by Jo Verity
3
Fay and Isabel agreed that Laura’s fish pie and apple crumble were better than anything they might get in a restaurant.
During the meal Fay noticed how little Isabel ate, and how much she drank. From what she said, her life sounded equally unbalanced. She talked about Geoffrey as though he were a professional acquaintance and her children no more than a logistical problem. Fay had not met Piers, Max, Johnny and Esme often enough to know them as individuals. In her head they were ‘Izzy’s four’, and their mother’s disjointed ramblings about ‘gap years’ and placements with ‘friends of ours in Chile’ served only to weld them inseparably into Piersmaxjohnnyandesme, a four-headed, over-indulged monster.
Fay noticed how intently Laura listened as if committing every word to memory. Occasionally she asked a question or made a comment that pinpointed the essence of the discussion, elevating it to something more meaningful than gossip. She had always been attentive and, had she been a writer not a painter, Fay might have worried that these intimate conversations would appear in a novel or TV drama.
Isabel stopped talking and relinquished her place in the confessional. It was Fay’s turn and she knew that, having been through the superficial stuff earlier, they were expecting some in-depth revelations. But Fay was accustomed to promoting the Waterfield family myth of harmony and success. ‘I’m really, really getting a lot out of being HoD.’
‘What’s HoD?’ Isabel interrupted.
‘Head of Department.’ Didn’t everyone know that? She continued with the sanitised patter. Jack was well respected within his profession, still loving his work and was very trim for his age. Caitlin was lecturing at the Dental school in Cardiff. She owned her own flat and had a silver sports car. Dylan had just married a charming young woman from a very good family. And Kingsley…? Oh, Kingsley was fine – learning lots of life-skills on the other side of the world. There. All done.
‘Does Jack still do that whatd’youcallit? With bells?’ Isabel giggled.
‘Yes, he does.’ Fay had hoped to avoid the Morris dancing. People sometimes forgot his name but nobody forgot her husband’s hobby. If he played chess or collected stamps or went fishing it wouldn’t get a mention. She, too, found the whole dancing thing ludicrous but she kept up the PR. ‘It’s a very strenuous activity you know. Excellent for the cardiovascular system. Better than aerobics. And it goes way, way back. Before cricket was…invented. Invented? If you’ve ever read Hardy,’ she paused for her words to penetrate Isabel’s alcohol-dulled consciousness, ‘If you really know your Hardy, you’ll remember that it’s pivotal in several of the novels.’ She avoided Laura’s gaze, dreading that she would demand chapter and verse.
‘I think back all those years, to that last day, when we stood on the bridge and skimmed those sodding school hats across the river. Everything seemed possible. God, I’d have drowned myself there and then if I thought I’d end up like this.’ Isabel made a pistol with her fingers, holding it to her temple, as if drowning were not enough.
‘Well I’m perfectly content with how things have worked out.’ Fay smiled brightly. ‘Perhaps I’m not quite so demanding.’
Isabel ploughed on. ‘Come off it, Fay. I can’t believe that Jumping Jack, successful and healthy though he may be, has been the only man in your life. Spill the beans. Dish the dirt. No dalliances in the stockroom or extra-mural activities? We all know what goes on in the staff room. And in the dentist’s chair, come to that. Has Jack been a good boy? Actually, my dentist is dishy. He can give me a filling any time he likes. What’s yours like Laura?’
‘She’s certainly very efficient.’ Laura, the slightest of smiles crossing her face, collected the plates. ‘And I’d change only one thing about my life. I should have told that bloody editor that David wasn’t available.’
Fay leaned across and put her arm around Laura’s shoulder, and remembered David Ford. David had been working as a junior photographer on one of the major dailies. A big story had broken. A man was holding a group of teenagers hostage, at a youth club, and all the other staff photographers were occupied so David had been asked to cover it. He’d jumped at the chance. As activity around the youth club stepped up, and police marksmen were called in, the man had become agitated and started firing towards the crowd. At the inquest it was revealed that one of the bullets had ricocheted off the wall of an adjacent building and penetrated David’s skull, even though he had been well out of the line of fire.
Try as they might, they couldn’t regain their high spirits and soon after they had cleared the table and done the washing up, Laura wished them goodnight. ‘You can stay up and natter if you like but I need my bed. Help yourself to anything you need.’
Isabel wandered into the sitting room with two glasses and the remnants of a bottle of wine. Fay followed. It was cooler in here and she pulled her jacket around her as she flopped onto the shabby Chesterfield and yawned. ‘I really should go to bed, too. I was up at six. I’ve eaten and drunk far too much, though, and I shan’t sleep.’
Isabel proffered the bottle and when she declined tipped its contents into her own glass. ‘I never sleep.’ She drank the wine, gulping it down until the glass was empty. ‘I’ve always suffered from insomnia. The only thing that does the trick is a good fuck. And those are few and far between these days.’
Fay was used to Isabel’s outrageous statements and whilst her friend prattled on, she looked around the room. The walls were painted in shades of dusky pink, but little of it showed between the patchwork of Laura’s paintings and David’s photographs. One wall was completely fitted out with bookshelves, the contents dancing in higgledy-piggledy rows. Painters, poets, cooks, travellers, story-tellers and historians, cheek by jowl. Her own shelves were classified along the lines of the school library, and she wondered how anyone in this house could ever find what they were looking for.
Isabel had fallen silent and was lolling to one side. Her cheek, pressing against the high arm of the sofa, was folded and wrinkled like the worn leather. Leaning closer, Fay inspected her friend’s hair and could see a few gratifying millimetres of grey, almost white, at the roots. And the skin above her upper lip was furred with soft, bleached hair. The face of her mother’s sister, Violet, sprang up before her. Auntie Violet had been glamorous, too, and as a child she’d loved watching her aunt applying blood-red lipstick, then clamping her lips to a Rizla paper to blot off the excess. When she got older the lipstick flooded into the tiny wrinkles around her lips – a scarlet centipede walking across her face.
A noise from the kitchen made Fay jump. Someone was coming in through the back door. She froze, wishing that she had closed the door to the sitting room and could hide from this midnight prowler. Holding her breath, she prayed that Isabel wouldn’t wake and start babbling.
It sounded as though the intruder was running the tap and clattering in the cupboards. Now he was whistling. She reached into her bag for her phone, switching it on, ready to call nine-nine-nine.
Something tinkled on to the kitchen tiles. ‘Bugger.’
With the phone clasped in her hand, she tip-toed across the hall and leant around the half-open kitchen door. Silhouetted against the white light from the open fridge, was a young man, crouching. He must have felt her presence because she certainly made no noise and he swivelled round to face her, still on his haunches.
‘Oh, God. Sorry. Did I wake you? Mum’ll murder me.’
‘Cassidy?’
‘I’m so sorry. I wasn’t supposed to come home but I missed the last bus to Beeston. I was planning to stay with a mate.’
‘You nearly spent the night in a police cell.’ She held up her phone. ‘I’m Fay, by the way.’
‘I know. You haven’t changed a bit.’
They shook hands, calculating that it was six or seven years since they’d last met. ‘I remember it very clearly,’ he said, ‘Mum and I dropped in on our way somewhere and I managed to kick a cup of tea all over your white carpet. You were terribly nice about it
.’
‘Was I? That doesn’t sound a bit like me.’
They laughed.
‘Well this calls for a drink, don’t you think? I know Mum’s got some brandy stashed in one of these cupboards. I’d hate to think she’s going to waste it on cooking.’
Out of the blue, Fay felt the party mood return and didn’t protest when Cassidy poured two generous brandies from the dusty bottle. He raised his glass. ‘To reconnecting.’
Fay wasn’t fond of brandy but, not wanting to appear a spoil-sport, tossed it back, straight away feeling her cheeks flush and her heart race.
Now that he was standing up, she had to tilt her head right back to look at his face. ‘Gosh. I thought my sons were tall but you’re…’ She stopped. ‘How rude of me. I shouldn’t make personal remarks.’
‘No sweat. And it’s a fact. I am ridiculously tall. Six-five. The only place I can get lost in a crowd is Sweden. They all seem to be tall over there. But I don’t think Dad had any Scandinavian genes.’
‘Maybe not, but he was a lovely man. D’you remember him at all?’
‘Not really. I used to think I did, but now I realise I was remembering all the things people told me about him. Their memories of him, not my own.’ He paused. ‘I do remember something of my own, actually.’ She waited, wondering why he seemed so uncertain. ‘It must be mine because it’s something horrid.’
‘You don’t have to tell me if it’s a private thing.’ She wanted to keep the conversation light.
‘I want to. I don’t often meet anyone that knew him. But you won’t tell Mum will you? It would be pointless to upset her.’
She promised, dreading what he was going to say.
‘He died when I was five, so it must have happened a little while before that. We were in the garden and he had the hose-pipe fixed to the tap outside the kitchen door. We were living in South London then. Did you ever come to that house? Anyway, he was watering the garden, or whatever, and I remember looking down at the hose, lying across the lawn like a big black snake, and I stood on it. God knows why. To see what would happen I suppose. The pressure blew the pipe off the tap which didn’t really do any damage but Dad went mad. He smacked me across the legs with it and locked me in the shed. I don’t know how long I was in there but it was stifling hot. The smell of creosoted wood still makes me feel ill.’ He pushed his hair back with his hand and shook his head. ‘Can that be the only memory I have of the man that everyone tells me was so wonderful? He thrashed me and locked me in a shed. Sometimes I think I dreamed it. I wish I had.’ He poured two more brandies and this time he, too, tossed his back.
She wished her cheeks weren’t burning and that she could think of something comforting to say.
‘Shall I tell you another secret?’ He paused then obviously seeing concern cloud her face continued, ‘Don’t worry. This is something nice. I used to love it when you came. Mum, bless her, was a bit laid back but when you came we had such a great time. We did proper things.’
‘Proper things?’
‘We went on outings. To museums. Out for meals. You took me to the zoo for the first time. Things that proper families did.’ He paused again, looking directly at her. ‘I know this sounds disloyal but I distinctly remember wishing that you were my mum.’
Overcome by something she didn’t quite understand, she grabbed him in a lingering hug, her head barely grazing his chin. How bony he was beneath his sweater, so different from her well-built son.
‘Fay?’ Isabel’s voice croaked from the sitting room. ‘Where is everyone? What’s the time?’
Fay felt unreasonably miffed at the interruption. ‘Just getting a glass of water.’ Cassidy raised his eyebrows and she put her finger to her lips then went to the sink, making lots of noise as she filled a tumbler with water. He followed her and standing very close whispered, ‘Sorry about all that. I shouldn’t have offloaded. You won’t tell Mum, will you?’ She shook her head.
‘Fay? Ooops.’ There was a crash from the sitting room which might have been books falling off the shelf or a chair toppling over. ‘Shit.’
‘Coming.’
Like a sleepy child, he offered her his cheek and she kissed it gently. ‘See you tomorrow?’ she whispered, then went to persuade Isabel that it was time for bed.
4
It took Jack a few waking moments to pinpoint his location. The window wasn’t in the right place – unless he’d moved into the spare room during the night, something he often did these days, prompted by Fay’s ‘Snoring, Jack,’ and prod in the kidneys. They agreed that it was a sensible solution – they both needed to get a decent night’s sleep, ready for the working day ahead. But the spare room didn’t have crisp white sheets or smell of lavender. The bed creaked as he rolled on to his front, enjoying the long-forgotten sensation of cotton against his naked flesh, before rolling over again to locate a cooler spot. It had been like this when he was a child, hot and feverish with measles, mumps or something that children weren’t allowed to have anymore. He would lie in the middle of his tubular metal bed, getting hotter and hotter until he could stand it no longer, then wriggle out of the dip in the mattress to a cool patch right at the edge, anchoring himself with a skinny arm thrust between the mattress and the tucked-under bedding.
The sash window was open a few inches and he dozed for a while, enjoying the fresh morning air, until the distant babble of running water drove him out of bed in search of the bathroom. The rooms at The Welcome Stranger Guesthouse did not have en suite facilities. Non made sure that he was aware of that before suggesting that he stay the night. ‘Lots of people have got a real thing about it,’ she said, ‘So I always mention it straight away. There are four rooms and we’ve got two bathrooms so it’s not like a camp site.’
Fay would never stay anywhere if she had to share a bathroom and he felt daring as, kitted out in the towelling robe from the back of the bedroom door, he sauntered across the landing. He pulled it firmly around him when he saw Non coming up the stairs, carrying a mug of tea. ‘Sleep well?’ she inquired as if he were one of her family. She held the mug out to him. ‘I thought you might be ready for this.’
Today her hair was roughly plaited, the ends tied with red knitting-wool and she wore a short-sleeved white blouse and pair of well-washed jeans. Her face was without makeup and her feet were bare. All visible skin had the even tan that only comes from working out of doors.
‘Yes. Thanks.’ He wanted to tell her that it was the most restoring night’s sleep that he’d had for years and that it would be the easiest thing in the world to stay here for the rest of his life, playing Scrabble and sharing a bathroom with lovely people like Melvin and Bonnie.
But he didn’t get the chance to say a word before she was off again. ‘What d’you fancy for breakfast? Oh, Gareth’s on his way over to pick up the keys then he’ll go and take a look at your car. Full Welsh? D’you want to borrow some slippers?’
He loved the way her conversation darted all over the place, her voice soft as honey dribbling off the spoon.
After showering, he put on his clothes from the previous day. This was forbidden at home. Fay whipped things off him and into the washing machine before they had time to meld to the shape of his body or take on his smell, then they turned up again in the wardrobe with sharp creases down the arms or legs. Fair enough, he needed to look freshly laundered when he was at work or attending a meeting of the Dental Practitioners Committee, but she did the same thing with his gardening togs and his dancing clothes.
Before going down to breakfast, he checked his phone for messages and called in to see whether there was anything vital on the landline. It was a facility that he’d viewed as technology gone mad but, this particular Sunday morning, it put his mind at ease, knowing that there had been no crisis at home and no one was trying to get hold of him.
The smell of bacon wafted up the stairs and Jack traced it to the kitchen where Melvin and Bonnie were already tucking in to a cooked breakfast. ‘Hi there. Help y
ourself, Jack.’ Bonnie waved towards the Aga where a baking tray held all the makings of a ‘full Welsh’ breakfast.
At home, even at weekends, he and Fay stuck to muesli and wholemeal toast but he poured a mug of tea from the large brown pot and only hesitated for a second before loading his plate with a bit of everything, choosing the seat which gave him a clear view of Non, carrying a basket down to the enclosure at the end of the garden.
‘What are your plans for the day?’ he asked Melvin.
‘We try not to make plans, don’t we?’ Melvin looked at Bonnie for confirmation.
‘Not strictly true, honey. But now we’ve completed our research we can afford to go with the flow. We don’t need to be back home for another couple of months so…’ she smiled and shrugged.
What must it feel like – not to be constrained by a relentless schedule? The longest break from work that he’d ever had was two and a half weeks when they’d dragged the children around Scotland. Fay had complained that she was expected to soldier on alone, year after year, through the long summer holidays and had insisted that he put in more effort with ‘his’ children. By some twisted logic she considered his going to work as a kind of treat, some sort of dig at her, and that she was the one who had the rotten deal. The other school holidays were the same but with a smaller discontentment rating. The Scottish trip had been planned down to the last ice cream stop and visitor centre. Often they had driven past intriguing hand-painted signs on the roadside, suggesting that they might veer off down a winding lane to see a ‘tartan maze’ or a ‘rodent sanctuary’, but it would have thrown them off schedule and they might never have got back on track.
‘How about you, Jack? How’s your day looking?’
Before he could answer, Non had come through the back door. ‘Sorry to abandon you but I’m sure you don’t want me hovering around being servile. I’m not very good at that.’ She put her basket down on the draining board and lifted out a dozen or so eggs, splodged with chicken dung and downy feathers. She wiped them with a damp cloth and placed them gently in the egg cartons, stacked on top of the fridge. ‘It’s a gorgeous day. I don’t think we should sit around here wasting it d’you? I know a place where I can guarantee that we’ll see red kites.’
