The Kindness (18 page)

The pages are lined with tiny writing in a variety of pencil and pens, he evidently hadn’t been as fetishistic about his writing implements in his student days. The plot hadn’t wavered over years of thwarted good intentions. His Eve was a feminist who argued long and energetically with her Adam in their bower, a flat above a fruit market. He’d sketched her out arriving on her bicycle in her black and white hooped tights and don’t-fuck-with-me boots: ‘her basket overspilling with bunches of marigolds, bright as her hair, and crammed with vegetables from the market . . .’

Marigolds as bright as her hair
. Well, that could be changed. It made him snort. But this was it. The thing that he’d been attempting before Mira became ill. The falcon. The obscuring clouds. And for the briefest beat of a wing all the pieces fall back into place.

Fourteen

Easter had been a time of illness and short tempers, with no time for Julian to do anything much with the book that was stubbornly rising, this scattering of Post-its on his desk the only proof he had ever started. One night he rose from his bed with the title being whispered in his ear and crept downstairs to his desk, still dreaming as he wrote it down. Afterwards, sleepwalking back up the stairs, he had stumbled on the landing and woken Mira.

He was waking in the mornings with whole scenes writing themselves but no time to get them down. There was the script for
Fletch le Bone II
to finish and Julia had already done what she could by taking Mira to London with her for a few days: Mira liked sleeping on Heino’s little day bed in Lamb’s Conduit Street, but not all the trailing around in the van, especially not a man in an office who shouted at her for dropping fistfuls of gravel into his executive loo.

Now Mira was ill. While she slept off her fevers, he wrote. On the days when she was better he got no work done at all. The days and nights until Julia’s return stretched before him like a junkyard for broken deadlines.

Most of the meals he prepared for Mira ended up in the dog. Several times she pleaded with him to take her to the village to feed the ducks or to be clucked over by the Miss Hamlyns in the village shop where she eyed the Easter eggs, finally choosing one for Julia with Maltesers inside. She was tearful and wanted to sit curled into him on the window seat, with her rabbit hot-water bottle on her tummy. He read to her while she dozed, with his script already in overtime and thoughts of his book penetrating almost every waking hour.

Eventually they went to Dr Andrews who felt her tummy, said that it was probably constipation and sent them home with some powder for her orange juice. He took her walking by the river so the roses would bloom in her cheeks but still she looked wan. He carried her on his back and she nodded off with her head on his shoulder, while the words he wanted to write blazed briefly and disappeared like smuts on the breeze.

It was on one of these walks that he ran into Katie’s mother. Penny Webster stopped him to chat, stroking Mira’s sleepy cheek. ‘Katie will be in Horton soon. She’s bringing Billy and Arthur, so there’ll be someone for this little one to play with,’ she said.

Back at Firdaws, Julia exploded: ‘What, just Katie? No husband?’ She stared into Julian’s eyes until he found himself staunching a flush of unearned guilt. It rose unbidden from who knew where as she mocked: ‘Oh Jude, Ju-ju, Jooo-ooood.’

‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘Do you have to?’

But yes, it appeared she did have to.

There had been a letter once, on blue paper, Katie’s writing on the matching blue envelope. He remembers Julia reading it, cross-legged on his bed at Mrs Briggs’s, naked but for his dressing gown, which had become separated from its belt. Julia’s pregnancy was showing almost immediately with a dark line that ran from her navel to her pubic hair, her slim ribcage was out-proportioned by the new and astonishing swell of her breasts. Katie’s letter was shaking in her hands. ‘Well, that is really very unpleasant,’ was all she said, abruptly gathering the dressing gown around her and reaching for his lighter. Sheet by sheet she burned the pages of that letter, holding each by its corner until there were only three tiny blue triangles in his ashtray, the rest of it curling ash. She cried for a bit but refused to let him know what Katie had written. Whatever it was was enough to turn Julia hostile whenever Katie was around.

On Good Friday Julia returned from London early. It didn’t help that he hadn’t heard her van pull up. It was bright and there was actual warmth in the sun for the first time that year. He was lying in the hammock with Mira and Billy, a canopy of apple blossom between them and the sky. Katie and Arthur were making daisy chains close enough to listen while he told them a Fletch le Bone adventure. He knew how it looked.

But still he stayed put as her shadow fell over them.
When the cat’s away the mice will play
on repeat in his head, so it was hard to work out if he wasn’t secretly punishing her for going away. ‘Very cosy,’ Julia said, turning tail as Katie stumbled to her feet, brushing daisies from her lap.

They didn’t speak until Katie and the boys were gone and Mira was settled. He brought tea for them to drink in bed, found her sitting at the dressing table in her white shirt and pants. ‘So now she’s breaking up with her husband. Is that it?’

He shrugged, tired of the conversation already. ‘They’re having problems. He’s a shagger.’

‘Oh, what timing. She’s going to be here all the time, I suppose. That’s nice for you.’

‘You have nothing to be jealous about,’ he said, watching in the mirror as she attacked her tangles with a brush. He was weakened by the sight, wishing they could get this row over with and get on with being naked. Lady Lilith’s hair crackled, her cheeks ablaze.

She tugged at a knot, grimaced. ‘I knew you’d think it’s all about jealousy,’ she said.

‘Hardly surprising, the way you behave around her.’ He reached out to touch her. She’d been away for three nights, it was hard not to leap at her.

She drew away. ‘I will never forgive her for what she wrote. It’s not me being jealous.’ She threw the hairbrush on the bed and abruptly changed to a subject of equal fury. ‘And what about this place? I suppose you’re going ahead with the builders?’

‘What?’

The men were due to start work demolishing the kitchen and the Nicholsons’ bathroom the following week.

‘This is getting silly, your priorities are all wrong,’ Julia said, but he’d gone ahead and paid the builders half up front. She was right, a bit of help over the nursery-school holidays would have been a more sensible use of the money.

Mira started running a temperature almost the moment Julia left for London. He laid cold flannels across her head and wondered if Dr Andrews was right, that she really was starting to sicken for her mother during these midweek absences.

But the next day Mira was better, though still talking about tummy ache and being picky about her food. She was dangling a sausage for Zeph.

Mary Poppins, where are you? Hello, Nurse Matilda? Mrs Doubtfire? The phone was ringing but not a moment to answer it as he tried to commit his waking thoughts to paper. He’d dreamt an entire scene. Julia and Raph, a sunlit road. Julia walking along the verge, her mouth and hands stained by berries from the Pick Your Own at Horton Farm. She has brought a basket of fruit, has selected the juiciest berries. The strawberries so sweet he could taste them as he woke. He could still see her: face upturned and gently mocking, the sun glancing from golden callipers that Raph was pressing to her features to demonstrate Fibonacci perfection. The phone stopped ringing.

Mira was down to her last pair of pants, he had to get the washing on. Zeph leapt for the sausage. ‘Stop it, Mira!’ he snapped. ‘It’ll be your fault if he gets your finger.’

‘Horrible sausage,’ she said when he insisted she at least try it. ‘And Dadoo, you’re a horrible sausage too!’ she added, pushing her plate away and glaring at him.

Outside there was the honking of a car horn. Through the window he saw Katie at the wheel: Lady Madonna in dimples and fur, a vision emerging from her mum’s white Volvo. In the back Billy and Arthur bouncing in their seats. He ran to the door with Mira in tow. Katie came across the grass smiling lopsidedly at them, the fur collar of her coat lending a glamour to her jeans and wellies.

‘There are lambs at Tiggy’s Farm Park that you can feed with a bottle. Does Mira want to come? I’ve got a spare car seat . . .’

He thanked his lucky stars Julia had already departed as Mira threw herself at Katie and the boys. Without looking back at him, she pulled on her wellies and clambered across Billy’s legs and into the seat between them.

‘Well, that’s decided then,’ he said, laughing, and Katie came in with him to grab Mira’s coat.

‘I’ll take her back to ours for lunch and a play afterwards if that’s OK with you,’ she said.

‘To tell you the truth, that’d be more than OK, Katie.’ He ran both hands through his hair, making it stick up. ‘I’m not getting any work done at all.’

She looked at him as though he were simple. ‘You should have said something. I’ve got stuff going on for the boys all the time we’re down here. They’re running me ragged, but I’m very happy for Mira to come over and play if you need to write.’

‘Really? Oh, Katie, you’ve no idea.’ He was looking beyond her, to a squeal from the back of the car, Mira leaning over to tickle Billy.

She grinned at him, full-on dimples.

‘Are you sure? I’m late with about a hundred things and Julia isn’t back until Friday to take over with Little Miss Oh Majesty Who Must Be Obeyed over there.’

‘Why don’t you let me take her off your hands?’

He could’ve kissed her – to be honest he did, right there at the front door of Firdaws, with the children watching, lifting her up to deliver it and then another when he put her down and saw that he’d made her blush.

Mira loved Billy and Arthur, her ‘naughty boys’, and with almost insulting alacrity waited at the door each morning with her haversack packed and ready for Katie’s arrival. While Mira was gone he worked like a maniac, getting himself back on track with the wretched
Fletch le Bone II
. He even found time for the other thing, which was emerging as surely as the cyclamens that were pushing up shoots around the apple trees where he swung her.

Tuber. Tumour. His book. The secret things had all been swelling and growing.

The alien land of his desk testifies to how he squandered the time he could’ve spent with her, swarming as it is with messages to himself from a previous dimension, from the time before they knew she was ill. He starts peeling the Post-its, slowly, deliberately, screwing each one into a ball to aim at the wastepaper basket.

Zeph barks at the sound of voices and Julian follows him to the porch. Jenna and Michael are approaching across the fields, hand in hand, the sun low through the branches behind them so he has to shield his eyes. His mother picks through the stubble, nimble as a cat, Michael less so, in fact, he notices as they get closer, Michael is hobbling.

He points to his leg and then at Jenna: ‘She made me walk all the way back from Sue’s because she thinks I’m too drunk to drive.’

Jenna ignores him and starts talking of lamb and couscous. Julian could stick his fingers in his ears as they follow him inside and she wails about okra and red shallots. ‘They’re all still in the car. We left the shopping!’ She gives Michael a light cuff around the ear as punishment. ‘I told you not to let her open the second bottle,’ she says. Michael tries to pinch her bum, but she skips away. They’re both flushed in the face, as much from Sue’s wine as the walk home. Jenna looks at him expectantly. ‘The shopping? Julian, would you?’

He forces himself to do the right thing, sticks out his hand with a sigh.

‘Give me the keys if you’ve locked the car.’ The phone rings and Jenna springs to answer it, no matter how many times he’s asked her to leave it.

She covers the mouthpiece. ‘It’s William,’ she says. ‘Again.’

He shakes his head at her.

‘Don’t you think you should speak to him? He’s a good friend to keep calling.’

‘I’m off to get your shopping from Sue’s. Tell him I’ll call him back.’

‘OK,’ she says and mouths after him. ‘But you never do.’

Michael steps forward: ‘Here, give me the phone.’

William? A good friend? William with his Clark Kent specs and button-down collars, and his rocket-fuelled ascent up the editorial ladder at Random House. William and his endless ill-fated romances. William: some godfather he’d turned out to be, stupid Larkin poem and then what? Mira might just as well not exist for all the attention he ever paid her. He never once visited her in hospital, but he was all over the phone now.

Since the naming party William had met Mira only once. It was at Cromwell Gardens, the first time Julia poppered her in to the terrifying baby bouncer with its inadequate-looking clamp on the doorframe. It still makes Julian chuckle to think of the look on Mira’s face as she boinged about, surprised by the power of her own tippy-toes, her expression growing so earnest anyone would’ve thought it was her
job
to bounce. He and Julia got the giggles watching her, but William just stood with a bottle of champagne about to pop, looking from them to Mira and not really getting it.

They drank William’s champagne and ate at the table in the bay of their plum-coloured sitting room. Julia had cooked osso bucco in honour of this rare visit and William told them all about his latest minx, while they ate with Mira passed between their laps and William trying to look interested in her latest achievements: the pot she could bash with a spoon, her sophisticated tastes, a piece of marrow bone grasped in her tiny greasy fist. They put Mira to bed between the main course and pudding and William feigned barfing when Julian changed her nappy on the sofa and Julia admonished him with a poke to the stomach. ‘Stop it! You’ll give her a complex.’