by Rosie Thomas
‘We’ll write to them,’ a girl said. ‘We’ll do everything you told us. Please, take our names anyway, won’t you? There’s no other way me and Keith can get a house of our own, not near here.’
Harriet took their names, writing them down on a page in her notebook. She saw Alison at the back of the crowd, seeming to nod in approval.
The questions persisted for more than an hour. At last, seemingly all of a sudden, the last people filtered away and the hall was empty. Only Alison was left, sitting in the front row with her legs stuck out in front of her.
What now? Harriet was thinking. Just what has all this gained us?
Then the doors banged open once more, and Miss Bowlly reappeared like the bad fairy. With all four of them staring at her she traversed the hall again and positioned herself squarely in front of Harriet.
Harriet found her voice and the initiative. ‘Have you come to tell me you’re ready to sell, Miss Bowlly?’
‘All right,’ Miss Bowlly answered, gracious to the end.
It was a brief meeting and exchange of promises. When Anthony had courteously escorted the old lady back to the door, Harriet sank back into her chair in unbelieving exhaustion. It was David who slapped his hand on the trestle table and gave a crow of triumph.
‘I think Miss Bowlly’s just handed the deal to us,’ Anthony said.
Harriet sagged in her chair. She was surprised to see the delight in the three faces. Now the performance was over the adrenalin was seeping away. Even with Miss Bowlly, did they have enough?
‘Will they come round to us?’ she asked. ‘Do you think they will?’
It was Alison who answered. ‘Listen. I believed in Birdwood, as if it was already there. I felt I could walk down the streets and admire all the houses, as if I could touch all the good brick walls …’ she glanced at David, and it was a glance that Harriet even in her lowness interpreted as flirtatious, ‘… even pick the flowers in the damned gardens. Everyone else in this room believed in it too. They imagined it and they loved it. You could have collected down-payments on a couple of streets full of houses at least, if you’d only asked for them. I’d probably have parted with real money myself, and I don’t need part-ownership of a two-bedroomed cottage in the authentic Kentish vernacular style. I’ve got a nose for these things as good as old Miss Bowlly’s. Birdwood’ll make your fortune. Your second fortune, of course.’
Harriet knew that she was joking, but that there was a mixture of truth in what she said.
She reminded them, ‘There’s a long, long way to go yet.’ But she found that her spirits were rising once again. The euphoria was infectious. And she had Miss Bowlly. Miss Bowlly was what she needed, more than all the goodwill in Everden.
‘We covered a good distance tonight,’ Anthony said. They all smiled, dazedly, acknowledging it.
‘So let’s go and have a drink on it. Come back to the cottage,’ Alison invited.
They took down the posters and the big photographs and the REACTION AGAINST BOTTRILL IS ACTION FOR EVERDEN banner, and stacked the chairs once more, leaving the hall all ready, just as the committee had stipulated, for the use of the playgroup the next morning. The last job of the evening was performed by David, who extracted a set of flat-packed boards from under the stage and re-erected the Wendy house.
Then they went back to Alison’s cottage and drank whisky, growing noisier and readier to laugh as the bottle emptied. Alison watched David Howkins, carefully estimating the exact degree of her attraction to him. She also saw that he only looked at Harriet. A little later she stood up and when she had turned away from the group the corners of her mouth pinched in, compressing her lips, so that she looked older and disappointed. Then she opened a cupboard and took out a second bottle of whisky. She poured herself another measure, and when she sat down she was laughing again.
In the time before the planning committee meeting, Linda came home from school to stay for a weekend with Harriet. To settle it, there had been elaborate four-way telephone negotiations between Harriet, Ronny Page, Clare Mellen’s secretary in California and Caspar.
‘She so much wants to come,’ Caspar said.
Harriet listened to his resonant voice. It was unmuffled by the miles between them, but there seemed to be longer silences between their careful words than could be explained by the distance.
‘I’d like to see her.’
‘You’ve a way with the kid. She listens to what you say. Always did, since that first godawful day.’ Caspar laughed at the memory, without self-criticism.
Harriet wanted to cut through the whisky bluster. She could imagine him, at the wide window with the view over Los Angeles to the Pacific, and the diamond pool glimmering outside. She knew just what level in the bottle he had reached, and she felt neither affection nor sympathy for him.
‘She listens to whoever takes the trouble to talk to her. Linda will be okay. How are you, Caspar?’
‘Good. I’m looking at a couple of ideas.’
‘I mean, about the accident.’
The longer silence again, before he said easily, ‘That’s all been handled.’
Harriet could imagine the lawyers and the agents, the calls and the deals, and the ears of the right policemen and deputy prosecutors that would have been employed in the handling. The discreet money and handshakes and silence.
‘That’s all right, then,’ she said, tonelessly.
‘And you, Harriet?’
Even at this distance, even knowing what she did, his warmth and charm seemed to touch her. She answered, more expansively than she had intended. ‘I’ve got a new project, too. A kind of property deal, a community development.’ She told him about Birdwood, and the tense wait for the news of the planning committee decision. ‘If Bottrill gets the outline permission, that’s the end. If he’s turned down, we can submit our own scheme.’
Caspar said, ‘It always was business that turned you on, Harriet, wasn’t it?’
She could have bitten back, Not just business. You did, until I knew better. But she did not. She let the silence speak. There was no warmth, after all.
‘You and Linda enjoy yourselves, won’t you?’
‘I’ll take good care of her. Goodbye, Caspar.’
That was all.
Harriet collected Linda from the school on a Friday evening. She was to deliver her back again on Sunday afternoon, in time for tea.
‘Two whole days,’ Linda chanted. ‘Two whole days freedom. What shall we do?’
Linda was taller and thinner. The unflattering uniform dress was too short for her, and her collarbones showed at the neck of her maroon sweater. She had been wearing her hair in regulation off-the-collar bunches, but as soon as Harriet drove out of the school gates she pulled out the maroon hair-ribbons and banished them to the winds out of the car window. Harriet caught sight of them out of the corner of her eye, whipping away over the hedge.
‘For God’s sake, Linda. What we will have to do now is spend two days combing John Lewis’s for exactly the right shade of ribbon to replace those you’ve just chucked over the hedge.’
Linda laughed. ‘Arabella Makepeace’s got about twenty yards. I’ll snip a teeny bit off the end of hers and she’ll never notice the difference.’
‘Poor Arabella Makepeace. Still the unknowing provider, is she?’
‘Still the total pain in the ass.’
Linda seemed older too, with a new veneer of confidence acquired with the bewildering speed that Harriet assumed was normal at her chameleon age. It seemed much longer than the bare year since Linda had crept out of the privet hedge, defiant and miserable, to confront Robin and herself. Harriet wanted to look hard at her, studying the new angles and shadows in her face, but she kept her eyes firmly on the road.
‘I haven’t seen you properly since the day we went to Santa Monica,’ Linda said.
‘It was a good day,’ Harriet agreed.
It was a measure of Linda’s new maturity that she let the rest of the Los Angeles
topic lie quiet between them. There would be time to come back to it, proper time, not now in the car bowling towards Hampstead against the weekend traffic.
When they came in through Harriet’s gate, Linda shuffled a sideways kick at the privet and giggled. Harriet laughed too, and put one arm around her shoulders. They went up the steps and into the flat together.
Harriet had come up from Everden only that morning, in time to stock the refrigerator and make up the spare bed. To her the rooms felt chilly and unwelcoming. But Linda looked round at the pale walls and unobjectionable pictures with an admiring sigh.
‘I really love your apartment,’ she said.
‘Do you?’ Harriet was startled. In comparison with the house at Little Shelley, even this neglected place must seem homely, she thought. ‘I … went off it, for a while. I’ve been staying with a friend of mine, in the country. But I like it when you’re here.’
Harriet had planned the evening’s entertainment. They were going to the cinema, and then to have a Chinese supper. Linda had said that she loved Chinese food.
They were all ready to leave when the telephone rang. It was David, needing to talk about an aspect of financing the Birdwood scheme. Harriet sat down at her desk table at once, and drew some papers towards her.
Behind her back Linda stood waiting in silence. After a moment or two she crossed to the window and stared out, resting her forehead against the glass.
The conversation lasted for about eight minutes. When it was over, Harriet cheerfully said, ‘Sorry about that. Shall we go now?’ Then she turned to look at Linda. The scowl that met her was an exact replica of the first expression she had seen, in Annunziata Landwith’s drawing room.
‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I thought now you didn’t work for Peacocks any more it wouldn’t be business all the time. This is our weekend. I really looked forward to it.’
Harriet was angry. ‘I didn’t work for Peacocks. I made it. It was mine and I lost it, and that hurt me. I don’t expect you to understand what happened, but you’re old enough to know what loss means.
‘Now, I’m telling you that I’m trying to set up a new business. It’s work, yes, but I do what I do because I enjoy it, because everyone needs to do something, because if I don’t I’m like nothing. Like an empty bag. Can you understand that, Linda?’
She paused, then, realising that she was shouting, surprised by the heat of her own response. She rubbed the back of her hand against her mouth, to contain the unnecessarily harsh words.
‘If you like being here, if you like me, you’d better accept that work’s a part of me. There is no me without it. You’ll be spending weekends with a paper bag.’
The attempt at lightness was too late, and lame-sounding.
Linda clenched her fists. ‘You’ll have no time for me.’
In her fear and indignation, the words came out as a squawk. Harriet heard in them all the resentment and bitterness at her parents’ neglect.
‘Oh, Linda.’
She ran to her and tried to hold her. Linda struggled away but Harriet dug her fingers into the child’s hair and twisted her head so that she was forced to look at her.
‘You’re hurting me.’
‘Listen then.’
Linda was crying now. Unwilling tears smeared her cheeks.
‘I have got time tor you. I have, I always will. But you have to have time for me too. It has to be mutual. That’s what adult relationships are.’
Harriet thought, the hypocrisy of it. As if I were an expert. She guided Linda to a sofa and made her sit down, still within the circle of her arms.
‘I promise I will always have time for you, if you have time for me. Having time for me means accepting my work, what I do, as part of me. We can’t cut the nice bits out of each other and ignore the rest. If we could, I’d keep all your fun and liveliness and cut out the scowling and the ribbon-throwing. But we can’t do that. I take calls, you have tantrums. Shall we agree to go on as we are?’
Linda sniffed furiously, but she accepted the handkerchief that Harriet gave her. Harriet waited, pointedly.
At last Linda mumbled, ‘It’s our weekend. I looked forward to it.’
‘I looked forward to it too. It still is our weekend, unless you wreck it. Come on. Crispy fried duck, remember?’
‘I’m not a baby. You don’t have to bribe me with things to eat.’ Linda lifted her head and looked Harriet straight in the eye. ‘Is he your latest boyfriend?’
Harriet was momentarily bewildered. ‘Who?’
‘Him. David.’
She had said, Hello, David, of course. ‘It was a private conversation, Linda.’
‘I was standing four feet away, wasn’t I? You didn’t ask me to leave the room, did you?’
‘No, I suppose I didn’t.’
‘Is he?’
It was, Harriet reflected, the exact opposite. Their relationship had continued to make reverse progress from personal to professional. It was now conducted upon an entirely bloodless business footing.
‘No, he isn’t. I don’t have anybody, at the moment, as it happens.’
‘Hmm.’ Linda rubbed her eyes with the handkerchief and screwed her nose up into a snout before blowing it thoroughly. ‘That may be the problem, you know. A woman needs a man. Everyone knows that.’
‘Then everyone is adopting a very old-fashioned and inaccurate view,’ Harriet snapped. ‘I’m surprised at you, Linda, for thinking anything of the kind. Now. Are we going to the cinema, or not?’
Linda’s dignity was restored. With pursed lips and sceptical expression she went to fetch her jumper. ‘Whatever you say, Harriet,’ she murmured.
Harriet hid her amusement, and her relief. They went off to the pictures arm in arm.
On Saturday they went to the market at Camden Lock that Linda loved, and came home with armfuls of T-shirts and a small pair of Doc Marten’s.
‘Are you sure people wear these?’ Harriet had asked doubtfully.
‘Sure I’m sure. You’re brilliant, you know, Harriet. Ronny will only buy me those stupid sandals with sunburst holes in the toes. Like in some dumb school story from nineteen-fifty-something. But you understand.’
‘Some things.’ Harriet remembered her own battles with Kath over miniskirts and Twiggy lashes. The memory made her laugh.
‘Actually,’ Linda said seriously, ‘you understand about most things. I’m, you know, sorry about last night. I guess it was unreasonable of me, was it?’
‘About as unreasonable as it was for me to shout back at you. So I’m sorry, as well.’
Abruptly, Linda said, ‘Do you miss my dad? I wish it could have worked out. You’d’ve been my stepmom, and I’d really have loved that.’
Harriet tried for the right words. Linda was perceptive, and she didn’t delude herself with unrealistic hopes. She said would have. ‘I miss him a lot. I’ve never known anyone like your father; I don’t think there is anyone like him. I miss his voice, and the way he talks, and his energy, and his sense of humour. All kinds of different things about him. But will you understand what I’m saying if I tell you that all the things didn’t add up to make a necessary whole? Not for me. Nor did I for him, you know.’
‘Some things about him you didn’t love.’ Linda was resigned. Her realism touched Harriet more deeply than the tears had done. She did examine her small face now. The expression was earnest, not despondent.
‘No,’ Harriet said gently.
Linda considered. ‘I understand. You know you said about not believing that a woman needs a man?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought about it. I think some women do. Like Clare; you know, as if there’s no show without a man there to watch it? But you’re not like that. When I think about you I don’t think about you being a woman. You’re just a person.’
‘Thank you. I accept that as a compliment,’ Harriet said, meaning it.
‘That’s OK. Shall we do the cooking, now?’
&
nbsp; Linda had announced that she wanted to learn to cook. Harriet had protested that she was hardly the person to enlist as a teacher, but Linda was adamant. She said she loved the way the kitchen was a real part of Harriet’s apartment. In the Bel Air house, she said, Mercedes didn’t like her to go in the kitchen at all, and when Caspar was at Little Shelley there wasn’t any chance to cook.
‘He can make all kinds of food, though. He’s really good at it.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Harriet said.
So they had agreed that they would have supper at home à deux, and Linda would prepare it under Harriet’s direction. Between them they had settled on grilled lemon chicken and stuffed baked apples as a menu Harriet felt they might reasonably manage. Linda put on an apron and pushed back the sleeves of her new T-shirt. Together they laid out the ingredients. Linda put a tape in Harriet’s cassette machine and hummed exuberantly.
‘Watch that knife, it’s sharp,’ Harriet warned her, as she attacked a handful of fresh herbs from the market.
‘I can handle it,’ Linda answered patiently.
They worked side by side, comfortable with one another. Harriet hoped that Linda found the same satisfaction in their collaboration as she was discovering for herself.
When the telephone rang Harriet assumed that at six o’clock on a Saturday evening it would be Jane, or Jenny, or perhaps Alison. Unthinkingly, she lifted the receiver from the wall next to the work-top in a buttery hand.
‘Harriet?’ a man’s voice answered. ‘This is Martin Landwith.’
It was so unexpected that Harriet could only repeat, conventionally, ‘Hello. How are you?’
Months had passed since she had spoken to him. Her dispatch from Peacocks had been entirely organised by Robin; Martin had written her a carefully worded letter of sympathy afterwards.
‘Very well, thank you. Harriet, Annunziata is with some friends of ours in Hampstead, and I’m meeting her there for dinner. It’s not very far from where you are, I believe. May I drop in and see you for fifteen minutes on the way past?’