The Kindness (27 page)

She knelt to brush her hand across it, to smooth it. ‘So glamorous,’ she said.

‘“Heavens’ embroidered cloths . . .”’ he told her with a pleased grin. She looked blank. ‘Do you know the poem?’ She shook her head, stood up.

‘It’s Yeats,’ he said, and cleared his throat. Though she never told him, she hated it when he quoted poetry at her, it always made her grow hot and rooted to the spot. He made a Sir Galahad flourish as though expecting her to step on to the quilt as he recited. ‘“. . . I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”’ He held a courtly hand to her and the responsibility of not trampling his dreams made her feel instantly clumsy.

It’s a relief to get to Freda’s – easily recognisable from the lemon trees at the yellow front door, three in glazed pots each side of the step, with glossy leaves and the scent of their flowers in the air. Julia stoops to inhale the waxy white blossoms and slides her hand down the trunk to the line of the graft. She runs a finger back and forth around the ridge of the enjoined scion and stock. Every inch of Freda’s front garden is bursting with plants, standing in pots, or sprawling, tangling their limbs. Ruth runs in and out between them, a plump little savage released from the car. ‘George, George, George of the jungle,’ she sings out from between the leaves, and Mira scowls at her as Freda throws open her door with a whoop of delight.

Julia and Freda hug, tears springing to their eyes. ‘Julia, your hair!’ Freda says. ‘And Mira! You’re all grown up!’ Mira squirms and Ruth presses forward to get a closer look at this Tango-haired woman who hasn’t even noticed her yet. ‘And Ruth too! Goodness, you were no more than a babe in your mother’s arms,’ Freda says, scooping her up.

The girls perk up immediately in Freda’s bright-pink kitchen. They’re sitting on high stools at the counter talking over each other to answer Freda’s questions about the zoo while she clops about in her funny boots sorting out tea and toasted buns, squeezing fresh orange juice. The glass doors to the garden are ajar, potted palms throw handprints across the room and two giant urns spill branches of plumbago trembling with baby-blue blooms. Freda’s feet are pushed into her customary tough leather work boots, her dress is of a pretty blue and grey floral print. She wears her big boots without laces so the tongues flap around as she moves. She has a leather tool belt buckled around the dress and a metal blade glints in its holster. She laughs easily, her strings of amber beads catch the light and her hair is dyed the colour of tangerines. Mira and Ruth can’t take their eyes off her, and she soon has them shouting to be heard.

She pushes a plate of toasted buns towards Julia. ‘Your girls have American accents!’ Julia tries not to pull a face but the strain of Karl’s absence has got to her. Freda widens her eyes, puts down the butter knife. ‘Julia, are you all right?’ Julia is horrified to find herself suddenly close to tears, staring at the plants, the mass of stems and leaves swimming. In her kitchen in Connecticut a single aloe vera waits like a lone specimen on the smooth white surfaces. She can’t find the words, the paradise palms blur into a flock of peacocks’ tails, splendidly fanned, and now the girls are both staring at her. Freda wraps her in her arms and rocks her like a child.

Together they walk arm in arm to the glasshouses around the corner. Inside, Freda stops now and then to snip off a stem or adjust a tie. It’s a familiar, steamy, verdant cloud of nostalgia, the heavenly scent a hundred times stronger than jasmine. Julia feels the brush of ferns on her arms, breathes the warmth of ripening sap, rich earth and, lingering above all else, the sweet citrus flowers.

‘It’s much easier these days,’ Freda is telling her. ‘I have two young lads to help me with the installations and after that I leave it to them to zip around town and do all the maintenance. They’re good boys.’

Mira and Ruth race up and down the tiled paths. Ruth stops at a calamondin orange, its branches gently dipping with fruit. ‘Can I pick one?’ she asks.

Mira is transfixed by some fuchsias with pale-pink buds the shape of dancers
en pointe
. Freda has to call to her twice to come and choose an orange to take back to the house.

The girls nestle down among Freda’s cushions and throws, some children’s television presenters are doing something with splat guns that’s making them laugh. Clashing roses and African prints, furry tiger rugs, cut-up sweet oranges within reach. Marcel, Freda’s tabby cat, purrs on Mira’s lap while Ruth leans across to nubble him under the chin.

As they leave the room, Julia hears Mira growl, turns in time to witness her sharp elbow: ‘Stop stroking him like that, Ruthie,’ she says. ‘He only likes me, his eyes are cross every time you touch him.’ And Julia has to quell the urge to march in and slap her.

In the greenhouse Freda’s citrus orchard spreads before them. The trees are at their peak, flowering and fruiting, but still Mira’s bad mood hangs heavy. Julia sighs and Freda asks her what’s wrong. ‘It’s starting to really get to me,’ Julia says. ‘Mira’s been awful since we got back, rude to me, foul to Ruthie.’

‘Jet-lag?’

‘Maybe. And maybe she’s missing Karl. I certainly am.’ She explains to Freda about his delay. ‘It’s the holy grail of pharmaceutical research,’ she says and grows a little sarcastic: ‘You know, Karl and his team are well up in the race to put an end to this planet’s overpopulation.’

‘Huh,’ Freda snorts. ‘As if handing the contraceptive pill to the men will make a jot of difference.’

Freda pulls down branches heavy with lemons, picks a dozen or so and sets them aside for lemonade. ‘I’ll have to start making marmalade if I don’t get this lot out somewhere soon.’

Julia walks among the trees answering Freda’s questions about their new home in Old Mystic. It’s an original captain’s house, overlooking the estuary, the girls’ school is a Big Yellow Bus ride away, they wake to the call of geese and yet Karl can be ready for action at Pfizer within thirty minutes. The Captain O’Shea House will, sadly for them, never come on the market. ‘I suppose for that reason I lost heart quite early on whenever the grass needed cutting or the garden was full of weeds.’ She tries to make light of her inactivity, but Freda lays a concerned hand on her arm.

At home there is only that single crown of aloe vera on the kitchen windowsill, put there by Karl in case of burns, and a few Phalaenopsis orchids that she keeps in their bedroom, and shamefully neglects for months on end.

‘Being among all this again is making me quite jealous,’ she says.

‘Everyone wants architectural plants now,’ Freda says, frowning. ‘I might have to sell off some of these big trees to make space.’

Julia knows them all: Meyer lemons, Amalfi oranges, Persian limes, some taller than her but, oh, somehow like old friends. She runs her finger around the graft scar of a ponderosa tree and Freda nods, reading her thoughts. ‘They’re entirely yours, from that first batch of rootstock – it was a good one,’ she says. ‘We haven’t lost a single tree, everything still healthy and, as you can see, fruiting like mad.’

Freda adds some oranges to her pile. ‘There’s a specialist nursery in Sussex that might give me a reasonable price, so you could find yourself with a little cheque soon.’

‘Oh Freda, no need for that.’ Julia would never stop feeling guilty about the way she left. ‘I couldn’t possibly accept a share. And anyway, wouldn’t it be a shame to let them go?’

Freda piles the fruit into a bucket, shrugs and says: ‘I’ve cut right down on new projects since you quit. It’s not as much fun as it used to be. It needed your flair.’

Julia crouches on the path and rootles her fingers through the woodchips at the base of a tree. ‘Look, this one’s got some suckers coming through from the rootstock, right here.’ Freda passes her the secateurs from her belt: ‘Go on, I can tell you’re dying to.’

Julia holds the pale-green whip between her fingers. The blades are satisfyingly sharp and in one slice the rogue spear of the original thorn tree has been banished. She rocks back on her heels and Freda squats beside her, packing earth around the base of a neighbouring kumquat.

‘I really am worried about Mira,’ Julia says, handing back the snips. ‘Does she look OK to you?’

Freda pockets them. ‘She looks absolutely gorgeous. They both do.’

‘Well, I wish she was a bit more bonny. Next to Ruthie . . .’

‘Pft, you mustn’t worry. Different body types. I mean, look at me next to you.’ Freda grasps a roll of her own flesh through the flowering fabric of her dress, laughs as she says: ‘Ruth’s a little chubby thing, but at least she might grow out of it, unlike me.’

Julia shakes her head. ‘It’s not Mira’s skinniness. You know? Recently she seems to have lost her appetite for everything, not only food. All she wants to do is listen to tapes of the same old stories she’s heard a hundred times before. She doesn’t want to be cuddled, doesn’t want to play. She’s hardly spoken a word since we arrived in Lamb’s Conduit Street, except to snap at poor Ruthie. It’s not like her to be so silent. You know, I can’t help wondering what’s preoccupying her.’

‘Oh dear.’ Freda stops what she’s doing, lays a hand on Julia’s arm. ‘Do you think it’s being back at the flat? The hospital right there? I take it you and Karl still haven’t talked to her about Julian?’

Julia replies with another shake of her head. ‘I think we’ve left it too late,’ she says.

‘Tell me,’ says Freda as they leave the glasshouse, running back because she’s forgotten the bucket. ‘Have you got anything happening tomorrow?’

Julia has nothing much planned. ‘I’ll probably have to drive the girls to see their cousins, but that’s about it.’

Freda’s eyes sparkle. ‘It’s an interesting space, three glass apexes – which can be vented, according to the architect – long thin windows looking down into the foyer from the offices, plenty of light for trees.’

‘Freda, what are you talking about?’

Freda grins at her. ‘A beautiful glass atrium at the centre of a building in the City, a green space for the workers to mingle. The tender is due with the architect by Friday. Do you fancy having a go at drawing something up? Yes?’

‘Yes!’

Julia can barely contain her excitement as she drives away. She and Ruthie sing along to the radio. The traffic is bad so she takes a back route she used many times before, along Holly Hill and up the side of Waterlow Park. It’s dangerously close to Cromwell Gardens. Mira becomes transfixed by a squirrel she’s spotted running along a branch while they stop to let the traffic pass. She’s still listening to a story on earphones so her voice comes out loud.

‘I had a toy pram once, it had a wheel that squeaked and Dad . . . put some oil on it and it didn’t squeak any more. And I had a doll called Wee-Ro-Ro. Isn’t that a strange name?’ Julia remembers the doll, which Mira had eccentrically named Wheelbarrow, and the pram, her second birthday present from Granny Jenna. But as she replays Mira’s voice, she can’t discern if it was Daddy or
Dadoo
who fixed the wheel. In the rear-view she sees her rubbing her eyes and then with some relief remembers her allergy.

They return to Lamb’s Conduit Street with bulging carrier bags of Freda’s oranges and lemons. Mira is outraged at being asked to carry one up to the door and swings it angrily as she stomps up the stairs. The bag splits and the fruit spills and bounces past Ruth’s feet, some oranges roll into the street. Mira stands looking pale with the broken bag in her hands but doesn’t offer to help.

Heino is already in bed but through his door Julia can hear the radio he’ll keep on all night. Ruthie thoughtfully arranges the fruit in a large wooden bowl on the table.

With the girls finally settled on the top floor, Julia pours herself a large glass of white wine and spreads out the architect’s drawings on the kitchen table. She visualises the flow of people between trees, paths, stone benches, some grouped planting to give a feeling of privacy. She gulps at the wine, checks Heino’s calendar on its string beside the telephone. His great-niece Claudine is due back in the morning. She’s already said she’d like to spend some time with the girls and the whole place is clean and tidy due to her own insomnia, so there won’t be much else she’ll have to do . . . Freda knew she wouldn’t be able to resist – ‘
I was thinking perhaps a lemon-orchard sort of a vibe
. . .’ – and Mira and Ruthie adore Claudine.

Julia pours herself a second glass, a third, and her thoughts drift inevitably to Karl in Connecticut. The phone on the wall mocks her with its silence. She checks her watch; still only five in the afternoon over there, so he’ll be at the lab. She rarely calls him at work but really, after a day like today, she ought to talk to him about Mira.

It’s no use waiting, sometimes the family has to come before the team. She calls his direct line but it goes unanswered and after a while clicks to the main switchboard. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lieberman, but Karl isn’t working here this afternoon.’ At the table she empties the remains of the bottle into her glass. She’s starting to feel tipsy, enough that she can blame the booze for the paranoia of her actions.

Everything blurs a little as she pulls up the high stool that Heino keeps beside the phone. She props herself against it. She dials the main number, hoping for a different switchboard girl, but unfortunately it sounds like the same one and she sinks further into the mire because although it’s ridiculous, she puts on an American accent. ‘May I speak directly to Miss Sofie van der Zeller, please?’ The line bleeps as the receptionist tries to put her through, then she’s back with the heart-sinking news that ‘Miss van der Zeller is not at work today.’ Julia drops the phone into its cradle and the disgust she feels is mainly at herself for being so suspicious and untrusting. There’s no need to link the two absences in such an unpleasant way.