Chapter 36
36
‘ G oose?’
Martin nodded. He had a drink in each hand, a glass of Coke and a glass of wine. ‘I got you a drink,’ he said, ‘but I see you already have one.’
Stunned, Kay looked at the drinks. She hadn’t even seen him come in, let alone order drinks.
‘You still prefer white to red?’
Now she looked at him. ‘And you drink Coke?’
‘I do now,’ he said. ‘Is it OK if I sit?’
She nodded. He’d lost weight and hair, and she was trying to think how long it had been since she had last seen him. It had to be at least two years. Certainly not since Alex had told her that Martin had separated from his partner, a move that had coincided with her becoming ill.
‘You don’t have to drink it,’ he said as he put the wine on the table. ‘I see you already have one.’
She snapped back into the moment. ‘I may need it.’
He smiled. ‘It wasn’t too presumptuous then?’
‘No. What was presumptuous,’ she added, before he could speak, ‘was staying anonymous, when you knew it was me? You obviously knew? Don’t answer that. Of course you did!’
‘Of course I did,’ he said, and his smile faded.
‘That’s not fair, Martin.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s not even nice.’
As he filled his lungs, his shoulders rose to his ears. Slowly, he let the air out again. ‘Would you have come,’ he said, ‘if you’d known it was me?’
‘No.’ Kay picked up her glass. She couldn’t look at him. Not because she was angry, but because she was confused. Of course she wouldn’t have come. Of course she wouldn’t have dressed up, washed her hair, got excited for and about, a man who had left her for an affair that had lasted all of three months. The only circumstances under which she would have agreed to meet, were exactly these. Those in which she didn’t know. And yet she couldn’t deny what she was feeling. She was happy she was here, and she wasn’t unhappy to be here, with him. ‘Well,’ she said as she turned back, ‘as you’ve already paid for it.’ And she pulled the second glass of wine towards her.
Martin visibly relaxed. He nodded at her hair. ‘I like it, he said quietly. ‘It suits you shorter.’
‘Thank you.’ She felt her cheeks warm, which was ridiculous given the compliment was coming from a man who had seen her give birth. ‘It grew back like this,’ she said, ‘after the radiotherapy.’ Her hand was at the back of her neck, self-conscious.
‘Well, at least you still have hair to grow back.’ And now it was his turn to colour, to pat the bald spot on the top of his head, his mouth turning up in a wry smile.
‘It’s not too bad.’ But this close, she could see how thin his hair really was. Another couple of years and he would be completely bald. She felt a pang of sympathy. No wonder he’d stayed in the shadows. The courage it took to put yourself out there. Older and greyer, fatter and balder. Not everyone who stayed anonymous did so for nefarious reasons. Some, she felt sure, were simply hiding. Not from wives or girlfriends either. They were hiding from themselves: from who they had become. All those photos of motorcycles and mountains? They were pleas. Petitions from men who knew time was no longer on their side to please look past their age, their grey hair, their no-hair, their jowls, their whiskers. See me . See who I am inside. Who I still feel like. And the irony of the fact that the one man in the world who should never have needed to stay in the shadows, had chosen to do so - the man she would always be able to see from the inside out - did not escape her. She could have laughed. She did. She took a sip of wine and shaking her head put the glass down.
‘Something funny?’
Yes, it was funny, and sad that he couldn’t see it. Together, they had the one thing that time could not distort or make ugly. They had a past. ‘Just life,’ she said, then nodding at his receding hairline. ‘I think I prefer it to the style you had the first time we met.’
Martin laughed. ‘You mean the perm? It was 1988, Kay. Everyone had a perm.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘No.’ He lowered his chin and wrapped his hands around his glass. ‘You were never swayed by anything. Do you remember where we met?’
Kay smiled. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Rock Bottom Lounge,’ he started.
‘The Student Union bar,’ she finished.
‘We had some great times there.’
‘We saw some great bands there.’
‘OMD, Human League, Altered Images …’
‘The Jam, Spandau …’
‘Cider and Black for you.’
‘A pint of Fosters for you.’ Kay laughed. ‘We made a good team. My Student Union vice-president, to your president.’
‘We did.’ Crossing his arms, Martin dipped his head as he smiled. He had a generous mouth, with lips that seemed to be perpetually shaped upward. It gave him the appearance of always being happy or at least pleased with life. Of course, she knew that wasn’t the case but as Kay looked at him, she remembered how attractive she had found it. The way he took life easy, the way he shrugged it all off.
She picked up her glass. By the window, the men in the work shirts were still talking, shoulders rounded, and arms crossed as they leaned over the table, talking and talking and talking. ‘We were like that once,’ she murmured. ‘We had so much to say, we were going to change the world.’
Following her eyeline, Martin shook his head. ‘I was never going to change anything, Kay. I couldn’t even get out of bed in time to catch the coach to London for the CND march.’
Kay laughed. ‘It was a very early start. And remember, how cold your place used to be? Getting out of bed wasn’t easy. The curtains used to stick to the window.’
‘That’s because it was next to a funeral parlour.’ As he leaned towards her, Martin’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘You do realise that every time you stayed over, you were sleeping three feet from a corpse.’
Her lips twitched. ‘So romantic.’
‘No.’ He sat back. ‘I was never romantic enough. And as for us changing the world? It was the other way round, wasn’t it? The world changed us.’
‘Did it?’ Tears sprung. Uncomfortable, she looked away. Did Martin mean Alex? Was he talking about the way their world had bent and shaped itself to accommodate their son? How horizons had shrunk, and walls closed in, as they do, in a perfectly proportionate ratio: the greater the child’s needs, the smaller the world.
‘I failed to adapt,’ he said. ‘That’s what happened. I failed.’
He did mean Alex. As she turned back to face him, she pressed her lips together. There was no point in denying what he had said, no point in offering words of comfort or mitigation. He had failed.
Neither of them spoke. She watched as the men by the window stood, scooping phones and keys, downing pints. Faces easy with laughter, all of them with full heads of hair.
‘You made it,’ Martin said.
‘Made what?’ She turned.
‘The bus.’ He smiled. ‘You got up in time. You always did.’
Kay shrugged. ‘Well as you said, it was cold ––’
‘No.’ He shook his head, his voice low. ‘Don’t make excuses for me, Kay. I don’t do it for myself. Not anymore. That’s why I stick to this.’ And he picked up his Coke.
Kay didn’t speak. The years following her divorce had been a quagmire of hurt and disappointment, and at times she had honestly believed she would never feel happy again. But she had. Oh, so slowly, she had begun to find herself on stable ground, woken up, gone about her day and, looking at the clock, realised that she hadn’t thought about him once. It was a lonely and inhospitable place, the place she had dragged herself out of, and she had no desire to go back. What was there to discover anyway? That the man that she had loved had proved to be a disappointment? He was right. She shouldn’t make excuses.
Holding her glass at her lips, she stared across the room. Was that really the whole truth? Or was it just the assessment she had made at the time, and nurtured ever since: a stand formed from the front-row seat of a marriage in crisis? Sixteen years further away and no matter how she tried to focus in, her perspective had changed, and the view of the stage on which they had moved around each other was different. Alex, she could see so clearly now, had filled her up. From the moment of his birth, he had filled her every sense. There hadn’t been room for a husband. She hadn’t – and this was something she’d had a long time to think about – always wanted one. ‘Why did you match with me,’ she said as she put her glass down. ‘Why are you here, Martin?’
For a long moment he looked at her. ‘I wanted to talk to you again,’ he said quietly. ‘It was always so easy.’
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘You could have picked up the phone.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘We both know I couldn’t have done that.’
Kay nodded. The extent of their communication for many years had been nothing more than an occasional text, and odd as it was this was probably the only way. How sad then. How sad in this lonely world, that two people who had once been so easy in each other’s company, should become so estranged. ‘Are you hungry?’ It was a question that surprised her, as much as it obviously did him.
‘I could eat,’ he said slowly. ‘There’s a nice ––’
‘How about my place?’
He blinked. ‘Your place?’
Kay shrugged. ‘Alex is out. He’s always out these days. And I have a fridge full of home-made macaroni cheese. Why not?’