Having issued hasty farewells to the still shell-shocked group, she was now walking with the girls towards the exit sign. Peter loped after them, reaching into his breast pocket for the list he had compiled, groggy with fatigue and unhappiness, at five o'clock that morning. It was an attempt to marshal all the things he wanted to say, all the garbled thoughts of another sleepless night, scrawled with none of his customary tidiness or articulation on the back of an envelope.
Sorry… Love is what you arrive at… I MISS you… need you… SORRY…
‘Helen.’ He was plucking things from his pocket – his cheque book, his pen.
She gave her watch a fierce glance. ‘I've got to go.’
The pen fell from his fingers and bounced on the floor. Peter dropped to his knees to retrieve it, scrabbling round the sharp points of her shoes. ‘I wanted to say –’ He raised his face, seeking mercy still, clutching the cheque book and pen.
‘I don't need money now, Peter,’ she hissed. ‘I'm making a list – income and outgoings, school fees, Theo's allowance – your lawyers will have it by next week.’
‘No – I –’ Peter clambered upright. The list was out of his pocket at last, sticking to his hot fingers.
‘And we're agreed about Christmas, aren't we? You'll be at Ashley House and I'll send the children down on Boxing Day by train. Theo will look after them. He's going to Clem's now. In fact, I think they all are. Will you go too?’
‘I don't know – I – Take this, please.’ Peter pressed the crumpled envelope into her hand.
She took it without a word and rammed it into a side pocket of her handbag.
“Bye, darlings.’ Peter kissed each of his daughters on the head, smelling, hungrily, the clean soft scent of their hair, the faint sweetness of their skin.
The others had moved closer to the picture now. Clem, still pink-faced, was laughing. Charlie had progressed from ‘blimey’ to ‘bloody hell’, while Serena was cocking her head in a brave effort to see art as opposed to her naked daughter. Theo was saying something about Clem being an actress after all. Ed chipped in with a quip about his sister's new job at the press office and what would she give him to keep quiet.
Peter watched it all with a hollow sense of banishment: as well as his wife, his family, he had lost his footing, his place, in the wider world. His glittering career seemed a cheap bauble compared to the riches he had thrown away. He wondered that he had ever prized it so much. And as for Ashley House, trying to wrest back the greatest gift he had ever made, what had he been thinking? Helen had been right – he should have tried to talk Charlie out of the scheme, not egged him on. Since the showdown his brother and sister-in-law had, typically, been warm and forgiving, insisting he still join them, with or without the children, for Christmas. But Peter, watching the animated group now clustered round the portrait of Clem, wasn't sure that he could stand to be there, bearing witness to all that had become irretrievable.
Keith liked having a desk, even though it was in a dingy room on the lower ground floor with two small windows so high and narrow that they reminded him of prison. At least people walked past them, shoes and ankles, dogs on leads, toddling children. Keith studied them all day, imagining the heads that went with the legs and the places they might be going.
The boredom was something else; staring at screens all day, watching for suspicious people and packages. The footage, running like some silent black and white movie, all looked suspect if you watched hard enough. No wonder he preferred the legs and the dogs, and the photograph of the boys – he looked at that a lot too. It sat facing him on his desk, a little window into the bit of the world that mattered, a daily reminder of what the drudgery was for. They had a good thing going now, the three of them, regular visits, football matches, mucking around in the park. At the cinema the previous Saturday Craig had held his hand, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen, like he didn't even know the whereabouts of his left arm, but Keith had known, all right – the little fingers gluey with popcorn, he'd wanted to squeeze the life out of them.
Keith had learnt not to look at the clock too much, especially not in the afternoons when time seemed to enter some slowed-down third dimension of its own. He wasn't supposed to smoke, but often did anyway, in the loos or perched near an open window, or to read anything but newspapers, so he had taken to doing crosswords and sudokus, saving them for the long haul after lunch. That day he had already filled in every grid on the coffee-break page and it was only four o'clock. Two sluggish hours remained till he knocked off; it was already so dark outside that the legs passing the window were a blur. The screens were lifeless too; the receptionist, the pot plant, the double doors, the lifts. It was enough to make anyone long for an armed robbery.
Then, suddenly, someone was on the screen, and not just someone either, but June, of all people, dolled up with her new platinum hair and a fur coat. Keith saw her stop and talk to the receptionist, and the next moment he could hear the clack of her heels on the stairs. He ran a hand through his straggly hair, straightened his desk, dropped the newspaper into the bin and reached for a pad of paper and a pen. By the time his ex-wife stuck her head round the door he was as poised and studious as an academic putting the finishing touches to a submission for the Nobel Prize.
‘Hey, there, can I barge in?’
‘June! This is a surprise.’
‘Well, presumably you saw me on one of those,’ she said, jerking a thumb at the three screens above his desk.
‘Yes, but it's still a surprise, isn't it?’ he snapped, not liking her point-scoring tone or that she had to see him cooped up in his miserable hole of a job.
‘Nice uniform.’
‘If you've come here to be rude you can fuck off right back up those stairs.’
‘No, I meant it – you look good.’ She wiped some invisible dust off a chair and sat down. ‘Can I smoke in here?’
Keith shook his head, rather relishing her disappointment. ‘What do you want, anyway?’ He tipped his chair back, inter-lacing his hands behind his head and thinking, as he studied her heavily made-up face, that going up in the world didn't necessarily mean getting better-looking or more nicely behaved. ‘It hope it's not about Saturday I've got the tickets now and I can't do the following weekend because I'm moving out of Irene's… Hey!’ He slammed the chair back to the ground and gripped the edge of the desk. ‘The boys are all right, aren't they?’
‘Yeah, they're fine.’ June shifted in her seat, pulling her coat more tightly round her, as if the place was cold instead of overheated. ‘Look, I won't muck you around, Keith. The fact is, I've got some news that you're not going to like. I don't like it much myself, to be honest. Are you sure I can't have a fag?’
He shook his head again and folded his arms, keeping his eyes fixed on her. ‘What sort of bad news?’
‘We're moving. Barry and I –’
He laughed. ‘What – to some fancy penthouse on the wharf?’
‘No, to Surrey.’ She tapped a cigarette out of a packet and rolled it between her fingers.
‘Surrey?’
‘Look, I know this is hard on you – you've just got settled with this job and the kids love having you around, but Barry's got this new investment and he needs to be there, and I've just found out I'm expecting, and you know how sick I get, and I just want to be settled as soon as I can.’ She put the cigarette into her mouth and took it out again. ‘There's a house going up every minute down there, Barry says. He's got in on this really big project. He says it's his big break.’
‘Barry's big break, is it? Well, good for Barry.’
‘I knew you'd be like that.’ She rammed the cigarette back into the packet and snapped her handbag shut.
‘Well, how the fuck did you expect me to be?’
‘You could be more positive for a start. It's not like we're leaving the country. You can see the kids whenever you want – Mum and Dad will want them too. I expect they'll spend half their holidays up here. Or…’ she hesitated ‘…
I suppose you could try your luck again down south.’
Keith was pressing his jaws together so hard that he could feel tiny vibrations shooting up and down his teeth. ‘I will NOT –’ he hit the desk as the word exploded out of him, like a gun going off ‘– spend the rest of my life following you and Barry around the fucking country like some rejected dog. I,’ he sat up straighter, tugging down his horrible stiff blue shirt, speaking calmly again, ‘am better than that.’
June was studying the nails on her right hand, raising her eyebrows as if she was seeing something extraordinary for the first time. ‘I know we had a… bad time down there what with the – your – but that was London and a long time ago and… well, Surrey wouldn't be too far from that woman you were keen on, would it?’
Keith breathed in and out very quickly. ‘What woman?’
‘Irene told me… not that it's my business.’
‘No, it's not your business.’
She stood up, smoothing down the glossy panels of her coat. ‘About me expecting, you don't mind, do you?’
‘Of course not. I'm pleased for you.’ He smiled wearily.
‘Keith, I don't want to move,’ she wailed suddenly, slumping down in the chair. ‘I love it up here, but I love Barry too, and he's not one to have his mind changed. In fact, I'm worried sick, if you must know, about starting somewhere new, getting the boys sorted into schools, having another kid. I'm so much older this time and I wasn't good, was I, at that early bit, all that crying and feeding – I got wrung out, didn't I?’
‘You'll be fine.’
For a few moments neither of them spoke. June looked at the floor, poking the point of her shoe at a ball of fluff. ‘You can have Craig and Neil to stay whenever you want. It'll be a help.’
‘I could take you to court, you know,’ Keith muttered. ‘I could claim my rights, sue for custody.’
‘Yeah,’ she replied softly, ‘but you won't, will you? Because you can't afford it and you'd lose, and you wouldn't want to put the kids through it. You've fucked up in many ways, Keith, but I know you love them.’
Keith walked home kicking at litter, blown from gutters and bins by strong winds, which had descended on the city like a sudden storm. He strode through the middle of it, his chin tucked into his jacket, feeling with each punch of cold air against his body as if his entire life was blowing off-course. To be whirled back down south, like a feather in a hurricane, spend another seven months looking for work, borrow money for a deposit on some poxy flat and without Irene to tide him over
– he couldn't do it, he just couldn't. Soul-destroying though the security job was, it paid pretty well. The girl on Reception was nice too – that week she'd even found some pretext for giving him her phone number. The flat he was moving to was lovely
– on the ground floor with a small back garden and a second bedroom, which had a bunk-bed and a bean-bag and plenty of wall space for football posters and its own basin on a pedestal in the corner. The boys had been especially excited about the basin, like it bestowed on the place the five-star status of a grand hotel. But even without that Keith was confident that his sons would want to come and stay, that the months of spending time together had paid off. Weekends, half-terms and holidays… He'd get his fair share. It wasn't ideal but, then, what was?
Keith aimed his toe at an empty can, sending it noisily into the gutter. Only a sad sheep of a man would choose the option of heading back down south; a man who couldn't forge his own way; a man who said one thing but meant another, who tried to close doors only to go knocking at them five minutes later, like some loser who'd changed his mind. Keith dug the can out of the gutter and kicked it again, harder, further away. His bloody sister! Bloody women, yakking to each other, running their own private grapevine as always.
Keith looked round for something else to kick, but the pavement was empty. He began to walk even faster, dimly seeking escape from the images now flooding his mind: his raised voice to Elizabeth in the pub all those weeks ago – my history not yours – and the unflinching gaze of those bottom-less blue Harrison eyes, all sad and unafraid, like she knew the anger was about his own lack of courage more than the misery of letting her go.
Irene had made shepherd's pie for tea, with peas and carrots. She had set the table nicely with mats and two bottles of Coke, caps off and ready next to the ketchup. Since he had found the flat she had been a lot kinder, showing more care, like she could manage affection now that the end of the need to show it was in sight.
Having served the pie, Irene reached for a small pile of envelopes and dropped them on Keith's side-plate. ‘There's a card from your pal Stephen – palm trees and that. He's landed on his feet.’
Keith glanced at the post, too glum still to be curious.
‘You'll have to fill in one of those forms for the post office, tell them your new address.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ Keith ate steadily. The pie was good, the mince soft and tasty.
‘Aren't you going to read it?
‘I presume you have already.’
‘I have not,’ Irene cried, her voice flaring with triumph and indignation. After all she had eked out of him about the shenanigans of his old schoolfriend's private life it had taken considerable self-restraint to shuffle the postcard back into the pile. ‘Go on, you pillock, look at the bloody thing, won't you? There was an interesting letter too,’ she added slyly, ‘handwritten, with a Sussex postcode.’
‘Quite the Sherlock Holmes, aren't we?’ said Keith, testily, setting down his cutlery and picking up the letters. He found the postcard first. The picture was, as his sister had remarked, of the archetypal beach – two palm trees on white sand that curled towards a turquoise sea. The writing was crammed and small, so smudged in places that it was hard to read.
Keith, as I expect you've heard by now, the wedding's off. Sorry for not telling you myself – had a lot to sort out. Main feeling now is good riddance – those bloody Harrisons, how they love getting under people's skins. We're well out of it, believe me. Have everything here a man could wish for – sun, sand, sea, great sex – apart, that is, from a good mate. Am researching a new book and making arrangements to stay a while. Why not come and join me? If money's a problem, I'd be happy to help out. We'd have a laugh. Life isn't a dress rehearsal, is it? Give me a call (have put number at top). Best, Steve. PS Bring teabags, and the odd tin of baked beans wouldn't go amiss either.
‘What does he say?’
Keith shrugged and handed the card to his sister. ‘Wants me to go and stay with him – says he'll pay.’
‘Bloody hell! You jammy thing – how fantastic! Let's see.’ Irene scanned the postcard greedily while Keith, with as much insouciance as he could manage, rummaged for the other letter, the one with the Sussex postmark. He had to look twice, as it was in a brown envelope, like everything else in the pile, and addressed in such small, tidy block capitals that at first glance it looked printed.
Watching him, Irene groaned. ‘You drive me mad, do you know that? Open the bloody thing or I'll do it for you.’
‘Go on, then.’ He offered her the envelope.
‘Don't be like that.’ She made a face, uncertain whether he was teasing or cross. He had been so moody lately it was hard to tell.
‘You obviously think my life is an open book, so go on, take it, read it, tell me what it says.’ He thrust the envelope under her chin.
Ignoring the gesture, Irene dropped her cutlery and folded her arms. ‘And what's that supposed to mean exactly?’
‘Gossiping with June… I tell you, Irene, I don't need it.’ Keith withdrew the envelope.
Irene rammed the lid back on to the ketchup bottle and stood up, venting her anger in the screech of her chair on the kitchen floor. ‘Yeah, I talk to June a bit. So what? She's all right, is June. She put up with – with a lot, after all, didn't she?’ She paused, pursing her lips as her brother flinched. The accident and its consequences were a no-go area and, in a balanced frame of mind, she respected
that. Keith had paid his dues, after all – two years inside, losing everything, having to start from scratch. ‘You and June might have gone your separate ways,’ she continued steadily, ‘but I still like her and, believe it or not, I still like you. All I want is for both of you to sort yourselves out and move on… to be happy,’ she snarled, seizing her plate and dumping it with a clatter in the sink as she stomped out of the room.
Keith moaned softly to himself. The little brown letter had a smear of tomato sauce on it now, like blood from a pricked finger. Wearily, he tore open the flap and peered inside. It wasn't a letter, just a newspaper cutting with messy, jagged edges and a ring of red felt-tip highlighting a couple of lines:
Full-time gardener and handyman required for local country house with 15 acres. Accommodation provided. Non-smoker preferred. Excellent references essential.
Having thundered up the stairs, Irene was now thundering down them and along the hall. A moment later the front door slammed, making the pots and pans jangle on their hooks above the stove. Carefully Keith picked up the postcard and laid it next to the advert, which he had known at once was for Ashley House. Walking home he had felt bludgeoned and powerless. Now, with his head still full of June's news and these two items of post laid before him, Keith experienced the even more daunting sensation of a man standing at a crossroads, staring up at the dark arms of a signpost. He wasn't powerless: he had choices, which was good in a way, but also very bad, since each option was so different and so certain to cause him pain.
The Simple Rules of Love Page 53