My House Is Falling Down Read online

  I try to concentrate on the music but you really do need to be in the mood for Beethoven quartets and I am not. I’m not crazy about Beethoven at the best of times. I know he’s a genius but he’s a fractious genius and he makes me feel jittery. He certainly requires more attention than I can muster with Angus sitting beside me to my left, with his hands on his thighs – large hands, strong hands, the fingers splayed. If he stirs even slightly I feel myself prickle, and I am aware of my body’s slight but deliberate incline away from his: I am conscious of my legs, shoulders, hands, of where they are and how they might look; conscious especially of my eyes cast towards Angus, downwards and to the left – a thief’s angle, eyeing up the goods. I risk a slow, sly glimpse of his profile. I can smell him. I don’t recognize his aftershave but I wouldn’t; I know only Mark’s and this is not it. Angus’s scent is sharp and imposing. It is not, I think suddenly, the scent of a virtuous man. It is too impeccable.

  There is no interval and therefore no let-up, so a couple of quartets later we emerge on to the South Bank without preamble and I am disconcerted at being out here all of a sudden, feeling edgy, taut and excited. I have heard almost nothing of the music and Angus and I have barely had five minutes to speak and yet here we are walking side by side, and he has turned to me and smiled five, no, more like ten, times already. The temperature has dropped. The cold is no longer invigorating: the sky has clouded over and a fresh wind reports its easterly influence in surprising, bitter stabs. Now, I am as grateful to be well wrapped in my layers as I was frustrated earlier, in my haste to reach Angus.

  Angus on the South Bank: a man inviting description. His overcoat is so long, and so wide at the hem, it could pass as a cloak. I am enthralled by the garment’s low-pitched ostentation, by the way it concedes to him, simultaneously obeying and accentuating his body’s movements; and I am impressed, too, by the drama of a hemline few straight men would wish to entertain. There is a flourish to Angus’s gait, a fluency exacerbated by the coat that is redolent of a conductor’s swagger. Momentarily, I picture my children on Bonfire Night – frenzied little conductors themselves – assuming exaggerated gestures as they write their names with sparklers, making letters that dissipate the second they become apparent: gold script fizzing in the obsidian air, its beauty as fleeting as musical notes. And as my thoughts come full circle, it strikes me that with his leonine hair and commanding presence Angus looks like the conductor of an orchestra himself, someone to whom fifty people would surrender in unison without question – which amuses me because my brother Ed, who really is one, with the Berlin Philharmonic, has the permanently strained and slightly derelict appearance of an exhausted commuter.

  I consider the theatricality of Angus’s demeanour, a theatricality he seems completely to possess, and I see that this way of being in his own body, this easy flamboyance, is probably something he has cultivated over a lifetime and come to recognize as a great advantage, for it will have made him impossible to disregard. It only takes a walk beside a person to see these things, sometimes.

  ‘How tall are you?’

  ‘Six foot three, or thereabouts.’

  ‘Or thereabouts.’ I smile. ‘Men always do that. My husband is convinced he’s six foot two. He’s not.’

  ‘So, he’s shorter than me?’

  ‘That’s not the point. The point is, you’re not six foot three – I don’t believe.’

  ‘I’m a man,’ Angus shrugs, apologetically. ‘Men argue every last half-inch.’

  ‘Which is ridiculous.’

  ‘Because women don’t care?’

  ‘Oh, women do.’

  He nods slowly, taking me in.

  I smile; a Cheshire cat smile, damn it. I can feel it.

  We duck out of the wind and into a cafe: it is Angus’s suggestion. ‘It’ll be quieter elsewhere,’ he had said, when proposing a hot drink as we dithered in the concert hall foyer once the recital had concluded. Now, he puts his arm around me, not quite touching me, just carving a shape around my shoulders as he guides me ahead of him through the door, saying, ‘Are you sure this is okay? There are one or two other places further along but they’re all much of a muchness.’

  It’s warm. The seats look reasonably comfy. I tell him it’s perfect.

  On the walls are old, laminated posters advertising plays at the National Theatre: sweat-browed actors with contorted expressions are frozen in poses suggesting pain, passion, emergency. Love and war. Under a long glass canopy running counter to the messages of turmoil above is a soothing selection of flapjacks, muffins and cheesecakes. Further along the wall, the cast of Guys and Dolls is belting its collective heart out above an espresso machine.

  We order a large pot of tea, a round of cheese toast to share and two warm, dark chocolate brownies, oozing like unset tarmac.

  ‘I love to eat,’ says Angus, with relish.

  ‘Me too.’

  At a table by the window the afternoon slides away like the river running parallel to us, through the glass. We talk a bit about music, much more about ourselves. I keep my coat around my shoulders for I am shivering from the inside out and cannot stop, but Angus has removed his cloak. It lies over the back of the chair beside him but even inert it embodies prospect, of being filled by Angus. Angus’s eyes are brown, his hair thick and his skin olive, like a Latin.

  ‘Actually, I’m as English as they come,’ he tells me, when I ask about his forename, ‘but my paternal grandfather was Scottish, and my mother spent her childhood holidays in Scotland and loved it there.’

  ‘Thus Angus?’

  ‘Thus Angus.’

  He asks me lots of questions. I sermonize about Mark and the children. He wants to know what makes me tick. I pay tribute to marriage and family life. He says he means, ‘What makes you tick, apart from that?’ and I realize it is a very long time since anyone asked me that question and how it feels similar to being handed a beautifully wrapped present when it’s not your birthday. I volley carefully with return questions of my own but Angus is determined and his enquiries become steadily more insistent. He wants to hear and I am conscious of wanting to be heard. He seeks confidences: I hedge but insinuate promise. I don’t stop to wonder whether I should be behaving this way; it seems oddly admissible, given the circumstances. Besides which, it is interesting to do, to flex old muscles in a game of this sort. Years ago, I knew how to catch a man across a room or a table and though I say it myself, I was good at it. I assumed I had forgotten how. It seems not.

  All the same, I am ashamed by how much I am prepared so readily to share. It’s not the content of my disclosures that offends me – for when it comes to facts, I reveal little – so much as their indulgent manner. I haven’t had this kind of conversation with a man since I was in my early twenties and exhilarating though it was to get what I wanted, I was still appalled by the indecent ease with which I could accelerate in a flash from straightforward to siren. And yet it seems that this is exactly what I am doing right now, quite suddenly at a point in my life when everything I ever wanted I already have, at home. It feels like an unexpected detour into old rooms and former lives, or into a cupboard in which I discover that a long-discarded costume still fits and an earlier version of myself is around after all. It is a huge surprise, a jolt both fantastic and preposterous, but except for the sharp stimulant to my vanity it is surely meaningless. At least, that is what I try to tell myself, as far as it is possible with Angus sitting only inches away. It’s all very well being adorned quite suddenly in some historic version of oneself but to what end? Raiments from the past are just that: past.

  I remember one of my mother’s general guidelines for life: ‘Do not, in the first place, put yourself in a position from which you may later need to extricate yourself.’ Given my mother’s contained and close-fitting character, it was a maxim I always interpreted as meaning, ‘Take no risks,’ so I ignored it. Even a moderate chance of a poor outcome never struck me as a sufficient reason not to try something new, and accustom
ed as I was, when younger, to seeking excitement with the dedication I later applied to maintaining domestic security, my mother’s dictum seemed to me not only unrealistic but irrelevant – even absurd – considering the kind of person I was. If having an adventure involved hazard and exposure, and opting for defiance over caution meant that something interesting, unusual or even incredible might happen, then so be it.

  As I got older, however, I came to see that that is not what my mother was trying to impart; that her emphasis was instead on the safeguarding of oneself from unnecessary future difficulties. If she was advising me to keep more than half an eye on my general conduct and reputation, and above all to avoid those situations in which I might set myself up for embarrassment or unwelcome obligation, then sitting here today with Angus, I can see her point.

  The cafe has filled up. People are coming in cold, wanting hot food. Angus pours tea from a second pot, which he had to queue for some time to get. While he did, I savoured him from behind.

  ‘Your husband,’ Angus says carefully, ‘sounds like a truly amazing man.’

  ‘He’s the love of my life. With the children, of course.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know what that feels like.’ Angus sighs. ‘Never married. No kids.’

  ‘Your choice, no doubt.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. So, don’t pull that sighing number with me.’

  Angus looks me straight in the eye. I don’t flinch.

  ‘Wow!’ His tone is one of awe, and something else, too – a relish akin to delight. ‘You really do tell it like it is.’

  ‘I’m sorry, that was awful of me. I’ve never been much of a diplomat.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. I appreciate straight talk.’

  I should be mortified. I have, with minimal knowledge of this man and certainly no right to tell him what I think of him, been harsh and provocative. But I am not mortified and neither is he. He is charmed. I suspected he would be and am glad my instincts served me well; it is pleasing to be reminded that the way to another person is sometimes so easy, and the route so clear.

  Now he leans forwards, his arms stretched partway across the table, and he settles himself purposefully. He looks as if he is bedding down finally into something he has been hoping for.

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Your turn. Shoot.’

  I take a deep breath.

  ‘Okay then, Mr Wilson, a straight question: what about your amazing woman?’

  He does not miss a beat.

  ‘There is no amazing woman.’

  When I exhale, I realize I have been holding my breath.

  ‘Surely there are some hopeful birds out there?’

  ‘Not that I’m interested in.’

  ‘There must be one or two lurkers.’

  ‘Lurkers!’ He throws back his head and laughs with such vivacity that I think, So this is what you look like.

  I laugh, too.

  ‘I have no lurkers, sweetheart.’

  I don’t believe him, a man this attractive.

  ‘Lurkers!’ he repeats. ‘You really are funny.’

  He gives me a long, quizzical look, which I return. If he thinks he can outstare me he’s mistaken. I’m married to a lip-reader: I am considerably less discomfited than most people by a locked gaze.

  ‘Okay,’ he concedes, ‘I might have the odd lurker. And no, they are not my students. But,’ and he lingers for a few seconds, enjoying himself or my anticipation, or very likely both, ‘there is not one I would want to be sitting at this table right now. To put it bluntly,’ his expression grows more serious, ‘there is only one person I want sitting opposite me right now. And she is.’

  A woman squeezes past our table and accidentally catches the end of a teaspoon with her bag. It falls to the floor, together with a paper napkin. She doesn’t notice. Neither Angus nor I move to pick it up.

  ‘You must know,’ I say soberly, and I want to sound steadfast and dependable, ‘I’ve never so much as glanced left or right. Not once, in all the time I’ve known Mark.’

  Angus stretches his right hand across the table, closer to mine. In a raised vein between the second and third fingers, a soft pulse is visible.

  ‘So, I’m quite safe, then.’ His voice has dropped to a near-whisper.

  The wish to stroke that raised vein is upsetting me.

  ‘You definitely are. You’re a one-off music date.’

  ‘That, if I may say so, is a disappointment.’

  I want to feel that vein. I want his pulse under my fingers.

  The cafe door is being held open for a woman with a pram and the draught from outside is savage. My head buzzes. The clatter of crockery, voices and scraped chairs ebbs and flows around us, yet everything seems suddenly to close in and the light to fail. Angus’s hand is closer still to mine and now he reaches for my uncurling fingers and they meet – his index finger and mine, just the tips – and while we contemplate them, very quietly Angus says, ‘Lucy, tell me about you before Mark. When you were growing up, what were you like?’

  Transfixed by the pressure of Angus’s finger, I cannot meet his eye.

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Any sense,’ he replies, and his voice is close, closer. ‘All senses. Tell me,’ he croons. ‘Tell me all about you.’

  I look up and away.

  ‘I was not at ease.’

  ‘Why? Living with your famously difficult famous dad?’

  ‘Partly. I was just not a relaxed person and I think that’s probably still true. I mean, it’s different with the children, with them I’m someone else entirely, but I’ve never been especially contented and that has probably made me restless and with Mark . . . I mean, I’m not –’

  ‘Not what?’

  I consider how truthful I am prepared to be.

  ‘I’m just not an easy person.’

  ‘How so?’

  We regard each other for a long time and what might have been a plain, wordless interval between us amplifies into a fecund silence from which deliverance feels both urgent and impossible. Finally, Angus places his finger on top of mine and presses its firm, warm pad upon my glossed pink nail.

  ‘Tell me,’ he insists. ‘I want to hear.’

  ‘It’s hard to say.’

  ‘Lucy,’ he says. ‘Look at me.’

  ‘Okay. I’m looking.’

  ‘Why are you not happy?’

  It’s a dance and we both know the steps.

  Angus walks me to the Tube, to the top of the steps that disappear underground. We stand in the dingy remnants of the day’s light and the wind that is blowing even harder than it was earlier. I am shivering still, and not just from the cold.

  ‘Well,’ I say, ‘this is me.’

  ‘And this is me, wishing that you weren’t going home.’ He smiles ruefully. ‘I hope you’ll come again soon – to London, I mean.’

  ‘I do from time to time. I’ve got some friends here.’

  ‘Perhaps you might add me to their number.’

  ‘I might well.’

  He laughs. It’s infectious and I giggle.

  ‘That’s more like it!’

  We kiss on both cheeks; a brief and faultless conclusion.

  ‘Angus, I really must go otherwise my train will turn into a pumpkin.’

  A strand of hair whips across my face. Angus lifts it carefully to one side and loops it over my ear. Immediately, the wind blows it across once more and quickly I brush it aside myself, turning away from him.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he urges, as I run down the first few steps into a blast of stale, warm air. ‘Make haste, Cinderella!’

  I stop and look back up. Angus is smiling and waving, and without even thinking, I do it; I take off one shoe. Wobbling slightly on my other, still shod, foot, I place the shoe on the step beside me. A woman hurries past, huffing forcefully: I am in her way. A man dithers on the step above mine, confused. When he realizes that I am going nowhere, he dodges around me, irritated. At the top of the steps Angus is curious
. I pick up the shoe and wave it at him and when I see realization dawn upon him at last, clumsily I pull it back on, and I smile.

  ‘I would have brought it to you!’ he calls.

  I know you would.

  ‘I could have put it on for you!’

  And it would fit.

  ‘Mummy! You’re back!’

  Melanie emerges into the half-light of the hall. She is wearing pyjamas patterned with jungle animals and she has a half-eaten chocolate biscuit in one hand.

  ‘Hello, Mel! Gorgeous girl!’

  She hurls herself at me. I squeeze her tightly, growl, snap at her fingers and the biscuit. Delighted, she shrieks and wriggles. I squeeze her harder, growl more fiercely and snap again at the biscuit, which she stuffs into her mouth. I feign shock. Through giggles compromised by crumbs and saliva she munches hard, swallows, then winds her arms around my hips and pushes her head against my stomach. I thread my fingers into her hair.

  ‘My beautiful baby.’

  My phone pings.

  ‘Where’s your sister?’

  ‘In the kitchen with Daddy.’

  ‘You girls should be asleep. It’s way after your bedtime.’

  ‘Daddy says it’s okay to wait for you.’

  ‘Daddy would say that.’

  Again, the phone pings. I pull away slightly from Mel, swipe the screen, read the text message above her, my wrist resting lightly on her head: ‘Thank you so much for such a special afternoon. What a pity Cinderella had to go – the conversation had only just begun. Hope you returned safely to your crew. A. X’

  The hall is gloomy and the phone screen bright. Illuminated, I reply politely to Angus, and in the time it takes me to divest myself of my daughter, keys, bag, coat and scarf, Angus has texted back: ‘Next time, I could cook you a proper meal at home (if you would like). A. X’

  Quickly, I write: ‘I would like. L x’

  ‘Mummy!’ Mel is tugging at me, willing me further into the house.

  In the kitchen, Mark and Miranda are bent over a mixing bowl. Miranda has a wooden spoon in one hand. There is flour and cocoa dust all over the work surfaces and smears of butter on the handle of the cold tap. An empty packet of chocolate buttons and some daisy-patterned cake cases are to one side. The oven is on. It is eight-thirty and a school night and the place is a mess. It is proof, if any were needed, that there really is no such thing as a free lunch. I anticipate the clean-up ahead, which moral imperative demands that I do.