A short story
We drove along, wrapped in a silence I eventually punctured with: “Some rain ahead.”
She didn’t reply, but fifteen miles higher up the country, turned on the radio, perhaps to seek confirmation, and I took it as an interaction of sorts.
That was something, because we hadn’t really spoken much over the last couple of days, since her dog died.
Her fucking dog, I swear to Christ. I mean as dogs went it was a fine animal, but we’d been seeing each other (me and Janine, this is, not the dog, OK?) for six weeks. She never mentioned him once, even when we went to see her parents, with whom he, in happier times, had once resided.
Jesus, that was a visit. Her parents announced their separation the following week and Janine took it really badly. But this could have been how she took all crises. I’m not sure, we had only been together less than two months before it died.
My train had arrived on time, so that was one less source of tension as she picked me up from the station, and we headed north to her parents, whose relationship (she hoped) would be rekindled by Bingo’s passing. Really she was stoking the ashes, in I can stick with the fire metaphor, but she laid on the guilt pretty thick and told them she needed them to be together again so they could bid the family pet farewell.
She turned down the radio and dialled a number on her mobile. I gathered she was speaking to her mother, judging by her frequent and long silences.
“This is Bingo,” she said into her mobile at one stage, “you and dad have to put aside your differences. For me. For Bingo.”
After the call, she said, “It’s kind of nice, really.”
“How’s that?” I said.
At least we were talking, even though I wanted to ask her what the hell was nice about driving north rainward to bury someone else’s pet with your estranged potential in-laws.
“How mum and dad are going to be together again.”
“What did she say? Are they working things out?”
“I can tell,” she said. “Everything’s going to be OK, Peter. Adversity brings people together.”
“How have things been over the last few days?”
She had spent that week with her mother, who had been living on her own for the past three weeks since her father had agreed he would live elsewhere. Her daughter thought it best she needed company, which turned out to be a good idea because the dog, her only companion of late, three days after Janine’s arrival.
“Difficult.” she said, “She sounded upset. I don’t know if it’s from the break-up or Bingo. But dad’s on his way now and they can be there for each other now.”
Adam, her dad, struck me as highly strung and overworked; her mum Joyce was and had always been the stay-at-home type. She went for coffees and manicures with slim-waisted, bechunky-kitted similars. She cooled pies on the window ledge. Literally - she had a window put into her kitchen especially, even though the cost of the structural work would have kept her in cold pies until long after Janine and her sister Cathy had left home.
Her parents never seemed to get on all that well. They settled down too fast, too young and papered over the cracks with kids and that was years ago, as Janine had grown up and was now my (gulp) girlfriend. Actually, I say gulp, although that’s purely a figurative word which to our cold, fledgling relationship pays mere lipservice. As does the term lipservice, if you get my meaning.
So we were in the car, not talking, hurtling towards a dead dog and her separated parents when the rain opened up. I smiled a little while she tried to find a signal on the radio.
An hour passed, then three more. She called ahead to say we were stopping for food because we had missed lunch, but her mum and dad could eat together after we arrive. I think she thought they would reconcile their differences over a dinner, which she started cooking for them after we arrived.
It was quiet as the evening crept in, and even the rain seemed to restrain itself to a muffled respect. I dug the hole while Janine prepared a meal for her parents waving to me occasionally through the kitchen window. She had a big stupid smile on her face, mixed in with admiration and pity every time I caught her eye. Her father paced around upstairs and I cursed ever getting myself into this situation. I didn’t love her.
I’m a sucker for the sympathy vote and when we met, Janine was heading for a landslide victory. Her parents were breaking up, she had just moved to London and didn’t like her job, and I seemed to be this light at the end of the tunnel. I had wanted out before this whole dog thing and I think she knew it, because she said she would do anything to keep me from leaving. I wish I’d seen it coming, but Bingo wasn’t even ill before he died. Would that have made it better? To leave someone on the news that their dog is going to die?
She often asked me if she thought we would stay together. I lied because I couldn’t break up with her at a time like this. I guess I was waiting for things to straighten out for her before making my excuses. Adversity brings people together all right.
Her parents ate their dinner and then we buried the dog. The hole was filled with an inch of rainwater, so Bingo kind of floated for a second. No one said a few words and the whole thing seemed like a waste of time. On top of which I had to sleep downstairs on the couch in the living room at the other side of the house because woe betide the thought that me and Janine might actually share a bed. In fact, we all slept in separate rooms. It seemed like the perfect end to a perfect day.
At first light, while the house was quiet and still, when Janine came downstairs to me, and we made love on the floor.
“What about your parents?” I said as she fumbled to touch me, enthusiastic, but I still said again: “What about your parents?”
I didn’t want her mum or dad to walk in on me having reluctant morning sex with their daughter.
“My dad’s in my mum’s room right now. We’re the only people who aren’t doing it. Come here.”
“Really? They’re together again?”
“Mmmmm hmmmm,” she said, and she put her leg across my stomach, leaning in to kiss my neck and pull herself towards me.
She was OK, Janine. I was probably being a little harsh on her. She deserved better that me, but even though I felt a little sorry for her, she was had started to grow on me in the new dawn after that miserable day.
We left the house before breakfast, on her insistence, so as not to disturb them. She looked different, and I felt better about us.
Her phone went about about hours into the journey and she let it ring.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” I asked.
“It’s OK,” she said.
“But it might be them. It’s probably to say goodbye. Or thanks.”
“No, it’s OK,” she said, a little harder.
“OK, but if they’re back together, you should really take some credit. The adversity thing, right? That was pretty smart.”
“It wasn’t me, it was Bingo.”
We picked up coffees on the way and back on the road she ignored two more calls, one from a number I didn’t recognise and another that showed up as Cathy, her sister.
“That’s Cathy,” I said, “Are you going to get it?”
“I’ll answer my phone when I want to,” she snarled.
And there it was, the cold grating tone I had hope she had left behind found its way back to her as we headed towards London.
I cursed my false hopes of wanting her and turned on the radio.
“…have been found dead in their home in Cheshire. The couple, thought to be in their early to mid-sixties, have not been named and are believed to have been poisoned.”
Her phone rang again.
“Everything’s going to be OK, Peter. I can tell.” She reached for my hand. “Adversity brings people together.”
Yesterday I discovered internet scrabble, and have become an instant addict.