Matthew sighed. He looked, Ben thought, not just tired but drained and without that air of confident togetherness that Ben had supposed, for the last five years or so, to be inbuilt. He watched Matthew order, and pay for, a couple of bottles of beer, and then he followed him to a table in a corner, under a plasma television screen showing a picture of some giant freeway interchange, photographed from directly above. Matthew put the beer bottles on the table and glanced up at the screen.
‘I watched the rugby World Cup on that’.
Ben grunted. He put his duffel bag down on the floor and eased himself into an Italian metal chair.
‘How’s things—’
Matthew went on looking at the screen. ‘OK’.
Ben said, ‘My afternoon was shite. He just put me down the whole time over stuff he’d told me to do anyway’.
Matthew glanced away.
‘But apart from this afternoon, everything’s OK?’
‘Aren’t you going to sit down?’
‘Yes’.
‘Well, sit then. I can’t talk to you if you’re standing’.
‘Sorry,’ Matthew said. He sat down slowly, on the chair next to Ben’s. Then he said, ‘Sorry to snap at you’.
Ben took a swallow of beer. He pulled off his knitted hat and ruffled his hair.
‘That’s OK’.
Matthew looked at him.
‘And you really are OK? Apart from this afternoon’. ‘I’m great’. ‘And Naomi—’
‘Great. And the flat. It’s cool. I really like it’. ‘You look as if you do’.
‘Don’t tell Mum,’ Ben said, ‘but I should have gone before, two years ago, three’. Matthew picked up his beer.
‘We all do that’. ‘Do what?’
‘Stay too long’. Ben eyed him.
‘At home?’ ‘And the rest’.
‘Matt,’ Ben said, ‘what’s happened?’ Matthew put the neck of the bottle in his mouth and took it out again. ‘I’m not sure’.
‘You and Ruth—’
‘I think it’s over,’ Matthew said abruptly.
‘Christ’.
‘It just happened. It was so sudden. And I didn’t see it coming’. He took a mouthful of beer and shut his eyes tightly, as if swallowing it was an effort. ‘And I should have’.
‘Hey,’ Ben said. He leaned towards his brother. ‘Hey, Matt. Mate—’
‘She wants to buy a flat,’ Matthew said, ‘and I can’t afford to. I can’t afford to because it’s been costing me every penny I earn to live the way we do and I’m a stupid bloody idiot to have got in this mess. I am twenty-eight years old, Ben, and I’m back where I was at your age. I feel – I feel—’ He stopped and then he said in a furious whisper, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter’.
Ben said slowly, ‘It’s hard to say—’
Matthew looked at him.
‘It’s hard to say, to a woman, that you haven’t got enough money’.
‘Yes’.
‘And if the woman has more than you do—’ ‘Yes. Does Naomi?’
‘No,’ Ben said, ‘and I tell her I wouldn’t mind if she did. But I’m not so sure’.
‘It isn’t good,’ Matthew said. ‘You may not have failed, but it feels as if you have. So you don’t say, and she makes assumptions. She’s perfectly entitled to make assumptions, if you don’t say’.
Ben drank some more beer.
‘Don’t you want to live in her flat?’
‘Not under those circumstances. I’d feel like a lodger’.
‘So—’
‘So I’ve said to her that if she wants the flat – and she should be buying a flat, earning what she does – she should go ahead and buy it, but that I can’t come with her’.
‘Why,’ Ben said, ‘does it have to be this flat?’
‘She’s set her heart on it—’
‘But if you had a cheaper flat, then you could manage it, maybe’. Matthew frowned.
‘I tried that’.
Ben gave him a quick look.
‘What did she say?’
‘She said she wanted me to come too. To this flat. She wants this flat’.
‘Well then’.
‘But I can’t. And she knows I can’t’.
‘So you’re making her choose—’
‘No,’ Matthew said, ‘I’m setting her free to choose’.
Ben stared ahead.
Then he said, ‘I’m sorry’.
‘Thanks’.
‘Will you tell the parents?’
‘I’ll have to’.
‘Why have to—’ Matthew looked down.
He said, almost bitterly, ‘I may need a bit of help. For a while’.
Ben adjusted his gaze from the distance to his beer. This was the moment, if he was going to take it, to tell Matthew that Rosa had already asked for help from their father, and been, however reasonably, turned down. But it occurred to Ben that Matthew wasn’t like Rosa and that, in any case, his older brother and sister had to do things their own way, fight their own battles. If he mentioned Rosa, it might just be one more depressing thing for Matthew to have to factor in, one more difficulty in an already difficult situation.
He picked his bottle up again.
‘Talk to Mum’.
Matthew turned to look at him.
‘Really? I was going to talk to Dad’.
Ben shook his head. He was conscious of feeling something he had never felt in his life before, a sensation of not just, at last, being the same age as his brother but also, headily, almost older. He put an arm briefly across Matthew’s shoulders.
‘No. Talk to Mum,’ Ben said. ‘Trust me’.
Chapter Six
Barney reached across Kate to buckle her car seat belt. She put a hand out. ‘I can do it—’
‘I like doing it,’ Barney said. ‘My wanting to will probably wear off, so I should enjoy it while you can’. He pushed the buckle home. ‘You look better’.
‘I feel,’ Kate said, ‘marginally less awful. Marginally’.
Barney turned the ignition key.
‘Or you are relieved to be getting away from the flat for the weekend’.
Kate turned her head away.
‘Kate?’
‘Can’t hear you’.
‘Yes, you can. Even the prospect of being a daughter-in-law for forty-eight hours is better than trying to pretend that having Rosa in the flat isn’t like trying to manoeuvre round an agitated double bed all the time’.
Kate said nothing.
‘You were in her room,’ said Barney, pulling the car out into the street, ‘until one o’clock this morning’.
‘She was miserable—’
‘And then you can’t sleep so you’re miserable and then I’m miserable’. Kate beat lightly on her thighs with her fists. ‘Barney, we have had this conversation’. ‘But then nothing happens’. ‘It does. She’s got a job’. ‘Temping’.
‘It’s a job. She’s going to give us some rent’. ‘How much?’
‘Don’t be so completely vile’.
Barney waited until he had negotiated a small roundabout, and then he said, ‘OK. That was out of order. Sorry. But we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and I wouldn’t be saying things like that, if it wasn’t for Rosa’.
‘I know’.
‘The thing is, she doesn’t know how not to be a huge presence. She’s somehow all over the flat even when she’s in her room with the door shut’.
‘Barney,’ Kate said, looking straight ahead, ‘there are two weeks to go’.
‘And then?’
Kate said nothing.
Barney took a hand off the steering wheel and put it on one of Kate’s.
He said, more gently, ‘And then?’ ‘I don’t know’. ‘Promise me something’.
‘Oh—’
‘Promise me you won’t ask her to stay longer’.
Kate said, ‘I’ll try—’ ‘No’.
‘Barney—’
‘If you do,’ Barney said, ‘I’ll un-ask her. Not for my sa
ke particularly but for yours. And ours’.
Kate put her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
‘I just feel we’ve got so much—’ ‘Look,’ Barney said. ‘Look. Whatever we’ve got we’ve made ourselves. We haven’t taken something of Rosa’s’. Kate began, very quietly, to cry. Barney glanced at her.
‘Oh darling—’ ‘It’s nothing—’
He pulled the car quickly into the side of the road and put his arms clumsily round her.
‘Oh darling, don’t cry, I’m so sorry, don’t cry. Oh
Kate—’
‘It’s not you,’ Kate said unsteadily. ‘It’s me. And probably this baby’.
Barney loosened his arms and slid down until his cheek and ear were resting against Kate’s stomach.
‘This baby’.
Kate sniffed. She looked down, at Barney’s head in her lap, at his hair, his hand on her thigh.
She said, ‘It’s OK. I’ll tell her. If she doesn’t know already—’
‘She’s not a fool—’
‘No,’ Kate said. She blotted her eyes on her sleeve. ‘No, she’s not. That’s part of the trouble’.
* * *
Cleaning, Rosa thought, hunting for rubber gloves under Kate’s sink, wasn’t something she had exactly been brought up to do. Edie had been very strict about helping, had made sure that everyone – with the frequent exception of Ben – realised that the task of keeping a house going was a communal responsibility and that, just because she was the mother, it didn’t automatically follow that she was also unpaid room service. But Edie was not the kind of woman for whom crushed cushions and unscaled kettles represented the first signs of domestic anarchy; washing the kitchen floor was never, for her, going to take priority over helping Matthew make a model or dancing with Rosa in front of the landing mirror. It was only staying over in schoolfriends’ houses that had revealed to Rosa that people – some people – bought vacuum cleaners for their efficiency and not solely because they had a jolly little face painted on the cylinder. Nothing she saw, no amount of gleaming bathrooms, made her feel Edie’s attitude was wrong, but she did begin to see that the relief to be found in the small satisfactions of cleaning was very real and weirdly reliable. It was, in the end, living with Josh that had driven her to find the solid, if unglamorous, consolations of exercising control where you still could, in creating domestic order.
It was her intention, that Saturday, to create exactly that order in Kate and Barney’s flat. It was partly that she might find personal solace in burnishing surfaces and straightening rugs, but also because she might gain a form of unspoken forgiveness from Barney, in particular, and even – this was a long shot but desperate situations required desperate measures – prepare the way to asking if her month in the flat might be extended into two. She was keenly aware that she had not behaved well in the past fortnight, that she had conducted herself with the sort of sulky resentment associated with disaffected fourteen-year-olds, and that it looked to Kate as if she was motivated by no more than the most primitive and unattractive of envies.
If she was honest, she thought, spraying cleaning fluid lavishly across the kitchen surfaces, she was envious of Kate. Not envious of Kate having Barney, but envious of Kate and Barney wanting to be together, and having the unspeakable luxury of a future to look forward to. At the same time, however, she knew that this kind of envy was a bitter, destructive thing, as well as a disgrace in any commendable personality. And even, Rosa thought, scrubbing at a stain, if my personality is not commendable, and certainly hasn’t been recently, I would like it to be; I would like it, really, to be in charge of itself.
She straightened up. A pleasing sort of calm was beginning to overtake the kitchen. She thought of extending her efforts to the contents of the cupboards and then it occurred to her that to move so much as a box of lentils could be construed as criticism, which was, in her present shaky state, the last thing she wanted to convey. She wanted, rather, to make the flat look, by the time Barney and Kate returned, like a humble but unmistakable token of gratitude. She wanted, she acknowledged with difficulty, to appear sorry without actually having to say so.
From the sitting room, her mobile rang. Rosa went slowly to answer it, pulling off the rubber gloves and saying to herself, under her breath, as she seemed to have been saying for years every time the phone rang, ‘Make it a surprise, make it something nice, make it—’
‘Darling?’ Edie said.
‘Mum, hi—’
‘Are you all right? What are you doing?’ ‘Actually,’ Rosa said, ‘cleaning’. ‘Cleaning? Why?’
‘I want to. I like it. It’s Saturday morning. Cleaning time’.
‘Not in this house,’ Edie said. ‘I remember’.
‘Rosa, what’s happening?’ ‘Happening?’
‘Yes. We haven’t spoken for weeks—’ ‘Five days’.
‘I want to know if you’re OK’. Rosa stood a little taller.
‘I am’.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes, Mum. Thank you’. ‘Have you found a job?’
‘Yes’.
‘What—’
‘Not a good job. But a job. In a travel agency’.
‘Rosa—’
‘Don’t start’.
‘You’re so bright and beautiful,’ Edie said, ‘I don’t want you wasting yourself’.
‘Nor do I’. ‘Darling—’
‘Mum,’ Rosa said, interrupting. ‘What’s going on with you?’
‘Oh, that’.
‘Yes, that. I can tell there’s something’. ‘Well,’ Edie said, ‘I got the part’. ‘Mum! The Ibsen?’
‘Yes. Isn’t it odd?’
‘Odd?’
‘Yes. To get a part you don’t want when you weren’t trying’.
‘You do want it’.
‘Maybe’.
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ Rosa said. Her throat hurt, as if she were about to cry. ‘Congratulations. It’s brilliant’.
‘We’ll see,’ Edie said. ‘Read-through on Tuesday. I get to meet my stage son. Have you heard from Matthew?’
‘No—’
‘What about this flat he and Ruth are buying?’ Rosa put her hand to her throat. ‘It sounds all very hip young professional—’ ‘Darling, I wish—’
‘I don’t want an urban loft, Mum. Or a job in the City’. ‘Have you spoken to Ben?’ ‘I haven’t spoken to anyone’. ‘Rose, are you all right?’
Rosa shut her eyes. She mouthed, ‘Don’t keep asking’ at the ceiling. Then she said loudly, ‘Fine’. ‘If you’re not OK—’
‘I am. Ring me and tell me how Tuesday goes’.
‘Oh,’ Edie said, ‘OK’.
‘How is Dad?’ ‘In his shed’. ‘You’re joking’.
‘Would I?’
‘Give him my love,’ Rosa said.
‘Darling—’
‘Back to Mr Sheen!’ Rosa called. She held the phone away from her ear.
Edie’s voice came faintly from it, thin and small.
‘Bye, Mum!’
She went slowly into the kitchen, and leaned against the sink. Edie in her kitchen, herself in Kate’s, Matt and Ruth no doubt buying Alessi-inspired kettles for theirs, Ben and Naomi blissfully not giving kitchens a thought. She sighed. She had not given her mother what she wanted, on the telephone. She knew that she hadn’t given it because she couldn’t, for all the tired old reasons of loyalty and disloyalty that bedevil family life, the kind of reasons that made her mother and her mother’s sister ring each other and bitch about each other daily in equal measure. She leaned against the sink and folded her arms. It struck her, with a small ray of dawning hopefulness, that this thought of her aunt coming into her head might not be totally arbitrary and that, beyond fathers and mothers in the leaky support system provided by families, there could sometimes also be aunts. Rosa stood straighter and laid the rubber gloves down on the now gleaming draining board. Then she went thoughtfully back towards the sitting room, and her
mobile phone.
‘I’m playing Osvald,’ the young man said. Edie smiled at him. ‘I guessed’.
He gave a small snort of laughter.
‘Not difficult, with a cast of five—’
He had fine features and the slight build Edie had always somehow associated with First World War poets.
He said, ‘Well, we’re the same colouring, anyway. Mother and son’.
She gave him an appraising glance.
‘I expect you got your height from your father—’
He grinned.
‘Among other things’.
‘I know,’ Edie said. ‘What a play’.
‘Not much light relief—’
‘That means rehearsals will be hilarious. They always are, if the play is dark’. The young man said, ‘My name’s Lazlo’. ‘I know. Very exotic’. ‘My sister’s called Ottolie’. ‘Is she an actor?’ Lazlo shook his head.
‘She’s almost a doctor’. He made a little gesture. ‘I’ve never played Ibsen before’.
‘Nor me. Not really’.
‘I didn’t think I had a hope—’
‘Nor me’.
‘It was an awful casting—’
‘Horrible’.
He smiled at her.
‘But here we are, Mama’.
‘I think,’ Edie said, smiling back, ‘you call me Mother dear. At least, in this version’. He bowed a little. ‘Mother dear’.
She looked across the room. A dark girl with her curls tied on top of her head with an orange scarf was standing in an extravagant dancer’s pose, feet and hips sharply angled, talking to the director.
‘What do you think of Regina?’
He turned his head.
‘Scary’.
‘You get to kiss her’. ‘Double scary’.
‘In two weeks’ time,’ Edie said, ‘you won’t be thinking that for an instant’.
He said, almost eagerly, ‘I’ve only been out of drama school a year, you see—’
She looked at him, full in the face. Then she smiled and took his hand.
‘How absolutely lovely,’ Edie said.
Barney had insisted that Kate take a taxi to work. It was her first Monday morning, after all, after feeling too terrible to leave the flat for three weeks, and he was taking no chances. He had booked the cab himself, and left a twenty-pound note weighted with an orange on the kitchen table, to pay for it. ‘Just this once,’ Kate said.
Second Honeymoon Page 8
