by Tessa Hadley
—Not for those reasons. But why are you denigrating your real expertise? You don’t really think that books and music are only play.
—Oh, if I was really any good at the violin, or if I was a real scholar . . . Are you happy?
—Happy? I don’t know.
—You see yourself as instrumental, Kate said. —Your outer life is given form by structures larger than yourself, the inner life is left alone. There’s a kind of bitter-sweet glamour in that. It makes men very attractive at this point of life you’ve reached, with youth behind them.
—Surely it could apply to women just as well, these days?
She made a quick disclaiming face. —But not to me.
Kate suggested he come back to Firenze for coffee. He drove knowing he ought to feel irresponsible because he was slightly, uncharacteristically drunk; actually he felt exalted and confident, and when they climbed out of the car he breathed in deeply the cold night exhalation of vegetation from the park. The woman Kate had asked to come in and sit with Billie was watching television in the library; David hadn’t ever noticed before that the Flynns had television. Kate thanked her effusively, called her ‘my lifesaver’, got out her purse to pay, hurrying her off in a performance of patrician condescension that Suzie would have bristled at.
—Put the kettle on, she called to David. —I’m going up to make sure Billie is all right.
He wandered through several rooms whose light bulbs when he found the switch were either blown or grimly dim, and found himself eventually where he remembered a glassed-in conservatory area led down to the kitchen at a right angle to the main house, beside the garden. The cavernous space with its pantomime-sized table and gigantic plate racks on the walls was comically disproportionate to Kate’s and Billie’s needs; when he searched for coffee most of the cupboards were empty. An electric cooker had been installed long ago beside the disused gas range. Water thundered into the kettle from a high tap over the square enamel sink; the kettle at least was electric, although its flex looked dangerously frayed. Kate’s black cat mewed throatily to be let out of the back door. David couldn’t find instant coffee, and then guessed that Kate might only make real, and found that in the huge old cream-coloured fridge whose loud motor with its changes of mood was insistent as a personality in the room.
A small plastic-framed mirror hung askew from a hook over the sink and while he waited for the kettle David looked at his reflection, skin greenish in the bleak central light. He saw himself as Kate had suggested, authoritative and complete-seeming, mysterious just because he didn’t have any time to spare for introspection; then looked quickly away, ashamed of the falsity of consciously seeing this. It occurred to him for the first time that Kate might be expecting him to make a pass at her. He didn’t think of himself as the sort of man women wanted to do this: but Kate’s type – London types – might take it for granted that if two people liked each other enough, finding themselves conveniently alone, they would end up in bed together. Why not, after all? His wife had abandoned him and gone off with strangers. Why not make it simply an extension of friendship?
But he knew he would only be appalled and embarrassed if anything like that started up. Hadn’t Kate tried to kiss him on some occasion, when they were teenagers, and he’d made a humiliating mess of it? Francesca had once called him ‘unimaginatively monogamous’. He made the coffee hastily, the glow from the alcohol all subsided. Kate came and leaned in the kitchen doorway, watching him doing it, telling him funny stories about Billie, directing him to where the coffee cups were kept, and the sugar. They were proper old porcelain cups, green and gold, with saucers; if you held them up to the light you could see it shining through a woman’s face set in the base. He avoided looking directly at Kate. He didn’t think he was attracted to her physically, anyway. There was something off-putting in her extreme thinness under all those layers; the idea of peeling them away was more forensic than sensual. Also, she smoked, she was smoking now, blowing smoke at the ceiling, knocking her ash into the sink, waving the cigarette carelessly in a dangling hand. He said that actually he was tired, his exhaustion after the busy week had just hit him, he must hurry off to his bed as soon as he’d drunk his coffee. Even the word ‘bed’ seemed too intimate; he winced as he used it. He imagined that Kate could see through him; that her eyes, if he’d been able to meet them, would have been full of mockery at his predicament.
Halfway home, he was furious with himself for his gaucherie and for his ridiculous idea. How rude he must have seemed, falling over himself to get away. And he regretted now the stupidly squandered opportunity; so bitterly that he almost turned around and drove back. But how could he have explained? He had wanted to sit with Kate in the library with its pink-shaded lamps and walls of books, unravelling himself: the ache of longing for companionship, now he was cheated of it, was overwhelming. At home he sat for a long time outside in the car before he could face going into the house that seemed by contrast so transparently empty.
For half an hour on Sunday evening David thought that the film he and Kate had seen lived on in him: in his voice quaking with rage and his trembling hands he was horrified to feel that same righteous male violence. Suzie came back late, hours later than she had told him to expect them; he had been frantic with worry. And when she came in, she was stoned, really stoned, so that looking for her in her eyes he couldn’t find her, she was veiled and blurred and lost to him. The van with its farting exhaust had dumped them and made its derisive exit: when he came out from his study, his family crowded in the hallway seemed transformed by their short time away, tanned and dishevelled and staring with exhaustion. They even smelled alien: of some mix of smoke and earth, pee and petrol. He was outraged at the idea of Suzie’s irresponsibility, getting into that state while she was in charge of the children.
—It was good, Hannah and Joel insisted, but unsmiling.
He bathed them tenderly and put them in clean pyjamas; they didn’t even ask for stories, they melted into their sleep almost as he lifted the duvets over them. While he did all this he heard Suzie throwing up noisily in the en suite bathroom.
—What is this about? he said. —What are you doing?
She was propped against the sink with her T-shirt off, in only her bra and trousers, her hair dripping wet as if she’d been pouring water over her head to try and sober up.
—Having fun, that’s all, she said idiotically, with the water running down her face and neck. —But you wouldn’t know about that.
—It’s a peculiar kind of fun. Look at you. The children are wiped out. They have to go to school tomorrow. So do you: but that’s your business.
—What are you accusing me of?
—You can go where you want, he said. —But you’re not taking the children away with that crew again.
—They had a fantastic time. Just because they’re tired now.
—Who was driving? David said. —What had he been smoking?
—Oh, I’m going to go and sleep in Joel’s room, Suzie said, pushing out of the bathroom past him, picking up her pillow from the bed, rummaging unsuccessfully in a drawer for pyjamas, slamming it shut with the clothes still hanging half out of it.
—I’ll go and sleep in there, sighed David, performing weary patience. —You stay here. You might need to be near the bathroom.
He moved to close the drawer.
—I don’t want you to touch me! she exclaimed, backing off, hugging the pillow to her chest. —Don’t even touch me.
He hadn’t thought of touching her, but when she shrieked at him he felt vividly a tingling in his hand, as if he’d slapped her face with all his strength, knocking her head sideways with the blow; he stood away from her quickly, letting her go. Slumped down onto the side of the bed, he felt the blood pulsing thickly into his ears and his throat. He heard her vomiting again, in the other toilet.
In the morning Suzie was chastened, she reassured him that Neil had been perfectly safe to drive, Menna had been fine, only she had been poorly, she must
have reacted badly to something, she was sorry. And the children, although they drooped and whined all week from the late nights, dropped fragments of delighted narrative of their adventures for him in voices that didn’t expect him to be able to understand: the nights so dark, the torch that failed, the barbecue built from stones, the thieving goats. Jamie remarked conversationally that the skunk Suzie’s friends had been smoking was probably hydroponically grown and much stronger than anything she had been used to; that would be why it had made her ill. David heard him out in silence and then shrugged, as if it was a matter of indifference to him. Suzie didn’t talk about going away for any more camping weekends; in fact, he knew she gave the tent back to Giulia. She didn’t mention Menna, although he presumed that when she said she was going out for a drink with friends it was with them. She went on sleeping in the top bunk in Joel’s room.
Six
BILLIE WAS BAKING: over her dress she had tied an old-fashioned apron, frilled, with heart-shaped gingham pockets outlined in red piping. She looked absolutely competent, turning a hand whisk, beating egg whites into a froth. Kate was frowning into a book, sitting upright at the big table with its white enamel top. The kitchen smelled strongly of something like marmalade.
Carol had called in on her way home from work.
—Billie, you look so pretty, she said. —You remind me of a waitress in a Danish pastry shop.
—Do you know, said Kate, —there are carrier bags full of her clothes in every room upstairs? Lots of them not worn yet, with the price tags still on, which I try not to read.
—We had such lovely times in the old days, Billie reminisced, —shopping for outfits together. Didn’t we, Kate?
—Long after she stopped paying the gas bills or calling the plumber in, she must have gone on visiting Howells and David Morgan, trying things on, having all the assistants running round after the sweet old lady.
—She is sweet.
—Everything suits her, everything fits: but the trouble is it’s all white and pink and pale yellow. She just forgot to buy the other stuff, the black and the brown, the sensible part. She looks every day as if she’s dressed for a wedding. Talking of plumbers, that heating engineer’s in the house somewhere. He’s bullied me into buying a new boiler. We were having to heat our water in saucepans. Go and spy on him, tell me if you think he’s any good, or if you think I should make a scene and demand my money back.
—I knew you’d have to see sense and get a new one sooner or later. What is Billie cooking?
Even in her vagueness Billie didn’t forget to be winning, tilting her face to one side, pursing her mouth, looking at the whites in her bowl as if she was surprised to find them there. —What am I cooking, Kate?
—Cake, said Kate shortly.
—Oh yes, cake. Her face cleared. —My mother’s cake: orange and almond, very moist. You’ll love it.
—But look at the size of me! What are you thinking of, tempting me with cake?
—Darling, it’s good for you.
Billie’s pretty clothes were stained and spotted with dropped food (‘And they’re all dry-clean only,’ Kate moaned), but her hair was immaculate in its perfect pleat, sensuous as snow.
—How I wish I could do my hair like this, Carol said, kissing it, sniffing the dry-leaf faint odour of Billie’s scalp.
—I’ll teach you, sweetheart. Easy-peasy.
—With my old straw? You’re joking. Anyway, what would I look like with my hair pulled back? She showed them, baring her teeth and growling. —Pretty scary, huh?
—Billie’s making cake because she thinks I don’t feed her properly.
Billie was distressed. —Is that what I said?
—I’m with Billie, you’re an awful cook. It’s because you don’t like eating.
—Oh it’s true, when she was a baby she was so fussy. She wouldn’t have the breast milk, she wouldn’t have the Ostermilk. When she was a little girl, she lived on bread and butter: cut so thin, only I could do it right. Swallowed down like medicine, in tiny pieces.
—I have to sit here for anything involving machinery or heat. Or for when she forgets what she’s making.
Carol took the lid off a pan. —Are these oranges really supposed to be boiled?
—So it says in the recipe. Put the kettle on, make tea, stop stalking up and down. You’re making me nervous.
Carol emptied the teapot in the garden, tea and leaves an amber arc against rain-soaked grass and foliage brilliant in sunshine. Kate shivered, hunching her shoulders under her jumper.
—It’s a lovely day out there.
—Don’t want to know.
—I came to ask you how the conference went.
Kate didn’t smile or look away from her book. —It went fine.
—They liked your paper?
—They adored it.
—Meet many people you knew?
Kate scowled and put the book down. —Your solicitude is showing, she said. —You know, like a bra strap or a droopy petticoat.
Penitently, Carol measured out spoons of tea into the pot.
—You’re bored, she said to Kate later, upstairs, when the cake – exotic, made from beating the boiled oranges to a mush and mixing them with ground almonds and eggs – was in the oven, and Billie was resting in front of the television, and the boiler-man was paid off. —You’re not happy. I told you how it would be. We have to think about respite care for Billie, at the very least. Why don’t you try and find some work down here?
—Look, said Kate. —D’you see what I mean? Bagfuls of clothes, not even unpacked. Cupboards full.
In a back bedroom, dust motes swam indolently in a thick bronze light; they explored in the bags, pulling out dainty tops and skirts and dresses, throwing them on the bed (untidy as if Billie might have slept in it recently), agitating the dust to frenzy so that Carol began to wheeze, finding a little dusky-rose-coloured cashmere pullover to like, a sleeveless broderie anglaise top. Kate stripped off her jumper and unbuttoned her shirt; she didn’t wear a bra. Her skinny nakedness was always frank as a curt statement; meagre palm-scoops of breast, big chocolate-brown nipples, a narrow ribcage the same silky brown as the skin of her face and hands. Carol imagined how her friend’s body would age by diminution, shrinking and concentrating, while her own would blow up and dilute; their bodies didn’t show much ageing, yet, only their faces and hands gave signs of it, like first flares of yellow in green summer trees. Kate tried a silky dress with a Peter Pan collar and a pattern of tea roses.
—I hate to think of you stuck here all day every day, doing nothing with that brilliant brain of yours.
—It never was brilliant. Anyway, who keeps these books, to see who’s used themselves wisely and who’s wasted?
Carol felt smothered inside her T-shirt and gasped her way out of it, turning her back to Kate because she didn’t want to see their different flesh too cruelly juxtaposed.
—As a matter of fact, I’m fine. I’m going to give a musical party: isn’t that a good sign? Max has said he’ll come down, and a few other friends from London. I may invite your brother. Try this one on, it’s summery.
—My brother? David? Oh, Suzie did say that you’d met him at a concert.
—She’s a bore. I suppose I’ll have to invite her too.
—Suzie’s not a bore.
—And she sleeps around.
—Kate, be ashamed of yourself. Wherever did you get that idea?
—David told me.
—I just don’t believe you.
—Or I intuit it in the gaps between the bits he tells me. And you can smell it on her anyway: one of those feral women, short on words, itching to leap into bed.
—That’s not funny, said Carol. —You’ve got a horrible imagination. What are you up to; what’s all this about my brother? You’re not developing some sort of thing about him?
—I know I’m getting very provincial, but I’m not quite that bad yet. I think I can do a bit better than your brother. Don’t get
me wrong, he’s a really decent salt-of-the-earth type. He’s the type you’d be grateful for in an emergency, when the more interesting and attractive ones were falling apart or saving themselves.
Carol was mollified. —I didn’t think he was your sort. She grimaced at herself in the mirror, in a chintzy cotton dress too short and too tight. —And Wales isn’t a province by the way, it’s another country.
Kate preened beside her. —I could never wear anything this optimistic.
—I look like an armchair whose loose covers have shrunk in the wash.
—Why did Francesca choose him, do you think? Of all the ones who were queuing up to get inside her silk knickers?
Carol stared quickly at the real Kate not reflected. — What made you think of her, all of a sudden?
—Perhaps because we’re looking like the ugly sisters. That’s how she used to make me feel. That rope of pale hair of hers, and the long nose and close-together eyes: I suppose it had all taken centuries of breeding. Do you remember how she talked?
—I can’t. Carol was pained to realise she’d forgotten.
—Nasal, fastidious. As if she was picking a slow path among the mistakes that other people might have made. Not that she was clever: clever was another mistake.
—David wasn’t queuing up, I suppose; perhaps that was what interested her. He didn’t really notice her until she set to work, attracting his attention.
—She thought he was a fortress, she thought he was deep and still, and that she would be healed if she could lose herself in him. Do you remember how she used to parade him round with her, after they were first together? Petting him, talking about him as if he wasn’t there?
—He was just starting as Senior House Officer.
—Her talk must have been a torment to him, don’t you think? Wasn’t he one of those young men ashamed of letting anything out from inside?
Carol was thinking about Francesca. —How sad it was, she said, sitting down abruptly on the bed, on top of all the clothes. The smell of baking cake was spreading through the house. —It’s the saddest thing that’s happened in my life, really.