At twelve-fifteen they went back into the kitchen and he fed Freya while Mags laid the lunch and opened a bottle of Chilean white.
‘There’s a perfectly good box of El Tesco Blanco on the go in the fridge,’ she told him, ‘but Timothy’s got a thing about getting it out in company.’
‘I’m hardly company.’
‘No, but you know what I mean.’ To David’s disappointment she replaced the bottle in the fridge. ‘He’s concerned about appearances.’
This remark, taken all in all with Mags’s wild hair and straining stirrup pants, was giving David pause when Tim himself arrived through the back door. He wore a grey suit in need of pressing, and it may have been this that made him look older. His smile, though, was one of genuine warmth.
‘Good to see you, don’t get up.’ He came over to where David sat and placed, fleetingly, a hand on his shoulder. ‘She’s grown, but turn your back for two minutes at this age and they do.’
Though David knew the shoulder-touch had been in lieu of a handshake, it still had the power to move him. He and Tim had never exchanged more than the most formal expressions of affection. ‘Manly’ was how their father would have described these exchanges, usually in the context of describing the alternative as ‘unmanly’, but David had never subscribed to this view of manliness. If Tim’s simple gesture could induce this response in him, it could scarcely be considered anything other than right and feeling.
Tim made a gusty noise, something between a sigh and an exclamation, and hung his jacket on the back of one of the chairs.
‘Hello!’ cried Mags, who was slicing tomatoes. It struck David that she was over-projecting. ‘I opened a bottle as instructed, it’s in the door of the fridge.’
‘Cheers.’ Tim fetched the bottle and poured himself a glass. ‘ Did Sadie go in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank God for that.’ He took a mouthful. ‘I’d walk through fire for my offspring, but one of the pleasures of coming home to lunch is that we have the place to ourselves.’
Mags made a big-eyed face over her shoulder at David. ‘Whatever you’re thinking, that’s not it!’
Tim continued as if his wife hadn’t spoken. ‘Looking forward to going back in next week? Or are you all for cancelling the help and doing this full-time?’
David was getting used to this question and a little tired of it. ‘Somewhere in between the two it would be fair to say. I’m enjoying it, but I can understand why women get browned off.’
Mags gave a shrill little laugh. ‘Hear that, Timothy? He understands. By the way is anyone else allowed a drink?’
‘Believe me,’ said Tim, pouring, ‘I understand. I should do, you’ve explained often enough. I just don’t know what I’m expected to do about it.’ He smiled sourly at David and added: ‘Everyone around here’s under the impression I leave the house at seven-thirty every morning in order to engage in non-stop fun and frolics. Instead of which I’m brown-nosing half the palsied house magazines in the south east in an attempt to persuade them to print with us—! Sorry.’
David, looking at Mags’s furiously chopping backview – she’d moved on to cucumber – chose his words carefully.
‘It’s extremely hard to assess the level of someone else’s pressure, that’s for sure, I’m finding this. On the face of it I’m on holiday, nothing to do but mind a tiny baby all day, and yet – something you two will recognise – the sense of being on call permanently is exhausting. I seem to have time for very little else and I sleep the sleep of the utterly knackered.’
He fancied he had done his best to align his brother and sister-in-law with each other, if not in opposition then at least in contrast to himself, but they seemed determined to remain resolutely unaligned. Mags placed a bowl of salad on the table with more force than was strictly necessary.
‘Think, David,’ she said, ‘at one point I had two under five and two at junior school, is it any wonder I’m a trifle careworn?’
‘Get away Mags,’ said Tim, ‘you loved it.’ The words were teasing, but the tone bordered on bitter.
Mags, very bright-eyed, looked at David and pointed at her husband. ‘He would know of course.’
David attempted to laugh, but no sound came out. Mags opened the fridge and removed a bowl of potato salad covered in clingfilm.
‘I should have taken this out earlier, it won’t taste of a thing.’
Tim prised off the clingfilm. ‘It’ll be fine, stop apologizing.’
‘I didn’t apologise, I made an observation.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
She leaned her face down beside his. ‘I’ve heard you sound off about chilly cheese often enough.’
David got up. ‘I’ll fetch Freya’s seat.’
As he went into the family room he was aware of a brief, muted altercation behind his back. When he re-entered the kitchen, having taken a diplomatic extra couple of minutes changing Freya’s nappy and eliciting smiles, plates of cold chicken were in place, glasses were charged and Mags held the breadknife poised over the baguette. He sensed a standoff, negotiated in his absence on grounds of politeness.
‘Will she be all right down there?’ asked Mags as he placed the seat on the floor. ‘ She’s awfully good, bless her. If she gets fed up I want to pick her up.’
‘Be my guest.’ David turned to Tim. ‘How is the print trade, anyway?’
‘Pretty crapulous.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Tim shrugged. ‘ I don’t think it’s terminal. I hope to God not. Middle management’s last in and first out under those circs.’
‘But surely you’d be safe? With all your experience, and so many years with the company?’
‘There are no brownie points for loyalty. In fact in some quarters these days it’s seen as a positive disadvantage – evidence of an unwillingness to try anything new, timidity, dullness, all that unsexy sort of thing.’
‘If that’s how people do think, I think it’s completely outrageous,’ put in Mags, pinkly. ‘My father got a gold half-hunter for being with Micanite and Insulated for forty years, and that’s how it should be. It’s like lack of respect for the old.’
‘Anyway,’ said Tim, closing the brackets on this intervention, ‘don’t let’s get too gloomy. Nothing cataclysmic has happened yet, we’re just a bit short of orders.’
But Mags was not to be deflected from her proseletysing course. ‘You know, I often think how simply awful that must have been for you, David, when you were put out in the cold. You were so good and calm about it all but there must have been some terrible dark nights of the soul. And we were so busy trying to keep you cheerful we never really let you be miserable.’
‘Bloody good thing,’ said Tim. ‘No disrespect bro, but being miserable should remain a lonely vice.’
David acknowledged this. ‘And I was fortunate not to be out in the cold for long. Given my age I might easily still have been out there now.’
‘How long was it?’ asked Mags.
‘A couple of years. Long enough to be shall we say character-forming.’
Tim tore another piece off the bread. ‘ Must have been, didn’t you meet Annet during that time?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So unemployment didn’t diminish your pulling power.’
‘I don’t know about that. I mean I’m not sure I exactly pulled.…’
‘No, correction, I don’t think Annet is a woman susceptible to pulling, but anyway, low ebb notwithstanding you got together with one of the most glamorous women I know.’
At this point Mags abandoned what was left on her plate and picked Freya up, making a great business of patting her back and adjusting her clothes.
‘Are you going to look like your mum?’ she enquired rhetorically of the baby. ‘ Hm? Or be tall like your dad …?’
David had the uneasy feeling that he had become the ball in a dogged baseline rally.
‘Most people,’ he said firmly, ‘think she looks like Annet at
the moment. She’s got her dark hair and eyes, but that could all change.’
‘Damn right. All ours were born with hair but bald as coots by three months,’ commented Tim. ‘ But not smoothly bald, you could never say there goes that good-looking, bald kid, it came out in fits and starts, they looked as if they were suffering from creeping alopecia or mange or something.’
‘Justin had eczema as well,’ Mags remembered fondly, ‘so you can imagine.’
‘She’s had a bit of nappy rash,’ admitted David, keen to join in with anything that had a bonding effect on his hosts. It seemed to work, because both of them laughed.
‘Unclean! Unclean!’ cried Tim. ‘If that’s the worst you can come up with you’re having one hell of an easy ride, bro.’ David smiled, pleased that they were pleased. ‘I know.’
The rest of lunch passed perfectly pleasantly, with them running David through a familiar repertoire of stories of family life intended to divert rather than depress him, towards the end of which Freya began to complain.
‘I’m going to take my niece for a stroll round the garden,’ announced Mags. ‘I don’t want coffee, so you two go ahead.’
When she’d gone Tim upended the bottle over David’s glass. ‘You polish this off. I have to drive back.’
‘So do I.’
‘I’d forgotten – but not for a while, surely.’
David said: ‘You’re not seriously worried about work, are you?’
Tim tapped the end of his knife on his plate, gazed out of the window. ‘Seriously, but not very, if you understand me. There are real worries but I wasn’t flannelling you when I said they weren’t going to bring us to our knees.’
‘Good. Mags seems eager to aid the war effort, anyway.’
‘There isn’t any war effort!’ Tim’s voice was scratched with irritation as he slammed down the knife. ‘I’ve got nothing against her working, bloody good thing, she’s obviously climbing the walls around here, but she doesn’t have to, financially. I get a little tired of this plucky little woman thing of hers. She should get a qualification of some sort, learn how to do something. The thought of her pratting about in some supermarket fills me with complete – I don’t know.’
‘If that’s what she wants to do, surely … does it matter?’
At this, Tim turned to look at him, and it was like the touch on the shoulder, suddenly and almost unbearably intimate. Though not, this time, amicable.
‘It matters to me, David, though not for the reasons you think. I don’t give a toss about the status or how it looks. It’s not a case of “no wife of mine is going to stack shelves” – I want her to pull herself together.’
Although he knew Mags was out of earshot, David lowered his voice. ‘That’s a bit harsh. She’s been primarily a wife and mother all these years, and a jolly good one, you can hardly expect her to go straight out and become a nuclear physicist.’
‘No. Forget it.’
‘She seems a little on edge,’ ventured David. ‘She just needs to get out, make a start. Anyone as demonstrably competent as Mags is going to find interesting employment in the end.’
Tim got up and began stacking plates, the cutlery clutched in one hand. ‘Sure.’
‘The kids are great. They do you credit.’ He went for a white lie: ‘After our little party we were saying as much. You could take Sadie anywhere.’
Tim slammed the plates in the sink and leaned on the edge, his shoulders hunched. ‘Yeah.’ After a pause he turned back, put his hands over his face and said in a tired voice: ‘We’re in trouble, though.’
Dread clutched at David. ‘What sort of trouble?’
Tim shook his head, massaging his eyes. ‘Not financial – not yet. I’ve been reasonably prudent.’
‘Then what?’
‘Christ …’ Tim dropped his hands and sat down on what had been his wife’s chair. He slumped, and David noticed with a pang that his younger brother had a paunch. ‘ Do I have to spell it out?’
‘Everyone goes through sticky patches.’
‘Not one lasting five years.’
David was humbled. ‘ I see.’
‘We’ve been together nearly twenty you know.’
‘That long? I suppose it must be.’
‘Twenty years. Four kids. Three houses. Two decades. Too long.’
‘It’s great,’ David tried for a positive note. ‘A triumph. You should be proud.’
‘Of what, for Christ’s sake? Staying the course?’
‘If you want to put it that way.’
‘What other way is there? We’re not exactly a couple of turtle doves. When I look at you and Annet, I – comparisons are odious I know, but it makes me want to weep.’
‘We have our problems too,’ David said quietly.
‘Yes, yes, but you know you’re alive.’ Tim was impatient with him. ‘You have something going on. The two of us have lived with sins of omission so long we’ve forgotten how – or why – it all started. Or I have. I’m on hold, David. Don’t feel a thing, how’s that for sad?’
The use of his name brought David up short. Yet another sign, if one were needed, that some dangerous corner had been reached.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yes, me too. Sorry for me. Sorry for Mags. I don’t love her any more.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘She doesn’t love me either if that makes it sound any better.’
‘It doesn’t. And I don’t believe it’s true – of either of you.’
Tim gave him a mocking, twisted look. ‘It’s not up for discussion. As the person most affected, I’m telling you.’
‘Love changes,’ said David desperately. ‘ It has to change.’
‘You’re saying it alters when it alteration finds?’
‘That refers to romantic love. Married love is different.’
‘No, no—’ Tim put up a hand as if warding off a blow – ‘No! It won’t do. We haven’t had sex in two years, can you imagine that? I doubt it. Look at your wife, and then look at mine. Look at me, for Christ’s sake. It’s not a pretty sight.’
David remembered his mental comparison of Mags with Annet earlier in the day and was momentarily silenced.
‘What do looks matter?’ he muttered
Tim gave him another sneering glance. ‘We both know what I’m saying bro. Mags and I may never have won any beauty competitions, but we’ve stopped trying for one another. She doesn’t care what I think of her, and vice versa. Lack of self-respect. Lack of respect for the other person. QED.’
‘But easily remedied,’ suggested David.
‘You mean she greets me in a suspender belt and fluffy mules and I bring her a bunch of flowers?’
‘Something like that.’
‘You have to want to do it, bro. It starts up here.’ He tapped his head. ‘And that’s where we haven’t got it. Not any more. Perhaps we never had enough of it to last, never enough lift-off.’
A terrible thought struck David. Is there anyone else?’
‘No.’ Tim gave a grunt. ‘Wish there was.’
‘That’s an awful thing to say, Tim.’
‘But truthful. The fact is, one chance and I’d be in there. But I’m too chicken-shit to instigate anything and not a good enough prospect to attract offers. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so fucking tragic. I find myself looking at perfectly ordinary, not very bright girls in the office and imagining what they’d be like in bed. Do you do that?’
Dumbfounded, David shook his head.
‘I thought not. You have Annet. You and she have each other. You have a relationship. Bit of an overused word, but believe me it’s like reputation – when you don’t have one any more, you realise what you’ve lost.’
David found his voice again, but seeing Mags cross the lawn, happy with the baby, lowered it. ‘You two have a relationship. But a different one. You’re different individuals, you’ve been married a long time.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Perhaps
– perhaps you need a holiday.’ The moment he’d said this David realised how trite it sounded. And the fact that Tim chose to ignore it completely confirmed him in this view.
‘I wonder whether the kids notice,’ said Tim. ‘That’s the bottom line, when your children start to suffer.’
On this David did feel confident. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, your children are the best-balanced lot I’ve ever come across.’
‘Forgive me, but you don’t come across many – no, sorry, thanks, but who the hell knows what effect we’re having? I mean they’re on about influences in the blasted womb these days, by the time they get to Josie’s age Christ knows what must be going on in their heads.’
David said: ‘But you and Mags aren’t cruel to each other, or to them, you don’t swear and throw things, I don’t see how they can possibly know there are difficulties, let alone be affected.’
‘I don’t know … I think they might feel it in their water.’
‘Mags is a really good person. Genuine. Industrious. Sympathetic.’
‘Jesus wept—!’ Tim leaned back, slapping his hands to his head. ‘That’s supposed to make me feel better?’
Mags pushed open the back door. ‘What’s so funny?’
A little later, when Tim had returned to work, David and Mags put Freya in her buggy and went to meet Sadie and Luke from school. They attended the local church primary, not so very different from the one in Newton Bury, except newer and larger.
The walk from the Keatings’ enclave of 1930s villas to the school was a busy bustling one, rife with hazards.
‘Not very scenic and not very safe,’ said Mags. ‘Can you wonder I pick them up? I’d normally bring the car. But since we’re walking we can come back via the park and let the sprogs let off steam on the swings and slides.’
They were five minutes early at the school gate and Mags got talking to some other parents. David stood a little to one side, idling the buggy back and forth with one hand. He found something touching in the school mums, including Mags. Tim’s desperate confessions rang in his head, but he found these women warmly attractive, and even admirable. With his tiny stock of experience he could appreciate the small quotidian acts of courage, the resolve in the face of tiredness and boredom, the bread-and-butter love that was the staff of life. Who cared if they wore joggers and were too fleshy for elegance? And what did it matter if their perms and tints were growing out? He honoured their lack of vanity. Not only was it comforting, it was – the only word for it – womanly.
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