by Fiona Gibson
December 4
Vanvey
Dear Jonathan,
Well, we’re here and pretty settled. The house isn’t as bad as it looked in Mum’s photos. The roof leaks in around eighteen places but only when it rains, obviously. And it’s less of a problem now I’ve figured out where water comes in and have found enough buckets and pots to catch the drips.
Great news! Ben is walking. Well, not walking exactly but standing up, almost cruising. Still a bit wobbly but you should see him! It really is amazing!
I crumple the letter, fling it into the impressive fire I’ve made and start again:
I don’t know how to begin or even why I’ve come here. The house is terrible, far worse than Mum and Dad ever admitted. Ben’s nose is permanently streaming. We can’t wash properly—there’s no hot water apart from what I boil in the kettle. I’m thinking of coming back and asking Eliza to put us up for a while, or even my parents. The house is just about bearable now but who knows how it’ll be in January or February? Dad says there’s often snow. If the pipes freeze there won’t be any water at all. I never speak to anyone except Ben and I think I’m going crazy. Even Ben looks at me like I’m not all there.
I stop, check the date. Our wedding day. Jonathan and Nina invite you to their wedding on December 4, at 11:00 a.m., at Hackney Town Hall and afterward at the Fox, Bishop Road, London N4.
It’s our wedding day and I’m spouting a weather forecast. In the little bedroom water drips from the light fitting into a chipped enamel jug. Doop, doop, doop.
Sylvie shows up in a quilted gold jacket patterned with raspberry-colored ferns. She smiles elegantly as if I should have been expecting her. Hefty gold earrings hide in her auburn hair. “I was passing,” she says. “Look, I’ve brought you some things we won’t use.” I step back to let her glide into the kitchen. From her macramé shopping bag come tomatoes, an orangy pie topped with almonds and a paper bag of green beans. “I’ve been thinking about you,” she says, pulling the jacket about her. “Are you warm enough? There’s a heater I can bring from the hotel. Do you have enough firewood? My son will bring some around.”
“We don’t need anything,” I say, backing away from her. “Thank you, but we’re fine.”
She looks around the kitchen. The worktop is dusted with cake crumbs. Ben stands at a battered cupboard, clinging to its tarnished handle. His checked trousers are striped with chicken and broccoli with added sugar and salt. Is she expecting a coffee or what? I consider resorting to my old tactic—making it with cold water—to get her to leave. I don’t want her here, noticing things.
“Are you staying for Christmas?” she asks.
“Probably.”
“You’re spending Christmas alone in this house?”
If only I had my coat on, I could pretend I was on my way out. Sorry, Sylvie, but we’re due to meet friends in a lovely warm restaurant. We know people here. See, we belong.
“All alone with a baby,” she says.
I swipe at Ben’s unhygienic trousers with a rank-smelling cloth. “My husband was supposed to come,” I explain. “For Christmas. But he’s working, can’t get away. We’re just here a little while until—thanks for the food. It looks delicious.”
She touches my arm and says, “Can I invite you for lunch? This Saturday? We’d enjoy having you.” She trots out on clippy heels, wafting lavender like an underwear drawer.
Hotel Beauville lies at the end of a curved graveled driveway, a hunk of cheap yellow in the distance. Plaster animals cluster at each side of the path. A bird’s house with a wooden man winding a handle juts from a dilapidated border. Ben struggles in his buggy, arching to making his escape. I feel conspicuously giftless. Ben and I perused the supermarket in Chatillon—and I hovered over prettily packaged olives, biscuits and cheeses—but what if these were everyday French brands, the equivalent of bringing Jacob’s Crackers, or Branston Pickle?
Sylvie peeps though a flounce of white curtain and opens the door before we reach it. Ben is unleashed by her quick fingers and clasped in her arms. She guides me, a hand at my back, into a hall smelling of woodland glade room freshener.
“This way,” she says, and we’re in a mish-mash of a living room, its bookcase jammed not with books but soft toys: teddies with waistcoats and glasses and mice decked out in flamboyant evening wear. Each window is draped with ruched white satin, glimmering cheaply like highly flammable knickers. Damp wooden oars have been carelessly propped up against the pansy-printed wall.
Nadine makes sweet talk to Ben. She is still wearing the horse blanket sweater. Ben giggles, glancing from one animated face to the other. I realize how flat my face has become, like a paving slab. “Christophe!” calls Sylvie. There’s a male mutter from somewhere higher than us and he appears, lolloping down three stairs at a time. He’s a long-legged boy, a long-everythinged boy; too tall for his width, as if stretched. The nose is long too, the chin decorated with a beginner’s attempt at a beard. Don’t kiss me, I plead. Don’t do that double-kiss French thing.
He does the double-kiss French thing and turns his attention to Ben, whose winter clothing is being peeled off. It’s like shooting a commercial: everything taken out of my hands. Sylvie tells me to sit. Nadine dumps steaming mounds on my plate; green beans and dollops of mash and a meaty dish swimming in gloss. From his vintage high chair—clearly falling way short of safety standards—Ben is fed by Sylvie, his mouth stretching enthusiastically each time the spoon swoops toward him. My glass is sloshed with red wine, never allowed to be less than two-thirds full. There’s a pudding of white stuff—cream and meringue, perhaps—flecked with berries.
I am aware, despite the perpetual chatter, of the sound of my eating; the slapping of my oversize tongue. Sylvie talks about extending the hotel with a conservatory at the back. Nadine regards me as if I’m about to do something amusing. Christophe watches my jaws moving. Sylvie licks a paper serviette and dabs Ben’s face clean. I’m so full I can hardly breathe, let alone move. My parents’ house is a continent away. Can I walk like a normal person, after so much food? It’s the first cooked meal I’ve had since the sausage on the ferry, when my digestive system started to play up.
It’s raining heavily. “You must stay,” says Sylvie, “until it stops.” She lifts a hefty green album from a bookshelf which I suspect contains photos. I tell her, “The meal was lovely, but we must get back. Ben needs to nap.”
“He can sleep here,” she trills, patting a rose-patterned sofa. Something rises in my throat; a fear, perhaps, of drowning in knicker curtains and meringue pudding. “Why such a hurry?” she asks. “On holiday, too.”
“Sorry, we really have to leave.”
While Nadine eases Ben into his snowsuit, Sylvie dollops the remains of the pudding into a green glass bowl which she wraps in a bag and slides into the basket beneath the buggy. “Christophe will see you home,” she announces.
“I’m fine. It’s just a short walk.”
“But it’s raining. Do you have an umbrella?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you want to be wet, and the poor child ill for Christmas?”
“I have a rain hood for the buggy,” I protest, remembering that although I do possess such an item, I thoughtfully left it back at the house. And I feel lousy for gobbling her food and kindness and doing a runner, but then, haven’t I done a lot of that lately?
“Please, I don’t need walking home.”
“He wants to,” she says. “Don’t you, Christophe?”
19
Antisocial Behavior
Outside smells of wet soil. I am grateful for air; the hotel felt overheated and hard to breathe in, perhaps due to all those soft toys . Christophe holds the umbrella over me and the buggy as if we are VIPs treading the red carpet to a film premiere. Rarified creatures who must not be sploshed. Our feet crunch into wet gravel. The sole of my right shoe flaps as I walk. We turn into the road leading back to the village. There’s no pavement, just a sodden grass
verge, and we’re too wide an ensemble to walk together.
Christophe touches my shoulder, making me jump. “Here,” he says, “take the umbrella. I’ll push.” He pulls off his jacket and forms a waterproof cape around Ben, then walks ahead, pushing the buggy. His sweater is drenched. He looks back at me, laughing at the absurdity of the scene, and something not entirely unpleasant—like a glimmer of recklessness—flits through me.
We reach the village where the pavement enables us to walk side by side. Now he can ask me things. Curiosity is clearly a family trait. “So you’re looking after your parents’ house?” he says.
“Sort of.”
“On your own, just before Christmas?”
I respond by batting back questions: What do you do? Is this your life, helping your mother with the hotel? Why is your English so good?
“I lived in London,” Christophe says. “Worked there. Jobs here, jobs there.”
He’s at a lifestage where jobs-here-jobs-there is a viable way to exist. Not a Jonathan lifestyle. Not grownup. We pass the bakery. The owner is using a pole to shake the canopy where water has collected. She nods at Christophe. Her eyes meet mine with startled disdain as if the flooded canopy were somehow my fault.
“What brought you back?” I ask.
“My mother. The hotel, she and my father bought it, worked together. And he left. We didn’t know where he’d gone until the fax arrived, telling us he is living with a hairdresser.”
So much information is gushing my way that I’m not sure how to respond. “His hairdresser? Did she cut his hair and—” I stop myself. I’m sensing a Promise story.
“No, my mother’s,” Christophe says.
“I assume she’s not her hairdresser any longer.”
He laughs, swerving the buggy down the track to the house, and says, “My mother still goes to her. She is very particular about who cuts her hair.”
I let us in with the five-inch key which I leave under a lump of yellowish stone at the door. It’s a game I play: hey, burglars! Come on in. See? Nothing to take, unless you’re aware of a market for stale sponge cakes.
Christophe follows me in, shaking his hair like a wet dog. In one swift movement he yanks the sodden sweater over his head and, perhaps accidentally, the T-shirt with it. I wish I knew what to do with him. Linda from the ferry would have a warm drink pressed into his hands and something to occupy him whipped from the zebra-striped bag stuffed with coloring books (surely he’s not young enough for a coloring book). “A towel please,” he says.
I sniff the hand towel in the bathroom. It smells like it’s been trapped in a bag with wet swimming trunks. When I come back, Ben has been decanted from his buggy, disrobed of snowsuit and placed in his car seat. He’s nodding toward sleep.
Christophe towels himself dry. I busy myself with brushing cake crumbs from the work surface and cleaning Ben’s bottles as best as I can with icy water. “Would you like a sweater?” I ask, keeping my back to him.
“Great,” he says. He mooches out of the room, exploring. When I find him it’s his back I see; narrow and shiny, the spine clearly defined. He lights the fire in my turquoise Gap sweater which finishes at his navel. Grinning, he holds up his blackened hands.
“No hot water,” I say reluctantly. I don’t want Christophe or any member of his family forming the opinion that I am managing anything less than brilliantly. And I want to ask him: why is your mother involving herself with me? And why are you here? I must have a look which announces: I need to be taken care of. But I don’t. Look at me here, alone with my son. I take care of others, isn’t that what mothers do? I’m one of those mums you see in the park; the real ones who know what they’re doing, have clean babies and endless supplies of the right kind of snack, stashed in some kind of Tardis bag. I belong to that club.
I’m filling the kettle when it happens: that wave like on the ferry, only hotter this time, involving sweat and a too-close recollection of Sylvie’s sauce swilling around my insides with the wine and meringue pudding. Your body does this when you’re feeling unwell: conjures up images of intense, bile-making food—raw eggs, pilchards—just to taunt you.
It’s having a laugh, this belly of mine; pulling a fast one when I have a young male—two young males—in the house. How much have I drunk? Wine: bad idea in the day. Shakily I make my way to the living room where Christophe is jabbing the fire with a poker I have never managed to locate.
I lower myself into the battered sofa, aware of its greasiness. Slow, deep breaths. Anything to take this thing away. As if sensing mother in distress, Ben wakes, depriving himself of his usual two-hour kip. He’s instantly crotchety, kicking at his seat furiously. But I can’t go to him. I am rooted to the sofa, panting into my hands.
“Is something wrong?” Christophe asks. “You look—”
It’s a distant voice, well-meaning but unable to help. Ben’s howls are more distant still. If only I could un-eat Sylvie’s meal, get it out of me. It’s there in my throat, splattering onto my park shoes, and he’s at my side saying, “Poor Nina.”
For a moment I believe it won’t stop; I’ll empty completely and sag like an ancient balloon. One arm hugs me, the other holds back my hair. Dignified. The sort of sophisticated look I always aim for when I’m with someone new. Fed up with wailing, Ben watches, transfixed, as his mother appears to be eating in reverse.
Christophe cleans up. He actually wipes up the vomit of a woman he has known for one brief afternoon, even finding disinfectant tucked behind the loo. To prevent Ben investigating the infected area, he constructs a kind of corral from three wooden chairs, placed on their sides around the sick zone. I am so ashamed I could cry.
Christophe says, “Feel better now?”
I shake my head and say, “A week ago, I was supposed to get married.” He’s still next to me in the striking combination of damp jeans and girl’s turquoise sweater. “And I didn’t get married,” I tell him. “We had…a sort of row. About nothing, like most of them are. And I used it. As an excuse. I tricked him. It was a mistake—all too fast. We met though a lonely hearts ad, when you advertise yourself because you can’t…do you have that here? Lonely hearts?”
He frowns, shaking his head.
“And we had Ben. Also too early. I wasn’t ready. No one was ready.”
He says, “It’s better not to marry if you feel that way.”
“I know that.”
“Though you feel bad for hurting—”
“Jonathan,” I say. The name comes out crookedly. I haven’t said it aloud since I left him. I haven’t even said “Dad.” I wonder if Ben’s forgotten he has one. How far back can babies remember? A month? Or mere seconds, like goldfish?
“And you came here because…”
“I don’t love him,” I say, wondering why it didn’t occur to me to lie.
He stays into the evening, moving about the house as if he belongs. I feed Ben his nighttime bottle, drinking the coffee Christophe made, aware of clanking sounds from the dank space where the boiler lives. Something heavy and metallic is being moved. There’s a scraping sound and a muffled yelp, as if he’s hurt himself. I hope he knows what he’s doing. Christophe may be unusually skilled in the efficient clearing up of vomit, but I suspect he might not have sat the complex exams required for fiddling about with gas.
But something happens. There’s a rush of air like breath through a tube; then a faint pwuff as something ignites.
He stands before me and says, “You have hot water.” If I weren’t double his age, and suspecting that I might still smell faintly of sick, I could hug him.
Christmas presents arrive. From Jonathan to Ben: a wooden construction with holes of varying shapes into which blocks are to be slotted to encourage manual dexterity. From Beth: a snowman card made with tiny scrunches of white tissue paper, glued into place, with perhaps a little help from Rosie, and blue rabbit slippers. The card reads: Missing you. Have a very happy Christmas. Love, Beth, Matthew and Maud. No Rosie. Perh
aps she’s considered too low in the hierarchy to merit a Christmas card mention.
From Constance to Ben: a custard cardigan with clumsy pearlized buttons. Nothing from Jonathan to me. Nothing from my parents to anyone. I reseal Ben’s presents and place them high on the bookshelf.
I call my parents to remind them of their daughter and grandson’s existence and brag about how well I’m managing. My mother says, “Are you finding the house comfortable?”
Slightly more so, I want to say, now that I have hot water. Why didn’t you warn me? What made you pack me off with a key and an illegible map and a baby? But it’s not her fault. No one made me do this. “It’s perfect,” I tell her.
“Oh, isn’t it? Your dad and I are missing the place. We don’t usually come in winter—absolutely freezing, isn’t it? And so damp. But with you being there we thought, why not? So we’ll be over for New Year. Maybe you could make the place shipshape, get some food in.”
“I’ll do that,” I say, warming to Sylvie’s offer of an overheated hotel room, sans parents.
Presents come from Eliza: for Ben, a babysoft black crew-neck; for me, an aromatherapy bath kit (well timed considering the arrival of hot water). There’s also a heavily discounted soul compilation CD—she’s left the price sticker on—which, due to a lack of stereophonic equipment, I will be able to play only in the car. I rewrap the gifts so I’ll have something exciting to open on Christmas day. There’s an envelope in Eliza’s jiffy bag which I assume is a card but it turns out to be a letter written in top-speed scrawl:
Dearest Nina,
Are you all right? Still at your parents’ clapped out place? I’ve been terrible at keeping in touch. Sorry. Things have been complicated. But Jonathan called, wanting to know if I’d heard anything. Like what your plans are.
Conversation was a bit strained. Think he suspected I was holding stuff back—like I know more than I do. What could I tell him? He must be demented with worry. Is this some delayed postnatal thing? Why don’t you come back and sort yourself out? You could get pills. Sarita at work is on some seratonin thing and it’s worked a treat. She’s sweaty at night and a bit spacey looking, but smiles more. Nina, I have to admit I feel partly responsible for this mess, putting the baby modeling thing in your head. Please call.