Chapter Twenty-nine

IRING, AND get Dylan’s answer machine. I start a message saying I need to talk to him, and he cuts in, yawning. A minute later, I hear the sound of tea going down the wrong way, followed by lots of swearing. Half an hour later, he is tossing a teabag into a mug for me.

‘This is dreadful. First David, then the Bish, and now Bea!’

‘Ah,’ is all I can think of to say. I smooth down my skirt.

It turns out that, this morning, despite ‘lengthy petitions for divine intervention through the appropriate channels’, Dylan got the letter (actually just a sentence) confirming his meeting with the Bishop. After days of nail-chewing, Dylan claims he’d cranked himself up to such a pitch, he would almost have preferred it had the Bishop leaped out of the envelope and punched him on the nose. Although I suspect that the part of Dylan’s brain still reeling from the best part of last night’s bottle of brandy is relieved that this failed to happen.

I notice that Dylan still has sleep creases down his left cheek. ‘OK, so I get the bit with the Bish. What’s happened with David?’

Dylan groans, and drops Alka Seltzer tablets into a glass of water. ‘We’ve split up. I wish I could say I dumped him, but the rage is mutual. But, hey, I’m over it.’

I actually snort. ‘So, let me get this straight. You loved David enough to try and have a child with him, and now you’ve dumped each other, and that’s the end of it?’

‘What, like, sane and adult heterosexuals don’t make those kind of mistakes?’ he snaps.

‘Sure, we all do,’ I say, straightening my shirt sleeves and remembering my flight back from New York.

‘Although, of course I was a heterosexual once,’ he winks at me. ‘For five minutes!’

‘Don’t!’ I put my head in my hands. ‘What happened?’

‘She was a moose. Enough to turn anyone gay!’

I slap him. ‘Not me. You and David. Look, I’m sorry to hear you’ve split up.’

‘No, you’re not. You thought he was a twit.’

‘I didn’t!’ I say, slapping him again. ‘He just had this whole combat-trouser thing going.’

‘Hey, life’s a trade-off !’ he laughs, moving to sit on the kitchen worktop.

‘I just never thought he was as great as you did. But you loved him. And that’s why I’m sorry. Because you’ve been hurt again.’

‘If we all stopped having relationships because we’re afraid to get hurt, there’d be no point in getting up in the morning.’

‘Is that why you’re still in your pyjamas?’

‘Seriously, the whole baby thing? I’m coming to the conclusion that I got swept up in something, and that on some level it was a way to avoid really looking at my faith.’

I finish my tea. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I need to make some choices. Decide who I want to be. And it’s going to be hard. I have responsibilities. I have a parish. People who look up to me, who want me to do funerals, weddings, these big moments in their lives. And I don’t have the answer yet. I’m not even sure there is one answer. But occasionally I just want someone to put their arms around me and tell me it will be all right.’

He bangs his heels gently against the cupboards, a little boy who can’t reach the floor.

‘Which still leaves me with the problem of what to do about Bea. Bitch!’

‘Language, vicar!’

‘Careful, or I’ll make you do it.’

The room is suddenly filled with an absence of sound. A seagull’s cry, incongruous in central London, drifts in and out of the silence, as though asking for directions.

‘That’s it!’ cries Dylan, leaping down from the kitchen worktop.

‘No—’ I groan, sensing the freight train of Dylan’s plan careering towards me at speed.

‘Yes! You’re the perfect person. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.’

‘Probably because I’m not the perfect person—?’

‘You are!’

‘I can’t possibly play Amy and direct at the same time.’

‘You’ve lost your job. You need a distraction from your mother—’

‘It’s not a great sales pitch,’ I warn him.

‘Well, what else are you doing with your time? I see you’re still wearing your snappy little office clothes and heels, yet I don’t hear you mentioning interviews.’

I am momentarily stung. Can’t he remember how lately I’ve been struggling to hold it all together? Or how I lashed out at the mother of his church?

‘Well?’

‘Sorry. My mind’s on other things,’ I say, standing up.

‘Please, Bambi. Please do it for me. It’ll get me out of the most frightful hole.’

His use of my pathetic nickname only hardens my resolve. ‘Sorry, Dyl. I’ve got rather a lot to sort out right now.’ But, knowing that he’ll badger me until I give in, I start talking about my mother, and the fact that she seems afraid of something. Or someone.

‘So, you think she was in London to meet someone?’

‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘But you’ve asked her, surely?’

Historically, I remind him, the relationship has not permitted such freedom of expression.

‘Good point. So, ask the taxi driver who drove her to hospital. He’ll know where she was headed before she was taken ill in his car.’

‘Right. I’ll trawl through the list of twenty thousand unlicensed cabbies in London and miraculously find the guy I need. That should keep me busy for, what, half an hour?’

‘Now, now,’ says Dylan, striding out of the kitchen. ‘Don’t be tetchy.’

I drop my dead teabag in the bin and return to the table. I watch as morning sunbeams filter though the oak tree in the garden; the dust motes inside them are doing pixie dances on the kitchen cupboards. When Dylan returns, he is wearing a tweed jacket over his pyjamas, and a self-satisfied grin on his face.

‘Very fetching,’ I say, tracing whorls of wood in the table.

‘What a shame you find my latest attire so, how shall we say, tiresome.’

‘If the Bishop doesn’t sack you for heresy, it’ll be for sartorial schizophrenia.’ When Dylan fails to reply, I look up to find him holding something out to me. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘Keep up, Einstein. It’s been in my pocket all the time. Since your mother was admitted.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

Dylan flops into a chair. ‘I withheld it deliberately, because I am spiteful and childish,’ he intones with feigned sincerity.

‘OK,’ I say, penitently, stroking the driver’s business card. ‘Even I didn’t know this might be useful—’

‘Even you!’ retorts Dylan. ‘Even Little Miss Perfect!’

I lean over and kiss his cheek. ‘Oh, Dyl, this is brilliant. I’ll ring this guy as soon as I’ve seen my mother. In fact, I might even ring from the cab.’ I start gathering my belongings. ‘This is the best news I’ve had in ages. I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you.’

*

My first act as the new director is to force Dylan to offer Pamela a role in the rejigged cast. This Pauline conversion is achieved by persuading him that a better show can be achieved at very little cost to his sanity. Privately, I hope to exploit his mother’s hoarding tendencies for costumes and props. Whereas I loathe clutter (my monthly donations keep numerous local charity shops financially solvent), Pamela stockpiles everything, as though early widowhood rendered her incapable of losing anything else. If the production’s a flop, at least it will be visually authentic.

After a fleeting visit to the hospital, where Mother informs me that she’s ‘never liked this particular brand of chocolate’, I drive to Kentish Town. Over a midday gin and tonic, Pamela agrees to play Joanne, the blowsy, ageing alcoholic who inadvertently gets the hero to consider marriage. Pamela’s fun, but she is exhausting. Her ready supply of waspish anecdotes always has me feeling I’m auditioning for something.

‘So, do you plan to remain in headhunting?’ she asks sharply, at one point.

I murmur something about having a few things to sort out first.

‘Ah yes, your mother,’ says Pamela, crunching on an ice cube.

Dylan is so bloody indiscreet.

‘Well, there’s so much about my mother I don’t know. What was it someone once said? “The unexamined life is not worth living”?’

Pamela lights another cigarette, shakes the match and inhales deeply before locking her eyes on me. ‘I prefer to think that the unlived life is hardly worth examining. You’d do well, dear Amber, to remember that, before you waste your life trying to change what cannot be changed.’