Relative Love (45 page)

Having finished the croissant, Elizabeth picked the flakes of pastry off her shirt-front, delaying to the last second her return to the hot car and the thirty-minute drive back to Ashley House. She hated being there – partly because it was a limbo, decision-delaying existence, but mostly because it made her ashamed. Yet again, she had lived
down
to expectation. A grown woman with a son, she had been able to think of no more inspired solution to her marital crisis than to scuttle back to the family home like a beaten dog. Tiptoeing round Colin at five o’clock in the morning three weeks before, almost choking with terror as she cajoled Roland, sleepy and bemused, out of his pyjamas, there hadn’t seemed a huge range of alternative options. A hotel would have felt desolate, temporary, not to mention being expensive. Finding a house to rent would take time. Of her few local friends there were none she knew well enough either to confide in or to ask for the loan of a spare bedroom. Which left Ashley House as the only possible refuge; the lesser of all evils.

Her parents were ashamed of her too. They hadn’t said anything, of course, not outright. On the surface there had been nothing but kindness – tuts of understanding, fresh sheets on the beds, cups of tea and sympathy – but as the days slipped by (where had the three weeks gone?) Elizabeth sensed, increasingly, the heaving sea of disappointment behind the displays of support. While her father coped by making tactical withdrawals from conversations and rooms at every opportunity, her mother’s impatience with the situation had begun to sound like the tick of an invisible clock, pulsing in every word she uttered, every meal she cooked, every suggestion she
made about Roland, Resolution and Compromise. To Pamela the circumstances were simple: Colin had strayed and needed forgiving. She knew, because Elizabeth had told her, that he had said sorry, both to her face and in a long rambling letter that had dropped on to the doormat of Ashley House shortly after her arrival. They were bigger than what had happened, he said, and would survive. Elizabeth, however, did not feel bigger than what had happened, she felt very small, so small that if she went back to Guildford she knew she would be swallowed by the force of everyone’s willpower but her own.

It had taken every ounce of courage to walk out. When she had confronted him, Colin had had the grace to be honest and penitent, but also aggressive. It was just one of those things that happened, he said. It was over already and meant nothing. When Elizabeth suggested he might consider moving out he had laughed in disbelief, telling her she was overreacting and that every marriage in the world had to take a few knocks along the way. He loved her and was sorry. He knew that, deep in her heart, she still loved him too. He was glad she had found out. He had been going to end it anyway. He wanted to make amends, to take care of her, to give Roland the childhood he deserved. By the end of this and many subsequent conversations Elizabeth had felt as if she was being the unreasonable one, that it was
her
lack of commitment that was jeopardising the stability of the marriage and – worst of all – the well-being of their son. Trapped thus by her conscience, it had been several days into the ordeal when, making a cup of tea one sleepless night, she had seen the car keys on the hook behind the kettle and realised suddenly that escape, in purely physical terms, was possible. It was like a door sliding open, a glimpse of a pathway out of the maze, but one, she knew, that would slide shut the moment the morning arrived, bringing with it the sanity of ordinary life, its easy routines – breakfast, work, school, tidying, cooking – and Colin overpowering her with his penitence, using it to make her own doubts feel treacherous. He was still doing it now, bombarding Ashley House with phone-calls and messages, trying in every way to persuade her of her unreasonableness in not agreeing to return. And maybe she was being unreasonable, Elizabeth reflected bleakly, brushing the last of the crumbs off her green skirt and heading reluctantly towards the car park. Clearly her mother thought so. Just that morning, after Roland had dashed off to find Jessica and John had shuffled outside to monitor (as he did each day) the progress on the roof, she had turned to Elizabeth with a look of exasperation. ‘You should at least talk to him.’

Elizabeth, stacking breakfast things, had shaken her head.

‘How can you sort this mess out if you won’t even talk?’

‘He … muddles me … muddles what I feel.’

‘And there’s Roland.’

‘I
know
there’s Roland, Mother, believe me, I know that.’

‘I’m only saying —’

‘I realise it’s difficult having me here.’ At that instant, as she stacked the dishwasher in the way her mother liked it, with the cups at least two inches apart instead of slotted cheek to handle as she did with her own machine, Elizabeth had conceived the idea of going to Chichester. Anything to get away. Time and space to think. Plans kept skidding into her brain and out again. What to do about her job (the head, presented with a vague story about a family crisis, was assuming she would return in September); what to do about Roland, running wild every weekend with the dreadful Jessica; what to do, in fact, about her life.

‘It’s not that, darling,’ purred her mother at once, ‘you can stay as long as you like, you know that. Your father and I would never dream of turning you out. It’s just that … well, marriages need working at sometimes.’

‘Thanks, Mum, I know that too.’ In the process of shutting the dishwasher, Elizabeth, had momentarily closed her eyes. As ever, she was aware that her mother’s soothing tone belied the steeliness of her true opinions: namely, that her elder daughter was weak, gave up on things, made bad choices, bad decisions. If such criticisms had been dealt out directly Elizabeth was sure she could have defended herself against them. But with Pamela any negative feelings – anger, reprobation, disapproval – were always couched in kindness, dressed up,
disguised
, so there was nothing to strike back at except air and a smile. ‘I have to go out,’ she had said, spinning the dial of the dishwasher, ‘to Chichester … to get some things. Do you need anything?’

There was a little intake of breath before Pamela answered, as if she was swallowing the exasperation. ‘That’s a kind thought … Cream – double cream for strawberries. The more Sid and I pick them the faster they seem to ripen. And Roland does love them so, doesn’t he?’

‘Oh, yes … yes, he does.’ Remembering the conversation now, Elizabeth slapped the steering-wheel. After all that, she had forgotten the cream. The one thing she was charged to buy and she had forgotten it. And now there was no time left on her parking ticket. And no change in her purse to purchase another. Which meant she’d have to chance her luck at one of the village stores
en route
home, where they’d probably have clotted or single or long-life or sour or none at all. The problem bulged uncontrollably in Elizabeth’s mind, merging with all her other worries until it seemed as tumultuous as leaving Colin and the guilt she felt about the upheaval for their son. It would be easier to go back to Guildford, she decided miserably, to play the bruised wife, let Colin resume control. The unhappiness of such a prospect was at least familiar; a far less daunting proposition than this new and terrifying course on which she had set herself, where she continued to disappoint everyone and was paralysed into inaction by the weight of choice and responsibility. She simply wasn’t brave or strong enough to see it through. She might have broken away but she had no long-term vision of how to make herself or Roland happy. It could only result in more failure, yet worse on every front because she would be facing it alone.

When Roland heard Jessica shouting for him he didn’t move. He was lying on his tummy with his head sticking out of the flaps of the tent his grandfather had put up on the lawn in front of the cloisters. A butterfly was perched on a blade of grass about two inches from his nose. Its wings were a brilliant orange engraved with tiny intricate patterns of blue, black and white, each one identical, as if they had been pressed together to make a mirror image of the design. He had made paintings like that at school, but they had smudged when he pressed the paper down, whereas these wings were as clear as anything, like they’d been drawn with the tiniest tip of a felt pen, and sort of shiny and dusty at the same time. He wanted very badly to touch the colours, to see if they felt as soft as they looked, but feared his own clumsiness. As it was, the butterfly was trembling, as if it was afraid and might fly away at any moment. If he shouted back at Jessica he was sure it would.

‘There you are,’ exclaimed Jessica crossly, jumping out of the cloisters and skipping towards him with an impatient toss of her bushy hair.

‘Hang on.’ Roland held up his hand, but it was too late: the butterfly had taken off and was already a black speck in the sky.

‘What’s this?’ Jessica twanged one of the guy-ropes.

‘A tent, stupid. It was my Great-uncle Eric’s when he went on his expeditions. Granddad says I can sleep in it tonight if I want.’

Jessica’s eyes widened. ‘Won’t you be scared?’

‘Nope,’ said Roland, even though he knew he would be terrified. Fortunately his grandfather had delivered the suggestion with so many conditions attached – about the weather, being good and securing the agreement of his mother and grandmother – that he was pretty sure it wouldn’t happen anyway. ‘Come in, if you like. We could play a game.’

‘What sort of game?’ Jessica lifted the flap to peer inside, her voice breathy with new respect for her companion, whom she had always regarded as a fall-back solution to total boredom rather than a real friend. Her secret favourite of the Harrison gang was Ed because he wasn’t remotely stuck-up like the rest of them could be and because he could do forty kick-ups with a football. But Ed wasn’t coming till later in the summer, Sid had said, so she had to make do with what came along in the meantime.

Roland shrugged. He was still cross about the butterfly and not at all sure he wanted to share the tent with Jessica. When he couldn’t find her after breakfast, he had felt a bit lonely until his grandfather unrolled the canvas and started banging pegs into the grass with a big wooden hammer. Roland had helped, his heart swelling with excitement as the saggy heap grew into a tight-roofed little house, complete with plastic windows and a zip for sealing the entrance. The moment it was finished he burrowed inside, not minding the heat or the weird, stuffy mackintosh smell. It was a TV room of his own, somewhere safe but also tremendously exciting. After a while he went to fetch his drawing things and stacked them neatly in one corner, next to the bottle of water his grandmother had given him. He had to drink it all by lunch, she said, or he’d get one of his headaches because it was so hot. Roland didn’t like water much so he’d only had a sip or two. He hadn’t had a headache for ages. His tummy hurt a bit but that was because he was hungry. He was quite often hungry at the moment, even though he had seconds at practically every meal. His grandmother had said just that morning that if he kept it up he’d grow to be as tall as his grandfather, which was an impossible but rather thrilling idea, since his grandfather seemed like a towering mountain, so towering that Roland had twice seen him bang his forehead on the low beam in the kitchen. He had said rude words each time, like he had in the Easter holidays trying to fix the hinge on the music-room door. Then Roland had felt afraid, but now he didn’t mind so much. Grown-ups, he realised, weren’t nearly so in charge as they pretended to be. Not even his parents, who, after two days and nights of terrible arguing, were
taking a break
. Roland knew that behind his mother’s brief explanation lurked all sorts of unseen terrors; being allowed to miss school – not to mention their leaving home when it was dark and with his dad still asleep – made it impossible to think otherwise. But he also knew that it was lovely to wake in the night with only the hoot of an owl or the faint rumble of his grandfather’s snoring to listen out for instead of harsh voices, the slam of a door and his mother’s muffled sobbing. The shadow of adult unhappiness was still there, but at least this time Roland knew – thanks to overheard comments and occasional oblique references from Elizabeth – that it had nothing to do with his crying or bed-wetting or bouncing on the spare bed or getting his spellings wrong. It was because of his father’s friend. The woman in the long purple dress. It was all to do with her. And if this meant that his father didn’t love his mother enough then that wasn’t very nice, but yet sort of okay because Roland felt more than up to the job of compensating for it. Loving his mother was something he found easy, the easiest thing in the world. He could do it non-stop, for ever, without even trying. Just as he knew she loved him, no matter how much she snapped or smouldered or sobbed. He knew it like he knew his own name.

‘We could play showing each other our
things
.’

‘I don’t think I want to play that.’ Roland blushed furiously, all curiosity at the notion quashed by alarm at the sly look on Jessica’s pixie face. She could be fun to play with, he knew that now, but he knew also that she didn’t
feel
things in the same way he did. She never said quite what he expected and was always laughing without him fully understanding why.

Jessica had her hands in her pockets and was flapping the legs of her voluminous pink shorts. ‘No one would see in here.’

‘I think it sounds a stupid game.’

‘Well, what ideas have you got then, scaredy-cat?’

‘I’m not scared I just think it’s stupid. I know –’ Roland seized his pad ‘– I’ll draw you, if you like. I was going to draw a butterfly but it flew away.’

‘Draw me?’ Jessica looked uncertain.

‘You’d have to sit very still.’

‘That’s
easy
.’ She folded her arms and pouted. ‘See? I’m not moving, am I?’

‘It’s so hot, let’s go outside.’

They were scrambling out of the tent when Elizabeth appeared. Roland ran and put his arms round her waist, closing his eyes while she stroked the back of his head where it felt nice and tickly.