A Spanish Lover (30 page)

‘But we were always so adamant about quality—'

‘I don't mean as a permanent policy, I just mean as a short-term measure, to cheer the shop up, to make it look as if nothing in it has actually been sitting here for months. I thought we might try some little room
settings
, to show people what they could do with not much outlay, a Kelim on a table rather than the floor, you know the kind of thing, you're brilliant at it—' He stopped.

‘Well?'

‘The thing is', she said slowly, ‘that I just don't want to do it.'

He dropped his hands.

‘Lizzie, are you ill?'

‘No.'

‘Then—'

‘I know I'm failing you,' Lizzie burst out desperately. ‘I know I'm not being dependable, competent, capable Lizzie, I know I'm hopeless just now but I feel – I feel that in order to survive, just
survive
, all I can do at the moment is crawl.'

There was a silence between them. Robert knew that his face wore his feelings as clearly as if they had been printed there in capital letters, feelings of frustration and bewilderment and, try as he might to quell it, a dangerous cocktail of exasperation and resentment.

‘Is it your blasted sister still?'

Lizzie moved her head so slightly it could have been either a nod or a shake. She lifted one hand and hooked her hair behind her left ear.

‘Take Jenny.'

‘What?'

‘Take Jenny to Birmingham. She's so experienced now and she'd love to go with you.'

Robert opened his mouth to say, as a reflex action, that he didn't want to take Jenny, he wanted to take his wife and said instead, ‘I can't. There'd be no-one to mind the shop.'

‘I'll do it,' Lizzie said in the maddening voice of someone offering to do a kind deed which is in fact their responsibility in the first place. ‘Term doesn't start until next week, after all.'

Robert stared at her. If she was insisting on playing this daft game, then he'd play it too, for the moment. He thought about the idea of taking Jenny to the vast gift fair at Birmingham. It wouldn't be exciting to take her, but it might be quite soothing, and, in his present mood, there was a strong allure in being soothed. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘OK then.'

‘Good,' Lizzie said. She sounded relieved. She leaned forward and kissed him, on the cheek.

‘Money troubles are not ennobling, are they—'

‘No,' he said crossly. ‘No. But they needn't be golden opportunities for self-pity either.'

‘Rob! I never—'

‘I don't want to talk about it any more,' he said, interrupting. ‘You go back to Westondale and I'll take Jenny to Birmingham.'

Then he turned on his heel and went back across the shop floor to the cash desk, where Jenny was checking the till for the night.

‘Do you know', Lizzie heard her say, ‘that in the end, after all that fuss, that woman bought both the expensive
and
the cheap paper. Aren't people weird?'

‘Yes,' Robert said with loud and meaningful emphasis. ‘Yes. Some of them certainly are.'

‘Is this mince?' Sam said. He poked a suspicious finger at his plate.

‘Of course it is,' Barbara said. ‘What does it look like?'

Privately Sam thought it looked like cat sick, but some warning bell in his head rang in time to prevent him saying so. His grandmother, whom he liked because she was so completely unsoppy, had to be treated, he had learned, with a certain circumspection. You could be entirely blunt about some things with her, but not about others, and one of those others
was
her cooking. That she couldn't cook had never occurred to Sam; he simply thought she didn't try. After all, all women could cook, couldn't they? It was what they did. Some fathers did it too. In Sam's view, Robert was a better cook than Lizzie because he didn't keep wanting you to eat salad. Salad was death to Sam, so was cabbage and worst of all, broccoli. Broccoli was death times a squillion. Sam couldn't even think about broccoli. He looked at Davy. Davy was regarding his grey mince with apprehension.

‘Davy gets very nervous about lunch,' Sam said.

Davy immediately looked close to panic.

‘He'll have reason to be nervous,' Barbara said coolly, ‘if he doesn't eat it.'

She eyed them both. She had offered to look after them for the two days that Lizzie had sole charge of the Gallery while Robert was away in Birmingham. She liked having them, not least because it gave her a chance to rectify various things she thought wrong about the way they were brought up by Lizzie and Robert, like too much television, not enough time in bed and careless table manners. She gave them jobs to do, weeding and shoe cleaning and dusting between the banisters with a miraculous object that was just a mad bunch of feathers on the end of a bamboo that Davy, for some reason, adored, and sent them out into the field behind the house with a list of things to find – various leaves and flowers, pebbles, bird eggshells, wormcasts to prove to her that they had actually looked at things and not just dawdled about slashing at the hedges with sticks. In the evening, William played draughts and dominoes with them and read to Davy out of something called
The Yellow Fairy Book
, which was dated 1894, so practically out of the Ark, which Sam affected to despise but always loitered just within listening-distance of. If you didn't pull the lavatory plug properly in Granny's house, she made
you
come back and do it again and then wash your hands and let her smell the soap on them. Her lavatory was terribly cold but it had an interesting chain hanging from an iron tank near the ceiling and a box of sort of tracing paper as well as the usual kind. Davy wouldn't go into it on his own.

‘Eat up,' Barbara said.

Davy whispered, ‘Ketchup.'

‘What?'

‘He said could he have some ketchup,' Sam said.

‘Why?'

Davy whispered, ‘To take the taste away.'

Barbara's mouth trembled. If he hadn't known her better, Sam would have said she was about to smile.

‘Grandpa and I don't have ketchup.'

Sam looked at Davy. Pimlott had said Davy was a wimp three days before when Davy wouldn't go down the recreation-ground slide head first, and to his considerable surprise, Sam had found himself kicking Pimlott. Pimlott had been amazed. He had stared at Sam with his light eyes as huge and round and spooky as moons, and then he had taken to his heels. Sam hadn't seen him since. After he'd gone, Davy, without further urging, had crept down the slide head first, determined and petrified, clinging to the metal sides with little rigid hands, and on the way home, Sam gave him a piece of chewing gum and a sticker which said, ‘Be Alert. Britain needs lerts', which Davy was wearing now, stuck on his jersey. He leaned towards Davy.

‘Eat it with your potato.'

‘Why not,' Barbara said. She sounded quite friendly. She was looking at them in quite a friendly way too, as if she almost approved of them.

Davy took a bite and chewed with resolution.

‘Well done,' Sam said encouragingly.

Davy took another. This one was harder. Swallowing it made his eyes water.

‘Where's Grandpa?'

‘Out,' Barbara said shortly. Out meant that he had gone to get petrol and some grass seed, and probably a pint of stout and more than probably he would squeeze in a visit to Juliet. Juliet was reputed to be very anxious about Lizzie, according to William, which showed, Barbara thought, the most astounding nerve on Juliet's part. She had no business of any kind to be anxious about Barbara's daughter. Barbara had her own views about Lizzie. They were not unaffectionate views, but they were strongly tinged, also, with disapproval. She looked at her grandsons. Sam was helping Davy load his fork in such a way as almost to conceal the mince under a small cliff of mashed potato. Odd, really, but the twins had always objected to her mince too, all those years ago. Odd too, though perhaps less surprising, that the fact of Lizzie's maternal eye being evidently, and one did hope and pray, only temporarily, off the ball, was making the children at last take a little responsibility for one another.

‘There now,' said Sam in cosy tones to Davy, ‘that wasn't so bad, was it?'

‘It wasn't so bad', said Davy bravely, but nonetheless seizing his chance, ‘as when I cracked my jaw.'

Robert gave Jenny lunch in one of the cafés at the Exhibition Centre. He bought her a glass of wine although she protested she never drank at lunchtime, and they ate disappointing slices of quiche full of chunks of potato, and salad, and then surprisingly good coffee with which they shared a piece of carrot cake. They were having a successful time. Jenny had been very quick in taking in both their budget and the principle of giving the shop an inexpensive, stylish facelift. Robert had always supposed her taste would run to very traditional things, flowered china and
chintzes
and slighty teashop ornaments, but she turned out to have a very good eye. She said, eating a morsel of carrot cake, that she had learned what to look for from Lizzie.

Robert said, ‘Lizzie is a really good sculptor, you know. It was what she was doing at art school when we met.'

‘Why doesn't she do it now?'

Robert stirred his coffee.

‘Why do you think?'

Jenny didn't reply. She was enjoying herself but she didn't feel, at bottom, that it was quite right for her to be here with Robert while Lizzie minded the shop. She had said this, tentatively – it was not in her nature to say anything very forcefully – and had been given to understand that Lizzie had not wanted to go to Birmingham and had suggested that she, Jenny, went instead. She didn't feel quite certain that Robert wanted her there and had said, rather than point this out openly, that surely it was best that he go on his own. No, he had said, it wouldn't be; it was always best to have two tastes and two pairs of eyes because of understanding all the different appetites of the Gallery's customers. Jenny, understanding him to mean that she, being conventional and mildly sentimental, represented a large proportion of the customers, then agreed. She had no illusions about herself, and was proud of the fact that she was a good saleswoman because she was intuitive about what people wanted, and frightened nobody. So she put most of her apprehensions about propriety to the back of her mind, arranged for Toby to spend the night with her next-door neighbour, and allowed herself to be taken to Birmingham. When there, she also allowed herself to voice some quite strong opinions, to make some decided choices, and to take pleasure in being with Robert who was, after all, charming, good company
and
extremely attractive. There were, however, some things she wouldn't allow.

‘I don't think we ought to talk about Lizzie. Not when she isn't here.'

‘But I was only saying, admiringly, what a good sculptor she was—'

‘And that would lead to saying other things. Wouldn't it?'

‘Are you', Robert said, smiling at her, ‘just a tiny bit priggish?'

She was unoffended.

‘I expect so. My father, who was very colourful, used to say that I was a good girl but that nobody ever climbed a mountain out of goodness.'

‘Was Mick good?' Robert asked.

Jenny blushed faintly.

‘Not very.'

‘Do you miss him still?'

‘Of course. He's—' she hesitated.

‘What?'

‘He's easier to miss than he was to live with.'

‘Oh Jenny—'

‘But I don't like not being married,' Jenny said quickly. ‘I'm designed to be a wife, I think. If it wasn't for Toby and the Gallery, I'd be miserable. I like being necessary, I like being depended on.'

‘We do depend on you.'

Jenny blushed again. She finished her coffee quickly, and put the cup down.

‘Is it very impertinent to ask if things are getting better? Money things, I mean?'

‘Not impertinent at all. After all, I told you before I told anyone. I think they perhaps are getting a little better in the sense that they aren't getting worse any more. We're bumping along the bottom but we aren't still falling.'

‘I'm so glad.'

‘It's been so ghastly. Terrible for Lizzie.'

‘Robert—'

‘I have to talk about her,' he said firmly. ‘I have to talk to someone about her and I can't talk to her parents or to Frances and so it has to be you. I just have to say to somebody that I can't take very much more of Lizzie behaving like this, absenting herself in spirit from me and the children and the business. I know the money situation has been a nightmare but we aren't out on the streets, we've got our home and our business still, the children haven't really suffered. And I know it's tough, when she's been used to having Frances almost as an extra child, another dependant, to have her so wrapped up in Luis she hardly even telephones just now, but it's not that tough. Frances is her sister, not her husband or children. And she's always gone on about how she wants to see Frances settled and happy, and now that she's happy she's gone all to pieces as if
she
was involved in the love affair. Frankly, it's driving me crackers, and I also don't see why I should try and put the Gallery back on its feet single-handed because she doesn't happen to feel like committing herself to it just now. It isn't that I'm not trying to understand but I get more baffled every day. I begin to think I've married into a family of absolute nutters. I always thought the others were a bit suspect, but I never, until the last year, thought that Lizzie might be. I'm going to get some more coffee. Would you like some?'

Jenny shook her head. She was full of sympathy, dangerous, luxurious sympathy. She watched Robert go back to the self-service counter, shoulders square in his corduroy jacket. He always wore corduroy jackets, they were his trademark and they made him, Jenny thought, look both distinctive and very faintly raffish. Poor man. Poor Robert. Yet poor Lizzie too, so unhappy and burdened. Families could be so terribly
oppressive
, she could see that even though she was herself an only child and mother of – so far, she always said privately – another one. Jenny hardly knew Frances, she only knew her as a quieter, dimmer version of Lizzie, sometimes, in the past, in the shop on Saturdays, but never now. This was because of her love affair. Jenny said the words over to herself again: love affair. She hadn't had a love affair with Mick, it had been more of a courtship, starting at a tennis-club dance and ending on a Saturday afternoon at Langworth Parish Church in a frightfully outmoded white lace crinoline chosen by her mother and now lying folded up in a box in Jenny's attic, never even to be glanced at again. Love affairs were by all accounts very different to the tidy ritual Jenny and Mick had followed, like people going through their allotted paces in a square dance. In love affairs, Jenny suspected, you took your clothes off emotionally and psychologically as well as literally, you let yourself go, you flung yourself in. In their case, Jenny had to confess, she had never really let herself go, and when Mick began to, after their wedding, she didn't really like it. She didn't seem to recognize him when he wasn't controlling himself. She looked up. Robert was coming back holding a coffee cup. You could tell, just by looking at him, that he was sensitive. Mick had been sensitive too, in his way, but more about himself than about other people. Robert put the coffee cup on the table amidst the debris of their lunch and sat down.