Suddenly, this struck me as terribly funny. I lost the use of my legs and doubled up weakly on his arm, wheezing hysterically.
‘Key?’ he hazarded, as I swayed violently.
I opened my handbag wide. ‘Take it!’ I gasped wantonly. ‘Go on, ferret around all you want.’
‘Jesus,’ I thought I heard him mutter, but I was probably mistaken.
As he found the key and helped me through the door to the hall, I continued the commentary.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, weak with laughter now. ‘Your new PA, a woman of uncertain years, with questionable motives, two teenage children, stretchmarks and her first grey pube, drags her gorgeous young boss up to her lair …’ at this I playfully seized his tie as we mounted the stairs, pulling him along behind me, ‘…assaults him on an empty stomach – doesn’t even let him get his hands on a bread roll –’
‘Or even a ciabatta,’ he commented as he put the key in the flat door, ‘since we were going smart Italian and not greasy spoon. Bedroom?’
‘Down the end. Or even a ciabatta,’ I agreed drunkenly as he propelled me down the hall. I lurched into a doorway en route. Swayed. ‘Ooh, Laurie. This looks nice.’
The bath suddenly looked terribly inviting. I put one leg over the side.
‘No, no.’ He heaved me out bodily. ‘Not in there. Bed. This way.’
‘Bed,’ I repeated seductively, rolling my eyes lasciviously as I leaned against his shoulder. ‘B.E.D.’ I licked my lips. ‘Mmmm …’
‘Now, you lie down here and – ooh Christ, Henny!’
I’d obeyed orders and flopped back on the double bed, but still had hold of his tie, pulling him down on top of me. I lay there, giggling under his weight, still holding on tight, his nose to mine, whilst behind him, the elaborate ceiling rose was spinning in a curious manner, like a de mented Ferris wheel.
‘You’re a very naughty girl,’ he admonished, tapping my nose lightly. ‘With a very pretty face, and if you weren’t so catastrophically slaughtered I’d be sorely tempted to take advantage of this situation and indulge in a little afternoon delight. As it is though …’ He untangled my fingers one by one and eased himself gently away.
‘Spoilsport!’ I grabbed the back of his head with both hands and pulled his lips down to mine.
At that point, puzzlingly, I saw double. Two heads. Laurie’s, obviously, clamped in my hands, but another, more familiar one, framed in the doorway. I frowned, confused.
‘Marcus?’
Laurie was off me in a trice. Standing to attention by the bed, frantically smoothing down his hair, his tie.
I sat up, frowning. ‘Marcus. What on earth are you doing here?’
He looked terribly pale, my husband, standing there squarely in the doorway, in his pinstripe suit, briefcase in hand. And rather temporary. Why didn’t he come in, I wondered?
‘I’ll leave you,’ muttered Laurie, sliding away and somehow sliding past Marcus, which was no mean feat, because my husband was a big man. Not desperately tall, but wide. Solid. Broad shoulders. I’d always rather liked that. Found it comforting. I lay down again as Marcus advanced towards me. I wasn’t finding him terribly comforting now, though; his face looked fuzzy against the horribly mobile ceiling. Not very restful. I shut my eyes again. And actually, I thought blearily, if he was here for what I thought he was here for, he could forget it. I really wasn’t up for it. If he was hoping for a bit of gratuitous leg-over with his wife on a Tuesday lunchtime, he was out of luck. In fact, the very idea of doing anything untoward with him, or Laurie, or just about anyone, for that matter, suddenly made me feel decidedly ill. I didn’t open my eyes again, but let my limbs, which felt like lead weights, sink into the bed. Possibly right through it.
‘Not now, darling,’ I murmured. ‘Got a bit of a headache.’ And with that, I passed out.
Chapter Eight
When I awoke, the flat seemed very quiet. Very still. The light had changed too. Well, let’s face it, it had disappeared. It was October, so the days were getting shorter, but not that short, surely? I gazed blankly at the dark, opaque windows, then down at my watch. Six o’clock. Six o’clock? I sat bolt upright. Had I really been asleep that long? I frowned into the gloom in an effort to remember how long that was, exactly. When had I arrived? I had absolutely no idea, and frankly, not the slightest idea what I was doing here, either.
I flicked on the bedside lamp, swung my legs over the side of the bed and frowned down at the cream carpet. Not a very practical colour, but chosen on the grounds that it would get only very occasional use in our smart London flat. I rubbed the soft pile with my toe, puzzled. Odd. I didn’t remember taking my shoes off. Perhaps Marcus had taken them off? I seemed to remember him being here, and Laurie too. I shook my head, bemused. What was that all about? Had we all had lunch together? Here? And had I cooked it? I wracked my brains. No, too weird. Just Laurie and me then, I decided. Out somewhere, in a restaurant. Yes – a mushroom risotto, that was it. Well, it had to be out, I was pretty sure I couldn’t cook that.
I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, feeling a bit better now. That little sleep had done me the world of good. Ah yes, sleep. I paused, mid-brush. Gazed at my reflection in the mirror. Gracious, it was all coming back to me. I’d taken those wretched sleeping pills. Then I must have had a nasty turn in the restaurant and Laurie must have deposited me back here. That was good of him, if a little embarrassing, I thought with a squirm. I tried vainly to remember arriving, coming up the stairs, but …no. Shook my head. Couldn’t. Anyway, having deposited me, he must have rung Marcus to tell him I was here in case – well, in case I passed out or something, I thought, colouring up. Yes, that was it.
I found my shoes and wandered into the drawing room. And Marcus had clearly waited until I was asleep and then gone back to work. He could have left me a note, I thought, glancing around, but then he was always very economical with the written word. I smiled. Why bother with a pen when you could email, fax or text, was his theory, but unfortunately I’d never got to grips with technology, so it was no good checking my mobile. Unlike my offspring, whose little thumbs moved faster than the speed of light, and who’d insisted I should learn, as their friends’ mothers had.
‘You must, Mummy, you must!’ Lily would urge. ‘It’s so-oo embarrassing, and you’re so-oo missing out!’ She was right, I was. And I should. So that when I received a message from her saying Just off to geography, I could respond with Splendid. Just off to Waitrose. How on earth was I managing without it?
So had Laurie come inside, I wondered, right into the flat? No, probably not. He’d probably just dropped me at the door, in a taxi. I wouldn’t have minded him coming up though, I reflected, moving around the room admiringly. I’d forgotten how nice this place was. I fingered the Osborne & Little curtains at the window. It was nice, having money, I thought guiltily, although sometimes I felt we had too much. When we’d bought the farm and then this place, both of which needed doing up, I’d left the décor of the farm to a friend but had done the flat myself. I’d found it both cringe-making and exhilarating to breeze into designer showrooms in Chelsea and pick out sumptuous fabrics, before sauntering up the King’s Road to look at antiques with prohibitively expensive price tags swinging from them, enquiring casually of the haughty assistant, ‘That sofa-table in the window. When would you be able to deliver?’ That had them dropping their supercilious sneers and scurrying across in their Gucci loafers, I can tell you.
And I had gone a bit over the top here, I admitted, strolling around, speculatively, head on one side. But Marcus had been thrilled. Delighted. He’d made the money and wanted to spend it, or me to spend it. He didn’t want it lolling around in the bank, or in trust funds for the children; in fact, the very idea brought him out in a rash. ‘No child of mine,’ he’d fume, in a Victorian, bewhiskered Papa sort of way, ‘is going to think they don’t have to work for a living. Not when I’ve done it all myself.’
‘Oh aye, oop mill and down pit,’ An
gus would say sardonically, but it was true – Marcus had pulled himself up by his bootstraps from the little draper’s shop his father had had on Kilburn High Road, and although he didn’t bang on about it, he wasn’t inclined to forget it, either.
I remembered Marcus taking me there when we got engaged. To the shop, Levin’s. He’d embraced his father warmly at the till behind the counter, a tiny, spare man in shabby trousers, an ancient brown cardigan – a skullcap, too – speaking English with a Viennese inflection. I’d been surprised. Not by the clothes or the foreign accent, but no one kissed in my family, let alone hugged. We’d mounted the back stairs to the little flat above, where Joseph Levin lived alone, Marcus’s mother having died some years back. We’d sat at a tiny table in the front room drinking lemon tea and eating mundel bread and streusel. A radio had played fuzzily in the background, a foreign station, as I recall. There was an electric fire burning, but no central heating, and every few minutes, a train would rumble by and we’d hang onto the cups as they rattled. All around the room were piles and piles of newspapers, which Joseph never threw away. He never threw anything away.
As we got up to go, Marcus tried covertly to press money on his father, but Joseph refused, smiling proudly at his son in his smart clothes, admiring with his eyes the BMW at the kerb below. I’d felt uncomfortable because I wasn’t Jewish, but Marcus had said his father wouldn’t mind, that Joseph just wanted him to be happy. He’d walked us downstairs and when we’d got to the shop, Marcus had moved through the aisles, amongst the rolls of cloth, packed tightly from floor to ceiling, fingering them lovingly – reverently, almost. He told me how he’d helped in here as a child, grown up in here. Then he’d pulled a roll of fabric from the wall and thrown it expertly at the counter, the blue-grey silk shooting out like a shining, rippling sea. He’d cut a length with a flash of scissors, laughing, and popped it in a paper bag, showing me what he’d done as a boy. Joseph, half his son’s weight and height, was quiet and watchful beside us. I’d laughed too, but I’d treasured that piece of silk, and when we were married a few months later, I’d had it made into a little bolero jacket to wear over the short cream dress I’d worn to the register office. I remember the flash of surprise, recognition and then love in Marcus’s eyes as he saw me, and then his father’s face at our reception at a local restaurant, nodding as he touched it, smiling. His eyes swimming.
I moved on around the flat, holding the tops of my arms, looking at the luxurious furnishings. The heavy drapes in the dining room puddled fashionably on the floor, and I thought how Joseph would have sucked his teeth at that, at the flagrant waste. And I did try not to be wasteful. Had deliberately chosen a modest farmhouse with a pretty garden and a couple of acres, not the zonking great Lipton Hall on the other side of the village which was also for sale and which Marcus would have been happy with. But he was also happy with the farm. As long as I was, he was, and that had always been the way. He loved me to distraction, I was so lucky in that. So this extravagant flat had been my concession to him. My way of letting him say, Look where I came from, where I began. Look where I am now, what I’ve done. And why not? Why not have a flat in leafy W8 and throw money at it, if you could?
Yet somehow, it made me uncomfortable. Because lots of people worked hard, and not everyone was so amply rewarded. I thought of Penny, Penny who had to work, despite her protestations that she’d never be without her job. She could have married the gorgeous Philip, complete with family brewery business to stroll into after the Army, but had clung on for dear life to lovely penniless, prospectless Tommy Rutlin, who managed an art gallery and brought in about enough to feed the cat. So Penny had worked her socks off. She’d put down the deposit on the house in Clapham, waited until she was a partner before she had children so she could afford their education, and generally kept the show on the road. And that made me feel guilty. I’d once said to Marcus that I’d like to –
‘What?’ He’d regarded me in amusement over the menu in The Ivy. ‘Give her some money?’
‘Well …’ I’d shrugged helplessly.
‘You can’t just hand people a cheque, Henny. It embarrasses them. Emasculates them, even.’
But there were ways, and he knew how.
When Tommy took a deep breath and bought the art gallery from the owner, then looked around wildly for backers, I know Marcus waded in. He didn’t tell me, but I saw the relief on Penny’s face when they came to lunch one Sunday. I remember her getting a bit pissed and attempting to thank him, Marcus brushing it off, embarrassed.
And that had always been his way. If you had money, you spent it, you helped people, you didn’t hoard it, as Joseph had done. I remember the look of horror and distress on my husband’s face when Joseph died. All that money under the mattress – a terrible, thin old mattress, with terrible, tatty bedlinen. His ancient pyjamas – rags, almost – folded neatly on the pillow. Marcus, with his head in his hands.
Joseph had died in the shop, serving a customer, working to the end. At the funeral in Kilburn, the synagogue had been packed – packed – with people of all ages, colours and religions, for Joseph, a strict Jew, had embraced everyone. So many people had come up to us – women, mostly – a lot of them Indian, in saris – pressing our hands, telling us how Joseph had sold them fabric on the never-never, and sometimes the absolutely never. How they’d made clothes for themselves, their families, hung curtains, thanks to his kindness. And Marcus had inherited that streak. That generous spirit. I sometimes wondered how many more Tommy Rutlins there were. You never completely knew the person to whom you were married. As I stood now, looking out over the Kensington rooftops, I felt a rush of love for him.
More recently, he’d been great about Dad. But he’d felt so helpless, too. When Dad had finally gone into hospital, it had had to be National Health and not private, because however much Marcus had wanted to pay, that was where Dad was going to get the best treatment. Senile dementia, or one of its variants, they’d called it. Not Alzheimer’s, but a very acute form. At seventy-two, my father had suddenly become a child again. He threw tantrums, wet the bed, became more and more abusive and unpredictable, until Mum – who I have to say had lived with it for a long time without letting on, shielding him in her proud way from the world and even from Benji and me for a while – finally had to give in.
I remembered so vividly that day, three years ago, when Mum had phoned us, and we’d dashed up to London. I remembered her following Dad’s ambulance in the car on her own – she’d insisted – to the hospital. Benji and I had gone in later that evening, while Marcus and Francis, Benji’s boyfriend, waited in reception. Dad was sitting up in bed in stripy pyjamas, very bright-eyed and alert – provocative, even – Mum beside him, ashen-faced but very relieved.
‘Someone’s taken one of my cards,’ Dad had said accusingly, as Benji and I sat down. ‘I had forty-two yesterday, and look. Forty-one.’
On the bedspread were the Players cards he’d collected as a boy and now kept in his pocket, along with his pen-knife and a conker on a string.
‘I’m sure it’ll turn up,’ I soothed, leaning forward on a grey plastic chair by his bed. ‘Don’t fuss.’
‘I wouldn’t mind, but it was my cricketing one,’ he grumbled, lifting up the bedclothes and peering to check it hadn’t gone down there. ‘One of my best.’
‘How are you finding it, Dad?’ asked Benji. ‘Food all right?’
‘Well, it’s better than hers, at least I can eat it,’ he said, glaring at Mum. ‘And I don’t have to listen to her voice all day, either. Whoever she is.’
We cringed, and Mum bowed her head in shame, but this was par for the course. A facet of Dad’s condition. He had no idea who Mum was, or Benji and I for that matter. He thought like a child, and spoke like a child. He was not a cruel man, in fact a very kind man, but right now, he had no brakes.
‘And I don’t want to be married to her any more, I want to be married to Beverly,’ he declared, matter-of-factly, as if he were merely
changing his best friend at school. He picked up his cards and carefully stacked them together, his face petulant. ‘I’ve told her that, but she won’t listen. Hey, Beverly.’ He sat up straight and waved excitedly as a large black nurse languidly pushed a trolley full of instruments past. ‘What’s the difference between a man’s willy and a chicken leg?’
‘No idea, Gordon,’ she said resignedly in her sing-song Caribbean accent.
Dad flushed, delightedly. ‘D’you want to come on a picnic?’
As she grinned and moved on, unperturbed, he roared with laughter, flopping back on his pillows and hooting at the ceiling. As his mirth subsided abruptly, he sat bolt upright.
‘Hey, d’you think he’s got it?’ he hissed, glaring suspiciously at his neighbour, a dribbling ninety year old, ga-ga and open-mouthed in the bed beside him, incapable of even having a pee on his own, let alone taking one of Dad’s cards.
And that was really what was so awful, as I said to Marcus on the way home, the windscreen wipers swiping away torrential rain. Yes, it was undignified for Dad, but actually, he was happy. He wasn’t aware of his condition, just busy wondering if it would be baked jam roll for lunch and if he’d be allowed to play in the garden afterwards. Whereas Mum …well, Mum was in pieces.
My mother was a strong, domineering woman, but little by little her strength was being eroded by her family’s fortunes, and that, in the end, was all she cared about. Which surely is only another expression of love? And as far as she was concerned, our fortunes had plummeted. After my disastrous non-wedding to Rupert, her dream son-inlaw, I’d then married a Jew, the son of a Kilburn draper. She probably didn’t think it could get much worse, until Benji, whom she’d hoped would become a doctor and marry a female doctor – she fondly imagined their hands brushing as they passed scalpels to each other during operations (Mum could so easily out-Finchley Road her neighbours) – appeared to be gay, and living with a boy called Francis. Having picked herself up off her scrubbed kitchen floor after that life-shattering revelation, she was making the bed one morning only to find a turd, lying thick and solid, steaming on the bottom sheet. When she confronted her husband who was up a tree at the time, throwing stones at next door’s greenhouse, he thrust his lower lip out defiantly and said, ‘No, I didn’t. You did it. In your sleep. I saw you.’ I think that was the last straw for Mum.
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