Past (16 page)

It was absolutely dark in the bedroom the three children shared, yet in Hettie, lying in bed with her eyes strained open onto nothing, every sense was anxiously alert to the difference from home. Even the dark was different: in Marylebone a street lamp diffused its orange glow into their room so that she could always make out the hump of Roly in his bed – he slept bottom up, with his face in his pillow – and the bars of the baby's cot casting a weak shadow on the wall. There, the headlights of cars passing crossed the ceiling in a deliciously, mysteriously purposeful slow arc; the night was always full of voices from the London street below.

Darkness in Kington was as dense as a hand clapped over her face, and her grandmother's cool sheets smelled disconcertingly of lavender. At home Jill hardly had time to wash their sheets, let alone iron them, and Hettie had grown used to burrowing each night into the crumpled cloth smelling of herself, her dribble and biscuit crumbs and salty hair. Something barked in the woods: a fox, or a wolf? There was so much empty silence in the country that each sound seemed significant in ways Hettie couldn't learn to understand; her dad didn't understand them either. Jill knew the names of all the flowers and could recognise the birds by their songs; when Tom said he didn't care, Hettie was reprieved, and hid away the I-Spy books of the countryside which were the record of her shame, hardly ticked at all. She preferred the wild animals in London zoo, safe behind bars and identified straightforwardly by the labels on their cages, which she was beginning to be able to read.

For a while she lay tormented and sorry for herself, needing to pee, disappointed in her body as she had been on the bus when she knew she would be sick. Eventually, swinging her legs from under the blankets, she slid down the side of the bed until her feet touched the bare boards of the floor, feeling with her toes for the rug: it occurred to her in a clutch of terror that in this darkness reality could be making and unmaking itself dizzily, unforeseen precipices opening ahead of her which were not there when she got into bed. Cautiously, she felt her way around by the wall – Ali stirred in the cot when she knocked against it, and made lip-smacking noises. At least Hettie could discern, once she was out from the bedroom – in a dim light escaping from wherever the grown-ups were talking downstairs – the looming perspectival shapes of so many doors, open and closed, to so many rooms fearfully unused, full with their emptiness. A blue-black sky showed in the uncurtained arched windows at either end of the landing. In the bathroom she peed and rubbed the hard toilet paper between her hands as her mother had showed her, till it was soft enough to use, then pulled the momentous long chain. On the windowsill ends of old soap were dissolving in a jam jar of gloopy water; her grandfather used these to wash his hair, it was one of the funny stories Daddy told about his meanness. Coming out onto the landing again, Hettie was quite blind, after the light in the bathroom.

Jill's voice rang out downstairs, overbearing the murmurings of Granny and Grandfather. — Having the time of his life, she said. —
Vive les étudiants! À bas le C.R.S.

Hettie had no idea why her mother was speaking in an unknown language, or what her father was doing, but thought her grandfather might make some cutting comment. She was anxiously wary of Grandfather's disapproval on behalf of all her family – Roland because he was fussy over his food, the baby with her clamour and clutching fat fingers, though in fact he was tolerant of these sticky fingers, he liked Ali. Hettie had been drawn fatally, on certain occasions in the past, into the bad behaviour that brought a pained distaste onto her grandfather's face; the more coldly he withdrew his attention, the more insanely she had tried to attract it, dissolving into tantrums and extremes of silliness which she feared he hadn't forgotten. At least there was always Granny, who could be counted on to love you – though consequently Hettie rated her grandmother's approval slightly less.

Tiptoeing in the dark along the landing, she didn't want to climb back into her reproachful lavender-bed. In her mother's room the curtains weren't drawn across and the window was pulled up a few inches, letting in the shock of ripe night air, as cold as water. By touch Hettie identified the familiar loved items unpacked onto the dressing table: hairbrush, face cream, scent bottle. A little lamp with a short chrome neck offered an irresistible upright press-switch in its base; she pressed, and the room sprang into satisfying being, with her mother's library book, Margaret Drabble, and its postcard-marker, and her mother's spare shoes, and the coat in her mother's shape on its hanger. Hettie breathed
L'Air du Temps
on her fingers, and longed to slip for warmth into the insulated space between the pink satin eiderdown and the top blanket; it was so perfect, when she tried it, that she closed her eyes in bliss. Jill woke her later, coming to bed and cross. — In the country when you put on the light at night, she said, — you must make sure the windows are closed first. Look at all the bugs that have come in.

Hettie thought guiltily that she must still be dreaming: the walls of the room were crowded with blundering moth-shadows, looming and receding. — I lost my way. I came in your room by mistake, it's too dark here at night.

Her mother was implacable about returning her to her own bed.

— You're my big girl, Hettie. You have to be sensible.

Jill left the children with her mother the next day and caught the bus into town: one ran from the village every morning, returning in the early afternoon. She needed things from the shops – food, zinc ointment for the baby's nappy rash, Tampax. And she had business there too which she didn't mention to her mother: she called in at the estate agents, to make enquiries about properties available to rent locally. It was strange to be back in these streets sodden with familiarity, and it was the first time in weeks – in months even – that she had been anywhere alone. Without the pushchair and the children hanging on to her she was weightlessly afloat. The estate agent she spoke to was someone she had known from primary school; she and he had been set apart together in the little gang of clever ones who would pass the eleven plus. Big-limbed and blushing, he looked displaced now in his poky office, but must have chosen it in preference to a life on the family farm – for the past's sake, Jill felt tenderly towards his freckled pink wrist, clumsy in his clean shirt-cuff. She was aware of putting on a performance as married and sophisticated; she had pinned up her hair in front of the mirror that morning and now she flaunted her wedding ring, crossing her legs conspicuously in their slippery nylon tights under her short skirt. It was important to convince them all that she was sane and worldly, even as she made crazy plans to manage by herself.

— My husband has to travel a lot for work, she said. — If we rented somewhere down here, I could be closer to my parents, my mother could help with the children.

When they shook hands he called her Mrs Crane, and asked if he should send through details of any new properties that came up – but Jill didn't want her parents to know what her plans were, not yet. — Don't bother to post them, she said, smiling, charming him. — I'll call in here whenever I'm in town.

She had time, when she'd finished shopping, for a coffee at The Bungalow on the high street. Tom would despise The Bungalow, where the fake beams were festooned with horse collars and horse brasses, there were plastic flowers in the vases, and the elderly waitresses – wizened, she imagined him calling them – wore black dresses and white organdie aprons with starched frills. A friend of Sophy's at another table – Women's Institute, tennis – waved to Jill, she waved back. I could live here, all the same, she thought. Because life is just life; I can choose to belong anywhere. Who's to say all our radical friends in London are right, with their condemnations? You live how you can.

Reading through the details the estate agent had given her, she was exultant with self-sufficiency, though she didn't see anything that fitted in the least with her idea – her old schoolmate, not knowing her, had chosen all the modern horrors for her, little boxes new-built on the edge of town, which in any case she couldn't afford. What she dreamed of was somewhere on the edge of social life, where she could be free, not cluttered with falsity. She didn't really know how much she had to spend, except that it was next to nothing – even if Tom sent her half his money, which he would very likely refuse to do. In London she had been getting copy-editing work from a couple of publishers, but she didn't think they'd go on using her if she moved away. Recklessly she ate a buttered teacake, then ordered another one. These past awful weeks, she had gone days forgetting almost to eat; now she was wildly hungry and thirsty.

Sophy's friend – gaunt and powdered and faintly arty, with dangling earrings – stopped on her way out, to ask yearningly after the London theatres. She said she always looked out for Tom's articles, he was so clever. — Sophy didn't mention she was expecting you. Are you staying long? She'll be so happy to have you home. Isn't it term time? Harriet must have started school by now.

Suavely Jill explained something about the children having had feverish colds, needing to recuperate in the country air. Because she was the vicar's daughter, she'd learned to lie from an early age, not caring much if anyone believed her, so long as she firmly deflected further enquiry. When she paid for her teacakes and coffee she found that her mother had slipped a ten-shilling note into her purse – half-infuriating, but useful. Sophy was full of these secret charities, pre-empting you, accomplished with a little shy fuss like a quiver of nerves. Dawdling on her way to the bus stop, Jill saw a card in the wool shop window, advertising for part-time staff, and on an impulse she went inside, not caring who was watching. She didn't recognise the woman who took down her details. The manageress wasn't in today – perhaps Jill could call in again on Monday?

Jill could tell this woman didn't think she was at all the right type for selling wool, with her short skirt and eye make-up and patrician condescending accent – whereas the idea thrilled Jill perversely, to end up here, with her first class in Greats from Oxford. Eagerly she insisted that she could knit, was skilled in knitting: which was perfectly true. She had knitted such lovely things before Hettie was born, including a shawl in 2-ply off-white lambswool, as subtle as a cobweb, in a complicated leaf pattern. She had had a job, while she was pregnant, on reception at a publisher's, and when she wasn't enlisted for tying up parcels of books, had striven away on her needles through long empty hours. The matinee jackets and bootees in the wool shop window – in brash strawberry nylon, and yellow and vermilion – weren't anything like the tasteful old-fashioned things that she had made. She had imagined that motherhood was going to be dreamy and delicately absorbed like her knitting: then all the pretty clothes she'd prepared had turned out to be so wildly beside the point, in the days of shock and violence – as she thought of them – which began with the arrival of the actual baby. The dainty wool vests and cardigans had quickly become matted and tight with washing, and anyway they had given Hettie a rash – and she had outgrown them in a few weeks. Jill had only ever imagined her baby, in advance, as a tiny, wistful, curled-up creature-thing.

The vicar was away for the day at a diocesan meeting and Sophy found Roland in his study, staring into a leather-bound book open across his scabby knees: Herodotus in the original, as it turned out. She stored this up as a funny story to report to Jill; then, in a second impulse of protective tact, decided to keep it to herself. Jill these days seemed to make a joke out of everything, including her children – she believed it was better to jolly them along and not indulge them. Sophy quailed occasionally at her daughter's brittle, brave performance; Jill had mentioned already, as if it was funny, that Roland was slow at learning his letters. — He's a sweetheart, but he isn't Einstein, she had cheerfully said. He was holding Herodotus the right way up, anyhow, and turned the pages with great care, seeming really to be peering closely at the words. His small, intent face was brown and neat as a nut, wrenching his grandmother, and the silky hair curled tight on his skull like a black lamb's. He told her he was reading Grandfather's book.

— How interesting, darling. What is it about?

— All sorts of things, Granny. They can't be said, because I can only read it with my mind.

— Of course, that's very natural, I'm the same way.

— But what is thinking?

Sophy pushed away the idea of those absences of hers, when she sank into deep water: did they count as thought? — I suppose it is a kind of work, she said. — You can feel it in going on in your brain, when you're understanding things. For instance when you're reading words in a book, trying to find out what they mean. This book is in Greek, of course, so Granny can't read it: but your mummy can, and your grandfather.

— And I can.

Roland twitched his nose when he looked up, to keep his glasses in place, with a backwards jerk of his head like a little old man. Sophy blamed this new habit, which distressed her, on the glasses mended lumpily with sticking plaster, which must be a blot in the corner of his vision. At the first opportunity she would take him into Corrigan's, for a real repair. She mentioned it as soon as Jill arrived home off the bus, her basket piled high with shopping – and of course Jill took it as a criticism, although she was in buoyant spirits and forgave her mother easily. — Don't you think I've had them repaired ten times already? He'll only break them again right away. And old Corrigan's creepy, he used to put his hand on my knee. But if you want to, I don't care.

Jill's beauty was startling that afternoon, with her hair pinned up and something scalded and raw in her young face: Sophy had to turn her eyes away from it. She didn't have the refinement of either of her parents, with her straight long nose, lean animal jaw, big lazy mouth, her golden colouring suffused across the cheeks with a rough pink. — I can't believe how everything in town is just the same. I knew everyone. I bumped into Mikey Waller – he's working as an estate agent, did you know? And Ailsa was in The Bungalow. Thank you for the ten shillings. I felt like a schoolgirl on a treat, and ate two teacakes and bought iced buns for everyone.