Heading Inland. Nicola Barker
I could be too, easily.’
Carrie often found Heinz to be genuinely perceptive. At their second ballet together he’d said, ‘And your husband . . . ?’
To which she’d responded, ‘I don’t ever want to talk about him.’
‘Very well.’
And they’d never spoken about him since. It was almost like, Carrie decided, Jack had never even existed.
Sydney was plaiting her hair, trying, but failing, to include the front bang-like bits into the weave so that they didn’t keep falling into her eyes. Their class was due to start at any minute. Carrie stood behind her, scowling to herself, intensely discomfited.
‘I was only saying,’ Sydney observed, still plaiting, ‘that it seems a bit strange for you not to want me to come with you when you said yourself on several occasions that there was a spare ticket going begging.’
‘There is a spare ticket,’ Carrie said, caught distinctly off her guard. ‘It’s only that next week I promised someone else . . .’
‘Who?’
‘A friend called Sue,’ Carrie said, too quickly, and then widened her eyes when she’d finished speaking as if the words she’d just uttered were indigestible.
‘Who?’
‘I told you about her, surely? She’s the one who thinks I should open my own interior design shop.’
‘Sue?’
‘Yes. Remember? I said I was thinking about starting work again, now that Jack’s gone. The money’s tight and everything.’
‘Interior design? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. How could you afford to open an interior design shop? You don’t know anything about retail . . .’
Sydney finished her plaiting and turned to face Carrie. Carrie’s cheeks were red, she noted, and she was scratching her neck as though she’d been bitten.
‘It was just an idea.’
‘Where would you get the money from to start a business with? You’re broke.’
‘I know.’
‘Interior design, you said?’
Carrie nodded.
‘Sue? Sue who?’
Carrie blinked and then swallowed. ‘The Sue who’s coming to the ballet with me next week. We were at school together. I surely must’ve mentioned her before.’
‘No.’
People had started to filter their way gradually into the gym. Carrie pointed, ‘I think the class is due to start.’
‘OK, next time.’
‘Pardon?’
Sydney smiled. ‘Next time I want to come with you, so make sure you keep the ticket spare, all right?’
‘Yes. Fine.’
Sydney led the way. Carrie looked down at her trainers and silently incanted a Hail Mary.
They’d become so engrossed in their conversation that they hadn’t noticed everyone else going back inside. Carrie was so engrossed in what Heinz was saying that she almost hadn’t noticed his hand on her shoulder. Almost.
‘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