Second Honeymoon (35 page)

Russell eyed her.

‘So I congratulate you’.

‘Yes, please’.

‘And why couldn’t you tell me this at home?’ ‘Home’s difficult,’ Rosa said. Russell looked away.

‘I mean,’ Rosa said, ‘I probably help to make it difficult but it’s not, well, it’s not really working, is it, us all living together? It’s not very successful’.

Russell said, still looking away, ‘I never thought it would be’.

‘Well, you were right. You’re right about lots of things’.

He said tiredly, ‘Don’t try to placate me, Rosa. I’m beyond all that’. ‘I mean it’. ‘Well, thank you—’

‘And I don’t mind going to Holborn and I don’t mind working in a travel agency. I don’t
mind’.

‘Ah,’ Russell said. He turned to look at her. ‘Why don’t you?’

‘Because,’ Rosa said, spreading her fingers flat on the table and regarding them, ‘another avenue has opened up’.

‘Not a work avenue, I take it—’

‘No’.

Russell took a swallow.

‘Lazlo?’

‘Yes. I didn’t know you knew’.

‘I didn’t
know,’
Russell said, ‘but I guessed. It would be hard to live in the same house and not guess’. Rosa smiled down at her hands. ‘It’s very early days’.

‘Yes—’

‘And he’s terribly shy. I’m not sure – he’s ever had a real girlfriend before’.

‘He’s a nice boy,’ Russell said. ‘An honest boy’. ‘So you don’t mind—’

‘Mind?’

‘You don’t mind if Lazlo and I move out to live together?’

Russell leaned forward.

‘No, Rosa, I don’t mind. I’m very pleased for you’. She eyed him.

‘Will Mum be?’

‘I should think so—’

‘Will you tell her?’

Russell shook his head.

‘No’.

‘Dad—’

‘You must tell her. Lazlo must tell her’. Rosa made a little gesture. ‘I really don’t like to’.

What do you mean?’ Russell demanded, sitting upright. ‘What do you
mean
, you don’t
like
to? After all she’s done for you—’

‘It isn’t that’.

‘Well, then—’

‘It’s just,’ Rosa said, ‘that I know how much she’s done. I know how tired she is, I know how disappointed she is about the play not transferring, and I just don’t want to add to everything, add to the feeling of losing things’. She paused and then she said in a rush, ‘I mean I’m worried she’ll really feel it, with Matt going and now us—’

‘Matt?’ Russell said sharply.

Rosa put her hand over her mouth.

‘Oh, my God—’ ‘Rosa—’

‘I didn’t mean,’ Rosa said, ‘I didn’t mean to say anything about—’

Russell leaned across the table and grasped Rosa’s wrist. ‘What,’ he said, ‘about Matthew?’

Vivien sat in her hall beside her telephone table. On it lay a list of all the people she was going to telephone, one after another, in a calm and orderly fashion, and when the list was completed she was going to go upstairs with a new roll of heavy-duty dustbin bags and begin, without hysteria, to fill them with Max’s possessions.

The first person on the list was Edie. She had planned to ring Edie first and tell her what had happened and reassure her that she was, strangely and slightly light-headedly, perfectly all right. Then she intended to ring her solicitor and bank manager and Alison at the bookshop to tell her, in the phrase beloved of old-fashioned crime novels that didn’t need to trouble themselves with too much inconvenient reality, that something had come up, something that would prevent her coming in to the shop tomorrow, but that she would be in as usual on Wednesday. However, on reflection, she thought she would ring Edie after she had spoken to her solicitor and bank manager, rather than before, so that she could sound reassuring about having everything in hand and being composed and controlled.

She had been extraordinarily composed when she discovered, by asking Max outright about the amount of money he had received for the flat in Barnes, that he had never actually sold it. She had been rather less composed
when it became evident that, not only was the flat not sold, but it wasn’t even on the market since it was still inhabited by Max’s last girlfriend, who was both refusing to leave and refusing to pay the bills. And she had, to her subsequent regret, lost all control when Max fell on his knees on her bedroom floor and told her that only she could save him from the rapacious harpy who was bleeding him dry, and that was why he’d wanted to come home, to a real, warm, loving woman whose sole aim wasn’t to castrate him as well as bleed him dry.

She had, of course, cried all night after that episode. She had expected to. What she hadn’t expected was, despite the dispiriting sensation of having a tremendous hangover, to feel such a relief the next day. It was unmistakable, this relief, a feeling that she was at last emerging from something that had beguiled her for too long in a profoundly unsettling way, and obscured her sense of purpose into the bargain. When Max, haggard in his lavish velour dressing gown, had stared into his coffee the next morning and said, ‘I need you, doll. I want you, I love you. Please, please forgive me,’ she’d been able to say, to her amazement, ‘Of course I forgive you, but I’m afraid I don’t want you any more’.

Sitting now on her telephone chair, she carefully tested her feelings as she had done a hundred times a day since Max’s revelations. Did she still love him? Did she even still want or need him? No, quite decidedly. Could she face the thought of all the days and months and years ahead without him? Yes, not quite so decidedly, but that was more, she thought, the prospect of no man at all
rather than no Max. And, even that possibility, the possibility of being on her own really meaning being on her own, was less unpalatable than seeing herself sliding back into being the person she seemed to be around Max, the anxious, appeasing, uncertain person who dealt with his unreliability with either silence or screams.

She looked again at her telephone list. She was going to rehearse very carefully what she was going to say to the solicitor because, although she obviously wasn’t going to blurt it all out before she actually saw him, it was important, she felt, to give him an idea, in a dignified way, of what she wished to see him about. Perhaps she wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Perhaps she wasn’t quite ordered enough in her mind to talk about it as distantly as she wanted to. Perhaps it would be better to ring Edie first, after all, and ask her advice about how she should tell Eliot. It was only when she thought of Eliot, she told herself, that she felt remotely unsteady.

She picked up the receiver and dialled Edie’s number. It would be an hour or two before Edie needed to go to the theatre, a time when Edie could be expected to give even half her attention to her sister, a time when …

‘Hello?’ Edie said. ‘It’s me—’

‘Vivi,’ Edie said, ‘you are just brilliant at picking the very moment when I really can’t—’ ‘No,’ Vivien shouted. ‘No!’

‘What?’

‘Listen to me!’ Vivien shouted. ‘Listen to me!’ And burst into tears.

*        *        *

Now that he had switched off even the television, the house was eerily quiet. Even the perpetual hum of London seemed to have withdrawn itself to a distance. The only sound, really, was Arsie who, having leaped on him the moment he lay down on the sofa, was now extended up his chest with languorous purpose and purring loudly. He had his eyes closed, but in a way that indicated to Russell that he could remain, at the same time, exceedingly watchful.

Beside them, on a padded stool, lay the evening newspaper, an empty wine glass and the plate that had borne Russell’s unsatisfactory supper. There had been nobody at home when Russell returned, and no indication as to where anybody was, or what they intended, except that the stack of Ben’s possessions behind the sofa appeared, Russell thought, slightly diminished. He had cleared up the kitchen in a perfunctory way against Edie’s return, made himself an unsuccessful omelette over too high a flame, finished the last third of a bottle of red wine, done the crossword in the paper and was now prone on the sofa wondering why an empty house should feel so peculiarly unrelaxing.

‘Is it waiting?’ he said to Arsie. ‘Is it just waiting for them all to come in?’

Arsie yawned. The inside of his mouth was as immaculate as the rest of him. He stretched one paw upwards and laid it, claws only just sheathed, on the skin of Russell’s neck, just above his shirt collar.

‘Don’t,’ Russell said.

Arsie took no notice.

‘Please oblige me,’ Russell said. ‘Please take pity on how weary I am. Please don’t behave like all the others’.

Arsie unfolded his second paw and stretched it up to join the first one. Then he slowly curled his claws over the edge of Russell’s shirt and into his skin.

‘Get off!’ Russell yelled, flinging himself upright.

Arsie flew in a neat semicircle and landed lightly on the rug. He composed himself at once into a tidy sitting position, with his back to Russell, and began to wash.

‘I’m sorry,’ Russell said, ‘but that was the limit. You had been warned’.

He swung his legs off the sofa to the floor, and put his elbows on his knees. In an hour, Edie would be home and, however tempting it was to think of going to bed, it was a temptation he must resist. He got stiffly to his feet and picked up the plate and glass. Part of the hour might be beguiled by making some very strong coffee.

‘Aren’t you in bed?’ Edie said from the doorway.

Russell swam dizzily through half-sleep to consciousness.

‘No, I—’ ‘Isn’t Ben in?’ ‘No’.

‘Lazlo’s having supper with Rosa, Matt’s out somewhere with Ruth and I thought at least Ben—’

Russell began to struggle out of his armchair. ‘I think some of his stuff’s gone’. Edie looked sharply at the sofa.

‘Has it?’

Russell went across to the doorway and bent to kiss her.

‘Would you like a drink?’ She thought for a moment. ‘Not much’.

‘Why don’t you,’ Russell said, ‘why don’t you just be accommodating for once and have a drink while we talk?’ Edie hesitated.

‘Talk—’

‘Yes,’ Russell said, ‘unless you’d like to make an appointment for the purpose on Sunday?’

He moved past her and went across the hall to the kitchen.

‘Coffee? Wine? Whisky?’

Edie went slowly after him. ‘Wine perhaps—’

He glanced at her, then jerked his head towards one of the chairs by the table. ‘Sit down’. ‘I’m going to—’

‘White? Red?’

‘Anything,’ Edie said, ‘anything. I feel too stunned after this week to make decisions that size’. She pulled her arms out of her jacket and let it slump on the chair behind her. Then she leaned them on the table and let her head fall forward. ‘Matt, Rosa, Lazlo, Ruth, Vivi—’ She paused and then she said, ‘Poor Vivi’.

Russell put a glass of white wine on the table in front of her. She looked at it without enthusiasm.

‘I thought you couldn’t stand Max’.

‘I can’t. It’s not Max, it’s the situation, Vivien’s situation. Divorce and everything. She’s going to have to sell the house’.

There was a short pause and then Russell, standing at the other side of the table with the wine bottle in his hand, said with emphasis, ‘Yes’.

Slowly, Edie raised her eyes to look at him.

He said, ‘May I say something?’

‘Go on’.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if the children are all branching out like this, if they really are going to do the things they seem to be doing, well, it would – it would be nice to help them, wouldn’t it?’

Edie’s gaze didn’t waver from his face. He put the bottle down on the table, and leaned on his hands.

He said, in a different tone, ‘I know how hard this might be for you even to contemplate, heaven knows, it isn’t very easy for me, but I’ve been thinking and the thought I’ve come up with, the thought that won’t somehow go away, is that, in order to give the children a bit of help and rearrange our own lives, we ought, really, if you think about it, to – to sell up too. We ought to sell this house’.

Edie went on looking at him.

There was a silence that seemed to go on for a disconcerting length of time, and then she said, ‘I know’.

The estate agent had said that, on the plus side, it was very rare for a house of this size and quality, and still unconverted, to come up in this particular area. However, he said – and he was quite difficult to take seriously, Edie thought, because of looking rather younger than Matthew and wearing a childishly terrible tie – the minus side, which was quite a significant minus, was that the house was so very unconverted that most buyers with the kind of cash they were envisaging would find it difficult to visualise it in an improved and modernised state.

They had both looked at him when he finished speaking as if he must be about to say more.

After a silence, he’d said, ‘You get my drift?’

Edie had looked at Russell.

Russell said politely, ‘No. Actually’.

The agent had taken a breath. Perhaps, Edie thought, we remind him of his own parents, and how he has to talk to them.

She said, to try and help him, ‘Are you saying it’s good or bad?’

He took another breath, and then he said what he had already said, only more elaborately.

‘I see,’ Russell said. ‘The house is in too bad a state to sell’.

‘No, no, it’s a very desirable house in a good area. It’s just that’ – he glanced round the kitchen – ‘it’s just that, the way it is, just now, the way it
looks
, because it looks so – very much of, um, well, it’s
time
, of course, it’s family life and all that, that the kind of purchaser we have in mind, well, we would
like
to have in mind for this kind of property, might, you see, have difficulty in, well, in seeing the potential’.

Edie had leaned forward.

She said, in a very kind voice, ‘You think we should tidy it up’.

The agent had stared at her with something approaching violent relief.

‘Yes’.

‘Well, that’s easy—’

‘No,’ he said, suddenly desperate again. ‘No. Not tidy up.
Empty
. Just – almost empty it’. He waved his arms. This room—’ He gestured out of the window. ‘That shed—’