A man in combat trousers was coming round towards me. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” I said. “Are you all right? I’ll give you my details. It was all my fault. I wasn’t looking. I’m sorry. The children . . .” I gestured to the inside of the car. Dan was still asleep. Fergus was pushing his bottom out of his seat in excitement, gesticulating wildly. “Crash,” he said, laughing. “Crash, crash, crash.”
“Calm down,” said the man, smiling. I realised he was Australian when he opened his mouth—“Ca’m deyeown” he’d said—but you could have guessed from his stance, legs apart, arms out at an angle, a body not closed like English bodies against the elements, but open to the warmth. He had blond curly hair with darker roots, scrunched up as if he’d been through a hedge backwards, and coppery freckles on his forehead. His hands were broad, the fingernails ingrained with dirt. He said, lazily, “Look, I was probably as much to blame myself. I wasn’t looking where I was going. Are the kids alright?” He opened the back door. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” continued Fergus. “Oh shit,” I said, and shut it again.
The man laughed. He was younger than me, nice looking. “Hey, let’s look at the damage.” He went to the back of my car and poked about. “It’s not too bad. New bumper probably, new headlight. I expect they can beat the panel out. And as for mine . . . Well, it was about time”—abo’ tiym—“I had a new one anyway.”
He gave a half smile, half grimace. His eyes were ginger. There was a fan of white lines on the outside corner of each as if he’d been squinting into the sun. “You’re being so nice,” I said. “People are usually so horrible about these sorts of things. What shall we do? Shall we swap details anyway?”
His T-shirt was creased oddly. He tweaked it at the shoulders. “Yeah, perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
I found an old parking receipt on the dashboard and wrote my name and number on it. He handed me a card. “Peat and Dug” it said beneath a pen-drawn spade. “Garden services. No job too small.” Then there was a name, Pete Russ, and two phone numbers. So he had been through a hedge backward. “Oh, you’re a gardener,” I said. “No wonder you’re nice.”
He smiled, looked at the used ticket, and then, I could have sworn, at my ringless left hand. “And you’re a meter maid.”
I felt myself go pink. “Not really a maid,” I said. He looked at me for a bit but didn’t say anything.
After a moment or two, I said, “So is there a Doug?”
“Come again?”
“Peat and Dug. Is there a Doug?”
“Oh no. No, there’s no Doug. There’s a Lloyd. Will you be all right?”
“Yup, yup, of course,” I said, getting into the car.
Fergus said, “Are you going to call the police?” The baby was stirring, screwing up his face in his sleep in preparation for Armageddon.
“Thanks,” I said through the window. He was bending down and trying to wedge something back onto his car. “And sorry again.”
“No worries,” he said, not looking up.
And I drove, or rather clanked, off down the road—back to microwave baked beans and do some laundry and feed the baby, screaming at full throttle now, and persuade Fergus to have a rest and do the ironing and then get out the crayons or make some fairy cakes and remember to call the garage and if I was lucky later and the sun was out maybe collect some stale bread and go and feed the ducks. It was my life. I loved it. It’s just . . .
What was Claire doing, all this time? Had she watched me from the window? Had she seen me, a boring thirty-something mother, flirting stupidly with a kind, indifferent man? Or had she, after kissing her lover, returned, sleepy-headed, to her warm, crumpled sheets? Percolated herself a tiny cup of strong, dark espresso and curled up in an armchair with the papers or the latest copy of Vogue? Slipped into a long, deep bath fragrant with amber or mimosa or fleurs d’oranger? I wondered about that intently all the way home.
That night, Jake called to say he’d be late. He had an important “strategic development meeting” to prepare for. All his meetings were called things like that. Sometimes he had brand definition meetings; other times he had campaign definition meetings or status meetings. But it all came down to bread in the end. Bread (Wheato), spot cream (Zap-it), pot noodles (Ecram Foods), and cars (Kyushi, the Japanese multinational). Those were his accounts, his bits of business, the things he filled his head with. Today it was the zit cream. He had the results of some focus group to go through. To spot check.
“Ha, ha. Go on,” he said at this. “Squeeze it for all it’s worth.”
“I’m squeezing,” I said, “I just wish it would pop.”
Then I told him about the car and he said as long as we were all okay, and I said we were, and he said, “Okay then, sweetie. Laters.”
“Laters,” I said.
After I’d put the phone down, I sat, quite still, for a few seconds and then I got on with putting the children to bed on my own. Later, when they were asleep, I called some baby-sitters to try to find someone—unsuccessfully—for Saturday night, spoke briefly to Jake’s mother, who wanted to know how his nasty cold was (I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t know he had one), and then, after I’d tidied the sitting room and swept the kitchen floor, I settled on the sofa and called Mel.
I’d known Mel since my second year at college. Our paths shouldn’t have crossed—she was a medic and I did languages—but Adam, the boy she went out with in her second year, was a friend of Tom’s, the boy I was going out with (and whom I once thought I’d marry, but that’s a different story), and we were hurtled together in a series of double dates in the days when double dates were easier than having to talk to each other on your own. Our romances both fizzled out before the end of the summer but our friendship didn’t, and it was Mel and I who ended up moving in together at the beginning of the third year. She was different from me. She was a scientist; I was an arty-farty nothing. She came from a big family in the center of Manchester, not an inconsequential one on the outskirts of London, and she had a resilience and a toughness on her delicate shoulders that I envied and admired. She also made me laugh. Nowadays, she lived, with her three-year-old daughter in a two-up, two-down terrace near our local hospital where she used to work. She was going to be a surgeon but, as for so many women, ambition became impractical once she’d had Milly. She was a GP now. A doctor, and a single mother: every inch of her life was a reproach to mine. As she rarely let me forget. She was my dearest soul mate and my harshest critic.
I said, “I have sooooo much to tell you.”
She said, “Well, be quick. I’m on another call.”
I said, “I met your future husband today.”
She said, “I’ll phone you straight back.”
Mel’s daughter was the result of a brief relationship with a consultant in Obstetrics and Gynecology who left her, when she was pregnant, for a drugs rep. Mel said he’d obviously had enough of the National Health and wanted an easier life. Mel was slim and dark and compact. Milly had unruly blond hair and blue eyes the size of petunias and big fat three-year-old thighs. Mel used to say Milly needed a proper father, that she herself needed a proper man in her life, not just a signature on the end of a monthly check, but I was never so sure she meant it. For the moment she was seeing a very nice anesthetist called Piers, who would have done anything for her. But Mel asked for nothing. Secretly, I suspected she liked her life just the way it was. Which is not to say I didn’t still try.
The phone rang. “God,” she said, as soon as I picked it up. “Middle-class mothers! Nonworking middle-class mothers, no offense—they are the worst. I’ve just had one on the phone. Whine, whine, whine. Why won’t I give her daughter antibiotics? She’s sure it’s not viral. Blah, blah, blah. She came into the surgery earlier today and her kids were running riot and trying to dismantle the weighing machine and I told her then that she didn’t need them, but she thinks she knows best and that, just because I know her a bit from Milly’s nursery, I’m going to give in. W
ell, I’m not. Honestly, there was a bloke in the surgery today who cut up nasty because I said I didn’t have the authority to renew his Methadone prescription—he’s got to see Andrew, the head of practice, for that—but I can tell you, this woman was scarier.”
“Are you going to let this nonworking middle-class mother cheer you up, then?” I said.
She sighed. “Yes. Go on. Who’s this bloke?”
So I told her about bumping into Claire and the party invitation and the pigeon robe, then I told her about bumping into the red van. “And this man comes out,” I said, “and starts walking toward me and he’s smiling. You know, he’s being nice. And he was sweet with the children, and he didn’t get nasty or start talking about insurance details. He was Australian—does that matter? Do we like Australians?—and . . .”
“Handsome?” she interrupted.
“Yes,” I said. “He was. Very handsome. I mean leagues above anyone we normally meet. I suppose that’s because he’s Australian. Very blondish and . . . an amazing body. Great muscles. You could see them, under his T-shirt, they sort of rippled sweatily.”
“Go on,” said Mel. “What does he do?”
“Oh. He’s a gardener.” I started laughing.
Mel did too. “A gardener?” she said.
“Yes. Isn’t that great? We never meet gardeners, do we? It’s always solicitors or managing directors or advertising executives, men who spend their whole time indoors, worrying about money and accounts and business portfolios, not out in the open air, in touch with the elements, up to their arms in soil. I mean, how sexy is that? Anyway . . . well, I just got the impression he was available. Don’t ask me why. I might be wrong, but it’s worth a punt. Honestly Mel, he was really fit . . . To be frank, if Jake doesn’t begin to show a bit more interest, I wouldn’t mind . . . Well, anyway, the best thing is I’ve got his number.”
“He’ll do,” she said, after I’d rabbited on for a bit longer, “though I don’t know how you’re going to get us together.”
“Leave it to me,” I said.
I was reading in bed when Jake finally got home that night. I’d had my nightly flick through my stash of pornography. Mini Boden, with its privileged sun-kissed six-year-olds in their stonewashed boxy sweatshirts, dipping for crabs on a Cornish beach; Toast—that new one—full of willowy women with enough time on their hands to lie languidly in the shade in their Cambodian hand-woven ikat-dyed shot silk sarongs and duck-egg blue thong sandals. I knew I had to kick my mail-order catalog habit because I always felt cheap and guilty afterward. Wistful too. In my most down-trodden moments, I used to think it was a pity that they were offering only the clothes and you couldn’t send off for the life. Mind you, you probably wouldn’t want to hang around for too long in those thong sandals: they looked like they’d be murder between the toes.
I was deep into a Georgette Heyer—comfort reading, the literary equivalent of a rice pudding—when the front door slammed. “Hello,” Jake said, poking his head round the bedroom door. He came in with a sheepish air about him, kissed me, and sat on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes. There were dark shadows across his cheeks and his green eyes looked bright—with tiredness perhaps. He smelled of cigarettes and taxis and something else almost floral—the summer night air or the scent of another woman.
“What’s that smell?” I said, pulling a corner of polo shirt toward my nose.
“What smell?” he said, bending his face too. “Oh that. I popped my head round the door of Charlotte’s going away party on the way home. I wasn’t going to but Ed persuaded me. He said we needed cheering up. It was at La Renne and they spray you in the gents there. Like aftershave. Or air freshener. You know what they’re like in these posh restaurants.”
“Actually, I don’t,” I said. I tried to keep the tone out of my voice. Because there certainly was a tone to be ushered in if I’d let it. There seemed recently to be a going away party every week at his office. It had a faster turnover than the McDonald’s in Morton High Street. And as for Jake’s colleague Ed: he always seemed to be leading Jake astray, or turning him back from the Tube at the last minute, anyway.
Jake had gotten up and was rattling about in the bathroom. When he came back, he said, “Sorry. I tried to ring but you were engaged.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
Jake threw his clothes—his polo shirt, his chinos—on the back of the chair and clambered into bed, pulling the duvet off my legs as he did so. “Oi,” I said playfully, yanking it back. Jake wasn’t in a playful mood. He switched on his light, and reaching down for Campaign on the floor, said, “It’s getting worse and worse. I had to see the managing director today. More bad news. Those bastards Kyushi want a European realignment. I’ve got a nightmare month ahead of me. We’re going to have to get a pitch together to blow all the other European agencies away. One thing is I think that means we won’t be able to go on holiday this year. Not until it’s sorted at least. We’re going to have to do it well. We can’t afford to lose them.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh well.”
He looked at me. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
He turned back to his magazine. After a bit, I turned on my side and pressed against him. I rested my cheek on his shoulder. “But this weekend: will you have to work then? Or can we go to this party?”
“What party?”
“You know, Claire’s.”
“Oh, Maggie.” He still had his eyes on his page. “Do we have to? I really, really don’t want to. Anything but that. Claire Masterson’s? Do we need that? I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Who would we know? It’ll just be her Disney crowd.”
“I’d like to,” I said. “It’ll be fun, won’t it?”
“Okay, then.” His expression was blank. “If you want to.”
“I do,” I said. I was moving my chin farther up his shoulder, in little jerky movements, trying to get him to look at me. He didn’t. After a bit, I lifted my chin away, shifted back over to my side of the bed, and went back to my book. “Who shall we get to baby-sit?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he answered shortly, turning a page. I felt a flare of unexpected anger. Of course he didn’t know. He didn’t know any of our sitters’ names, let alone their numbers. It was something since I’d give up work that I always dealt with, just as I always got the dry cleaning. And cleaned the kitchen floor. And cleaned it again. And did all the mundane things that kept our life together. I didn’t mind the chores, but I did mind any inkling of his contempt for them.
I put my book down and closed my eyes. Other things had changed between us recently too. Jake used to go to the gym, played tennis on Saturdays. But over the last year, it was as if he’d partially retreated from the toughness of having two children, as if the very thought of it made him feel weary. And around him instead there seemed to be a gradual accretion of middle-aged things: predictable clothes, corporate entertaining, golf. It was all very well growing old together, but did it really have to happen this quickly? “Night,” I said, thinking all this, thinking of Claire. Claire and her screenplay. Disney. Had I told Jake about that then? I must have done, or how else would he know?
“Night,” he said, not looking up.
I turned onto my stomach and thought about cotillions and Corinthians for a while, Hessian boots and neckcloths tied Trone d’Amour. And then I thought about Claire’s gorgeous robe—maybe that was from Toast?—and her man in his suit and the gardener, and the gardener with Mel . . . They could meet at my house. I could babysit Milly. We could rendezvous for drinks, in an outdoor pub, by the river, there would be birdsong, and the two of them would laugh and kiss and thank me. There was a crackle of pages next to me. I opened my eyes and half-turned. Up close, Jake smelled of wine and smoke and a day in the office. The duvet smelled stale too—the old sheet smell of marriage. It had been a month or so, now that I came to think of it, since we’d last had sex. T
hat was another thing that had seized up. It was fine when it was still the topic of jokes between us, but less fine now that it had passed into silence. I wondered if I should make another approach, not so obvious as to make rejection, if it came, feel too awkward, but obvious enough. I stroked my hand low across Jake’s stomach. His skin felt soft and fuzzy. He didn’t even run these days. He said, not moving except to turn another page, “So, as a result, I’m going to have to go to the agency office in Amsterdam next week.”
I said, “Oh right, fine,” and took my hand back.
“Night,” I said, curling away from him into my corner of the bed. Claire had said I looked fulfilled. Was I fulfilled? She’d said Jake was dull. Was he?
“Night,” he said.
Chapter 3
“I’m going to start with Jamie Oliver’s slow-cooked and stuffed baby bell chilli peppers. Followed by the River Cafe’s pan-roasted pigeon stuffed with cotechino with wood-roasted whole organic carrots. And then for dessert—well, I’m not quite sure. Have you ever done Nigella’s almond and orange blossom cake?”
It was Friday afternoon and, after taking the car to the garage across the common, I was sitting on a warm, damp bench in the playground talking, or rather listening, to Rachel, another playground mother. There had been a quick burst of rain, but the sun had come out again. Dan was in the sandbox, seeing how much of it he could fit into his mouth, and Fergus and Rachel’s son Harry were trying to climb up the slide. A smaller child in a white sundress and pink Teletubby boots, which she was banging crossly on the metal at the top, was waiting to slide down. One of us needed to intervene—playground etiquette is very strict on the subject of equipment violation—but I couldn’t be bothered.
Having It and Eating It Page 4