Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
‘OK, but promise to stay there until I get back.’ He glances at
me anxiously.
I nod. I’m too exhausted to run off. How can I have thought I
didn’t have any luggage? I have so much emotional baggage I should get a trolley.
Nathaniel seems to return in a matter of moments. He has remembered how much milk I take, and when I sip the tea I
discover he has put in just the right amount of sugar. Just sitting
here with him makes things better. I decide not to mention
Fabrice. I really don’t think I’d like to hear the details.
‘You’ve… you’ve just flown in from somewhere, haven’t you?’
I say slowly.
He nods.
‘So why are you in the departures area? You should be in arrivals.’
He grins sheepishly. ‘I got lost. I was trying to find the bank. I’ve been going up and down the escalators like a total bloody
idiot. I thought I was going crazy, because I
know
where the bank
is – or, at least, I usually do. It began to feel like looking for a Chinese takeaway – do you remember that evening?’
Of course I do. How could he have thought I would forget it?
‘I suppose I was looking for you, only I didn’t know it.’ He reaches out and touches my palm. He makes small circles in its
centre. It is such an intimate and unexpected gesture, and so totally right. This is just the kind of thing I don’t need right now. It might
make me tell him I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with him. And he’d
be understanding about it – because, let’s face it, he must hear that
kind of thing pretty often. He’d probably even be
sympathetic.
I shift restlessly in my seat. ‘I should go, Nathaniel. They may
call me any minute.’
‘I once did what you’re planning to do,’ he says calmly.
‘Where did you go?’
‘New Orleans. I wanted to go to Costa Rica, but I didn’t have
enough money. I just needed to get out of New York for a while,
be somewhere different – I wanted to be
someone
different. I was
having doubts about everything – Ziggy, my job, the ridiculously
expensive new suit I’d bought that didn’t fit me properly. I think
it was the suit that did it, actually.’ He laughs his bright, gleeful laugh. ‘It seemed fine in the shop, but that was because I hadn’t
actually walked in the thing. I had to contort my entire body just
to get across a room.’
I find myself smiling. He always manages to make me smile, eventually.
‘People kept saying what a lovely suit it was, even though it made me feel like a hunchback. My life felt just like that suit: I had to contort myself to a ridiculous extent to fit into it, and
nobody seemed to notice. It was the loneliest feeling. Should I get
some biscuits?’
‘No. I don’t eat biscuits any more,’ I say. ‘I’m on a diet.’
‘Of course it seems crazy now, flying off somewhere because of
a bloody suit. I should have just chucked it and put it down to experience.’
‘What happened in New Orleans?’
‘It was fun, even though I found a cockroach under my bed in
the dirt-cheap hotel. I went out. I wandered around and looked
at things. I ate. It’s a lovely city. It was different, but I was still the
same. That’s when I knew I had to let some things go – some
beliefs about myself.’ He starts to fiddle with a spoon. ‘And that’s hard. It’s what I’d been trying to avoid, I suppose. I’d been living
with this idea that there was some better place I had to find. But what I realised was that finding it might be more an internal decision than a question of location – though, of course, some locations are better than others. I still have a hankering to go to Costa Rica.’
‘What did you do with the suit?’
‘I gave it to Ziggy. She got it altered. She wears it with a feather
boa. Of course, I could have got it altered too, but it didn’t occur
to me at the time. I think I’d wandered into a rather primitive part
of my brain. I really should have made more of an effort to use
my neo-cortex.’ He looks over at the food counter. ‘Do you think
they do baked beans on toast?’
‘Probably.
What’s a neo-cortex?’
‘It’s the part of the brain that can see the bigger picture – along w
ith other things, of course. It sees a whole range of alternatives.
But you can’t access it if you’re too emotionally aroused, so things
seem black and white.’ He looks at someone carrying a loaded tray.
‘Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind some scrambled eggs too.’
I remember the important-looking psychology books on the floor of his flat. ‘So is this why we’re talking, Nathaniel?’ I say slowly. ‘You wanted to calm me down?’
‘Yes. Of course, I wanted to talk to you, too,’ he admits cheerfully. ‘To be honest, Sally, if you’re going to California I
think you should pack. I really missed not having a spare T-shirt
or boxer shorts in New Orleans. I didn’t even have an extra pair of socks.’
I suddenly feel defensive. ‘This is an entirely different situation, Nathaniel. My sister needs me. I
am
calm. I’m very calm.’ I lift my
cup with trembling fingers. ‘I’ve thought it all through very carefully.’
‘I’ll miss you.’
I stare at the table.
‘And Diarmuid will miss you, won’t he? What about
Diarmuid?’
‘Look, it’s only a
visit!’
I snap. ‘It’s not like I’m planning to –’
‘
Disappear like DeeDee?’
‘Don’t finish my sentences,’ I protest. ‘That isn’t what I was
going to say. I’ve forgotten about DeeDee; I know I’ll never
find her.’
‘What were you going to say, then?’
‘I was going to say…’ I clench my fingers into my palms so hard that it hurts. ‘I was going to say that none of this is your business.’
‘What’s happened with Diarmuid?’ Is he psychic?
He reaches for my hand and touches the tips of my fingers. ‘I’m
sorry he found us together like that. It was all very… very awkward.’
‘As you made clear at the time,’ I say tightly, recalling the appalled look on his face.
‘Is it over, then?’
‘What?’
‘Your marriage.’
Am I really that transparent?
‘And now you’re wondering how I know. It’s because I know
that look on your face, Sally. I’ve seen it on my own. You feel things leaving and you don’t know what’s going to take their
place, and everything seems very stark and strange, almost unreal.’
I feel an ache in my heart. How can I not love someone who
knows these things about me? But what do I know about him? He
is basically a stranger. He flew off somewhere with
Fabrice,
for God’s sake! He has a whole hidden life that he never even mentions.
I can’t even look at him. ‘Yes, you’re right. Diarmuid has found
someone else… and it’s not a mouse.’ I smile feebly. It isn’t even
funny. ‘It turns out Diarmuid’s very decisive. He doesn’t hang around and fret, like I do. He replaced me with surprising speed and efficiency.’
‘And you find that just a bit offensive?’
‘I suppose I have no right to feel offended, really,’ I say hesitantly. ‘I mean, I’m the one who left him first.’
‘Feelings aren’t quite that clear-cut, though, are they? From what you’ve said, it sounds like you feel he left the marriage
almost as soon as it started – only, of course, he was in the same
house.’ A faraway look enters Nathaniel’s eyes. ‘That’s what I felt
with Ziggy, anyway. She was there but she wasn’t there, if you know what I mean.’
‘At least she didn’t have long conversations with mice.’
‘She had long conversations with her lover instead,’ he says. ‘I
think I would have preferred mice.’
I know I should say something sympathetic, but I can’t – not n
ow that Greta has told me about Ziggy’s phone calls. Nathaniel
is leaving that bit out, of course. There are probably loads of things he leaves out every time we talk.
‘The thing about the mice,’ I begin, realising how stupid and
improbable it sounds, ‘was that I couldn’t really complain about
them without sounding daft. A lover would almost have been easier, in a way.’
‘I once had a client whose husband was obsessed with a stick
insect.’
I want to burst out laughing, but then I see Nathaniel’s
expression and realise it’s true.
‘He used to take Candice – that was the insect’s name – out to the garden every weekend and sit with her. He said she needed to get out and about a bit. Then he’d go upstairs and clean her cage,
and go to the pet shop to make sure she had all the food she needed, and by that time it was too late for him and his wife to
go out for the day. No one believed his wife until they actually
saw him sitting on his deckchair, watching Candice and ignoring
everyone else.’
‘What did the wife do?’
‘She boiled Candice up and fed her to him in a tuna sandwich.’
I gulp.
‘No. That’s what she would have
liked
to do.’ He laughs. ‘She left him and got very involved in Buddhism. She said she would
never marry again.’
‘I can understand that,’ I say softly. ‘I don’t want to marry again either. It just doesn’t suit me.’
I wonder if I should go to the standby desk. I’ve been listening for my name. Maybe the woman has forgotten me. Instead I say,
‘If it’s not mice or stick insects it’s the Internet, or golf, or the pub.
Haven’t you noticed that, Nathaniel? People get married and
then, after a few months or years of romance – if they manage to
have them – they start to devise ways to be apart from each other.
Especially the men, I’m afraid.’ I look at him reproachfully.
‘Women keep saying, “Please talk to me,” and men keep saying,
“Not now, dear, I’m watching football.”’
‘Not
all
men,’ Nathaniel corrects me. ‘It was Ziggy who didn’t
want to talk to me.’
‘Yes, yes, but you’re not typical!’
‘Thank you.’ He grins at me. Am I actually blushing?
‘Everyone’s looking for love, Sally,’ he says softly. ‘Everyone and everything in this universe wants to be loved and to love. It’s
just that sometimes we get a bit battered about and forget that.
Or we look in the wrong place and then decide it’s not anywhere,
that it’s some sort of awful twisted joke.’