Kind of Cruel

by Sophie Hannah

  I dump our coats on the nearest chair, head for the kitchen and nearly trip over Neil, emerging from the downstairs loo with his phone clamped to his ear. ‘That doesn’t come into it,’ he says. ‘You know how it works: you tender for a job, you quote an all-in price. If it takes you longer than you thought it would, you don’t get to come back and ask for more money. You suck it up.’ He makes rude gestures at his phone for my benefit. There’s a crash from upstairs. We both look up, see the ceiling shake. Neil eyes the door of the downstairs loo as if he’s considering going back in there.

  I wasn’t expecting him to be here. I don’t normally see him when I come round on Wednesdays; he usually works late. Isn’t it a bit inconsiderate of him to come home when there’s obviously no room for him in his house? I watch from the narrow hall as he starts to climb the stairs, then, after another thud and a cry of ‘Kirsty!’ from Hilary, thinks better of it and comes back down. He has nowhere to take his argumentative phone call; Jo is in the kitchen, calling out for me to join her, Quentin and Sabina are talking in the lounge, the children are making a racket in the dining room.

  I remember asking Neil what he did, when Luke first introduced me to him and Jo. ‘I’ve got my own little company,’ he said affectionately, as if he was talking about a poodle or a hamster. ‘We make window films.’

  ‘What, like Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock?’ I said. It was a stupid joke.

  ‘No-o-o,’ said Jo with exaggerated patience, rolling her eyes at Neil conspiratorially. ‘Alfred Hitchcock made Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. We’ve never heard that one before, have we, Neil?’

  When I asked Luke about it later, he admitted he hadn’t noticed Neil’s puzzled expression, the way he’d looked at Jo when she’d said that, his answer to her supposed-to-be-rhetorical question: ‘No, I don’t think we have heard it before. You’re a true original, Amber.’

  ‘Amber? Do you want this tea or not?’ Jo yells.

  ‘Coming!’

  ‘Ciao, Amber!’ Sabina calls out.

  ‘Is that Amber?’ Quentin sounds surprised. Didn’t he hear the doorbell, or Jo inviting us in, or William and Barney demanding to know when we were arriving, as I know they must have at least seventeen times?

  ‘I don’t think I’ve told Amber about my run-in with Harold Sargent,’ Quentin announces, as if this is good news for us all. ‘I don’t think I’ve told Luke, come to think of it. Course, Harold’s thinking about having one of those stair-lifts installed now, but I said to him, I said, “They only work on some staircases, you know. Might not work on yours.” ’

  Oh, God, please someone or something distract him before he comes looking for me, armed with one of his long, pointless anecdotes. He hasn’t told me about his run-in with Harold Sargent and nor should he, because I have absolutely no idea who Harold Sargent is. Even when I start out knowing who and what Quentin is talking about, within ten seconds I’m lost. His stories are so dull that my mind drifts off, and when I realise I’ve been AWOL and tune back in, the cast of characters has often changed entirely: instead of Margaret Dawson and the railings outside the station, he’s talking about someone called Kevin’s bad attitude, and the dangers of failing to fibre-glass the insides of septic tanks. Quentin and Pam had a septic tank about twenty years ago, when they lived in the middle of nowhere between Combingham and Silsford, and Quentin is still obsessed with the damn things.

  ‘I think Amber is too tired now to talk,’ I hear Sabina say. Thank you, thank you. ‘You know she doesn’t sleep.’

  I smile at this. Sabina is well aware that Quentin doesn’t know anything about me, despite my having been attached to his son for nearly a decade, which is why she’s telling him. One of his stranger characteristics is that he can be relied upon to know nothing about the people in close proximity to him at any given time, while simultaneously knowing all the tiny, tedious details of the lives of everyone the people around him have never heard of or met. If he bumped into Harold Sargent on the street, he would find himself suddenly full of information about the minutiae of my life, all the better to bore poor Harold with.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me instead? I would love to hear the story,’ Sabina says convincingly. She’s an angel. ‘Should I make you a cup of tea first?’ Although perfectly able-bodied and afflicted by no disability, Quentin cannot perform even the smallest domestic task, and no one ever suggests that he might. The closest he ever came, one Christmas at my house when everyone but him was helping with the Christmas dinner preparations, was to say, ‘I’m sorry I’m not helping.’ Pam giggled as if it was the silliest idea in the world, and said, ‘That’s all right, darling. No one expects you to.’

  She was more frightened for Quentin than for herself when she was dying. ‘He can’t do the simplest things, Amber,’ she whispered to me once. ‘Can’t fend for himself at all, and it’s too late for him to learn now.’ Why? I wanted to scream. Boiling an egg is no harder now than it was fifty years ago. ‘It’s my fault,’ Pam said. ‘I enjoyed looking after him. And he worked so hard . . .’ If she hadn’t been sick, I might have argued with her. Until he retired, Quentin managed the Lighting and Mirrors department at Remmicks; how punishing can it have been? I’m sure I could sell lights and mirrors to people five days a week and still manage to put a slice of bread in the toaster at the weekend.

  Raised voices are coming from the dining room. ‘No, listen,’ says William. ‘I’m older than Dinah, Dinah’s older than Nonie, Nonie’s older than Barney, so . . .’

  ‘Do “more beautiful than”,’ Dinah orders. ‘I’m . . . oh, no, that’s the same, isn’t it? Do “is keeping a secret from”.’

  I have no idea what they’re talking about, but I can’t help wondering if Dinah’s thinking about secrets because of me.

  Why don’t you just say you’d rather not tell me?

  ‘Amber? Your posh tea’s going cold!’ Jo bellows as if the hall is miles from the kitchen. Nothing is far enough away from anything else in this house. It’s one of the things I can’t stand about the place, and there are plenty of others. The small square multi-coloured tiles on the kitchen walls give me eye-ache. I’m generally in favour of colour, but here it’s abused. Each room is painted a different cheerful primary, like a nursery, and stuffed full of too-large, too-grand furniture, most of it antique and unsuited to a house that was built in 1995. You can’t take a step without falling over a heavy carved mahogany sideboard or an ornate walnut desk. Occasional tables jut out at odd angles to ensure that nobody can walk in a straight line. The kitchen has an oversized breakfast bar that protrudes into the middle of the room, surrounded by six high stools. Jo always orders me to sit on one, so that I can chat to her while she gets supper ready, and then she has to squeeze around me, muttering, ‘Sorry, if I could just move you slightly to one side . . .’ There is no side of the breakfast bar where I might sit and not need to be moved. If I sit on the window side, I’m in the way of the fridge; at the curved end, I’m blocking the dishwasher; on the hall side, I’m pressed up against the door to the pantry.

  Kirsty is still making a racket upstairs. I hear Hilary trying to soothe her, much as I tried to soothe Nonie in the car. ‘Hi, Hilary,’ I call up to her. ‘Need a hand?’

  Neil brushes past me on his way to the front door, phone still at his ear. He opens the door and steps out on to the pavement. ‘Right, I can hear you now,’ he says. He might have been furious with the guy he’s speaking to a minute or so ago, but he sounds suddenly upbeat, and I understand why: the restful hum of traffic from the road is a relief.

  ‘No, ta, we’re fine!’ Hilary calls down the stairs. ‘We’ll be down in a sec.’

  Neil pulls the door shut behind him.

  I find Jo in the kitchen, leafing through the local paper. She could have brought my tea out to me instead of letting it go cold, but she prefers it if I pay court to her in the place of her choosing.

  I’m over-analysing again.

  ‘Have a high-chair,’ she says. It’s
what she calls the breakfast bar stools. Because she wants to turn everyone into her child.

  Oh, give it a rest, for God’s sake.

  ‘Sabina just saved me from one of Quentin’s interminable narratives,’ I whisper.

  ‘She’s brilliant with him. She’s more of a nanny to him than to the boys these days.’

  I make the agreeing noise I reserve for occasions when I disagree with Jo; it’s very similar to the noise I make when I agree with her, only quieter and less wholehearted. Whether Jo is aware of it or not, Sabina has never been a nanny to the boys, though that has been her job title from the start. As far as I can tell, her role here is indulged-older-daughter-cum-publicist-to-Jo. Jo has always tended to William and Barney’s every need while Sabina watches, awe-struck, and provides moral support, irrespective of the morality of what is being supported. When William hit another boy at playgroup, Sabina agreed with Jo that it was the other boy’s fault for provoking him. She celebrates, vocally, all Jo’s child-rearing decisions, and offers visitors a running commentary on what a wonderful mother Jo is, in between going for runs and massages and to English language lessons, which Jo always couches in terms of poor Sabina desperately needing a break.

  Sabina is a skilful handler of both Quentin and Jo because they’re adults; it’s only children that she doesn’t have the first clue what to do with and is slightly afraid of. Luke and I have laughed till we’ve cried about the idea of her deciding to train to be a nanny. Still, the joke’s on us; Sabina must have known what we would never have believed: that there are people out there keen to spend their money on the illusion of childcare.

  I’ve often wondered if Sabina truly likes Jo, deep down – though not as often as I’ve wondered if Neil likes Jo.

  The posh tea is delicious. ‘Mm. Why don’t I have heavenly things like this in my house?’ I say.

  ‘Count yourself lucky. You don’t have Quentin in your house,’ Jo whispers, grinning.

  ‘I do, believe me.’

  ‘You do have Quentin living in your house? Funny, I could have sworn he lives here.’

  I laugh for longer than the joke deserves, falling easily into what Sharon used to call my ‘SONS’ routine: being the source of narcissistic supply that Jo needs me to be. In her spare time, inspired by having Marianne as a mother, Sharon read every book about dysfunctional parenting that she could get her hands on. Her house was full of chunky volumes with titles like Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life, which she refused to hide when Marianne visited.

  Sharon and Jo never met, though for years Jo kept saying Sharon sounded like ‘a hoot’ and she’d love to meet her, and Sharon got to hear plenty about Jo’s antics from me, so they probably knew each other about as well as two people who had never met could.

  I couldn’t introduce them. It’s my own fault that I couldn’t, and it makes me feel sick when I think about it. One moment of recklessness . . . This is the dark core of everything I hold against Jo and against myself: that I was stupid enough to give her the power to destroy me and Luke, to destroy me and Sharon . . .

  ‘I’m making the simplest, loveliest supper in the world.’ Jo’s voice brings me back to the present. ‘Even a non-cook like you could manage it: linguine with basil, tomatoes, mozzarella and olive oil stirred in – that’s it, all there is to it!’

  ‘So basically Insalata Tricolore with pasta?’

  ‘Yup. With a sliver or two of red chilli, black pepper and Parmesan. Why didn’t I think of it years ago? Quentin won’t eat it – leaves in it, no meat, not hot enough, yada yada. I made him a shepherd’s pie this morning.’

  ‘You’re a saint,’ I tell her.

  She turns to face me. ‘I meant what I said before. You should count yourself lucky. Sabina helps a lot, but . . . sometimes I still fantasise about putting a pillow over his face.’ She claps her hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry, that’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s wholly understandable. It’d only be terrible if you did it.’

  Dinah comes tearing into the room. ‘Amber, William’s been teaching us the difference between transitive and intransitive relationships. Can I tell you?’

  ‘Not that again!’ says Jo. ‘The child’s obsessed.’

  William has a tendency to develop strange fixations. He seems older, more serious, more pedantic every time I meet him. Barney, in contrast, is regressing: a few weeks ago he ditched his normal voice and started to speak like a lisping toddler. He’s kept it up ever since. Jo thinks it’s cute, but it drives me mad.

  ‘You don’t know the difference, do you?’ Dinah gloats.

  I don’t. My education was sadly lacking, evidently.

  William, Nonie and Barney appear in the doorway.

  ‘William learned it at school, along with a gazillion other things, but for some reason, this is the one that stuck,’ says Jo.

  ‘A transitive relationship is like “is younger than”,’ Dinah explains. ‘If I’m younger than William, and Nonie’s younger than me, then Nonie’s also younger than William. An intransitive relationship is like “is cross with”. If I’m cross with you and you’re cross with Luke, that doesn’t mean I’m cross with Luke, does it? I might not be.’

  ‘Very clever,’ I say. Why did no one ever teach me that?

  ‘Let’s go and put more things on our lists!’ says Nonie.

  ‘We’re making lists of transitive and intransitive verbs,’ William tells me. His tone implies I’m a dullard who cannot hope to keep up. I wonder if he has any friends at school.

  ‘Whap aboup, “Wikes pizza”?’ Barney suggests, in his new baby patois.

  ‘No, that’s—’

  ‘That’s almost perfectly right, Barney. You just need to add a bit more.’ Jo flashes a warning look at William. ‘You could have “Likes pizza more than”. Well done, Barn! Clever you!’

  Dinah shoots a disbelieving look in my direction. I think about Nonie’s Maths homework and feel compromised.

  Once the children have withdrawn, Jo says, ‘William’s teacher’s a genius. Seriously. A proper genius who spent years refusing to get a job because he was unwilling to do anything but read and think. His life story’s fascinating. He lives on a boat.’

  Of course he does. In the abstract, people who live on boats annoy me, though I liked the only boat-dweller I’ve ever met, a man I used to work with at the council.

  ‘Jo, about Quentin . . . I know I said you’re a saint, and you are, but . . . you know you don’t have to be one, don’t you? If it gets too unbearable having him here . . .’

  Jo stops chopping basil. She lays down her knife and stands with her back to me, stiff and still. ‘What are you saying?’

  I feel something harsh and hostile creeping towards me; its invisibility renders it all the more menacing. How have I cocked this up? I’m sticking up for Jo, a tactic that can normally be relied on to go down well.

  Whatever you say now will be wrong. And you won’t know why. And you’ll feel victimised and relieved at the same time, relieved to be able to say to yourself, ‘This is it, this is what happens, and it does happen. Look, it’s happening now.’

  ‘What point are you making, exactly?’ Jo asks again, in the voice I find hard to believe I haven’t exaggerated in my mind when I’m not listening to it.

  Second-guessing isn’t going to work. My best chance is honesty. ‘Ignore me,’ I say. ‘I know you’re way too good a daughter-in-law to turf him out. It’s my guilt talking. Luke and I ought to take him off your hands now and then, but we don’t because the thought of having him to stay . . .’ I shudder. ‘I suppose I self-servingly thought I’d help instead by suggesting you send him packing. The more I see you suffering with him, the worse it makes me feel. And let’s face it, there’s nothing wrong with him apart from . . . everything that’s wrong with him. Why can’t he live on his own, or try and meet a boring widow who’d be willing to take him in?’

  Jo turns to face me. ‘I don’t
expect you to share him,’ she says, moving back in the direction of normal temperature speech. ‘You’ve got your hands full with Dinah and Nonie. But I can’t evict him, Amber. How can I? He’d be lost on his own, utterly lost.’

  She folds her hands, watching me carefully. Why? Why isn’t she getting on with chopping stuff up? ‘Wouldn’t he?’ she says, when I say nothing. ‘Admit it.’

  Honesty worked for me once; it’s worth trying again. ‘Yes, he’d be lost, initially, but . . . that’s his problem, Jo. He’s in possession of his faculties and able to get himself a life if he wants to, even at his age. I freely admit I might be a selfish cow, but for me the right to enjoy one’s own life – own and only – trumps duty to others every time. I took Dinah and Nonie in because I wanted to. I love having them; they enhance my life. I’d never in a million years allow Quentin to move in.’

  ‘Yes, you would. If Luke was an only child, if it was a choice between having Quentin live with you or—’

  ‘Jo, seriously. Under no circumstances whatsoever would I agree to live under the same roof as Quentin Utting.’

  ‘Well . . .’ She considers what I’ve said. ‘Luke certainly doesn’t feel that way. And if you do, you deserve to die miserable and alone, with no one to love and look after you.’ She turns away, cuts open another packet of mozzarella. The cheese rolls out onto the work-top like a squashed wet golf ball.

  You deserve to die miserable. And alone. With no one to love and look after you.

  Damn. No one heard it but me. Damn, damn, damn.

  ‘I don’t think that is what I deserve,’ I say matter-of-factly, trying to ignore the sensation that I have poison inside me. ‘If I’m unbearable to be around when I’m old, then, okay, fair enough, but if I make the people close to me feel good rather than like hanging themselves from the nearest coat peg, then I think I’ll deserve not to die miserable and alone.’ I do this only with Jo: speak as if I’m representing myself at the Old Bailey.

  ‘Shall we drop it?’ she says tightly, her eyes fixed on her pile of basil.