by Tessa Hadley
That afternoon Billie drove the dented Citroën down to the shops as usual, at a cautious fifteen miles per hour. They parked illegally outside the leisure centre at the bottom of the park, beside the library, in a spot they already thought of as their own, so that they were indignant if anyone had taken it; then picked their way through brown watery slush to the café, whose customers had tramped the slush inside. Their entrance was always conspicuous; everything had to wait, as if for royalty, for Billie with her stick and her gracious unseeing smile. The staff – girls and boys with piercings, pink- and blue-dyed hair, bared midriffs even in this weather – knew what they wanted before they asked: Kate always had black coffee, Billie hot chocolate and shortbread. Billie had developed a new greed for sweet things; effusively she thanked whoever brought them, calling them all Jenny and Polly whatever their gender. The newish existence of this particular café among the shops of the suburb had drawn out – from shabby Victorian and Edwardian residential streets, and a mix of white and Bengali families, and students, and solitaries either interesting or mad – the appearance of a little community. There were exhibitions of local artists on the café walls, along with posters advertising drum ’n’ bass, yoga classes, online creative writing groups.
On the way back from fetching extra sugar for Billie, Kate was brought up short by a boy at the next table: she was certain that she knew him. One of her ex-students? She was used to the passage across her life of more or less golden boys and girls. The face – wide, with rich creamy skin and deep hooded eyelids, long coppery-brown hair pushed behind his ears – seemed too strongly significant. Guessing, smiling tentatively, she balanced her sugar packets by the corner on the edge of his table.
—Are you David Roberts’ son?
She hadn’t been interested in him, after what David said: she’d pictured him in one of those unflattering biking helmets, absorbed in dreary self-punishing tests of physical prowess. He had to struggle to draw himself out of that raptness in which the young relate to one another; there were three others at the table, boys and a girl. She saw them register her middle age.
—I suppose I am.
—But you don’t look very like him. You’re like Francesca, aren’t you?
He wasn’t at all what she had carelessly imagined: at the mention of his mother his expression opened up, complex and conscious. He half stood up from his chair.
—Did you know her?
—She was my friend at college. And I’m a friend still of Carol’s.
—OK, that’s cool. I don’t know many people who remember her. Apart from Auntie Carol. And my grandmother, of course.
—Is that Francesca’s redoubtable mother? I haven’t heard of her for years.
—She’s pretty amazing. Yeah, she’s doing really well. Do you live here?
—I’ve lived in London for years. But I’ve moved back. I grew up here.
—I wouldn’t move back, one of the boys said: freckled and ginger, thickset.
Kate conceded. —You’re eager to be gone. But that’s how it is. Like being born: can’t wait to get out, spend the rest of your life trying to get back in.
Kate could amuse these young ones; what else had she got out of all those years of teaching? Teaching gave one a better idea of how to talk to them; mothers especially found themselves trapped inside that awful jollying, explaining voice. She smiled around the table and took in without a flicker that the girl was pretty, brown-skinned, possibly Iranian, with long eyes whose stiff black lashes were like kohl-lines. Probably she was Jamie’s girlfriend, or if she wasn’t, wanted to be. Weren’t girls still made like that? Or perhaps all she daydreamed about was becoming an investment manager, or a dentist.
—And you’re in the sixth form, Jamie? You are Jamie, aren’t you? Are you bright? What’s your subject?
—He’s bright, said the girl, proudly envious.
Jamie grimaced as if it wasn’t worth discussing. —I don’t know if I have a subject yet. I don’t know if it’s English or Philosophy.
—Do English, Kate said, unhesitating. —Why waste your life learning clever ways to redescribe what everybody already knows? Art’s much more complicated.
He smiled warily. —I’d like to talk to you about my mother sometime. If you didn’t mind. I’d like to find out more about her.
—Is this Francesca your mother? the girl said, astonished: so, he hadn’t allowed her far inside his privacy.
—I wouldn’t be a reliable witness, Kate demurred. —We knew each other when we weren’t much older than you are now. It’s a long time ago. I’ll only remember funny bits and pieces.
—I’d like the funny bits and pieces, I think.
She gave him her telephone number then, and told him how to find the house, the name in black and gold letters painted on the fanlight over the door.
—You could cycle over. Your father said you were interested in bikes. He and I bumped into one another at the Millennium Centre.
Jamie laughed. —He has no idea. I go everywhere on my bike; but I’m not interested in it.
Kate wouldn’t have minded him in one of her classes: a Tolstoy type, not a Dostoevsky type, who were two-a-penny. But Billie was waiting patiently for her sugar; and in all the ceremonial fuss of stirring her chocolate and tucking a paper napkin into the white Peter Pan collar of her dress, Kate wouldn’t even have noticed the young people leave, if Jamie hadn’t raised a hand in farewell to her through the window, straddled already half across his bicycle, hopping on one leg. She saw for herself then how shabby and ancient it was, not even a racing model (and that he didn’t wear a helmet). She thought that probably he wouldn’t ever turn up at Firenze. He’d be protective, on second thoughts, of his own idea of Francesca; which probably, considering some of the things Kate remembered about her, would be a good thing.
She had bought a postcard in the post office. Along with her fountain pen, she fished it out from her bag: a photograph of the triumphant figure of Justice from over the Crown Court in the city centre, with bandaged eyes and swinging scales. ‘Dear Max,’ she wrote, cramping her big black italic hand into one half of the space; she didn’t want to have to put the card in an envelope, in case Sherie didn’t get to read it too. ‘Greetings. I am well, amid more civilised mœurs de provence. My days are dedicated to art, and my nights to the cellist in our new quartet. And how are you? Kate.’
It wasn’t strictly the truth. She didn’t in fact find the cellist at all attractive, although she suspected he could be encouraged, if it amused her or she grew desperate, to harbour a moody thwarted passion for her. It would be in keeping with his sorrowful paisley shirts washed to pale thinness, his lion’s mane of hair with its secret bald patch, and the divorce he clung to as part of the explanation for himself, as martyred saints in paintings carry round the wheels that they were broken on.
David came home from work one evening to find not only Giulia in his living room but also the new teacher, Menna, the fortune teller. David had been at a tabletop multi-agency exercise, rehearsing contingencies for a flood in the Bay area, in a big room hired out for functions at one of the leisure centres: behind his concentration all day there had floated the liquid echo and splashings from a swimming pool and the thudding chock of balls, perhaps in a basketball court. All the various authorities and agencies at these events competed to make their points, and public health came low in the order for commanding attention. ‘We don’t have time to wait for you to consult the books,’ one of the policemen had said to him at some point.
The women were sitting with the curtains drawn and only the lamps switched on, drinking wine, huddled intimately on the floor among the cushions, their talk intent, their heads bent close together: Giulia’s hair faded dark-blonde and Suzie’s honey-coloured, the new girl’s black and shiny as a china doll’s, in a long plait. They looked up and paused when he stood in his heavy coat in the doorway with his briefcase, but only as if he were a stone fallen into their stream, interrupting its flow for a mom
ent. The new girl’s face was doll-like, too: with white perfect skin and too-small symmetrical features, eyes rather burningly coal-dark, outlined in black pencil. The children were in the snug, watching EastEnders, cuddled up one either side of Jamie. David and Suzie disagreed over whether the soap was suitable: the idea of its lugubrious quarrelling imprinted on their infant minds depressed him, but she said if he wanted them not to watch it then he had to be home in time to do something else with them. She said if they didn’t watch it they would feel different to the other kids at school, and he kept to himself the thought that it was better, to be different. The house was burrowed deep into its comfortable evening; whatever they’d all had for supper was cleared away in the kitchen and the dishwasher churned. He poured himself a glass of wine – the girls were on their second bottle – and chose something from the freezer that looked roughly the right size and shape to microwave for his supper, not bothering to wipe away the ice crystals to find out what it was.
—I’m sorry, Suzie called into the kitchen. —I didn’t keep anything for you. I didn’t know what time you’d be finished.
When he’d eaten the gluey food and came with his wine to sprawl on the sofa, their talk petered out conspiratorially. EastEnders was finished and Joel came running to snuggle in his lap, hooking an arm round his neck, the light little body just beginning to elongate out of baby roundness. Hannah showed off her series of ballet positions in the middle of the room, proficient but not graceful. —Do you know, Daddy, that Menna can tell fortunes?
—Oh yes, David, Giulia urged him, an enthusiast for everybody’s gifts. —Why don’t you let Menna tell yours? Suzie, have you got playing cards?
—He never would, said Suzie, not looking at him.
—She’s uncanny. She can tell you things about yourself you can’t believe she knows.
—I can’t say I find that an appealing prospect, David said firmly.
Instead Hannah dragged Jamie from the snug and made him sit cross-legged on the carpet to have his fortune told: he had always since she was tiny given himself up like this to her command. David couldn’t tell what Jamie thought; he was smiling slightly, but that could have meant irony, or just dope. The women and the children watched intently, Hannah breathing noisily with her mouth open. The girl was probably closer to Jamie’s age than to any of theirs.
—D’you want to do this? she asked him.
Jamie said he didn’t mind. She shuffled and cut the cards with deft expertise, handed them to him to cut again, and then dealt them with crisp practised movements into rows. Her hands were small, fingers sore and puffy round the bitten nails; there was no elaborate mystification, but something was commanding in her matter-of-fact concentration. David couldn’t help imagining she had been soaking up everything they gave away about themselves, to bring it out later as her triumph. With sudden significant slowness, Menna turned a card over, then another one; her glance flicked from them up to Jamie’s face. —The watcher, she said, —from his vantage point: lots of sky.
Suzie nudged Giulia’s arm in triumph. Jamie smiled steadily back at Menna.
—Books, she said, frowning, peering. —Lots of books. I can’t read what’s written in them, yet.
She lingeringly turned over another card, making it snap. A tiny jolt of surprise seemed to register in her shoulder blades. David thought it was an effective touch. —Oh, she laughed. —How interesting. She looked at the other women. —Trouble.
—What kind of trouble? Suzie said.
—The usual kind. What do you think, at his age?
—Oh, Jamie. Giulia touched him reassuringly on the shoulder. —You don’t have to go on with this if you don’t want to.
Jamie only shrugged and looked amused. —Perhaps I ought to know, he said.
David broke the spell, getting to his feet. —I think these children should go to bed. I’ll take them up.
There were furious wails of protest; Menna paused with the next card ready to turn over.
Giulia pleaded. —Let them watch. It’ll only take a few more minutes.
Menna turned the card over slowly, stared at it. Then she shook her head. —It’s gone, she said: blankly, as if it didn’t matter to her one way or another. —Something’s blocking me. I can’t see it.
She pushed the cards away, muddling the carefully dealt piles.
—Oh, David! Suzie complained, with real regret. — That was you. Your fault.
Hannah couldn’t forgive David all the time he was putting them to bed; she sulked, and spat her toothpaste on Joel’s feet, and stubbornly wouldn’t even come to listen to the story. Joel was free to choose something safe; his favourites were all about railway cats or jolly postmen or good little trains, he endured Hannah’s more frightening choices in a stoic stillness. David thought Joel liked the opportunity to have his father to himself; he recounted little muddled snatches of school life, wanting confirmation that what seemed only strange and arbitrary added mysteriously somehow up to sense. He put his hands on his father’s face and held it looking into his, so he could be sure he had all his attention. While David was reassuring Joel, he heard Jamie pull down the ladder to his attic and then pull it up again behind him.
The women when he came downstairs were confiding together in low voices, so that he knew they didn’t want him to join in. He could hear that Suzie was telling them about escapades from her teenage life, about going to rock festivals with her friend and bringing boys back to the tent. She had only been fourteen when they did this. She had told David these stories – or some of them anyway – when they were first together, including the fact that she had caught herpes from one of these boys, and had had to attend an STD clinic afterwards. He hadn’t been shocked; he was a doctor, he took a practical approach. But it did shock him – he couldn’t help it – that she told the stories now, to this woman she hardly knew, and in a voice as if it was all funny or even glamorously wicked. He left them to it, and went into the study to check his e-mails.
By the time Suzie came to bed he could tell that she had drunk quite a lot more; she stumbled over her shoes on the floor, swearing under her breath, and instead of folding her clothes or putting them in the wash basket she let them fall where she took them off. She showered for a long time to sober up. When she climbed into bed he had already put out the light on his side, and he closed his eyes as if he was asleep; pressing up close against his back, she made him too hot.
—Tell me about Francesca, she pleaded into his pyjama top, her voice muffled so that at first he wasn’t sure what he’d heard.
—Whatever for? I’m asleep.
—Tell me. It’s important.
—You know all there is to know.
—No, I don’t. We hardly ever talk about her.
—When someone’s dead, after a while there’s nothing new to say. That’s natural.
—You treat it all so calmly. If I died, would you be this calm?
He turned over to face her in the dark.
—You used to not want to discuss all this.
—I know. But now I can’t stop thinking about her.
—Don’t think about her. It was a sad, awful story. Better to let it go.
—Which way did you go to sleep together, when you were lying in bed like this? Which side did she like to lie on? What did she wear to bed?
David dutifully thought about it. —I can’t remember, he said. —I don’t know what she wore.
—You must be able to remember.
—We kept such different hours. I’d be getting up to go to work sometimes as she was coming to bed.
He did remember then that when Francesca was very pregnant she could only sleep sitting up in an armchair. But that was also when she began to imagine it wasn’t a baby growing inside her but a demon, which would split her open and kill her when it was born. He didn’t want to tell Suzie about that.
The next day on the way back from work – he was early, a meeting had been cancelled – David decided on an impulse to turn
right at a traffic light instead of going straight home, and to call in on Kate Flynn. It was weeks since he’d been to her house after the oratorio. Somewhere washing about among the tissue boxes and empty crisp packets on the back seat of the car was the impossible book she had lent him; he had felt so puzzled and slighted when he opened it at home and found he couldn’t read it, that he had meant simply to drop it through Kate’s letter box sometime, and not to go out of his way to see her again.
But she might have made a genuine mistake; and anyway he was disappointed now, standing in the dusk at Firenze’s front door, when the bell chimed somewhere far off and in the long minutes he waited after it no one came to let him in. The pillars of the portico were crumbling and corroded; a black mould grew across the white steps. Through the windows to either side of the door he couldn’t see anything but the porch with its checkerboard tiled floor and empty flowerpots and rotting deckchairs; the fringed cream blinds pulled halfway down were worn to threads. He hadn’t known he was thirsty to talk with Kate Flynn until she wasn’t there. He nursed her book under his coat, shielding it from a drizzling, sideways-blown fine rain that had started as he got out of the car; he didn’t even try to post it through the letter box (which was anyway, simplifyingly, too small). He had never been any good at talking: Suzie complained of it, even his mother teased him for it. All the short time he was married to Francesca, he had kept a young man’s silence like a seal across his lips. At work of course he talked, but there it had consequences, and was about substantial things. He didn’t know where this urge to spill his private thoughts had sprung from, sharp and precise as other appetites.
