In a Good Light (44 page)

‘I really want to get to know you, Esther,' she said, cornering me in the utility room one day while I was rinsing out some tights. ‘It's quite hard to cross that boundary between being a paid helper and a friend. It's something we need to work on.'

I refrained from commenting that she hadn't had any trouble vaulting the boundary where Christian was concerned. ‘I don't think there are any shortcuts when it comes to getting to know someone,' I said, giving the tights a final squeeze. I draped them over the airer, where they hung, repulsive, withered legs. ‘In fact,' I added with sudden inspiration, ‘I don't think you can know someone properly unless you knew them as a child.' I haven't a clue where this came from, but it felt irrefutable.

Elaine thought about this for a second. ‘There's nobody left who remembers me as a child,' she said. This seemed to me a tragedy that might bear investigating, but I didn't have the chance. She was off again: ‘I'll tell you what you should do with tights. Pop them in a pillowcase and stick them in the machine on your wool cycle. That's what I do. Saves you doing them by hand.'

‘I've only met her a couple of times,' Dad was saying, as he struck out for another length on his back. ‘And I confess I didn't pay her anything like the attention I would have if I'd known she was going to be my daughter-in-law.' His arms circled lazily. He was wearing a pair of black Nike swimming shorts, a recent extravagance. I had made it clear that I wouldn't be accompanying him any longer
if he persisted in turning up in knitted trunks.

‘She's rather bossy,' I said, catching up.

‘Maybe Christian wants someone to take him in hand,' said Dad.

‘She'll do that all right,' I muttered. An overweight elderly man overtook us in a fast, splashy crawl. We paused in our strokes for a second to ride the choppy wash.

‘It's you I feel sorry for,' said Dad. ‘Where will you go?'

‘I thought I might move back with you initially. If that's okay?'

‘Of course. Love to have you. If that's what you want. Though it seems a dismal life for a young woman.'

‘Anyway, he hasn't proposed yet, and she hasn't accepted,' I reminded him. ‘So let's not be hasty.'

‘But we are agreed it would be a good thing? For Christian.' Dad was beginning to register my lack of enthusiasm with concern.

‘What? You mean marriage?'

‘Yes. Love, marriage, and all that it entails. I'm rather glad to think of Christian having a companion in his old age.'

‘Well, he had me for companionship,' I pointed out.

‘I was thinking of those comforts you can't give him,' Dad said, not looking directly at me. ‘There's more to marriage than sharing a house.'

‘Yes, I suppose so.' I thought of Mum and Dad, living thousands of miles apart, and yet still married, still apparently devoted. Once Christian and I were completely settled in our adult life Mum had felt a calling once again to use her medical training, and was now working as a volunteer in a health centre in Eastern Nepal. She came home for four weeks each year. Dad didn't want to go with her: his
calling was to stay near Christian, and so they'd ended up in this curious state of loving separation, communicating by phone and letter, each obedient to their own calling and respectful of each other's. It was a modern marriage, all right, and had very little to do with sharing a house.

We'd done our thirty lengths by now, and the top of my head was still dry. Dad hauled himself out and hobbled across the pimpled, non-slip tiles to the changing rooms while I had a quick steep in the hot tub. Since Mum went away, Dad has discovered he can cook, rather well in fact, and so I generally go back to the flat (formerly the ground floor of the Old Schoolhouse) for lunch on Tuesdays. Bread is his speciality. He does all sorts of interesting variations: rosemary and onion or bay and vanilla, but he'll happily get a recipe book out of the library and work through it methodically and without fear. Another consequence of Mum's absence, and the sale of the Old Schoolhouse, is a slackening of the purse-strings, of which those Nike trunks were just the latest manifestation.

Today it was minestrone soup with goat's cheese bread. I watched him frisking round the kitchen, laying the table, humming along to the lunchtime requests on Classic FM. As always, he hadn't bothered to comb his hair out after swimming, so it had dried in a great white thatch (his eyebrows and nose-hair had retained their ginger coloration). I noticed he'd bought a piece of parmesan the size of a house-brick, and one of those battery-operated graters – further evidence of this newfound frivolity. I gave the machine an experimental squeeze and it whirred into life, showering the table with shreds of cheese. ‘It tastes so much nicer fresh,' he explained. ‘I don't think that dried stuff is cheese at all. I think it's dandruff.'

On the poster-sized calendar stuck to the side of the fridge he'd written ESTHER – SWIM in every Tuesday slot for the whole year. Given that our arrangement is cast in iron I found this, like so much about Dad, touching, but completely daft.

‘If Christian and Elaine do get married,' he said, as we ate our soup, ‘your mother might come back for the wedding.'

‘Ah, that's why you're so in favour,' I said, and he smiled. I told him about my visit to the primary school and my encounter with the living ghost-child of Penny. ‘I thought I might follow it up,' I said, helping myself to another handful of loaf. ‘I'd be curious to find out what she's doing now.'

Dad looked dubious. ‘Do you think that's a good idea?'

‘Yes. Why shouldn't it be?'

‘Well . . . I don't know. It seems rather unfortunate timing. Just when Christian's finally fallen in love. Has it occurred to you he might not want any reminders of that time?'

‘He doesn't have to meet her if he doesn't want to. She was my friend too.'

‘I'm not sure that curiosity always needs to be satisfied.'

‘But without it we'd all still believe in a flat earth,' I protested.

‘I don't like to think of anyone getting hurt,' he said, clearing away the plates and the subject. ‘Speaking of the flat earth, I've got a puzzle for you.' He pointed to a diamond-shaped pencil outline on the wallpaper above the kitchen table. I'd noticed it before but never remarked on it. ‘You see that piece of stained glass above the back door? Well, at noon on the longest day every year the sun falls on it so that a blue diamond of light lands just there. You can see
where I've drawn round the shape. Now last year it had moved by about a centimetre. How do you account for that? Is the earth shifting on its axis?'

I didn't have an answer off pat, but I promised I'd look into it. He often sends me off with some brain-teaser that needs solving. When I got home I asked Christian for his scientific view of the matter and he tittered at Dad's suggestion.

‘The door frame's probably warped,' was his unromantic suggestion. ‘Or the house is subsiding.'

On reflection I had to agree that this was the more likely explanation, though it was rather an anticlimax: the earth hadn't moved at all, just our small corner of it.

I MET GEOFF,
as usual, in the bar of the George and Dragon at Westerham. We're there every second and fourth Wednesday of the month. It's easy to remember because the council recycling lorry, which comes to collect our old newspapers and empties, works on exactly the same timetable. I have to drag the black and green boxes to ‘the edge of the curtilage', as the leaflet put it, by 7 a.m., or they're left to fester for another fortnight.

We always sit in the same place if it's free: a pair of old brown armchairs by the fire, the best imitation of hearth and home that we can manage. We fixed on Westerham because it's well outside the catchment area of the surgery and a good distance from Geoff's house, so there's less chance of bumping into patients or friends of his wife. Although he has to pass fairly near the end of my road to get there we still take the precaution of travelling separately. Geoff's alibi for these encounters is a
wholly fictitious ‘peer review committee', about which his wife appears to exhibit no curiosity. She once commented on the fact that he smelled of cigarettes, after which he was forced to invent a colleague on the panel who's a heavy smoker. Neither of us derives any pleasure from these deceptions, and we don't make a habit of discussing them.

Tonight I could tell that my news about Christian had unsettled him. Routine is the calm water on which this strange relationship is kept afloat: any intimations of change are like a rock thrown in the pool.

‘I wonder why we never foresaw something like this happening,' said Geoff, swilling ice round in his vodka. One of our founding principles was that we would never leave our partners. We hadn't allowed for the possibility that one of them might leave us.

‘Because Christian is such a recluse. He never met anyone till now. He works from home; he's got a few friends, but they're blokes or married couples. He hardly ever puts himself in situations where single women are available.'

‘But you must have female friends. Didn't you ever introduce any of them to him?'

‘He's met Rowena, but she's totally unsuitable. She's a compulsive divorcee. Anyway, he's never asked me to introduce anyone.'

‘How has he managed all this time without female company?'

‘I'm female company, aren't I?'

‘That wasn't what I meant.'

‘Oh, I see. Mike, the carer before last, used to bring girls round to give Christian a massage. I used to think they were friends of his, but I'm coming round to the idea that they
were prostitutes. It would be odd for one man to know so many physiotherapists, don't you think?'

Geoff laughed. ‘Your naivety has a charm all of its own. Anyway, it's not Christian I'm worried about. It's you. Where will you live?'

‘Oh, I'll be all right.'

‘You don't own any of the equity in the house?'

‘None at all. It was all paid for by Christian's mystery benefactor. I've lived there rent free. I'm just a sponger,' I said cheerfully.

‘And I don't suppose you've set aside any money for a rainy day?' Geoff said.

‘Well I put all my tips in a big jar, and then at the end of the year—' I tailed off. I could tell Geoff was finding the informality of my financial arrangements unnerving.

‘You'll never be able to buy a place round here on what Rowena pays you. How much did you earn last year?'

‘Oh, last year was a good year. Twelve thousand pounds.' Geoff looked aghast. ‘But that includes the money I got for that book prize. I can't expect that much every year.'

‘Esther, have you any idea how much it costs to rent a flat, or even a hovel, in this part of the world?'

‘Yes.' Only that morning Elaine had left the local
Property News
lying open at the Lettings page for me to see. ‘I'll probably have to move to Glasgow or Salford, or somewhere.' I said this in the same breezy tone, without thinking how it would be interpreted.

Geoff went quiet. He was chewing the inside of his mouth: a sign of anxiety. ‘How would we ever see each other?' He had drawn away from me fractionally and his face had that hurt look that he sometimes wears when I've
said something that appears to disparage the quality of our relationship.

‘I was joking,' I said. ‘Of
course
I'm not going to move miles away. I couldn't leave Christian, or Dad. Or you,' I added, but he wasn't listening; his mind was already racing ahead, trying to formulate solutions.

‘I wish I could think of some way to help you out. I ought to be able to – I earn enough. But Mary does all the finances: she'd notice if large amounts of money started vanishing from the account.'

Now it was my turn to look affronted. ‘Set me up in a little flat, you mean? That's a repulsive idea. I might as well go on the game.'
Splash
. Another rock for the pool.

‘I didn't mean that. I wasn't trying to suggest . . . oh, Christ.'

‘I've never taken any money from you,' I went on. ‘We've always been equals. I can't stand the thought of being “kept” like a pet poodle.' My voice tends to turn shrill when I'm indignant: I can hear myself sounding like a drag artist's idea of a battleaxe. At the bar several heads turned in our direction.

‘Look, I'm sorry,' Geoff whispered, trying to head off a scene. We never quarrel: it's another founding principle. ‘I only want to help you. I love you and I don't want to see you struggling. It's only natural. Why shouldn't I give you money? I've got plenty: you haven't. I've just got to work out a way to do it discreetly.'

‘I don't know why you're making such a drama out of this,' I said, lowering my voice to match. ‘It's my problem, not yours. Anyway, it's emotional support I want from you, not strategies. You're as bad as Elaine.'

Geoff shook his head and went up to the bar for more
drinks. I thought that would bring an end to the subject and we could get back to familiar territory: his kids' progress at school and university, the antics of his more eccentric patients (anonymous). But as soon as he sat down again he said in a great rush, as though he'd been rehearsing while at the bar, ‘You say we've always been equals, and that's the strength of our relationship, but that's just my point: we're not going to be equals any more and that's what worries me.'

‘Why aren't we?'

‘Because you're free and I'm not. And pretty soon you'll realise that the little I can offer you isn't enough.'

‘I've always known how much of you I could have. And I've never asked for more, have I?'

‘No. But when your circumstances change and you don't have Christian to look after or to keep you company any more, maybe you will.' Geoff is what you might call a predictive worrier. He believes that foreseeing problems that will in all likelihood never happen somehow arms him against them. I think it gives him gastritis.