Authors: Joanna Trollope
She clicked on ‘Reply’ to Laura’s message.
‘Forget fridge,’ she wrote, ‘I need advice. No, I don’t. I need
comfort
. I thought if I showed Matthew the flat – and
it is stunning – it would somehow persuade him that we could work it out together in a place like that. But he was wiser than me. He saw what I didn’t want to see, and he’s gone. Laura, he’s
gone
. And I am devastated. But I am still thrilled about the flat. Laura, am I a freak?’
‘Like the blazer,’ Matthew said, nodding at the sunburst buttons.
‘It would be kinder not to mention it’. ‘I can’t
not
mention it’.
‘Yes, you can,’ Rosa said. ‘Unless you want to make even more of a point about contrasting my life with yours’.
There was a tiny pause and then Matthew said, indicating the menu, ‘What d’you want to eat?’
‘Are you paying?’
‘Yes’.
Well, I’ll have the courgette-and-broad-bean thing with a grilled chicken breast’.
‘Please’.
Rosa smiled at him.
‘Please’.
Matthew turned and gestured for a waiter. Rosa said, ‘And possibly a glass of Sauvignon?’ Matthew glanced at her.
‘All right’.
‘Matt, one glass—’ He turned back.
‘I don’t begrudge you a glass, Rose. You can have a bottle if you want. It isn’t that’.
‘What isn’t what?’
A waiter appeared, in a long black apron, holding a pad. He smiled at Rosa. She held up her menu, so that he could see, pointing at what she wanted. Then she looked up at him and smiled back.
‘I’ll have the kedgeree,’ Matthew said, ‘and a salad. And one glass of house Sauvignon’.
‘Aren’t you having any?’
‘No’.
‘Why not?’
‘Because,’ Matthew said, ‘I really don’t feel like it’. ‘Why not?’ Rosa said again. ‘Tummy? Head?’ Matthew picked up the menus and handed them to the waiter.
‘Heart,’ he said shortly. Rosa sat up. ‘What’s happened?’
Matthew picked up a basket of bread and offered it to his sister.
She ignored it.
‘Matt. What’s happened?’
‘Well,’ Matthew said, putting the bread down and leaning his arms on the table, ‘Ruth and I are – over’.
‘Oh no’.
‘Yes’.
‘Not you two—’
‘Yes’.
‘Same outlook, same interests, same ambition—’
‘No’.
‘Has she met someone else?’
‘No’.
‘Well, from the look of you, you haven’t’.
‘No’.
‘Matt—’
‘I’ll tell you,’ Matthew said, ‘if you’ll just shut up a minute’.
The waiter put a glass of wine down in front of Rosa. She said, ‘I can’t believe it, I can’t grasp—’ ‘Nor can I’.
‘This flat—’
‘That’s it really,’ Matthew said, ‘the flat. The bottom line is that she can afford it and I can’t. And she should be on the property ladder. It’s the right decision for her, I’ve told her so. But I can’t join her’.
Rosa said slowly, ‘I thought you were earning a shed of money’.
Matthew made a face.
‘Half what Ruth earns’.
‘Half?’ ‘Yes’.
‘Heavens, I always thought—’
‘I know. I didn’t stop anyone thinking that. But the truth is, it’s been a struggle to keep up and lately – well, lately I haven’t been keeping up. And I certainly can’t begin on fancy flat buying’.
Rosa’s gaze moved, item by item, over as much of her brother as she could see above the table.
He said, ‘Say stupid if you want to’.
‘I don’t want to. And I’m hardly in a position to say anything anyway’. She paused and took a mouthful of wine and then she said, ‘Poor you’.
He shrugged.
‘What – what if she doesn’t buy the flat?’ ‘Too late,’ Matthew said. ‘You mean too late, she’s bought it?’ He shook his head.
‘No, too late to retrieve where we were. The flat was just the catalyst. It made us face the disparity’. ‘Did she throw you out?’ ‘No!’ he said angrily. ‘Sorry—’ ‘I threw myself’.
‘Oh Matt,’ Rosa said, ‘I wish I’d done that’. He said sadly, ‘It’s awful, whatever you do’. She leaned forward. ‘Do you still love her?’
The waiter appeared again, holding their plates of food. Matthew leaned back.
He waited until the kedgeree was in front of him and then he said, ‘Of course I do. You don’t just switch that off in an instant. You should know that’.
Rosa looked at her plate.
She said hesitantly, ‘I meant, do you still love her enough to try again?’ Matthew sighed.
‘Not under present circumstances’.
‘But Ruth will just go on being successful. Won’t she?’
‘Yes. And she ought to’.
‘What, put work before relationships?’
‘Well,’ Matthew said, putting his fork into the rice and
taking it out again, ‘you’ve got to put something first, haven’t you? Not everything can take priority’.
Rosa waited a moment. She cut a strip off her chicken.
‘Matt, what about you? Couldn’t you have compromised?’
Matthew sighed.
‘Apparently not’.
‘A cheaper flat—’
‘Ben said that. But I couldn’t afford even a cheaper flat. And she was – kind of stuck on this one. Elated’.
Rosa stopped cutting chicken and looked soberly across the table at her brother.
‘Matt, what about you?’
He said, not looking up, ‘I’ve still got a job’.
‘Do you like it?’
‘I don’t mind it. In fact, I do quite like it. But it feels different now, if there isn’t going to be Ruth. It was just one part of life and now it’s got to be almost all of it. So – well, it doesn’t feel like it used to. I can’t quite remember what it’s
for’.
‘D’you think,’ Rosa said, ‘that having Mum and Dad still together makes us feel we
ought
to be in a relationship?’
Matthew took a tiny mouthful.
‘I don’t think that’s got anything to do with it’.
‘Have you told them?’
‘It’s only just happened,’ Matthew said. ‘Ben knows, that’s all’.
‘Before me?’
‘He just rang me,’ Matthew said patiently. ‘He just happened to be around’.
Rosa picked her wine glass up. ‘Where are you sleeping?’ ‘On the sofa’.
‘Ruth in the bedroom, you on the sofa—’
‘Yup’.
‘You can’t do that—’ ‘No. Not for long’.
Rosa said, as if an idea was slowly dawning, ‘Maybe, if you got a flat, we could share’. Matthew put his fork down. ‘Sorry, Rose’.
‘What?’
He looked at her.
‘I just feel – a bit demoralised, I suppose. As if everything has come to a halt, as if I can’t decide anything for a while. I never thought I’d say this, I mean, I left about seven years ago, for God’s sake, but I think I might go home. Just for a while’.
‘I wonder,’ Freddie Cass said to Edie at the end of rehearsal, ‘if I could ask you something’.
Edie was putting on her jacket.
‘Of course’.
Freddie put out an arm to hold a shoulder of the jacket. ‘It’s Regina’.
‘Ah’.
Regina was being played by the defiant girl called Cheryl Smith who chain-smoked and stamped about rehearsals in slouched pirate boots.
‘She’s good,’ Freddie said. ‘She knows what she’s doing. But Lazlo’s frightened of her’.
Edie shrugged her jacket round her neck.
‘She’s in-your-face sort of sexy—’
‘Exactly. That’s what I wanted. Especially for Act Three. But there’s no chemistry between the two of them because she’s contemptuous and he’s scared’.
Edie said, ‘Well, you’re the director—’
‘Well, indeed I am’. He smiled at Edie. He smiled so seldom, showing long, greyish teeth, that she was startled. ‘But you could do something for me’.
‘I said of course—’
‘You’re mothering Lazlo so excellently’.
‘Don’t ask me to mother Cheryl—’
‘Oh no. Just have her to supper’.
Edie looked across the room. Cheryl, her legs arranged in their distinct dancer’s pose, was smoking and talking to Ivor.
‘She’d never come’.
‘Oh, I think so’. ‘With – with Lazlo?’
‘That was my idea’.
‘She’d certainly never come if he came’. Freddie switched his smile off. Edie felt a sense of relief.
‘She’d come,’ Freddie said, ‘if you told her your husband’s an agent’.
Edie said indignantly, ‘Look, sorry, but this is
your
job!’
He leaned forward and gripped her arm.
‘In a production like this, dear, it’s
our
job. I’ll buy the wine’.
Later, on the bus going home, Edie found herself having to work hard at staying indignant. Freddie should never have asked her to help him out and she should never have agreed, but once they had both done so there was little point in nursing outrage. In any case, the energy outrage would have consumed seemed to want to be channelled into thinking about having Lazlo and Cheryl to supper and how their presence in the kitchen – both in their twenties, both in a precarious profession – might serve as a useful bait for tempting Rosa to come back, just for the evening, just for supper. And once Rosa was there, it might be possible – or, at any rate, less impossible – to discover why she had chosen to seek help from her friends and her aunt rather than her mother.
Edie looked at the script in the bag on her knee. That afternoon, she and Lazlo had made a first attempt at their final, terrible scene. She had flung out her hands and cried Mrs Alving’s words, ‘But I gave you your life!’ and Lazlo had looked back at her and said, as if he hardly knew her, ‘I never asked you for life’. She had burst into tears. Mrs Alving’s wail of ‘Help! Help!’ had been no trouble at all. Freddie Cass had strolled over and looked into her face with his removed, observant grey gaze.
‘Nice,’ he’d said.
Vivien had emptied all the cupboards and drawers in her spare room, for Rosa. The drawers, Rosa noted with awe,
were lined with sprigged paper and the hangers were solid and purposeful, not simply a motley collection left over from chain stores and dry-cleaners’. There were also two sizes of towel, a new cake of soap and a copy of
Glamour
magazine. It was kind, Rosa thought, bundling her sweaters on to the sprigged paper, it was really very kind, but in the context of complicated family loyalties it was also making a point, a point Rosa was going to have to ignore if she was to live with her aunt in any kind of equity. It would be perfectly acceptable to thank Vivien for making her so welcome, but it wouldn’t be acceptable at all to applaud her for it. Applause would imply that a comparison with Edie had been made in which Vivien was the victor. Rosa sighed.
‘How could you,’ Edie had demanded over the telephone, ‘turn to friends rather than to me? I am your
mother!’
‘That’s why,’ Rosa had wanted to say. Instead she’d said, lamely, despising herself, ‘Sorry’. ‘And now Vivien—’ ‘Sorry’.
‘Rose,’ Edie said, ‘Rose. I just want to know
why?’
‘They didn’t ask me anything’.
‘What?’
‘They didn’t keep on at me. Kate and Vivien. They didn’t keep asking questions’.
There’d been a long pause and then Edie had said, with much diminished energy, ‘Oh,’ and then, after another pause, ‘Goodbye, darling,’ in a voice of such pathos that for five minutes afterwards Rosa wrestled with the urge to
ring Vivien and say that after all, for family reasons, she couldn’t come and live in her spare room. It was enough to make anyone sigh; it was enough, as she’d said to Kate, to make anyone wonder if the obligations attendant upon having family support made that support actually hardly worth the candle.
‘It’s like presents,’ Kate said, eating a
salade Niçoise
with gusto. ‘The way people give you what they want to give you. It’s a sort of conditional generosity’.
‘Yes’.
‘But then, you have to, don’t you? I mean, if you help someone, you have to do it your way. You can’t give the help only the way the receiver wants it because that’s asking too much of anyone, it isn’t human’.
Rosa watched Kate spearing anchovy fillets.
‘I’m glad you’re hungry’.
‘Starving. Every two hours. Especially salty things. Do you want your olives?’
Rosa pushed her plate forward.
‘Mum sounded so forlorn’.
‘Isn’t that better than angry? Or offended?’
‘Not as far as guilt goes’.
‘If this baby’s a girl,’ Kate said, ‘I vow not to make her feel guilty’.
‘I think women just do. Even when it isn’t reasonable. I mean, Matt and his girlfriend have just split up and, although he’s devastated, he doesn’t feel guilty. But I bet she does’.
Kate stopped chewing.
‘How awful. Poor them’.
‘Yes’.
‘Is it this woman and ambition thing?’ Rosa sighed.
‘Well, she earns twice what he does’.
‘And I bet,’ Kate said, ‘however successful, she’s afraid that makes her unlovable’.
Rosa picked a cherry tomato off her plate.
‘Unsuccessful isn’t very lovable, either’.
Does moving into your aunt’s spare bedroom count as unsuccessful? she thought now. If by successful you mean financial independence, probably yes. But if you mean still having other humans in your life who’ll speak to you, probably no. She picked up an armful of shoes and boots and dumped them in the bottom of the wardrobe. They looked terrible, with the sad intimate terribleness that worn shoes always have. And in addition, if Vivien were to come into Rosa’s room while she was at work – not a happy thought, but not one that could be discounted, either – she would expect to see Rosa’s possessions in sufficient order to denote gratitude for housing them. Rosa bent down, her head muffled in the hanging folds of her clothes, and began to sort her shoes into pairs.
Below her, in the hallway, Vivien’s telephone started to ring. Vivien still had a landline with a cord, a cream plastic handset that sat on a little table with a shelf for directories and a pad and a pot of pens. Vivien drew mouths and eyes on the pad while she talked on the telephone, curvy mouths and thick-lashed eyes, swimming about the page as if they had an eerie life of their own.
‘Hello?’ Rosa heard Vivien say. Her voice was perfectly clear, even from a floor below and with Rosa’s door closed.
‘Oh,’ Vivien said, her voice lifting a little. ‘Oh! Max—’
Rosa got up from her knees and went quietly to the door, a red canvas basketball boot in one hand.