Keeping Secrets (12 page)

Oh, no, thought Alice, of course not. Of course you wouldn't. She said: ‘It was planned, then?'

‘Yes.' Hilda raised an eyebrow, self-mocking. ‘Can you imagine me doing anything I hadn't planned?'

‘No,' said Alice truthfully, ‘I can't. And – does Stephen … does he manage to get to London at the moment?'

‘When he can.' And then Hilda's luminous expression changed, the shutters coming down, and Alice was silent again. She looked at her sister, long navy legs stretched out before her, and thought: I've been in your shadow all my life, and having babies was the one thing that made me human, the one thing I thought you'd never do. Or even want to do. I shouldn't be upset but I am, I'm devastated. You're on my territory – more than that: it feels as if you're taking away from me the only thing that has made me real. I never felt real before. She saw Hilda's hand move as the baby inside her moved, and thought, as she had been thinking for weeks, but with real fervour now: I
must
have another one, just one more. Is that wanting too much?

Hilda said: ‘Do you disapprove so deeply, Alice? You really shouldn't.' She looked round at the familiar room, at the boxes of toys, the blue jug of daffodils on the mantelpiece, and at Hettie, down in her corner with her bears. ‘After all,' she said lightly, ‘You've got everything now.'

Have I? thought Alice. Almost everything.

‘I suppose it must seem like that. I expect you think I've got too much.'

‘Of course I don't,' said Hilda, although, in truth, it was hard sometimes not to feel that Tony had handed it all to Alice on a plate. But even so – why shouldn't she have it all?

‘It used to be you,' said Alice, ‘disapproving of me.' That's why I never told you anything, you would never have understood. I was mad long before they took me into hospital, mad like Blanche Dubois: brittle, on edge, in pieces, using men like a drug, hating all of it. All of it!

‘Well … I was worried about you. You were so …' Hilda looked down at her sister, who was gazing, again, at the carpet, and said carefully: ‘But now it's better, isn't it? Alice? Are you happy now?'

Alice took a deep breath. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.'

‘But what?'

‘But … I suppose sometimes I feel I'm not good enough for Tony …'

‘Oh, don't be ridiculous!' And Hilda was suddenly as tart as she had been in the old days, when Alice had made weeping telephone calls from Oxford, and was told to pull herself together. There'll always be something, she thought now, feeling a rising exasperation. It's never quite right, is it? Here you are, with the nicest man you could wish for as your husband, two lovely children, a beautiful home – and
still
there has to be something to gnaw away at. ‘What on earth do you mean?'

Alice's pale face was scarlet. ‘Forget it.'

And I've done it again, thought Hilda: Alice over-reacts, and it's all my fault. I can hear Mother now: ‘Leave her, poor little thing!' God, she's a pain. But then she moved, and the baby kicked inside her again, an insistent fluttering beneath her ribs, and she was suddenly filled with tenderness and remorse. Perhaps I am too hard on her, she thought. Perhaps I always was.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, trying to sound warm again. ‘Tell me what you were going to say. If you want to. I promise I'll try to understand.'

Alice floundered. ‘I mean bed,' she said, blurting it out as if she had been standing for a long time on the edge of a precipice, and now could no longer stop herself from leaping. ‘I mean sex.'

Hilda looked at her, but Alice would not meet her eyes. ‘What about it?'

‘I mean, if you must know, that I don't enjoy it. I never have.'

Hilda, with images of an endless stream of Alice's lovers floating up from the past, said slowly: ‘Are you serious?'

‘Yes,' said Alice. ‘It leaves me completely cold. It always has.'

‘You mean – even with Tony?'

‘Even with Tony.' She was hugging her knees, her face buried.

‘But …' And now Hilda was floundering. ‘But why don't you tell him? I mean, Tony, of all men – he's not exactly insensitive, is he?'

‘No. Of course he isn't.'

‘Then why …'

Alice looked up, and gave an unconvincing smile. ‘It seems a bit late, somehow, after all these years.'

‘But …' said Hilda once more, and from upstairs there came a cry.

‘Mum-my!
Mummy
!'

From her corner Hettie said: ‘What does Annie want now?'

Alice scrambled to her feet. ‘I think perhaps she's sickening for something.' She looked flushed, tearful, uncomfortable, pushing back her hair.

Hilda said gently, quietly, mindful of Hettie, who was looking up at them: ‘Alice … you don't
have
to like it …'

‘Don't you like it, with Stephen?'

‘Yes, but …'

‘Well, then.'

‘
Mum-my!
'

Alice shook her head blindly. ‘I must go up to her. Anyway, it doesn't matter, Hilda, I don't want to talk about it any more, and please, just forget it. I don't even know why I said it …'

And she was gone, calling up the stairs: ‘Coming!'

Hilda and Hettie looked at one another.

‘Come over here,' said Hilda.

Upstairs, Alice found Annie sitting up in bed, scrunching the duvet cover. She looked as Alice felt – hot, flushed, miserable, damp fair hair clinging to her head. Alice sat down beside her.

‘What's the matter, darling?' She drew a breath, steadying herself. ‘Not very well?'

Annie shook her head crossly. ‘I want a drink.'

‘All right, come on.' Alice pulled back the duvet, and found the bed was soaking. ‘Oh, dear, poor Annie.' She picked her up and took her along to the bathroom; she took off her wet clothes and found a last pair of clean pyjamas in the airing cupboard.

‘I'm
shivering
!'

‘Sorry, darling.' Alice pulled on the pyjamas quickly, sponged Annie's face and gave her a drink. ‘Now, you sit there while I go and deal with the bed. I'll be back in a minute.'

She left her in her dressing gown on the bathroom chair, while she stripped the bed. Back in the bathroom, she put wet sheet and duvet cover in the machine. Annie watched her, swinging her feet.

‘All right now? Let's go downstairs, and see Hilda.'

Annie scowled.

‘D'you want to stay in bed? You can pop into Hettie's bed, if you like.'

‘Your bed. Your bed, and you read me a story.'

‘Annie, I can't stay upstairs, Hilda's visiting us. Come down, and we'll have a story by the fire.' Alice held out her hand.

Annie put up her arms. ‘Carry me. You carry me.'

‘You're such a heavy girl.'

‘Please.'

‘Oh, all right.' Alice picked her up and they went slowly downstairs, Annie's arms round her neck. In the hall, Alice saw an envelope on the front door mat.

‘Look, there's a letter.'

‘For me!'

But when they went along the hall and picked it up, Alice saw a child's uneven letters: ‘HETTIE'.

‘It's for Hettie, darling, I think it's a party invitation.'

‘
I
want to go to a party.' Annie reached for the envelope.

‘I know, never mind. Your turn next, perhaps. Soon be
your
birthday, Annie. Come on now.'

They went back along the corridor, towards the warmth and light of the sitting room. At the doorway, Alice stopped, hearing Hilda's voice. Hettie was not in her corner – when she looked round the door she saw her on the sofa, leaning against Hilda, a bear on her lap. Hilda had her arm round her, and was reading a story aloud.

They look absolutely right together, thought Alice, who had seen Hettie being read to by different people many times. With Hilda she looked as if she belonged: two dark heads, two pairs of navy tights. But it was more than that: Hilda's measured voice, her calm assurance, matched Hettie's own small-scale containment and self-possession. And again, as in the playground, a part of Alice was pleased and a part, even with Annie in her arms, felt uneasy – not only because of the exchange she'd just had with Hilda, but more than that: as if she were watching a scene which no one needed her to join, but which she wanted desperately to join.

Annie was wriggling, and Alice put her down: she ran to the fireside, plopping down on a cushion with her thumb in her mouth, wanting, now she was downstairs, to hear the story, no matter who was reading. Hilda and Hettie looked up, and Hettie smiled.

‘Hello, Mummy.'

‘Hello, darling.' Alice felt a rush of relief and tenderness –
my
daughter,
my
beloved – and then Hettie had turned back into the crook of Hilda's arm, listening again.

Alice came slowly into the room; she sat on the cushion on the other side of the fire, watching her sister and daughter, close and absorbed. It's just like when we were little, she thought. Still. Hilda and Father, always reading, looking up when I came in, wondering what I wanted.

‘Sit on your lap,' Annie commanded. She had got up from the other cushion and sat down on Alice, still flushed, and Alice wrapped her arms round her, resting her chin on the tousled hair. I thought I was cured, she said to herself in apprehension, almost in despair, watching the street beyond the firelit window begin to grow dark. I thought having the children had cured me of everything. I can remember lying in bed on Christmas night, after they'd gone to sleep, and I felt so peaceful and contented. I thought: this is who I am, and who I'll be for ever. How could I have imagined that?

Hilda turned the page and paused for a moment; she looked across the room at Alice, but Alice did not look back. And Hilda gave an inward shrug and went on reading, her arm round Hettie's small firm body, feeling with pleasure her unborn baby stir again.

Thus Alice, unsteady still. Thus Hilda, full of hope. And meanwhile Miriam, in her house in Norfolk, making her discoveries.

Nine-fifteen on a Monday morning; a long, tiled house set back from a winding lane. To the left the lane ran past farmland, to the right towards the road to Saxham, a village of flint and whitewashed cottages with pantiled roofs, a line of fifties council houses, a shop, a pub. The road meandered out of the village, bordered with hedges, reaching the long straight run to busier Woodburgh, where Miriam had her shop. On Mondays the shop was closed and Miriam had a day off, to make up for Saturdays, when she would rather have been at home. With the men gone, banging the front door – ‘'Bye, Miriam!' ‘'Bye, Mum!' – she had the house to herself.

She came downstairs a little unsteadily, her hand on the dark banister. A tall, once striking-looking woman in her late forties; with something of a blurred, vague air now, thick deep chestnut hair hennaed so the streaks of silver didn't show, dark brown eyes puffy first thing in the morning, soft freckled skin getting looser, slacker. Still beautiful – ‘
I
think you're beautiful, Mum,' – coming down the stairs in her silk kimono and flapping cotton slippers, and charming, always: to her customers, to Stephen's clients, whom she entertained for dinner when she had to, and to Jonathan's friends, who roared along the lane on motorbikes and came into the house in creaking black leather, barricading themselves upstairs in his bedroom, with his tapes.

But the charm did not quite conceal the vagueness, and the vagueness could not quite be accounted for, even by Miriam herself. Had she grown absent-minded and blurry because of the drink, or had she begun to drink because she felt out of touch with Stephen, and from there with everything? Had she been out of touch because she wasn't happy, or if she had been more in touch would she have been able to be happy? Such reflections were often to be found at the bottom of a glass, prompting her to pour another. She drank, always, alone, and made sure – she was sure she made sure – that Jonathan was among those who would be surprised to know she ever had anything more than a sociable glass or two at the dinner table.

There was a postcard for Jonathan, from Amsterdam, lying on the mat. Miriam bent to pick it up, with the letters for Stephen. The hall was broad and airy, running the width of the house, always cool – the sun rose at the front but there were tall woods across the lane, and it was the garden behind, where Stephen had built himself a studio, which soaked up the midday and afternoon sun. Miriam opened the front door because she believed in airing a place, and it calmed her to let in the fresh morning air and see the sun filtering through the trees, full of birdsong. Jonathan had already taken Tess out for a run, he did every morning; she came padding through from the kitchen now and flopped on to the mat.

‘Good girl. You stay there.'

She checked to see that the front gates were shut, for the road at the end of the lane was a potential killer: once the school bus and early traffic from the village to the town had gone, it was empty and sleepy except for the chugging tractors from the farm, but every now and then a car would appear from round the bend, coming much too fast, and no animal stood a chance. When Jonathan was small the gates had had to be padlocked. She worried no less about him now that he was seventeen; in fact, with the motorbike, she worried more.

She carried the letters and postcard into the kitchen, and put the kettle on for coffee; Stephen's letters she would take over to the studio later. She sat down, waiting for the kettle to boil, and turned over Jonathan's postcard. In the Easter holidays he had gone for three days to Amsterdam, with friends, to listen to the music in the clubs. The postcard was a black and white photograph of a spike-haired androgyne sticking out an over-sized tongue, touched in in a lurid pink. Miriam turned it over again. ‘
Dear Jonathan, I am thinking of you and the good times we had. Perhaps I shall come to England one day? Kisses from Marietta.
It was written in spidery, continental ballpoint, with a telephone number at the top. She propped it up against the cereal packet, tongue side out, then turned it over so that she did not have to look at it – but then it would be obvious that she had read it. Had Marietta spent much time wondering whether to send a casual postcard or sealed letter to Jonathan, who had not mentioned girls when he came back? Miriam drank her coffee, and pushed away images of smoky nightclubs and her sixth-form son, far from home, bedding – had he actually bedded? – large blonde Marietta in the small hours.