Something Good (3 page)

T
he little boy extracted his face from his mother's corduroy skirt. “He's never been anywhere like this before,” the woman told Jane, as if day care centers were quite terrifying with their ladybird-shaped floor cushions and wicker baskets overflowing with toys. The woman glanced anxiously at a group of children who were engrossed in a vigorous game in which toy dinosaurs were being made to charge headlong into each other. There was a sharp
thwack,
a collision of prehistoric skulls.

“Joshua,” Jane said gently, “would you and Mummy like to see our sandpit?”

The boy nodded uncertainly, yet remained unwilling to detach himself from his mother's clothing. He was gripping her tights now, tugging the nylon until it formed a semi-sheer tent. She waggled her leg in a feeble attempt to detach him. Jane had greeted hundreds of new children at Nippers. She excelled at coaxing them away from their mothers' hosiery, their fathers' neatly pressed trousers.

Sally had offered Jane shifts at Nippers when she and Hannah had moved to Albemarle Street. Although it was ideal—a mere five-minute walk from home—Jane had assumed it would just be a stopgap. Having a child of her own had felt so right, yet dealing with other people's kids and their perpetual emissions seemed quite alarming. Here she was, ten years on, now deputy manager and “a part of this place,” as Sally was fond of putting it. It was well-meant but sometimes made Jane feel like an electrical appliance or a radiator.

Jane led Joshua, who was still clinging fiercely to his mother's limb, up the short flight of steps into the main play space. The woman's lips were pressed together in an anxious line. “This is our messy play area,” Jane explained. “Do you like painting, Joshua?”

“Yuh,” he muttered.

His mother scanned the chaotic array of paintings and collages tacked to the walls. “Josh has some allergies,” she murmured, “and there's a piece of old blanket he really can't manage without, I hope you don't think it's silly—”

“That wouldn't be a problem,” Jane said, accustomed to complex dietary intolerances and children who refused to be parted from some strip of damp satin that had once edged a baby blanket.

In the dining area children were guzzling milk from plastic cups. “Isn't this a lovely place, darling?” the woman asked.

Joshua gazed up at Jane. “Like nursery lady,” he whispered.

Jane smiled, thinking,
if only fifteen-year-olds were as easy to win round.
She remembered Hannah the previous night, sounding outraged at being disturbed whilst on the loo. Yet for years, Jane had been unable to go to the bathroom without Hannah scuttling after her. Anytime she'd had the audacity to lock the door, Hannah had shoved madly scrawled notes through the gap beneath it—
Let me in!!! Wot are yoo doing?
—until Jane had abandoned any concept of privacy and allowed Hannah to play with her Tonka digger at her feet.

“If you ask Sally in the office,” Jane told Joshua's mother, “she'll arrange a start date. The extension's nearly finished so we should have a place in a few weeks.”

The boy's hot, damp fingers had curled around Jane's. He tugged hard on her hand, yanking her toward the face-painting table as he ordered, “Come
on.
”

 

“So you're off to Max's new place?” Sally asked.

“Yes—going to see what the hell he's got himself into. According to Hannah, the place is a heap. It was infested with mice when he moved in.”

“Really?” Sally was fearless when confronted by uninvited wildlife. She fed the savage-looking stray cats that prowled around her garden off Hackney Road, and had been known to lurk at her window at 2:00 a.m., hoping to photograph visiting foxes.

“He wants me to make him a stained glass window,” Jane added.

“Oh, right. The place is about to fall down around his ears, but he
must
have stained glass, designed by you, of course….”

Jane laughed as she pulled on her coat. “Who else would he ask? Anyway, he's probably sick of the boring practical stuff—the plumbing and electrics and all that. He wants something…indulgent.”

Sally's mouth twitched as she suppressed a smirk. “Yes,” she said brightly, “of course that's what Max wants.”

 

Jane strode past St. Matthew's church. Its windows consisted of tiny, wizened panes, many of them cracked or missing. Jane yearned to get her hands on those windows. She'd restore them, carefully removing each damaged segment and cutting replacements in colors that virtually matched the original glass.

Hannah was in St. Matthew's right now, in the draughty back hall—home to her theater workshop, the only activity she'd stuck with over the years. She'd come home with rumpled scripts poking out of her bag, but rarely let Jane see them these days. Jane and Max had sat together, watching all the productions—
Calamity Jane
,
Grease
,
Bugsy Malone
—like any ordinary couple.

Soon the familiar streets around London Fields gave way to dingier terraces. There was a dilapidated dentist—its crude plastic sign read “entist”—and a junk shop, its jumbled contents threatening to escape through a half-open door. Jane paused, hating that she had to stop and consult her A-Z so close to home, despite Max's directions. Drizzle dampened the pages as she peered at the tangle of streets.

She memorized the next few turns, passing a dingy-looking Turkish restaurant, its window obscured by crooked Venetian blinds, and a huddled pub with a spiral staircase that coiled down to a sinister-looking club. And finally, here it was: Max's street, a curving terrace of once-proud houses, now weighed down by age and neglect. Jane stared up at Max's house. Its roof sagged gently in the middle, as if it had been sat on. The windows were grimy, their frames peeling, exposing blackened wood. This was the worst-looking house on the street. Why had he taken it on? He'd told her that he was planning to do most of the renovation work himself. He'd fitted out the cycle shop, all those years ago, transforming an unpromising kebab shop into a thriving business. Spokes had been voted Best London Cycle Shop in
Your Bike
magazine for its “nonelitist atmosphere” and “friendly, personal service.” Max had done all that. He wasn't one of those DIY bodgers who severed electrical cables or pierced themselves with drills. Yet this was too much. How would he find the time to fix it all up?

Jane hurried up the stone steps and tried the old-fashioned brass doorbell, knowing it wouldn't work. She rapped on the glass, tried the handle and pushed the door open. “Max?” she called. “It's me.”

Frantic hammering was coming from upstairs. Jane stepped into the hallway, breathing in chalky air. The walls were municipal green paint over woodchip. Now she understood. She remembered the excitement she'd felt when she and Max had found their perfect house. She'd hurried from room to room, ignoring hideous pansy-patterned wallpaper because she'd known it was right. Max had given her that raised-eyebrow look—code for,
this is it, isn't it?
Inside Jane's belly, their baby had flipped. She'd signalled back,
yes, this is it.

“Where are you?” Jane shouted.

The hammering stopped, and someone called down, “Veronica?”

For a moment, Jane panicked that she'd marched into the wrong house. Someone else lived here—some stranger, with a woman called Veronica. She shrank back toward the front door.

Max appeared on the landing. “God…hi,” he blustered. “Is it that time already?”

“Am I too early?” Jane asked stiffly.

“No, of course not.” His dark hair was flecked with dust, his jeans ripped at the knees and splattered with paint. He never seemed to age, not really. He had a boyish face, was always laughing or chatting—
engaging
with people. Everyone liked him: his staff, his customers. And, Jane assumed, this
Veronica
person.

“Come up,” he said. “I'll show you round—not that there's much to see.” Max laughed uncomfortably. “Anyway, you found it.”

“Easy,” Jane fibbed, wondering if she should ask about Veronica—whether he was seeing anyone—and decided it wouldn't be right, interrogating him the minute she'd walked in. Max's love life was none of her business.

Jane climbed the bare wooden stairs and followed Max toward an open door at the far end of the landing. Through his thin gray T-shirt she could see the contours of his lean back and shoulders. His lithe body had stunned her the first time she'd seen him naked. She'd wanted to stop what they were doing with their hands and mouths and study him, tracing every muscle and bone. She'd had an urge to draw him, and later she had, although she'd destroyed her sketches soon after the thing had happened, ripping them into confetti scraps. She hadn't known then that cycling had made him taut and lean; that bikes consumed him. Later, after Hannah had been born, he'd spend hours disassembling gear systems amidst her toys on the living room floor. He'd finally come to bed, smelling of metal and oil, after Jane had drifted into half-sleep. Sometimes she'd wondered if he'd have been keener to come to bed if she'd possessed pedals and gears.

Jane followed him into a bedroom that overlooked the street. It was huge and airy, filled with light and possibilities. “It's lovely,” she said, and it was, despite anaglypta walls and a ripped lampshade dangling cock-eyed from the center light.

Downstairs, in the shabby melamine kitchen, Max spooned instant coffee into chipped mugs bearing the Spokes logo. “It just felt right,” he said, pulling up the chair opposite Jane. “I spotted it in the estate agent's window—the one at Limehouse station—and I couldn't believe the price….”

“Max,” Jane said, “what really made you move? I mean, why now?”

He looked down at his mug. “Thought it was time I got on the ladder….”

Jane spluttered. “What, the property ladder? When did you ever care about stuff like that?”

He shrugged. “I told you, I couldn't let this place go.”

“You wanted a project?”

“Yes, I suppose I did.” He smiled sheepishly. “So, d'you think Hannah will like the big bedroom?”

“Won't you be sleeping there?” Jane asked.

Max stood up, strolled across the kitchen and swilled out his mug at the sink. “I tried sleeping there the first couple of nights. It felt too big, too—”

He turned from the sink, and looked at Jane. She studied his face; the deep brown of his eyes, the softness of his lips. It wasn't right, the way his eyes still drew her in. She tried to focus on the melamine cupboards.

“Too
empty,
Max?” came a voice from the doorway.

Jane swung round. A woman with great swathes of fair hair and red lips stood at the kitchen door, grinning broadly. “I can understand that,” she added. “Single guy—must feel a bit lonely in there, eh, Max?” She strode toward Jane. “Veronica Fox, neighbor of Max's, three doors down. Been helping him out, making sure he's eating properly.”

“Eating properly?” Jane spluttered.

Veronica frowned, then quickly corrected her face and lowered her dainty rear on to a kitchen chair. She was wearing a fitted suit in pinky-purply tweed—the colors of heather—that clashed rather nastily with the ageing tangerine cupboards. Over her shoulder was slung a burgundy mock-croc bag. “Terribly busy, isn't he,” she ventured, “with the bike shop?”

“Yes, he is.” Jane forced a smile.

“And so clever, building it up from scratch. That's dedication for you. I like a man who knows what he wants.” She smirked suggestively. Jane's smile had congealed. Max, who had gone rather pink around the cheeks, was fiddling with the kettle flex.

“Like some coffee, Veronica?” he asked.

“No thanks. You know I don't take it.”

“Oh, of course.” He dropped a tea bag into a mug but made no move to fill the kettle or switch it on. His teeth were jammed together; Jane could sense the tension in his neck. Clearly, Veronica was no stranger here. Max knew that she didn't “take” coffee.

An awkward silence settled around them, as if a teacher had marched in and caught them smoking. “So, do you like living around here?” Jane asked, floundering.

Veronica grimaced. “All I could afford after the divorce. It's lovely, though, isn't it, Max? My place?”

“Yes, um, it is,” he muttered. Perspiration gleamed on his forehead.

“Had it gutted, soon as I bought it.
Threw
money at it, Jane, the way you have to in order to get the job done. You're down London Fields way, aren't you?”

“Yes, opposite the park.” Jane glanced from Veronica to Max. Were they seeing each other or what? Surely he'd have told her? It wouldn't
bother
her—Max's private life was his business—but still, she felt hurt. He'd always told her about his dates, his short-lived relationships; they'd chortle over the women's eccentricities from the safety of distance once it was all over. Jane had especially enjoyed hearing about the woman who worked as a life model—spent the best part of her week stark naked in front of strangers—yet had insisted on wearing a button-up nightie to bed. “Well,” Jane said, “nice to meet you Veronica, but I'd better get back. Hannah, my daughter—”