The Missing World (16 page)

“Michelle Shocked,” said Maud. “You used to like her.”

He watched Hazel’s eyes, the corners of her mouth. She sat very still and then, praise be, the knife fell from her hand and she was gone, a good neck-locking, heel-drumming, all-out seizure. He held her head while Maud rushed to pull chairs out of the way.

“Who will pay?” Hazel asked. “Stupid bugger.”

“Oh, god,” said Maud.

“Fetch a blanket and a flannel.”

The seizure was the worst since the hospital. Foam dabbed her lips. She kicked frantically. “Shall I call an ambulance?” asked Maud, offering the flannel.

“Not yet. Turn off that damned music.” She scuttled out of the room again. “Hazel, it’s all right. I’m here. Don’t fight it. Relax. You’re quite safe.”

He wrapped his arms and legs around her, a straitjacket of affection. But the seizure went on and on. Her limbs thrashed, and he could feel his grip weakening. Maud hovered anxiously. Maybe she was right. “Give it one more minute,” he said. “She’d hate to end up back in hospital.”

As if she heard his threat, Hazel began to kick less strongly; her breathing slowed; soon she was barely trembling. Maud suggested they carry her up to bed. They tucked her in and he managed to give her her eight o’clock pills.

Back in the kitchen, Maud poured them each a brimming glass of wine. He dragged the chairs over to the table, and they collapsed. “Hell’s bells,” said Maud. Beneath her red shirt her breasts moved rapidly. “Just when it seems she’s getting better, something like this happens. I can’t imagine how she feels.”

“Exhausted, for one thing.” He himself felt a shaky exhilaration, as if he’d won a race or a fight.

“You were great.” She smiled. “So calm. I’m sure she can sense what’s going on, and people panicking only makes it worse.”

“I’ve had a bit of practice these last few weeks.”

“This was a bad one, though, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. He was longing to ask if she thought the music might have been a factor, but hesitated to utter even a syllable that would break their unspoken truce. “I’m starving,” he said.

“Me too.” She sounded surprised. “I can make risotto if there’s a recipe. Did you finish the onion?”

“Almost.”

Half an hour later they were on the sofa watching
Truly, Madly, Deeply
. Jonathan had been to check on Hazel twice. Each
time she was sleeping soundly, with no sign of the disruption that had knocked her to the floor. He switched on the monitor he had bought and set the listening device on the table.

Around nine they paused. Maud cleared the plates and he opened a second bottle of wine. When they sat down again, the distance between them, he noticed, had narrowed; during the next twenty minutes, he could not have said quite how, they edged closer and closer until, ineluctably, their bodies adjoined from shoulder to ankle. A single whimper came from the monitor and, as they both turned to listen, was supplanted by the soft, oceanic sound of breathing.

At the end of the film, Jonathan pressed rewind, drained his glass, and let his arms encircle Maud. We’re old friends, he was thinking; she slipped her hand inside his shirt, he reciprocated, and they were falling upon each other.

“Come,” she said, and they moved to the hearth rug.

Jonathan’s brain, the thinking part of him, seemed to have taken a leave of absence. This ought to have been one of the most astonishing events of his life, fucking Maud on the living-room floor, the TV glimmering above them, but he was all skin and blood, tongue and prick. Even more astonishing, Maud was in the same state, so naked, so unabashed, he could scarcely believe this was Hazel’s dour friend. Who would’ve thought she could utter such groans as he ground himself against her?

Afterwards, the room roared with silence. Now surely, thought Jonathan, I’ll know I’ve done something mad, unforgivable. No such sentiments, however, came into view. Instead he felt calmer than he had in months; at last he’d acted with his whole self. As for Maud, whom he expected any moment to raise the flag of propriety, she nuzzled her head against his shoulder and murmured his name. It was quite possible, he thought, his breathing lapsing into time with the monitor, that neither of them would ever move again.

When he opened his eyes, Maud was saying something about the bathroom and slowly unwrapping herself from him. She stood over him, naked. Come back, he thought. But she was pulling on her clothes, clever girl, and leaving the room. Alone, he gazed up at the odd W-shaped crack he had filled both times he painted the ceiling, and which always reappeared within a month. Cassiopeia.

Maud was back, holding out a glass of water. “You’ll get cold.”

Sitting up to drink, he realised he already was and that his ardour for Maud had cooled too. While he swallowed half the water, the last glimmerings died away. He was desperate to be rid of her. The transformation was over, for both of them. She perched on the sofa, knees primly together, hands clasped in her lap. As he reached for his trousers, she said, “I’ll kip here, if it’s all right with you.”

No, he wanted to say. Absolutely not. Just the thought of her under the same roof made his palms itch. He’d happily have bought her a room at the Ritz. But she overruled all suggestions: a cab, a lift.

“I’m afraid I’m not up to cycling,” she said coyly, “and I don’t want to leave the bike, because I need it in the morning.”

“Oh, do what you want,” he said at last. “You know where everything is.” He turned away but not before he’d glimpsed, with pleasure, her shocked expression.

chapter 9

Charlotte lay back, enjoying the spectacle of her small breasts cresting the foam. A nymph, Walter had called her once, a wood nymph. No, think instead of herself and Bernie, aged eight and ten, standing at the ends of their beds, swinging their arms, chanting,
I must, I must, develop the bust
. This isn’t working, Bernie had declared after their third evening. You have to do it for ages, Charlotte had said, months and months. But she soon followed Bernie’s example and returned to bed. Later, to their mutual fury, their father had begun to refer to them as his nubile lassies. Old goat, thought Charlotte, closing her eyes and sinking beneath the surface.

In the warm, underwater world a dull drilling sound reached her. She was running out of breath when she recognised it: her alarm clock reminding her that her two prospective tenants were due today, Renee at noon, Mike at one. She was out of the bath in a flash. No time for primping, just a squeeze of toothpaste and yesterday’s clothes. Then she turned on every possible light, unfurled the roll of black rubbish bags, and set to work.

She had only herself to blame for this crisis. In the days since her supper with Bernie she’d thrown out the odd newspaper, sprayed Mr. Sheen on the bathroom mirror, but after five minutes, ten at most, she would put aside the duster, find her coat, and head for Kilburn High Road. Stupid even to start, she reasoned, until she had a stretch of time.

From the moment Bernie had opened the door that evening, dressed like a normal person in jeans and a sweatshirt, and poured her a glass of wine without being asked, Charlotte had known that the wind was blowing from another quarter.

“Cheers,” said Bernie. “By the way, there were some calls for you.” She pushed a notepad across the table.

Charlotte started to apologise—at her wits’ end, she’d listed her sister’s number in the advertisement—but Bernie simply shrugged. “What can you do when your phone’s on the blink?”

More and more mysterious. She put the pad aside and smiled cautiously. “Something smells wonderful. I hope you haven’t been slaving.”

“Chicken cacciatore, like Mum’s.” Bernie moved the salt shaker half an inch to the left, an inch to the right. “You must be thinking I’ve lost my mind. Last time you were here you suggested we do a deal and I told you to piss off. Well, now I’m desperate.”

Watching her unfurrowed brow, Charlotte thought, she could never be an actress. Look at the way she said “desperate.” Totally unconvincing. “What happened?” she asked.

Bernie ticked off items: Rory was doing overtime; the woman who collected Melissa and Oliver from school had found a new job, plus a highly unsuitable boyfriend; and she herself had been offered a private job twenty minutes away. “So,” she gave a pinched smile, “how about you move in for three
months. You’d promise not to make a mess or run up the phone bill. And you’d collect the children from school four afternoons a week and mind them until I got home.”

“What about shopping?”

A happy vision of herself buying trolley loads of goodies with her sister’s money was wiped out by Bernie saying she would take care of that. “I know we’re like chalk and cheese,” she went on, “but I do think we can help each other. In fact, I was going to suggest we write everything down and both sign it so there can’t be misunderstandings later.”

Charlotte nodded. As if an agreement ever solved anything. But that was Bernie for you: brittle and bloodless. And she was the smelly old cheese. “Where will I sleep?”

“Oliver’s room. He and Melissa can double up.”

“That’ll make me popular.” She scrunched up her face in imitation of Oliver, and they both laughed.

“Who’s this?” Wineglass in hand, she paced the kitchen, shoulders hunched, jaw jutting.

“Rory, Rory to a T.”

“He’s an easy one.” And then—the words flew out of her mouth—she asked why Bernie didn’t take him back. “He loves you, he loves the kids, his not being around is making everything complicated. I know he behaved badly, but he is sorry. I don’t understand why you can’t forgive him.”

She stopped, horrified. At last Bernie was doing what she wanted, and here she was trying to talk her out of it. Not daring to see the effect of her words, she stared at a picture on the cabinet, a blue cow towering over a red house.

“One,” said Bernie, “it’s none of your business. Two, you may think you know the whole story but you don’t. Three, not everyone is a doormat. Four, I’m considering it. Your being here would mean I could see him without telling the kids.”

A blue cow and a red house, thought Charlotte.
I must, I must, develop the bust
. She turned, doing her best to smile.

“Charlie, I’m sorry. If you’re frustrated about me and Rory, then you’re getting a glimpse of how I feel about you and almost …”

Some small, imploring gesture must have escaped Charlotte. Instead of launching into what was clearly an exhaustive list, Bernie went to check on the chicken and Charlotte excused herself. In the bathroom she scrubbed her hands and redid her eyeliner. Her fantasy about Bernie was coming true, so why did her heart, or was it some other organ, feel so heavy?

What took time, she discovered, was sorting. By eight-thirty she had filled only two bags, and if anything the mess was worse. Sipping her second Nescafé, Charlotte reconsidered. She must streamline. The newspapers, every last one, would go into rubbish bags. As for the clothes, they too deserved to be bagged, a first step to the long-awaited encounter with a washing machine. Everything that wasn’t a newspaper or a garment would go into a third set of bags: miscellaneous.

Only the threat of Renee and Mike—ten-ants, ten-ants—kept her from climbing back onto the futon and pulling the covers over her head. At ten o’clock, on her fourth Nescafé, she finally forced herself to enter the bedroom; she hadn’t so much as touched the doorknob in six months. Now what met her gaze was a pale, musty, utterly empty room. Not utterly empty; what was that little grey heap in one corner? Cautiously she approached, fearing something dead, and recognised, beneath a layer of dust, another of Walter’s socks.

Back in the living-room, she seized the futon, dragged it into the bedroom, and dumped it on top of the sock. She piled on the duvet and pillows, swept the floor, and, choking on the
swirl of dust, opened the window and swept again. A quick spray with Mr. Sheen and the air took on the plasticky smell that most people equated with cleanliness. Stepping back to survey her handiwork, she noticed for the first time that Walter had failed to take the curtains, which was somehow almost as upsetting as the sock.

By eleven the floor was clear and Charlotte was surrounded by a flock of bulging bags. She tried lining them up against a wall in the hope they might pass for sixties furniture, but even to her biased eye they remained, obdurately, rubbish bags. Then, as if some hitherto forgotten storage space might reveal itself, she scanned the room. Her gaze stopped at the window. Grey sky, not actually raining. She picked up the nearest bag and headed for the stairs: rubbish to the left of the door, clothes and miscellaneous to the right. After a dozen trips she counted nineteen bags along the pavement.

Upstairs, she wished she could experience triumph or at least satisfaction at the sight of the clean floor with the two rugs, the two armchairs covered with bright shawls, the row of posters, the bookcase filled with books, the several lamps, their scorched shades turned towards the wall. Instead, grief grabbed her. The place looked so nice, nicer than at any time since Walter left, and now here she was, handing it over to strangers and going back to live with her sister, like a child or, more precisely, an old maid. And what did it mean to have most of your possessions in rubbish bags on the pavement? You didn’t have to be Madame Curie to know it meant your life was not in tiptop shape.

At five past twelve Charlotte opened the door to two immaculate, pale-skinned hand-holders, both dressed in black. Briefly she lurched again into the past: Walter and herself when they came house hunting years ago, although neither of them had ever been this small or this neat. Then she went into full
hostess mode. “Charlotte Granger,” she beamed. “Welcome. I hope you didn’t have any trouble with directions.”

Renee held out her free hand. In the clarion tones which on the phone had led Charlotte to expect someone taller and stouter, she introduced herself and her companion. “This is Ian,” she boomed.

Ian mumbled something, certainly not hello, and kept his hand firmly in Renee’s. They had, Charlotte noticed, identical sandy eyelashes. “Come in, come in,” she said, flinging open the door in
Merry Wives of Windsor
fashion.