She recalls, not for the first time, that Ted once described his father as ‘a randy old goat’ and she pictures him fleetingly with a white beard, tethered to a stake, straining at his chain. She feels her face twitching with amusement. ‘What does?’ she says, and with the effort of not laughing, the words come out louder than she intended.
He takes another drag of his cigarette, regarding her with narrowed eyes. She can see that, in his day, he would have been handsome. The blue eyes, the curled upper lip, the once-blond hair. Odd how the beautiful can’t ever quite let go of that expectation, that assurance of admiration.
‘Motherhood,’ he says.
She tugs her skirt further down, over her knees. ‘Do you think?’
‘And how about my son?’
Elina glances at Ted and sees that he is alternately screwing his eyes shut and opening them again. ‘What about him?’ she asks, distracted.
‘How is he acquitting himself as a father?’
‘Um.’ She watches as Ted sits forward in his deck-chair, putting a hand over first one eye then the other. ‘Well,’ she murmurs, ‘fine, I think.’
Ted’s father stubs out his cigarette in a saucer. ‘It was easier in my time,’ he says.
‘Was it? How?’
He shrugs. ‘Nothing was expected of us – no nappies, no cooking, nothing. We had it easy. Just turn up at bathtime every now and again, a trip to the park on Saturday mornings, that kind of thing, the zoo on birthdays. And that was it. It’s hard for them.’ He nods in Ted’s direction.
She swallows. ‘But how about—’
From across the garden, she hears someone say, ‘Oh dear.’ Elina is on her feet before she’s even aware of moving. Ted’s mother is holding out Jonah at arm’s length, her nose wrinkled. ‘I think he needs a bit of attention.’
‘Of course.’ Elina takes him, carries him against her shoulder into the house. Jonah twines his fingers into her hair and says, ‘Ur-blurmg, ’ into her ear, as if imparting a secret.
‘Ur-blur-mg to you too,’ she is whispering, as she picks up the bag from the hall, as she carries him into the bathroom. It is a small bathroom – Ted’s mother calls it ‘the cloakroom’, and Elina had initially expected it to be filled with cloaks. She unpacks the wipes, the clean nappy, the tissues, and lays them out beside the sink. She then seats herself on the closed toilet seat and places Jonah across her lap.
‘Eeeeeuuuuuurrrrrkkkkkk!’ he shrieks gleefully, at the top of his voice, grabbing for his toes, for her hair, for her sleeve as she bends over him, and the noise bounces around the walls of the tiny bathroom.
‘Ow,’ she murmurs, as she disentangles her hair from his fingers, unpopping his suit. ‘That’s a very loud noise. Some would say it’s a very—’ Then she stops. Then she says: ‘Oh.’
The shit has gone down Jonah’s legs and up his back. It has soaked through his vest, his Babygro, his jacket and, now she thinks about it, it is soaking into her skirt as she sits there. He hasn’t done one of these overflowing ones for ages and it would have to be here, it would have to be now.
‘Damn,’ she mutters, ‘damn, damn.’ She unpops the rest of the Babygro and eases Jonah’s hands out of the sleeves, taking care to avoid smearing him. Jonah suddenly decides that the undressing is a step too far. His face looks unsure and then his lower lip goes stiff.
‘No, no, no, no,’ Elina says. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK. Nearly done.’ She whips the Babygro away, trying to hurry through the last bits. As she pulls the vest over his head, she must have caught his ear by mistake because he lets out a roar. His body goes stiff with outrage and he takes in a shuddering breath, ready for the next cry.
Elina balls up the shitty clothes and drops them on to the floor. She turns Jonah over very quickly, he screams and struggles, and she cleans the shit off his back as quickly as she can. It feels incredibly hot in here. Sweat is pricking at her upper lip, under her arms, in a trail down her back. Jonah is naked now, and furious, slippery with cleaning wipes, and she is scared she might drop him. She is just reaching for the clean nappy – get the nappy on, then everything will be all right – when she feels his body strain. She has the nappy in her hand, it’s almost there, she is so close, when she looks down and Jonah is letting out another stream of shit.
It is an incredibly large amount. And it comes out with remarkable force. She will reflect on this later. It spatters the wall, the floor, her skirt, her shoes. She hears her own voice say, ‘Oh, God,’ and it sounds very far away. She is frozen for a moment, unable to move, unable to see what she should do next. She is holding the nappy under her chin, and as she starts scrabbling for the wipes, he lets out another. She can only think: There is shit all over Ted’s mother’s cloakroom. All over her. All over Jonah. Tears spring painfully into her eyes. She doesn’t know, she can’t see, what to clean first. The baby? The wall? The skirting-board? The impossibly white hand-towel? Her skirt? Her shoes? She can feel shit between her toes, squelching and sticky. She can feel it soaking through her skirt into her underwear. The smell is indescribable. And Jonah screams and screams.
Elina leans forward and unlatches the door. ‘Ted!’ she yells. ‘TED!’
Clara swishes into the hall, one brow arched. Elina sees her pleated silk dress, the gold shoes that lace up her calves. ‘Hi,’ Elina says, in what she hopes is a normal voice, through a crack in the door. ‘Could you ask Ted to come here?’
Minutes later, Ted is slipping into the cloakroom. Elina thinks she has never been so pleased to see him.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he says, surveying the room. ‘What happened?’
‘What does it look like?’ she says wearily. ‘Can you take Jonah?’
She sees him hesitate, glance down at his clothes.
‘You can either take Jonah or clean the poo off the floor,’ she says, over the noise. ‘It’s your choice.’
Ted takes his screaming, writhing son and holds him at arm’s length. Elina wipes him again then straps a clean nappy on to him. ‘Right, the clean clothes are there. You get him dressed and I’ll clear this up.’
Ted squeezes past her to the basin and Elina gets on her hands and knees to mop the shit off the walls, the skirting-board, the floor. When she’s finished, she steps past Ted, who is putting on Jonah’s vest inside out.
She stands for a moment in the hallway, her back against the wall, her eyes shut. Jonah’s screams are settling into hoarse, shuddering sobs. After an interval, she hears Ted step out of the cloakroom. She opens her eyes and there before her is her son, face wet with tears, his thumb jammed tight in his mouth.
‘You need some clean clothes,’ Ted says.
Elina sighs and brings her hands up to cover her face. ‘Can we go home now?’ she says through them.
Ted hesitates. ‘My mum’s just made a pot of tea. Do you mind if we stay for that? Then we’ll go.’
She lets her hands drop; he avoids her eyes. She feels the possibility, the temptation of arguing over this, but then she remembers something. ‘Is everything OK, by the way?’
He looks at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You were doing that thing again.’
‘What thing?’
She mimes the blinking. ‘That thing.’
‘When?’
‘In the garden. Just now. And you seem a bit . . . I don’t know . . . out of it.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Yes, you do. What’s the matter? Did you have one of those things again? Did you—’
‘It’s fine. I’m fine.’ Ted hefts Jonah to his shoulder. ‘I’ll ask my mum about some clothes,’ he says, and disappears.
Elina follows Ted’s mother up the stairs, up and up the winding centre, past door after shut door. She has never been in this part of the house. She doesn’t think she’s ever been further up than the big drawing room on the first floor. Ted’s mother leads her two floors above this, to a bedroom thick with beige carpeting, with draped curtains held back with swags of tasselled material.
Elina stands by the window, looking down into the street, into the square, into the gardens there, the trees swaying in the breeze. The leaves, she notices, are edged with orange-brown. Can autumn really be coming?
‘How about this?’
Elina turns and sees that Ted’s mother is holding out a dress in fawn jersey material. ‘Great,’ Elina says. ‘Thanks.’
‘Why don’t you get changed in here?’ Ted’s mother says, opening a door, and Elina darts through.
She finds herself in a dressing room. The walls are papered with large yellow chrysanthemums and winding stems. There is a dressing-table by the window, covered with a surprising number of bottles, pots, tubs. Elina goes closer as she unfastens her skirt. As it drops to the floor, she tilts her head to read: ‘anti-ageing formula’, says one, ‘for neck and décolletage’, says another. She is smirking – who’d have suspected Ted’s mother of such indulgences? – when she catches sight of herself, skirtless, in a shit-stained blouse, hair standing on end, grinning lopsidedly, in the mirror. She drops her gaze, rips off her blouse and pulls on the unpleasant dress. Just as she is struggling with the zip, she sees something else.
It is the right-angled corner of a canvas. Peeping out from its hiding-place behind the dressing-table. Here, in Ted’s mother’s dressing room. The incongruity of it makes her want to laugh.
At first she registers only this: its existence, the strangeness of its position between the furniture and the wall. She sees the thickness of the paint, the colours: grey, muted blue, black. At this point she lets go of the zip. She crouches beside it. She goes to touch it, to feel the grain of the paint, but stops herself at the last second.
Elina gets closer and closer to the canvas, then pulls back. She can see perhaps a ten-centimetre strip of the painting. She looks at the swirled colours, dripped thick to the canvas; she sees hairs from the brush, set deep into the paint. There is no doubt in her mind whose work this is but incredulity, disbelief, makes her crawl into the space under the dressing-table to see as much of the painting as she can. She crouches at skirting-board level, edging along the rim of the canvas, until she finds the artist’s signature, unmistakable, in black paint, slightly smeared, at the bottom right-hand corner.
The knock at the door gives her such a fright that she thwacks her head on the underside of the dressing-table.
‘Auts,’ she whimpers. ‘Kirota.’
‘Are you all right?’ Ted’s mother’s voice comes from the other side of the door.
‘Yes.’ Elina shuffles backwards, rubbing her head. ‘I’m fine. Sorry.’ She opens the door, pushing hair away from her face. ‘I . . . er . . . I . . .’
Ted’s mother comes into the room. They regard each other for a moment, wary, unsure, like cats who have just met. It is not often they are alone together. Ted’s mother looks about the room, in the manner of someone who thinks she may have been burgled.
‘I dropped something,’ Elina mumbles, ‘and, er . . .’
‘Do you need a hand with your zip?’
‘Yes,’ Elina says, relieved. ‘Please.’ She turns round. As Ted’s mother’s hands land on the small of her back, she sees the corner of the canvas again, the swirls and drips of paint. ‘You’ve got a Jackson Pollock behind your dressing-table!’ she blurts out.
Ted’s mother’s hands pause halfway up her back. ‘Is that right?’ The voice is cool, calm.
‘Yes. Do you have any idea how much it’s . . . I mean, that’s not the point. But . . . it’s incredibly valuable. And incredibly rare. I mean, how come . . . how did you . . . where did it—’
‘It’s been in the family for years.’ The hand continues up to the nape of Elina’s neck. Then Ted’s mother walks towards the dressing-table. She looks down at the edge of the canvas. She touches the bottles and pots, as if counting them, straightens a hand mirror. ‘There are others—’
‘Other Pollocks?’
‘No. I don’t think so. Other paintings from the same era, I believe. It’s not something I know much about, I’m afraid.’
‘Where are they?’
She waves a hand through the air, dismissively. ‘Around. I’ll have to let you look at them one day.’
Elina swallows. She cannot quite catch up with the strangeness of this situation. She is here, in Ted’s mother’s dressing room, zipped into Ted’s mother’s dress, in the same room as a Jackson Pollock, which has been shoved behind some furniture like a piece of car-boot-sale tat, talking about a possibly priceless art collection as if it’s an array of homemade doilies. ‘Yes,’ she manages to say, ‘that would be good.’
Ted’s mother gives a gracious smile, indicating the subject is now closed. ‘How is your own work going? Are you managing to get anything done at present?’
‘Er . . .’ Elina has to think. Her own work? She can’t even remember what that is. ‘No. Not at the moment.’ She scratches her head. She is unable to look away from the strip of that painting.
‘Shall we go down?’
‘Yes. Sure.’ Elina turns towards the door, then back to the painting. ‘Um, listen, Mrs R—’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Ted’s mother interrupts, sweeping out of the dressing room, holding the door open for Elina. ‘Call me Margot, please.’
Lexie sits at her desk in the Courier office, tapping her pen against the phone. Then she snatches up the receiver and dials. ‘Felix?’ she says. ‘It’s me.’
‘My darling,’ he says, down the phone, ‘I was just thinking about you. Am I going to see you tonight?’
‘No. I’ve got a deadline.’
‘I’ll come over. Later on.’
‘No. Didn’t you hear what I said? I’ve got a deadline. I need to work as soon as Theo goes down.’
‘Ah.’
‘You could always come and make him his dinner. Then I could start earlier.’
There is a short silence. ‘Well,’ Felix begins, ‘I could, I suppose. The problem is—’
‘Forget it,’ Lexie says impatiently. ‘Listen, I need a favour.’
‘Anything.’
‘The paper has asked me to go to Ireland to interview Eugene Fitzgerald.’
‘Who?’
‘Sculptor. Greatest living. It’s extremely rare for him to agree to an interview—’
‘I see.’
‘So obviously’ – Lexie ignores the interruption: she has to say this quickly or she’ll never get it out – ‘I have to go and I was wondering if you could come and look after Theo for me while I’m away.’
Another silence. This time stunned. ‘Theo?’ Felix says.
‘Our son,’ she clarifies.
‘Yes, but . . . What about the Italian woman?’
‘Mrs Gallo? She can’t do it. I’ve already asked her. She has family visiting.’
‘I see. Well, I’d love to. Obviously. The thing is—’
‘OK,’ Lexie snaps. ‘Forget it. I had serious misgivings about even asking you, but if you can’t be bothered to even contemplate looking after him for three days, then just forget it.’
Felix sighs. ‘Did I say that? Did I say no?’
‘You didn’t need to.’
‘Three days, you say?’
‘I said forget it. I’ve changed my mind. I’ll find someone else.’
‘Darling, of course I’ll have him for you. I’d love to.’
Lexie is silent this time, trying to sense if there’s a catch in this, if he’s lying.
‘I’m sure my mother will come down from Suffolk,’ he continues. ‘She’d be delighted. You know how she dotes on the boy.’
Lexie sniffs, considering this. Felix’s mother has taken everyone by surprise and put aside her initial horror at Felix and Lexie not being married and become a devoted grandmother, abandoning her WI meetings and
jam-making at the drop of a hat to come to London to see Theo and to take him out for the day if Lexie needs to work. This is, if Lexie is honest, the outcome she’d been hoping for. She’d never leave Theo in the sole care of Felix. God only knows what would happen to him. But Felix’s mother, Geraldine – there is something comforting and utterly dependable about her muddied wellies and silk headscarves. And Theo adores her. But Lexie is still annoyed that Felix sounded so reluctant at first. ‘I’ll see,’ she says.
‘Very well,’ Felix replies, and she can hear the amusement in his voice. ‘I’ll speak to my mother about it, shall I? See if the old girl’s willing?’
The Hand That First Held Mine Page 26