And Franny went to bed.
In the kitchen, washing up, we said little. I stood at the sink, washing and rinsing mechanically, handing the plates to Jess to be dried, thinking all the time of how little I had known of Franny in the past few years. We had shared a house, I had known the little intimate details of her daily life: that at times of stress she could eat a whole jar of Nutella with a spoon, that she and Simon used condoms not the Pill, that she suffered from a day a month of agonizing period pain. I had known all this, but not this thing we shared. Or might have shared. Or would have shared if he had wanted me as he’d evidently wanted her. As I washed and scraped and soaked, I imagined Franny and Mark together. I did not want to imagine this but, once I had thought of it, I found myself unable to turn my inner eyes away.
‘How long do you think this has been going on with her?’ said Jess.
I started, then shrugged.
‘Don’t know. I had no idea. Didn’t she mention anything to you?’
Jess shook her head.
‘Not a word. I suppose she was embarrassed.’
‘Mmm,’ I said.
‘Poor Fran,’ said Jess. ‘What a painful person Mark must be to love.’
16
I picked the receiver up. I put it down again. I sat down. I stood up. I breathed deeply. I rehearsed the different ways of saying, ‘Hi, it’s James.’ I picked the receiver up. I dialled the number. In the heartbeat before it began to ring, I put it down again. I drummed my fingers on the table. I looked at the clock: 6 p.m. An hour or so before Jess would be home. I poured a whisky. I took a gulp. I drank too quickly, choked and spluttered. I drank more slowly. After twenty minutes a slight mellowness began to prickle me. Now, I thought, now. I picked up the receiver. I dialled the number. I listened to it ring and to the click of the receiver on the other end being picked up and to Mark — oh God, Mark — saying, ‘Hello.’
‘Hi,’ I said, ‘it’s James.’
‘Hi, James!’ he said, and there was a smile in his voice. ‘How the fuck are you?’
I resisted the urge to slam the phone down.
‘Fine,’ I said, ‘I’m fine. Listen. Do you want to meet up? Have a beer? Something? Would be good to talk.’
‘Oh, sure,’ he said, ‘that’d be great. This evening?’
And my pulse pounded and throbbed in my throat, because that wasn’t in my plan.
‘Um,’ I said, ‘not tonight.’
‘You free tomorrow? I’m all time, you know. Ain’t got nothing but time, baby.’
Jesus.
‘Um. Yeah. OK. Tomorrow afternoon? I finish school at …’ I tried to calculate: how long, how short, how much time did I need to prepare for it? ‘I could be in Islington at 5 p.m. That’s where you are, right, Islington?’
‘Your spies are everywhere, Mr Stieff.’
I said nothing. My heart was crashing in my chest.
‘But yeah,’ he said, ‘that’d be fine. Wanna come to the flat?’
‘No,’ I said, a little too quickly. ‘That is, nah, let’s go for a beer.’
He named a pub off Upper Street. ‘At 5 tomorrow. Cool. Looking forward to it, mate.’
And it was done. The adrenalin coursing through my system left me shaking when I put the phone down.
He was waiting for me when I arrived. It had been raining and his hair was damp, his fringe plastered to his forehead. He didn’t see me at first and I had a few seconds to look him over before he noticed my presence. He looked older. Partly it was his clothing. A camel-coloured coat, an indigo suit with winkle-picker boots and a white shirt. Not a serious suit, but I’d never seen him wear a suit at all before. There was a new stillness to his body. I hadn’t realized until then that, in the past, he’d always been a little jittery. Playing with matchbooks and cigarettes, or jiggling one knee. Now he was still.
He looked up and a smile, uncalculated and uncomplicated, broke over his face.
‘James!’ he said. ‘Brilliant!’
He stood up and reached out to hug me, but I stepped awkwardly to the side, my hands up. He looked puzzled, but said again, ‘Brilliant!’ and we sat down. I was silent for too long. I had various things in my mind to say, had stored them up, but none of them were opening lines, and none of them seemed promising here, on a Wednesday afternoon in a half-empty gastropub. They were, I realized, things that were more suitable for shouting, in a kitchen in Oxford, two years earlier.
After a long moment, Mark drew in breath, exhaled — and I remembered his breath hot on my neck, I couldn’t help myself, and I thought, oh God, is this madness? — and he said, ‘So. Right. What are you drinking?’
Mark went to the bar, giving me time to think, to settle, to stop my leg from twitching, to place my hand on my knee and remind myself that nothing was going to happen here. And when we were sitting back in the armchairs with our beers he said, ‘Mate, how the fuck have you been? I’m a bloody idiot not to have been in touch sooner. How is everything? How’s Jess?’
I told him about my work at the school. I described Jess’s burgeoning career, her concerts, her friends, her small reviews in the papers. I told him the amusing stories from her tour. I explained that she was much in demand. He nodded and looked interested, normal. He was sane. Suddenly, startlingly sane. Was this Nicola? Had she taken all the madness from him?
Mark said, ‘Are you and Jess planning to get married?’
I shook my head.
‘No,’ I said. ‘We don’t believe in it.’
Mark looked at me. He raised his eyebrows and I noticed that, when he did so, fine lines became visible across his forehead. He took another swallow of beer.
‘I suppose you think that I’m doing something very stupid indeed.’
I realized that, because I had been unable to do so, he had brought the conversation around to the point.
He took a swig and continued, ‘Franny came to see me over the weekend, you know. Utterly lashed. Do you think she’s turning into a drunk? Anyway. Yes. She accused me of terrible things, leading Nicola on, lying to her family, taking advantage of Simon. And Manny called me yesterday, wanted to know if it’s all a joke. So I hope you’re not here to give me the same bloody speech, James, because I’m not interested in hearing it again.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not.’ And it was true; I wasn’t.
He frowned at me, then broke into a grin.
‘Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t. You can understand it, can’t you? It’s like you and Jess. I do love her.’
I stared at him. He and Nicola were like me and Jess? Was it an accusation or an attempt at comfort?
‘I love the whole family … even Simon, though he’s not being especially pleasant to me right now. And Nicola’s so perfect, you see, so simple and sane. Just, normal. Sweet and loving and normal. She’s exactly what I need, James. And of course my mother and Father Hugh are delighted. An end to all the old trouble at last.’
A spurt of hot madness erupted in my head. I wanted to throw the glasses to the floor, to shout and overturn tables, as I should have done two years earlier. None of this was what I’d expected. Not this sanity, not this calmness, not this normality. The idea that Mark and I should be talking like this, when I knew the truth of him, when I still thought of him and the memory of his fingers and his palm could still glow hot on my flesh.
‘But Mark, you’re gay. Aren’t you? I mean, aren’t you? Really? You’re really gay and being with Nicola … aren’t you going to … You’re just going to end up hurting her.’
Mark sat back in his chair with a huff, folded his arms across his chest, looked at me for a few moments.
‘But you understand this, don’t you? What are any of us really, James? What is really? Why do we have to decide this when we’re sixteen and then stick with it forever? Why can’t it be like food? When I was a kid I liked strawberry milkshakes but now I don’t. I like dark chocolate instead. Have I perverted my natural desire for strawberry milkshakes into an unnatural desire for dark chocolate? Or was my desire for milkshakes wrong and now I’ve come to my senses? No. People change. Our tastes develop. I used to like sleeping with boys and now I like sleeping with Nicola. My tastes have changed, that’s all. I mean, you must know. It’s the same with you.’