The ABCs of Love (14 page)

However, the architect realized that if he forced the woman to leave her husband, she would come to him as a different person. All the soft edges he loved about her would have to be sawed off in order for her to survive the rift. She would have to want to come to him, leaving none of her heart with her husband. In the meantime, the lovers agreed that they would meet once a year and share a weekend of romance.

After five years, the couple were still as much in love with each other as they ever had been. They shyly admitted that these weekends had become the center of their lives, but the last night was always spent with the woman in tears. How could she leave her husband? He needed her.

The architect decided to spend the next year praying for a solution. After a few months, he felt a stirring within. One night he woke up and, in a half sleep, made his way to his drawing board. The lines he made on the plain paper were not coming from his brain, but direct from his heart.

When the couple met up, he was ready. It was with a tender proudness, a certainty, that he unrolled the drawings he had tucked under his arm. He took her hand and traced the rooms, the lightness of the proportions, the sheer originality of the house spread in front of them, with her fingers. It was his hopes for the future he was parading in front of her. How could he fail?

When the woman returned to her husband two days later, the architect sat alone and studied the abandoned drawings. The lines blurred with his tears, and he suddenly saw how he had gone wrong, how hopeless this shape had been—the clumsiness of the end wings meant it would never take flight. This was not the house she could ever want to live in with him. How right she had been. How right she always was. He found a pencil and started work again immediately.

Each year, the architect would design another house for his love to live in with him. She never did, but he didn’t stop planning either. Sometimes a couple would come to his studio in order to have a house designed for them. The wife would get bored with discussions about budgets and work schedules and start to flick through the architect’s plans. Always, he noticed, it would be the drawings for his love that would capture the wife’s attention. There was something about them that called to the woman’s heart. Once, one wife had even pulled out a plan. Had called her husband over. Had demanded that the architect design something just like this for them too. Something as romantic.

He refused, even when the couple threatened to leave and find another, more malleable architect. He realized something that night, however, as he pored over the drawings, wondering what it was that had attracted the strange woman so much, but not the one for whom he had intended this house. He realized that all the years of giving his heart on paper had had an effect. Somewhere along the line, he’d given up hope without realizing it. The drawings were without teeth now. They were pretty enough to attract those who had everything, but not daring or brave enough to be worth real risk and sacrifice.

He kept going, though. The only difference was that his subsequent drawings became more fanciful. Less believable. The woman seemed to appreciate them more. She exclaimed over tree houses, perched high in the sky. Laughed over underground tunnels, as comfortable and as traditional as a badger’s set.

He took her praise, her love, for what it was and tried to make it enough. Only after she’d gone would he go back into his studio and weep over the houses he’d dragged out from somewhere deep within his body. The maps of his heart. All leading back to nowhere.

My mother had laughed after she’d told this story, but my father looked sad. He’d taken her hand and circled the center of her palm with his fingers. I remember feeling strangely angry. Why did I feel cold when I was with them, as if I were sitting in their shadow? It was partly to warm myself up that I told them how I wanted to find someone to love me like that architect. I wanted to be adored that much. My father looked at me as if he weren’t seeing me at first. Then he got angry. He said that I couldn’t understand anything. That the real love in the story was between the husband and wife.

See also Endings; Illness; Utopia

U

ultimatum

Sally has got so tough from all this independence business that she thought it would be a good idea to tell Colin that unless he left his wife for her, she would leave him.

I could have told her this was a bad idea, but the situation is even worse than I suspected. Colin’s divorce actually came through six months ago. His ex-wife has been happily living in Wolverhampton with a dental technician all this time.

I can’t blame Sally for refusing to have anything else to do with Colin, even though he says he was going to tell her. He just hadn’t found the right moment. The trouble is that now Colin agrees with Sally that she has to leave the flat straightaway. It seems he was more clever than her because he’d taken out only a short-term lease, whereas Sally’s lodgers have got six more months in her own flat before she can get rid of them.

Still, Colin says Sally mustn’t give him any second chances. He doesn’t deserve them. Sally has devoted herself to him for too long.

A situation like this is particularly hard because it isn’t just a romantic liaison for Sally; it’s like giving in your notice at work too.

See also Ambition; Colin; Endings; Worst-Case Scenario; Yields

underwear

My mother took Sally and me together to buy our first bras. Afterward, she took us to the coffee shop as a treat and let us choose whichever cake we wanted. She watched us eat them, the cream oozing between our fingers, while she smoked. In my memories, my mother always seems to be circled with cigarette smoke, as if she were already fading away.

Sally couldn’t wait to get to school to show her bra off, but mine felt itchy and uncomfortable. It was like that first week back to school in the autumn, when you crammed your feet into shoes after a summer of wearing open sandals. The leather was so creaky, pinch-tight, and solid all around your sole, constantly reminding you of timetables and rules.

It’s become a habit of Sally’s and mine now to buy our underwear together. Whereas once we used to feel more successful the more material we needed for our bras, now we spend a month’s salary on garments designed to look as if we’re wearing nothing.

The last time we went, Sally and I got the same set— purple silk with a silver ribbon woven through the edges. Sally said we looked like strippers. We were just walking over to the café to have our cream cakes when Sally suddenly turned to me and said, “I loved your mother.” I was so surprised, I nearly walked straight into the road, but then we couldn’t stop laughing, because we were both wearing the sort of lingerie that makes you long to be run over by a bus so you can make the ambulance man’s day. Just like our mothers always told us.

See also Breasts; Mustache; The Queen; Velvet; Zzzz

unfit

Several clients have complained about Brian’s unreliability, so he was called in to see the managing director yesterday to be given an official warning. I have never seen anyone as angry as he was when he came out of that office. We all pretended to be busy with our work, trying not to catch his eye, but Brian was like one of those magnets attracting iron filings. All the hairs on his arms and even his beard seemed to be standing up, spiking out from him, forming a dark shadow.

He just sat at his desk staring at the same piece of paper. At lunchtime, I asked whether he wanted me to get him a sandwich, but he shook his head.

“Are you sure? You have to eat, you know.”

He looked up. “Do I?” he said. The funny thing is that Brian has quite a nice face when he hasn’t been drinking.

“There’s always your film,” I said. I was trying to make things better.

“Christ, Verity, grow up, can’t you?” he said. “This isn’t a game, you know.” Then he stormed out and didn’t come back for the rest of the afternoon.

We worked in silence until it was time to go home. It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the office.

See also Indecent Exposure; Star Quality; Wobbling

utopia

I’ve noticed that the way John talks about the time when he’ll leave Kate and we’ll live together has changed.

It is now much more if-only-ish. And wonderful too. It seems that when John and I get together, we’re going to be surrounded by light and sun and birds singing and fairies fluttering and mermaids merring.

I don’t know why, but I felt more comfortable when he was glooming around, saying how unhappy we were going to be. At least that was realistic.

I suppose I should be looking for some way to get John’s feet back on the ground, but I’m worried about Brian. He hasn’t been in the office for two days. I’ve been covering for him with clients and have even managed to do some of the writing myself. Not even the managing director has noticed, and although I’m not sure how long I can do this, I feel a responsibility toward Brian.

See also Marathons; True Romance; Unfit; Yellow