‘They learn to read and write,’ answered Stephen.
‘Not at four.’
‘They play with other children.’
‘Emily plays with other children.’
I didn’t tell him that the previous afternoon at the park she kicked a boy in the head because he was rushing her as she climbed the ladder for the slide. Apparently, she stood on his hand, too, which may or may not have been deliberate. The kicked child’s nanny was nowhere to be found and I had to carry him around the playground as he cried, searching for the nanny, which meant I left Daniel in the swing seat on his own. When I returned I found an older child swinging Daniel too hard, as he screamed hysterically. That would have been worth a pill or two, but I wasn’t taking them then.
Now Stephen holds my head in his hands, massaging my temples, squeezing together the lobes on either side of my skull, tracing my hairline with his fingernails.
‘Tell me what hurts you so much,’ he says to me.
‘Those fucking drugs you gave me,’ I say. ‘God, how does anyone in your office work on those?’
I can hear his laugh above me. ‘I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.’
‘I’m so worried,’ I say. ‘Worried about the children.’
‘You just need some help. More than that useless cleaner.’
‘Veena. She’s not useless. She’s my friend.’ Veena is a philosophy Ph.D. candidate. She is terrifically smart, and good company, but is in fact terrible at cleaning a house.
‘Well, the last time I saw her she scrubbed the skirting boards until you could eat off them but left the kitchen sink full of dishes.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘Veena doesn’t like dust.’
To be honest, Veena is a little weird about dust. She runs a damp cloth along the tops of doors and the back of chests of drawers. She has a special duster she uses for radiators, one she made herself and which she says she should get a patent for. ‘Such a lot of terrible dust you have,’ she says. If she manages to get beyond polishing the picture frames, she might actually run a vacuum cleaner. ‘You are having need of tile floors and shutters, not all these thick carpets and flouncy fabrics gathering dust,’ she has told me. When I protested to her that in every Indian restaurant I’ve ever been to there are nothing but flouncy curtains with complicated pelmets, she made a face and told me London dust is very nasty stuff, plus nobody bothers to wash such things in this country.
‘Why not a nanny?’ asks Stephen now. He is using his most gentle voice, his most loving hands.
‘No. The only thing I like is being with my children.’
‘Then why are you so miserable?’ he sighs. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
But it is not ridiculous. I have read how animals react hysterically, sometimes even violently, in the event of imperfect offspring. One night, while watching television, I saw the awful spectacle of a wildebeest born with the tendons in its legs too short. The legs would not straighten and the newborn calf buckled under the clumsy disobedience of his faltering limbs. Five minutes was all it took for a cheetah to find its opportunity. The wildebeest cow circled her crippled calf, bucking and snorting and running her great head low at the lurking cheetah, who seemed almost to gloat at this unexpected opportunity of damaged young. She ran at the cheetah, but the cheetah only dodged and realigned itself closer to the struggling calf. The mother then tried distracting the cheetah, enticing it to chase her. Trotting gently before it, inches from its nose, the wildebeest offered in lieu of her offspring the sinewy meat of her own buckskin hock.
‘Turn it off,’ I told Stephen. He was sitting in his favourite chair, his feet resting on Emily’s playtable, his dinner on his lap.
‘What? Right now? Let’s just see what happens to the calf!’
I took the remote control and pressed the button as though it were a bullet to the cheetah’s heart. ‘I know what happens,’ I said.
3
Stephen’s surname is Marsh. His Uncle Raymond has a family tree that shows the history of the Marsh family right back to a sprawling black-and-white farmhouse in Kent where I was once brought on a sunny August afternoon in order to observe the origins of this great family to which I am wed. The house was a low-ceilinged maze of musty rooms added on over centuries, charming but archaic, a difficult house that needed constant repairs to its thatched roof and, because of planning restrictions, lacked a garage or a paved road to its entrance, which was through a field of cows. The house was impressive, even if it did require a monstrous amount of attention just to remain habitable, and turned my thoughts immediately to such things as lead poisoning and water-borne diseases. What was I supposed to learn from it? I didn’t understand. ‘Ah, you wouldn’t,’ observed Stephen’s father, Bernard, ‘as you come from a country of immigrants.’
Now the family seat, so to speak, is a post-war brick house in Amersham. It has two bedrooms and a large, anonymous living room with a textured ceiling and lots of ugly brass lamps on the walls; but they can cope with this house, while the other was too much for them now that they are in their later years. Because Bernard is forever spilling tea on the floor, they’ve laid a dark, patterned, low-pile industrial carpet from one end of the house to the other. I am a fan of their new-found practicality, having been subjected to endless numbers of competitively designed terraced houses and roomy flats throughout London. They are owned by Stephen’s colleagues, all of whom have recently had to sell their two-seat sports cars in favour of five-seat Volvos, now that they’ve become parents. As beautiful as I find the fireplaces and polished floors, the thick plaster undulating gently up to vaulted ceilings with all their fine moulded glory, I cannot help being preoccupied with thoughts of inadequacy, as I am indeed a daughter of immigrants. My father, now dead, was the illegitimate son of a Jewish violin maker.
‘Interesting carpet,’ I whisper to my sister-in-law, Catherine. ‘It reminds me of something. Airport lounge? Pub?’
‘I can’t help but think Mother has been the victim of some sort of textile crime,’ says Cath, studying the gold-and-maroon pattern on the floor. ‘And they’ve got the garage stuffed with remnants in case Dad spills.’
Cath is unmarried at thirty-four, which gives both her parents great cause for concern. She’s a doctor, a GP, tall and magnificently built, with thick hips and a powerful tennis arm. Having been made to play cricket with her brothers on beaches, to kick footballs into nets on school holidays, and play tennis on unkempt lawns at the old house for most of her childhood, she has an athlete’s presence. She is my one ally in this family and I adore her.
‘Would you like somewhere to deposit that lad of yours?’ she asks now, nodding at Daniel, who sleeps in my arms. Like his mother, he has odd sleeping patterns that seem to defy the ordinary government of day and night. He will have about five hours from midnight and then a few hours in the afternoon, but only if someone holds him during the nap. Otherwise, he wakes and cries, arching his back and screwing his eyes shut as he howls. No amount of rocking or lullabies or cooing in his ear will make any difference at all. The only place he will sleep other than in my arms, is in the car. I should be a taxi driver, for all the senseless miles I clock in the early hours.
Cath says, ‘I’ll take him. Or perhaps we should give David something to do.’ Stephen’s brother, David, has been parked in front of the cricket the whole of the day, leaving his seat only to visit the buffet lunch, the majority of which was supplied by his wife, who remains mostly in the spare bedroom with a migraine. Their three boys, outside on the small frozen lawn, have been kicking a football for hours against the side of the house. Once in a while Tricia comes out of the spare bedroom, screams at them to stop, then goes back into the bedroom. Meanwhile, David wrings his hands at the Test match, which appears to be taking place somewhere hot. The players are all in wide-brimmed white hats, their noses covered in zinc oxide.
‘I’ll hold on to him,’ I say. If I hand him over surely Cath will notice how much heavier he has gotten, how much big
ger. It isn’t that I don’t want Daniel to grow – nothing of the sort – only that I don’t wish to draw attention to how immature Daniel can seem, such a big boy and yet still sleeping in his mother’s arms.
The lunch consists of several Marks & Spencer’s quiches, a plate of sausages for the children, a green salad and several bowls of variously dressed cold dishes. I brought Cornish game hens in a complicated sauce, which was a mistake. As usual I tried too hard and my effort makes me look as though I’ve turned up to a child’s birthday party in a Chanel suit. I don’t know why the game hens, arranged on a platter of roast potatoes and watercress, are just so wrong for this family lunch, but they are. I understand why Emily doesn’t like them, however. She thinks they look like the corpses of Easter chicks.
‘No soggy vol-au-vents from you, then,’ says Cath, eyeing up the platter. ‘Very impressive.’
‘I would think they are overpriced, being mostly bone,’ says Stephen’s mother, Daphne. She looks hard at the game hens, pursing her lips with a mixture of triumph and disdain as though to say she is not fooled by appearances, nor impressed by oddities such as these half-sized birds.
‘I was told to bring quiche,’ shrugs Tricia, dropping two dissolvable aspirins into a glass of water, then stirring the bubbles with her finger.
‘These are quiche,’ I say cheerfully, pointing at the game hens.
But the game hens grow cold, remaining for the most part on their nest of watercress. And my profiteroles are also a disgrace, being passed over for the blackberry crumble with Bird’s Custard and a summer pudding, still slightly frozen from the box. Why do people with so much money fill themselves with such garbage? Is it some English eccentricity I will never understand?
Stephen leans toward me, whispering, ‘You know, if you ate more, you might grow breasts again.’
‘Stephen, don’t be vulgar,’ says Daphne. Like a schoolboy standing at a closed door with an inverted cup, she misses nothing.
‘I’m sorry, dear,’ says Stephen’s father, sitting in his chair. He has not moved for many hours, and is engrossed in the cricket. ‘Were you talking to me?’
‘No, Dad, Stephen was just being himself,’ says Cath, rolling her eyes.
But at least Stephen defends my game hens. He finishes off two, declaring them ‘charming’ to anyone who cares to hear. I fumble with my plate, trying not to disturb Daniel, who sleeps all through lunch. Lying across me on the couch, he looks more like a puppet for a ventriloquist than a boy. In the end I find it is too much trouble to eat, and anyway, I’m not hungry.
‘Sit with me,’ I ask Stephen.
‘I am sitting with you,’ he says, from the other side of the room.
Daphne steps through the house with a regal air. She wears a floor-length woollen skirt, a crisp high-necked blouse. I am too casual in chinos and a jumper. But then, last time there’d been such a gathering, I showed up in a silk skirt and heels, only to discover they expected me to go on a ‘family walk’ through half the Chilterns. I should have known I had it wrong this morning when we were dressing. Stephen polished his shoes before we got in the car.
‘Why don’t you put that child down?’ says Daphne now, looking with mild disapproval at her sleeping grandson.
‘He’s attached to me,’ I whisper, at which she gasps.
‘You have a very odd sense of humour,’ she says, moving away.
Her next complaint is how fat her elder son has become. ‘You need to make time for the gym, dear,’ she tells David, perched momentarily beside him on the armchair, like a visiting bird.
David doesn’t look away from the TV screen. He’s the only one who seems to like the profiteroles and has no intention of being distracted from them, or from his cricket. ‘Too much on at work,’ he says dismissively. Then he points his fork at the profiteroles. ‘Did you make these things?’ he asks me.
I shake my head no.
‘Bloody good,’ he says. Like most men of his type, David is under the impression that women cook to gain compliments from men. When we don’t cook, but instead buy food, the compliment is forfeited, unrequired. I have been instructed by my mother-in-law on more than one occasion always to admit to baking a dish from scratch, regardless. ‘Up to and until they see the bar code, it is yours,’ she told me. I am not seeking to impress but rather to deceive. If I can present a reasonable lunch, then the rest of my life is similarly ordered. That is my statement, an If/Then statement. The logic of ordinary housewives. A complete lie.
‘They don’t look like something you’d make,’ says Daphne, glancing from David’s bowl to me. ‘Though I suppose someone had to make them. What I want to know is how they get the cream into that incy-wincy, tiny little hole?’
‘With a gun,’ I say. Something about my tone startles everyone in the room. Stephen, David, and Daphne look at me all at once now, blinking. Raymond, who is in a corner with a book on the history of London, stares at me over his bifocals. Stephen’s father rustles from his chair as though woken from a dream. ‘A pastry gun,’ I add, trying to smile.
In fact, I bought the profiteroles that morning at a pastry shop while cruising with Daniel, who would not go back to sleep no matter how much I drove. The pastry shop is run by a group of young Italian men who I gather are somehow related. At 5 a.m. they are in the shop, preparing for the day. The shop has dark shutters, newly painted white brickwork, spotlights that shine out to the pavement. I could hear voices inside, smell the dough, the sugar. Stumbling inside, I surprised them all. They tried to tell me they were closed; then suddenly a short man in baggy black trousers and what might have been a pyjama top charged out from the kitchen at a pace. He was older than the others, their father, perhaps. His hands were wet, his beard unshaven. He was balding in a pattern that made him look as though he had a huge forehead. He saw Daniel, with his blond hair and his favourite train, and stopped at once, wiping his palms on a towel tucked into his belt.
‘Yeah, OK,’ he said, waving us inside. Maybe he thought we were homeless or the sad outcasts of domestic violence. He opened the door, glancing down the road one way then the other, then shut it again. The others shrugged, going back to work. I sat on a stool and watched them roll out pastry, unload boxes, whip up cream. I couldn’t understand much of what they said to each other in Italian, but I understood they were figuring out if I was American. While Daniel picked dough from the floor, I bought box after box of pastries they gave me for next to nothing. I answered questions like, ‘Why Americans drink so much bad coffee?’ and ‘Why Americans like so much to have wars?’ Their own coffee made my head spin. I was more interested in breathing its steam than in drinking it. How long could I stay there? I wanted to stay for ever. But Emily would be awake soon. It was time to go. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you,’ I apologised from the doorway. The sky was streaked with pink and orange, the traffic increasing by the minute now at 6 a.m. ‘Come back, Miss America,’ one of them called. The older one saw me leaving. He came from the kitchen barking orders at his sons. His face was hot, his shoulders enormous for so small a man. I noticed his fingernails coated in flour, a wedding ring that dug into his flesh. I smiled at him. ‘Come back another time, signorina,’ he said.
For the occasion of this family lunch, Stephen’s uncle Raymond has brought the Marsh family tree, which is the size of a school map and requires careful folding. Raymond is a lonesome character with a vast lap and many chins. He moves by use of a cane, which was his father’s and which he wishes to bestow upon Stephen or David when the time comes, which, at eighty-four, is not far off. Beside him, on the edges of a floral settee, is Daphne, who smiles into the family tree, this great canvas of alien names. As always, she seems impressed by the intricate detail of children produced by assorted, untraced females added on to the Marsh lineage by means of tiny crosses from Raymond’s fountain pen. She’s been to the beauty parlour to have her hair set in curls. Between glimpses of the enormous family tree, she admires Emily’s hair, which you cannot get a comb through,
but is nonetheless completely natural, flocked in ringlets that drape down her neck.
‘Where has all your lovely hair gone?’ she asks me now. When Stephen met me I had wavy blonde hair halfway down my back. I’d published some essays in a literary review and I don’t know if it was the hair or my budding journalism career that got me invited to that party in London where we met. ‘I’ve heard about you,’ he said, walking with me along the Strand. This was certainly not the case, but I didn’t mind. ‘I’ve heard about you, too,’ I told him. He was far too sure of himself with a woman. It unnerved me. ‘Well, about people like you,’ I added, then listened to him laugh. I was wearing my hair loose, cascading around my shoulders like a shawl. He told me later how he longed to put his hands in my hair, his tongue in my mouth.
Now my hair is just ordinary, straight, shoulder-length, half the thickness it used to be. I’ve done some articles on a freelance basis since having the children and may, one day, return to work. But that’s not what is on my mind these days.
Daphne says, ‘I mean, what did happen to your hair?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say truthfully.
‘Did it fall out?’ she continues.
I don’t answer this. I’m not even sure it’s a question.
Daphne says, ‘Do you think it is because of …?’ She makes a little motion with her hand.
‘Stress?’ I say. She shrugs. Time to draw this to a close. ‘Could be hormones,’ I tell her. ‘You know, sex hormones.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she says, pursing her lips as though we have just spoken of something about which she greatly disapproves. ‘They are such nuisances.’ She turns now to Raymond, clearing her throat. ‘I see you’ve spelt Took correctly. So few people can, and yet it is very much an English surname, you know.’
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