The Kindness (31 page)

They’re already running late, Julia can hear the build-up of traffic as she crosses back to the flat, the air thickening with fumes. She must remember to pack their new dresses still hanging in the wardrobe. The girls’ outfits are perfectly plain black linen, high to the neck and full at the skirt with a penitent placket of buttons up the back. In the chi-chi shop where she chose them, shortly after hearing her father had died, she snorted with delight to think of her girls looking so Amish. The dresses were expensive and they’d never be worn again. She wonders if Claudine might lend her the camera but thinks it’s probably bad taste to take photographs at a funeral. She can hear her mother going on about it already.

A pity. She pictures her daughters at the graveside, their lovely heart-shaped faces pale and serious above the black linen, Ruth’s hair escaping from her thick braids, Mira’s fine skin reflecting a single white Madonna lily she has clutched to her chest . . .

It’s still too early for the flower shop, but she’s shaken from this reverie by the rattling ching of its door. For a moment she thinks the blonde florist must have read her mind and be offering her lilies. ‘I’ve something for you,’ she says.

‘Oh?’

‘Hang on there a minute,’ she says. ‘You’re Julia, right? Staying with Heino, right?’ Julia nods and waits at the door while she turns and shouts into the back of the shop.

‘There’s a box been dropped off round the back for you. Someone’s shoved it in the yard with one of our deliveries from Holland. It’s quite heavy; if you wait there I’ll get Ken to bring it up to you.’

Ken has the box. It is old cardboard, bulging between criss-crosses of packing tape, the tape wound round so many times it’s impossible to tell what it might once have contained. A microwave oven or possibly a television, it’s that sort of size. She turns and stops Ken halfway up the stairs, impatient to see the writing on the label. She braces herself and holds out her arms to take it from him. ‘Honestly, Ken, I can manage.’ He keeps hold of the box and though it’s dark on the stairs she sees the familiar spaced block capitals and her heart starts to kick like a rabbit.

‘You open up, love, just tell me where to dump it.’

Somehow she gets the door unlocked and directs Ken to leave the box in the hall. The grandfather clock makes her jump as it dings the hour. Her nails make little impression on the densely woven packing tape. Damn, they’re seriously late setting off – and now
this
.

In the kitchen she kisses Heino good morning and flings the flimsy bag with the batteries at Mira, begs the girls to hurry up and finish.

Claudine holds out her hands for the Walkman: ‘Here, Mira,’ she says. ‘Let me sort that out for you.’ Heino proffers a cup of coffee and she takes it from him before his hand starts to shake too badly.

She’s still got things to pack and the hell of Ruth’s knotted hair. Mira’s kicking up the usual fuss about her vitamins, Heino wants to make sure she has his AA membership details. She bats them off and rummages through the drawer for the kitchen scissors, knows she has no option but to leave them all to it until she’s seen what’s inside the box.

It takes a few moments, alone with it in the dim light of the hall. The cardboard is deteriorating, spattered in places with pigeon guano – he’d clearly had it knocking around for a while. Her old jumper comes out first, half-eaten with mould, more mottled grey than lavender. It releases a cloud of dust when she shakes it. There are books: lots of musty paperbacks and the Andy Goldsworthy art books he’d bought her, with his inscriptions roughly ripped out, leaving only ragged margins. A broken radio spills leaking batteries, some old sketchbooks she’d somehow forgotten are stained on every page. She picks through it all, heart sinking, the dust making her cough, searching for a note among the tangles of filthy-looking clothing, but comes out with nothing more than the sorts of odds and ends you might find under a bed: single socks, dried-up old face cream in a lidless pot, an ancient gardening glove grown hard and calloused as a hand, bits of broken pottery, a tampon that has swelled and burst its wrapper, some crushed silk irises that he’d once bought for her hair, the brass padlock she’d given him in Paris. There was nothing more; no note, no further explanation. That was that.

She gathers the girls and their things and drives in hot silence, gulping back tears and furious with herself for allowing a box of rubbish to upset her so. The road is choked with cars beneath a smothering grey sky, there is nothing on the radio to distract her, only noise.

She blows a kiss at Mira in the rear-view mirror and Mira instantly lowers her lashes in return. She starts overtaking, has to check herself for speeding, feels a surge of self-righteousness recalling the message she’d left on Julian’s answerphone. She hadn’t had time to work out what to say before she began speaking. How had she put it? That even after five years she still thought of him tenderly, with happy memories, and it was becoming clear that Mira did too. It really had been lovely to hear his voice on the machine and easy to summon warmth as she found the words. And his response? To send her that box of rubbish.

She brushes away a tear, checks in the mirror that the girls haven’t noticed. However hard she tries she cannot summon up a picture of Julian being so hateful. Why didn’t he simply bin those things? Did he collect it all up in one industrial-cleaning-style purge? It catches in her throat to think of him dangling her old jumper, transporting it to the box at arm’s length with the sort of euwww on his face he reserved for clearing up one of the dog’s accidents.

The girls are mercifully quiet in the back and, surprisingly, not squabbling. Mira is stupefied by her stories and Ruth has dozed off with the family-selection pack of sweets that Claudine gave them for the journey clutched to her chest.

There’s altogether too much time to dwell as she takes the motorway, with only her mind’s eye to fill the void between Karl’s empty seat and the road. She’s focused on the summer’s night Karl came to Cromwell Gardens. Julian was in Paris and she hadn’t been expecting him. Since the zoo, she and Karl had taken great care never to be alone together.

The first Julia had known of Paris was the morning Julian left. She came in from the glasshouse to find him running in little circles, his words erupting in great bursts, so it took a while to grasp what he was on about. His smile was infectious as he bounced from their strawberry-coloured walls, holding out his hands to her.

‘Come on, Julia, come with me. A whole week in Paris at the film company’s expense,’ he said.

And she’d wanted to go with him, really she had, but she and Freda were in the middle of an installation and it couldn’t have come at a worse moment.

She’d never seen him so excited. ‘Wow, and I’ve always wanted to work with Claude De’Ath. Apparently he’s fired the last guy and come up with my name and had them track me down.’

He wanted her to dump everything, had bodily lifted her, laughing and protesting, sat her on the kitchen counter to talk sense into her, but though the thought of being parted from him was almost unbearable, she promised instead that she’d fly out on the morning of his birthday. He punched her on the arm, called her a swot and a yuppie. She punched him back: ‘Feckless loon.’ There was barely time for a quickie before he ran for his flight.

The bath at Cromwell Gardens stood on four gilded feet cruel with talons and claws. It was double ended and so vast it took a whole boilerful of hot water to fill. The chipping and greening of the enamel made her think it was almost certainly original to the building. It was rare for Julia to find herself sloshing about in it without Julian, and she had to wedge her knees against its sloping sides to stop herself slipping under. She had the water as hot as she liked. When she climbed out for a flannel, an enjoyable scald was reddening her skin. She added some mandarin oil to the water, sniffed the delicious steam and added a second, bigger slug. With her hair wound and clipped to the top of her head, she pressed the nape of her neck into the roll-top and tried to relax. She thought of putting on some music, but that would mean getting out again, and decided instead to try and enjoy the absolute quiet of finding herself alone. She wondered what Julian was doing about dinner in Paris. She stretched a leg along the edge of the bath and, though she didn’t normally bother, found a great luxury in soaping it and running Julian’s razor along it and then its twin until they were slippery smooth.

She was having some success relaxing in the swirls and steam, when the doorbell burst in. The fourth ring came accompanied with knocking. The only thing to hand was Julian’s old dressing gown so she wrapped it around herself and cursed him for its lack of a belt.

She opened the door to find Karl standing there. ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking quickly away, ‘I thought your bell wasn’t working.’ His hair curled around his collar, a little longer and scruffier than the last time she’d seen him, yet he was so clean-shaven his skin shone. He was rumpled and hot from his journey, two bottles of wine gripped by their necks, one in either hand.

‘I couldn’t remember if you and Julian liked claret or Burgundy,’ he said, showing her the labels. ‘So I got both.’ He leant and kissed her cheek. His lips were the only part of him that touched her because of the bottles in his hands. She gripped the dressing gown in a bunch at her chest. It had taken on a slightly doggy smell. She could feel her face sweating from the steam. Karl was looking expectantly into the hall behind her. ‘He’s in Paris,’ she said, taking a step backwards.

Karl’s eyebrows shot clear of the wire rims of his glasses. ‘He isn’t here?’ he said. ‘What, seriously? Paris?’

She nodded; if only she could get away from him, at least to get dry and put on some clothes. She twisted one foot around the other ankle, pulling Julian’s dressing gown tighter.

‘Why didn’t he call to let me know?’ Karl sighed deeply. ‘Honestly, Julia, he’s impossible. It’s taken me ages to get here, the tubes are really fucked tonight. Oh, sorry . . .’ He noticed her wet footprints, her bare feet.

‘Hang on a minute,’ she said, inviting him to follow her. The hallway was steamy from her bath. ‘You know where everything is,’ she waved in the direction of the kitchen.

She scarpered, down the hall, calling to him: ‘I’ll be right with you.’

In the bedroom she pulled on a jumper and jeans, sat briefly before the mirror and put cream on her face, released her hair from its band and brushed it free of knots.
That was all
.

Twenty-seven

Julia pulls into the services so that the girls can pee. Mira starts a fight with Ruth as soon as they leave the car. Her headphones have somehow become tangled around Ruth’s foot – the Walkman clatters on to the tarmac and Ruth’s heel briefly tramples the case. Mira runs at her, knocking her down, and Julia kneels to comfort Ruth and rub her knee, trying to simultaneously comfort the one and scold the other. She stands and places Mira’s hand firmly around Ruth’s. They both note the expression on her face and neither lets go.

She thinks of them the summer before, such good friends, bare-backed and tanned, holding hands without being forced to, rickrack skirts with ribbon waistbands, bright sunlight caught in their hair, Mira pointing to something in the far distance, and . . . Julia realises it’s a photograph she’s thinking of, one of a set on a sideboard at home, and despairs at how often and easily her memories seem to be replaced by snaps.

The girls brighten up when she buys them chips and allows them a Coke. Julian’s brass padlock is weighty on top of her purse, green verdigris fills the swooping double Js of its engraving and around the lock, the key is greeny black. Mira and Ruth trawl the motorway store begging for sweets and come to a halt at the comics. Each one is gaudy, with its own free gift taped to the front, pink plastic, starbursts of glitter. The girls eye them up, grading the toys. Julia stems the urge to point out that they should choose based on what’s between the covers. Instead she tells them to stay right there, and, sternly, that they are not to let go of each other’s hands.

She selects the booth where she can still see through into the shop and dials home. It’s eleven o’clock, six in the morning in Connecticut. She thinks of the Captain O’Shea House, the broad sweep of polished stairs to their bedroom. The light from the estuary bouncing on the ceiling, the walls chalk-white, the terrifying spectre of the unslept-in bed at its centre.

The phone rings on and on. She looks in disbelief into the receiver, its grime the colour of ear wax. She dials again, holding it an inch from her ear, but still Karl doesn’t answer. She tries his mobile but that appears to be switched off. She replaces the receiver, stares at the girls sprawling before the comics on the floor of the shop, tries to push her misgivings away, but they gallop in anyway and give her a muscular kicking.

The girls are happy for a while as they leaf through their comics in the back of the car, which is just as well because the traffic slows through the valleys, the drizzle turning to dense fog. Julia fixes her concentration to the tail lights of the car in front. There really is too much time to think on this journey.

When she came back from her bedroom Karl was waiting on the plum sofa, his phone clamped to his ear. ‘Bloody Julian. I can’t even get hold of him now,’ he said.

‘I don’t think there’s any reception at all where he’s working. Claude De’Ath’s studio is underground. He’s probably still at it,’ she said and slipped past to draw the curtains.