Close Relations (24 page)

A small crowd had gathered in the street. An ambulance waited, its light flashing. Paramedics carried out Dorothy on a stretcher. April – professional, efficient – said something to them. She jumped into the back of the ambulance. Gordon followed her. The two daughters watched as the ambulance sped off down the street.

It was called a transient ischaemic attack; a sort of spasm, apparently. They were only keeping Dorothy in for a couple of days, for tests. Thank God she was all right. Thank God, too, that she had been taken to a different hospital from the one which had treated their father. The image of April nursing their mother back to health, even working in the same building, was too bizarre to contemplate.

On the other hand, April had saved their mother's life. Maybe not saved – who knows? – but she had sprung up and helped her in a way that neither of her daughters could have managed. How confusing to be grateful to their father's mistress!

‘I feel so awful because
I
upset Mum, too,' said Maddy. ‘You see, for the first time in my life I sort of admired him.' It was midday on Sunday; Erin lay beside her in bed. ‘It's as if he had sort of joined me. Us. Joined the club of people who've done something nobody had expected them to.'

‘He can change too, I guess,' said Erin.

‘It was the funniest feeling. All my life I've been the odd one out, he's been disappointed in me. And now, maybe, he'll understand. Oh, I don't know. It's such a mess. Because I should be feeling sorry for Mum. I
do
feel sorry for her. He's
been such a shit.'

She wanted Erin to rescue her with certainties. Erin was so strong. Many of Erin's friends regarded men with contempt, even hatred. Erin's attitude towards men was subtler and somehow more damning. She pitied them. She pitied their aggression, the way it sprang from fear. She pitied the linear way that, imprisoned by testosterone and centuries of conditioning, they pushed their way blindly through life. She pitied their pride in the thing between their legs, as if it were a lovingly polished trophy won in some boring and irrelevant tournament. Didn't they know what they had been missing?

She damned them by their irrelevance. Only women could feel the powerful pulls and eddies of nature. Only women, with other women, could truly be free – stirred by the same tides, by the beat of their blood. She washed Maddy's feet in glycerine and scented water; she murmured to her strange and wonderful words . . .
nectar . . . honey-basket . . . finger-frolics
. . . In the past, such words would have bemused Maddy. Embarrassed her, even. But now she was enraptured.

Maddy removed the tea mugs and buried her face in Erin's shoulder. Forgetting her parents, she kissed the sweet dip in Erin's throat. The doorbell rang.

‘Don't go,' she whispered.

Erin opened the door. Aziz stood there. He was a delicate Indian man – small, with finely drawn features. Erin raised her eyebrows. Tall and tousled, wearing her satin bathrobe, she looked like a Valkyrie.

‘Is Allegra ready?' he asked.

Erin shook her head. ‘She's gone to a birthday party.'

‘But it's Sunday,' he said. ‘You knew I'd be coming.'

‘Didn't I tell you?'

‘Erin, I have one Sunday a fortnight to see my daughter. The past two times she's been out.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Erin. ‘She's been looking forward to it all week.'

‘Well,
I'd
been looking forward to taking her roller-skating.'

Erin gazed at him – not coldly, that would have been bearable to him. She gazed at him with detachment, as if he were a milkman and had come to the wrong house. ‘I'm sorry. Come back next week, I'll make sure she's here.'

‘I've got to go to Glasgow on Thursday! You know that –'

She shrugged. ‘Well, if your work's so important . . .'

‘Erin! That's not fair! I need her.'

‘I think that's nearer the point.'

He turned on his heel and left.

Dorothy sat in her dressing-gown. The watery sun shone through the hospital window. It shone onto the mismatched chairs and the milky cataract of the TV screen. Gordon sat opposite her.

‘Strange to be kissed by your own husband's girlfriend,' she said. ‘And to cap it all, I had to be grateful.'

Gordon nodded. ‘She brought
me
back to life too.'

Dorothy raised her eyebrows. ‘You've made many tactless remarks, Gordon, but that has to take the biscuit.'

‘I'm sorry, love.' He gazed around the TV room, as if it might help. The empty chairs faced him. ‘I've been home and paid the bills. Sorted out some paperwork. I've not taken anything, bar my clothes.'

‘How nice of you.'

Down the corridor a Tannoy called, ‘
Doctor Mulbarek
.' The name sounded familiar. Wasn't he the President of Egypt?

‘Our life here on earth, it only comes the once,' he said.

‘I know that, Gordon.'

‘When I had that heart attack – episode – can you understand, love? I'd been working myself to the bone, head down, year after year. I'd not started to live.'

‘I'd been telling you that,' said Dorothy. ‘I told you for years and you never listened. That's what really gets me. You never listened to
me. I
felt that too. I told you we should give
up the business, retire, have some fun. I told you that and you didn't take a blind bit of notice. Oh, but the moment
she
said it you listened.'

‘She didn't say it. I did.'

‘Oh, wipe that dopey look off your face, for God's sake.'

A nurse came into the room. She was black. Dorothy's heart jolted.

‘Just want to take your blood pressure,' said the nurse.

Dorothy got to her feet and left the room.

Erin lounged on her sofa, her leg flung over the armrest. Today she wore a shirt, jeans and boots like a farmgirl. She was being interviewed by a journalist – one of the eager, young, female kind.

‘My novel's about courage,' said Erin. ‘It takes courage to fall in love, don't you think? Oh, people say they do, all the time, they say the words because everybody else says them. But very few people know how to truly love another person without the need to possess them. It takes enormous courage to give another person freedom.'

‘Now, you make no secret of your own sexual orientation,' said the journalist. ‘Could you tell me –'

She stopped. Maddy came in, carrying shopping bags.

‘Oh. Sorry,' said Maddy.

The journalist switched off her tape recorder.

Erin said: ‘Maddy, this is . . .'

‘Alison.'

‘Alison, from the
Independent on Sunday.
' She turned to the girl. ‘Would you like some tea? Earl Grey, Rosehip, Lapsang?'

‘Lapsang would be lovely.'

Erin smiled at Maddy. ‘Lapsang for both of us, sweetheart. Thanks.'

Maddy left. Alison switched on her tape recorder. ‘I believe you had your daughter Allegra by artificial insemination –'

‘Oh no,' Erin replied. ‘I fucked the guy.'

‘Oh. Anyway, why did you decide to bring up a child
alone? Wasn't that a very brave decision?'

‘I didn't want to miss out on motherhood.' Erin stopped. ‘Hey, that's a great bracelet.'

Alison glowed. Erin smiled at her.

In the kitchen Maddy, filling the kettle, heard Erin's voice.

‘. . . living with someone should be a celebration, not subjugation. With no man in the house all the power-games disappear – who's doing the chores, who's resenting having to take time off work. Have you noticed how we always thank a man when he makes a meal and never a woman?'

Maddy started to unpack the shopping.

Prudence drove her mother home. It was Saturday morning and the streets of Purley were empty. When she was young the streets had been full of children; now there were just parked cars. Since her childhood, car ownership had doubled and children had disappeared. They were sitting at home, watching the CD Roms her company was producing. Driving past the houses, she mourned her lost youth. The break-up of her parents' marriage had separated her from her past; it had broken away, like an ice-floe, and drifted into the distance.

Prudence looked at her mother. There had always been something blurred and undefined about Dorothy. She didn't even look her age. An unremarkable, pretty face if one tried to assess it. Maybe everybody felt that about their mother; they were too close to have a shape, too out-of-focus. But Louise was like that too. Like her flyaway hair there was something fuzzy about her. Perhaps it was because both women had spent the years servicing the needs of other people. Maddy was strong and square; like her father, there was a solidity to her. But Dorothy was a mother and a wife; her own identity had somehow been lost. Now, at the age of sixty-three, she was alone. Gordon wasn't coming home, Prudence knew it now. How was her mother going to cope? Her sudden flare-up in April's flat had startled Prudence. Already her mother was revealing a hidden part of herself. In
the coming months was she going to disintegrate or grow strong? Was she going to surprise her daughters and those who loved her? Prudence had no idea, and felt panic-struck on her mother's behalf.

They arrived at The Birches. Prudence unlocked the front door and picked up the letters that were spewed onto the doormat. ‘I'll put the heating on.'

Dorothy went into the lounge. She had been away for a week – three days in hospital and four days of convalescence with her friend Connie in Harrow. Connie was a divorcée; until recently, such women had been a separate species. Sometimes Dorothy had pitied them; sometimes she had envied them their freedom. She thought: I've stepped across the threshold now.

Hunched in her overcoat, she sat down. Her absence had changed the house; it was no longer hers. When her grandmother had died she had sat with her; she had sat beside the bed for hours, unable to leave because she knew that when she returned her granny would be changed into a corpse.

Prudence came into the room. ‘Let me help you unpack,' she said.

Dorothy looked at the framed photographs, at the forty-four years of married life. She sat, perched on the edge of her chair as if she were just visiting. She wondered whether Gordon would come into the office on Monday. She tried to picture him leafing through invoices and scattering cigarette ash. She tried to make him act as he had always done.

Prudence said: ‘You're coming home with me.'

‘I'm fine, really,' said Dorothy. ‘I've got plenty to do here.'

‘Come on.'

Prudence's hand slipped into hers. It was dry and cool. Dorothy stood up like a sleepwalker and let herself be led to the door.

Prudence managed to find a parking space only a few yards from her flat. This struck her – erroneously, as it turned out –
as a good omen.

‘Can you wait here a sec?' she asked her mother. ‘I'll just, er . . .'

She left her mother, ran to the door, let herself in and ran upstairs. She unlocked her front door and, hearing a whirring sound, went into the kitchen. Stephen stood at the blender.

‘I asked my mum to stay, just for a night or so. Do you mind?' She kissed his cheek. ‘I just couldn't leave her in that empty house all by herself.'

Prudence looked at the blender. It appeared to be full of milk shake. She turned. Dirk stood in the doorway.

There was a moment's silence. ‘Hello, Dirk!' she said.

‘Kaatya had to go on some course,' muttered Stephen. ‘Some Saturday workshop or something. I've got them till six.'

Dirk poured the milk-shake mixture into a glass and took it into the living room. Prudence followed him. Pieter lay on the carpet, surrounded by sheets of paper.

‘Hello, Pieter,' she said. ‘How lovely to see you.'

‘What do you know about Bismarck?' he asked. ‘Dad's hopeless.'

Prudence hurried back into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. ‘Take them out!' she hissed. ‘Take them for a walk or something.'

‘I can't!'

‘She can't find out about them now. Not in the state she's in.'

‘She's got to sooner or later,' he said.

‘Not now! Put them in the bedroom, just for half an hour. Then I'll take her off shopping or something.'

She went back into the living room. ‘Listen, chaps. Let's play hide-and-seek!'

‘I'm thirteen,' said Pieter.

Stephen gathered up the papers. ‘Please, Pieter. You can do your project in there.'

Dirk said: ‘There's no TV in there.'

Stephen ushered him towards the bedroom door. ‘And
keep really quiet, okay? Is that a deal?'

‘How much will you pay us?' demanded Pieter.

Prudence stared at the boy. ‘What?'

‘How much, Dad?'

There was a pause. ‘A quid each,' said Stephen.

‘Stephen!' said Prudence.

Pieter shook his head. ‘Five pounds.'

‘What?' Prudence stared at him.

‘Five pounds for the two of us,' said Dirk.

‘Oh, all right,' said Stephen.

The two boys went into the bedroom and shut the door.

Dorothy sat beside the eternal flames of the fire. ‘Honestly, I was perfectly all right,' she said.

‘Don't be silly. That's a sofabed, remember?' said Prudence. ‘You can stay as long as you like.'

Stephen carried in a tray of coffee. ‘Of course you can,' he said.

Dorothy looked up at him. ‘Forty-four years, Stephen. That's how long we've been married. How could he do it?'

‘Would you like some sugar?' Stephen asked.

‘You're a man,' said Dorothy. ‘Tell me.'

‘I can't imagine,' he said, passing her a cup. Prudence looked at him sharply.

Dorothy said: ‘It's as if he's just screwed it up and thrown it away, all of it. As if our marriage never happened.'