The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs (27 page)

“And what about all the staff?”

“They live above the garage.”

“It’s absolutely not our fault that we witnessed that. They must have known there’s a risk. Maybe they like the fact that there’s a risk. It’s absolutely their fault that we saw what we did. We could sue. People in glass houses and all that. Sorry, sustainable recycled glass houses.”

“What, people in glass houses shouldn’t indulge in weird sexual perversions?” I say.

“Something like that. Shouldn’t indulge in coprophilia. That’s the technical term, I believe.”

“I don’t love that you know what coprophilia is.”

“Homonym,” he says, suddenly, slapping his forehead.

“I don’t think he’s gay. Though it is often these macho types, I suppose.”

“No, Maz. That’s the word I couldn’t think of earlier. It’s a word with two completely different meanings. Like posset meaning stuff a baby sicks up and that pudding we had.”

“Now that was disgusting. Especially now I think about where Mitzi’s hands have been. Oh, god, Joel, how are we going to survive until Wednesday?”

“You’re not the one who’s having to go sailing with shit-boy. And it wasn’t me who wanted to come here. I knew it wouldn’t be worth the free accommodation. It’s like going to church because you want to get your children into a religious school. Hypocrisy never goes unpunished.” He sighs. “The worst thing is that even that didn’t put me off my food. I’m still famished.”

“Don’t even think about going downstairs for that ham. I don’t want to think about what they may be doing with it.”

I throw him a cereal bar. He unwraps it and gives a theatrical look of horror at the nutty nubby brownness of it. We look at each other and start giggling all over again.

I wake up feeling surprisingly rested. It took me ages to get to sleep with my head swirling, or should it be swilling, with what we had seen. At first we tried to sleep in each other’s arms, the first time we’d done so for years, but laughter and cramps got the better of us and we wriggled away from each other, while the giggles continued. I look across the vast acreage of bed, but Joel has gone.

Our bedroom has gloriously thick curtains, so the near-midsummer dawn light is blocked out. I look at my mobile, dreading that it should only be 4 a.m., but am surprised to read 8 a.m. I do a double-take. I don’t know the last time I woke up that late. I should get up, but I am leaden. Eight o’clock. Something is happening this morning, I had to be somewhere before breakfast.

Cara—of course, Cara. I throw on some clothes and go downstairs to find my menfolk in the kitchen, painting a rare picture of familial perfection, despite liberal scatterings of muesli.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” I say. “I was supposed to go for a walk.”

“You slept through Gabe and Rufus waking up so I thought I’d let you have a lie-in. Thought you might be tired.” He suppresses a giggle. “Sorry, I forgot you were going out. Should have set the alarm.”

“Since when have we needed to set an alarm for anything?” I look at his stubble-covered face and feel a surge of gratitude for both the lie-in and the fact of him not being Michael. But why is it, I also think, that the one and only time my husband spontaneously decides to let me lie in is the one time I don’t want to? “Where are our hosts?”

“The offspring are being forced into outdoor activity by the au pair, while their parents have yet to emerge. I think they may be very tired.” We both start giggling again.

“Michael!” shouts Joel seconds later with forced jollity. Michael is wearing shorts, a polo shirt and boating shoes. He looks every bit as respectable as he has every other time I’ve met him, except now I picture him sporting a gimp mask and being whipped by prison guards. “Did you sleep well?”

“Certainly did. All set for the regatta?”

Joel nods, unable to speak.

“Tea,” I say. “Made in a pot and everything.”

Michael sniffs it and I am inevitably reminded of his wife and the wet wipe. “You didn’t use fresh, not-boiled-before water, did you?” He looks around at the selection of cereal packets and bowls encrusted with the fast-drying wallpaper paste of wholewheat breakfast products. “Where’s Radka? Why has she left this mess?”

“It’s ours,” says Joel. “Sorry. We’ve been very mucky pups, haven’t we, boys? Dirty boys. Naughty, naughty, naughty.” He slaps his wrist. He’s got to stop this. He then scoops up the cereal
packets and puts them in the cupboard where I know Mitzi will rearrange them in height order. I am beginning to think of ways that we can leave this place early.

Mitzi comes in, looking fresh and lovely. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet. I think it’s all going to be fine, but then I find I can’t actually look her in the eye. She manages to make me feel like we’re the filthy ones for having stumbled across the scene, rather than them for a) indulging in such weirdness and b) indulging in such weirdness with guests in the house.

“Good walk?” asks Michael.

“Lovely,” she replies.

Somehow we struggle through the next couple of days and Joel makes a work excuse so that we can leave on the Tuesday, a day before our agreed departure. We have the usual flurry of chaos to round up all our possessions and the endless screeching of “Have you seen the camera?” and “You had the mobile charger last.” The boys have been whining about wanting to go home since we arrived, but now they whine about leaving their new best friends, the Labrador and the Jack Russell. We finally gather up the last of our detritus and, as the sound of Michael’s voice giving us top navigational tips fades away, we breathe for the first time.

“Did you have fun, boys?” I ask brightly. “It was lovely, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” says Rufus. “Especially the Wii.”

“I loved the sea. It was so salty,” I say.

“Ooh, Oscar Wilde, I wish I’d said that,” says Joel.

“What, Oscar in my class?” asks Rufus. Such is the quality of our in-car banter.

The loss of freedom in parenting is incremental. If it all came
at once we’d drown our babies like puppies in the river. New parents are staggered by the compromises that they have to make when they are delivered of the firstborn, but little do they know how much worse it’s going to get, that liberty is chipped at so subtly that you’re not even aware of it—in fact, you even sign up for more in the shape of further children. The lost freedom I’m currently mourning is the ability to have conversations in the car without my children interrupting me or catching on to who we’re gossiping about. I suppose I ought to rejoice in Rufus being behind in his reading since it means we can still “es pee ee el el” out taboo words like “sex,” “affair” and “chocolate.” I’m sure in only a few months this too will be denied us.

At last Rufus and Gabe fall asleep.

“I don’t know how we survived,” I say.

“It’s all right for you. Can you imagine what it was like for me being trapped on a small boat with Michael? Making his strainy face every time he shouted out ‘Ready about, Leo.’ ” He does a stomach-churning impression of said strainy face.

“What makes someone want to do those things? Is it something to do with potty training? Do you think his mother did it too early? Or too late? Did I leave it too late with Gabe? Or perhaps I made too much of a fuss about it. It’s all very odd because I’ve always thought of Michael and Mitzi as anally retentive. When in fact he’s anally expulsive. What does that even mean?” Joel is silent. “Your mom would know; I’ll ask her next time I see her. Is it someone who’s really disorganized and untidy and is always losing stuff?”

“A bit like me, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“With Michael as the alternative?”

“I think there must be a happy medium, don’t you?”

He’s silent again.

“Don’t you?”

“One person’s happy medium is another person’s obsessive compulsive.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What you think are normal levels of organization and tidiness might be someone else’s idea of anally retentive. That’s all.”

“I’m not at all anal, if that’s what you’re saying. Mitzi and Michael, you’re right, they did verge on the obsessive. I’ve always admired how tidy she is, but I did find the way she’d move my shoes so that the left one was on the left and the right on the right when I put them by the door a bit disconcerting.”

“And the way she’d jump and tidy up the minute we finished eating. And throwing away all the newspapers when they were only a day old.”

“No, Joel, that’s normal behavior.”

“No, it’s anal.”

“Well, that would make me anal then.”

He says nothing.

“Am not. You’re a slob, that’s all. Do you think you’re normal and I’m anal, or do you admit that I’m normal and you’re a slob?”

“All I’m saying is that it’s relative, like what that Daisy was saying. I’m sure Mitzi and Michael think they’re completely normal. Well, that their attitude to tidiness is normal. I’m not sure even they would think defecating on glass coffee tables is entirely mainstream. And I’m sure you think your attitude to mess is completely normal.”

“If anything, I’m way too tolerant. Obviously I’m not anal, given that the house is a dump at all times.”

“Actually, though,” he says, “now I think about it, you’ve been a lot nicer recently. A lot more tolerant.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, I’m only just realizing it now I think about it. Recently, you’ve been a lot less angry about stuff. We don’t have those daily rows about the cereal and the laundry basket.”

“Concentrate on the road.”

“Yes, you’ve definitely been nicer to me. I don’t know, for a couple of months or so. Not been on at me about every little thing. Have you noticed?”

“I’ve not noticed you becoming any more considerate around the house recently, no.”

“I shouldn’t mention it, I suppose. Just make the most of having the old Mary in the house again, my lovely slatternly
pelirroja
.”

He gives me a patronizing little pat on the knee.

“Mommy,” says a small voice from the back of the car. “What does anal mean?”

“Shall I put the DVD on?” The children safely distracted, I ask Joel the question I’ve wanted to ask for almost nine years. “I’ve always been curious about whether you’ve ever thought about, you know, the fact that Mitzi fancied you when you came to work with us?”

“Not really. Should I?”

“No. I just think you might wonder what it would be like.”

“After last night, I don’t need to wonder.”

“I wouldn’t blame you.”

“For what?”

“Thinking about it. God, I’m not saying I wouldn’t blame you for having an affair.”

“I’m not having an affair.” He leans forward to study the road. “There’s an awful lot of roadkill around these parts, isn’t there?”

“I never said you were having an affair. I know that. I think Mitzi’s got her hands full with Michael.”

“Mitzi is exactly the sort of woman to have an affair. She can’t stand anybody having something she hasn’t got.”

“She was fine about us. It surprised me at the time. I remember I was dreading telling her, but she was fine about it.”

He sighs. “I tried to tell you, but you never wanted to hear. She wasn’t fine.”

“What do you mean?”

“She tried it on with me.”

“Yes, I know that. She fancied you first.”

“No, after you and I had got together.”

“Are you sure it was after she knew we were together?”

“Yes, I’m absolutely sure.”

“Tell me.”

“One evening, about a month or so after our first night, she said she needed to talk about something. Idiot that I am, I agreed to go out for a drink. She put her hand on my knee, low-cut top, all the clichés. I said no, that I was in love with you, she said that you didn’t need to know, I said but I don’t want to and she stopped. Begged me not to say anything to you, told me about her upbringing and how it makes her insecure, and made me promise not to.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Because I promised I wouldn’t.”

“Joel, you great lump, that sort of promise isn’t binding.”

“I know. It was really stupid of me. I thought it would hurt you more to know, so I didn’t, but it was a mistake. It pushed me into a corner where Mitzi and I had a secret from you and I didn’t like that. But I thought you’d wonder why I didn’t tell you immediately, so it just seemed easier to keep quiet.”

“For the last nine years?”

“I’d pretty much forgotten about it, to be honest.”

“But what about all those secret glances between you two, and your antipathy toward Michael?”

“There are no secret glances. More like grimaces. And I don’t like Michael because he’s a tosser. Why did you think I don’t like him?”

“I don’t know. There’s a lot about Mitzi I’m going to have to rethink after this weekend.”