A Place for Us (40 page)

Cat looked round for Joe, but he wasn’t in the kitchen, and she peered into the bar, but couldn’t see him there either. She took the scissors out of Sheila’s hands, playing for time. “You shouldn’t be doing that with your back. What else do you need?”

“Very kind of you, my dear. What did I do before you came along? We need some thyme. Parsley, big bunch of it. And some tarragon.”

“Oh.” Cat started cutting. She looked up at the fence. “Hey, Sheila, I was thinking something.”

“Oh, dance here,” Sheila said. “I love this bit. She’s got a great way about her with a song, hasn’t she? I love dancing.”

“Me too,” Cat said, beaming. “Me too!”

They danced round the garden a bit, clapping their hands and singing, laughing together, and eventually Sheila leaned against the windowsill and turned the radio down. “Ooh, my sides. You have brightened this place up, Cat, you really have.”

“Oh, right.” Cat shrugged, trying not to show how much this pleased her, and pulled her cardigan off. “I wanted to ask you, Sheila. I’ve talked about this with Joe, but it was a while ago now. Have you ever thought of extending the garden? Making a vegetable patch down the back, putting some tables out under an awning?”

“Well, we were going to, this summer. But it got away from us, what with one thing and another. Now I’m off to Weston tomorrow, and he’s ever so cross with me. Doesn’t understand why I want a holiday.” Sheila crossed her arms. “Ooh, the way he is at the moment, it’s work, work, work. He wants everything yesterday, that’s his trouble. Well, he’ll have to wait.”

“Joe’s lucky to have you.”

Sheila chuckled. “My dear, I’m lucky to have him. Bless his heart. For all his moods, and he’s a right pain at the moment, isn’t he?”

“How do you mean?” Cat kept her voice level.

“Oh, Cat, you know. He’s like a bear with a sore head lately.”

“Karen?”

“Of course. He’s devastated. Never known him like this.”

Cat moved on to the tarragon bush. “I just—I thought maybe he’d be glad. I never knew—right, that’s . . .” She knew Sheila was watching her curiously, and she swallowed, trying to sound normal, any earlier jollity all gone. “It must be very hard for him.” As she handed Sheila a bunch of herbs, she was alarmed to feel her cheeks flaming red. She changed the subject. “What about the herb garden, kitchen garden, then? Should we choose a time when you’re free to talk it over properly?”

Sheila nodded, watching her. “Good idea.” She leaned against the window ledge and banged on the window, which Cat now saw was open. “He’s back. Hey, Joe! Get out here! Cat’s telling us how we ought to do the garden. You should have a chat with her. I’m sure she’s right.”

A few seconds later Joe appeared in the doorway. “Hello, Cat.” He nodded at her.

“Hi,” she said. Any easy communication they’d had earlier in the summer was gone since Karen had left, and the past fortnight he’d barely spoken at all. The one time Cat had stopped him and ventured to ask how he was, in the dark passageway out to the garden, Joe had stopped, fists clenched, and stared at her. “Fine, thank you for asking. Why?”

“Oh. No reason. Just—been a while since we talked.”

“Yes. I’m in the middle of something, Cat, I’m sorry. Best get on.” Then he’d pushed open the door to the gents’, leaving her standing in the passageway feeling like an unwelcome smell.

Now he stood in front of them, his arms crossed. “Sheila, the
portobellos weren’t in the veg box this morning. Can you call the suppliers and find out what’s happened to them? Otherwise we’ve only got two main courses today.”

“I’ll murder them, I will. That’s the third time this month.” Sheila heaved herself off the window ledge. “Cat, you come and find me later,” she called. “Joe, get her to tell you her idea. It’s a good one, it is. Stop this from happening again.”

The two of them were left standing on the shaded patio, where the sun hadn’t yet arrived. “Excuse me, will you? I need to check the soup,” Joe said, and he turned back inside.

Cat followed him into the cluttered white kitchen. She watched a buzzing fly, dangerously close to the ultraviolet insect killer, high up on the wall. “It’s quiet today for once,” she said, wishing she was better at small talk.

“It’s July. I’ve got two people away and a reviewer and a party of ten in for lunch. You’ll be busy, I should think.” He said it with almost grim satisfaction. “So, what’s up, then?”

Cat looked around for a place to stand. She felt in the way, and she didn’t want to talk to him if he was going to be like this. She’d thought he wasn’t the type to be moody, the kind who liked watching others squirm because he dictated the atmosphere—she was wrong, though. How could he be acting like this?

“Joe—it’s about the garden—but it doesn’t matter today.”

“Not today?”

“No. Another time.”

His tired eyes narrowed to a flinty stare. “Have you been talking to Lucy?”

“Lucy? Yes, why?” Cat said, surprised.

“You Winters. You stick together, don’t you? I should have remembered.” He looked at her angrily, something like disgust on his face, as if she were a grub on a fresh green lettuce.

“What’s Lucy got to do with it?”

“You know perfectly well, Cat. You waltz in here making a racket dancing round the garden with Sheila, trying to get her into your little gang too. ‘Hi, I’m one of them, everyone loves us, we’re better than the rest of them.’ ”

Cat felt as if he’d slapped her. “What the hell does that mean?” she demanded. “You’ve got totally the wrong idea about us. We’re not glued together like some clan.”

“ ‘Clan.’ Very posh.” His expression was ugly.

“Oh, shut up,” Cat said, fury suddenly uncoiling inside her. “It’s all in your head, whatever it is. These past few weeks, the way you blow hot and cold. Stop going on like you’ve got some chip on your shoulder about—”

“Chip on my shoulder?” he shouted, and she stepped back, astonished. “That’s funny, Cat. I could almost laugh at that.” He looked away and covered his eyes with his arm, then looked back. “You should all be glad to kiss my boots—that baby’ll grow up and one day she’ll wish it had been the other way. That I was her dad. But I’m not, am I? She’s stuck with you lot. What a life.” He turned his back on her, and began grinding garlic cloves with the head of a wooden spoon.

“Oh, Joe.” Cat cleared her throat. “Is it little Bella?” She bit her lip. “Joe? Did they get the tests back?”

He didn’t answer, just carried on pounding the garlic, pulling the skins off and smashing the cloves to pulp. Cat watched his curved back slump. Her eyes stung. She could hear his breathing.

“She’s Bill’s, isn’t she? Joe, I’m so sorry.”

She couldn’t see his face. “Why are you sorry? I’ve not met her, I don’t know her.”

“I thought it’d be nice for you if she was—” That sounded completely wrong. “I—I just wanted you to be happy.” The atmosphere was excruciating. She wiped her hand across her brow. “Look, I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”

“No.” Joe put the spoon down, back still to her. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m sorry for yelling like that.” He stared out the window. “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, you . . . Never mind.”

“You really wanted her to be yours, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

Cat reached forward and gave him a tiny pat on the back, then stepped back. He hung his head, hand up to his eyes.

“It’s silly things. Seeing Luke . . . every time I see him around, I think of Jamie. And I think,
Oh well, Jamie’s met Luke, they played together, so
at least when I’m looking at your son there’s a connection to mine even if he’s—he’s two hundred miles away.
’Cause I miss him that much. Does that sound mad?”

When Daisy came home when Cat was eight, for a week, Cat had memorized everything she’d touched in the house. The William Morris print book. The orange casserole dish. The phone. The chair on the right of Southpaw’s in the kitchen, painted blue many years ago, worn at the edges. She still sat in that chair out of habit, every time. That was why. It occurred to her only now that that was why. “I know what you mean, Joe.”

“I thought it’d be different with this one. And there it is, I’m not even her dad.” He turned round and gave her a small smile. “I only found out this morning. Came in the post. Old-fashioned . . . and I wasn’t expecting it. Just a bit of a shock . . .” He trailed off, his head hanging. She thought he might be crying and moved toward him, patting his arm softly.

“It must be really hard.”

This time he didn’t stop her. He said quietly, “I went to work one day and I said bye to her before I left, and she looked at me and said, ‘Thanks, Joe.’ And I thought it was weird. ‘Thanks, Joe.’ I get back and she’s gone. Nothing left of her.”

“Do you want to see her? See Bella, anyway? I’m sure she’ll be back. You never know, this thing with Bill . . .”

But he gave her a strange look. “They’ll be all right together. I knew it all along. Always.”

“Really?” Cat said.

“She needs an older man, Karen does. She needs someone who’s a different pace from her. He can look after Bella and she can take on the world.”

“I never really understood them, to be honest,” Cat said. “I like her, I love him, he’s my uncle. I just don’t get them together.”

“Don’t you? I do. More than she did, I think. Look, I have to get on, Cat. Sorry again. I really didn’t mean to bite your head off.”

Cat nodded. “Honestly, Joe, it’s fine.” She dared to reach out and pat his arm, wondering if maybe he’d start yelling again, but he didn’t. “I wish it didn’t make you so sad. Look—if you need to chat to anyone, okay?”

“Okay,” he said. “Thanks. You’re a good friend.”

She wished there was something else she could do: wrench that baby away from Bill and give her to Joe, for just a couple of hours, so he could at least see her, say hello. Cat shut the kitchen door quietly behind her and went out into the pub.

“Cat, can you fold the napkins?” Sheila said from behind the bar. She pointed at a basket of gleaming snowy linen.

“Sure. Need to hurry now, I suppose.”

She was talking to herself really, not to Sheila. Though it was still a beautiful day, she shivered in the cool of the bar. Trying to ignore the old voice that shouted, that tried to panic her, bring her down again. The voice that said she was like her mother, that Luke was in danger, that relationships were trouble, that life was better small and cozy, not loud and scary and exhilarating like the roller coaster at the fairground they’d been to last week on the Bristol Downs. She hummed “Call Me Maybe” as she folded the napkins. She had almost learned to ignore the voice. Almost.

“Did you talk to him, then?” Sheila asked. “Joe?”

“Now’s not a good time,” Cat said, pressing down on the pile and feeling the cold smoothness of the linen beneath her skin.

Martha

August 2013

T
HAT MORNING, HER
eyes flew open, and she realized she had barely been asleep. She had been thinking, dreaming again. It was happening a lot lately.

As she lay in bed staring at the beams on the ceiling, Martha’s dream came back to her. The disastrous summer party: was it 1978 or ’79? Such a long time since she’d thought about it, and there it was, a fully formed memory, like a settled snow globe.

It had been a terrible summer. It rained for weeks. The lawn was a bog, so bad that Hadley (their dog after Wilbur, a tough act to follow), who was of a nervous disposition, sank into it whenever he went outside for a run around and had to be unplugged like a suction cup. The iron-with-plastic-carapace DIY gazebo did not exist then, and so Martha, helped but mostly hindered by David, constructed her usual awning out of a shaky combination of bamboo sticks, two iron poles, and plastic sheeting, which was folded away neatly each year and shaken out onto the lawn in August once again, rampant with spiders that scuttled across the neat grass. The action of taking the awning out, spreading it across the grass—it was summer for her, just like Studland Bay, and David’s hat, which he wore every day the sun shone.

That year, despite the ceaseless rain, Martha and David had put up the awning, decorated the tables, organized the food, and waited for evening. Secretly, she hoped some of the guests might cry off—but no, they tramped up the drive in wellies, in long floral floating dresses, in caftans and jeans, in suits and ties. Martha watched them crowding under the awning with a kind of bemused despair. There they all stayed for the rest of the evening, staring out at the drizzling, misty garden, which
she’d worked so hard in all summer, so that it would look perfect for this one night. The
High Society
album was playing on the gramophone in the sitting room, the window ajar so that Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby floated out across the garden. The women sank farther into the grass, all except sixteen-year-old Florence, who took immense pride in pointing out to everyone that she was wearing flip-flops. Bill, on holiday from medical school, all Adam’s apple and legs, dutifully handed round drinks, chatting politely, asking after people’s holidays, people’s children, people’s health. Daisy was, as ever, nowhere to be seen. She’d been out all day. Shopping, she said. She was off to polytechnic in Kingston in the autumn, to study sociology. But her plans didn’t seem quite real; with Daisy, they never did.

Usually Martha loved parties: the ideas, the little touches, the food. The bringing together of people, the delicate social tasks often required. Not tonight. She just wanted it to be over. To be inside, dry and warm. To stop having to keep an eye on Hadley, who was more hyperactive than ever, circling and wheeling around the tent, shaking wet grass and mud all over the guests. The party wasn’t working; everyone was cold and formal and annoyed—with her, maybe. She wished she were tucked up in bed with a hot toddy and even a hot-water bottle, David next to her, the pair of them chuckling over the worst parts of the evening.

She could still see it now: the moment when Hadley, out of nowhere, suddenly stopped chasing his tail around on the lawn and turned, snarled at the assembled crowd, and dashed into the awning, catching a dancing piece of twine with him, crashing into the outermost pole. He made for Gerald Lang, who lived up at Stoke Hall and whom the Winters loathed: Bill said he was a cheat; Florence said he was a sex pest who’d put his hand down her top at the church fête. Now Gerald was flung to the ground as Hadley went for him.

The tent began collapsing around them and the guests fled, screaming. Martha could see Hadley’s yellow teeth tearing into Gerald’s thigh. Patricia, Gerald’s formidable new wife, tried to pull the dog off him, but something had flipped inside Hadley’s always slightly confused brain and it was almost impossible to detach him.

Bill, clamping his hand around Hadley’s muzzle and his knees around the snarling dog’s trunk, eventually managed, with one hard yank, to jerk Hadley away. The guests looked on in the rain, some screaming.

Daisy came running onto the lawn. “I’ve called an ambulance,” she said. Then she stopped, and smiled down at Gerald. “Hope he’s ripped your cock off, you disgusting man.”

“Daisy!” Martha said, as David came forward with a lead and took Hadley by the collar, and locked him up in a shed at the back of the orchard.

The next day when the vet told them Hadley had been destroyed—“He has to be, I’m afraid. No saying he won’t do it again, now he’s done it once”—Daisy was furious. She said Martha must be mad, must be making it up, and they had a terrible, blistering, white-hot row, and Daisy went to London the day after, to stay with some school friends. She returned for a week before poly started, but only to pack. It was never really her home again.

But they didn’t know that, just then. Didn’t know Hadley would have to die, that Daisy would leave and not really come back, that Gerald and his new wife would never have any children and the rumor would always be that Gerald, who was to be avoided at drinks parties, as the polite parlance had it, wasn’t the man he used to be. It became something of a terrible, black joke between David and Martha, a couple’s private jest, which, if anyone else were to hear it, would sound utterly appalling.

After the ambulance had taken Gerald Lang away, Martha sought a moment’s sanctuary in the kitchen, where she leaned on the sink, head spinning. Then she opened the kitchen door and found her son, vomiting into a bucket.

“Bit green still,” he said, wiping his mouth, looking wholly ashamed. “It wasn’t pretty, I’m afraid. Poor Gerald.”

“You were wonderful, Bill.” She gripped his shoulders. “You’re so grown-up! I can’t believe it. You are, aren’t you! You’re going to be a wonderful doctor. So brave.” She kissed his hand, unbelievably proud of him. Gilbert Prundy, their old vicar, had appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“The hero of the hour. William Winter. I say, well done, old chap. Well bloody done.”

The strange thing about that night was: the party went on. In fact, it went on rather late. Gilbert Prundy fetched his Oscar Peterson albums from the vicarage, and he and David sang along and danced. Kim Kowalski, the new owner of the cottage down the hill, played his guitar. They stayed outside among the ruins of the party, the torn awning muddied
on the floor, useless, the old trestle table buckled and broken. The moon didn’t come out that night, but after enough wine and enough Pimm’s, no one really cared. The rain grew heavy at around midnight, so the guests moved inside and the party went on until dawn. And Martha, relaxed for the first time ever, enjoyed herself. Because it had been pretty much the worst party you could have, and yet they were all still there, when even the rabbits, which scampered constantly across the lawn in summer, stayed out of the rain.

•   •   •

She thought about that party constantly as she prepared the lunch, the first proper entertaining she’d done since David died. Poor Hadley. What was it that had set him off that day? They had constantly wondered afterward. Was it something they’d done? Eventually David had just said, “Put it down to flipped-switch syndrome.” But he hadn’t drawn Wilbur for about a month afterward.

She said out loud, “What did you draw during that month instead? I can’t remember.”

The lunch was all ready: cold cuts, pie, salads, and burgers. She moved around the kitchen, touching her familiar things, feeling very calm.
What’s the worst that could happen? You’ve arranged it now.

She thought about Florence and Jim, somewhere on the motorway. Lucy, singing in the shower upstairs. About Luke and Cat, down by the river. Karen and Bill, out for an early morning walk with Bella, having driven over last night from their newly rented flat in Bristol. And she thought about Bella, her newest granddaughter, whom David would never meet.

More time. All she wanted was a little more time. Not much: one more week, one more day, even just one more hour with him. That was all. Just a little more time, to sit in the kitchen as she sat now, her hands wrapped around the same old mug, gazing out of the window, to know that he was in the house too. Upstairs, shaving, singing. In his office, laughing at something. Calling out into the hallway, “Any chance of some tea, Em?”

His voice. She could hear it so clearly it might have been real. Not in her head, this once. She breathed, feeling the tight ball of pain that, ever since he died, seemed to sit above her lungs. It made her
breathless, it made her cry, it made her throat swell with sadness. It was always there.

Any chance of some tea, Em?

What would happen if, for just one minute, she believed he was here, in front of her? Really believed it? Martha relaxed and closed her eyes, letting the sun warm her face.

The room was still, noises off, as if her ears were stopped up with wax. She sat, waiting. She felt something cold brush over her and found she couldn’t open her eyes, didn’t want to.

Then she knew he was here. That he was waiting for her, that he was here.

Martha froze. Very slowly, she opened her eyes, and he was in front of her, in the doorway. Without his stick.

“Any chance of a cup of tea, Em?”

“Yes,” she said, and she smiled at him, and it was as though nothing had happened. As though he’d always been there, waiting to walk in through the door. “It’s a bit thrutchy. It’s been in the pot awhile.”

“Fine by me.” David sat down in his chair. “What’s happened to this? It feels different.”

“Lucy stood on it and it broke.” Martha poured him some tea, unable to tear her eyes away from him. The crease in his shirt, it was real. His eyes, his chin, his chest. He really was here again, really was. She missed the mug, and tea splashed onto the table. “I fixed it.”

“Of course you did,” David said, and he slid the Rochester Castle tea towel over to her, his eyes crinkling, his wide smile. He was there, he was in front of her. Somehow she kept looking at him, and he didn’t disappear. Somehow she kept on talking.

She said, “It’s amazing what wood glue and some tape will do.”

“Not amazing. You can fix anything, darling,” he said, and they both drank their tea, together in the warm kitchen, nothing remarkable about it at all, really.

Suddenly Martha didn’t know what to say, and the ball of grief seemed wedged so high in her throat she thought she might choke.

“I miss you, David,” she said eventually, tears in her eyes.

“I know you do, Em.” He couldn’t smile now.

“I did it all wrong, all of it. I shouldn’t have had that party.”

“No, darling. They had to know. We had to tell the truth.”

“But I lost you.”

“I would have gone anyway.” He seemed to be altering before her eyes. Was his hair less gray, more brown, was he younger every time she looked at him? “Em, I was dying. Nothing you could have done to change it. You do understand that, don’t you? You had to tell them the truth about Daisy. I had to die. Those are the facts. They had to happen in their own time.”

In their own time.
For the first time, she believed it. “Yes.”

The table was too wide, she couldn’t reach over and touch him. She hesitated.

“Good,” he said.

“I hate it here without you.”

“I know. But before that . . .” David said. “Before that . . . we loved it. We loved it here. We were happy. We
are
happy.”

Martha wiped her eyes. She cleared her throat and said, “Is it right, what I’m doing today? Is it the right thing to do?”

“Of course it is,” he said.

“I don’t know anymore. I don’t seem to be able to fix on anything these days. They think I’m much better, but I’m not. I—we—we—” She broke off with a sob, her head bowed, rubbing at her chest.

And he said, “I’m here, you know that. I’m with you always. I won’t ever go away.” He stretched his hands out to her, across the table. The hands. She stared down at them. They were strong and supple, almost as good as new.

Martha tried to touch his fingers, to stretch toward him, but he didn’t move.

“I can’t reach you.” Tears were blinding her eyes. “David, I can’t—” She stood up, stumbling, and when she looked up he was gone.

There was a knock, a tiny knocking at the back door, and she started, looking around.
I was here. He was here.

“Martha?” The door creaked open. “Ma?”

Karen came in, carrying her tiny daughter, Bill behind her.

“Everything all right?” Karen said, staring at Martha. “You look as—you’re very pale.”

Martha looked around wildly. He was still here, wasn’t he? Behind the door, perhaps just next door.

“I—did you see someone?”

Bill looked at his mother. “Who?”

“I . . . nothing.” Martha shook her head. “Nothing.” She kissed her daughter-in-law’s cheek and stroked her granddaughter’s dark hair. As though it was normal, everything, all of it, the same; as though he wasn’t there with her, but then she saw that of course he was. She looked behind them, and thought perhaps she glimpsed him there, by the doors that led to the dining room. Perhaps it was only the wind from the open casement, blowing in fresh air from outside.

She looked down at the table, and saw the mug of tea she’d given him. It was only half-full now.

“Is it all ready, then?”

“What?”

“Florence’s lunch?”

“She’s not here, not yet. Everything else is ready.” She blinked, trying to concentrate. “Bill, I was thinking about that summer party today.”

“The one when Florence got drunk on gin and sang ‘Luck Be a Lady’ out of the bathroom window?”

“No. The terrible one.”

“Oh, my goodness. I must say . . .” Bill rubbed his eyes. “. . . that was a great party.”

Martha said, “Not for Gerald, of course.”

He looked contrite. “Course. Poor Gerald. I always forget about him.”

“What happened?” Karen said.

“Well,” Bill began, and then he stopped. “It was a long time ago. Past history.”

The kitchen door slammed, with a force so great they all jumped. Martha whirled round, but there was nothing there. Bella woke and started crying, and Karen said, “I might give her a feed if she’s awake. Bill, have you got my . . .”