Bachelor Boys (19 page)

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Authors: Kate Saunders

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Ruth nodded. “Thanks. And I won't ask again.”
I found that I appreciated this. I began to feel that I could stop being so terminally polite. I followed my biological mother into the house. It was warm, and startlingly quiet, once the front door had shut out the wind.
And it was really rather nice. Amazingly, Ruth had made herself a setting that was not untidy and depressing. The heavy wooden street door of the cottage opened directly into a small white-painted sitting room. There were armchairs, and a modest coal fire burned in the grate. Ruth had brought the watercolors from her office, and they looked far less dim here. She had added a couple of paintings I had never seen, vivid oils of boats and cliffs. The thick old walls muffled the steady roar of the sea. I always feel calm in places where I can hear the sea.
“This is lovely,” I said. “Good grief, you've bought furniture!”
Ruth smiled, less grimly than usual. “Oh yes. I've branched out into interior design in my old age. I didn't bring much from the flat—everything was on its last legs.”
“You've bought new pictures, too.”
“Hmm.” Ruth eyed me cautiously for a moment. “They were gifts. From the artist. His name's George Denny.”
“Oh.”
“You'll meet him later. He pops in most nights.”
I squeaked, “Oh,” hardly able to believe my ears. Was Ruth telling me she had a follower, after all these barren and defeated years? And if so, how did this make me feel?
Intrigued. In a very good way. “I'll look forward to it,” I replied in the same code. “His paintings look terrific here.”
“It's the first place I've ever made that's just for myself,” Ruth said. “Your father arranged the Hampstead house, and the Gospel Oak flat was
always a symbol of unhappiness for me. Starting again has been very therapeutic.”
“It's cozy. I never thought you could do cozy.”
Ruth said, “Sit down.”
It was evening. I watched her switching on lamps, and drawing curtains across the darkening window. We drank tea beside the fire. My breathing fell into the rhythm of the sea, and for the first time in God knew how long, I felt myself truly calm. The details of my life still seemed horrible, but they were distant. The tea drove away the last remnants of the hangover. I began to see that Phoebe had been right. This was as good a place as any to hide a broken heart.
I told Ruth about the whole Matthew business. I did it without emotion, deliberately dry as a response to her dryness.
“You wanted to marry him,” Ruth said.
“Yes. I wanted a life with him. But I can see now that it wasn't working.”
“Obviously not.”
You had to be very articulate with Ruth, or she'd have you sectioned in a flash. “I mean, I can see that too much of the relationship depended on me. I was the one making all the effort.”
“It's very easy to get meshed in that kind of power balance,” Ruth said. “One person demands, the other seeks to please. The demands are sometimes a direct response to the other person's need to please.”
“Like you and Derek.” (My father.) This was bold of me, but I wanted to see how far Ruth's new communicativeness went.
“A little,” she said coolly. “How is he, by the way? Have you heard from him?”
“Not recently. He's in California. He got a professorship at Berkeley.”
“Full circle,” Ruth said. I knew what she meant. She'd been Derek's student when they fell in love.
“I don't speak to him much,” I said. “He calls on my birthday Sometimes at Christmas.”
“This is the life he designed for himself,” Ruth said. “It was always extremely difficult to ascertain exactly what he wanted. He didn't really know himself. Shall I open a bottle of wine?”
“Wine?” She'd caught me off-guard. I wasn't used to Ruth opening
wine. Her usual tipple was a medicinal slug of whiskey. It was becoming clear why Phoebe had sent me here. She wanted me to see for myself that Ruth had—well, how should I describe it?—mellowed.
“I keep a bottle on the go for George,” Ruth said.
So George was already a fixture in my mother's house. For the first time, I minded that I was not a fixture. I sensed in Ruth a cautious desire to reach out to me, to comfort me, to protect me from mourning.
“I drank far too much last night,” I said. “I'm only just getting over the hangover from hell.”
“Try a little.” Ruth held up the bottle. “It might be just what you need. A hair of the dog that bit you.”
This made me laugh. “A scale of the dinosaur that bit me, you mean. All right, I will try a drop.”
The small glass of red wine she gave me went down very well. The surrounding calm was starting to seep into my skin. I began to see that this quiet place had a healing quality, very faintly antiseptic but very beneficial. The two of us had found a level where we could converse comfortably. By the second glass of wine, I had remembered that Ruth could be fascinating to talk to. I thought that her relaxed mood could be due to George Denny, who walked in through the unlocked front door just as the pie was coming out of the oven.
He turned out to be a hale, white-haired widower in his sixties, dressed in yachting slops. He was as undemonstrative as Ruth, but there was no mistaking the strong, calm friendship between them. Ruth was relaxed in his company, as she had never been relaxed during her awful marriage and its aftermath. They even shared jokes, though of a dry sort. George had a subscription to
The Cavendish Quarterly
, and criticized a piece I had written about John Galsworthy, in a flattering way that showed me he had read it in detail.
Against all my expectation, the three of us had a very pleasant evening. I drank wine and ate shepherd's pie. I went to bed at half past ten (my old bed, from the flat; I knew the mattress intimately) and slept without dreaming.
This friendly politeness carried on through Saturday. We walked on the cliff top, we visited George's boat in the little harbor, we ate lunch at a fisherman's pub by the harbor wall.
In the evening (sipping yet another drink and a little wearied by good behavior) I remembered Phoebe's present. Ruth had forgotten, and it was still in its paper.
When Ruth unwrapped the bluebell quilt and gently unfolded it across her knees, her face betrayed nothing and she was silent for a long time.
“How very like Phoebe,” she said at last, “to be so shamelessly transparent.” She glanced up at me. “I'll phone, and all that. But please tell her …” she was touchingly hesitant, “it's probably the most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me.”
“She said you loved the story.”
“Oh yes. Phoebe knows it has a resonance for me.”
“Why?”
Now Ruth was cautious. “The image of the solitary mother, waiting for her unborn child. The loneliness of pregnancy, and the great hope you have.”
“Is pregnancy lonely?”
“Mine was.”
“I shouldn't think Derek was much of a support,” I offered.
Ruth said, “No. He wasn't. I spent hours and hours alone. Just like Phoebe's mother, whose husband was away at sea, except that I didn't pass the time making a quilt. I was writing my doctoral thesis.” She looked amused. “You kicked like mad.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I liked it. I liked feeling you were really there. It was companionable.”
I didn't know how to reply to this. I had never been a companion to my mother.
Ruth's hands rested on the padded folds of the bluebell quilt. “Derek didn't want children. I didn't think I did, either. I got pregnant by mistake.”
“I guessed I was a mistake,” I said.
“Oh, there was no mistake about you.” Ruth took a sip of her wine. “The agreement was that I would have a termination—it never occurred to either of us to do anything different.”
I was fascinated. This subject had never featured before. “So why didn't you?”
“I did,” Ruth said. “I had an abortion, and that should have been that.” She looked at me. “But I'd made the promise before I knew what it was like to be pregnant. I didn't realize how unhappy the abortion would make me afterward. I felt empty. I grieved for my child. The only cure for the grief was to get pregnant again.”
“How on earth did you persuade Derek?”
“Derek didn't know,” Ruth said. “You exist because I slipped one past him.” Another grim smile. “My sole act of rebellion.”
This was extraordinary. I sat very still, afraid she would stop.
“It was fairly easy,” she said. “I got pregnant again after about two months. But this time it was different. I didn't tell him.”
“But didn't he notice?”
“He's not a noticing man. He only criticized me occasionally for getting fat. I managed to hold on to you until it was too late to get rid of you.”
I began to see the bravery and the loneliness of Ruth's deception. In her way, she had fought to bring me into the world. I owed my existence to her stubborn, primitive courage.
“Was he angry?”
“You know him, Cassie. He didn't express anger, but it rotted the marriage anyway.”
“I always guessed the divorce was sort of my fault,” I said.
“Oh no,” Ruth said decisively. “That's quite wrong. It was entirely my fault. I had my baby in utter misery, against his every wish—but I did it. The decision was mine.”
I was filled with a new respect for her, and a kind of softened feeling—not love, exactly, but compassion for what she must have been through. “I bet he made you suffer for it.”
“Yes. He was angry for at least ten years. So angry that he had to stay with us to punish me. I blurted the whole thing out to Phoebe, after that mix-up when we left you alone. I'll never forget how kind she was.”
“That's why she gave you the quilt.”
“Of course. She understood perfectly.”
I saw it all now—why Phoebe had insisted, against all the evidence, that my mother deserved to be loved. I wanted to tell her, at least, that I was sorry I hadn't been more of a comfort to her.
She went to her little back kitchen to see to supper, leaving me to mull over what I had learned. I thought I knew why she hadn't told me before. At the age of thirty-one, with my own ill-fated love affair behind me, I was finally old enough to understand.
As soon as I arrived home on Sunday evening, I rang Phoebe and gave her Ruth's message. “She says it's the most beautiful gift she's ever had.”
“I'm so glad,” Phoebe said. “I felt I owed her something special—because what I really owe her is a daughter.”
I
t wasn't quite over with Matthew yet. He is a methodical person, and there was no question of the fat lady singing until he had tied up all the ends. Through the usual chilly medium of e-mail, he booked me for a postmortem the following Saturday evening. I was determined to approach this in a kind of holiday mood. For once, after all, I could be as slipshod as I liked.
“I refused to go to L'Etoile,” I told Annabel, on the Saturday morning. “I'm not intending to make a scene, but I have to be able to make one if I want. He's coming round to my place, and I'm making a special point of not cleaning.”
“Quite right,” Annabel said. “This shouldn't be too easy for him.”
The two of us were in a shop near Oxford Circus, in search of baby gifts. Claudette had just given birth to a fine little daughter—the first child to appear in our circle. Annabel and I agreed that we found the whole event thrilling, mysterious and oddly heartbreaking.
“I heard it—I mean her—squawking over the phone,” Annabel told me. “Claudette sounded absolutely knackered. She said it hurt like hell. She still has to sit on a bag of frozen peas—can you imagine?”
“I suppose the baby makes up for all that,” I suggested doubtfully.
“Hmm, I suppose. I'm sure I'll have one eventually, but I'm putting it off as long as possible. She says she has more stitches than the Bayeux Tapestry.” Annabel picked up a tiny yellow cardigan, and we both broke into oohs and aaahs. “Oh, isn't this darling? And there's the sweetest little hat to go with it.”
I laughed. “Admit it—you're broody.”
“I am not!”
“Spare a kipper for the baby, guv!”
“Piss off.”
I said I didn't think we could help it—women seemed to be programmed to turn to marshmallow whenever we saw a teeny-weeny hat or a pair of adorable little socks.
“Perhaps you'll have a baby with Fritz.” I really couldn't help sounding wistful here.
Annabel giggled. “That would be a bit of a miracle at the moment. We haven't managed sex for over a week.”
(She was already living with Fritz—or as good as; he had to stay in the house for Phoebe's sake, so Annabel simply started joining him there after work, and now kept cosmetics there, which any woman will tell you is serious.)
“That doesn't sound like Fritz,” I said. “Is he in a decline or something?”
“No, it's mostly my fault.” Annabel (awash with money owing to her ridiculous salary) gathered up the cardigan, the matching hat and a pair of exquisite yellow kid shoes. “Work's frantic at the moment, and I get so tired that I have to crash into bed at about ten. Fritz doesn't get home till after midnight. He's still fast asleep when I get up. When I finish work, he's already at the theater. We only see each other at weekends.”
“Where is he now? I hope you're not missing a chance for sex on my account.”
“He'll still be asleep—this play does make him awfully tired. I thought I'd wake him up with a blow job, then take him out for lunch.” Annabel said this casually, and clearly in the hearing of the woman at the till. Not in the least embarrassed, she gave the woman a charming smile. “Could you gift wrap these, please?”
While the woman was wrapping Annabel's purchases, and my Merry-thought Heritage Teddy Bear, I considered what Annabel had told me. Something about it struck me as odd. Fritz had never let a little thing like sleep stand in the way of sex. In the first careless rapture of their romance, he had set his alarm clock so that he would see Annabel before she left for work in the morning. And Annabel had cheerfully stayed up late to see
Fritz when he came off stage. I wondered what was going on, but I didn't have the heart to probe any further when Annabel was so radiant. I told myself that I was probably picking holes because I was jealous. Happiness shone out of her. She was the very embodiment of a woman in love. My love life, in stark contrast, was a blasted heath. I was in absolutely no position to judge.
“Where to now?” I asked, when we were back on Regent Street with our expensive parcels. “Have we earned a cup of coffee yet? Or do you need yet more saucy underwear?”
Annabel had already spent a small fortune in the lingerie department at Dickins and Jones, on a selection of cantilevered bras and filmy silk knickers.
She considered. “Well, I suppose we could have some coffee—but do you mind if we walk toward Wigmore Street? I'd like to pop in on Ben and Neil. Poor Ben had to rush out without any breakfast this morning.”
I was touched by her thoughtfulness for her lover's brother. Ben and Neil were rehearsing at the Wigmore Hall for a concert of songs by Hugo Wolf. I was constantly amazed to remember that Ben was earning money these days, and that Fritz was about to (the West End transfer of
Rookery Nook
was to happen the following week). The Darlings certainly had a talent for falling on their feet. They were looking distinctly marriageable. I felt a familiar pang of guilt that I'd done nothing more about finding a match for Ben. I was still sure that Hazel Flynn would be ideal for him, but there was no question of arranging a meeting yet. Poor Hazel's father had died, very suddenly and unexpectedly, and she had taken herself back home in a state of near collapse. Heaven knew when she would be up for romance again. The hurried message she had left for me had contained actual sobbing. Annabel and I had already spent part of the previous evening and the first half of this morning wondering how to offer support. We knew that this wound went too deep for the usual poultice of an available man.
Annabel and I filled two paper bags with coffee and Ben's favorite almond croissants, and threaded through the crowds to Wigmore Street. I only knew the Wigmore Hall (which had always reminded me of a tiled Edwardian swimming bath) as a member of the audience. It also contained a number of rehearsal rooms. I climbed the dark staircase feeling
like a person in an old film—artistic endeavor was all around us. You could hear warbling voices, sawing strings or hammering pianos behind every door.
Annabel had been here before. She followed the sound of Neil's gorgeous tenor (stuck on one phrase, like a faulty CD), knocked briskly, and led me into a dusty room. It was furnished with a shabby grand piano, stacks of chairs, and a spindly crowd of metal music stands.
Ben was at the piano, unshaven and a little sullen. His face lit up into a broad smile when he saw us. “You angels—you've brought food!”
“You'll be the ruin of me,” Neil said cheerfully, diving into the bag of croissants. “Elspeth's trying to put me on a diet.” (Oh yes, he and the Wicked Queen were still an item—I could apparently make wonderful matches when I wasn't trying.)
“She's got a point, mate,” Ben said kindly. “Fat opera stars are out of style. I saw Pavarotti at La Scala, and all I could think of was how much leather it took to make his tunic. You could've held a meeting in it.”
Annabel chuckled. “La Scala! What poor dear paid for that?”
Ben looked a little hangdog, but he also laughed. How interesting, I thought, that Annabel was allowed to tease him about the Foolish Virgins. When Fritz or I did it, he sulked for ages.
Neil said, “I hope you had the decency to sleep with her afterward.”
“Having a girlfriend has made you very smug,” Ben told him.
“Don't worry,” Annabel said. “We'll find someone for you. Someone very musical and sensitive. Won't we, Cassie?”
I hadn't a clue what to say to this—wasn't it supposed to be my job? Annabel might have bagged Fritz, but I was damned if I was letting her muscle in on my matchmaking. I had made a promise to Phoebe. Any triumphs would be mine and mine alone.
“Two cappuccinos and two lattes,” I said. “Plus two plain croissants and two almond. You boys can have first choice because you're working.”
“Almond, please,” Neil said promptly. “Sod it—I can't hit that b-flat on an empty stomach.”
The four of us drank coffee and ate croissants. I was touched to see how Ben and Annabel had rediscovered their ancient friendship, as if they had only just climbed out of the sandpit. They chatted and laughed and
carried on a conversation they had obviously been having for ages. They had tons to say to each other. While I talked to Neil about the songs, Ben and Annabel retreated to the window to talk about some household arrangement. I couldn't hear, but there were frequent bursts of laughter. It occurred to me that I'd never seen either of them this relaxed with a member of the opposite sex. I told myself that I had to stop feeling jealous and dog-in-the-mangerish about Annabel and Fritz, since their romance had apparently shed blessings on the entire family.
Ben wanted to know what we had bought. We described our baby presents, and Annabel showed off her underwear.
“Now, be honest,” she said, holding up a transparent, underwire bra with embroidery over the nipples. “Will Fritz fancy me in this?”
“Bloody hell,” Neil said, reddening and laughing. “If he doesn't, there's something seriously wrong with him.”
“You look lovely anyway,” Ben said, with a touch of severity. “You don't need to truss yourself up in stuff like this. Does she, Cass? I like that shirt thing you sometimes wear in the mornings.”
“Oh, Ben, don't be silly. I just pull that on so I can make tea without you seeing my bum.”
“It looks great.”
“Yes, but it won't inflame Fritz.”
“That bra is too obvious.”
I had been listening to this exchange in some surprise. Was Annabel really in the habit of flaunting herself around the Darlings' basement half naked? And since when had she been Ben's most intimate friend? There was an air of familiarity between them, faintly spiked with something else that I couldn't quite identify.
“I want to be as obvious as possible,” Annabel explained seriously. “Obvious enough to make Fritz come right home after the theater, instead of carousing with the rest of the company.”
“You should join in the carousing,” I suggested.
Annabel sighed. “To tell the truth, I don't much like hanging out with the other actors. And Fritz says he doesn't like mixing business with pleasure. He's stopped asking me.”
I might have let this one past, if I hadn't seen the expression on Ben's
face. He looked annoyed—though not with Annabel—and rather suspicious. He knew his brother better than anyone, and if he was suspicious, there had to be something amiss.
But then again, he was a bit funny about Annabel. And she laughed off his suspicions with such confidence that nobody could doubt her happiness. Perhaps Ben, like me, was a little jealous of the two of them. It must have been difficult, I thought, actually sharing a small basement with Love's Young Dream.
Before we left them to their work, Neil mentioned that he and Elspeth had a spare ticket for that evening's Prom at the Albert Hall. The Proms were in their last week, and this was a very good one—the Berlin Phil and Beethoven's Ninth. Elspeth had probably sold her body and killed several people to obtain her four priceless seats.
I explained that I would be heavily engaged in burying my exploded romance.
“Annabel, why don't you come?” Ben asked eagerly. “After all, you're not doing anything else, and Fritz is working.” He was going, of course. Earning money had not dimmed Ben's passion for free concert tickets.
“I'd love to,” Annabel said. “Being a theater widow is almost as bad as being single.”
“Crap,” I put in gloomily. “Nothing's as bad as being single.”
 
I devoted the rest of my day to the business of severance from Matthew. I had decided to cook goulash, with lashings of paprika. He had once complained that it gave him “indigestion”—by which he meant that it made him fart. Ha! Honor could enjoy the subsequent trombone solo under his duvet. I didn't have to worry about this sort of thing any more. I didn't have to vacuum, clean the bath or wear something feminine. I must be positive about this. I would receive him in ancient comfy jeans and cook him farty food, and he would see that I was free.
Matthew arrived on the stroke of eight. He was carrying a bottle of wine, and looking so subdued that I found it hard to keep up my indignation. I poured us both glasses of wine, and we sat ourselves down on opposite sides of the sitting room. This was the first time I had seen him since catching him at it. I swallowed a mad impulse to giggle.
“Cassie,” he said. He raised his hanging head, and fixed me with his mournful gaze. “Cassie, darling.”
“You told me you didn't like oral sex,” I said.
I admit this was a cruel blow. I had the barbed satisfaction of watching Matthew's face turn that dull shade of red. He blushed so hard that his eyes watered. As I had guessed, the loss of dignity was agony for him. He wasn't used to being in the wrong. When a person is accustomed to the high moral ground, they can hardly breathe in an atmosphere of wrongness.

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