Before she left her flat for the evening Clara cut out two photographs from a brochure for the Cheltenham Literature Festival – one of herself, and one of Nick. They were due to read on consecutive nights in October. She placed the photographs side by side in a picture frame she’d been given for Christmas. It was round, encrusted with opalescent stones. When she was satisfied with their arrangement she placed the frame on her bedside table and lit it with her old brass angle-poise, glancing at the two smiling black and white faces as she closed the bedroom door.
That night Nick was launching his latest volume of poems. It had been seven years since his last collection and his new book held the promise of greatness. Tickets were sold out. Clara knew that she would almost definitely meet Philippa that night – Nick’s new partner. Well, not so new in fact – partner of six years. Four years ago he’d been seeing Philippa and Clara. Sure he’d given Clara clues that she wasn’t the only player on his field, but Clara’s perception was filtered through faulty equipment; she received the satellite information, but only processed it three months later. So when Nick phoned one day to say he could only see her in the afternoons, she was flattened.
“She was in extremis,” said Nick. “I had to let her stay. Don’t get upset……… O.K., you can phone me when you like.”
In the months which followed Clara came to realize that what this meant was that Philippa had left her husband and moved in with Nick. Clara was relegated to lunch at the South Bank, or tea at Madam Berteaux. And though on those occasions Nick was always attentive – kissing her before he got up to order more drinks, kissing her hand through the window before she drove off in her car – he never again came to her flat in Camberwell, carrying presents of Schubert and scarves.
After three of these meetings neither of them suggested another. Their relationship had gone backwards. They had progressed to chaste dates during the day. They were like a fire in a hearth – the newspaper had caught but it failed to ignite the kindling. Clara concluded that, for better or worse, Philippa must be what Nick needed; he hadn’t loved Clara enough. She had been too full of doubts to fight for him – doubts about him, doubts about being able to compete with his literary standing; he had published four collections to her one, he had been shortlisted the T.S Eliot Prize, and he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Some or all of these had got in the way.
After that Clara had a transatlantic flurry with a gallery curator in New York, but it floundered when he asked her to move across the water. When it came to it there was nowhere else she wanted to live but London. She adored her flat. She’d spent hours looking for the right porcelain door handles; she’d travelled for miles to find brass bottle taps for her roll top bath. Being alone didn’t bother her. She had her friends, she had her work, and she liked to be able to please herself. She managed to forget what it was like to be close to someone when there wasn’t a man around.
Clara parked on a single yellow line on Long Acre. She tweaked her fringe in the rear view mirror and applied another layer of lipstick; then she tipped her chin upwards to check the smoothness of her throat. It was a relief to her that the fairness of her hair hid the silver grey which was starting to appear, or so she thought.
The day before, Clara had phoned Nick to ask if he would write a reference for her for a fellowship. She had known about the launch for weeks. She wondered if he would mention it.
“I have a reading tomorrow. At Betterton Street.”
“Oh?” said Clara.
“I haven’t invited many people. We’re going to have supper afterwards. Do you think you might come?”
“I’ll see how I’m fixed.”
Clara walked past Covent Garden tube and up Endell Street. It was July and diners and drinkers had taken to the streets. The air was thick with humidity, begging for a storm. She went up to the Poetry Café window and peered through a clear strip between the etched glass. Nick was standing by a table - tall, white-haired, solicitous of the woman he was talking to. Clara turned on her heels and walked back the way she’d come. She needed more time. She knew that all her wonderings over the last six years about Philippa and Nick would be realized that night. She did a circuit round the block till she felt calmer. Then she pushed open the glass door and walked between the wooden tables and chairs to where Nick was sitting. He stood up as soon as he saw her and kissed her cheek.
“You came.”
Extricating himself from the table he walked with her to the bar.
“What would you like?”
“White wine please,” smiled Clara. She wasn’t quite sure yet which one at Nick’s table was Philippa, but so far she was pleased with her reception.
When they sat down, Nick made a general introduction.
“This is Clara May.” Clara spread a magnanimous smile round the table. She guessed that Philippa was the dark, rather stern looking woman to Nick’s left. Mid-forties, mildly attractive, unfortunate piercing voice. Clara looked down at her black velvet blouse and realised that she had left the top two buttons unfastened. She turned to the man to her right.
“Are you Hal Morris?”
“Yes. How do you know?”
“I saw a photograph in Poetry News last year – you won the National.” Hal nodded with pleasure. He looked much more interesting than his photograph – softer and altogether less serious. Clara liked the fact that he seemed unaware of his celebrity.
At seven thirty everyone climbed the stairs for Nick’s reading. Afterwards, behind the book-signing queue, Philippa’s met Clara’s gaze for the first time, then quickly looked away.
They walked to a trattoria in Bloomsbury. It was a cheerful gingham-tabled place playing snatches of Carmen and Rigoletto. Clara made sure that she sat between Hal and Richard. Richard was an old university friend of Nick’s – a motorbike-riding lawyer.
“What would you like,” Philippa asked Nick. “There’s chicken in a wine sauce, grilled fish, carbonara. You like carbonara.”
“Is there any steak?” asked Nick?
“Yes,” replied Philippa, slightly surprised.
“I’ll have steak,” said Nick, with great satisfaction.
“Or there’s cannelloni?” Philippa went on.
“Steak will do me fine. Rare.”
“But you usually like it well done.” Philippa looked disconcerted. Nick wasn’t sticking to form – or the form that she knew.
“I’ll have steak too,” said Hal. “What about you Clara?”
“I’m going to have lasagne,” said Philippa. Clara thought this a rather dull choice.
“I’ll have the risotto,” said Clara. “Because it takes so long to cook if you do it yourself.” Clara thought about what she’d just said. “Well, not that long, but you have to stand over it.”
“And I’ll have the ossobuco,” said Richard, “ because I like the sound of the word. Can’t stand veal though.” Only Philippa didn’t laugh.
The waitress placed a basket of bread and a saucer of olive oil between Clara and Hal. They began to dip and chew.
“I’m looking at a flat in Herne Hill at nine o’clock in the morning,” said Nick.
“You’re moving to South London?” asked Clara.
“No. I live in Norfolk. I’m after a property to rent out. I’ve just sold a house in Diss and I’m hoping to clean up with the capital,” said Hal.
“In the capital,” said Clara.
“That’s about it. I need to make some money. I’ve a new son. And my daughter’s still at school.” Clara’s eyes rested on Hal for rather longer than was necessary. She was always puzzled by other people’s responsibilities.
“Do you think we should offer the bread around?” suggested Clara, aware that they were eating most of it.
“No, let them fend for themselves,” said Hal. “You’re not from the south are you?”
“No. Lancashire. My father says I need to keep going home to learn how to talk proper,” said Clara flattening her accent. “Did you go to public school?”
“Is it that obvious?” Hal didn’t sound too surprised.
And so Hal and Clara began to make a world for themselves – a place where they had their own food and conversation, where they explored the reaches of each other’s lives.
“I had a friend I went clubbing with. We used to play ‘pubic schoolboy spotting’.”
“What did you do when you spotted one?” Hal was intrigued.
“We’d go up and check. We were never wrong. Something about the ready smile, the straight back, healthy complexion. And always an easy way
with words. Consonants slipping under the tongue,” said Clara in a measured, gentle tone.
“Hmmmm,” said Hal, not sure if this was a compliment or not.
“What happened to the friend?” asked Hal.
“How do you mean?” said Clara, tilting her head.
“You said you had a friend.”
“Oh, she turned gay and I didn’t fit into her life anymore,” Clara said with some resignation. The basket of bread was now empty.
“There’s nothing behind her eyes,” said Nick.
“Whose?” asked Clara, realising that she and Hal hadn’t been taking part in the general conversation.
“Nigella Lawson’s. How can you call a book ‘How To Eat’? Doesn’t she think we know how to eat?” Philippa said something which Clara couldn’t quite hear.
“Philippa likes Nigella’s recipes,” announced Nick on her behalf.
“I’m starving,” said Richard, glancing at the empty breadbasket.
Just then the waitress brought their dishes. Philippa seemed to be questioning Nick earnestly, but all Clara could hear was Nick saying, “Let’s sort it out when we get home.” Clara watched Nick planting kisses on Philippa’s lips and cheeks and remembered when he’d been affectionate to her – on trains, in bars, in carparks. Then she thought about the fact that Hal was staying with Nick that night and that Nick lived in Ealing.
“How are you going to get to that flat for nine o’clock in the morning?” she asked. They’d already drunk three bottles of wine. “Where I live is just down the road from Herne Hill.”
“Do you have a spare room?” asked Hal.
“Not as such,” said Clara, slowly.
“This conversation was quite promising,” said Hal.
“I have a back room, and a kind of spare bed,” offered Clara.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?” Hal wanted to make sure he was welcome.
“Of course not.”
“We have an announcement to make,” said Hal to the table.
“You two are getting married?” teased Richard.
Hal ignored the joke. “I’m going to be staying at Clara’s place tonight. It’s close to Herne Hill. Where the flat is I’m supposed to see at nine.”
“You must do what you want,” said Nick.
Nick and Hal became disinterested in eating and didn’t finish their meals. Nick didn’t light up a cigarette, as Clara would have expected.
“I gave up eight months ago,” he said.
“Did you use those patches?” asked Clara.
“Why poison myself with what I’m trying to rid my body of?”
At ten thirty Philippa got up to leave saying she had an early start for work in the morning.
“See you back at home,” she said to Nick kissing him three times. She made sure he knew exactly the number of the bus to get back to Ealing and the precise location of the bus stop.
‘There it is,’ thought Clara. ‘I could never have done that. Spent my life managing Nick.’
“So you’re not coming back to ours?” Philippa asked Hal. “I won’t see you?” She seemed unable to grasp the situation and kissed him on the cheek. Philippa had managed not to look at Clara, nor to speak to her throughout the whole meal.
Only when she stood in the doorway did Philippa say a word to Clara. ‘Goodbye.’
Almost as soon as the door closed the conversation turned to sex. Nick and Richard had a mutual friend they knew from university who had been celibate for several years.
“I can’t imagine not wanting to fuck someone,” said Nick. Clara laughed out loud. It was easier to forgive him when he was being transparent.
After two more bottles of wine they paid the bill and left. Nick kissed Clara on the cheek and went to find his bus.
“Goodbye lovebirds,” said Richard, pulling on his motorbike gear and submerging his head in his helmet. Hal and Clara walked back to her car.
“Are you sure this is O.K.?” asked Hal.
“Sure,” said Clara. “I wouldn’t have offered if it wasn’t.”
Clara swept along the roads and darted in and out of the little traffic that there was. On Waterloo Bridge they could see veins of lightning routed between the London Eye and Tate Modern. Within half an hour Clara was parking deftly in the only space left on her street.
“Very good bit of driving,” said Hal. “I’m a nervous driver myself.”
Just as they stepped out of the car huge drops of warm rain began to fall. More rain fell in the time it took to get to the front door than had fallen in the previous two weeks. Clara switched on the lights, locked the front door after them, and grabbed a towel from the bathroom. The shoulders of Hal’s moss green polo shirt had darkened with the rain. She left him rubbing his hair in the kitchen while she hurried into the bedroom. Now that Clara had met Philippa she felt that she and Nick had a full stop and a line drawn beneath them. She took the picture frame from by the bed and hid it in under the newspapers in the log basket.
When the kettle had boiled Hal helped her to carry a tray of coffee and a bottle of Jameson’s into the back room.
“This is a lovely flat,” he said as he walked through and saw a door which led into a small conservatory. Clara picked up a new bottle green watering can which stood on her worktable.
“This is my pride and joy,” she said.
“Yes, I was looking at that.” The spout was an elegant arc which finished in a brass rose with tiny holes.
“It can give a very fine sprinkle.” There was a pause then they both laughed.
Clara had never met anyone who knew Nick well. She told him their history.
“So you two were an item?”
When she told him about Nick’s afternoon only rule he said, “That’s not a solution.” But he wasn’t surprised at how things had gone.
“It’s the way Nick is. He behaves badly then everyone forgives him.”
He had no criticism of Philippa.
“She’s part of the Nick package now. You see Nick, you see Philippa. She’s kept him straight. I bumped into him at the World Service before she moved in. He was drunk as a lord at nine thirty in the morning.”
“I couldn’t have done that,” said Clara.” I need a father, not to have to mother someone else.”
“Her husband was rich but dull. Nick is poor but never dull.”
“How do they manage?”
“Philippa’s training as a physiotherapist. She didn’t need to work before now.”
“I suppose one has to admire her for that,” said Clara, grudgingly. Then she remembered something that Nick had told her in one of their last meetings.
“Not everyone forgives Nick. Did you know his last partner – Jenny?”
“I knew of her,” said Hal.
“She got cancer – after Nick and her split up. They’d lived together for six years. But Jenny refused to see Nick – even when she was on her deathbed. He was very cut up about it. He would lie beside Philippa and cry and call out Jenny’s name.”
“He told you all this?” asked Hal, surprised.
“Yes.”
“It must have ended very badly,” Hal supposed.
After a couple of glasses of whisky and an Arvo Pärt CD, Clara began to prepare Hal’s bed. A comfy, precarious arrangement of cushions from the blue water silk sofa with a baby futon balanced on the top. Hal stood by as he watched Clara building his bed.
“My grandma’s embroidered sheet,” said Clara as she threw it up to catch the air so that it would fall flat on the futon. She piled a duvet and blankets over the pillows, hoping that the combination would be comfortable.
When Clara said goodnight she stood in the hall and kept Hal at a distance.
“Help yourself to towels or whatever you need.” Hal simply looked back at her. When she thought back to those moments she realised that Hal hadn’t spoken for some time. He stood, motionless, looking at her with his clear grey eyes. His fine boyish hair was already dry.
Clara sat on her bed in her blue and white striped cotton pyjamas. She felt she had lived for a year that evening. She tried to read but kept going over and over the same paragraph. She knew it would take her at least an hour to fall to sleep. But at least, she thought, Hal must have settled; the bathroom sounds and the walking to and fro had stopped.
Clara put down her book, lay back with her knees bent and closed her eyes. A loud determined rap came on her door. Her body jumped. Clara climbed off the bed to open the door. Hal was standing there, gesturing with his palm open towards her.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said.
“What?”
“You have a great bathroom.”
“Thank-you,” Clara said automatically.
“And I want you to know – we’re both adults, and I think it would be a shame if I were to sleep in there and you were to sleep in here.”
“You don’t have to say that. It’s not what’s expected of you.”
Hal walked a little way towards her.
“No, I know. I don’t mean that. I wanted to say, I wouldn’t want it to go unsaid … . I think you’re great.”
“But you’re married, with children. You have a new baby.”
“Not with my wife.”
“You live with someone?”
“Yes.”
“What is her name?”
“Megan.”
“And what are your children’s names?”
“Freya and Max.”
“Hal, I’ve only just met you. I may never see you again.”
“I hear what you’re saying.”
“Go to bed,” pleaded Clara putting her arms around him. Hal’s arms closed around her. They stood next Clara’s wardrobe, stroking each other’s back and shoulders.
“I guess this will have to do,” said Hal.
Clara lay awake for most of that night. She was right wasn’t she, that spending the night with Hal would have left her feeling as vulnerable as a
victim of third degree burns? The next day he would travel back to his family. She would have to imagine him being welcomed home … answering
questions. How would he construe his visit? Besides, she’d had enough one night stands to know that wasn’t what she wanted. And though she’d only just met Hal, she knew it wasn’t what she wanted with him. But the entire surface of her body was flayed with longing. She almost wished that he had left things unsaid – she could have carried on in her cocoon of familiarity. But Hal had bridged the distance which could have kept them from each other.
She longed to go next door and drag him from his bed. She turned over onto her stomach, drew her fists under her shoulders and pressed her body hard into the mattress. Only when the light crept around the sides of the Roman blinds did she fall into fitful sleep.
JACKIE KAY - Trumpet
ALAN BENNETT - Untold Stories
JANET FRAME - An Autobiography
