Cuckoo (9 page)
The smallness of the room also limited the size of his work, which further defined his style. The luck of it was that what he had hit upon out of necessity turned out to be very marketable and this had hauled them out of the grim rental market and on to the Hackney flat-owning step of the artist’s progress in London.
It had helped that Rose had been earning a regular salary. Without that, the mortgage for Hackney would have been impossible. Her teaching job had also qualified them for a key-worker’s loan for the deposit. These days, however, her role in their rise tended to be overlooked: both she and Gareth had a tendency to see their progress as being solely connected to his efforts. Over the years she had changed role from that of principal breadwinner to wife of the successful artist, and mother of his lovely children. While she knew she should probably feel bitter, or at least a little wistful about this, she was in fact genuinely happy with her lot.
Gareth snored softly. Rose sighed and turned over, aware that she had just a couple of hours before Flossie woke up for her feed, and that she must sleep.
After half an hour of lying there trying to empty her mind, she gave up. She knew it just wasn’t going to happen. Taking care not to wake Gareth, she got up and slipped on her dressing gown – a dusky pink antique kimono that Gareth had brought back from an opening in Japan – and padded down the stairs in her sheepskin slippers.
She stopped on the half-landing and looked out of the arched window towards the Annexe. The boy’s room was all darkness, but Polly’s light was still burning, and the curtains were still open. Rose stood still, to one side, and saw Polly pacing back and forth in front of the window, smoking, her hair following her like a dirty fox tail. Rose wondered whether she should go up there and see if she was all right.
But then Flossie started whimpering and rustling in her cot, two hours earlier than usual. Rose cursed under her breath. Floss had slept too long on the airport journey and that, along with the alcoholic milk and missing her usual bedtime routine, had messed her up.
Rose bounded back up the stairs to catch Flossie before Gareth woke up. She was rewarded by the vision of her daughter gurgling in her cot, holding out her arms, delighted to see her mother arrive so quickly. Rose scooped her up and took her downstairs to sit in their favourite feeding chair. She drew a blanket around them both and settling in, she slowly drifted off to the rhythmic sucking of the baby, the tingling of the letting down of her milk.
When she woke, she and Flossie were enclosed in the bubble of their own body heat. Flossie was fast asleep, a trickle of milk drying on her cool, soft cheek. Rose carried her back up the stairs, being careful not to wake her. On the way up to the second floor, she stood at the arched window again, looking at the Annexe. The main lights had been turned off, but there was still a glow in the room. Probably Polly had put the bedside light on. She was reading, perhaps. Or writing – Rose knew she liked to work in bed. Or was she just lying there, thinking of a beach, a house, a man, a life that had been taken from her and her boys?
Poor Polly
.
.
Rose continued up the stairs and laid Flossie down in her cot, tucking her under the little duvet. She tiptoed across the landing to her bedroom, took off her kimono and slippers and put them in their proper places. She pulled back her crisp, clean, lavender-scented bedding and climbed in beside her handsome, capable, alive husband. Her sturdy baby slept solidly just yards from her, and her healthy and bright older daughter was dreaming good things on the floor below in her freshly painted, beautifully large bedroom.
How lucky was she?
Rose lay back and, like a rosary, she counted her blessings until she fell into a deep and generous sleep.
Eight
At seven o’clock, Nico and Yannis ran down to the house. Rose, up again with Flossie, set about making them porridge with maple syrup. They both sat at the big table, tousle-haired, sleep still in their eyes, their voices croaky. Flossie lay on her lambskin on the floor, gurgling and kicking, her eyes fixed on the coathanger hung with shiny toys that Rose had suspended from the ceiling to dangle down low in front of her.
‘Mama’s still sleeping,’ Nico said.
‘She’s always asleep,’ Yannis added.
‘It’s been a difficult time for her – for you all,’ Rose said, placing the porridge in front of the boys. ‘Sometimes people get so exhausted by stuff like that, they just have to go to bed and sleep it off.’
She showed them how to drizzle the maple syrup on the porridge to make a spiral shape.
‘She’s just drunk all the time,’ Nico said.
‘She is, Rose,’ said Yannis, looking up at her.
‘I’m sure she’s not drunk
all
the time,’ Rose said. ‘Things’ll work out. You just see. Now, eat up.’
all
the time,’ Rose said. ‘Things’ll work out. You just see. Now, eat up.’
They looked at their bowls.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘What is it?’ said Nico.
‘Looks like sick,’ Yannis giggled. ‘Or mushed-up brain.’
‘But it doesn’t taste like it. Go on, try a bit. Make sure you get a bit of the syrup on your spoon.’
Yannis watched Nico as he put the edge of his spoon into his bowl and, shuddering, slowly lifted the porridge to his mouth.
‘Bleurgh!’ He spat it out, grabbed his throat and fell to the floor, writhing in agony.
‘Nico!’ Rose said.
‘It’s quite nice, actually,’ he said, getting up and shrugging. His timing was spot on.
Yannis laughed, and the two boys tucked in. They were both so skinny, Rose wondered where they put it. Humming-bird metabolisms, she thought. Yannis ate messily, spreading it all about the table. A porridge battlefield.
He stopped suddenly. ‘Where’s Gareth gone?’ he said, a slight panic in his voice.
‘He’s working. He likes to get going really early, before everyone else is up. He just disappears down there and gets on with it.’
‘Dad used to paint, too,’ Nico said.
‘I know,’ Rose said. ‘Do you know, I knew your father before your mum met him?’
‘Oh,’ Nico said, busy with his porridge.
‘Anyway, you’ll see Gareth at lunchtime. He comes out to be fed. Sometimes he comes out earlier, for more coffee.’
‘Aren’t we going to school today, though?’ Nico asked, trying to clear up his little brother’s mess with his spoon.
‘Leave it, Nico, I’ll do it,’ Rose said, fetching a cloth from the sink. ‘I don’t know. It depends on your mum.’
‘Please . . .’ Yannis pleaded.
‘Please, Rose. We’re going to be so bored stuck here all day,’ Nico said.
‘Thanks!’ Rose said.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Nico said. ‘It’s just that Mama will sleep all day and we’ll have to tiptoe round like mice, as usual.’
Yannis jumped up and stuck his teeth out. ‘Eeek eeek,’ he said. He started scurrying around the room on tiptoe.
‘And look,’ Nico added, pointing at his brother. ‘I’m fed up spending all my time with that spastic.’
‘Oy!’ Yannis said, jumping at his brother, pulling him back off the bench by the hair. ‘Oy!’
‘Spastic.’ Nico got up and turned to face Yannis, holding him at arm’s length, his hand on his head.
Yannis punched at his brother but, being a lot smaller, he couldn’t reach. His face exploded with fury and frustration. ‘Wanker!’ he yelled.
Nico laughed at his brother’s anger, but then Yannis dodged under his hold and caught him in the belly.
‘Right, shit face. You asked for it!’ Nico cried, wrestling Yannis to the floor.
‘Hey, you two!’ Rose said, stepping in. She was a little stunned. Where in Karpathos did the boys learn all this language?
The boys scuffled their way across the room, towards the corner where Flossie lay on her lambskin, gurgling at the shiny, pretty toys that dangled from the coathanger.
‘Cunt!’ Yannis screamed and lashed out at his brother with a kick. His foot narrowly missed Flossie’s head.
‘RIGHT YOU TWO, CUT IT OUT NOW,’ Rose cried, leaping over to separate the boys. This was worse than the worst class she had taught back in Hackney. And in her own kitchen, too.
Getting the two boys apart was quite a job. Although they looked as if they were made of thin wire and paper, they had an angular strength that rendered them solid to the touch. The energy beneath their skin made them stick together like glue.
‘Right. You sit there,’ Rose motioned Nico to one end of the table. ‘And you go there, Yannis.’ The child-control techniques she had honed at work were being called on in a way that they never had been with Anna. Rose scooped Flossie up, feeling like an idiot to have exposed her to such danger.
‘Time out. Five minutes’ silence to calm down.’ The boys sat there glaring at each other. Rose sat in the armchair by the window and fed Flossie, studying them and thinking.
She had planned that the boys would stay at home with her for a week or two while the school stuff got sorted out and they got used to being in England. She had thought about taking them for long walks around the hills that surrounded the village, showing them the British spring and the new animals at the farm down the road.
But this fight made her think that this might not work out as she had planned. For all his crudeness of expression, Nico had been right: the boys needed to spend time away from each other, to be with other children. And school was the best place to start all that. There was also Anna to think of and, after what Rose had just witnessed, diluting the Yannis and Nico effect with some other children might be best for all concerned.
‘OK, look guys,’ she said at length, buttoning up her pyjama top. ‘I’m glad you’ve both calmed down. Let’s take you up to the school this morning and I’ll have a word with the Headmistress.’
The boys cheered and punched the air, all animosity forgotten.
‘I’m not sure what she’ll say, but she owes me a few favours.’
‘Shall I go and wake up Mama?’ Nico said.
‘No, let her sleep. I’ll deal with it today.’
‘Hi.’ A sleepy Anna wandered into the kitchen. ‘What was all that noise?’
‘It was Nico’s fault,’ Yannis muttered, looking at his brother.
‘You started it, runt!’ And Nico launched himself across the table, knocking the milk jug over.
‘
Enough
,’ Rose said. Once more, she pulled them apart. It was only after she had sat them down again that she noticed that Anna, her little doppelganger, had got the cloth from the sink and was, very quietly, cleaning up the spilled milk.
Enough
,’ Rose said. Once more, she pulled them apart. It was only after she had sat them down again that she noticed that Anna, her little doppelganger, had got the cloth from the sink and was, very quietly, cleaning up the spilled milk.
When everyone was ready, they set off for school. It was quite a cold morning after the clear night, so Rose found a fleece of hers that swamped Nico, but would at least keep him warm. Yannis wore the only warm top of Anna’s that wasn’t pink or covered in flowers. Rose made a mental note to get the boys wellies.
The way to school was down to the end of the garden, then across the field at the back, skirting round the bottom of the hill that rose up like a lone breast from its middle, to the main part of the village about half a mile away. The earlier skirmishes had been forgotten and Anna, Nico and Yannis ran on ahead, jumping up to catch dewladen branches, shaking them and running away from the resulting shower.
Rose walked along behind them, Flossie strapped to her front and carefully wrapped up underneath her Barbour. She looked at the boys with their sun-fed skins, their angles and lankiness under their too-big outer clothes. She compared them to Anna, who looked as if she fitted everything completely, from her skin outwards to her pink Puffa jacket. Her hair looked impossibly thick and shiny next to their long rats-tails, which Rose had earlier tried to comb out. She had met with such screams and resistance that she had given up. Looking at Yannis and Nico, the word that came to her was ‘waifs’. Poor waifs and strays.
‘Got some new children, then?’ Her neighbour Simon bounded up with his usual contingent of Labrador and two elfin children. Rose often bumped into him on the way to school, and he usually went back with her for coffee after. He was a writer and took the domestic role in his marriage to Miranda, who was a high-flying barrister well on the way to becoming a judge. Rose liked Simon very much.
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