Nicola Barker - Three Button Trick and Other Stories

‘What else do I have to spend my money on? Huh? There’s nothing. I want for nothing. It would give me enormous pleasure to help you out.’

‘I don’t know.’ Carrie, for some reason, couldn’t stop thinking about Sydney.

‘Actually, Heinz, next time I come to the ballet I’ll be bringing someone with me …’

Heinz’s hand slipped from Carrie’s shoulder. His voice was suddenly flat. ‘Oh. That’s good. It seems such a shame to waste the seat every week like you do.’

‘Exactly. We go to the same evening class together.’

‘Does this person have a name?’

‘Sydney’

‘I see. I see.’

Carrie noticed that Heinz’s face was pale and doughy. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Nothing at all. Nothing.’

Carrie continued to stare at Heinz. Was he all right? He didn’t look it. She suddenly became nervous and she didn’t know why. She started to babble. ‘She’s Australian. I had to invite her. She asked.’

Heinz put his hand to his bow tie. ‘She’s a girl?’

‘Yes.’

Carrie watched with ill-concealed amazement as Heinz burst out laughing. He laughed so hard and loud that his toupee slipped. Then he plucked it from his forehead with his meaty hand, tossed it into the air with a great whoop and then caught it, just as deftly.

The sauna. Sydney sat bolt upright, her eyes as wide as saucers, each hand enfolding a single breast as though her amazement endangered them in some way.

‘You’re sleeping with this guy?’

Carrie’s towel was wrapped as tight as it could be but still she hitched it closer. ‘Not exactly. I didn’t spend the night …’

‘You fucked this man?’

‘Please! He’s eighty-three!’

‘Exactly! He’s eighty-fucking-three and you shagged him. My God! How did this happen? How does it happen that an attractive forty-four-year-old woman, in her prime, great body, big hair, the lot, shags an eighty-three-year-old man who she was the first to admit …’

‘It wasn’t …’

‘Who she was the first to admit is the fattest and most boring old loudmouth in the whole damn universe. How? Huh?’

‘Sydney! Please …’

‘Jesus, I can just imagine it.’

‘Imagine what?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Don’t!’

‘Guess what I’m visualizing, Carrie. I am visualizing this grey slug of a man with an enormous pale belly and a tiny penis like a party-time Mars Bar hanging down below …’

‘Stop it!’

Carrie was on the brink of crying. She was so ashamed. It wasn’t even the act, the fact of it, that shamed her, only Sydney’s perception of it and then her perception of it as a result of Sydney’s. That was all. And if Sydney hadn’t insisted on the second ballet ticket it would never have been a problem, she could have hidden it. She could have pretended …

‘He must be loaded.’

‘What?’

‘Money. Why else would you want him? Is he loaded? Is he going to, maybe, give you a little bit of money to start off your interior design business? Is that it?’

Carrie was mortified. ‘It isn’t like that at all!’

‘No? How is it then?’

‘I don’t know!’ Carrie started crying.

Sydney was unmoved. She said softly, ‘You know, I kept thinking you were taking this whole Jack thing too well.’

‘I don’t want to talk about Jack!’

‘What would Jack think, huh? What would Jack actually think if he knew what you were doing?’

Carrie stood up, covered her cheeks with her hands, bolted out of the sauna, through the changing rooms and into the showers. There she turned the tap to cold, ripped off her towel and pushed her burning face into the jet.

Sydney crossed her llama legs at the knee and then dialled Jack’s number.

‘Hi Jack. It’s Sydney’

‘Sydney? Well, hello. What can I do for you?’

‘I want to see you. It’s about Carrie.’

After Jack had put down the phone, he picked up his duffel coat and brushed it off. He was keenly looking forward to a cold snap.

It was a nightmare. Just as she’d imagined. Heinz wore his toupee and his turd-coloured tie. He kept regaling them with terrible stories about his late wife’s beloved red setter which had died—following several years of chronic incontinence—after swallowing a cricket ball. Carrie supposed that he must be nervous. Poor lamb.

Sydney was horribly polite. She kept staring at Heinz’s stomach as she spoke to him, like she expected, at any minute, that something might explode out of it.

When Carrie drove her home, she didn’t talk for the first ten minutes of the journey. She merely said, ‘Carrie. Leave me. I have to digest !’

Carrie left her. Eventually, after she’d digested sufficiently, Sydney said, ‘He belched throughout the ballet. It was like sitting next to an old pair of bellows. Christ, the orchestra should recruit him for the wind section.’

Carrie’s heart sank. ‘He wasn’t belching. He swallowed a toffee too quickly. It went down the wrong way. He kept apologizing.’

‘And that fucking dog! His dead wife’s dead fucking dog! Does he really think I’m interested in how they fed it a diet of fresh chicken to try and quell its chronic flatulence? Are you interested, Carrie? Huh?’

‘No.’

‘Pardon?’

‘No! No, I’m not interested. I’m not.’

‘And I just can’t believe …’

‘What?’ Carrie tried to keep her eyes on the road, but Sydney’s expression …’

‘What?!’

‘The two of you …’

‘What?’

Sydney’s eyes were glued to the road ahead. It was starting to rain. Carrie turned on the windscreen wipers just in time with Sydney’s next pronouncement.

‘Fucking.’

Carrie said nothing. They both stared at the road. Eventually Sydney turned her eyes towards Carrie. ‘Well?’

Carrie said nothing. She focused on the road and the wipers and the rain and the way that the light from the streetlamps reflected in the drops of water on the windscreen before each harsh stroke brushed it away. Where do they go? She wondered. Where do those moments go? The rain falling in just such a way, the light, the wiper. Something there and then something gone.

Sydney found she was boiling. Not hot, but something inside. What else could she do? What else could she say? Carrie had closed down, shut up, like a clam. Sydney cursed herself. She was too impetuous. Too quick to judge. If only she’d tried to be nice, to be supportive. Maybe then Carrie might have provided her with some details. Something to ponder, to mull over, fat to chew on. Damn! Sydney crossed her arms, stared at the road, boiled.

‘I got your number from the book,’ Heinz said.

‘Didn’t I give it you?’

‘No.’

‘I should’ve.’

‘She didn’t like me.’

‘No. Actually, I think she really hated you.’

‘Sometimes I can be overwhelming. It’s a fault of mine. I know that. But I am simply myself. When you get old …’

‘You tried your best.’

‘But did I? One tends to forget how it is to … uh … to play the game.’

‘Never mind.’

‘Can I see you?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Tonight?’

Carrie rubbed her eyes with her spare hand. ‘I only just got in. It’s raining outside …’

‘Tomorrow?’

Sydney lay on her stomach and rested the weight of her head on her hands. What was wrong? It was just … she couldn’t imagine. Carrie and that fat old man. My God! She just couldn’t picture it. Not properly. Not graphically. She rolled on to her back. Couldn’t imagine. But my Lord, my Lord, how she longed to!

Sydney stared at Jack’s buttons. Jack pretended not to notice. Sydney sighed.