‘It’ll be in the fridge,’ Johnnie says. Suddenly he’s in the kitchen doorway. ‘You always keep it in the fridge.’
I put down my glass and swing the fridge door open. There it is, the top folded over and fixed tight with a peg. Sometimes I astonish myself, how organized I am.
Johnnie says, ‘Why don’t you go out more?’
This isn’t the kind of thing Johnnie and I talk about. I get busy measuring coffee into the coffee-maker.
‘I don’t like the traffic. This part of London’s a nightmare.’
‘You can walk to the park from here,’ he says.
I think of Anna. The park is a child’s place, and I don’t go there any more. I think of Anna when it was nearly dark, with her face shining out of her hood, on the swings, swooping up into the dark so I could hardly see her. Then back again, down, to the touch of my hands.
‘Push me harder,’ she said. She never yelled and screamed when the swing flew up, she wasn’t that sort of child. In the winter the park has a smell I can’t describe. And Anna’s skin, cold and sweet as fruit, not like our skin.
‘I don’t like the park,’ I say to Johnnie. ‘Tell me where you’re going.’
‘Abroad,’ he says.
‘You going to give me a bit more detail?’
He smiles. ‘You’re better off without it,’ he said.
‘In case Paul asks?’
‘In case anybody asks.’
‘Well, he is my husband. He’s entitied to know.’
‘Lulu, he’s married to Sonia.’
‘That’s a pack of cards.’
‘You mean a pack of lies.’
‘No, I don’t,’ I say. I know what I wanted to say. Paul and Sonia, they’ve bought this big stone house in Yorkshire, twice the size of our house in London. And they’ve got Anna there. But that doesn’t make it the truth about what’s happened between us all. ‘It’s a house of cards,’ I say. It’s the best I could do with the brandy swirling in my head. ‘You don’t know about marriage, Johnnie. You’ve never been married.’
‘I know about you and Paul,’ says Johnnie.
‘You know too much,’ I say quickly, sharply. Then I remember myself and turn straight to Johnnie. ‘You know I’m right, don’t you? He’s my husband. Anna’s our daughter. You’re my brother-in-law.’
‘Yeah,’ says Johnnie. He let the word out in a long, tired breath. ‘Yeah. Don’t have another drink, Lulu. I need you to stay here.’
‘I’m here.’ I sit down. ‘Listen, Johnnie, I went to see your mum last week.’
He looks so weary. I almost say to him, Don’t keep talking here. Go on in my bedroom, lie down and I’ll put the quilt over you. Have a little sleep. Don’t worry, I’ll still be here when you wake up.
I love daylight sleep. First of all there are the hours it eats, that you never have to live. Yet all the time you’re aware of time passing, and you hear the noises of outside like speeded-up music. Traffic thinning then thickening again, children on their way home from school, doors slamming. And even right in the middle of London the birds sing fiercely at dusk, so you know when to get up. I could keep Johnnie safe here, between my Egyptian cotton sheets, under my quilt, deep in the bedroom with the blinds drawn down and the inner door locked as well as the outer. But I know as well as he does that doors don’t mean anything, or locks either, if you’re really in trouble.
Johnnie’s eyes are almost closed. If you didn’t know him you might think he was completely relaxed. Then he says, ‘I’ve got debts.’
‘What sort of debts?’
‘The kind I can’t pay.’
‘How much?’
He shrugs, as if he doesn’t know. I’m thinking fast, about my bank account and what’s in it now I’ve sent the grand to Anna. About the flat and what it’s worth.
‘You ought to tell Paul,’ I say.
‘No.’
‘He’d help you.’
‘I’ve had enough of his money. That’s why I’m going away.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
He opens his eyes a little, gives me a cat-like, squeezed smile. ‘It’s not just the money anyway. There’s other stuff.’
There always is, I think, but I don’t say it. I think of the way knives cut and the flesh doesn’t seem to notice it for a moment, then all at once the blood wells up. I must have been mad, thinking I could let some man cut me. I feel sick at the thought of it now. I want the results without the pain. I’m a bit like Johnnie, that’s my problem.
‘How was Mum?’ asks Johnnie.
‘There’s a new nurse she likes. We didn’t talk much, we just sat. That’s what she prefers.’
We sat in the conservatory. The people who run the home are wonderful with plants. There was gardenia, and big troughs of hyacinths. It smelled like heaven. I was a bit worried about Maureen because she doesn’t like certain flowers. They upset her. It’s as if, with some of her senses going, others have developed until they are sharp as razors. But she was smiling and her hands lay quite still and loose in her lap. I hate it when she washes her hands, over and over, as if the job’s never done. And then she reached out and covered my hand with hers, as if she knew me. As if she hadn’t forgotten anything.
‘She was all right,’ I say. He doesn’t go and see her, but he likes to hear about her. ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’m going to make you something to eat before you go.’
Twenty
I send Johnnie out to the French bakery on the corner, for some bread. I want to keep him here for a bit longer, but when I look out from the window and see him walking away down the street, I’m suddenly sure he won’t come back. The back of his head looks so final, like an extra in a film, pushing forward through a crowd.
Now the street is empty. I pull up the lower sash window, and lean out. There are white patches on the trunks of the plane trees opposite, where the bark’s peeled off. They’re clever trees. All the poison goes into the bark, then they get rid of it and grow a new skin. There’d be no need for plastic surgeons, if we could do that. I look up at the London-coloured sky. Then a car goes by, a new black Saab.
That was Johnnie’s car. A black Saab, turbo. When Anna was a baby he used to come and take us out for the day in it. Johnnie had time on his hands, and we never saw Paul from seven in the morning to seven at night. If then.
One day we went to the sea. It was grey and quiet, the kind of day that seems like nothing when you look at it from inside a house, but it’s beautiful once you are out in it. The beach was pebbly and I sat Anna up on a rug and let her put stones in her bucket, then take them out again. She didn’t try to put them in her mouth: she was always good like that. Then I lay back and the whiteness of the sky felt like sun on my eyelids, even though the sun never came out all day. Lying like that, low down, it was warm. I could feel myself falling into sleep. I was always ready for sleep, because Anna still woke at night. I felt Johnnie’s shadow swoop down and block the light, then he said, ‘I’ll take her for a walk.’
He slung her up on his shoulders and she twisted her hands into his hair and held on tight. She loved it. Anna was a serious little baby, but she was laughing up there on Johnnie’s shoulders. I squinted and watched them walk off, Johnnie loping along to make her bump up and down and laugh more. He was going to show her the sea. She hadn’t seen it before. I closed my eyes and I could hear them through the distant noise of water: Anna’s voice cheeping, Johnnie’s deep. He sounded young too, like her. Sometimes I forgot with Johnnie how young he was. I must have fallen asleep, because when I next looked up there they were beside me, Anna bolt upright with the straight back babies have, eating an ice cream, and Johnnie smiling. I was surprised at myself, falling asleep when Anna was with someone else. I hadn’t been worried for a second, and I was always worried over Anna, even when she was with Paul. It felt as if they were both my children, and I loved them just the same.
Then we went back. Johnnie hadn’t had the car long, and it was too powerful for him. We drov
e fast, but I didn’t mind that. Anna was asleep in her seat in the back. We went past a harbourside pub that backed on to the water, and Johnnie said we ought to stop for a drink. I didn’t want to disturb Anna so he brought the drinks out and we stood by the car, watching the water. It was nearly dark, not quite. He wanted to get another but I said no, we ought to get back. I was worried in case Paul came home and we weren’t there. I think Johnnie must have been angry about that, though he didn’t say anything. We got back in the car, and he turned the lights on and all at once it was night, with the lights of the harbour behind us and the pub ahead. It wasn’t a real car-park, just the quayside, with no barrier between us and the water. But we weren’t parked right by the edge. I was relieved, though I didn’t say anything. We were about ten yards from the edge of the quay. Johnnie revved the engine. He looked at me. I thought it was one of those ‘We’re off again’ looks, so I smiled, and then he smiled back. And that was it. Nothing. No reason.
Johnnie put the car into reverse and pushed his foot down on the accelerator. I didn’t see what he was doing but I saw the way the other cars shot away forward instead of backward like they should have done. I was thrown back in the seat. I saw the lights as if they were being sucked past me. I was too frightened to scream. And then he stamped his foot on the brake. The car was big, it was heavy, it was powerful. Even so I could see what might happen, what would surely have happened with any lighter car. I could see it slewing round, the wheels losing the quayside, the body of the car grappling then falling and all of us with it, sliding down deep under the water and into the harbour mud that never lets go.
It didn’t happen. The car stopped. Johnnie stopped. He put on the hand-brake and turned off the engine. But I wasn’t looking at him. I was twisted round, reaching for Anna. She’d woken, and I could see her eyes shining even though there wasn’t much light. Her face was clear, not frightened, not crying. I was halfway over the seat and grabbing at the release catch. I had her out of her seat and clutched to me and I was out of the car in one movement.
The back wheels were a few inches from the edge of the quay. What I thought was, Why didn’t they put something there? It was as if I was afraid to blame Johnnie, or really believe that he could have taken such a risk, with Anna in the car. I held Anna tight and I looked down into the water. It was rocking, so you saw the tremor of light on top of it. You couldn’t see past the surface. The water looked as if it was calming itself.
I thought if I could look down far enough, if I could see inside the water, I’d see myself. I’d be looking up, but the weight of water would press me down. If it wasn’t for those few inches of quay behind the wheels, that’s where we’d be. I couldn’t feel Anna, even though she was in my arms. I was shivering. It had so nearly happened, and I couldn’t shake off the feeling that the fall we’d nearly fallen was the truth. I could feel the plunge and the cold water closing round us. Somewhere under the water there was the car, and Anna’s car seat with the straps swaying like weed.
There are some moments when you know more than you can understand. You could call it a vision. In the vision I saw Anna, but she wasn’t with me any more. She was somewhere else, somewhere safer, without me.
Johnnie had got out of the car too. He looked at me, his face blank and bright in the neon. I said, ‘Get the car back on the road, Johnnie, and we’ll go home.’
We drove home, Anna sleeping, Johnnie silent. I think he was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t. I wanted to be home with Anna in her cot, and me in a deep bath, washing the day off. But I knew it wouldn’t come off. I was stained by it, and Johnnie too. All the things we hadn’t said, and all the silent lies we’d told, to Paul and to ourselves. And to Anna too. I thought of her face all the way home. She would have kept on believing in me even as we all went down into the water together.
I’m still at the window, playing that day through in my head, when I see Johnnie coming back with the bread tucked under his arm. He doesn’t know I’m watching. He stops under one of the plane trees, takes his mobile out of his pocket, gets a number. His face is tight and frowning. He waits, but nobody answers. He stares down at the phone for a long moment, then pushes it back into his pocket.
I cut the bread, and lay the cheeses out. Johnnie’s looking over my shoulder, and he can’t believe how empty my fridge is. It always used to be packed with everything he liked. I used to make fresh vegetable and fruit purées for the baby, and my own tomato sauce. The cheeses are a bit old, but they still look all right. Sometimes it gets to about six o’clock and I can’t remember if I’ve eaten anything all day, or not. I don’t get hungry.
I pour us gin-and-tonics. I wish I had some lemon, but I’m no good with lemons. I forget about them, and they go dead on me in the fruit-bowl.
‘Nice gin,’ Johnnie says, putting down his empty glass. I pour some more and it goes flashing down the side of his glass. He hasn’t touched his food.
‘You should eat, with a journey in front of you,’ I say.
‘I’ll eat on the boat,’ he says, absently, as if he doesn’t know what he is saying.
‘Where’s the boat going?’ I ask.
He smiles at me, a You think you’ve caught me out, don’t you? smile.
‘I haven’t made my mind up yet,’ he says. ‘I might go to Denmark.’ I can’t think why he’d be going there. Well, I can. There’ve been enough boats in the past, with Johnnie. ‘Don’t look like that. It’s a ferry,’ he says. ‘We sail from Harwich tomorrow morning.’
‘They used to go from Tilbury,’ I say, remembering.
‘That’s all finished.’
‘I liked Tilbury.’
I did, too. My dad used to take me down there, to show me the river. We watched the boats going out, slipping out on a cold, greasy November day, in the fag-end of the afternoon. The river’s wide there, and strong, and brown. It’s rucked up with currents like a dress a girl’s worn all night, and come home in.
I stood with Dad and watched the tide turn. He told me it went out past Sheerness and Shoeburyness, past Sheppey and Canvey and the Isle of Grain. I used to listen to him with half my mind while I watched rubbish and orange boxes spinning round on the current.
‘That’s on its way out to sea,’ he said. ‘It’ll get smashed up in the shipping lanes.’
I looked down and there was weed and polystyrene and rags of plastic bobbing in the water. It went in and out, in and out, but never far enough out. Like breathing. Like what Paul told me about his dad breathing. It would never escape. There was mud under the wall and it looked velvety soft, but it stank.
Dad said that was how he found our terrier bitch. He saw her swimming downstream, a little bitch miles from home, paddling hard. She was snapping at the current as if she thought she was in a fight. She wasn’t ours then, of course. Dad knew someone who kept a boat down there, and he got the engine going and brought our terrier back. Bloody silly thing to do with the tide on the turn, he told me, to make sure I’d never do anything like it. I wasn’t with him when he found our terrier, and I always wished I had been. He got her into the boat. She was still snapping at him but when he laid her down on the planks at the bottom she seemed to know that he wasn’t going to hurt her. She shivered and shivered, until he got her back in to land and rubbed her dry on a bit of sacking.
When he got her cleaned up she was a nice little bitch. Nice nature, too. She never snapped at us in all the years we had her. Most likely someone had chucked her in. It was the way she was swimming that got him, as if she thought any minute she’d find a grassy bank and scramble up and dry herself and go off home again. She had no idea that someone had dumped her in the dirty old Thames, hoping she’d be dragged out to sea with the rest of the junk nobody wanted, and drowned. I like to think of my dad going after her. Mum said it was stupid and irresponsible: it was the only time I heard her shout at him. You might have been killed, and then what would I have done? It isn’t just your life you have to consider, it’s mine and Louis
e’s.
I used to watch the cranes poking into the sky, and the sun hiding in the fog, and wonder if we’d ever find another dog to be a companion for Sheppey, but we never did.
Isle of Sheppey, Canvey, Isle of Grain. I can hear Dad’s voice now, saying the names. He told me how big the river looks when you’re out in the middle of it, and about the pilots who guide the big ships down the river. He said the mudbanks and sandbanks and currents changed all the time. Look at the strength of that current, fighting the tide.
‘You won’t stay there long,’ I say to Johnnie. ‘In Denmark.’ I pour us another gin. Gin is the most beautiful thing to watch when it’s flowing. It’s like water, only more alive.
‘I’m not coming back,’ he says.
I feel as if he’s dropped something in my lap, heavy as a gun wrapped in grease and newspaper. I believe him as soon as he says the words, even though I don’t know what’s behind them. And I’m terribly afraid. I know I’ve got to keep him here, but I can’t think fast enough. Even to me, my voice sounds slurred as I say, ‘You mustn’t do that.’
‘I’ve got to.’
‘Is someone looking for you?’
Johnnie stands up, swirls his drink in a circle round his glass. He’s working out how to tell me about a tenth of what there is to know. I don’t want to hear it. Being told lies makes me tired, and anyway it’s a waste of time when the important thing is to stop Johnnie going off. I know enough about how certain people behave when you owe them money not to need any further information. I wish I hadn’t had the second gin.
‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’ve got an idea. ‘I’ll go with you.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘Why not? Course I can. I haven’t got anything to keep me here, have I?’
He looks at me, the thoughts clicking up fast.
‘I’ve got some money,’ I add. ‘Not a lot, but I can get hold of five thousand. That ought to take us somewhere worth going.’