Second Honeymoon

by Joanna Trollope

  I wanted this, she thought, looking at her family. A few months ago, I wanted this, I wanted to go back home. And now I am, all I feel is a failure.

  She eased herself into the end seat, next to her father. He was looking straight ahead, at the drawn curtains of the stage, and she could tell, from the look on his face, that he was thinking of nothing but Edie.

  Vivien thought that if only Eliot could have been there too – with or without Ro, who was somehow very hard to visualise – she would have been completely happy. As it was, sitting in a darkening theatre with Max on one side of her – his pristine white knee lightly touching hers – and Ben on the other, and all the family beyond Ben, including Ben’s girlfriend, who looked as if she’d be an excellent test case for Max’s avowal of reformation, was a pretty good approximation to complete happiness. She had never, after all, envied Edie her acting talent, she had never wished she was Edie or wanted to live the way Edie did. She was, she told herself, very pleased for Edie that she’d got this part, just as she was very pleased for Edie that she’d managed to fill the house again, and that all the broken bridges were mended, and that she, Vivien, had played a part in sheltering Rosa until Russell came round to seeing that you couldn’t turn the poor girl away a second time. In fact, Vivien thought, noticing that she could feel Max’s shoulder as well as his knee, it had all turned out really well and everybody had got what they wanted, except that she wished Eliot was not in Australia, but even that was rather more bearable now knowing that Max not only felt the same, but had also suggested that they fly out for Christmas.

  ‘Our son,’ Max had said, speaking of Eliot, the other day. ‘Our son’.

  Vivien smiled in the darkness. The curtains gave a small quiver and parted, slightly unsteadily, to reveal a large garden room with a view of a gloomy fjord visible through the back window. In the doorway to a conservatory beyond stood a working man with, apparently, a club foot. Opposite him, as if preventing him from coming any further in, was a remarkable-looking girl in a maid’s uniform, holding a large garden syringe.

  ‘Good God,’ Max said, in an audible whisper, ‘that’s never Edie?’

  ‘“Ah, but you see,”‘ Edie said, as Mrs Alving, ‘“here he has his mother. He’s a dear good boy, and he still has a soft spot for his mother.”‘

  Matthew shifted a little in his seat. Edie looked impressive really, in a black dress with great full skirts and her hair drawn back under a white lace cap with black ribbons. She looked not just different, but distanced from her everyday self, and her voice was different too, and her gestures, and the way she spaced her words out. He’d seen her act before, of course, but really only on television and not, as far as he could remember, in anything where she wasn’t still recognisably his mother. He had wondered how he would feel, seeing her on stage being someone so very separate from her real self, whether he would be excited, or even embarrassed.

  What he actually felt, sitting there in the dark between his father and his sister, was a surprising degree of interest, an interest that would intensify, he rather thought, when Lazlo made his entrance, when he saw his mother and Lazlo together on stage.

  He could feel that Russell, on his left-hand side, was concentrating with the effort you use when you are willing someone to do well. That concentration, he thought, was typical of his father, typically generous, typically reasonable. Russell, after all, had had plenty to resent Edie for in the last few weeks, but for tonight had managed to put all grudges aside in order to focus on this production working, on Edie achieving something that had nothing to do with relationships or family or those tiny but telling shifts in power that meant you could go from light to dark in a matter of hours. One word was all it took, sometimes, one careless word. Or – Matthew tensed a little -the absence of words over a long, fatal period of illusory calm could result in the failure to stop a slide into something that couldn’t be rescued by words any more.

  He had kept his vow not to contact Ruth. He had joined a new – cheaper – gym near his parents’ home and opened a savings account with his bank. Part of him was quite pleased about these manifestations of recovery, but part of him felt that they were pitiful, forlorn little plasters stuck on a still-gaping wound. And yet these efforts had to be maintained, even built on, because there could be no going back, even if he couldn’t visualise – and he had tried – a woman who he would simply like to be with as much as he had liked being with Ruth. In the night, when he woke, and remembered everything with a weary renewal of suffering, he missed Ruth’s just being there more than any other aspect of their relationship. For several years, after all, he had been wrapped in a companionship he had never had before and had never ceased to marvel at. He could discuss things with Ruth, confide things to Ruth, that it had never occurred to him as possible to articulate, and which were now bottling up again inside him despite his continued attempts to medicate himself by imagining what she might have counselled, how she might have responded.

  He gave the briefest glance sideways, at his father. He was completely absorbed in what was going on, on stage, his elbows propped on the seat arms, his hands loosely clasped below his chin. Presumably, over all the decades he’d been married, his father had told his mother all kinds of things he hadn’t told anyone else – in fact, didn’t need to tell anyone else because he had Edie. Matthew looked back at the stage. Were all men like this? Were all men, if left to themselves, this lonely?

  Abruptly on stage, Edie became extraordinarily illuminated. She flung out an arm, gesturing towards the open doorway.

  ‘“Listen,”‘ she said, her voice full of sudden rapture, ‘“there’s Osvald on the stairs! Now we’ll think about nothing but him.”‘

  And then Lazlo, in a long pale coat, a hat in one hand and a pipe in the other, stepped dreamily on to the stage and the whole theatre turned to look at him.

  * * *

  Up in the little balcony – only three rows deep and uncomfortably steeply raked – Kate and Barney Ferguson watched the Boyd family rise for the interval.

  ‘I can’t move,’ Kate said. ‘It was enough trouble getting me in here and I’m not trying to get out again until the end’.

  ‘Oughtn’t you to go and see them?’

  Kate looked down into the stalls.

  ‘Well, you could find Rosa and ask her to come and see me’.

  Barney stood up.

  ‘Who’s the spiv?’

  ‘That,’ Kate said, ‘is Rosa’s Uncle Max. Married to Edie’s sister Vivien, in fuchsia pink’. She paused and then she said, ‘The colour Rosa and I have always referred to as menopause pink’.

  Barney looked down, smiling.

  He said tolerantly, ‘Nasty girls’.

  ‘That’s us’.

  He turned in the narrow space between the seats and looked behind him.

  ‘I’ll just climb my way out and go and find her’.

  ‘Past an ice cream, perhaps?’

  He smiled again.

  ‘Not that kind of theatre—’

  ‘No,’ Kate said. ‘More’s the pity’.

  Barney bent and dropped a kiss on her head.

  ‘I like,’ he said, ‘knowing exactly where you are,’ and then he climbed over the seats behind him and made his way down to the foyer, which doubled as a bar during the interval.

  Russell was standing at the bar lining up glasses. Barney touched his arm. ‘Evening, sir’.

  Russell looked round. He was glowing. ‘You must be the last young man on the planet with manners. Isn’t she wonderful?’ ‘Brilliant,’ Barney said.

  ‘I mean,’ Russell said, starting to riffle through his wallet for notes, ‘I knew she could, I knew she had it in her, but she’s bringing something else to this. I’m bowled over. And by the boy’.

  ‘Not surprised—’

  Russell took his hand out of his wallet and gripped Barney’s arm.

  He said, almost conspiratorially, ‘Matt was in the Gents just now and overheard a couple of chaps s
aying there goes the next Hamlet and Gertrude and from his description of them, they’re surely—’

  ‘Barney,’ Rosa said, from behind them.

  Barney turned.

  He said, ‘She’s wonderful’.

  Rosa nodded.

  She said, ‘It’s given me quite a turn—’ ‘Ignorant child,’ Russell said affectionately. He turned back to the bar and began to gather up glasses. Rosa said, ‘Where’s Kate?’

  ‘Waiting for you. In what passes for the dress circle’. ‘Lovely of you to come,’ Russell said, over his shoulder. ‘Lovely of everyone. Lovely evening. Lovely everything.

  Wine?’

  Rosa took a glass neatly from her father’s grip and handed it to Barney.

  ‘I’ll go and find Kate’.

  ‘She’d like that. She’s wedged’.

  Rosa slipped past him and vanished up the stairs. Barney took a sip of his wine. It tasted like the wine at student parties, the kind they’d bought in plastic bottles with screw-tops and amateur labels. It was offering Kate a glass of something much superior that had first induced her to look at him, to see beyond – he hoped – the name and the voice and the manners. And now look at him, married to her, mortgage with her, baby on the way, parents all forgiveness after an educational career in which school reports had struggled to perceive potential. Barney smiled privately into his wine. Nothing except happiness and current idolatry would have induced him to entertain even the thought of going to see an Ibsen play, let alone finding himself rather absorbed in it. Rosa’s mama was – well, really rather something.

  He raised his eyes and looked across the group. Rosa’s brother Matthew – pretty successful, from the cut of his suit – was talking to the kind of girl Barney’s father would probably have referred to as a popsie. Barney made his way over to them and stared openly at Naomi. She was like something straight out of a sweetshop.

  Matthew stopped what he was saying and said to Naomi, This is Barney. He’s married to my sister’s best friend’.

  Naomi looked at him as one might regard something interesting but irrelevant from another species.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said.

  ‘Likewise—’

  ‘Naomi,’ Matthew said, ‘is Ben’s girlfriend’. ‘Lucky Ben’. Naomi didn’t smile.

  She said instead, ‘Your wife’s pregnant, isn’t she?’ ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I listen,’ Naomi said, ‘I pay attention. I always did, even at school’.

  ‘More than I ever did—’ Matthew cleared his throat.

  Barney switched his gaze from Naomi to Matthew and said, ‘Your mother is amazing’. Matthew nodded.

  He looked a little bright-eyed, as if he was feverish. Now that Barney was paying attention, he thought Matthew also looked a bit gaunt, older, somehow.

  He smiled and said, ‘I have to say, I wouldn’t exactly have hurried here, without Kate, but I’m awfully glad I did’.

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ Naomi said, ‘brilliant. I’m going to tell my mum. Does he die?’

  ‘God,’ Barney said, ‘is this going to be like Shakespeare, stage littered with bodies at the end?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Matthew said, ‘I’ve never seen it before, either. I’ve never—’ He stopped.

  ‘You must be so proud of her,’ Naomi said. ‘If that was my mum up there, I’d be so proud’.

  Matthew nodded.

  ‘I just wish – everyone could see her—’

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘Well,’ Matthew said, swirling the inch of wine left in his glass round and round, ‘everyone I know—’

  ‘I’d feel like that,’ Naomi said. ‘I’d make them all come. I made Ben come’.

  Matthew looked sharply at her.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Course,’ she said. ‘Family is family, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes,’ Matthew said.

  Barney looked at Naomi’s shoulders, and the sequins lying over them, like little trails of stars. Then he thought of Kate sitting upstairs with her hands resting on the mound that was their baby because there was nowhere else to put them. Amazing how different women could be, how different they could become, how – differently they could make you feel about them. He swallowed.

  He put out a hand and gave Matthew’s nearest shoulder a quick cuff.

  ‘Better get back—’

  ‘OK,’ Matthew said.

  Barney glanced at Naomi.

  ‘Nice to meet you’.

  She nodded.

  ‘All the best for the baby’.

  ‘Yes,’ Matthew said. ‘Give my love to Kate. Good of you to come’.

  Barney put his wine glass down on the nearest surface and made for the stairs. There was a girl standing a little way up them, staring down into the bar, a dark girl in black, with a hat on, and sunglasses. In Barney’s father’s now collectable vinyl record collection from the sixties, there was, Barney remembered, a 45 rpm record whose cover featured a woman he’d been much struck by, when he was about fourteen, a French woman, all in black, with symmetrically cut black hair and black glasses. Her name was Juliette Greco, and Barney’s father, as an undergraduate as he called it, had hitch-hiked to Paris to hear her sing live in some dive on the Left Bank. Barney hadn’t thought about Juliette Greco for years, but this still, dark girl on the stairs, watching the crowd through the open doorway below her, had just the same cheekbones, just the same air of mystery.

  ‘Penny for them,’ Barney said cheerfully, as he went up past her, back to Kate.

  ‘I think,’ Edie said, ‘I’ll just stay down here for a bit’.

  Russell, filling his nightly glass of water at the sink, turned round.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m tired but not tired. I couldn’t sleep yet. I’ll just stay down here and revel’. Russell turned the tap off. ‘Would you like me to stay with you?’ She shook her head.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure,’ Edie said.

  He came across the room to where she was leaning against the cooker, and bent a little, to look into her face. ‘You were quite, quite amazing’. She looked down. ‘Thank you’.

  He put the hand not holding the tumbler under her chin.

  ‘Look at me’.

  Edie raised her chin an inch.

  ‘You were absolutely wonderful and I am unspeakably proud of you’.

  She looked at him, saying nothing.

  ‘And I’m really sorry to have been such a grumpy sod about the children coming back and everything’.

  ‘Forget it—’

  ‘I loved watching their faces,’ Russell said. He let go of Edie’s chin and straightened up. ‘I loved seeing all that amazement and awe. If they’d had thought-bubbles coming out of their thick heads, they’d have read: “This is Mum? My Mum?”‘

  Edie laughed.

  She said, ‘They’re not thick’.

  ‘Only when it comes to seeing you as other than the provider of home comforts. Dear old room service’. ‘Not just them,’ Edie said, ‘guilty of that—’ ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry about—’ She put a hand up, across his mouth. ‘Enough’.

  He nodded. She took her hand away.

  She said, ‘I’ll be twenty minutes. You go up’.

  He leaned forward and kissed her.

  ‘See you in twenty minutes, fantastic Mrs Alving’.

  She smiled.

  She said, stretching against the cooker, ‘You can’t imagine how it feels—’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t, quite. But I can see,’ and then he turned and went humming out of the kitchen and Edie could hear him going up the stairs at a run, the way he had when they first had the house and everything seemed somehow an adventure.

  She looked at the clock on the wall above the dresser. Twenty-past one. Arsie was curled up on the nearest kitchen chair, pretending, with great professionalism, that he wasn’t waiting to accompany her to bed. She stepped forward and scooped him up into her arms, and went over to
unlock the kitchen door to the garden. Arsie stiffened slightly, alert to the awful possibility of spending the night outside, like any other cat.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Edie said, holding him. ‘I’m only taking you out for company’.

  The air outside was cool and sweet. It was only at night, Edie thought, that London somehow relaxed into its past, into the villages and huddles of huts it had once been, into a place that would quietly, un-urgently, outlive all its inhabitants. She walked slowly down the damp dark grass, holding Arsie against her neck and shoulder, admiring the way the white climbing rose whose name she could never remember shone in the gloom with an almost eerie luminousness, as if it had stored up energy in the daylight hours to use when darkness fell. There was a seat at the far end of the garden, beside Russell’s shed, a basic wooden playground bench, that they’d ordered from an offer in a Sunday newspaper without realising that Russell was going to have to assemble it, all one painful weekend, with the instruction sheets laid out on the grass, weighted with stones, and Russell crawling round them, cursing and saying he hadn’t got the right screwdriver. Edie sat down on the bench, and settled Arsie, rather tensely, in her lap.

  Down the far end of the garden, the house shone like some tableau of domestic contentment. Its black outline stood sharply against the reddish sky, and every single window was lit, oblong after oblong of clean yellow light, with a shape moving here and there, Matt perhaps, Lazlo in Rosa’s bedroom, Rosa in Ben’s, Russell in the bathroom. To look at that, to look at what she was shortly going to return to, and to remember Freddie Cass’s arm briefly round her shoulders a couple of hours ago and his unengaged voice saying clearly in her ear, ‘Outstanding, Edie. Possibility of West End transfer not a fantasy,’ gave her a feeling of such hope and such pleasure and such energy that she could only suppose it was triumph.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘How would you like,’ Russell said, ‘a new computer?’ Maeve didn’t look up from her screen. ‘I don’t care for that kind of joke’. Russell sat on the edge of her desk. He said, ‘Haven’t you noticed anything different lately?’ ‘In what way—’ ‘About me’.