Tread Softly (2 page)

‘I know. But I'm going to Devon. I've only just arranged it.'

Lorna forced her feet with difficulty into the nearest she possessed to normal shoes. Another weekend alone. Which meant the Terrors were bound to strike. Most normal people found terror inexplicable unless it had a cause – a bomb scare, for example, or rapists at one's bedroom door. Anything less was neurosis. But Ralph understood, thank God. He could hardly be much help, though, two hundred miles away.

‘You're fortunate to
have
a husband.' Aunt Agnes again, lifelong spinster.

Yes, Aunt, she replied feelingly. I am.

‘Come in, come in! How lovely to see you!'

Lorna felt herself pressed against a generous, fleshy bosom and overpowered by floral scent. The sensation was not unpleasant – like being softly smothered by a honeysuckle pillow – and was a distraction from the pain in her feet, exacerbated tonight by shoes that made her bunions scream. Was it beyond the wit of shoemakers to construct special lump-accommodating shoes, on the lines of hamsters' pouches?

Olive Kirkwood released her at last. ‘It's wonderful to meet you, Lorna, after all our little chats on the phone. And of course we've heard so much about you from Ralph.'

So much? Ralph rationed words and regarded compliments as unnecessary, if not hypocritical. But perhaps he was different when she wasn't there. How odd, she thought, that she'd never know how he behaved in her absence. With the Kirkwoods he might praise her to the skies: ‘I adore my wife. I'd be completely lost without her. She means the world to me.'

‘You must meet Hugh, my other half. He's seeing to things in the garden.'

Hugh. Hughes. Lorna's mind flipped back to the surgeon. Sitting on his knee. Not just her feet, the whole of her. He was stroking her hair, caressing her cheek. He smelt of coal tar and security.

Olive was now embracing Ralph, unaware that he regarded physical contact as an invasion and a threat (and anyway would rather be at home). ‘Great to see you again, Ralph! Do come through, both of you.'

As Olive led them into the sitting-room, Lorna covered for Ralph's taciturnity with a tidal wave of compliments: what a lovely house it was, so light, so bright, so spacious … Weren't the pictures charming, and what an original colour scheme. She was, in fact, dizzied by the patterns – stripes on the curtains, squiggles on the carpet – and by the profusion of flowers: flamboyant lilies, shaggy-haired chrysanthemums, snooty scarlet roses preening in cut glass. Olive herself was a living bouquet in flounced peony-printed silk, and there were more flora on the chair-covers: an extravagant (if seasonally inaccurate) display of delphiniums entwined with pussy-willow. She had imagined the house quite differently from Ralph's terse descriptions.

‘Yes, we love it,' Olive smiled. ‘Especially the garden. We decided to have drinks alfresco this evening, to show off your handiwork. Hugh's made a nice fruit punch.'

Ralph's smile failed to reach his eyes. He actively avoided any drink with an alcohol content of less than 40 per cent.

‘Or would you prefer something else?' She indicated a daunting array of bottles on the sideboard. ‘We've got all the usual – gin, whisky, sherry, Martini – and a few exotics brought back from trips abroad. This is medronho,' she said, cradling a weird-shaped bottle in smoky-brown glass, ‘which we picked up in the Algarve. Or there's ouzo from Cyprus, or –'

‘Whisky, thanks.' Ralph was still standing by the door, as if poised for a speedy getaway.

‘And I'll try the medronho, please.' Lorna wished she had something of interest to say about the Algarve, but her fears put paid to foreign holidays. She eyed the family photographs, which, even on the expanse of the dazzlingly white grand piano, seemed to be jostling for space. She and Ralph were not just singularly ill-travelled but short of living relatives: no parents on either side, and no children – only pregnancies.

‘There we are!' beamed Olive, handing them their drinks. ‘Now let's go outside and find the others.' She led the way through the French windows on to a patio that rivalled Kew Gardens in its abundance of plants, the only difference being that the Kirkwoods' were largely artificial.

A paunchy fellow in a loud tweed suit spotted them and came bounding over. ‘Hello! Hello! I'm Hugh,' he said to Lorna, pumping her hand with painful vigour and then giving Ralph a friendly thump on the shoulder, all the while somehow managing not to spill his drink (a lurid mulberry-red concoction stuffed with an awesome amount of tropical fruit salad – the punch, presumably).

‘Cheers!' he said, raising his glass. ‘Here's to us.'

‘Cheers!' Lorna echoed, wondering what he meant by ‘us'. Surely they had nothing in common beyond an interest in fake grass.

‘How's business?' Hugh asked, as if reading her mind.

‘Fine,' Ralph lied. ‘We've landed a big contract for Broom Hall's hockey pitches. It's a boys' public school in Devon. I'm off there tomorrow, to measure up. With all this rain we've been having recently, artificial grass is really coming into its own.'

‘Yes, we're thrilled with ours,' Hugh said. ‘It saves us a hell of a lot of work. No mowing or weeding or maintenance.'

‘And no hay fever,' Olive put in. ‘Last summer I was sneezing night and day.'

Ralph should put them on the payroll, Lorna thought – let them proselytize to all and sundry with their unprompted customer endorsement. Far cheaper than an advertising agency.

‘Our guests are admiring it at this very moment. And they're all frightfully keen to meet you.'

Hugh steered them across the Astroturfed lawn to the Astroturfed tennis-court, where some six or seven people were peering down at the velvet-smooth green surface. Well, green in part. The garden was illuminated by a variety of coloured lights, which cast psychedelic swathes of pink, purple, gold and turquoise across the extensive vista.

As Olive made the introductions, Lorna grasped at names and hands. Was Alice the one in the red, or was that Caroline? And had Olive said Joan or Jean?

‘So you're Mr and Mrs Astroturf!' Joan/Jean laughed.

‘You could say that,' Ralph put in quickly, scenting further business. ‘We're actually called Astro-Sport, and we use every sort of material and do every type of job – private gardens, of course, but also putting-greens, cricket-grounds, tennis-courts, you name it.'

‘It's a brilliant notion,' the woman in red enthused. ‘You could never tell it isn't real.'

‘And it's much healthier for children.' Ever loyal, Lorna backed Ralph up, stressing the messiness, inconvenience and health hazards of
real
grass. And ditto of real plants and shrubs. Although the Kirkwoods had real water, she noticed, cascading in a miniature Niagara from the gaping mouth of a corpulent bronze frog into a landscaped pond surrounded by frog siblings. Further statuary (of a human kind) was dotted among ersatz rhododendron bushes in full purple bloom – a rare sight in mid-September.

‘Can I tempt you to some nibbles?' Olive proffered bowls of roasted nuts.

‘Mm, lovely.' Lorna took a handful, wondering when they were going to eat. Tantalizing smells were wafting from indoors: garlic, roasting meat. She still wasn't sure what the dinner was in aid of. Did the Kirkwoods simply like to socialize with business contacts, or was another order in the offing? But what was there left to Astroturf? The sitting-room? Hugh's bald patch?

‘This weather's a bit iffy,' observed a man in a blue blazer and matching cravat. ‘I wouldn't be surprised if we were in for a shower.'

Lorna looked at the sky expectantly. A nice sharp shower would mean they could go in and sit down. There
were
chairs and loungers in the garden, but no one was actually lounging, and she could hardly sprawl horizontally while the others remained vertical. Bunionless mortals couldn't imagine the torture of standing. For some time now excruciating spasms had been stabbing through both feet. She wished she could unscrew them and stand on her stumps. Or perhaps borrow one of the statues' plinths for support. Not that she would change places with the naked Venus in her rose-bower (synthetic roses, of course). It was cold enough
with
clothes. People's predilection for congregating in gardens regardless of the temperature never failed to amaze her. Regardless, too, of the insect population. Squadrons of midges and mosquitoes were mingling with the guests, and two inebriated wasps clung to a pineapple-raft in the punch.

‘Yes, the long-term forecast isn't good,' Alice/Caroline remarked, gold bangles jangling as she sipped her punch. ‘Not that we're too worried, are we, darling?' She smiled smugly at the man beside her. ‘Bill and I are off on a Mediterranean cruise next week.'

‘Oh, lovely,' Lorna said, recalling the nightmare of her honeymoon cruise with Ralph. The Terrors had assailed her the very first evening. The trouble with ships was that you couldn't get off, apart from brief trips ashore. Sightseeing in Alexandria, she had been severely tempted to make a bolt for it and return to the safety of home. ‘Where are you going?'

‘All over the place. Athens, Venice, Malta, Rhodes …'

‘Lovely,' she said, third time. She stole a glance at Ralph, who was regaling a bespectacled man with more sales patter: the advantages of artificial grass for children's playgrounds. She was glad it wasn't around when
she
was a child. She remembered lying on her back in a nice, wet, muddy field at the age of six or seven, gazing up at the sky in the hope of a glimpse of her parents. Should heaven be so grey, she had wondered anxiously?

‘Lorna …' Olive bustled up again. ‘Did Ralph tell you we had a new grandchild?'

‘No, he didn't mention it.'

‘Yes. A little girl, born on Monday. I've been boring all the others with the pictures. Would you like to see them?'

‘Pictures so soon?'

‘Oh yes. And Brian videoed the birth, right from the moment Daphne's waters broke.'

Lorna hoped she would be spared the gory details. She took the padded pink album, glad of an excuse to sit down. It was surely physically impossible to look at photos standing up with a drink in her hand. She studied each page politely, although with a growing sense of emptiness. No children meant no grandchildren; your world unpeopled, futureless. ‘What a gorgeous baby,' she said, wishing she had something to show in return. Perhaps she should have videoed her miscarriages or come armed with a sheaf of photos of bloody little foetuses. ‘And what's her name?'

‘Brianna.'

‘That's unusual.'

‘Yes, isn't it? They were hoping for a boy, who was going to be Brian junior, so they chose it as the female equivalent.'

Lorna pondered the irony of childbirth: everyone beginning life inside someone else, yet, once they emerged from the womb, becoming isolated from other human beings; each adult person separate, cut off.

‘My daughter likes exotic names as well,' Olive continued. ‘She called her two boys Zachary and Sheldon. My son-in-law wanted James and John, but I'm afraid he was outvoted!'

‘You can't beat James,' Blue Blazer declared. ‘My name!'

Lorna smiled at him gratefully – at least she'd got one straight. And Clarence she remembered because the name didn't suit its owner – a weaselly individual with a straggly grey moustache. ‘Our son's called James,' he was saying, as he dislodged a lemon-pip from his teeth.

‘Yes, how
is
he?' asked Jean/Joan. ‘We haven't seen him in ages.'

‘Oh, he's doing famously. He got ten GCSEs this year and passed Grade 8 in violin.'

Lorna pictured the teenage prodigy: a budding Einstein-cum- Menuhin, mortar-board on head, violin case under arm, and not a trace of acne or adolescent angst.

Having expounded further on his son's accomplishments, Clarence broached the subject of television. ‘Did anyone see
The South Bank Show
last week?'

Lorna groaned inwardly. Children and television were two conversational zones she could enter only in a state of total ignorance. Ralph monopolized the television each evening, while she sat in the study with a book.

As the discussion moved from Melvyn Bragg to
Newsnight
, she studied the women's shoes. Amazing that they could stand at all in such torturous creations: strappy sandals, slingbacks, towering stiletto heels. She had never owned such footwear in her life. From an early age both she and her feet had been ‘difficult' (Aunt Agnes's word).

She dragged herself up from her chair. Being the only one sitting, and thus on an eyeline with people's stomachs rather than their faces, made her feel somewhat out of things. She just hoped dinner wouldn't be long. Dusk was deepening into dark, and a contingent of fluttery moths had boosted the ranks of winged gatecrashers. Brushing one from her face, she noticed the goose-flesh on her arms. A pity the coloured lights couldn't double as a source of heat. An idea for Ralph, perhaps, once the entire world was Astroturfed and he needed pastures new.

‘Dinner is served!' Olive announced, conveniently saving her guests from pneumonia. ‘Hugh, if you'd take everybody in I'll dish up the soup.'

Soup. Perfect! Something warming to start the meal. Lorna tried not to appear too eager as she followed Hugh back into the house, although just the prospect of a long-term chair seemed a blessed relief. Ralph, she knew, would have liked another drink and was lingering on the patio, possibly planning a hasty retreat through the artificial shrubbery. Again she sought to compensate as Hugh ushered them into the dining-room. ‘Oh, what a lovely table! You've gone to so much trouble.' Indeed, raided the silver vault. Candelabra, napkin-rings, goblets, cruet, mustard-pot – all were gleaming silver. There were even silver name-holders at each place, the names written in curlicued script. She did a surreptitious check. It was Jean, not Joan, and there was also a Robert she didn't remember meeting.