‘How’s the work going? Did you get much done while we were away?’ her mother enquired with unusual interest.
‘Fine. There’s plenty coming in. I’m getting the hang of making it pay. It seems all the suppliers want paying in advance and all the clients want to pay six months late. I wish I was making enough to hire an assistant.’ She resented time wasted chasing invoices, and besides, it was hideously embarrassing. On the other hand, there was a sum equal to a month’s budget owing from a job she had done back in May.
‘You’ve got that girl …’
‘Inmaculada? Her English isn’t up to it.’
‘We’d always have Max for you, you know, if things got difficult one day.’
It was a three-hour drive to her mother’s house. Not a tempting offer. Stephanie made an appreciative face over her tea cup. So much talking without saying; the pressure of words unspoken was getting critical. Impossible to think of telling her mother that half the neighbourhood was gossiping that her grandson was illegitimate and her son-in-law had abandoned them. Where would you start on a topic like that? All the same, it was seething unsuspected in her head like magma in a volcano, that and her pointless rage at the whole situation.
Four years of living here and that absurd Lieberman woman was the only one person she could actually talk to. The rest of the time it was stay cool, draw trellis-work, make peanut-butter sandwiches and find courteous forms of words to remind people you were still a human being, even if something bad had happened to you.
‘Have you thought any more about renting the house out?’ her mother asked before long.
‘Why?’ Here it was, the cause of the trouble. Stephanie made her eyes big and soft, and her voice low and soft, and tilted her head on her long neck like a polite giraffe, a pose of non-confrontational innocence which she had always found effective.
‘We were thinking,’ – she smoothed down her skirt, picking invisible threads off it – ‘your stepfather and I, that you might like to do that. And maybe move in with us for a while. We worry about you, all alone with this terrible business dragging on. You wouldn’t have to work so hard. Our place is so big. I think there’s even an old tree house in the garden.’
Stephanie pasted on a bland half-smile and felt it set like concrete on her lips. Careful, take it easy, take it at face value, don’t give offence. ‘How kind,’ she forced out, holding down the voice tone, then for the sake of simulating warmth, she put her cup down and gave her mother a hug. ‘I’ll think about it, really I will.’
‘You’ve done wonders with the house,’ her mother pressed on, gentle but pitiless, ‘I’m sure it would rent well. Then you wouldn’t have all these things to worry about – the money, or getting someone to look after Max …’
‘I really will think about it,’ Stephanie repeated, howling with horror inside, ‘but I do like working, you know.’
‘But you look tired, dear. More than tired, you’re looking – harrowed.’
‘Of course I’m looking tired and harrowed – wouldn’t you in my situation?’
‘I suppose …’
‘Have you thought what might be happening to Stewart right now? Have you thought that he might be dead, he might have been dead for weeks?’
‘Don’t be angry, dear. We’re only trying to help.’
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry.’
When she was alone with the children, and her mood settled, she found herself keeping her promise. Probably the house would rent well, everything she and Stewart had taken such pride in, the lustrous sun room, the pretty terrace, the gleaming kitchen, the cosy bedrooms. Rental homes were never stylish, anybody would be thrilled to be offered their house.
Go home to Mummy. Give up, give in, revert to a child-state, eat without having to cook, sleep without having to launder. No more climbing into a suit to give a presentation then coming home and climbing into a sweatshirt to be a mother. Regular cheques, no more clients, no more invoices.
No more Westwick. No more acting sweet around Lauren Pike when you felt like stabbing her. No more hiding from Allie in fear of becoming a media victim. No more avoiding Ted in case he made another pass. Lately she had poured half her energy into these accommodations. She was tired of it, she was sick of it. So why the silent scream at the mere idea of moving out?
This house is us, it is Stewart and me, and once it made me happy. Ecstatically happy, on the day we moved in. She remembered standing on the front path watching Stewart get Max out of the car and feeling joy streaming around them, gilding the scene like the October sunshine. She remembered going back to Stewart, holding on to his arm, laying her head against his shoulder, stroking Max’s hot round cheek and saying, ‘You can’t imagine how happy I am,’ and Stewart clumsily catching hold of her fingers. She remembered thinking, I must remember this: my husband, our baby, our home in Westwick – perfect happiness.
Needing comfort, she sat down at the sycamore table and called back the scene. She saw herself and Stewart carrying their baby, walking together up the path to the new house. She saw them opening the stiff door and letting their happiness blow them through the fresh empty rooms, and knew that they had felt bliss then, but now could not retrieve the feeling. Her memory held nothing but words and pictures when she urgently wanted the proof that she had once deserved to be happy.
Stewart had done what he always did in houses, a funny little dance, running his fingers around architraves and his toes along floorboards, as if communicating with the construction itself by touch. ‘It’s a dream, isn’t it?’ he said to her. ‘A lovely family home in Westwick. You are a very clever woman, you know that?’
‘I’m not. I was just in the right place at the right time, that’s all.’
‘I thought that was cleverness.’ He asked the baby, now gazing wonderingly up from the crook of his arm, ‘Isn’t that cleverness, Maxie? Being in the right place at the right time so we get to buy a beautiful house in a beautiful neighbourhood we never even looked in because we thought we couldn’t possibly afford to live there. I think that’s very clever. My boy, your Mummy is a very clever woman.’ The baby yawned fit to unhinge his little gummy jaws, and appeared to agree.
Stephanie had said nothing. People had on occasion called her clever, but she was afraid if she accepted that opinion she would have to do something to justify it. She had gone on into the garden, her own little Eden.
Presently, their furniture had been carried in, followed by Allie, their first visitor, who pushed a great Cellophaned bouquet of red roses with corkscrew willow twigs into Stephanie’s arms with one hand and put a bottle of champagne down on a packing case by Stewart with the other. ‘Welcome, my dears. Welcome to Westwick!’ Stewart lowered Max for her to kiss. Somehow, people had an instinct to save Allie from ever looking awkward. ‘Darling baby, always so good! I just came to see you over the threshold. Look at me, I’m still in my make-up – don’t let me get it on you. I can’t stop, I know you’re in chaos and I’m waiting for the studio car. Gorgeous kitchen, do let me see …’
She darted inside like a bright parrot, still wearing the searing pink suit in which she had presented her show that morning. The greasy smell of her make-up was the first alien scent in the house. At once Stephanie felt useless; she was a head taller than Allie and twenty pounds heavier. They had no vase for the roses or glasses for the champagne; their possessions were sealed in crates all around her. She took Max while Stewart washed out the plastic cups she had packed for baby juice and popped the cork.
‘It will be so, so good to have you as a neighbour.’ Allie skipped up on a crate and sat on the end of the worktop, crossing the legs of which Channel Ten’s publicist said a million men dreamed each day. ‘Maybe we should do a new home feature – what do you think? So much social mobility these days, people relocating and stuff. We could film right here.’ Stephanie did not realise she was shaking her head. ‘Oh! I forgot, you hate all this media stuff, you’re so, so shy. I am so insensitive, Steph, can you f
orgive me? Of course you must be rushed off your feet. And the baby, he must keep you busy too. Never mind, we can do something another year. You must come over, meet some more neighbours. It’s lovely having you so close to us now. Darling, do forgive me, I gotta run now …’ And she jumped to the floor and was clattering down the front path to her car.
‘Just think – two years ago we knew nothing at all about daytime TV.’ Stewart watched the car pull away, a pink sleeve waving through the window.
‘And we thought people who did were just sad.’
‘And then Allie Parsons came back into your life and we changed our minds. And now we’re her neighbours and we owe her this, really, don’t we?’ With a sweeping arm, he indicated the huge space awaiting transformation at their hands. ‘If she hadn’t given us the tip that they were knocking the price down we’d never have looked at it. I’d never have believed we could afford to live in Westwick.’
‘You negotiated them down. God, I was proud of you.’
‘She told us they’d sell for less – I pretty much knew what we could get it for.’
Stephanie heard Max and Sweetheart shrieking joyfully outside and felt her own mood all the more leaden. Happiness was like water, it just slipped through your fingers, it had no substance. When it disappeared, there was nothing left, not even the memory.
‘Mistur Parsons, you come arround to Sun Wharf today? Somzin’ you might want to see.’
‘What is it, Yuris?’ Ted did not want to go to the Sun Wharf site, where Yuris and the Lithuanians were doing some architectural salvage. He wanted to stay out at Oak Hill: the contractors there were new and he needed to spend time with them, bringing them up to speed. Yuris had been his best foreman for the past ten years and could be trusted to get a job done well and on time with no trouble and no more than one site visit from Ted each week. Besides, Ted liked watching the diggers. And Sun Wharf, on the east of the city, was almost three hours away.
‘We make start on second building this morning and is not what we zink.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Different building behind front wall. Some kinda t’eatre or zomzin’.’
‘Theatre?’
‘Thaz right. You need see it, Mistur Parsons.’
‘Yup,’ he agreed, startled, ‘I’m on my way.’
Three and a half hours later – the cause of the delay was a double trailer bringing ready-baked potatoes to Magno. Helford which jackknifed and rolled over blocking all three lanes just after the Acorn Junction – Ted stood on a pile of rubble in Sun Wharf Lane and saw for himself.
The site had been a factory, at different times dedicated to bottling brandy and stitching mink skins but most recently in use as a sweatshop where two hundred Bengali women and children had sewn trousers day and night. After a pincer movement of the Immigration and Public Health authorities had closed the operation down the building had stood empty for years, the filthy windows boarded over and the roofs sagging and shedding their slates.
The inspector who had condemned the building after the raid gave the tip to Ted, and Tudor Estates bought the site for peanuts when the regeneration of the old docks was just something smart architects talked about and the concept of a brown-field site had not yet been named. Ted never had any intention of developing it himself. The cost of gutting and renovating an old building, the endless bureaucratic hassles, and the volatility of the market for dockland properties did not charm him. He bought the site to sell on when the market rose. That time was now at hand, and the cash would be better invested in Oak Hill.
Cleared sites sold best, but before demolition he put in a gang to strip ironwork and window shutters, collect the old slates and chisel out the corbels, cornices and fireplaces to sell on to an architectural salvage yard. Financially, the operation barely washed its own face but it put him in good standing with the planning authorities, and besides, he felt better about razing a building when he had first honoured the original craftsmen by saving their work.
Ugly, featureless and begrimed, from the outside Sun Wharf looked like three utilitarian brick boxes jammed together, the biggest in the middle. Yesterday, the gang reported that there was almost nothing worth saving except a few floorboards. Today, they had knocked their way into the central building through a bricked-up doorway and found a broad stone staircase leading below ground level.
‘Come,’ Yuris suggested, respectfully watching Ted to see he did not trip over the fallen laths from the ceiling. ‘Firrst, look here,’ and he turned his torch to the walls, lighting up what seemed to be a picture.
One of the men stepped forward with a broom and very gently brushed away the dust and cobwebs, revealing a lifesize mosaic panel of a dark-haired woman in rosy draperies, encircled by lilies and curlicues. Her dimpled feet in fanciful sandals were level with Ted’s face. The next panel was a pert girl in knickerbockers with a bicycle. Opposite her posed a busty beauty laced into a black corset, bending saucily over a cage of doves. The stairway was lined with Edwardian chorus girls.
‘I’m zinkin’how in hell do zis,’ the foreman explained as he led onwards. ‘Mozaic. How take down. Zen we go on …’ The plaster from the ceiling had crumbled, becoming a layer of powdery dust on every surface. The handrails were brass. The doors at the bottom of the stairs were mahogany with cut glass panels.
They passed through a wide room with a low ceiling and wooden counter down one side; the men’s boots had trodden a track across the floor to another pair of doors. Ted stood in the middle of the auditorium, struck dumb by the visions in the beam of his flashlight.
Everything was as it had been when the last punter staggered cheerfully out into the night. Here and there crumpled playbills lay where they had been dropped. Beer mugs stood on the tables in the stalls, with chairs pushed back at all angles by the departing audience. A few sheets of music were still on a stand in the pit, the pages bearing alterations scratched in uneven ink. A mop rested in a bucket in a corner. There was so much animation in these objects, which had lain as they were posed for eighty, perhaps a hundred, years, that it seemed as if the gaslights might glow to life at any moment, and a ghostly audience of sailors and longshoremen suddenly push through the doors and take their seats.
Walking tentatively forward in the darkness, Ted discovered that this had been a pocket playhouse, seating barely a hundred revellers, mostly in boxes in the higher tiers with plaster nymphs holding floriform gaslights to divide them. A shred of a curtain hung from the gilded proscenium. The boards where the players had their hour had rotted and fallen in.
‘Strange,’ the foreman commented, shooting Ted a sideways glance. ‘I don’t know what to do. I zink nobody knows this here.’
‘It’s dry.’ Ted shone his torch up at the ceiling, again finding holes in the plaster but only blackness above. ‘That’s why everything’s so perfect. There’s two floors of building above us. Foundations must be dry. Water never got in.’ The men of his salvage gang moved tentatively about, one of them finding an old briar pipe discarded on the lip of a stage box.
‘You zee what I mean?’ Yuris asked with anxiety. ‘Eez perfeck. Perfeck. How take down, where we start …’
The romance of the find had its fangs in Ted’s neck. His phone peeped and he turned it off. He passed through the secret door from front to back of the house and scrambled about backstage, finding rotting ropes and faded scenery, old machinery unrusted, greased and capable of working, an empty willow skip which fell to dry twigs at his touch.
The advantage to the developer in building a theatre was not obvious, unless perhaps such properties went for better prices at the beginning of the century. ‘Why build underground?’ he asked himself, and took the stairs again to pursue the mystery outside. The beauty with the doves, with her deep bosom and strong flanks, put him in mind of Gemma. In another way, the dormant vitality of the entire find seemed to speak of her, but he dismissed the notion.
‘I neverr zink …’ Yuris began, following eagerly.<
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‘No more did I. God damn, I’ve owned this for years. I had no idea, none at all.’ He had never surveyed the site properly, always intending to keep it only until it was worth selling.
Blinking in the light, he saw that the ugly street elevation was false, thrown up in front of the arched music-hall facade, with iron stairs from side doors leading to the workshops above. At the wharf side, where the land approached the river, it fell away sharply. Probably here the water had carved a bed for itself thousands of years beforehand. The neighbouring buildings had extra half-floors on the wharf side. His investment probably occupied an area where the slope was wide enough to embrace the auditorium.
Yuris followed him patiently while the rest of the crew sat down around their pick-up and smoked, waiting for his decision.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Ted instructed them, and saw their hard, closed faces break up with pleasure. ‘I’m going to get a few more people to see this. Board up the door for now and leave everything just as it is. Make a start on the other side, get some flooring there if you can. I’ll be back.’
‘Mrs Sands? Is this Mrs Sands?’ Her heart jumping like a landed fish, Stephanie crushed the phone into her ear as she pulled into the slow lane of the 31 westbound.
‘Miss Helens?’ Something had happened to Max. There could only ever be one reason for a call from the teacher at 11 am. ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’
‘Hopefully it’s not too serious, Mrs Sands …’ Hopefully? Then it was serious. Watch the road, watch the road. She stood on the brakes in time to avoid running into the back of an old Nissan crammed with people.
‘What’s happened?’ she demanded, furious with the woman for prevaricating.
‘He had a fall, Mrs Sands. Off the climbing frame. Of course, since we had the shock-absorbant surface put down it isn’t nearly so hard—’
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