Landing Gear (22 page)

“Marriage is, well, it’s kind of epic. It
is
epic. You forget about it for years and years, you carry on living together, when your kid is small, while you’re both working, the sports days, the school plays, the anniversaries. The fucking anniversaries. That’s when it hits you. That’s when you think—hoo boy. Year after year. The person you’re married to has become like part of your own body, except separate, and at times annoying. There. There all the time. No question about that. The truth is it can be a bit dull. If you let it.”

He rubbed his hands up and down his face. “Why am I talking about marriage? I look at you and I feel the need to talk about my marriage. Sorry. Edit that bit out. Please.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Marriage is not easy. How can something that’s so much a part of the fabric of your life be so difficult? God.”
He looked away, toward the window. “Jack’s going to hate this.”

“What do you mean?”

“We had a tricky time, Harriet and I, a few years back. My fault, of course, but not entirely. There was always something else, something that came between us. Jack was getting older and turning away from us.”

“Can you be more specific?”

Michael smiled at the camera. “No,” he said.

And the interview was over as quickly as it had started.

4

Harriet arrived, apologizing for the two large shopping bags full of food. “It’s one of the good things about being back at work,” she said, “no time to go to the supermarket.”

Emily laughed.

Harriet handed her the bouquet of flowers she’d bought for her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Lovely to see you,” she said.

Emily breathed in Harriet’s perfume. “Thanks for coming.”

“I don’t have long,” she said. “I have to get home and cook supper for the boys.”

“Can’t the boys cook for themselves?”

“They can,” Harriet said with a nod, “but there’s no food in the house.”

“Can’t they do the shopping?”

Harriet gave her a look.

Emily ducked her head.

“Come on,” Harriet said, “let’s do this thing.”

Emily took the flowers into the kitchen and put them in the sink. Harriet carried the shopping into the sitting room and placed the bags on the floor, on either side of where she sat on the sofa, like protective buttressing or sandbags.

“You can leave those by the door,” Emily said.

Harriet shook her head. “They’re fine here.” She looked down at the bags. “Sorry,” she said. “That’s weird.” She got up and moved the bags near the front door before sitting down once again. “Michael told me it wasn’t too bad,” she said, “your interview. He said he waxed philosophical on the topic of marriage.” Harriet winced. “Was it okay?”

“He was great. He’s coming back for more on the weekend.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m nervous.”

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

“A glass of wine!” Harriet said. “Good idea.”

Emily returned to the kitchen, took the cork out of the bottle and poured two large glasses of white wine. Her hands shook.

In the sitting room, Harriet drank a mouthful and closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “Kate Winslet,” she said. “Gather. Gather.”

“What?”

“Oh you know, Oscar speech. The camera, brings out the diva in me. Maybe I’ll explode in a frenzy of swearing. Cause another YouTube sensation.”

“Don’t worry,” said Emily. “There won’t be any of that.”

“Any of what?” said Harriet.

“Clips on YouTube. At least not from me.”

“Outtakes? Bloopers?”

Emily shook her head.

“Turns out I’m much happier behind the scenes.”

“Me too,” said Emily.

“Okay. What do you want me to talk about?”

Emily drew a breath and took another sip of wine. “Let’s talk about my mother,” she said.

“This is our subject, isn’t it? Yours and mine.”

Emily nodded.

“This time for the camera,” Harriet said.

Emily nodded again.

“You do realize that I think of you as a kind of daughter?”

“And I thought of you as my mother for a couple of years before we met. Hard to shake.”

“I know,” said Harriet. “I’m sorry. That whole following me, friending you business.”

They fell silent. Emily shifted forward to turn on the camera. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“I’m ready.” Harriet cleared her throat and pushed her hair away from her face. “The short version. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“We were housemates. Your mother and me. She was the best friend I’d ever had. I loved her the way only a twenty-year-old can love somebody—I gave it everything I had. No one else mattered to me. Then she met George Sigo. He was a lunatic.” She put her hand over her mouth. “I can’t say that. You’ll cut that, won’t you?”

“Yes,” said Emily.

Harriet started again, speaking rapidly. “She ditched him, finally. But she was pregnant. Then she had the accident. She fell. You were born, but she died. I took you
home with me and took care of you for a whole week. Her parents decided to put you up for adoption. I tried my best to keep you, I tried to get my parents to help me, but no one listened. I had no rights. And then you were gone. It was too late.”

Harriet picked up her glass and knocked back the rest of the wine. “More, please,” she said.

In the kitchen, Emily cut herself on a sharp bit of foil on the wine bottle. She ran cold water over her finger, dripping blood on the big yellow daisies in the bouquet she’d left in the sink. She thought about how in the first interview she’d tried to stop Yacub from including her in what he was saying. So much for that. She’d heard Harriet’s story before, many times. But that didn’t stop it from feeling like having her bones scraped with a razor blade.

She wrapped her finger in paper towel, filled Harriet’s glass and took it to her. Harriet was gazing toward the window. The camera was still running.

“That was a bit brutal,” Harriet said. “I’m sorry.”

Emily sat down. “When you’re ready.”

“We were twenty years old. We were students at what was then the Polytechnic of Central London. Journalism. Both of us. Me and your mother, Elizabeth Barry. Barry. She called herself Barry, so we all followed suit, though she was the least Barry-like person around. I guess she thought Barry would make her seem less posh. She wasn’t posh—her background was like mine, ordinary suburban London girls. We came from opposite ends of the Northern Line, Morden in her case, High Barnet in mine—but she
was one of those English women who seem posh no matter what they do.

“We were all, I don’t know, what’s the right word? Adventurous. The Poly was a hotbed of radical politics, and it was the 1980s, after all, plenty to be angry about. We were angry. But we also had this incredible freedom. I’d spent my first year commuting between college and home every day but then I met a bunch of people who were squatting in Vauxhall, near the river, and they invited me to move in. They’d occupied a series of big houses in a terrace. An enterprising New Zealander called Mick—they were all enterprising, those Kiwis, they knew how to make stuff, unlike us Brits, we were useless—anyway, Mick had carved out an amazing room in the attic of one of the houses, all built-in shelves and a raised platform to sleep on, beneath a skylight that gave onto a little wild roof garden he’d planted.

“Mick got beaten up on an estate in Stockwell when he was trying to rescue a broken chair from a skip and he’d decided to go back to New Zealand. His room was vacant. I jumped at the chance, though I had to lie to my parents about it being a shared rental—they would have been horrified by the idea of me squatting. I had a bank account with the Post Office—god, I’m so old, it’s like I’m talking about the Dark Ages, you had to go in and stand in a long queue with your payment book—and I used to deposit the rent cheque they sent me every month. I used that money to pay for—”

Harriet’s grip tightened on the edge of the sofa.

Emily said, “Do you want a break?”

“I spent that money on flowers after she died, Emily. Six enormous bouquets of the most extravagant flowers in the whole of South London. Elton John for a day. She would have laughed. I don’t know where I thought they would go because her parents dealt with her funeral—in the end I filled her room full of flowers. I used to take you in there to feed you.” Harriet smiled. “There was a famous actress called Elizabeth Barry. Restoration. Did you know that? Barry used to mention it but then she began to think it was part of what made people think she was posh, so she stopped.”

Emily said, “I looked her up online.”

“Did you?”

“Not the best-looking woman.”

Harriet laughed. “Barry used to claim she was descended from her. No idea if it was true. But Barry, well, the main reason people thought she was posh was because she was so beautiful. Those classic English Rose looks. You have that, Emily. The fine white skin. The symmetrical features—the straight nose, the clear blue eyes, that hair that’s somehow always silky and smooth. You look so much like her.”

“It’s a Brazilian blow-dry.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s this hair treatment I get every six months or so,” Emily said. “It’s a chemical blow-dry that makes your hair smooth and silky. Takes hours and costs a fortune.”

“Oh,” said Harriet. “Well, that’s disappointing.”

“Is it?”

“I thought you were a natural beauty.”

“But I am,” said Emily.

“What else is fake? Come on, tell me.”

“Nothing!”

They both laughed and paused and drank.

“You really were my baby, for a while at least, for a whole week.”

Emily looked at Harriet. She wished she could remember it. With all her heart she wished she could remember being three days old and being held by Harriet. She felt tired. “Okay,” she said, “that’s enough for today.”

“Okay,” said Harriet. “Do you want to come home with me for dinner?”

“Not tonight.”

Harriet began to take off her microphone.

“Hey,” said Emily. “One more question? It’s not one we’ve discussed.”

Harriet sat back. She looked nervous. “Yes?”

“Your own parents. Why are you so … detached from them?”

Harriet let all the breath in her lungs go in one long sigh.

“I’m sorry,” said Emily. “Big question. You don’t have to answer.”

“It’s okay. The answer’s simple, really. You were denied your family, so why should I get to have one? I was angry. I was twenty. They were hard on me.”

Emily did not reply.

“I have to go cook for the boys.”

5

“I don’t have much to say. What’s there to say?” Jack looked straight at the camera. “What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me what life at home is like now that you’ve finished school and are working.”

“Okay. I can do that.”

Jack seemed more relaxed this time. He’d made a bit of effort with his clothes, had done away with the hoodie. “Ready when you are,” Emily said.

“For a couple of hours I thought you were my sister.”

“It was nice, wasn’t it?” Emily asked.

“It was. A sister! But I also thought I was dead. Neither turned out to be true. But since then you sort of have become my sister. And Yacub, he’s a kind of brother. I still tell people he’s my cousin. They look at me, they look at him. It’s entertaining.

“It’s good at home. It’s so much better than it was two years ago. Mrs. Harriet’s working again, which is a huge relief for us all—she’s no longer quite so
Crazee
. Dad trundles along as he always trundles along but he’s home more, not at work all the time, and he makes an effort with Mum—it’s kind of sickening, but it’s also sweet. He gives her flowers. They kind of date, in a weird way. They
go out to the movies or into town to see an exhibition on the weekend. For a while I thought my family was going to break apart. But that hasn’t happened. Instead it’s been transformed, it’s grown—first Yacub, then you. We’ve expanded. You should get married and have some kids, Emily, and you should all move in with us.”

There it was again, that moving-in idea.

“It’s a good idea,” Jack continued. “You’re not getting any younger.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think Michael would want me and my growing young family moving in with you.”

“You never know. He can be quite sentimental at times. Also, it’s a Pakistani tradition, isn’t it, the big extended family, and we’re honorary Pakistanis now, according to Yacub. Mrs. Harriet would love it. And anyway, I’ll be gone soon.”

“Off to uni.”

“Off to the debt factory.”

“You’ll come back, though. I can see it already. You’re definitely going to be a stay-at-home adult child.”

“You’re probably right. I’ll move my growing young family in as well. I’ll have such a massive debt from my ten years at university that I’ll never be able to afford to leave.”

“Well, it’s a plan,” said Emily.

“Not really,” said Jack. “Not really.”

6

On Saturday, Emily got up early and went for a cycle along the river. She felt apprehensive; today she was interviewing Harriet and Michael together. This had been Harriet’s idea, and Michael was happy to oblige. Emily figured it might prove fruitful.

It was windy along the river and rain spat at her intermittently, but she kept up a good pace and was soon sweating inside her cagoule. The sky was grey and the river was grey, too, the colours of London. The trees were stripped of their last remaining leaves, and the wind pelted her with them. She decided to get away from the embankment and onto a road. She found herself cycling across the river, toward Chiswick New Cemetery. She’d visit her dad, and she’d tell him everything.

She’d showered and finished her breakfast when her doorbell rang. She opened the door to Michael and Harriet. They looked smaller somehow, thinner and more tentative than usual. “Hello!” she said, sounding falsely hardy. “Come in! Welcome!”

They entered the flat, bumping into each other, bumping into the walls of the narrow corridor. Harriet
had brought a cake for Emily. “I actually made it,” she said, “I didn’t buy it.”

“It’s true,” said Michael.

“I’ll make coffee,” said Emily. “We’ll have cake.”

Harriet looked satisfied. They walked into the sitting room where the camera and the big light on its long-legged tripod were already set up.