Extract from In Time

Lauren Glasgow

Of course it was an ending. That much was obvious on the day you buried your oldest friend. But it was a different sort of ending too. It was the end of pretending. And he supposed, like all the cliches said, it was also a beginning. Each evening, stood at the end of his garden – all these years later – he listened to the gurgling of the river and tried to search for the forks in those tributaries, looking for the earliest moment that could have carried him along to a different shore. That was the thing about time. It was like water. The more tightly you tried to grasp onto it the more it split apart, rushing over you, past you, around you, and before you knew it, it was gone and you weren’t sure any more what you were trying to hold on to or why. 

So yes, when he looked back, the last time he could pretend he didn’t know, was the day of Oscar’s funeral. But that wasn’t the beginning. Because before the funeral was the phone call. And before the phone call was the dinner party. And before and before and before. Like trying to find a dropped stone in a surging brook. Were there any fixed points? There had to be. Stones tumbled along the river bed before they came to rest, and sometimes you could pluck one out, slick and smooth and say – here it is. A moment that matters, that changed the course of things. His first kiss; Elise dancing; Sarah on that cold January day. When Mikey called that night.

By the time Oscar was dead, Fred had spent so long waiting for the past to reach out and drag him backwards, it was absurd that in the end, it had caught him off guard. He’d got comfortable. Maybe comfortable was the wrong word. He’d got used to a new life – resigned maybe – but there had always been a current, just there under the surface, pulling at him, whispering. 

But was that true? Maybe it was only afterwards, visible like a faint floodmark after the water had drained away, that the past seemed to have been inside every new moment – every decision he’d ever made. Because when he’d turned up for dinner that evening with Sarah, he might have been a little fed up – might even have been wishing he was somewhere else. But he hadn’t been thinking about the past. He hadn’t heard a whispering or felt a current, or felt shadowy metaphorical hands tightening slowly around his neck. If he was honest, he hadn’t been thinking about much more than whether the wine he’d just bought was expensive enough to disguise the fact he’d grabbed it at the local corner shop.

The fateful dinner of the phone call – as he’d taken to calling it in his head, like the wordily prophesied moniker of a Dickensian chapter heading – might, he realised, have pre-emptively taken on a sort of sacred significance. But not, he had to admit to himself, because of any premonition of what was to come. It was the first time they’d been over since the renovation – a phrase which amongst the four of them seemed to have taken on the same hallowed import as a certified body of Christ reincarnation. Let the blood of Jesus anoint your new architrave. Receive your centre-point pivot Velux as a gift from God. Build your church. Amen. Perhaps that was why they were so blissfully oblivious to the sands of time trembling underfoot. Too busy admiring the freshly laid parquet floor probably. 

Over the past year they had seen Emil and Madeleine with a regularity that belied conscious thought. If not invited round to try the newest Ottolenghi on Emil’s ever-expanding repertoire, they ventured out to well-reviewed small plates restaurants on gentrified side streets – so many hidden gems in South London when you know where to look. Sometimes they were joined by other couples – men Emil knew from his advertising firm, or old university pals that came with glistening-haired women and bottles of expensive Châteauneuf-du-Pape. But Sarah knew Madeleine from school and their bond seemed to break through the rattling cast of irregulars. And he was with Sarah – he loved Sarah – so now he did what she did. Which with increasing certainty, meant seeing Emil and Madeleine.

Madeleine opened the door with a beaming smile. It struck Fred, not for the first time, how expensive she looked. How was she always so clean? Like she’d just that moment stepped off the pages of House and Home, miraculously sparkling and put together. The two women embraced on the doorstep and then as she leaned in to give Fred a light kiss on the cheek, he caught a whiff of her perfume, cloying and sweet. Did she notice him shudder? Her white silk shirt was tucked into loose trousers, so that when she waved them inside, she seemed to billow in the breeze that had slipped in off the street. 

– Gorgeous dress Sarah. Emil’s just in the kitchen slaving away – he’ll be out in a moment. You must excuse the mess, it’s been absolute chaos as you know.  

When they stepped out of the hallway and into the distinctly unchaotic dining room, Fred didn’t know what he was expecting. Perhaps after all he’d heard about the expensive beautification of this palatial Victorian maisonette, anything short of the Sistine Chapel was going to disappoint. He wouldn’t have been shocked to see the hand of God reaching across the newly-corniced celling. But as he took in the blankness of the white walls, the artfully arranged furniture, the large Danish dining table – even the shining floor that swept out into a glass entangled extension overlooking an impossibly long garden – he could see it was impressive, that it was what you were supposed to want. He supposed it was what he wanted. But somehow, here – 

Sarah had moved away from him into the centre of the room.

– It’s beautiful, Madeleine. Oh you did go for the blue velvet armchair in the end. It looks just perfect in here. And the way they’ve done those windows.

Sarah raised her arm, motioned with her open hand towards the front of the house,

–  You were right, the light just bounces off the walls. 

He wondered if Madeleine could hear the envy vibrating underneath Sarah’s words. Over the past year she had returned from their prosecco-soaked evenings, eyes shining with the zeal of a new convert. She would tell him the benefits of sand-blasted tiles shipped direct from Morocco, outline the relative benefits of classic brass hardware over the trend for matt black brushed steel. The fact that they hadn’t yet bought a place together seemed a fact so irrelevant, he wasn’t stupid enough to mention it. But he knew that pretty soon they were going to have another conversation about how far his teaching salary could stretch. Had he made that sigh aloud or was it just in his head? Sarah and Madeleine were looking at him. Aloud then. He took his hands out of his pockets, lifted his right arm to point towards the windows. 

– Yes, it really is beautiful, Madeleine.

She nodded, turned back to Sarah as she gestured for them to look around. 

– You’re so kind. I shouldn’t complain, but really – it has been rather stressful. Our builder, oh you know how it is, always adding expenses here and there. It’s so hard to find workmen you can trust, isn’t it?  

Madeleine looked across to Fred who blinked, before she started up again,

– But he was a good sort in the end. Polish you know, so cheaper. And they’ve got the work ethic. Not like some of these English ones, frightfully lazy. Silas – you know Emil’s friend from Durham – had a terrible time when he was getting his loft done. Young men stopping every thirty minutes to go on a fag break apparently. Took a two-hour lunch break to visit the local café.  

As she spoke Fred had moved through the room towards the French windows. Outside he watched as a grey cat leapt onto one of the walls running out towards the back of the garden where it disappeared behind a shadow. He thought about the boozy client lunches he knew permeated Madeleine’s working week. Fucking hypocrite. From behind him he heard Sarah.

– Dreadful Madeleine. I can’t imagine.

– Well, when I heard that, I told Jakub just how glad we were – well, you know?

– Of course.

– We must give you his number for when you get your place.  

He looked back into the room, the light from the garden making him momentarily blind. A black shape hung, fleeting, over Sarah’s face before he blinked it away. He tried to smile at her, but she glanced away. Madeleine gave him a meaningful look and turned back to Sarah who replied. 

– That’s so kind, yes that would be great.

She was running her finger along the arm of a dining chair, looking intently at the walls. 

– What Farrow and Ball did you go for in the end? Is this Mole’s breath?

Just then, the door banged open, Emil burst in, tea-towel thrown over his shoulder, a bottle wedged under his armpit and four champagne glasses clinking between his fingers. 

– Time for a bloody celebration I think. Grab these will you, mate.

His thick black hair falling across his forehead, a curly wave, he signalled to Fred with a nod. Fred took the glasses and placed them on the table as Emil began unwrapping the top of the bottle.

– Did I hear Madeleine telling you about Jakub? Terrific bloke, you know. Bit of a pain having him and his boys in the house all day – but no denying they’ve done a stellar job.  Now listen, the dinner will be ready in thirty so plenty of time for fizz. 

They stood sipping at their champagne, their glasses glittering in the evening sun. Emil talked to them about his week, a complicated story about a difficult client, a climbing wall and a human-size model of a crisp packet. As he spoke, Emil ran his fingers through his hair, voice pitching up into sporadic barks of laughter. There was something Fred found soothing about being in the company of men like Emil. The way he could fill a room with noise, his endless anecdotes that seemed to weave together into a perpetual, never-ending narrative. There was never a punchline. The different threads looped back in on themselves, stitched together to create new beginnings over and over, only coming to an end when someone eventually interrupted, or he took a toilet break – whichever came first. It allowed Fred to sit inside himself. To watch. To listen. It wasn’t like those excruciating encounters with Emil’s friends. Those times when he was asked to offer something up by way of exchange. He knew he was required to transform some ordinary experience of the past week into a heroic endeavour or witty adventure. He could see the way those other men did it. How they could use the conversation to stitch together a story, revealing in wordy glory, their nous for a good deal, their superior intellect or impressive generosity. And then Fred was expected to do the same. He didn’t know exactly how he got it wrong. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what made a good story, how to present material, how to talk to people. He was a teacher for god’s sake. But somehow with those men... And when he stopped talking, their embarrassed glances – and awkward, too-long pauses – told him everything he needed to know. But with Emil he could just listen. Or not listen. Whichever. As long as he looked interested, he had space inside himself to think about other things. 

– Emil darling, I can hear the ding-er dinging.

Emil paused mid-sentence, listening, a fox caught suddenly in the glare of a streetlamp. 

– Fred mate, get that bottle of red open.

He paused for a moment on his way out the door.

– You’re in for a bloody treat.

As they relocated over to the table, Fred reached out an arm, tried to place it around Sarah’s waist, wanted suddenly to feel close to her, kiss her cheek maybe. But she pulled away from him, drew out a chair, so that his outstretched arm hung for a moment, before falling by his side. Sarah sat down, Madeleine looking at him, a faint frown.

– The bottle opener’s just over there Fred. That’s it, by the drink’s tray.

He filled their glasses and slipped in to sit beside Sarah. 

– And how is school Fred? 

– Yeah, it’s OK – busy.

– I don’t know how you do it. You’re a saint, honestly. Just the other day, a whole gang of them – you know – loitering, making a nuisance of themselves outside the station. Such a racket. Shouting, cursing, listening to music out their phones – no regard for anyone around them. 

She shook her head, seemingly lost in the horror of the memory, before continuing.

– Didn’t even notice I was trying to get past. Not an excuse me or sorry madam. It’s cultural of course. The parents just don’t think manners are important. Well, I was saying to Emil, politeness doesn’t cost a penny does it.

She took a sip of wine. 

– They’re so lucky to have you. 

Madeleine looked across at Sarah as she put down her glass.

– But really Fred, you know there’s a lovely school St Cecilia’s just round the corner. 

She motioned off to the left. Fred knew exactly where she meant.

– You’ve met Tilly, I think – that time we went to Roger’s place. Well, it’s her old school, hasn’t changed a bit apparently. Proper values. Seems like it would be much more up your street. They’re all so polite, respectful you know. So clever. You’d be able to really teach. 

There was a burning in Fred’s chest. He took a long gulp of wine, was grappling around for a reply, when Emil came in backwards through the door, brandishing a serving tray. He crossed the room, placed it on the table. Madeleine leapt up.

– Oh marvellous darling. What a feast. Are all the other accoutrements ready?

She turned back to Sarah and Fred.

– Excuse me while I bring through the rest  

Emil followed her out as Fred took another gulp of wine. Sarah was chewing at the corner of her bottom lip.  

– I like my school.

– I know Fred.

– Did you tell Madeleine I was having trouble with my students?

– I just said you were a bit stressed. You’re always working Fred. It’s just so all consuming. And for what?

– I like my job.

The door opened again and Madeleine appeared, Emil just behind.

– Ta-da! 

It was just as Madeleine pulled out her chair, lamb hung aloft the table, Emil grinning in triumph, that Fred felt the first vibration in his pocket. As he reached for his phone, tried to pull it out discreetly, Sarah put her hand on his arm, gave it a squeeze – no devices at the dinner table. He smiled at her, swallowed the flicker of irritation pulsing in his jaw, managed to wait until he was half way through the buttered potatoes and organically-grown-almond-roasted-tender-stem broccoli, piled like a pyre beneath his bloodied chunk of meat, before he eventually excused himself. 

He could still hear the lulling sounds of the chatter, the gentle clinking of expensive cutlery, as he shut the door to the bathroom and pulled out his phone. There were three missed calls and two new WhatsApp messages. Which in itself was a little unusual. There weren’t a lot of people that desperate to get hold of him anymore. But it was when he clicked open his phone and saw the name on the screen that he felt the first hum of disquiet beginning to buzz through him, like the slow waking of an old nervousness. A beast’s mouth yawning. Leant against the wall, the sleek tiles pooling a shiver at his lower back, he returned the call.

– Can you talk?

– Yeah, I’m – yeah, I can talk.

– I’m sorry Fred, it’s not good news.

*

Back at the table he watched himself pick up his knife and fork, felt the gelatinous resistance of the pink meat as he scraped the serrated edge back and forth. He chewed slowly, pushing each mouthful round his mouth, before his tongue forced it down the back of his throat, one dry swallow at a time. Before they’d sat down to eat, Madeleine had lit four tapered candles at the centre of the table. Now their quivering light punctuated the air above the meal, so that for a moment Fred saw the edges of each face around him bleed into one flickering, masticating mass. Emil was telling an anecdote he was sure he’d heard before.  The words broke over him and splintered into fragments. Butchery course in Valencia. The size of it. Moustache like a Latin dictator. Fried in a vat the size of a camel. He could see himself nodding. Making the right uh-huh noises in between Emil’s lengthening sentences. 

– And right when the wailing started I showed him the receipt he’d given me the day before.

The buzzing was getting louder. He could hear it in his shins, running up the sinews of his neck. His jaw.

– Fred, are you OK? You’ve gone quite green.

In the end he hadn’t made it to the bathroom. When he pushed back his chair, a corner of the tablecloth caught underneath his hand. In the ensuing tumble a candle fell into what was left of the lamb, two glasses of red releasing themselves across the artisanal linen napkins, a wet slash against the white. For a moment he’d been pitched forward, clutching for the cutlery that had clattered onto the floor. And then he was fumbling out the door and into the hallway, a streak of chewed lamb sprayed across the wall behind him.

Alone finally, he spat the last tendrils of bile into the basin of the toilet. He ripped off a piece of toilet paper, wiped it across his chin before moving across to the sink and squeezing a lump of toothpaste into his mouth. Not a great evening all in all. He stared numbly at his reflection in the mirror. And not a pretty sight. Emil had been right, he was a definite shade of green – hovering somewhere between Farrow and Ball’s ‘Lichen’ and ‘Cooking Apple’ if he wasn’t much mistaken. He turned away from himself and reached for the wall, before lowering himself, knees tucked against his chest, onto the cold bathroom floor. 

He had imagined how the phone-call would go a hundred times. Of course he had. Anyone who knew Oscar well by the end would have run through all the different ways the call might come. By a certain point, any other ending seemed like optimistic idiocy. But it didn’t stop you hoping. And if Fred was honest, it wasn’t that he’d been thinking there might be another way things could go. It was more like at some point he’d stopped thinking about it altogether. 

Being with Sarah helped. She didn’t know Oscar, didn’t know any of his friends from back then actually. It was one of the things he had liked about being with her.  When they’d met on early Tinder, it seemed entirely miraculous that there would be anybody he could meet that knew nothing of where he was from. Growing up in South London he got used to the spidery legs of association woven across boroughs and schools, mates-of-mates, and so-and-so who went out with what’s-his-name. But she was different. A nice girl from the home counties who had never even heard of Wandsworth Common, let alone Streatham High Street. Being in Sarah’s world meant there were a whole lot of things he didn’t have to think too much about – least of all navigating the intricate web of connection between every last person he knew. And for the last couple of years that had been exactly what he’d wanted. In fact, he’d got so good at sitting squarely in the present, he’d started to think maybe life had simply switched tracks, that it was heading towards a future that didn’t look so much like the one he might have imagined led from his past. So yes, the call had come as a shock. Turned out you couldn’t trick yourself out of history, no matter how hard you tried. 

He felt suddenly, inexplicably that he was going to laugh. As if, after all this time, he was sitting on a bathroom floor, a smear of vomit across his shoes, thinking about how to clear out of a party he’d – metaphorically and otherwise – smashed to shit. A tame and mediocre dinner party of four, but a party nonetheless. Well, he supposed, Oscar certainly would have liked that. He pulled himself up into a crouch, perched for a moment, one hand against the wall to steady himself, before straightening up. He could hear Sarah’s voice from the other room, imagined the three of them in there straightening out the table cloth. Madeleine, ever the gracious host, just the shadow of a furrowed eyebrow as she furiously scrubbed at the napkins. Poor Fred, of course we don’t mind. We just hope he’s OK. 

No matter which way Fred spun it, this was going to be a difficult conversation. Just the idea of trying to explain this to Sarah made his bones heavy. He felt a tugging anguish for the tidy ordinariness of their life together. Just this morning he’d been swept up in a moment of blissful contentment watching her move around the bedroom. There was something about witnessing another person wrapped up in the small tasks of their day – knowing that they didn’t mind you seeing the little pathways, the watery furrows, that ferried them between the proper business of life, the real events – the meetings, the dinners, the parties. He didn’t know why it made him feel so grateful. From where he lay on the bed this morning, propped up against the pillows, he had watched her lift onto her toes, stretch up to the top shelf of the open wardrobe, pull down a carefully folded sweater. She was in her underwear and he could see the creased impression of the rumpled covers dimpling across her thighs. She looked beautiful. Light falling through the window, the dying breath of summer. She had been awash in it. A blue sky. A soft breeze. He’d felt it. What all those bloody meditation apps were telling you to enjoy. The moment. And now here he was being pulled backwards into the past. The ground was loosening, breaking open, cracks running through the earth. How long before the soil shifted apart, revealed the murky waters of a river bursting its banks, dredging up all the buried flotsam of long ago. Time would tell. Oh yes, very funny. Time, the ultimate snitch.

He was being over dramatic. There was no reason why life needed to change. He could leave this bathroom, make his embarrassed apologies, and head back to the safe anchorage of Sarah’s neat little flat in an unremarkable corner of Clapham Old Town. He did love it there. He loved her. In fact, why did anything have to happen at all. He didn’t even have to go to the funeral if he didn’t want to. He could deal with it his own way. Remember Oscar how he needed to. All of this was just a massive overreaction. He hadn’t seen him for years. No need to change anything just because of a phone call. This was absolutely fucking typical of Oscar. No consideration of anyone else and what they were doing.  Always expected to drop everything because he had an idea, a scheme, a sudden inspiration. 

He saw Oscar suddenly, as he’d been at school. Laughing as he came through the door of the classroom, ruffled blonde hair, black record bag slung across his shoulder. It was hard to imagine him stationary. He was always half way through an action, like a leg’s muscles contracting into a run, frozen for a heartbeat before he was off again, onto the next moment. But Fred could hear the laugh. He heard it now in the bathroom. An urgent, infectious sputter, which broke through his chatter and drew you in close, or at times threw you out, confused and disorientated, the sudden butt of a joke. God, he was an absolute bastard. 

And now the buzzing was back. This time it seemed to be starting in his knees, an angry hiss running up his thighs, into his lower back, his gut. He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. Yes. He would have to tell Sarah. He’d have to tell her one of his oldest friends had died. But she didn’t need to know how close they’d been, about all the things they’d done together, about what had happened the last time he’d seen him. He could blame it on Emil’s cooking.  In fact, he might actually enjoy that. He could downplay the phone call altogether. And it didn’t mean he wanted to go to the funeral. Or that he would need to. This didn’t need to be blown out of proportion. It didn’t need to change a thing. Yes, he would tell her exactly that. He’d tell her just as soon as they said their goodbyes and left the flat.

He’d tell her just as soon as he could stop being sick.  

On his knees again, the chill of the tiles began to seep upwards into his bones. And with his eyes closed, cheek resting cool against the closed lid, the flushing toilet sounded just a little like a river bursting its banks.