VI. Martin #2
I trace the outline of the house, turning left into the rose garden which flows into a small square lined with carefully cut topiary.
Through an archway is another exquisite garden, dotted with more flowers, some notable outbuildings that were once purloined by French soldiers for reasons I don’t recall, and then, rising starkly out of the ground, the chapel.
Except I can’t make out the oaken door because a marquee has been erected in front of it with two giant TV screens at the front, and I realise, to my horror, that they have made Fliss’s funeral into a social gathering.
The theme is commiseration rather than celebration, but the guest list is the same.
Typical of Ben and Serena to maximise every single opportunity to network – even death.
My back breaks out in a sweat. I feel all the long-buried sensations excavate themselves from their shallow graves.
There’s the shame. Ah yes, and how kind of humiliation to join.
Did you bring outsidership? And is that my old chum imposter syndrome standing beside you?
Wonderful! Oh, but here’s the one we’ve all been waiting for.
I wasn’t sure if he’d show up, but of course he never misses a chance to muscle in.
It’s anger! Hello, anger. Good of you to be here.
I’m about to turn and make my exit – I swear to you, I am on the verge of leaving and getting the hell out of this sunken place – when I hear my name.
‘Martin?’
And there, walking out of the marquee, is Ben.
My nemesis.
Whom I loved.
Whom I loathe.
Whom I can’t stop thinking about.
I try to look at him, but I can’t quite manage it. My head is too heavy. The light is too bright. I catch a glimpse of his square jaw, a curl of his hair.
Can he hear the darts being thrown in my chest?
‘Ben,’ I croak.
I take my sunglasses from my jacket pocket, relieved I thought to bring them.
I feel safer with my eyes shaded and am able, finally, to look at him.
His eyes – flecked hazel, perpetually on the brink of amusement – are the same ones that greeted me that first term at school.
Time folds in on itself. There I am again, in a dormitory, two boys jeering at the teddy bear my hateful mother packed; Ben at the doorway telling them to stop.
Ben passing me the vodka bottle in his room.
Ben dancing with a girl at the school disco, my jealousy rising.
In the park, sharing a joint, my mouth grazing his for just a single second.
The desperation I felt that I did not belong to him.
The severance that came – gradually at first, so subtle I couldn’t sense it.
And then, the guillotine blade he brought down on our past.
It all comes back, a rush of it.
‘I didn’t expect to see you!’ Ben says. He seems confused. A darkness passes over his face and then I know: Ben didn’t invite me.
In which case, who did?
Quickly, as quickly as a magician vanishes a ball under a cup, Ben slips on his politician’s mask.
He slaps me on the back and shakes my hand with a great show of bonhomie.
His palm is soft. ‘How are you, Martin? My God! What a surprise. Thank you so much for coming. It’s great to see you.
I wish it were under different circumstances, but … ’
He has found his flow and now pitches headlong into the familiar stream of it.
‘Serena! Serena!’ Ben is beckoning her over, and now here she is, his wife, bearer of his multiple children, floating like a black angel across the lawn.
‘Look who it is! It’s LS. It’s bloody Martin!
He’s come for Fliss. So good of you, Martin.
We can’t tell you how much we appreciate it. ’
Ben shakes his head, passing his hand through his gelled hair, sweeping the quiff backwards, then patting it smooth. I imagine his fingers sticky with product.
Serena smiles at me. She is still blonde, still fragile, still striking, a touch thicker around the waist – and yet something has shifted that has altered her appearance.
She is no longer breathtaking, I realise.
It’s not that she has lost her beauty, simply that it has become unremarkable.
It used to be the kind of beauty that existed at a far remove, like a statue one looked up at.
Now she is at eye level with the rest of us.
‘Can you believe it, Serena?’ Ben is saying now.
‘I can,’ Serena says, placing her hand on my upper arm and letting it rest there, light as a moth. ‘I invited him.’
Well, this is a surprise, given that I had always blamed Serena for putting a wedge between me and Ben.
Ben’s grin fixes itself to his face. There is a beat of silence, a perfect semiquaver of discomfort.
‘You did?’
Serena nods.
‘We all know Fliss adored LS,’ she says, which seems to be stretching the truth somewhat. ‘It seemed the right thing to do. Let bygones be bygones. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?’
She links her arm through mine and stares at her husband.
Interesting, I think, and it’s not too much of a leap to conjecture that Ben has been up to his old indiscretions again.
He never was capable of fidelity. Serena, with her breeding and her brittle elegance; her blondness and her emotional unavailability, had kept his attention longer than most. But now … trouble at t’mill.
‘Come, Martin, I’ll show you to your seat.’
Serena wafts me into the marquee. Her dress is floor-length black silk and as she walks, the skirt of it swishes around her ankles. She talks to me in a low whisper, casually savaging the guests.
‘That’s Rosie Carson-Smythe. Alcoholic. Decided she was a lesbian a couple of years ago, right around the time her husband was shagging the nanny. Oh, and there’s Petra—’ Serena breaks off to give a little wave. Her bangles jingle. ‘One of Fliss’s school friends. Terrible breath.’
She chatters on, not expecting a reply. We walk right through the marquee and into the chapel.
Vast bouquets of lilies on either side of the altar.
There is a stand where Fliss’s coffin will be placed and a photo of her propped against one corner, with neatly blow-dried hair, in a high-collared blouse.
The photo was clearly taken many years ago and bears no relation to the person I spotted outside King’s Cross station.
Swish, swish, goes Serena’s dress. Swish, swish.
‘That’s Richard Take. I’m sure you know all about him.’
Her fingers squeeze my forearm.
‘He’s doing that awful reality TV show, did you see it?’
‘No.’
‘Not surprised. Chav telly.’
‘But I am a chav, Serena.’
The corners of her mouth curl.
‘I know, darling, but you’re the right kind. You piss away from the tent.’
Is that even an expression? As much as she has lost her beauty, she has grown in a kind of caustic confidence. I’m not opposed to it. In fact, might I hazard a dangerous suggestion in the safety of these pages that I rather like it?
In the front pew, I catch sight of the back of Lady Katherine’s head. I would recognise it anywhere. Ben and Fliss’s mother. Her grey hair is perfectly set underneath a large black hat accentuated with a turkey’s worth of feathers.
‘Goodness,’ I say and Serena knows immediately what I’m referring to.
‘I knoooow,’ she says, drawing out the o. ‘So tacky. Cruella de Vil by way of Claire’s Accessories. I tried to tell her, but you know Katherine …’
‘Used to,’ I mutter.
‘Well, she hasn’t changed. None of them have.’
‘You have,’ I say.
She stops then and turns to me. I can see the pale white scar on her forehead. She catches me looking at it.
‘A lot has happened since—’ she gestures to the scar with her hand ‘all that. Anyway, it’s nice to see you, Martin. I’m sorry if, in the past, I was …’ She searches for the right words, before coming up with the underwhelming ‘… rude to you.’
It must have shocked Serena to discover that, in the end, she has been let down by Ben just like the rest of us.
Because Ben is only interested in himself.
And now Serena is looking for a way out.
That’s why I’m here. That’s why she’s fabricating this non-existent intimacy.
She wants to unsettle him with my presence, and, maybe, I think, she also wants an ally.
I wonder if it’s not just sexual indiscretion that’s at the root of it.
I wonder, in fact, if there are money troubles, too.
I noted that the marquee was one of the cheaper models: shiny white PVC, rather than fabric.
Ben’s watch was an Apple, not a Rolex. Serena’s dress is Saint Laurent from several seasons ago and there are greys at the roots of her dyed hair.
‘Fliss would be happy you were here,’ Serena says.
‘Oh,’ I reply, taken aback by the sincerity. ‘Yes. I did like Fliss immensely. But, I’m not sure I’m quite clear on how … she … well, how she died?’
For a brief instant, Serena looks offended. So, I think, she didn’t expect me to ask. Quickly, she collects herself and shrugs.
‘You know how Fliss was,’ she says. ‘High as a fucking kite in Bali. Went for a moonlight swim. Drowned. Very sad.’
I frown.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yes,’ Serena says, reflective. ‘I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, and that makes it worse in a way, doesn’t it?’
I don’t answer.
‘And it was a bloody nightmare to repatriate the body,’ she continues. ‘But we must get you to your seat,’ she adds breezily, her normal social grace resumed. ‘I’ve reserved you a spot towards the front.’
‘Is the PM coming?’ I ask.