Read Online The Heart Broke In by James Meek - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: James Meek
Tags: Contemporary
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invitation to Val’s Best of Britain party she went along. She liked parties; they were like little lives. And when Val asked her there if they could have dinner, the contrast between his nervousness towards her and the nervousness his journalists felt towards him made her skin tingle. Saying yes seemed to be another woman’s risk, like something the Bec in the picture would do, and not regret. It’d been easy for her to start seeing him and sleeping with him without thinking it would turn permanent, imagining that it could be rewound in some mutually painless backward version of the way they’d got together.
Val took her to grand places – a hotel on an island on alake in Italy, with rose petals floating in the stone bath set in the floor of their rooms; a country house in Scotland, owned by a lord Val was friends with; the British Museum after hours, when some gazillionaire hired it for a ball and decked it out with gold and red silk organza. She liked lifting her hand out of the bath and seeing it covered with soft scarlet petals; the gold and red made her open her mouth in wonder; and the lord’s house was full of touchable, gnarly artefacts made of walnut, oak and brass. But she never met the tycoon, didn’t like the lord and was made uneasy by the rich guests at the island hotel, who seemed sad that they couldn’t meter the goodness of the time they were having, to the decimal point of a smile. Val arranged these displays for her too close together, one showy weekend after another. She felt hurried through a process. When friends used words like ‘glamorous’ and ‘romantic’ to describe the experiences Val contrived for her, she resented him.
Since she’d begun going out with Val she’d found herself dressing up more, as she’d played in childhood, posing in her father’s beret or an old miniskirt of her mother’s. When she turned herself out one morning at the lord’s house in green wellies, a white Aran sweater, a tweed skirt, a waxed green jacket with corduroy collar and a small string of fake pearls, her hosts hadn’t looked surprised, and didn’t laugh at her, even though the lord’s niece was dressed almost identically, except that her pearls hadn’t, presumably, cost £9.99 from a chain.
Bec wished that Val had complimented her on the success of her disguise instead of telling her she looked wonderful. At a garden party Bec thought she’d gone too far with elbow gloves, a broad-brimmed hat, a gauzy shawl looped round herwaist and forearms and a ridiculous little satin-effect clutch. The extreme whiteness of her dress, the pleats, the A-line! But Val, and the other guests, had told her she looked, whatever it had been, one of those words, and she hadn’t been the only woman with garden-party gauntlets on. And Val was good at it, too, exactly the part in a white linen suit. He dressed in the perfect imitation of an imaginary past archetype. Once, delighted by his mimicry of a wealthy middle-aged American being smart-casual in London – the dark blue blazer, the light blue shirt, the khaki slacks, the loafers – she’d told him that she liked his costume, and he hadn’t seemed to understand. ‘What costume?’ he said.
After she’d taken his ring, she remembered him looking her up and down before an elaborate dinner and saying ‘Celia would be proud.’ She wondered now whether he’d been looking not so much to replace his wife by marrying Bec as to pay the dead woman tribute. How strange, Bec thought, that she and Val could have been moving in such different directions, so close together; that she’d enjoyed his company as a rolling holiday from the lab, and liked the feeling she was helping him recover from Celia’s death, while he’d been pursuing a suitable acquisition, someone who looked fresh in a party frock, came with a sort of patriotic stamp inherited from her father and seemed to be doing good in the world.
She really had not been paying attention. He wasn’t a
Val took her to grand places – a hotel on an island on alake in Italy, with rose petals floating in the stone bath set in the floor of their rooms; a country house in Scotland, owned by a lord Val was friends with; the British Museum after hours, when some gazillionaire hired it for a ball and decked it out with gold and red silk organza. She liked lifting her hand out of the bath and seeing it covered with soft scarlet petals; the gold and red made her open her mouth in wonder; and the lord’s house was full of touchable, gnarly artefacts made of walnut, oak and brass. But she never met the tycoon, didn’t like the lord and was made uneasy by the rich guests at the island hotel, who seemed sad that they couldn’t meter the goodness of the time they were having, to the decimal point of a smile. Val arranged these displays for her too close together, one showy weekend after another. She felt hurried through a process. When friends used words like ‘glamorous’ and ‘romantic’ to describe the experiences Val contrived for her, she resented him.
Since she’d begun going out with Val she’d found herself dressing up more, as she’d played in childhood, posing in her father’s beret or an old miniskirt of her mother’s. When she turned herself out one morning at the lord’s house in green wellies, a white Aran sweater, a tweed skirt, a waxed green jacket with corduroy collar and a small string of fake pearls, her hosts hadn’t looked surprised, and didn’t laugh at her, even though the lord’s niece was dressed almost identically, except that her pearls hadn’t, presumably, cost £9.99 from a chain.
Bec wished that Val had complimented her on the success of her disguise instead of telling her she looked wonderful. At a garden party Bec thought she’d gone too far with elbow gloves, a broad-brimmed hat, a gauzy shawl looped round herwaist and forearms and a ridiculous little satin-effect clutch. The extreme whiteness of her dress, the pleats, the A-line! But Val, and the other guests, had told her she looked, whatever it had been, one of those words, and she hadn’t been the only woman with garden-party gauntlets on. And Val was good at it, too, exactly the part in a white linen suit. He dressed in the perfect imitation of an imaginary past archetype. Once, delighted by his mimicry of a wealthy middle-aged American being smart-casual in London – the dark blue blazer, the light blue shirt, the khaki slacks, the loafers – she’d told him that she liked his costume, and he hadn’t seemed to understand. ‘What costume?’ he said.
After she’d taken his ring, she remembered him looking her up and down before an elaborate dinner and saying ‘Celia would be proud.’ She wondered now whether he’d been looking not so much to replace his wife by marrying Bec as to pay the dead woman tribute. How strange, Bec thought, that she and Val could have been moving in such different directions, so close together; that she’d enjoyed his company as a rolling holiday from the lab, and liked the feeling she was helping him recover from Celia’s death, while he’d been pursuing a suitable acquisition, someone who looked fresh in a party frock, came with a sort of patriotic stamp inherited from her father and seemed to be doing good in the world.
She really had not been paying attention. He wasn’t a
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