Close Relations

by Deborah Moggach

  The body in her arms had grown heavy. Erin had fallen asleep.

  Three

  SOME THINGS ARE easily sorted out. Tyres, for instance. They were sorted out by ten-thirty Monday morning and paid for in cash. A transaction was completed and Gordon – showered, though still wearing Sunday’s clothes – drove along to the Dawlish Road site where Frank stood stony-faced beside a skip.

  ‘We should’ve been out of here by the end of the week,’ Frank said. ‘More like the end of the bloody year. Bob’s not here, Len’s taken it into his mind not to turn up, I’ve got nobody to do the plastering. And what were you supposed to be doing at my place last night?’

  ‘Look Frank, I’m sorry –’

  Suddenly, Frank grinned. He was a volatile man, his moods changed at the throw of a switch. ‘Just hope she was worth it.’

  ‘It’s not like that –’

  ‘It’s okay. Your secret’s safe with me.’ Frank turned and went into the house.

  ‘It’s not –’

  ‘You old devil. Who’d have believed it?’

  It’s stupendous, the effort we make when we are trying to avoid the truth. There is something heroic about it. All that energy we expend, the excuses we create for ourselves, if we plugged them into the national grid we could light up a city with our self-delusion. What did Gordon persuade himself? That April needed help of the practical nature that only he could supply. That he was only doing a job – unpaid, of course, but if you cannot bring yourself to help out a nurse what sort of human being are you? That it wouldn’t take long anyway, five days maximum. That if the jobs weren’t done now conditions would only get worse – that leaking connection under the sink, for instance, the water was seeping under the lino, if they waited any longer April would have wet rot to contend with. He told himself that he needed to use up some half-finished buckets of trade emulsion – yes, he even told himself that. He told himself he was doing nothing wrong.

  He also told himself, edging nearer danger, that April had been treated so badly by her brute of a boyfriend – and indeed by the boyfriend who had preceded him – that she deserved a little kindness to restore her faith in the male sex. Her father had deserted her; Gordon himself had been deserted by his daughters through the natural process of their growing-up. The lives of two of them were virtually incomprehensible to him and even Louise, the closest to him emotionally, was geographically distant and was sealed into a lifestyle that made him feel clumsy and inadequate. After his visits to her he felt exhausted, as if he had had to spend a day in the wrong, tightly fitting clothes.

  Edging into even more dangerous territory, he told himself that it was invigorating to develop a friendship with somebody who liked him for himself, or who seemed to; someone in whose company he felt utterly himself, yet somehow renewed – a better Gordon, whom he himself recognised but nobody else seemed to. What an adventure: to be admitted into somebody else’s life, to start afresh with somebody who laughed at his jokes, even for the limited period – five days, a week, maximum – that he told himself it would take.

  He told himself this, not at home – for some reason he didn’t want to think about April when Dorothy was in the room – but when he was in the car, driving from one job to another. He was supposed to be taking it easy, he was forbidden to lift any heavy weights, and this gave him the excuse never to stay anywhere long. Besides, he was restless and could only feel at ease when he was alone in the traffic.

  And, of course, when he switched off his phone nobody knew where he was. The boss of a building firm is always somewhere else. On the road, out and about. That is what they’re like, isn’t it?

  ‘Where is he?’ Dorothy asked Frank on the phone. It was Wednesday.

  ‘He’s with Jeremy Dawson, I reckon.’ Dawson and Associates were the architects at Elephant and Castle.

  ‘I’ve rung them. I’ve been trying to get hold of him all day.’

  ‘Said he had some errands to run. You know Gordon.’

  ‘I’ve got to talk to him about the planning permission refusal. I’ve had the Simmondses on the phone all morning.’

  ‘Haven’t seen him all day. Maybe he’s gone to Sidcup.’ There was a timber yard there.

  ‘I spoke to Mavis. He hasn’t been.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s fine.’

  Later, when he looked back on it, that week had the weightlessness of a spell. Someone else had set it in motion; he floated helplessly, blown like thistle-down by a powerful force. He felt disconnected from the outside world, from the clamouring tasks and responsibilities, as if he were sealed away in hospital, but this time without the pain.

  The sun shone, warm for November. It glowed above the turreted roof-tops of the shops opposite; it blessed him as he stroked the creamy-yellow paint onto April’s walls. There was a fairy-tale innocence about those days. In the next room April lay sleeping. She was working nights, that week, and had given him the key. He unlocked the door to find her tucked up in bed, her uniform hung over the chair like the empty skin of a chrysalis. During the hours of darkness, when he had slept, she had guarded a wardful of souls and dreamed about her father. She was Gordon’s own daughter, polished brown, made strange and strangely familiar, returned to him.

  That was how he felt about her; that was allowed, wasn’t it? That was why he had tiptoed into her bedroom to check if she was still breathing, to see the miracle of her, as he had tiptoed into his daughters’ rooms when they were little. April’s possessions, as she lay there unconscious of them, grew dear to him – her Van Gogh poster, her fluffy toys, the blue-glass bottles she had brought back from a holiday in Venice. (She had gone there on a weekend package with a group of Geordies who had drunk themselves into a stupor. She said, ‘I wish I’d been in love.’) In the bathroom her tights lay over the towel-rail; in the kitchen her jars, filled with tea-bags and sugar, each according to its label, brought tears to his eyes.

  The lounge, on the other hand, was stripped of her personality. He had moved the furniture into the middle of the room and covered it with dust-sheets. It smelled of paint, the aroma of his working life, and of renewal. Her past had been stripped away like the blistered gloss on the window-frames. He had filled the cracks; he was painting her a bright new future where anything was possible, creamy-yellow emulsion (Hint of Buttercup) over the terracotta of her former life.

  It was Thursday morning. There was only one wall left to paint. Gordon dipped his brush into the pot. His hand moved, it had a life of its own. It wrote I LOVE YOU.

  Gordon gazed at the letters. They were large and lopsided, trailing off at the end. A drop slid down from the O, down the wall to the skirting-board. Outside, a bus passed. The sounds in the street were suddenly distinct – a shout of laughter, the rattle of a delivery to the off-licence nearby. He stood there weightlessly, hearing the life of the city beyond the street, beyond the streets beyond. In the room he heard the floorboards sighing, or maybe the sound came from within his own body.

  Gordon plunged his brush into the paint-pot. When April woke up – the creak of the bedroom door, the flush of the toilet – when she came into the room the words had long since been obliterated.

  ‘Where have you been all day?’

  ‘Just out and about.’

  ‘There’re about ten messages here. If you’d phoned in I could have dealt with them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love. The traffic was terrible.’

  ‘Frank’s livid. You were supposed to meet the surveyor at three.’

  ‘I was?’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Went down the Tottenham Court Road. Looked at some office systems. You said that printer’s driving you round the bend.’

  ‘Are you all right, Gordon? Is anything the matter?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  On Friday afternoon Gordon had finished. The room looked larger and more gracious. Classy, they agreed. April helped him rearrange the furniture.

  ‘It looks great,’ she said. ‘Ever thought
of taking it up professionally?’

  He wiped his hands on his overalls. ‘Someone did suggest it once. I said I’d stick with the brain surgery.’

  She laughed, and pointed to the window. ‘You’ve showed me up. Have to get new curtains now. Don’t those look grungy?’

  ‘There’s this bloke I know, can get them for you at cost –’

  ‘Gordon! You’ve done enough. Aren’t they saying things at work?’

  He looked up at the ceiling. ‘There’s a bit there I’ve missed –’

  ‘Stop it!’ She took his arm. ‘Sit down.’

  She went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle and two glasses.

  ‘It’s only sparkling Australian,’ she said.

  ‘They’re the worst, the sparkling ones. You stay away from them.’

  She chuckled. He loved her chuckle, it was deep and surprisingly rude. He untwisted the wire and pushed out the cork with his thumbs.

  They drank. The sun, a red disk, slid below the buildings opposite. Down in the street the rush-hour traffic swelled murmurously. Over decades of Friday afternoons he had fought his way through it, alternately blaring his horn or lavishly beckoning out cars from the side streets – as a driver he had always had an emotional relationship with the other vehicles on the road. He had struggled home to Purley, exhausted, only to gather himself together at seven a.m. on Monday morning to start the whole thing again.

  ‘I’m dying for a cigarette,’ she said.

  ‘Ssh.’

  ‘How long’s it going to last?’ she asked.

  He looked at her. She wore a navy-blue tracksuit. In the past, he hadn’t found tracksuits appealing. ‘That’s up to you,’ he replied.

  ‘It’s up to both of us.’

  Did she mean the smoking? She drained her glass, got up and went to the window. ‘I look at people sometimes,’ she said. ‘Out there, I look at them and think – don’t they know what’s going on inside them, what a miracle it is? It doesn’t matter what an idiot someone is, how stupid or selfish, still their bodies go on digesting, pumping . . . the aortic valves, the gut, the lungs, working like the clappers. However wicked we are, our bodies still go on sterilising and cleaning, balancing fluids and electrolytes, defending us from infection . . . however bad we’ve been our bodies will always forgive us . . . Heart-breaking, isn’t it?’ She turned round. ‘You look after yourself, see?’

  He picked up his jacket. She put her arms around him and hugged him, her cheek pressed against his. And then somehow their heads turned and they were kissing. How soft her lips were, how sweet the taste of her tongue! He felt a dam unblocking. The water gushed through, flooding him.

  They disentangled themselves. He was trembling.

  ‘Think I’d better go,’ he said. He picked up his things and left.

  That weekend the weather changed. The wind swung to the north, the temperature plummeted. Sleet blew across the streets, sending people scuttling for shelter. Trains were delayed, leaving passengers stamping their feet on station platforms. Freezing fog brought the Ml to a standstill. Torrential rain caused chaos in Southern Europe, and out in the Gulf of Mexico a hurricane tore across the Windward Isles, leaving behind a trail of wreckage. Yet New York was enjoying its warmest November since records began. The experts were baffled. As the century drew to its close, nature flexed herself and made the earth tremble.

  Outside The Birches, the garden was frozen as if the gear of the past had locked and life would never get started again. Gordon moved slowly around the house. It was Saturday. Dorothy was away, visiting an aged aunt who had broken her hip. Gordon gazed at the dishwasher but he hadn’t the energy to open it and put in his dirty plates. The paper lay unread, its Saturday supplements still folded within it. The house felt chilly. He wandered around, putting his hand on the radiators. Was April’s central heating working all right? He had forgotten to bleed her rads.

  He gazed out at the houses opposite – detached, half-timbered. Their inhabitants were supposed to be familiar to him – they were his neighbours, for God’s sake. The Bosworths, who had lived there as long as he had; the Dorrells, whose son used to borrow his jump-leads to start his car. For over twenty years Gordon had lived there and yet time seemed to have telescoped; his street was as alien as when he had first arrived.

  He stood on the upstairs landing, looking into the girls’ bedrooms. His wife had long ago taken over Prudence’s, which faced south, and had installed her sewing machine there. Heaps of washing were stacked on the ironing board; Dorothy always put off the ironing until there was something good on the radio. The other two rooms had long ago lost all traces of their occupants. It was as if his daughters had never existed. Their childhood seemed to have passed in a flash; they had simply perched in this house like migrating birds.

  He went downstairs. He thought: it happens all the time. Married man falls for younger woman. The papers are full of it. However, this description didn’t fit him. What he felt was more complicated than that, more profound. It was as if he had lived his life in monochrome and now, suddenly, he was experiencing colour. Had he felt like this long ago, when he had first met Dorothy? He couldn’t remember it. His body ached with desire – yes, he could admit it. But it was more than lust. It was as if a door had opened and out there, beyond it, the world was sunnier and more intense. If he surrendered himself up and stepped through the door, then anything was possible.

  Oh, it was more than that, he hadn’t the words for it. He was unused to thinking like this; by the evening he felt as if he had been heaving sacks of cement all day. Dorothy was staying away overnight. He was alone. He didn’t put on the TV; it seemed too brash an intrusion, Anthea Turner yacking at him. He chewed some spearmint gum. April had given him a packet to help him stop smoking. He felt like a gum-chewing imposter in his own home. He put on a CD – a Mozart piano concerto that Prudence had given him. Most of his collection consisted of Broadway hits. Nowadays it was Mozart, however, who spoke to his heart.

  Rubbing his neck – it ached from painting April’s ceiling – Gordon pulled open a cupboard and took out the photo albums. He opened one. Dorothy stood on the steps of their first flat – how many years ago? Nearly half a century. She held the baby Louise in her arms. He closed the album and opened another. He looked at a holiday snapshot of his three daughters. Wearing their swimsuits, they sat around the table outside the caravan. They gazed at the camera warily as if, all those years ago, they already suspected him of one day betraying them.

  He closed the book. He had done nothing yet – just told some harmless lies and concocted some small alibis. Already, however, his soul had left this house. Closed in their plastic albums, his children could sense that. Even the furniture looked accusing. The street lamp shone into the room – he hadn’t drawn the curtains and made the room cosy, he hadn’t Dorothy’s home-making instincts. The place felt unlived-in. He was a lone man, roaming through rooms that no longer belonged to him. Every bone in his body ached for April; he longed to pick up the phone and speak to her. He knew he must resist the temptation. He must forget about her and remove her from his life.

  Outside, the land was locked into its own paralysis. Indoors, Gordon, who didn’t know how to get through the evening, sat at his desk and toyed with his paperwork. He had some inner prompting to put his things in order, as a man does when he has been told he is going to die.

  Out beyond Beaconsfield the hills were dusted with white. Robert, driving in his BMW, skidded on some ice and nearly ended up in a ditch, like the badger. Imogen stayed in her bedroom copying out her friend Sandra’s notes on Cold Comfort Farm. It was the only set book she liked; in general she found her A levels a struggle. Jamie had sailed through his, which of course only made it worse. It wasn’t fair, him being tall and blond whilst she was stunted and dark. If she didn’t shave them, her legs would be practically as hairy as her father’s. Could Karl really find her attractive? For the twentieth time she opened her Student’s Guide to the Ancient W
orld and took out the photo. Karl, his eyebrows raised, stared at her. Depending on her mood, his expression changed. Sometimes he looked at her with such ardency that her bowels melted. Sometimes he looked as if he had seen a ghost.

  She drew the photo to her and kissed it. His mouth opened against hers, his breathing quickened. She ran her finger along his stubbly cheek. She replayed the moment when his hand had reached into her lap for a chip. At the time she had sat there rigidly, waiting for something else to happen. Now, faint with desire, she could make him do exactly what she wanted.

  On Monday it was still bitterly cold. Gordon got up at seven, as usual. He ate breakfast with his wife – cornflakes and toast, no more fry-ups. He went to work. He drove a new plasterer over to Orpington to put in a day on a flat conversion. He picked up some brochures for fitted kitchens and delivered them to Frank, who made some suggestive remarks at his expense. He dropped in on Farleigh Road, where a lone chippie worked on a job that should have been finished weeks before.

  His phone rang. It was Mrs Malik. She asked after his health and then said that she was worried about her pipes bursting. It gave him a jolt to hear her voice – the last voice he had heard before the trap-door had opened and he had been flooded with light. As she twittered down the phone – she was one of his more anxious customers – he felt a wave of fondness for her.

  The afternoon dragged by. Gordon willed it to end. On the other hand, playing for time, he urged it to go on for ever. He told himself that it was a normal Monday. After work he would go home to his wife, eat a meal, put his feet up. Those who worked with him noticed no difference. He was the same old Gordon – brisk, fidgety, jokey. None of them noticed – why should they? – when at four-thirty he made his decision.

  He was standing on a landing, halfway up the stairs in the house they were renovating in Dawlish Road. Down in the basement there was the sound of hammering. Gordon took out his phone and pressed his home number.