Exciting Times(50)

   Edith and Julian





39

September

We took the ferry to Lamma Island. Edith wore a straw hat with a black band. Julian brought his laptop and tapped at emails. I sat in between and watched the foam curdling against the boat as it churned through the water.

‘She must be out of her mind,’ Julian had said when I’d told him Edith wanted the three of us to do something together.

‘You guys would get along.’

‘She can’t really want to meet me.’

One of the stranger things about Julian, though, was that he’d say no to something, then come back later and say: no problem. I couldn’t force an about-face, but could reasonably expect it if I made sure not to mention the issue in the interim. ‘Do you still think we should hang out with Edith?’ he’d said in the kitchen a few days later. At least I was still good at something.

First we went walking. Edith held a parasol. There was a lot of greenery, scrunches of shops, and seafood restaurants with white plastic tables. Anteprandial fish swam their last in tight-packed tanks. I said: ‘Can we save one?’ Julian seemed to decide I was addressing him and said: ‘No.’ Edith looked like she was speculating if this was a long-running joke between us. I wanted to tell her we’d never be that rude to her, but I really had no precedent to go by. We passed balconied houses spread out up the hill.

He’d arrived two weeks ago at the start of September. The night before he’d returned, I’d thrown out Edith’s edits – the flowers, the framed paper samples. I went to meet him at the airport and when we got back, he took his shoes off in the hall and put them beside the heels I’d left earlier. I added the sandals I’d had on and saw that this combination, one pair of his and two of mine, looked a lot like something else. I made tea. ‘I’ve coffee either,’ I said. ‘We’ve coffee.’ Tea was fine, he said. The kettle clicked and hummed. I asked if I could stay until I found somewhere.

For our Lamma lunch, Julian had made a booking at a raw vegan café. Even when he wasn’t enthused by something – be it uncooked plant-based cuisine or Edith’s company – he wanted to be in charge of it. She told him the restaurant was nice, and he looked at her pityingly like she thought he’d built it by hand and he didn’t want to disillusion her. I wondered if he’d thought Edith was vegan – it was the sort of thing he assumed about women. We ordered zucchini noodles and hot turmeric milk. The tables were tiny. We arranged our elbows carefully around the plates.

‘Ava told me we’re not allowed to talk about work,’ Julian said to Edith, ‘so I won’t ask if you’ve advised my bank.’

‘I never said that,’ I told her. ‘Don’t believe a word this one says about me.’

Edith said: ‘Julian, Ava mentioned you went to Oxford?’

‘For my sins, yes.’

‘I’m afraid I’m a tab.’

‘She told me,’ said Julian. ‘Don’t worry, everyone makes bad choices.’

I said: ‘Like the one Oxford made when they let you in.’

‘Does she do this to you, Edith?’ said Julian.

‘He loves when I roast him about Oxford,’ I told her. ‘It reminds him he went there.’

After our raw lunch, we went walking again. Edith led. Her dress reminded me of hotel bedsheets: creased cotton, limb-indented. Physically, I found it confusing to be around both of them: my face kept wanting to make expressions, something I now realised I censored it from doing when I was with Julian. I thought they’d had the same sense of humour, but now they were together, I couldn’t think of a single joke they’d both like.

Julian’s phone rang when we were halfway back to the pier. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he said. I went ahead to walk with Edith. The Chinese banyans cast weeping shade. They grew figs – Edith had told me that before. I kept watching her but couldn’t do too much of it at once.

‘When are you moving out?’ she said.

‘Two weeks,’ I improvised.

‘You can stay with us. My mum could improve you. Everyone she meets, she sees room for improvement.’

We’d reached the shops. In Central the signs blocked the skyline like pop-ups, ten per lamppost, one per storey of a twenty-floor building, but on Lamma there were gaps between them. Awnings shaded the walk. A shop with sliding doors and no English name stocked postcards and dried meat.

The morning before this outing, the sun had woken me early. I got water and paced while drinking it in the lounge. I cut up an apple and did not eat it, and observed red-lined heels beside Julian’s shoes in the hall but did not care. Throughout inspecting the shoes I continued not caring, and on seeing they were a seven formed no dubiously feminist mental image of her big ugly feet. Then I went to my room and cried, which was sometimes something people did, and as I was crying I heard Victoria say she’d best be off.

‘It’s hard moving out,’ I told Edith.

‘Practically, you mean?’ she said.

I said: ‘I love you.’

I loved her that moment, yes, but also because the morning I heard Victoria leave, I’d put on a cardigan Edith had thrown on the floor. Like Edith, it smelled of soap. I remembered how she listened whenever I told her about Irish, and then I thought about the places where things lived in her bag. I was one such thing now, I was safe there, and no one but Edith could hurt me. So that when Julian asked later that day if we were still on for Lamma tomorrow, I’d said: all good, and meant it.