‘Only a fortnight since Bert Checkov died,’ observed Derry, sitting on a bar stool. ‘Only ten days since we spotted the non-starters. Funny.’
Hilarious. And eight more days to go to the Lamplighter. This Monday, I decided, I would stay safely tucked away at home.
‘Don’t forget,’ I said to Derry. ‘Don’t tell any one my phone number.’
‘What brought that on all of a sudden?’
‘I was thinking about Charlie Boston. My address isn’t in the phone book...’
‘Neither Derry nor I will give your address to any one,’ Luke-John said impatiently. ‘Come off it Ty, any one would think you were frightened.’
‘Any one would be so right,’ I agreed, and they both laughed heartily into their pints.
Derry was predictably pleased that I wanted to go to Newcastle instead of Kempton, leaving the London meeting for once for him.
‘Is it all right,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘With your wife, I mean?’
I told him what Elizabeth had said, but as usual anything to do with her made him uncomfortable. Luke-John said dutifully, ‘How is she?’ and I said ‘Fine.’
I kicked around the office all the afternoon, arranging a travel warrant to Newcastle, putting in a chit for expenses for Heathbury Park, Leicester and Plumpton, and collecting the cash from Accounts. Luke-John was busy with a football columnist and the golfing correspondent, and Derry took time off from working out his tips for every meeting in the following week to tell me about taking the Roncey kids to the Isle of Wight.
‘Noisy little devils,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Their mother has no control over them at all. She seemed to be in a dream most of the time. Anyway, none of them actually fell off the ferry, which was a miracle considering Tony, that was the eldest one, was trying to lean over far enough to see the paddles go round. I told him they were under the water. Made no difference.’
I made sympathetic noises, trying not to laugh out of pity for my ribs. ‘They were happy enough, then?’
‘Are you kidding? No school and a holiday at the sea? Tony said he was going to bathe, November or no November. His mother showed no signs of stopping him. Anyway, they settled into the boarding house all right though I should think we shall get a whacking bill for damage, and they thought it tremendous fun to change their names to Robinson, no trouble there. They thought Robinson was a smashing choice, they would all pretend they were cast away on a desert island... Well, I tell you, Ty, by the time I left them I was utterly exhausted.’
‘Never mind. You can look forward to bringing them back.’
‘Not me,’ he said fervently. ‘Your turn for that.’
At four I picked up my suitcase and departed for King’s Cross. The Newcastle train left at five. I watched it go.
At five forty eight she came up from the Underground, wearing a beautifully cut darkish blue coat and carrying a creamy white suitcase. Several heads turned to look at her, and a nearby man who had been waiting almost as long as I had watched her steadfastly until she reached the corner where I stood.
‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘Think nothing of it.’
‘I gather,’ she said with satisfaction, ‘that you fixed your wife.’
9
She moved against me in the warm dark and put her mouth on the thin skin somewhere just south of my neck. I tightened my arms round her, and buried my nose in her clean, sweet-scented hair.
‘There’s always something new,’ she said sleepily. ‘Broken ribs are quite a gimmick.’
‘I didn’t feel them.’
‘Oh yes you did.’
I stroked my hands slowly over her smooth skin and didn’t bother to answer. I felt relaxed and wholly content. She had been kind to my ribs, gentle to my bruises. They had even in an obscure way given her pleasure.
‘How did it happen?’
‘What?’
‘The black and blue bit.’
‘I lost an argument.’
She rubbed her nose on my chest. ‘Must have been quite a debate.’
I smiled in the dark. The whole world was inside the sheets, inside the small private cocoon wrapping two bodies in intimate primeval understanding.
‘Ty?’
‘Mm?’
‘Can’t we stay together all weekend?’
I said through her hair, ‘I have to phone in a report from Newcastle. Can’t avoid it.’
‘Damn the Blaze.’
‘There’s Sunday, though.’
‘Hurrah for the Golf Club.’
We lay quiet for a long while, I felt heavy with sleep and fought to stay awake. There were so few hours like this. None to waste.
For Gail time was not so precious. Her limbs slackened and her head slid down on to my arm, her easy breath fanning softly against my chest. I thought of Elizabeth lying closely curled against me like that when we were first married, and for once it was without guilt, only with regret.
Gail woke of her own accord a few hours later and pulled my wrist round to look at the luminous hands on my watch.
‘Are you awake?’ she said. ‘It’s ten to six.’
‘Do you like it in the morning?’
‘With you, Ty, any time.’ Her voice smiled in the darkness. ‘Any old time you care to mention.’
I wasn’t that good. I said, ‘Why?’
‘Because you’re normal, maybe. Nice bread and butter love.’ She played the piano down my stomach. ‘Some men want the weirdest things...’
‘Let’s not talk about them.’
‘O.K.’ she said. ‘Let’s not.’
I caught the Newcastle express at eight o’clock with ten seconds in hand. It was a raw cold morning with steam hissing up from under the train. Hollow clanking noises and unintelligible station announcements filled the ears, and bleary-eyed shivering passengers hurried greyly through the British Standard dawn.
I took my shivering bleary-eyed self into the dining car and tried some strong black coffee, but nothing was going to shift the dragging depression which had settled in inexorably as soon as I left Gail. I imagined her as I had left her, lying warm and luxuriously lazy in the soft bed and saying Sunday was tomorrow, we could start again where we’d left off. Sunday was certainly tomorrow, but there was Saturday to get through first. From where I sat it looked like a very long day.
Four and a half hours to Newcastle. I slept most of the way, and spent the rest remembering the evening and night which were gone. We had found a room in a small private hotel near the station and I had signed the register Mr and Mrs Tyrone. No one there had shown any special interest in us: they had presently shown us to a clean uninspiring room and given us the key, had asked if we wanted early tea, had said they were sorry they didn’t do dinners, there were several good restaurants round about. I paid them in advance, explaining that I had an early train to catch. They smiled, thanked me, withdrew, asked no questions, made no comment. Impossible to know what they guessed.
We talked for a while and then went out to a pub for a drink and from there to an Indian restaurant where we took a long time eating little, and an even longer time drinking coffee. Gail wore her usual air of businesslike poise and remained striking-looking even when surrounded by people of her own skin colour. I, with my pale face, was in a minority.
Gail commented on it. ‘London must be the best place in the world for people like me.’
‘For anyone.’
She shook her head. ‘Especially for people of mixed race. In so many countries I’d be on the outside looking in. I’d never get the sort of job I have.’
‘It never seems to worry you, being of mixed race,’ I said.
‘I accept it. In fact I wouldn’t choose now to be wholly white or wholly black, if I could alter it. I am used to being me. And with people like you, of course, it is easy, because you are unaffected by me.’