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Authors: Margot Livesey

BOOK: Homework
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Sometimes as a child when I was bicycling in the country I would stop to listen to the wooden telegraph poles that lined the road. When I pressed my ear against the rough, creosote-smelling wood, a faint hum was audible; I believed this to be the distillation of a thousand conversations. I was always hoping to overhear something meaningful, but no matter how long I listened, I was never able to decipher a single sentence. I was sure it was different for the birds who perched on the wires, that they understood everything. When they twittered they were discussing significant pieces of human news, and it was boredom that drove them to flight.
I bent down to remove a piece of earthenware which had wedged between the prongs of the fork and added it to the small pile of stones Stephen had made in one corner. The
swallows were fidgeting, unfolding and refolding their wings. They were expressing their annoyance, I thought, at the conversation between Stephen and Helen, a conversation to which I was no more privy than if I had been still standing beside a telegraph pole, my bicycle lying in the grass at my feet.
The minutes passed. The entire bed had been forked over, but I felt awkward about going back into the house. If I had been there all along, it would have been fine, but now it seemed that my return must be significant of anxiety, or curiosity.
I wandered around pulling out weeds, snapping the dead heads off the roses. Our swimming costumes and towels hung motionless on the line. The birds vanished; Selina had retreated inside her hutch; the air seemed colder. The earth turned on its axis, bringing even that endlessly light summer sky a little closer to darkness.
I was examining the runner beans when I felt Stephen's gaze upon me. As soon as I saw his motionless figure, standing in the kitchen doorway, I knew that all was not well. I walked over and put my arms around him. One step above me, he stood still for a moment in my embrace, and then his arms closed around me.
We went for a walk, but where we walked I do not know. I was aware of a crack in the pavement, the zigzagging flight of a bat stitching the sky, a clematis in full bloom, an elderly man in shirt sleeves and braces watering his garden, every detail shimmering and distinct with life, yet as to which streets we crossed or turned up or down, I was oblivious. I did not ask what was the matter; I said to myself that Helen had upset him, as she so easily had the power to do, and he would tell me soon enough.
We were crossing a bridge over the railway line when Stephen at last spoke. “Helen's going to Paris.” He uttered the words so softly and the conjunction of the names was so like a joke that I asked what he had said, even as I realised that I knew.
“Helen's going to Paris,” he repeated.
“For a holiday?”
“No, to work for a year. The bank has a branch in Paris. They find her a place to live, and she'll get almost twice as much money, compensation for being on foreign soil.”
Fifty-two weeks, I thought, without Jenny. Or at least only for holidays, and those, like the fixed buoys in a harbour, would be easy to negotiate. “It sounds wonderful,” I said. I was about to say a wonderful opportunity for Jenny, but I did not trust myself. With the prospect of release, my dislike of the present situation blossomed like a genie suddenly freed from the confines of his bottle.
“Yes, she's very happy. She's talked of doing something like this for years. In fact she was actually offered a job abroad shortly before she found out she was pregnant.” He had taken my hand, and I felt his palm burning against mine.
A van was approaching. We paused on the edge of the pavement, and the sheet of dark metal rushed by a few feet in front of our faces. In its wake the words “She's not taking Jenny” appeared, not as if they came from Stephen, but like an aural hallucination.
We stepped into the road. He had not spoken; I had conjured the words out of my fear; like the sound of the van, they would disappear.
On the far pavement, Stephen stopped. “She just told Jenny today.”
I did my utmost to practise the magic of denial. “Jenny must be thrilled,” I said. “Going to Paris will be a big adventure.”
Stephen reached out and took my other hand in his. “Jenny isn't going,” he said. “She's coming to live with us. I mean of course it depends on you, but that's what Helen has offered.” He spoke slowly and simply; there was no mistaking his meaning.
I stood looking up at him. His face was tense with suppressed emotion. At first I thought he too was upset, and then, as he returned my gaze, I realised that his reaction, as extreme as my own, lay in the opposite direction; the corners of his mouth twitched; he was trying not to smile. He was so happy he wanted to grin like an idiot.
I pulled my hands out of his clasp. In what sense did it depend on me? I wondered. Nothing depended on me. I would not say one word. But even as I had this thought, the words burst out of me. “Why can't she take Jenny with her?”
“Celia,” said Stephen, “what's wrong?”
“One minute she'll hardly let you see Jenny. The next she
tries to dump the whole business onto you. It seems so unfair, both to you and to Jenny.”
“Helen admitted on the phone that she has been difficult. She even said that one reason she applied for the job was because she knew that she and Jenny were too close for comfort.”
There was a clicking sound. I looked up and saw a young man bicycling towards us. He caught my eye and smiled. “I thought she was worried about another woman replacing her in Jenny's affections.” I remembered how much friendlier Helen had been recently, how much easier about arrangements; this was no will-o'-the-wisp of an idea but a carefully considered, well-established plan. I began to walk again, and Stephen fell in beside me. We passed a garden with a hedge so overgrown that we had to step into the street.
“Everything she's heard from Jenny makes her think you'll be the perfect stepmother,” he said.
“I can't imagine what she's heard,” I said angrily. I was not seeking the information but repudiating it. All the attempts I had made to befriend Jenny, to make her feel at home, rose up to mock me. Bitterly I recalled the satisfaction I had taken in Selina.
Stephen put his arm around my shoulders. As if following my thoughts he said, “You take a lot of trouble with Jenny. Since I've met you my relationship with her has improved enormously.” He paused, then, before I could respond, continued. “I can understand you being shocked. I'm still stunned. When Helen announced that she'd got this job, I was convinced that she was about to tell me that I wasn't going to see Jenny for a year.”
A group of people was coming towards us: a very tall man, holding the hand of a small girl, followed by a woman and a slightly older girl. All four of them said good evening, and Stephen replied.
“So why isn't she taking Jenny?” I asked again. This time
I kept my voice calm; I wanted Stephen to answer me.
“It's partly a practical decision. She's going to be working very hard, and it would be difficult for her to spend much time with Jenny. And, as she said, I'm now in an excellent position to take care of Jenny. I'm living with you; we have a house and a garden.” He squeezed my shoulder. “This couldn't have happened at a better time. Jenny's young enough to accept the switch, whereas in a year or two, when she's a teenager, it would be much harder.”
As we made our way home he continued to enumerate the advantages: his parents would be pleased, it would be good for Jenny to have a normal relationship with him and to be less dependent on Helen. All the reasons were irrelevant. Jenny was Stephen's daughter. Helen did not need to insist that Stephen take care of her; Jenny, by her mere existence, insisted.
 
Night after night since New Year's Eve I had squatted down to put in my diaphragm. That night as I held it up to the light, scrutinising the thin hemisphere, I paused. Why not, I thought, put it back in its case and replace the case on the shelf. Who would be any the wiser? The chances of anything happening were remote, but there would at least be a possibility, and that seemed desperately appealing. I imagined a sweet-smelling baby, whom Stephen and I would take everywhere.
Suddenly I thought of Helen. Perhaps Jenny had been conceived not accidentally but out of some such fleeting impulse. I knew from Stephen that Helen had planned to have an abortion and then changed her mind. That life, existence, depended upon such tiny moments was terrifying. A pinprick in a piece of rubber, the contraction of a woman's heart as she waited for her womb to be scraped clean: was that all that was needed? Maybe the fetus, even tiny as a minnow, could sense these twists and hesitations, and this was the root of
Jenny's difficulties; she had always known that her presence was provisional. I opened the tube of jelly and bent down.
 
Given her momentous announcement, I had thought that Helen might want to spend Saturday with Jenny, but in fact it was she who suggested that Stephen take Jenny and Anna to the Chambers Street museum, where there was a special children's exhibition of flora and fauna. I decided to stay at home. I told Stephen that I wanted to keep an eye on the plumber who was coming to install the washing machine. The truth was that I did not think that I would be able to sound suitably enthusiastic about the prospect of Jenny's living with us; I needed some respite.
Shortly after Stephen left, the doorbell rang. I opened the front door and found Barry, the plumber, standing on the step, a tool box in one hand and a cassette player in the other. He smiled shyly and said something complimentary about the garden. Soon he was lying on the kitchen floor, with his head under the sink, playing Buddy Holly at full volume. I spread newspapers on the floor of the spare room. We had prepared the walls and bought the primrose yellow paint almost a month before, but from week to week we had postponed the task. Now our decision to devote this weekend to painting the room took on an ironic quality. I must learn, I thought, to call it Jenny's room.
I filled the roller tray with paint and set to work. There was something oddly soothing about the mechanical act of running the roller up and down, and as I moved along the wall, my anger and dismay began to subside. I was sorry for Jenny. Beyond the fact that Stephen and I were going to be so greatly inconvenienced, I could imagine that she must feel abandoned. When I thought back over the conversation of the night before, I was struck by how little part Jenny had played in the discussion; she was after all the one most affected, yet we had barely mentioned her reactions. I poured more paint
into the tray and edged my way round the corner. I was so much under Stephen's influence that I had always thought of his leaving Helen as an unmitigated blessing. Now it occurred to me that Jenny's grief about her parents' separation might be no less than my own had been.
My parents had broken the news to me soon after I went to university. I had been there for only a few weeks when my mother's letter arrived. All unsuspecting, I had carried it into breakfast; my cornflakes had grown limp before me as I tried to make out what she was saying. “I'm sure you won't be surprised,” she wrote, “to know that your father and I have decided to separate. He's going to stay on in the house, at least meanwhile, so it won't make much difference to you. Your old room will be waiting. I'm going to live with Harry.”
For years Harry had been an avuncular presence in my life. He played in the same chamber group as my mother and often gave her lifts to concerts. He would sit in the kitchen, dressed in evening clothes, chatting to my father or me, until my mother appeared wearing a long black dress. Then off the two of them would go, set apart from us by their elegant appearance and lofty destination.
There must be some mistake, I thought. I could still picture my parents standing side by side on the station platform, waving goodbye to me. I hurried to the nearest telephone. When my mother answered, I announced that I was coming home. I had the idea that my mere presence would restore normality.
“Didn't you get my letter?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Then you'll understand that now isn't the best time. Everything's in an uproar. If you want to come in a couple of weeks, after we've sorted ourselves out, that would be lovely. Harry's terribly fond of you. We're both looking forward to seeing you in the holidays.”
In retrospect it seemed unbelievable, but only at that moment,
when I heard my mother unite herself with him in the first person plural, did I begin to grasp that she and Harry were something more than friends.
She had begun to talk about the difficulties of packing. “It's amazing how much junk I still have. Listen to me,” she said, “prattling away as if you were in the next room. Phone this evening, or sometime very soon, and we'll have a long talk.”
I went back to my room and lay down on the bed. Thoughts fluttered around my brain, like a bevy of pigeons startled out of their dovecote. My mother had a lover, had been having an affair, was Harry's mistress. I had never used those words before except about characters in books. Day after day that summer I had come home from my job at Marks and Spencer's to find her sorting through her possessions; she had given a dozen bags of clothes to Oxfam and thrown out as many more. “I'm sick of not knowing where anything is,” she had said. I had never known her to be tidy, but it did not seem implausible. How could I have guessed what was going on, I thought, when she did everything to ensure that I would not? What was the subterfuge for, if not to deceive me?
That my mother was not utterly oblivious to my telephone call was revealed by the postcard that arrived a couple of days later. She suggested that as the Christmas holidays were only a few weeks away, there was no point in my coming home for a weekend. I did not need to read between the lines to see that I played an exact and limited part in her life. She had borne me, raised me, and she would do her best by me, but there was no reason for unnecessary sentiment or sentimentality.
I had been eighteen the year that my parents separated. Jenny had been five when Stephen moved out, but who was to say that her agony had not been as great as mine. It was easy from my present adult perspective to reduce her emotions to black and white, but if I thought back to my own childhood,
I knew that at her age I had experienced a range of feelings as wide and subtle as the spectrum of paints from which Stephen had so carefully chosen the primrose yellow I was now applying to the walls of her room.
I had almost finished the bottom half of the first wall when Barry put his head round the door. “Nice colour,” he said. “Is this the future nursery?”
“It's the room Stephen's daughter will use.” I concentrated on running the roller smoothly up and down.
“At least she has good taste. My daughter Linda has an absolute bee in her bonnet about having everything pink.”
I remembered how Jenny had shuddered at the thought of us painting the dining room pink. “How old is she?” I asked.
“Linda's thirteen and Margaret's fifteen. Proper little madames, the pair of them.” He shook his head. “I just wanted to let you know that I have to turn the water off.”

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