Olivia’s Luck (2000) (44 page)

He glanced surreptitously at his watch and moved imperceptibly towards the door. Suddenly I realised the interview was over and I was being shown out. I got up hurriedly. God, perhaps I shouldn’t have come at all? Perhaps I was overstating my position here. Maybe we hadn’t even remotely been ‘an item’ as Claudes would put it, but surely…Oh well. I grabbed my bag and scuttled doorwards.

“There’s still your London premiere, isn’t there?” I said nervously as he held it open for me.

“At the Wigmore Hall, that’s right.”

I wondered for a minute if he was going to offer me a ticket but he seemed miles away.

“Well, good luck,” I faltered.

He smiled. “Thanks, I’ll need it. I’ll be a nervous wreck that night. I could really do without this can of worms on my plate, too.” He scratched his cheek anxiously and glanced across to the piano. “I usually like to be completely free of any work at a premiere, so I can empty my mind.” He continued to gaze past me, then abruptly came to, shrugged. “Oh well, can’t be helped.”

“I should just bung any old thing down and tell them it’s a masterpiece,” I joked, in an effort at levity.

He laughed. “Nice idea, Liwy, but I’m afraid I’m far too analytical and self-obsessed to ‘bung’. No, I won’t be happy until these final closing bars lie down and behave.”

“You’ll knock them into shape.”

“Let’s hope so, otherwise the London music mafia will knock me into shape!”

I went past him and out towards the stairs. “Oh, you don’t have to come down – ” I glanced back as he made to follow.

“It’s OK,” he said easily, “I need another pot of coffee and I feel horribly guilty if Maureen has to puff all the way up here. By the time she arrives at the door she has steam coming out of practically every orifice, except the coffee pot, of course, which is stone cold.”

I smiled, but couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. I was drained of all wit and words suddenly, and talking to him had always been so easy. Finally we were at the bottom.

“Well, goodbye,” I turned.

“Goodbye, Olivia.”

He smiled, held the front door open for me, lightly touched my shoulder and kissed me warmly on both cheeks. Out I went.

The red front door shut fast behind me, and the sultry, heavy, mid-afternoon air wrapped itself around me like an electric blanket, hot and oppressive. I walked down the steps and wiped my forehead. God, why the hell did it have to be so hot all the time? This was supposed to be England, for crying out loud, not Madagascar. And talking of crying, I realised with alarm, there seemed to be a bit of a lump in my throat. As I walked up the cobbled street, I appeared to be gulping down a fresh supply of tears. God Almighty, I dragged a hanky from my pocket and blew my nose loudly, where was all this water coming from? Was I compensating for the drought? Doing my bit for the national crisis? I was so flaming overemotional at the moment, so permanently on the point of bursting into floods or punching a wall, and – well, I was supposed to be the happiest girl alive! What the hell was the matter with me?

V
arious factors combined to convince me to pay Nina Harrison a visit. Outright curiosity, for a start, together with a desire to tie up all the loose ends and to see that all the stories did indeed tally, but I could have resisted both of these impulses, were it not for the fact that Johnny’s mood swings were beginning to rival mine. Now, I was allowed to be volatile – I was the wronged wife, for heaven’s sake – but over the last few days, Johnny, from a standing start, was whipping up a performance that was positively Wagnerian in style. It certainly knocked my lettuce slapping into a cocked hat. He’d suddenly taken to getting up at dawn, wandering around the garden smoking furiously, and then at about nine o’clock, coming inside to pace the house. From that moment on, the telephone was rarely out of his hand and he’d negotiate urgently all morning, before slamming the receiver back in its cradle, punching the air, and giving an elated cry of, “Yes!”

“Yes what?”

Yes, it transpired, we simply had to fly to Geneva to stay with some people we hardly knew but who he’d managed to track down, and if he got enough of a party together he’d even hire a private plane to get us there! I’d watch, sweaty-palmed and with a horrible sense of
dejd vu
and memories of Normandy ballooning trips, as more and more of these plans unfurled. I wondered in bewilderment where on earth the rocklike, calming influence of a few days ago had gone. The following morning I’d take him up a cup of tea in bed, only to find that Geneva was off and he didn’t even want to get up. At all. Later that morning, though, I’d glance out of the kitchen window to see him still in his pyjamas, but careering around the garden with a squealing Claudia on his shoulders, shrieking with glee and terror as he threatened to throw her in the river. An hour or so later would find us at lunch, Claudia beaming up at her jocular Daddy, who for no apparent reason, would suddenly turn on her, yelling at her with such ferocity about the atrocity of her table manners that the poor child was forced to shrink down in her chair and peer at him from under her fringe, so strong was the stream of his invective.

At this yo-yoing continued I began to wish he’d go back to work, just to give myself time to think, to regroup, to consolidate, but as far as the office was concerned, he was still ostensibly in St-Jean-de-Luz and had time on his hands. Time to dig enthusiastically beside me in the flowerbeds, time to accompany me to Sainsbury’s and commandeer my trolley, questioning loudly my need for quilted loo paper and other luxuries, just when I wanted to cruise those aisles in peace and give myself time to think.

But it was Mac and the boys who really took the full force of his boomerang style. Since Johnny had been back he’d been wont, at the end of a very warm day, to take a six-pack from the fridge and wander upstairs to the bathroom, where they’d all be sweltering away amongst the archaic plumbing. There he’d open a can or two with them, take a debrief on the day’s work, and perching on the side of the bath, recall his own days as a student, when he too had worked on a building site, joking laddishly with them the while. Now, suddenly, puce in the face with rage, he was telling them their work was shoddy, that they had to redo the entire bathroom, strip the plaster work off, repin the boards underneath and start again.

“You can see great lumps and bumps in the wall, Liwy,” he stormed as he dragged me upstairs one evening to see. “Look, even
you
can see that’s hopeless, surely!”

I ignored the implicit insult. “But we’re going to tile it,” I soothed. “They’ll plaster it over and then the tiles will cover it. You won’t even see it.”

“But I’ll know it’s there,” he hissed. “And I want it all off!”

My builders were subdued. Johnny’s return had been greeted with polite congratulations and a searching look from Lance which I’d ignored, followed by studied concentration, heads down, and a deep desire to finish the job and get the hell out as soon as possible. Any hopes of finishing that imminently, though, were dispelled by Johnny, who made it quite clear – politely or forcibly, depending on which way the wind took him – that much of the work done in his absence had been second rate. Clearly, he seethed, they’d hoped to get away with it, but that now that he was back and was once more ‘the guv’nor’, they wouldn’t. Spiro whimpered and twisted his hat in his hands, Alf cowered, Lance looked angry and defiant and Mac was mutinous but tight-lipped, because he’d been a builder long enough to know that keeping shtumm was the only way to get paid.

As Claudia and I sat in the kitchen at breakfast one morning, listening to him berating them upstairs, I felt sad. On the whole I believed their work to be good and professional, but aside from this, I’d been close to these people. They were my friends. They’d helped me when Johnny hadn’t been there and seen me through some very dark days. I clenched my hands under the table and felt a sense of betrayal as Johnny’s irate voice resounded through the rafters.

“It’s just incompetent!” he was saying. “Just downright incompetent!”

Claudia was wide-eyed over her Coco Pops. “Why is Daddy so cross?” she breathed.

“I don’t know,” I replied. I pushed my chair back and got up. “But I intend to find out.”

I may have sounded determined as I snatched my car keys from the dresser and grabbed my bag, but as I went into the sitting room to find the A to Z, it was with a thudding heart. I knew Nina Harrison’s address off by heart, but as I flipped through the pages to find the route, my hands were shaking. You see, for the first time since Johnny’s return, it occurred to me to wonder if the object of his affections had rejected him.

Clarendon Road wasn’t hard to find. Plenty of my friends had lived in the Finchley, Highgate area, premarriage, and as I drove around the quaint little back streets, I thought what happy times I’d had here in my single days, tipsy and shrieking with laughter in a girl-friend’s basement kitchen, a crowd of us cooking spaghetti bolognese and talking long into the night. In fact, if I remembered rightly, Imogen used to have a flat right – here. I went past her old flat, peering into the familiar windows, then turned down another familiar side street, and left into a mews. I purred along, and drew up slowly, right opposite number 32. I checked my scrap of paper. Yes, 32, next door to a garage Johnny had said. I gazed out of the window. And yes, there it was. Not a tacky, filling-station-type of garage, though, more of a discreet workshop affair, with double barn doors painted bottle green, and opening on to a small forecourt with a couple of classy vintage cars parked outside.

A silver-haired, narrow-faced man with glasses looked up from polishing a hubcap as I got out of my car. He straightened up and wiped his hands on a rag. It was a quiet, dead-end street so I imagined any visitor was something of a diversion. As I locked my door I felt his eyes on me and I wondered if he was just a mechanic or indeed Bob, the father. Either way I ignored him as I walked confidently across the street, glancing up at a rather dear little mews house, painted pink with a green door to match the garage beside it, with window boxes and pots spilling over with bright red geraniums. I reached the door and stared nervously at the bell. 32A or 32B. Oh help, which one was she? I couldn’t remember. Suddenly I realised the silver-haired man was behind me.

“Can I help?” in a friendly voice.

I turned. I knew at once it was her father. I managed a smile. “Oh, well, I was looking for Nina actually.”

“Ah, you want the top flat then. We’re down below in the servants quarters where we belong.” He chuckled. “Hang about, I’ll see if she’s around. Sheila!” He rapped his oily knuckles on a downstairs window.

A net curtain parted and a middle-aged woman appeared between the Fairy Liquid bottle and a spider plant. She was attractive in a faded blonde sort of way, with good bones and pale hair coiled neatly round her scalp, secured with gold hairpins.

“What?”

“Is Nina about?” he yelled.

She shook her head and smiled, indicating by a wave of dithering hands in the air that she couldn’t hear a thing. “Hang on,” she called. “I’ll come out.”

“Deaf as a post,” he grinned. “Although I always maintain it’s selective. She can hear the postman arriving with her new Freemans catalogue halfway down the street!”

I groaned inwardly. Oh God, did we have to get the whole family involved here? Why on earth had I come? In fact, why didn’t I just slip away now and forget all about it?

The green door opened and the woman peered around. She was wearing a housecoat and Dr Scholl sandals, and I spotted a wheelchair behind her in the hall.

“This lass has come to see Nina,” explained Bob with a sideways nod at me.

“Oooh, has she now?” she said with evident interest, coming more squarely into the doorway. “Well, she should be up there, luv. Is she expecting you?”

“Um, well not exactly.” I hesitated. They gazed expectantly at me. “I’m – I’m a parent, from school. From – her school.”

She beamed. “Oh well, she’ll be pleased to see you, I know she will. She’s always keen to get involved with the kiddies, isn’t she, Bob? Have you tried the bell?”

“No, I – ” haven’t had a chance, I wanted to say through gritted teeth, but stopped short of saying anything at all as I heard a clattering down the stairs behind her. Pink, fluffy slippers appeared, then nylon encased legs, a floral skirt, and then Nina was beside her mother in the communal hall. She looked tired, dishevelled and unmade up. Her face was very pale. As she stared at me, her right hand slowly reached out and gripped the banister rail tight.

“What d’you want?”

Her parents caught the tone of her voice and turned quickly. They glanced at her, then back at me. As they did, I could see the penny making its slippery way down and, as it dropped, so did their smiles. Her mother’s face sagged.

“Well, I – I wanted to talk to you,” I faltered nervously. I flushed, from nerves, sure, but actually, from anger too. Jesus, who was the wronged party around here? Why should I be feeling guilty? Surely the aggressive, defensive tone should be mine, not hers? Who exactly was the floozie here, hmm? Nina’s eyes dropped to the lino floor, almost, I thought, in recognition of this. She nodded.

“You’d better come up.”

“Nina, d’you want me to – ” her mother shot out an anxious hand. Nina shook it off her arm.

“No, Mum, I’ll be fine.”

They both watched silently as I followed their daughter upstairs, and as I turned at the top, I saw the man put an arm around his wife’s shoulders.

A separate front door opened on to a tiny hallway with a night storage heater and not much else, which in turn issued on to a light, airy sitting room. I followed Nina through and realised it stretched the length of the flat – which wasn’t large – with two sash windows on to the street. Coir matting covered the floor and a pair of identical white sofas with rather worn, washable damask covers stood either side of a wooden fireplace. Oatmeal hessian curtains hung at the windows from black, wrought-iron poles and on the white walls or on shelves, driftwood collages, twiggy sculptures and large church candles perched. All was cream, all was neutral, all was very safe and very Habitat. And how unlike my own eclectic, cluttered chintzy home, I thought, glancing around, full of clashing colours and mistakes, but at least they were my mistakes and not Terence Conran’s. I tried to imagine Johnny here, full length on one of those creamy sofas, reading the Sunday papers, picking his nose, swigging a beer. Suddenly, I realised I could. Yes, why not? Totally at home, no doubt, his feet on that ethnic wooden coffee table. Fury rose and it strengthened my resolve.