‘I’ve got a Bristol and a Lagonda 3-litre Drophead Coupé.’
As he spat his cucumber mousse across the table, I turned coolly to Sebastian.
‘I gather you’re a teacher,’ I said gently. After Malcolm I could be kind. I could bring him out, just an inch or two.
‘Well, yes, occasionally. Just a couple of days a month really.’
Ah, so it was like day release.
‘That’s good. You must enjoy that?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘It’s nice to get out, isn’t it?’
He frowned at this. Didn’t answer. Too difficult perhaps. I persevered.
‘And what is it you teach, exactly?’ Even more softly.
He paused, perhaps trying to remember. ‘Music,’ he intoned eventually.
I clasped my hands and contrived to look enchanted. ‘Music! Lovely! Songs, and things?’
‘Um, some … songs, yes.’
‘Super!’
A silence ensued.
‘And do you play?’
‘Sorry?’
‘An instrument, you know, the violin or –’ oh God, no – ‘the recorder? I used to play the recorder!’
‘Really.’ Rather drily perhaps.
‘Yes, at school. Not any more. If people ask “What do you play?” I just say, “Oh, the fool!”’
Suddenly I cringed. Oh God, you idiot, Olivia – the fool! He’ll think you’re taking the mickey! I cast around desperately.
‘I – um, and – how is your mother?’
He turned almost 180 degrees to look at me. Really rather closely. ‘She’s well, thank you. How’s yours?’
‘Oh! Oh, fine. No, no the reason I ask is because I see her around quite a lot.’
‘Who?’
‘Your mother.’
He stared at me with his slanting, dark eyes, as if I had two heads, but happily Yolanda was causing a diversion on the other side of the table and the silence was averted. Nanette was bustling around her, changing plates.
‘I’m so sorry, Nanette, it’s such a bore, but they do say no liver, no blue cheese, no unpasteurised products and absolutely nothing that’s been in the microwave. I take it the mousse had raw egg in? Ah yes, well, that’s why I left it, and I’m afraid this hollandaise sauce is out, but if you scrape if off I can eat the salmon, and then what is it to follow … chocolate pots? More raw egg! Gosh, anyone would think you were doing this on purpose, you naughty girl! No, no, don’t worry about me. Bumpy and me will be fine with an apple or something for pudding, won’t we, bumpy?’
She patted what I now realised was a burgeoning stomach and smiled smugly at Cliff, the father, it transpired, of her five children. For these weren’t newly weds who couldn’t keep their hands off each other as I’d originally imagined, but a fabulously fecund couple who were about to inflict their sixth child on the world.
‘I’ll take the sauce off,’ muttered Nanette, removing the plate.
‘Oh dear, what a shame, and it looks so lovely, but one really can’t be too careful and I’d never forgive myself if anything happened. Five perfectly healthy ones and then God forbid disaster should strike. Has anyone else got little ones here? Nanette, yours are all grown up now, aren’t they?’
‘Er, well. Not so grown up.’
‘But teenagers, surely? At university?’
‘Just.’ Nanette ground her teeth and, as she replaced the salmon, I could have sworn she wiped a smear of hollandaise back on top.
Malcolm held up his hands and was quick to claim absolutely no offspring whatsoever, so no paternity suits, please, ho, ho, ho. Sebastian failed to answer and looked at her blankly, and I was forced into admitting I had one.
‘Just one? A baby then, is it? The first?’
‘No, she’s ten.’
‘Ah, I see!’ Yolanda laid down her knife and fork for dramatic emphasis. ‘Oh, I am sorry.’
All eyes were on me. ‘Well, no, please don’t be,’ I stammered nervously.
‘Oh, but I know what it’s like.’ She leant forward, all concern. ‘Friends of ours have been to hell and back with it, haven’t they, Cliff? All those blood tests, laparoscopies, Clomid injections, in and out of the infertility clinic – not to mention poor Bernard doing unmentionable things into a test tube with a porno mag – and all for absolutely no reason! You see, quite often, just like you, a child has already been conceived – as Bernard and Gill’s child was – totally naturally, and there’s no rhyme or reason why another one hasn’t popped along after it! The one thing that everyone does say, though,’ she confided, lowering her voice, ‘is to relax about it. The more het up you get, the more it’s just not going to happen, and d’you know, that’s absolutely true. The number of couples I know who’ve adopted as a last resort and then – hey presto – the wife gets pregnant! They’ve stopped thinking about it, you see, stopped fretting, and another little tip – even more extraordinary – get a puppy. Sounds odd, I know, but it’s the stroking apparently, the caring, the release of all your pent-up maternal instincts. You see, you’re looking after something tiny and vulnerable and – what? Nanette, did you kick me? Am I opening my big mouth again? Oh!’ Her hand flew to her big mouth. ‘Oh gosh, I am sorry. Nanette did say, but I forgot.’ She puckered her brow in consternation. ‘You’ve had a sadness, haven’t you?’
Naturally, I’d been busy blushing away throughout her weighty monologue, but this last remark really shot an extra bathful of blood up the back of my legs. A sadness. Christ!
‘Well, no one’s died,’ I muttered.
‘No, but didn’t your husband –’
‘Shall we all sit soft?’ warbled Nanette gaily, getting to her feet and coming firmly to my rescue. ‘Through into the lounge for coffee?’
Cliff was the first up from the table, but Yolanda sprinted to his side, then marched just ahead of him into the room. As I followed Cliff through, I noticed him grit his teeth and flick a quick V sign at her ample behind. It was a futile, childish gesture, and one that he’d meant to go unobserved, but one that I – after I’d got over my initial astonishment – applauded wholeheartedly. I hadn’t categorised, or even noticed Cliff during the evening, except as a small, cowed appendage to his large, domineering spouse, but I began to realise that all was not quite as it seemed in that camp. Was Cliff unhappy? Was Cliff considering heading for the wide open spaces? And if so, how much better, I mused as I collected a cup of coffee from the tray, to be abandoned with one child than to be abandoned with six.
Cliff was settling himself down on a sofa in the corner, and I determined to have a word in his ear about the merits of the single life, about how Johnny was absolutely loving it, and how I was sure he’d thoroughly recommend it to him. God, I could even give him his telephone number. Yolanda, though, with bristling antennae, seemed to be alive to this possibility and as I sat down, scuttled to squeeze her large backside between us on the two-seater sofa. As we all sat squashed together, elbows in, she confided to me in a loud, pseudo-jolly voice that she never let Cliff go off on any sort of golfing weekend or boys’ nights out because that, in her view, was where all the trouble started. It became clear that poor Cliff was a prisoner in his own home, purely there to procreate and pay the mortgage, and that any thoughts he might have of escaping had been crushed long ago.
‘I don’t let him out of my sight!’ she warbled, nudging him gaily and spilling his coffee. ‘Do I, darling? Heaven knows what he might get up to!’
Cliff forced a tight little smile, then resumed his contemplation of his coffee. Black and hot, he stirred it in measured silence, his eyes a trifle wild. Suddenly he got to his feet. I shrank back, half-expecting him to tip it all over his beloved’s head, but he simply gathered some coats from a chair and spoke.
‘The baby-sitter will be waiting, my love. We must be off.’ Calm, measured, but gritted. The voice of a man on the edge.
At the mention of babies she was instantly galvanised, fussing about midnight feeds and bed-wetting and
getting up at six to make breakfast, as Cliff helped her into her coat. His hands were shaking, though. Ah no, I reflected sadly, desertion was not on the cards for poor old Cliff. He’d never even make it to the wire, let alone send a postcard back from Blighty. No, no, this was a desperate man with only desperate measures left to him. And either way, he was facing a life sentence.
They left, and the evening limped on without them. Sebastian stood at the window, staring fixedly at a tassel on the curtains, Nanette snuggled up to Malcolm and explained in hushed tones exactly why a thong was so incredibly comfortable, and I threw the hottest coffee imaginable down my throat.
‘Finished,’ I gasped. ‘Must be off, Nanette. Mac will be waiting.’
She followed me to the door, where I promised her that I’d had the most fantastic evening, that of course I’d come again, and agreed that Malcolm was indeed a complete honey.
‘He really liked you,’ she hissed, glancing back over her shoulder. ‘In fact I think he might ring you!’
‘Excellent,’ I said, too tired to argue. ‘Couldn’t be more pleased.’
As I turned and walked back up the dark cobbled street, it occurred to me to wonder whether it was my knickers he was trying to get into, or my Lagonda.
Alone in bed that night I lay staring at the ancient brown William Morris wallpaper that still had to be stripped from the bedroom walls. Blue, Johnny had said, and I’d agreed, even though a pale yellow would have been more my choice. I swallowed hard. Nights were always the worst. Still, I reflected, blinking hard, if I couldn’t be with Johnny, at least I was alone. That was something of a solace. How much better to be here by myself than with a ghastly Malcolm, or a sad Sebastian, or anyone else you care to mention, desperate to start a relationship, desperate to get to the point at which Johnny and I had already been. That point of absolute familiarity, intimate honesty, that point that took years to get to and which marriages are made of. How could I contemplate embarking on that with someone else? Why would I want to? And even if I did, what was I supposed to do with the deep, abiding love I had for Johnny? Freeze it? Deny it? Stuff it under the pillow and suffocate it? I’d found my soulmate, found him years ago, grown up with him, married him, had a child with him. I’d never thought for a moment of looking for another.
I pictured him now, in bed with Nina, something I’d never yet allowed myself to do. The tears rolled down my face in torrents. I imagined that openness, that intimacy that was mine by rights, not hers. The pain was so great I had to sit up, gasping, pinch my arm hard to stop myself going further down that road. Then I lay back on the pillows feeling weak, staring at the ceiling. So how can you ever have him back? After that? a small voice asked. Oh, but I could. I knew I could. Scarred, damaged, as our lives would surely be, but I’d have him. The alternative, that which I’d glimpsed over the horizon tonight, was too horrific to contemplate.
Chapter Eight
The following Wednesday, Claudia and I bumped into Molly in the school car park.
‘What are you doing here? You’ve got at least two years before Henry’s eligible!’
‘God, two years is nothing,’ she said as she levered herself heavily out of her car. ‘You have to put embryos down for some schools these days. No, I’ve left it late, and much as I’d like to just shove his name on a list, apparently I have to be shown around the wretched place first.’
I grinned. Molly was nothing if not relaxed. Some mothers liked to inspect the plumbing and shake hands with all the dinner ladies.
‘Mrs Travis, apparently, I have to see,’ she said, consulting a piece of paper. She held her side and puffed across the playing field beside me, the breeze flattening her denim dress against her huge stomach. ‘God, it’s hot. Where will I find her then, in the office or something?’
‘She’s the deputy head,’ Claudia informed her. ‘And she’s totally sad.’
‘She’s sweet,’ I assured Molly. ‘I’ll take you there. Bye, my darling.’
Claudia peeled off to her classroom and I escorted Molly to the office. Passing the main hall, we discovered there’d been a catastrophe. One of the pipes had burst and both the head and the deputy head had been tasked off to deal with the water board, a distraught caretaker was trying to mop up a flood with a roll of kitchen paper – like sticking a finger in the Aswan Dam – and two dozen seven-year-olds were lined up outside in tutus, poised, whispering and giggling, to have ballet and tap in there.
‘Oh, Mrs Piper, I’m so sorry,’ twittered Audrey, the school secretary, wringing her hands melodramatically, when we got to the office. ‘What must you think of us? Such a muddle, I do apologise, but there’s simply no one here to show you around! I’d do it myself only I’ve been tasked off to take Mr Harty’s French class and all I can say in French is je t’aime! They’re always getting me to do this and I’m not qualified to teach a flea!’ She flung her hands apart in silly-me appeal. A great advertisement to a prospective parent, I thought. ‘You couldn’t come back again tomorrow, could you? When we’re a teensy bit more organised?’
Molly groaned. ‘I could, it’s just that it took me ages to arrange a child-minder for Henry, and I dread the thought of bringing him with me – not that he’s not an angelic little boy, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘I couldn’t just have a wander round on my own, could I? Peer in some classroom windows, put his name down and come back for a better look nearer the time?’
‘Of course, of course!’ Audrey fluttered, rummaging in a drawer for a list. ‘Here, put his name down here.’
Molly grabbed the pen eagerly. ‘How early do you take them?’ she muttered, scribbling.
‘How old is he now?’
‘Nearly one, but he’s very mature,’ she said firmly.
Audrey looked taken aback. ‘Oh, er, well, not for another eighteen months or so –’
‘As much as that?’
‘Oh, it’ll fly by! I tell you what, why don’t you just go to the nursery today? That’s the first class he’ll be going in to. Perhaps Mrs McFarllen would show you where – Oh!’ Her hand shot to her mouth. Her cheeks flushed. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs McFarllen, I –’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said smoothly. ‘Of course I’ll take Molly to see Miss Harrison.’
‘Oh, but I didn’t mean to put you to any – I – I didn’t think, I –’
‘It’s quite all right. Come on, Molly.’
I took her arm and we swept out.
‘She knows,’ muttered Molly as we marched along.
‘Of course she bloody knows. Everyone knows, the whole bloody school knows.’
‘But that’s outrageous!’ she gasped. ‘It’s so embarrassing for you. I don’t know how you can bear it!’
‘I don’t know how I can bear it either,’ I mused. ‘But I do.’
As we approached the nursery, Molly suddenly stopped short. ‘Livvy, I’m not sure I can do this.’
‘What?’
‘Well, be introduced to her by you when she’s living with your husband! What – say howdy-doody when I know my goddaughter’s father is having a ding-dong with her? No, thanks, I’ll come back another day. In fact – come to think of it – I don’t think I want Henry to be taught by her at all! How can I form a relationship with someone who’s doing this to you? No,’ she shook her head vigorously, ‘he can go to the nursery in the village. Come straight into the reception class here after that, bypass Miss Whiplash altogether. In fact, why don’t you take me to see the reception teacher? I’m sure –’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Molly. You know as well as I do this is the best nursery for miles around. Christ, they all sniff the Copydex at the one in your village. Come on.’ I seized her arm. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t mind this at all. I rather enjoy encountering her.’
She gave me a strange, sideways look, but it was true. I’d noticed recently that instead of going round the back of Claudia’s classroom and out to the car park, which was my usual, quicker route, I made a point of coming through the m
ain entrance and going right past the nursery doors. There she’d be, on her hands and knees with the teeny-tinies, doing jigsaws, playing with sand, her backside often presented to me as she leant forward on her elbows. It was wider than mine, but not huge. Small cervix too, I bet. She’d get up, drift across to help another child, the rhythm of her rolling buttocks in her long skirts languid, hypnotic, like a black girl’s. If I had a small silver pistol I could draw it from my bag, aim, and shatter her coccyx, I was sure. I only got a quick glimpse each morning, of course, didn’t stand and stare, but it was enough. Like a fix, it set me up for the day. Why? I wondered. Was I stalking her, for God’s sake? Sometimes I horrified myself. And why did I want to hurt myself every morning? Because there was no doubt about it, that’s what it did: gave me a short, sharp stab of pain. It was almost as if I didn’t want that pain to go away, like daily opening up a sore. I’ve often heard that when someone dies, the grief-stricken, the left behind, want to mourn constantly. They don’t want to feel better, don’t want to stop crying or stop poring over photographs, because by feeling better, they’d be distancing themselves from the deceased. That was how I felt. I wanted to keep that distance short between me and Johnny, and Nina was my link.
She was sitting on one of those miniature chairs, showing a little blonde girl how to draw around a stencil as we approached. Molly hesitated but I pushed straight on through those glass doors, like barging into a saloon. When she saw me, she stood up hurriedly, knocking over a jar of crayons. She flushed scarlet. Molly glanced awkwardly out of the window.
‘Oh, Miss Harrison, Mrs Travis is having a terrible time with a burst pipe in the hall and Audrey asked me if I’d bring Mrs Piper in here to see you. She’s thinking of bringing Henry here in – what would it be, two years, Moll?’
‘Um, yes, about that,’ admitted Molly, scuffing her toe. ‘He’s two in August next year.’
‘Oh, er, yes, well, I’d be glad to show you around.’ She shot me a quick, nervous look. ‘Um, I don’t know if you want to wait here, Mrs McFarllen, or –’
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