The House of Women (29 page)

‘
Does Mina know Professor Williams is her father?’ Edith nodded, watching the smoke curl from her cigarette, the ash drop from its end.

‘
And Gladys?’

‘
And Ned knew.’ She grimaced. ‘And, of course, my husband knew.’

‘
And is that what wrecked your marriage?’

‘
Adultery’s usually a symptom, not a cause. I could never work out what spoilt my marriage, so I came to the conclusion we simply made the wrong choice in each other.’ She unclasped her hands to retrieve the cigarette, and held it to her lips, sucking in smoke. Pressure points discoloured the thin skin of her fingers, patches of angry red bleeding into blotches of whiter flesh. ‘There were a lot of problems when we first married. My husband hadn’t long graduated, he wasn’t happy in his job, it didn’t pay well, and his prospects were poor. Then I fell pregnant with Annie, which neither of us was ready for, and things overwhelmed us for a while, but we carried on, because you do, don’t you? And people say problems bring you together, so you soldier on, even when common sense says you’re flogging a very dead horse.’

‘
And?’ he prompted, when she fell silent, gazing blankly at the wall.

‘
Things got better: new job, more money, lots of chances for promotion, and I went on the new contraceptive pill, which did its job even though it made me feel dreadfully sort of flat and depressed. But while the surface looked rosier, the inside grew bleaker than ever, so perhaps the marriage needed its problems for survival. When they went, it died, because we had nothing else to share.’ She replaced the cigarette in the ashtray, and folded her arms, tucking the fractious hands into fists. ‘Annie was wise beyond her years when the crunch came, you know. She wouldn’t marry Bethan’s father because she said there was too much she could call into question about their relationship, and as she wouldn’t be able to stop herself doing it, the rot had already set in, so to speak.’ She paused, watching him assessingly, as Phoebe watched the world. ‘D’you know why your marriage went astray?’

‘
I suppose the kindest judgement is that we realized we wanted different things from life, and grew apart.’

‘
Really?’ She smiled. ‘And do you know what you want?’

‘
I haven’t a clue.’ He smiled in return. ‘Someone keeps moving the goalposts when I’m looking elsewhere.’

‘
Or turning the signposts.’ Sniffing the smoke from the discarded cigarette, she said: ‘I think Annie’s on the right track, provided her hormones don’t send her off course, but it’s strange how she can still take her part in adding to the generational tragedy, like any child who isn’t orphaned.’ She smiled fleetingly. ‘That’s my fancy name for the way children dismiss the knowledge their parents learned the hard way, and can’t understand parental feelings until they’re in the same position, when it’s usually too late to make any amends. Even now, Annie can revert to being a child in the blink of an eye when it suits her.’ She stopped again, to draw breath, and he wondered if she had ever before expressed the thoughts and feelings tumbling from her mind. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘if I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned from my children what a relationship needs if it’s to work.’

‘
And what’s that?’

‘
Aren’t you absolutely weary of hearing our voices?’

He shook his head, wondering as he did so when he had come to need these women more than they could ever need him, and if that need were rooted in the power he wielded in their lives, but as she began to speak again, he realized the ground which shook so humiliatingly beneath him in office was not the same ground trodden here.

‘A good relationship,’ Edith said, ‘must be like a full cycle of the seasons of the year, because if it’s trapped in winter frosts, or stifled by the heat of summer, it will perish.’ She unfolded her arms, and let her hands rest on the table, watching their tremors as if they were owned by another. ‘And that’s my profound thought for the week, and the month, and perhaps for ever, and I don’t know where Phoebe gets the strength to cope with having her head awash with much deeper thoughts nearly all the time.’

‘
She puts them on paper and sorts them out,’ McKenna said. ‘Transfers their power to impress.’

‘
I hope so, because I’m sure this thinking turned Ned’s brain, and for all we know, Gertrude might be another victim of ideas running amok like a herd of rogue elephants in her head.’

As footsteps thundered on the stairs, vibrating through the kitchen ceiling, she flinched, then Phoebe pushed open the door, said the cat was asleep on her bed, and disappeared, slamming the front door.

Edith cocked her head to one side, listening. ‘Sometimes, she makes a huge racket to fool you into thinking she’s gone out, and isn’t tiptoeing back to listen at the door. She’s an incredibly nosy child.’

‘
I’d noticed.’

‘
If you hadn’t, your faculties would be sadly lacking, wouldn’t they? But that’s how she grows, feeding on information as the rest of us feed on food, gobbling it up before it escapes or goes off.’ She frowned. ‘Must I really stop Iolo coming tonight? Solange won’t be back until tomorrow, and he’s relying on me for a decent meal. The cook walked out because of some row.’ Watching his eyes, she added: ‘You’re going to say “no”, aren’t you? Why must you prise out every last secret, every morsel of shame?’

‘
So that I can decide what to discard, or ignore.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘When did you first meet Professor Williams?’

‘
Almost a year to the day before Mina was born, although he’d already been at the university a while on a visiting lectureship.’

‘
And who introduced you? Your husband?’

‘
No, not my husband.’ Something akin to amusement glinted in her eyes for a moment. ‘I see Margaret didn’t quite tell you everything. She was my part-time domestic. Iolo came to pick her up one day, and it was then the deceit and subterfuge and excitement began. I’d been on my own for some time, so I wasn’t taking the pill, and I truly believed Iolo’s kisses had the same heat in them that burned all the caution from my own heart, but I was wrong. They were empty of everything except his urgent greed, and when I told him I was pregnant, he fled.’

‘
Annie told me your husband was here when Mina was born.’

‘
I asked him to come back because there was no-one else to turn to, but he refused to take Mina as his own. There’s just a blank space on her birth certificate where her father’s name should be, even though I was still married.’ She drummed her fingers slowly on the table, beating out a disjointed, stuttering rhythm. ‘He left again, carrying his shame like a trunk full of keepsakes. People say counselling can sort out emotional baggage, but what do you do when that baggage lives and breathes, as Mina did?’

‘
But your husband must have returned. He’s Phoebe’s father, isn’t he?’

‘
Yes, he came back, and he brought all his luggage, including the festering resentments of his shame. He couldn’t bring himself even to look at Mina, let alone touch her, so I asked him to go, for everyone’s sake.’ She fell silent, watching her hands. ‘I not only gave birth to Mina, you know. It was then I created the ghosts which came to haunt our future, and I suppose that’s why we’ve seemed a divided family. You must have noticed that.’

‘
I felt you and Mina were orbiting one path, Phoebe and Annie another,’ McKenna said, smiling faintly. ‘Professor Williams was your sun, as it were, and Ned theirs, but as his light faded, I began to see other contingencies and intersections.’

‘
In the near dark?’ Edith asked. ‘Iolo has hardly any light, and it’s very wintry in his shadow.’

‘
Then why on earth d’you still see him?’

‘
For Mina’s sake.’

‘
Does Solange know, too? Is that why Mina spends so much time with her?’

‘
Probably, but neither of them will ever say. Mina stopped talking to me after she found out, and Solange gives little away because she prefers you to think she’s as blank and faceless inside as out.’ She smiled fleetingly. ‘I think she goes travelling so often to escape the suffocating futility of being married to Iolo, recharging her batteries for the next phase in the survival course. We women do that, don’t we? Thank God Annie had the sense to see it coming.’

‘
Perhaps Mina simply finds her glamorous,’ McKenna suggested. ‘Especially as she has free run of a very extensive wardrobe. Or perhaps Mina’s a doll for Solange to dress up and play with.’

‘
You judge her too harshly,’ Edith commented. ‘I imagine Mina feels safer with her, because she’s no threat to her, and she won’t spring any nasty surprises, or dredge up rotting secrets. Solange has no part in the false memories of the past, so perhaps Mina senses she can guide her towards something new and hopeful.’

He rose to empty the overflowing ashtray, then stood by the back door, looking out into the garden, where birds twittered among the quietly rustling branches of the tall old trees. The ginger cat he had seen from Ned
’s room darted out from the shrubbery, stopped in its tracks when it saw him, then shot back under cover when he moved.

‘
You’ve got a trespasser,’ he told Edith. ‘A big ginger cat.’

‘
He lives next door but one. Phoebe doesn’t mind him in the garden because he’s not a fighter, so Tom’s quite safe.’

‘
Among Ned’s papers, we found some horoscopes he and George must have pulled off the computer, and Tom’s was included.’

‘
What about Mina?’

‘
There were predictions for everyone, but not a vestige of truth in any.’

She rose to fill the kettle.
‘It’s for the best, isn’t it? Who’d have the courage to go on living if they knew what was in store? Would you like tea or coffee?’

‘
Coffee, please,’ he said. ‘Black, no sugar.’

‘
You’ve still got what was left of the sugar.’ She tinkered with a cafetiere, spilling a few grounds on the counter, then pulled on rubber gloves, rinsed out a cloth, and cleaned up the small mess. Staring at her back, he thought how shapely and youthful she looked, yet how in every gesture and expression her age was unmistakable. Below the hem of her pretty dress, her legs had a slight stringiness, like the length of forearm showing beneath her sleeves.

‘
I’d better call Iolo, hadn’t I? Tell him he’ll have to fend for himself.’

‘
I’m sure he’s capable,’ McKenna said.

‘
I don’t know whether he is or he isn’t. I don’t know much about him at all, except that he’s weak.’ She rinsed the cloth again, then ran hot water into a bowl, squirting washing-up liquid under the tap. A great froth of scented bubbles rose in the water, spilled over the edge of the sink and took to the air, drifting about the room and out through the door. One landed in front of him, a glistening sphere that rolled and tumbled for a moment, then exploded into a spatter of moisture on the table. Edith dropped the used mugs and glasses into the bowl, wiped the table, removed the soiled ashtray, and took another from the cupboard. ‘When Iolo comes here,’ she went on, ‘we don’t have conversations. He talks
at
people, but never listens to them, and I suppose that’s how he manages not to hear what he doesn’t want to know.’ Pulling off the gloves, she put clean mugs on the table, and leaned against the counter, as her daughter so often did. ‘When I look at him now, I can’t imagine how we came together. He almost makes my flesh crawl.’

‘
You’ve worn a great many faces over the years,’ McKenna commented, ‘and all apparently for the benefit of others.’

‘
Perhaps I was trying to find one that suited me. I’m not a blank canvas like Solange. She can paint on any face she wants.’

‘
I find her two-dimensional. She reminds me of the Queen of Spades in a pack of cards.’

‘
Does she really?’ Edith smiled. ‘That’s not very kind of you, is it? You’re supposed to be impartial. Bureaucracy must be, if it’s to work properly.’ Turning away, she poured boiling water on to the coffee grounds, put the cafetiere on the table, and sat again. ‘If bureaucracy had a heart, Mina wouldn’t know her father, and everyone might be so much more at peace. Ned might even be alive. Who can know?’

‘
Is there a connection between Mina’s parentage and Ned’s death?’

‘
I know we can only make sense of the past in retrospect, but one thing always leads to another, despite what the horoscopes tell us. Hitler invaded Poland, Gertrude had a baby, and now she dwells out her last years in some terrible twilight, her thoughts the colour of a mountain storm, and just as chaotic.’ Pushing the plunger to the bottom of the cafetiere, she added: ‘You think I’m being evasive, don’t you?’

‘
Are you?’

‘
I’m trying to hang on to the last of our privacy for a little longer.’ She poured the coffee, smiling wryly. ‘Talking with you is like a fencing bout I know I’ll lose, but I’m still obliged to put up a fight.’