Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas
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didn’t turn his head. ‘I can have a fucking glass of wine, can’t I?’
Hannah lifted one buttercup-yellow shoulder. She sat down between Andrew and Jimmy without looking at Darcy again. It was Vicky who stood up, walked to the other end of the table and poured the drink for him. Everyone stared at the glass, as if the Californian Cabernet had taken on some significance of its own. Darcy sat in Gordon’s place, pushing away Gordon’s plate with his forearm. He drank half of the wine and then set his glass down with exaggerated care. It was obvious that it wasn’t his first drink of the day.
‘So who won the big match?’ he asked. ‘Jim?’
Jimmy was rigid with the anticipation of a different question. The certainty that Lucy must have talked to her father began to break up, permitting different, more hopeful interpretations of Darcy’s mood. He grinned at Darcy.
‘Ah, Gordon and me. Piece of cake.’
Jimmy heard the little musical jingle of Marcelle’s improbable earrings as he dropped one arm around her shoulders, and he absent-mindedly squeezed her as if she were the trophy.
Andrew protested that it had been no piece of cake. Conversation resumed in relieved eddies. Darcy had been drinking, that was all.
Michael’s eyes guardedly met Hannah’s across the table. He saw now that she was carefully made up but the artifice did not quite hide some shadow in her face. She seemed less pretty than usual. He found this juxtaposition of public Hannah with the other Hannah he had discovered both touching and disconcerting. He made himself look away, to Darcy.
Darcy was loudly talking, tilting his glass, complaining that he had not been able to play tennis. Michael was belatedly shocked by what he saw.
There was a flush over Darcy’s cheeks and nose, but the skin seemed loosened on the bone. There was a bluish tinge to his lips that bled out into the lined flesh around his mouth. He was still handsome, even imposing, but it was as if the good looks had all along been only pasted on to some crumbling substructure.
Michael’s professional mind began to tick. He recalled the name of the Cleggs’ GP, and resolved that he must have a quiet word with his colleague, Darcy’s cardiac specialist.
Then, fully-formed, the thought delivered itself to him. What happens if he dies? What happens to Hannah? Hannah …
Once it had come to him, it seemed absurd that he had not asked himself the question before. But Darcy had always been a solid, massive presence amongst the couples and in Grafton itself. How much more invincible must he seem to Hannah? Yet he had suffered one heart attack in front of them, and he was plainly ill.
A new set of reckonings took root and multiplied as Michael looked across the table again, to Hannah. He shivered, torn between apprehension and desire for her. Hannah was talking, making Andrew laugh at something she said, and her hands moved fluently between them.
The children dispersed indoors. Gordon brought candles in holders to the table and the flames steadied within their glass chimneys. At once the darkness concentrated beyond the margin of the circle. Tiny moths were drawn to the light, and spiralled upwards in the treacherous heat.
The talk within the fragile dome of light fragmented, growing thin, as if they were each aware of other, unspoken and more significant conversations.
Darcy barely touched his food, but he drank steadily. He could not let the smallest talk begin at the other end of the table without leaning forward, his bulk weighty against the table, scowling and demanding, ‘What? What the hell are you talking about?’
It was as if he wanted to demonstrate his supremacy here, at least, in the company of friends. The couples were kindly to him, making space for him as his interruptions and pronouncements grew louder, more insistent and less rational, until conversation almost foundered. Darcy’s words began to slur and he frowned, as if affronted to find his tongue beyond his control.
‘What do you know?’ he pursued some argument in Andrew’s direction. ‘What the … what the fuck do you know?’ His face contorted with anger and frustration, but the reason for the disagreement had already escaped him. His helplessness was apparent to all of them.
Hannah would not look at him.
Gordon left everyone’s glasses empty. But then, with a small cunning smile, Darcy bent down and reached out for an uncorked bottle that was left half-hidden in the shadow beside the barbecue. It clearly cost him a physical effort to bend and twist and there was an instant, with the bottle in his grasp, when it seemed that he would not be able to heave himself upright again. But Darcy did sit up, and he placed the full bottle beside his glass with a hiss of triumph.
‘Anyone join me?’ he called.
His fist tightened around the neck of the bottle. He lifted it, brandished it over his glass, and then tilted. Misjudging the distances, he clipped the rim of the glass with the bottle. The wine gushed but the glass was already falling. Darcy tried to catch at it, but his confused hands fumbled and the bottle fell too, a dark plume of wine making a twisted arc in the candlelight. A crimson jet sprayed across the cloth and the wine glass rolled over the edge of the table to smash on the paving.
There was a confusion of movement. The bottle was caught, hands reached to mop up the rivulets of wine.
Michael said, ‘Darcy? Are you all right?’
Darcy did not answer. His head was bowed, so that he seemed to be staring down at the shattered glass. Very slowly, painfully, he lifted one arm and then the other until his elbows rested on the table. Then he covered his face with his hands.
Very quietly he said, ‘Oh God.’
In the candlelight the faces except Hannah’s were like pale moons, reflecting their separate concerns and their diffidence and embarrassment.
Michael had begun to stand, but Vicky was quicker. She reached Darcy’s side before he lifted his head from his hands.
‘Yes, I’m all right,’ Darcy said.
He seemed suddenly completely sober, surprised to see them staring at him.
Vicky touched his shoulder. ‘Come inside. I’ll make you a cup of coffee. It’s getting cold out here.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ Darcy went with her, heavy-footed but as obedient as a child.
Gordon watched them go. He was impressed by the calm directness of Vicky’s intervention, and he felt a quiver of renewed love for her as she led Darcy out of sight into the house. And at the same time, as if some subconscious recognition swam towards the surface of his mind, a question formed in his head.
Janice began to collect the plates and Gordon bent to pick up the broken pieces of glass. The others pushed back their chairs, feeling the release of tension. A buzz of concern centred on Hannah.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Gordon. ‘We shouldn’t have come. Only he wanted to, and he isn’t stoppable when he wants something.’ She spread her hands helplessly.
‘How is he?’ Michael asked. The others were quiet, deferring to his superior medical insights.
Hannah hesitated. ‘Well … perhaps if I could talk to you about it, some time …’
Their eyes met again, mutely signalling to each other, I must see you, I need you.
Gordon was prompt. ‘If you want to have a quick chat, if you think Mike can help, why don’t you go in there, in my study?’
There were French windows, open on the garden, on the other side of the house from the kitchen. Hannah nodded.
‘I’d be grateful. That’s if you don’t mind, Michael? I’m sorry the evening’s ruined.’
Marcelle held herself still, listening to the rushing sound her blood made in her ears.
With the yellow linen shirt brushing against his sleeve, Michael walked with Hannah into the house.