Chapter Thirty-Six
Thirty-Six
When the group moved indoors and went their separate ways, Catherine and Geoffrey found themselves taking the lift together, alone.
Had he engineered it that way? Had they both?
It had been that way in Catherine’s university days.
Something would be building with a boy and you’d just find yourselves, through an unsaid agreement, side by side.
Geoffrey opened his mouth to speak, paused, then let out the sentence that was on his mind.
“Catherine, would you like a cup of tea? In my flat? Or coffee?”
Catherine opened her mouth to speak but Geoffrey couldn’t stop talking.
“If you don’t want tea or coffee I don’t have any wine but I do have some whiskey, which I got for Christmas, although if you like ice with your whiskey I’m not really an ice person so I don’t have any in the freezer, I’m afraid.
I think they sell ice in shops now. Would you like me to go and get you some ice from the shops? ”
“A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you, Geoffrey.”
Geoffrey nodded and smiled. He looked nice when he smiled, thought Catherine.
There was nothing conventionally attractive about him—the bags under his eyes were almost as big as his eyes themselves.
But at Catherine’s age she was beyond aesthetics.
She could see behind his eyes, and behind his eyes Geoffrey looked… nice.
At Geoffrey’s place, Catherine felt strangely at home.
She recognized the clock on the wall as one she’d had in the eighties.
Geoffrey talked at length about how a number of errors had been made in the electrical wiring of Sheldon Oaks.
Switches were in the wrong places; problems were being stored up; the legacy of EU overregulation hung over British buildings like a bad smell.
Catherine found that, if you ignored everything he said, his voice was comforting.
A man’s voice. Even if they were talking complete rubbish, there was a security, she thought, in the certainty that men projected.
Her phone pinged with a text, and she took it from her handbag. Margaret: The police have arrested Polly Slaughter for Desmond’s murder! lol
And then another text came: Sorry ive just remembered my￡￡ nephew told me lol doesn’t mean lots of love. Not lol. Meet in the bistro in ten minutes???send text￡
Catherine relayed the news to Geoffrey.
“Polly Slaughter, eh?”
“Margaret wants to meet in the bistro. I suppose she wants to discuss what comes next.”
“Well, I’d imagine if Polly’s charged, she’ll get out on bail pending a trial,” said Geoffrey. “Although considering that would send her back here, to the scene of the crime, perhaps they’ll keep her on remand. Gosh. Polly Slaughter—on remand!”
“I think Margaret means what comes next with us. And our investigation.”
“Right,” said Geoffrey. “I see. Well, I’m sure there’s a lot to be looked into. How she did it. Why. Are there any holes in their case? Are we sure they have the right man? Woman. Right woman.”
“Mmm.”
They sat in a beat of silence, looking into each other’s eyes.
“Catherine, how would you feel about not going down to meet Margaret?”
Catherine shrugged. “I don’t have to.”
“Why don’t you stay here with me and watch The World at War? I have the whole series on DVD. All twenty-six episodes. Obviously, I’m not suggesting that we…”
“That would be lovely.”
And so they sat on Geoffrey’s sofa and watched episode one, which was about the rise of the Nazis. Geoffrey couldn’t stop himself from chipping in with his own analysis.
“I don’t know if Drexler gets enough credit.
There’s a lot of Hitler and Goring, you know, but Drexler did an awful lot of the groundwork for them in the early years.
You understand, when I say ‘credit,’ I don’t mean—I’m not pro-Nazi—I happen to think, and you can quote me on this, I happen to think that the Nazis were dreadful. Absolutely dreadful.”
“I understand,” said Catherine, resting her head on his shoulder. And she did understand. Geoffrey Standing was a lovely man who just needed to feel loved. Maybe she could do that for him. She couldn’t see his face, but she felt sure that Geoffrey was happy to have her body so close to his.
After a while, sometime around the annexation of Czechoslovakia, Geoffrey nodded off.
Catherine, who hadn’t been paying much attention to the program, took out her phone.
Margaret had replied to Catherine’s message asking to meet tomorrow instead with a simple—or was it a curt?
—Ok. Was this really happening? Were she and Geoffrey about to pair off and leave Margaret like the gooseberry?
No. Catherine couldn’t let that happen. Perhaps, now that Polly was to be put away, Carol would be reintegrated.
Although Catherine had to wonder just how comfortable she really was being friends with the author of those diaries.
She fiddled around on her phone. An email had arrived from Nigel. Nigel? She hated herself for feeling a flutter of nerves. Nothing could have prepared her for what the email contained.
Dearest Catherine,
I do hope we can be grown-ups about this.
I’ve told the children and they’re all delighted for Emily and me.
The long and the short of it is that we’re getting married.
I suggested inviting you but Emily, understandably, didn’t want competition in the room.
Not that, beautiful as you are, anyone could be competition for Emily, the love of my life.
Seeing as this leaves you the only person in England who’s free on that particular weekend, how would you feel about looking after our dogs?
Best wishes,
Nigel
Catherine threw her phone across the room.
Geoffrey was still asleep but Catherine had to do something with her instant rage. She needed somewhere to put it.
“Catherine?” Geoffrey had woken up to find her hand on his crotch. He looked at her, stunned but overjoyed. “I…I really…Catherine, I’m afraid I need a little medical assistance. I have some pills in the bathroom.”
“Take one. Now.”
Catherine and Geoffrey carried out her revenge sex on his bed. The television still on, they could hear a detailed description of the Saar Offensive coming from the living room.
Catherine put her back into it, like digging the garden, hoping the physical exertion would take her mind off the news.
But it couldn’t. Maybe one day she could fall in love with Geoffrey, but it could never be the same.
She was too old; he was too old. The older you got, the more distinct you got.
You became who you were. She could never give herself to another man like she had with Nigel.
Catherine was heartbroken.
No. That wouldn’t do. Catherine needed to get out of her head and into her body. All that swimming, all that yoga, what was it for if not for this? She pushed herself to her limits, stretching them both into a position never before performed by a couple of their combined age.
Living in central London for years, as she had, Catherine was familiar with the mating call of foxes. You’d often hear it at night as they prowled the bins—an ugly, terrifying shriek. For the first time in her life, Catherine now heard that sound coming out of the mouth of a human.
“Argh! Aaaaargh! Jesus H. bloody Christ! I think I might have pulled my calf!” rasped Geoffrey.
Catherine rolled off him and they stared at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry, Catherine. That was terrific, it really was. I’m just a little out of practice.”
“That’s all right, Geoffrey. I got a little carried away. Why don’t you see if you can sleep it off?” said Catherine.
Catherine felt guilty. She’d used Geoffrey’s body as a repository for her anger, and it hadn’t worked. She’d given the poor man an injury, but the rage hadn’t faded. Her eyes narrowed. There was only one person who could help her now: Carol.