The Last Weekend (2 page)

Did I? I’d been so preoccupied with Em’s response that I hadn’t really thought about it. A long weekend near the sea might appeal to most people, but I’m a townie — grew up in Manchester, did my teacher training in Birmingham, distrust big waves, feel uneasy when there’s no concrete. On the other hand, Ollie and Daisy were bound to be staying somewhere comfortable, even grand, and it would be good to get together. I’d begun to think that we might not meet again, ever.

‘Ollie seemed pretty keen,’ I said.

‘The friends they originally asked have cried off, you mean.’

‘It’ll be fun. We all get along, don’t we?’

‘It depends who else is around. Remember that time at Primrose Hill?’

Em has more reasons for disliking Daisy than she realises. The one she cites is the occasion, ten years ago, when Daisy and Ollie were living in Primrose Hill, and invited us for the
weekend without mentioning that they were having a party and that the guests (more than sixty of them) were mostly their work colleagues and therefore unknown to us, neither of which omissions might have mattered had Daisy not failed to introduce us to people and then treated us like kitchen staff, though as to the last I think the blame lay partly with us since, for want of something better to do, it was we who started passing plates of food around. The fact that two other couples stayed overnight, and that we’d no time alone with the Moores on the Sunday, didn’t help. Ollie bore some responsibility, of course. But the real culprit was Daisy. I too had resented her neglect.

‘It’ll just be them,’ I said. ‘Ollie said so.’

‘Good. Daisy’s fine when she’s not showing off. And it’ll be nice to see Archie. You’re supposed to be his godfather, remember.’

‘Ollie didn’t mention Archie.’

‘Archie or not,’ she said, letting me know she’d had enough, ‘it sounds like we should say yes.’

‘Right. I’ll call them back.’

‘Not now. It’ll make us look desperate. Leave it a few days.’

‘OK,’ I said, leaning down and kissing her.

‘Meanwhile …’

‘Meanwhile you’ve got work to do, I know.’

‘Don’t you?’

I did, but not as much as she had, or not sufficient to deter me from going downstairs to fetch another beer. Shutting the fridge, I noticed the back door was open, and stepped outside, and felt the heat of the day still stored in the back step. Ours is a small garden, fifty feet or so, mostly gravel rather than grass. But there’s a view of the hills over the houses behind. And the previous owner created a pond, bequeathing us his koi and goldfish. I picked up the canister of fish food, treading
on a loose flagstone as I approached. The noise drew them upwards through the weed, their open mouths and feathery tails churning the surface. Goldfish are meant to have a memory span of ten seconds. So how did these ones know, when I trod on that flagstone, they were about to be fed? And why, whenever a heron visits, do they stay close to the bottom for days afterwards? I admired them for living so simply. ‘Pond life,’ people say, as an insult. Perhaps Ollie and Daisy thought of Em and me as pond life. But they wouldn’t have called unless they wanted to see us. They probably liked us for the same reason as I liked the fish.

Drawn by the splishes from the pond, Rufus wandered out to join me, lethargically sniffing the lily pads before shambling back inside. I too was almost panting in the heat, but rather than follow him in I sat on the back step, avoiding the snail trail which shone like spilt semen. The sun was finally setting over the roofs. It seemed too grand a sunset for our street, so triumphant I half expected trumpets, glorious but also brutal, the clouds underlit with blood. How long before the sun went completely? Ten seconds? Twenty? I settled on fifteen and counted it down, to the last orange wisp. Twenty-six seconds. I’d have lost that bet.

The dusk gathered round, heavy and hot. I sat there for a long time. Anything was preferable to marking.

‘OK, love?’ Em called as I finally creaked back upstairs, meaning would I please get on with my work so that when we’d both finished we could go to bed and do what couples our age are supposed to do once or twice a week. I ought to have felt flattered — to have my partner of fifteen years still desire me — but as I sat in the box room, unable to concentrate, my brow sweating from the beer and humidity, the mouse connecting me to websites, what I felt was chided, for being the lesser, lazier partner in the marriage.

It was different when we first lived together. Then I’d been the one with the demanding job, a young teacher learning to cope with unruly kids, whereas Em was merely in training, for what precisely she didn’t yet know, social work broadly, but whether work with the old, disabled, addicted, delinquent or merely impoverished she wouldn’t decide until she had her certificate. We were hard up then, more so than now, in a rented flat with dusty carpets and no washing machine. But I assumed the pattern of our lives would stay the same, with me at work all day and Em a dilettantish part-timer. I’m not the kind of man who expects his wife to have the dinner on the table when he gets home, but even when she qualified and began her first job it seemed only right that Em took on the bulk of household duties — preparation for when children came along. They never did, or haven’t yet. And as the prospect of them has receded, so Em has begun to immerse herself in other people’s children, her daily dealings with kids who have been damaged in some way — through abuse, neglect, violence, malnutrition and all the other charming hand-me-downs — compensating her for the non-arrival of ours.

Her work is hard. Harder than mine. A weekend away would do her good. 27August. 2, 7, 8. Three lucky numbers of mine. I put the date in my diary.

Procrastinating, I retrieved an old road atlas from under my desk and looked up Badingley. I wasn’t surprised it didn’t appear in the index: there isn’t room for every small village or hamlet. What was frustrating was to turn to the relevant page and find it torn out. No worries: I could always google. But the missing page seemed faintly ominous — as if the whole area had been wiped from the map.

Despite Em’s discouragement, I was tempted to call Ollie back that night, so we all knew where we were. In the event,
he saved me the trouble. The phone rang just as I’d finally settled to my marking.

‘I hope it’s not too late,’ he said.

‘Not in the least.’

‘Good, because —’

‘I’ve talked to Em,’ I said, leaping in to keep it brief. ‘It’s sorted. We’re free. You’re on.’

‘Right. Good. Only, I’m sorry, this is awkward, but I was hoping you hadn’t talked to Em so we could change the date – it turns out Daisy has already asked someone else for the bank holiday, without telling me. You’re not free the previous weekend by any chance?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, though I did. ‘I’ll have to ask Em.’

‘If that’s not a nuisance. I don’t mind waiting.’

‘She’s in the middle of something. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘So it could be difficult.’

‘I don’t know. But we need to discuss it.’

‘Just a sec,’ he said. I could hear footsteps in the background and the sound of a door closing. I was too taken aback to feel angry, but I knew that was how I ought to feel and irritably drummed my red biro on the desk. Had he not consulted Daisy before he called me? Had she now ordered him to dis-invite us? I imagined her losing her temper with him on the leather sofa in their drawing room: ‘For God’s sake, Ollie, how could you be so stupid? We’ve asked the Fitchinghams that weekend, they and the Goades are chalk and cheese.’ Em was right about Daisy: our small-town ways were an embarrassment to her; Ollie might feel some lingering attachment to his old mate, but she didn’t want us around. I threw my biro down and drained my beer. Jesus, this was insulting enough without Ollie expecting me to hang on indefinitely while he wandered off somewhere.

‘On no account ask Em anything,’ he said, returning in a
newly hushed voice. ‘I should never have called you back. It’s just Daisy thought if you’d not spoken to Em … But you have, and that’s fine, so let’s leave things as they are. I’d much rather you came on the bank holiday weekend — it’ll give us longer.’

‘But if you’re double-booked …’

‘It’s only one of Daisy’s designer chaps. He can come another time.’

‘Really, if it’s difficult, I’m sure we could switch.’

‘Enough, Ian. It’s settled. Come on the Friday morning. Come as early as you can. Let’s make the most of it.’

I hung up and tried to concentrate: ten minutes’ marking and I’d be done. But Ollie’s call — his second call — was all I could think about. There he was, crossing the floor of his study (not a box room like mine, but a high-ceilinged, book-lined sanctum, with sash windows overlooking the garden) in order to close the door, so that Daisy wouldn’t overhear him talking to me. Why? Their relationship had always seemed enviable and nobody envied it more than I did. But if they’d reached the point where one made arrangements without consulting the other, was something wrong? I suddenly remembered the last time we’d seen them. Three years ago, at half-term — they were passing through with Archie on their way to a holiday in the Lakes, and we had lunch in Matlock and went for a walk, during which Ollie wandered off and failed to rejoin us till we reached the car park an hour later. No great drama: he’d spotted some sort of roadside display in the distance and by the time he established what it was (a floral memorial to a dead cyclist) he had lost sight of us and then turned right where we’d turned left — a simple enough explanation, but I recall Em saying afterwards that Ollie and Daisy seemed out of sync in some way.

I felt sad to think their marriage might be in trouble — sad
but excited. Partly responsible, too: I was the one who’d introduced them to each other all those years ago.

I went online again, hoping a spin of the wheel would distract me. But Ollie was too much in my head. He’d always lived with a manic kind of vigour: if the weekend didn’t include a five-mile run, a dinner party with fellow lawyers, a concert or exhibition, a game of tennis or squash, a skim-read of a new political biography and three hours preparing his latest case, then it wouldn’t be an Ollie weekend. But he was in his mid-forties now, when men begin to lose their edge. And he hadn’t sounded his old self on the phone. Was he going grey? Had he finally put on some weight? I saw him cross the room in blue cotton trousers, a white polo shirt and navy sailing shoes, but I couldn’t make out his waistline or his face.

Hearing Em get up from her desk, I quit the website with a mixture of frustration and relief.

‘I’m off to bed,’ she said, in the doorway. ‘Who was that?’

‘Ollie again.’

‘He must be keen.’

‘He is.’

‘It’s sorted, then?’

‘Yes.’

I didn’t mention the business over dates because it would have annoyed her. If we were going to spend a weekend with Ollie and Daisy, it was best she go into it with an open mind. I was protecting Em from herself — but also, if I’m honest, protecting Daisy. She and I go back a long way. I knew her before she met Ollie. And there are episodes which, misinterpreted, might prejudice Em against her.

Couples should be honest with each other. But when being honest causes trouble, tactful omissions are kinder. That’s how I see it — though Em would certainly disagree.

The light was fading beyond the window but street lamps
kept the dark at bay. It’s a good street to live in. A street free of knife attacks and muggings. A street where the handmade posters pinned to trees are messages about missing cats, not missing children. A street which
has
trees, enough of them for estate agents to call it ‘leafy'.

As I returned to my marking, with Em waiting in bed, the phone rang again.

‘Ian,’ Daisy said, like an alarm going off, ‘I am so,
so
sorry.’

For a moment I thought she must want to change arrangements again. I braced myself not to show anger or hurt. What did it matter whether or not we saw them? They were gone, people from the past, strangers.

‘Ollie ballsed it up,’ she went on. ‘He missed the point completely. I don’t know what’s wrong with him these days. Am I forgiven?’

How could I not forgive her? What was there to forgive?

‘We’ve been planning this for ages,’ she said. ‘You suggest it every year on your Christmas card. Well, finally we’ve got round to it. I’m so glad you can come.’

I got the whole story then. How Ollie had forgotten that she’d asked a client of hers called Milo to stay over the bank holiday ('His wife is going to the States for a month, he has two young kids to look after, for me it’s more duty than pleasure but the least I could do was offer'). How she would see if Milo could do a different weekend, but if not it didn’t matter, he was lovely, we would like him and there was loads of room, the house had five bedrooms. How she hoped Ollie hadn’t given the impression that she was putting us off. Nothing could be further from the truth. It would be lovely —
lovely
— to see us.

‘Ollie’s been under a lot of pressure lately. It will do him good. And anyway, well, I don’t have to tell you.’