Close Relations (42 page)

So that was what she did. Upstairs, Imogen lay, a ticking time-bomb, while down in the kitchen April yanked open the freezer and shoved frosty packets into the Aga. Gordon, who hated sitting around doing nothing, came in and tried to help but she sent him away.

She chopped up a cucumber. Suddenly, she was flooded with happiness. She had been launched into the hot centre of Gordon's family, into the middle of a crisis. They needed her! She would take care of them.

When they returned to the kitchen, an hour later, April felt as intimate with their lives as with the contents of their cupboards. She tossed the salad and put the bowl on the table.

‘You're so kind,' said Louise. ‘That's what we needed, a nurse. A cook.' She carried a bottle of Bollinger. ‘I've found another case. Let's drink the lot!' She poured out the champagne; it frothed over the glasses. April guessed that it had been her husband's job to do this. ‘I may have lost everything
else but at least I've got my children back. Isn't that all that matters?' She turned to April and raised her glass. ‘Welcome to the Hammond family,' she said. ‘And all who sail in it.'

‘Join the shipwreck,' said Jamie.

On Thursday, in her lunch-hour, Prudence drove to Chelsea. She had arranged to meet Maddy. Stepping out of the traffic fumes she entered a garden. She brushed past a beech hedge; its leaves were such an intense green that she felt breathless, as if she had been sucking lemons. She suddenly longed for a garden of her own; all her adult life she had lived in flats. She longed to step out onto the grass in her bare feet. She closed her eyes. A child, its hair flying, came running towards her.

Maddy was planting out a tray of zinnias, handling them as tenderly as if they were babies. It was only May but her face was already tanned from working outdoors. She wiped her hands and produced packets of sandwiches wrapped in foil. How was Erin? Prudence asked. Working on a new book. How was Allegra? Fine. Far away the traffic roared. Prudence's own desultory questions sounded as distant. They fell silent. Maddy wasn't the sort of person who felt the need to make conversation.

Prudence swallowed the last mouthful. She lit a cigarette. She said: ‘Something extraordinary happened last Saturday. The night Jamie came to your house. I want to ask your advice.'

She told Maddy what had taken place. Maddy was the only person in the world she could tell. Her sister had the un-shockability of the pure at heart; she had no prurient interest in the murkier reaches of human behaviour. When Prudence finished, she just said: ‘Gosh.'

‘The thing is – I found her . . . thrilling. I don't know whether it was because – you know – Stephen was there.' She laughed lightly. ‘You see, I've never had a lesbian experience before.'

Maddy poured coffee out of a Thermos. Prudence
struggled on.

‘Remember when you told me about Erin? You said you didn't know if you were gay, or you'd just fallen in love with her.'

‘Did I?' Maddy passed her the plastic cup. ‘I've only got one, we'll have to take turns.'

‘Maybe I am – well, gay. Underneath.'

‘Of course you're not.'

‘Well, anyway – now I'll know what you're talking about.'

‘It's not what you do.' Maddy took the cup. ‘It's what you feel.'

‘I told you – it felt wonderful.'

‘I mean, what you feel about Stephen.'

Prudence gazed at the freshly dug earth. A robin flew down and pulled out a worm.

Maddy said: ‘I bet he just did it to turn himself on.'

‘No,' said Prudence weakly.

‘Sounds like he was using you,' said Maddy. ‘I should know, I speak from experience.'

‘No. That's not true.'

Hadn't he been reluctant at first?
I'm keeping my jim-jams on.
Prudence's head spun.

‘Nice kinky sex, three in a bed,' said Maddy. ‘Bet he couldn't believe his luck.'

‘It wasn't like that!'

‘Every middle-aged bloke's fantasy.'

‘Don't be so hostile,' said Prudence. ‘Not today.' The worm was too fat; it twisted in the robin's beak. Why did Maddy always say the thing one didn't want to hear? Her first word, apparently, had been ‘No'.

‘Why did you ask me then?' said Maddy. ‘If you didn't want to know?'

Prudence drove back to the office, past Canary Wharf. The glass buildings glinted in the sunlight; they flashed a warning.

How did she feel? Angry with Maddy, for a start. How could she say such things?

I should know, I speak from experience.
Prudence parked the car. She thought: what had Maddy meant by that? Did she feel used, too?

Maddy yelped. She had pricked her finger on a rose thorn. She pushed the cushioned underside of her fingertip, pressing out the drop of blood. It emerged, a bead, from her interior. If she went on pressing she would make a necklace.

If she fell asleep, what would happen? Bloody nothing. Maddy didn't believe in fairy stories. By the time she'd been born her mother must have got tired of reading them. Her back ached. She straightened up. Sucking her finger, she put away her tools and drove towards Hackney, through the clogged rush-hour traffic. Louise was the fairy-tale princess and look what had happened to her.

Maddy felt her family breaking up under her feet. She was losing her balance. When she'd lived abroad she had considered herself independent. Only now did she realise how much she had relied on them to be there, safe and unchanged. A solid family to rebel against and come home to, for despite her adventurous life she had still felt like an adolescent, resenting the very people she needed.

She wondered why she had been so abrupt with Prudence, who, after all, had come seeking her advice – an almost unheard-of occurrence. Was it because Prudence had muscled in on her territory?

She picked up Allegra from her clarinet lesson. As they drove home she said: ‘You're lucky, being an only child.'

‘Why?' asked Allegra.

‘When you're the youngest everything's been done before. They've worn the clothes. They've ridden the bike. Everything you've got is second-hand. So you try to be different.' She shrugged. ‘Then you find they've done
that,
too.' She turned left into Romilly Street. ‘They thought I was going to
be a boy. They would've called me Buddy, after Buddy Holly.'

‘Who's he?'

‘
Then
I would have been different.'

Allegra wasn't listening. ‘Look.'

Two cars and a BBC van were double-parked outside their house. The front door was open. A crowd of kids had gathered, leaning on their bikes.

‘Oh God,' said Allegra. ‘It's the TV.'

They got out of the van. A man carrying a walkie-talkie barred the front door. ‘Sorry, love. We're filming.'

‘We live here,' said Allegra. Clutching her clarinet case she slipped through.

Maddy pushed her way into the hall. The house was full of men shouting at each other. ‘Bob, where's the bloody masking tape?' Cables ran up the stairs.

Maddy was exhausted. Her back ached, she was filthy. When she went upstairs she found the bathroom door locked. Behind it, somebody flushed the lavatory. The landing was crammed with people. One of them was bellowing into a mobile phone: ‘Get Tanya to bike them over, pronto!'

Maddy looked into Erin's study. The light was dazzling. Erin sat at her word processor. She wore her red velvet jacket; a girl dusted her face with a brush.

‘Excuse me, sweetheart.' Somebody moved Maddy aside.

Someone shouted, ‘Quiet please! We're going for a take!'

‘And . . . ACTION.'

Erin sat in the blazing light. She was a goddess, worshipping at the altar of herself. As Maddy watched, something snapped. All her half-lies, all her efforts to fool herself. They snapped and she was released.

She turned and pushed her way to the bedroom. A woman sat on the bed. She wore a black suit and was talking on the phone.

‘Get out,' said Maddy.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Get out of my bedroom.'

Maddy was packing her bag now, opening drawers and
shoving in clothes. Allegra came into the room and stood beside her.

‘You're going, aren't you?' she said. ‘Like all the others. I knew you would.'

‘CUT!' somebody called.

‘Where are you going?' asked Allegra.

‘I don't know,' said Maddy. ‘I'm not leaving you. Just leaving her. I'm sorry.' She looked at Allegra's face – a dusky triangle, wide eyes and pointed chin. It was hard to believe she belonged to Erin at all. Maddy felt a pain in her chest.

Allegra fingered the mirrored bedspread. ‘She wouldn't notice if I went either.'

A voice said: ‘Is that her little girl?' A man came into the room. He said to Allegra: ‘Come along, sweetheart. Let's have you in the shot.'

Five minutes later Maddy stepped out of the front door. Nobody, except Allegra, noticed she had gone. At the top of the street she turned. The BBC van looked like a fire engine, its hose running into the house. She thought: nothing will put out Erin's fire. It will devour everyone else, but it will never devour her.

Prudence stood in the kitchen, her back to Stephen. She addressed the calendar on the wall. ‘You never really left her, did you?' As she spoke, she wondered why all the showdowns in her life took place in kitchens. ‘You just used me to revive your marriage.' Or cars.

‘That's not true,' he said, but he didn't move nearer her.

May 29 was ringed in Pentel, with an exclamation mark. It was Stephen's birthday, but now they wouldn't reach it together. There were months left after that. Then another calendar and another year.

‘When you said
Isn't she amazing,
who did you mean?'

‘What?' he asked.

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Prudence, listen –'

‘You used me. Both of you did. Maybe you didn't realise, but it doesn't really make any difference, does it? Your marriage was the real thing, all the time.' She moved to the window. ‘I was just a sex-aid, when you had run out of all the others.'

‘I loved you – love you. It's just . . .' His voice broke. ‘I miss my boys.'

There was a silence.

‘And your wife,' she said. ‘You don't like her, but you love her.'

He said: ‘I'll always love you.' The words dropped like pebbles; the four words everybody dreads to hear.

He was slipping from her; he had been for months. It was night, but next door's garden was floodlit. Their cherry tree was in blossom. The branches were burdened with it, like snow; they looked as if they would break. Beneath it stood a child's climbing frame. She longed for Stephen to leave.

He didn't put up much of a fight, her darling, weak lover. Late that night, he packed the bags he had dumped five months earlier on her office floor. She phoned for a minicab.

Love . . . she thought. Love . . .
LOVE
. . .
love
. . . His wife was right. Funnily enough, as she didn't speak English so well. There should be words for the different kinds of love he felt. Everyone felt. She thought:
I'm the word person but she's beaten me at my own game
.

Outside, in Louise's garden, the magnolia had shed its petals. The lawn was white with them, as if snow had fallen. It was late Saturday afternoon but the church clock had stopped years earlier at 3.15. Soon it would be Saturday evening but neither Louise nor her children had plans to go out. Jamie and Imogen lounged on the sofa, watching a
Blackadder
video on the TV.

Louise sat down on the window-seat. When they had bought the house she had imagined herself sitting here doing tapestry; in fact, she had never sat on it at all until now. The bookshelves were emptier; Robert had been down to collect
more of his stuff. He had moved, with the woman, into a flat in Dollis Hill.
Dollis Hill
. My God, thought Louise, he really must love her.

Her sisters' love-affairs had broken up; they were alone now, like herself. For the past week, Maddy had apparently been sleeping on the floor of a friend's house, one of the mysterious friends her sisters had never met. The three of them were casualties of love. Its failure had made them familiar to each other, sisters again; they were no longer altered by those with whom they lived. She longed to be near them.

‘Do you mind moving back to London?' she asked.

‘Mind? You must be joking.' Jamie tipped the tube of Pringles; the last one fell out. He put it into his mouth. ‘When can we leave?'

‘What about you?' she asked Imogen. ‘You don't mind us selling Skylark?'

Imogen shook her head. ‘Think I can ever trust her again?'

‘We won't have much money,' said Louise.

‘Why not?'

She paused. ‘We just won't. We'll have to rent a flat. I'll have to find a job. Things'll be different from now on.'

‘Can we live in Brixton?' asked Jamie. ‘It's wicked.'

‘We could always live in the caravan,' said Louise. ‘People have been happy there, in their own little way.'

She looked at Imogen. Her daughter was inspecting her fingernails as if she might find gold beneath them. Imogen had been quiet lately. She had actually been helping around the house. Louise found this alarming; was Imogen suffering from delayed shock from the accident?

Jamie stood up.

‘Hey, you're in the way,' said Imogen. He was blocking the TV screen.

He said: ‘If we're leaving, I think someone else should, too.' He went to the door. ‘Come on, you lot.'

He went into the garden. Treading on the fallen petals, they followed him to the rabbit hutch. He pulled down the latch and opened the door.

‘Come on, Boyd, old bugger,' he said. ‘Bugger off.'

‘He'll eat the plants,' said Louise.