The Trouble with Henry and Zoe Page 20

  ‘Well, that’s reassuring. Anyway, it’s not her I’m worried about.’

  Dad leans forwards on the counter, resting his weight through the knuckles of both hands. ‘There’s nowt else to worry about. They know whose son you are.’

  It seems like the thing to be done, so I lean across the counter and kiss my father. He acts embarrassed, but it’s an amateur show.

  ‘I’ll be here,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe you could bring that Zoe?’ says my mum.

  I laugh out loud. ‘Are you sure? You could barely say her name a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘Well, I can’t blame the girl for the sins of my son, can I? It’s not her fault you’re a bastard.’

  Dad laughs and walks to the other end of the bar to serve a customer.

  ‘Thanks, Mum, but . . . I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘Think about it. It would be nice for you to have someone with you.’

  ‘Okay,’ I lie. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Zoe

  Helicoptering

  The sound of thumping from the next room is ruining the movie. It’s not a particularly good movie, and I’m having trouble focusing, but we needed something to drown out the noise. The relentless thud of man on Vicky, Vicky on mattress.

  ‘I’ll give him top marks for stamina,’ says Rachel.

  ‘Well, it’s kind of his job, isn’t it?’

  ‘What, shagging the punters?’

  ‘Well, perk of.’

  I should be next door in the twin room with Vicky, but she pulled our stripper so I’ve moved in with Rachel.

  ‘Did you have a fun hen do?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah, lovely. Be more fun if I was pissed, I imagine.’

  ‘That’ll teach you to go fooling around.’

  ‘Hmm. And what about you . . . how’s the Henry thing working out?’

  I consider telling Rachel about Henry’s secret identity as an extractor of teeth, but it’s too late, too complicated, and I’ve drunk too much Pimm’s. I’ll tell her on the train back tomorrow.

  ‘He made me a birdhouse,’ I say.

  ‘For birds?’

  ‘Yup, in the garden. Bust my fence to get the wood, but still . . .’

  Rachel coos at this. ‘Romantic.’

  ‘I know, but . . .’ big sigh ‘. . . what can you do?’

  Rachel slides an arm around me and kisses my temple. ‘It’ll work out for the best,’ she says. ‘One way or another.’

  The sound of thumping in the next room builds to a crescendo.

  ‘Thing with willies,’ says Rachel, ‘is, they do look a bit daft, don’t they.’

  ‘Some more than others.’

  ‘What was that thing he was doing again?’ Rachel rotates her wrist, emulating the concluding part of The Manaconda’s act.

  ‘Helicoptering.’

  ‘Has it left a mark?’ she says, touching her cheek.

  ‘Yeah, looks like a penis, only bigger.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘I’m kidding. Nothing a bit of foundation won’t hide. Oo, here he goes.’

  The Manaconda reaches terminal velocity, testing the welding on the bed to the limits of its engineering.

  ‘Blimey,’ says Rachel after a final juddering wallop from next door. ‘It’s enough to put you off for good.’

  Henry

  It’s As Quiet As The Countryside Gets

  It’s a few minutes past two when I wake to the sound of breaking glass. Not just a pint pot or a whisky tumbler, but a lot of glass. And then someone shouts: ‘Jiiiiiilter!!!!’

  The noise has also woken my parents; we congregate in the hallway, Mum huddled behind Dad, Dad clutching a baseball bat and a torch. I’m just grateful he pulled on a pair of pants.

  ‘Was it inside?’ asks my mother.

  ‘I think it was the car park,’ I say.

  And I’m pretty sure it was George.

  Mum waits upstairs, and if Dad had his way so would I. But he’s not as fit as he used to be, and anyway, we all know whose mess this is. The bar is empty and the doors, front and side, are still closed. Dad unlocks the side door and we step outside.

  It’s as quiet as the countryside gets; a hooting bird, the rustle of something small in the hedges, a bit of wind for added atmosphere. But no engines, no laughter, no sound of a shotgun being cocked.

  Dad pans the torch around the car park and up the walls, checking the windows one by one.

  ‘Try over there,’ I say, indicating where my car is parked.

  And you have to hand it to George. Not only has the mad bastard heaved a hod through my windscreen, he has taken care to first fill it with bricks.

  ‘Best hope the rain holds off,’ says Dad.

  ‘It won’t,’ I say.

  ‘Probably not. Come on, I’ll buy you a nightcap.’

  Zoe

  Maybe Maybe

  It’s all about stories now.

  Since handing in my notice three weeks ago, Claire has phased me out of the day-to-day; out of the spreadsheets, finance meetings and, of course, author relations. Instead I am back to light duties; opening envelopes, reading stories. Everyone’s a writer now; everyone seems to have a story to tell – although some are more worthy of an audience than others. Every week between fifty and a hundred hopeful packages drop through the office letterbox. And I read them all. Alliterative alligators, otters and sprites with their hang-ups, confusions, lacks and conflicts. And I devour them all, as if each one holds the answer, or at least a clue – play fair, don’t tell lies, beware of dragons; be foolish, be brave, be yourself.

  Wisdom and precedent tells you that they must be junk; derivative drivel, clumsy rhyme, mixed metaphor and garbled logic. It’s not for nothing that we call it the ‘slush pile’. One good story a month is a standard haul; one submission out of every four hundred or thereabouts. But my bin is practically empty, the stack of pages growing on my desk, reaching closer to the light fittings by the day. I read them and I read them again, arrange the stories between piles: yes, maybe yes, maybe no, maybe maybe. Because if there is anything these stories teach us, it is that everyone has potential. Everyone can. It’s become my mission to make one of these happy endings happen before I leave this office in a little under two months. But time is running out.

  On Friday afternoons, as the paper tower develops into a health and safety issue, I select the best dozen manuscripts from the yes pile, drop them into my bag and read them again over the weekend. I read them over breakfast, in the bath, in the garden, behind the bar of the Duck and Cover. I listen to Henry read these stories to me as I chop onions, wash my hair, lie in bed with my head on his chest.

  But it’s not all dragons and daisy chains.

  Some evenings, we watch movies, the ones Henry watched with his mother: Brief Encounter, An Affair to Remember, Roman Holiday, His Girl Friday. Stories about love, thwarted by timing, pride, circumstance, politics, family, money, war, others. Stories with only two endings; will they/won’t they stories, although you can usually guess which.

  Our own brief affair ends in seven weeks, it’s a weepy for sure and I already know the final scene – it’s one we’ve watched together, laughing at the melodrama in black and white. Ridiculing the silly accents, dated dialogue and awful hair, as if desensitizing ourselves for our own inevitable goodbye. Henry apologizes for the films as if they were his fault, but I enjoy the simplicity, the lack of expensive effects and cheap thrills. It makes me feel close to him, sharing something from his own history, I suppose. We won’t be together when the credits roll, but we will have a story. But a lot can happen in seven weeks, so I remind myself to shut up, sit back and enjoy the final act.

  Henry

  And Where Does All This Candour End?

  I’ve been exposed and found lacking.

  After introducing her to the old matinee idols, square-jawed and sure-minded, Zoe has presented me with a golden opportunity to play the heart-throb. But I have missed my cue.
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br />   It may be the middle of summer, but it’s been an overcast day with high winds on the south west coast of England. Zoe’s parents are on holiday in Copenhagen, and their converted farmhouse, with its brick walls and high ceilings, is as cold as a church. We could throw on an extra jumper, of course, but where’s the romance in that? Zoe sent me outside to chop wood; perhaps expecting me to strip down to my white vest and cleave logs with brutal precision. That’s how Clark Gable would do it, or Cary Grant. I don’t have a white vest, and I’ve never touched an axe in my life. Watching me swing, miss and come within an inch of removing my toes, I must have looked more like Benny Hill than Errol Flynn. So Zoe prepared the firewood while I removed the splinters from my hand. And then, when my fire died for the third time, Zoe stepped up again, to provide heat while I chopped vegetables and uncorked the wine.

  I can’t even fly a kite.

  Zoe swapped her shifts at the Duck, working Thursday and Friday night to free up today and tomorrow for an impromptu weekend away. We set off shortly after sunrise this morning, our train arriving on the Cornish coast five hours later, while the weather was still trying to make up its mind. Her parents’ house is a thirty-minute walk from the train station via the beach, where the Goldmans own a blue and white striped hut like something off a postcard. In amongst the deckchairs and spiders and deflated beach balls, Zoe found a kettle, mugs and a jar of instant coffee. We drank it black, watching the intrepid surfers paddle out and wait and ride back to the shore. Zoe laughed and took black and white photographs as I laid the kite on the sand, walking backwards and unravelling string in preparation of a fast sprint and vertical launch. But before I could offer the kite to the wind, the wind would flip the thing over, dragging it sideways across the sand or tangling the string around my feet. Zoe watched this farce for ten minutes before intervening. What you do, she told me, is keep the kite on a short length, letting the wind play with it at close range, before gradually letting the string out until the red and yellow diamond is no bigger than a postage stamp against the grey sky. There is a lesson to be learned, I’m sure. Maybe someone should write a children’s book about it. Kitty the Kite, a lesson about letting go, or holding on.

  ‘Sitting comfortably?’ says Zoe.

  And I’m not lying when I say that I am. Thanks to Zoe, the fire is roaring; and thanks to her father we are drinking red wine from a cut-glass decanter. Whether the vessel has improved this bottle of inexpensive wine, who knows, but it certainly adds to the effect.

  Zoe stretches her feet and rests them in my lap. ‘Then I’ll begin,’ she says, in her best storytelling voice:

  ‘Hippochondriac rolled out of his mud bed and yaaaaaaaaaaaawned. “I wish I could yawn like that,” said Irrelephant. “You’re probably the most best yawner in the morner.”’

  ‘I think we read this one on the way down,’ I say.

  ‘Did we? Are you sure?’

  ‘I never forget an Irrelephant.’

  ‘Sorry,’ says Zoe. ‘Am I being a bore?’

  I shake my head, but can’t suppress a yawn. ‘Sea air,’ I say. ‘Chopping logs.’

  ‘Shit, I am, aren’t I? I am bloody borangutan.’

  ‘I don’t remember a borangutan.’

  ‘Joke,’ says Zoe.

  ‘Funny. Didn’t you say – when we were on the bridge – that you were thinking of writing something?’

  ‘Seems like a long time ago,’ Zoe says.

  ‘The bridge or the story?’

  ‘Both, I suppose.’ Zoe wipes her cheeks, and I see that there are tears in her eyes.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Just remembering.’

  ‘Alex?’

  Zoe nods. ‘The day he . . . that morning, I had this idea, a silly idea for a book. And I thought, yeah, I’ll write that later. But then . . .’

  ‘You miss him.’

  Zoe nods. ‘Sometimes. He was . . . we had some good times together.’ Zoe’s hand goes to her hair, wrapping the white strand around two fingers. ‘Did I tell you how I ended up in publishing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know I was a lawyer, right? Well, I was miserable. Hated it. I had eczema on my legs from stress and . . . it was a bit like being on the rebound, I think. Alex came along, and I just . . .’ Zoe makes a grasping gesture at the air in front of her. ‘Just clung on. Don’t get me wrong, he was fun and caring and . . . you’ve seen his picture.’

  ‘Handsome.’

  Zoe nods. ‘You’re handsome, too, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘We moved in together pretty quickly,’ Zoe says. ‘He supported me while I quit law and found my way into publishing. It was like a lifeline.’

  ‘He sounds like a good guy.’

  ‘He was. I’ve never told anyone this before,’ she says, staring into the fire, ‘but, I didn’t love him. Maybe at first, but . . . not really. It was a . . .’ Zoe shakes her head, lets herself cry quietly for a moment.

  ‘Did he know?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, maybe that’s . . . you know . . .’

  Small mercy is what I want to say, but it feels insincere and trivial, and I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence. Zoe understands me, all the same.

  ‘I used to be thankful that I never told him, but . . . I’m not so sure anymore. I feel like he died under a lie, and I . . . I feel so bad about that. If I’d told him, maybe . . .’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘And you know what else? If I’d told him, then maybe I wouldn’t be travelling in seven weeks. Maybe I wouldn’t have met you? And . . .’

  I could say I understand, and hold Zoe’s hand while she cries. But saying it is easy, and meaningless and hollow. Proving I understand, though; reciprocating Zoe’s honesty and showing that I recognize her guilt and confusion, isn’t that the best thing I can do? Isn’t it the only thing?

  ‘Before I came to London,’ I say, ‘I was engaged.’

  Zoe sits up, wipes her eyes and looks at me calmly. ‘To be married?’

  I nod. ‘Except . . .’

  ‘You didn’t marry her?’

  ‘April. No, I didn’t marry her.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘I didn’t love her,’ I say.

  Zoe smiles, sadly and – it seems to me – complicitly. ‘Bad scene.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘Was she pretty?’

  I nod. Zoe kicks me.

  ‘Oh, right, sorry. And you’re pretty, too. Obviously.’

  ‘Obviously. So, what happened?’

  And where does all this candour end? We have seven weeks left and I’m tired of keeping secrets and pretending to be someone I’m not. But at the same time, how much truth is enough, how much is too much, and how much can a person handle in one sitting?

  ‘What is it?’ asks Zoe, as if reading my mind.

  ‘I called it off,’ I say.

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Well, it didn’t go down as well as the proposal . . .’

  Zoe laughs, and I hate myself for making light of what I did to April.

  ‘And . . .?’

  ‘I’ve known her since we were kids,’ I say. ‘Went to the same school. And, well, it’s a small village. Very small.’

  ‘I see. So . . .’ Zoe cocks a thumb off to one side. ‘You left?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be . . . it must have been awful. God, that poor girl. I’m sorry, I . . . God!’

  ‘I know. But . . . if I hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have met you, would I?’

  Zoe shakes her head. ‘I’m glad you did,’ she says. ‘Well . . . kind of.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Kind of.’

  Zoe

  There Is Something There

  For all the sex, sea air and wine I can’t sleep.

  Apart from his camera, all of Alex’s things are gone. His bike, his decks, even his records. They fetched a couple of
hundred pounds less than I’d hoped, but with additional shifts at the Duck and accumulated holiday pay from work, all systems are still go, the spreadsheet still holds, and I can still afford to leave Henry behind. It’s beyond frustrating. Henry, on the other hand, is handling it all with noble stoicism. No, not noble; it’s annoying. A bit more moping wouldn’t go amiss, a bit more ‘please don’t go’.

  Kind of, he said.

  I’m glad I met you . . . kind of.

  I mean, come on, Henry. I’m teeing this up for you, already. Three little words is all I’m asking for.

  I’ll miss you.

  It’s not like I’m asking him to tell me he . . .

  There is something there, though; something mutual that scores higher than ‘LIKE’ on the Scrabble board. Something that maybe I’d be a complete and utter idiot to walk away from. And maybe this is the real reason I can’t sleep – the worry that I might be seven weeks away from making a huge mistake.

  Outside, the wind is howling in from the coast, banging the gate and making the washing line whine like a tormented ghost. Normally I find the sounds of harsh weather comforting, but tonight’s elemental cacophony has me as keyed up as a frightened child.

  Henry is sleeping like a baby.

  I want our fast-expiring time to count, so when Mum invited me to Copenhagen with her and Dad, I said no. Henry, on the other hand, broke the news today that he’s heading back to his own hometown in a couple of weeks. And I’m not invited. He didn’t explicitly say as much, but then neither did he say: Hey, seeing as you invited me to see the house where you grew up, why don’t I return the favour. It crossed my mind to invite myself, but, call it pride, I want it to come from Henry. Not that I didn’t hint: I wonder what I’ll do that weekend? I’ve never been to the Peaks. I do love a ramble in the hillside. But the bait went untook.

  The wind sounds like thrown gravel and the gate bangs again, loud enough this time that even Henry stirs.

  ‘Humhh, wassat?’

  ‘Storm,’ I tell him. ‘Ghosts of sailors.’

  Another bang, metallic sounding, and then . . .