She said to Rosie, ‘Maybe get a fleece, darling?’
‘About what?’ Blaise said.
Karen spun the knife again.
‘About me and women and work.’
Poppy came to lean against her mother. She had taken off the hairband and had one of the antennae eyeballs in her mouth. Karen put an arm round her.
‘I didn’t mean you can’t have both,’ Karen said. ‘I didn’t mean you aren’t a complete woman if you don’t have both, either. I just mean that women seem able to identify themselves more broadly. That’s all.’
Rosie came back into the room, struggling into a twisted fleece. Blaise held out her hands to help.
‘I know what you think,’ Blaise said. ‘We’ve had this conversation a hundred times before. It was just that tonight you sounded different.’
‘Different?’
Blaise inserted her hands inside Rosie’s collar, and flipped out her hair.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘different. In front of him.’
Chapter Nine
Noah had made a construction, and left it on the sitting-room carpet. It comprised a chopping board, some plastic cups linked together with a length of string, a few uneven towers of Lego and two small knights on horseback, their plumes and caparisons meticulously moulded and coloured.
Lindsay stood and looked at it, the brush section of the vacuum cleaner in her hand. Her instinct – her perpetual instinct – was to tidy it up, restoring the board to the kitchen, the knights to their cardboard castle in Noah’s bedroom, the cups and the string (rolled up) to the appropriate drawers. But Noah never made anything. He played, quietly and almost solemnly, with his cars and his knights and, to Lindsay’s mild distress, with a Barbie doll someone had once left behind, arranging them and pushing them about, but he never constructed anything, he never attempted to put anything together except in the form in which it had arrived.
Lindsay put the hoover brush down and knelt on the carpet. The plastic cups were upended, and the string had been attached to their bases with nuggets of blue gum. The crooked towers of plastic bricks were placed randomly around the cups and the knights were either end of the board, facing outwards. Were they defending a castle? Had they just ridden around the cups and towers, weaving in and out as a kind of test of horsemanship? Were they about to leave something ruined? Lindsay put a finger out, and touched one knight on his tiny, plumed, helmeted head, and he at once fell over.
When had Noah made this? He certainly hadn’t made it the day before, as Lindsay never went to bed without leaving the sitting room orderly for the following day. And when she had gone in to wake him for school, he had been lying in bed with his thumb in, flicking his comfort rag about with his free hand and watching the shadows it made on the wall, in the light cast by his bedside lamp. He must have got up in the night, or the dawn, and collected all these strange little items, and knelt there in his pyjamas and built it, whatever it was. And why would he have done that?
Lindsay picked the knight up and set his horse on its hooves. She couldn’t clear it all away. She would have to leave it there, disturbing though it was, and ask Noah about it later. And of course, he might not tell her. He might not be able to tell her. He might have no idea why he was impelled to get out of bed and go into the kitchen and collect a chopping board and plastic mugs and string and make a – a something out of them. And when she thought about it, she remembered that there had been no sign of disturbance in the kitchen, no drawers pulled out or cupboards left open. And she would have noticed when she went in first thing to put the kettle on. She noticed everything.
Paula used to tease her about it. She would accuse Lindsay of not taking in something vital someone was saying because she was so distracted by a fallen hair on their collar or a missing button on their cardigan. She told Lindsay that she lived as if she was playing a permanent Kim’s Game, memorizing trayfuls of random objects, as if her life, almost, depended upon it. When they were out together, Paula would suddenly say, ‘Go on then, how many Asian men have we passed since Feldom Street, how many tomato slices did I eat at lunch, what were the odds on a white Christmas in the betting-shop window?’ and she’d always know. It was as if something in her brain told her that if she recorded everything – everything – then there’d be nothing left to catch her unawares.
That, really, was why Paula meant so much to her. Of course Paula was attractive and energetic and openly, engagingly, emotional, but the quality Lindsay really valued was her lack of carefulness. She spun round blind corners without checking to see what might be waiting, she took chances, obeyed impulses, flung herself into the business of being alive. And although Lindsay couldn’t emulate her, not in a million years, she felt that some of Paula’s impulsive vitality rubbed off on her, loosened her white-knuckled grip on things. In ordinary circumstances – the circumstances that had prevailed for the last five years, at any rate – Lindsay would have telephoned Paula and told her about Noah’s creative achievement and Paula would have suggested they take it straight over to the White Cube Gallery. And when Lindsay said, ‘But d’you think he’s upset about something and doesn’t know how to tell me?’ Paula would say, ‘Are you crazy? This is called development. Noah’s learning to do something, without being told—’
Lindsay got to her feet and picked up the hoover brush again. Ordinary circumstances were not, however, currently prevailing. Paula had something else on her mind which seemed to mean that there was no space left for much else. She had always been self-absorbed – it was a quality Lindsay recognized from all those involved in her ramshackle childhood – but that had sharpened into something closer to a complete abstraction since she’d met Jackson. If Lindsay rang Paula now, Paula would listen for twenty seconds and then she’d start on again about why Jackson hadn’t rung her from Karen’s house the previous Saturday, when he’d been there with Toby, after the football.
When Paula first met Jackson, Lindsay had been included. In fact, she hadn’t been so much included as vital to the exhilarating opening scene of this drama, the only person who knew, the only person Paula wanted to know, the only person who could be relied upon to rejoice and say go for it, girl, go for it, in that crucially supportive way required of the true sisterhood. She had been the audience for the new shoes, the new underwear (‘I’m a cliché,’ Paula said, ‘aren’t I?’ But she was laughing), the text messages, the account of that first drink and every syllable he’d uttered, every gesture, every look. And if Lindsay had felt, on occasion, pangs of envy so keen they were almost physical, she would never have admitted them. After all, it wasn’t Jackson, whoever he was, that she was envious of: it was seeing Paula feeling like that, just blown away, completely liberated from all the little guy ropes of anxiety and self-discipline that kept Lindsay tethered to the self-imposed orderliness of her life.
But now things were different. They were different because Paula was deeper in, and wanted more of Jackson, wanted Jackson to move to fill the confidential space Lindsay had once occupied. And of course, she knew Jackson better. At least, she knew as much as he’d let her, as much as he seemed, tantalizingly, to be inclined to show. She knew enough, Lindsay could see, to make her realize how much she didn’t know and to begin to fear how vulnerable that ignorance, and her growing dependency, might make her.
Lindsay stooped to unplug the hoover from the wall, and to press the button that caused the cable to shoot itself back into the interior of the machine. When she’d been left alone with Noah, as a baby, she remembered she’d had a feeling that the whole world had just gone away and left her, that whatever she looked at had dwindled to a miniature distance, like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. She remembered saying, when Eleanor gently asked her how she was bearing her situation, ‘Well, I’m not bearing it,’ and meaning it, meaning that she had a permanent sensation of being about to fall into a pit of something fatal, which she supposed was despair. But she hadn’t fallen. She was still here and she had a job an
d a flat and friends and a sister and a little boy who had made something original and unfathomable and left it on the sitting-room carpet.
She opened the hall cupboard and stowed the vacuum cleaner in its usual place beside the ironing board. If she mooned about any longer, she’d be late for work.
‘Someone to see you,’ Joel said.
Paula looked up, bright with anticipation. It was a Thursday, a lunchtime, just the kind of moment, surprise occasion that he…
‘It’s Lindsay’s sister,’ Joel said. ‘She was lying on one of the sofas. I told her. I told her last time.’
‘Oh God,’ Paula said. She got to her feet. ‘D’you think there’s a crisis?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ Joel said. Although his private life – heavily hinted at – had its wild side, his appearance and personal habits were intensely fastidious. Jules’ random life and personal dishevelment were distinctly not to his taste.
‘What a pain,’ Paula said. ‘Is she high or anything?’
Joel shrugged. He might be able to write a dissertation on party highs but he declined to associate himself with the cheap rubbish kids like Jules sustained their dancing with. ‘I told her not to move till you came.’
Paula went down the steps on to the shop floor. Jules, in a floor-length knitted coat of sagging purple wool over a tartan minidress and scuffed gold pixie boots, was standing, slouched on one hip, beside a leather sofa, picking plum-red varnish off her nails. She didn’t look up at the sound of Paula’s heels on the waxed floorboards.
‘What’s up?’ Paula said.
‘Your little fairy friend—’
‘This isn’t a doss house,’ Paula said. ‘This sofa is for sale. It’s not for kipping on after a hard night just because your sister is a friend of the manager’s.’
Jules sighed.
She said, ‘I wanted to have lunch with Lindsay. But she said she was working through lunch. Said she was late in this morning, or something.’
‘Are you OK?’
Jules yawned.
‘Shattered.’
‘Apart from that.’
‘Yeah,’ Jules said. ‘Fine.’
‘Aren’t you staying at Lindsay’s?’
Jules eyed her.
‘Not for ages.’
‘Oh—’
‘Didn’t you know that? I thought you and Lin—’
‘I miss some things,’ Paula said, ‘even me. D’you want some lunch? I could do twenty minutes.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ Paula said. ‘So busy.’
Jules put her hands into her purple knitted pockets.
‘I know.’
Paula looked away. She looked as if she wanted to smile at something private. Then she looked back at Jules.
‘Come on then. Quick pasta fix. I’ll tell Joel.’
‘I haven’t seen you,’ Paula said, ‘since that Friday. At Blaise’s.’ She pushed the chrome-lidded jar of grated Parmesan across the café table towards Jules. ‘That Friday.’
Jules stirred the sauce into her pasta in big, slow circles with her fork.
‘I’ve had three gigs since then,’ Jules said, ‘and a day job.’
‘A day job!’
Jules gestured at the noisy little café with her fork.
‘This crap. Waitressing. Five twenty an hour plus tips. Same as a kitchen porter.’
‘Does Lindsay know?’
‘I told you,’ Jules said, ‘I tried to see her.’
‘There are telephones—’
‘Maybe.’
‘Three gigs. That’s great.’
‘Yes,’ Jules said seriously, ‘it is. We have a DJ residency this month and I warm up for him. He plays soulful house. I get them ready for him. I’m getting good at it.’
Paula took a swallow of water.
‘I should come. We should come.’
‘You should,’ Jules said. She took a bite of pasta and then said casually through it, ‘He did.’
‘What?’
‘He came. Last Thursday.’
‘Who did? Who came?’
Jules speared more pasta.
‘Your fella.’
‘Jackson?’
Jules nodded.
Paula said, ‘Jackson came to your club?’
‘He was the oldest there by about a hundred years.’
‘Why,’ Paula said, leaning across the table, ‘did Jackson come to your club?’
‘I suppose he wanted to—’
‘How did he know about it?’
Jules put in another mouthful.
‘He asked me.’
‘He asked you?’
‘Mmm.’
‘When?’
‘That night,’ Jules said, ‘at Blaise’s.’
‘But you didn’t even speak to each other—’
‘He said so you’re the disc jockey and I said yeah and he said where’s your club and I said you wouldn’t know and he said I might and I told him and he turned up.’
Paula looked directly at Jules.
‘A lone?’
Jules grinned at her.
‘Four blokes. Four old blokes.’
‘Did they dance?’
‘Are you joking?’ Jules said. ‘They drank. The bar was well pleased.’
‘At Blaise’s,’ Paula said carefully, ‘when did this conversation happen?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes,’ Paula said. ‘No. I want to know when because I thought—’
‘I was putting Poppy’s coat on,’ Jules said. ‘I was kneeling on the floor, putting her coat on.’
‘What d’you think of him?’
Jules bent over her plate.
‘I don’t think anything.’
‘D’you like him?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I don’t know,’ Paula said. ‘It just feels so strange—’
‘What does?’
‘When things happen, and I don’t know about them. What I don’t know—’ She stopped and then she looked at Jules. ‘Why did you tell me?’
Jules looked at her. Then she tore a piece of bread in two, and used one piece to wipe the remaining sauce from her pasta bowl.
‘Why not?’
‘Well—’
‘We know each other,’ Jules said. ‘Because of Lin, we’re part of the same group. Women. And groups like ours, well, we tell each other stuff. Don’t we?’
Paula screwed her paper napkin into a ball, and dropped it into the remains of her pappardelle.
‘Why do we?’ Paula said.
‘You look awful,’ Lindsay said.
Jules was kneeling on Lindsay’s sitting-room floor looking respectfully at Noah’s construction.
‘So Paula said.’
‘Paula?’
‘I had lunch with her.’
Lindsay put her chin up a fraction.
‘I know.’
‘What’s this?’
‘He won’t tell me.’
Jules looked up.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I asked him. I brought him in here after school and I said, “What’s that, Noah?” and he said, “It’s what I made.”’
Jules looked back at it.
‘Did he want to play with it?’
‘No. But he didn’t want me to clear it up either.’
Jules grinned.
‘No. I bet not. Is he in bed?’
‘I think his light’s still on—’
Jules got to her feet and shrugged her purple coat off on to the floor. She put a hand out to Lindsay. ‘I’ll pick it up in a minute. In a minute.’
She went out of the room and across the tiny hallway to Noah’s bedroom door. He was lying on his side with his thumb in his mouth, listening to a voice telling a story very animatedly on a brightly coloured plastic tape machine on the floor. His expression didn’t change when Jules came in. She closed the door and sat down so that she was leaning against his bed.
‘What’s this?’<
br />
Noah took his thumb out to say, Horrid Henry, and put it back again.
‘Can I turn it off a sec?’
Noah nodded.
Jules pressed the off button.
She said, ‘I saw what you made.’
Noah sucked on.
‘What is it?’
Noah rolled on to his back.
‘Is it a castle? Is it a fort?’
Noah took his thumb out and said, ‘It’s not anything.’
‘Why don’t you want Mum to clear it away?’
‘Just don’t,’ Noah said. ‘I made it.’
‘That seems a good enough reason.’
Noah rolled back. He reached his free arm down and started Horrid Henry playing again.
‘D’you want me to go?’
Noah nodded once more.
Jules got up and bent to kiss him.
‘You’re a little weirdo, but I like you.’
He closed his eyes. He was learning, Jules thought, small as he was, to do that male thing of taking back control by switching off.
‘Horrid Henry,’ Jules said. ‘Naughty Noah.’
Noah said, round his thumb, ‘I’m not naughty.’
‘No,’ Jules said, ‘you’re not. I wish you would be sometimes. Sleep tight.’
Lindsay was in one of the armchairs in the sitting room, reading a gossip magazine.
She said, ‘I suppose you want to stay?’
Jules hooked a foot into her purple coat and kicked it clumsily aside.
‘Why are you pissed at me?’
‘I’m not—’
‘OK,’ Jules said. She sat heavily into the second armchair and pulled off her gold boots. Two toes, their nails roughly painted green, pushed through holes in the feet of her tights.
‘Do you have to dress like that?’ Lindsay said.
Jules lay back.
‘Actually I’m thinking of changing. I think I’ll get more respect if I change my look a bit.’
‘Respect?’
‘At the club. I’ll look more professional.’
‘Oh,’ Lindsay said faintly, ‘I see.’ She put the magazine down on a small table at her elbow, and made to get up. ‘I’ll get us something to eat.’
‘Lin,’ Jules said, ‘I only had lunch with Paula because you said you were busy. I was going to see her sometime, but there wasn’t any hurry.’
Friday Nights Page 13
