A Hidden Life (47 page)

‘You never stand up for me,' she shouted. ‘You're always so preoccupied with
her.
With your mother. I'm sick to death of it. You have a duty to me. Whether you agree with me or not, it's your business to defend me from Rosemary, not go along with her version of events.'

‘That's not what I did,' Dad had replied. ‘I just …'

‘You shut up! You said nothing! That's what you always do. Just
my luck to be married to someone so spineless that he can't even utter a squeak when his mother launches into one of her tirades …'

‘She is NOT my bloody mother!' Dad was shouting, and Matt remembered shrinking back against the leather upholstery, praying for him to shut up. His father rarely raised his voice and hardly ever swore, so the effect of this fury was enormous. Matt almost stopped breathing. His father went on, ‘She's nothing to do with me.'

‘She
is
to do with you,' Constance shrieked. ‘She might not be your birth mother but she's brought you up since you were eight. And in any case, her relationship to you or the lack of it has absolutely no bearing on what you should have done when she attacked me. You should have told her what you thought of her behaviour. She
is
your mother to all intents and purposes. She's brought you up since childhood.'

‘She took my mother from me.' Matt could see from his seat in the back of the car that his father's neck was red. It always went red when he was angry: scarlet patches covered the skin from his collar to his hairline. His voice rose to a shout as he went on speaking: ‘She robbed me of my mother …
robbed
me.'

‘What nonsense!' Constance laughed. ‘Your mother died of starvation, and probably malaria and God knows what other ghastly illnesses, in a prisoner-of-war camp. It's frightfully sad and all that, but you ought to have got over it by now. It was years and years ago, John. Talk about living in the past! You're a real expert at doing that, aren't you? Well, I'd be grateful if you stopped worrying about your mother, who's been dead for donkey's years, and took a little more notice of
me
.'

Matt drank the last of the milk. His father hadn't answered, or if he had, the memory of what he'd said had gone. What remained, what came back to him now as he sat in his own kitchen, an adult, well able to deal with unruly emotions, was the utter misery he'd felt then in sympathy with his father. He'd recognized – how old had he been? Not much older than ten, certainly – the depth and complete hopelessness of his father's sorrow. I knew, Matt thought, even at that age, that he and Constance were always going to be at odds with one another. They ought to have separated. There were some boys at his school whose parents were divorced. It wasn't completely unknown,
but Matt dreaded it more than anything. For years and years he'd gone to bed praying that his parents would stay together and his prayers had been answered. He should have specified some happiness in his fervent, whispered chats to the Almighty. For someone who didn't know whether he believed in God or not, he did make a lot of demands on His time. Just in case …

Matt rinsed his glass and left the kitchen.
She robbed me of my mother.
The novel was a truthful account of what had really happened and remembering those long-ago words of his father's made Matt believe this properly for the first time. Until now he'd been uncertain, but that memory had returned unbidden to convince him. He would tell Lou about it tomorrow. The light was out now in her room and he offered up another prayer, for his daughter's happiness. And Poppy's. Their health. Lou's success. He wasn't going to take the risk of leaving anything out.

Without curtains, without carpets, Milthorpe House was echoey and cold. Jake had picked her up early and here they were, walking round a place which Lou thought she knew better than anywhere, but which suddenly looked like nothing so much as a stage set waiting for scenery, props and, especially, actors to come and make it live again. The house felt dead. There was nothing in it that Lou could point at and say, I used to love this when I was small …

‘It's horrible,' she whispered. ‘I wish you could have seen it when Constance was alive. She wasn't a nice person, but she did know how to make a house beautiful.'

‘I just feel so – well, it's good to see where he used to live. Can we go and look at his study? Will it worry you? You can stay down here if you like and just give me directions …'

‘No, I'll come too. I haven't been in there for years. Without Grandad there, I never wanted to. Constance didn't change anything about the room but it wasn't the same after he died.'

They went up the stairs together, Lou leading the way. She'd not slept well: a combination of Poppy and then being unable to fall asleep again, and part of that disturbance was to do with Jake. That kiss last night … he'd made no reference to it this morning and Lou
interpreted that as meaning it was due to the lateness of the hour, the scent of honeysuckle: whatever. When something caught his attention, he focused on it completely. Now, he was totally absorbed with John Barrington, trying to imagine how it was for the writer to sit in this room and put down the words that would become his novels.

‘Tell me how the room was arranged,' he said.

‘The desk was here. Grandad didn't like looking out of the window while he worked. He told me once that the blank wall was like a screen and he could see the scenes unfolding on it – like a movie. We loved movies. We used to watch them together all the time. There was a sofa there, and a small television over in the corner and they used to show old black and white movies in the afternoons sometimes. The curtains were tobacco-coloured – velvet I suppose they must have been, but they were very worn and old. I don't know how Constance allowed it. She wouldn't have stood for worn curtains in any other part of the house …'

Suddenly, there were tears in her eyes.

‘I'm sorry, Lou,' Jake said. He looked stricken. ‘I wouldn't have asked you to come if I'd known it'd be so hard for you. Let's go, I've seen enough.'

‘No, no – I'm fine. Really. I just felt sad for a moment, that's all. Not about Grandad. Or not really. Just a sort of regret that he couldn't be alive to see his book reissued. That's all it is. And tiredness. Poppy woke up last night. She mostly sleeps through these days but last night, well, sod's law, isn't it? Kids always wake up when you go to bed late. Let me tell you about the desk. He had a rolltop desk which I loved. He let me keep my pencils in one drawer. My grandmother got rid of it when he died, and that makes me so angry whenever I think about it. I'd have loved that desk …'

‘That's too bad. That kind of thing really gets to you, but it's so cool. To be here, I mean. To look out of his window. I really get off on stuff like this, you know. Writers' houses. I love them. I did all the tourist things when I first came over here. Stratford, the Lake District, Hardy's Dorset, even Brontë country. And modern writers … it's harder with them, so I'm lucky to know you. And very lucky to have got here before they turn it into something else.' He
smacked his hand against the wall. ‘It makes me mad, to think this is disappearing. How can you stand it? A health club!'

‘Grandad's not famous enough for anyone to turn this place into a shrine.'

‘I know. It's sad, that's all I'm saying. I'm glad your brother didn't run his cockeyed idea past me. I'd have been – well, I'd have found it hard to be polite to him. It's … I dunno … Philistine, I guess.'

‘Justin does his own thing. He always has. He never thinks about anyone else, and he's so good-looking that people don't seem to mind. They indulge him.'

Jake smiled. ‘I've noticed that. The beautiful get away with stuff, that's true.'

The study seemed crowded all of a sudden. Jake was leaning against the wall by the door. Lou was on the other side of the room. Suddenly, he came towards her, holding out his hand. ‘Come on, Lou. We're out of here.'

He held her hand as they walked downstairs. She felt as though she were being led out of a dangerous maze. He knows the way out, she told herself and that thought was followed by another: you're mad.
You
know the way out.
You're
the one who's been here before, not Jake. Still, the feeling persisted that he was looking after her; guiding her out of somewhere that used to be a happy place and wasn't any longer. She'd been about to cry, about to sink into memories that made her sad, and Jake had been there to take her back into the sunlight. The study had always been on the dark side of the house, and the sun never reached it till late in the afternoon, but now, coming out at the front, there was the warmth and brightness of a clear August morning and her spirits lifted.

Once she was in the car, once they were on their way to Haywards Heath to fetch Poppy, she began to feel tired and slightly depressed again.

After a while, Jake said, ‘You okay? You're very quiet …' He shot her a quick look and a smile and then turned his eyes to the road.

‘I'm fine, just tired.'

‘Go to sleep. Really. We've got at least half an hour.'

‘I think I will. Thanks, Jake.'

She closed her eyes and leaned back against the seat. As she drifted
into sleep, she became aware of a hand moving over her hair, softly, very softly and then adjusting the cardigan that was draped over her shoulder, covering up her bare arm. Did he think she was asleep? Did he want her to know he'd touched her? Lou didn't care. He'd stroked her hair …

‘I think it's very kind of Mummy to ask us out to dinner. We can have a … well, a bit of a celebration. Have you told her about your new little brother?' Gareth grinned at Tamsin and, like a human lighthouse, turned his head and the beam of his happy smile on Nessa too. She smiled back. Well, he
had
just had a son and whatever anyone said, men did go all gooey when a male child was born. Nothing you could do about it but disapprove and have another glass of wine to show how delighted you were. He was here in the restaurant, ready to hand Tamsin over for the weekend. Melanie, naturally, had sailed through the entire process with no trouble at all, and everything surrounding the birth was positively jubilant and positive and life-affirming, quite unlike her own painful experience, which still made her shudder in horror even after eight years. It was quite true that the whole thing had been worth it in the end because of Tamsin, but the actual process itself hadn't been a pleasant one.

‘Congratulations, Gareth,' she said. ‘And you, Tamsin, sweetheart. You're a big sister now! Isn't that lovely?' She found that she, too, was doing the beaming thing, and added, ‘I think we'll go and find a nice cuddly toy for him tomorrow. Okay? Have you decided on his name yet?'

‘Barnaby,' said Tamsin. ‘Barney for short.'

‘Lovely!' said Nessa, while privately believing the name would be very much more suitable for a teddy bear.

The waiter came with their pizzas, and for a few moments they chewed away in harmony. Nessa looked around. The restaurant
wasn't too crowded but there were a few people sitting at tables quite close by: probably enough to stop Gareth from making a scene. She'd gone over and over it in her mind. She'd decided to break the news about Mickey to both of them together, and though of course she could have done so in private, she knew that being in a restaurant meant that Gareth wouldn't be able to have any kind of row with her. She looked at Tamsin happily eating her pizza and took a deep breath. Here goes, she thought, and smiled at her ex-husband and her daughter.

‘I'm glad you're both here together, you two, because there's something I want to tell you. I've got a bit of good news of my own that we can celebrate. I'm … well, I've fallen in love.'

‘Good for you, Nessa! Who's the lucky fellow?' Gareth asked and he sounded genuinely pleased.

‘I'm afraid it's not a bloke, Gareth. It's Mickey. Mickey Crawford,' she added, smiling, making sure they both knew who she meant.

‘But Mickey's a lady,' Tamsin said. ‘Ladies can't fall in love with other ladies.'

‘Yes, they can. It's …' Nessa thought for a moment. ‘It's not what most women prefer, but some do. They fall in love with other women.' Let's not, Nessa thought, turn this into a sketch from
Little Britain
with talk of ‘laydees'. She had been so taken up with Tamsin, with her reaction, with seeing that she had absorbed the information and not been, at first sight anyway, completely traumatized, that she'd hardly glanced at Gareth. She turned to him now, because Tamsin had gone back to her meal. She looked okay, but Gareth … he was clearly about to have some kind of fit. His face had turned dangerously red and he was opening and shutting his mouth like a goldfish. Nessa smiled at him encouragingly and said, ‘Relax, darling. No need to throw a wobbly!'

‘That's not what I'm doing,' he spluttered eventually, wiping his mouth with a paper hankie. ‘I'm just … I cannot believe what you've just told me. We can't discuss it now, anyway.'

‘Why on earth not?'

‘Don't be ridiculous, Nessa. It's not – it's not suitable for our daughter to hear and I don't want the entire clientele of this restaurant listening in on what's a very private discussion.'

‘What nonsense, Gareth! There's nothing whatsoever to discuss. Mickey and I love one another and now that the divorce is through, I'm going to start making arrangements for a civil ceremony.'

If he'd been purple before, what colour was he now? Nessa saw the blood rise in her ex-husband's face and was amazed at how much of it there must be in his body to produce this strange red and white blotchy effect. She waited for him to return to normalish, which he did after a few moments. He said, ‘You mean, one of those stupid gay marriages.'