Sorrow and Bliss(25)
I said yes, right and got up quickly to go and get a broom because I did not want to cry in front of him. He wasn’t in the kitchen when I came back with it, and there weren’t any broken pieces left on the floor for me to sweep up.
Oliver and I hadn’t revisited the topic of our conversation under the awning or acknowledged the conversation itself since we had it. I did not know if he had told Patrick, whose level of discomfort in the kitchen wasn’t obviously higher than it always was whenever he was around me. I did not know if Patrick had detected mine. Because of it, I didn’t join them in the living room that night, or any night afterwards. Still, when they were there and I could hear the television, the sound of their voices, the thump of the dryer in the under-stairs cupboard, food being delivered, I felt less on my own.
*
Early in the morning, Nicholas went on walks and filled the rest of his day by going to meetings and journalling and talking to his sponsor on the phone. Having deduced, in a short time, that I had even less to do than he did, he asked me if I wanted to go with him.
That day, we made our way from Shepherd’s Bush to the river, along it as far as Battersea; the next, all the way to Westminster. From then on, we took circuitous routes to the city, followed canals, went up into Clerkenwell and Islington, inventing ways home that took us through Regent’s Park, eventually walking for so many hours a day that we started buying energy bars and Lucozade. By the time we had worked through every flavour varietal, I loved Nicholas. He felt like my brother, and never asked why I was twenty-six and jobless and living with my parents and why I only owned one outfit. When I volunteered it, he said, ‘I wish marrying a total fuckwit was the worst life-choice I’d ever made.’
But, he told me, ‘Everything is redeemable, Martha. Even decisions that end up with you unconscious and bleeding in a pedestrian underpass, like me. Although ideally, you want to figure out the reason why you keep burning your own house down.’ We were somewhere in Bloomsbury, sitting on the edge of a fountain in a gated garden. I asked him why he kept burning his house down, then said he didn’t need to talk about it if he didn’t want to.
He did. He said no one ever talking about anything when he was growing up was the reason.
I told him Ingrid and I were always desperate to ask about his origins.
Nicholas said, ‘God, my origins.’
I’d said it the way Rowland did. I thought he would find it funny but it was clear he didn’t.
I apologised. ‘It must have been horrible, having something about you that was unspeakable.’
Nicholas sniffed. ‘Being something unspeakable, you mean. If you were so desperate to ask questions, why didn’t you? Did your parents tell you not to or something?’
I said no. ‘We just assumed we weren’t allowed. I don’t know why. Probably because we never heard anyone in your family mention it and,’ I considered it, ‘I think, for me, it was like I didn’t want to be the one to break the bad news.’
‘It’s not like I didn’t know I was adopted though is it?’
‘No. The bad news you weren’t white.’
He said what? so loudly that people turned around, then grabbed me by my shoulders. ‘Why am I only hearing this now Martha?’
‘I’m so sorry Nicholas, I thought you knew.’
He released me with a little backwards push and said he needed to keep walking, to process. Maybe, he said, on a level he’d suspected but still, it’s a massive shock, hearing someone say it. I told him I understood it would be a huge blow.
Out of the gate Nicholas put his arm around me and said, ‘Martha you are a fool.’ We walked like that for a while, back through Fitzrovia. Later, we turned up towards Notting Hill. I asked him if he thought we should be eating more carbohydrates. He said Martha, we should be getting jobs.
*
There was a sign in the window of a small organic supermarket we passed on Westbourne Grove advertising casual vacancies in all departments. Even though we lacked essential retail experience, we were both hired, I think, because as a recovering addict and spurned wife who walked for miles every day, we both had the requisite pallor and wasted bodies of health shop employees.
Nicholas was put on night fill. The manager asked me if I would prefer register or café. I told her that, as an insomniac, I was also interested in evening work. She glanced at my biceps, said, ‘Register,’ and sent me home with a sample of herbal sleep tonic that tasted like supermarket salad leaves that had decomposed in the bag.
We didn’t go on walks any more. On breaks, I ate ham sandwiches from Pret and drank the ultimately best flavour of Lucozade, hiding in the stockroom because meat is murder and, I overheard the manager telling a customer, sugar is microbial genocide basically. Even though Nicholas was still at Goldhawk Road, I missed him.
11
THE LAST TIME I saw Jonathan was at his office. I went there to sign our finalised annulment papers. It had been six months by then since I had skedaddled. I stood in front of his desk waiting as Jonathan checked every page with uncharacteristic diligence then pushed them towards me, smirking. ‘All I can say is thank God you didn’t manage to get pregnant. Someone with your tendencies.’
I snatched up the papers and reminded him that it had been his idea. ‘But yes, thank God you didn’t manage to get me pregnant, Jonathan. A baby I didn’t want in the first place turning out to have a genetic predilection for cocaine and white jeans.’ I left before he could say anything else.