83

When Jamie got home from work he rang Tony. No answer. He rang Tony’s mobile and left a message asking him to ring back.

He cleaned the kitchen and ate supper in front of a film about a giant alligator in a lake in Maine. Tony didn’t ring back.

He rang Tony’s flat early the following morning. No answer. He rang Tony’s mobile at lunchtime and left another message, keeping it as simple and straightforward as possible.

He went swimming after work to stop himself waiting for the return call. He did sixty lengths and came out feeling exhausted and relaxed for five whole minutes.

He tried ringing the flat again when he got home but to no avail.

He was tempted to go round and knock on the door. But he was beginning to think Tony was avoiding him and he didn’t want another scene.

It wasn’t sadness. Or not like any sadness he’d felt before. It was as if someone had died. It was just a thing to be lived with in the hope that it would get slowly less painful.

He kept ringing, every morning and every night. But he no longer expected an answer. It was a ritual. Something that gave shape to the day.

He’d retreated to a small room somewhere deep inside his head, running on autopilot. Getting up. Going to work. Coming home.

He imagined stepping into the road without looking and being hit by a car and not feeling any pain, any surprise, not feeling anything really, just a kind of detached interest at what was happening to this person who wasn’t really him anymore.

The following day he got a surprise phone call from Ian and agreed to go out for a drink. They’d met ten years back on a beach in Cornwall and realized they lived four streets away from each other back in London. Training to be a vet. Poor bloke came out at twenty-five, tested positive after four years of monogamy, went into a tailspin and started committing a slow expensive suicide with cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine and chaotic sex till he lost a foot in a motorbike accident, spent a month in hospital and disappeared to Australia.

Jamie had got a postcard of a wombat a few months later saying things were looking up, then nothing for two years. Now he was back.

He’d be having a crappier time than Jamie. Or he’d be bearing up stoically. Either way, a couple of hours in his company promised to make Jamie’s troubles seem manageable in comparison.

Jamie arrived late and was relieved to find he’d got there first. He was in the process of buying himself a lager, however, when a lean, tanned man in a tight black T-shirt with no discernible limp said, “Jamie,” and wrapped him in a bear hug.

And for fifteen or twenty minutes it all went swimmingly. It was good to hear how Ian had turned everything round. And his stories about bizarre horse diseases and big spiders were genuinely funny. Then Jamie explained about Tony, and Ian brought up the subject of Jesus, which didn’t happen in bars very often. He wasn’t completely whacko about it. Made it sound more like an amazing new diet. But coupled with the new body it was unnerving. And when Ian headed off for a pee, Jamie found himself staring at two men on the far side of the bar, one dressed as a devil (red velour catsuit, horns, trident), one as an angel (wings, white vest, puffball skirt), who were doubtless en route to a fancy dress party with the cowboy at the bar (chaps, spurs), but it made Jamie feel as if he’d taken some ill-advised drug, or that everyone else had. And he realized that he was meant to be at home here, but he wasn’t.

Then Ian came back to the table and sensed Jamie’s unease and changed the subject to his own rather active love life which seemed contrary to most of the teachings of Christianity insofar as Jamie understood them. Jamie was beginning to suffer that befuddled incomprehension old people felt when you told them about the Internet and he wondered whether he’d just failed to keep up with what had been happening in churches recently.

He went home, after a slightly uneasy parting with Ian during which he promised to think seriously about the possibility of coming to an evangelical meeting in Kings Cross, and Ian gave him another bear hug which Jamie now realized was a Christian hug, not a real one.

Several hours later he had a dream in which he was chasing Tony through an endless series of interconnecting rooms, some from his old school, some from properties he’d sold over the past few years, and he was shouting but Tony couldn’t hear him and Jamie couldn’t run because of the tiny creatures on the floors, like baby birds with human faces, which mewed and squealed when he trod on them.

When he finally woke at seven he found himself going straight to the phone to ring Tony. He caught himself just in time.

He was going to sort this out. He’d go round to Tony’s flat after work. Say his piece. Give him shit for not answering the phone. Find out if he’d moved. Whatever. Just put an end to all this waiting.

84

David was having a new boiler installed, so Jean was sitting with him in the garden of the Fox and Hounds. The idea made her nervous at first, but David was right. The place was empty and they were yards from the car if they needed to slip away.

She was drinking a gin and tonic, which she didn’t normally do on her way home from the school. If George asked questions she could always blame Ursula. She needed some Dutch courage. Her life was an unholy mess at the moment and she had to make it simpler.

She said, “I’m not sure how long we can carry on doing this.”

“You mean you want to stop?” asked David.

“Maybe. Yes.” It sounded so harsh now she was saying it out loud. “Oh, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“What’s changed?”

“George,” she said. “George being ill.” Wasn’t it obvious?

“And that’s all?” asked David.

He seemed untroubled, and she was beginning to find his confidence annoying. How could he sail through all this? “It’s not a small thing, David.”

He took her hand.

She said, “It feels different now. It feels wrong.”

He said, “You haven’t changed. I haven’t changed.”

It exasperated her sometimes. The way men could be so sure of themselves. They put words together like sheds or shelves and you could stand on them they were so solid. And those feelings which overwhelmed you in the small hours turned to smoke.

He said, “I’m not trying to bully you.”

“I know.” But she wasn’t sure about this.

“If you were ill, if you were seriously ill, I would still love you. If I was seriously ill, I hope you’d still love me.” He looked into her eyes. For the first time he looked sad and this put her at ease. “I love you, Jean. It’s not just words. I mean it. I’ll wait if I have to. I’ll put up with things. Because that’s what love means. And I know George is ill. And I know it makes your life difficult. But it’s something we have to live with and sort out. And I don’t know how we’ll do it, but we will.”

She found herself laughing.

“What’s funny?”

“Me,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. And it’s infuriating. But you’re still right.”

He squeezed her hand.

They sat in silence for a few moments. David fished something from his shandy and a large agricultural vehicle rumbled by on the far side of the hedge.

“I feel dreadful,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

“The wedding.”

He looked relieved.

“I was so thrown by what was happening to George that I…Katie must be having a dreadful time. Planning to get married. Then canceling the wedding. The two of them living together. I should have been sympathetic. But we just argued.”

“You had enough on your plate.”

“I know, but…”

“At the least the wedding’s off,” said David.

It seemed like a callous thing to say. “But it’s so sad.”