Consequences (27 page)

Julia observes that many people never read anything, but still go in for love.

“Okay.” says Ruth. “Point taken. But what is it, then? How does it happen?”

“Disease. Eventually they’ll find a vaccine, for those who wish to be spared.”

“And why do we fix on
that
particular person?”

Julia proposes pheromones. “You know, like animals—a chemical secretion that says, here I am, come and find me.”

“How unromantic can you get?” cries Ruth.

Julia says that a scientific explanation is perfectly compatible with a romantic effect. “You can still go weak at the knees—it doesn’t matter
why.
”

“Hmn. Maybe. But why does it end? You fall out of love, too.”

“Not always. It can mutate.” Julia sounds complacent, perhaps. Is this her experience? “Just as well,” she adds. “No one could spend their life in that condition.”

Ruth wonders if possibly some people do. She thinks of the way in which Molly and Sam can look at one another.

“It’s surely the one great thing,” she decides. “Isn’t it? Disease or pheromone or whatever. Would we want to have missed out?”

Julia yawns. Sleepless nights, again. “Oh, no. You have to join the club. Sign up. But that’s it, for me. I’ve signed off, now.”

It is seven-thirty; the children are in bed. Ruth moves around the kitchen with practiced efficiency, as though she were dealing with the engine-room of a ship. She shoves dirty clothes into the washing machine, she turns on the oven. She takes a carton of soup from the fridge, and a quiche and the wherewithal for a salad. She whips up toys from the floor and stows them in various containers. She goes through into the adjoining room, which serves as her office; she checks her e-mail, she reads a fax, she listens to messages on the answerphone. She hears Peter’s key in the door, returns to the kitchen, tips soup into a pan.

Peter opens a bottle of wine. They sit at the table. Peter is flicking through newspapers; Ruth has some household bills and her check book.

“Jess got a gold star for reading,” she says. “Perhaps we have an achiever on our hands.”

Peter turns a page. “Oil Price Rise Forecast,” Ruth reads, and “World Bank Chief to Quit.”

“And I am a multitasker, I learn. It’s the new definition. Do you want to hear about a day in the life of a multitasker?”

Silence.

“No. Probably not,” says Ruth. “How were things at the coal-face today?” She rises, goes to the cooker, starts to heat soup. Peter takes a pad from his shirt pocket, makes a quick note, folds the newspaper. “I shall be going to New York for a couple of days next week,” he tells her.

Ruth does not ask why. The answer would be to do with something obstruse and economic. And she does not think that Peter has a mistress in New York, or indeed anywhere.

She serves soup, and ciabatta bread. Peter pours wine—a Chilean merlot. Machines churn, hum, beep, wink green eyes. Off-stage, a phone rings: a fax grinds. This is a heartland of the late twentieth century, abreast of everything, and its own obsolescence ordained, its tastes and technologies doomed. Ruth is thirty-six, which sometimes seems rather old, and at other times nothing much at all. She has always been aware of the long view—perhaps uncomfortably so. Other people seem to live in the here and now; she is forever conscious of then, and when.

She says, “Have you ever heard my mum talking about that Somerset place where she was a small child.”

“On occasion,” says Peter.

The neutrality of this is an irritant. Veiled criticism? Indifference? But Ruth is now in pursuit of her own reflections. “No amenities. But a sort of paradise. Or is that just how we see childhood? Will Jess and Tom see this place like that, I wonder?”

Peter shrugs. He is not a man given to abstract consideration, unless for professional purposes. “The dear old Zanussi fridge? Of course it might be a collectible by then.”

“Aha!” says Ruth. “Potential investment. Maybe we should be laying down a few.”

Under the table, Peter’s foot has come across something. He bends down, finds a small plastic dinosaur and sets it alongside his place. “Some of these might be a better bet. Dinky Toys have gone through the ceiling.”

“What are Dinky Toys?”

“Miniature cars, buses, fire engines…Correct in every detail. Rubber tires that came off. They were still around in our day, just.”

“I was a girl,” says Ruth. “They didn’t reach me.”

Peter is examining the dinosaur. “Where did this come from?”

“I have no idea. Toys simply appear. Self-propagation, I sometimes think. My mum used to make her own when she was a child—clothespeg dolls.”

“China by origin, would be my guess.” Peter has got up, and is now rummaging in one of the toy bins.

“And stuff out of the hedges. She used to show me how—poppy heads and dandelion clocks and seed pods. I loved it.”

Peter now has an ichthyosaurus and a tyrannosaurus rex. He returns to the table, lines them up with the stegosaurus. “The global market. Kids have the same gear right around the world.”

“You can make a whistle out of a thick hollow stem. You cut a notch—no, two, I think…”

Peter has brought the toy bin over to the table. He extracts a Barbie doll. “I wonder if these are kitted out with regional variations. Burkas for the Saudi consumer?”

“Acorn cups for dolls’ tea parties,” Ruth is remembering. “And conkers, of course.”

Peter returns the Barbie and examines a small robot. “The thing would be to look at demand and supply. Does the manufacturer determine fashion, or do buyers lead the manufacturers?” He puts the robot into his briefcase, finishes his soup and pours wine for them both.

“You can’t take that,” says Ruth. “Tom will go spare.”

“A few hollow stems should keep him happy.”

Ruth shoots a cool glance, before clearing plates, placing quiche and salad on the table. They resume eating.

Ruth says, “Tom is going to be a man who drives a rubbish truck when he’s grown up, he tells me. What were you going to be when you were four?”

“Governor of the Bank of England.”

“That’s not true, is it?” It occurs to Ruth suddenly that perhaps Peter never was four, that he arrived fully fledged, with a calculator in his hand, at about twenty-five. His parents have seldom referred to his childhood, she realizes; they are a reticent couple who live in Amer-sham and seldom visit, finding London unsettling.

“No.” He fills his glass, waves the bottle in her direction.

She shakes her head. “Is there anything you’d like to be?”

“What’s all this about?”

“Nothing,” says Ruth. “Just wondered.”

Peter frowns. “Am I measured and found wanting?”

“Dear me, no. Idle speculation, that’s all.”

“Not something I much go in for,” says Peter.

“I know. Very wise. Coffee?”

Summer in Devon. High summer. Bucket and spade time; combine harvester time; picnic and wasp time; traffic jam time. The motorway has discharged rivers of metal into the resorts, the caravan sites, the bed and breakfasts—cars piled high with cases, rucksacks, body boards, bikes, buggies, complaining children. These spill out over the landscape, homing in on some chosen target. Peter and Ruth, with Jess and Tom, are in the red Datsun, homing upon a farmhouse tucked away up a lane that you can’t find unless you have done so before, where Molly and Sam await them for a weekend of extended family life.

Up and down the land, thousands of such weekends are being spent. Intergenerational weekends. Parents and children and parents-in-law and children-in-law and grandparents and grandchildren. Step-parents and step-children. Step-grandparents such as Sam. Molly and Sam, Ruth and Peter, Jess and Tom. It is Jess and Tom who will be principal beneficiaries of these days, since most of the time is dedicated to their entertainment. There will be a trip to the beach, another to a Farm Center, they will be exquisitely fed, they will be played with and listened to. Since they know that this is their due, they will accept every thing as such, and make further demands when any spring to mind.

Molly thinks: Ruth has got thinner; so much
stuff
they’ve brought; will the children eat cassoulet? Is it still fish fingers and chicken nuggets? I should have got some videos.

Ruth thinks: she looks older, suddenly; did I bring any Calpol? I must make notes for the
Observer
piece; will the mobiles work here?

Sam listens to the engine of their car, as they come down the lane, and does not like what he hears. Not firing right. He’ll have a shufti under the bonnet at some point, if that’s okay with Peter.

Peter unloads his children, the bags, a box of wine. He would prefer to be elsewhere. Nothing personal, no criticism—just, this is not his scene.

On the beach, the children bale out a rock-pool with buckets. They scamper back and forth. Sam builds a sand castle, with great artistry; it is the Taj Mahal of sand castles. Molly’s leg is hurting; she has walked too far. She watches Ruth, who sits staring at the sea. Peter is reading newspapers. He bought an armful on the way here and reads, apparently, every page of each.

Tom stumbles into the sand castle, the Taj Mahal, which collapses.

Molly and Ruth sit in the garden, watching the children, who are appreciating the swing that Sam has fixed to a branch of the apple tree. Sam is out in the lane, tinkering with the Datsun. Peter is indoors, with his laptop.

Ruth says, “I’ve got this plan. I want to go to Crete.”

“To see…?”

“Yes. To see where it happened. Where Matt…” She always thinks of him as Matt. You cannot call someone of twenty-nine grandpa.

“Was killed.” Molly pronounces, where Ruth stood back. “I’ve thought of doing that. I was too craven, I think. There’s a cemetery. So when is this to be?”

“I don’t know. It’s just something in the pipeline. I suppose you wouldn’t…?”

Molly shakes her head. “My bloody leg. I don’t do flights anymore. And I’d be a drag. Can’t walk far.”

Ruth scowls. Her—a drag? That it should come to this. “I know. Okay.”

“That letter,” says Molly. “The one his friend wrote to my mum. You’ve seen that.”

“I was going to ask—can I have another look?”

“Take it back with you.”

There is a small commotion; the children are squabbling on the swing. Ruth gets up, arbitrates, returns. “Sibling stuff,” she says. “Neither you nor I know about that. One has been everything else—mother, partner, etc. Daughter.”

“Grandmother,” says Molly thoughtfully. “That’s a turn-up for the books, let me tell you.”

“Sorry.”

“Your day will come. Oh dear—she’s hitting him again.”

There is further arbitration. Molly stumps to the kitchen and returns with biscuits. The children subside.

“I saw your piece on in vitro fertilization. Interesting.”

“Ah.”

“And the one on surrogate pregnancy. You seem to have escaped from lamp shades and cutlery.”

“Sometimes,” says Ruth “I think of jumping ship.”

Molly stares, alarmed. “You what?”

“Doing something quite different. Chucking this in. Becoming a…oh, anything. A beekeeper. An upholsterer. A person who runs a farm shop.”

“I don’t know about upholstery,” says Molly. “You were never much good with a needle.”

Ruth shrugs. “Anyway…all that is also in the pipeline, merely.” She pauses. “One should always consider change, no?” She looks intently at Molly.

From down the garden there comes a wail. Jess is in outrage. “M-u-u-m! He’s
looking
at me!”

Molly says to Sam, “They never touch each other, she and Peter. They don’t
say
much to each other.”

Ruth and Peter pack up the car, the children. A practiced process—she does this, he does that. It requires little or no communication. Presumably.

Molly and Sam stand waving.

Sam says, “I cleaned his spark plugs for him. Filthy.”

Molly sighs. “
I
don’t know.”

“What don’t you know, my love?”

“I don’t know about other people. I don’t know about my own daughter.”

One day, Ruth knew that she did not love her husband any more. Much of the time, she did not even like him. They had become two people who lived in the same house, had shared responsibilities and interests in the form of Jess and Tom, but who no longer much cared for each other’s company. Because they were a man and a woman, they had sex; they had always done so, it was expected, it would have been odd not to do so. Each time, both strove for satisfaction, and found little.

Eventually, Ruth said it. “Shall we not bother?”

Peter shrugged. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked. He reached under the pillow for his pajamas, put them on, took his spectacles and his book from the bedside table, and left the room. Ruth heard the spare room door close.

The next day, she confronted the absence of love, or anything resembling love. In another age, this unexceptional marital situation would simply have been a grim reality; you would have lived with it as best you could till death you did part. In the late twentieth century, that was not really an option; the system supposed otherwise. There was every provision for the ending of a marriage. You sat down and talked about it, or you fought about it, the wheels were set in motion, the law got busy, and in due course the situation was resolved. There was no need for two people whose passion had frozen to remain under the same roof.

Ruth thought about change. Nothing is forever; possibly nothing should be forever. But change is a slippery concept. Some change just happens; children grow, become different people, friendships slacken or intensify. Above all, the world turns; the backdrop is a moving screen—an impervious chain of events, something new shouted from the newspapers, the television, different faces, different places. There is no saying, “Hold it! Let’s keep things the way they are”—nor would you want to, given the circumstances. Perhaps change is the triumph of hope over expectation. Whatever, it colors the days, the months, the years. We go with its flow.