I rose to go to the kettle. ‘So, is this a one-off, or will you be over this way again?’
‘A couple of mornings over the next couple of months.’
‘Oh, well then,’ suddenly this was fun, ‘you can come here for coffee, we can have breakfast, I can buy some brioche.’
‘I work with men in hard hats: I don’t eat brioche.’
‘Would you be emasculated by the odd blob of apricot jam on a croissant leg?’
‘The coffee will do nicely.’ From his pocket he took a small, pharmaceutical-looking packet, printed with a name which suggested nicotine chewing gum.
I nodded towards it: ‘I thought that you gave up when Oonagh was born.’ Three years ago?
Delving into the packet, he glanced upwards from beneath one eyebrow. ‘I did.’
‘So why the gum?’
‘Why not?’
‘But you’re supposed to use them to help you to give up; you’re not supposed to use them all the time, for years and years.’
He mimicked, ‘Supposed to … not supposed to …’ and slotted two pieces into his mouth.
‘And how are those blissfully smoke-free babies of yours?’
‘They’re beautiful and they make me laugh: what more could I want from my girls? Oh, except for some sleep, for a few hours each night. And patience, twenty-four hours each day. Don’t believe a word if you receive one of those newsletters at Christmas telling you that Oonagh took her Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award before going off to do VSO in Belize, and that Caitlin has set The Songs of Innocence and Experience to her Grade Eight violin pieces. The truth is that Oonagh has an aversion to toilets, and Caitlin screams unless she’s attached to her mother.’
‘And how is Sarah?’
His head tipped backwards in a soundless laugh. ‘Put-upon.’
He never talks of Sarah without affection. The apparent success of their relationship is intriguing. Drew had been involved with so many consciousness-raised, sexually-confident, clever-clever women, and then suddenly there was Sarah. They met when she came to work behind the bar in one of his haunts, never having worked anywhere but pubs and shops. Within a couple of weeks, there was an unplanned pregnancy, which was surprising because Drew never makes mistakes; and then, more surprisingly, the decision to marry. But although their domestic lives are necessarily interdependent, their social lives seem to have remained resolutely separate. I rarely see her; but whenever I ring to speak to Drew and she picks up the phone, we perform the full range of pleasantries with enthusiasm. I love to listen to her Scottish voice, the slides as impressive as those of a trombone.
Philip came home half an hour or so after Drew had arrived. Drew and I had giddied each other with gossip: friends in common, other friends, in-laws, property prices. Drew greeted Philip with a kiss on both cheeks. Now, while I am here, in the park, he is watching Philip cook. He had wanted to know what Philip was making; Philip had explained that what appeared to be a pancake was going to be a roulade.
Drew laughed, ‘Rolling your own.’ But then, suddenly and defensively, ‘Listen, you two, I grow my own basil, these days.’
I made the mixture for ice-cream; the bowlful is chilling now, in the fridge. Some local friends – a couple of couples – are coming for dinner, this evening. I make puddings; puddings are all that I make. The icing on the cake, in this household. While I was stirring the syrup into the cream, and Drew was nosing over my shoulder, Philip said, ‘I love that recipe.’
I barely heard him over the whoomphs of the wooden spoon in the mixture, the muffled knocks on the bottom of the bowl.
‘I love the simplicity,’ he was saying, ‘just the strawberries and cream, a little sugar and balsamic vinegar.’
‘Vinegar?’ Drew sounded affronted, and close to my ear.
I said, ‘Nothing’s quite as sweet as you think it is.’
He laughed. ‘No one’s quite as philosophical as you are.’
Philip mused, ‘The sour with the sweet, and all that.’
I tapped the spoon a few times on to the rim of the bowl, then passed it to Drew. He dipped it into his mouth, and as the wooden lip slid back into view, I explained. ‘The vinegar brings out the flavour of the strawberries. And you know strawberries: some of them do need coaxing.’ I was speaking over his protracted groan of pleasure: the proof is in the pudding. He went to replace the spoon in the bowl, so I had to swoop, snatch the handle, tick him off: ‘Saliva digests, Drew; didn’t you know that? That’s what saliva’s for.’
‘Oh, and I thought –’
‘– Drew, don’t.’
He was amazed, amused. ‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’
‘Coming from you, and concerning a bodily function? Bad news, whatever.’
From across the kitchen, Philip enthused, ‘So strawberry-ish.’
I said, ‘So real that somehow it seems fake.’
Drew said, ‘Post-modern strawberry ice-cream.’
Putting the bowl in the fridge, I complained, ‘Ice-cream is underrated in this country.’
Drew despaired, ‘Oh, everything is underrated in this country.’
‘Except self-denial,’ I said.
Which made him laugh.
I did ask Drew if he wanted to come with us to the park, but he declined. I felt that I should ask, but knew that he would say no. So, here we are, Hal and I, alone together as usual, side by side, accompanying each other on our separate strolls, like an old couple. And we have just passed the impeccably dressed old couple who are here most days in their small parked car, asleep. As always, she was in the driver’s seat and he was sitting directly behind her on the back seat. They do not always sleep. Sometimes she holds in her kid-gloved hands a floppy book and a pencil: puzzles, crosswords, I presume. Sometimes he stares ahead through the windscreen. But the purpose of the daily trip seems to be to sleep, because on the rare occasions when they are awake, they look furious, cheated. Why do they come here to nap? I went to parks, in darkness, in cars, when I was a teenager. Odd, to think how I slid into those deserted parks under cover of darkness alongside someone else. Odd, to think of once having been so purposeful, so physical. So purposefully physical.
Whenever I see the old couple, I ponder their relationship: perhaps she works for him, drives him here, because why else the bizarre seating arrangement? They seem to be of a similar age, but of course there is no need for her to be younger than him in order to work for him, to care for him. I am a poor judge, though: to me, old is old; I could be looking at an age gap of ten or even twenty years and I would not know. I have doubts that their relationship is professional, I see no semblance of good form in those faces.
So the homeless man is not the only person to sleep here. And as well as the old couple, there is the courier. Every morning, Hal and I pass a parked van, the windscreen of which displays a sign, Courier on delivery. We had been passing that van every morning for weeks before I realised, one morning, that what I was seeing when I glanced through the windscreen was a person, asleep. What I was seeing was a figure, reclined and wrapped in blankets: formless, featureless, but the repose unmistakably that of sleep. Suddenly, I was uneasy: I felt caught out, as if I had been observed, as if it were me who had been seen. Self-conscious, I was anxious to be quieter, although that was scarcely possible. I wanted to mark my respect. And so, nowadays, I tiptoe by the van, marvelling at the ability of that person to sleep visible, to turn so thoroughly and apparently peacefully from the daytime world of dog-walkers, childminders,