Love Is a Four Letter Word (21 page)

She stuck her tongue out at him covertly.

‘I saw that.' He squeezed her leg and left his hand resting on her thigh.

‘So, should I call her Mrs Henderson or Frances or Fran or what?' She licked her finger and smoothed down her eyebrows, frowned at her reflection.

‘You look fine. Relax. Not Mrs Henderson, mainly because she isn't anyway; minus five points for not listening when I was giving you the fascinating details of my family tree. She's Mrs Bradley because of Hugh, my stepdad, ex-stepdad, whatever. She prefers Fran, but, frankly, I don't think she'd care if you called her Chatanooga Choo-Choo. She's a tad eccentric.'

‘How eccentric?'

‘Hardly at all. Barely noticeable. Can't think why I mentioned it. But thank heavens she lives in England where behaving peculiarly is cultivated as a national pastime.'

Fran's cottage was set back a little way from a narrow track with three other houses. It looked old to Bella, perhaps seventeenth-century, with a low doorway and steep ‘catslide' roof that swept right down to her eye level. Succulent houseleeks clung to the roof-tiles in compact clusters. An uneven brick path led to the front door, flanked by beds packed with scented clove pinks, outsize oriental poppies with petals like salmon-pink tissue, a haze of pale blue love-in-a-mist. Will dipped to smell the pinks as he passed.

‘Here, have a sniff,' he said over his shoulder to her.

A few strands of badly painted ivy trailed across the blue door, continuing from the real ivy that grew around it. There was no answer when they knocked, so they went round to the back.

‘Hello-o-o-o-o,' Will called down the long garden.

A figure sprang up from a fuzz of fennel halfway down.

‘Hello-o-o, yourself.'

Will led the way along a narrow path that wove between lavender bushes, feathery artemisia, waving blue delphiniums.

‘Hello, Ma.' He gave Fran a big bear-hug.

‘Willum,' she said fondly, squeezing him back. She was wearing a voluminous blue boiler suit, its pockets bulging with lumpy artefacts, and what looked suspiciously like a pair of men's leather slippers. Her grey hair was piled on top of her head in a rough heap. There seemed to be a pen stuck into it, though Bella couldn't tell whether it was to anchor the hair vaguely in position or if it had just been poked in there as a temporary resting place. Will reached forward and removed a bit of twig from her hair.

‘So you're Will's light-o'-love then?'

Will rolled his eyes.

‘Ma, do make some effort not to embarrass me completely.'

Fran took both Bella's hands in her own and looked at her.

‘Oh, peachy cheeks! Will said you were a beaut but I presumed he was biased. What wonderful eyes. Tell me – do you like rosemary?' She waved her secateurs around alarmingly.

Bella was grateful for the sudden change of tack.

‘Here, have some cuttings. This one has the bluest flowers ever. Do you know which it is, Willum? I never remember the names.' She leaned towards Bella. ‘I'm sure he must despair of me.'

‘Nonsense. I do not. The plants don't know their names either, do they? I only need to know to impress my clients. It might be
Rosmarinus officinalis
“Prinley Blue” – that's very blue.'

‘Certainly worked with me, at any rate,' Bella said. ‘He bewitched me with his talk of
Meconopsis
and
Salix
and
Lavandula
whatever it is.'

‘Angustifolia,
mostly.' He looked suddenly very serious and very young. ‘This one,' he patted a nearby bush with wing-tipped purple flowers as if it were a small child, ‘is French lavender,
Lavandula stoechas.
Like we put in your garden. And I thought you'd fallen for my brains, wit, charisma and dashing good looks.'

‘And simple humility, obviously.'

‘Obviously.'

Fran laughed and linked her arm through Bella's.

‘How nice to see he's met his match. Lunch isn't quite ready, but come in and have some tea. You must both be gasping.' She stuck her secateurs into her pocket. A length of green garden twine dangled down behind her like a tail from the other pocket, trailing on the ground. Will picked up the end and processed after her, carrying it like a bridal train.

‘There's a casserole on the go, but the meat's a bit tough, so we'd best leave it as long as we can stand it, I think.' Fran lit the gas under an outsized enamel kettle. ‘There're some scones somewhere if you want to keep yourselves going. Have a rummage in the bread crock there – they're fresh today. Or yesterday. Anyway, they're absolutely fine.'

Bella reached deep down into the stoneware crock.

‘I feel like I'm doing a lucky dip.'

‘More likely unlucky dip in this kitchen.' Will shifted a sprawling pile of papers from the table to the dresser and set out an assortment of cups and
mismatched saucers. ‘They're not home-made, are they, Ma?'

‘No, you needn't worry, rude boy. I knew I should have paid more attention to your manners when you were growing up.' Fran's voice echoed from the depths of the larder. ‘My scones are legendary, Bella – flat as stepping stones and twice as hard. Hughie cracked a tooth on one once. The dogs used to love them, though. But these are proper shop-bought ones as you're a real guest.'

‘Consider yourself honoured,' Will said. ‘Any jam, Mother dear?'

‘Strawberry and elderflower. And that is homemade.' Fran caught Will's look. ‘Recent vintage, so don't look like that, but it might be a bit gloopy; it didn't seem to want to set. It's fine. Just eat it with a spoon and alternate it with bites of scone.'

That night, Bella lay cuddled up close to Will in the narrow double bed in the ‘rose room'. Fran had said they could have the proper guest bedroom, but they'd have to shove the beds together or they could squeeze in here.

‘It's very cosy, but – be warned – the walls are a bit thin and I'm right next door.'

‘God, Ma, you are so embarrassing.'

Fran breezed on, unabashed.

‘I only do it to annoy. I know, how hideous – a parent alluding to sex. Yuk. Children always think of their parents as permanent virgins or asexual, like amoebas. Or is it amoebae?'

Will was cringing. He pulled Bella by the elbow into the room.

‘Fine, fine. We'll have this one. Thank you. Come on, otherwise she'll be off on her I've-had-quite-a-few-interesting-escapades-in-my-time speech and we'll have to hear about the bank manager who fell madly in
love with her and kept calling her with trumped-up queries about her finances, then tried to ravish her over a pile of her statements.'

‘I'm paying no attention.' Fran skipped downstairs. ‘Kettle's on.'

Bella told him he was being rude.

‘No I'm not. We love each other to death and we both know it. So we can be as rude as we like.' Surely her family weren't
polite
to each other all the time?

‘Dad and I tease each other. We always have.'

He asked about her mother.

‘Do you know, you almost never mention her.'

‘I'd never talk to her the way you just did. You can't tease her, it would be bound to upset the planet's orbit or something. We try to be quite civil most of the time. Like in an armed truce.'

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Mmm. Have to be. If we let down our guard, boy the knives'd be out.'

‘Aah, how sweet. The joys of the mother-daughter bond. I see it now: Madonna and child with beatific smiles, a small dagger glinting discreetly beneath flowing robes.'

‘Hilarious.' Bella left the room. ‘Coming down for some tea?'

‘Will you really? I'll be your best friend.' Bella squidged Will's cheeks and gave him a slurpy kiss.

‘You already are.'

After only minor arm-twisting and the promise of numerous sexual favours, Will had volunteered to speak to his brother-in-law-in-law about the DAMP. The phone call was made, unknown leverage put into action. Mr Bowman had moved her from his black book to his red book, the actual one where real jobs were written in with dates and everything. It would take four to five days; once the treatment had been done, the walls would need replastering then drying out before they could be repainted.

Life became even more impossible. Boxes were squished into the bedroom, pictures stacked like dominoes on the landing, pot plants gathered in a leafy convention in the bathroom.

‘You oughtn't really to stay in the house while all that's going on; the dust can't be good for you,' Will said.

‘I know. Viv said they'd put me up.'

‘Right. Or – you could, ah, stay with me.'

Although they usually ended up at Bella's house, she had stayed the night at Will's place several times
before. He had bought her an extra toothbrush to keep at his place because he thought it ridiculous that she kept taking hers backwards and forwards. He had cleared a drawer for her, in which she kept one large T-shirt and one pair of pants. But staying the night casually was different, supper followed by sex followed by falling asleep. This was planned, official. Living together for five days solid – well, it was … domestic, wasn't it? It would involve couply conversations, cohabiting-type rituals: who would pick up something for supper; you-cook-I'll-wash-up routines; she'd become involved in the minutiae of his household: where he kept the spare loo rolls, how to master the exact jiggle-jiggle-chunk required to open the back door, which day the rubbish was to be put out.

‘That's very kind of you. You don't have to do that. You've earned your scout badge, talking to Mr B.'

‘I'm not being kind. You sound like a polite child who's been coached to say thank you. I know I don't “have to do that” – I want to do that. This. Whatever. What I mean is – I'd love you to come and stay. With me.'

Warning bells. What if she got to like it? Got used to seeing his face and his adorable, funny eyebrows on the pillow by hers when she closed her eyes each night? Each morning, there his face would be, her first glimpse of the world, already familiar. She'd know if he was in by the feel of the house when she entered the door, the smell of him in the air. How quickly might she adjust to his tread on the stair, his voice calling hello, the change in his eyes as they met hers? And then? Then the DAMP would be done, the walls painted and there would be no reason for her not to go home. That first evening she would go back to her own house. The chill tang of fresh paint, the clunk of her keys on the table, the fridge with its lone carton of
blobby milk. It would be like the first time she had gone back to the flat after Patrick.
After
Patrick. That was how she saw her life sometimes: Before Patrick/With Patrick/After Patrick, divided into neat sections like a pie chart, with no space left over for anything else.

∼ ∼ ∼

She turns her key in the lock, half-expecting him to call out ‘Hiya. Good day?' The silence is like water, filling the rooms right into the corners. She moves through it with slow limbs, feeling it part and reseal itself behind her. In the kitchen, there is an unfamiliar stillness, a cold tidiness; nothing has moved. There is no marmalade jar sitting on the worktop with its lid off. No half-read paperback spreadeagled on the table. Automatically, she looks down. Patrick has an infuriating habit of leaving his heavy brown lace-ups in the middle of the floor where she frequently trips over them.
Had
an infuriating habit, she corrects herself. She feels a sudden pang of anticipated loss, a guessing of future pain. She is tempted to go and fetch his shoes and place them on the floor, then dismisses the thought as silly, mad even.

The bathroom is worse. Four disposable razors, all apparently on the go at once. That absurd deodorant in the just-'cause-I-smell-nice-don't-mean-I'm-not-macho black phallic spray can. Her fingers run over the head of Patrick's green toothbrush, splaying the bristles to and fro. It had what Patrick claimed were ‘go-faster' stripes – ‘See, I can do my teeth in 30 seconds with this.' She lifts her purple brush from the tooth mug and holds one in each hand, face to face, bouncing them up and down the way Patrick used to, giving them voices. ‘Are you talking to me yet?' he'd say as green toothbrush, putting on an extra-deep
voice, pogo-ing it along the edge of the basin. He'd twist the purple one from side to side, shaking its head, until Bella laughed.

She head-butts green toothbrush with purple toothbrush.

‘Why'd you have to go and die on me then? That was pretty dumb.'

‘Yeah.' She switches to goofy, green toothbrush voice. ‘Guess I just didn't see it coming, a-her-her.' She leaves them intermeshed – ‘Kiss and make up?' Patrick used to say, pushing their bristles together. Wipes her
stupid
tears away with her hand. Her lungs feel tight and full, as if they are packed with explosive. ‘Breathe deeply,' she says out loud. She can feel ugly sobs stirring down there, churning around in her, threatening to lurch out of her uncontrollably, tearing the fragile silence. She rubs her ribcage; it is so tight, it is painful, aching for release. Her teeth clamp tight shut and she bites the inside of her lip hard, desperate for some tangible, lesser pain to cling to.

In the bedroom, the curtains are half drawn and the dim light is welcome. She undresses slowly, by rote. As she pulls back the quilt to get into bed, she stops, then crosses to the chest of drawers. Rummages in a drawer, tuts quietly to herself. She dips into the linen basket and digs down, dropping socks, towels on the floor. Patrick's blue shirt – crumpled, soft with wear. She sinks her face into it, and breathes in.

She slides beneath the quilt and folds the shirt into a bundle by her face. Fingers one of its pearlized buttons, tracing round and round the rim, until she slips into sleep. It is twelve hours before she wakes again.