Close Relations (7 page)

‘Ditch him and find somebody else,' said Maddy.

‘You don't understand.'

‘No. I don't.'

‘If you were in my position –'

‘I wouldn't get into your position,' said Maddy.

‘No. Everything's black and white to you, isn't it.' Prudence looked around. ‘Aren't you going to unpack? It looks awful. Shall I help?'

‘What's the point?'

‘Well, to make it look nice for yourself.'

‘But I don't mind.'

‘There must be some other reason,' said Prudence.

‘What reason?'

‘You can never find things.'

‘But if I don't need them I never look for them anyway.'

Pru gave up. She looked out of the window. From this subterranean viewpoint only a strip of the street was visible – the pavement, the wheels of parked cars. Somewhere, children
shouted.

‘I always feel like this when I've been to Lou's and Robert's,' she said. ‘Do you?'

‘Feel what?'

‘Like this.' Suddenly she yelled. ‘
Men!
'

Maddy closed the pizza box. ‘In the village I lived in, all the woman had clitoridectomies.'

Prudence gazed at her sister. She got up and paced around the room. ‘I'm going to ring him up. Now. He'll just be putting the boys to bed, having
quality time
with them, His horrible wife'll be cooking supper, lamps lit, gin and tonic waiting. I'm going to phone him up and blow the whole thing apart.'

‘Don't be daft. Course you won't.'

‘How do you know?'

‘I'm your sister,' said Maddy.

Prudence smiled. How quickly they had slipped back into their old relationship. She admired Maddy – she was simple and direct, there was something morally upstanding about her. But she also irritated Prudence. Despite her adventures in foreign countries, despite her physical bravery, she was so untested.

Prudence made her way past the slumped plastic bags belonging to the owner of the flat, past the detritus of someone else's life amongst which Maddy seemed content to live. She went into the kitchen. A batik hanging failed to cover a damp patch on the wall. She looked through the window. Even in the dark she could see that the garden was a mess. She thought, irritably, that if she had this place she would make it nice. She had always wanted a garden. ‘You should do something about it out here,' she called, searching for some coffee. She could only find a jar of Nescafé. Prudence, who liked real coffee, suddenly felt lonely. She longed for Stephen so much that her legs felt weak. She loved her sister, but in matters of the heart Maddy was no use at all.

Prudence drove home. She wondered what Stephen was doing now. In fact, from the clues she had gathered about his
wife, Kaatya wasn't the sort of person to fix him a gin and tonic. Prudence had said this to Maddy because her sister made her speak in clichés, she didn't encourage subtlety. From what Prudence had heard over the past months, clues she had picked at like a scab, Kaatya was a neurotic, self-absorbed person who didn't look after Stephen at all. She was always going off on courses, leaving Stephen to cope with the boys and do the cooking. She was restless and impulsive.
‘Now she wants to live in Normandy,'
he had sighed one day, making Prudence's heart lurch. Kaatya was moody, sinking into glooms that made her family creep around the house speaking in whispers. The next day she would suddenly dig up the garden to lay a patio.
‘I never know what's going to hit me when I get home,'
said Stephen, running his hand through his hair. Kaatya seemed to keep the three males of her household in a constant state of wary anxiety. They sounded bemused by her wilful femaleness. Prudence thought she sounded a pain.

Back in the flat Prudence made herself a pot of real coffee, freshly ground, and switched on the gas-coal fire. How cosy her living room looked.
She
would make him a gin and tonic. She looked at the manuscripts she had brought home. She ought to read a treatise on environmentally sustainable industries but suddenly she wasn't interested.

She lifted up the top folder. Rubbing off the mud with her finger, she read the title:
Playing with Fire
by Erin Fox. She should have given it to Liz, who dealt with novels, but something about the gardening woman had intrigued her.
‘We're all non-fiction, if you think about it.'
Prudence thought: if only we weren't. If we were fiction I could rewrite Stephen and make him leave his wife. I could create a man to fall in love with Kaatya and the boys would like him even though they still loved their father and we could all live happily ever after.

Prudence set her gold-rimmed cup and saucer precisely in the middle of the table. The cat jumped into her lap. She withdrew the manuscript from the folder and opened it at page one.

THE GENERAL STORES
in Wingham Wallace was an old brick cottage with living accommodation above. It faced the village green. Years before, there had been a butcher's shop next door, and a hardware shop up the road towards the church. The older residents could even remember the days when there had been a ladies' outfitters called Meryl Modes in a building that had since been flattened to create the pub car-park. These shops had long since gone. They had been reabsorbed into the cottages, leaving no trace except enlarged ground floor windows – in one case, regrettably glazed with bottle-glass. The hardware store was now the weekend retreat of a City solicitor whose intruder lights froze the local courting couples in its beam. This was just another irritant for the villagers who had seen their shops disappear and public transport reduced to two buses a day.

Now, only the General Stores remained. In summer it did a brisk trade in ice-cream but the rest of the year it struggled to survive, relying on the elderly locals collecting their pensions and the other villagers dropping in for things they had forgotten to buy at Tesco. The owners, Tim and Margot Minchin, had moved in five years earlier. Their lives had already been bedevilled by bad luck. This was another blow, for the superstore was erected only ten minutes' drive away, between the village and Beaconsfield. Once it was built even their most loyal customers deserted them, seduced by the miles of aisles crammed with everything anyone could need, and a lot else. How could Tim's wizened bananas compete? It
was a vicious circle, for the less business he did the less cash he had to invest in stock, so the shelves emptied and the shop began to have a third-world look. That spring there had been yet another blow. Tesco had introduced a free bus service which lured away his last remaining customers, those too poverty-stricken or dilapidated to run their own car. And on top of it all he had to cope with Margot.

Tim was a small, weedy man. Margot was huge. Since their tragedy six years earlier, a tragedy of which they never spoke, Margot had put on an alarming amount of weight. They never spoke of this too – what could you say? Tim blamed the various pills she had been prescribed at the time – anti-depressants, Prozac – upon which she had grown more and more dependent. He knew that she ate too much – comforting, sweet things like cake and chocolates – but he had no idea of the extent of her addiction for she spent increasing amounts of time upstairs, leaving him to run the shop. Over the past year she had retreated from the world. To his customers she had become creaking footsteps across the ceiling and the murmur of daytime TV. He had long ago given up talking to her about the problems with the business, she became so upset.
‘What are we going to do?'
she would wail, tears sliding down her cheeks and settling into the creases in her neck.

Tim was a gallant man. To him, women were to be worshipped, as he had worshipped his mother. They were to be protected. When he was a boy he had made swords out of planks of wood and pretended to be a crusading knight, rescuing damsels in distress. Nowadays his favourite recreation was to take part in Civil War re-enactments, fighting for the Royalist cause. Once he had worshipped his wife. In those days she'd been a big, fruity woman with a ringing laugh. When they'd made love he had marvelled at the ripeness of her body; he had sobbed with gratitude, burying his face between her breasts. That was long ago, however. Nowadays he simply kept her safe, shielding her from the nudging giggles of schoolchildren and the financial problems
of the shop that had once been their dream. And his need to worship at the temple of womanhood – that need, so powerful within him – was channelled elsewhere.

On Friday he was slotting copies of the local newspaper into the rack. He always remembered, later, what he was doing when she came into the shop. The door opened; the sunlight dazzled him. She greeted him and picked up a basket.

Today her hair was piled on top of her head. It gave out a golden glow, like a halo. She raised her eyebrows and paused, as if trying to remember what she had come in for. She always did this. She inserted her finger into her nostril – not picking it, she wouldn't do that. Thoughtfully exploring it. She wore jeans and a white T-shirt saying
The London Marathon
. Her husband ran in it each year; he was that sort of competitive creep. He didn't deserve her little toe.

‘Saw your daughter riding by yesterday,' said Tim.

‘She's in seventh heaven,' said Louise. ‘All through school she's itching to get back on her horse. Not that she ever does anything in lessons anyway. Got any anchovies?'

He looked at the cans. ‘No, but I could get you some.'
John West Salmon . . . Tuna Chunks in Brine
. . . the words danced.

‘Remember what it's like to be in love? Wildly in love?'

He moved to the counter and wrote
anchovies
.

‘You dream about them? Your heart thumps when you see them?' She flung a tin of tomatoes into her basket. ‘You get goosepimples just thinking about them?' She reached up. When she raised her arm, her breasts moved beneath the T-shirt. He looked down quickly, and replaced his biro next to the till.

‘Well, that's what she feels about her horse.' She pointed to the potatoes. ‘Two pounds please. Mine have got some disgusting sort of blight.' She laughed. ‘Story of my life.'

He picked up the potatoes; his fingers felt boneless. He could see her shoes – the scuffed gym shoes she normally wore. Not surprising – she was only coming to the shop. She wouldn't get dressed up for him. Sometimes, when her
London friends were visiting, she wore delectable high-heeled shoes. His favourite were her grey suede ones with the ankle strap.

‘Better, really.'

‘What is?' he asked.

‘I mean, a
horse
doesn't leave the lav seat up or criticise you in front of other people. A
horse
doesn't tell you you're getting fat.'

‘You're not!' he said loudly.

She turned to him with a dazzling smile. ‘Tim. You are nice.' She moved away. Her T-shirt was hitched up on one side; it revealed the shape of her bottom – womanly, round.

‘Where's the peanut butter?' she asked, looking at the shelves.

I'm sorry, it's –'

‘I know.'

‘I'll get you some.' He picked up his biro.

‘This place used to be humming,' she said. ‘I got all my gossip here.'

‘I don't know how long we can go on.'

‘Don't say that!' When she frowned, a crease appeared between her eyes.

‘Post Office Counters, they're threatening to close us down.' He stopped. ‘I shouldn't bore you with this.'

‘It's not boring –'

‘They want to take out a franchise in Tesco.' He took her money. Her beautiful hands were grubby; she must have been gardening. ‘And now I hear they're planning to build a Safeway out near the old A40.'

‘Well
I
shan't go there.'

‘Margot's in a bad way. She wants us to close down.'

‘You can't!' Louise protested. ‘Coming here's the most exciting thing I do all day.'

There was a silence. ‘Is it?' he asked.

The doorbell jangled. He jumped. James, her son, came in. His bike lay on the verge outside, its wheels spinning.

‘Mum, I've got it!' he shouted. ‘I've got the job!'

‘That's wonderful!' Louise hugged him.

‘I can start on Monday. It's a doss. I just walk up and down bunging stuff onto the shelves.'

‘Where is this?' asked Tim.

‘Tesco,' said Jamie.

There was a pause. Louise picked up her carrier bag. ‘Come on,' she said to her son. And she left.

At six o'clock Tim turned the sign to
CLOSED
. Above him he heard Margot's heavy footsteps. He paused, listening. Then he went across to the shelf next to the frozen foods. He knelt down and removed the sack of Bar-B-Q Briquettes. He reached behind it, easing his hand around the plastic-wrapped baking trays that nobody had bought for years. He drew out the wallet of photographs.

You have to be careful with photographs. You must not surrender yourself to gluttony. Upstairs, Margot was breaking up a Toblerone and putting one piece after another into her mouth. Down in the shop, however, Tim practised self-control. He knew, from experience, that if you look at a photograph too often the meaning drains from it. Like sucking the fruit juice from an ice lolly, you are left with frozen water. For this reason he didn't open the wallet often; he needed to preserve that jolt of joy. This evening, however, inflamed by the first proper conversation he had had with Louise for weeks, he succumbed.

Tim was known to be a keen photographer. The year before he had won second prize at the village fête for his study of a chaffinch feeding her young, an artistic composition of hinged beaks. It wasn't unusual for him to be seen on his day off with his Olympus strung around his neck. But this tender hoard was his alone.

He drew them out slowly, sensuously, delaying it. One snapshot showed Louise letting the dog out of her car. Wearing her padded jacket – it was winter – she held open the door of her Space Cruiser. The dog was a blur, half out of
shot. Another, overexposed on a sunny day, showed her at the village pageant. She stood there, maddeningly half-obscured by Arnold Allcock, who ran the pub. Another, shot over her garden wall, was a far view of her kneeling at her lawn-mower. It had broken down. At the time Tim had longed to go to her rescue, but in doing so, of course, he would have had to reveal that he was spying on her in the first place.