Striving to wrench things back, seeing as she was still in the porch and already the mood had shifted, Rosa turned to Judy and said: ‘Well you look wonderful.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Judy, blushing slightly, or was it just her ruddy glow, Rosa thought. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s lovely to see you. Come in, come in.’
A few things came to mind. Rosa, tall and thin, dressed in old jeans and a grey felt coat. Overburdened with bags and another sort of weight, failing to understand how frothy and ephemeral things are. Judy, large, rotund moreover, happy, dressed in mud-stained clothes. She and Will were both pretty splendid. That was quite the word for them, the rough and ready pair of them, standing in their practical garb. Eyeing her. Friendly, but inquisitive. Definitely observant. She could imagine them, later, mulling her over. ‘Terrible, she looks terrible.’ ‘Oh, quite terrible.’ ‘Oh, terrible.’ ‘Poor her.’ ‘Poor poor her.’ Or perhaps they were insincere, and later they would string her up with the thick cord of their condemnation. ‘Presumptuous as anything.’ ‘Fancy coming up here.’ ‘Desperate.’ ‘You’re so right, darling. Desperate.’ But she thought they were sincere after all. Now there was a subtle transition. Will gave Rosa a hug. ‘I think you look great,’ he said. ‘We’ll feed you up.’
That made her baulk a bit, but she was glad they were so rust-coloured, mud-coated, glowing. They looked like a different breed, that breed of country people who walk all day in fields or ride around on horses. She admired them for the girth and firmness of their legs, the strength in their arms. Their bodies were tested daily. They were fit, happy, fecund; they had birthed several children. Rosa could hear a couple of them crying in the bowels of the house. Will glanced towards the door. He put a long arm round Rosa, his hand flat like a spatula on her back, and guided her along a whitewashed hall. ‘Have I disturbed you in the middle of something?’ Rosa asked.
Judy laughed, boisterously. ‘Rosa, we’re always in the middle of something. But come in, come in, it’s wonderful you came.’
It was bonhomie, simple and reviving. They had all recovered from the opening, and now Rosa was being bonhomied along the hall and into the living room. There they stood for a moment, while Rosa felt the warmth of the room. There were lots of red cushions and red curtains and an orange sofa and some bright red rugs. The walls were decked with paintings and photographs of the children, of Judy and Will, of Lakeland landscapes. The mantelpiece was a domestic shrine, scattered with homemade birthday cards, big numbers painted on the front. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY BOY! YOU ARE THREE!!!!! TWO TODAY WHAT A BIG GIRL! There were photos of christenings and baptisms, ‘in the village church,’ said Will, as she stared at them. There were pot plants everywhere. The dogs each had a cushion. Even the dogs had a sense of purpose, thought Rosa. It made her smile. There was the small brown mutt busy gnawing a plastic cat and the big white mutt eating a discarded shoe, and the other one sniffing something, all of them devoted to a specific end. There was a fire burning in the grate.
‘Would you like tea?’ said Will, as Judy sat on the sofa, arranging herself on several cushions, emanating joy.
‘Do you have coffee?’ asked Rosa. She sank into the beckoning folds of a large red armchair. Her head was pounding and her lips were dry. Despite the warmth of the room, she was nervous. That creeping sense of being anticipated, she thought, of discussions having preceded you. It was inelegant and she tried to stop it. She was trying to appear relaxed, resting her hand on the table.
Will was a robust man. He looked as if he spent his days chopping wood. He was shaking his head, flexing the muscles of his neck. ‘I’m afraid we don’t. Judy gave up coffee when she was having the babies, and I did too, for support. So now we just don’t keep it. But tea? We have some rooibos and some camomile. Probably some Earl Grey somewhere.’
‘Earl Grey would be lovely,’ Rosa said with a tight smile. And she was thinking they were a pair of super saintly swine. Even coffee banished! They would live a thousand years. There was a wail from upstairs, a baby’s cry. For a heavy woman, Judy was swift to move. She sprang up, saying, ‘So sorry, Rosa, I’ll have to get this. The other two are fine; Samuel and Leila are lovely. But Eliza has been very tricky. Very ill at ease. We’re worried it’s because she’s the third. She’s had so much less attention than the others had. My mother says it can make them very relaxed, they don’t feel the nervous eye of the parent upon them. But poor Eliza is struggling.’
‘Can I help at all?’ asked Rosa, knowing that she couldn’t.
Judy smiled, ‘Oh no, of course not. I’d love you to meet them a little later, when they’ve had their baths and the nanny has gone. But I’ll just go and see what she’s up to,’ as the wail reached a crescendo.
‘Of course, of course, you must go,’ she said.
Judy disappeared. Will had gone away. Rosa found a pile of magazines on the sofa, furniture magazines, gardening magazines, magazines about childcare. Guides to the Lakes. Country Life. House and Garden. Already she was aware of it. It seeped from the sofas, coursed across the dog baskets, flickered at the grate. There was an overwhelming sense of goodness to the house. Altruism, understanding and love. It swept you in, deposited you by a raging fire and a few handsome dogs. Rosa patted them each on the head. ‘Good dog,’ she said. ‘Good good, steeped in goodness, little dog dog.’ She ambled round, looking at the big plush curtains, read some cards set out on the bookshelves, loving notes from friends – ‘Thanks so much for a gorgeous stay. So lovely to meet the fabulous Eliza, and to see those sweeties Sam and Leila again. Love to all of you’; ‘Congratulations, my dear friends, on the birth of your third! Hope you’re all doing very well. All my love …’ They were doing the right thing, making a life for themselves. Three children, it was a towering achievement. And the place was a work of art, with the vivid upholstery and the fire spitting in the hearth and the neatly varnished window-frames. Everything was immaculate.
When Will returned, with a tea set on a tray, she was humbled and grateful. Now she looked at him carefully, he did look older. Perhaps his hair was thinning on top. Flecks of grey in it, anyway. Nothing too blatant, a subtle shift towards midlife. He had a few lines around his eyes. His hair had grown long at the sides. He had taken off his muddy wellingtons and his jacket, and was wearing shabby blue jeans and loafers and a green V-necked sweater. He put the tray down on a solid oak table. ‘Do you take milk?’ asked Will and Rosa nodded. She did. ‘Just a spot, thanks so much.’ A spot, she thought? Serving out tea from a silver tea service, Will looked incongruous. He had a furrowed brow, and sharp blue eyes. He looked like an overgrown choirboy with a holiday penchant for rugby. It was a curious combination. Judy obviously liked it. His children, judging from the photographs scattered around the room, were all as stocky as him. He would breed a tribe of prop-forwards who would never be ill.
He was staring at her, thinking of something to say. Determined to practise virtue in all its forms, Rosa reeled off pleasantries. She was digging in her store of remembered questions. It was a while since she had been so stubborn and polite. She said, ‘Well, you have a lovely house. How do you find it living here? Do you like it? How do you find the region? How did you find the house?’
‘Rosa,’ said Will, uncurling his big legs and setting his feet firmly on the floor. ‘I love it. We live in total bliss. You should try it.’
‘Any time, Will. Any time you feel like a house-trade, your lovely farmhouse for a room with a view of the train tracks, just let me know,’ she smiled.
Will smiled back. ‘Sounds great. Just what we need, an away-break in the city slums.’
‘How old are your children? What are they like? Are you planning more?’ asked Rosa.
Will rattled off their ages. Rosa nodded profoundly and failed to commit any of them to memory. Meanwhile Will was explaining that they wanted more children. Another one at least. Maybe two. ‘It’s genuinely miraculous. You hear everyone talking about it, and you can’t possibly understand i
t, but then you produce this being, and after a few weeks you can’t imagine that they never existed before. It’s extraordinary. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s so much work, of course. The work is insane. We farm some of it out. We have a nanny who lives a few doors away. She must be about to leave now. But she’s here most of the day. That’s a great bonus. And we have people from the village who help. But you know, we never sleep. One of them sleeps through the night, the other wakes up; Eliza goes mad at dawn, you know, it’s crazy. But still, it’s extraordinary how much I love them all.’
He was still smiling, beaming with wonder. When people talked about their children Rosa smiled and looked intent, but it seemed to her as if they alluded to something hermetic. Still she nodded, batted a few more questions towards him, about the neighbours and the sense of community, a few more platitudes, a compliment on the tea which was making her long for a hit of coffee.
He was grateful she was making the effort. Later, she knew, he would be just as polite to her. ‘Oh, they’re wonderful,’ he said. He meant the neighbours, she thought. Rosa was nodding with conviction. Now, as Will said: ‘Yes, the neighbours, really great. Some of them are incomers too. It’s such a quiet valley, the Duddon Valley, where we are. By summer there are fewer tourists than elsewhere. And we’ve helped a bit with local events. It’s sublime’ – as Will continued, Rosa felt her expression was becoming fixed, like a mask. ‘Sublime,’ she said. ‘How lovely.’ She nodded and smiled again. She couldn’t drop the smile for fear of losing it altogether. Will, she thought, I am quite sure that you are dear to the gods. They have poured blessings on your head. There was a pause and Rosa was hunting for something else to say when Will puckered his brow and said, ‘Rosa, I’m very sorry about everything that’s happened. About the death of your mother. And I couldn’t believe it when I heard about you and Liam. Neither of us could believe it.’ His expression was open; he looked like he meant it.
‘Well, thanks,’ she said.
‘We just wanted you to know that.’
‘Good of you,’ said Rosa. ‘But really, it’s fine. No need for sympathy. I was knocked back for a while, but now I’m fine.’
‘I have to say, you look a little strained,’ said Will. He was leaning towards her, he seemed to be thinking about putting a hand on her arm. But he didn’t. ‘You look like you haven’t been having the best time of it recently.’
But that was a funny thing to say. Who ever had a best time? How did you get a best time? Tell me where to go for a best time, she thought, and I’ll be out of here in a flash. But she stopped herself again. Discipline, she thought. Gratitude.
‘Oh that’s because of a lot of other things,’ said Rosa. ‘Other stuff. You know, existential.’
‘No, really, you look very worn.’
He was sipping his health tea and looking pensive. He seemed to find it painful, personally painful, that Rosa was so mashed. She was sure he was a good man. She certainly had them both pegged as good people. Their mantelpiece displayed it, all those shots of community functions and smiling small children. They were virtuous and productive. She had known them for years. She had met them – she could barely remember when she had met them. A long time ago, it must have been through mutual friends. A party, in the days when life was a pattern of parties and everyone thought they were unique and possibly immortal. In those days no one thought much about the essential unknowability of things in themselves, an sich and the rest. They hardly cared a jot if space and time were merely intuitions, and they hardly considered the ens realissimmum. If they thought about it, they talked it through over a beer, but in a detached way, as if it didn’t directly concern them. Mostly they drank and fell in love. They trusted the physical world, invested heavily in it. Judy and Will met during that period. She had known Judy first, yes, she remembered a few coffees with Judy early on, and she remembered something about Judy and Will meeting and becoming so compelled and excited by each other that Judy cried. Was that real? Or a disturbed echo of something else? She had always thought of them with affection, though distantly, people she semi-knew but liked. When they lived in London she and Liam had them round for dinner a few times a year. That was cosy, and then they met at parties, in large groups. It was the closeness of their scrutiny that was freaking her out. But if you lugged bags of unwashed breeches around the country, pursued by rapacious bank sharks, you had to accept it. Still she thought it was strange he wanted to question her so closely. For all he knew, she was truly mad. He was lucky she still had some of the carapace stuck to her.
‘It’s very kind of you to bother about it, but I really don’t much care what I look like,’ said Rosa, trying to shrug him off.
‘It’s not that I care what you look like,’ said Will. ‘I’m only concerned if this outer layer hints at any turmoil within.’ When he said turmoil, he stuttered. As if he hardly remembered the word. As if he was saying, Poor Rosa, I am not fluent in your dialect of crazy-mad. Really he was quite at ease. He folded his hands in his lap and waited.
Briskly, she said, ‘Really, Will, I’m fine. I’ve just got a job, well at least, a good prospect of a job, after a period which I just devoted to nothing at all.’
‘We were all surprised when you just walked out of your career. We had you pegged as the first female editor of the paper!’ He was laughing.
‘Best thing I ever did,’ said Rosa, fiercely. First female editor? How little they had known her. But she didn’t want to offend him. There was an uncomfortable pause, and then Will said, again: ‘I just think you look, sort of, fried. Frazzed. Done for. I don’t know how else to express it.’
God freedom and immortality, thought Rosa, looking at Will. The problem was, she didn’t believe in any of them. What do you think Will about the categorical imperative? Does it concern you at all? Well, he acted well enough, and if Will’s life became a general natural law, she wouldn’t complain. Will was looking at her in a kindly way, expecting an answer. She wasn’t sure what to say, so she gazed across the room, glancing at the careful arrangements of lamps, rugs, country furniture in mahogany, books, magazines, papers, toys, the flowers in the vases and the paintings – a view of Coniston Water, a view of Skiddaw, now she looked. With an effort, she said: ‘Oh, I’m not that serious at all. Not serious enough to be any of those things.’
After Will’s opening, there was the re-emergence of Judy, who lifted her reddish neck, threw back her hair (released for the evening, flying around her face like a force of nature) and said, ‘Oh Rosa! It’s so nice to see you!’ Then the children appeared, and they were dazzling and exhausting. It was impossible to imagine spending more than a couple of hours with them, as Samuel kept shouting and slapping his hand on Judy’s knee, and talked a lot of child nonsense and tried to kick Leila who played with boxes except when she was crying because Samuel had kicked her, and Eliza the baby dribbled and sometimes cried. Rosa played with them and sometimes over the sounds of the children they tried to talk. Then Will started to cook, and Rosa said she would help Judy put the children to bed. In the process, she read Samuel a story about a boy who saw snow for the first time, which Samuel knew by heart already. Then Judy reappeared to kiss him goodnight and turn off the light. When the children were settled Judy told Rosa about the mothers’ group in the village, and how Will thought it was unfair there wasn’t a fathers’ group and had proposed establishing one, but there were only a few couples with young children anyway. Most of the villagers were older, though they had all been welcoming and kind. There followed some stories about tractors and power cuts and the exchange of bacon and eggs and lifts to the playgroup. Then Judy said, ‘Of course you’d find the people I deal with deadly dull. If I wasn’t such an earth mother I would too, and there’s a side of me that knows I’ve completely lost my analytical faculties. If I ever had any! It’s amazing how it takes you. The first time you find the dugs and lactation thing actually quite bizarre, but the next time it doesn’t even seem odd any more. Do you want them?’
‘Now, I want to show you your room, Rosa,’ said Judy. They passed along whitewashed corridors into a room with scruffy sofas arranged around an old slate fireplace, and piles of toys and books. ‘Where we really live,’ laughed Judy, and then into a room which had a long wooden table and a sculpture of an anguished naked woman in the corner. ‘Will made it,’ said Judy, and they stood in front of it for a few minutes while Rosa exclaimed in delight. ‘It’s me, when we were trying to get pregnant for the first time. Don’t I look depressed!’ ‘Mmm,’ said Rosa, leaning on the sound like a crutch.
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