The Accidental (10 page)

Was Eve Smart a fraud?
She had lain back down on the dirty floor after Astrid had gone.

Was Eve, for instance, tired of making up afterlives for people who were in reality dead and gone?
Eve chose not to answer this question.
Was she fazed by the popularity of the last volume, which really she should have known to expect given the distasteful rise in public interest in all things Nazi and WWII generally over the past few years and especially now that the UK was back at war again?
Eve chose not to answer this question.
Was it anything to do with that ‘mendacious glorified peddled’ review just quoted?
Eve chose not to answer this question.
Did Eve really remember the whole of that review off by heart, verbatim?
Eve chose not
was it anything to do with the fact that thirty-eight thousand wasn’t actually all that many after all, not in bestselling terms, and now that the big time had arrived, it was disappointingly not that big a time?
No! of course not! Absolutely not.
Did Eve have a subject for her new unbegun book yet?
No.
Why was the very thought of starting a new book, which would bring in relative money and fame, enough to make her spend all day lying on her back on the floor of the mock summerhouse unable to do anything?
Good question. See if you can answer it from the answers already given. She had watched a woodlouse climb out of a crack in the floor and then back down into it again. She had wanted with all her heart at that moment to be a woodlouse with a woodlouse’s responsibilities, a woodlouse’s talents.

Call that working?
Eve took a deep breath. It is very very hard work indeed, she answered, to be a woman and alive in this hemisphere in this day and age. It asks a lot, to be able to do all the things we’re supposed to do the way we’re expected to do them. Talent. Sex. Money. Family. The correct modest intelligence. The correct thinness. The correct presence.

Isn’t that a bit feeble?
Any more questions like this and Eve would terminate the interview.

Well, what kinds of question are acceptable?
Good questions. Conceptual questions. Not the personal kind. What did it matter what colour Eve’s eyes were? Or what gender she happened to be? Or what was happening in her private life or her family?

What
was
happening in her family?
Well, Astrid, for one, was acting very adolescently.

And Magnus?
Eve didn’t know what to do about Magnus. The way he was acting was very worrying.

And her husband?
Michael was fine. Really, he was fine. But these are personal questions. They’re the wrong kind of question. The point was: Eve was an artist, and something was blocking her.

Okay, so, what did Eve believe in?

It’s a straightforward enough question; what did Eve believe?
What do you mean exactly, what did Eve believe?

What did Eve believe?

What credo did she live by?

Well?

What made her think?

What made her write?

What kept her motivated?
Eve was motivated by Quantum.

As in physics? Theory? Mechanics? Leap?
Quantum was the name of the make of running machine she used.

Running machine?
Yes.

She ‘believed in’ her Quantum running machine?
Yes.

Like other people believe in God, or chaos theory, or reincarnation, or unicorns?
The Quantum running machine definitely existed. At home, when she couldn’t sleep, Eve used the Quantum. On the Quantum she exercised both body and mind while everyone else was asleep, asking herself questions and answering them as she walked or ran in rhythm. (It’s actually how she first came up with the Genuine Article concept.)

But there was no Quantum in Norfolk?
No. It was at home, in Eve’s study.

Why didn’t Eve just go for a run, then, during the day, rather than lying about all day on the floor of the shed?
Don’t be ridiculous. Eve never ‘went for a run’, anywhere, any time. What a terribly public thing to do. It wouldn’t be the same at all.

Why didn’t she try it, go for a run, right now, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, where no one would have seen her?
Eve sat up in the bed. She folded her arms.

Okay, okay. Where were we, again?
We were on the floor of the shed. Woodlouse.

And what happened then, after the woodlouse?
After the woodlouse moment of revelation she had fallen asleep on the floor.

Was it any wonder Eve couldn’t sleep now, with all that sleeping during the day?
Listen. Eve was lying in this too-hot bed in this too-hot room in this too-hot too-dark part of the world. At home, when she was awake like this, at least there were streetlights.

Why had that girl shaken Eve?
Jealousy? Intimidation? Malevolence?

Had it felt malevolent?
Well, no. Not really. It had felt as if–

As if what?
Well, curiously as if, when she took her by the arms, the girl was going to, well, strange as it sounds, kiss her.

But she didn’t?
No. She shook her.

If Eve got up and went to the window would she be able to look down and see the car there?
The girl would be asleep on its back seat. No, the back seats would probably fold down into a reasonable-sized sleeping space. Or she might be stretched across both front seats. Or in the passenger seat, reclined. Eve lifted the sheet, slipped out of the bed, made her way across to the ow f***

What was that?
That was the dressing-table edge.

No, what was that supposed word, f***? Can’t Eve say the word fuck?
Not out loud.

Why not?
Have you never had children? Eve rubbed at her thigh. She hauled back the curtain, holding her breath. Dust. These curtains were probably from before the war, and that was probably the last time they’d been laundered. When they left this house Eve intended to send Mrs Beth Orris a list of what had been unsatisfactory and a demand for some restitution.

Was the car still there?
Yes, parked next to their own.

How did someone sleep in a car? How did someone do it every night? Did she do this in the winter as well as the summer?
It would ruin your muscles and joints. Wouldn’t you like to sleep in the house, Amber? Eve had said when it came to the time to leave and she got up to go. Eve was hospitable. There’s plenty of room, she’d said. There’s a spare room, nobody in it, I think the bed’s even made up, it’s absolutely no trouble, you’d be welcome to. No, she said, I like to sleep in the car, and she came forward in the hall as if to give Eve a perfectly mannerly goodnight and thank you for dinner embrace, or kiss, whatever, and instead she took Eve firmly by the shoulders, so firm it was on the verge of painful, Eve could still feel the hold now, and before she had had time even to realize what had happened never mind say anything or be outraged at the intimacy of it, the girl had shaken Eve, hard, twice, for no reason, as if she had every right to.

Why did she think she had every right to?
Behind her, Eve heard Michael turn over. She watched him shrug the sheet further down his back. Eve had been sure to kiss Michael hard when his ‘student’ was out of the room.

Why?
To let him know.

What?
That it was all all right with her, whatever he was playing at now.

Wasn’t the girl (
well, hardly a girl, only about ten years younger than Eve for God’s sake
)

–
wasn’t her general rudeness to Michael this evening yet more proof of her being one of Michael’s conquests?
Yes, definitely.

Wasn’t she a lot older-looking than his usual?
Curiously, yes, and more salacious-looking, rougher-looking, with her high-cut shorts and her low-cut shabby shirt, certainly more shabby than Michael usually liked. She didn’t look like a student. She looked vaguely familiar, like someone you recognize but can’t remember where from, maybe someone who’s served you at Dixons or at the chemist, who you see in the street afterwards. She was also one of the brave ones, brave enough or stupid enough to come to the house. Eve almost admired this.

Were they already sleeping together?
Quite possibly, because Amber MacDonald was already nonplussed around Michael. She acted preternaturally coolly around him. She didn’t even flicker when he filled her glass.

But when was the last time there had been a dinner like tonight’s?
with Astrid somehow reduced to sweetness, to red-faced childish hilarity, by whatever the visitor had been whispering in her ear.

When was the last time Eve had seen Astrid like that, like someone had tickled her into submission?
God knew.

And how in God’s name had she managed to persuade Magnus?
She had gone upstairs and come downstairs again and he had been there behind her, she had him by the hem of his shirt, she led him into the room, I found him in the bathroom trying to hang himself, she said. Everybody round the table laughed. Magnus laughed too and sat down next to the girl. He stayed downstairs. He sat with them for the rest of the evening. He ate chocolate pears off the girl’s plate.

Where had the strange air of celebration come from?
Tonight there had been no yelling about Astrid obsessively filming the various courses of dinner because tonight Astrid’s camera was who knew where and Astrid was acting like a civilized being again.

What was Astrid?
Poised before her own adulthood like a young deer before the head of a rose. (Deer love to eat roses.) Standing there on her too-thin legs, innocent, unsturdy, totally unaware that the future had its gunsight trained directly on her. Dark round the eyes. Kicky and impatient, blind as a kitten stupefied by all the knowing and the not-knowing. The animality of it was repulsive. She didn’t get it from Eve. She got it from God knows where. From Adam. She was so adolescent. Everything about her asked for attention, the way she walked across a room or a shop or across the forecourt of a petrol station, leaning into the air in front of her as if about to lose her balance, mutely demanding that someone–Eve, who else?–put out the flat of her hand and let Astrid push her forehead or her shoulder into it.

What had Magnus been, just a moment ago?
Clear and simple as a glass of water. So certain about simplicity that he sat down (at Astrid’s age, a moment ago? five years ago?) at the Victorian bureau in Eve’s study and wrote to the Queen, Elton John, Anthea Turner, God knew who else, asking them to fight world poverty and help homeless people find somewhere to live. To The Queen, Buckingham Palace, to Elton John, Los Angeles, to Anthea Turner, c/o the British Broadcasting Corporation. The child-Magnus, a sweet pedant. He had had some very pleasant letters back, like the one from a lady-in-waiting somewhere in a palace office who presumably spent all day answering letters like his. Her Majesty the Queen was very touched by and interested to hear of your concern. Magnus: a happy accident, a happy unexpected pregnancy, the happy beginnings of an unexpected family. (Astrid, on the other hand: a meant pregnancy; meant, by Eve, to hold unhappy things together.) That happy child version of Magnus had been stolen, by thieves maybe, and a long, thin, anxious, mysterious, selfrighteous, impertinently polite boy who took a lot of showers (or alternatively, like now, took none at all) had taken his place; a boy so strange and unfamiliar that he even announced himself, one night at the dinner table earlier this year, as pro the Iraq war–a war about which Eve still felt a bit guilty, albeit in a measured way, about not doing more, about not having concentrated on more, what with being so busy worrying about being unable to start the new book.

But Astrid, tonight?
had cleared the plates and shared jokes with Eve like a normal daughter.
Magnus?
had almost looked his old self again. He had even gone through voluntarily, like in the old days, to help Michael with the washing up (since there were apparently no dishwashers in the swindle that was Norfolk). Then Astrid had forgotten her adolescent squeamishness about the house’s furniture and had lain on the sofa (though she did fold a Guardian on the arm of it where her head would go) and was nearly asleep. Eve and the girl, Amber, stood in the warm at the open french windows.

What did Eve do then?
Let’s take a walk around the garden, Eve said. Calm, measured.

All right then, the girl said. That’d be a nice thing to do. Thanks.

They crossed the gravel. Eve talked generally, about flowers, about how to get things to grow in shade. They sat under one of the old trees.

What did Eve say to the girl in the garden
?

You’re Scottish, aren’t you? I can hear it in your voice. I love Scotland. I haven’t been for years. My mother was Scottish.

Ah. Where are you actually from, originally?

Can you speak that–I can’t remember the name of it–that other language people used to speak up there?

What did you say? It sounds beautiful.

Translate it for me. What you just said.

Tell me a bit about yourself.

Well, anything, just general. What are you studying?

At university, I mean.

What did the girl in the garden say back?

I’m a MacDonald.

I am directly descended from the MacDonalds of Glencoe.

(Something that sounded like gibberish.)

(laughing) I was telling you some ancient Gaelic proverbs that everybody knows off by heart in the place I come from.

Okay. Roughly translated. One: there’s many a hen that lays an egg. Two: the yellow will always return to the broom. Three: be careful not to let folk over your threshold till you’re absolutely sure who they are.

What do you want to know?

What d’you mean?

(laughing) I’m not at a university.

What was practically the last thing Eve said to the girl in the garden?

We are a family, Amber, as you will have seen this evening. Astrid is only twelve and at a very difficult stage, and things with Magnus are a little adolescent. It’s complicated, with family. You understand, I’m sure. Did Michael tell you you could come here?