‘Thank you,’ said Jane, thinking, not for the first time, what a nice boy James was, and how much she would have been able to like him if only she’d known him under different circumstances – as just the son of a friend, for example. ‘I was going out, but now I’m not.’ She put the kettle on and related the story of her sabotaged plans. ‘I wish I was eighteen again,’ she finished. ‘Make the most of your freedom.’
‘What freedom?’ James protested. ‘I’m not free. I’m either studying for exams, or working in some crappy job.’ There was an uncomfortable silence while Jane poured the coffee and wondered whether repainting their spare room in preparation for the (still unconfirmed) arrival of Hugo was one of the crappy jobs to which he was referring. She hadn’t before considered their relationship in terms of tyrannical employer and mutinous employee.
‘I wasn’t talking about you by the way,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘This job’s okay.’
‘No, you’re right,’ she replied, smiling. ‘We’re none of us free.’
‘I am. I’m free-and-a-half,’ said Harriet, walking in, nibbling an apple.
‘Where did you get that from?’ Jane asked. ‘I hope you’re not going to waste it.’
‘They don’t grow on trees, you know,’ James admonished, in a fair imitation of Jane’s voice at its most hectoring.
She had the good grace to laugh at herself. ‘I’m not always such a nagging old witch,’ she said. ‘You’ve caught me at a bad time.’
‘Look. Why don’t you leave Harriet here with me for the day?’ James suggested. ‘I’ll look after her.’
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t,’ Jane said automatically. Already, though, she could see the advantages of the scheme, and could picture herself setting off, alone, with the sun roof open and the wind in her hair.
‘Yes. I want to stay with James,’ Harriet begged, hopping up and down, delightedly.
‘I thought you wanted to come to the seaside.’
‘No, I don’t. I want to stay here. I’ll be good.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Jane was experiencing twinges of maternal solicitude. What did an eighteen-year-old boy know about the care of small children? ‘It’s not fair on you. It’s harder work than you think.’
‘We’ll be fine. She can help me paint the walls. We can always resort to the TV.’
‘Is Kerry not coming today?’ Jane asked. She would feel happier if there was a female in attendance, even one as inert as Kerry.
‘No, she’s got her driving test.’
‘Ah.’
‘Look, you can take my mobile phone if you like,’ James offered. ‘If there’s any problem I’ll call you.’
‘Do you promise to be good and do whatever James tells you,’ said Jane, fixing Harriet with a stern look.
‘Yes, yes.’
‘And not to sniff,’ she added, wiping Harriet’s nose with a vigorous twisting motion which made the child squirm.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘All right then,’ said Jane, coming round to the position which she had known all along she would take. ‘I owe you, James. And I’ll bring you back a present if you’re good, Harriet,’ she said, bending down to kiss her daughter, who, recognizing these as exceptional circumstances, suffered the embrace without complaint.
Vaughan Williams had given way to Thea Musgrave, who didn’t have nearly the same calming effect on Jane and was therefore switched off. Erica was still indoors getting ready, and when she finally emerged, Jane saw to her surprise that she was carrying, in addition to a large canvas bag, Yorrick, a car seat and pushchair.
‘Sorry about the extra passenger,’ Erica explained, lashing Yorrick into the back of Jane’s car. ‘The friend who was supposed to be having him has got chicken pox in the house.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Jane, thinking that at least Yorrick wouldn’t answer back or throw tantrums or plague them with endless questions. All the same, she thought, we’re not free. ‘We very nearly had Harriet with us.’ And she explained her predicament, and James’s providential arrival.
‘Your in-laws aren’t particularly doting, then?’ said Erica.
‘Far from it. Though they’re quite excited about Guy’s brother’s foetus.’
‘Oh, I see. Like that, is it? Do they know about James?’
‘No. Guy was supposed to tell his mother last week, but he decided against it.’ Jane started to turn the car around. Before they had even left Erica’s road the phone rang. ‘Oh God, what’s happened?’ Jane said, picking it up and letting Erica take the wheel and steer them into the kerb. ‘Hello?’ she said anxiously.
‘Who’s that?’ said a woman’s voice in surprise.
‘Jane Bromelow. Who are you?’
‘This is Nina. I’m looking for James,’ said the voice.
‘He’s at home. My home, I mean. I’ve just borrowed his phone for the day.’ It hadn’t occurred to her until now that this would involve taking all his calls, too.
‘Oh really?’ said Nina, sounding a trifle put out at the familiarity implied by this arrangement. ‘Well, I’ll try him there, then. Goodbye.’ And she had hung up.
‘False alarm,’ said Jane, with relief, slamming the phone in the glove compartment. ‘We’re off. What’s that you’ve brought?’ she added, jabbing her thumb in the direction of Erica’s hand-luggage, which sat on the back seat beside the baby.
‘My camera. In case I see something. Oh, look out.’ On the windscreen, perched or trapped on one of the wipers sat an exquisite butterfly, its orange and blue tissue wings mapped with the finest of black lines. Intending to free it, Jane instinctively hit the wiper button and watched in horror as the rubber blades swept up, mashing the creature against the glass.
‘Oh my God!’ said Jane, hysterically.
‘Shit,’ said Erica. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘I wasn’t thinking! Poor little thing.’ Jane leapt out of the car and removed the mangled corpse with belated gentleness, and then pumped the windscreen washer repeatedly to clean off the smears. It was only when she had set off again that she noticed a tiny scrap of orange wing still fluttering on one of the wipers like confetti. In spite of herself, her eye kept returning to it.
Beside her in the front seat Erica was polishing her sunglasses on the cuff of her T-shirt, which she was wearing with cut-off jeans. Cut off by Erica herself; evidently, as one leg was slightly shorter than the other, and no attempt had been made to turn up a hem. There was a bag of chocolate limes on her lap. Every so often, without being asked, she would unwrap one and pass it across. Her skin was tanned and freckled from the recent sunshine. Jane suspected she must spend hours out in the garden, though there was never any evidence of gardening having taken place. Probably she just sits, doing the crossword or reading, thought Jane, who tended to view her own garden in terms of a list of pending chores rather than as an oasis of relaxation.
‘Will you have a garden in Kuwait?’ she asked, prompted by this train of thought.
‘No. We’re in a flat. I suppose there must be parks. I haven’t investigated. If you’ve got the space for any of our outdoor equipment, you’re welcome to it.’
‘Well,’ said Jane, not committing herself to harbouring any of Erica’s lethal home-made slides and swings, with their protruding nails and fraying ropes. With children you had to put safety first. ‘Sophie might like the pogo stick.’
‘Done. And I’ll throw in a barbecue and a sand-pit if you’ve got room in the shed.’
Jane nodded. ‘I’d offer to keep some of your stuff in our loft, but we haven’t got a loft. It’s Guy’s observatory.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Erica, crunching on a chocolate lime. ‘We’re shipping most of our belongings out to Kuwait and the leftovers can go in a boot sale. I’d be happy just to take a suitcase, myself, but Neil says the flat is a bit under-furnished for a family.’
‘It’s funny,’ said Jane. ‘Just as you move back in with your husband, I’m moving away from mine.’
‘No, no. Nothing like that.’ Jane explained about the new sleeping arrangements. She half expected Erica, who wasn’t normally given to seek or offer confidences of a deeply personal nature, to change the subject, but instead she said, ‘That’s nothing. I didn’t sleep with Neil for at least a year after Greg was born. He couldn’t get near me. I always had a baby attached to my tit.’
‘Really?’ said Jane, suddenly feeling more cheerful than she had in weeks. ‘So you don’t think it’s terminal then?’
‘No, not necessarily. I think all relationships have these . . . patches. I bet it’s more common than you think.’
‘But what can I do about it?’
‘I don’t know. Wait for it to pass, I suppose, like this drought.’ Erica looked out of the window at a backdrop of baked flowerbeds and grass verges in different shades of brown. Even the petunias in the municipal hanging baskets had wilted and died. ‘It can’t last for ever,’ she murmured.
‘According to the experts – you know, doctors, magazines, books – I’m a freak,’ said Jane. ‘In dire need of a cure.’
‘Well, I think in personal matters you don’t want to listen to what other people advise.’
‘That’s your advice, is it?’ said Jane, smiling.
‘Absolutely. Ignore all recommendations. Especially mine.’
‘I can see the point of reproduction,’ Jane conceded, pondering aloud, ‘but I can’t see much point in purely recreational sex. Or, at least, I can’t see why it should be given precedence over other hobbies.’
‘You’d rank it alongside stamp-collecting and ping-pong?’ Erica inquired.
‘Well, why not? I mean, supposing I wrote to an agony aunt and said, “Dear Flora, I used to enjoy playing ping-pong, but now I’ve gone right off it, in fact I don’t mind if I never pick up another bat in my life.” She’d say: “Give it up then and do jigsaws instead.” She wouldn’t tell me to try playing it by candlelight, or in high-heeled shoes, or up against a wall instead of on a table.’ Jane was getting quite carried away, unaware that Erica was shaking with laughter.
‘But what about your unfortunate ping-pong partner, who still enjoys the game?’ Erica said at last. ‘Wouldn’t he be entitled to find someone else to have a knockabout with?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘The real question is: do you want Guy to play ping-pong with anybody else?’
Jane admitted that she didn’t.
‘Well, there you are.’
‘You’re as bad as all the other “experts”,’ Jane grumbled. ‘Advising me to try harder.’
Erica held her hands palms up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I’ve advised nothing, except waiting,’ she said. ‘Patient endurance attaineth to all things, as the nuns at school used to say.’
‘Now I’m having to take sex tips from nuns,’ Jane sighed.
‘Do you want to play Barbies?’ Harriet asked James. They had done all the puzzles in the toy cupboard, eaten all the biscuits in the barrel and played five games of picture dominoes, of which Harriet had won the last four. When James had seen what a bad loser she was he had taken care to rig all subsequent games in her favour.
‘Not really, no,’ he replied. He couldn’t quite believe how slowly time was passing. He kept shaking his watch in case it had jammed. ‘Why don’t you watch a video while I make us some lunch’ – it was only half-past ten – ‘What about Dumbo?’
‘Too sad.’
‘Snow White?’
‘Too scary.’
‘Well, what about . . .’ he squinted to read Jane’s tiny handwriting on the label, ‘. . . Miscellaneous Educational 1 or Miscellaneous Educational 2?’
Harriet pulled a face. ‘Can I do homemade playdough?’
‘What’s that?’
‘You use flour and water and pink,’ Harriet explained.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said James, imagining what a combination of flour and water and ‘pink’ would do to Jane’s clean, white kitchen. Come on, Kerry, he thought. She had promised to come over straight after her driving test: to celebrate if she’d passed; to be comforted if she’d failed. He did like Harriet, but she was a little overwhelming. He could see why Jane was always so tense and cross; she was never off your case for a minute. Even when James was in the loo Harriet stood outside, with her toes right up against the door, and continued to interrogate him, or regale him with surreal made-up jokes. What do you call a deer with no eyes? A badger.
‘I know. Let’s go out in the garden,’ James suggested. ‘The sun’s shining, the birds are tweeting, and you can show me how you ride your tricycle.’
‘I want the paddling pool out.’
‘I can’t fill it up. There’s a hose ban.’
‘Mummy uses buckets.’
‘Anyway, you shouldn’t get wet. You’ve got a cold.’
‘I could have hot water. Mummy lets me.’
‘On second thoughts, go and get those Barbies. And blow your nose while you’re up there.’ He didn’t really want to be outside in case the phone rang. Jane might be checking up on him, and if she got no reply would probably panic and come straight home. He was beginning to regret his attack of generosity, but Jane had looked so pale and miserable this morning. Now he could see why. It hadn’t even occurred to him to think of Jane as a person before today. As a species, over-thirty-year-old mothers of small children were generally invisible to boys of James’s age. She was just Guy’s wife, someone to whom he wasn’t related, and who could make no demands on him. It was only something Kerry had said that had put him on this track and prompted him to look at her properly.
‘She must hate having you around the place, but she hides it well,’ she’d said, one evening as they were walking away from the Bromelows’ house, watched by Harriet and Sophie.
‘Why should she hate me?’ James wanted to know. ‘I’ve never done anything to her.’
‘Yes you have: a) got born, and b) turned up. That’s enough. I feel sorry for her. She’s sleeping in the spare room.’
‘How did you know that?’ asked James. ‘Is this the fabled feminine intuition, or did she tell you?’
‘Of course she wouldn’t tell me something like that. I’ve hardly spoken to her. But when she showed me which bits of the spare room needed doing, I noticed the bed had been slept in.’
‘It might have been one of the kids.’
‘And there was a book on the bedside table. And a pair of earrings.’
‘Are you saying you think they’re going to split up. Because of me?’
‘I don’t know. I was just saying.’
‘It never even occurred to me,’ said James, bewildered by these intimations of female complexity. ‘She’s always so friendly, I just assumed she liked me.’
‘I love you, James. You’re so uncomplicated.’
James, waiting in the front room for Harriet to bring down her dolls, and looking at the photographs on the mantelpiece of a younger, happier Jane and Guy, was thinking of this conversation again. He’d assumed Jane liked him: from her behaviour it wasn’t an illogical assumption, but now here was Kerry, who probably had a better eye for these things, saying she hated him. From overhead he could hear the bump-bump of a toybox being dragged down the stairs, and then from outside came the insistent hooting of a car horn. It was Kerry. In the driver’s seat. Alone. He punched the air. Yes! It was going to be a good day after all.
Erica had retuned Jane’s ancient and temperamental car radio and was now singing along to a pop station. She seemed to know the words to all the songs. Jane would never be able to get Radio Three again. From now on it would always default to this channel, and every time she got in the car she would be reminded of this day.
They had crossed the South Downs and Jane was on home territory now and completely at ease. She loved the Sussex landscape: the gentle hills, with their chequerboard pattern of green and gold; t
he grey turrets of Lancing College; hay bales like cotton reels in the fields, and every so often, in the blue distance, a flattened triangle of sea. There was nothing dramatic or extreme about the scenery: it was this modesty that appealed to Jane. Only those with a truly discerning eye were admitted to its subtle beauty.
They had lunch early at the Royal Oak in Worthing; it had been Jane’s local when she was a teenager. They sat outside at the last free table and Erica fed Yorrick some grey mush from ajar, while they waited for their meals. He had slept for most of the journey, and was now sitting up in his pushchair, alert and interested. His chubby hands kept lunging for anything within reach – handbag straps, wine glasses, wasps. It was hard for Erica to bring the spoon anywhere near his mouth without his flailing arms batting it into orbit. Jane began to fear for her silk trousers.
‘Will you be sad to leave?’ she asked, shifting out of the line of fire and spreading a paper serviette over her knees. What she meant was ‘Will you be sad to leave me?’ but hoped that Erica might answer the unasked question at the same time.
‘Not sad,’ said Erica, pausing with an outstretched spoonful of sieved vegetables. ‘Everything will still be here, just the same, when I get back. Anyway, I don’t get attached to places. We moved house a lot when I was a kid.’
‘Well . . .’ It had been Jane’s intention all along to speak frankly today. She was determined that Erica should not escape to Kuwait without hearing what a difference her friendship had made, and how dull life would be without her. This wouldn’t be easy. Erica tended to head off anything that looked like turning into a compliment. Nevertheless Jane was resolved. She was hesitating between ‘I’ll miss you’, and the less personal ‘We’ll miss you all’, as a way in, when Yorrick knocked the whole jar of mush into Erica’s lap, and in the confusion and swearing that followed, the moment for openness was lost. Later, Jane promised herself. Somehow I’ll work round to it.
After lunch they strolled down to the seafront, past the cream Victorian villas alongside the green. On the promenade a man was selling fresh fish at a stall. Beside him a fox terrier was lying fast asleep on a table in the sun. Erica’s hand strayed to her camera bag, but then she thought better of it, distracted by the beach itself.
A Dry Spell Page 33