Only another fifteen minutes and she would know. On no account must Ivan’s hopes be raised until she was sure, because if she turned out to be wrong it could set off another episode. She fingered one nipple under her dress to check that it was still as abnormally hard and tender as it had been for a week now. The sensation brought a delicious recollection of all those frantic and frequent attempts at conception, mixed with the fear that all that side of the business might now be over. But there was no reason why it had to stop now, just because its purpose had been achieved. She would give up the ciggies the moment it was confirmed, but it would be hard to give up the sex. And anyway, suppose she wasn’t. In fact, she often felt something like this just before her period, which had been late before, and she had only felt sick, not actually thrown up. It could even be the start of the menopause.
A slight cough from the dining room signalled that Mrs Takahashi had finished. Hilary balanced her cigarette on
the side of the table and went through, waving her arms to disperse the smoke that followed her. Mrs Takahashi looked up meekly and offered the smiling and bowing that courtesy demanded and which by now Hilary could hardly be bothered to return. The dining room was freezing and Mrs Takahashi, even with her cardigan slung around her shoulders, seemed to have grown even smaller with the cold. But it was midsummer, the end of July, and you didn’t go round switching on fires in July, not even this cold and wet one. The trouble was this room got no sun, but July was July. In Harrogate, where July often felt like November, you put another layer on. You didn’t wear it round your shoulders.
‘Any plans for today? Will you be wanting a lift down into town again?’ Hilary’s questioning bore the roughness of interrogation rather than polite enquiry.
Mrs Takahashi half shook her head in a gesture of noncommittal. Very odd woman. ‘Today I am tired. Today I shall stay here and perhaps walk in this area.’
Hilary nodded. ‘There’s the towpath along the canal, that’s a nice walk. Don’t go all the way round by the road, you can get to it through our land. Just go up through the vegetables, there’s a way through. The vegetables are nice at this time of year. If you like vegetables. You’re welcome to wander.’
Hilary returned to the kitchen with the plate and took in a rack of cold toast. People did go on holiday alone, so perhaps it had not been all that odd when Mrs Takahashi had turned up without a reservation last Sunday and booked a room for the week. They were seldom full, being too far out for couples ‘doing’ Bath and too small for families wanting countryside diversions. Their situation
wasn’t all that countrified anyway, being close to the railway and the canal. Most people stayed only one night, including a proportion of those who booked two and cancelled the second after experiencing the first, a statistic that Hilary did not bother herself about. She was an artist first, and her work at the Sulis was the next important thing, after supporting Ivan with the smallholding. With a self-justifying sniff Hilary deposited the toast on Mrs Takahashi’s table and exited.
Nevertheless it was slightly strange that Mrs Takahashi, apparently such an organised little woman, would just wash up on the edge of Limpley Stoke with a huge suitcase and no plans. And it had seemed odd that she had then spent half the time in her room, the smaller one which, like the dining room, got no sun. On the first day Hilary had given Mrs Takahashi a lift down into Bath straight after breakfast, dropping her at the abbey before going on to work at the clinic. Mrs Takahashi had done the usual tourist things, that evening showing them the leaflets of the places she had seen, with a display of nodding and polite English. On the Tuesday she had gone out again after her non-breakfast, leaving her room exquisitely tidy, and returned in the early evening a little dejected. With rather forced nods and smiles she had said she had simply been walking. On the third day she had stayed in her room.
On the fourth, yesterday, coming back from work at six o’clock, Hilary had heard the sound of weeping from behind her door. She would have left her to get on with it, but she might get a late arrival wanting the other room and what sort of advertisement for her establishment was that, the sound of sobbing from next door? Summoning the charm which was going to have to substitute for compassion,
she had knocked quietly on the door and asked her if anything was the matter. Mrs Takahashi had apologised and bowed several times. Then a frown had crumpled her small face and she had struggled not to cry again. Hilary had hesitated. She would not venture any enquiry about the absent husband. She did not want to be told about the absent husband, to be thought of as a person who knew about breakups or breakdowns, as if it were written all over her face that she was some kind of expert. Ivan was fine now, that was what mattered, so she had simply said, ‘Good. Well. We’ll see you in the morning then. Eight o’clock for breakfast? Fine.’
‘Very private people, the Japanese,’ Ivan had said nonchalantly, when she had told him about it later at supper. ‘Saw her round the garden today, trying to chat to Leech. Obviously at a loose end.’
‘Can’t think what she made of Leech. Still, I feel sorry for her,’ Hilary had lied, as she rose to clear their plates. Really, she couldn’t wait for Sunday when Mrs Takahashi’s stay would be over. She had already decided that should she ask to stay longer she would say the room was already booked. But Ivan expected her to be caring about strangers in a baseless, general way and knowing this, she found that she could often sound as if she were. ‘Poor little thing,’ she had added, ruffling Ivan’s hair on her way to the sink.
Ivan would be down in a minute. Hilary looked at her watch, sucked on the last half-inch of her cigarette and stubbed it out in the scooped-out tomato half on Mrs Takahashi’s plate. It was time. She opened the cupboard and rose up on tiptoe to check the test tube for its little blue ring. Which wasn’t there. It wasn’t there.
It wasn’t
there
. A whole thirty minutes had gone by and the blue ring definitely wasn’t there. Hilary turned from the cupboard and found that in the few seconds during which her back had been turned, somebody had changed the set. The world had been transformed into a warm, generous place, full of people dear to her. Suddenly she knew herself to be warm and generous too, a woman so heaped with blessings that she could not begin to count them all: she was an artist whose fingers were aching to sculpt, the happy wife of darling, damaged Ivan who was going to be so happy now. And Stephen would be so happy too, the most wonderful, generous father-in-law in the world, a brilliant doctor and so much more, a true healer. She scraped the tomato ashtray into the bin along with the rest of the debris on the plate and chucked her cigarette packet in on top. She would give this place a really good going-over. She would redecorate in the autumn. Leech would have to go, of course, which in many ways would be a relief. Perhaps Mrs Takahashi would like an orange for breakfast, or she could try her on grapefruit, or melon, perhaps strawberries, even Ivan’s macrobiotic muesli. She must get the poor little woman to eat. She should perhaps switch to fruit herself, to prepare her body. Ivan would know what to do. She returned to the dining room.
‘More tea or toast?’ she offered. Just as she was about to make her offer of fruit tomorrow, she heard Ivan come into the kitchen. With a smile she cleared the last of the breakfast things away and returned. Ivan was getting himself a spoon, looking that sulky, little boy way he did in the mornings, an effect heightened by the checked blue shirt. Hilary dumped Mrs Takahashi’s dishes on the table and sat down out of his way and watched as he mixed flakes, grain
and dried fruit from five plastic containers in a bowl, added live yogurt from the fridge and a sprinkling of wheatgerm. She had grown used to his tranquillized lack of excitement over things and she had almost stopped noticing how she mimicked his mood with a detached flatness of her own. Despite her elation she said, in a sleepy voice that seemed to her quite natural for the circumstances, ‘Pass us a banana, pet,’ and pushed her bacon-scented hair off her face. If she announced it calmly, it would simply add to his joy.
Ivan was leaning against the sink eating his cereal, his long torso slightly, boyishly concave. He pushed himself on to his feet, took a banana from the bowl and tossed it to her.
‘Ivan?’
He was in a good mood. In a bad one he might have ignored her altogether or just handed her the bunch. Encouraged, Hilary rose, crossed the room, took the cereal bowl and spoon out of his hands and put her arms round him. She whispered in his ear, ‘Ivan? I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby at last.’
Ivan said nothing at first, but by the slight tightening of his hands on her shoulders, and his muffled gulping as he cried into her hair, she knew that he had heard. And was overwhelmed with delight.
A
NDREW STOPPED ON
the pavement at the corner of Green Street and said, ‘I’m not sulking,’ in a voice that made it clear he was.
Sara appeared not to hear. His eyes left her face and followed the direction in which she was looking. They both watched in silence as Joyce and Pretzel wandered ahead into the crowd in the sunshine. Both sides of Green Street in Bath were lined with trestle tables and awnings; plastic tables, chairs and umbrellas were arranged on the road down the middle and everywhere there were people, inordinate numbers of them in aprons selling and serving food and drink, and many more buying from the stalls, laughing in groups, sitting or standing with plates, glasses and carrier bags. Mingled with the scents of fresh fruits, wood smoke, garlic and grilling meat was an almost tangible layer of amused incredulity that this combination of sunshine, food and people was happening in England, and that was what gave the game away. In France, Italy or Spain it would happen every week and be called the market; in Bath it happened once a year on the last Saturday in July and was called the Bath International Taste Extravaganza, the BITE Festival.
‘Good. Glad to hear it,’ Sara murmured. It was a technique
that worked with very small children, she believed, simply to swamp petulance with unironic good nature. It appalled her, if she thought about it, that she was using it on Andrew, so she refused to think about it.
Amid the crowd Joyce remained distinctive, her pink suit and chiffon scarf standing out against the vest tops and shorts of other people. A child, stooping to pat Pretzel, was gently pulled away by its mother. As she ambled slowly from stall to stall down the street, her passage eased by the undeclared
cordon sanitaire
that surrounded her, Joyce remained separate and alone, although the shy smile and wave which she was now turning to send Sara and Andrew’s way suggested that she was not aware of this.
‘Wave. Wave back,’ Sara commanded. ‘Smile.’ Andrew obeyed, then turned to Sara. The smile died on his face as he saw that tears were running down her cheeks.
‘Darling,’ he began, taking her hand. ‘Darling, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ Sara said. ‘I’m fine. It’s just so awful, seeing her like this. If you’d known how she used to be. We’ve got to do something.’
Andrew sighed. ‘I know, but what?’ His years as a police officer had shown him more than he had cared to see about chronic alcoholics and he would have described his pessimism over Joyce’s chances of recovery as realistic. He also knew, after three years of loving the passionate, compassionate and downright bloody unreasonable optimism of Sara’s view of people, that she would consider his view offensively cynical. He sighed again.
Sara was saying earnestly, ‘Look, I know she’s in a bad way, I know other people have probably tried. But don’t you see? She hasn’t sold her cello. She’s sold everything else, bit by bit, but not that. There must be something in that.’
Andrew nodded. ‘I know, I know.’
They had, since Thursday morning, been taking care of the now sober, wobbly, but far from contrite Joyce, and had pieced together her unedifying story. It followed the usual pattern: shortly after she had retired, and Joyce did not offer any reason why, the booze had begun to take over, bringing about the first of many losses, the respect of acquaintances and friends (‘Just because I took a wee hoot mid-morning, dear. Some folk are awful narrow-minded.’). Next to go was any interest in anything except the next drink and the gradual selling off of just about everything she owned. Joyce had pointed out that three bottles of vodka a day for ten days out of every month soon mounted up, and had gone on to blame the Chancellor of the Exchequer for scandalous excise duty. Then had come the day she first collapsed drunk in public, which she described with vague arm waving and a short discourse on deplorably uneven pavements, marking the loss of her shame at what she had become. When they had reached the end of her sparsely detailed story Sara and Andrew had been surprised by the amount of energy that Joyce held in reserve for her firm denial that she was afflicted by anything more than ‘a wee weakness’. Her friends had been faithless. She did not need to be saddled with owning a flat or furniture so why hang on to them. She tended to faint in the heat. A wee weakness, that was all.
Sara would have backed off at that point. Andrew had not.
‘You call it what you like, and I’ll call it a serious drink problem. And I want to make something clear. While you are a guest in Sara’s house, you do not drink a drop, here or anywhere outside. Understood?’
Joyce had merely given him a huffy scowl. ‘Who’s he again, dear?’ she had demanded, turning to Sara.
‘Because if you do,’ Andrew continued, ‘I am going to make it my business to throw you out. I will not have Sara’s kindness abused. Is that clear?’
Joyce had changed tack and assumed a ruffled, regal grace. ‘I hope I know
my
manners,’ she said. ‘I would never let it be said that I outstayed
my
welcome.’
That seemed to amount to an uneasy agreement to Andrew’s terms. Sara had looked pleased, as if a problem had been solved. Andrew had kept to himself the knowledge that it was a painless promise for Joyce to make at the end of a binge when her body would need time to recover before it could tolerate another drink. Before it would crave another.