The Reunion (12 page)

Rachel was still smiling. “Good for you, dad. This calls
for a song. What shall we do, Queen or Fiddler?”

“I think I’ll go for Queen please, Rachel.”

Sam had avoided the conflict, but now downstairs he
watched in wonder as the unlikely duet commenced.

~

That evening there was a knock on the front door soon
after David had settled down with a novel and a mug of instant coffee.

“David, we need to speak.” It was Jim and David
contemplated slamming the door in his face. “May I come in please, just for a
short while?”

Jim strode in before David had a chance to reply. He held
up a bottle of red wine. “It’s a Prince de Courthezon 2007, rather special.” He
made his way into the kitchen, took out two large glasses from the unit to the
right of the hob, then opened the cutlery drawer to extract the bottle opener. He
knows where things are, David realised. He’s done this before with Jane.

David shuddered as he thought about their opportunities,
perhaps the weekend last Easter when he and the children went up to Birmingham
to stay with his mother. Jim invited him to sit down as if he was the host.

Jim. Such a good friend, always concerned about others,
ever willing to offer advice or to help in a crisis. David had respected his
serenity and wisdom. The devious bastard. Until now he’d never focused on Jim’s
looks, but as he watched him pour the wine he acknowledged the man had fine
facial features suggesting intelligence. The most notable quality was his soft
blue penetrating eyes. David felt inferior to this tall man looking down at
him. He could appreciate Jane’s choice.

“I always think a glass of wine helps break the ice at
times like this,” Jim said as he lifted his and clinked it against David’s
glass which still rested on the table.

“Done this before have you?”

“What do you mean, David?”

“You said ‘always’ and ‘at times like this’. I was
wondering whether you’ve made a habit of stealing other men’s wives.”

“Don’t be silly, Jane is very special. Unique. But never
mind me. I want to find out how you’re feeling. I’d like to think I can help in
some way.”

“I can move on without your help.”

“Clearly not if it involves activities like burning
Jane’s clothes.”

“That was an accident.”

“I’m sure you’re right, David.”

Jim was an expert at fostering conversation and was able
to draw out an account of the fire. David made a point of informing Jim that
the incident took place during a visit by his new friend Bridget and her children,
but it came across as a feeble attempt to demonstrate he was coping. When asked
to explain the smashed cups and saucers, he described the incident as a light-hearted
jest.

“I don’t see it as funny. In retrospect, do you, David?”

“I’ve said all I want to say, Jim. I think you should go.”
He lifted up the bottle. “You can take the rest of the wine with you.”

“I must warn you, David. The way you’re behaving is going
to make things a lot easier for Jane’s solicitor.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it, David.”

This was the final straw. David stood. “Time to go, Jim. Maybe
I’ll keep the wine after all.” He put the bottle out of Jim’s reach on the
furthest worktop from the table. For the second time that day he resolved to
rearrange where things were kept in the kitchen.

Jim stood. “Have you understood my message, David?”

“Absolutely. I won’t set fire to any more of Jane’s
clothes and I won’t smash anything she thinks she can take without asking.” He
looked him in the eye. “You know where the front door is. If you don’t mind you
can show yourself out.”

“Very well.” Jim turned and left the kitchen. Seconds
later the front door shut with a little more force than was needed.

David considered this meeting with Jim a milestone. At
last he was released from something. Perhaps released from Jane.

“I suppose I was worried you’d think I was a complete and
utter idiot.”

“No, I don’t think that. The fire was an accident, you
didn’t mean to burn them.”

“That’s true enough but Jane intends to make me suffer
for it. Within a couple of days I’d got a letter from her solicitor listing
alleged loss to the tune of £3,000.”

“For clothes! Are you going to challenge that?”

“Yes. I’ve decided it’s time to get my own solicitor. We had
our first meeting yesterday and I’ve passed everything on to him. In the end I
reckoned I had to get help, it was too complicated handling the separation
myself. I want the financial split resolved quickly.”

“Ah yes, it’s one of the things on your famous list,
isn’t it?”

David reddened, something he did rather often in front of
her. “Look, Bridget. The list…”

“Yes, David?”

“Nothing.” He paused before an outpouring. “Actually I must
explain. I was just messing around when I wrote it. I had a few minutes to
spare so I jotted down some daft things. I was all set to throw it away because
Rachel had already seen my short term objectives and had teased me.”

“So everything you wrote was daft, was it?”

“Well, not…” David was about to outpour further when he
detected the impish grin. Bridget was following in Rachel’s footsteps with the teasing.
He was torn between a final serious statement and self-mockery. Bridget eliminated
the need for either. “Actually I’m quite forgetful. Maybe I should write lists,
too.”

They were chatting away in a restaurant and all was going
well. Though he didn’t obsess about the ill-fated list, APMLTO4 (action plan
medium/long term objective number 4) had moved a step closer.

It was Bridget who’d telephoned him soon after the
fireworks debacle to check everything was OK, and once she’d ascertained that
he wasn’t bothered about the shed, to thank him for such high entertainment. Their
conversation had moved on to the cups and saucers incident.

“Bloody hell, you didn’t.”

“I did. I was so irritated the way she was taking things
without asking.”

“So you decided to smash them!”

“It wasn’t planned, it just happened.”

Towards the end of their telephone conversation Bridget
had suggested a meal out, insisting she would pay, having got a big bonus for
her October art sales. Objections would not be tolerated.

“I was wondering where to go, but now there’s only one
choice. It’ll have to be Greek,” she had declared.

“Why?”

“So you can practice your crockery smashing technique.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Actually they don’t go in for that sort of thing where
I’m thinking of, but the food’s great.”

~

Here they were, sitting at a cosy table in the lively
Bouzoukia Restaurant in Muswell Hill. There was a giant poster of the Acropolis
on the uneven white brick wall to their side. Conversation was flowing easily,
interspersed with much laughter, no doubt influenced by the bottle of Retsina they
had emptied at great speed.

They had shared a starter platter of hummus, goat’s
cheese, pitta bread, olives, tsatziki and dolmades – the very food David had intended
to buy for the Guy Fawkes meal. Now they were on their main courses. David cut
the last piece of lamb off his kebab. Bridget was eating vegetable moussaka.

“Good to see you eating lamb again,” she noted.

“Yes, I think I’m much more at ease about what’s happened
now.”

She took hold of his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I
think you are, too.”

“Thanks Bridget. Shall I get some more wine?”

“Blimey, no, I’m already half way under the table. I’ll
order some for you though, if you’d like.”

“No. I’m fine, too.”

There was a lull in the conversation. David plucked up the
courage to ask. “We’re always talking about me, but I’d like to know a bit
about you.”

“Sure. What?”

“Maybe this is an odd request, but you said your husband
died in an accident. I’m wondering what happened.”

“I have no problem talking about it if that’s your
choice. Let’s get some coffees, maybe ouzo too.”

She called the waiter over and placed the order.

“I think I’ve already told you about me ending up in the
art gallery that exhibited his works. Things went well for a while, but then
they got difficult. Roland’s sculptures weren’t selling, he was feeling
rejected and had stopped working. He was depressed, began drinking a lot and
taking a fair old cocktail of drugs. He’d adopted the ‘no one understands me’
syndrome that people involved in arts think they have the sole right to. I was
trying to be supportive, but he took his frustration out on me. He became abusive.
Cruel.”

She continued at a tangent, speaking about her parents
with great affection. They had died a couple of years ago within two months of
each other, and she missed them so much. Unfortunately they played an indirect
but important role in the death of her husband. They sensed the tension between
Bridget and Roland, even though she hadn’t mentioned anything specific, and suggested
the pair took a break to see if they could sort things out. They volunteered to
pay for a holiday and look after the kids.

Bridget researched the web and found what she thought
would be the ideal place to inspire Roland to rediscover his creativity and perhaps
improve their relationship. They travelled by plane to Inverness, then hired a
car and drove to a remote rented cottage at Fanagmore in the far north-west of
Scotland. It was a beautiful place right by the sea with stunning cliff
formations. There wasn’t a shop for miles around, the nearest was a general
store that made a Tesco Metro seem like a hypermarket.

“Every day we’d go for a long walk, the first couple of
days setting off on foot from the cottage, then later on getting into the car and
driving along tiny lanes to deserted coves and cliffs. The scenery was
spectacular as was the weather, one minute blazing sun and the next dark storm
clouds throwing down a torrent of rain.

“One day at the start of our second week it was my turn
to drive. I had no idea where we were heading, but we ended up at an amazing
lunar-like landscape of bare rock. I’d never seen anything like it, jagged
outcrops stretching out a huge distance towards a fierce sea. I can still visualise
the scene, I often do.”

The waiter arrived with two tiny cups of coffee and the
glasses of ouzo. Bridget knocked hers back in one gulp then took a sip of the
thick black espresso.

She described their walk that day, heading out towards
the wild sea, gingerly treading over the slippery rocks laden with barnacles
and seaweed, stepping into small clear pools. She and Roland were getting on a
little better – perhaps their relationship had a chance after all. At some
stage she stopped to remove a shell lodged between her toes. Sitting on a large
boulder, she took off her trainer and looked back towards the red sandstone
cliff. As she turned sunbeams struck parts of it, producing a view of such
dramatic beauty that she had to stop what she was doing to admire its grandeur.
She was just about to call out for Roland to look back when she was interrupted
by his shout.

“I turned to face the sea. He was smiling, a rare event
over recent times. ‘Look what I’ve found,’ he yelled. He was perched on a high outcrop
of rock holding a large crab. ‘Here, catch it.’ And he pretended to throw it
across to me but as he did so, he stumbled.

“It looked really funny, him losing his balance and
hovering like in a Buster Keaton movie. He swayed backwards and forwards, the
crab still in his hand. The expression on his face, the puzzled look of ‘should
I be letting go of this crab now?’ Then he tumbled sideways and went crashing
down.

“I stopped laughing when I approached and saw him close
up. There was a large gash on his forehead and he was out cold. The crab had
escaped his grip and was edging away into the pool of water that was rapidly
reddening. Loads of tiny crabs were scuttling away. I forgot, what do you call
a collection of crabs?”

“A cast, I think.”

“Another ouzo, please,” she called out to the passing
waiter. “Do you want one, David?”

“No thanks.”

“We never took our mobiles on the walks, we decided
nothing should disturb us. God, it was all my fault. Getting as far away as
possible from civilisation had been my suggestion. There I was with an
unconscious husband and no way of contacting anyone quickly. It was an hour or
more walk then a drive to reach help.”

She described how she lifted him out the pool then made
her way back as quickly as the difficult surface would allow.

She knocked back her second ouzo.

“An hour and a half later when a rescue team was with me
and I told them the location as accurately as I could, they looked at me with
pity. What an idiot I was. The tide, the fucking tide. I should have realised. They
found him two days later, his body washed up a couple of miles down the coast
in a sandy cove. I’d left him to drown.”

She had been looking down, now she raised her head to
meet David’s gaze and there was intense sadness in her eyes.

He took hold of her hands. “There was nothing more you
could have done, Bridget.”

“Surely something. I should have dragged him up to higher
ground or yanked him step by step all the way back. God knows what injuries
that might have caused, maybe to me as well as him, but at least I would have
saved him. Or died in the attempt,” she added solemnly.

“Sir. Madam. We are closing soon. Can I make up your
bill?” Bridget nodded. David looked past the waiter to the otherwise deserted
restaurant.

“Well, that’s the story. My parents felt guilty, it had
been their suggestion we went away. Dad came up for the inquest and mum stayed
with the kids. I couldn’t have coped without them.”