Seven Days of Us(58)

Guilty conscience, thought Jesse. “And you’re sure you want to go through with this?” he said.

“Through with what?” said George.

Jesus, the guy was obtuse. “With getting married.”

“What the fuck? Of course I do! Like I said, that wasn’t me that night. Haven’t you ever done anything stupid when you were pissed?”

“Pissed” meant drunk here, Jesse reminded himself.

“Sure, but I never stopped being gay.”

George took a deep, angry breath through his nose, his little nostrils quivering. Jesse wondered how he had thought he was cute. He looked like a flushed, balding pug.

“If you say anything about any of this,” said George, tendons flexing in his outsize neck, “I will personally fucking kill you. OK?”

“Dude, calm down. I’m not about to say anything. That’s your call. I just think you have some pretty deep thinking to do. You’re getting married—” Down the passage, a door closed. He lowered his voice. “You’re marrying Phoebe and that is a huge commitment. You don’t want to be having doubts as she walks down the aisle. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I don’t have doubts! Listen, I don’t know what you’re playing at just rocking up here, but Phoebs is devastated.”

“Hey, you told me to come here, remember?”

“I’m sorry? Why the fuck would I do that?”

“Forget it. What do you mean, Phoebe’s devastated?”

“What d’you think? You’ve destroyed her entire image of her daddy. She worships the ground he walks on, and now you show him up as the prick he really is. She just told me the whole story.”

“Hey, that’s my father you’re talking about.”

George made a snorting noise. “Ha! Your father for all of five minutes. Why couldn’t you have written to him first, like a normal adopted person, and met in private, for fuck’s sake?”

Somewhere, a flush set off a symphony of gurgling pipes.

“Anyway,” said George, in a tight whisper. “Just don’t say anything, OK?”

“Believe me, I won’t.”

“Good.”

He left, and Jesse lay looking at the scalloped valance. He felt bad for Phoebe, marrying such a dick. He wondered if the other Birches liked George. The things he’d said about Phoebe made Jesse feel terrible. He hadn’t planned any of this, the front door had opened, literally, and somehow it had all just happened. Besides, if Andrew had replied to his e-mails, he would have met up with him in private. An alert flashed up on his iPad—Jesse still hadn’t read Andrew’s latest column. The review was of a pub called the Perch, but mostly it was about being in quarantine. The “family first” headline was misleading. If anything, Andrew sounded kind of scathing about families. It was interesting to read his birth father’s writing again, having finally met the man. He had the same arch tone in person, but Jesse felt there was something warmer underneath. It was just buried.





Andrew


FIRST-FLOOR CORRIDOR, WEYFIELD HALL, 11:48 P.M.

? ? ?

Walking out of the Green Bathroom, Andrew was surprised to find George in the passage. He’d been under the impression that the lovebirds had defected from the main house altogether. George was kicking a spider by the skirting board, but looked up and said, “Just getting Phoebs an extra blanket. Bungalow’s a bit cold,” before marching into the Gray Room. Andrew wondered what George, with his painfully conventional worldview, must make of Jesse’s arrival. He hoped Phoebe wasn’t too mortified, but he feared she would be. For all her bravado, his younger daughter could be rather conservative—hence her choice of husband. Andrew walked down to the smoking room. His next column wasn’t due for days, but he’d told Emma he had an early deadline to avoid coming to bed. The thought of lying beside her, neither of them speaking, was grim. Easier to go up once she was snoring. Or perhaps he’d just camp in the smoking room. He knew he’d never sleep anyway.

Andrew poured himself a large glass of port, aware that he’d already drunk more than enough, and sat at the desk in near darkness. He took a long, sickly swig, as he tried to recall a meal at a new Middle Eastern place in St. John’s Wood. He remembered Phoebe turning heads in a short dress, and how proud he’d felt of her, and the owner making her balk by assuming she was his trophy wife. He remembered talking to her about how the media wasn’t what it once was, and that she’d do well to extricate herself. And he remembered her saying that she just wanted to do something fun and funny for work, like Andrew did, and that life was too short to do a serious job. But he couldn’t remember a single thing about the food. Had it been small plates (Phoebe’s favorite) or Emma’s beloved sharing platters? Or his personal bugbear, “street food.” His meal blanks struck more and more often, these days. He began to write anyway—he could ask Phoebe what they’d eaten tomorrow. If she’d answer him.


HOURANI & CO., Wellbeck Street

Food: ?? ? Atmosphere: ??

Beirut, 1980. The sun bathes the carcass of a primary school in silvery dawn light. The droning adhan, blasted through loudspeakers, heralds a new day. A man balances a beaten copper tray of cakes on his head, cubes of filo and pistachio drenched in perfumed honey, as he picks his way through the rubble