I knew he wouldn’t. Our only hope was that someone as rational as Ed could deal with what he was about to be put through. Only someone as rational as Ed could coolly pack his suitcase with things he must know would be taken from him on arrest without thinking about everything he had lost, without breaking down or cursing God or roaring like a bull calf at the miserable hand fate had dealt him. It wasn’t as if he had ever done a single thing in his entire life, a life of making families and supporting our family, which meant he deserved what was coming. Well, maybe one thing. He had broken a moral law. I held out an arm but he turned back to the bed and started packing his suitcase. Only Ed could face his destiny without the brief touch of human consolation.
I collapsed into the bow-legged armchair we’d bought in a junk shop in Golborne Road in the days when you could still find bargains there and watched him pack. I felt exhausted yet the full horror was still to come. More than anything I wanted it to be over – the goodbyes, the tension, the charges, the announcement, the humiliation, the hounding, the court case, the sentence, the publicity, the looks, the whispers, the false concern, all the things from which we could never hide. I wanted to go to sleep and to wake up on the far side, wherever that was and whatever it meant. I wanted to crawl into my hole and do my work. I wanted to protect myself and my family.
He finally left after supper. It had been an unsurprisingly subdued affair, every word pregnant with double-meaning, every sentence drenched in loss. Ed had waited until the children had gone up to bed before he went to say goodbye. He was on the top floor for twenty minutes. I didn’t ask him what he’d said. I wanted it to be between him and his children. It might be the last thing they would take with them. Neither of us spoke. We just hugged silently – hugged and hugged and hugged – pressing our bodies together so hard it was as if, right at the death, we could fulfil our marital vows and become one. Moments later he was gone, without a backward glance, the front door clicking softly behind him, his broad back disappearing into the dusk as he clutched his bag, his posture erect and defiant. The gate clanged as he went out into the road and there was silence. I imagined him pausing, sniffing cool scents in the warm air, before heading for his car. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.
For a few seconds I felt vacant, out of my own body, as if I was somewhere or someone else, on the upper deck of a Saga cruise or answering the phone in Italian. Had what I thought just happened really happened? When the moment passed I looked around the kitchen for a magazine. I couldn’t go to bed as there was no way I would sleep, but equally there was no chance of concentrating on a book or a poem or even looking at a painting. I spotted Bristol Magazine, a glossy freebie, on the wooden worktop. It was exactly the sort of brain-dead fodder I needed, pictures of houses for sale and minimalist German kitchens I would never want or could probably afford, certainly not now. I went downstairs to the basement fridge and fished out a bottle of Sancerre donated by some generous new parent happy to provide more expensive wine than we would ever drink, oblivious to the circumstances in which it would be drunk. I figured we might as well go down in style and, anyway, just then I needed a drink so badly I could have been an alcoholic. Maybe I should follow Matt down Addiction Road? My route hadn’t brought me much more happiness in the end. Maybe we Tenterdens weren’t built for happiness? Maybe I had simply staved off the unhappiness for longer? Or maybe I had simply appeared to? I pulled out a tumbler. The phone rang. I left it. It kept ringing. I kept leaving it. With what sounded like a final peal of outrage, it stopped. I picked up the corkscrew.
The first glass didn’t touch the sides. I rebooted. Yet even as I refilled my glass with the pale yellow wine I knew I didn’t want it. I didn’t need it. My thirst was slaked. Whatever happened to Ed, I wouldn’t be going down Matt’s road. I had Nell and Arthur, which he didn’t, and they needed me sober, fully lit and protective as a tigress over the next few hours, days, weeks, months and, probably, years. I poured the glass and then the bottle down the sink, taking a malicious pleasure in sluicing such expensive wine.
I looked briefly at the magazine but it couldn’t settle my nerves. So I reached for the TV flicker and landed on the news on some twenty-four-hour channel. The Middle East, violence flaring. A finance company’s share price was collapsing. A big slug of a man who had eaten too often and too well was angry with everyone for saying he was bust when he said he wasn’t. He didn’t look trustworthy. I thought if I didn’t believe him then Julian Noone and the market definitely wouldn’t believe him and his company would go down. A good-looking young soldier had died in training on the Brecon Beacons. I clicked off the TV. There was only so much bad news you could take in a day. I went upstairs to the study and dug out a back issue of Apollo with a beautifully illustrated article on Georgia O’Keeffe I had meant to look at for ages, and headed up to bed. I wanted to absorb her colours. I needed her lyrical eye.
I was standing at the round mirror in our bathroom, lit by the crescent of bulbs as if I was a star of stage and screen. The light was pore-bright. It picked on every blemish and imperfection. Imagine what it must be like to be an actress.
How would I paint my face? First the physical: crystal-blue eyes, almond-shaped when I smile. A straight nose, petite, softer than my mother’s. My hair was cut in a bob as it was easier for work. It was mousey, with a strain of ginger from my father’s side and curled inward naturally at the neck. It needed a wash. Somehow, with everything that was going on … I widened my mouth. The tips of my two front teeth peeped out. They are always with me. I have been lucky with my skin, though in the bright bathroom the laughter lines seemed as deep as canyons. The take-no-prisoners glare revealed the faint impress of lines on my forehead, not yet centre stage but undeniably there, the result of childbirth and motherhood and painting self-obsessed people. This was the beginning. It was not hard to imagine what the next few weeks and months might do.
I looked into my eyes. Always start with the eyes. They tell you how strong someone is, what reserves they have, how far they could go. They reveal the structure. The rest is cladding. Mine were flecked with red and, no matter how much I tried to pretend otherwise, they looked exhausted. I couldn’t hide from it. They told the whole story to anyone who knew how to read them. Nabokov once said you couldn’t read a book, you could only re-read one. Maybe you can’t paint a self-portrait but only re-paint one?
I put down the O’Keeffe and switched on the radio. It’s a Roberts radio, a long-ago present from Ed for my studio that I moved to our bedroom when I realized I didn’t want to listen to the crap that gets talked all day on Radio Four. All those smug types playing word games, rejoicing in their own wit and cleverness, the earnest plays, the glib analysis, spouting heads. Politicians telling lies. It’s all just words, swirling around formlessly like the onset of dementia. Opium for the intelligentsia. How can you do anything when you’re drowning in verbiage? Why would you do anything? Art is the opposite. It must capture a moment. It must tease out meaning, engage with nuance, reach an understanding, ascend to a truth. It must be approached obliquely, not through a barrage of me-too commentary. Art is not an opinion.
The midnight DJ on a random station introduced a singer-songwriter I had never heard before. There were a few chords of acoustic guitar before the harmonica cut in – a sure sign of a performer about to take himself seriously – and a gravelly voice grouched on about heading out west over wide open spaces in search of his love. After three minutes of hope and frustration and maybe redemption the harmonica blew back in like tumbleweed. I lay back on clean sheets and puffed pillows in the half-empty bed.
A moment later the phone rang. I hesitated for a moment before picking it up. In the micro-silence before he spoke I knew it was Ed. His voice was soft but urgent.
‘Darling, have you heard the news?’
‘No. What news?’
‘They’ve let him go.’
‘What?’
‘It was on the news. Di
dn’t you hear it?’
‘Hear what?’
‘They’ve let Trumble go. Araminta’s man.’
I felt my stomach lurch.
‘Oh darling! But where are you?’
‘Don’t you see?’
‘See what?’
‘There’s no need to give myself up because they’ve already let him go.’
‘But aren’t you there already?’
‘No.’ His voice was triumphant. ‘I’d been driving around psyching myself up, and by the time I was ready it was ten so I thought I’d listen to the local news one last time before I handed myself in. And they said they’d let him go.’
‘Darling, that’s—’
‘Fucking fantastic! It’s awesome is what it is. I’m the luckiest man alive.’
‘Alive,’ I echoed.
‘Yes, isn’t it great? And, darling …’
‘Mmm?’
‘You OK?’
‘Yuh?’
‘Only you sound a bit, well, not quite ecstatic.’
‘No, no, I’m good. I’m good, oh darling, that’s fantastic news.’
‘It is. I can’t believe it. You know what it means …?’ He didn’t wait for me to reply. ‘It means everything’s going to be all right. Darling, I’m so happy I can’t tell you. I’m on my way home.’
I lay back on the plumped pillows, the phone in my hand. I couldn’t hide it from myself. I didn’t feel elated. I didn’t feel as happy as I knew I should. This was officially the best news we could have had as a family and yet … and yet … I tried to revive the sense of despair I had when Ed left in order to conjure up the relief and joy I should be feeling. But I couldn’t clear the one question which was zinging around my mind.
Why didn’t I feel fucking fantastic?
The following day, though to all appearances nothing had changed, I couldn’t face taking the children to school. So I rang Plan Bea and busied myself with laundry at the back of the house, sending Nell and Arthur out to meet her in the road where she hovered by the gatepost, having arrived a couple of minutes early on the off-chance of a catch-up with Clifton’s most infamous woman. When I was certain she had gone, I crept up to my studio and collapsed on to the chaise longue. I hadn’t slept after Ed got back, triumph oozing from every pore, and I was exhausted, my limbs too heavy to move. The sun was already high in a cloudless sky and the hot air enveloped me. I wasn’t sure how much more I was going to be able to take. But there was no escape. We were public property now, to be poured out and pored over and pawed. Whatever Ed had or hadn’t done had cost us our privacy, the privacy that was essential for painting portraits. I had to cancel my three contracted sittings. I didn’t have the strength to undertake them.
For a while I didn’t even have the strength to make the calls. I lay on the chaise longue for hours with my mind in turmoil while the sun beat down and a pack of wild dogs snapped at my mind. As time passed I sensed the afternoon’s pick-up hurtling towards me like a packed courtroom and I knew I had to make my calls before Ed returned home and persuaded me not to bail, but still I couldn’t move. I was trying to raise the energy to start with the easiest, Eddie Sanderstead, a sweet modest man whose portrait is a sixtieth birthday present from his wife I suspect secretly he’d rather not have, when my mobile rang. I answered. There was the slightest pause before a shy voice said, ‘Bunny?’
It was Matt. Matt had been to Highlands and missed his connection to Leeds and Whitby. He had an hour to kill at Temple Meads. Was there any chance I could meet for a quick coffee? He was typically apologetic about the lack of notice and quite understood if it wasn’t convenient. I said I would be there in ten minutes. His voice lit up.
Driving the back way along Spike Island beside the muddy Avon, I thought only Matt, who I hadn’t seen for a couple of years, could give me ten minutes’ notice for a forty-minute cup of coffee in the middle of the afternoon when anyone else would have been at work.
He saw me before I saw him as he had positioned himself to one side behind a large menu with a perfect view of the door. It was as if he wanted advance warning of the arrival of – I don’t know what. Dealers? Creditors? Ex-girlfriends? Landlords? Mother? He ought to feel safe in Bristol, a city in which he’d never lived or worked, in a café at a railway station, but evidently he’d learned not to take any chances. He waved, his face splitting into his hopeful grin, almost as if he thought I might also have arranged to meet someone else. I looked around the high-ceilinged, near-empty café and felt a sudden sadness. A railway station, not even a terminus, seemed a wretched place to meet such a restless soul. Matt had always been waiting for his connection.
We hugged. He was still handsome, though the lines were deeper. Matt had shiny hair, no trace of grey, Tenterden cheekbones, a well-cast nose and a generous mouth with the full flush lips of a Rubens beauty. But slim had turned to gaunt and he looked tired. The drugs or the years, or the net-making business, were beginning to take their toll.
I bought two coffees. Conscious of the clock, we sped through – or in my case glossed over – our recent lives. Matt, of course, hadn’t seen the news, and amazingly (or not) Mother hadn’t mentioned it, which allowed me to give a parboiled account of that woman. It was short on truth, which made me feel bad as I had always told Matt everything about my life even if it wasn’t always reciprocated. His economy was never falsehood; evasion perhaps, that and his desperate urge for privacy. There were dark places no one was invited and I never ventured. How was Whitby? Whitby was great. How was Jo? Jo was great. How was net-making? Net-making was great.
‘And … profitable?’
It was hard to imagine Matt as a businessman. He was too gentle. He was not equipped to deal with suppliers and distributors and the hard northern fishing folk who had seen their industry collapse and pared their spending to the bone.
The battle for control of his face told me everything. I probed. They were struggling to turn a profit. Jo’s business lacked the scale of the industrial net-makers and it was hard to persuade under-pressure local fishermen to pay a premium for quality and service. That was why he was passing through Bristol. He had been to Highlands to ask Mother if he could borrow some money to provide short-term cash flow to shore up the business.
‘I think I can guess the answer.’
He nodded grimly. We both knew he was not a sound bet. He wore his failure like an old coat.
Jo had started the business five years ago. She had left school with a single GCSE in English Literature, sat on a checkout stool in Asda for five years before realizing if she was going to make anything of her life she was going to have to do it herself. She was twenty-seven to Matt’s forty-five, an uneducated entrepreneur to his wasted life. What was the attraction? Who could say? Maybe they’d shared a dealer. Maybe she was drawn to his gentle demeanour, his love of poetry, the promise of a different life. However they’d met (Matt had always been reticent about his emotional life, generally with good reason), I knew she worked hard and was on the level.
‘It hasn’t always been easy – with Jo, I mean.’
‘The age difference?’
‘Not only that.’ Matt gave the wary, hooded look I remembered so well. ‘We are different. She’s very determined, focused. She’s got quite a temper on her.’
‘So Bridgey said.’
He took a sip of coffee as if to rebalance himself.
‘That wasn’t a good time.’
‘She stayed with you?’
‘Jo?’
‘Bridgey.’
He gave a wistful laugh. ‘Not even a night.’
I had heard. Bridgey had spoken at a Brontë festival in Haworth and afterwards taken the train to Whitby. She had never learned to drive. The plan had been to spend the weekend with Matt and to meet Jo. She ended up checking into a B&B at 10 p.m. on the Friday night and caught the first train back to London on Saturday morning. There had been an argument between Matt and Jo about his habit and Bridgey had been too embarrassed to stay. She i
s not built for confrontation.
‘But things are better now?’
‘Yup.’
‘And you love her?’
‘Jo? Yuh. She’s great.’
‘And she loves you?’
‘For now.’
I pulled what I hoped was an optimistic face, but it was hard to be confident. Matt was a man in motion, an alien in the north, a fragile soul who had crash-landed in the world of commerce. It was hard to imagine the business question to which the answer was: ‘Matthew Tenterden’.
‘And you’re clean?’
‘Almost.’
‘Jo?’
He shook his head. I didn’t know whether he meant she was clean or she didn’t know he wasn’t. I didn’t even know whether she’d ever been a junkie. I also didn’t know how far ‘almost’ stretched, but I couldn’t ask. Matt was my big brother and his habit was a place I couldn’t go. He absent-mindedly stirred what was left of his coffee with a toothpick he took from a packet in his pocket. ‘She’s been very good to me.’
‘And how much money do you – does she – need?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘No, go on. I could lend you some. I’ve got three commissions on. Things are good. Money’s no problem.’
I didn’t add that after the three phone calls I planned to make that afternoon I would have no commissions. Matt was probably the only person in the world who at that moment could make me say, if only comparatively, ‘Things are good.’
‘No, Bunny, that’s really sweet of you. You’ve always been so generous.’
‘Hardly.’
‘The kingfisher?’
Ah yes, the kingfisher. The kingfisher had gone down in family lore. One day at Highlands when I was eight a kingfisher had somehow got into the house and become trapped in a high-up window. Neither Matt nor Bridgey could reach it. It was so desperate that I could see by the time one of us found an adult it would have broken its beak on the thick green glass. So without thinking I hurled my tin of coloured crayons – the last present my father had ever given me – through the window, which shattered into a million glittering shards. The bird gave a startled look before hopping through the gap and disappearing in a flash of coral and cobalt, leaving me to face the shocked and amazed and delighted expressions of Matt and Bridgey and the heavy hand of Mother alone.
What Alice Knew Page 16