Out of Step (22 page)

‘Att-att att-att att-att!’ Josh cried, ‘BOOM!’ He threw another marble. It missed, and hit the edge of the bath a glancing blow, quite hard enough to chip its white enamel surface.

‘Oh, Josh …’ Nell began, hesitating to reprimand him so early on. ‘That isn’t a very good idea.’

‘It’s a raid,’ Josh explained. ‘I’m a bomber, and this is the enemy fleet, and I’m winning and they’re all going to get sunk. Watch!’ He threw two marbles at once and scored a direct hit, which turned one of the boats over on to its side. ‘Yesss!’ Josh crowed. ‘See that. You can be a used bomb collector if you like. You can get them out of the water and re… re… something them.’

‘Recycle?’

‘Yes, recycle them. You’ll have to roll your sleeves up though. It’s pretty deep. It’s got to be miles down there. It’s a bottomless ocean!’

Nell was quite touched at his concern, but unsure as to how to proceed. Perhaps she should have said ‘Stop it, Josh!’ at the beginning. But she didn’t like to be so immediately authoritarian to a comparative stranger. ‘No, I don’t think so. You see the bath is likely to get damaged if you go on,’ she tried to explain, ‘and you’re making an awful mess, so I wouldn’t do it if I were you.’

‘Oh,
I
would,’ Josh said with satisfaction. ‘And anyway my dad doesn’t mind. He
made
these boats.’

Nell strode forward and pulled the plug out. ‘I mean I don’t want you to do it,’ she said firmly (perhaps too firmly?).

Josh let out an injured wail. ‘Hey, you’re spoiling it all. It’s not
fair
. And anyway, it’s nothing to do with you.
We were here first!’

‘Let’s go downstairs, mmm?’ Nell said lamely. Josh jumped off the bath and stamped out ahead, shrugging off any attempt at contact with her. Then he ran straight downstairs and out of the back door.

When Nell got down to the kitchen she found Rob giving Rosie a shoulder ride. The child seemed to have forgotten her upset feelings already, and was seeing how many wet hand-prints she could make on the newly
decorated ceiling just above her head, and gurgling with laughter. Nell frowned.

‘Shouldn’t we be changing her clothes?’ she asked. ‘We don’t want her catching a chill.’

‘Good thinking,’ Rob said. ‘Spare clothes in that bag over there. OW! Stop pulling my ears, you monster!’

Nell searched through the spare things Cassie had sent and held them up in turn for Rosie’s approval. ‘This one?’

‘That’s Joth’s,’ Rosie said witheringly.

‘Oh well, what about this then?’

‘Joth’s.’

‘And this?’

‘Joth’s.’

‘Well, that’s all there are,’ Nell said. ‘It doesn’t look as though your mum’s sent us any of your clothes. You’ll have to borrow something of his just for now, until yours are dry again.’

‘Don’t want –’ Rosie began, but Rob distracted her by swinging her down from his shoulders and tickling her under her arms. Rosie screamed with mirth, and Rob expertly stripped off her dungarees and the woolly pullover underneath them, and stuffed her into a jersey of Josh’s, rolling up the sleeves to expose her podgy little fists. It was far too long but it, plus her still-dry tights underneath, would have to do.

‘Guess what Auntie Nell made yesterday for us to eat,’ Rob asked.

‘Apple cumble,’ Rosie said hopefully.

Rob laughed. ‘No, marmalade. She made it all herself. Isn’t it a lovely orange colour?’ He took one of the jars from the shelf and held it up to the light.

‘That’s my sweater,’ Josh protested, coming in again and leaving muddy footprints on the floor. ‘I didn’t say
she
could have it.’

‘No,’ Rob said, ‘I did. OK? We haven’t got any of her clothes here, so we haven’t got much choice. Sorry.’
Nicely said, Nell thought. She felt much more comfortable when Rob was there.

The rest of the afternoon passed. Nell mopped up the bathroom floor and put all the marbles back in their box. She made toast-and-Marmite soldiers for Rosie, and honey slices for Josh at 4.30, and at five o’clock Rob helped Rosie back into her newly dry dungarees and then put both children into the Land Rover to take home. Rosie left, clutching one of the jars of Nell’s marmalade, and wouldn’t put it down even when Rob was strapping her in. ‘Marmlade,’ she crooned softly to herself. ‘Olinge marmlade.’

‘Bye, Rosie. Bye, Josh,’ Nell said, looking in through the passenger door. ‘See you again soon, I hope.’

‘Anyway,’ Josh said stoutly, as though completing an argument of long-standing, ‘anyway, my mummy doesn’t make jam. She’s on TV.’

I think I’ll aim for television work, Elly thought to herself as she wrapped the silk scarf artistically round her throat to keep out the penetrating February wind. ‘Whaaa!’ she exclaimed aloud as she got out of her car and into the northerly blast. ‘I hope my nose won’t go all red with cold. Today I’ve got to look my absolute best.’ She glanced around to check whether anyone had observed her talking to herself, but the few people walking or driving through the square were in their own bubbles, self-absorbed and apparently remote from the communal atmosphere. That’s why I like living in London, Elly thought. Only here, where you’re surrounded by strangers, can you be truly free of other people’s expectations. I’m going to shed all those labels that categorise me: no more ‘Headmaster’s wife’; no more ‘businesswoman.’ I need to get a life – no,
lots
of lives. I shall be someone different every week! A man passed her, pushing twins in a pram. I shall always be a mother though, Elly thought.
That’s something I can’t escape – even if I’d quite like to some of the time. And I’m very happy to be a lover, or even a mistress…

She skipped up the steps and rang Malachy’s front doorbell. Six whole weeks, she thought, with only a measly couple of postcards signed ‘Best wishes’. He’s got some explaining to do! I shan’t tell him I didn’t go skiing though. She pushed her hair into place whilst she waited for him. I must get him to give me a key, she thought. Could I live here, or would I be better being independent to begin with?

‘A belated happy New Year,’ he said, opening the door and embracing her. ‘I’ve missed you. Mmm, you smell delicious! Good festive season?’

‘Actually, no,’ Elly said.

‘Me neither. Never mind, you’re here now.’ He stood aside for her to go up the stairs before him. ‘Would you like a drink first?’

‘Isn’t your mysterious American friend here? I thought we were going to talk about my career?’

‘Darling girl, I’m so sorry. He couldn’t make it after all. Pressure of work. You know how it is.’

‘What?’ Elly stopped abruptly halfway up.

‘He said to promise you he’d see you next time he’s over here. He’s a dear man, I’m sure he’ll keep his word.’

‘But… I was relying on meeting him,’ Elly began. ‘You prom –’

‘It’s a damned shame,’ Malachy agreed, patting her bottom. ‘On you go. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’

Elly frowned but went up, and along the landing into the drawing room, where she stood in the large bay window with her back to him.

‘Don’t be vexed, sweeting,’ Malachy said. ‘There’ll be other times.’

‘But I’m selling my business!’ Elly protested. ‘I can’t just enjoy myself. I have to have some way to earn my living.’

‘Relax,’ he said. ‘A calm interlude as a kept woman wouldn’t do you any harm at all. You’re all tense and stressed out. You’ve even got a little pink quivering nose!’ He came forward and kissed the end of it gently and then stood back, regarding her gravely.

‘Would you really?’

‘Would I really what?’

‘Keep me?’

Malachy made a little deprecatory gesture with his hands. ‘Well, naturally I meant Paul, but yes I’ll certainly help pamper you, you know I will. I’m having a Campari and soda, how about you?’

‘White wine,’ Elly said automatically. He’s got no idea what I’ve done, she thought. How shall I tell him? What if he isn’t overjoyed? She didn’t know why she suddenly had doubts. She had been so confident. She stood in the window and hugged her arms around herself.

‘Poor love, you’re freezing,’ Malachy said, coming in with a tall half-filled wineglass and giving it to her. ‘Isn’t the climate just bloody these days?’

Oh God, Elly thought, he’s talking about the
weather!
He surely can’t be bored with me already.

‘This time of year is always a letdown, don’t you think?’ he said. Worse and worse.

‘I tried to phone you before you left,’ she said, ‘but you were never in, and you didn’t answer any of my messages.’

‘Damned machine,’ Malachy apologised, sitting down. ‘Somehow I can never bring myself to get to grips with it. Rob set it up for me, but all it does is to double the number of people I don’t want to speak to.’

‘Including me?’

‘Of course not, darling. Whatever’s the matter? You’ve been as perverse as a porcupine ever since you arrived! Come and sit down.’ He patted the couch next to him.

‘Something happened over Christmas,’ Elly said. She
rested against the button-backed leather and closed her eyes.

‘Something bad?’

‘Yes and no.’ She opened her eyes again and took a gulp of wine. ‘Paul’s got some woman.’

‘I see.’ He looked for the first time like an actor playing for time, having forgotten his lines. He’s a fake, Elly suddenly realised. He never says what he truly thinks; even now, when he’s supposed to be in love with me! Her resentment made her strong. She thought, I’m not going to help him out. This is the ultimate test. If he tries to get some clues from me about what I want him to say, then I’ll know for sure that his attachment to me isn’t real…

‘So, how do you feel about that?’ Malachy put a sympathetic hand on her knee. Elly shook it off.

‘I thought you’d be pleased!’ she cried. ‘Paul’s
leaving me
. We could be together all the time. How do
you
feel?’

He rose to his feet and walked deliberately over to the fireplace, where he poked at the glowing coals unnecessarily. Then he leant against it elegantly. ‘Startled,’ he said. He waved his hands expressively. ‘Concerned for you … This isn’t something one can react to instantaneously in some sort of slick sound bite, you know. It needs considerable thought.’

‘No,’ Elly said, getting up to leave. ‘That’s just where you’re wrong. It just needs a spontaneous response from the heart. But maybe, as I’m discovering, you aren’t any good without a script.’

Living with Rob seems entirely natural, Nell thought. Our lives fit together almost effortlessly on a practical level. Rob’s taken command of the woodburner and supplies it with regular firewood, and I do the cooking and… most other things, now I think about it. But if I put some of his dirty clothes into the washing machine with my stuff, it’s simply because it would seem petty-minded
only to do half a load. I iron the odd thing of his too when doing my own, but then I quite like ironing.

‘Wonderful,’ he said, coming downstairs wearing a freshly laundered shirt. ‘The Mad Cow never ironed
anything.’

Nell had felt obscurely from the very beginning that she was in some sort of contest with the aftertaste of Cassie, and only if she could win hands down would she feel even adequate. At the moment she was clearly doing all right on the domestic front, but the very fact that he was comparing her with his wife made her wonder whether he actually saw her in those terms. She began to feel a little put out that he hadn’t shown any interest in sleeping with her. She wasn’t that unattractive, was she?

She began to wear a little make-up at home to see if he would notice. Then she wasn’t sure if he had or not, because he didn’t mention it. She dabbed a spot or two of Anaïs Anaïs behind her ears. Still no comment. She thought of Martin and how, in Rob’s place, she would have had to fight him off, and smiled wryly to herself. But if Rob had been equally as keen, would she then have accused him of taking advantage of the situation? Perhaps he couldn’t win. She tried to see it from his point of view. Maybe he was unsure of himself; crushed by his experience with Cassie. Nell decided he needed some unambiguous encouragement.

An opportunity presented itself the following Saturday when Rob was sitting at the kitchen table opening his post. Nell had already discarded hers as being junk mail, and was about to put some soup on for lunch.

‘At last!’ Rob muttered under his breath.

‘What?’

‘My decree nisi has arrived. Only another two or three months and I’ll be shot of the bloody woman for ever.’

‘That’s great,’ Nell said with enthusiasm.

‘Of course, it won’t actually be like that,’ Rob said,
making a face. ‘To be realistic, I shall still have to cooperate with her for the next God knows how many years, until the children are grown up and off our hands.’

‘But at least you won’t be married to her.’

‘No, thank the Lord.’

That evening Nell prepared a special meal, and set it out on the table with wine and candles and a background of Beethoven. Rob came in in his stockinged feet, having taken his boots off, and switched the lights on.

‘What’s all this?’

‘Turn them off again,’ Nell said. ‘I’m recreating that evening when we had a power cut. D’you remember?’

‘I remember being bothered about the Land Rover stuck in the snow,’ Rob said. ‘I was worried I’d buckled the axle.’

‘Sit down anyway. I’m just dishing up.’

‘Looks good.’

‘I hope it’s one of your favourites.’ Nell handed him a plateful, and he helped himself to sprouts.

‘So, what’s all this in aid of?’

‘I thought we’d celebrate the beginning of your life as a free man.’

‘That’s nice. I’m pleased about it naturally, but I didn’t think … it would be any big deal for you.’

‘Well, that’s up to you.’ She said it deliberately.

Rob actually blushed. Even in the half-light she could see the colour rise in his cheeks. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘I had no idea.’

I’m out of practice at this sort of thing, Rob thought. Haven’t chatted up anyone for years. Makes me feel about seventeen again, and… flustered. Didn’t think she fancied me. Have there been other signs I’ve simply missed? I’ve been so preoccupied with the divorce and the kids … But it could be dodgy, with us living in the same place – what if it all goes wrong? Oh, to hell with all
my puritan prudence. She’s lovely! I’d be crazy to pass up a chance like this. He finished his food and sat back, smiling at her.