The Bones in the Attic (20 page)

His tenderness for them, his sense of leaving things undone, was increased by a phone call from Aileen.

“Are you alone?” she asked.

“Yes, they're in bed and asleep. I listened ten minutes ago.”

“Matt, I'm in my last week or ten days here. I'm in Durban briefly at the moment, and if I can't book a direct flight home I'll get one from Johannesburg. It's Monday today—it should be in the first half of next week.”

“Hooray! Hallelujah!” said Matt, his voice swelling with delight. “I don't see why the children had to be asleep before you told me that. I've a good mind to wake them up now.”

“No, don't, Matt. The morning will do.”

“So Tom is really better?”

“Tom is . . . better. Still needs nursing, but it won't be by me. I'm just putting his affairs in order here, in so far as I can, then I'll go back to the farm for a few days, arrange for the care he needs, then pack up, and tell him I'm off the moment I see the Land Rover coming up the track to get me.”

Matt considered, his heart heavy.

“Tell me. I think I'm guessing.”

“Yes. It's starting up again.”

“He hasn't—”

“No. Don't go all macho. He hasn't, but the signs are all there, and God knows I should recognize them by now: it's
starting,
but it hasn't happened. Of course the moment he
started to regain strength and stopped feeling sorry for himself he wanted me back in his bed.”

“I hope you told him where to stick his bed.”

“In no uncertain terms. He only wanted me because I was
there,
like Everest. Of course he used all the ‘You're still my wife' arguments, which made me think a lot. And he can't take being refused. He's like a small child. And after the refusal had festered for a few days, the signs started showing themselves.”

“Like?”

“Like plates being thrown when the meals weren't to his taste, my wrists being taken and twisted when he thought I was getting cocky and he wanted to punish me for it. He hasn't entirely lost his strength, but he wasn't any match for me. . . . And do you know the oddest thing?”

“No, what?”

“He kept pestering me to bring the children out on a visit. My God, that's the last thing, the very last thing, I would do—start that up again. I haven't forgiven myself, and I don't think I ever will, for letting it go on as long as it did. It was more psychological than physical, I suppose that's my only excuse, so I saw the results rather than anything actually happening, or scars afterward.”

“The children were afraid you'd take them back to live with him, Isabella, anyway.”

“Yes, I feared that's what she must be thinking. She's the only one who really remembers. The thought of them living with him sends goose pimples up my spine. If he lived in England, the most I'd want him to have is the customary afternoon at the zoo with them. And then I'd probably set a private detective to tail them.”

“I'm at your service anytime, though I'm still very much at the apprentice stage. So you're just doing a bit of business stuff for him, then you'll book a flight, go back for a day or two to see about nursing arrangements—”

“Yes. I've nearly got that worked out, anyway.”

“And then you'll be home!”

“Home. The new home.”

“I feel like taking off my clothes and dancing round the garden.”

“Don't. A partner in jail on an indecent exposure charge is not my idea of the ideal homecoming. What gives in the baby business?”

“I'm onto Peter Basnett, and I'm organizing a trip to see him. But I'll fill you in on that when you come. I can't think of anything else now but your coming home. So you want me to let them know at the education department you'll be back at your desk soon?”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I'll need a full week of rest and recovery. And I don't mean just from the flight. And come summer I'll need two or three weeks of
real
holiday, all of us together, somewhere
nice.
Not exciting, or stimulating, but relaxing and
nice.
”

“As always you present me with a challenge. Where can you find somewhere nice in school holiday time? Everywhere's overrun with kids.”

“You love children, Matt.”

“Ours.
I suppose you'd rule out Australia or New Zealand?”

“Another long flight would kill me.”

“What about the bottom of Italy, on the Adriatic side? At least most of the children will be locals.”

“And if ours don't have anyone much to hang around
with, they and I can get to know each other again. Sounds promising.”

When the call was over Matt didn't take his clothes off and dance around the garden (he thought the Goldblatts could take it in their stride, but the Cazalets would be dialing 999 at the merest glimpse), but he did do a triumphal caper, something obviously inspired by memories of football victory celebrations, around the front room. Then he went upstairs, opened the door to Isabella's bedroom, and in the light from the landing watched her for a moment as she slept. Then he went across to her, sat down on the bed, and gently shook her shoulder.

“What's wrong? What's the matter?”

The girl's assumption went to his heart.

“Nothing's the matter. I've just been talking to your mother.”

“Yes?”

“And she'll be home next week.”

“Next week!” Isabella's face creased into an enormous smile. Then it faded a little. “For good?”

“Yes. For good.”

And then she threw her arms around his neck, and for minutes it seemed she lay with her head on his shoulder, crying happily.

“So Daddy won't be with her, then?”

“No. I don't think you'll be seeing Daddy in the near future.”

Half an hour later, as he piled dirty pots and pans in the dishwasher, he paused and went into the hall. There were voices from upstairs. Isabella was telling her brothers. Children usually know the right thing to do where they themselves are concerned, Matt thought. It was a sign, too, that
terror at what might happen had spread from Isabella to the younger ones. Matt wondered how he would have coped at Stephen's age.

He had already got the children's agreement to going on their own to the Nottingham Forest friendly that coming Saturday. Lewis's consent had been purchased at the price of a meal afterward at the pizza restaurant of his choice. Lewis was a connoisseur of pizza chains, able to weigh up the merits of a Margherita here against a Quattro Stagioni there. Matt wondered what his reaction would be to a real Italian pizza should they get to the Mezzogiorno in the summer holidays. Ecstasy or rejection? He felt a bit guilty at dangling the dazzling choice in front of him because he had memories of Nottingham from his footballing days, and eateries of any description had been notably sparse on the ground. Still, anything could happen in ten years. Leeds itself had been transformed in the same decade, and now made token appearances in the class nosheries sections of the Sunday color supplements.

To make the point that his life was complete without football (or any other game or form of physical activity, come to that), Lewis brought along on the trip his copy of
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
to read for the fifth time during the match. Isabella knew enough about the Nottingham Forest team, an esoteric subject, to lecture Stephen on whom they should be watching out for. Matt dropped them off outside City Ground without too much compunction: the crowd was good-humored if foul-languaged, and Isabella displayed her usual competence and apparent confidence, which Matt still trusted in when it came to practical situations, though it might fail her in emotional ones. Then he made, without any major
mishaps, for the A52, stayed with it as it veered round, then left it to drive eastward for Belling Joyce.

He slowed down as he approached it. It was a pleasant, unremarkable large village, near enough to Nottingham to attract commuters, but not sufficiently picture-postcard to send house prices rocketing. The green was its central point, and two pubs, a corner shop, and a post-office-cum-newsagent's reinforced that position. The road on either side of the green stretched wide, and Matt simply stopped the car, locked it because villagers are not what they once were, and began to walk around it in search of The Cottage. The houses were of many kinds and periods, but modern ones were few, and the feel was of an agricultural past long before the Common Market, for a time, transformed rural life into a prosperous and forward-looking one. It seemed a pleasant, friendly, open place—escapist, perhaps, but it was hard to see it as a prison for those too poor to own a car.

It took Matt five minutes before he came to The Cottage: a warm redbrick affair, with peeling paintwork, and the air of love and care being more evident in the garden (small and neat at the front, but apparently with a lot more land behind) than on the outside of the house. Matt swallowed: Would there be anyone at home? How would he be received? He paused only for a moment, then walked through the gate and rang the bell on the front door. Footsteps—male footsteps surely?—then the door opened and a figure stood in front of him that could only be Peter Basnett. Matt smiled tentatively, then a second later found himself locked in a warm embrace that went on and on.

“Matt! It's good to see you. I feel I'd have known you
even if we'd only passed in the street and even if I hadn't seen you on television.”

“I feel the same.”

“Come on in. There's tea brewing. There usually is in this house.”

And Matt was drawn straight into an inviting living room, and had the oddest feeling of coming home. Peter was still looking at him.

“I've often asked myself what I'd do if I saw you—when I saw you, may be I should say, because I knew you wouldn't give up. And I knew I'd do what I've just done, because I couldn't help myself. Sit down, and I'll fetch the tea things.”

He bustled off into the kitchen, leaving an impression of a slim, energetic man, busy, committed, but with a face—was Matt using prior knowledge? he wondered—that put on a public front to conceal pain. And, Matt conjectured further, behind that busy, practical facade there was a divided man, whose instincts and moral codes pulled him in various and irreconcilable ways. But perhaps he was reading too much into the bustle, which somehow seemed excessive, and a cover for uncertainty. Perhaps he was just relying on Charlie's judgment that this was a muddled man.

“By golly, you bring back some memories!” said Peter Basnett, as he once was, sitting down. “The tiny Cockney wizard with the ball! It was a pleasure to watch you—an excitement. I bet other people have been telling you that.”

“One or two,” said Matt. He thought Peter was on the point of asking whom he had talked to, but if so he bit back the question and went on in the same mode.

“You were somehow so—fresh. I nearly used the word
‘innocent,' but you weren't that. You were pretty knowing, really—a street kid. But—it's difficult to explain—you knew it all, had taken it in, in such a childlike way that you didn't seem beyond your years. One wanted to protect you somehow.”

“That's the role I remember you in: my protector,” said Matt truthfully.