Fortunately, at Rowena’s prompting, one of the chefs, Daniel, offered to help me out, and the night after I’d provided him with what little information I had concerning Cassie and Penny, he had produced an address and phone number.
‘Did it take long?’ I asked him, watching as he chopped an onion to a fine tilth with what seemed to me reckless haste.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I could probably have found out her work address, bra size and credit rating if you’d wanted it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah.’ He pointed the knife at me. ‘I looked you up while I was online. You’ve got about sixty mentions on Google.’
‘Me?’ I said, thinking, What the hell’s Google?
‘All about your illustrating stuff. All the books you’ve done. Winning that prize. Basically every time your name’s been in a newspaper. I’m like, wow, she’s more interesting than she looks.’
‘Thank you so much, Daniel,’ I said, wilting.
I considered turning up on Penny’s doorstep unannounced, but common sense prevailed. Weybridge was that bit too far to drive on the off-chance that she’d be at home. A letter would require more patience than I possessed. It would have to be the phone. I preferred to make the call when I had the house to myself, and I didn’t have to wait long: Christian and Elaine were off out on little jaunts at every opportunity. Today they were going to Tate Modern. Christian’s an art-lover all of a sudden!
I didn’t plan what I was going to say. I thought it would be better to crash in and be spontaneous, so as soon as I’d waved Christian and Elaine off I snatched up the receiver and dialled without giving myself any time to rehearse.
The phone was picked up after half a dozen rings, and a curt female voice said, ‘Hi.’ This monosyllable wasn’t quite enough for me to make a positive identification, so I said, ‘Is that Penny?’
‘Hello Esther.’ The reply came back instantly, with all her old warmth, but without any trace of the surprise that I would have thought the breaking of a nineteen-year silence deserved. From her tone you would think I was just returning a call.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ I ploughed on, trying not to be derailed by her composure. ‘I got your number off the internet. I hope you don’t mind. I thought I’d get in touch and see how you are and what you’re doing and all that.’ I found myself reverting under her influence to teenage levels of inarticulacy.
‘Well, I’m so delighted that you have, Esther. Shall we meet? I’d love to see you.’
It was as easy as that.
In the kitchen Penny prepared lunch of mushroom omelettes while the man from Appliance Care dismantled the washing machine. ‘I’m sorry about the chaos,’ she said, ‘but when you work full-time you have to get everything done on your day off.’
Already someone had come in to take the computer away to be fixed, and a crate of groceries had been delivered and unpacked. At the bottom of the garden a man was braced halfway up the largest of three tall poplars, a buzz saw swinging from a rope around his waist.
‘I’m having them lopped,’ Penny explained, uncorking the wine with a curious plunger. ‘Cassie has worked out using Pythagoras that if they fall this way they’ll demolish the house.’
Just beyond the trees was a railway cutting. What seemed like every few minutes an express train went screaming past, making the whole house quake. I found myself tensing up, waiting for the next onslaught. Penny didn’t turn a hair. I suppose you get used to anything.
‘Where do you work?’ I asked her.
‘For the Crown Prosecution Service. As a solicitor.’
‘That sounds high-powered.’
She pulled a face. ‘It’s the civil service.’ As if that explained everything. ‘Whereas you,’ she went on, fluffing up some salad leaves with a pair of wooden claws, ‘are a successful illustrator of children’s books. I’ve read all about you in the Guardian.’
I launched into my usual litany of denials. ‘Oh, no, I’m not successful at all. I mean, I don’t make a living. Almost nobody does, unless they sell TV and merchandising rights.’
She dismissed this talk as mere modesty. ‘I always knew you’d be an artist of some sort. You were the only one who didn’t realise what a talent you had.’
‘There’s your problem,’ said the Appliance Care man, holding up a piece of semi-circular wire. ‘That’s what was making the noise. It had gone right through the drum.’
‘Oh,’ said Penny. ‘I wonder where that came from.’
The man’s face assumed the arch expression of one who has privileged information to impart. ‘Shall I tell you what it is?’ he said.
‘Yes, do,’ said Penny. ‘We’re on tenterhooks.’
‘Put it this way,’ he said, twiddling it round between finger and thumb, ‘one of your bras is not giving you the support it should.’ Penny was speechless. I roared with disloyal laughter. ‘We get this all the time,’ he said, laying the exhibit down on the kitchen table and shaking his head. ‘You ladies.’
While he reassembled the machine and packed away his tools, we ladies ate our omelettes in the sunny, white-walled dining room, which looked onto the garden. The tree-man had moved on to the second of the poplars: the lawn below was six feet deep in fallen branches.
I explained the chain of circumstances that had led me to her, making no mention of Christian. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw Cassie. I knew she had to be yours. And then I read the name on her exercise book and that settled it. I just had to follow it up – it was such a monumental coincidence.’
‘You surely don’t think it was a coincidence, do you?’ Penny said, with an enigmatic smile.
‘What else would you call it?’
‘Well, suppose I had read about you in the Guardian, and suggested to the literacy coordinator at Cassie’s school that they invite you in to speak at Book Week.’
‘Oh. Why would you do that?’
‘Because I knew you’d recognise Cassie, and if you were interested in a reunion, you’d pursue it, and if you weren’t you wouldn’t.’
‘Oh.’ This was unsettling. I had considered myself to be the manipulator of events. Penny was part of my plan. Instead, it seemed, I was part of hers.
‘I’m not saying there’s no such thing as coincidence,’ she said, enjoying my mystification. ‘I’m just saying that nothing that happens here today can be called a coincidence.’
In the doorway the Appliance Care man coughed discreetly. When Penny had paid him off she made a pot of sludgy Turkish coffee and we moved into the sitting room, which was large and slightly underfurnished, with dents in the carpet where the missing pieces had once stood. There were photos on the piano, studio portraits of Penny and Wart and Cassie, arms around each other, the united family.
‘So you married Wart,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ Penny’s smile vanished. ‘And then two years ago he left me for someone else.’
‘Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I never thought I’d end up divorced. Even my parents are still together, and they can’t stand each other.’
‘How long were you married?’ I asked her.
‘Twelve years. And we were together for five years before that. That’s what’s so unfair. People assume the relationship was a failure, but it wasn’t. It was successful for at least fourteen years, which is a bloody long time.’
‘What went wrong?’ I could sense from her tone that she didn’t mind talking about it. Perhaps every retelling dispersed a little more of the unhappiness.
‘He had an affair with this woman he worked with. The fact that it’s such a cliché doesn’t actually make it any less miserable when it’s happening to you. In fact I think it makes it worse, because you feel ridiculous as well as heartbroken.’
‘Poor you,’ I said, with rising inadequacy. ‘How did you find out?’
‘I think I always suspected. I don’t believe people who say they have no idea. I think you always know.’
‘Really? Do you
think it’s impossible for a man to deceive his wife for long?’ This conversation was beginning to make me feel uncomfortable.
‘Yes, I do. I knew for a long time before I actually caught John out. We were in the car one day and he pointed out one of those coffee house chains and said, “That’s the shop I was talking about the other day.” Only he hadn’t been. Not to me. He got a bit flustered and tried to pretend I had forgotten the conversation, but I never forget conversations. Even after that I was frightened to confront him, because I didn’t want to precipitate a huge crisis. I kept thinking, if only I do such and such, he’ll realise what he’d be losing, but you just end up running round in circles trying to be the perfect wife, and getting more and more demoralised.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. Penny offered me the coffee jug, but I shook my head. My heart was hammering enough already. The fact that Wart, who had pursued her so hard and lured her away from Christian when she was at her most vulnerable, had gone on to discard her seemed to me an outrage.
‘I thought, perhaps if I showed more interest in all the things he’s into, like Formula One, and modern jazz. He always used to accuse me of being an intellectual snob and looking down on his interests. But it didn’t work. I used to go round to my sister’s all the time and say, “What can I do? How can I make him love me? Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” And eventually she had to sit me down and say, “Look, mate. He doesn’t love you any more, so nothing you do is going to work. And if he leaves you it’s not going to be for a saxophone-playing racing driver, because love isn’t logical like that.”’
‘Well, that’s true,’ I said. My face was burning. Partly with embarrassment at listening to Penny abase herself so frankly, and partly at the hypocrisy of my own expressions of sympathy. I had always been able to appease my bad conscience over Geoff’s wife with the thought that our situation was utterly unique, and beyond the scope of conventional ethics. We were no common adulterers: I was no scheming home-breaker. The impregnability of his marriage was a given for both of us, and I had never wanted it otherwise. I didn’t feel jealous or resentful of his wife; indeed, I felt a sort of sisterly warmth towards her, and something like regret that we could never meet. I imagined myself, in short, to be the sort of nice, untroublesome mistress that any woman might be pleased for her husband to have. I had been deluding myself, clearly.
‘So that night I waited till Cassie was asleep,’ Penny was saying, ‘and John was slumped in front of the telly – it was Farewell, My Lovely, funnily enough – and I switched it off and said, “Do you want to leave me?” And he sat looking at the dead TV for about ten seconds and then said, “Yes please.”’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that. It was unbelievably civilised.’ She gave a little snort of self-mockery. ‘So I said, “In that case you’d better go while Cassie’s asleep.” So he packed a bag and was gone within ten minutes. And then I lay down on the floor and howled like a beast.’
‘Oh no!’
Penny laughed at my tragic expression. ‘It’s okay. That was more than two years ago. I’m fine now. Good riddance. I’m just a bit overweight from all that comfort eating.’ She patted her hips. ‘And I’ll tell you something. That first year of being alone was a lot better than the last year of our marriage.’
‘What’s the moral of this story?’ I asked, sensing that further demonstrations of pity were superfluous.
Penny drew her features into a mask of deep consideration. ‘I’m buggered if I know,’ she said.
I wondered if she would ever get around to asking about Christian, or whether I would have to bring his name up myself, but eventually, after enquiring about Mum and Dad, and hearing their stories, she said, ‘Now tell me about your brother.’ She had gathered, from that feature about me in the Guardian that we lived together in eccentric seclusion, shored up by a rigid structure of routines and rituals, and I was able to confirm that this had, until lately, been the case. I didn’t, couldn’t explain about Geoff, but I did tell her about the new and unwelcome influence of Elaine.
‘So having given him the best years of your life, as it were, you are now facing imminent eviction, physical and emotional,’ was Penny’s blunt diagnosis of my predicament. ‘No wonder you’re pissed off.’ Put that way it made me sound rather selfish.
‘I’m not pissed off with Christian,’ I said, trying to frame a defence. ‘I’m delighted that he’s happy. I just can’t seem to hit it off with Elaine. And that’s going to be a barrier between us.’
‘Poor old Elaine,’ Penny tittered.
‘Why poor old Elaine?’ I said. ‘Poor old me.’
‘I’d hate to have you as an adversary. You’d be worse than ten mothers-in-law.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’ve got that same unbreakable bond with Christian, but you’re also young and smart and pretty and sarcastic and opinionated. Oh no, my sympathies are all with her.’
‘You don’t paint a very flattering portrait of my character,’ I said. And you don’t even know the half of it! I thought, beating back a tide of self-disgust.
‘I’ve always been your biggest fan,’ she replied, glancing at her watch, and then jumped to her feet. ‘God, is that the time? I’ve got to pick up Cass. You’ll stay till we get back, won’t you? She’s dying to meet you properly. Make yourself at home. Oh, and can you keep an eye on my tree-man? If he comes down see if he wants a cup of tea.’ And she snatched up her keys and bolted out of the door. It only occurred to me once she’d gone that there was no good reason why I shouldn’t have accompanied her, and I felt an inexplicable twinge of resentment at having been abandoned.
There is something slightly menacing about the silence of an unfamiliar house. I paced from room to room, in search of an innocent diversion. It was almost impossible not to pry. My wanderings took me back to the kitchen, where I read all the correspondence tacked to the memo board – mostly spelling lists for Cassie, school newsletters, reminders about piano exams and dental appointments, party invitations and lists of emergency phone numbers. So much administrative support for one small girl!
I noticed on the window ledge the agate egg displayed on a pewter napkin ring, and wondered whether Penny had produced it especially for the occasion: it looked somewhat less dusty than the surrounding ornaments.
To make myself useful I did the washing up from lunch, managing in the process to splash my suede skirt with droplets of eggy water from the omelette pan. In the course of putting the crockery away I located the dishwasher, hidden in one of the units. As I filled the kettle, another express train roared through the cutting, slaughtering the peace of the afternoon. High up in the poplar the tree-man swayed dangerously, balanced, legs apart, between two of the slenderest vertical branches that could possibly support a man’s weight. He was working with his back to me, and a combination of woolly hat, earphones and the buzz saw made him deaf to my shouts from the patio, but I could see he’d nearly finished, so I carried his cup of tea down the garden, my high heels collecting a ruff of mud and grass with each step.
A cold, low sun was shining in my eyes as I approached the piles of fallen branches. I could see the decapitated trees silhouetted against the platinum blond of the sky. Far above me the man reeled in his chainsaw and in a sweeping stroke sliced through the one remaining bough. Too late I realised it wasn’t roped; too late the man turned and saw me; too late I struggled to free the heels of my boots from the sticky clay into which they’d sunk.
‘Look out!’ he shouted, futilely, as the branch came down like a javelin, catching me on the shoulder and knocking me to the ground. Trees, sky, man: all disintegrated in a blizzard of pain. My hand raged as if on fire; I could feel the wetness of blood pooled in my palm, and then, worse than all, I tried to move my legs but nothing happened. I started to scream and scream.
A voice said, ‘Are you all right?’ then ‘Esther!’ and the coloured fragments slowly reassembled themselves before my ey
es to form a face I recognised.
‘Hello, Donovan,’ I said to the tree-man, who had now entered my dream in this strangely transfigured state. ‘I think you’ve killed me.’
40
MY CLAIM TO be mortally injured turned out to be an overstatement, but my identification of the culprit was spot on, and so there came about an additional reunion that day which, though unexpected on both sides, nevertheless could not properly be called a coincidence.
It was Donovan who reassured me, once he’d lifted the amputated branch from my legs, that my inability to move them was due not to paralysis, but to the spiked heels of my boots, which had bent back to snapping point as I fell, pegging me to the ground. The absurdity of this image was something I could only appreciate later: pain tends to override subtler sensations.
It was Donovan who helped me to hobble up the garden, and made me run my hand under the cold tap until it ached. The burning and wetness I had experienced turned out to be attributable to nothing more gory than spilt tea.
‘I didn’t realise it was you up there,’ I said, flexing my fingers. Every time I tried to withdraw my hand from the stream of tap water, Donovan took my wrist and firmly put it back again. ‘Penny never said.’
‘Well, it’s nice to see you again, Esther,’ he replied. ‘Though perhaps not in these circumstances.’ As soon as the shock of emergency was past, his apologies began to contain an element of reproach. ‘You know it is actually considered quite dangerous to stand under a tree while it’s being cut down.’
I gave him a baleful look, but he just smiled. Now that the fog of pain had dispersed I could see clearly how little he’d altered. Unlike Penny, he was just as I remembered him, his skin maybe slightly weathered from a life spent out of doors. In fact, when I tried to picture his eighteen-year-old self, I found I couldn’t visualise anything but the face before me. Strange the way memories age to keep pace with the march of time. Voices, of course, never change, and although there was nothing particularly distinctive about Donovan’s – classless, regionless – I would have recognised it anywhere.
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