Close Relations (8 page)

‘What are you doing?' Margot's voice rang out querulously.

Tim climbed to his feet. ‘Just cashing up,' he called.

Prudence was known for her temperance. Her personality had been forged, to some degree, by the personalities of her two sisters. Louise was the vague one; the girl who forgot her homework books, the woman who couldn't map-read and who collected parking tickets whenever she drove to London. Maddy was the impulsive one who blurted out home truths and who decided, on the spur of the moment, to pack in her job and go to Nigeria. Somebody had to keep things in order and that role had been taken on by Prudence, the sensible one in the middle. When her family was quarrelling, Prudence had learned to keep the peace. She had learned to conceal her own feelings in the cause of general harmony. Having reined in her impulses for so long she sometimes forgot that she had them in the first place.

For a year she had resisted the urge to see where Stephen lived. She had tried to blank off that part of his life – the part that began when he left the office each day. But the imagination is a powerful organism. It swells and festers, like a boil that has to be lanced. Sometimes she thought that she was going insane.
36 Agincourt Road, Dulwich
. She had found the street in her
A–Z
. She had inspected it so many times that her thumb had blurred the print.

On Friday she went out to dinner in Camberwell. She hadn't wanted to go. She knew her hosts had arranged a spare man for her, a fact that would be glaringly obvious both
to her and the man in question. They would be seated next to each other and watched, beadily. On the last occasion the man, whose name she had mercifully forgotten, had spent most of the evening telling her all about the wonderful things he could do on his Apple Mac. He had also spilled wine on her dress.
Hell is other people
, said Jean-Paul Sartre. Hell was sitting next to a man who wasn't Stephen. When she got home she would be gripped by such loneliness she would feel as if she were dying.

Sometimes the man asked her out; sometimes she went. The evening would be spent sitting in one of those Italian restaurants near Leicester Square that are listed in
What's On in London
, the sort of restaurant nobody she knew ever went to, the sort that still served veal in mushroom sauce. The man would order house plonk and tell her how he never saw his children now his ex had moved to Hull. Panic would rise in her, panic for the whole human race.

All things considered, she preferred staying at home. She was also becoming engrossed in the gardening woman's novel, which she had begun reading the night before. But she went to the dinner party in Camberwell, just to prove to herself that she had a life. During the meal she was seized with the certainty that Stephen was ringing her at home. She heard his voice, speaking on the answerphone in her empty flat. ‘
She's gone out for the evening . . . the boys are staying with friends, I could come over now . . . are you there, Pru? . . . oh my darling
. . .'

On either side of her the dinner guests chattered. They were talking about how often their cars had been broken into – a favoured topic in Camberwell.

‘. . . we take the radio out, of course, but they still smash the window . . .'

‘. . . last time they took all the tapes except
Queen: The Classic Collection
. They left it on the roof.'

‘How embarrassing! So now your neighbours know you like Queen.'

‘I don't. It belonged to the au pair.'

Suddenly Prudence saw Stephen so vividly it took away her breath. He had got no reply. He had remembered she was going out to dinner, so he had driven to her flat. At this very moment he was letting himself in with his key . . . he was getting into bed, waiting to surprise her . . .

As soon as she could politely do so, after the first round of coffee, Prudence said her goodbyes and left. She drove home fast. She jumped the lights; she took a left corner so tightly that she narrowly missed a cyclist. She speeded across Clapham Common and down her road, jamming on her brakes at each hump.

Her flat was dark. There was a smell in the kitchen; she had forgotten to put out the rubbish.

It was then that she could bear it no longer. She got back into her car and drove to Dulwich. By the time she arrived at the end of his road it was half past one.

She switched off the engine and sat there. So this was where he lived. Her stupid heart thumped. It was a street of large, red-brick houses with front drives. They were obscured by trees. The street lamps illuminated the branches; they illuminated the pavement upon which he had walked for the past seven years. It was the strangest sensation to look at a road that was so familiar to him and sickeningly, unknowably familiar to her.

She turned the car round and drove through the neighbouring streets, acquainting herself with them. She drove past a parade of shops – a Thresher, for his whisky; a place called Animal Crackers where his sons no doubt bought food for their gerbils. She knew about the gerbils. She felt like a thief, crawling at walking pace through the streets. She felt she was betraying him by spying on his life; from now onwards she would have a secret from him. It struck her as unfair:
he
didn't have to spy on her, he didn't have to feel like a criminal.

Finally she plucked up courage to return to Agincourt Road. She drove past 36 and stopped. The hall light illuminated the number. It was like the other houses – a comfortable,
Edwardian, family home. The downstairs windows were dark. Upstairs, however, a light glowed behind a blind. This must be their bedroom – the master bedroom. The next window was plastered with what looked like football stickers. This must be Dirk's or Pieter's room. In the driveway two cars were parked – his company car and a battered 2CV that no doubt belonged to his wife.

Oddly enough, Prudence felt nothing. Now she was here at last, parked outside the place she had imagined so painfully, she felt blank. Thinking about it all these months had sucked the flavour from it. All she felt was that she shouldn't be here; it was nothing to do with her. It had no connection with the Stephen she knew. The only shock was seeing his Ford Granada parked outside.

She drove home. It was only when she slotted in the Brahms that the tears came.

‘They can't close it down!' said Louise. ‘The village will die. It's more than a shop. It's where everybody meets. Old ladies who can't go anywhere else.'

‘Market forces, my dear,' said Robert.

‘Don't market forces me! It's all right for you, you're hardly here. He can't afford to buy the stock, everybody goes to Tesco. Soon there'll be – oh, a packet of tea-bags and a box of bootlaces. Like Eastern Europe.'

‘You been to Eastern Europe lately?'

‘You don't care. Oh why did I marry a Tory!'

‘Your father's more Tory than me. He reads the
Daily Telegraph
.'

‘Well
I'm
going to keep going there.'

‘You can afford to. Know why? Because you're married to a venture capitalist.'

‘God you're cheap.'

‘No. I'm expensive. That's why –'

‘Oh, shut up!'

Robert grinned and left. He was off to play tennis.

Louise was cleaning out the rabbit's hutch. She dug viciously at the dried droppings in the corner. Boyd, the rabbit, sat hunched in his sodden sleeping compartment. He glared at her. Nobody liked Boyd. He was the last of their dynasty of rabbits, a moth-eaten old buck who had fathered hundreds of babies, fluffy darlings the children had crooned over and then forgotten. Jamie and Imogen had grown out of their pets. Though Imogen's bedroom was plastered with Save the Whale posters she ignored Boyd; he could be dead for all she knew.

But Boyd didn't die. Like many belligerent octogenarians he clung stubbornly to life, refusing to go gently into that good night, sticking it out and making life a misery for anyone who ventured near. Nobody did, except Louise. She scattered sawdust into the hutch. She tried to shunt him into the clean side – she couldn't pick him up, he was surprisingly powerful and would scratch her arms to ribbons. She pushed his rump. He turned round and bit her. She yelped. Ears flattened, he hunched himself further into his corner. He growled. Boyd was the only rabbit she had ever known who growled. Robert said he was a Pit Bull terrier in disguise.

Louise, kneeling at the hutch, heard the sound of an engine approaching. That would be the blacksmith. It was Saturday; Imogen had spent most of the morning grooming Skylark and preparing her for this visit, as if preparing a bride for her groom. This past week had transformed Imogen. Where her horse was concerned, there was no problem with droppings. The moment they fell onto the stable floor Imogen darted forward with her spade, her face radiant. She was a young girl in love.

‘Do you want sugar – er –'

‘Karl.' The blacksmith nodded.

Imogen put the mugs on a ledge. The blacksmith flexed himself against Skylark's back leg. He lifted it up, wedging it between his thighs. With a pair of pliers he wrenched off the
old shoe and flung it aside.

‘She likes you,' said Imogen, ‘she usually fidgets in here.' She gestured around the stable. ‘I ride her for miles. I feel so free! The birds don't fly away when you're on a horse. It's, like, you're part of an animal too.'

‘We are animals,' he said. ‘Just animals, with clothes on.'

‘I suppose we are.'

‘Trouble comes when we forget it.'

She watched him working. He had curly black hair, damp with sweat. He wore a singlet; when he moved, she could see the muscles shift under his skin. She could see the bushy black hair in his armpits. Around his hips was slung a leather apron. He was pressed against the flanks of the horse, peeling off pieces of hoof as if he were peeling the rind off an apple.

‘I saw a heron yesterday,' she said. ‘And a fox.'

‘Know Blackthorn Wood? There's a badger's sett there.' Karl had a ripe, local accent. ‘Pal of mine showed me. He's into wildlife photography.'

‘Badgers! Wow!'

He leaned against the horse, grinning. ‘Yeah. Wow.' He turned away and hammered in a shoe. ‘Have to go at dusk. They come out and play. Thing about badgers, they don't lumber around, like folk think. They're really light and graceful.'

‘Wicked!'

He looked at her. ‘How old are you?'

‘Sixteen.'

‘Ah. Thought you were older.'

Imogen glowed with pleasure. ‘Really? How old?'

‘Then you say something dumb like wicked.'

Imogen flinched. ‘It just means great.'

He reached over for his mug and drank a draught of tea. ‘Should enlarge your vocabulary when you grow up. That's what your mum and dad pay for.' He put back the mug and reached into his box of tools. ‘Bet you go to private school, right?'

‘It's not my fault! I didn't want to go. Anyway, I hate school. I'm hopeless at everything except netball.'

He grinned. ‘Don't get angry with me. Save it for your parents.'

She smiled at him. He didn't notice; he pulled Skylark's leg between his, braced himself against her and started filing the hoof.

‘Where exactly is this badger's sett?' she asked.

‘Maybe I'll show you.'

‘Do I have to get older first?'

He looked up at her, under his oily hair, and grinned.

Louise watched the van drive away. Beside her, Imogen rinsed out the mugs.

‘Mmm, very Lawrencian.' Louise leered. ‘He can take my shoes off any day.'

‘Mum! Don't be disgusting.'

Louise laughed. ‘It doesn't stop at forty, you know.'

Stephen was trying to read a manuscript. Kaatya was hauling the furniture about. She was a volatile, black-haired woman. Tonight she was dressed in leggings with a child's skirt over them, and a shrunken jumper on top. Her perspex earrings rattled. She glared at one of her collages, hung on the wall. She took it down. Then she yanked an armchair across the room.

‘Kaatya, come and sit down,' said Stephen.

‘I don't like this here!'

‘You liked it once.'

She pulled the coffee table across the floor. ‘No, you did.'

‘Kaatya!'

She pushed the coffee table against the chair. ‘Don't mind me. Just read your intellectual book.'

‘Actually, it's a poorly constructed, derivative, and totally unconvincing little thriller by that man you fancy on
Europe
Tonight
. Just because a chap can read an autocue he thinks he can write like García Marquez.'

She yanked the table back. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘It doesn't matter.'

Kaatya went upstairs. He heard her call: ‘Dirk, get out of that bath!'

Stephen tried to concentrate but he kept reading the same sentence over again. Pieter, his older son, came in from the other room, where he had been working at Stephen's computer.

‘She seems in a tizz.'

Stephen ruffled his son's hair. ‘Women.'

Living with Kaatya was like living with Mount Etna; one never knew when she was going to erupt. Even when dormant, she smouldered. This bonded Stephen with his sons.

Pieter, carrying his books, went upstairs. Though he was thirteen he already seemed like a little old man. Stephen's sons were quaint, formal boys. They had a wary look to them. Sometimes their mother shouted at them. Sometimes she flung her arms around them and smothered them with kisses. How could a chap know where he stood?

The trouble was, they could be wary with him too. Though sometimes united, blokes together, by Kaatya's moods, they could also be alienated. Kaatya lived by no discernible moral code. She had no compunction about corralling her sons when she was quarrelling with Stephen. ‘
How can he treat me this bloody way?
' she would wail, clutching her sons under her wing. ‘
How can he be so cruel, your own father?
' She pressed their heads against her. They stood there, three black heads, foreign people with their foreign names, and he felt like a visitor in his own home.