by Janet Davey
He had come all the way from Croatia to London, leaving his mother alone in Zagreb. His family had seen worse things than ever turned up in bags at London concerts. Kirsty felt – although Luka wasn’t, ultimately, or even in the short term, her responsibility – that rejecting him was a breach of hospitality. There were no words she could say – none that were safe – to make him himself again, though she knew what they were, the unsafe ones.
7
A WEEK AFTER Easter, Paula rang Vivienne at work. ‘Have you had a think about the “Our Families” DVD, darling? Glen needs to firm up on the numbers.’
‘No, not yet. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Richard,’ Vivienne said. She and Paula had already had the same interchange when Vivienne had rung up to thank Paula for the party. Their conversations often had an overlapping effect, which was sometimes soothing, sometimes irritating. Vivienne preferred to be left alone at work. Then the days – working and non-working – separated themselves out, or at least blurred within their different categories. Through the glass screen of her office, Vivienne could see into the showroom. A red-headed woman, wearing a tightly belted mac, was walking aimlessly in and out of the screened compartments. The baths, basins, bidets and toilets were arranged in their style/range groups, as if they were in real bathrooms with half-walls round them. The gleaming white was sepulchral and generally calming. The groups were, in their way, like impeccable families: clean, matching, durable and with clearly defined roles. ‘I don’t think we’re suitable,’ she said, deciding she must take a unilateral decision. Her earlier excuse jarred.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ Paula said.
‘Not perfect. As a family.’
‘Darling, you’re all scrummy. Who mentioned perfect? This is “Our”. It’s meant to be an inspiration to the couples who want to get married in St Dunstan’s or bring their babies for baptism.’
‘Richard and I aren’t really screen types. I’d be hopeless.’
‘Sweetie, we’re not talking Hollywood,’ Paula said.
Vivienne felt affronted – which was absurd. She transferred the receiver to the other ear and crashed it against her earring.
Paula was saying, ‘I do think family values should be celebrated. Oh, before I forget, I found a pair of spotty socks in the garden. I wondered if they belonged to Martha, I know she’s always stripping off.’
‘Yes, they’ll be hers. Don’t send them. I’ll pick them up some time,’ Vivienne said.
‘How’s Richard?’ Paula asked.
Vivienne hesitated, wondering whether Paula had picked up on Richard’s behaviour at the lunch party: his solitary time in the garden; his failure to appear for the Pattersons’ party medley. She had hoped Paula hadn’t noticed.
‘We were a teeny bit worried about him. He didn’t seem quite on bouncy form,’ Paula said.
‘He could have done with more time off over Easter – but he’s all right, I think.’
‘You two should get away,’ Paula said.
‘We might do something for my mother’s seventieth in June.’
‘That’s ages away. In any case, I was thinking more of a twosome. You know, darling, Hartley and I would always have your girls for a night, if we’re free.’ She broke off and made a sound as if she were licking a spoon. ‘We’re off on a spoiling holiday in Normandy, eating tons of cream, did I tell you? Just a few days. I might have to miss Prayer Clinic. You’ll lead the meeting if I’m not back, won’t you, June the third.?
‘That’s not your ma’s birthday, is it? The meeting will be at Hilly’s house but she refuses point-blank to lead.’
Jake, the salesperson, was taking a very long coffee break. Vivienne craned her neck to see if she could get a glimpse of him in the small backyard, where he went to make calls on his mobile and to smoke a cigarette. Sometimes she had the impression that Paula was keeping her up to the mark in her marriage – setting encouraging goals, as she did with church activities. Then the idea seemed far-fetched; a sign of her own insecurity – the fear that she would never pass, as people used to say, with flying colours. Jake was standing with his back to her, apparently gazing at the ventilation brick in the wall opposite. The top of a comb stuck out of the back pocket of his trousers. He had been taking longer and longer breaks, ever since she had wondered whether she should talk to him about the gospel message. ‘Keep it short,’ Glen had recommended. ‘It can be useful to begin with a scriptural sentence that means a lot to you. Don’t mention sin in your opening pitch.’ But she hadn’t yet said a single word. Jake seemed to sense that she was revving up to it. Really, she was completely useless.
‘Darling, are you still there?’ Paula asked.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You went very quiet. But you are a quiet person. Restful. You don’t rabbit on, like me.’
‘Whereabouts are you going?’ Vivienne said.
‘Do you know Normandy?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Just imagine a half-timbered building in the middle of a field of cows. I’m hopeless at geography. I go somewhere and enjoy it and come back again.’
The woman wearing the tightly belted mac was contemplating an oval basin on a twisted pedestal that was part of the Petrarch range. She ran her hand along its curved underside. The mild sensuousness of the gesture unsettled Vivienne. Her body, slight as it was, felt surplus. She wondered which had come first, the useless feeling of her flesh or Richard’s tired lack of interest. She felt ashamed, somehow, that such private things were visible, or could be heard in the voice – by Paula, at least. The red-headed woman seemed to sense she was being watched and removed her hand quickly, as if she were in a museum and feared a custodian might bear down on her for touching the sculptures. It occurred to Vivienne that if other people had noticed that Richard seemed unwell she would be justified in delving around in the study at home, checking the file where they kept the health insurance policy and having a quick look in Richard’s desk. It was nothing to be ashamed of, because illness was morally neutral, unlike adultery, and didn’t impugn the investigator of it with jealousy or anything dubious. All the same, she knew in advance that she would feel uncomfortable about looking. She took a deep breath. ‘Paula, why did you ask about Richard? Did he say something was the matter?’ she asked.
‘No. He didn’t say anything.’ Paula paused encouragingly. As Vivienne said nothing, she continued, ‘Actually, I thought he was his usual sweet self. It was Bellsie who said he seemed below par. When she went downstairs to find her bag he was, allegedly, slumped over the kitchen table.’
‘He’d probably had a bit too much to drink. He’d been sober all Lent,’ Vivienne said.
‘Probably, darling. I wouldn’t worry about it. Richard’s gorgeous. In my book, he can do no wrong. “Slumped” was over the top, I’m sure. You know Bellsie. She has her own vocabulary. You’re not worrying, are you?’
‘No. Look, Paula, I’ll have to go. I’m on my own here.’ Jake was still in the yard. It wasn’t a lie.
‘Go, go, go. You did say “yes” to Prayer Clinic, didn’t you? Put it in the diary. Thank you, angel. Lots of love. ’Bye.’
For the rest of the working day, Vivienne made an effort to suppress thoughts of Richard’s malaise but business was flat and the image of Paula’s guests wandering into the kitchen and gazing at her husband kept cropping up. In the late afternoon, Jake sold three bathrooms. Vivienne was glad of some action. She worked out a favourable deal for the client and sorted out the paperwork. After she had telephoned the order through, she went out to the local patisserie and bought Jake a chocolate éclair. He looked a bit nervous as he accepted the little tissue paper package tied up with blue ribbon. He was a tall, good-looking lad, with a line in flamboyant ties and a diamond chip in his ear. Nervousness didn’t suit him. Vivienne said he could go home early if he wanted to. He thanked her and smiled. She hoped that if she banished the thought of witness in the workplace, eventually they would be on easy terms again. He was a
promising young salesman and she didn’t want to lose him.
Vivienne arrived home at seven o’clock. As she walked into the hall, she could hear the noise of dice being shaken in a pot and counters placed in plodding sequence on a board, through the open door of the kitchen. Otherwise it was a silence of meticulous cooperation. Henka, the girl who came in to look after Bethany and Martha, had a tranquillising effect on them. She had introduced them to old-fashioned games – Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, dominoes – and endlessly played with them. Vivienne thought it was all rather repetitive. Henka’s main drawback was that she couldn’t drive and was therefore unable to take the girls to their activities. Ability to drive had been part of the person specification for the job but Henka had scored on the point of church attendance. She was Roman Catholic, which was understandable, since she was Polish. She had stuck with her childhood faith. Vivienne went into the kitchen to say hello but Bethany and Martha were too absorbed in the game to give her more than passing kisses.
Vivienne walked across to the study and, having unfastened the security locks, pushed the window open because the room seemed airless. The Epworth paperwork was all organised in box files on open shelves. Vivienne took down the health file and flicked through the contents. She found nothing, just the policy itself, various advice notices of increases in the premiums and some old correspondence about a mole Bethany had had removed from her arm. She returned it to its place.
The desk was Richard’s. It was the old-fashioned sort, made of oak, with a pull-down front and compartments inside. There was no key, so it wasn’t private, just exclusively his, as the dressing table in their bedroom was hers. All couples had pieces of furniture that were particular to one or the other and, in the very old, this extended to chairs. She and Richard were too young to have special chairs, but the thought was comforting that one day this might be the case. Vivienne half wished they had reached that point. She lowered the desktop and looked inside. Richard wasn’t a hoarder of memorabilia. He kept his bank statements and investments bumf for three years, then put the papers through the shredder. The only personal item was a worn leather wallet in which he kept spare credit cards, his driver’s licence and a couple of baby photos of the girls. That was all. His mother was the keeper of his childhood: photographs, school reports, the weekly letters from boarding school. Not having lived with any other men apart from her father, who had also been economical with his possessions, Vivienne assumed that salting stuff away was more a female habit. The exception to the rule was business cards. There was a stack of them in one of the desk compartments. They accumulated like offerings of bread for overfed birds. Vivienne took them out and riffled through them but found nothing medical among them. She picked up the wallet. A card was sticking from one of the pockets. She wondered why it was there, in this special place, and not part of the stack. She pulled it out. It had a design on one side – a feather – and, turning it over, she saw there was a telephone number, handwritten, on the back. The style was different from a normal business card. It couldn’t have come from a shop or a gallery as there was no trading name or address.
Through the open window Vivienne could hear next door’s children playing table tennis in their garage – the rapid plop of bats on the ball and shouted score keeping. The boys were a few years older than Bethany and Martha, though that didn’t stop the girls speaking disparagingly of them in deliberately audible voices. Their daddy had recently gone to live with another woman, taking his car with him, which was why one half of the double garage was free for the table tennis. Of course, table tennis was no substitute for a father but the boys seemed to enjoy it. Vivienne imagined the daddy returning and driving smack into the table. People couldn’t expect things to stay the same.
She looked at the card again; the feather was pretty, a nice design. She went to the desk and put it back where she had found it. Then she relocked the window. The sky, striped with dark cloud, was still disconcertingly light – the debilitated light of early evening when the clocks have gone on but spring hasn’t caught up – enough to give definition to the roofs in the distance. There was something depressing about the early weeks of daylight saving, Vivienne thought, parsimonious. But daylight couldn’t be shifted about like money between accounts. It got its revenge by producing evenings that were dull and pale – often until the end of May, by which time the concept of saving light was irrelevant.
8
IN HIS LAST week of employment Abe took a day off. He had a lie-in, then he went by tube to Liverpool Street. He would have called the office and said he was sick but illness, in the health insurance business, was a commodity. If you weren’t careful you were fast-tracked to the Personal Advisory team. ‘Good morning, this is Danielle speaking, could you give me your policy number, please.’ ‘Piss off, this is Abe and I’ve got the flu.’ Abe had some leave owing and he had genuinely taken a day off work. He was proud of that. He was heading for Karumi, the sports injury treatment centre in Shoreditch, where his friend Shane worked as a receptionist. Shane was still planning to lease Japanese exercise equipment to gyms and health clubs. Abe had called him and they had arranged a time to go and look at the machinery.
Bishopsgate was the only street Abe knew where everyone kept up. They put one foot in front of the other and moved. As soon as he stepped off the escalator, people carved him up, whooshing by him as if they were on wheels, shouting at each other across him. Abe liked the part of London around Liverpool Street. He liked the reverberations between the massive Victorian buildings and the glassier buildings put up yesterday – and the way everyone, scurrying at ground level, male and female, wore Thatcher-style suits with square-cut shoulders. As it was a day off, Abe was wearing jeans and his white hooded jacket. Also his hat as there was a bit of a wind.
Abe turned off the main road and followed a tall brick wall, stylishly blackened by old pollution, then, when that came to a dead end, because the railway had right of way, he chose a side street at random and cut through an alley, dodging a stream of water that bubbled up through the concrete from a leaking pipe. He hoped he was heading in the right direction. After crossing two intersections he paused. On the far side of the road was a row comprising a half-demolished building, a betting shop, a funeral director, a sandwich bar called Vasco’s. These were the first signs of commercial life since he had left Bishopsgate. Abe needed some coffee. He waited for a gap between the cars and went across.
Glancing in through the window of T. Shipley & Son, Funeral Directors, he noticed a framed poem, propped like a photograph, next to the urn. Before Neil died, funeral directors’ premises seemed like gaps in the high street. Now Abe was slightly fascinated – aware that there were quirky differences between them. Unobtrusiveness came in various styles. He pressed his face against the glass to read the poem. The gist of it was that death was nothing at all and that the dead person had just gone into another room. Abe read it a second time and still couldn’t make sense of it. He thought about calling in and telling whoever was in charge that they were eroding the customer base. Why not just shut up shop and reopen as a deli or a launderette? Looking beyond the window display, he saw a vase of stiff white flowers standing on a table and, just behind it, a panelled door. He supposed it must lead to a room. He tried to imagine it and summoned up an interior, closed like a box, unlit and unfurnished – but the picture lasted less than a second. He saw the reflections of the street again, a post van going past, himself staring at the glass. He thought of the cinema screen blanking out at the moment of a death. You feel the pitch into nothingness – then the credits appear and you shuffle out of your seat, assuming that’s how it will always be; with the capacity to see and to stand up after the shock has worn off. Then Abe thought about Neil and felt sad and guilty, because his death had been, in a way, nothing at all.
Abe turned away and pushed open the door of Vasco’s, hunching his shoulders because the doorway was narrow, as was the interior, with its seating crammed into a sliver of space alon
g the wall. He walked past the counter – the mounds of flaked tuna, sliced tomato, chopped egg, shredded lettuce, each in plastic containers behind curved glass. There were only three customers: two women giggling over some photos on a phone and an elderly man eating a doughnut. Abe negotiated the bolted-down tables and slipped into a seat at the far end, also bolted down. He had set aside the day to replan his life. Vasco’s wasn’t the ideal setting but it would do for the time being. The man behind the sandwich counter was watching him. A kind-looking man with a grey moustache. Abe held up his index finger with his thumb an inch below it, to indicate that he would like an espresso. The man smiled and nodded. Abe liked an old-style sandwich bar. He even liked the sandwiches once in a while. White sliced bread, brown sliced bread, white sticks, chewy as old slippers. There was one with a breaded escalope of meat – chicken or veal – slapped inside a white stick. The smear of bright yellow butter got stuck to the breadcrumbs and the filling fell out as soon as you bit into it. He might order one of those later, if they had one. But this was the moment for creativity. He had purposely left his laptop at home. Abe fished around one-handedly in his bag and took out a clean A4 notebook. He opened it at the first page and stared at it from a wide angle, leaning against the back of the seat, as if he were long-sighted. Running the middle finger of his left hand slowly down the spiral binding of the notebook from top to bottom produced a tingly feeling that started in his fingertip and moved up through his hand and past his wrist. After a while the sensation dulled. Abe wrote ‘Business Plan’ at the top of the page.