I’ve been exposed and found lacking.
After introducing her to the old matinee idols, square-jawed and sure-minded, Zoe has presented me with a golden opportunity to play the heart-throb. But I have missed my cue.
It may be the middle of summer, but it’s been an overcast day with high winds on the south west coast of England. Zoe’s parents are on holiday in Copenhagen, and their converted farmhouse, with its brick walls and high ceilings, is as cold as a church. We could throw on an extra jumper, of course, but where’s the romance in that? Zoe sent me outside to chop wood; perhaps expecting me to strip down to my white vest and cleave logs with brutal precision. That’s how Clark Gable would do it, or Cary Grant. I don’t have a white vest, and I’ve never touched an axe in my life. Watching me swing, miss and come within an inch of removing my toes, I must have looked more like Benny Hill than Errol Flynn. So Zoe prepared the firewood while I removed the splinters from my hand. And then, when my fire died for the third time, Zoe stepped up again, to provide heat while I chopped vegetables and uncorked the wine.
I can’t even fly a kite.
Zoe swapped her shifts at the Duck, working Thursday and Friday night to free up today and tomorrow for an impromptu weekend away. We set off shortly after sunrise this morning, our train arriving on the Cornish coast five hours later, while the weather was still trying to make up its mind. Her parents’ house is a thirty-minute walk from the train station via the beach, where the Goldmans own a blue and white striped hut like something off a postcard. In amongst the deckchairs and spiders and deflated beach balls, Zoe found a kettle, mugs and a jar of instant coffee. We drank it black, watching the intrepid surfers paddle out and wait and ride back to the shore. Zoe laughed and took black and white photographs as I laid the kite on the sand, walking backwards and unravelling string in preparation of a fast sprint and vertical launch. But before I could offer the kite to the wind, the wind would flip the thing over, dragging it sideways across the sand or tangling the string around my feet. Zoe watched this farce for ten minutes before intervening. What you do, she told me, is keep the kite on a short length, letting the wind play with it at close range, before gradually letting the string out until the red and yellow diamond is no bigger than a postage stamp against the grey sky. There is a lesson to be learned, I’m sure. Maybe someone should write a children’s book about it. Kitty the Kite, a lesson about letting go, or holding on.
‘Sitting comfortably?’ says Zoe.
And I’m not lying when I say that I am. Thanks to Zoe, the fire is roaring; and thanks to her father we are drinking red wine from a cut-glass decanter. Whether the vessel has improved this bottle of inexpensive wine, who knows, but it certainly adds to the effect.
Zoe stretches her feet and rests them in my lap. ‘Then I’ll begin,’ she says, in her best storytelling voice:
‘Hippochondriac rolled out of his mud bed and yaaaaaaaaaaaawned. “I wish I could yawn like that,” said Irrelephant. “You’re probably the most best yawner in the morner.”’
‘I think we read this one on the way down,’ I say.
‘Did we? Are you sure?’
‘I never forget an Irrelephant.’
‘Sorry,’ says Zoe. ‘Am I being a bore?’
I shake my head, but can’t suppress a yawn. ‘Sea air,’ I say. ‘Chopping logs.’
‘Shit, I am, aren’t I? I am bloody borangutan.’
‘I don’t remember a borangutan.’
‘Joke,’ says Zoe.
‘Funny. Didn’t you say – when we were on the bridge – that you were thinking of writing something?’
‘Seems like a long time ago,’ Zoe says.
‘The bridge or the story?’
‘Both, I suppose.’ Zoe wipes her cheeks, and I see that there are tears in her eyes.
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Just remembering.’
‘Alex?’
Zoe nods. ‘The day he . . . that morning, I had this idea, a silly idea for a book. And I thought, yeah, I’ll write that later. But then . . .’
‘You miss him.’
Zoe nods. ‘Sometimes. He was . . . we had some good times together.’ Zoe’s hand goes to her hair, wrapping the white strand around two fingers. ‘Did I tell you how I ended up in publishing?’
‘No.’
‘You know I was a lawyer, right? Well, I was miserable. Hated it. I had eczema on my legs from stress and . . . it was a bit like being on the rebound, I think. Alex came along, and I just . . .’ Zoe makes a grasping gesture at the air in front of her. ‘Just clung on. Don’t get me wrong, he was fun and caring and . . . you’ve seen his picture.’
‘Handsome.’
Zoe nods. ‘You’re handsome, too, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
‘We moved in together pretty quickly,’ Zoe says. ‘He supported me while I quit law and found my way into publishing. It was like a lifeline.’
‘He sounds like a good guy.’
‘He was. I’ve never told anyone this before,’ she says, staring into the fire, ‘but, I didn’t love him. Maybe at first, but . . . not really. It was a . . .’ Zoe shakes her head, lets herself cry quietly for a moment.
‘Did he know?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, maybe that’s . . . you know . . .’
Small mercy is what I want to say, but it feels insincere and trivial, and I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence. Zoe understands me, all the same.
‘I used to be thankful that I never told him, but . . . I’m not so sure anymore. I feel like he died under a lie, and I . . . I feel so bad about that. If I’d told him, maybe . . .’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘And you know what else? If I’d told him, then maybe I wouldn’t be travelling in seven weeks. Maybe I wouldn’t have met you? And . . .’
I could say I understand, and hold Zoe’s hand while she cries. But saying it is easy, and meaningless and hollow. Proving I understand, though; reciprocating Zoe’s honesty and showing that I recognize her guilt and confusion, isn’t that the best thing I can do? Isn’t it the only thing?
‘Before I came to London,’ I say, ‘I was engaged.’
Zoe sits up, wipes her eyes and looks at me calmly. ‘To be married?’
I nod. ‘Except . . .’
‘You didn’t marry her?’
‘April. No, I didn’t marry her.’
‘Because?’
‘I didn’t love her,’ I say.
Zoe smiles, sadly and – it seems to me – complicitly. ‘Bad scene.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Was she pretty?’
I nod. Zoe kicks me.
‘Oh, right, sorry. And you’re pretty, too. Obviously.’
‘Obviously. So, what happened?’
And where does all this candour end? We have seven weeks left and I’m tired of keeping secrets and pretending to be someone I’m not. But at the same time, how much truth is enough, how much is too much, and how much can a person handle in one sitting?
‘What is it?’ asks Zoe, as if reading my mind.
‘I called it off,’ I say.
‘Just like that?’
‘Well, it didn’t go down as well as the proposal . . .’
Zoe laughs, and I hate myself for making light of what I did to April.
‘And . . .?’
‘I’ve known her since we were kids,’ I say. ‘Went to the same school. And, well, it’s a small village. Very small.’
‘I see. So . . .’ Zoe cocks a thumb off to one side. ‘You left?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be . . . it must have been awful. God, that poor girl. I’m sorry, I . . . God!’
‘I know. But . . . if I hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have met you, would I?’
Zoe shakes her head. ‘I’m glad you did,’ she says. ‘Well . . . kind of.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Kind of.’