Keeping Secrets (30 page)

‘I've made a pot of tea,' said Jane. ‘And I've found some chocolate digestives. Let's forget about the babies and being mothers for a bit.'

Hilda shook her arms, which were almost numb. ‘What a treat.'

They sat at the table and talked for the rest of the afternoon. Out in the hall, and upstairs, the babies slept on; beyond the kitchen window the sky grew dark, with a flurry of rain. The throbbing music from upstairs stopped, and Phil went out, banging the front door, but Sam did not wake until much later, when Don came home, pushing through the hall with a bag of shopping. He came into the kitchen and pulled off a wet woollen hat, dumping the bag on the floor.

‘My God,' said Hilda, hearing whimpers, ‘what time is it?'

‘I think it's about five.' He put his hat on the radiator, kissed Jane, and filled the kettle. ‘Had a nice afternoon?'

‘Lovely,' said Jane.

‘But I must go,' Hilda said, getting up. ‘I'd no idea it was so late. All right, Sam, I'm coming!'

‘Feed him here, before you go,' Jane suggested as Sam's cries grew louder.

So Hilda stayed, feeling both comforted and excluded, watching Don unpack shopping, make himself a cup of tea and sit at the table rolling a joint as Jane went upstairs to fetch Daisy, who had also woken. Don made no attempt at conversation, and Hilda, who could think of nothing to say to him, found the silence between them, bridged by Sam's eager feeding, perfectly acceptable. When she left, she and Jane hugged each other.

‘It's been lovely, thanks so much.'

‘Come again.' Jane had left Daisy with Don; she stood on the doorstep, watching Hilda click open the gate and wheel the pram through, pulling the hood up. It was very cold, the street lamps shining on to the wet pavement.

‘See you.'

‘See you,' said Hilda. ‘Go back inside! It's freezing.' She turned up her collar again, as Jane closed the door, and began to walk, talking to Sam, peaceful now but wide awake. ‘Well, we seem to have made friends. What did you think of Daisy? This time next year you'll be toddling about together in the park.' The dismal morning spent there, out in the cold, seemed already a long time ago, the creeping loneliness banished. It returned almost as soon as she reached home.

‘Oh, my God,' she said, stopping at the foot of the steps. ‘Anya was supposed to come up this afternoon.' Sitting in Jane's comfortable kitchen she had forgotten all about Anya. She stood for a moment looking up at the darkened house, the curtains drawn, all at once longing for the door to open wide, and Stephen to be there, welcoming her home. Well, he wasn't. She turned and began to pull the pram backwards up the steps, bumping and grunting. ‘Sorry, Sam.' Perhaps she should start by taking him out first, but then she'd have to leave him alone upstairs while she came back down to bring the pram in. A wheel banged against her foot and she swore as the pack of nappies slid from the shopping tray and tumbled down the steps. Behind her the door swung open, and a cat shot out.

‘Hilda, I've been worried.' Low-watt light spilled out from the hall. ‘Let me help you.'

‘It's all right, I've done it now.' Hilda dragged the pram back over the last step, and bumped Anya's sturdy body, just behind her. ‘Sorry,' she said, and again thought bitterly: why the hell aren't you Stephen? I don't
want
you hovering round me. She pulled the pram into its place in the hall, and put the brake on. ‘I'm sorry about this afternoon,' she said to the air, as she went out again, running down the steps for the nappies. ‘I met a friend.'

‘It's quite all right,' said Anya, as she came back, and closed the front door after her, bending to slide the bolts as Hilda lifted Sam out. ‘I was only worried that something might have happened to you.' She straightened up again stiffly. ‘Does your friend have a baby, too?'

‘Yes,' said Hilda, and added unkindly: ‘Why?' as if Anya had no right or reason to ask.

‘I …' Anya faltered, ‘I was just interested, that's all.'

‘We met in hospital.' Hilda turned to go up the stairs. ‘She was in the next bed, you might remember her.' She could hear herself sound cold and rude. ‘Excuse me,' she said, ‘I'm tired. Come up another time, all right?'

‘Yes,' said Anya. ‘Goodnight, Hilda. Goodnight, Sam.' She crossed the faded rug to her sitting room door, and went inside, closing it slowly behind her.

Hilda climbed the stairs with Sam and her bag and the nappies, feeling it all grow heavier and heavier. At the top she fumbled wearily for the keys: how was she going to manage as Sam grew bigger still? She let herself into the dark empty flat, switching on lights, bath taps, the television, drawing the curtains – doing it all quickly, although she was exhausted now, so that the place could come alive again.

She bathed Sam, dressed him for bed and left him to kick on his playmat while she cooked spaghetti and ate it watching
This Week.
She fed him and put him down in his crib and left him to cry there, closing the door and pacing in the sitting room until he fell asleep. Asleep, or dead? As every night, she checked him, kissing his warm wet cheek, listening to the tiny thread of breath, feeling her anxiety subside. Then she ran a bath and lay listening to
The World Tonight;
she got into her pyjamas and switched off the radio, going back into the sitting room to tidy up.

The room was littered with Sam's toys, bought mostly by herself in desperate moments on the High Street. She bent to clear them away, and picked up a red musical rabbit, whose paws clicked back and forth. Stephen had bought that. The string was caught on the edge of the bouncing chair; as she lifted it, it began to wind itself up again, and the room was suddenly filled with the tinkling of
Fr
re Jacques.
Hilda had heard it a hundred times, a merry little tune; now, standing alone in the middle of the warm room, it sounded plaintive and thin, unbearably sad.

She stood holding the rabbit until the string had wound slowly up to the end, and the time was over. The room was quiet; the whole house was quiet. Down in the square two youths went by, laughing until they rounded the corner and their voices faded. Hilda went to the rocking chair by the window, and sat there thinking about Jane and Don and Daisy, all together in their worn, untidy house, with Phil coming and going; about Alice and Tony and the girls, especially Hettie, who looked like her, and whom, until Sam, Hilda had loved more than any child. And she thought about Stephen and Miriam, together in their house in Norfolk with their tall, good-looking son, whom Stephen was never going to leave.

What were they all doing now?

Hilda looked at her watch. It was after eleven. She saw herself sitting alone in her rocking chair, falling prey to self-pity, and pictured a winter full of such evenings, alone with Sam, wanting Stephen. She reached for the telephone, dialling his number once again. The line clicked, and her heart began to race; there was a pause, a silence that seemed to go on for ever, and then the ringing tone sounded. Hilda sat absolutely still, the blood pumping in her throat, listening to the two insistent notes ringing repeatedly, two hundred miles away. Where was the phone in Stephen's house? The kitchen? The sitting room? If he was out in the studio, why didn't he answer?

At last, a woman's voice.

‘Hello?' Sleepy, rather hoarse.

‘Hello?' Puzzled, an edge of nervousness. Was she, also, alone? A dark house in a quiet country lane; an autumn night, windy and cold.

‘Hello? Jonathan? Is that you?' Frightened now.

Hilda put down the phone.

The evenings had drawn in and the mornings, too, were dark; Miriam, who had slept badly, woke to hear rain falling against the window, pattering on to the leaves which were blocking the gutter. Stephen had been too busy and too often away to get up there and unblock it, but someone was going to have to. Perhaps she and Jon could do it on Sunday. She lay, her head uncomfortably heavy on the pillow, still half-asleep, picturing Jon's tall figure at the top of the ladder, herself at the bottom, holding it on wet grass; she was looking up at Jon, leaning precariously into the gutter, at the mossy tiles and rainwashed morning sky above him, and she shifted her position on the shining grass and slipped, jerking the ladder, hearing – no! – Jon's sudden shout and then his fall, unstoppable, eternal, and silence.

Miriam's body was shot through with one of the spasms she sometimes had between sleeping and waking, limbs jerked out, heart missing beats. But she was fully awake now, her hands clammy, mouth dry, remembering the phone-call, and the sleepless hour that had followed, lying in wait for the sound of the motorbike, coming back from Woodburgh, where Jon had been visiting Mike Baldry. Well after midnight, the roar up the lane – too fast, too fast! – the single beam of the headlight in the rain, the slowing down, engine off, footsteps up the path, and creak of the garage doors. Thank God. More footsteps, his key in the lock.

‘Jon?'

She stood at the top of the stairs, shivering in her kimono, trying to sound ordinary, calm.

‘Had a good time?'

‘Yes, thanks.' His black leather gear was soaking, his hair plastered down by trickles of rain and his helmet; he had eased it off and was holding it, letting it drip on the mat.

‘You should have a hot bath.'

‘I'm going to.' He wiped his feet. ‘Why're you up? There's no need.'

‘I know, but –' She came down the stairs, pulling the kimono round her, hesitating. ‘There was a phone call … I thought it was you.'

Jonathan frowned, moving towards the kitchen. ‘No. Where's Dad?'

‘He's having dinner with the Sadlers.' She followed him down the passage. ‘He said he'd be back late.'

‘Oh.' He clicked on the light in the kitchen, and bent to pat Tess, old and grey round the muzzle, who had got up stiffly from her basket to greet him. ‘Hello, girl, hello.' He moved the kettle on to the hotplate, and began to take off his jacket, snapping open the stud. ‘Why didn't you go?'

‘I didn't feel like it, they didn't mind – they're talking work anyway, they want Dad to do a conversion of the stable block, I think.' She yawned, shifting on bare feet. ‘He'll be home soon, I'm going back to bed.'

‘Shall I make you a drink?' Jon had peeled off his jacket, and was sitting down, easing his feet out of his boots. ‘A nice cup of Ovaltine?' He waggled his toes and grinned up at her and she smiled back, filled with relief – that he was home, that they were friends.

‘No thanks, you make me feel a hundred.' She bent to kiss the dark flattened hair. ‘Want me to run your bath?'

‘You could do.'

‘Don't let it get cold.'

‘Cluck, cluck, cluck. I won't.'

‘Night, darling.'

‘Night, Mum.'

Upstairs, she lay listening to the sounds of the bath filling up, Jon climbing the stairs to turn it off just in time, closing the door. She listened, too, for Stephen, but though one or two other cars swished past the end of the lane, he did not come. Who has he found to entertain him this evening? she wondered, and wondered again, uneasily, about the phone call. Who could it be?

Who else could it be?

On the borderland of sleep Miriam saw again the steady and unsmiling face of the woman in the photograph, gazing coolly out at the world through her wire-rimmed spectacles. A woman in control, capable, competent.

Why start phoning now?

Drifting into a troubled dream she heard, magnified, the sounds of Jon going to his room, and Stephen's car, the garage doors, the front door. By the time he came quietly up the stairs the dream had taken her.

Now, she could not remember any of it. She lay waiting for the panic, the image of Jon, sprawled on the ground by the fallen ladder, to subside and fade. The rain fell steadily, soothing now; beside her the bedclothes had been turned back, and she could hear Stephen coming up the stairs with the tea tray – the perfect husband, easing her into the day. What day was it?

He set the tray down on the bedside table, and crossed the room to the windows, drawing the curtains. She lay watching him in his dressing gown looking out at the falling rain, the slowly lightening sky above the trees. What was he thinking about? What did Stephen ever think about? She could hear Jon downstairs, banging cupboards in the kitchen; it must be getting late.

‘Stephen?'

‘Mmm?' He turned from the window, solicitous. From somewhere, probably a television play, she heard a Cockney voice say firmly: I don't want no trouble.

‘Sleep well?' He came over and poured out the tea, passing her a cup, not touching her.

‘Not very. Thanks.' She took the cup and sat up, propping herself against the pillows. ‘What time did you come back?'

‘Oh, about midnight. You were flat out.' He took off his dressing gown and pyjamas and began to dress, rapidly, a man in a hurry, searching among piles of ironed shirts in his chest of drawers for the right one, and the right tie.

‘Stephen?'

‘Mmm?'

She was going to say: The gutter's blocked. Instead: ‘Someone rang last night.'

‘Oh?' He was standing in front of the mirror, doing his tie, his back to her. ‘Who?'

‘I don't know. It rang, but no one spoke.'

‘How odd,' said Stephen steadily, and reached into the wardrobe for his jacket. From downstairs Jonathan called up: ‘Dad? You ready?'

‘Coming.' He slipped on his jacket and closed the wardrobe door.

‘Who do you think it was?'

‘No idea.' Stephen brushed his hair in front of the mirror, and flicked at his shoulders with the clothes brush. ‘A wrong number, I should think, wouldn't you?' He said it in the tone of one speaking to the very young or slow-witted; reasonable, unanswerable. ‘I must go.'

‘Are you coming back tonight?'