Better Than This

Better Than This by Stuart Harrison

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Snow Falcon Still Water

Stuart Harrison

BETTER THAN THIS

HarperCollmsPuhlishers

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollins Publish 77-85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London w6 SJB

www.fireandwater.com

Published by HarperCollins Publish 2001 135798642

Copyright Stuart Harrison 2001

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 00 712955 6 UIlK HBfC)

Set in PostScript Linotype Baskerville by

Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd,

Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St. Ives plc

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This Is For My Mother

To Susan Opic, my editor at HarperCollins, Ilka Heinemann at List, and Stephanie and the team at William Morris: Thanks.

Part One

I woke suddenly, aware that I was alone in bed and certain that Sally had left me. My sleep had been troubled, and I lay in the darkness feeling my heart beating too fast, assailed by panic under which lay a melancholy loss.

How had it happened? When had we stopped being happy with one another? I tried to recall an incident, some denning moment but I couldn’t settle on anything. We had been married for eight years. I had never screwed around, not even once during that time. I had been attracted to other women, sure, and perhaps once or twice I’d even been in situations where I was tempted to do something about it, but I loved Sally and that was more important to me than any one-off encounter I knew I’d end up regretting. But lately we’d been fighting more than usual, and talking less. There were problems with the bank and with the agency that my partner Marcus and I jointly owned which had taken its toll on my marriage. But what was wrong with us went deeper than that.

Gradually, as the boundary between sleep and wakefulness dissolved, I wondered if the images that lingered in my mind were real or imagined. Had I dreamt Sally was gone? She had left the house in the dead of night with a suitcase clutched in one hand, which she put in the trunk of her car. The next thing she was at the airport, where she caught a plane to her parents’ house in Oregon. A vestige of bitterness remained when I imagined her mother comforting her, reminding Sally that she had always known this would happen.

I reached out, and beside me in the bed there was only an empty space. At that moment I heard the toilet flush, and a second later the bathroom door opened spilling a wedge of light across the floor. I feigned sleep as relief washed over me. Through half-closed eyes I watched as Sally appeared framed in the doorway. She wore a long pale cream nightgown through which, as she reached to turn out the light, her body was clearly delineated. I glimpsed an image of shadows and curves, the softness of her breasts, the slope of her belly. Then, with the light extinguished, she came ghost-like back to bed.

For a moment I didn’t move, but I needed physical reassurance of her presence and I turned on my side and lay my hand on her shoulder. “Sally.”

She had her back to me, and mumbled something I couldn’t make out. When I tried to turn her towards me she grudgingly resisted, a reminder that all was not well between us. I tried to remember the last time we’d made love but all I knew was that it had been a long time.

I recalled an occasion several months earlier when Sally had announced that she needed to see her doctor because she was finishing up her supply of birth control pills.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“About what?”

She fixed me with her steady gaze. “Should I renew my prescription?”

I knew what she was getting at but I pretended not to. “I guess,” I said abstractedly. “Have you seen my keys?”

Sally, though, wasn’t going to let me off that easily. “So, you think I should?” she insisted, an edge of warning in her voice I knew better than to ignore. I paused and reluctantly met her eye.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Because taking the pill over long periods can affect a woman’s ability to conceive. It might be a good idea if I stopped and gave my body time to adjust.”

The unspoken but clear purpose of this conversation hung poised in the air between us. It had been a while since we’d last had a discussion like this. I searched for the right note of understanding when I replied. “Sally, I really don’t think this is a good time. Maybe if you wait a little while. You know how things are at the agency.”

Her mouth tightened just perceptibly. “It isn’t as if I would fall pregnant right away.”

“I know that, but you can’t be certain. Things are tough right now and what with the mortgage and everything else … I just think a little more time,” I finished lamely.

“Christ!” She got up and started clattering dishes as she emptied the dishwasher and banged them down on the counter.

I got up and went over to her. “Sally…”

She shrugged me off angrily. “Don’t try to get around me. I’m tired of this, Nick. I’m tired of everything.” She whirled around to face me. “It’s never the right time.” She paused and I saw a resolve in her eye and I guessed what was coming even before she said it. “I’m not going to take the pill any more. If you don’t want me to get pregnant, then you take responsibility for a change.”

For a few days afterwards things were tense between us. One night I came home and found a packet of condoms on my night stand. I put them away in the drawer and though Sally must have noticed neither of us mentioned them. But gradually the incident was forgotten, or at least put aside. It must have been weeks later that I reached for her one night when we were in bed, and somehow all the friction and minor hurts that featured in our lives these days were forgotten as we tried to recapture a semblance of our former closeness. But in the height of passion, locked in a deep kiss as I moved to lay over her, and she shifted position to accommodate me I remembered the condoms. I broke off and fumbled for the drawer.

“What is it?” Sally asked, and then she realized what I was doing.

She watched me in recriminating silence and I could feel her mood change and when I kissed her again she was barely responsive. Our passion evaporated leaving only awkwardness in its place.

Now as I remembered that occasion I let my hand drop from her side. “You okay?”

No answer, but I could tell she was either angry or upset, or both which puzzled me. True, we were going through a difficult time but I sensed a tension in her that was raw, as if from a fresh wound. We hadn’t argued the night before, so it couldn’t be that. I’d arrived home late, which wasn’t unusual. It must have been around nine-thirty or so. Sally was reading a magazine in the living room. She looked up and offered her cheek when I bent to kiss her, and said there was chicken salad in the refrigerator if I was hungry. Shortly afterwards she said she was tired and was going to bed. I stayed up alone.

I picked at the salad and drank a couple of glasses of wine, then, when the bottle was empty, rather than open another I poured a scotch and ice which I drank in front of the TV watching a rerun of Seinfeld. I wasn’t paying attention so I turned it off. I was thinking instead about the meeting Marcus and I had with the bank in the morning which would determine the future of Carpe Diem, the advertising agency we had started together several years ago, but which I alone had brought to the brink of ruin. I sat there drinking scotch and brooding. My friend and partner was barely speaking to me, my life was collapsing, and there was no solace to be found in my marriage. It occurred to me that Sally and I probably hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to one another the whole of that day. When I went upstairs to bed it was after midnight and she was asleep.

Right now Sally remained unyielding and I needed to pee so I went to the bathroom, making sure I closed the door before I turned on the light. While I emptied my bladder I studied my reflection in the mirror. I’ve always had thick, dark brown hair which I wear short but I saw something that startled me, and leaning closer I examined the strands of white at my temples. I tried to tell myself it was the light but I knew it wasn’t. My brow was creased in frown lines, and I noticed for the first time just how deep they ran, like furrows in a ploughed field, and the crow’s feet around my eyes seemed more pronounced than

I remembered. I was so absorbed with these unwelcome signs of aging that I splashed on my foot.

“Shit,” I muttered.

I finished up, then rinsed my foot off under the tap. I looked back at my reflection. I was thirty-four years old but I appeared older than that. My eyes weren’t as clear as they should have been. Too many late nights pouring over market reports or preparing for meetings, too much booze in the process. I’d get home dead tired and knock back another couple of drinks, then sleep badly until dawn, if I was lucky. I stood back from the mirror. On the plus side, though I was a pound or two heavier than I ought to have been I was still in okay shape. I have the characteristic deep chest and wide shoulders of a swimmer. Ever since college I’ve hauled myself down to the pool at least three or four times a week. A hundred lengths without stopping. Smooth, even strokes, not hurrying but not slouching either. Lately I hadn’t been going as often, but I was still making it when I could. The grey hairs still worried me. It wasn’t vanity exactly. It was more like fear and mild panic. I’d be forty before I knew it, and then what? I had achieved very few of the things I wanted to in my life, and the clock was ticking. I could almost hear the soft trickle of the grains of sand falling through some cosmic hourglass that represented my allotted time on this earth.

My eye fell on a partially open pack of Carefree on the vanity top. The rows of smooth, white tampons in their clear glossy wrappers resembled, oddly I thought, virginal bullets. Beside the box a sliver of cellophane lay where it had fallen and suddenly I knew what was wrong with Sally. She’d been moody for a couple of days when I thought about it. She must have known, her body signalling the coming change. She always complained how her belly became swollen just before her period, not that I could see it. I stared at the open pack. It was a stark symbol of the discord between us.

By six-thirty I was showered and dressed and drinking my first cup of coffee in the kitchen. Sally sat at the bench wearing a big white fluffy robe which she seemed to shrink inside. She still looked half-asleep. Her big brown eyes were half-hooded, and her bee stung lips lent a pouting, almost sullen expression. She was thirty-one but looked younger, still girl/woman. Steam from her coffee cup drifted like mist before her face, and she appeared to gaze into the middle distance, her thoughts hidden. I glanced at the time.

“I should be going,” I said. “I don’t want to be late for the meeting.”

She cast me a brief accusing glance but didn’t say anything. I thought about the traffic build-up on the freeway, but I had a little time and I was reluctant to leave just yet.

“Look, it’s going to work out. Once they see our new projections the bank will give us a break.” I went over and put my hands on her shoulders, and bent to kiss her neck. Her skin was soft and warm and I breathed in the mingled scents of sleep and the hair shampoo she used. I wanted to put my arms around her, tell her I loved her, have her lean back against me the way she used to, her eyes closed, her lips a little parted as I murmured in her ear. But as if she sensed my intent she got up abruptly and went to put her cup in the dishwasher.

“You had your period didn’t you?” I said to her back. Her shoulders stiffened slightly. “That’s what you’re upset about isn’t it?”

“Is it?” she said, refusing to face me.

“I think so, yes.” I hesitated, then I took a tentative step towards her and she must have heard me because she turned round. Her eyes were glistening, but I wasn’t sure if she was angry or upset.

“You should go,” she said.

I glanced at the time, thinking she was right, but I couldn’t leave her like this on this day of all days. I needed to know everything was okay between us. I needed to know she didn’t hate me. I forced a note of optimism into my voice that I didn’t really feel. “When this is all over we can start trying…”

Sally shook her head violently. “I don’t want to hear this.”

“You’re just…”

“What? I’m just what?”

“I don’t know. I can guess what you’re thinking, that’s all.”

“Really?” she said. She was angry now. She wiped her eyes with a vigorous gesture, like she meant business. “So, what am I thinking, Nick? Tell me, I’d like to know.”