‘Hell,’ he said, looking round. Bill was playing with Damon, Emma’s grandson. He tapped Bill on the shoulder. ‘Where’s Lily?’
‘Pshew,’Bill said. ‘She’s gone home. Damon’s a fireman.’ Damon had a Fireman Sam helmet on his head. ‘And I’m Elvis,’ Bill said.
‘Where’s your guitar?’ Larry asked curiously. That was a conversation stopper, he thought, as the two boys ignored him and carried on with their ‘pshewing’ in the name of Fireman Sam.
*
He was in the kitchen making the coffee when Emma came in, stepping nimbly over the safety gate despite her size.
‘Do you want one?’ he asked.
She looked at him uncomfortably and took the band out of her hair. It was covered in navy and white polka dots, the same as her dress. Her dark hair fell forward, hiding her face for a moment, and Larry noticed for the first time the fine silver hairs among the dark. He took another mug out of the cupboard.
Emma replaced the band in her hair. ‘You know about the playgroup?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Becky told me.’
‘We usually get a grant from the council but they’re going to give us less than half what we get now in the coming year.’
Larry nodded and spooned the coffee into the two mugs. He poured in the milk and then the water from the kettle. ‘Here you are.’
‘Thanks.’ She leaned against the cooker. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know of anything we could do to make them rethink?’
‘You need publicity,’ he said. ‘You should get in touch with the local press, that kind of thing. You could try a petition, bring it to people’s awareness that way. This place should be kept open. It’s not just for the children, it’s for the people who look after them.’
As he said it, she looked at him. Her dark eyes seemed bloodshot, he noticed. He wondered how old she was — she looked older than he’d reckoned. She looked tired, too.
‘Like childminders,’she said.
‘Yes. And fathers.’
He watched her hand go to the polka dot band in her hair and then go back to her mug, as though it was a habit she was trying to break.
‘We don’t get many fathers here,’ she said, raising her chin. ‘There aren’t that many fathers looking after their children. It’s hard for them to fit in — lots of the women here are single parents and they want to moan about men, not have to be nice to them. And you know what men are like — always on the chat-up. Like you with Helen.’
‘There’s nothing —’ he shook his head ruefully, thinking of James. Yeah, she came pretty close to the truth, he thought. ‘Look, like you say, you’re not going to be overrun with househusbands because there aren’t that many of them. But it might be good for the children to have one or two men around.’ He hesitated, wondering if he even cared.
She looked into her coffee mug, and then raised her head. ‘So you’ll think of something, you know, to try to keep this place open?’
‘Yes.’
Emma nodded. A flicker of humour softened the edges of her face. ‘A march, Becky said, to the town hall. You’re not as useless as you look. And by the way, I take sugar,’ she said. ‘You’ll remember next time.’ And she winked.
32
Larry was on the phone to his mother, talking underwear. The dirty washing was climbing up the wall and Megan had pushed the booklet that came with the washing machine into his hands on the way out that morning.
He’d read it through from cover to cover but it hadn’t mentioned pants.
His mother was pleased at having been asked. ‘Just do the whites to start with. Have a look at the label, first, and see what they’re made of,’ she said.
Bill held up a pair of his own and Larry looked inside. ‘One hundred per cent cotton.’
‘Put all the white things in together, on a hot wash, that’s fifty on your dial. Do you want me to come and help, darling?’
‘I can manage,’ he said, putting the phone down, armed with new knowledge. ‘Whites in together, Bill. Hey, what do you want to be when you grow up?’
Bill looked at him stoutly. ‘A man,’ he said.
*
When Megan came home, the smell of burnt sausages was drifting inside the house and the sitting room was hazy with blue smoke.
She stepped out in the garden and found Larry and Bill crouched over the barbecue. As they heard her they both looked guiltily over their shoulders and Bill, she noticed, had the audacity to stand in front of it as though his slight body could hide it from view.
She could feel herself tightening up.
The men’s club, she thought. If they didn’t want her to see something, well then she wouldn’t look.
Ignoring them, she brushed her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, and sat on the side of the sun lounger and peeled off her hold-ups so that her bare legs could get the fading rays of the evening sun.
She should have gone for a drink with Lisa. They could have chatted over a decent meal. She could have asked her exactly what it was she disliked about Stephen Dean and why she’d arranged to see Mark Howarth as well.
She lay back, wanting to be peaceful, but she could hear Larry and Bill whispering to each other. ‘Having problems, chaps?’ she asked.
‘Larry put the sausages on too soon,’ Bill said.
‘Thanks, Bill,’ his father retorted. ‘And why did I put the sausages on too soon? Because we went to buy another goldfish and you took so long to choose it that I had to hurry up the cooking.’
She put her sunglasses on, the better to see him in the evening sun. ‘You bought another fish?’
‘To replace Nobby. His name’s David,’ Bill said. ‘He’s got a moustache.’
‘A fish with a moustache,’ Megan murmured, leaning back on the lounger and feeling peeved. ‘You’ve been out in the sun too long.’ She closed one eye. ‘Why David? After Daddy?
‘After David Niven,’ Larry said. ‘Spitting image, I swear it.’
‘How much was this hirsute pet?’
‘Ninety pence,’ Bill said, ‘and Larry let me keep the change.’
‘Which is now lost in the garden,’ Larry said, straightening. He was holding a small pile of blackened shapes on a plate. ‘With ketchup on they’ll be marvellous. Carbon is awfully good for the digestion.’
‘I can feel a take-away coming on,’ Megan said, sitting up and bending one knee to rub away the tickle of a fly.
‘They’ll be lovely, Mum,’ Bill said, ‘won’t they, Larry?’
‘Raw in the middle, cooked on the outside,’ Megan said. ‘We’ll all get salmonella.’
Larry glanced at the plate in his hands and flicked away something from the edge of it before looking at Megan curiously. ‘Yes, you’re right. We’ll have a take-away,’ he said, going into the house. Bill followed him so closely that she saw Larry kick his knee accidentally as he climbed the step.
Megan flopped back onto the lounger and stared through her lenses at the brown-tinted sky. She took her sunglasses off and blinked at the bright blueness. With a sigh she got up off the lounger and followed them inside. They were in the kitchen. Bill was holding a tray with three glasses on it and Larry was pouring beer into two of them. She leaned on the doorframe and watched. The tray looked too heavy for Bill but obviously — obviously it wasn’t. He was holding it steady, and, what was more, parallel.
‘And Orangina for you,’ Larry said and looked up at Megan. She felt rebuffed. His eyes were not hostile, but they were not friendly, either. It was the sort of look that people gave each other on the tube just before they looked away.
Megan bent and scratched her ankle awkwardly. ‘The sausages will be great,’ she said, straightening up. ‘Sorry to be so —’ she shrugged and rested her teeth on her lower lip.
Larry took the tray from Bill and offered it to her. She took a glass and it was refreshingly chilly and damp with condensation against her palm.
‘Too late, I’ve put them in the bin,’ he said, offering the tray
to Bill. Bill stretched out his hand towards the beer. ‘Oy!’Larry said and Bill giggled and took his Orangina and put the glass straight to his mouth.
Megan could hear the clink of his teeth against the rim as they went back out into the garden.
She looked at Larry, who saluted Bill briefly with his glass before drinking it. They had become close; those two.
She was glad.
She sipped her beer and looked at her husband over the glass. He wasn’t smiling and she could see the fine white lines fanning from the outer corners of his eyes where his skin hadn’t tanned. She imagined them both out all day in the sunshine, laughing. She sipped the beer again, smelling the yeast and feeling the fizz of the bubbles in her throat.
‘What are you thinking?’ Larry asked her and she felt herself blush, as though she’d been caught out.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I was watching you and Bill.’
Larry smiled at her. It still made her heart go bump.
Larry came up to her and stroked a finger down her bare arm. She stifled a shiver.
‘How’s work?’ he asked, so softly that she felt her hair stir with his breath.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Lisa’s exciting to have around. She sees things differently and it’s made me wonder if Zelda and I aren’t rather too much alike.’
‘The Colgin Partnership is a success story. Don’t worry about it.’
‘I’m not worried. Just ringing the changes.’
‘Do you think it’s because Lisa’s new to executive search?’
‘More because she’s Lisa, I think.’ The words reminded her of something that Lisa had said: I do things my way. It’s the only way I know.
He nodded. ‘Keep an eye on her, Meg.’
‘Yes, I will. She can be a little too unorthodox at times. How was playgroup?’
‘It may have to close down. We’re trying to fight it, of course.’
‘We?’ Megan asked, squinting at him. ‘Don’t use up too much energy on it, Larry. You don’t want them to start to rely on you.’
Bill came running up at that moment. ‘Will you come and see David, now?’
‘Who?’ she asked, confused.
‘The fish,’ Larry said helpfully.
She’d already forgotten about the fish, but she put her glass down and followed them upstairs to Bill’s room.
The fish was swimming lazily in the tank and she could see, just as they’d said, a straight black line following the shape of his upper lip. If fish had lips. Whatever, it really did look like a moustache. She looked at him closely. ‘What a spiv. It’s David Niven all right,’ she said.
‘It took the man ages to catch him,’ Bill said and Larry nodded in agreement.
‘He was very lively, wasn’t he, Bill?’
‘Yes. And he’s for you, Mummy. Because something happened to your underwear.’
Megan looked at Larry, an is-it-true look.
Larry shrugged helplessly, like a sit-com husband. He went off and came back with a handful of shrivelled, grey undies that had once been white silk. It took Megan a few moments to recognise them as belonging to her.
She didn’t feel able to speak.
She turned back to look at the moustachioed fish swimming idly around the tank. ‘He’s great,’ she said flatly.
They had spoiled her undies and bought a fish without her. They could have waited until the weekend so that she could have joined them. They could have replaced the lingerie.
She stared at the fish with sudden resentment and what she was thinking was, Who has to clean him out? Who has to make sure he’s fed?
She was aware of them looking at her.
Here she was, the mother who was hardly ever home and when she was she ruined everything.
‘Let’s go out and get a pizza,’ she said, ‘we’ll feel better after we’ve eaten.’
She pretended not to notice the look they gave each other. She bet they loved the ‘we’.
PART SIX - Six a Dearth
33
James was trying to clean the mould from his crockery. The pale green floaters were easy enough, but the grey fuzz was more resilient.
Hidden in his wardrobe were four dustbin liners containing things that he’d picked up off the floor: newspapers, clothes, magazines, biscuit wrappers, nothing important, and while he did the dishes he hoped she wouldn’t decide to have a clean out and find them.
The point was, to act as if he could cope.
Well of course he could cope. It was just in a different way from Lydia.
The fact of her coming was quite unusual, as, since the wedding, Charles had taken to dropping the girls off. He did it ingratiatingly, as though he was a dog-hater who’d somehow got locked into a kennel, but even that didn’t give James the satisfaction it might once have done.
He’d wondered about this visit of Lydia’s. She’d been cagey on the phone, saying she would tell him when she saw him. It was hard to work out what would make her cagey like that.
He’d toyed around with a few ideas, just a few, something on the lines that her sex life was no good and would he oblige, but he couldn’t, ha ha, come up with anything concrete on that score. The thought of Lydia and Charles doing anything as human as making love was ridiculous but then so was the idea of Lydia making love with him. She was as likely to start kissing frogs. Still, the idea of it whiled away a mossy bowl or two.
All the dishes de-fuzzed, he looked around for something to dry them with. In the end he had to use a shirt from one of the bin bags in the wardrobe. He was surprised to find it wasn’t very absorbent but he persevered, and stacked the clean-ish dishes in the cupboard. He even had time for a quick shower.
Would have had time. He was still in the shower when the doorbell rang and he hurried down, afraid she wouldn’t wait, and opened the door still fastening up the buttons on his jeans.
‘Lydia,’ he said, feeling the water from his hair trickle coldly between his shoulderblades.
‘James,’ she said with a small smile, inclining her head.
‘Come in.’ He made an extravagant gesture and bowed low.
‘Your hair’s wet,’ she said. ‘You ought to get a towel.’
‘Yes.’ But he had noticed, when he’d grabbed it, that the towel had taken on a strange smell, rather like hops. It had seemed to transfer itself to his skin and he felt it was better left where it was.
Lydia settled herself on the sofa, smoothing her beige dress, looking round, looking at him.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked her.
‘Coffee, please.’
He went into the kitchen and picked up the tea-towel shirt and rubbed his head with it. He switched on the kettle and got out mugs, thought better of it and felt around for cups instead. And saucers.
‘A mug will do,’ she said in response to the sound of clattering china.
‘No, a cup, I insist.’ The saucer, he noticed, was dusty and he wiped it on the seat of his jeans. His hands were shaking as he put in the instant coffee. ‘Still no sugar?’
‘Still no sugar,’ she confirmed.
He took the coffees through and his heart began to beat loudly again. He could hear his pulse beating in his ears and it had the same resonance as if he was listening through a shell.
‘Shoot,’ he said.
‘The girls are going to board.’ She said it like someone might have said, ‘The girls have gone to seed,’ and it took him a moment to make sense of it.
When he did, he found she’d shot him, sure enough. ‘Why?’ But it was clear why. ‘This is old Charlie-boy’s idea, isn’t it,’ he said, ‘packing them off so that you can spend time alone. Not enough that he gets you to divorce me, he wants you to divorce the girls! I’ll have them here. I’ll look after them.’
She was rubbing her thumb over a chip on the rim of the cup. ‘You can’t look after yourself, James,’ she said sadly. ‘How could they stay here? Look at this place — you haven’t even got a job, how could you look after them?’ She
shrugged wearily as though it was a subject she had considered and swiftly tired of. ‘Anyway, James, it isn’t a plot against you. They want to go.’
‘When will I see them?’
‘During the holidays, and there are plenty of those.’
‘I don’t want them to go,’ he said again. ‘I don’t want to lose them.’ It was, he knew, a little late for that sort of regret. ‘All I want...’he put his coffee cup on the floor and walked over to the bookcase on which their school photograph stood, warped slightly in the cardboard mount.
‘Go on,’ Lydia said.
‘All I want is for life to be as it was.’
‘That’s a stupid thing to say. It never will be as it was. If you want to change your life, get a job,’ she said.
‘I will. I’ll open a surf shop —’ he stopped as Lydia looked away.
‘James, who buys surfing gear in London? Who wears it, for that matter, apart from you? You’re not suddenly going to get a business going, how the hell could you?’
She swung back to him and her voice rose to a shriek. ‘What am I talking about? How the hell could you even imagine you could run a business? How could you?’ And he had the sensation that every point was being hammered into him swiftly and cleanly, like tacks. He could feel the pain of them poking into him under his skin.
It seemed to show on his face, because all of a sudden she stopped and clasped her hand over her mouth as though a river of angry words might gush out if she took her hand away.
He saw her breath heave her rib cage up and down. He felt dizzy, as if he’d been tumbled about.
After a few moments she took her hand tentatively away from her mouth and nothing came out. No rivers, anyway. ‘I only came to tell you what the girls wanted. They’re going to start in the autumn.’
James knew he had one last chance to grab the rope that would save him. ‘Lydia, you don’t know how much I love you,’ he said.
‘But you love yourself more, don’t you? You’ll always do what you want. You’ll never change.’
Striking a Balance Page 19
