Cuckoo

by Julia Crouch

  ‘OK, kids. Why don’t you go and watch The Simpsons? Nico and Anna, will you keep an eye on Flossie for a moment?’ She ushered them through into the TV room and thrust the remote control into Yannis’s hand, who took it as if it were a piece of treasure entrusted to his safekeeping.

  Rose hurried out of the house, round to where Polly was still standing, looking out now, up at the Annexe, her stained nightdress fluttering in the breeze.

  ‘Come on, Polly, let’s go up to your room, make a cup of tea, have a sit down.’

  ‘You always think putting things in stomachs will mend things, don’t you?’ Polly said.

  ‘I know,’ Rose said, putting her arm in Polly’s. ‘But, you know what? I really do need a cuppa. Come on.’

  Steering her by her sinewed, downy arm, Rose led Polly up the stone steps towards the Annexe. Her skin felt rough to the touch, dry like paper. But she came readily enough, offering little resistance.

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so busy today,’ Rose said. ‘I wanted to spend some time with you, but I had shopping to do. I checked on you earlier, but I think you were asleep. It must be a long time since you’ve had some time to yourself, without the boys to take care of.’

  ‘Yes.’ Polly drew her arm out of Rose’s and wrapped it round her thin frame. The sun was going down now behind the Annexe, and the shadows were lengthening, revealing the true chill of the breeze. They stopped at the bottom of the wooden stairs that led up to the bed-sitting room.

  ‘Don’t come in yet,’ she said to Rose. ‘Just give me a second, will you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Rose said. She stood and waited for ten minutes, listening to Polly moving around upstairs, shifting things, rubbing and banging. She heard a tap running for a while, then the toilet flushing. Then Polly, breathless, was at the door again. Her mood seemed to have been lightened by the work.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘The boys – they leave such a mess!’

  But they’ve been out at school all day, Rose thought. As she followed Polly up the stairs, she got an overwhelming, amber-heavy blast of Polly’s perfume, which had quite clearly been sprayed around the room. But why? What was she masking?

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Polly said, moving over to the kitchen area. Rose sat at the table.

  She had no idea what Polly had been clearing up. The bed-sitting room was a mess, the bed unmade, rumpled, the sheets torn away. And there were clothes and underwear strewn around the place, as if the open suitcase in the middle of the room had projectile-vomited its contents in a 360-degree trajectory. Polly’s guitar was out of its case and the table was blanketed with sheets of yellow paper, all covered in tiny writing and drawings, crossings out and hieroglyphs. Rose knew what this meant, having seen it many times before.

  ‘You’re writing.’ She looked up at Polly.

  ‘Oh? Oh yes,’ she said, hurrying to gather up the paper, as if she hadn’t noticed it before. She dumped the lot on the bed and pulled the duvet over it. ‘It’s one of my ways of coping, as you know.’ She sat down on the bed, on top of the papers.

  ‘And the others are?’ Rose asked, getting up to finish the teamaking that Polly had abandoned.

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to know, Miss Rose.’ Polly started to laugh, and Rose joined her. But Polly went on laughing a little longer than was necessary, or normal, until the noise became a mechanicalsounding tic in her throat.

  Rose turned to add milk to the mugs then took one over to Polly, putting it carefully in her hands.

  ‘Polly, are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘To be honest?’ Polly said, taking a sip out of her mug and making a face. ‘I’ve been better. But just give me time, OK?’

  ‘Of course,’ Rose said. ‘There’s all the time in the world.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Polly said, and set about drinking her hot tea as if it were a task she had set herself. When she had finished, she put the mug on the floor and looked up at Rose, who had sat back down at the table.

  ‘Look, Rose,’ she said. ‘I’m really grateful for what you’re doing for me. I really am. Just – just please don’t think you can make it all better by talking, by having cosy little chats with me, or with my kids. It’s not going to work like that. What we’ve gone through is not solvable by that. The only way that is going to work is my way. And I do things differently to you. I always have. So please don’t think you can put it all right with some words and plates of food, because you can’t. The truth is that nothing will bring Christos back. And that is what we – the boys and I – are dealing with. And how could you ever know what that means to us? So please – you know. Back off.’

  Rose looked at the floor and exhaled slowly. ‘OK then,’ she said.

  ‘I know you want to be everyone’s mummy, Rose. And we both know exactly why that is.’

  Rose gasped, shocked at what Polly had just said.

  ‘Don’t worry, Rose,’ Polly went on. ‘Just don’t take it out on my kids, eh?’

  Rose got up and turned to go. She noticed that her knees were shaking. At the top of the stairs, she turned to face Polly, forcing a smile.

  ‘You’ll be coming down for supper?’ she said. ‘The children have made a pie.’

  ‘I’m sure they have,’ Polly said, hugging herself and avoiding Rose’s eye.

  ‘Seven-thirty, then. Please don’t be late. The pie won’t hang around.’

  ‘OK. Cheers then,’ Polly said, getting up to close the door behind Rose.

  Rose turned to take one last look round the blasted room that she had spent so long sorting out for Polly’s arrival. She noticed, for the first time, that on the little table by the bed there was a brand new, hardback copy of Simon’s latest novel.

  Polly followed her gaze. ‘Oh, Simon brought that round at lunchtime. For me to read. It looks rather good,’ she said. She turned back to Rose.

  ‘It is,’ Rose said, looking straight at her. ‘You’ll really love it.’

  Then she turned and went back down to The Lodge, counting her steps carefully.

  Thirteen

  Led by Anna, the children had decided to make the meal into a big event. They laid the table with a white linen cloth and the best cutlery. They picked daffodils from the bottom of the garden and put them in a vase as a centrepiece. As a final touch, with help from Rose, they lit two candelabras, setting them at either end of the table.

  Gareth, who came in from his studio just as the candles were being lit, saw the spread and declared that it was going to be the most special meal of the year, worthy of a bottle of champagne from the case he had received from Andy for his fortieth birthday.

  He popped the cork right across the room, and the children caught the overspill in tiny glasses, which they held up in a toast. Their enthusiasm was infectious. It thawed the tiny part of Rose’s heart that still held ice from earlier, so that when Polly finally arrived – late, of course – she was able to look at her.

  And she was quite a sight. She had put on a long black, bias-cut dress and pinned her hair up in a distrait bun. Red lipstick made her slightly too-large mouth bloom like a rose, and her pale cheeks were fringed by impossibly long, mascaraed lashes. She looked, Rose couldn’t help thinking, extraordinarily beautiful, like a character in a novel, like La Dame aux Camélias. Rose drew her own worn and pilled cardigan around herself and wondered how one suitcase could contain so many different outfits, so many different Pollys.

  Unlike Rose, Polly seemed to have completely forgotten what had happened up in the Annexe. She made her entrance, then, seeing the splendour of the table, took Rose by the hands and kissed her, once on each cheek. She moved to Gareth and repeated the gesture, then went on to the children and formally shook their hands, one by one.

  ‘This looks gorgeous,’ she said, sitting down, her skin glowing in the candlelight. ‘You’ve all been working so hard!’

  The children smiled, ripples of pride running through their shoulders. Rose and Anna served up.

 
‘This pie is delicious,’ Polly said, as she nibbled at her portion. And it was. Despite enthusiastic over-handling by the children, the pastry was light and flaky, the lamb and vegetable filling melting and tender.

  Rose looked at Polly. That outpouring back in the Annexe must have been useful for her, she thought, because she was on incredibly good form. Well, if it made her feel better, then that must be a good thing, she supposed.

  Polly asked the boys about their day at school. She even sat with her arm around Yannis while they waited for Rose, Anna and Nico to serve up the dessert of baked apples stuffed with dates. In his mother’s arms, leaning back against her breast, the little boy had the relieved look of a survivor pulled from a sinking ship.

  Polly looked almost beatific, with her arm round her boy, Rose thought, as she ladled custard into a jug.

  ‘How’s your work going, Gareth?’ Polly asked, turning the beam of her attention towards him.

  ‘I’m getting there,’ he said. ‘I’m looking away from the fields now – at the river. Hand-generated prints of some sort, I think. Maybe a book.’

  ‘Our river?’ Rose asked. This was news to her, but she was glad of it. Gareth hardly ever talked about his work while he was developing ideas. ‘And printmaking? That’s interesting,’ she added, handing out the apples. Gareth’s more recent artwork had mostly been digital, with a little oil paint added along the way, for old times’ sake.

  ‘I guess I’ve been taken up by manual labour,’ he said, getting up to fetch a bottle of red from the dresser. ‘I’m feeling the need for something solid, something real under my hands.’

  ‘I know the feeling,’ Polly smiled.

  ‘I might try to trace the river back to its source, document the journey,’ he said, filling up her glass, then his own.

  ‘I’d like to come with you!’ Polly said.

  ‘I’m not sure—’ Rose started, but Gareth spoke over her.

  ‘If I do the trip, it will have to be alone. It’ll take days,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a sleeping bag and just spend the night where I find myself.’

  How wonderful it must be, Rose thought, to feel free enough to just do that. But it was part of what made her love Gareth – the way he could make an idea become a fact, a reason for spending days and weeks and months on something. Years, even, in the case of the house. Tenacity was a good quality for a husband. And, more than that, when it came to his artwork, he could turn this ability into a way of making money to put food on their table. That Rose could ever think it possible to take off alone for a couple of days to follow a dream seemed so remote that for a second she wanted to weep. What dream would it be, in any case? She wasn’t so sure she had one. But then she was living her dream, wasn’t she? She didn’t need to go anywhere.

  They finished the apples – all plates except Polly’s scraped clean. Rose got the children up and organised them into a washing-up team.

  ‘Polly’s been doing some writing, Gareth,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ He turned to her.

  ‘I’m just digging out some work I’ve done since Christos . . . Well, I’ve always written my way through trouble, and the conditions are certainly good right now. It’s spilling out of me.’

  ‘Songs?’ Gareth asked.

  ‘My Widow Cycle,’ Polly said in a small voice. Then she ground to a stop, spreading her hands out in front of her and examining her nails. She suddenly looked very fragile.

  For a thin woman in her late thirties who had taken a lot of drugs and spent five years living in the sun, Polly had a remarkably smooth face. Rose had a belief that it was your arse or your face for women of a certain age, using it to comfort herself about the extra stone she carried. Polly defied this, as she did with so many of the rules set for the majority. In the candlelight she looked like a girl of twenty.

  ‘I so admire you two for being able to do that, to use your lives and surroundings to create stuff,’ Rose said, sitting down next to Gareth.

  ‘You do it too, Rose, but your creation is life itself,’ he said, putting his arm around her with a cheesy smile.

  ‘Oh per-lease,’ Rose said. ‘You sound like a fridge magnet.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But you make all of this come alive,’ he said, gesturing around the room. ‘Without you, all this would be nothing. Without you, I’d be nothing.’

  He was pushing it a bit far. Over by the sink, the children started giggling, then Rose and Gareth joined them and soon the five of them had tears of laughter streaming down their faces. Polly smiled from her different place, across the table. Rose watched her from the corner of her eye. She had that look on her face again, the one where she appeared to be working out some sort of sum in her head.

  ‘Without you, I’d be nothing!’ Nico was down on his knees, his eyes closed, holding Yannis’s hand to his heart. He had taken Gareth’s American accent and exaggerated it perfectly. Yannis looked heavenward, flipping the plate he was drying up to give the moment dramatic flourish. Unfortunately, it parted company with his hand and arced across the room to land in a shattering crash on the stone floor, sending Manky yowling for cover. There was a brief, stunned pause, then everyone turned to Rose who, despite losing one of her best plates, led them all as they collapsed, once again, into snorts of laughter. When they had finally exhausted themselves, Rose got up and cleared up the smithereens of the plate.

  ‘All right yeah,’ Gareth said. ‘But see what I mean?’

  ‘When can we hear your new songs?’ Rose asked Polly as she sat down again.

  ‘When they’re ready, you’ll be the first to hear them. Well, second. I think I promised first dibs to Simon.’

  Rose and Gareth exchanged a look.

  ‘I suppose they’re about the essence of what you just said to Rose, Gareth. But it’s me saying it to Christos,’ Polly went on. ‘And then there’s the anger at being left.’ She stared into her wine glass.

  ‘He didn’t choose to leave you, Polly,’ Rose said.

  ‘At least I can say that, can’t I? Funny how it offers such scant consolation.’

  ‘Mum, we’ve done,’ Anna said, coming up and putting her arms around Rose, hugging her from behind. ‘Come and check.’

  Rose got up, realising she was a little drunk. She cast an eye over the washing-up. There were a couple of pans that she would re-do later when they had gone to bed, but on the whole it was passable.

  ‘Right, get your pyjamas on, guys.’ She clapped her hands and they ran upstairs. ‘Clean the teeth, get into bed and I’ll be up in a bit.’

  ‘I’m assuming, from all the disruption this afternoon, that you’ve decided the boys are staying up here,’ Polly said.

  Gareth looked surprised. ‘Is this right, Rose?’ he asked.

  ‘It seemed practical. I just thought that you could do with a bit of space, Polly. It’ll take the pressure off. And the boys were really keen.’

  ‘It would’ve been good to have discussed it beforehand,’ Gareth said.

  ‘And would you have objected?’ She turned to face him.

  ‘Well, no, but that’s not the point.’ He looked her in the eye.

  ‘Oh come on, Gareth,’ Rose said, sitting down again. ‘They’re going to be down here every morning and evening, round here after school, and it’s tiny up there. Polly needs to be alone to work. It’s all good,’ she said.

  ‘Gareth’s right, though,’ Polly said, looking up at Rose.

  ‘But it’s the best thing.’ Rose poured herself another glass. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly as if you’ve been around to ask. I did go up earlier, but you weren’t there.’

  ‘I’ve been in all day,’ Polly said.

  ‘I couldn’t hear you moving about.’

  ‘So you came and had a good listen, did you?’ Polly said.

  ‘Look, for fuck’s sake, I’ll go up and tell Nico and Yannis to move back to the Annexe.’ Rose stood up, ready to march upstairs. She had just about had enough.

  ‘Oh Rose,’ Polly said. ‘Come here and
sit down. Flouncing really doesn’t suit you. Look, I’m fine with it, really I am. It’s just that you went ahead and did it without even considering what I might feel.’

  ‘Believe me, what you feel is foremost in my mind at the moment, Polly,’ Rose said, still standing.

  ‘Look, Rose, will you come and sit down, drink your wine and shut up,’ Gareth said.

  Rose stayed standing. She didn’t know what to do. Go upstairs or sit down? Which would seem less like a capitulation? Then Polly gave an involuntary shiver. Seizing her opportunity, Rose went over to the sofa and pulled off one of the throws. She took it to Polly and wrapped it round her.

  ‘You really should get some warmer clothes,’ she said.