Cuckoo (11 page)

‘How's Charles, Frances? Busy as ever?'

‘Er … yes.'

‘I envy you. My spouse sits at home half the time, fiddling about with model aeroplanes. Hey, Viv, you don't want a guinea pig, do you?'

‘I don't mind. We've got three already.'

Viv had room for all creation, and she couldn't accept one abandoned child. ‘Look Rachel, I don't want to sound rude, but Viv and I …'

‘You want me to go. OK, I'm going! I've left the oven on, in any case … Say goodbye nicely, Bella.'

The door slammed and Viv sat down again. ‘Now, Frances, tell me more about this child. Magda, you say. It's a pretty name, isn't it? Poor kid, though, it must be awful for her.'

‘I hate her, Viv. Oh, I know it sounds brutal, but I feel I simply hate her. Just for existing. For ruining everything between Charles and me.'

‘But you haven't met her yet. Give her a chance. She may be quite a sweetie.'

‘I'll hate her even more, if she is.' She hated herself, as well, for saying it, knew it sounded cruel. She'd always regarded herself as a decent sort of person, up till now – not as tolerant as Viv, perhaps, but basically humane. She'd never realized one could feel so bitter, violent almost. It had shaken her faith, not only in Charles, but also in herself. Why, in God's name, did he ever have to tell her? If only he'd sent Magda to a friend's house, or bought her her own flat, or insisted she went back to Budapest. He'd tried, she knew he had. He'd offered boarding school in Scotland, or private tuition back in Hungary – anything. But that wretched woman had refused it all, blackmailed him, more or less, threatened to tell her if Charles didn't, or just turn up with Magda on the doorstep. She shuddered. At least she'd been spared the sight of Charles' mistress in the flesh, his fingerprints all over her, her womb engraved with his initials.

Viv was stacking dishes. She popped a discarded crust into her mouth, almost absent-mindedly, as if she were a waste disposal unit. ‘Perhaps Magda's mother will have her in the holidays. That's half the year, at least.'

‘No, I don't think so.' Miklos was the stumbling block. She probably saw him as her last chance of marriage, or romance, or even affluence. Charles had hinted that he wasn't badly off.

‘There's a man involved, Viv. The perfect match. They're both Catholics, and both from Budapest. What I imagine's happened is that he insists on going back there, with his bride in tow, and refuses to be saddled with anything as unromantic as a teenager. So she dumps the child on us.'

‘Look, be fair, Frances, love. She has looked after her for fifteen years. That's quite a stint on her own – without a husband to support her.'

‘She should have thought of that before she had the kid.' She could hear herself sounding bitchy and unreasonable. Just because Viv had five children herself, and lived her life around them, she imagined everyone else was overflowing with the breast-milk of human kindness. Nice to be a Viv …

‘Look, Frances, just love her enough and she'll accept you. They always do. Can't you see her as a sort of big baby, or an adopted step-daughter? You always said you wanted a baby.'

Frances burst into tears. Rupert joined in, louder. Midge trailed through the door, flushed and spotty in a torn nightie.

‘Why is Auntie Frances crying?'

‘She's not, darling, she's got a bad cold.'

‘
I
‘ve got a cold, haven't I, Mummy?'

‘No, you've got measles, love. Now you pop back to bed and I'll bring you some nice warm milk.'

‘I hate nice warm milk. Auntie Frances
is
crying, Mummy.'

‘Yes. Well, we'll make
her
some milk, shall we?'

‘That's the worst thing, Viv, the very worst thing about it.'

‘What is? You ought to have something, you know, just a drink, or …'

‘The baby thing. I've never said much to you about it, Viv. I'm proud, like Charles. But we've been trying for years to have a child. Charles was always rather odd about it, never wanting to discuss it, just said vague, evasive things like ‘‘no rush'' or ‘‘wait and see''. I thought it was male pride. He wouldn't even have the proper tests. Well, he didn't need to, did he? He'd already proved his rotten fertility. But he let me go on thinking it was him. I'd had all the investigations and they'd found nothing. So, naturally, I assumed it was in his department. Well, up to last month I did. And now …'

‘But, Frances, maybe that was kind of him. Not to let you blame yourself. You'd have felt much worse if you'd known.'

‘I
do
feel worse. I feel absolutely betrayed. He's deceived me over everything. Every single minute of our marriage has been a lie. Every time I've talked to him, he's not been the person I thought he was. Even our wedding was a lie. He was married to her already, more or less.'

‘He wasn't, Frances, that's just the point. He couldn't have wanted her, not really. Not to marry. He married
you
. It was probably just an affair which went sort of sour on him, but because she had his child, well …'

‘Careless bitch! As if there weren't coils and pills and things. I bet she did it on purpose, just to trap him.'

‘That's probably it, love. But it didn't work. He still loved you and wanted to marry you.'

‘But how will I ever know? I can't find out whether he loves this woman, whether he ever loved her, how much he's been seeing her. How well does he know his own child, for example?'

‘Well, how well? Surely he told you that.'

‘Hardly at all, as far as I can gather. He's been sending them money, but he didn't seem to see Magda much after she was five or six. I think she got in the way of the affair, so to speak. The child embarrassed him.'

‘Poor kid. She must be feeling desperate, with no proper father and her mother waltzing off without her.'

‘Oh Viv, don't say that. I do feel sorry for her. In theory, anyway. But I'm so shocked and …'

The doorbell rang. ‘‘Doctor!' carolled Midge. She was naked now, except for her father's fishing cap.

‘Midge, where's your nightie?'

‘I piddled on it.'

Viv groaned, and turned to Frances. ‘Will you be all right, love? I won't be a minute. Make yourself some toast.'

Food solved everything for Viv. She had even plugged Rupert with a biscuit to keep him quiet. Frances could hear her slow, easy voice rising above the doctor's baritone. She glanced at Rupert, who had regurgitated breakfast dribbling down his chin. She could never be a mother. All those gynaecological tests were just a sham. She lacked that vital ingredient which allowed you to love a child, even through prunes and piddled nighties. Rupert knew she was a brute, the way he stared at her, coldly almost, with his huge, undissembling blue eyes. She didn't like Rupert and she couldn't love Magda. True, a teenager wouldn't be sicking up its breakfast, but it would still be a body. There was something so physical about a child – its smells, its noise, its orifices. She always noticed it at Viv's, especially when all the family were there. Five mouths munching, five noses running, ten hands grabbing …

‘Keep her on liquids for the moment. Plenty of fluids. And try not to let her scratch the spots …'

The doctor was booming his way out again. Viv returned to the kitchen, started washing up. Frances slumped back in her chair, as if to dissociate herself from the messy cluttered table. There were crumbs in the marmalade and tea stains in the sugar.

‘Frances …'

‘Mmm?'

‘I'll have her.'

‘What?'

‘Magda. I'll have her – here. I'll look after her. Another kid around the place won't make much difference. She'll be company for Bunty.'

‘Viv, you're an angel!'

‘No, I'm not. I'd quite enjoy it, actually. And if you say she's Roman Catholic, well, she'd be better off here in a nice safe Papist family than in your godless set-up.'

Frances grinned for the first time since Saturday. ‘Oh, Viv, it would be wonderful. If I just didn't have to have her all the time, sleeping with us, and eating with us, and reminding me every minute of … I mean I'll come and visit her – every day if you like – and buy her clothes and take her to museums and …'

‘Well, that's settled, then. Perhaps she'll like babies and give me a hand with Rupert.'

Frances leaned across and picked up Rupert from his high chair. He felt heavy and uncomfortable against her shoulder. ‘Rupert, you're gorgeous. Please try and like Magda.' Rupert screwed his face up in a wail. She returned him hastily to Viv, and the wail changed key into a gurgle. So she couldn't even hold a baby properly. She groaned, aloud, despairingly.

‘What now?'

‘It's no good, it won't work. I must be out of my mind. Magda's not a parcel to be delivered to any new address. She's Charles' own flesh and blood. Charles may even want her, Viv. That's why he agreed. He's bound to feel an obligation. He probably loves her. He'd never let her live with you, in any case. I don't want to be ungrateful, Viv darling, but you know what he feels about cats in the bed and … Look, please don't be hurt. It's just my stupid husband. He's obsessed with hygiene and order and … Oh, I'm as bad, I know I am. How any godforsaken child will stick the course in our double-wrapped, sterilized ice-house, I can't imagine.'

Viv was disentangling nappies from the washing-up. ‘I must admit your place does look a bit like a museum. Everything in glass cases – even you. Please Don't Touch the Exhibits.'

‘Oh, Viv, are we really so awful?'

‘No worse than cats in beds, I suppose. I turfed all six out of Tessa's bed this morning. We're just two extremes. Perhaps that's why we're friends.'

Frances wondered if they really were friends. Somehow it was difficult to be friendly with someone as messy and disorganized as Viv. It got in the way of everything. Perhaps she only used Viv – wept on her shoulder whenever there was a crisis, or popped in for coffee when all her more sophisticated friends were out. She was beginning to dislike herself, using people, hating people, barring access to her home and heart. Viv was a saint, compared with her, splitting her life into seven pieces and keeping only the smallest for herself. And willing, now, to offer that to Magda.

‘Viv …'

‘What?'

‘Thank you.'

‘What for?'

‘Oh, for listening and … everything. I do feel better, honestly.'

‘When's Magda arriving?'

‘Wednesday. I've only got five days to get her room ready.'

‘Just a sleeping bag and a few posters on the wall. That's all they want, at that age. Bunty moved all the furniture out of her room in the name of Freedom for Botswana, or some such.'

Frances closed her eyes. Problems, problems, problems. She picked up her handbag and the long, elegant umbrella. ‘Goodbye, Viv.'

She heard Rupert crow with laughter as she closed the door.

Viv really was absurd. A sleeping bag for Charles' only child! A posture-sprung four-poster was more the thing he'd have in mind. And a Regency desk or two, and the collected works of Henry James. Viv made everything so easy. Another loaf, another pint of milk, another child. Her life was built for children, like her house. Everything was shabby, grubby, friendly, worn, comfortable. Dinky toys down the lavatory and soggy biscuits embedded in the chairs. Viv would do anything for anyone, but you always had to share her – with noise, and smells, and pets and brats.

Frances brushed cat hairs off her dress, glanced around her own house, which looked chilling, almost sterile, more a show-house than a home. The photographs and ornaments were sited with exact precision. She bought flowers to match the curtains, arranged magazines in rows, as if it were a dentist's waiting-room. She could hardly remember now if she'd been so finicky before she'd ever met Charles, or whether she'd changed to humour him. Her own home had been strict, not so much tidy as double-locked and barred. Everything was dangerous or forbidden. Her mother regarded childhood as a period of continuous peril. Ponies only existed to be fallen off; fairgrounds broke your neck or picked your pocket; holidays abroad were a foreign plot to give you sunstroke or diarrhoea. Children themselves were risk and ruination, who would wreck your figure before they frayed your nerves. It had been almost a relief to escape to Charles' regime. At least he had a plan to beat the perils. She sometimes wondered what she might have done, if she hadn't had a Charles. Could she have discovered that life wasn't as hazardous as everybody claimed?

She stretched out on the Victorian chaise-longue and tried to see the room through Viv's eyes. It didn't look like a museum – she was too good a home-maker for that. It was elegant, yes, but comfortable. The Victorian copper log basket was filled with hand-picked logs, attractively arranged – real logs, but not for burning. The log fire was a sham, an artificial hearth, courtesy of the Gas Board. It was cleaner than the real thing. She and Charles hated grime. They also hated shams. But the real logs somehow redeemed it. She got up to switch it on. It wasn't cold, but she felt stiff and shivery. She hadn't slept at all, the last two nights. After hours of agonizing, they had lain in their single beds, turned away from each other, facing their own bare strip of wall. Strange how life continued. Time still ticked on, sixty minutes to an hour, exactly as before. The sun came up and set again. The milkman delivered Charles' skimmed milk and free-range eggs.

She had stared out of the window, this dreadful, drunken morning, and everything appeared so ordinary. Dogs peeing on the grass, commuters plodding to the station, a plane doodling through the baby-blue sky. The trees were lush, unruffled; the pavements still divided into squares. She couldn't understand it. The way she felt, the world should be uprooted and capsized, trees turned bare and blasted overnight. Her own world was in ruins, and the real one hadn't blanched.