Authors: Polly Samson
Julian abandons the modest anaesthesia that sorting through the mysteries at his desk might offer and calls to the dog, whose joy is out of proportion to his planned breath of air in the garden. The noonday sun is obscured by clouds. Outside is muggier than in. The dog spins in ecstasy as he heads for the far corner and the rougher grass. The granary stands squat on its staddle stones, still home to his mother’s old stone kiln, though there’s no sign the Nicholsons ever fired it up. They’ve added various shelves and flat-pack cupboards where Jenna’s work benches used to be and he misses the way it was when he was a boy, with its wheel in the centre and all the industrial bins of minerals, the smell of burning sawdust mingling with the dankness of fresh clay, her work drying on shelves. The pots and figurines are all gone now, as are the old-fashioned spike on which she impaled her orders and her tins of glazes each with its own coloured tile hanging on a nail, sorted so they ran along the wall in a rainbow.
Julian turns his face as he passes. He’s yet to set foot inside, still can’t help regarding any proof of the Nicholsons’ occupancy as vandalism.
He visited them here once, by mistake, the day he travelled from college, bringing his rotten two-timing heart for one final kicking by the girl he’d forsaken. Katie Webster was taking the news of Julia’s pregnancy so badly she’d come home from Manchester so that her mother could at least try to get some good food into her. Her voice was shaky when she called him at his digs and he’d agreed almost at once to come.
He arrived in the village the following day and cycled straight from the train to Katie’s house. He was shaken by the brute physiological effects of his betrayal on her: she looked so diminished in her raggy leggings and T-shirt, all angles where once had been curves. She remained curled miserably on the sofa the entire time, balled-up tissues to her eyes.
He stood awkwardly across the room, hopelessly making excuses. ‘We’ve been together since we were fifteen. You didn’t seriously think . . .’
He didn’t rise to anything she said, put his head in his hands to hear her call Julia ‘some old slag who gets pregnant.’ He let her rant on, shrugging and wincing, until she ran out of words. What else could he do? Katie’s parting shot was vicious: ‘I’m glad Firdaws has been sold,’ she said.
He found himself there on automatic pilot. Mrs Nicholson was looking out of the window and must have guessed the identity of the doleful young man with the bicycle leaning against Jerry Horseman’s rusting gates.
Walking into Firdaws that day was a waking version of the old childhood nightmare of getting home to find there are only strangers who don’t know who you are: it didn’t smell right, the pictures were all wrong on the walls, no dogs, everything so sharp and clean and lemony. Mrs Nicholson led him through to the kitchen. The Rayburn was gone, the wonky apple-green cupboards too. The Nicholson twins sat with their straw-coloured plaits and colouring books at a round table at the wrong end of a shiny new space laboratory of white and steely appliance.
He turned his attention from Mrs Nicholson’s hideous children – what was their problem, why were they staring at him like that? – to the steaming rose-patterned mug placed before him on the table. Noticing the gleam of his knuckles beneath the stretched skin, he made himself unclench his fists. He drank the tea scalding and pedalled to the station with it burning inside him and the wind stinging his eyes.
Firdaws swelters, no air escapes from the valley. Every day bluebottles battle the glass, things scrabble and buzz, the butter he left out has gone rancid so he has to throw his toast to the dog. Someone is tapping on the kitchen window when he comes down, forcing him to skulk at the foot of the stairs where the postman has left yet another slip for a parcel, which he tosses to the top of an untidy heap of packets and letters. From beside the front door his father is unconcerned, blue eyes twinkling for ever in Jenna’s smudgy oils.
Maxwell is paler than Julian, who has Jenna’s Persian skin that tans with one lick of the sun. He looks confident, amused; large hands resting on a green-topped card table; a good-looking man with a delicate colour, sandy lashes and shaggy hair. He’s wearing a blue shirt with an open Nehru collar and, most noticeably, the sort of almost-smile that makes you believe he’s about to tell you a secret. Maxwell Julian Vale is so bursting with vitality it seems impossible he will be dead within three years of this being painted.
There are hooks for coats and wellies, several pairs, still caked with dry mud from the winter. Mira’s red ones are, of course, missing. Her fleecy duffel, striped hat and nursery rucksack no longer hang from the brass peg that he’d screwed into the wall especially low so that she could reach her things herself.
The knocking seems to have stopped and Julian darts into the kitchen, willing his visitor far away so that he can retrieve the milk from the step and get on without being spotted. Already he’s shaky, in need of a smoke. He’s down to the last of the bread now and, more importantly, tobacco but can’t face the clucking he’ll be subjected to by either or both of the Miss Hamlyns at the village shop. His headache reminds him that he’s out of wine too, out of booze generally: last night ended in the custardy embrace of a bottle of Advocaat.
Inside his car is Stygian, but the dog insists on accompanying him into town and sticks his head out of the window with the wind whooshing past so his ears look like the flaps of Amelia Earhart’s flying cap. Insects splat themselves against the windscreen and the wipers process them into a pus-coloured cream to smear in arcs across the glass. His screen wash manages only a tiny spurt of foam.
Some men are repairing the humpback bridge leading out of the village and Julian has to stop at a barrier to let a white Volvo pass. It pulls up beside him with a menacing crank of handbrake and he has to suppress the urge to reverse when Penny Webster’s pink and white head pops out from the window. With one fat hand she fans herself. ‘Phew, so warm. Oh, Julian. We thought maybe you’d gone away, but here you are.’
There are children in the back of her car. Penny Webster reaches through the window to give his shoulder a squeeze, her bare arm mottled mortadella by the sun.
‘Are you OK, pet?’
Katie’s boys regard him from the rear seat with blank blue eyes. He tries not to look. ‘Katie’s left the little devils with Grandma,’ Penny Webster says unnecessarily, gesturing so he has to.
Billy is sucking his thumb with a blankie to his mouth while Arthur kicks his legs to and fro against his car seat. Julian manages to nod and they carry on staring at him. They don’t ask where Mira is, so they must have been told something.
Billy’s blankie stays hanging from his mouth even when he removes his thumb. What have they been told? They couldn’t have forgotten her so soon. Billy, Arthur, Mira, squealing and splashing each other with hosepipes, running around in their pants, bouncing on the trampoline, yelling newly acquired rude words. The three of them calling from the hammock: ‘Come and swing us, come.’
In the back of the Volvo Arthur leans across to whisper into Billy’s ear.
Why don’t they ask for Mira? Katie brought them to the hospital that Saturday in April: it’s only been a matter of weeks. They brought her some new comics and balloons . . .
Penny Webster is talking. He mumbles something about a meeting, fixes his eyes on the road ahead.
‘Did you get the eggs? I left them on the step . . .’
The truck behind Penny’s car flashes for her to move on.
‘Come for a meal, pet. Katie’s worrying about you. We all are,’ she says and he has to look away from her now that her eyes are welling up.
These Webster women cried easily. Katie failed to hold back her tears when she came to the hospital, arriving on the ward with Billy and Arthur trying not to stare as they drew closer, tucking themselves behind their mother like goslings sensing danger. He wondered what it was they were seeing. Mira was pale, surely that was all, and free on that occasion of anything too alarming in the way of canulas or drips or feeding tubes.
The balloons they brought were helium, a monkey and a Winnie-the-Pooh, and Mira sat grinning, propped against her Disney pillows, set alight at the sight of them bobbing. Katie leant over and kissed her gently on the forehead then embraced Julia, who looked brittle clasped to her bosom.
‘Here, you have the chair,’ Julia said, standing and hitching up her clownishly large trousers, ‘but we mustn’t let Mira get exhausted.’ She started pulling her hair back, severely winding the band round and round, making Julian think of snagged knitting. Katie frowned and took her place beside Mira’s bed. Julian was stiff still from his night on the hospital camp bed and needed more caffeine. He pushed his hands into the small of his back, wondering if he could escape for long enough to grab a coffee from the cafeteria downstairs. The boys edged along the bed and Julia busied herself tying the balloons to its frame. The nurses thoughtfully brought pink milkshakes with straws when it was time for Mira’s protein drink. Julian made up voices and a silly conversation between her stuffed toys and Mira’s laugh came easily. He stopped the bear mid-speech and stared at her. Her eyes shone huge, enough to break any heart. Enough that Katie cried.
‘This must be so hard for her,’ she whispered, turning her head, and at first he thought she meant Julia. ‘Have you any idea when they’ll let her come home?’
‘If they can keep her blood pressure down and the tests continue to go the right way it could be soon,’ he said. Please God.
Katie grabbed Billy to stop him bouncing on the bed. Julia perched, fiddling with her necklace.
‘Poor love.’ Katie allowed a slippery curtain of hair to fall across her eyes.
‘But Mira’s doing fine,’ Julia pulled a face to make Katie shut up. ‘She’s watching everything that goes on and she’s never alone because me or Julian sleep beside her every night.’ She reached for Julian’s hand and he pulled her close.
Mira led the way to the playroom. Her enthusiasm was painful to witness. He and Katie followed the others, Julian working hard to swallow.
‘Julia’s staying tonight and I’ll be off to my mum’s,’ he was saying. ‘Did you ever come to Michael’s house? In Barnes? No?’
Katie shook her head. At the sanitiser they stopped to squirt their hands.
The playroom was bright enough, light streaming through the windows along with the din of the streets. Low tables, baby-bear-sized chairs, felt tips in Tupperware boxes. Mira led the boys to the boxes with their primary-coloured lids. The wipe-clean toys were lined up on the shelves.
‘Michael and Mum talk all the time, and argue, like they always did.’ His hands mimed a pair of yabbering heads. ‘And her dogs are constantly doing terrible things to his lovely furniture. It’s a bit of a strain,’ he said, pulling out a miniature chair for Katie as Julia took to her knees, sorting through a crate of train set.
‘They never seem to grasp that I could use time alone.’ Catching himself whining to Katie like this made Julian realise how grumpy he’d become, how worn down.
‘I’m much better the nights I stay here,’ he said, plonking himself in his own tiny chair.
‘It must be awful for Jenna too,’ Katie said.
‘It’s tough for us all.’ He stooped to rescue a runaway train. He passed it to Julia, gave her shoulder a squeeze and for a moment she put her cheek to the back of his hand. ‘We haven’t had a night together since this started,’ he said. ‘And I’m stuck with my mother who jumps every time the phone rings. She’s right at my side:
Is it the consultant? What does he say?
Drives me nuts.’
‘Oh, poor Jenna,’ Katie said and Julia rocked back on her heels and snorted.
‘Mum is also very pissed off that Julia doesn’t stay in Barnes with her on the nights I’m here,’ he said.
‘Yeah, it’s intolerably selfish of me to want to be as close to my daughter as possible,’ Julia said, unsnapping some pieces of track. The children had grown tired of the trains and were climbing in and out of the Wendy house windows.
‘Oh, dear,’ Katie frowned. Julia started chucking carriages and bits of track into a box as Julian explained.
‘Julia’s got her room in Lamb’s Conduit Street, it’s just five minutes’ walk away.’
‘Oh, right, that’s where you’ve been staying in London . . .’ Katie said, turning to Julia, and Julian interrupted her: ‘Yeah, with my friend Karl’s dad, same as before. Three nights a week before any of this . . .’ and he waved his hands to include Mira, the whole hospital.
‘It’s a nuisance Firdaws being so far,’ Katie was rummaging for something to wipe Arthur’s nose.
‘It’s worked out well for Julia, and Karl’s dad is a lovely old fellow. I’d much rather camp there myself, but you can just imagine how much Mum would go for that.’ Julian sighed and tried to slump in his Lilliputian chair.
‘Actually, talking of Firdaws,’ Katie waved a triumphant tissue at Arthur, ‘my mum thought I should offer you some help in that department. What’s happening with the builders? I imagine there’s quite a bit to be done since they ripped out that awful kitchen.’
Julian ran his hands through his hair, making it stick up at the front. ‘I’ve not been able to get there . . .’ he said, and Julia stopped what she was doing and stiffened. ‘I, I need to at some point soon.’
Mira, he could see, was starting to tire. She was sitting in the doorway of the plastic house dreamily fiddling with a piece of ribbon. Shadows clung to the hollows of her face. Above her, dangling their rounded legs from the roof, Katie’s boys looked ruddy, indecently healthy.