I shook Jean’s papery hand, then Gordon’s surprisingly soft one.
‘Jew, was it?’ bellowed Gordon, his face contorted with what I hoped was curiosity, but feared might be something worse.
‘Jude,’ said Jude, with a beaming smile, ‘short for Judith.’
‘Ah…’ said Gordon, with a hint of relief.
‘But I am Jewish, as it happens,’ said Jude, ‘on my mother’s side anyway, which is how it works. All that wandering in the desert. I suppose they couldn’t be sure who the father was, so they made it matrilineal.’
‘I see,’ said Gordon, with a faint look of distaste.
‘Anyway,’ Jude said breezily, ‘I’m about to get a top-up. Can I bring you something to drink…?’
‘A light ale for me and Jean’ll have a tomato juice,’ Gordon said.
Perhaps Jean would like a Mai Tai, I felt like saying; perhaps she’s in the mood for a Sex on the Beach. I caught Jude’s eye as she headed off towards the makeshift patio bar.
‘Grab me another beer will you, Jude?’ Nick called after her. ‘On second thoughts, you won’t have enough hands, I’ll come with you.’
‘Nick…’ I protested, but they had gone and I was marooned, clutching my glass, as tongue-tied and awkward as if the new guests were some glamour couple from Islington, not our septuagenarian neighbours from two doors up.
I turned back to them with my best hostess’s smile. ‘Have you… lived here long?’
Jean turned deferentially to Gordon.
‘How long is it, dear?’
Gordon raised his eyes heavenwards.
‘Nineteen sixty-seven we moved in,’ he muttered as if this were a topic of conversation he was tired of rehashing.
‘Nineteen sixty-seven, that’s right,’ Jean nodded fondly, ‘because we got a television and that lady won the song contest in her bare feet.’
Gordon muttered to himself and drifted off to weigh up the vegetable patch.
‘Goodness, that’s a long time!’ I said, with a forced smile.
Fifty years in this one spot. Fifty years married to Gordon. I felt a gloom descending and I wasn’t sure if it was on Jean’s behalf or my own. Would I find myself reminiscing at some future date on my own half century spent in this obscure little corner? The hedges growing higher every season, the trees growing taller, the wonky signpost finally falling off so that not even Jude would be able to find me?
‘We moved in with Gordon’s mother, after his father passed away.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘And by the time she passed on I was in the family way, so it made sense to stay in the house.’
‘How lovely!’ I said, thinking the opposite. ‘It must be so nice to have that sense of continuity. Do your children still live nearby?’
‘Oh no, dear, Peter’s in Dubai and…’ she lowered her voice, ‘… Gordon doesn’t see eye to eye with our daughter, so we don’t see her any more…’ her tone was wistful ‘… or the grandchildren.’
‘Oh, what a shame,’ I said with a sympathetic pout, ‘it’s such a lovely spot for little ones too.’
Who was I kidding? Prospect Cottage was every estate agent’s nightmare – a blight on an otherwise desirable hamlet in which the average property prices had doubled in a decade. Its mellow stone frontage had been pebble-dashed over and the portion of its front garden not turned into hard-standing for the couple’s Honda Civic, was dominated by a vast Leylandii, whose one benefit was that it obscured a fuller view of the ugly uPVC porch which Jean and Gordon had filled with gloomy, Triffid-like houseplants. Neglect, the consequence of its owners’ advancing years, had been the property’s only saving grace, allowing its hedges to grow tall and shaggy, ivy to rampage up to its sagging eaves and moss to spawn on wall and outbuilding alike, softening its ugly profile into an irregular dark green carbuncle.
‘… They know who their granny is though,’ Jean continued now, the chirpy optimism in her tone more heartbreaking by far than despair, ‘I never forget their birthdays. Send ’em a postal order every year, on the dot.’
A postal order, I mused, was that still a thing?
‘That’s nice,’ I said doubtfully.
Jean gave me a wistful smile but as we both glanced across to where Gordon was still glowering at the kale, it died on her lips, and I looked away embarrassed. Over her shoulder I could see a young couple making their way down the lane, he carrying a bottle of champagne, she a Kilner jar trimmed with gingham. Behind them trailed two little girls in flouncy dresses and Alice bands, each clutching a small bunch of garden flowers. I squeezed Jean’s arm by way of ‘excuse me’ and her eyes met mine in mute appeal, as if there was more she had wanted to say to me.
‘Douglas Gaines,’ said the newcomer, pumping my hand warmly and handing me the bottle. ‘And this is my wife Imogen.’
She was a woman for whom the term pretty might have been coined: snub-nosed, blue-eyed, smooth-haired, with a mouth neither too big nor too small. She wore a fitted cotton dress and an angora cardigan over her freckled shoulders.
‘Courgette chutney,’ she said, thrusting the Kilner jar at me. ‘Last year’s, I’m afraid, but it keeps for ever.’
I juggled the champagne, the Kilner jar and my half-empty glass before finding a precarious equilibrium.
‘Thank you so much.’
Douglas ushered the two girls forward.
‘And these two monkeys are Honour and Grace. Say “hello”, girls.’
‘Hello,’ they chimed, thrusting their bunches of wilting flowers at me.
‘Oh! Sweet.’
I made an awkward grab for one of the posies and the jar of chutney slipped from under my arm and smashed on the path.
The faint babble of conversation stopped and there was a brief silence, before someone – it must have been Dave – filled it with ironic applause.
Slowly, I took in the tableau of horror – the green gloop on the path, studded with shards of inch-thick glass; the spatter of chutney up the legs, and yes, on the dresses of Honour and Grace; the expressions of polite dismay on the faces of their parents.
‘God! Oh God. I am so sorry. I’m such a…’
Grace (or was it Honour?) started to cry while her braver sister cast a silent malevolent spell on me. Whatever she was summoning – pustules, incontinence, lameness, it couldn’t have been worse than the agony of standing there for what felt like decades, apologizing on a loop, while the Gaineses’ smiles grew ever more strained.
‘You’ve met the wife, then?’ Nick appeared from nowhere, clapping a matey hand on each of their shoulders, and looking from Douglas to Imogen and back again with an expression of such pop-eyed satirical enthusiasm that they had no choice but to laugh. Even I managed to crack a smile – my roguish husband, whose insults were taken for compliments, whose sins masqueraded as misdemeanours – always on hand with a ready quip.
‘She made it herself,’ I murmured, woefully, in Nick’s ear. He bent down to appraise the spilled chutney before sticking his finger in an uncontaminated bit and licking it ostentatiously.
He grimaced.
‘Lucky escape if you ask me!’
There was a moment of silence while the assembled guests digested the audacity of his remark, then Imogen turned on him an expression of scandalized delight and batted his sleeve and Douglas emitted a complicit snort. Jude handed me a dustpan and brush and ushered the little girls towards the kitchen. I heard her promising them Coke, crisps and stain removal, in that order. Day officially saved.
More people came. A friendly couple called Ray and Min who ran the B&B and overhauled vintage motorbikes in their spare time, followed by a plump Scottish woman, Cath, mannish of dress, unfussy of demeanour. She explained which house she lived in and I must have looked surprised. It was the picture-perfect cottage with roses round the door, which I had imagined might belong to some apple-cheeked matron and Nick had insisted was more likely a lucrative holiday let. Cath was a garden designer, she told me, and wh
ilst her own garden reflected her old-fashioned preference for lupin and hollyhock, she had paid for it by designing minimalist gardens for city types who didn’t give a shit about plants but cared very much that she’d won two silver gilts at Chelsea. I smiled at that.
Things were getting almost buzzy now. The local farmer dropped in, accepted a glass of wine, offered us a discount on his organic beef and asked us to like his Facebook page before heading off to move the yearlings to their summer pasture. Then came an interesting pair, young and arty-looking with foreign accents and I got quite excited until Min took me to one side and explained, in embarrassed tones, that they were guests at the B&B, who hadn’t quite grasped the protocol, and thought it was open house. I didn’t mind. They bulked out the numbers and brought down the average age of the guests by a good couple of years. I even had a slightly stilted discussion with the woman about the merits of the Swedish education system, only to be told later by Jude that they were Dutch.
As twilight fell, a couple of rackety youths looked in, who seemed to know everyone, but only hung around long enough to eat a burger apiece and down a couple of beers, before heading up the lane towards the local pub. Nick muttered ‘freeloaders’ under his breath, but I didn’t mind – I liked their swagger and their air of entitlement and the way they came and went, like the weather. I could almost fool myself they were mates of Ethan’s – that we were a family again.
It was only when the four of us were clearing up at the end, trekking back and forth from garden to kitchen with glasses dangling between our fingertips, making cheery remarks as we passed each other on the path, that it occurred to me that Jean and Gordon must have left without saying goodbye.
4
I slept in the next morning. I could hear the murmur of voices downstairs, the chinking of cups and smell bacon cooking. For a while I pretended to myself that I was still asleep. I couldn’t face it. The laughter, the chitchat, the morning-after discussions, during which my progress would be monitored, my rehabilitation assessed and scored. But Jude and Dave were leaving today, and I knew that if I let them go without saying goodbye, I’d only regret it. I struggled into my dressing gown, ran my fingers through my hair, glanced into the mirror to reassure myself I still had a reflection, and then made my way along the landing, slowing as their voices came within earshot. I could tell from their hushed, confidential tones that they were talking about me. I stopped, one hand on the banister, and listened.
‘… I just think you have to be so careful,’ Jude’s voice – low and serious, ‘… It might be therapeutic, but it might be too soon…’
‘Yes, I haven’t forgotten, thank you,’ Nick interrupted tersely, ‘and of course I’m not going to push her. I’m not an idiot. Only the psych said, career aside, it could be a good outlet… a safe space…’
‘Don’t you think this should be her safe space? Here, with you? In your house?’
I clattered noisily down the rest of the stairs.
‘So yeah, no… I suppose the neighbours aren’t exactly what you’d call cosmopolitan,’ said Nick, and I marvelled at his ability to turn on a sixpence, ‘but their hearts seem to be in the right place and it’s not like we need any more friends as such… oh hi, darling. Come have a coffee.’
‘So yeah, Kaz, we were just saying. Not a bad gaff you’ve got here,’ Dave pitched in, with uncharacteristic tact.
‘The neighbours seem friendly,’ added Jude. She shuffled her chair along to make room for me.
‘Well, we hardly know them yet,’ I reminded her, holding out a mug so that Nick could pour the last of the coffee into it.
‘The B&B woman seemed nice. Normal anyway,’ said Jude.
‘You’d have to at least pretend, wouldn’t you,’ put in Dave, ‘running a B&B.’
‘I quite took to Cath,’ I said.
‘The er… big woman?’ said Jude.
‘The lesbian,’ Dave said, in a satirical whisper.
‘Is that how we identify women,’ asked Nick drolly, ‘by their size or their sexuality?’
‘Works for me,’ said Dave.
‘Anyway, yeah, Cath was nice,’ I said.
‘Better keep an eye on the missus, Nick,’ Dave said.
‘She’s promised me some fuchsia cuttings,’ I said to Jude, ignoring him.
‘Eh-up!’ Dave slapped the table.
‘Shut up, Dave,’ said Jude wearily.
‘Shall I fry you an egg, love?’
Nick leaned across the table and touched my hand. I watched his fingers caress mine and felt the warmth of his touch, but the two phenomena seemed unrelated. I smiled at him and shook my head.
‘What about the Fotherington-Farquars?’ Jude nudged me, her eyes round with suppressed merriment.
‘They’re called Gaines,’ I said with an admonishing smile. ‘They were all right, I thought. Especially considering I dropped her chutney.’
‘Chutney though!’ Jude rolled her eyes.
‘What’s wrong with chutney?’ I said, laughing.
‘She’ll be joining you up to the WI next,’ said Jude with a sulky smile.
‘She will not.’
‘My God, their kids are precocious,’ Jude said, changing tack. ‘You should have heard them when I was trying to get the stains out of their dresses.’ She put on a high drawly voice. ‘“I don’t think it will come out completely because Mummy’s chutney has turmeric in it and turmeric is used as a dye in India.”’
‘Yep, you’re right,’ I muttered, ‘spawn of the devil. Remind me to sneak round after dark and kill their ponies.’
I didn’t know why I was being mean to Jude. Because she was going home, I suppose; because she was leaving me here.
‘Don’t be like that,’ she said. ‘I’m not saying they’re not nice people. I just can’t see you hanging out, that’s all.’
‘Yeah well, I didn’t hang out with our neighbours in Trenchard Street, did I? I hung out with you.’
The truth of this statement – its emotional heft – silenced us both for a moment.
‘Come home!’ Jude said, pouting. ‘We miss you.’
Nick winced and Dave threw Jude an exasperated glance.
‘Not home, obviously,’ Jude backtracked, ‘this is home. And a very homely home at that. Much nicer than… well every bit as nice as… Anyway, you know what I’m trying to say… Oh Christ, when you’re in a hole, eh…?’ She looked in slight desperation from Nick to Dave and back again, then leaned forward and patted the back of my hand. ‘Take no notice of me, babe. I’m just being selfish. I want what’s best for you. You know that… as long as I still get to see you once in a while and you promise not go off with old Vita Sack-of-potatoes up the road, I’ll let you keep your little bit of paradise. How about that?’
I rolled my eyes, not trusting myself to speak.
‘Well, it is,’ Jude insisted, waving toward the window as if I had challenged her, ‘it’s paradise. Look at that view. A person could never get tired of…’
‘Jude, I’m not a child!’ I snapped. ‘We’re not here for the view as you very well know. I wish to God you’d all just…’ I put the back of my hand to my mouth and focused hard on the tufts of meadow grass waving their own strange semaphore message through the kitchen window.
It was awkward after that. Too much politeness about the order in which showers should be taken, too much willingness to strip beds and take taxis to the station, rather than put us to any trouble. An onlooker might have mistaken us for casual acquaintances, rather than friends of twenty years’ standing. I felt the old feeling returning, the fish tank feeling, as though I were behind glass, moving more slowly than everyone else through the wrong element. I watched Jude check the train times on her phone and had to fight the impulse to snatch it off her. Don’t leave me here! I wanted to say. Take me back to London with you. Only take me in a time machine back to before the silences and the evasions and the sudden lavish treats. Back to a houseful of noisy adolescents pissing off the neighbours and
a busy social calendar, back to a pair of perky tits and a husband who occasionally wanted to fondle them. Back to the sound of sirens and the smell of chicken shops; back to rubbish in bus shelters and busted sofas on street corners; back to reality.
I heard the rattle of Jude’s suitcase wheels on the landing and felt, for a moment, overwhelmed with despair.
By the time we were loading our guests’ luggage into Nick’s new Range Rover, the mood had lifted a bit.
‘Nice light environmental footprint you’ve gone for here, mate,’ Dave said sarcastically.
‘He’s just jealous,’ said Jude, as if we didn’t know.
Nick smirked and switched on the ignition. Then, half joking, half in earnest, he turned the sound system on full blast, slid down the front windows and roared up the lane with Nirvana riffling the hedgerows like a cyclone. He had taken three blind corners at breakneck speed, to the anxious hilarity of his passengers, when, rounding the fourth, a Transit van loomed out of nowhere. Brakes squealed and we were flung forward in slow motion, collapsing like puppets against the leather seats.
‘Shit!’ Nick killed the music and we sat in shock for a moment, watching the bonnet of the Transit vibrate. I thought we must have hit it, but leaning out of the open passenger window, I saw that it was juddering, not due to any impact, but because it was held together mainly by rust and gaffer tape.
Not that the van’s shaven-headed driver seemed much mollified by the lack of physical damage. Seeing him glare down at us through his wrap-around reflective sunglasses, I shifted uneasily in my seat.
Nick raised a hand, acknowledging fault, and then, with his trademark insouciance, gestured towards a passing place a few yards behind the Transit, into which the other driver might easily reverse so that the two vehicles could pass each other. The youth continued to stare at us, his neck pulsing beneath a terrifying-looking Celtic cross tattoo. He gripped the steering wheel and worked his jaw.
‘Dude’s off his head,’ muttered Dave.
‘I think you’d better just back up,’ I said.
The Move Page 3