Ninepins (32 page)

Uninvited, Laura nevertheless sat down; it must surely be easier than standing up. ‘It's rather out of the way, though. For getting anywhere, I mean. To the shops, or just out for a coffee.' She hesitated, aware that she had no idea whether Marianne was allowed off the premises, then blundered on, ‘I suppose there are buses, at least. That's how Willow gets here, isn't it, when she comes to see you.'

Her eyes dropped to the expanse of bench between them, to the Tesco bag, and Marianne's fingers, which were playing over and over something she held in the palm of her hand. Something metallic, flat and slightly lozenge-shaped, with rounded corners. The movement was rhythmic, perhaps self-soothing, almost mesmeric; Marianne's eyes had closed. ‘When she comes,' she repeated. ‘When Willow comes.'

Of course
, thought Laura.
The drugs
. What an idiot she was, to come here and expect … whatever it was she'd been expecting. Explanations, reassurance, to discover anything at all? Of course it was all impossible with Marianne doused and dampened down with medication. There could be no reaching her, even had she wanted to be reached.

Gently, though without much hope, she tried again. ‘Willow, yes. She comes to see you quite often, I believe?'

‘Willow.' The metal object slipped a little in her palm so that for a moment Laura saw it clearly. It was a cigarette lighter.

‘She lives with me, you know. With us. She's my lodger. She, um,' Laura stumbled over the deceptive half-truth, ‘talks about you.'

Finally, the fingers ceased their relentless movement and closed into a fist. Marianne opened her eyes and directed them straight at Laura. A misting seemed to clear.

‘Ninepins,' she said.

‘Yes, that's right.' Laura was eager, now, even while a warning tightness clutched her stomach. ‘By the lode – by the water. You came there, remember? You've been there twice.'

‘The brick house, up on the bank, with the water down below. The frozen water. Of course I remember. You were there with Willow. And a child – there was a child, a girl.'

‘That was my Beth.' Laura's mouth felt dry.

‘I met you, you were kind.'

Laura, who remembered no especial kindness, attempted to smile, but her lips were stiff and refused to stretch. And, anyway, Marianne wasn't smiling.

‘So you're the new one. Like that Janey. And the man, Vince.'

‘Oh, I'm not a foster carer or a social worker. I'm just … Willow just rents a room from me.'

But the green eyes had drifted down, and the mist was back, the moment of connection lost. ‘Ninepins,' Marianne said again, her voice stripped of all inflection.

Nothing more appeared to be forthcoming, so Laura stood to take her leave, stealing a surreptitious glance at her watch, as the thought of her office pressed back into her mind.

‘Well, goodbye, Marianne. I hope you didn't mind my coming here.' Though she saw now that it had been an irrational impulse, a fool's errand. She wouldn't come again.

The woman's head lifted. Laura wondered if lucidity had returned and she would say goodbye. Instead, she stared out wordlessly at a point beyond Laura, her brows drawn together as though in puzzlement or consternation. Then, all at once, her frown dissolved and she was smiling like a child.

‘Skittles,' she said. ‘Falling down like ninepins. All the pretty skittles come tumbling down like ninepins.'

There was little immediate reaction to Laura's confession, that evening, of her trip to Stanforth House. Beth, it is true, had stared in disbelief and demanded baldly, ‘Why?' but a minute later she was peering in the Rayburn and asking what they were having with the jacket potatoes. From Willow, too, there was a shrug and a rapid switch of subject. Laura waited until after supper when the girls were upstairs before she rang Vince, but if she'd feared his censure, she'd been worrying for nothing.

‘I can see that. That you'd want to go and talk to her, after your encounters, to get more of a picture of her. And why not? Better that than to stay away and let it eat at you. She could always tell you to get lost.
Did
she tell you to get lost?'

‘Not in so many words.' Laura grinned. ‘She didn't have to. I think I worked it out for myself.'

‘What did Willow say about it?'

‘Not much.'

‘Hmm,' he said. ‘Give her time, maybe.'

But the subject of Marianne did not come up again for the rest of the week, and it seemed that the matter of Laura's visit was forgotten. Beth's, and thus Laura's, attention was diverted by a telephone call on Wednesday evening from Simon. It was not Beth's weekend to go over, but Jack, who was five on Saturday, had announced that his birthday celebrations would not be complete without the attendance of his big sister.

‘If she can stand it,' said Simon, ‘we'd be very grateful. Eleven little boys and Beth. Tell her to bring protective clothing – and ear defenders.'

The party was set for a two pm start, so Laura dropped Beth off. She chose to arrive a little early; Beth was useful in the kitchen and they might do with the extra pair of hands. When Simon let them in at one forty-five, however, the house was quiet and apparently deserted.

‘Tessa's nipped out,' he explained, as he led them along the hall to the kitchen. ‘Gone to fetch a new paddling pool. That is, she hopes she can borrow one, from Kathy down the road, but if not she's going to Homebase.'

‘A paddling pool?' Beth's face lit up. ‘Brilliant!'

But Laura eyed him sceptically. It was a cloudy April day and blowing a crisp easterly: ten or twelve degrees at best, without allowing for wind chill.

‘Yeah. Jack was adamant he wanted a pool party. Alfie had one for his birthday, you remember, and everything Alfie does, Jack has to do, too.'

It seemed finicky to point out that Alfie's birthday was in August. Instead, she said, ‘I thought you had a pool.'

‘Mice. At least, we think that's what it must be. The pool's been in the shed since last summer, and when we brought it out this morning and started to fill it up, there it was all full of holes. Come and see.'

He led the way through to the dining room, where French windows opened on to the small back garden. In the middle of the lawn was the old paddling pool, semi-inflated and sagging slightly to one side; around it spread a broad quagmire, in which hopped and danced all three of Simon's offspring. As they watched, Jack grabbed Alfie by the knees and they both went tumbling to the ground in a squealing splash of muddy water.

‘Tessa thought carrier bags might do the trick.' Simon had assumed the detached manner of the experimental physicist. ‘Spread across the bottom of the pool, you see, to cover the worst of the holes. We thought the weight of the water would hold the bags in place, if the boys didn't kick them up too much. And it did work, too,' he added. ‘For a while.'

‘Should we fetch them in and get them changed?' wondered Laura. The boys were barefoot with their trousers rolled up, but the muddy spatters didn't stop at the knee.

‘I could take them up and do it,' offered Beth, ‘if you're busy with food and stuff.'

Simon's face was glum. ‘They changed already. That's Jack's new party shirt.' And now that Laura looked more carefully, she saw the crisp white cotton beneath the smears of brown. ‘Doesn't seem much point now, anyway. They'll only get wet again.'

Leaving the birthday boy and his brothers to their mudbath, they returned to the kitchen, where plates of sandwiches and mini sausage rolls competed for table space with unopened packets of Jammie Dodgers, a laptop and a muddle of handwritten notes. Centre stage, on top of an industrial sized box of drinking straws, stood a large layered sponge cake, coated over approximately two-thirds of its surface with chocolate fudge icing.

‘It ran out,' said Simon, catching the direction of Laura's gaze. ‘I tried to spread it thinner but the cake began to crumble and lift away. I could have made another batch, but I've got this article to finish for Monday at nine, and it's barely started. I thought maybe I'd just stick some chocolate buttons on that side and they wouldn't notice.' He cocked an optimistic eye. ‘There'll be candles.'

Beth moved to stand beside him. ‘I'll do it. Where are the buttons?'

He flapped a hand vaguely. ‘Somewhere around. I'm sure Tessa said she bought some.'

Just then, Alfie appeared in the kitchen doorway. ‘Jack says, can Beth come out and play with us? We need someone to squirt the hosepipe.'

‘In a minute,' said his father, ‘when she's done the cake.'

Alfie took a sausage roll and began to munch. ‘I had a cake, when I came home from hospital. George's mum says I could have died. She says anyone can die when they have an operation, even if it's just for their teeth. It's because of the anaesthetic.' He pronounced the word with reverent pride. ‘Mum got my cake from Tesco's. It wasn't as big, but the icing was all over.'

Laura was wondering who was ensuring that Jack and Roly weren't drowning in the inch of water that hadn't escaped from the paddling pool, when the front doorbell rang.

‘Aha.' Simon looked relieved. ‘That'll be Tessa back with the new pool.'

But it wasn't. It was the first of the party guests, running into the hall ahead of a mother who carried a lumpy, gold-wrapped parcel.

‘I'll leave this with you, shall I? Pick him up at five, I think you said? And he mustn't have dairy.'

‘They're in the garden,' Simon told the child, who was already heading off. ‘You know the way.'

‘Great, then,' said the mother, and backed out rapidly.

Back in the kitchen, Beth had found the chocolate buttons and some jam from the fridge and was pebble dashing the cake. On her hip was a mud-drenched Roly, who was sobbing in short bursts between the chocolate drops that Beth was pressing into his mouth. ‘Ja-a-ack,' he wailed. ‘Pushed me o-o-ver.'

The doorbell rang again: two short, commanding blasts. ‘Would you mind?' said Simon. ‘You could get the door on your way out. Everything's under control here – you go.'

Gratefully, having shown in three more small boys, Laura went.

 

There was something perverse in Laura's attitude to the weekends – or in this case, just an afternoon – when Beth was over at Simon's. Beforehand, she looked forward to the peace and quiet, which should have been a chance to get some work done, clearing space in the week ahead to spend with her daughter. But when the time arrived and the house was silent, she could rarely settle to her desk. It wasn't exactly that she missed her. It was something less sentimental than that, something more atavistic, perhaps, like a dog that sleeps with both ears pricked for his master's return. Whatever the reason for it, Beth's absence was often more distracting than her presence would have been.

Today, after ten ineffectual minutes at her desk, Laura rose and drifted along the landing to her daughter's room. For some minutes she stood at the window. The lawn was long and lush and needed mowing; the pumphouse, with its gleaming exterior woodwork, lacked only a final coat of paint inside before the furniture could be moved back in – and with it, finally, Willow. Three weekends in a row, now, Laura had promised to get it finished, and Willow had said she'd help. But the emulsion still stood on its shelf in the shed.

At random, she turned and opened a drawer, then dropped to kneel in front of it, inspecting the contents. Beth's sweaters. She had the habit of wearing them for a week or so until they smelt lived-in and then putting them away again, and taking out another. By this means of rotation she apparently believed that knitwear somehow reached some kind of happy stasis in which it never needed washing. Unashamedly, Laura bent and inhaled, drinking in the aroma of her absent daughter. Then, on impulse, she lifted an armful of sweaters and pulled them out on to the floor, and then another and another. It was a fresh, breezy day and the morning's threatening clouds had dispersed; she would give Beth's jumpers a spring clean.

The hand washing of woollens was not her favourite domestic job. The soap flakes tickled her nose and, unable to work in rubber gloves, she always finished with her hands red raw. But the job needed doing, and she sensed it might be beneficial to her mood. She turned the hot tap on to full and poured in a handful of soap, agitating it beneath the blast. Then, scooping up a red sweater, she plunged it into the foaming water and began to rub.

Hard at her task, it was some time before she noticed that Willow had entered the kitchen, and was standing quietly by the table, holding an empty glass.

‘Oh, sorry – I didn't see you there. Am I in the way? Did you want some water?' Turning the spout away from the bowl, she turned on the cold tap and let it play down the side into the sink, testing it with her fingers until it ran cool. ‘Here, let me.'

Watching Willow drink gave her a thirst herself and she went to fetch a glass, filling it and drinking deeply, then filling it again. When she went back to her washing Willow seated herself at the table behind her. It was disconcerting: rinsing the red sweater, Laura couldn't rid herself of the feeling of being watched. After the red sweater came a navy blue one. Almost too small now, with anchor buttons at the neck, it had been a longstanding favourite. She saw that the wool was worn thin in places, when she held it, dripping, to the light. Then came the birthday jumper: the black Fair Isle with the snowflake pattern. She ran another bowl of water, tipped in another scoop of soap.

When Willow finally broke her silence, the words made Laura start.

‘My mother never washed things.'

Laura's hands paused for a moment above the suds; then she re-submerged the jumper and continued her scrubbing. She neither spoke nor turned.

‘Not like that, anyway, not by hand – at least, I don't remember it, if she did. We did go to the launderette sometimes. Or one or two places, there was a machine.'