Out of Step (34 page)

‘Why?’ Bert challenged. ‘How could frost affect the physiology of a parsnip?’

‘Well, it obviously breaks down the cell walls and causes the starch…’

Oh no, Nell thought. Don’t let’s have one of those discussions where no one knows what they’re talking about, and as a result argues even more fiercely. She heaved herself up and went over to the stove to check the pudding.

‘Have we got any brandy?’ she interrupted them.

‘Miniature in the cupboard, I think,’ Rob answered after her third try.

‘Come on, young Josh,’ Bert said heartily. ‘Let’s set fire to it, eh?’

Josh could not resist, and as his grandfather poured the warmed spirit over the pudding, he struck a match and ignited it, crowing over the fleeting blue flames. Then, having forgotten about the necessity to sulk, he ate a huge bowlful of it with cream and brandy butter, and found more hidden five-pence pieces in his than anyone else.

‘It’s no good being afraid of your children,’ Bert said confidentially to Nell later on over the washing-up – which he was doing with great flamboyance and too much foam. ‘You have to show them who’s boss.’

Nell retired to a stool to dry a handful of cutlery with the teatowel, feeling resentful. Rob had taken the children for another rainwalk to dissipate some of their energy, and Bert had stayed behind rather obviously to help her. She got the impression that he didn’t like her very much. Perhaps she wasn’t beautiful enough. Perhaps he was influenced by the fact that she’d worked in a shop. Nell knew by now that Rob was not a snob, but suspected his father might well be.

‘I’m glad to have this time on our own.’ Bert said to her conspiratorially. ‘I’ve got a little present for you. It’s really to celebrate the birth of your first child, but now seems an appropriate moment.’ He dried his hands and went to fetch a small package.

Oh no! Nell thought. What if it’s… She tore off the blue tissue paper nervously and opened the box. In the virgin white interior lay a beautiful malachite necklace. ‘No,’ she said at once. ‘It’s very kind of you, but I couldn’t possibly accept it.’

‘Why ever not?’ Bert’s eyes were wide with ersatz affront.

‘I just couldn’t.’ She wanted to say, ‘You know very well why not!’ but was afraid to do so.

‘You’re being illogical,’ Bert said quite gently. ‘You like
it, I can see you do, and I want you to have it. Surely those are good enough reasons?’

‘It would upset Rob,’ Nell said stubbornly without looking at him.

‘Oh, I see … That old canard!’ He put out a hand and raised her chin so that she could not avoid looking at him. ‘You don’t believe that nonsense surely?’

‘Yes,’ Nell said stoutly. ‘I think I do.’

He dropped his hand abruptly. ‘I’m disappointed in you,’ he said, closing the box and slipping it into his pocket. ‘And to think I was so glad when Rob found himself someone after Cassie …’ He sighed. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have expected you to be alike.’ He made for the back door, shrugging himself into an immaculate Barbour jacket and pulling on a fisherman’s cap at a rakish angle. ‘Fresh air,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s needed.’ And he went out into the weather. Nell took herself into the sitting room to recover her composure, and saw him through the window, striding out along the coast path all boldness and self-confidence; a man unburdened by insight.

Poor Rob, she thought. No wonder.

Ten minutes later Rob and the children came back with Bert, and there was a great disrobing and shaking of waterproofs and pulling off of muddy boots. Nell let them get on with it. She had cleared up most of the torn wrapping paper and the empty nets which had held the chocolate money. She felt she had done enough for the day.

They came into the sitting room with faces pink with cold and glowing with exercise. Josh’s feet were bare. ‘Not another welly-full?’ she asked.

‘It was an accident.’ He grinned cheerfully.

‘It always is!’

‘Look what I’ve got, Nell!’ Rosie pranced in joyfully. She was wearing the malachite necklace, and it hung down her flat little chest like an oversized garland of
green pebbles. Nell glanced straight at Rob, but his face was expressionless. She cast about for something neutral to say.

‘Rosie and Josh,’ she said, ‘did you find the real pound coins we put in amongst your chocolate ones?’

‘Yeah,’ Josh answered for both of them. He looked cautious.

‘So why didn’t you say so?’

Now he looked shifty. ‘I thought they might belong to someone else.’

It went on raining solidly all Christmas Day and Nell was glad when it got dark so she could draw the curtains and no longer have to look out at the brown river and the brown trees and the brownish leaden sky. At least indoors there were bright lights and cheerful decorations. By eight o’clock in the evening the children were tired and peevish, and only staying awake to spite each other. Nell didn’t want always to be the one to send them to bed, and wished Rob would be more decisive and take charge. He didn’t notice, of course, and seemed quite happy lolling on the sofa, occasionally administering a mild reproof to one or other of them.

‘Right!’ Bert said, looking at his watch. ‘Bedtime for kids. Who’s going to be up the stairs first?’

‘I don’t want –’ Josh began, but Bert, rising from his chair and bent double, rushed at him, grabbed him in a fireman’s lift and bore him aloft laughing and complaining all at the same time.

‘Me too, me too, me too!’ Rosie shouted joyfully.

‘I’ll come back for you,’ Bert promised, disappearing. They heard the clump of his feet on the wooden stairs and Josh’s squeaks and giggles. Then he was down again for Rosie. ‘Which way up is this parcel?’ he teased, standing her on her head. ‘Ah, that’s right.’

‘No, it ithn’t!’ Squeals of joy.

‘This better?’

‘No!’

‘Or this?’

‘No!’

Nell and Rob exchanged glances as he went up with her too, and as the bedroom door closed and the noises diminished, Nell said, ‘It’ll never work. He’ll get them so hyped up that they won’t sleep for a week!’

‘Mmm,’ Rob agreed.

‘There’s a programme about painting on BBC2 that I wouldn’t mind watching,’ Nell said. ‘D’you think Bert would mind?’

‘Shouldn’t think so.’

‘Or you?’

‘Fine by me.’

Bert came back a quarter of an hour later, looking tousled but pleased with himself. ‘Out like lights,’ he reported.

‘Asleep?’ Nell was astonished.

‘Yep. Now then…’ He walked across to the television, switched it on and pressed the button for ITV. ‘Good, he said. ‘Just in time.’

It was his own programme and there he was in his surgeon’s mask, saving lives, making impossible decisions, seducing nurses and fighting the hospital management committee. Nell looked anxiously at Rob. He never watched the programme on purpose. She waited for him to protest, but he just sat there. For her own part she was intrigued to see Malachy in action, so she made no move to dissent either.

Bert sat back on the sofa with legs crossed widely, ankle on knee. ‘Now she,’ he said, pointing to the actress playing the theatre sister, ‘is actually a lesbian. Never know it, would you? Looks a real doll. And he, with the red hair, has done time for actual bodily harm, but he’s as mild as baby food, bless him. And watch this bit coming up …
you can just see the overhead mike, that fuzzy bit of grey… got it? It took us a ridiculous amount of time to shoot that scene because the bloody casualty kept on corpsing. Look, you can see him trying not to laugh … there!’

Even Rob was smiling. Nell couldn’t help but be amused, and was flattered by his indiscretion. During the ad breaks she got Rob to fetch drinks; beer for himself, orange juice for her, and malt whisky for Bert. The three of them sat comfortably in front of the log fire, totally relaxed. This is more like it! Nell thought. This is what Christmas should be like. She didn’t even feel annoyed about her missed art programme since everyone was enjoying themselves so much.

At ten o’clock Elly phoned, and Nell went into the kitchen to speak to her. ‘Happy Christmas!’ She sounded cheerfully tipsy.

‘And to you. Have you had a good day?’ Nell asked.

‘Very good. We’re all at Sibyl’s and Hat is taking the boys out for a treat tomorrow, so I wondered if you’d meet us in the Wheatsheaf for lunch?’

‘Oh, I’d love to,’ Nell said, ‘but we’ve got the children, and Bert’s here … and I don’t suppose you want to see him…’

‘He’s not my favourite person, no!’

‘So I’m afraid …’

‘Well, why don’t you leave the kids with Bert, and you and Rob come?’

‘Wouldn’t that be rather selfish?’ Nell said, thinking (as always) of the awful example set by Anna’s stepmother.

‘What, escaping for a couple of hours? What d’you want to be, feminist or doormat?’

‘Something in between for preference!’

‘Well then, you do have to put your foot down sometimes and do what
you
want for a change. Get a life!’ Elly
urged. ‘Go on, we haven’t met for ages, and I’m dying to see you.’

‘I’d like to …’ Nell hesitated.

‘Tell you what,’ Elly said, ‘we’ll be there between twelve thirty and two, so if you can come, do.’

Rob was awoken in the middle of the night by Nell shaking him and turning on the light. ‘Whassermatter …?’

‘Your father’s shouting downstairs. Go and see what’s wrong.’

‘Probably… nightmare … go back… sleep.’

‘No! I’m sure it’s more than that. Please wake up!’

Rob groaned and sat up, peering at the clock. It was 3.40 a.m. ‘God…’ he grumbled. ‘This had better be worth it.’ He pulled on his dressing gown and was just about to go downstairs, when he met Bert coming up. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘You might at least have given me a boat to sleep in,’ Bert said, turning round to show him the back of his silk pyjamas, which were soaking wet.

‘Oh Christ!’ Rob elbowed him aside and rushed downstairs, thinking: All that rain… the river… high tide… Why the fuck didn’t I put out the sandbags?… Distracted by booze and talk, and bloody Bert!

The damage was not as great as he had feared. The flood was only a few inches high across the floors of the cottage – too low to have buggered up the electric power circuit, thank God, but enough to have soaked up through Bert’s makeshift mattress and muddied the carpets and the legs of the furniture. Rob splashed through it in bare feet to the comer by the back door, where he kept the sandbags. He had no idea whether the tide was yet at its height, and he didn’t fancy trying to sweep the river out of the cottage if more were to pile in than he could get rid of. So, for the moment at least, he would wall up both doors and try to stop things getting any worse.

He was furious with himself for not taking precautions. He
knew
this was likely to happen after such rain, especially during a period of spring tides.

‘Rob?’ Nell called from upstairs. ‘What’s happening? Can I do anything?’

‘No,’ he shouted back, dragging sandbags about. ‘It’s all… under … control. Stay where you are.’

‘Is it a flood?’

‘Yes, but it’s not… very … bad.’

At least, he thought, the lights still work so I can see what I’m doing, and I’ve got the wherewithal to contain the water. I’m not totally stuffed. He completed the sandbag barrier inside front and back doors and watched if tensely to see if it would do the job. He made a pencil mark on the skirting board and inspected it every few seconds to check it was still on the waterline, not below. It was. He began to breathe more easily.

‘Dad?’ Josh splashed across the floor towards him. ‘What’s all the shouting for, and why’s Granddad having a bath in the middle of the night?’

‘See for yourself.’

‘Is it the river or the sea?’

‘A bit of both, probably.’

‘And will we all be washed away and drowned?’ Josh hunched his shoulders anxiously.

‘Oh, no. Everything’s all right now. The sandbags will stop it.’

‘What about the windows?’

‘Oh, it won’t get that high.’

‘But why didn’t you put the sandbags out
before
the water came in?’

‘Good question.’ Rob ruffled his hair affectionately. ‘Some people have no foresight.’

Nell was unable to sleep for the rest of the night. It was difficult enough at the best of times in her condition to get
comfortable, but now they had Bert all warmed up again from his bath and snoring loudly on a heap of blankets on their bedroom floor. All right for some! she thought crossly.

She worried about the mess there must be downstairs, and how she would ever be able to clean it all up, and how she would prevent the first floor from getting covered in mud and water as well, with everyone going up and down the stairs … Then she thought of Elly and about putting one’s foot down, and she made a decision.

‘The children will have to go home to Cassie,’ she said in the morning. It was the first time she had ever interfered in an arrangement made between Rob and the Mad Cow about their children.

‘Oh, we’ll manage,’ Rob said at once, brushing the idea aside. ‘They can help in the clearing up. Rosie’s absolutely furious that she slept through the whole drama last night!’

‘No, Rob, I mean it.’ This was also the first time she had asked for something important for herself, and it felt dangerously egocentric. If she hadn’t had the obvious excuse of late pregnancy, she might have found it impossible, but exhaustion spurred her on. ‘I can’t cope with them here. It’s all too much.’

‘Well… I’d have to see whether Cassie’s there,’ Rob said doubtfully. ‘She might well be away.’

‘Yes,’ Nell said, ‘you do that.’

Bert announced that he would be leaving early too. ‘Best get out of your way,’ he said. ‘I never sleep properly on the floor anyway. I was built for luxury not utility.’ He offered to return the children to Cassie and to have a word with her at the same time. Rob was obviously torn between the possible benefits of this intervention, and the disappointment of sending his children away. Nell was worried too, but for just the opposite reason. She heard
Bert on the phone to Cassie, joking and teasing her. ‘At least she is there,’ she said to him as he put the receiver down.

‘Oh, she’s there all right. Sounds to be in good form too.’