Her Page 5

  There was another reason why we moved away from Oxfordshire and though I’ve never felt any particular need to share this with Charles I doubt whether he’d be surprised by it. That was the house that my father began to leave. Before long, he was always away, in London and Los Angeles; sometimes when I asked where he was this week, my mother didn’t seem to be entirely sure; and then there were the times when I’d answer the phone in the hall and no one would speak, and the silence would build and accumulate, an avid sort of silence caught in the tight coils of cord. Someone listening quite patiently while I said again and again, ‘Hello? Hello, who’s there?’ And then after a few seconds, the connection would be cut. ‘Who was that?’ my mother would call, and – unsure of why I was lying, but knowing a lie was necessary – I’d call back, ‘Wrong number.’

  Sometimes my mother must have taken these calls, though she never mentioned them to me. Standing in the hall, the receiver grasped like a duty, a punishment. ‘Hello? Who’s that? Is anyone there?’

  When my father eventually came home, with carrier bags full of Duty Free scent and cigarettes, and packs of Hershey’s Kisses for me, there would be a few days’ grace, and then I would start to catch hold of the edge of arguments, arguments taking place behind closed doors when I was meant to be asleep or out or doing my homework. Mostly I would hear my mother’s wild emotional indiscipline, but if I listened for long enough I would hear the sore, sour sound of my father.

  And then the house was put up for sale, and we moved to Jassop, and the phone calls stopped, for a while at least.

  ‘She kept her spinning wheel and her looms in the attic,’ I tell Charles, ‘and when he was at home he was always in the drawing room, on the piano, or the telephone – so it wasn’t exactly a surprise when they split up. It was a lovely house, though, the oldest bit of it was in the Domesday Book. Or at least, that’s what they told me.’

  As I say it, I remember stepping from the hot garden into the little porch, its pegs hung with mildewy macs, and then passing down into the thankful chill of the kitchen, the soft cold flagstones underfoot, the striped roller-towel on the range rail, the china sink capillaried with pale blue, the paper bags of sugar and flour leaning into each other on the pantry shelves. One particularly deep cupboard had mesh panels in the door: the meat safe, where not so long before game birds and joints of beef and lamb were stored.

  ‘We could go and have a look around one weekend,’ he suggests. ‘Book a hotel. See the marsh churches. What do you think?’

  ‘Might be fun,’ I say, but I don’t want to go back. I never have. This is as close as I want to get: the thick streaks and smears and beads of paint, bands of colour, the sky, the light. Nothing too specific. I remember long afternoons – always hot, always indolent with heat – spent in the garden at Jassop, making the snapdragons snap while the pansies (‘kitten faces’, my mother called them) trembled in the breeze, and I remember that feeling of waiting for something to happen. Something exciting or marvellous. I knew it was on its way. I didn’t know what form it would take, but I knew it was coming.

  My bedroom was under the eaves, with a low sloping ceiling. No door handle, just a wooden latch. Pale yellow walls, a blue coverlet on the bed. When I was little I’d made a family of clay owls which my mother had helped me to glaze and fire (five or six of them, in waistcoats and aprons and spectacles), and even as a teenager I liked to see them there on the windowsill, set out in order of size, looking out owlishly towards the sea.

  I wonder what happened to the owl family. Probably my mother has them still, in a shoebox at the back of a cupboard. The arrowheads of their sculpted feathers. The sharp little nibs of their beaks.

  ‘Let’s walk over to Hampstead for a coffee,’ Charles is saying, so I tidy up, putting some sketches in the plan chest, and as I do so I pause for a moment as the manila envelope slides into view. My hand goes out to it, and then I put the papers on top of it and close the drawer.

  We leave the studio, passing Casey – who runs an internet operation from a unit on the same floor, selling imported Japanese sports drinks and energy bars – in the dim concrete stairwell. The noise of our footsteps chases us down into the cold street. I do not think of the envelope, nor the white-bordered Instamatic snaps it contains; inexpertly and pretentiously composed, speckled with the leaky bleached stars of accidental exposure. The blacks bleeding into the reds.

  Emma

  Ben’s father Dirk comes out to greet us, his mustard corduroy trousers a beacon in the dusk, his mouth opening and shutting as the headlights sweep over him and the naked lady in the hostas before coming to rest on the double garage. There’s a moment of silence when Ben switches off the engine, and then the baby wakes up and I reach out for the handle.

  ‘Emma, splendid, how was the traffic?’ he’s saying, striding towards me, his hands flapping out to seize my waist. I intercept them just in time, grabbing his fingers, glad I remembered. Here’s Christopher, shyly stumbling up behind me, Blue Bunny dangling by one ear. Dirk greets him rather perfunctorily, then turns with more enthusiasm to Ben, wanting to know about the sat-nav and the bypass.

  Ben brandishes the car seat containing Dirk’s granddaughter. This is their second meeting; Dirk and Peggy came to see me in hospital, bringing yellow flowers. But Dirk has other things on his mind. ‘Yes, it’s new,’ he says, gesturing expansively at the silver Audi estate parked in its own special spotlight on the gravel, as if we’ve all been clustering around, clamouring questions. ‘Trade-in. John Brethwick made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Miles to the gallon, it makes sense, had it a fortnight, haven’t had to fill it up once.’

  Dirk was in shipping insurance and claims to be retained, in some capacity, as an ad-hoc consultant. Secretly I find it hard to believe that his firm is a willing participant in this arrangement: I imagine the smoke-signals from the front desk on the days when he drops in to the huge redbrick HQ off Holborn, the PAs on high alert, the bigwigs suddenly remembering critical meetings on the fifth floor. Dirk buttonholing clerks by the water-cooler, passing on the benefit of his wisdom and experience. He’s a man of infinite butterfly interests: opinions on everything, though they vary from day to day, and sometimes from hour to hour, depending on whether he has been absorbing data from the Spectator or the Today programme or a copy of Peggy’s Daily Mail. For Dirk, the important thing is having an opinion. Its particular flavour matters less.

  ‘You’ll see we’ve had a new alarm system put in,’ he says, indicating a box on the wall under the eaves, but at this Cecily starts to twist and whimper in her harness so I say, ‘I think I’d better—’ and almost reluctantly he says of course, come on into the warm, Peggy’s getting tea ready, there’s still some Christmas cake left.

  I wouldn’t mind feeding Cecily in the sitting room, just to get up his nose, but when I say she’s hungry Peggy tells me she has popped us in the Blue Bedroom, it’s all set up, I should find everything I need up there. So I put Cecily over my shoulder and go upstairs, along an acre of olive carpet illuminated by dim glazed wall sconces in the shape of scallops, and lie down with her on the bed, on the slippery periwinkle bedspread, because the chair by the window has no armrests.

  While Cecily feeds, I work through the pile of Christmas round robins that have been left out for us (although the pond-water illumination cast by the squat little ceramic bedside lamp, with its pleated shade, does not make this easy). For all the wrong reasons I love these letters. I love the ludicrous spectacle of strangers’ lives artlessly set out for my delectation: the foreign holidays, the house extensions (‘we finally got rid of the builders!’), the silver-wedding celebrations and theatre trips to Stratford-upon-Avon. Cynthia and Derek are learning Portuguese! Kathy and Malcolm have bought a camper van! Berenice has moved to Wales!

  And yet, beneath it all, it’s clear that a displacement is taking place. Peggy and Dirk’s friends are now defining themselves through their grandchildren’s achievements: the art prizes and choral scholars
hips, the A-stars and Russell Group offers. Something is pushing them to the side of their own lives. I put down the letters and feel the chord reverberating, and I resolve to be kinder this visit. More patient, more understanding. Nicer.

  Sated, Cecily rolls off me, her cheek flushed and shiny with milk. I will be good, I think.

  Downstairs, Dirk is showing off his new electric curtains (gizmo was a special offer at the back of the Telegraph magazine, he couldn’t resist), zapping them with a remote control, revealing and then hiding the spotlit lawn, the bare trees and birdbath, the topiary hens – themselves an excuse, I’ve always suspected, for the chainsaw.

  ‘What do you make of that, eh, Christopher?’ he says, over the high-pitched whine of the motor, making the sprigged curtains dance and sway: open, shut, open. ‘Clever, isn’t it?’

  Christopher, hypnotised, transfixed with longing, puts out his hand.

  ‘Better not, old chum,’ Dirk says breezily. ‘Delicate mechanism. Not a toy, I’m afraid.’ He zaps the curtains so the view vanishes, and pops the remote on the highest bookshelf, next to the row of military history. That’s that. Peggy hands me my tea and admires Cecily in a rudimentary fashion: all very arms’ length. ‘What an absolute dear she is,’ she calls as she returns to the kitchen. ‘Would you like some Christmas cake, Emma?’

  I would, and I deserve it, but I can’t cope with Cecily, hot tea and tiny plate (nor, indeed, the uncontrollable look of disapproval that would cross her face if I accepted: Peggy does three spin classes a week, plus a Friday Zumba, and views sugar as the enemy, though she seems bent on giving her menfolk type-two diabetes), so I say I’ll pass. Christopher returns his attention to the dish of chocolate fingers on the ankle-high coffee table. He won’t eat any supper after this, I know; but fuck it, that’s not my problem tonight. ‘Dirty hands!’ cries Peggy, rushing in with a damp cloth as he lunges for the ornamental chess set.

  I close my eyes, feeling the baby’s solid dampish weight against me, imprisoned by it. But I need do nothing here: it’s all out of my hands, beyond my control. My life is such that these visits, which I used to dread, which are still full of uncomfortable moments, are now beginning to qualify as relaxation. In the kitchen, Dirk is showing Ben the pop-up plug socket on the central island, and the special bin system under the sink for separating wet waste from dry. ‘We saw that programme of yours, that one on the GCSE marking scandal,’ Dirk says as they come through. ‘Very good. Shame you couldn’t get the Secretary of State to comment.’

  This is typical Dirk: many things go over his head, but he is always able to identify his son’s disappointments or weaknesses, eager to bring these failures out into the light. I catch Ben’s eye, and he glances away, at the Nordic pine in the corner.

  ‘Lovely tree, Dirk,’ I say, and – as I knew he would – he gives me its full provenance: it’s a bit of a tradition, Mike Caxton rings him when the delivery comes in so he gets first pick; of course they need a bit of a monster with ceilings this high.

  The fairy lights wink on the tree, threaded between the coordinated balls and birds and angels. This year, everything is either silver or white. ‘Shall we do presents now, or after we’ve eaten?’ says Peggy.

  Later that evening, as Cecily rustles sleepily in the travel cot at the foot of the bed, Ben and I undress in low light. At moments like these, I long for a proper therapeutic debrief, a bit of a giggle, as well as some sort of vaguely appreciative apology, but I won’t get either from him and I know it’s wrong, mean, to want them so much; just as I know it’s wrong, mean, to wish Dirk and Peggy might offer us a little financial help while we’re going through this tight spot (though of course Ben would never solicit or accept a handout, even as the shed door lists on its hinges, the brown stain on the ceiling of Christopher’s bedroom grows larger, and the mortgage repayments and credit-card bills stalk our dreams).

  ‘They seem very well,’ I murmur, finding a clean babygro and putting it next to the wipes and nappies, ready for the morning. ‘Your mother’s really into this gym thing.’

  Ben, climbing into bed, grunts. The slippery blue bedspread whispers as he pushes it down towards the foot, and then it slides off altogether, pooling on the carpet, a lake of static. ‘I expect she spends a lot of time in the salad bar,’ he says, ‘gassing with Angela Sinclair.’

  I look down at Cecily, whose dark eyelashes are fanned out on her round cheeks, her fists curled on either side of her head. Her chest rises and falls in her moon-patterned sleeping bag: in, out, in. I visualise Peggy on the treadmill in pink velour joggers and a light sweat glaze, eyes locked onto Cash in the Attic or Homes Under the Hammer.

  I rub moisturiser into my face, my neck. When I pull back the duvet, there’s a dark smear of chocolate and a flattened foil wrapper on the pillow: one of Peggy’s thoughtful touches. I must have melted my guest orange cream unwittingly, when I was feeding the baby this afternoon.

  The visit unfurls as these visits always do. We gather for chilli con carne and baked gammon and rissoles made with leftover turkey. We attend the Sinclairs’ New Year drinks where Ben becomes rather animated because one of the other guests was once a formative crush. We go for wet walks along the bridleway, Cecily in the backpack, Christopher managing to get water in his beetle wellingtons, necessitating an early return. In the evenings, with the children in bed, we watch period dramas and play competitive games of Scrabble and listen to Dirk talking about a new ride-on mower he’s thinking of buying, to Peggy havering over where to go in February (Cape Verde islands? Madeira?).

  At regular intervals during the day, Peggy does a ground-floor sweep after which bossy little cairns of our possessions – jumpers, Blue Bunny, bibs, wipes, the tube of Christopher’s eczema cream – are left for our attention at the bottom of the stairs. It’s a silent scream of protest. And, as things are never where I left them, it makes my life just that little bit harder.

  We spend a lot of time saying, ‘Put that down, Christopher,’ or ‘That’s Grandma’s special china bell, it’s not for playing with,’ or ‘The curtains aren’t a toy.’

  ‘He’s a livewire, isn’t he?’ says Dirk admonishingly as we return the Scrabble tiles to their rightful place. The chess set is missing a queen and two pawns but no one has yet commented; with luck, we’ll find them before we leave. ‘Bright as a button, I expect?’ There’s an edge of doubt in his voice. It’s just before lunch, a time for peanuts and sherry. I never have sherry anywhere else. Here, it’s a bit of a highlight.

  ‘That reminds me, Dirk,’ says Peggy, over the scream of the electric carving knife, ‘Jemima’s been put in the top sets for maths and literacy, did Tom mention that?’

  Dirk did know. ‘And of course the standard at The Chase is terribly high,’ he adds, for our benefit.

  Jemima is their other granddaughter, precious firstborn of Ben’s brother Tom. Tom was going great guns in corporate finance – Dirk was always keen to tell us that he was nailing targets, collecting scalps, being showered with bonuses – until about three years ago when it emerged, in a roundabout fashion, that he had been made redundant. Since then, Tom has been ‘regrouping’, ‘working on something very hush-hush’, although he and his matchy-matchy wife Carolyn, who does something in ‘comms’, don’t seem to have pulled in their horns: they’re still a two-car household, they’re still going to Verbier and Dubai, and the porridge-faced Jemima continues to put on her blazer with the green piping every morning. Is there a boater? I think there might be a boater.

  We sit there, waiting to be called for lunch, and suddenly Dirk rocks forward in his chair, barking, ‘Oh, stop fiddling!’ and Christopher is looking down at the coffee table, at the upended bowl and the spilled peanuts, a salty finger in his mouth. Uh-oh.

  On the last morning we come down and find that Christopher has risen early and balanced two cushions on the sofa, giving him access to the holy grail on the top shelf. The curtain mechanism is broken, the curtains jammed at half-mast. Dirk puts a brave face on it
. ‘Not to worry,’ he says, taking the back off the remote to see if new batteries will do the trick. They don’t.

  We escort Christopher to the naughty step, out in the cold hall, next to a balled-up pair of walking socks and a copy of Peepo. He sits there mute, bearing his punishment, almost noble in his acceptance of it.

  Back in London, unpacking the children’s bag, stuffing the dirty clothes into the washing machine, I find the little green drawstring sack from the Scrabble set, and inside it the queen and the pawns.

  Nina

  Sophie’s face, I think, is like the moon, cold, mysterious, remote. I look at my child now, standing there in the hall in martyred resignation – slightly knock-kneed as the fashion has it, her hair pulled in a slippery fall over one shoulder – and I’m not sure who she is.

  She puts her tongue in her cheek, turns the rope of her hair around, twisting it, tugging it, bored, waiting for the moment to pass.

  The inflections of Arnold that I notice at these moments, when Sophie’s busy hating me, are hard to bear. The weary inhalations. The lip-pressing. The holding back from saying things that I can, in any case, imagine. When she speaks, I smell Wrigley’s first, and then cigarettes.

  ‘My phone ran out of juice,’ she’s saying, ‘So I didn’t get your message.’

  ‘Well, you should have remembered to charge it up properly,’ I say, hearing my voice, shrill, reverberative, appalling. My power, already compromised, dwindling further. ‘And you could have borrowed a friend’s phone. It’s a school night! How many times do we have to go through this?’

  She stifles a yawn, the phone in her hand suddenly illuminating as a text or email arrives. ‘I just forgot. I won’t do it again,’ she says, moving her hand quickly to hide the light that confirms her deceit.