The Two of Us Page 23

  While Ivy goes to the bathroom to remove her make-up, I sit on the bed and kick off my brogues. In one hand I’m holding the hipflask Joe gave me as a present for being best man, and in the other I have a glass jar full of penny sweets. I take the lid off the jar and dig among the flying saucers, white mice and vampire’s teeth until I find a fizzy cola bottle.

  After the flower throwing, I think I recognized the disappointment on Gaz’s face because I felt it too. Yes I’m drunk, yes I’m high on the fumes of today’s occasion, and yes there’s nothing like the sight of a maniacal ex to enamour you of your current – that word again – girlfriend. But none of that changes the simple fact that Ivy is my ‘one’, and I intend to be with her until one of us (me, I hope) dies peacefully in our sleep. In amidst the pineapple chunks and jawbreakers and jelly babies is a single jelly ring. The toilet flushes and Ivy’s ponderous footsteps thump along the corridor. I take the jelly ring from the jar and get down on one knee.

  ‘Oh my God,’ says Ivy as she rounds the corner. Her hands go to her face and she stops so abruptly she almost topples forward.

  ‘Ivy . . .’ I begin.

  ‘Fisher, wait, no, I . . .’

  ‘. . . will you marry me?’

  Did she just say ‘no’?

  Ivy is frozen.

  I offer up the ring and wobble a little on my knee.

  Ivy winces.

  ‘I know it’s only a sweetie,’ I say, ‘but I’m serious. We can go shopping for the real thing tomorrow. Selfridges, Harrods, anywhere you want.’

  Ivy still hasn’t moved.

  ‘I love you, Ivy. Completely and utterly and . . . well, completely.’

  Ivy’s hands drop from her face. She smiles . . . yes, apologetically. ‘Babe,’ she says, ‘I love you, too. Completely and utterly and completely. But . . .’ she shakes her head.

  ‘But I thought . . . I don’t . . . why?’

  Ivy sighs, looks at me with a combination smile and grimace. ‘Been there, done that,’ she says. ‘Sorry.’

  I realize I’m still kneeling, still holding the stupid bloody jelly ring out towards Ivy. She sits on the bed and pats the space beside her.

  It takes maybe half an hour for Ivy to get from the day she met a guy called Sebastian until the day her divorce came through. It shouldn’t take thirty minutes to tell, but I interrupt her narrative every three minutes with indignant outbursts, elaborate compound insults and trips to the minibar. The salient details involve Sebastian and Ivy’s inability to conceive and Ivy’s assumption that the problem lay within her. For his part, Sebastian appeared to be entirely untouched by the disappointment that left Ivy sleepless with tears and nausea and heartbreak. More than this, though; not only did he – her fucking husband – fail to share Ivy’s sadness, he failed to care about it. When she asked him to go with her to see a fertility specialist, Sebastian all but laughed. The marriage continued with sporadic sex and occasional highlights, but nothing changed except a gradual erosion of any affection. Before their first wedding anniversary Ivy had cheated on Sebastian twice (one-night flings on two-day shoots), and was reasonably certain he had returned or pre-empted the favour at least as many times. They spent a happy, romantic, perfectly civil week in Alicante to mark their first wedding anniversary and then, maybe three weeks later, sitting on the sofa with bowls of pasta on their knees, Sebastian turned to Ivy and said, ‘This isn’t working.’ Ivy didn’t correct him; she washed the dishes, went to bed, and in the morning she phoned a friend who happened to be a solicitor. Within a year Sebastian was living with another woman and their brand-new baby boy, further confirming Ivy’s fears that she was unable to have children. Ivy got the flat.

  And now I understand what Ivy meant by ‘It’s okay’, about contraception and I feel horrible for haranguing her about it on Christmas Eve.

  ‘And you never thought to tell me this sooner?’ I ask.

  Ivy gives me a look that all girls learn when they are about three years old – chin down, eyes wide and an aren’t-I-just-adorable smile. It’s the look they give you when they want something, broke something, or forgot something.

  ‘Just waiting for the right moment,’ says Ivy, still beaming that look at me.

  Ivy shrugs, holds up her right hand, fingers extended. ‘Couldn’t tell you the first time we met, obviously. Oh, by the way, did I mention, I used to be married.’ And she folds down her thumb as good-reason-for-not-admitting-to-being-a-divorcée number one. She moves on to her index finger. ‘Then we spent most of a week in bed. Then we went on holiday; then we went to your dad’s. Then—’

  ‘You got pregnant.’

  ‘Then I found out you had got me pregnant. So, again, not good timing.’ Ivy moves on to the fingers of her left hand. ‘Then you moved in, then we had a scan, then we went to Mum and Dad’s, then Frank moved in, then you got all stroppy on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘It’s okay – ha! My “answer to everything”!’

  I shake my head at the memory.

  ‘I don’t blame you, babes, honestly I don’t. But it certainly wasn’t the time to bring up a failed marriage. Just . . . never a good moment.’

  ‘Until now?’

  Ivy nods. ‘Until now.’

  It’s a bloody shock, for sure, but I’m less perturbed than I might have imagined. Maybe the signs were there all along. Maybe fatigue and alcohol have anaesthetized me. Maybe I’m immune to shock after the events of the last twenty-nine weeks.

  ‘Who’s better looking?’ I ask. ‘Me or Sebastian?’

  Ivy punches me on the shoulder, but doesn’t answer.

  ‘Sorry. I . . . I’m just getting my . . .’ I gesture at the invisible imps, elephants, tweeting sodding birds circling my head.

  ‘It’s why I was so . . . I don’t know . . . protective, I suppose, of Frank.’

  ‘Because you’d “been there, done that”?’

  Ivy nods. ‘I’m sorry. Are you okay? Are we . . .?’

  I look at Ivy and only now register the anxiety on her face. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own insecurities that it hadn’t occurred to me she might be wrestling with her own.

  ‘Are you kidding? Yes, I just bloody proposed, didn’t I?’

  ‘That was before you knew I’d . . . you know. You don’t think I’m damaged goods?’ There is a hint of a smile.

  ‘Well, yes, obviously, but . . .’ I place my hand on Ivy’s stomach ‘. . . well, I’m stuck with you now.’

  Ivy’s head is down, her eyes on my hands on her belly. There is a tear on her cheek. As I watch, a drop forms in the corner of her eye, swelling, catching the light then spilling over and chasing its predecessor down Ivy’s face.

  Keeping one hand on her belly, I put my free arm around her shoulders. ‘Baby, what’s the matter?’

  Ivy puts her hands to her face, her shoulders begin to shake and her breathing comes in hitching gasps as the quiet tears progress into full-on sobbing. I have never seen her like this and it’s alarming.

  ‘Babes, I was joking, you know that, right?’

  Ivy nods. ‘I love you so much,’ she says, the short sentence punctuated by shuddering intakes of breath. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Marry me then.’

  It’s not until the words are out of my mouth that I realize how belligerent and ungracious they sound. I would take it back if I could, but instead I hug Ivy tightly as she shakes her head. The sound of shouting and screaming and music and laughing and two hundred drunken wedding guests rumbles down the corridor as if piped through cheap speakers at a low volume.

  ‘I thought I couldn’t have babies,’ Ivy says. She sits up and wipes her eyes on the shoulder of my shirt. ‘I thought I couldn’t have babies, and then I could, then I thought I was going to lose you and I’d only just found you.’

  ‘I’m still here,’ I say.

  ‘Stuck with me,’ says Ivy. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘I’d be stuck with you even if you weren’t up the duff,’ I t
ell her, and Ivy starts crying all over again.

  We’re sitting up in bed, talking baby names, when the couple in the next room crash through their door. More accurately, Ivy is talking baby names and I’m using all my willpower to stay awake. I’m drunk and tired and emotionally baffled, but I’m also horny as hell, and if nothing else I’m an optimist. Ivy has a book, 5001 Baby Names, and as she reads through the D’s – Declan, Dedalus, Deepak – I nuzzle into her neck, plant kisses on her shoulder, stroke her knee. Whether she’s oblivious or determinedly ignoring me, I don’t know.

  And then the couple next door clatter into their room and thump up against the dividing wall. From the muffled groans and growls, it’s immediately apparent that whatever pheromones are absent in this room, they are present in great sloshing bucketfuls in the next.

  ‘Love is in the air,’ I say, letting my eyebrows add a suggestive inflection.

  Ivy closes the book, puts it down on the bedside table, rummages through her bag of toiletries.

  ‘If you can’t beat ’em . . .’ I say to Ivy’s back.

  Ivy turns to me, holding something in her closed fist.

  ‘Earplugs,’ she says, dropping a pair of yellow foam bullets into my hand.

  ‘I love you,’ Ivy says, and I can feel the honesty of it when she kisses me.

  She turns out the light.

  The earplugs, it turns out, are effective enough at muting the vocal manifestations of sex, but aren’t quite up to blocking out the noise of a headboard banging against a bedroom wall. When the guy next door starts testing the construction of the bed for the fifth time, it’s gone four a.m. and I’ve given up hope of getting any sleep. Maybe Ivy kept the best pair for herself, because she sleeps as peacefully as if we were in a soundproof chamber. And I’m grateful for this mercy, because whoever the hell is in the next room, he’s making me feel woefully inadequate. Who knows, maybe someone spiked his beer with Viagra.

  Chapter 26

  For the first year of our friendship El was half a head taller than me. In the twenty-two years since, I have grown by around a foot and a half, and El by approximately three inches, but I have always looked up to him. He is almost fourteen months older than me, so he went to big school a year before I did. That kind of profound class distinction could kill a friendship, but we went to different schools and weren’t put in a situation where El was forced to ignore or patronize me. He lived a short walk from my house so we played together most days, El bringing information and artefacts from the future: pornography, cigarettes, sherry, dirty jokes, new bands, details of sexual mechanics and anatomy. El is a year older than me, always was. But as I look at him now, I can’t ignore the knowledge that soon his clock will stop; his age will reach its limit the same way his stature did twenty years ago.

  With hindsight it was always apparent that El was gay, but as a young boy I was as ignorant of the signs as of the possibility (‘gay’ being nothing more than a slur or a farfetched rumour). Take the pornography, for example.

  ‘’member wh. . . wh. . . what y’used t’call me?’

  ‘El Tittymonger,’ I say.

  ‘T. . . t. . . tittymonger tittymonger!’ El says, throwing his head backward and barking a harsh, gasping laugh that sounds worrying, like he’s choking on his pizza. I go to stand, but El shakes his head and waves me away.

  Through some intermediary or other, El would come home from school with his bag straps straining under the weight of Men Only, Penthouse, Club and Razzle. El would sell these to the frothing teenage boys in the village, but I didn’t question why he never kept any material for his own perusal.

  The mention of El Tittymonger appears to have swerved El’s train of thought from things past to things pending. ‘A. . . a. . . are y. . . you h. . . havin a. . .’ his lips come together and his cheeks bellow outward as he struggles to find or eject the right word.

  ‘Can you spell it?’ I ask.

  El’s face creases with effort. ‘B. . . f. . . b. . .’

  ‘What does it sound like?’

  ‘S. . . sound. . . sounds like fuck off!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  El scowls as he raises his hands, twitching less now, instead moving with hypnotic slowness – as if bound in elastic – as his disease advances. His hands come to rest in front of his belly, hugging an invisible bump.

  ‘Baby,’ he says. ‘Are y. . . having a baby?’

  ‘Two,’ I tell him. ‘Twins.’

  El smiles. It’s genuine but transient; dropping from his face as quickly as it formed. ‘K. . . kill for a d. . . f. . . d. . . drink,’ he says.

  I reach for El’s pink sippy cup of orange squash.

  ‘Bollocks!’ he shouts, startling me. ‘R. . . r. . . real drink.’

  Reflexively, I look over my shoulder, which is a stupid thing to do as we are on our own in the house. I don’t intend giving El any alcohol, but it appears that some subconscious part of me would.

  ‘You know it’s bad for you,’ I say, hating the sound of my own voice.

  ‘L. . . life’s f. . . fukig b. . . bad f ’me.’ And he laughs genuinely.

  El doesn’t eat much now; the bulk of his calories coming from fortified drinks and powders. Always slight, he looks angular and fragile. His beard, though, is magnificent – thick and glossy, lending him the look of a guru, perhaps, or a junkie rockstar.

  ‘Wh. . . when?’ he says. ‘Th. . . th. . . the b. . . baby?’

  ‘Babies,’ I remind him, holding up two fingers. ‘April the 11th – seven weeks and two days away.’

  El nods. ‘Good.’ He smiles. ‘Y. . . you’ll be good,’ he says. ‘G. . . d. . . g. . . good dad.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Goin’ m. . . marry that g. . . gir?’

  ‘Ivy,’ I tell him, smiling at the memory of my clumsy and unsuccessful proposal at Joe’s wedding. ‘Yes,’ I say, because the real story is too difficult to tell, and anyway, it’s as good as the truth – love, honour, obey; to have and to hold; for better for worse . . . yes to all of that; I will and I do, and as much as I’d like it, I don’t need a certificate to stay with Ivy until death do us part.

  ‘More pizza?’

  El shakes his head and flops backward into the sofa. ‘I. . . I’m . . . done,’ he says.

  ‘Not even one more slice?’

  El shakes his head violently; his face is screwed up in annoyance. ‘D. . . done!’ he says, bringing his hands slowly but deliberately to his head. ‘T. . . tired of th. . . this,’ he says, and there are tears running down his checks.

  ‘El, hey.’ I sit next to him and put my arm around his shoulders.

  ‘Wish I was d. . . d. . .’

  He’s still struggling to end his sentence, and I hug him to me, stroking his long hair and pressing his face against my chest to stifle the final word. He’s crying so hard I can feel the wetness of his tears through my T-shirt.

  After a minute or maybe two, El pushes away from me, sniffing.

  ‘Wh. . . wh. . . w. . .’

  ‘What? . . . When? . . . W—’

  El nods. ‘When. . . when’s Phil’s b. . . b. . .’

  ‘His birthday? May. Start of May.’

  ‘S. . . soon then,’ El says.

  ‘A few months still.’

  Phil went to the pub tonight, as he always does when I visit El. Tonight, though, is the first time he’s openly admitted to meeting Craig there. He hasn’t yet suggested they are anything more than drinking buddies, but I have my very strong suspicions. Last week Craig was already here when I came to see El, and there was something in Phil and Craig’s body language, tone of voice and eye contact that felt more than platonic.

  ‘A. . . after Phil’s b. . . birthday h. . .’ El takes a deep breath, steels himself and presses on with scowling, dogged determination, ‘he’s t. . . takin me t’that place. W. . . wh. . . wh. . .’

  ‘What?. . . When?. . . Why?. . . Where?’

  El nods. ‘Wh. . . where th. . . they k. . . m. . . k. . . kill
you.’

  ‘What? Pardon?’

  ‘Th. . . they kill you,’ he says, smiling as if describing a trip to Disneyland. ‘D. . . D. . . Diggitas.’

  ‘Dignitas?’

  El nod, nod, nods. ‘T’ get killed!’ he says, chuckling and letting his eyes close and his tongue loll out onto his chin.

  ‘El, wh— shut up! Phil hasn’t . . .’

  El grins and nods, and as much as he is prone to inventing scenarios and bending the truth, his sincerity shines through. ‘Wh. . . what I want,’ he says. ‘B. . . birdy present for E. . . El.’

  ‘But . . .’

  But what? El struggles to speak and think, he can’t walk without help, climb the stairs, or get up to pour a glass of water. He can barely operate a remote control. He can’t eat curry or drink beer; he can’t follow a plot. He needs Phil to wipe his backside and he sleeps alone in a padded cot. And this disease is progressive; there is no remission, no cure, no hope for anything other than decline. And death. And as much as I don’t want to hear it, I get it.

  ‘Your birthday isn’t until November,’ I remind him.

  El shakes his head. ‘Can’t w. . . can’t wait t. . . till Nember.’ And he shakes his head again. The devilment slips from his eyes and when he smiles, it’s a composite of sadness, fatigue and silent appeal. There is no bravado or insincerity, and it’s the most present and lucid I’ve seen El in many months.

  ‘How about that drink?’ I ask him.

  El’s eyes go wide. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really,’ I tell him.

  When Phil gets back from the pub an hour later, El is sleeping with his head in my lap. And when Phil walks into the room, the first thing he does is notice the half-empty whisky glass on the table in front of El. Mine is full, for the third time.

  ‘He told you, then,’ says Phil, dropping into his favourite armchair.

  I nod.

  ‘And . . .?’

  I raise my glass. ‘Join me?’

  Phil reaches across the table and picks up El’s unfinished drink, he clinks the glass against mine and takes a sip. ‘How much did he have?’