Cuckoo (31 page)
He took her by the arm and hauled her away, out of the pub. Rose looked down at Polly, who was still on the ground, surrounded by a circle of men. One of them had got a glass of water from the bar and Gareth was using a napkin to wipe the admittedly nasty-looking cut that the woman’s ring had left beneath Polly’s left eye.
‘Are you OK?’ Rose leaned forward and asked Polly.
‘I’m fine.’ Polly smiled up at her, but her mouth was twisted. ‘Forget about it, won’t you? I know her from a long time back. She’s a mentalist.’
Gareth and another man – a great, glossed and suntanned bear of a man – helped her up.
‘Now what I need is a drink,’ Polly said, looking up at Gareth.
‘A bottle of champagne for the star, Charlie!’ Gareth yelled as he cleared her way to the bar. Someone slipped off a stool and offered it up to her.
‘It’s on the house, mate,’ Charlie said, and reaching behind the bar, he picked up a bunch of red roses and presented them to Polly with a bow. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, Rose would never have believed that such a gesture could have come from this beer-bellied, pock-nosed, coarse-veined bloke. He was far better known for his ability to eject troublemakers by literally pulling them up by the seat of their pants and throwing them out into the road than for his way with chivalry and flowers.
Gareth poured the champagne and handed it out to Polly and Rose.
‘That was great, Poll,’ Rose said.
‘Thanks.’
‘Wasn’t it awesome?’ Gareth put his arm round Polly’s shoulders. ‘You’re not going to have any problems getting back into it, girl, are you?’
‘I dunno,’ Polly shrugged.
‘Excuse me?’ A well-spoken white guy with dreadlocks down to his waist came between Polly and Rose and held out his hand. ‘I was blown away by that.’
‘Thank you.’ Something in Polly that had been dimmed after the confrontation with the blonde woman was beginning to come back to life.
‘Jem Williams, Karma Records,’ the guy said.
‘Wow,’ Gareth said.
‘Cool,’ Polly smiled.
Rose’s attention wandered across the crowded bar, until her eyes came to rest on a figure leaning against the wall near the door, cradling a pint and looking right over in their direction. It was Simon.
‘Just going to the loo,’ she said to no one in particular, and made her way over to him. She couldn’t believe he was here.
‘What are you doing here? Who’s looking after the kids?’
‘They’re all asleep. I just slipped in for a quickie. Don’t tell Miranda,’ he said.
‘That’s the least of the secrets I’ve got to keep from her.’
‘I trust it went well, then. I didn’t get here until the applause.’
‘It was – brilliant,’ Rose said, searching for the word.
‘Great.’
‘Yep.’
‘Look, Rose,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about the other week. I was a bit . . . lost. I just want you to know that, if ever you need to talk, I’m here. I don’t want us not to be friends. I miss our chats.’
‘I’ve forgotten about it already.’ She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. ‘But I’m only going to be your friend if you go back right now and babysit your children.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, handing her his drink. ‘I’m gone. Remember, though, just grab me – OK? Any time.’
‘Right,’ Rose said, although she didn’t quite know what he meant about her needing to talk. About what? He was the one in the state. She knocked back the remains of Simon’s pint and headed across the bar.
‘Where were you?’ Gareth put his arm around her.
‘Loo,’ she said.
He looked like he had been edged out a little. Polly was sitting on a bar stool, holding court. She was surrounded by a group of men who were listening with hungry, yet sympathetic faces to what she had to say. Rose noticed that the dark-fringed man from earlier was among them, standing right by Polly, so close that he must surely be touching her thigh with his own. He must have lost the blonde woman somewhere, Rose supposed.
‘Time to get back for Janka,’ Rose said. ‘You stay if you want.’
‘Nah, I’ll come back. I’ve got to be up early in the morning, anyhow,’ Gareth said.
They said their goodbyes to Polly, who looked like she was getting stuck in for the night. Outside in the lane, the moon had travelled over the sky, hanging in the night as if it were keeping a big, cautious eye on them. The air, while still chilly, had something of the smell of summer to it. Rose leaned against Gareth on the way home, glad to be out of the crowded pub.
Gareth laughed to himself.
‘What?’ Rose asked, looking up at him.
‘I was just thinking that tonight might find its way into a couple of autobiographies in a decade or two.’
‘It was an event, that’s for sure.’ Rose noticed that over in the far west, clouds were gathering, pastel grey in the moonlit sky. It was going to pour down later.
They went back to a calm household. The evening there had been uneventful. The children had gone to bed when they were told, no one had woken up, and yes, Flossie was fine. Rose and Gareth sent Janka away with twenty pounds, then – after Rose had checked that Flossie was still soundly asleep – they fell, slightly drink-dizzy and exhausted, into bed. For the first time in what seemed like months, she felt that she wanted her husband. She started stroking the small of his back and he turned to her and held her face in his hands. He kissed her then rolled her over onto her back, where he moved his mouth towards her breasts, first kissing, then sucking, then biting so that she yelped in surprise.
Not that she didn’t like it, but he had never been that rough before. He moved his hand between her legs and started gently stroking her until she was wet. Then he put one finger deep inside her, then another. He moved his fingers around inside her then pushed in a third and a fourth. It was making her wild, and she moved herself up and down on him. He pushed further, up beyond his knuckles until he finally, gently but firmly, slipped his thumb and whole hand right up inside her so he was wearing her like a glove puppet. This was all new. Their ten years of lovemaking had been, up to now, characterised by a gentle intimacy. She came quickly and explosively, bright lights exploding in her head, as she collapsed on his hand. He rolled over on top of her, took her fingers and closed them around his penis, pumping it furiously up and down until, with a cry, he exploded over her breasts, rubbing his sticky semen in and around her nipples.
‘I do love you, Rose,’ he said, and, turning his body onto his side of the bed, he fell instantly asleep, tangled in a sweaty heap in and around her legs. She lay there on her back, her vulva burning and still contracting from time to time. She hadn’t had an orgasm like that for years.
‘We mustn’t forget about all this,’ she murmured into the silent night of their bedroom.
But, as the rain began to spot onto the dormer window, she couldn’t help wondering:
Where did he get the idea for all of that?
Where did he get the idea for all of that?
Twenty-Eight
The next morning Rose woke to the sound of Gareth singing one of Polly’s old songs in the shower. She lay there in the square of thin morning sun that hit her from the Velux window above the bed, trying to remember what had happened the night before, wondering what it was that made her feel a little stomachchurned. Then she moved and felt the soreness between her legs, and shivered a little.
She felt like she had on her first day at school.
‘Hi, my love.’ Gareth walked in from the shower, rubbing his hair dry with one of the thick white towels that Rose always left beautifully folded on the slatted oak bathroom shelves. He bent to kiss her on the lips.
‘I’m out of studio coffee,’ he said. ‘We steam through the beans down there, me and my new coffee-maker.’
‘I’ll put it on my shopping list,’ Rose said.
‘I do love you, you know.’
‘You said that last night,’ she told him.
‘I said it because it’s true.’
He pulled on his work clothes of old 501s and a loden green jumper that Rose had knitted for him when she was pregnant with Anna. Then, running his hands once through his hair, to make sure it dried in his favoured tousled style, he left.
Humming, Rose went to the farmers’ market straight after taking the children to school. It was held in the next village, three miles away, so she had to drive there, but it felt so right to be using the market rather than Waitrose. She flung her special wicker basket onto the back seat when she got into the car. She had bought it specifically for these market visits. It was a little difficult to carry tucked under her arm with Flossie in the sling, but she couldn’t imagine going there without it. It reminded her that she was a village woman now, and it made her feel complete.
The morning mist was fading away to reveal a blue sky as Rose turned the Galaxy into the car park of the village hall where the weekly market was held. Despite rain at night, the days seemed to have been getting warmer and warmer for the past week or so. She was pleased to see that this morning, despite a little muddiness, someone had decided to move the market to its summer pitch on the playing field at the back of the hall. As usual, it was bustling, full of parents she recognised from the school. She nodded and said hello to a few of the more friendly ones as she waltzed around, humming and packing her basket with artisan French cheeses, local jam and a kilo of bacon that she secretly felt was inferior to (and more expensive than) the supermarket’s deli brand, but which she bought because it was produced by a farmer whose fields she could see from the top of her garden.
She closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face and imagined that she was in some sort of French street-market in the Dordogne.
‘Coffee, mustn’t forget coffee,’ she sang to herself as she headed towards the stall that sold the home-roasted whole beans in the particular blend that Gareth liked.
Her spirits were soaring as, babbling on to Flossie back in the kitchen, she tidied the last jar into the correct cupboard. She got the coffee-grinder down from its shelf then processed enough beans to keep Gareth going till suppertime. Gareth. She shivered again, remembering the night before. It was incredible, she thought, how, in amongst all the stuff of day-to-day life, a good bit of sex could make all the difference to how one felt. Looking up from putting the bacon away in the fridge, she saw Polly wandering down the garden path towards the kitchen, clutching around her a black satin dressing gown that Rose had never seen before.
Rose took her basket and put it back in its place in the cool pantry, which smelled of the apples she had wrapped in newspaper and stored there in the autumn.
She walked out to the kitchen and saw Polly sitting at the table, watching her.
‘You look happy, Rose,’ she said.
Rose smiled.
‘Did you and Gareth have a nice time last night?’
‘We loved it. How did it go after we left?’
‘OK,’ Polly said.
‘What?’
‘I dunno.’ Polly stretched. ‘I’ve got a touch of anti-climax about me.’
‘You get back late?’
‘I think so.’
‘Anyone interested?’
‘Oh, I dunno. They say they liked it, that they’ll get back, but it’s all blah blah blah.’ She twisted a lock of hair around her finger, inspecting it for split ends. ‘Where’s Gareth?’
‘He’s in the studio.’
‘It’s great he’s working again.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you know he hardly went into his studio when you were away.’
Rose looked over at Polly, who was still fiddling with her hair. A flush of something bled into the contentment she had felt all morning. What was this all about?
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