Divinity Road (36 page)

So the van doors slam. Nuala makes one last effort to give Semira some money for the trip and again Semira refuses. Her friends Tom and Gloria have somehow acquired a free entry ticket for the park, she tells Nuala, so the only expense will be ice creams at the end. Nuala sees that she’s beaten so she shrugs and smiles and the van moves off in a cloud of acrid exhaust.

Her reminiscences about Burnley and the Tate have reminded her that there is a week-old message from him on her answer machine. He’s remembered Greg mentioning a set of animal sketches he’d done, charcoal on paper, and wondered whether Nuala had seen them around.

She’s been meaning to have a root in the studio, to let him know if she finds anything. Since Greg’s disappearance, Burnley’s continued to represent his art. He has been scrupulous in providing Nuala with detailed records of revenue and with every penny of earned income, minus his commission of course. She feels a little guilty for her previous mistrust, though she still finds dealing with him a strain. Even after Greg’s disappearance he has never thawed out, never shown much warmth. Not that he has been offensive or rude, just avoided the slightest intimacy. There is never any hint that their relationship is anything other than professional

Before she begins the hunt, she decides to make coffee. In the old days she would snatch at such moments of freedom, slide herself onto the piano stool and lose herself in her music. But she still cannot bring herself to play. Instead, mug in hand, she wanders vaguely towards the basement studio.

The room is well lit, the ceiling fitted with rows of spotlights. She remembers people’s surprise when they learned that Greg painted in a basement. Even she knew that painters normally sought as much natural light as possible. But he’d always maintained that paintings were designed to live indoors, so good artificial light was acceptable for his work. Still, whenever the weather permitted, he’d haul his easel out to the back garden and set up shop there.

The room’s been transformed since Yanit and Abebe’s arrival. Gone are the easels – Greg often had three or four pictures on the go at one time – and the stacked up canvases.

Gone, too, the wooden table strewn with tubes of oil paint, brushes, rags and bottles of white spirit. There are two built-in cupboards in the basement, and one of these now contains all of the paints and brushes. The easels have been folded up and are stored for the moment in a cupboard in the spare room. Any finished canvases have long since been collected by Burnley. The unused and unfinished ones are secreted around the house, one or two still in the basement cupboard, others in the loft, the spare room, even Nuala’s own bedroom.

The white walls are now decorated with posters – different species of snakes and the Chelsea squad for Abebe, a boy band and a map of Africa for Yanit – and the table has been moved into a corner. The two camp beds now dominate the room.

Nuala looks around distractedly for the charcoal sketches. She thinks she would have noticed them all those months back when she first went through Greg’s things. She doesn’t recall any such artwork, but is aware that she had been in a terrible state at the time, oblivious to much of what was going on around her. She opens the cupboard and checks under the table.

She can’t face the loft, but tries the other possible hiding places – her bedroom, the airing cupboard in the bathroom, the bookcase on the landing. Finally, and with a twinge of guilt at the invasion of privacy, she pushes open Semira’s door and enters what was once the spare bedroom.

She hasn’t been inside this room since Semira moved in. It’s almost unchanged, no photos on display, no pictures or posters to personalise the space. On the desk is a pile of books. There’s an English grammar, a heavy dictionary, a history of Oxford, a text on computers, a prospectus for Oxford Brookes University. Next to these lie a copy of the
Qur’an
and a notebook. Pens and pencils are stacked inside a coffee cup. There’s an electronic dictionary beside the cup.

Next to the lamp on the bedside table is a hand mirror and bathbag full of make-up, its zipper open and contents displayed. Nuala recognises the bright scarlet lipstick Semira tends to use most days, the eyeliner and mascara. The bed’s been made, a spare blanket neatly folded on the duvet. The room’s stuffy, the window shut, Semira’s scent – half perfume, half human odour – hanging in the air. Nuala opens the window.

She’s about to leave when she remembers why she came, pulls open the door of the wardrobe. It’s full of Semira’s clothes, padded jackets and dark baggy skirt suits and colourful dresses, three or four pairs of shoes. Nuala closes the door, then as an afterthought, reaches up on top of the wardrobe and runs her hand along the surface. She’s hoping to feel a pile of loose leaf sheets, or perhaps a large thin sketch book. Instead, her fingers brush against something much more solid. She drags it across to the edge of the surface and pulls it down – a shoebox.

It feels full but not heavy. Nuala takes off the lid. Inside are a pile of envelopes, each addressed with a single name in English: Kassa. She takes out the first envelope and turns it over in her hand. It’s sealed. She pulls out more, all identical. Carefully she returns the letters to the box, the box to its original location.

Back in the kitchen, she sees that the cat’s food bowl is empty, the water bowl dry. She tops them both up, hears the metallic click of the catflap and feels the soft sensation of the tabby as she rubs herself against her legs.

Nuala’s restless. She opens the sliding doors that lead out into the garden and stands on the lawn amongst the bats and balls, the plastic wheelbarrow and overturned see-saw. She hasn’t worked outside for months but even in the Before time, she’d been a reluctant gardener, enthusiastic for only about three days a year, usually in early summer, when she’d bully Greg into mowing the lawn. She’d hack away viciously at any overgrowth in an attempt to get all the pruning over in a single hasty session, then pull up handfuls of weeds that would lie where they were thrown until the following autumn.

Nuala goes back inside. She contemplates a spot of spring cleaning. Fortunately the floor tiles are a zesty yellow, good for concealing the dirt, but even she can see that they need a scrub. The fridge, too, hasn’t been cleaned for some time, nor has the microwave. The book shelf opposite the table is dusty, a mess of unsheathed CDs and piled cookery books. She sighs, knowing that the chores need doing while yearning for some more meaningful act. She’s about to set to work, rummaging under the sink for cleaning fluid and scouring cloths, when she has a better idea, a moment of inspiration that falls somewhere between raging rebellion and reckless desperation.

She phones everyone she knows in Oxford, the book group women, the school mums and neighbours, her old friends from yoga, Cassie and Angie and Ingrid and Mary, and tells them of her plan, an impromptu party. They all say yes, they’ll be there, what can they bring? And they don’t tell her, of course, of their own arrangements that they’ll cancel, postpone. Their loyalty and love for Nuala make it an automatic response.

So she gathers her purse and shopping bags, spends an hour at the supermarket filling her trolley with cheeses and snacks, baguette and olives, the ingredients for a great pot of chilli con carne, a green salad, bottles of wine, cartons of juice and fizzy drinks. And back home, she sets to work so that by the time the children return with Semira, the chilli is simmering on the hob, the snacks laid out in the lounge.

It’s early evening when the van rolls up outside the house and Semira and the four children bustle into the hall, kicking off muddy shoes and throwing their jackets in the general direction of the coat stand. Semira heads for the toilet while the children invade the recently peaceful kitchen.

What’s going on? asks Beth when she sees the festive preparations. Are we having a party?

Nuala explains that it’s a Thank You party, that there’s no time to lose, that it’s all hands on deck. The children are swept along in the excitement, put to work blowing up balloons and organising party games. Nuala won’t let herself stop and consider her actions, fears that she’ll abandon the project if left to her own thoughts. Semira, sensing the significance of the event, takes her place in the kitchen and begins preparing a batch of falafel.

And the party’s some way towards a success. It’s too chaotic for pussy-footing, for inhibitions and stilted self-consciousness. The guests arrive in threes and fours, adults and children. There’s music – Beatles and Beach Boys and The Pogues, the children’s latest pop chart favourites, then later Tom Waits and Ry Cooder, the
Jungle Book
soundtrack and Billie Holiday, Greg’s music as much as Nuala’s, but tonight it’s OK, the pain is tolerable.

The adults mingle and drink and dance. The children shriek and scream in an atmosphere of hilarity, of abandonment. For Nuala, there’s still no letting go. She’s disappointed to admit that it is an evening to endure as much as enjoy. But many hours later, when the kids have been put to bed and Nuala clears up with Mary and Semira, she feels a sense of relief, an important rite of passage successfully navigated.

***

It’s six months since Semira first moved in. The two women have grown closer. Semira is no longer irritated by Nuala’s gentle inquisitiveness, Nuala willing to let Semira’s past remain a mystery. Acceptance, thinks Nuala. Another essential component of friendship.

Although she no longer expects revelations from Semira, Nuala nevertheless still dwells on why she felt such a need for this intimacy and tries to analyse her own impulses. As you make someone’s acquaintance, she reflects, you learn details of their past, and these help explain their personality, become like the pegs on which you hang their present characteristics. Deprived of this background, she feels cheated, somehow vulnerable. But perhaps what her relationship with Semira is teaching her, she wonders, is that history counts for nothing. It’s a luxury and when all the frills are torn away, the present is the only thing that counts.

Nuala no longer thinks about Semira’s departure. There’s a silent agreement that her residence has acquired a greater permanency. The routine of their lives is soothing.

Time is marked only by occasional celebrations – Easter, the children’s birthday parties, the school holidays.

One evening, Nuala, Beth and Yanit are in the lounge, spread out on the sofa and beanbags, watching a tepid romcom on DVD. Beth asks Nuala whether Yanit can move into her bedroom.

Is that what you want, Yanit? Nuala asks. She nods eagerly. On a number of occasions, there have been ‘sleepovers’ involving the girls sharing Beth’s bed. Nuala considers the request. Both of her children have spacious bedrooms, plenty of room for second single beds.

Well, it’s OK by me, but we’ll have to check with Semira, make sure she’s happy with Abebe being left on his own.

That problem is solved as soon as Sammy hears about Beth’s scheme. Not to be outdone, he demands that Abebe moves in with him. Abebe has slept top-to-toe with Sammy several times in the past, too tired to make his way downstairs after mammoth Lego-building sessions.

When the request is put to Semira, she feels a little awkward, an irrational fear that her family are playing cuckoo in Nuala’s nest. Still, when she tries to raise this unease with Nuala, she is told that she’s being silly.

So the camp beds in the basement are folded away.

One of Nuala’s colleagues offers her an unwanted single bed,

Kenyan Tom comes up with a second, and within the week, the change has been made. The basement is now free.

And, most unexpectedly, this begins a new chapter in Nuala’s life. It starts one Tuesday during the October half term. Semira’s taken the children ice skating and Nuala finds herself wandering down to the basement. She stands at the doorway and casts her eyes around the room.

The old table’s still there, pushed up against the wall, its paint-stained surface concealed beneath a floral cloth. There’s a chair, there, too, tucked beneath the table, a solid piece of pine also smeared with dried oil paint. Nuala remembers it as Greg’s thinking chair, the throne from which he’d contemplate his latest creation or plan out a future project. She stares at the chair and, despite herself, conjures up his presence.

There he is, leaning back, one leg crossed over the other, a hand resting on his ankle, the other cradling his head, locked in fierce concentration. She remembers what he used to say – that he did ninety-nine per cent of his painting in his head, the initial inspiration of a vision perceived, then the process of mapping out in his mind the dimensions, the perspective, the lighting and colours. Only then, sometimes days after, would he prepare the canvas and pick up his brushes and oils.

There he is, dressed in his scruffy jeans, the grubby tee-shirt beneath the baggy long-sleeve shirt, collar frayed, cuffs rolled-up. He’s so wrapped up in his thoughts he hasn’t seen Nuala. She coughs and he looks up and his face breaks into a smile and Nuala steps forward. And then – poof! – he’s gone and the room’s as stripped and empty as it was when she first walked in.

Nuala rubs her eyes. She’s been doing this conjuring trick ever since the crash, hating herself for it, the ritual of masochistic scab-picking. It’s like plunging her leg into a scalding bath, the first time excruciating, each time thereafter less painful as her tolerance grows. And today, for the first time, it’s actually almost pain-free, almost soothing. Even the moment when he disappears and she realises she’s on her own again, that she’s lost him forever.