Marian Keyes - Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married (31 page)

me to buckle at the knees. "But can I do it in the morning?"

"Gus, do you solemnly promise that you have a good excuse and that you'll tell it to me in the morning?"

"I do," he said, staring sincerely into my eyes and at the same time tug- ging hard, trying to get my pajama bottoms down.

"And you can give me hell. You can even make me cry," he promised.

So we went to bed.

I remembered what Karen had said, but I disagreed with her--I didn't feel used. I wanted Gus to want to have sex with me. That would prove that he still liked me. But I had forgotten that Gus was a bit of a wham, bam, thank you ma'am kind of guy--the sex was over almost as soon as it started. As in the past, Gus came in a matter of minutes. Which left plenty of time to hear his excuses. But he fell sound asleep immediately afterward.

And eventually I fell asleep too.

48 The following morning Gus wasn't any easier to pin down for his lecture.

Considering how drunk he had been the previous night, he was surpris- ingly full of energy. By rights he should have been flat on his back, begging for a bucket and swearing never to drink again, like any normal person. Instead he was awake at the crack of dawn, eating cookies. 374 / marian keyes

And when the mail arrived, he bounced out to the hall to get it, and then, with much rustling of paper and ripping of envelopes, opened mine and told me what was in it.

"Oh, good girl, Lucy." He sounded proud. "I'm glad to see that you owe those Visa lads lots more money. Now all you have to do is move and not tell them."

I lay in bed and wished bleakly that he would calm down. Or at least stop reminding me how much money I owed.

"What's going on at Russell and Bromley?" he asked. "Is it your old trouble again?"

"Yes." A pair of black suede knee boots and a pair of sexy, snakeskin sandals, to be precise. "Now, Gus!" I tried to be firm and get his attention. "We really must--"

"What about this one, Lucy?" He waved an envelope at me. "It looks like Karen's bank statement. Should we...?"

God, it was tempting. Charlotte and I suspected that Karen had thousands salted away and I would have loved to know.

But I had work to do.

"Never mind Karen's bank statement, Gus." I tried again. "You said last night that you had an excuse and that..."

"Can I have a shower, Lucy?" He interrupted. "I think I smell a bit."

He lifted up his arm and put his nose to his armpit.

"Pooh," he said, making a disgusted face. "I stink, therefore I am."

He smelled fine to me.

"You can have a shower in a little while. Give me that envelope."

"But we could steam it and she'd never know..."

It was obvious that, despite his passionate promises the lucy sullivan is getting married / 375

previous night, he had no intention of explaining anything to me.

And I was so delighted he was back that I didn't want to scare him away by pushing for explanations and apologies.

But, at the same time, he had to realize that he couldn't get away with treating me badly.

Of course, he could get away with treating me badly, in fact, he just had. But I had to, at least, lodge my protest, go through the motions of acting as if I had self-respect. In the hope that, even though I couldn't fool myself, perhaps I could fool him.

I would have to trick him into having the Serious Talk. It would have to be coaxed out of him, wheedled out of him, so that he wasn't even aware that he was doing it. He wouldn't cooperate if he was approached full- frontal, as it were. I would have to be very, very pleasant, but with an un- dercurrent of firmness. I turned to Gus who was stretched out on the bed, reading a pension offer thing from my bank.

"Gus, I'd like to talk to you," I said, striving to sound pleasantly firm, or failing that, firmly pleasant.

I must have overdone the firmness because he said, "Oh-oh," and made an "Oh-oh" face. And he jumped off the bed and huddled, cringing, in the space between the dresser and the wall. "I'm scared."

"Come on now, Gus, there's no need to be afraid."

But he wasn't taking it seriously at all. He kept poking his head of black curls out and I'd catch a glimpse of his bright eyes, before he'd whisk his head back in and I would hear him muttering, "Oh, no, I'm done for, she's going to make mincemeat of me."

"Gus, come out, please, there isn't anything to be afraid of."

I tried to laugh to show how good-humored I was, but 376 / marian keyes

it was hard work being patient. It would have been great to shout at him.

"Come on, Gus, I'm not scary, you know that."

"The only thing I have to fear, is fear itself, is that it?" asked his disem- bodied voice.

"Exactly." I nodded to the wardrobe.

"But, the thing is, Lucy," it continued, "I actually fear fear an awful lot."

"Well, you must stop. There's nothing to be afraid of with me."

He slunk out, looking cute. "You won't shout at me?"

"No." I was forced to agree with him. "I won't shout at you. But I do want to know where you've been for the last three weeks."

"Has it been that long?" he asked innocently.

"Come on now, Gus. The last time I heard from you was the Tuesday night before Karen's party. What have you been up to?"

"This and that." He was vague.

"You can't just disappear for three weeks, you know?" But I said it very gently so that he wouldn't get annoyed and tell me to get lost and that he could disappear for as long as he liked and there wasn't anything I could do about it.

"All right then," he said. I leaned toward him eagerly, hoping to hear stories of natural disasters and acts of God. That neither I nor Gus were responsible for the three-week severance.

"The brother came over from th'Emerald Isle and we had a bit of a drinking spree."

"A spree that lasted three weeks?" I asked disbelievingly. I didn't like the fact that I kept calling it three weeks, I should have been vaguer about it. I didn't want lucy sullivan is getting married / 377

him to think that I'd counted the days since he'd been gone, which is of course, exactly what I had done.

"Yes, a session that lasted three weeks," he said sounding surprised. "What's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with that?" I echoed mockingly.

"I've often been missing in action for lots longer than three weeks," he said, sounding confused.

"You're trying to tell me that you've been out drinking for three weeks?"

And suddenly I was appalled at myself. I sounded just like my mother, the tone of voice, the accusation, even the words.

"Och, I'm sorry, Lucy," said Gus. "It's not as bad as it sounds. I forgot about Karen's party and by the time I remembered I was too afraid to call you, because I knew you'd be furious."

"But why didn't you call the next day?" I asked, cringing with pain as I remembered the agony of waiting that I had endured.

"Because I was in a state about missing the party and annoying you, so Stevie said to me, `There's only one thing that'll straighten you out, and that's..."

"...Another drink, I'm sure," I finished for him.

"Exactly! And the next day..."

"...You felt so bad about not ringing me the previous day that you had to go and get drunk to feel all right about it..."

"No," he said, sounding surprised. "The next day there was a big party in Kentish Town that started at eleven in the morning and we went along to that and got good and hammered, Lucy. Hammered! You never saw anyone so drunk, I hardly knew my own name."

"That's no excuse!" I exclaimed, and then shut up abruptly as, once again, I heard my mother. "You know 378 / marian keyes

I don't mind you getting drunk." I tried to sound calm. "But it's not okay to simply disappear and then come back and act like nothing is wrong."

"Sorry," he exclaimed. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

Then I braced myself for the hardest question of all.

"Gus, who's Mandy?" I stared hard into his face so that I could draw conclusions from his reaction.

Was it my imagination or did he look alarmed? It could just have been my imagination. After all, his jaw didn't drop open and he didn't bury his face in his hands and sob, "I knew this day would come."

In fact all he did was look sulky and say "No one."

"She can't be no one. She's someone." I smiled tightly to convey that I wasn't accusing him of anything, that my fire was strictly friendly.

"She's no one special. She's just a friend."

"Gus," I said, my heart beating fast. "There's no need to lie to me."

"I'm not." Aggrieved, pained.

"I'm not saying you are. But if you're seeing someone else, I'd rather know."

I didn't say, if you're seeing someone else you can go and fuck yourself, which is what I should have said. But I didn't want to commit the cardinal sin of seeming to care. Popular myth has it that women are desperate to trap men, that men are afraid of being trapped, so the best way to trap them is to pretend that you don't want to trap them. However, that had backfired more times than I'd care to mention, with me saying, "I don't own you. But if you are seeing someone else, I'd like to know." And then meeting my so-called boyfriend at a party wrapped around another woman and wanting to throw a drink at the two of them. And then being told, "But you said you didn't mind.

"Lucy, I'm not seeing any other girls," said Gus. He lucy sullivan is getting married / 379

had lost the defensive look and there was the light of sincerity in his green eyes.

He looked as if he cared about me. And although I was afraid of seeming ungrateful, I pushed ahead.

"Gus, were you seeing someone else, you know, before, when we were, er, you know, seeing each other?"

He looked puzzled for a moment while he translated my question into his vernacular. Then he got it.

"Was I two-timing you?" He sounded horrified. "I was NOT."

There was always the chance that he was telling the truth. In fact he probably was because he didn't have the organizational skills to live a double life. As it was, it was a triumph that he remembered to keep breathing when he woke up every morning.

"How dare you?" he demanded. "What kind of person do you think I am?"

The combination of his passionate denials and my desperate desire to believe him, meant that I did. Relief made me joyous and slightly light- headed.

Then he kissed me and I felt even more light-headed.

"Lucy," he said. "I would never do anything to hurt you."

I believed him. It would have been churlish to bring up the fact that he had hurt me. The important thing was that he hadn't meant to.

"Now can I hose myself down?" He asked meekly.

He went and had his shower and I thought about my mother. It had scared me a lot to hear me sounding like her. I would try even harder to be more and more liberal, I promised myself.

I heard Daniel and Karen greet Gus, as Gus came out of the bathroom.

"Morning, Gus," said Daniel. Was there something amused in his tone, I wondered defensively.

"Morning, Danny Boy," said Gus jovially, as if he'd never been away.

"Morning, Paddy O'Paddy," said Karen to Gus.

"Morning, Heather McShortbread," said Gus to Karen.

"Morning, Pisshead O'Bricklayer," said Karen to Gus.

"Morning, Skinflint McSeanConnery," said Gus to Karen.

I heard roars of laughter. Outside the bathroom door was obviously the place to be.

Roommates and boyfriend had successfully rebonded, and no one seemed embarrassed except me.

49 So Gus and I became an item again. And I tried to relax and give him a longer leash. Gus was a free spirit, I constantly reminded myself. Normal rules didn't apply to him. Just because he was late, or talked for hours to someone else at a party where I knew no one, didn't mean that he didn't care about me. I wasn't lowering my expectations, I decided. I was simply changing my perspective.

I knew he cared about me because he had come back, after the three- week hiatus. He hadn't had to do that, no one forced him. And with my new attitude Gus and I got on beautifully. He behaved impeccably. Well, as impeccably as he could without ceasing to be Gus.

It was summer and for once it acted like it.

The weather in London was so unusually warm and lucy sullivan is getting married / 381

sunny that many people took it as a sign that the world was about to end.

Day followed day of golden, blue-skied heat, but the population of London had been betrayed by the weather so many times that they expected the heat wave to disappear at any moment.

Everyone shook their heads and said gloomily, "It won't last, you know." But it did last and it seemed that the sun would shine forever.

I remember the time as idyllic.

Weeks and weeks where life seemed heavenly, where I felt as if I were living in a little golden cocoon. My bedroom was flooded with yellow light every morning, so that it was nearly a pleasure to get up and live my life.

My depression always abated in the summer, and even work didn't seem so grueling. Especially after we had the minimutiny and the maintenance department had to buy us a fan.

Most lunchtimes, Jed and I went to Soho Square where we scrambled with several thousand other office workers for a square inch of grass on which to lounge and read our books.

Jed was the best person to do that with because if he tried to talk to me, I could just tell him to shut up and he would. We could lie there in compan- ionable silence.

At least, I found it companionable.

Meredia wouldn't come with us because she hated the sun. She spent her lunchtimes hidden in the office, with the blinds down, trying to cast a spell on the weather, so that it would rain. Every day, she anxiously read the forecast, hoping for news of a drop in the temperature, raging as big black clouds that were coming from Ireland bypassed the UK and made straight for France.

Throughout the day, she treated us to the sight of her 382 / marian keyes

hiking up her skirt to shake containers of talcum powder between her gargantuan thighs. "Warm weather isn't kind to the larger woman," she would say bitterly, and then ask if we wanted to see her red chafe marks.

The only thing that cheered her up was reading the temperatures of places in the world that were hotter than London. "At least I'm not in Mecca," she often sighed. And, "Think of what it must be like in Cairo," was another.

Megan wouldn't come to the park either.

Like a true Australian, she reveled in the warm weather, and took her sunbathing seriously. Far more seriously than Jed and I did.

She laughed at me and all the other girls who sat on the grass and pulled our skirts up above our knees and thought that we were daring and un- fettered. She was in a different league--she went to the open-air pool and sunbathed topless.

Her contempt for Meredia was even more energetic than usual. "Listen, Pauline," she hissed. "If you don't stop whining about your thighs, I'm going to show you my tanned nipples."

"Keep talking, keep talking," said Jed eagerly to Meredia. She bestowed a sour look upon him and muttered, "My name is Meredia."

Megan blossomed in the heat. She was totally at home with it. She wore cut-off jeans to work--it wasn't her fault she looked like something out of Baywatch. She didn't mean to be provocative, she couldn't help being beautiful.

But I was very glad I wasn't Australian. I would have been far too self- conscious to walk around half-naked. I thanked God that I had been born in a cold country.

Most afternoons we had an ice cream run and even Ivor joined us. Like the soldiers that played football in no-man's-land at Christmas, the unusual weather made us lucy sullivan is getting married / 383

suspend our usual hostilities. Although it was far from pleasant to watch Ivor nibbling all the chocolate off his Dove Bar and then seeing his fat red tongue swirling around the ice cream bit.

Megan was eventually dragged up to Personnel because there had been complaints about her shorts. The complaints must have been lodged by some of our female employees, because they certainly weren't made by the hordes of men who came to our office on the flimsiest of pretexts, to inspect her long, golden thighs.

Meredia was thrilled. She hoped that Megan would be fired. But Megan came back with a mysterious, yet satisfied smile.

"Should we help you clear out your desk?" asked Meredia hopefully.

"Maybe, Rosemary, maybe," smirked Megan.

"What are you looking so pleased about?" Meredia was confused and suspicious. "And it's Meredia," she added vaguely.

"I may be moving up." Megan punctuated this with a point of her finger toward the ceiling. "Up, in the world."

Meredia looked stricken. "What do you mean?" she gasped. Then she rallied. "Up to the welfare line?"

"Oh no," said Megan. That mysterious, satisfied, sphinxlike smile again. "Just up a few floors."

Meredia looked as if she was going to pass away.

"How many?" she managed to ask hoarsely. "One?"

Megan smiled and shook her head.

"Two?"

Another smile and another shake of the head.

Meredia barely managed to squeak "Three?"

And Megan, cruel, cruel Megan, waited a few, breathless, unbearable seconds before once again shaking her head. 384 / marian keyes

"Not...not the fourth floor?" whispered poor Meredia.

"Yes, the fourth floor."

It appeared that Megan in her shorts had appealed to Frank Erskine, one of the flabby, bald, soft old men in Management. And in the godlike way that these men seemed to have, Frank had promised to create a position for her.

"What position might that be?" asked Meredia, with bitter innuendo. "The flat-on-your-back position?"

The news spread like headlice in an elementary school because Megan's shorts-to-riches story captured the imagination of the entire staff. It was everyone's fantasy to be plucked from the ignominy of Credit Control on the ground floor and suddenly elevated to the heights of the fourth floor. With the commensurate elevation of pay, of course.

People sighed and said, "And to think I didn't believe in fairy tales."

Meredia took it bad, she was a broken woman. Eight years she'd been there, she moaned, eight years. And that Australian slut was barely off the plane. And she was probably the direct descendant of a sheep thief.

Whenever anyone said to Meredia, "I hear Megan's going up in the world," she said, "She's going up because she goes down, if you follow me." Then she would purse her lips and nod her head self-righteously.

It wasn't long before word of Meredia's scurrilous allegations made its way back to Megan.

Megan, flint-eyed with rage, took Meredia aside. I'm not sure what she said to her, but it was enough to ensure that Meredia looked pale and ter- rified for a couple of days. And, thereafter, she energetically stressed that Megan had got the promotion entirely on her professional merits.

At least that's what she said in public.