You Left Early: A True Story of Love and Alcohol

When the rain stopped, I walked out into the brilliance of sudden English sun after rain, raindrop-spattered cobwebs glittering all around, the wooden garden fence steaming lightly, and I sang ‘Cry Me a River’ softly to the sheep who stood with tiny rainbows in their oily wool, as the wet grass soaked through my shoes and drenched my jeans up to the knee.

Tenderness crept through me. I could feel it. I imagined a future: him at the piano, playing; me on a sofa, reading. A fire. French windows, maybe. A touching end to a long saga.

Would I make him cry me a river?

No. I would follow Johnny Cash’s advice. I would be what I was – in love with him. With him, finally. To turn my back on this would go against nature. All I could do now was be honest. See where love would take us. Because love can take you anywhere.

*

On my return to London I had a little speech semi-prepared, and waited for the moment, which occurred across a bowl of tom yung koong.

‘I must try and make this,’ he said. ‘You like it, don’t you?’

‘So, Robert,’ I said.

‘Yes, Louisa,’ he said, with a demeanour of self-aware ironic obedience. He was wearing a clean white shirt, and was sober, though over-shaved.

I hadn’t smoked for years, but I rather wanted one now. It felt so charmingly youthful to be here with Robert. Like being twenty-five again. I took a fag from his packet.

‘Bloody amateur,’ he grumbled, and didn’t light it for me.

‘So, Robert,’ I said.

‘You’re looking gorgeous,’ he said. ‘Let’s skip dinner. Come under the table with me. I’ve had a demi-maître all week at the thought of you.’ (Demi-maître = half-master = semi-erection.)

‘Robert,’ I said.

‘Don’t brush me off,’ he said.

‘No!’ I said – and realised suddenly his vulnerability.

‘No?’ he said.

‘Do you want me for your girlfriend?’ I asked. The seventeen-year-old ghost me shivered. The nerve! To ask Robert that!

‘Well it seems a bit of a juvenile way to put it,’ he said, ‘but partner is a dreadful term, sounds like I want you to set up in a law firm or play squash, and it’s probably a little early to ask you to marry me, though I could start quite soon with the veiled hints …’

‘I’ll be your girlfriend,’ I said. ‘What I said – if you’re looking for a good woman so you can be saved by her love, I’ll do that. I can’t not. Two things though.’

He was smiling.

‘You stop drinking, and you get a shrink.’

My seventeen-year-old gaped. To ask Robert, straight out, and to set requirements!

He was taking a long drag, cigarette held between finger and thumb. He smiled down at the cigarette. ‘Drink and smoke till the day I die,’ he murmured.

‘Smoking is a detail,’ I said. ‘Of course you smoke too much, but it doesn’t make you a cunt.’

‘Does drinking make me a cunt?’ he asked.

‘You should know. You’re there every time it happens.’

‘I do drink too much,’ he said. ‘Far too much. You’re right, I should cut down.’

‘You must stop,’ I said.

‘Completely?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that a requirement?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t ask much, does she.’

‘It’s not for me.’

‘Yes it is,’ he said. ‘OK. I’ll do it.’ (Air of doing a great favour.) ‘I won’t drink when I’m with you.’ He announced it as if it were in his gift.

‘At all,’ I said gently.

‘And I won’t be POA,’ he said. ‘All right?’ A little aggressively. (POA is Pissed On Arrival.)

‘At all,’ I said.

He avoided understanding.

‘OK,’ he said.

‘At all, ever, whether I am there or not,’ I said, very clearly. ‘Ever again.’

‘But I can’t have a steak without a glass or two of nice fat red wine,’ he said. ‘It’s a cultural thing, it’s …’