‘Raymond –’ I hug him, I realise all at once how much I’ve missed him.
‘You look marvellous,’ he tells me.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I’m thinking once again how everything I’m wearing seems wrong and that, despite how much I try to fit in, I always stand out.
‘You’re a breath of sunshine in this dire place,’ he says.
I am puzzled, delighted, unsure what to say. Raymond sighs and I look at his face which is beautiful, like an ancient image, ornamental with lines and folds. His eyes are waxy with age but full of love, compassion. He holds my elbow and I touch his hand. I kiss his cheek. I invite him to spend a day with us. But then Daphne arrives back to take Raymond off to see someone else, so that I cannot finish what I want to say to him, which is that we love him, the children and I.
If there is anything more awkward than going to a funeral, it is going to a funeral for a man who never liked you as the ex of a man who wants nothing more than to divorce you. It’s really not terribly pleasant. Still, as freakish as I might feel, scores of those around us have no idea I don’t belong.
‘So nice to see you, Melanie, how are the children?’
‘Oh, Melanie, I haven’t seen you in ages!’
‘You look absolutely lovely, my dear. What a beautiful hat!’
Stephen’s uncles and aunts and cousins, not to mention Bernard’s ancient assortment of friends with short-term memory loss, have no idea I am anything but Stephen’s faithful wife, and he my doting husband. Although it must seem a tad odd to see Penelope there, standing with Stephen. That might throw them if the fact I stand alone does not.
‘I think you’re bloody brave,’ says Cath, bringing me a glass of wine.
Cath wears an unflattering black skirt that ends mid-calf, a jacket with long sleeves even in this hot weather, and a nondescript blouse which is hidden in all the black of her jacket. Her hat is plain, her bobbed hair crunched beneath it. She wears no make-up. I always marvel at Cath’s seemingly purposeful efforts at sabotaging her own good looks. Perhaps it is something you learn to do at boarding school, where the emphasis is on uniformity, fitting in, being correct. I am none of these things. I thought the English always wore long skirts to such occasions, but I see now that there is only one other woman in the room in such a thing and she is a member of the clergy. Mid-calf would have been correct, and also my blouse is too bright and my jacket has short sleeves – very wrong – plus, I should have realised, no lipstick.
‘I came for you,’ I say to Cath now. She says nothing. ‘OΚ, and for him.’
‘And because you are just nice,’ says Cath. ‘You were always nice. It’s not a trait that gets you anywhere in life, but the rest of us appreciate it.’
I smile. ‘I’m sorry about your dad. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right if I just failed to show up.’
Across the room from me, near where the food is set out buffet-style, Penelope sips her glass of wine and nods at one of Stephen’s cousins, a man named Andrew who teaches at Cambridge and whose specialty is kinship among tribal groups in Borneo. I never know what to say to Andrew, who comes across as slightly lewd in his continual referral to the rites and rituals surrounding the role of mothers’ brothers. But Penelope seems quite at ease. She knows all of the cousins well, having many times during university holidays accompanied Stephen and his family to a farmhouse in the Peak District, where they spent their time watching village cricket and fishing in the rain. It is really only right and fitting that she is with Stephen now. She suits him. Standing beside Stephen’s anthropologist cousin, she can both marvel at the exotic, quaint habits of tribal people and enjoy the cultural exactitudes of her own, precise and metred class. Whenever I’ve tried to talk to Stephen’s cousins they seemed to keep noticing my accent as though its sound released a mildly displeasing scent into the air. Actually, that is a bit of an exaggeration. They are used to me now. And anyway, they are nicer than that, but not Andrew.
‘I think I will say hello,’ I say now, heading for Penelope.
Penelope is not a stupid woman. She knows exactly where I am in the hotel reception room, her radar no less accurate than my own. As I step toward her she turns to me, her face open and welcoming, placing her wine glass in her left hand and holding out her right. She unzips a smile, beaming at me with big, horsey teeth. She says my name as though it is good news. ‘Melanie,’ she says, pausing, taking me in. ‘I’ve wanted so much to speak to you!’
Bending her face toward mine, smiling as though I am a great friend, she is gracious and attractive. I can hardly stand it. She is taller than me, even though she has opted for shorter heels. She turns now to Andrew, brushing his cheek with her lips, ‘We’ll chat later,’ she murmurs quietly.
Stephen is suddenly nowhere to be found. He caught a glimpse of me earlier at the church and again as I came into the hotel, so he knows I am here. When he rang to tell me about his father’s death, I assumed he wanted me at the funeral, but now I am not so sure. Perhaps he wanted the children here, which would make no sense. If Daniel were in the room right now, they’d have had their circular doilies and napkin rings confiscated for their roundness. He’d likely have run beneath the buffet table and tugged at the tablecloth until it brought down all the food. Certainly nobody would keep him from the trays of cheese and crackers, as he will do anything to eat gluten. He’s like an addict, desiring more and more bread. My gluten-free alternatives are shoddy approximations of the real thing. The boy craves cake.
‘You must hate me,’ says Penelope now.
‘No, not hate,’ I say. She nods. I don’t like to admit it, but she has really a rather appealing face, a kind of regality. Her cheeks are sharp points, her eyes theatrical and large beneath the solid weight of her heavy fringe.
‘Do you remember when I met you that day in Camden Town?’ she asks me. Her voice is kind. Her attention is all mine.
‘Was it Camden Town?’ I say. ‘I can’t see you in Camden Town.’
‘And why is that?’ she smiles. She is genuinely surprised. She is stunning. Over the past few years she has become more rounded in the hips, a bit chunkier in her upper arms, her thighs, but she is a gracious and commanding woman. A beauty, I have to admit, making me seem by contrast a dry and angular creature no more appealing than a paper fan.
‘Never mind,’ I say.
‘Now look, you need to speak to Stephen. We would both like to talk with you. Don’t you think it’s time?’ she says.
Perhaps it is. I don’t know. All I can think is that I am looking at my children’s future stepmother and that she seems an awful lot more engaging than their real mother. I can picture Emily and Penelope exchanging tales of headmistresses and hockey teams, discussing the pressures of GCSE exams and Christmas balls. My daughter, whose colicky newborn stomach required me to pace for hours every evening, for whom I played patient to her doctor, pony to her rider, who I taught to pedal a bicycle by holding on to her seat and running, over and over again, until I had no more breath. It seems somehow unfair that Penelope is so well mannered and so English, and so everything that I am not. Still, here she is. There is no escape from her. Not by me. Not by Emily.
‘I think you should babysit Daniel,’ I tell Penelope now.
‘Oh,’ she says, a little taken aback. I’ve never let the children near her. ‘What a lovely idea,’ she says flatly.
‘We think he can use a toilet now,’ I say, as though this is a grand, scientific discovery. ‘But then again, maybe not.’
‘I see,’ she says, fingering her pearls.
‘You just have to watch his willy,’ I say. She swallows, coughs softly, tries to smile. ‘But as for number two, you have to get there before his hands do, that is my advice. Unless, of course, you have a lot of time and disinfectant.’
She has no answer to this. I spot Stephen coming through the doors from the hotel’s reception. ‘Excuse me,’ I say, and Penelope steps aside.
Stephen’s tie has come slightly loose. His ey
es have a heaviness to them as though he has not been sleeping well. He runs his hands through his hair and I see, through the cascade of sandy locks, the scar from a rugby game a dozen years or more ago, and I notice, too, that his hair is thinning. Still, he is a beautiful man.
‘Very nice,’ he says. ‘Very nice of you to come.’
‘I’m sorry about your father.’
‘Doctors didn’t give him the right heart medicine. I blame them, you know. He was on that rat poison but not beta blockers. I can’t remember what excuse they gave. Something about a stroke.’
He looks away from me, over my shoulder. It occurs to me, now that I notice such things, that he has not looked me fully in the eye for many months.
‘Where are the children?’ he asks.
‘With Veena. With Andy.’
‘You mean that guy who helps Daniel to play? That Andy?’
I nod.
Stephen lets out a long breath. ‘He seems to know what he’s doing,’ he says,
‘He’s Irish,’ I say, just for something to say.
‘Yes, I think I remember that,’ says Stephen tartly, and I realise my statement is not so innocent as I would like to think. Stephen hasn’t been married to me for five years without picking up on the habits of my thoughts, the meaning of isolated tones in my voice that others would scarcely notice. What I meant was, He is Irish, not like you, Stephen. He is with the children, not like you. He is good at playing with kids, not like you. He is in my life, not like you. None of this is lost on Stephen, who is at times a cantankerous and insular man, but not stupid.
I say, ‘Stephen, I would like to take the children on a holiday somewhere. Summer is almost over and all we’ve done is hang around London.’
‘What about Ireland?’ he says now. ‘Ireland in your plans at all?’
‘I would like just a little bit of money, you know? Just to take them to the beach?’
‘I’ll take them to the beach,’ says Stephen. ‘If that is where you’d like them to go.’
He leaves me there and I feel like shit. He walks off in long, confident strides back to Penelope who glances into his face as though she’s seen something holy there, something glorious and sacred. Perhaps she has.
When I feel I can finally leave, having said something to David, to Cath, again to Daphne, who this afternoon looks suddenly older, suddenly frail, after I have chatted at least briefly with those who knew me and who made their best efforts to incorporate me into their family – for some of them did – I go to Stephen and say goodbye. I hope not to upset him, or disturb him, or anger him, or annoy him. Just to say goodbye. I find him beside his brother, talking about the cricket.
‘Goodbye,’ I say, nodding. He nods back, murmurs, ‘Bye,’ then with hesitation and a hardness in his eyes, he leans forward and kisses me drily on the cheek. The kiss is performed quickly, dispatched. This kiss is meant to be, what? Polite? It is an affront, painful in its isolating effect, like a slap on the face. I have been dismissed. I stumble away from him out through heavy double doors which have been propped open, leading into the hotel foyer. I am wishing I’d never come, wishing I weren’t so ‘nice’ as Cath says, wishing I were someone else entirely. I pass a pair of mustard-coloured tassled ropes connected to slim, silver stands. I pass the lifts, pass the reception area with its tidy employees in their uniforms. I am thinking, Just Go Home. Then I hear a voice behind me. I hear Stephen call my name, hear the muffled clap of his hard shoes against the hotel’s carpet, which I realise all at once is the exact same carpet that covers Daphne’s living room.
‘Wait,’ says Stephen. He touches my elbow, turns me gently toward him. It is exactly the same gesture he made the first night I met him, when he told me how I must not, under any circumstances, leave without him.
‘Here,’ he says now, pulling money from his wallet, note after note, twenties and fifties. ‘Take them to the beach, Melanie,’ he says, his face looking slightly crumpled, not like him at all. ‘Tell them I love them, OK?’
21
The Welsh cottage is not what you’d call a holiday destination. Formerly a sheep shed, it was converted sometime in the seventies during what must have been a dizzy moment for interior decorating. The kitchen’s linoleum floor has been laid across several previous linoleum floors, and is a brown-and-orange pattern that repeats so often you cannot look at it without feeling your pulse rise. The carpet is a dull green, high-pile affair that is faded where the bay window – OK, the pane of ordinary glass looking like what you’d find in a shopfront – lets in the alarmingly infrequent Welsh sun. The bathroom fixtures are a deep brown, which I must point out is very useful at disguising the need to clean it, and the fireplace is a brick monster that looks something like a cross between a beehive and a bread oven, and suffers from an overload of what can only be described as decorative cement. Then there is the garden, its beauty spot. The garden is described in the estate agent’s details as ‘a patch of native grasses and wild flowers’, but what is really at work here is an overgrown patch of unkempt grass strewn with poppies, enhanced in its fertility by a dodgy septic tank that appears to leak, judging from the boggy soakaway at the edges of the back wall, and that at certain times of year gives off the scent of sulphur.
‘Well,’ Stephen had said when he first observed the cottage, which I have to admit was a bit of a purchasing error on my part. ‘Now we know what primitive man endured.’
But the reason I have my attention drawn to the cottage now is that the estate agent has rung me with what is not exactly good news.
‘Mrs Marsh, I’m sorry to tell you, but it seems that someone has deposited a whole pile of unauthorised dung in the back of your cottage. We’re not sure how or why, but we can’t show the cottage with all the dung like it is, so perhaps you or your husband could come down and sort it out for us.’
A pile of dung? Cow dung? Horse? Sheep? Dung from the stinking goat farm adjacent to the cottage? Dung doesn’t come from nowhere. And what does he mean by unauthorised? Would it be possible to get authorisation for this dung, in which case, would that make it all right?
‘What kind of dung?’ I ask. It turns out that nobody is quite sure what kind of dung it is, though smells have been reported and steam has been seen rising from it.
‘You really need to sort it out,’ insists the estate agent, a man named Robert who has what I’m sure his mother finds an endearing stutter. When he tells me about the dung he says it’s a ‘who-ho-ho-hole pile of dung’. But he also warns me that it would not help matters on his side if the parish council got involved with the cottage. ‘You’re at the end of the selling season as it is, Mrs Marsh. This manure is not w-w-w-working in your favour.’
I promise him I will do something about it, get off the phone and drop on to the floor with Daniel and Andy, who are watching a video that shows you how to make robots out of paper bags. On the television, the camera focuses on a pale table on which rest a pencil, some crayons, a set of bright red buttons, some shiny paper, glue and of course the bag. And now, a pair of human hands which I recognise immediately as Andy’s hands. While we listen to the voice – Andy’s voice – explaining what needs to be done to make a robot puppet, the hands go about cutting shapes, positioning, gluing down, all of which leads us eventually to the creation of a convincing robot.
‘First, we will make the robot’s eyes,’ says the voice. ‘We will use buttons for that. And we will need glue …’
It’s what Andy calls a ‘play video’. Because Daniel learns more easily from things he sees on television, Andy has put on to the television the thing he wants him to learn, which is craft-making, normal kids’ stuff, paste and glitter and googly eyes. ‘When did you do this?’ I ask him.
‘While you were out,’ he says. Nobody is allowed to say funeral any more. Emily gets a little too weird with her Mickey Mouse, having it die and brought back to life again, when we mention Bernard’s funeral.
The play video works a treat. Daniel watches it, m
esmerised by the creation of the puppet, then turns to discover that the exact same materials that are in the video are now here, on our table at home.
‘We will use buttons for eyes,’ says Daniel, parroting the video.
Andy will not allow Daniel simply to memorise and repeat. So he asks Daniel, ‘What kind of buttons should we use?’
‘Red buttons,’ says Daniel, ‘for the eyes.’
‘Perfect,’ says Andy.
But wait a second. There is something that requires explanation. I touch Andy on the arm and he looks at me, his face bright with the success of the play video. ‘Andy, where did you find the video camera?’ I ask. It’s about the only thing of value I haven’t sold, and I keep it secreted away in case a burglar comes.
‘In your underwear drawer,’ says Andy without a moment of hesitation.
‘And what – what exactly – were you doing in my underwear drawer?’
‘Looking for the video camera,’ he says, trying not to laugh.
Veena, coming to me now with a mug of tea, says, ‘I was telling him I thought you had one, but might have sold it. It’s my fault.’
I look at Veena, then at Andy, who seems so innocent standing there, a pair of blue plastic child’s scissors in his hand.
‘Anyway,’ Andy whispers to me now, ‘I wanted to know if you were a thong girl or a panties girl.’
And then he turns away, cutting as Daniel directs him, and won’t be disturbed or even interrupted as I swat at his back, pull the ends of his T-shirt until it makes a bell shape round his waist, or even when I reach under the belt line of his jeans and yank the elastic band of his shorts until it snaps against him.
Daniel Isn't Talking Page 21
