Emmy, Violet and Prue sat and drank coffee at the kitchen table. Once upon a time, Violet would have been drinking orange juice and demanding a story, a diversion she used to demand constantly.
If Prue had loved her - and she tried, she did try - Violet would have been fascinating. She had been a funny little girl, a great collector, comics, Girl annuals, cheap jewellery, shells, abnormally tidy and over-fond of fluffy toys. Each toy had a house in her bedroom, a shelf, a corner, an area of the bed and a second establishment downstairs, and it went ill with Prue if they were moved. Every so often, Violet gathered up her menagerie of bears, cats, dogs and dolls, shut herself in the bathroom and washed them. The hairdryer then whined continuously. Eventually, damp, groomed and fluffy, the objects of Violet’s passionate care returned to their homes. The tidiness had created an extra barrier between stepmother and stepdaughter.
‘By the way,’ said Violet holding out her cup for refill, ‘I’ve got the official letter today. Group Rights Director.’
The magnitude of this achievement was lost on Emmy, but Prue said, with unfeigned delight, ‘Congratulations.’
‘It’s the one I really wanted.’ Violet’s red-tipped nails tightened on her cup. ‘It’s the most exciting publishing group in the business.’
‘Will the house be ready in time?’
‘Sorry, Prue, I forgot to tell you. Jamie told me last night. We exchange contracts on Monday and complete in two weeks. Jamie’s making them work double quick.’
Dear God, only two weeks.
‘Lovely,’ said Prue. ‘We should celebrate.’
At her end of the table, Emmy shivered. ‘I’m freezing,’ she said.
Prue met Violet’s gaze and, for once, there was complete accord between the two women.
‘You’re not wearing enough,’ said Violet.
That was the weekend when Prue first became concerned about Jane who had arrived back from school subdued and pale. Prue had overdone her concern, insisting on a double dose of tonic and supper in bed. This had pitchforked mother and daughter into a battle. Jane wished to stay up to watch Home and Away, Neighbours and Eldorado and Prue had said no. Jane had insisted on three good reasons as to why the ban was in force, and Prue had made the mistake of saying she did not want Jane’s head stuffed with that rubbish. ‘You don’t want me to be left out,’ Jane wailed as she went upstairs, ‘everybody watches them. Anyway,’ she added, ‘we see them at school.’
This left Prue to reflect bitterly on the relationship between school fees and soaps. She came to the conclusion that the subject was so enraging that it was best not to dwell on it.
She was tackling the ironing after lunch on Saturday when Jane surprised her by sneaking up behind her and sliding her arms around her waist.
‘Hallo, poppet,’ Prue said.
Jane pressed her cheek into her mother’s back. ‘I’ve done my prep, Mum.’
This was Jane’s apology. Touched by its elliptical approach, which was so typical of Jane, Prue inserted the tip of the iron under a shirt collar and the material wrinkled into creases. ‘Bugger,’ she said under her breath.
‘I did an extra bit as well because it was easy.’
‘Well done.’
Jane’s arms tightened around Prue. ‘Victoria’s mum and dad are getting divorced, you know.’
Prue did not know. She plonked the iron down on its stand and swivelled round to face her daughter. ‘That’s awful. Poor Victoria.’
‘She’s quite happy. She says she can play them off against one another. Me and Sally have a bet that Victoria will have a pony by Christmas.’
This report did not accord with Prue’s image of Victoria who was a shy, rather withdrawn child, and she ached to think of the bravado that had gone into her statement.
‘And what would you aim for, Janey . . . if you were playing Dad and me off against one another?’
Jane’s eyes gleamed. ‘You know what I want, Mum. State-of-the-art laptop
Prue searched her daughter’s face, so little and so unfinished, and smoothed back some hair from the unmarked forehead. It was a source of amazement that she had produced a creature of science and mathematics, of computers and suchlike when she herself cared for and knew nothing of these subjects. ‘I should have known,’ she said tenderly.
‘Can we light a fire, Mum, and watch telly together?’
When Max came in from his walk, mother and daughter were settled in front of the drawing-room fire enjoying themselves. They made a good picture and he watched them fondly for a moment.
‘Hallo, darling.’ Max leant over the sofa and gave Jane a kiss.
Jane reached up a hand and Max tugged at her fingers. He pointed at the newspaper lying on the table in front of the sofa. ‘Did you read that the pound’s in a mess?’
Prue sat up. ‘They won’t put up interest rates, I hope.’
‘It’s possible,’ said Max.
It was only then Prue registered that another figure stood behind her husband.
Quite by accident, Prue’s and Jamie’s eyes met, explored, and exchanged a message which neither quite understood.
Chapter Five
At last the Becketts had moved into their house in Austen Road. Prue had longed for their departure but, in the contrary manner of the human psyche, found the space left behind in Hallet’s Gate empty and unsettling.
‘It’s odd,’ she told Max as they wheeled the borrowed pram back to its owner, ‘how ungrateful you are for getting the things you want.’
Max’s expression was inscrutable. Then, looking straight ahead, he said, ‘I’m grateful for getting what I wanted, even if it is obsessed by a saint.’
For a second Prue was blank, then she realized he was joking. She prodded him in the ribs. ‘Unlike wine, Max, your wit does not improve with age.’
He laughed, and they walked on together and, because they were enjoying the walk, took the long way home.
But the peace was not to remain unbroken.
A couple of weeks later the telephone rang.
‘Can you help, Prue, do you think?’ Violet managed to make her request sound remarkably similar to a command, explaining that it was imperative that she attend the spring sales conference as a run-in to the new job. Apparently, the nanny hired for the week had phoned to say that, after all, she did not fancy the job.
Not fancy it? Violet was not often floored. Not fancy it? was all she could manage at her end of the phone, the grail of the sales conference whisking out of sight. You can’t do that to me, I have a job to do. Tough, said the defaulting nanny who, in contrast to MPs and civil servants who hold the balance of power in the country, holds the balance of power in a significant number of homes.
In Dainton, Prue toyed with the idea of saying no.
Violet, knowing she was at bay, changed her tactics. ‘I’m desperate, Prue.’
It was true. She was desperate to get out and away and shake off her appendage. In her more anguished moments when she fell back on cliche, Violet thought of herself as a bird unable to take flight, caged and encumbered - which, of course, she was.
Prue checked out the Prunus autumnalis. Planted strategically so that washers-up at the sink - her - could benefit from its winter blossom, it was now past its best, but tanking up nicely underneath were the narcissi and chinodoxia she had planted at the last minute. London was another world. Not hers and, she suspected, dangerous.
‘It’s only from Tuesday to Thursday afternoon,’ said Violet, who did, indeed, sound desperate.
Prue relented. ‘I suppose I could do some work on Joan when
Edward’s sleeping.’
Violet refrained from replying that she thought it most unlikely. ‘Of course,’ she said in the tone she had found useful in New York when lying, business lies being part of business. ‘I would be so grateful.’ Gratitude was not an emotion she usually felt for Prue, but Violet was a strategist.
There was no one at Waterloo to meet Prue, not that she expected it, and
the taxi queue was enormous. Nudging her case along with her foot, she took stock of the city, a station being as good a place as any to begin. As a child, Waterloo, to which she had journeyed frequently on school trains, had seemed immutable and unchanging, like the areas in her atlas stained pink which, her teacher insisted, represented decency and order.
Now the station was under wraps. Bits were falling off it and a skin of litter, leaves and dust overlaid the pavements. A couple of homeless men had set up base by the entrance. One of them had a puppy stuffed into the front of his coat, which was tied with string. The other breathed in greedy slugs from a paper bag and turned a drugged, drowning face towards passers-by who did their best to ignore him. Prue supposed he was in his twenties.
According to the taxi driver, Albert Bridge was out of commission, and life was a bloody nightmare. Prue sat in the taxi, swamped by a sea of cars. She sniffed at the benzine and exhaust, overcome by the miasma of houses and humans competing for existence in a confined area.
Colours in the city are cast in a different foundry. Leaves are heavy with yellows and ochres dripping acid tints into the greens. Dun-coloured cement pointing in brickworks is slicked by a powdering of carbon. Curved grey roof-tiles gleam in the rain; a flat counterpoint of greys sit alongside the harsh, unbeautiful red of London brick.
Prue pressed her gloved hand against the taxi window and rebellion at being there streamed through her fingertips and on to the glass. Was her protest at Violet? Or was she protesting about the fin breaking through the surface of the now calm, unstormy waters of her marriage?
A cyclist paddled alongside the taxi and flipped the wing mirror.
‘Idiot,’ said the driver, mildly, out of the window.
The Becketts’ house was situated in a road wider than the others, in the area between Wandsworth and Clapham Common. Prue was deposited outside a late-Victorian house with good proportions and a brown front door.
Violet had been hovering and opened the door before Prue had rung. ‘Hideous colour, isn’t it?’ she said, referring to the front door.
Prue followed her into an open, light-filled hall, littered with painting equipment. Almost at once, she sneezed. From upstairs came a clatter of boots on bare floorboards and a volley of interesting language. Violet apologized.
‘I thought you said nothing needed to be done to the house.’
‘Well, you know how it is,’ said Violet. ‘In the end, Jamie needed a dressing room and the nanny must have her own bathroom. Some of the rooms needed decorating, and the kitchen wasn’t quite as I wanted it, so it’s being redesigned. Don’t worry, they’re working on the nanny bit at the moment and won’t bother you.’
It is possible to know how you feel about a house when you step over the threshold, and Prue was interested in this one’s incompleteness. By the time you enter them for the first time, most houses have settled.
‘There’s a good feel to the house,’ said Prue.
‘That’s lucky.’ Violet led the way into the kitchen. ‘I’m not moving again for a long, long time.’
The kitchen was large, sunny and the floor had just been relaid with planks of sanded wood and varnished to mirror brightness. Prue negotiated a pile of builder’s overalls and huge tins of varnish and sat down.
Violet loomed over her, a creature, Prue fancied, out of a Fuselli engraving, brooding darkly, wings straining for flight.
‘Edward’s in the next room, asleep. I’ve made up his bottles for the day and they’re in the fridge. He should sleep for an hour or so. Give him a drink when he wakes. After his lunch he likes a walk, then pray for six o’clock when you can put him to bed.’
‘Bath?’
‘If you like.’ Violet seemed indifferent. ‘Have some coffee.’
She disappeared and returned ten minutes later, groomed and made-up, wearing an olive wool suit, her eyes sparkling with a different light.
‘Do you think you can cope, Prue?’ Violet was straining to be gone.
Prue transferred her gaze from the garden (20 ft X 50 ft) which currently resembled a municipal tip. ‘Good luck.’
Suddenly, momentarily unsure, Violet hugged her briefcase. ‘I’ll need it. I’ve got to make a good impression. Show them that the baby makes no difference at all.’
‘I think that’s impossible,’ said Prue gently. ‘You can’t have a baby and pretend that nothing’s happened.’
‘I can,’ said Violet, and the old, assured expression was back in place. ‘By the way,’ she added from the doorway, ‘you’ll have to buy something for supper. Northcote Road. The A-Z is in the hall. Alfalfa sprouts are in the fridge.’
Edward did not bother to wait for an hour and was yelling for his bottle within twenty minutes of his mother’s departure. Prue gave it to him - there was no point in not and she had been blooded in the Baby-Knows-Best school. The afternoon walk was advanced by three-quarters of an hour but Prue enjoyed snooping. Anyway, the prospect of a supper composed entirely of alfalfa drove her shopwards.
Colonized by late-Victorian housing developers, the area had mouldered during the fifties and sixties but, clearly, was now enjoying a renaissance. Many of the houses had been painted in pastel colours, a backwash from the British love affair with the Mediterranean, and wreathed in fashionable plants, clematis and old roses definitely favoured over utilitarian mahonia and laurel. The effect reminded Prue of medieval gardens she had seen in Books of Hours, indisputably pretty but lacking robustness.
Pelmets were in fashion. Tart’s-knickers blinds had been ousted in favour of swags, poles and ornate curtain rods. Velux windows sat fish-eyed in roofs so that neighbour, it seemed, was looking into neighbour.
Edward stirred in the pushchair and opened his eyes, which were now bright blue, blinked and, soothed by the motion of the chair, dozed.
‘You little blighter,’ Prue told him.
By the time she reached the butcher, she had decided that her taste in curtains was boring, and she should do something about it. On an impulse, she bought a copy of Interiors, which featured pages devoted to old Swedish furniture, swathed in muslin and photographed in light as white and sunny as a dream. They were delicious and beautiful, and utterly removed from her life.
Prue took the magazine back and exchanged it for Good Housekeeping and a part-work on computers for Jane.
The shop local to Austen Road turned out to sell French cheeses, Italian salami and extremely expensive vegetables. Next door was a florist whose window display was composed of lilies and mimosa, and the off-licence further down the street had Australian wines stacked in bins.
How like Violet. How clever she was at situating herself. No run-of-the-mill corner shop for her. No wedges of cheese wrapped in industrial strength ding-film, or one-size pop socks. All the same, Violet was right. These commodities exuded attraction, Vignottes and Chaumes cheese sitting on a bed of, admittedly, fake straw, pesto, Haagen-Dazs and Bach Flower Remedies exuded the allure of fantasy made real.
Back at the house, which seemed cold and dark, Prue sat in the kitchen and fed Edward, conscious of the uncurtained window making a rectangle in the wall. Because he was tired, Edward fussed. Suddenly, two days seemed a long time.
She phoned Kate, at home in Dainton, and did not feel at all guilty at talking for half an hour at the Becketts’ expense.
‘You are kind,’ said Jamie when Prue served him sausages with baked potatoes. ‘We batten on you, I’m afraid. Do you mind if I start? I’m so hungry.’
They sat opposite one another at the table, with a candle stuck into a bottle. Prue was wearing a jersey in her favourite blue which allowed Jamie to see the outline of her breasts.
How soft were they? Softer and more yielding than Violet’s?
Jamie made himself concentrate on his plate.
‘Ketchup?’ she asked.
They passed mustard, chased sausages around their plates and drank wine out of tumblers, because nothing was unpacked, and shared the kind of intimacy that is usually s
hared by people who know each other well.
Jamie talked about his work in the bank, and used his knife and fork to emphasize points. He talked about the Australian economy, the promise in Europe - ‘still a bit iffy’ - and the bogey of ERM. Prue described the protest against the motorway extension at Twyford, which was gathering momentum, and explained that she was concerned it might turn violent.
‘I’m not sure how to act,’ she confessed. ‘I disapprove of violence but I feel driven to wield a stave.’ She drank her wine. ‘I know I’m talking liberal middle class . . . but it’s the best I can do.’
The thinness of her aspirations struck Prue with depressing force, and if she expected to be reassured about the purity of her intentions, she was not. The motorway reference had reminded Jamie of a file he should have checked before leaving work and his attention wandered. Frightened that she was boring him, Prue came to a halt and then sneezed a couple of times.
‘It’s the dust, sorry.’
‘Like Lara.’ Jamie poured out more wine.
‘Lara?’
‘I lived with Lara before I met Violet. She always sneezed.’
Prue was unprepared for this knowledge, which hit her hard as bolts of jealousy generally do. ‘I didn’t know about Lara. What happened?’
‘She met someone else, upped with her daughter and left.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He looked down at his empty plate. ‘I was too. But I went to America soon afterwards and met Violet, so I gained in the end.’
After a second or two, he looked up, his expression suggesting that he appreciated the sympathy. In fact, he had just noticed that the electric light gave Prue’s hair fascinating highlights.
‘Do you keep in touch with them?’
‘I write to Jenny now and again.’ Jamie sounded sad. ‘I watched her growing up, you see.’
Prue drank several mouthfuls of wine. ‘Do we regret mistakes as much as we regret the things we don’t do?’
An ancient but renascent message was sent over the table. A second elapsed. Then another.
Perfect Love Page 6
