A Desirable Residence

by Madeleine Wickham

  ‘What a wonderful language,’ she said guiltily; feeling an obscure need to prove herself. ‘I can always see the Italian in it.’ Idiotic remark. What was she trying to say? Oh yes. ‘Jonathan, I’m sorry for taking over at the staff meeting,’ she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to monopolize it.’ He looked up at her; his eyes benign and surprised.

  ‘Oh, my lovely, don’t apologize. I thought you were wonderful. Tremendous stuff. You did it much better than I could have done.’ He gave her the wide, lopsided, entirely natural grin which had always charmed schoolboys and parents alike, and Liz’s insides contracted in a strange mixture of affection and relief. Of course, she was surprised to find herself thinking. That’s why I love him. I knew there was something . . .

  Daniel Witherstone knew his mother would be waiting eagerly for him as he came out of school on the first day of term. He lingered in the cloakroom for a while with Oliver Fuller, who walked home and could leave when he liked, and would have liked to stay longer in the companionable atmosphere of shoe bags and radiators, playing on Fuller’s Nintendo. But there was always the danger that his mother would come and find him, as she had that memorable day when he’d borrowed Martin Pickard’s Walkman and forgotten what time it was. She’d completely flipped, and thought he’d been run over or abducted, and got all hysterical and gone to find Mr Sharp. When they’d arrived in the cloakroom and she’d seen him, curled up on the bench, completely absorbed in Michael Jackson, she’d nearly burst into tears, according to Pickard. Daniel had always been grateful to Pickard after that, for not telling everyone about it and making it into some big class joke. But he never wanted it to happen again.

  So after a while, he tore himself from level three of Mortal Kombat and mooched slowly out of the cloakroom, up the stairs, through the hall and out into the drive of Dene Hall. His mother’s car was parked near the school building, and Andrew, his younger brother, was already strapped into the back seat. Daniel preferred it when Hannah, their housekeeper, came to pick them up. She was really cool, and played tapes really loud and swore at people in her Scottish accent when they got in her way. But he’d known his mother would be there today. She always came on the first day of term. And besides, she’d want to hear about the scholarship class.

  Just thinking about it gave Daniel a secret, elating feeling of pride. It was the way Mr Williams had said, so casually, ‘And, of course, Witherstone. You’ll be sitting a scholarship of some sort, I should imagine.’ He’d given Daniel a little smile—that showed he knew how chuffed Daniel was but wasn’t going to say—and then told everyone to get out their maths books. And all day, Daniel had carried around a little glow inside him. Even when Miss Tilley told him she couldn’t fit him in at any other time, and he’d have to come for his clarinet lesson at eight-thirty on Monday mornings, he’d smiled, and said that was fine. It was as if nothing could go wrong.

  But now he was going to have to tell his mother. He looked at her face, smiling at him questioningly through the windscreen. At least she knew enough not to get out of the car, like she used to, and call out really embarrassing things like, ‘How did your spelling test go?’ But she would still want to know whether Mr Williams had said anything about scholarships. And then he’d have to tell her, and then the glow would be gone.

  It wasn’t that she wouldn’t be pleased. It was that she’d be too pleased. She’d talk about it too much, and ask him all about it, and ask how many other boys were in the scholarship class, and what had Mr Williams said to him exactly, and then tell her again, start from the beginning, and tell her which lesson they were in when he said it, and had they mentioned which schools they might sit and was anyone trying for a scholarship at Bourne?

  He’d have to tell her all about it, and talk about it all the way home, and then hear her tell Hannah, and his father, and probably everyone else in the world as well. It would be like the time he won that clarinet competition, and she’d told every single mother in his form. It was really embarrassing.

  As he neared the car, she leaned back and opened the rear door for him.

  ‘Jump in,’ she said. ‘Good day?’

  ‘All right,’ he muttered.

  ‘Did anything happen?’

  ‘No. What’s for tea?’

  ‘Hannah’s doing it. Something special, I’m sure.’ She backed the car smoothly out of its parking space, and out of the school drive. A few moments’ silence elapsed. Daniel stared doggedly out of the window. Andrew was reading a comic that he must have borrowed from someone at school. Daniel glanced at him.

  ‘Can I read that at home?’ he said, sotto voce.

  ‘OK,’ said Andrew, without looking up.

  ‘What’s that?’ said their mother brightly.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Daniel. His mother hated comics; she said they should be reading books, even though she spent the whole time reading big shiny magazines with more pictures than words. He shouldn’t have said anything; maybe she would look round and ask Andrew what he was reading. He sat very still and tried to think of something harmless to say. But it was no good.

  ‘And so . . .’ she said in a bright voice. Daniel looked out of the window; perhaps she wasn’t talking to him. ‘Daniel?’

  ‘Yes?’ he said discouragingly.

  ‘Did you have Mr Williams today?’ Perhaps he should lie. But that never worked. He went bright red and his voice shook and she always found out.

  ‘Yes,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘Oh good!’ She turned round briefly to flash him a bright smile, and he felt the glow begin to fade. The whole point was that it was a secret glow. He stared at the passing houses and furiously remembered the exact smile Mr Williams had given him; the exact thrill of hearing his name out loud like that; the way Xander, his best friend, had looked at him—kind of casually impressed . . . But her voice cut through his thoughts inexorably, breaking them up and spoiling them. ‘And did he say,’ she paused to negotiate a roundabout, ‘. . . did he say anything to you about the scholarship class?’

  By eight o’clock, Marcus was sick of the subject of scholarships. He had arrived home from work to find Anthea in triumphant mood, even though, as far as he could make out, nothing had actually happened beyond some teacher at Daniel’s school saying he could try for a scholarship. Well, big deal. It was hardly surprising, given the number of times Anthea had mentioned scholarships to Daniel’s teachers. They must have realized their lives wouldn’t be worth living unless they recommended Daniel for the scholarship class. She was completely obsessed by the idea. Marcus, meanwhile, was ambivalent, and resolved, almost unwillingly, to say something to her about it.

  After supper, he made a jugful of strong, dark coffee—decaffeinated, at Anthea’s insistence—and took it into the drawing-room. The boys had volunteered to help Hannah stack the dishwasher, which meant they could hang around the kitchen, breathing in illicit cigarette smoke and Radio One, Marcus shrewdly realized. He had to return to the kitchen for a jug of milk, and as he went in, he saw them both sitting on the kitchen floor reading comics—strictly forbidden by Anthea. Daniel jumped, with a startled, deer-like movement inherited from his mother. Andrew, meanwhile, looked up calmly from his copy of the Beano, ignoring his older brother’s frantic signs, and said, ‘Don’t tell Mummy about the comics.’

  ‘That’s no way to talk!’ chided Hannah, drying her hands on a cloth decorated with green apples. She draped it on the heated towel rail by the sink, pulled an elastic band from out of her hair, and let the furious, aubergine-coloured tangle descend slowly from its pony-tail, around her shoulders. A few plaited strands fell heavily around her face, weighted down by coloured beads. These had appeared after last year’s Glastonbury Festival and had stayed put ever since.

  ‘You know you’re not supposed to read comics,’ she continued. ‘If your mum finds out, that’s your own fault.’

  ‘I told you,’ whispered Daniel to Andrew, turning agonized eyes on his father. Marcus felt it was hi
s turn to speak.

  ‘Now, really, boys,’ he said, trying to inject a tone of disapproval into his voice. ‘What did Mummy say about comics?’ Daniel hung his head, and half closed his comic, as if trying to hide the evidence.

  ‘Well, can we just read them tonight?’ Andrew looked engagingly at Marcus. ‘I’ve nearly finished, but Daniel wants to read this one next.’

  Marcus watched, half amused, half pained, as Daniel blushed pink at Andrew’s words and looked down, fronds of dark hair falling over his forehead. He felt at a bit of a loss. As far as he was concerned, comics were utterly natural reading matter for boys of that age. At prep school, he’d been a keen subscriber to about five comics himself, he remembered. But he’d been over that particular argument enough times with Anthea to know that he was defeated. And, as a matter of principle, he backed up all her decrees to the children, whatever he thought of them.

  Andrew was displaying not a morsel of guilt, he noticed. In fact, his eyes had dropped to the page again, as though to take in as much cartoonery as possible before it was confiscated and, as Marcus watched, he gave a little chortle. Daniel was also looking down, but miserably, clearly waiting for his father’s wrath to fall. A flash of irritation crossed Marcus’s mind. He really needn’t cower on the floor like that, as if Marcus were about to hit him.

  Then, almost immediately, the irritation vanished. He took in Daniel’s bowed head, his resigned eyes, his ink-stained fingers. He’d probably had a hell of a day, what with all of this scholarship nonsense. A bit of comic reading was probably just what he needed.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘Just this once, as you’ve done so well, Daniel, you can finish the comic you’re on before you go to bed. But that’s all. And tomorrow you give them back to whoever gave them to you.’

  ‘OK.’ Daniel gave his father a sheepish smile. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Thank you, Daddy,’ said Andrew cheerily. ‘Would you like to read them after us?’

  ‘Er . . . no, thank you,’ said Marcus, catching Hannah’s eye. She grinned back at him.

  ‘I’m taking the boys to school tomorrow. I’ll make sure they’re given back. Or thrown in the bin,’ she added threateningly to Andrew.

  ‘Thanks, Hannah,’ said Marcus. ‘Now, I came in for some milk . . .’

  ‘Here you are.’ Hannah reached over to the fridge. She handed him a carton.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Marcus. ‘Actually . . .’

  She sighed. ‘I know. Put it in a jug.’

  ‘Mummy hates cartons,’ said Andrew conversationally.

  ‘Yes,’ said Marcus firmly. ‘And so do I.’ He ignored Hannah’s quizzical look, and took the porcelain jug of milk into the drawing-room.

  The floor-length curtains were cosily drawn, and the lamps around the room gave out a warm light. Anthea was sitting on a yellow brocade sofa, frowning at a book entitled Improve your child’s IQ. Her chin was cupped in one hand, and as she read, she unconsciously tapped her teeth with a palely manicured nail. As Marcus poured the milk into her coffee, he glanced over her shoulder. At the top of the page was a cartoon of a child and parent, grinning at each other over an open book. The caption read, These reasoning exercises will help both parent and child develop their powers of argument.

  Marcus gave a little shudder. As far as he was concerned, Anthea’s powers of argument were already quite developed enough. She’d always had a pincer-like mind, able to seize deftly on the flaws in her opponents’ theories and demolish them with disconcerting ease. It had been one of the things that most excited him about her, back in the days when she was a rangy, long-legged, serious-minded undergraduate at Oxford. He’d taken her home gleefully to family parties, sat back, and waited for the heady thrill as he watched her throw back her long red hair, coolly look at whoever was speaking, and completely destroy their argument. Particularly when it was his cousin, Miles. Miles had been astounded by Anthea from the beginning. ‘She’s a bloody teenager!’ he had exclaimed, the first time Marcus brought Anthea home to show off.

  ‘Nearly twenty,’ Marcus had replied, with a grin. ‘She’s young for her year. But very bright. Extremely bright, in fact.’

  And that, of course, had been the attraction. Living in Silchester, settling down to his life as an estate agent in the family firm, doing everything that was expected of him, by his late twenties Marcus had begun to experience a discomforting feeling of mediocrity. A comfortable, provincial, well-heeled existence seemed to be all he was ever going to achieve. And, in some obscure way, this had worried him. With an enthusiasm he’d never felt as a student, he’d begun to visit London night-clubs at the weekend, take a few drugs, try to experience the intensity of life that he’d missed out on. And there he’d met Anthea: young and beautiful and clever, dancing at Stringfellow’s with a crowd of undergraduates. With her pale face and long red hair, she’d attracted him even before he discovered what she did. And when she told him, matter-of-factly, that she was eighteen, and a maths scholar at Oxford, a surge of excitement, of awe, almost, had gone through him. Here was intellect. Here was excellence. The first time he’d visited Oxford, she’d arrived at her room late, from some function, and as he’d watched her running across the quad, long miniskirted legs emerging from a billowing black gown, he’d experienced a growing surge of sexual energy that he could barely control.

  During the weeks and months that followed, he would sit in his dreary Silchester office, gazing out of the window, imagining her sitting in the Bodleian Library, surrounded by piles of books, or taking high-powered notes in a huge panelled lecture hall. When she took her finals, he drove up to Oxford every night to hear how her papers had gone; on the last day, he waited outside Schools with an enormous bunch of flowers and a diamond engagement ring.

  ‘I’ll move to Oxford so you can carry on with research,’ he’d declared. ‘Or London. Or the States. Wherever you want to go.’

  ‘Really?’ She eyed her newly sparkling left hand thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure yet what I want to do. Perhaps we could start off in Silchester and see what happens.’

  ‘Of course,’ he’d replied heartily. ‘Great idea.’

  And so Anthea moved into Marcus’s house in Silchester, and for a couple of years they kept up the charade that she was carrying out important maths research from home. Marcus took out subscriptions to a number of weighty pure mathematics journals which he left lying around prominently in the drawing-room, bought a sophisticated computer system, and frequently referred to Anthea’s work in conversation. But it was apparent even from the first week that she wasn’t really interested.

  It now struck Marcus that she’d never actually been interested in the subject at all. Her aim had simply been to be the best in the year; achieve the highest marks; beat her contemporaries. Mathematics had only been a vehicle for success. And when the spirit of competition was taken out of her work, it ceased to appeal. Now she never referred to maths except in the context of the boys’ homework.

  She looked up as Marcus poured the milk into her coffee, and smiled. Her hair, still auburn but tinted slightly darker than its natural colour, was cut short in an elfin crop which had dismayed Marcus as soon as he’d seen it. Especially as she had given him no warning that she was to have it done. That was six months ago, and the sight of it still sometimes upset him. He couldn’t explain why it affected him so much, to think of that lovely hair lying on the floor of the hairdresser’s salon; to see Anthea’s thin neck exposed suddenly to view. But after that initial, debilitating argument, he hadn’t mentioned it again, except to reaffirm how much he liked it, now he’d got used to it.

  ‘I told the boys it was OK to read a comic before bed,’ he said, as soon as he had sat down. He knew there was no point expecting the boys to be discreet and not tell their mother. Andrew, in particular, would no doubt be bubbling over with the doings of Dennis the Menace when they went in to say good night.

  ‘Really?’ Anthea’s skin was so thin and fair that, although she was still
young, every slight frown produced the thinnest of lines on her brow. ‘Where did they get them from?’

  ‘Someone at school.’ Marcus tried to downplay the matter. ‘Anyway, it’s good news about Daniel, isn’t it?’ As soon as he said the words, he realized he didn’t mean them. ‘Although I was wondering,’ he continued, feeling his way cautiously, ‘whether there was actually any need for him to sit a scholarship. I mean, we don’t really need the money, and it seems to be an awful palaver.’

  ‘Honestly, Marcus.’ Anthea’s voice snapped at him; too high pitched and defensive to be entirely natural. Marcus suddenly wondered whether she had been expecting him to say something like this. ‘The money’s not the point. It’s the achievement. It’ll set him up for life. A scholarship to Bourne. How many people can put that on their CV?’

  ‘Yes, well, I’m sure Daniel will have quite enough on his CV by the time he’s finished without scholarships here, there and everywhere,’ said Marcus.

  ‘Bourne College isn’t here, there and everywhere,’ retorted Anthea. ‘It’s one of the most prestigious public schools in the country.’

  ‘I do know that,’ said Marcus testily, suddenly feeling like an irate old man. ‘I did go there myself.’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘But I didn’t have a scholarship. I didn’t need a scholarship.’

  There was a short silence, during which Anthea pointedly said nothing.

  ‘Look,’ said Marcus eventually, in calmer tones, ‘I just want what’s best for Daniel. If that means him trying for a scholarship, well, fine. But I think he’s under enough pressure as it is.’ He paused, then generously said, ‘We should both try to lighten up a bit.’ As soon as he said it, he knew it was a mistake.

  ‘Oh, don’t pretend you really mean that,’ snapped Anthea. ‘What you really mean is I should lighten up a bit.’

  ‘No,’ protested Marcus weakly.

  ‘What would you know about what’s best for Daniel? You’ve no idea how hard it is out there, how important it is to be able to compete in the world. You’ve never even had to find yourself a job, have you?’