Authors: Sarah Bilston
“He’s a good kid really,” Tom said, chuckling, picking up on our earlier conversation as we wound our way slowly along the dark driveway. Tall pines reared up all around us, black and still; beneath them, in the red earth, lay pine cones sticky with sap. Before us, at the end of the winding dirt path, surrounded by maples, the house glowed like a giant pearl in the moonlight. “And he seems so much more alert than he used to be—”
“Did you notice how his eyes swiveled when you came into the room this evening?” I asked proudly, resting my head briefly on Tom’s shoulder.
“Yes. And I really think he heard that gull on the deck this morning. Did you see how his eyes turned?”
After sharing a few more moments of equally dizzying brilliance from Samuel’s short life, we fell into contented silence. Sometimes it is easier to see your infant’s perfections when he is not right in front of you.
“Have
you thought about what you want to do after Crimpson?” I asked suddenly.
“N-no,” Tom replied slowly. “That is—no.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means—it means I can’t make any decisions until I know what you’re going to do.” His face was hard to read in the darkness.
I blinked. “Come again?”
Tom stopped, and looked down; I could just see the gleam of the white part of his eyes. His breath was warm on my face. “Just what I said. Are you going back to Schuster? Or—not?”
There is such a noise and a jostle in the forest on a summer night; when you stand still it seems as though every leaf, every patch of undergrowth, is bursting with life. There was a rustling somewhere behind me, and I turned a little nervously to look; a skunk ambled unhurriedly from between two trees, stopped and gazed at us for a
moment, then resumed his course, his white stripe sharply defined in the moonlight. Other, smaller animals scurried as mere shadows beneath the lowest boughs of the pines. High above, we heard an owl’s jubilant call, then the desperate squawk of some little animal. An acre away, a dog clinked his chain, and someone’s screen door opened and closed.
“You think I’m
not
going back?” I countered at last.
Tom shrugged. (I heard the fabric stretch and move across his shoulders.) “I can’t see it, quite frankly, Q. You’ve been losing interest in corporate law for months, if not years. You hate half the people you work with. You can’t bear to leave Samuel for twenty-five minutes. Why on earth would you go back?”
“Because—because—they’ve paid my maternity leave,” I returned helplessly. “Because it’s my job. Because jobs are hard to find these days. Because I don’t know what else I would do.”
Tom half-laughed, and put his lips to my hair. “I’m the one whose job’s on the line, but you’re the one who most needs to quit, Q. Least, that’s how it looks to me. When you were on bed rest I was frightened by how quickly you forgot your working life. The moment you walked out of the office it was as if the whole place slipped straight out of your mind.”
“That’s not
quite
true—” I was defensive.
“No, but almost. What do you
want
to do? If you could do anything in the world, I mean? If we weren’t in a recession? Save gorillas? Teach high school? What?”
We had begun walking along the driveway again, and at this moment we rounded the final corner to see…an unknown car parked in the driveway. I’d opened my mouth to answer Tom, but as soon as I saw the car I forgot everything: for about three minutes, as I charged breathlessly up to the door, heart thumping, hands shaking, I thought of nothing but our son: was this a doctor? But no, no, of course not; it was only Paul, who had arrived a few hours early from New York. As soon as he walked into the sitting room, he was
like a refreshing spirit from another life, his thoughts full of work and gossip, of boats and sailing, of sports drafts and deals and rookies and the new season. Tom’s face lit up immediately. “I’m so glad to see you!” he said happily, and the two of them went out onto the deck.
I fetched a bag of tortilla chips the size of a pillow case for them, then took myself off to bed with Samuel. As I lay in the darkness, I could hear their laughter echoing around the silent, watchful ranks of moonlit pines. All too soon, my son’s wails joined in.
Jeanie
O
f course, I made it quite clear to Paul that his Harvard-University-GQ-spread charms wouldn’t work on me.
I heard him with Tom outside the first night, the night of his arrival. He was talking about dining with some Supreme Court judge, about going to Washington to meet with White House lawyer-types, about being asked by Bill Gates to advise on some charitable committee (“I said, Bill, sorry, just don’t think I have the time…”). Tom was clearly impressed. It sounded like humbug to me.
He came inside to fetch some ice just as I was about to go to bed; I was standing by the kitchen sink, filling a glass with water. I stiff
ened as I caught sight of him. “Hey, Jeanie,” he said softly, coming up behind me and standing a
little
too close (I felt his breath in the hairs of my neck, just beneath my ponytail). “I’m sorry about earlier. Really. I was a bit—um—surprised when I walked in.”
I moved away, and stared him down. “You behaved
despicably,”
I told him. (Actually I stumbled a bit, added a syllable, and came out with “despicabibly,” but I think he got the point;
note to self:
avoid polysyllabic words in moments of high drama.) “We have to live in the same house for the next few days, I realize,” I went on, reaching for the tones of an English grande dame, Peggy Ashcroft perhaps, or Maggie Smith as an E. M. Forster Edwardian; “but I can
assure
you I shall avoid you as much as I possibly can.” We looked at each other for a moment, then I turned on my heel and left the room with the fuck-you poise of one dressed in rustling silks. (It’s unfortunate that I was wearing my bunny slippers at the time, but I’m fairly sure my cool demeanor overcame the effect of the pink floppy ears.)
Frankly I felt he had an ulterior motive. He clearly imagined a few polite words and a cocked half-smile would be enough to win me over, most likely into his bed. He was about to learn that English girls were more discerning.
Americans seemed to think the British were uptight, but I’d yet to meet an English lad half as uptight as these American city types. Work was what defined them. I couldn’t quite tell what they did for kicks, or if they even liked having fun. While other Americans were busy pursuing happiness, to these men it seemed almost incidental. They were so busy working they’d forgotten how to enjoy life.
Take Paul, for example, I mused, as I brushed my teeth. Oh, he had muscles—but not the muscles of a man who spent his life in the hot oily place under a car. Paul had the small, tight, well-defined, perfectly proportioned biceps of a man who attended a sleek white gym in Manhattan. Who’d sweat discreetly while sliding polished shiny dumbbells up and down a polished shiny rack. I can see him now, I thought irritably, sliding into the sofa-bed; I can see him,
wiping three drops of rogue perspiration off his forehead with a fluffy white towel slung casually around his neck. Because he won’t want to get his high-thread-count organic cotton T-shirt dirty, will he? Certainly not! He’s got a certain standard of personal grooming to maintain. He finishes his circuit then pops into the sauna to open his pores, and before he heads back to the office he slips a comb of citrus gel through his hair.
Paul wasn’t the kind of man who’d pull a sickie to take you to the zoo. He obviously spent eighteen hours a day at work, got home at midnight, gave his slumbering wife a chaste kiss, then leaped out of bed at five a.m. to face another exciting day of contract negotiations (I laughed scornfully as I kicked off my slippers). His idea of living was presumably counting the zeros in his bank account. Meanwhile his wife was shagging the doorman and his children were snorting cocaine to get over the unbelievable, ineffable
boredom
of life. This was not the kind of man to appeal to
me
(I switched off the light and pulled the covers up to my chin). And I’d made that completely clear to him.
I lay in the dark, thinking about my boyfriend, who was a different story entirely. “When d’you want me to come over to America to see you?” he’d asked me excitedly on the phone that morning.
“You can come out any time you want,” I replied, wondering briefly what Dave would make of this home of rich, elegant whiteness. He was a T-shirts, work-boots, and newspapers-on-the-table sort of man—the real deal. “But I think you should aim for sometime next month; go for halfway through my trip to split the difference. Limit the amount of time we’re apart.”
“Good idea, I’ll look into tickets. And you said your sister will help with the cost, right? Bloody marvelous, tell her ‘thank you’ from me. I can’t wait to see you, Jeanie. I can’t stop thinking about you, to be honest. The bed seems so cold without you.
“I’ll feel like a bit of a hypocrite, though, going to Heathrow,”
he went on, earnestly. “Badger’s mate Ranger has been telling me all about the environmental impact of air travel. He’s, y’know, an expert; he spent two weeks last year kipping on a runway to demonstrate against Terminal 5. He’s seriously
hard-core.
Did you ever think about how many gallons of fuel are used over three-and-a-half thousand miles, Jeanie? And the
injurious
effects of it all go
straight
up into the atmosphere! Still, there’s no other way I can get there, I suppose, and I can’t wait four bloody months to see you…”
I could see him in my mind’s eye, biting his jagged, worn-down fingernails. “Dave, I’ll have to leave that decision to you,” I told him a little impatiently, “but personally I think politics have to yield to practicality sometimes.” That sounded rather good, so I said it again. “And anyway, there’s bound to be some research you can do out here—you might gain a whole fresh perspective on—on—on the Kyoto Agreement,” I finished inspirationally. “True, true…” I could tell he was impressed by my argument.
“Well, I’ll see what it’ll cost, and perhaps I’ll ask Ranger to look into the number of gallons an airplane really uses on a long-haul flight, then I can make an
informed decision.
Or—” he thought for a moment—“maybe I’ll just say ‘bugger it’ and come over, what do you think?”
I laughed, and told him that sounded like the best plan.
It was ages before Tom and Paul went to bed.
Q
Q
, are you awake?” (I pulled the covers over my head and pretended not to hear.)
“Sweetheart, it’s eleven o’clock. And it’s a beautiful day.” My husband had tiptoed into the room and was peering hopefully into the duvet. “Paul has a suggestion…”
I half-opened my eyes. “What is it?” I growled.
“You don’t have to come—I think Jeanie would stay home with you, if you want. So don’t feel—I mean—” I groaned, clutching my forehead. I had the strangest sensation of having a metal sword lodged inside my brain after the night’s terrible screaming.
“What?”
“Well, Paul has to take a boat to his friend’s house this morning, further along the coast, he’s going to help him replace some rotten wood in the stringers. His name’s Adjile—did you ever meet him? Ex-CEO of G-Metrix dot-com? Well, anyway, he’s offered to take us all sailing—that is, Adjile’s offered to lend Paul a boat for the afternoon so he can get some time on the waves. We could all go. But only if you want, of course.”
I thought about this for a moment. Adjile Olawe…“The baby needs more time outside,” I said, at last, throwing back the covers. “Vitamin D and all that. We should go, it’ll be fun. And I’d
love
to try sailing, I don’t really know how to do it, but perhaps you can show me?”
Tom’s face was transfigured.
I dressed myself quietly in my capacious jeans and XL green button-down shirt—Samuel was miraculously sleeping—and went downstairs to find Paul and Jeanie sitting silent, side by side, in the kitchen. Paul was leaning backward in a chair, reading the property pages; Jeanie was working her way through a tottering stack of waffles, dressed in a tight plum-colored T-shirt and skimpy denim shorts. “So. Are you going to come with us today, Jeanie, or not?” I asked, observing her get-up dourly.
Jeanie looked up, her face smeared in syrup. She was rather taken with American breakfasts. “Wha—? Oh, you mean this sailing business,” she said, through a full mouth. “Well, really” (swallowing hard), “I suppose I should, but I’ve always thought boats were just big toys for men with too much money,” she added airily, as if she’d been giving the matter a great deal of thought over the course of a very long life. I stared at her. “Yes, the consumption of resources—and the—er—damage to marine ecosystems from the—um—rudders is positively shocking,” she finished triumphantly. She launched into another waffle.
“Well, we’ll all understand it if your political principles prevent you from coming.” Paul put down his newspaper. “I wouldn’t want you to do anything that makes you
uncomfortable,
Jeanie. I’m sure between us we can help Tom and Q with Samuel, so why don’t you just stay here? We’ll spend the day sailing on the Atlantic, enjoying the views of the house from the sea (it just won another design award, Q, did you hear?) and you can work on that press release on—what was it you were telling me about? Oh yes, whales’ dental cavities, instead.”
Jeanie choked slightly. “Well, obviously I would under normal circumstances,” she explained carefully, “but Samuel has been tricky recently, I wouldn’t want—”
“No!” Paul interrupted. “Certainly not. You stay here. Adjile and Lily aren’t your kind of people anyway, from what I can tell you’d be
shocked by their way of life. They have a personal chef. The desserts are phenomenal, I had this thing with iced chocolate last time that was beyond description. Amazing fish too, fresh-caught in the Atlantic. Plus Adjile has a world-class wine cellar, the quality of his champagne beats anything I’ve had in New York; he sponsors a small family operation in Epernay. All that consumption would make you sick, Jeanie. Much better to stay away. Have lunch by yourself. I think I saw some brown sliced bread in the fridge.”