To Heaven by Water

by Justin Cartwright

  Rosalie gestures to him elegantly, her head cocked slightly in an unfamiliar way. He is not sure what she means by this. As he walks to the waiting room, he is more or less under control, but his whole body is convulsed with relief, admixed with guilt. It’s been a day of shocks. Back in the waiting room the receptionist congratulates him. She seems genuinely pleased and of course she knows that he has had to give up intimate samples for examination. Medical people lead a strange double life; on the one hand they are obliged to be bland and reassuring, and on the other they are closely acquainted with death and suffering. He feels warmly grateful to the whole profession as he settles back to look at Country Life. Maybe, if the property market collapses as predicted, he will be able to buy himself this lovely thatched house on the Avon, with fishing rights and a staff cottage, using his solid, imperturbable Swiss francs; or what about this one in the Cotswolds, with ten acres of woods, highly suitable for pheasant rearing, and an insulated barn containing a swimming pool?

  He hopes Rosie doesn’t wonder, as he has, if there is any connection between his brief affair with Alice and this happy outcome.

  He calls Lucy to tell her the good news.

  ‘That’s totally brilliant, Ed. This is probably not the moment to remind you that you said she was a fantasist. Women know these things.’

  ‘God, I don’t care what I said. I am so happy for her.’

  ‘And for yourself?’

  ‘Of course, but you know what I mean. The stakes were high. Just a sec.’

  He goes out into the corridor.

  ‘Lucy, sorry, Rosie’s just having some tests, blood samples and stuff like that. Alice told Rosie about us after Robin fired her. Why do you think she hasn’t confronted me?’

  ‘Alice told you?’

  ‘Yes, but Rosie hasn’t mentioned it. My question is why not.’

  ‘That’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?’

  ‘Because she knew she was pregnant?’

  ‘I would say so. I just wish Mum was here to see her grandchild.’

  ‘So do I. I’ll send Dad a text. Eventually he is going to come back to civilisation. Are you OK, Lucy?’

  ‘I’m fine. You’ve been great, Nick’s been great, and Josh is even now heavily sedated. We hope.’

  ‘I’ll check with the police. He’s in for seventy-two hours but it can be extended by the shrinks. Look, Luce, if Rosie ever speaks to you about Alice, play it down. Just say this girl was after me and we once got pissed and I asked Robin to move her on. Deeply, deeply, regret it, et cetera.’

  ‘That’s not really totally straight, is it?’

  ‘I’m going to be a dad. And you’re going to be an auntie. The family must close ranks. There’s only you and me.’

  ‘True. And you’re going to Geneva.’

  ‘Anyway, Alice told me I was a mistake.’

  ‘I doubt if she, I mean Rosie, will ever ask me, but if she does, I’ll practise omertà. I’ll lie for la famiglia, for Cosa Nostra, or I’ll sleep with the fishes.’

  ‘Yes, OK, OK, enough already.’

  ‘Bye for now, my bro, and lots of love to Rosie. Tell her I’ll call her later.’

  He’s glad Lucy’s happy; when Rosie returns from Mr Smythson’s consulting rooms, it’s obvious that she is happy, too, luminously happy.

  ‘All well?’

  ‘Perfect, perfect.’

  She hugs him close and he feels that she is giving him a message, which is probably that they have a higher destiny now, as parents, and that the past can indeed be forgotten. At least, he hopes this is the message.

  18

  Mothers lie on demand. Without realising it, children expect their mothers to lie for them and to them. Perhaps this is where it went wrong, that Mum never prepared me for the real world. Her every effort was directed to creating and preserving an ideal world. A little restricted but still trouble-free. Dad found it cloying, but her motive was always to protect them from harshness. Now Lucy wonders if this hasn’t left her unable to deal with the more sombre aspects of life, which have lately been demonstrated to her. Typically, of course, she has now turned to Nick and to Ed to supply her with the untruths – or perhaps the unsaid – in order to protect herself. In her eagerness to avoid the facts, she’s turning into her mother. The awful irony is that Mum could not protect herself from the one great ineluctable fact. When Ed said, only half joking, that the family must pull together, perhaps he was thinking of his soon-to-be-extended family; she and Ed, with Dad absent in the Kalahari, are hardly a family. It’s not really fair to say he’s absent: it’s been less than four weeks, but even before he left, Dad was distancing himself in non-geographical ways. Lucy sees that already a lot of hope and expectation has been invested in the new baby, which is after all only an embryo of less than a month; it probably hasn’t even acquired the egg-yolk-in-albumen look you see on scans, the baby thing looking happily stoned. And probably never this happy again. When they spoke, she found that Rosalie had quickly acquired the spirit of inclusiveness: the shared genes of this baby tied them together.

  ‘You can come round to play with her whenever you like.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Yes. Definitely.’

  ‘Because women know. OK. I would love to come and hang out with you and her. But I am not sure how often I will be in Geneva.’

  Rosalie is not constrained by geography.

  ‘I think a big family, masses of cousins and huge family occasions, are wonderful, don’t you?’

  ‘I have never really thought about it. But, yes, sounds good to me.’

  ‘Ed told me about your awful incident with Josh. I’m so, so sorry. Can you and Nick come round for supper tonight?’

  ‘I’ll ask him. He works quite late putting the paper to bed. He has to show how keen he is, because they have given him a contract.’

  She likes the phrase, putting the paper to bed. She’s almost put her catalogue to bed. The proofs are in and Rachel said it was the best catalogue they had ever done.

  ‘Good. Let me know if you can come. I’m going to miss you when we go.’

  ‘Is Geneva definite definite?’

  ‘I think so. Ed has resigned and he’s going to sign his contract with the Swiss next week.’

  ‘So the baby will be born Swiss.’

  ‘Yes, with an apple on her head.’

  It takes Lucy a moment to make the connection: William Tell the opera, and no doubt William Tell the ballet, too.

  Rosie sees a future of mountain air, sparkling water, the Ballet du Grand Théâtre, powder skiing on Mont Blanc, and immaculately dressed trilingual children – no street grunge for these bambini – but still in touch with their artistic temperaments, even as they enjoy the benefits of Euro living. Ed’s role, Lucy thinks, is so far less clearly imagined, but no doubt he will be leading the charge down the mountain at weekends as a reward for bringing home the bacon, remportant les lardons. Or perhaps des lardons. She never quite mastered the difference between ‘all the bacon’ and ‘some of the bacon’. They have been sent details of a spacious apartment, Rosie says, available in a village on the lake. As soon as the contract is signed, they are going to look over it.

  Nick is happy to come to supper with Rosie and Ed. He’s also very keen to meet Dad, if he ever comes back. Ed said he was having his gap year; she hopes not. Dad has this effect: he has entered the affections of his viewers as insidiously as a virus. Nick, she is finding, is doing something similar to her, but she is trying to hold herself back in case it turns out that her judgement has been affected by the traumas caused her by Josh’s craziness.

  As she looks at the proofs of the catalogue – riddled with mistakes – she thinks of Constantine murdering his incestuous wife Flavia by parboiling her in a bath. It had all seemed quite pleasantly remote, like a horror movie, filtered of all reality, but since Josh pushed a pistol into his mouth and she imagined a fine Tarantino mist hanging in the air above her bath, composed of blood and capillaries and bon
e fragments, she hasn’t seen the murderous history of the Constantines as something charmingly remote. What she sees now is a family of genuine Mafiosi, deranged and vengeful. And maybe this is what history is, a series of atrocities that are worn smooth by the passage of time. To calm her mind, she reads through the proofs very carefully, checking every spelling and every reference.

  She must not become too attached to Nick. It’s difficult, because he has said that she is the most wonderful person he has ever met. She knows that this is a tactic employed by bastards: women find it difficult to resist someone who claims to love them beyond reason. Mum spent her life devoted to her children. When she was dying she was ashamed that she had let them down, as if she had somehow lived a sham. Her head was shaved and her eyes seemed to be retreating into caves that hadn’t been there before. Dad must have known early on that she was dying but the speed of it threw him completely. He didn’t have time to perfect the easy lies that might have seen them through. Mum’s concern was only for the children, her life’s work, and this concern wasn’t lessened by the fact that they were already grown up. Lucy knows that Mum was particularly concerned about her, as if she was especially vulnerable. Just before she died, she held Lucy’s hand with the grip of a very small bird. The lightness of her hand spoke eloquently of the nearness of her death: it had lost all warmth and motive power. Her eyes, deep in their last retreats like Byzantine hermits in caves, retained a broad range of expressiveness, and the anguish in them was heartbreaking. It was so awful that Lucy wished she would die right there, partly because she was suffering so badly, but also because there is something contagious in death, moving backwards in time to infect the living memory.

  And now Lucy thinks that she has always treated herself as a special case, someone deserving of some unique consideration. She’s not a special case any more: it’s gone with Josh’s deranged stunt. I am not immune in any way to life’s realities. If he had blown his brains out, I would never have recovered. They may be killing each other casually with knives and guns down in South London, but here, in the still-living radius of her mother, most of us are terrified of randomness. We don’t want to know about every awful thing. The other day, leaving Green Park station, she saw some tourists photographing the picturesque but unused red phone boxes. Picturesque on the outside; inside they were full of bottles, cans, prostitutes’ cards and – in one – a huge human turd. She felt sick with anxiety. Obviously, a few bits of litter and one sad person’s faeces should not spoil anyone’s day, but she seems to have assumed her mother’s fastidiousness, which was close to agoraphobia. Not so long ago, before Mum died, she believed that somehow life would reveal itself evenly and predictably. All the evidence to the contrary, which, naturally, was available to her – the tsunami, earthquakes, murder, torture, betrayal – seemed real enough but impersonal, as if happening in a parallel world. Her grandfather’s friend, Pavel Gersbach, had lived all his life in a small rented flat in Highgate because, after what he had seen when the Nazis arrived in Prague in 1939, he had thought it would be tempting fate to buy a house. When Dad told her this story, she had imagined that it was really just some colourful hangover of Mittel Europa; the Holocaust, she sometimes thought, should be put behind us. Now she knows that none of us is exempt.

  She meets Nick later after the paper has been tucked up.

  He appears, running from the building.

  ‘What would you rather be or a wasp?’ he says.

  ‘I fell out of the cradle laughing at that one.’

  ‘Really? I’ve just heard it. You look great. Do you want a drink before we go to dinner?’

  ‘Supper. Rosalie prefers the term: it’s more pastoral. And yes, I do.’

  ‘Come, I know just the place. I really need one. Any news of Josh?’

  ‘Safely locked up.’

  In the leafy opulence of Kensington, he kisses her and holds her close.

  ‘Do you have a drink problem?’ she whispers into his ear.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘How little I know about you. Nada.’

  ‘Not much to know, sadly.’

  The pub has a lively, dense atmosphere, which they must break into. It’s almost a natural process; the human and alcoholic vapours and gases part to admit you, and then close around you. She thinks of those microscopic shots of in vitro fertilisation. There’s a gynaecological theme to her thoughts.

  ‘Tell me about your sister-in-law.’

  ‘As I said on the phone, she’s pregnant. They’ve had a few problems in that department, so she’s on a total high. My brother’s been offered a job in Geneva, the world’s dullest city, and I foresee a future of increasing prosperity and cheese consumption. Nick, I’m only going to say it once, because you will think I am babbling like a fool, but you were great last night, without you God knows...’

  But she can’t go on, and weeps in this gamy pub, where none of the regulars takes any notice as Nick holds her: they have seen many domestic dramas. Their credo is that there is nothing a drink can’t fix.

  ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. I want you to stay with me. Just until you feel safe,’ he adds, as if he imagines he has gone too far.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Look, I’m only offering so that I can get into your knickers twenty-four seven.

  ‘Oh thanks,’ she snuffles. ‘Actually, that’s fine by me.’

  By the time they get to Rosalie and Ed, they are both tipsy. Ed comes to the door.

  ‘Sorry, bro. We’re both a little pissed,’ says Lucy.

  ‘No problem. So am I. We opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate my new job and our baby. But Rosie’s on water.’

  ‘The job’s done and dusted?’ asks Lucy.

  ‘Just about. Nick, come in. And thanks, you have been wonderful. Lucy can’t stop talking about you. To be honest, she’s become a bit of a pain. Come in, come in. This is Rosalie.’

  ‘Hi, Nick.’

  ‘Hi, Rosalie, I hear you’re pregnant, congratulations.’

  ‘Sorry. I told him. I just couldn’t stop myself,’ says Lucy.

  ‘Let’s keep it in the family for the moment. But still, no harm done.’

  They are so obviously happy that Lucy feels tears coming to her eyes again. Rosalie is more than happy, serene. Only now is it apparent how anxious she has been: she looks as though she has never heard of Alice and never feared being childless for ever. Lucy hasn’t told Nick about Alice, because she doesn’t want the family to seem too flaky, what with Dad gallivanting in the desert somewhere.

  ‘You look sensational, Rosie.’

  They embrace with unaccustomed vigour.

  ‘Can you give me a hand for a moment in the kitchen; I’ve made some snacks. Ed, can you take Nick through to our enormous courtyard?’

  ‘Are you more or less over the Josh business, Luce?’ Rosalie asks as she busies herself.

  ‘Who knows? Nick’s been great and so has Ed. How do you feel? Any different?’

  ‘I feel absolutely fine: I keep imagining things are happening. I almost believe I can feel the baby.’

  ‘Even though it’s about the size of a walnut. Or smaller.’

  ‘Exactly. You obviously lose touch with reality when you’re pregnant. Luce, I think this business, and your Mum’s death, has had one good effect: it has brought us all much closer, don’t you think?’

  ‘I do. It struck me after we talked that we are the re-formed family. Like reconstituted. I’ll be the spinster auntie, who makes sponge cakes.’

  They take the snacks out to the courtyard, two women in domestic union. There is something about Rosalie that is curiously out of time, but at this moment Lucy loves her ethereal, slightly whacked, sister-in-law. And feels a deep kinship with her – the baby is already signalling to her aunt from the womb – a kinship she has never really felt before. It’s like the meeting of passengers in a lifeboat after the ship has sunk: a certain unavoidable intensity of feeling has arisen; the life force is running strongly in
Rosalie this evening and its elemental power has swept Alice away. Lucy would have liked to have met Alice, to compare and contrast.

  As they bear in the tiny but fashion-conscious eats, she sees that Ed and Nick are having a fine time. Whatever story Ed was telling, he breaks off quickly: chaps have a kind of Freemasonry. She finds it reassuring to find Nick so relaxed and sociable. She has never seen him in company before. Behind them, the Moroccan snake-charmer lights cast a beguiling light. And she sees that the moribund bougainvillea has gone at last.

  ‘Snacks?’ Rosalie asks.

  ‘Snacks?’ says Nick. ‘They look too beautiful to eat.’

  Ed takes four.

  ‘This is how to do it,’ he says.

  ‘You’re a pig,’ says Rosalie.

  ‘Oink, oink.’

  ‘Christ, you can be silly, Ed,’ says Rosalie indulgently.

  Lucy believes that Rosalie has decided once and for all to erase the conversation with Alice from her mind. She wonders how you could possibly do something like this, and she hopes that it is more than a lull in their torrential lives.

  ‘Did you like them?’ Lucy asks after they have made love.

  Their lovemaking has that thrilling sense of discovery, as though they are on a reckless journey whose destination is not yet known. The intensity is extreme, almost unbearable, racked up by the knowledge that Josh, who was once her lover, is under lock and key.

  ‘I loved them. Ed’s great, and Rosalie is almost too good to be true.’

  ‘You got her in one. She’s a sort of uber-woman. She always makes me feel clumsy. But she’s had her problems, as I said.’

  ‘Your brother told me, too.’

  ‘Crikey, you didn’t waste time getting down to basics.’

  ‘He told me in the club, man to man. He seems very relieved. It must have been a strain.’

  ‘He is. Rosalie’s instincts are strong. You can’t fuck with them.’

  ‘“You can’t fuck with them.” What sort of language is that from one of London’s hottest and brainiest girls?’