Feminism caused more than a few casualties among the married couples Claire and Tommy knew. It was a wave that crashed over them, and one or two wives were swept up and carried so far from their suburban homes that they could find no way back. There was Annie Darkley, who after reading The Feminine Mystique had lurched to her feet in the middle of a dinner party to announce that she was no longer prepared to clean a bathroom where three males went to piss. She’d had too much to drink, but still. The silence at the table had frightened Claire, though privately she had sympathised. Not long afterwards, Annie had walked out on her husband and their two boys. Claire heard she’d sold her engagement ring and flown to India, ‘to find herself’ as people said then. Later, stories filtered back of a gang rape in Goa, of Annie’s parents flying out to bring her home, and of the need for ongoing psychiatric care.
After the Annie Darkley scandal, Claire had thought the next to go would be that fawn-like Fiona Padwick. She and her husband Danny had seemed locked in a private struggle, the nature of which Clare could only guess. But they had stuck it out, or they had up until that time a few years back when she bumped into them out Christmas shopping. Danny had put on an alarming amount of weight; Fiona was still as wary as a deer about to bolt, but there they were, buying fancy cheeses together.
Whenever Claire thinks about Fiona Padwick and Annie Darkley she understands her own ambivalence towards the women’s movement. Women deserve equal pay for equal work, no question, but it is not as if men are ever going to shoulder their share of the housework and child-rearing. And with a soft man like Tommy, Claire had known she would get more with honey than with vinegar: the one bit of wisdom she had been able to glean from her mother. Perhaps women like Annie, who were borne away on the feminist wave, were already chaffing within their marriages, whereas Claire, after a difficult childhood, had crept into matrimony like a hermit crab into an empty shell. She had felt protected, and had chosen to manage Tommy rather than to make demands. Which is why he is still in her life, even if he is married to someone else.
Rosanna, though, has negotiated a fairer division of labour. Tommy works around the house. He would even get up in the night to their children when they were small – something he never did for Claire after Martin was born. Recoiling from her son’s unbidden appearance in her thoughts, Claire remembers the first time she stayed with Tommy and Rosanna – it was that terrible winter when she’d had pneumonia, and was too weak to shop or cook for herself – and how astonished she had been to see Tommy vacuuming the living room. She still wonders what he had to promise Rosanna so that she could stay. Their daughters had been small, that first time, and when Tommy brought her home he had introduced her to Penny and Juliet as ‘Aunty Claire’, having already warned her that Rosanna thought the girls far too young to understand that Claire had once been married to their father.
There had been small Buddhas ranged along the windowsills in the guest bedroom. Claire always remembers this with a wry smile, for Rosanna’s Buddhism seems an affectation, like the cigarettes Claire once posed with at parties but didn’t inhale. When the door had closed behind Tommy she had picked up the little resin figures, one by one. Some were slender, meditating with half closed eyes, while others had broad bald heads and chubby bellies – the fat ones all seemed to be either laughing or sleeping. Of the slender figures, some held their hands in prayer, some pointing to the earth. One held a bowl in his lap. One held a lotus flower. Their arrangement in the room where she would sleep had struck Claire as talismanic: Rosanna was protecting her household against Claire’s evil eye.
As if to support this theory, when Aunty Claire’s presence at Christmases and birthdays had become a ritual the children insisted upon, and looked forward to, Claire noticed that the Buddhas had multiplied, that there were, in fact, little Buddhas everywhere, even on the windowsill in the downstairs powder room, and resting along the tops of door frames – these latter were made of white plaster, so that you hardly noticed them against Rosanna’s stark white walls. On the sill above the kitchen sink was a miniature altar. That Buddha received daily offerings – cones of incense, rose petals, flower heads floating in a shallow dish. Once, Claire had seen half a peach balanced in the Buddha’s lap.
Tommy’s youngest, Penny, had known all their names, and she would move along the windowsills, solemnly reciting them for Claire.
“This is the Medicine Buddha, see, with the bowl of herbs? And this one is the Happy Buddha; this, the Teaching Buddha …”
From Penny, Claire learned that there were Begging Buddhas, and Laughing Buddhas; there were Preventing the Relatives from Fighting Buddhas, and Nirvana Buddhas. At Christmas, and sometimes on Penny’s birthday when she is able to wangle an invitation, Claire looks forward to seeing how many more Buddhas Rosanna has crammed into their house.
It is a bit of luck the insurance has fallen due, so that there is something to discuss with Tommy. Once he realises the significance of the date she feels sure he will indulge her in a small, private celebration. In her handbag she has a gift already wrapped – gold cufflinks, each set with a small ruby. To afford them, Claire has tightened her belt even further than usual. She wants to see her husband’s face when he realises she has gone to some trouble for him; she wants to see that dimple that flashes in his left cheek when he feels a surge of affection for her – for even now it still sometimes surfaces. It is a small thing, this relic of their shared past, but it seems to say to Claire that often when you think something precious has been lost it has really only been mislaid.
She pulls the dress over her head, and fumbles her arms into the sleeves. Once, when she and Tommy met at the hotel not long after they were divorced, Claire had told him that autumn had always been her favourite season. She had gestured towards the window, where tawny leaves were being tossed and teased by the wind. There was still some gold left in her, she’d said, for the right person. Claire had truly felt that then, and sometimes felt it still. Tommy had laughed, rather nastily, she’d thought. He had made a remark about her hair, which she had been experimenting with growing out grey – another economy – and after that she had hurried back to the hairdresser. What was it Tommy had said? Claire has banished his exact words to some dim, outer sphere of memory, though the sense of hurt remains.
The dress fits snugly over her hips, raspberry lace, and even though she has had to remove the stained silk rose at the neck it still looks a million dollars because, if nothing else, she has kept her figure. When Claire has finished putting on her face – not too much, because Tommy doesn’t like overly made-up women – she steps into her shoes, and shrugs on her coat, bracing her shoulders against the weight of it.
“There!” It isn’t far to the hotel, but she will take a taxi, and to hell with the expense.
Tom Delaney could swear he is being strangled by invisible hands. He slips the top button of his shirt and wrenches at the knot of his tie, loosening it a little, taking in a big gulp of the early evening air that is greasy with fast-food smells and exhaust fumes. Around him, people are streaming out of the glass fronts of office buildings, roaring past in their cars, rushing towards whatever awaits them, while he hovers at this pedestrian crossing, cursing himself for agreeing to meet Claire.
When she rang him he had wanted to scream. The thought of sitting down with her in that bloody hotel she likes had felt like the last straw to a camel. But he’d agreed to go, and now that the hour has arrived he feels so unsettled that he wonders whether he should stop at a bar and take a steadying drink. The light turns green, and he lunges forward, resolved to get it over with.
When he searches his mind for some way to begin the conversation, the sensation of being strangled returns: in the lobby of the Windsor Hotel Tom pulls off his tie, rolls it up and shoves it into his jacket pocket. He imagines Claire’s face when she sees him emerge from the lift without it, and with his shirt undone. She won’t say anything, but he will see the tightening of her mouth that makes her look like her mothe
r, the icy gleam that enters her clear grey eyes from who knows what light source. These are the outward expressions of her displeasure. Christ, it is almost unnatural, Claire’s ability to control her feelings, and part of him admires her for it, her resolute grace, her implacable dignity. But another part believes Claire’s reticence is the reason he fell so hard for Rosanna. Claire could never let herself go, not in bed, not on the few occasions she’d drunk too many cocktails, not even – and this was hardest to believe – in those desperate days after they lost Martin.
Only once has he known Claire give way to tears, and fucking hell if it wasn’t because they’d had to re-home their cat, Sixpence. He’d had to explain to her that the charter of the flats excluded pets. So they’d taken the cat to someone Claire knew – she had been Martin’s friend – Lizbie bloody Menick, or Lizbie the Manic, as he’d thought of her, which had been a bit unkind, because she was really just an oddball kid. Lizbie had stayed with them once when she had nowhere to go – anyway, Sixpence had no sooner moved in with her than she’d given birth to a single kitten. Claire swore she hadn’t known Sixpence was pregnant, but Jesus Christ, the fuss there’d been with Lizbie!
He and Claire had been in the midst of the divorce, and although on the surface all was calm, they had really been like a pair of ducks on a pond, paddling madly underwater. He had wanted to shout at Lizbie that her place was a complete fucking shit heap, to which an extra cat would make no difference, and that it was no wonder her drip of a husband had topped himself. In the end, when the kitten was weaned he had taken it home. Rosanna had balked at keeping a litter tray in the laundry, but she’d relented when he’d explained about Claire, and crazy-as-bat-shit Lizbie.
Sometimes he wonders how different his life would be now if he hadn’t found Rosanna before Martin discovered drugs. He doubts he would have had the guts to deal Claire a second blow, but by then it was all a done deal; they had started the divorce. But yeah, Claire had cried when she handed over Sixpence, yet she was dry-eyed after they heard their son was dead of a heroin overdose. Tom often wonders what a psych would make of that. Otherwise, you couldn’t fault her.
Rosanna has plenty to say, of course, mostly about the way that, over the years, Claire has hot-wired herself into their lives. It is true that he sometimes feels his ex-wife’s reasonableness is designed to keep him distracted while her tentacles fasten more tightly around his throat. Like that time she claimed to have had pneumonia: personally, he still gives her the benefit of the doubt, but Rosanna has never believed she was as ill as she said. And then somehow she’d started spending Christmases with them. Rosanna had only asked that Claire stop calling him Tommy; it made him sound like a teenager, she said, or some spiv who would hang about at race tracks, losing money. But Tom knew it would do no good to raise it with Claire, so he hadn’t, and after a while Rosanna had stopped rolling her eyes every time.
The children had taken to her, especially Penny. Claire had taught them to bake gingerbread men and to knit long striped scarves – he didn’t know whether that had made her presence more bearable for Rosanna or whether she had taken it as a criticism.
The choking sensation returns as he enters the lift, and Tom slips another button of his shirt and sucks in air. The thing about that episode with Lizbie and the cat was that it had happened on the day they’d had to deal with Martin’s bedroom. For the two years after he died they had barely opened the door, but the divorce, and the sale of the house, had forced them to sort through his belongings. Tom had been amazed, and then stricken, at how little their son had owned – a couple of secondhand guitars and amplifiers, books from childhood, clothes too worn to give to charity. There were stacks of records by artists you’d never heard of. And in the bottom of his wardrobe, one pair of shoes. He remembers standing in the middle of that sparely furnished room, hot with shame at the realisation that their only son had been living his life in a single pair of scuffed black brogues. He had wept then, and later Claire had cried over the cat, but he reckons a psych would say they were both crying for the same reason.
The first floor lounge of the Windsor has a faded blue carpet, yellow walls and darker yellow curtains that don’t quite touch the floor. There are tub chairs, and one square blue sofa in front of the window, and Claire sighs her relief when she sees the sofa is vacant. She settles in but drapes her coat around her shoulders, for a chill falls from the plate glass window. Outside, trees heave and subside in a breathing motion that reminds her of the ocean. When a waiter appears, she explains that she would like a small club soda while she waits for her husband. For years now, with strangers, she has given up explaining that they are divorced. She is taking her first sip when the lift doors part, and Tommy walks towards her.
Claire feels that lift of gladness the sight of him always brings. She likes the way he wears his clothes, for Tommy is not one of those men whose body strains at the cloth of his shirt, or his trousers. He gained a pound or two in his middle years, it’s true, but his height ensures a degree of elegance. However, Tommy Delaney is not looking his best this evening, and Claire notes shadows under his eyes, and in the hollows of his cheeks. His hair needs a trim, too, and he is without his tie. In the month since she last saw him, Tommy seems to have aged.
“Claire,” he says. “Am I late?”
She shakes her head and smiles. Even his voice sounds different; perhaps he is getting a cold.
Tommy thrusts a hand into his right trouser pocket and jingles coins, then looks away to where the waiter is drifting towards them from the bar. Claire remembers the jingling as a nervous habit.
“To be honest, I haven’t much time.” He draws up a tub chair and sits facing her. “There’s always time for a gin and tonic, though. What about you?”
“Yes, please,” she says, though she had anticipated something more celebratory.
She watches her husband order. How often have they entered cafes, restaurants, and country pubs together? Tommy’s profile hovering at the counter, or speaking to a waiter, is as familiar to Claire as the back of her own hand.
“Well,” he says, once they’ve taken their first sips of gin, “I’ve rung around, and I think you should stick with the same insurance company.”
“It was kind of you to do that for me,” she murmurs.
He swirls the ice in his glass and looks past her to the window. “It was no trouble.”
Claire is reaching into her handbag for the gift, when Tommy suddenly sucks in a breath and leans towards her.
“Bit of bad news, I’m afraid, Claire.”
“Oh?” She withdraws her hand from the bag and curls it in her lap.
Tommy rubs at his throat. “Rosanna had a mammogram,” he says. “Something showed up.”
A mammogram? Those breasts, so poised beneath singlet tops and strapless summer dresses?
“Rosie’s going for surgery, both sides. It’s drastic, of course, but the safest option.”
Claire sees two small brown breasts, lying together in a stainless steel kidney bowl. There is a sensation in her own breasts; a pulsing there, penetrating as a sonar beep. The pulse becomes painful as she thinks: Rosanna. Has. Breast. Cancer. That sun bed. Those UV rays. To Claire’s surprise, there is no sense of triumph, but a muted, unexpected grief.
Tommy clears his throat, and his face is flushed. “The thing is, we can’t have you to stay this Christmas,” he says. “In fact, Rosanna and I are spending Christmas in Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?” Who goes to Hawaii when they have cancer?
“Rosanna wants to get away, just the two of us.”
“But Juliet, and Penny.”
Tommy shifts in his chair. “Juliet is going on holiday with friends. It’s been booked for a year, and Rosanna thinks she should go ahead.”
Claire’s mind is working so slowly now. “Penny must be terribly upset.”
“Penny has refused to go to Hawaii,” Tommy says, “because of the cat.”
Claire remembers that their cat has b
een having treatment for something that has cost thousands in veterinary fees.
Tommy is rubbing at his throat again. “Twopence is old, and Penny thinks she’ll die if she’s sent to board.”
Claire absorbs this information in silence.
“Penny asked if she could stay with you,” Tommy says quietly.
“With me? At the flat? But they don’t allow cats.”
“It’s Penny who wants to spend Christmas with you,” Tommy says. “And I think I could fix things for Twopence with the admin committee. If not, you could move in to our place.”
Penny is what, fifteen? How do you make a fifteen-year-old do anything they don’t want to do? There are ways, Claire supposes, and Rosanna knows them all. She can only conclude that Rosanna wants a break; she wants to go away, having had a double mastectomy, to recuperate in a hotel room in Hawaii. It is madness!
In the silence that has fallen between them, Claire feels something melting, dripping. She looks down the front of her dress to see whether she has accidentally spilled the gin, but the lace is spotless.
“I’m sorry,” Tommy says.
“Sorry?”
“Well,” he glances out at the swaying treetops, “I know you hate it when everything shuts down over the holidays.”
Claire nods. Martin’s absence haunts her then, all the bright promise of his life extinguished by the prick of a needle, as in some grotesquely twisted fairy tale.
“But I won’t be alone,” she says. “There’ll be Penny, and Twopence.” Claire’s smile is tremulous, and then firms as she mentally repeats what she’s just said.
The dimple in Tommy’s left cheek flashes once at Claire.
“I wasn’t counting on you being willing to take them, he says. “But if you will, then …”
The melting inside her is an actual flow now rather than the dripping. Penny has no useful extended family, for Rosanna is an only child whose parents died years ago; Tommy’s mother bolted with a real estate agent to Canada when he was still married to Claire, and his father, an ancient curmudgeon who detests children, lives in a distant city. So Claire has played grandmother to Penny, and to some extent Juliet, though they both still call her Aunty. She supposes it is odd for children to be close with their father’s ex-wife, but she will not fret about this.
Murmurations Page 3