Slack-Tide Read online

  At the noodle bar with Robert I looked at him holding the empty yellow Selfridges bag and I thought of Magali. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘It’s perfect.’

  The bill came, and I picked it up.

  ‘It’s mine,’ he said. I tried to point out that he’d paid for the movie, but before I’d finished my sentence he’d handed over his money.

  We stepped onto the street, and he asked me if I believed in intuition.

  I laughed. ‘It’s not a belief system, Robert.’

  He struggled with my response, then he said that intuition wasn’t a notion he subscribed to. ‘You know how John Kennedy Jr died? Small plane, heavy weather off Martha’s Vineyard? You’re familiar with the story, right?’

  I shook my head and he told me how, low in a storm, the president’s son had seen a line of lights far off and, mistaking them for a landing strip, had ignored the plane’s instrument panel and dipped the nose for landing, heading straight for the queue of little boats in the water far below. The radar track later showed evidence of the young man’s vertigo as he’d gone into his death-spiral.

  ‘It’s like carsickness,’ Robert said. ‘It happens when you see or feel things that don’t tally with what your instruments are telling you. So your brain goes into overdrive trying to reconcile it, and you’re dizzy. You know what the real skill of instrument flying is, when that happens? To ignore your instincts and pull back. To listen to your mind, not your heart.’

  In the British Library there is an artwork by Patrick Hughes called Paradoxymoron. Approaching it from one side, a passer-by will register a series of bookcases, protruding from the canvas. Each of them is positioned on the diagonal. As the passer-by continues walking, looking always at the picture, they will notice that the shelves appear to rotate. Repeating this a second and a third time, staring at this static sculpted painting, the passer-by might experience a little of the nausea Robert had spoken of.

  I invited him to an event at the library.

  ‘Keep your eyes on the picture,’ I said, taking his hand and walking him past it.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s literally what I was talking about.’

  Outside the noodle bar on Wardour Street he suggested sharing a cab.

  I laughed. ‘But you live near Angel.’ Reminding him that I lived in Kentish Town, a fact he’d been careful to ascertain over dinner, I gestured that way.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘We’ll do a round trip.’

  ‘You go ahead. I’ll take the Tube.’

  I hailed him a taxi but he waved the driver on. Trying to lift my bag from my shoulder he said, ‘I’m fine with the Tube.’

  ‘But you need a different branch.’ I retrieved my bag. ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘We can walk to the station together, but I’m carrying this.’

  While we walked, he told me that he was due to have Christmas on his own in New York; he’d see one or two old friends, but otherwise be alone. Then he’d fly to Mexico to join Lena and Philippe and their extended families. The group had rented several houses in a small town, and would spend New Year together.

  I said that it was good he was able to do it, despite the separation, and that his son must be glad.

  ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I literally feel like smashing the whole thing to pieces.’ Holding his hand high, he brought it down sharply like a hatchet on a log. ‘Get rid of it. Be free. I don’t want to go any more.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ I said, surprised by his anger. ‘You’ll be glad you went.’

  My ex-husband and I spent our first separated Christmas together. Just the two of us, in a house on a part of the Suffolk coast we’d always visited. On Christmas Day, we picnicked on the beach: cold lobster, hot potatoes in tinfoil, and champagne in glasses we’d brought from the house.

  I took Robert there once, in the May that I was with him, but it felt like an incursion. Looking at a map of England in the library this week I was struck by how few stretches of the English coastline were free of old memories, and available for the making of new ones.

  My ex-husband and I were happy that Christmas, in a strange, sad kind of a way. Thinking about it after my date with Robert, I realised that we’d been able to be happy only because things hadn’t yet been decided. That we might have stayed together still. That losing our child had nearly broken us in two, but that beyond that, we weren’t sure why we were pulling apart. We walked that shoreline every day, with the waves coming in from the east. Frozen in that moment, it was as though time had been suspended, and our decision postponed.

  Within a year our split was official. I spent the following Christmas in London with Susie and her family. My brother and his wife had invited me to Norfolk. Their second son was newborn, though. It hurt to even think of it, so I stayed away, and promised myself to them another year. Susie and Ben had made it clear I was more than welcome. For the whole of the week I was there, though, I was a torso cut from ice.

  That night with Robert, to be friendly, I went the long way round: we took the Tube together to King’s Cross, where we would take our separate lines. In the final moments, he outlined his options for return flights in the New Year, and asked if I’d like to meet again.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, smiling. I put out my hand to shake his. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

  Then he kissed me.

  Because the act was unilateral and full on the mouth, I was puzzled and stepped back. Until then, aside from my private acknowledgement of desire, our meeting had seemed open to any interpretation: either we were at the start of what would be an engaging friendship or, in some uncharted way, we were navigating the very early stages of what might become a romance.

  What he’d done by kissing me had changed things.

  At my flat, I texted Magali. Why did he have to do that?

  She phoned. ‘His dad was French, you said. That is a typical French thing. A certain kind of a Frenchman would do that. Did you like him? Could you do him?’

  When I told her about the scarf, she said that was a French thing too. ‘Oh, that is normal. A small thing, a gift. Olivier was the same with me, some flowers, some perfume, all the time at the beginning. It’s romantic, yes?’

  ‘It’s not a small thing. It’s a massive thing.’

  ‘The scarf?’

  ‘Yes, it’s thick and warm and black and crêpe-y and kind of –’

  ‘If you don’t want it I’ll have it. The heating’s gone again at the club. I’m permanently shivering, my musicians are shivering. They are playing in fingerless gloves. We are all completely freezing our balls.’

  ‘I enjoyed our conversation,’ I told her when we met the next day. ‘My mind liked it. A part of me that’s died was reminded of being alive. But he’s not someone I want a relationship with.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s old. He’s still married.’

  ‘Separated, you said.’

  ‘Not divorced, though.’

  ‘Your divorce took a while.’

  ‘He hasn’t even started his.’

  ‘Didn’t you say you wanted a relationship? Isn’t it time to try?’

  ‘He’s fifty-two. I don’t want a man with fifty-two-year-old legs. Can you imagine? Can you even imagine?’

  When there was no response, I conceded, ‘I could’ve taken more of the conversation.’

  Because Robert had insisted on paying for our dinner as well as our movie tickets, I wrote a thank-you note. He’d given me his address, and when I cycled into town the next day I took it with the pile of Christmas cards I was dropping through friends’ doors. At his apartment, a converted Victorian printworks near Angel, the high metal gates were locked. I cycled on and called him to check where his office was on Fleet Street; my final destination was near there, so it wouldn’t be a detour.

  He answered at the first ring. ‘I just left work,’ he said, so loudly I held the phone away. ‘Where are you? Really? That’s incredible! I’m heading home. I’m walking right toward you.
’

  We met a second later in the street. Instead of his sharp-fitted suit, he wore chinos that were the colour of mud, and baggy. They were cut a little too short so his red socks were clearly visible. He had on an old man’s winter coat and a felt hat. I was in my hi-viz cycling jacket and a red helmet. Giving each other the once-over, we grinned like teenagers, then I handed him the envelope.

  In the email exchange that followed, he wrote how delighted he’d been to see me appear from the gloom, and he thanked me for my ‘beautiful’ note. He knew I was busy up to Christmas, but wanted to know if I would see him one more time before he went away on Friday. I replied that I had an appointment in town on Thursday morning, and could meet for coffee. His next email attached a reservation: breakfast at the Delaunay, on the corner of Kingsway and Aldwych.

  ‘8.30,’ he’d written. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

  He was at a table facing the door.

  I said hello quickly, explaining that my chain had come off, so I was going straight to wash the grease from my hands.

  Before I came back, I texted Susie.

  Date # 2 with your American! Breakfast at Delaunay’s … Are you ready for Xmas? Is Tom counting the days? How’s work? Are you still on that case?

  She texted back: I still can’t believe you guys are seeing each other! Do you really like him? I’m on my way to court now, going right past you in ten.

  Ha! I joked. Stop for a coffee.

  OK. Fab idea.

  ‘Please,’ I breathed on the way back to Robert. ‘Please tell me you were joking too.’

  At the table, Robert said I could eat what I liked.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m a grown-up.’ He frowned, and I smiled and said, ‘You paid last time. It’s my turn.’

  Robert cut in: he wanted something clear from the start. It was his invitation, so he’d be picking up the bill. He didn’t want to argue it, so please would I promise not to? ‘Think of it as a Christmas present!’ he said. ‘What’ll you have? I’ve ordered oatmeal.’

  I was preoccupied by the idea that Susie might appear at any moment, so I only half heard him. When my pain au chocolat came I cut it in two, lengthways. He watched me tease the strip of chocolate out of the first piece and eat it, keeping the empty pastry in my hand. He reached over and took the other piece from my plate. He ate it in two mouthfuls and began to tell me a story.

  As a boy, he said, he’d attended a French school in New York. In his teens, and at his mother’s behest, he had spent part of every summer in Paris as the guest of his great-aunt who, on account of her migraines, spent much of her time in bed with the curtains closed. When I asked him what he’d done every day, a teenage boy alone in the city, he shrugged and said he’d walked by the river, gone to the parks, and looked at art.

  ‘Weren’t you lonely?’ I said.

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  If he was bored he saw an afternoon movie, or took his sketch pad to a bridge, and drew the passers-by. Early one morning, on a whim, he’d visited a patisserie. He’d chosen a pain au chocolat for his great-aunt, and she’d liked it so much that he’d begun to bring her one every day.

  ‘She did what you did. Literally every single time, she tore it in two and nibbled the chocolate out, super slow! I sat there for what literally felt like forever and watched her split the damn thing right down the middle,’ he laughed. Then Susie was behind me, placing her hands over my eyes and saying, ‘Surprise!’

  Robert stood to say hello, then they laughed about seeing one another without a novel in their hands. Robert cracked a joke about someone else in their book group, and what might be said about the two of them meeting ‘in secret’. As Susie pulled up a chair and ordered coffee, I put the piece of pastry I’d been holding into my mouth and hiccupped, swallowing it whole.

  Robert’s oatmeal came. He took a mouthful, declared it too hot, and asked Susie about her family. She talked without stopping, so I was able to drink two glasses of water straight down, dislodging the pastry from my throat. When I tuned back in, Robert, who by now was eating his porridge, had just discovered that Susie’s son was six years old.

  ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know that!’ He turned to me. ‘It’s a very studious book group. We only ever discuss literature.’ Then he was plying her with anecdotes about his own son, Philippe, at that age, when he glanced at his porridge and interrupted himself to say to Susie, ‘Tell me the story of when you first made oatmeal.’

  Almost before she’d finished answering, he leaned in, conspiratorially.

  ‘You wanna know mine? Well, here you go.’ He shrugged his shoulders up, then down, in the way I would come to know as his habit, then he sighed. ‘I was in the kitchen in our place in New York, warming Philippe’s milk. We were still feeding him through the night, so it was 3 a.m. or something crazy. I took the oatmeal packet out the cupboard just for something to read. It sounded so easy I went ahead and made some. Kept me full all day. Never looked back.’

  ‘Your wife didn’t breastfeed?’ Susie said.

  ‘She extracted.’ He ran his fingers through his hair.

  ‘Ah,’ Susie said. ‘I totally get that. I just knew, after Tom, I couldn’t have another. I didn’t want my body taken to pieces again.’

  ‘Lena was kinda shell-shocked too! We met in the summer, married in the fall and I got her pregnant on honeymoon.’ He grinned.

  ‘Wow,’ Susie said, kicking me under the table.

  ‘One morning, I looked in the refrigerator and saw these packs of extracted milk in a line,’ Robert said. He stood up, suddenly, knocking the coffee cups together. ‘I said out loud, “I own this fridge. I own this milk.”’ Then he raised his voice and beat his fists on his chest, so people turned to see. ‘“This is the milk of my wife which I will give to my son,” I said. “I am a man!”’

  Susie looked at her watch. I noticed she’d gone red. ‘Oh, gosh,’ she said, smiling so only I could see. ‘I totally have to go. Sorry. Late for court,’ and she ran, after being kissed on both cheeks by Robert, who, once he’d realised she meant what she said, had bowed at her, holding his hands together.

  When Susie and Ben had brought the newborn Tom home, I stayed with them all that day and some of the next; Ben had to work, and she was exhausted. Before she got into bed, we placed the baby on a small sheepskin rug. Six hours later, when the sun had set and Susie still hadn’t stirred, I stood to close the blind and became aware for the first time that this tiny boy had, in incremental wriggles and sighs, travelled more than a foot across the rug.

  A year later, when I found out I was losing my own child, Susie came straight away. She held my hand, and told me I would be all right.

  As Tom grew, I imagined my Phoebe alongside him, always a little younger, always invisible.

  She phoned that evening, after Delaunay’s.

  ‘So he’s interested in kids?’

  ‘I guess,’ I said. ‘I mean, maybe. Why else would he tell that story about the milk? What do you think?’

  ‘I think he’s lovely. He’s so different outside book group, but he’s lovely. Nice hair. I think you should give it a go.’

  ‘Having his kids?’

  ‘No! Not yet, anyway. Dating him. See what happens. Oh, by the way, apart from the fact he’s older, don’t you think he looks exactly like Keanu Reeves?’

  Robert had paid the bill for breakfast. Then he’d stood up and placed a scarf around his neck. An orange and deep-green wool, it was woven in an ornate pattern, and was more like an evening scarf than one someone would wear in the daytime. He said he’d walk me to wherever my bike was locked up, so we could say goodbye there. I explained that I wanted to walk to my appointment; there would be Christmas shoppers everywhere, I said, so it would be easier.

  ‘May I go with you?’ Robert said, putting on his hat, with its broad brim. ‘I could do with a stroll.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, smiling.

  Crossing Covent Garden we kept our distance. In Soho, we
meandered and he showed me buildings: the way this one leaned, how that one was clad in non-reflective glass. A light rain had begun. He described the pitch of a roof and I looked up. His voice wavered and I could hear his tongue catch, in the way mine does when I’m nervous. When I went on he hung back, then he followed.

  Though I’d seen it coming, I was surprised when he paused on Argyll Street and whispered, ‘Come here,’ pulling me into him so I was under the brim of his hat. ‘Come out the rain.’

  As we kissed, our mouths opened and our tongues touched softly and I felt like I had one winter evening when, walking on my own through a nearly empty city, I’d heard a blackbird sing.

  I took a train to Norfolk that afternoon. There were storm warnings, and the train’s speed was restricted. My journey was five hours, rather than three. Outside Cambridge, we stopped altogether and a young man led the carriage in Christmas carols. People laughed, and strangers spoke to each other. Eventually, a couple stood up to announce their engagement, which they said had taken place as the train had pulled out of Liverpool Street. Everyone clapped and someone cheered, and hot drinks were passed around.

  At the station, my brother and his children were waiting. We drove in the dark to the house, where his wife was just inside the door, with hot tea. I put my Christmas gifts by the tree, then I found Robert’s text. He wished he’d given me his orange-green scarf, he said. He’d noticed that I wasn’t wearing mine. There was the rain, and my journey to Norfolk would be cold, and when I arrived, the temperature would be much lower than in London. He was bothered by the fact I would quite possibly have been cold for the rest of the day, when he could’ve seen to it that it was otherwise.

  How? I replied.

  I could’ve given you my scarf!

  You already gave me one! Anyway, you need yours, you’re travelling too. Have you packed yet? Won’t there be blizzards where you’re headed? Won’t Central Park be buried in snow?