The Generation Game (29 page)

‘Skiving,’ he says. ‘Fancy a drink? You look like you could use one.’

I check my watch. Knowing Adrian he means a drink-drink and I’ve just been thinking about going home for that Darjeeling and a handful of crumpets.

‘A bit early isn’t it?’

‘It’s never too early.’

‘Go on, then. A quick one.’

So that’s how we end up in a wine bar in Soho, one of Adrian’s haunts.

‘What are you doing out of Belsize Park?’ I ask him once the small talk is beginning to run out.

‘Having a breather,’ he says. ‘Toni’s doing my head in.’

‘Poor Toni.’

‘Poor Toni? Don’t you mean poor Adrian?’

‘You’re a big boy. You can look after yourself.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ he says, somewhat morosely, swilling his wine round the glass. ‘I need someone to take care of me every once in a while.’

‘Are you saying Toni doesn’t understand you?’

‘I’m saying Toni couldn’t give a monkey’s. There’s only one thing she cares about.’

‘A baby?’

‘You know then?’

And somehow after a significant part of a bottle of Chablis, I tell him about Toni’s proposal in her flat all those years before.

‘That’s why you left?’

‘I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed. Whether she would have persuaded me. Whether it would’ve worked.’

‘She should never have asked that of you. She’s a woman possessed. And you think she was bad then… ’

‘I take it there’s no progress in that department.’

‘Well, I’ve been to the doctor’s.’ He attempts to stab an olive with a cocktail stick but it flies out of the dish and onto the floor. He stares after it, shoulders
slumped. ‘Apparently I’ve got lazy sperm.’

I have to swallow the urge to laugh at the thought of Adrian’s sperm pressing the snooze button – which is slightly funnier than the thought of that turkey baster Toni was
proposing.

‘She wants to go to Romania now. Adopt one of those kids from the orphanages.’

‘Gosh,’ I say, profoundly. ‘That’s a big step.’

He rubs his eyes, which are rimmed with red, the kind of make-up Toni might’ve experimented with on me.

‘And you?’ I ask. ‘Have you got yourself straightened out?’ I take his hanky from my pocket as evidence.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The old snuffy nose.’

‘Ah.’

‘Well?’

‘Yes, I’m sorted.’

‘Sorted?’

‘I mean, I don’t do that anymore. It’s all behind me.’ He waves his hand vaguely. ‘I’m trying to make her happy.’

‘And what about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Are you happy?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m bloody miserable.’

And seeing him sit there like a little boy, biting his nails, I believe I have it in my power to make him happy. I can do something. Maybe four years ago I could’ve helped Toni. But I
wasn’t ready then. Now I want to help Adrian. But in helping Adrian I don’t really think too much about how this will affect Toni. How this will affect my life in every way
possible.

He hails a cab for me later, after we’ve eaten in some Italian place, dark and dingy in a basement but nice enough tortellini. At the last moment he jumps in beside me
and I don’t protest. I think he just wants company. He just wants to kill some time travelling in a cab halfway across London and back before going home to Toni. But when it brakes to a halt
outside the flat, Adrian gets out with me, paying the driver from a wad of notes stuffed in his wallet.

‘How about a nightcap?’

Unfortunately all we have is a bottle of cherry liqueur that Joe’s mum brought back from Switzerland when she went skiing some time ago. Adrian is not put off easily and soon tucks in
after his initial distaste. I stick to a cup of tea. I have a feeling I might need to keep my wits about me which is difficult after all that over-priced wine chased by those (regrettable) flaming
sambucas.

‘Where’s this Joe bloke then?’ asks Adrian, flicking through a copy of the
New Statesman
that he knows can’t possibly belong to me.

‘At a meeting.’

‘With the Trots?’

‘They’re not Trots anymore. Haven’t you heard?’

‘Oh yes, I’ve heard. That’s right. They’ve sold their souls to get into power.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Still not a political animal, Philippa?’ he asks, throwing the magazine down on the coffee table that separates his chair from the sofa that I am hogging to myself.

‘Not really,’ I yawn. ‘I’m more of a fluffy bunny.’

‘Show us your tail.’ He gets up from his chair and moves my outstretched legs out of the way so he can sit down on the sofa next to me. Close to me.

‘Do you mind?’

‘Go on,’ he says. ‘Just one little peek.’

He is edging nearer and nearer to me. And I am not totally against the idea though of course he is married. To Toni. Well, not actually technically married. They’ve never officially tied
the knot. Does that count?

Yes, I think it most probably does, I hear Jiminy Cricket whisper in my ear.

‘I think I’d better call you another cab,’ I say with some degree of firmness.

‘Let me stay here, Philippa. On the sofa,’ he adds. ‘Pleeease.’

He is obviously much firmer than me because I let him. I fetch a spare duvet and pillow and leave a note for Joe in the kitchen, advising him to steer clear of the lounge till morning.

‘Make sure you call Toni,’ I say before I shut the door.

That way I can sleep with a clear conscience knowing I’ve done my best. I’ve tried to get him to do the right thing. But knowing somehow that he probably won’t.

Like Cinders, Joe is normally home before midnight. But, Fate sticks her oar in and entices Joe to spend the night with his almost-girlfriend, a Blair Babe from John Smith House. And as it
happens, my conscience must be a little murky because I can’t get to sleep no matter how hard I try. Maybe it has more to do with the knowledge that Adrian is lying on the sofa on the other
side of the wall, but I do keep wondering what is going through Toni’s mind. Whether she is sick with worry that Adrian hasn’t come home. Or relieved. I make myself think it is the
latter. It’s amazing what you can convince yourself if you set your mind to it. If you are desperate enough. And yes, I am desperate. I must be.

In May, Joe and his comrades (who aren’t really comrades anymore) find themselves on the winning team for once. Tony is Prime Minister and the days of Tory bashing are
done. For now. Even I manage to get my hopes up, my political conscience having finally been pricked – though not my moral one which I am happily ignoring while I carry on seeing Adrian. And
I mean ‘seeing’ in every sense of the word. I am a mistress. The other woman. The phrases
filthy harlot
and
disgusting slut
spring to mind accompanied by the far-off image
of a little Margot Fonteyn galloping down the road after her mother, hair scraped back neatly in a bun. Glass tinkling to the floor. Maybe I am my mother’s daughter after all. She, who
betrayed her friend, Sheila. And me, betraying her daughter. The next generation making a muck-up. But, hey, I think, chin up. As everyone is saying: things can only get better.

And actually they aren’t bad for a while. Adrian makes the treacherous journey south of the river whenever he can, which is surprisingly often. I don’t ask what he
tells Toni about where he is, where he is going. She is absorbed with adoption plans. Adrian says she won’t even register his absence – though I am not sure that is entirely true. But
if he is surplus to requirements, I am only too happy to have what is left over.

Apart from the romance in my life, things carry on as before. I still have my job and I still have Evelyn and Judith’s allotment offerings. And I still have Joe.

‘Isn’t it time you got a place of your own?’ Adrian asks after one evening when we’ve had to share a living room with three local councillors and an MP’s researcher
before discreetly withdrawing to my room to get down to basics.

‘I can’t leave Joe,’ I say. ‘He’d be lost without me.’

‘You?’ he says, kissing my shoulder that he’s just uncovered. ‘You’re a pig. I thought I was messy but you’re something else.’

‘We can’t all afford cleaners,’ I say, a cheap dig at Toni.

He stops kissing me, turns away. ‘I didn’t fall in love with Toni for her cleaning.’

‘I don’t want to know why you fell in love with Toni, thank you very much.’ My voice sounds hauntingly like Helena’s, hoity and proud. Adrian turns back to me.

‘But I’m not in love with her anymore.’

‘Are you in love with me?’

‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Are you in love with me?’

‘Maybe.’

Oh dear. I have a piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe. One that I know is there but however much I wave my foot about, it just won’t go. (And my metaphors have really taken a turn for
the worse.)

Maybe we are in love, it is hard to say. I know I like being with him. I know he is annoying and arrogant and facetious and a poser and an ex-druggie and an adulterer and a
golfer and that he makes me laugh. He makes me feel I am living a life, my own life – not one I’ve borrowed from a library or read about in the bookshop.

But. There is always that niggle. A niggle that has nothing to do with Jiminy Cricket but that has everything to do with that old fear, the one that has been handed down to me from Helena. The
feeling this will all end in tears. That those tears are waiting just round the corner.

By the end of August when Evelyn and Judith are up to their ears in courgettes and spinach and runner beans, this niggle proves to be right. I am in another place
metaphorically speaking to where I was at the start of the summer. Adrian would like to get me physically to another place. He’s even suggested helping me out with a deposit for a flat.

‘East Dulwich is a good area,’he says, ‘for south east London. You should try there. It’s up and coming. Prices are going to rocket’ (etc, etc, estate agent
blarney).

But now Adrian is in a different place; he’s gone away for the weekend with Toni, to Torquay of all places, staying with Sheila and Bernie and Coco the dog. Even Justin will be putting in
an appearance there apparently – if he still calls himself Justin. It could be Beowulf for all I know, it has been that long since I’ve had news of him.

Joe and I are staying in London with the tourists (not that there are too many in our neck of the woods). We decide to have a lazy boozy Saturday together. We drink beer in the park (the other
end from the winos and from little bottles, not cans), sitting on a rug, watching young lads play football and children on the swings. We take a boat trip on the Thames, the only breezy place in
the city, and I think of Mr Raby eating his tea at three in the afternoon. We enjoy a long balmy evening in the pub garden, drinking more bottled beer and fighting off the midges. No Adrian, no
Blair Babe. Just two best friends.

I am woken very early the following morning by Joe. He is standing next to my bed in his boxers and I wonder if he is sleep-walking. I have time to notice he has the legs of a
rugby player though he wouldn’t know what to do with a rugby ball any more than Evelyn would. (She thinks PE should be replaced in the National Curriculum by gardening. ‘When have you
ever seen an allotment invasion?’) Then, I realise he is speaking to me.

‘It’s the phone,’ he says. ‘Bob.’

My heart flutters. Why is Bob phoning at this time of day? Something must have happened. Maybe it is Helena. Maybe she is dead. She is dead and I will never see her again. Never get the chance
to have a mother.

All these thoughts pass through my brain on the short journey to the phone in the living room next door.

‘Bob?’

‘Philippa,’ he coughs. ‘Have you heard? Switch on the radio. The television.’

It can’t be Helena. She wouldn’t make it to the news. And then I see what has happened. At least I think I can see but it doesn’t quite make sense. I must be mistaken.

‘Joe! Come here!’ I call out. He thuds back in the room trying not to spill two mugs of tea (oh-why-don’t-I-love-him-like-a-boyfriend?), a worried look in his eye. I point at
the television where we see news footage of a car wreck. In an underpass in Paris. I can hear Bob in tears down the end of the line. The rattle of pills. And I remember how we saw her on that hot
day in July. Cheryl with a tea towel wrapped round her head. A newly-wed Princess gliding down the Mall, a halo of sunlight wrapped around hers. And now she is dead. Even Joe, a staunch Republican
to the end, is quiet. There is nothing to say. Not yet.

‘I’ll phone you later, Bob. Take it easy,’ is all the words I can put together. Of course I am relieved my mother was not in that car, but I feel strangely moved by what
I’ve seen. And can never guess at what will follow.

‘I’m going to phone Sheila,’ Bob says before putting the phone down. And my heart drops still further.

I stay indoors all that day, in my pyjamas, watching the news updates along with much of the nation, aware that something extraordinary has happened. And nothing can be done to
change it. When I watch the CCTV footage of Diana and Dodi leaving the Ritz, I want to tell her to turn back, to spend the night in the hotel, to leave in the morning and to live a long life. But
– like poor Lady Jane Grey – it is too late. The clock keeps ticking. The heart of the princess has stopped beating. She’s been used by those around her. It was always going to
end in tears.

At work the next day, Evelyn is not herself. She keeps sighing and blowing her nose and saying ‘
I can’t believe it
.’ This is what many people are
saying, lining up at the cash point, in the bakery, on the streets, in the shop: I can’t believe it.

Later in the week, Joe is at the stage where he believes the nation to be in the grips of mass hysteria, though he has time to be annoyed with the Queen and proud of his Prime Minister, whose
honeymoon period is suddenly over. If it is a wave of mass hysteria, Evelyn and Judith are bowled along in it, tugging me with them. Evelyn says she and Judith are going up to Kensington Palace to
pay tribute.

‘Would you like to come with us? We’re going as soon as I’ve shut up shop. On the bus.’