Based on a True Story (17 page)

thirty-two

At some point after she’d left him, Ken had learned to cook. For supper there was filet in Madeira sauce, braised fennel, funny little potatoes shaped like gnarled fingers with buttery flesh inside. Ken had eaten everything on his plate, and with shocking presumption reached over to spear a wedge of steak on hers. As if they regularly ate from the same plate. Augusta wanted to be furious about this, but the Ativan and the wine were preventing her from locating her anger.

In spite of the chilly evening, they sat in his garden — or “backyard,” as he laughingly called it in a flat Valley accent. His jacket lay draped across her shoulders. She’d failed to wear many of her own clothes. But how rewarding was the look in his eyes when she’d shown up at his door in the red dress, her arms and chest covered in gooseflesh? It had thrown her into the past to see his comic-book expression, eyes out on springs, tongue practically unrolling like a carpet at her feet.

All around them was jungle, Kenneth’s garden a riot of plants and shrubs she didn’t recognize. Before dinner he’d pointed them out to her: winter hazel, jasmine, honey-suckle, each, he said, giving off scent at different times of the year. Charles had chosen the plants, and tended them with maternal devotion.

“You and I between us,” Kenneth said, “we couldn’t keep mould alive.”

Augusta pulled herself upright, a posture she’d perfected when playing a headmistress.

“I gave that child life,” she said with asperity. “Although he seems to have forgotten it. He’s still furious with me for some unfathomable reason.”

Kenneth stared at her in disbelief. “Are you are joking me?”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“You know perfectly well why he’s angry. You tossed him out on his ear when he was sixteen. You told him to choose between us, and when he wouldn’t choose you, you put his things in a bag and told him to leave.” He reached over and took the last potato from her plate. “He was just about to start his A-levels.”

“If that had actually happened,” she said stiffly, “I would remember it.”

A ladybug was crawling along the edge of the table; he took it on the edge of his finger and placed it on the grass. “I would love to see a map of your memory sometime,” he said. “I imagine it would be very useful. The rooms you choose to ignore.”

Her fingers slid along the teak handle of the steak knife, its blade greasy with dried blood. She should have stabbed him when she had the chance. Her eyes closed. From a dark, submerged pool, an image floated to the surface: Charlie in the doorway of her flat, eyes narrow with rage, cheeks wet with tears. The image wavered and dissolved. No, that couldn’t be a memory. Ken had planted the thought there.

When she came back to the present, to the little garden, he was talking. He was
still
talking.

“The thing no one wants to acknowledge about relationships is that they contain hundreds of truths. When I’m on the radio, people don’t call me for advice; they call because they want me to take their side. But I always say —” he paused for effect, and his voice deepened as if he were speaking into an invisible microphone: “Love doesn’t have sides; love is like a ball.”

“Or an egg,” she said slowly.

“What?”

“The Heart Is an Egg,” Augusta repeated. “It Can Be Broken, But Never Beaten.” Was it a trick of the light, or had he grown paler? “Your book, Kenneth. Why don’t we talk about that?”

Augusta had forgotten how hard it was to get such a big bastard drunk. Once, she had relied on his flinty constitution. Ken could pour any amount of alcohol down his gob and still be standing at the end of the night, ready to defend her ragged honour, drive her home, carry her upstairs, and pitch her into bed.

A forest of bottles sprouted from the coffee table in front of them: port, Armagnac, brandy, Jägermeister. Every time she filled Kenneth’s glass, she found a way to dispose of her own. A ficus sat on the floor beside the sofa, its soil soupy with digestifs.

“The boy says there’s no one in your life.” She tucked her legs under her on the sofa, letting the red dress fall away from her thighs. Let him deal with that.

“He’s in my life.”

“Really, Ken. It can’t look very good for Mr. Romance to not have a girlfriend. Like a chef standing in the middle of an empty restaurant.”

He smiled faintly, head back against the pillows, an empty port glass balanced on the arm of the sofa.

“Worried about my love life, are you?”

He turned his head to look at her and his eyes immediately were drawn to her legs.
Like a fucking compass needle
, she thought.
Unbelievable
.

“Augusta,” he said hoarsely, and inched toward her.

It was too soon; he was still coherent. Her heart was racing with the electric thrill of the caffeine pills she’d taken in the loo after dinner. “For the temporary relief of exhaustion,” it said on the box she’d picked up at the Boots in Heathrow. “Maximum four tablets per day.” She’d poured eight in her mouth and washed them down with water from her cupped hand. It was tragic to let go of the Ativan’s silken buzz, but she needed her wits to be sharp. And his to be dull.

She waved the bottle of Jägermeister at him.

“Oh, go on then,” he said.

When she handed him the glass, she let her fingers brush against his ever so gently. As she put the bottle down on the floor, she felt dizzy, nearly swooned. What if she’d given herself angina with those pills? What was angina, anyway? It had something to do with hearts. She hadn’t felt hers tripping like this in years.

“Are you all right?” Ken put a hand on her shoulder to steady her.

Any excuse to touch me
, she thought. It was the caffeine pills’ fault that she felt a crackling on the bare skin under his hand.

Shrugging him off, she got to her feet, knees unsteady. The sitting room gave nothing away — nothing of his past, nothing of the transformation he’d made of his life. Only the L.S. Lowry prints on the wall hinted at the grim city he couldn’t quite leave behind, and a series of framed photographs of Charlie, charting his journey from childhood, indicated that there was a human being he loved.

One entire wall was covered with books. She felt his eyes on her back as she looked at the titles, heard the dull scrape of the bottle as he lifted it from the table. A few novels, but mostly history and philosophy and biography, one entire shelf dedicated to books about famous couples in history.

Her fingers slid along the spines, stopped at one slim volume. She leaned closer to read the title and pulled it free, shaking her head. The book fell open in her hands, and she read: “There are jobs that an Englishman just doesn’t take.”

“Ah,” he said from the sofa. “
The Loved One
. I sometimes wished I’d followed that advice.”

“It’s my copy. I recognize the HP stains.” She looked at him through her lashes. “You saved it, you sentimental fool.”

She saw him swallow. One big hand caressed the empty sofa seat. “Augusta,” he said. “Why don’t you come sit down?” She felt the pull in her gut, the treacherous tug of desire. Turning back to the bookshelf, she put Waugh’s novel away. She’d come here for a reason, and she mustn’t lose sight of it. Her fingers resumed their travels across the shelf, and she felt a welcome flicker of violence.

“Ken,” she said slowly, “where the fuck is my book?”

“No one reads books anymore, Augusta, so it hardly matters.”

She joined him on the sofa again, sitting rigid with indignation. The back of his hand rested against her thigh — accidentally, perhaps, but neither of them moved.

“Is that so, darling? Then why are you writing one?”

“I’ve asked my publisher the same question. She’s completely mad, lives in a yurt in Santa Cruz. But she seems to think there’s a tiny niche in the self-help market that I can squeeze myself into.” He still sounded sober. “How did you know about it, anyway? Did Charles mention it?”

She snorted. “That child. It’s like talking to a statue.” Augusta picked up the bottle and filled Kenneth’s glass, hesitated, filled her own. “He’s so self-contained. Nothing like me. Nothing at all.” She felt drained of all energy. “I’ve no idea where it comes from.”

“Nor do I,” he said quietly. “He’s a mystery to me.”

As nonchalantly as she could, she said: “He did mention that you might be planning to spill some secrets.”

To her annoyance, he burst out laughing. “He did no such thing, Augusta!” Kenneth said when he could finally speak. “I’d have thought you’d become a better liar, with all the practice you’ve had.”

Her fists clenched and for a minute she considered sinking one of them into his smug face. She drew a deep breath and tried to remember what Alma had advised: Act stra-
tegically. Only one of you will be thinking with your brain.

She wriggled closer to him on the sofa and he looked at her, surprised. His fingers played with the hem of her dress. Tugging it down, not up, the canny bastard.
I’m only feeling this way because it’s been so long
, she thought.
Because it’s been so long since I had sex with somebody other than myself. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad . . . a quick shag, steal his computer, and go.

She handed him his glass, touched it to hers, and they both threw back their drinks in one go.

“I guess you haven’t forgiven me,” she said.

He gazed at her coolly. No, definitely not drunk enough. “You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?”

“Think what?”

“That I sit here, night after night, licking old wounds. That I’ve got pictures of you in a box and I take them out at night and cry myself to sleep.”

“Don’t be such a knob. My ego’s not quite so huge as you imagine. Although” — she reached for her cigarettes, not bothering to ask if she might smoke inside — “I think it’s fair to say you probably do have a picture of me somewhere with darts stuck in it.”

He shook his head. “You’re unbelievable. We have better things to do, Charles and I. There are other things that occupy us besides” — he curled his lip — “memories of you.” Stretching, he stood up. “I’ll be back in a minute. Try not to cause too much damage.” He stalked off toward the kitchen.

“Bring back another bottle,” she called after him.

Her hands shook as she put her cigarettes down and rummaged through her bag. Caffeine or nerves? Or something else? Quickly, she texted Frances:
Be outside in 20 min. Lights off.
She added Kenneth’s address and phone number and hit send.

She rooted around for another few seconds until her hands closed around a tiny plastic bottle, its ridged lid rough under her fingers. Lorazepam, 2 mg, the label said. Take one as needed. Before she could reconsider, she put her palm against the lid and twisted.

Nothing. She could hear Ken in the kitchen now, the fridge door opening, the clink of bottle on bottle. Cursing, she wiped her palm on her dress and tried again to open the lid. Nothing. It remained firmly attached to the bottle. Fucking child-proof lids. They couldn’t possibly save enough children’s lives to compensate for the annoyance they caused. The tap in the kitchen was turned on, then off; she heard a cupboard slam shut. Taking a deep breath, she placed her palm against the lid and twisted firmly. This time, it gave.

Four white ovals skittered onto the table. Quickly, she scraped two back into the bottle. She could hear Ken’s footsteps coming down the hallway. She crushed two tiny pills with the end of her lighter, grabbed his empty glass, and held it to the edge of the table: she used her cigarette pack to sweep the small pile of white powder into his glass.

When he came into the room, she was pouring them both drinks. He stopped in the doorway, leaning heavily against the frame. He gazed out the window behind her and said, “What I don’t understand, Augusta, is why you think I’d give you away now.”

She swirled his glass gently, held it toward him but he didn’t move. “I’m not sure —”

“That door’s been closed for years.” His eyes — somewhat less focused, she was pleased to see — slid to hers. “You know nothing about me at all.” He reached for the drink, and upended it in one fierce motion. Wiping his hand across his mouth, he sat heavily next to her. “I’m not sure why that surprises me.”

It took all her control not to snarl: Why do you think you know anything about me? Instead, she turned to him and tilted her head, an enticement that always worked beautifully on the small screen.

“You know what surprises me? That I agreed to come here tonight.” She put her mouth close to his ear, whispered: “But I’m glad I did.”

Finally, his eyes began to glaze. He blinked at her slowly, as if he were trying to memorize every inch. As if he were already planning to never see her again.

“’S more than idle flattery,” Ken mumbled. “You do look spectacular. Which is astonishing, considering what you’ve done to yourself.”

“Considering what you’ve done to me.”

“Me? I haven’t done anything.” He inched closer to her on the sofa, his knee knocking hers. “Not yet.”

Augusta held her breath. It would be easy enough at this point to delay until he passed out, to make some excuse and leave the room. But parts of her — particularly certain parts — wanted this. So she closed her eyes.

She felt his mouth against hers, not entirely gentle. Then she was falling, and she was in two places at once, here and there, present and past. She wasn’t ancient and nearly expired; she was young and furled with potential. They both were. If she opened her eyes, that’s the man she’d see. The first Ken, not the one she’d ruined. They fell back onto the couch, her arms around his neck. For an uncountable time, every other thought was chased from her head. She felt his hands slide down her sides, up to her breasts, slow and warm.

She had no idea how much time passed, only that she was in danger of forgetting herself. She shifted under him. “I’m sorry,” she murmured against his mouth.

“What?” He broke away from her, shook his head. He seemed to be having trouble focusing his gaze. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

She tangled her hands into his hair and pulled him down. He landed on her with a thud, knocking the air from her lungs. He
was
a great lump. What if he passed out on her, and she slowly suffocated to death underneath him? It would serve her right. Panic gripped her and she wedged her forearms under his shoulders. He seemed to have fallen asleep. Now she knew what people meant by the weight of the world.