The Exhibitionist, page 15
Sukie Blackstock is invited tonight.
Leah’s proud of keeping the current RSVPs on her person, on the back of a huge Costco receipt; she pulls it out like a herald and narrates it at meals. But, as she left this morning, she handed it to Gillian.
‘You’re a grown-up,’ she’d said. ‘Don’t let it out of your sight.’
Obviously Gillian doesn’t know about Sukie Blackstock; none of Lucia’s friends do. She wanted them still to think well of him. But she’d asked Gillian to see the list and Gillian pointed out that she looked pale. So Lucia admitted the reason she needed to check the names. Gillian did not, as she’d expected, lightly say: ‘Oh I know, David’s done the same’ or ‘best to grin and bear it’.
She cradled the spent light bulb under her chin, grabbed the ladder-top with her free hand and slowly lowered herself onto the little platform, her eyes on Lucia’s.
‘I’m sorry, what? That absolute sod.’
For so long, Lucia’s hidden it; she can’t tell how it looks to the naked eye anymore. Aren’t all marriages unhappy quite often? ‘It’s not such an – I mean, who knows exactly wh—’
‘That bastard,’ Gillian says and Lucia makes a hushing gesture. ‘Slow down. Tell me everything. Why didn’t you say?’
Lucia looks out of the window. The brick in the February sunlight is apricot, edible. ‘I was protecting him. From what you might think of . . . Is that mad? And he – he always said it wasn’t fair to tell people about it, on her or him. That they wouldn’t understand. You won’t tell David, will you? You mustn’t. Please. Ray would b—’
‘But, you peculiar woman, why? I mean, it’s your business. But it’s a big deal. Now. Let me be clear. How long after your operation did this happen?’
Lucia blinks, breathes in the clarity. ‘I – I can’t be sure. I knew in my heart, but he kept kept kept denying it. But he was so excitable, you know how he gets, sort of feverishly hilarious, and I remember on Patrick’s birthday I was so . . . scorchingly sad and worried all the time, the closed-door phone calls, the mysteriously late dinners in town. But he just said I was being paranoid, and controlling. Which I really am, often. Usually. He’s right.’
‘That’s his story, when you don’t fall in with what he wants,’ says Gillian, and Lucia inhales sharply. ‘So, you’re vague about the dates?’
Lucia hasn’t dared ask anyone about neurological damage. Might there have been a faint whiff of oxygen-deprivation, a distracted anaesthetist, during surgery number two, or three? The drains beside her bed had kept filling with blood; they couldn’t understand why, so returned to re-operate that evening, through her scar. A few hours later, deep in the night, it happened again; her signature on the consent form looked like a false eyelash. Eight hours of surgery, four dark pints of a stranger’s blood, or the shock, or the medication; some, or all, have blunted her.
This had seemed helpful: smudging certain horrors of the time. The operation was 27 February 2007; the third anniversary is racing towards her. She’s kept whatever did happen between Ray and Sukie Blackstock as a block of nastiness, frozen at some point after, not technically during, the months she’d spent derailed, destroyed.
But now something unwanted is nudging into place. She remembers that, in the winter of 2006, Ray had begged and cajoled and insisted on introducing them: his wife and his osteopath (‘healer, really,’ he’d say. ‘It’s incredible, the laying-on of hands’). They’d been walking past the pain clinic; Lucia has always assumed it was coincidence, but how did Ray know Sukie Blackstock would be there? And exactly where?
Behind the fire-door on the concrete staircase – had he her mobile number, already? Was that allowed, in the NHS? – Sukie Blackstock and Lucia smiled at each other. Sukie teased Ray. Lucia, already at least one biopsy down, had tried, despite her grief, to behave like a sophisticated woman. Why had he steamrollered her into doing this?
And was it when Ray and Sukie were still straightforwardly practitioner and patient, before the weird era of friendship? Ray was so deeply excited when Sukie Blackstock declared that they could be friends, insisting it was allowed, no boundaries crossed, although obviously she mustn’t tell anyone, a friend, a nurse. ‘It might get her into trouble.’ He said that Lucia was unreasonably suspicious and Sukie Blackstock was trustworthy. Lucia could tell she was a wiggling manipulative force for harm. It was as if he was showing off a sparkling stick of dynamite and expecting her to rejoice for him.
And then, edging closer to the stink of thawing shame, she slots in the rough date of that dinner with the korma and My Partner Gareth; then, a full year later, having to go to a French film with her and Ray.
‘We’re friends,’ he said. ‘That’s what friends do.’ And refusing would have led to such upset, distress.
The next month was when he finally confessed.
She’d been so certain that something was up, had begged him for the truth for weeks. One night, sitting on the edge of the bath looking down at her nakedness, he said he’d tell her, if she really wanted to know.
‘What kind of something?’ she had asked, almost calmly.
‘Well.’
‘Say it.’
‘We didn’t have full sex.’
‘Oh. God. I knew! I knew, you—’
‘You realize,’ he said, ‘that technically it was abuse. She was my clinician. I’m the victim here.’
‘You had an affair!’
‘No! Absolutely not. How could you say that?’
And round and round and round.
So, logically, something was in train before her operation. And, without question, just afterwards; within weeks, days. She’d written a blurry diary, to keep track of consultations and results, but it had ended up being full of how overwhelmed Ray said he was, her miserable certainty he was lying. Lately she’s reread a page or two.
In the darkest time of Lucia’s life, he had absolutely and totally betrayed her.
‘Christ,’ she tells Gillian, ‘and then six months after was when he admitted it. “It”. Whatever they’d . . . So it must have been very in the wake. You remember, I could hardly leave the house for months, no work for a year. It was very . . . fresh,’ she says, and dips back for a moment into the wound, the dimness in her bedroom while the sun slowly set and he told her she was too upset, too much.
What a sucker.
‘Tell me,’ she says to Gillian, ‘is it weird that I’m only working out the timings now?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Shock, I suppose. Self-protection. Being so trodden on.’
‘Ow. OK. So, when that woman came to ours for his birthd—’
‘She came to your house?’
‘You know that. Don’t you? Several times. He – he said it mattered to him that I accept his . . . friends.’
‘Christ.’
‘Oh my God. I married a narcissist.’
‘Well, yes.’
After a pause, Lucia goes on: ‘Anyway, so that evening it was definitely going on. My God. As I went to all those appointments, or when I was in hospital, or, or convalescing . . . it was happening then?’
‘Is there anything else?’ asks Gillian, a little later.
‘That he did?’
‘I meant . . . going on. Consequently. Currently. With you.’
‘Oh! Why, well, no, absolutely not,’ says Lucia, glancing like a weak spy at the phone. Marie-Claire has been prowling round the edge of her mind all morning. Lucia will not let her into the castle. Success is the last thing they need.
‘You’re not . . . seeing anyone?’
‘What?’
‘Well, why not? After what he did. It would end some marriages. Most.’
Lucia shuts down her face. ‘Who,’ she says, ‘would want me?’
24
In mid-January, Priya told her: ‘Let’s not take it slow. I’ve done this before; you have too, distantly, you grandma, in your ancient past.’
‘True,’ said Lucia. ‘But I h—’
‘Thank God you’re not an innocent, with women. It’s so boring,’ and visions of naked innocents, softer, firmer, filled Lucia’s mind, for solitary suffering.
Even for the right woman (despite what she has implied in the heat, at least once), Priya will never leave her husband. Lucia has tried to tease out the truth like gravel in a child’s plump palm, but still hasn’t established whether the issue is the public eye, which obviously would be reason enough, or being Hindu, whatever that involves or . . . that she simply doesn’t want to. That she doesn’t want Lucia enough.
They had done much, primarily in the mews round the back of the Dove in Pimlico but also, before then, among God knows what in the shrubbery of a scrappy Holborn square. But, since it – ‘it’ – began, they had never been alone in a room. If one has snogged extensively in side streets, discussed everything in the intervals of simply looking, or by text, in secret midnight phone calls, one knows so much yet almost nothing. She has never seen Priya’s back. They have felt each other almost everywhere and yet the idea of an expanse of skin, of access to the joints and folds, is dumbfounding. The greatest thing of all would be nakedness.
She had survived the thirty-two days since the Chinese restaurant on three meetings, encounters; she would recollect them while washing spinach and want to submerge her face so she could scream. When Priya mentioned a spare evening, Lucia’s stupid heart tolled in her chest. The strain of trying not to beg has changed her cells. She is light with hunger, singing to herself like a lunatic; every colour and object is associated with hope, the pain of love.
Priya herself has said the word. What else could it be?
Once before, on the cobbles in Pimlico, her legs shook, hard, like a dog. Priya laughed, then moaned; it seemed to fuel her. Lucia has not yet made Priya’s legs shake.
‘Come to mine after nine-ten,’ so, of course, she did.
Ray flicks the switches and the Guildworkers’ Hall lights up. ‘There he is. Pissing about. We’ve been here since the crack, waiting for you.’
Patrick, dazzled, says: ‘Sorry, I was . . .’ and Ray gives his dragon snort.
‘So,’ says Leah, ‘got everything sorted?’
‘I think,’ ventures Patrick, ‘it is all under con-control.’
‘Hah.’
‘It’s just . . .’ Life is a series of tests. He must force his way through this, to start the next conversation. ‘Your pictures,’ he says. ‘I can’t hang them if they’re not . . .’
‘Well, they’re on their way,’ says Leah. ‘I’m handling it, aren’t I, Dad,’ she says. ‘It’s confidential, this bit. I’ll do whatever it needs.’
‘But moving them . . .’
‘I can do it,’ says Leah, more firmly. ‘I’ll get a cab.’
‘You’ll need mo—’
‘A fucking fleet of taxis, then. OK? Leave it,’ says Ray.
A shallow triangle: Ray and Leah just inside the main room, Patrick in the corner, back to the wall. If either of them moves, he cannot do it. But they stand in their places, Leah looking worriedly over her shoulder, fiddling with the keys, Ray’s head back, chin up, eyeing the gallery like a fighter.
‘Sorry,’ says Patrick, trying to feel the present infusing his bones, which he’s practised in the caravan with a Tibetan tape from Mrs R. ‘I need to ask, tell, say . . .’
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ says Leah. ‘What do you want to know? Is it urgent, because I need to speak to the cateri—’
‘I . . .’ begins Patrick. ‘They . . . I—’
‘Will he spit it out,’ says Ray.
‘They want me to help in the kitchen at a pub and I can live upstairs.’
Ray and Leah exchange glances. ‘What,’ she says, ‘in the name of fuck are you talking about?’
‘It’s . . . I . . . it’s starting Monday. The manager said. It’s a good thing. A job.’
‘This,’ says Leah, ‘is Dad’s special day.’
Ray sighs. ‘Was.’
‘No, no,’ says Patrick. ‘That’s not . . . it isn’t negative, it’s work! I mean I’d have to move my stuff out, but . . .’
‘It’s fine,’ Ray says, his voice dead. ‘Let’s cancel my show. Let’s make today a celebration of Patrick’s baking.’
‘No, sorry, I . . . I didn’t—’
‘I am not,’ says Ray, ‘going to think about this selfishness now. I don’t have the energy.’ He turns and stalks off, through the front door.
Patrick looks at his shoes.
‘Right, you, listen to me,’ says Leah.
‘What? Sorry, I can exp—’ Patrick begins. ‘I didn’t mean to upset him. But this is what I’ve been, I assumed I’d never . . . Mrs R says they’ll pay better than she can, and I get a room. And I’d come back whenever anything needs to be fix—’
‘Shut up,’ says Leah.
‘Sorry?’
‘Shut it. OK? Listen to me. We have a problem and the least you can do, now, is fix it.’
‘So,’ says Lucia lightly, ‘what’s up? Where are you?’
Priya never rings ‘just for a chat’. She hasn’t mentioned last night’s non-visit; why should she? Government business.
‘On my way to a school United Nations conferencey thing. Ever been to Clapton?’
‘No. Are . . . are you eating?’
‘Breakfast,’ Priya says crunchily, ‘a bagel. Sesame.’
She doesn’t say: come and meet me. Or: I’m sorry about yesterday. Chalk Farm isn’t far. I’d have walked out of this garden barefoot and over there, thinks Lucia. Or on my knees, like a pathetic old pilgrim. Even my passion has no class.
Then she remembers last night’s craziness. She could blurt out about Venice, make Priya marvel. No; absolutely not.
‘Guess who left a message?’
‘The Prime Minister?’
‘Plonker,’ says Priya. ‘It was Hellie.’
Whenever Lucia’s prodded, wondering if Priya and Hellie still meet, Priya snaps shut like a mousetrap: not the humane kind. If only she’d tell Lucia there’s nothing to worry about. Her throat tightens. She thinks: be cool.
‘The Hellie?’ she asks.
Priya, involved with her bagel, merely laughs through her nose, breathily, as if she were right up against Lucia’s ear. Lucia understands that the risk isn’t that she’ll lose her to Sid, or to the next interesting woman, but that Priya will go back to strong, humourless Hellie, who is everything Lucia fails to be.
The future fans out before her; she’s a gambler with one chance.
‘By the way,’ she says. She grabs a sprig of rosemary, breathes in the resin of hillsides, goddesses. ‘I had a phone call last night too. Are you ready to hear something amazing?’
In the name of all that’s holy, let no one be home.
There is still pee on Jess’s fingers from the toilet at the Black Ball. She’d tried to conceal herself with her coat but she’s bound to be on a Dark Web porn site now. Until they see what she was peeing on. It’s in her pocket; the bin was stuffed and foetid, swampy with other women’s secrets. She’d have felt criminal leaving it in that place of drunken ruin, like abandoning a baby where it would be unfound.
If she sees her mother, she will cry. Patrick: she might tell him. Martyn will suspect that something is up. She and her father are raring for a bust-up; when are they ever not? But the worst person, she thinks, pushing through the front door, would be . . .
Leah, standing on the bottom step, looking fresh and beautiful: ‘Oh. Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘Where’ve you been? Christ, wait until you hear what your idiot brother has . . . come and help me smoke a ciggie,’ she says, as Jess hears a male footstep on the stairs. It might be Martyn.
‘OK.’
The back door bangs behind them; they both wait for their father’s shout.
‘Go on, have one, you loon, it won’t kill you.’ Leah’s holding out her Rothmans. Jess looks hard at the pear tree. The thought of her sister’s pink lungs clogged with tar makes her feel quite violent.
‘You know that’s stupid,’ she says. ‘Given Mum’s hi—’
‘Don’t,’ Leah says, hands over her ears. ‘I can’t bear it.’
Leah, Jess tries to remember, is a good dear person; she’s just been infected by their father. There is what passes for a companionable silence, except that Leah is dragging the life out of her cigarette, while Jess clenches her fists to stop herself gnawing her thumb. It feels like a chance to say something important. A piebald cat, possibly a relation of Paisley, swaggers along the path. Please, no, thinks Jess, as it leaps with heavy grace onto her lap.
‘Ow.’ She shifts her knees. After all these years away, she’s more daring. Fibres must have been broken, the force-field weakened. Surely? ‘So,’ she begins, putting a hand on her sister’s back. ‘Where are we with . . . him? I mean, generally.’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ says Leah, and Jess takes her hand away. ‘Even just getting him his, you know, stuff, it’s a full-time . . .’
‘Well, yes,’ said Jess, over the sound of the walls closing in, the slosh of unknown fins beneath dark water. ‘It’s upsetting. Seeing him like this, and Mum.’ The cat is purring, its eyes on Jess. It looks like it might bite. ‘And, well, we could be titrating his dosage, if we make a plan.’
‘Don’t start on all that again.’
‘You can buy special placebo pills online, I’ve read about it. You j—’
‘Can you stop? I’ve got enough on my . . . All your “Shouldn’t Dad see another doctor? Shouldn’t we wean him off” crap,’ says Leah in her special Jess-voice, high and posh and warbley like a Morningside duchess. ‘Dr Mac is in charge and if he says—’
Jess flops her knees; the cat thumps to the ground. The blind rage of siblinghood is upon her. ‘He’s a poisoner! God. I’m . . . I want to help.’
‘I am sick,’ Leah says, ‘of being the only one who does anything. Your brother is worse than useless, it breaks Dad’s heart. His latest . . . forget it. But you . . . you’ve been protected from reality for long enough.’
