A Spanish Lover (38 page)

‘Why?'

‘Because', Barbara said carefully, ‘Lizzie and I had a bit of a quarrel last week. They'd had the chicken-pox and then some upset about the girl who works in the shop and she'd flounced out, and then your news came, and Lizzie started creating so I went over and I said now look here, Lizzie, you're jealous and that's a
problem
you have to confront because it's poisoning you and you keep calling it by other names that are easier to live with and you've got to
stop
. I probably shouldn't have said it in front of the children.'

‘No, you shouldn't—'

‘But it had to be said.'

‘Did it?'

‘If she wants any future relationship with her husband or sister, yes it did.'

Frances crossed her arms flat on the table, and laid her face down on them. The thought of Lizzie suddenly made her feel deeply sad, troubled sad, as it had done that long ago lovely morning in Mojas with the curtains swishing on the tiles and the woman in the alley below calling for her little hiding boy.

‘I shall go and see Lizzie,' Frances said. ‘I shall go and see her tomorrow. I ought to anyway, I haven't seen her for so long. Mum—'

‘Yes?' Barbara said.

‘What will happen to Dad if you go and live in Bath?'

Barbara paused. She arranged the sandwiches on a plate in a little block.

‘He can do,' she said, ‘what he probably should have done twenty-five years ago. He can go and live with Juliet.'

Lizzie said she didn't want to talk in the flat, she said it was too crowded with children because of the school holidays having begun. She didn't look well, Frances thought. The children, on the other hand, despite the last vestiges of chicken-pox, looked in rude health. Harriet was helping Robert in the Gallery because since Jenny had gone, they were very short-handed. Lizzie said Harriet had amazed everyone, and most of all herself, by liking working in the Gallery. Lizzie also said that Frances must speak to Harriet on her own.

‘Must I? Why?'

‘Because she's hurt.'

‘Hurt?'

‘Yes,' Lizzie said, ‘because you didn't tell her yourself about the baby, you just assumed I would. It didn't matter with the boys. You know boys. I sometimes think they simply don't have the mechanism for receiving information of any human kind, but Harriet is different. Harriet has always thought you and she have something special, that you feel differently about her.'

‘I do.'

‘Then you should have told her about this baby.'

‘It isn't
this
baby,' Frances said, ‘it's
my
baby.'

She went down the staircase to the Gallery. There were quite a lot of customers, some of them with the holiday-clothed, questing air of tourists, and Robert was sitting on a rush-seated stool behind the till, smiling and counting out change and putting purchases into the Gallery's new buff-and-dark-blue recycled bags. Frances waved to him and he gave her a returning wave, almost like a salute. Then she went towards the back of the shop and found Harriet holding up Indian rag rugs while a customer colour-tested a scrap of cotton fabric against them.

‘Not quite the same beige—'

‘Won't it look a bit dull', Harriet suggested, ‘if it's exactly the same?' She glanced up and saw Frances, and blushed.

The customer sighed. ‘I'm afraid I'll simply have to think about it.'

Harriet laid the rugs down.

‘I do like the blue, though,' the customer said, ‘and the green is very pretty. But then, the rust has more character—'

‘Yes,' Harriet said, scowling with self-control.

‘Is Mrs Hardacre here?' the customer asked. ‘She has such an eye for colour—'

‘I'm afraid she's on holiday just now.'

The customer looked as if she thought that this was very inconsiderate. She put the piece of curtain fabric away in a little zipped compartment inside her handbag, and then she glanced at Frances.

‘I mustn't keep this lady waiting—'

‘Thank you,' Frances said, adding, ‘I
am
in rather a hurry—'

‘Are you?' Harriet said when they were alone. She stood behind the piles of rugs, as if to keep a barrier between herself and Frances. ‘Are you in a hurry?'

‘No,' Frances said, ‘I just wanted to get rid of her. I came to say sorry.'

Harriet said stonily, ‘I expect Mummy sent you.'

‘She did say that I had been thoughtless and that I'd offended you and I wanted to say I am truly sorry about that.'

Harriet lifted a foot as if to kick the rug pile and then remembered her position as shop assistant, and desisted.

‘Doesn't matter. It's your baby—'

‘Yes, but you're my niece and we've always been particular friends.'

‘Until—' Harriet said, and stopped.

‘Yes,' Frances said, ‘until.'

‘I think,' Harriet said, too loudly, ‘I think you're being unfair.'

‘To you?'

‘No. To this baby. Mum says you aren't getting married.'

There was a beat and then Frances said as lightly as she could, ‘No, it doesn't look like it.'

‘That's not fair on the baby. People can talk and talk and say it doesn't matter if kids don't have a mum and a dad, but it does matter, it does, otherwise it's just grown-ups doing what they want, as per usual, it's just one more poor kid having to explain why their
name
isn't the same as their mum's name or their dad's name, it's just some awful battle you've started that your kid will have to do the fighting in, not you!' She tossed her head so that her hair flew up in a plume before it fell back again across her face. ‘You should have thought of that, you should have thought of all that before you started!'

‘Harriet—'

‘I don't want to talk to you,' Harriet said. ‘I don't care whether you told Mum first or me first, I don't
care
. I'm just pissed off you turned out to be like all the others, all the other grown-ups with their secrets and their lies. I've got to help Dad now, anyway.'

‘Yes,' Frances said. She put a steadying hand out against a sturdy pine dresser filled with pottery plates painted with hens. ‘I hope – I hope that, when your cousin is born, you won't take your anger with me out on it.'

‘'Course not,' Harriet said scornfully. ‘What do you take me for?'

Lizzie and Frances lay on a rug under an enormous horse-chestnut tree on the edge of Langworth recreation ground. At some distance away, a group of boys were being given net practice for cricket by a ginger-headed man with unnaturally long arms, like a chimpanzee, and Sam and Davy had drifted enviously towards the group, full of shy longing. Sam adored cricket, as he adored all games; Davy was trying to accustom himself to not being afraid of the ball.

Lizzie lay on her stomach, plucking at grasses at the edge of the rug. Frances sat beside her, legs outstretched, propped on her arms. She had told Lizzie about Harriet's angry reaction and Lizzie had said well, you know how conventional teenagers are.

‘But she has a point.'

‘Maybe. But we all have points. That's the trouble, all of us having points and wanting them heard.'

Frances looked at her sister, took a deep breath and said, ‘And now Mum wants hers heard.'

She waited for Lizzie to spin round, but Lizzie went on weaving three stiff grasses into a little rigid plait.

Then she said, ‘You mean this plan to go and live in Bath?'

‘You know about it!'

‘Mum has dropped so many heavy hints, I couldn't fail to. I suppose we ought to try and stop her, but frankly, I can't take on another single emotional thing just now, I simply can't. They're our parents, I know, but it's their marriage, if you can
call
it a marriage.'

‘I think they think it is. Anyway, it appears to be my fault.'

‘Does it?'

‘Dad said my pregnancy had brought everything to a head and made them quarrel so badly that Mum can't stay any more.'

Lizzie said dully, ‘It isn't you.'

‘Oh?'

‘Well, it's only partly you, it's really Luis.'

‘Luis?' Frances demanded.

‘He's made you behave so differently, he's taken you away from us and now he's going to abandon you.'

Frances said furiously, ‘If you ever say anything remotely like that again—'

‘Sorry!' Lizzie shrieked. ‘I didn't mean it, I didn't mean—'

‘I thought we were beyond all this, we'd done with this kind of rubbish—'

‘We have, we have, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—'

‘Lizzie—'

‘Listen,' Lizzie said, speaking rapidly, her head bent low over her plaiting fingers, ‘I've got rather a lot to say
to
you and I'm not quite sure what order it will come out in. Perhaps I'll do Jenny first, shall I? Poor Jenny. I caught Rob kissing her, or rather, having kissed her, which he said was out of relief and gratitude to her for being so normal when I've been so bonkers. I don't know if I believe that or not, but I've decided to try to. I went to see Jenny who was behaving as if she and Rob had had a full-blown affair and it was perfectly plain she was in agony because she
had
found Rob very attractive and therefore couldn't disentangle what had happened and what she had fantasized might happen. She's sacked herself from the Gallery, which is the worst thing she could possibly do from everybody's point of view including her own, but I can't persuade her otherwise. And then you. This awful situation you've got yourself into. I mean, you're my sister and I'll help you all I can, of course I will, but I can't pretend I think you've done a wonderful thing, because I don't, I think the whole thing's been a disaster, from that first trip to Spain, an utter disaster—' Her voice broke a little and then, without warning, she reared up and said, gazing at Frances, ‘Oh Frances, what am I going to do?'

Frances knelt up and put her arms round her.

‘Nobody', she said, ‘can feel very normal when there's a situation like mine around.
Nobody
can.'

Lizzie clung to her.

‘Are you going to be all right?'

‘I don't know. How can I possibly know?'

‘And Luis, I mean, is Luis being kind to you?'

‘Very.'

‘Mightn't he – mightn't he feel differently when the baby is born?'

‘I don't know,' Frances said again. ‘In this situation, it doesn't seem possible to know anything, for certain.'

Lizzie pulled away a little and looked at her.

‘Are you afraid?'

‘Yes.'

‘About the baby, about your job, about what will become of you?'

‘Not – so much about those, but those too—'

‘Then what?'

Frances sat back on her heels, holding one of Lizzie's hands.

‘It's a more primary fear. I suppose it's the irrational fear of aloneness that we all have, that goes right back to childhood, but in my case, at the moment, I'm afraid I'll lose access to parts of myself I've only found through – someone else.'

‘Luis.'

‘Yes.'

‘What parts?'

Frances looked away.

‘I can't tell you. It's too private. I can just sense that the loss would shake me badly.'

Lizzie whispered, ‘What can you do about it?'

‘Nothing.'

‘You said that – that the loss of Luis would shake you badly—'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, you see,' Lizzie said, putting Frances's hand down carefully as if it were something fragile, ‘I feel just as destabilized by the loss of you.' She looked up, half-waiting, half-hoping that Frances would say, But you haven't lost me! You couldn't! I wouldn't let you! but Frances said quietly instead, ‘I know.'

‘Just that? Just “I know”?'

‘Yes.'

‘Frances—'

‘No,' Frances said, scrambling suddenly to her feet, ‘no more talking, I'm sick of talking. I'm sick of going round and round everyone's bloody
feelings
!'

‘But what else do you expect?'

‘I don't know what I expect, but I know what I like
just
now, I like plans. I prefer Mum's plans to Dad's feelings. I prefer Ana's plans—'

‘Who is Ana?'

‘Luis's sister.'

‘You never told me—'

‘Well, I have now,' Frances said almost shouting, ‘I have now. Ana is a doctor and she is finding me a colleague with whom I can register in Seville and a hospital bed in which I can have this baby. I'm going to join the boys.' She looked down at Lizzie, and then she said fiercely, ‘If you don't start counting your blessings, Lizzie, you won't have any left to bloody
count
,' and then she set off, half-running, across the grass, before Lizzie could say, as she could see she was just about to say, You sound just like Mum.

‘What will happen to Shore to Shore?' Robert said.

‘I expect it will go on. There's Nicky after all. Anyway, it'll have to. What else can she live on?'

Robert squeezed toothpaste on to his brush and wedged it into his mouth while he screwed the cap back on the tube.

‘But if she decides to live in Spain—'

‘I don't know. Perhaps Nicky will run London and Italy and Frances will run Spain. Or Spain and Italy. I don't know and she doesn't seem much interested.'

‘But it's her company.'

‘Rob,' Lizzie said, lying back in the bath, ‘I don't know what's happening. I only know she is having the baby in a hospital in Seville because that's what she wants. And what Frances wants, she does.'

‘Lizzie!'

‘It's true. Why shouldn't she?'

Robert stared, his mouth full of foam. Then he spat.