Close Relations (32 page)

‘Did I?'

He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. ‘I love you. I would die for you.'

‘Tim, I can't – you can't –'

Monty pressed his nose into Tim's crotch. Louise put her hands around the dog's shoulders and heaved him aside. This gave her an excuse to stand further away.

‘I've tried to start a new life here.' Tim's voice shook. ‘After – you know, after it happened. When me and, you know, when we came here and set up the shop, we were trying to start afresh. But it was no good, Louise. It had all finished by then.' He stepped closer. ‘To tell the truth they could bulldoze the shop tomorrow, I don't care. My only life is with you.' He took her hand and stroked her fingers, one by one. ‘I want to make you happy, we both deserve it, Louise. You're horribly neglected, how could any man do that?'

‘It's not true –'

‘Is there any – just the smallest – chance that by some miracle you could feel the same? Or maybe, one day, feel you could?'

An owl hooted. She thought: I'll never be able to step into the shop again. Then pity rose up again and engulfed her.

‘Tim, you're married, I'm married –'

‘Can I hope?' He spoke urgently. ‘Please just tell me that. Please give me something to live for!'

A car approached. Louise sprang back. Headlights dazzled them; the dogs barked.

The car slewed to a halt. ‘Hi, Ma!' called Jamie. Doors slammed; music thumped out. Jamie and Imogen shouted goodbye to their friends.

The car drove off. When Louise turned round Tim had disappeared, swallowed back into the darkness.

‘I'm ravenous,' said Jamie. ‘Got any supper left?'

‘What were you talking about?' asked Imogen. ‘With the Weasel?'

‘Dad says he's the sort of person who mends his specs with sticking plaster.'

‘He doesn't!' snapped Louise. ‘You snobs!'

‘She laid her down under the banyan tree,'
read Erin.
‘She laid her on the sand. Her blood pounded. She moved down Roxanne's body, sniffing it like a dog on heat. She pressed her lips into the thicket, tonguing the red berry, the rose-hip hidden amidst its thorns. How sweet were the cries of her beloved!'

Maddy opened the door. The bookshop was crammed with women. They gazed at Erin as she sat, reading her novel. Maddy squeezed her way through.

‘A man approached. He slapped his bullock with a stick. Roxanne hurriedly pulled the cloth over her nakedness. “Aren't you proud of us, my love?” asked Eve. “Aren't you proud of your beauty?”'

Maddy wasn't listening. Her bladder was bursting. She had been working all day in the bush-free garden of a locked-up house. One of the disadvantages of the job was its lack of lavatorial facilities. She remembered her father, in one of their rare moments of closeness, describing the ingenious and often revolting arrangements that builders made when caught short.

‘Is there a loo here?' she whispered to the woman standing next to her.

‘Ssh!'

Maddy tried to concentrate.
‘Come with me, my dearest, let's swim . . .'
said Erin. Maddy knew what was coming next. Erin's book both embarrassed and unsettled her. She looked round at the audience. The conversation with her mother, the week before, had affected her profoundly. If her mother knew, then it must be true. Maddy was a lesbian; she had been born that way. All her life she had felt that she hadn't belonged in her family and now she knew why. She belonged here, amongst these uncompromising women who lounged
against the bookshelves. No longer did she feel inferior to Louise and Pru; she had her own proud identity now.

And how proud she was of Erin! She felt very much in love with her that evening; she had hardly seen her all week and she missed her. The audience's attention charged up Erin; she glowed. She wore her nipped-in satin jacket and a tie; her hair was slicked back with gel. She looked like a plumaged bird compared to the drab sparrows of her devotees.

They burst into applause. Erin moved to another table to sign books. Maddy eased her way through the crowd.

‘Hey, this is a queue, you know.' A woman with a shaved head glared at her.

Maddy joined the queue. It shuffled forward. Eventually she arrived at Erin who sat there, her pen poised.

She looked up. ‘Darling. How did I sound?'

‘Great,' said Maddy. ‘I've got the van outside. I thought you'd like a lift home.'

‘Sweetheart, I can't. I've got to go out to dinner with the Waterstone's people.'

‘But I've bought some supper. You said you'd be home tonight.'

Erin smiled. ‘Oh dear. You sound just like a wife.' The woman behind them tittered.

Maddy turned round and pushed her way through the crowd. Tears stung her eyes. She pushed open the door and stepped outside, into Notting Hill. She hurried down the street, her bladder bursting, her heart bursting. She got into the van and drove home.

Embarrassment is the tyrant of the young. It eases its grip with age. That was what Dorothy told herself as she sipped a glass of wine with her first date. His name was Raymond. Such a nice man, that was what made it worse. Her embarrassment, unlike that of the young, was not just on her own behalf but on his, too. It was a cosmic pity for the two of them. They sat in a pub in Holborn. Buses passed outside. In
them she glimpsed people with whom she wished so strongly to change places that her body ached.

Raymond took out a photograph of his wife. ‘She passed away last spring,' he said. ‘She was a wonderful woman.'

His skull was blotched with liver spots. His skin was papery; when he put away the photo his hand shook. While Dorothy had been married, men had been ageing. She supposed that she had been ageing too. Was this what she looked like? This man mirrored not just her own loneliness – indeed, a loneliness that seemed to engulf the world – but her own mortality. She wondered if he were looking at her with horror and thinking the same. In a long marriage neither partner grows old; their wrinkles are visible yet not recognised, for both people remain at some indeterminate age – not the age when they first met but some blurred stage in between.

‘I play golf, for my sins,' he said. ‘Do you enjoy any hobbies?'

‘Well – I used to play badminton.'

‘How interesting,' he replied. ‘When was that?'

‘At school,' said Dorothy.

There was a silence. She could sense his desperation; she could smell it, coming off his body. He was frightened of dying alone.

Prudence and Stephen were not alone in the flat; her mother had long since gone but Kaatya remained. Kaatya was a guest who could not be removed; her ghostly presence was a gas, poisoning the air. It was getting worse. Prudence had never seen her; she had only heard her voice on the phone, harsh and foreign:
‘Can I speak please with Stephen?'
That she hadn't learned such a simple English sentence by this time seemed insulting. From remarks dropped by Stephen she had clues to his wife's appearance – black-haired, like their sons, and inclined to wear startling clothes she had picked up in Oxfam shops. In Prudence's imagination Kaatya was beautiful, as unknown rivals always are; as time went by her beauty
increased and by now, fuelled by Prudence's jealousy, she was dazzling. She had wide, sensual lips, like the women in the
Heartbeat
books that Prudence published. Prudence's own mouth was small. She rolled her own cigarettes – how rollicking and carefree that sounded! She drove a battered 2CV which she was constantly scraping – Stephen at that very moment was struggling with the latest insurance claim. She was volatile and creative; Prudence felt, by contrast, pinched and dowdy. A lusty woman, she could drink Stephen under the table. She was physically powerful; once, on holiday in Greece, she had picked up a sheep and put it on a wall to take its photograph. Prudence, torturing herself, pictured Kaatya in bed with Stephen, vigorously manhandling him. He had lived with Kaatya for fourteen years, six of them married; they must have made love thousands of times – in Dulwich, in Amsterdam, on countless holidays in hotel rooms and under canvas – probably, from what she had heard of Kaatya, in the open air. Prudence felt sick.

Even Kaatya's many faults – her ruthless selfishness, her slovenliness, her lack of interest in anything remotely intellectual – even these faults, emphasised by Stephen no doubt to make Prudence feel better, only deepened her jealousy. They made Kaatya horribly real, as if she were there in the room. Besides, if his wife were really so impossible, why had he stayed with her?

Prudence had confessed none of this to her sisters; she felt demeaned by it. She knew she was obsessed; she could stand aside and watch herself with a repulsed detachment. How could she presume to possess his past? It was none of her business, his relationship with his wife. Didn't he tell her that he loved her, that living with Kaatya had been a sort of madness? She knew, however, that he couldn't have been that stupid. For many of those years he must have been happy with his marriage. If she truly loved him she wouldn't hope that he had been miserable, would she? Ah, but it was painful. When reminiscing about the past, he tried, tactfully, not to mention Kaatya. She stiffened, however, as if the
conversation might detonate; however carefully he trod, the sudden ‘we' exploded in her heart.

She knew she had to take action. The day came one Saturday in March. Stephen had taken the boys down to Chichester to stay with his mother. Prudence showered; she made up her face with care. She knew this was stupid. For one thing, she probably wouldn't see the woman; even if she did, she had no intention of revealing her own identity. She dressed herself in her artiest clothes – black velvet leggings and a boldly patterned sweater she had bought on impulse years before and never worn.

She drove towards Dulwich. Half the roads seemed to have been dug up. She sat in a traffic jam, waiting at a temporary traffic light. Was this a sign telling her to go home? She thought of all the things she should be doing on a Saturday morning – reading manuscripts, collecting the dry cleaning. Ahead of her was one of those Toyota monster-jeeps, the sort that Louise drove. It belched exhaust smoke. How superior it seemed, how huge and armoured! Louise was safe in her marriage. Louise had children – something that Kaatya had shared with Stephen and that was a tie deeper than marriage.

The cars shunted forward. Prudence thought about her mother's outbursts about April.
‘She's not even that attractive!'
Her mother's jealousy seemed pure and fine – seemed utterly understandable – compared to her own curdled sickness. April had stolen Gordon's heart and thrust her mother into the wilderness. Three months earlier Dorothy had been running a business and living happily in a large house in Purley. Now she was alone, issuing forth from a rented room to meet strange men in wine bars. This could be considered exhilarating – she was free, she could do anything, at last she could live for herself. Prudence had told her mother this, with false cheer, as if she were really capable of dispensing advice.

She parked at the top of Agincourt Road and turned off the engine. Her heart thumped, just as it had all those months ago when she had sat there, looking at Kaatya's and
Stephen's cars. It was March now; the trees were bare and she could see the house more distinctly. Even from this distance she could see that there was no Citroën parked outside. Maybe Kaatya had gone out. On the other hand, the car could be at a garage, being repaired. She looked up at the roof. It, too, had been repaired, by her father's firm. Had Kaatya arranged this to lure Stephen back, or simply to upset him?

Prudence lit a cigarette. Her hand shook. She thought: I just need to see her. The image of her had been building up for eighteen months; just a glimpse of her would surely prick the boil and release the poison.

Half an hour passed. Prudence sat there, inert. She didn't even play the radio. Maybe if she sat there long enough these big Edwardian houses would be neutralised; the street would revert into being a comfortable, anonymous place, one of thousands of similar streets throughout London. Perhaps she could persuade herself to feel sorry for Kaatya, the abandoned wife. Perhaps – who knows? – Kaatya would emerge from the front door arm-in-arm with another man.

Prudence was imagining this when the front door opened and a woman came out. It was unmistakably Kaatya – who else could it be? From this distance all Prudence could make out was a blur of black and white, with red legs. Kaatya walked off in the opposite direction.

Prudence got out of the car. She hurried down the road, drawing nearer. Kaatya carried a hold-all. Like a film star, she was shorter than Prudence had imagined – in her mind Kaatya had grown powerfully tall. She was wearing a fake-fur coat, red leggings and boots. She had a mass of black hair. Prudence could almost inhale her scent. Kaatya strode across the main road, narrowly missing a car. Prudence followed her.

Down past the parade of shops stood an industrial building. Kaatya disappeared into it. The sign said
The Old Brewery Fitness Centre
. Prudence read the price list, pinned to the doorway.
Membership £250 per annum
. Stephen had paid that. He paid for everything. Throughout their marriage Kaatya
had never earned a penny; she was too disorganised. She was one of those arty women who bought large amounts of equipment on their husband's credit card and never finished anything. It was one of Stephen's many complaints that just made Kaatya seem more attractive – impulsive, creative, highly sexed.

There was an alleyway beside the building. Prudence walked up it and gazed through the window.

The room was filled with women. She spotted Kaatya straight away. Kaatya wore a shiny green leotard. She was thin, with small breasts; even from this distance the nipples were visible. Her stomach was so concave that her pelvic bones jutted out. She stood, swinging her arms first one way and then the other. She twisted her body, rotating her hips as if balancing a hula-hoop. Those same hips had rotated beneath Stephen. She wiped her forehead, revealing black hair in her armpits. She had that loose-jointed look of someone who is at ease with her body.