Dorothy answered. ‘Hello?’
Gordon stood there, poised. He could climb the stairs or descend them. Now or never; he had the choice. Behind him, plastic sheeting flapped in the empty window-frame.
He said: ‘Never guess who I bumped into. This bloke Graham, same regiment as me – you know, up at Nottingham.’ Behind him the plastic slapped as if it were trying to attract his attention. ‘So he’s in London for the night and he said why don’t him and me go out for a drink, maybe a bite to eat. That okay?’
Dorothy said that was fine. He switched off the phone and went downstairs to his car.
April was working the day shift that week. At six-thirty she left the Cardiac Unit, buttoning up her coat. She stepped out of the hospital lobby and paused, looking up at the sky. She wound a red scarf around her neck.
Gordon drove up to her, stopped the car and opened the door. She looked at him. Wordlessly she climbed in. He drove her home to Brixton. Still they didn’t speak. They climbed the stairs to her flat – she picked up her mail on the way – and went into the bedroom. She switched on the light and sat on the bed.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she said.
He nodded. She sloughed off her coat. She raised her arms like a child and he pulled off her sweater. Beneath it she wore her uniform. He undid the buttons at her neck. She unbuckled her belt. One by one the letters slid off the bed. She sat there, gazing at them scattered on the carpet.
She raised her head and frowned, searching his face. He put his arms around her and pulled her to him.
Four
IT WAS MID-DECEMBER, four weeks since Prudence had seen Stephen or heard his voice. Her weak, vacillating lover had finally taken a decision and stuck with it. At times she could admire him for this. If his pain at their separation – amputation seemed a better description – were anything like hers, then he was demonstrating a remarkable strength of character. On the other hand, she presumed that it was easier for him: he had returned to a wife and children whom he loved, and whom he had never left in the first place. Maybe – horrible thought – he was forgetting her. The water of his family life had risen up and closed over the past. She was starting to realise that she, too, must get on with her life without him. She must stop these one-way conversations with him that still carried on in her head. Can you believe what Alan said to me in the marketing meeting? What do you think about this Princess Di business? She longed to know if he had found another job but there was nobody she could ask. His removal, not only from her life but from Beveridge and Bunyan, meant that he had disappeared from the lives of the few remaining colleagues at the office with whom he had been close. She hadn’t met any of his other friends, she had been kept secret, so she couldn’t keep track of him through them. She had been cut off from him as if he had died.
She had told her sisters what had happened – reluctantly, in the case of Maddy, because she knew that Maddy had never liked Stephen and though her sister wasn’t the type to say I told you so, she wasn’t a crowing sort of person, the confirmation of her suspicions about Stephen, that he was simply a philanderer, seemed crudely simplistic and caused Prudence to rush to his defence and say that it was she herself who had broken it off. ‘He only honoured my decision,’ she had said. Maddy sometimes made her talk pompously.
She tried to get on with her life. Britain was full of women like herself, tender episodes in the lives of men who had returned to their families. Oh, but she missed him! The day of the party she put on the black slip she had bought for their night of pleasure. She stood in the bedroom, stroking her silky flanks. She remembered how that night had ended: not with love, but with a dash to hospital to sit beside her father’s bed in Intensive Care. Later, this had struck her as a premonition.
Maddy didn’t like parties. Who are all these people? she would think. What are they doing here? What was she doing here? What was the point of standing there, wearing shoes that hurt, being shouted at by somebody who didn’t have the slightest interest in her and whom she couldn’t hear anyway? They laughed uproariously at jokes whose punchline she couldn’t catch. They looked over her shoulder. Years of living abroad had set her apart from English people, whose preoccupations seemed parochial. Sometimes they politely asked her about herself but they had never heard of the places she had been, and even if they had they soon got bored anyway. She felt inadequate and yet prickly. She wanted to go home. She never felt that she was wearing the right clothes and the cigarette smoke made her eyes water. Besides, there was only so much orange juice she could get down before she started to feel sick.
So it was with some reluctance that she accompanied Erin to the editorial department party at Unimedia House. She went simply because Erin suggested it and she was so pleased to be asked that she agreed. She was also mildly curious to see where her sister worked. Maddy was no book-reader, she had little knowledge of Prudence’s job. In fact, she realised with shame, she had only once visited the old premises in Bloomsbury. But now she was in love with a novelist she found herself drawn to the place, as a woman who has fallen in love with an Arsenal supporter suddenly wants to go to a football match. However, when she arrived at the building – a huge, modern place – she felt chastened that it was her love for Erin rather than for her sister which had prompted her to come.
How impressive Prudence was! She wore an unfamiliar black dress – almost slinky, in fact – with gold stuff around the neck. She was the hostess, smiling and confident, a Prudence that Maddy had never seen. Maddy’s heart swelled with pride. Her sister, in charge of all these people! Fifty of them, at least. They looked intimidating. Prudence climbed onto a platform and tapped her glass for silence. Maddy, just for a moment, wished that her parents were here. In some sense Erin had been right: she had always felt intellectually inferior to her sister. But Erin was an only child; she had no understanding of sisterly love, the thickness of its brew and the complex feelings that rose to the surface when it was stirred.
‘Welcome, everybody, to our Christmas party!’ Prudence’s voice rang out, clear and confident. Like all good professionals, she looked as if she were enjoying herself. ‘It’s been a year of upheaval and change – new premises, new owners. B&B has been dragged, somewhat protestingly, into the brave new world of publishing but I’m thrilled to be leading our editorial team and, with Unimedia back-up, we’ve had our most successful Frankfurt ever . . .’
Next to Maddy, people stirred. She turned. A bearded man stood at the back of the room, swaying. He wore a raincoat; he must have just come through the door. Even at this distance Maddy could see that he was drunk.
‘And we have a marvellous spring list,’ said Prudence. ‘Some of our favourite writers are here tonight – Corey Deacon, author of I Can’t Get Enough – Feminism and Pasta in the Millennium . . .’
It was Stephen. Maddy recognised him now.
‘. . . Stanley Dibbs, author of the wildly successful Detective Patel series . . . Erin Fox, whose first novel Playing with Fire is one of our leading fiction titles –’ She saw Stephen. ‘So fill up your glasses and have a wonderful evening –’
‘And don’t let anything spoil your fun!’ Stephen bellowed.
Maddy pushed her way through the crowd and grabbed his arm. ‘Stephen, shut up!’
He pulled away. ‘After all, what do thirty redundancies matter? We’re only people!’
‘Let’s go,’ muttered Maddy.
‘Our children asking us Daddy, why aren’t you going to work today?’ he shouted. ‘What’s a bit of human misery when it comes to the bottom line?’
Someone tittered. Prudence hurried over. Together with Maddy she half-pushed Stephen out of the room and down the corridor. He stumbled ahead, like a clockwork toy. Prudence opened her office and pulled him in.
On the carpet was heaped a pile of belongings – a suitcase, a hold-all, some bulging carrier bags.
Prudence stared. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I’ve left her,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I did it. I left Kaatya.’
‘What about your kids?’ demanded Maddy.
He sank to the floor as if his strings had snapped. He started shuddering. Prudence knelt beside him.
‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked. ‘Coffee? Water?’
‘I feel like a murderer,’ he said. ‘Their faces, Pru . . . when I was leaving . . . Pieter turned away and went up to his room . . . Dirk just stood there looking at me, tears running down his face . . .’
‘You’re making her feel really great,’ said Maddy.
He raised his head and looked at Prudence. His hair was sandy but his beard was a startling ginger colour; it looked as if he had dipped his chin in blood. ‘Have you got room for me?’
‘Of course,’ said Prudence, stroking his head.
‘A drunk, a murderer . . . Christ, I really put the kibosh on your party, didn’t I . . . Are you sure you want me?’
‘Of course I want you,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that the point of all this?’
She leaned down and kissed him. Maddy got up and left them to it. She closed the door behind her. Erin was waiting in the corridor.
Maddy said: ‘And I used to think my sister was intelligent.’
‘Sorry,’ said Stephen. ‘I seem to have spread.’ He gathered together the newspapers.
Prudence had come in from work. It was two days later. Stephen, lulled by the inertia of the unemployed and the fumes of her gas-effect fire, had been dozing in the armchair.
She picked up the Appointments page and looked at it. ‘Why do all the jobs seem to be for commis chefs?’
‘And typists with Windows.’
‘As opposed to doors. You don’t have computer skills, do you?’
He shook his head. ‘My secretaries did all that stuff.’
She sat down. ‘There must be something.’
‘Are you glad I barged into your lovely ordered life?’
‘It wasn’t lovely,’ she said, ‘without you in it.’
‘Leaving the loo seat up and getting in your way?’
She stroked his leg. Of course she was glad – the word was pitifully inadequate. All day she felt ill with happiness. So far, however, there was a feeling of unreality about it. Despite the physical evidence of his occupation – his hold-all stuffed into her wardrobe, his boxer shorts stuffed into her dirty-linen basket – despite the invigorating air of masculine occupation, she couldn’t believe he was really staying. When she opened her door she expected to find the flat empty and a ‘1’ on her answerphone.
‘I want you to be here,’ she said. ‘I want us to be a real couple, like other people.’ She rubbed her cheek against his – he had shaved off his beard, thank God, and his skin felt familiar again. ‘Listen, I’m going to my parents this Sunday. Come with me. That’s real enough for anybody.’
If it was strange, having Stephen living in her flat, it was even stranger taking him home. So accustomed was she to keeping him secret that she couldn’t slot the two sides of her life together. How would he behave? She had so seldom been with him on any social occasion that she felt they were starting from scratch – the most treacherous of beginnings, under the beady eyes of her family.
Even Maddy was there – she had dropped by to borrow the lawn-mower and had been persuaded to stay to lunch. Maddy was a stranger to discretion. Would she blurt out about his drunken behaviour during the week? It took Prudence by surprise, how much she wanted her parents to like him.
They were in the hallway. Louise’s family was already there. She introduced Stephen to them. Stephen looked around. ‘So this is where you grew up.’
‘The Purley Queens,’ said Robert. ‘No man was safe.’
Prudence pointed out of the back window. ‘That’s our caravan. We used to play in there. Till Lou started to take her boyfriends into it and bribed us to stay away.’
‘She never took me in,’ said Robert.
‘You wouldn’t have liked it,’ Louise replied. ‘There were spiders.’
As they stood there, the door of the caravan opened. Gordon stepped out. He made his way across the garden, towards the house.
‘What on earth’s he doing in there?’ asked Louise.
They went into the lounge. Dorothy went into the kitchen. Gordon came in.
‘What were you doing?’ she hissed. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
‘Just tidying up,’ he said.
‘Tidying up? They’re here.’
Gordon, who had simply been sitting in the caravan staring at its walls, who had been doing nothing, picked up the tray of drinks. ‘These going in?’
Meanwhile, in the lounge, Prudence whispered to the others: ‘Don’t let on that, well, Stephen’s married.’
‘Course not,’ said Louise.
‘They’ll disapprove. I disapproved. Until it happened to me.’
Jamie said: ‘Everyone’s doing it anyway.’
‘Jamie!’ said Louise. ‘Don’t be so cynical.’
Gordon came in and put down the tray. He shook Stephen’s hand.
‘Gosh, Grandad,’ said Imogen. ‘You’ve got so thin!’
Dorothy said: ‘He’s not been looking after himself. The doctor warned us. I’m worried about him.’
‘How do you feel?’ Louise asked her father.
‘I’m fine,’ he said.
‘He’s never here,’ said Dorothy. ‘He promised he wouldn’t, but he’s worse than ever.’
Robert grinned. ‘Up to your old tricks, Gordon?’
‘I never see him from morning to night,’ said Dorothy.
Gordon uncorked the wine bottle. ‘I’ve told her – we’re short-staffed at present. I’m three labourers short, my best chippie’s off sick –’
‘Leave it to Frank,’ said Dorothy. ‘He’ll sort it out.’
‘And my chief plasterer seems to have buggered off completely.’ He turned to the teenagers. ‘Excuse my language.’
‘He the one with the love nest?’ asked Robert.
Dorothy turned to Stephen. ‘He’s got these two families who don’t know about each other. One in Tufnell Park and the other in Crouch End.’
‘The energy of the man!’ said Robert. ‘One has to admire it.’
Prudence said: ‘Dad’s lads have very complicated love lives. Mum’s their mother confessor.’
Gordon passed Robert a glass of wine. ‘Hope it meets with your approval,’ he said. ‘New Zealand, on your recommendation.’
‘Anyway,’ said Dorothy, ‘I’ve decided that he needs a proper holiday, so I’ve got these brochures.’ She picked them up from the side table. ‘We thought we’d go away for Christmas. It’s not too late for some of them.’
Prudence took the brochures. ‘Where’re you going to go? Somewhere hot?’
‘We thought Bermuda,’ said Dorothy.
‘How lovely!’ said Louise.
‘But Dad,’ said Maddy, ‘it’s full of blacks.’
‘Maddy!’ said Dorothy.
Maddy turned to Stephen. ‘Our father calls Africa Wogland.’
‘He’s only winding you up,’ said Prudence.
Imogen put her arm round her grandfather. ‘I think you’re lovely. It’s just that you probably don’t know any. I don’t either, there’s none at my school.’
Robert laughed. ‘Beaconsfield’s not known for its ethnic diversity.’
Louise took the brochure. ‘It looks wonderful.’
‘We’ve booked this one.’ Dorothy pointed. ‘Look, you have your own little hut.’
‘Thatched and everything,’ said Louise. ‘How romantic! Like a second honeymoon.’
Gordon remained silent. Prudence looked at him. How pale he looked, pale and shrunken, in the large armchair. ‘It looks wonderful, Dad. Just what you need.’
‘We’re flying out on Christmas Eve,’ said Dorothy.
‘So you won’t be having Christmas with us,’ said Louise.
‘Lucky sods!’
‘Jamie!
’
Gordon fingered his earlobe. His silence was like a black hole, a vacuum sucking them in. Prudence thought: he’s more ill than he admits, but then he never admits anything.
Gordon rallied. He patted Imogen’s knee as she sat beside him. ‘You’re looking very pretty, Immy.’
‘She’s madly in love,’ said Louise.
Imogen stiffened.
‘How lovely!’ said Dorothy. ‘Who is he?’
‘Her horse,’ Louise answered.
Imogen relaxed.
Maddy, who was not attending, gazed around the lounge. She hadn’t set foot in The Birches for a long time. The old claustrophobia gripped her. Purley wasn’t just a suburb, it was a state of mind. There was no beginning to it and no end. One street led to another, houses and houses and more houses, big houses with their big gardens. What could people possibly do in all those rooms? Didn’t they ever want to break out into the world?
She looked at her father. She thought: when he dies, what can he boast? I lived in Purley.
She longed to be home with Erin. She longed to be in their bed, the most adventurous place on earth.
Lunch was over. Jamie had escaped to the caravan. He sat there, eyes closed, inhaling on a joint.
Back in the lounge they were drinking coffee. ‘That was delicious, Dorothy,’ said Stephen.
‘Lou thinks I married her for her gorgeous legs,’ joked Robert. ‘In fact it was for her mother’s roast potatoes.’
Dorothy smiled. She thought how rare it was for them all to be gathered together like this in the companionable inertia of a Sunday afternoon. The presence of an outsider, Stephen, gave her family a solidity that it hadn’t possessed for years. She looked at Prudence, who was telling him about the time when they had all had a craze for Cluedo. Prudence’s cheeks were flushed; her brown hair, loose around her shoulders, shone. Today she looked the most beautiful of them all. Dorothy thought: how invigorating it must be to have plenty of sex. She blushed. Stephen stood up.
‘Would you mind if I used your phone?’
Dorothy told him there was one upstairs. Prudence watched him leave.