Life Begins (31 page)

‘An hour?’ hazarded Benedict, returning his concentration to his character (a lawyer with a fondness for Persian cats and a vengeful ex-wife) and fighting a mushrooming urge to trade the flaking end of his pencil for a cigarette. ‘Maybe two if the traffic’s bad.’

‘Which it would be today, of course – especially the South
Circular – Catford, Lewisham…’ Dominic shuddered on Charlotte’s behalf.

‘Keen to get rid of Sam, then?’

Dominic wrenched himself away from the window and began to plump up cushions and stack the weekend newspapers in tidy piles. ‘On the contrary. In spite of their decidedly unpromising start, he seems a good kid. On the quiet side, secretive – just Rose’s cup of tea. I thought you liked him too – all that bonfire and barbecue business, you had him in raptures.’

‘The boy’s okay.’ Benedict put down his script and levered himself upright. What’s up?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Are you worried about him and Rose
liking
each other?’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘Well, you’re worried about
something.’

‘No, I am not.’ Dominic punched the last of the cushions and dropped it into place, puzzling over the business of loving someone who could be so wilfully irksome. He wondered, too, whether the moment had arrived to reveal the latest unfortunate twist in his City career, a twist about which he, bizarrely perhaps, could still muster no real concern beyond hurt pride. If Benedict was picking up anxiety on that score it was entirely subconscious.

‘Hah. I’ve got it.’ Benedict slapped the script against his knees. ‘The lovely Petra. You haven’t mentioned her, from which omission I can only deduce…’

‘Bugger-all. Shouldn’t you be doing something useful like tearing goosemeat off a carcass?’

Benedict swung himself off the sofa, grinning smugly as he hitched up his shorts. One cigarette in the back garden before the rain had started, a treat for eating only half the mountain of chocolate he had accrued during the course of
the weekend’s festivities and for managing to pass on seconds of Dominic’s apple pie at lunch the previous day. ‘You are seeing her, aren’t you, you sly fox? I put her your way and then you don’t even have the decency to –’

‘We’re having lunch on Friday,’ Dominic cut in, suddenly weary, not just of his sibling’s curiosity, which, as they both knew, arose as much from brotherly fondness as a serious deficiency in his own life, but also of the human knee-jerk assumption (his own included) that every adult needed to find a
partner.
He had been feeling good lately, much more secure, and increasingly able to recall Maggie’s maddening habits with the genuine irritation he had experienced at the time rather than through the cunning prism of nostalgia. There was an emotional freedom to being alone that he was also starting to enjoy and would not, again, surrender readily.

Petra’s contribution to this more secure state of mind had been as a walk-on part in the occasional sexual fantasy, playing the role with such unwitting efficiency that Dominic had even wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to keep her in such confinement, untested, unable to disappoint, the blank sheet he so craved, rather than throwing her into the dragon’s den of real life, so messy in comparison, so full of scars and skeletons, maddening habits and dashed hopes. He wasn’t worried about Sam and Rose per
se
, but he feared for the rawness of their young hearts, for their innocent ignorance of the fact that acquiring the capacity to love went hand in hand with the power to disappoint and inflict pain.

‘That is excellent news.’

‘Glad, as ever, to have your approval,’ remarked Dominic, drily, moving back to the front window and noting that the foil-wrapped egg had disappeared from its perch on the gatepost – blown off, probably, by the wind. Behind him, he was aware of his brother retreating into the kitchen,
banging a few drawers and then, softly (like the dope he was, thinking he could fool anyone), opening the back door to sneak out into the garden for a smoke. Such a great, warm, open, talented man, yet hamstrung by secret vices, Dominic mused with familiar, cheery despair as he held back the curtain for a better view of the street. He stood there for a few moments, using his free hand to fire off a text to Rose saying that if rain didn’t end the get-together he wanted the pair of them home by seven p.m.

It was only as he was letting the curtain drop that Dominic spotted the car – patches of black behind a fuzz of pink blossom – parked a good fifty yards away, opposite the derelict church, which was soon, according to laminated council plans pinned to lampposts, to be converted into a primary school. It might not be the Volkswagen, of course – it was impossible to be absolutely sure from the angle he had and at such a distance – but Dominic, for no good reason other than a curious stirring in his gut, felt certain that it was.

‘I’m going out,’ he called, pushing open the back door and surprising Benedict, who spun round like a guilty schoolboy, face pink, keeping the offending item cupped behind his back. ‘Bury the stub, won’t you?’ Dominic added, chuckling to himself as he grabbed his jacket and hurried out into the street.

It was definitely a Volkswagen. Dominic slowed his pace, recalling the last occasion he had approached her car in that same street, when he had been finalizing things with the Stowes. There had been a gale blowing and she had treated his offer of help like a bad smell. Dominic began to smile, then stopped abruptly. The car was empty and dusted with blossom. It could have been there for hours. Not hers, then. Idiot. Christ, as if it mattered when the bloody woman
arrived. She used him as it suited her, treated kindness as a commodity rather than a gift.

Dominic continued down the street, nursing the vague intention of joining in with the tail end of the class picnic, maybe offering his services as a deep fielder. He had been good with a ball once upon a time – cricket and footie – before marriage and work had eaten up the time necessary to pursue such hobbies. That was another thing he could consider now – a spot of weekend cricket. It would be perfect with the summer approaching; he might make some new friends into the bargain, like-minded souls to raise a pint with on a Sunday evening – yes, that would be nice.

Dominic proceeded slowly and with diminishing conviction. His appearance at the rounders fest, he realized, might not be greeted with unbridled glee, either by his daughter or her new friend. They might think, for instance, with their still so recently acquired, still fragile thirteen-year-old independence, that he had decided they needed an escort home. Which wouldn’t do… wouldn’t do at all.

Dominic stopped again. He had crossed the road by now and was by the church, right next to the no-trespassers sign that hung at an angle on the fence, as if someone had tried to prise it off. The sorry state of the fence itself made the warning seem pointless – slats broken and missing like a set of rotten teeth. The primary school would seem like a palace in comparison. The church, with its pock-marked red bricks and boarded-up windows, looked embattled to the point of defeat. Strewn around its base was a rich assortment of litter – cans, bottles, Styrofoam containers, the odd gnarled item of clothing; almost, Dominic decided, as if some of the inhabitants of the graveyard had tunnelled out of their resting-places for a spot of nocturnal partying and not cleared up afterwards. Through the trees crowding the side of the
church he could just make out the tops of a couple of headstones pitched at angles in the long grass. And a woman. Dominic blinked. A woman with a blue top and red hair was visible… ducking behind a gravestone and then… Where had she gone? A ghost? Dominic squinted, uncertain of his emotions and his eyesight in the failing grey light. Maggie? He opened his mouth to call, then eased himself sideways through a gap in the fence instead, the widest one, right next to the wonky sign forbidding entry.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to be
sorry
for. It happens.’ Theresa eyed her socks as she pulled her pants up, wondering dimly if they could have been to blame: ankle-length, grey, serviceable, comfortable, with a small ladder over the left anklebone, they were hardly what one might have described as erotic. Henry had been so eager, prising her away from loading the dishwasher, chivvying her upstairs, tugging at zips and buttons, that it hadn’t occurred to her to worry about the need to appear especially alluring. It was the first real physical interest her husband had shown in more than two months so it also hadn’t occurred to her to refuse, even though there were a thousand other things she had planned to do before George and his brothers were dropped back from their various play-dates in and around the park. She had especially enjoyed their ungainly progress up the stairs, giggling and shushing each other on account of Matilda, who had ultimately to take credit for their opportunity: she had performed the unprecedented act of falling instantly asleep after her bath.

Once in the bedroom, they had taken the precaution of locking the door nonetheless, then fallen on to the bed, separating only briefly to attend to the business of removing
garments. Except socks… had Henry left his on as well? Theresa had been too embroiled in rediscovering the ancient pleasure of desiring and being desired to notice. He had them on now, certainly, along with the chinos that needed washing and a checked shirt he had been so eager to button up again that the entire set was misaligned.

‘Hang on a minute…’

Henry pulled away, misreading the approach as a fresh effort to stir his passions.

‘Your buttons,’ said Theresa, anger pushing through the wifely compassion. What had she done wrong, after all, except respond to his advances and then, when he had gone irretrievably, inexplicably, off the boil, try to be understanding? She knew plenty of women who found sex tedious, who joked that the pretext of a week off provided by their monthly cycle was a blessed relief. Not her… at least, not recently. Deprived, she had rediscovered real physical hunger. No one, when assaulted next to a dishwasher, could have been more eager, more willing to please, more delighted. ‘Your buttons,’ she pointed out tersely. ‘They’re wrong.’

After Henry had gone Theresa lay back on the bed to do up her trousers, which were tight – far too tight – and closed her eyes. She wished suddenly that she could leapfrog over what she knew would be a hectic few hours, and cut straight to the business of falling asleep. The boys would be tired, but hungry too, no doubt, in spite of their respective teas and picnics. George was supposed to have done a project on the Taj Mahal and the two younger ones had had spelling lists and Alfie had said first that his trainers were too small and then that they weren’t and now she wished she had bought some anyway.

Theresa opened her eyes and raised one leg, wiggling the
toes. Socks were a better reason for going off the boil than the other thing, the thing she had ruled out. Suffolk had been an
unmitigated disaster
, she reminded herself. Henry had stumbled off the train and into her arms on Saturday afternoon in such a curious, unHenry-like state of exhausted relief that she had been momentarily concerned he might be ill. Just happy to be home, he had assured her, turning his attention to their three youngest and throwing each of them in the air, even Jack who was densely built and decidedly unwieldy. Normally one to let Easter pass him by, leaving it to her to assuage the children’s expectations with regard to rabbits and confectionary, Henry had then spent the rest of the weekend making enormous efforts to participate in every ritual. On Sunday morning he had even presented her with a vast, expensive dark chocolate egg, rattling with truffles, and a card – a proper Easter one, exploding with spring flowers, lambs and baby chicks. A
card!
Henry usually only stretched to such extravagance on her birthday and even then he had been known to forget or to hand over something tacky or inappropriate, clearly bought at the last minute from the corner shop near the station.
Darling Theresa, Happy Easter, all my love, H.

Theresa wagged her foot harder, not liking her train of thought, but unable to resist it. The egg, the card… It was all wrong. It smacked of penitence. What had Henry to be sorry for? Being a pig for three months, or for something worse, something more recent, more threatening…?

The front door thumped and Henry called up the stairs, ‘Tessy, the boys are back and I’m making scrambled eggs. Shall I do some for us, too, or do you want to wait?’

Theresa rolled off the bed. ‘Yup – great. Let’s all eat now.’ She could hear the boys pounding round the ground floor, running as they always seemed to, as if nowhere could be
got to fast enough. What bliss, she reflected wistfully, to want to speed on to the next thing, to have no fear of what might be waiting. One was calling her – Alfie, with his funny low growl of a voice, always the neediest of the four.

‘Coming.’ She straightened her hair and swiped away the makeup smears under her eyes. Henry, for whatever reason, was
trying
, and so would she. Nothing he had said about his few days with Charlotte and Sam had offered grounds for the reignition of suspicion; on the contrary. The pair had been a distraction, a nuisance, he had claimed many times. Charlotte, meanwhile, would have had a gruelling weekend tending her injured mother and would be in need of support. She would suggest they had a girls’ lunch, Theresa decided, hurrying down the stairs, somewhere thoroughly nice for a change instead of the café, maybe even the new place she had posited as a possible venue for Charlotte’s fortieth. They could order three courses and wine – go the whole hog – call it research. And she could probe about Suffolk, throw out questions and leave the instincts to which her mother had referred to do the rest. Innocent until proven guilty, as the old adage said.

After admiring the wobbling tooth that had prompted Alfie’s summons, Theresa joined Henry in the kitchen, where she mopped up egg spills, fetched cutlery and generally played the role of dutiful sous-chef even though she was longing to seize the wooden spoon from his hands and take over. Henry never put enough butter in, or milk, or salt. The eggs would be dry instead of sloppy as she and the boys preferred. Once she wouldn’t have thought twice before barging him out of the way. She would have called him a useless nincompoop and he would have said she was a bossy harridan and settled happily behind the newspaper.