Something I'm Not (14 page)

Chapter Nineteen

T
HE NEXT DAY
I fly into New York where, in an air-conditioned room at a discreet SoHo hotel, I've arranged to interview my candidate for Keswick's. It's a meeting arranged on the tacit understanding that neither side will reveal our connection. Former patients are often flattered to be rung up by their erstwhile psychiatrist. Particularly if there's a favour involved. Especially those recalling a crisis of great personal, if not national, disquiet. Even more so if issues of secrecy had been so vital that the psychiatrist had been sourced from abroad, with consultations conducted on the golf course to foil an intrusive international media.

And so this former patient has agreed to meet his psychiatrist's wife. I suspect my call could not have been better timed. People don't give much thought to the fact that, after you've held powerful office, you might be stuck, on a long-term basis, for something to actually do. But I do give such things due thought. In psychological terms, I know just which levers to pull. I know that successful people do not succeed by chance. They are all driven to avenge an early hurt, and this drive never dies. It becomes their vocation. I know this viscerally, because it underpins my very soul. And knowledge, they say, is power. When I meet successful people, I see the wounded child inside.

Rage at my mother's rejection has dulled my excitement at the task ahead. Throughout the flight, I am listless and weepy in turns; I keep having to disappear to the toilet to replenish tissue supplies. The rest of the time, I burrow into my cradle chair, ignoring the food and entertainment. It isn't until I cross the threshold of the hotel room that I imagine the mask of the functioning adult snap back into place. I watch as two bodyguards step outside to take up positions in the corridor. They smile as they register my tailored skirt and expensive heels.

My candidate pours me coffee. From the writing desk he picks up a copy of my book,
The Right Job for You
, and asks me to sign it. In spite (or perhaps as a result) of having a face resembling an excited marsupial, this is a man with a well-polished instinct for intimacy. He combines charm with intelligence. Every look, every word, vibrates with significance. Above all, I sense in him the hunger of someone damaged early in life perpetually striving to amend the deficits.

He massages away any doubts I might have regarding his suitability for the role. He proves himself extremely well briefed: about Keswick's, naturally, but also about me. He makes me feel that of all the people he's ever met, I am by far the most fascinating. He knows the subject of my university dissertation (
I just adore Edith Wharton
), and how much my bonus was last year (
that's impressive, Amber!
). There's even soya milk in a jug with the coffee (
I'm lactose-intolerant, too – doesn't it suck?
). In his openness, and abundant emotional curiosity, I am reminded of Matt.

Once I leave the hotel and the aura of the man's charisma, I feel bereft.

The heat in the city is as oppressive as in London. Sensible folk will be staying away until after Labour Day. For a while I wander aimlessly. I drift around boutiques, fingering impossibly wispy pieces of fabric. A vague plan to buy designer foodstuffs at Dean & DeLuca is thwarted when I find it closed for the day to be used as a film set.

Eventually I find myself at Ground Zero. I clink in my heels up a metal staircase and stand on the raised iron platform. I stare into the crater below. My feet have swollen in the heat. They are sore where the tight leather chafes my skin. Leaning into a railing, I ease one blistered foot out of its shoe.

Nothing has prepared me for this scene of desolation, the way the vast expanse of concrete flooring shimmers in the heat and appears to stretch to the horizon. The clang of metal on metal drifts upwards. Traffic hums in the background. The sun shines fiercely, bright and defiant. Workmen go about their business, wearing hard hats, their bronzed torsos stripped to the waist. And, in the face of their physicality, their task of active regeneration, I suddenly feel hollow, diminished. It is as though the question with my mother has always been: which headhunter will claim the first scalp? And I am suddenly hijacked by the desire to step off the ledge and never be bothered by her again.

*

The return flight that night is empty. Despite the flat beds, and the entertainment options, I am restless. My mother lurks in the background like a particularly bothersome flight attendant.

I am one of only a handful of passengers on my deck. All are sleeping, having eaten in the Club lounge prior to boarding. The crew, taking advantage of the slack, gossip in secret recesses beyond the galley. I assume I am the only one awake. I ease myself up in the darkness and prise off my eye mask. The beds are arranged nose to tail, as though in homage to some unspoken erotic pleasure. To my astonishment I lock eyes with my neighbour, who has paused in his reading of the latest John Updike. He peers over the top of his spectacles.

‘Jet lag?' he mouths.

I grin and shake my head. ‘Pathetic, isn't it!' I whisper. ‘It's three in the morning our time, and I'm wide awake!'

‘I know the feeling.' The man removes his reading glasses. Late forties, I reckon. A youthful fifty at most. Clean-shaven, despite the hour, and with groomed greying hair. He wears a white linen shirt, which hangs in soft folds around his chest. Attractive laughter lines draw attention to his eyes, which are the luscious colour of washed mangoes. His accent is appropriately mid-Atlantic. ‘So, what were you in town for? Business or pleasure?'

Believing it would be disingenuous to imply hard graft when the meeting had proved so exhilarating (
Now, whaddya say we order in lunch, Amber!
), I admit to a bit of both. The stranger rolls his eyes as if to say,
Isn't that so New York?

We've reached that awkward border crossing when conversing with strangers, a checkpoint between intimacy and solitude. To snuggle back into my cubicle might be misconstrued as a snub, yet to prolong conversation with a man who'd made arrangements to consort with literary nobility seems laced with presumption.

And then it comes to me, unbidden as it were. That we float here in limbo, thousands of feet above the clouds, suspended between time zones. We can somersault beyond the gravitational pull of real life, into spaces beyond the reach of criticism, to experience free will in its purest form, unfettered by assumptions, mistakes or consequences; language, religion or nation. No background, no baggage. To meet without prejudice. To have not even traded names. To know only this: that to be human is to be free.

I unbuckle my seatbelt, toss my blanket to the floor and step round to his cubicle. With his leg, he kicks the footrest into upright and leans forward to secure it; there is no pretence between us that I've merely come to chat. I hold his gaze before moving to stand before him, sliding my skirt and silk lining up over my thighs. He grasps my buttocks with large warm hands and pulls me gently towards him. I notice the smooth triangle of toffee skin at his neck where the top button is undone. I place a fingertip in the groove and stroke it lightly. His scent is subtle: an intoxicating blend of clean skin, musk and warm intelligence. I straddle him, and as he unzips himself I sink my knees into his seat. He kisses me forcefully, missing my mouth and almost biting my cheek, twisting my head to align our lips. His hand finds my knickers. He parts them slightly, and slides his finger inside me. My knees are sore from the seat's rough fabric, but it does give very good leverage. Slowly I lower myself on to him.

From the floor, John Updike's dust jacket smile observes us, as if in approbation.

*

In a shower cubicle in the airport Club lounge, I press my forehead into the cold tiles and close my eyes. Needles of water pierce my naked back. My head throbs. If only this was just due to dehydration. I grip both taps until my knuckles tinge white. Survival, I have always felt, is about staying in control. Right now, I don't recognise myself. I don't know this other person, this woman who's had sex with a stranger in the no-man's land above the clouds. I must regain control, if only to defy my mother's indifference. I have to retain control.

Chapter Twenty

B
Y THE TIME
I'm through passport control and have switched on my phone, I have four missed calls. Louisa has gone into premature labour. The messages, a typically easy-going one from Matt and three feral ones from the mother-to-be, overlap in the wish that I join them at the hospital. Prue is driving in from Norfolk. I try to focus in my taxi on the domestic drama unfolding in town, to obliterate memories of the subsonic one.

Which isn't easy. When I recall my duplicity, I feel utterly numb. Shame makes me fractious and I barrack the driver. And all around me the drabness of the suburbs and the chaos of endless roadworks match what I see as my festering inner ugliness. I rest my head against the window, as if the weight of guilt makes my skull too heavy for my neck.

William Edward, weighing in at less than four pounds, is sucked from Louisa's stomach as my cab draws up outside the hospital entrance. As I pay the fare, he is uttering his first whimper. As I spin the revolving doors and approach reception, his puce, wrinkled body is being sponged and rushed from theatre to incubator, to be wired up to monitors. And as I run down squeaky corridors, a sedated Louisa is being wheeled back to her room, and Matt is removing his sky-blue theatre scrubs and joking with the obstetrics team. When I arrive at the labour ward, I find beautiful, clean Matt sitting reading a dog-eared society magazine. I hug him so tightly he begins to laugh.

As we walk hand in hand to the vending machine, he describes the emergency Caesarean: how Louisa suffered potentially fatal side-effects to the drugs the hospital had administered to halt her contractions. Once these had been stopped, there was nothing the staff could do to delay William's arrival, and she'd been rushed to theatre. At one point, it was feared the baby might arrive in the lift, and the midwife had had to hold a pad in place to stop the low-lying placenta slipping out.

‘I told Prue we'd wait till she got here,' whispers Matt, blowing on scalding liquid once we reach Louisa's room. ‘Is that all right? You look bushed. Couldn't you sleep on the plane?'

Sometimes when Matt is tired, his voice has a stronger Springbok lilt. It reminds me that he was once a little boy in another country far away, and I long to wrap him up in a blanket. I close my eyes. Against his shoulder, I am Sleeping Beauty. I listen as Matt speaks, with his easy grasp of medical terminology, hacking at the briars of blood, and mucus, and morphine, before saving me with a kiss.

Sometimes I fantasise that I am one of his patients; that he will sit on my bed and make all my horrid feelings go away. And sometimes when I'm in a really self-pitying mood, I will tell him this; and Matt will laugh and say I could never afford his fees.

Louisa utters a moan just as Prue appears in the doorway – as though, even in sleep, she can sense her mother's approach. As if the very air around a mother quivers with the static of maternal concern. Matt and I stand up.

‘How is she?' gasps Prue, to no one in particular. Her voice is taut, her words clipped.

At the sight of her mother, Louisa begins to weep. ‘They put a needle in my hand', she mumbles repeatedly, and ‘Why weren't you here?' Prue sits on the bed and strokes Louisa's fringe, ignoring the reproaches. She murmurs soothing sounds. Then she leans forward and gently kisses the new mother's forehead.

I suddenly feel very clammy. I offer to fetch Prue a coffee.

As the liquid spurts into the cup, tears stream down my face and splash on to my shoes.

Chapter Twenty-one

O
F ALL THE FRIENDS
whose telephones throb with news of William's premature arrival, one in particular has specific reason to thank He who moves in mysterious ways – for the birth proves to be indirectly responsible for the unusually high attendance at Dylan's auditions. That evening, as we cram around Louisa's bed, the gang finds itself unwittingly in Dylan's parish. And, when Louisa becomes too weary for visitors, there is clearly (even for those who traditionally hide their social inertia behind a lack of childcare) no escape, as Dylan cheerily reminds us.

Owing to a church hall timetable clash – a beetle drive for the local Youth Re-offending Team – we gather in the church itself. It feels different when not set up for a service. For one thing, all the heavy wooden pews have been moved to the sides, creating an empty space that appears to make our footsteps ring out more loudly on the flagstones. The triptych of stained-glass windows seems flatter, somehow, without bright sunlight pouring through them. And, without fresh flowers, or people in their Sunday best, I feel as though I'm trespassing on something intensely private.

Just one area looks the same. At either side of the shallow steps leading to the chancel stand the wooden pedestal of a carved statue of the Virgin Mary, painted cream and blue, and an iron lectern with the wings of a bronze eagle forming the bookrest. Behind them I can see the altar draped in white cloth, topped with two burning candles, their flames flickering in the reredos of beaten gold. On the rare occasions I go to church, these objects barely register. But tonight, I feel glad to see them.
We're here for you
, they seem to say.
We'll always be here
.

On one of the pews sits a clique of strangers. They glare at me as I nod at them and smile. Their eyes appear dark and lifeless. Dylan sidles up to me.

‘Don't waste your breath trying to make them like you,' he whispers. ‘Their jealousy of each other is exceeded only by their hatred of new people.'

Dylan stands on the steps to the chancel and, adopting the single malt undertone he reserves for making parishioners do things they don't want to do, urges us to form a circle for some warm-up exercises. Beneath the scraping of shoes on flagstones, there are detectable ripples of discontent, which Dylan bravely ignores. How, I ask myself, does he remain so upbeat amid such debilitating parish dynamics? No wonder he's thinking of leaving the church.