Close Relations

by Deborah Moggach

  Imogen’s heart lurched. She reined in Skylark and dismounted. Her legs filled with liquid. She fiddled with Skylark’s bridle. She adjusted the girths, glancing under the horse’s neck at the door of the pub. She willed Karl to come out. She willed him with the muscle in her brain she had used since she was a child . . . If I count to ten . . . if I squeeze tight . . .

  The door opened. Karl came out. She mounted her horse and rode over.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  ‘I don’t go in all the time now. I’m doing my A levels.’

  He grinned. ‘And studying hard, I see.’ He wore a donkey jacket; a spotted scarf was knotted round his neck.

  ‘I think better when I ride.’

  He looked at her horse. ‘Shoes okay?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Be seeing you then. Cheers.’ He climbed into his van and drove off.

  She drank in the scent of his exhaust smoke. Thoughtfully, she rode home. She dismounted and led Skylark into the stable. Thoughtfully, she gazed at Skylark’s hooves.

  Then she went to her father’s toolbox and took out a pair of pliers.

  April was thirty – older than he had thought at first. She had such smooth skin, shiny as a plum. She was as ripe as a fruit. When she laughed, which was often, Gordon was startled by the whiteness of her teeth. She was the only nurse who bothered to sit and talk to him. As the days passed he became entranced with the soap opera of her life, whose cast of characters was becoming as familiar to him as members of his own family.

  On Wednesday she brought him in some cassettes. She put them on his bed, one by one. ‘Alanis Morisette . . . Nina Simone . . . ,’ she said. ‘I like women singing about what a mess their lives are.’

  He smiled. ‘Because yours is so sorted out, right?’ He settled down with relish. ‘So go on, what happened yesterday, with the boxing promoter?’

  ‘Well, he signed Dennis up and they both came home totally legless, with these other blokes, and they started singing and the people upstairs kept banging on the ceiling, and I’m trying to get some sleep. Then my aunty phoned up –’

  ‘The one whose car burst into flames?’

  She nodded. ‘This is three in the morning, mind, and she says she thinks she’s got Parkinson’s and could I describe the symptoms. And meanwhile there’s this crash comes from the lounge. The stupid buggers had been dancing on my glass table –’

  She stopped. Dorothy had arrived.

  Gordon introduced them. ‘This is April. She’s been looking after me.’

  ‘So pleased to meet you,’ said Dorothy, ‘I’ve heard so much about you. He’s doing very well, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s great. He’s started reorganising the ward.’

  ‘Gordon!’

  ‘Give him a couple more days,’ said April, ‘he’ll be reorganising the NHS. Probably do a better job than they are.’

  She left. Dorothy said: ‘What a nice girl.’

  ‘Never guess what happened to her last week,’ said Gordon. ‘See, she’s got this boyfriend, Dennis, sounds a right case to me, always getting into fights and she has to bail him out – well, they live above this optician’s place in Brixton –’

  Dorothy laid a hand on his arm. ‘Gordon – take it slowly.’

  He paused. ‘Forget it.’

  She took out some books. ‘Got these out of the library . . .’ She put them on his locker. ‘Now, you don’t have to worry about a thing. Frank’s sorted out that business at Lavender Hill, and they’ve got the structural report on the Duke’s Avenue site, Len’s faxed it through, so they can go ahead there. I did the VAT last night.’ She paused. ‘Gordon?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  He said: ‘I nearly died.’

  She put her hand on his. ‘No you didn’t, love. You’re going to be fine. But when you come home you’re not to do a thing. No worries, no stress.’

  ‘But lots of watercress.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bloke I heard about.’

  She nodded. ‘Plenty of healthy food, I’ll see to that. And no cheating!’ She smiled. ‘Because I can always tell when you’ve been doing something you shouldn’t.’

  Night, and the library books lay unread beside him. He half-slumbered in bed, the walkman plugged to his ears. Nina Simone sang ‘In the dark’, her voice spread through his veins like black treacle, pulsing.

  Gordon lay, surrounded by the ill and the dying. In his bones he felt the thump of the music, the heartbeat of it.

  Two

  ON WEDNESDAY PRUDENCE was summoned to the Unimedia chairman’s office where she was given a glass of chardonnay and offered Stephen’s old job. Though disguised by a new title, editor-in-chief, and a rejigging of the departments, there was no doubt that this was basically the editorial director’s position from which Stephen had been so ruthlessly removed. This fact somewhat tempered her pleasure at her promotion, but there was little time to dwell on this because Beveridge and Bunyan was in the throes of packing up in readiness for the move to the new Unimedia headquarters building in Docklands.

  The musty old building in Bloomsbury had been sold, the office cat taken home by Muriel, the receptionist, who had been given early retirement. It was the end of the end of an era in British publishing and this, too, contributed to the mixture of emotions Prudence was feeling. Though she despised the old boy network she still felt a certain sentimental attachment to the past, much as those who are not religious feel an affection for churches and would be saddened to see them demolished. Besides, Stephen himself, with his bow ties and Oxford cronies, was part of such a tradition and on the Friday when she left Museum Street for the last time she felt an ache in her ribcage. Unlike her sister Louise, however – soft-hearted Louise – Prudence kept her emotions under control. She was the sensible one, the one upon whom others relied, and when she took her new department out for a lunchtime drink she radiated optimism for the future.

  Unimedia House, headquarters of the communications empire, is a vast glass building complete with the regulation atrium and post-modern flourishes. Topped by satellite dishes it is situated in a no man’s land of flyovers and building sites between Wapping and the Isle of Dogs. The penthouse boardroom commands a panorama of the River Thames and the smog-blurred skyscrapers of the City. The lobby, a vast expanse of tawny marble, displays clocks which show the time in Tokyo and New York. It is patrolled by security guards whose chests crackle with static. Outside, beyond the slip road and the car-park, the next building is sheathed in mirror-glass; it reflects Unimedia back on itself, a narcissistic contemplation of its own image.

  Beveridge and Bunyan had been dusted off and installed on the eleventh floor. On Friday afternoon Prudence and Trish moved into their new office. It was an acreage of mushroom carpeting and white walls. They hesitated, clutching their potted plants; they felt dwindled and amateurish.

  The phone rang. Trish grabbed it and said, in a silly voice: ‘Editor-in-chief’s office, Trish speaking, how may I help you?’ She passed the receiver to Prudence. ‘It’s Stephen.’

  Prudence grabbed the phone. His voice said: ‘I wanted to be the first to call you. What does it feel like?’

  ‘Strange. Big. Bare.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me they’d given you my job?’

  ‘It only happened on Wednesday. Where are you?’

  ‘Outside.’

  Prudence moved to the window. Down in the road she glimpsed a figure, standing in a phone booth. With one hand she struggled with the window catch.

  ‘We’re air-conditioned,’ said Trish.

  Prudence banged on the glass. She beckoned. ‘Come up!’ she yelled down the phone.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said.

  ‘I’m coming down!’

  She hurried out. She pressed the button for the lift. There were three of them – glass capsules which crawled up and down the walls of the atrium. She jumped in one and descended to the gro
und floor. She clattered across the marble and rushed out into the street.

  The phone booth was empty. Stephen had gone.

  That week in early November Maddy also moved. She moved in with Erin. It was Erin’s suggestion that Maddy live with her and help her with the gardening business. ‘We’ll work together, my darling.’ She laced her strong chapped fingers through Maddy’s. ‘Would you like that?’

  Maddy packed her belongings into plastic bags and Erin drove her to Hackney, to her house. Romilly Street was a decaying terrace that backed onto a school. When Maddy arrived it was the lunch-break. The children’s shouts echoed from her own past in Purley, from the school veiled by birches at the end of the garden. Stirred by her memories, she stood in the bedroom with Erin.

  There was a step on the stairs. They turned. Allegra stood in the doorway.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Erin. ‘Why aren’t you at school?’

  ‘Had to get my clarinet.’ Allegra was nine years old, a wiry girl with dusky skin – her father was Indian.

  ‘Are you really sure you don’t mind me coming here, Allegra?’ Maddy asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No. And you can call me Ally if you like.’ She turned and went downstairs, idly scratching her bottom. ‘Hope you stay longer than the last one,’ she called over her shoulder.

  On the Saturday Gordon was dressed and ready. The sister passed his bed.

  ‘Excuse me, love,’ he said. ‘Where’s April?’

  ‘She’s off today.’

  ‘But I haven’t said goodbye.’

  ‘Shall I give her a message?’

  He shook his head. He looked at the cassettes, stacked on his locker.

  Dorothy arrived, and drove him home. Back in The Birches she settled him in the lounge. She tucked their picnic blanket around his knees. He felt pettish and restless; he longed for a cigarette.

  ‘It’s stifling in here.’

  ‘I put up the heating.’ She put down his bag and sat beside him on the settee. ‘Gordon, I’ve been thinking a lot this past week. Since all this happened.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘I think you should retire.’

  He stared at her. ‘Retire?’

  ‘Frank’ll look after things, at least for the time being.’

  ‘Frank’s an alcoholic.’

  ‘We’ll sell up,’ she said. ‘None of the girls are going to take over the business. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I think we ought to move somewhere smaller, have some fun. Have time to ourselves, just you and me. Don’t you?’

  The cat had had an accident in the kitchen. Not an accident, actually – it was cold outside and he had simply not bothered to go out. Louise swept the result into the dustpan, walked out behind the stable and flung it onto the grass. As she did so she caught sight of a horseshoe, lying amongst the nettles.

  She picked it up, fetched a hammer and some nails and attempted to hang it over the back door. Robert, who had a splitting headache – he had been to a company dinner the night before – came out in his dressing-gown.

  ‘You sound like the porter at the Gates of Hell.’

  She pointed with her hammer at the horseshoe. ‘It’ll bring us good luck.’

  ‘With your family you need it. Father has a heart attack, sister becomes a lesbian. What else does fate have in store?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with being a lesbian.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I like having sex with women too.’

  He took the hammer and banged in a nail. The horseshoe swung round, upside down.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Something awful’s going to happen.’

  November is a melancholy month. The wind whips the leaves into the gutter; in gardens, small, silent deaths take place. Bones are chilled as winter approaches and summer’s screen is blown away to reveal the ugliness that lies beyond. It is a time for facing the truth, even for a man such as Gordon, who was unsure what truth was being revealed to him or why he was being bowled along, as helpless as litter, by the unseen currents of his need. For he found himself driving towards Brixton, and as he drove he thought how some day he must die and the shops he was passing would carry on trading without him: Radio Rentals would never know that he had arrived on this earth and would some day leave it; he had lived his life never having sat on a number 3 bus, which he was stuck behind now. For once he didn’t fidget; he didn’t pull out and overtake. A troubled fatalism had settled upon him but he had no words to understand it; all he told himself was that he had cassettes in his pocket and an errand that he could put off no longer.

  I live above Betterspecs. He knew that from their conversations; also that there was a Burger King opposite. At this stage, before it all happened, these clues gave him a prickle of childish excitement. He found the place and parked. He stepped out of his car and into another world. It was a windy, bracing day; he felt like his granddaughter’s horse, when it was led out of the kitchen – its ears pricked, its nostrils flexing.

  Next to the optician’s there was a doorway. There were two bells; he pressed the lower one. An age passed. A man walked by, arguing into a mobile phone; a car drove past, thudding with music. He was about to try the upper bell when he heard footsteps descending the stairs. The door opened; April stood there.

  He held out the cassettes. ‘Just passing by,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d drop these in.’

  ‘Come in.’

  He looked at her. ‘You all right?’

  He followed her upstairs. She let him into her flat. A chair lay smashed on the floor. A mirror was broken and something – it looked like coffee – had been flung against the wall. April sat down on the arm of a settee.

  ‘We had this row last night. He started hitting me. I thought he was going to kill me! So I got out and went to stay with my friend Beverley, and when I got back he’d gone.’ She burst into tears. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  He stroked her hair – how wiry it was! It was pulled back with gold plastic clips. He thought how odd it was to see her in normal clothes – a red sweater and jeans. She was transformed from an angel of mercy, ministering to him. She was now a distraught young woman in need of his help. He felt a shameful jolt of pleasure.

  ‘Don’t worry, love. I’m here.’ He removed his hand. ‘You think he’ll come back?’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s what the row was about. I saw him coming out of the gym with this girl . . . you can tell, can’t you, just by looking . . . body language.’ She caught her breath. ‘He’s always been really jealous of me, and all the time he’d been – oh, I hate him!’ She slumped into the settee. ‘No, he’s gone. He’s taken his stuff.’

  ‘You sit there. I’ll make us a cup of tea.’

  ‘It’s you who should be resting,’ she said.

  ‘You looked after me. Well, it’s my turn now to look after you.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at home?’

  ‘To be frank, I was going barmy at home.’ He looked around the room. Its big, grimy window faced the high street; a bus passed, startlingly near. People sat on the top deck. ‘I’ll have this place sorted out in no time.’ Apart from the mess, the room was in need of a good lick of paint. ‘You own the flat or rent it?’

  ‘It’s mine, I bought it.’

  He went into the kitchen. He filled the kettle as if he lived there. It was the first practical task he had done for nearly two weeks; it felt exhilarating. She came in and opened the cupboard. That door needed fixing too; one of the hinges was broken. She took out a packet of tea-bags. It felt domestic to have her beside him, as if they had been doing this for years.

  She fetched the milk. ‘I’m glad you came.’

  ‘I’ll tidy up now, and I’ll come back on Sunday with my tools,’ he said. ‘You working Sunday?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘That’s all right then.’ He tore off a piece of kitchen roll and gave it to her. ‘Now, blow your nose like a good girl.’

  Maddy and Erin were in
Cheyne Walk. They were planting winter-flowering primulas in the garden of a Lebanese banker. Maddy was discovering that she loved the job. She loved driving around London in the van, part of the working current of the city and then for long periods separate from it, sealed off into the birdsong of hidden gardens. Maddy was tough; she didn’t mind rain and cold. This gave her a rare sense of superiority over Erin, who suffered from poor circulation. Otherwise, Erin was the boss. A natural teacher, she was in her element instructing Maddy on soil composts. Like many bossy people she was gratified by someone else’s ignorance and her pleasure in imparting information made her kind, even gentle. She had seven regular clients – both private gardens and business premises. Her jobs ranged from weekly maintenance – lawns, window-boxes – to landscape design and larger replantings. For Maddy, whose life had been rootless for so many years, the simple act of handling plants was soothing. Even in this dying season she felt invigorated, digging in the soil, lowering her leafy children into their beds and pressing down the earth around their stems. She was starting to feel healed, even safe. But could she trust in this?

  ‘Has nobody lasted long with you?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re here, now,’ said Erin. ‘Isn’t that all that matters?’ She straightened up and looked at her watch.

  ‘So that’s why you’re checking on the time?’

  Erin shook her head. ‘I’ve got a meeting at five. About the book.’ She wiped her nose, leaving a smear of earth across her cheek.

  ‘Will you be seeing my sister?’

  Erin nodded.

  ‘I told her about us a couple of weeks ago,’ said Maddy. ‘In a funny way, she didn’t seem surprised. Sometimes I think my sisters know me better than I know myself.’

  ‘Maybe they do.’ She scraped the earth off her trowel. ‘Darling, could you pick up Allegra from school and take her to her dance class?’

  Maddy nodded. ‘Do you think she minds me living with you?’

  Erin shook her head. ‘She likes you.’

  ‘Did she like the others?’

  Erin straightened up and looked at her.