Keeping Secrets (32 page)

‘I thought you didn't want me to come,' said Miriam, swallowing. One false move and it all yawned open again. She looked down at her plate.

‘Stop it, you two,' said Jonathan sharply. ‘We're talking about me, all right?' He turned to Stephen. ‘Mum didn't say anything so dreadful, did she? Now, are you serious about the Sadlers or not? Do you think they really want someone?'

‘I'll phone them,' said Stephen. ‘And will you kindly stop speaking to me in that tone.'

The meal ended in a silence no one could pretend was ordinary. As she cleared away, Miriam said carefully: ‘What about your university forms, Jon? We were going to talk about all that, too, weren't we?'

‘Not now,' said Jonathan. ‘I don't feel like it, sorry.' He pushed back his chair and went out; they could hear him climb the stairs to his room, and then his music, turned up full blast.

‘God Almighty,' said Stephen. ‘What is that?'

‘I think it's Def Lepard.' Miriam carried the plates over to the sink.

‘
Who?
' He pushed back his chair and got up. ‘Never mind.' There was a pause. ‘Sorry I snapped.'

‘It doesn't matter,' said Miriam, not turning. ‘By the way, the gutter needs unblocking. At the front.'

‘Okay. I'll have a go at it on Sunday. I'd better go and phone now, hadn't I?'

He went out into the hall; while she did the washing-up she could hear him look up the number and dial, and his voice become sociably warm, charming, as always.

‘Daphne? Stephen. Thanks so much for last night, I really enjoyed it. Listen, I think we may have solved your problem …'

It is, after all, she thought, hanging the tea towel over the rail on the Rayburn, better when he's not here. Or when he is, that we keep cool. We have come to this? No. It feels as if we have always been like this.

On a cold grey morning in November Jonathan set off on the bike for Norwich to meet Marietta: she was to arrive on the train from Harwich, after a six-hour crossing. At breakfast he had looked out at the windswept sky through the garden doors. ‘Not a good day to be at sea.'

‘It might be different out there,' said Miriam, pouring tea.

‘It isn't.' He came and sat down. ‘I've been listening to the forecast.'

‘Oh. Well, let's hope she's a good traveller.' Miriam, still without a description of Marietta to go on, pictured, as she had done when the postcard came in the summer, a large blonde young woman who in her mind's eye was at this moment up on deck, enjoying the feel of wind and spray on her large Dutch face. The little voice on the telephone – and she had phoned again, twice – seemed to belie this vision, but she was still unable to substitute anything else for it.

‘Are you sure you need to go all that way on the bike?' she said, passing cereal. ‘I'm sure the Sadlers would go.'

‘I'm sure they would, but I don't want them to.' Jonathan shook out cornflakes.

‘If Dad were here he could drive you.'

‘I know. But he isn't. When's he coming back?'

‘I think he said Wednesday. Perhaps I should drive you.'

‘You've got the shop. Anyway, Mum, do stop it, I want to go.'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘I know.'

‘You remember I said I was bringing her back here, don't you? Just for the night. I mean, she doesn't want to get thrown in at the deep end with that lot after a long journey, does she?'

‘I shouldn't think so, no. Yes, it's fine. I've made up a bed in the spare room.'

‘Why?'

Miriam put down her teacup. ‘So she can sleep there.'

‘She's sleeping with me,' said Jonathan. ‘That okay?'

They looked at each across the table.

Miriam said slowly: ‘Would you do it if Dad was here?'

‘Probably not.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know. I just wouldn't. At least I don't think so. Do you mind?'

Miriam didn't answer, because she didn't know. ‘I suppose,' she said at last, ‘that I'm pleased you trust me.' And pushed away other feelings which were not pleasurable at all, or even admissible – of loss, and jealousy, and confusion. And then, oh God, terror.

‘Good,' said Jonathan. ‘That's what I hoped.' He spooned up the last of his cornflakes, quickly, and got up to put on the toast.

‘But you will –' she broke off, suddenly overwhelmed.

‘Be careful.' He was watching the toaster. ‘Yes, I will.'

‘Of everything,' said Miriam, seeing, unstoppably, Jonathan ill, Jonathan wasted, vomiting, struggling for breath. Dying.

‘Of babies and of AIDS,' he said kindly. ‘I promise.'

Miriam let out a long breath. ‘My God. What an age we live in.'

‘
I
live in,' said Jonathan, as the toast popped up. ‘It's my generation that's going to cop it, isn't it?'

‘Is it?' she said faintly. ‘Do you think it has nothing to do with us?'

‘I hope not,' he said cheerfully, and sat down again, putting the toast in the rack. ‘Want some? I don't think I want to continue this conversation. It takes all the fun away somehow.'

When Miriam got back to the house that evening they were already home; she saw the lights as soon as she came down the lane, and when she had put the car in the garage, she opened the front door with a feeling of nervous apprehension.

‘Hello?' she called out in the hall, thinking she must announce herself.

‘Hi, Mum.' Jonathan's voice came from the kitchen; as she walked down the passage Tess came out, as every day, but slowly, not as if she wanted anything: Jon always fed her if he were first back. He was sitting at the end of the table, in Stephen's chair; beside him, opposite the door, sat a small girl in a baggy camel jumper, rolling a cigarette. She did not raise her head.

‘Mum, Marietta,' said Jonathan, with a gesture. ‘Marietta – this is my mother, okay?'

‘Okay,' said the little voice, between lips moistening the cigarette paper.

‘How do you do?' said Miriam, moving to the table. ‘We've spoken on the phone.' She held out her hand.

‘Yes.' The girl looked up. ‘Hello.' She turned to Jonathan.

‘Do you have matches?'

‘Yes,' he said easily, ‘we have matches. I'm not sure if Mum minds about smoking in here.'

‘Oh, it's fine,' Miriam said quickly. ‘Here …' She crossed the room to the Rayburn and took down the box from the mantelpiece, passing it over. What about Jonathan – didn't he mind? He disliked smoking almost as much as meat. She watched him take out a match and strike it, lighting the girl's cigarette.

‘Thanks.' She blew it out, and inhaled deeply.

‘Well …' said Miriam. She was about to offer tea, but Jon had already made a pot; the table was littered with mugs, a milk bottle, teaspoons, cigarette things. ‘I hope you had a good journey.'

‘It was very bad,' said the girl, not turning.

‘She was sick,' said Jonathan helpfully.

‘Oh. Poor you,' Miriam said to the thin little shoulders facing her beneath the baggy sweater. ‘Perhaps you'd like to have a rest?'

The shoulders shrugged. ‘It's better now.'

Miriam poured herself a cup of tea and came to sit down. There was a silence, during which she tried to take in Marietta's appearance, and disconcerting manner, without staring. Beneath the camel sweater, a black polo neck emerged at the top and became black leggings beneath the table, ending in small black ankle boots – this much she had seen as she stood by the Rayburn. The girl's hands were small and blunt, every fingernail bitten to the quick; her face was pale, small-featured, expressionless except for a fleeting, giggling smile directed at intervals at Jonathan. Her hair was brown, nondescript, but in the peculiarly favoured and unflattering style Miriam saw often on teenage girls in the town: short and nibbled round the face, with a spiky fringe, then allowed to stay long at the back, well on to the shoulders. Marietta's little ears were pierced by several silver earrings; there was also a small gold stud in one nostril. Miriam found herself thinking of fictional blonde, strong, healthy Marietta with longing. She sipped her tea, and could think of nothing to say.

The girl turned to Jonathan, exhaling a cloud of smoke. ‘Do you have television?'

‘Of course.'

‘Let's go.' She pushed back her chair and gathered her tobacco tin and papers.

Miriam watched Jonathan lead the way out; she wanted to catch his eye and burst out laughing, but he did not look at her and she heard smothered giggles in the passage and then, from the sitting room, the sound of the television, turned up loud.

In the evening Stephen rang, apparently from James and Klara's.

‘What's she like?'

‘Appalling,' said Miriam, before she could stop herself, and then, because Stephen did not like her to be critical – why? why ever not? – she went on quickly: ‘I expect she's all right really. She's just very young. How are you, Stephen?'

‘Not very good. The Regent's Park job is going down the drain, half the builders are on their way back to Ireland for Christmas. I might have to stay a day or two longer – can you cope?' He always asked that.

‘Of course.' She had always coped. ‘Anyway, Marietta's going to the Sadlers tomorrow.'

‘What do you mean? Where's she staying tonight?'

‘She's staying here,' said Miriam matter-of-factly, and added: ‘She's had a very bad journey,' as if that provided Stephen with all the information he could need. There was another silence in which, quite clearly, she could feel him deciding not to ask any more.

‘I'll be back at the weekend, anyway,' he said. ‘Friday evening at the latest, all right?'

‘All right. Thanks for phoning.' How many conversations had they had like this? She replaced the receiver and went back to the kitchen, putting spaghetti into a pan, wanting a drink.

Supper was difficult, at least for Miriam. She sat at one end of the table, Jon at the other, Marietta between them, picking at her food. For the first time Miriam understood how irritating this might be to an observer, although after the bad crossing it was understandable. She tried to make conversation – how long had Marietta been learning English, did she have brothers and sisters, how long did she hope to stay – and gave up. The girl answered indifferently, in monosyllables, although it was clear she understood English quite well, and she showed no curiosity about Jon's family or about Norfolk, or the family with whom she was to stay – surely an impending disaster – or, indeed, about anything. Jonathan, too, fell silent, although he did not seem embarrassed – he was, Miriam realised, even at his age, capable, like his father, of riding any social situation. Or so it seemed. After a while she gave up listening to her own bright, forced questions, and Marietta's indifferent replies; she sipped at a glass of wine and told herself to make allowances. The meal over, the two of them disappeared again, leaving her to clear up: she heard them return to the television, then, after a suitable while, climb the stairs to bed. Which was where, presumably, they had wanted to be ever since they got back.

Later, a tactful hour later, Miriam lay in her own bed, hearing from along the landing, even through her closed door, Jonathan's muted but relentless tapes. He hardly ever played so late, certainly not when Stephen was here. She flicked through the pages of
Vogue
, usually a reliable distraction, and could not be distracted; she put it back on her bedside table and turned out the lamp. The music stopped, and began again. After a long, sleepless while, she heard the door of Jonathan's room open, and the landing light switched on; footsteps went to the bathroom and came out again; Jonathan's door was closed.

Miriam got up, and went to the window; she drew back the curtains and stood looking out at the woods across the lane. The wind had dropped; the woods were dark and quiet: in that alert, watchful quietness before the foxes and the owls began their hunting. The moon had risen high above the trees and hung in a clear, unclouded sky. Miriam drew a breath, and tried to calm herself. These woods, this silence, had been her companions on sleepless nights ever since they moved here – comforting Jonathan, small and unwell; waiting for Stephen to stop working and come to bed; waiting for another child. Waiting, in more recent years, for Stephen to come back from London, to come back to her.

And now? Jonathan was no longer small and in need of comfort – at least, if he were, he would not, for much longer, look for it from her. There was no question, now, of another child, and those distant longings had long since been locked away. And Stephen?

The heating had gone off, and the room was getting cold. Miriam closed the curtains and went back to bed. She reached into her bedside drawer for a sleeping pill and swallowed it quickly, without water. The music along the landing stopped, and did not begin again. Within a few minutes she had fallen into a deep, almost suffocating sleep.

From within Anya's flat, on the other side of her door in the hall, a new sound: television. Hilda, with Sam, spent most of her evenings upstairs, but if she came down into the hall to fetch something from his pram, or when they came back from afternoon outings, she could hear it: Channel 4 news at seven, the BBC at nine, ITV at ten. Anya was watching other programmes, too, but it was for the news that she had bought it, looking out of the sitting room window the whole of one wet afternoon for the delivery van, combing the Yellow Pages for someone reliable to come and instal an aerial, inviting Hilda to come down and watch.

They were knocking down the Berlin Wall. That, if nothing else had followed, had to be seen. But then came Czechoslovakia. Prague. Anya sat with the cats on the edge of her sofa, watching the thousands stand in the falling snow in Wenceslas Square, cheering, ringing handbells. If it was moving for Hilda to see again the modest, smiling, unforgotten face of Dubček, as he came out on to a balcony, waving, for Anya it was overwhelming.