Selfish People

by Lucy English

  The last plate was rinsed and Rachel was sweeping the floor.

  ‘Was that true, about Ian?’ said Leah. Rachel swept the crumbs into a dustpan and put them in the bin.

  ‘Yes. What I actually said was, ‘‘You fucking disgusting bag of bones, why don’t you die, I can’t stand watching you rot any longer.’’ Nice aren’t I?’ She sat at the table.

  ‘You were under a lot of pressure,’ said Leah, sitting down as well.

  ‘What was worse, he forgave me. I wanted him to hate me, but he couldn’t. I hated what he turned into. I hated it.’

  ‘Never be a nurse,’ said Leah, and Rachel smiled, a lopsided smile as if she might have cried instead.

  ‘And was yours true?’

  ‘Unfortunately. You think they’re asleep. You think they don’t hear.’

  ‘I thought Oliver was asleep,’ said Rachel. Leah looked around the kitchen. The last time she had been there was just after Ian had died.

  ‘Did Al hit you a lot?’ said Rachel.

  ‘How much is a lot?’ said Leah and now it was her smile that wavered.

  They sat there. The late afternoon light fell in bands across the room. There was a dresser in Rachel’s kitchen, a large one with twelve plates covered with birds and flowers. Rachel retrieved her knitting and started to correct the mistake.

  ‘You have to think about the future,’ said Leah.

  ‘I do, and it’s depressing. I feel like I’m waiting for something.’

  ‘I know. Half the time I don’t know what I’m doing and the other half I don’t know why I’m doing it.’ She was thinking about Bailey.

  ‘Declan stayed here on Friday,’ said Rachel suddenly.

  ‘And …?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was very drunk. Nothing happened. Are you after him?’

  ‘Me? Never!’

  ‘Just checking. I wouldn’t want to … fight over him,’ and Rachel smiled sweetly. This was the woman who had bewitched Ian away from Jen.

  ‘I slept with Bailey,’ said Leah to emphasise her lack of interest in Declan.

  ‘He’s going out with Jen!’ Rachel was shocked and Leah laughed at her hypocrisy.

  ‘I won’t do it again. By the way it’s a secret.’

  ‘How could you? I’d rather fuck a dog.’

  Leah was still laughing, she felt almost hysterical, it was such a relief to tell somebody. ‘It was a big mistake, oh please don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘I think you should be careful,’ said Rachel slowly.

  ‘Oh, what can he do?’

  ‘I don’t know what he can do. That’s the problem.’

  Bailey came into the office after the basketball lesson. He marched up to Leah and said, ‘I have to talk to you. It’s mega fucking important.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Leah.

  ‘About work,’ said Bailey as if she were an idiot. He handed her a piece of paper. ‘These are my new hours. I’ve got another job, so I’ve got to change me hours.’

  Leah looked at the paper. The words and figures were crawling about like ants.

  ‘Yes, well … it’ll have to be cleared at the meeting, Bailey.’

  ‘If they don’t, I’m off, I’m not going to be pissed around.’

  ‘Is it a sports job?’ She put the paper down. ‘Do you need a reference?’

  ‘No, it’s in a café, I need the dosh.’ He was looking more angry than she had ever seen him. He took off his hairband and started flicking it like a catapult.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine. I’ll bring it up at the meeting tonight … Thank you, Bailey. I’ll see you around.’

  ‘No you won’t.’ He pointed to the bit of paper. ‘I’ll be working Wednesdays and Fridays and that’s when you’re not in.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  You have shut me out of your life and I can only guess that getting a job and changing your hours has something to do with the last time in Steep Street. Whatever happened between us is buried. What worries me is that anything buried can be dug up again in a foul and festering state. Your absence at the Project is worse than your presence. I know you have been there. I know you have walked past my house to get there. You feel like an invisible monster stalking me.

  It was half-term. She was on a train going to London to visit her mother. The cold countryside flashed past. The children squabbled over comics and biscuits. She stared at the trees and the hedges looking for signs of spring, but everything seemed so grey.

  Mrs Claremont was devoted to the memory of her late husband but she had managed to eradicate every scrap of him in her house apart from a framed photograph by her bed. The study was now a dining room and the archaic kitchen he adored was now wall to wall fitted cupboards. These changes upset Leah. She remembered the house as a shabby friendly place with old furniture, pipe smoke and Daddy Claremont in his Saturday cardigan. It was now like any other suburban household. Mrs Claremont had changed too. In Leah’s memory she did not feature much except as someone making meals and looking after baby Felicity. Mrs Claremont was small. Her favourite colour was beige. Her fair hair had gone grey ages ago but it was a silvery grey and she had the sharpest eyes of anyone Leah knew. She could spot unpolished shoes instantly and a bad mood a mile off.

  ‘You’ve got thinner,’ were her first words, ‘but the children look well,’ she added as if they shouldn’t have done. They had lunch in the kitchen. Baked potatoes and baked beans.

  ‘This is scrumptious,’ said Jo. This was the right thing to say to Grandma.

  ‘Is there more?’ said Ben.

  ‘I love beans,’ said Tom.

  ‘What good boys,’ said Mama fondly. ‘How nice to see proper appetites. Felicity’s always on such funny diets I never know what to cook.’

  ‘Mummy’s got a new house with a big telly,’ said Tom.

  ‘And we can see the trains from our window all through the night,’ said Jo.

  ‘And Daddy’s doing decorating,’ said Ben.

  Leah held her breath. Al and Mama didn’t get on at all.

  ‘How nice for you,’ said Mama and went to fetch the apple pie.

  After lunch Mama showed Leah everything Felicity had done around the house. Felicity was not there, she was tiling next-door’s bathroom. Felicity was the youngest in the family, nine years younger than Leah and politely described as ‘a little surprise’. She had been a sickly baby permanently covered in a rash or throwing up her last feed. As a child she was thin and filled with horrors about the dark, spiders and other people’s toilets. She only spoke in a whisper. Leah had very little to do with her because of the age gap, but sometimes when she was doing her homework Felicity would come and sit on the bed and just sit there sucking her thumb and twiddling a strand of hair. No words were spoken. Daddy Claremont didn’t find his youngest daughter so exasperating. ‘She’s just shy,’ he would say. There was another problem. She was eight or nine and all she could manage to read was ‘Here is Peter.’ Daddy Claremont, who was quick to call the whole lower fifth complete morons, did not notice his daughter was finding learning difficult. ‘She’s just shy.’ But Leah noticed it. As Felicity got older she grew taller and thinner. Daddy Claremont sent her to a convent in Harrow. She hated it. The dinners made her sick and the ferocious nuns terrified her. Daddy Claremont helped her every night with her homework and every morning Mama threw up her hands in despair because Felicity had a headache or a stomach ache. Then everything changed. That morning in May Daddy Claremont dropped dead in the car park. In their family there was an unspoken assumption that he would sort it out: Jimbo’s career, Mama’s housekeeping, Felicity’s homework, Leah’s baby. It would be all right because he was there. At his graveside Leah watched the clods of earth being chucked down. Jimbo was comforting Mama, who was looking very brave and hugging Felicity. Felicity looked bewildered and confused. She was sucking her thumb. She was thirteen.

  Mama never talked about it but Felicity didn’t go to school again. Leah was in Dev
on and pregnant with Ben. Jimbo assured her they were both well, but to Leah it didn’t seem well. Without Daddy Claremont, Mama and Felicity came to a standstill. They stayed, shocked in aspic.

  Mama got a tutor in for Felicity. She had the kitchen done, but it was half-hearted. Then Felicity decided to have Jimbo’s old bedroom and painted it. She got a book from the library and put up some shelves. When Leah next visited with baby Ben the regeneration had begun.

  ‘Look at the time,’ said Mama. ‘I must make tea, and here comes Felicity.’

  ‘Oh hello,’ she said, looking at the floor. She was wearing beige overalls smeared with grouting.

  ‘Come and talk to us,’ said Mama. Felicity looked pained as if she had been asked to carry a lump of concrete up a ladder.

  ‘Mum was telling me about the garden,’ said Leah.

  ‘Did you see the plans?’ She began to look more cheerful.

  Until teatime Leah listened for the second time about what was going to happen to the garden. It was difficult to follow Felicity: she still spoke softly and never looked at whoever she was talking to.

  ‘That’s the per-thing, along there, down the path, I’ll have to dig it up, it’s for roses, you know, they’re made out of wood.’

  ‘Pergola,’ said Leah. The boys started asking questions and Felicity was getting confused.

  ‘Climbing frame? No, it’s for roses, it’s a per-thing … a pond? for frogs? … I’m not sure.’ She became quiet and started fiddling with her hair.

  The next day Jimbo and his wife came for lunch. Mama made roast beef because Chloe was a vegetarian and she was sure he wasn’t being fed enough. Jimbo was Mama’s favourite. He had done everything right. He had gone to Oxford and got a first in modern languages. He was now a senior French master at a public school in Somerset. It was a Catholic school as well. Chloe was a music teacher. They had met at Oxford. She was Catholic too. Jimbo had indeed done everything right. Jimbo was beginning to look like his father now that he was balding but he had not got his father’s jovial temperament. Jimbo was a snob. They spent each summer touring France except this last summer because they now had baby Edouard. Edouard reminded Leah of Felicity, he was always ill with something. Chloe was a nervous mother, she was much happier playing the cello. She had read every single book on modern childcare.

  Lunch was unstressful, although Felicity just ate the potatoes and didn’t talk to anyone. Chloe balanced a wriggling Edouard on her knee and tried to feed him pureed vegetables. Jimbo was telling Mama about the most delicious canard he had had in a tiny village café in a forgotten bit of Normandy. He was good at finding bits of France nobody went to. The boys told jokes and made each other giggle. Mama had got out her best china and they were all in the dining room.

  ‘How’s Al?’ asked Chloe. She had never learned there were certain topics not discussed in the Claremont family and Al was one of them.

  ‘He’s going back to college,’ said Leah.

  ‘It must be awful for both of you, after all these years and to leave your home …’

  Mama had not said a word about it since Leah’s arrival.

  ‘I got a very nice letter from Mrs Ferris,’ said Mama, giving Jimbo more roast beef. ‘Apparently Dr Ferris is going on a lecture tour of Canada.’

  Leah knew that Mrs Ferris had probably written about a lot more than a lecture tour. There was a tense moment.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Leah. ‘It’s been a strain but I’m fine.’

  ‘More gravy?’ said Mama. ‘Felicity, something more for you?’

  Felicity didn’t like food, conversations or tense emotional scenes. She mumbled she had a lot to do, and left. Chloe spooned more food into Edouard.

  ‘Is she all right?’ she said to Jimbo.

  ‘She’s redesigning the garden. Mama will tell you all about it.’

  ‘I mean,’ said Chloe, ‘is she happy? She’s twenty. She should go out more. She should get her own place.’ Anything wrong with Felicity was another taboo topic.

  ‘Boys, would you like some ice-cream?’ said Mama.

  Chloe turned to Jimbo for support. She wasn’t interfering, she genuinely cared about her in-laws, but Jimbo liked confrontations as much as his sister. He looked out of the window and hummed. Edouard began to cough and threw up his dinner all over Chloe’s skirt.

  ‘Goodness!’ said Chloe. ‘He must be ill.’

  ‘Felicity used to do that,’ said Mama.

  Jimbo, Leah and Mama sat in the dining room. Chloe was upstairs, cleaning up Edouard and the boys were giving her useful suggestions.

  ‘I do believe it’s going to rain,’ said Mama.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Jimbo. ‘I don’t fancy driving back in the rain.’

  There are so many things to be said and they are not going to talk about any of them. My silly cowardly family. But I’m glad. There are plenty of things I don’t want to talk about.

  The rest of the week was spent doing the things they always did when they went to Ruislip. Up to town to see the museums and shopping in Uxbridge. Mama was particularly generous this time. She bought the boys new winter clothes and Leah realised it was her way of acknowledging their difficult situation. Mrs Claremont had only raised the topic once, one evening. She said, ‘Do tell me about your new house, dear,’ in the most conversational way possible, as if it were Leah’s house, not Clive’s, as if Leah’s reason for being there was to put up curtains and not because she had run away from her husband. Leah described Brewery Lane and made it sound cosy. Shabby but homely, knowing Mama could relate to that for the house in Ruislip had been shabby and homely for years. In the end Brewery Lane seemed the sweetest little house on earth and Clive the most kindest most favourite-uncle-type person you could care to meet.

  ‘But of course you’re not going to stay there,’ said Mama, meaning, of course you’re not going to marry Clive.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Leah and there was a pause in which Leah knew her mother was inspecting her thoroughly, looking for an indication that her wayward daughter was heading along the right path at last.

  But I don’t know what’s going to happen after Brewery Lane. I don’t know what’s going to happen next week … She was thinking about Bailey and her mother caught her change in thought. Mrs Claremont made a slight adjustment to her cameo brooch. It was from Italy and Daddy Claremont had bought it for her.

  ‘You wouldn’t do anything foolish,’ she said.

  Leah breathed in. Her mother’s definition of foolish was not to put on a vest on a cold day, and she had got pregnant at college and married an anarchist.

  It was their last evening in Ruislip. Leah and Mrs Claremont were sorting through the family photographs. Felicity was watching television, as she did every evening. Some American movie with exploding cars and gunfire. The boys were in bed, not asleep, but talking in loud whispers. Mrs Claremont had arranged three piles: family holidays, Jimbo and Leah when they were little, and life after Felicity. Leah hadn’t seen some of these photos for years and some with Felicity she hadn’t seen at all. Poor Felicity, it seemed, had been dragged round every capital city in Europe with her ageing and unfashionable parents.

  ‘Doesn’t she look a picture,’ said Mama. It was a rare snap of Felicity smiling, not yet walking and sitting on a mat in the garden holding up a shoe. ‘You know, she sat in the sun so much that day she came up in a rash. What a child she was. And here’s you.’

  Leah as a child had nearly white hair and rosy cheeks. In this picture she was watering the flowerbeds with a huge watering can. ‘You watered the flowers every day; even when it was raining, you used to go out in your gumboots. It did make Daddy Claremont laugh.’

  There were other pictures. Birthdays, parties, treats. Leah and Jimbo in their best clothes. Jimbo was blond as well until he was ten, but as a little boy he was as fair as a cherub. Jimbo and Leah holding hands like Hansel and Gretel. Even when they were captured doing something more active like playing in the paddling pool or running dow
n a beach, they looked like an advertisement for happiness.

  ‘Look at this one,’ said Mama. Jimbo nearly seven and Leah, five, sitting under the apple tree both absorbed in an atlas.

  I remember that. He used to have a game. He would say, ‘Shut your eyes. Now what is the capital of Switzerland? What is the capital of Norway?’ Oh, I remember that summer because we went to Dorset for a holiday and saw Corfe Castle. We went for a trip in a boat and we played the atlas game … at the end of the summer he went to the prep school at the monastery.

  She sat down on the floor to look at the photographs more closely. Mama made decisions about what was to go into the album and what wasn’t.

  Here’s me and Jimbo. I was ten and we’re on a trip to Sissinghurst. I looked dreamy because the flowers were so beautiful, but he looks hot and bored. A little prep school know-it-all boy … And here’s Jimbo at prize day at school, with all his prizes, and here’s me in a blue dress. Here’s Jimbo’s O-level celebration dinner, and Jimbo’s first day at Oxford, and his graduation celebration dinner and here’s me in a red dress. That dress, it was from Laura Ashley, dark red with little flowers. Daddy Claremont took a long time with that photograph. I was under the apple tree with a pile of art books and a red Alice band in my hair. I’m not looking at the books but smiling at something in the middle distance. The year after that I had a baby and was living with Al …

  ‘We must have that one,’ said Mama, taking it from her. ‘Daddy Claremont said it was his favourite, he said you looked like a Fra Angelico angel.’

  Leah flicked rapidly through the rest of the photographs of herself and Jimbo. Where are my achievements? My O-levels, my graduation. I worked so hard at school to be like Jimbo. Those essays and reading and reading, because I thought that’s what they wanted … but now it’s obvious. Blue dresses. Red dresses. It didn’t matter. None of it. Because all they wanted was for me to be sweet and pretty.

  ‘You look a bit tired,’ said Mama. ‘Why don’t you have an early night?’

  In bed Leah opened the book on the Early Renaissance. She didn’t read it but smoothed out the pictures as she used to. She stopped at St Sebastian strung up in his stony landscape. The house was quiet now. The painting still made her feel sad. She wanted to rush in and save him from that exquisite intolerable pain.