Eating Crow Read online

  Just before broadcast, I eyed the box of tissues hidden out of sight behind a cushion and said, “I don’t think you’ll be needing those tonight.”

  She looked down at the box.

  “Those, honey? They’re just for retouching my lipstick during the breaks.”

  She gave me a fearsome smile of icing sugar-white teeth that made the corners of her eyes crease away into cracks of expensive skin-care products, and said,

  “Trust me, dear. It will all be fine.”

  Now why did she have to go and say a thing like that? It was reverse psychology. In the past, when I heard those words, they were being used to soothe an anxiety which Lynne had identified before I had articulated it. This time all it did was make me question whether I ought to be more anxious than I was. I found myself eyeing the tissue box like it was a bottle of hard liquor that I might later need to slug from.

  At first the interview was straightforward. She asked me what Jeffries was like. She asked me all the Petersen questions about being in touch with my emotions. She asked me how it felt to know that a video of one of my apologies had been emailed across the world. I said it felt odd at first but that, given time, you can get used to anything. “I just hope people got something out of it.”

  She fixed me with another ice white smile that I took to be more punctuation to the conversation than encouragement. “In your country they refer to eating humble pie, I think. Here we also eat crow. Does the difference in language cause you any problems?”

  “Indigestion is the same the world over, Helen. It doesn’t matter what meal caused the problem, does it? We’re all people. We’ve all got feelings and that’s the level I work on.”

  “Tell me how you got started in this game.”

  So I told her: about Hestridge’s suicide and the effect it had on me. About Ellen Barrington and, without naming her, Wendy Coleman. (“We don’t need to go into details, Helen, for the lady’s sake. But let’s just say I treated her badly and I needed to face up to that.”) I didn’t talk about Harry Brennan because who needs to hear about an old man losing his lunch? But I did make it clear I’d done a big number on myself before embarking on the job.

  “My, that’s remarkable Mr. Basset. You really did apologize for everything you had ever done wrong.”

  Suddenly, into my mind came a memory and I shivered under the hot studio lights: an ancient garden shed, a single shadow of two people intertwined cast against the battered, clapboard wall, and one pretty boy’s face caught in an expression which said only, “What have you done to me?”

  “No, Helen, not everything. There is something left.” And I began to talk.

  Her name was Gaby Henderson and I loved her, although that barely does justice to the car crash of overwrought emotions. We met at university when we were both eighteen, at a party. The only curiosity was that we had not met before, because we took a number of the same courses in our first year and we already knew people in common. They had mentioned her, discussed her vivacity and her appealing eccentricities as if she were an exotic island they only got to visit occasionally, but none of the things they said did her justice. She had short dark hair cut in a gamin bob, dark eyes, and a laugh that made you feel like you were the only person in the room. I want to compare her to Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, because men always want to compare the women they have loved to Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, but that doesn’t do her justice, for she had none of the worrying vulnerability or faux innocence.

  Later I learned that she had made all the long, silky, ankle-length skirts that she insisted upon wearing, which suggested an instinctive understanding of her own long, lissom body. She read books by Anaïs Nin, which sounded like a filthy thing to do even before I got to read a single page, and collected records by people I had never heard of, like Chet Baker and Bobby Darin. She knew how to cut cloth on the bias. She knew how to make a martini. She knew a lot of things.

  I invited her out to dinner, to an American place in town used by the richer students. I was convinced the sophistication of the gesture would win her over, but then appetite kicked in and I ordered the one thing on the menu I could not resist. There was, I can see now, no chance of her falling for me when my fat cheeks were smeared with spare rib sauce and my fingers spent most of the evening in and around my mouth as I tried to rip the meat from the bones. Gaby didn’t recoil in disgust. She laughed at my jokes and I laughed at hers and at the end of the night she put her hands around my neck and said, “That was really lovely. You’re really lovely. Let’s do it again.” She kissed me on the cheek. I floated home.

  We did go out again. To the cinema. To the pub. For weekend afternoon walks in the park. She held my hand. She still laughed at my pathetic jokes. She still only kissed me on the cheek. It took me about three weeks to clock that this one was getting away from me; that I was heading again for Most Favored Friend status. Two months into our “friendship” I got drunk on Thunderbird wine at a party and told her I loved her.

  “Oh, Marc. I love you too. You’re lovely. I’m just not in love with you.”

  Bugger.

  The next morning, terrified I’d blown my chances for good, I phoned her. I said: I get a bit emotional when I’m drunk. You know how it is. I’m really sorry. Ignore me. What a fool I’ve been. What a terrible fool. She said: No, darling. It’s fine. It was really lovely that you felt so comfortable with me to be able to say that.

  “Lovely” was a big word with Gaby Henderson.

  She came over to the student house I shared and I cooked her dinner, which clearly impressed, because she knew her way around a kitchen but had met few boys who did. Soon we began cooking together. We even held dinner parties for our university friends, great overinvolved tableaux of neomaturity, complete with guttering candles and ice buckets for bottles of German Hock. Our friends watched us, working together at the stove or bringing dishes to the table. After we had served the main course I would sit at the head of the table and Gaby would stand by my side, a hand resting lightly on my shoulder as we took their compliments. And our friends would say:

  “Look at you two. Like a married couple.”

  I would glow because the bond between us had been recognized. But of course, we were not a couple or anything like it. One night I went round to her house to collect her for a party. I was directed upstairs to her bedroom by her housemates, where I found her getting ready. We were talking about the night to come when, as she opened the wardrobe door and without looking at me—without even glancing, to acknowledge my presence—she pulled off her T-shirt. She was braless.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” she said, as she riffled through her clothes looking for a new top. “But it is only you.”

  I had dreamed of seeing her naked, often more than was strictly healthy. And now I was being granted a viewing because I was only me. Oh, how I wished I was someone else. That night I got very drunk again.

  It was not, I think, an accident, that Gaby hadn’t met Stefan. No fat boy should ever introduce the girl he loves to his thin, good-looking friend, so unconsciously or otherwise, I kept them apart. I had been to visit Stefan in Bristol, where he was a student, but whenever he suggested coming to stay with me for the weekend I came up with a reason for why he should not. I was a realist, though. I knew he would have to visit me in York one day, and that when he did, my two closest friends would meet. The moment they did so, the outcome wasn’t in doubt. These were two very attractive people sizing each other up. I could tell from the look Gaby gave him that when Stefan got round to seeing her naked it wouldn’t be because he was only him. We were sitting in a pub not far from my house. I feigned tiredness, withdrew from the field, went home and sobbed. I did not want to witness the first kiss.

  It could, I suppose, have been worse. Gaby and I at least remained very close, even when Stefan came to visit, which was nearly every weekend. Sometimes we formed a little triumvirate, Stefan, Gaby, and I, our friendship reasonably equal and balanced all the way up to the be
droom door, which they closed behind them with deliberate finality as they set about inventing sex. She did still confide in me, which was something, and she had the sensitivity not to talk too much about their coupling when we were together, which was more than could be said for him. I had comforted myself that the affair would be short-lived because Stefan’s always were. He would see how far he could get, squeezing the juice from the lemon until it ran dry, and then move on. But this one was different. They stayed together for the rest of that first year at university and into the second.

  “I always thought falling in love would be really scary,” Stefan said to me late one night as we were sitting, just the two of us, in my bedroom, getting stoned on a little grass. “But it isn’t, you know. It’s the easiest thing in the world. I really think I’ve found the one for me.”

  I said, “I’m really pleased for you,” but I wasn’t. I fantasized about him falling under a bus or a train. The tragedy would force Gaby to turn to me for support and comfort, and swept along on a wave of emotion, she would finally realize that I was the one.

  “It’s a terrible thing that Stefan died the way he did,” I heard her saying in these dramas of mine. “But at least we finally discovered our true feelings for each other.”

  “Yes,” I would reply, “something good came from the tragedy. I know Stefan would be happy for us.”

  Although the relationship hadn’t yet failed as I had expected it to, I held fast to the notion that it would eventually buckle under the strain of their separation at different universities. Naturally I assumed this would happen because Stefan would give in to his urges and run off with someone else, whereas Gaby would remain faithful. It didn’t work out like that.

  It was the spring term of our second year. Gaby and I were at a Saturday night party, the usual crowd. For some reason Stefan couldn’t be there that weekend. It was late, we were drunk, and she was sitting on my lap, head rested into my neck, the gentle curve of her back eased into the softness of my belly. We were peoplewatching, swapping opinions on friends we had known for years and whom we now felt we could see in a new light, courtesy of the distance and feverish newfound adulthood provided by college life. Into our field of vision strode Gareth Jones: broad shouldered; meaty thighed; testosterone enhanced. Gareth played football. Gareth played rugby. He was studying engineering. Gareth was the kind of boy who, when we were 15, would have been first onto those heaps of adolescent males that we thought it hysterical to build at parties. Gareth had always been quick to laugh at my jokes, which meant he was fine in my book, although as far as I could recall he had never given me anything to laugh back at.

  I said, “Now there’s a big piece of male hormone.”

  “Gareth?”

  “Yeah. I’ve always thought of him as a friend, but you know what? I don’t really know why. We’ve never had anything in common.”

  “I’ve always rather fancied Gareth.”

  “What?”

  “Not in a hearts-and-flowers way. Only in a phwoar way. You know, a what’s-in-his-trousers sort of way.”

  She turned to look at me sleepily. “It’s okay to say these things to you, isn’t it? I mean, it’s okay to fancy other people when you’re with someone else, isn’t it? Doesn’t mean I don’t love …”

  I stroked the back of her head. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to go mouthing off to Stefan.”

  She kissed me on the cheek. “You are such a good friend. Don’t know what I’d do without you. It’s so lovely to be able to say what I’m thinking.” She turned back to look at Gareth. “He really does have a lovely ass.”

  Of course I wasn’t going to tell Stefan. My plans were much more sophisticated than that.

  Twenty-four

  In my defense I must emphasize that there was nothing calculated about my plan. It was entirely opportunistic. That said, the general notion had been in my head for a few weeks. The way I saw it, I would be doing everyone a favor if I helped Stefan and Gaby to break up. I considered it my duty to do so. Stefan was clearly dangerously in love with a girl whose thoughts were elsewhere. It was incumbent upon me as a friend to bring about the inevitable conclusion at the earliest opportunity, because the longer this sham of a relationship went on, the more the end would hurt. By the same token, I had to save Gaby from unintentionally hurting Stefan more than necessary—an act which I knew would distress her greatly—while also freeing her up for the relationship she was meant to be in. Which is to say, the one with me. Gareth would, of course, only be a catalyst. Anything which occurred between them would be temporary, for while the inside of his trousers might be mildly interesting, the inside of his head wasn’t. All of this was obvious to me.

  Another party, then. A few grams of potent grass in my pocket and Stefan nowhere to be seen. Arriving later from Bristol, Gaby says. Gareth smoking hand-rolled cigarettes by a tree out back of the house, one knee up, foot back against the trunk, watching the world go by. I suggest to Gaby that we slope off to an old shed at the back of the garden to smoke a joint but announce sadly that I have no cigarette papers. This is a lie, for they are in a jacket pocket, snug against my chest. The lie is necessary. I approach Gareth, who swiftly agrees to join us. A few papers in return for sharing a joint? Who could refuse? It’s a good deal. I hurry the two of them away into the nighttime shadows, giggling excitedly to each other. Just as we disappear around the shrubbery I look back and see Stefan step out of the house and into the back garden, his weekend backpack still slung over his shoulder. He is looking for us, but we’re out of sight before his eyes focus in the gloom. He’ll see us soon enough.

  Inside the shed one corner is illuminated by a pale wash of light from the house, breaking through the trees outside. I use it to see what I’m doing while I roll the joint. The light casts a huge fuzzy shadow of me against the wall, hunched and round-shouldered. Gaby is perched on a pile of bags containing bark and peat, her long, slender legs braced against an old shelving unit containing pots of paint. She looks comfortable and self-contained there, the delicate folds of her skirt hanging down to the floor. Gareth is leaning back against the gray clapboard side of the old shed, holding the same position as he did against the tree. There really is very little to Gareth. It doesn’t matter whether you move him from one place to another, from one situation to another. He still looks the same.

  They watch me silently, exchanging expectant glances. When the construction work is done I light up, the knot of twisted paper at the end bulging dangerously with flame that makes the other two laugh naughtily, before it falls back to a flickering, smoldering kernel of hot red. Quickly the smell of peat and bark and rubber hosing is smothered by the sweetness of the grass. I take a couple of puffs and pass it around. Gareth takes a deep drag, the peaks and hollows of his hard-jawed face illuminated by the burning joint for a moment. He goes into a comedy spasm of coughing when he can’t hold down all the smoke. We giggle. Gaby reaches out to stroke Gareth’s shoulder.

  She whispers, “Are you all right?”

  He looks up. “I’m very all right,” he whispers hoarsely. They hold the look and giggle again.

  I smother the surge of jealousy. I can deal with this. I have been jealous for months now. These days it is a general state of mind with me. It directs what I am doing. But this jealousy is different. It is a means to an end and the end is suddenly very close.

  I say, “I’m just popping outside for a sec.” They don’t even look at me. This makes sense. Why would two attractive, stoned people who fancy each other bother to look at me?

  Outside I sat down on the damp grass and waited, hugging myself to keep warm. How long would they need? How long did these things take? I had no idea, but I knew I had done my bit. In front of me I could hear the thump of music and the echo of laughter from the house. Behind me I could hear the occasional creak and whisper. I was the pool of dead calm between them.

  I pushed myself up from the lawn and wandered back to the house. Stefan was still standing in the ba
ck garden, nursing a drink, staring into the darkness. He saw me and cut straight to the point.

  “Have you seen—”

  “I’ve come to take you to her.”

  “Where have you—”

  “In the shed, having a quick …” I mimed pulling on a joint held between thumb and fingertip at my puckered lips.

  “Aaaah!”

  “Yes, aaah! Come on before they hog the lot.”

  We trudged into the depths of the garden. Only when we came within a few feet of the shed could I hear the creaking of the old wooden frame. It was rhythmic and continuous, like the sound a new pair of leather-soled shoes makes on a polished stone floor. Stefan noticed nothing, of course. He wasn’t primed to listen out for sounds. All he knew was that his girlfriend was in there waiting for him and that he was anxious to see her. He stepped ahead of me so that it was his hand which reached to open the door first.

  I heard Gaby gasp as the door opened, and then the world stopped. She stared at us over Gareth’s shoulder, eyes wide, her open mouth a big black “ooh” of surprise in her lovely white face. She was still sitting on the peat sacks, but her bare knees were up and separated to make room for his hips. With one hand she held on to his neck. The other she rested back on for support. Curiously, from the neck to the waist, her clothes were perfectly in place. Below that it was a sudden tangle of his shirttails and her rucked skirt and his jeans slumped to the ground about his knees as if deflated. Stefan stared at the mess of limbs and clothing, his mouth open. He closed his eyes for a second and opened them again, but the scene remained the same. Gareth stared straight ahead over Gaby’s shoulder, motionless, as if hoping that by keeping still nobody would notice him there.

  Gaby said, “Stefan, I’m …” He pressed his lips together, shook his head to silence her, turned and walked away back to the house.