Such as being barred from the house of son and grandchildren. Distressing was not an adequate word to describe the sense of rejection. She could not begin to explain herself to the coven when she met them for coffee in Luigi’s; could find no formula to reply to the question, ‘And how’s the lovely babies, then?’ without the lie or the equally telling lack of detail becoming transparent. None of them was born yesterday: they relished family conflict and Sophie had lorded over them a little too long. ‘Wonderful,’ she would say. ‘Growing so tall, eating so much,’ none of this news anything compared to the fulsome details she was accustomed to provide even though her contact with son and grandchildren had never been as frequent or consistent as she had pretended. No contact at all was not a difference of degree; more like a body-blow which left her wheezing and gasping for air, a humiliation so acute she could not mention it. Mary said Katherine was to blame, and although Sophie had not been strictly truthful in her account of the last evening’s babysitting, she tended to agree, since it was, in the last analysis, Katherine who had barred her from the house.
When the burglars struck, she had been wandering in a street, which street mattered not, provided there were shop windows and nothing was far from home. She liked looking at antiques if there were any to be seen and was particularly fond of masquerading as a buyer, well aware that her general appearance, her clipped accent and the deceptive appearance of being a lady of means, instead of one who had had her pocket money regulated by her son since ever he was twelve, made the sellers inclined to listen and answer questions for twenty minutes at a time. She was looking, vaguely, for pieces of furniture she had once possessed and lost, little tables, chairs, all gone, sold or taken; she had been looking for years, never finding. But in one of these delightful interludes, so frequent now, when she felt the need to chat was even greater than the need to eat, the burglars had found the living room and stepped through it. Unnecessary, she thought, to break one pane of glass: the window was open already.
Oh what a mess. Dearie, dearie me. The room was always one kind of mess in the form of clutter, but this was a different type of mess. She did not find the fact of only the minimum of things being missing to be any sort of comfort. In the course of removing one precious television, a radio not quite so indispensable and two or three ornaments which happened to be recognizably silver, they had invaded every drawer, every cupboard, despite the flimsy locks which Sophie used for the safe keeping of almost everything she owned. The contents appeared to have been tipped on the living-room floor. Looking with quick, bird-like eyes at what was left, Sophie knew a feeling of pique. How dare they imagine that her Staffordshire dogs, her ornaments, the cups of David’s which were nickel, not silver, or the lace antimacassars were not worth the bother of stealing? Cheek, ignorant pigs, the indignation soared through her, granting a feeling of superiority which arrested the cold sensation for a minute. She supposed she could call the police, but only wanted to call her son, and in the dilemma of what to do next, she sat on the floor once she had established there was no one left in the flat and the windows were firmly closed, made tea and began to examine the piles of things on the carpet. No, she would not call the police; she had enough to do with them once, great big brutes. There on the floor was Daddy’s death certificate, medical reports citing malnutrition. Oh, he had been so fat and fair once. Fractured skull from falling downstairs, falling, it said. Everything scattered about now, along with his indictment for embezzlement and fraud, his convictions for theft. Sophie shuffled away papers, merely examined the objects, preferring to find things the existence of which she had forgotten. The forced, slow turning over of items which had been locked away was a voyage of discovery, accompanied by a great jumble of memories and confusions, all far more disturbing than the burglars themselves.
For a start, there she had been for something like weeks, ever since her banishment, hating her daughter-in-law with the sort of poisonous hatred which would have made her stick pins in her wax effigy if only she could have found the wax and the hair she believed necessary, but here, on the floor, released from some place of safe keeping, were all those lovely things Katherine had given her in the past. Yes, she pictured it now, this same flat when son David was courting, bless him, that gorgeous girl arriving armed with flowers, chocolates, assorted goodies, clothes. Oh and a care in the choices too, a pink silk scarf so precious that Sophie saved it only for best until she forgot where she had put it, then, saucy girl, some camiknickers which had been the most flattering thing of all, a recognition of being not just any old woman, but a pretty old woman, you know, the age usually the recipient of beastly thermal underwear, delighted to receive something fit for a sexy lady. Sophie had saved those to look at, tried them on sometimes, giggled and decided that she did not dare, but in looking at them now, remembered she had worn the frilly blouses and used the exquisite lace handkerchiefs provided from the same source, and not with David’s money either, not as far as she knew, no definitely not. David had been as surprised by the perspicacity of the choices, even a little annoyed, so he certainly had not paid. Oh dearie, dearie me, oh my ears and whiskers. Sophie was scratching at her head, feeling the curls damp with the heat, Katherine even used to take me to the hairdresser. Katherine loved me, she really did. Whatever Mary says.
The evening had come down like a curtain over a short act, surprising her into dusk. Suddenly she was too exhausted to bother with anything and what did it matter, none of all this had anything to do with Daddy. Tomorrow would do. Nor could she cope with any one of the coven, or Katherine’s sister, who would have come round like a shot at the merest hint of disaster. It was only after she went to bed, leaving the mess, only shutting the drawers in the bedroom so as not to be alarmed by different shadows on the walls, that she began to shake and imagine whoever they were would come back. Despite the metal grilles across the broken window frame, piece of nothing to such a team. She could not envisage this as the work of one teenage boy (which it was), lay there quaking and listening for any sound not instantly familiar, got up to fetch the radio at midnight before she remembered it had gone. She made tea, drifted to and fro to the lavatory and sat there for an hour, the bathroom feeling secure since it appeared to have escaped invasion, ah there was a trick to recall for the future, put the silver in there. She tried to think of insurance, the bonus of money back on what was stolen, but could not think straight. All the time she wanted to call her son, strangely wanted to call Katherine. Pride forbade, but she could not stop the wish. Then a squirt of anger intervened. This is my son, my only son: she is my daughter-in-law. I am an old lady. Why the devil does it matter if I call in the middle of the night? At 2.00 a.m., according to the clock too old to be worth the burglars’ appropriation, she dialled, but put down the phone after three rings. She imagined it, by the side of their marital bed, oh no, supposing Katherine did not love her after all, put down the phone as soon as someone at the other end picked up their receiver. Then the anger took hold after yet more tea. She dialled again at three. This time she waited for an answer.
Sophie, hand shaking on one end of the telephone, waiting to speak to a son while hoping the spouse of the son would answer. David had been wrong: Katherine would not mind the mess, Katherine never had. Sophie, receiving, after a very long pause, how many rings, she lost track, determined this time to hang on to the receiver as if it were a lifeline, a voice out of the wilderness. David, speaking with a suspicion in his tone which sounded a little like guilt. ‘Hallo . . . Who’s that?’ Not the aggression she might have expected.
‘Mummy,’ she mumbled.
There was an exclamation. ‘Mummy who?’
‘Your mother,’ Sophie yelled, angry with him for sounding such a stranger.
‘Oh.’
‘You took long enough to answer. What on earth do you think you were doing? I hope you weren’t having a nightmare.’
‘I’m not doing anything, but I was trying to sleep. It’s the middle of the night. What do
you want, Mother, are you drunk?’
‘I’ve been burgled.’
‘When? Now?’
She was aware she might achieve more by exaggeration of both timing and scale, but could not bring herself to lie.
‘No, this afternoon.’
‘Did you call the police?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Are you all right?’ The question sounded bored.
‘Sound in mind and limb if that’s what you mean. I only needed to talk. Could I speak to Katherine?’ The hesitation was palpable.
‘No, you can’t: she’s asleep. And she hasn’t been well.’
‘I’m sure she won’t mind if you ask her. I’m not very well either, as it happens.’
He laughed, a little uncertainly. ‘Not like Katherine, Mama. Different kind of sickness. We think she may be pregnant. Not sure yet.’
‘Ohhhh!’ All Sophie’s fears, angers and alarms melted in the face of one sensation of delight. The burglars were forgotten in David’s masterstroke. Surely her son would need her now. ‘Ohhh, darling David, you are so clever . . . Ohh, I’ll leave her in peace.’
‘Listen, Ma, it’s 3.00 a.m. I can’t come over now and leave the children. I’ll drift across in the morning.’
‘You’re forty in a few days,’ Sophie remarked in one of her non sequiturs which only meant she was not anxious to relinquish the phone.
‘I know, Mother, I know. Go back to sleep.’
She was completely mollified, suddenly weary. ‘I haven’t been to sleep, oh all right then, sleep tight. Give Katherine a kiss for me. Bye-bye.’
David replaced the phone on the bedside table. The mattress beside him was empty. He was marginally grateful to his mother for the earlier interruption, not for the later. His house was now secure, because of her, all his possessions safely housed. Jeremy slept; there was never such a sleeper as Jeremy. Jeanetta was back where she belonged, out of earshot, while he could imagine the faint sounds of Katherine in the attic, walking up and down, down and up, her frantic rattling of the lock suspended now. She should have known better: such a pity she always had to be taught all over again just as soon as she appeared to have learned. As he drifted into sleep, he remembered the red cloak still on the railings outside and reminded himself to remove it in the morning.
So many tasks.
CHAPTER 16
‘Do you love me?’ My husband asked me that, once, in another life, two years ago.
‘Don’t be so damned stupid. Go to sleep.’
Something like that, was what I said, something derisory. I remembered, wide awake somewhere about four o’clock this morning, and into these ghastly hours comes every single depressing thought, everything I never wanted to know or think, conclusions I have never made.
Then there’s a count of everything drunk the evening before in a vain attempt to prove that these broken slumbers and the consumption of alcohol are not related, a piece of mathematics which invariably fails after three gins, half-bottle wine, three more of the same . . . Not much, not much at all, of course not, the old lie turning into that sickly sweet taste in the mouth which tells the truth and makes water into nectar. Sometimes, the deepest sleep follows the waking, but in the small hours, I admit defeat and I miss him. The warm back mostly, the shreds of conversation. The brief intrusion from the front. Did you love me, did you ever love me?
He wasn’t always so perfunctory, you see. It was me who started the rot. Bored, grumpy, can’t be bothered to go out and I hate this house, pushing him off while thinking instead of sums or clients and taxes, ignoring the children the way I had been, ever so nicely, ignored. Such a tidy house of servants, the one of my childhood and the one I created, no responsibilities for mother. Perhaps privilege does this, I do not know, made me so frightened of intimacy through lack of practice, keeping life as formal as possible, but I begin to see how modern man wants more, suffering the same as us from a rising of expectations. They want cuddles and a warm kitchen as well as brain; want us to civilize them with talk, comfort and wallpaper so that pure marriages of equal minds and equal duties may not work. Mine was always treated like a deal, Sebastian and I like directors on the Board and if we disagreed, he was outvoted. Less said the better, mine was the only way, never a hint of democracy here and precious little sentiment either. Something there was I missed or I would not be missing him now. Would not consider, in the purgatory of the early morning, begging him to come back, and if pride was once my backbone, it has a curvature. In my own loneliness, I now see, his.
Backache, heartache, headache. Yesterday morning I had all three as well as the peculiar conviction of being woken by something other than the pre-dawn nausea, opted for pillow over head until daylight, gave up towards six and wobbled towards the study for some pretence at work. And God, the heat. Weeks of this constant sweat, making everything grey, an open window carrying the mockery of a breeze as fetid as a cow’s breath, the air so thick you could cut it with a knife. Not a sound in the street when I look out to check if anything else is alive, blinking downwards to something like a flag on the railings flanking the Allendales’ house, so startling I squint and look again, very quietly. Thick red material on top of the blunt spikes near the front window, a sort of red carpet for a burglar’s bottom. Pretty and pretty odd: half asleep, I tried harder for the imperfect view which misses their front windows and the recess of the door, nothing visible, no sight or sound apart from the red material, hanging there like a signal while I feel absurdly disappointed to see nothing more malicious.
They weigh on one now, if you can understand, a family like that, so bloody self-contained, and they treat me as if I did not exist, the first humiliators of the deserted wife. I can’t approach them, knowing what I know, but I wanted one of them to approach me with the hand of friendship we’re supposed to have, but neither of them will. To think I liked them once after my own fashion while now I tend to despise them for despising me: you would think their children had never spent the greater part of two years in my house because in the few weeks since they left, there’s been scarcely a word. Oh I know David gave Mrs Harrison a large sweetener, but it doesn’t follow that the kids should have disappeared so completely. Mark may have found Jeanetta a pain, but now he sulks, so does Samantha. They are a little confused by the absence of Daddy, however little they saw of him: having those Allendale brutes around the place would have helped since what seems to control children most is the presence of other children. Oh damn, damn, damn. All right, Sebastian, you’ve made your point. I can’t bring myself to call you darling, but OK, you did help: you actually did far more than I, and I miss you.
Did you love me, my husband? Did I try? It was me, wasn’t it? And you in spirit, sitting on that park bench, lonely as a day in hell.
I shouted last time we met, but my heart wasn’t in the noise I was making and when he had his turn he spoke with more authority than I’d ever remembered. He has fine eyes and his hair was untidy, I wanted to touch while I capitulated so much, thought so much, realizing things I never knew, and if suffering ennobles the human spirit, I would prefer to remain base. There is no black and white to life any more, only shades of grey like dirty washing. He looked leaner and fitter, which irked me into the shouting and also drinking more, watching him watch me and seeing through his eyes what it did to my speech. Oh for the luxury of drunkenness instead of the confusion, the vulgar cracks, occasional obscenities and sharp memory for irrelevant jokes which float to the surface of my wine, making me less and less able to get what I want. As if I knew any longer what that was. I drink therefore I digress, and in that process, acceded to all demands. The end-result is that later this evening, Sebastian will come to the door and take Mark away for a couple of days. They will have their own holiday while my spouse and I continue to deliberate, ha, ha. The men of the household seem to be winning.
On that dull thought I was finishing his packing, most of it done by Mrs Harrison since I do not even know where my children keep their
clothes. Such miniature things for a miniature Sebastian, me putting them in a bag and wanting him to come in and say he preferred my company to his father’s but knowing he wouldn’t, and wishing I did not deserve it; when in the middle of what threatened to be tears, Mrs Harrison, more tight-lipped these days than ever, came to see if I was in control. Not of myself, of the packing. And also to ‘have a word’. Her presence was an unwelcome echo of my own redundancy: ‘a word’ is never brief and she never chooses the right time. I wanted Sebastian to come and go: I did not want to listen.
The Playroom Page 24