She gave me the longest second and said: ‘I don’t want to have to fall out with you, Maggie,’ which surprised me; it was more than I had expected.
I didn’t bite. I don’t know why. Perhaps I am as proud and vain as they say.
She took her tin and left. Bet hugged me, her face wet, leaving a big dark smear of it across the collarbone of my dress. My mother was already outside, standing by the car in the first light, stunned.
Her coat, she forgot; it still lives in a corner of my wardrobe.
It would have annoyed her, and I get some morsel of pleasure out of that.
33
I was awake before six and listened, for a while, to the family in the house next door. Their baby was new and still in their bedroom; it cried for a bit, and soon the older one began and when the parents’ efforts to hush them grew too loud, I got up. I crept past Anja’s door like a cartoon burglar. It was ajar, but dark inside.
It had been strange to have another person in the house. She was not a good sleeper and there were noises in the night. What I thought at first was a call for me and had me out of bed in an instant turned out to be the back end of a nightmare. She was sat up when I got to her, eyes open but not awake. She let me ease her back beneath the covers and I sat against the wardrobe and watched for a while till I was sure that she was sleeping. It didn’t upset me. Bella had been the same.
Later I was disturbed by an adenoidal snore of astonishing build and evenness. She woke herself, I think, at its upper reaches, as she fell silent for a while, and the cycle repeated. None of which mattered. I got plenty of time for sleep.
In the early hours, I decided that I must see Peter. He’d had almost a week, and not a word. I texted him as early as seemed decent, and he told me half past eight. Paul would be out with the dogs, although it felt wrong, all of a sudden, to have involved him in that collusion.
He answered the door in slippers, his hair wet and combed, and the scent of coffee bean behind him. He offered me a cup, but I saw on his face that the news wasn’t good, and said no. We went through to his office this time, a move that was not hard to read.
‘It’s OK, Peter,’ I said. ‘I already know from the Internet that these cases can be tough,’ as if it were no big thing.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘That’s what my friend told me. She emailed last night. I was about to call.’
He went to sit behind his desk and then changed his mind.
‘OK. The odds are not great. Maybe two-thirds of asylum applications are refused. More among women. But these things are complicated. Each case is different. A lot of it is luck. Lawyers are important and you get another shot at appeal. But you just never know. So you should be prepared, basically.’
‘I did think as much. It’s fine,’ I said.
‘Right. I was hoping you wouldn’t be too disappointed.’
Relief plain on his face.
‘Disappointed? Well, it’s not really a case of disappointed, is it? It’s her future. It’s her life we’re talking about here.’
The room was pale and smelt of paper. Next to me stood his drafting table, empty of work, its huge blank face angled like an easel. Its surface was a cold white lacquer, so smooth that it felt soft underneath my finger. Above it, I noticed a photo of Peter with a child. Could it be his? Would they not have said?
‘I know, Mags. But it’s just. You know, these aren’t our decisions to make, are they?’
I said nothing.
‘And also Kate, my friend – I mean, she’s not a psychologist or anything but she did say that it’s not necessarily helpful for you and Anja to get so closely involved at this point.’
I thought of her at home, sleeping soundly in my spare bed.
There was something inviting in the pearled and poreless surface of his table. Tilted up, it seemed to dash the light right back at me. I had the idea that I could dive down into it; vanish beneath the waxy surface. Clips like tiny wipers were spaced around the frame to hold his plans in place and, as I touched them, I wondered if a man this particular would mind. A huge drawer of polished walnut ran along the underside, a nice note of contrast. There was a cut-out for a handle and I reached one finger inside and pulled, with just the tiniest of pressures. The drawer slid open with more force than I thought I had applied.
‘Sorry,’ I said, and pushed it shut. It hit the back of the socket with a satisfying bounce.
‘Not that there’s anything wrong with it, of course. With your relationship, I mean. It’s just. Well, obviously it’s unsustainable, isn’t it, so it might become difficult for you, for both of you, at some stage. I think that was her point,’ he said.
‘Thanks, Peter. I appreciate it. I really do. You did what I asked. I had better be off now. Thanks.’
‘Look, Mags, you don’t have to go. Stay for a coffee. Please.’
‘I need to go now. Really. Thanks anyway though.’
I took a step towards the door but felt the hem of my coat tug. It had caught on an exposed nail in the crossed legs of the table. It was a decent mac, from M& S, but I yanked at it anyway and it tore with a pleasing cottony shriek.
34
She was up when I got back, and looking to take my lead. We skirted each other, like some sexless one-night stand. I hid in function, said I’d just popped out for milk, although the fridge was full and I didn’t carry a bag.
‘Let’s go for a treat!’ I cried, at last. ‘The cinema!’ I hadn’t been for years. She agreed and went off to google.
She chose the film while I walked the dog; a romcom, which we got to on the bus. It was shouty and brittle and there was too much of everything; a bottle of water so large it would be stale long before I drank it and popcorn you could wade through. I felt irrelevant, out of time, swallowed by my huge chair. Anja texted throughout, her phone held low. I have no idea with whom.
That night, back at mine, I saw her sweetness again. She made a cake. A woman at the hostel teaching life skills had showed her how and she went out to buy what was needed, and baked it in an ancient tin.
We ate at the coffee table, on our knees, with tea out of teacups and milk from a jug that she poured. A big slice of Victoria sponge filled with value jam and an underbeaten icing. Grains of sugar lodged between my crowns but I didn’t show it. Her efforts moved me, but mainly made me sad.
She felt unfamiliar to me then, her difference singing out of her clearly. I watched her chuckle at the telly and she looked to me to share, but I couldn’t raise a grin. I heard her curse in her own language when she cut her hand, and it all just seemed so very strange. I wanted to tell her to pull up her trousers, that no one wanted to see her arse, but that would have been unkind.
It’s hard, this business of being with others.
Finally, she asked me, ‘Maggie, is something wrong? You seem unhappy today.’
‘No. I’m fine,’ I said and then, ‘It’s just. I think we need a lawyer. A good one. That’ll make all the difference, you know.’
She rolled her eyes, almost in parody.
‘If you want to stay here, Anja, we need to be doing more. It’s as simple as that,’ I said and got up, propelled out of my chair.
‘It all takes money,’ she said, in a slow bored voice. ‘And I have no money.’
‘No, of course not. But I do.’
I was thinking of the amount that my mother had left and what I’d saved from my time at the doctor’s. That sum put by for Rose that I’d never found a way to offer. There were Premium Bonds, if needed. More than enough. Surely.
‘The question is who. How to find the best possible person.’
But I wasn’t talking to her any more. I went out to the kitchen. There had been a friend, a woman from when Rosie was at school. I had her number in the book.
Then Anja was behind me and she seized my arm, yanked it with a strength that pulled me from the drawer.
‘I don’t want your money, Maggie,’ she said, and her voice was low and aimed.
‘What’s the alternativ
e? I have been to Peter and he told me that our chances are not good.’
‘You went to Peter?’ she said.
‘Yes, I did. And I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but someone had to do something,’ I said, as if this were pure undeniable common sense.
I realised my mistake; I saw its impact on her. A flinch that she cut short as soon as she felt it, and a shrinking – I swear. She withdrew before my eyes. I witnessed that first step away from me and, god knows, it is easy from there.
‘Mind your own business, Maggie,’ she said.
‘You are simply naive. You are being a child. This will not go away, I can promise you that.’
My voice rose and tumbled.
‘It is not your problem,’ she said, and that hurt, because it was not true.
‘Not my problem? You make it my problem, Anja, when you come here with your drama.’
I jabbed a finger. Most likely moved towards her. I am a Benson, after all, and we Bensons do not shrink from conflict. Losing my temper was physical, a pleasure. I felt the freedom in it. It showed me I was alive.
But Anja saw it too. She narrowed against me.
‘My drama? Is that right? Is that what you call it?’
A puff of scorn.
I said nothing, waiting for her to come.
‘OK, Maggie. As you say,’ she said.
And she left the room; she ambled. No rush.
I said to myself, let her go; but still I caught her in the hall, the scruff of her coat in my hand.
‘What are you doing?’ I said.
‘Thank you,’ she replied. ‘For everything. But I am not yours.’
When she opened the door, there was Paul.
‘Hey. You off?’ he asked, but she stepped through the tangle of his dogs and was gone.
‘Maggie? Is everything?’ He looked slow and stupid between us.
‘Good luck, Anja, yeah. Best of luck with it all,’ I shouted, bent out of my door, one socked foot dampening, but she didn’t turn back.
I stepped inside to a ringing silence, and wished for Frannie.
‘Stop,’ she used to cry, twisting a tea towel in my mother’s wake. ‘You must stop, Hel. We’ll have the social round.’
And my mum would sit down at the table, head in hands, and start her journey back to us.
Warm sweet tea and the slow road of recovery.
35
Time passed more slowly without Anja.
The first day I woke into was bright and beautiful but I couldn’t acknowledge it. I took the dog out, and again later. He seemed pleased with the extra walk but I caught him watching me a couple of times, though he put on his best jolly face when I did.
My groceries arrived; identical, bar a handful of items, to the week before. I recognised the man who brought them, around my age, smart in a way that made me sorry for him. Combed hair, belted trousers and a habit of knocking his wrist against the phone that hung from his belt that I found affecting. It felt difficult with him in my kitchen, and when he had gone and I was putting it all away, I acknowledged briefly the oddness of before and after. Not how changed things were but how relentlessly the same.
I cooked some of what I’d bought to freeze for the week ahead – a habit carried over from busier times. A spaghetti Bolognese updated across the decades and a beef stew into which I’d learnt to add Marmite.
My friends had been calling, and Chris, once more, but I’d unplugged the landline. From then, like Anja, I only worked with mobile.
Mo came, and I told her I had the flu.
‘Christ, you do look bad,’ she said, and offered to take the dog. She had to pull him from the house, legs locked, claws scraping and his head bent to me, swivel-eyed until the last.
When they were gone, I dragged an armchair into the garden room and sat and watched for the fox and his wife who were living under the house behind’s shed. It was cold, the wood of the French windows crabbed and cracked and the glass uncertain in its frames, but I unearthed a plug-in blanket and an old blow-heater from the attic.
I thought of the things that she had brought here to keep safe. I reached out to help her, when she first lugged it in – an old Bag for Life – but she hesitated and I moved my arm back.
‘Oh, thanks, Mags, here you go,’ she said, a second on, and it was heavy when I took it. ‘What’ve you got in here, the Crown Jewels?’ I almost replied, but coughed instead. When I lowered the bag, the handles sagged and I saw a T-shirt uppermost, stretched across and tucked firmly down the sides. ‘I’ll put it in the spare room, shall I?’ I said. Now she was gone and my fingers twitched to feel inside. I was on my knees, one hand stretched under the bed last night, before I stopped myself.
Buster came back in love with Maureen, a further reminder that I am easily replaced. She offered to walk him next day and I said yes.
Later, I took a bath too hot for me to think in and was in bed by nine, though I’d switched on the lamp by five past and gone downstairs for the dog; an occasional lapse, an old woman’s weakness.
There was the usual failed negotiation. I wanted him on the bed but he did not consider that his place. He jumped up, pawed and circled, but would not settle. He lay on the floor, in the end, by my side. I hung my arm down so as to rest my hand on the soft top of his head, but that could not be sustained.
No Paul, which concerned me, as I knew he would be worrying.
And all this time, I expected her back. I thought, at least, that she would call. I should not have shouted, I knew that. But I had not anticipated abandonment. I texted: ‘I’m sorry for what happened. Please let me know that you are OK. M.’
Was I sorry? To be honest, I was fine with the row. I didn’t dwell on the words exchanged; they were merely tools, chosen to do a job, and subsequently laid aside. The question of their truth was beside the point.
I do not bear a grudge, when it comes to a fight. Least said, soonest mended. Benson family lore.
But perhaps it was different for Anja. When I went up to bed there was still no reply.
The third day was warmer, but wet – a hateful combination. I was glad to miss the park; the dressing for it, then hosing down the dog. His stink and the steam of his towel on the radiator.
And all the better, without Buster, to watch the foxes.
They seemed a settled couple. There will have been pups in the hole, the Internet said; if so, they were kept well out of sight. Grown up and gone now, not that Mum and Dad appeared to mind, sat on high, taking the air. One of them, I didn’t know which, was bold. It looked at me and didn’t look away.
That afternoon, I slept in the chair; a deep dark sleep, something about the localised heat of the blanket, and in that last second of disorientation before I woke, I felt my need for her. And I knew that I could will it away, this emotion, as I had done so many times before, but instead I held on. An idea came. She cleaned at Peter’s about this time. I could go and find her there. Say sorry. Make it OK. Was it that easily done? I went, my heart buoyant.
I waited on the corner, sat on a low wall outside a dark house like a teenage suitor, but an hour passed and still she hadn’t come. In the end I knocked. Their outside light was dazzling and I stepped closer to evade it and heard a metallic scrape behind the peephole and the heavier clankings of mortice lock, night latch and chain.
‘Maggie, it’s you. I’ve been calling,’ said Paul, eyes rushing.
‘Oh, right,’ I said vaguely. ‘Try the mobile. There’s been something wrong with the landline.’
He took both my hands, dry and spindled under his touch.
‘Are you OK? What’s been going on?’ he said. ‘We’ve been worried about you.’
His smell was clean and grapefruit and he wore a round-necked jumper of a thin dark knit. I thought of reaching for him, turning my head into his neck, closing my eyes, just for a minute.
‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been ill. Did Maureen not say?’
I heard myself, woolly and distracted.
<
br /> ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, putting an arm round my shoulder and steering me gently. The warmth of their house swamped me and I felt slower still, and clumsy.
‘It’s just I haven’t seen Anja. For a few days. I was wondering if she had been here,’ I said.
‘Peter. It’s Maggie,’ Paul called out into the house, his voice loaded, and then Peter was in front of us.
‘Good to see you, Mags,’ he said. ‘We’re glad you’re here.’
We paused in a snaggled row in the hall.
‘You go on,’ Paul said, with a little shove. Peter went to him, and behind me, they came to some agreement. When we gathered again, Paul looked grim but resolute. Peter lowered the radio and I felt a giggle rise at the portent of it.
We stood in a shifting triangle. I realised that I still wore outdoor shoes.
‘We have seen her, Maggie. She came yesterday instead of today. We’ve been trying to phone you,’ said Paul. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. But she stole from us.’
They moved together subtly.
‘What?’ I asked. I was not sure what I’d been expecting, but it was not this.
‘Yes. Cash. It’s definitely gone. And there was no one else here. We’re absolutely sure. We wouldn’t say so if we weren’t,’ he said.
‘Cash. What cash?’
‘Just money, Maggie. In an envelope.’
‘For what, though?’ I asked, a picture assembling.
‘What do you mean?’ Paul said.
He looked exasperated but Peter flashed him a glance and I knew that I was right.
‘I mean what was the money for? Why did you have an envelope full of money lying around?’
‘For builders,’ said Paul.
‘Builders? You’re not getting anything done. This place is bloody perfect.’
I swiped a hand before me in a theatrical gesture that wasn’t mine. I took in the room, but found my point almost immediately disproved. There was a large red stain on their white carpet seeping through a thick shell of darkening salt. Spilt wine, recent; kicked over, perhaps, in alarm at my arrival. The empty glass stood on the bar, sediment curving up its side.
In My House Page 18