More pertinently: why is Ollie confiding in Bryony? It frightens her. He frightens her, with his slightly cold eyes and the new flashes of silver electrifying his hair and his stubble. He and Clem are both greying stylishly of course. Despite now living in Canterbury, they both still go to their old hairdresser in Shoreditch who gives them jagged, asymmetrical cuts that somehow emphasise their wisdom, rather than their age. Bryony is sure that Clem still books all Ollie’s hair appointments. She probably pays for them too.
‘I’d better go,’ she says, looking at her watch.
‘I’m off to the bar. Fancy a drink?’
‘I can’t. I mean, I’d love to, obviously. But, you know, the kids.’
‘Let James put them to bed for a change.’
Bryony frowns. In reality, James will already have put the kids to bed. In fact, he puts the kids to bed almost every night because of Bryony doing her reading, or her valuation reports, or having drunk a bit too much.
‘He wouldn’t know how,’ she says.
‘No?’ Ollie shrugs. ‘OK, well, I’m going to go and have a drink anyway.’
‘Where do you even get a drink on campus at this time of night?’
The bar is dark, uncomfortable and almost empty. All the furniture is cheap, sticky and has sharp, thin edges that would kill a toddler in less than five minutes. There’s football: Germany are playing Australia on a screen that covers most of one wall. Germany are winning, of course, but Bryony can’t see that from where she’s standing. Bryony wouldn’t be able to spot the German football team if they walked into this bar. She watched all England’s matches in the World Cup last year – yes, including the one against Germany where the ball went over the line but wasn’t a goal – and she even pretended to like it, and actually did understand the offside rule when Holly explained it to her, although she’s forgotten it now; but, really, football? Sometimes she has said to James that her love of fashion is like his love of football, and she has to admit that there is something gendered and therefore unfathomable about it all. Both football and fashion have beautiful patterns that you seem to need the right kind of chromosomes to see, although as James has repeatedly pointed out, fashion requires a lot of time and money and football just requires a subscription to Sky Sports or a nice local pub.
Ollie hands Bryony her large white wine without looking at her and picks up his pint of IPA without looking at it. He looks, with the same expressionless expression he uses when looking at his phone, at the big screen. As Bryony follows him to a table, she can just about see that one of the teams has scored one goal, and the other has not scored any goals.
‘Nice to see Australia losing something,’ says Ollie.
Bryony mumbles something indistinct that could be ‘That’s good’, but might equally be ‘That’s interesting’, or even, if you analysed the tone closely enough, ‘I really couldn’t give a shit.’
‘Shame the Germans don’t play cricket,’ Ollie says.
‘But then wouldn’t they beat England at that too?’ says Bryony.
‘Do you like sport?’
Bryony can’t work out whether the emphasis in that sentence has fallen on the word ‘you’, the word ‘like’ or the word ‘sport’.
‘Not really. I quite like tennis, I suppose, but that’s only because of Holly.’
She sips her wine. It’s too sweet and too warm. At home she has most of a bottle of 2001 Chablis in the fridge. It cost around thirty pounds, but that’s worth it, right, for a bottle of wine to drink at home, when you’d pay that for a bottle of really crap wine in a restaurant? Anyway, the Chablis is cool and crisp, of course, but with just a hint of hay bales in the early morning – don’t laugh – and, to be honest, well, just a touch of horse manure. Bryony loves wine that tastes of barnyards or stables. She’s been looking forward to that Chablis all day. Now she has 250mls of this crap, Pinot Grigio or something, to get through, and she feels slightly dizzy from not eating since half past five. Why the fuck did she order a large glass of white wine in the first place when all it’s going to do is get warmer and warmer? And she has to drive home. And not say anything stupid.
‘So I guess you’re not my teacher any more,’ she says to Ollie.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Now we can fuck.’
What? OK. Bryony has gone bright red. She must have done. Ollie is still looking at the football. She looks at what he is looking at. Someone in a white shirt kicks the ball to the goalkeeper. It’s all a bit blurry. He’s not trying very hard to . . . Oh, of course. It’s the goalkeeper on his own team. Bryony does not understand why people kick the ball to their own goalkeeper when surely they should be trying to get it to the other goal. But . . . Now someone’s blowing a whistle. Everyone stops running. It’s half time.
Ollie looks at her. ‘Er, joke. Sorry.’
‘No, it’s OK. It’s . . .’
‘Anyway, what about the PhD? I’ll be supervising that, surely? You can’t fuck your supervisor. You’ve applied, right?’
‘What?’
‘Joke.’
‘I know.’
‘So?’
‘Yeah. I applied online at the weekend.’
‘And for funding?’
Bryony frowns. ‘Yeah.’
Ollie sips his IPA.
‘OK. Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but do you actually need funding?’
‘What?’
‘I mean, do you actually need funding more than, say, Grant, whose father lost his foot in an accident in a factory that won’t pay him any compensation? Or Helen, who grew up on a council estate in Herne Bay and whose head-teacher once had to buy her a coat because her parents spent all their dole money on smack? I mean, I don’t want to put you off or anything, but . . .’ He laughs. ‘Well, to be honest I do kind of want to put you off. I mean you guys are pretty minted, right, you and James?’
Ollie says all of this as if it’s another joke. He even adds some ironic gravity to what he says about Grant and Helen so that Bryony knows that he knows that their narratives are just that, narratives, and that reality is so much more complex and dignified than tired old sob stories. The only thing is, it’s also obvious that he’s totally serious, so . . .
‘Well, actually . . .’
‘And of course – and I don’t mean to be harsh, but it’s happening, right, so we might as well admit it – there’s Great-Aunt Oleander’s estate to be divided up. What’s that house worth? A million or two? Plus the business.’
‘She’s probably left it all to Augustus,’ Bryony says. She has already had this conversation with James. What is it about men? Can people not just be sad for a few days before starting to talk about who gets what? But the fact is that, to be blunt, Bryony has spent most of what she inherited from her parents on clothes, wine, shoes and stuff for the kids, and she and James don’t have that much money any more. Well, they have some money. But not so much that Bryony can blow £950 in ten minutes in Fenwick on eye-shadow and moisturiser as she did on that hot, peculiar day last summer. They don’t have enough money to live like Augustus and Cecily, or Beatrix, of course, with all their property and bonds and God knows what. Bryony and James have enough money to go to the Maldives at Christmas, which is what Bryony wants to do, but not enough money to buy a forest just outside Littlebourne, which is what James wants to do. If Bryony does inherit part of Oleander’s estate, she has promised to buy James the forest on the basis that, yes, of everything a person could choose to do in the entire fucking world, she really wants to spend every summer in a dark, damp forest, picking poisonous toadstools and getting wet all the time and DYING. Even if she doesn’t die, her thighs will chafe, which people think is funny but is not funny. But maybe James will get a book out of it. And Bryony will be thin by the time they have to actually go to the forest, which means that everything will be different. She’ll be like a woodland nymph, dressed only in pure white cobwebs, and . . .
‘What are you and Clem going to do with your share? I mean, if t
here is a share, which I still think there probably won’t be.’
‘Probably a teaching buyout for me, so I can finish my book.’ Ollie finishes his IPA. ‘It’s just so fucking busy here all the time. Clem wants a pond in the garden. Wants to make a film about it.’ He looks at Bryony’s wine. ‘You want another one? I’m going to get another one.’
Bryony shakes her head. He goes to the bar. Bryony wants to pee, but she can’t leave while Ollie is at the bar. Perhaps he’d think that she’d walked out on him because of what he said about fucking, or about the scholarship. Perhaps then he’d leave too. Would that be such a terrible thing? Then Bryony could go home and start again on her evening, and drink the Chablis instead of this Pinot Grigio and love James like a real wife would. There are 165 calories in this glass of wine, but Bryony won’t log it in her food diary later because it isn’t very nice and she didn’t really mean to have it. When she gets home she’ll have 250mls of Chablis and she’ll log that instead. She also won’t log the sausage roll and chips she had in the dining hall before this evening’s class, because, after all, she wouldn’t normally have something like that, and now that term is more or less over she is confident that she will never even go to the dining hall any more, and after all where else would you find sausage rolls and chips? Fuck it. She just won’t fill in her food diary at all today. She’ll start afresh tomorrow. That means she can drink all the Chablis when she gets home. And she could have a packet of crisps now. Could she eat a packet of crisps in front of Ollie? No. Well, maybe. Actually, what Bryony really wants is a cigarette, but that would just be nuts. She gave up for the last time over three years ago. No calories in fags, of course. But James hates her smoking, and so do the kids. Last time Bryony smoked, Holly cried all night and threatened to kill herself.
Ollie comes back with a pint of IPA and a medium glass of white wine.
‘Here,’ he says. ‘Sorry I’m being a bit of a cunt. It’s been a long day.’
175 ml. Another 130 calories. And it will be warm by the time she gets to it. Warmer. What she should do, what she should really do, is wait for Ollie to go outside for a cigarette and then tip the rest of the large glass away somewhere and start again on the slightly cooler and smaller new glass. OK, how would she actually do that? She could just take it back to the bar. She could take it back to the bar and explain that she really shouldn’t drink this because she’s driving and could they just get rid of it for her, please, but in such a way that the man she’s with doesn’t see? Or she could just return it because it’s shit. She could go up to the bar and say, ‘Your wine is too shit even for students,’ or something cleverer that she would think of. But then they’d just give her more of something else. It’s so hard to lose weight when all the time people are giving you things full of calories. Ollie starts rolling a cigarette.
‘Actually,’ she says, ‘can you do me one of those as well?’
The football is back on. Improbably, Australia scores a goal.
‘Fuck me,’ he says. ‘Game on. You coming?’
They smoke by the university duck pond. Bryony wants to vomit, but she has to admit that once she is over the initial nausea, the cigarette tastes amazing. She feels mellow, all of a sudden, almost the way she felt that time she made tea from the wrong caddy at Fleur’s cottage. She’d forgotten it was like this. She was thinner when she smoked as well. How could she have ever stopped doing it? Smoking was like having a best friend who always listens and never judges you.
‘It would be nice to have a garden pond,’ she says. ‘I guess now the kids are a bit older, but they’re so expensive and . . .’
‘If you get a scholarship you could afford a pond.’
‘That’s not what I mean.’ She sighs. ‘Anyway, yes, all right, fine. I’ll pull out. I don’t need the scholarship as much as Grant and Helen need it. Point taken. But the main thing is that they’re better students than me, so why would I waste my time going up against them?’ She sighs again. And draws deeply on the cigarette.
Ollie screws up his face. ‘Why do you think they’re better students than you?’
‘They say more.’
‘You got the top mark for your essay.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yeah. So you’d probably get the scholarship. But they need it more. And they won’t come without it, so you’d basically be doing them out of their doctorates. You’ll come anyway, of course.’
‘I guess so. Well, no pond then.’ And no forest. ‘Never mind. Hope you get yours.’
‘No kids to drown in ours,’ Ollie says. ‘Never will be.’ He throws his cigarette end in the duck pond. ‘And because of that, my wife has started hating me. But you’ll know all about that.’
Bryony does not have any idea what he’s talking about.
‘I don’t have any idea what . . .’
‘Look, ignore me. I’m being a total cunt. Sorry. Fuck it. Let’s go back.’
Inside, Australia have scored another goal. A penalty. It’s 2–1.
‘Well,’ Ollie says. ‘Miracles do happen.’ He goes to buy another drink.
Bryony should have left by now. She hasn’t even texted James to tell him she’ll be late. Why has she not even done that? She could have done that while Ollie was at the bar, or while he was outside smoking, if she hadn’t been outside smoking with him. She should do it now. When she gets in she’ll have to clean her teeth before saying hello to anyone. That might sort of fool the kids, but it won’t fool James. Whatever she does now, he’ll know she’s been drinking, and smoking. At this rate she won’t even be able to finish the lovely Chablis because James will probably be in bed reading, and what kind of wife sits up drinking while her husband lies in bed reading?
She quickly texts him now: End of term drinks. No reception until now, sorry. Home soon as I can get away. Love you. Somebody, probably Fleur, was telling Bryony recently about an app people get that writes their text messages for them. In order to do this, it has a database of the things people always say in text messages. Sorry. See you soon. Leaving now. I love you. It must have been Fleur. Yes, it was over tea on Sunday while they were not talking about Oleander’s death and how Fleur felt about it. One of the celebrities had told Fleur about this app, expecting her to disapprove. But for Fleur there was no difference, not really, between an app supplying the words ‘I love you’ and one’s fingers typing what are essentially just words anyway. Bryony surprised herself by saying something back about Derrida, and arguing that it’s not that words are meaningless: quite the opposite. Words separate things. They create meaning. Without words we wouldn’t know the difference between a table and a planet. Without words, would anything exist at all? Then Fleur, being Fleur, said there’s no difference between a table and a planet anyway because the whole universe is just an illusion. Then Holly rolled her eyes and said, ‘OK, you are both officially mad.’
‘Clem doesn’t hate you,’ she says to Ollie when he comes back. ‘How could she? I mean, you’re very attractive – I’m saying that objectively, of course – and your book is going to be amazing, and . . .’ Bryony touches Ollie’s arm in a way that is supposed to be reassuring. Bryony doesn’t touch many men’s arms, at least not any more. She is surprised to find how firm this one is. Ollie’s biceps are incredible: rocks the size of tennis balls. Bryony’s intellectual mind retreats into what could be an endless ellipsis while her vaginal walls immediately start producing fluid. Biology is such an easy lay.
‘Maybe she thinks she doesn’t,’ he says. ‘But underneath, she does.’
‘No. That’s not right. She’s lucky to have you.’
He sighs. ‘I don’t know.’
He’s probably right. Bryony was the lucky one, getting James. He has already texted her back: No hurry. Hope you have fun. Kids in bed. Drive safely. Love you forever.
When Ollie gets in, Clem is asleep. Or pretending to be asleep to make him feel bad about staying out. Or perhaps some mixture of the two. He shits in the spare toilet before joini
ng her. Here’s the game: he is being REALLY, REALLY quiet so as not to disturb her because she is so clearly REALLY, REALLY asleep. She cracks first.
‘Hello.’
And he does love her. That’s the thing. He adores her.
‘Hello.’
‘Are you having an affair? Do I need to start shaving my legs more or something?’ She yawns. ‘Please tell me it’s not a student.’
‘No, no. You’re quite safe. I was out romancing Frying Pan.’
This is what he calls Bryony. How do these nicknames start? Well, Bry rhymes with Fry, obviously. Bryony and frying pan have the same number of syllables. They are both dactylic, which means that the stress falls on the first syllable of the three. The nickname is also metonymic, because Bryony is fat, and frying pans represent, or in some way stand for, fat. But you can analyse these things too much. Clem knows who he means, and while she never joins in his nicknaming, she doesn’t stop him doing it either. It’s basically because she must still believe that he is taking the piss out of himself when he does it, and not the other person. And his nicknames aren’t that good, to be honest. If Clem comes up with something it’s brilliant. If Ollie does it’s usually just a bit weird. Like all his book proposals.
‘God, I must give Bryony a ring about next Thursday.’ Clem rolls onto her back. ‘How was your class?’
‘Fucking awful.’
Ollie can see Clem’s Forever Fish swimming bag neatly packed for the morning on the yellow wooden chair on her side of the room. The neatness is partly to spite him, just as the neatness all around the house is partly to spite him. The yellow wooden chair on his side of the room is empty. It is empty because their cleaner, Alison, insists on putting everything away. Anything that is left out is dumped, hidden or imprisoned in whatever cupboard or on whatever shelf happens to be nearest. Ollie looks and finds yesterday’s gym shorts hanging up in the wardrobe. This is stupid because, first, who hangs shorts in a wardrobe? Second, they stink. Ollie would report this to Clem, but she would just lazily say something about how he isn’t a child and can he put his shorts in the washing basket if he wants them washed rather than put away. Under the reign of Alison, these are the only two things that can happen to objects in this house: they are either washed, or they are put away. Clem has no qualms about telling Ollie off, but will never mention how she really feels to Alison. But of course, if Clem feels really strongly about something she never actually says it to anyone. This is why Ollie reads her journal. And because she knows he reads her journal, she never writes what she really feels in it (and sometimes goes so far as to actually lie, for example all that stuff about how she REALLY, REALLY loves him).