Mel, followed by his student, came back to me, snatched his carrier bag from me. He raked his hand through his hair a few times, all the while glaring at Claudine. ‘I’m going home,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
Clearly, the best offer I was going to get all night.
chapter thirteen
Cheat
Mel made angry tea.
That’s not tea that was called angry, he made tea angrily, huffing and puffing as he slammed cups onto the breakfast bar, then slam-dunked tea bags into them. Having said that, if Like Water For Chocolate was to be believed, all his anger and frustration would come through in the drink and I’d soon be choking on his fury by simply taking a sip of the tea. As it was, I was too scared to tell him I didn’t drink proper tea unless it was an emergency.
He lived about three streets away from the party and it’d been an angry pound from there to his house. Part of me had been scared. Not that Mel was a scary man, per se, it’d been his nefarious mood upon leaving the party. Of course, the other night I had thought he was kill-and-bury-you-under-a-patio material. But, even in the dark of the party I could see he needed a friend. And, yes, all right, all right, brain, I’m not meant to be doing this sort of thing any more, but you try walking away from someone who’s suicidal.
Mel wasn’t overtly suicidal. Mel wasn’t booze and overdose, or take a shotgun to his chin suicidal. He was down a bottle of whisky and go pick a fight with a really large individual suicidal. He would get the living daylights beaten out of himself, to hurt physically so he wouldn’t hurt emotionally. So he wouldn’t have to feel what he was feeling. That’s what happens in his situation: first, the only way to douse your feelings is to drink. Then you drink, and drink more. Then, the booze stops helping and the going out being surrounded by other people while totally bladdered stops helping, so the next stop is physical pain. Punching the walls, or going out to pick a fight with an obliging thug so you could get your head kicked in. I’d felt Mel’s desperation, his eagerness to be hurt at the party, started to feel desperate too, so, naturally, I went with him.
‘My wife is an interior designer and decorator,’ Mel explained as I oohhed and awwed over his American-style fridge, his huge sixties leather chairs, the cream carpets, white walls, padded breakfast stools, fake fur rugs, light wood and chrome fittings. This is how my flat was meant to look. How it was always going to look – until I actually moved and discovered how expensive and time-consuming decorating was.
‘Ah, right.’
‘That’s how we met,’ he said, plonked a cup of tea on the glass-topped side table in the living room and threw himself into one of the leather sixties chairs. He slumped in the chair, his head hanging, his feet not quite reaching the ground, swinging his legs back and forth. Mel reminded me of my five-year-old nephew and how he sat when he felt unjustly blamed for something.
‘I’d just bought this place. It was a student house the landlord had got bored of running so I got it dirt cheap. I even had money left over to get some decorators in. I found her number in the book and booked an appointment. I went to her office and . . .’ Mel stared down into his tea, suddenly less angry, more lost. ‘And she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.’
He paused. ‘We flirted outrageously during that meeting and, of course, I asked her out. She didn’t date clients, but she made an exception with me. About six months later, she moved in here. She started her own business in that time and our house became a bit of a show home for what she could do. Philippe Starck chairs, Bang & Olufsen speakers, Habitat rugs, chrome, light wood, Smeg fridges, etc., etc. . . . Her office was upstairs and my office was upstairs too. The rest of the house had to be kept immaculate cos of clients coming round. My room – my office – it’s a tip. Always has been. Always will be.’
I sat on the sofa playing with my mug of angry tea.
‘We got married about a year later. We didn’t even need a wedding list cos we had everything most newlyweds ask for.’
‘Did you feel that you missed out on starting a new home with someone?’ I asked.
Mel’s face registered surprise; looked at me as though realising for the first time I was still there. Shrugged. ‘Maybe. Who knows?’
‘You still haven’t told me the reason you split up, if she doesn’t know about you and Claudine.’
Mel perfected the stance then, looked so much like my nephew I wanted to bundle him up, saying, ‘It’s all right, I know you didn’t mean to do it.’ He sighed. Then smiled, bitterly.
‘The thing with Claudine happened just before Christmas, the weekend that Fran went home to see her parents in Sheffield. Basically, we’d decided this was going to be the first Christmas that we spent together at home, alone, no parents, no siblings, no friends. She’s dead close to her family, so she went home a week before to have an early Christmas with them. That was the same weekend we had our staff party at college. Clau and I shared a taxi back, one thing led to another . . .
Fran got back on the Tuesday night. I’d spent all that time trying to work out how I felt. I mean I wouldn’t have done that with Clau if I truly loved Fran, would I?
When she got back, she walked through the front door and I wanted to tell her what had happened. I’d never done something like that before. I mean, I’d never cheated before, that wasn’t me. I didn’t do things like that. I just wanted to get it off my chest, out in the open. But I kept thinking, how’s she going to take it that I’d done that with someone she thought was her friend? The worst thing was, she felt bad cos I’d been alone all that time – it was the longest we’d been apart. And she kept trying to apologise. She’d even bought me an early Christmas present to make up for it. A games console, imagine how that felt. That first night I left it. And the second night. But the third night . . .
She was sat where you are, I was sat here, I just looked over, stared at her for ages. She was all curled up reading a Jane Austen book and I said: ‘I don’t love you any more.’ I still can’t believe I said it like that.
She just carried on reading.
‘Did you hear me?’ I said, ‘I don’t love you any more.’
She looked up from her book, her face was set like stone. ‘I heard you,’ she said. ‘I was just wondering what you expected me to say.’
‘I don’t know. I just thought you should know.’
‘Do you mean you don’t fancy me, or you don’t love me?’ she asked.
I shrugged.
‘Don’t you dare shrug at me, Melvin Rivers. Don’t you dare sit there, tell me to fuck off and then shrug at me.’
I stared at my feet for ages, then I said, ‘I still fancy you. I’d still have sex with you, but I don’t love you.’
‘So it’s not my body, it’s me.’
‘I suppose,’ I said.
‘Is there someone else?’ she asked.
What do I say to that? Maybe it was someone else, maybe it wasn’t. I just knew I wouldn’t have been with Clau if I loved or respected Fran.
‘No. Not really.’
‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN “NOT REALLY”?’ she screamed at me. She even threw the book at me, luckily it missed, cos it was a hardback.
‘I mean, I have an idea of the person I love in my head and it’s not you.’
‘YOU WAITED UNTIL WE’VE BEEN MARRIED FOR FOUR YEARS TO DECIDE I’M NOT THE PERSON YOU LOVE IN YOUR HEAD?’
‘NO! YES! I DON’T KNOW. I ONLY KNOW I DON’T LOVE YOU ANY MORE. I CAN’T HELP IT.’
I thought she was going to throw something else at me, but she fell apart. I’ll never forget how she sat there sobbing, how it felt to hear her cry and sob. I wanted to go to her but I couldn’t move.
‘So what are you saying?’ she asked. Tears were pouring down her face at this point.
‘I don’t want to be with you any more.’ Yes, I actually said that.
She went upstairs and I sat here for ages because I couldn’t move. I think I was in shock, more than anything. I’d never been such
a bastard in my life. I mean, there I was, breaking her heart, ruining her life and I was so cold. So cold. I was just . . .cold. Eventually, I went up to her and she was lying on the bed. She kept saying between tears, ‘Why? Why? What did I do wrong?’
You’re probably thinking I couldn’t get much worse, but I could, I did. I started comforting her, cuddling her, then kissing her and then . . .then . . .I ended up making love to her. All the time I was resenting her, wishing she was Clau. Fran just cried the whole way through and then afterwards she said, ‘What did I do wrong?’
We talked for ages, and all I could say was, ‘You’re just not what I want.’ Anyway, when I fell asleep a few hours later, she got up, packed a bag and left. It was three days before Christmas. I went out on the day before Christmas Eve to the pub, I couldn’t stand the silence in the house. That was the one thing I hadn’t really been prepared for. The silence. It was awful. When I came back she’d cleared out her stuff. All her office, her clothes, make-up, books, CDs. I figured she must’ve had help. All she left was a cheque for the bills and half the mortgage for a month, her keys and a phone number where to direct all her business enquiries. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since.
Christmas was hell. I couldn’t work out how to tell my family, or anyone else. How do you tell the world you’ve failed at a marriage to the most wonderful woman on earth? How could I tell everyone that for the past year or so we’d hardly spoken? Or that the longest conversation we’d had in twelve months was the night she left me. Clau rang but I couldn’t speak to her of all people. I spent the whole of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day on dope, beer and whisky. I thought I was going to die on 2nd January. Part of me wanted to die on 2nd January.
If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t have been so cold. I would’ve been . . .Oh I don’t know, I can’t go back in time, I’m officially separated from my wife and I haven’t spoken to her cos I haven’t got a clue what to say to her. Neither of us has started divorce proceedings and I’m sure she’d call me if she had anything to say to me. So, the official reason we’ve split up is that I’m a total bastard and she was blindsided by that, just before Christmas . . .
Had I, Ceri D’Altroy, been a person without a predisposition to saying what I thought, I would’ve said, ‘You’re not a total bastard.’ As things lay, I was, and he sounded like a total bastard. Not a fraction of a bastard, or a bit of a bastard, a total bastard. However, it did take two to wreck a marriage. In Mel and Fran’s case, even though I’d only heard one side of the story, it did indeed seem that they’d both neglected their marriage. And, of course, there was Mel’s ‘thingy’ with Claudine.
‘Don’t worry, you don’t have to say I’m not a bastard, I know I was. I still get pole-axed when I think about what I did.’
‘I wasn’t going to say you weren’t one.’
Thankfully, he laughed instead of fitting me up for a patio foundation. ‘So anyway, Clau hates me. She thinks I was perving over that student.’
‘Did she say that?’
‘No, she didn’t have to. All she said was, “You look like you’re having a good time, don’t let me interrupt you” and then she and her four harridans of witchville went prancing off.’
‘She doesn’t hate you.’
‘She’s just jealous, right? Cos that will make all the difference.’
‘Look, Mel, we all bandy about the word “hate” as if it’s as whimsical as air, but it’s a very strong emotion. I can’t see her feeling that in an instant and then it staying with her till she dies.’
‘You reckon,’ Mel replied.
Touchy-feely reasoning wasn’t going to work. I changed tactics. ‘You do know that student fancies you, don’t you?’ I said.
Mel sighed. ‘Oh she’s just an ego boost.’ He registered my raised eyebrows. ‘Yes, I know, I’m a bastard. But my wife’s left me and the woman I love is with somebody else, I need an ego boost.’
‘Ever thought of a career writing country and western lyrics?’ I said before I could stop myself.
Mel laughed.
‘You knew what you were doing when you let her drape herself all over you. You should be grateful she wasn’t trying harder to kiss you when Claudine walked in.’
‘Suppose.’
That feeling, my curse, brewed itself in my heart. The need to make things better. And the more those big hazel eyes simpered at me, the stronger the feeling got. I clamped my teeth together, trying to stop myself from saying something, anything to make him feel better, to make this situation all right. The last time I did that, I’d ended up with Whashisface Tosspot. But, even as I wrestled with myself, I knew I was fighting a losing battle. I might as well have tried to stop watching television for a year or two.
‘Claudine doesn’t hate you. She’s just jealous and,’ Lord forgive me for what I’m about to do, but he needs it, you can see by the look on his face he needs it, ‘being jealous is a good sign. She was probably taken aback at the strength of her reaction to,’ God, I promise I’ll make it to church sometime soon if you don’t let this blow up in my face, ‘seeing you with another woman. Even if she is a student.’
He threw himself forwards in his seat. ‘You really think so?’
I nodded, unable as I was to say ‘yes’ to the nonsense I’d put out there. It was probably true, but also not as uncomplicated, what with Claudine still being with her fella and all.
‘You think I should tell her the student meant nothing?’
‘No, Mel, I think you should make sure the student knows it meant nothing. That there was no “it” in the first place, before it gets blown out of proportion and it gets back to the college that you’re knocking off a student. Ignore the Claudine thing. It’ll be all right. You’ve been mates for years, it’ll blow over.’ And anyway, have you forgotten she’s with someone else?
Mel slid out of the seat, slid onto the floor, still managing to keep his tea upright. ‘I did love my wife, you know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t stop as quickly as I made out to her. I was so busy making her leave, I guess I never really thought about how much I was hurting her. I thought about getting rid of her, stopping myself being unfaithful to her, but I never thought about how much I was hurting her. Can you believe that?’
Er, yes I could, actually.
chapter fourteen
Lost
Jake wasn’t wrong about how far it was from here to up there, aka, my bedroom. The relevance of Star Trek’s space time continuum wasn’t lost on me at moments like this. I’d got the space, but did I have the time (or energy) to get up there? (It regularly occurred to me that the reason I was still single had something to do with my ability to drop Star Trek into normal conversations.)
Mel had ordered me a taxi at three, it’d arrived at four-thirty. Saturday night-morning was clubbing till all hours night, so taxi firms, naturally, concentrated on getting them home first. People like me who wanted to go a couple of miles down the road had to wait till the large fares were dealt with.
I’d gone to say to the taxi driver that I should charge him a waiting fee in the same way he’d charge me one if I kept him waiting for an hour and a half but, uncharacteristically, my mouth didn’t work. Possibly tiredness. Or, possibly, because he was a big white geezer with a shaved head, a gold tooth and a grunt for ‘hello’.
After I’d paid him plus tip (I was a veritable coward in the face of such scariness) I found myself at the bottom of the stairs looking up at them, realising how never-ending they were. In fact, they reminded me of that scene in Poltergeist where the corridor seemed to lengthen each time the mother tried to run down it. By the time I hit the second set of stairs I’d be climbing a stairway to heaven. Or thereabouts.
Luckily, I hadn’t taken my duvet upstairs from earlier. Jake and Ed won’t mind if I kip down on the sofa, just this once, will they? I asked Narcissus, who was still silently checking out his reflection over the fireplace. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t answer.
I peeled off my leather trous
ers – never as good an idea at four forty-five in the morning as they were at ten last night – and sighed as air hit my legs and flesh gave way to gravity. I was never so grateful as that moment when the trousers were pulled away and my flesh could return to its natural place on my body. I yanked the gold top off, but left on my bra and knickers. If I kicked off the covers by accident I didn’t want Jake or Ed to come wandering in to find me sprawled naked on the sofa. And, in my universe, it’d be the weekend their parents decide to visit.
Birds had started to chirp and cheep and generally create a ‘we’re awake, why aren’t you’ row outside, and the sun was obviously going to be putting in an appearance quite soon.
I wrapped the duvet around me like a cocoon so my skin wouldn’t become stuck to the leather of the sofa, snuggled down, lay on my side facing away from the window. There was a time when the reason I was coming home at this hour was because I’d been out having sex. When I’d got into a taxi at four-thirty in the morning with dull throbs left by another person tingling across my skin. I’d need to have a shower before slipping between the sheets, wondering how long I should wait before I called them.
I most certainly wouldn’t have spent the night in the company of a good-looking man and not even considered jumping his bones. Cos even on the many (MANY) occasions when I discovered a bloke wanted me for my ear not my body, there was a time limit. Chucking out time at the pub, usually. Possibly midnight if he was very, very lucky. No bloke had exceeded the two in the morning mark before. Not if sex wasn’t ever going to be on the agenda.