Golden Hour (39 page)

Laura feels so full of love for Carrie right now. My proud, hurt child. Too old now for me to kiss it better.

She puts down her glass and takes Carrie in her arms. She kisses her temples.

“You know what?” she says. “Tomorrow it's the twenty-seventh anniversary of our engagement. That's such a long time.”

“I want that too,” says Carrie. “I want someone to stay with me. But people don't stay any more.”

“Yes, they do, darling. Just maybe not yet. You're only nineteen. When I was nineteen I wasn't stayed with. I was walked out on.”

Carrie is familiar with the family tale of Laura and her first love, Nick. It's long been a source of wonder and reassurance.

“I know,” she says, snuggling into her mother's arms. “I do know. Only there seem to be so few people I even want to be with for an evening, let alone twenty-seven years. Then you find one, and he turns out to be rubbish. And a thief.”

Laura looks out at Toby in the garden and sees that he's finished his cigarette.

“I think he's about to come in,” she says.

Carrie goes out onto the terrace, leaving the kitchen door open behind her. Laura can hear every word.

“Toby,” Carrie says. “We have to talk.”

Toby comes from the dark of the lawn to the pool of light falling from the kitchen window onto the terrace.

“We don't have to,” he says. “But we can choose to.”

“Oh, fuck off, will you?”

“Okay if I fuck off tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is fine,” says Carrie.

He doesn't move. Both of them are frozen, waiting to be released.

“Why do you tell me you're not a good person?” says Carrie. “Why do you tell me that?”

“So you'll know,” he says.

“You think it lets you off obeying the rules everyone else has to obey? You think you can just do as you please?”

“Maybe I do. What do you care?”

“I don't care,” says Carrie. “I just want to know what happened with Mum's ring.”

He stares at her for a moment in silence.

“What do you think happened?”

“I think you took it.”

That shuts him up.

“Did you?”

“You think I'm the kind of person who'd accept your hospitality for five days, and then rob you.”

“You could be. Are you?”

He just goes on staring at her. She looks away, her right hand tugging at her left sleeve.

“If that's the kind of person I am,” says Toby, “then you're better off without me in your life, aren't you?”

“Yes,” she says, still not looking at him.

She hears him walk away with rapid steps. She releases her breath, which she hadn't even realized she was holding.

In the house he picks up the kitchen cordless phone, saying to Laura, “Okay to use the phone?”

“Of course,” says Laura.

He goes into the hall. Carrie comes into the kitchen.

“He admitted it.”

“I heard,” says Laura.

“I want him to be gone. I want everyone to be gone.”

“Would you rather we didn't have all these people round tomorrow evening?”

“No, it's okay. Just so long as I don't have to be there too.”

“Where will you go?”

“My room.”

Their eyes meet, and Carrie looks back with such open sadness that Laura is humbled. Not hiding any more. And that in its way is a sign of strength.

“What do you do in your room all day?” says Laura.

“Not much.” Then she adds, seemingly as an afterthought, “I fool about making up songs.”

“You make up songs?”

“I played a couple to Toby. He said he liked them.”

“From what I've seen of Toby,” says Laura, “if he says he likes them it means he likes them.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

Toby comes back with the phone.

“I called my mum,” he says. “She's coming over tomorrow morning to pick me up.”

“Oh, I am glad,” says Laura. “I mean, I'm glad you called your mother. I couldn't bear to think of her not knowing what had happened to you. If you were my son I'd have been frantic with worry.”

“She's not much like you,” says Toby.

“Even so. She needs to know you're safe and well.”

“Am I safe and well?” says Toby.

He looks at Carrie. Carrie meets his gaze for a brief moment then turns away.

“I'm going upstairs.”

Laura offers Toby a glass of the Orvieto, which he accepts. Then she puts on a pan for some pasta. She finds a little to her surprise that she feels no anger toward him, perhaps because he's now going. Also there's something about Toby that seems to place him outside the rules of normal social conduct.

“Thank you for getting my ring back,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “While it was lost, it almost felt as if I'd lost my marriage.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I'm sorry your marriage is so easy to lose.”

Laura is too shocked to speak.

“Carrie writes songs,” he says. “They're good. You should get her to show them to people.”

“Right,” says Laura.

“Would you mind if I went out for a smoke?”

“Supper in half an hour.”

He goes outside. Laura sees him passing up and down the lawn, a ghost in the dark, the tip of his roll-up glowing red.

It's almost ten when Henry gets home, bringing Roddy with him. Laura is full of the dramas of the day, but doesn't want to say too much in front of Roddy. She wants time to shape their version of the story before it reaches Diana, who has her own way of dramatizing other people's crises. Laura can just hear Diana saying, “You are amazing, Laura! You let some long-haired weirdo you know nothing about into your house, he steals your jewelry, abuses your daughter, and half-kills some random child! It's so bizarre it's practically performance art!” So instead she greets Roddy with a friendly kiss and goes and gets him his Florentines.

“I remembered you like Florentines. You don't have to share them. You can take them to your room and have a midnight feast.”

She asks Henry about his meeting, but she already knows from his posture that he has nothing much to report.

“There's a possibility there,” he says. “If I can bear it.”

“Tell me upstairs. I'm utterly wiped out.”

She starts moving about the kitchen turning out lights. To her irritation Roddy doesn't take the hint and go. He stands there clutching his unopened box of Florentines to his chest and watching her.

Henry parks his load of papers in his study.

“You're in your usual room, Roddy,” says Laura. “What time is Diana getting here tomorrow?”

“About one, I should think,” says Roddy. “I hope you don't
mind me invading you like this. It just makes sense, what with Worth being fairly near.”

Laura doesn't want to hear about Worth right now. She goes on turning out lights. Roddy still doesn't move. So she turns off the final kitchen light and moves on to the hall, leaving him in the kitchen in the dark.

At once she regrets this act of petty vindictiveness. As he comes shambling out to the foot of the stairs she lays one hand on his arm.

“Sorry, Roddy. I've had a bad day. We'll talk tomorrow, okay?”

“Tomorrow,” he says.

He nods twice, then slowly ascends the stairs, holding his overnight bag and his box of Florentines.

Alone in her bedroom at last with Henry, Laura tells him the dramatic events of the day. She tells it in the order it happened to her, wanting him to be frightened the way she was frightened, and then relieved the way she was relieved. Henry is dismayed for Carrie and wants to go to her.

“Go and give her a kiss. She's fine now.”

But before he goes she shows him the ring. Needless to say, he hadn't noticed it was back on her finger.

“So we're still engaged,” he says.

“Just about,” she says.

“Where did you find it?”

“Long story. Go and kiss Carrie.”

While he's out she undresses and prepares for bed. For the first time in many hours she turns her mind to tomorrow's dinner party. So much has happened that it seems absurd to be worrying herself over the roasting time for the lamb. But if guests are coming, if they're to be fed, the lamb must be cooked, and she would like it to be just right.

Is making a good dinner for friends a minor decoration in
her life, or is it the life itself? It's a question of foreground and background. Her marriage remains in the background until some small shock shifts her perspective, and suddenly it becomes all that matters.

Is my marriage so easy to lose?

It's survived this far. How do you keep it in the foreground? The perversity of nature means that we only value what we fear to lose. So is the value in all things not an absolute at all, but relative to the needs of the moment? There's something here that matters, if only she could track it down. But she's tired.

Henry returns.

“She seems pretty okay,” he says. “Could have been a lot worse.”

“Suppose she'd been hit by a car instead of a bike.”

“I don't want to think about it.”

“Something like this happens,” says Laura, “and suddenly you realize how vulnerable we all are. Anything could happen, any time.”

Henry's undressing slowly, familiarly.

“But you can't think like that, can you?” he says. “You have to carry on as if nothing bad will ever happen.”

“Isn't that just sticking our heads in the sand?”

“Maybe,” he says. “But life has to go on somehow.”

“So you think it's all right to go ahead with tomorrow evening?”

“I don't see why not.”

He sounds tired. He's had a hard day too.

“So what happened with Aidan?”

“Oh, Aidan tried to dress it up, but all they've got is a bog-standard director job. I'd be working to a series producer, an executive producer, and an editor.”

“That's ridiculous. You can't do that. You've always been the one in charge.”

“It's a job.”

“Oh, darling. Did you say you'd do it?”

“I said I'd think about it.”

They move about the bedroom, both going through their accustomed rituals, exchanging information in short form, each aware of the mass of emotion that lies beneath.

“Roddy's in an odd state,” Henry says. “He more or less told me he has some other woman.”

“Poor old Roddy. I almost wish he had. Can you imagine Diana?” In a Diana voice, “Don't be so silly, Roddy! Put her down!”

When they're both in bed and the lights are out, Henry says, “I'm glad the ring came back.”

“Me too.”

“What happened there?”

“Something to do with Toby, we think. Don't worry. He's going tomorrow.”

“He's a lost soul, Toby.”

“Do you think so? I thought he was just the sort that would annoy you.”

“Maybe my standards are dropping as I get older. It seems to me that just about everyone has their own mountain to climb.”

“Even funny old Roddy.”

“Roddy most of all. He wants to let the ego die and float on the stream of life.”

They can both feel each other smiling, lying side by side in the darkness. Laura reaches out her hand and finds Henry's hand.

Maggie sits in the car in the station car park waiting for Andrew's train. It's running late. She's much more nervous than she thought she would be, and she's confused about why. Everything would be so much simpler if she knew what she wanted, but she doesn't. She doesn't even know what she feels.

I don't want to have to choose any more. I want things to happen to me, and then to have to make the best of it.

Two of the station staff stand at the foot of the steps, heads down, shoulders hunched, snatching a cigarette. A woman is feeding coins into the parking-permit machine. Maggie has her car window open on this sunny morning, and can hear the coins dropping one by one. Then comes the sound of the approaching train. It makes gentle, squealing, rocking noises, like an enormous animal settling into its lair.

As always, she sees Andrew before he sees her. She feels a little rush of affection and relief, which catches her unawares. Did I really think he might not show up? He has a preoccupied air as he walks up the platform toward the exit. He carries a small rucksack slung over one shoulder, his usual weekend bag. He could be a husband, a father, coming home after a week away working to feed his family, anticipating the comfort and rest of a loving home. She could be a young wife with a bonny
two-year-old on her lap, pointing him out as he strides toward them. “Look, here's Daddy come home!”

Jesus, what's wrong with me?

He opens the car door and folds himself into the passenger seat with a sigh of exhaustion.

“Only just caught the train,” he says. “Really late night.”

He doesn't lean across to give her a token kiss, the way he usually does. She remembers he had a leaving party last night.

“How was it?”

“It was great. Quite emotional, actually. I wasn't expecting it to be. But I've been there over two years. Duncan made a speech.”

“Did you make a speech?”

“I said a few words. Not my thing, really.”

She can feel his nervousness, which doesn't help her own tension. She busies herself with the car, maneuvering it through the people crossing the car park.

“So you're all set to start the new job on Monday?”

“More or less.”

He doesn't say where he's proposing to live, and she doesn't ask, but it hangs unspoken between them. Andrew has never been one to take the lead when things need to be said. In the past this has annoyed her. Now it frightens her. His silence could mean much more than she knows. Perhaps he's already sorted out a rented flat. Perhaps he's going to live with Jo. This notion of a secret Andrew, an Andrew who could be living a life of which she knows nothing, gives her the oddest sensation. She knows this man better than any other man in the world, she can tell what he's going to say before he even opens his mouth. How can he be a stranger?