Relative Love (29 page)

She sat on a chair near the front, next to the aisle and facing the altar.
Okay, God, if you’re there come out now and do something. Show yourself. If you exist, help me
. She opened her eyes and looked about her, staring first at the waxy face of a madonna on a plinth next to her and then at Jesus pinned to a crucifix behind the altar, brown-red blood dripping from his hands and sides. His head was cast down and he looked gruesome and self-pitying.
Okay, I’ll settle for a priest then; some charismatic, community-loving chap with understanding eyes and a kind voice who’ll assure me my pain will pass, that he will pray for me even though I can’t pray for myself
. Hearing a rustle, Serena looked about her, a brief wild hope pulsing in her heart. But nobody was there. She closed her eyes and let the tears, draining and inexhaustible, fall unchecked. Around her nothing moved, except for the flames of three thin white candles flickering on a rack near the door, stirred by the breeze that had followed her inside.

Charlie paused at the florist’s outside the underground station. He wanted to buy something for Serena, but flowers made him think of death. They had been sent so many after Tina’s accident, huge and beautiful bunches, all with sad little notes tucked inside. At the funeral, too, there had been hundreds of flowers both inside the church and at the graveside, many of them wreaths fashioned into the shape of hearts and teddy bears. He eyed a bucketful of red roses, their crimson velvet buds glossy in the last burst of evening sun. ‘A quid off if you buy two bunches,’ barked the man, jingling the change in his apron.

‘No, thanks, I don’t think so.’ Charlie plunged into the entrance to the underground, his heart heavy.

Behind him he heard the florist quip, ‘Ain’t she worth it, then?’ followed by a throaty cackle.

Serena was worth it, all right. She was worth everything. Which was why he would play it safe and buy chocolates instead, nothing posh – she didn’t like fancy chocolates – but a good old Terry’s Chocolate Orange, or maybe a bag of chocolate éclairs. She liked chocolate éclairs. Once, a long time ago, before hiding sweets from the children and worries about healthy eating, the pair of them would eat a whole bag at a sitting, dipping them in coffee until the hard outer coating began to melt, then licking the dribbles off each other’s chin. Charlie, swaying torso to
torso with his fellow commuters, clenched his jaw at the memory and stared hard at the newsprint of the
Evening Standard
. An ex-cabinet minister had written a biography claiming a string of affairs with eminent people. Telecom shares were climbing again. The Americans had arrested a suspected Taleban terrorist. And all Charlie could think was, So what? At work it was all right, he could shut things out. There was still so much to get to grips with: his briefcase was stuffed with reading matter – treatises on marine safety, piracy, terrorism, international environmental-protection laws, it would be months before he was properly up to speed. There was also a considerable amount of liaising with similar bodies overseas, some of which would necessitate travelling abroad. A trip to Paris was already scheduled for May, and in August the USA was hosting a conference at a Florida research institute as a preliminary round in negotiations for a new tighter international treaty on marine terrorism. One of the many challenges of the evening was to break this news to Serena. Charlie had never had to travel for work before and feared, given her fragile state, how Serena would react to the prospect. He was also planning, for the umpteenth time, to broach the subject of bereavement counselling. Unlike him she had so much time on her hands, time in which to get morose and think backwards instead of forwards. To talk to someone other than her usual gaggle of friends, many of them painfully surrounded by little ones of Tina’s age, would surely be a help. Charlie wasn’t over the loss himself, of course, not by a long way, but he was beginning to see that one day he would be. He still felt desolate, but was aware, too, of life moving on and a growing urge to allow himself to move with it.

Serena met him in the hall, porcelain-faced, a sparrow in his arms.

‘If you get any thinner you’ll fade away.’

‘So will you.’ She pulled back and patted his stomach, which, thanks to his running, had shrunk visibly in recent weeks.

‘Hardly.’ Charlie smiled, hoicking up his trousers. ‘I bought you a little present. Close your eyes.’

‘Oh, Charlie, I —’

‘Close your eyes. It’s nothing, really, something silly.’ He placed the bag of éclairs in her outstretched hand. Serena opened her eyes, sighed, then burst into tears. ‘Oh, darling, I didn’t mean … oh, don’t cry, Serena, please don’t cry.’ He put his arms round her, feeling a tight lump constrict his throat. ‘Come on, now, a drink. We both need a drink. Then I’m going to cook us fried eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, like I used to, remember? When you were pregnant with the twins and needed fry-ups at least twice a day. Do you remember, darling, do you remember?’ He folded his arms round her head while she cried harder, trying between sobs to explain that there was virtually no food in the house because they were going away and certainly no bacon or tomatoes or mushrooms.

‘Scrambled eggs, then.’ Charlie put his arm across her back and steered her into the kitchen, taking the weight of her as he would an invalid. ‘And,’ he continued, easing her into a chair and beginning to hunt for a saucepan and wooden spoon, ‘we’re going to eat it in bed watching telly.’

‘We’ll make crumbs.’

‘So bloody what?’ He whistled as he worked, thinking, This is all it needs – the will to carry on, the desire to be cheerful, a determination to get life back on to an even keel. Serena was wrung out, so he would manage it for the pair of them. ‘And the children, were they okay, getting the train and so on?’

‘Fine.’

‘And then what did you get up to?’

Serena dug her nail into one of the ingrained lines on the kitchen table. Next to it was a large faded pink stain where Tina, in a few unsupervised moments, had attempted to be creative with a red felt pen. ‘Nothing.’ The stain looked like a heart. Why had she never noticed that before?

‘Nothing?’

‘I … tidied the house. I went to the shops. I saw Brenda Howard, who pretended not to see me.’

‘Oh, no, darling, did she? That’s outrageous.’

Serena shrugged. ‘I can understand it. And it’s probably just as well. I mean, there’s nothing anyone can say, is there? Nothing that we don’t know already.’

‘A bereavement counsellor might say something that would help,’ he blurted.

‘If I need a counsellor, Charlie, what about you?’

‘Okay, I’ll come too. If that’s what it takes, I’ll come too.’ He swung round to face her, waving the wooden spoon. ‘I’ll do anything – anything you want, to help. I —’

‘Oh, Charlie.’ Serena got up from the chair and slipped her arms round his waist, pressing one cheek against his chest. There was shell in the egg, she noticed, a small pearly pink dagger at the heart of the yolk. ‘I know you mean to be kind, but I don’t need to see anyone. I know what I’m going through … denial, anger, acceptance. It’s called grief and I’m in the thick of it. Someone else telling me I’m in the thick of it really won’t make any difference.’ She pulled back, dropping her arms to her sides. ‘There’s a bit of shell in the egg. Do you want me to fish it out?’

‘No, I can manage,’ he snapped, irritated suddenly by everything, her obstinacy, the eggshell, the unhappiness still filling their house like fog. ‘You go upstairs and get into bed. I’ll bring the food.’

They ate side by side with trays on their laps, watching – after much cursing and channel-hopping from Charlie – a programme about penguins. Penguins, the presenter explained, his glasses and orange kagoul speckled with rain, a backdrop of heaving grey sea behind him, take a mate for life, then set up house in huge colonies that operate with all the efficiency of a well-run commune, complete with crêches run by aunts, play-time sessions on the beach and a fair allocation of parental responsibilities. Behind him the birds, part of a vast colony on the Patagonian coast, blithely co-operated in a demonstration of this thesis, canoodling together under rocks, herding small charges into tidy groups and partaking in indulgent sliding and diving competitions into the sea. It was all improbably soothing. At least Charlie, sleepy with wine and food, thought so. Turning to Serena in the dark afterwards, he nuzzled his nose into the space between her neck and shoulder, venturing, after ten long weeks of not venturing anything, to slide his hand between her thighs.

‘I went into a church today.’

‘Did you?’ he murmured. Her thighs were a vice, clamped together. ‘Did it help?’

‘No.’

‘I know what would help me.’ He moved his hand lower down her legs, stroking, seeking a way in between her knees.

‘I think I might get a job.’

‘A job. What sort of job?’ Concentrating only on the conversation he was trying to have with her body, her words floated almost beyond his consciousness.

‘I don’t know – stacking shelves, working in a shop, anything.’ She straightened her legs.

‘Don’t be silly.’ He edged closer, pressing himself up against her back, trying to push a bend back into her legs with his knees.

‘It would be something to do …’

He was aroused now and wanted her to feel it, to feel him.

‘Charlie … I don’t … I can’t …’

‘It would help, darling, surely, it would help … Wouldn’t it help … just a little bit?’ He moved his hand from her legs to her shoulder, trying gently to pull her on to her back. She resisted and then gave in suddenly, relaxing her limbs and rolling over with a little sigh. ‘There … you see? There …’ He eased himself inside her with a groan. She was warm and soft. As she always was. After so much pain, so much separateness, it was blissful, like coming home, like finding himself again, finding them and their closeness. Such closeness. Charlie groaned again from the pleasure of this alone. Then his head emptied and the rhythm of his desire asserted itself. He started pushing harder, deeper, the pleasure building, so sweet, so intense. And reassuring too, God how reassuring, to find it still there, this capacity to touch, to arouse, to connect. Charlie slipped one hand under her, tipping the angle of her hips to meet his. He was close now, he could feel it, like approaching a cliff top at full speed, ready to fling himself into the ecstasy of letting go …

‘Charlie – my cap. I need to put in my cap.’ Serena had stiffened and was pressing both hands hard against his shoulders, trying to push him out of her.

Not with him, he realised, not with him at all. ‘Do you?’ It took every ounce of his will-power to force the words out, to engage his brain. ‘Why, my darling, why? What would be the harm if …?’ He began to push again, the pulse of the desire building again, easily using the bulk of his body to overpower her. A baby, they would make a baby. To replace Tina, to make them whole again. To make things good again. And it felt so good, so
right
, so —

‘Charlie!’ It was a scream. His wife was screaming. ‘For Christ’s sake, Charlie!’

‘What?’ Charlie blinked. Sweat stung his eyes. He raised himself on his elbows looking down at her, seeing the flat moon of her face in the dark, her eyes wide hollows. ‘What?’ he rasped. He was hot, but she was cold he realised, unheated, undesiring. He could feel his own desire shrivelling inside her.

‘How could you?’ she whispered, turning away, as if the sight of him disgusted her.

‘I only … I’m sorry … I …’ Charlie pulled the duvet round him like a comforter. His body, still damp with sweat, was shivering and clammy. He could see the hard line of Serena’s back on the other side of the bed, on the other side of the world. Accusing and unreachable. He had behaved badly, but he had meant well. Oh, God, he had meant well. One day she might understand that. But what if she didn’t? What if this distance between them, this curious separating sadness, never went away? What then? Never in his life had Charlie felt so alone, so full of suffering, so rejected. The knowledge that Serena, too, was suffering did not help. Instead, he found his thoughts straying with vengeful enthusiasm to the demands of his new post. Maybe time apart was what they needed. They had to get through the Easter weekend with his parents and then he would start firming up some dates for his trips. To find so much solace in the prospect of something connected to work was a new departure for Charlie and one that he embraced keenly. A few minutes later he slipped his hand between his own thighs and started, very carefully and quietly, to return himself to a state of arousal, knowing that sleep would evade him until he had released at least some of the tumultuous tension inside. Every time Serena stirred he froze. But he got there in the end, turning his face into his pillow and biting the linen as he came.

On Good Friday afternoon a grand party, comprising Pamela, Elizabeth, Cassie, Theo, Chloë, Ed and Clem, was dispatched to visit Uncle Eric. They took with them a huge dark chocolate Easter egg that Pamela had ordered specially from a famous chocolatier in London. Roland was let off the duty because of a heavy cold that Elizabeth said she didn’t want him giving to Eric, although
it was quite clear to the assembled party, adults and children alike, that Roland was being protected rather than the other way round. Maisie, spying a chance to sneak into the village, had said she needed to do some work on a history project (they were doing Tudor monarchs and Clem, who had chosen Queen Elizabeth, already had twenty pages in her file, fat with illustrations she had downloaded off the Internet). She could help keep an eye on Roland too, Maisie said, innocent and wide-eyed, swinging her glossy ponytail, knowing that with her grandfather and Sid around, there was hardly any need.

Pamela had eyed her granddaughter a little sharply, a shiver of suspicion crossing her mind. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it and there were other things to worry about, like Sid and John conducting hair-raising examinations of the roof, scaling ladders like two excited Boy Scouts, pretending they could sort out the problem when it was perfectly obvious that outside help would have to be called in. Expensive outside help, which, of course, was why John was resisting it.