Chapter 31
31
Aware things have got heavier than we want them to be, we manage to steer back to discussing the joys of life in Park Slope and matching it to my scant touristy knowledge. I tell him about Mark’s job in San Francisco to try to sound like more of an internationalist, hoping I’m eloquent enough that he doesn’t notice I’m piggybacking on my ex-boyfriend’s accomplishments.
As we decide we’re having a cheese board instead of dessert, another diner interrupts us.
“Excuse me...,” says a woman with gray hair in a bun.
“Beverley, don’t!” says a well-spoken man standing behind her. “Leave them in peace.”
“I want to let you know, you’re the loveliest couple I think I’ve ever seen.” She puts a palm to her chest in a theatrical swoon. I suddenly remember the girls at school and the smudged ink initials ‘FH’ on their books.
“Really...?” we both say, simultaneously, looking at each other in surprise.
Although I’m sure my surprise is the greatest. I’m not anything like an equal to Fin aesthetically, I don’t think, all false modesty aside. Shows what sitting opposite him can do. Like when film crews hold up reflectors.
“I’ve enjoyed watching you.” She leans down and squeezes my arm, resting on the table. “Have a long and happy life together, won’t you. For me.”
She picks up my left hand, sees the ring finger is ringless.
“Ask her, you fool!” she stage-hisses to Fin.
“Forgive my wife, she’s had a lot of Bordeaux,” says the man, and we laugh, and they leave.
An awkward pause ensues.
“OK, since Bev’s brought it up, we can’t avoid it any longer. Will you marry me?” Fin says. “We don’t know each other but we can’t make a worse mess than most people who do get to know each other first, right?”
“Since you put it like that.”
I laugh gratefully, and we clink glasses. I initially took his words as a graceful way of breaking the tension, but he’s gazing at me in a way that might, just possibly, be construed as flirtatious? Nothing thus far has prepared me for Finlay Hart, flirting. Had you asked me the one thing he’d never do, I’d have said flirting.
It’s not fair, in these surroundings, in his white shirt, with his bone structure, after Jesus has dropkicked me through the goalposts of life.
“Can I tell you something weird, without you thinking I’m weird?” Fin says.
“Probably depends on it not being too weird?” I say, trying to reassert some sass, as I feel vulnerable and a little bit... what would my mum call it? Squiffy.
“Years back, maybe five years ago, I was in a bar in the East Village. The kind of self-regarding place that plays Yo La Tengo and Whitney Houston and the barmen have sex-offender mustaches. There’s a dog walking around and it serves melon-flavored cocktails in jelly jars... The dog’s not serving.”
“Jelly?”
“ Jam jars, sorry. See, I’ve got some American in me now. And ‘Catch’ by The Cure came on, you know it?”
“Yes, this is my wheelhouse! Kind of a ditty...? ‘ I’d see her when the days got colder ’—that one?”
“Yes!” Fin’s the most animated I’ve ever seen him.
“That song came on and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I got this pin-sharp image of you standing at the door when you used to call for Susie. A big bow in your hair. Your solemn eyes.”
I gasp. “I didn’t think you remembered me! Or any of that. Or I’d have mentioned it.”
Finlay frowns. “Of course I do. I’ve been away for a while but I don’t have amnesia. Listening to that song, thousands of miles away, so many years after: I realized what it was about you that felt so unusual.”
“Was it the Edwardian ghost hair accessory?”
“You always looked so worried. For a kid.”
“Did I?”
He plays with his wineglass stem again and looks at me, and I feel seen, though I’m not fully sure why.
“Yeah. Well, to me. Maybe it takes one to know one.”
I puzzle.
“Shall we get the bill?” Fin says.
“F ANCY A NIGHTCAP?” I say, when we get back to The Caley. “On me too! I don’t like not paying for anything.”
“Why not,” Fin says.
Its bar is a narrow, galley space so we have to sit side by side on high stools at a counter, which I always like.
I watch the barman rattle ice in a shaker like a maraca after we order two smoked old-fashioneds.
With minutes to go, I remember my nine p.m. check in with Ed, and apologize while I hack out an EVERYTHING FINE, SITUATION NORMAL bulletin, without explaining that’s what it is.
“Sorry, meant to reply to my friend Ed about something,” I say.
“Is Ed the fair-haired guy at the funeral, who did the reading?”
“Yes!”
“He’s your ex, right?”
“Ed? No, no, no, not my ex. Nope.”
“Ah.”
“Is this what we call... fishing?” I say, and Fin smiles back.
“No, it’s making conversation, when you politely ask a question and the person is free to respond, ‘None of your business,’” Finlay says, the quote marks clear in the intonation.
He sips his drink and I cast my eyes upward.
“Oh, very clever. You’re asking as you overheard our argument at the wake?”
“It was quite heated but I’m not sure I followed what had gone on. You read a letter? A letter from the box of personal items you weren’t going to look at, but, hey, that’s not important right now...”
Fin does a comic look into the middle distance while tilting the glass to his lips pose and I guffaw, my stomach clenching with guilt. I’m still slightly stunned he has such levity in his repertoire: like your mate sitting down at a street piano and bashing out a fluent Moonlight Sonata.
“Apart from that one moment of weakness,” I say, hastily. “Which, as you clearly bore witness, fully, karmically repaid me, so you don’t need to bother shaming me.”
“Right. So if he’s not your ex, why is it an issue he slept with my sister? Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”
I hard swallow both at the amount he knows, and his asking a question I’ve levelled in great embarrassment at myself.
“It’s complicated...”
“We’re in one of those intense situations where we see each other every day for a few days and then never again in our lives, so what would usually be indiscreet, isn’t, right?” Finlay says.
“Yes! This is like a holiday romance with no holiday and no romance,” I say, with the boldness of a woman who’s half a centimeter deep in orange-flavored paraffin.
I describe the letter to Ed at university going astray, Hester, the engagement, the sense of understanding between us, and my discovery regarding Susie, in context. I summarize everything Ed said when he came around and gave Rog chew sticks. It feels good to purge it by telling someone, so much so it outweighs any hesitation and my self-consciousness.
Fin listens to it and says at the end: “I see why you were upset.”
I breathe out. “Thank you.”
“Want my take?”
“Yes,” I say, and brace, as Finlay is sufficiently clever that even if he gets it wrong, he’s going to sound right.
“Your boy Edward has had his cake and eaten all of it.”
My eyebrows rise.
“He’s had exactly what he wanted from each of you, hasn’t he? Adoration from you, steady commitment from his fiancée, casual sex with Susie. It’s hurt all of you in different ways. Susie only in terms of her memory, as far as we know. But who knows? Must’ve torn her up, keeping it from you.”
“Yeah, I guess so?”
“He chose to start things with you, he chose to let them drop, he chose to start dating someone else and let you find out the way you did. And he chose to cheat. Yet he doesn’t own those as choices, but as pieces of bad luck? Beware the Nicest Guy in the Room, who doesn’t think his failures are the same as everyone else’s.”
I suppress a smile at Fin having definitely not put himself at risk of being accused of “Nicest Guy in the Room–ing.”
“Hmmm. I mean, I’m sure he didn’t set out intending it... with me, with Susie. Even with Hester, given he thought I’d not written back...”
God, I can hear myself. Let it go, Eve.
“That’s not a particularly useful measure of your enemies, motive. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that harm done with explicit conscious intention of doing another person harm accounts for about two percent of all harm inflicted. That descriptor pretty much only applies to dictators in banana republics, serial killers, and PE teachers.”
Finlay pauses, to the relief of my whirring brain. I’m not sure I’ve ever been given this much in one go to think about since history A-level cramming.
“These are good, aren’t they? Strong but good.” He takes an other sip of old-fashioned. “You had no idea whatsoever about the thing with my sister?” he says.
“No. What breaks me is that I can never ask why she did it, given she knew what I felt. She’d say she was pissed, I guess? What else could she say? It doesn’t feel like the whole answer. She could’ve pulled anyone. She went for him.”
“I think I know why she did it.”
“Why?”
“Jealousy.”
“Really? But she never fancied Ed in the slightest.”
“Jealousy of you, not of him. Jealousy of the feelings between you. Jealousy and envy manifest in many ways. Plus, if there was action of any sort around, my sister wanted a slice.” Fin smiles. “Take it from one who shared a toy box with her.”
I feel my disloyalty, using Fin as a sounding board, and being dissected like this; it’s too efficiently on point to be comfortable.
I can’t believe you’re listening to my wanker of a brother trash-talk me! UGH... please tell me you don’t fancy him?! That’s it, I’m gonna barf.
Ed, in a toilet? I say to her, sternly. She falls silent.
I pick at a drink coaster. “She’d have thought my tragic love for Ed was exactly that though, tragic. Why would she envy it?”
“If you don’t mind me saying, based on a very short acquaintance—you seem to take people at their word, which is a really good quality, but maybe leaves you short of an answer at times. Susie mocked plenty of things, but it wasn’t necessarily representative of how she felt, deep down. As far as I know, she never fell in love with anyone. You were in love, and that would’ve fascinated her. What happened with Ed... she was probably trying to find out why. She was exploring, trying to feel what you felt. She was rifling through your closets when you were away.”
I sip my drink and think I have amateur-hour tangoed with an absolute ballroom professional here. His analysis is a series of controlled explosions.
“She was snooping?”
“Yeah, emotionally, experientially, snooping. You were with your ex throughout the Ed thing? The one who’s now on the West Coast? How did that work, given your hang-up?” Fin says.
I gulp and shrug and feel ancient guilt.
“Like any torch you carry over a very long time, I suppose. I put the torch in a cupboard for the duration and there was still a faint glow. When Mark and I fell apart, it was still there. Mark accused me of not being willing to leave the group behind and move with him to London. He principally meant Susie, but I’ll always wonder if Ed was a factor too. He must have been, I suppose.”
“What was your reason for not going at the time?”
“Well... Mark was this laconic, funny, super-talented, and ambitious hack type. I admired him more than I ever felt feelings for him. I turned office banter into going to the pub and the pub into a one-night stand and a one-night stand into a fling, and a fling into a relationship. It was all powered by wishing and hoping for the love of my life to have arrived. But at the point he wanted me to give my life up for a life with him, it was too much. The jig was up. I’d conned myself first and Mark second. It was shit of me. But I didn’t intend it...” I trail off and break into a grin. “Hah. Like you said. God. It’s so clear, when I look at it now.”
Fin smiles back. “Yes, relationships. So obvious what was going on in hindsight. Especially when described to third parties in hotel bars, over some sort of classic drink with four units of alcohol and a curl of fruit peel in it.”
My phone blinks with a WhatsApp message from Ed. I slide to open it.
Good to hear from you, Harris. Justin tells me you’re going on dressy dinner dates?! Is the brother’s idea that you might find his dad down the leg of a pair of silk stockings? X
It’s so lumpenly manipulative, in the black and white speech bubble of text. That is the possessiveness of a boyfriend, with a built-in plausible deniability of Concerned BFF if I called him on it. I feel something approaching contempt.
What space does Ed imagine making for me, on the other side of his wedding, their having kids? It’s like he’s got me trapped playing the Janeane Garofalo role in a Will They Won’t They? , which he knows, in his heart of hearts, is already a They Never Did . He’s going to marry Uma Thurman. It’s the hope that kills you.
“What about you, then?” I say, thinking I have a clear run at nosiness, now. “You and... Rowena? Romilly!”
“Ah.” Fin smiles an eye-creasing, sheepish smile, and looks into his drink as his hair falls forward a little, and my heart goes boom, whether I like it or not. “She’s my ex, as said.”
“I got a sense from her call she is a semidetached ex.”
“Yes, your senses are correct. I ended it in the spring, but she’s convinced I’m going to change my mind.”
“Are you?”
“Oof. More of these, before I can do that? Same again, thanks,” Fin says at my nodding, and gestures to the barman. “No, I’m not, but I have a relationship with her five-year-old that I’m finding very hard to walk away from. Also, she said a thing in our final fight that I can’t forget. I’ve lain awake in the dark, thinking about it.”
“Was it... life is one vile fuckin’ task after another ? Al Swearengen, Deadwood .”
Fin laughs, fully corpses, and I know I’ve definitively broken through the hard carapace with him. Susie would’ve found that funny too.
“She said... ah, thanks.” Fresh drinks arrive. Fin waits for the barman to move away. “She said... you don’t want me because I remind you too much of yourself.”
“... Oh.”
“Mmm.”
“What did she mean?”
“She means—well, she said as much—I’m tough and I’m cynical and my faith in people is broken. But I want an optimistic, kind, more gentle person to restore all that. Someone who, if I actually got, she said, I would eat alive and pick my teeth with her bones.”
“ Oh .” On my bare knowledge, Romilly sounds like she might have him sussed.
“Plus, she said, ‘That sweetness and light girl has no chat ,’” he grins.
“No chat?”
“No wit, no comebacks, no spark. Can’t make me laugh.”
“Did she have someone in mind?”
“No. It was very Romilly to be disgusted by even the thought of the next person I might date.”
“Why does it keep you awake?”
“Because I’m forty in four years’ time, and I worry she’s right. When you pass on something that has good things about it, but isn’t good enough, you’re gambling that something one day will feel better, aren’t you? Stick, or twist. I’m getting old enough to say: I might be wrong about that.”
I pause. “Fuck, you sound like my mum! Don’t tell me mum was right about Mark!”
“Well. She remarried a ‘human burp.’ Equally you can be too accommodating.”
I honk loud enough that the barman looks over.
Fin’s phone, lying on the bar, bursts into light. Not only a call, a full-screen picture, a FaceTime. Featuring first a red-haired woman, then jostled by a small red-haired boy. I think: bit late to have a child up? Then remember New York is hours behind.
“Oh, speak of the devil,” Fin says, with a startle at Romilly’s features. “I best get this.”
“Of course,” I say, swigging the last of my drink and pushing down off my stool.
“Meet at nine in the lobby for the grand tour of Leith?” Fin says.
“You’re on!”
Upstairs, I get into my room, pull my pajamas on, tease my hair out of its pins, and brush it smooth under the bathroom light.
As I pad through to the bedroom, I see my phone flashing on the nightstand. I pick it up—it’s an unknown caller, an international number with mysterious digits.
Out of the sheer intrigue, I answer it.