Games People Play (31 page)

Rachel

‘Want a cup of tea, Gordana?’ I ask.

From where she is propped up on pillows on the sofa, Gordana looks over at me standing in the doorway. She rarely goes to bed, unless she is feeling particularly sick, instead choosing to rest fully dressed on the sofa downstairs. She says it’s so that she can see out into the garden, and also so Ted and I don’t have to run up and down stairs after her all day – like I could run up and down stairs! – but we all know that really it’s because she can’t bear anyone to think of her as an invalid. She hates to be seen in her dressing gown and slippers.

Today she has a sketchpad and a charcoal pencil balanced on her lap, and she is making a few desultory black lines on an empty sheet, which I think are supposed to represent tree branches. She didn’t want to be seen doing nothing – as if we’d judge her for that, I think, almost indignantly.

‘Thank you, darling, if you’re making one, that would be lovely. Be careful with the trolley, though, won’t you? And perhaps you could help me with this drawing? I cannot make this tree look like that one out there. You are so good, please explain to me how you do it. And, Rachel—’

‘Yes?’

‘We do love having you here, you know. You will stay as long as you like, won’t you?’

I hop into the room, feeling the tickle of the thick carpet fibres beneath my bare foot, and sit down on the arm of the sofa. Unlike me, Gordana is wearing tights, as usual, underneath neatly pressed navy slacks, and even through the tea-brown stocking toes I can see that her toenails are beautifully pedicured. I give her toes an affectionate squeeze. In the background, the radio is playing old jazz songs.

I pick up her sketchbook and inspect the drawing, which is indeed pretty poor. With a few quick strokes, I transform the tree into a towering oak, and then sketch in a little Jackson, jumping around underneath it. It earns me a laugh from Gordana, and a feeling of pride in my chest, not unlike the pleasure of winning a match against a tricky opponent.

‘I love being here. It’s so different to living with Dad and Anthea. I always felt so in the way there, as if Anthea only ever relaxed when I went out. They just needed their own space, I guess . . .’ I hesitate, concerned. ‘But you and Pops do, too – need your own space, I mean,’ I add awkwardly. ‘You’ve got Mum coming and going too, and what with all the stress of Dad’s court case coming up, and Jackson and everything – I do worry that you’re just being polite, and really you both would love us to leave you to it. Isn’t Pops sick of ferrying me to physio three times a week?’

She laughs faintly, and adjusts the neat bandanna covering her patchy hair.

‘Come on, Rachel darling, you know us better than that. If we wanted to be alone, you’d be the first to hear about it. And Ted loves giving you lifts in and out of Kingston, you know he does. He says you are big breath of fresh air for him.’

I smile a watery smile. Gordana always knows the right thing to say to make me feel better – although at the moment I feel more like a hole in the ozone layer than a breath of fresh air.

‘Thanks,’ I say, hauling myself up again and out into the kitchen on my crutches, before she can see how much her words mean to me. I am relieved, because it’s been playing on my mind considerably. I don’t want to go back to the place I used to call home. I don’t want to live with Dad and Anthea, either or both; and not just because of what Dad’s going through. I’m not a rat abandoning a sinking ship. I’d stay there if I thought for a moment they needed me more than Gordana and Pops, but they definitely don’t.

And I can’t stay here forever, either. It’s fine now, while Gordana still needs company and a bit of help, but despite what she’s just said, they won’t want me or Mum here for too much longer. They are so independent.

I’m not doing too badly myself, either, in terms of independence. I’m getting pretty nimble, though I say so myself. I’m able to make the tea on one leg, put pot and cups on to a gilt hostess trolley and, leaning on the bar of the trolley instead of on my crutches, hop back into the living room, pushing it in front of me like a wheeled zimmer frame. Luckily it’s a sturdy piece of equipment. It hasn’t seen so much service since the 1970s, and it makes me feel like a one-legged dinner lady; but it gets the job done.

When I return with the tea for Gordana, she is singing along to ‘Summertime’ on the radio, in a low, wistful voice whose depths and clarity makes my stomach twist with fresh emotion. I pause just outside the door to listen. She has the most beautiful voice. I wonder if it is a source of real sorrow to her that she never became a singer; or whether it was just another lost dream: something she grumbled about not achieving but which wasn’t ever a serious proposition. You could never be sure with Gordana. Sometimes the telling was what was important, rather than the content. I’ve heard the story of how Sandie Shaw took the life Gordana wanted so many times that it is more like a myth.

Have I followed my dream, I wonder? Everyone always congratulates me, tells me that I have – but I’m starting to wonder what my
real
dream is?

I decide it might finally be time for me to rent somewhere; get a new life. Perhaps Kerry will know a place. She’s the one with the wide social circle – she even has friends who don’t play tennis! I certainly don’t have any of those. I’ve been half thinking about asking Mum to go halves with me on the rent of a small house, if she’s planning to stay, but she is beginning to make noises about going back to Kansas again.

Mum seems very down lately, and has been spending more and more time at her friend Corinna’s. I worry that she’s bored of being with me, or feels uncomfortable being around Gordana, but whenever we cross paths, she hugs me or touches my face, trying to smile, saying, ‘Sorry, Rach, it’s not you.’

I put it down to her sorrow about losing Billy, but she eventually confessed that she can’t bear the thought of bumping into Dad. I don’t really understand why. Neither of them will admit to a confrontation, although something must have happened. I mean, it was only a couple of years ago that we all had Christmas dinner together and that, whilst not exactly a bundle of laughs, hadn’t been too bad.

‘Oh, Rachel, I didn’t see you there,’ says Gordana, turning mid-song to look at me.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just love listening to you singing.’

‘I love singing,’ she says softly.

I wheel in the trolley and park it in front of a nest of tables by her side, letting her sit up and do the honours. I wouldn’t dare serve tea to Gordana without milk in a jug and sugar in a bowl. I watch her thin hands put the tea strainer over the cups and pour.

‘So, what are you up to today?’ she asks, handing me a cup and saucer.

It’s been so long since I’ve ‘done’ anything that I’m kind of surprised she has even asked. We have all fallen into a quiet, safe routine, centred on Dad or Pops driving Gordana to and from her chemo treatments.

Between chauffeuring duties, Dad then vanishes again, coaching (privately, we assume, because he’s not at the club) and placating Anthea, or whatever his life consists of. I fit in my physio sessions at Kingston Hospital and some basic non-weight-bearing training in the little gym in the village near Gordana and Pops’s house, but nothing more exciting than that. I like it this way. Dad’s next hearing and Gordana’s recovery hang over us all, like two great boulders teetering on the edge of a high cliff, and so the quieter life is, the better, as we wait with bated breath to see if they are going to drop. And if they drop, how hard they shatter; how much damage they do.

Days are measured by Gordana’s cycles of rest and activity; if she is feeling wiped out, we do jigsaws, reading out loud, sketching: invalid activities carefully disguised as hobbies, like a mother trying to get her child to eat vegetables by chopping them up into tiny pieces and smuggling them into the bolognese sauce. How much would she hate that I’m thinking of it like that! But on the days she feels more normal, we do other stuff: shopping trips and the cinema or theatre, with Pops a willing driver and bag-carrier.

The only thing neither of us wants to do is to go to the tennis club. Gordana’s good friends come to visit her here, but she can’t face the inevitable nudges and whispers about Dad’s scandalous arrest that she knows would fly around her if she went down there. The same goes for me too, but in addition, I don’t want to have to see Mark and Sally-Anne together. I can’t bear the thought of him flashing her secretive little smiles from the next court, or seeing his arm resting casually around her shoulders.

I wonder if I’ll ever have a serious boyfriend again.

Maybe it’s because twenty-three is, in tennis years, well into middle age, but I have a horrible nagging fear that maybe I’m destined to be an old spinster in all walks of life.

‘Actually,’ I say, remembering that Gordana has asked me a question, ‘I was thinking of getting the bus back to Dad’s this afternoon. I’m easily nifty enough on the crutches now, and I need to collect some gear from the house.’

‘Are you sure you’re up to the walk from the bus stop?’ she asks carefully.

I shrug, but suddenly can’t stop the frustration from bubbling up inside me.

‘I don’t see why not, if I take it easy ...Oh, I
hate
this! I hate not being able to walk! What if I can never walk again? I know it’s only been a month, but sometimes I just can’t even remember what it’s like! Let alone running around a tennis court... Now it’s a big deal for me even to go to the sodding bus stop!’

‘Oh darling,’ she says, her big violet eyes full of concern. The dark grey shadows in the wrinkled skin beneath them make their colour stand out even more vividly. ‘You’re doing so well with your physio. I know there’s not much I can say to make you feel better, but you just have to be patient.’

I stand up on my good foot and reach for my crutches again, a gesture which has become totally instinctive. ‘I just want to know, one way or the other. I didn’t before, but I do now. I’ve got to plan for the future.’

‘I know what you mean,’ says Gordana, so matter-of-factly that I feel humbled. I’m only worried about my career, while she is waiting to find out if she even has a future to plan for. For the first time, I feel something positive about my accident. If I hadn’t injured myself, I would have been able to spend hardly any time with Gordana while she was ill, and I certainly wouldn’t have been living here. I’d have popped in for the odd visit, of course, telling myself that I was doing all I could to be supportive to her, but I bet she’d have had to be at death’s door before I’d pull out of a tournament voluntarily to be at her side. To my complete shame, I’m not even sure I’d do that; not if I was doing well.

What if I’d got through to the semi-finals? The final?

No, of course I would. Of
course
.

Susie

Gordana had called me at Corinna’s to say that he’d rung and wanted to meet me. At first I couldn’t even think who he was. My brain seemed a little scrambled from the stress of recent events, as well as the confusion of being based in two different places. I didn’t like to spend more than a few days at a time at either Gordana’s or Corinna’s, not wanting to get under anybody’s feet or outstay my welcome.

‘Karl who?’

‘He says he met you on the skiing holiday.’

I was astounded. ‘Oh, that Karl! Good grief, I don’t believe it.’

‘Did you have time to have a holiday romance?’Gordana asked, a little frostily.

‘No! Of course not! He was just really good to me – to both of us – when we were out there. He gave me lifts to the hospital and so on. He said he’s often in London on business, and because I didn’t know if I’d have a mobile phone over here, I gave him your number. I hope that’s all right.’

‘That is fine,’ said Gordana. ‘He says he’s going to be here until Friday, and if you wished to give him a call, he’d love to hear from you. He asked about Rachel too.’

I copied down the number she read out, trying to remember what Karl looked like. I had a memory of blond eyebrows and thick stubby fingers, and bits of popcorn stuck in his stubble, but whenever I tried to picture him, I saw Paul Newman instead. Oh, and beetroot – that’s right, he made me that supper when we got back from the hospital. That was all a bit blurry, after the brandies I’d consumed and the day I’d had.

What had we talked about? I thought I must have done all the talking, because I couldn’t for the life of me remember any information about him at all. I remembered the iron dragons in the fireplace, and the beige snow falling, and being out on the mountainside in zero visibility, but that was about it. What a truly awful vacation. Meeting Karl had been the only nice part of it, apart from the time spent with Rachel before the accident. But I couldn’t say I’d given him more than a passing thought since our return.

He must fancy me, I thought uncertainly, to look me up. Usually when you met people on holiday and exchanged numbers, it was as good as saying, ‘Have a nice life, it was good meeting you but I’ll never see you again.’

‘Ring him!’ said Corinna when I told her. She was doing the Saturday
Times
music crossword at the time, frowning at the few remaining unsolved clues. Her bare feet were propped up on the coffee table and her purple sparkly toenail polish was chipped. We were having a lazy Saturday morning together. ‘Go and have a date, it’ll cheer you up. Wish some handsome Aryan knight in shining armour would ring
me
up.’

‘He was quite handsome, actually,’ I reflected. ‘Quite a bit younger than me though, I’d say. Nice body. I can’t remember what he looked like, other than he had a touch of the young Paul Newman about him.’ I remembered that I’d thought of setting him and Rachel up, but that obviously hadn’t happened. Suddenly I no longer wanted her to have him. That wasn’t to say that
I
wanted him...at least, not yet. But I decided I’d quite like the option, if there was one going.

Corinna cackled. ‘Oh dear, it gets worse and worse...You sound like “younger” is a problem! A young, fit, decent, man who looks like Paul Newman is ringing you up? I’d be jumping for flaming joy if it was me…Eight letters, second letter L, Britpop band whose single was "Connection". Ooh, I’m sure I know that…’

‘Don’t ask me,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t a lot of Britpop in Lawrence; not that I ever heard. It was more bluegrass or reggae instead. I’d like to see him again,’ I added. ‘If only to thank him for everything he did for us in Italy. I could take him out for a meal, couldn’t I? But what if he—’

‘
Elastica!
Of course.’ She scribbled it in. ‘What? What if he what?’

‘Well. You know, does fancy me?’

Corinna shook her head pityingly. ‘Oh come on, Susie, get a grip. I mean, literally. Get a grip. If he fancies you, go for it. Have some good old-fashioned uncomplicated sex! It’ll do wonders for your ego if nothing else, and put a smile on your face. You lucky bitch.’

I laughed and slapped her shoulder affectionately. Perhaps she was right. I suppose it felt a bit funny, Gordana being the one who passed on the message. She made no bones about the fact that she’d love to see Ivan and me back together again, which of course was completely preposterous, but I had too much regard for Gordana to tell her that her son was an arrogant, devious cheat, and I didn’t even want to be in the same room as him, let alone in another doomed marriage.

‘I can’t imagine having sex with anyone other than Billy,’ I said dolefully. ‘And I don’t think I’m ever going to get married again. I’d have married Billy years ago if I’d wanted that.’

‘Who’s talking about marriage? You’re going to meet up with a new friend, who may or may not fancy you...Oh, I can’t do this one: the Rainmakers’ only single, four words, last word ends in O. I’ve never even heard of the Rainmakers.’

I got up. ‘It’s “Let My People Go-Go”.’

Corinna gaped at me in mock admiration.

‘They’re from Kansas, don’t you remember?’

‘No, I can’t say I do. But thanks. Now go and ring your Karl bloke.’

Karl and I arranged to meet on Monday night for dinner, although I made him promise to allow me to pay, which he harrumphed about Germanically before conceding. Once I heard his voice on the phone, I remembered how relaxed I felt in his company. I still couldn’t visualize his face, but I heard the smile in his voice and how he had that wonderful ‘port in a storm’ quality of making me feel safe. A bit like Billy had.

It was an odd feeling, getting ready for a date with a different man. I found myself dressing to impress Billy: a squirt of the perfume he liked, my hair up the way he approved of, the matching underwear he’d bought me (Lord knows how he managed that. I think he must have stood in the doorway of the lingerie shop in Lawrence looking lost until a sales lady took pity on him. For which I’m most thankful, otherwise I might have ended up with a purple polka-dot bra two sizes too large and some orange nylon briefs . . .).

Corinna lent me a funky pink charm bracelet, and her pink suede boots, which were a size and a half too large, but so lovely. I felt like I did as a five year old, dressing up and clunking around the house in my mother’s clothes, and it gave me an unexpected pang of loss. As well as my parents being long dead, Billy never saw his folks: they were divorced, and one lived in Canada, one in Tallahassee. Gordana was my substitute mother, and I knew that whatever happened with Ivan and me, she would always be there for me. I couldn’t stand the thought that she might not survive this illness. She was the hub of the closest thing I had to a family, however dysfunctional and fractured it was.

‘What’s up, Susie?’ said Corinna, who was teasing my hair into big waves with her curling tongs.

‘Just thinking about Gordana,’ I replied, concentrating on applying shiny pink eyeshadow. ‘I want to spend as much time as I can with her, but I don’t want to have another run-in with you-know-who. He’s like a bear with a sore head. I’m getting enough grief from one ex, I don’t need it from the other as well.’

Corinna squeezed my shoulder. ‘Think about your date instead. You can’t change anything by worrying about Gordana.’

I sighed. ‘I know, but….’ There wasn’t much else I could say.

All the way into town on the train, I was still seeing Paul Newman’s face on Karl’s body. But when I met Karl at the bar of the tapas restaurant near Waterloo Station that Corinna had recommended, Paul Newman vanished with a pop, and I couldn’t think how I’d ever made the association. They weren’t a bit alike, apart from the hair. I also couldn’t think how I hadn’t been able to remember what Karl looked like – as soon as I saw him, he looked utterly familiar. Having felt nervous about meeting him, I instantly felt nothing but pleasure.

‘Hi!’ I said warmly, kissing him on both cheeks, enjoying the feel of faint stubble against my lips. I tried and failed to recall the last time I’d had sex. ‘It’s really nice to see you again.’

‘You also,’ he said, appraising me at arm’s length.

‘You look great.’

I laughed, remembering the Tweedledee salopettes that were my sartorial lot the last time he’d seen me. His trademark ‘alt-zo’ hit the spot, too.

‘Well, rented ski gear from the Eighties doesn’t do much for a girl’s appearance. Not to mention the trauma of that week.’

‘No, I don’t suppose they do.’

I was half waiting for him to say that I’d looked great in Italy too, but he didn’t.

‘How is Rachel?’ he asked.

‘She’s much better, thanks,’ I said, accepting the seat he pulled back for me. ‘She’s still on crutches, but the physio’s going well, and she’ll find out if she can play competitively again in a couple of months’ time.’

‘I looked her up on the Internet,’ said Karl with enthusiasm. ‘She’s done very well, hasn’t she?’

‘Yeah. Although she’s convinced she could go a lot further. She wants to be at least the British number one – she’s number eight at the moment. Well, at least she was, before the accident.’

‘That sounds impressive to me,’ Karl said. ‘Please send her my best wishes.’

‘Did you meet her?’ I asked curiously. I couldn’t remember that they’d even had a conversation, only that he’d brought her up with the rest of us in the van, and then seen her semi-conscious in hospital.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘We had a good chat the first morning over breakfast. I think you were not awake yet. We ...how do you say it? Hit it off.’

‘Oh right. Shall we order?’

In the end, the evening was somehow not quite how I’d imagined it would be. Whilst I’d been unable to get to grips with Corinna’s idea of having a therapeutic, confidence-boosting one-night stand with Karl, I had thought that it would be ...well, more of a date, I suppose. It was more like a comfortable, companiable dinner with an old friend I hadn’t seen for a while.

Which was fine, of course, and infinitely preferable to a stilted meal full of pregnant pauses or, worse, unwanted advances. But on reflection, I think I was slightly hurt that there were no advances, unwanted or otherwise. Karl was utterly natural, and funny, and sweet. He told me all about his magnet-supplying business, which was a sideline to his ‘real’ work as a wine-importer, and how he loved the time he spent at the hotel in Italy.

He didn’t volunteer any personal information at all, apart from saying he’d never been married. He didn’t ask me anything personal either – although, recalling how I’d banged on relentlessly for several hours at the hotel that night, there probably wasn’t anything left that he felt he didn’t already know about me. Our chat was strictly present tense: I told him how I was dividing my time between Gordana and Corinna’s places, and we talked a lot about how great London was after the small towns we were used to. It was all very…polite.

At the end of dinner, there was an unseemly tussle for the bill – he had reneged on his promise to let me pay – in which our hands accidentally brushed one another; but that was the only physical contact we had, apart from kisses hello and goodbye. We eventually agreed to split the bill, and after we’d got our coats and walked out into the still noisy bustle of the Cut, to my surprise he asked me out again.

‘Lunch, perhaps, on Wednesday? I could come out to where you are staying. I would like to say hello to Rachel also.’

I felt puzzled. He wasn’t even looking in my eyes as he spoke. Instead, he was watching the progress of a homeless man weaving drunkenly along the pavement opposite, swamped by a huge macintosh which made him look like a Dalek. I might have been horribly out of practice, but Karl wasn’t giving off signs that he liked me in any way other than as a friend. Perhaps he was gay? Lonely? No social skills? I discounted the last one – he was charm personified. The first two were far more likely.

Oh well, I thought. Go with the flow. You like him, he obviously likes you enough to see you again, very soon. Perhaps it’s a German thing: trying to look at all costs as though there was no question of fancying the person whom you were asking out...

‘That would be lovely,’ I said, trying to sound brisk and not coy. ‘Give me a ring on the mobile, and we’ll fix something up for Wednesday. I’m not sure whether I’ll be in Surrey, though, or at Corinna’s place. But I’ll give Rach a ring to find out if she’s free. I’m sure she’d love to see you too.’

Karl beamed at me, tearing his eyes away from the swaying drunk.

‘Wednesday then,’ he said.