Keeping Secrets (5 page)

Hilda said icily: ‘Will you please stop being so offensive?'

Alan straightened up, mock-shaking his hand as if she'd burned it. ‘She doesn't like me, she doesn't like me at all.'

Hilda closed her eyes. She heard Stephen say: ‘Perhaps we'll come and dance in a minute', and opened her eyes to see Alan weaving away to a little knot of people stretched out on the floor cushions. She said to Stephen: ‘I think it's time I was going.'

‘What is it about you and Alan?'

‘There's absolutely nothing “about” us at all. He's a vacuous fool who thinks I'm a stuck-up little miss and makes me behave like one.'

‘Do you always arouse such strong feelings in people?'

‘I wouldn't know,' said Hilda. ‘Not that I'm aware of.' She looked at her watch: the last train to Dalston left Camden Road in just over an hour; she did not want to be on the last train, travelling alone with Saturday night drunks. If she left now she could catch an earlier, safer one, and be home before eleven. She thought of her attic rooms with longing.

‘Please don't go,' said Stephen.

‘I have a train to catch.'

‘I'll take you home.'

‘Don't be silly.'

‘Why, where do you live, Prague?'

‘Hackney,' said Hilda, smiling in spite of herself.

‘I can take you to Hackney.'

‘Well …'

‘Or is there,' Stephen said carefully, ‘someone waiting there for you? Perhaps I've misunderstood …'

‘No,' said Hilda flatly. ‘I live by myself.'

There was another silence, as this fact hung in the air, begging questions – why? For how long? Always? Then Stephen said: ‘Well … You don't want to go this minute, do you?'

‘When you're ready,' said Hilda, wishing already that she had simply got up and gone when she wanted. Now she was in someone else's hands, no longer free.

‘Will you come and dance with me?' Stephen asked, and put out his hand. The way he spoke made the invitation sound as intimate as: Will you sleep with me? and almost as dangerous. Hilda shook her head. ‘No, thanks. But please …' She gestured at the dance floor.

‘I know,' said Stephen. ‘I mustn't let you stop me.'

Hilda flushed.

Out on the roof terrace, the sky was fading into dusk; Fanny was lighting candles. She came inside with a box of matches and lit more, in tall glass candlesticks, on the table and in alcoves, climbing the stairs to the minstrels' gallery. Candlelit, the room became full of shadowy corners, places to return to from the dance floor, to linger in. Earlier, Hilda had been able to summon the feeling that she was simply one guest talking to another, casual and in control. Now, it was inescapably more than that: she was sitting with a married man who had asked her to dance, who was going to drive her home. What were they going to talk about, between here and Hackney?

Beside her, Stephen had stretched out his legs and was watching people. Hilda turned to look at him, and looked away. Stephen said: ‘We can go if you want.'

‘Well … yes. All right.' She stood up, looking round for Fanny. ‘I must say goodbye; I think Fanny's upstairs.'

‘And I must find James and Klara,' said Stephen, getting up. ‘I'm staying with them; I'd better organise a key or something.'

‘Really, if it's a problem, perhaps you could just run me to the station – I'd still get my train if we left now.'

Stephen put out a hand and touched her arm, lightly, affectionately, as if touching a cat or someone he knew very well. ‘Stop it. I want to take you. Give me a wave when you've found Fanny, all right?'

‘All right.' Hilda moved away and climbed the wooden stairs to the gallery. She found Fanny curled up on cushions with two young men in T-shirts, passing a joint. ‘I'm just off,' she said, standing over them.

‘
Off?
' Fanny looked at her, drawing out the syllable. ‘Darling Hilda, you've only just arrived.'

‘Hardly,' said Hilda. ‘Anyway, thanks for asking me, it's been lovely.'

‘Oh, well, it was sweet of you to come,' Fanny said automatically. ‘I suppose you're trying to catch a train – Alan'll call a taxi, if you're really desperate to go.'

‘I don't think he will,' said Hilda. ‘And I'm not desperate. Stephen Knowles is giving me a lift.'

‘Stephen Knowles …' Fanny frowned, then brightened. ‘Oh, yes! James's new chap, isn't he a sweetie?'

‘He seems very nice,' Hilda said calmly. ‘He wanted to say goodbye to you, I'll see if I can …' She leaned over the balustrade, searching. Stephen was on the far side of the room, kissing Klara on the cheek; he turned away, looking up towards the gallery: when he saw her, and raised his hand, Hilda felt a queer little twist of pleasure. He walked across the room to the foot of the stairs and came up, and as he did so she found herself remembering something a colleague at work had said about the man she lived with: ‘It sounds such a small thing, but I like the way he occupies space.' I like the way Stephen does, thought Hilda, and I know what she means. It's such a simple thing, but somehow it makes everything else right.

He had reached the top of the staircase, and raised an eyebrow. ‘All right?'

‘Fine. Here's Fanny.'

Fanny held up a languorous arm. ‘Stephen, it's been lovely meeting you.'

‘And you. Thanks so much for the party.'

‘Pleasure, see you again, I hope. 'Bye now.' She turned back to the young men in T-shirts.

Stephen and Hilda made their way down again, and past the open doors to the terrace, where the candles were beginning to sputter. They went down the broad carpeted stairs to the hall and Stephen said: ‘The car's outside James's house.' They walked on, hearing the roar of the traffic from the main road, brakes squealing. The air felt cooler now. ‘That's better,' said Stephen. ‘London's so much warmer than Norfolk; I really noticed it when I got here this afternoon.'

‘Tell me about Norfolk,' said Hilda, as they turned the corner. ‘Where do you live?'

‘We have a house just outside Saxham – you won't have heard of it, it's tiny, about twenty miles from Norwich. Not far from Woodburgh, if that rings any bells. That's where Miriam's shop is.'

‘Shop?'

‘She sells fabrics – for curtains and loose covers.'

‘Oh.' Hilda didn't know what to say next; it sounded a very county thing to do, and she pictured a window filled with rustic baskets of flowers, and Laura Ashley prints. Country Living. ‘Is she – what's she like?' she asked.

‘She's … well.' Stephen gave a wry smile. ‘It's a big question – what can I say?'

‘One would imagine everything.'

‘Exactly. But I can't tell you everything, not all at once. And if I say that Miriam is a very nice person – well, what does that mean?'

‘All right. Leave it. Do you know where we are?'

‘I think so. Next on the left … yes.'

They entered a square not unlike the square where Hilda lived: solid, porticoed Victorian houses, but here there ran unbroken lines of white, well-kept homes, no cracked stucco or peeling paintwork, no unwashed net. From the brimming window boxes to the polished brass on the front doors there was a sense of order, money well invested years ago. They were the kind of houses from which little girls came out to go to violin lessons.

‘The Gibbon residence,' said Stephen, stopping outside one of them. He fished keys out of his pocket, and nodded towards a blue Peugeot. ‘The Knowles family car. Please …'

For a while they drove in silence, out through the side streets, passing lit-up restaurants and pubs, to Parkway, and down towards the tube. The traffic was heavy and fast. ‘Where do I go now?' asked Stephen at the lights.

‘Straight ahead, follow the signs for Holloway.'

‘The only thing I know about Holloway is the prison. Do we go near it?'

‘We drive right past the back in a minute, I'll show you. I taught there once.'

‘Did you really?' He shook his head. ‘And what were you doing?'

‘I ran a basic literacy course, I was organising volunteers as well as teaching. And I taught a creative writing group: that was quite exciting, we produced an anthology at the end of the year. Look – that's it, on the left.'

Stephen slowed to look at the blank redbrick walls of gabled buildings. ‘No windows. Presumably they all face inwards.'

‘Yes. You can't look out to the world from anywhere.'

Behind them a car was flashing its lights: Stephen put his foot down. ‘Didn't you find it frightening? I mean what's it like in there?'

‘Not frightening – I mean I wasn't frightened, why should I be? I was going out at the end of the day. For the women – yes, some of them were very scared. And angry. Writing about their lives seemed to help a bit.'

They had reached the traffic lights at the bottom of the hill. ‘You can't go right here, can you? Follow the Highbury sign.'

They climbed a leafy hill to a church and a clock tower, sprayed with graffiti. The clock had stopped, and boys on bikes were hanging around it, eating chips. They cut through quiet tree-lined streets and crossed a busy main road, driving alongside park railings. Ahead, on a broad curve in the road, was another church, towering over council flats; they swept round the bend past rows of shabby shops, with here and there a tiny Georgian house squeezed between, and came at last to an empty street market; a couple of minutes later they turned into the square.

‘Number 51,' said Hilda, ‘just up there past the lamppost.'

There were cars parked all the way along; Stephen drew up outside 59, which had no lights on. He switched off the engine, and said: ‘Well …'

‘Well … thank you very much,' said Hilda. ‘Will you be able to find your way back all right?'

‘Oh, I should think so. I've got an ‘A-Z'if I get lost.'

‘Good. Thanks again.' She reached for the door handle, and heard a click.

‘Central locking,' said Stephen, smiling. ‘You can't get out until I choose.'

For a moment Hilda felt a chill of pure terror. ‘Please open the door,' she said coldly. Stephen leaned forward and pressed a switch by the gear lever; Hilda heard another click and felt herself tremble in relief. ‘Thank you.' She reached for the handle again.

‘Hilda? Did I frighten you? I really didn't mean to, I was only joking. We have the central locking for Jonathan.'

‘It's all right.'

‘It isn't. Please don't rush off. Surely you know it wasn't serious.'

‘Actually,' said Hilda, ‘I don't. I mean, I do believe you, but I can't know, can I? Women don't like to be put in situations like that, surely you can understand.'

‘Of course. Of course I can. And perhaps you, particularly … You don't like to lose control, do you?'

‘Nobody,' said Hilda, ‘likes to lose control of
that
situation.'

‘I know. I'm just saying that perhaps … never mind.' He felt for his own door handle. ‘Let me see you to your house.'

‘There's no need.'

‘But may I?'

‘If you want,' said Hilda ungraciously. She felt that the evening had slipped out of her grasp, that the exchange of the past few minutes had taken away all the enjoyment she had begun to feel. They walked down the street towards Anya's house in a silence that felt colourless and disappointing. But then, what more might she have hoped for?

The marmalade cat was sitting at the top of the steps outside the front door; he made a little sound and got up, stretching, as they reached the bottom.

‘Here, puss.' Stephen held out his hand and the cat came forward, rubbing his head against it. ‘Sweet puss. Is it Anya's?' he asked, straightening up.

‘Yes,' said Hilda, as if: who else's could it be? ‘Well – thank you again.'

Stephen said: ‘I've enjoyed meeting you. I can see you're not going to invite me up to your attic rooms – quite right too. But may I phone you some time? We're going on holiday in a couple of weeks, but after that I'll be coming down fairly regularly …'

Hilda wanted to say: And what about your wife? What would she think of such a phone call? But that seemed to assume too much, to be putting herself forward – and once more this evening to be pronouncing on other people's lives. So she said coolly: ‘Well – all right,' and gave him her number. He pulled out a pen and a printed card from his inside pocket, and wrote it down on the back, and she noticed that he did not write her name beside it.

‘Good. Thank you.' He slipped the pen and card back in his pocket. ‘Right, then.' He held out his hand; she hesitated, then took it, and although they shook hands briefly, like two men concluding a meeting, she could not pretend that it felt like a casual handshake.

‘Goodbye,' said Stephen. ‘I'll be in touch.'

‘Goodbye.' She turned and-went up the steps, feeling for her keys, and went inside quickly, followed by the cat.

Upstairs, her sitting room felt warm and close; she opened the windows wider, and stood looking up and down the square. Stephen's car had gone; she found herself pressing her hand to her cheek, as if it still held some of the warmth his had held, and heard his voice, which was a pleasing voice, inquiring: ‘And what do you do when the chemistry is right?'

Then she turned away from the windows, and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee, thinking: And now I must get on.

Alice's baby was born in September, just after the start of the new term. Hilda went to see her the next day, bending over the transparent hospital crib by the bed, the scrunched-up face with its damp fringe of dark hair.

‘She's … oh, Alice.'

‘I know.' Beside her baby Alice leaned against the pillows, pale and triumphant. Her face looked swollen, blurred with exhaustion, but happier than she had ever looked in her life, a new and unrecognisable Alice. ‘I can't believe it,' she said. ‘I feel as if I could fly out of the window.'