Kintsugi
At last, alone. There was a sharp, artificial tang of lemon cleaner and the lighting was a little stark, but he shrugged off his rucksack, fell back on to the bed and recklessly gorged on complimentary shortbread, listening to the crumbs rattling into his ears, wondering about Tessa.
He’d already been briefed. In the weeks leading up to the trip, Cleo had contrived mentions of how attractive she was, how fit (triathlons apparently), how successful, a dentist with her own practice. Best of all, said Cleo, she was ‘outdoorsy’, though he was less sure what this meant: that she didn’t wear make-up? He knew, from history lessons and Nat’s costume dramas, that olden-time court artists would often be commissioned to paint flattering portraits for approval in advance of marriage, and that these portraits were not always representative. When he tried to picture Cleo’s Tessa, he imagined her on a moor, minty-breathed, shrugging off her white coat to run, then cycle, then swim. Was this what Cleo thought he wanted? He did not want anyone.
And even if he did, he could not imagine them at dinner in the Trout Inn, flirting over pie and chips, looks and smiles and self-revealing anecdotes. He had not been on a date since the Italian restaurant with Natasha fifteen years ago, and wasn’t that one of the great joys of a long relationship, to be free of that kind of performance? Trying to picture himself on a date now was like trying to imagine himself bungee-jumping, theoretically possible but under what circumstances? No, it was just as well she hadn’t come. On the wall opposite him, a TV leant dangerously on its bracket, and he reached for the remote and scrolled through the channels. When did TVs in hotel rooms start to seem so archaic and quaint? On their trips away, it was almost the first thing they did, turn on the …
There she was again. As if she’d walked into the room, he sat up, shook the crumbs out of his ears and got undressed, catching sight of himself in the mirror. The naked body of a middle-aged man. It could have been worse. He’d always looked after himself, running, hiking, five-a-side, not out of vanity but for the same reason he brushed his teeth and put the lids back on pens, but there was no doubt things had slipped a little since Nat’s departure. He was getting through a lot of chilli sauce, these days, and, he had to admit, did not always eat off a plate. He’d put on weight in some places, lost too much in others, and while his injuries had largely healed, he still felt cracked and vulnerable, like a cup with a glued-on handle. Apparently, there was meant to be beauty in cracks, cracks were how the light gets in but, more importantly, they were how the liquid gets out. No one really wants a leaky cup.
The shower was like a kettle poured on to the back of his neck and he stepped out quickly and wiped steam from the mirror, pouting, moving his mouth from one side to the other. His face. He’d been quite the catch at teacher-training, though that was some time ago. At Christmas, Mum had a habit of picking up wrapping paper and smoothing it out to use again, and his skin had taken on that quality, especially around his eyes, of tissue paper used more than once. He’d stopped shaving so that he wouldn’t have to explain the scar on his jaw, and he’d once hoped that there might be some kind of Renaissance-painting handsomeness to it, not the subject but a disciple maybe, lurking at the back. That was the theory, but what were these new filaments high on his cheek, like bristles on a broom? Tessa or no Tessa, he should have trimmed the thing. He blinked and tightened his jaw. At least he had his hair and he scrubbed at it now with his fingertips, arranging it to look like it hadn’t been arranged. The outdoorsy look.
The trick to walking two hundred miles was to travel light. He would have to wash and dry his underwear each night, and as he filled the basin, squirting in hand soap and squeezing his socks and pants in a milking motion, it occurred to him that there was a very real possibility that this might be considered depressing. He smiled and wondered if this was part of the portrait Cleo had painted for Tessa. He’s outdoorsy. Not bad-looking, always prompt. He still has his hair. Would she describe him as shy? Not shy, he just wanted to be left alone.
From Stickleback came the sound of Conrad’s music, the generic tsk-boom of an aerobics class and he thought, What kind of fop brings a Bluetooth speaker on a long-distance walk? What kind of amateur wears jeans? Don’t be judgemental. He heard the music build and Conrad shout, ‘Let’s goooo!’, grooming complete. Testing the radiator, Michael draped his underwear and socks along the top as if laying bacon in a frying pan. His one ‘night-life’ shirt lay on the glossy eiderdown, porridge-coloured, frayed at the cuffs. Arms out to the sides, the shirt seemed to say, Look, it is what it is. It is what it is.