For a long time, Natasha had avoided her sister's house. During her own miscarriages - only one of which her family knew about - she had found Jo's noisy home, with its finger paintings, chipped plaster and plastic toys, too strong a reminder of the babies she had lost. She had hated herself for not being stoic enough to overcome her envy of those three children, but it had been easier to pretend she was just too busy. Her family had called her driven, a workaholic, ever since she had applied to law school. She was the academic one, the achiever. When she explained that she was just too weighed down by work to attend family lunch, that she had this or that case to prepare for, she knew she would be missed with an indulgent comment, perhaps a certain wistfulness on her mother's part at her apparent failure to devote her energies to the more important things in life.
They had not dared mention her personal life since Mac had left. 'At least you've got your work,' they would say, on the few occasions that she did make it, comforting themselves with their belief that that was all she had ever really wanted anyway.
Jo was back some ten minutes later, chucking the apricot at the sink, then scraping her hair back into a ponytail. 'Desperate to get to the hairdresser,' she said. 'I had an appointment last week but Theo got the lurgy. I had to pay fifty per cent anyway - bloody cheek!'
She sat down, took a long, appreciative sip of white wine. 'Uh. Thanks for that. Bloody gorgeous. Right. I'm going to let the others stay up or I'll never get to talk to you.'
'And are you all right?' Natasha asked, suspecting her sister often thought her self-obsessed. Single, childless women of a certain age were. She heard it all the time. 'And David?'
'Nothing that two weeks in the Seychelles and some plastic surgery wouldn't fix. Oh, and sex. Can't remember what that was like.' She snorted. 'Anyway. You. You never bloody tell me anything. Spill.'
Her life had become this peculiar intense little bubble, Natasha realised. Here was normality. Her own life wasn't normal in the slightest. 'I only thought he'd be there for a couple of weeks,' she said. 'It wasn't worth telling.'
'I mean it, Tash. Move out. I'd offer you a room here but we'd drive you nuts in five minutes.' She had another swig of wine. 'You've got the money. Go and book yourself into a lovely spa hotel. Get a massage and a manicure every night after work. Take the cost off his share of the house. He's the one driving you out. The nerve of him.'
'I can't.' Natasha doodled with one of the children's crayons.
'You can. God - I'd jump at the chance. What heaven!'
'No, I can't.' She sighed, braced herself. 'Because I've sort of taken on responsibility for someone. A girl.'
Afterwards, Natasha felt vaguely regretful that she had seen so little of her sister in the last couple of years because, against all expectations, Jo's reaction to this news had been magnificent. She had got Natasha to repeat the story twice, and then, as Natasha explained, voice faltering with awkwardness, she had risen from her chair, walked around the table and hugged her younger sister very tightly, leaving floury marks on her dark suit. 'God, Tash. That's wonderful. What an utterly fantastic thing to do. I wish more people were like you. I think it's brilliant.' Jo sat down, her eyes shining. 'What's she like?'
'That's the thing. It's not how I thought it would be. She and I . . . we just don't seem to gel.'
'She's a teenager.'
'Yes. But she gets on with Mac.'
'Saddam Hussein would have got on with Mac. He's ninety-seven per cent flirt.'
'I have tried, Jo. We just seem to rub each other up the wrong way. It's not gone how I expected . . .'
Jo leant towards the door, perhaps checking that her children were not within earshot. 'I'll be honest with you. The moment Katrin was thirteen she turned into an utter cow. It was as if my sweet baby disappeared and this hormonal monster replaced her. She looks at me with such . . . disgust, like I'm physically repulsive. Everything I say gets on her nerves.'
'Katrin?'
'You've hardly seen her lately. Swears like a trooper. Answers back. Steals odd bits of money, although David pretends not to notice. Fibs about anything. She's a fully fledged member of the precocious-bitch club. I can say that because I'm her mother and I adore her. If it wasn't for the fact that I know the old Katrin's still in there, and have faith she'll re-emerge some day, I'd have chucked her out months ago.'
Natasha had never heard her sister talk in such unsentimental terms about her children. It made her wonder how much of motherhood she had chosen to block out, preferring instead to picture the hazy, rose-tinted version that she felt she'd been denied. It made her wonder if she'd been too hard on Sarah.
'It's not you. And it sounds like she's gone through all sorts. Just . . . be there for her.'
'I'm not like you. I can't do that stuff.'
'Bullshit. You're brilliant, all that work you do with disadvantaged children.'
'But they're clients. It's different. I'm struggling . . . And there's something else. I got turned over by a boy I represented. He made out he'd undergone this terrible journey, and later I found out he'd lied. Now I've lost faith in my ability to see whether I'm being taken for a ride.'
'You think she's taking you for a ride?'
'I don't feel I'm getting the full story.'
Jo shook her head. 'She's fourteen. There'll be all sorts of stories you're not getting, unrequited love, or bullying, or weight problems, or some little cow at school that won't be her friend any more. They don't tell us this stuff. They're frightened of being judged, or told off.' She laughed. 'Or, worse, that we'll charge in and try to sort it out.'
Natasha stared at her sister. How did she know all this?
'Look, I doubt she's deceiving you in any meaningful way. There's probably a frightened little soul in there who might be quite glad to open up to someone. Take her out for a meal, just you and her. No, not a meal.' She chewed at a fingernail. 'Too much pressure. Go and do something together. Something you like. Nothing too intense. You may find she relaxes a little.' She patted Natasha's arm. 'Go on. At the very least it'll take your mind off that git being in your house. And remember you're doing something wonderful just by having her in your home.'
'It's a small thing.'
'Doesn't make it any less wonderful. Right. Now let me get those two terrors up to bed.'
And Mac? she wanted to ask. How do I feel better about Mac? But her sister had disappeared.
The old man took the fork from Sarah with his better hand and put the slices of mango into his mouth slowly, with silent, intense satisfaction. Mac had bought a ready-prepared pack from the supermarket on the way over, and Sarah was spearing each small piece, then handing him the white plastic fork, allowing him the dignity of feeding himself.
Mac waited until they had finished, the Captain carefully wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, before he pulled out the folder. 'I've got something for you, Captain,' he said.
The old man turned his head towards him. He seemed perkier today, Mac thought, his responses more alert, his language a little less confused. He had demanded water twice, quite clearly, and said, 'Cherie,' when he had seen Sarah.
He pulled a chair to the other side of the bed, and opened it so that the contents were clearly visible. 'We've decided to decorate your room.'
Before the Captain could look bemused, he pulled out the first print, a black-and-white A4-sized blow-up of Sarah and her horse performing the stationary trot she called piaffe at the park. The old man peered at it, then turned towards his granddaughter. 'Good,' he said to Sarah.
'He did well that day,' she said. 'He was really listening to me. Really trying. Every movement . . .'
'Little act of beautiful,' he said carefully. Apparently overcome by this sudden rush of language, she crept on to the bed and slid over beside him. Her head lay against his pyjama-clad shoulder.
Mac, trying not to look, took out another. 'I think this one was . . .'
'Shoulder-in,' she said.
'Je ne peux pas voir,' the old
man said. He waited patiently while Sarah placed his glasses on his face, then gestured to Mac to move the print closer. Mac held up another beside it. The Captain nodded his approval.
'These are all for your room,' Mac said, and reached into his pocket for the Blu-Tack. He began to stick the pictures carefully around the bed, slowly obscuring the blank, pale green walls, which had been enlivened only by a 1980s watercolour print and a notice entreating visitors 'Please wash your hands'. A couple more he affixed to the end of the Captain's bed.
He watched carefully, gazing at each in turn as if he was drinking in every last detail. He would stare at them all day, Mac guessed.
When he had told Sarah what he was going to do, during the drive over here, she had examined the pictures in stunned silence. 'That okay?' Mac had said, worried by her lack of response. 'I didn't include any of the ones of you doing things you're not meant to do, the going-up-on-his-back-legs and stuff.'
She smiled at him, but it was a sad smile. 'Thank you,' she said. Her voice suggested she had not seen many unexpected acts of generosity, had expected even fewer.
'And I've saved the best until last.' Mac unwrapped the one he'd had framed. Even Sarah had not seen it. It was not expensive, just a lightweight wood frame and cardboard mount, but behind the polished glass, the photograph of the girl, her cheek pressed to that of her horse, was bright and clearly defined enough for the old man to make out every detail. It captured her vulnerability, the strangeness of a face that hadn't quite decided whether it was going to be beautiful, pressed in a kind of ethereal communion to the Stubbsian finesse of the horse's bone structure. The monochrome, the high resolution, gave the two faces dignity, mystery, which would have been absent in colour. It was one of his best works, Mac knew. He had known it almost as soon as he had taken it. When he had seen the finished print, his heart had skipped a beat.
'Baucher,' the Captain said, still staring at the picture. 'Sarah.' He pronounced it 'Sara'.
'I love that picture,' Mac said. 'It was just before we left the yard one morning last week. She didn't even know I was taking it. I love the way the light from Sarah's face moves on to the horse's. The way their eyes are both half closed, like they're somewhere else in their heads.'
The man at the gallery had thought so too. He wanted to show the work, he had told Mac. He loved it. A part of London that was disappearing, he said. Echoes of the Dublin horse children. But better. He had suggested a price for each work that made Mac's eyes widen.
'They may appear in an exhibition in the spring, if that's okay with you, but these copies are yours. I thought it would be nice for you to have something to look at . . .'
There was a long silence. Mac wasn't someone to whom uncertainty came often but now he felt its chill. It's too much, he thought. I'm simply reminding him of what he has lost. He's afraid I'm exploiting her. Who was he, anyway, to come in here like Lord Bountiful, taking over the old man's space, deciding what he should spend his days looking at? Was plastering his walls with these pictures - a world he could not enjoy - rubbing his nose in his immobility?
Mac took a pace towards the wall. 'I mean, if it's too much I can--'
The old man was gesturing to him, beckoning him closer. As Mac stooped, he took Mac's hand between his own and pressed it. His eyes were moist. 'Merci,' he whispered huskily. 'Merci, Monsieur.'
Mac swallowed hard. 'It's nothing,' he said, forcing a casual smile. 'I'll do you some more next week.'
It was only then that he noticed Sarah. Unusually, she had barely spoken all evening. She was still leaning against her grandfather, her hand wrapped tightly around his arm, as if she did not want to leave him again. Her eyes were tight shut and her face was tilted away. A solitary tear trickled down her cheek, illuminated by the strip lighting. She was a startling picture of misery.
She was such a self-contained girl, so practical, so obsessed with her horse, that sometimes Mac forgot how lost she must feel. How much she must miss the grandfather she had spent her childhood with. He felt awkward again and shoved the Blu-Tack back into his bag.
'Anyway,' he said, I'll meet you downstairs, Sarah, if that's okay. Fifteen minutes?'
He placed the framed picture on the bed and left the room, haunted by his last image of the old man, perplexed, his trembling hand lifting towards his granddaughter's hair, her face buried in his shoulder as she tried to hide her tears.
Fourteen
'I am far from saying that because an animal fails to perform all these parts to perfection, he must straightway be rejected, since many a horse will fall short at first, not from inability, but from want of experience.'
Xenophon, On Horsemanship
A few years previously, when Mac and Natasha had first moved into their street, the neighbourhood had been described, optimistically, as 'up and coming'. If that was so, she had thought at the time, it was some way from arriving. The street was characterised by a shabby uniformity. Three-quarters of the houses had not seen fresh paint in five, perhaps ten years. Outside, on a road with no yellow lines, defunct cars without wheels stood on bricks, while dented hatchbacks ferried young families to and from their chores.
The houses, their stucco Victorian frontages cracked and peeling, stood back from small front gardens, with perhaps an errant privet hedge, a motorbike covered with a tarpaulin or a few dustbins with ill-matched, collapsing lids. She often paused to chat to her neighbours, Mr Tomkins, the elderly West Indian painter, Mavis and her cats, the housing-association family with eight gap-toothed children. They had been companionable, commented on the weather, enquired what Mac was doing to the house now, whether she knew about the plans to introduce residents' parking, that a Buddhist centre had moved into the high street. As far as any road in the capital had a sense of community, this one did.
Now Mr Tomkins was gone, Mavis was long buried, and the housing association had sold off its interests, its tenants shipped to God only knew where. Now nearly all the houses were painted porcelain white, their cracks carefully filled, their front doors tasteful colours from Farrow and Ball. Topiary yew or bay trees flanked the front steps, and half of the little gardens had become smartly cobbled driveways, or were hemmed in by unfriendly glossy ironwork. Outside stood oversized 4x4s, glossy Mercedes estates. Stressed professionals nodded a brief greeting to each other as they hurried to and from the station, the size of their mortgages guaranteeing that there was little time for more.
It was an affluent street, throwing its remaining few long-term inhabitants into sharp relief, their peeling windows and net curtains like remnants of a former age.
Financially Natasha knew she had benefited from this process of gentrification, but in her gut she felt a deep unease at the polarisation of her world. It was now a street that mirrored its neighbours, little oases of aspirational middle-classness, ringed by estates that conspired to look darker, harder and more threatening, populated by people with fewer and fewer chances to escape.
The two worlds never collided now, unless it was through the criminal (the latest stolen car or burglary, a purse snatched at the mini-mart), the commercial (everyone had a cleaner, or a childminder, of course) or the structurally formalised (Natasha, representing a twelve-year-old whose alcoholic parents refused to take him home).
Natasha thought of this now as she drove into the Sandown estate, past the burnt-out cars and flickering street-lights. Sarah sat silently beside her, clutching her keys. She had not spoken since they left her grandfather's ward, and Natasha, still shocked by what she had seen, had not attempted to make her. Nothing had confirmed the magnitude, the foolhardiness of what they had taken on, more than the sight of the old man, his frail neck supported by pillows, his face sagging slightly on one side.
'He's getting there,' the stroke nurse had said cheerfully. 'We've come a long way, haven't we, Henry?'
'Henri,' Sarah had growled. 'It's pronounced Henri. He's French.'
The nurse had raised her eyebrows at Natasha as she walked out.
> 'How - how long do you think he'll have to be here?' Natasha had hurried after the woman while Sarah greeted her grandfather.
The nurse had looked at her as if she was a little backward. 'He's had a stroke,' she explained. 'It's a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string question.'
'But you must be able to give me some idea. Days? Weeks? Months? We're . . . looking after his granddaughter so it would be good to have some idea.'
The nurse glanced back. Sarah was tidying her grandfather's bedclothes, talking to him while he watched her steadily. 'You really need to speak to his consultant, but I can tell you it's definitely not days,' she said. 'And I wouldn't put money on weeks either. He suffered a severe stroke, and he still requires a lot of rehabilitation.'
'Is it something . . . a young person could manage? His care?'
The nurse pulled a face. 'Someone of her age? No. We wouldn't recommend it. It's way too much responsibility for a child. At the moment Mr Lachapelle still has hemiparesis - that's weakness - down one side. He needs help washing, getting on and off the lavatory. We've had a few problems with bedsores and his language isn't a hundred per cent. He's having physiotherapy twice a day. He can feed himself now, though.'
'Will he stay here?'
'We're a long-term unit. I don't think it would be appropriate to put him in a care home yet, not while he's still improving.' She checked her watch. 'I'm sorry, I have to go. But he is progressing. I think the pictures helped, funnily enough. Gave him something to focus on. We all like them.'
Natasha look back at the little side-room, at Mac's work all over the walls. This other Mac again, charming the nurses, helping the sick, even in his absence.
They pulled into the sprawling estate and drove to the Helmsley House car park. It had started to rain, and a few of the youths Natasha had seen the first time she had met Sarah were sheltering under hoodies, flicking matches at each other. They watched her get out of the battered Volvo, but were distracted when someone's phone rang.
'What is it you wanted to pick up again?' Natasha walked behind Sarah up the dank stairwell. The rain hissed around them, pouring through broken guttering, swirling into drains blocked by crisps packets and chewing-gum.