As Ginnie departed I cast Ludo an apologetic smile on my sister’s behalf. He shrugged good-naturedly, his eyes trailing me as I turned and went away. It occurred to me that, just for a moment back there, I could actually have plunged a knife into Ginnie. In cold blood. At a school fete. I knew I’d felt that about my mother recently, too. What did that make me? Was there a word for it, I wondered? A mother-and-sister-murderer? Shakespeare would have one, I was sure. Why did I feel like that? Why? And then, as I turned the corner, I knew. It stopped me in my tracks a few metres short of the bring-and-buy stand. Knew that, just as my mother and sister lashed out when their worlds were rocked, so did I. And that, actually, neither of them mattered. What mattered, I thought, as I saw him hand a plastic bag full of change over the burgeoning stand to Tabs, and as she and her friend Meg then tried to persuade him to buy a cracked china piggy bank, was that my precarious world, the one that for so long had been held together with Sellotape and paperclips, had finally fallen apart. It didn’t matter how much I patched and made do, Sebastian had removed the only brick in the wall that mattered. The vital component. The one that said that the man I’d once loved more than anyone in the world now hated me so much he wanted a divorce. He couldn’t live with me. Not the other way round. As Sebastian’s face creased into that loving, affectionate smile I hadn’t seen for so long, and as Tabs gleefully handed him the piggy bank, a terrible, crushing sadness broke over me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ludo was waiting when I came out of the ladies’ loo in the new modern block which housed the school gym. He’d obviously seen my face buckle as I stood and watched my husband and daughter. Had followed me here.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked quietly.
‘Sebastian wants a divorce,’ I said, putting the crumpled, tear-stained tissue in my bag and swallowing hard. I snapped my handbag shut and glanced around, blinking rapidly.
We were alone, but precariously so: in an empty echoing corridor, just shy of the boys’ changing room. A few beefy-looking lads emerged in football kit, roaring with laughter, punching each other heartily. One of them gave my teary face a second glance.
‘I can see that devastates you,’ Ludo said quietly.
‘Yup,’ I gasped, thinking: Don’t be too nice. ‘Bound to, don’t you think?’
‘Of course.’
‘Josh and Tabs –’
‘I know.’
We didn’t have to say any more. Had often talked about the children being everything. Regardless of how we felt about each other. How he couldn’t imagine not seeing his daughters every day. I couldn’t tell him about Josh. Knew I’d break down. A bit of my brain also knew that Josh was nearly eighteen. And that he wasn’t exactly leaving home, either. That I mustn’t overdramatize.
‘Let’s meet next week,’ Ludo said quickly, as a clutch of parents approached.
I nodded. Needing it suddenly. ‘Where?’
‘I’ll text you.’
‘OK.’
We parted, and I walked quickly down the empty corridor, hugging my handbag to my chest for protection. Rows of empty pegs for younger children ranged down one side, sticky labels with names beside them. I was in the junior department, where both my children had started. Plimsolls left over from the previous term were still in lockers, and despite the fact that term hadn’t quite started, the ubiquitous smell of soggy gym kit and school floor cleaner prevailed. A smell that children hated, but mothers, perhaps mothers for whom things had gone wrong, found nostalgic. I located Josh’s old locker and was surprised I still could. Then Tabitha’s. Remembered how she’d found this bit of school hard at first: how I’d had to persuade her into the classroom, find a friend for her to go in with, and how I’d always have to be on time to pick her up. How some boys had called her Tabby Cat. Not bullying, just teasing; but she hadn’t liked it. Sebastian had said leave it, ignore it. I hadn’t. I’d seen a teacher. Made it worse. Then the boys had called her Tubby Cat. She’d been a little bit plump at the time. I’d been beside myself. I’d seen the headmaster, the headmistress – the school sensibly had both – and had wanted to take her away. But it had all settled down eventually. In spite of me.
As I came out through the double doors at the far end of the corridor into the sunshine, I saw Tabitha at her stall in the courtyard below. She was near the top of the school now: confident, clever, pretty. Well, I thought pretty; she still thought she was overweight. And she hated her curly hair; she straightened it constantly. And wished she had a boyfriend. We all ached for love in some form, didn’t we?
From my vantage point, at the top of the steps, I watched as Ludo, who’d emerged at the other end of the corridor, rejoined Eliza, who was beckoning him impatiently, clearly itching to go. She asked him where on earth he’d been. She’d been waiting ages. I saw him shrug into her cross face, unaware he was being watched: not the charming man I knew. A bit bolshie, perhaps. Sullen. It struck me that he was just an ordinary man. Probably rather an irritating one, too, not unlike my husband. He wasn’t really some romantic hero. He probably picked his feet. Left wet, winding towels on the floor. Got disastrously pissed at parties. Except … Ludo hardly drank and was always immaculately turned out, even in his gardening gear – in a Monty Don, bleu-de-travail sort of way. And I couldn’t imagine towels on floor. Other annoying traits, then, but I couldn’t think what. Snoring, perhaps. Not that I’d be sharing a bed with him, I thought quickly, descending the steps to the courtyard, so I wouldn’t find out. I knew I was in trouble here, though, and that my heart was beating very fast. Rejection from Sebastian might be all I needed to have me rebounding faster than the speed of light into Ludo, and not just once, but ricocheting like a ball in a pinball machine, again and again, on a rather needy basis. Obviously that simply mustn’t happen.
Anyway, I thought, trailing miserably round some stalls on my own, picking up hand-knitted scarves and wishing I was at home, where at least I could throw myself on my bed and howl into my pillow, with this latest revelation I was unlikely to be in the mood to embark on a steamy affair. I’d be too busy clawing what remained of my family together. Even as I thought this, I saw them through the window, as I passed by the art block. Josh and Sebastian. And just as I’d seen Ludo unobserved, so I did my husband and son. They were in the spacious, airy room with a few other parents, looking at the pictures. Very much together, father and son were strolling around slowly, heads cocked appraisingly. They stopped at a particular painting, heads close, conferring quietly. It was a terrible shock. Without thinking, I pushed through the glazed door and strode across the room. Approached at speed as they admired a landscape.
‘I thought we weren’t going to do this?’ I said, rather loudly. Emotion was exaggerating everything I said, so I was shrill, too. ‘Thought you didn’t want to be on display for us, eh, Josh?’
Josh wasn’t often taken aback, but he was now.
‘Oh, er, Dad was just wondering what the light was like in here,’ he mumbled.
‘Oh, really!’ I said, aware I’d got him on the back foot for once. Pushing home the advantage. ‘And if I’d wondered–’ I made quotation marks in the air round the last word – ‘would I have got the same film-star treatment? Would the red carpet have been rolled out for me, too?’
‘Mum,’ he said warily.
‘And, no doubt, as you were discussing the light, you just happened to come across one of your own A-level pieces, hmm? Well, durrr!’ I made an incredulous, Homer Simpson face, eyes wide and probably a bit mad, too.
One or two people turned, curious.
‘Ella, calm down,’ said Sebastian quietly.
‘Oh, it’s “Ella, calm down” now, is it? In a voice one usually reserves for the seriously unhinged? Ella, don’t fly off the handle! Ella, don’t make a scene! Yes, I’m leaving you, yes, I’m taking the children with me, and yes, I’m in charge of the school work from now on, what is your problem? Is that it?’
They looked at me, horrified. I’d said it at some v
olume. People were openly watching now and I knew I was about to either storm out or say more. Josh had the presence of mind to lead me by the arm to an easel in the corner. I was shaking.
‘That wasn’t mine, Mum; that was my mate Danny’s. But this is mine, if you’re interested.’ He said it calmly. The painting was of a stubble field, lit by late-afternoon autumn sunlight: so mellow and beautiful and so fantastically good that, despite my highly charged state, I was speechless.
‘Breathe,’ he commanded in a more jocular, ironic voice. ‘Breathe, Mum. You’ll last longer. Nothing’s ever as bad as it seems.’ There was kindness there, too.
Sebastian had joined us now and they stood either side of me as I calmed down, protecting me almost. Waiting. I was grateful they didn’t exchange ‘Wow, crazy woman!’ looks over my head. Believe me, I’d have known. Was grateful for their compassion.
‘No, you’re right.’ I gulped. ‘Nothing ever is. And this is good, Josh,’ I said, recovering.
‘Thanks,’ he said briefly.
My breathing was coming down to a normal rate and I concentrated hard on the sunbeams hitting the stubble.
Lottie was in the room somewhere. I’d seen her out of the corner of my eye as I’d stalked in. She was diplomatically keeping her distance, no doubt having heard my rant. But not so her mother, who’d spotted me.
A hand touched my elbow. ‘It’s Eleanor, isn’t it?’ A heavily lined face came round to peer into mine. Watery, pale-blue eyes, grey frazzled hair, wonky lipstick. All I needed. Really, all I needed.
‘Yes,’ I conceded weakly, forcing a smile.
‘Are you all right? You’ve just made quite a scene, you know.’
‘Fine, thank you,’ I said, collecting myself and thinking she did look and sound a lot better than when I’d last seen her. Maybe I should have some of her pills? Perhaps she’d got some in her bag? I eyed it speculatively. Introduced her to Sebastian and Josh. She narrowed her eyes at Sebastian.
‘You’re the artist, aren’t you?’
‘So I’m told.’
‘But haven’t done anything for years. Painter’s block, or some such excuse. Is that the party line?’ I’d forgotten how direct she was. And how old age – and a touch of dementia – gave one carte blanche to say what one liked. It was rather like inebriation. And, paradoxically, with this unhinged abandonment came a superiority, since there was surely no stopping the intoxicated, or the crazy, or the old. They were in total command of the situation by virtue of not subscribing to the usual rules of self-control. I tensed, waiting for Sebastian’s scathing response.
‘That’s right,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I peaked early.’
Even I couldn’t detect a cynical tone. If anything, he sounded almost amused.
‘Too much pressure, perhaps,’ she said pensively, almost to herself. ‘This is good, young man. Is it yours?’
‘Yes,’ admitted Josh, colouring slightly.
‘I used to be a headmistress, you know. And before that, I taught art. Still paint, occasionally. There’s an arts and crafts shop in Stroud where they hang them for me. It’s all lesbians and goths in ghastly clothes, of course, but, still, they hang them. I’ll get them to hang this too, if you like, if you want to make a few pennies. They’re trying to get rid of me. Say I come in too often, make a scene if my pictures don’t sell, but I know my rights. If they spent more time getting the lighting right and sweeping the pavement outside so the place looked inviting, instead of lounging behind the counter stroking their beards and fondling their worry beads, they’d sell more pictures. I take my broom regularly and sweep the pavement for them, lazy so-and-so’s.’ She raised her chin defiantly at Josh. ‘I’m eighty-two, you know.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘I didn’t think you did. The young think they know everything, but they don’t.’
‘Um, Mum?’ Lottie hovered nervously.
‘What?’ she snapped. ‘I’m talking to this young man.’
I thought about the distressing scene in the Spar. This was no confused old lady running ketchupy hands through her hair. This was more Jeremy Paxman limbering up on Newsnight. Something had clearly kicked in hard. A powerful narcotic, no doubt.
‘Your parents died in a car crash, didn’t they?’ She turned back to Sebastian, honing her interrogative skills. Lottie looked resigned as Sebastian agreed that they did. ‘So you have no idea if you’re long-lived or not. Mr Arbuthnot – next door but one – died last month, and he was only seventy-six. Imagine!’ she said gleefully. ‘Seventy-six! No age at all. And the woman who owns the gallery, Gwen Collins, is going downhill very rapidly, I’m pleased to say. She’s only seventy-two.’
‘It’s all she thinks about,’ Lottie murmured in my ear as her mother expanded on her theme to Sebastian, spitting a bit now, prodding his chest. ‘How she’s going to outlive everyone. She probably will, knowing my luck. She’s frightfully competitive.’
‘Perhaps it’s all she’s got left?’
I was grateful to her, actually. She was going some way to distracting my family and giving my own body and brain a chance to climb down. To retreat from the front line, regroup and regain some composure. As she rambled on, it occurred to me that one’s whole life was a competition: who you married, how many children you had, the size of your house, your garden, what you achieved, what your children achieved. This was the final competition, then: all there was left to elbow-barge about.
‘How old are you?’ she demanded of my mother, who’d approached, clearly looking for us.
‘I’m not sure that’s any of your business,’ my mother said tartly. She squared her shoulders, a match for any old woman. Horrified, Lottie and I grabbed a mother apiece as it looked as if they might square up, handbags at the ready. We turned them about – forcefully, in Lottie’s case.
‘We’re going,’ I told Mum. ‘Tabitha’s getting a lift back later, with a friend.’
‘Who is that woman?’ my mother asked, her head swivelling a hundred and eighty degrees, despite being frogmarched away.
‘Lottie’s mother. She’s only just come out of hospital. She’s not entirely … you know.’
‘No, I can see that! And I’ve a good mind to tell her my own mother made ninety-three, and my father ninety-four, so it’s extremely likely I’ll make very old bones myself!’
‘Yes. Right. Marvellous.’
Somehow, though, that little episode had helped to distance the scary scene earlier. The one in which I’d been the protagonist. But only temporarily. As we walked to the car, I could see my own Oscar-winning performance roaring back to the men in my family in glorious Technicolor.
And the thing was, I thought, as I followed them across the hockey pitch, head bowed in shame, once it was out there – or they were out there, the words – it didn’t matter how much you tried to retract them, claw them back, say sorry, sorry, that wasn’t me at all – you couldn’t erase them. They hung there, drying slowly on the mind, to be remembered for ever.
Stupidly, hopelessly, that evening, when the children were getting themselves some beans on toast in the kitchen, I nonetheless tried to do some clawing.
‘Sorry about earlier, Josh,’ I said brightly, muscling in to butter the toast he’d made for them, stirring the beans Tabitha had emptied into a pan. ‘It was just a bit of a shock, that’s all. Daddy saying he was moving into town and all that. I couldn’t quite believe it, actually.’
Embarrassed silence.
‘And obviously you both knew,’ I went on breezily. ‘Daddy had already told you at the pub. But for me, well, it as a bit of a bolt from the blue! I overreacted, I guess.’
They stared at the beans in the pan. Tabitha was quite pink. I wondered if she was tearful. I also wondered – shamefully – if she might be my bargaining tool here. My reason to block it happening.
‘Tabs, I can see you’re upset,’ I said quietly. ‘D’you want to talk about it? About Daddy moving out?’
‘No.’ Quietly.
‘Come on, they’re ready,’ said Josh gruffly, meaning the beans. They weren’t, they were lukewarm. His sister, however, took the pan handle gratefully and began ladling them out onto the toast I’d buttered.
‘I’ll have some,’ I said desperately, grabbing a plate from the rack.
‘There’s no more toast,’ Josh muttered.
‘Doesn’t matter, I’ll have them on their own. Let’s all sit down and talk about it.’
‘What is there to talk about?’ Josh said stiffly, his eyes on the counter.
‘Well, maybe I can have a word with Daddy. Maybe I can persuade him not to move out. Maybe I –’
‘No,’ Tabitha said suddenly, her eyes coming up from the pan. They were glittering. ‘It’s what we want, too. What we all want. This is so – so odd, this situation. Dad in the garden, not living with us.’
‘Yes, but at least he’s there,’ I said, shocked. ‘At least we’re all together.’
‘Yes, but it’s grotty for him, in that little hut. He can’t live there for ever. He’s not – I don’t know – an animal or something. It’s not right, Mum! And, anyway, lots of my friends have divorced parents. I’m cool with that. It’s not a big deal. But this is just so weird and everyone says so. And I just want it to be normal!’
This was said at some volume. And there was no mistaking its message. We stood there staring at each other, my daughter and I. Her cheeks were red, her eyes angry. And then Josh took her away. He shepherded her with the crook of his arm, carrying both the plates, pausing to grab cutlery, into the playroom, their television room. Without turning round he shut the door behind them dexterously with his foot, so they could eat in peace.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
My Husband Next Door Page 22