Cuckoo (29 page)
On the Monday after the hospital stay, a large parcel arrived from Amazon, addressed to Gareth. Rose went down to the studio, skirting her way around the wet grass and thinking about the stepping stones she would like to lay when time and money allowed. She could see him bent over a sketchbook on his angled wooden table, a daylight lamp illuminating his work. She felt privileged to have this spider-on-the-wall glimpse into his world. It all seemed so mysterious and exotic to her. She knocked on the door and waited at the window – he hated to be burst in on in mid-flow.
He jolted, startled by the sudden intrusion, but then, hand to his chest, he turned, saw Rose and smiled.
‘There’s a parcel for you,’ she said, motioning through the window to show him it was over at the house.
He gave her a thumbs-up.
‘I’ll be up in a sec,’ he said, and she trailed back to the house, to wait for him to appear.
‘Aha – here’s the beast!’ he declared as he came through the kitchen door a good half-hour later.
‘What is it?’ She had been dying to open it.
‘Just look here, Rose,’ he said as he ripped open the box to reveal an expensive espresso machine not unlike the one they already had in the kitchen. ‘It’s state of the art, it has a hard-water filter, and a guaranteed clog-free, self-cleaning milk steamer.’ He got the thing out of its box and caressed its black and chrome curves.
His enthusiasm was endearing, and normally Rose would have left it at that, but she had seen the four-figure cost of the thing on the invoice, which fell out of the box as Gareth lifted it out. It seemed so wasteful.
‘I don’t see why we need another coffee-maker, Gareth. The one we’ve got’s perfectly fine, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, it’s great, but this one’s for my studio. Saves me having to trail up here whenever I need a drink.’
‘Sounds very time smart,’ she said as he folded the cardboard box ready for putting it in the recycling.
‘I’ll still have to grind the beans up here, though. There’s nothing like my old grinder.’
‘I know,’ Rose said.
‘I’m going to give her her maiden voyage.’ With that, Gareth kissed Rose on the cheek, then set off for the studio, grabbing the tin of coffee he had ground for the day when he got up. He tucked the new coffee-maker under his free arm, resting it on his hip like a particularly lumpy and hard child.
Rose would miss him coming up for coffee. Since she and Flossie got back, he had taken to ducking back into the studio after supper, leaving her to put the children to bed on her own. She would then spend the rest of the evening sitting alone with a book and a glass of wine. She had begun to move the older children’s bedtime back a bit to postpone the moment of solitude, which always felt to her as if she had failed at something, but she didn’t quite know what.
Some nights she wasn’t aware of Gareth’s presence at all. He would climb into bed when she and Flossie – who was back in the bed with them for the time being – were fast asleep. Then, when they woke in the early morning, he would already be gone. Rose suspected that sometimes he worked through the night, because some mornings she couldn’t detect any evidence of his presence in their bed at all: no crumpling of the pillow, no smell of him on the sheets.
The only chance she had for conversation with him was at dinner, when the clatter and bickering of the boys gave little space for anything other than crowd control. She had to keep reminding herself that this was a stage that Gareth had been through many times before, one that had always previously boded well for his work, and therefore, ultimately, for the family. But she couldn’t help feeling that this time there was something different. Perhaps it was just because his studio was so close to the house? She couldn’t put her finger on it.
Polly’s gig drew closer. Anna, Nico and Yannis had all wanted to go up to the Lamb to hear her play, but children weren’t allowed on weekday nights. In any case, Rose felt it might not be appropriate for Nico to hear his mother’s songs about his father so soon after his death. She wondered how appropriate the event was for anyone, given the circumstances. But she let it ride. In her view, anything that led Polly towards a path of independence was a good thing.
The boys couldn’t believe that they couldn’t come. In Greece, they argued, they were able to go anywhere anytime, and children could just do as they pleased.
‘It’s not like that here, I’m afraid, chaps,’ Rose said.
‘But it’s our mum singing . . .’
‘Sorry. The landlord said very firmly, no exceptions. They’re expecting a big crowd, and it won’t be safe or right to have you there.’
‘Fuck what the landlord says,’ Nico snarled.
‘Nico!’ Rose said.
In the end though, Rose felt sorry for them. To make up for them missing the gig, she promised to video it. That way, Nico’s first viewing of the songs would be mediated, and any reactions would be in private, where, if necessary, she could quash them.
‘I’m off, then – see you later.’
On the day of the gig, Polly put in one of her rare appearances at The Lodge to say goodbye to the children before she went down to the Lamb to do her sound checks. It was an acoustic set, but Polly said she needed to get a feel for the space.
‘Wish me luck, then,’ she said as she ruffled Nico’s hair. He scowled back at her.
‘Bye, Mama.’ Yannis reached up to her and gave her a big hug. For a second, she closed her eyes, her soot-black eyelashes grazing her white cheeks. Her gash of red lipstick broke into the hint of a smile as she placed her large, bony hand on his small shoulder. Then the moment passed.
‘Gotta go,’ she said, breaking away. ‘My public awaits me.’ And she strode out of The Lodge, her guitar slung across her back.
Rose stared into the bolognese sauce she was stirring. Polly had barely registered her presence. But it was good to see her so enlivened. Movement of any sort was a good thing. Once it had started, momentum could build, and perhaps on a high, upward swing, Polly might take it into her head to just keep going and leave. But then Rose started to worry about the boys, and what would happen to them once they were outside her sphere of influence.
She turned to see them standing at the door, looking at the front garden, at the space left by Polly.
‘Can you make sure the video camera’s still charging, Nico? It’s plugged into the socket by the telly.’
Thirty minutes later, Gareth came in from the studio.
‘Isn’t it ready yet?’ he asked, looking at Rose, who was still standing at the sauce, stirring it. ‘We’ve got to get changed, don’t forget.’
She was wearing an old, unwashed T-shirt and her gardening dungarees – an ancient, baggy pair she had lived in during her pregnancy, when she was working on the house. They were paintand cement-splattered, with a gaping hole through which her muddy knee protruded. She had been wearing them a lot recently. Something in her wanted to keep them on to go down to the pub. She didn’t want to appear to have made an effort. But of course, to do so would be out of the question. People would talk.
‘Sorry. I got into a bit of a daze.’ She blinked and set about putting the spaghetti water on and laying the table, while Gareth scrubbed his inky fingers in the kitchen sink.
‘Great day today,’ he said. ‘A breakthrough on the river project.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘I’ve found the language I’m looking for. All that work with the digital manipulation, the etching and the cross-hatching seemed wrong somehow, dishonest. So it’s woodcuts, Rose, definitely.’
‘Woodcuts!’
‘I’m going to take the wood from trees that grow along the banks along the way.’
‘Is that sound?’ She imagined a riverbank lined with bare stumps, like a photograph in a colour-supplement article on the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest. Acres of decimated land.
‘I’m only going to take a branch here, a limb there. Cutting the wood is part of the work. My intervention on the material is going to be minimal, just a suggestion, to make sense of the flow of the water. Let the grain talk. And then . . .’ He paused as he dried his partially cleaned hands on a tea-towel, leaving black smudges that meant it would have to go straight into the laundry.
‘Then what?’ She was having difficulty picturing what he was talking about. She always did when he got onto his work. He took a long time to arrive at his conclusions, but the way he tried to explain them to her made them sound so obvious and simple that they seemed too easy somehow, not worthy of all the effort he had put into arriving at them.
‘Then I’m putting the human form into the pieces. Not sure how. But it’s about beauty and destruction. About how we put ourselves in our world and then in doing so, we despoil it, grind it to pieces.’
‘I’d love to see what you mean.’
‘There’s nothing to show yet, but when there is, you’ll be the first, I promise,’ and he leaned over to her as she drained the spaghetti, and kissed her hair.
Rose broke away and rang the bell. ‘Dinner!’ she called.
‘Yep, a good day.’ Gareth rubbed his hands together and sat down.
Rose didn’t know why, but she felt her heart resting around her navel. Perhaps, she thought, wine would help lift it up again. So she opened a bottle from the bottom shelf of the wine rack – the better shelf – and poured herself a large glass of blood-red Bardolino. She was just turning round with it when she realised she had forgotten to pour one for Gareth. Slapping the side of her head, she went back and got a glass out for him, polishing it carefully with her T-shirt before she filled it.
After supper, Rose organised the older children into a clearing-up party while she bathed and fed Flossie, ready to put her down for the night. Flossie kicked a little in the bath, stirring up a few soapy bubbles. It was the most animated Rose had seen her since the hospital stay. For the first time, she felt perhaps that her daughter wasn’t damaged goods. She managed to see a glint of hope, but then again, it could have been the wine.
She was just putting Flossie down when the doorbell rang. That would be Janka, Simon’s au pair, who was babysitting for the evening. Simon had chosen not to go to the gig, so it seemed a perfect solution to the problem of both Rose and Gareth going out.
‘Can you get it, Gareth? I’ve still got to get changed. Just give her a cup of tea and I’ll be down in a sec.’
Rose felt her belly turn over, as she tucked Flossie into her cot, which had been moved back into the nursery. The plan was to put her in there until they got back, when Rose would take her into their bed, which was the only place she felt safe with her. Putting her in the cot was difficult in itself. But the whole night was going to be a big test. It was the first time she had left her children at night, ever – except for the topping-out ceremony when Anna went to that sleepover. And coming so hard on Flossie’s hospital stay, well, Rose didn’t quite know how she could do it. Her stomach had been quite upset with the nerves of it over the past few days. She kept on having to rush to the loo. But she had to do it. When she had confided in Gareth about her fears, he had just patiently pointed out that the Lamb was only a few hundred yards down the road, that Janka knew the children, that she had the phone number and that he would tell Charlie the landlord that he had to get Rose immediately if Janka were to call.
He just couldn’t see it.
Rose went to her dressing room and leaned against the full-length mirror, eyeball to eyeball with her own reflection. Perhaps if she were to say she were ill? If she were to have a headache, or make herself sick – and here she knew she had form – then she wouldn’t have to go. But when she looked over at Christos’s painting of Polly, she remembered everything that once was. She bore a loyalty, almost a debt to Polly, and there was no way she couldn’t drag herself up the road to the pub for her.
What to wear, though? She picked out the black dress with the sequinned band under the breasts, the one that Gareth really liked. She pulled off her dungarees and T-shirt, leaving them in a pile on the floor, and squeezed the dress over her head. It was quite a bit tighter than it had been the last time she had worn it, back in London for a private view of Gareth’s just before they left. But it was empire line, so she could just about get away with it pulling a little across her stomach. She looked in the mirror. The way her breasts squashed up and spilled over the top was all right, she thought. She didn’t dwell overlong on how the rest of it looked.
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