Life Begins (16 page)

‘
I need a Helena,’ he calls, pointing in our direction. Eve stands up. ‘Not you, you.’ His finger is aimed a little to the left of my chest, at my heart. I stand up, shaking off my coat, raking my fingers through the tangle of my wet hair. I move slowly, aware of many things, including the sheer wonder of how much can be packed into a single human moment. This man and I will sleep together, I know. I know,
too, that Eve knows it, that the connection from the stage to my chair, so instant, so strong, is somehow visible. As I step towards the stage I feel the crunch of her dreams underfoot, but my need is too great to care.

Happiness, I learn that night, comes when the fulfilment of desire not only exceeds expectation but is experienced simultaneously, equally, by another. While we eat pasta and discuss John Osborne and the cheap posters on the bistro walls, being only children and whether mushrooms should be peeled, I know with exalting certainty that the balance of pleasure is absolute. He feels as I do. We will make love, but already there is the delicious sense of a mutual slowing down, the knowledge that we have the rest of our lives, should we choose. At my insistence we divide the bill equally, laughing at our mutual ineptitude with figures, turning mundanity into courtship. Before we leave he swipes a clean paper napkin off a neighbouring table and tears it in two. I write my name and number on one half and he his on the other. I watch his hand work the biro, wondering how I could ever have thought the name Martin ordinary, wondering how his tongue will feel inside my mouth.

There was so much mist that morning, swirling round their scrubby back garden like smoke, that Dominic, nursing his first cup of tea in the draughty chill of their rented kitchen, wondered whether to cancel his planned visit to the Redhill aerodrome and go into work instead. Upstairs he could hear the creak of the floorboards and the gurgle of water as Rose moved between the bathroom and her bedroom, getting herself together in a manner that would have left Maggie reeling in disbelief. Rose setting an alarm clock! Rose, getting out of bed with more than five minutes to spare! Cleaning her teeth without being asked, forcing a comb through the morning thicket of her rebellious hair – unbelievable, fantastic! His wife and daughter had fought hard over such
rituals, so hard that sometimes Dominic had been glad to escape out of the door with his briefcase. They clashed because they were so alike – intense, obstinate, wilful – like two tigers in a cage; but so passionate, too, so loving. Dominic swallowed a hot mouthful of tea. It wouldn’t do, not today, not any day. Sentimental garbage. He swallowed again, harder.

‘Hey, Dad.’

‘Hey, sweetheart. I bought a pack of Pop-Tarts yesterday – they’re in the breadbin.’

She screwed up the pointy tip of her nose, the only part of her face where the freckles were scattered enough to show the true pearl of her skin.

‘I thought you liked them.’

She shook her head. ‘Not any more.’

‘Right.’ Dominic drained his tea. ‘Cereal, then.’ He began pulling packets out of the cupboard.

‘You’re not going to work?’

‘No.’ He laughed. ‘How did you guess?’

She shrugged, clearly unmoved by the admiration in his tone. ‘You’ve got jeans on, haven’t you? Which means you’re either going flying or house-hunting.’

‘The former, clever clogs. I don’t have to look at houses any more, remember?’ he prompted, a little concerned that she could have forgotten such a thing, wondering if it meant she hadn’t liked the place after all, whether she had only said she did to please him. ‘We’ve had our offer accepted, haven’t we?’

‘You did, Dad,’ she replied haughtily. ‘It’s not
my
money, is it?’

Dominic decided to let the matter drop. She was studying the back of the cereal packet, clearly in no mood to continue talking. Maggie hadn’t talked much in the mornings either.
Though she was usually the one to venture downstairs to make tea, and would often climb back into bed afterwards, nudging her knee between his legs if she wanted to make love. Dominic turned back to the window as the shadow of longing descended and then passed, like a private silent storm, but easier now, definitely easier.

The mist was lifting, floating in strands across the fence and the branches of the trees like thinning hair. A squirrel was perched on one of the mudflats pitting the scrubby lawn, flicking its tail and glancing over its shoulder as if it knew it was being watched. He missed Maggie, but at times Dominic simply missed sex – a basic enough urge and yet one that was proving maddeningly complicated to satisfy. A blind date organized by well-intentioned Hampshire friends had led to a liaison of sorts; the woman had been a slim, attractive brunette, a divorcée with two children, intelligent, wealthy in her own right, a keen lover – generous, imaginative. Recognizing the potential, Dominic had done his best to nurture it, only to find himself feeling like a spectator to the relationship rather than a participant. Even when making love, he had experienced a distinct, shaming sense of detachment, fighting the urge afterwards to scramble free of her arms and bolt home.

He hadn’t, of course. Dominic was too well brought up for that. Instead he had lain still while a head rested on his arm and fingers stroked the shield of dark hairs on his chest and intimate questions were put to him about love and loss. He had realized then that his bereavement held some allure – the romance of tragedy, a man in need of rescuing. He had stonewalled, not wanting rescue, so she had responded to his monosyllables by pouring out confidences of her own, invariably connected to the disappointments of her marriage. All of which had made Dominic cringe in the half-light of
the bedroom, shrinking from the sheer
weight
of what she was so desperate to share. Feeling a fraud, after a few such encounters, he had brought the whole thing to an end, citing platitudes – not being ready, needing space – to ease the exit.

What he needed was a clean sheet, Dominic mused, tracking the squirrel as it scampered through a patch of weeds and up a tree; someone fresh and uncluttered as Maggie had been when they’d first met, full of ideals, hope and generosity, holding still to the view that the world would deliver rather than disappoint. Someone, maybe, like the Polish girl whom his sly brother had recently placed at Dominic’s end of a dinner table; late twenties, self-assured, saucer-eyed, full of a youthful eagerness to please, to succeed, proud of her unusual career path – au pair, to PA, to fledgling producer in a film company – she had exuded an energy that was impossible to ignore. So some of his clients invested in films, she had exclaimed, in her clipped, school-book English, with the delight of somebody stumbling upon a monumental coincidence, maybe they could talk about it over lunch some time.

‘Dad, we’re going to be late.’

‘No, we’re not.’

‘But you haven’t had your breakfast and it’s
eight o’clock
and you feel
sick
if you don’t eat before you fly.’

Dominic reached out to stroke his daughter’s cheek, missing the harum-scarum creature who had spent the first ten years of her life exercising his patience. She was filling in for Maggie, of course. Even the most amateur shrink could have worked that out. All perfectly understandable, but heartbreaking nonetheless. Something she loved had been taken away so she was damn well going to protect what was left. In his own way Dominic felt it too, had fought it minute
by minute during the bad times, letting her be when he wanted to crush her gangly, fragile twelve-year-old body against his chest and howl. It was the new game they played, no sissies allowed, and Rose was still excelling at it. How she had handled the business with the loathsome Sam Turner had been typical: keeping it to herself, not
worrying
him, calmly reporting it to teachers the moment it got out of hand, then putting it behind her as soon the headmistress’s door was closed. Sam Turner was a
saddo
and a
geek
, she had pronounced, during the car ride home, and she would have kicked him back if there hadn’t been the danger of getting into as much trouble herself.

Before they left the house Dominic shuffled through the morning post. ‘There’s a letter, look, for you.’

‘For
me
?’ Rose snatched it from him, beaming.

‘Anyone I know?’

She ignored him, tucking the envelope into her blazer pocket, but adding, because she had her mother’s kindness, ‘I might show you later, okay?’

As Dominic crossed the M25 the glorious spring day promised by the forecasters – clear skies, light winds, temperatures rising to sixteen – began to push through the mist like some ravishing oil painting emerging through an insipid overlay of watercolour. He felt, as always, a deep reluctance at the thought of the hour or so it would take to shoulder-barge the hangar doors, tug the Cessna out on to the Tarmac and carry out the necessary checks prior to radioing for permission to take off. Enthralled as some members of his flying group were with such technical ritual, Dominic’s part-ownership of the little plane had always been about the pure joy of being in the air. In the immediate aftermath of Maggie’s death he had, on a couple of occasions, skipped every safety check in the book – ailerons, elevators, lights,
oil, avgas, the lot – bumping along the grassy runway with no precaution other than the clearance to do so. No one would know, he had reasoned. No one would care. But the second time he did it, on a loop round the Isle of Wight, a storm had blown up from across the Channel. For half an hour he had had to fly by his instruments alone, which he had managed, sweating with concentration, drawing on the advanced lessons he had taken for just such an emergency. Buffeted in the cramped cockpit, the rain splatting against the screen, he had willed the plane on, his heart swelling with a desire to survive, not just for Rose – of
course
for Rose – but for himself.

That day Dominic’s outing did not disappoint. The sky was the densest blue, the sun glaring even through his sunglasses. A thousand feet below, the ordered map of southern England was predominantly rural rather than urban – a green feast of a world, embroidered with the silvery sinews of rivers and motorways and the darker, more geometric lines of its hedges and ploughed fields. Houses clustered round churches like pebbles round a rock, their pedestrian colours studded with the occasional emerald and turquoise jewels of games pitches and swimming-pools.

Dominic turned east, tracking the lower ridge of the North Downs, letting the sides of the control stick float between his palms. In the distance to his right he could make out the thick, ominous shimmer of yellow-grey hovering over London; smog trapped by high air pressure, voluntary human suffocation. Dominic shuddered, nosing the plane south instead, rejoicing in the simple power of being able to turn his back on it. He began to rise higher, until the sheep in the fields were white flecks and the lakes of the chalk pits fingerprint smudges of blue. His heart, his hopes, soared with the plane; such a jewel of a day, so full of beauty
and promise; a day, he mused, releasing a sudden involuntary chuckle, when even Maggie might have been prepared to swallow one of her travel-sickness tablets and come along for the ride.

Theresa kept within arm’s reach of the barrier as she circled the rink, trying her best to glide rather than stagger, as Charlotte was managing a few yards in front of her. Behind them, somewhere among the moving crowd, Sam and George were ricocheting off each other and the edge of the rink as if ineptitude merely added to the thrill of trying to stay upright. Charlotte had only skated on ahead at Theresa’s insistence. She was wearing a blue scarf, which flapped among the brilliant auburn tumble of her hair, and had the too-straight back and legs of an amateur but was still graceful, clearly having mastered the knack, which Henry liked to go on about on skiing holidays, of transferring weight to achieve momentum rather than actually moving one’s legs. It boiled down to
letting go
, Henry said, allowing instinct to overrule intellect. Which was a fine theory, Theresa mused, steering her aching ankles towards the side for yet another breather, but took no account of the importance of self-preservation; driving, shopping, tackling laundry and marauding children – some silly accident, and the world as she knew it would cease to turn.

She was still catching her breath when Charlotte threaded her way across the ice to join her at the barrier. ‘Are you okay? Have you had enough? Shall we sit down? This is brilliant of you, by the way, Theresa, asking us out like this – a mid-week treat, getting the boys together – absolutely
brilliant.’

‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ Theresa admitted, wishing her
motives for the impromptu entertainment were as pure as they seemed. Bits were pure, like enjoying Charlotte’s company and wanting to do something supportive in the face of the gossip still rippling between the buggies, dogs and bicycles at the school gates, gossip that had made her own tittle-tattle at the theatre the previous week seem positively innocent. One woman who barely knew Charlotte had used the word ‘abuse’ to a spellbound throng awaiting the end of orchestra practice, adding knowingly that such things always began ‘in the home’. When Theresa had said rot and Sam was basically a good boy going through a bad patch – painfully shy, cut up about his parents’ separation – they had looked not so much ashamed as disappointed, as if something truly enjoyable had been snatched away.

George’s summary of the hiatus – that Rose was stuck-up and Sam an idiot – had struck Theresa as infinitely more likely and honest. Having delivered this verdict, her eldest’s attentions had switched, with refreshing speed, to outrage at a spell on the substitutes’ bench and a dogged resumption of negotiations to be allowed to give up the trumpet. When Theresa broached the skating plan he had even tried to use that as leverage, saying if she wanted him to befriend an idiot there had to be a pay-back. ‘McDonald’s,’ Theresa had retorted, using a sharp tone to mask her admiration. ‘Chips and nuggets afterwards can be the pay-back. And on the subject of music lessons, since we need to give a term’s notice, you’re committed to the end of the summer anyway.’