Jamie was outside now, walking the last few streets. Left and then right . . . right and then left?. . . And now he saw the sign: Romilly Street.
He walked up the road. It was 2.20. The houses were dark; it looked as if nobody had ever lived in them. Behind a front door a dog barked two short barks and was silent. Jamie had no idea of Maddy’s number; it was a miracle that he had remembered the name of the street. He gazed at the houses, shabby in the sodium light. If he couldn’t find Maddy he would die.
And then he saw the van: Fox Gardening Services. His aunt was here, somewhere. He thought: my aunts are the only people who can save me. Parents are useless. He inspected the houses. Window-boxes, wouldn’t hers have window-boxes, seeing as she lived with a gardener? But several had window-boxes; even a trellis. The front doors danced up and down, they were performing a musical routine.
He shouted, ‘Maddy!’ His voice felt hoarse with disuse. ‘MADDY!’ he bellowed.
The sound echoed down the street. He was disintegrating into pieces. He would either lie down in the road or float away.
‘MADDY!’ So this was what happened when you went mad.
Lights were switched on. Windows slid open. The street of the dead came to life.
‘Jamie!’ Maddy leaned out of an upstairs window. He had never been so pleased to see anyone in his life. ‘Jamie, what’s happened?’
A moment later the front door opened. Maddy opened her arms – Maddy, who never hugged. She put her arms around him. He laid his head against her dressing-gown.
The phone rang. Louise, sitting in the living room, grabbed it.
Maddy’s voice said: ‘Don’t worry, he’s here.’
‘What?’
‘Jamie. He’s soaked through but he’s all right.’
Jamie? Didn’t she mean Imogen?
‘He’s walked miles,’ said Maddy. ‘Pru wasn’t in and he couldn’t remember where Mum lived but he’s fine –’
‘But where’s Imogen?’
‘I’ve tucked him up in bed,’ said Maddy. ‘Didn’t you know he was in London? I think he’s upset about his dad. We had a good talk about fathers. I told him I didn’t always get on with ours either –’
Louise wasn’t listening. Her ears had picked up another sound. It was so faint she must be imagining it.
‘. . . I tried to explain about Robert,’ Maddy was saying. ‘I wanted to say what a shit he was but I suppose he is Jamie’s dad. Anyway, he’s fine. I’ll put him on the train in the morning . . .’
It was the sound of horse’s hooves. Louise flung down the phone, rushed to the window and flung open the curtains.
The outdoor light was on, illuminating the gravel drive. Monty barked. The clop-clop grew more distinct.
Louise stood there, frozen. The sound grew louder. Skylark appeared, a grey shape in the dark. She trotted up to the front door and stood there, snorting. She shook herself.
Her saddle had swung around; it hung upside down on her belly. The horse stood there, riderless, in the rain.
PART FIVE
One
APRIL HAD WANTED a man to take care of her. She had got tired of bailing men out, of mopping them up – she had enough mopping up at work. She had got tired of their anger and remorse, of telling herself lies: he’ll be different with me, I can change him. I’ll be different with him. Dennis had been the last in a line of men she could now see in perspective. Some radar had attracted her towards the hopeless cases, and them to her.
Then along had come Gordon. He had swept her up; she had been powerless to resist. He had bulldozed through her guilt, he had bulldozed through her desire for independence. He had bulldozed through the disapproval of her family and friends, for he was an unexpected object of her affection. Her mother was no longer speaking to her. She had, however, spoken the truth to Jamie that night: she was simply devoted to him. She should have felt worse about what she had done, but, like many people who spend their time caring for others, April was ruthless in her personal life and, besides, Gordon had insisted that his marriage was dead. She was a robust person who lived for the moment; Gordon was, too: they answered this in each other.
And now he had bulldozed her into giving up her flat and moving in with him, and she had agreed with only token resistance. He was going to take care of her, this balding, stubborn, endearing man, and she sloughed off her past life just as he did his. She had even given up her job.
If it all felt unreal, she blamed it on the move. She knew nobody in Wandsworth; nor did he. Maybe that was the reason why he had wanted to move there. The house was enormous. She walked from room to room, her footsteps echoing. Neither Gordon nor she had many belongings; he had relinquished most of his possessions. Their packing-cases barely filled the dining room.
Gordon had bought the house on impulse. He had rushed through the whole business – contracts, completion – in a couple of weeks. She had rented out her flat. The speed of it all made her feel rocky. This place needed a lot of work but he had fallen in love with it, he had plans. Only a palace is good enough for you, my love. This bossy, selfish generosity was Gordon through and through.
She couldn’t, however, picture their life here yet. That first morning, Sunday, she dumped a bag of rubbish in the front garden. It had rained during the night but now it was a beautiful morning, fresh and green, and the neighbours were out in force. They vacuumed their cars and painted their front doors. She felt as if she had arrived in Nobody’s Toytown, a place of primary colours and innocent activity. It was utterly alien to her. A child, walking past, stared at her until its mother pulled it away.
Gordon was in the kitchen, making coffee in her espresso machine. He enjoyed this; it was his ritual to make their breakfast. Outside, the overgrown lawn was surrounded by bushes whose names she didn’t know. Some of them were flowering in the sunshine. She and Gordon were isolated in a sea of alien bushes and neighbours; they clung to their small rituals as they began their life together.
Later, she remembered her feeling of dislocation. She had come on a long journey; Gordon didn’t know the half of it. He didn’t ask her questions about herself, he wasn’t interested in her past, anybody’s past, in fact; he wasn’t a curious man. She watched him plugging in her toaster for the first time, for their first breakfast in their new kitchen. She wondered if he had been the one who had made breakfast in his old life; she had never asked him. Was it because it was too painful to think about those years he had spent with his wife, or was she simply as incurious as he was? She knew nothing; she had lost sight of herself.
Later that morning, they drove down to Buckinghamshire. Louise had asked them to lunch. April was pleased about this, of course; his daughters seemed to be thawing towards her. Maybe this was simply due to the passage of time and the fact that, from what she had heard, their mother seemed to be sorting out a new life for herself. Maybe, now that Louise’s marriage was breaking up, she herself felt adrift and needed her family around her.
Whatever the reason, April was curious to visit the Old Vicarage. She wanted to see Jamie again, whom she had liked. She had dreaded this first visit but the fact that Louise’s life was now in a mess made it easier. She had never met Louise – she had missed her when she had visited Gordon in hospital – but by all accounts Louise was the least intimidating of Gordon’s daughters.
She was unprepared, therefore, for Louise’s horror when she opened her front door. ‘My God, I’d forgotten you were coming,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’ For a moment April thought she was going to close the door in their faces. ‘The place is a pigsty . . .’ Louise began, and burst into tears.
They went into the kitchen and sat down. Louise wore an old tracksuit; her hair was pulled back in a rubber band. April passed her a Kleenex.
‘I’ve been up all night,’ sobbed Louise. ‘I’m sorry. You see, Imogen’s only just come home.’
‘What’s happened?’ asked Gordon. ‘She’s been at one of her parties?’
Louise shook her head
. Joltingly, the story came out. How Robert had left home the day before, and how Imogen had ridden off nobody knew where and had been thrown from her horse in the middle of the night.
‘It took her, oh, hours to walk home. She’s gone to bed. She’s all right – a bit bruised . . . exhausted of course.’ Louise said that the doctor should be dropping in later that day to check her over.
‘Shall I just pop upstairs?’ asked April. ‘Shall I look at her, would you like me to?’
When April came downstairs, thoughtfully, twenty minutes later, Jamie had arrived from London. He too had had an eventful night, tramping across the city in the pouring rain. Gordon seemed put out that all this had been happening and nobody had told him.
‘You’ve got your own life now,’ said Louise. ‘Anyway, what could you have done?’
‘I rang your bell in Brixton,’ said Jamie, ‘but you’d moved away.’
April thought: Gordon has detached himself from his family now, he has cut adrift. Doesn’t he realise? She looked at the three of them, slumped around the kitchen table. She said: ‘Why don’t you go into the other room and I’ll rustle up some lunch?’
So that was what she did. Upstairs, Imogen lay, a ticking time-bomb, while down in the kitchen April yanked open the freezer and shoved frosty packets into the Aga. Gordon, who hated sitting around doing nothing, came in and tried to help but she sent him away.
She chopped up a cucumber. Suddenly, she was flooded with happiness. She had been launched into the hot centre of Gordon’s family, into the middle of a crisis. They needed her! She would take care of them.
When they returned to the kitchen, an hour later, April felt as intimate with their lives as with the contents of their cupboards. She tossed the salad and put the bowl on the table.
‘You’re so kind,’ said Louise. ‘That’s what we needed, a nurse. A cook.’ She carried a bottle of Bollinger. ‘I’ve found another case. Let’s drink the lot!’ She poured out the champagne; it frothed over the glasses. April guessed that it had been her husband’s job to do this. ‘I may have lost everything else but at least I’ve got my children back. Isn’t that all that matters?’ She turned to April and raised her glass. ‘Welcome to the Hammond family,’ she said. ‘And all who sail in it.’
‘Join the shipwreck,’ said Jamie.
On Thursday, in her lunch-hour, Prudence drove to Chelsea. She had arranged to meet Maddy. Stepping out of the traffic fumes she entered a garden. She brushed past a beech hedge; its leaves were such an intense green that she felt breathless, as if she had been sucking lemons. She suddenly longed for a garden of her own; all her adult life she had lived in flats. She longed to step out onto the grass in her bare feet. She closed her eyes. A child, its hair flying, came running towards her.
Maddy was planting out a tray of zinnias, handling them as tenderly as if they were babies. It was only May but her face was already tanned from working outdoors. She wiped her hands and produced packets of sandwiches wrapped in foil. How was Erin? Prudence asked. Working on a new book. How was Allegra? Fine. Far away the traffic roared. Prudence’s own desultory questions sounded as distant. They fell silent. Maddy wasn’t the sort of person who felt the need to make conversation.
Prudence swallowed the last mouthful. She lit a cigarette. She said: ‘Something extraordinary happened last Saturday. The night Jamie came to your house. I want to ask your advice.’
She told Maddy what had taken place. Maddy was the only person in the world she could tell. Her sister had the un-shockability of the pure at heart; she had no prurient interest in the murkier reaches of human behaviour. When Prudence finished, she just said: ‘Gosh.’
‘The thing is – I found her . . . thrilling. I don’t know whether it was because – you know – Stephen was there.’ She laughed lightly. ‘You see, I’ve never had a lesbian experience before.’
Maddy poured coffee out of a Thermos. Prudence struggled on.
‘Remember when you told me about Erin? You said you didn’t know if you were gay, or you’d just fallen in love with her.’
‘Did I?’ Maddy passed her the plastic cup. ‘I’ve only got one, we’ll have to take turns.’
‘Maybe I am – well, gay. Underneath.’
‘Of course you’re not.’
‘Well, anyway – now I’ll know what you’re talking about.’
‘It’s not what you do.’ Maddy took the cup. ‘It’s what you feel.’
‘I told you – it felt wonderful.’
‘I mean, what you feel about Stephen.’
Prudence gazed at the freshly dug earth. A robin flew down and pulled out a worm.
Maddy said: ‘I bet he just did it to turn himself on.’
‘No,’ said Prudence weakly.
‘Sounds like he was using you,’ said Maddy. ‘I should know, I speak from experience.’
‘No. That’s not true.’
Hadn’t he been reluctant at first? I’m keeping my jim-jams on. Prudence’s head spun.
‘Nice kinky sex, three in a bed,’ said Maddy. ‘Bet he couldn’t believe his luck.’
‘It wasn’t like that!’
‘Every middle-aged bloke’s fantasy.’
‘Don’t be so hostile,’ said Prudence. ‘Not today.’ The worm was too fat; it twisted in the robin’s beak. Why did Maddy always say the thing one didn’t want to hear? Her first word, apparently, had been ‘No’.
‘Why did you ask me then?’ said Maddy. ‘If you didn’t want to know?’
Prudence drove back to the office, past Canary Wharf. The glass buildings glinted in the sunlight; they flashed a warning.
How did she feel? Angry with Maddy, for a start. How could she say such things?
I should know, I speak from experience. Prudence parked the car. She thought: what had Maddy meant by that? Did she feel used, too?
Maddy yelped. She had pricked her finger on a rose thorn. She pushed the cushioned underside of her fingertip, pressing out the drop of blood. It emerged, a bead, from her interior. If she went on pressing she would make a necklace.
If she fell asleep, what would happen? Bloody nothing. Maddy didn’t believe in fairy stories. By the time she’d been born her mother must have got tired of reading them. Her back ached. She straightened up. Sucking her finger, she put away her tools and drove towards Hackney, through the clogged rush-hour traffic. Louise was the fairy-tale princess and look what had happened to her.
Maddy felt her family breaking up under her feet. She was losing her balance. When she’d lived abroad she had considered herself independent. Only now did she realise how much she had relied on them to be there, safe and unchanged. A solid family to rebel against and come home to, for despite her adventurous life she had still felt like an adolescent, resenting the very people she needed.
She wondered why she had been so abrupt with Prudence, who, after all, had come seeking her advice – an almost unheard-of occurrence. Was it because Prudence had muscled in on her territory?
She picked up Allegra from her clarinet lesson. As they drove home she said: ‘You’re lucky, being an only child.’
‘Why?’ asked Allegra.
‘When you’re the youngest everything’s been done before. They’ve worn the clothes. They’ve ridden the bike. Everything you’ve got is second-hand. So you try to be different.’ She shrugged. ‘Then you find they’ve done that, too.’ She turned left into Romilly Street. ‘They thought I was going to be a boy. They would’ve called me Buddy, after Buddy Holly.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Then I would have been different.’
Allegra wasn’t listening. ‘Look.’
Two cars and a BBC van were double-parked outside their house. The front door was open. A crowd of kids had gathered, leaning on their bikes.
‘Oh God,’ said Allegra. ‘It’s the TV.’
They got out of the van. A man carrying a walkie-talkie barred the front door. ‘Sorry, love. We’re filming.’
‘We live here,’ sa
id Allegra. Clutching her clarinet case she slipped through.
Maddy pushed her way into the hall. The house was full of men shouting at each other. ‘Bob, where’s the bloody masking tape?’ Cables ran up the stairs.
Maddy was exhausted. Her back ached, she was filthy. When she went upstairs she found the bathroom door locked. Behind it, somebody flushed the lavatory. The landing was crammed with people. One of them was bellowing into a mobile phone: ‘Get Tanya to bike them over, pronto!’
Maddy looked into Erin’s study. The light was dazzling. Erin sat at her word processor. She wore her red velvet jacket; a girl dusted her face with a brush.
‘Excuse me, sweetheart.’ Somebody moved Maddy aside.
Someone shouted, ‘Quiet please! We’re going for a take!’
‘And . . . ACTION.’
Erin sat in the blazing light. She was a goddess, worshipping at the altar of herself. As Maddy watched, something snapped. All her half-lies, all her efforts to fool herself. They snapped and she was released.
She turned and pushed her way to the bedroom. A woman sat on the bed. She wore a black suit and was talking on the phone.
‘Get out,’ said Maddy.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Get out of my bedroom.’
Maddy was packing her bag now, opening drawers and shoving in clothes. Allegra came into the room and stood beside her.
‘You’re going, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘Like all the others. I knew you would.’
‘CUT!’ somebody called.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Allegra.
‘I don’t know,’ said Maddy. ‘I’m not leaving you. Just leaving her. I’m sorry.’ She looked at Allegra’s face – a dusky triangle, wide eyes and pointed chin. It was hard to believe she belonged to Erin at all. Maddy felt a pain in her chest.
Allegra fingered the mirrored bedspread. ‘She wouldn’t notice if I went either.’
A voice said: ‘Is that her little girl?’ A man came into the room. He said to Allegra: ‘Come along, sweetheart. Let’s have you in the shot.’
Five minutes later Maddy stepped out of the front door. Nobody, except Allegra, noticed she had gone. At the top of the street she turned. The BBC van looked like a fire engine, its hose running into the house. She thought: nothing will put out Erin’s fire. It will devour everyone else, but it will never devour her.