Close Relations (21 page)

‘Welcome, everybody, to our Christmas party!' Prudence's voice rang out, clear and confident. Like all good professionals, she looked as if she were enjoying herself. ‘It's been a year of upheaval and change – new premises, new owners. B&B has been dragged, somewhat protestingly, into the brave new world of publishing but I'm thrilled to be leading our editorial team and, with Unimedia back-up, we've had our most successful Frankfurt ever . . .'

Next to Maddy, people stirred. She turned. A bearded man stood at the back of the room, swaying. He wore a raincoat; he must have just come through the door. Even at this distance Maddy could see that he was drunk.

‘And we have a marvellous spring list,' said Prudence. ‘Some of our favourite writers are here tonight – Corey Deacon, author of
I Can't Get Enough – Feminism and Pasta in
the Millennium
. . .'

It was Stephen. Maddy recognised him now.

‘. . . Stanley Dibbs, author of the wildly successful Detective Patel series . . . Erin Fox, whose first novel
Playing with Fire
is one of our leading fiction titles –' She saw Stephen. ‘So fill up your glasses and have a wonderful evening –'

‘And don't let anything spoil your fun!' Stephen bellowed.

Maddy pushed her way through the crowd and grabbed his arm. ‘Stephen, shut up!'

He pulled away. ‘After all, what do thirty redundancies matter? We're only people!'

‘Let's go,' muttered Maddy.

‘Our children asking us
Daddy, why aren't you going to work today?
' he shouted. ‘What's a bit of human misery when it comes to the bottom line?'

Someone tittered. Prudence hurried over. Together with Maddy she half-pushed Stephen out of the room and down the corridor. He stumbled ahead, like a clockwork toy. Prudence opened her office and pulled him in.

On the carpet was heaped a pile of belongings – a suitcase, a hold-all, some bulging carrier bags.

Prudence stared. ‘What's happened?'

‘I've left her,' he said.

‘What?'

‘I did it. I left Kaatya.'

‘What about your kids?' demanded Maddy.

He sank to the floor as if his strings had snapped. He started shuddering. Prudence knelt beside him.

‘Can I get you anything?' she asked. ‘Coffee? Water?'

‘I feel like a murderer,' he said. ‘Their faces, Pru . . . when I was leaving . . . Pieter turned away and went up to his room . . . Dirk just stood there looking at me, tears running down his face . . .'

‘You're making her feel really great,' said Maddy.

He raised his head and looked at Prudence. His hair was sandy but his beard was a startling ginger colour; it looked as
if he had dipped his chin in blood. ‘Have you got room for me?'

‘Of course,' said Prudence, stroking his head.

‘A drunk, a murderer . . . Christ, I really put the kibosh on your party, didn't I . . . Are you sure you want me?'

‘Of course I want you,' she said. ‘Isn't that the point of all this?'

She leaned down and kissed him. Maddy got up and left them to it. She closed the door behind her. Erin was waiting in the corridor.

Maddy said: ‘And I used to think my sister was intelligent.'

‘Sorry,' said Stephen. ‘I seem to have spread.' He gathered together the newspapers.

Prudence had come in from work. It was two days later. Stephen, lulled by the inertia of the unemployed and the fumes of her gas-effect fire, had been dozing in the armchair.

She picked up the Appointments page and looked at it. ‘Why do all the jobs seem to be for commis chefs?'

‘And typists with Windows.'

‘As opposed to doors. You don't have computer skills, do you?'

He shook his head. ‘My secretaries did all that stuff.'

She sat down. ‘There must be something.'

‘Are you glad I barged into your lovely ordered life?'

‘It wasn't lovely,' she said, ‘without you in it.'

‘Leaving the loo seat up and getting in your way?'

She stroked his leg. Of course she was glad – the word was pitifully inadequate. All day she felt ill with happiness. So far, however, there was a feeling of unreality about it. Despite the physical evidence of his occupation – his hold-all stuffed into her wardrobe, his boxer shorts stuffed into her dirty-linen basket – despite the invigorating air of masculine occupation, she couldn't believe he was really staying. When she opened her door she expected to find the flat empty and a ‘1' on her answerphone.

‘I want you to be here,' she said. ‘I want us to be a real couple, like other people.' She rubbed her cheek against his – he had shaved off his beard, thank God, and his skin felt familiar again. ‘Listen, I'm going to my parents this Sunday. Come with me. That's real enough for anybody.'

If it was strange, having Stephen living in her flat, it was even stranger taking him home. So accustomed was she to keeping him secret that she couldn't slot the two sides of her life together. How would he behave? She had so seldom been with him on any social occasion that she felt they were starting from scratch – the most treacherous of beginnings, under the beady eyes of her family.

Even Maddy was there – she had dropped by to borrow the lawn-mower and had been persuaded to stay to lunch. Maddy was a stranger to discretion. Would she blurt out about his drunken behaviour during the week? It took Prudence by surprise, how much she wanted her parents to like him.

They were in the hallway. Louise's family was already there. She introduced Stephen to them. Stephen looked around. ‘So this is where you grew up.'

‘The Purley Queens,' said Robert. ‘No man was safe.'

Prudence pointed out of the back window. ‘That's our caravan. We used to play in there. Till Lou started to take her boyfriends into it and bribed us to stay away.'

‘She never took
me
in,' said Robert.

‘You wouldn't have liked it,' Louise replied. ‘There were spiders.'

As they stood there, the door of the caravan opened. Gordon stepped out. He made his way across the garden, towards the house.

‘What on earth's he doing in there?' asked Louise.

They went into the lounge. Dorothy went into the kitchen. Gordon came in.

‘What were you doing?' she hissed. ‘I've been looking for
you everywhere.'

‘Just tidying up,' he said.

‘Tidying up? They're here.'

Gordon, who had simply been sitting in the caravan staring at its walls, who had been doing nothing, picked up the tray of drinks. ‘These going in?'

Meanwhile, in the lounge, Prudence whispered to the others: ‘Don't let on that, well, Stephen's married.'

‘Course not,' said Louise.

‘They'll disapprove.
I
disapproved. Until it happened to me.'

Jamie said: ‘Everyone's doing it anyway.'

‘Jamie!' said Louise. ‘Don't be so cynical.'

Gordon came in and put down the tray. He shook Stephen's hand.

‘Gosh, Grandad,' said Imogen. ‘You've got so thin!'

Dorothy said: ‘He's not been looking after himself. The doctor warned us. I'm worried about him.'

‘How do you feel?' Louise asked her father.

‘I'm fine,' he said.

‘He's never here,' said Dorothy. ‘He promised he wouldn't, but he's worse than ever.'

Robert grinned. ‘Up to your old tricks, Gordon?'

‘I never see him from morning to night,' said Dorothy.

Gordon uncorked the wine bottle. ‘I've told her – we're short-staffed at present. I'm three labourers short, my best chippie's off sick –'

‘Leave it to Frank,' said Dorothy. ‘He'll sort it out.'

‘And my chief plasterer seems to have buggered off completely.' He turned to the teenagers. ‘Excuse my language.'

‘He the one with the love nest?' asked Robert.

Dorothy turned to Stephen. ‘He's got these two families who don't know about each other. One in Tufnell Park and the other in Crouch End.'

‘The energy of the man!' said Robert. ‘One has to admire it.'

Prudence said: ‘Dad's lads have very complicated love
lives. Mum's their mother confessor.'

Gordon passed Robert a glass of wine. ‘Hope it meets with your approval,' he said. ‘New Zealand, on your recommendation.'

‘Anyway,' said Dorothy, ‘I've decided that he needs a proper holiday, so I've got these brochures.' She picked them up from the side table. ‘We thought we'd go away for Christmas. It's not too late for some of them.'

Prudence took the brochures. ‘Where're you going to go? Somewhere hot?'

‘We thought Bermuda,' said Dorothy.

‘How lovely!' said Louise.

‘But Dad,' said Maddy, ‘it's full of blacks.'

‘Maddy!' said Dorothy.

Maddy turned to Stephen. ‘Our father calls Africa
Wogland
.'

‘He's only winding you up,' said Prudence.

Imogen put her arm round her grandfather. ‘I think you're lovely. It's just that you probably don't know any. I don't either, there's none at my school.'

Robert laughed. ‘Beaconsfield's not known for its ethnic diversity.'

Louise took the brochure. ‘It looks wonderful.'

‘We've booked this one.' Dorothy pointed. ‘Look, you have your own little hut.'

‘Thatched and everything,' said Louise. ‘How romantic! Like a second honeymoon.'

Gordon remained silent. Prudence looked at him. How pale he looked, pale and shrunken, in the large armchair. ‘It looks wonderful, Dad. Just what you need.'

‘We're flying out on Christmas Eve,' said Dorothy.

‘So you won't be having Christmas with us,' said Louise.

‘Lucky sods!'

‘Jamie!'

Gordon fingered his earlobe. His silence was like a black hole, a vacuum sucking them in. Prudence thought: he's more ill than he admits, but then he never admits anything.

Gordon rallied. He patted Imogen's knee as she sat beside him. ‘You're looking very pretty, Immy.'

‘She's madly in love,' said Louise.

Imogen stiffened.

‘How lovely!' said Dorothy. ‘Who is he?'

‘Her horse,' Louise answered.

Imogen relaxed.

Maddy, who was not attending, gazed around the lounge. She hadn't set foot in The Birches for a long time. The old claustrophobia gripped her. Purley wasn't just a suburb, it was a state of mind. There was no beginning to it and no end. One street led to another, houses and houses and more houses, big houses with their big gardens. What could people possibly do in all those rooms? Didn't they ever want to break out into the world?

She looked at her father. She thought: when he dies, what can he boast? I lived in Purley.

She longed to be home with Erin. She longed to be in their bed, the most adventurous place on earth.

Lunch was over. Jamie had escaped to the caravan. He sat there, eyes closed, inhaling on a joint.

Back in the lounge they were drinking coffee. ‘That was delicious, Dorothy,' said Stephen.

‘Lou thinks I married her for her gorgeous legs,' joked Robert. ‘In fact it was for her mother's roast potatoes.'

Dorothy smiled. She thought how rare it was for them all to be gathered together like this in the companionable inertia of a Sunday afternoon. The presence of an outsider, Stephen, gave her family a solidity that it hadn't possessed for years. She looked at Prudence, who was telling him about the time when they had all had a craze for Cluedo. Prudence's cheeks were flushed; her brown hair, loose around her shoulders, shone. Today she looked the most beautiful of them all. Dorothy thought: how invigorating it must be to have plenty of sex. She blushed. Stephen stood up.

‘Would you mind if I used your phone?'

Dorothy told him there was one upstairs. Prudence watched him leave.

Dorothy refilled her daughter's cup. ‘He's very nice. You've kept him very quiet.'

‘He was my boss,' said Prudence. ‘It was kind of awkward.'

‘Then she got his job,' said Louise.

‘I think it's amazing he's even speaking to you,' said Robert. ‘I wouldn't.'

It would suddenly hit Stephen, the need to speak to his sons. His insides would buckle as if he had been punched in the gut. He remembered when he was a new boy at Bryanston being suddenly winded by homesickness. It was like that but worse, much worse.

He had to check that Dirk and Pieter were still speaking to him, that they were still alive. He had to hear their voices. He kept picturing the house falling down or going up in flames. Had Kaatya bolted the back door and screwed the security locks right in? What if the pilot light went out in the boiler: would she remember to push down that lever thing that stopped the whole thing blowing up when she relit it? And what about all those bloody candles she put everywhere? He pictured his sons – pale, solemn, alone in a world that throbbed with danger. He should be there protecting them. He should be keeping them safe. It was so unnatural to be wrenched away from them; it felt as if nature had been pulled inside out.

He couldn't tell Prudence, of course. It would upset her and make her think he was unhappy. He wasn't unhappy, he was just pining for his sons. Usually he phoned when they got home from school and Prudence was still at work. He needed to be reassured by their voices, however wary – cool, even – they had been during this past week. He needed to reassure them that he was still there, he hadn't gone far. That he loved them. That none of this was due to them, it was
between himself and their mother. Grown-ups changed; sometimes they couldn't live together any more – all that.

He never got this far. He had tried to explain on that nightmarish evening when he'd left home, but they had refused to listen. Now, when he phoned, he just talked about safe, normal things – how was their day? How was Dirk's project going? He felt that he was dabbing ointment, diffidently, on their flinching skin.