Chapter 27
27
When I returned, the lounge was empty. Moments later, Joey arrived, looking excited.
“You won’t believe it,” he said. “Courtney. Guess who she’s married to.”
I had no clue. “Ike Blakely?”
“You’re obsessed with him! And you’re ruining my great story.”
I tutted. “Narky Joey.”
He looked hurt. “I’m not so narky anymore.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Have you?” He brightened. “Okay! Courtney is married…to the cop! Last night’s officer of the law!”
I was dumbfounded. “You. Are. Joking me! How d’you know?”
“First chance to talk to her all day.” He nodded towards reception. “I asked why he’d shown up last night. Just to piss her off, she said.”
I shook my head. “Other people’s marriages. Baffling …” I realized this could also apply to Joey, so I trailed off.
Too quickly, he turned and called towards the bar. “What’s good, Emilien?”
“Nothing. Especially not the stew.”
“The other night I had a toasted sandwich,” I said. “Served with crimped crisps. Delicious.”
“You had me at crimped crisps. Two toasted cheese and ham sandwiches with fries, Emilien.” Then to me, “And to drink?”
“For people who don’t drink a lot, Joey, we’re…drinking a lot.”
“Because I don’t have my running stuff with me. Got to burn off the stress some way.”
Surprisingly, there was a wine list. I gave it to Joey, who furtively slid on his reading glasses. “Don’t laugh,” he muttered.
“Who’s laughing? You look like a man who can see.”
“I look like my granddad.”
“Give me a proper look.”
Sheepishly, he lifted his head.
The tortoiseshell frames brought out the green in his eyes. “Bet they didn’t come from Specsavers. They suit you. You’re giving, like, ‘hip business dude.’?”
He scoffed at this.
“Seriously,” I said. “If I didn’t know you I’d think you looked hot. And cross.”
“How come you don’t need glasses?”
“Because I got my eyes lasered. But…” I wiggled my fingers at him. “I’m getting arthritis in my hands. Happy to show you my swollen knuckles next time I get a flare-up.”
“Now there’s an offer.” He almost smiled.
“Lots of other parts of me are also kaput. My bone density is a shadow of its former self and I won’t even start with my bladder. Getting old isn’t ideal, Joey, but it’s better than the alternative.”
“Right! Thanks.” Much happier now that he had examples of my oldness, he returned to the wine list. “There’s a red Primitivo from Puglia. Dry, full-bodied. Or a Portuguese Grenache that’s more fruity. Half-bottle do us?”
“Fine. And you choose.”
“What? You don’t care?”
“I really don’t care. In New York, food and wine…the whole breathless drama is too much. Obviously I don’t enjoy being hungry because I’m not, like, a freak . But I’d be okay to live on toast and Nutella forever.”
“You still don’t cook?”
That surprised me. “You’ve a good memory.”
Cooking bored me senseless. By contrast, Angelo would return from the farmers market, bursting with plans because he’d found bunches of borage or Vietnamese coriander. Pre-pandemic I could muster enthusiasm for the multi-flavored extravaganza he served. (I’d eat slowly and announce each new spice as I identified it. “Is it…cumin? It is!”) During the pandemic, not so much.
But I wouldn’t say this to Joey; I still had lots of loyalty to Angelo.
“What do you like?” Joey seemed interested. “Yoga? All the girls love yoga.”
“This one doesn’t. And I know I’m not a girl, you don’t have to tell me.”
“I wasn’t going to. Touchy. ”
“ Me? ” We exchanged a knowing smile.
Emilien appeared at Joey’s shoulder. Joey tapped at something on the wine list and then continued asking questions. “Animals? Pets?”
“No.”
“Anna.” He looked concerned.
Tentatively, I said, “I liked making things with my hands. During the pandemic I took up—please don’t laugh—weaving.”
“Oh yeah. Crafting. Elisabeth does felting.”
“But I lost all interest in my loom, Joey. Like, overnight. It was the last thing to go. I’d officially fallen out of love with every part of my life.”
“Not just Angelo?”
“Seriously, Joey, everything. For so long I took pride in my job, then…all of a sudden, I felt heartsick. Weary. The end was fast and it was total. I even stopped loving New York.”
“…And just like that…” Joey murmured, which made me laugh.
“I don’t know what I like because right now I don’t know who I am.”
I was treated to a silent assessment. “You’re buffering.”
“Yes!” I liked that concept. “Downloading the new me.”
“You’ll fall in love with your life again. Give it time. You might even decide to go back.”
“To New York? I can’t imagine it…But I haven’t sold my apartment yet. Just wasn’t quite ready, you know? Ariella says she’ll give me a job if I’m back in under a year. But I’m too old to do stuff I hate, unless there’s no other choice.”
Emilien arrived with the wine. “I’d to go down to the cellar. I say ‘cellar’—I mean the shed out the back.”
“Whatcha get in the end?” I asked Joey.
“The Primitivo from Puglia.”
“So you’re a wine expert now?”
“Just a blagger. A good actor. Well, you know that. But I learned how to fake it in Elisabeth’s world.”
“Tell me about her.” Pushing myself to be brave, I asked, “Why did you marry her?” Because maybe the timing had just been a big coincidence. “Obviously you loved her, but tell me the rest.”
He became still and I thought I’d blown it. But when he spoke, it was with quiet sincerity. “I liked her. She liked me. More importantly, her father approved. She was so bossy…” He rolled his eyes and smiled. “She’s from a world with rules. Deadly serious about them. About a week after we first, ah…she gave me a list of behavior she wouldn’t put up with. This might sound…whatever, but I felt safe: I couldn’t take risks or fuck things up just a little, the way I always did, because this time if I got caught, it would be game over. She scared me away from my own worst impulses.”
His honesty was astonishing. I reflected that the reasons most people fall in love never crop up in Hallmark movies.
“She gave me the outline of a respectable, upstanding man, told me to fit into it or fuck off. Although she never swore.”
“But you broke her rules?”
“You mean, did I fuck around? No, Anna.” After a pause he said, “We got married for the wrong reasons. She wanted a bad boy who wasn’t actually bad. Once she’d got me, she didn’t want me any longer. I disappointed her.”
“And what did you want?”
“I guess, a relationship where I wasn’t hiding stuff. Or…where I didn’t do things that contradicted the promises I’d made. I wanted to live honest and clean.” He hesitated. “And I was looking for someone to take away my…loneliness is the closest word. I thought there was enough good stuff for it to work.” He shook his head. “But we have our three boys. There isn’t a day that passes that they don’t make me feel like the luckiest man alive.”
“Of course.”
“Sometimes I’d see us from the outside.” He sounded as if he was talking to himself. “Elisabeth and me, with our three beautiful children, with nice clothes and haircuts, maybe getting a business-class flight to somewhere sunny. It was a real stretch to believe that this was my life. The younger me would be so wowed. Then I’d stop looking at the outside and start looking inside. And I still felt…” He’d been staring at the table, now he looked at me. “Alone.”
The ensuing silence ached.
“I hate saying this but maybe a year in, I sensed that once again, I’d done the wrong thing. I was too broken, disconnected, whatever the word is, to be vulnerable with her. But we bought a house, we had Max, we bought a holiday home, we had Isaac. I kept myself so busy that I didn’t have to think about my inadequacies. Elisabeth deserved so much more than I was ever able to give her. I did the lot: couples counseling, then individual therapy. And I still couldn’t make it work. So that’s the story of my failed marriage.”
I sought the right words. “Joey, your marriage didn’t fail. It worked until it didn’t. It was meant to last as long as it did.”
“Ah, don’t, Anna. Luke is always saying that too. But it failed. I failed.”
“You can’t say tha—”
“Anna, it’s true. Not because I deliberately broke it, which made a change. But because—Elisabeth said it—I wasn’t able for emotional intimacy. I didn’t even know what she meant. I’m still fairly clueless but I think it’s because the things I’m telling you now, I should have been telling her. Like the way I often feel hollow. How shut off I am.”
“You’re not shut off, though. You love your kids.”
Courtney’s voice cut in. “There they are, over in the corner guzzling wine and eating chips like they’re in the Algarve. Anna! Aber’s here to see you.”
Startled, I jumped to attention. The Aber Skerett of my imagination was a huge half-man, half-sheep, whose wild hair was actually fleece, patterned with blue and red paint. His fictional overcoat was secured at the waist by a thick length of blue twine, tufts of fleece burst up through his collar and his trousers looked suspiciously like sheep’s legs.
But crossing the lounge was a slight man, shaven-headed and kempt, wearing jeans and a nondescript jacket. This was Aber Skerett?
He turned out to be lovely —soft-voiced and reasonable. He told us there was another field that might suit his sheep. It would be a change in the routine, of course. But change can be a good thing, he suggested. In fact the other field was closer to his home. Since his mother’s dementia had accelerated he liked to check in on her several times a day.
Joey and I offered to cover the first year’s rent but he said there was no need.
“In that case,” I said, “let us ply you with alcohol.”
“I’ve to drive home,” he said. “I’ll stick to tea.”
“Ice cream, then,” I offered. “There’s three flavors: vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. You get a scoop of each.”
“Well, ah…”
“Excellent! That’s agreed. Emilien, two bowls of ice cream—”
“Three,” Joey said.
“You like ice cream?”
“I love it.”
“Three, it is.”
We got on so well that Aber forgot the time. It was after nine when he jumped up and said, “I’d better get back to pick up Mum.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Joey said.
Moments later, all excited, Joey was back. “There’s a woman at reception!”