Paris for One and Other Stories Page 12

  "It's funny." He spoke through a rictus grin. "I don't remember you being this angry."

  "Angry?" she said sarcastically. "Why would I be angry?"

  "I don't know. Especially as, if I remember correctly, you were the one who made all the decisions."

  "Decisions?"

  Ben leaned a little closer to her. "Not to meet me? Not even to discuss what we had promised to discuss?"

  "Not to meet you?" She turned and stared at him. "Are we talking about the same relationship?"

  "Beth, darling, would you mind passing the wine?" Krista's voice broke across the conversation.

  She held it up abruptly as if she had won a prize. "Certainly," she said, her voice unnaturally loud.

  "The day you left," he hissed beside her, "you were going to meet me in the Old Hen, so that we could discuss our future. And you never even turned up. I knew you were having trouble working things out, but not a call, not an explanation? Nothing?"

  "The Old Hen?"

  Krista's voice again. "And the white? Sorry, darling. Just can't reach from here."

  "Sure!" She leaned forward with the chilled bottle.

  "And you knew I couldn't reach you once you had handed in your work phone. What was I supposed to think? Don't you believe that after everything we'd been through, everything we'd promised each other, that I deserved a little more than just a no-show?"

  Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It was the Coach and Horses. We were due to meet at the Coach and Horses. And you were the one who didn't turn up."

  Their eyes locked.

  Lisa appeared between them. Beth noticed, with vague satisfaction, that Ben flinched slightly at her hand on his shoulder. "What did you think of the lentil pate, darling?"

  "Delicious!" His smile landed on his face like it had been dropped there.

  "I thought you'd enjoy that. Krista's going to give me the recipe."

  "Great!"

  There was a brief, awkward silence.

  Lisa nodded wryly. "Business, eh? It's okay . . . you two can get back to your marketing discussions now. I'm trying to locate the ladies'."

  "Over there." Beth pointed through the crowd of people. "In the main house."

  "The Coach and Horses?" Ben repeated as his wife disappeared.

  The rice had arrived in front of Beth. She passed it to Ben, feeling an electric jolt as their hands made contact. "Two hours I waited."

  They stared at each other. For a moment the tent disappeared. She was there on a wet Thursday, weeping into her sleeve in an empty pub.

  "Did I hear you two talking about pubs?" Henry had arrived back on her right.

  "Yes." She swallowed. "The Coach and Horses."

  "Oh, I know that one. Up by the ring road, isn't it? Isn't it quite busy?"

  Her eyes met Ben's. "Not as busy as some of us would like, apparently."

  "Shame. A lot of pubs seem to be headed that way around here. It's the landlords, you know. Charge them extortionate amounts. They'll put them all out of business."

  They sat and ate the main course, something containing chicken breast. She didn't know.

  She could no longer taste anything.

  "Do you want some more wine?"

  She watched his hand as he poured, remembering how much she had loved the shape of his fingers. Perfect men's hands, long, strong fingers with squared-off ends, lightly tanned as if they'd been working outside. She had always compared her own husband's unfavorably to them and hated herself for doing so.

  "I don't know what to say," he told her.

  "There's nothing to say. You're married, I'm married. We've moved on."

  She felt the faintest pressure and realized with shock that it was his thigh against hers.

  "Have you?" he said quietly, and the words went through her like a seismic tremor. "Really?"

  She had eaten half a chocolate mousse, and the coffee cups were empty in front of them. She fingered her wineglass, watching as Ben's redheaded wife talked animatedly to a group of people at the other end of the long table. That could have been me, Beth thought.

  "All this time," Ben said quietly, "both of us believing the other had bailed out." His leg was still resting against hers. She didn't like to think how she would feel when it was taken away.

  "I just figured you'd tired of my indecision."

  "I'd waited the best part of a year. I would have waited another."

  "You never said that."

  "I hoped I wouldn't have to."

  She had grieved for him. Privately, hiding it from her unsuspecting husband. Tears in the bath or in the car, tears of loss for what might have been and of guilt for what had been. But even then with a vague relief that a decision had been reached. She was not naturally a duplicitous person; this thing had left her incapable of concentrating on anything--work, house, family. And the prospect of breaking Simon's heart had been almost too much to bear.

  Ben leaned in toward her, his eyes trained on the dance floor. "What do you think would have happened to us?"

  She kept her own eyes straight ahead. Her husband was talking to Krista. They broke off briefly to laugh at someone who had fallen from his chair.

  "I think . . . speculating on that is the road to madness."

  His voice was a low murmur. "I think we would be together now."

  She closed her eyes.

  "In fact, I know it."

  She turned to look at him. His eyes were soft, searching, terrifying.

  "Nobody ever made me feel like you do," he said.

  The world stalled around her. She felt her blood rising, her heart race. Two years fell away.

  Then she looked up, and as she did, she saw Lisa at the other end of the table. Lisa had turned from the group of people and was watching them both, her expression briefly unguarded, bearing the tense weariness of the constantly vigilant. She smiled awkwardly at Beth, then looked down at the table. Beth felt the color rise to her cheeks.

  Yes. That could have been me.

  She looked over at her husband, laughing. Unaware. Blameless. We're doing okay, aren't we? he'd said the previous Sunday evening. Uncharacteristically, he had studied her face as he said it. She took a sip of her drink and sat very still for a moment. Then she stood, feeling for her handbag at her feet.

  "Beth?"

  "It was good to see you, Ben," she said.

  Incomprehension flickered across his face. "You never told me where you worked," he said hurriedly. Henry the Damp-Proofer sat a short distance away, nodding in time to the music.

  "Maybe . . . we could have lunch sometime? We've hardly begun to catch up."

  She looked over again at Lisa. She put her hand gently on his arm, just for a moment. "I don't think so," she said. "We've both moved on, haven't we?."

  "I'm sorry--what did you say you did?" Henry called out as she left the table.

  Simon was standing near the bar, picking his way through what remained of the canapes. He would be searching for cashew nuts, his favorites. He found one and held it aloft like a prize before tossing it into his mouth. She realized she'd never seen him miss.

  "Let's go home," she said, placing her hand on his shoulder.

  "Still tired?"

  "Actually, I thought we could have an early night."

  "Early night?" He glanced at his watch. "At a quarter past twelve?"

  "Gift horse, mister," she said.

  "Ah. I'm not looking. Promise." He smiled, helping her on with her jacket.

  Perhaps she imagined, rather than really saw, the way he glanced behind him at where she'd been sitting, a flicker of something unreadable on his face. But with her husband's arm around her, just enough to stop her heels from sinking too far into the matting, Beth made her way carefully through the tables to the entrance of the tent and home.

  Crocodile Shoes

  She is peeling herself out of her swimsuit when the Yummy Mummies arrive. Glossy and stick thin, they surround her, talking loudly, rubbing expensive moisturizer into shiny legs, comp
letely oblivious to her.

  These are women with designer gymwear, perfect hair, and time for coffee. She imagines husbands called Rupe or Tris who carelessly toss envelopes containing awesome bonuses onto their Conran kitchen tables and sweep their wives into bear hugs before booking impromptu dinners out. These women do not have husbands who stay in their pajama bottoms till midday and look hunted whenever their wives mention having another go at that job application.

  Gym membership is a luxury they really cannot afford these days, but Samantha is tied into paying for it for another four months, and Phil tells her she might as well make the most of it. It does her good, he says. He means it does them both good for her to get out of the house and away from him.

  "Use it or lose it, Mum," says their daughter, who eyes Sam's increasingly indistinct hip-to-waist ratio with barely concealed horror. Sam cannot tell either of them how much she hates the gym: its apartheid of hard bodies, the carefully disguised disapproval of the twenty-something personal trainers, the shadowed corners where she and the other Lumpy People try to hide.

  She is at that age, the age where all the wrong things seem somehow to stick--fat, the groove between her eyebrows--while everything else--job security, marital happiness, dreams--seem to slip effortlessly away.

  "You have no idea how much they've put up the prices at Club Med this year," one of the women is saying. She is bent over, toweling her expensively tinted hair, her perfectly tanned bottom barely covered by expensive lace knickers. Sam has to wiggle sideways to avoid touching her.

  "I know! I tried to book Mauritius for Christmas--our usual villa has gone up by forty percent."

  "It's a scandal."

  Yes, it's a scandal, Sam thinks. How awful for you all. She thinks of the camper that Phil bought the previous year to do up. We can spend weekends by the coast, he'd said cheerfully. He never got beyond repairing the back bumper. Since he lost his job, it has sat there on the drive, a nagging reminder of what else they've lost.

  Sam wriggles into her knickers, trying to hide her pale, mottled flesh under the towel. Today she has four meetings with potential clients. In half an hour, she will meet Ted and Joel from Print, and they will try to win their company the deals they've been working on. "We need this," Ted had said. "As in if we don't get it . . ." He pulled a face. No pressure there, then.

  "Do you remember that awful place in Cannes that Susanna booked? The one where half the swimming pools were out of order?"

  They are braying with laughter. Sam pulls her towel more tightly around her and heads to the corner to dry her hair.

  When she returns, they are gone, an echo of costly scent lingering in the air. She breathes a sigh of relief and slumps down on the damp wooden bench.

  It is only when she is dressed that she reaches under the bench and realizes that although the kitbag there looks exactly like hers, it is not hers. This bag does not contain her comfortable black pumps, suitable for pounding pavements and negotiating deals. It contains a pair of vertiginous, red, crocodile-skin, Christian Louboutin sling-backs.

  The girl at the desk doesn't blink.

  "The woman who was in the changing rooms. She's taken my bag."

  "What's her name?"

  "I don't know. There were three of them. One of them took my bag."

  "Sorry, but I usually work at the Hills Road branch. You're probably best off speaking to someone who works here full-time."

  "But I have meetings to go to now. I can hardly go in my sneakers."

  The girl looks her slowly up and down, and her expression suggests that wearing sneakers may be the least of Sam's sartorial worries. Sam glances at her phone. She is due at the first meeting in thirty minutes. She sighs, picks up the gym bag, and stomps off toward the train.

  She cannot go into this meeting in gym shoes. This becomes obvious as soon as she reaches the publishers, whose marble-and-gilt offices make Trump Tower look positively Amish. It is also apparent in Ted's and Joel's sideways glances at her feet.

  "Getting down in the 'hood, are we?" Joel says.

  "Going to wear your leotard, too?" says Ted. "Perhaps she's going to conduct negotiations via the medium of freeform dance." He waves his arms to the sides.

  "Funny."

  She hesitates, then curses, rummages around in the bag, and pulls out the shoes. They are only half a size out. Without saying anything, she whips off her sneakers in the foyer and puts on the red Louboutins instead. When she stands, she has to grab Joel's arm to stay upright.

  "Wow. They're, um . . . not very you."

  She straightens, glares at Joel. "Why? What's 'me'?"

  "Plain. You like plain stuff. Sensible stuff."

  Ted smirks. "You know what they say about shoes like that, Sam."

  "What?"

  "Well, they're not for standing up in."

  They nudge each other, chuckling. Great, she thinks. So now I get to go to a meeting looking like a call girl.

  When she emerges from the lift, it is all she can do to walk across the room. She feels stupid, as if everyone is looking at her, as if it is obvious that she is a middle-aged woman in somebody else's shoes. She stammers her way through the meeting and stumbles as she leaves. The two men say nothing, but they all know that they will not get this contract. Nevertheless, she has no choice. She will have to wear the ridiculous shoes all day.

  "Never mind. Still three to go," says Ted kindly.

  She is outlining their print strategy in the second meeting when she observes that the managing director is not listening to her. He is staring at her feet. Embarrassed, she almost loses the thread of what she is saying. But then, as she continues, she realizes it is he who is distracted.

  "So how do those figures sound?" she says.

  "Good!" he exclaims, as if hauled from a daydream. "Yes. Good."

  She senses a brief opportunity, pulls a contract from her briefcase. "So shall we agree on terms?"

  He is staring at her shoes again. She tilts one foot and lets the strap slide from her heel.

  "Sure," he says. He takes the pen without looking at it.

  "Don't say anything," she says to Ted as they leave, jubilant.

  "I'm saying nothing. You get us another deal like that, you can wear carpet slippers for all I care."

  At the next meeting, she makes sure her feet are on display the whole time. Although John Edgmont doesn't stare, she sees that the mere fact of these shoes makes him reassess his version of who she is. Weirdly, it makes her reassess her version of herself. She charms. She stands firm on terms. She wins another contract.

  They take a taxi to meeting four.

  "I don't care," she says. "I can't walk in these things, and I've earned it."

  The result is that instead of making their usual harried, sweaty arrival, she pulls up outside the final meeting unruffled. She steps out and realizes that she is standing taller.

  She is a little disappointed, therefore, to discover that M. Price is a woman. And it doesn't take long to discover that Miriam Price plays hardball. The negotiations take an hour. If they go ahead, their margins will be down to almost nothing. It feels impossible.

  "I just need to visit the ladies' room," Sam says. Once inside, she leans forward over the basin and splashes her face with water. Then she checks her eye makeup and stares at herself in the mirror, wondering what to do.

  The door opens, and Miriam Price steps in behind her. They nod politely while washing their hands. And then Miriam Price looks down.

  "Oh, my God, I love your shoes!" she exclaims.

  "Actually they're--" Sam begins. Then she stops and smiles. "They're great, aren't they?"

  Miriam points down at them. "Can I see?"

  She holds the shoe that Sam removes, examines it from all angles. "Is this a Louboutin?"

  "Yes."

  "I once queued for four hours just to buy a pair of his shoes. How crazy is that?"

  "Oh, not crazy at all," says Sam.

  Miriam Price hands it back almost
reluctantly. "You know, you can always tell a proper shoe. My daughter doesn't believe me, but you can tell so much about someone from what they wear."

  "I tell my daughter the exact same thing!" The words are out of her mouth before she even knows what she's saying.

  "I tell you what. I hate negotiating like this. Do you have a window for lunch next week? Let's the two of us get together and thrash something out. I'm sure we can find a way through."

  "That would be great," Sam says. She manages to walk out of the ladies' without the slightest wobble.

  She arrives home after seven. She is in her sneakers again, and her daughter, who is just headed out, raises her eyebrows at Sam as if she is some kind of bag lady.

  "This is not New York, Mum. You just look weird, like you lost your shoes."

  "I did lose my shoes." She puts her head around the living-room door. "Hey."

  "Hey!"

  Phil raises a hand. He is where she knew he'd be: on the sofa. "Have you . . . done anything about supper?"

  "Oh. No. Sorry."

  It's not that he is selfish. It's as if he cannot rouse himself to anything anymore, even the cooking of beans on toast. The successes of the day evaporate. She makes supper, trying not to feel weighed down by it all, and then, as an afterthought, pours two glasses of wine.

  "You'll never guess what happened to me today," she says, handing one to him. And she tells him the story of the swapped shoes.

  "Show me."

  She disappears into the hallway and puts them on. She straightens a little as she heads back into the living room, injects a little swagger into her walk.

  "Wow." His eyebrows shoot up to somewhere near his hairline.

  "I know! I wouldn't have bought them in a million years. And they're a nightmare to walk in. But I pulled in three deals today, three deals we weren't expected to get. And I think it was all because of the shoes."

  "Not all of it, surely. But your legs look fantastic." He pushes his way up so he is sitting straight.

  She smiles. "Thank you."

  "You never wear shoes like this."

  "I know. But I don't have a Louboutin-shoe sort of life."

  "You should. You look . . . you look amazing."

  He looks so lovely then, so pleased for her and yet so vulnerable. She walks over to her husband, sits on his lap, links her arms around his neck. Perhaps the wine has made her giddy. She cannot remember the last time she approached him like this. They gaze at each other.