‘Fair enough, Dad,’ I said. ‘Aye, sure, that’ll be right,’ I thought, glancing across at Jan, and knowing from the look in her eyes that she was thinking exactly the same as me. We would discuss this between ourselves at a later date.
Mac the Dentist looked across at the two of us. He opened his mouth as if to say something profound, then thought better of it.
‘Time I went home,’ I said, seizing the moment. ‘I want a chat with my sister.’ I kissed Auntie Mary and Jan goodnight, patted my dad on his bald spot, then lugged my bag round to the big house looking out to sea.
I took a good look at Ellie as she opened the door for me. Dad was right. The fat wee wifie I had found in France was gone. My sister, with her waist back and her new haircut, looked better than she had since she was twenty-one. And there was a gleam in her eye that I couldn’t remember ever seeing there.
‘You’re doing great, Our Ellie,’ I said, at last, as I settled into dad’s armchair clutching a coffee which she had brought me. ‘It does my eyes good to look at you.’
‘Not just your eyes, brother,’ she said. ‘I am having an affair.’
You could have knocked me down with a Lightbody’s celebration cake. ‘You’re what?’ I couldn’t help it. I laughed. ‘Who with?’
‘Grammar, Osbert. With whom, please. With a guy at the school where I’m teaching part-time. He’s separated, like me. He’s one of your chauvinist types. I reckon he thinks he’s using me. The truth is that it’s the other way round. I am feasting on his body, but when I’ve finished all the white meat, he’ll be getting the push, believe you me.’
I managed to restrain my laughter this time. ‘Well, just you be careful. Take no chances until you’ve got everything sorted out with Allan. He’s seeing reason right now, but if he finds out that you’re playing away games before the separation agreement’s even drafted, he might change his mind.’
She nodded. ‘Don’t worry; the same thought occurred to me. I’ve decided to put Ross into cold storage until everything’s taken care of. If he doesn’t like that, well tough on him. Actually,’ she said, ‘I might just leave him in the freezer for good. The truth is I don’t like him that much. It was just that I needed to be made a fuss of, even if I did know all along that he was only doing it to get his end away.’
I gazed at her in the lamplight, hugging my mug of coffee, not knowing quite what to make of my new, capricious sister. ‘You know, Ellie, after Jan and I decided that we weren’t right for each other, and I was bouncing about like Zebedee in the Magic Roundabout, whispering “Time for bed” in the ears of as many women as I could, I used to lie awake on my many nights alone, and think about you and Allan. You weren’t long married then, and very solid and responsible …’
‘And boring, Oz, don’t forget boring.’
‘… yes, okay, and boring. But still I used to lie there and wish I could be like you, able to make a single commitment.’
I smiled at her. ‘Now look at us. We’ve turned almost full circle. I’m settled down with Prim, in the sort of solid relationship I used to dream about, while you’ve cut yourself adrift from all of that. Just be careful of one thing, though, sister. Don’t let yourself become like I used to be.’
It was her turn to smile. ‘Promiscuous, you mean? Don’t worry, as well as you I’ve got two sons and a father to protect me against that. If I’m indulging myself just now, it’s for the good of my morale, not just because I’ve a need to get properly laid.’
She paused. ‘Anyway, what about you and Prim? You’ve got that solid relationship, you say. But is it what you want, or is it what you think you should have?’
‘Of course it’s what I want. Prim’s a fantastic woman. She changed my life from the day I met her. She’s changed me.’
‘Aye,’ said Ellie, looking at me as if she was reading me, ‘she has that. She’s started you thinking again after all these years. And you’re more mature, too. Not so long ago you’d have run a mile rather than get involved between Allan and me. That’s good.’
I frowned at her. ‘Come on, sis. I’d like to think I’d always have stood up for you.’
‘Sure,’ she responded, quickly. ‘But before, you’d have just picked up the telephone, and told Allan he was an arse; or if you were really pumped up, maybe you’d have gone and thumped him. But you wouldn’t have got involved, not like you did. You’ve changed all right, and I’ve got to credit Primavera for that.’
She sipped her coffee. ‘But tell me something I’ve always wanted to know, Oz, about you and Jan. What happened to the two of you?’
Taken by surprise, I stared for a while out of the bay window. ‘Time?’ I ventured at last, but without conviction.
‘Bollocks,’ said Ellen, with a laugh. ‘Do better.’
I tried again. ‘Okay. I suppose that at some point we decided that with the way we had grown up together, and become a couple, it had all come too easy for us. I suppose that we decided that we were drifting towards marriage because it was expected of us, and maybe because it was the soft option. I suppose we just decided that it was wrong. We never had a great debate about it. It just … worked out that way.’
‘Mmm,’ said my sister, pressing herself back into the sofa. We sat in silence for two or three minutes, until she looked across at me and whispered, ‘Oz, is that really true?’
I looked deep into my mug, as if it was a window to the past. ‘No,’ I said, for the first time in my life. ‘The truth isn’t that we decided anything. I did.
‘At university, everyone had a steady. That was the way it was, and so there was no pressure on Jan and me. But at some point in my very short police career, I looked around at my contemporaries, and the way they lived. There they were, young guys like me, tear-arseing around in their time off, scoring women like trophies. There was one guy we called Comanche, because every time he made a new conquest, he used to cut off a curl of her hair — and you know what I’m talking about — and bring it to work with him next day.
‘I looked at those characters and I told myself, “This is how normal young men live.” And I began to feel abnormal. At that point, Jan was the only girl I’d ever slept with, and I thought to myself, “What if we get married, and at some point I come to regret all that missed experience? What if I start to fancy the grass on the other side of the hill, enough to go grazing?” I was afraid of that, Ellie. Maybe I was afraid of the hurt of losing her, so I ensured that I never would, by pushing her away.’
‘But there was something else too, Oz, wasn’t there?’
‘Yes.’ It came out in a hoarse whisper. ‘I really did want to graze, from the start. I just couldn’t suppress it. Sex with Jan was good, but it was rarely great, and never all that it might have been. Both of us knew that. But then how could it have been? We only had experience of each other.’
I gazed across at her. ‘I did it very gradually, disengaging myself, until it was how it was and she had settled for being best friends. Of course, I never told her what I’ve just told you. I’ve never admitted that to anyone before … not even me.’
‘What about love, Oz? How did you make yourself stop loving her?’
‘I never even tried. I never did stop. I’ll always love Jan, but in a way that’s different from anyone else. I’ll always be there for her, except for …’
‘Except for the times when she might need you the most. When was the last time you slept with Jan?’ asked Ellie suddenly.
‘Last March, before I met Prim. We had a sort of arrangement.’
‘Yes, I know about it. Jan and I had a girlie night. She had a few drinks and told me about it. Occasional grazing rights on each other, to use your analogy. Only now you’ve closed the pasture. So don’t tell me you’ll always be there for her, brother, although I know you’d like to mean it. How can you be, when you’re living in Spain, in love with another woman?’