Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
I inch out of the bed, not wanting to wake him. My clothes are
piled neatly on a chair. I take them into the bathroom and dress.
Then I pad downstairs, hoping that Barry has gone out
somewhere. Barry had eaten half of the cake by the time we got to it. He’s a big brown man who chugs through life with almost
unnatural cheer; he surfs and drinks huge quantities of beer, and
brings home cheerful, sporty women who seem to have no particular expectations of him. I’ve only been to one of his barbecues. He and some mates started playing around with the
g
arden hosepipe and thought it would be fun to drench us. I
ended up going home in one of Diarmuid’s sweatshirts.
Barry has gone. I breathe a sigh of relief as I set about making
tea and toast and pouring out the breakfast cereal. It’s nearly ten
o’clock – and I told Aggie I’d visit her this morning…
My mobile rings. It’s in my handbag, on an armchair in the
sitting-room. I race towards it, in case the sound disturbs
Diarmuid. I yank it out in a mild panic – maybe it’s Fiona, saying
she’s gone into labour – but I don’t recognise the number.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello there, Sally Adams.’ It’s Nathaniel.
‘What is it?’ I lower my voice and go back to the kitchen. I close the door so that the sound won’t travel upstairs.
‘How did it go?’
‘What?’
‘Meeting Diarmuid.’
‘I’m in his – I mean, our – house now,’ I whisper. ‘How did you
get my number, anyway?’
‘I asked Greta. You left something in my car.’
‘What?’
‘A notebook. It must have fallen out of your bag. It appears to
be full of recipes. And there’s a photo; it says “DeeDee” on the back. There’s something about her eyes that –’
I think I hear a creak on the stairs. ‘Look, Nathaniel, I can’t have this conversation now.’
‘– that reminds me of you…’
I switch off the phone and lean against a sideboard. The
kitchen is capacious and fitted and well designed; it’s a very organised room, and perhaps if I look at it for long enough I’ll feel organised too. I will know where to store these strange bits
of myself that keep leaking out. I will know what to throw away
and what to keep.
‘Morning.’ Diarmuid walks into the room sleepily, wearing a w
hite T-shirt and a pair of dark blue boxer shorts. ‘Were you on
the phone? I heard you talking.’
‘Yes. It was… someone ringing about… about table-mats.’
‘On a Saturday?’ He rubs his eyes sleepily. ‘Their enthusiasm
for household accessories clearly knows no bounds.’
‘I wanted to bring you up breakfast.’
‘Come here.’
He wraps his arms around me. The softness of sleep is still in him; it feels cosy. Nice.
‘I have to shower and go soon.’ He releases me and wanders over to get a mug.
‘Why?’
‘I promised Charlene I’d give her a driving lesson.’ He looks at
me carefully.
‘Shouldn’t you be studying?’ I sound like my mother used to.
‘I studied last night,’ he says. ‘Before we met up in the pub.’
I gaze at him. ‘Last night?’
‘Yes.’ He spoons some instant coffee into his mug, then pours
in some boiling water. Diarmuid doesn’t take milk with his coffee,
and he just takes half a spoon of sugar. I place a spoon and a sugar bowl on the table.
Is he lying to me? He really looks as if he is telling the truth. But I definitely saw him at those traffic lights. He was even wearing the same wine-coloured shirt that he wore to the pub.
I turn away from him, towards the toast. ‘Do you want marmalade?’
‘Just a skim of it.’ He is sitting at the table, scratching an elbow
and yawning, and just for a moment I feel like throwing the toast
at him. Can I believe anything he says any more? Has he ever
really been honest with me? I should ask him, but I’m not sure I
could handle his reply.
‘DeeDee’s dead.’ I have to say it; I don’t know why.
‘Who?’
‘That great-aunt I told you about.’
‘Oh, yes – the one who just disappeared.’
‘I felt very sad when I heard. It’s silly, isn’t it? I never even met her.’
‘She was a relative. That’s only natural,’ Diarmuid says. ‘You
come from a close family.’ I don’t know how Diarmuid has
formed this impression, but I don’t contradict him. ‘At least now
you don’t have to worry about trying to find her. Who told you?’
‘Marie. Someone phoned her from Rio de Janeiro.’
‘Is that where she landed up, then?’ He is drinking his coffee.
Somehow the expression ‘landed up’ doesn’t sound right for
DeeDee. There’s an arbitrariness about it that is entirely inappro
priate. ‘She always wanted to go to Rio de Janeiro,’ I say.
‘So you’ve learned more about her, have you?’
‘Yes,’ I say, but I don’t add that I have only found out she liked
marble cakes and hats.
‘Poor woman.’ Diarmuid munches his toast.
‘I’m not entirely sure she was a “poor woman”, Diarmuid. I think she may have actually led a very interesting life.’
‘Completely cut off from her own country and her family, her
oldest friends – running away like that…’ Diarmuid looks out the
window. ‘It isn’t natural.’
‘Maybe it felt natural to DeeDee,’ I say. ‘Some things may feel
unnatural to you, Diarmuid, but entirely natural to someone else.’
‘Fine. Fine; have it your way.’ He gets up from the table. ‘I
don’t want to have an argument about this, Sally. Thanks for the
toast.’ He goes upstairs. I hear the sound of the shower while I wander around the kitchen washing things and wiping them. I even sweep the floor.
‘Do you want a lift anywhere?’ Diarmuid calls down to me.
‘Yes, please. I said I’d go and visit Aggie.’
‘Fine. I can drop you off.’ He says it brightly, breezily; there’s
no suggestion that I might stay here, even just for the weekend.
He has asked me to come back so many times already; maybe he’s
got tired of asking. Maybe he’s waiting for me to say I want to. But, if I do, he’s the one who may say he needs time to think
about it. Because our marriage hasn’t been on hold, like I thought
it was. It’s been changing – becoming something else.
I must ask him where he was last night,
I think. Maybe it’s q
uite innocent. He probably just felt guilty about not studying.
Or maybe he
was
studying, at his parents’ house: his mother loves spoiling him, and Barry plays his rock CDs very loudly… If it had
been an important lie, Diarmuid would have gone pink and stumbled over the words. Of course he would have.
I take out my mobile phone and see that someone has sent me
a text message.
‘If you want your notebook and the photo back – and I assume
you probably do – then phone this number. I’ll leave them some
where for you, so we don’t have to meet if you’d prefer not to. N.’
But I want to meet Nathaniel again. I want him to tell me
about Rio de Janeiro. I want to get into his crazy old car. I want
to know that, in this lonely old world, I’m not as alone as I think
I am. I want him to tell me what he saw in DeeDee’s eyes.
Chapter
Fourteen
It’s raining, pissing down
in buckets, as Diarmuid and I leave the house. We scurry to his car. I have borrowed one of his jumpers; it hangs on me like a brown tent.
‘They say it may ease up in the afternoon,’ says Diarmuid, who
tends to listen to weather forecasts. He is sitting beside me, solid
and preoccupied, and seems very far away.
‘Good,’ I reply, wondering where the other Diarmuid has gone
to, the one who needed me to hold him and caress him – the Diarmuid who was thoughtful enough to use a condom.
‘I know you don’t feel like starting a family in… in these
circumstances,’ he said tenderly, taking the packet out of the small
cabinet beside the bed. It was a new packet. I was, of course,
immensely grateful and surprised, because Diarmuid has always
said he dislikes condoms. But now he seems to be able to use them
without peering at them reluctantly and swearing and asking me
to help him ‘get the thing on’. Where did he learn this expertise?
No. I mustn’t think these things. If I do, everything he does will
seem suspicious. All men know how to put on condoms if they really need to.
I gaze out the window. ‘Isn’t it a lovely view?’
‘Yes,’ Diarmuid says, fiddling with some button on his car.
‘We could almost be in the countryside,’ I say, gazing at the small white cottages that hug the nearby mountains. We pass a huge beech tree; the leaves seem heavy and plump with rain.
‘How’s Aggie these days?’ Diarmuid enquires, almost absent-
mindedly.
‘Oh… pretty much the same.’ I decide not to mention the floating sheep.
‘Will you tell her about DeeDee?’
‘No. There’s no need to.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’
We swing onto a larger road, away from the mountains. I feel
a sudden yearning for the mountains, for some vast, daunting space. ‘I’ve been wondering if I should visit her grave.’ The
sentence pops into my head and I just say it, like I would have to
Nathaniel.
‘Whose grave?’
‘DeeDee’s, of course.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sally, can’t you just forget her?’
Diarmuid’s voice is hard, infuriated. ‘She’s dead. Surely that’s the
end of it.’ His voice softens. ‘I’m sorry to be so blunt about it, but
it’s the truth.’
I decide not to argue. Truth is a strange thing, perhaps more flexible than we suspect. In a way he’s right about DeeDee, and
in a way he’s wrong. And if he could see this, we could talk about
so much else; we could explore the soft, forgiving places in between these delicate certainties.
‘Barry may be moving out in a few months. He’s thinking of
going back to Australia.’ Diarmuid glances at me quickly.
‘Oh.’ I tighten my grip on my handbag.
‘I was wondering if we… if I should build a… a sort of one-
r
oomed cottage at the bottom of the garden, instead of a c
onservatory. I think I might be able to get planning permission.’
‘
Yes,’ I say slowly. ‘Yes, why not? That would be nice.’
‘
I’d be building it for you,’ he says quickly. ‘If you come back,
y
ou could use it as an office. A… a place of your own.’