The Crane Wife (18 page)

But it was also affectionate.
Yes
, George insisted to himself.

‘They’re going to be surprised,’ he said.

‘A good party needs a few surprises. Is that not what people say?’

‘I’ve never heard that.’

‘Then it is possible you have gone to the wrong parties.’

He moved to kiss her but there was a knock on the front door. ‘Already,’ he sighed.

‘They have to arrive sometime. Your friends.’

‘But not yours.’

A faint strain furrowed her forehead. ‘I do wish you would not–’

The knock came again. He released her and moved to the front hallway, the tension from Kumiko staying with him, like a rung bell. He stopped in front of the door for a moment, took a deep breath.

He opened it.

‘Sweetheart!’ he said, greeting his daughter. He leaned down to pick up his grandson, and as JP launched into a breathless analysis of a paradigm-shifting cast change in the Land of Wriggle, George found his eyes not quite believing who he saw behind Amanda, here as an apparent guest, gift bottle of champagne in her hand.

‘You remember Rachel?’ Amanda said, innocent as baby poo.

And the party was under way.

‘Who on earth
are
all these people?’ Clare said, arriving with Hank and finding Amanda in the rapidly building
mêlée
of George’s sitting room. The furniture had been pushed back, but even so, it was only 7.40 and they were crammed into the space like a disco.

‘Not a clue,’ Amanda answered, embracing her mother and kissing Hank on both cheeks.

‘How you doin’?’ he said, his voice deep and friendly as a talking forest. ‘Where’s the munchkin?’

‘Helping with the coats. Which means pretending they’re seals and he’s a penguin.’

‘I’ll go and find him,’ Clare said, taking off her jacket and relieving Hank of his.

Amanda was left alone with her stepfather, which was absolutely fine, he was lovely – kind to her mother, warm to JP, sane – but she felt keenly aware, as she did all too often with Hank, that she was talking to the only black person in the room. There was also the additional problem that she’d now spend the rest of the evening worrying about whether to apologise for it on behalf of England.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Where can a Texan get a drink?’

‘Mehmet’s here,’ Amanda blurted out.

Hank stared at her. ‘Is he now?’

‘I think he’s in the kitchen.’

‘Remind me of how I might know a Mehmet.’

‘He works for George. He’s Turkish.’

Hank understood and placed a hand on either of her shoulders. ‘I’ll make sure to find him to celebrate the rainbow nation. Can I bring you a refill?’

She sighed, but relaxed. ‘Glass of white wine? Maybe two.’

‘Not on my account.’

‘No,’ she said, tapping her wedding ring on her glass, a wedding ring she was almost only now realising she still wore. ‘There’s an odd vibe here. I mean, look at everyone.’ She leaned forward in a whisper. ‘Does George know them, do you think? Or are they just, you know, art people?’

‘Why would you invite strangers to your
house
?’

Amanda knew Hank’s question was actually,
Why would you invite strangers to
this
house
? She loved that he was a little bit of a snob – it was always so socially unexpected in an American – but she knew what he meant. The house was too small, too rundown and, the real issue, far too many miles out of Zone 1 for the way some of the folk here were dressed, a few of whom were currently looking in wonderment at George’s utterly non-flatscreen telly.

Hank headed to the kitchen, and Amanda saw a thunderstruck Clare returning downstairs, JP in tow. ‘She’s moved in,’ Clare said.

For a second, Amanda couldn’t compute the meaning of this. ‘Who?’

Clare lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘
Kumiko
.’

‘
Has
she?’

‘You didn’t know?’

‘No. How do
you
know?’

Clare frowned, guiltily. ‘I looked through his wardrobe.’

‘
Mum
–’

‘It was half-full of lady’s things. So either she’s moved in or George has something very interesting to tell us.’ Clare looked around the small, crowded room, and they heard the voices of more guests arriving. ‘Where is she, anyway? What does she even look like?’

‘She’s got brown hair . . .’ Amanda started but then wasn’t quite sure where to go next.

‘Thank you, darling,’ her mother said. ‘That narrows it down to almost everyone.’

The party spread quickly, moving into the kitchen and even the garden, despite the coldness of the night.

‘Welcome,’ George said, pouring wine into rented glasses. ‘Welcome.’

A woman he’d never met before pinned him with her stare, an almost pleading look in her eyes that he’d come to recognise. ‘I don’t suppose you could direct me to the host?’

George blinked. ‘The host?’

‘This George Duncan person,’ she said, drinking the wine, making a face at it. ‘I came all the way out here to talk to him about his extraordinary art, and instead I’m standing in a freezing garden in–’ she made another face ‘–the
suburbs
.’

‘Yes, well,’ George said, ‘when I see him, I’ll be sure to send him your way.’

‘I mean,’ the woman continued, gesturing with her cigarette at George’s precarious breeze-block garage, ‘is this some kind of prank? Or do you suppose this whole place is an extension of his art?’ She turned to him, suddenly inspired. ‘Like Rachel Whiteread! Yes, except instead of the empty spaces of a house, we have the house
itself
.’

‘No, I think he just lives here.’

The woman snorted. She turned to the man next to her, who George had also never met, and said, ‘Do
you
think he lives here?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said the man. ‘When do you think they’re going to bring out the new tiles?’

George felt a hand at his elbow. He turned. Kumiko.

‘The house is
full
,’ she said.

‘Is it?’ He looked at his watch, and accidentally spilt a good portion of the bottle of wine onto the back patio. Men and women whose names he didn’t know jumped back in complaint. ‘It’s barely eight o’clock.’

‘Who are they all?’ Kumiko whispered.

George wished he knew. It wasn’t supposed to be anything like this, just friends and family, plus a few people from this new world they’d suddenly found themselves in, art buyers who kept saying how connected they felt to George and Kumiko through the tiles, all coming together at the comfortable intersection of his home. A simple party. Small.

Not this.

‘Well, the guy who bought the first tile asked if he could bring a friend along, and I guess it just snowballed–’

Kumiko looked around at the crowds, but even her alarm was mild. ‘We will not have enough tiny sausages.’

‘They don’t really look like tiny-sausage people–’

‘George?’ Rachel said, appearing at his shoulder like poison gas. He tensed, so much he was sure Kumiko could see it. He’d come out here because it was the furthest place he could get away from Rachel without actually leaving the neighbourhood. The light from the kitchen window caught her eyes, and they blazed green for a second.
Like devil eyes in a photograph
, George thought.

‘And you can only be Kumiko?’ Rachel said.

‘Yes,’ Kumiko said. ‘That is who I can only be.’

George realised it was the first time he’d ever heard her speak to someone else in a way other than completely friendly. It made his stomach hurt, not least because he felt as if it could only be his fault.

He refilled his own glass of wine and drank it, quickly.

‘It’s not like they’re even that good,’ Mehmet said, enunciating in the careful way of the marginally too intoxicated. ‘You know what I mean?’

‘I’ve only seen pictures of them,’ Hank said, skilfully mixing a gimlet for Clare, ‘but they look pretty amazing to me.’

‘Yeah, okay, I’m lying, they’re brilliant. Can you make me one of those?’

‘I could, but I’m guessing you haven’t exactly been pacing yourself this evening.’ Hank waited near the refrigerator door until the man in front of it noticed him and hurried apologetically out of the way. It was one of the things he liked about this country, the solicitude. People apologised if you stepped on
their
foot. Though it probably helps if you look like me, he thought. He pulled out a bottle of white and judged its label with a raised eyebrow. ‘Oh, well,’ he said and started looking for a corkscrew anyway.

‘I mean, I shouldn’t even
be
here,’ Mehmet said. ‘I’m missing a party for this.’

Hank gestured with the corkscrew at the bodies pressed into the surprisingly narrow kitchen. ‘This is also what many people would call a party.’

‘George said he wanted me to come in particular tonight, since I was there when he met her first.’ Mehmet gave him a shifty look. ‘I think there’s going to be some big announcement.’

‘Oh?’ Hank said, feeling slightly interested as he poured himself the mediocre Pinot Grigio. He didn’t
much
care. George was a nice enough guy, but so far in his acquaintance George’s actual friends – as opposed to the alarming number of art buyers and hangers-on currently besieging Bromley – seemed limited to women and this slightly drunk gay person. George wasn’t exactly a man’s man, and though Hank wasn’t so much of a Texan that he wore a cowboy hat, he
was
a Texan. On the other hand, Clare still liked George, and if there was gossip to be had, Hank was more than happy to be the one to deliver it to her. It would make her smile and, fool that he was, Hank’s heart would thump quite off rhythm when that happened.

‘They’ve moved in together,’ Hank said, re-corking the wine and shooing the same man out of the way of the fridge again. ‘Something like that.’

‘Can’t you feel it, though?’ Mehmet said. ‘It feels like something’s coming.’

‘I’m guessing for you it’s a hangover.’

‘Please. I’m not even straight-girl drunk.’

‘I genuinely haven’t the slightest idea what that means.’

‘Something’s on the horizon. Something about where this–’ Mehmet mimicked Hank’s corkscrew gesture to include the party and all the events leading up to it ‘–is headed. Something big. Something wonderful and, I don’t know,
terrible
.’ He leaned back on the counter. ‘I’m just saying.’

‘You’re just saying.’ Hank picked up the drinks and made to head back into the sitting room.

‘Hey, wait,’ Mehmet said.

‘Yes?’

‘Did Amanda tell you to talk to me because I’m Turkish?’

Hank looked thoughtful. ‘She more implied it.’

‘
There
you are,’ Amanda said, entering George’s bedroom. Kumiko was using her fingers to eat what looked like a rice dish out of a large bowl. Amanda held up JP. ‘Mind if I put him down for a little snooze?’

Kumiko nodded at the avalanche of coats on the bed. ‘He will be warm, at least.’

‘8.43,’ JP said, reading the red digital clock on the side of the bed.

‘Can you say it in French?’ Amanda asked him.

‘Papa says time isn’t French. Papa says time is only ever English.’

‘Either way, sparky, it’s
way
past your bedtime.’ She tucked him under a long trenchcoat, and he pulled several more down on top of himself until only his nose and the top of his head were poking out. ‘Don’t suffocate.’

‘I won’t.’

She turned to Kumiko. ‘He’ll be out in a minute, you watch.’

‘He is a lovely boy,’ Kumiko said.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

Kumiko gestured to the bowl. ‘I am taking a quiet moment. Hiding from the party so that I can face it again afresh.’

‘They’re all dying to meet you. All those strangers with money.’

‘It is not, perhaps, a mutual feeling.’

They smiled together and Kumiko said nothing more, just ate another fingerful. This was actually the first time Amanda had laid eyes on her since the gift of the tile, and she felt herself almost bursting with everything she wanted to say, everything she’d been holding for all this time. It was like when she used to return home from school, filled with so much new knowledge to share with her mother and father that it felt like she was going to pop open and bleed it out onto the dinner table along with her guts and blood and brains. She wondered, not for the first time, if that was something that happened to only children, if brothers and sisters knocked that kind of enthusiasm right out of you. She stroked JP’s already sleeping head and wondered if he’d come home in a year’s time, at death’s door with the need to tell her about dinosaurs or triangles.

But where to even
begin
with Kumiko? Had she really moved in, for example? And who the hell
were
all those people downstairs and were they going to be a permanent part of everyone’s life? And where did the images in the tile Kumiko gave her come from and why did they make her feel so helplessly, painfully, agonisingly hopeful? Why did she cry when she thought about it? Why had she
stopped
crying about everything else?

And where had Kumiko been? Where had she been? Where had she been? Where had she been? And how could Amanda miss someone this much who she’d only seen once before?

When she opened her mouth, though, all that came out, even before a simple thank-you for the tile, was ‘What’s that you’re eating?’

‘A kind of sweet rice pudding,’ Kumiko said, but held up a finger to check the knowing nod Amanda was giving her. ‘Not the kind you think. This is something from my childhood.’

‘A recipe from your mother?’

She shook her head. ‘My mother. Not much of a cook. Would you like some?’

‘Oh, no, thank you,’ Amanda said, though she couldn’t quite take her eyes off the bowl. ‘Have you moved in with my father?’

There was a pause in the rice-pudding eating. ‘Only a little. Is that all right?’

‘Of
course
it’s all right,’ Amanda said. ‘I mean, it’s quite quick, but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘But nothing. Just, you’ve really bowled him over. Our George.’

‘I hope that is exactly what I have
not
done,’ Kumiko said, taking another stab of rice. ‘George is like a rock in the ocean to me.’