Cuckoo

by Julia Crouch

  ‘We mustn’t forget about all this,’ she murmured into the silent night of their bedroom.

  But, as the rain began to spot onto the dormer window, she couldn’t help wondering: Where did he get the idea for all of that?

  Twenty-Eight

  The next morning Rose woke to the sound of Gareth singing one of Polly’s old songs in the shower. She lay there in the square of thin morning sun that hit her from the Velux window above the bed, trying to remember what had happened the night before, wondering what it was that made her feel a little stomachchurned. Then she moved and felt the soreness between her legs, and shivered a little.

  She felt like she had on her first day at school.

  ‘Hi, my love.’ Gareth walked in from the shower, rubbing his hair dry with one of the thick white towels that Rose always left beautifully folded on the slatted oak bathroom shelves. He bent to kiss her on the lips.

  ‘I’m out of studio coffee,’ he said. ‘We steam through the beans down there, me and my new coffee-maker.’

  ‘I’ll put it on my shopping list,’ Rose said.

  ‘I do love you, you know.’

  ‘You said that last night,’ she told him.

  ‘I said it because it’s true.’

  He pulled on his work clothes of old 501s and a loden green jumper that Rose had knitted for him when she was pregnant with Anna. Then, running his hands once through his hair, to make sure it dried in his favoured tousled style, he left.

  Humming, Rose went to the farmers’ market straight after taking the children to school. It was held in the next village, three miles away, so she had to drive there, but it felt so right to be using the market rather than Waitrose. She flung her special wicker basket onto the back seat when she got into the car. She had bought it specifically for these market visits. It was a little difficult to carry tucked under her arm with Flossie in the sling, but she couldn’t imagine going there without it. It reminded her that she was a village woman now, and it made her feel complete.

  The morning mist was fading away to reveal a blue sky as Rose turned the Galaxy into the car park of the village hall where the weekly market was held. Despite rain at night, the days seemed to have been getting warmer and warmer for the past week or so. She was pleased to see that this morning, despite a little muddiness, someone had decided to move the market to its summer pitch on the playing field at the back of the hall. As usual, it was bustling, full of parents she recognised from the school. She nodded and said hello to a few of the more friendly ones as she waltzed around, humming and packing her basket with artisan French cheeses, local jam and a kilo of bacon that she secretly felt was inferior to (and more expensive than) the supermarket’s deli brand, but which she bought because it was produced by a farmer whose fields she could see from the top of her garden.

  She closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face and imagined that she was in some sort of French street-market in the Dordogne.

  ‘Coffee, mustn’t forget coffee,’ she sang to herself as she headed towards the stall that sold the home-roasted whole beans in the particular blend that Gareth liked.

  Her spirits were soaring as, babbling on to Flossie back in the kitchen, she tidied the last jar into the correct cupboard. She got the coffee-grinder down from its shelf then processed enough beans to keep Gareth going till suppertime. Gareth. She shivered again, remembering the night before. It was incredible, she thought, how, in amongst all the stuff of day-to-day life, a good bit of sex could make all the difference to how one felt. Looking up from putting the bacon away in the fridge, she saw Polly wandering down the garden path towards the kitchen, clutching around her a black satin dressing gown that Rose had never seen before.

  Rose took her basket and put it back in its place in the cool pantry, which smelled of the apples she had wrapped in newspaper and stored there in the autumn.

  She walked out to the kitchen and saw Polly sitting at the table, watching her.

  ‘You look happy, Rose,’ she said.

  Rose smiled.

  ‘Did you and Gareth have a nice time last night?’

  ‘We loved it. How did it go after we left?’

  ‘OK,’ Polly said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Polly stretched. ‘I’ve got a touch of anti-climax about me.’

  ‘You get back late?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Anyone interested?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno. They say they liked it, that they’ll get back, but it’s all blah blah blah.’ She twisted a lock of hair around her finger, inspecting it for split ends. ‘Where’s Gareth?’

  ‘He’s in the studio.’

  ‘It’s great he’s working again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you know he hardly went into his studio when you were away.’

  Rose looked over at Polly, who was still fiddling with her hair. A flush of something bled into the contentment she had felt all morning. What was this all about?

  ‘It was probably the worry. About Flossie,’ Rose said curtly.

  ‘He was always around, here in the kitchen,’ Polly shrugged. ‘Is there any coffee going?’

  ‘I’ll put some on in a sec.’ Rose remembered she had to get that coffee down to Gareth. He’d be gasping now, with his North American inability to work without caffeine. She pulled on her sawn-down wellington overshoes and padded across the back garden to Gareth’s studio. On the way she called out for Manky. He hadn’t been home in the night, not that this was unusual. But he hadn’t dropped by to eat his breakfast, either. Rose hoped that no one else was feeding him. She knew that this was not what you were supposed to do, but that people often did it out of misplaced kindness.

  She knocked softly on the studio door. The blinds were drawn, as they often were, against the morning sun.

  ‘Yes?’ he said from within.

  She opened the door and gasped. Since she had last seen the studio, less than a week ago, every surface, every spare centimetre of wall space, had been covered with drawing after drawing of the river, of trees, of figures, moving – was it dancing? – in an abandoned, loose-limbed way. There was something about the attitude of the figures that looked familiar to her.

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ she said, looking at the frenzy of work around him.

  ‘Yup,’ he said, putting the paper he was working on face down on the floor. He turned to her. ‘How can I help you, Rose?’ She knew he didn’t like anyone to see his work in progress, not even her.

  ‘I brought your coffee,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yeah. Of course. Great. Thanks.’ He looked at her as if waiting for her to go.

  ‘OK, then, see you at lunchtime.’

  ‘I’m going to work through. Sorry. But don’t forget me for supper.’

  ‘OK, then. See you then.’ Rose backed out and clicked the door shut behind her.

  The sharp sun made the lawn seem to tilt on the way back to the house, and she felt herself shrinking, Alice-like. The house seemed to get farther away rather than nearer. Suddenly she stopped. Idiot! She had left Flossie in the kitchen, in her car seat, on her own with Polly.

  An invisible hand pushing at her back, she tore up the lawn and threw herself into the kitchen, making Polly – who was still sitting at the kitchen table examining the cut beneath her eye in a small turtleshell hand mirror – jump. Flossie was still in her seat, over the other side of the room, fast asleep. Rose ran over to her.

  ‘What’s up?’ Polly said, putting the mirror down.

  Rose was almost weeping with gratitude. Polly hadn’t even noticed Flossie. She was asleep, untouched, unscathed.

  ‘How about that coffee, then?’ she asked Polly.

  Once she had a bit of caffeine inside her, Polly was far less gloomy about the outcome of the night before. It turned out that she had a whole string of meetings lined up in London and Bristol about possible recording contracts and other putative small-scale unplugged gigs.

  ‘Did you see
the skinny old guy with short grey hair and a nose ring?’ she asked Rose.

  ‘The tight jeans and the leather?’

  ‘Yes. He’s Steve Blow.’

  ‘Not?’

  ‘Yep, the bassist. He wants me to guest on a gig he’s doing next month in Camden.’

  ‘You going to do it?’

  ‘Why not? The only way is up, really, isn’t it, Rose? I thought I’d go up for a couple of days, show the old face around. You’ll be cool with looking after the boys, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’ More than cool, she thought. Delighted.

  The garden door opened, and there was Gareth, silhouetted, resting his weight on one hip and running his charcoaled fingers through his hair, raking it back out of his face, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark in the kitchen.

  ‘I ran out of milk,’ he said.

  ‘You need to rig up some sort of pipeline,’ Polly laughed. ‘Then you need never come up here again.’

  ‘Oh, hi.’ Gareth came in and kissed her on the cheek. ‘You star, you.’

  ‘Aw, shucks,’ Polly deadpanned.

  ‘Use the bottle from the front,’ Rose said, as Gareth rummaged through the fridge.

  ‘Oh yeah. Is there any chance anyone’s going into Bath today? I’ve broken a string,’ Polly said.

  ‘Sorry,’ Rose said, apologising for both of them. Gareth was working, and she couldn’t go: there wouldn’t be a chance of getting in and out before it was time to pick up the kids.

  ‘Hang on there.’ Gareth turned, with the milk bottle in hand. ‘I guess I could take you. I need some more paper. I was planning to go tomorrow, but today’ll do just as well.’

  ‘If you’re sure . . .’ Polly said.

  ‘No worries. We’ll go after lunch. What’s for lunch, Rose?’

  Rose was certain he’d said he was going to skip lunch.

  Twenty-Nine

  Rose made a french onion soup. Which they ate at the kitchen table, with bread and goat’s cheese from the market. It was strange having everyone around – she had begun to get used to her solitary days. She felt a little as if she was sitting between two bush fires, as both Polly and Gareth talked about their work, about their plans.

  Gareth outlined his ideas for his river series, and Polly listened, leaning in and nodding to show she could see what he was talking about. Rose began to drift away. She pressed her right breast to see if it had any of its telltale premenstrual ache. If so, this would be the first period she would have had since Flossie was born, and it would explain the way she was feeling. The morning had started well, she remembered, bright and sun-filled. But now she felt as if she had climbed into a box that was very slowly being closed around her.

  Polly went up to the Annexe to get herself ready, and Rose cleared the lunch things as Gareth sat at the table drawing up a list of things to buy in Bath.

  ‘Is there anything I can get you, while I’m there?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t find the nit comb,’ Rose said. ‘And Anna’s been scratching again.’

  ‘OK, it’s on the list.’ He stood up and fetched his car keys from the wooden cabinet by the back door. ‘We shouldn’t be back too late,’ he said, kissing her on the head. Then he went out, bounding up the steps to the Annexe, like a dog let free in a field.

  Rose saw Polly turn out of the Annexe door and smile at Gareth. She had on a loose white shift dress that dazzled in the sunlight, making her look a lot younger than her years, like a little virgin bride.

  Once she had cleaned the kitchen and checked the garden again for the cat, Rose broke the habit of a lifetime and took an afternoon nap alongside Flossie. Perhaps she would feel better for a sleep, she thought. But she woke up with ten minutes to go before she had to leave to pick up the children, and found that now, not only did she still feel boxed in, but she also had a muzzy feeling in her head, as if someone had crept in while she was sleeping and replaced the sentient part of her brain with cotton wool.

  So, when Simon called out to her when she was crossing the field, she didn’t hear him at first. But he ran to catch up with her, and the first thing she felt was the friendly brush of Trooper against her leg.

  ‘Hi.’ Simon bounded up, more puppylike than his dog. ‘Anyone in ?’

  ‘Sorry.’ Rose turned and made her mouth smile. ‘I was in a daze.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’ He fell into step beside her. ‘Do you fancy coming round for a cuppa after school?’

  ‘Why not?’ Rose said. There was no reason to go home, in any case, and she could get a lasagne out of the freezer for supper. She didn’t feel all that much like cooking.

  At the school, the children whooped when they heard the plan, in a way that made Rose wonder what was wrong with going back to their own house.

  The field seemed to have filled with black crows in the short time it had taken to gather children, book bags and lunchboxes together and head back. The children ran at the birds, which rose like great black ghosts, filling the air with their caws. Anna, Yannis, Nico, Effie and Liam took the hint from the wheeling birds and flung their arms out, spinning around underneath them until they all fell down in a dizzy heap.

  Simon’s children were twins. Tiny for their seven years, they had their mother’s pale Celtic skin and round dark eyes staring up from underneath Simon’s blond thatch of hair. Rose always saw them as little elf children, light of foot and full of a mischief that was much more carefree than that of Polly’s boys.

  ‘Where’s your weirdy aunty?’ Effie jumped up and ran alongside Anna. Both girls were now pretending to fly, too involved in what they were doing to notice that they had got very close to Rose and Simon.

  ‘She’s not my aunty,’ Anna said, swooping away from her.

  ‘She’s weird though, eh?’ Liam zoomed in, more plane than bird.

  ‘Fuck off!’ Anna said to Liam.

  ‘Anna!’ Rose said.

  ‘No, it’s OK. He was winding her up. He deserved it.’ Simon touched her arm.

  Rose looked at Nico, who was smirking. He caught her eye and held it defiantly for a few seconds, then went over to join Yannis, who had taken himself away and was swiping at nettles with a muddy stick. She had no doubt whatsoever where Anna had got the idea from that using that sort of language was acceptable. Since the boys had arrived, Rose had discovered that she hated children swearing. In the past she had thought that explaining context and understanding was more important than banning naughty words, but now she realised she hated filth coming out of the mouth of her daughter, and she had to fight the urge to slap her.

  She watched Anna whirling around, and realised that she had become more wiry. It must have been a growing spurt. She had a tendency to fill out, grow up and thin down, but Rose usually was aware of it going on. Now, she saw that her daughter’s clothes no longer fitted her – there was a good two inches of wrist showing at her sleeves. But it wasn’t just that. Anna had a sort of tension about her that Rose had never seen before. She tried to think back to how she had looked just a month ago, and the way she had contrasted with the harum scarum boys. Now, she realised with a thud, there was little to tell between the three of them. They all looked as if they had come out of the same mould. The discovery shocked Rose. She had always seen her family like a piece of algebra, neatly tucked inside its own brackets.

  Then, as she tripped on a tree root, the revelation came to her that she, Anna, Flossie and Gareth simply hadn’t had long enough on their own since the finishing of the house to make their family enclosure solid. It had been a ghost wall they had built, and now it seemed to have been breached.

  She snatched in her breath and just managed to stop herself from falling.

  ‘Steady, Rose.’ Simon caught her by the arm.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘I just tripped.’

  ‘Let’s stop at the shop and get a cake,’ he declared, and all the children turned as one and cheered. The village shop sold a secret recipe chocolate cake that wa
s famous throughout the local parishes.

  Simon and Miranda’s house was about half a mile beyond Rose and Gareth’s, which meant that they were next door but one. The house was very different from the pristine newness and clean lines of The Lodge. A ramshackle building, it was full of clutter, with piles of letters and books on every surface. There had been little of the expensive renovation that Rose and Gareth had exerted on their home. The garden was, even at this time of the year, something of a jungle, with stuff that should have been cut back in the autumn already throwing weedy sprays of new growth into the air.