‘It’s OK, love, we’ve got this,’ Nick said, replacing me at Jean’s right elbow, while Gordon, hatchet-faced, took her left. I bowed my head and hurried homeward, not looking back, only stopping to catch my breath when I could no longer hear the sound of her keening.
20
I had my key in the lock of our front door before I noticed through its mullioned window the indistinct shape of a figure sitting on the couch. Joy and relief flooded through me.
‘Hello, stranger…’ I said, the emotion in my voice betraying my attempt at levity. He turned round in surprise and the disappointment winded me; it wasn’t Ethan, as I’d thought, but Gabe. I should have known from the hair; Gabe’s was much lighter and cropped closer to his scalp.
‘Oh!’ I said, trying not to sound dismayed. ‘Nick didn’t tell me you were coming…’
Gabe muted the television and sprang up to greet me with an awkward air kiss-cum hug.
‘You’re OK, then?’ he asked, backing off again. ‘Nick said you needed rescuing.’
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ I said, a little touchily. ‘Just, my phone was dying and it’s pitch-black on that road without a torch. When did you arrive?’ It sounded like an accusation.
‘This afternoon. I thought it was about time I checked out the Country Seat and Dad said the er… room… was free.’ He looked a little shame-faced. I could imagine all too well what Nick had said. Abel, come down quick, Cain’s done a bunk.
‘Well, it’s lovely to see you,’ I said briskly. ‘Nice for you and your dad to spend some time together, too.’
He nodded eagerly and there was an awkward silence. I realized I must cut an odd figure, breathless and dishevelled from my encounter with Jean. I was conscious too that he would have smelled alcohol on my breath.
‘Well, I… I might just pop up and have a shower,’ I said.
Gabe gave me a puzzled look.
‘Where’s my dad…?’
‘O-h-h. Yeah, there was a bit of a… this elderly neighbour of ours, Jean. She gets a bit confused now and then. Anyway, she was out on the lane just now, wandering about on her own, so he’s just helping her husband… round her up.’
I closed my eyes briefly at the memory and opened them again to find Gabe giving me a bemused smile.
‘She’s too strong for me,’ I said, ‘I gave it a go, but…’
Why was I explaining myself? How did he always manage to make me feel like a lesser mortal? A freak?
‘Nick’ll be back any minute. You just…’ I waved vaguely, ‘… make yourself at home.’
He looked perfectly at home already, I thought, watching him reach for the TV remote again; more at home than I was.
The heat of the shower felt like love. The water cascaded down on me, relaxing my tense muscles, sloughing off the dead skin cells and the pollution; evaporating the last fuzzy traces of tipsiness. I closed my eyes and luxuriated for a few minutes in the feeling of warmth and wellbeing, steering my mind deliberately away from Jude’s predicament and Jean’s – my own, come to that – and focussing instead on the physical pleasure of the water drumming on my head, the scent of the shampoo and the feeling of vitality and rejuvenation.
I put on some clean jeans and my favourite sea green jumper. Coming back downstairs, I could hear Nick and Gabe bantering like old mates. Nick was sitting forward in the leather armchair, ankles crossed, scruffy old deck shoes sliding off his calloused heels, beer bottle dangled lazily between two fingers.
‘… Bloke’s a fucking animal. He’s spent more time on the bench than on the pitch, but defensively they’re screwed without him…’
He turned at the squeak of my damp feet on the last few stairs and his eyes flicked over my body as if taking an inventory. Finding everything to be in order, he gave me a faintly vulpine smile and said, ‘Hello, you.’
‘Hi.’
‘Hungry?’
‘I could eat,’ I conceded, although I was hardly in the mood.
‘Boil a kettle for the rice, will you, mate,’ Nick murmured to his son, ‘and grab some knives and forks.’
I watched Gabe spring out of his seat and lope over to the kitchen. He was so like his father; not in his colouring or even his stature, but in the way he carried himself. He had a grace, a confidence so compelling that even his deficits – the overly long Byzantine nose, the eyelashes so fair as to be almost invisible – seemed like assets. No wonder they had named him after an angel.
‘So…?’ I said looking at Nick.
Nick smiled perplexedly as if he didn’t know what I was getting at.
‘… How was Jean?’
He pulled up the sleeve of his sweater to display a livid scratch on his forearm.
‘Pretty fierce, actually. I don’t know how the old boy copes with her.’
I knelt beside him, pouting sympathetically and ran the pad of my thumb over the scratch, pressing just a little harder than I should have when I got to the middle. He didn’t flinch.
‘Did you go in the house?’
Nick pulled his sleeve back down.
‘Of course.’
‘Is it…?’
What? What was I asking? Is it a dungeon? Is she chained to the bed? Forced to wee in a bucket?
‘It’s spotless.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No wonder the poor old sod’s a bit uptight. Must be a full-time job. He’s not getting any help from social services either. Different generation though; they’ve got a lot of pride. I’d like to think I’d be like that if you went gaga…’ he grinned roguishly, ‘but who knows…’
I shuddered.
‘Poor baby,’ he said, ‘the cold’s got into your bones. Shall I light the wood burner?’
‘Do you want the curry in a dish or what?’ Gabe called from the kitchen.
‘Nah,’ Nick said, ‘just bring the pan to the table. We’re family, aren’t we?’
Are we? I wanted to say. Are we family? Isn’t there someone missing? I couldn’t pretend any more. I couldn’t dissemble. I leaned forward and said to Nick in an urgent undertone, ‘Have you heard anything from him? From Ethan?’
He closed his eyes briefly in exasperation.
‘Nope,’ he said and then, not even as if he were changing the subject – as if to him there had been no subject, he turned his head and called, ‘naan breads, mate. Bottom left oven…’
‘Is he staying long?’ I said, jerking my head towards the kitchen. I sounded about six years old. A sulky brat. Pitting the boys against each other in precisely the way I had promised myself I wouldn’t.
‘Till Tuesday, probably. He had leave owing and it was a case of use it or lose it.’
I think we were both aware of the unspoken comparison. This son’s no slacker; this son’s on a career path.
‘Don’t worry, though,’ he added pleasantly, ‘we’ll be out of your way tomorrow. Little job to do for your favourite neighbour.’
I frowned, Jean still being uppermost in my mind.
‘Which neighbour?’
‘Imogen’s marquee, remember?’
‘You’re actually going to show your face?’ I asked incredulously. ‘After what happened?’
‘Ethan behaving like a dickhead, you mean?’ Nick said, meeting my eye.
‘Nick, you nearly bloody strangled him…’
Gabe was hovering beside the table by now, holding a pan in each hand. Nick leaped up to put a tablemat beneath each of them.
‘Ethan can come and apologize any time he likes,’ Nick muttered, sitting down again and pushing the rice towards Gabe. ‘He knows where we live.’
Gabe spooned rice onto three plates and handed them out.
‘Where we live?’ I hissed, incredulously. ‘He lives here too, Nick. It’s his home, in case you hadn’t noticed. The only one he’s got.’
‘Lamb bhuna?’ offered Gabe uncertainly.
Getting no response, he shrugged and served that out, too. I sat down mechanically and picked up my fork.
&n
bsp; ‘P’raps he ought to treat his home with a bit more respect then,’ Nick fixed me with a defiant glare. ‘Treat the community with a bit more respect.’
My fork clanged on the table.
Both men looked up in surprise.
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said, pushing my chair back abruptly as I stood. ‘I’m going to bed.’
The bedroom was immaculate: the duvet smooth, the chair adorned only with Nick’s clothes from yesterday, somehow even more stylish in their slight dishevelment than fresh from the hanger. The room smelled not just of his aftershave, but of the deep-down Nick scent that still stirred something in me despite everything. The blind was open and the moon had risen higher in the sky since my walk, illuminating the summit of the hill like a spotlight trained on an empty stage.
I got into bed. Hunger gnawed my gut and I tried not to think about my helping of lamb bhuna, probably even now being divvied up between Nick’s and Gabe’s plates. If it were me, left downstairs after such a scene, I’d have been too upset to eat. Nick, I knew, would just say ‘waste not, want not’ and tuck in.
I fell asleep quickly and had a nightmare. I could hear Ethan crying in the attic of our cottage. Nick had put him to bed in the cot he’d slept in as a baby. His fully grown arms and legs were splaying awkwardly through the bars, but his cries were the needy hiccupping sobs of an infant. He was dehydrated in the dream, his eyes sunken, his breathing rapid and shallow. He was going to die if he didn’t get water. I tried to run down to the bathroom to fetch some, but the staircase kept turning into an escalator carrying me backwards. When I did finally make it to the bathroom sink, the tap was rusted up. Ethan’s cries were becoming fainter and more pitiful now and I was frantic. I ran out of the cottage and found myself not on the lane, but on our old street in London. I ran up the path of our next-door neighbour’s house shouting, ‘Help me! Help me!’ but as I got nearer, the house became overgrown and by the time I had thrashed my way through to the front door, it had turned into Prospect Cottage. Through the window, I could see Nick sitting at a table with Imogen. He was pouring water from a crystal jug into her open mouth. I pounded on the glass with my fists, but they ignored me. Nick just kept pouring the water so that it overflowed from her laughing mouth, onto her breasts and pooled around them both on the floor. I pounded on the glass until my fists ached, but Nick just kept pouring and Imogen kept laughing and the water kept pooling…
‘Hey, hey. Baby. Relax. It’s just a bad dream, OK?’ It was Nick’s voice; Nick’s hand softly stroking my cheek.
‘No, no,’ I heard myself mumble, ‘bringha waggah, godda geggah waggah…’
The dream was slipping away from me; Ethan was slipping away. I blinked up through the semi-darkness, my heart rate gradually slowing, my powers of recognition returning.
‘The wagher…’ I mumbled forlornly.
‘Yes, it’s here, take a sip,’ Nick pushed a glass into my hand, ‘here, let me help you.’
‘No, no, it wasn’t for…’ I muttered confusedly, but the dream was already hazy and remote. I could no longer tell what was real and what was a figment. It was easier to give way, to succumb. He was gazing down at me now with concern in his eyes, and yes, perhaps even love; kneading my shoulder, murmuring endearments.
Nick moved his hand gently down my upper arm and his touch became intentional; erotic. It was with a strange detachment that I registered his thumb massaging my inner elbow, his hand sliding down my forearm, clasping my palm and interlacing his fingers with mine. He squeezed my hand interrogatively and more out of curiosity than desire, I squeezed back. He turned me over then and hitched up my hips so he could work the pillow underneath them and I splayed my legs to make it easier for him. I heard the rattle of his buckle and the rasp of his zip, but I did not, to my surprise, have the usual Pavlovian response of wetness, of readiness. He took a handful of my hair, wrapped it around his fist and bracing against the pillow, used his free hand to twist my arm a little way up my back – not too far, just far enough.
Usually by now I would be breathless; thrilled to be overcome, to be taken. Usually by now I would be burying my face in the pillow to stifle the first groans, because the rule was that if I appeared to be enjoying it, he would stop. Usually by now, my hips would be writhing and he would have to tug on my hair to slow me down, to remind me that gratification was best deferred. But tonight, I felt nothing; no, not nothing, I felt indifference, inconvenience, boredom. He was getting into the rhythm now, his thrusts growing stronger, more emphatic. He had not yet adjusted for the angle of maximum penetration. Usually that was the point at which I got so turned on by his desire that my own satisfaction became an irrelevance. I became an irrelevance and that was the biggest turn on of all. I would raise my head, take one last gulping breath, like a long-distance swimmer and go down again, biting the pillow so as not to cry out. Not tonight though.
Tonight something strange was happening. My face was in the pillow, yet I could see the back of my own head. It was as though I had floated up to the ceiling – was in my body but also outside it. Looking down on the pair of us from on high, I noticed how strangely my hair sprouted from my crown and that my knuckles were getting bony with age. I saw how ridiculous Nick looked – buttocks going like the clappers, jaw set in a rictus of ferocious concentration. I had an overwhelming urge to laugh and forgetting that I was down there as well as up here, I did laugh – a big irreverent snort into the pillow. Luckily, Nick took it for a groan of ecstasy and when, despite my best efforts to subdue them, my shoulders continued to shake uncontrollably, he seemed to think I was coming.
21
I was woken by an incongruous noise – a city noise; the gasp of air brakes on a truck followed by five syncopated toots of a horn. For a moment I thought I was back in Trenchard Street.
‘Nick,’ I mumbled, rolling over and patting his side of the bed. It was empty, the duvet thrown back. I sat up groggily, my head still pounding from the hangover and remembering where I was, stared one-eyed around the room. Nick’s jeans had gone from the chair and the bedroom door was ajar.
I could hear shouting coming from the lane now, more cheerful in tone, more ‘can-do’ than it would have been in London. Then came the electronic woop woop of the truck’s reversing, the clatter of metal; more bellowing. Imogen and her bloody marquee! No wonder Nick was up and at it. No doubt Gabe had been pressed into service too; I pictured a gang of able-bodied males, all waiting eagerly for Her Ladyship to say jump so they could chorus, ‘How high?’ I squinted at my phone. Seven forty-five a.m. They had a nerve. I flopped back onto the pillow and closed my eyes again but it was too late, I was wide-awake.
Thinking I might as well make the most of the early start, I put on an old T-shirt and my dungarees and made my way down to the kitchen. The sink was still full of last night’s dirty dishes. I was so hungry that even the slightly stale morning-after whiff of curry made my mouth water. I’d had nothing to eat, I realized, since the sushi I’d picked at yesterday with Jude. Nick and Gabe were long gone, the only evidence that they’d even passed through, two soggy teabags on the draining board. I put the kettle on and while it was boiling, opened the fridge and scooped cold rice into my mouth with my fingers. I’d have liked to help myself to a bowl of leftovers, but the thought of being in Nick’s debt, even in this small way, stuck in my craw. Instead I took a bruised banana out of the fruit bowl and, once the kettle had boiled, made a cup of tea and took my makeshift breakfast down to the studio.
I opened the door with trepidation, half expecting to find pottery shards on the floor, some sinister message scrawled in the clay dust, but everything was normal – perhaps not quite as clean as I might have left it on an average day, but orderly enough. I thought of the unexpected turn events had taken since I’d walked out of the studio on a whim to take my photographs – the heart-to-heart I had had with Cath in the woods, the disconcerting discovery of the van parked up in the barn, the whole Nick and Imogen fiasco, Ethan’s departure…<
br />
Ethan… I tried not to think about where my son might be now; what he might be up to. If I’d let it, my imagination would have run the gamut from crack dens to petty crime, but I chose to remember the dog-walking and trust in his essentially good character. When had worrying ever helped in the past? It hadn’t. I perched on a stool at my work surface and, peeling the banana, surveyed my studio, now so crowded with finished pots that there was scarcely room to dry new ones. The pots were more numerous than I remembered, but also, somehow, more accomplished. They looked like the work of a craftswoman, an artist, someone who had put in the hours and knew what she was doing. I washed down my last bite of banana with a swig of tea and hopped down from my stool.
The block of clay I had re-wrapped cursorily yesterday, expecting to be gone no more than an hour, still lay on my work surface like road kill. I heaved it off the melamine – a leathery dead thing – and lowered it into the bucket of viscous brown slip which I used to revitalise old clay. I fetched my cutting wire, wiped over the work surface with a clean cloth and, when I judged the clay to have had enough to drink, hauled it out again and set about dividing it in three.
I was wedging the first piece; had it almost ready to throw, when it all kicked off next door: clanging, banging, the clatter of mallets and the whirr of electric tools. Every kind of repetitive, spine-jolting, head-jangling noise and all of it accompanied, not by calling, not even by shouting, but by bellowing.
‘To you!’
‘To me!’
‘Left a bit… right a bit. Hold it there. Hold it… ho-o-old it…’
I marched over to close the window, but once there, I became distracted. It was too compelling an entertainment to ignore: the bluster, the camaraderie, the underlying masculine competitiveness; the sense that the very future of civilization depended on the successful completion of the task. I could hear Douglas issuing instructions in his clipped patrician tones, Nick being cheerfully insubordinate and Gabe trying to mediate between the two. There were other voices I didn’t recognize, an older gruff-sounding local and his sweary sidekick and an eager-to-please posh boy whose nasal laugh was frequently and ingratiatingly deployed.
The Move Page 18