How to Be Good (12 page)

‘I definitely never said anything about . . .'

‘You did, actually, Katie. You said something about the difference between art and science, and that you preferred art.'

Oh. Oh dear. There was no way that was a lucky guess. I hadn't realized that I'd ever voiced my art versus science theory, but I must have done.

‘I never said I preferred art.'

‘You said you were a scientist by profession and you didn't need science in bed.'

Now he comes to mention it, I do remember saying something like that, but it was intended to make Stephen feel better about, you know, nothing happening from my side. Ironic, then, that it has come to be used as a weapon against David, who did make things happen from my side. (If you're interested, there is another layer of irony here, because David is a great anti-science man, and constantly bangs on about the superiority of the arts over science,
and how all scientists are idiots and so on and so forth. So first of all, in this particular situation, he's swapped camps and become a scientist, his own worst enemy, without knowing it. And, then, having swapped camps and actually achieved more than the artist – although maybe that's just me speaking as a scientist – he's attacked for it.)

‘I'm sorry,' says David mildly. ‘You've lost me.'

Neither Stephen nor I have the heart to explain, so we just let his rather plaintive (and, let's face it, perfectly understandable) bafflement hang in the air. But I hate the feeling that Stephen and I are now, suddenly, the unit, and that David's incomprehension isolates him. I don't want to form any sort of alliance with this twit. Not any more.

‘Stephen, I was trying to be nice to you when I told you that. It was an explanation for why I didn't come.' I glance at David, hoping that this brutally plain information will cheer him up, and that the cheer will register somewhere in his face, but he is still blank and quiet. I want to make him feel better than he must be feeling, but I can see now that referring to my sexual relationship with Stephen, even given its relative failure, is not the way to do it.

‘That's what you're saying now,' Stephen says. There's a whine in his voice that I've never heard before, and I don't like it. ‘That's not what you were saying when you were lying on top of me in Leeds.'

David looks away momentarily, a flinch as the needle finally pierces the skin. ‘No, that's not what I said then,' I say, and there is a real heat in my voice. He's really beginning to upset me now. ‘We know what I said then. I said the thing about arts and science then. That's what we're talking about. We're interpreting the words we know I used. Please try and keep up, Stephen.'

‘Oh, terribly sorry if I'm not quick enough for you.' We glower at each other, and it is this that finally makes David get to his feet.

‘I'm sorry if I'm speaking out of turn here,' he says, ‘but you two really don't strike me as a couple who stand much chance of a happy and successful relationship together. You don't seem to get
on very well. And you really should be able to, at this stage. Early on. First flush and all that.'

It's such an obvious and welcome observation that it makes me smile, even though the ‘you two' and the ‘couple' stick in my throat.

‘I mean . . . to be honest, Stephen, Katie doesn't appear to like you very much. I'll let her speak for herself, but I don't think she's in a hurry to rush off with you. And, you know . . . there's surely got to be a degree of . . . of . . . unanimity about it. Otherwise it's not going to happen, is it?'

‘No it bloody isn't,' I say.

‘Katie . . .' Stephen reaches for my hand and I snatch it away. I can't believe he wants to argue the point.

‘I'm not sixteen, Stephen. This isn't like trying to persuade someone to go to the pictures. I have a husband and two children. You think I'm going to suddenly see your point and leave them? “Oh, yeah, you're right, I do want to be with you. Silly me.” I made a mistake. I've got to live with it, and so has David. Please go.'

And he does, and I never see him again. (Oh, but I think of him, of course I do. He's not really a part of this story any more, but in months and years to come I will find myself wondering whether he has a partner, whether he remembers me, whether I left some small but disfiguring scar . . . I haven't slept with enough men to forget any of them, particularly the most recent. So even though you will not hear much about him again, do not make the mistake of thinking that it is as if he never was.)

 

‘Thank you,' I say to David when we hear the door slam. ‘Thank you, thank you.'

‘What for?'

‘That must have been horrible for you.'

‘It . . . It really was. I was so jealous. I hated him so much. What were you thinking of?'

‘I don't know.' And I don't. Stephen now seems to be not a person at all, but the hallucinatory product of some sort of sickness.
‘You were brilliant. And I'm sorry I put you in such a ridiculous situation.'

He shakes his head, and is quiet for a moment. ‘I put myself in it, too, didn't I? Wouldn't have happened if I'd been making you happy. So I'm sorry, too.'

And now I do feel I owe him. Not because of what I promised a long time ago, but because of what he just did five minutes ago. And that's how it should work, isn't it? That night, I go to bed feeling I'd do anything for him.

‘There's a favour I wanted to ask you, actually,' he says as we're about to put the light out, and I'm pleased. I'm in the mood for favours.

‘Sure.'

‘I spoke to GoodNews yesterday, and . . . Well, he's got nowhere to live. His landlord's given him notice. I was wondering if he could come here for a couple of nights.'

I don't want GoodNews here, of course I don't: the prospect fills me with a great deal of apprehension. But my husband has spent some of this evening listening courteously while my ex-lover outlines his shortcomings, and has now asked me if a friend can stay for a while: you don't have to have had a spiritual conversion to come to the right decision.

 

He's a funny little man, GoodNews. Thirtyish, small, astonishingly skinny; he would be unwise to pick a fight with Tom. He has huge, bright-blue, frightened-looking eyes, and lots of curly, dirty-blond hair, although I suspect that personal hygiene might not necessarily be a priority for him at the moment, and perhaps I should reserve judgement on the hair colour until he has been persuaded to shower. There has been an unwise and spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to grow a goatee, hence a fluffy little tuft of something or other, just underneath the centre of his lower lip, that any mother would want to rub off with a bit of spit. What you notice first of all, however, is that both his eyebrows have been pierced, and he is wearing what appear to be brooches over each eye. The children are particularly and perhaps forgivably fascinated by this.

‘Are those tortoises?' Tom asks, even before he's said hello. I hadn't wanted to stare at the eyebrow jewellery before, but now I can see that Tom is right: this man is wearing representations of domestic pets on his face.

‘Nah,' says GoodNews dismissively, as if Tom's error was ignorant in the extreme, and he's about to expand when Molly steps in.

‘They're turtles,' she says. I am momentarily impressed by her authority until I remember that she has met GoodNews before.

‘What's the difference?' asks Tom.

‘Turtles can swim, can't they?' says David over-cheerfully, as if trying to enter into the spirit of a completely different occasion – an occasion where we're sitting around eating pizza and watching a nature programme, rather than an occasion where we're welcoming a spiritual healer with animals dangling from his eyebrows into our home. The cheerfulness comes, I can see, from embarrassment – he has, after all, spent an awful lot of time kneeling on the floor with this man, and so he has a lot to be embarrassed about.

‘Why did you want turtles and not tortoises?' Tom asks. It's not the first question that came to my mind, but DJ GoodNews is such a curious creature that any information he cares to give us is endlessly fascinating.

‘You won't laugh if I tell you?' I laugh even before he tells us. I can't help it. The idea that one would laugh at the explanation for the turtles, but not at the turtles themselves, is in itself funny.

GoodNews looks hurt.

‘I'm sorry,' I say.

‘That was quite rude,' says GoodNews. ‘I'm surprised at you.'

‘Do you know me?'

‘I feel like I do. David's talked a lot about you. He loves you very much, but you've been going through some bad times, yeah?'

For a moment I think he's asking me for confirmation – ‘That's me!' – but then I realize that the ‘yeah' is just one of those annoying verbal tics that this generation pick up like headlice. I have never met anyone like GoodNews. He talks like a dodgy geezer vicar, all cockiness and glottal stops and suspect solicitude.

‘Anyway,' he says. ‘The turtles. It was really weird, yeah? 'Cos I
had this dream about blue turtles, and then Sting, you know, the singer, well, I don't like him much, I used to like the Police when I was a kid but I think his solo stuff is bollocks pardon my French, anyway he brings out an album called
The Dream of the Blue Turtles
. So. . .'

He shrugs. The rest – the eyebrow-piercing and the brooches – is clearly meant to be self-explanatory, although I can't help feeling that he's missed out a couple of steps of the decision-making process.

‘And I've always had this thing about turtles anyway. I've always thought they could see stuff that we can't, yeah?'

The children stare at their father, clearly baffled.

‘What can they see?' asks Molly.

‘Good question, Molly.' He points at her. ‘You're good. You're sharp. I'm going to have to watch you.' Molly looks pleased, but there is no attempt to answer the question.

‘He doesn't know,' says Tom with a snort.

‘Oh, I know all right. But maybe now's not the time.'

‘When's the time, then?'

‘Do you want to show GoodNews his room?' says David to the children, clearly with the intention of bringing the subject of turtles and their psychic powers to a close; and as GoodNews doesn't want to expand on his theories anyway, he picks up his bags and goes upstairs.

David turns to me.

‘I know what you're thinking.'

‘What am I supposed to think?'

‘I know he talks nonsense some of the time. Try not to get bogged down in the superficial stuff.'

‘What else is there?'

‘You don't pick up a vibe?'

‘No.'

‘Oh. Oh well.' In other words: some people – the intuitive, soulful and spiritual among us – can pick up a vibe, and others – the flat, dull, literalists, like me – can't. I resent this.

‘What vibe should I be picking up, then, according to you?'

‘It's not according to me. It's there. It's interesting that Molly and I can feel it and you and Tom can't.'

‘How do you know Tom can't? How do you know Molly can?'

‘Did you notice that Tom was rude to him? If you pick up the vibe, you wouldn't be rude. Molly isn't rude. She got it the first time she saw him.'

‘And me? Was I rude?'

‘Not rude. But sceptical.'

‘And that's wrong?'

‘You can almost see it, what he has. If you know how to look.'

‘And you don't think I do?' I don't know why this bothers me so much, but it does. I want to know how to look; or at least, I want David to think of me as the sort of person who might know how to look.

‘Calm down. It doesn't make you a bad person.'

‘That's not true, though, is it? According to you. That's precisely why I'm a bad person. Because all I saw was the eyebrows, not the . . . the . . . aura.'

‘We can't all be everything.' And he smiles that smile, and goes to join the others.

 

‘There are a few things GoodNews has a problem with,' says David when they have all come down again.

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' I say.

‘I don't really agree with beds,' says GoodNews.

‘Oh,' I say. ‘Do you mind if we sleep in them?' I want to sound dry and light, like a nice white wine, but I fear that what comes out is a lot more vinegary than that.

‘What other people do is their business,' says GoodNews. ‘I just think they make you soft. Take you further away from how things really are.'

‘And how are things?'

David shoots me a look. Not the old-style, I-hate-you-and-I-wish-you-were-dead look I would have got, once upon a time; this is the new-style, I'm-sooooo-disappointed look, and for a moment I am nostalgic for the days when hatred was our common currency. It
was a currency that worked, at the time, just as pigs and bales of wheat must have worked. And though you can see why pigs were abandoned, they at least had the virtue of simplicity.