Easy Peasy (23 page)

‘They look precarious.' He nodded at the holiday shacks.

‘See that gap …' I pointed, ‘that one had just gone last time I came.'

He nodded solemnly and we fell quiet for a moment.

Then he turned to me again. ‘I was truly sorry to hear about your father,' he said.

‘Yes.' The fire was getting low. I knelt and put on a log. It spat and steamed, too wet. A spray of applause from the radio in the kitchen filled an awkward gap. We stood amongst the screwed-up paper and the stacks of presents. I could think of nothing to say. I could not make small talk with this man, with the memory of that little boy intruding, with the sharp splinter of shame pricking away inside me. I poured a sherry I didn't remotely want, just for something to do.

‘My mother is ill,' he said. ‘Ovarian cancer.'

‘Oh.' I sat down quickly on the sofa, my knees suddenly weak and rubbery. ‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘She'd like to see you.' He sounded as if he was surprised.

I nodded, not imagining then that I ever would see Wanda, supposing that I'd never see her again. I thought of asking him to sit down, but that would only prolong this awkward agony. I wanted him gone. He looked taller than ever now that I was seated. He was wearing a beautiful silver-grey moleskin jacket. His fingers were long and flexible, gold hairs on his wrists, a wedding ring.

‘You've done well, I understand,' I said, appalled to hear myself.

He nodded, finished his drink, put down his glass as if suddenly impatient. ‘Well, good to see you Griselda.'

‘You're going already?' I stood up to urge him on his way. ‘You could wait for the others …'

‘No.' He went to the door and I followed him. ‘Must get back, just nipped out for a breath of air. Lunch, you know, the family …' I should have asked him about his child, I thought, I should have asked him about his wife. ‘Say hello to Astrid,' he said, ‘and Happy Christmas.'

‘Yes.' I stood at the door and watched him go. He waved his arm, got into the pale Saab parked behind my Beetle. I listened until the sound of his engine had died away and went back into the kitchen. The pudding was fidgeting and bumping in its pan. I turned down the gas.

4

In someone else's kitchen, I lose my self-confidence. Whether to put the eggs on the toast or serve them separately? Whether to add pepper or leave that to Wanda? I don't know. The eggs are growing cool before I decide to pile them in a white china bowl and cut the toast into fingers. I choose her a fennel tea-bag for a change.

Wanda smiles as I push the door open with my elbow and manoeuvre my way in with her tray. ‘I would have got up if you'd yelled.'

‘Sorry. Would you rather …?' I step back towards the door.

‘No, that'd be stone cold by the time I got down.' She pats her lap and I put the tray on it.

I hear a key in the lock downstairs. Before she can say it I know whose key it is. Hasn't he already travelled into my mind this evening?

My immediate thought: what a fright I must look, what a cheek to be wearing his sweater over my clothes. My hand goes to my hair.

‘Now you'll have company while I eat my tea.' Such love in her voice, such expectation on her face as she watches the door.

His footsteps on the stairs, the bigness of him in the room, a charcoal grey overcoat. Cashmere, I suspect, a smell of night.

‘Mum,' he stoops and kisses her. ‘Griselda.' He nods at me, no smile, I am not liked. Why should I be?

‘Sorry,' I say, ‘I just came to …'

‘No need to apologise. Mum wanted to see you. Glad you've come.' A slight lifting of the corners of his mouth.

‘A new face.' Wanda does smile at me. ‘Not new, but …' She has not touched the food.

‘Do eat up,' I urge. She takes a tiny scrap of scrambled egg and lifts it slowly to her mouth. She parts her lips. I can feel just how enormous the morsel of egg seems, how Herculean the effort of putting it into her mouth. But she does so. She closes her lips and tries to smile with it inside her, the cool, damp scrap that she must swallow, that her throat rebels against swallowing.

‘Shall we leave you alone?' I ask.

She nods. Her eyes are very shiny. I see a rising in her throat as if she wants to retch.

‘Mum?' Vassily reaches out to touch her but she waves him away. I notice again the loose rings on her fingers, the way the stone in her engagement ring has slipped round out of sight. I remember the puzzle ring she gave me that I kept for years but have no more, the too-big feel of it on my middle finger.

Vassily and I go downstairs. He takes off his coat and slings it over the back of a chair. He sighs. ‘She hardly eats a thing.' I want to smooth the coat and stroke it. How can he be so casual with anything so beautiful? All his clothes are beautiful. Some might say that he was.

Oh Foxy, Foxy, Foxy.

‘Your sweater,' I say, looking down at myself, ‘your mum said …' But he is indifferent. A lorry roars past. He goes to the window, looks out, turns and stands with his back to it, looking too big, out of kilter with the scale of the room. He is as ill at ease as I am. ‘I was going to stay the night … but …' I sit down on the sofa, smooth my skirt over my knees. ‘But now you're here and I've seen Wanda maybe I'll …'

He watches me speak, then, ‘No, don't go. Don't disappoint her.'

‘Vassily?'

He waits for my question.

‘She's … dying isn't she?'

He pauses. He runs a hand down his throat, I fancy I hear the faint rasp of bristles, or maybe I imagine the feel of them. I watch the movement in his throat as he swallows. ‘Yes.'

‘But she was alone!'

He shakes his head. ‘She won't
have
anyone to stay … Stan's here mostly. A Macmillan nurse comes every week and the district nurse most days. If Stan's away I try and come. She doesn't want to be a burden, she says. I
know,'
he finishes defensively, reading, wrongly, criticism into my look, ‘I
know
it's not ideal but …' He spreads his hands.

‘She doesn't seem too … down,' I say.

‘She's amazing, Mum.'

‘How long?'

He looks away. I don't know if he heard the question, if he saw my lips. There is a pause that is too long. Another lorry grinds its gears and roars. I can smell exhaust fumes.

‘I don't know how she stands that …' I say and flinch, realising that, probably, he can't hear.

‘It's surprising what you can stand,' he says, and I don't know what he means, what he's thinking of or remembering. Or whether he means anything at all.

‘I'll find a guest-house,' I say, ‘something on the front maybe. Where I can hear the sea.' Shit. I've done it again. What is the matter with me? ‘I'll come back tomorrow. There's not room for both of us.'

‘This house not big enough for the two of us?' He surprises me. I blush, a hot and childish buzz of blood in my cheeks. ‘My mother will be hurt if you don't stay. And …' he hesitates.

‘What?'

‘Drink?' He reaches for his brief-case, opens it and brings out some groceries and a bottle of Famous Grouse.

‘Colin was most annoyed that I opened his Glenmorangie … at Christmas.'

‘Colin?'

‘Hazel's …'

‘Aaah.'

‘Va-ass.' Wanda's voice, panicky from upstairs.

I indicate the ceiling: ‘Your mum …'

Vassily smashes down the bottle and takes the stairs two or three at a time. Again, such love. I hear their voices, his feet above me, water running in the bathroom. I shiver; despite the heating, the fire, it is still cold. I switch the second bar of the fire on, catch my reflection in the mirror: a mess. I roll my fat cool curls round my fingers, take lipstick from my bag and re-do my lips. Wish I hadn't, in the bleak electric light it looks too harsh, the edges hard.

I don't want to be here, on a cold February night in a small house with a dying woman and with a man I hardly know. But who knows the worst of me. It was only a game. Children get up to all sorts. They don't know what they do. I scrub the lipstick off on a tissue and pinch my cheeks for colour.

Vassily comes down and into the kitchen. I go through. He's brought the tray down, the food is almost untouched. The silly yellow egg congealed in its bowl.

‘She's had her pain-killers,' he says. ‘She'll sleep now.'

I watch him tip the egg, a solid heavy shape, into the bin then pause, his foot on the pedal, the plate of toast poised above it. ‘Unless you want this?'

‘No.'

Is he serious? How can I eat the food she could not eat, old toast gone cold and stiff? Although I am hungry. Maybe he reads my mind.

‘I'm going to make myself some grub.' He slits open the Cellophane of a packet of pasta shells. ‘Want some?'

‘Well … yes.' Unwilling to accept, unwilling to stay. I want to go out and walk on the sea-front, fill my lungs with cold clean air that has come straight from the sea, unbreathed, salty air. Wanda's house smells … not unpleasant exactly, except for the traffic fumes but there is a sort of dampish sweetish ill smell. What happened to the joss-sticks? I am uneasy with Vassily, awkward and ashamed. And I want Foxy. I would put up with anything, I think now, anything if I could be with her, now, at home, her arms around me. I want Foxy.

No, you can't.

‘Pour a couple of whiskies will you?'

I take two glasses from the draining-board and splosh in the whisky, too much I expect, I never know how much is right. I take a gulp and feel it in my head before it even touches my stomach. Because I am empty and not just empty of food.

I sit by the fire with my drink, watching the bulb flickering behind the dusty plastic coals. I touch them and they are hardly warm. For decoration only, created to give the illusion of warmth. The heat comes from the coiled orange bars above. I can hear Vassily in the kitchen, clattering about as he cooks, the little grunts and sighs he doesn't know he's making. He did that as a child, made noises when he bent over his books at school, when he did anything that required concentration. The sudden sizzle of onion, the pungence of garlic.

Legs folded backwards and forwards.

Daddy pushing, pushing.

Up in the air and over the wall.

Daddy headless on a ladder.

No.

Up in the air so blue.

The lurch of the tree-house when you were in it and someone climbed up.

Oh I do think it's the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do.

‘Here we are.'

I start as Vassily comes in with two plates of pasta and mushrooms. It smells divine. We sit side by side on the sofa, plates on our knees.

‘I've got some wine,' I say.

‘Good.'

Red wine, blue-red in this light. As we eat we talk about food. A safe topic. I don't speak of Foxy but he mentions his wife Caroline several times, and the difficulty of coaxing their daughter to eat anything except sausages and Battenberg cake. ‘First she peels off the marzipan and rolls it into a ball. Then she separates the squares, builds a tower, knocks it down, eats the white squares, then the pink squares, then the marzipan.' He is proud of this infant eccentricity. I don't ask why they give her Battenberg instead of healthy food. I'm sure it's not that simple. I don't pretend to understand children. The pasta is delicious, lots of garlic, torn basil leaves, black pepper, slivers of fried mushroom. We're drinking the wine too fast. Vassily's lips are stained blue.

When we've finished eating he shows me photographs: Caroline and little Naomi. ‘Don't say she looks like me because she doesn't.' He has a shred of basil caught between his front teeth.

‘What about you?' he asks.

‘What about me?'

‘Not married?'

‘No. I was engaged once … but it didn't work out.'

‘And now?'

‘Alone.' I feel Foxy's fingernail dragging down my spine. Well, it's true isn't it? From now on, probably, I am alone.

He waits for elaboration but I offer none.

‘Huw?'

‘Oh, a string of girlfriends, can't see him settling down for a while. If ever. Hazel's the only one who's settled and she …' has settled down too easily, I want to say, has attached herself to safety. Colin is safety, as far as a man can ever be. But I don't say.

And silence. Too long.

What's wrong with safety? Who the hell am I to mock?

‘Well I'm glad Wanda's married. He looks nice.' I nod towards the wedding photograph.

‘Stan the man.' Vassily slides his index finger round inside the collar of his shirt, a soft pale blue shirt under a soft pale grey sweater. I wonder if he chooses his own clothes or whether it's Caroline who has such exquisite taste. ‘He's a good bloke,' he says. ‘Mum likes him, that's what counts.'

‘And you?'

‘She's happy.'

If I am not going to go tonight, there's something we have to break through. There is a membrane between this small talk and the real things we could say to each other. The real things I feel compelled to say, at least. It is only nine-thirty. I can't politely go to bed for at least an hour. But how can we go on spinning out this meaningless conversation for another hour?
I
can't. If we don't say something real I will have to go.

I want to be on the promenade under the bleaching lights, walking fast and hard. I want to jump on the shifting shingle and run to the lip of the sea and hear it breathe, smell it, feel it. No. Liar. I want to go into the phone box by the pier and ring Foxy and tell her … I don't know what. I want to hear her voice so badly that I ache. But I don't want to hear anything she might say.

A long silence. Vassily holds the wine bottle up to the light – empty. He unscrews the whisky, looks at me, I hesitate, then nod.