by Anna Raverat
“I should retire soon and anyway you need help,” she says. “I feel I ought to. It’s my duty.”
“Actually, Mum, I was going to ask Noreen,” I say. “Why don’t I go round after supper and see what she says? There might not be any need to uproot you and Dad.”
Adam texts to say he’s coming to collect some of his things. It’s been nine days since he went away and although we’ve been on the phone a lot, I haven’t actually seen him since that walk on the common. I think it’s better if I avoid him this evening, especially if he’s just had a row with my father, so I go to the supermarket.
Afterward I call in to see Noreen. Perhaps she sees in my face that something is wrong because she closes the door to the living room, where her husband is watching the news, sits me down at her kitchen table, makes tea, and gets the biscuit tin out. Noreen takes my hands and holds them while I tell her what’s happened. Her hands are small and pale, dotted with age spots and very soft. She listens attentively, nodding to show she understands, and when I stumble on a difficult bit she squeezes my hands with surprising force, as if to pass some of her strength into me. I tell her everything. Occasionally she shakes her head, but she doesn’t interrupt with questions or condemnations. Only when I finish does she say, “Oh, what a silly man—a lovely wife like you and two beautiful children. Of course I’ll look after them, I’d love to.”
Buoyed up by Noreen, I go to the bookshop before going home. It’s closing time. I go over and ask the man for some empty boxes.
“Sure, how many?” he says.
“Ten.”
He fetches a stack of flat cardboard boxes from the back of the shop, piles them up next to the till, and counts them. There are nine.
“Shall I get another one?” he asks.
“No, that should be fine. Thank you.”
“That’s a lot of boxes—are you moving?”
“No, but my husband is.”
“Oh, right,” he says.
To shorten the awkward silence I order a book, Raising Happy Children. The man is kind as he handles my order, or maybe he is just being careful.
“I’ll give you a hand with the boxes if you like,” he says.
“Oh! OK, thanks.”
We leave the bookshop, he with a pile of flat boxes and me with several laden Sainsbury’s bags. It’s raining and cold and gray. Because of the boxes, he has to have his head over to one side, and it’s on my side. We turn off the high street into my road.
“What’s your name?” I ask him.
“Ben—as in Benedict,” he says.
Benedict, as in a blessing. I don’t know for sure, but I think Ben is single. The basis for this assumption is that I saw him once, more than a year ago, walking along with an attractive blonde and have never seen him with her again. This of course doesn’t mean anything, but I’m not interested in accuracy at this point. I wonder what else Ben does, because he’s not in the shop every day. He seems light and watchful. I decide he must be a poet.
At that moment I realize that Adam will probably be leaving the house just as we get there.
“We might bump into him. My husband, I mean,” I say.
“Oh. Right,” says Ben.
The remaining minutes’ walk is filled with silent horror on my part and, I am sure, his. We don’t see Adam. Ben leans the boxes against the wall next to the front door. I thank him and he leaves. When I get inside, I call Jo and tell her that I’ve embarrassed myself thoroughly with the man from the bookshop and she reassures me that it isn’t that bad. But it is.
* * *
At bedtime, the girls pull me into their bedroom and close the door.
“Why did Grandpa say that my daddy is a lying shit?” asks Milla.
“How did you hear that?” I’d closed the sitting-room door and the TV was on! “You weren’t meant to hear that, I’m sorry. Grandpa is quite angry with Daddy.”
“Why—because he ran away?” says Hester.
“Well, yes.”
“But he wants to come back,” says Hester.
“Does he?”
“Yes, he told us. And we want him to come back. We miss him,” says Milla.
“I miss him too,” I’m surprised to hear myself say, “but don’t worry, you’re seeing him this weekend—you’re going for a sleepover. That will be fun, won’t it?”
“Yeah,” says Hester sadly.
26
The following evening, Trish calls, extremely agitated. Richard collapsed at work; suspected heart attack. Valerie had already gone home and nobody found him so he lay on the floor for several hours until one of the night cleaners on his rounds raised the alarm.
I leave the girls with my parents and rush back to the office. There were sirens wailing in the background dur-ing Trish’s call; maybe they weren’t to do with Richard but in any case by the time I get there, the ambulance has gone.
* * *
“He had a weak heart,” says Trish as soon as I see her. “Apparently he was dead when they found him but they called an ambulance anyway because who else do you call?”
“The police!” says Valerie, incensed. “If I’d been here, this never would have happened. I sit right outside his door; I see everything. I know what kind of phone call he’s having just by the way his eyebrows move. Moved.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself,” says Trish.
Valerie looks at her, dumbfounded. “I don’t blame myself—I blame you! You went to the shareholders behind his back, and you sent Don to tell Richard that you’d sold off the best thing this company had—apart from him—and you knew it would be like daggers in his heart!”
Since there’s nothing I can do for Richard, I leave them fighting and go home.
* * *
I get to work early the next day. In the vast, shining lobby a few dark suits scuttle across the polished beige floor. Several more are coming down the escalator. When they reach the bottom they scatter like marbles. At the far end of the long glass reception desk there’s the usual trussed-up, architectural arrangement of strange plants. I wilt slightly inside my coat. Richard was due to retire next Christmas, but this is so sudden. I don’t know how we’ll manage without him.
* * *
Trish says she has some good news that will distract everyone from our sad loss, and sends a company-wide email to announce that she and Don have secured the acquisition of the Ambassade hotels in the United States and Canada. A chain of fourteen luxury hotels that are a bit down at heel but certainly not concrete boxes, which is something, I suppose. Valerie tells anyone who’ll listen that the shareholders backed Trish and Don over Richard, who had serious misgivings about the plan. “Sack seventy-five people,” they’d instructed him, twenty years ago. “Sell a hotel,” Richard had thrown back. And now they had: they sold the Regal on Park Lane to a Saudi oil baron in a private deal that Don and Trish had already lined up.
When this comes out, everyone feels sad about it—something about an old and grand institution being broken down, a loss of dignity, like sacking the royal nanny after she’s brought up all the little princes and princesses. It may be true that she’s no longer needed but she’s given years of devoted service and should be honored. Selling her off like that—underhand, uncelebrated—and two trusted advisors betraying him, went against everything Richard stood for. People began to say that news of the sale broke his heart.
“There is no such thing as a broken heart,” Trish declares. “The heart is a muscle, not a vase. Muscles can be weak or torn or strained but not broken—you never hear about a broken bicep, do you? You can break a fingernail, or a bone, but not a muscle. It was well known: he had a weak heart.”
“He was not weak! His heart was strong, and true!” Valerie cries.
* * *
At lunchtime I escape with Gérard for an hour. We take the alley to get away from the usual office haunts. Peter is laying out his wares—today, mainly small electrical goods; a blender, two toasters, several hair dryers, a grilled-cheese
sandwich maker, a waffle iron with drops of hardened batter stuck to the outside, and a handheld sander.
“Would you like a food processor?” I ask. “One extremely careful owner who upgraded to a newer model and palmed the old one off on me?”
“You don’t want it?”
“Definitely not.”
“I’ll take it.”
“What’s all this?” says Gérard, looking at a table farther up the alley.
“Taxidermy!” Peter shouts. He seems to think this very funny, or else he’s drunk. There is a row of dusty glass domes, one with a toad underneath, another with a lizard. “Look at the bat!” says Gérard, but Ronnie points instead to an open felt box displaying a fang. “See this?” he says. “Wolf’s tooth! There used to be wolves in the British Isles, you know. There’s a man in Scotland trying to bring them back.”
Toto watches us from his cage.
“Parrots are supposed to talk, aren’t they?” I say. Toto blinks, and sips his water dispenser.
“He’s a quiet one,” says Peter. Toto tilts his head to one side and looks down demurely.
“That parrot is a flirt,” I say.
* * *
In the pub, we raise a glass to Richard. “Everyone is still in shock. But the numbness will wear off,” says Gérard.
“And then it will get better?”
“Worse, probably,” says Gérard. “In the beginning there’s all the fuss and arrangements, and it takes time to sink in.” He asks how things are going with me.
“Not great,” I tell him. “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t stop thinking about him, and her, and the other her. I’m possessed.”
“Are you getting any help?” asks Gérard delicately.
“My parents are staying at the moment, and that’s tricky at times. But I’ve found someone to help me with the kids when they’ve gone—my neighbor Noreen, who used to be a childminder. And if you mean a therapist, I’m going to see one—slightly dreading it.”
I remember what Gérard said when I first told him about Adam. “Tell me again how you get over something big,” I ask.
“It takes time,” says Gérard. “That’s no secret. Everyone says so. But something they don’t tell you is that it also takes work. You have to work things through—to understand and accept them. It’s hard, but it’s worth it, because this is how you find your own place, inside yourself. And once you have that, life’s different. Better, in fact.”
“How long does it take? I want this to be over as soon as possible.”
“It takes a while,” he answers. “Years, really.”
“It hasn’t even been two weeks yet,” I say, dismal at the thought of what lies ahead; the effort required.
PART THREE
A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.
—Rumi
27
I had to send my mother to collect Raising Happy Children. I saw Ben in the street a few times, and said an awkward hello as we passed each other. Meanwhile I was trying to raise happy children, seeing lawyers and mediators and financial advisors and estate agents as well as doing my job.
The weeks began to take a new shape. The girls stayed with Adam on Wednesday nights and every other weekend. On Mondays I took the girls to school and then went to see Elisabeth. The therapy sessions lasted fifty minutes and I spent most of those crying in the yellow armchair. I learned not to apply makeup until afterward but even then arrived at work blotchy. On Fridays I collected the girls and Noreen did the other days.
I shopped at lunchtimes in the big Sainsbury’s near the office so that I didn’t have to drag the girls round later. I was extremely busy by day, and by night I could not sleep because the children were disturbed and fretful and because I was also disturbed and fretful. The doctor gave me sleeping pills and a tranquilizer for daytime use. I took the sleeping pills but not the tranquilizers.
Elisabeth recommended Facing Co-Dependency and Co-dependent No More. While on Amazon I also ordered two volumes of poetry and a novel. I felt a pang of regret ordering the poetry; I was squandering an opportunity to show Ben that I was the kind of person who reads poetry even when not trying to impress him.
* * *
On Valentine’s Day, Adam put a fat red card through the letterbox. Enclosed was a letter asking me to forgive him. I threw the card and letter away after the first reading; he had ripped my codependent heart out. I wanted to stab him.
The children rushed in after their swimming lesson.
“Mummy, did Daddy give you a Valentine’s card?” said Milla.
“Ye-es,” I said.
“Can we see it?” said Hester.
“I don’t have it anymore.”
“What! You mean you put it in the bin,” said Milla.
“Um, yes, I did.”
“Did you rip it up?” asked Hester.
“Yes, I did,” I admitted.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Mum,” said Milla.
“I’m going to tell Daddy,” said Hester.
* * *
Early the next morning the girls stood together on the window seat and watched as the bin men removed the bag containing the shreds of Valentine’s card. They wailed and cried.
“Mum, you’re rubbish!” said Hester.
I thought about taking a tranquilizer but it wasn’t even 8:00 a.m. By 8:30 a.m. I had told them to Bloody Well Shut Up. I stomped off and sat in the kitchen, feeling guilty and hard done by. Hester came to look at me and went back to report on the situation.
“Yep, she’s red in the face,” I heard her say to Milla.
“She’s going to cry,” said Milla.
I thought it would be better if I didn’t cry in front of them again, so I shoved the misery back inside and went to join them.
“I hate you, Mummy,” said Hester.
I took them to school early because it was easier to wait in the cold, wet playground around huddles of other people than to be at home on our own.
As soon as I got to work I went on Amazon and ordered more books I didn’t want to buy in the bookshop: Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes, Connection Parenting, and Parenting from the Inside Out: How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive. I thought these books would feed into Raising Happy Children, a book I still had not read.
28
Don was duly appointed president. He promoted Trish and they both moved up to the eleventh floor. There was excitement and anxiety in the air. Anyone who worked directly for Don or Trish was pumped for information at every watercooler, coffee machine, and toilet in the building. What they all wanted to know was “Is it going to be all right?” The press reported Don’s rise and excellent reputation and all hailed the new King of Hotels.
* * *
Trish’s new office is four times as big as her old one, with a white leather sofa and a big postcard window.
“When the weather’s fine, you can see Saint Paul’s Cathedral,” she says. I start toward the window to have a look but she cuts across with “It’s not fine,” so I sit down.
“I am promoting you,” she says.
“Oh! What to?” I ask.
“I want you to take more responsibility in general. Among other things, I want you to break down the Guest Experience so we can build it back up in the same way, everywhere. I’m setting up project teams and you’re in charge. I haven’t thought of the job title yet. You can make one up, if you like.”
“Thanks,” I say, not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. As Trish talks I notice the painting on the wall behind her. It’s of a bridge. Something about it strikes a chord. Trish is listing what she wants me to do, but it’s apparent that she’s already made her mind up about how it should be done. My eyes are drawn again to the painting. Something peaceful and quiet in it, the bridge arches elegantly over a river that looks like a summer meadow—perhaps it is a summer meadow. It looks familiar—the proportions maybe, or the style. The quality is unmistakable.
<
br /> I burst out, “Wait a minute, is that—?”
I had been going to say “real,” but Trish, melting into a gracious smile, replies, “A Monet. Yes.”
“I had no idea!” I say, getting up to admire the painting. “I didn’t know we owned art!”
“Lovely, isn’t it? We recalled it from the National Gallery. Richard had loaned it out so that ‘the public could enjoy it,’ but what about us, the people at PHC?”
Not many people are going to see it if it’s in your office, I think but don’t say.
“There’s more, actually—there’s a Raphael in the boardroom until we decide where to put it, and one of David Hockney’s swimming-pool pictures is coming back from Tate Britain.”
Monet and Raphael! A shiver runs through me. Hockney, for goodness’ sake! I know those pictures; they make me want to move to Los Angeles for the heat and the ripple of bodies moving through sunlit water.
Coming out of Trish’s office, I glance across the pool of secretaries, heads bowed over their work. One of the chauffeurs is sitting back in an armchair reading a newspaper, his legs stretched out so that I can see his stripy socks.
The boardroom is empty, quiet as a church. A tall room with wide oak doors and a long, gleaming table. I slip inside and at first think Trish was having me on because the back wall is bare, but then to my left I see him, an angel, looking out from a dark green canvas, a young man with fair hair falling in loose ringlets to his shoulders and skin so smooth that even up close the brushwork is undetectable. How is it possible to paint skin like this, to account so perfectly for shape and shadow, bone structure and rounded, rose-gold cheek, the dimple at the corner of his mouth? His clear green eyes pick up the darker green background. Impossible to understand how even a great artist like Raphael could bestow such poise, the way the angel’s hand rests lightly on his chest, the tilt of his face as he gazes out of the canvas, alive beyond the work yet resting in it—these matters are beyond angles and skill. Almost androgynous, his masculinity is assured by light but definite tawny sideburns, the musculature on his arms and shoulders.