by Adam Thorpe
And here it was, his des res. He had the key to it. So it must be his.
‘All right, neighbour?’
‘All right, Edward.’
‘I’m setting to on redecorating the master bedroom!’
‘Great idea!’
He scurried into the house as Edward Cochrane unloaded shopping from the boot of his Chrysler. The sexiest thing to carry your children since your wife, the advert for it had run. Milly had toyed with the idea of taking Chrysler to court for defamation of women. Edward had laughed at this, rather insensitively, but now the car was only carrying himself. It was rough justice. You had to be sad, anyway, to find a car sexy. Except perhaps if it was a 1923 Bugatti, Type 31A.
Milly was home again from the club, glowing from the sauna and the swim and smelling of eucalyptus. She had heard an awful story in the gym. The giant egg-timer thingy on the wall of a sauna in some hotel in Stockholm only worked at an angle. An obedient Japanese tourist wasn’t told and stayed in there for an hour; found dead of dehydration.
‘That’s what comes,’ said Jack, making a fresh, stronger coffee whose aroma filled the house, ‘of putting time before pleasure.’
‘I mean, it’s awful, but it’s funny-awful. He was obviously told not to stay in there once the lower glass had filled up. But he must have been pretty bloody thick.’
The coffee trickled through the filter, filling the jug.
‘I like the idea of being killed by an hourglass,’ said Jack. ‘It’s like a cheesy metaphor gone literal.’
‘What have you got Anna Karenina out for? I thought you’d already ploughed through it ages ago.’
‘I have.’
‘This copy’s hopeless. Bits fall out.’
‘I know. It’s a postmodern version.’
‘Dump it. I’ll get a new one from Daunt’s at some point.’
Jack took it off her and said, ‘No, it’s fine now. I mended it. Anyway, I need it.’
‘What for?’
‘Feeling inspired. Need it, that’s all. Maybe achieve what Britten didn’t.’
‘I’ll pop out this afternoon. Is this you? This little heap of dill? At least if you have a perversion, clean up afterwards.’
Jack laughed. ‘I forgot to get more lapsang, by the way.’
‘You didn’t forget, you never thought about it,’ said Milly. ‘You were distrait, as usual. You’re very distrait at the moment.’
‘Should you have actually gone to the sauna if, you know, things might have worked last night?’
‘Oh no,’ groaned Milly.
‘How are you feeling, in fact?’
‘Why am I so stupid? I don’t really want it, do I? See?’
Jack shrugged. ‘It’s probably too early to make any difference.’
They drank coffee in the garden room, and Milly ate her croissant anyway. She was always trying to find ways to keep her figure, and having a sauna before breakfast was one of them. Jack didn’t point out that she’d had two breakfasts.
This is how the rich live. Nothing compels them but their own guilt, which is not very strong.
‘No, she lives on the edge. Right on it. Why?’
Jack cradled the receiver, pen still poised. ‘Woeful. The North Circular.’
‘No address, just that I know she mentioned it’s almost bang opposite Homebase and the gas works.’
‘Yuk. Misery. Like a Ken Loach film.’
‘Oh, much worse than that I should think. At least those films are set in the North. The North is so much better.’
‘Look, do you think that surname beginning with K is her real one?’
‘No idea. Why the interest?’
Jack had prepared his spiel for this question.
‘His very sad eyes made me think he might need, you know, a helping hand, support-wise.’
‘Money?’
‘Spot on.’
He heard Howard breathing close to the mouthpiece.
‘Jack, throwing cash at a problem is not always the answer. His sad eyes might come from not having his dad around. Or an awareness of his club foot.’
Jack’s stomach contracted. He was sitting on the sofa in his study, with Britten’s Les Illuminations coming through the pair of Bose speakers, quite loud. Howard had commented on this, but Jack could not tell him that it was to avoid Milly overhearing him at the door. It was a technique used by dissidents in Estonia, according to Kaja’s father; to muffle the bugging devices that might well be planted in your room somewhere hard to find. It was still Tuesday and Milly had decided to work at home. Late-August fatigue, clients away, office dull. She was downstairs preparing gazpacho soup for tonight’s dinner at Burgh House, in aid of the Red Cross. The gazpacho soup had to be carried up there nice and cold in a big bowl covered in cling film. They’d have to walk very steadily, especially on the hill. He’d have to walk very steadily with this whole thing, in case it spilt over into disaster and tears. The kid was five years old. Kaja must have met the dad very soon after Jack had gone back home. The kid could be his own kid, of course, but for some reason that idea did not seem feasible. She would have come looking for him earlier. She would not have called herself by that surname beginning with K.
‘Wilco, Howard, but a hole in the wall is better than a lump in the throat.’
‘I think he’s serious, but not sad.’
Jack remembered him bouncing along in that jerky, lame way, chattering and laughing next to his mother. Next to Kaja. Kaja, a mother!
‘What did my composition teacher say, Howard, when I asked her what advice she’d give me, as I was starting out?’
‘Find a rich patron.’
‘OK, I’ve sold you that one already, but she wasn’t wrong.’
‘Jack, being far from rich has never hurt me.’
‘I would say you are rich, compared to an Estonian immigrant.’
‘There’s rich and rich. I bought that flat in the slump with me mum’s inheritance. What she left me when she popped her clogs. For a rainy day. Or, as we say up in Derbyshire: When it’s gettin a bit black ower Bill’s motha’s.’
‘Howard, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. If it’s owt to do wi’ me I’d let it alone, our kid.’
Jack always found Howard’s Derbyshire dialect irritating and overdone, but he could tell how annoyed Howard was in turn by all this talk of money. He was not getting very far. He chatted about other things, mainly music gossip, to mollify Howard, and then rang off, forgetting to ask how the finger was.
He’d had a nightmare last night in which Kaja and the limping boy were an inseparable twosome with very sharp teeth, popping up in the dark alleyways of a city (a bit like New York in the thirties) that he was desperate to escape from. Kaja must not know that he was a friend of Howard’s. Howard must not mention his name. He would have to tell Howard the truth, but Howard was unpredictable. He had this irritating self-righteous streak of moral virtue. A counterbalance to all the sexual indulgence.
Jack hoped the boy hadn’t described him too thoroughly. He wasn’t very familiar with boys of five and their descriptive powers.
He turned off the Britten at the end of ‘Being Beauteous’ and went downstairs.
‘Hi, how’s it going?’
‘Left it too late,’ Milly sighed. ‘It’s not going to be cold.’
‘Put it in the freezer.’
‘Won’t fit. It’ll be the unpopular gazpacho instead of someone else’s unpopular rice salad. Please leave the dill alone. You’re always rubbing it between your fingers.’
‘I like the smell.’
‘It gets on my nerves.’
‘Does it matter if the soup’s not cold?’
‘Jack, who’s ever had tepid gazpacho soup? I’ll be a laughing stock.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘I am.’
‘It’s only the Red Cross, Mill. Thought that counts.’
‘I should have done it instead of going to the stupid sauna that’s probably k
illed my baby.’
‘Mill, stop it.’
‘Stoppit, stoppit,’ she repeated, in a cruel, mocking tone that was entirely meaningless. ‘Oh, fuck.’
The doorbell rang.
It was Edward Cochrane in a boiler suit splashed with white paint.
‘You won’t believe this, guys, but I’ve just heard from Lilian. She’s in pissing Argentina.’
‘With the kids?’
‘With the kids.’
And he was breathing hard, as if he’d run all the way from the other side of Hell.
Edward looked better in a boiler suit; he claimed the paint on it was old, that he hadn’t yet started on the master bedroom, and slumped onto the sofa. His round, schoolboyish face, with a plump nose and laughter lines creasing up from the eyes behind the trendy, gold-rimmed spectacles, looked less debauched than it did above a suit and tie. He was in shock.
‘She walked out on me but I didn’t think she’d go that far.’
‘Literally,’ said Milly, who could get away with remarks like that because Edward had a soft spot for her. She handed him a mug of tea.
‘Argentina,’ he murmured, his upper lip curled in distaste.
‘It must be illegal,’ said Jack. ‘You’ve got a right to see the kids.’
‘She said: Don’t even try to get us back.’
‘Was her bloke Argentinian, then?’ asked Milly.
‘No. He was from Chiswick.’
‘So why Argentina?’
Edward shrugged. ‘Buenos Aires is the new Barcelona, isn’t it? It’s all going to be very, very messy. I’ll try not to lean on you lot.’
Jack’s heart sank. This meant he would lean on them. Jack didn’t like Edward, but he was their next-door neighbour. The house on the other side belonged to an Italian millionaire, a mate of Berlusconi’s who came with his family for about a fortnight in July; the rest of the time it was looked after by a diminutive Albanian couple with roughly thirty words of English who kept using power tools in the house and a strimmer in the garden. Edward’s children had played skateboard on the sloping pavement of the hill, making a clicking noise. They had screamed and shouted on their back lawn, always arguing in posh vowels, too young to think about changing them. The absence of Edward’s children was a great relief.
‘I’m not even sure what I did to deserve this,’ said Edward. ‘I think she’s gone mad.’
Milly pulled a face. She had always wondered how Lilian had put up with Edward, who would stay on every day after work for a few ales with his workmates in the City. She asked what the bloke from Chiswick did, although she knew because Lilian had told her all about him. He was called Keith Granger or Ranger and was a top systems analyst for Dell. Age: mid-thirties.
‘Steals wives and children,’ said Edward. ‘Poison, that’s what he is. A toxic geek. Poisoned my life. I keep asking her one simple question on the phone, when she rings: What have I done? If you tell me what I’ve done, I’ll try to do something about it.’
‘And?’
‘That’s it,’ said Edward, spreading his arms wide, ‘can’t answer, hasn’t got an answer.’ He kept his arms wide, like a little boy playing an angel in the nativity play. ‘She can’t say. Because I’ve done absolutely nothing. Did my bit with the kids, earned our crust, took her out to nice restaurants, put the cat out at night. Made love. Sex no problem. No problem at all, in fact.’
Jack looked away. He really did not want to hear about Edward and Lilian’s sex life.
‘So?’ said Milly.
‘So she’s hit the switch on our marriage and taken up with this creep from Chiswick. That’s it. Finito. Tie the knot, cut the knot. For no discernible reason aside from complete bloody selfishness. We both liked Joe Cocker, for God’s sake. We sang along.’
‘She fell out of love with you,’ said Milly – hurriedly in case Edward tried to do his imitation of Joe Cocker.
‘Maybe it was that stag night in Tallinn,’ Jack suggested.
Edward looked at him, mouth open; then he looked at Milly and narrowed his eyes.
‘What’s he on about?’
Milly said, ‘I think you should go see a solicitor, Edward. I don’t think we’re the ones to advise you.’
‘I needed someone to talk to, that’s all.’ He picked up his tea and sipped it. ‘Very nice tea, thanks. Darjeeling? Love it. So did Lilian. Broken orange pekoe. Earl Grey. Poof’s tea, her father called it. She loved it.’
‘She’s not dead, Edward,’ Milly pointed out.
Tears were welling up in his eyes, his voice was husky. ‘We went to Paris for our honeymoon and it was the best week of my life. Bloody miracle week. Fifteen years ago. We didn’t just marry, we blended. All smashed because she gets the hots on some webhead from Chiswick with a Beckham scalp and a tattoo on his arse. Well, I guess her computer won’t break down now.’
‘Watch those computer nerds,’ said Jack. ‘Especially the tattooed ones.’
‘Beware the fairer sex, mate,’ said Edward, rather aggressively, jabbing a finger at him. ‘You don’t empty the dishwasher one night, and you’re out on your neck.’
He covered his face in his hands.
‘It’s the kids I miss. I was in love with my kids. They were my whole life.’
And Lilian would come round on a Saturday, when Edward was playing golf with his old schoolmates from Wellington, and say: I wouldn’t mind, if he just showed some fucking interest in the kids.
It was a couple of days later, and they were babysitting the twins. They belonged to Milly’s older brother Philip, and they were no longer babies. Far from it. They attended St Dunstan’s Independent School in Knightsbridge, which had been educating the junior rich since 1928. They wore a brownish uniform, remarkably similar to the summer dress of a Deutsche Jungvolk File Leader of 1934 (on which, according to rumour, it was based). Each year St Dunstan’s commissioned a composer to write an opera. Jack had decided he would refuse, if asked, but up to now he had not been asked. He suspected that was Philip’s doing; Philip du Crane was on the school board and liked neither his brother-in-law nor his work. His most famous line to Jack was, ‘I don’t suppose you’ll notice retirement, will you?’
Philip had booked some tickets for a Thursday matinee at the Globe. It was The Winter’s Tale. He was suddenly called away to Dubai (he was a big shot in Esso and was working on the Iraqi oil-field brief, which Milly was highly suspicious of), and Arabella, Milly’s busy sister-in-law, asked the Middletons to take over.
This was always happening. Milly found it both gratifying and, of course, painful. ‘If you have kids,’ as she put it, ‘you ought to look after them.’ The fact is, Jack was aware that her grief for the lost baby, for little Max, was growing instead of diminishing. This was because, at the time of the loss, there was everything still to play for. Neither of them had wanted to believe the obstetrician. And as her nephews had grown up – they were ten or twelve or something now, Jack could never keep abreast of such things – they had acted as livid reminders of what Jack and Milly were missing. So Milly was always a little tense under her jollity, when looking after the twins. And bony Arabella, who worked for Sky, had no sensitivity whatsoever on this subject: she and Philip underestimated what the stillbirth had meant emotionally speaking, and appeared impatient even with the medical after-effects, or perhaps with Jack and Milly’s hesitation over adoption or IVF.
Because most of her friends were out of the country stirring their swimming pools, Milly was free of impending dinner parties to host. Although it was the first day of the fourth test in the Ashes series, with England playing well enough to be in with a chance, Jack agreed to come along.
The boys were, in fact, eleven years old and down for Eton, following a long line of du Crane males. There was a du Crane – Milly’s great-uncle, Hugh – on the memorial tablets in Eton’s cloisters. Jack liked the boys, who were called (Arabella’s influence) Lance and Rex, but he realised they only had about four years to go before becoming junior ve
rsions of their father – by way, no doubt, of a brief sludge stage of torn tracksuit bottoms and grunts. Their father had booked the most expensive seats, but Jack insisted he and the boys stay in the yard with the groundlings.
Milly took the day off, completely; the office was still very quiet. The following week looked to be busy.
The weather was hot and dull. They walked it from Philip and Arabella’s place in Islington. The twins chatted non-stop, mostly about the cricket, which they were annoyed at missing. Lance did most of the chatting, in fact; he had come out of Arabella first and was well built, ruddy-cheeked and confident, while Rex was the thin, pale, insecure runt, with odd blue veins on his cheeks. An objective observer would have presumed they were out with their parents.
The foursome cut through the little strip of garden around St Paul’s; pallid white-collar workers were tucking into lunch all the way along, the odour of confined spaces hanging about them like a mist. Jack caught the furtive eye of a pretty receptionist-type biting into a fruit pie, her finger catching the blackberry goo at her chin, the awkward, comic moment shared and then gone.
Because of the bombings, the theatre was half empty – which wasn’t the case with theatres during the Blitz, apparently. The groundlings consisted mainly of Italian students, signalling to friends on the far side and giggling. The twins enjoyed moving about the yard, but were quiet and reasonably concentrated. They were doing a project on Shakespeare.
‘He was gay,’ Lance said, with great authority.
‘Bisexual,’ Rex corrected, his lipless mouth opening to reveal overlarge teeth in an embarrassed grin. However, Lance did better than Rex in class. Lance did everything better than Rex. It must be hell to be Rex, Jack thought, as the actors thumped about the stage a few feet away.
He decided, as the period music played from the gallery, to take a trip up to Bounds Green the following week. Lance waved at Milly, up in her expensive seat. Jack told him not to.