Simon & Garfunkel
brIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER
I elbowed my way through the crowd of mourners with a neat gin in one hand and a neat whisky in the other.
David was somewhere on the other side of the room, and I made it my mission to get to him without having to engage in any more idle conversation with strangers beforehand.
Though, of course, they weren’t strangers; only people I hadn’t seen for years, which felt a little like the same thing.
Martie Crouch had been a friend from mine and David’s university days.
He was always the life and soul – through to the end, as it turned out, given that his poor heart gave out while he was refreshing drinks at a party – and we’d kept in touch loosely over the years, enough to know that Martie had done well for himself.
In part evidenced by the fact that the room was full of people ready to celebrate his life, and in part evidenced by the twenty-years-his-junior widow who’d spent much of the afternoon weeping in a corner and graciously accepting sympathies from people. Including me and David.
‘Excuse me, sorry, can I just… Right through there, yes, thank you.’ I squeezed past a group of women and on the other side found my husband.
‘Ah, here she is,’ David said, turning to me.
‘Thanks, sweetheart.’ He took his drink and span around to face the man he’d been talking to: short; balding; a grey suit that he likely saved for occasions such as these.
‘Been lovely catching up, hasn’t it? Shame about the circumstance, of course, but you’ll keep in touch? ’
‘Of course, of course,’ the man answered. ‘You take care, the two of you.’
At that he turned back into the crowd and made his own way across the sea of grief.
‘Who was that?’ I asked.
David sipped his drink and winced. ‘No idea.’
‘I think we can probably slip away soon.’
‘Patti, there are so many people here we haven’t seen in years,’ David said, though it didn’t feel altogether like an answer to what I’d said. ‘Christ, what a shitshow it is that after so many years this is what’s brought us all into the same room again.’
It was something David and I had talked about endlessly in the week that had passed between the death and the funeral: the harsh reality that we’d reached a point in our lives where it was a wake rather than a birthday party that brought us into the company of old friends.
I was fairly certain both of us had lost sleep over it, in fact.
There had been two nights at Sheila’s where I’d tried to have similar conversations with her, too, but somehow they’d wound up with us having sex instead.
I was treating a shared climax like an escape valve.
‘Welcome to my world,’ David had said when I mentioned it over breakfast one morning.
But I didn’t think it was necessarily a place I was looking to inhabit long-term.
‘Is life actually too short, David, or have we tricked ourselves into thinking it is?’
‘I don’t think I understand the question.’
‘Well, Martie. He was, what, three, four years older than we are?’
‘Mhm.’
‘Can a man complain at–’
‘Yes,’ he snapped.
‘I didn’t finish the question.’
‘You didn’t need to. He died young, and now you’re being morose.’
‘I’m at a funeral.’
‘It’s no excuse.’ He sipped his drink again; winced, again.
‘Have you seen the legs on that widow of his?’ He gestured with his drink and I hoped to God that no one had heard the question.
‘Martie was well within his rights to expect to at least live long enough to get divorced from that good woman. He was robbed, Patti, absolutely bloody robbed. It’s no age. ’
There was too much bite in his protest, too many angry teeth. I couldn’t help but be suspicious of what David was actually talking about. ‘What’s really grinding your goat?’
‘Nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘I just think that it’s a crime for a man to be robbed of a beautiful woman.’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘You’re talking about Eudora.’
‘I could be talking about– Ow!’
I’d slapped his arm before he could finish the lie. ‘You’re bloody relentless, David. We’re at a funeral and all you’re thinking about is sex, still!’
‘You’re right, Miss I’ve-Used-My-Girlfriend-Twice-For-Sex-This-Week, I should be more respectful.
’ He rolled his eyes as he spoke. ‘People find comfort in all sorts of distractions during times like these, Patti. All I’m trying to do is keep my mind busy and in truth, it’s helping me an awful lot.
So if you could just be a supportive wife about the whole thing–’
‘Oh, don’t you play the supportive wife card.’
‘It’s one of the few bonuses of having a wife, and I have to use it while I still can.’
‘Meaning what? Are you going to kill me off?’
‘No,’ he answered in a childish tone, ‘but we might get divorced if you and Sheila keep on how you are. Though if it does come to that, then I’d at least like to meet her beforehand.’
I stamped on his foot and ignored the painful sound that followed. ‘Sheila and I won’t get married.’
‘Can I meet her anyway?’
‘How does that go? Hi, Sheila, meet my husband?’
‘You’re always so quick to tell women you have a husband.’
‘You’re always so quick in forgetting to tell women you have a wife.’
‘And I get myself in far fewer tangles than you, I think you’ll agree.’
‘David, I…’ The sentence died in my mouth.
I found that suddenly I didn’t have the fight for the conversation that was coming.
He was probing too deeply into a hornet’s nest that I’d been blissfully ignoring, instead choosing to let the creatures buzz around in my attic – brain – for days on end, rather than arrange any measures for dealing with the problem.
The more serious things became with Sheila, the more disingenuous it felt to avoid telling her about David.
Though it wasn’t strictly true that I’d avoided telling her about David, as such.
She knew I lived with David (my flatmate); she knew I cooked for and was cooked for by David (my flatmate); she knew that David (my flatmate) and I went back years, all the way to university, and had been best friends since.
But she knew nothing of David my husband.
And given that David wasn’t really my husband, it had started to seem like a pointless pretence to uphold, especially as things became more serious with Sheila.
‘David, I think I’d like to go home.’
I don’t know whether it was my tone or something in my expression, but he didn’t resist the suggestion that time.
Instead, he just said, ‘Okay.’ He took the remainder of my drink from me and necked it himself, before placing our empty glasses on a nearby table.
Then, like a good husband, he tucked one arm around me and held my elbow with his free hand, and he guided me through the room until we were outside in open space, where I could finally start to breathe.
* * *
It was a toss-up between changing out of our funeral clothes first, or making a round of drinks.
David suggested that I make the drinks and he choose the music, which seemed a fair compromise, especially given that it didn’t involve either of us having to decide on a second outfit for the day.
I walked into the living room with a glass of red in each hand just in time to catch the opening chords of Simon my arms draped around his neck, his around my waist. It was a routine we’d done too many times to count, and I found the comfort of it was instant.
Soon, I was resting my head against his shoulder with no thought to the porcelain blusher that would inevitably rub off on his suit jacket.
We passed five minutes in silence like this, only rocking our bodies to the slow movement of the music, and when the track stopped, I began to pull away.
David encouraged me back, though, and when the track started on a repeat of itself, I realised why.
I huffed a laugh and quietly agreed to a second turn around the room.
We were midway through this second spin when David broke our silence.
‘You were wrong, about what you said at the funeral. Life is too short, Patti. It’s so, so bloody short.’ He squeezed me a little closer. ‘I don’t think we should underestimate the time we’ve got left, though, you know?’
‘Mhm,’ I agreed.
‘I think, when an opportunity presents itself, we have to grab it, grab it and squeeze the juice out of it until it runs down our chins and–’
‘Christ, you can tell you’re a writer in the winter of your life.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, this isn’t the winter of my life at all. I like the sound of being a writer, though.’
‘And what season do you think you’re in, dear David? Summer?’
A few chords of the song passed before he answered. ‘Late summer. Which I think is the perfect time for romance.’ He moved so his chin was no longer pressed against my head. Instead, his face was angled down to get a look at my own. ‘Don’t you think, Patti?’
I had to smile at that. ‘I think if you want to find a way to win this woman over, you will. If anyone can…’
‘I think I will, Patti, I think I damn well will.’
The song quietened to its end and David eased away from me, moving, I hoped, to change the tone to something lighter.
I reached for my drink and took a thirsty mouthful, the acid of it catching at the back of my throat.
Diana Ross’ rendition of ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ was the next track to bounce through the speaker system and whether it was the wine, or the gin, or the talk with David – or even a heady mixture of the three – I found myself agreeing with the song wholeheartedly.
I solo danced around the living room and for every time Ross told me there wasn’t a mountain high enough, I thought: No, there bloody isn’t.