Her (27 page)

‘You think it’s odd that she took a shine to me? What’s so strange about that?’ I shiver with laughter, but I’m a little hurt, too. Why shouldn’t Nina like me? Why shouldn’t she recognise in me the things I’d feared might be lost forever? I can’t explain to Ben how this feels: to be seen, again, for who I really am. Not to be a person always in the context of other people. However much I love them.

I think of Nina moving between the soft spots of light in her father’s bedroom, the room with the writing desk and the view. Unpacking her bag, the white and navy and dove-grey clothes, her sandals and the small bottle of topaz-coloured scent that smells of figs and spice. Placing her hairbrush and the stack of paperbacks on the bedside table. Is it really so very strange that I have a friend like Nina?

‘No, I don’t mean that, exactly,’ he says. ‘It’s just – what do you really know about her, anyway?’

‘I know enough!’ I say. ‘Not all friendships hinge on a shared interest in Arsenal and pranks you played on the geography teacher twenty-five years ago.’

‘She’s a bit . . .
cagey
,’ he’s saying, and I say that’s rubbish, she seems pretty open, what about all that stuff at supper about her dad: ‘I guess that explains this house, anyway.’

‘And the one in Pakenham Gardens,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘Somehow, I doubt Charles’s practice does
that
well. Guilt money. Her father sounds like a nightmare.’

‘I think she’s a bit lonely,’ I whisper, and as I say it I realise it’s true: Sophie hardly needs her now, and there’s Charles, of course; but for all his easy charm there’s something a little detached about him, a little distant. It’s a novelty, feeling sorry for Nina, but suddenly I’m overcome with pity.

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong,’ he says. ‘I like her. She’s great. Very generous. God knows how much it would have cost us, to rent a place like this for ten days.’ He knows he has been tedious about money recently, a bit of a killjoy, but he has been mulling things over: ‘That stain on Christopher’s ceiling. That needs looking at. We should probably think about re-roofing. It’ll be tight, but we’ll manage. We’ll have to.’

I put down my book and turn off my light and a few moments later I hear the rattle as he takes off his spectacles. He reaches out for me in the dark, presses his mouth against my ear and murmurs, ‘I’m sure the next contract will work out fine. We’ll sort out the roof when we get back.’
Go crazy
, I think.
Knock yourself out.

Our last full day. I’m woken by the sound of Nina talking quietly in the garden, and then the clear pleasant sound of her singing:

James James

Morrison Morrison

Weatherby George Dupree

As I open the wardrobe and pull the pink linen dress off the hanger, I’m thinking about how little time is left. The holiday is coming to an end, of course, and so is my time with her. The thought of London occurs: the downward slide into another autumn, the afternoon light fading earlier and earlier. The cold and the rain. People taking refuge in their own homes, hunkering down, just getting through.

I’ll have to be assertive if I’m going to ask those questions: the questions about her first marriage, her childhood and her parents. The conversations we must have, if we’re going to be real friends.

I think she wants to tell me the answers. I’m almost sure she does.

But there are so many obstacles. Ben. Cool, listless Sophie who drifts around yawning, avoiding us and yet constantly nearby. The children, of course, forever teetering on the edge of catastrophe. I once heard someone on the radio saying that a bee is never more than forty minutes away from starving to death, and this fact has stayed with me because it seems to have a certain personal resonance. My children are in a perpetual proximity to catastrophe: concussion, dehydration, drowning or sunstroke. Keeping them safe requires constant vigilance.

I’ve turned into one of those mothers, full of terror.

Every so often, I steal away from them, thinking:
It’ll be fine, nothing will happen
, and I lie down alone on the bed or in the hammock, or I walk a little way into the pine wood; and something always goes wrong, something always happens. Someone always cries for me, and I hear the shrill just accusation beneath the pain or the fear; and I feel it, too, like a burn or a blade, an electric shock.

And then I catch them up and hold them close and kiss it better, pressing my face into their soft skin and flyaway hair, feeling the warmth of their cheeks and sticky fingers, the hope and greed and vitality of them. Working my magic; astonished, as the sobs die away, by how powerful my magic is.
No one else can do this for them.
I watch Nina with Sophie, whose demands are so straightforward – there’s a problem with the wi-fi, could she borrow some factor 20 – and feel both envy and a tremendous, sweeping pity.

When Nina suggests an excursion, we go along with it, flattered – I suppose – that she wants to take us somewhere that she considers special. As we assemble in the kitchen before departure, the candy-striped bag filling with sun hats and rice cakes and baby wipes, Ben says, ‘Not Blue Bunny. Blue Bunny would much rather stay here and have a rest.’

‘Daddy’s right,’ I say, ‘We’ll leave him here to look after the house,’ but then I see the expression on Christopher’s face, and I can’t bear it, I can’t summon the energy required – not in this heat, not in front of Nina – so I say, ‘Well, if you promise to hold on to him . . .’ and Ben sighs and walks off.

It is a little cooler in the hills. We park the car under the trees and walk up through the wood, the buggy wheels bumping over the cobbles, and every so often a view opens up: a ruined hamlet on the other side of the valley; the ghost of a stream snaking through the trees. Nina walks on ahead, by herself, but waits for us in the shade of the gatehouse. She points out the little statue of the Madonna and child set in the wall and I look up at it, grateful for the hot dusty wind, taking a swig from a bottle of water and then pouring a little over my wrists. ‘He’s a proper baby,’ I say, admiring his balloon cheeks. So many holy infants look like bank managers or middle-grade civil servants, tiny old men in loin cloths, piously administering peace with a raised finger.

I’m conscious of the noise we make as we walk through the cloisters and courtyards, the library and refectory, Cecily starting to struggle in the buggy, Christopher testing out the various echoes. He’s either racing on or lagging behind, bending down to examine a trail of ants bearing away the corpse of a woodlouse.
Hurry up. Slow down.

In the dining hall we wait as he tiptoes along a narrow path of white tiles, his face blank with concentration, teeth pressed into his soft lower lip. He’s almost there, and then he hesitates and wobbles and has to start all over again. I’m aware of Ben’s irritation as he pushes the buggy on towards the doorway, and Nina catches my eye and smiles at me, full of solicitude: for me and for Christopher. I experience her kindness as if she has held out a hand to me, to us both. ‘Oh very good, darling!’ I say, when he’s finally done. ‘What a clever boy!’ and she joins in, applauding him, her eyes shining.

The moment of Nina’s kindness stays with me, as clear and reviving as a drink of cold water, while we stand on the terrace counting the twelve tolls of the bell in the tower, and help Christopher to light a candle in the chapel. It stays with me as we go to look at the beehives, as we return to the car, as we stop at the market in a nearby town to buy crêpes from a girl in a van. While I’m lifting Christopher so that he can see the thin batter being ladled onto the hot plate (the pleasing deftness of her movements as she levels it off and fills the crêpe and flips it into a wrapper), I’m thinking of that moment. Feeling better for it.

We wander from stall to stall in the dappled shade, between mahogany behemoths and trestles piled with vegetables and old lace and junk, and I have Christopher’s hand in my own, just resting there, soft and pliant, but as we pass the second-hand toy stall it leaps and tugs, his attention hooked like a fish. Instead of hurrying him on as I would in England, I let him stop and choose. It’s so easy to allow him to be happy, I think. I should allow him to be happy more often.

Our last afternoon. As we return to the car and drive back to the house, I find myself thinking: this time tomorrow we’ll be checking in, we’ll be waiting in the departure lounge, we’ll be stowing our things in the overhead lockers.

Nina and Sophie vanish off to the pool, and because of this Ben and I are just a little more relaxed, perhaps. Little metal cars gouge passes through the gravel as Christopher creates his world in the garden, keeping up a low contented muttering full of instructions and warnings. Sensing this makes us more available, Cecily is suddenly ambitious: she’s trying to pull herself up, wishes to experiment with walking. When Ben takes her round the lawn, she reels along, hanging off his hands, her steps as high as a dressage pony’s or a chorus girl’s, drunk with delight and self-satisfaction.

I leave them and go out to the black pool to do my twenty lengths.

Side by side under the parasols, Nina and Sophie are dozing. The pages of a book flutter in the breeze. The place is lost.

I pick my way around the flip-flops, the bottles of mineral water and Piz Buin, and as I drop my towel on a lounger my attention catches on the sheen at Nina’s temples and the little runnels left in her hair as she rakes her oily fingers through it. For some reason, I’m reminded of something – not even a memory, more of a half or quarter of a memory. The neat sharp bite marks made by the teeth of a comb as a girl pulled it through her dark and dirty hair.

It’s a precise impression, but it’s isolated, untethered. The girl has no features, no expression. No name, no context. Someone I was at school with, probably. I can’t remember.

It must have disturbed me at the time, for some reason. Why else would it stick?

Though no one’s watching, I hurry towards the steps and into the shallow end, humiliated by my baggy olive costume, my belly, my rough pale skin. I feel better once I’m in the water. Carving through it, I count out the daily lengths.

In the deep end I fill my lungs and put my face under and let go, gently rotating and tilting in the water as the motion leaves it. I was once so at home in my body that I wasted it, rarely noticing it, never bothering to celebrate its strength and efficiency. I’ll never be beautiful again, I think. The water licks at my ears. I hear it slopping through the filter and over the infinity edge; repeatedly knocking Christopher’s orange armband against the ladder in an uneven tattoo. I hang there as my shadow drifts over the bottom of the pool, becoming increasingly distinct and definite. My pulse starts to clamour.

I wait as long as I can, until I can’t wait any longer. Then I surface, gasping, and swim to the edge, resting my arms on the side as the water pulses over it and spills into the channel beneath. The bell sounds in the valley. The children will be getting hungry.

I’m clearing away their tea things when Nina comes back from the pool, and she’s just in time to hear Christopher demanding another biscuit. If she wasn’t there, I’d probably give in, but today I feel I can do better. There’s a bit of a row, which Nina elegantly defuses. ‘If you come into the garden with me,’ she tells him, ‘I know a game we can play.’

I
never play games with him
, I think. Another thing to feel bad about.

I scoop up Cecily and sit her on my hip and try to interest her in a kiss but she squirms and pushes my face away with her fat little hands, wanting to be released. Dribble has soaked her top, and her cheeks are pink pantomime circles. In our bedroom, she crawls around shouting crossly while I dig for the Calpol in the spongebag patterned with sailing boats, and then I run her a shallow bath. I’m peeling off her sundress while singing ‘Old Macdonald’ (her favourite, she particularly likes making the piggy noises), when I hear the scream.

It’s very high and thin and whippy, a streamer in the wind. I’ve never heard him make a noise like that before.

I run with her through the house, to the terrace, almost losing my footing on the steps. ‘Christopher!’ I say as he hurtles towards me, eyes wide. He throws his arms around my thigh and I put my hand out to the table, steadying myself. ‘What on earth was all that about? I’m so sorry,’ I call to her as she comes over the grass to join us, laughing and reaching out to ruffle his hair.

‘Oh no, we’re fine, it’s just a game,’ she says.

‘For heaven’s sake, Christopher!’ I say, almost furious. ‘Don’t make that noise again. Cuts through me like a knife.’

He has had enough of the game now, and comes for his bath without complaint.

Ben is just settling down with both children, preparing to read
Goodnight Moon
, when Christopher reaches under his pillow and looks under the bed and says Blue Bunny is missing. ‘It’s fine, he’ll be in my big bag,’ I say, but as I say the words I’m pitched into sudden dread, a certainty that the rabbit isn’t there, and that I haven’t seen it since some time this morning.

I check the bag. The jar of honey, oily napkins from the crêperie, some cards I keep forgetting to post.
Fuck fuck fuck
.

We go through the rooms lifting cushions, dragging furniture away from the walls. Christopher stands in the pale corridor, wailing. Fat glassy tears spill over his cheeks. He rubs them away with a fist. ‘I want Blue Bunny,’ he moans.

‘Well, let’s just keep looking,’ says Ben. ‘I’ll go and check in the car.’ And when he glances up at me I know he’s thinking about the scene that morning, before we set off, and how I gave in.
See? What did I say? This is your fault.

‘Can you remember when you last saw him?’ I ask Christopher, but this question is beyond him: I might as well ask him to recite some Larkin or read a bus timetable. Sophie goes off to check the pool. Ben returns from the car empty-handed and then we go back over the morning, charting it, using its most striking features – the drive, the walk through the wood, the beehives, the crêpe van and the toy stall – for navigation. ‘Did you have him when I bought you the cars?’ Ben asks, and Christopher thinks maybe, maybe he did. His breath comes in ragged bursts. Ben and I exchange a look.