Keeping Secrets (13 page)

The sink was full of washing up from last night; on Sundays she let it go, knowing that on Mondays she was there to put the house in order, make it a home. That above all: whatever else was wrong, she could have one day, at the start of the week, in which to cherish the notion of herself as homemaker, her men needing her to make a haven, welcoming and warm, to come back to. Phrases like well-stocked cupboards, clean dry clothes, freshly swept and dusted had at some long-ago story-book time gone deep into Miriam's psyche, although she rarely brought them consciously to the surface.

She finished her coffee and got up, opening the window over the sink, which looked on to the fields, the long hedges bordering a cart track, and the glass door at the back, which led to the garden. The grass was still wet with dew; she drew in more fresh air, and began her tour of the house, where no one could disturb her.

Miriam had an uneasy relationship with solitude. In moments of unhappiness she craved it as a release from the need to keep up appearances, to be pleasantly convincing as the architect's wife: privileged, interesting, running a lovely home and her own small business, too. She was also afraid of it, feeling solitude slip into loneliness, rarely able to lose herself, or a sense of herself as a woman alone – as if she were being observed, usually by someone critical, walking through the quiet house, picking up Jonathan's scattered clothes, tapes and cricket things, putting them neatly away. Hard to confront exactly what this imaginary observer would wish her to be doing otherwise; she only knew that she sometimes, in fact quite often, inwardly rehearsed the externals of her life as if she'd been asked to give a potted biography to present to the outside world, and needed to make it sound as though she were accomplished and content.

Upstairs, she dressed, then made up the beds with clean linen. There were four bedrooms, two large at the front, two small at the back, on either side of a broad landing; Miriam had put a window seat at the front. They'd moved here on an autumn afternoon fourteen years ago, leaving a cramped Norwich flat so that Stephen could save money on studio rent and build up his practice from home. He had made his studio the large room across the landing from their bedroom. Jonathan had a room at the back, overlooking the garden, and the other small room was, Miriam hoped, soon to be occupied by another baby. In the meantime, they could use it as a boxroom. She'd watched the removal men struggle with Stephen's drawing board and plan chest round the bend in the stairs, and had visions of winter evenings spent sewing by the fire, with Stephen working up here. She would come up later with a cup of coffee for him, and run a bath; she would go to bed and read for a while, and presently he would join her. They would lie together, listening to the owls in the woods, the bark of a fox, while Jonathan slept, and then they would make love. The following year their second child would be born, and they would be a proper family.

The boxroom was still a boxroom, and within six months of their move Stephen had built a new studio out in the garden.

The removals van had gone at about four o'clock, rattling back to Norwich. They stood at the window of the little bedroom which was to be Jonathan's, watching him, down below in the overgrown garden, crouch on the path to examine a snail, then get up to run off again, making for a heap of old grass cuttings. No one had lived in this house for over a year; it needed a lot doing to it, and had been on the market for months before Stephen found it. The room smelt of dust and of being shut up for a long time; Stephen fiddled with the catch on the window frame and pushed up with a jerk. He ran his fingers down the side, examining the sash. ‘Rotten,' he said. ‘Or on the way. I should think every frame in the house will need replacing.'

Miriam leaned out. It hadn't rained for days and the air was warm and hazy, Indian summer weather, the garden laced with spiders' webs. There was a paved area, where straggling weeds poked through the cracks, before the grass began, and the old brick path ran through a gap in an unkempt hedge to a second, secluded part, planted with apple trees, pale with lichen. She waved to Jonathan who was coming through the gap. ‘All right? Having a good time?'

‘I found a long, long worm – come and see!'

‘In a minute.'

She looked over to the left. There was a path running down the side from the front of the house, and across the ragged hedges bordering their garden a cart track led from the lane to the fields of the neighbouring farm, just ploughed. The farmhouse itself was at the end of the track; she imagined they could get snowed in, in winter. As she watched, a tractor came bumping along from the lane; she saw Jonathan leap up at the sound and run to the hedge, peering through. Perhaps there were children on the farm; he could go and play in the haystacks. In the meantime, there was the donkey, whom they had met in the summer when they went for a walk down the lane after looking at the house. He was standing in a field under the trees, shaking his head to get rid of the flies; across the rough grass was a corrugated iron shelter. They hadn't had anything to give him, but Jonathan had pulled out a few blades of sweeter grass from the verge and thrust them through the gate.

‘Remember the donkey?' she said to Stephen, behind her. ‘We can go and visit him now, Jonathan will love it.'

‘Mmm.' He was pulling at a piece of browning flowered wallpaper, and a little heap of plaster pattered on to the bare boards. ‘God, I wonder if it's all this soft.'

Miriam looked out to the right, where a grey church tower rose beyond yellow trees. The village was a quarter of a mile away, with one shop, probably expensive, with postcards on the door advertising rabbits, garden tools and paraffin stoves. Miriam wondered how the people in the village would take to them all, if they'd known the old lady who'd died here for years and would view newcomers with caution. Well, Stephen could charm them, he could charm anybody. He'd charmed her into bed on their second meeting, and Jonathan had been the result. Where was Jonathan? She craned her neck and saw him, still by the hedge, talking to himself.

Stephen put his head out beside her. ‘Do you think we should put up safety bars?'

‘I suppose we should,' said Miriam. She looked down on to the stone slabs and straggling weeds, and pictured a small, spread-eagled figure, very still. ‘Ugh. Yes. And we must remember to keep this shut in the meantime.' She drew back her head. As usual, it had been Stephen, not she, who had made the serious suggestion – practical, sensible, anticipating. She would have worried and done nothing, or not thought until it was too late, hearing that sudden, leaden thump, then silence. She shivered. I'm an idiot, a careless fool; that's what could have happened. Then she thought: If I didn't have that streak in me, Jonathan wouldn't even be here. Other women use contraception, or make sure their partners do; I just closed my eyes and hoped. I suppose, of course, I was hoping for a baby.

Self-deprecating, unsure, even in her thirties, about relationships with men, Miriam did not allow herself to face the thought that perhaps it had been up to Stephen, too, to consider the consequences of nights of passion; that his practical, sensible nature, which when she found she was pregnant had made him ask her to marry him, might have kept them both out of trouble in the first place. Or perhaps his asking her to marry him had more to do with his age, his situation – an architect in a moderately successful partnership set upon becoming very successful in his own right. It surely had more to do with that, with needing a wife, after endless girlfriends, than with feeling. Certainly, it was not enough to do with love, at least not the way Miriam loved Stephen.

There was a part of Miriam which, once she had Jonathan, had settled down, had become secure and purposeful through his need of her. There was another part, vulnerable and uncertain, which motherhood had done nothing to diminish: if Stephen did not love her, and she was sure he did not, what was she worth? What was anything worth? It wasn't good to love anyone like that, it took too much out of you, and a stronger woman would not have allowed it; Miriam was not a stronger woman. And she stood, now, in an empty room in their new house, reproaching herself for a tragedy that had not happened – a little dead boy, lives ruined.

Stephen drew his head in from the window. ‘The garden's going to need a lot of work.' He sounded pleased, proprietorial, then saw her face. ‘Miriam? What are you thinking about?'

‘Nothing,' she said. ‘Let's go and have some tea.'

There was a sudden scream from the garden. ‘Mummy! Mummy!'

‘Oh my God.' She fled from the room, down the uncarpeted stairs, out along the passage to the back door. We left him alone too long, she thought, he's only a baby, typical of me to stand about worrying about nothing when all the time.… Outside, she found Jonathan howling his way towards the house, clutching his arm.

‘I got stung, I got
stung
!'

‘All right, darling, all right, come here.' She led him into the kitchen full of tea chests, trying to prise away the hand from the swollen, reddened arm. She was filled with visions of bee stings and allergies, hospitals too far to get to in time; not like Norwich, cramped but safe, with the doctor two roads away. Her hands were shaking: where was the first aid stuff, something she should have packed last, to make sure she could put her hand straight on it in an emergency. Instead, she hadn't a clue where it might be, had spent a week doing all the packing late at night and was too tired this morning to remember sensible things like that. And anyway, what did you do with stings? If it was a bee, and the sting was left behind, if it had been his eye, his mouth …

‘Stephen!'

‘I'm here, don't flap.'

‘
Dad-dy
!' A note, detectable even by Miriam in her panic, a definite note of the theatrical. The pain fading, the crisis past.

‘Let's have a look.' Stephen drew Jonathan to him, sat on the garden step with him on his lap. ‘Was it a whopper?'

‘I didn't see,' said Jonathan. ‘It just
came
at me.'

Stephen looked at the fading red. ‘I don't think it's a bee, do you?' he said to Miriam. ‘Just a nasty old wasp.' He kissed Jonathan's head. ‘A whopper of a wops. Shall we put some TCP on it? And a plaster?'

‘I don't know where the stuff is,' said Miriam. ‘I'm sorry.' A sudden inspiration. ‘I think soda bicarb is supposed to do something for stings – perhaps amongst the kitchen cupboard things …' She turned to look at the tea chests, the last-minute cardboard boxes. Where to begin? ‘If it's only a wasp it'll go down anyway, won't it? I'll put a cold poultice on.' She found a clean tea towel, soaked it under the tap, wrung it out and folded it. ‘Here, Jonathan, this'll help, let Daddy hold it on. Good boy.' She stood watching them, heads close together, Stephen making funny faces, Jonathan laughing. ‘I'll make some tea,' she said. ‘At least I know where that is.'

They sat with their mugs at the kitchen table, eating ginger biscuits, Jonathan still on Stephen's lap, the sting forgotten. Miriam yawned, leaning back in her chair. Outside, the sun was low, and the smell of grass, warmed all afternoon, came drifting through the open doors.

Her doubt and insecurity began to evaporate. If Stephen had sought out a house as large as this, where he would spend most of his time, with her at home, he must, too, be envisaging a settled family life, brothers and sisters for Jonathan, no longer feeling trapped – by a baby, by someone who loved him too much. A decision had been made, a life had to be lived. They'd be all right.

The Indian summer ended; by the middle of October they were building bonfires of the leaves which blew across the garden and down the lane. The tall trees creaked in the wind and it began to rain, heavily, for days at a time. Stephen had a contract with a housing estate on the outskirts of Norwich; he drove off on dark wet mornings to the site and came back on dark evenings. In between times he was making contacts, trying to get his name known in their village and in the others nearby, starting work restoring a barn for a local landowner, wanting it to be a showpiece. He spent evenings and much of the weekends either out or up in the studio, and began to complain that it wasn't light enough, even when the last of the leaves had fallen and the trees stood bare. The light faded early, and it began to get very cold, the wind sweeping across the flat, unprotected fields.

Miriam made occasional excursions to auctions and salerooms, Jonathan in tow, but mostly she was confined to the house. She stripped wallpaper, painted woodwork and waited for Stephen to have enough time to help. He found a local builder, Frank, who came and plastered, watched by Jonathan.

‘Can I do some of that?'

‘You can have a go if you like.'

When he left in his van Jonathan stood at the window, waving. The plaster was left to dry out but no paper was hung; when Jonathan had his nap Miriam painted the walls with cream emulsion. She listened to Radio Four all day and wondered if he was lonely. He was old enough to join a playgroup, but there was nothing here – until they were five, and bussed into the school beyond Woodburgh, the village children stayed at home with their mothers; they went with them to the shops and came home again to play in the garden or watch television; they all seemed to have brothers or sisters, and plenty of friends. Their mothers nodded to Miriam in the shops where Stephen had put up his card in the window, beside the rabbits and logs and paraffin stoves. Jonathan at first did not speak to the children, overcome by so many, in such a confined space, after the rambling emptiness of the house. After a while he began to say hello, and they said hello back, but nothing ever came of these exchanges – they stood munching crisps until their mothers took them out again, running down the wet lane in their boots and anoraks. ‘Mind – there's a car coming!' Miriam and Jonathan walked home under their umbrella, and when it cleared up went to visit the donkey.