Читать книгу Glover’s Mistake - Nick Laird - Страница 14

Ruth had seen a little Chinese place, the Peking Express, not far from her flat and wanted to try it. That they were the sole customers became apparent only after entering. David wanted to leave but Ruth had already settled on a table in the corner, beside the aquarium. The tank was coffin-long and faintly stagnantlooking, and as various fish twisted their sad eyes to David, he got the definite impression that he was there for their entertainment and not the other way round. In greeting he parted and closed his lips at the glass. A scarlet fantail jerked away, billowing flamenco skirts.

Just as the waitress arrived at their table Ruth was telling David about Bridget’s mad plan to marry her boyfriend, Rolf, and she lifted the palm of her hand to ensure quiet until she’d finished. The waitress, a Chinese girl of about seventeen, dutifully stood there, head down, as David tried to shoot her a pleading, apologetic look. When Ruth delivered the kicker—And I said, darling, I remember what it’s like to be twenty, but no feeling’s for ever—the waitress palmed a small gold lighter from a pocket in her skirt and lit the stubby candle, then gave a neutral lethal smile.

‘I think we need another minute.’

Ruth had a knack for touching on questions that encouraged self-examination, and over dinner she asked about David’s relationship with his parents. He found himself talking about rejection, about disappointment and resentment. Ruth interrogated softly, and as he was speaking he realized he was actually learning certain things about his life.

He didn’t think her interest was compensation for her earlier, peremptory response. Unlike David, she couldn’t feign successfully, or not for long. She was not nice, that damning adjective, and her curiosity, when it came, was undiluted by politeness. Instructed since birth in the cardinal virtues by a joyless Calvinist mother, David barely knew what interested him any more. He was sure of how he should behave, of the questions he should ask, of suitable responses. But he’d had enough of that. At least if Ruth appeared intrigued by something, it was simply because she found it intriguing. She might be a slave to her id, to insistent desires, but she wasn’t boring. There was no ritual in her conversation and no taboo. Nothing was beyond analysis and articulation—over dinner she told him that she thought his mother probably hated him on some subconscious level because he tied her to his father. David felt Ruth and he were pulling close, aligning themselves, and the fit was remarkably good.

This was why men went mad for her. She looked at David with such intensity that he could believe he was the centre of her universe. It was not need: that would have been off-putting. But she gifted him the rare belief that he was special. He was the millionth visitor. He was the only one who understood, the only one she wanted, the only one to save her.

Her continuous low-level anxiety was brought to the surface by the usual liberal flashpoints. The environment. Her own ageing and death. American foreign policy. She assumed his politics, of course, as she assumed most things, but he didn’t mind. The waitress appeared with more wine and her assassin’s smile. David watched two tiny neon-blue fish dart like courtiers around a large black catfish. It slowly turned its ribbed underbelly towards their table and began grubbing on the dirt that clouded the glass.

As they left the restaurant, the two waiting staff and three chefs lined up like the hosts at a wedding (‘Goodbye, we see you soon’). Ruth had insisted on leaving the change from her fifty, which meant the staff got a tip of fourteen pounds eighty. The food was completely average, but if the mood took her, she could be crazily generous—although her absent-mindedness, more often than not, left a wake of insulted and unthanked, the doored-in-the-face. She may have lacked intent, but culpability resides also in neglect: David was sure of that. He felt several things about her simultaneously. Her worries and concerns were all near the brim, so he found he forgot how fucked up and desirous, how petty and distraught he himself usually was. She let him know that he was not abnormal, by which she meant alone. The two of them were in this thing together. It was seductive, that, to be appropriated to someone’s side. He could imagine that his interests tied in entirely with hers. As to what she saw in him, he wasn’t sure. He knew she thought him entertaining. He was one of the amusingly crucified, and plainly devoted to her. He figured that she might enjoy his obvious delight when the conversation turned to art, to books, to anything that might broaden and sustain the mind. And maybe she was lonely too.

Out on the street she slid her arm into his. He squared his shoulders and straightened his back, possessive of this creature by his side. A cairn of black bags was heaped on the pavement by an overflowing litter bin and they swerved to avoid it. The last few yards had passed without speech. David was in a small reverie of contentment, thinking how he had, belatedly at thirty-five, met someone he found interesting, met someone who was doing something. His life had turned a corner. Their footsteps made a pleasing beat, which he was about to mention when she drew his arm a little tighter and said, ‘I need to say something. I know you’re going to think it’s crazy, and I do too…believe me…’

Her tender tone and the wished-for words accelerated regions in his heart. He squeezed her arm back as she whispered, ‘Do you think…I mean I think there might be something…’

She paused and David felt the shiver rise within him. He lifted a hand to his chest as if that might be enough to keep the blood pumping and the whole thing in place.

‘Something between James and me…’ She stopped walking then, pulling him to a stop, and looked up into his face to examine his reaction. He yanked a fierce smile from somewhere. He felt cold, distant from himself: the real David was a many-legged scuttling thing, climbing up inside his body and now peering out with sad despair through the windows of his eyes.

‘Oh God, you’re outraged, right? Is it outrageous? I know it’s a little crazy, but…’

‘The thing is…’ He started walking again, looking forward, almost dragging her down the street. ‘And I know, because we’ve talked a lot, he finds it hard to trust…’ David made a preposterous gesture of holding a weight in his open hand. It might have been his ousted heart.

‘Yes. He’s told me about that, about college.’

Had he? When? Each time David left the room did they change gear to intimacy, then slow up again to casual acquaintances when he returned? Were they telepathic? Email. They were chatting on email. How nice for them.

‘He’s such a sweet man. He’s so…sincere.’

‘Earnest, you mean? Yeah…not like us.’

She turned her head and gave David a curious look—it was almost a flinch of injured pride; but then she saw the vanity of that move and turned the thing into a joke on herself.

‘No, exactly, not like us. We’re cynical old things.’

David wanted to disentangle his arm from hers but thought that might reveal too much. He succeeded in jollying himself along, but all he wanted was to be out of her presence, to get home and climb into bed with a pint of wine and a spliff. Things began to draw clear. She had asked questions about the two of them living together, about how David had met him, about where Glover was from, but stupidly, idiotically, shamefully, he had thought he was the focus. She chattered on emptily now about how ridiculous it was, and she was sure that nothing would transpire but she just wanted to say something, she needed to say something, she felt something between them, and what did he think? Over and over. And then the childish denouement: he was sworn to secrecy. Then they were standing at the bottom of the rock face of her apartment block, and over-eager to prove himself unfazed by the news, David found he had asked her round for dinner next week. When they had settled on Thursday, he added, ‘And I actually will cook for us.’

Ruth laughed and then there was an elongated pause, as the first person plural hung in the air and both of them wondered if it might include Glover.