Kate could hear her. The sofa wasn’t very comfortable, and was scarcely long enough even for Kate, and the various tensions of the evening hadn’t been conducive to a quiet mind. It was odd, because Kate had got what she wanted, had achieved what she had set out to achieve, and with surprising ease at that, but the end result simply refused to feel natural. Here she was, lying in her dear room, through whose window she often saw the canal boats that never failed to thrill her, with Joss lying safely tucked up only feet away from her, just as she once used to be, before James, only this was better, and yet it didn’t feel entirely right. I expect, Kate thought, turning once again in search of a sleep-inducing position, that we are too excited, and that we mustn’t hurry getting used to each other again, after so long. But three months isn’t very long, and we’ve seen each other every week . . . She strained her ears. Joss was still crying, but more quietly now. Kate slid off the sofa and tiptoed to the dividing door.
‘Jossie?’
Silence.
‘Jossie, don’t worry. It’ll be fine, you know, it’s just that it’s been a bit of a shock, something you weren’t expecting. That’s all. And don’t worry about school. I’ve ordered you a taxi for tomorrow, until we’ve worked out the buses.’ She paused. ‘It’s lovely for me to have you. To have you back.’
‘Yeah,’ Joss said faintly. She had stopped crying.
‘Sleep well. Croissants for breakfast.’
Croissants, Joss thought. Why croissants? At Richmond Villa they only ever had them as a treat, on birthdays, except of course for Uncle Leonard’s birthday. He’d only ever tried one croissant. ‘Stupid bloody thing,’ he’d said, looking at the explosion of buttery flakes down his front. ‘Trust the perishing French.’ Joss set her jaw. She would not think about Uncle Leonard.
‘Sleep well,’ Kate said again, her voice very loving.
Joss took a breath. ‘You too,’ she said.
‘I just wondered,’ Bluey Acheson said, ‘if you could use a few of these? They’re Boston Bay cookies.’
With a wide smile, she held out a box. James had found her there, on the doorstep, when he went to answer the bell, thinking it might be the postman, with a parcel.
‘I’m Garth’s mother—’
‘Ah!’ James said, smiling back. ‘The provider of the peonies.’
‘That’s me!’
James held the door a little wider. ‘Do please come in.’ She stepped past him, a neat figure in jeans and a scarlet cardigan. ‘I’m afraid we’re in awful disorder—’
‘I’ll confess,’ Bluey Acheson said. She had shining brown straight hair tied back with a red-and-blue checked ribbon. ‘Garth told me. He said you’d all got in a bit of a pickle, so as Randy’s away I thought I’d just come round—’
‘Randy?’
‘My husband,’ said Bluey Acheson without enthusiasm. ‘He’s a physicist. That’s why we’re in Oxford. He’s gone to lecture in The Hague or someplace.’
‘Mrs Acheson—’
‘Bluey, please.’
‘Bluey, I’m afraid my uncle is still in his dressing gown.’
He was. He sat at the disordered remains of the breakfast table, and muttered at the crossword. Across the table Hugh, in a cashmere polo-necked jersey with the sleeves pushed up, was smoking and writing an illustrated letter to the twins with coloured felt-tipped pens he had found in Joss’s room. The kitchen door to the garden was propped open to the temperate May sunshine, in which Miss Bachelor, firmly in her brown overcoat still, was pruning off the dead-flowered spikes of a forsythia.
‘Attention please,’ James said, ‘I would like to introduce to you Mrs Bluey Acheson, Garth’s mother, who has most kindly brought us some biscuits.’
Bluey beamed at them. Hugh leapt to his feet and held out his hand. ‘You should never be in here, Mrs Bluey Acheson, you look far too hygienic.’ He gestured to Leonard. ‘Get up, you insanitary old heap.’
Leonard didn’t move. He eyed Bluey. She smiled at him. ‘Have you brought Joss?’ Leonard demanded.
Her face fell. ‘Only cookies—’
‘It’s been ten days,’ Leonard said accusingly, as if Joss’s going to Osney was Bluey’s fault.
Bluey sat down. Leonard was wearing a singularly repulsive old plaid dressing gown open over his pyjamas. He hadn’t yet shaved. Bluey looked at him just as if he were shining with care and cleanliness.
‘Garth’s been to see Joss,’ she said. ‘He took her to the movies. I think she’s doing fine.’
‘No, she’s not!’ Leonard shouted. ‘She’s no business to!’
Bluey looked down. Garth had not in fact said Joss was doing just fine, he’d said she was homesick for Richmond Villa but that she felt she owed it to her mother to stay in Osney. ‘I’ll feel guilty wherever I am,’ she’d said to Garth, and then, though he had not told Bluey this, he had tried to take advantage of her temporary frailty by kissing her, and she’d socked him in the face with a fist uncomfortably armoured in new Indian rings. ‘Don’t you think she ought to be with her mother?’ Bluey said now.
Leonard looked miserable and furious. He shook the paper at Bluey. ‘What about me?’
James put a mug of coffee down in front of Bluey. ‘You must make allowances for my uncle. He affects rudeness and temper to cover a heart of marshmallow.’ Bluey smiled. She sipped her coffee and looked round the kitchen. It was sensationally untidy and looked, Bluey thought, just wonderful; human and imaginative. ‘I love it in here,’ she said.
Hugh goggled at her. ‘You couldn’t,’ he said, remembering, though he had forbidden himself to, the ordered charm of the kitchen at Church Cottage.
‘My kitchen’s so dull, compared to this,’ Bluey said. ‘No books, no chairs, no—’ she paused.
‘Bottles?’ James suggested.
She laughed. ‘Only such serious bottles, you know! Olive oil and balsam vinegar and all the things Gourmet Magazine says I should have.’
James and Hugh pulled their chairs closer to her. She looked like a newly picked Alpine flower in the chaos around her.
‘Her husband’s called Randy,’ James said to Hugh.
Hugh said to Bluey, ‘You can’t be serious.’
She nodded, delighted. ‘It doesn’t mean the same thing in the States.’ She hid her face behind her coffee mug, giggling. ‘My sister’s called Pokey, and that doesn’t mean the same thing either.’
James and Hugh watched her, smiling; she was charming, a pretty, sweet distraction blown in through the front door like a present. Leonard got up with difficulty, grunting and puffing like an old hippo. He found his stick and limped towards the garden door.
‘And while Randy does physics, what do you do?’ Hugh said.
Leonard made his way unevenly out into the garden. Beatrice heard him coming and deliberately did not turn until he was almost wheezing in her ear. ‘Why aren’t you dressed?’
‘It’s sodding Saturday!’ He thumped his stick down on the lawn. It needed mowing. ‘They’ve got a woman in there.’
Beatrice turned round properly, a handful of whispering dead petals in her grasp. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Garth’s mother. Looks like a doll. Made us some biscuits.’
‘How very kind.’
‘Kind!’ said Leonard. ‘Huh! News gets round that there’s three men on their own at Richmond Villa and bingo, there’s droves of bloody women. First you, now her.’
Beatrice flushed. ‘How crudely you talk.’ She turned back to the forsythia. It was ten-thirty and she had been slightly hoping that James might bring her a cup of coffee and pause to talk while she drank it, but she was not going to say so. Instead she said, ‘Why don’t you dress? You look inappropriate.’
He leered at her, from the side.
‘Mustn’t inflame Mrs Acheson with my déshabillé?’
Beatrice snorted. Chuckling, Leonard tottered back across the grass. ‘Do believe,’ he told himself, ‘do believe the old boiler’s jealous. Must be in love with me.’
He lurched into the back door. Bluey was telling a story and James and Hugh were laughing at it. Nobody took any notice of Leonard. ‘Bloody fools,’ he said, quite loudly, and limped past them, to go upstairs and dress.
Kate paused at the top of the spiral stairs that led down to the kitchen of Pasta Please, to allow Christine to come up. Kate was carrying dirty plates; Christine was carrying two dishes of rigatoni in tomato sauce, sprinkled with parmesan and pine nuts.
‘There’s someone come in to see you,’ Christine said disapprovingly. ‘Please be quick. I told them you were working.’
‘Who?’ Kate said as they passed one another. ‘A man or a woman?’
‘A woman, of course,’ Christine said crushingly, sweeping on.
It was Julia. She stood against a wall, where Christine had clearly driven her, so that she couldn’t engage Benjie in distracting conversation at close quarters. She looked pale and thin, but her appearance was as clean and carefully thought out as usual, with her hair in a thick, perfect pigtail.
‘Julia!’ Kate said, putting plates down on the nearest surface and running over.
Julia put her arms out. They had scarcely even bumped cheekbones in token kisses before, but now Julia held Kate tightly, like a sister.
‘Oh Kate. I’m so sorry to come here, but can I see you?’
‘Of course—’
‘When do you finish, when is lunch over?’
‘I can get away about half-past three, I think. And Joss won’t be home’ – oh, the pride of being able to say that again – ‘until about six.’
Christine’s feet began to descend the spiral staircase. Julia’s eyes swung in her direction, and then back to Kate.
‘I’ll come back for you about three-thirty, then. Can I?’
‘Of course—’
Julia bent and kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you. Oh thank you. I’ll wait outside for you. On the pavement.’
When she was gone, Christine said, ‘Don’t I know her?’
‘She’s been in once or twice—’
‘No, no. Not here. On the telly.’
‘Yes,’ Kate said, ‘yes, you have. She presents Night Life.’
Christine had a headache, and a meeting with her accountant later that day. She scowled at Kate. ‘What does she want with you, then?’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Julia said simply. ‘I just do not know what to do next.’
She sat with Kate in the window of a big café in St Giles, and pressed a slice of lemon down to the bottom of her cup of tea.
‘He says he is desperate without the twins and that he loves me, but he won’t come home because my attitude is killing him.’
‘What is your attitude?’ Kate said. She felt fond of Julia and sorry for her and, by comparison, for once strong and capable.
‘I just want to help,’ Julia said. ‘I love him and I miss him and I just want to help him come to terms with this terrible unfairness. And—’ she stopped.
Kate waited. She took a mouthful of warm, sharp tea and watched Julia. At last as if after a little internal wrestle with herself, Julia said, ‘You see, I can’t cope without him. I thought I could but I can’t. There isn’t any point to anything without him. I need him. I’ve discovered that.’
‘Have you told him so?’
‘He won’t let me,’ Julia said sadly. She had telephoned constantly, for brief, unsatisfactory conversations, and once she had gathered up all her courage, and gone round to Richmond Villa, which had seemed to be full of people and very lively, with an American woman in the kitchen showing Leonard how to make real hamburgers with a little plastic mould. Leonard had looked like a happy child in a sandpit. James had been sweet to Julia and Hugh had been kind, but politely kind, and she hadn’t achieved anything.
‘I begged him to come home,’ Julia said now, remembering. ‘I went round there and simply asked him outright. It was difficult to see him alone because there were so many people there, including an American woman I didn’t know. I said please come home for the twins’ sake even if you won’t for mine. He said it was too soon. I tried to talk about the twins but he got terribly upset, and I don’t want to upset him.’
Kate, meaning to say something sympathetic, said instead, by mistake, ‘What American woman?’
‘The mother of a boyfriend of Joss’s, I think. James said she was a woman designed to do charitable work and that they had become her charity. She didn’t seem to mind when he said that. She laughed.’
Kate pulled herself together. ‘And the twins? How are the twins?’
Julia swallowed. ‘Terribly difficult. They keep asking when Daddy’s coming home and every time the phone rings they rush at it shouting “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy”. And they’ve started wetting their beds. I thought Sandy was wonderful—’
‘Isn’t she?’
‘I think she’s exploiting me, now Hugh’s away.’
‘Julia,’ Kate said, leaning forward, ‘can you work?’
‘It’s a relief,’ Julia said solemnly. ‘It’s the only thing that’s ordinary, that’s all right.’
‘So you’re OK for money—’
‘Oh yes,’ Julia said, ‘I’m earning more than Hugh did.’ Her face twisted briefly. ‘I’m so ashamed of myself. I used to think money mattered so much, that it was security, that our kind of life depended upon having enough of it. But now I’ve got enough of it, and I haven’t got Hugh, I feel—’ She stopped again.
‘He’ll come back, you know,’ Kate said gently.
Julia gazed at her. ‘But will he? You should see him and James together.’
Kate looked up. They stared at one another.
‘Was there ever any, I mean, did they ever—?’
‘No,’ Julia said, ‘I don’t think so. But the way they love each other is worse than sex, somehow, it’s got more of a hold, they’re such friends.’ She spread her hands. Her big, beautiful old engagement ring from Hugh, a half-hoop of opals and tiny diamonds, glittered and gleamed. ‘I feel shut out. Did you ever? Did you ever feel Hugh mattered to James more than you did?’
Kate thought. If she was scrupulously honest, it was only at the end that she had been irritated by James’s affection for Hugh, and by then she had been ready to be irritated by anything. ‘Not really.’
‘I feel that at the moment I can’t compete, that I’ve become smug and prissy and I haven’t a sense of humour. Beside me, James is so warm and easy and human, and he doesn’t make Hugh feel as if he’d let him down. I don’t feel that Hugh’s let me down either, but he feels he has and it’s somehow my fault. It’s like being in a maze,’ Julia said, fishing out her lemon slice and dropping it in an ashtray. ‘It’s like going round and round the same paths in a maze, and never getting to the middle, and never getting out, either.’
‘I think you just have to wait.’
‘Do you? Do you honestly?’
‘I did,’ Kate said, ‘I waited and waited for Joss, and then the time was suddenly right to act, and I acted. It was Benjie, the chef at work, actually, who suddenly spurred me to act. The same will happen to you.’
‘Will it?’
‘Oh yes. Because, you see, Hugh will be missing you. He mightn’t be able to feel it but he is. He’s too wounded to feel anything just now, but he will in time.’
Julia put out a hand and took Kate’s. ‘You do comfort me. How can you be so sure?’
A shadow crossed Kate’s face. She said, ‘I’m not proud of this, but I know for certain that James is still missing me. Hugh will be just the same. And now I’ve got Joss—’
Julia smiled. ‘It’s so lovely, that you’ve got Joss back.’
‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘Yes. Lovely’s the word.’
James asked Mrs Cheng to work extra hours at Richmond Villa; he said Mr Hunter would pay her. Mrs Cheng disapproved of Hugh. She liked Beatrice Bachelor, whose age, in any case, made her worthy of respect, and who treated her with courtesy and had asked her how to say several simple things in Cantonese; but Hug
h was another matter. He made stupid jokes and he kept James up too late and there were too many empty whisky bottles. Mrs Cheng ironed his shirts – much better quality than James’s – and cleaned his room and wiped over all his bottles and potions and lotions in the bathroom, but she did it purely and entirely for the money. She would do nothing extra for Hugh, and she wouldn’t speak to him either.
‘Bloody rude,’ Uncle Leonard said.
‘You fine one to talk.’
‘What’ve you got against the poor sod, anyway?’
‘Shouldn’t be here.’
‘Why not?’
‘Not right,’ Mrs Cheng said, brushing clots of fluff out from under Leonard’s bed. ‘Not right, all you men. Should be Kate back. Should be Joss.’
‘We’ve got Bluey now,’ Leonard said, to be annoying.
‘Not same.’
‘No,’ said Leonard, thinking of Kate and Joss, ‘not the same at all.’
Mrs Cheng had spring-cleaned Joss’s room. She had washed the windows, and then the curtains, and prised all the chewing-gum off the carpet with a kitchen knife. She had made the bed up with everything but the duvet, and then covered it with a clean old double sheet, to be ready for Joss. When she couldn’t bear Hugh, she went into Joss’s room for a quiet moment. Although she had no concrete reason for suspecting it, she sometimes thought James did the same thing. James had only spoken of the matter to her once, and then in a roundabout sort of way, but all the same, Mrs Cheng knew what he meant.
The Men and the Girls Page 20