The Men and the Girls (26 page)

Kate. Joss felt in such a muddle about everything that she didn't know if Kate was Mum any more or just Kate, now. When she had found Kate, to her utter amazement, washing up glasses at the sink in Richmond Villa, Joss had felt a sudden surge of being Kate's child again; there Mum was, in context, familiar and expected, washing up at the sink where she had washed up since Joss was just a little kid. It had knocked Joss off balance to see Kate like that, and made her vulnerable and responsive, so that, when Kate said they were going back to Osney together, Joss had nodded and said OK, then, no fighting or screams. They had packed together, and Kate had telephoned for a taxi, and it was only when they were getting into the taxi that Joss remembered her duvet.

‘But you don't need it, Jossie, I've got you a new one—'

‘I do,' Joss said, suddenly desperate. ‘I've got to have it, I've got to—'

She tore back into the house and up the stairs. Her room looked awful, as if it had been burgled, violated. Panic seized Joss. She couldn't go, she couldn't leave her room and – and James and Leonard, and then she didn't want the taxi to drive Kate away from her either. She stood gibbering faintly in the centre of her room, immobilized. From the street, the taxi blew its horn. Joss gasped. She took a deep breath and seized her duvet, and plunged her face into it. ‘Help,' Joss said into its muffling folds. ‘Help.' The taxi horn sounded again. Clasping her duvet like a treasured animal, Joss flew down the stairs and out of the door.

‘You gave me a fright,' Kate said. ‘I thought you'd changed your mind. I thought you weren't coming.'

In silent pain, Joss bowed her head and buried it in her bedclothes. She couldn't look at Kate; she couldn't look at anything until, what seemed like hours later, Kate said gently, ‘We're here.'

Kate had put flowers everywhere, and there was a new, black-hooded sweatshirt for Joss in a carrier bag from her favourite shop. ‘You can change it,' Kate said, ‘if you want something else.' They had gone out, after they'd made up Joss's bed, for a pizza and Joss had had some wine and felt rather better, though it was an odd kind of better, giddy and a bit hysterical. They'd laughed a lot and Kate said, ‘Oh, we're going to have such a good time!' and Joss began to think that perhaps they were. There were several people in the pizza restaurant who knew Kate and they came over to talk, and were introduced to Joss, and Joss felt excited and at the same time unhinged, because Kate hadn't known any of these people or talked like this, when she was just Mum, at Richmond Villa.

The whole evening was OK really, until Joss was alone in bed, alone with her duvet. Then she began to worry. How much longer was it going to take to get to school and which bus would it be? How would Angie be able to come here, and Emma, and what would happen all the nights Kate was working at Pasta Please and left Joss alone with gross old Mr Winthrop who reminded her of something that had got left in a damp corner and gone mouldy? And how would she fit in the rest of her stuff, and where could she be by herself and what did James and Leonard think when they came back and she wasn't there? Abruptly she remembered the yoghurts she had bought, in the little walking pots, the yoghurts in all the flavours James hated and she loved, like banana and chocolate and fudge. The thought of the yoghurts waiting for her in the fridge at Richmond Villa was too much for Joss. Very quietly, with clumps of duvet stuffed into her mouth to muffle the noise, Joss began to cry.

Kate could hear her. The sofa wasn't very comfortable, and was scarcely long enough even for Kate, and the various tensions of the evening hadn't been conducive to a quiet mind. It was odd, because Kate had got what she wanted, had achieved what she had set out to achieve, and with surprising ease at that, but the end result simply refused to feel natural. Here she was, lying in her dear room, through whose window she often saw the canal boats that never failed to thrill her, with Joss lying safely tucked up only feet away from her, just as she once used to be, before James, only this was better, and yet it didn't feel entirely right. I expect, Kate thought, turning once again in search of a sleep-inducing position, that we are too excited, and that we mustn't hurry getting used to each other again, after so long. But three months isn't very long, and we've seen each other every week . . . She strained her ears. Joss was still crying, but more quietly now. Kate slid off the sofa and tiptoed to the dividing door.

‘Jossie?'

Silence.

‘Jossie, don't worry. It'll be fine, you know, it's just that it's been a bit of a shock, something you weren't expecting. That's all. And don't worry about school. I've ordered you a taxi for tomorrow, until we've worked out the buses.' She paused. ‘It's lovely for me to have you. To have you back.'

‘Yeah,' Joss said faintly. She had stopped crying.

‘Sleep well. Croissants for breakfast.'

Croissants, Joss thought. Why croissants? At Richmond Villa they only ever had them as a treat, on birthdays, except of course for Uncle Leonard's birthday. He'd only ever tried one croissant. ‘Stupid bloody thing,' he'd said, looking at the explosion of buttery flakes down his front. ‘Trust the perishing French.' Joss set her jaw. She would not think about Uncle Leonard.

‘Sleep well,' Kate said again, her voice very loving.

Joss took a breath. ‘You too,' she said.

‘I just wondered,' Bluey Acheson said, ‘if you could use a few of these? They're Boston Bay cookies.'

With a wide smile, she held out a box. James had found her there, on the doorstep, when he went to answer the bell, thinking it might be the postman, with a parcel.

‘I'm Garth's mother—'

‘Ah!' James said, smiling back. ‘The provider of the peonies.'

‘That's me!'

James held the door a little wider. ‘Do please come in.' She stepped past him, a neat figure in jeans and a scarlet cardigan. ‘I'm afraid we're in awful disorder—'

‘I'll confess,' Bluey Acheson said. She had shining brown straight hair tied back with a red-and-blue checked ribbon. ‘Garth told me. He said you'd all got in a bit of a pickle, so as Randy's away I thought I'd just come round—'

‘Randy?'

‘My husband,' said Bluey Acheson without enthusiasm. ‘He's a physicist. That's why we're in Oxford. He's gone to lecture in The Hague or someplace.'

‘Mrs Acheson—'

‘Bluey, please.'

‘Bluey, I'm afraid my uncle is still in his dressing gown.'

He was. He sat at the disordered remains of the breakfast table, and muttered at the crossword. Across the table Hugh, in a cashmere polo-necked jersey with the sleeves pushed up, was smoking and writing an illustrated letter to the twins with coloured felt-tipped pens he had found in Joss's room. The kitchen door to the garden was propped open to the temperate May sunshine, in which Miss Bachelor, firmly in her brown overcoat still, was pruning off the dead-flowered spikes of a forsythia.

‘Attention please,' James said, ‘I would like to introduce to you Mrs Bluey Acheson, Garth's mother, who has most kindly brought us some biscuits.'

Bluey beamed at them. Hugh leapt to his feet and held out his hand. ‘You should never be in here, Mrs Bluey Acheson, you look far too hygienic.' He gestured to Leonard. ‘Get up, you insanitary old heap.'

Leonard didn't move. He eyed Bluey. She smiled at him. ‘Have you brought Joss?' Leonard demanded.

Her face fell. ‘Only cookies—'

‘It's been ten days,' Leonard said accusingly, as if Joss's going to Osney was Bluey's fault.

Bluey sat down. Leonard was wearing a singularly repulsive old plaid dressing gown open over his pyjamas. He hadn't yet shaved. Bluey looked at him just as if he were shining with care and cleanliness.

‘Garth's been to see Joss,' she said. ‘He took her to the movies. I think she's doing fine.'

‘No, she's not!' Leonard shouted. ‘She's no business to!'

Bluey looked down. Garth had not in fact said Joss was doing just fine, he'd said she was homesick for Richmond Villa but that she felt she owed it to her mother to stay in Osney. ‘I'll feel guilty wherever I am,' she'd said to Garth, and then, though he had not told Bluey this, he had tried to take advantage of her temporary frailty by kissing her, and she'd socked him in the face with a fist uncomfortably armoured in new Indian rings. ‘Don't you think she ought to be with her mother?' Bluey said now.

Leonard looked miserable and furious. He shook the paper at Bluey. ‘What about me?'

James put a mug of coffee down in front of Bluey. ‘You must make allowances for my uncle. He affects rudeness and temper to cover a heart of marshmallow.' Bluey smiled. She sipped her coffee and looked round the kitchen. It was sensationally untidy and looked, Bluey thought, just wonderful; human and imaginative. ‘I love it in here,' she said.

Hugh goggled at her. ‘You
couldn't
,' he said, remembering, though he had forbidden himself to, the ordered charm of the kitchen at Church Cottage.

‘My kitchen's so dull, compared to this,' Bluey said. ‘No books, no chairs, no—' she paused.

‘Bottles?' James suggested.

She laughed. ‘Only such
serious
bottles, you know! Olive oil and balsam vinegar and all the things
Gourmet Magazine
says I should have.'

James and Hugh pulled their chairs closer to her. She looked like a newly picked Alpine flower in the chaos around her.

‘Her husband's called Randy,' James said to Hugh.

Hugh said to Bluey, ‘You can't be serious.'

She nodded, delighted. ‘It doesn't mean the same thing in the States.' She hid her face behind her coffee mug, giggling. ‘My sister's called Pokey, and
that
doesn't mean the same thing either.'

James and Hugh watched her, smiling; she was charming, a pretty, sweet distraction blown in through the front door like a present. Leonard got up with difficulty, grunting and puffing like an old hippo. He found his stick and limped towards the garden door.

‘And while Randy does physics, what do
you
do?' Hugh said.

Leonard made his way unevenly out into the garden. Beatrice heard him coming and deliberately did not turn until he was almost wheezing in her ear. ‘Why aren't you dressed?'

‘It's sodding Saturday!' He thumped his stick down on the lawn. It needed mowing. ‘They've got a woman in there.'

Beatrice turned round properly, a handful of whispering dead petals in her grasp. ‘What
do
you mean?'

‘Garth's mother. Looks like a doll. Made us some biscuits.'

‘How very kind.'

‘Kind!' said Leonard. ‘Huh! News gets round that there's three men on their own at Richmond Villa and bingo, there's droves of bloody women. First you, now her.'

Beatrice flushed. ‘How crudely you talk.' She turned back to the forsythia. It was ten-thirty and she had been slightly hoping that James might bring her a cup of coffee and pause to talk while she drank it, but she was not going to say so. Instead she said, ‘Why don't you dress? You look inappropriate.'

He leered at her, from the side.

‘Mustn't inflame Mrs Acheson with my
déshabillé
?'

Beatrice snorted. Chuckling, Leonard tottered back across the grass. ‘Do believe,' he told himself, ‘do believe the old boiler's jealous. Must be in love with me.' He lurched into the back door. Bluey was telling a story and James and Hugh were laughing at it. Nobody took any notice of Leonard. ‘Bloody fools,' he said, quite loudly, and limped past them, to go upstairs and dress.

Kate paused at the top of the spiral stairs that led down to the kitchen of Pasta Please, to allow Christine to come up. Kate was carrying dirty plates; Christine was carrying two dishes of rigatoni in tomato sauce, sprinkled with parmesan and pine nuts.

‘There's someone come in to see you,' Christine said disapprovingly. ‘Please be quick. I told them you were working.'

‘Who?' Kate said as they passed one another. ‘A man or a woman?'

‘A woman, of course,' Christine said crushingly, sweeping on.

It was Julia. She stood against a wall, where Christine had clearly driven her, so that she couldn't engage Benjie in distracting conversation at close quarters. She looked pale and thin, but her appearance was as clean and carefully thought out as usual, with her hair in a thick, perfect pigtail.

‘Julia!' Kate said, putting plates down on the nearest surface and running over.

Julia put her arms out. They had scarcely even bumped cheekbones in token kisses before, but now Julia held Kate tightly, like a sister.

‘Oh Kate. I'm so sorry to come here, but can I see you?'

‘Of course—'

‘When do you finish, when is lunch over?'

‘I can get away about half-past three, I think. And Joss won't be home' – oh, the pride of being able to say that again – ‘until about six.'

Christine's feet began to descend the spiral staircase. Julia's eyes swung in her direction, and then back to Kate.

‘I'll come back for you about three-thirty, then. Can I?'

‘Of course—'

Julia bent and kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you. Oh thank you. I'll wait outside for you. On the pavement.'

When she was gone, Christine said, ‘Don't I know her?'

‘She's been in once or twice—'

‘No, no. Not here. On the telly.'

‘Yes,' Kate said, ‘yes, you have. She presents
Night Life
.'