Close Relations (15 page)

‘When did this happen? After you came to dinner?'

Maddy pulled at a thread on her sweater. ‘She kissed me. It was like – all my life I'd been asleep and she woke me up.'

‘Have you – er, been attracted to women before? God, I sound like someone on Channel 4.'

‘You mean, am I a lesbian or have I just fallen in love with Erin?' Maddy raised her face – her square, honest face. Her cheeks were flushed. ‘I don't know. I don't know anything. I'm just so happy.'

Prudence put her arm around her sister. Maddy stood there, stiffly. She wasn't a demonstrative person.

‘Don't tell – you know,' she said.

‘Poor Dad,' said Prudence. ‘It'd give him another heart attack.'

‘. . . our own sister! Does she look different? What did she say?' Louise picked up an empty yoghurt pot and flung it into the bin. With her free hand she was tidying up her daughter's room. ‘Do we call her a lesbian or gay? We're out of touch here and I don't want to get it wrong. Trouble is they're always changing the word, aren't they, like the blacks, and it's bound to be the wrong one.' She clenched the phone against her shoulder, bent down, and sorted through a heap of dirty tights. Down the line Prudence's voice faded, either
through distance or excitement. ‘Wish I was a lesbian.' Louise carried the underwear into the bathroom. ‘No horrible children with their horrible horrible mess.' She dumped the clothes into the laundry basket and glared at the bath. ‘Why don't they ever clean the bath? It looks like someone's washed a warthog in there.
And
she's used my body rub.' Dreamily, she said: ‘No more adolescent daughters with their bloody hormones . . .'

When she put down the phone she wondered if she had been tactless to complain about her children to Pru. Pru's childlessness was something that was no longer mentioned between them, and though Louise presumed that by now her sister had come to terms with it – indeed, she suspected that Prudence never really wanted children in the first place – she also knew that, to the childless, a complaining parent is more hurtful than a boasting one, just as millionaires' complaints grate more harshly than their self-satisfaction.

Louise, like her father, was not by and large a reflective person. She lived instinctively, through her senses. She cooked, she mothered, she was stroked and loved. She heaved shopping bags and pulled up leeks, smelling the earth on her fingers. It was her surface that dazzled the world. Beneath it, her mind was unexercised. She felt the rusty cogs turning as she tried to reorganise her thoughts about her younger sister. Had Maddy always been a lesbian, was this the clue to her? Since childhood Maddy had been obstreperous and difficult, at odds with their father and, now Louise thought about it, men in general: their maths teacher at school; an apparent sadist called Barney who ran the project in Canada, and several others besides. Did lesbianism make sense of this, combing out the tangles of Maddy's psyche like cream conditioner, leaving her sister silky and manageable? Or was life more complicated than that? The whole thing was such a shock – deeply fascinating, but a shock. Louise had never met this Erin woman but by all accounts she was a powerful, charismatic creature. Had she corrupted Maddy or liberated her? For all her truculence,
Maddy was a vulnerable person who had always felt inadequate. Maybe this woman was just what she needed. Despite this, Louise felt lonely. Her sister was a lesbian. Applying this unfamiliar word made Maddy lost to her.

Meanwhile, their father lay in hospital, himself transformed into a statistic – a Heart-attack Victim. Though there was every hope of a recovery he too had been jolted away from her: in this case, towards death. Of the three sisters Louise had the closest bond with their father. All her life she had pleased him by her beauty and compliance. Her life was understandable to him – motherhood, home, the upholstery of wealth. His pride in her, though embarrassing at times, was something she had long taken for granted. She was a simpler person than her two sisters, and her anxiety about him was unmuddied by the currents that his brush with death had stirred up in the hearts of the other two.

Adolescents, on the other hand, are blessedly self-absorbed. Imogen was out riding. When she galloped the wind blew away her preoccupations but when she reined in Skylark they settled on her again like flies, briefly disturbed but returning buzzingly to crowd her. Was her chin too big? Were her breasts too flat?
Yes.
What did Karl really think of her, did he really want to show her the badger's sett?
‘You're just a kid,'
he had said. What did he mean by that? She had replayed the scene so many times that it had lost all meaning, like her
Blackadder
videos. Oh his curly hair, dampened with sweat! The ruddiness of his neck . . . the battered leather apron slung around his hips . . .

It was a clear November morning. She rode along Westcott Ridge, following the bridle path. A chain-saw whined in the woods. She smelled her horse's sweat and the corrupt scent of silage. Down below lay a secret valley. A farmhouse nestled there, snug between the thighs of the hills. She lived there with Karl. In the mornings she flung open the door and threw grain to her chickens. Chunk, chunk . . . Karl was chopping
wood. At night they climbed into bed, a brass bed with a featherdown duvet, and the moonlight shone through the window and silvered their faces. How immature Jamie's friends seemed, how giggly the girls at school! Imogen rode down the track, between the sighing pines. She rode along the main road into the village, past the council houses, past the cottages. She rounded the bend. There, in front of her, lay the village green. The church clock struck one. Outside the pub, Karl's van was parked.

Imogen's heart lurched. She reined in Skylark and dismounted. Her legs filled with liquid. She fiddled with Skylark's bridle. She adjusted the girths, glancing under the horse's neck at the door of the pub. She willed Karl to come out. She willed him with the muscle in her brain she had used since she was a child . . . If I count to ten . . . if I squeeze tight . . .

The door opened. Karl came out. She mounted her horse and rode over.

‘Hi,' he said. ‘Shouldn't you be at school?'

‘I don't go in all the time now. I'm doing my A levels.'

He grinned. ‘And studying hard, I see.' He wore a donkey jacket; a spotted scarf was knotted round his neck.

‘I think better when I ride.'

He looked at her horse. ‘Shoes okay?'

‘Fine.'

‘Be seeing you then. Cheers.' He climbed into his van and drove off.

She drank in the scent of his exhaust smoke. Thoughtfully, she rode home. She dismounted and led Skylark into the stable. Thoughtfully, she gazed at Skylark's hooves.

Then she went to her father's toolbox and took out a pair of pliers.

April was thirty – older than he had thought at first. She had such smooth skin, shiny as a plum. She was as ripe as a fruit. When she laughed, which was often, Gordon was startled by
the whiteness of her teeth. She was the only nurse who bothered to sit and talk to him. As the days passed he became entranced with the soap opera of her life, whose cast of characters was becoming as familiar to him as members of his own family.

On Wednesday she brought him in some cassettes. She put them on his bed, one by one. ‘Alanis Morisette . . . Nina Simone . . . ,' she said. ‘I like women singing about what a mess their lives are.'

He smiled. ‘Because yours is so sorted out, right?' He settled down with relish. ‘So go on, what happened yesterday, with the boxing promoter?'

‘Well, he signed Dennis up and they both came home totally legless, with these other blokes, and they started singing and the people upstairs kept banging on the ceiling, and I'm trying to get some sleep. Then my aunty phoned up –'

‘The one whose car burst into flames?'

She nodded. ‘This is three in the morning, mind, and she says she thinks she's got Parkinson's and could I describe the symptoms. And meanwhile there's this crash comes from the lounge. The stupid buggers had been dancing on my glass table –'

She stopped. Dorothy had arrived.

Gordon introduced them. ‘This is April. She's been looking after me.'

‘So pleased to meet you,' said Dorothy, ‘I've heard so much about you. He's doing very well, isn't he?'

‘He's great. He's started reorganising the ward.'

‘Gordon!'

‘Give him a couple more days,' said April, ‘he'll be reorganising the NHS. Probably do a better job than they are.'

She left. Dorothy said: ‘What a nice girl.'

‘Never guess what happened to her last week,' said Gordon. ‘See, she's got this boyfriend, Dennis, sounds a right case to me, always getting into fights and she has to bail him out – well, they live above this optician's place in Brixton –'

Dorothy laid a hand on his arm. ‘Gordon – take it slowly.'

He paused. ‘Forget it.'

She took out some books. ‘Got these out of the library . . .' She put them on his locker. ‘Now, you don't have to worry about a thing. Frank's sorted out that business at Lavender Hill, and they've got the structural report on the Duke's Avenue site, Len's faxed it through, so they can go ahead there. I did the VAT last night.' She paused. ‘Gordon?'

‘What?'

‘Are you all right?'

He said: ‘I nearly died.'

She put her hand on his. ‘No you didn't, love. You're going to be fine. But when you come home you're not to do a thing. No worries, no stress.'

‘But lots of watercress.'

‘What?'

‘Bloke I heard about.'

She nodded. ‘Plenty of healthy food, I'll see to that. And no cheating!' She smiled. ‘Because I can always tell when you've been doing something you shouldn't.'

Night, and the library books lay unread beside him. He half-slumbered in bed, the walkman plugged to his ears. Nina Simone sang ‘In the dark', her voice spread through his veins like black treacle, pulsing.

Gordon lay, surrounded by the ill and the dying. In his bones he felt the thump of the music, the heartbeat of it.

ON WEDNESDAY PRUDENCE
was summoned to the Unimedia chairman's office where she was given a glass of chardonnay and offered Stephen's old job. Though disguised by a new title, editor-in-chief, and a rejigging of the departments, there was no doubt that this was basically the editorial director's position from which Stephen had been so ruthlessly removed. This fact somewhat tempered her pleasure at her promotion, but there was little time to dwell on this because Beveridge and Bunyan was in the throes of packing up in readiness for the move to the new Unimedia headquarters building in Docklands.

The musty old building in Bloomsbury had been sold, the office cat taken home by Muriel, the receptionist, who had been given early retirement. It was the end of the end of an era in British publishing and this, too, contributed to the mixture of emotions Prudence was feeling. Though she despised the old boy network she still felt a certain sentimental attachment to the past, much as those who are not religious feel an affection for churches and would be saddened to see them demolished. Besides, Stephen himself, with his bow ties and Oxford cronies, was part of such a tradition and on the Friday when she left Museum Street for the last time she felt an ache in her ribcage. Unlike her sister Louise, however – soft-hearted Louise – Prudence kept her emotions under control. She was the sensible one, the one upon whom others relied, and when she took her new department out for a lunchtime drink she radiated optimism for the future.

Unimedia House, headquarters of the communications empire, is a vast glass building complete with the regulation atrium and post-modern flourishes. Topped by satellite dishes it is situated in a no man's land of flyovers and building sites between Wapping and the Isle of Dogs. The penthouse boardroom commands a panorama of the River Thames and the smog-blurred skyscrapers of the City. The lobby, a vast expanse of tawny marble, displays clocks which show the time in Tokyo and New York. It is patrolled by security guards whose chests crackle with static. Outside, beyond the slip road and the car-park, the next building is sheathed in mirror-glass; it reflects Unimedia back on itself, a narcissistic contemplation of its own image.

Beveridge and Bunyan had been dusted off and installed on the eleventh floor. On Friday afternoon Prudence and Trish moved into their new office. It was an acreage of mushroom carpeting and white walls. They hesitated, clutching their potted plants; they felt dwindled and amateurish.

The phone rang. Trish grabbed it and said, in a silly voice: ‘Editor-in-chief's office, Trish speaking, how may I help you?' She passed the receiver to Prudence. ‘It's Stephen.'

Prudence grabbed the phone. His voice said: ‘I wanted to be the first to call you. What does it feel like?'

‘Strange. Big. Bare.'

‘Why didn't you tell me they'd given you my job?'

‘It only happened on Wednesday. Where are you?'

‘Outside.'

Prudence moved to the window. Down in the road she glimpsed a figure, standing in a phone booth. With one hand she struggled with the window catch.

‘We're air-conditioned,' said Trish.

Prudence banged on the glass. She beckoned. ‘Come up!' she yelled down the phone.

‘It's okay,' he said.

‘I'm coming down!'

She hurried out. She pressed the button for the lift. There were three of them – glass capsules which crawled up and
down the walls of the atrium. She jumped in one and descended to the ground floor. She clattered across the marble and rushed out into the street.

The phone booth was empty. Stephen had gone.

That week in early November Maddy also moved. She moved in with Erin. It was Erin's suggestion that Maddy live with her and help her with the gardening business. ‘We'll work together, my darling.' She laced her strong chapped fingers through Maddy's. ‘Would you like that?'