Prudence shook her head.
In the en suite bathroom Maddy was polishing the taps with an old silk stocking she had found behind the towel rail. ‘Never had a jacuzzi,’ she said, looking at the bath. ‘Never done lots of things. I’m going to start a new life.’
‘Me, too,’ said Prudence. ‘So how do we begin?’
‘Search me,’ said Maddy.
Jamie came in and gave a carrier bag to Maddy. ‘Allegra might want these. My old computer games and things.’ He paused, and turned to his mother. ‘Do you know where Tim’s gone?’ he asked. ‘The man from the shop.’
Louise looked at him sharply. ‘Why do you think I should know?’
‘Only asking,’ he said, and went out.
Thoughtfully, Louise stuffed her old magazines into a rubbish bag. Had Jamie overheard something? Had he been around when Margot had come to the garden? No, he’d been in York.
‘When I’ve finished this, shall I help Immy with her room?’ asked Prudence.
Louise shook her head. Imogen had been shut in her bedroom all morning. ‘She says she’s doing it herself.’ She lowered her voice. ‘She’s been very quiet lately.’
Just then they heard Imogen’s door open. Footsteps hurried past them to the bathroom. The door slammed shut. They heard the muffled but unmistakable sound of vomiting.
Louise dumped down her magazines and hurried into the corridor. She listened. How violent the retching sounded, as if Imogen’s inside were being torn from her. Maddy joined her, clutching her bottle of Brasso. Even the dog padded upstairs and stood there, his tail waving to and fro.
The lavatory flushed. They heard the sound of running water. The door opened and Imogen came out, her hair wet. She stopped and leaned against the radiator. She looked as if the knots within her body had been loosened; at any moment she would slide to the floor.
Louise brushed back the hair from her daughter’s forehead. ‘Darling, are you all right?’
‘Not really,’ said Imogen. ‘I’m pregnant.’
They sat on Louise’s bed, a row of them. Jamie and Dorothy had appeared, drawn there by Louise’s cry of horror.
‘Who is it?’ asked Louise. ‘Who’s the father?’
‘Karl.’
‘Karl?’
‘The blacksmith.’
‘The blacksmith?’ Louise felt dizzy, as if she were watching them all suspended from the air. ‘How do you know? Are you sure?’
Imogen nodded. ‘I did a test this morning. April sent me the kit.’
‘April?’ Louise stared at her daughter.
‘April?’ snapped Dorothy. ‘How does she know?’
‘I’d missed my period. I was worried.’
Louise said: ‘So April’s known all this time?’
‘It’s only three weeks,’ said Imogen.
‘Why did you tell April?’ demanded Dorothy.
‘She was here,’ said Imogen. ‘She’s a nurse.’
‘I know she’s a nurse!’ barked Dorothy.
Louise said: ‘You told April before you told me?’
‘Louise! Mum!’ Prudence frowned at them. ‘Is it so important, about April?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Louise put her arm round her daughter’s rigid shoulders. ‘When did it happen? Have you been – seeing him – a lot?’
Imogen shook her head. ‘I hate him.’
There was a silence. Outside, horses clopped down the lane. Skylark whinnied from the field. She was answered by another whinny. For a mad moment, Louise imagined the horses telling each other the news. Soon it would be all round the village.
Imogen said: ‘He’s married. And he’s got a girlfriend. Not me. Another one.’
Nobody spoke. They sat side by side on the brass bed. They gazed at Imogen, who picked at the skin around her fingernails.
‘When was this?’ Louise hooked her daughter’s wet hair behind her ear. ‘My poor love. Was it when you heard about Dad and me, or before that?’
Jamie said: ‘I bet it was when you left Skylark at the stables. I always thought that was funny.’
Imogen said: ‘I asked for it. It was my fault, really.’
‘Course not,’ said Maddy. ‘It was his. Shall we go and kill him?’
‘It was our fault,’ said Louise. ‘Your father’s and mine. Oh shit.’
They sat there on the bed; beneath its covers Imogen had been conceived. Louise still couldn’t take it in. She closed her eyes and it replayed itself in normal life. Imogen, emerging from the bathroom, said, I must have eaten something funny last night, and they carried on with their cleaning.
Prudence was talking. ‘What do you want to do, Immy?’
‘What do you – oh. Keep it, of course.’
‘Darling, you’re sixteen!’ said Louise. ‘You’re still at school.’
‘I hate school. I’m hopeless at everything. I’d rather have a baby.’ Imogen raised her head; her face glowed. ‘When’ll I feel it kicking?’
‘This is completely insane,’ said Louise.
‘I’ll love it,’ said Imogen.
‘You can’t possibly keep it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re too young.’
‘I’d like to be a mother,’ said Imogen. ‘I’d be good at that. I want a baby more than anything in the world.’ She looked at her two aunts. ‘Can’t you understand?’ They didn’t reply. ‘I want something to look after, that’s mine.’
‘It’s not a rabbit,’ said Louise.
‘You never cleaned them out anyway,’ said Jamie.
‘You’ve got your whole life ahead of you,’ said Louise.
‘So has the baby,’ replied Imogen.
This silenced them for a moment.
Then Jamie said: ‘You told anyone? Like at school?’
Imogen shook her head. ‘Only April.’
‘April!’ Dorothy snapped. ‘I can’t believe –’
‘Shut up, Mum,’ said Louise.
There was a silence. Dorothy, who was sitting in the armchair, gazed at the row of them. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She wore the daisy-patterned apron she had worn for years. ‘If she wants to keep it, she should keep it. We’ll rally round, Imogen, love. I think it’d be lovely to have another baby in the family.’
They stared at her. ‘Mum!’ said Louise.
‘Goodness!’ Dorothy laughed. ‘Gordon’ll be a great-grandfather. He won’t like that.’
‘Is that all you can think about?’ Louise retorted. ‘Come to think of it, this isn’t my fault. It’s yours. If you hadn’t opened your stupid mouth about Robert none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t be selling the house, Imogen wouldn’t be pregnant –’
‘Lou,’ said Prudence. ‘That’s not fair.’
Louise turned to her sisters. ‘You two probably wouldn’t have split up and been so unhappy.’ Something snapped. She glared at her mother. ‘Now you’re alone you want to make us all helpless and dependent, you want to put the clock back and make us all single again, make us back into your little daughters!’
‘Lou –’ began Prudence.
‘You want to blame me for everything?’ demanded Dorothy. ‘What about your father, why don’t you blame him? He started all this.’
‘Do shut up, both of you,’ said Maddy.
‘Why do children blame their parents for everything?’ asked Dorothy bitterly. ‘Why can’t you grow up and blame yourselves? You’ll be blaming me for the dead daughter of your shopkeeper next.’ She appealed to the room in general. ‘You educate your children and what do they learn? How to attack their parents.’ She paused, breathing heavily.’ Anyway, I’m not trying to get you back. I’ve had quite enough of all that, thank God. The reason I came down today, apart from trying to help, was to tell you I’ll be off your hands soon.’
‘Why?’ asked Prudence.
‘Eric and I are getting married.’
They stared at her. Even Imogen stared.
‘Married?’ whispered Louise.
> ‘Well, when I get divorced.’
Suddenly they all burst into laughter.
Two
IT TOOK JAMIE a whole morning to reach Tim’s flat. He knew the address, he had got it from Arnold, who ran the pub, but once he arrived in London he had to take the tube to Bounds Green, then a bus, and finally found himself in the outer reaches of London, almost off the A–Z, out beyond the North Circular Road which hummed in the distance.
It was a sunny Saturday, a week since he had heard the news about Tim and about his sister, a child snuffed out and a child begun. As he walked up the street he felt strangely confident. The old Jamie would have been embarrassed by what he was about to do but now he had crossed the threshold into adulthood. He was the man of the family now. He walked past the rows of semis and modest blocks of flats. This was where people lived, the sort of place where he himself might soon be living with his family; how fortified they had been by their good fortune but now the barriers had melted and he had joined the human race.
This was how Jamie put it to himself, for the nobility of his plan created sonorous words in his head, like a gong being struck. Petty considerations – what would happen, for instance, if Tim wasn’t at home – seemed irrelevant. Life consisted of massive events, how liberating this was! The harm he had done in the past dissolved, he was going to put it right, he was a better person now. He felt happiness filling him like warm soup. He hadn’t felt so happy for months.
Jamie found the place at last. It was a small, purpose-built block of flats opposite a children’s playground. Two boys rode their bikes round a dried-up paddling pool. A row of poplars shivered and swayed, their silvery leaves applauded him as he rang the bell.
Tim opened the door. It was odd seeing him away from his shop, like seeing one of his teachers in Beaconsfield, looking like a normal person. Tim blinked through his glasses.
‘I’m James Bailey – you know, I used to come to the shop.’
‘My goodness. What are you doing here?’ He let Jamie in. They went upstairs and into a room. It was sunny. Some sort of historical costume lay on the floor.
‘Caught me doing my mending,’ said Tim. ‘Would you care for some coffee?’
Jamie shook his head. ‘I just – well, dropped by. I heard what happened, you know, with the shop.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That you were robbed.’ Jamie’s confidence drained away. ‘Well, I’ve managed to get some of the money back. ‘He fished in his jacket and took out the envelope. He gave it to Tim. ‘So I brought it back to you.’
Tim took the envelope, opened it and looked at the notes. On the wall a cuckoo flung itself out of its clock and squawked.
‘Why?’ asked Tim.
‘I know it’s probably not enough. But at least it’s something.’
Tim sat down heavily in an armchair. Its stuffing was bursting out like brains. Jamie sat down in the other one, facing him. He thought: my father would never do this. Look, I’m a separate person.
‘How did you get it?’ Tim asked.
‘I can’t really say,’ said Jamie. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ It was, in fact, his accumulated earnings from Tesco. He had saved it up to go travelling around Europe in the summer.
Tim removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was wearing a Pizza Express T-shirt. Maybe he had got a job there; Jamie never found out. Tim looked at him, his eyebrows raised. ‘Your family’s always trying to give me things.’
‘Who? What sort of things?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Tim smiled. ‘A case of noblesse oblige.’ He leaned across and gave back the envelope. ‘In this case, too, I feel I must refuse.’
The envelope lay on Jamie’s lap. It was a windowed one, a business one, from his father’s desk.
‘Call me old-fashioned,’ said Tim, ‘but my instinct is to serve.’
‘Is that why you had a shop?’
Tim shook his head and pointed to the costume. ‘Hence my loyalty to the Royalist cause.’ We’re re-enacting the Battle of Wallingford next week. Probably seems silly to you, a lot of middle-aged men sloshing around in the mud, but in fact it’s rather satisfying.’
‘Why?’
‘If I didn’t do it – who knows? – I’d probably go and do something silly.’ He paused. ‘I mean really silly. Like bashing something up. Like your friends.’
‘They’re not my friends.’
‘And then where would we be?’ Tim gazed down at the costume, lying between them. There was a bald patch in the middle of his hair. ‘At least I know whose side I’m on. Everything else, it’s not that easy.’
‘Please take it.’
Tim shook his head. ‘To tell the truth, young man, I’m glad she’s left. My wife, I mean. I think she is, too. We couldn’t cope any longer. I won’t go into details. I’ll just say that be-reavement is not endearing. I hope you’ll never have cause to discover that.’ He stood up. ‘So keep your money. Enjoy it.’ He paused. ‘Live.’
Jamie stood up. They stood there for a moment, formally. Feeling a hot, guilty relief, he put the envelope back into his pocket. Now he could go Inter-railing with Max and Chris from school.
Tim stepped over the costume. It was laid spreadeagled on the floor, as if its Cavalier had vaporised. ‘Something I found comforting, though you might not think so, it’s something I read. That the living are just dead people who have not yet taken up their posts.’ He escorted Jamie to the door. ‘It’s not as gloomy as it sounds. You’re a nice kid. Remember what you said in the shop? Well, I hope your life is long and sweet.’
Jamie went downstairs and let himself out into the street. He felt light-headed – so light-headed, that, if nobody had been there, he would have jumped onto one of the swings and pushed himself up, up into the dazzling blue sky.
The Amersham Horse Show was in full swing. In a roped-off enclosure jumps had been erected. A girl on a chestnut horse cleared the double-hurdle and cantered off. ‘Number 26, clear round!’ boomed the loudspeaker. In another enclosure smaller children stumbled to the finishing post in the egg-and-spoon race. Tethered horses whinnied to each other across the sea of cars; the air smelled of dung and exhaust smoke and the aroma of sizzling frankfurters. Vans had flung open their flanks to reveal items for sale – saddlery, soft drinks, china ornaments of famous stallions.
Louise and her sisters, avenging furies, strode through the crowd. Karl was here; Imogen had told them so. Louise looked at the row of horseboxes, their opened ramps littered with straw. A teenage girl sat there, jodhpured legs apart, munching a sandwich; she fed the crust to her pony which was tethered beside her. Tears stung Louise’s eyes – tears of rage and grief. That should be Imogen, sitting there in the sunshine. But Imogen was at home; she no longer rode, she had lost her nerve – besides, she was scared of losing the baby. Her youth had been stolen from her.
The three of them walked towards the far ring where a crowd had gathered. Louise thought: this time last year we were a happy family. Now strangers are tramping around my house, opening the cupboards, standing in front of the windows, looking at my view.
‘What are you going to do when you see him?’ asked Prudence.
‘Castrate him?’ asked Maddy.
Louise shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I just want to see what he looks like,’ said Prudence.
At the time they had no plan. Louise had no intention of telling the blacksmith that he had made her daughter pregnant; the thought filled her with horror. What happened next filled her with horror, too, in retrospect. She would never have managed it without her sisters’ presence. For they regressed, that mad day, into the giggly plot-making of their childhood.
The Young Farrier’s Competition was in progress. A man held a megaphone. It was John Suttler, Louise knew him, he ran the riding stables with his wife.
‘. . . points against the clock,’ he was saying, explaining the rules to the new people who had drifted towards the ring. Louise and her
sisters peered through the crowd. A bent figure stood in the ring, hammering a shoe onto a large black horse.
‘That him?’ whispered Prudence.
Louise shook her head. He can take my shoes off any day. How flippant she had been, how insouciant. She watched the blacksmith at work. She thought how all these years she and her children had been playing on a beach with their backs to the water, oblivious to the tidal wave that was rearing up behind them, higher and higher, poised, ready to engulf them.
When Karl walked into the ring she had made up her mind. As she watched him, it was Robert’s face she saw. He grinned at her: I like sex with women, too. Beside him hung the upturned horseshoe, its luck spilling out. Louise looked across the grass at Karl. His hair was oiled flat like an otter’s; he wore his leather apron slung around his hips. She pictured him on top of her daughter. A bay horse had been led into the ring; the clock clicked 1 . . . 2 . . . Karl got to work.
Louise squeezed through the crowd. How charmingly she smiled at John Suttler, oh, she could still charm. He gave her the megaphone and above her the clouds scudded and below her feet the earth turned, for she was clearing her throat and speaking into the mouthpiece loud and clear.
‘Let’s have a big hand for Karl Fairlight, a rising young blacksmith from Tetbury Magna. Karl is married with two small children but that hasn’t stopped him pursuing his main career . . .’
Karl straightened up. Louise, appalled at what she was doing, stopped. Maddy grabbed the megaphone from her – Maddy, the brave one, who didn’t care. Prudence whispered the words into her ear and loudly Maddy repeated them.
‘. . . you see, ladies and gentlemen, Karl is a bit of a stallion himself, he has a very high score in that respect. If it moves, jump it, that’s Karl’s motto, so if he visits your home we would advise you to keep your wives and daughters safely tethered up indoors.’
A hush fell. Across the showground the loudspeaker boomed but the crowd was stilled. They stared at Maddy. Their heads swivelled round; they stared at Karl. He hadn’t moved.
The three sisters escaped to the car. They slammed the door and exploded into laughter. They laughed so hard they thought they were going to be sick. As they drove off, bouncing over the grass towards the exit, Louise thought: what the hell. After all, in a few weeks I’ll be gone for good.