Alice inspected her fingernails. She blew out an impatient sigh. She flattened the tips of her hair and sighed again. She cast her eyes over the room. ‘Alan?’ she asked. ‘Is that a new crack?’
‘What?’ He was too busy to look.
‘Behind you. Where you knocked through to build the conservatory.’
‘Of course not. If you could just hold this piece – whoa now, gently – Alice? Alice? What are you doing? Why aren’t you helping me? Where are you going?’
The clock chimed nine.
Alice stood with her face to the wall. She was right about the new crack. It reached – now she examined it – from the picture rail at the top, down to the floor tiles. It hadn’t been there before. She’d have noticed when she was vacuuming. There was definitely a hairline split in the plaster just at the point where the outer panel of the conservatory met the external brickwork of the house. She pressed her cheeks against it. It felt strangely soothing, like a cold hand. She could even hear something – what was it? – a small sad sigh, as if something was travelling towards her from very far away.
‘Alice!’ called Alan. ‘Alice! Spanner!’
‘Get it yourself!’
Alice gave a start. She never snapped. And she’d worked so hard over the years to lose her estuary vowels, but here they were all over again. She had barely voiced those consonants.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Alan.
‘I’m TireD,’ she said carefully (sounding more like Alice). ‘I’m TireD of passing things. I wanT to helP.’
‘There was no need to be rude,’ said Alan (sounding exactly like himself). ‘You wouldn’t have spoken to me like that at the student union. The night we first met.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t you remember?’
Alice squinted at the crack in the wall. She could have sworn it gave a shiver. ‘I was drunk.’
‘Drunk? You? I don’t think so …’
‘Yup. Completely trolleyed.’
‘Alice?’
‘Pissed as a fart. Smashed.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Alan laughed again, but it no longer sounded like happy laughter. ‘You weren’t drunk. It was love at first sight. You saw me and you ran into my arms. “My, you’re great,” you said. Come on, Alice – you know this story. You had that funny accent I could never understand. Remember?’
A dart of cold air shot from the crack in the wall straight to Alice’s mouth. ‘Mind your feet, I said! I was trying to get to the loo! Mind your honking great, winkle-pickered, who-do-you-think-you’re-kidding feet! You were standing in my way! Even in our wedding photographs you were standing in my way! Not to mention when you finally got me to the hospital and the midwife yelled at me to push!’ Alice slammed her hands to her mouth.
Alan was staring up at her from the floor and he wasn’t laughing, happily or otherwise. ‘What did you just say?’ He sounded winded.
Alice fumbled behind her for the settee and lowered herself on to it. Her knee joints felt weak and her cheeks were aflame. What had happened to her mouth? She reached for a tiny thing that looked as if it might fit on to another tiny thing, if she just pressed them together, very slowly and deliberately. ‘I’ll work on this bit, shall I?’
‘But that’s our story,’ said Alan. ‘We’ve always talked about how we met at the student union. How you ran into my arms and it was love at first sight.’ He picked up a screwdriver. ‘Though now you mention it, it’s only fair to add I had my eye on someone else.’
‘You?’ she said, in a disbelieving way that he didn’t quite like. ‘Who?’
‘A young lady called Linda Spiers.’
‘Linda Spiers? Not the Linda Spiers? She had breasts the size of my head.’
‘She found me very entertaining.’
‘Well, well,’ Alice said tightly. ‘I had no idea.’ She placed the tiny thing inside a pair of pliers and tried to wedge the pliers between her knees. They jumped out and bit her fingers. ‘Oh,’ she cried, dropping everything, ‘this stupid thing won’t go on to this stupid thing.’
‘That is because they don’t, Alice. They are both washers. So hang on, what are we saying here?’
‘I don’t know.’
If only the kit was not so complicated. If only the instructions made some sense. If only they’d bought a bike from a shop, all grown-up and ready-made. She wasn’t even sure Will wanted a bike, not really. Who knew what he wanted? As a little boy he had been so happy, so inquisitive. He had followed her everywhere, constantly chattering. These days she was lucky if she got so much as a hello. It was like talking to a person who was not there.
She suspected he was being bullied at school. She watched him walk up the garden path every afternoon, his head so low it looked too heavy for his shoulders, and she felt pulled apart. Only a few weeks ago she’d had a meeting with his head of year, Miss King, a cherry-faced woman, possibly because she was zipped to the chin in a brand-new puffy skiing jacket. Alice had explained all about Will’s silence, his frequent headaches, how he wasn’t himself any more. Miss King had listened carefully and then she had asked such terrible questions Alice had felt ill; she had actually felt assaulted. ‘I think Will is going through a period of adjustment,’ Miss King had finally said. And she had given Alice a steady, meaningful look that implied … what?
Alice had no idea. She’d fled before she could work it out.
But that was not the point. Alan was still talking. He was still going over the night when they first met. ‘It seems to me that what we’re saying is that contrary to the story we have always told, it was not love at first sight. Our meeting was, in fact, a very ordinary accident. Alice?’
She abandoned the washers. Instead she arranged nuts and bolts across the carpet in order of size. Small ones; very small ones; tiny ones; teeny-weeny ones.
‘I’d like to know the truth,’ said Alan.
‘Can we just finish this thing?’ said Alice.
Something in the conservatory gave a snap.
Alan prowled with his torch through the green-lit shrubbery. He had an uneasy feeling, as if the ground had suddenly been swished away beneath his feet. He inspected the patio, and then slowly swung the beam of his torch across the conservatory. The room was empty, save for the flashing Christmas tree and the hundreds of pieces and the very large box. There was no sign of structural disturbance. Everything was intact. And reaching forward to touch the cool white plastic-covered frame, Alan too felt solid again.
If only the weather would do something. You couldn’t say it was warm, but it wasn’t cold either. It was nothing. Colourless skies all day that threatened rain but never brought it, that just hung around loutishly, and low dark cloud at night that sat between the land and the sky like a piece of wadding. All along the avenue the houses pulsed with Christmas lights. No wonder people decorated everything they could lay their hands on with sparkles and baubles like shiny fruit; how else to get through the endless days of dark and cloud? But the truth was that sometimes, very occasionally, Alan had a queasy feeling about Christmas, as if it was just about adding way too many things so that one could enjoy the relief of removing them all again, come January.
He touched the conservatory walls one more time. No, Alice was wrong. There was no crack.
Glancing up, Alan was startled to catch a small face peering out from Will’s bedroom window. It looked the loneliest thing. Despite the mild night, Alan shivered and pulled his jacket close. And then the face was gone.
‘The noise stopped,’ called Alice. ‘The windows gave a brief rattle and that was the end of it. I suppose it was a bird.’
‘Probably,’ said Alan. He placed his shoes back on the rack and padded through to the conservatory.
Alice was kneeling on the floor amidst the mess of nuts and bolts, engrossed in trying to screw one piece on to another. Her make-up bag was open beside her; she’d applied a new layer of face powder to her red-hot cheeks but they still glowed. One of her straightened sections of hair had also spru
ng into a zig-zag of curls, right at the back where she couldn’t see. He felt a tug of tenderness.
She said, ‘I went upstairs to check on Will.’
‘Was he all right?’
‘Fast asleep.’
The clock chimed ten.
Alan crouched on the floor beside Alice. He had a childlike longing to take hold of her hand – he knew it so well, after all, he had seen the skin grow older, he had seen it begin to slacken and crease, but at that moment he felt he knew and loved her hand more than he had ever loved it. Instead he reached for a titanium bolt and screwed it diligently to a plate.
She said into the stillness, ‘I don’t know what came over me, Alan. All that nonsense about the night we met. I think it’s this kit. All these pieces and no instructions. Of course I was attracted to you.’
‘It was the same for me. Linda Spiers had nothing on you.’
Now they laughed, familiar easy laughter that felt like sitting in comfy chairs.
‘Shall I pass you something, Alan?’
‘You don’t need to pass me anything, Alice.’
‘Oh, I like passing you things.’
‘You could pass me the flat-head screwdriver. If you wanted to.’
‘I would love that.’ She fetched him another wrench, but he didn’t say anything, he just smiled.
‘We have so many stories, Alice. What about the time I surprised you with the fitted kitchen?’
‘Oh,’ she said, remembering and laughing. ‘Now that was a story.’
For several minutes they worked in silence. He knew she must be thinking about the fitted kitchen because every now and then she gave a small, breathy laugh and shook her head. Then she said, ‘Would you mind passing me the slanted tweezers?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘From my make-up bag. I can’t get a grip with these pointed ones.’
Alan turned. ‘Exactly what tools are you using?’
‘While you were outside, I realized your tools are too big for my hands. That was the problem. So I fetched my make-up bag and – ta da – I have made a pedal.’ She held up something that looked like a mangled plate.
‘And where exactly on the instructions does it show you how to make a pedal?’
‘It doesn’t. It doesn’t say anything, if you remember. We are building a bicycle with no idea how it is supposed to fit together. The only instructions we have seem to be written in scribble. So I have put this bit on this bit, and voilà.’
‘But they don’t fit together. They have only fitted together because you have rammed one into the other with a make-up brush.’
‘Heated tongs.’
‘For crying out loud!’
Alice threw down her pedal and returned to the wall. She could have sworn the crack gave a hiss. ‘For your information, this has got worse,’ she said.
Alan shook his head. ‘It’s just the plaster,’ he said. ‘All buildings move. It’s because we’ve had no rain.’
If Alice put her eye to it, she could actually see inside the crack. It was dark and deep. She worked her fingernail into the widest point. Dust as soft as cornflour and tiny grit stones crumbled free. Alice felt that bitter shot of sleety air again. ‘And anyway, I may not be any good at DIY, but at least I’ve never forgotten to buy you a Christmas present.’
The sentence hit Alan like a slap. ‘Alice, that was fourteen years ago. It’s water under the bridge. I gave you the fitted kitchen as a surprise. We were only just talking about that. You said it was the best Christmas present ever.’
‘I was being kind. I wanted perfume. Nice underwear. Normal things. Not granite worktops. Not saloon doors. I don’t even like cooking.’
‘You cook all the time.’
‘That doesn’t mean I like it. I’m a slave to the kitchen—’
‘What you are forgetting is that you were extremely depressed fourteen years ago. It wasn’t easy.’
‘Are you saying it was my fault you forgot to buy me a Christmas present?’ Oh no, she was shouting again.
Alan snatched up a cable luber and tried to find something with which to match it. No sign, of course, of any cable. He glanced at Alice slumped against the wall, all pink, another section of her hair spriggy with curls. There was a crack, he could see that now, but she was only making matters worse by sticking her fingers inside it. He felt a twist of anger as if someone had pinched his bowels. He reached for the hammer and several nails.
‘What I should have said – bang – what I wanted to say – was, One: Buck up your ideas! Two: Get a job if you’re so lonely! Bang. You haven’t worked since you got a degree! Three: Have you any idea what it’s like to come home every night to a self-appointed martyr to domestic appliances? Bang. Four: For your information, you cannot cook! I have spent years – bang – years! with fish bones stuck between my teeth and chewing on gristle and burning with indigestion! You undercook meat! You overcook vegetables! Your puddings are enough to give a man a heart attack! I didn’t forget your present that year. I just couldn’t be bothered to think of one!’
Alice felt made of air. Even as she heard the words, she thought she was mishearing. He couldn’t really be saying those things, could he? She reached for the wall and instead found the crack again. She dug her fingers right inside the crevice and felt the cold. It shifted and stretched, as if something were trying to get out. If she didn’t hold on tight, she was certain she would slither to the floor.
‘Is that really true?’ she asked.
Alan huffed and huffed again.
‘Could you really not be bothered to buy me a present?’ Her chin trembled and she took deep breaths so she wouldn’t cry, but in the patchy silence that followed, something else happened instead. Anger. Where was it coming from? It filled her like shards of ice, as if her arms and head and feet were all freezing up and turning to glass. ‘I wanted a baby!’
‘Alice, calm down,’ said Alan.
‘Don’t tell me to calm down!’ said Alice.
‘It wasn’t my fault you couldn’t conceive.’
‘Oh, ha ha ha!’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
Alice had no idea. But at that moment she was so angry she couldn’t think. ‘I should have gone,’ she spat. ‘I should have gone the day I packed my suitcase.’
‘You packed a suitcase? When?’ Alan wasn’t so much screwing things together any more as wedging them into blocks and chucking them aside.
‘On our tenth wedding anniversary.’
‘You packed a suitcase on our tenth wedding anniversary? But that was the year before you had Will—’
‘I know!’ Her pulse was thudding so hard she felt light-headed, she almost couldn’t keep up with it, but there was an awful pleasure too, a kind of relief – almost hot it was so cold – in speaking the words. ‘I wanted to leave you.’
The silence was broken only by the clanking of a hammer.
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘I got a cold.’
Alan’s throat tightened. He could barely swallow. He was about to shout, he would have shouted, but instead the polycarbonate roof panels above their heads gave a long creaking moan like a wooden ship at sea. Their eyes shot upwards. And then their heads swivelled left and right as all around them the silicone joins hissed and the glass walls rattled. The crack in the wall stretched as if yawning.
‘Keep calm,’ shouted Alan, leaping to his feet. He held out his arms, warning everything to stay in place.
‘Calm?’ shrieked Alice. ‘Calm? The conservatory’s falling down! I’m going to check on Will.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
She turned. Her face was red as a panic button. ‘You’re the one who built it! You stay here and sort out this mess!’ Alice kicked off her mule slippers and fled towards the stairs.
Everything was exactly as usual on the first-floor landing. Not one sign of disturbance. You could be up here and have no clue about the mayhem below. Lamps shone a buttery yellow over the flow
ered wallpaper. Will’s Christmas stocking hung from the handle of his closed door. Alice knocked quietly. More a tap, tap than a knock. She eased the door open, just a few inches.
Will lay fast asleep, tucked on one side, his head clasped between his hands.
Everything was so much easier when he was asleep. It was the only time these days when she truly stopped worrying.
Alice crept past his bed to the window and parted the curtain. She could see right down into the conservatory. Alan was back on the floor, screwing pieces together like a madman, his hair sticking out in tufty patches. All around him the garden glowed lime-cordial green.
Perhaps it was because she was looking down on Alan or perhaps it was to do with the strange night, but set there against the darkness, a middle-aged man in a glass conservatory – even if he was backlit by his own green shrubbery – seemed such a small thing. Everything did. Everything seemed so small and fragile, as if it were made of wet tissue paper and might disintegrate at any moment. Fleetingly Alice pictured the young woman she had once been, who reeked of rose oil and was going to travel the world with a rucksack. She remembered Binny, the girl she had followed everywhere, the way they would lie on the grass and laugh for hours, smoking Binny’s mother’s Sobranie cocktail cigarettes. And now look at me, she thought. I’m half of something, but I am not a whole. If we met, Binny and I, she wouldn’t even know me.
Alice had other friends, of course. But how did you say to them, those friends, those women she’d passed on the avenue with pushchairs and bags of shopping, those women she’d helped when washing machines packed up or sugar ran out, how did you say, I think my marriage might be – what? What was the word for what her marriage had become? Not over. Not that. But what?
Different.
Not the thing she had expected when she started.
And then how did you say to your friends, I think my son might be – what? What might he be? She remembered the way Miss King had spoken to her at the school. The questions she’d asked. Was Will happy at home? Were there difficulties? Was everything in his parents’ relationship as it should be? Of course he was happy at home! It was school that was the problem! Will was very happy at school, the infuriating Miss King had replied. He was always laughing. Always the centre of things. Everyone adored him. ‘But sometimes we don’t see what is under our noses,’ Miss King had observed, not looking at Alice, but straightening the zipper on her jacket. ‘I think Will is going through a period of adjustment.’