Authors: Sarah Bilston
“Public school!”
“—and, most appealing of all,” Tom continued remorselessly, “Q and I could arrange our working life around each other. We could develop a more—a more
organic
professional life, instead of the old grind of nine-to-five—or, more realistically, seven-to-one-the-next-morning.”
“In other words, you’re going to ruin yourself.”
Tom laughed; Samuel, hearing him, turned his head curiously toward the sound of his voice. “Well, if I am, you’ll have to go ahead and let me do it, Dad,” Tom said simply, and suddenly the door opened, and my husband ushered me inside. “Don’t wait out there any longer, Q,” he said, grinning, taking Samuel tenderly from my arms. “No need for you to lurk in the dark.”
I walked cautiously back in to see Peter and Lucille grabbing jackets—or, rather, Lucille nervously grabbing the jackets while Peter stood, cold and furious, in the middle of the room. “We are leaving,” he announced.
Tom nodded cheerfully. “Won’t stay for lunch, then? Oh dear.”
Peter walked past without even glancing at me or at Samuel. “Call me when you have come to your senses,” he intoned as he swept from the room.
Jeanie
I
took the subway down to 42nd Street while Q, Tom, and Samuel entertained the in-laws then went to visit their baby-specialist person (“Will you be all right by yourself? Will you find something to do all that time?” “Oh, I think I can manage.”).
Once I got out of the station, I walked, feeling the sun on my face and a deep happiness inside. This is me, Jeanie Boothroyd, in New York; this is me, Jeanie Boothroyd, about to be wined and dined by a ridiculously eligible American who for some reason is obsessed with me. This is me, Jeanie Boothroyd, in a rather nice pair of shoes, with a brand-new bag from a shop on Fifth Avenue. This is me, Jeanie Boothroyd, living a dream. I smiled as I walked, and swung my arms, and felt the breeze lifting my hair. I wondered what Una would think of me now. How could I ever have lived with her?
Crowds of people swirled around me. Ragged, tired-looking homeless people loped side by side with uptight businessmen in linen suits. Women in tailored jackets and pencil skirts darted in and out of the throng in sensible trainers. Ladies with tiny shaved dogs inched along in heels, tourists struggled with subway maps and hot pretzels. This is New York; I’m a part of this, I thought proudly. I’m so glad I came.
So many appealing-looking restaurants, so many interesting boutiques; I stared in fascination at the sheer, extraordinary variety
of New York. I passed flower shops, paper shops, pipe shops, shoe shops, wine shops, electronics shops, and toy shops; shops selling postcards, shops selling suitcases, shops selling organic coffee in hundreds of tight gold packets lined up against the wall. Choco-latiers nestled beside corner shops, artisanal bakers beside doughnut vendors. I love this, I love this, I love this, I whispered to myself, feeling the blood sort of
zing
in my veins.
I must (I thought to myself suddenly, with a start of contrition) pick up something nice for Q, a treat of some sort, she’s been so weary of late. So I stopped off at a little hushed patisserie and bought three cakes, one lime, one lemon, one with milk chocolate layers. They cost a shocking amount, but as the woman wrapped them up in a gold box, topped with stiff ribbon, I felt pleased at the thought of Q’s face. She loved sweet things. I pushed the door open and maneuvered myself back into the street, armed with my elegant box of bullion.
Only then, suddenly, I stopped. On the other side of the road, ahead, just visible through the press of people walking toward me, was Paul. I blinked, half-convinced for a second I must be hallucinating; perhaps I was thinking so intensely of his face I’d conjured it up in midair…But no; it was him. And with him was Lily.
Lily of the gold eyes—I thought, for a second, I could actually see the light reflecting off their extraordinary depths—but I can’t have done, because she was looking up at him; looking in his face with an expression of passionate love. She was smiling, touching his face so tenderly that I caught my breath; he was smiling down at her too, as if she was all the world to him, and even through the noise of the traffic, the footsteps of a thousand people, I heard him laugh at something she said. I ducked into the entryway of a pharmacy, feeling suddenly sick, headachy in the bright white light of the sunshine, and watched. It
couldn’t
be…
As they drew level with me, on the other side of the road, I saw Paul reach out his hand, and snake it around her waist, then gen
tly—oh so gently—it slid down, down, until it was cupped firmly around her bottom. He tugged her toward him. For a second, they both stopped, still against the stream of people, suspended, body touching body. The traffic screeched to a halt for a red light; I could see the two of them quite clearly in the space between a bus and a car. Lily drew playfully away from his grasp and then (I saw it all) came back toward him, and leaned into his chest; she slipped her hand inside his jacket, and pulled him into her body. He didn’t resist; instead he leaned down and said something to her, serious for a second, and she nodded.
After what seemed like an eternity, she removed her hand from inside his jacket—in spite of myself, I could imagine her fingers, hot on his skin—and they moved on, still intimately close. At that moment the light must have turned, because the traffic started up again. Seconds later, they were lost to my sight.
I stayed still for about five minutes in the pharmacy entryway, my hand pressed to my throat, barely able to see through the sunshine that seemed suddenly oppressive. I literally thought I was going to be sick, and it was only when a disapproving-looking security guard came toward me that I fled, stumbling and knocking over a basket of beach balls. Fraught, I stared down at the green and pink and orange balls rolling in every direction, tumbling toward startled pedestrians, even rolling out into the street—cars honked, there were shouts of anger—and I ran off, in the opposite direction from Paul and Lily, away from the pharmacy, away from the guard, feeling the tears on my cheeks.
Paul and Lily, Paul and Lily. But she was married to
Adjile,
to kindly Adjile, and Paul was planning to meet me that evening—we were seeing each other now, how could he? How
could
he?
Suddenly, I felt like the stupidest person alive. I’d been so proud of myself all that time: I’d imagined I was in a relationship with Paul Dupont. Paul Dupont! How idiotic: we’d shared a few kisses, no more. He knew I was in the city for just another day, then a month
or two more in the States, and after that I’d be gone. Of course, I was just a bit of fun for him. What was I thinking?
I cast my mind back to all those things he’d said—about how I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, about how he couldn’t think of anyone else—and I realized (reality came sharply into focus) that I’d made one of the oldest mistakes: I’d thought my holiday romance was
real.
I was no better than some middle-aged woman kicking her heels up in Spain, a backpacked teenager falling in love with a long-haired stranger in Budapest, I realized disgustedly. What was I thinking?
Lily
was his lover—it was suddenly startlingly clear. Had he been with her all along? I felt dazed. Perhaps the time we saw each other in Connecticut—I rifled feverishly through my memory, trying to recall a moment of particular intimacy—they’d begun an affair. Perhaps
she
was the real reason he split up with Tina. Or perhaps Tina was only ever a cover for his feelings for Lily; perhaps they’d been together for years. Perhaps he had flirtations on the side—perhaps they were all just a cover! I wondered numbly if he told Lily about them, his dates and dinners and kisses with women like me?
In fact, maybe
that
was what he and Lily were talking about just now, I thought suddenly, starting to walk again, and it was as if the volume had been switched on in the little tableau I’d just watched. “I’m having dinner with Jeanie tonight,” Paul said to Lily, putting his arm around her; and she pulled away from him, briefly upset. “With Jeanie? Q’s sister? What, are you
serious?”
And then she thought for a moment, and came back toward him. “I don’t mind you having dinner with her, but you won’t take it any further, will you?” she asked. “Of course not. It’s all about us, Lily,” Paul replied. It seemed terribly plausible.
I’d been walking for half an hour at least when I looked up and realized I was utterly lost; I’d been stumbling and crying without paying the slightest attention to where I was going. The nearest sign said “27th Street.” There was a coffee shop on the other side of the
street, so after a moment’s hesitation I crossed over, and ordered myself a bucket of latte.
It was only as I got up to leave that I remembered the patisserie box, dropped and lost somewhere in the hot busy streets of New York.
Q
Sussex, Connecticut
Such joy to be in Paul’s lovely house again, Tom, Jeanie, Samuel, and I. We spent our first few days back on the beach, the evenings on the deck, enjoying the view of the sun fading into pastels over the tops of the trees with freshly caught fish for dinner, accompanied by fiery wild arugula from the garden and glasses of chilled white wine.
Only Jeanie seemed sad and low, even though I told her she was forgiven for talking to Alison. “I know,” she replied gruffly. “I mean, it’s not that I—well, all right.” I watched her carelessly splash out another large glass of wine.
Dr. Ezekial Sykes’s assessment of Samuel, the day before we left New York, was unenlightening. “Not an obvious case of reflux,” he remarked thoughtfully, “it doesn’t sound as if his crying is linked
closely to feeds.” He then went through a long checklist of possible gastrointestinal causes of severe infant crying, none of which, he remarked judiciously, appeared to apply to Samuel. In the end, he simply lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know why he is crying so hard. I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s serious. I’m sure he will grow out of it.” The door closed softly behind him.
I called Alison as soon as we got home to tell her all about it; she was sympathetic and unsurprised. “Of course there was nothing, and of course he’ll grow out of it,” she said stoutly. “I’m glad you’ve had him properly checked out, but I think you’ll just have to wait. And learn that you can be a good mother and still leave him sometimes, darling, so you can get rest and a change of scenery. The mistake
I
made was to think no one else could look after my baby.
“Is Jeanie being helpful?” she went on, and I explained that she seemed strangely low-spirited. “Do you think it’s about Dave?” she inquired, and I gasped, because I hadn’t even thought of this.
“You don’t think she’s regretting breaking up with him, do you?” I asked, and she clicked her tongue.
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but this is Jeanie we’re talking about. She’s always had a penchant for—” she stopped herself awkwardly—“losers,” I finished ruefully.
The first morning after our arrival in Connecticut, we called Kent. “If you’ll take me on as an associate—on a temporary basis—I’m in,” Tom explained. “Q’s still technically a Schuster employee, so she’ll have to be involved on an informal basis. And I’m not committing long-term yet, okay? This is just a tryout, so to speak, for us and for you.”
If we were expecting a joyous response, we were to be disappointed. There was a brief silence. Then: “Come to court with me tomorrow,” Kent growled. “I’ll introduce you to Judge Ackerman and the other lawyers. You’ve got to get it over some time,” he added gloomily, with the air of one guiding a couple of sheep through a huge ravine. “Might as well be now.”
And so, on Friday morning, I left Samuel with Jeanie after
breakfast, then Tom and I set off for Middleford, a town a little over fifteen miles north of Sussex, on the banks of the Connecticut River. It had the faintly seedy air characteristic of all half-abandoned New England ports. A large highway separated the downtown area from the river, and only a few businesses fronted directly onto the broad water, which therefore seemed strangely incidental to the business of the place. There was one small park with a few wooden benches tucked around a bridge, but it was partly flooded and liberally strewn with trash, occupied only by occasional flurries of muddy pigeons. The main street cut a long, wide swath through undistinguished Victorian buildings, which were now occupied by a motley collection of cheap restaurants and regional clothing stores. Pansies burned paper-thin by the summer sun fluttered along the sidewalk in cracked stone urns.
The court building, which sat on a quiet side street, was redbrick, with six white Doric columns and a grandly sweeping staircase leading out of the spacious round front hall. We met Kent on the other side of security at a few minutes before nine o’clock. Pausing to whisper something to Brenda, one of the security guards, that brought a blush to her cheeks, he led us to the elevator and into the third-floor courtroom.
There was a cheery hum of conversation in the paneled room when we entered, a hum that was perceptibly checked by our entrance. Four lawyers, clustered together in the central aisle, looked over at us and frankly stared.
Kent raised his hand in mock salute. “Mick—Sue—Freda—oh, and Charlie, didn’t see you hiding there—how’re y’all doing?”
“Morning, Kent,” said one of the women, her eyes keen and appraising. She looked about forty-five, and her expression was redoubtable, Margaret-Thatcher-like in its formal intensity. Her blond hair was short and curled close to her head; her suit was a serviceable navy, without much style to it. She wore a simple gold necklace and tired-looking, low-heeled shoes over ugly brown pantyhose.
“Heard you’re trying out a couple of city lawyers for your practice, is that these two over here?” She looked us over, her right eyebrow twitching upward.
Kent grinned back at her, and shooed us toward the front of the court. “Sure are, Sue,” he said, with a chuckle. “Fancy Wall Street lawyers, no less. Want to try out life in the backwoods, I guess. Mick, heard your son made the honor roll at school the other month, he’s a kid to be proud of, eh? Mick’s kid is a smart one, you ought to meet him,” he explained. I had the bright idea of asking which college Mick’s son was hoping to attend.