When Charlie had asked Alan if he could cook, Alan had thought he’d meant just that, ‘Can you cook?’
‘Course I can.’
‘Oh good,’ Charlie said, ‘because I can’t.’
He’d been grinning at Alan, as if he could see a joke Alan couldn’t see.
He said, ‘And operate a washing machine?’
‘Yes—’
‘And iron?’
‘So-so. What is this?’
‘I just wanted to be sure—’
‘Sure of what?’
‘Sure of your domestic skills before you move in with me.’
Alan had gaped.
‘Charlie—’
‘Will you? Will you move in with me?’
He remembered a little ecstasy. He’d known Charlie was in love with him, known he wanted to spend time with him, but there was something so carefree about Charlie, something so unpossessed, that he, Alan, had never quite dared to hope that Charlie would suggest what he was longing for him to suggest. He could only nod, he remembered, nod and nod like some daft mechanical toy.
And now here he was, early evening in Charlie’s kitchen, throwing out all the rubbish in Charlie’s cupboards, all the packets and tins and tubes and bottles long past their sell-by dates. It was hugely pleasurable. It felt, Alan thought, dumping a broken box of elderly poppadoms in the bin, as if he were throwing away Charlie’s past, all the people he’d loved before Alan, all the people he’d known before Alan even knew he was on the same planet. He was getting rid of all the stuff that didn’t count any more, all the stuff that was over, in order to make way for something not just new, but lasting. It was this sense of its being lasting that filled Alan with a kind of awe; a sense that he had stumbled upon exactly what he had been looking for, for years, exactly the person who could give a point to everything. He’d said to Charlie, a bit drunkenly the other night, that he wondered if they’d been making their way towards each other for years, constantly being diverted or encountering difficulties, but keeping on because – because, well, it was sort of meant. And Charlie, so given to teasing, so given to making light of the most serious things, had simply said, ‘I know.’
Charlie had hoarded the most extraordinary food. There were jars of peculiar East European vegetables and tins of nursery puddings and crumbling packets of obscure pulses and spices. It looked as if he had bought them on impulse and immediately forgotten he’d done it, since Alan knew for a fact that, up to the moment that they met, Charlie had lived on a truly appalling diet of random takeaways and indifferent hamburgers.
‘I’ll eat vegetables,’ Charlie had said. ‘Of course I will. I like vegetables. It’s just that they don’t ever exactly occur to me.’
Alan was looking forward to correcting that, looking forward to making Charlie eat breakfast and vegetables and olive oil and organic bread. He picked up a jar of grey-green pickled cabbage and dropped it, with a satisfactory thud, into the bin.
From the sitting room, his mobile phone began its shrill squeal. He hurried through, smiling, his face and voice ready for Charlie, ready to be tough and teasing about Charlie saying his surgery had overrun again and he’d got two emergencies at the hospital.
‘Hello,’ he said, with the special emphasis he reserved for Charlie.
‘Alan,’ Laura said.
His face changed.
‘Hi, Mum—’
‘Are you busy?’
‘Not especially—’
‘Where are you?’
Alan looked at Charlie’s swaybacked sofa piled with newspapers and discarded sweatshirts. Laura did not know about Charlie.
‘At home.’
‘Oh,’ Laura said.
‘What’s the matter, Mum?’
Laura said tightly, ‘Simon put the telephone down on me.’
‘What—’
‘Earlier today. I rang to ask him why he had taken to writing to me with such hideous formality and he said he was too busy with some family crisis and put the telephone down.’
Alan moved across the sitting room and sat down on the sofa. He pulled one of Charlie’s sweatshirts across his knees and patted it, as if it were a cat.
‘What crisis?’
‘Oh,’ Laura said irritably, ‘some storm in a teacup between Jack and a girl.’
‘Moll?’ Alan said.
‘I don’t know. Why should I know? Jack is sixteen and will probably think he’s in love another dozen times before next Christmas.’
Alan smoothed a sleeve of the sweatshirt and folded it up neatly.
‘I think it was quite serious, Mum. For Jack at any rate. The first time he’d—’
‘But not comparable,’ Laura said.
‘Not—’
‘Not comparable in any way to what I am faced with!’ Alan said nothing. He retrieved the second sleeve and folded it on top of the first one.
‘Are you there?’ Laura said.
‘Yes—’
‘Simon wants me to accept this offer on the house. He has instructed me to accept the offer. He has sent me an absolutely dreadful formal letter virtually commanding me to do it.’
‘It’s a good price, Mum. And he is your lawyer.’
‘I know. Of course I know.’
‘You asked him to be your lawyer.’
‘Because I believed he understood. I couldn’t go to a lawyer who didn’t know our history, didn’t understand how things were between your father and me. I couldn’t just be a statistic, a set of figures, a typical example. I asked Simon because he knew. Because he cared. I needed a supporter, Alan, someone to turn to, someone who would feel what I was feeling, someone to take my part. Can you really not see?’
Alan moved the sweatshirt to one side and lay down along the sofa so that he could pillow his cheek on it. He said into the phone, with his eyes shut, ‘You’ve asked for his advice, Mum. He gives you the best advice he can. Then you refuse to take it.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Laura said.
Alan opened his eyes.
‘What?’
‘I am not accepting this offer. I am not selling Hill Cottage.’
Alan sat up abruptly.
‘Mum, you have to.’
‘Why do I?’
‘Because it represents the largest chunk of equity you and Dad have, and it has to be divided.’
‘That,’ Laura said, ‘is your father’s problem.’
Alan said patiently, ‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that you can’t stop things, ultimately. You can delay them, but you can’t prevent them.’
There was a small scrape of a key in the lock. The front door opened and then slammed.
‘Home!’ Charlie shouted.
‘Who is that?’ Laura said.
Charlie appeared in the sitting-room doorway. His hair was tousled and his tie was at half mast. Alan’s heart rose like a bird.
‘A friend—’
‘I want you to do something,’ Laura said.
Charlie tiptoed over to the sofa and sat down beside Alan. He pointed to the phone, raising his eyebrows.
‘My mother,’ Alan mouthed.
Charlie grinned and picked up Alan’s free hand. He put his fingers in his mouth.
‘What?’ Alan said.
‘I want you to tell Simon that I’m refusing the offer on Hill Cottage. I am not going to be treated like this. By any of you.’
Charlie bit gently on Alan’s fingers.
‘OK—’
‘Are you listening?’
‘Yes,’ Alan said faintly, his eyes on Charlie’s face.
‘Then ring Simon,’ Laura said. ‘Ring him and then ring me back.’
‘OK. Mum, I’ve got to—’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got to go,’ Alan said. He took the phone away from his ear. Charlie took it out of his hand and switched it off. He winked at Alan.
‘Unless she’d like to join in?’
When Jack saw
Simon on the pavement outside the school gates, he had an immediate panic. Simon had never come to meet him from school, not since his nursery-school days, and the sight of him hanging about rather apprehensively on the edge of the pavement, his hands in the pockets of his inevitably crumpled suit, made Jack think immediately that there’d been a disaster. He forgot Adam and Rich, dawdling along beside him as they seemed to at the moment, like a couple of spaniels, and sprinted forward.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing,’ Simon said. He was trying to smile.
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘At work,’ Simon said. He put a hand out to touch Jack and it hovered, uncertain where to land. ‘Where did you think she’d be?’
‘Is she OK?’
‘Yes, of course—’
‘And Rach and Ems?’
Simon’s hand brushed Jack’s shoulder and slid off.
‘Everyone’s OK, Jack. Everyone’s fine. I’m not here with bad news. Nothing’s happened, promise.’
Jack peered at his father.
‘Why’re you here then?’
Simon shrugged a little. He said with difficulty, ‘I felt bad. I felt – well, I felt I’d let you down—’
Jack glanced over his shoulder. Adam and Rich were standing eight feet away, pretending they weren’t anything to do with anything. Jack jerked his head in their direction.
‘See you,’ he said to them.
Adam glanced up.
‘Later?’ he said.
‘Nah,’ Jack said. ‘Tomorrow.’
He willed Adam not to say, ‘You OK?’
‘You OK?’ Adam said.
Jack nodded. Rich pulled at Adam’s sleeve.
‘See you,’ he said. Jack nodded again. They went wandering off, their school bags bashing into one another.
‘Your friends?’ Simon said.
‘Yes. Some of them—’
‘Looking after you?’
Jack shrugged.
‘Seems like it—’
‘Sorry,’ Simon said.
‘Sorry what?’
‘Sorry it wasn’t me. Or Mum.’
Jack said, ‘Could we get a move on?’
He stepped past Simon into the gutter and began to walk along the road. Simon ran to catch up with him.
‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of your friends—’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I just wanted to see you, to tell you I was sorry.’
Jack put his head down. He began to walk faster.
‘You did. It’s OK. I said.’
‘Can I ask you,’ Simon said, dodging other people on the road edge to keep up with Jack. ‘Can I ask you something?’
Jack nodded.
‘When – when it happened, when you found out—’
He stopped.
Jack stopped walking.
‘What?’
‘When you found out,’ Simon said, stopping, too, and facing him, ‘why didn’t you come and tell me or Mum?’
Jack sighed. He shifted his school bag from one shoulder to the other.
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why not? We’d met Moll, we’d seen what she meant to you—’
‘Dad,’ Jack said, interrupting.
‘What.’
‘You weren’t listening,’ Jack said.
Simon said earnestly, ‘But you didn’t try us.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘You couldn’t? Why couldn’t you?’
‘There wasn’t any point,’ Jack said, and began to walk again.
‘Can you tell me—’
‘There hasn’t been any point for ages. Ever since this Grando thing. You’re always too tired or too busy or out or something.’
Simon said, ‘And Mum?’
‘Same,’ Jack said briefly.
They stopped to cross the road by some traffic lights. Simon put a hand on Jack’s arm.
‘Probably,’ Jack said, ‘I cross twenty roads a day all by myself.’
‘I don’t,’ Simon said. He waited for Jack to shrug his hand off. Jack didn’t. The lights changed and they went across together, Simon’s hand under Jack’s arm.
‘So you went to Grando.’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell me why?’
Jack screwed his face up.
‘He’s OK.’
‘Could you try a bit harder?’
Jack stopped walking again. He said, staring past Simon rather than at him, ‘He talked to me.’
‘Just that?’
‘He listened,’ Jack said, ‘he made time for me.’ He looked quickly at Simon. He said, quite slowly, ‘He didn’t make me feel I was just a bloody messy teenage pest.’
Simon’s face twitched.
‘I see.’
‘He’s in this grotty flat,’ Jack said. ‘He’s only got his clothes and some books. But he never—’
‘He never what?’
‘He never asked me to be sorry for him. He was just sorry for me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because he knew,’ Jack said loudly. ‘He knows.’
Simon said tentatively, ‘And I don’t?’
Jack’s gaze dropped. He kicked at the uneven edge of a pavement slab.
‘I don’t know what you know,’ he said. ‘How can I? You never say.’
Chapter Sixteen
Rachel had left her bedroom door slightly open. The landing light was on as usual so that Rachel could see across the stairwell and notice that Emma’s door was shut. Emma had gone to bed halfway through supper, saying she had a headache.
‘The same headache?’ Carrie said. Carrie looked as if she had a headache herself.
‘I don’t know,’ Emma said.
‘Is it in the same place?’
Emma had twiddled some spaghetti into a nest shape and then taken her fork out of the nest and laid the fork aside on her plate.
‘I can’t remember.’
Carrie had found a packet of paracetamol in a kitchen drawer and made Emma swallow one. Then she’d taken Emma upstairs and put her to bed as if she were six.
When she came down, she said to Rachel, ‘I wonder if it’s her eyesight—’
‘You’ll never get her to wear glasses. She’d freak.’
‘Why should she keep having headaches?’
Rachel was reading the weekly colour supplement of the evening newspaper. There was an article in it on how stress made some girls into sticks and some into balloons.
‘Stress,’ she said.
‘Why should Emma be stressed?’ Carrie said.
Rachel shrugged. If Carrie didn’t think the whole evening hadn’t been stressed, with Simon first playing super-dad all over Jack and then insisting on taking him out for a drink, then she wasn’t going to point it out. Jack looked as if he didn’t know what to do, as if he hadn’t a clue as to what was expected of him. He hadn’t eaten his spaghetti either, he’d just picked some bits of ham out of the sauce and left the rest in a tomato-y mess, like Emma had. Rachel had eaten hers. She wished she hadn’t, but she had. She tried not to think of how her tummy would look in the shower. She pushed the colour supplement away from her.
‘I’ll clear up,’ she said to Carrie.
Carrie was nursing a mug of herbal tea. Her hair was all over her shoulders. It needed a wash, Rachel thought, or a brush at least.
‘Will you?’
Rachel got up.
‘Yes.’
‘Actually,’ Carrie said, ‘don’t bother. It’s very kind of you, but I’ll do it. I need something mindless to do while I wait for Dad and Jack to get back.’
‘OK.’
‘Have you got homework—’
‘Don’t ask,’ Rachel said. ‘Just don’t always ask.’
‘Sorry. Reflex.’
Rachel looked at the table. It was appalling to realize that she could easily have eaten what Jack and Emma had left on their plates. She jerked her tummy muscles in, and held them.
‘See
you later,’ Rachel said.
Carrie lifted her face.
‘Give me a kiss.’
‘You never want a kiss—’
‘I do now.’
Rachel bent and kissed Carrie’s cheek. It felt dry and a little rough. Trudy thought Carrie was pretty but didn’t make the best of herself.
‘What d’you mean, the best?’ Rachel said. ‘She doesn’t make anything.’
Once upstairs, Rachel lay on her bed. She raised her legs into the air, first left, then right, then both together, and felt the satisfactory pull in her abdomen. You ought really, she knew, to do these exercises on the floor, but it was too much to do at night, too much to ask of somebody with all the preoccupations Rachel had. She turned on her side and looked out through her open door at Emma’s closed one. She thought of going in and sitting on Emma’s bed and trying on the butterfly hair clips Sonia had given her. But it would be a hassle. Emma wouldn’t want her to, out of sheer perversity, and she’d shriek if Rachel so much as put a hand on the butterfly clips and then Carrie would come up and there’d be a scene and Emma would say her headache was worse.
Downstairs, the telephone rang. Rachel became alert.
‘Hello?’ she heard Carrie say. ‘Hello?’ and then, in a different voice, ‘Oh, hello, Laura.’
Rachel rolled quietly off her bed and on to the floor. Then she crawled out on to the landing and lay against the banisters, peering down towards the hall and the open kitchen door.
‘No,’ Carrie said. ‘No, he isn’t.’
Rachel heard the scrape of furniture on the kitchen floor as if Carrie were pulling a stool over towards the counter where the telephone was.
‘He’s out, Laura,’ Carrie said. Her voice was quite loud, louder, Rachel thought, than it needed to be for an ordinary conversation. ‘He’s out with Jack. They have gone out together. No. No, I don’t know when they’ll be back, I didn’t ask, Laura. I did not ask.’
Marrying the Mistress Page 22