Authors: R J Gould
David glanced back towards the room they had come from,
expecting Bill, Ben and a lynching party of their associates to arrive at any
moment. But the other guests remained at the bar or on the dance floor. A
Culture Club song was playing, he couldn’t remember the title. “Good idea sitting
here,” he joked, looking across to the muscular night porter with shaved head
and beefy arms covered in tattoos. “He’ll protect us when Bill arrives.”
Bridget smiled, one of those smiles that encourage you to
smile back. “You were up to when you told Jane you hoped she ended up unhappy,
or something like that.”
David paused. He took a gulp of beer to give himself time
to consider what next to tell Bridget. She seemed genuinely interested, even
concerned with his plight. But he had only just met her, well since childhood
anyway. How much should he be relating about personal matters that were still
painful to think about?
“It was not a happy time, for me or the children. Sam was
convinced everything would end up fine and Rachel was threatening to murder her
mother. It was a mess and to a large extent still is. If you don’t mind I’ll
leave it at that for now. Suffice to say it was clear that Jane wasn’t going to
change her mind. She’d already packed suitcases to take to Jim’s and she’d even
lifted some of what she wanted from the house, including a painting we’d bought
soon after we married which I’m very fond of. I was annoyed that she thought
she could take whatever she felt like without even asking.”
Bill, Ben and five other men came into the reception area.
David tensed up but the group walked past without eye contact, cigarettes at
the ready to be lit as soon as they stepped outside.
“And Jane still hadn’t sat down with the kids to explain
what was going on. She should have tried harder. Even though Rachel rejected
her approaches, she should have persevered.”
Bridget nodded. Her sympathetic face was as beautiful as
her smiling one. David had succumbed to teenagesque passion together with the
angst that invariably goes with it. He was an adolescent again, the twenty-five
years since being at school washed away by this chance meeting.
“I’ll tell you what’s odd though,” he continued. “I was
unhappy, I still am. But just a few weeks on I’m not nearly as unhappy as I
thought I would or even should be. It’s made me realise the relationship
between Jane and me had become distant; her walking out brought the reality
home. My anger’s pretty well gone because I recognise that at least in part I’m
responsible for what happened.”
Bridget interrupted. “Wait a minute. It’s good of you to
think that, but you weren’t the one who ran off with someone else without any
discussion.”
“No, true enough. Thanks for saying so, Bridget. And I
must admit the shock was huge. Luckily friends and work colleagues rallied
round. I was invited to the cinema, bowling, clubbing, dinner parties. Some of
them suggested strategies for getting a new partner, but that was the last
thing on my mind. In fact I haven’t taken up any offers because I feel the pressure
of being responsible for looking after the kids.”
“So how come you came to this reunion?” Bridget
persevered.
David wanted to impress her with light and witty patter.
Instead it was like being in a counselling session. “Another drink first?” he
asked.
“No, I’m fine thanks. Carry on.”
With reluctance he did so. “Well one evening I was
watching some TV drama and there was a young girl who looked the spitting image
of Marianne Dunnell. Do you remember her?”
“I certainly do.”
“We used to call her Marianne Faithfull. She looked just
like the singer – an absolute stunner all the boys thought.”
“Us girls called her Marianne Unfaithful. She hopped from
boyfriend to boyfriend every day and her girlfriends didn’t last much longer.”
“Oh I didn’t know that. Anyway, I had a sudden impulse to
contact her even though she’d had little to do with me at school. My Rachel
uses Facebook, for far too long I tell her, but I wondered whether it could
help me get in touch with Marianne. The next evening Rachel showed me how it
all worked. I set up a profile and password and went on the search for friends.
When I typed in the name up came one Marianne Dunnell, she listed Dunnell as
her maiden name as well as Peters which is her married one. She was located in
Oxford, Boars Hill to be exact. I was pretty sure it had to be her, bearing in
mind the unusual surname and where she lives. I sent a message asking her to be
my friend and the next day I had a reply. Do you use Facebook?”
“No, my kids do but I can’t be bothered with it. My two
say they’ve got about three thousand friends. Or is it three million? But they
only recognise about five of them.”
Bill, Ben and their entourage came back into reception,
laughing loudly. ‘You fuckin’ didn’t?’ one of them enquired. ‘I fuckin’ did’
another responded. ‘Fuckin’ hell’ a third piped in, their voices so alike it
was hard to tell who was doing the talking. This time they did notice Bridget
and David. Bill, who was at the front of the group, stopped and looked down at
Bridget. The other men formed a row behind him, facing her. ‘Bitch,’ he
declared and the others thought this was highly amusing. ‘Yeah, bitch’ another
of the faceless nobodies muttered as he followed Bill back into the bar.
“They are…” David began.
“Never mind them, they aren’t worth thinking about. What
happened with Marianne?”
“Initially very little. She wrote a brief hello, not much
more than a ‘yes I do remember you’. I wasn’t going to let her get away with
that so I wrote back, rather a long message that I soon discovered was being
read by all her friends and their friends. Apparently she was teased about this
long lost admirer of hers. It was embarrassing as I’d written how much everyone
at school had fancied her and asked if she wanted to meet up for old times’
sake.”
“How did she reply?”
“She started off with advice about how to write something
on Facebook that only the person it’s sent to can see. Then she gave an update.
To cut a long story short, she got married to a man training to be a cleric soon
after leaving school. Now she has five teenage children, two dogs and a
hamster, and works as a librarian in the law department at the university.”
“Marianne a librarian! Hard to believe. In fact being
married to a vicar and with loads of kids presumably from the same father is
also a revelation.”
“Well in our short flurry of messaging she mentioned the
reunion and gave me the email address of the organiser, that woman who likes
standing on tables. Marianne intended to come along herself but emailed me with
only a couple of days to go. Her husband had organised a surprise weekend away to
celebrate their wedding anniversary and she had to cancel. I’d signed up for
the reunion and booked the hotel by then so I thought why not.”
Bridget glanced at her watch then across to the night
porter who was leaning over the reception counter reading a newspaper. He
yawned, she yawned too. The 1980s hits were still blasting out. “Well, I’m glad
you made it, David. But I’m afraid I’m done for the night, if you don’t mind.”
“No, I’ve had enough, too. Well I don’t mean enough of
you, just that if you’re heading off then I don’t feel like mixing with anyone
else.”
They stood and took the wide staircase with its plush red
carpet and ivory and gold striped wallpaper up to the fire door on the first
floor landing.
“I’m this way,” Bridget announced.
“Me too.”
They walked along the corridor glancing at the prints of
hunting scenes until Bridget stopped at Room 134. “This is mine.”
“I’m next door. 136.”
“Coincidence. Hey, it’s been nice chatting David, I’ve
enjoyed this evening loads. Maybe see you at breakfast.”
David didn’t reply. He was too busy thinking of something
to say to prolong their time together, the closeness of their bedrooms a
nagging contributory factor. Possibilities crossed his mind. Fancy a coffee
before bed? Would you like to see if the décor in my bedroom is the same as
yours? Shall we share a bed tonight?
She took hold of his shoulder and planted a kiss on his
cheek. “Goodnight,” she said key in hand, and he was still thinking of the
elusive one-liner after she had closed her door and left him standing alone in
the corridor.
Jim answered her mobile. “What do you want, David?” he
snapped.
“To speak with Jane if you don’t mind.”
“I’m not letting you.”
“I want to speak to my wife.”
“Not after what you said. She wants nothing to do with
you.” Before David could respond, Jim launched into a severe tirade covering
decency, loyalty, compassion, morality and quite possibly much more, but David
hung up before the end of the monologue.
He walked round to the newsagent to buy the Sunday Times.
Everything on the short journey was the same as ever – Isobel pushing the pram
in a vain attempt to stop her baby crying, Lawrence washing his BMW, Mrs Grant
nurturing her flowers and plants with care beyond the call of duty. It was only
his life that was different.
“Hello Mr Willoughby, and how are you today?” asked
Stanley Entwhistle, the newsagent and postmaster who had been around since
David had first moved to the area. He had a wild mop of white hair with
matching strands leaping up from his eyebrows and out his ears. Stanley had seen
his children progress from infancy to adolescence and now he would be seeing
his marriage go from ceremony to cessation.
“Fine thanks.”
David dropped the newspaper onto the counter and took out
his wallet.
“What about your Mail on Sunday?”
“Not today, thanks.”
Back at home David half-heartedly read the newspaper,
vaguely acknowledging that economic freefall, terrorist threats and
post-accident motorway mayhem perhaps were more significant than his own
crisis. He skipped lunch.
He was in the hall en route from kitchen to downstairs toilet
when the first of his children returned. Rachel opened the front door, cigarette
in hand.
“Put that thing out,” David ordered.
“OK,” she said, throwing the stub behind her onto the
small tidy front lawn, “but I smoke. I won’t inside the house, but that’s all
I’m agreeing to.”
Still somewhat hung-over, David didn’t have the energy to
argue.
“And have I missed my fucking bitch of a mother?” Rachel
continued.
The previous day’s anger might be acceptable, but David
was not prepared to tolerate habitual use of that word from his sixteen year
old daughter. “There is no need to swear, thank you very much.”
“Fucking bitch, fucking bitch, fucking bitch,” Rachel
chanted as she brushed past him and headed up to her room. A minute later
Britney Spears was belting out of her music system.
David stood in the hall trying to remember why he’d left
the kitchen in the first place.
The phone rang, it was Sam. “Dad, could you pick me up? Now
please. Adrian and I have had a bit of a bust up. He’s blaming me for running
his car into a skirting board, but he didn’t tell me it had a turbo
accelerator. Anyway it’s only the bumper that’s busted and his dad says a bit
of glue will sort it.”
David agreed to set off immediately. He called up to
Rachel to let her know he was popping out. He left without keys; rang the
doorbell to get back in to collect them; rang it again when a Britney track
ended and Rachel had a chance of hearing; picked them up; went out and unlocked
the car; recalled that the original reason for leaving the kitchen was to go to
the toilet; went back inside to do so; and finally departed. “I can’t think clearly
anymore,” he uttered as he started the engine.
He drove through the comfortable streets of suburban Mill
Hill with a surge of feeling sorry for himself, jealous that for those in the
immaculately ordered houses he was passing, life would no doubt be as secure as
the day before. Well maybe not, he reconsidered, his mind now racing with what
ifs. Perhaps the loss of a job or a death in the family. Or conceivably like
him, a wife leaving, leaving to live with a so-called best friend. A wave of
self-disgust added to his concoction of emotions when for a split second he
hoped others were facing similar grief.
He turned into the gravelled drive of Adrian’s impressive
Totteridge house, an ornate structure with classical pillars at the front door.
Armless marble Romanesque statues stood on each side, a naked man and woman
facing each other. The door bell chimed La Marseillaise – Adrian’s mother was
French. David knew the father dealt in property sales in Europe and rumour had
it he was struggling to cope with the severe economic recession on top of
changed Spanish laws about foreign ownership. Clearly he wasn’t struggling
sufficiently to have to vacate this palace or trade in the Porsche and Daimler
on the drive.
Mrs Grainger came to the door. “I am so sorry to hear
your news.”
She took hold of him. “You poor, poor, poor thing,” each
‘poor’ accompanied by a consoling pat on the back. He hardly knew the woman but
if there was anything she could do to help, all he had to do was ask.
She stepped back and looked him in the eye. “I know
exactly how you feel,” she uttered with compassion. David sensed that Mr
Grainger had been guilty of transgression.
Sam was a few paces behind her mouthing ‘can we go, dad?’
Just as David felt he had an opportunity to exit with Mrs
Grainger in silent mode, Mr Grainger came racing downstairs. The conversation
was pretty well repeated though with three differences – no hugging, Mr
Grainger far cheerier than his wife, and the ‘I know exactly how you feel’ statement
omitted.