After Everything Page 4

  There was a puzzled silence. ‘What on earth do you mean? Are you trying to say Sandy was gay in some way?’

  ‘No,’ said Penny. ‘Well, perhaps yes. I mean, I used to think they were emotional homosexuals. Everyone talks about bromances these days. Brad Pitt and George Clooney, David Beckham and whatshisname.’

  ‘What absolute rubbish,’ snorted Angie. ‘Tim and I have always been each other’s best friends and Sandy was devoted to you and the children.’

  ‘For a bit.’

  ‘We’re digressing. The point is we think you ought to try to come over, if only for Matthew and Emily.’

  Penny put down the flower and began pushing back her cuticles with some savagery. ‘Em is in India and Matthew is away. I haven’t even contacted them yet, so I’m not sure how I’d be helping. And I’m quite busy here. Can’t someone else help, one of his old girlfriends? Heaven knows there’re enough of them. Why don’t you contact one of them?’

  ‘Penny, you and the children are his only family. He’s going to need you. I know this comes as a shock. It must be hard for you.’

  Penny wanted to say the only hard part was this tortuous conversation, that there was a difference between Sandy needing her and it being convenient for everyone else if she ran to his side. She wanted to hang up, but couldn’t seem to manage it.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said finally. ‘But Sandy and I have been divorced for more than a year now. Our lives are completely separate. We’re friendly, but we’re not friends. There’s a difference.’

  There was another silence. Penny knew Angie would hang on until she got the answer she wanted.

  ‘All right,’ Penny said. ‘I’ll try.’

  She said goodbye, just as angry as she’d been when she’d read Jeremy’s email. There was no right decision. If she stayed in Sarlat, there would be the inexplicable guilt that she couldn’t erase; if she rushed back to London, she couldn’t play the role of the good wife healing the fractured former husband. Still, there were the children to consider. If, and it was a monumental if, Sandy became more aware after this episode, perhaps he would be kinder to Emily and Matthew. But they were adults now. What need, or wish, might they have for a retrospective parent–child relationship? She had no idea how they’d react.

  The hills outside had turned umber with the low sun. It would be dark soon. She went to the shed for the axe and spent the last half-hour of the day splitting knotted pine logs from the great pile behind the shed. She kept chopping until the wheelbarrow was full, and the blade of the axe was speckled with tiny globules of sticky resin. In the weak evening light, they might have been drops of blood.

  She would light a fire tonight, early. She would fry the mushrooms gently in a little unsalted butter, and scramble the eggs, taking care they didn’t overcook and become rubbery. Then she’d shave fragments of the precious truffle over them. She’d eat the lot with a glass of Montravel, then go into her sitting room and read as the logs crackled and spat before collapsing into a fine powder ash. After that, she would go upstairs to bed.

  Chapter 7

  Where was he? Not in his own bed. He was lying on something different, narrower and shorter. There was a chill draught playing on his uncovered feet. Through the open window came the hum of traffic and the cawing of seagulls. The last thing he remembered was seeing the men with their buggies on the common. Everything went dark after that. A gripping headache, then the nauseous gagging feeling. The vomiting. A nurse, her figure dark above him. Deep dreamless sleep under a thin blanket, knees tucked up to his stomach as he shook and stared at the air-conditioning vents in the ceiling.

  He opened his eyes. Looming in front of him was the familiar green wall of his own flat. He was lying on his sofa, dressed in unfamiliar tracksuit bottoms and a long-sleeved checked top. Where had these clothes come from? How did he get from the hospital to his flat? Who had put a pillow under his head? He had no idea. He felt only one thing: terrible shame.

  There was something scuttling outside the door, then a loud knock. Sandy dragged himself upright and, steadying himself against the wall, stumbled to the door. A figure with his back to Sandy crouched in the dim light of the hall, foraging inside a bag. Thick grey hair, a black jacket and jeans. The figure swung around and Sandy saw a man in his sixties with a long face and a beaky nose.

  ‘Hi. I’m Rupert. I’ve come from the hospital to see how you’re going, check you over. Your friend Jeremy arranged it. No needles, no blood. Promise.’ He smiled, showing a row of neat white teeth. Berserk little black wires began dancing at the edges of Sandy’s vision. He was going to pass out.

  ‘Do you need a hand?’ asked Rupert.

  ‘Thank you, but no,’ grunted Sandy. ‘I’m feeling much better.’ The ignominy of meeting a stranger while wearing tracksuit bottoms was too much. He wanted this Rupert to know he had once been a star of the music world, that managers and agents had spoken the name of Sandy Ellison with respect, sometimes reverence. He’d shared Peking duck at Mr Chow with Mick and Jerry. He’d walked in Richmond Park with Ronnie and Jo, flirted with Stevie Nicks and swapped guitar notes with Mark Knopfler.

  He wanted to name all his hits – singles as well as albums. Rupert would have recognised some of them, surely. He might even have rushed to buy a copy when the song was released, taken the vinyl out of the sleeve, played the haunting melody Sandy had created and been transported to another place.

  This Rupert would be listening to the radio on his way to work or unloading the dishwasher. He would hear Sandy’s song and remember when he’d kissed the one that got away, the scent of them, the feel of secret skin. He might forget the title of the book he read last night and the film he saw last week, but not Sandy’s song. It would still echo somewhere inside him.

  ‘May I come in?’ Rupert’s question cut across his reverie. Sandy nodded and crept back to the sofa. The pillow was damp and stained with brown spittle. He turned it over. There was a pile of dirty clothes in the corner and a full ashtray on the mantelpiece, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

  Rupert brandished a blood pressure kit and gestured for Sandy to roll up his sleeve. He strapped on the grey cuff and began pumping air into it.

  ‘Your friend insisted that you’d get proper care here. The hospital had its concerns, whether it was an accident or not, but your friend said he’d take all responsibility.’

  Now Sandy remembered. It was Jeremy who picked him up and brought him home. How had Jeremy known where he was? Through the fog of a dull headache, he tried to concentrate on what Rupert was saying.

  ‘Your blood pressure isn’t too bad. High, but not hysterical. Do you do any exercise at all?’

  Sandy was too exhausted to dissemble about walking whenever he could or playing the occasional game of geriatric tennis. He opted instead for pathological honesty.

  ‘None at all,’ he said. His throat hurt.

  Rupert smiled and pulled off the cuff. ‘You must have given yourself quite a shock. Had you been drinking?’

  Sandy was confused. What was Rupert talking about?

  Rupert continued. ‘When you stepped onto the road, when the car hit you?’

  So that’s what happened. A car accident. Sandy had a sudden memory of a loud bang and the smell of rubber. Someone shouting.

  ‘Your blood alcohol level was high. Alcohol can be a powerful depressant,’ said Rupert. ‘How much do you drink, would you say? How many units a night?’

  Sandy rolled down his sleeve. ‘I don’t count. Too many.’

  ‘And smoke?’ he asked.

  ‘Loads,’ said Sandy. ‘That’s the thing about smoking. It goes with everything. Good times, bad times and anything in-between.’

  Rupert didn’t reply. He plugged the ends of a stethoscope into his ears and placed the other end on Sandy’s heart. He smelled of soap and something sharp and clean, like eucalyptus. For a second, Sandy felt that if he could lean his head on the doctor’s shoulder then everything would be all r
ight; that Rupert could lay his freckled hands on Sandy’s shoulders and make him whole again. But that was a ridiculous notion and Sandy pulled away.

  ‘You’ve had a nasty knock and you’ve got mild concussion. You need to take it easy.’ He put the stethoscope back into his bag and turned an unblinking gaze on Sandy. ‘Was it an accident, or did you do it deliberately?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ mumbled Sandy. ‘I don’t remember. I think it was an accident.’

  Rupert cocked his head and lifted an eyebrow. ‘So your friend said.’

  ‘Things weren’t working out,’ Sandy whispered. His mouth seemed invaded by fine grit. ‘Everything became very difficult.’ He wanted to tell him in some detail how incredibly difficult everything had been, but Rupert was already heading for the door.

  ‘I’ll arrange some follow-up appointments. Take it easy. Get some rest. Try not to drink, if you can. You’ll be surprised how much better you’ll feel.’

  ‘I don’t remember much,’ Sandy whispered again. His head hurt. ‘Perhaps I tripped.’

  Rupert lifted both eyebrows. ‘From the pavement to the middle of the road? If you say so. You might consider talking to someone. Therapy, combined with the right drugs, can be very effective. But you have to take it seriously. Recovery won’t be like having a drink and getting a quick buzz. Here’s my card. Call me at any time, day or night. I’ll let myself out.’

  Sandy staggered into the kitchen. The weak afternoon sun played on pots of dead geraniums left behind by a previous tenant. He leaned against the windowsill. Chimney pots, television aerials and satellite dishes rose from neighbouring roofs to meet a clear afternoon sky. He made his own clouds, blowing little puffs of condensation on the window.

  What had happened to him? To Sandy, the hit maker? He’d never quite worked it out. It can’t just have been the arrival of punk, Brit-hop, garage, or grime, because ballads were perennial. People still fell in and out of love. Someone’s heart always hurt and a ballad hit the spot the way a bass beat never did.

  Was it that he kept writing the same sentimental songs while everything around him changed? Maybe. But for whatever reason, by the time Sandy had realised his idea of a perfect note was out of fashion, he was also out of step. He tried not to mind. But he did. His moments of riding on a wimpling wing with his hero Gerard Manley Hopkins as his muse ended soon after Fred, his faithful assistant, mentioned something called Auto-Tune.

  Sandy had always imagined that his gift of combining the right note with the right word to create a hit was a kind of divine intervention. He always knew immediately if a voice or instrument was off-key. He had a special ear for music.

  Yet another illusion. Sandy’s ear for music was no more than a computer program devised by an American oil engineer called Andy Hildebrand. Auto-Tune made every note pitch-perfect. An unlikely career segue from drilling sites to pop music, but apparently all in a day’s work for Andy.

  Sandy couldn’t blame his decline on Auto-Tune and Andy Hildebrand, because the mining engineer didn’t even write songs. But it was something visible, a name he could google, a smiling grey-bearded image he could sneer at for replacing his beloved fuzzed compositions with squeaky-clean digitisation at the same time his own life began to lose its clarity. All that remained was a dusty pile of framed gold records on the top of his wardrobe.

  mattman5@hotmail.com

  To: emily.ellison@gmail.com

  You’re not going all religious, are you? Can’t see you with a shaved head and a begging bowl, so don’t get too carried away. That town sounds good. I’d join you, but no job anymore means no money. Mum called the other night. Dad is okay now. Hard to know what happened. Mum says he needs help and understanding but she’s got the red voice back.

  Remember that? Dad always got it more than us, probably because she was mad at him more. When the red voice stopped, I thought it was because she and Dad were finally getting along. But it turned out to be the opposite. She was there in her body, but she was gone in her head, and then she really was gone. Anyhow, I haven’t heard the red voice for years, so I guess she’s pretty angry about it, although she won’t say so. Same same. I went to see him and he said it was a blip, that he got confused. Hey, don’t we all.

  Don’t fret about me. I’m good. Although, had a little slip last week, and spent two days in bed feeling pretty shitty. Then they told me not to bother coming into work again. Surplus to requirements. Sam moved out of the flat. He’s gone to Sydney and this complete dickhead, Arthur, moved into his room. He does something in the city and never looks up from his iPad, completely straight. He’d never heard of GHB, for starters.

  That was my little slip, a good one though. I had this dream thing about flying, just above the ground, like the little yellow man on Google maps except speeded up. Really speeded up. Then I fell asleep at the kitchen table and Arthur told the others he thought I had a problem. I don’t. I just like it every now and then. So, no nagging. I’m cool, everything under control.

  Chapter 8

  Tim didn’t like lentils, but somehow had never managed to tell Angie their floury texture stuck in his teeth and lay like a dead weight in his stomach. Angie always served them with sausages oozing red oil and stinking of garlic. It was a minor deceit, but after twenty-five years of marriage, he could scarcely confess now. Considering Angie’s multiple sensitivities, the way she could extrapolate a minor nuance into a giant issue-laden dialogue, it wasn’t worth it.

  If he said, ‘The thing is, I’ve never said it before this, but I’m not that keen on lentils. Not many men are. And those sausages make my breath stink,’ then she would say, ‘But you’ve never said anything before. Why didn’t you tell me? I thought you liked them. You always said you liked lentils and sausages.’

  He might reply, ‘I don’t think I ever said I liked lentils and sausages. I just ate them because you cooked them.’ After a silence during which he could imagine her mind whirring and clicking, she would say that he should have told her. She’d ask if he was trying to tell her she had stinking breath. She’d say, ‘Aren’t we meant to be honest with each other? Isn’t that what our marriage is about? What else haven’t you told me? How many more secrets have you got?’

  Occasional indigestion was so much easier.

  They were in the kitchen. Angie had lit the wood burner. The Aga was on its highest setting and Tim was hot. But Angie felt the cold, and preferred to heat any room she was in, rather than wear an unflattering bulky sweater. Angie liked to change for dinner and apply makeup, even though dinner was always in the kitchen and only the two of them. It was part of her ethos of making a childless marriage work. Without children to twine them together, Angie had made herself indispensable as both siren and secretary. To Tim, it remained one of her most attractive qualities: her implacable belief in them as a never-ending couple and her unwavering confidence in their love for each other.

  In the early London days, she would drive him around Battersea and Brixton, taking notes of rundown houses for sale that he might be able to buy and sell. When he fell into negative equity in the 1990 recession, she juggled the accounts for months in a futile effort to stave off bankruptcy, and she stayed awake with him night after night discussing what they might do. Never the singular, always the plural.

  Tim played with the lentils. He was tired after the long journey from London and wanted to slump in front of the television for an hour or two, have a beer and go to bed. But he couldn’t. Angie had to tell him every word of her conversation with Penny, and about her trip into the Ludlow antique rooms. The matter of Sandy had to be discussed again, in case any aspect of it had been overlooked.

  ‘Penny’s become hard. I think bitterness has set in,’ said Angie. ‘Can you believe she was humming and hahing over coming back to see Sandy? She actually said she was busy. But what does she do over there all day? There is only so much time you can spend weeding and growing vegetables.’

  Sandy’s accident, the distinct possibility that it had
been a failed suicide bid, had created great excitement for Angie. She needed examples of the frailty of others to remind herself and Tim how lucky they were. It was a bonding exercise, one at which she excelled. So they went through the whole thing again. Angie sipped her supermarket sauvignon blanc, rather quickly he noticed. Sauvignon blanc was another thing he didn’t like. He preferred red wine, but wasn’t prepared to have a three-hour discussion about it.

  The meal was finished. The bottle was two-thirds empty. He had drunk half a glass at most. How much had she put away while he was driving home? Since Sandy’s abortive suicide attempt, he’d become acutely conscious of his own alcohol consumption and that of others. He sipped instead of gulping, and alternated each mouthful of wine with water. He noticed the yeasty smell of it on the breath of strangers in the street, the telltale red blotches on their cheeks and under their eyes.

  No. Angie wasn’t one of them. The smooth bob of her youth had made way for a tangled auburn mess that hung below her shoulders and hovered above her brown eyes, giving her the appearance of a bedraggled loyal spaniel. But her eyes were still clear, her face bony and drawn back over her cheekbones.

  She sat across from him, his friend and his wife. Angie was his unassailable ally. She was the one who kept him going through the bouts of uncontrollable weeping and the black depressions after he lost his nerve for white-knuckle property development. It was her idea for him to retrain as a psychotherapist dealing mainly with retrenched men of a certain age.

  He was reluctant at first, but Angie persuaded him that he was so empathetic, so good with people. ‘Why not get paid for something you do for nothing anyway?’ she argued. ‘You’re always listening to other people’s problems. And it’s a growing market. You have to see that.’ After some weeks of cajoling and flattery he agreed, gratified to hear that he was, at least, good at something.