Cuckoo (6 page)
‘Yes, it’s her.’
‘Polly Novak?’ he gasped. Rose had kept the fact of her famous flatmate a secret from her Goldsmiths friends.
‘Yes. Look, she’s not well. You’ve got to call an ambulance.’ Rose held Polly to her breast, shaking now only inside herself. Christos gently put his arms around Rose and kissed her hair.
‘You go, Rosa. I know what to do – this happened to a friend of mine. I’ll lift her up, get her walking around. You go: I’m stronger, you know the address and everything.’
So Rose went to call the ambulance and the emergency operator asked a whole string of questions like what Polly had been taking, when and how much. There wasn’t much Rose could say definitely, but she answered as truthfully as she could. Who cared if it caused a scandal? Polly needed to stop what she was doing or the next time Rose found her, she might not be breathing. Despite the messed-up living rooms and the chaotic lifestyle, when it came down to it, Rose couldn’t bear to think of what her life would be without her.
The operator finally let Rose go, saying the ambulance would be there as soon as possible. Talking had calmed Rose down. She went through to tell Christos the news, but stopped in the doorway. He was standing in the middle of the room, naked, holding the equally naked, floppy body of Polly in his big arms. She had come round slightly and had a worn-out ecstatic smile on her face, like the clipframed print of Munch’s
Death and the Maiden s
he had on her bedroom wall. She looked beautiful. Christos was singing one of her songs to her, stroking her hair.
Death and the Maiden s
he had on her bedroom wall. She looked beautiful. Christos was singing one of her songs to her, stroking her hair.
Seeing them there like that, fitting together like two worn but beautifully jewelled belt clasps, Rose knew that there would never be a house on a cliff for her and Christos.
And she was right: through Polly’s stay in hospital and the media hoo-ha and the rehab, Christos hardly left her side. Rose was forgotten, and all she had of him was that one night. But, in his absence, his best friend and fellow MA student Gareth Cunningham just sort of stepped in. And shortly after that, it was the degree show, and then there was no time for looking back.
Rose could have felt resentful about Christos going off with Polly, but she saw that, once introduced, they had no choice. It was hardly that Polly had stolen him from her – she had, after all, been unconscious when he fell in love with her.
It was just one of those things that Polly did to men.
‘Why have we stopped?’ Anna had woken up and was leaning forward in the car, tapping Rose on the shoulder.
‘Who knows. Some sort of roadworks perhaps, or an accident,’ Rose said. ‘Try and get back to sleep.’
‘I’ll just look out as we go along. I like the lights in the rain.’ Anna leaned back and pressed her face on the cold condensation of the window.
Soon they were off again, crawling along the shining road, the exhaust from the cars around them like a swirling fog.
Rose saw the ambulance lights up ahead, and the swooping blue light of the police cars.
‘It’s an accident. Look the other way, Anna.’
They crawled past the scene. It looked as if a lorry had ploughed into a people-carrier that had been parked on the hard shoulder, half crushing it, sending it out into the path of the traffic coming behind the lorry.
‘Look away, Anna!’ Rose yelled as they went past the people-carrier. It was on their side of the road and, despite her better instincts, she couldn’t look away herself. She saw the emergency workers trying to get at the occupants, who looked like a family of puppets with their strings all cut. One small body – it looked like the first to be freed – was being stretchered away under a blanket. Rose looked sharply up the floodlit grass verge and saw a little girl sprawled near the top, one leg bent right under her body, her head at an unnatural angle, her eyes open. A couple of paramedics stood over her. One looked like he was crying.
Six
Gareth was in his studio when they finally arrived, two hours later than planned. He didn’t come out to the car to greet them, which Rose chose to see as a good thing. If he was so involved in his work, this was progress, and she wasn’t going to spend a moment supposing that his not showing might have more to do with the fact that he wasn’t keen on seeing Polly.
‘You go in, it’s unlocked,’ Rose said to Polly and the boys. ‘Anna will show you the way.’ And her little girl led them off down through the herb garden to the front door.
‘Mind the steps,’ Anna said, looking back, feeling the responsibility. ‘There’s lots.’
Rose unbuckled Flossie’s car seat and lodged the handle in the crook of her arm. She scooped up the bottles of milk she had picked up at the late-night garage on the main road outside the village and followed the others down to the house.
‘Very nice,’ Polly said, standing dwarfed by the vaulted kitchen ceiling. ‘Must’ve cost a bob or two.’
‘The house was a wreck, so it was actually quite cheap for round here,’ Rose said, as she busied herself setting the table. It was a little annoying that Gareth hadn’t done a thing towards getting the kitchen ready. ‘But we made up for that with our blood, sweat and tears.’
‘It looks very smart now.’ Polly curled up in the large old armchair in the corner of the kitchen, watching Rose work. ‘Very finished.’
Rose wondered why this sounded like a criticism.
‘We can’t do finished,’ Polly went on. ‘Christos always gets distracted into other things. He can never settle on the one task. So we live in the middle of ongoing projects – paintbrushes in the kitchen sink, wires hanging down from ceilings. It never ends. Oh, God.’
Polly leaned back in the chair and covered her eyes with her hands. Rose went over to her and put her arms around her.
‘Beep beep!’
A crowd of children barged past them. Anna and the boys were racing round the circuit you could make around the ground-floor rooms – from hall to living room to study to kitchen to hall and so on. Already, this part of the design of the house had become a major attraction for visiting children.
‘Well. They’re settling in just fine,’ Polly said, wiping her eyes.
‘Oy, calm down, you lot!’ Rose got up to get a glass of wine for Polly and herself. A panting Yannis bowled up in front of her.
‘Rose, can we stay for ever?’ He leaned his sweaty little face right into hers. ‘I love it here!’
‘You can stay as long as you like,’ Rose said, giving him a big hug.
‘Come on, Yannis, I’ll show you my dolls. I’ve got some Action Men, too.’ Anna grabbed the little boy’s hand and took him away. Nico, at nine years old too cool to show enthusiasm for dolls, nevertheless followed along up the stairs behind them.
‘Oh, happy boys,’ Polly said, cupping her wine glass in her dry, cold hands. ‘She works well, your girl. But we’re not going to stay too long – just until I can get us on our feet again.’
Rose started to slice a loaf of bread. ‘What are you going to do about money, Polly? I mean,’ she added, detecting a flicker in Polly’s eyes, ‘not that we’re going to ask you for anything. You’re our guests and we love you and you must stay as long as you like.’ She laughed. ‘I keep saying that! But that’s because I mean it.’
Polly drew her knees up to her chest, making herself look tiny in the armchair. ‘What surprised me most of all about – about what happened to Christos – apart from the actual fact of him dying, of course – was that the month before he died he had actually got it together to sort out some insurance. Against his life, you know?’
‘Wow,’ Rose said. It was the last thing she would have expected from someone who had lived so very much in the moment.
‘I know. He made sure that if anything happened – to either of us, actually – the survivor and the children would be OK. At least financially. At least for a couple of years. It isn’t a fortune, but it gives me a buffer. Well, it will, when it’s all settled. Greek bureaucracy is a nightmare. Oh, stop me. I hate talking about money.’ She drained her wine glass just like that, in one, and Rose topped her up. ‘And I’ve got the money from the house, of course, when it comes through.’
‘You’ve sold it already?’
‘His sister wanted it. She was sick of Athens and wanted to get back to the island. There was some sort of expectation that I’d just let her have it for nothing, but that was just mad, suffocating, Greek family stuff. That island seems to pull them all back like Persephone to the fucking underworld. I’m wondering if my boys will be the same, when they grow up.’
‘You’ve left for good, then?’
‘Oh yes. I’m done with all that.’
‘But what about Christos’s mother? Won’t she miss the boys?’
Polly sighed. ‘She did mention that once or twice. It’s like living in a vice grip, being in that family. We’re better off out. Anyway, she can come and visit us here when we’re settled. It’s not the end of the earth. And she’s got Elena’s lot now. Five boys, God save them. No, I’m not going back there. Not even for a visit.’
Polly got up and wandered across the kitchen. She stopped and stroked the chrome bar in front of the stove. ‘Oh, an Aga. How very nice.’
Gareth came through when Rose rang the supper bell. It had been a camp joke to have a handbell to summon the family to dinner – ‘to call the swains from the far corners of the estate,’ Gareth had said. But under Polly’s gaze, Rose felt the thing to be something of an affectation.
As she carried the stew over to the table, she looked at Polly, who was already seated, waiting to be served. She was casting her eyes around the objects in the room, as if she were making some sort of mental calculation.
Polly never could keep her mind still and, as with Rose, the years had seen her childhood character crystallise. She had always been a wild, restless little elf, whereas Rose saw herself as slightly bovine, more easily contented. She was home, and Polly was away. She wondered which sat better on a woman in her mid-to-late thirties.
She went back to the workbench to dress the salad, and Gareth bent down and hugged Polly.
‘It’s great to see you, Polly,’ he said, holding her tight. ‘I can’t say how sorry I am about Christos. He was the guy.’
‘He was that,’ she looked up at him.
‘I only wish I’d managed to have gotten out to see him,’ Gareth went on, helping himself to wine and sitting down. ‘It’s hard to think the last time I ever saw him was five years ago.’
‘When he came to England on his own,’ Polly said, looking into her glass.
‘Yeah.’
‘Things weren’t too good between us back then,’ Polly said.
‘Yeah, he said.’
‘But they got better again,’ she said, looking up, tears in her eyes. ‘They did, Gareth.’
Gareth reached across and took her hand. ‘They did, Polly. I know that.’
Rose, who had worked hard to stop herself from intervening during this exchange, was impressed at the warmth Gareth had summoned for Polly. She reckoned that he had probably realised how mean-spirited his initial reaction had been to her coming to stay. And, of course, he did realise how important she was to her.
To be fair to Gareth, he had tried to make an effort back in the early days. Perhaps Polly had been right and it
was
due to his jealousy at her taking his best friend. Rose’s theory was more simple: she thought it was because Polly rubbed him up the wrong way. She was, after all, an acquired taste.
was
due to his jealousy at her taking his best friend. Rose’s theory was more simple: she thought it was because Polly rubbed him up the wrong way. She was, after all, an acquired taste.
Once, as an attempt to smooth things out between them, Rose had set up a get-together for Gareth and Polly in a pub in Hammersmith. It was a chance, she said to them both separately, to work out what it was that stood between them.
After all, these were the two people she loved most in the world (three, if she counted Christos, although she tried not to), and she couldn’t bear it if they hated each other.
Rose stayed home in Gareth’s flat in Elephant and Castle, watched a video of
Pulp Fiction
and drank a bottle of wine. At eleven o’clock, he came back, a little more pissed than she was, and smelling of beer and outdoors.
Pulp Fiction
and drank a bottle of wine. At eleven o’clock, he came back, a little more pissed than she was, and smelling of beer and outdoors.
‘How did it go?’ she asked.
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