On the washing line, the sheets and nightdress catch the sun like flags, rippling in the breeze. She said it would brighten up, and it looks as if she was right.
That evening, I make omelettes using the eggs my mother gave me, the orange-yolked eggs from her hens. ‘Oh, she was fine,’ I tell Charles. ‘She was perfectly normal, as if that phone call never happened.’
‘What phone call?’ asks Sophie, coming in from the hall. I didn’t know she was at home. It’s a choir night.
‘Oh, she was just in a grump about something,’ I improvise. ‘Anyway, she seemed fine today. On good form. She said you’d be very welcome if you wanted to go down and visit next week during half term.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ says Sophie, fibbing back. ‘But I’ve got a stack of revision.’
‘Have you got plans for next Wednesday?’ I ask, tilting the pan so the egg hits the hot butter and foams into lace. ‘Someone called Emma’s coming to lunch, she’s after a babysitter, I thought you might be interested.’ Yes, she’ll make sure she’s around. Hastily, she eats an omelette and pulls on her boots and her beanie and goes off to choir, leaving a particular sort of emptiness behind.
When the day comes, I open the door to Emma, and as usual, she’s incapacitated by motherhood, like a Victorian morality print: Christopher attached to her leg, the burden of the enormous unwieldy buggy. Smilingly, I stand aside and let her lug it all up the steps. Bump, bump, bump. She’s perspiring by the time she backs into the hall. I feel the embarrassment coming off her as she unwinds her jolly candy-striped scarf and gives it to me, along with her waxed jacket and Christopher’s green coat. The ungainliness of her life sharpens for us both in this setting: the high ceilings and pale walls, the heart-lifting scent of freesias. The order.
I feel a need to touch her, to experience the heat of her humiliation, so I put my hands on her elbows, holding her still for a moment, and press my cheek against hers. I inhale. Sweat and washing powder, apple shampoo, the sweet sour faraway smell of breastmilk. I turn my head to let my hair fall across her face for a moment, and then I step back, saying how lovely it is to see Christopher again. He’s gazing up at me doubtfully, two grey beads of snot on his upper lip. My fingers itch for a tissue, but instead I tell him the cat’s waiting for him in the kitchen. Unsure for a moment, he weighs it all up, but I can see he remembers this house, he had a nice time here, with his milk and his Smarties, and a cat is a cat; and eventually he peels himself from Emma’s leg and cautiously makes his way down the corridor, away from us.
I’m aware of Emma noticing it all, seeing the little things. I give her a glass of mineral water, and she turns the glass around in her hand, examining it. Her fingers trace the grain of the table. Taking stock, taking comfort. There’s no envy in her: she’s too tired for that. She’s just comforted to be here, surrounded by it.
And yet she finds Sophie intimidating. I observe Emma tensing up, asking too many questions, reminded of being on the very edge of things. Left out. It’s a good moment to float the idea of Sophie doing some babysitting. Even though Sophie scares her, just a little, I see the flare of hope in Emma’s eyes: an evening out, every so often. Surely she’s entitled to this?
As she’s putting the baby down for a sleep, while Christopher lies on the floor, talking to the cat and crayoning on a pad of paper, I tell Sophie – lowering my voice – that I’ll give her a fiver if she’ll take him to the park after lunch. ‘Ten,’ she says, experimentally. ‘OK,’ I say, hearing footsteps coming back down the hall.
For various reasons I’ve been uneasy about introducing them, but I needn’t have worried. As an adolescent, I was short on the confidence which is – miraculously, horrifyingly – Sophie’s defining characteristic. Sophie always deserves to be in the room. And so, despite the other things that might link that distant faraway me to my daughter (colouring, build, the shape of our eyes and necks and hands), the connection passes unnoticed. It’s not so surprising. At seventeen, I lacked – or believed I lacked, which came to the same thing – those qualities that make an impression, the qualities Emma then so amply possessed, and which she now perhaps recognises in me.
Of course it’s also possible that the moment itself had had no significance for her.
Over time, I’ve come to see that so much of a personality boils down to confidence: whether you have it, or not. In many cases, it’s really all that counts. All there is. I started with very little, but found it as an adult, through painting, and through Arnold, through motherhood and all those years when Sophie needed me so passionately. I’d guess Emma, having started with plenty of confidence, has gradually lost it. You couldn’t say we complement each other, exactly; but perhaps in some strange way she complements me. It’s a thought which amuses me as I make the salad – mixing it by hand, as my mother does, so the vinaigrette is evenly distributed – and passing her the wooden servers.
I can tell Emma is apprehensively anticipating Christopher’s reaction to the dishes I’ve prepared, which are full of spices and herbs, and I’ve resolved, if he objects, to smile brightly and say
oh dear, there’s nothing else, would he like some more bread
. But as it turns out, he has a sense of adventure, and doesn’t do too badly. We talk briefly about that afternoon in the park and there’s only one threat of awkwardness, when Christopher refers to the loss of his scooter (‘You said to leave it. You put it in the trees’), but I gloss over this quickly, with good humour, conveying my bafflement, and the tension is quickly forgotten, ascribed to a child’s muddle or fancy.
When he has finished, I catch Sophie’s eye.
Park.
I’m not sure whether Emma will accept my suggestion. These women are so twitchy, so fearful, so superstitious about the threats lurking out there, lying in wait for their children. To be fair, after the park incident, no one could blame Emma for caution. But no, she thinks it’s a wonderful idea. She wants, I can see, to be alone with me. I listen so attentively, so sympathetically. And Sophie’s very enthusiastic, so pleasant.
Once Sophie has taken Christopher away, I fill Emma’s glass with wine.
Go on, be a devil. Where’s the harm.
She’s pinking up, flushed with the novelty and intimacy of it all. I picture her eating her usual lunch in her little kitchen: the plastic plates and bibs, the ludicrous cartoon cutlery, peas rolling around on the floor.
You really don’t get out much, do you?
I think, as I make her tell me about her husband, a freelance TV director, and the touch-and-go nature of their finances since her own career ground to a halt. She doesn’t go into details but I sense real financial anxiety here, so I say what I’m meant to say at this point, hinting at our own difficulties, but I’m fairly sure that she knows it’s just a courtesy: tact, more than anything else.
When she asks how my show went I let her believe that I was puzzled, maybe even a little bit hurt, that she didn’t come.
She’d love to see my work. She googled me, but drew a blank, nothing came up for Nina Bremner. Ah, but I use Setting, I explain. No, it’s not my maiden name. My first husband’s surname, Sophie’s father. It’s not a lie, the explanation I give her: ‘We were very young, I was just starting out. One of those rash idealistic decisions you come to regret quite quickly.’ But there’s more to it than this, of course. I continue to sign Arnold’s name on the back of my paintings in tribute to him. I will always be grateful that he took me on, extricating me from everything I wanted to leave behind: the shadow of my father’s success, lengthening year by year; my mother’s sense of failure and resentment, rarely articulated but always present, like the sad tired ghosts you sense just round the bend of the stairs in very old houses, or waiting in the far corners of the quietest, darkest rooms.
‘That’s one of mine,’ I say as I collect up the plates, indicating – just a little shyly – the landscape over the fireplace. Wanting to test her.
She rises and walks down the room to look at it.
As I lift my tumbler and hold it to my mouth, I see the water trembling slightly, a shimmer on the surface, a reverberation.
Sip. Swallow.
I put down the glass, watching as she pauses in front of the mantelpiece (the papier mâché apple Sophie made in primary school, the wooden bowl filled with worry beads).
What will she see? Will she say something stupid? I’m almost certain she will.
But her response is one I hadn’t anticipated. She makes a noise and leans in, examining the brushwork. She’s staring at it so intently, I feel a hot rush of panic. What was I playing at, showing her this? What did I think would happen? In a sort of terror, I draw closer, conjuring up a lie, a rather wild and useless lie, anything to distract her from the truth, which is that I painted this shortly after returning her wallet, and brought it to the house in preparation for this lunch.
It’s an old painting
, I tell her.
I painted it five or six years ago.
I summon up the courage to look her in the face. Her eyes are full of tears.
She’s fine, she says, swiping at her face with fingers, saying she really shouldn’t drink at lunchtime. Again, a moment when I experience the heat of her humiliation, close-up. But she loves the painting, she really does, it took her by surprise. ‘The atmosphere. The sense of the weather. I think it’s wonderful. I wish . . .’
She trails off, thinking. ‘Where is it?’ she asks. ‘Or is that a stupid question?’
As I tell her that I like to paint the sea, mudflats and estuaries around East Anglia and the south coast, I’m aware that I’m saying too much. Rabbiting on nervously.
Turn the tables.
I put on my most cow-like expression, very patient and understanding, and I bend towards her as she bends towards the painting, and I ask if she’s OK. I say I remember that last time we talked, she seemed a little low.
‘Oh, that,’ she says. ‘I’m fine! Yes, it’s OK. Knackering, of course. But it’s OK.’
I think she’s about to say something else, but then we hear the baby crying at the end of the hall, a wail of bewilderment at finding herself abandoned and alone in a strange room, and Emma hurries away from the painting, and from me; and the moment when we both might have spoken the truth is lost. But when they’ve gone home, taking their noise and mess with them, I remember the look on Emma’s face as she looked at the painting of Jassop, and I wonder what it was that she saw there.
Did she recognise the trees, the sky? Did she know where the path was leading? Again, I remember walking down the track: taking care where I stepped, afraid of twisting my ankle. My shoes moving in and out of that small bobbing shadow, over the cracked uneven earth.
So we fix a date and I’m glad it’s in the distance because this gives me more time to think about it, to look forward to it. Of course, I’m full of doubts; that’s only to be expected. Entirely natural. What will we do if Cecily doesn’t go down like a stone at 7 p.m.? Will Sophie cope if she wakes up? What if Christopher cries and begs me not to go, not to leave him with this girl he doesn’t really know at all?
I voice these fears to Fran after Monkey Music, and she gives me a pep talk, as I hoped she would.
‘God, you lucky
lucky
thing,’ she says, trying to interest Ruby in a Babybel. It’s a mild day, we’ve filled Tupperware boxes with egg sandwiches and dried apricots and Jammy Dodgers, and we’re chancing a picnic, the first of the year. The recreation ground stretches out ahead of us, the grass marked here and there with the scars and gouges of winter football. At the little Tyrolean cuckoo-clock café, a short queue snakes to the hatch: people wanting salted caramel or lemon curd ice-cream. Above the line of trees the sky is suddenly clear and blue, and for a moment, sitting here on the bench while Cecily sleeps and Christopher and Ruby collect twigs, it all seems within my grasp. Maybe I’m over the worst. Maybe it gets easier now.
‘It’s a step in the right direction,’ I say.
‘I can’t remember the last time Luke and I went out for dinner,’ sighs Fran. ‘Jesus. Six months?’
‘We haven’t been out together since Cecily was born,’ I say. ‘If someone had told me . . .’
‘Well, quite.’
I’m reminded of a day a few weeks after Cecily’s birth: an emergency appointment with the GP. I remember the pain of the mastitis, but I also remember the wild shocked relief of stepping out of the house by myself in the late afternoon, the first time I’d been properly alone since she’d been born. Leaving the children with Ben; making my way, unfettered, through the underpass and along the main road; giving my name to the receptionist and sitting quietly in the waiting room, waiting to be called. I could have waited there forever, watching the fish in the tank, the bubbles popping out of the treasure chest, the water weeds twisting and flexing in the invisible currents.
Yet the prospect of this night out with Ben is not uncomplicated. As well as the anxieties relating to leaving the children, I’m daunted by the scale of the project: finding something to wear, putting on mascara, making conversation and staying up late.
So, it’s good it’s some weeks off. I’ll be up for it when the day finally comes.
‘Where shall we go?’ I ask Ben one breakfast time. It’s the busiest time of day: everyone in one room, the dishwasher needing emptying, a load of laundry already in, the kettle whistling gouts of steam. I’ve mashed up a banana, and Cecily is tasting it with concentration. Many emotions crowd her face in rapid succession: disgust, cautious optimism, greedy delight, and fury when it’s all gone. On the radio, someone is saying that a bumblebee is only ever forty minutes away from starving to death. I scrape a damp flannel over Cecily’s cheeks and mouth, and, in an attempt to distract her, cut her a crust off the toast I’m buttering for Christopher. ‘Shall we go into town? Anything you fancy at the theatre?’
‘Not sure I can face the West End on a Friday night,’ he says, making himself a tea, not bothering to see if I’d like one too.
It’s not deliberate
, I tell myself.
He just isn’t thinking.
Somehow asking if he could pour me a cup would make it worse, more of an event, so I don’t bother. Christopher wants jam on his toast. I get the jar from the fridge.