Lovers and Newcomers (52 page)

‘I’ve got to go,’ he told the assembly importantly. ‘But I’ve had the same thought. Leave it with me.’

A couple of boys gestured behind his back as he made his way out in the wake of the slab man, but the chorus of goodnights was mostly unironic.

Kieran finished his pint in two gulps and tailed the two men out into the car park.

Amos and the other man were standing at the rear of a small white van. The back doors were open and they were both leaning inside. Kieran had been intending to pursue Amos further about the grave site, but now curiosity drew him on.

A cardboard box with holes punched in the sides was opened, and the man put his hand inside. He drew out a small, squirming black shape that emitted tiny yipping noises. Amos took the puppy into his arms, and under the nearest light he examined the little creature’s eyes and ears and paws.

‘Pride of the litter. You saw that when you picked ’im out,’ the man said.

Amos returned the puppy to the box and transferred the box from the van to the passenger seat of the Jaguar. A small sheaf of notes was counted into the van driver’s hand, he and Amos shook on the deal, and the doors slammed. Once the van had reversed away, Kieran stepped out of the shadows. Amos was about to climb into his own car.

‘I can guess who that puppy’s intended for.’

‘I expect you can. I’m on my way over there now to surprise her.’

Kieran didn’t miss a beat. ‘Is it all right if I come with you?’

Amos looked distinctly unwilling.

‘I’d like to see her face when you lift him out,’ Kieran pleaded.

Amos sighed. ‘There’s safety in numbers, I suppose. You can back me up if she hates the very idea of a new dog.’

Before Amos could change his mind, Kieran hopped into the passenger seat, balancing the puppy box on his knees. The Jaguar slid out of the Griffin car park, turned along the side of the green and headed past the church towards Mead. The puppy snuffled and scratched in its bed within the box.

‘How’s work?’ Amos inquired pleasantly.

‘All right, thanks. We’re pretty quiet at the moment, as it happens.’

‘Your boss must be pleased to have some time to spare.’

Kieran was embarrassed. Fortunately it was dark enough in the car for his red face to be hidden.

Amos said, ‘It’s all right. I’m not quite the first person to lose his wife to a younger man.’

‘I don’t know what to say. He’s a decent bloke.’

‘Katherine wouldn’t be with him if he were not,’ Amos observed. There was no further discussion. Kieran was forming the impression that Amos Knight was quite a decent bloke himself, contrary to all the outward signs.

The car stopped at the overgrown gateway. Blanketed by darkness, the cottage looked quite welcoming, with its lights shining from behind closed curtains.

This impression was soon dispelled, however. Jessie yanked the door open in response to Amos’s knock. She stood outlined by the glare from the overhead bulb.

‘It’s my night off. Can’t the Griffin manage without me?’

‘Nice to see you too, Jessie. May we come in?’

She considered the proposal. ‘I suppose. And him as well?’

Kieran slipped into the narrow hallway. He peered eagerly over Jessie’s shoulder.

The living room now looked liked one half of its old self, with half of an entirely different room grafted on to it. Music posters were still tacked on top of the grubby wallpaper, but the one over the mantelpiece had been replaced by a large and intricate thangka painting in strong tones of blue and green. The sofa and armchair were draped with throws, there were cushions in jewel colours, and a large jar in one corner was filled with an artistic arrangement of twisted willow twigs and catkin branches. The antique electric fire had been replaced with a slightly larger, more modern one, and in front of it stood an old crate covered with a cloth for a coffee table. A clutch of mother and baby magazines and a battered Penelope Leach book were fanned out on it. Scented candles burned on the hearth.

In the midst of this sat Nic. She was knitting.

‘Hi. Hi, Kieran,’ she said, looking pleased to see him. He slid across and perched beside her on the sofa.

‘It was a girls’ night in,’ Jessie said. ‘I suppose you want a coffee or something now you’re here?’

Amos held the box in his arms.

‘I’ve got something for you.’

He knelt down, placed the box on the floor and removed the lid. Immediately there was a frantic burst of the high-pitched yipping. Jessie’s hands flew up to her mouth.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.

Amos reached in and lifted out the puppy. Its black feet splayed as it steadied itself on the hearth rug. It checked its surroundings, then it trotted over to Jessie and sniffed at her foot.

Jessie crouched down and Nic rolled her bulk off the sofa. Both girls knelt at puppy eye-level, melting with instant adoration.

‘Is he mine? Is he for me?’ Jessie cried.

‘He is yours. He’s a black Labrador pup, fully certified, vetapproved, and of a rather good pedigree.’

She scooped the creature up in her arms, rapturous as a small child on her birthday. The puppy yipped, then licked her face.

Kieran watched this scene, finding to his surprise that he needed to blink. Surreptitiously he reached for Nic’s hand, and held it. She didn’t pull away.

‘You want to keep him, then?’ Amos asked.

‘Don’t be stupid. Of course I do,’ Jessie said, with her face buried in the puppy’s black fur.

Jessie and Nic

The kitchen window ran with condensation. The air was thick with steam and the smell of frying bacon. Jessie sat hunched at the small table, chewing her bacon sandwich and reading a thick paperback. Her tobacco tin, a packet of Rizlas and a saucer for an ashtray were placed close at hand.

Nic shuffled slowly out of her boxroom and steadied herself against the kitchen door. Her gaze travelled over the sink, complete with greasy frying pan immersed in a bowl of cold water, spattered gas stove, and the floor patched with newspapers to catch the puppy’s accidents. The dog was under the table, delightedly tussling with an old shoe. Jessie had named him Gulliver.

‘This place is really minging,’ Nic sighed.

Jessie didn’t look up. ‘You’re right.’

‘Is there any tea?’

‘In the pot. How do you feel?’

Nic made a face, which Jessie didn’t see.

‘What are you reading?’

‘The Magic Mountain.’

‘…Mushroom?’

‘Does being ten months pregnant affect your hearing?’

Nic flopped down on the only other chair. She wrapped her fingers around her mug of tea and stared at the dim grey sky beyond the window. Her back ached, and most of the rest of her body as well. She had had a fortnight of solid telephoning and beseeching to do but she wasn’t bad at that, and now she had matters straight. It was much easier dealing with the system up here than in London. Sometimes people in the benefits office or the hospital appointments system even had time to speak politely to you, and the GP that Miranda had sent her to see was an old-fashioned family doctor, like in an Agatha Christie. He wore a suit with a waistcoat, and called her ‘dear’, which was about as different as it was possible to be from Gina, the harassed and therefore largely unsympathetic inner-city practitioner she used to work for. Nic had seen the Meddlett midwife as many times in the last three weeks as she had managed in the whole of the previous five months in London.

One afternoon Amos and Polly had come to the cottage bearing a pile of baby supplies. There were tiny snow-white babygros and vests and blankets and great bales of disposable nappies.

‘The ante-natal trolley-dash, is it?’ Jessie dryly asked.

Looking around the cottage Polly seemed both deferential and eager, but she tried to hide her eagerness in case Nic thought she was being intrusive. She insisted that Amos had paid for everything, except for the pram, which had mostly been bought out of the proceeds of some old people’s swear-box system over at Mead that the girls didn’t quite understand. The pram had fat rubber tyres and suspension as elaborate as Amos’s car, and the padded body of it lifted out to become a rocking cradle in which the baby could sleep. Amos demonstrated all the mechanisms to Nic.

Nic also had a crib, bought very cheaply from a young mother in Meddlett to whom she had been introduced by the midwife, and she had knitted a small pyramid of clothes in rainbow stripes that Omie Davies had enthused over. She had been quite pleased with the arrangements she had made for her baby, and at first she felt belittled by this casual largesse of Amos’s. Did he think she was a charity case, and therefore was Polly of the same opinion?

Then she looked across at Jessie, who was lounging in the doorway watching the unloading of the baby kit. Jessie wore skinny jeans and her unpregnant, undistended breasts, embellished with the tattoo, showed perkily under her open shirt. She was perfectly in command of herself and her appeal and the whole situation, but Nic wouldn’t have changed places with her.

Jessie wasn’t having a baby, and she was.

Nic read the warning that Jessie signalled her. It was, more or less,
He means well. Don’t have a go at him
.

She was right, too, Nic judged.

She thanked both of them for their generosity, and she was rewarded by a soft, shining smile from Polly, and Amos’s hearty insistence that if she needed anything else, she or Jessie were just to let him know. Polly also made her promise that as soon as labour started, she would call. She would stay with her, and drive her to the hospital when the time came.

‘That’s good. Don’t count on me, I’ll be crap at all that obstetric stuff,’ Jessie said sternly when they had gone.

Nic wrote down the various numbers at Mead and pinned them in a prominent place on the kitchen wall. She added Kieran’s number, too. He had insisted that he could drive her, any time she wanted, it didn’t matter if it was the middle of the night, he’d be glad to help out.

Jessie gave her a long look.

‘I can’t believe you fancy him. You do, don’t you?’

Nic went red. She felt in such a turmoil of hormones and uncertainty and anticipation, she didn’t even know what it would be like to fancy anyone.

‘Kieran’s all right. You’re just biased against his family.’

‘Too right I am. Damon’s turning into a mental case. What he gets up to, you wouldn’t believe. Eh, Gully?’ She shook her head, sombre with the responsibility of inside information. The puppy squirmed and twisted in Jessie’s arms.

‘Kieran is Damon’s brother, not his keeper,’ Nic snapped.

Nic poured herself another cup of tea. Jessie would be leaving quite soon for morning opening time at the Griffin, and a long day with no company lay ahead. She wanted to talk.

‘What’s the book about, then?’ she asked.

‘A TB sanatorium,’ Jessie muttered, turning a page.

‘Cheerful. Why did you pick that?’

She could have supplied the answer, but she wanted to hear what Jessie would say.

‘Amos recommended it.’

‘Of course. Do you always do what he tells you?’

Jessie reached for her tin. She took a whiskery pinch of tobacco, made a roll-up and leaned back in her chair. Nic had already tried to suggest that smoking in the house would be bad for the baby, but Jessie had merely replied that she wasn’t smoking in Nic’s room, was she? And if Nic preferred a nonsmoking, puppy-free household, she could go and find one. That was how Jessie was, but it was hard to quarrel with her because she was so matter-of-fact. Nic had never had a friend like Jessie before.

‘No, I don’t always. But he knows more than most of the people I come across in the bloody Griffin. I’d be a fool not to listen to what he says, wouldn’t I? And it’s a good book, as it turns out.’

Nic had already pointed out to Jessie that Amos was fascinated by her. And so were both of his sons, judging by the way they had looked at her at Christmas. Jessie only shrugged.

‘He hasn’t mixed in the real world much, has he?’

‘He’s rich…’ Nic began.

‘And so old.’

‘Has he tried it on?’

Jessie laughed. ‘Just the once. It ended up with him saying he wanted to look at my tatt, so I gave him a flash of it.’ Then she turned serious. ‘It was quite touching, in a way. He was grateful, not really sleazy. I ended up liking him, but not in that way. Nor those posh sons of his, either. Amos says I should be applying for uni. If I choose law, he knows some people who would help. They really like to give places to members of the underclass. Looks good in the statistics, I suppose.’

Nic stared at her. That would be three or four years at least of going back to school, with a huge debt to pay off at the end of it. The beauty school course had been bad enough.

‘Great,’ she said.

Jessie stubbed out her rollie in the ash-grey saucer. The sight made Nic feel suddenly very sick. She stood up, steadying herself against the corner of the table. There was a
ping
as her waters broke. Amniotic fluid ran down her legs and splashed on the floor.

‘What’s happening? Are you going to be all right?’ Jessie wailed.

‘This is it,’ Nic said.

The puppy trotted over and licked at the puddle between her feet.

Colin

It was one of those New York days of withering cold when any skin left exposed to the wind stings in protest and then turns numb. The production of
Manon Lescaut
for which Colin had designed the set and costumes had previewed satisfactorily, and would open in three days’ time. It had been an interesting job, working with a director he admired. He had just walked across to Central Park with the director’s assistant, a woman who had lately become a friend, and they had parted company at a fork in the path where she headed across to the East Side and he turned north towards the bird-dotted waters of the reservoir. The trees were reduced to scribbles of twig and branch, their great boles a patchwork of tattered bark, as if the winter had defeated them and the sap would never rise again. He found himself nodding to the nearest one, a gesture of physical solidarity.