by Angela Huth
Emily thought about it.
‘But then what about my father?’
‘That’s a point,’ said Wolf. ‘I suppose they’re best together. Perhaps your mother’s got a friend a bit like her who could marry Dad.’
‘I could ask her, if you like,’ said Emily.
‘Ask her tomorrow,’ said Wolf. And fell silent.
Emily had so much to ask her mother tomorrow. She began to count the hours till she came out of school. But halfway through she changed to counting all the different necklaces that lived on the side of Fen’s mirror. The jewels and beads blurred in her imagination till they were no longer hanging, lifeless things, but flung out from Fen’s neck, bright coloured stars as she danced and danced on a foggy floor.
Eventually, Emily slept.
Fen came back from London effervescent, full of energy. She brought Emily a packet of her favourite caramel lollipops. She told about the party in vivid detail, making Emily laugh. She said London was all right, just for a day, but she’d never live there again. She was pleased to be back. Very pleased. For her part, Emily experienced that pervading warmth of return that obliterates the hollow chill of past absence. She forgave her mother as unconsciously today as yesterday she had condemned her.
And at the weekend Uncle Tom came to stay, bringing with him a lymphatic blonde called Janie, and Kevin McCloud. Wolf spent most of the time at the house and was naturally drawn to Kevin, in whom he found a common interest in traction engines. In fact, Emily admitted to herself, she couldn’t help agreeing with Wolf. Kevin wasn’t at all bad. He spent the whole of Saturday afternoon helping them make a very elaborate tower – more fanciful by far than anything they had envisaged – for their bird town. He then went out to buy special glue and helped them stick the whole thing together. Uncle Tom, meanwhile, on whom Emily relied for surprising adventures on Saturday afternoons, disappeared with Janie for a rest. Apparently they were both very tired, though in Emily’s judgement Uncle Tom looked his usual lively self. When they returned at tea time, it seemed that Janie, at least, had received no benefits from the sleep. She lay limp in the armchair, her occasional twitter reduced to total silence. Emily was scornful. No girl would ever get Uncle Tom that way: what he liked was to laugh with a woman, as he did with Fen: to find a woman in whom wit, curiosity, and enthusiasm matched his own. If Fen hadn’t been his sister she would have been his ideal wife. Strange how his girls – and they changed almost weekly – all seemed to be beautiful but unrewarding, with impressive breasts but lesser brains. He spent so much time on them, too. He would explain to them in his mellifluous voice the difference between Keats and Byron, only to be rewarded with a vacuous nod and a look of loving adoration. Still, Emily didn’t really mind, because at this rate it looked as if he wouldn’t be married for years, and she herself had plans to be his wife. Always had had, for as long as she could remember. She had proposed to him once, a few years ago, at the end of a chapter of Peter Pan, when he had done Captain Hook’s voice so well she had laughed till she found herself crying with love. Uncle Tom, not a moment’s hesitation, said of course he would have waited for her, had it not been for the law. But this hardly deterred Emily. With a stalwart optimism she felt the law, whatever that was, was sure to change by the time she was old enough to marry Uncle Tom. Consequently, there was no unhappiness in her waiting.
Saturday evening, Wolf still with them, was a lively one. In comparison with the fatigued Janie, Fen was refulgent. Emily could never remember her looking younger, happier. She supposed it must be to do with lots of things: bravery about Papa being away; Uncle Tom’s jokes, the wine they had had for lunch, and the warmth of the fire that protected them from the dark frost outside. There was music and laughter. Wolf did his imitation of a pop star on the kitchen table, much encouraged by the enthusiastic response. Emily imitated him, wiggling her hips with astonishing rhythm and skill.
‘Sexy!’ shouted Uncle Tom from the armchair. Janie was lying all over him, limp, her head on his shoulder. For a moment Fen whirled about the room in Kevin’s arms, her head on one side, his cheek close to hers.
‘Sexy!’ shouted Wolf, still stomping on the table. Laughing, Fen and Kevin parted at once. At the same time Emily stopped dancing, too. She liked it better when her mother danced alone, flinging out her arms, like she sometimes did for Papa. And her own mood of wild dancing was suddenly over. The light in the kitchen trembled, and she was glad when Uncle Tom removed Janie from his lap and she was able to take her place.
Sunday morning, as was her custom, Emily came down early to fetch her mother’s breakfast. On the way she met Kevin in the passage, dressed in pyjamas. He picked her up, gave her rigid body a friendly hug, and kissed her lightly on the nose. He explained he had taken the papers in to Uncle Tom and was now going to fetch some coffee for Fen. When Emily explained that was exactly her purpose, Kevin was most reasonable. In that case, he said, he’d go back to bed. Perhaps Emily would even bring him something, too? She watched him go down the passage. When he opened the door of the small room in which Marcia Burrows had slept so tidily, she had an instant’s view of clothes all over the floor, but a barely ruffled bed.
Then she noticed Kevin had dropped his handkerchief. She picked it up, screwing it up in her hand. She would return it to him with his breakfast.
But later in the morning the handkerchief was still a bulge in the sleeve of her jersey. She wondered if anyone would notice, giving her the chance to say sorry, she had forgotten. But they didn’t. And as the sun shone, and Wolf wasn’t due for a while, she went out into the garden. She walked down the hill, cold crackling grass, to the stream. The water gurgled along quite fast. She watched it for a while. Then, bending down, she put in a finger. Icy. The handkerchief, she thought, would sail downstream a long way before becoming waterlogged. She could watch it out of sight, then run along the bank and rescue it.
Emily pulled the white handkerchief from her sleeve. It was warm. She shook, cold. But, determined now, she threw it quickly. It spread a little, floated. Faster than she had expected, it spun away. Soon it was out of sight, round a bend, the way the watercress had gone.
Emily tried to move, to chase it, to carry out the next part of her plan. But her legs remained motionless. Then, with a sudden, nefarious joy, die found herself running back up the hill. She would tell Mama, sometime, explaining first she had done a very wicked thing. Well, perhaps if Kevin didn’t notice, it would be better to say nothing. Or would it? She couldn’t decide. Not for the moment, anyhow.
Four
The northern town in which Kevin lived was suffering from a particularly bleak winter. The sun, when it occasionally shone, was unkind in its revelations of blackened stone, blackened trees, blackened moors beyond hills and dales of mean houses. It was unusually cold. People bowed their heads as they went about, not bothering with greetings in this raw air, aiming only to return to some kind of warmth. In the large house where Kevin lived – once belonging to a mill owner, converted now to flats – something had gone wrong with the boiler. While they waited for it to be repaired, the inhabitants lit small gas and electric fires. But their thin warmth stood no chance against the force of this kind of cold, re-echoed through the stones of the old house. Impatiently, they suffered.
The night Fen told Emily they were going to spend the weekend with Kevin in the north, Emily cried. She cried rarely: on this occasion she was unable to understand why she was racked by tears, unable to explain to her mother her melancholy reaction. Ordinarily, she was receptive to almost any suggestion of travel or a visit. Her reluctance to go north was nameless, but acute. Fen tried to encourage her.
‘You’ll see a new bit of England. We’ll go up on the moors. It’s beautiful there.’
‘Why can’t we just stay here?’
‘Because – ’
‘I like it here.’
‘I know you do. Of course you do. But think of Kevin, how awful it must be for him, up there so much of the time.’
/> ‘If it’s awful for him, why will it be nice for us?’
Fen smiled, wiping away Emily’s tears.
‘Now, come on,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t want me to leave you behind, would you?’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’ Emily sniffed. In the face of such a disagreeable choice, she felt helpless. ‘I don’t see why we have to care about Kevin so much.’
Fen hesitated.
‘Well, we just do,’ she said. ‘I mean, he’s a friend, isn’t he?’
Emily felt too weak to resist further. Sometimes, she was unable to make herself clear, perhaps because she was not quite clear within herself. And children who were not positive, she had discovered, always lost battles. The chances were loaded against them. It was pretty unfair.
They travelled by train. Emily slept most of the way, her head leaning against her mother’s shoulder, her cheek tickled by the fox fur collar that sparkled with damp from the station. The fur smelt good and the carriage was warm.
In sleep, the rhythm of the train rumbled through Emily’s bones and she dreamt she was on a merry-go-round. In front of her, on a painted wooden horse with a wild gold mane, Fen rode side-saddle. Beyond Fen, on an identical horse, galloped Idle. The only strange thing was that behind Emily rode a small boy with fair hair who kept calling out to her that he was her brother. She could hear his calls above the music. But when she turned to look at him, although his hair was quite clear, same colour as hers, his face was a blur. She couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying. She shouted to Fen to turn and look, too; but Fen couldn’t hear and didn’t turn, So Emily gave up worrying about the boy, whoever he was, and concentrated on the chase. Because it seemed that’s what they were doing, chasing each other on these horses that moved in great bounds, but never progressed in catching each other up.
The merry-go-round came to a halt, the train stopped. Emily woke.
‘I wish I had a brother,’ she said.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Fen was getting down cases.
‘We’ve been into all that before. You know I’m much too old to start having more children now.’
‘I don’t think you are. And anyhow, I would have liked to have had an older brother, like Wolf. So I suppose if you did get a baby now it would be too late.’
She knew she sounded accusing and that her timing for such observations was wrong. But then everything, on waking, was wrong. She would have liked to have gone on dreaming till one of the horses had caught up with another. The station was dank, freezing. Her suitcase was heavy. She felt rather sick. And Fen was impervious to her condition, maddeningly cheerful.
They lunched in the station hotel. A vast, almost deserted dining-room, with a high domed ceiling. It was painted with gold stars, some faded so pale they were near invisible, like real stars on a cloudy night. On a small stage an orchestra of three saddened gentlemen in maroon coats skimmed their way through a Viennese waltz. Fen said she thought they must be practising for some special occasion tonight. She herself, as Emily knew, liked running into any kind of band at any time of day. Her fingers played on the white tablecloth. She seemed very happy.
‘Isn’t this fun, Em?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Emily.
She was worried by the amount of waiters who guarded two trolleys of silver domes, almost the same shape as the ceiling. They must be very bored, waiting for someone to ask them to raise these lids for a helping of roast beef. And even when the order came, it couldn’t be all that interesting, just slicing away at meat, day after day. What would they tell their wives when they went home in the evenings? ‘Six slices today’? Or, ‘Someone wanted nothing but the crackly bits’? It would be awfully boring being married to a waiter, except on the days he spilt something and made a customer very cross. Then, of course, there would be a chance to sympathise, and he’d think you were a good wife interested in his work.
‘You are a spoilsport, sometimes,’ said Fen. ‘What do you want to eat ?’
Emily decided to have the roast beef in order to cheer up the waiters. There were so many of them, so bored, longing for something to do. She wondered if the thrill of her order would cause them actually to fight over who should do the carving. She supposed if they did fight it would be up to the head waiter to part them by squirting them with soda water. If all that happened, lunch would be much more fun.
But it didn’t. All the young waiters stepped back to let an old grandfather of a waiter glide up to her, pushing the trolley elegantly as if it were a dancing partner. His feet almost kept time with the waltz now being played. Emily felt a certain fairness had been achieved, but she couldn’t help being disappointed.
As they began their lunch, a solitary new customer came into the dining room. A youngish man, well dressed, with a single curl on his forehead. He looked slowly around. Immediately the unemployed waiters scrambled about him and he flicked a hand in the air, as if he had suddenly decided to conduct the waltz. The gesture sent three of the waiters scurrying back to their waiting place by the huge table of untouched hors d’oeuvres. The one remaining privileged waiter led the man to a table far away from theirs, but directly opposite. He sat down and ordered very quickly, without looking at the menu, which sent the waiter into a pantomime of confusion. Then he looked across at Fen and Emily. Both returned his look.
‘I’m so glad he’s come,’ Emily said. ‘It’ll give them all some more work.’ She was feeling better now. Warm and less sick. Besides, it was hard to resist Fen’s gaiety. Perhaps the north wouldn’t be so bad after all.
As they ate, the man across the way from them continued to stare with some curiosity. Then, on finishing his soup, he whispered something to the devoted waiter. The waiter nodded, raising his eyebrows. The man stood up. He made a direct line across the dining room to the table, laid for one, next to Fen and Emily’s. As he sat down, he bowed his head to them. Fen smiled a little.
The waiter pursued the man, carrying a bottle of red wine. This was followed with a plate of roast grouse. He began to eat, concentrating hard. Now he was near them, he stared no longer. Emily could see Fen was puzzled. And on looking round the room she noticed that the few other diners were glancing in their direction, and the band of waiters were suddenly happy, full of mysterious smiles.
Then, as Fen and Emily began their trifle, they heard above the music a soft whistling. Fen looked up at the man, from whom the sound came, and he looked back. Both smiled. Fen blushed. She talked quickly to Emily, trying to suppress a laugh. The man had finished his grouse. He stood up again, picked up his wine and glass in one hand, his chair in the other, and came across to their table. He sat down, easily, as if he’d been invited. Patted his bottle of wine.
‘Much better than yours,’ he said to Fen. ‘I could tell that from a great distance. Will you share it with me?’
Fen hesitated only for a second. Then she nodded and the man poured her a glass. He did not explain why he had come to their table : merely said he was a businessman from Brussels, in Yorkshire for twenty-four hours. His name was Rubrick.
‘And I never expected,’ he said to Fen, ‘to run into a beautiful woman like you in a place like this.’
‘I’m not sure if your approach is ridiculous or bold.’ Fen blushed again.
‘Both, probably,’ said Rubrick. ‘Laughably corny, too. But sometimes events in real life are like that. I mean, there’s a moon most nights, for a start. Quite a few lovers are going to benefit from it.’
‘Well, you didn’t exactly run into us,’ went on Fen, in a spirited fashion. ‘You approached us very determinedly across the dining room.’
‘Quite. But then I had a purpose. I wanted to try my luck. I wanted to ask you if I might have the honour of taking you out to dinner tonight. With your daughter, of course.’ He spoke like a man in a play, his voice stilted. This time, Fen couldn’t refrain from laughing.
I’m sorry. But of course not. We’ve come up here to stay with someone. Thank you, all the same.’
&nb
sp; ‘I quite understand. It was an outside chance.’ He sounded so sad Emily felt quite sorry for him. She was pleased when Fen called for the bill. They should leave at once, so that Rubrick would get over his disappointment quickly. But he and Fen had a prolonged argument about the bill. Emily couldn’t follow what was going on, but it seemed he wanted to pay for their lunch as well as his own. Fen sounded firm, and eventually produced her own money. When they left, Rubrick bowed and shook hands with both of them, very polite.
‘Such a small chance,’ he said to Fen. ‘But I’m a born loser.’ Fen gave him a wonderful smile in return, as he squeezed her hand, and this seemed to make him happier.
The incident had added to Fen’s elation.
‘Kevin’ll think it so funny when I tell him,’ she said out in the hall.
‘Will Papa think it’s funny?’
‘Of course.’
Emily remained puzzled by the humour of the situation. Grown-ups found the oddest things funny. She thought it had been rather sad. For Rubrick, anyway.
‘Why did he come over to us? What did he want?’
‘Like he said. He wanted to take us out for dinner. I expect he was lonely.’
‘I think he was. But you’ve always said people shouldn’t go out with strange men.’
‘That’s one of the reasons I said no.’
Outside, there was sleet on their faces. Emily thought about Rubrick again, the steady way he walked across the huge dining room, like a soldier on the march.
‘Do you think perhaps he thought you were sexy?’ She’d learnt the word from Wolf, and had been looking for a chance to use it.
‘Sexy?’ Fen laughed. ‘Darling, really. I don’t know. Perhaps.’
‘I think,’ said Emily, ‘if you weren’t married to Papa and didn’t have me, you’d have a lot of boyfriends.’
‘I don’t suppose so.’ She was hailing a taxi. ‘I don’t suppose so for a minute. And anyway, as I am married to Papa, we’ll never know.’ At that moment a new squall of sleety wind cut their faces, wiping away Fen’s laughter that only a moment before had quickened Emily with the absurd happiness of a shared joke. She reached for her mother’s hand.
