“Oh,” I said.
“Is that all right? I should have consulted you, but she was so eager that I said yes. I can always ring her back.”
“No, it's fine. I'm just taken aback. I didn't even know that your parents knew about me.”
“Of course they know, and they're longing to meet you. We can talk about it later. Now we have to get ready to go.”
While he tidied up the tea things I went to the bedroom to collect my bag. Tobias was still asleep on the foot of the bed. I had planned to introduce him to Jenny, but I could hear her talking on the phone. “So what happened?” she said. A few minutes later, when I came out into the hall, she was putting on her jacket. She stared at me as I walked towards the coat rack. “Are you staying here?” she asked.
I had my back to her and so could not see her expression, but I sensed a faint note of accusation in her voice. Before I could muster an answer, Stephen called from the kitchen, “She's visiting me for the weekend.”
“I thought you had a flat.”
“I do.” I turned around, with my coat in my hand, and found Jenny standing immediately in front of me.
Stephen came out of the kitchen. “Jenny, you have a flat,” he said lightly. “In fact you have two if you count mine, but you still go and stay with Anna sometimes. Have you got your gloves?”
Jenny nodded. She had brought her schoolbag, presumably to carry her library books; she picked it up from the floor and looped the strap diagonally over one shoulder. Then she opened the door. I followed her out onto the landing. Stephen was still putting on his jacket. “Which library are we going to?” I asked.
Jenny had already started down the stairs. “What did you say?” she said.
She was nearly at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, and I hurried after her, thinking to answer when I had caught up. She was only a few yards ahead, and I expected as I rounded the corner to find myself almost abreast of her, but she was nowhere to be seen. I heard her feet pattering down the stone stairs. She repeated her question. “Celia,” she called. “What did you say?”
I glimpsed her dark head two floors below. She seemed to want to engage me in conversation and I was eager to respond. I broke into a trot; at Jenny's age I could remember never walking down stairs, and it was as if I were simultaneously imitating her and my own younger self. Suddenly, at the top of the second flight, I tripped and but for my hold on the bannister would have fallen. Lying in the middle of the stair was Jenny's bag. I picked it up and continued my descent more slowly.
In the street, Jenny was standing between two parked cars, trying to balance on their bumpers. “You dropped your bag,” I said, holding it out to her.
“Thanks.” Without getting down from her perch, she took the bag and looped it back over her shoulder.
I waited for her to offer some explanation as to how she had dropped the bag and why she had not stopped to pick it up, but she seemed to be concentrating exclusively on her balancing act. Finally I said, “Don't you get dizzy going down stairs so fast?”
She shook her head. “I never get dizzy.”
On the day of our visit to Stephen's parents, a storm broke over Edinburgh. The rain lashed against my office window, and Marilyn remarked that there would be snow on the hills. The forecast had predicted an improvement towards evening, but by five o'clock the sound of the wind howling in the alley had reached new heights, and the glass shook so hard in the window frame that I was afraid it would break. I had offered Suzie a lift home, and we went downstairs to the lobby to wait for Stephen. A stream of people walked past us; a few called goodbye, and the sales director made a comment about our vigorous social life.
While we waited, Suzie entertained me with stories about meeting the parents of various lovers. “They'd given us separate bedrooms so it seemed like the ideal opportunity,” she said in conclusion to an account of how, while visiting Alan's parents for the first time, she had dyed her hair, ruining several towels in the process and leaving ineradicable traces of her presence on their bathroom wallpaper.
I was about to ask what had happened to Alan when a horn sounded. I stepped out of the building. Rain stung my face as I ran to the car. Stephen was holding the passenger door ajar, and I opened the back door for Suzie. We all exclaimed about the weather. Suzie gave directions, and we set off, rattling over the cobblestones. “So what will they give you?” she asked, when we stopped at a red light. “One room or two?”
“One,” said Stephen. He laughed.
“Well, that's something. In my experience, it's fairly rare to cop a single room on the first visit. The anxiety I've suffered sneaking round strange houses at night trying to find the right room.”
“Not everyone has Victorian parents,” Stephen said.
“Everyone who fancies me does. I think I must appeal to their overdeveloped sense of sin.”
She asked about the son of a friend, who was in one of Stephen's classes, and the remainder of the short journey to her flat passed in a discussion of the boy's learning disabilities. After we had dropped Suzie off, we continued out of the city along the Queensferry Road. “This was where my two great-uncles lived,” Stephen said, gesturing to the left. “Number four Craigcrook Place.”
His voice was low, and I leaned closer to hear above the din of the engine. “Do they still live there?” I asked.
“No, they're both dead. Norman had a stroke when I was about ten. Alexander only survived him by a few months. I used to go and stay with them by myself. I'm amazed that they put up with me. Norman had a huge nose. I would draw grotesque pictures of him and then ask him to help me write his name underneath.”
“Maybe you admired his nose. One of my uncles had a wooden leg, and I was very proud of it. I would try to get him to show it to my friends. What about Alexander?”
There was a pause while Stephen negotiated a roundabout. “Alexander was the one who cooked and cleaned, so I tormented him by refusing to eat and making as much mess as I could.”
“You must have had some redeeming features.”
“I don't think so. The main reason I liked visiting them was because they gave me money and treats that I never got from my parents. I would actually calculate in advance how much I would get from them.”
“I think all children are like that,” I said. “I remember knowing exactly what each of my aunts and uncles was worth.”
By now we were on the outskirts of the city, and the street lights were further apart. Stephen leaned forward to wipe the windscreen. “I suppose that's true. What worries me is the idea that Jenny has that attitude towards me. You know: âDaddy's good for going to the cinema, and I bet if I ask him nicely he'll buy me that comic.'”
“But she doesn't. She's obviously very fond of you.” The windscreen wipers limped back and forth. I tried to come up with some compelling evidence; I had only seen them together on two occasions.
“It's an odd thing to have a child,” Stephen said slowly. “Sometimes I think I understand Jenny fairly well; after all, I've known her all her life. Then I remember myself as a child, and I suspect that she's a total mystery to me.”
I looked over at him. It was hard in the darkness to determine his expression. A lorry overtook us, and the sudden deluge rendered the windscreen opaque. For a moment I was afraid, but Stephen held the wheel steady, and gradually the screen cleared. When the road was visible again he said, “I'm afraid this car isn't meant for torrential rain. The combination of the geriatric windscreen wipers and the heater barely working means that you need X-ray vision.”
“We can drive slowly,” I said. “It's not as if we have far to go.”
Soon we were coming down the final incline towards the Forth Road Bridge. Ahead of us the line of tollbooths shone. Stephen pulled up beside one and rolled down his window. “Nasty night,” said the attendant as he took our money.
We drove out onto the bridge. “When I was little,” said Stephen, “the only way to get across here was by ferry. Then they started to build the bridge, and every time we went to Edinburgh I would watch the men swarming up and down
the cables at either end. I couldn't imagine how they would ever get the two halves to meet. But one day we arrived at the ferry and there was the bridge stretching all the way from shore to shore. I remember how thrilled we were. I can't really explain why, but it was one of the things that made me want to study mathematics.”
The whole bridge was capable of swaying thirty feet in either direction, and Stephen was certain that he felt it shifting; that we were swinging like a pendulum, in huge sixty-foot arcs. He slowed down until we were barely moving. “Can you feel it, Celia?” he kept asking, until I said yes.
Suspended in the darkness, high above the water, I felt anything was possible. I forgot our destination, that we had left one place and would shortly arrive in another, and wished only that we might forever, side by side, continue to drive where the light of the headlamps showed us the way.
When we were once more on land Stephen accelerated. In less than half an hour we turned off the motorway onto a country road, and from there it was only a few miles to the outskirts of the village. Stephen pulled up beside a low stone wall, and I glimpsed the facade of a house. A light above the front door shed a small pool of brightness.
“I'll go first,” he said. “Wait until I get the door open.” He leaned over and kissed me until I tasted, beyond the coldness of his lips, the warmth of his mouth. Then he was out of the car. I watched him hurry up the gravel path towards the light. He opened the door and turned to beckon me.
I ran through the rain. As I crossed the threshold, the door on the left of the hall opened halfway and a man squeezed out, saying, “Down. Stay. Good dogs.” He patted Stephen on the shoulder. “What a frightful night,” he said. “I was worried about you.”
Stephen introduced me to his father, Edward. We shook hands, and Edward's whole body tilted slightly forward, in the self-effacing, almost deferential manner of a tall man who
is anxious to demonstrate that he does not plan to take advantage of his size. It was easy to imagine him as the country solicitor he had been for nearly forty years.
Stephen carried our wet coats off to the kitchen, and Edward showed me into the sitting room. As soon as he opened the door, two King Charles spaniels shot out, falling over my feet in their eagerness to reach Stephen. “Sorry about the dogs. They're an absolute menace when they're excited.” Edward indicated that I should sit in the high-winged armchair closest to the fire. A book lying open on the nearby table suggested that I was taking his seat, but I was too shy to object. I stretched out my hands to the blaze. Edward poked the fire and sat down opposite me. “How was the drive?”
“Fine,” I said. “I wish we had come by daylight so that I could have seen the countryside.”
“Plenty of opportunity for that in the spring. It's really rather depressing at this time of year: fields of mud populated by turnip stumps and soggy sheep. I hope it will be dry tomorrow so that I can show you the garden. Not that there's much to see besides snowdrops and jasmine, but I do have an unusual Christmas rose that's still in bloom.” He cleared his throat, as if checking himself. I knew from Stephen that Edward was a passionate gardener. “Now what can I get you? Whiskey, sherry, gin, vermouth, martini, wine?”
While he was reeling off this list, the door opened and Stephen came in, followed by his mother. Joyce was as round as her husband was angular, and when I stood up to greet her I saw that she was a head smaller than I. She shook my hand, and I found myself looking into her blue eyes. How was it possible, I wondered, that Stephen had failed to inherit such vivid eyes?
She settled herself in a corner of the sofa and picked up a piece of mending. “Look at Celia,” she said. “She's perished. I tell you, that car is a collector's item; it takes you back to the early days of motoring. Give her a drink at once, Edward.”
“I'm trying. I'm waiting for her to tell me what she wants.”
“I'd like whiskey and a little water,” said Stephen. He had stationed himself with his back to the fire, his heels resting on the fender.
“I'll have that too,” I said hastily.
“I'll have a gin,” said Joyce.
“Right you are, dear.” Edward left the room in search of drinks.
“If the rain doesn't stop soon, we won't have a drive left.” Joyce threaded her needle and turned towards me. “There's a farm track along the side of the house, up the hill to our garage. When there's this much rain, it turns into a stream, and then the tractors go back and forth, churning it up. We've been arguing with the local farmer for twenty years about whose responsibility it is. Stop hogging the fire, Stephen.”
In response to his mother's admonition, Stephen sat down in the other corner of the sofa. “You're like someone out of Dickens, always threatening lawsuits,” he said. “If Daddy had let her, she could have kept his whole firm in business single-handed.”
“That's not true,” said Joyce. She began to sew the hem of a blouse. “I was involved in a dispute about the nursery school; they were taking in too many children for the number of staff. Some of the parents protested, but we weren't being vindictive. What we wanted was to get more staff and a better building. The reason the track is a bone of contention is ⦔ But before she could finish her defence, Edward opened the door and came in bearing a small circular tray. One of the dogs slunk in at his heels and was immediately ejected by Stephen.
“Cheers,” Edward said, when we each had a drink. The whiskey made my throat catch, and I struggled not to cough. Stephen smiled. “I should have warned you how strong a drink my father pours.”
“Is it too strong?” Edward began to get to his feet.
“No, no, it's just what I need to warm me up.” Edward settled back in his seat, and Stephen gave me a wink.
Â
Next morning after breakfast, Stephen and his father disappeared up the garden to the old stone building, once a stable, which Edward used as a workshop. I found Joyce bustling around the kitchen.
“Do you want some coffee?” she asked.
“Yes, please. Is there something I can do to help?”
“Keep me company.”
I sat down at the far end of the table and watched while she measured flour into a bowl, threw in a pinch of salt, and poured in the foaming yeast. I was reminded of the many occasions when I had sat watching my aunt Ruth; she too was an energetic cook. “Are you making bread?” I asked.
“Yes. There is a bakery in the village, but when I've time I like to make my own. I'm sorry that Jenny couldn't come with you. I suppose it didn't suit Helen.” She was looking down into the bowl, slowly stirring the ingredients together, and I could only guess at her expression.
“I don't think it was really Helen's decision. Jenny already had various plans for the weekend. I never knew how many social engagements a nine-year-old could have. She was very disappointed.”
“Oh, well,” said Joyce, sounding brisk again. “Next time we'll manage things better.”
The kettle came to the boil. She made us two cups of Nescafé and began to beat the dough with a large wooden spoon. “I don't know if Stephen's told you, but when Jenny was a baby she spent a lot of time with us. Helen didn't want to leave her with strangers, and she and Stephen were both working. Now we hardly ever see her. I used to telephone once a week, but Helen made me feel as if I was intruding.”
She gave the dough a final stir and scraped the spoon. “She doesn't seem to understand that we're still Jenny's grandparents.”
A movement outside the window caught my eye. On the bird table a female blackbird was pecking at a heel of bread. Joyce emptied the bowl onto a floured board. With her short, rather broad fingers, she began to knead the dough, flattening it out and folding it up again, gradually rendering the mixture more and more elastic, as she waited for a sign that the magic expansion of the yeast was safely under way.