She noticed, as she approached the house, that every floor was glowing. It looked welcoming and wonderful, and all she could think was, Who pays the electricity bills? She dumped her bags on the doorstep and put her key in the lock. When the door swung open, she was aware that she always, at this point, called out, ‘Hi, guys!’ and that this evening she couldn’t.
Rose appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was in her school uniform and it had a long smear of green paint or chalk down the front.
‘Hi, pumpkin,’ Karen said tiredly.
Rose said, ‘I’ve got a project on windmills.’
‘Windmills?’
‘And wind farms. Anything windy.’
‘Oh good,’ Karen said.
Rose went back into the kitchen. Karen followed her. Lucas and Poppy were sitting at the kitchen table eating spaghetti off the same plate. Rose’s plate was almost empty. The air smelled of toast.
‘Hi,’ Karen said.
Lucas got up. He came round the table and took the bags out of Karen’s hands.
Poppy said in her hoarse whisper, ‘I’m the dancing queen.’
‘In her form play,’ Rose said. ‘They’ve all got a part. To be fair.’
‘Darling, that’s great.’
‘I know,’ Poppy said. She put her fork down and slid off her chair. ‘I’ve had enough.’
‘Back,’ Lucas said.
‘But I—’
‘Back,’ Lucas said. ‘On your chair.’
He put the bags on the counter top.
He said, without looking at Karen, ‘Tea?’
She went slowly across to the table and pulled out a chair and sat down heavily.
‘Don’t bother. You get off.’
‘Tea?’ Lucas said again. ‘Or whisky?’
‘There isn’t any. It’s fine. You go.’
Rose, standing behind her chair, was watching.
‘I’m full,’ Poppy said. ‘Full up.’
Lucas didn’t look at her.
‘Three more bites. Don’t argue either.’
Poppy picked up her fork.
‘Really,’ Karen said. ‘You go.’
Lucas opened a cupboard and took out an almost empty bottle. He tilted it and the tea-coloured liquid inside formed a small triangle at the bottom.
‘Just enough,’ Lucas said. ‘And I’m not going.’
‘Not—’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ Lucas said, ‘I want to talk to you.’
Rose gripped the back of her chair.
She said, ‘I don’t want you to argue.’
‘We won’t,’ Lucas said.
Poppy said with her mouth full, ‘Finished!’
Lucas was pouring the whisky into a tumbler.
‘Don’t move.’
‘But, Daddy, I—’
‘Don’t move,’ Lucas said, ‘until your mouth is quite empty. Then scrape your plate into the bin and put it in the dishwasher. You too, Rose.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Rose said.
Lucas put the tumbler down in front of Karen.
‘Water?’
‘Please.’
She watched while both girls took their plates across to the kitchen bin.
‘I’m not cross,’ she said, ‘nor’s Dad. Nobody is.’
‘I hate it,’ Rose said, ‘when it’s like this.’
‘Upstairs,’ Lucas said.
‘But I—’
‘Go upstairs,’ Lucas said. ‘You can do what you like. I’ll be up later.’
‘No,’ Poppy said.
Lucas crossed the kitchen and put his hands on Poppy’s shoulders and propelled her from the room.
He turned to Rose.
‘You too.’
Karen tried to catch Rose’s eye, but she wasn’t looking. The door closed behind them. Karen stayed where she was, her Andean hat still on, and looked at her whisky.
Lucas opened the fridge and took out a bottle of beer. He flipped the top and sat down with it at the table.
He said indifferently, ‘I’ve sold a painting.’
Karen gave a little jerk.
‘Luke!’
‘Fifteen hundred pounds.’
‘That’s wonderful!’ Karen said. ‘Congratulations. That’s – that’s wonderful.’
He took a swallow from the bottle.
‘You think so?’
‘Of course I do!’
‘I sold it to the gallery we went to the other day, even though I haven’t finished it. A Japanese buyer. He wants another.’
‘Luke, I am so pleased.’
He looked straight ahead.
‘Good.’
‘It – it’s fantastic that you’re working again.’
‘Yes.’
Karen bent over her whisky.
‘Luke?’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t want to rain on your parade, I really don’t want to spoil this, but – but I don’t think I can go on.’
He turned to look at her.
‘Not go on?’
‘No,’ Karen said. She raised her head. ‘I’m exhausted and frustrated and I can’t go on working like this just to pay the bills.’
He said, ‘Please take that hat off.’
Karen pulled off the Andean hat and dropped it on the floor.
‘Is that why you work?’ Lucas said. ‘To pay the bills?’
Karen gave a little snort.
‘What do you think?’
‘I thought you worked because you liked it. I thought it gave you satisfaction.’
‘Not any more,’ Karen said.
‘Which justifies you kissing someone who you suppose might provide the life of leisure you imagine to be preferable?’
There was a silence.
Then Karen said, ‘I didn’t kiss him.’
‘Oh,’ Lucas said. ‘Oh really?’
Karen put her face in her hands.
From behind them, she said, ‘I tried to kiss him, but he wouldn’t let me. He didn’t want me to. He said, “I’m not up for this.” He said it quite loudly. I think Rosie heard.’
‘She did.’
‘And yes, I did try to kiss him because there was a kind of relief in being with someone I’m not – I’m not—’
‘Propping up?’
Karen took her hands away.
‘Yes.’
Lucas looked at her tumbler.
‘Drink your whisky.’
‘I’m too tired.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Lucas said. ‘First the children, now you. Drink it!’
Karen picked up the tumbler and took a sip.
‘You think,’ Lucas said, ‘that you want to stop working. Is that what you think?’
Karen nodded.
She said, ‘Luke, I don’t know—’
He turned towards her.
‘I can get a job. I can get a teaching job. I expect I can get a teaching job quite easily. But that isn’t the point, is it? I can’t make the money you make and, even if I could, that still isn’t the point, is it?’
‘I don’t know—’
‘The point is that you like working, that you are good at working, that working, for all the fuss you make about it, suits you. Doesn’t it?’
Karen watched him. She was beginning to feel, obscurely, that she would like him to get up and come round the table, and hold her.
‘Do you,’ Lucas said with energy, ‘really want to give up? Don’t you want Rosie and Poppy to see you working? Don’t you want them to see what women can do? Do you really want to give up that achievement, that independence?’
Karen sniffed. She picked up the whisky glass and gulped.
‘Maybe I can do more,’ Lucas said. ‘Maybe I can do more and you can do less. Maybe we can think about living differently. Maybe you should be employed rather than self-employed. It doesn’t really matter what we do except that we, and you especially, do something.’
Karen pulled a tissue out of her p
ocket and blew her nose.
‘Sorry.’
‘Sorry about what? Kissing that wanker?’
‘I didn’t—’
Lucas raised his hands in the air and brought them down on to the table with a slam.
‘OK. OK. And I didn’t get anywhere with Blaise, even though I half wanted to.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Blaise?’
Lucas turned to look at her.
‘I was in a twitch about everything, you, me, painting, Jackson, everything. Blaise just looked so sorted. And she is. She told me where to get off.’
Karen began to cry.
‘Don’t cry,’ Lucas said. ‘It isn’t worth it. We’ve made fools of ourselves and that’s not worth crying over.’
‘No.’
‘Blaise is on your side.’
Karen said in a whisper, ‘I kind of hate her.’
‘Because she’s behaved well?’
Karen nodded.
‘Unfair, don’t you think?’ Lucas said.
Karen nodded again.
‘Kay,’ Lucas said, leaning forward, ‘if you squander your abilities, I’ll throttle you. With my bare hands.’
She looked up at him. Her nose was red. He slid a hand along the table and grasped her nearest one. Then he got up and walked to the kitchen door and pulled it open. Rose and Poppy were sitting on the hall floor, just outside, wrapped in a blanket. They looked up at him, like a pair of chastized puppies.
‘All over,’ Lucas said. ‘You want to come in?’
‘There,’ Fiona said.
She laid three photographs out in front of Toby on Paula’s coffee table.
‘Elizabeth, Sarah and Jane. Jane is good at sport. Very good.’
Paula waited for Toby to leap up and dash away to his bedroom. But he didn’t. He was visibly tense but he stayed where he was, looking at the photographs.
‘Of course,’ Fiona said, ‘you always knew about them. Didn’t you? But it’s different when they don’t have pictures and names. You can pretend they aren’t real when you don’t take in their names. Now you have. Elizabeth and Sarah are older, of course, but Jane’s about your age.’
Toby bent forward. Jane was wearing dungaree shorts and a T-shirt. She was scowling slightly at the camera.
‘She hates being photographed,’ Fiona said.
Toby muttered.
‘What?’
‘Me too,’ Toby said.
Fiona put another photograph down.
‘That’s our house.’
Toby looked at it intently.
Fiona said, ‘There’s a pool.’
‘Don’t do this,’ Paula said sharply.
Fiona glanced up at her.
‘Don’t – bribe him,’ Paula said.
Fiona waited a moment, and then she said, ‘It’s not just him. I’m trying to bribe you, too.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s time,’ Fiona said.
Toby picked up the photograph of the house and began to move his forefinger along the façade, counting windows under his breath.
Paula said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Well,’ Fiona said, ‘I’m feeling my way, rather.’ She looked round. She said, in a voice with a hint of surprise in it, ‘It’s nice here.’
Paula flung herself back in the sofa.
‘For God’s sake! What did you expect? Why are you so bloody patronizing?’
Toby didn’t look up.
He said very clearly to his mother, ‘Don’t swear.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Don’t swear,’ Toby said.
‘Can I start again,’ Fiona said. ‘Can I go out and come in again?’
Paula looked away.
She said wearily, ‘I don’t really know why you’re here.’
‘You rang me.’
‘You asked me to ring you.’
Toby said, ‘Is she a sister?’
‘Who?’
‘Jane.’
‘You know that,’ Paula said exasperatedly. ‘ You knew Jane was one of your half-sisters. You’ve known that all along.’
‘Yes,’ Fiona said to Toby. ‘A half-sister. Same father, different mother. But a sister.’
‘Did you just want,’ Paula said, ‘to see what Gavin spends some of his money on?’
Fiona looked at Toby.
‘No,’ she said.
Toby put the house picture down and picked up Jane’s. He looked slightly sideways at the photographs of the older girls lying on the table.
‘I don’t quite know how to put this,’ Fiona said, ‘but I just got to the point of not wanting us to be fantasy figures of hate to one another any more. I just thought, Hang on, there’s children here, there’s four children who are related by no action of their own. And I thought – well’ – she glanced quickly at Toby – ‘I thought it was only fair to tell you that – that men who stray don’t usually stop straying. If you get me.’
Paula waited.
‘I mean,’ said Fiona carefully, ‘that you were not alone. No more babies, but other – other interests.’
Toby looked up.
He said, ‘Are you talking about Gavin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, don’t,’ Toby said.
Paula sat forward.
She said sadly, ‘I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.’
‘Better, I hope. You’re the only one I wanted to see, the only one I’ve made an effort about.’
‘Because of Toby?’
‘Partly.’
Paula looked at her and then looked away.
‘Hard for you—’
‘Hard,’ Fiona said, ‘for all of us.’
Paula stood up.
‘I’ll make some coffee.’
‘I’m going soon—’
‘Why,’ Paula said suddenly, ‘why d’you stay?’
Fiona looked down at her lap.
She said steadily to it, ‘Because the alternative is so much worse.’
‘Can you mean that?’
‘I can. You work, you see.’
‘I thought you—’
‘I stopped. I’d have to retrain. I might retrain.’ She looked up at Paula. Her manner was quite changed. She said, ‘Confidence goes, you see. You can look so capable, so certain, in your own world, in the world that requires some incredible talents but doesn’t actually ask you to get out there and graft with everyone else. People think that if you can run a house and a family you can run anything. Well, maybe you can, but the world out there doesn’t think so.’
In Paula’s mind there arose a spontaneous image of the showroom, of her small white office up its staircase, of Joel’s spare, black-clad figure padding silently about, his arms full of cushions.
She said rather uncertainly, ‘Work isn’t everything—’
Fiona briefly twisted her wedding ring.
‘From where I’m sitting, it looks like quite a lot.’
Paula sat down again. She looked at Toby. He was leaning back, still holding the photograph, but staring past it to the rattan chest by the window where Gavin’s picture lay, as he had left it, on its face.
Paula said very directly to Fiona, ‘We aren’t a project for you, you know.’
‘No.’
‘We aren’t something just to fill a gap. I can’t gang up with you, whatever I feel about Gavin. I can’t let Toby be part of some kind of game.’
‘I know. I didn’t intend any of that. I just thought we’d all got stuck, and then that letter to you kind of – kind of galvanized me.’
‘OK.’
Fiona said, ‘The way I see it, you just have to work out what you can live with, and what you can’t, and some kinds of pain are better than others. It seemed to me that not trying, as far as you’re concerned, was worse than trying and getting my head bitten off. So bite away. If that’s what you want.’
‘I want to go,’ Toby said suddenly. He spun Jane�
�s photograph across the table.
‘Go?’ Paula said.
‘Yes.’
‘Go where?’
Toby roused himself from the depths of the sofa. He flicked a casual hand in the direction of the picture of the house.
‘There,’ he said.
Toby leaned in Paula’s bedroom doorway. She was looking out of the window. She was extremely still, her hands resting on the windowsill. She had been standing like that for ten minutes or so, the ten minutes that had elapsed since he saw her put the telephone down.
Toby had no qualms about eavesdropping. Quite apart from its being a natural consequence of living in a loft, it had become quite clear to him in the last few weeks that, if he didn’t know what was going on, he would have no chance at all of influencing events in a way that was acceptable to him. He had spent years avoiding being told anything, in case knowledge led to unwanted and disagreeable involvement, but it had recently struck him that, if he was going to behave like a human parcel, he would be treated like one. It was amazing – and faintly alarming – to him to discover that you could have your say by – well, by saying it.
At the same time as discovering this potential for at least the beginnings of power, Toby retained, quite firmly, a lot of his old habits of deliberate ignorance. Pain, discomfort even, were best dealt with by distance in many cases, as much distance as possible. One of these cases, right now, was Jackson. Toby preferred, in self-defence, not to think about Jackson. Adults, it seemed, could be as unreliable (Jackson) as they could also be trustworthy (Eleanor) and the misery inflicted by the former quality was best dealt with by deletion. He would not, of course, give up his enthusiasm for and loyalty to Chelsea Football Club – that would have seemed to him both wrong and unthinkable – but he would somehow exorcize the means and the man that had introduced him to it.
Which was, as a plan, all very well, except for his mother. For Paula, Jackson did not seem, despite the fact that he hardly appeared any more, to be as easy to eliminate from her daily consciousness as Toby was determined to find it. He had no intention of asking her anything directly, but at the same time he was aware that a miasma of unhappiness hung in the flat like a melancholy mist, and that he had been relieved, earlier in the day, to see her getting quite shirty with Fiona. On the subject of Fiona, and Jane and – and the others – Toby was not going to venture just yet. It was enough to have won his small victory. It was enough that he was going, next weekend, to see the swimming pool at his father’s house.
Friday Nights Page 27
