Girl From the South (v5) Page 5

  The problem was William. Or, more fundamentally, the problem was Henry, but that problem was compounded by William’s presence in the flat. He was amiable enough to live with in all conscience, but he was there, living, breathing there, even when he was asleep and even, oddly, when he wasn’t there at all but his shoes were, by the sofa in the sitting room, and his parka was, hung crookedly on a peg in the narrow hallway, and his toothbrush was, sometimes in the same toothmug as hers, sometimes with Henry’s, sometimes – most often – lying at the bottom of the basin, with the toothpaste scum, where he’d dropped it.

  It seemed to Tilly that if two of you lived in a relationship, with a third person there, that relationship could make no progress. It was held back, of course it was, with the restraints and accommodations and courtesies of including someone else who could, by the very nature of things, only be included up to a point. William’s presence was keeping them both limited and student-like. Adults, unless very peculiar or very sophisticated, did not on the whole live with add-ons to their basic relationships. Students did because they weren’t formed, weren’t finished, because a kind of plasticity and fluidity sat comfortably with a stage in their lives when they were still fluid and plastic themselves. Except, Tilly thought, that they got used to that, men especially: the student stage of living and relationships was very seductive because it was the last stage, or age, where the outside world forgave you for not making up your mind.

  Tilly knew, had known for some time, that she’d made up her own mind. In order not to put any pressure – oh, terrible phrase, terrible notion, acknowledged universally as a deeply unacceptable thing for a woman to do to a man – on Henry, Tilly had tried not to make the certainty of her own mind too plain. Henry was loving, after all. She knew he loved her. She knew it. He behaved, mostly, with all the consideration and affection of a man who is thinking about his partner as well as of her. He wasn’t a champagne-at-midnight, impulse-weekend-in-Paris kind of man, but he was one who thought to run a bath for her when she was tired. And he listened. Tilly couldn’t, she told herself, accuse him of not listening. It was odd, therefore, with Henry’s warmth and capacity for listening, that Tilly should be so afraid – yes, afraid – of talking to him openly and candidly about marriage. She would talk to Henry eloquently and at length on the topic in her own mind, but when it came to the point – in bed, on a journey, in a bar, in the park – she shrank from saying it. Literally shrank, as if she was curling herself up physically away from exposing herself, away from possible hurt. But the need to say something was growing more urgent. It wasn’t any good mooning about remembering the early years and finding her black chopstick in Henry’s pocket and having him telephone her endlessly, constantly. That, however powerfully seductive, was then. They were twenty-one, twenty-two. This was now. They were nearly thirty, Tilly had been working since she was sixteen and she wanted to get married. She wanted Henry to choose her, in the extraordinary, wonderful, exclusive way that women were chosen as wives, and marry her.

  But this wasn’t going to happen round William. Nothing to do with real, grown-up emotional progress could happen round William. It was William’s presence, rather than his personality, that kept them all – well, the word, Tilly thought, is really immature. It is immature not to allow relationships to grow up, to keep them adolescent, or childish, or whatever. And then there was William’s attitude to her. You could say that William’s affection and admiration for Henry spilled over, in a boys-together way, into affection and admiration for her. But there was something more to William’s conduct than that. Tilly knew that William watched her, was aware of her, in a way that was neither – yet – exciting nor irritating, but which nonetheless gave a little edge to the atmosphere in the flat. William would, for example, talk to Tilly about Susie, in a way which managed not to be, quite, disloyal to Susie, but which also made it plain that William could be objective about sheer calibre in girls, and that he knew Tilly had more of it than Susie did.

  William had never touched Tilly, except in the most commonplace, unexceptionable way. He had never, even after a lot of drink, or an intense conversation, done more than offer a brotherly shoulder. But Tilly was fairly certain that she would only have to suggest the smallest encouragement for William’s shoulder to become unbrotherly in an instant. It wasn’t that Tilly had any desire at all to encourage William, but only that she had to be able to cite to Henry, truthfully, another reason why William should leave the flat than the real reason of her wanting to push the subject of marriage from the wings to centre stage.

  She took her face away from the glass and put her spectacles back on. Then she released her hair from its clips, shook it out and pulled it back behind her head again. Whatever everyone defiantly said about current female independence and assertiveness and validity, it didn’t, Tilly reflected sadly, seem to make any difference when it came to dealing with affairs of the heart. You could talk all you liked, strike all the attitudes in the world, but the human heart went on wanting what it had always, always wanted. And trying to give it what it wanted was like trying to cross a minefield, fraught with danger and bedevilled by lack of information. Tilly threw her head back. Damn, she said to herself, and in the same instant, go for it, and help. Oh, damn.

  Henry was cleaning his camera lenses with an antistatic cloth. He had them lined up neatly on the scarred Indonesian chest that belonged to William, and which they used as a coffee table. He was in his socks and jeans and a black drill overshirt. He stood up when he heard Tilly’s key in the door.

  ‘Hi!’ he said. He held his arms out.

  She took her spectacles off and dropped them on the small side table where they all left their keys and letters.

  ‘Welcome back,’ she said. She put her arms round his neck.

  He kissed her cheek and hugged her.

  She said, ‘Was it a complete waste of time?’

  ‘Pretty nearly. A few dawn shots but no birds to speak of.’

  ‘No bar-tailed godwits?’

  ‘Not one.’

  He dropped his arms.

  ‘How about you—’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Nothing momentous to report. No panics, no flashes of genius either.’

  ‘Susie been here?’

  ‘No,’ Tilly said. She took a step back. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just assessing your state of mind—’

  ‘I don’t mind Susie.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Well, some of her habits are irritating, but I don’t mind her as a person.’

  ‘Oh,’ Henry said. He rubbed a hand up the back of his head. ‘Well, I do.’

  Tilly looked at him.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘There’s a kind of girl,’ Henry said, ‘a sort of fake-independent modern girl, who’s all trendy claptrap about equality and freedom and stuff but still wants you to carry her over puddles.’

  ‘So you can’t cope with mixed messages?’

  ‘No one can,’ Henry said. ‘We all need to know where we are.’

  ‘I see,’ Tilly said.

  ‘I find having Susie in the flat pretty annoying,’ Henry said. ‘So I was just asking if she’d been here when I was away because I thought you found her annoying too.’

  Tilly sat down on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘It was just me and William.’

  ‘Do you want some coffee?’ Henry said.

  ‘In a minute. Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About the fact that, while you were in Norfolk, it was just me and William here.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Henry,’ Tilly said, ‘I need to talk to you about William.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Why not now?’

  ‘Because you’ve just walked in, because we haven’t seen each other since Monday, because I’m going to make some coffee first—’

  ‘Because you won’t ever, ever, talk about anything that matters.’

  Henry move
d round to the sofa and sat down close to Tilly. He picked up her nearest hand, kissed it, and put it down again.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘It’s about William—’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What do you know—’

  ‘I know,’ Henry said, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees, ‘that you want him to leave the flat.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘Sorry,’ Henry said.

  William looked down into his beer glass.

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘Sorry all the same.’

  William said, ‘I sort of knew it was coming.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Well,’ William said, moving his glass through the wet rings it had already left on the pub table, ‘things can’t stay the same for ever. Nothing can. We’ve had a good time. And, well, you and Tilly—’ He stopped.

  ‘Do you think,’ Henry said, ‘that we’re all hopeless at deciding anything?’

  William took a swallow of beer.

  ‘No. I think we’ve just all got too much to decide. Too much freedom.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I mean,’ William said, ‘my grandfather was in the war, he was at Dunkirk. My father grew up in the ’50s, went to school with his hair slicked down with Brylcreem and took the first job he was offered and he’s still in it. They weren’t used to deciding. They were used to things not being controlled by them, to not choosing much. They kind of married people they met instead of looking for the perfect person. They didn’t go around thinking that there were four million options about everything and that their lives were a disaster if they didn’t choose the exact right one.’

  ‘But I’m now,’ Henry said. ‘And not them. Or then.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say is that it’s different for us. Harder.’

  Henry picked his glass up.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘I’m seeing a couple of flats. Bayswater. Central Line to work.’

  ‘Are you going to share?’

  William shrugged.

  ‘Might not.’

  ‘Susie?’

  ‘No,’ William said. ‘Not Susie.’

  Henry put his glass down again.

  ‘Susie’s not for serious,’ William said.

  ‘Does she sleep around?’

  ‘I don’t ask,’ William said. ‘We just do it, and I don’t ask.’

  ‘Would you care—’

  ‘Yes,’ William said. ‘It’s only when you don’t want to sleep with someone any more that you stop caring.’

  Henry put his elbows on the table.

  ‘Tilly said to me that girls learn to be attracted to men they love and that men learn to love women they’re attracted to.’

  William snorted.

  ‘I don’t exactly recall Tilly having time to get to love you before she was in bed with you.’

  ‘Will,’ Henry said, ‘that was about one hundred years ago.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘To time? To the universe? To you and Tilly?’

  ‘You know bloody well—’

  ‘I think,’ William said, ‘that you’re about to find out.’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You love her, don’t you?’

  He nodded again.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. She is beautiful and interesting and kind and hardworking and able.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘The but isn’t Tilly, Will. It’s me.’

  William hunched over his glass.

  ‘Can’t quite make the commitment?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought I did. I certainly have never met anyone I could even remotely think of spending the rest of my life with. She’s the only person I’ve imagined having a kid with. It’s—’ He paused.

  William waited.

  ‘I suppose,’ Henry said reluctantly, staring at William’s beer, ‘that what I’m trying to say is that I don’t like myself much any more when I’m with her.’

  ‘Hardly her fault—’

  ‘I’m not saying it is. The chemistry between people, for good or ill, isn’t a question of fault. Or blame. It’s just there, one thing reacting on another thing. And then something changes, or moves on, and the reactions change too. D’you know what I mean?’

  ‘No,’ William said.

  Henry reached across the table and hit his shoulder lightly.

  ‘Fuck off.’

  William said, ‘It’s just much easier when all you want to do is get your end away.’

  ‘Really fuck off—’

  ‘It’s ought and ought not and owe and upset and betray and love and all that shit, that buggers everything up.’

  ‘That,’ Henry said, ‘is exactly what I’m trying to say to you.’

  William took a gulp of beer. He said, suddenly serious, ‘You have to do the right thing by Tilly.’

  ‘Yes,’ Henry said. ‘Define right thing.’

  ‘Treat her decently. Not behave like a bastard.’

  ‘You mean do what would make her happy?’

  William thought. He put his finger in the beer puddle on the table and drew it out into a long wet smear.

  ‘Will?’ Henry said.

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘Do what makes Tilly happy even if I’m far from certain it would make me happy? Patronize her? Make her believe something that is certainly partly true but equally certainly isn’t entirely true?’

  William sighed. He dried his wet forefinger off on the thigh of his trousers.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said again.

  After William had left the flat – seven black bin bags, three suitcases, four cardboard boxes, the Indonesian chest and a lava lamp – Tilly hired a carpet shampooer from the dry-cleaner’s down the street, and shampooed every inch of carpet in the flat. The carpet stayed damp for days and smelled, as Henry pointed out, like the changing rooms of a squash court. Then she washed the windows and the paintwork and bought new bedlinen for William’s bed and a bunch of twisted willow to put in the big African pot that stood in a corner of his room and which had been used as a container to hold his prized spring-loaded ski poles and a tennis racquet.

  Henry watched her. Once or twice he offered to help move furniture, or carried black bags of discarded things down to the area steps at the bottom of their building, but mostly he just watched her. There was no point, he decided, in saying, ‘What are you doing?’ because it was perfectly plain what she was doing. She was turning over a new leaf, starting a new chapter, putting everything in place for something to develop, something new to happen. She was doing it excellently, too. The flat looked vastly improved, pulled-together, welcoming. What made Henry apprehensive was that, when the last new saucepan and cushion was in place, Tilly would want the performance to start. The joint performance, that is. It wouldn’t be any good having Henry unobtrusively, admiringly, supportively on the sidelines any more: she would want him to come and join her, take her hand, participate in this new and charming scenario she had set up.

  In a way, she’d involved him already. He knew there was money owing to him – a not insignificant sum of money either – and he’d resented the debt, and told Tilly about his resentment. But somehow, his resentment hadn’t actually translated itself into any action until Tilly had pointed out that there was now, without William, a shortfall in their rent, and that he must write letters and telephone and make a nuisance of himself until those who owed him money were thankful to give it to him, in order, at the very least, to get rid of him. In three weeks, Henry had retrieved something over two thousand pounds.

  ‘See?’ Tilly said. She was in a bath towel and her spectacles, reading her horoscope from the previous night’s Evening Standard.

  ‘I know,’ Henry said. He was drinking orange juice straight out of its plastic flask. ‘I get so galvanized about taking pictures and so ungalvanized about the follow-up.’

  ‘
Perhaps I should become your agent—’

  He kissed her bare shoulder.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You think I’d boss you about?’

  ‘Um—’

  ‘Lots of couples do work together. Very successfully. And I do seem to have a few more life skills than you do.’

  ‘It’s being creative,’ Henry said. ‘Traditionally, the creative are hopeless at the practical. You know that.’

  ‘You’re very good with your hands,’ Tilly said. She took her spectacles off.

  He didn’t look at her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very good.’ The bath towel was slipping.

  Henry said, ‘I think I have to go on inefficiently driving myself up the greasy pole even if it drives you insane having to watch me.’

  He turned away and opened the fridge to insert the orange juice into the ledge in the door. The fridge was very tidy. When William was there, there were always spoons left in things, half-eaten things, rinds, peels, beer. Lots of beer.

  Tilly said, ‘I’ve rung Paula.’

  Henry straightened up and turned round. Tilly had twitched up the bath towel and put her spectacles back on.

  ‘Paula? My sister?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘I’ve asked her to stay.’

  Henry leaned back against the kitchen worktop.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We have a spare bedroom now,’ Tilly said. ‘We can have people to stay.’

  Henry thought about the way he’d always stayed with people, sofa cushions on the floor, shared beds, armchairs that were never long enough, inevitable hangovers.