Keeping Secrets (20 page)

‘It was this morning,' said Hettie. ‘I told you she'd drop it.'

‘I didn't drop it, it was an
accident
!' Annie screamed, and ran into the house, slamming the kitchen door.

‘Oh, Hettie!' Alice snapped, getting up and going after her. ‘Do leave her alone. All right, Annie, I'm coming, let's find you a clean nightie.'

When she had gone, Tony finished his beer and pulled the salad bowl towards him. ‘Well, well,' he said to Hettie, helping himself. ‘Isn't family life delightful? Has it been like this all day?'

‘I don't think so,' said Hettie. ‘I think it was quite a nice day, really. Do you want some bread?'

‘Yes, but I'll cut it, thanks.' He sliced off a wedge, and began to butter it. ‘“And how was your day, Daddy?” “Fine, thanks fer asking.”'

‘I was just going to ask. Did the judge notice the smell?'

‘What smell?'

‘The milk.'

‘Oh, no; no, he didn't, he had too much else to think about.' He took a big bite of the bread. ‘Actually, I had a horrible day today, and so did everyone else.'

‘Why? Because it was so hot?'

‘Yes, but also because the boy I was looking after got sent to prison for a very long time.'

‘How long?'

‘Five years.'

‘That's not very long.'

‘It is when you're eighteen.'

‘I thought you were going to say about a hundred, or a thousand or something.'

‘No.'

Hettie was silent. Then she said: ‘What did he do?'

‘He stole a lot of things.'

‘You mean he was a burglar.'

‘Yes.'

‘But burglars should go to prison, shouldn't they?'

‘It depends. Sometimes punishing people makes them worse, not better. It makes them angry and unhappy. Sometimes it's better to give people something better to do than steal things, or sit in prison.' Tony yawned. ‘Anyway, this is a big conversation for a small person. What have you done today?'

‘I can't remember.'

‘Hettie!' Alice was leaning out of an upstairs window. ‘Come and brush your teeth, it's late now.'

‘Coming.' She looked at Tony, who had taken off his glasses, and was rubbing his eyes. ‘I wish you didn't work all the time.'

‘So do I. Never mind – off you go, and I'll come up and read in a few minutes.' He put his glasses back again and patted her as she went past. ‘Run, rabbit.'

‘I wish we
had
a rabbit.'

When she had gone, Tony finished eating, and pushed his plate away. He stretched, and walked round the garden with his glass of beer, hearing the voices of other families, and the spit of sausages on the barbecue, a few doors down. He saw again the face of Jason Hanwell, black, sweating, expressionless, as he was given his sentence and taken down, and heard the shouts from the gallery, where his parents and brother had been sitting for three days.

‘Daddy! We're ready!'

Hettie and Annie were leaning out of their bedroom window, waving a book.

‘Okay, I'm just coming.'

Upstairs, he stepped over strewn clothes and toys, finding the girls in bed, Annie already curled up, sucking her thumb. Hettie was propped up against the pillow; Alice was picking up socks and pants.

‘Okay? I'll go down and put the coffee on. Goodnight, you two.' She bent over each bed. ‘Straight to sleep after the story, all right? See you in the morning.' She went out, and down the stairs, and Tony perched himself on the chair between the beds.

‘Right then, what have we got tonight,
War and Peace?
'

‘I want this one,' said Annie pushing a worn copy of
Spot's Birthday
at him.

‘Again?'

‘I like it – I like opening the flaps.'

‘I know you do. All right. What about Hettie?'

‘The next chapter, of course.' She held up
Charlotte's Web
, taken out of the library last week. ‘Wilbur is going to be
killed
, if Charlotte doesn't think of something.'

‘How could I have forgotten? Okay, let's have
Spot
first …'

When he had finished reading, he got up and drew the curtains. They were the curtains Alice and Hilda had had in their room when they were children, faded blue cotton with a pattern of pandas and bamboo. Drawn, with the summer evening sky still light, they softened the room with shadows, but did not darken it.

‘All right now? Everyone happy?' He bent to kiss them in turn. ‘Goodnight, Hettie. Goodnight, Annie, and try not to wake us up, there's a good girl.'

‘I can't help it.'

‘Well, try.'

She put her arms round his neck. ‘Will you ask Mummy to come up?'

‘No. Mummy's tired. We'll see you in the morning, if not before.' He disentangled himself and went out, leaving the door ajar. ‘Sixpence for the first person to go to sleep.'

‘There's no such thing as a sixpence,' said Hettie.

‘What a world we live in.' He went downstairs, finding Alice in the garden again, the table cleared and the coffee made and waiting.

‘You're wonderful.' He slid along the bench beside her. ‘What sort of day?'

‘All right.' She poured out the coffee. ‘You?'

‘Not all right. I was telling Hettie – Jason Hanwell got five years.'

‘Who?'

‘Alice …' He sighed. ‘The case I've been on all week, remember?'

‘Sorry – I just forgot the name, that's all. Did he? Poor Tony, after all that work.'

‘Poor Jason.'

‘What do you mean, you were telling Hettie?'

‘We had a brief discussion on the demerits of the prison sentence. She seems to think he got his just desserts.' He stirred his coffee, to cool it. ‘Why is she getting on your nerves?'

‘I don't like her being so superior with Annie. I'm not sure I like you treating her like a grown-up, either – discussing your work and all that. She's barely six.'

‘And sometimes I think you're letting Annie go on being a baby for too long,' said Tony equably. ‘So there we are.' He picked up his coffee cup. ‘Do you mind if I take this upstairs? I've got a mountain to do by tomorrow.'

‘Oh, Tony …'

‘Never mind about the washing-up – I'll do it before I come to bed.'

‘It's not the washing-up, I can do it. I just wanted to talk, that's all.'

‘About?' He took a sip and yawned.

‘Anything.' She rested her head against his shoulder. ‘We hardly seem to see you these days. We haven't even had a holiday.'

‘I know, I'll try. We'll get away before next term, I promise, even if it's only for a few days.'

‘We could even go once term has started,' said Alice. ‘It's not the end of the world, is it? And you need a holiday more than anyone.'

‘Okay, we'll talk about it properly at the weekend.' He drank his coffee and poured another cup. ‘Sorry, Alice, I must get on. Was there anything else on the agenda?'

She shook her head. ‘Not really.'

‘Meaning something in particular.'

‘Just – perhaps I baby Annie because I'm still feeling broody, that's all.'

‘Oh, God.' He pulled a face so comical that she had to laugh. ‘Please, no. It must be Hilda. Is it Hilda? When's it due?'

‘Early August. I think she's leaving work this week.'

‘And how is she?'

Alice shrugged. ‘All right, I think. Organised.'

‘And who's going to look after her? Is Stephen going to be with her when it's born?'

‘I don't know, do I? It'll probably come in the middle of the night, when he's in Norfolk.'

‘Poor Hilda.'

Alice said nothing.

‘If it hadn't been for Hilda,' said Tony, getting up, ‘we wouldn't even have met. She was the one who made you go to the picnic, remember?' He pushed his glasses up on his nose. ‘I'll see you later.'

By the last day of term many of the students had already left, and coming out of the bursar's office into the canteen Hilda found only the pensioners from the Small Gardens class. They sat smoking and drinking tea, plants brought in from home on the tables in front of them, ailing begonias and geranium cuttings. Hilda tucked her papers into her bag and went up to the counter.

‘Can I have a large orange juice, please?'

‘You can, my love.' The woman behind the counter was greying and motherly, wearing a green overall. She poured Hilda's drink from the machine behind her and passed it across. ‘Isn't this weather something else? I should think you'll be glad to stop work. The heat must be killing you.'

‘It is,' said Hilda, counting out change. ‘There, thank you.'

‘When're you due?'

‘First week of August.'

‘Ah, lovely. Hope it goes all right for you. You'll bring him in to show us, won't you?'

‘Oh, yes,' said Hilda ignoring the automatic ‘he'. She took the juice and went slowly over to sit by a window. Last night she had been out for a meal with everyone in her department, coming home late with a head unaccustomedly full of wine and an armful of presents for the baby. This morning she still felt tired and unexpectedly flat and, looking through the wire mesh to the car park, she saw two of her students from the Information Technology course wander through, holding hands, and heard herself give a long sigh. This won't do, she thought. In an hour and a half I am meeting Stephen for lunch in Bloomsbury; I must be pleasantly persuasive, not melancholy. Stephen dislikes tears these days, particularly in public.

Since he had returned from Italy, and the summer went on, Hilda had grown increasingly and unwillingly accustomed to meeting him on neutral territory – in cafés and restaurants and pubs near wherever he was working, and then saying goodbye. In the old days, what seemed now like the old carefree days, she might on a free afternoon have met him in a pub overlooking the canal in Camden, waiting until he came out of the office, but they would almost always have gone home together. Recently, he seemed to have little need to be in Camden, and much more in Norfolk; when he did come down he was liable to be summoned by unpredictable clients to far-flung places all over London, where it wasn't always easy to meet. Last night, when he was supposed to be coming over late, he had rung from a phone box near James's house, where he had been staying for two days.

‘I wish I could come,' he said, ‘but we've got so much on it's hardly worth it. I've got to be up early to meet a contractor on site just near here.'

Hilda yawned. ‘Never mind, I'm almost asleep anyway. But you're coming tomorrow?'

There was a pause. ‘Darling, I'm really sorry, but I've got to get back tomorrow. Could you come and meet me for lunch? I've got to collect some stuff from the AA in Bedford Square. We could meet in that little place near the British Museum, do you remember it?'

‘I remember it,' she said coolly, with a miserable sensation of everything beginning to go wrong. ‘But there seems to be hardly any time for us at all these days. I thought things were slack in the summer.'

Not, apparently, this summer. They made their arrangements and said goodbye without affection…

Hilda drank her orange juice, and looked through the maternity leave papers in her bag. The woman covering for her next term had been appointed, with a permanent job in another college to go to after Christmas; Hilda looked forward to coming back in the new year. To stay at home all day with a baby, then a toddler, as Alice had done – she could not imagine it, and remembering the complacency of some of the mothers she had met at Alice's house in the past, their whole world shrunk to the world of a single infant, she did not want to. It was the child she was looking forward to, the daughter and companion.

She finished her orange juice and got up, passing the pensioners on her way out, who nodded and smiled. My child will have no grandparents, she thought, not for the first time. Stephen had a mother, elderly and frail, living in Southwold: it was hardly likely that they would ever meet.

When she went outside the sun was dazzling, and so hot that the uneven tarmac in the forecourt had begun to bubble up in soft lumps. She went out of the gates and turned to walk up towards Church Street, where she was catching the 73 to Bloomsbury – no point in taking the car all the way down there and trying to find somewhere to park, although the heat was already making her feel lightheaded. She walked slowly along the burning pavements, past dusty roses and hollyhocks in small front gardens, and wished she had worn a hat.

At the top of Bloomsbury Street Hilda got off the bus and walked up towards the turning to the British Museum. The street was full of tourists, strolling beneath the plane trees, stopping at ice-cream vans, and for the first time she began to feel as if she were on holiday – more than that, on leave, with five long months before she need even think about work. She pictured herself with the baby in a sling, wandering on autumn days through the rooms of the Hayward and the Tate.

It's going to be lovely, she thought, as she came to the wide open gates of the museum, where visitors and pigeons swarmed at the top of the steps, and she stood at the zebra crossing, waiting for a gap in the traffic. A group of schoolboys, probably sixth-formers, stood on the island, with two middle-aged teachers.

‘Everyone here? Where's Baldry?' ‘Must be still on the train.' Near the boys was a party of French students, immaculate in pale sports shirts and well-cut cotton trousers; beside them the English boys looked not so much scruffy as unconsidered. The traffic slowed and halted; Hilda crossed, passing them, and went down Museum Street, pausing to browse among the sun-warmed second-hand bookstalls outside the shops. But the heat here, without the shade of the plane trees, was intense, and the words on the yellowing pages began to blur. The little network of streets between here and the restaurant where she was meeting Stephen was filling with office workers coming out in the lunch hour; Hilda made her way carefully through them, hoping that she wasn't going to faint.