Can I do anything?
‘I need to build a bridge,’ Tess told Wolf. She felt so tired, too tired to go upstairs to bed even though she was now cold, down here. ‘I need to build a bridge but I don't know how.’
She stirred and woke. From the stillness and the silence, it was obviously very late. She felt discombobulated and stiff-necked from her slump on the sofa. Very cold. And suddenly in a panic at the looming presence of someone else in the room.
‘Sorry – I didn't mean to wake you.’
‘Joe? No, it's OK.’ Tess scrabbled to sit herself up. ‘I must've dozed off – what time is it? I'm—’
But Joe interjected. ‘I'm off.’
Tess stared at him. ‘Off?’
‘France. Elsewhere.’
Words careened around Tess's head while she frantically tried to arrange them into sentences. Practicalities – when where how long. Declarations of regret – I shouldn't have said what I said in the way I said it. Proclamations of intent – if you kiss me now I will kiss you back. Naggings of insecurity – France? Oh shit that means Kate and Nathalie. A need to make amends. I'm sorry, Joe, sorry for – it's just, it's just.
But before she could formulate a single sentence, he delivered answers to questions she hadn't yet prepared.
‘My mother has dementia,’ he said, ‘early-onset dementia after a fall and a stroke almost two years ago. She is safer at Swallows. Even before the dementia, she wasn't living here. She hadn't for quite some time. And the dementia might cause her to think this place is still her home, but her dementia does not mean that she is now somehow welcome.’
Tess opened her mouth though she knew she was speechless.
‘I'll be gone for a few weeks,’ Joe said flatly; he glanced across to Wolf and then looked at Tess. ‘You are welcome to stay here in that time – but it would probably be best if you look for a position elsewhere.’
There was a lump that was threatening to obstruct her breathing, but the dryness in her mouth made it impossible to swallow; as if the sides of her throat were coated with sandpaper, rasping together. Joe made to leave but hovered in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder, directly at Tess.
‘There is no Kate, Tess,’ he said. ‘The initials K.L. on the back of that photograph? They stand for Kuala Lumpur. It's a commonly used diminutive – Kay Ell. I was involved on a project there. The photo was taken by Taki Kanero, a colleague and great friend of mine. He's in his fifties, a lovely man with a wife and two – no, three now – children.’
As soon as the seatbelt sign went off, Joe unbuckled, reclined his seat, closed his eyes and willed sleep. But this was not possible, partly because the level of organization required for his impromptu return to France had left him wired, partly because his fellow travellers in row 12 were two elderly ladies yaketting away fifteen to the dozen. He might not be able to sleep but he could certainly make it look as if he was and avoid a flight's worth of pleasantries. Countering the steady motion of the plane, his mind whirred like a small tornado, plucking elements of the preceding days and swirling them in an eddy with his plans for the next few days. Tess and Nathalie and his mother chased each other round and round his mind's eye, while the Transporter Bridge and the bridge in KL and the new bridge he was returning to, vied for his attention; the khaki water of the Tees running into the clearer navy of the Sungai Klang, both running dry on reaching the lush valley landscape of his bridge in progress. Oh, for God's sake, couldn't he just think of one thing at a time? More to the point, couldn't he just empty his mind completely? He tried to cue in to the sounds of the plane, the pressurized cabin, the chirruping chit-chat in row 12, the drifts of people's conversations in the neighbouring rows, the clatter of the trolleys being prepared for their pedantic passage up and down the aisle. He found he could not. His mind was preoccupied and in his mind's eye, the spiral of women had slowed down and it was thoughts of Tess that solicited him first.
Taken on its own, Tess's rant about the other women – even the fictitious Kate – could have been quite flattering, really. Certainly, it fed Joe's ego but more than that there was something quite nourishing about the strength of Tess's feelings towards him, about which he had hitherto been unsure. He thought about this as the plane settled into its altitude. He recalled her ire, the way her eyes darkened with glinting indignation and her jealousy carved itself in the twist between her eyebrows, the purse of her lips. The contortions of her face relating directly to the intensity of her feelings for him. He thought of her brandishing the KL photo with furious triumph, ignorant of the prosaic truth behind the picture. How he could have laughed; how he could do so right now. She'd been so sure, she had kept it until the perfect moment – her trump card with which she could indict Joe, have him fall to his knees, have him entreat her. Plead, even. Kate was then, I don't love her, she means nothing – it's you I want, Tess.
Actually, he had never had a girl called Kate. He didn't even know a Kate. Silly old Tess, in such a tizz. The creeping redness around her throat, the change in her voice, her fiery face. She'd actually stamped. The hand not holding the photo had been in a fist. But she hadn't been rendered ugly and he hadn't felt repelled at the time. Even now he was still struck how all that infuriated him about her colluded with all that he liked and together, they welded an attraction for a woman who was complex, colourful, real.
Now Nathalie – she wasn't remotely complex, her underwear was colourful and his time with her existed outside reality. There was an element of playing at a laissez-faire situation between broad-minded consenting adults. No chit-chat, no pea-squashing, no seconds of custard or endless cups of tea. No gentle teasing, not much laughter. Time spent with Nathalie was about constructing a reality where life was refreshingly uncomplicated, nothing to argue about, little to discuss, no need for extraneous chat – just a fantastic glut of sex which made them feel so good about themselves. What attracted Joe to Tess was what also irritated him about her – the gamut of emotions brought about by the slightest thing. Now he thought of Nathalie, attractive, available, aloof – no demands, just sexual abandon on tap. Nathalie made him feel all man; Tess made him feel fantastically frustrated.
Up at 36,000 feet, with the sensation of putting life at ground level on hold, Joe could think about it all whereas driving to the airport had been another matter. He had been rushing. He had been fuming. He'd spat out loud in the car, you stupid little cow, Tess, you stupid girl. But now, thinking of Nathalie, Joe had to wonder why the hell she'd laboured the point of his bloody BlackBerry being between her frigging sheets. She'd altered the dynamic, unbalanced their equilibrium, and potentially screwed up their zipless fucking. Her sudden possessiveness; his loss.
Women, thought Joe at 36,000 feet, an hour into his journey, bloody bloody women. He opened his eyes to see the air hostesses and their drinks service. Were they any less complicated? Their highly trained smiles and tolerance, their skilled deportment, trolleying up and down the aisles in high heels making light of the trials of turbulence. What were they like on terra firma, he wondered? At home, did they fly off the handle at their partners allowing imagined demeanours to become real? Did they wave innocent photos, exclaiming S.F! S.F! Who the fuck is Sarah Fanshaw? Did their partners have to say, shh, silly, I don't know a Sarah Fanshaw but that photo was taken in San Francisco? Did they phone their lover's home number and, on hearing a female voice, decide to spin out details of his phone – my bed? How about the elderly ladies sitting next to him – would they invent some golden girlfriend expressly for the purpose of sabotaging their
