by Fiona Neill
“Well, it took her a while to decide which man she wanted to marry,” Foy interrupted. “Poor Felix Naylor was still on tenterhooks even as I led Bryony down the aisle.”
“Ali, please sit down,” commanded Foy.
“I’m not sure whether I should be here.” Ali laughed nervously, moving away from Foy, toward the middle of the table.
“That’s a big existential question,” said Jake, sitting down next to Tita and pouring his grandmother a glass of water.
“Is there any fizzy?” he shouted over to Malea.
Surely Jake could sense her discomfort? Ali looked at him for solidarity but found none. Jake’s indifference to her stung more than Izzy’s careless rudeness. His ambivalence reinforced her sense of disconnection from this new life. If you were defined by the people around you, then what did it mean if you were largely ignored? She had tried to engage with him, offered to help him with an essay on relationships between men and women in The Handmaid’s Tale, or asked him about music that she knew he liked (The Libertines, Daft Punk, Kaiser Chiefs—Ali had cheated and looked at his iPod). But he wasn’t interested.
“For God’s sake, Bryony, where should the Sparrow make her nest? She’s floating around the table like an escaped salmon trying to get back into its cage,” Foy boomed.
Bryony pointed to the seat opposite Foy at the other end of the table and indicated that Alfie and Hector should sit on either side of her, with Izzy and Jake acting as a buffer zone between the twins and the adults.
“It’s just an informal lunch,” said Bryony distractedly. Ali eyed the intimidating, neat lines of cutlery, the different-size wineglasses, and the place mats, and the folded napkin atop the side plate. She sat down, feeling exposed at the end of the table. Malea put a plate of asparagus in front of her, and Ali muttered an embarrassed thank-you. She picked up a knife and fork to start eating. Hector giggled beside her.
“You don’t eat asparagus with a knife and fork,” said Alfie with a shy smile. “You can use your fingers.”
“Thanks,” said Ali, putting the butter-smeared knife back down on the table.
“Where’s your dad?” Ali asked Hector.
“On the phone,” said Izzy, pushing blades of asparagus lazily around her plate.
“Daddy is always on the telepono,” chorused Hector and Alfie. They were eating bread rolls instead of asparagus. They took bites at exactly the same time and then swapped rolls across the table until they were finished.
“You mean the telephone,” said Ali, correcting their pronunciation but not their table manners because it seemed a bit rich coming from someone who was picking up cues on which cutlery to use from a pair of five-year-olds.
“It’s his job,” said Izzy, as though his absence needed explaining.
Malea came round with wine, and Ali put her hand over the glass.
“Are you not a big drinker?” asked Foy, as though this made Ali suspect.
Ali jumped, and water from her glass spilled onto the table. Hector dipped his finger in the tiny pool and began drawing circles on the table.
“Not really,” said Ali.
“Where are you from?” asked Foy. Ali was unsure how this connected with the first question.
“Cromer,” said Ali. “It’s a small town in north Norfolk.” Malea cleared the plates, including Ali’s. It made Ali feel even more uncomfortable, as though underlining Malea’s unequal status. None of the children got up to help. They remained seated until Malea returned with plates of salmon for everyone.
“I sometimes shoot near there,” said Foy.
He turned to Bryony and started asking her about her plans to come to Corfu the following summer. Ali tentatively cut a small slice of salmon and pushed it onto her fork, but it wouldn’t stick, so she turned to the vegetables, which were more cooperative. She had no appetite. But then neither apparently did Tita, and Bryony’s plate was piled no higher than a child’s. There was debate about whether she should come for one or two weeks.
“Leave Nick behind to get on with his work,” said Foy.
“It’s just as hard for me to take time off,” Bryony admonished him.
“Well, bring the Sparrow and then at least you’ll get a proper rest,” said Foy. “Have you been to Greece, Ali?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer and instead began extolling the virtues of Corfu. Ali recognized Foy as someone for whom questions were really an excuse to expound his own opinions.
“We bought an old olive farm in the northeast before it became fashionable,” he explained, “and I have just acquired a twenty-acre olive grove. It’s a wonderful retreat for us all, and it’s big enough to have several families to stay at once. Even Nick manages to come. Present at least in body, if not in mind.”
This drew attention to Nick’s continuing absence at the table, although Izzy and Tita had managed to slowly absorb the space where he should have been sitting.
“You’ll get used to Nick’s disappearing acts, Ali,” Bryony said, and smiled. “He’s here but he’s not here. Like the invisible man.”
Like me, thought Ali, the reality dawning on her that the role for which she had auditioned with the Skinners was far more complicated than she had anticipated. The Skinners needed her around but didn’t really want to feel her presence. They wanted someone who could tread on the map of family life without leaving a big imprint. She would need to learn to be a chameleon.
Their detachment heightened her loneliness. Later she would realize it could also buy her freedom. But right now, Ali found herself missing her parents. She imagined Sunday lunch, albeit a couple of hours earlier, her father falling asleep because he had been out since three o’clock in the morning checking his crab pots. Her mother noisily clearing away plates as she asked Ali questions about what books she was reading for her course.
It was an idealized version of family life, because in practice all her mother would have talked about was her sister. Eighteenth-century literature couldn’t compete with the drama of Jo’s life, although perhaps Hogarth could have drawn inspiration from the dissolute underworld that she inhabited. For a moment, Ali even missed Jo, the old days, at least. She imagined Sunday afternoon with her friends in Norwich, the easy banter, the cheap laughs, and the comfort of knowing that she could get back to Cromer quickly if there was a problem. She wished her evening could be spent babysitting her tutor’s children instead of Alfie and Hector.
She thought of the timetable of activities that hung in her room and wondered how she could monitor whether Izzy was really reading Henry James, or force the twins to sit down to do half an hour of maths with her when they got home from school, or listen to their piano practice when she couldn’t read music. As for Jake, she had given up on him before she had started.
5
September 2006
“Accelerator on the right. Brake in the middle. Clutch on the left,” Ali repeated to herself like a mantra as she tentatively emerged from a side street onto a busy main road on the first morning of the new term for the twins. She congratulated herself for managing to drive from Holland Park Crescent to this point entirely in second gear. Her left calf ached from the strain of pressing on the clutch whenever she stopped in traffic, her hands stuck to the leather steering wheel of the BMW SUV, and there were dark shadows of sweat under her arms. But by avoiding unnecessary gear changes she had reduced the risk of stalling. She licked her upper lip slowly. It tasted of salt.
The radio was switched on. News about more terror alerts made Ali feel more relaxed, as though there were worse disasters than driving through London in someone else’s manual car for the first time since she had passed her driving test two years ago. When Bryony had casually tossed the keys across the kitchen table, asking Ali to drive while she made calls, she had assumed it would all come back to her naturally. Like riding a bicycle. But right now she felt
as ill at ease as an elephant on an ice rink. The car, a huge four-by-four with three rows of seats, was a great unwieldy beast, unwilling to cooperate with its inept mistress, and overreacting to the slightest change in pressure from her hands and feet. Ali nervously looked at Bryony, wondering whether she had noticed. To her relief, she was scrolling through messages on her BlackBerry.
“Ali,” said Bryony without looking up, “did I mention Nick and I will be away for four nights over the last weekend in October?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’re going to Idaho to stay with Nick’s boss on his ranch. It’s an annual event. You’ll know your way around by then, won’t you?”
“Sure,” said Ali, who wanted to appear willing but couldn’t talk and drive at the same time. Then, mercifully, traffic slowed and she stopped in the road, her foot resolutely pressed on the clutch.
“I’ll e-mail you the details,” said Bryony. “Izzy has a party on the Saturday night, but we’ll get a cab to collect her at midnight.” A couple of seconds later Ali heard her brand-new BlackBerry give a satisfactory ping as the message landed in her inbox.
Bryony switched the heater on to maximum. She was always cold. Probably because she is too thin, thought Ali, recalling how every morning she was woken at six o’clock by Bryony’s personal trainer ringing the doorbell. The hot air blasted in Ali’s face, making her eyes feel dry and filling her nostrils with the smell of burned dust.
Bryony’s phone rang. It was Nick. He wanted to talk about fine-tuning the guest list for their Christmas drinks party in light of Tony Blair’s announcement that he would be standing down as prime minister in less than a year.
“Brown will get it, but Cameron will win the election,” said Bryony confidently, “and we’re too associated with Blair. So let’s strike off Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper and invite the Camerons and the Goves instead.”
The call ended as abruptly as it had begun.
Ali’s back stiffened. Even without her employer sitting beside her in the front passenger seat, this maiden voyage would have presented a challenge. But Bryony’s last-minute decision to show Ali the quickest route to the twins’ school had amplified the pressure, especially when she suggested that Ali should drive, in case she had to take a call.
Bryony was wearing a floaty chiffon shirt that billowed gently as the heater blasted hot air through the car. The shirt was in a plum color that most people with red hair would have assiduously avoided. But somehow Bryony managed to pull it off. The early-morning sun through the windshield caught her hair and set it ablaze, turning her into something magnificent. If she were a man, people would say Bryony had a commanding presence, Ali decided.
Bryony opened an envelope, and Ali could see that she was going through photocopies of stories from today’s newspapers. Every so often she would read something out loud.
“‘French Connection sinks into the red’ . . . Let’s see what The Times has got to say . . . ‘August terror alert cost BAA thirteen million pounds’ . . . Could be worse . . . ‘Scottish Power in merger talks’ . . . Felix did well to get someone to spill the beans on that one . . .”
“Is this part of your job?” Ali eventually asked, as Bryony reached into her handbag to pull out a packet of seeds. She tore them open and elegantly began eating them, one by one, even though they were tiny and she could have consumed the entire packet in a single gulp. Bryony looked surprised, because although she was accustomed to being driven to work and often talked to her driver, she clearly wasn’t used to someone asking her questions.
“It is,” she smiled.
“What exactly is your job?” asked Ali.
“I run a financial PR agency,” said Bryony, who liked the fact Ali was the only nanny they had interviewed for the job who clearly hadn’t bothered to do a Google search on her family. “My clients are companies who pay me and my team to advise them on media relations. I talk to journalists on their behalf. If one of my companies is being bought by another company, or they are about to release their results, or someone is being recruited or fired, then we come up with a communications strategy to explain all this to the media.”
“That sounds pretty interesting,” said Ali.
“It is,” said Bryony, leaning over to switch on Radio 4. “I need to listen to this. One of my clients is being interviewed.”
Ali fell silent as the Today presenter introduced the CEO of a British company that had just bought one of its rivals, catapulting it to the top of the house-building league. It was a punchy debate that seemed to consist of John Humphrys suggesting the property market was about to lose steam and Bryony’s man avoiding the question by talking about the surge in one hundred percent mortgages to enable first-time buyers to purchase the properties his company was going to build. Then it was over.
“Brilliant,” said Bryony. “He managed to stick to the brief for a change. Now, tell me, what books are you reading?”
“I’m reading Feminism in Eighteenth-Century England by Katherine Rogers,” said Ali. “It’s for my coursework. I’m trying to keep up with the background reading so that I don’t have so much ground to cover when I go back next year.”
“What I meant was what books have you recommended the children should read?”
“Oh, sorry. I’ve left Jake to his own devices. Izzy is reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and I’ve introduced the twins to the joys of Horrid Henry.”
“Can you write that in the daybook so in the future I don’t need to ask?”
Bryony got out another bunch of papers from her bag. “Private and Confidential,” it read on the front: “Project Odysseus.” Bryony began to skim-read the document. Ali caught a glimpse of its content. A Ukrainian company wanted to buy a British counterpart. Interesting, thought Ali, who wanted to ask more questions. But Bryony’s phone rang and their conversation was over.
The traffic was beginning to unravel. Ali could see the twins in the rearview mirror. They were tightly strapped in their car seats, but they each had an arm stretched toward the other so that their short, stubby fingers were entwined. When they saw her watching, they each put their index finger to their lips at exactly the same time, warning her not to say anything. Their connection was both spooky and touching. She was pretty sure that Alfie was on the left and Hector was on the right. Clutch and accelerator. Or was it accelerator and clutch? She quickly looked down at her feet for reassurance. Even if she couldn’t tell the twins apart yet, she needed to be certain about the pedals of the car.
From the back of the car, Ali could hear them muttering words to each other in their strange secret language. “Nakakatawa sya,” one of them said seriously. The other nodded. “Alam ko.” The words sounded ancient, like an impenetrable lost language rescued from the depths of the Amazon. Ali repeated them under her breath, and they giggled uncontrollably. They didn’t seem upset about going back to school after the holidays, a relief to Ali, who was taken aback by the intensity of all their reactions.
They were due to review how to deal with what Bryony called “the language issue” at the end of the week. Ali had little concrete to report other than the fact that it seemed surprising they needed to use it when they seemed to communicate subliminally anyway. She wanted to say to Bryony that perhaps drawing attention to it might exacerbate the problem. She knew she wouldn’t dare. She already understood that for Bryony, identifying problems was halfway to solving them. She lived her life by lists. How else could she be so organized?
• • •
Ali managed to persuade the car back into a more controlled rhythm as she headed down a wider street, grateful for the bus in front that meant she didn’t have to pick up speed. The road ahead looked vaguely familiar. But it might have just been the generic nature of the shops. Starbucks. Habitat. Marks & Spencer. The kind of shops you found in places occupied by people in upper tax brackets. Not a Costcutter
or a Sue Ryder in sight. She relaxed enough for the blood to return to her hands and began to pick up the threads of Bryony’s conversation.
Ali knew from the ringtone (a song by the Black Eyed Peas downloaded by Jake) that Bryony was speaking on her private line. She also knew from the way Bryony had chewed her lower lip and stared at the screen until the chorus of “Where Is the Love?” began that she was in two minds about whether to take the call.
“Maybe it’s a good idea to go organic, Dad,” she heard Bryony say in an even tone. “You’re always complaining that the supermarkets are squeezing your margins. Then you could sell at a higher price to more niche outlets. The other day you were complaining to Nick that the fish were full of fleas.”
She was talking to Foy. Ali could hear his voice booming back down the phone. Old people always shouted into telephones, especially mobiles.
“Bloody organic,” Foy shouted back at her. “It’s total bunkum. We’re going to the dogs in this country. Do you know, when I went to the doctor about my back last week he suggested acupuncture in my sacrum?”
“Acupuncture is very effective,” Bryony interrupted him, clearly hoping to move the conversation in a different direction.
“No one’s sticking a needle in my arse,” said Foy, “and I’ll never agree to organic salmon. God, by the time I need a hip replacement they’ll be offering Dark Rescue Remedies instead of morphine.”
“Bach Rescue Remedy,” Bryony corrected him.
“I blame your sister,” Foy continued. “All her homophobic mumbo-jumbo. Bloody yogurt knitting brigade.”
“Homeopathic,” Bryony corrected him. He ignored her.
“I can’t think what’s got into Fenton. He’s spent too much time with bloody Prince Charles. I swear I saw him talking to the fish last time we were in Scotland,” Foy rambled on, “asking them whether they had enough room to swim.”
“How did you respond?” asked Bryony, wondering how her father’s younger business partner coped with him.