Homework (12 page)

Read Homework Online

Authors: Margot Livesey

BOOK: Homework
9.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“No, I've been too busy. Let me finish explaining this.” While Banu stood at my elbow, listening intently, Stephen studied the menu as if he had never seen it before. In a minute Chandor came and dispatched Banu back to the family table. “He wants to be prime minister,” he said. “Although I tell him in England that's a job for women.”
“Can we order?” Stephen asked. Normally he would have responded to Chandor's joke, asked to see Banu's homework, leaned across the table, and squeezed my hand. When Chandor had taken our order and brought lager and papadums, I asked what was wrong.
Stephen broke a papadum onto the white tablecloth. He looked down, fingering the larger pieces so that they broke into smaller ones. “Jenny and I were arguing on the way home,” he said, “and she accused me of hating Helen.”
“What were you arguing about?”
“It wasn't important. She wanted to invite Anna to come over next Saturday, and I told her we were hoping to go to Abernethy.” His tone was brusque, as if I had deliberately misunderstood him, and still he did not raise his head.
“You did get quite absorbed in your shelves,” I said, trying
to tease him out of his gloom. “We can't expect the house to be as interesting to her as it is to us.”
He put out his hand to silence me. “Did you say something to Jenny?” he asked, looking up into my eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I asked Jenny why she thought I hated Helen, and she said you had told her.”
“Stephen, I would never do that. I don't think I even mentioned Helen today. No, maybe I did when I asked if they had a garden. I do try to make occasional comments about her because I don't want Jenny to feel that her mother is a forbidden topic, but I would never dream of saying anything about you and Helen.” I waited for Stephen to nod understandingly or reach out with a smile to take my hand. “You can't believe that I'd tell your daughter that you hated her mother.”
“I know you wouldn't use those words, but you might have said something negative about Helen without thinking.” On his face was an expression I had never seen before, a mixture of embarrassment and determination.
“I definitely didn't.”
He raised his glass to his lips. He swallowed some lager, lowered the glass, wiped his lips. A long time seemed to pass. At last he spoke. “I'm not accusing you, Celia. You probably made some remark that Jenny misconstrued. Sometimes she seems so intelligent that it's easy to forget she's only nine.”
Chandor appeared, carrying several dishes. His arrival was timely; I would not have known what to say. There seemed no way to defend myself against the charge that I had said something which Jenny had misinterpreted; it was, in spite of Stephen's protestations to the contrary, an irrefutable accusation. Banu brought the rice, and we began to eat.
On Sunday, Stephen and I worked on the bathroom. Every available surface was coated in a shiny green paint which had probably been chosen by Mrs. Menzies in the first months of married life. It took us most of the day to sand the walls and apply undercoat. As the hours passed, the proximity imposed by the confined space seemed to increase rather than lessen our estrangement. The first fissure had appeared in our union; only a hairline crack, faint as those that seamed the green paint, but nevertheless a blemish on what had previously been perfect. He had forgiven me, which implied that there was something to forgive.
For once I found myself looking forward to going to work, and on Monday I was at the office even before Marilyn. I covered my desk with piles of paper to camouflage my inactivity and then sat gazing out of the window. In the alley below, two men were unloading boxes from a van. Their voices came to me in muffled bursts. I tried to imagine what had happened on the drive to Helen's flat. Perhaps Jenny in an outburst of anger had exclaimed, “You hate Mummy and me.” Stephen had replied by saying that of course he didn't: why on earth would she think that? And Jenny, searching for an answer that would serve simultaneously as a pretext and a reason to press the question, had said, “Celia told me.” Next week I would ask her what she thought I had said. But then I remembered her standing over me, shouting, “You're dead,” and I knew there could be no question of questioning her.
The sound of footsteps in the corridor roused me; Clare whisked by. I wished there was someone with whom I could discuss the situation, but even with Suzie, my closest friend in Edinburgh, I felt reticent. If only Lynne were not at work, I thought, I could telephone her, and then it occurred to me that I could write. I wound a sheet of headed note paper into the typewriter and began to type at top speed. I covered two pages almost without pause. When I stopped to reread what I had written, however, I felt less confident of Lynne's allegiance. I suspected she might reply by pointing out the difficulties of Jenny's situation. For my anxiety to make sense, I would have to explain that what had happened on Saturday was not an isolated event but the latest in a series of incidents, each in itself trivial but all suggesting that, contrary to the appearance she maintained most of the time, Jenny did not like me. I was wondering whether to go into more detail, when Suzie came in to ask my opinion about the design of a maths book.
She put the manuscript down on my desk and pointed out different kinds of examples and headings. “I have no idea whether we should distinguish between the various subheadings, or what format we should be using for the examples.”
“Didn't you ask the author to identify each kind of heading?” I asked.
“Yes, and he did after a fashion. But when you study his notes, he's completely inconsistent: sometimes he distinguishes between two identical headings, sometimes he conflates two or three different kinds.”
We began to look through Chapter Six, which Suzie had chosen as having the greatest variety of examples. After we had come up with several different lists of headings, she suggested that we take a coffee break. We went down the corridor to the kitchen. While we waited for the kettle to boil, I asked what she had done at the weekend.
“I seemed to spend most of my time arguing with Tim
about his hamster. It was a birthday present from his father.” Suzie shook the kettle impatiently. “Tim insists on having the cage in his room, but then he can't sleep because the hamster is a secret exercise fanatic and makes a terrific din on its treadmill all night long. No wonder it's comatose during the day.”
“Couldn't you oil the treadmill?”
“I've tried. I drenched it in Mazola but that didn't make the slightest difference, and it seems cruel to take the wheel away. The whole problem would be solved if Tim would agree to let the hamster spend the night in the living room, where it would be out of earshot, but he won't hear of that.”
“Maybe you could drug the hamster.” I spooned Nescafé into the cups and poured on water.
Suzie giggled. “I'm not going to share my drugs with a rodent,” she said.
She returned to her office, and I settled down to finish my letter to Lynne. I was reaching for another sheet of paper when the idea came to me: we could buy Jenny a pet for her birthday, which was only a fortnight away. Although she liked Tobias, he was too much mine to be really satisfying. The advantages of the plan ranged before me: Stephen's pleasure in the suggestion would raise the temperature between us back to normal, and the ownership of a small animal would work a kind of alchemy for Jenny, transforming our house into a home for one day a week. I tore up the letter and at lunchtime wrote Lynne a cheerful postcard.
 
The walls of the pet shop were lined with cages. Near the front there were mice, rats, hamsters, and guinea pigs, and, further back, away from the draughts: canaries, parrots, mynah birds. On the floor were a couple of pens similar to those used to confine small children; there were puppies in one and kittens in the other. I knelt down to look at the latter. A Siamese kitten walked over to rub itself back and forth
against the bars. “I can see this might be fatal,” Stephen said. “It wouldn't be fair to get Jenny a pet I planned to completely monopolise, would it?” The kitten raised a paw and patted my finger. “Anyway, Tobias would never forgive me.”
A heavyset young woman wearing a green apron appeared from the back of the shop. She walked over and stood beside us, resting her plump hands on the edge of the pen. “He's a charmer, and he knows it,” she said. “We call him Prince. He's had all the shots.”
“He's beautiful,” I said.
“Do you want me to lift him out?”
“We're really here to buy something for a ten year old, not a dog or a cat,” Stephen explained, straightening up.
“Inside or out?” the woman asked briskly. She looked from Stephen to me, and when it was clear that neither of us understood, said, “Do you have a garden where a pet could live for at least part of the year?”
“Yes,” said Stephen.
“In that case, I'd recommend a rabbit. They're more fun than hamsters or guinea pigs, and much less delicate.” She led us over to a large cage which contained half a dozen rabbits, ranging from pure black to pure white. “These are does,” she said. “Put your hand in and see what they do.”
A small, light grey rabbit with a splash of white under her chin came fearlessly to sniff Stephen's fingers. He stroked her, and she was quiet under his hand. “She's pretty. Don't you think so, Celia?” he said.
“Yes, she's sweet.”
The woman lifted her out and offered her to me to stroke. Her fur was soft as thistledown, and her large ears twitched towards me like antennae searching the air waves.
 
On Saturday morning I was sitting at the dining room table, consulting a cookbook, when Jenny arrived. She followed Stephen into the room, barely nodded in response to my
greeting, and stalked out again. “Is something wrong?” I asked Stephen.
He sat down at the opposite end of the table. “She's annoyed that we're not going to Abernethy for the day.” He tried to shrug as if Jenny's pique were a minor matter, but I could see from the set of his mouth that he was unhappy.
“But Joyce and Edward are coming to lunch. Isn't that as good?”
“Apparently not. I'd forgotten that she wanted to invite Anna today. Now she thinks that I cheated her out of Anna's presence by pretending that we were going to Abernethy and then not telling her that we'd changed our minds.”
“She'll cheer up when she sees the rabbit,” I said. It was still ten days until Jenny's birthday, and there was no reason for her to suspect a surprise.
“Yes, of course.” Stephen smiled. “Let's give it to her now.”
He left the room, and I overheard him asking Jenny to help him tidy up the garden shed. She muttered something inaudible.
“I meant now,” he said.
He came back in, and slowly, dramatising reluctance with every step, Jenny trailed after him out to the garden. On the pretext of hanging a couple of dish towels on the washing line, I followed. Stephen opened the door of the shed.
I could not see Jenny's face, but I heard her whisper, “A rabbit,” almost as if to speak aloud would make the vision vanish. She knelt down and put her fingers through the bars of the hutch. Over her shoulder I saw the rabbit, sitting in one corner; her blue eyes were wide and alert, and her nose quivered. She showed no signs of coming closer. After a minute or two Jenny pushed past Stephen and me into the garden, to pick a handful of grass. Then she came back and pressed the greenery through the bars; the rabbit hopped over and began to munch.
“What's its name?” she asked.
“It doesn't have a name,” Stephen said. “You'll have to choose one.”
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“It's a girl.”
“Oh,” said Jenny, and then fell silent. She remained kneeling, engrossed in watching the rabbit eat the grass, until Stephen suggested that they move the hutch out into the garden, where they could build a run.
I left the two of them debating which corner would be most suitable and went inside. During the next couple of hours, whenever I looked out, they were engrossed in building the enclosure. At one o'clock I went to tell Stephen that his parents were late. “Good,” he said. “Maybe we can get this finished.” He continued to hammer in a stake. Jenny was busy adjusting the wire netting. I returned indoors. A few minutes later, while I was mixing the salad dressing, the doorbell rang.
“Celia, I'm so sorry we're late,” Joyce exclaimed. “We stopped at a market garden, and you can guess what happened.”
Edward's arms were full of plants. He had bought us basil, columbine, and delphiniums. We trooped through the house, with Joyce commenting on all the improvements, and out into the garden. As soon as Jenny saw her grandparents, she dashed over and seized Joyce's hand. “Come and see my rabbit,” she said.
“A rabbit,” said Joyce, sounding properly surprised. “Goodness, where did that come from?”
“Dad got it for me. For my birthday.”
Edward had paused beside the herbaceous border. “Some of these will fit nicely here, I think. I'll put them in after lunch.” He set down the bedding plants and surveyed the garden. “I must say I wouldn't fancy having a rabbit in a garden as nice as this. Think of the damage it could do.”
“I don't think it can get out. Stephen and Jenny are building it a run.”
Reluctantly Edward left the plants and followed me over to the far corner of the lawn. In the course of the morning Jenny and Stephen had constructed a large wire-netting run, which stretched in front of the hutch. There was even, Jenny demonstrated proudly, going to be a gate.
“It still needs a few finishing touches,” said Stephen, getting to his feet.
“It's wonderful,” I said. “Now she has lots of space, and nothing can hurt her.”
“What could hurt her?” asked Jenny.
“Oh, I don't know. A dog?” I felt foolish. I had been thinking of my childhood, when even close to town there had been talk of foxes and weasels.
“But how could a dog get into the garden?”
“It couldn't,” I said.
“What's her name?” asked Joyce.
“Her name's Selina.” Jenny spoke as firmly as if she had had a divine revelation of the rabbit's name.
“That's a pretty name,” said Edward, but she vouchsafed no hint of its origin.
Jenny had to be cajoled into coming inside for lunch. She ate at top speed, then begged to be released. Edward was almost as anxious to get back to the garden, and he and Stephen soon followed Jenny, leaving Joyce and me to clear the table. When we were settled over our coffee, Joyce described the terrible state in which she had found Helen's flat a fortnight earlier. “Helen's never been keen on housework, but the mess was unbelievable.” She spread her arms wide to suggest the scale of the disaster. “I ended up coming through on the Monday with Mrs. Blair, my daily. Between us we got the place clean.”
“Stephen was quite upset about it,” I said. Even though I believed his story, I was glad to have Joyce's confirmation.
“I don't wonder. Well, the situation should be easier now. I always liked Stephen's old flat, but it wasn't good for Jenny, whereas this place is ideal.” She drained her cup and stood up. “I didn't come here to spend the whole afternoon blethering. You must set me to work. I brought an old shirt and a pair of trousers in case you wanted me to do some painting.”
Soon she was ensconced in the bedroom, painting the window frame, which we had left for last and never got round to doing. As I washed the dishes, I glimpsed Edward's tall form stooping over the herbaceous border and heard the sound of Stephen hammering. I began to cover the kitchen shelves with lining paper. When teatime came, I carried out a tray and spread a blanket on the grass. Joyce, Edward, Stephen, and I drank Earl Grey and discussed central heating. All Jenny wanted to do was play with Selina. She poked grass and dandelion leaves through the wire netting, and Selina obligingly twitched her nose and ate everything that was offered. I felt pleased with myself.

Other books

The Aquila Project by Norman Russell
The Toyotomi Blades by Dale Furutani
Paper Daughter by Jeanette Ingold
Backstage Nurse by Jane Rossiter
Husband for Hire by Susan Crosby
Don’t Ever Wonder by Darren Coleman
The 13th Resolution by Charles M. Sheldon
Colder Than Ice by MacPherson, Helen