Cuckoo

by Julia Crouch

‘We’ve had the most difficult two years of our lives, and now, just as we’re beginning to settle in and start really living this life we have worked so hard for, we’ve got to open our doors to that friend of yours and her kids.’

  ‘It’s bad timing,’ she said.

  ‘Why should we risk it all for her?’ he asked, looking straight at her.

  ‘Risk?’ she said. ‘That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s an invasion.’ He threw his dog end in the river.

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  ‘How do you want me to be?’

  A breeze ruffled the willow, and they both listened to the rustle and scratch that encircled them.

  ‘But look,’ she said. ‘We’ve got the space. We’ve got the whole big house to ourselves, and Polly and the boys can stay in the Annexe. They’ll be entirely separate. They can even cook their own meals. We’ll hardly notice they’re there.’

  The Annexe stood at the front of the property, just off the lane. It had been a glorified chicken coop for decades, and the first job had been to convert it into a comfortable, if basic, bed-sitting room for Rose, Gareth and Anna, with a tiny antechamber for Andy when he came. There was a fairly well-equipped kitchen area – Rose had to be able to provide good fuel for the workers – and a shower room. She had missed soaking in a bath, though.

  ‘And besides, who else do we know with this amount of space to offer?’ Rose went on.

  It was true. All their other friends lived in London in tiny flats. Or, if they had children, they were in small terraced houses that were bursting at the seams. No one else they or Polly knew had the money for this sort of property. Even from Polly’s music business days nobody was left who ticked all three boxes of unwasted, wealthy enough and still living in the UK.

  If it hadn’t been for the death of Rose’s parents, Rose and Gareth wouldn’t have been able to afford a big house either. Her father and mother had gone, one after the other, from, respectively, liver cancer and bowel cancer. Their legacy – the proceeds of the sale of their house in Scotland and a hoard of savings amassed through a result of clever house-buying in the days when that sort of thing had been possible – had been enough to allow Rose, their only child and their great disappointment, to dream a bit. The fact that they had thought to acknowledge her in this way had surprised her. She had expected the money to go to their church, or to a dogs’ home, or to distressed gentlefolk. Anywhere other than her.

  This old house, The Lodge, which Rose and Gareth had first seen as a ruin with Buddleia growing where the roof should have been, had seemed to be just the stuff of a good dream. They decided to do almost all of the work on the house themselves, partly to stretch the money, and partly for the experience. Gareth had declared that he wanted to do it so that they could truly connect with their home. His enthusiasm was infectious. Once Gareth got something – good or bad – into his mind, there was no holding him back. He liked to see things through. And that was why Rose was determined to nip his objections to Polly coming to stay before they even came into bud.

  The moonlight wove into the wind-rippled river and Gareth tugged at a strand of willow.

  ‘It’s not possible not to notice Polly,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t exactly blend in.’

  ‘That’s why I love her,’ Rose said. She looked at Gareth as he stared at the water. A nerve was flickering in his cheek, and his jaw was tense.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m just tired,’ he said.

  She sighed. This was his way of telling her to leave him alone. But she wasn’t going to do that this time. If she left it, there would be a disaster.

  Back in London, when he was like this, he would throw himself into his work. He’d disappear to his studio, only to emerge a couple of days later with two or three pieces which went straight to the gallery.

  This approach worked for him, but for Rose, stuck at home alone with Anna, it was less satisfactory. She wished sometimes that they could work things out together, that they could sit and talk about things until dawn, like she imagined other people did. Perhaps if they had done that, the whole pregnancy thing wouldn’t have made their lives so difficult. She also wished she didn’t have to be the gatekeeper, fending off Gareth’s behaviour around Anna, who wondered why she didn’t see her daddy.

  ‘But he’s at work, love,’ Rose would say, and they would go off and bake a cake.

  This had been easy in Hackney, where the studio was far away, on the other side of Victoria Park. But in this new house, especially during the build, the work was all tied up with the life. There was nowhere for him to go, and he could infect them all with his downturn. It had happened once already, and she didn’t want it to happen again.

  ‘Look, Gareth. Christos, your friend, your old, old friend, is dead. For Christos, can’t you see a way?’

  ‘I’m not going to get a say in this, am I?’ he said, ripping a Rizla out of the packet and rolling another cigarette.

  ‘We’re talking about it now, aren’t we?’

  ‘But you’re decided. I can see that.’

  ‘If you like, I can phone Polly right back up and tell her not to come,’ Rose said. Part of her wanted to do that. She knew that Gareth had a point, that it was indeed the wrong time. But she couldn’t fully admit it, not now.

  ‘I just wish we could have discussed it before you said she could stay,’ he said.

  ‘But what else could I do? Polly and I practically grew up together. She’s like a sister to me,’ Rose said, counting the points off on her fingers. ‘We shared everything until we met you and Christos. And now Christos is gone, she’s widowed with two kids, she wants to come back and there’s no one else for them to stay with. I don’t even know if she’s got any money.’

  They sat in silence. It was a cold night if you were still. Despite her sensible waxed coat, and the protection of the willow, Rose shivered.

  ‘Man,’ Gareth said. ‘Christos dead. I can’t believe it. Shit.’

  ‘I’ll miss him so much,’ Rose murmured.

  ‘Me too.’

  Rose leaned her head on his shoulder.

  ‘Look. I want us to be together on this,’ she said, after a while.

  She didn’t want it to be like her pregnancy, when she had felt as if she were carrying both Anna and the baby on her own. It had been frightening, feeling so alone. The endless work on the house, and the blustery, wet, psychotic English weather seemed to grind Gareth down. He was tall, with big hands, thick hair, and solid legs. But, over that period, he seemed to get smaller and smaller. Rose’s belly had swelled in counterpoint to Gareth’s decline, but she had been determined to pull her not inconsiderable weight on the building work. She remembered aching everywhere. Her tenacious optimism, which usually saw her through anything, had started to desert her.

  Everything had begun to seem hopeless, when, unannounced and two weeks early, the baby arrived.

  The labour was an unseemly two hours, far too short to get to the hospital. So Andy and Gareth – who had been wrenched from his slough by the pressing nature of the event – delivered her with telephone support from the emergency services.

  The minute the baby slipped into his hands, Gareth was smitten. He declared her to be Flossie – not the prearranged Olivia that Rose had whittled out from all the possibilities. Rose was so relieved at Gareth’s instant transformation that she would have agreed to Weasel or Troutface if that was what he had wanted.

  This new joy had taken them through the last stages of the build – the final fixings, the colour schemes and the flooring decisions – into the completed house, where life was ready to begin as an ordered, organised existence. There was a cupboard for everything; shelves displayed only books or the useful and beautiful. They had space, at last. It was so different from cramming their lives into a one-bedroom flat with no garage and no attic as they had done back in Hackney. And this space was special: they had punched and pulled and sweated to create it. Spring was on the
way, and the sun would soon begin to warm their bones again. The forecast was for a great summer.

  Rose knew that her instinctive reaction to Polly’s situation had posed a threat to all this balance, but she also knew that neither she, nor Gareth, had any real choice now. And she was pretty sure he saw it like that, too.

  ‘Look,’ she said to him. ‘They’re not staying for ever, and if it doesn’t feel right, we can always ask them to move. It’s only till they get their feet on the ground here, really it is.’

  The air shifted slightly in their willow shelter. Very, very slowly, he began to smile, and she knew in that moment that it was going to be all right.

  ‘Oh yeah, I can really see you asking her to move on,’ Gareth said. ‘You’re too softhearted, Rose. You’re a pushover, always looking out for something to look after.’

  ‘That’s why I chose you,’ she said, and he drew her in close.

  ‘But I’m serious, Rose. If it goes tits up, then I’m going to be the one to send her on her way, and I won’t take any sort of opposition from you, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ she said, curving into him. ‘Besides, we’re rock solid now, aren’t we?’

  ‘Too right,’ he said, and he threw a stone into the river, skimming it so that it bounced four times.

  Three

  ‘Tell me a story about when you were younger.’

  Two weeks had passed. Anna was curled up next to Rose. Manky, the old cat, was sprawled over the two of them, purring like a motorised, heated blanket.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about when I met Polly?’ Rose said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you like to hear it?’

  ‘Yes!’

  They were on the bed in Rose and Gareth’s room. Already it had become the favoured place for bedtime stories. It sat up in the eaves of the house, tucked under the roof whose topping-out was responsible for Flossie’s existence. The sloping, oak-beamed ceilings – high enough to stand under except in the very far reaches of the room – made the place feel enclosed, like an embrace. And the low, warm lighting made you feel protected and held, even on a night as stormy as this.

  ‘Well now. When I was six – the same age as you – I lived in a big house by the sea. It was in the middle of a town too, though.’

  ‘That’s Brighton.’

  ‘Yes. The house I lived in was a guesthouse.’

  ‘I know that!’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘But what’s a guesthouse? A house with guests – like we’re going to be when they get here?’

  ‘Not really, it’s more a sort of hotel. My mum and dad – your grandparents – let rooms out to people who came to Brighton on holidays, or for business. They gave them breakfast in a room in the basement in the mornings. The people paid. It was hard work for your grandparents. The guests were always coming or going, only staying for a couple of nights at most.’

  ‘Did you like living there?’

  ‘Do you know what? Not really. There were always these strangers shuffling up and down the stairs, waiting for the lavatory, wanting this or that. Complaining.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘No. But it was all I knew. Your grandparents were kept really busy by it all, so I was pretty much left to get on with things myself.’

  ‘Sounds boring.’

  ‘It was. And a bit lonely. I wasn’t lucky like you. I didn’t have a sister to play with. There were never any children apart from me. Your grandparents didn’t allow children.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Noise. Mess. They hated all that.’

  ‘They sound horrible.’

  ‘I liked living by the sea, though. I used to go down to the beach every day. It was my route to school.’

  ‘You used to walk on your own, right?’

  ‘Yes. Out the house, take a left. Cross the road at the zebra then down onto the beach. I used to cut under the pier, although I wasn’t really allowed to.’

  ‘I wish I could walk to school on my own.’

  ‘You’re too young. It’s dangerous these days.’

  ‘Why weren’t you allowed to go under the pier?’

  ‘That’s another story. But the thing was, you see, that the sea was extraordinary. Every time it was different. One day it might be flat, like a sheet of silk. The very next morning there would have been a storm, like the one we’ve got tonight, and it would boil, reaching up and trying to grab you off the pebbles to drag you out to sea. I loved it like that. I’d poke my tongue out at it, following the waves back onto the wet gravel as they pulled outwards, then I’d pelt back up the beach as they threw themselves in again.

  ‘One day, the sea got me and I turned up at school soaking wet, my homework book ruined. The teacher told me off and the other children all laughed. I was freezing cold.

  ‘Then the teacher said there was a new child, and brought in this tiny, skinny girl with a bush of black, matted hair. Everyone giggled again, but she looked back at them like a tiger and that shut them all up.’

  Rose made the face for Anna. She remembered it clearly.

  ‘The teacher got us all to sit down. “This is Polly, everyone, and I want you to make her feel welcome,” she said. “Polly, would you take a seat, please?” Well, the only seat available was the one next to me. So she came and sat there, right by my side.

  ‘She looked at me, all soaking wet. “I’ve got some spare clothes in my rucksack, Miss,” she said to the teacher. “Can this girl put them on? She’s freezing, look.”

  ‘And amazingly, the teacher said yes. And me and Polly went out to the cloakroom. Her clothes didn’t fit me all that well: she was so skinny, and I was quite chubby back then. But at least they were dry.

  ‘And ever since that moment, we’ve been best friends. We sat together every day at school and it turned out that her mum lived in the flats in the next street from ours. So at last I had someone to be with at school and at home. We’d spend days rummaging round the guesthouse, hiding from my parents in empty rooms, pretending it was our hotel, or pretending we were newlyweds on honeymoon. We’d dress up in Polly’s mother’s clothes – she was very poorly and stuck in bed all the time, but she had loads of beautiful things from the days before she got sick – and parade along the seafront in long, floppy velvet coats, too-big platform T-bars and feather boas.

  ‘Polly and I called ourselves twin sisters. And, thanks to her, I wasn’t lonely any more. Or bored. She always had ideas about what to do next. So, in the end, I was lucky like you. You’ve got Flossie and I’ve got Polly. We lived together in Brighton from when we were sixteen, and then later, when she was a singer and I was a teacher, we shared a lovely flat in London. We had loads of adventures, and sometimes we were quite naughty.’

  ‘What sort of naughty?’

  ‘Ah, now, that’d be telling. Another story for another day. Look at the time. It’s bedtime, Mrs.’

  ‘Oh. Pleeease.’

  ‘No! Come on. We’ve got a long day tomorrow. We’re going straight after school to the airport to pick up Polly and the boys. So you’ve got to be full of beans. Just think, not only have you got your little sister, but you’re going to have Nico and Yannis to play with all the time.’

  Excited by this thought, Anna picked up her teddy and padded downstairs to her bedroom, where Rose tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. She smoothed her daughter’s thick brown hair and felt the warmth of her breath on her cheek. Manky jumped up and took his place at the end of Anna’s bed.

  Rose turned out Anna’s light and went to find Flossie for her bedtime feed. On the way downstairs, she tried to remember what it was really like in her parents’ house, on that dark, winding staircase that seemed to go on for ever from the little basement flat that they lived in to the very top attic bedrooms. She remembered landing after landing of closed doors that seemed to draw her to them, tempting her to eavesdrop on the transient lives that played out behind them. But most of all, she remembered that sick, fearful feeling
she always had in that house, and she was glad that her daughters would never have to go through all that.

  Did she have some of the hotelier in her blood? She hoped not – she would rather not have anything to do with all that – but she had enjoyed preparing the Annexe for the visitors. It had been a bit of a rush: once Polly had the invitation from Rose, she lost no time in organising her departure. But Rose was nearly there. She ticked off in her mind the final things she needed to do to prepare for them: make up the beds in the Annexe, put milk in the fridge, fresh towels and loo roll in the shower room and a bunch of daffs in a vase on the table.

  And then, everything would be ready.

  Four

  ‘How much longer?’