Her (20 page)

‘I do wonder what you were like then,’ Charles says, folding my hand in his; and for a moment I can’t think how to respond, and I’m frightened of saying the wrong thing, of giving myself away. And then I see what he means and, while he releases my hand and feels again for his keys, I compose myself. ‘What, when Sophie was tiny? Oh,’ I say, as he goes up the stone steps ahead of me and opens the front door. ‘You wouldn’t know me. I was someone else then – someone quite different.’ And it’s true enough, though the real transformation had happened long before, when I first met Arnold, who for all his faults saw in me the things I barely knew I possessed, and drew them out, letting the bad habits fall away behind me, liberating me from the awkwardness and the doubt rather as he liberated me from my father. I remember Arnold in his earliest incarnation as a dealer, walking around my first studio, being surprised by the work: ‘Oh yes, I think we can do something with these,’ he said, glancing over at me with a speculative expression, just before he invited me for a drink.

Sometimes it felt as if Arnold, with his confidence and generosity and taste, had willed me into existence, suggesting as much as fostering the characteristics that are now so much a part of me. He turned my shyness into reserve, my guardedness into self-possession. He brought me out of the shadows. All this talk about ‘finding yourself’; often, other people show you yourself first. Of course, I was grateful to Arnold for what he did for me; but I also resented him for it. In the end, he knew too much. He’d seen both sides. That was why I had to leave.

In the hall, we step over a pile of parkas and hoodies, dirty cream hi-tops the size of boats. I look into the sitting room, and they’re lined up on the sofas and sprawled against the kilim cushions: seven or eight of them, eyes and teeth and empty pizza boxes bright in the fish-tank illumination of the TV. On the screen a woman is being chased through a wood. Crying and panting, the tell-tale snap of undergrowth, panicky strings. ‘What’re you watching?’ I ask, and someone shushes me; and then some of the girls giggle. Sophie takes shape, an apparition in the gloom, brushing past me, heading for the kitchen.

They’re all invited to someone’s eighteenth in Dartmouth Park, they got sidetracked by this crappy horror thing on Netflix, it’s nearly over.

Beneath the smell of soda pop, her breath, when she speaks, is punchy with spirits.

‘Whose party?’ I ask. ‘Won’t it be over by the time you get there?’ She shrugs, standing in the glow of the fridge, helping herself to two cans of Diet Coke.

‘Back by one-thirty at the latest,’ I say as she walks away, towards the darkened room. ‘I’ll wait up for you.’

One-thirty comes and goes while I lie there beside Charles, the door open to the dark and silent house: the coats on the hooks, the flowers in the vases, the snuffed candles and the pots left to dry by the sink.

I won’t call until two. I mustn’t. I click on my bedside light, angling it low so it won’t disturb Charles, and pick up the
Spectator
, and read a column about first memories: how shock acts as a fixative, preserving fleeting and otherwise insignificant moments of childhood distress (falling down the stairs, leaving a favourite teddy in a taxi, losing a parent in a crowd); and then I try to concentrate on the book reviews, but the words swim like cyphers, refusing to make sense. Just after 2 a.m. I try her mobile: the voicemail kicks in straightaway. I send her a text, a tiny electronic pulse of data and anxiety, which goes unacknowledged. Twisting in the loose cool layers of cotton and linen, I wait, I wait, the phone’s glow fading in my hand. The cat comes and lies in the crook of my knees for a little while, and then moves off again, compelled by his own mysterious affairs.

She arrives home around four, refraining from switching on any lights. I listen to her picking her way up the soft grey stairs like a burglar.

The following morning, she’s full of excuses as she stands in front of the kettle, spooning cereal into her mouth. It was a mad night, she left her phone in her bag, lost track of time and only picked up my messages on her way home.

I explain that I’m docking her allowance and grounding her for a fortnight. If that means she has to miss Rosie’s cinema trip, too bad. She shouts a bit, her eyes full of tears, and then storms off with her mug of tea. Charles, who has been keeping out of it (his particular skill), glances up from the week’s brown envelopes. ‘That’s fair enough, isn’t it?’ I ask, irritated by his remote, amused expression.

He thinks I handled it very well.

I only ever miss Arnold at times like this. Charles is fond of Sophie. He would say he loves her. But the feelings he has for her are mild and dilute, far removed from my raw involuntary connection with her.

I hear her on her phone, the tone of outrage and injury spliced with giggles and ‘God, piss off, you
didn’t
!’ Later, when I’m unloading the dishwasher, she comes to me, saying she’s sorry. ‘I should have thought,’ she says, picking up the cutlery basket and taking it over to the drawer, picking out the knives and teaspoons: very contrite. ‘I just got carried away.’

I put my arms around her, feeling the slight bridling resistance before she softens and permits the embrace. I won’t back down about the punishments, I tell her (giving her a kiss, pushing her hair back from her forehead, as I used to do when she was a little girl), but I’m grateful for the apology.

She looks at me, fawn-eyed. ‘I screwed up,’ she says. ‘Fair enough.’

I’m tempted to think I’ve handled it pretty well. But a few days later, while I’m rootling in my purse to find Lenka’s money, I find I’m a bit short: maybe twenty pounds down, or thirty. I’m sure I am not mistaken; but then the doubts creep in. Perhaps it’s safest to say nothing.

Full of apprehension, I find it hard to commit to sleep; and then the alarm is going off, and Ben is staggering out of bed, pulling the duvet off me, turning on the overhead light. Behind the curtains the street lamps shine on empty pavements. The windows in the houses opposite are dark, without motion.

We hurry to and from the shower, not speaking, towelling our hair and concentrating on the last critical elements of packing: toothbrushes, phone chargers, spectacles. The luggage is dragged downstairs. The taxi will be here in ten. We stand in the hall jittery with adrenaline, checking over the car seats, the folded buggy, the buttered Ryvita and dried apple rings stashed in Ziploc bags, wondering what we’ve missed.

It’s time. As Ben goes into Christopher’s room, I go into Cecily’s. I’ve removed her sleep suit and changed her nappy and have half-dressed her before she’s properly awake. She’s too stunned to protest, just sits mute on my hip, swaying and squinting, turning her face to shield her eyes as I take her out onto the landing.

The doorbell, the carrying out of luggage, the fitting of the child seats, the strapping in of the children. I step out of the house, into the startling secret chill of the dawn, and turn the key in the door. We are off. As the cab swings out of our road, Ben says, ‘You definitely double-locked it, didn’t you?’

It’s quiet in the cab: just the soft intermittent ticking of indicators and a crackle every so often as control dispatches drivers to addresses in Bow or Barnsbury. Cecily goes back to sleep almost immediately; Christopher sits holding his sippy cup of milk, huge round eyes fixed on the window. Briefly, I see the world as he sees it: a new world of sodium lights and deserted streets and shuttered shops, the familiar landscape stripped of animation and so rendered magical and mysterious. I can’t helping thinking of
The Tiger Who Came to Tea
– Sophie being taken out for supper in her nightie – and I’m about to mention this to him, and then I can’t be bothered.

As we join the motorway, switching from one zombie lane to another, the sky opens up and begins to lighten, biblical pink and gold building in the east. A memory of leaving London as a child at the start of the holidays, of being packed in the car in our pyjamas, wedged in by pillows and quilts, and falling asleep, and waking up the next morning in my bed at Jassop, the sun creeping over the top of the blue curtains and into the room, the bookshelves wedged tight with worn hardbacks, the paraffin heater shaped like a tower, the rush-bottomed chair in the corner. The smell of it, of things that stayed the same.

I rest my head on the back of the seat. Just for a moment, I shut my eyes. If someone would only give me permission, I think, I could sleep for days. Weeks, even.

‘God, I need a holiday,’ murmurs Ben.
Not half as much as I do
,
sunshine
, I think, keeping my eyes closed. We both know that we won’t be getting one anytime soon. Last summer was quite unlike any other holiday we’d taken: our days circumscribed by naps and mealtimes, by a need to avoid mosquitoes and the midday heat and the pool on the mornings when they’d added the chemicals. The constant low-level anxiety. Was it really fine to drink the tap water? Would the chemist be open on a Monday afternoon?

A year on, with a baby in the mix, we’ve learned our lesson. Neither of us expects much. Better that way. I squeeze his hand.

At various points during the morning – queuing at check-in; shoving items into clear plastic bags; sampling Cecily’s puréed butternut and formula to prove they’re not bomb components; removing and putting on our shoes; being sheep-dipped into the aircraft – I look at my watch and am aghast to find it’s still not 9 a.m. Could time go any slower? Before we’ve even taken off Ben has read Christopher both of the picture books I bought for the journey and one of the new Hotwheels has gone astray under the seats in front. There is the threat of a tantrum, which I see off with the triumphant flourish of a Chupa Chup.

Conversations die away as the plane accelerates, and then revive once we’re securely launched, the moment of terror falling away behind us like England. Taking slow breaths of the cold deodorised atmosphere, holding Cecily in my arms, I feel as much as hear the whine as wheels and flaps are adjusted. Up ahead, secured behind locked doors, are the dials and gauges that hold us up; the dizzying electronic skeins of navigation filling the skies. Behind us, the contrail spilling out like a spider’s thread.

Brisk smiles are distributed with breakfast. I hold my cup out for the stewardess’s metal coffeepot, trying to keep it steady while Cecily bucks and twists on my knee. While Ben holds my cup, I unwrap the croissant and rip it in half. She sinks her gums into it appreciatively.

Christopher is plugged into a movie about a shy dragon on the iPad. Ben gets out
Private Eye
. ‘Would you hold her for a moment?’ I say, passing her over. I stand up and stretch and join the queue for the loo, but once I’m locked in there I just rinse the stickiness off my hands and splash some water on my face and pat it dry with a fake-linen disposable towel. And then I look at myself in the mirror, in the merciless blue-white light. Crumbs on my jersey. Shadows under my eyes. My hair has dried with a slight frizz to it, giving me a vague unfinished outline, as if my signal is weak.

For a moment, I remember the holidays Ben and I had in the past: simple little whitewashed cottages with terraces covered with vines, fancy suites with thick swagged curtains and pairs of sofas and complimentary fruit bowls swathed ludicrously in cellophane. The clink of rigging, the rattle of trams, room service’s quiet knock, the chiming of ten or twenty bells as the goats come down from the hill. Pointing at something on the menu, not knowing or minding what’ll come. Food, wine, sex, books, sleep.

Still, it’ll be good to get away. Just to see that it’s all still out there, still happening: the world of aperitifs ordered at pavement cafés, of pink tablecloths and floodlit squares and crowded markets. Even if we are, for now, not at ease in it.

I go back to my seat and drink my nasty coffee. Cecily has a shouty twisty episode and then quite unexpectedly falls asleep again.

The descent begins. I find the bottle with the slow teat for Cecily, in case she wakes up.

‘You’ve got another lolly for Christopher?’ Ben asks.

Yes, of course I have. It’s in the inner pocket of my bag. He reaches over and rummages around while Christopher presses his hands to his cheeks, saying his ears hurt. ‘I can’t find it,’ Ben says, and so I shrug Cecily into my shoulder and take the bag from him and have a look, sorting through the baby wipes, the spare sachets of formula, the children’s emergency outfits, the novel I have yet to open. It’s not there, I can’t find the lolly anywhere. The seat belt bites into my hip as I rake through the contents, finding nothing but loose change and keys and the dry rubble of biscuits.

The plane drops again, sinking through the cloud.

‘Mama, it hurts,’ wails Christopher, and I hear the injury and accusation in his voice, as if it’s my fault, as if I’ve done it to him. And in a way, he’s right. I have.

‘We’re trying to find you a sucky sweet,’ I say. I should be sounding calm and sympathetic rather than irritated and dismissive. Sweat prickles out along my hairline.

‘Have you looked in the bottom of your bag?’ Ben asks, yawning and turning to ‘Street of Shame’, as if he’s off the hook; and I snap, ‘It’s not there! Did you see it? I didn’t.’

I’m about to press the button to call the stewardess – somehow, I’m always the one who has to ask for help – when a man across the aisle leans over with a tube of fruit gums. Thanks so much, I say, wondering what sort of impression we’ve been creating during the flight, wondering how I must appear, and suddenly cold with humiliation. Now I’ve started thinking about this, I find I cannot stop.

Fields and woods begin to assemble between silver snakes of rivers, the formal geometry of motorways. The ugly sprawl of small provincial towns. Lakes, industrial estates, farms. Small sky-blue boxes set in the ground, flashing in the sun.

The plane falls and falls, and then catches the edge of the runway with a great metallic shriek, and indeed it has all been all about this moment, the velocity and the terrible noise and the shaking, and then the relief as the pace begins to slacken and the journey is finally over: the brown grass beyond the asphalt, the little orange vehicles buzzing towards us, the men with paddles. But we’re not allowed to move yet: we must sit tight while the plane taxis around and then noses into a berth by the low grey terminal. Someone opens the doors, and the heat sweeps through the cabin like wonderful news you can hardly bring yourself to believe. Ben catches my eye, winks.
Not bad, eh?
But half of me is thinking about Christopher’s eczema, wondering if he’ll have a flare-up, trying to remember if I packed the hydrocortisone. As we step out into the burning light, I am conscious of how I must look to the aircrew lined up to bid us goodbye. A drained-looking middle-aged person, draped in children and exhaustion, close to saying something she’ll regret.