Barbara Erskine - Distant Voices

While he bathed she washed his glass assiduously, sponged the outside of the whisky bottle and then got out the vacuum cleaner and ran it over the carpet where he had been standing. Fleas indeed! She shuddered.

With a sudden pang of guilt that she could so completely have forgotten her meeting she went to the phone and called the office to instruct her PA. ‘I don’t feel too well,’ she explained quietly into the receiver and was amazed to find it was the truth. She felt sick and slightly feverish.

He reappeared in half an hour wearing her bathrobe. Voluminous on her, it sat on him like an outgrown coat on a gangly schoolboy, exposing long muscular legs and arms, and an expanse of hard brown chest.

‘No sign of a man up there,’ he commented as he threw himself down on the leather sofa. ‘I could have borrowed his razor.’ He sounded faintly aggrieved.

‘I suppose you’re hungry?’ Zara ignored his remark loftily. She was indignant to find that her heart had started to bang rather hard beneath her ribs as it had, she distinctly remembered, when she first knew him.

‘I’m starving, lady. Not eaten since the day before yesterday.’ He reverted to his whine. She ignored it.

‘I hope you don’t still expect oysters for breakfast,’ she commented sarcastically from the kitchen as she filled the kettle, remembering some of his more extravagant tastes. Her hands were shaking.

‘A crust will do, lady, just a crust.’ He appeared immediately behind her suddenly, and put his hands gently on her shoulders. ‘I suppose you want an explanation?’

‘I think I do rather.’ She gave a small laugh.

‘You could say I’d been down on my luck.’ He looked at her hopefully, then on second thoughts shook his head. ‘No, I know. It’s not me is it. Would you believe that I did it on purpose?’ He paused. ‘You’d never credit the things people put in their dustbins, Za-Za. Someone ought to write a monograph on it: The world’s great untapped source of wealth .’

‘I’m sure the dustmen tap it successfully,’ she commented acidly, slipping two slices of bread into the toaster. ‘Judging by the things they nail to the fronts of their vans.’

‘Teddies,’ Gerald said reflectively. ‘Your dustman here nails teddies to his van. I saw him as I came up the road. How anyone could bear to throw their teddy out I shall never know. It’s worse than homicide.’

‘Gerald! You never kept yours!’

‘I did!’ Her perched on the edge of the breakfast table to take the toast as it popped up, snatched his fingers away and blew on them hastily. ‘Didn’t you even search my trunks and the things I left?’

‘Of course not. They were private.’

Gerald stared at her. ‘You are truly a wonderful woman Za-Za. I wonder why I left you?’ He buttered the piece of toast thoughtfully. She was also, he noted, slimmer, taller, if that were possible, and overall a thousand times more stunning than he remembered her.

‘You couldn’t stand me, dear.’ She smiled. ‘It’s a shame because I really rather liked you.’

‘Liked?’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘Loved, then.’

‘Still in the past tense?’

She smiled. ‘Stop fishing Gerald and tell me what you’ve been up to.’

The black coffee had steadied her, and she sat down opposite him, elegantly crossing her legs, waiting for him to begin.

For a few minutes he ate in silence, giving every impression that he really hadn’t eaten for days, then he sat back with a sigh and reached for his own cup.

‘One morning on the way to office, I thought, Gerald, old chap, what does it all mean? You know, the way one does? I couldn’t find a convincing answer. So I thought, Right. If there’s no reason for doing it, don’t.’ He grinned and reached for the sugar.

‘There’s always the need for money, Gerald.’ She tried not to sound prim.

‘Money for what?’ You earn a damn good salary, so you don’t need it. I don’t need it. You had a house, I had a flat, did we need both, for God’s sake? Why should I risk a coronary for the sake of a subscription to a golf club full of bores and for the Inland Revenue?’

‘Gerald, that’s a very trite and short-sighted remark, if you don’t mind my saying so. And how,’ she flashed at him suddenly, ‘do you know how much I earn?’

‘I own your company, dear. No,’ he raised his hand as she put down her cup indignantly, about to speak. ‘No. You got your job on merit alone, and I am totally uninterested in policy. Now, as I was saying, I thought, Why don’t I drop out like all those delightful chaps one sees singing in the underground. The trouble is, I can’t sing. I expect you remember that. I can’t paint, or pot or woodcarve, to earn enough money to subsist, so I had to resort to begging. More coffee, please.’

She poured it for him without a word.

‘I told James to stop the car. I told him to take a month’s salary in lieu, drive the car home, lock it up, turn off the gas and the electricity in the flat, stick the keys back through the letter box – oh and empty the fridge. I thought of that. Then I called the office and said, “I’ll be away for a year or so,” and gave my solicitor a ring, about power of attorney and that sort of thing. I bought a large cream doughnut, simply oozing cholesterol, and a can of beer, put all my loose change in the hat of one of those pathetic young men you see sitting leaning against walls with their dogs beside them and started walking. Right then and there, in my city suit.’ He threw back his head and laughed. ‘I bet you didn’t recognise it when I came in.’

‘Did you enjoy yourself?’ Zara tried not to sound shocked or angry.

‘Marvellously.’ He reached for the breadknife, cut an enormous wedge of bread and began heaping butter onto it. ‘I’ve been all over the south of England and right down to Cornwall, to all the little off the road places one misses in a beastly car. I’ve stuck it for eight months.’

‘Why did you come back here then?’

‘For one thing I was hungry this morning. For another, I wanted to see you again.’

‘Gerald. How could you afford the stamp and the paper for that letter?’ She was suddenly suspicious.

He looked embarrassed for the first time. ‘Well, the trouble is Zara that I’ve begun earning money again. First it was only casual jobs: car cleaning, fruit picking, even potato lifting once – God! What a job that was. Then one night in a pub, I happened to recite one of the poems I’d been making up on the road as I walked along. They passed the hat round and I made about seven pounds fifty. A fortune! Well, I’ve gone on from there. Each town and village I visited after that I’d chat up the landlord and stick a notice in his pub saying I was going to give a recital. Then afterwards I’d pass round the old hat.’

‘Gerald, you’re not serious!’ Zara looked at him with real admiration.

‘Well, the truth is dear,’ he looked down at the cup, half embarrassed. ‘I think I need an agent or something. You see I want to have them published. I know it’s silly, but I’ve got ambitions for them. I’ve found out what life is all about, you see. For me, it’s poetry.’