Читать книгу Not Another Happy Ending - David Solomons - Страница 10

‘Laughter in the Rain’, Neil Sedaka, 1974, Polydor Records

‘YOU SAID IT WAS a Highland cottage.’

‘Yes.’

‘I heard you distinctly. An old crofthouse nestling at the end of a glen, you said.’

‘Yes.’

‘But …’

‘Yes?’

‘You made it sound …’ he hunted for the right word ‘… picturesque.’

Ignoring his accusing tone, she motioned towards the small stone dwelling with a gesture of ‘ta-da!’

His eye roved suspiciously across the outside. A chimney stack balanced like a drunken man on the roof; weeds sprouted from slate tiles that had been discarded rather than laid; of the two windows cut roughly into the facing wall, one was bricked up and the other colonised by a family of squabbling, drab-feathered birds. The whole structure tilted at a twenty-degree angle, leaning into a relentless, biting wind that howled down the most desolate glen he had ever seen.

‘Does it leak?’

Her mouth gaped, offended. ‘Of course it doesn't leak.’ She turned away, fished out a great iron key from her weekend bag, slid it into the stiff lock and shouldered her way inside. ‘So long as it doesn't rain,’ she mumbled.

There was a sucking squelch from behind her.

‘Of course. What else should I expect? Just wonderful.’

He stood up to his ankles in a sloppy brown puddle. Jane wasn't sure which looked more soggy—his trousers or his face. When she had suggested the trip up north to work on the manuscript—to finish it once and for all—she told him to bring suitable outdoor wear. So, when he'd picked her up in his car that morning, she couldn't help but notice with some surprise that he was wearing orange trainers. She declined to comment at the time; he'd obviously picked them as a reminder that he didn't have to listen to her—he was the one who gave the notes in this relationship. Well, look where it got you, she thought smugly. I say potato, you say pomme de terre.

The muddied orange trainers steamed gently in front of the fireplace as Jane stoked the sputtering fire. Beside her, Tom shivered in a faded tweed armchair, hugging himself and grumbling.

‘What's wrong now? You haven't stopped moaning since we left Glasgow.’ She threw on a handful of kindling. ‘Don't you like it here? This was my granny's cottage.’

He snorted. ‘You're telling me your granny was a crofter?’

She noted that he didn't say ‘farmer’, but used the Scottish expression. He was amazing. His English. Was amazing. Not him. He was annoying. ‘She worked on the line at Templeton's Carpets,’ she explained.

‘So, she bought this place?’ He sounded incredulous at the idea anyone would put down hard-earned money for such a dump.

‘She won it. Back in the ‘80s. One of those dodgy timeshare offers came through the door.’ He gave her a blank expression. ‘Y'know the sort of thing: You have already won one of these great prizes: a wicker basket of dried flowers, a canoe, or a Highland hideaway. All you had to do to claim your prize—and it was always the dried flowers—was sit in a conference room in an Aviemore hotel and listen to some guy's sales pitch. But my granny hit the jackpot.’ She motioned, quiz-hostess style. ‘The Highland hideaway.’

‘And to think she could have walked away with a canoe.’ He cast a disgruntled eye around the dim room. ‘If you'd wanted a change of scene there are perfectly good cafés on Byres Road,’ he grumbled. ‘With Wi-Fi.’ He flicked the switch on a standard lamp sporting a fetching floral shade. The room remained dim. ‘And electricity!’ he barked. ‘This is not natural.’

‘What are you talking about? Outside that door is actual nature.’

‘Nature is for German hikers in yellow cagoules.’ He scraped the chair across the floor, closer to the fire. ‘Can't you turn this thing up?’

Jane tossed on another log and retreated to the kitchen to make coffee. It was a while since she'd been up to the cottage. When she'd begun the novel she imagined retreating to its splendid isolation. In her head it would go like this: during the day she would alternate writing by the window (that would be the one window with glass in the frame) with long walks in the countryside where she would be inspired by clouds and daffodils. At night she would curl up by the fire and continue scratching out her masterpiece. She had decamped to the cottage to live the dream, only to find the power out, as usual. Four hours later her laptop battery died and she lost half of the chapter she'd been working on. That was the end of the romance. She returned to Glasgow the following morning and hadn't been back since.

The cupboard contained a single jar of Nescafé, a tin of powdered milk and a suspicious trail of what she hoped were only mouse droppings. She warmed the drink on an old Primus stove. It pained her to admit it, but Tom was right; the place was little more than a ruin. But it was her ruin. Her gran had left it to her, not her mum. Gran hadn't approved of mum's choice of husband—she was an astute judge of character—and though there was no grand title or country estate to disinherit her from, there was the cottage.

Tom called from the other room, imploring her through chattering teeth to hurry up with the coffee. She put up with his hectoring, thankful he wasn't asking where to find the toilet. She was delaying the inevitable moment when she had to explain the purpose of the spade by the front door.

He had moved from the armchair onto the hearth, and as she approached she saw he was holding her manuscript. She sighed. It was straight to business then.

‘Sit down.’

‘You're incredibly bossy, anyone ever told you that?’ she complained, sitting nonetheless.

‘Yes. Now be quiet and listen. This is the chapter where Janet goes to her favourite sweetshop—’

‘Glickman's,’ she interrupted. It was on the London Road. A Glasgow institution, the oldest amongst dozens in that sweet tooth of a city. Her dad used to take her on a Saturday morning to spend her pocket money: a bag of Snowies for her—moreish drops of sweet white chocolate covered in rainbow-coloured sprinkles; and a quarter of tangy Soor Plooms for him that made her mouth tingle. He always let her pay for his—a warning sign of things to come.

Jane folded her arms, bracing herself for his critique. ‘OK, so what's wrong with it? Wait, don't tell me. It's the Soor Plooms—too specific—they won't understand the reference in Croydon.’

He said nothing and instead reached into his bag for a small, white paper bag. It rustled with unbearable familiarity.

‘Are those from Glickman's?’ she asked, already knowing the answer.

He chuted the contents into his hand. Out tumbled white chocolate Snowies.

She felt sick.

He held out a single sweet with the quiet unblinking confidence of a man who knows that when he wants to kiss a girl it is inevitable; at some point she will kiss him back. He offered the sweet to her, both of them understanding that she would succumb.

‘Your dad—’ He shrugged. ‘Forgive me, Janet's dad—was an alky and a total bamstick, but you took that pain and turned it into a novel which, for the most part, isn't awful.’

‘I'm not Janet.’

He made a face as if to say, oh really? ‘A less scrupulous publisher would insist on calling this a memoir,’ he said with a nod towards the manuscript. ‘He would conveniently skip over the few sections that are fiction and sell a hundred thousand more copies. Readers love pain, particularly if they know someone really suffered.’

‘I'm not Janet.’

‘Now, for the sake of editorial distance, you need to let her go.’

‘Editorial distance?’ She felt the sag of disappointment. So this was just about the edit.

‘Yes. What else?’ Tom leant forward. ‘Janet is about to have a new life on the page. Soon, your character will belong to thousands of readers—’ he grimaced ‘—well, hundreds. You two need to go your separate ways.’ He paused. ‘So we are going to make a new memory. One that belongs to you, not her. Here, in this picturesque shit-hole.’

He pushed the Snowie towards her. ‘You are not Janet.’

‘I can't. I haven't had once since Dad …’

‘I know.’

Slowly, she parted her lips. He popped the sweetie on her tongue and her mouth filled with warm chocolate and the crunch of hundreds and thousands.

In the morning she found him asleep in the armchair, arms wrapped around her manuscript. Was it possible to feel jealous of your own novel? Nothing had happened after Snowie-gate; he had behaved like a gentleman, keeping the conversation professional, the mood workmanlike. Which was absolutely fine with her. A-OK. Hunky-flipping-dory. After all, it was perfectly natural for a modern young woman to invite an attractive man she barely knew to a cottage in the middle of nowhere. A cottage with one bedroom. There was no pretext; this weekend was all about the sex. Text. The fire had burned itself out overnight. No, that wasn't a metaphor. She gathered a handful of kindling from the basket next to the grate and built a new one.

At his suggestion after breakfast they spent the day walking the length of the glen. Around lunchtime it opened out to a dark, glassy loch. The sun was breaking through the thick layer of cloud when they came to a large flat rock by the edge of the water and Tom insisted on stopping. He reached into a chic leather messenger bag, and Jane was sure it was to retrieve the manuscript, but to her surprise he produced a couple of gourmet sandwiches from Berits & Brown and a portable espresso maker, from which he proceeded to make the most delicious cup of coffee she'd ever tasted.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked as they ate. The clouds had cleared and now the sun hung awkwardly overhead, lost in an empty sky like a walker who's realised he's been holding his Ordnance Survey map upside down for the last four and a half hours.

‘It's a nice day, I thought we should get out.’

‘No, I don't mean here. I mean here here. In Scotland. At the risk of sounding small-town, can I ask what a Frenchman from the Côte d'Azur is doing running a publishing company in Glasgow?’

He lowered his espresso cup. ‘You know, Saint-Tropez is a lot like Glasgow.’

‘It is?’

‘No. Not one little bit.’

‘So, you fancied a change of scene?’

‘I had to get out. I was living in a pop song. A French pop song. Do you know how many hours of sunshine the Côte d'Azur receives annually?’

‘How many?’

‘A fucking lot.’

‘Wait, you're saying you came to Scotland … for the rain?’

He shrugged and rooted around the ground before picking up a smooth, circular stone.

‘Why Glasgow?’ Jane continued. ‘You do know it's Edinburgh that has the book festival, right? And if you want to be a publisher isn't Paris a more obvious choice? Or London, or New York?’

Gripping the stone in the curve of his index finger and thumb he sent it skimming across the flat loch. It sank on the second bounce. ‘Merde!’ He turned to Jane. ‘The world has been overrun by ersatz writers, musicians and artists. All we have are writers who write about writing, singers who purposely break up with their lovers so that they may sing about heartache. I came because Glasgow is still somewhere real. And I came to find someone real.’

His eyes definitely did not bore into her soul. Real eyes didn't do that. So why did she feel so utterly naked?

‘Jane, I think I came to find y—’

‘Guten Tag!’

Above them on the edge of the loch stood a party of walkers with bare knees, ruddy cheeks—and yellow cagoules. Their round smiles deepened into Teutonic puzzlement when Jane and Tom's laughter shattered the stillness.

They returned to the cottage. The weather closed in shortly before they reached shelter and they were both soaked through. When she entered the room, towelling her hair dry, she found him occupying his usual place in the armchair by the fire.

‘We need to talk about the sex,’ he announced.

The sex. Le Sex. Finally, she thought.

There were, however, cultural proprieties to be observed. A nice girl simply didn't acquiesce to such an indecent proposal. ‘I don't think we do,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I am not talking about “the sex” with you. You've got some cheek, you know that? Just because I asked you up here doesn't mean I'm ready to jump into bed.’

‘The sex,’ he said evenly, ‘in chapter seventeen.’ He opened her novel to the relevant page.

‘Oh,’ she said, unfolding her arms. ‘Yes. That sex.’

Tom stabbed a finger at a section halfway down the page. ‘I'm confused. What is going on here?’

‘What are you talking about? It's …’ She circled behind him, craning her neck for a sight of the offending paragraph. ‘Perfectly clear.’

‘Are they having sex? Because if they are, you should know that it's improbable.’

‘Ah, well,’ she wagged a finger, ‘that's because I'm writing it from the woman's perspective—something you clearly don't understand.’

‘Right.’ He held the page at arm's length, rotating it first one way and then the other, as if looking at it from another angle would make the scene clearer. ‘So where exactly is her leg meant to be?’

Oh, the man was maddening! Jane swatted him with her towel and made a grab for the manuscript. ‘Give that back!’

He was too fast for her. He led her around the room, dangling the novel at arm's length, just out of her grasp. At first she requested him curtly but politely to desist in his childish behaviour, but when he ignored her she resorted to a tirade of foul language. He doubled up with laughter at hearing her swear. Which meant that he failed to notice the trailing cord of the standard lamp as he swept around the room once more.

‘Ow!’ He slammed into the floor, his knee taking the brunt. ‘I hate this place!’

She stood over him to gloat. ‘Serves you right. It's a good scene. It's full-blooded, lusty—’

Tom rubbed his knee mournfully. ‘—physically impossible.’

With one final cry of irritation she lunged for the manuscript. He teased it out of reach and with his other hand swept her legs from under her. She crumpled, sinking down beside him. So near to him now she saw that he had kept his promise—no lover had ever looked at her this way.

‘It's not impossible,’ she said, swallowing. ‘You just have to be … bendy.’

That raised an eyebrow. ‘This is drawn from personal experience?’

They were close enough to breathe each other's air.

‘Well, that's not something you're ever going to find out.’ She let the words hang there. Just the two of them in the overwhelming silence of the cottage. Not a milk frother to disturb the stillness.

A small part of her couldn't help but observe the situation from a distance: an unfairly attractive Frenchman, a hearthrug in front of a crackling log fire, a Highland cottage. If she'd written it, he would have struck it out. Infuriating, exasperating man.

She waited. In all the romances she'd read people kissed adverbially. Hungrily, madly, passionately. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Wondered about the hardness of his bristles and the softness of his lips. Wondered if she should make the first move.

And then she didn't have to wonder any longer.