Easy Meat

Thirty-six

As luck would have it, Stella Aston had answered the phone when Resnick called; yes, of course she’d meet him, how about the Town House? Did he know it? That street off Bridlesmith Gate. Low Pavement, is that what it was called?

It was. Resnick got there early, one of those places he had walked past numberless times in the last three or four years. Slim, pale wooden tables and waitresses who were studying fashion at Trent University; either that, or they were sixth formers from the High School, giving off equal quantities of good breeding and disdain. Inside, casually smart young men, whose designer socks and underwear, Resnick guessed, cost more than he spent on clothes in a year, lolled back in dark glasses and looked cool. An elegant young mother-or was it the au pair? — fed what looked like purple yogurt to a toddler in a high chair. One elderly woman, gray hair unraveling round her lined face, sat unhappily over the remains of her toasted sandwich, looking as out of place as Resnick felt.

“One, sir?” the waitress asked, friendly enough.

“Er, I’m meeting somebody.”

She gave Resnick a look that seemed to signify “as if” and consigned him to a table near the coffee machine, where she promptly forgot about him till Stella walked in. Stella in a bright top, colored tights and clumpy boots, and a skirt so short as to be hardly worthy of the name.

Resnick half rose to greet her, embarrassed by her youthful attractiveness and conscious of those eyes watching from behind dark glasses, weighing up the nature of their relationship.

“How’s your mum holding up?” Resnick asked, once Stella had sat down.

“Oh, you know, pretty well considering. Sometimes I think it still hasn’t properly sunk in. Maybe it won’t while I’m still around.”

“How long’s that likely to be?”

“I ought to go back, oh, the end of the week.”

Resnick ordered a double espresso and Stella a fizzy mineral water and a piece of chocolate cake that came, small and rich, marooned in the middle of a large white plate.

For ten minutes or so they talked about nothing very much, Resnick relaxed enough now to enjoy Stella’s company, the way she would throw back her head and laugh aloud at one of her own anecdotes about college. They think I’m her father, he thought, sneaking an hour off work to spend with his daughter, one of her rare visits home from university.

“I don’t know what to call you,” Stella said, suddenly. “I know my dad always used to call you Charlie.”

“Charlie’s fine.”

But she shook her head. “Not serious enough.”

“Is that what I am?”

“Aren’t you?” Cake finished, she surprised him by taking a packet of cigarettes from her bag, signaling to the waitress for an ashtray. “You see, you’re disapproving.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.” Drawing the first lungful of smoke down deep. “You think, nice young girl, into the environment, ought to be taking care of her body in the same way. Something like that, anyway.”

Resnick supposed she might be right.

“You’re not-what’s the word? — frivolous, are you, Charlie? You have to do things for a reason.”

Despite himself, almost as if to disprove her, Resnick laughed. “How do you know, I mean, here you are, the first time I’ve seen you in years. Certainly the first time we’ve ever …”

“Been alone.”

“Had a proper conversation …”

“And I’m analyzing you.”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Charlie, I don’t just know about trees. The reason we’re here, for instance, it’s not casual. You didn’t call me on the spur of the moment. Not that there’d be anything wrong in that, but you just wouldn’t do it.” She grinned. “Even if it occurred to you, you’d hold back. Too many possible complications.”

Uncomfortable, Resnick looked round for the waitress. “D’you want anything else? I’m going to have another espresso.”

She watched him while he ordered, waited while the waitress cleared their used crockery away. “Well? I’m right, aren’t I?”

Resnick leaned forward. “I wanted to ask you …”

“Yes?”

“Your parents, they had separate rooms.”

“Yes, Dad’s insomnia …”

“And this first happened when?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Two or three years ago, maybe. But why do you want to know?”

“You were still living at home then, when they made this decision?”

“Doing A levels, yes.”

“And did they say much, d’you remember, about why they were going to make this change?”

“Yes, like I said, my dad, he couldn’t sleep properly, he thought it would be best for my mum, they both thought it would be …” Stella broke off abruptly and reached for another cigarette; there were things she didn’t want to see forming behind her eyes. “You think something was going on, don’t you? You think he was having an affair? My dad. That’s what you were on about the other day, all that fuss about that phone call. God, Charlie! You think he was sleeping around.”

Slowly, Resnick shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Stella shook her head and laughed. “You didn’t know him very well after all. He just wasn’t like that. I know that’s what you’d expect me to say, but it’s true. He just wasn’t. Apart from anything else, there was all that religion. His preaching. Even if he’d been tempted, he’d never have let himself.” She held the smoke inside her mouth, releasing it through her nose. “If it was either of them having an affair, it would have been Mum. Not him.”

It was Resnick’s turn to be surprised. For some moments, he tried to imagine Margaret, small, dumpy Margaret … “Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because she was the one who had nothing else.”

“She had children, you.”

Stella laughed again, brittle and raw. “I was seventeen, eighteen, my brothers had long left home. I had this boyfriend, older than me. We were sleeping together. Mum and I we never talked about it, but she must have known. It’s not so difficult to imagine what that’s like, your baby girl out there having sex and enjoying it, night after night, and you … I doubt if she and Dad had done it for years.”

Resnick’s mind was on overtime. “What you’re saying …”

“Do I know it for a fact? No, not at all. I certainly didn’t think it at the time. But then I would have been so wrapped up in what was happening to me, I think she could have done it on the kitchen table and I’d hardly have noticed.” She giggled, suddenly young again. “Well, I think I might have noticed that.”

She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette. “About Mum, you won’t need to say anything, will you? Ask her, I mean? It probably isn’t true, none of it. Just my fertile imagination and besides, even if there was some truth in it, it couldn’t have anything to do with what happened to my dad, could it? I mean, how could it?”

Resnick shook his head. “I don’t know. But you’re right, it’s difficult to see.”

“Then you won’t say anything to her, to my mum?”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

Stella beamed and ordered a hot chocolate. “You notice a bit of a theme here?” she asked. “Hot chocolate, chocolate cake.” And then, “All those times you used to come round to the house with Dad, I used to hang around, follow you from room to room. I always wanted you to notice me, but you never did.”

“I’m sorry, I …”

“I used to think you were lovely. I had this photograph of you, I’d cut it from the paper. I used to keep it in my room, hidden in case anyone saw it. You never even noticed I was there.”

Resnick was blushing. “God, Stella, you were about twelve.”

Stella laughed, spilling hot chocolate over the table. “I can’t help it, I was advanced for my age.” She was dabbing at the table with her napkin. “Now I’ve shocked you.”

“No.”

“Yes, I have. All these steamy revelations about the Aston family women in one afternoon?

The waitress was weighing in with a cloth, murmuring something about coming back to mop the floor. Stella scraped back her chair, smoothing down her skirt onto royal-blue thighs. “I think we ought to go, don’t you? Before we turn this place into a wreck.”

Resnick thanked the waitress and paid the bill.

On the cobbled street outside, for a moment Stella took his arm. “So, Charlie-I like calling you that now-how about you, have you got a girlfriend or what?”

It took him a while to answer. “Yes,” he said. “At least, I think so.”

“Ooh.” Stella laughed. “I should make sure, if I were you. You never know, whoever she is, she might not see it that way at all.”