Daughters-in-Law (35 page)

“My mother said also a bit later that although she knew our children are lent to us, they do not belong to us, she still found it very difficult to let go. She said we would find it so with Mariella, and that we must make sure we have interesting work and . . . and enough between us, enough relationship so that we are not begging Mariella for the time
and attention she should give to her own life. She said—” Sigrid stopped.

She did not take her hand away from Edward’s, but she put her free hand up to her eyes briefly, and then she said, not quite steadily, “My mother said you were a good man.”

Edward made a little self-deprecating noise in his throat. It was, in a way, wonderful when Sigrid was in one of her serious, almost melancholy Scandinavian moods, but it was also awkward to know quite how to respond to them without sounding embarrassingly theatrical, so he sat there beside her holding her hand and feeling at once both pleased and foolish, and then abruptly she leaned sideways, kissed him full on the mouth, and said with fervor, “And you
are
.”

Petra sat on the floor by Kit’s bed with her arms round her knees. Kit was asleep, flung across his pillow with his arms above his head. Across the room, peering at her through the bars of the huge, heavy, old-fashioned cot that Ralph and his brothers had once slept in, Barney lay on his side not moving, his eyes round with the effort of keeping them open.

Both boys had been very quiet at bath time, playing docilely in the water without fighting or splashing and then making no fuss when it was time to get out, Barney even lying peacefully on the bath mat while Petra put his nappy on, without squirming over and onto all fours, so that he could crawl rapidly away out of the door and down the landing. And when Ralph had rung, quite close, this time, to six o’clock, Kit hadn’t cried, or shouted for him to come home, but had simply sat there, holding Petra’s phone against his ear and nodding, but not saying anything, not responding.

She hoped they hadn’t frightened them, she and Steve, when they had their argument. It hadn’t been the kind of argument she had with Ralph, when Ralph shouted, or banged out of the
house slamming doors, but the atmosphere had been strained enough for someone like Kit to pick it up, and react to it, and for that reaction to be passed on to Barney, who could not be distracted by another slice of toast and jam, but who crawled to her feet, whimpering, and pulled himself up to lean against her knees, staring up into her face with eyes enormous with distress. He was still staring now, as if he feared that if he closed his eyes she might not be there when he opened them again, as had happened with Ralph.

She was appalled at herself. Why had it not struck her, all those dozy, hazy weeks of avoiding facing the inevitable, that she might have been alarming her children—and herself—into the bargain? Why hadn’t she thought of that? Why hadn’t she seen something like Steve’s proposal coming? Why hadn’t she broken out of her own stupid head for just long enough to see that, whatever all this was about, it wasn’t just about how
she
felt at this moment, in these precise circumstances, it was about something much broader, and with a future, and you couldn’t just go back to what you knew, like Barney sucking his thumb, because nothing was the same when you went back to it, because you weren’t the same. And what had struck her that afternoon, sitting on the windy shingle while Steve told her his plans, and told her what he wanted, and told her that they could really make a go of things, if only she’d stop messing him around, was that she was no longer in the place in her own heart and mind where she could just say, oh wow, cool idea, let’s all go and conserve corncrakes on an island.

She couldn’t do that anymore. Clutched now by a kind of horror at her dangerously sleepwalking state these past weeks, she wondered if, in fact, she ever could have. She took a breath and held it, to fight down a rising panic.

Then, still hardly breathing, and to give herself time to calm down, she’d let him talk. She’d let him describe this new job,
this new idea, she’d let him go on, in his steady, unhurried way, about what they had in common, about how he felt about the boys, and she’d looked round her, at the great sweeps of tawny pebbles and the quietly heaving expanses of the sea, and she had waited to feel what she always felt there, the sense of belonging, the sense of reassurance and homecoming. She gazed and gazed . . . and nothing came. And then her gaze had traveled to rest on the little boys, Kit scrambling on a slope above the sea, Barney sitting in a hollow he had made throwing stones tiny distances with ecstatic, jerky movements, and it was all she could do to stay still, listening to Steve, and not race to pick up her children and stumble away with them, away from this alarming prospect of embarking on a new life in an unknown place with someone, she realized, whom she hardly knew anyway.

She had taken some deliberately deep breaths. Then she said, as emphatically as she could, “I’m married.”

Steve glanced at her.

“When did that stop you seeing me?”

Petra looked down.

“You’ve been really good to me,” she said. “Really good. I shouldn’t—”

“Shouldn’t what?”

“I shouldn’t have let you. I shouldn’t have let you be so good to me. I should have told you.”

“Told me what?”

Petra picked up a pebble. She could not say that she had, all along, been watching, hoping for Ralph to look her way again, that she would have given anything, anything right then to have heard the crunch of approaching footsteps behind her, and turned to see that it was Ralph coming to collect them all, and take them home. So she said instead, mustering her courage, “I should have told you that I wouldn’t leave him.”

“I thought he’d left you.”

“That’s different,” Petra said. “Ralph’s different. He does things differently. He’s got a temper.”

Steve looked out to sea. He said, “You’re lucky I haven’t.”

“I am.” She looked at him. “I haven’t been playing with you.”

“Okay,” he said. He got to his feet. He called to the boys, “Teatime.”

Petra had thought, slightly dazedly, that that was that, that she had survived the bomb blast going off under her feet, and that there would be no repercussions. But once they were in Steve’s kitchen, and the business of settling the boys and giving them toast was done, Steve started on Petra.

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t yell or shout or slam round the kitchen. He simply told her, in a low, steady, furious monotone, what he thought of her, what he thought of her morals, and her cowardice, and her conduct, and her selfishness, and her immaturity. He told her she had used him, and that he didn’t like being used, and that she had allowed him to believe all kinds of things that could never happen, and presented herself as a rejected outcast, not some right little cow who wanted to have her cake and eat it, which is what she, in fact, was. He called her all sorts of names, and all the time he was talking she sat by the table, motionless, until Barney came miserably to her knee and roused her as if from a trance. She’d bent down to pick him up, and then she’d stood up, and Kit had scrambled off his chair to be close to her, and she had looked directly at Steve.

“You can call me all the names you like,” Petra said. “But it takes two to tango, and you know it. And now I’m going home.”

“You’ll have to walk,” Steve said. “I’m not driving you another yard.”

“We’ll walk, then,” Petra said. She’d taken Kit’s hand. She
hoped he wouldn’t speak, she hoped he wouldn’t make a move towards Steve. Barney had his arms round her neck, and his face buried in her hair. His face was hot through her hair, and he was breathing heavily. She let go of Kit long enough to sling her bag over her shoulder, and then she walked past Steve, out of the kitchen, not even pausing when he tried to catch at her as she went by, and said, in quite a different, more urgent voice, “Please stay.”

In the little rough parking space by the entrance to the beach, an elderly couple were urging their spaniel into the back of their car. Petra paused beside them.

“Excuse me—”

They looked up at her, standing there in her gypsy skirt with tousled hair, a child in her arms and another beside her holding on to a fold of her skirt with both hands.

“Could you please do me a favor?” Petra said. “Could you drive us some of the way, at least, back towards Aldeburgh?”

T
he bar was full. Luke, holding two pint glasses unsteadily above his head, and conscious of occasional little splashes of beer down his hands, made his way through the hubbub to where Ralph had managed to corner a couple of galvanized bar stools next to a long shelf running across the wall.

Ralph had taken his jacket off and loosened his tie. He looked exhausted, and thin, but he’d had a haircut, Luke noticed, and even if his nails were bitten he had links in his shirt cuffs and his shoes were polished. Despite Ralph’s clothes, and despite Luke only being in his work uniform of black combat trousers, black T-shirt, and baseball boots, Luke felt very much in charge of the occasion, very much, he was surprised to find, older than his older brother.

He put the glasses down on the shelf in front of Ralph. Ralph said, “Is this welcome, or is this welcome—”

He ducked his head, and slurped the first mouthful of beer without touching the glass. Then he lifted his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Magic.”

“You look right manky,” Luke said.

“I’m okay—”

Luke grunted. He picked up his glass and took a long swallow.

“So,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Good,” Ralph said, “I’m good. Got given two new clients this week.”

“You don’t get a cut of the profits, do you—”

“Nope,” Ralph said. “That’s the quantitative-trader guys. But I’ll be in line for a bonus.”

Luke watched him drink. Then he said, “And what’ll you spend it on?”

Ralph put his glass down and stared into it. After a pause, he said, “A house for the boys and me. And legal fees.”

“Don’t be daft,” Luke said.

Ralph glanced at him.

“What’s daft—”

“That kind of talk. What are you playing at? Are you going to take your children away from their mother and bring them up on your own?”

Ralph didn’t look at him. He said to his drink, “That’s the idea, yes.”

Luke said calmly, “You are insane.”

Ralph was silent.

“You couldn’t do it,” Luke said. “You don’t have a case. No court is going to take two little children away from a perfectly okay mother just because you don’t want to admit that this is as much your fault as Petra’s.”

Ralph said angrily, “She’s the one who—”

“She hasn’t,” Luke said. “She hasn’t had an affair. It’s a funny old relationship, but it’s not sex. She told Charlotte.”

Ralph said, “You don’t have to have sex for it to be disloyal—”

“And,” Luke said, interrupting, “you don’t have to throw your wife downstairs to be an abusive husband.”

“I’m not abusive!” Ralph yelled.

A group of drinkers nearby looked round, and there was a sudden pool of silence in their corner.

“I’m not abusive,” Ralph said again quietly.

“Depends on how you define abuse—”

Ralph said, leaning forward to hiss his words at Luke, “I am here doing this fucking job, to
keep
them all.”

Luke looked back at him. He waited a moment, and then he said, “So you are. Heroically battling to pay the bills. Having previously buggered up your online work and kept Petra in the dark about it, and then just telling her what you were going to do next, never asking her, or including her, just frightening her with your sudden plans and turning her whole life upside down. That’s all.”

There was an astonished pause, and then Ralph said, “You’ve changed your tune!”

“I’ve had time to think,” Luke said. “Stuff’s happened. You’ve just let Mum and Dad shove you around all the time, and then, when things go wrong, you take it out on Petra. It’s not her fault. It’s not her fault that she does what everyone wants until she just can’t anymore, and does some stupid bloody thing, like this bloke, and we all go apeshit about it.”

“So,” Ralph said sarcastically, “you do everything Charlotte wants all the time, do you? If she wants it, then it must be right?”

“Actually,” Luke said, taking no notice of his brother’s tone, “not.”

Ralph picked up his beer glass and put it down again. He said, “Well, there
is
this guy. And I don’t know what’s going on except he sees my kids and I don’t like it.”

“Well,” Luke said. “
You’re
not seeing them.”

“I told you. I
told
you. I’m working my arse off because—”

“Bullshit,” Luke said.

Ralph made a little jerky movement as if he was going to scoop up his jacket, slip off his stool, and fight his way through the crowd without another word to Luke. But he hesitated. He took his hand off his jacket.

“You like doing this job,” Luke said. “You like being good at it. Fair enough. But don’t pretend it’s to put bread into the mouths of your starving children, don’t give me all that noble, self-sacrificing
crap
. Just don’t. And don’t make a complete and utter idiot of yourself, talking about fighting for the custody of your children.” He looked at Ralph. “God, bro,” he said, “don’t
embarrass
yourself.”