‘Fair play.’
We both watched as she disappeared upstairs, long legs eating up the stairs two at a time. Tom sighed and stretched out on the couch.
‘Are you not phoning Bruce?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘To tell the truth we had a bit of a … disagreement, let’s call it. Before I left.’
‘Oh right.’ I kept my voice neutral.
I never know what to say in these situations. I hate people prying into my business, so I assume others will feel the same way. But sometimes they want to spill, it seems, and then you look cold and odd, backing away from their confidences. I try to be completely non-judgemental – not pushing for secrets, not repelling confessions. And in truth, although part of me really doesn’t want to hear their petty jealousies and weird obsessions, there’s another part of me that wants to egg them on. It’s that part of me that stands there nodding, taking notes, filing it all away. It’s like opening up the back of the machine to see the crude workings grinding away inside. There’s a disappointment in the banality of what makes people tick, but at the same time, there’s a kind of fascination at seeing the inner coils and cogs.
The trouble is that the next day they almost invariably resent you for having seen them naked and unguarded. So I’m deliberately reserved and non-committal, trying not to lead them on. But somehow it doesn’t seem to work. All too often I end up pinned to the wall at parties, listening to a long tale of how so-and-so fucked them over, and then he said this, and then she got off with him, and then his ex did that …
You’d think people would be wary of spilling to a writer. You’d think they’d know that we’re essentially birds of carrion, picking over the corpses of dead affairs and forgotten arguments to recycle them in our work – zombie reincarnations of their former selves, stitched into a macabre new patchwork of our own devising.
Tom, if anyone, should have known that. But it didn’t stop him. He was speaking now, his voice a bored drawl that didn’t disguise the fact that he was clearly still angry with his husband. ‘… What you’ve got to understand is that Bruce gave James his first big chance, he directed him in Black Ties, White Lies back in … God, what, we must be talking seven, eight years ago? And maybe – I mean, I don’t know – I never asked what went on, but Bruce wasn’t exactly renowned for his professional chastity. We weren’t together then of course. But naturally Bruce feels that James owes him a certain amount, and maybe equally naturally James feels that he doesn’t. I know that Bruce was pretty angry over the business with Corialanus and the fact that Eamonn sided with James … And then when those rumours got round about him and Richard, well, there was only one place those could have come from. Bruce swore he never sent that text to Clive.’
He carried on, a stream of names and places that meant nothing to me, and plays that had only the sketchiest impression in my own cultural landscape. The politics flowed over me, but the point was clear: Bruce was angry with James and had a past with him – of whatever kind. Bruce had not wanted Tom to come to this hen night. Tom had come.
‘So anyway, fuck him,’ Tom said at last, dismissively. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Bruce or James. He walked across to the sideboard where a cluster of bottles stood: gin, vodka, the pathetic remnants of last night’s tequila. ‘Want a drink? G&T?’
‘No thanks. Well, maybe just a tonic water.’
Tom nodded, went out for ice and limes, and then came back with two glasses.
‘Bottoms up,’ he said, his face set in lines that made him look a good ten years older. I took a sip and coughed. Tonic there was, but also gin. I could have made a fuss, but Tom raised one eyebrow with such perfect comic timing that I could only laugh, and swallow.
‘So tell me,’ he said, as he drained his own glass and went back for a refill, ‘what happened with you and James? What was last night about?’
I didn’t answer at first. I took another long sip of my drink, swallowing it slowly, thinking about what to say. My instinct was to shrug it off with a laugh, but he would get it out of Clare or Nina later. Better to be honest.
‘James is … was …’ I swirled the drink in my glass, the ice cubes chinking as I tried to think how to phrase it. ‘My ex,’ I said at last. It was true – but so far from the whole truth that it felt almost like a lie. ‘We were together at school.’
‘At school?’ Tom raised both eyebrows this time. ‘Good lord. Dark ages. Childhood sweethearts?’
‘Yes, I guess so.’
‘But you’re friends now?’
What could I say? No, I haven’t seen him since the day he texted me.
No, I’ve never forgiven him for what he said, what he did.
No.