The Other Half of My Heart (11 page)

‘I'm not sure,' Bettina says, ‘I might have it cut shorter for summer.'

Her mother nods. ‘Less bother,' she says, ‘it will dry in no time.'

‘Yes.' Maybe I should go, she thinks, go now, take this small perfect pebble and not worry about the terrible, rocky road.

But then, in the same tone, with the same familiar, conversational lightness, Alice says, ‘Roddy was here. It's always good to see Roddy. He's such a nice boy.'

A flash-flood of melancholy rises in Bettina. She's shocked to hear a name she didn't expect to hear. And behind the shock washes the sadness, for all that Roddy was, and could have been, in his own right and with her. For a moment she is with her mother, deep in the past. She's choked by love and want and need, so powerfully felt, unmoderated because she hadn't known, then, how life would hurt less if feelings were tempered with distance and distraction. And the undertow is worse. The moment or two of present-day conversation with her mother has gone, as she harks back nearly two decades to talk affectionately of someone whose name, later, she would refuse to hear spoken in her presence.

Bettina listens to the sound of her body as she breathes deeply. Her mother has turned her face towards the sun and closed her eyes, the way a cat would when the clouds receded. This is why I bring the Sunday newspapers, she reminds herself, this is what the food is for. It's all protection. She opens up her bag and says, ‘I brought you some shortbread. I made it this morning, before I got the train. I put some lavender in it, because my friend brought me two lavender bushes in big pewter-coloured pots, and I've put one out the front of the shop and one just outside the kitchen door, with the herb planters. I wonder if the marjoram will attract as many butterflies as it did last year.' The more she says, the less her mother will say, and that's all she can think of as she talks.

‘How lovely' is all Alice says, and she takes a piece of shortbread from the opened box that Bettina offers her, crumbles it between her fingers, and starts to throw it to the birds. She is oblivious to her daughter, who, for all Bettina knows, has stopped being a daughter again as far as her mother is concerned. She might be just the other woman on the bench by now. The one with the shortbread and the tears in her eyes. The one who, trying to find a bright side, is glad that at least she hasn't had to decide whether or not to explain why Sam isn't here.

On the way home, Bettina can do nothing but look out of the window on every train she takes. She has no energy for reading and she's too tired for sleep. She tells herself off for wallowing, but it's only a half-felt reprimand, because she's only half wallowing. And with the other half of her mind, that's buzzing like a wasp in an upturned wine glass, she's wondering whether she is just as trapped in the past as her mother is. Bettina thinks about how much of what she does, she does because of what happened all that time ago. Hearing Roddy's name where she had expected Sam's to crop up had made her feel the way she used to when she came off over a jump. She's jarred right through. Although it wasn't really the mention of his name that rattled her, more the tone of her mother's words. Alice had spoken of him the way she had when he was the handsome boy still, when her mother winked at Bettina behind his back and said, you enjoy yourself, my girl, I would if I were you, and Bettina would blush and rush to get Roddy out of the house before Alice could say anything worse. That was when the mention of Roddy had made her heart flutter and fly rather than tear at itself. That was a long time ago.

Rufus is tired after a long meeting with a client. It's a barn conversion – it always seems to be a barn conversion, if it isn't a conservatory. The brief was to create a headquarters building for an up-and-coming company, and Rufus had suggested a central area with skylights above an informal meeting space. The MD thought it was a wasteful idea, because she didn't think it would be used. Rufus had countered that, if the space was there, so was the expectation. He'd reminded his client of her original brief, that the company needed room to grow. She'd agreed, but it was the kind of agreement that Rufus doubted would stick. His plan for the evening is therefore to sketch out an alternative, ready for the email he suspects will come in the morning. But before he begins, he pours himself a glass of wine, puts on the news, and wonders whether he had done the same thing with Bettina the other night. He had tried to create the semblance of the relationship he wanted, in the hope that the relationship itself might follow. If that's the case, perhaps he needs to review this approach. It's not working.

And then the doorbell rings. It's Bettina. She hasn't texted, or called first. This never happens. Suddenly, there's hope, a switch flicked on in a dusky room.

‘Hello,' she says, ‘can I come in?'

‘Of course.' They kiss, both cheeks, their habit; her face is wet.

‘Are you crying, Bettina?' He doesn't think he's ever seen her cry.

‘Yes, I'm crying. This is me, crying. Even though I never cry.' She's half laughing, as well. For a moment Rufus thinks of something terrible. This is hysteria, reaction to tragedy. He steps back to let her pass, then follows her up the stairs, and notices how her left foot is dragging, just a little, a sure sign that she's tired.

‘Could I have a glass of wine?' she asks when they are in his small sitting room.

‘Of course.'

Bettina looks exhausted. Her face is a little out of its usual shape, made puffy and pallid by tiredness and tears, her eyes dull and swollen. ‘I need to talk to you. I need you to listen,' she says. Her voice is so quiet that he has to lean forward to hear her. He nods, waits. Despite all that he's told himself over the last few days, he knows that Bettina is his best chance of happiness, and of the relationship he would have if he was a better man. He thinks, not for the first time, of how good it is to be with someone who says what they mean, simply, without accusation or pretence, and how it makes him honest in return. He likes the man he is when he is close to Bettina.

‘When I went to see my mother today, it made me think about things. You know she has dementia?'

Rufus nods.

‘Well, sometimes she doesn't say much, and sometimes she doesn't know who I am, and I can cope with both of those things.' The wine has gone, gulped down: Rufus fetches the bottle.

‘It's hard, though,' Rufus says.

‘Yes. But today was – today was worse. Because I thought that she knew me, but she was talking to a younger me, and she was so – stuck in the past.' She stops, shakes her head. ‘I'm sorry. I'm not explaining very well.'

‘Let me be the judge of that,' Rufus says gently.

‘She was talking about people who – who if she saw them now she wouldn't want to talk to. She was talking about them as though they were friends. She doesn't remember my father at all. Never talks about him.' Tears are in her voice again, although they don't fall.

Rufus puts his hands over her clenched ones, a roof over a rock. ‘That must be horrible, Bettina,' he says quietly.

She looks up at him, quickly, then moves her gaze so that she's looking out of the window. ‘It is. It makes me feel – lonelier – than when she doesn't know me at all.'

‘Yes,' Rufus says. His thumb strokes the knuckle of her first finger. She goes quiet, still, as though breathing is all that she can do, as though it takes all of her will to sit here. Rufus waits.

‘And it made me think about what you said the other night—'

‘I wasn't at my best—'

‘Please, Rufus, let me talk.'

‘Sorry. I'm listening.'

‘I was thinking about how my mother has no choice but to live the way she does. This – thing – is rotting her brain and she has no control over it, and I feel sorry for her, and everyone looks after her knowing that she's ill, that she can't help herself.'

She looks at Rufus. He feels as though he is being told something very important. He doesn't know why, yet. He nods, a small nod.

‘And she mentioned something – someone – and I realized that I'm as stuck in the past as she is. The difference is, I'm choosing to be. It's not – it's no way to live.' She looks at him again, gauging, waiting. He nods again. ‘It was the best I could do, for a while. But I think I can do better now. I think I need to try to do things differently.'

‘I see,' says Rufus, hoping that he does. The song thrush so close he can see each feather on its breast.

Bettina pulls a pack of tissues from her bag, takes one out, rubs her eyes then blows her nose. She looks full into his face: her eyes black and bronze in the fading evening light. ‘I brought my toothbrush,' she says. ‘Please may I stay the night?'

 

TINA AND RODDY
first spend the night together in early December, when Fred and Fran are away. Tina has bought new pyjamas for the occasion. She and Katrina had spent most of the previous Saturday afternoon choosing them. Katrina had been delighted with the task; Tina, thoroughly embarrassed, had refused pointblank to contemplate anything lacy, frilly or satin. She had tried to explain that she wasn't looking for what she called ‘girlfriend clothes', it was just that the only pyjamas she possessed were either worn out or had some sort of horse theme – the Randolphs have a tradition of new pyjamas on Christmas Eve and Alice prides herself on finding something appropriate. ‘But don't you want to look …' Katrina had asked with a raised eyebrow, holding up something that Tina couldn't see herself wearing in a million years.

‘Honestly, Katrina,' she'd said, ‘all I'd look in that is uncomfortable. And Roddy won't care.'

‘You don't know anything about what Roddy cares about, in the pyjama department. Yet.'

‘No, but I know that he likes people to be themselves. And that's not me.' In the end, she'd bought a pair of short cotton pyjamas that satisfied her because they were plain and kept Katrina happy because they were black. And Tina had tried to explain that, if Roddy cared what his girlfriend looked like, then he wouldn't be going out with her at all. Katrina had taken this as a cue for a motivational talk about self-esteem, but Tina knew what she meant. If you threw a stick in the yard at Flood Farm you'd hit six people more suitable to be Roddy's girlfriend than she was. But somehow, there she was, buying pyjamas and disposable razors and looking forward to the following Friday night, when she and Roddy will put an undisturbed end to two months of panting foreplay. She is still getting used to his glorious frankness. ‘What do you want to do about contraception?' he'd asked. ‘Are you on the pill?'

‘No,' she'd said, ‘I've never really liked the idea.'

‘Fair enough,' Roddy had nodded. ‘Condoms, then?'

At last Friday night comes round – Tina hasn't seen much of Roddy during the week as he's been away at a training event, and so when she walks up to the farmhouse with her overnight bag she's all the more ready to see him. She can't believe how easily he's weaving his way into her life. Her heart is on a helter-skelter. Tina can feel that she walks differently. Despite her protestations to Katrina, mascara doesn't seem like such a chore any more. Sometimes she wills the afternoons past so that her plans with Roddy for the evening can begin. Roddy, on the other hand, strides the same, and jokes the same, and works in silence with the horses the same. As he talks his way through his working day he laughs and claps backs and never looks twice at Tina, except when he asks for her to come and work with him, which they do in the same near-silence as they always have.

When Tina arrives he greets her with a long kiss, looks her up and down as though he wants to eat her, and says, ‘I'm starving. I was going to get fish and chips.'

‘Good idea.' Tina's not sure she can eat anything. The December air has made her face and hands cold but her heart is overheating.

‘I assume you want to stay here? I thought I'd drive. So nothing gets cold.'

‘Yes, thank you.'

‘Make yourself at home.' Another kiss, and he's gone. It feels as though Tina has barely had time to make a fuss of the dogs, cautiously pet the uneven-tempered cat, and find plates and cutlery, before Roddy bursts back through the door. He's brought fish and chips, mushy peas, curry sauce, gravy, a pickled onion and a pickled egg. ‘It's funny,' he says as they lay out the cartons, unwrap the paper, ‘I feel as though I've always known you, but then I got to the front of the queue and realized I don't know what you like with fish and chips. So I thought I'd just bring everything, so I'll know in future.' He stands behind her, circles her waist with his arms, puts his chin on her shoulder.

‘I need to think about this, then,' Tina says, laughing.

‘Yup. Choose carefully. Whatever you have tonight, that's your fish and chip supper for the next fifty years.' Tina thinks of something Sam says sometimes, about indirections finding directions out, and that's how Tina often feels about Roddy: he doesn't talk about his feelings much, but then he mentions something like feeling as though he has always known her, or says ‘in future' like that, and her head lets her be sure of what her heart already knows.

‘The thing you'll find with the Flood boys,' Fran had said one weekend, as Fred had dozed behind the newspaper and Roddy had gone upstairs to bring down a jumper for Tina because she was cold, ‘is that actions will always speak louder than words. They might not say how they feel but they'll show you.' Stable legend had it that, when a young Fran had badly fractured a wrist taking a tumble on a point-to-point course in Scotland, Fred had driven through the night to collect her, driven her straight back home to Surrey, seen her settled with her mother, had a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich, and then got a train back to Scotland to collect her horsebox and the horse that was being looked after by friends. Seeing how the Floods behaved day-to-day, Tina could well believe the legend.