Transgressions (6 page)

By a kind of mutual consent she and Tom had stopped using the magazines so much and after a while she had packed them away in a box under the bed; like the classic suburban couple, she had thought at the time, imagining their children coming upon them one afternoon when they were out, trying to square these pictures of explicit, exploitative sex with the image of their cozy, long-married parents. But neither the marriage nor the children were to be, and when she looked for the box during that brief reawakening of sexual interest a couple of months after Tom had moved out, she found to her annoyance that he had taken the magazines with him. Their absence angered her—specifically, of course, because she knew that she could never ask for them back.

She stood in the shower, feeling the water run down her body, wondering just how much she would really like to have them again. Enough to go into a shop in Soho and flick through the magazine shelves, then present her selection at the desk, a big grin on her face? No, maybe not. She was laughing at the very thought of her embarrassment when she heard the doorbell ring two stories below. Damn. Chances were that by the time she got out and made herself decent enough to open it whoever it was would already have gone. She decided to let them ring. The bell went again, longer this time—whoever it was was holding their finger against the button. Eventually it stopped.

She finished the shower and got out, pulling a new towel from the linen closet and wrapping its fresh warmth around her. She dried her hair and headed toward the bedroom. From the vantage point on the stairs she could see right down into the hall to a large buff-colored envelope lying on the mat.

She went down to retrieve it. When she picked it up it turned out to be bulky as well as big. She tore open the top and a key fell into her palm. She didn’t need to open the front door to know which lock it fitted. At last Tom had come through. But the gifts didn’t end there. She dug farther in and pulled out a CD wrapped with a scrawled note held in place with a rubber band.

“Only just found it after I got back from Canada,” it said. “Sorry. No hard feelings. Will this make up for the delay?”

She slipped the paper off the plastic case. The CD with its image of an American city skyline at night was still in its record-shop wrapping. Above the picture was the name, Van Morrison, and below it the title,
A Night in San Francisco.

She stared at it for a moment, not quite taking it in. So it had been him after all. And this was what? His way of making a joke out of it? “No hard feelings.” It was incredible.

Or maybe not. Maybe the “no hard feelings” wasn’t a reference to the CD at all, but only to the key and how long she’d had to wait. Could that be it? Could the music be just a present? Except Tom didn’t know one end of Van Morrison’s work from another. To pick this one from the ten or fifteen CDs available couldn’t possibly be coincidence. It had to be a statement. But if he had taken it from her, then why bother to buy it again new? Presumably in order to keep the message ambiguous. So when would she get the other one back? Or did he already know that she didn’t need it anymore. After all, if it was him, then his last visit would have revealed the fact that she’d already replaced the first CD. It was unbelievable. But it was, she realized, not unlike Tom to do something like this, to admit everything and nothing at the same time with a gesture that was both cruel and generous.

Her sense of outrage moved into anger. How dare he? She pulled the front door open, hoping—hoping what? To catch him still hovering behind it? But there was no one there and when she went out onto the street it was empty. From behind her a set of firecrackers went off alarmingly close. She jumped around, half expecting to see him, flinging up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry, Lizzie. Just a joke.” But instead two teenage boys jumped out from behind a car where they had been crouching.

“Police,” shouted one of them, in a howl of laughter. “It’s a raid.”

She slammed the door and went inside. From the hall phone she dialed his number. He wouldn’t, of course, be home yet. The Barbican from here? How long would it take? Ten minutes? Twenty in traffic. His answering machine had a different message, a little less jaunty, she thought. She waited till the beep, but when it came she couldn’t trust herself to speak, wasn’t sure she would find the right words to register her contempt as well as her fury. It would be braver and better to do it face-to-face. Or at least person-to-person.

She thought about driving straight to his apartment, confronting him then and there, but by the time she got herself ready, the kitchen clock was showing 8:20 and she was already late. Having refused the last three invitations, it wouldn’t do to completely blow off this one. Sally might act casual about such things but she didn’t easily forgive people who forgot Patrick’s birthday.

She slammed the CD down onto the counter. The cover of the old one was still on the rack above. She brought it down and sat them side by side. She was tempted to fling the new one straight into the trash, to not allow herself to be contaminated by it. But why punish Van Morrison for someone else’s transgression? In the end, she pulled off the cellophane and slipped it into the machine. She played the first three tracks before turning it off and heading out the door, grabbing a bottle of wine on her way.

four

I
f it wasn’t the best of evenings, then neither was it the worst. Years of practice had made Patrick’s birthday something of a ritual: first the fireworks (whatever the weather), then the food, and finally the dancing. Lately, Sally had got her hands on the guest list, skillfully working in business with pleasure. There were a few faces that she recognized (not Charles, she noticed, but, then, perhaps the aroma-therapist had been invited instead), otherwise the place was full of people who usually wore suits, slumming it in jeans and sweaters and shoes that had probably never seen a garden, let alone mud.

She chatted to some of them as the rockets exploded over the Islington skyline, and surprised herself by how well she did. A few friends came by and told her how fabulous she was looking, and how much they wanted to have her to dinner, and she smiled and agreed it would be a good idea, promising to call them back before moving on to the next group of strangers. It struck her as curious that she got on better with people she didn’t know, as if this new Elizabeth, single, without Tom, needed an equally new world to define herself against. Curious, but not unpleasant.

In fact, had she arrived less freaked out she might even have found one or two of these strangers attractive. She had gone to the social precaution of leaving the car at home, so that by halfway through the evening she was more than a little drunk. When the fireworks had given way to the food she found herself sitting on a bench at the back of the kitchen, laughing with a guy whose name she couldn’t remember, a youngish man with a square face and floppy hair in a suit that was fashionably too big for him. They were talking and eating, balancing kabobs and glasses on their laps. He was expressing some witty reservation about the cinematic talents of Tarantino, in a manner that suggested intelligence as well as just cultural perversity. She looked across at him, and the apartment block in Prague came mischievously back into her mind. What would you do if I bent down now and slipped off my panties, she thought. Would it bring us closer together? His fingertips were greasy with sausage fat. She imagined herself licking them. Afterward. The thought was absurd. Outrageous. She had another drink, and found herself choking a laugh into it.

“. . . that kind of violence. What is it? You all right?”

It got worse before it got better. In the end he had to thump her across the shoulder blades. The perfect introduction to intimacy. She managed to get herself back in control. “Nothing, nothing. Just an unexpected idea.”

“If it’s that funny I’d love to hear it.”

“Really, I doubt you would,” she said, this time with a straight face.

“You sure about that?” He smiled the question, inviting in his curiosity, but she couldn’t rise to it. The moment had passed and she found herself already withdrawn and embarrassed at the same time.

In the end he gave up. After a while he drifted away and she knew suddenly that it was time to go home. She made her way through the house to the front hall, where she called her local cab company who said it would be fifteen minutes at least. She was still deciding whether or not to wait for them when her hostess appeared.

“Eliza! You’re not going home already, are you? The dancing’s just getting started.”

Sally, glass in hand, equally the worse for wear. “Sal, hi. Yeah, I’ve got to go. I’ve . . . I’ve got an early morning.”

“In which case you’re going to be tired. It’s after one o’clock, you know.”

“Is it?”

“Hmmm. You must have been having fun. He’s all right, isn’t he?”

“Who?”

“Who? The man you were supposed to meet three weeks ago, that’s who. Malcolm. Fuzzy hair, nice body, good eyes.” Malcolm. Of course. The name she couldn’t remember. “Are you going to see him again?”

“No. Why, are you?”

Sally laughed. “I do believe you’re drunk, too. Tremendous. At least I feel I’ve accomplished something tonight. So, tell me, how have you been? God, I’m sick of talking to your answering machine. I was ready to give up on you. I tell you, if you hadn’t said yes to this, Patrick was all for changing sides.”

“Changing sides?”

“Yes. He was going to invite Tom instead.”

“He didn’t, did he?” she said, altogether too anxiously.

“No, of course not. Don’t worry. I told him it was verboten. By the way, talking of which, have you got that key back yet?”

“Yes.”

“Good. And how about the business with Van Morrison?”

“Oh . . . er . . . I found them again.”

“Where?”

“In the house.”

“There, I told you. Too nasty even for our Tom. Still, you are in his thoughts, you know.”

“What?”

“Tom’s thoughts.”

“How do you know?”

She looked sheepish. “Because Patrick had lunch with him a couple of days ago. Don’t worry. I promise, no secrets. Since when did I tell Patrick anything anyway? But he said Tom was a bit down.”

“Why?”

“He’d been for some interview or other. In Canada? Was sure he hadn’t got the job. Politics, I gather.”

“Yes. It usually is.”

“So. Poor Tom, eh? Patrick said he misses you.”

“Did Tom say that?”

“Lord, no. That was Patrick’s take on it. He said he seemed in a bit of a state. He got quite drunk apparently, and a bit bitter about things.”

“Things?”

“Yes, well, you know. You and him. Life, all the old Tom-type stuff. Patrick felt sorry for him really. That’s why he wanted to invite him.”

“Well, thank God he didn’t.”

“Indeed. Sad, though, eh?” She paused. And then when she realized she wasn’t going to get anything more: “How does it make you feel?”

Sally, up and running, gathering gossip for the local newsletter. “Actually, Sal, to be honest I couldn’t give a toss. And I do have to go.”

“How about the cab?”

“I’ll get one off the street. I’m sure someone else will take mine.”

“Okay. Well, just don’t go underground again, right? I know you’ll probably take offense if I say it, but you’re not looking all that great. I bet this is the first time you’ve been out for weeks. Am I right?”

Elizabeth put up her hands in mock submission.

Sally shook her head. “See? I do wish you’d let me run your life for a bit. I know I could get you back into the swing of things.”

The swing of things. It didn’t sound like the kind of place one wanted to be, even with Sally holding one’s hand. Definitely time to go.

Outside the sudden fresh air sharpened her up, the night temperatures rapidly plunging their way toward zero. She was absurdly glad to be out of the house and on the street. She walked the fifty yards or so to the main road and stood waiting for a cab. After a few minutes, a car with three guys stopped at the traffic lights, the one in the back rolling down a window. “Hey, darling? Need a lift?”

“No, thanks,” she said, her voice instantly a middle-class parody. “I’m waiting for someone.”

“Yeah, me,” he said, laughing, starting to open his door. She felt herself go tense, checking for other people on the street. Across the road a couple was walking, almost out of earshot, but at that moment the lights changed and the driver slammed into second gear, taking off at an unholy speed, leaving the passenger clinging to the door for dear life. She heard their wild laughter echoing down the road.

When a cab finally came, she gave her address and sat back against the seat, exhausted. Too much social life after too little. She wasn’t up for it. Give me written words any day, she thought. Nobody answers you back.

H
er address was at the end of a maze of one-way streets, so she had to direct the driver for the last couple of blocks. As they turned the corner onto her road she saw a blue Mustang pull out from the curb and head off in the other direction. Bad electrical system, she thought, remembering the trouble that she and Tom had had with theirs. The Golf may have less prestige, but it also has more reliability.