Heading Inland (3 page)

‘I guess so.’

Sydney lay down flat on her back. Whenever she lifted her shoulders or her buttocks, they stuck to the wooden boards, aided by the natural glue of her body’s moisture. The noise this made reminded Carrie of the sound of an emery board against a ragged nail.

‘Actually,’ Carrie said, grinning, ‘
La Fille Mal Gardée
is my favourite ballet.’

‘Really? You like an element of slapstick, huh?’

‘I suppose I must do.’

‘Myself, I prefer a tragedy. I find that tragedy best reflects my emotional and psychological state.’

Carrie turned and stared straight into Heinz’s frogspawn eyes. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘Me? Kidding? Not at all. Not at all.’

Heinz offered Carrie his family-size box of Maltesers.

‘Thanks.’

Carrie took one and popped it into her mouth. ‘That’s the strangest part . . .’ she said, chewing and enjoying the sensation of chocolate and malt on her tongue. ‘I’ve been to four ballets with you and never for a moment did I think you seemed like a sad or a dissatisfied person.’

It was the interval. Heinz and Carrie were propping up the theatre bar. Heinz had discovered that Carrie’s favourite winter tipple was port and lemon. He’d taken to ordering her one before the show. This meant they didn’t have to wait to be served during the intermission.

Heinz smiled at Carrie. ‘You see the best in everyone.’

‘Maybe I’m just insensitive.’

‘You? Insensitive? Never. You’re an angel.’

A man standing just to Carrie’s left turned and stared at them. Carrie caught his eye. His expression was a mixture of amusement and confusion. Carrie took a sip of her drink. People were so funny, the way they stared. Their quizzical expressions. It had begun to dawn on her that when she was out with Heinz she became a puzzle. She became mysterious.

Alone, at home, in life, she felt like something dried-up, wrung-out and innocuous. Out with Heinz, she felt like she was transformed into something much less explicable.

Heinz was bossy and opinionated but he wasn’t entirely unobservant. He rolled his eyes at Carrie. ‘Probably thinks you’re my daughter.’

Carrie shrugged. ‘And I could be too, easily.’

Carrie often found Heinz to be genuinely perceptive. At their second ballet together he’d said, ‘And your husband . . . ?’

To which she’d responded, ‘I don’t ever want to talk about him.’

‘Very well.’

And they’d never spoken about him since. It was almost like, Carrie decided, Jack had never even existed.

Sydney was plaiting her hair, trying, but failing, to include the front bang-like bits into the weave so that they didn’t keep falling into her eyes. Their class was due to start at any minute. Carrie stood behind her, scowling to herself, intensely discomfited.

‘I was only saying,’ Sydney observed, still plaiting, ‘that it seems a bit strange for you not to want me to come with you when you said yourself on several occasions that there was a spare ticket going begging.’

‘There is a spare ticket,’ Carrie said, caught distinctly off her guard. ‘It’s only that next week I promised someone else . . .’

‘Who?’

‘A friend called Sue,’ Carrie said, too quickly, and then widened her eyes when she’d finished speaking as if the words she’d just uttered were indigestible.

‘Who?’

‘I told you about her, surely? She’s the one who thinks I should open my own interior design shop.’

‘Sue?’

‘Yes. Remember? I said I was thinking about starting work again, now that Jack’s gone. The money’s tight and everything.’

‘Interior design? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. How could you afford to open an interior design shop? You don’t know anything about retail . . .’

Sydney finished her plaiting and turned to face Carrie. Carrie’s cheeks were red, she noted, and she was scratching her neck as though she’d been bitten.

‘It was just an idea.’

‘Where would you get the money from to start a business with? You’re broke.’

‘I know.’

‘Interior design, you said?’

Carrie nodded.

‘Sue? Sue who?’

Carrie blinked and then swallowed. ‘The Sue who’s coming to the ballet with me next week. We were at school together. I surely must’ve mentioned her before.’

‘No.’

People had started to filter their way gradually into the gym. Carrie pointed, ‘I think the class is due to start.’

‘OK, next time.’

‘Pardon?’

Sydney smiled. ‘Next time I want to come with you, so make sure you keep the ticket spare, all right?’

‘Yes. Fine.’

Sydney led the way. Carrie looked down at her trainers and silently incanted a Hail Mary.

They’d become so engrossed in their conversation that they hadn’t noticed everyone else going back inside. Carrie was so engrossed in what Heinz was saying that she almost hadn’t noticed his hand on her shoulder. Almost.

‘What else do I have to spend my money on? Huh? There’s nothing. I want for nothing. It would give me enormous pleasure to help you out.’

‘I don’t know.’ Carrie, for some reason, couldn’t stop thinking about Sydney.

‘Actually, Heinz, next time I come to the ballet I’ll be bringing someone with me . . .’

Heinz’s hand slipped from Carrie’s shoulder. His voice was suddenly flat. ‘Oh. That’s good. It seems such a shame to waste the seat every week like you do.’

‘Exactly. We go to the same evening class together.’

‘Does this person have a name?’

‘Sydney.’

‘I see. I see.’

Carrie noticed that Heinz’s face was pale and doughy. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Nothing at all. Nothing.’

Carrie continued to stare at Heinz. Was he all right? He didn’t look it. She suddenly became nervous and she didn’t know why. She started to babble. ‘She’s Australian. I had to invite her. She asked.’

Heinz put his hand to his bow tie. ‘She’s a girl?’

‘Yes.’

Carrie watched with ill-concealed amazement as Heinz burst out laughing. He laughed so hard and loud that his toupee slipped. Then he plucked it from his forehead with his meaty hand, tossed it into the air with a great whoop and then caught it, just as deftly.

The sauna. Sydney sat bolt upright, her eyes as wide as saucers, each hand enfolding a single breast as though her amazement endangered them in some way.

‘You’re sleeping with this guy?’

Carrie’s towel was wrapped as tight as it could be but still she hitched it closer. ‘Not exactly. I didn’t spend the night . . .’

‘You fucked this man?’

‘Please! He’s eighty-three!’

‘Exactly! He’s eighty-fucking-three and you shagged him. My God! How did this happen? How does it happen that an attractive forty-four-year-old woman, in her prime, great body, big hair, the lot, shags an eighty-three-year-old man who she was the first to admit . . .’

‘It wasn’t . . .’

‘Who she was the
first
to admit is the fattest and most boring old loudmouth in the whole damn universe. How? Huh?’

‘Sydney!
Please
. . .’

‘Jesus, I can just imagine it.’

‘Imagine what?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Don’t!’

‘Guess what I’m visualizing, Carrie. I am visualizing this grey slug of a man with an enormous pale belly and a tiny penis like a party-time Mars Bar hanging down below . . .’

‘Stop it!’

Carrie was on the brink of crying. She was so ashamed. It wasn’t even the act, the fact of it, that shamed her, only Sydney’s perception of it and then
her
perception of it as a result of Sydney’s. That was all. And if Sydney hadn’t insisted on the second ballet ticket it would never have been a problem, she could have hidden it. She could have pretended . . .

‘He must be loaded.’

‘What?’

‘Money. Why else would you want him? Is he loaded? Is he going to, maybe, give you a little bit of money to start off your interior design business? Is that it?’

Carrie was mortified. ‘It isn’t like that at all!’

‘No? How is it then?’

‘I don’t know!’ Carrie started crying.

Sydney was unmoved. She said softly, ‘You know, I kept thinking you were taking this whole Jack thing too well.’

‘I don’t want to talk about Jack!’

‘What would Jack think, huh? What would Jack actually think if he knew what you were doing?’

Carrie stood up, covered her cheeks with her hands, bolted out of the sauna, through the changing rooms and into the showers. There she turned the tap to cold, ripped off her towel and pushed her burning face into the jet.

Sydney crossed her llama legs at the knee and then dialled Jack’s number.

‘Hi Jack. It’s Sydney.’

‘Sydney? Well, hello. What can I do for you?’

‘I want to see you. It’s about Carrie.’

After Jack had put down the phone, he picked up his duffel coat and brushed it off. He was keenly looking forward to a cold snap.

It was a nightmare. Just as she’d imagined. Heinz wore his toupee and his turd-coloured tie. He kept regaling them with terrible stories about his late wife’s beloved red setter which had died – following several years of chronic incontinence – after swallowing a cricket ball. Carrie supposed that he must be nervous. Poor lamb.

Sydney was horribly polite. She kept staring at Heinz’s stomach as she spoke to him, like she expected, at any minute, that something might explode out of it.

When Carrie drove her home, she didn’t talk for the first ten minutes of the journey. She merely said, ‘Carrie. Leave me. I have to
digest
.’

Carrie left her. Eventually, after she’d digested sufficiently, Sydney said, ‘He belched throughout the ballet. It was like sitting next to an old pair of bellows. Christ, the orchestra should recruit him for the wind section.’

Carrie’s heart sank. ‘He wasn’t belching. He swallowed a toffee too quickly. It went down the wrong way. He kept apologizing.’

‘And that fucking dog! His dead wife’s dead fucking dog! Does he really think I’m interested in how they fed it a diet of fresh chicken to try and quell its chronic flatulence? Are
you
interested, Carrie? Huh?’

‘No.’

‘Pardon?’

‘No! No, I’m not interested. I’m not.’

‘And I just can’t believe . . .’

‘What?’ Carrie tried to keep her eyes on the road, but Sydney’s expression . . . ‘What?!’

‘The two of you . . .’

‘What?’

Sydney’s eyes were glued to the road ahead. It was starting to rain. Carrie turned on the windscreen wipers just in time with Sydney’s next pronouncement.

‘Fucking.’

Carrie said nothing. They both stared at the road. Eventually Sydney turned her eyes towards Carrie. ‘Well?’

Carrie said nothing. She focused on the road and the wipers and the rain and the way that the light from the streetlamps reflected in the drops of water on the windscreen before each harsh stroke brushed it away. Where do they go? She wondered. Where do those moments go? The rain falling in just such a way, the light, the wiper. Something there and then something gone.

Sydney found she was boiling. Not hot, but something
inside
. What else could she do? What else could she say? Carrie had closed down, shut up, like a clam. Sydney cursed herself. She was too impetuous. Too quick to judge. If only she’d tried to be nice, to be supportive. Maybe then Carrie might have provided her with some details. Something to ponder, to mull over, fat to chew on. Damn! Sydney crossed her arms, stared at the road,
boiled
.

‘I got your number from the book,’ Heinz said.

‘Didn’t I give it you?’

‘No.’

‘I should’ve.’

‘She didn’t like me.’

‘No. Actually, I think she really hated you.’

‘Sometimes I can be overwhelming. It’s a fault of mine. I know that. But I am simply myself. When you get old . . .’

‘You tried your best.’

‘But did I? One tends to forget how it is to . . . uh . . . to play the game.’

‘Never mind.’

‘Can I see you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Tonight?’

Carrie rubbed her eyes with her spare hand. ‘I only just got in. It’s raining outside . . .’

‘Tomorrow?’

Sydney lay on her stomach and rested the weight of her head on her hands. What was wrong? It was just . . . she couldn’t imagine. Carrie and that fat old man. My God! She just couldn’t
picture
it. Not properly. Not graphically. She rolled on to her back. Couldn’t imagine. But my Lord,
my Lord
, how she longed to!

Sydney stared at Jack’s buttons. Jack pretended not to notice. Sydney sighed.

‘Jack,’ she said, ‘you haven’t a hope in hell of winning me over with that old three button trick.’

Jack’s eyes blinked and then widened. ‘What do you mean, ma’am?’

‘Nor that Courtly American Gentleman shite.’

Jack scowled. ‘What’s the axe you’ve got to grind, Sydney?’ he asked, not charming any longer.

‘No axe,’ Sydney said. ‘I just thought you should know

. . .’She paused. What did she want to say, exactly? Would she tell Jack about Heinz? She looked into Jack’s face and knew that the notion of an eighty-odd-year-old man sleeping with his wife was hardly going to incite him to jealousy.

‘Is it Carrie?’ Jack asked.

‘Yep.’ Sydney rubbed the corner of her eyes.

‘You look washed out,’ he said.

‘Tired. Haven’t been sleeping.’

‘Really?’

Sydney uncrossed her legs. ‘Carrie’s got someone new.’

Jack looked surprised. ‘Already?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who?’

Sydney cleared her throat. ‘Someone she’s known for a while.’

‘She met them at the gym? Who is it? Do I know them?’

Sydney shrugged. ‘That’s not the point.’

‘So I do know them?’

‘I didn’t say you knew them.’

‘Are they younger than me?’

Sydney squirmed. ‘I just thought . . .’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

Sydney picked up her briefcase. ‘Not for any reason, really.’ She frowned and then asked out loud. ‘Why am I telling you? I don’t know.’ She stood up. ‘That three button thing you do,’ she said finally, ‘I just wanted to tell you that it’s a real cheap trick.’