by Adam Thorpe
It was weird for Jack, seeing himself as a little boy. He had a sudden vision of Jaan as fulfilling a potential that the father had not fulfilled. The father? Yes, he supposed he was the father, that Kaja wasn’t fooling around. Unless she was a fantasist, disturbed in some way.
He felt a wall between himself and this boy who was meant to be his son – a gauze screen between them. A tiny element of repulsion, seeing his own offspring, seeing himself reproduced. He was reasonably sure this would not have been the case if this was his son by Milly, all above board and official. Here he was in a forced, artificial situation. He was behaving. He was defusing a potentially lethal bomb, wire by wire. But there were an awful lot of wires.
The two of them returned to the lawn by the statue and, much to both parties’ relief, Kaja came walking across the grass. Jaan scampered up to hug her, burying his face in her thighs as if totally relieved. She spoke to her son in Estonian, smiling through the long vowels.
‘We had fun,’ said Jack. ‘He’s a champ.’
They arranged to meet in a week’s time, same place.
‘Maybe more after that,’ said Kaja, her eyes unnerving in the sunlight.
‘Let’s see how it goes,’ Jack replied, ruffling Jaan’s hair.
‘How it goes,’ Kaja repeated, looking down at her son as he smoothed his hair back. ‘Very English. Very practical.’
‘Softly-softly.’
‘Would you like piano lessons with Jack?’ she asked Jaan. ‘In his house? Piano’s really useful.’
The boy nodded. Although Jack knew this would come up at some point, and had considered mentioning it himself to Jaan, he still thought: that was a very crafty move. Kaja was dressed in torn-off shorts and another cut-away top, but didn’t seem to be cold. She smelt duskily of sweat, not the ambergris perfume of six years ago. It would be good to hold her tight again. He felt himself sinking into the possibility while she said something to Jaan in Estonian. A large girl walked past with Vacation are the Best Moment of Year on her pink top.
Jaan nodded a second time. His mother turned to Jack and said: ‘He’d love you to teach him piano. When? He’s free from three thirty.’
Whenever my wife isn’t in.
‘Tuesdays are good. I teach another boy at five thirty. Four o’clock? Four o’clock on Tuesday coming?’
‘That’s tomorrow.’
‘So it is.’
She squinted at him again, with her hand on her hip and the other in Jaan’s hand. Jaan was experimenting with his eyebrows, moving them up and down, and wasn’t listening.
‘You’re not the same,’ she said, softly. ‘You know? Maybe that wasn’t you in Estonia.’
‘My identical twin,’ said Jack, peculiarly hurt.
She shook her head. ‘Twins are the same.’
‘Which version of me do you prefer?’
She gave a snort of a laugh. ‘Certainly not this English one,’ she said. ‘But maybe that is the true one. See you tomorrow,’ she added.
She walked away before his crestfallen face could summon a voice, with Jaan limping next to her as if a ball and chain was attached to his little leg. Jack knew what that ball and chain was.
There was no such thing as history. Only legacy.
He hadn’t quite worked out what Kaja was up to. If she was up to anything. This made any defensive strategy difficult to plot. What he did feel was completely exposed, which was why he’d not even kept Howard up to date. And Howard was off to Sicily soon, to teach on a summer course in front of a mass of bougainvillea, roughly where the Cyclops had squashed Acis.
He tended not to go to Hayes on Mondays and Tuesdays or most weekends, because of his own spots of teaching: he was in a routine, and now Kaja was part of that routine.
There was a ring on the doorbell the next day at precisely four o’clock.
‘Kaja, hi! Hi, Jaan!’
He was playing hearty, English, normal. There was a taxi at the gate, a plump bloke standing by it with folded arms.
‘I don’t have cash,’ she said. ‘He won’t accept my card.’
‘No problem.’
He stepped out into the sun. Unfortunately, Edward Cochrane was in his porch, talking to the painter-decorator as the latter was packing up. The two men were ogling Kaja as they chatted. Jack went out of the little iron gate and paid the taxi driver, whose various bellies poked through his velvety shirt and made Jack think of the front of a hovercraft.
He waved coolly to Edward as he came back. Maybe he’d lost his job as well as his wife.
‘I’ll pay you,’ she said.
‘No you won’t. So, you’ll pick him up in an hour?’ They were safely out of sight in the hallway.
‘Or I can wait here,’ she suggested, as if she found his question ridiculous. ‘It looks like you have a bit of space.’
‘OK. There’s shade in the garden. It’s really warm for the end of September. Worrying.’
Afterwards, he felt awful about this. He’d been so royally welcomed on Haaremaa. He was treating her like any mum. He spent ten minutes making her a cup of tea, spreading Milly’s bland hay-tasting sugar-free biscuits on a plate, conscious of the size and wealth of his home in which he was play-acting his own life. Kaja said very little about the house, mainly making comments to keep Jaan happy. Jack felt an inch away from the notion that they were a family, this was their home, and that Milly did not exist. It was terrifying. At the same time, he felt resentful that she’d wheedled her way in so deeply. She was in charge. He couldn’t think what to do about it.
Marjorie phoned while the kettle was boiling, thinking her daughter was at home. She’d gone to sleep on the upper lawn, she explained, and thought it was later than it was. The sun had come round and she’d got roasted in her sleep like a sausage. He put the phone down with a sigh. She’d called him ‘Jacko’.
‘Your mum?’
‘No,’ Jack replied, dodging Kaja’s knowing smile. He found it intrusive. He showed her out into the garden, hoping Edward wasn’t in his.
‘This is a typical English garden, Jaan,’ she said. She repeated it in Estonian. Or that’s what Jack assumed. She said something else and Jaan stepped onto the lawn and solemnly performed, as best he could, a forward roll. It was all legs. Jack and Kaja clapped.
‘Gymnast in the making,’ Jack smiled, without perceiving the irony until he’d said it. ‘By the way,’ he added, in a murmur, ‘have you told him yet?’
‘No. Not yet. I’m waiting to see it. How it goes.’
Jaan stood up straight with his head bent down and studied the soft grass, frowning. Jack’s heart gave a little fish-leap. That’s what I used to do, he thought, on our little handkerchief of grass in Hayes. Because when you’re five you’re closer to it and you can see things going on in there without having to go on your knees. There wasn’t ever much going on in our grass, he thought – not after Dad had been at it.
Kaja sat in a chair on the lawn, reading a linguistics tome in Estonian, while Jack taught Jaan up in the lair. Any minute Milly might open the door, although she wasn’t due back from a meeting in Hackney until seven or eight. He found the lesson difficult – not because of Jaan, who responded well in his quiet five-year-old’s way, but because of this terror that Milly might come back early from Hackney. The boy’s small fingers were flat on the keys, splayed out, and Jack had to curve them for him. When he touched Jaan’s fingers, showing him the curve, positioning them, they were like the stems of flowers. Clara Knowles had touched his own ten-year-old’s fingers and said they were like wood anemones, because they were never still. Wood anemones are also called windflowers, she would say, stroking his fingers between the knuckles. Jack had looked this up in his Ladybird Book of Wild Flowers and found almost the same sentence as Clara had used. Jack wanted to stroke Jaan’s fingers but was a little scared to. He’d met a piano teacher at a London school who said she wasn’t allowed to touch her pupils’ fingers at all, either to position them or rap them. But Jaan was his son: he
had the right to hold his hand, to squeeze it. He very much wanted to squeeze the little hand, but Jaan didn’t know Jack was his father. It was a silly situation.
When the lesson was over, Jaan went out to fetch his mother. Jack stayed inside, in the garden room.
‘Thank you,’ said Kaja. ‘He liked it.’
‘So did I. I’ll call a taxi.’
‘No. We’ll take the bus.’
‘I thought you didn’t like to.’
‘I don’t, much. But I was brought up to handle these fears. How much do I pay you?’
‘You must be joking.’
Kaja looked at him as if studying his expression. He felt strangely exhausted.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Next week, same time?’
‘Why not?’
‘And Kensington Gardens? Monday, after the viola lesson? He loved that with you, playing the ball.’
‘Could be a bit tricky next week,’ Jack lied. He wanted to assert some kind of control. He felt as if his control was ebbing away, somehow. But he was touched to hear that Jaan had enjoyed himself. Very pleased, in fact.
‘I’ll ring? The day before? Sunday?’
‘Maybe not a good idea to ring here.’
‘I’m only a pupil’s mother.’
‘Not quite,’ said Jack, softly enough so that Jaan couldn’t hear.
‘Get them younger and younger, don’t you?’ called Edward, after Jack had seen them out. The newly painted porch was a tasteful shade of yellow, and Edward was admiring it as if he’d been standing there an hour. The painter had gone, with all his clutter. Not for the first time, Jack wished the low hedge that separated the two doors was a lot higher.
‘Five’s a good age to start,’ he answered. He would play it straight. ‘Four, even.’
‘I was thinking of the mum. Or is she the nanny?’
‘The mum.’
‘Looked foreign. Where’s she from?’
Jack shrugged.
‘Latvia or somewhere,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t want a sugar daddy, does she? I could get the show on the road again with her sort.’
‘She’s taken, I think.’
Edward grunted. ‘They all are,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t the prodigy, was it?’
‘Prodigy?’
‘The one you talked about after the Kenwood do. Remember? Howard’s prodigy. Estonian, not Latvian. Made me think I ought to go back there and pick up a wife, actually, you talking about Estonia.’
‘Just like that?’
He had the impression that Edward was watching him. ‘Women use us, that’s the trouble. We’re desperate for fanny and they use us. What do you think of the colour?’
‘Fine,’ said Jack, already in the door.
‘Lilian hated yellow!’ Edward shouted after him.
Milly said, as he climbed into bed next to her – wanting her very much, wanting to have her in her new cream silk nightie with its enticing ribbony strap over the scoop of each collarbone: ‘Edward says you’ve got a new pupil.’
‘Yeah. Howard’s prodigy.’
‘You didn’t tell me. You’d normally tell me.’
‘Didn’t I?’
He ran his hand like a conjuror’s over her slippery silk-hidden breasts, barely making contact, then started on the thighs, taking care not to touch her groin. Milly never liked him to be abrupt with foreplay: she found it sexist. On the other hand, she didn’t usually wait long either before getting down to it.
‘Maybe it’s because of the mother,’ she said.
‘Eh?’
Although his heart was thudding in his throat, he made sure he carried on faultlessly. He wondered whether she could hear his heart, or feel it.
‘Edward said she’s a real corker. I quote, of course.’
He gathered his hand in and settled down on his back, totally alarmed but smiling inanely and allowing their shoulders and hips to touch. He felt her fractionally shift away.
‘What’s Edward trying to do? Get off with you?’
‘Why should he want to do that?’
‘Everyone wants to get off with you,’ said Jack, keeping it light. ‘Don’t blame them.’ He wanted to say: I could kill that bastard neighbour, but held himself back. Not a good move to hate thy neighbour in front of Milly.
She sighed. ‘Claudia says Roger’s got to have some operation. Relieve pressure on the brain.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘He might even die.’
‘Really?’
He was genuinely surprised.
They were lying on top of the sheets; it was a very warm night for late September. There were still mosquitoes around, a legacy of the Ponds. The mark on the ceiling above Jack’s head vanished, then reappeared a few inches away. He couldn’t imagine Roger Grove-Carey not being alive.
‘It’d be the best thing that could happen to her,’ said Milly. ‘She’s a prisoner, except for when she goes out on parole to Waitrose. She might as well wear a burkha. An incredibly awful thing to say. Where did you tell me your new pupil’s from?’
‘Eh?’
‘Howard’s genius? With the beautiful mum?’
‘Latvia, I think.’
Milly stared up at the ceiling.
‘I thought it was Estonia.’
‘Probably. Why did you ask, then?’
‘I only just remembered.’
‘Estonia. That’s right.’
‘Weird. That you couldn’t remember, when you’ve actually been there.’
‘Weird,’ said Jack, in an American twang. It came out strangled by the tension in his throat. He could feel Milly’s whole body radiating suspicion.
‘Do you want to read a bit?’ he asked, as coolly as he could, his voice better. He looked at the little slew of books on his bedside table. Milly had given him a massive hardback critical biography of Mozart, but he found it annoying in bed. ‘I’ve finally started on the Mozart,’ he lied. ‘It’s brilliant. I’ll take it to the hospital. Dad’s buying junk provisions at Lidl. They’ve knocked down the Waitrose and put up a Lidl. The stuff’s dirt cheap but complete junk. The frozen lasagne was a joke. I’ll keep myself going with Mozart.’
‘Is she the one who phoned up here when you were in Hayes?’
‘When I was in Hayes …’ he repeated, like the beginning of a joke. ‘Yeah, I think it was.’ He couldn’t remember what Kaja had told her, that was the trouble.
‘Then she’s the Kaja from Estonia,’ Milly said. ‘That’s how she put it on the answerphone.’
‘That was to organise the lessons,’ said Jack.
‘Kaja from Estonia,’ Milly repeated. ‘Of course you knew where she was from. The one doing her thing on Arvo Pärt.’
‘Pärt?’
He suddenly remembered: the Pärt thing was his cover. He couldn’t even keep track of his own dissemblings. She rolled over and switched her bedside light off. Jack began to rub her back but she twitched it away. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he could hear her snuffling.
He switched his own bedside light off and said into the darkness, ‘I think I was confused because she’s half-Latvian or something. Or Russian. It’s like all these Baltic countries, they sort of merge into one. People get them confused with the Balkans, even.’ He had no real idea how to play against woman’s intuition, which always had a spin on it, but he was trying. And since Milly didn’t reply, didn’t even perform the ritual goodnight kiss, he rolled over and waited for sleep, his mouth open in a kind of slow-motion panic. Then he heard Milly murmur, ‘Do what you want with me.’
‘Eh?’
‘Pretend I’m a prostitute. Do what you want. Rape me.’
‘Mill…’
‘I mean it. Fuck me stupid. From behind.’
‘Really?’
He rolled over to lie against her. She lifted her arm and rested it on her face.
‘Have me,’ she said, into her arm, as if tearful. ‘Rough trade. Eastern European. Your private Estonian ditzy-head. I’ll just lie here whil
e you do whatever you want with me. Please please please.’
He hoped this wasn’t a trap. He hoped – no, guessed – this was another of her strategies, probably suggested by her wacky fertility counsellor with the pseudo-Spanish name. But he didn’t mind. It excited him. He lifted her silk nightie clear of her buttocks and pulled down her knickers all the way over her feet and threw them on the floor. She lay there on her side on the top of the sheet as if she was in the tropics. Her body was heavy, sleep-heavy. Her skin was damp and warm as he stroked the hip and the long cooler thigh, then up again to the edge of her breast, the skin taut at the ribs where the breast obeyed gravity, like a stocking with an orange in it. He pressed himself hard against her rump, wiggling to be comfortable, and pushed her nightie higher, fingers lightly playing her nipples on the far side, in the way she liked. Her nipples were squashed close together, so he could palm them both at the same time, a couple of tangerines. Still she didn’t move. She was on her side, foetal, head lowered, and he was her twin, knees in the backs of hers. His left elbow hurt, caught under his ribs. He shifted it, unable to find a comfortable spot. Her armpit smelt, not of her swanky natural deodorant, but of London-induced sweat that he breathed in the way you’d breathe in mountain air.
‘Do what you want,’ she insisted, as if through her teeth. ‘I’m your slave. I’m not in control. Buttfuck me, you bloody awful ape.’
Sometimes he would marvel that, in the privacy of their bed, they actually had the sanctioned right to do this, to do what they did do to each other, to give each other pleasure in pleasuring themselves, turning the heat up mutually, completely spoiling themselves. The very fact of her pleasure, her little shudderings and moanings, would excite him in turn; seeing her edging slowly up to ecstasy through his own little contributions, even in the most animatronic of their baby-making exercises, would in itself work him up. There was something generous in it, almost selfless (or that was the illusion, when in fact it was something evolutionary, probably).
Now, faced with Milly acting dead mutton, he had to try that much harder. A mosquito bit him on the haunch, he slapped it and carried on, his arm stretched over her hip, his fingers working away at the front – on her breasts and on her forehead and on her belly, where the navel had a little frown of lazy flesh over it, these days. He forced her leg lower so he could stroke the fur, the feral heat of it, slipping his hand between the pressed thighs as into a foxhole. It was awkward, and his arm ached. His other arm had gone dead under his weight. He thought she might have made a sound. An ambulance wailed past, leaving its ripples as he poked about. A small night freshness had started to waft over his bare thighbone. Maybe they needed the sheets, after all, but he’d leave it.