I Think I Love You (39 page)

What was that Fitzgerald story? Last one in the book, where one guy meets another, a former acquaintance, and tries to work out where he’s been for so long, out of the fray. Abroad, or sick, or just away? Turns out he’d been drunk. How did the line go? “Jesus. Drunk for ten years.” Well, that was how Bill felt, sometimes; not resentful, quite mild in his way, but sad and quizzical nonetheless.
Jesus. Married for ten years
. “The Lost Decade,” that’s what the story was called.

Clare had been quite firm about not wanting kids. And he had gone along with it, not wishing to force the issue, as it were, while noticing, as if out of the corner of his eye, how much he enjoyed being Uncle Bill to his six nieces. From the outside, Clare and Bill had the gleam of success. They had risen through their ranks: she, to high office in the temple of investment, a priestess whose rites he never claimed to understand; he, “Magazine Man,” as Clare would say with a third of a smile, leafing his way through the ever-shinier pages of one title after the next, until he was senior enough—“sufficiently wanky,” in the words of Pete, when they met up near work—to take off his shirt and tie and wear a top of black knitted silk instead, buttoned to the neck, beneath his suit.

He had seen the Welshwoman, Petra, looking at him the other day and sizing him up; taking in the clothes, the loafers (soundless, on the office carpet), even the lacquer of his fountain pen, and—he had never felt the force of the phrase before now—getting the measure of him. Like an entomologist with a beetle, still alive. She would have tapped his shell if she could, to find out if there was anything inside. There was a look in her eyes he couldn’t place. She was the polar opposite of a
groupie, that was for sure. Whatever those older women had done to David Cassidy, wanting him without knowing him, without knowing
why
, it was the opposite of what Petra was after, with her visitor’s pass and her twenty-four-year-old letter.

She was not on her knees; Welshwoman stood straight and looked at Magazine Man. She did not altogether like what she saw, he was sure of that. But then Bill did not always like what he saw, whenever he caught sight of himself. In a glass, darkly. He had put away childish things, and he kept fearing—half hoping—that they would start to reappear. Flashes and eruptions of young William, in the sagging face of Mr. Finn. Did Petra think such thoughts? Can two people think the same thing without knowing it?

Strange that he should wonder about her. Met her for—what?—an hour or two at the most. Yet she had struck him—really struck, in the way that you do a gong, or a chord—and the sound would not die away. He could see her now, in detail, conjure her more exactly from those few minutes than he could Clare, his other half, with whom he had spent a decade. Clare was misting over, and this stranger—this
other
other—was growing clearer by the hour. Petra. Lost and found. Tender is the night. Ruth and Melody and Clare. The Pearl Woman. Spirit Level and Green’s Leaf. David Cassidy and
Puzzle Time
. Petra. I claim my prize.

A
re you alone?” asked Petra. “Is there just one of you? I thought there were going to be more.”

“Me too,” said Bill.

They were standing at the coffee machine in the British Airways lounge. It was a while since Petra had flown, and she had half forgotten the crush of travelers at the check-in desks, the long lines of thrumming anxiety, everyone on the hard verge of complaint; having forged a way through, she found her need for coffee, here on the other side, almost overwhelming. Coffee and somewhere to sit down. Sharon, on the other hand, who had flown only twice before, and had never been in an airline lounge, was in heaven. She was eating a slab of soft cheese on a Ritz cracker, and devotedly studying the labels of the three available brandies, like an art historian at a show of lithographs. It was nine o’clock in the morning.

Bill waited until they were seated. He stirred his tea, sipped and said to Petra, as she raised her cup to her lips, “Yes, I was going to send one of our writers to cover you.”

Petra snorted into her coffee. Some of it slopped into the saucer.

“I’m sorry,” said Bill. “I’ll start again. What I was trying to say was, I asked one of our lot, a very smart lad called Jake, to fly out with you and write up the story. Ideal chap; did a really nice cover story for us last month on Emmylou Harris.”

“The most beautiful woman in the world,” said Petra.

“God, yes. Most of the survivors from that era, they look a bit, you know, lived-in. And she just seems to have sailed through without a scratch. And the voice with it. Amazing. Anyway, when I said about you, and, and … the David Cassidy thing, Jake jumped at it. Said it was a brilliant idea.”

“So where is he?”

“Well, it was him who pulled out. I mentioned that I was thinking of doing, you know, the deep background piece. An oldie speaks. And he says, go on then, Boss, you do it. Do the whole thing.”

“Do they really call you Boss?”

Bill made a face. He broke a biscuit in two and dunked one half in his tea. Petra was glad her mother wasn’t there to see it.

“ ’Fraid they do, and it always makes me feel like I’m going to be rumbled at any minute. Because I am really the least … bossy boss you can get. I mean, I’m sure I’m a nightmare to work for. But I don’t do shouting or throwing things or threats. I just doodle a lot and change my mind. Although I did staple my thumb to an A4 pad last week.”

“Ouch.”

“Very ouch. And how about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you the bossy type? You don’t look it, but then …”

“Well, I’m organized.”

“Not the same thing. Who do you organize?”

“My daughter,” said Petra. “And me. I mean my days. I used to organize my husband, but then he organized himself into being with someone else.”

“Idiot,” Bill said.

“Who, me?”

“No, him.”

“Not all men are idiots, you know, just because they leave women.” Petra poured herself more coffee.

“Well, I left,” said Bill. “Because I didn’t know what to stay for. Or who, actually.”

“At least you didn’t leave to go and live on a houseboat with someone half your age.”

“God, is that what he did? He really is an idiot.”

“So there was no houseboat with you.”

“No, and no someone else, either. I just went. My dishwasher-stacking skills were becoming the most interesting thing about me. I thought of turning pro.”

“Me too.”

“Dishwasher?”

“No, cello.”

“Oh, cello’s much easier. You don’t need rinse aid.”

Petra smiled. “No, we use rosin instead.” She looked across at Sharon, who was busy slipping a complimentary Kit Kat into her hand luggage.

“Why did you give up?”

“Oh, because of my husband, I suppose.”

“Come on, he didn’t make you? Nobody does that nowadays. It’s not 1913.”

“No, but he’s one, too. A cellist. And he’s better than me.”

Bill sighed. “Modesty gets you nowhere.”

“But it’s true. He’s a star, and I … I mean, he’s like a planet and I’m just a moon, circling round. So I gave it up and went into music therapy, where I still use my, you know, my—”

“Gifts.”

“I was going to say skills. He has a gift, I have skills. Anyway, you can’t have two soloists in one house. People think we played duets all the time, making beautiful music and so on, but it’s not like that at all. I mean it wasn’t. It was more like a … like …” Petra, not wanting to go on, was relieved to find Sharon coming near, hauling her hand luggage. She was waving a leaflet.

“Pet, we can get a massage on the flight. For free.” She sank down into one of the chairs and puffed her cheeks, as if at the end of a long day, not the start. “Can’t decide whether to have the neck rub or the herby facial. Look, says here, ‘cleanses and refreshes with subtle oils of lavender and sage to rejunev, renuj …’ ”

“Rejuvenate?”

“Yeah, brilliant, ‘rejuvenate
and
brighten your looks, enabling you to step off at your destination ready to go and enjoy.’ Well, that’s us, isn’t it? Don’t know about you, but I haven’t had my looks brightened since 1981. Royal wedding. Only I would put a bloody face pack on just to watch TV.” She looked at Petra, then at Bill. “What you two nattering about, then?”

“Music,” said Bill.

“What, David’s music?”

“No, Petra’s. She was saying she doesn’t have a gift.”

“I—” Petra began.

“Oh, you don’t want to listen to her. I mean, you do want to listen, when she’s playing, like, but once she starts going on about how rubbish she is … Haven’t changed, have you, Pet? Never one for blowing her own trumpet. Cello.”

“She’s as good as I think she is, then?”

“Bloody brilliant, Pet is. Better than her bloody husband, I tell you.”

Petra sat through this with the flush gathering on her face. She hated to be talked about, even in praise, and especially when she was sitting right there. Who would like it? Pop stars, maybe, but nobody normal.

Their flight number was announced. Sharon and Petra stood up at once and started to gather their belongings. Bill stayed where he was.

“Give it a few minutes if I were you,” he said. “They’re trying to herd us. Won’t even open the doors for another twenty-five minutes.”

“Don’t want to miss it,” said Sharon, seriously concerned.

“We won’t, I promise. We’re near the front, anyway.”

“There’s posh,” said Sharon, sitting down again.

“All part of the service, ma’am,” said Bill, in a bad American accent. Petra sat down, too, though still uncertain.

“Do this a lot, do you?” said Sharon. If anyone else had asked, Petra thought, there would have been resentment at the edge of the question, like a stain; but Sha had no resentment in her soul. Not now, not twenty-five years ago. She took the world on its own terms, laughed out loud at its stupidities and waited patiently for any joys that might come along. Whenever, at any stage in life, Petra heard the
phrase “counting your blessings,” she always thought of Sharon, aged thirteen, kneeling on the carpet in the Lewises’ lounge, emptying a pack of Spangles onto a copy of
TV Times
and sharing them out: one for you, one for me …

“I do quite a lot of flying, yes, for the job.”

“ ’Spect you get bored, don’t you?”

Petra watched Bill. He smiled at Sharon and said, “You know what? I don’t. Some blokes do, and it’s not that good for you, being cooped up in a tin can, but I’m still enough of a little boy to think that getting into the can at one end and coming out the other end in New York, eight hours later, is a kind of magic trick. And it’s … When you take off, it’s still quite, I don’t know, liberating, leaving all the usual stuff behind. You just know that for the next few hours nobody’s going to knock on your door or ask you about cover design or bollock you for not making a phone call. The only boring thing, I guess, is not getting to share the liberation. Normally it’s just me. One time I had to go to Hong Kong, and I left my book on the Gatwick Express, and ended up running for the plane, and spent fifteen hours reading the in-flight shopping mag. So now I know nothing about Raymond Carver but I know all there is to know about furry padded 747s and what the difference is between Diorissimo and Miss Dior.”

“Go on, what’s the difference, then?”

“Um, one comes in this handy atomizer, for all your fragrance needs on the go …”

Sharon actually barked with laughter. She reached out and took the undunked half of Bill’s biscuit.

“Well, now you’ve got us, haven’t you? So you won’t be bored.”

“Exactly.”

“Bang goes your liberation.”

“Exactly. Thanks a bunch.”

Petra watched the two of them, enjoying themselves. It looked as easy as a game of ping-pong: to and fro, nothing to it, no hard feelings, almost no feelings at all … Why was it always harder for her—cautious, loaded, heavy with spin? Why could she just never play the game? And she had noticed how deftly Bill had ducked the danger. If he had admitted that yes, he was bored by the traveling (and he had to be, like all
businessmen were), it would have undermined the pleasure that Sharon was taking in this day. Not that Sha would have minded, or even noticed much; but to her the trip was something special, a big hilarious one-off. The right thing to do, the good thing, was to respect her feelings and play along. That’s what Bill had done, and, for the second time in as many weeks, Petra found herself thinking: I like him.

“What was the book you left on the train? Carver something,” she said.

“Raymond Carver. Short stories. Just the best. Perfect for leaving on trains.”

“I think I read some, in a collection. I’m so useless, if I really like something, I remember the plot and the characters and these silly details, like the color of someone’s lipstick, but I forget who wrote it.”

“The least important thing. Lipstick matters much more.”

“What was the title? Of your lost book.”

“
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
”

“Oh, I can tell you that,” said Sharon, taking an apple from a bowl on the table and rubbing it on her sleeve. “People in love don’t sit around chatting about it, like ‘Ooh, we’re so in love,’ do they? Waste of time. I knew this boy once, and all we ever talked about was who we’d really hated in school and what the best kind of ice cream was to go with what meal, like if you have roast chicken you have to have rum and raisin, right?”

Bill liked listening to the way her voice swooped up at the end of a sentence: rai-sin.

“And once, we spent a whole afternoon talking about how we’d live in space. And I was asking how you get the needle to stay on the record when there’s no gravity, if you want to have a listen to a song, and he was worried about flushing the toilet, and you know what he means, don’t you? All that pee floating round.” Bill and Petra looked at each other, trying not to laugh. “And so we split up, right, and it wasn’t until after that I was in the post office, and I thought, ooh he was lovely, that Gareth. I think I loved him, and I never said. Never knew. Nor did he, poor bloke. All we did was talk, like. Don’t know what happened to him, mind. Probably peeing in space. Might see him this morning if we look out the window, eh, Pet? Give him a wave.”