Relative Love (78 page)

Matt opened his mouth to say ‘Fucking hell’ only to remember that his son had reached an age where mimicry of adults was a prime pastime. ‘Come on, let’s run,’ he suggested instead, squatting in as friendly a manner as he could manage, given the inclemency of the weather, his rising ill temper and the already visibly drooping egg-boxes in his arms. ‘Please, Josh,’ he begged, inwardly cursing Kath for the unprecedented act of commanding him south of the river on a Friday afternoon, when he had planned to catch up on his paperwork and go straight to the theatre from the office.

Joshua paused, merely, as it turned out, to summon extra breath before raising the pitch of his protest to new heights. Matt cast an anxious glance up at the church, fearful that Miss Harris or one of her band of pretty young assistants might be judging this spectacle of failing parental control through a slit in the door.

‘Now calm down,’ he commanded, exasperation making it impossible to sound calm himself. ‘Okay, then, Dad will run.’ He crammed the artwork into his briefcase, hoiked his son back up into his arms and set off at a gallop for home, gritting his teeth against the awkwardness of his load. Only at the sight of their three-bedroomed terraced home, set in the middle of a long line of Georgian houses in various states of repair and dilapidation, did Matt slow his pace. By which time his eyes were so full of rain he could hardly see and Joshua was jigging round his hips with all the glee of a jockey approaching a finishing post.

‘There now, not so bad, was it?’ Breathing heavily, Matt leaned against the door to recover while Joshua shouted through the letterbox. When there was no response, Matt found his own keys and let them in.

Given their dripping state, it seemed a reasonable idea to have a bath. Josh, used to having to wait until after tea for this most precious time of day, was so excited at the news that he rushed upstairs still in his coat and muddy shoes. Dropping his keys on to the hall table, Matt slung his coat over one of the two laden hooks wedged behind the door, frowning absently at the amount of clobber apparently required by a family of three. He felt a familiar stab of longing for the early echo of emptiness when he and Kath had moved in five years before, when their possessions were too few to fill every room, when the paint smelt fresh and the stripped floorboards gleamed with varnish. Coming from a cramped flat in Shepherd’s Bush, the Kennington house had felt huge, full of possibilities, a wonderful blank sheet waiting to have its identity splashed upon it. That such an identity was to include a child had come as something of a surprise. Only four months after moving in, Kath, who hadn’t had periods since an anorexic phase in her teens, and who had feared that recent bouts of exhaustion and nausea might be heralding the onset of ME, discovered instead that she was twelve weeks pregnant. The clutter had started then, with the investment in Moses baskets, breast pumps and prams – a mere taster for the paraphernalia of toddlerhood and all the more sophisticated gadgets of the fully mobile child. Matt had waved gleeful farewells at stair gates and baby walkers only to find them replaced by trikes, trucks and large items of plastic weaponry.

Finding nothing of interest among the morning’s post, Matt dropped the envelopes back on to the hall table next to a vase of weary-looking flowers. He stretched and yawned deeply, running both hands back through his wet hair. Momentarily forgetting his excursion to the barber’s that morning, he was surprised to feel how little there was to get hold of, and stooped to reassure himself of his appearance in the hall mirror. Kath would like it, he was sure. She had a thing about short hair on men, particularly men with slightly receding hairlines and not as much to boast about on top as they would have liked. It made him look older, but more sophisticated too, more modern even, he decided, flexing his eyebrows and noting with mild surprise that the brightness of his eyes betrayed none of the exhaustion he felt inside. Before turning away, he cast a scowl of dissatisfaction at the rest of his reflection, thinking, as he always did, that being in proportion was at least some consolation for never having quite reached the magic milestone of six foot. Kath in heels was easily as tall as him. But then Kath was a particularly tall lady, eyes level with his chin even in her bare feet.

Upstairs, promising tap noises had been superseded by an ominous silence. Arriving out of breath at the bathroom door, Matt was relieved to find his son neither imperilled nor visibly wetter than before, but sitting on the white-tiled bathroom floor tugging crossly at the zipper on his coat. Next to him the bath was full but by no means overflowing.

‘Good boy, well done.’ Matt knelt down and tried to intervene with the zip, which had caught a wedge of material in its teeth.

‘Josh do it.’

‘But Daddy can —’

‘Josh do it.’

‘Fine. Josh do it.’ Matt sighed and began peeling off his own clothes, dropping them into a heap behind the door and then crossing to the loo to pee.

‘Daddy’s willy,’ remarked his son, pointing.

‘Yes, which, like Daddy, is getting in the bath. But not Josh because he won’t let Daddy help with his clothes.’ Seeing this observation induce a distinct tremble in the lower lip, Matt executed a comical jumping entry into the water by way of encouragement and diversion. A moment later he was back out again, skidding on the wet tiles and emitting a string of unfatherly profanities. Joshua, who assumed such eccentric behaviour to be all part of the afternoon’s entertainment, clapped in appreciation.

‘It’s cold, Josh … cold … bloody icy … bloody hell.’

‘Mummy says only touch the green one.’

‘Yes, well … quite right. Mummy is quite right, of course.’ Matt put the toilet seat down and sat with a towel round his shoulders, gloomily contemplating the mercurial challenge of seeing to the needs of a small child. Tiny slugs of mud had worked their way out of the ridges in the soles of Joshua’s desert boots, converting the white-tiled floor to a sea of smeary brown. Having successfully removed the anorak, his son was grappling with the double knots on his shoes, his breathing heavy with concentration. Taking in the scene, Matt felt a rush of longing for Kath, for her power to impose domestic order, for permission to be released back into the infinitely more manageable world of his career. He was covering Noël Coward’s
Private Lives
that evening
,
a star-studded revival which promised to be as pleasurable to watch as it would be to write about. The theatre’s press agent, an American called Beth Durant, had agreed to meet him in the bar before the start with a view to discussing a feature interview with the actress playing the part of Amanda. If it came off it would be Matt’s first brush with true celebrity, a real feather in the cap, both for the paper and his own career. The actress, a twenty-eight-year-old RADA-trained Hollywood success story called Andrea Beauchamp, was blessed not only with considerable talent but also with the kind of private life to set the heart of any journalist ticking with expectation.

Seeing Joshua now beginning to sob with impatience over his footwear, Matt dangled his wristwatch – a much-prized toy – by way of a diversionary peace offering. ‘You do this, Dad does your clothes, okay? And we’ll have bubbles,’ he added, turning the hot tap on full and tipping in several capfuls of the green slimy substance in which Kath liked to soak herself.

Half an hour later Matt took some satisfaction in propping a somewhat perfumed but pleasingly spruce child among the sofa cushions, together with a bag of crisps and the console for their old video player. Joshua pounced on it with his usual dexterity, eighteen months of nursery school having done little to encourage similar proficiency with anything in a pencil case. Particularly favoured was the rewind button, used to watch clips that he liked especially, sometimes four or five times on the trot. While mildly disturbed by the habit, Kath and Matt had long since given up trying to put a stop to it, not only to avoid tantrums, but because it converted a measly twenty-minute cartoon into an entertainment of feature-length proportions.

Upstairs Matt made a desultory attempt to clean up the mess in the bathroom, wiping his already damp chinos and shirt across the smeared floor before stuffing them into the laundry basket for Kath to deal with the following day. Pulling on the clean-ish set of clothes draped over his bedroom chair, he headed down to the kitchen, where he made a cup of coffee and reached for the phone.

‘Gemma, it’s me. The message from Kath – she didn’t happen to say when she would be home, did she?’

‘No, don’t think so. Just for you to pick up Josh because she was going out.’

‘Going out?’

‘That’s what she said.’

‘Right. Thanks.’

‘Is there a problem?’

‘No, not at all. She’s probably on a foray to Tesco’s and got snarled up in rush-hour traffic. See you Monday. Have a good weekend.’ Matt slammed the receiver down, wishing for by no means the first time that Kath would set aside her obstinacy about getting a mobile phone. Everyone had them these days, but then his wife always had been one for swimming against the tide. He wallowed in annoyance for a few minutes before wondering if perhaps he should be worried instead. What if she had been in a crash? Or been mugged? An image of Kath lying knifed in a gutter flickered and died. More likely she was with Louise, he decided angrily, reaching for the address book to look up the number of Kath’s oldest friend, who was married to a consultant and lived in Camberwell.

‘Hello?’ The voice sounded hesitant and rather young.

‘Is Louise there, please?’

‘She out. Au pair is speaking.’

‘Do you know where she has gone?’ Matt delivered the question with exaggerated slowness, drumming his fingers on the wall next to the phone.

‘Is drink with friend.’

‘Ah. Which friend? Do you know which friend?’

‘Which friend.’

‘The friend is called Kath?’

‘I think yes.’

‘Thank you very much. Sorry to have troubled you.’ Reassured, Matt checked the kitchen clock, glad to see that there was still a good hour to go before he needed to think about getting himself back across the river into town.

About the Author

Amanda Brookfield has written fifteen novels. She has two grown-up sons and lives in London.

1998

Chapter One

At Frances’s insistence there were to be no black ties. The service would be a celebration of Paul’s life. A successful, happy, astonishingly trouble-free half-century that had culminated in the most wonderful – not to say timely – party just a couple of weeks before his death. Thanks to that there were even two cases of champagne to get the wake off to a good start. Afterwards, they could move on to the Volnay he had taken such pleasure in choosing during their holiday in France earlier that summer. Paul would approve wholeheartedly. He always liked a good party.

The more Frances said such things, the easier it became. As well as being true, such platitudes acted as crutches to help her through each day and deterred people from asking how she felt. No amount of kindness on the part of the enquirer could make up for the fact that Frances had no coherent view on her feelings, let alone any concept of how to articulate them. To die of a heart attack on a tennis court was not an end anyone could have predicted, least of all for a man with a natural appetite for moderation, a man for whom the term close shave applied solely to the activity of his razor. In terms of recent health scares, Frances could recollect nothing beyond a bad cough that had clung on into the spring and an infected mosquito bite which had required a course of mild antibiotics. Being so suddenly deprived of him felt like waking up and finding a limb had been removed in the night. There was the shock of it, the feeling that he was still there, the pain of imagining he was.

While friends and family seemed to derive some measure of consolation from the fact that Paul had died while indulging in one of his favourite pastimes, it was an aspect of the situation which gave Frances herself little comfort. A part of her could not help thinking that there was something undignified, comical even, about dying in pursuit of a forehand. Though unable yet to say such things out loud, she could feel them pressing at the edges of her grief, confusing it. Just as her indifference to Paul’s departure for the club that Sunday morning confused her, making her long to be able to lay claim to an inkling of a presentiment. The sheer mundanity of their behaviour during what turned out to be the last hours of their marriage made her almost ashamed. They had exchanged a kiss on the doorstep, but perfunctorily, without thought or tenderness. She couldn’t even remember their exact last exchange of words. It was not only sad, but inadequate. It made her wish that humans could write the script for their own endings, so that they could be approached with grace and preparation, like wedding anniversaries and christenings.