Motherland (51 page)

‘How are bananas?’ says Kitty, meaning his work.

‘Challenging,’ says Larry. ‘My father has just decided to retire. Which puts me in the driving seat.’

‘But that’s wonderful, isn’t it?’

‘As I say, challenging. After all these years of having the market pretty much to ourselves, it looks like we’re about to get some serious competition. A Dutch firm called Geest.’

‘Geesed? As in goosed?’

‘Almost.’

‘You’ve been wanting to take over for ages, Larry. Now you can do all those things you’ve been dreaming of doing.’

‘Yes, that’s the exciting part.’ He looks round. ‘I take it Ed’s away.’

‘As usual. I want to talk to you about that. Later, when the girls are in bed. Oh, Larry, I’m so glad you’ve come.’

The guest bedroom above the kitchen is known as ‘Larry’s room’, because whenever he comes, with or without Geraldine, this is where he sleeps. He’s in the room, hanging up the modest changes of clothes he’s brought for the weekend, when he hears a soft tap-tap on the door.

‘Come in!’ he calls.

No one comes in. He opens the door himself. There stands Pamela, looking unsure whether she wants to come in or run away.

‘Pamela?’

She twists about on her toes and turns her head this way and that, but says not a word.

‘You want to talk to me?’

She nods, not meeting his eyes.

‘Come on in, then.’

She comes in. He closes the door. Realising she might find it easier to speak if he isn’t looking at her, he continues with hanging up his clothes.

‘Larry,’ she says after a while, ‘do you think Mummy would ever leave us?’

‘Leave you?’ says Larry. ‘No, never. Why would you ever think such a thing?’

‘Do mothers ever leave their children?’

‘No, they don’t, sweetheart. Hardly ever.’

‘Judy Garland got divorced. She’s got a little girl.’

‘But she didn’t leave her daughter, did she? And anyway, film stars aren’t like us.’

‘So Mummy wouldn’t ever go off with another man?’

‘No, Pamela, never.’ She has his full attention now. ‘Why are you asking me this?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Then tell your mother. You can tell her.’

‘No!’ says Pamela. ‘I could never tell her!’

‘Pammy, this must be some silly muddle you’ve got yourself into.’

‘It’s not a silly muddle! You don’t know. But I jolly well do know.’

Larry can see that she wants to tell him, but holds back for fear of the consequences.

‘How about I promise not to tell anyone else, if you tell me?’

‘No one else at all?’

‘No one in all the world.’

‘Not Mummy or Daddy?’

‘No one. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

‘You have to do it,’ Pamela says.

‘What?’

‘Cross your heart.’

Larry makes the sign of the cross.

‘No, not like that!’ Pamela demonstrates, describing an X across her skinny chest. ‘Like that.’

Larry complies. There follows a silence. Then Pamela bursts into tears, and mumbles some indistinct words that Larry fails to catch.

‘Come here, sweetheart,’ he says gently, opening his arms. ‘Whisper it in my ear.’

She presses her lips to his ear and whispers.

‘I saw Mummy kissing Hugo.’

He moves her round so he can look her in the face.

‘Hugo?’

She nods, snuffling.

‘You’re sure?’

Another nod.

‘Where?’

‘In the kitchen. When I came back from school.’

‘They were probably having a friendly hug.’

‘No! It was mouth kissing!’

Larry says nothing. He’s not sure what to think. He’s not sure what he feels.

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I believe you.’

‘So you see. It’s not a silly muddle I’ve got myself into.’

‘No,’ says Larry, ‘but it may be a silly muddle all the same.’

All through the remainder of that Saturday Pamela’s revelation fills Larry’s mind. He knows he must talk to Kitty about it, but doesn’t know how. His promise to Pamela seems to him to be overruled by the seriousness of the situation. Kitty is clearly in trouble. Apart from Louisa, who’s not at all well, he’s her best friend. Who else can she confide in?

All day long his thoughts bounce back and forth, from Kitty to Ed to Hugo and back, missing out only himself and his own feelings for Kitty. So long controlled if not denied, he dares not unlock the secret room in which he has hidden away his love for her. Kitty is married to his best friend. He himself has a wife. Things are as they are, and must be lived with.

But Hugo?

It makes no sense at all. Behind the locked door waits the secret cry: if Hugo, why not me? Except he knows why it can’t be him.

But Hugo!

One case reported by a child, one kiss that may never have happened, has rocked the fragile equilibrium with which he’s been living for so long. The old self-accusation rises up to taunt him.

I’ve been too weak. I’ve been too afraid. If I’d spoken out long ago. If I’d made demands. If I’d been a man.

If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Evening comes. The girls are tucked up in bed, presumed asleep. Kitty talks freely now, telling him about Ed and his absences and his drinking. All the time she’s talking, Larry looks
on her lovely face and asks himself, Is it possible she has sought consolation elsewhere?

‘Hugo was here the other day,’ she says. ‘He told me he wants Ed to take leave of absence from the firm. That’s how bad it’s got.’

Hugo was here the other day.

‘What will you say to him? To Ed, I mean.’

‘I don’t know, Larry. I don’t know what to do with Ed. He knows I hate his drinking. So now of course he does it in secret. But there’s something I hate more than the drinking. Why is he so unhappy? Have I failed him? What have I done wrong? He’s got me, he’s got the girls. I’ve never asked him to do anything he doesn’t want. I don’t ask him for smart cars or fur coats. I’m a good wife to him, aren’t I? He knows I love him. And I do, I do love him. Sometimes he can be so sweet and I think I’ve got him back, the old Ed. But then it’s like a door closes, and I’m on one side, and he’s on the other, with his unhappiness.’

She speaks rapidly but calmly, long past the stage of incoherence and tears. Larry understands that what he’s hearing is the cycle of thoughts that go round and round in her head.

‘Of course I blame myself, how can I not blame myself? But I’m so tired of it all, Larry, it wears me out. And there’s something worse. I get angry, too. Angry with Ed. Why is he doing this to us? Why can’t he see how good his life could be? Why can’t he see how unhappy he’s making me?’

‘I think he knows that,’ says Larry.

‘Then why doesn’t he do something about it?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Larry. ‘But I’m sure of one thing. It’s not your fault. I know he’d say that too. It’s something in him.’

‘What?’ she says, searching his face as if to find it there. ‘What in him? Why?’

‘I think he’d call it the darkness,’ says Larry. ‘I don’t understand it. But it’s been there as long as I’ve known him.’

‘Even at school?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘If only he’d talk to me about it.’

‘I think the problem there,’ says Larry slowly, ‘is that he feels he’s already let you down. He feels so much guilt about you, he doesn’t want to burden you with even more. He loves you so much, it must be torture to him, knowing he’s making you unhappy too. I think he’s trying to keep it away from you, his unhappiness. Like a contagious disease, you know? He’s quarantining himself.’

‘Then what am I to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Larry. ‘I suppose you could seek consolation elsewhere.’

‘Elsewhere? Where?’

‘Hugo, maybe.’

‘Hugo?’ She laughs at the sheer absurdity of it. ‘Why Hugo of all people?’ Then she guesses. ‘Pamela told you.’

She sees from his face that she’s right.

‘Oh, God! I should have talked to her. I just couldn’t think how to explain. Poor Hugo has had this idea he’s in love with me for ages and ages, and when he was telling me about Ed and how he had to stop work I got upset and cried a little, and he kissed me. Pamela had just got back from school and she saw. What did she tell you? Is she terribly upset? Oh, what fools we all are.’

‘She thought you might leave her to go off with Hugo.’

‘Go off with Hugo? He’s a child! It’s all a fantasy of his. No, I’d never go off with Hugo.’

‘That’s what I told her.’

Even so, the sweet relief is running through his veins, making his skin tingle. He hadn’t realised how afraid he had become of that kiss.

‘Anyway, I never kissed Hugo. He kissed me.’

‘What does he think of it all now?’

‘Oh, he’s fine. We’re still good friends. I just told him to stop being silly. He’s so used to his little game of unreciprocated love that I think he was almost relieved to go back to the way things were.’

His little game of unreciprocated love. There’s more than one of those.

He sees that she follows his thoughts. How could she not? It’s been so many years now.

‘How’s Geraldine?’ she says; even though she asked in the car, and he replied then, ‘Geraldine’s fine.’

‘Geraldine and I,’ he says this time, ‘are as unhappy together as you and Ed. Different couple, different problems, same misery.’

Kitty’s face shows sympathy but not surprise.

‘I did think, in France.’

‘We keep up appearances. But we more or less lead separate lives now.’

Kitty reaches across the table and takes his hand.

‘How do you cope with it?’ she says.

‘I work. Work can take up all your time, if you want it to.’

‘Like Ed.’

‘Ed’s angry with himself. The worst of my situation is I’m
angry with Geraldine. I know I shouldn’t be. I half understand why she is the way she is. I’m sorry for her. But more than everything else I’m angry with her. She won’t do the one simple thing that makes marriages possible. She won’t love me.’

‘Does that mean what I think it means?’

‘We sleep in separate rooms.’

‘Oh, Larry.’

‘I’m ashamed of myself for minding so much. But I do.’

‘Oh, Larry.’

‘So one way or another, we’ve both made a bit of a botch of our lives, haven’t we?’

She goes on stroking his hand, gazing into his eyes.

‘You were the one I wanted,’ he says.

It seems so easy to say it now.

‘I know,’ she says.

‘Have you always known?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I think so.’

‘But you love Ed. Even though he doesn’t know how to be happy.’

‘Sometimes I think that’s why I love him.’

‘So if I’d just been a bit more miserable, might you have gone for me instead?’

‘Probably,’ she says, smiling.

‘I could start now.’

He pulls a sad face.

‘Darling Larry.’

‘Don’t be too nice to me. I don’t think I can take it.’

‘I could have been happy with you,’ she says.

‘Well, there it is,’ he says. ‘What might have been.’

She goes on looking at him, and he sees so much love there
that he doesn’t want either of them to say any more. This moment is so sweet to him that he’d ask for nothing else in life if only it would go on for ever.

Then she says, ‘If Hugo can kiss me, I don’t see why you can’t. I’ve known you far longer.’

He gets up from his side of the table and goes round to hers. She stands, and puts her face up to his, timid but willing, like a young girl. He kisses her very gently at first. Then he draws her into his arms and they kiss as he has longed to kiss her ever since the first moment he set eyes on her, ten years ago.

And so they part at last.

‘I can’t help it,’ he says. ‘I’ve always loved you, and I always will.’

‘Dearest darling Larry. Don’t ask me to say it. I’ll never do anything to hurt Ed. You know that.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘But this’ – she strokes his arms, smiling at him, meaning the acknowledgement of his love – ‘this makes it easier.’

‘For me too.’

And it does. Nothing can change. Their circumstances make anything more between them impossible. But everything has changed. Larry feels filled with a joyful lightness. Now, and to the day either he or Kitty dies, he will never be alone.

‘That was it,’ she says. But she looks so much happier. ‘That was what might have been. Now back to what is.’

‘What system of budgetary controls do you operate, Mr Cornford?’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Larry. ‘I don’t follow you.’

Donohue, the young man leading the McKinsey team, frowns and leans back in his chair. He exchanges glances with Neill and Hollis, his colleagues. All three wear dark suits and white shirts with dark ties. All three are younger than Larry.

‘Purchasing, transport, stock management, maintenance contracts – every part of the running of the company incurs costs, and these costs have to be managed. But of course you know that.’ Donohue smiles suddenly and brightly. Larry waits to be told something he doesn’t know. ‘I’m simply asking what systems you have in place, as managing director, to ensure that your costs are kept as low as possible.’

The question annoys Larry. Donohue annoys Larry. The team from McKinsey & Co, brought in by the parent company in New Orleans, annoys Larry.

‘I don’t assume,’ he answers carefully, ‘that the lowest costs will always deliver the greatest benefit.’

‘But you must have some system for monitoring costs,’ says Donohue.

‘It’s called my staff,’ says Larry. ‘Each purchase is made by a member of staff who knows his business and has the best interests of the company at heart.’

‘I see,’ says Donohue, making a note. ‘Would it be correct to say that your staff are only lightly supervised?’

‘You could say that,’ says Larry. ‘Or you could say our staff are greatly trusted.’

‘And what if it were to turn out that your trust had been abused? Indeed, has it ever so turned out?’

‘We all fall short of the glory of God, Mr Donohue,’ says Larry. ‘The question is, what are we to do about it? We can set up what you call a monitoring system, which tells people what they should be doing, and detects when they’re failing to do it, and presumably punishes them in some way. Or we can give them an area of responsibility, and ask them to work out how best to operate for themselves, and rely on their pride in their work and their loyalty to the company to deliver the best possible results.’