Chapter 9 Jules “Hey Ya”
Jules
“Hey Ya”
“Oh, for feck’s sake! Come on, you donkey!”
Rose leans on the bar, shouting at the wall-mounted TV. Eddy, who works at the solicitors’ office next door, and has a soft spot for Rose, is in for his Saturday pint at the Peregrine. He takes a sip, catching my eye over the top of his glass, as I stand in the doorway, waiting to say goodbye.
The Royal Ascot races are always her favorite. After reading the runners and riders to me this morning to see which ones had astral or otherwise potentially lucky significance for either of us, Rose urged me to put money on her declared “surefire winner,” Danny Boy.
Like always, I declined. I’m not a gambler, especially after what happened to Adam’s dad.
I’m too long in the tooth to bet on something with so many variables, despite Rose’s purported clairvoyant skills.
Plus, I’m skint. That terrifying credit card bill seems to throb through my every waking thought.
In any case, I couldn’t spare the time to leave the kitchen. This catering job that Darius has lined up has put me in a flat-spin panic and I’ve been practicing a few classic dishes, but my confidence is at an all-time low.
Last night I made a boeuf bourguignon from scratch, but it had practically evaporated by the time I served it, and the gobbets of expensive meat left over tasted like shoe leather. Even Groucho Barx turned his nose up, which technically made it worse than a dog’s dinner.
“Come on…come on… ” Rose is properly bellowing now.
Her fist is up. “You’re nearly there, just do it,” she yells, as if the jockey can hear. The commentator’s voice crescendoes to a fever pitch as the horses cross the line.
“And Carpe Diem clinches it by a hair,” the guy on the TV shouts.
“Carpe Diem, my arse,” Rose says, shaking her head and screwing up her betting slip.
She looks down at the Daily Mail’s sports section spread open on the tarnished brass bar. “Pah. Twenty to one. Someone’s made out like a bandit.”
The commentator’s voice decreases in pitch and speed as the losers cross the line, but Rose petulantly points the remote at the TV and snaps it off.
“Ach, well,” Eddy says sympathetically. “Better luck next time.”
Rose gives him a snide look, but he shoots her a twinkly smile and she softens.
“You off then?” she says, noticing me in the doorway.
“Yes. Oh, I left that stock in the fridge. I’ll use it on Monday.”
“Doing anything fun?” she asks.
I can’t meet her eye. Is this what it feels like to have an affair? What I’m doing with Adam does feel so illicit. For a second, I want to be glib. To tell her about our plan to spend the afternoon in the shed…time traveling. But obviously I can’t.
“Oh, just, you know, sorting stuff out. With Adam.”
She nods as if this is a veiled reference to some kind of therapy and I want to tell her that it’s not.
Though come to think of it, I’m probably enjoying the best form of relationship therapy known to man.
I mean, can it really only be a week since Darius’s party?
We’ve had more sex since then than in the last six months.
And, dare I say it, we’re connecting more and more on a day-to-day level too.
“Well, say hi to him for me,” she says.
“Will do.”
—
Back at home, with Nelly out on a walk with Eva, and Liam on his way to London to pick up an amp, the house is quiet and I hurry inside to find Adam. As I pass the downstairs loo—the one only Adam and Liam use—I notice the loo seat is down.
Another little “time kink” that I’ve noticed being played out, but one so small I can’t see the point in mentioning it to Adam now.
“You’re back. Great. Anything for a darks wash?” he asks, stepping up behind me. He’s holding a plastic washing tub, filled with a jumble of our dirty clothes. “What?” he asks.
“Er…nothing.”
Because of course…this is another new memory I’m still getting used to. Adam always doing the washing on a Saturday afternoon, because of how I acquainted him with the dirty washing basket in 1995.
Laughing, I step toward him and kiss him, before leading him upstairs to bed by his belt.
“Hey. Steady on,” he says, but he’s grinning as we strip off each other’s clothes.
And I can’t help feeling how easy this is.
To instigate sex now, and not just because the house is free, but because…
well, because we’re suddenly back in the habit.
Like when we were young. That’s the thing about habits, I realize.
You break them, but you can make them again too.
Afterward, we lie on the bed smiling at each other. “So?” he asks. “You ready?”
“You bet.”
I gather crisps and dips and a bottle of red plonk for the shed. As if we’re off on a jolly picnic, like we used to do at weekends.
Once we’re settled inside the shed with the door locked, Adam holds up the tape he gave me yesterday, mock-trumpeting a fanfare as he hands it over.
There’s no writing on it like the others. It clearly isn’t infused with any of our history and wasn’t made with the hours of dedication and love that the other tapes were, which we both now agree might be a possible explanation as to why they have so much power. This one might not work at all.
“What did you put on it?” I ask, as he nods me toward the Sony to insert it.
“Stuff I thought you’d like. The Troubs’s first album. Oh, and by the way, Darius told me about the tickets for their gig. Said he’d cleared it with you.”
“Yeah. He texted.”
“You know, I was going to take you anyway. For our anniversary.”
“Were you?” I can’t help sounding surprised. Over the years Adam has tended to be ironic about our anniversary, usually getting me last-minute crappy flowers and an even crappier card.
“Yeah.”
From the way he says it, I’m suddenly annoyed that I let Darius muscle in, because while I don’t need a fuss, I’m also too old to be ironic about our anniversaries anymore. After twenty-five years, I do want it to mean something. Something special, just for us.
Maybe that’s what this crazy time-warp traveling back through the years is, though. Maybe this has been sent to us as our own chance for a recap and a regroup. It certainly seems to be working, because I do feel closer to Adam than I have done for months…even years.
“Okay, so this is just a mini tape. Ten minutes,” he reminds me. “Meaning, if my theory’s right, you should go back to yesterday, to five minutes before I gave it to you.”
He means when I was with Liam and Nelly looking at those old videotapes.
The ones I hated seeing myself in, embarrassed by how I bossily pestered the kids to turn round for the camera.
And sweet and adorable as the kids were, I wished I’d also filmed our friends, or Adam’s parents and my mum, who were so often there too.
“Ready?” Adam asks. “But remember—change nothing…”
I roll my eyes at his schoolteacherly tone. “Yeah, yeah.”
“See you in ten, then.” He grins, and I hit “Play.”
The Troubs start singing.
“Oh, I love this one,” I reflexively start to say.
***
Next thing…KRAASSSZZZZATTAK… I’m bursting back out of the storm to find myself standing in front of the TV next to Nelly and Liam, a load of old videotapes strewn around us.
Yesterday.
It’s spookily weird. Even weirder than going back further. Like a whopping double dose of déjà vu.
But whereas déjà vu ends after a few seconds, this just carries on…and on…
And just as happened yesterday…because this is yesterday…after five minutes, Adam appears in the doorway, and Liam and Nelly and I—well, Yesterday Jules, with me now riding inside her—stop laughing.
“Rewind. Show Dad,” Liam says.
Jules dutifully does, rewinding the tape and then showing him the footage he took of baby Liam and Nelly as a toddler in St. Ann’s Well Gardens.
“We were just remembering all the happy times,” Jules says, smiling across at him.
But he’s looking down at the tapes in a strange way.
“Argh, Mum. The dog’s farted,” Liam says, quickly rolling away from where Groucho’s lying by his side.
“Oh, gross,” Jules says. A tad harsh, this, retrospectively, because I remember that one was actually me.
As Groucho slinks off into the garden, unjustly condemned, and the kids continue to laugh at the TV, Adam beckons Jules into the hall.
But it all just feels too recent, like he’s acting. I want to tap his forehead with my finger and shout, Adam, you bellend. It’s me.
Too late. He’s already talking, handing over the new tape he’s made and telling her about Doodles finding nothing unusual about the old Sony.
“I knew it.” I feel her grin. “This is just for us.” Then she’s looking back down at the tape he’s just given her. “But won’t this just bring me back to—”
“Today,” he says. “To now, to when it was given to you. Or just a few minutes before, I guess.”
The whole thing is so absurd, so ridiculous, that I—me, Tomorrow Me, or whatever the hell I now am—can’t help imposing myself on Yesterday Me and hissing right into his ear, “But I already am back.”
Nelly shrieks, calling Jules back in. But I keep my grip tight on this other me. Keep in control.
Adam takes a sharp breath.
“Seriously?” He peers at me. “Jules? I mean, er…Future Jules?”
“I think I prefer ‘Tomorrow Jules,’ actually. More Marvel Universe, don’t you think?” I make Jules say.
His phone tings, but he ignores it. “Is that really you?” he says, still staring hard into my eyes.
“Yes.” Still in control. And grinning. Just from the sheer what-the-actual-fuckery madness of it all.
Adam is grinning too. Like we’re a couple of naughty schoolkids who’ve just broken a rule. A big bloody rule. The biggest. Together. Which we have. And still are.
“So it works.” He laughs, before shushing me, us, both of us, and steering us farther down the corridor away from the kids. “We really can make new tapes, then?”