Commencing Our Descent. Suzannah Dunn
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over here.’ He is younger than I am, and I am paying him: I suppose that I can issue orders.
He came over, smelling of grass.
I looked down at my tray, at my cafetière. ‘You want some water or something?’
He, too, looked at the cafetière. ‘I don’t suppose you have any spare coffee?’
‘Oh, sorry: I didn’t think you’d want a hot drink, that’s all.’
‘But there’s something about coffee in hot weather.’
‘Yes, isn’t there. I drink far more coffee during the summer.’
‘Me, too. And the treaclier, the better.’
Treaclier. I laughed. ‘Yes.’
I went to the kitchen for a cup for him. Returning, I asked, ‘Has anyone ever asked you that question: if you were on a desert island, what would you pay five hundred pounds for? Has to be a food, or a drink.’
‘No,’ he raised those eyes of standard, boyish blue; he was smiling, ‘No one has ever asked me that.’
Philip says that I am a one for creature comforts. I suspect that I am made of them: take my creature comforts away, and nothing remains.
‘Tobacco isn’t allowed?’
‘You’re a smoker! I didn’t know.’
‘Ex-. But once a smoker, always a smoker. Nothing to do with addiction, everything to do with pleasure. Ideal for a desert island. And you?’
‘Well, when I was asked, I thought I’d say chocolate but found that I went for coffee, and that was a surprise. The same reason, I suppose: I live on coffee but, until then, I’d thought that I was simply addicted, that coffee was a mere addiction, not a …’ … a what? ‘Not a …’
‘Passion,’ he said.
‘A passion, yes.’
I had some physalis on the tray – an attempt to break the habit of chocolate – and as I offered him the plate, he asked, ‘What’s your favourite fruit?’
‘Depends what for.’
He raised his eyebrows: explain.
‘Blackberries for ice-cream, I think. Apricots for juice.’
‘Apricots …’ he pondered.
‘Yes, try it. Papaya for texture. And, oh,’ of course, ‘oranges for their smell.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And raspberries for …’ but the best I could do was, ‘for themselves.’
‘Unadulterated.’ He popped a physalis into his mouth. His eyes widened slightly with the first bite. Perhaps he had never had one before. But perhaps their flavour always comes as a surprise.
‘So, they’re your passion,’ he said, when he had finished his mouthful. ‘Raspberries.’
‘Well, they have a rival: strawberries, but only for the one that’s just right, the perfect one in every punnet. There’s always that one, isn’t there.’
Smiling away over the garden, he muttered, ‘Oh, Mrs Summerfield.’
‘Don’t –’
‘I was joking, that time.’
Yesterday morning, I went upstairs to Philip’s study to look for the phone number of a particular builder who had done some work for us. Searching through his desk, the drawers, I delved into a slurry of stationery, bills, insurance policies, bank statements and passbooks. Inside the deep bottom drawer was a box, a shoe box, which contained postcards, cards, and letters. I looked at the postcard on the top of the pile. Poppies Against the Night Sky, a painting by William MacTaggart. I knew that the card must have been from me, although I had no recollection of writing it. I did not want to read it. Instead, rummaging, I confirmed my suspicion that all the cards and letters were from me. I read none of them. I had had no idea that they had been kept there; I had had no idea that they had been kept. I had forgotten that they had ever existed. They were sloughed skins. But there they were, boxed: raw, sweet sentiments, layered with pretty pictures and become rather dessicated. I returned the card unread to Philip’s makeshift treasure trove, replaced the lid, closed the drawer, covered my tracks. I wonder if the writer of that card is as dead to him as to me. Does he miss her?
He is home early today because for some reason – I forget why – he is going into work tomorrow, Saturday. When Hal and I set off to come here to the park, he was cooking. His unexpected return was not my only surprise, this afternoon. Earlier, as I opened the back door, returning from a stroll down the road with Hal to the bakery, I glimpsed a figure in my kitchen. My breath boomeranged into the reverse of a scream.
The silhouette enthused, ‘That’s the kind of response that I like.’
‘Drew!’
Drew, who lives in London: sitting in my kitchen, reading a newspaper. I closed the door behind me. His smile shone with crammed, angular teeth. Leaning back in the chair for a yawn and stretch, he lowered a hand for Hal, who went warily to investigate the fingertips. As he looked down to Hal, a halo of sunshine slid around on his black hair. The ends of the hair were closer to his shoulders than when I had last seen him.
I demanded, ‘Where did you come from?’
‘The front door.’ His other hand gloved one of mine and he pulled me down so that he could kiss me. His lips were cool and papery on mine. I suspect that he knows I am made uneasy by his aim for my mouth. And that is why he persists. These kisses do not come from the old days, our student days, when we were flatmates. In those days, if we had kissed whenever we met, we would have been forever kissing. I cannot remember when our lives became separate enough to require these bridging kisses.
‘The front door was open?’
‘No, I used the key.’
‘The key?’
‘The spare, under the brick by the drainpipe.’
Discovered. The best I could manage was, ‘It’s not by the drainpipe.’
He steadied my gaze with his own – those eyes of no particular colour, but dark – and revised, sarcastically, ‘Okay, let’s say six or seven inches away from the drainpipe.’
‘And, anyway, how did you know that I was going to be back?’
‘Oh,’ he smoothed a curtain of hair behind one ear, ‘you never go far.’
I slapped the loaf on to the table.
‘Don’t be cross with me,’ his tone was impeccably even.
‘This is like something from an Iris Murdoch novel.’
‘I wanted to see you.’
‘You could have rung.’
‘You haven’t been returning my calls.’
Suddenly I remembered the last one, last week: a simple, Call me, Cupcake. I slid on to a chair, lowered my elbows on to the table and my face into my hands. ‘Don’t take it personally.’
‘I won’t.’ His smile was slow, considered.
I closed my eyes. ‘I’ve been so – oh, I don’t know – unorganised.’ As if I had had a lot to organise.
‘I know.’ A momentary silence, before he was explaining, ‘I’m on my way to a site visit ten miles up the road.’
‘Oh,’ I opened my eyes, ‘work.’