Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon

by Linda Newbery

  ‘Martin’s the one I feel sorry for,’ Bethan said. ‘He’s afraid you’ll start comparing notes.’

  ‘Typical man, that’d be. Assuming we’d have nothing else to talk about.’

  ‘She did seem nice,’ said Bethan; she had met Ruth recently at Martin’s fortieth birthday party.

  ‘Sister substitute, obviously. Is that what you’re thinking?’

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t going to say.’

  No. No one ever did say. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that Rose’s name must never be mentioned. Anna had come closer than usual to breaking the rule.

  Bethan looked at her sidelong, tilting her head. ‘You seem a bit …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Unsettled.’

  Anna made herself smile, trying to regain the celebratory tone they’d started with. ‘Sorry. I don’t know why. Except it’s not because I want a baby, and definitely not because I think Martin’s sleeping with Ruth. Let’s not get sidetracked. Honestly, Beth, I’m thrilled you asked me to be godparent. Will you give me a crash course?’

  ‘We’ll talk more, sometime soon.’ Bethan glanced up at the clock. ‘I’d better get back. Publicity meeting at two-thirty.’

  Anna downed her coffee and summoned a waiter to settle the bill. Outside on the pavement she and Bethan stood for a moment, buttoning their coats, pulling on gloves.

  ‘I’ll text you. Take care,’ said Bethan, as they hugged.

  ‘And you! Great to see you. Look after yourself.’

  Bethan walked away quickly in the direction of Bloomsbury, a jaunty figure in her purple tights, boots and butcher-boy cap. Anna watched her go, wishing she had Bethan’s gift for happiness. It looked so easy, for those who had the knack.

  Years ago, when they were children, Rose showed Anna the Seven Sisters.

  Standing by the back door, Anna was shivering so much that her teeth hurt; she could have made herself stop, but it added to the excitement of being out in the dark. Night-time transformed the garden into a strange, unknown place, even though indoors was only a few steps away, with Mum and Dad watching TV. As long as she could reach back and touch the house wall, she’d be safe.

  They had come out to look for a hedgehog that sometimes scuttled across the lawn, nosing its way to the dish of cat-food Rose put out for it. Anna hugged herself, peering into the stalky, spidery place beside the shed. Her eyes sought the thicker patch of darkness that might, if she willed it hard enough, clump itself into a hedgehog and trundle over the grass as if on wheels. It gave her a shivery thrill to think of other lives so close to her own, of creatures huddled in darkness, waiting for nightfall, their time for creeping out. Then Rose, distracted from hedgehogs, called, ‘Look, look at the stars! There’s the Plough, and the Pole Star. And the Seven Sisters – how many can you see?’

  ‘Where?’ Anna’s head jerked up, her eyes adjusting to a different scale. The stars giddied her; how could she not have noticed them?

  Rose pointed. ‘See? It’s like a blurry bit. Look at the very top of the tree, then go up a bit, like two o’clock. Have you got them?’

  Anna gazed, anxious not to make Rose impatient. There were bears and lions and hunters if you knew how to see them; Anna imagined them chasing each other across the night sky, trailing stardust like glitter. She knew there was meant to be a swan and a lion and a pair of twins, and now sisters too. Her eyes searched for faces, flowing robes and hair, like those pictures made of joined-up dots. Star-sisters. But all she could see, following Rose’s pointing finger, was haze, a smudged thumbprint of light. She was disappointed.

  ‘Did you make that up?’ she asked Rose. ‘About sisters?’

  ‘No! It’s true. They’ve got names – Dad showed me. We looked them up in a book.’

  He didn’t show me, Anna thought. Resentment prickled her. She thought of Rose and Dad in the garden looking at stars, finding the pictures, joining the dots; herself left out, sent up to bed on her own. The Seven Sisters belonged to Rose and Dad. She was only being let in on something that was already theirs.

  ‘I can’t see them,’ she said, huffily.

  ‘You’re not looking properly,’ Rose told her. ‘That blurry place is made of stars. How many can you see?’

  Anna stared. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out the individual points of light. ‘Seven,’ she said, sure of a right answer.

  Rose shook her head. ‘There’s supposed to be much more than seven. If you had really good eyesight, you’d see more. But you won’t if you look straight at them. Look to one side, then try.’

  Anna tried. She fixed her gaze to the left of the smudge, pretending not to look, as if she could play a trick on a star cluster thousands of light years away. There was an impression of clarity, of the separate stars just out of her eyes’ reach. But when she stared straight at them, trying to catch them unawares, the vision blurred. The stars wouldn’t be caught that way.

  It’s funny, she thought: the more you look, the more you can’t see.

  Chapter Three

  On Friday evening Anna phoned Ruth.

  ‘Thought I might come and help tomorrow, while Martin’s out with Liam?’

  Now that she was offering, it seemed a stupid idea. She waited for a polite brush-off, but instead Ruth said, ‘Would you? If you really mean it, I could do with some help over at the house. My mum’s place, I mean. I’ve got to make a start on sorting out her things.’

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll help.’

  Ruth sounded relieved. ‘I’m not looking forward to it. It’ll be easier with company, but not much fun for you.’

  ‘I’ll come down on the tube,’ Anna told her. ‘Martin’s bringing Liam back later, isn’t he, so I can go back with him.’

  ‘Good – I’ll meet you at Woodford station. I’ll be putting Liam on the train at ten-thirty – does that sound OK?’

  When Anna told Martin of this arrangement, he gave a shrug, as if recognizing he’d been outmanoeuvred.

  ‘It’s nice of you to do that. It’ll be a bit dismal, though.’ He’d just come in, and was looking through the post.

  ‘Not really. It’s not as if I knew Ruth’s mum.’

  ‘I’d have thought you had enough house-clearing on your plate, with your parents’ move coming up.’

  ‘Mm. This is a practice run, perhaps.’

  ‘Must be worth a bit, that place. She’ll be glad of your advice. Either she could do it up and sell it, or let it and get the income. That’s what I’d do – wait till prices go up, then sell. It’ll only increase in value if she hangs on to it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose money’s the main thing on her mind,’ Anna reproached. ‘It’ll be a big wrench. Did she live there as a child?’

  ‘No – her parents moved there the year we got married.’

  It still jarred Anna to hear Martin say ‘we’ like this as if it was still current; to come up against this other, earlier we that was Martin-and-Ruth. Martin didn’t mention Ruth much, beyond the transactional details of his days with Liam, and had never told Anna why the marriage had ended, apart from an all-encompassing ‘Things didn’t work out.’

  She and Ruth saw each other only occasionally, when Liam – usually Liam on his own, now that Patrick’s visits were less frequent – was being collected or returned, but Martin’s presence always emphasized the triangular nature of their relationship. Ruth, a little younger than Martin, was diffidently attractive, with quick movements and an air of anxiety. When she came to Martin’s birthday party in November – alone, there never being any suggestion of a new partner – she had been quite uncharacteristically dressed up, trying to use clothes and make-up as a shield, giving herself extra height with heeled shoes that made her self-conscious. Till then, Anna had felt ambivalent about her, but now she was oddly touched by this brave effort. Not knowing many of the other guests, Ruth had stood awkwardly with her wineglass, affecting close interest in the bookshelves until Anna went to her rescue. She knew from Martin tha
t Ruth had given up her job in a hospital pharmacy to work as a gardener, a backward career move in his view. Asking about this, Anna drew out details of the course Ruth had taken in horticulture and garden design, and of various projects she spoke about with enthusiasm. Gratitude and warmth shone from Ruth’s eyes, not the wariness Anna might have expected.

  When Anna compared herself to Ruth, she couldn’t see what Martin had gained from the substitution. Though tempted to probe further into his dismissive ‘Things didn’t work out’, she never did, fearful of the not-workings-out that were emerging in their own relationship.

  Saturday was bright and frosty, more cheering than the bleak greyness of the previous week. As Anna came out of the Underground station at Woodford, Ruth pulled up in her black Fiesta, nosing into an empty parking space. Liam got out of the passenger seat, wearing his Chelsea scarf. Anna felt disconcerted, as she always did at first sight, by his resemblance to Martin, the sleek dark hair and dark eyes. Martin was taking him to a home match today, and being allowed to go to London alone on the Underground was a new concession.

  ‘’Lo.’ Liam gave her a perfunctory wave.

  ‘Hi, Liam. Hi, Ruth.’

  Ruth startled Anna with a kiss and a warm hug, which she hastily returned. ‘It’s really great of you to do this,’ Ruth told her. ‘You must have loads of better things to do on a Saturday.’

  ‘You don’t have to come with me,’ Liam mumbled, but Ruth insisted on going as far as the barrier, and seeing him through. Martin, who would meet him at Holborn, considered Ruth over-protective; but now Anna sensed Ruth’s anxiety as they waited for the small and suddenly vulnerable-looking figure to cross the bridge to the opposite platform, where a train was already pulling in.

  They went back to the car. Ruth’s mother’s house was in a village near Epping, and their route took them between leaf-strewn banks and stands of trees. Even in midwinter, the copper of the beech leaves was dazzling; the forest floor was thickly strewn, and the few still clinging to branches were burnished into fiery bronze by shafting sunlight. Anna saw, in a hollow, flecked ice on a pond, with hollies huddling close, a trodden path leading through the stand of trees, and grasses bleached strawy pale.

  ‘I know,’ said Ruth. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I try not to take it for granted, seeing it most days. We used to go for long walks with the boys.’

  That we again; Anna wasn’t used to hearing it from Ruth, and it hung awkwardly in the air for a few moments.

  A stretch of common marked the edge of the forest; then Ruth took to narrow lanes, crossing the M25 and reaching, after another few miles, a settlement hardly large enough to be called a village: a few houses, a post box at the junction of two lanes. A pair of cottages stood together beyond a farm entrance. Ruth and Anna got out of the car. Motorway traffic hummed faintly in the distance; nearby, rooks cawed in the treetops, and wings beat against cypress branches as a woodpigeon took clumsily to the air.

  While Ruth stood for a moment holding her bunch of keys, as if reluctant to go in, Anna couldn’t help looking at the house with the speculative estate agent’s eye she was fast acquiring. Probably built as a farm cottage, with its conjoined twin, it was quite substantial, with a generous front garden and driveway separating it from the lane. An entrance porch was twined all over with brown stems and feathery seed-heads, like old man’s beard.

  ‘Clematis tangutica,’ Ruth said, as Anna reached out to touch. ‘Lovely in September. The garden’s gone wild. I used to help Mum with it, but then things got out of hand. I should have got someone round to keep things tidy, but, well … I didn’t.’

  ‘There must be such a lot to think about,’ Anna said, dismayed by the prospect of dismantling a home, a life. The house must be stripped of personality. The similar task soon to confront her parents would be as daunting; to leave their home would mean leaving Rose, acknowledging at last that she would never come back.

  This was easier, by comparison; the house and its contents meant nothing to her, other than that Martin had been here with Ruth immediately after Bridget’s death. He’d known his way around, of course; Bridget had been his mother-in-law. She pictured him, capable and reassuring, collecting what he needed, making notes, ticking things off a list. He must have comforted Ruth too – allowed her to cry, in those first days. Anna imagined Ruth sobbing against Martin’s shoulder, her fine hair tickling his face, his arms holding her.

  ‘Martin’s been brilliant,’ Ruth said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘I wouldn’t have known where to start, but he’s thought of everything.’ She unlocked the door, looking in dismay at a heap of post on the mat. ‘Oh, look. I expect it’s mostly junk, but I must get it redirected. Something else I should have done.’ She tugged at a fat envelope wedged in the letter box.

  Never having met Ruth’s mother, Anna felt like an intruder as she stepped inside. The chill struck at her. She would have thought it impossible for a house to feel so cold; the air and space inside might have been rendered deep-frozen by the death of its occupant.

  Gathering up the letters and catalogues, Ruth carried them through to the kitchen; Anna stooped for a dropped envelope, and followed. They both stood in silence for a few moments. The kitchen was large, furnished with units in the dark, rustic-looking wood that had been popular some thirty years ago. A frilled blind was half lowered in the window. On the sill, and on every other surface, were bits and pieces of china, jars, ancient cookery books, dried teasels. Clutter, Anna thought; so much clutter. What will we do with it all? For a moment, thinking Ruth was about to give way to tears, she searched for something to say; but Ruth briskly took control of herself.

  ‘I thought we’d start upstairs.’ She dumped the post on a worktop, with a slither of paper and cellophane. ‘But first I’ll check the oil and turn on the heating, or we’ll get hypothermia.’

  There were only two bedrooms, the back one overlooking a large, bedraggled garden with a bird table and empty seed feeders. Beyond, hedgerows stretched away in hazy sunshine; a green slope of meadow, still frosted at its shadowed edges, was dotted with well-spaced parkland trees. Bridget’s room at the front, large and square with a washbasin in one corner, was less feminine than Anna had expected, the clothes in the wardrobe tending towards tweed and corduroy, quilted gilets and sensible skirts.

  ‘We need a system,’ said Ruth. ‘Most of this can go to the charity shop – the shoes as well, unless they’re too battered. Anything past it we’ll bag separately for the recycling centre – there’s a bin there for fabrics. I’m going to choose some scarves and jewellery to give to her friends.’

  They got to work. Ruth turned on the bedside radio and tuned it to Radio 3. They didn’t talk much, beyond ‘What do you think?’ or ‘Oh look, this can’t have been worn,’ and ‘Where on earth did she get this?’ as Ruth pulled out a flimsy purple top with feather-trimmed neckline.

  Anna carried the bulging bin-bags down to Ruth’s car, and stowed them on the back seat for Ruth to take to the hospice shop later. The hanging space and shelves were soon emptied, quickly stripped of character and the accumulation of years: hints of bargain purchases, special outings, threadbare favourites. Now it was as bland as a fixture in a hotel bedroom. Only the shoes remained.

  Ruth made a start, but said, ‘I can’t do this. Could you?’

  She didn’t say why, but Anna understood. Shoes took on the shape of feet; kept the imprint of toes, their uneven heels recording how their owner walked and stood.

  ‘OK. Let me.’

  ‘I’ll do the airing cupboard, instead – the sheets and towels.’

  Anna knelt, and began taking out the shoes, pair by pair. Sturdy lace-ups and flats, comfort sandals, ballet pumps, size five, were neatly arranged on racks, several with shapers inside to keep them stretched. Most were well-worn, though one brand-new pair had labels still stuck on the instep. It was easy to sort them. Most, still wearable, went into the charity-shop bag; Anna rejected only frayed slippers and a pair of pumps whose toe
s had almost worn through.

  She found herself thinking of Rose’s new sandals.

  Rose’s bedroom, the two of them on a summer Saturday; the window open, and Mum and Dad outside, gardening and reading respectively. Rose had been out shopping with Chrissie, her best friend, and had come home with new sandals in a box. The smell of fabric and newness, when Rose took off the lid, made Anna long for new shoes of her own.

  ‘They’re like the ones I saw in Honey,’ Rose told her, ‘the ones I showed you. Only cheaper.’

  She held the box possessively, as if Anna’s gaze might be too covetous. Then she lifted one out. It had a high wedge heel made of cork; the upper – just a broad strap over the instep – was crocheted in cream cord, and there was a triangular piece to fit over the heel; long ties ended in wooden beads.

  Anna touched it; felt the pitted smoothness of cork, and the round shininess of the beads. It was infinitely desirable, because chosen by Rose.

  ‘Put them on!’ she urged.

  Rose made a ceremony of it, placing the shoes side by side on the mat, sitting on the bed to unlace the old canvas plimsolls she had on. She pushed her feet into the new sandals, then criss-crossed the laces around her ankles and tied them at the front. She stood tall in the wedge heels, and practised a few steps in front of the mirror. The pale cream deepened the tan of her legs and feet. She turned this way and that, lifting her skirt to admire the effect; she stood pigeon-toed, like the models in Honey often did. Not satisfied, she frowned at herself. ‘They’d look better with shorts. You can have the box if you like, Annie.’

  She dropped her skirt so that it fell like a puddle on the floor, stepped out of it and posed again, giggling. ‘Perhaps I should wear them like this.’

  How slim and coltish her legs were, how slender her waist above the surprising fullness of her bottom in brief blue spotted knickers; how aware she was of herself, the way she turned, tilting her hip, pushing out her chest, flicking her hair. Rose had turned into something Anna could never imagine herself becoming. There was a gloss and preen about her, a sense that admiration was her due. Rose was like the girls Anna saw in magazines, sleek and groomed, leggy as racehorses, their beauty allowing them to attract and dismiss boys according to their whims. Anna imagined Jamie Spellman staring at Rose’s legs; she knew how his face would look, and how Rose would tease him, knowing he wanted her. She uses him, Anna thought; she’ll soon drop him for someone else.