by Chris Else
‘Don’t you really want lunch?’
‘I don’t need to eat,’ he said. ‘I have you.’
‘You think you can live on sex?’
‘I can try.’
Suddenly, she was twisting away from him, sitting up.
‘Men are so stupid sometimes,’ she said, walking to the door. She pulled a dressing gown from the hook and slipped it on. ‘Soup and toast all right?’ She pulled the belt tight, knotted it.
‘You shouldn’t be spending money on me,’ he said.
‘Soup and toast? Are you crazy?’ Amazement, annoyance in her face. ‘I can look after myself, you know. I do.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She sighed, then grinned at him. ‘That’s all right. Come and talk to me while I make it.’
6.
GREENWISE GARDEN CENTRE IN Hammer Road, proprietor Thomas Anthony Marino. Monday and Tuesdays were busy times, cleaning up, ordering in after the weekend, except that these days the boss seemed to take less interest than he used to. He was distracted — you know, after the accident and that — and he left more and more of the daily running of the place to Billy Ryan, his right-hand man. Not that Billy minded. He was from Yorkshire — Hull, to be exact — and he had left school at fifteen, run away to sea, been here since he jumped ship in Winston, 1965. Billy was a plain man and he liked being busy. He took a plain man’s pride in his knowledge, hard won over thirty-five years working in the gardens of the Winston City Council. There wasn’t much about growing things that Billy didn’t know, whether it was roses or rhododendrons, rhubarb or radishes. People now? They were a different matter. Weird buggers most of them. So when the boss came back from one of those long lunches, freshly showered with a far-away look in his eyes, Billy felt awkward, embarrassed, as if he’d done something wrong himself.
Standing there, the two of them, in the barn of the main building with its concrete floor and fret of steel beams up above. Indoor ferns and garden furniture, the racks of fertiliser, pesticides and herbicides, the seeds, the artificial waterfall that trickled in the quiet. They were in the middle of a problem with the rose order, when the woman walked in.
‘Ay-up,’ Billy said.
Tom looked too, saw her coming towards them. A blonde, in black leather pants and jacket, a white shirt and a red scarf around her neck. Long slim legs, high-heeled shoes, a slinky movement to her hips. Not your average Greenwise customer. More like somebody in Hardy’s, ordering people about, buying perfume and handbags. She was heading straight at them. Billy took fright. Did a runner.
Not Tom, though. Tom stood his ground.
‘Do you people give advice?’ she asked, stopping in front of him. Shift of her body, and a ripple, a sheen of light in her leather skin.
‘It depends what you’re looking for.’
Blue eyes, red mouth, cheekbones touched with rose. A long narrow nose with a flare to the nostrils. She was taller than he was by an inch or two but that was mostly the heels.
‘My landscape architect’s done me a plan but I’m not happy with it. I need a second opinion.’ Eyes fixed on his, her face expressionless.
‘Yes. I can do that for you.’
‘You personally?’
‘Yes.’
Her attention shifted, flicked over his shoulders and chest, the tag, with his first name, pinned to his jersey. Then back to his face. He was being examined, critically. For signs of competence.
‘How much?’ she asked.
He said nothing, deliberately held back, looked at her, met her gaze. He felt the stretch of the silence, the growing threat of the snap that would make their little struggle conscious. The tip of her tongue came out and flicked her upper lip.
‘Forty-five dollars an hour,’ he said, just in time.
She glanced away. ‘All right. When can you come? This afternoon?’
‘Friday.’
‘No. Friday won’t do. Tomorrow.’
‘What time?’
‘Two.’
‘Let me check.’ He moved to the till and pulled out the appointments book. Tomorrow was Wednesday. He was free all day. He knew that without looking, but he didn’t want to seem so immediately at her beck and call.
‘Three-thirty,’ he said.
‘All right.’
He was about to ask her name but already she was handing him a card. It was white, printed in gold and black, a flowing, cursive font. Laura Kerrington. A land-line number and a mobile.
‘Clisserford. It’s the second place down Cox’s Line. Well …’ She blinked, correcting herself. ‘Let’s say it’s the second house of any significance.’
‘I’ll see you at 3.30.’
‘Fine.’ She turned and walked away.
He watched her go, the sway of her hips, the little swell in her blonde hair, bounce with each stride. The electric eye caught her, and the doors opened. She stepped through into the open air, moved to the left. Bright writhe of light on her black back.
Tom slipped the card into his pocket, wrote the appointment in the book. For no good reason. There would be no others by tomorrow afternoon. Billy came scuttling back again. He hovered, twitching with curiosity, but he said nothing. Of course not. Billy wouldn’t think it was his place to ask a question.
7.
LISA CROSSED THE LIVING room, kicking off her shoes, sat down in the armchair by the window and put her gin and tonic on the table beside her. The cat jumped onto her knee immediately. It had been waiting for her. She picked it up, her hand around its ribcage, and lifted it to her face, buried her nose in the soft fur behind its ear, felt the beat of its heart as she breathed in the smell of it, a dry, musky, dusty odour, big lungful like a drug. It didn’t like that indignity, of course, and squirmed in her grip. She let it go and it gave a twitch and a wriggle and lay down in her lap, needle claws for a moment through the fabric of her jeans. She stroked it and it settled. Relaxed. Why not?
She leaned her head back on the cushions of the chair and closed her eyes. Heard the thud of her own heart then, felt the smooth warmth of the cat under her hands, the ripple of its purr. Black cat, soft and cruel. Are we cruel, cat? Moving as the mood takes us, needing no one. Except we do need, of course. More than we think.
She opened her eyes, slowly, looked at the room with its wood panel door in a blue frame, its off-white walls, the sofa and the other chair (oatmeal colour, buttoned cushions) and a big painting of a West Coast lake that Colin had given her for her thirtieth birthday. It was a small room and inconvenient; a narrow rectangle arranged around a fireplace in the long wall, a fireplace they never used. She and Tom had plans to gut the whole house and redesign it but they had never got around to it. Just as they had never got around to shifting the pine cones with the red ribbon and the string of fat silver beads that had been in the grate since Christmas.
A noise. The door opening. Thin, oval face between drapes of straight dark hair.
‘Hi,’ Imogen said.
‘Hello, sweetheart, how’s it going?’
Imogen came in, still in her school uniform — white blouse, grey tunic, black stockings. Tall and skinny, just a bunch of sticks. Yet she ate like a horse and, as far as Lisa knew, she wasn’t in the habit of poking her fingers down her throat. She sidled into the room, her shoulders hunched. Stand up straight, Lisa wanted to tell her. Be proud of your body! But she kept quiet. What fourteen-year-old was ever proud of her body? What forty-three-year-old was, if it came to that?
‘Well,’ Imogen said, sitting down on the sofa. ‘It’s pretty average, I guess. I got an A in English but then we had PE. That’s always a bummer. Humiliating.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Think about the English. That was good.’
Imogen nodded. Serious. Far too serious.
‘Vincent called,’ she said.
‘Oh? Is he okay?’
‘Fine. We talked. It was nice. You know, it’s a weird thing. We never used to talk.’
‘Sometimes it works that way,’ Lisa said, think
ing about the room across the corridor that no one opened any more, Carla’s room stripped bare of everything that meant her except the single photograph on the bedside cabinet.
Imogen was staring at her shoes. She had her left foot on top of the right, heel on toe, as if they were the first two stages in a tower.
‘What’s incest?’ she asked.
‘Well.’ Lisa was taken aback. Thinking, doesn’t she know? ‘I guess it’s when members of a family have sex. Who shouldn’t.’ Feeble answer.
‘I know that,’ Imogen said. ‘I want to know what combinations aren’t allowed.’
‘Well, father, daughter. Mother, son. Any combination where one person is descended from another. And then there’s other combinations like brother and sister, half-brother, half-sister, things like that. I guess it’s got to do with how many genes you have in common.’
‘What if you have no genes in common?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Like me and Vincent.’
‘That’s illegal because you’re under age.’
‘What if I wasn’t?’
‘Are you serious?’ She didn’t quite shout it. She was glad she hadn’t shouted it. You had to keep calm and cool and clear at such a moment.
‘Don’t be horrible,’ Imogen said, turning on her big, moony, dark eyes. ‘I was just wondering.’
‘Well, don’t!’ It was a shout this time, or nearly, but she managed to stop herself, took two, three deep breaths. ‘Just think of Vincent as your big brother, okay?’ But that was no answer. You couldn’t retreat into your own feebleness. She took another drink, finished the glass.
Imogen was slouched back now with her backside on the edge of the sofa, her legs stretched out, arms folded across her stomach.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lisa said, more calmly. ‘I don’t mind talking about it. If you want to.’
‘It’s okay. I was just thinking, before, about what’s a family and what isn’t. About Vincent and Carla. Last year, when Carla first came to live with us, I hated it, you know? I just wanted her to go away again. And then, after a while, I thought she was really great. And it was like, wow, here I am, I never had a big sister before, and now I’ve got one and she doesn’t hate me. She likes me. And she’s so cool. And now …’ Imogen’s eyes squeezed tight shut for a moment and then opened again.
‘God, sweetheart, I know. It’s the worst thing ever.’ Lisa began to move, to go to the child and comfort her. The cat leapt from her lap. But then …
‘Now it’s just me and you and Tom. Are we a family?’
‘Well.’ Sitting back, pushed back. ‘Yes, of course we are.’ We’re all there is, she wanted to say, but that wasn’t quite true. ‘And there’s your father.’
‘Yes, but that’s not what I mean. The people are great, you know, as separate bits but … What is a family? Really?’ The stare again, the big, helpless eyes.
‘I guess it’s complicated in the modern world. I guess it’s partly biological and partly social, people living together, loving one another. I guess it’s a matter of commitment. Any group of people can be a family if they want to.’
‘But it isn’t a matter of choice, is it? I don’t have a choice. I don’t have a choice that you’re my mother and Dad’s my father, and I didn’t have a choice that you and Tom got together.’
‘You could have made it really hard for us. You and Carla and Vincent. I’m very grateful you didn’t.’
A shrug in response, an indifferent shrug, it seemed. Have I failed her? Lisa wondered. Of course. Because even if I knew what her question was I couldn’t answer it. Perhaps you always failed them on the hard questions. Like why you couldn’t keep living with their father. Like why someone had to die. And thinking of Carla again made her realise that she might owe Imogen an apology.
‘I’ve got something I need to talk to you about,’ Lisa said. ‘I’ve written a story about the accident.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘You’re sure?’ Too late now, if it wasn’t okay. ‘There’ll probably be a photo of the cross we put up. And the flowers.’
‘Who cares? Everybody knows, anyway.’
‘It’s just that Ward’s organising a road safety campaign. I thought I could help.’
‘It’s okay. Really.’
Was it? Something about the story made her feel uneasy. Was it her own reaction or Ward’s? She remembered her conversation with him this afternoon, his hesitation, as if he felt bad about his interest in the subject. A road safety campaign would be good for his public profile, of course. Was he ashamed of exploiting their grief? No. Ward was always so open, so honest, so unlike a politician. It was the main reason he was successful. And he’d been deeply upset by Carla’s death. She remembered him at the funeral. Ashen. Appalled. As if he could hardly bear to be there, it was so painful.
The door again. It was Tom, of course. The sudden sight of him, his dark hair, his beard, brought a twitch of relief. To know he was safe.
‘Hello,’ he said. He looked tired. There were bags under his eyes.
‘Hi.’ Imogen was standing up, twisting, unfolding. She looked at Lisa. ‘Can I get you another gin?’
‘Thank you, sweetheart, that would be really nice.’ Lisa knocked back the last drop and gave her the glass, watched her turn to leave. ‘Tom might like something too.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not right now.’
He sat down in the chair, on the other side of the fireplace. Where he always sat, the two of them together.
The door closed behind Imogen.
‘She hasn’t forgiven you,’ Lisa told him.
‘For what?’
But she could tell that he knew for what. The cross by the roadside. The ceremony. Even now she felt angry that he hadn’t joined in. It wasn’t much to ask, was it? He couldn’t still be so deeply bound up in his own feelings that no one else’s mattered at all. Yet, how could she say that? How could she even think it?
‘I should apologise to her again,’ he said. ‘Would it do any good?’
‘It might.’ Lisa sighed. ‘How are you?’
‘Stuffed.’
He looked stuffed but also relaxed somehow, sloppy, his limbs falling about as he laid his head back against the cushions of the chair. As she had done. She was tempted to ask him how his session with the counsellor had gone, but she held back. He would tell her if he wanted to. It was none of her business.
‘You got my message?’ she asked. ‘About this evening?’
‘Yes. What’s the occasion?’
‘No occasion. Sylvia just suggested we go round for a drink. Do you want to come?’
He scratched the back of his head, rubbed his palm over his face before he answered. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘I’m going.’ Although she wasn’t sure why, now she thought about it. Colin, her ex, would probably be there, lapping up the booze, as if every gulp were an accusation. He and Larry winding each other up, getting sillier by the minute. Both of them teasing Ward, making him look lumbering and stupid when, in fact, he was essential to their lives and had been for thirty years. A strange business, the three of them together. Beyond friendship. They were more like lovers, a folie à trois. She knew it had to do with that camping accident in their teens but she had never understood it fully. And then, for a moment, she could hear Ward laughing. Huff, huff, huff through his thick moustache, his body bouncing up and down, his blue eyes watering, lift of his crippled hand to cover his mouth, as if he were ducking down behind it. Ward the hero, our most unlikely hero.
‘Ward’s running a campaign to get the speed limit on River Road reduced to 50.’ She hesitated. The same flinch of fear she had felt with Imogen. ‘I’m doing a story on Carla to support it. There’ll be a photo of the site. Front page, I hope.’
‘Great,’ he said, as if he meant it.
The door opened. Imogen with the glass of gin. She had filled it too full and was gripping it in both hands, her attention on the brimming rim.<
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‘Thank you, sweetheart.’ Lisa took it from her.
The girl turned and went out again. Lisa watched Tom watching her go. The expression on his face, a look of doubt and pain. He doesn’t deserve to be stuffed around by a teenager in a mood, she thought. But, then, that isn’t fair to Imogen either.
‘I’m sorry about the story,’ she said.
‘Why? If it does any good, write it.’
‘I should have checked with you first.’ Was that it? Was that what niggled her? Carla’s death was private property and not some scrap of gossip to be swatted about in public places.
‘What difference does it make?’ he asked.
Lisa sighed. ‘God, life gets complicated. Imogen was asking me before if we were really a family.’
‘What’s a family?’
‘You, too?’ She sipped her gin. It was way too strong. Thank you, sweetheart!
‘I suppose a family is an evolutionary strategy for ensuring the survival of the species,’ Tom said, in his best pontificating tone.
‘Yeah, right. And on that basis, we’re not a family, are we? Imogen isn’t your kid, so why should you care about her? And why should you care about me, given that I’m not going to have any of your babies?’ It felt dangerous to say that, to offer him the option of not caring, but the words were out before she could stop them.
He looked at her for a moment as if he were uncertain what to do. Then he gave her that grin of his, the teasing, sexy grin that made her squirm inside. ‘You’re still of childbearing age.’
‘Get real, buster!’ A scornful laugh but then she thought, Good God, he might be serious. Fixing that permanently was just one of the things they’d never got around to doing. Maybe they could have a child, if they wanted to. And, just for a moment, the thought of it made her want it very much.
8.
WARD AND MADDY LORTON, wrapped up against the cold of the autumn night, walked the two blocks from their own house to the Hannerbys’. Safer to walk if they were both going to drink, and drink, after all, was the whole point, wasn’t it? Ward felt the anticipation, his hopes for the evening, drawing him on like a scent in the air, like fresh-baked bread or roasting beef. You wanted to be there, to taste it, and the walk, in the cold, made it all the more desirable.