‘So you’re just going to wait until you collapse in the street or get cancer?’ Jean said. Her voice was louder. Higher. I flinched at the word and I could tell Jean was sorry for saying it.
‘You bet your fucking bottle of shitty Chardonnay in the boiler closet I am,’ said Tyler.
A boiler closet. That sounded like a nice place to be. It would be dark and warm and quiet. I put my hand over my mouth and supported my head that way.
Tyler said: ‘The world is over-populated. Way I see it, I’m saving the fucking planet.’
‘Some people would argue parenthood is the most adventurous thing you can do.’
Tyler slammed her glass on the table. ‘Well, they’ve got to, haven’t they? It’s one of the great unspoken rules. Never admit how resentful you feel towards your children.’
‘Know what I think, Tyler? I think you stayed too long at the fair.’
‘Know what I think, Jeannie? “Wilful” is a word that should be reserved for horses.’
I calmed her down in the bathroom. ‘You know, you have to let people choose their own adventures.’
She stopped brushing her teeth, pulled the toothbrush out. ‘What are you not telling me?’
‘Nothing. Come on. Spit.’
‘No, you spit.’
There was no point—
‘Jim and I haven’t been using protection.’
It sounded very formal.
‘You’re fucking kidding me?’ Blobs of toothpaste gathered on her décolletage as she spoke. ‘IS NOTHING SACRED?’
‘It doesn’t mean I want to get pregnant.’
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘But it does mean that you might.’
‘So I’ll have an abortion.’
Gotcha. I saw her thoughts follow mine and hit the wall I had her up against. I kept her there, watched her wriggle. Then I sat down on the side of the bath. ‘Is anyone ever sure, though, when they really think about it? What kind of fool would think, Know what I’d like? Less sleep, less money, less privacy… Best-case scenario is it happens by accident.’
She put her toothbrush carefully into a free hole in the holder. ‘I don’t know why I expected to be involved. My bad.’
‘Don’t be like that.’
‘Nah, it’s too late. You’re on the track.’
The next day it was still frosty between us but frostier still between Tyler and Jean — the basis of comparison, of lesser evils (like the eternally sobering sight of someone drunker than you regardless of your own state), rendering the conversation we’d had in the bathroom almost forgotten. I heard Ro talking to Tyler in the kitchen while I was smoking in the garden. Don’t you dare drag her back into anything, you hear me? We left as soon as we were showered and dressed, around noon.
We took a tour of London pubs and museums, ending up in a pub by Euston around six with a plan to catch the first off-peak evening train. I followed Tyler towards the bar and then over in the corner of the pub I caught the eye of someone recently familiar. Recently very familiar. Intimate even.
Yep.
He waved. I waved back.
‘Who are you waving at?’ said Tyler, following my gaze. ‘No fucking way.’ I looked at her. Her face split into a grin. ‘MARTY?’
He was halfway across the room. ‘TYLER?’ Adjusting his glasses as he ran. ‘Tyler JOHNSON?’
‘MARTY GRANE, AS I LIVE AND BREATHE!’
They hit each other like footballers in a chest-hard embrace. I stood there, boggling.
‘Hang on,’ said Marty, stepping back and looking at me. ‘You know each other?’ Lots of fast pointing — you, her, you, her. Tyler looked at me.
‘Marty did the Yeats talk at the library,’ I said. Then to him: ‘Tyler’s my flatmate.’
‘Landlord.’
‘Whatever.’
They embraced again. I moved to one side and ordered a large glass of white wine. Typical. Just. Fucking. Typical.
‘Look at you,’ Tyler said, flicking Marty’s collar as she pulled back. ‘Luckily I know the insidious truth beneath the dandy veneer.’
I took a large swig of wine and swallowed.
‘You look exactly the same,’ he said. ‘Exactly.’
I let my head fall back and I looked at the ceiling, my mouth hanging open in a silent howl.
‘Marty and I did our Masters together,’ Tyler said. ‘Then he defected down south. And now I hear you’ve gone all Romantic? Fuck you!’
‘I fell in love with another! Allow me that, you pebble of a girl.’ Tyler cackled. ‘I still remember every line anyway.’
‘I should think so. You were the Wife of Bath.’
Marty loud-whispered: ‘I have the power durynge al my lyf upon his propre body, and noght he… ’
They laughed. Oh, the loneliness of ignorance. It was lonelier than genius because you didn’t even have your knowledge to keep you company. I picked up my wine and tipped all of it into my mouth. Ordered another.
‘Make that two,’ said Tyler.
‘Come and join us!’ said Marty. ‘We’re just over there.’
I looked over. A man and a woman were sitting at a table, regarding us cautiously. Tyler flew towards them, jacket tassels flapping.
‘Americans,’ Marty said, watching her. ‘Don’t you just adore them? They’re like basking sharks, running at life with their mouths open.’
I paid for our wines.
‘Well, this is random,’ Marty said. (Desperately random, like the elaborations of…) ‘What brings you two to London?’
‘Tyler’s niece’s christening.’
‘Tyler has family? I thought she came out of The Pod.’
‘Hard to believe, I know.’
‘How’s the novel?’
I pretended I hadn’t heard and walked past him with the wines. As I put them down on the table I caught the edge with my hand so that the man’s pint spilled a little. I chastised myself for my obviousnesses, my elaborate social effort. You do not possess the normal micro-movements of politeness. ‘Sorry.’
‘Sheila Jones and Michael Perrin,’ Marty said, catching up. ‘Old friends from Oxford.’ (Wooo.) ‘They’ve just set up their own independent publishing house, so we’re celebrating. Tyler Johnson, who I studied with for my Masters in Manchester. Laura Joyce, who I met there last week.’
Hello. Hello hello hello.
‘Masters courses are the greatest,’ Tyler said. ‘You get just deep enough before you get bored and the seminars are like dinnerless dinner parties where everyone shares the same interests. If I ever get any money I’m going to spend my whole life doing one after another. I’d do one on Modernist architecture, one on 1960s French cinema, one on twenty-first century European history… ’
Her dad had paid for the last one — same time he’d paid for the flat.
Before we lived together I went round to hers unannounced one evening. I was twenty-six, she was twenty-three. It was mid-December, dark and sleeting, and I was surprised to see the bottom door of the block wedged open with a half-empty bottle of mineral water. I bent to pick up the bottle as I opened the door and then tucked it back in as the door closed, in case someone who was fixing or cleaning something had left it there so they could get in and out. The motion detector strip-light on the low ceiling flickered to a buzzy glow. Then I heard it — a blare of words from a few floors above. Her floor. Her voice.
THE FUCK OUT MY HOUSE.
A soft bump from the same place, a person falling against a wall, a shoulder charge, hard to tell much in terms of damage or intended damage.