Eleanor put her pen down. She looked up at the wall opposite, where, long, long ago, she had hung a small watercolour of the Lion Court in the Alhambra, in Granada, a watercolour now so familiar to her that she hardly saw it any more.
‘Lindsay,’ Eleanor said, ‘this isn’t about you. You have been a splendid sister against appalling odds, you will always be her sister. But you can’t keep her a child. She is childish, in too many ways, but we’ll see if she can, somehow, improve on that. If she can’t, if I find the way in which she insists on living her life intolerable, then I shall ask her to go.’
‘OK,’ Lindsay said, and then, after a pause, ‘I wish I had your strength.’
Eleanor picked up her pen again and crossed out the grid she had drawn.
‘You know I can’t manage it when conversations get maudlin—’
‘Sorry, but I—’
‘Tell me,’ Eleanor said, interrupting, ‘tell me how Noah is.’
There was a beat the other end of the line.
‘Well,’ Lindsay said, ‘that was the one reason that I rang you.’
When the call was over Eleanor heaved herself to her feet, and carried the saucepan over to the kitchen bin, and scraped the congealed contents into it. Then she put the pan into the sink among the mugs and bowls and spoons already there, and ran water into it. Then she put the newspaper under her arm, took the disagreeably invalidish walking stick she had been issued with in her free hand, and made her way back to her sitting room.
The room looked familiar, but at the same time slightly distorted. Jules was not the only innovation in Eleanor’s life since her fall and her subsequent physical tentativeness had made her realize that it made sense to have a cleaner. A cleaner would not only have some effect on the state of the carpets, which had been something of a surprise to her when she had seen their condition at floor-level, but would also be a human presence in the house periodically, valuable for both physical and psychological reasons. And so, after enquiries made in the corner shop, she had acquired Athina. Athina had been born in Athens, over fifty years before, and had, despite marriage to an Englishman and two children, clung defiantly to her Greekness. She was plump and dark and voluble and clattering with gold jewellery and, if her capacities as a cleaner were more dramatic than effective, she left behind her in the atmosphere a vibrating energy that sustained Eleanor for hours afterwards.
She had tried to rearrange the sitting room, but Eleanor had demurred. Everything was in the comfortable if unsymmetrical places that Eleanor had chosen, but the books were now in stacks, and the rugs smoothed out, and the blurring of dust that had filmed the most obvious surfaces removed. Athina had also added to the windowsill some cuttings of strange flowering cacti from her own plants, which Eleanor assumed she would simply get used to in time. Their unlovable presence was, she reflected, a small price to pay for Athina’s enlivening visits. Just as towels stained with hair dye and other undomesticated habits were an equally small price to pay for Jules’ presence.
If she had been a houseproud woman, Eleanor thought, if she had been the kind of woman who saw herself validated by, reflected in, the appearance and condition of her house, then no doubt trying to live under the same roof as Jules would be impossible. By the same token, if she had been possessed of a strong sense of her own entitlement – such a very modern preoccupation, this insistence on female entitlement – then she might have found Jules’ self-absorption unendurable. But as it was, as she noticed the disorder and the thoughtlessness and the infantile obsession with the moment but couldn’t somehow resent them, the signs of Jules’ occupation of the house were secretly welcome. She would not admit it to Lindsay – probably would never admit it to anyone – but in the privacy of her own sitting room, she could confess to herself, with relief and a kind of quiet joy, that it was just wonderful to have another human being in her daily life.
She lowered herself into her accustomed chair. The day was bright and the sun shone through the windows that Athina had, at least approximately, cleaned. She had a new crossword to do, sitting here in a familiar chair in a familiar room with the unimagined luxury of Jules asleep upstairs in Eleanor’s hitherto unused second bedroom. Jules had come in at four in the morning and had been asleep ever since. Eleanor looked at her watch. It was one-thirty. She would make a start on the crossword, and then she would, as was now their arrangement, telephone Jules on her mobile to wake her. And when she came downstairs, Eleanor would tell her that on Friday night – an evening that had a peculiar emptiness now that the habitual arrangement had become so fragmented – Noah was going to come round for a couple of hours to be looked after while his mother went out on a date.
Toby woke, as usual, in the dark. He lay for a while, waiting for his mind to swim unsteadily to the surface, and then he rolled over in bed and looked at the illuminated face of his bedside clock. It said ten-past seven. He raised his head off the pillow and listened. The flat was very quiet, almost spookily quiet. Usually, by seven o’clock on school mornings, Paula was at the foot of his ladder telling him to get up, hurry up, not to forget his field kit, not to put on yesterday’s socks.
He sat up. There was a light shining from the kitchen area. Perhaps Paula had forgotten to turn the lights off the night before. Perhaps she was already up. He pushed the duvet back and put his feet on the floor. Then he padded across the platform and shinned down his ladder in the practised manner he always visualized being admiringly filmed.
In the kitchen, Jackson was standing gazing out into the black early morning, his back to Toby, waiting for the kettle to boil. He was in jeans and the rest of him was naked. He didn’t turn. Toby wanted suddenly to say, ‘Fuck you,’ to his naked back, but there was something about the sight of it, something animal and powerful and alarming, that stayed his tongue.
He turned away and crept quietly back across the living space. He paused by his mother’s bedroom door and looked in. One lamp was on, and by its light he could see that Paula was still in bed, lying there in so relaxed a manner that the shape of her body looked as if it had been poured there.
She smiled at Toby, slow and sleepy.
‘Hello, darling.’
Something sour and hot rose into his mouth.
‘Fuck you,’ Toby said.
Chapter Sixteen
Paula stood on the pavement outside Workwell’s office building. The ground floor was occupied by a dry-cleaning company, whose huge, sleek Italian machine occupied a prominent central position, almost in the window, as if it were being proudly shown off, like a sculpture. Beside the window was a narrow door, painted black, and on the lintel beside it, a brushed-steel plate with ‘Workwell’ engraved on it in capital letters and, underneath in lower case, ‘First floor. Please ring.’
Paula put her finger on the buzzer, and took it away again. She glanced behind her. Nobody was watching, and anyway what could it possibly matter to her if they were? She swallowed and adjusted her sunglasses. She put her finger on the button again and pressed.
There was silence. Paula waited, staring at the Workwell plate, hardly breathing. Then Karen’s voice said, ‘Workwell. Can I help you?’
‘It’s Paula,’ Paula said.
‘Oh. Is it?’
‘Can – can I come up?’
There was another short pause and then a buzzer sounded and the door latch released. Paula pushed it open, and stepped inside.
A steep stair, painted white and carpeted in charcoal-grey, rose up in front of her. The air smelled faintly and headily of dry-cleaning fluid. Paula went up the stairs, head bent, at a pace she hoped would induce steadiness of purpose, and found the door to the office at the top open, and Karen back at her desk. She turned as Paula came in and laid an arm across the back of her chair.
She said, with a dangerous kind of relaxedness, ‘Well, this is a surprise.’
Paula looked round her.
‘I’ve never been here before.’
Karen smiled.
‘Im
pressive, huh?’
Paula took her sunglasses off.
‘Very.’
‘Coffee?’ Karen said.
‘No, thanks.’
‘Well,’ Karen said, ‘perhaps you’d like a seat? At least?’
Paula looked at the second chair. It struck her that to be at the same level as Karen would somehow put her at a disadvantage. She moved across the floor and leaned against the workspace to the right of Karen’s chair. Then she crossed her arms.
‘Oh, wow,’ Karen said, smiling.
Paula looked at her feet. She crossed her ankles.
She said, not looking at Karen, ‘Funny, really. I always thought it would be Jules.’
‘Jules?’ Karen said. ‘What would be Jules?’
Paula looked up.
‘That it would be Jules who tried to jump Jackson.’
Karen stared. She opened her eyes as widely as they would go.
‘What are you on about?’
‘You know,’ Paula said.
‘I do not—’
Paula unfolded her arms and leaned forward. She gripped the edge of the desk either side of her.
‘Oh yes you do.’
‘Look,’ Karen said, ‘I don’t—’
‘You can give me all the excuses in the world,’ Paula said, ‘but you fancy him, don’t you?’
‘No,’ Karen said.
‘I don’t check up on him,’ Paula said. ‘It’s not like that, it’s not that kind of relationship. But I can’t help noticing things, I can’t help noticing when I’m left out, when there are these little meetings. I can’t help thinking that this, Karen, is not what friends are for.’
‘I couldn’t agree more—’
‘Your loyalty,’ Paula said fiercely, ‘is supposed to be to me.’
‘It is.’
‘Then why are you behaving like this? What’s with all the secrecy and the games?’
Karen’s gaze didn’t waver.
‘No secrecy. No games.’
‘There is!’ Paula shouted. ‘There is, there is!’
Karen leaned back a little.
She said, ‘I can’t help your jealousy, you know.’
‘Jealousy!’
‘I mean,’ Karen said, ‘I wouldn’t have thought possessiveness went down very well with a man like that.’
‘I’m not possessive—’
‘Oh?’
‘I just want,’ Paula said, ‘to be able to rely on my friends.’
‘You can.’
Paula said nothing. She relaxed her grip on the desk edge and stood up.
‘There is nothing going on,’ Karen said.
Paula took her sunglasses out of her bag and put them on again.
‘OK.’
‘Nothing,’ Karen said. ‘He’s just been round with Toby and the girls sometimes. Kids’ stuff. Some business stuff. Nothing.’
Paula went slowly towards the door.
‘OK.’
Karen turned back to her desk.
She waited until she heard the door being unlatched, then she said, ‘See you,’ as if nothing had happened.
It had been a surprisingly good day. Blaise had been summoned by the chief executive of a marketing company she had been working with for some months, who had then told her that he was unhappy with the criticisms implied by some of her retraining methods, and that he felt she misunderstood the company ethic. He then leaned back, and said, in exactly the same tone of justifiable injury, that the implementation of some of her key ideas – such as fewer meetings and fewer absurd and alarming lists of required competencies – did seem, however, to be improving staff morale and consequent commitment to the tasks in hand.
Blaise, seated the far side of his desk with her knees together and a notebook in her hand, waited politely.
‘So you’ll be pleased, I think,’ said the chief executive, with the air of one waiting to be thanked for an act of magnanimity.
‘I would be,’ Blaise said, ‘if I was certain of your decision.’
‘My decision?’
Blaise regarded him.
‘I am not at all certain,’ she said, ‘whether your objections to my strategies and what you seem to see as my non-approval of the basic work ethics of your company amount to this conversation being not only our last, but also constituting my dismissal. Or not.’
The chief executive swung his leather swivel chair to an abrupt halt.
‘Good God, no,’ he said. ‘I want to renew your contract. How on earth could you have thought otherwise?’
Leaving the company’s offices, Blaise considered taking the underground back to West London, and decided she was going to indulge herself with a taxi. Karen never took taxis, but then Karen didn’t buy business suits or see regular haircuts as part of professional self-respect. In fact, Karen took an almost perverse pleasure in taking her striking looks for granted, as if they were remarkable enough to withstand – or even, strangely, to be enhanced by – being treated with elaborate carelessness. There was something about Karen’s looks, something about her slouching, sinewy grace that made you wonder interestedly and appreciatively what she would look like naked.
Blaise, in the back of a taxi with her briefcase on the floor and her bag on the seat beside her, reflected that the difference – well, one of the many differences – between them was that Karen played herself, and only herself, in all her life roles and she, Blaise, presented different facets of herself, depending upon the role required of her. It wasn’t that she was ever untrue to herself, but more that she changed the emphasis, depending upon whether she was persuading a company to revolutionize its business practices or sitting in Eleanor’s kitchen. In fact, she thought, gazing out of the taxi’s window at the crowded pavements of early-evening High Holborn – what wonderful opportunities travel provided sometimes just to gaze mindlessly and somehow re-boot the brain – she wasn’t sure she would like, could even cope with, the self-reliance of not working in an office environment, let alone the isolation and lack of variety it would mean. Working from home might be held up as a life-enhancing solution to the need to earn and fulfil oneself being nicely balanced with the demands of family life, but where, Blaise wondered, even without a family requiring fairy cakes and participation in dinosaur games, was one to find the self-esteem and self-discipline gained from working with other people? Karen might – indeed, was beginning to hint that she would – prefer to exchange their tiny but businesslike space for a converted box room behind the girls’ bedroom, but could she, Blaise, now cope with the idea of Workwell being run from a place where domestic life unquestionably predominated?
I can, Blaise thought, take myself out of the office. But I can’t take the office out of me. And it’s not because, as Karen hints, I like artificial constructions where I don’t have to engage, because I don’t think offices are artificial places, I think they are what evolves when people get together in a common work cause. And I like that. I like people and I like the way they behave when they are doing something like working together, and I think it’s OK for work to be lucrative and I think it’s more than OK for work to be meaningful. And I’m not a sad spinster trying to make work fill the space left by the absence of a man and children because although the right man – oh for heaven’s sake, what on earth is the right man anyway? – would be wonderful, I don’t feel in the least diminished or incomplete because I don’t have one. And what’s more, surely you can be allowed to like children very much without wanting to have some of your own? Especially if you knew, just knew, somewhere in the depths of your being where instincts and the unbidden impulses lurked, that work was going to give you something that nothing else – nothing – could possibly provide.
What had Eleanor said, suddenly from her hospital bed, describing Toby’s visit, describing Lindsay’s perpetual fretting over Noah?
‘You know,’ she’d said, looking at Blaise with an earnestness she was seldom prepared to display openly, ‘I like children. I like them very much, and so
me I am even prepared to love. But I decided not to have any of my own because I don’t believe that you can give yourself properly to work and to family. And I do believe that children should never be sacrificed.’
From the bag beside Blaise in the taxi came the abrupt and increasingly insistent sound of her mobile phone ringing. It would be Karen, calling to commiserate about the ending of the contract. Blaise took the telephone out of her bag and, without looking to see who the caller was, said into it, ‘You’ll never believe this, but he wants more!’
‘It’s Lucas,’ Lucas said.
‘Goodness, I—’
‘You were expecting Kay,’ Lucas said, ‘weren’t you?’
‘Of course,’ Blaise said. ‘We were expecting rejection today and got the opposite.’
‘Well,’ Lucas said, ‘that must be lovely. Not a feeling, I have to say, that I’m very familiar with.’
Blaise looked out of the window again. The taxi was now beginning on the Fulham Road, on the grand, stuccoed, stately end of it where even a hospital looked authoritative rather than intimidating.
She said carefully, ‘Is everything OK, Luke?’
‘In what way?’
‘I mean Karen, the girls—’
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘yes, they’re fine. Fine. I just rang on impulse. I wonder – I wonder if I could show you something?’
Blaise hesitated. That kiss in her kitchen – brief, competent, possible to dismiss as firmly friendly – had never been alluded to by either of them again, but it had happened. And the trouble with anything like a kiss or a confidence happening between a man and a woman who were not in a position to act unilaterally was that you couldn’t unhappen it. Lucas had kissed her, even if she hadn’t invited him to by any word or gesture, and she had not slapped him or remonstrated with him. She had been taken by surprise, and by the time she had collected her wits, he’d gone.
‘What kind of thing?’ Blaise said.
There was a pause.
Lucas said quietly, ‘A painting.’
‘A painting! What kind of painting?’
Friday Nights Page 23
