Falling to Earth

by Deirdre Palmer

  When sleep eluded her, as it often did now, she gave herself up to the luxury of extending the fantasy. Supposing she had accepted one of his invitations? Lunch, or coffee in the park, might have turned into dinner, and naturally she would have told Gray all about it and he would have said, fine, you go ahead, have a good time, and then the only thing she’d have had to worry about would have been what to wear. Yes, right. Most women, she supposed, would have been flattered by the dubious attentions of a younger man, but she wasn’t most women, was she?

  No, it was Gray she should be concentrating on. If you took it right back to basics, Gray was far more interesting than Jonno and a sight more fanciable. Jonno might have one of those faces that would be heaven to draw, because of all the interesting little dips and shadows of its contours, but there was something lacking in his eyes, beautiful though they were, and that something was kindness, a quality far more sexy than any come-hither look, however jokey, and a quality that was ever-present in Gray’s violet-blue gaze.

  It may have been Juliet’s unhinged meanderings about clothes to wear for Jonno or a simple, sudden desire to give herself an overhaul that exhorted her to turn out the contents of her wardrobe. Whichever it was, it didn’t matter, she thought as she made two piles on the bed, items to keep and items to throw, because the experience was both pleasurable and cathartic as well as long overdue.

  Rachel wandered in as she was considering the merits of a billowy, psychedelic tunic with batwing sleeves, a relic from her art-student days that had turned full circle and become kind-of fashionable again - but perhaps not for her age-group.

  ‘Urgh, gross!’ Rachel summed up the offending article in a trice. ‘What are you doing with all this stuff out anyway?’

  ‘Having a sort out. I might take some of it to the charity shop.’

  Juliet threw the tunic on to the reject pile and checked the label inside a short fuchsia skirt with a revealing slit at the back. Two sizes too small – at least. She threw it on the pile with the rest and Rachel pounced on it, holding it up in front of her.

  ‘Wicked! Can I have this?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  Rachel tutted, dropped the skirt back on the pile and flopped down on the end of the bed, rubbing her toes in the cream pile of the carpet. Her toenails were painted metallic green – from one of the bottles on Andrea’s dressing table, no doubt.

  ‘Mum, please can I have a computer of my own? It can just be a cheap one. It doesn’t have to be one like yours. Yours is cool though.’

  Juliet surveyed the almost empty wardrobe with satisfaction, then turned to Rachel in time to see her giving Juliet’s sleek laptop a covetous look. Why this sudden interest in computers? Rachel used them for school-work, of course, but as far as leisure time went she’d never seemed particularly interested, which had pleased Juliet, considering how much time other people’s children spent cooped up in front of a screen, playing games and talking to goodness know who on social networking sites.

  ‘Two computers in one house are quite enough for three people.’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘I wasn’t counting Andrea. Anyway, you’ve got computers at school. Perhaps when you get to the sixth form we can get you one.’

  Rachel put on an uncharacteristically sulky expression. ‘Supposing Dad was to buy me one? That would be all right, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘That doesn’t even deserve an answer. Haven’t you got homework to do? It is a school night, in case you’d forgotten.’

  ‘OK, OK, I’m going.’

  Rachel flounced out of the room but it wasn’t a serious flounce. She knew when she was beaten. She also knew the score as regards presents from her father, that there would be nothing large and expensive without Juliet being consulted first. Small gifts were fine and he was good at those, Juliet had to admit. Despite having only clapped eyes on his daughter roughly once every two years since she was born, Charlton usually managed to hit the spot with the USA-stamped packages that contained, along with a short, newsy letter, imaginative gizmos like the American mail-box pencil sharpener that Rachel placed at centre front of her desk at school during difficult lessons, like maths, to deflect questions she was unable to answer. Juliet wished she had been the one to provide such a talisman.

  Sometimes she felt a stab of guilt as she watched Rachel opening one of these packages – a long distance father was all she had because that was how they’d decided it should be. Since Charlton was based abroad it was the only practical solution. He had gone to work for the company in Hong Kong as soon as he realised Juliet wasn’t going to change her mind about marrying him, and after Hong Kong he’d moved to the States, first Philadelphia, now Boston.

  Occasionally he would return to ‘touch base’ with the London office and that was when he saw Rachel – and Juliet of course. Their meetings were coloured with awkwardness at first - they were bound to be - but as the years went by, Juliet began to think of Charlton, not as an ex-lover but as an old family friend or a distant cousin and she stopped dreading his visits and relaxed into the spirit of them. After all, it was Rachel he came to see, not her.

  As for Rachel, she seemed to take it all in her stride. There were never any tearful goodbyes or anything like that. When he was gone, as far as she was concerned it was as if he’d never been. She rarely spoke about him, which presumably meant she didn’t think about him either. Even so, Juliet sometimes worried that her daughter was hiding her feelings and then she would bring Charlton into the conversation herself, just to test the water.

  ‘This is a nice photo of you, Rachel,’ she’d say. ‘Shall we send it to Daddy?’ And Rachel would shrug and say: ‘If you like,’ and carry on with what she was doing.

  Gray was on the phone when Juliet went downstairs. He passed her the handset. ‘Karina.’

  ‘Karina, hi! How’s the bump?’ Juliet dropped on to the sofa next to Andrea, who was watching Midsomer Murders whilst steadily eating Maltesers from a family-size bucket.

  ‘Big,’ Karina said, ‘and extremely uncomfortable. Either this one’s bumper economy size or there’s more than one in there and they missed it on the scan. Anyway, I called to ask if you’d like to come for supper on Friday. Bring Andrea, too, of course. Gray said you were free.’

  ‘We are, yes. Thanks, Karina, and I’m sure Andrea would love to come ... oh, hang on a minute.’

  Andrea was nudging Juliet in the ribs and making contorted facial expressions under cover of the back of the sofa.

  ‘Karina? Andrea says thanks for the invitation but unfortunately she’s not free on Friday... yes, see you about seven then. Bye.’

  Gray lowered the evening paper. ‘Not free? What’re you doing then?’

  ‘Extra rehearsal.’

  ‘Oh, is that all?’

  Andrea and Juliet looked at one another and giggled. Gray shook his head in a bemused fashion and returned to his paper.

  ‘Here we are, my lovely - all good, honest food, straight from the soil, just as the dear Lord intended.’ Dilys Day emitted a whoosh of breath and dropped a mammoth newspaper parcel on to the kitchen table.

  How on earth she found the energy to pedal all the way to Clifton Gardens with half the allotment in her bicycle basket Juliet had no idea, especially as most of the journey was uphill. Dilys ‘did’ for two other households as well as theirs and operated a dog-walking service. In her spare time she ploughed the furrows of the allotment alongside her husband, Cyril, and pumped out Onward Christian Soldiers and other heart-lifting renderings on the organ at the Pentecostal church - the tin tabernacle, as it was known. Juliet always felt she should be offering Dilys the chance of a nice lie down instead of cleaning up after them. Besides, she’d never quite managed to cast off the niggle of guilt she felt at not doing the housework herself.

  The newspaper fell apart, revealing a huge bunch of green-topped carrots, three football-sized cabbages and an abundance of potatoes and turnips, most of which rolled across the table and on to the floor. Di
lys stooped to retrieve the errant vegetables, her face reddening, pepper-and-salt hair escaping from its French pleat.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Juliet said, bending with her. ‘You get yourself sorted.’

  ‘Right you are, Mrs C.’ Cranking herself upright, Dilys replaced a rainbow-striped cardigan with an orange nylon overall and delved in the cupboard where the cleaning things lived.

  Juliet eyed the heap of earthy vegetables dolefully. No doubt, as always, they would taste wonderful, although all that chopping and peeling could well induce a nasty case of repetitive strain injury. There was a scrap of paper tucked in among the carrots – £7.50 for veg supplied Wednesday, it said, in Dilys’s husband’s neat hand. Juliet pulled it out and stuck it on the dresser as a reminder to include the amount in Dily’s pay. Supporting her agricultural activities was becoming an expensive business.

  Closing the door of her studio against the noise of the vacuum cleaner, she set about today’s project which involved the painting of about a thousand miniature roof tiles. Actually it had been yesterday’s project too, and if she didn’t get a shift on, it would be tomorrow’s. The tiles in question belonged to the roofs of a seaside town which hung above a boat-strewn harbour. A double-page spread, this picture would be the centre-piece of the book, a jolly story for the three-to-sixes called Hooray for Buttercomb Bay, the text of which rattled satisfyingly along and was probably far less of a breeze to write than it appeared.

  A dozen or so more tiny roofs now cheerily red-tiled, Juliet sat back and yawned, dimpling the side of her mouth with the end of her paint-brush. She had half considered nipping into town this morning to make a start on replenishing her dwindled wardrobe but she didn’t really have the time or the inclination, and besides, it was tipping down with rain.

  Wondering whether Andrea had left her bedroom window open, Juliet went to check. The top vent was wide open, billowing the blue curtains into the room. Snapping the window shut, she turned to leave and as she did so, she noticed a card standing on the dressing table among the tubes of lip gloss and the pots of miracle anti-ageing cream that Andrea said was made out of yaks’ testicles or something equally revolting. The card had a cup-cake on the front with white sparkly icing and a cherry on top.

  She couldn’t quite see inside it, not even if she stood sideways on and tilted her head at a forty degree angle. She picked it up and sat down on the edge of the rumpled bed - well, it wasn’t as if she’d taken it out of a drawer or something was it? The few scrawled lines were difficult to decipher at first, and then she read: Dearest Andrea - the icing on my cake, the sweetest of all my dreams – together soon, I promise. Love you always. It was signed with what looked like either an ‘O’ or a ‘D’ and a row of hasty kisses.

  Closing the card, she sat with it in her lap for a few moments. Together soon? A bit melodramatic for what was supposedly a casual fling, wasn’t it? But then there was only one party in this affair who considered it as such and that was Andrea - if she was telling the truth. Of course, she wouldn’t lie about it deliberately, but perhaps she was deceiving herself and the relationship meant more to her than she was prepared to acknowledge. Juliet didn’t like to think of her friend being led up the garden path by this O or D person, whoever he was. Then again, it could be the other way around. Perhaps Andrea wanted to inflict the same kind of hurt and humiliation on a man - any man - as Declan had inflicted on her. Revenge by proxy.

  Juliet studied the writing in the card, as if by doing so, its secrets would be revealed. They weren’t, of course. It was only a card, an impulsive lover’s gesture, and she was reading more into it than there actually was. It was just that she wanted to protect Andrea but she could no more do that than she could protect her daughter from whatever traumas life had in store.

  The stairs creaked. Juliet shot off the bed, stuck the card back in its place and went to the door but it was only Dilys on her way down from Rachel’s room, the sheepskin duster on its bamboo stick held out in front of her, like Joan of Arc with her banner.

  ‘You all right, Mrs C? You gave me quite a start there for a minute.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes, fine.’

  Back in her studio, she stood at the glass door watching the rain forming rivulets around the bases of the plant pots. Buttercomb Bay slumbered on the easel but she felt too unsettled to work now. Finding the card from Andrea’s lover seemed to have stirred up something within her, something distinctly unpleasant which tasted, shamefully, like jealousy.

  She went downstairs, put the kettle on, then wandered to the sitting room window. The rain had almost stopped and the plants in the tiny front garden held globules of bright water on their leaves, like mercury. Dilys’s bike was no longer chained to the railings. Juliet hadn’t heard her leave. On impulse, she picked up the house phone and punched the button for Gray’s mobile.

  He answered immediately. ‘Yes?’ She could almost see the crease-lines on his forehead.

  ‘It’s me. I wondered if you fancied anything special for dinner this evening.’

  ‘Juliet, I’m in the car. I’ve had a gruelling morning and I’ve just got back to the office... damn and blast!’

  ‘Gray, what on earth’s the matter?’

  ‘Just missed a space. Some idiot pulled into it when you distracted me. Was it something important?’

  Juliet sighed. ‘No, I was only asking... oh, never mind.’

  Honestly, what was the bloody point? She banged the handset back on its cradle.

  7

  On Friday, Juliet worked solidly through until lunchtime. Most of the Buttercomb Bay illustrations were finished and she was pleased with them. There were still a few of the smaller drawings to complete but as she was well ahead with her schedule she’d decided to devote this morning to finishing off a set of postcards, beach scenes with lots of bright colours. Sometimes she got fan mail, sweet little letters from children that never failed to thrill her. She always replied within a day or two, if she could, and postcards were useful for that.

  At one o’clock, Andrea tapped on the door then put her head round. ‘Fancy joining me for lunch?’

  ‘Gosh, yes, I’m starving! I didn’t realise the time.’

  ‘Gray was in a right old mood this morning, wasn’t he?’ Andrea said when they were sitting down.

  ‘Was he? I didn’t notice.’

  She didn’t want to talk about Gray, or think about him, because then the eternal round of questions would begin in her head, questions to which she did not want to find the answers because if she did, she might have to make decisions and she wasn’t ready to do that.

  Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today had been one of her mother’s favourite sayings, but somehow the threat of having to buy a whole new set of buttons because the loose one had been lost had never quite succeeded in compelling Juliet to take urgent action with the sewing kit. Procrastination is the thief of time was another one out of the same mould. A little procrastination never hurt anyone – it might even prevent a mistake being made, a mistake of potentially life-wrecking proportions.

  Of course she had noticed Gray’s temper this morning – it was impossible not to. Nothing had been right for him, not the water temperature (too high), not the new towels she’d bought (too soft), not the toast (underdone), not his egg (over-boiled) and not the position of the cat’s feeding bowl (too near the kitchen door and therefore liable to be stood upon – which it was – by Gray).

  In order to avoid an argument, Juliet had refrained from commenting that if Gray took more than a passing interest in these things himself there wouldn’t have been a problem but she’d felt a little swoop of anxiety inside which had see-sawed away inside her for most of the morning.

  Thankfully, Andrea didn’t pursue the subject of Gray but instead prattled on about the Clifton Players.

  ‘Honestly, Ju, the way some of them carry on you’d think they were the company of a Broadway production instead of a bunch of amateurs having a crack at an Alan Ayckbourne,
’ Andrea said as she reached the end of her anecdote. ‘And as for that Amanda one, bleating on about her costume being shoddily made – talk about primadonna! He told her, David did. He said if she wasn’t satisfied she should go to a designer and have her costume made at her own expense or shut up about it. She never said a word after that. Hah!’ Andrea slapped her hands down on the table, smiling triumphantly, as if it was she who had put paid to the leading lady’s histrionics. ‘Doughnut?’ She proffered a grease-stained paper bag. ‘I bought these yesterday but they’re still quite squidgy.’

  ‘No thanks. Oh, go on then. I could do with a sugar hit.’

  Juliet had seen Fiona Wellman, David’s wife, last week when she’d taken her some bits and pieces for her charity bric-a-brac stall. Fiona had opened the door just as Juliet reached for the bell. She’d looked distinctly peaky. Her eyes were sunken in their sockets, her hair was lank and greasy and by the look of it she had lost a bit of weight, and not in a healthy sort of way. Juliet had been about to ask her if she was all right when Fiona muttered her thanks and closed the door. Just as well, Juliet thought. If Fiona had flu or something it would be just her luck to catch it.

  After they’d eaten, Andrea went upstairs and Juliet flopped down on the sofa and flicked through the daily paper. She shouldn’t have stopped for lunch, or at least she should have stayed off the inertia-inducing carbohydrates. She’d just take five minutes and then, back to work. Any longer and she’d be asleep. She heard the front door close. Andrea hadn’t said where she was going but Juliet had a fairly good idea. She’d been wearing a new dress, a mango cotton affair with big white buttons down the front.