The Master Bedroom

by Tessa Hadley

  The set for the last act was the least elaborate. Swathes and swags of fabric, dimly green-lit, were the night-time garden; there was a bench, there was a door, presumably into some grotto or summer house, through which the Count was trying to coax the veiled woman he believed was Susanna. David opened his eyes: he could bear this lightness and vagueness of suggestion better. For the last act, they were right, there must be concentration, the enchantment narrowing to the tiny indefinite space between the lovers. On the bench Figaro and the woman who seemed to be the Countess kissed and cuddled, driving the Count into a frenzy. David found himself drawn in, despite himself, to the familiar twists and turns of misapprehension; the secrets, concealments, longings, devices, trickery, notes fastened with a pin; the promise of joys. Where else did the music come from? The women in their disguises flitted with rustling skirts between the bemused men, their masters. When it was over and the characters hurried away out of the back of the set, hand in hand in pairs as if they escaped into the unseen dark garden, he was bereft. Coming back to take the applause, they were only singers and actors. David’s throat was constricted so painfully with sorrow that he couldn’t swallow, feeling himself shut out and left behind.

  Kate wasn’t left with nothing. It was more complicated than that.

  One morning, a few days after her last talk with Jamie, when she was still hoping David might ring her, she woke up in all the mess of the unsorted house and knew something she had been trying not to know for weeks. She had been vomiting in the mornings, she had felt horribly ill, her periods had stopped, her breasts had swollen, she had not wanted to smoke; she had refused to connect these things, or she had told herself they were her signs of shock, at Billie’s death, at all the turmoil in her life. But it had begun before Billie’s illness, before her stay at the Parrog: how many months, then? It seemed such a stupid accident. Apart from anything else, she was too old, wasn’t she, for this? She lay in her bed, in rumpled stale sheets, listening to the cat prowling hungrily in and out of the empty rooms, batting doors open with a disdainful paw. The central heating rumbled into action at the time appointed, then shut down again hours later. The phone didn’t ring.

  This was her punishment, for living as if life was a playtime, to be made up as you go along. This was sent to smite her, she was smitten – in the Old Testament sense, not the courtship one – by a low blow: to the body of course, where one was always, always weak. She thought of her mother, finding out she was pregnant when she, too, was over forty and must not have expected it: her husband much younger and already sick, fighting her in his rages, drinking, staying out with other women until he could hardly drag himself home to be nursed. Among all the detritus in the house, Kate had never found anything to do with babies: wasn’t that odd? Two had been born here – and her grandmother was supposed to have had all those miscarriages and stillbirths before Billie – but there were no cots or prams or baby clothes, though everything else had been kept, the bikes and school exercise books and tennis racquets from their childhoods. It was as if the babies in this house had been born walking and talking.

  Of course, there was no reason for Kate to go through with this (although, how many months was it, already?). She didn’t really think she would go through with it. She didn’t move, though, from her bed, to telephone her doctor in London who would have been so understanding (he had been understanding once before). Late, late in the afternoon she got up, when the room was dark enough for her to dress without having to catch anything but the palest scrap of her body reflected in the mirrors; scrambling out of her too-skimpy nightdress (she had taken one of the pink silk ones from Sam’s store), the night intruding through the window was like gooseflesh on her shoulders. Bent over with cramps and nausea she crept to the shop ten minutes’ walk away, tucked in a little sixties brick row out of sight of the dignity of the lake, and bought food for herself: fruit and milk and wholemeal bread and a tin of sardines (when she got home she couldn’t bring herself to eat the sardines, so she gave them to Sim). Probably, anyway, this wouldn’t last: she hadn’t looked after herself, her body wouldn’t hold on with any tenacity to what was planted in it, this wasn’t the sort of thing she was good at. Something would go wrong. Every time she used the bathroom she expected to find blood.

  Max came to stay, to help her pack the place up: although he wasn’t all that much use, yielding too easily to the stories in everything, marvelling excitedly, pulling out more and more boxes and bundles from the backs of cupboards. Kate at first stood over him impatiently; then left him to it, went to read her book. She could imagine him spilling out to friends with his charming boy’s eagerness, over dinner cooked by Sherie, the story of the fantastic old place: untouched, full of the hoarded treasures of lost lives. She thought of how strenuously David would have cleared out everything for her, wordless, relieved to see the back of the old rot: but that thought winded her like a blow. Mostly she was good, she was good, she didn’t allow herself to think of David. She mustn’t think of how he hated her, she mustn’t open the lid on all that. Blind, she made herself stare at the words of her novel.

  Max phoned people he knew who were collectors and dealers, and piled up in the porch a few particular things to take away – some Clarice Cliff, an old pearwood knife box that might have come from Lithuania, that horror of a brass light fitting that had always hung from the hall ceiling, other bits and pieces. Kate knew she would be scrupulously paid for these – overpaid, for anything Max kept for himself – although she didn’t care. She swore she didn’t want any of it, she would be glad to be rid of it all; even the knife box, which he had thought she might feel tender for, in case it came out of her family’s deep past. The volume of belongings left behind didn’t seem in the least diminished by what Max had taken out: they wandered round the rooms together, demoralised.

  —It reproduces itself when I’m not looking. Like gold into straw. It’s like one of those houses in fairy tales where there’s always more food on the table, however much you eat. I think I’ll just have to start sticking all this into black bags.

  —Black bags! You’d need a landfill site.

  —Or house clearance. Just let them have the lot.

  —You’re brave, Katie. Are you sure? There’s a whole history intact here. You won’t regret letting it go, later?

  —Later! Later, I’ll be dead.

  Kate tried to hide herself from Max; she went before he came to Vidal Sassoon, she used her brightest lipstick, she chose dresses and skirts that hung concealingly across the slight convexity that might be there (that shape was fashionable, luckily: flaring slightly under the bust, falling loose over the waist). Sometimes she thought she was deluding herself; other times her stomach seemed hard and round under her hand, swollen like a nut, not soft as she had expected. She was beginning to feel less ill. She hadn’t seen anyone about her problem yet, pretending to herself that if she didn’t take any steps in either direction, she was safe: whatever that meant. She hadn’t even done a pregnancy test. She and Max went to the opera – Ann had tickets, someone had dropped out from her party – and to the cinema; apparently Sherie had given him leave, for three days he was Kate’s. Kate kept up until the end of the last night a performance of her most volubly and outrageously sociable self. They talked about Billie and she was weepy, serene, reconciled. Max’s intimate observation of her prickled on her skin (who else knew her so well?); he was almost but not entirely convinced that everything was, miraculously, all right. Tactful, he didn’t ask after her amours.

  Home from the Arts Centre after the film, he drew the curtains at the windows in the library and asked Kate – crouching over the new-lit gas fire, rubbing at her knuckles yellow with cold – if she wanted coffee. Not coffee, no. She meant to sound lightly considering, not crabbed and nauseous. Max stopped on his way to the door – freshly fair, eager and long, his big camel overcoat hanging open, Paul Smith lilac-and-yellow scarf dangling – to take her in: she looked no doubt witch-like, she knew how he
r skin was showing her moods transparently. Max might marvel over the thickness of history in this old dark den of hers, but he couldn’t have lived in it; wherever Max went he couldn’t help shining his tasteful civilising light. She forced herself to her feet, trying to deflect him by smiling, ferociously. Just hot water, perhaps. She’d found herself lately enjoying a cup of hot water at this time of night. Just one of the little cups he’d find on the draining board, with rosebuds and a gold rim. It didn’t taste good out of anything else.

  —Katie! he exclaimed. —My God! You’re pregnant!

  Illuminated, he was all wondering generosity, bounding over to scrutinise more closely. —I knew there was something: against the light of the fire, it showed. All along, I’ve sensed a difference: but this, I’ll admit, didn’t occur to me. Aren’t you? Last night at the opera – it’s funny – I kept noticing your breasts in that gorgeous dress you were wearing, but didn’t think to wonder why.

  He put out his hand to touch: palm curved ready to fit in homage over the little mound that pushed out – she glanced and saw it – through the loose but clingy silk of her top. She pounced – like a rat, she imagined – and seized him by the wrist, holding him off.

  —Don’t dare, Max! Don’t you dare touch me.

  —But aren’t I right?

  —You’re talking shit as usual, she said.

  He twisted his wrist forgivingly out of her grip. —I am right. It’s OK. Don’t be mad at me. No one else would have noticed in a million years: it’s almost nothing.

  —It’s nothing.

  —No it’s not. Don’t you think I know you? Is it bad news? Are you sorry?

  —Whatever you think you saw, you saw nothing.

  She gripped his upper arms tightly in both her hands, pressing her nails in, standing up tensed on her toes in her effort to hurt him as much as he could; he persisted in smiling, as if he couldn’t help thinking of happy events.

  —Does anyone else know? Have you told your nice doctor man about it yet? I suppose it’s his.

  She pushed him away hard and caught him off balance so that he stumbled back against the black marble fireplace, slipped, hit his shoulder and cursed, nursing it tenderly; then she subsided again in front of the fire. Max jackknifed his long length down onto the hearthrug beside her, hugging his knees.

  —I’m sorry, she said.

  —No, I’m sorry. It isn’t any of my business.

  —Isn’t it implausible, though? Me, of all people.

  Cautiously, he expressed the feeling he said he’d always had, that pregnant she’d be splendid.

  —But whatever you think you know, dear Max, please promise me, for my sake, for ever and ever, that you know nothing.

  He was impressed. —Of course I promise. Didn’t you think that I could be trusted?

  She nodded contritely, patted his knee-top.

  —So what are you going to do, then?

  It became more definite for Kate as she explained. —I’m going to have it in America. It’s going to have an American father.

  Max considered that (he might once have hoped to be her baby’s American father); in his clear-skinned face his feelings showed in nervous tiny movements of muscle. —That’s why, in the future, I mustn’t have known that you were pregnant now.

  —You see? If I really am, anyway. Because you know, I haven’t seen anyone about it.

  —Are you happy, Katie?

  —Oh: how can you think it? Quite apart from Billie – who to my surprise I miss every minute of every hour – if you knew half the mess I was in . . . But I won’t tell you, so don’t ask.

  —I wish you would.

  —It’s so odd having to make plans. I’m used to thinking of my life as metaphor: now, this intrusion of real things, schemes and dates and months and concealments. The march of facts, from which I can’t extract myself: contingency.

  —It has a kind of grandeur.

  —Grandeur? You smooth-talking copywriter. Oh well, I’ll try to cling to grandeur in bad moments, from now on.

  She never got around to cancelling Buckets and Mops, so from time to time they showed up just when she’d forgotten to expect them. Kate liked Alison. Faced with the mythical scale of the mess in Firenze she had never panicked or abdicated; all the time she’d been coming (from long before Kate moved home), the rooms they lived in, at least, had seemed to shine almost as they must have done in the days when there were maids, even if behind those surfaces chaos waited. She was Kate’s age and had four children, the youngest fourteen; she cleaned one day a week to help eke out her student loan while she finished her degree course in occupational therapy (she also did bags of other people’s ironing). Her hair was black and wirily curled, her skin was cold milky coffee with pale freckles; her mother was from the valleys and her father was from the docks, her grandfather a sailor from Sierra Leone.

  When Alison arrived one day, in those last weeks, Kate had just unearthed from the wardrobe in the master bedroom a chocolate box heavy with whatever was inside, held shut with rubber bands so perished that they shrivelled into dry strings as Kate touched them. The picture on the top was of a woman in high heels and a white robe edged in fur, popping into her mouth a chocolate from another box just the same. She looked across it at Alison beseechingly.

  —Photographs, Alison said. —That’s what people keep in chocolate boxes.

  —I won’t know anyone. We’re not that sort of family. I wish I hadn’t found it. I was always relieved there weren’t any.

  —Go on, it’ll be interesting. Won’t there be pictures of you and Billie?

  —I don’t know. Those are all in albums somewhere. Sit with me, will you, please, while I open it? It makes me nervous.

  Kate made them both tea then couldn’t drink hers; it steamed on the kitchen table while she tugged at the box lid. The box was crammed with photographs; when the lid came unstuck they cascaded out over the table and onto the floor. Rescuing them, Alison marvelled.

  —Look, here’s Billie! Isn’t it? Just a girl – doesn’t she look lovely? Look at that outfit! And the hat!

  Bracing herself, Kate squinted at it warily from a distance. —And my grandparents. I never knew them. I have seen pictures of them, of course: although not these.

  —They’re so elegant!

  —That’s probably the same hotel in Nice where Billie took me when I was a teenager. It really might be: the palms, that stone pineapple thing at the bottom of the steps. If I imagine purgatory, there’s always a string trio playing light classics.

  The photos came in no order: Billie was a girl, dreamily poignant in a profile portrait (her nose slightly modified?); then a suspicious child in a garden (Firenze?), white-blonde, holding a toy monkey by the ear; then a laughing young woman in Pierrette costume in a crowd of others – gypsies, pirates, clowns – one with a guitar. Billie opened herself eagerly to the camera; her melancholy mother, stoutish, with little gold-rimmed glasses, bore it patiently. On a few occasions Sam Lebowicz, ironic, allowed his likeness to be captured: showing not a sign of his barrow-boy origins, zestfully well dressed as his womenfolk, with a clean-shaven lean face and the high-knuckled cheekbones that you might have attributed to a violinist or a doctor; he only betrayed his business preoccupations (what mess would his people manage to get into, while he submitted to this leisure?) in a right foot, crossed suavely over his other knee, blurred where he quivered it too restlessly. One photograph was of Firenze: disappointing as somehow old photographs of buildings always are, looking hardly different to how it was now except for the lake road empty of cars; the house bleached and withdrawn under shallow light as if it was just a facade. A flag was flying from Sam’s turret: what flag, for goodness’ sake? No matter how closely they peered, they couldn’t make it out.

  Under that layer of familiar faces, the box was full of strangers: muddled together, studio portraits from before the first war and snapshots of picnics and parties from the twenties and thirties. A woman with her hair bobbed and lit
tle white teeth showing in her smile posed at an upright piano; a boy with a freckled snub-nose had his face licked by a dog, its paws on his shoulders; a middle-aged couple in fur collars strode towards the camera down some broad tree-lined street, in a sunshine that sprang strong shadows. Alison puzzled out the photographer’s address, embossed in the bottom right-hand corner, for an unsmiling family group, eight children gazing forwards with huge eyes in mouse-sharp faces, the flashbulb making their parents look staggered, at how excessively they had brought forth and multiplied.

  —Sierakowski Street? Alison suggested. —Wilenska Street, this other one. Poland?

  —Vilnius, perhaps. In Lithuania, where my grandparents came from. This could be my grandmother in this one, as a girl. But then, so could this one. I suppose they brought some pictures over with them; the others must have been sent afterwards, in letters. They’ll be my grandmother’s family, not my grandfather’s: he made his way up, he came from nowhere, he had nobody.

  —You must know who some of these are.

  —They all died. Jews, in the war. So I never did know.

  —Oh, I see.

  —I’m exaggerating slightly. A great-uncle and -aunt, my grandmother’s brother and sister, did go to South Africa in the twenties. I believe there are still some of us there. Also, sons of Billie’s first cousin went to America, for what was meant to be a short trip, just before war broke out. They stayed; she kept in touch with them for years. I don’t know which ones they are, the ones that got away. Billie never showed me these, she didn’t like talking about all this. As if she was ashamed.

  Alison picked up a few of the photographs and looked at them again, with a different attentiveness. Then, reverently, carefully, she pushed them into a heap in the middle of the table. —What will you do with them?

  —I don’t know, Kate said. —Shall I take them with me? Do they belong to me?

  —I don’t know.

  Kate walked through the park on her way home from seeing her solicitor. Its first section was unfenced, a long grassed recreation ground marked out in white lines, and with goalposts; a path and a little tamed brook followed along its far edge, beside the road. In the city’s lapse, the sky was hugely empty: looking across, big houses on the opposite side (more dilapidated, over there) seemed remote and flat as toys. The path’s tarmac was hillocked and cracked by the roots of a long row of towering beeches, planted between the path and the open space; magpies on too-thin dipping twigs did balancing acts with their tails; the cold was a grey-white miasma, although it was not mist, everything was starkly visible. Intermittent between the trees to her left, she was aware of groups of boys, or young men, playing something – rugby? football? – informally in the frozen mud, scratch sides, not in strip, not even full complement. How could they? At the very idea Kate shuddered, drew deeper in under the cashmere stole wrapped up to her nose, so that she breathed her own warm exhalation. Their shouts nonetheless, blunted by the cold, were poetry in the attenuated afternoon; the pounding of their boots on resonant turf reached her as vibrations coming up through the path; they seemed to thud willingly into one another, perhaps for warmth, subsiding in winded grunts (rugby, then): she felt herself by contrast cocooned in cold inside her warm clothes, separate.