Games People Play (41 page)

Everyone else is staring anxiously at Ivan, who has gone the colour of the Stilton. He look for a moment like he is going to cry too, but not in a good way.

Then slowly, slowly, he push away his chair and stands up. Oh no, darling, don’t walk out, I beg him in my head. Don’t do this to her, it’s not fair. I can see the big muscle tick-ticking away at the corner of his jaw, and it seems like it’s going in time with the tick-ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room.

He walks over to Rachel. Karl squeezes Rachel’s hand more tighter. Rachel is shaking so much now that she knocks over her port, and it makes a stain on my beautiful lace tablecloth. The stain is the same colour as the rose she painted me. Karl picks up the glass and mops at the spillage with his napkin, not letting go of Rachel’s hand even though it means he has to cross his other arm awkwardly over his body to reach it.

It’s like the whole room is holding its breath. Ivan leans down – and then he hugs her. She puts her arms around him and hugs him back. He doesn’t say a word.

I know my boy – sometimes he doesn’t speak because he doesn’t want to. Other times he doesn’t speak because he can’t. Now is one of those times. He can’t.

He kisses the top of her head. Then he walks back and sits down. Nods once at her. Smiles. And that’s the end of it. It’s over. Rachel’s new life begin here.

Susie

Long walks were one of the things Billy and I always did well together – surprisingly, considering his general inactivity for much of the rest of the time.

Some of our best chats had been tramped out in time with our marching feet and the backdrop of a spot of impressive scenery. Perhaps it was because our legs were the same length; we could keep pace perfectly.

Something about the rhythm of it always used to turn us on, too. Some of our best sex was had after, or during, a long walk – all that fresh air and blood rushing around the body ...And it always helped us figure out problems too, away from the stale familiarity of our home, puffing out the cobwebs of our discontent and our dreams.

Up in the thin air of the Adirondacks we set up Billy’s new mechanics’ business. In the Ozarks, I told him the sorry story of my marriage to Ivan in more detail than I’d ever told anyone else; and then Billy leaned me backwards over a hollow fallen tree-trunk and made it all better. Across the smaller peaks and glassy waters of the Lake District, scuffing through an autumn carpet of orange and red on a holiday soon after we got engaged, we discussed having kids. That conversation lasted for miles, I recalled, and never was really concluded.

Billy reminded me of it as we did circuits of Bushy Park, near Hampton Court, on a damp foggy Boxing Day. There were no mountains for us to walk up in south-west London, but there was an austere beauty to the bare ancient chestnut trees, and the deer skittering across the grass lent an otherworldly quality to the setting, despite the fact that we usually preferred to be alone in our landscapes – and we were far from alone. Families were out in force: little girls in bright-coloured wellies and ladybird or frog mackintoshes, new and shiny like the carefully pedalled trikes and brand new Christmas scooters bumping over the ruts as parents strolled behind issuing warnings and injunctions.

Billy gazed at them. He’d always taken it harder than I had, us not having children of our own.

‘Was that anything to do with it?’ I asked abruptly. ‘Kids, I mean.’

We still hadn’t talked properly yet. He had slept on a camp bed in Ted’s office last night (Ivan, Karl, Rachel and I taking up all the other available spare beds in the house), and I hadn’t suggested he shared my bed. I let him be in the dog-house, and he had humbly acquiesced. I’d half-expected, half-hoped that he might creep into my room in the dark of night, but he hadn’t, so I had lain awake, itchy with frustration and long-suppressed lust, dying for my Christmas cuddle but not quite ready to forgive him yet. Not sure that I would be able to forgive him.

Billy reached out and took my hand. I was wearing woollen gloves but I could still feel the warmth of his touch. Ever since I was a little girl I’d always loved the feeling of wearing gloves and holding hands with someone.

‘It’s hard to explain,’ he said cautiously.

‘Try.’

A squirrel shot out of a patch of long grass nearby and hurled itself up the closest tree, hotly pursued by a yapping cocker spaniel. The dog’s owner, a rotund woman in a red jacket that made her look like a lagged hot water tank, called out to it: ‘Trevor, stop it! Naughty boy!’ Then she turned to us. ‘Sorry! Isn’t he dreadful? Did you have a nice Christmas?’ – as if we were old friends.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I replied politely. The woman opened her mouth to say something else, but I allowed Billy to drag me away before we got engaged in any more of a conversation. We had rather more important things to discuss.

‘I thought you said Brits weren’t as friendly as Americans?’

I grimaced. ‘Only when you don’t want them to be...So. Kids. Was that it? Or did you tell Eva that I didn’t understand you? Come on, Billy, we’ve never even talked about all this, and it’s time we did.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But to be fair, it’s not like you gave me a chance. You kicked me out and then you went to Europe.’

I stopped walking, outraged. ‘Oh right, so if I’d said we needed to talk, and I hadn’t gone to Italy, you’d have dumped Eva then and there and everything would’ve been fine? I don’t think so!’

Spaniel Woman was catching us up, with a determined look in her eye and another conversational gambit hovering on her lips. We ducked off the main path, through the long, wet grass, to avoid her.

‘No, I’m not saying that at all. But we should’ve talked earlier. We talk when we go on walks, but, Suze, how many years has it been since we went on a walking vacation, or even for a hike? We stopped walking, and we stopped talking. I was so busy at the garage, you were always at work, or with Audrey, or planning your next trip to see Rachel; or emailing Rachel; or talking to Rachel on the phone – I just felt shut out of your life! You never included me in anything, I felt like a spare part. And yeah, maybe if we’d had kids of our own, we’d have been more of a family.’

We stopped to let a herd of deer stroll past, which at least made the spaniel and her owner run in the opposite direction. Not so brave now, are you, Trevor? I thought, watching the dog yelp and scarper. I was furious with Billy.

‘
You
felt shut out? We hardly ever had the bloody house to ourselves, with all your buddies round the whole time buying pot and then staying half the night to smoke it. What was I supposed to do, since I don’t smoke? Sit on the sofa in silence with you all, or talk about Spinal Tap for seven hours on the trot?’

‘Suze, that’s not fair. I was always asking you if we could do more stuff together. I got all those brochures for photography classes, and we were going to take up t’ai chi, remember? I wanted us to have folk round for dinner once a month, a proper dinner party, but you just made a joke about us not having enough trays, and that was that. It never happened. I wanted us to put some weekends aside to redecorate the house, remember, but you were always too busy, and I so wanted it to be a joint project.’

I supposed he was right. Billy had at various times tried to get us to do more stuff. I hadn’t thought he was all that serious about it; I’d assumed they were just more of his stoner ideas that would never happen. It never before occurred to me that the reason they didn’t happen was due less to his lethargy and more to the fact that I’d ignored them or poured cold water on the suggestions. Guilt began to prickle at me.

He stopped walking. A heavy drizzle was beginning to surround us, coating our faces and settling on his hair like dew. He had tears in his eyes.

‘It wasn’t just that, Suze. I’ve been feeling for ages that ...well, that you weren’t really mine any more – maybe that you never felt you were; that you’d been running away from Ivan and you rushed into getting engaged to kind of make up for the crap marriage you had with him, without ever intending to
commit
. You just talked about him and Rachel and Gordana all the time, and your life in England, and the fact that you wanted to come back here one day, and that you didn’t like Kansas —’

‘I do like Kansas! I loved our house, and living in Lawrence, and being engaged to you. I thought we were happy; I thought that was committed!’

‘But I didn’t know that. You always seemed like you wanted something different to what you had. You never said you were happy. And if you liked being engaged to me, why the hell wouldn’t you marry me?’

A flock of crows all suddenly rose as one from a big bare oak tree, cawing so loudly that I had to speak up to be heard. They flew over our heads to settle on the branches of a different tree, all flying as if they knew exactly where they were going. Why couldn’t we have been more like that? Why was it so difficult to communicate, even with the ones closest to us? There’d only been me and Billy – how could it have been so easy for us to misread each other’s needs?

‘I didn’t know it meant so much to you. I thought you understood how scared I was of getting married again, after the first one went wrong. I thought we were OK as we were. I’m sorry, Billy. I just didn’t know it was upsetting you so much.’

‘You hardly ever even said you loved me; not with passion, anyhow. Only B.I.L.Y.’

‘I liked B.I.L.Y.,’ I said miserably. ‘I thought that was our thing; our way of saying it. I’m sorry if you needed me to spell it out.’

He sighed. ‘Yeah. No, you’re right. It was. But it’s not just that. I mean, we used to have a great sex life – but we haven’t for years, have we? No wonder I thought you didn’t want to marry me.’

‘You were always up half the night after I’d gone to bed. I was tired from working. You often worked weekends.’ I felt angry again, and defensive, like he was trying to blame me for the fact he’d cheated on me.

‘You shut yourself off from me, Susie. I tried to talk to you, but you stonewalled me. I thought you didn’t love me anymore. Then I met Eva—’

‘Where did you meet her?’ I hadn’t wanted to ask, but curiosity got the better of me.

‘At a show, at Liberty Hall. Leon Russell – remember? I asked you if you wanted to come with me, but you said no, so I went on my own. She was at the bar at the same time as me, and we got talking, ’cos she was on her own too. She listened to me, Suze. I just felt, for the first time in years, like I was really connecting with someone, the way I wanted so bad to connect with you, but couldn’t ...I know it was wrong, and I feel truly awful about it, please believe me. Now I’ve hurt Eva as well as you, and I can’t forgive myself. But I couldn’t pretend to her any longer. When you went away, I just couldn’t bear it. I used to go and sit in our yard at night, looking at the empty dark house and petting the cats. They were always real happy to see me. But I’d sit there and cry, because I’d lost the one person I love more than anything, and I didn’t know what to do to make it right again. I’d destroyed everything we had together, just because we couldn’t talk properly.’

He was really crying now, in that hopeless way that men did; dragging his sleeve across his eyes, all wet-mouthed and red-faced, his shoulders shaking silently.

I hugged him, loving the way that we were the same size. With Ivan, I’d always had to crane my neck to reach up to kiss him. Since both our legs and trunks were the same length, it meant that Billy’s mouth and mine were exactly opposite each other’s too, and all we had to do was to lean forward and ...I leaned forward. He tasted of salty tears, garlic and, faintly, old pot. It was the best taste in the world. He kissed me back, hiccupping slightly. He smelled wonderful too.

‘It’s not all destroyed,’ I whispered, the rim of his ear soft and velvety against my lips. ‘I still love you, really, Billy, I always did. I was devastated when I found out about you and Eva. I’ve never, ever not wanted to be with you.’

‘But how can you ever forgive me for cheating?’

I shrugged. ‘It might take a while. But I will, because I want to. I want you. I want our lives back; just you, me and the cats. I didn’t see it before, but I’m to blame as well, by not talking to you. But things can change. We can do all that stuff together: courses and holidays and stuff. Perhaps you might stop selling pot for a while, so we don’t have so many people in the house ...?’

Billy nodded into my neck. ‘Definitely. I’m sick of it anyhow, and they’re really coming down harsh on the dealers these days. It’s not worth the risk. And to tell you the truth, I don’t really care much for Flamingo Dan and his buddies either ...I just couldn’t piss ’em off or they’d buy their pot elsewhere.’

‘Shame about the weather!’ trilled Spaniel Woman, popping up again from nowhere. ‘It’s lovely when Boxing Day is crisp and clear, but this—’

Billy looked up, wet-faced and irritated. ‘Ma’am, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’re having a —’

I clamped my hand over his mouth. ‘Yes,
such
a shame about the weather, isn’t it? Oh well.’ I slid my hand around the back of Billy’s head. ‘Some things are more important than a bit of fog, aren’t they?’ And I kissed him, long and hard, right in front of her. She looked on, horrified, as Billy walked me over to the nearest tree, still kissing me back, and pressed me hard up against it, ramming his knee between my legs and sliding his hands inside my coat to feel my breasts. I reciprocated, running my own hands over his backside and down the sides of his legs, both of us giggling helplessly within the kiss.

‘Well!’ said Spaniel Woman in tones of horror and disgust. ‘I never saw such an appalling ...I can’t believe people can be so ...I don’t think I’ll . . .’ She tailed off and, peering over Billy’s shoulder, I saw her clip the lead on to the dog’s collar and drag him off back towards the car park.

‘That’s sorted her,’ I said briskly, going to push Billy away from me again. But he wouldn’t move; he just rubbed himself harder against me and kissed me again.

The relief of it almost made me cry – except I was too turned on. I’d go off like a rocket, I thought, if we made love now; a whirling Catherine wheel of desire. It had been so long.

‘Come on.’ I grabbed his hand impulsively and led him towards a dense copse. ‘No one will see us in here.’

Billy said nothing, but smiled his wicked, dimpled smile and followed me until we were surrounded by dark, tight-packed tree trunks. He laid his coat down on the damp ground and pushed me on to it – but my knees were so weak by then, I probably couldn’t have stood up for much longer anyway.

Sometime later, we stood up and brushed bits of bark and soggy leaf off ourselves, our bodies two patchworks of hot and cold, wet and dry. I had indeed gone off like a rocket, my strangled cries issuing up into the treetops and scaring away the birds. Billy shook out his coat and put it back on, a look of sudden anguish on his face as he began to delve in the big pockets of it. ‘What have you lost?’ I asked.

‘Oh man, don’t tell me, oh man – wait – oh. Phew. Here it is,’ he said, visibly relieved, pulling what looked like a piece of crumpled kitchen towel out of one of the pockets. It wasn’t like Billy to be so concerned about being out without a tissue, I thought, unless he’d changed a great deal since we were together...

‘Kitchen towel?’

He grabbed my hand, looking over his shoulder to check we were still alone – or perhaps to check that Spaniel Lady wasn’t about to pop up and start commenting on his technique.