The Kindness (12 page)

‘It was while I was on maternity leave with Billy . . .’ Katie was saying. He wanted to ask her to get Mira’s room carpeted so she wouldn’t have to wear slippers when she got home. Her room at the hospital was shiny lino, the whole hospital was. ‘Camilla was his classroom assistant. Most original.’

He put down his pen, realised he was ravenous and stuffed his mouth with the burger. Katie was telling him she couldn’t stop dwelling on all the times she’d walked into the staffroom at break and everyone fell silent.

‘She had this ruby cross on a chain and they all knew he’d bought it for her.’

He thought of Mira in her hospital bed, her hand above the sheet, Julia’s arm reaching across from the camp bed to meet it.

‘It all started when they took a group rock climbing,’ Katie continued. ‘Adrian came back with a pulled ligament in his groin.
From the climbing
.’

The bartender came to clear away their leftover chips while Katie listed Adrian’s sins. There were complications over the sale of the house, she and the boys would have to stay on at her mum’s after the summer and she’d get whatever supply teaching she could. ‘I’m not going back there,’ she said, and held up her hand and a finger grown fat around her wedding ring. ‘And this has got to go . . .’

He asked the bartender for some butter, the least he could do, his list and plans ready for action in her bag. The bartender brought the butter in a basket with rolls. It was soft, almost melting, when he unwrapped it. He picked it up within the foil to smear it along her ring finger and she turned her head away as though from a medical procedure as he rubbed it in. He twisted the ring back and forth until it slid from her finger surprisingly easily.

She stared at her finger so shiny and bare. ‘Oh, I suppose that was really inappropriate of me,’ she said. ‘Asking you . . .’

He wiped the ring and handed it back to her. She still wore a band of paler skin. ‘Think of it as no more to me than the removal of a splinter,’ he said, making her stick out her lip at him: ‘That’s really very callous of you,’ and he shrugged apologetically. She smiled without showing her dimples and picked at one of the rolls. ‘I know I shouldn’t be going on about this,’ she said.

Ah, she meant well. In the bathroom he lathers his face. His conscience won’t leave him be: it wouldn’t hurt to be a little kinder to your one-time paramour, it says. Reaching for his razor, he clears the steam from the mirror and is hit by a wave of yearning so strong it makes him screw his eyes shut, but still he sees her splashing around at the opposite end, his Mira like a little elf with her hair in a topknot, watching him shave. Mira liked it when he squirted his foam on her face and she copied him shaving, using a lolly stick that had found its way to the bathroom, pulling all the right faces, jutting out her funny chin.

He squirts the foam and starts at his throat, leaning into the mirror. The bathroom is old-fashioned, unchanged since his father’s, or possibly even his grandparents’ time: a primrose suite that always made him think of lemon meringue pie, a brass rack across the bath with a round swivel mirror just right for resting a book. He runs more hot water, starts scraping at his face. His conscience rises around him in the steam: Remember, if it wasn’t for Katie, Firdaws would have stayed lost. No one else was going to tell you it was for sale. Not even Michael. He
kept
it from you. Bristles fall like timber into the snowy waste of his throat.

It was fate that he should be the one to take Mira for her booster that day or he would never have known that Firdaws was up for sale. He’d changed tubes at – haha, you gods – the Angel Islington and that’s when he saw her: Katie just ahead of him on the platform.

At first he wasn’t sure; her hair was different, much blonder. She grasped a tot firmly in each hand, a bulky canvas bag strapped to her back like a camel. She hadn’t yet seen him, but as he edged through the crowds he became convinced it
was
her. She scooped the younger boy on to her hip, his fat legs gripping her like a pair of nutcrackers, and as she turned to say something to him Julian clocked her smile: the one that spread more up one side of her face than the other, the double dimple in her cheek that made her unmistakably Katie, and he called out her name.

She was plumper than he remembered but still as pretty. Her bosom was back, he was glad to note. The last time he’d seen her, the grief of their break-up had shrunk her in a shocking way; the sight of her tiny breasts poking her thin T-shirt back then had made him want to throw himself at her feet and beg for forgiveness.

‘Katie?’ She turned, dipped her chin in disbelief. ‘Julian? Jude?’ She shook her children’s hands at him, dimples flashing. ‘What are you doing here?’

Three trains, four, filled and emptied while they talked, the air whooshing at them with gastric sighs, the boys squirming impatiently.

‘Billy. Arthur.’ She made them say hello. ‘I got married and then I got these.’ He ruffled Billy’s hair while she peeked into his pack where Mira was sleeping, her head lolling against his neck.

‘Ahhhhh . . .’ It came out slowly.

The lips he pressed to Katie’s cheek that day were those of a man who has been spared. ‘You’ve changed your perfume,’ he said, sniffing her neck. And she said: ‘Well, seven years is a long time, what do you expect?’

He couldn’t be late for the clinic so he scribbled down his number and slid it into her bag. The next tube was his.

‘You know Firdaws is up for sale?’ She said it quite casually as he climbed through the doors, and his heart missed a beat.

He was almost hysterical with excitement when he got back to Cromwell Gardens. Freda was on her way out to deliver plants, amber beads clacking. She pulled a face at Julia, he clearly wasn’t making much sense. He eased the backpack with Mira still strapped inside on to the floor while Julia went on chopping onions, her brow furrowing. ‘It’s almost too good to be true, this was meant to be.’ He danced round and grabbed her. ‘Firdaws, it’s for sale.’

She studied him hard, eventually putting down the knife and wiping her streaming eyes on her sleeve. ‘They told you that at the
health centre
?’ He didn’t answer. No point confusing things by mentioning Katie.

‘You should suck bread while you do that,’ he said, tearing off a crust and handing it to her.

She released Mira from the backpack. ‘What are you talking about, Julian?’ She swept her free hand through her hair, then smelt it. ‘Damn, onions.’

‘I have to get hold of the agent immediately. Mira was very brave about her injection, by the way, just one little cry,’ he said as he danced towards the phone.

‘Firdaws? Are you serious?’ she said, stopping him in his tracks.

‘Don’t you see? I’ll never get the chance again.’

‘This is ridiculous.’ She jerked her head away from him as he tried to pick some stray foliage out of her hair, perched Mira on her hip. ‘Have you thought for a moment about me?’ Mira started to cry. ‘I can’t commute from Firdaws and all my work is here. What am I supposed to do?’

‘We’ll sort something out,’ he said.

Mira was beside him like a partner in crime as they ran away together to Waterlow Park. Mira pulling him and stumbling so she was dangling on his arm but still urgently pointing at things she needed him to explain, to look at more closely. Dogs, birds, a comic left fluttering on the pavement, a 10p piece in the gutter. In the park, on a seat with ice-cream cones and the rhodoendrons in lurid flower, he told her of Firdaws, of her bedroom that used to be his with silver stars on the curtains, the fields she would run in, the lovely dog that would be hers. He promised he’d teach her to swim in the river and show her the baby birds in their nests. A squirrel was bold enough to hop beside them to hear these wondrous tidings. Julian held his finger to his lips, telling Mira to keep still. Breaking the end of his cone, he made a little scoop of ice-cream and the squirrel took it from him, staying on beside them, politely sitting on its breechy haunches, licking its miniature cornet like a tiny neat child, while he made up and whispered the things it was saying to her in its posh schoolboy voice until Mira’s explosion of giggles sent it scampering to the foot of a tree.

‘You
knew
?’ Before the end of the day he was standing in Michael’s office, the estate agent’s particulars shaking in his hand. He’d hurtled from the tube and through the elegant doors, the ignored receptionist sarcastic – ‘Well, good afternoon to you too’ – as he bowled past, Michael appearing on the curve of the stone stairs – ‘Julian?’ – and, noticing the set of his face, taking him by the sleeve and steering him into the conference room, gesturing for him to sit.

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Julian refusing the chair, slapping the property details on the table.

‘What?’ Michael standing beside him. ‘Oh, I see . . .’

‘Were you scared that if my mother found out about this she’d want to move back there? You’d have to retire if she persuaded you . . .’ Julian said. ‘What, retire to Firdaws and give up all this?’ sweeping his arm to indicate the room with its gleaming mahogany, the tall windows, the trees in the square just coming into leaf.

Michael shaking his head, saying: ‘How the hell do you think you’ll manage it?’ The receptionist popping her head around the door – ‘Coffee?’ – and retreating without waiting for an answer.

‘I’ll sell Cromwell Gardens. There’s plenty more work out there, you said so yourself. Oh, and I’ll postpone writing my novel.’

‘Again?’ Michael grimaced.

‘Look, Michael, I do know it won’t be easy . . .’

Michael pulled out the chair, persuaded him to sit. ‘That wasn’t really what I meant,’ he said and clearing his throat: ‘Have you thought about Julia? She seems very happy in her work. What will happen to her business if you move out there? All she’s built up? Are you expecting her to just drop everything?’ And Julian had been only slightly abashed to tell him that yes, that
was
what he was expecting. ‘It’s paradise, Julia will love it,’ he said. ‘I’ve never felt more certain of anything before in my life.’

Michael picked up the estate agent’s brochure, flipped past a photograph of the Nicholsons’ unpleasantly marmoreal kitchen. ‘That’s a hell of a lot of money for a man in your position,’ he said, stabbing a finger at the page.

‘It’s for Mira. Don’t you think she should have the chance to grow up at Firdaws? I’ve seen the children marching in crocodiles up the road past our flat. Grey school jumpers and matching grey faces. That’s not what I want for her. And it’s fate. Yes, that’s right. Don’t look at me like that; I’m not a total idiot, Michael. It’s there, the gates are ajar, I owe it to her . . .’

They’d outgrown Cromwell Gardens and that was a fact. Back at the flat he cast a critical eye. Julia’s sheets of graph paper were spread out at the table, her Caran d’Ache pencils arranged anyhow in the tin. In the alcove his desk, with everything pushed to the wall to stop Mira grabbing, his headphones lying across the pages of his half-baked script. He’d started work on that one with Mira crawling at his feet, no wonder it was taking so long. Hardly ideal. Mira’s baby room was tiny, they would have to move eventually. Not much more than a box room really, her cot beside a window with a view across their strip of lawn to Julia’s greenhouse, close enough to see the leaves pressing against the glass.

The bath is growing cold around him. His conscience won’t leave him be. Katie’s going through a hard time too, it reminds him. You’ll have to man up and go downstairs sooner or later. You’ve been in this bath for over an hour, it says. Look, the walls are dripping.

‘That’s better,’ Katie says as he comes down, rubbing his hair with a towel. He’s wearing a clean T-shirt and jeans. She nods her approval. There’s a bowl of raspberries on the table, each one perfectly plump. She’s been out into the garden to pick them; she’ll have seen how lax he’s been with the watering, how he just lets everything die.

She fills the silence with an update on her marital crisis, offers him eggs or pancakes. He shrugs. ‘You choose.’

‘Why do I always pick such rotters?’ she’s saying, cracking eggs into a bowl. ‘First of all you and then Adrian.’

His head is pounding, she’s opened all the windows, outside the buzzards scream. ‘Please, Katie?’

She stands from the table, her blonde ponytail swings. The air is thick with Pledge. The worksurfaces shine, she’s swept the floor, picked some sprays of jasmine for the table and dealt with the overflowing fridge and bins. She’s filled the bird feeder that hangs from the lintel and the blue tits tell him off for not having done it himself. She brings him the coffee pot and scrambled eggs, sits down to butter his toast.

He pours the coffee into two mugs, and for a moment, as he reaches for the milk, it’s Julia and not Katie he sees across from him at the table. Julia passing him the jug.

Katie offers him second helpings, tries to prompt him, reaches for his hands, tells him he should find someone he can talk to, makes him want to scream at the cod-psychology of it all. ‘I quite understand if it can’t be me,’ she says. The birds chatter at the feeder. Come on. Say something. She fiddles with the end of her ponytail. He wishes she’d leave. He’s overcome with tiredness.

‘Can I drag you out for a walk?’ she says, and at the word ‘walk’ Zeph jumps from his chair. ‘Just to the river and back?’