Daughters-in-Law (36 page)

Ralph turned away slightly, and hunched himself over his beer glass. He was silent for a minute or two, and then he said grumpily, not looking at Luke, “So what d’you think I should do?”

Luke picked up his drink and drained it, then set it down on the shelf with a bang.

“Go home,” he said.

Petra decided to travel by bus. It would, apart from all other considerations, be cheaper than a train, and the thought of driving in London, even with her renewed spirit of enterprise, made her heart fail a little. Ralph had sent her a check—thrust inside an envelope, with no note accompanying it, and her name and address typed on a computer-generated label—but she didn’t feel she could use it. She had put it under a jar of peanut butter on the table and hoped it would just somehow vanish in all the clutter, and not persist in troubling her. She didn’t want the money, and Ralph’s signature on the check upset her. She put the peanut-butter jar actually on his signature so that she didn’t have to look at it.

She had a few notes put away in a teapot they never used. She’d done that all her life, since she was small, squirreling money in pockets and boxes and pillowcases, because money had always meant an escape to her. You didn’t need much, but you needed enough on hand to get away, to obey your own instincts for flight, or food—or drawing lessons. And if they all went on the bus from Ipswich, Petra reckoned that, with Barney being only a baby, and choosing a less popular time of day for traveling, she could probably get them all there for under twenty pounds. And once they were there, she could figure out what to do next.

She wasn’t, especially, troubled by what to do next. In her present mood—a mood she recognized with relief, as the one that carried her resourcefully through her grandmother’s leaving and those dodgy but successful years of hand-to-mouth jobs and art school—she was pretty sure that she would have an idea when she needed one. It was like, she thought, being woken from a long sleep, and finding that, not only were you free to choose, but you had to choose, because no one was going to choose for you.

She took the teapot down from the shelf where it had been since they moved in, and blew the dust off it. There were fingerprints on the lid—hers, where she had opened it to put money in—and a rag of cobweb hanging down from the spout. She blew at it, took the lid off, and tipped it upside down over the table.

“Money!” Kit said appreciatively. He was in his Spider-Man T-shirt, ready for the journey, his digger in his Bob the Builder rucksack.

Petra counted the money.

“Sixty-three quid,” she said to Kit. “Plenty. Plenty for what we’re after.”

“In a rocket?” Kit said hopefully.

“No. In a bus. But a high-up bus, with steps.”

Kit considered this. He said, “Where are we going?”

Petra looked at him. He had never been a rosy-cheeked child, but the last week or so he had grown especially wan, and now, with his hair still unbrushed from the night before, and a smear of something or other from breakfast around his mouth, he looked pathetic indeed. It was tempting, she thought, so tempting, to bring a light to his face by telling him that she was making an attempt to get back to a place familiar to him, a place she should never have contemplated leaving, with Kit and Barney to consider, but, as the chance of failing seemed pretty considerable to her, it wasn’t fair to kindle even the smallest hope in him. So she went on moving the mess around the kitchen table—the check, though not visible, glowed through the layers like a burning coal—and said, with enough energy to make it sound like an adventure, “London!”

Kit said nothing. He picked up a spoon lying in front of him and began to bang it rhythmically against the nearest table leg. He had done that the day before, too, with a wooden spoon, when Steve had turned up, just before the boys’ bedtime, and tried to say sorry. Petra had at first considered saying sorry, too, as was her instinct, but then something else had taken over, something she had recognized from long ago, when she had first learned to stand up to her grandmother, and she would just stand there in her grandmother’s kitchen, mute and unresponsive, refusing either to engage or to give in.

Kit had been, at first, excited to see Steve, had rushed forward, his mouth still full of his supper. But Barney remembered. Barney remembered the scene in Steve’s kitchen, and twisted round in his high chair to hold his arms up to Petra, begging to be lifted up, away from whatever turbulence Steve might have brought with him this time. Petra picked him up, and held him, and said nothing. She stood, with the table
between her and Steve, and Barney in her arms, and without speaking held her ground. And Kit faltered. He paused, inches away from Steve, and looked back at his mother. Then he retreated, step by step, until he was within clutching distance of her nearest leg. He held on to her jeans, still chewing.

“I’m saying I’m sorry,” Steve said.

Petra nodded.

“I don’t know what got into me,” Steve said. He spread his hands. “Suppose I—well, I suppose you mean more to me than I thought you did. I—I shouldn’t have called you names. Not those names. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Petra shifted Barney a little on her hip. She put her hand on Kit’s head. Very faintly, she could feel the vibration of his moving jaws through her palm.

“I’ve come to apologize. I’ve come to ask you to forgive and forget.”

Petra said nothing.

“Please,” Steve said. He made an effort. “
Please
.”

There was a silence. Then Petra said, without heat, “Forgive, yes. Forget, no.”

“But—”

“If it’s in you, it’s in you,” Petra said. “You’d do it again.”

“I swear—”

“I’m not interested,” Petra said.

“
Please
.”

She shook her head.

“Just a month. Just a week more—”

“I’m not interested,” Petra repeated.

“So what’ll you do?”

Petra said to Kit, “Spit it out. You can’t keep on like that. Spit it in the bin.”

Kit turned towards the wastebin. Petra looked at Steve.

“Good-bye, then.”

“Don’t do this—”

Behind her, Kit spat vigorously.

“You mean it,” Steve said.

Petra nodded again.

“Okay.” He looked at Barney. He bent sideways to see Kit, still occupied by the waste bin. “Bye, boys.”

Barney put his face into Petra’s neck.

“Say good-bye, Kit,” Petra said.

Kit looked up.

“Bye,” he said. He trailed back to his place beside Petra, extracting a wooden spoon from the muddle on the table in front of them. He began to bang it rhythmically on the nearest table leg.

“I’ll miss you—”

“Bye,” Petra said.

“Have a . . . good life. Hope things work out—”

He retreated to the outside door, and stood on the worn mat, holding the handle. He said awkwardly, “I meant . . . all the good stuff. I did. I meant it.”

He opened the door and paused, waiting for Petra to say something. Kit went on with his spoon on the table leg, bang, bang, bang, as if he was signaling something.

Petra didn’t take her eyes off Steve, and she didn’t speak. “Take care,” Steve said, and left.

When the door had closed behind him, and his footsteps had retreated down the cement path away from the house, Petra bent down to insert Barney back into his chair. Then she put a hand on the wooden spoon.

“Enough, hey?”

She did it again now with the cereal spoon.

“Enough, big guy.”

Kit held on to the spoon, glaring at Petra.

“Listen,” Petra said, “listen.” She bent towards Kit. Maybe
it was okay to take a small gamble, offer just a little promise of better things.

“Who lives in London?” Petra said.

Kit thought. He pressed the spoon into one cheek, pushing his mouth sideways.

“Spider-Man?” he suggested.

Petra smiled at him.

“Mariella,” she said.

Mariella had been amazed. She was not allowed to open the front door to anyone, but she was allowed to drag one of the hall chairs across to the door, in order to stand on it and be able to see, through the fish-eye spy-hole at adult height, who was standing on the step outside. She would then, ignoring the intercom, call penetratingly down to her mother, and Sigrid would come up to open the door to visitors either amused or disconcerted by how Mariella had described them. But this time, Mariella could hardly believe what she was seeing, to such an extent that she could scarcely speak, but merely stood there balancing on her chair, and staring at Petra and the boys, huddled on the doorstep outside and gazing at her with the expressions you saw on African babies when there were videos about world poverty in assembly at school. Then she’d started shrieking, she was shrieking, “Mummy, come, Mummy,
come
, it’s them, it’s them, it’s
them
!” and Sigrid had come running up the stairs from the kitchen, where she’d been starting to get supper, and she’d peered through the fish-eye too, and gasped, and then the door was flung open and there was a great confusion of arms, and bags, and crying, and Kit wanting her to look at his digger as if she hadn’t seen it a million times before, and Barney refusing to let go of Petra for an instant and Sigrid saying, “There, there,” and, “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” and then they were all downstairs in the kitchen, and the boys were
beginning to laugh, and shout a bit, and then Edward came home and all the confusion started again. It was, Mariella made a note to tell Indira on Monday, just
crazy
.

But it was happy, too. Everything got noisy and sticky very quickly, but it felt right, Mariella thought, it felt really okay to have everyone there, and spilt yogurt on the table, and Petra sitting on the floor as if she knew the house really well, instead of being practically a stranger in it, and Edward giving her a glass of wine and ringing Luke and Charlotte to come over too, and Charlotte arriving with a bag of pick-and-mix sweets which weren’t healthy at all, being all sugar and chemicals, but which were so yummy all the same, and Charlotte sat on the floor, too, and Sigrid started cooking pasta for everyone, and it suddenly felt like a party and it just got better and better until Edward said above the racket, really loudly, “I’m ringing Ralph,” and it was like someone had shut a door or popped a balloon or said it was bedtime when it really, really wasn’t—and everything stopped.

“Please,” Petra said from the floor.

Edward looked at her. He was standing, holding a wine-glass. She was below him, holding Barney.

“Please no, or please yes?” he said.

“Please yes,” Petra said.

“Good,” he said. “Good.” He looked quite stern. “I wouldn’t have accepted please no.”

Mariella glanced at her mother. Sigrid was looking at Edward. Mariella knew, from long experience, that her father’s expression was one he wore when he was being the responsible eldest son of the family, the one who had to listen on the phone when Granny rang up with a problem. And when her father got tense, her mother usually got tense too, and Mariella emphatically didn’t want anyone getting tense when everything was being so fun, and, more important, being so fun right here
in this kitchen, which was normally so dull. So she watched while her mother began to walk across to her father, obviously to say something to him quietly, and before she got there Luke looked up from fitting chestnuts out of Sigrid’s nut bowl into the bucket of Kit’s digger and said, “I’ll go and get him.”

“But—” Edward began.

Luke stood up.

“Much the easiest. I’ll call him and say I’m picking him up from work for a beer. And if he’s already out having one, I’ll go and find him.”

“Don’t tell him why,” Charlotte said from the floor. She had now enticed Barney onto her knees. He was eating dolly mixtures out of her cupped hand.

“Wouldn’t dream of it—”

Edward said, “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“But—”

“I’m sure,” Luke said, “I’m doing it.” He bent and aimed a kiss at the top of Charlotte’s head. “I’m gone.”

Mariella looked at her father. He looked dazed, then he shook himself slightly and glanced at Sigrid. She was smiling. She held out her wineglass.

“More, please,” she said.

“I’m fagged out,” Ralph said to Luke.

He had gone down to the deserted reception area to let Luke into the building, through all the security systems, past all the empty desks where people were free to go home because their work didn’t depend on the American market, which still had four or five hours’ life left in it yet.

Ralph thought he might get away by nine, nine thirty anyway, and then he’d probably mooch off with a few of the others and have some drinks, and a Chinese, maybe, and get back
to his room—his landlord and girlfriend had gone to Barcelona for a city break—when he’d be too past it to do anything but crash out. And then here was Luke, saying come to Ed’s, come on, come on, turn that thing off, and come to Ed’s.

“Why?” Ralph said. “I’m fagged out.”

“It’s Friday, man. Friday night is downtime night. Sigrid’s cooking pasta.”

Ralph began, very slowly, to close the programs on his computer.

“I don’t want any lecturing—”

“Nobody will lecture you.”

“I don’t want—”

“Bro,” Luke said, “stop mingeing and
come
. You need time off and feeding. It’s an impulse supper at Ed’s and we want you there.”

“We?” Ralph said suspiciously.

“We. Char and me. Ed and Sigi. Put your jacket on.”

In Luke’s car, driving up to Islington, Ralph told Luke about his week. He said that one of his clients was someone really tricky, a right fucker no one else wanted to touch, but with a five-hundred-million-dollar turnover, so worth getting to grips with, and everyone on the team thought that Ralph was the man for a tricky client as he was so tricky himself. Luke let Ralph talk. It was a boring story, but it kept Ralph’s mind occupied and, if he just grunted now and then, he wouldn’t be in any danger of giving the game away. And if that happened, if Ralph got even a hint that he was being cornered, coerced, presented with something he couldn’t escape dealing with, then he might just bolt. Luke thought that he couldn’t actually relax until he’d got Ed’s front door shut behind him, with Ralph safely inside.