Another World (7 page)

It’s impossible. He’d hit a dog once, a young Labrador, and the whole bonnet had crumpled under the impact. There’s no way the car can be undamaged. The headlights throw his distorted shadow far up the road. Unless there was no impact. He thinks back, and he’s almost sure he neither heard nor felt an impact. Nor had he felt the bump of the wheels going over a body. He bends down, shaking, finds sweetheart sticking to the legs of his trousers and peels it off, automatically, trying to think. No impact, and since he’d seen the girl fall under the wheels, no impact meant no girl. Hypnogogic hallucination. Must have been, can’t have been anything else. He’d been drowsy, mesmerized by the swish of wipers and the flick-flickering of his lights across the trees.

What should he do? He sits in the driver’s seat with his feet on the road and lights a cigarette. Go to the police? He’ll be breathalized. Well, he’s all right, he’s pretty sure he’s all right. In any case that’s not the point. The point is there’s been no accident. There’s nothing to report. He double checks the bumper. Nothing could hit the car without leaving some trace, and the bumper’s unscathed. He lets the relief wash over him, ashamed, a second later, that he could have run round like that, gasping and panicking, not thinking at all.

He tries to recall the girl, but her face was whited out by the glare of the headlights. An impression of long hair and a long skirt, as she came running out from the trees. Nothing more individual than that. Where had she been running to? The only house on this stretch of road is Lob’s Hill. Though if she’s the product of an over-tired mind, it makes no sense to ask where she was running to.

The house is in darkness when he arrives. He goes to the living room first, spends a few moments looking at the painting, and then slowly, unbuttoning his shirt, climbs the stairs. His mind fizzes. He can smell his armpits, a fear-sweat smell unlike any other, and despises himself for it. On the landing he undresses and then, naked, goes into the bedroom.

EIGHT

Fran sees a silhouette against the landing light, sharply black and slim, so that for a moment, waking from deep sleep, she feels a jolt of fear. Almost unconsciously she moves to give him room as he climbs into bed, and begins groping for sleep again, only to realize he’s lying awake beside her, flat on his back, his skin, where his thigh touches hers, burning hot. Grandfather ill, cancer, she remembers. ‘How is he?’

‘Bad.’

She mumbles some kind of response.

‘I had a bit of a shock on the way back. I thought I’d hit something.’

‘But you didn’t?’

‘No, it’s all right.’

Rabbits and hedgehogs and the occasional bird lie in crumpled and bloody heaps all along the back lane that leads from their house to the main road. It’s awful, but what can you do? She squeezes his hand in token consolation and turns away. He curls around her, and after a few seconds she feels the stir and rise of his cock.

‘Nick.’

‘I know, I know.’ He presses his face into the hollow between her shoulder blades, lifting her hair and running his mouth from side to side, a slow sweeping kiss. A hand comes round, cradling her breasts, fingertips find her nipples, tweak gently.

‘I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,’ Fran says dryly. ‘You might get more than you bargain for.’

They lie tensely locked together; she waits for him to give up and turn away, but he doesn’t, and part of her’s thinking, It’s not much fun for him. He does try to help, only now he’s got his grandfather to worry about, and he just seems to look on helplessly as control of the domestic situation slithers out of her grasp. Between them, Jasper and the unborn baby are eating her alive.

Responding to her tension, the baby heaves itself across her stomach, one of its cosmonaut somersaults. It’s nobody’s fault, she thinks, and it won’t go on for ever, but meanwhile Nick hasn’t had sex for weeks, months, and almost involuntarily she arches her back, giving him an easier entrance. ‘I won’t move,’ Nick says. ‘I’ll just lodge him inside.’ And she wants to giggle at his self-deception, does giggle, and he gasps as he feels the nudge of her downward-shaken womb. He begins to move, tentatively, asking on held breath, ‘You all right?’ ‘Fine,’ she says, still sleepily, then starts to get interested. She likes this position, though generally, after a few minutes, they switch to her lying over the edge of the bed and Nick kissing her, but his thrusts become faster and deeper, his hand on her hip braces and tightens, and then with a cry he’s shuddering and jerking and pouring himself into her. Painful tweaking of the skin on her hips follows as he cries out and convulses and sobs, yes
sobs
, and what the fuck, she thinks, do you have to sob about?

Afterwards they lie side by side on their backs, staring into the dark. He says, ‘That was all right, wasn’t it?’ and she says, ‘Was it?’

‘I didn’t know whether you wanted to come.’

‘You didn’t try to find out.’

‘I could kiss you down there. Come on, Fran, please… Please?’

‘Don’t bother.’

She turns over. After lying for a while, irritatingly exuding guilt, Nick rolls away from her, and though she tosses and turns and heaves deep sighs it’s not long before he starts to snore.

When she wakes next morning he’s still snoring.

He’ll be full of guilt when he wakes up.

Not full enough.

Today’s Sunday and they’re going for a day out to Fleete House, where, Nick seems to think, the Fanshawes lived after they left Lob’s Hill. But the thought of having to organize it all: the nappies, the sandwiches, the orange juice, the cans of coke, the car seat, the pushchair, the beaker, the potty – in case Jasper starts to think its absence means he needn’t bother – makes her want to vomit.

Lying there, lazily, in the last few minutes before Jasper wakes and roars for attention, she dips her fingers between her legs and sniffs them. That warm, kippery smell of fucked-the-night-before cunt, the best smell in the world. Normally she’d have invited Nick to join in, but not after last night. Her fingers move further down to the episiotomy scar, soon to be cut open for the third time. She wonders how Nick would react if somebody proposed cutting his scrotum open without a general anaesthetic and then repeating the procedure, twice. He isn’t keen on the idea of a vasectomy – the Big Snip, he calls it – though it’s the obvious solution for somebody who grows ten thumbs at the sight of a Durex packet.

Jasper’s chuntering rises to a yell. Fran gets out of bed, staggers out into the landing, feeling dizzy as she always does when she gets up too quickly, and trips over the tangle of jeans and underpants Nick’s left on the landing. He’d only got undressed out there because he was trying not to disturb her, but that doesn’t stop her feeling angry. Lifting the heap of clothes on one bare foot, she kicks it halfway downstairs.

Jasper’s leaning on the rail of his cot in that four-square John Bull way, the way a man stands when he’s inordinately proud of what he’s got between his legs, though what Jasper’s got is a sodden nappy that drops to the floor with a disgusting plop as she picks him up. ‘You stink,’ she says. His bottom’s wet and cold against her arm, as she carries him along the corridor to the bathroom – pausing to bang on Gareth’s door as she goes past – and runs the bath.

The bathroom’s lovely, almost her favourite room in the house, though the window’s so closed around with roses that the room seems dark. Green, rather. A submarine light with fugitive shadows of leaves chasing each other across the wall.

She runs a shallow bath and puts Jasper in. It’s easier to hose him down than to wipe him. ‘You’re going to see Paddington Bear today,’ she tells him. He’s concentrating on a yellow plastic duck that, when squeezed, squirts jets of water high into the air. One spurt hits her in the eye, and he roars with laughter as she gasps and blinks. Like father, like son, she thinks, and lifts him out to dry.

Gareth ignores the bang on the door. With any luck he’ll get half an hour on the new game, before Mum bursts in rabbiting on about family togetherness and all that crap. The screen glows gently in the gloom of the closed curtains. While he waits for the computer to finish loading, he reads the back of the box.

There is no doubt that you are being watched, by whom and by what life form is not determined. Even Spock has not been able to accurately assess this data. The occurrences are just too strange. Is that truly an ancient WWI triplane heading straight for you at Warp 9? How can your sensors suddenly report life forms on a dead planet…?

He feels pressure on the back of his neck. The sense of somebody in the room behind him’s so strong he almost turns round, thinking it must be Mum telling him to for God’s sake switch the damn thing off and get dressed. But she’d have spoken by now, and Gareth’s too frightened to turn round.

Instead, he goes on looking straight ahead. He sees his own shadowy reflection in the screen, but can’t be sure there’s nobody else there. In a small voice he hardly recognizes as his, he says, ‘Please go away.’

Nobody answers. After a few moments the pressure on the back of his neck’s lifted and he knows he’s alone.

‘Why do babies need so much stuff?’ Nick asks, pushing rolled-up nappies into the plastic duffel bag with its design of blue frolicking teddy bears, while Fran tries to squeeze the potty into the zipped compartment underneath. He knows the answer, he’s just trying to break the thunderous silence Fran’s maintained since breakfast, but she’s in no mood to respond to overtures.

‘If you don’t mind him shitting on the car seat say so and I’ll leave some of it behind.’

‘Miran–’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’

Oh, Fran thinks, I see. Either Barbara managed things better or Miranda was the first baby to be born with a miraculous self-wiping arse. ‘Pass the nappy liners, will you?’

Nick hands them over in silence, then goes into the hall to hurry Miranda and Gareth along. Miranda appears at the top of the stairs wearing the same long skirt and T-shirt she’s been wearing since she arrived. He wishes she’d make more effort, but he doesn’t know how to say so; anyway, she has enough to cope with. There’s no sign of Gareth.

‘What’s Gareth doing?’

‘Cleaning his teeth.’

Oh, God. ‘Bang on the bathroom door, will you? Tell him we’ll go without him.’

Nick goes back into the living room to find Fran struggling with the toggles on another plastic bag. ‘Is that it?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Dink,’ says Jasper.

‘You can’t have one,’ says Nick.

‘Oh, give him one. He’ll only scream.’

Nick unpacks the bag, pours orange juice into a beaker and watches as Jasper raises it unsteadily to his lips. He manages without spilling any. ‘Good boy,’ Nick says, stroking his hair. ‘Do you know the fontanel’s completely closed now?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I think so.’

He investigates Jasper’s scalp, pressing gently here and there. Fran comes to look too, and they stare in joint fascination at the small blond head they’ve produced between them.

‘Mum… ‘ Gareth says.

They look up guiltily, as if they’ve been caught in an illicit threesome, to find the two older children staring at them accusingly from the door.

‘OK,’ Fran says. ‘Get in the car.’

Nick looks at her, at the stained T-shirt and straggly hair, and says, ‘You’re not going like that?’

Abruptly, she starts to cry. ‘It’s all very well for you. By the time I’ve got everything ready there’s no time for me.’

The children gawp at her.

‘Get in the car!’ Nick shouts.

Miranda darts him a reproachful look, then stalks out without a word. Gareth bangs the door.

They’re left alone. Nick sits in one of the armchairs and listens to Fran cry, which she does very thoroughly, giving herself up to the sobs. Jasper stares at her, tries an experimental whimper, then moves closer to his father, resting one pudgy fist on his knee.

‘What’s wrong, Fran? What is it?’ Nick asks as a gap in the sobs seems to be approaching.

‘I don’t know.’ She wipes the tears away angrily. ‘It’s nothing, I’m just tired.’

‘Would you like to stay here and get some sleep? I’ll cope with them.’

‘No, it’s all right.’ She looks down at herself, at the outstretched, abandoned, puppet legs. ‘I just don’t like what I’ve turned into, that’s all.’

‘It’s not for ever.’

She wipes her nose on the back of her hand. ‘Feels like it.’

‘Be better when we’ve got the house straight.’

She looks at the wall painting. ‘They’d have had servants, wouldn’t they? The Fanshawes.’

‘I suppose so. No birth control, though, or nothing reliable anyway.’

Ours wasn’t, Fran thinks.

‘Not that ours was,’ Nick says, with an apologetic laugh. ‘Still, the Great Snip will be.’

Great snip, she thinks scornfully. You don’t know you’re born. But she feels friendlier towards him than she has all morning, and by the time she’s combed her hair and changed her T-shirt she’s able to look out of the window at the milky blue of the sky and think, with some anticipation of pleasure, It’s going to be a real scorcher.

‘Christ, it’s fucking hot,’ says Paddington Bear. He’s standing on a patch of grass outside a circus tent, and the remark’s addressed to nobody in particular.

‘Look, Jasper,’ Nick says. ‘Paddington’s waving. Are you going to wave back?’

He half expects Jasper to be frightened of a six-foot-tall bear in a sou’wester, duffel coat and red wellies, but Jasper takes one look, pulls his hand free of Nick’s, and hurls himself on to the wellies with all the abandonment of a rubber fetishist. Paddington bends down, rather clumsily because of the wadding round his middle, and pats Jasper on the head before straightening up and saying, ‘Hello, Prof. How you doing?’

‘Fine,’ Nick replies, trying to place the voice.

‘Buddle,’ says Paddington in muffled tones. Losing patience, he takes off his head. ‘Buddle,’ he says again, running his fingers through his sweaty hair.

‘Hello,’ Nick says.

‘Can’t get a job,’ says Buddle, answering the unspoken question.

‘But you got a First.’

‘I think that’s part of the trouble.’

Buddle notices a family with three children approaching and starts to replace his head. At that moment Jasper looks up, sees a headless bear and screams. Nick picks him up and tries to console him as Buddle lumbers off, shouting loudly, ‘Marmalade sandwiches!’, ‘Luggage labels!’ and ‘Peru!’

That’s what a First in psychology does for you, Nick thinks, hoisting Jasper on to his shoulders and setting off in search of Fran. The position does his neck no good at all, but Jasper loves it, twining his fingers painfully round chunks of hair. Wonder he’s not bald. ‘Ow, Jasper.’ Jasper laughs.

Gareth’s walking on stilts, Miranda’s juggling with leather balls, kids all round them are skipping and playing skittles. Fran’s sitting on the grass watching them, looking a bit better, Nick thinks. ‘Come on, let’s go to the house. They’ll be all right here.’

A steep slope leads to the house. ‘Do you think it’s the same Fanshawes?’ Fran asks.

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘He must have gone up in the world.’ She nods to the house that towers over them, against a landscape of wooded hills.

‘Yes, well, he did. Made his money in the First World War, munitions. 1919 – ’ Nick spreads his arms to indicate the grandeur before them.

The question’s settled for them as soon as they enter the house, for there, in the hall, is a portrait of Sir William Fanshawe, older, but unmistakably the man on the wall, same keen gaze, same voracious intelligence. Sadder, perhaps. But then we all get sadder, Nick thinks.

‘I feel quite embarrassed for him, don’t you?’ Fran says.

‘No – oh, you mean his dick?’ Nick’s pulling money out of his back pocket. ‘No, green with envy, actually.’

The staircase leads to a long gallery, lined with Victorian paintings of no great merit. Wounded animals, blood on their paws, crying children, glistening tears on rounded cheeks, obsessively lingered over.

‘I don’t like his taste,’ Fran says, pausing in front of a dog that’s lying in the snow next to its dead master. ‘It’s very old-fashioned, isn’t it? I mean it’s old-fashioned for the twenties. You’d think the war had never happened, it’s –’