You said you loved, might as well,
the cold begins to …
That first note wasn’t so high; she ought to reach it easily, she usually did. Mary shook her head at Fred and walked away, relieved that the crowd let her pass and that no one said anything except one pat and a whisper, ‘Well tried, very brave!’
The final shock came at dawn. Fred had woken up next to Caroline and hastened downstairs to find something to bring her on a tray. As he reached the hall, he breathed in the surprisingly fresh air and realised that the front door was open. The pockets of the jacket he had left hanging on a hook were empty. He walked from room to room, letting his eyes remind him of what ought to be there – his computer, fax machine and pager, the television and stereo, Bella’s red plastic tape player. For days to come, those who lived there would reach for something only to add it to the list – the bicycle he had bought Mary, Caroline’s camera, Juliet’s grandmother’s moonstone bracelet. At what hour had they all been so fast asleep? Or had someone passed through the house during the party, opening every door, cupboard and drawer, and slipping whatever they chose into deep invisible pockets to leave again unnoticed by these fools, caught up in their own small excitements and griefs?
TWENTY-SIX
Juliet lay in bed and looked around the room. Everything seemed slightly out of place, as if the world had tipped a little. She felt sick again, that strange combination of full and void. When she made her way downstairs, she found Fred and Caroline talking to a policeman.
‘Method of entry?’ he was asking.
‘The front door I should think, like everyone else,’ said Fred.
The policeman scrutinised the door. ‘No sign of anything being forced. What makes you think they came in this way?’
‘It was open.’
‘On the latch?’
‘No, open.’
‘The windows were open too,’ put in Caroline,’ so some of them might have come in that way.’
‘There was more than one?’ asked the policeman.
‘There must have been, what, seventy?’ calculated Fred.
‘Not including those of us who live here,’ said Caroline.
‘Or the band,’ said Fred. ‘There was a live band, you know.’
On the policeman’s advice, Fred and Caroline paced each room, trying to remember what might have been where, and then sat down to make notes.
‘You look like a couple preparing a wedding list,’ said Juliet, who felt too rotten to care if everything she owned had been stolen. They just smiled.
Fred’s bank had given him a deal on insurance, something he would never have thought of for himself, and the idea that someone else would pay him to buy new things amazed him. The loss adjuster who came to the house left Fred a pile of leaflets and he read every word.
‘Do you know,’ he announced, ‘there are all kinds of insurance. The ordinary kind for the stuff in the house and for going on holiday; then there’s insurance for when you’re not in the house and not on holiday; and some for if you can’t work because you’re dying, or if you lose your job or just plain die.’ A locksmith arrived and shook his head until Fred agreed to buy a new front door with three locks and a reinforced frame, and bolts for all the windows on the ground floor.
If Fred felt any fear about the dangerous world he had discovered he lived in, it was countered by the pride he took in his organised response. He was a man in charge of three women and a child, and enjoyed being able to provide what was needed in order to protect them.
Each night, when he had finished talking to New York and Tokyo, Fred would turn the locks and bolts, and only then would Mary feel able to stop watching over Bella, who could have been taken along with the camera and the bracelet, slipped into an invisible pocket while her mother sang so badly downstairs.
Fred would go up to Caroline and they would talk themselves to sleep listing the details of the different kinds of machines Fred might buy. Caroline spent hours in department stores, taking notes.
Juliet listened to the keys turn and the bolts slide, Mary’s creeping steps and the amiable babble coming from Fred’s room. It was already a different house and they were different within it.
Juliet went to see her doctor at the health centre on the estate near Khyber Road. She caught a Tube and then an overground train and then a bus, and found herself back in a different London, where all there had been to worry about was what Fred was giving his stupid friends for dinner and whether there was enough coal for the fire.
The doctor was not the handsome young man Juliet had seen before but a woman with a bad cough. She did a urine test on the spot. ‘You’re not pregnant, so that’s one less thing to worry about. Now hop up on the couch and we’ll take a look. I’m glad you came in at last. Did you not get a letter?’
‘What letter?’
‘It says here that we received a report from your American doctor giving the results of your investigations and treatment, and that you are due for surgery. In fact, looking at these dates, well overdue.’
‘Are you sure I’m not pregnant?’
‘Yes, sure. Now if I could just …’
Juliet lifted her hands away from her belly. ‘Sorry.’
The doctor felt something, frowned and felt it again more deeply and Juliet screamed. The doctor concentrated for a long time. They both stopped talking. Then she returned to her desk, and waited for Juliet to get dressed and sit down beside her.
‘What is it?’ Juliet asked.
The doctor said that she would refer Juliet as an urgent case which meant that she would be seen within a week. They would notify her of an appointment by letter, at which point Juliet said that she was just about to move and gave her address as Botolph Square.
She walked round the corner to Khyber Road, where she found the windows boarded up and the front door nailed shut. Looking through the letterbox, she could see a heap of envelopes, leaflets and fliers. People had gone on delivering things to the house as if people had gone on living there.
A week later, a letter arrived at Botolph Square offering her an appointment at the hospital that Thursday. She went along and queued up at a desk until it was her turn to hand over her letter.
The receptionist shook her head. ‘Sorry love, but this was for last Thursday.’
‘But I only got the letter on Monday.’
‘That’s been happening a lot lately – people getting their letters after their appointment time.’
‘But my doctor said it was urgent.’
The woman clicked through a number of files on her computer. ‘It says here that we offered you an appointment last October.’
‘I was abroad. Can I see someone now? I feel so ill.’
At that moment, both the receptionist’s telephones rang and she glanced past Juliet as if to indicate that this roomful of women were all feeling just as bad and their insides were just as monstrous. The waiting women looked at Juliet; she could not look back.
Like many English country houses, the one that Stefan had bought on his marriage to Clara Clough gave the impression of always having been what it was, whereas centuries of expansion and decline had made sure it never settled. A prosperous generation built a new wing, a fashion-conscious descendant covered oak panelling with silk, windows had been bricked up to avoid tax, the person who installed radiators had fireplaces boarded up, a lawn became a tennis court and then a lawn again. The house’s weak foundations, and the thinning, tipping plane on which it had been built, meant that the Hawley brothers from Ingfield had to be kept on permanent contract to deal with subsidence. Expert and taciturn, they wandered the corridors, inserting gauges, braces and props. And because they never threw their hands in the air and announced that the place was about to fall down, Stefan and Clara relaxed and believed it never would.
They had agreed to spend August at home. She would not go to London and he would not go to Geneva. They would plan a new winter garden, oversee the renovation of the conservatory, and
have something done about the tennis court. But today, Stefan was going to take the children out and give Clara time to work.
He stood by the open front door waving his car keys. ‘Where’s Mabel?’
Clara called up the stairs, ‘Mabel, you’re going now!’
There was no response.
Stefan rattled his keys some more. ‘We’re going to be late for the show. It starts in half an hour.’
‘Mabel!’ Clara yelled. ‘The show starts in half an hour!’
‘I wish you would stop fiddling with your laces,’ Stefan said to Sidney.
‘Unvn.’
‘He says they’re uneven,’ explained Clara.
‘Nn Mbl.’
‘He says he doesn’t want Mabel to come,’ said Stefan.
‘Ssn.’
‘Oh not that again,’ said Clara, ‘They’ve been playing this game all week.’
‘Who’s Susan?’
‘Mbl.’
‘She wants to be called Susan and this boy here has decided that he is called John.’
‘OK,’ said Stefan genially, ‘come on John,’ and he shouted ‘Susan!’ at which Mabel came running triumphantly down.
Clara watched them, Sidney forgetting about his laces once his sister was there, Horace happily chewing op his father’s collar, and Stefan looking as if he had about him all that he required and she was afraid for herself and then not, because he came back and kissed her full on the mouth.
‘I’m so pleased,’ he said.
‘Not shocked?’
‘No.’
‘I was. But I’m pleased too.’
‘So long as it’s not another set of twins,’ he said, stroking her hair.
Clara blanched. She hadn’t thought of that.
She knew what pressures this new baby would bring but also knew that Stefan was really back, and she believed that he would really stay.
She shut the door and walked along the hall into the kitchen. Nothing demanded her attention; no one was sick and nothing was broken. She was free to work but couldn’t bring herself to when the time was given to her so easily. She relied on the static that came from being cross or tired to reduce her focus. If she painted now, when her mind was clear, she would travel too quickly through an idea and it would be realised in its slightest form.
This was the argument that Clara had formulated for use when asked about art and children. That the limitations they placed on you could become a way of reducing the aperture, of thinking deeply and of looking more closely. She knew that this was not the truth, or not all of it. The trouble was that if she did start now, with enough space and energy to see what should happen next, and if she began to approach it, then she would be caught by the possibility of something that she could not see through, not without stopping listening.
She walked up the three flights of stairs to the library, which was filled with an encouraging light. The one painting she had finished this year lay against the wall. It was a study of this room, its high green walls and north-facing windows, and what might have been a tear in the wallpaper, had there been wallpaper – an extruded figure leaning hard into a corner, the pattern of a dark green dress, bony empty hands and a lurid hank of hair. The picture frightened her; she had no idea what to do next.
She picked up a magazine and put it down. Beside it was a sketchbook, and a letter from an American dealer. It was ten o’clock. She would go down the three flights of stairs again and make a pot of coffee and by then, something would occur to her. As it was, the telephone rang. Someone had arrived to save her.
‘Juliet? What is it?’
‘I need to talk to you now. Are you busy?’
‘What’s happened?’
‘It’s hard to say.’
‘I’ll come to you.’ That was it, the answer to her empty day. ‘I can catch the ten thirty.’
Juliet did not argue. She was overwhelmed at having allowed herself to ask for help, and to have received it.
Clara drove joyfully to the station. She was going to help Juliet. She wouldn’t stay long. She’d be back in time for tea.
Juliet met Clara at Liverpool Street. She cried when she saw her sister striding down the platform towards her and stumbled as she rushed to meet her. These days, she was always about to fall down.
She had summoned Clara and here she was and now something had to be said. Why would talking help? Talking was what people did to thicken rather than to clear the air. Conversation was a strategy, like bricklaying or a relay race, full of overlaps. It was its own construction, its own journey. You didn’t listen and wait, then think and speak; that took too long and made everyone uncomfortable. Talking without thinking, though, was how you found out what you meant.
They sat down in a café and Juliet began. ‘I feel as if I’m being sucked into myself.’
‘You’re not by yourself though, you’ve got us.’
‘I know you’ve all been worrying about me.’
Clara looked at her sister carefully. ‘Clearly not enough. What is it?’
Juliet explained about the growths and the pills and the hospital appointment she had missed in October and the one for which she had been too late. Clara took charge and after briskly berating Juliet for letting things slide, she wrote down the name and number of Juliet’s consultant and promised to get her an appointment.
‘I should do this myself.’
‘You’re not well. Let me do it for you.’
‘Thank you.’ Juliet looked carefully at her sister. ‘And how are you?’
‘Pregnant.’
‘Oh no.’
‘I’m pleased.’
‘So everything’s fine with Stefan now?’
After the night in New York, when Clara had told Juliet about Stefan’s affair, she had refused to say more.
‘I hope so.’
‘You think that a baby will make everything alright?’
‘No, it was an accident.’
‘Really?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘It just seems a strange time to have another baby.’
‘There’s never a time that’s not, in one way or another. I’m sorry, I know what with all you’re going through that you are bound to feel ambivalent about this.’
‘That’s not fair. Babies are the last thing I think about.’
Clara said nothing.
‘What about your painting? It’s going so well.’
‘I’ll keep it up.’
Juliet looked so delicate that Clara put her in a cab and told her to go home to bed. Juliet was glad to. She did not want to think any more that day, nor did she want to find herself talking about Jacob or mentioning another name, Theo Dorne, a name no one here had heard yet. Until September Theo Dorne was in San Francisco, far off in the west across an unarguable distance of land and sea.
Clara could walk to the Quondam Building from Liverpool Street in thirty minutes and she made herself do it. There was an hour or two to be made use of before she had to go home. She marched past banks and churches, decisive in her route through the forks and curves of the City. She unlocked her studio and sat by the window, and wondered when she would come back again.
Juliet was woken in the night by pain that passed like a blade through her body, leaving her struggling for breath. She got up but the pain folded her in two, more pain than she had ever felt, as if all this time it had been collecting itself. She reached the landing and then lost consciousness and fell down the stairs, waking everyone. Mary fetched pillows, Fred fainted and Caroline called an ambulance.
This time no one answered the door at Chacony Villas. Clara walked across the street and looked up past the white steps and the studded black front door, the shuttered windows and the four generous storeys of the flat white façade. The house’s exterior gave no hint of what had been done to it inside. It looked as if all the architect’s alterations would one day be spat out into sacks and skips, and the house would reassert itself once more, long after this briefly co
herent family had broken up and gone.
She could see a figure by a window on the top floor and he could see her. Wanting to remain clear about the purpose of her visit, Clara neither smiled nor waved. Jacob came down and opened the front door. Clara went through into the hall and then stopped. Jacob stopped too. She waited for him to try to show her in to somewhere where they could sit down and to offer her a drink, so that she could refuse, but he did neither.
‘Juliet is in hospital. She had an emergency operation yesterday. One of those growths, a cyst, ruptured.’
‘What growths?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Clara knew, in detail, but felt that it was a private matter.
‘She had pain but –’
‘She was supposed to have an operation last year.’
‘I had no idea.’
Nobody had, but Clara did not want to console him.
‘Why an emergency?’
‘She collapsed. An ambulance took her straight in and they opened her up and found that this thing had burst and was poisoning her. She must have been in a great deal of pain. I don’t just mean now but for ages. They said so. It was poisoning her.’
Jacob stood in the doorway.
‘We nearly lost her.’
He looked up and then down. His eyes and mouth tightened; the screws were turned. The force and variety of his feelings might have been about to propel him out into the world but he stopped on the top step, looked at the houses opposite with their identical doors and windows, and shook his head.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Fred and Carlo moved Juliet’s bed downstairs. She came home to Botolph Square and lay there with her hands on her stitched and bandaged belly. She had been in hospital for two weeks and Carlo felt sure that she should still be there now.
An Irresponsible Age Page 26