Nicola Barker - Heading Inland

‘Huh?’

‘Outside.’

‘What cab?’

‘I called for one a little while back.’

‘A cab? Can’t I stay here?’

‘What for?’

Sydney started grinning but only half her mouth worked properly. ‘Sex, stupid.’

Heinz picked up Sydney’s pale silk shirt from the arm of the sofa and handed it to her. ‘I’m eighty-three years old,’ he said gently, ‘and entirely impotent.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Carrie asked, for the umpteenth time. ‘I can tell something’s bothering you. I only wish you’d tell me.’

Sydney had still not yet quite recovered. It was Thursday night at the gym.

‘Nothing’s wrong.’

She hadn’t been sleeping. Her elbows were hurting. She couldn’t stop thinking. .

‘I only got out of the house tonight because Jack’s at a conference. I swore not to come here any more. He seems to have got the idea into his head that you’re some kind of. .’ Carrie couldn’t think of the appropriate word.

Sydney was staring at Carrie with an odd expression. Either Carrie lied, she was thinking, or Heinz lied.

‘So Jack doesn’t know about Heinz yet?’

‘No.’

‘Well, let’s just hope he doesn’t get to find out, either.’

Carrie shook her head. ‘I spoke to Heinz on the phone. I explained that I didn’t want Jack knowing. He was so good about it.’

‘Knowing what?’

‘Knowing anything.’

Sydney smiled at this, and Carrie, for some reason, had cause, she sensed, to feel a sudden dart of disquiet. In her stomach. In her gut.

‘I told you not to ring me!’ Carrie exclaimed, terrified at the possibility of discovery.

‘Is it safe to talk?’

‘Jack’s in the bath. He’s listening to the cricket on the radio.’

‘You know I miss you terribly. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Heinz, there’s no point. .’

‘But this isn’t about that. It is about your friend, Sydney.’

‘What?’

‘She keeps calling around and she also keeps writing to me. She phones me. .’

‘Sydney?’

‘I just want you to talk to her. I simply want her to leave me in peace.’

‘My God. How odd.’

‘I miss you so much.’

Carrie’s cheeks glowed an unnaturally bright colour as she said goodbye and then gently placed down the receiver.

She waited until the last person had left the sauna. ‘Carrie,’ she said, ‘I’ve done something I think you should know about.’

‘What?’

‘I had sex with Heinz.’ She’d expected Carrie to blush or blanch. One or the other.

‘What happened?’

‘Straight sex. Nothing fancy.’

Carrie frowned, ‘I’m afraid I don’t believe you, Sydney.’

‘Why not? It’s true.’

‘He’s impotent.’

‘He isn’t. You slept with him.’

‘I didn’t sleep with him.’

‘You said you did.’

‘He’s impotent.’

‘So what. .’

‘He’s in love with me. He’ll do anything .’

Sydney stared at Carrie, confounded. Carrie was round and soft and lily white. She seemed peculiarly full of herself.

‘So let me get this straight. .’ Sydney said, wanting details so badly.

‘He just wants you to leave him in peace.’

‘Does Jack know yet?’ Sydney asked, knowing she was routed and turning nasty.

‘He doesn’t know.’

Carrie appeared unperturbed. Sydney shrugged. ‘Better make sure he doesn’t find out, then.’

Carrie only smiled.

‘Jack made a move on me, when we met up recently,’ Sydney said. ‘He tried that old three button trick of his.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘So you don’t even know about that one yet?’ Sydney asked. ‘Oh, you’ll just love it. It’s so cheap.’ And she set about putting Carrie straight on that particular matter.

He’d kept on nagging so in the end she’d been forced to give in to him. ‘It’s a terrible waste,’ he said, ‘to keep on leaving the seats empty.’

Anyhow, Carrie was bored of sitting at home every night with nothing to do and no proper conversation. Sometimes he mentioned the name of a new actress. Sometimes he wasn’t too tactful and inadvertently made her feel her age.

When Heinz finally entered the box, a little late, without his tie, pale-faced, dishevelled, Jack muttered, ‘Christ, I’d almost forgotten about him.’

Carrie said nothing, but she hadn’t forgotten.

Sydney was sitting on her bed and in front of her was a pile of scrap books. She opened the first one. Dry red wines from the Perth region. She touched the wine label and wondered about her mummy and her daddy. Her elbows were itchy. She reached for a tub of Vaseline. She dipped in her fingers.

Heinz had had several options: to forget about her, to confront her and tell her what a bastard Jack was, to be a kind of bastard himself. He was old. If he’d learned anything along the line, he’d learned that the little things didn’t matter, at the end of the day, but the big things mattered, and sometimes you had to compromise yourself, however slightly, to try to maintain that bigger picture.

In the interval they bumped into one another at the bar. Jack was several feet away ordering drinks. Heinz had given plenty of thought to this moment. He’d had several options available. He’d taken the cheapest. Arriving late, no tie, the business.

‘You look terrible,’ she said, glancing over towards Jack, her lips barely moving. She stared at his shirt. ‘And your buttons,’ she added, ‘are done up all wrong.’

He looked down at himself. ‘Really?’ he said, wheezing, like he’d barely noticed. But when he looked back up again his old heart began pumping.

Jack was walking over towards them holding two glasses. A whisky, a port and lemon. He was walking over. He was close and he was closer.

Carrie put out her hand and touched Heinz’s buttons. ‘Oh God,’ she said softly, ‘that stupid three button trick, you old hound,’ and her eyes started sparkling.

‘Look,’ Trevor said, ‘you’ve got to serve from the back, see?’

Wesley dropped the orange he’d just picked up.

‘Put it where it was before,’ Trevor said sniffily. ‘Exactly.’

Wesley adjusted the placement of the orange. There. Just so. It was neat now. The display looked hunky-dory.

‘Let me quickly say something,’ Wesley said, as Trevor turned to go and unload some more boxes from the van.

‘What?’

‘It’s just that if you serve people from the back of the stall they immediately start thinking that what you’re giving them isn’t as good as what’s on display.’

Trevor said nothing.

‘See what I mean?’

‘So what?’

‘Well, I’m just saying that if you want to build up customer confidence then it’s a better idea to give them the fruit they can see.’

‘It’s more work that way,’ Trevor said, shoving his hands into his pockets.

‘Well, I don’t care about that,’ Wesley responded. ‘I’m the one who’ll end up having to do most of the serving while you’re running the deliveries and I don’t mind.’

Trevor gave Wesley a deep look and then shrugged and walked off to the van.

Another new job. Selling fruit off a stall on the Roman Road. Wesley was handsome and intelligent and twenty-three years old and he’d had a run of bad luck so now he was working the markets. No references needed. Actually, on the markets a bad temper was considered something of a bonus. Nobody messed you around. If they did, though, then you had to look out for yourself.

Trevor had red hair and a pierced nose. Wesley looked very strait-laced to him in his clean corduroy trousers and polo-neck jumper, and his hands were soft and he spoke too posh. What Trevor didn’t realize, however, was that Wesley had been spoilt rotten as a child so was used to getting his own way and could manipulate and wheedle like a champion if the urge took him. Wesley had yet to display to Trevor the full and somewhat questionable force of his personality.