Heading Inland. Nicola Barker
took their seats. They smiled and nodded at Carrie. She did the same in return. She then paged through her programme and pretended that she wasn’t overhearing their conversation about the kind of conseratory they should build on to the back of their house. He wanted a big one that could fit a table to seat at least six. She wanted a small, bright retreat full of orchids and tomato plants.
Carrie kept reading and re-reading the names of the principal dancers. The orchestra’s preparatory honking and parping jangled in her throat and with her nerves. She closed her eyes. I will count to ten. One, two, three, four . . .
‘Ooof! Here we go, here we go!’
Heinz, squeezing his way over to his seat, pushing his considerable bulk between the two rows of chairs.
‘Oi! Hup! There we are.’
Carrie opened her eyes and stared at him. He had a box of chocolate brazils in one hand and a bulging Selfridges bag in the other, which he almost, but couldn’t quite, fit into the gap between his knees and the front of the box.
Carrie’s gut rumbled her antipathy. He smelled, always – as Jack had noted on many an occasion – of wine gums and Deep Heat. An old smell. He must have been in his eighties, wore a grey-brown toupee and weighed in, she guessed, like a prize bull, at around three hundred and twenty pounds.
Carrie converted this weight into stone and then back again to occupy herself.
Heinz nodded at her. She nodded back. He always wore a sludge-coloured bow tie. It hung like a shiny little brown turd, poised under his chin.
Heinz endeavoured, with a great harrumphing, to find adequate room by his knees for his bag. ‘Uh-oh! Uh-oh!’
Carrie gritted her teeth.
‘If you haven’t room for your shopping, this chair is empty.’ She indicated Jack’s empty seat which separated them.
‘Empty? Really? That lovely man of yours isn’t with you tonight? Empty, you say?’ He wheezed as he spoke, like an asthmatic Persian feline, which made his German accent even more pronounced.
You’d think, Carrie speculated, that a wheeze would take the hard edges off a German accent, but you’d be wrong to think so.
‘Would you mind’ – close to her ear – ‘if I sat next to you and put my bag on the other seat?’
My God! Carrie thought, fixing her eyes on the stage curtains and breathing a sigh of relief at their preliminary twitchings.
‘Brazil?’
Ten minutes in, Heinz was whispering to her.
‘What?’
‘Brazil? Go on. Have one.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Go on!’
‘No. I don’t actually like brazils. Nuts give me hives.’
Heinz closed the box and rested it on his lap.
During the intermission, Heinz regaled Carrie with tales about the relative exclusivity of the Turner and Booker prizes. He liked the opera, it turned out, especially Mozart. He found camomile tea to be excellent for sleeplessness. He was a widower of seven years.
Carrie noticed how the box’s other regulars smiled at her sympathetically whenever they caught her eye. It was odd, really, because actually, with increased acquaintance, Heinz wasn’t all that bad. In fact, if anything, he’d made her the centre of attention in the box. The focus, the axis. She felt rather like Princess Margaret opening a day care centre in Fulham.
As the safety curtain rose for the second half, Heinz was telling Carrie how he’d just been to Selfridges to buy a cappuccino maker. He loved everything Italian. He’d been stationed there during the war.
As the stage curtains closed, Heinz mopped something from the corner of his eye and muttered gutturally, ‘Poor, poor old Petrushka!’
During the curtain calls Heinz told Carrie that he often felt that it was sadder to be a sad puppet than a sad person.
‘Pardon?’
‘Petrushka, the puppet. Sometimes it feels like the ballet is sadder because he is a puppet and not a living being.’
‘Oh, right. Yes.’ Carrie finished applauding and leaned over to pick up her bag. Heinz stayed where he was.
‘How will you be getting home then, Carrie?’
‘I brought my car.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘So maybe, maybe you wouldn’t mind joining an old man for a cup of coffee somewhere before you make your way back?’
‘Uh?’ Carrie was agog.
‘Oh! Um . . .’ She thought about it for a long moment. She imagined her quiet house, her empty bed. ‘OK,’ she said cheerfully, ‘love to.’
Sydney was late for Thursday’s class so they didn’t have a chance to chat beforehand. Afterwards though, in the sauna, they had plenty of opportunity for exchanging news. Carrie wore a white towel around her essentials and sat on the lower bench. Sydney wore nothing and sat on the upper.
‘How’d it go then?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Last night.’
‘Fine.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes.’ Carrie cleared her throat. ‘I mean, you know how it is when you do something alone for the first time when you’re accustomed to doing it with someone else . . .’
‘I guess so.’
Sydney lay down flat on her back. Whenever she lifted her shoulders or her buttocks, they stuck to the wooden boards, aided by the natural glue of her body’s moisture. The noise this made reminded Carrie of the sound of an emery board against a ragged nail.
‘Actually,’ Carrie said, grinning, ‘La Fille Mal Gardée is my favourite ballet.’
‘Really? You like an element of slapstick, huh?’
‘I suppose I must do.’
‘Myself, I prefer a tragedy. I find that tragedy best reflects my emotional and psychological state.’
Carrie turned and stared straight into Heinz’s frogspawn eyes. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘Me? Kidding? Not at all. Not at all.’
Heinz offered Carrie his family-size box of Maltesers.
‘Thanks.’
Carrie took one and popped it into her mouth. ‘That’s the strangest part . . .’ she said, chewing and enjoying the sensation of chocolate and malt on her tongue. ‘I’ve been to four ballets with you and never for a moment did I think you seemed like a sad or a dissatisfied person.’
It was the interval. Heinz and Carrie were propping up the theatre bar. Heinz had discovered that Carrie’s favourite winter tipple was port and lemon. He’d taken to ordering her one before the show. This meant they didn’t have to wait to be served during the intermission.
Heinz smiled at Carrie. ‘You see the best in everyone.’
‘Maybe I’m just insensitive.’
‘You? Insensitive? Never. You’re an angel.’
A man standing just to Carrie’s left turned and stared at them. Carrie caught his eye. His expression was a mixture of amusement and confusion. Carrie took a sip of her drink. People were so funny, the way they stared. Their quizzical expressions. It had begun to dawn on her that when she was out with Heinz she became a puzzle. She became mysterious.
Alone, at home, in life, she felt like something dried-up, wrung-out and