Sun at Midnight (7 page)

‘She’s picked up a chest infection. The hotel doctor’s a bit worried about her.’

‘Can I talk to her?’

‘She’s asleep at the moment.’

‘How long has she been ill?’

‘A couple of days.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Trevor sighed. ‘You know what she’s like.’

Small, fierce, unfaltering, impatient with weakness. As stubborn as a rock formation. Yes, Alice knew what her mother was like.

‘Are you going to bring her home? Shall I come out there?’

‘There’s no need for that. Rest and antibiotics is what she needs.’

‘Are you sure? I’ll call you later and see how she is. Give her a kiss from me when she wakes up.’

After Trevor had rung off Alice tried to turn back to her work, but anxiety nudged at her and in the end she gave up. It was almost lunchtime. Jo’s house was nearby and Jo would have constructive advice to offer. But it was Pete she wanted to talk to. She would call in at his studio and tell him about Margaret. They could have a sandwich and a cup of coffee together. Alice left her desk at once and rode her bicycle through the traffic.

The studio was in an old warehouse at the end of a cul-de-sac. Mark’s side was closed up, but the heavy door to Pete’s hung narrowly ajar, sagging slightly on its hinges. Alice padlocked her bike to a street sign advising that there was no parking. A smart new Mini was parked right alongside.

She edged round the door and slipped into the studio. It was dim inside after the bright daylight. Pete wasn’t working, then. The blinds at the big windows were all drawn. The concrete-floored space smelled of dust and resin, and something familiar scraped at her subconscious in the split second before she identified it and the association. It was music, the same song that had been playing in the punt on the afternoon when Pete jumped into the water.

His latest work in progress loomed above Alice’s head. It was a bird’s nest of twisted metal and within the lattice cage some of his found objects were suspended on thin wires – a buckled bicycle wheel, a polystyrene wig block like a blanched head that revolved very slowly as the studio air stirred. The hair at the nape of Alice’s neck prickled as she looked around for the source of the music. Peter’s welding torch lay on the ground, with the black welding mask that made him look like Darth Vader discarded beside it. She took three quick steps to the inner door, past more accumulated debris.

The door led into a boxed-off cubicle with a metalworker’s
bench at which Pete did his smaller-scale work. There was a grey filing cabinet, a kettle and a clutch of mugs stained with rings of tannin. The CD player was balanced on the broken typist’s chair from the skip outside the Parks. A girl’s handbag, an expensive-looking fringed suede affair, spilled its contents on the floor. The girl herself was perched on the edge of the cluttered bench, steadying herself with her hands. Her denim legs stretched out on either side of Pete’s head.

Pete hadn’t heard Alice come in. Just above and to the side of his right ear Alice could see the butterfly tattoo.

The girl looked straight into Alice’s eyes as the song finished.

‘Oh, shit,’ the girl said.

Alice didn’t move. There was a scramble of movements from the other two as Peter leaped to his feet and the girl pulled up and zipped her jeans. She bent down sideways and picked up her bag, briefly holding it in front of her chest as if it were a piece of body armour.

Peter shook his head and ran his hands through his hair. For the moment he was silenced.

It was the girl who spoke first. ‘Look, what can I say?’

She had one of those low, drawling voices. Alice knew that it must be her car parked outside, probably a twentyfirst present from Daddy. Pete liked girls who weren’t going to rely on him for support. She belonged in that category herself. The thought struck a shiver of bewildered amusement through her and when he glimpsed it in her face Pete winced and said in a thick voice, ‘Al, you know, it isn’t…’

‘It isn’t what I think? Is that what you’re going to say?’

He held up his hand. ‘Georgia, you’d better go.’

With a part of her mind Alice was noticing how pretty she was and how young she looked. In contrast to this glowing girl she felt old and dull. She was also surprised by Georgia’s self-possession. She had hitched her bag over her shoulder
and now she was looking coolly around the little room to see if she had dropped anything else. She leaned across and pressed a button to eject the disc from the player. When she had tucked it inside her bag she stood facing Pete with her back to Alice. Alice gazed at the graceful lines of her neck and narrow shoulders.

‘When will I see you again?’

He had the grace to look uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps not for a bit.’

‘I see. Well, then, I’ll call you.’ She turned away and glanced at Alice. ‘I’m sorry, I really am. It wasn’t intended to be like this. But all’s fair, as the saying goes.’

Then she left.

What does one say now? Alice wondered. Pete was waiting, ready to take his cue from her. He looked like a schoolboy anticipating a scolding, half truculent and half defiant. She wanted to tell him that he was an adult, a grown man. He couldn’t get away with being a naughty boy for ever.

‘I came over because my mother’s not well. I’m worried about her. I was thinking we could have lunch. Just a sandwich or something.’

Her words fell into the space between them. Pete’s expression changed to one of relief, reprieve.

‘Of course we can. Come on. Where would you like to go?’

‘What? No. I don’t want to go anywhere. That was before I saw…what I just saw.’

He rushed in: ‘Al, believe me, it’s one of those dumb things, it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘It’s just a dick thing?’

His face flushed. ‘No. Well, if you want to call it that, yes. I suppose.’

‘How many?’

‘How many times? For God’s sake. She’s just a student.’

‘I meant how many other women.’

‘Alice, please. What do you think I am? I’m with you, I love
you
.’

She stared at him. She wanted to have him put his arms round her and hear him saying that this was all a mistake – not in the guilty, formulaic way that he was saying it now, but in a way that meant she could believe him. And at the same time she knew that this was utterly unrealistic because she would never be able to believe what he told her, never again, no matter what he said. He had lied to her and he was lying to her now.

When he had finished protesting she listened carefully. She thought she could hear a tiny, feathery whisper. It was the sound of her illusions, softly collapsing.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

He thumped his clenched fist on the bench. It was a theatrical gesture. ‘Listen, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. It was a mistake and I was regretting it even before you walked in. But it happens.’ The way an avalanche happens, or a thunderstorm, presumably. A natural cataclysm that was beyond his control.

Alice said carefully, ‘You didn’t look as though you were regretting it. I’m going back to work now. We’ll have to talk about what’s going to happen, about how to…’ She was going to say put an end to everything, but she couldn’t find a word that fitted. ‘But I don’t want to do it today. If you can’t find a place to stay tonight, I’ll go to Jo’s.’

She was dry-eyed and her voice sounded level, but she didn’t feel in control. Her stomach churned with nausea and the palms of her hands were wet. Then she turned round and walked out through the studio. The polystyrene head was still gently turning on its thread of wire. She had never understood Peter’s art, she thought. She had longed to, had dragged her mind and her senses to contemplation of it over
and over again, but she had never been able to make sense of it. She was like Trevor and Margaret, really: just a literal-minded scientist.

Unable to think clearly, she cycled back to her office, combed her hair and drank a glass of water. Then she sat through a long discussion with five of her colleagues about grant allocations for the coming year. She took the minutes, concentrating on noting everyone’s different points with meticulous accuracy. Once or twice, though, when someone spoke to her, she found herself staring at them and struggling to inject meaning into the babble of their words.

‘Are you all right, Alice?’ Professor Devine asked as the meeting broke up. David Devine was the head of her department and an old friend of both of her parents.

She smiled straight at him. ‘Yes, thanks, I’m fine.’ In fact, she felt sick.

From her office, she called Jo. ‘Are you in? Can I drop in after work?’

‘Of course I’m in. I’m always in. The babies are having a bit of a crap day, though.’

‘I’ll give you a hand.’

Jo and Harry lived in Headington. Alice cycled slowly up the hill, buffeted by the tailwind from passing buses, her legs feeling like bags of wet sand. She rang Jo’s doorbell and leaned against the wall of the porch while she waited for her to come to the door. How many times had she stood here?

Jo opened the door with one of the babies held against her shoulder. She cupped the back of his head with one hand and kept him in place with her chin and forearm. There was a bottle of formula in her free hand. Alice kissed her, smelling baby sick and talcum powder.

‘Come through,’ Jo said. She edged past the double babycarrier that blocked the hall and led the way to the kitchen. The second twin was in a Moses basket on the table. He
was awake, his black-eyed stare fixed on the shadows moving on the ceiling above him. ‘Cup of tea? Wine?’

‘I’d love some tea, please,’ Alice said. She didn’t think she could keep a glass of wine down although she would have welcomed the bluntening effect of alcohol. ‘Can I hold him?’

Jo handed the baby over at once. He frowned and squinted up at Alice, who knew that she handled him with that stiff, alarmed concentration of the utterly unpractised. He responded by going stiff himself and puckering his face up, ready to start crying.

‘Here, plug this in,’ Jo said, handing over the bottle of formula. Alice poked the rubber teat into the baby’s mouth and he began to suck. She eased herself into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, the Moses basket and a packet of Pampers and a pile of baby clothes at her elbow. Through the open doors into the garden she could see leaves and the ragged, dirty-pink globes of mophead hydrangeas. Getting into his stride, the baby snuffled and sucked more vigorously.

‘How are you?’ Alice asked and Jo half turned from the sink. She looked, as she so often did nowadays, on the verge of tears.

‘I’ve had to start bottle-feeding in the last couple of days. I just can’t go on feeding them both myself. This way, they sleep a bit longer between feeds and I can sometimes get as much as two hours myself.’

‘That’s much better, isn’t it?’

Jo nodded, but without seeming convinced. She wanted to be a good mother, as well as a good girl, and that meant breastfeeding. Alice knew this without Jo having to say as much.

‘Look at me, Ali,’ Jo said quietly.

‘I am looking.’

She was wearing a shapeless shirt under which her breasts swam like porpoises. Her skirt hem hung unevenly and
revealed pale calves and unshaven shins, and her pretty face was drawn. Alice thought she looked older but there was also a new solemnity about her, an extra elemental dimension that added greatly to her appeal. Even in her weariness she was sexier than she had ever been before her pregnancy.

‘Sometimes I think that no one ever looks at me now, even Harry. I’m an invisible appendage. I have no function except as a machine for feeding and wiping and tending Leo and Charlie. I’m just a mother. I want to be myself, but I can’t even remember what I was like before this happened.’

‘You are yourself. Only more so. This time will pass.’

Alice wanted to put an arm round her friend, but she was pinned down by the baby she was nursing. And this was only one of them, for a few minutes. When she looked out into the garden again she saw how narrow the view really was. Jo had told her how long it took to get both babies ready to leave the house, even for a walk to the shops. What must it be like, to think that the world had shrunk from its infinite breadth to the four walls of a house and a square of suburban garden?

‘It’s only twelve weeks since they were born. They’ll grow up and start running around.’ With the present helpless morsel of humanity in her arms, Alice realised how very far in the future this must seem.

Jo sighed. ‘I know, of course they will. It is getting better, too. Remember at the beginning when some days I didn’t even find time to get dressed? I’m sorry, Al. I don’t mean to complain. I’m just sounding off because I’ve been here on my own all day. I wanted them so much and I do love them. I didn’t even know what loving meant before I had them.’

She put a teapot and two mugs on the table.

‘Which one is this?’ Alice asked sheepishly.

Jo laughed. ‘Leo.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ll learn to tell them apart.’

‘Don’t worry. Even Harry gets it wrong half the time. D’you want some toast or a biscuit or something? ’Fraid I haven’t made a Victoria sponge.’

Alice shook her head quickly.

Jo eyed her, then sat down next to her at the table. ‘What’s up?’

‘It’s Pete.’

‘Go on.’

Alice told her. While she was talking Leo’s eyelids fluttered and then closed. His gums loosened on the bottle teat and a shiny whitish bubble swelled at the corner of his mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jo said at the end. ‘And I’m sorry for going on and on about my problems without giving you a chance.’

‘You didn’t. You never do that.’

There was a moment of quiet in the kitchen. Both babies were asleep, and the oasis of calm silence was more notable and the more precious because it would last only a few minutes. Jo’s face went smooth and luminous as she stared peacefully into the garden. Alice’s sympathy for her twitched into sudden envy and she bit her lip at the realisation.

She said, ‘The thing is, I’m not sure that Georgia is the only one. Now I’ve seen this much, all kinds of other details seem to be falling into place. Pete’s so evasive and maybe I’ve been convincing myself that it’s just because he’s an artist, needs space, can’t be tied down. When he doesn’t come home in the evenings, when he goes off to Falmouth or London or Dieppe for days at a time, I just get on with my work and feel pleased about how…how separately productive and mutually in accord we are. In fact, he’s probably got half a dozen women on the go, hasn’t he?’