The Heart of the Country (16 page)

‘What about Jean?’

‘Jean won’t worry. She’s too sensible.’ The bed they lay in had belonged to the Harrises. It was king-size, and had gone for a song at the auction. The original Wandle matrimonial bed had fetched five hundred and forty-five pounds a couple of weeks before they’d moved into Dunbarton. How a convenient fate played into Arthur’s hands!

A buyer had come into the shop, looking for just such a rare brass bed, and Arthur had taken him upstairs and shown it to him: a splendid piece of brasswork, early nineteenth-century.

‘Just as a matter of interest,’ said Arthur. ‘Of course it isn’t stock! Very much not for sale!’

But he’d capitulated on being offered five hundred for it, five hundred and forty-five if the buyer could take it there and then in the van. He could, said Arthur, and when Jane came home from hearing reading, the mattress and bedding were on the floor and her and Arthur’s marriage bed of 26 years’ standing was gone. She’d cried, and Arthur had been abashed and apologetic, and had had a word with Angus, and was only too happy to buy her the Harris bed when the opportunity arose, which he thought she’d really like, it being modern. (Jane kept saying she hated old things, which in an antique dealer’s wife can only really be interpreted as hostility. Can this marriage be saved?)

Now he wondered on which side Natalie had lain, and which side Harry, and why it was married couples stuck to one side or the other, and what was to be made of it.

‘I wish you were happier,’ he said to Jane. ‘I wish I knew what to do to cheer you up.’

‘I don’t like the house,’ she said. ‘I know I wanted it but now I’m here I want to be back in the flat. It’s too far from anywhere. I can’t get proper help in the house and I’m lonely.’

‘If that’s what you really want,’ he said, rather too quickly, ‘we’ll put the place up for sale right away. I reckon we can get a hundred and twenty thousand. That’s sixty thousand clear profit. It’s a family house – we can wriggle round capital gains tax on medical grounds, I should think. Your nerves, perhaps – ’

‘But what will people think? Poor Natalie Harris – ’

He was quite taken aback, surprised at the speed of her mind.

‘Poor Natalie Harris? Don’t spare a pang for Natalie Harris! When the heat dies down Harry Harris will turn up in the north somewhere, with a new name, and she and the kids will be off to join him. It’s a set-up job, don’t you see? The factory closes, the staff aren’t paid, he’s got a chunk put away no one can touch. Oh, she’s in on it, all right. What did you think she was, a poor wronged woman alone in the world?’

He could not add that since Natalie cheated on her husband she deserved no pity, but he said it in his heart. He wished he had a wife he could confide in fully. He wondered what it would be like to be lying now next to Natalie, and wished he was. Then he fell asleep.

No ‘For Sale’ board went up. It would have caused talk and speculation. Arthur just had a word with Angus at Waley and Rightly, and Angus said he’d do what he could. Arthur offered a 25 per cent commission, which seemed reasonable inasmuch as it was Angus who had arranged for the house to be sold to Arthur, at, roughly, half its market value. Though a new selling price of one hundred and twenty thousand was pushing it, said Angus. The second bathroom was like a box. But then when did Arthur never not push a profit to its limit?

Traumas

Natalie went up to the Abbey grounds to see Peter the groundsman. He swept; she walked along beside him. She had collected her DHSS draft and had managed to give Sonia the slip somewhere in Glastonbury. Ben and Alice now walked home from school by themselves; Ben put up with the embarrassment of being seen with his sister with the merest shrug, as if this was the least of his troubles. Sometimes Natalie could hear him through the bathroom wall crying in his sleep, but by day he was brisk, competent and distant, and seemed to make no distinction between Sonia and his mother, which might have been an elaborate act of revenge or might not, how could Natalie tell? Certainly he blamed Natalie for so carelessly losing his father. As for Alice, it was hard to tell what went on in her head. She sucked her thumb, and played with Teresa as if she were the same age and not four years older, and pulled Edwina’s hair when she thought no one was looking. The clear-eyed, protected look had gone. Alice no longer prattled, but whined. Perhaps she was just growing older; perhaps she was deeply traumatized? Who would ever know, who could ever tell?

‘You ought to tell them about Harry,’ said Sonia.

‘But I have nothing to say,’ said Natalie.

And indeed, what was there to say? ‘Your father really loves you.’ Absurd. ‘He really loves me.’ Nonsense. ‘He’s coming back soon.’ Unlikely. ‘He’s gone mad, had a brainstorm.’ Lies. He’d left her and the children in the shit and buggered off and what was the point of talking about it. Least said, soonest mended.

She’d written to Harry’s father in Geneva, finding the address by chance on the back of a Christmas card envelope while she was packing up Dunbarton, and there had even been a reply. No, he hadn’t heard from Harry, nor did he expect to. He was sorry to hear what had happened but the state of his health and his finances would not allow him to get involved. Piss off, Natalie, in other words. She hated Harry and hated to see him in her children. She grieved for them and was cold to them at the same time. Just as Sonia saw Stephen looking out of the eyes of Teresa, Bess and Edwina, Natalie saw Harry in
Alice and Ben. Once you have children by a man, that’s it. You are never free of him, unless you can free yourself of your children too. Chances are you can’t. Chances are they’ll turn up at your funeral and throw a rose or so into your grave.

Sonia gets on all right without her children. If they want to strike up a relationship with her when they’re teenagers and can wipe their own noses that’s fine by Sonia. Their stepmother, Sandy, is okay. Sonia used to know her well. Steady, Catholic, moral, plain, doesn’t say much but tidies up a treat. Will suit Stephen down to the ground. Sandy will never be found
in delicto flagrante,
or
in flagranto delicte,
or whatever, when Stephen goes to open the back of the family car. Sandy will never crack sour jokes and upset people. Sandy will stop Edwina painting her toenails and backcombing her hair at the age of five. Five, yes. Was four, is five. Sandy will have given Edwina a birthday party. Stepmothers are always in the business of doing better than the mother. Sandy will have put up with the racket and boredom and mess of the party without a murmur.
And
cleared it up, quick, so Stephen could stand in front of his hearth and have a quiet glass of sherry before dinner. Let Sandy do it. Good luck to her. She’ll need it. It’s Sonia the kids will want later. Sonia will never lose them now. Those you want for ever, give away. Like boomerangs, they’ll return.

Sonia hopes Sandy made the cake herself, that’s all. That it wasn’t a shop one; not for Edwina, who’s so special.

Here come Sonia’s pills. She needs them! Goodnight.

Bright and Purposeful

Where did I leave Natalie? Why, up in the Abbey grounds, chatting to Peter in that rather cosy, companionable way which means you want a job and the other might have one. ‘There’s a waiting list for working here,’ said Peter. ‘And the Abbey Fathers are very traditional. Outdoor work is man’s work, so far as they’re concerned. But you could try up at the quarry, if you’re desperate. Emphysema land.’

‘Emphysema?’ Really, Natalie knew nothing.

‘Dust in the lungs,’ said Peter. ‘Kills you in the end. But by that time you’ve got your cards, and are off. Why should they care? And what can they do about it? Spread used tea leaves when they blast, to keep the dust down?’

‘I’ve just got to get myself out of this situation,’ said Natalie. ‘Since there’s no one to help me I’ll have to help myself.’

‘Try the quarry then,’ said Peter. ‘The Devil helps those who help themselves.’

Since taking his advice, although it was always enigmatic, had turned out well in the past, Natalie took it now and the next day went up to that part of the old quarry which was still being worked, in the section of the hill above Bernard and Flora’s caravan. White dust shrouded the road and fields for yards around. It crunched underfoot as Natalie walked. Sirens sounded, and a whole section of Somerset hillside crumbled and collapsed in its own special granite cloud. A line of ancient giant rock-crunchers prepared to receive that day’s splendid dinner. The ground shook beneath her as the rock fell away.

‘Okay,’ said the site manager to Natalie. ‘You want to be the gofer? You be the gofer! You’re here in person, which is more than can be said for the one we employ now. No phone call, nothing! Can’t say I’m sorry; his mum’s up here all the time, about one thing or another. The trouble with today’s young, they can’t tell a job from a classroom.’

‘What will I have to do?’ She had no idea, but she was astonished and gratified to find a job was so easy to find.

‘Make the tea, run errands, copy out the work chits. Can’t use a computer out here: the dust gets into the works.’

‘And the lungs,’ she said, coughing, but he didn’t seem to think that was funny. Not one bit.

‘Shift work Monday to Thursday: 6 a.m. till 2. Thursday through Saturday: 3 to 11. Forty quid.’

‘The day?’

‘The week,’ he said. ‘No arguments. Take it or leave it. If you don’t take it someone else will.’

‘I can’t manage on that!’

‘Lady,’ said Bob, for so he was called, ‘that’s no concern of mine. Try for Family Income Supplement, if it’s not enough. Don’t expect me to keep you in luxury. Start on Monday.’

‘All right,’ she said.

‘Where do you live?’ he asked, in rather more friendly tones than before.

‘Eddon Gurney.’

‘Oh, Eddon. No bus. I’d give you a lift up in the mornings but the wife wouldn’t like it.’

‘I’ll manage,’ said Natalie.

Now what Natalie failed to notice, being not, as we have observed, the most perceptive or sensitive girl in the world – in spite of what I’ve said to the contrary in the past, in Natalie’s defence: I do think it
takes a pretty obtuse kind of person not to notice when a husband plans to leave – was the flash of the Quattro round corners and hedges wherever she went. Angus was well and truly hooked on Natalie, as men can sometimes be on women whose moral approval they want. Of course Angus wanted her body – who wouldn’t? – but he wanted her to like him, approve of him, admire him and tell him he was doing just fine, as well. All those very reactions, in fact, a man can reasonably expect from a wife, but seldom gets, and Angus certainly did not receive from Jean.

‘I reckon you’re a closet queer,’ Jean would say, blaming him for her lack of orgasm.

‘You
were a fool to buy this car,’ she’d say, every time the garage filled it up yet again. ‘More money than sense!’ ‘She’d never look at you, you’re past it – an old man with a paunch,’ she’d say, if he admired some woman on TV. ‘Why can’t you take up an honest profession,’ she’d say, if he pulled off some stupendous property deal.

‘Big fish in a little pond,’ she’d say, if he got his name in the local paper. And if he gave her a cheque, out of the blue, she’d say ‘Now what are you trying to buy?’ Or if he bought flowers, ‘What have you been up to, Angus?’

What he liked was Natalie’s silence, her soft, occasional glance towards him, the tremble of her bottom lip, how feeling hard done by, as she must about the auction, she had not ranted or raved. She wouldn’t talk to him, true, but she’d get over that. Moreover he had let it be known to Arthur that he and Natalie were in what Arthur liked to describe as a ‘leg-over situation’. He wanted it to be true, he was humiliated that it wasn’t true: he meant to make it true.

So when Natalie left the quarry in the pouring rain and started walking down the hill, it just so happened the Audi Quattro happened to be passing.

‘Give you a lift, Natalie?’

She’d said no often enough on the road to school, outside the house, by the post office, and at the shops, quite automatically. Now her lips seemed stiffened by white dust and she needed shelter. She stayed quiet and just got in. ‘What are you doing here, Natalie?’

‘I’ve got a job.’

‘What do you want with one of
those? Do you no good. Wear you out.’

‘I want to be independent.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? I thought all you girls together were happy enough living off the State. I could get you a job.’

‘What doing?’

Angus thought fast.

‘We’re entering a float for the Carnival. Needs someone to be in charge – what’s wrong with you?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Natalie.

‘No strings attached,’ he pleaded.

‘No.’ She didn’t even bother to think about it. She just said no. It annoyed him.

‘Eighty pounds a week, cash, no tax deductions.’

She shook her head. He wanted to shake her. He took her back home, or to her half-home, down at Sonia’s. The Quattro had parked outside better places, his expression said. Slumming, where the little children swarmed, and all of them fatherless! As are 23 per cent of all the nation’s children of course, but someone like Angus wasn’t counting. Takes a mad woman in a loonybin to actually count. One child in thirty these days is born physically handicapped. Did you know that? Sonia saw it on a poster only yesterday. And no money for research any more. The only people doing research are the drug companies themselves – the ones who make Thalidomide and allied substances. That’s the way it goes, these days. For the heart of the country read the pocket of the country.

‘Any time you want out!’ Angus said. ‘But I suppose you two ladies are snug enough,’ and he was pleased to see Natalie reacted to that. Just a spot of colour in her porcelain cheek, but nonetheless a reaction. She had lost the dishevelled look of the early days of Harry’s leaving, he was sorry to see. Except for a little patch of quarry dust left unbrushed on the side of her skirt, she was otherwise well turned out. When it rained the dust would turn not so much to mud as to a thick gluey paste. No brushing it off then. It won’t be long, thought Angus.