‘No, they’re not washed. Leave that shopping alone,’ snapped Jane. Harriet had already nibbled both ends off the French stick so that would be stale by teatime.
‘What car is she in?’
‘Who?’
‘The lady.’
‘She isn’t in a car. She’s walking.’ Jane could see her in the distance, turning down a side road, pushing her buggy. I’m going to lose her now, she thought. As the elderly woman set the front wheels of her zimmer on the kerb Jane put her foot down and the car leapt forward and stalled. Jane yanked the gearstick into neutral and revved the engine aggressively before lurching off again.
‘Why are you driving fast, Mummy?’
‘Because I want to catch up with this lady before she disappears into one of the houses,’ Jane explained, impatiently, taking the corner too early and clipping the kerb with a jolt.
‘Why did you do that, Mummy?’ asked Harriet.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ Jane spluttered. ‘Look, it’s very difficult’ to drive when you keep asking me questions all the time.’ There she was, about halfway down the road trying to drag her buggy up a short flight of steps to her front door. Jane, still some distance away, pulled over and watched her let herself in. As soon as the door was shut Jane drove slowly past, checking the number of the house. It was a redbrick Victorian cottage, with a tiny front garden, occupied by two dustbins and an overgrown hedge. On the porch was a bicycle minus its wheels and a broken umbrella like a dead crow on a stick. The downstairs curtains were closed and there was a vase of wilted flowers between them and the glass. The front gate swung from one hinge.
‘What are you looking for, Mummy?’
‘Nothing. I’ve found it,’ said Jane. ‘We can go home now.’ She had been thinking about Erica Crowe on and off ever since that meeting at the library. Thinking that she seemed an interesting person whom she would like to know better. And then when the first letter from the library had arrived, requesting the immediate return of the six overdue tides Erica had put on her ticket, Jane had started to feel slightly less warm towards her, but rather more urgently inclined to bump into her again and issue a curt reminder. Jane had caught sight of her once the previous week, but too far in the distance for pursuit to be dignified or even feasible. Jane had been on foot at the time and burdened with empties for the bottle bank. Later she had taken the car out and cruised the streets close to the sighting, on the offchance. And she’d been back to the park at every available opportunity sometimes with Harriet, sometimes alone, but with no success. At the back of her mind, unexamined, lay the thought: all this for a few library books? Really? Then today on the way back from the supermarket, thinking about Erica again, Jane had seen her emerging from the off-licence with a box of beers on the bottom of the pushchair. As if I’d made her appear, Jane thought.
It was a couple of days before Jane worked up the courage to knock on her door. She had contemplated forwarding the letter from the library, anonymously and with no further explanation, and hoping that did the trick. But something stopped her. Nosiness or politeness, or something stranger. In the event she took Harriet along for moral support. Although the presence of small children could often complicate a simple situation, very occasionally the reverse was true.
The front room curtains were still closed when Jane and Harriet made their way up the steps, and the wilted flowers were now crisp and dead. At the slightest touch they would disintegrate all over the floor, thought Jane, who would never let things get to that stage, even supposing anyone were to buy her flowers.
Without waiting to be told, Harriet pressed the bell which promptly stuck, and a continuous, angry buzzing sounded deep in the house.
‘Look what you’ve done!’ said Jane, swatting her hand away, as the door was thrown open. Erica, in a headscarf and paint-smeared overalls, stepped past them without a word and gave the bell-push a sharp tap with a wooden mallet which she then replaced just inside the house. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’m up a ladder.’
‘Well, I was only . . .’ Jane began, but Harriet, who needed no further persuasion, had already marched indoors and vanished into the front room, from which the sound of a television issued.
‘Do you mind if I finish this ceiling?’ Erica called over her shoulder. ‘I’ve only got a corner left to do, and I don’t want the brush to go hard.’ Through the kitchen door Jane could see work surfaces cluttered with what looked like a week’s unwashed dishes and pans, all protected by swags of clear polythene dustsheets. ‘We had a bit of a flood last week,’ Erica went on, climbing back up the ladder and applying white emulsion with a fat brush to a nicotine-coloured patch of ceiling. ‘One of the boys let the bath overflow and the water came right through into here. It was dripping off the light fitting. So I thought I’d better cover up the stains.’ She pointed at the door, through which Harriet had disappeared moments before. ‘Why don’t you make yourself at home? I’ll be finished in a second.’
Jane, who hadn’t advanced much beyond the doormat, picked her way down the hall, which was littered with baby toys, shoes, crayons, and pieces of model railway. On a nest of tables in the corner a dusty telephone shared the space with a full nappy sack, a rack of red bills, two pieces of toast with an infant-sized bite missing from each piece, and a baby’s bottle on its side dripping milk on to the rug below. Jane stood it up and started to dab at the wet patch with a tissue. She couldn’t leave it – you had to treat that formula milk immediately or it would reek of sick.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ said Erica, coming down from the ladder and tossing the brush into a pail of water at her feet. She pulled the scarf off and twisted her hair round and round into a knot at the back of her head, where it seemed to stick without the aid of pins. A diamond stud glinted at the side of her small, straight nose. Her eyes were ringed with yesterday’s make-up. She unzipped her overalls to reveal a pair of tartan pyjamas. ‘Oh,’ she said, zipping them up again. ‘I forgot I hadn’t dressed.’
She pushed open the sitting room door, meeting some resistance from a pile of newspapers and magazines. The room was dark, the curtains still closed, but Erica made no move to open them. In a high chair, in the bluish light of the television, the baby that Jane had minded in the park had fallen asleep face down on the food tray. On the couch beside Harriet, a boy of eight or so, also in pyjamas, was watching a daytime chat show and eating tortilla chips from a huge drum on his lap.
‘This is Gregory. He’s ill,’ Erica explained. Gregory gave Jane a smile full of crisps. ‘I thought you’d gone quiet,’ she said to the slumped baby, extricating him from his harness and laying him on the couch where he twitched and drew his knees up to his chest a few times before relaxing back into sleep. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea, but the kettle’s buried somewhere under the dustsheets. There are some been in the shed.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Jane, who was still trying to get accustomed to the semi-darkness. ‘I don’t want anything to drink.’ She didn’t like beer much at the best of times, which this wasn’t.
‘I know why you’re here,’ said Erica. ‘It’s those sodding library books. How much do I owe you?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jane, dragging her eyes from the television screen, where an uncomfortable-looking man was being berated by his wife and mistress, to cheers from the studio audience. ‘I thought I ought to remind you, that’s all. In case you’d forgotten. I’m starting to get letters.’
‘Oh God, sorry. I’ve got such a shocking memory. I think it’s genetic. My mother’s completely ga-ga, and she’s only sixty-five.’
Jane smiled uncertainly. She wasn’t sure if this was a joke. ‘They’ll be here somewhere,’ Erica was saying. ‘Under something. Except perhaps the astronomy book. I think my husband might have taken that one back.’
‘To the library?’ said Jane.
‘No, to Kuwait.’
‘Kuwait?’
‘Yes, he works for a construction company out there. Perhaps if I put the light on
we might be able to find the books,’ Erica went on, as if suggesting something controversial.
‘Shall I open the curtains?’ Jane offered. She was beginning to find the gloom unnerving. ‘It’s quite a nice day out there.’
Erica nodded. Jane twitched the curtains apart and the shrivelled flowers collapsed into powder on the window sill, leaving a few dead stalks in the vase. The sudden burst of sunlight through windows densely stippled with fingerprints revealed the full extent of the room’s disorder. Newspapers, magazines and piles of laundry lay on every chair. Like the hallway, the carpet was strewn with toys and pens, and a pack of cards that had evidently been flung up in the air. Between the television and the couch was a trail of crushed crisps, and every horizontal surface was furry with dust. The wallpaper behind the couch where the children were sitting had been torn off in ragged strips, like a row of stalagmites.
‘Daylight’s very unforgiving, isn’t it?’ said Erica, surveying the scene with a critical eye.
‘Well . . .’ said Jane, wondering what sort of lighting arrangement could possibly flatter such a room. No wonder she kept the curtains closed.
‘Oh, who’s done that?’ Erica suddenly said, noticing the peeled wallpaper for the first time. Without taking his eyes off the TV, Greg solemnly raised a hand.
‘You idiot. What did you do that for? Look at it!’
‘You said I could.’
‘I did not!’
‘You said this was the next room we were going to decorate.’
‘Yes it is. Eventually. Not today, you great pudding.’
Jane couldn’t help laughing. Really, perhaps her own kids weren’t so bad after all.
‘She helped,’ said Gregory, pointing at Harriet.
‘What?’ said Jane.
‘Don’t tell tales,’ said Erica, simultaneously.
‘I want to go and play upstairs,’ said Harriet, sliding off the couch.
‘Did you pull some of that wallpaper off?’ Jane demanded.
‘He said it was allowed,’ Harriet retorted. Not a glimmer of contrition, thought Jane, preparing herself for a good rant.
‘Please,’ said Erica, holding her hands up. ‘It doesn’t matter. You go up into the boys’ room and find some toys, darling,’ she said to Harriet, who skipped off, delightedly.
‘And don’t make a mess,’ Jane called after her automatically, and then blushed, as Erica gave a sardonic laugh. On the TV the chat show was giving way to a commercial break. Coming Next, flashed a message across the screen, the man who lost everything through his addiction to jelly!
‘Oh, do turn that thing off’ Gregory hit the remote button and the screen gave a pop and went blank. ‘And put some clothes on,’ she added, as he slouched out of the room.
‘I’m fed up with all these jobs,’ was his parting shot.
Jane and Erica turned to each other and shrugged, in a gesture of solidarity, at the trials of motherhood. ‘What’s the time?’ asked Erica, looking at Jane’s watch. ‘Eleven. I think I will have that beer after all. What about you?’
Jane opened her mouth to refuse, then changed her mind. She wasn’t driving anywhere; Sophie could be picked up on foot. ‘Okay, why not?’
‘So has your husband worked abroad for long?’ asked Jane when Erica had returned from the garden shed with four bottles of lager, and cleared a space either side of the baby for them to sit down. The library books had been temporarily forgotten.
‘Eight months. He’s got another ten to go.’
‘Don’t you miss him?’ Jane tried to imagine how much, or whether, she would miss Guy, and whether there might be something to be said for enjoying the financial and social advantages of marriage without having to accommodate the habits of a husband. No, life would be intolerable without Guy. Even at such moments of disloyalty she was struck by how much she did love him.
‘I miss him more at weekends,’ Erica said, after some thought. ‘Though I can’t say I sit around pining. We could have gone with him, but it didn’t seem worth uprooting for such a short time. Will’s just got settled in at the playgroup, and Greg’s happy at school. We thought it would be best not to disturb their education.’ From above their heads came the loud electronic music of a computer game. ‘Anyway, I like it here.’
‘Your phone bill must be huge. Do you ring each other much?’
‘Once a week he calls me from the office. And we’ve got a fax so we send messages quite often. It’s not as bad as all that. It must be worse for him.’
‘Yes.’ Jane had no clear image of Kuwait. She pictured skyscrapers, and faceless, modern industrial estates. And sand. She took a sip of her lager. Such a bitter, dirty taste. Erica was already well down her second bottle. It was just like giving up sugar in coffee. You had to persevere.
‘Are you married?’ said Erica.
Jane nodded. ‘He’s head of the primary school down the road.’
‘Oh, that’s your husband, is it? He’ll know Gregory then. He must like kids.’
‘Other people’s. No, that’s not fair. He’s good with the girls, when he’s not too tired. Well, it’s easy to be good with Sophie.’ She lowered her voice. ‘We’re both at a bit of a loss with Harriet. They prefer him anyway.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to him,’ said Erica, thinking with her head on one side. ‘He’s not been there long, has he?’
Jane shook her head. ‘Nine months. How come I haven’t seen you at school then? I’m up there twice a day, taking and fetching, and I’ve never noticed you.’
‘I don’t go up there much. Greg walks home now with a couple of his friends. There’s no roads to cross. I sometimes drive in the morning if it’s raining, and just tip him out at the gate.’
‘That’s very brave of you – letting him go on his own. I think Guy and I will still be escorting the girls when they’re twenty.’
‘I’m not a great worrier,’ Erica admitted, her hand straying instinctively to the baby’s tummy, rising and falling between them.
No, thought Jane. It was fully consistent with losing library books and drinking before lunchtime and leaving old nappies and pieces of toast in close proximity. This wasn’t the house of an obsessive.
‘What’s this for?’ Harriet asked, walking in holding a rusty mousetrap, primed with a lump of hard, cracked cheddar.
‘Whoops,’ said Erica, retrieving it. ‘Was that on the landing? Sorry. Just a little local infestation. Nothing major.’ She tapped the cheese with a crayon from the floor and the trap sprang shut, snapping the crayon in half. Jane went white.
‘I want one of those,’ said Harriet, impressed.
‘Perhaps we’d better go and look for those library books,’ Erica remembered. ‘Come on, kids, there’s a prize for anyone who finds them.’
‘Only don’t go hunting through things, Harriet,’ said Jane, finishing her beer with a shudder of distaste. Who knew what other hazards might be lurking out of sight? ‘Just see if you can see them, without touching.’ She followed Erica up the stairs, casting an anxious glance at the baby on the couch as she left. What if he woke up and rolled off?
Most of the landing was occupied by a life-sized model dalek with two towels draped over its metal arms. ‘I made that for them,’ said Erica. ‘But as they’ve never seen Doctor Who they don’t really know what it is. It’s become a sort of clothes horse now.’ The carpet beneath their feet was randomly striped with masking tape. ‘That’s just there to mark the squeaky floorboards,’ Erica explained, seeing Jane’s expression. ‘So I don’t wake the baby.’ On the wall at the top of the stairs was a framed black and white photograph of fishing nets on a breakwater, and another of a man running away from the camera across a vast expanse of sand at low tide.
‘They’re nice,’ said Jane. They were the first things she’d seen in the place which she could admire with any sincerity.
‘Oh thanks. I took them,’ said Erica, pausing in the act of rummaging through a carrier bag hanging from the banister
s.
‘Really?’ said Jane, amazed to discover that an aesthetic sense could flourish amidst so much chaos. ‘You’re a photographer?’
‘Non-practising,’ said Erica. ‘I don’t have time any more. And my dark room’s about to be converted into a nursery.’ She pointed at a closed door next to the bathroom.
‘Well, there’s always that one-hour place down by the station,’ said Jane, smiling.
Erica nodded. ‘Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘And this is yours, is it?’ said Jane to Gregory, who had forced open the door of the box room for her inspection. A pair of bunk-beds stood against the window blocking out much of the light. A chest of drawers and a brimming toy trunk occupied the rest of the floor space that was not already ankle deep in cars, trains, books, naked action men, and crushed jigsaw boxes from which the contents had slithered and merged. There was scarcely room to put a foot to the floor. ‘Mine and my brother’s,’ said Gregory, wading to the edge of the bed, where Harriet was dangling upside down from the ladder.
‘Do you sleep in the top bunk?’ Jane went on, conversationally. It was hard to think of anything else to say about the room which wasn’t expressive of shock or disapproval.
Gregory appeared to find her suggestion highly amusing. ‘Of course not, silly. It’s much too messy. I have to sleep on the couch downstairs.’
‘Oh,’ said Jane. Now she came to think of it there had been a sleeping bag on the couch downstairs. She had taken it for an appurtenance of his illness.
‘Which means I’m not allowed to get up in the night in case I set off the burglar alarm,’ he went on.
‘Found them!’ came Erica’s voice from the master bedroom. Through the doorway Jane could just see the corner of a double bed and beside it an exercise bike hung with clothes.
‘What if you need to go to the loo?’ asked Jane, who was finding Gregory’s revelations rather exhilarating.
‘I just have to hold it,’ Gregory explained, crossing his legs and adopting a pinched expression.
‘What about your brother, Bill . . . Billy? Where does he sleep?’
A Dry Spell Page 15