Jane, who was watching from the dining room window as Harriet and the boys swarmed up to the top of the climbing frame, while Sophie flicked earwigs out of the sandpit with a spoon, couldn’t help smiling at the scene. Like many fastidious people, she found untidiness rather bracing provided it was not on her own territory. ‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ she said, when Erica came back indoors. ‘You’ve got enough to do.’ In fact she couldn’t think of anywhere else she could have gone at such short notice. She still hadn’t decided whether or not it was possible or even desirable to keep the whole thing quiet.
‘It’s no problem,’ said Erica, twisting her hair up to expose the grey, and securing it at the back of her head without pins. She was holding a mesh bag of chocolate pennies wrapped in gold foil. ‘I’ll just scatter these around for the children to find later. Keep them happy. Then you’ll have my full attention.’
She’s got such patience with them, Jane thought enviously. Nothing rattles her. She wandered back into the sitting room to rejoin Yorrick, and idly inspected the bookshelves while she was waiting for Erica’s return. The collection consisted largely of nineteenth-century English and French literature, Big American Novels, and modern crime fiction. When she had first met Erica, Jane would have taken the opportunity to have a good snoop, looking for clues to Erica’s personality and habits. Her taste in books, music and soft furnishings would have been subjected to exhaustive analysis. But as she had got to know Erica, she had given this up as futile. You couldn’t know a person from their things. There were no shortcuts to friendship.
‘Right.’ Erica appeared, eating a chocolate penny. She flipped the last one to Jane. ‘Your tea’s cold so shall we move on to wine? I think there’s some in here.’ She delved in a corner cabinet and produced a bottle of red vin de table which still had a raffle ticket stuck to it. ‘I’m not a big wine buff,’ she said.
‘The thing is,’ said Jane, accepting a dusty glass and wiping it on the hem of her dress, ‘I’m really angry with Guy. I want to rant and scream at him. But he won’t let me. He’ll just parry all my abuse with common sense. I know him. In a way I think I’d prefer it if he had known about James all along. Then I’d have an excuse to hate him.’
‘The way things stand you can’t very well blame him for anything,’ said Erica, who was having trouble with the cork. ‘Except having had sex before he met you. And I don’t suppose you thought he was a virgin when you met him at – what was it?’
‘Thirty-two,’ said Jane.
Erica put down the corkscrew and picked the foil off the bottle neck to reveal a screw-top lid with a neat hole through it. ‘Do you know the woman?’ she asked, filling their glasses at last. ‘Have you ever met her?’
Jane shook her head. ‘She’s much older than me,’ she said, with unnecessary spite and then remembered that Erica herself was nearly forty. ‘Guy says he only slept with her once. On this field trip to the Sahara when he was a student. Her actual boyfriend was murdered. It was all pretty horrendous.’ The moment she had put the phone down on him she had ransacked the boxes in the loft and fetched down his photo album. There she was: slim, blonde, tanned, pretty: some ridiculous outfits she had on, but it was 1976. Jane felt a surge of anger and hatred towards this two-dimensional woman who had lain dormant so long between the pages of an old album and had now risen up to torment her. Now she came to look at the pictures carefully, through newly suspicious eyes, it was clear that there were many more of this Nina woman than of the other members of the expedition, even the poor dead one. Of course, Guy couldn’t have known at the time that he was going to be killed, that much Jane had to admit. But still.
‘The question is,’ said Erica, balancing her wine glass on the arm of the couch, so that it wobbled every time she moved, ‘what, if anything, does she want from Guy?’
‘Money probably,’ said Jane. ‘Apparently she’s been passing this James off as the son of the murdered boyfriend all this time.’
‘She sounds completely unscrupulous to me,’ Erica agreed.
Jane nodded, not really listening. She was trying to calculate what a backdated claim for eighteen years of child maintenance might look like. She would have to go back to work – at a lower grade, naturally – and take in ironing at weekends. They would never be able to afford holidays; the girls would have to be clothed from charity shops. They would have to sell the car. Jane’s eyes began to smart. Until now she hadn’t even considered the financial implications. The boy was probably just off to university, grantless and broke, and requiring regular handouts. ‘I wonder if we could countersue her if she asked for money. For denial of access or paternal rights, if there is such a thing.’
‘Do you think it’s likely to come to that?’ asked Erica, unaware of the way Jane’s thoughts had been running.
‘Who knows? Nothing would surprise me any more.’
‘Put it this way: I don’t think she’d have a case in law,’ said Erica. She stooped down to the baby, whose drumming was getting harder to ignore. ‘Too noisy, darling,’ she admonished, removing his wooden spoon. He immediately let out a series of piercing shrieks, his chubby face turning scarlet with indignation. ‘Oh no, that’s even noisier,’ said Erica, hastily handing it back. As his yells modulated to whimpers, the distant sound of a telephone became audible. Jane stood up and then sat down again.
‘If it’s Guy I don’t want to speak to him.’
‘Up to you,’ said Erica, withdrawing. A moment later Jane could hear her saying, ‘Hello . . . yes . . . yes, she is . . . yes, they’re fine . . . Okay, I’ll tell her. Bye.’
‘Didn’t he want to talk to me?’ Jane asked, unable to keep a note of disappointment from her voice.
Erica shook her head. ‘He was just checking to see where you were. He said he wouldn’t bolt the front door tonight in case you decided to come back.’
‘I’m not going back tonight. I can’t.’ Jane’s heart quailed within her at the thought of confronting Guy face to face. They might have the sort of argument in which unforgivable things are said – an exchange of home-truths from which no relationship could recover. ‘I’m sorry to be such a nuisance. I know there aren’t enough beds. I’ll sleep on the floor.’
‘Absolutely not. You and the girls can have my bed. I’ll sleep with Will on the bottom bunk and Greg can have the top. Yorrick will be in his cot. Plenty of room.’
Jane glanced down at Yorrick who was starting to nod over his saucepans. She picked him up and sat him on her lap where he gave a few experimental wriggles of protest and then nestled against her chest, thumb in mouth, and presently closed his eyes. A proper boy, Jane thought, cradling his solid little body and feeling its warmth. Such chunky hands and feet. And she sank back against the balding velvet upholstery of the armchair and thought of that other woman with her long blonde hair and cheesecloth smocks, who must have rocked Guy’s son to sleep in just this way.
Erica insisted on putting the children to bed herself while Jane lay pinioned beneath the baby. She called them in from the garden where they had been taking it in turns to bury each other in the sandpit, and they tore through the house like dust-devils in their quest for the hidden chocolate pennies, ignoring Jane’s frantic signals to keep quiet near Yorrick.
‘Oh, don’t worry about him,’ said Erica, herding children towards the stairs with the aid of a Kenyatta-style fly-whisk. ‘He can sleep through a stampede. It’s only tiptoeing that wakes him.’
A few moments later the whoops and cries were muffled by the roar of the shower, and all over the house pipes began to clank and groan. Jane shut her eyes, grateful that she’d been spared the bathtime ritual. She stroked the soft skin of Yorrick’s legs and rubbed her cheek against the fluffy down on his head. He smelled gorgeous: pure and unpolluted. Jane allowed her knotted muscles to unclench and the tension fell away like chains. The baby gave a sudden shivering sigh as if he’d sensed this transference of energy, and Jane felt a surge of tenderness towards him, for being so defenc
eless and trusting, and moreover a part of Erica that she could legitimately hold and love. Surely, surely, she thought, if I can feel this way about a baby who isn’t mine, I ought to be able to find a grain of affection for this boy who is half Guy.
When Erica returned, one leg of her white trousers transparent from a recent drenching, Jane had reached a state of deep relaxation. ‘I stood them in the bath and hosed them down with the shower, but I got caught up in the backwash,’ Erica explained. ‘I’ve left them fighting over the beds. I expect they’ll all be crammed into the top bunk when we go up.’
From overhead, like a parody of frenzied lovemaking, came the sound of bedsprings creaking violently.
‘No trampolining on my bed!’ Erica bellowed at the ceiling. Yorrick, sleeping peacefully not five feet away, didn’t even flinch. The creaking stopped momentarily while the bedroom door was closed, and then resumed at a slightly reduced pitch.
‘Thanks for taking us in,’ said Jane, too mindful of Yorrick to speak much above a whisper. ‘You’re so kind.’
‘It’s no big deal. You’d have done the same for someone in need.’
Would I? thought Jane, conscious that spontaneous generosity – especially to those outside the immediate family – was not one of her special virtues. She remembered with some shame her uncharitable reaction to Guy’s offer to accommodate the homeless, jobless, wifeless Hugo. Here was Erica giving up her own bed, while she, Jane, begrudged the loan of a spare room – a room used merely for storing boxes. I’ve become a selfish, petty-minded, suburban drudge. No wonder my children hate me. No wonder Guy spends so much of his time hiding in the loft. I never used to be like this. ‘No,’ she said to Erica. ‘There’s a mean streak running right through me. I never put myself out.’
‘Course you do. You came to my rescue in the park that time. And you lent me your library ticket.’
‘Yes – and then regretted it a moment later.’ She didn’t add that these instances didn’t count because they weren’t indicative of her real nature. It was only Erica who could elicit this sort of behaviour. Just being in her presence made Jane a nicer person. She wanted to say something along these lines, but couldn’t compose a reply that didn’t sound embarrassingly needy and intense, so said nothing instead.
‘And you’re so good with your kids,’ Erica was saying. ‘Raincoats, boots and umbrellas when it’s cloudy; sunblock and hats when it’s not Nothing left to chance. And you clean their teeth twice a day, and cook them real food using real ingredients. And you probably read the Classic Children’s Literature at bedtime.’
Jane laughed at this portrait of herself. Only Erica could think it was flattering. ‘And I name and date and file all their drawings, and rotate their best paintings on the kitchen wall, and hand-sew Sophie’s ballet costumes, and polish their shoes every night. All the mechanical things that don’t matter.’
Erica whistled, impressed. ‘They do matter. God is in the detail. Every night, though, Jesus. I don’t think I’ve ever polished a shoe. I was only thinking the other day that I never change the boys’ sheets unless they’re actually sick or wet the bed. Fortunately this happens reasonably often,’ she added hastily, aware that Jane or her children might, after all, be sleeping on these sheets. ‘Here, let me have that baby.’ She peeled Yorrick from Jane’s chest to reveal a sweat patch on the front of her dress. ‘Into your cot,’ she said, carrying him from the room. She came down a moment later to report that the girls were in the double bed and the boys in the bunks. Only Gregory was still awake, playing computer chess behind the curtain. ‘It’s a devil getting him to sleep on these light evenings,’ she said. ‘I think he’s photosensitive. It’s ever since I dropped him in a tray of developing fluid when he was a baby.’
Jane smiled. She was beginning to realize that Erica was mostly joking, although she was still not sure about those sheets. It occurred to her that she hadn’t thought about her problems for at least ten minutes.
For supper Erica produced a selection of cheeses, some slightly bendy celery and a granary loaf. ‘Homemade: I got it in the market,’ she said, as pleased as if she’d done the kneading herself. In between mouthfuls she encouraged Jane to review her predicament from any unexplored angles, but Jane had had enough of the subject. ‘I’m sick of talking about it. Sick of thinking about myself. Sick of being myself.’
‘I know what’ll take your mind off it,’ said Erica, putting down her plate. ‘Something physical.’ For a moment Jane thought Erica was going to lunge at her, and was ashamed to find the idea wasn’t wholly unappealing. But instead Erica leapt to her feet and beckoned Jane after her. ‘This way. Not afraid of spiders, are you?’
Jane, who was, put down a wedge of Camembert untasted and followed Erica into the hallway, where she was rolling back the rug to expose a wooden trapdoor. This is a bit spooky, thought Jane. ‘You’re not going to kill me and cut me up?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Erica. ‘Not in these white trousers.’ She lifted the trapdoor and clumped down a steep flight of steps into the darkness. By the time Jane had joined her at the bottom Erica had located the light switch.
Two bright, wall-mounted spotlights illuminated a generous-sized cellar, about seven feet high, containing nothing but a table-tennis table, two bats and a ball.
‘Can you play?’ Erica asked, chopping the air experimentally with one of the bats.
‘I used to,’ said Jane, who had always preferred sports on a miniature scale. ‘I haven’t played since I was about fourteen, but I always preferred this to hockey.’
‘Brilliant. I hardly ever get a game nowadays with Neil away. Greg’s not quite old enough to take me on.’
They patted the ball back and forth across the net. The distinctive tick-tock sound, amplified by the cavernous surroundings, immediately transported Jane back in time – to the school gym, youth club, campsite games rooms: all places where she’d been young and happy. After a few minutes’ warm-up Erica suggested they start scoring. She had the advantage of more recent practice, but Jane soon picked up. You never entirely forgot childhood skills – they were all there, waiting to be reclaimed. After a few games, won by Erica, Jane suddenly began to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’ Erica wanted to know.
‘I’m just picturing Guy’s expression when he asks me how I spent this evening and I tell him about this. He’ll really think I’ve lost it this time.’ She realized she had inadvertently committed herself in her mind to reconciliation and return. ‘He already thinks you’re a bit eccentric.’
‘Me?’ said Erica, astonished.
‘Oy,’ said a voice. ‘What’s going on here?’ And Gregory’s head appeared upside down through the trapdoor, his hair falling into a halo of spikes.
Nothing much, thought Jane. Just two middle-aged women playing ping-pong in a cellar.
‘Go away, I’m winning,’ said Erica.
‘The baby’s crying.’
‘Oh b . . . blast. All right, I suppose we’ll have to call it a day.’
As they emerged from the vault Yorrick’s wails were clearly audible over the chiming of the hall clock. ‘I had no idea it was so late,’ said Jane, checking the time on her watch.
‘I’ll probably have to climb in with him to shut him up,’ said Erica. ‘If I’m not down in ten minutes, feel free to go to bed.’
Jane replaced the oval rug and washed and dried the supper things. She made an attempt to put them away, but the cupboards seemed to be booby-trapped with avalanches of crockery, so she retreated. After a quarter of an hour there was still no sound from upstairs, so Jane turned all the lights off and tiptoed up to bed with her overnight bag. She peeped round the door of the boys’ room. Gregory was in the top bunk; Erica was asleep on the bottom, still fully clothed, with Yorrick beside her, and Will was wedged into the cot, his arms and legs extruding through the bars.
In the bathroom Jane opened her bag to find the wrapped present that Guy had hidden there before leaving for work. She pulled
off the tissue paper and held up a tiny oyster silk nightdress with spaghetti-thin straps and a lacy, semi-transparent bodice. She put it on, smiling. It was touching, really, that he still considered something like this appropriate for her raddled 31-year-old frame. She cleaned her teeth at the sink, which was already generously daubed with toothpaste, and looked round for a towel, before resorting to wiping her face on the grey bathrobe hanging on the door.
Occupying Erica’s double bed, in a depression in the slackest mattress Jane had ever seen outside of a French hotel room, Sophie and Harriet lay curled like prawns in the bottom of a wok. Jane clambered gingerly over the wok edge, afraid of rolling on top of them. The bedclothes were tangled underneath their skinny limbs. Jane managed to extricate a miserly corner of duvet, beneath which she would shiver in her skimpy nightdress until dawn. The sheet felt strangely gritty against her skin, and on further investigation she discovered she was lying on a fine layer of sand.
34
‘That’s him,’ Nina said to herself, as Guy walked across the car park of the Windmill on Clapham Common. She watched him pause at the door to hitch his trousers up and re-tuck his shirt, and then glance round self-consciously before ducking inside. Shorter hair, but otherwise just the same, Nina thought, aware that time hadn’t dealt so kindly with her. She didn’t have long hair herself any more, but the blonde was now naturally highlighted with grey, and he would find her fatter too. After having James, she’d never recovered that flat-stomached, willowy look she’d had as a student. From within the driver’s mirror a pleasant, lightly freckled 39-year-old face stared back at her. Tiny pin-tuck creases appeared at the corners of her eyes when she smiled experimentally, and didn’t altogether disappear when she stopped. Nina snapped the mirror back into position irritably. She was sitting in the front seat of her old car, which Kerry had kindly loaned her for the night. Ever since Nina had offered to take Kerry out for driving practice at weekends in preparation for her test, relations between them had undergone something of a thaw. It was fortunate, for the continuation of this trend, that Kerry had so far been too busy to take up this offer, as Nina was an exacting passenger, unlikely to inspire confidence in a nervous learner.
A Dry Spell Page 28