ONE DAY(125)
But to just look at someone, to just sit and look and talk and then realise that it’s morning? Who had the time or inclination or energy these days to stay up talking all night? What would you talk about? Property prices? She used to long for those midnight phone-calls; these days if a phone rang late at night it was because there had been an accident, and did they really need more photographs when they knew each other’s faces so well, when they had shoeboxes full of that stuff, an archive of nearly twenty years? Who writes long letters in this day and age, and what is there to care so much about?
She sometimes wondered what her twenty-two-year-old self would think of today’s Emma Mayhew. Would she consider her self-centred? Compromised? A bourgeois sell-out, with her appetite for home ownership and foreign travel, clothes from Paris and expensive haircuts? Would she find her conventional, with her new surname and hopes for a family life? Maybe, but then the twenty-two-year-old Emma Morley wasn’t such a paragon either: pretentious, petulant, lazy, speechifying, judgemental. Self-pitying, self-righteous, self-important, all the selfs except self-confident, the quality that she had always needed the most.
No, this, she felt, was real life and if she wasn’t as curious or passionate as she once had been, that was only to be expected. It would be inappropriate, undignified, at thirty-eight, to conduct friendships or love affairs with the ardour and intensity of a twenty-two-year-old. Falling in love like that? Writing poetry, crying at pop songs? Dragging people into photo-booths, taking a whole day to make a compilation tape, asking people if they wanted to share your bed, just for company? If you quoted Bob Dylan or T.S. Eliot or, God forbid, Brecht at someone these days they would smile politely and step quietly backwards, and who would blame them? Ridiculous, at thirty-eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life. No, everything had evened out and settled down and life was lived against a general background hum of comfort, satisfaction and familiarity. There would be no more of those nerve-jangling highs and lows. The friends they had now would be the friends they had in five, ten, twenty years’ time. They expected to get neither dramatically richer nor poorer; they expected to stay healthy for a little while yet. Caught in the middle; middle class, middle-aged; happy in that they were not over happy.
Finally, she loved someone and felt fairly confident that she was loved in return. If someone asked Emma, as they sometimes did at parties, how she and her husband had met, she told them:
‘We grew up together.’
So they went to work as usual. Emma sat at her computer by the window overlooking the tree-lined street, writing the fifth and final ‘Julie Criscoll’ novel, in which her fictional heroine, ironically enough, became pregnant and had to decide between motherhood and university. It wasn’t going very well; the tone was too sombre and introspective, the jokes wouldn’t flow. She was keen to get it finished, and yet uncertain what to do next, or what she was capable of doing; a book for grown-ups perhaps, something serious and properly researched about the Spanish Civil War, or the near-future, something vaguely Margaret Atwoody, something her younger self might respect and admire. That was the idea anyway. In the meantime, she tidied the flat, made tea, paid some bills, did a coloured wash, put CDs back in their cases, made more tea then finally turned on her computer and stared it into submission.
At the café, Dexter flirted a little with Maddy, then sat in the tiny stock room that smelt oppressively of cheese and attempted to complete the quarterly VAT return. But the gloom and guilt of this morning’s outburst still clung to him, and when he could no longer concentrate he reached for his phone. It used to be Emma who made the conciliatory calls and smoothed things over, but in the eight months since their marriage they seemed to have changed places, and he now found himself incapable of doing anything while he knew she was unhappy. He dialled, imagining her at her desk, looking at her mobile phone, seeing his name appear and turning it off. He preferred it that way – much easier to be sentimental when no-one was going to answer back.
‘So I’m here, doing my VAT, and I keep thinking about you and I just wanted to say don’t worry. I’ve arranged for us to view this house at five o’clock. I’ll text you the address, so, who knows. We’ll see. Period property, good-sized rooms. It’s got a breakfast bar apparently. I know you’ve always dreamt of one. That’s all. Except to say I love you and don’t worry. Whatever it is you’re worrying about, don’t. That’s everything. See you there at five. Love you. Bye.’
As routine demanded, Emma worked until two, ate lunch, then went swimming. In July she sometimes liked to go to the ladies pool on Hampstead Heath, but the day had become precariously dark and overcast, and instead she braved the teenage kids at the indoor pool. For twenty minutes she weaved unhappily between them as they dive-bombed and ducked and flirted with each other, manic with the freedom of the end of term. Afterwards she sat in the changing rooms, listened to Dexter’s message and smiled. She memorised the address of the property and called back.
‘Hi there. It’s me. Just to say, I’m setting out now and I can’t wait to see the breakfast bar. I might be five minutes late. Also thank you for your message and I wanted to say . . . I’m sorry for being so snappy today, and for that stupid argument. Nothing to do with you. Just a bit nuts at the moment. The important thing is I love you very much. So. There you go. Lucky you! I think that’s everything. Bye my love. Bye.’