Keeping Secrets (22 page)

‘Why didn't you go on up?' He unlocked the door of the building and they followed him inside.

‘Because no one answered the door, that's why,' said Jonathan.

‘James must have left early. Sorry, I forgot, he usually does on Fridays.'

He led them up the narrow flight of stairs to what was usually the dazzling white of the studio, where now the Venetian blinds were closed and the fans switched off. It was airless: James must have left hours ago. The boys went straight to the kitchenette – a sink and a little fridge behind white louvred doors – and gulped down water from paper cups. Except for half a packet of cheese and a limp cucumber the fridge, well-stocked when he'd last looked, was empty.

‘Sorry, boys.' He gathered up the stuff from his desk and snapped his case shut. ‘Let's go.' And since they'd had a drink there, and he wanted to get moving, and beat the rush hour, he'd taken them straight round to the car and driven away without stopping. Now that seemed like madness – they'd been out in the heat all day, perhaps Mike had really overdone it.

The cars ahead were moving again, sending up clouds of fumes and exhaust. They left the endless rows of houses behind and drove through a stretch of brown common. Jonathan reached forward and turned on the radio; rock music pulsed through the heat.

‘Do you have to have that on?' asked Stephen, after a few minutes.

‘Just a distraction. Mum never minds it.'

‘Well, I do. At the moment, anyway – especially if Mike's not feeling too good.'

Jonathan turned in his seat. ‘Mike? D'you mind this?'

‘It's okay.'

Stephen checked the mirror again: the boy was drumming his fingers, nodding his head to the beat. He sighed. ‘Well, turn it down a bit, anyway.'

‘What's the matter, Dad, getting old? You didn't mind on holiday.'

‘Well, we're not on holiday here,' snapped Stephen. ‘Now, turn the bloody thing down, okay?'

In silence Jonathan reached for the knob. They drove on in fits and starts without speaking, reaching at last a garage, where petrol fumes shimmered off the forecourt. They stocked up with mineral water and cans of Coke from, a fridge running low, and went back to the car. Inside, Jonathan switched off the radio; they all drank like men in the desert.

‘Everyone okay now?' Stephen eased out on to the road again.

‘Yes, thanks.' Jonathan looked at him; he ran his nails along his teeth in mock terror. ‘What about the Führer?'

Stephen patted his knee. ‘Sorry.'

‘It's doesn't matter.'

‘You can have it on again if you want.'

‘No, it's all right.'

The traffic was moving well now; air streamed in through the open windows. Stephen moved into the fast lane; they swept past dry open fields and dusty trees.

‘What're we doing this weekend?' asked Jonathan. ‘Have you got people coming?'

‘No,' said Stephen. ‘I've got to do a bit of work, but other than that I just want to flop. What about you – any plans?'

Jonathan yawned. ‘Not really. Might go into Norwich tomorrow night, there's a gig, isn't there, Mike?'

Silence from the back seat; he turned to look, and turned back again, grinning. ‘He's out of it.'

‘He hasn't got sunstroke, has he?'

‘'Course he hasn't. Mike's always out of it. Well, a bit, anyway.'

‘But you like him?'

‘'Course I do.'

They slowed, approaching a roundabout. Stephen said: ‘Mum okay?'

‘Think so. Same as usual. Why?'

‘No reason. She's not got anything on this weekend, has she? Apart from the shop.'

Jon shook his head. ‘Shouldn't think so – you're the socialite, aren't you, Dad?'

‘Mmm. I suppose so.' For a moment Stephen wondered if he were going to ask about Hilda. For a moment, a split second, he considered telling him. But Jon said nothing, yawning again, and the moment passed. They drove on; it grew cooler. After a while, when neither had spoken, Stephen glanced over at him. He had fallen asleep, too, dark head on graceful boyish neck turned to one side. After a day out in the London heat he looked sweaty and grimy, in need of a bath; he also looked very beautiful, and untroubled. Stephen turned his eyes back to the road, and put his foot down.

They came to the ring road outside Norwich just after seven; by a quarter to eight they were dropping Mike off in Woodburgh. He shambled up the path to his front door, looking like someone in need of help, but turned to wave at them, grinning, as the door was opened by a cross-looking sister in shorts.

They drove out of the town, past shut-up shops and tubs of geraniums, past the war memorial, out on to the long straight country road. The sun was not yet down behind the trees on the horizon, but even in this, the hottest July for decades, it was cooler up here than in London, or at least more bearable. It began to feel like a perfect summer evening, warm and still. Across to the left a combine harvester, working late, was throbbing along the edge of a cornfield; when they turned off on to the narrow road to Saxham, they saw rabbits. In the village, children were bicycling up and down; the usual old boys sat outside the Plough with their pints.

Stephen let out a long breath. ‘Thank God we're back.'

‘Poor Dad. You have a rest this weekend.'

They turned into the lane leading down to the house; it was caked and hard, from weeks of hot weather; they bumped past verges thick with cow parsley, and when they stopped at the gates and Jon got out to open them the air smelt summery and sweet. Miriam's car was in the garage; Stephen pulled up and turned off the engine. Behind him, Jonathan was closing the gates again.

‘Hello, Tess, hello, girl!'

Coming out of the garage with his case Stephen saw Jonathan bend down to hug her, kissing her greying head. ‘Good girl, good girl.'

The front door was open, the hall was cool and shadowy. They went inside, dropping their things, calling out.

‘Miriam?'

‘Hi, Mum!'

There was no answer.

‘She must be round the back,' said Jonathan.

They went down the passage to the kitchen, where the radio was on, and out through the garden doors. Miriam, in long cotton skirt and sleeveless top, was hosing the flowerbeds. She saw them, and smiled at Jonathan.

‘Good trip?'

‘Fine. I met Dad, we came back together. God, I think I'll get under that.'

He was pulling off his clothes, dropping shirt, shoes and trousers in a heap, running over the wet grass in his pants. Miriam turned the hose on him and he shrieked, raising his arms. ‘Brilliant! Come on, Dad.'

Stephen shook his head. He sank on to the wooden seat outside the kitchen doors and watched them, the fine spray gleaming in the evening sun, the water trickling down his son's long body, soaking his hair. Tess barked, racing round him.

‘That's enough,' said Miriam, after a few minutes. ‘Why don't you go and have a proper shower now? We can have supper out here.' She left the hose lying on the grass and came slowly up to the house, and the garden tap, turning it off. Water dripped from the shrubs and roses. Jonathan padded past her and Stephen, picking up his clothes, leaving wet footprints on the stones; Tess shook herself, and followed him inside.

‘Wipe your feet,' said Stephen. ‘And hers.'

‘Yes sir.' They could hear him humming in the kitchen, looking for a towel.

‘Miriam?'

‘Yes?'

‘Everything all right?'

‘Fine. How was London?'

‘Hot.'

‘Well, supper's cold. Are you going to have a shower, too?'

‘When he's finished. Come and sit down.'

‘In a minute. I'll just get Jon a towel.' She brushed past him, up the step to the kitchen; he could hear her opening a drawer, and she and Jon chattering easily together before he went upstairs. She did not come out again, and he went on sitting there, hearing her lay a tray with supper things, looking at the fresh wet garden, listening to the birds. With a part of him he was glad she had not come back, because it freed him from the sense he always had of her: wanting more than he wanted to give, waiting for him to reach out to her, as if he alone could make everything all right. Even so, he was, as always, glad to be back.

The sun slipped down in the endless Norfolk sky, blackbirds and thrushes sang in the apple trees. After supper he would go across to the studio and sort out what he had to do this weekend, perhaps listen to a concert. He yawned and stretched, hearing from the open window upstairs Jonathan in the bathroom, singing under the shower. He got up and began to walk round the garden, stretching his legs. He thought about Hilda, and the lingering kiss they had exchanged beneath the plane trees in Russell Square: between them, the baby had kicked against his ribs, beyond them the traffic roared.

Here it was peaceful and still. Walking round his garden, where Tess had reappeared and lay soaking up the last of the sun, he tried, as a cautious experiment, to imagine a time when he might not have all this to come back to.

‘And who is going to look after you, Hilda?'

Anya, from beneath the garden parasol, looked as if she were sitting for a painting, leaning forward on the uneven slatted table, elbows bare beneath rolled-up cotton shirtsleeves, teapot in front of her, straw hat on the seat beside her, next to a sleeping cat.

‘Who, for example, will drive you to the hospital? If Stephen is not in London?'

‘I expect I shall call an ambulance,' said Hilda, sipping her tea. ‘It's what most people do, isn't it?'

‘Most people,' said Anya, ‘even if they go into hospital by ambulance, have someone to be with them. You will be in labour …' She let the rest of the sentence trail away, leaving Hilda with imagined agony.

She put down her teacup and shrugged. ‘I'll be all right.'

‘You may not be all right. You may not want to be alone among strange doctors.'

Hilda did not answer. She had been lying on her bed, with the curtains drawn and the windows open, when Anya summoned her down for tea in the garden, as she did most days. In the interminable weeks between leaving work and now, less than a fortnight before the baby was due, she had received visitors – Stephen, two friends from college, Alice and the family back from ten days in Brittany – but had grown less and less able or inclined to leave the house. It was too hot, she was too heavy and tired. To come down here and sit beneath a shady parasol, listening to the sparrows, and to Anya, who until today had talked mostly about herself – her girlhood in Prague; the train which had brought her out of the city in the last days before the gates of the ghetto had closed; her meeting with her husband – it had been restful, a welcome distraction. As she listened, she sewed, feeling unusually domestic, stitching little cotton tops and pillowslips. In the evenings, as it grew cooler, Anya walked round the garden with the hose, sprinkling the drooping lupins and roses, although she left the grass to go brown.

‘It will recover, grass always does. One must not be wasteful with water.'

The cats followed, padding after the spray.

‘I can remember,' she said now, ‘with Liba. Of course, in those days it was unthinkable for the husband to be with you, but still, Josef was in the hospital, in the father's room. And he had come with me …' She broke off, shaking her head. ‘Birth in those days was terrible, it is different now, I am sure, with all these breathing exercises and injections. But still –' She tapped on the table with her teaspoon. ‘Hilda! How are you going to manage?'

Hilda looked at her. ‘I don't know.'

‘Your sister …'

‘No.'

Anya sighed. ‘I suppose,' she said, pouring a third cup of tea and dropping in a thin slice of lemon, ‘that I shall have to come with you. Would you like me to, Hilda? If Stephen cannot? I should be very happy …'

‘I can't sleep,' said Alice. She sat up, threw off the sheet to the end of the bed and lay down again. Behind the lace curtains the windows were wide open, but it made no difference: the hot, still air from the street felt like a blanket, thick and dark.

‘Tony?'

He had come to bed before her, exhausted, already asleep when she switched off the light and crept in beside him, her hair damp from the shower.

‘Tony,' she said again. ‘Are you awake?'

There was no answer, and after a few moments he began to snore, lightly but unendurably. Alice kicked him. ‘Ssh!' He snorted and stopped, turning over, and Alice moved to the edge of the bed. She tried lying on her side, on her back, on the other side. Beside her the luminous hands of the clock showed midnight, half-past, one o'clock. Her eyes closed, and she felt herself begin to slip towards sleep. From the children's room came a whimper, then a cry.

‘Mum-my!'

Alice lay still, hoping, as always, that Annie might not have fully woken, and might drift back to sleep. There was the sound of bare feet padding along the landing; Annie was beside the bed in her nightdress, her face crumpled.

‘I had a bad dream.'

‘Ssh!'

She began to clamber on to the bed. ‘Let me come in.'

‘No.'

Annie opened her mouth to cry.

‘Stop it! It's too hot, I haven't slept a wink.'

‘I want to come
in.
'

‘Well, you can't. I'm fed up with you, go back to bed.'

Annie burst into tears.

‘Oh, for heaven's sake.' Alice swung her legs off the bed and took her hand. ‘Come on. Ssh, now, you'll wake the others. Come and get a drink.'

She led her to the bathroom, yawning. ‘Just as I was dropping off.' She ran the tap, gave Annie a beaker, sponged her face and had a long drink herself. ‘That's better. Now – back to bed.'

‘Your bed.'

‘No!'

‘Please!'

‘No! No, no, no! I've had enough of it, Annie, you're three and a half and this has to stop, do you understand?' She found herself kneeling on the floor in front of her, gripping her small bare arms. ‘You've done it every night since you were born, you did it all the time we were on holiday, and I've had
enough
! Now go back to bed.'