Cuckoo (8 page)
The last time this had happened, when she was sixteen, Polly had been there, thank God. The news Rose gave her father was so terrible to him that he would probably have killed her, had she been alone.
‘Slut,’ he hissed, holding Rose by the hair, raising his clenched fist, ready to bring it down hard into her stomach.
Tiny as she was, Polly launched herself across the room at him and physically stopped his arm.
‘NO,’ she yelled, so forcibly that he was shocked into silence.
She stood right in front of him and spat up into his face. Rose, still cowering by the sofa, her arm over her head, looked on in a stunned silence.
Her father turned and fled the front parlour of the family flat at the bottom of the tall dark Regency guesthouse, straight into the arms of his selectively blind wife.
Muttering about how they would never again be able to hold up their heads in Brighton, her parents put the guesthouse on the market. They moved up to Scotland, to her mother’s home town, a small place north of Edinburgh. They did not invite their daughter to go with them, nor would she have gone had they done so.
If it hadn’t been for Polly, Rose wouldn’t have known what to do. Polly’s mother had been put into hospital, so Rose moved into their flat. Polly took care of everything for Rose, sorted everything out. Yes, if it hadn’t been for Polly, she wouldn’t be where she was today.
Rose finished feeding Flossie, carried her to her little bedroom and lay her down in her cot. On her back, her eyes closed, her arms flopped out to either side, the baby looked dead to the world.
There was something in that position that triggered an unwelcome reverberation of the car crash Rose had witnessed earlier. She had forgotten about it until then. She closed her eyes and thought about that whole family, wiped out in one wrong move. It was all so fragile.
She touched Flossie on the cheek. After a couple of moments, she murmured and smacked her lips, telling Rose she was still alive, and freeing her to leave.
She went back down to the kitchen. Polly was once more in the armchair, staring into the fire, a glass of whisky in her hand. The washing-up still needed to be done, and Gareth was nowhere to be seen.
Seven
By the time Rose managed to prise Anna and the boys apart, it was gone eleven. While Anna got ready for bed, Rose showed Polly and the boys to the Annexe. She had tried to make the space as homely as possible, scrubbing it clean and putting a load of Anna’s old toys and books in the boys’ room. Before she left for the airport she had lit a fire in the woodburner they had installed when they first moved in. She was pleased to see that it was still giving off some warmth, hours later.
‘Where’s my room?’ Nico asked.
Rose showed him the little bedroom off the main room. ‘In there. You two will have to share.’
‘So tell me something new,’ he shrugged.
‘Wicked, a bunk bed. Can I go on top?’ Yannis looked up at Rose.
‘Get to bed now, you two,’ Polly said from the main room. ‘Don’t worry about teeth or pyjamas for tonight.’
After a little tussle, they worked out that Nico should sleep on top as he was bigger, so if he fell off it wouldn’t seem so far. Finally, Rose managed to get them both settled down. She leaned over and kissed each of them.
‘And we can stay as long as we like, you say?’ Yannis whispered from deep within his duvet.
‘Longer,’ Rose smiled.
She came out of the bedroom to find Polly pacing around the main room.
‘I know it’s rather small up here,’ Rose said, ‘but the boys are welcome to come down to the house to join us when they wake up, if you want to sleep on. I’m up at six with Floss, anyway.’
‘No, it’s lovely. It really is. I don’t know how to thank you,’ Polly said.
‘And look!’ Rose said, opening the fridge with a flourish. ‘Bonne Maman crème caramels. Remember?’
‘I used to live on them,’ Polly said, holding the little pot that Rose had passed to her. ‘Them and Solpadeine.’
She put the crème caramel back in the fridge and went to the window.
‘Quite a view of the big house I’ll have here in the morning,’ she said.
Rose showed her how to draw the curtains, using the rope rather than just pulling them across.
‘Leave them open, though, Rose. I want to look at the sky for a bit.’
Rose took hold of Polly’s hand. ‘Are you going to be OK?’
‘Of course,’ Polly said. ‘I’m a tough old bird.’
‘Don’t I just know it,’ Rose said, and drawing her close, she gave her a big hug. ‘Right. Time to leave you to your own devices. And you’ve got everything you need?’
‘The bed is there,’ Polly said.
‘And remember, just turf the boys out in the morning. Send them down to the house.’
‘I will. Never fear about that.’
On her way back to the house, Rose smelled woodsmoke. She wandered round to the back and found Gareth stoking the woodfired pizza oven that he had built on the terrace. It had been one of his pet projects. Rose hadn’t seen the point, but he had just gone ahead with it anyway. She was quietly boycotting it – she had her work cut out enough getting to grips with the Aga. And, as she did most of the food preparation, her inactivity had led to the pizza oven sitting there unchristened by food. But they had spent a couple of family evenings out there enjoying the heat it created when it was fired up with the doors open.
‘That’s nice,’ she whispered, slipping her arm into his. They stood, letting the flames warm their faces, watching the sparks rise and flicker towards the gaping mouth of the chimney.
‘Where did you get to back then?’ she asked, after a while.
‘There was something I needed to finish off in the studio. It wouldn’t keep. Polly said she was fine about me going.’
‘It just seemed a bit abrupt, you going off like that.’
‘She really didn’t mind. I behaved really well tonight.’
‘You did.’
‘I’m trying my best.’
They sat close together on the wooden bench, the light from the applewood flames flickering on their faces. The rain from earlier had stopped and the night was clear and cold. They could see every star up there, and the crescent of the moon was as sharp as a sickle.
‘Sometimes the work just screams out for me,’ Gareth said. ‘I can’t believe I was away from it for so long.’
‘I know.’
‘I didn’t draw anything for over a year.’
‘You did some lovely diagrams.’
‘Yeah, and I painted walls and woodwork.’
‘You did it beautifully, though,’ she smiled up at him. ‘And you did say you wanted to get your hands dirty. And you enjoyed it in a way . . .’
‘Yep.’
‘It was awful for you sometimes, Gareth. I know that.’
‘I lost the plot.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I did.’
‘We all had our low moments. Remember, “Fuck it, let’s go and buy a nice Barratt Home”? If it hadn’t been for Andy . . .’
Gareth stared into the flames.
‘Without him, I don’t know what we would have done,’ Rose said, searching for her husband’s eyes. ‘You have a great brother.’
‘He’s OK,’ Gareth said.
Rose had to be careful about discussing Andy with Gareth. There were issues there. Of course, they had grown up believing they were real brothers. In fact, out of the two of them, Andy was the only birth son of Pam and John, who for political reasons had only had one child of their own – and they had waited until they were into their forties to do that. Their choice had been to adopt a second baby, in order to share their good fortune in life with someone who might otherwise not have been so lucky.
Rose had asked Andy about this on one of the many evenings they spent alone together, while Gareth was hiding under the duvet, battling his demons.
‘Why didn’t they tell you?’ she asked, as they went for one of their evening walks down to the river.
‘They didn’t want Gareth to feel the odd one out,’ Andy said. ‘I guess they thought it was for the best.’
‘Didn’t it come as a shock to you?’
‘Totally. I mean, we’re so physically alike, people always asked us if we were twins. But it wasn’t such a big deal for me as it was for Gareth. He’s never gotten over it. He never got beyond formalities with them again, and now Pam and John have passed away and it’s too late. They loved him so much, though, Rose.’
Rose looked at Andy. It was true; he and Gareth were very similar. Both tall and strong-looking, both with the same beautiful hands. But it was as if Gareth were made up of two halves – the light and the dark, whereas Andy was just light.
It was because of this lightness that Andy seemed to be able to cope with the residual anger that Gareth sometimes, for want of a better target, directed at him. It was because of this lightness that, from time to time, Rose found herself asking if she had picked the right brother.
‘Andy’s more than OK,’ Rose said to Gareth.
‘I guess,’ he shrugged.
The fire crackled around the knotty wood, sending a spray of sparks out onto the brick surround of the pizza oven. Rose looked at her husband and wondered how on earth she could ever have doubted that he was the one for her. They sat still, listening. The silence of the night was broken only by a blackbird that Rose had fed throughout the winter. He sat on their chimney, giving perspective to the evening.
‘I hope they don’t stay too long,’ Gareth said at last.
‘Oh, she doesn’t stop still,’ Rose said. ‘If I know Polly she’ll be up and off – probably with a new husband, band and recording contract – before I get a chance to change their bedlinen.’
‘I don’t want you running around after her. She’s a grown-up, you know. She needs to take care of her own stuff.’
‘OK, Dad,’ Rose said, leaning into him.
‘I’m sorry.’ Gareth put his arm around her shoulder. ‘I just don’t want us to be distracted from the important stuff.’
‘No worries about that.’ She reached up and kissed him. ‘You know, there’s something rather wonderful about this fire,’ she murmured, as she slipped to her knees and unbuttoned his Levis.
Later, in their bedroom, as she lay next to Gareth – who had gone out like a light – Rose thought about what he had said, about the dark days, about how he had lost the plot. There was a point back then when his silence had been deafening. He had effectively signed out, only showing up for meals.
This evening had been the first time they had ever really talked about it. She didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing. Sometimes it was better just to forget about the unhappy stuff.
Remembering that not so distant time, she again questioned her wisdom in welcoming Polly. But it was unthinkable that she could have turned her away. In any case, she and Gareth had sworn to be generous with their good fortune. After all, just ten years ago, they wouldn’t in their wildest dreams have imagined themselves in this comfortable position.
Back then, before Hackney even, they lived in Gareth’s rented flat in Elephant and Castle. It actually had two bedrooms, but the landlord wasn’t allowed to charge rent for the second since it was too damp for human habitation. This ‘condemned’ room became Gareth’s studio, and it was there, out of necessity, that he had turned his back on the large-scale conceptual installations of his MA days. Instead, he started to work in what later became his trademark style of painting on found wood in oils. The dampness of the room meant that the oils stayed wet for longer than they normally would, and he would move his pictures into the living room to mingle their fumes with those of the paraffin stove that heated the place.
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