‘I think it might be something like that for Rob’s wife, you know. She can be very. Distant. I worry about him. Her.’
Maureen was off the mark with that one. I had met Robert’s wife and she was a different sort entirely. A woman who was up, up and away, dragging her man behind her. A woman who didn’t like to share, down in Chislehurst or wherever it was. A woman of nails and hair and teeth and a big white car that was always clean.
‘Well, you can’t make their choices for them, can you?’ said Paul.
‘No. That you can’t, love.’
They huddled round their platitudes and I dropped back a bit, pretending to feel for something in my coat. Maureen turned her head and called to me.
‘What about you, Mags? You heard anything from Rosie lately?’
Rosie. I wondered if that was a mistake, or where she’d heard it, though it could only have been from me. A name from a sweeter time when my child still submitted to my love. It was Rose now, had been for years. I spoke of her only when asked. One daughter, I had told them. We are not close.
‘No. No. Nor do I expect to.’
I retracted the lead. Called for Buster harshly.
‘Maggie. Come round here a minute.’
Paul stretched his free arm backwards. I could see the side of his face, one eyeball straining to find me. Young skin, a foreshortened nose. There was nothing to do but catch up. We walked in a row of swollen coats and white-and-red faces.
‘Ladies. I’ve got a crazy idea. It’s twelve o’clock. Opening time, if I remember rightly. Why don’t we go to the pub?’
We settled at the third one we tried, the only place to take dogs. A pub with the dimensions of a church and the longest bar I think I’ve ever seen. A huge flat telly was suspended from the ceiling with the racing on, volume down. Updates scrolled along its bottom and other people’s messages. Texts, or maybe tweets: ‘Go Highland Midnight!!!! love Tim and Tara xxxxx.’
The air felt warm and breathed as we pushed open the door. No one paid us any notice, and I felt a clutch of almost painful happiness. We paused a few steps in, uncertain of where to sit, and to buy time talked about what we might drink.
The room was filled with low round tables of maroon wood and matching stools; toy-town arrangements in the massive space. Long-legged chairs were tucked under the bar, and there were benches built beneath the windows. Once inside, as with all decent pubs, the outside world seemed some way away.
The place was pretty much empty. The few men at the bar were solitary and distant, possibly alcoholic. A couple with their necks craned up towards the sport had a scary-looking dog who it seemed best to avoid. So we settled at the edge of the room, on a window seat with an extra chair dragged over.
A huge glass arrived, three-quarters full and clouded from the dishwasher, but the wine inside was warm, rich and viscous, nourishing almost. I drank it, and went up for more.
We were together in a way we’d never been before, silly and scatty and trivial. We spread open bags of crisps unrecognisable as their flavours, and Paul showed us how to fold the empty packets into tight balls which we pinged across the table. We flicked beermats and snatched them from the air – I surprised myself by being rather good at it. Maureen suggested darts but that was a step too far.
In a while we found ourselves cheering with the telly each time the finish line approached, and when I went to the loo my face was puce and my lips stained red at the dry bits and I laughed at my own reflection.
We thought we’d better eat, and ordered three huge plates of fish, chips and peas, which came with batter an inch thick that burst to dust in our mouths, and fed handfuls to the dogs under the table, until we remembered that potatoes were bad for them.
They brought up Anja, and I told them of our lunch.
‘That’s amazing, Mags. She can do me as well. Twice a week if she likes,’ said Paul.
Even Maureen, who would never countenance a cleaner, said she’d ask next door. We’d got to the stage by now that everything we said seemed fundamental.
‘So did she tell you anything about what happened over there?’
That was Paul.
‘No. No. And I wouldn’t ask. Later perhaps.’
‘Or maybe wait till she brings it up?’ said Maureen.
‘She was very. Together, I suppose.’
‘Yeah, but people hide things,’ said Paul.
‘I know. I know. But I was surprised by her. She’s got this sort of optimism. She’s childlike. Well, she is a child, really, I suppose.’
Beliefs forming as I spoke them. My view of her changing by the moment.
‘It might be some kind of coping mechanism. A response to trauma, or something. I don’t know.’
Paul’s face had changed.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Nothing. But you know she might be. Damaged, Maggie.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.
I knew what he meant, that perhaps she was dangerous.
Maureen saw it too.
‘Maybe she is. But who wouldn’t be? Who isn’t, in their own way?’ she said. She coughed out her emotion. Paul looked sorry, and ashamed perhaps.
‘I know. Look, I’m not saying. Anything really. I was just pointing it out. We’ll help. I wouldn’t. God.’
He looked at his phone, angry at the picture that Maureen had drawn of him. She took my hand in hers. It was freezing cold and damp from her cider.
‘I wonder if she’s got family or friends, or anything. Back where she comes from,’ she said, trying to imagine her way into Anja’s life.
‘I don’t know. But she doesn’t feel like someone with no one, if you see what I mean.’
‘Well. We’ll do what we can. Tell her now, won’t you?’ she said.
Our mood had dipped; we divided the bill and Paul went to pay. He looked like a boy at the bar. I watched his left hand wander, to his pocket first, and then hang awkward by his side, fiddling with itself.
‘D’you think he’s really all right? What with Peter and everything?’ Maureen said. ‘I know he talks a good game, but.’
‘Course he is. He’s fine. The last thing he’ll want is us fussing over him, that’s for sure.’
Back home and it was darkening. The hall was dim but for the digital ‘1’ that blinked on the panel of my phone. I pressed the forward arrow. There was emptiness and a click of disconnection. I crouched down, bent my ear close to the grid of the speaker and played it again.
This time I heard a sigh.
Not the deliberate type, the type to send a message, but an exhalation caught on the phone’s trip back to its cradle.
A huff, more than anything; exasperation but also the smug comfort of expectations met.
I wondered, could it be Chris? My husband, or rather my ex. In not replacing him, he never came to be renamed.
14
Drinking with girlfriends, newly metropolitan, sure of my own appeal. Feeling the part under feathered hair and floppy hats, in clothes that swam behind me. Sleeping with a boy who looked like Joe Strummer and wondering what that might mean for my look. Working hard, head down, thrilled at my wage. And one day there was Christopher, cheek in his palm, cap parked beside him. Smooth and well pressed; amused, I had thought, at the picture he made.
We were giddy, me, Michelle and Julie, sat up against the bar in that funny old hotel Brian took us to each month on a Thursday, to thank us for all our hard work, whether we’d done any or not.
Brian Barclay, my first boss, a mentor of sorts.
I forget the name of the place, but can see the room, the residents’ lounge, though of course we never stayed. Windowless and warm, the walls textured like carpet, a maroon lozenge pattern laid over mustard. No music and low chat; muffled, but strangely accommodating.
It must have looked odd, our arrangement. Three young girls and Brian; balding, fiftyish, suited, obscenely cheerful. Yet we were welcomed, each visit, with a solemnity that flattered us but we also wanted
to push against, play young and wild, which we weren’t. Not that there was anything dodgy in it. Brian was a man of an unusual sort – a lady’s man in the rarest of senses. ‘I simply love the female mind,’ he said, and it seemed to be true.
He would buy us a cocktail each, listen as we talked – we put it on a bit, just to make him blush – then hop down and head back home to Hemel, to Marjorie and his twin daughters, once he had checked that we had money enough to get home. We scoffed at him when he left, silly old pet, and emptied our purses to see if we had cash for another.
I noticed Chris first. He was already settled when we arrived, by the wall at the far end of the bar. We came in with noise and bluster and gathered up stools that we reset in a messy half-circle. When we came to sit, I made sure I was facing him.
‘Hellooo,’ Michelle said at one point, waving at me, as I watched him over her shoulder. She looked.
‘Oh, got it,’ she said.
Brian grinned on benignly.
I remember the bones of his nose and cheeks and the blonde of his hair pushed back across his head. Polished black shoes, and the uniform too, of course. He seemed dropped in from another time, a permanence about him that made me feel flimsy. But he didn’t look up. He seemed immune. Which didn’t harm.
And when Brian had left, and we raked through our scattered coins, he called to us.
‘Excuse me, ladies. Your. That man you were with. I think he left his brolly.’
He pointed at our portion of the bar and I leant right out onto one leg of my stool to see. He was right. It hung on a brass rail built into the underside.
We looked at the umbrella, we looked back at Chris; more time passed than seemed necessary.
‘Oh well,’ Julie said. ‘Don’t worry. We can give it back to him tomorrow. He’s our boss.’
‘Or I could?’ Chris replied.
He stood up as if he meant to get it, but stopped just short of Michelle. To reach across her would mean coming closer than was appropriate. I saw that he was tall and broader across the shoulders than he appeared in profile. This was good. My experience so far had tended towards the slim. I recall that thought as some sort of precognition. We are still animals, after all.
‘Oh, don’t bother,’ Julie said. ‘It isn’t raining,’ though of course we couldn’t know. Michelle snorted.
‘Well, don’t trouble yourselves, ladies,’ Chris said, with a spot of tease in it. ‘I’ll take it, shall I?’
He held out an arm and I unhooked the umbrella and passed it to him. We shared the smallest of looks and he headed out. He was back in a minute or two, fat raindrops sitting unbroken on the shoulders of his jacket. He didn’t look my way again.
And that was it, until six months later. I was on the train back to Brighton for a weekend at Mum’s, bare legs on a scratchy seat and the bite of burnt rail in my throat. The train stopped just before East Croydon and when I pressed my temple against the window, I saw him waiting further down the platform. The train started up and I watched for a few stretched-out seconds as I was carried closer. There was the moment that we were to pass, my head sharp to the glass, and I saw his eyes blink me into focus. We stopped and I waited. Three people later he was there. He sat on the chair across from me which gave a punctured sound that we pretended not to hear.
‘It’s you, isn’t it? The girl from the bar? I knew you straight away.’
He settled unselfconsciously; brushed down the lapels of his jacket with the back of his hand, crossed his legs. The train bounced and the toe of his shoe with its bird-beak shine gave a hop, and almost touched my knee.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘How come?’
Braced for a compliment.
‘I never forget a face,’ he said. ‘That’s how come. It’s one of my talents.’
‘Do you not? I do. I’m hopeless,’ I said, which wasn’t true. Outside sped off behind us.
‘You surprise me,’ he said. ‘You struck me last time as rather capable.’
‘Compared to the others? That’s not saying much.’
It was hot and the back of my dress felt sticky all the way down. My calves were flattened against the bottom of the seat and I tried to adjust my posture quietly. I slid my heels towards him then across and my skin peeled free.
He registered the movement; his eyes dropped, but he made a slick recovery. He raised his arm and pushed his nails through his hair and I saw that he wore a ring on his little finger, which meant nothing at the time, and when he dropped his hand to his lap, he eased it round tenderly, under cover of his palm.
‘Some friend you are!’ he said.
‘They’re just people from work,’ I replied.
‘Not friends then?’
‘Somewhere in between, I suppose.’
‘Oh yes. I know the sort.’
There was silence for a while and he was still, his gaze faintly ticklish on my cheek.
‘Are you a pilot?’ I said, in the end.
‘No. I’m on the way to fancy dress.’
‘God, I bet that line’s had some use.’
‘That’s more like it,’ he said and bent over his lap towards me. There was an old woman across the aisle, ogling without restraint.
‘How about I take you out when I get back?’ he said in a low close voice, his face beneath mine, his eyes the white blue of holiday sky.
And then: ‘Oops.’
The train had lurched and he grasped my knee, each finger distinct, the faintest press of nail.
‘Sorry about that,’ Chris said, and sat back with a chuckle. ‘What do you think?’
It took twenty minutes to Gatwick. His trip was long haul, four days, and he came back to me straight off the plane – same suit, same shoes. We met at another hotel, the Grosvenor in Victoria, a better place than I was used to.
Something old-fashioned happened. I knew it for what it was, which was surrender, but called it by its other names for a long time. In instant thrall to his authority. A man who took responsibility for hundreds of souls, crossed time zones daily, and returned, unaltered. He bought me my first glass of champagne and told me about Concorde. I went back to my flat and threw out my waistcoats.
His schedule kept me dizzy as if I were the one travelling. A life lived in anticipation and recollection. With another man I think the shape of it could have suited me. He wore a cologne, as he called it, that broadcast his return and had me pivoting in the street if I smelt it on another and yet never quite disguised a chemical undertow of dry cleaning or air-conditioning maybe, even after he showered. He carried the cabin around with him.
He said he wanted to know my family and so I took him to our home. My mother was thrilled, Bet goggle-eyed, Fran shy. I watched them change in his presence, wait for his cues, follow his lead. Felt their relief at having a man in the house, especially one of his calibre. How much easier it all became. It made me despise them, that visit, but love him more.
When it was time to head back to Town, as he called it, we left the three of them crammed into the doorway competing with their neat little waves, but I could see the grip that Mum had on Bettie’s hand, and that it was triumph. No matter that he lived in Purley, which wasn’t Town by anyone’s standards, this felt like progress; to them, and to me too.
His family? The Kents were of a better class, that much was clear. A tidy home of lowered voices and good manners. The truth of things covered, for decency’s sake; food decanted into serving bowls, toilet rolls dressed, tights whatever the weather, selected to appear like skin. When his mother appeared in a shift, wearing pearls, as I fed the baby in their kitchen one morning before dawn, I laughed at her – it was the tiredness – but when she asked me what was wrong, I didn’t have the nerve to say.
Nothing shown plainly – my own mother’s paradise – but she had her sisters to keep her straight.
There was Michael, of course, Chris’s brother, the prodigal, but he was kept hidden for the first little while.
Chris showed me how to read the sky.
A cirrus cloud – feathery, casts no shadow – means fair weather. Unless the day is already fine; then there will be change. Ripples of cloud – a mackerel sky – and it will be dry. When we were engaged, he taught me to drive and I would take him to the airport for the early runs. Brief journeys on empty roads. Chris peering into the sunrise. Brilliance was bad news. A fiery red meant rain. A muted shade boded well. His belief surprised me, and I read it as depth, a complexity in this most rational of men. An incorrect assumption, as it turned out. Later, when we were married, he got himself to work.
A pilot to his bones. The most clear-eyed man I ever met. Supreme self-knowledge. Instant in his grasp of a situation. Brutal in execution. And he was beautiful. I should mention that. There was always that, and it counted for something.
He told me he had wanted me from the very first time in the bar.
‘I could see you were a woman with oomph. And you meet so very few of those.’
Who wouldn’t have responded?
15
I was still buying the papers, switching every few days to avoid the shopkeeper’s question or the question I thought I saw behind our ordinary interactions.
The dog was confused, but enjoying the change.
Once paid for, I found the newsprint in my bag wouldn’t wait. I told myself it was too heavy to lug around, that I might hurt my back, but that was not the reason I went straight home every time.
I splashed the papers over the kitchen, hungry to get started. When it was over and there was just scrambled print, I felt ashamed, but knew that the next day, I would do it all again.
Later I went over them more carefully. I knew the titles well, their personalities crisp and distinct. I saw patterns too; the way stories overlapped, how they bent and changed. I came to spot in advance which would balloon and where, the equivalent space in each paper. The pages a landscape that I could read; made expert in their topography.
In My House Page 6