by Judy Astley
‘Marvin and I go way back,’ Lizzie said, not opening her eyes. ‘But . . . I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing him again. There are some . . . well you just have to know when to call time, don’t you?’
Sara pulled out on to the King’s Road and joined the tail end of the school-run traffic. Lovely, she thought, a nice slow ride back home.
‘Though of course you don’t know, do you, Sara? You’ve always been little Mrs Good-Wife. Never looked at anyone else since Conrad came along.’
‘I’ve got male friends. One or two of them I’ve even fancied a bit in a what-if kind of way. I’m a normal human, Lizzie,’ Sara told her, slowing to look at the Victorian nightdresses hanging in the window of Lunn Antiques. ‘I just don’t get the big deal in you sleeping with all your exes. What are you looking for with them that you didn’t find when you were with them first time round?’
‘Oh I don’t know.’ Lizzie yawned. ‘It’s just about . . . still being desirable, I think. Or at least I did think. What I think right now is I’m tired of it all. There isn’t any better sex out there than even the worst you get with someone you really love.’
‘At last!’ Sara laughed at her. ‘You’re catching up with the rest of us! Taken you a while, hasn’t it?’
Lizzie sighed. ‘You’ve just got no idea how lucky you are, Sara,’ she said. Sara’s phone, which was propped up in the drinks holder, rang. ‘Got it,’ Lizzie said, grabbing it before Sara could get to it. ‘Hello?’ Sara held her breath. It was probably Conrad. Or one of the girls. Or Marie.
‘Er . . . no, I’m Lizzie. No . . . no, right number, I’m Sara’s big sister! And you?’
‘Give me the phone Lizzie!’ Sara hissed, turning left abruptly and without signalling and stopping on a double yellow line.
Lizzie handed over the phone, smirking in an annoyingly knowing way.
‘Hello. Hi Ben!’ Sara was aware of sounding overkeen and a bit high. ‘Er . . . oh good! You liked them. Wow!’ Lizzie made a face and giggled, mouthing ‘Wow?’ at her.
‘No . . . sorry, it’s my sister. She’s being really stupid. We’re in my car.’ Sara slapped Lizzie quite hard on her arm. Why did he have to call when she wasn’t alone?
‘OK – yes, great. See you soon. Bye.’ She pressed the off button, twice, and put the phone back. Without comment, she started the car again, did a neat three-point turn and went back to the King’s Road.
‘Go on, say something then,’ Sara said to Lizzie. ‘You’re almost exploding with it.’
‘I’m saying nothing,’ Lizzie said, smothering laughter.
‘It’s not what you think.’
‘I didn’t think it was. But . . .’
‘But?’
‘Well it must be, mustn’t it, or you wouldn’t have said that. Not to mention you’ve gone all pink and flustered. Your hands are trembling on that steering wheel. I’m surprised we’re not up the back of that Volvo.’
‘No really. It isn’t anything. It’s just about paintings, for a new gallery. Ben likes my work and there’s an exhibition possibility coming up. That’s all.’
‘Ben. Let me guess, he’s about your age, attractive, divorced . . .’
‘Er . . . well sort of but that doesn’t mean . . .’
‘Does he know you’re married to Conrad?’
‘That’s what Conrad said! What’s the big deal there? I do exist in my own right, you know!’
‘Oh come on Sara! You know it’s always the big deal. Like would any magazine, TV show and so on have been interested in Coleen McLoughlin if she wasn’t with Wayne Rooney? Get real! The Conrad connection would guarantee a private-view guest list that would have all the art wallahs taking notice. And editorial coverage. Exactly what a new gallery needs.’
‘Well thanks for your faith in my talent, sister dear! And no as it happens, he doesn’t know I have any connection with Conrad.’ Sara felt upset, hurt.
‘Ah . . . so he likes you, then. And you like him. Well it’s only natural; don’t feel bad. Conrad’s getting older. You looking for someone else is just nature’s way.’
Sara slowed. Putney Bridge was jammed with traffic. People were walking in the road – something had happened. ‘But I’m not looking for someone else,’ she insisted.
‘Subconsciously, you are, darling. It’s like at the end of a pregnancy when even the idlest domestic slut starts cleaning behind the fridge. Instinct. Nothing you can do about it. You’re anticipating a partner vacancy.’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say, Lizzie! Really vile and completely untrue!’
‘OK.’ Lizzie shrugged. ‘Well in that case you’re going to have to admit you’re looking for a bit of good old-fashioned fun with someone your own age. Who could blame you now Conrad’s gone tame? He doesn’t paint, he doesn’t go out much, he’s smoking again. I think it adds up to losing the will . . . I hesitate to say it, possibly losing the will to live.’
Ahead in the road, people were getting out of their cars and looking at something. It wasn’t an accident: they were smiling, pointing, watching as three men and a woman carefully herded a lost swan off the bridge and down to the slipway, where it could get back to the Thames.
‘People are so much kinder to animals than to humans, aren’t they,’ Sara commented to Lizzie. ‘If that had been a confused old man wandering about, nobody would have helped him. They’d just have beeped their horns and got cross. It’s so unfair.’
‘Life is, Sara sweetie. It just is.’
*
The house was clean; an unexpected delight to come home to. So the tidy fairies had visited after all while Sara had been out collecting Lizzie.
‘Wow, this is wonderful! I must go out more often when it’s a complete wreck!’ Sara said to Pandora who was in the kitchen, washing rocket for a salad. Sara was touched; not only was the house back to the state she liked, but Pandora had organized dinner for everyone. Perhaps there was an upside to having a house full of people after all. Panda had bought lamb for a barbecue and chunks of it were marinating in something interestingly fragrant and herby on the worktop. The glass door of the oven showed a big bubbling dish of dauphinoise potatoes. It looked as if working in that restaurant, only a spit (in all senses) away from Mr Big-Deal Celebrity Chef had paid off.
Pandora smiled at her. ‘Well it was easy. Xavier came over for an extra couple of hours earlier. Him and me and Jasper did it together – it doesn’t take long with three, does it?’
Sara gave her a suspicious look: since when had Pandora been keen on domestic labour? When she’d lived in the house as a teenager, her idea of tidying her room had been to put all loose items in a bin bag – not to be thrown out but to be retrieved for use as and when she needed them. At one time, Sara had counted nine overloaded rubbish sacks in there, randomly stuffed with stray clothes, CDs, magazines and used plates complete with toast crumbs. Only actually starting to load these into the car on the pretence of taking them to the charity shop had scared the girl into screaming out of the house in protest, promising to go through her possessions and find suitable space for them.
‘So did you pay Xav or do I owe him?’ Sara asked, as she took a bottle of chilled white wine from the fridge.
‘Oh, he said not to worry about it. He only really came to borrow a DVD from me, some movie I happened to have that he wanted to see.’ Pandora sounded peculiarly breezy, as if Xavier calling at the house on a casual social mission was an everyday thing. Perhaps it now would be. That was fine by Sara, though if she was going to have to look for another cleaner she hoped he’d give her some warning. She hadn’t ever expected to keep him for long; he was only cleaning to finance his way through law school.
‘Right – so while he was here he thought he’d just put in a few unpaid hours?’ Sara struggled with the bottle’s cork and concentrated on hauling it out. She decided not to pursue the topic of Xavier. If he and Pandora were getting together, that might be a good thing. Panda could be such a prickly girl; whatever it took to keep her as relaxed and c
heerful as she was at this moment had to be worthwhile. She’d gone to all this trouble too, which was very sweet of her and quite unexpected. Panda’s past ideas of dinner preferences had tended to need the film pierced or a bloke on a moped knocking at the door.
The day’s warmth had continued into the evening. Everyone except Conrad agreed there was still enough heat in the air to have dinner outside on the pool terrace and he had been firmly overruled. Sara glanced at him now and then as he ate in silence, looking mentally a bit absent. Was he sulking? What was to sulk about? Surely not still the Ben thing. But now he was very quiet and kept looking down the garden towards the studio. The huge old oak had burst into leaf in the last few days, and the studio was now almost hidden behind it. You couldn’t see the tree house at all. Perhaps he was hankering after doing some work again, after all, she thought. If that was what he really wanted, it would be a good thing. He needed something to absorb his mind – perhaps it would give him a way to resume normal service, stop feeling overwhelmed by the demons of age.
‘. . . And he’s still alive!’ Lizzie had been twittering in the background for a while now. Sara’s attention returned at these words.
‘Who is?’ she asked, in case it was someone she knew as well.
‘Oh Sara! Do keep up!’ Lizzie squealed. ‘Is she always like this?’ she asked Cassandra. ‘Just because you’re a granny now, darling, doesn’t mean you can let your mind wander off like this! I was talking about Bagshot Brian, you remember – from when I was in my teens! We went to the Isle of Wight Festival together, me all in flowers and a bell round my neck. He was my older man.’ She glanced sideways at Conrad. ‘You see, Conrad, even I’ve had one.’
‘You’ve had more than one of everything going, according to you,’ he said, grouchily. Jasper, big-eyed and wary, looked nervously at his mother, and put his iPod earplugs firmly in, shoving his long dark hair aside impatiently in his hurry to block out the conversation. Sara didn’t blame him. He’d probably heard Lizzie’s old-lover descriptions a million times before. If not, seventeen was a vulnerable enough age for a boy, full of embarrassment and flying hormones, without his mother making things worse.
‘Yes I have!’ Lizzie agreed with Conrad delightedly, mistaking his comment for admiration. ‘I’ve had lots of everyone! Share the love, I suppose they’d say today. That’s always been my motto, nothing new about it. And don’t tell me it hasn’t been yours, over the years. Don’t think I don’t know.’
‘Only before Sara,’ he told her.
‘Yes, well you had plenty of years before Sara.’
‘La la-la!’ Pandora sang, putting her fingers in her ears.
‘Cut the information now! Nobody like wants to know about their parents?’
‘And . . . er . . . I’ll go and check on Charlie.’ Cassandra hurriedly picked up some of the plates and vanished swiftly into the house.
‘See? You can still clear a room in thirty seconds with your vacuous talk of endless sex. And where did you spend last night? Don’t you ever bloody stop?’ Conrad grumped, lighting a cigarette.
‘Oh good grief, lighten up, man, will you?’ Lizzie hissed at him. ‘Is this because Sara’s getting back into painting? Why aren’t you pleased for her?’
‘I am,’ he said. ‘Of course I am, don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Hmmm. Well in that case are you simply going mental and moody now you’re approaching the three score and ten? You’ll end up one of those old sods who pushes people out of the way on the street shouting “I’m eighty-five you know,” as if we’re supposed to be impressed at the number. Nearly seventy ain’t even that old, babe.’
‘Enough!’ Conrad slammed his hand on the table and got up, stalking down the garden towards the studio.
‘Thanks Lizzie,’ Sara said. ‘It was a lovely evening till you started.’
‘Me? What did I say? I was just making frivolous conversation! I don’t get this down in Cornwall with Jack, you know, we still have a laugh!’
Then why aren’t you there with him, Sara almost said. She decided not to. It was enough that one of them was in a vile mood.
‘He’s very sensitive about this age thing, isn’t he?’ Lizzie took the last piece of avocado from the salad bowl and bit a chunk off it. ‘It’s not a big deal, for heaven’s sake. He’s still well and good-looking and can work if he wants to or not if he doesn’t. What the fuck’s he got to complain about?’ She gave Sara a sly glance, one that was close to saying ‘apart from his wife looking elsewhere . . .’
‘I don’t know.’ Sara felt weary. ‘He keeps deciding he’s giving things up.’
‘What? For a while, like Lent? What things?’
‘No – for good. Travel and work and. . .’ She wasn’t going to add ‘life’ or ‘sanity’ to the list. What Lizzie had said had made her feel more uneasy about Conrad. If even Lizzie could pick up on him changing, then it must be true. He’d certainly, if today was anything to go by, given up on good manners. He’d always been friendly and warm to Lizzie before.
Sara and Lizzie started clearing the rest of the debris from the table. Somewhere in the back of her head Sara was aware, as she went in and out of the house, of a chopping noise somewhere not too far away – a neighbouring garden, she assumed. There was some slight question as to who would be demolishing something in the dark, but she felt, vaguely, that the noise was probably further away than it seemed, carried by the night and the river, nothing to make her investigate.
‘Let’s open another bottle and stay outside,’ Lizzie suggested, peering into the fridge and checking wine labels. ‘Get a bit pissed and all cheered up again.’
Jasper was now stretched out on a teak lounger without having bothered to get the cushions for it from the cupboard beside the pool shower. He would have stripy marks on his skin where the slats pressed against him. Briefly Sara thought of the marks Stuart had once described, the ones he’d like to see etched into her skin from the sharp application of willow on flesh. She saw again the marks on Marie’s wrist from Angus’s handcuffs. Why were some men so tricksy? Did the partners of anyone she knew come into the category labelled normal?
Cass and Pandora brought coffee out to the terrace, where Lizzie was opening another bottle of Cloudy Bay. The silence was blissful, Sara thought, aware that the chopping had stopped. But suddenly, that peace was cut by a massive, whooshing flash and an explosion. Monumental flames flared up beside the oak tree.
‘Dad! What the fuck . . . ?’ Cassandra got up and screamed. ‘Noooooo!’ The next shriek came from Pandora. She hurled the mug of coffee she was carrying on to the table and raced past Sara and Cass down towards the studio.
‘Dad! What are you doing? Stop it!’ she wailed. Cassandra ran after her, catching up with her sister and with Sara. Sara saw the two girls exchange fearful glances.
‘It’s the tree house!’ Pandora yelled. ‘He’s cut it down
and burned it! WHY?’
‘Where is he, is more to the point!’ Sara felt frantic, looking around but barely focusing; there was no sign of Conrad – had all that hinting about death been leading up to this? Personal immolation sparked off by a stupid sulk? Then he appeared from the far side of the crackling, sparkling fire, covered in sooty grime, his teeth startlingly white as he grinned at them all.
‘It was cold!’ he explained, waving a red plastic fuel can at them. Sara carefully stepped forward, like a brave cop approaching a nervous gunman in a movie involving bank heists.
‘Give me the can, Conrad,’ she murmured calmly, putting one hand on his arm and cautiously removing the can from his fingers. She got the impression he was trembling. What the hell was he up to? What kind of logic said that being a bit chilly meant you climbed a tree, pulled down a rotting tree house and risked an agonizing death by starting a blaze with a gallon of lawnmower fuel? Behind her, she heard Cassandra switching on the garden hose, aiming it at the flames. In the firelight, she could see Pandora was crying. The tree house wasn’t all he’d burne
d, either. Lying among the flames she could see a heap of Conrad’s paintbrushes, precious, years-old brushes that he’d loved and cherished. He’d burned, she realized, his career.
‘Come on, Conrad, let’s go back to the house. For a moment there, I really thought you’d set yourself on fire.’
‘God no, Sara, are you crazy? That’s a terrible way to go. I won’t be choosing that one.’
Colours seen by candlelight will not look the same by day.
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
‘So when’s this exhibition then?’ Conrad really chose his moments. Sara was about to leave for work and was rummaging through the fridge looking for vegetables. Some of the older class members had questioned the free-choice nature of portraying elements, and for this week’s Earth had asked if they could have a nice simple still life to draw. ‘You know where you stand with a good still life,’ Pedantic Pete had said. ‘All this arty-farty stuff isn’t really for us oldies.’ He was probably about five years younger than Conrad, she’d guess. To stave off a possible revolution, she was going to give him what he wanted. Earth, which she’d thought had endless potential for imaginative expression, was going to have an unchallenging option of a plateful of carrots, cauliflowers, onions and tomatoes. In case the students then argued among themselves about how these should be arranged, she was going to make the decision for them and just tell them to get on with it, no choices. Those with more imagination could choose their own interpretations of the topic and if Melissa and Pamela slid out to the cemetery across the road to get a more in-depth view of Earth, then that was fine too.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Sara replied. ‘I might not even be in it. It’s early days and I’m sure it isn’t just Ben who has to like my work.’ Some of Stuart’s carrots were very odd shapes. She lined them up on the worktop and took out the split one that looked like splayed legs, and all the bum-shaped potatoes. Then she put them back again. Who was she to censor the vegetables? How prim and uptight would that be? Cherry might twitter and tut but the rest of them weren’t above a smutty giggle.
