‘She’s supposed to rest a lot.’
‘Apparently she’s been playing cards with someone called Edward half the morning. I don’t call that resting.’
‘Oh good,’ I say, ‘she must have been feeling better.’
‘You had quite a party here last night, so Susan was telling me. I didn’t realize you were such a keen cook, Nina. You’ll have to give me some new ideas. I get sick of my own cooking, don’t you? But of course it’s different if you haven’t got a family. I’ve the Young Farmers’ barbecue next week, and my boys’ll play war if it’s not better than last year’s. Of course Susan’ll help me out, but you wouldn’t believe the amount they eat. This baby’s hungry, look at him.’
The baby is mouthing her shirt, making mewing sounds. ‘He wants his bottle,’ says Margery, staring hard at Susan.
‘Mum, he’s breast-fed.’ Her tone makes it clear they’ve had all this before.
‘Oh I know it’s all the fashion these days. But I can tell you, Susan, when you’ve got three under four the way I had you’ll be glad of bottles. At least you can see what they’re getting. I should have taken out shares in Ostermilk.’
‘He’s doing fine. The health visitor weighed him and he’s put on four ounces.’
‘You can weigh him all you like, but he looks hungry to me and I know a hungry baby when I see one.’ Her rings flash as she shifts the baby to her other arm.
‘Give him your finger to suck, Mum, that’ll keep him quiet.’
‘What do you think, Nina? Doesn’t it seem daft to you, your sister breast-feeding when she’s had a hysterectomy? How is she going to get her strength back?’
‘It’s what she wants to do.’
‘She doesn’t know what she wants. How can she? You don’t know if you’re coming or going after a first baby. And a major operation on top of it, it’s not surprising she’s in the state she is.’
In the state she is. What’s Susan been saying? ‘And it’s not just the physical side of things. You’re going to have to watch out for this postnatal depression.’ She watches me as I move round the kitchen. ‘It’s nice she’s got a sister to come down. I only ever had Geoffrey’s mother, and that was a very mixed blessing, I can tell you. There are some people you want near you when you’re not quite yourself, and she wasn’t one of them. Who is this Edward, then?’
‘Oh, he’s an old friend of Isabel’s. You must have met him before, he’s always coming down.’
‘I see.’
I catch Susan’s eye over her mother’s head and Susan winks, a little fleeting wink which is much more sophisticated than anything I’ve ever heard her say.
‘And here’s Richard,’ says Margery, turning, crossing her legs, ‘back from foreign parts. Where was it this time?’
‘Korea.’
He slides easily into a chair by Margery’s.
‘Do you want coffee, Richard?’ I ask, unhooking more mugs.
‘Yes, why not?’
‘That plane must have been over us ten times yesterday if it came over once. Doesn’t it drive you mad?’ asked Margery, stirring sweetener into black coffee. ‘I wonder it stays in the air, it’s so slow.’
‘I heard they were going to close down,’ says Susan.
‘What, Damiano’s Dreamworld? Never. It’s been going since you were six. We took you for your birthday the month it opened, don’t you remember?’
‘I wonder if anyone’s done a survey,’ says Richard, ‘into the effectiveness of aeroplane advertising?’
‘Don’t suggest it,’ says Margery. ‘Now we’ve got two so-called universities down the road instead of one, half the world’s surveying the other half. I’m only grateful Susan went into something sensible. The world’s her oyster, isn’t it, Susan?’
‘Yes,’ says Susan.
‘I’d love to go to Damiano’s Dreamworld,’ I say.
We could all go, when Isabel’s better. And we’ll make a point of telling them we only came because of the aeroplane.’
‘It would certainly do Isabel good to get out more,’ says Margery, with more meaning in her voice than I like. ‘Richard, you ought to have a word with her. This baby’s starving. Look at him, gnawing my arm with his little gums. And Susan’s not thought to get so much as a tin of milk in the house, let alone a bottle.’
‘Isabel doesn’t want him to have any,’ says Richard.
‘Well, she isn’t going to know, is she, if Susan gives him a little bottle when he’s hungry?’ Margery’s eyes gleam. ‘You could always tell her later on, when she’s better.’
I bend down, and put my awkward hands round the baby. ‘I’ll take him.’ I lift him carefully away from Margery, but not too carefully. I’ve noticed how firmly Margery grasps him, and how he seems to like it. I tuck him into the crook of my arm, and begin to walk him up and down. He doesn’t cry. His eyes stare at me without quite seeming to see me, and then suddenly they droop and close fast over his eyes. ‘There,’ I say, ‘he’s asleep. He must have been tired.’ I look up and see Richard watching me, his eyes moving over my body as if matching it against some pattern in his head. I look back, briefly. I’m still wearing the shorts he pulled down. I cover my thoughts so that Margery won’t see them with her round, bright eyes.
‘You ought to put him down now he’s off,’ says Susan. We don’t want him to get used to being held all the time, do we?’
‘God forbid,’ says Richard. ‘He’ll have a terrible time when he grows up. Bring him through, Nina, and I’ll open the doors for you.’
‘He could go in the carrycot in my room,’ says Susan; ‘then you won’t wake Isabel.’
‘OK.’ Richard holds the kitchen door open, and I pass under his arm holding the baby. Just as I do so I realize that it’s his baby I’m carrying. Richard’s child. I’ve always thought of the baby as Isabel’s alone. I glance back, towards him, but I catch Margery looking at me, taking in the three of us, Richard, the baby, me. She knows nothing. She’s just letting her instincts play on us and seeing what they come up with. She probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it. It’s people like Margery you have to look out for.
Richard and I walk carefully as far as the stairs, as if Margery’s still with us.
‘I can manage Susan’s door fine. You go back now.’
‘You won’t know how to turn on the baby alarm.’
He comes up behind me. Susan’s room is beyond the bathroom, badly planned so that a turn of corridor cuts off about a quarter of its space. It has a single pine bed, a chest with a TV on it, a table and chair looking over the garden. Sometimes the baby sleeps in here, so that Isabel isn’t disturbed. There’s a carrycot on the floor, and his changing things on a trolley with a mobile of zoo animals hanging over it. All the furniture is new and quite unlike anything in the rest of the house. There’s a teddy on the bed, and a pile of magazines. I lay the baby on his side, and loosen the shawl. He’s gathered into himself, fast asleep, and he doesn’t move as I settle him. Then I straighten up.
‘There. We’d better get back.’ Richard stretches out a hand, but I step back.
‘Not in the house.’
‘I just wanted to touch you.’
‘I’m going back to the kitchen now. When Margery’s gone I’ll be out under the cherry tree behind the compost heap. It’s nice there.’
His face looks hard, heavy and tired. He glances down at the baby and then back at me. ‘Do you really want to?’
‘Of course.’
Back in the kitchen Margery and Susan are pouring themselves second mugs of coffee.
‘He’s gone down.’
‘Good,’ says Susan. ‘He ought to sleep till lunchtime now.’
‘Your sister’ll get a nice rest,’ adds Margery, picking up her coffee, drinking it, looking at me. ‘I must say, Nina, you’re looking very well, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking so well. Though I wouldn’t have thought of you as a shorts person.’
‘They’re easy in this weather,’ I say,
‘and it doesn’t matter what you wear down here, does it?’ I notice that she’s unable to stop herself glancing down at her crisp white shirt. Her mouth moves slightly, as if she’d like to tell me how much it costs and how tricky it is to iron. But instead she recrosses her legs and says, ‘I suppose you are on a sort of holiday.’
The joint has made me hungry, and there are almond slices in the cake tin above Margery’s head, if Edward hasn’t found them. I reach up, leaning over her, and bring down the tin. It’s light, too light. I open it and there is only one slice left, with the glacé cherry picked out of it.
‘I was going to offer you some cake,’ I say, ‘but there’s nothing left except this bit. Oh dear, it’s gone stale. Never mind, I’ll finish it off.’
The cake is delicious, synthetically moist and sweet. I eat it quickly and put the tin in the sink.
‘Oh well, time for work.’
‘Are you going to do some drawings, Nina?’ asks Susan.
‘I’d love to see them,’ says Margery. ‘Susan’s been telling me about all this drawing. I thought you were a photographer, but now it turns out you’re an artist as well.’
‘I’m going to draw in the garden,’ I say.
‘Does being watched put you off?’ asks Susan, her face turning a slightly deeper pink.
‘It does rather.’ I break a banana off a bunch and smile at Margery.
‘Goodbye. I don’t expect I’ll still be here next time you come.’
‘You never know,’ says Margery. I’m sure it’s just one of the things she says all the time, but it sounds as if she means to sit there, on and on, watching what we do, gathering evidence.
Richard is already under the tree. ‘Nina –’
‘It’s not going to be any good if you talk,’ I say.
The talking rises in his eyes, and dies down. The cherry tree is a better place than the bench, with its fermenting smell of compost, its shade and soft earth.
‘But I need to pee first,’ I say.
‘You could go behind the tree. I shan’t watch.’
‘Or here.’
‘Can you do that? I’d be too tense in front of you.’
He watches me, his hands stopped in undoing his belt. Suddenly he shivers. ‘Jesus, Nina. You should be careful.’
‘I’ve already told you I’m careful.’
‘No, I mean, some blokes would think they could do anything.’
‘But you don’t think that.’
‘I don’t know what to think.’
‘I don’t know what “anything” means.’
‘I could show you.’
‘You could show me.’
The earth under the cherry tree is soft and warm where layers of grass cuttings have been thrown. I’m on my face, like a swimmer bruised from a slow crawl up pebbles against the drag of the sea. I roll over and look straight up at the sky, cut into chinks by wide-ribbed cherry leaves. The sky is white, the cherry leaves black. It’s nearly noon, the hour when ghosts walk, and this hot summer I can see why. When I go down the track at noon I feel as if I’m dwindling, without a shadow, my head forced into my shoulders by the sun. That’s how a ghost knows it’s a ghost, because it makes no mark on the earth where it walks.
Richard’s eyes are shut. His hands lie at his sides, unclenched, palms upward. His chest moves regularly with his breathing, but his mouth is closed and I don’t think he’s asleep. He looks content, fucked out. I like his silence.
I can remember Colin’s funeral. His coffin was so small that my father carried it down the aisle of the small white church, as if it was a baby. My mother had told me it wouldn’t really be Colin in the box, just his body, which he didn’t need any more. I nodded, but I didn’t know what she meant. After my bath that night, the night before the funeral, I curled up in my towel behind the bathroom door, smelling my own smell, nuzzling the warmth of my legs and arms. Isabel was sitting on the lavatory by the bath, straining to go. I watched her face flush, and then turn pale. I tried to think of me and Isabel without bodies, but I couldn’t.
I don’t know where the church was, but I know it wasn’t in St Ives. There were a lot of people there, but no other children, and when my father walked down towards the door with the coffin there was a murmuring noise, like leaves, as people turned their heads towards him and then away. My mother was there too, at his side, her head down, wearing a dress I’d never seen before. That was important, because I knew the feel and smell of all her dresses. The green velvet with the velvet rose on the hip was my favourite, but she only wore it on special occasions. She should have been wearing it now, instead of that crinkly black stuff that smelled of shops. After we all came in I was lifted on to a seat with other people who must have been friends, but I can’t remember who they were.
I was there, but Isabel wasn’t; it’s the only important memory from my childhood where she doesn’t feature. She was in bed. For weeks after Colin’s death Isabel had terrible stomach pains, so bad that sometimes she couldn’t breathe. My mother would make little meals for her on a tray. Once she had two delicate lamb cutlets with a pool of mint sauce on the side. It was grown-up, expensive food, but she wasted it. I saw the tray on the kitchen table, with white lamb fat sticking the chops to the plate. I think that was the beginning of Isabel not eating with us.
Richard’s fallen asleep now. He looks older, his chin sinking into the flesh under it. We talked a bit, not much. He asked how old I was, he knew I was younger than Isabel but he couldn’t remember how much. I told him I was twenty-nine.
‘And I’m forty-six,’ he said. ‘Well into the era of dental floss and bleeding from orifices.’ He smiled and I saw lots of fillings in his back teeth.
A leaf detaches itself from the tree, spins down and falls on him. I wait for another. Drought’s hitting the trees now, after burning grass and bushes brown. The trees survive by seeming to die: they’re shedding their leaves in self-protection, drawing all their sap back to the heart. It’s like an early autumn, but a strange autumn with the sun blazing on a fall of crisp brown leaves.
I get up very quietly. I’ve got no shadow here either, because we’re already in shade, so nothing passes over his face to wake him. I pick up my clothes and shake them out, and then put them on. Already, with the fallen leaves on his chest, Richard looks as if he’s been lying there a long time. It doesn’t matter if anyone else finds him here lying naked on the ground, alone. People do strange things when it’s as hot as this.
Chapter Fourteen
‘I feel wonderful.’ Isabel’s up, dressed, sitting on the bed fastening her sandal. She’s wearing a very pale green dress, and she’s brushed her hair up on top of her head and fixed it with a comb. She looks cool and happy.
‘I slept all night, and then I woke up early and played piquet with Edward and I’ve been asleep for another two hours at least. I feel like a different person.’
‘The baby’s asleep in Susan’s room.’
‘I thought I might take him out after lunch.’ Isabel looks up at me with her long, clear look. She has the blue eyes that should belong to a blond, but set in her golden face they look strange, unsettling, as if their clarity is part of a deception.
‘But you haven’t got a pram.’
‘I’ll take him in the sling, like Susan does. Edward’s going to come with me.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘Nowhere much. Round the garden, maybe down the track a bit.’ Her eyes widen. Her face is so calm that it would be impossible to guess how frightened she is, unless you knew her. She feels better and she’s going to test herself, as she must have done the other morning when she came back with her shoes soaked. I hope Edward knows what’s going on.
‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’ I ask casually, as if the only thing that worries me is the operation she’s had.
‘I’m supposed to walk. I was thinking back and you won’t believe it, Neen, you know what I’m like about the garden, but I realized I hadn’t been outside since he
was born.’
Isabel is a very good actor. She mimics perfectly the surprise anyone might feel suddenly realizing she’s been housebound for days.
‘You’ve had a major operation,’ I say. ‘It’s not surprising.’
She looks at me gratefully. ‘I know. I keep forgetting. I keep thinking I ought to be doing things.’
‘You mustn’t push yourself.’ I want Isabel to be well and happy, free to go where she wants. And I want to keep Isabel out of the garden, which is becoming my territory.
‘I think I must,’ she says quietly. Her hands are flat on the bed at her sides, ready to push herself up. She’s still moving cautiously, afraid to wake pain.
‘The baby,’ I say suddenly. ‘I’ve only just realized. I knew he reminded me of someone.’
‘Who?’
‘He looks like Colin.’
‘Colin?’ Isabel’s face goes quite still, then her mouth falls open so that for a second she looks not beautiful at all. For a moment I’m terribly afraid that she’s going to say, Who is Colin? She licks her lips. ‘Colin. Do you think so?’
‘It’s been nagging at me ever since I first saw him. I thought he looked like Dad and of course he does, but then Colin looked like Dad as well. Everyone said so.’
‘I don’t remember what Colin looked like,’ says Isabel.
‘You must do. You were older than me, and I remember him.’
‘No. I’ve never been able to. If I shut my eyes and try to see his face all I see is a sort of –’ she pauses, shuts her eyes, ‘disc.’
‘I can remember him quite well.’ I frown, doubting myself now. ‘At least, I think I can. He was big and fair. But I suppose he might have looked big to me because I was little too. His head was wobbly.’
‘Don’t let’s talk about it, Neen.’
‘I’m sorry, Isabel, I didn’t mean –’
‘You forget,’ she says sharply, angrily, ‘I’ve got a baby myself now. Of course I’m going to worry about cot-death. I would anyway, let alone after what happened to Colin. Do you think I haven’t thought it might happen to him? I think about it every single night when I put him down.’
Talking to the Dead Page 8