43
A Thing Of Shreds And Patches
Sir Jacob had demanded to know what the fuck she was up to, but Polly, looking airy, had replied that she was just going up to the bach for a few days, and since it was mid-term break, Katie Maureen was coming with her. Turning purple, he had bellowed: “What about us?” but Polly had replied loftily that she and Katie Maureen weren’t in the mood to put up with male peer groups, thanks. And had thereupon vanished northwards in the Lamborghini, complete with her red-headed daughter and, Sir Jacob would discover some time later, the bowl of rump steak that had been marinating in the fridge for, or so he had fondly believed, his dinner. “Bloody COW!” he shouted; but his sons, alas, were not impressed. In fact Davey noted sourly that he and Johnny were gonna get up early tomorrow and walk down to the main road and catch the bus up to Carter’s Bay. Johnny agreed mildly, and enquired what was for tea, then, Dad? The empurpled Sir Jacob stomped around the kitchen, flinging doors wide, discovering that She hadn’t done any shopping. Immediately the twins decided to go round to the Greens’ place for tea. Sir Jacob vetoed this suggestion angrily, and stomped around a bit more, breathing heavily, before finally deciding they’d get the waggon out and go up there, too. His ten-year-old sons, eyeing him tolerantly, pointed out that Mum was in a bad mood, it’d be a stupid idea. It’d be a much better idea to go up in the morning, when she’d have cooled down. Johnny, who had a more scientific bent, even noted wisely that her PMT might have worn off, by then. Sir Jacob’s face twitched in a pale simulacrum of a smile and he muttered feebly: “Yeah.” Davey, who had a more managerial bent, then competently suggested fish and chips, and bustled them into the waggon for the trip into Puriri township and the good fish and chips shop up Sir John Marshall Av’. After which Sir Jacob just about had the strength to point out that he was supposed to be going into work tomorrow, old sons. The boys decided unanimously that in that case Dad could drive them as far as Carter’s Bay before work. Even though it was a Helluva long walk from the centre of Carter’s Bay to the Carrano bach at the far end of the Inlet road, Sir Jacob raised no objections: he had a feeling that they’d have it all sussed out.
Polly and Katie Maureen arrived at the bach in plenty of time for lunch. In fact, in time for morning tea before lunch.
“Can we go to Michaela’s?”
Polly cleared her throat. “Well, I dare say we could just drop in, yes.”
“Yeah; neato!” she approved.
“Mm.” Polly eyed her daughter’s outfit uneasily. Katie Maureen was now eight, and since she had been in the habit of choosing her own clothes since the age of about eighteen months, there was probably little hope that she could be talked out of it and into something, um… more feminine. “Jack and Murray might be home, too, since it’s mid-term break.”
“He’s a nong,” she declared unhesitatingly.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” replied Polly temperately. “He’s a dear little boy.”
“Yeah,’r’an’ he’s a nong,” she maintained stoutly with the customary intervocalic R of the demotic.
“Mm. Um, darling, wouldn’t you like to put on something prettier? Say, a pretty pale pink jumper? That one with the wee green rosebuds that Daddy got you in—”
“It’s sissy, Mum!”
“—Los Angeles,” finished Polly sadly. “It was just a thought. God knows I was ten times more macho than you at that age.”
“You had a horse!” she retorted swiftly.
“Only because Grandpa had horses for the farm; I’d have had a pony if—”
That went over like a lead balloon, of course. “I want a horse! A proper horse!”
The reminder that Davey and Johnny still loved their ponies went over like another lead balloon. Apparently they were both sissies. Polly didn’t argue. Actually, on the whole she agreed with her, though she wasn’t prepared to come right out and say so. “All right, darling, there doesn’t seem to be any logical reason why you shouldn’t have a horse, provided that you show us you can ride it. I’ll speak to Daddy. In the meantime, let’s have a cup of tea and then we’ll take the runabout down to Michaela’s, shall we?”
“If we go down Michaela’s first, she might make pear ginger sandwiches,” replied the eight-year-old brain cunningly.
Polly looked at the narrowed eyes, not to mention the jeans, black jumper, and macho grey third-hand Led Zepplin tee-shirt, and swallowed a sigh. “All right.”
“YAY!” she cried. “Gimme the key, I’ll unlock the shed!”
Smiling palely, Polly gave her sole female offspring the key and watched limply as she dashed over to the sacred macho Mitre 10 shed, unlocked it, removed and launched the sacred macho runabout, placed two life-jackets in it, and competently re-locked the shed. “Come ON, Mum!”
Limply Polly came on. And to think she used to worry that Jake was ruining her with all those frilly dresses and frilly-dressed dollies, turning her into a simpering idiot before she’d had a chance to discover women could do anything men could…
Michaela and Grace were out; so was Jane. Polly didn’t ask the offspring where it wanted to go next; she just turned the runabout and headed back to Jack’s.
The sliding door to the living-room was open, so they went in. “Hi,” she said mildly to the slim back in the kitchen.
Jack let out a yell and hurled a teaspoon into the air.
“Sorry,” said Polly blithely.
“Hi, there, Polly,” he croaked feebly. “Hey, Katie Maureen; gee, you look real workmanlike.”
“Yeah. I’m gonna have a horse,” it informed him.
“Uh-huh. Great. Uh, say, your family musical?” he said airily to Polly.
“Jake’ll sing, probably without even having to be asked, Jack,” said Polly with a sigh.
“No!” he said with a startled laugh. “He’d be a bass, would he?”
“An uncertain bass, yes. No idea of breath control. But he’s game for anything.”
“Not surprised. No, we were thinking of a young persons’ choi—”
“I’m nodda young person,” announced the offspring grimly. “Where’s Murray?”
“Upstairs, thinking about new curtains for the spare rooms. You wanna go on up, honey?” said Jack kindly.
“Nah, curtains are sissy.”
“Omigod,” said Jack faintly to its mother.
“Yes, well, it has been creeping up on us for some time,” admitted Polly feebly. “In spite of Jake’s efforts for the past eight years with frilly dresses and frilly dolls.”
“Dolls are sissy.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” agreed Jack mildly. “Horses are much better, huh? Say, that reminds me, Polly: did you know that Alan’s thinking of breeding quarter horses?”
“Really? Jack, that’d be ideal!”
“Uh-huh.” He looked sideways at Katie Maureen. “Real intelligent, very trainable, and—er—without a plethora of hands.” He raised his eyebrows very high at Polly.
“Exactly!” she agreed, grinning.
“Have you had your morning tea, Jack?” the focussed eight-year-old brain then demanded.
“Sorry,” said Polly limply. “Katie Maureen, don’t hint, darling.”
“Aw right. Please can we have some morning tea? If it’s convenerunt,” it produced, with a blinding smile.
Shaking slightly, Jack replied: “Gee, what can I say? You’re very welcome to morning tea, Katie Maureen, and we were just gonna have it.”
“See?” she said to her mother with satisfaction. “Thank you,” she added hurriedly. “How’s your leg?” This was not a polite form; she then bent and peered at it.
Jack was wearing baggy jeans; he replied unemotionally: “Much better, thanks. Wanna see?” She nodded, still bent over, so he obligingly pulled the leg of the jeans up.
“Just a big bandage,” she reported to her mother, breathing stertorously.
“Yes,” replied Polly feebly, avoiding Jack’s eye.
“Hey, do you wanna cat?” she then demanded.
Jack jumped slightly. “A cat? Gee, dunno, Katie Maureen. I hadn’t really thought…”
“Beth likes cats, I asked her,” she announced.
Polly gasped, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“Uh-huh,” returned Jack on a dry note. “That’s good. Well, in principle I’m not opposed to a cat, but we better get Murray’s opinion before any decisions are made. Whyn’t you run on up and ask him? Um, I’m not sure which room he’s in—”
“I’ll find him!” she retorted scornfully, going.
There was a sticky silence in Jack’s large, modern kitchen.
“I’m awfully, awfully sorry, Jack,” said Beth’s cousin faintly.
Jack swallowed. “Do I dare to ask what you said to her?”
Polly bit her lip. “I didn’t mean to— I mean, sometimes you forget how young she is… What I mean is, half the time Jake points the dreaded finger at me before the words are out of my mouth, and the boys are only interested in their dumb little male peer-group affairs, and Daph Green only comes four mornings a week, and if I’m working I don’t always see her…”
“So you’ve got into the habit of including Katie Maureen in your female peer group: sure, I understand. She’s bright as Hell: why not hold an intelligent conversation with her?”
“Mm. Even if she can’t pronounce ‘convenient’,” said Polly weakly. “Um, I only said that we mustn’t give up hope and I was sure you’d get together in the end. Um, they’re very pragmatic at that age, you know, and she immediately asked if you’d be having babies, so I said I couldn’t say, but it was possible. But some people settle for a cat or a dog, instead, and of course you already had Murray. It was after that that she asked Beth if she liked cats. Um—a friend of ours has got some young cats to give away. Not kittens: they’re about a year old.”
“Mm.” Jack turned away and stared bleakly out of his kitchen window at a view of expensive nursery-supplied manuka shrubs that weren’t doing too well, ditto variegated native flax that ditto, and the flourishing original scruffy growth that still covered the greater part of the roadside frontage of his property.
“This is more south than east, isn’t it?” discovered Polly. “I’d have placed the kitchen with a view of the Inlet.”
“You and all the moos of Puriri County,” he sighed. “Uh—sorry, Polly, didn’t mean to be rude. They all say it, though. Dare I ask if Katie Maureen asked Beth if she likes me, as well as cats?”
Polly gulped. “No; I headed her off.”
“Gee, good,” he said sourly.
“Jack, I’m sure she’s just jealous because Randi’s coming out.”
“I had worked that out,” he said bleakly.
“Well, isn’t that a good sign?”
Jack turned round and looked at her grimly, his nostrils flared. “I dunno, Polly. It would be a good sign if she was staying on and—and prepared to make a fight of it. But as it is?”
“Ye-es… She’s very insecure, you know. Don’t tell me you didn’t come on strong, I’ve gathered that. I don’t think that was the trouble, this time. I think it was the opposite: you held back too much. I won’t even say that you didn’t give her the right signals: she’s so very insecure— Actually I don’t think I mean that: I mean something much more old-fashioned. She’s such a modest person, Jack,” she said earnestly, “that unless you spelled out your feelings for her in words of one syllable, she’d never assume anything. See?”
“I see…” he said slowly. “That makes it hard for a guy, doesn’t it?”
“Not if you’re ready to make a commitment, no,” said Polly calmly, investigating his cupboards. “Have you got any biscuits?”
“Gee whillikins, didn’t you bring a cake?” he replied in huge astonishment. “You Kiwis don’t know beans about kaffee klatch etiquette, for sure!”
“Hah, hah. You must have some biscuits, with a little kid in the house!”
“Uh—yeah. See this here huge crock?”
Polly eyed it cautiously. “Mm. Straight from Albuquerque, is it, Jack?”
“What I like about you—well, partly—is you ain’t slow, Polly!” he admitted with a laugh. “It isn’t a genuine pueblo pot, but very nearly. It’s a cookie jar.”
“Balls, it hasn’t got ‘Cookies’ cutely emblazoned on it!” she replied, nevertheless opening it. “I can give you some really nice biscuit recipes that really work, if you like.”
“Your mum’s?” said Jack drily, handing her a plate.
“Yes. No, I tell a lie: Mum’s and Grandma’s.”
“They work with low cholesterol margarine?” he asked, brazenly pronouncing it “morj-rin”, accent on the first syllable, as he had learned in the States, rather than “mee-ah-jah-reen,” accent on the last, the style favoured locally.
“Dunno, no-one in my family’s ever bothered to waste their time finding out.”
“How do you keep that figure?” returned Jack sardonically, making tea.
“Largely, by not using Grandma’s recipes,” replied Polly blandly.
“Yeah!” He set the tea and the biscuits on a tray. “So: you reckon I should just ask her straight out?” he said hoarsely.
“Yes. Tell her you love her, Jack.”
“Mm,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “If she’ll even let me through the door. Um—what if it only makes matters worse?”
“I don’t think it could,” said Polly frankly. “I’ll get the kids.” She went out quietly.
Jack stared out blindly at his environmentally-friendly garden, his throat tight, blinking back tears.
Quite some time later, as Polly and Katie Maureen were getting into their runabout, he said hoarsely: “After or before Randi comes out, Polly?”
“I’d try to speak to her before, Jack,” she said gently. “Don’t put her through the agony of wondering whether you and Randi might get together again.”
“No. Right,” he said, swallowing. “Okay. They’re due middle of next week. I’ll give it my best shot, huh?”
“Mm,” she said, smiling the gentle smile that was so very like Beth’s. “Give it your best shot, Jack. NO!” she bellowed at the offspring. “I’M STEERING! And sit DOWN! –Bye-bye!” she cried sweetly, gunning the engine.
Jack took Murray’s warm, sticky hand tightly in his, and waved limply, as the runabout headed out into the inlet in a shower of spray.
“Grandpa, can I have a cat?” said the little boy into the silence.
“What?” Jack came to with a jump: they were both standing there stock-still like— “Uh—come on in the house, Murray, it’s freezing out here.”
“Can I?” he repeated as they went inside.
“A cat? Do you like cats?”
“’Course!” he replied scornfully.
Jack blinked. Okay, he liked cats. “Um, wouldn’t you rather have a dog?” he said cautiously.
“Nah! A cat!” he cried in the local vernacular.
The power of suggestion, no doubt. That and the forceful Carrano personality. Boy, and was that from both sides of the family, or what? He tottered inside and sank down onto a rawhide sofa. “Murray, honey,” he said after some time, “you can have a cat if you want. Listen, I gotta go see someone this evening. Um, think Jane’d take you for tea?”
“I’ll ask her!” He shot off to the phone.
Jack just sat there limply. Talk about your monstrous regiment… Thank God it had by-passed Beth.
Since walking out of Jack’s house Beth had had more than time to regret her rash action. Not to say, more than time to point out to herself that she had done the right thing: whether or not he looked on her as some sort of sexless carer without any feelings of its own, which in her opinion he did, it was very clear that he cared more about his ex-wife than he did about her. The sensible thing would be to forget all about him. Well, just to treat him coolly as a friend—not a very close friend. And most certainly not to get involved in anything to do with him, his troubles, his relations, his grandson, or anything he was involved in, ever again. In fact, if she hadn’t been scared of Penny Bergen, Beth would have resigned from the stupid Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Unfortunately she didn’t have the guts. Not that it mattered, because at the last several rehearsals Jack hadn’t even glanced at her. But the minute the stupid performance of the stupid Mikado was over she was going to leave. Actually, she would just not come to any meetings, or auditions or anything: it wouldn’t be a positive resignation, just a withdrawal. With any luck Penny wouldn’t even miss her.
She had been quite prepared to tell Jack—well, not positively face-to-face, maybe, but definitely on the phone—that she couldn’t possibly pick Murray up after school any more; but the innocent Wallis had announced out of the blue that Martin could easily do it: it was in the gap between lunch and dinner when he wasn’t needed at The Quays except in their very busiest summer period. Beth had taken this as a sign or portent, and let Wallis be the one to tell Jack about it. This unexpected solution to her problem should, by all the laws of logic, have cheered Beth up tremendously. Funnily enough, though, it hadn’t.
She had managed to avoid Jack almost entirely. Reports had filtered through to her that his leg was a lot better but Beth had told herself grimly she wasn’t interested in his stupid leg and for all she cared, it could fall off.
Various people who had Beth’s welfare at heart, if not so much Jack’s, had of course spoken to her in the interim. Persons such as the well-meaning Yvonne she had scornfully dismissed, if only in her head, as Nosy Parkers. Dorothy’s effort to point out that Beth must feel something, or why had she rushed to his bedside, had been received with the grim reply: “Because I was there. I suppose you’d have walked away?” And with the grim thought that whatever Dorothy said about Jack, she wasn’t going to listen. Because he was her brother. Dorothy actually hadn’t said much about Jack at all, but Beth’s heart had remained hardened. Nice Moana Curtis, herself glowing with happiness, had tried to tell Beth over a lunch at The Quays that Jack was not all bad and all men needed to have allowances made for them: but Beth, going very red and managing to articulate the words: “Personally I don’t see why women are always expected to make allowances for adult men: no-one makes allowances for us,” had mentally dismissed this well-intentioned effort as just the result of the relationship with Leigh, which was still at the rose-coloured spectacles stage. Unexpectedly, Hal Gorman had also asked Beth to lunch at The Quays. Beth had expected Janet to be there and had been very surprised to find she wasn’t. The reason for this had very soon been apparent: Hal had assured Beth that Jack Perkins, never mind that febrile manner, was a real good guy and to boot a real lonely guy. He had actually used the word “febrile”, and this, apposite though it was, had predisposed Beth against him immediately, as proving that at heart he was just as polysyllabic and pointlessly articulate as all Americans. This had made it very easy for her to ignore the suggestion that Jack was lonely. The more so as he manifestly wasn’t—or at least wouldn’t be in a few weeks’ time.
Angie had gone one better than Moana and Hal, and asked Beth to dinner. Beth might have been naïve but she was far from stupid, and although she hadn’t managed to be rude enough to refuse, had turned up fully prepared to resist, nay, ignore, every word Angie might say on the subject of Jack. Angie had Col and Mitsuko there, and the excuse for the whole thing was that she was about to take off for Hawaii, but as the young couple left early it was very clearly a plot. Angie didn’t actually say very much, except that she was sorry to hear that Beth seemed to have broken up with Jack. The phrase gave Beth the perfect opportunity to point out that she hadn’t broken up with him: there had been nothing to break up.
Nice Simone and Euan also asked Beth to dinner. Beth was very wary about this indeed: because Murray and Pierre were such good friends there had been several informal get-togethers with them and Jack: spur-of-the-moment Sunday lunches, and so forth; but only Simone, Euan, the children and Annick had been present, and no-one had said anything, or even hinted anything, about Jack. After not very long, however, it had dawned on Beth that all three of them were emanating—heavily emanating—sympathy. An outright discussion of the topic would have been, on the whole, easier to take. Because then she could have been firm and told them there was nothing in it and there never had been anything in it. The sympathy, however, made her feel very much like bursting into tears. Illogical though that would have been.
Clara had now moved in with Barry Goode: apparently definitively. Beth had not expressed her thoughts on that topic. Well, there was nothing much wrong with him, except that he was as dull as ditchwater and heavily into that hopelessly boring, not to say old-fashioned, Good Keen Man thing. Personally Beth would have said that it should long since have been retired as a worn-out myth. All right for appearing on the stupid TV ads in a sort of fuzzy sepia-tinted pioneer haze, but bearing no relationship whatsoever to real life in the Nineties. Well, for Heaven’s sake! How many men actually spent their weekends, even, let alone their lives, out in the bush with a four-wheel-drive hunting possums, or whatever it was that Good Keen Men hunted, as opposed to mowing their boring suburban lawns, polishing their boring family car, and sitting in front of the TV watching stupid, boring sports?
If he was what Clara wanted, however, Beth was sure she wished them well. She had managed to say, rather faintly: “Isn’t it a wee bit sudden?”
To which Clara had replied, with a blinding smile that made her look incredibly like Polly: “Well, if we don’t try it out, Beth, how will we know if we can stand living together?”
At the time this reply had seemed logical enough, the more so since Clara’s decision had come during the period that Beth was staying at Jack’s; and Beth had merely nodded seriously. She had seen almost nothing of Clara since: she and Barry certainly turned up regularly for the rehearsals of The Mikado, but she hadn’t seen her to speak to, really. Polly had had them to dinner one evening, with Beth and Akiko, and Sol and Michaela: just a family dinner. Jake and Barry had seemed to hit it off really well. Which only proved what Beth had thought all along: that Clara and Polly were incredibly alike and that she, Beth, would never in a million years be able to stand living with that hearty type of man that was actually interested in stupid macho things like building barbecues and the best sort of fence and playing feeble-ized billiards. –Three of the main topics at dinner. At the back of her mind Beth was aware that this judgement was doing Jake a considerable injustice, and probably Barry, too, because after dinner they had all talked about music and he had let Jake draw him out and had proved to know quite lot—more than Beth did, certainly. She had, however, wilfully refused to examine this point.
She and Akiko had driven back to Carter’s Bay together. At first Akiko had said nothing, which was rather unusual for her. Then she had said: “What you think of Barry and Cuh-lara, Beth?”
Beth had replied on a sour note: “I suppose he suits Clara.”
“Yes,” said Akiko flatly.
“He’s nice enough,” admitted Beth grudgingly.
“Too-ah nice. All those-ah Goodes, they are door-uh-mattah men!” she retorted fiercely.
Beth blinked. “Oh. I see what you mean.”
“No go innah them,” she clarified.
“Yes. Boring. Oh, well, good luck to them.”
“Hai. I very sick of the subject,” owned Akiko grimly. “This is the Nineties. Women should have oth-ah things on their ah-mind than-ah stupid-ah men.”
“I quite agree,” said Beth grimly.
Possibly they both did have other things on their minds, but whatever they were, neither of them expressed them, because nothing more was said for the rest of the drive.
After that, when Akiko had asked Beth round to Mrs Adler’s for tea, Beth, though remaining wary, hadn’t really expected the topic of stupid men to be broached. And nor it had been. Nor had either Akiko or the old lady so much as hinted at anything even distantly related to Jack Perkins. On the contrary, Mrs Adler had chatted peacefully about her grandchildren and happily given Beth the recipe for her beef goulash: it was just a stew, really, but dressed up a bit with some spices and a bit of red pepper. She had got it out of the Woman’s Weekly years ago. There was nothing much on TV that night, but Mrs Adler always liked The Bill, because the characters were quite believable, so they watched that. The old lady always went to bed early, but Beth and Akiko watched Akiko’s video of a disaster movie with Charlton Heston in it. It was one of those third-rate American movies that were half-pie imitations of something else that had been successful, though not necessarily good. Everything seemed to be falling down or burning up or flooded or all three. No-one came out of it triumphantly or even, for the most part, alive, but as Akiko had previously warned her that it was awfully silly, Beth didn’t really mind. Though personally she couldn’t see what on earth Akiko saw in Charlton Heston. Added to which, in this particular film he was quite old. Still, it was exciting enough to hold your attention. And since it was a cold night they had cocoa for supper, Mrs Adler had taught Akiko how to make it. All in all it was a pleasant, undemanding evening, and certainly the entire lack of anything approaching hints or sympathy should have suited Beth down to the ground; but somehow or another she had ended up, when her front door was firmly closed against the world, hurling her handbag across the sitting-room and shouting loudly at the empty flat: “Is that all there IS? Stupid recipes and stupid VIDEOS?”
No alternatives immediately suggesting themselves, Beth had cried herself to sleep, that night as on many of the other nights since she had walked out of Jack’s. Waking the next morning with a headache, and grimly re-formulating the resolution, as she burnt the toast, not to think about him any more, because it was pointless.
She had of course thought about him almost unceasingly, except when actually performing the tasks Thomas employed her to perform. The resolution, however, remained grimly in place. As did the conviction that he wasn’t interested in her at all. Not as a person, as opposed to a convenient baby-sitter and sexless carer.
At the corner where Kingfisher Parade met the waterfront, the site of the almost completed Kingfisher Bay Dairy was dark and silent. The three little shops in the block overlooking the marina were quiet and closed. In Galerie 2’s window an artful display of a driftwood log, a scattering of silver sand, three shells, one small bowl and one superb hand-knitted sweater glowed enticingly. To those with Gold Cards in their wallets, at any rate. Above the shops, light showed in Beth’s windows. Jack rang the bell quickly, before he could chicken out on the whole bit.
“Can we talk?” he said as she opened the door.
As she trudged downstairs to answer her door on a freezing, damp July night, Beth’s heart had thudded furiously at the idea that it might be him. As it had done, in spite of incessant disappointments, every time she answered the door, since that first time when it had been him and she had still been so angry with him that it had been very easy to say “Go away,” and close the door. Of course it wouldn’t be him, it would probably be Sol, working late and hoping for a cup of coffee, or Annick, working late and hoping to have Beth join her for dinner at The Quays—
“What about?” she said, very, very faintly to Jack’s “Can we talk?”
Jack licked his lips. “Us, I guess.”
A Nineties woman should have pointed out lightly but firmly that there was no “us”. Then possibly conceding that if Jack wanted to talk, they could perhaps make an appointment to meet at a convenient time, on neutral territory. Beth could see a picture of this quite clearly in her head, but not of her saying or doing it. “Um, now?’ she said feebly.
Jack almost said yes, now, if it was convenient. Just in time he realised that this would have offered her the perfect opportunity to say it wasn’t convenient. “Yes, please,” he said meekly. “Could I come in? It’s an awful cold night.”
“Um, yes,” said Beth, going very red. “Um, how’s your leg?” she said, standing back in the inadequate space at the foot of the stairs to let him in.
“It’s a lot better, thanks. Having physiotherapy, y’know?” Jack looked around for a coat hook but there wasn’t one.
Wondering what he was staring at but not lowering herself to ask him, Beth closed the door and growled: “Go up.”
“Thanks.” Trying not to limp—he wasn’t out for the sympathy vote—Jack went slowly upstairs and into the sitting-room. Practically no furniture. Same as what she’d had in her old flat, if his memory went back that far.
“Some of us,” said Beth in a hard voice to his expression, “haven’t been earning huge American salaries for years. Sit by the heater.”
There was an electric heater, not a big one. It wasn’t on. Jack subsided limply into the chair nearest it and watched limply as, looking grim, she switched it on and sat down. Not very near but at least near enough to talk.
As she didn’t utter he said inanely: “You like this apartment better than the old one, Beth?”
“‘Flat’,” corrected Beth in a hard voice. “No.”
Silence fell.
“Oh. Uh—so, what’s through there?” he said feebly.
“It’s all in a row. Barry said there was wasn’t enough space for a passage. That’s Clara’s old bedroom. Well, it’s meant to be a dining-room but I haven’t got a dining suite,” said Beth on a vicious note. “And the kitchenette. You have to go right through to get to the bedroom and the bathroom.”
“I get it,” he said feebly. “Uh—so Clara’s moved in with Barry, has she?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a real nice guy,” said Jack desperately.
“Yes. I suppose he’s what she wants,” returned Clara’s cousin flatly.
“Uh-huh. She’s a simple kind of girl, really,” said Jack slowly. “Not nearly such a complex personality as you.”
“Me?” replied Beth, staring.
“Yeah. Hadn’t you ever realised? Well, you are. Hard to get to know, and real hard to get to understand.”
Beth had gone very red. She glared at him, and hugged herself—whether defensively or because the apartment was Goddamn freezing, Jack couldn’t figure. Both, maybe.
“Uh—you warm enough, Beth?” he ventured,
“Yes!” replied Beth angrily. “I’m not a pampered American, using up irreplaceable natural resources and polluting the environment with central heating all the time!”
“Not all the time, the other half of the year it’s air conditioning. Look, Beth, I thought you understood, though I guess it was wrong of me to make that assumption, that I’ve tried the pampered American bit, and it bored me solid. Fixed teeth, impeccable grooming, superb housekeeping skills, and all,” he added drily.
“You’ve got a real thing about teeth, haven’t you?” returned Beth pugnaciously.
“I’m real glad you’ve noticed, Beth!” said Jack with a little laugh.
Beth was very red. “It’d be hard not to notice: you mention them often enough.”
“Well, I don’t guess persons such as May Swadling would have noticed I do, or even Velda Manning, though she sees me most days of the week, or Yvonne from Sir G.G., or any of our colleagues. You may not realise,” said Jack, very dry, “but I’m not a popular guy in these parts.”
“I suppose you’re too—” Beth broke off.
“Too Americanised for them? Yeah. Am I too Americanised for you, is the question, Beth.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she replied, glaring.
Jack passed his hand over his forehead wearily. Boy, talk about not making assumptions. She was worse than that: she not only didn’t make them, she didn’t allow herself to make them; and in fact at the mere suggestion there might be an assumption to be made, she went into defensive mode!
“I suppose I better come right out and say it. I miss you like crazy, Beth. The house seems real empty without you. There’s nothing left between me and Randi, except that we made the mistake of having two kids together. Believe it: she wouldn’t have me back on a platter, garnished with cress!” he said forcefully.
“Then why’s she coming out here?” replied Beth sourly.
“The kids are too little to travel all that way by themselves,” said Jack flatly.
Beth gulped.
“Also, I don’t deny it, Randi’s the type that if she knows someone who lives somewhere faintly interesting where she thinks she might just like to take a vacation, she’ll contact them sure as eggs. Tell me that’s an uncommon syndrome here and I’ll eat my damned bandages.”
“Are—are you still bandaged up, then?” said Beth in a shaking voice.
“Yeah. Smith assures me that I’m improving. Also that I’m damned lucky, with all the hopping around I did too soon after he’d told me not to, that the leg didn’t set crooked and have to be rebroken and reset,” he said with a sigh. “I think, somewhere back in all that verbosity that I can’t help, I asked you to come and live with me again, Beth. If I didn’t, well, I meant to. I get worse when I’m nervous,” he said, gnawing on his lip. “Not to say, shit-scared.”
Beth swallowed loudly. After a moment she managed to say: “Of—of me?”
“Yes,” said Jack on dreary note. “Of you. Of rejection specifically by you, I guess.”
Licking her lips, Beth looked at him doubtfully. He was sitting very slumped, his wiry shoulders drooping. The fine knit vee-necked grey jumper looked like a boy’s school jumper, though at the back of her mind she recognised that it was probably that soft sort of wool that cost a fortune and he had probably bought it at a very expensive shop. In it, he looked about as old and defenceless as a schoolboy. He seemed to have lost weight, not that he’d ever been fat. “Um, wuh-well, what do you mean?” she said in a shaking voice.
Jack nearly made the awful mistake of telling her that he’d spoken to Polly and so he quite understood that she was far too modest to assume he was asking her to be his life-partner. He cleared his throat. “Uh, I thought we were getting on real well. I miss our comfortable evenings together.”
“Um, yes,” said Beth uncertainly.
“I won’t say Murray keeps asking me when you’re coming back, because that isn’t the point. I think the point is, that I want you to come back. Uh, not on the same basis,” he said quickly.
Beth just looked at him warily.
“Look, maybe we don’t know each other in the right way, but what the Hell, I’m not getting any younger and I can’t damn well stand it, Beth!” he said, getting a lot louder than he’d meant. “Come and live with me with a view to marriage, for God’s sake!”
After a moment Beth said in shaking voice: “Is this a joke?”
“No,” said Jack, blinking back tears. “Laugh if you want, though. –Shit,” he said, passing the back of his hand across his eyes.
“Um, the thing is," said Beth with a loud gulp, “I’m not very good at sex.”
“You mean that creep, Sally Whatserface’s brother, was no damn good at sex: that I can believe!” he said loudly. “What about Gerhard: don’t tell me he didn’t teach you how to enjoy it?”
“Um, ye-es… I suppose I thought it might just be him,” said Beth in a tiny voice.
“Gee, thanks!” he croaked, goggling at her in spite of himself.
Beth’s face flamed. “Not that!” she gasped.
“Uh—well, will you come and try it out? I don’t mean a fling, Beth. I’ve had it up to here with flings. I’ve only wanted you, since I first laid eyes on you. Don’t ask me the Hell why, because I can’t tell you. God knows I’ve tried enough to analyse it.”
“I see; you’ve got that sort of mind,” said Beth slowly. “Um, maybe it’s something you can’t analyse. Um—you never really— Um, I know that first time we went to the supermarkets I was a bit off-putting…”
“Yeah. I came on too strong. But gee, when I tried not coming on too strong it didn’t work, either! So I guess I got the message, and gave up for a bit. No,” he said, reddening, as Beth nodded: “that’s not it. I don’t want to play stupid mind-games with you, Beth. For a while I kidded myself that that was it. That you just hadn’t given me enough encouragement, and so I might as well give up. But I think, really, I just seized on that as an excuse. I guess I was scared of how strongly I felt about you, without really knowing you or anything.”
She didn’t say anything, just looked at him with a dubious expression on her face.
“Do you see?” he added desperately.
“Mm,” said Beth, nodding. “But I was mean to you. I did it on purpose. Um, I kept telling myself how Americanised you were and—and all that. Hal called you febrile the other day: it’s what I always thought. Only the thing is, I was using it as an excuse.”
“An excuse not to let yourself get closer to me?” said Jack hoarsely.
“Mm.” Beth looked at him shyly. He looked… somehow a lot older, and rather strained, and grey. All at once she saw, not the sophisticated, articulate, febrile, hyperactive Jack that the whole of Carter’s Bay thought they knew—and, he was right about that, didn’t like: but a simply a tired, nervy, no longer young man who was as defenceless as a little boy. In very much the same way as an excitable, nervy little boy: talking far too much, blurting out the first thing that came into his busy little head— He was, really, incredibly like her cousin Amy’s little Tyrone. Also mad on computers, though when last seen he had only been nine.
“You’re—you’re very like Tyrone,” she said shakily.
Jack gaped at her. “Who?”
“He’s a little boy! My cousin Amy’s little boy!” she gasped. “He—um, I mean, he talks all the time, and—and I suppose you’d call him very excitable. Amy says he’s… One of those popular words these days, no-one ever used it when I was a kid,” she said, frowning over it. “She doesn’t let him drink Coke or cordial, because they make him worse, especially the orange dye. Hyperactive! That’s it!”
“Oh,” replied Jack slowly. “That how you see me, Beth?”
“Only sometimes,” she growled, going very red.
“Yeah. But do you like this Tyrone?”
“Um, yes. Um, actually, he’s the only thing I miss about Christchurch, really. Well, that and Solidarity,” she said honestly. “Um, sorry, that’s a cat. He lived next-door to us—to the flat, I mean. In the next-door house. They called him that for a joke. He was a very chunky-looking kitten.”
“Yeah,” said Jack, smiling a little. “So, let’s say we get a cat, will you come live with me? Sex and all, view to permanency? Um, I know my track record’s real poor, but—”
“Yes, it is. Don’t make any promises,” said Beth, frowning.
“But I want to make promises, Beth!”
“Don’t. I might not be able to—to do it.”
“To— Oh, to hack living with me? No, I quite see that,” said Jack humbly.
“Don’t,” said Beth faintly.
“Don’t what?”
“You—you’re all crushed,” she said, very, very faintly.
There was silence in the chilly, under-furnished sitting-room of the apartment over the three little shops.
Jack took a deep breath. “I told myself that I wasn’t out for the sympathy vote, Beth, and I wouldn’t use that sort of emotional blackmail on you. But why not admit it? It’s true enough: I feel real crushed, sure enough. Partly my accident—y’know? Made me feel I’m not invulnerable no more,” he said with a grimace. “That and Shiva’s death. Well, and the three of them turning up out of the blue. No, well," he said honestly, “I guess I got over that. I’d have just—uh—brushed them into a corner, thrown money at them, or some such, y’know? If it hadn’t been for her being so ill.”
Beth nodded silently.
“I suppose,” said Jack, suddenly sighing and putting his hand over his eyes, “I’m not much of a bet for you, am I? Too old, don’t say it. Real bad track record in relationships. And crushed, sure enough.”
Beth got up, very shakily. “No,” she said, coming over to him and timidly touching the thin brown hand that lay on the arm of the cheap easy-chair.
“No?” said Jack faintly, looking up at her doubtfully.
“You’re not all those—those bad things. I mean, I don’t think so. I mean,” said Beth, taking a brave breath, “I think I’m in love with you.”
Jack tried to smile.
“Don’t,” she said, kneeling down beside his chair. ”I don’t care if all those stupid Carter’s Bay people don’t like you. I like you. You’re not boring.”
“Not boring, huh?” said Jack with a shaky grin. “Well, that’s a start.”
“Yes.”
“Uh—look, I’ll make a real effort not to come too on strong, Beth, honey— ”
“No. I mean, I like it, I mean, I’ve been telling myself I don’t, but I do,” she said, going very red.
“I see. Hyperactivity, all that?”
“Yes. I’m not like that myself. But it’s…” Beth frowned over it, Jack didn’t kid himself his heart wasn’t thundering in horrible anxiety as she did so. “Exciting,” she pronounced at last.
“Uh-huh,” he croaked. “Took you long enough to admit it, huh?”
“Mm,” she agreed, swallowing. “I had to admit it to myself, first. Um, don’t take this the wrong way, will you? But you’re a wee bit like Sol, and I know I’m a bit like Michaela, and I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s what she sees in him.”
Jack frankly didn’t give a damn whether this was correct, or not: just so long as Beth believed it! “Yeah,” he said, grinning, and daring to put his hand under her stubborn chin at long last. “Two hyperactive Yankee guys, huh?”
“Mm,” said Beth, going bright red.
Jack didn’t guess that it was what he’d said, specifically, that was having that effect on her; he guessed it was more having his hand under her chin like that, which, please note, even if Goddamned Sachs hadn’t taught her as much, was an erogenous zone in the average soft-skinned, pink-cheeked female person of the opposite gender. So he stopped talking and just leaned forward and kissed her.
“Actually, I hate this flat,” said Beth when he’d stopped for breath.
“Yeah. Shall we lock the door on it and go home?”
To his astonishment she didn’t raise any objections or say she had to fetch such-and-such—or anything. She just said: “Okay, Jack. I’d like that.”
Next chapter:
https://conquestofcartersbay.blogspot.com/2023/05/strategic-moves.html
No comments:
Post a Comment