Authors: William Nicholson
At the top by the Post Office Jo is waiting for her, boldly dressed as always, today in a sleeveless red top and black-and-white-check palazzo pants. Jo is almost exactly Maggie's age, but their friendship is based on how different they are in every way, a topic that never ceases to amaze and amuse them. Where Maggie is slight, bordering on petite, Jo is generously built, sexy, almost but not quite pretty, and without fear or shame.
She wears strong colors and outsize costume jewelry, and conducts her life in a series of glorious, often unscrupulous, impulses which generally come to grief. She makes an erratic living as a singer, having come up through the Glyndebourne chorus, though as she likes to say, she hasn't yet come up far enough. She lives with a cat in a flat in the new development where Baxters used to have their printworks.
She flourishes their lunch, bought at Beckworths Deli, and contained in a brown paper bag.
“Two slices of tomato and mozzarella pizza, a brownie, and an apple juice.”
“Oh, you angel.”
Maggie shows her the sign on Beckworths' front wall saying that this used to be the old Church House of St. Michael's, in 1545.
“Crikey!” says Jo. “And now it's selling pizza.”
“We're going to St. Michael's,” says Maggie. “I'm going to show you my secret place.”
She leads Jo up the High Street to the church with the big black clock that projects high over the pavement. The way into the church is across a miniature brick courtyard.
“We can't eat our pizza in a church,” says Jo.
Maggie leads her into the church's shadowy interior and then out again through a side door. Here nine broad steps of stone and brick rise gently before them, lined on either side with gravestones.
Maggie stops before one of the gravestones to show Jo. She reads out the worn lettering aloud.
“In memory of Thomas Evans, Collector of Excise. He had but recently been appointed to Sussex Collection, and while traveling his first round was attacked by fever, which terminated in death on the 30th November 1837. Aged nineteen.” This is Maggie's surprise. “Aged nineteen!”
“They died young back in the old days,” says Jo.
“But it's like a story. A tax collector, new at the job. His first round. He was probably all excited, his life before him. Probably thinking, I've got a great job, secure future, I can think of getting married, start a family. Then pop, he dies. Aged nineteen!”
“Now I'm all miserable.”
At the top of the steps they enter a walled grassy plateau where three mature yew trees spread their shade over a cluster of gray stone graves. The graves are raised like stone altars, their inscriptions smoothed to illegibility by wind and rain. To the left a narrow path through ragged shrubs leads to a further miniature graveyard, where a wooden bench has been placed beneath one of the yews.
“Maggie, this is heaven!” exclaims Jo. “I never even knew this place existed.”
“It's a secret. You mustn't tell.”
They sit down on the bench, which looks toward the church's round tower with its spire of oak shingles. Beside it a lower tower, also shingle-roofed, carries the square bell-cage and the clock. On three sides the back windows of surrounding houses peer down at them; on the fourth, the high old stone wall of the castle.
Jo opens the brown paper bag and gives Maggie her slice of pizza. The clock clangs out the quarter hour. The sky above is overcast, the air warm.
“So what's up with nice Andrew?” Jo says.
“Oh, God,” says Maggie. “I've been in such a state. I actually think I had a panic attack yesterday. Can you believe it? Is it possible to have a breakdown over something you've chosen to do of your own free will?”
“Don't ask me, girl. My own free will never ceases to fuck me up.”
“You know Andrew's said he'll take this job? Suddenly it's happening. He starts on Monday. And I go into a panic attack.”
Jo wants all the gory details.
“Like shortness of breath? Dizzy spells? You didn't swoon, did you?”
“More like this blinding headache.”
“No one swoons any more,” says Jo wistfully. “You could do a lovely swoon, Maggie. Me, I'd be like a felled tree.”
“I think it's all about whether or not he moves in with me.”
“Is he moving in with you?”
“Why wouldn't he? That's why he's taken the job. So we can be together. But you know what's so stupid? We've never actually talked about it. It's been there all the time, kind of assumed, but there's been no actual, you know, conversation.”
“Hey, you don't have to tell me. Paddy and me, we never talked at all. We had sex without talking. If he'd talked I'd have found out what a jerk he was years earlier.”
Maggie knows Jo still pines for Paddy, however much she jokes about him. The sting is that she was the one who ended their relationship. This is the experience Maggie wants to tap: the woman who said no and lived to regret it.
“But the difference is,” says Jo, “nice Andrew is not a jerk.”
“No, he's not a jerk.” Maggie has hardly touched her pizza. There's another symptom of her breakdown: loss of appetite. “He's just nice. Is that a terrible thing to say?”
“There's worse than nice,” says Jo.
“But for all the rest of your life? That's what I keep thinking. This is it till I die. I mean, if you're making that kind of decision you're supposed to be really sure, aren't you? Like, over the moon and in love and so on.”
“It helps,” concedes Jo.
“When I think of marrying Andrew I start to feel all shut in,
but when I think of never seeing him again I get this panic attack. Who am I supposed to believe, me or me?”
“Oh, boy. Don't ask me to take sides.”
“What would you do, Jo?”
“Me? My latest plan is to find myself a cripple in a wheelchair who can't run away. That way I don't end up alone.”
She's joking, of course, her opinions as fun and fake as her jewelry. But Maggie finds solace in her friend's shamelessness. It makes it easier to say the unsayable.
“Do you think anybody's better than nobody?”
“Definitely. One hundred percent. But that's not the question, is it? The question is, have you reached the end of the line? What we all need is a future flash that tells us, This is the last one. Turn this one down and you're on your own for the duration. But if he's not the last in line, hey, rock on. Out with the old, in with the new.”
“Do you sometimes think maybe Paddy was the last in the line?”
“Like, every ten minutes of every day.” She laughs at her own predicament. “But Paddy was such a jerk.”
“He won't be the last, Jo.”
“You think? I'm a minority taste.”
Jo has had three boyfriends by her own account. Her time with Paddy was longer than the other two put together.
She breaks the brownie in half. Maggie waves her share away.
“Nice Andrew's not the last in your line, I'll tell you that much. Your line's got a way to go.”
“But it all takes so long, doesn't it?” With Jo Maggie feels free to admit the calculations that fill her waking hours. “If I break up with Andrew, I have to meet some new guy. How long does that take? Give it three months, and that's being optimistic. Then you have to find out if he's really the one.
Another three months, minimum. That's six months. Then it turns out he isn't. So back to the store. Another six months. If you're really lucky, twelve months in you've got a good one. But you still need time, you have to try each other out, live together. Say, another year. Then you're ready. You decide to get married. That's a big deal, it takes time. I mean, you don't just go ahead and get pregnant right away. So there's another year. Three years, then nine more months, almost four years, and you've got a baby. And that's pretty much if everything goes right. By then I'd be thirty-four, and I'd have made it just in time. Or not. That's what makes it all so impossible. What if it's not? Then I'll be thirty-five, then I'll be thirty-six, then I'll be thirty-seven, and I'll be saying, why didn't I settle down with Andrew when I was thirty? By thirty-seven we'd have kids in primary school.”
“Oh, Maggie! Don't!” Jo makes a cross with her fingers to ward off the evil eye. “I feel like you're walking over my grave.”
“But you do see the problem.”
“The problem is the air we breathe. The problem is our birthright. It's our inheritance. It's our curse.”
“So how does everyone else cope with it?”
“They fuck up,” says Jo. “They compromise. They live with regret.”
“Do you? Over Paddy?”
“Sure. But I have a good time even so. I mean, like who said life was supposed to be roses all the way? I get a bit down sometimes. But then I wash my hair and pour myself a glass of Shiraz and think how much more other people have fucked up their lives than me. Then I feel almost fine again. I mean, hey, look around you.” She waves a beringed hand over the graves. “This lot are actually dead. Compared to them, we're winning. And in case you hadn't noticed, the sun is shining.”
“Yes, I know. I should count my blessings.”
“So, count. One, you're not dead. Two, you're not crippled. Three, you're not old. Fourâfuck it.”
“Right.”
Jo kicks her legs in front of her, doing dance steps in the air.
“So here's the question, Mags. Do you love him?”
“Do I love him?”
“Nice Andrew.”
Maggie thinks about it, thinking she shouldn't have to be thinking about it.
“I don't know, Jo. How do I know? Yes, I love him. But how do I know I couldn't love someone else much more? I feel like I could. I feel like there's a whole lot more of me not coming out to play, you know? Like loving Andrew only uses part of me.”
“Oho,” says Jo. “Aha.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don't know what to say. What's nice Andrew got to say about it?”
“I don't know. We haven't talked.”
“You mean he doesn't even know you've got doubts?”
“Of course he knows. I've been ducking the conversation. He's not stupid. But I don't know what he feels about me ducking it.”
“So call him. Ask him.”
“Don't I have to sort myself out first? I mean, he's going to say, What do
you
want to do? I'm the one with the problem here. It's not like I'm asking him for anything that he's not already giving. It's not fair on him to dither about like this. Either I'm staying or I'm going.”
“He's Aquarius, right?”
“Oh, please.”
“You can mock. If I'd paid more attention to Paddy being bloody Pisces I'd have saved myself years of grief.”
“All right. He's Aquarius. So what?”
“You're Scorpio.”
“I hate being Scorpio. Who wants to be a scorpion?”
“Scorpios are amazing. Very sexual. Very insightful. Julia Roberts is a Scorpio.”
“She's not exactly got a brilliant history of relationships.”
“Been married eight years now. Forty-three years old. Three kids, twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, and three-year-old Henry. Two dogs. Does her own cooking.”
Jo is a devoted reader of celebrity magazines.
“Hazel? Phinnaeus?”
“When that marriage started, she was thirty-five. You've got five years at least.”
“What about Jennifer Aniston?”
Jo lets her head fall. This is a killer blow. To a generation raised on
Friends
, Jennifer Aniston's failure to find love is the ghost at the feast.
“I'll never forgive Angelina Jolie,” says Maggie. “Never ever.”
“What I don't understand,” says Jo, “is why she didn't stay married to Ross.”
They laugh together, at their own failed dreams, at the shared failed dreams of the world.
“So tell me what I can do,” says Jo. “How can I help? Do you want me to call nice Andrew?”
“What would you say?”
“Hi, nice Andrew. How's it going? I hear you're moving down our way. That'll be nice. Then I leave a pause. Then I say, Won't it?”
“Then what?”
“How do I know? Maybe he starts crying down the phone.
Maybe he acts like there's no problem. Maybe he asks me what's going on with you.”
“What do you tell him is going on with me?”
“I say you're having doubts. Eve of wedding nerves. Julia Roberts walked out on Kiefer Sutherland three days before their wedding.”
Maggie thinks about that.
“Maybe you should. I just need time, Jo. Ask him to give me a bit more time.”
“You don't want to ask him yourself?”
“I don't want to have the conversation. Not yet. I want to know which way I'm facing first. You call him. Say I just need a bit of time on my own.”
Back in her office, tackling her ever-renewed in-tray, Maggie feels a little calmer, a little stronger. Jo will buy her some time. Maybe she should go home this weekend, home being the solid Edwardian villa in Oundle where her parents still live. Except that her parents adore Andrew and expect Maggie to marry him. She knows this even though they're too discreet to raise the subject. Maggie finds herself wondering about her mother's own marriage. Did she have doubts? Was Dad a compromise? Maggie in her turn has been too discreet to ask. You could say the marriage has worked well, in that it's quite impossible to imagine them apart, but they don't seem to talk much, or go out much together.
Then she remembers that she and Andrew are supposed to be going to the Broads for dinner on Saturday.
Have to find a way to get out of that.
Henry arrives a little early for his meeting and it seems that Justin Hamo is running a little late, so he sits down in the windy reception area and picks up a copy of the day's
Guardian
. He reads a story about vaginal gel as other visitors arrive, report to the reception desk, and hurry on to the lifts. Unsummoned, waiting in the lobby, he looks about him with a half-smile, to indicate that something quite other than the life of the lobby is occupying his mind, and that the little he does take in he finds gently amusing. Then, tiring of the strain of smiling to himself, he closes his eyes and lets it be seen that he has chosen this chair in this lobby as an opportunity to catch up on the sleep he so desperately needs. No doubt he's just flown in from LA, or more fashionably, Mumbai.