The Last Weekend (20 page)

‘That’s the history between us,’ I said, nodding assent as Ollie held the bottle over my glass.

‘Sounds like you dealt with him perfectly fairly,’ Ollie said.

‘But you shouldn’t have said what you did,’ Em said.

‘I meant it affectionately,’ I said. ‘My mum used to say it to me.’

‘What?’ Everyone was looking in expectation.

‘Ian called him a little monkey,’ Em said.

‘As a mild rebuke, not in anger. He’d just run the length of the pitch, hogging the ball, and scored. “Very good, Campbell, but next time pass to someone, you little monkey.” What’s racist about that?’

‘I know you didn’t intend to be racist,’ Em said. ‘But did he know?’

‘He was fine. He took it in good heart.’

‘It came out later. After the ear business he told his mum you’d called him bad names.’

Everyone fell silent.

‘I feel like you’re cross-examining me,’ I said to Em.

‘I’m playing devil’s advocate. I know what tribunals are like.’

‘She’s right, Ian,’ Ollie said. ‘It pays to have your defence ready.’

‘I don’t need a defence. I can handle this. I’m innocent.’

‘Sorry, mate, but that’s where you’re wrong.’

At that point Daisy stood up and offered herb tea and coffee, so I never discovered which of my assertions Ollie was refuting. I forget what else was said: doubtless Milo in his smarmy way expressed sympathy and hoped the tribunal would clear my name. Remorseful, Em reached for my hand but I pulled it away. I knew her motives had been benign — to stop me ‘bottling things up’ and get Ollie to advise me. But to drag up every last detail was painful.

We sat on for an hour, with the smoky tapers in a square around us and Cheddar and blue Stilton on the table. I can’t remember much of what was said once we retreated indoors, except for Daisy apologising for the accommodation again and saying how she wouldn’t blame us if we never spent another weekend with them. Don’t be daft, Em said, but I was thinking, no, we won’t spend any more weekends with you because I’m not going to be humiliated like that again and anyway Ollie will soon be dead.

‘I think I’ll hit the hay,’ Em said, shortly afterwards. It was late, and she often gets tired. More surprising was to hear Ollie saying ‘Me, too': he’s usually the last to go. Perhaps the cancer was affecting him, though in his place I’d certainly have stayed up longer, to be on guard, since Milo and Daisy were no longer engaging with the rest of us but in cahoots prattling about art on the sofa.

‘And I need to take the dog for a walk,’ I said, embarrassed by their intimacy.

‘At this hour?’ Em said. ‘Take his lead in case he runs off.’

‘It’s OK. I won’t go far.’

Rufus’s ears had pricked up when I said ‘walk', and he hauled himself from under the table and padded behind me down the corridor to the front door. Em was just ahead and, eager to make up, paused to kiss me at the foot of the stairs. She raised her eyebrows as she did. Putting our row to bed, I raised mine back, in sign language.
Long day; yes, too long. Sorry about earlier; no worries. Be quick, I want you in bed; you bet.
Before I’d got the lead on Rufus, she was already over my head, creaking across the landing to our room.

There’s nothing like the cosmos to put things in perspective. And the million chaste stars overhead stopped me thinking about Daisy and Milo for at least ten minutes, the time it took to walk Rufus up and down the drive. A sliver of moon grew from the shade of its dying double. I’d rarely seen so clear a night and felt in no rush to re-enter the house. When I’d noticed the ancient picnic table in the orchard the previous day, I’d wondered what it was for — surely no one would sit down to eat at so ramshackle a structure. Now, as I lay prostrate on it, four wooden planks beneath my back, I embraced it as an observatory or planetarium: unhampered by trees and hedges, I could see to the horizon in all directions. And what
a sky, so bright it seemed to be uplit from earth, or reflected back, as if the planets were our own lives glittering down at us. Off his lead, nose to the grass, Rufus snuffled for hedgehogs and field mice, then darted back, bemused by my horizontality, to lick my hands. I had folded them beneath my head so that I lay at a slight tilt, with the Plough straight ahead of me, the one constellation I could still confidently identify, though as a child I knew them all by heart. Every minute or so, there’d be a sudden swish at the edge of vision, like a silver zip being pulled down. But by the time I looked, it would be gone. I couldn’t remember seeing shooting stars during the weeks I’d sat outside Daisy’s hall of residence. But I remembered the sensation of being shut out, and of life behind a lamplit window going on without me. Here it was happening again.

There was a difference, though — not my being older, or married, or knowing it was Milo rather than Ollie in there, but the fact that the downstairs windows were tall and un-curtained. If I turned sideways, I could see them, two heads together on the sofa, not together-together, kissing, but close enough to make an innocent observer assume they must be a couple — and close enough to make me peel myself from the picnic table and move in for a better view. From what I could make out, they were perched at opposite ends of the sofa, facing each other — too far apart to be holding hands, but with their legs up and (I guessed) their feet touching in the middle. Whatever it was they were discussing had made them animated, with Milo waving his arms about and Daisy shaking her head. I felt sick, as sick as Ollie, but to stand there and watch, knowing they couldn’t see me, was irresistible. It was only when Rufus appeared, jumping up to lick my face, that I withdrew into the darkness, afraid his movements would catch their attention. I took up residence on the table again. Next
time I turned to peer in, the two figures had gone. To separate beds? Or to embrace in a quiet corner somewhere? Anything seemed possible.

A gust stirred in the blackness, polishing the stars. Despite the warmth of the night, the wood of the picnic table felt damp beneath my back and after a while I pulled myself up and sat cross-legged, staring out across the fields and imagining I could hear the roar of breakers beyond them. What had cured me all those years ago was Daisy telling me that she loved Ollie as she could never love anyone else. The inevitability of it was her story, and had gone on being her story, and I believed it, as I also believed, paradoxically, that she felt more comfortable with me than with him. I remember a night back at the house in my third year — them on the sofa, me in a chair. We were talking about the kind of lives we wanted after graduating: where we’d live, what kind of work we’d do, how many children we’d have, the usual hopes and dreams. Suddenly Daisy slid down from her seat and knelt at Ollie’s feet, or rather between his feet, laying her head on his left thigh and reaching towards his face with her right hand, which he took and held, before putting her fingers in his mouth one after the other. I’ve since wondered if they meant it as a taunt. But I’m sure they didn’t notice my hard-on. And at the time I took it as a spontaneous declaration of desire: she was in thrall to his body and so was he.

Now she was in thrall to Milo.

I felt disorientated, under the stars. Did it matter that Ollie was dying and his relationship with Daisy falling apart? We weren’t as close as we used to be. I only saw them every few years. And yet it did matter, not for nostalgic reasons but because the life I’d led, and the choices I’d made, rested on Ollie and Daisy staying together.

I was surprised by how angry I felt, not just with Milo and

Daisy, but with Ollie too. Why wasn’t he fighting the tumour? Why wasn’t he fighting Milo? He was too accepting, too resigned.

I was angry with him for another reason: that reference to my having a temper — as if he suspected me of being violent with Campbell Foster because I’d a record of violence in the past. The accusation was deeply unfair and concerned an episode from years before which Ollie had misunderstood.

It happened one Sunday, shortly after he and Daisy got together. The previous weekend — lonely, miserable, and with time to kill — I’d gone shopping in town and returned with a tea mug I liked both for its design (a big looping handle and an ace of diamonds motif) and its rich turquoise colour. That morning I couldn’t find it. I searched my bedroom and the kitchen, without success. It seemed plain the offender was Ollie, at that moment in bed with Daisy in her hall of residence. A furtive search of his room didn’t unearth the mug. But he had seen me with it. And there’d been a rare exchange between us earlier that week, when I might even have mentioned buying it. Had he broken it and chucked it in the bin? Hidden it to taunt me? Stolen it as a dare to amuse his rugby friends? Or to amuse Daisy, another of his thefts from me? As I sat there drinking coffee from one of the landlord’s ugly, chipped mugs I seethed with rage and thought about trashing Ollie’s room. At that very moment the smallest of the three Japanese students, Yukio, walked in. He was carrying two mugs, one of them mine. I didn’t wait for explanations, just snatched the mug and, leaving it on the worktop for safety, launched myself at him, yelling oaths he couldn’t understand. He fell backwards on the brick floor, banging his head. I continued to shout as he lay there concussed. Not for one moment did I think of kicking him. On the contrary, once I’d worked out my aggression, I bent down to help him
to his feet. He misunderstood, though, cowering as I leaned over him. Just then the front door banged and Ollie walked in. Misreading the situation, he rushed to restrain me. I explained about the mug, omitting to mention that my surge of anger had been caused by him. Helped upright, Yukio said he’d found the mug in the living room (where I’d watched television the night before) and was intending to wash it up. I apologised and shook his hand, saying the mug had enormous sentimental value, which wasn’t altogether a lie. There were no repercussions — except that Yukio moved out not long afterwards and Ollie stored the episode away to use against me.

It’s true I occasionally lose my temper. But I don’t get into fights with men, and apart from obliging that slag in Prestatyn I’ve never been rough with women. For Ollie to bring up the Yukio incident, when I was facing charges of professional misconduct, was vicious and underhand.

But he’s ill, I muttered to myself. He’s lashing out against everyone and everything. The tumour is to blame, not him.

Below me, on the grass, Rufus began to whine: his master was acting strangely and he wanted to go in. I’d no idea of the time, or how long I’d been sitting there, but the air was chilly and the stars had lost their sheen. ‘Come on, then,’ I said, climbing down from the picnic table. As we moved towards the lit cube of the house, the only sound was the swoosh of grass wetting our feet, like an incoming tide.

‘Is that you, Milo?’ Daisy said, as I crept into the living room.

‘No, it’s me, Ian,’ I said.

She was lying curled on the sofa where she’d been sitting with Milo. Her back was towards me and her dress had ridden up, exposing her thighs. As I stared, she rolled over, pulled the dress down and sat up.

‘Sorry, I must have fallen asleep,’ she said, and perhaps she had. But there was a wine bottle on the floor and her eyes weren’t blotchy with tiredness but from crying.

‘People went to bed,’ she said, ‘and I sat here talking to Milo, then he went to bed, too. I’d forgotten you were still up.’

‘It’s just as well I am. You’d have been here till morning.’

‘It’s comfortable enough.’

‘You don’t look comfortable,’ I said. ‘You look unhappy.’

‘No, really, I’m …’

She wanted to deny it but the word ‘unhappy’ broke her defences and her chin trembled before she could say that she was fine. She turned her face away, and for a time I just stood there in the hope she’d cry herself out. But when the crying got louder, loud enough to wake people, I moved across to sit next to her — and as the cushions sagged with my weight, she turned towards me, arms theatrically held out and eyes tightly closed. I didn’t know where to put myself but Daisy’s arms locked around me, and my chest became a sponge for her tears. To stroke her and murmur ‘There, there’ seemed inadequate. But when she whispered ‘That feels good’ I stopped worrying and hugged her tighter.

We must have sat there like that — her head on my chest, my arms round her, both of us gently rocking — for ten minutes or more.

‘Could you bear to get me some tissues?’ she said, into my chest.

I grabbed a handful from the bathroom. While she sniffled into them, I lingered in the kitchen, pretending to hunt for a glass, so she’d have time to recompose herself.

‘Poor Ian,’ she said, accepting the water. ‘You drive all this way for a jolly weekend and what do you get?’

‘Never mind me,’ I said.

‘Your socks are all wet, look. How did that happen?’

She was right. My snooping in the grass had soaked them.

‘Take them off — you’ll catch a chill.’

‘OK,’ I said, reaching down, ‘but it’s you we should be worrying about. What’s the matter?’

‘I had too much wine at dinner. I always get tearful when I drink.’

‘But there must be a reason. Tearful about what?’