The Post-Birthday World (2 page)

Lawrence utterly neglected the woman he called his “wife” to others but whom he had never bothered to marry; Ramsey was better brought up. Shifting toward Irina, Ramsey firmly turned aside any more snooker shoptalk for the night. He commended her illustrations for Jude’s new children’s book, extolling, “Them pictures was top drawer, love. I were well impressed.” (That was,

wew
impressed. Especially since his voice was soft, the thick South London accent took some getting used to. Ramsey apologized that the fish mousse was
awfoow,
pressed Irina to accept more wine because on his
burfday
she needn’t
beehive hersewf,
and demurred that he
dint fancy a pud neevah.
“Think things through” came out
fink fings froo;
a word like “motivated” was full of tiny silences, like a faulty digital recording:
mo’ i’ va ’i.
) He had a way of looking at Irina and only at Irina that no one had employed for a very long time, and it frankly unnerved and even discomfited her; she constantly cut her own gaze to her plate. It was a bit much for a first meeting, not presumptuous in a way you could quite put your finger on but presumptuous all the same. And Ramsey was lousy at casual chitchat; whenever she brought up the Democratic convention, or John Major, he plain stopped talking.

Quietly, Ramsey picked up the tab. The wine, and there had been a lot of it, had been pricey. But snooker pros made a mint, and Irina decided not to feel abashed.

That first birthday, his forty-second, as she recalled, he’d seemed perfectly nice and everything, but she’d been relieved when the evening was over.

Irina collaborated on a second children’s book with Jude— the overt manipulativeness of the first, along the lines of

I Love to Clean Up My Room!,
appealed to parents as much as it repelled children, and had ensured that it sold well. Thus the foursome soon became established, and was repeated—often, for London circles—a couple of times a year. Lawrence, for once, was always up for these gatherings, and from the start displayed a proprietary attitude toward Ramsey, whose acquaintance he enjoyed claiming to British colleagues. Irina grew marginally more knowledgeable about the sport, but she could never compete with Lawrence’s encyclopedic mastery, so didn’t try. Tacitly it was understood that Jude was Irina’s friend and Ramsey Lawrence’s, though Irina wondered if she wasn’t getting the short end of the stick. Jude was a little irritating.

The dinner that began the second year of their rambunctious foursome landed once again on Ramsey’s birthday. For secular Westerners ritual is hard to come by. Two birthdays in a row sufficed to establish standard practice.

Self-conscious that Ramsey always footed the bill on his own birthday, the fourth July, in 1995, Irina had insisted on hosting the do. In the mood to experiment, she prepared her own sushi-sashimi platters, to which she’d noticed that Ramsey was partial. Unlike those precious restaurant servings of three bites of tuna and a sheet of serrated plastic grass, the ample platters of hand rolls and norimaki on their dining table in Borough left no room for the plates. She would have imagined that someone like Ramsey was used to being feted, and worried beforehand that her hesitant foray into Japanese cuisine wouldn’t compete with the flash fare to which he was accustomed. Instead, he was so overcome by her efforts that for the entire evening he could hardly talk. You’d think no one had ever made him dinner before. He was so embarrassed that Irina grew embarrassed that she had embarrassed him, exacerbating the painful awkwardness that had come to characterize their few direct dealings with each other, and making Irina grateful for the boisterous buffering of the other two.

Ah, then there was last year. She and Jude had had a huge row, and were no longer speaking; Jude and Ramsey had had a huger row, and were no longer married. Though seven years was brief for a marriage, that was still a mind-boggling number of evenings in the same room for those two, and they were surely only able to stick together for that long because Ramsey spent such a large proportion of the year on the road. Had it been left to Irina, at that point she might have let their fitful friendship with Ramsey Acton lapse. She’d nothing in common with the man, and he made her uncomfortable.

Yet Lawrence was determined to rescue this minor celebrity from that depressing pool of people—sometimes an appallingly populous pool, by your forties—with whom you used to be friends but have now, often for no defensible reason, lost touch. He might have slipped in the rankings, but Ramsey was one of the “giants of the game.” Besides, said Lawrence, “the guy has class.”

Shy, Irina pressed Lawrence to ring, suggesting that he make a halfhearted offer to have Ramsey over; it was pretty poor form to ring someone up and ask him to take you out to dinner on his own birthday. Yet she expected Ramsey to decline the home-cooked meal, if not the whole proposition. A threesome anywhere would feel unbalanced.

No such luck. Lawrence returned from the phone to announce that Ramsey had leapt at the opportunity to come to dinner, adding, “He sounds lonely.”

“He doesn’t expect another sushi spread, does he?” asked Irina with misgiving. “I hate to seem ungenerous when he’s picked up so many checks. And last year was fun. But it was a lot of work, and I hate to repeat myself.” Irina was a proud and passionate cook, and never bought plastic bags of prewashed baby lettuces.

“No, he begged that you not go to so much trouble. And think of me,” said Lawrence, who did the dishes. “Last year, the kitchen looked like Hiroshima.”

Hence the fare had been, to Irina’s mind, rather ordinary: an indifferent cut of venison cubed in red-wine sauce with shiitake mushrooms and juniper berries, which constituted an old standby. Yet Ramsey was as effusive as before. This time, however, Irina wondered whether it was really the menu that captivated their guest. Perhaps in order to add one note of novelty to a meal she’d prepared several times, before he arrived she had dragged out a sleeveless dress that she hadn’t worn in years. The garment had almost certainly slipped to the back of the wardrobe because—as she discovered once more—the straps were a tad long, and kept dropping off her shoulders. The soft, pale blue cotton sized with latex stretched smoothly across her hips; the hemline was high enough that she had to yank it down her thighs every time she sat down. She’d no idea what had gotten into her, swanning around in such provocative gear before a man fresh from divorce. At any rate, it wasn’t the venison that Ramsey kept staring at all night, that was for sure.

Mercifully, Lawrence hadn’t seemed to notice. What he did notice was that Ramsey wouldn’t leave. Even with snooker icons Lawrence’s social appetite was finite, and by two a.m. Ramsey had exceeded it by a good measure. Lawrence vigorously cleared the plates, and washed them loudly down the hall. As the censorious clank of pots carried from the kitchen, Irina was stranded with Ramsey, and panicked for lack of subject matter. Granted that Ramsey was overstaying his welcome, but she wished Lawrence wouldn’t do that with the dishes! Whenever they did get the ball rolling in the living room, Lawrence would interrupt the flow by brisking in to wipe the table, or to prize off melted candle wax, never meeting Ramsey’s eyes. Oblivious to his host’s rudeness, Ramsey refilled their wine glasses. He didn’t collect his cue case, and then with obvious reluctance, until after three.

Thus the whole last year the trio hadn’t reconvened, as if Irina and Lawrence needed that long to recover. But Lawrence didn’t hold a grudge, agreeing with Irina that sometimes Ramsey’s social skills were as inept as his snooker game was elegant. Besides, Lawrence was well compensated for his lost sleep with free tournament tickets throughout the following season.

It was July again. But this year was different.

A few days ago Lawrence had rung from Sarajevo to remind her that Ramsey’s birthday was coming up. “Oh,” she’d said. “That’s right. I’d forgotten.”

Irina chided herself. She had not forgotten, and it was foolish to pretend that she had. The slightest abridgments of the truth with Lawrence made her feel isolated and mournful, far away and even afraid. She would rather be caught out lying than get away with it, and thus live with the horror that it was possible.

“Going to get in touch with him?” he asked.

Irina had been chewing on this matter ever since she learned that Lawrence would be at a conference on “nation building” in Bosnia and wouldn’t return until the night of July 7. “I don’t know,” she said. “You’re the one who’s big buddies with Ramsey.”

“Oh, I think he likes you.” But Lawrence’s tone imparted moderation, or even reservation, as in “I think he likes you well enough.” “But he’s so odd. I have no idea what we’d talk about.”

“The fact that they’re thinking about dropping the bow-tie rule? Really, Irina, you should call, if only to make an excuse. How many years have we—”

“Five,” she said morosely. She’d counted.

“If you let it go, he’ll be hurt. Before I left, I did leave a brief message on his cell-phone voice mail to apologize that I’d be in Sarajevo this year. But I let it slip that you were staying behind in London. If you want that badly to get out of it, I could always call him from here, and say that you changed your mind at the last minute and came with. You know, happy returns, but what a drag, we’re both out of town.”
“No, don’t. I hate lying for petty reasons.” Irina was uneasy with the implication that she didn’t have a problem with lying for substantial reasons, but further qualification seemed tortuous. “I’ll ring him.”
She didn’t. What she did do was ring up Betsy Philpot, who had edited Jude’s and Irina’s collaborations at Random House, and so knew Ramsey somewhat. Not having worked together for a couple of years, Betsy and Irina had morphed from colleagues to confidantes. “Tell me that you and Leo are free on the sixth.”
“We’re not free on the sixth,” said Betsy, whose conversation never ran to frills.
“Damn.”
“This matters why?”
“Oh, it’s Ramsey’s birthday, when we’ve had this custom of getting together. Except now Jude’s history, and Lawrence is in Sarajevo. That leaves me.”
“So?”
“I know this sounds vain, and it could be all in my head. But I’ve wondered if Ramsey doesn’t—if he isn’t a little sweet on me.” She’d never said so aloud.
“He doesn’t strike me as a wolf. I’d think he’s nothing you can’t handle. But if you don’t want to do it, don’t.”
For Betsy, another American, everything was always simple. In fact, her cool, compass-and-ruler approach to circles that others found difficult to square had a curious brutality. When Jude and Irina had fallen out, she’d advised with a savage little shrug, “As far as I could tell, you’ve never liked her much anyway. Write it off.”
Irina wasn’t proud of the way she “dealt” with this quandary, meaning that she didn’t deal with it at all. Every day in the countdown to July 6, she promised herself in the morning to ring Ramsey in the afternoon, and in the afternoon to ring him in the evening. Yet propriety pertained even to night owls, and once it passed eleven p.m., she’d check her watch with a shake of the head and resolve to ring first thing the next day. But he probably slept late, she’d consider on rising, and the cycle would begin again. The sixth was a Saturday, and the Friday before she faced the fact that a single day’s notice so obviously risked his being busy that to ring at the last minute might seem ruder than forgetting the occasion altogether. Well, now she wouldn’t have to face down Ramsey Acton all by herself. A flood of relief was followed by a trickle of sorrow.
The phone rang Friday at nearly midnight. At this hour, she was so sure that it was Lawrence that she answered,
“Zdravstvuy, milyi!”
Silence. No returning,
“Zdravstvuy, lyubov moya!”
It wasn’t Lawrence.
“. . . Sorry,” said an airy, indistinct British accent after that embarrassed beat. “I were trying to reach Irina McGovern.”
“No,
I’m
sorry,” she said. “This is Irina. It’s just, I thought it was Lawrence.”
“. . . You lot rabbit in—were that Russian?”
“Well, Lawrence’s Russian is atrocious, but he knows just enough— he’d never manage in Moscow, but we use it at home, you know, as our private language. . . . Endearments,” she continued into the void. “Or little jokes.”
“. . . That’s dead sweet.” He had still not identified himself. It was now too awkward to ask who this was.
“Of course, Lawrence and I met because I was his Russian tutor in New York,” Irina winged it, stalling. “He was doing his doctoral dissertation at Columbia on nonproliferation. In those days, that meant you needed to have some Russian under your belt. These days, it’s more like Korean. . . . But Lawrence has no gift for languages whatsoever. He was the worst student I ever had.” Blah-blah-blah. Who
was
this? Though she had a theory.
A soft chuckle. “That’s dead sweet as well. . . . I dunno why.”
“So,”
Irina charged on, determined to identify the caller. “How
are
you?”
“. . . That’d depend, wouldn’t it? On whether you was free tomorrow night.”
“Why wouldn’t I be free?” she hazarded. “It’s your birthday.”
Another chuckle. “You wasn’t sure it were me, was you? ’Til just then.”
“Well, why should I be? I don’t think—this is strange—but I don’t think, after all these years, that I’ve ever spoken to you on the phone.”
“. . . No,” he said with wonderment. “I reckon that’s so.”
“I always made our social arrangements through Jude, didn’t I? Or after you two split, through Lawrence.”
Nothing. The rhythm to Ramsey’s phone speech was syncopated, so that when Irina began to soldier on, they were both talking at once. They both stopped. Then she said, “What did you say?” at the same time he said, “Sorry?” Honestly, if a mere phone call was this excruciating, how would they ever manage dinner?
“I’m not used to your voice on the phone,” she said. “It sounds as if you’re ringing from the North Pole. And using one of those kiddy contraptions, made of Dixie cups and kite string. You’re sometimes awfully quiet.”
“. . . Your voice is wonderful,” he said. “So low. Especially when you talk Russian. Why don’t you say something.”
Summat.
“In Russian. Whatever you fancy. It don’t matter what it means.”
Obviously she could rattle off any old sentence; she’d grown up bilingual. But the quality of the request unnerved her, recalling those porn lines that charged a pound per minute—what Lawrence called
wank-phone.
she said, binding her breasts with her free arm. Fortunately, nobody learned Russian anymore.
“Kogda mi vami razgovarivayem, mne kazhetsya shto ya golaya,”
“What’d that mean?”
“You said it didn’t matter.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I asked you what you had in mind for tomorrow night.”
“Mm. I sense you’re having a laugh.”
But what
about
tomorrow night? Should she invite him over, since he liked her cooking? The prospect of being in the flat alone with Ramsey Acton made her hysterical.
“Would you like it,” she proposed miserably, “if I made you dinner?”
He said, “That’s bleeding decent of you, pet.” The curious little endearment, which she’d only encountered once before when collaborating with an author from way up in Newcastle, was somehow warmer for being odd. “But I fancy taking you out.”
Irina was so relieved that she flopped into her armchair. In doing so, she pulled the cord, and the phone clattered to the floor.
“What’s that racket?”
“I dropped the phone.”
He laughed, more fully this time, round, and the sound, for the first time in this halting call, relaxed her. “Does that mean yes or no?”
“It means I’m clumsy.”
“I never seen you clumsy.”
“Then you’ve never seen me much.”
“I never seen you enough.”
This time the silence was Irina’s.
“Been a whole year,” he continued.
“I’m afraid Lawrence wouldn’t be able to join us.” Ramsey knew that, but she’d felt the need to insist Lawrence’s name into the conversation.
“Rather put it off, so Lawrence could come as well?”
He’d given her an out; she should jump at it. “That doesn’t seem very ceremonial.”
“I were hoping you might see it that way. I’ll call by at eight.”