Her (24 page)

I know she’ll come back to the subject of Paul. She’ll want to draw me out, bond with me, show me how empathetic she is. There was a chance – a slim chance – that she’d remember his name. But she has seen it written down on envelopes; she has heard me say it aloud. Nothing. It means nothing to her. I’m quite safe.

That night I dream. It’s not the dream of walking into a crowded room and being unable to speak; it’s the other one, the one I hate even more. Am I chasing someone, or being chased? It’s hard to tell, and never really matters anyway. Here I am, climbing a staircase, the shallow steps falling away into shadow behind me, and twisting endlessly into inky darkness up ahead. I can hear someone in front, just out of sight around the bend, and I’m desperately trying to catch up with them; or perhaps they’re a flight behind, and just starting to gain on me, despite my best efforts. The sound of their feet, and their breath, quite steady and even; and mine, coming in rough gasps and snatches, reverberating and echoing, bouncing crazily off the walls.

I wake suddenly in the low bed, my feet twisted in the linen, a film of sweat on my neck. It’s early, not quite seven.

The house is dim and quiet. When I open the doors and step outside, the shadows lie precisely on the grass and the paths. This is the best time of day: new-minted, before the heat makes everything slovenly. Bees bob and weave between the lavender and the white trumpets of flowers.

The pool, when I unlatch the gate, is an expanse of black glass. As I stand there, holding my towel, the surface briefly ruffles and wrinkles in the breeze, and then grows taut again.

After finishing my lengths, I’m standing in the shallow end, enjoying the sensation of sun on my shoulders, when I become aware that I’m being watched. It’s Christopher, standing by the gate in his pyjamas, one hand longingly on the latch.

‘Good morning!’ I say, coming up the steps towards him, the water noisily falling away. ‘You’re up early.’

He regards me, silently, not smiling.

I wrap the towel around me and run my fingers through my hair, pressing the water out of it. His clear eyes. I wonder what they see. I wonder what he remembers, or will remember. Distantly, I remember reading something in a magazine – the
Spectator
, I think – about childhood recollection: how distress preserves memory more efficiently than contentment.
I could give you something to remember
, I think.

‘Do you want a swim?’ I ask, coming up to the gate. ‘Only, I don’t think you should come in without Mummy or Daddy. It wouldn’t be safe.’

He steps back, the gate between us. In his other hand, Blue Bunny dangles by those long soft ears. ‘Are they up yet?’ I ask. ‘Are they still in bed?’ As I come through the gate, I close it behind me, hearing the snap as the arm falls down into the slot. I take his free hand, quite firmly, and he lets me, though I can feel his initial resistance, and together we walk down the long gravel paths while I chant,

James James

Morrison Morrison

Weatherby George Dupree

Took great

Care of his mother

Though he was only three
,

James James said to his mother,

‘Mother,’ he said, said he;

‘You must never go down to the end of the town

If you don’t go down with me.’

I point out the bees and we stop and listen to the sound they’re making, the drowsy industrious hum.

In the kitchen I pour him a glass of milk and spread some butter on a piece of yesterday’s baguette and he eats it solemnly, barely speaking, his eyes round and watchful, while I unload the dishwasher.

When Ben appears with the baby, he’s full of reprimands and apologies: ‘Oh, noodle, you mustn’t wander off like that on your own, you mustn’t bother Nina . . .’ but I tell him not to worry, it was entirely my fault for leaving the door open into the garden, and the pool gate was safely latched, of course. There’s an unspoken understanding that we won’t mention this to Emma, who would fret unnecessarily about the water features, and when she comes through – wearing the pink linen shift I saw her wearing on the high street all those months ago – Ben and I conspire to talk about other things: how we all slept, the glorious weather, plans for the day.

I suggest an outing. Nothing too taxing: a drive into the hills to visit a monastery, about twenty minutes’ away. It’s one of my favourite places. It’ll be a little cooler up there. The monks keep hives and you can buy the honey. Christopher might find that interesting.

When I bring Sophie a glass of juice in bed and tell her the plan, she says she’d rather stay here; she fancies having the pool to herself.

Once the decision is made, the heavy machinery goes into action: Emma’s candy-striped bag is packed with equipment for all eventualities including famine, sunstroke and plagues of insects; nappy changes and trips to the loo are counterbalanced by last-minute drinks of water. ‘Not Blue Bunny,’ says Ben, trying to remove the toy from his son’s grip as we take stock. ‘Blue Bunny would much rather stay here and have a rest.’

‘Daddy’s right,’ Emma says, ‘We’ll leave him here to look after the house,’ but as Christopher’s face crumples she’s giving in, saying, ‘Well, if you promise to hold on to him . . .’ and Ben is breaking away, walking off towards the car, snorting and muttering to himself.

Once we’re all assembled, there’s the wait while Emma tries to help Christopher into his seat. ‘I can do it! I can do it!’ he growls, pushing her hands away, fumbling stubbornly with the safety straps. His arms and legs and neck are chalky, death-white with suncream. To kill time, Emma hops about, picking brown apple cores and half-drained bottles of water out of the footwells, offering the baby – who has started to protest – a rice cake, apologising and insisting that I take the front seat. Ben sits waiting, tapping his fingers on the wheel, miming a whistle. His elaborate unconcerned patience is all tension.

The monastery is apocalypse-quiet, as always: the car park’s empty, and as we walk up through the wood – the buggy wheels snagging and bumping on the stony track – there are no signs of any other visitors. As we come to the gatehouse I point out the terracotta Madonna and child set in the recess of the wall, and Emma says she approves of the baby Jesus. She likes his fat cheeks, the fact that he doesn’t look like a bank-manager in a loincloth.

Stop, start, stop. Christopher moves in bursts and without method, rushing off at a tangent or doubling back on himself, crouching down without warning to examine things at ground level – ants, his shoe buckle – so that there’s always the danger of tripping over him, or kicking him. Fitfully, we follow a smell of soup through a series of halls and cloisters and courtyards, Christopher finding the echo in every space. Now and then we catch snatched glimpses of men in white robes crossing a terrace or vanishing into a stairwell. There’s a sense of invisible industry, people one step ahead of us, forever keeping out of sight: the recently watered lemon trees in their terracotta pots, the just-mopped corridors that dry as quickly as we can walk down them.

The refectory is ready for the monks’ lunch, the long tables set with heavy worn cutlery and jugs of water, wooden bowls covered with cloths. Quiet hangs beneath the wooden rafters: hundreds of years of silence, of contemplation, of plotting and prayer. In the great scheme of things, Christopher’s noises – the sounds of protest and delight and injury – will barely register.

The child is tightrope-walking along a pattern in the tiled floor. He won’t be hurried. When the toe of his sandal touches the black, he insists on going back to the beginning and starting all over.

We stand around, smiling and waiting for him to finish. In my pocket, my fingers find a coin. I turn it over and over: heads, tails, heads. ‘Oh, very good, darling,’ says Emma. ‘What a clever boy.’ It’s the sort of thing you might say to a dog fetching a stick. She glances at me, self-conscious and yet wanting me to share in the pleasure of his achievement. I pull my hand out of my pocket to applaud. ‘Well done!’ I say, thinking:
smiley eyes
. Stifling a yawn.

There’s no chance of having a conversation with her. Emma is occupied, as if by an army. She’s always
touching
them: adjusting hats, wiping noses, patting cream into their soft little limbs, their rounded shoulders. I walk on ahead, suddenly bored and brisk: back through the cloisters, pausing to pick up Blue Bunny (dropped and forgotten, exactly as forecast) and, in the main courtyard, turning left into the chapel.

The thick warm blackness swallows me whole and for a moment I’m blind, halting, my fingers outstretched; and then I see the glow around a pillar, and the tray of candles comes into view. The flames bob and sway, a dozen or so hopes and wishes glittering and winking, using themselves up. I find a chair, the feet scraping as I put my weight on it. The air smells of incense and citrus-scented detergent and, more distantly, of mould or damp. I feel tired, here in the clammy dark, safely away from the rest of them.

When I hear sing-song voices bouncing around the courtyard outside, I push Blue Bunny deep into my bag, beneath my cardigan, and then I sit still, invisible for the time being, waiting for them to find me.

We go to look at the beehives, a series of pastel-coloured boxes a little way into the wood, and the Nashes pick up a jar of honey from the gatehouse, Christopher posting the euros into the wooden box, and then we walk back down the path and get back into the car.

We stop at the market in the next town for crêpes. Between the lace and the bric-a-brac, there’s a second-hand stall selling old toys, incomplete sets of Playmobil and Lego and baby dolls with startled eyes and fat waxy cheeks. Christopher persuades his father to buy him a bag of Dinky cars and, once we’re back at the house, spends the afternoon lining them up and racing them over the lawn. His parents take it in turn to supervise him and the baby, doing shift work by the pool where Sophie and I nap and read, pulling our loungers in and out of the shade as the sun rolls through the sky.

When Emma lets herself through the gate, I pretend to be dozing, my sunglasses allowing me to monitor her as she drops her towel and rushes down the steps into the water. Even though she believes no one is watching her, she is embarrassed by herself, her paleness, her figure, her lack of definition. The fibres of her khaki swimming costume are weakening, giving way: you can see the white of her buttocks through a thinning patch on the seat. She swims well – a neat confident swim-team crawl – but tires easily. She pulls herself up to the infinity edge, crossing her arms over it and resting her chin on her hands, the water pushing past her as she stares down at the valley.

I should offer to help, I think, shutting my eyes so the blood dances red-black, feeling my skin tighten in the heat.

The gate clangs as she leaves and then ten minutes later it’s Ben’s turn. I lift my head and adjust my sunglasses, smiling at him. Sophie says, too loudly, ‘What time is it?’

I mime at her:
turn it down, too loud
, and when she tugs the earphones out, I say, ‘Nearly six.’

She nods and rolls over onto her back, lifting her head to pull her hair away from her neck, trying to catch the breeze. As Ben drops his book and towel on the lounger, I see him looking at her, perhaps without meaning to: the sheen of cream and sweat on her stomach and arms, the bones of her ankles. The white Vs stencilled by her flip-flops.

There’s a buzz in the sky, and we both glance towards the noise. Something appears against the guileless blue, a shining capsule, a helicopter heading for a weekend at one of those cliff-top villas built by reclusive golden-era film moguls, properly updated with spas and panic rooms.

‘Oligarch,’ I say, and then I tell him about the things you can only see from out in the bay: the wedding-cake terraces. The maids, like ants, hurrying to and fro under the yellow-and-white striped awnings. The cars lined up beneath the palm trees.

‘It’s another world,’ he says. ‘Crazy stuff.’ He walks to the pool, standing on the edge for a moment, self-consciously contemplating the twisting patterns caught on its dark surface, and his own reflection: the orange trunks jauntily printed with octopi, the beginning of a paunch. Then he inhales and swings his arms and dives in: a bellyflop, his legs bending at the knee, like a puppet’s. The water surges noisily from side to side. Turning a page of my book, I pretend not to have noticed.

He swims fifteen or twenty lengths of a slow and shambolic front crawl, ploughing up and down, gasping when his arm goes over. Then he comes up the ladder and throws himself down on the lounger, scattering droplets. Sophie flinches, brushing at her arm, then resettles herself.

He picks up his book, reads a page or two, then lets it drop onto his chest; picks it up again, turns back to check something in an earlier chapter.

I say, ‘How are you getting on with that?’

He feels it’s not quite as good as the first one, and I say,
Oh, that’s a pity.

I don’t say that I’ve read it and enjoyed it, though I found the final plot twist unsatisfying, as plot twists often are: nothing like life, which – it seems to me – turns less on shocks or theatrics than on the small quiet moments, misunderstandings or disappointments, the things that it’s easy to overlook.

‘I don’t think I
like
these characters,’ he’s saying: an annoying remark, one with which I can’t be bothered to engage. The blue-black shade is starting to advance over the shallow end so I say,
time for a last dip
.

When I walk back to the house I find Emma tidying away the children’s tea, rinsing the plastic beakers, chasing crumbs off the table into her palm. Christopher is nagging for another chocolate biscuit, and Cecily’s tetchy with teething and tiredness, the front of her dress wet with dribble. I say to Christopher,
if you come into the garden with me, I know a game we can play
.

He stares at me for a moment – evaluating me and finding I come up short – and then switches his attention to his mother. ‘Another biscuit,’ he wheedles: ‘I’m
starving
,’ and I see Emma twitch, torn between indignation and a desire never, ever to hear her child utter a phrase like that.