Second Honeymoon

Chapter Nine

Sitting on the underground on his way up to North London, Matthew looked at the other people in the carriage. It was early evening, just after work, so the train was full, not just with tired men holding computer cases and newspapers, but tired women with computer cases too and handbags and supermarket shopping bags. Some of the women were young, and reminded Matthew of Ruth, young women with considered haircuts and business suits and the air, which none of the men had, of having thought – or possibly had to think – about much more all day than simply the things at work they had to react to. They made him remember, unhappily, the way Ruth had kept all the strands of their life together, persistently rounding up stray aspects in a manner that, particularly when they were first together, made him marvel.

Blaise, at the desk behind him at work, said that personally he had marvelled himself to a standstill about modern women.

‘They’re too much for me,’ he’d said by way of commiseration over Matthew’s break-up. ‘Girls now, I mean. Now-girls’.

He was giving up girls for a while, he said, and concentrating on getting his pilot’s licence. He said if Matthew wanted flying lessons too he was sure he could arrange it. Flying made you feel in charge of things and, at the same time, free of demands, and people, and the business of never quite living up to others’ expectations.

‘I’m not even living up to my own expectations at the moment,’ Matthew said.

Blaise didn’t take his eyes off the screen in front of him.

‘Lower them, then,’ he said.

Matthew got out of his seat now, on the underground, and gestured towards it at a pale woman, carrying a huge professional camera case and an enormous lever-arch file clasped against her chest.

She hardly glanced at him.

‘Thank you—’

An elderly black woman beside her, in a felt hat and horn-rimmed spectacles, turned to look at her.

‘I shouldn’t think he heard that’.

The pale woman, balancing case and file with difficulty on her lap, said nothing.

There’s not many young men with the manners now—’

‘It’s all right,’ Matthew said. ‘It’s OK’.

‘So why discourage the few decent ones we’ve got?’ An ugly colour began to spread patchily up the pale woman’s neck.

Matthew bent down.

‘She did say thank you. I heard her’.

The black woman regarded him impassively. ‘She should have looked at you. She should have smiled. Why shouldn’t you be as tired as she is?’ ‘I’m not—’

‘Some woman,’ the black woman said loudly, ‘is a lucky woman to have you. Some woman is lucky to have such a gentleman’.

Matthew looked away. His neck felt as miserably inflamed as the pale woman’s looked. A fat man strap-hanging a foot away caught his eye and winked. Matthew made a face and briefly closed his eyes.

The train pulled into Moorgate Station and stopped. The black woman, crucifix swinging at her neck as she moved, rose to her feet and made for the door.

As she passed Matthew, she said distinctly, ‘You tell that lady of yours she’s a lucky woman’.

There was faint tittering round him and sweat was sliding in an unmistakable trickle down between his shoulder blades. He looked at the pale woman for a glance, at least, of commiseration, but she was staring rigidly at the floor.

Edie had said to meet her after rehearsals. She had described where to find her, saying he would recognise the rehearsal hall in Clerkenwell because it had a yellow poster outside advertising Pilates in Pregnancy classes. She’d said that they could go for a drink together, possibly even have supper. She’d sounded so pleased to hear him, so relieved and gratified that he’d rung, that he wondered what had happened to propel him into her personal spotlight. It was the place, after all, usually occupied by Ben, who took it, as he seemed to take most things, entirely for granted. It was also the place, Matthew realised, that he had scarcely spared a thought for, over the last couple of years, because he hadn’t needed to. He rather wished he didn’t need to now.

The rehearsal hall was, Edie said, about ten minutes from the underground station, and he should aim for the spire of St James’s Church. Matthew thought, gazing skywards from the Farringdon Road, that that was exactly the kind of directions his mother had always given, instructing you to look out for a memorable, preferably romantic landmark that was not actually visible until you were standing almost beside it because she hadn’t taken the surroundings into consideration. When they were small, Matthew remembered, Edie would often point out of the window and ask them what they could see and they would say, tepidly, oh the grass and the shed and the back of the house where the Great Dane lived and she would say no, no, no, beyond that, through that – couldn’t they see oceans and castles and deserts with camels? Edie would have no trouble, Matthew thought, standing in the Farringdon Road and seeing St James’s, Clerkenwell, far away to the north beyond the Clerkenwell Road. And perhaps, by the same token, Edie would have no trouble in seeing through the miserable thickets Matthew had got himself tangled up in, and out beyond to something altogether brighter and more hopeful. Something that would stop him feeling he had spent the last two years circling round in a huge wild loop that had merely ended in a rather lesser place than he had been in before he started.

She was waiting for him outside the hall, leaning against the Pilates poster with her arms folded, and her sunglasses on.

He bent to kiss her cheek.

‘Am I late?’

Edie put both arms round his neck and pulled him down towards her.

‘No. We finished early. We did a lot of the joy of living today and it wore everyone out, being joyful’.

Matthew said, his face against his mother’s, ‘I didn’t think Ibsen was joyful’.

‘Norway wasn’t. Norway was dire, in Ibsen’s day. Work was a curse and a punishment for sin’.

‘Jolly—’

Edie let Matthew go. She looked up at him. ‘You don’t look good at all’.

‘No’.

‘Matt?’ she said. ‘Matthew?’ She took his hand. ‘What’s happened?’

He glanced down the street. ‘Let’s find a pub’. ‘Are you ill?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘nothing like that’. He moved back towards the pavement, pulling her. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, feeling the loosening sensation of relief flowing into his chest, into his head. ‘I’ll tell you everything’.

Russell went to the preview of a new American play at the Royal Court Theatre, left at the interval and made his way home on a number 19 bus. He had asked Edie to come to the theatre with him, but she had a late rehearsal, she said, and some other commitment that she was vague about but not particularly mysterious, and certainly not mysterious in a way that might cause Russell disquiet. There had been disquieting moments in the past, to be sure, moments when Edie seemed suddenly over-alert about an actor she was playing opposite or, once at least, a father on the parent-teacher association panel at one of the children’s schools, panels that Edie made vociferous and energetic contributions to. And, if he was honest, Russell had had lunches, and some afternoons, and even a weekend once, when he had been reminded of how powerfully attractive a new personality, a new face and body, can be to even the most faithful of eyes. It wasn’t anxiety about what Edie might be doing that propelled Russell on to his bus before the second half of the play, but more a resurgence of the feeling that was becoming very familiar to him now, a feeling of just wanting Edie to be there, to be with him, to give another, a vivid, dimension to what he was seeing and hearing. He supposed, if he was honest, that it was years since he had actively missed Edie when she wasn’t with him. Well, if that was the case, he was certainly making up for it now. He looked out of the bus window at the thronged mid-evening pavements and wondered how he would arrange himself, in his mind and in his feelings, when he reached home and found that Edie wasn’t there.

But she was. She was sitting at the kitchen table reading the evening paper with her glasses on and a mug of tea. Beside the paper on the table, where he was not allowed, Arsie was posed like a cat on an Egyptian frieze, elongated and very, very still.

‘Bad play?’ Edie said, taking her glasses off.

‘Wordy,’ Russell said. He bent to kiss her. ‘Wordy without grasping the subject. You indulge that cat’.

Edie looked at Arsie. He didn’t trouble to look back.

‘I know’.

‘Good rehearsal?’

‘Not bad. Lazlo’s very good at super-sensitive but he isn’t making him bright enough yet. If he makes Osvald all quivering introspection, it’ll turn the audience off’.

Russell went over to the fridge and opened the door.

‘What about supper?’

‘I’ve had it,’ Edie said, ‘but there’s plenty of ham’. Russell bent to look into the fridge. He said nonchalantly from inside it, ‘Supper with anyone?’

‘Yes,’ Edie said, ‘Matthew’. There was a silence.

‘Matthew,’ Russell said, without straightening.

‘Yes’.

Russell stood up, holding a plate of ham.

‘Why didn’t you have supper here?’

‘It sort of didn’t arise,’ Edie said. She folded the paper. ‘We went for a drink and then we had a plate of pasta. I am beginning to think I never want to see pasta again’.

Russell put the ham on the table and went across the kitchen to the breadbin.

‘How was he?’

‘Russell,’ Edie said, sitting up straight, ‘it was awful. He’s in a terrible state’. Russell turned round.

‘Matthew?’

‘Yes’.

‘Has he lost his job?’

‘He’s lost Ruth’.

Russell came back to the table and sat down. ‘Has she thrown him out?’

‘No. It’s sadder really. He’s left her because she wants to buy a flat and he thinks she should and she’s chosen this rather glamorous one, near Tate Modern, and he can’t afford it and he hasn’t been able to afford their lifestyle anyway, for ages, it turns out, and he doesn’t want to hold her back, so he’s gone’.

Russell stared at the ham.

He said, ‘Matt has left Ruth because he can’t afford to buy the flat she wants?’ ‘Basically, yes’. He raised his eyes. ‘Edie, what’s the matter with them?’

‘With Matt and Ruth?’

‘Yes. No. With all of them. With all these children and all they’re earning and still can’t manage’.

‘It isn’t them,’ Edie said, ‘it’s now. It’s how things are. We got married young because people did and we didn’t have any money or furniture because people didn’t, but now they do, and it’s different’.

Russell sighed.

‘Does he still love her?’

‘I think so’.

‘And does she love him?’

‘Well, she texts him most days saying so, apparently’. ‘I don’t get it’.

‘It doesn’t matter whether you do or not,’ Edie said. ‘It’s how it is’.

Russell folded his arms on the table and leaned on them.

‘He looked launched to me’.

‘I expect he looked launched to himself’.

Russell said, ‘Poor old boy. Poor Matt. So it’s back to bachelor flats and sharing and squalor and nosing around clubs for women’.

‘Certainly not,’ Edie said.

Russell raised his head and looked at her.

‘Oh Edie—’

‘I can’t watch him flounder—’ ‘He’s twenty-eight’.

‘That’s got nothing to do with anything. He’s in trouble and miserable and lost and I can’t bear to see it and I’ve told him he can come home’.

Russell sat back in his chair and crossed his arms on his chest.

He said to the ceiling, ‘I thought only the royal family continued to live with their parents when adult. Oh, and Italians’.

‘His room is there,’ Edie said, ‘and empty. He’ll give us rent’.

‘That’s not the point, really’. ‘I know. You told Rosa’.

Russell shut his eyes.

‘You told Rosa,’ Edie said, ‘that she couldn’t come home because you wanted my undivided attention’. ‘I didn’t quite—’

‘Well, that may be what you want, but it isn’t what I want. I want my children to know they are wanted and supported’.

‘It isn’t good for them,’ Russell said. ‘It isn’t good for them or for us. Remember the fox in Le Petit Prince?’

‘What fox?’

‘The fox who said, “You become responsible for ever, for what you have tamed.”‘

Edie brought her fist down on the table.

‘I’m not taming them. I’m helping them. It’s a rubbish old myth, this idea that you undermine someone by helping them, that it’s good for people to struggle—’

‘It is’.

Edie stood up.

‘God,’ she said, ‘it’s like pushing a bloody elephant upstairs’.

‘You don’t want to let go—’

She began to move towards the door.

She said furiously, ‘You can’t let go of being a parent. Not ever. It’s the one relationship you’re stuck with, besides yourself’.

‘Where are you going?’

Edie turned in the doorway.

‘To Matthew’s room,’ she said. ‘To see what he needs. He’s coming on Saturday’.

The weather in Cairns, Eliot told his mother, was bloody great. Twenty-five degrees and not a cloud and Ro was going to be a Buddhist. ‘A Buddhist?’

‘Yeah,’ Eliot said. ‘There’s a temple here. She’s going to meditation classes’.

‘Well,’ Vivien said, ‘good for her. Are you going too?’

‘Nah,’ Eliot said, ‘I’m helping a mate service his powerboat’.

‘You sound so Australian, darling’.

‘Yeah. Well’.

Vivien said, ‘I’m having dinner with Dad on Saturday. Again’.

‘Yeah’.

‘Do you know why he’s asked me a second time?’ There was a pause and then Eliot said, ‘Why shouldn’t he?’

‘Well, we’re separated—’

‘So?’

‘If you’re separated, it’s usually because you don’t want to see each other’.

‘Don’t you want to see Dad?’ ‘Yes, darling, I do, but—’ ‘That’s fine, then,’ Eliot said. Vivien gripped the telephone.

‘I don’t want to ask you anything unfair, darling, but -but do you know if Dad has a girlfriend just now?’

There was another pause and then Eliot said, ‘I’ve no idea’.

‘So he hasn’t said anything to you? Named any names?’

‘We don’t talk about that,’ Eliot said. ‘We talk about footie’.

‘Of course—’

‘Ma,’ Eliot said, ‘I have to go. I’m meeting someone’. Vivien looked at her watch.

‘How nice. Are you having supper with someone?’ ‘A few beers,’ Eliot said, ‘till Ro finishes her class’. ‘Lovely to hear you, darling. Give my love to Ro’. ‘Cheers,’ Eliot said. ‘Take care’.

Vivien put the telephone down. While talking to Eliot she had drawn a huge pair of parted Roy Lichtenstein lips, with teeth just glimpsed, and a high shine. It was the biggest mouth she’d drawn for ages, taking up half a page. She wondered briefly if it meant anything, and if so, what. Possibly something a bit excitable, louche even, the same sort of thing that had propelled her into buying some suede sandals, on impulse, in a colour the girl in the shop described as watermelon. They were rather high, higher than Vivien was used to, and would need a little practice. Before Saturday. Vivien put out a hand and tore the drawing of the big lips hastily off the pad.

Rosa had left a note propped up against the kettle that morning. She had also remembered to put the box of Grapenuts back in the cupboard. The note said she was meeting a friend for a drink after work and she wasn’t sure when she’d be back so not to bother about supper. Then she’d drawn a small sunflower with a smile and added, ‘Hope you hadn’t planned anything?’ Well, Vivien had, of course, because she couldn’t help planning. It was one of the elements that Max always wanted to loosen up in her, this propensity to live life in detail before she actually got to it. There were two tuna steaks in the fridge, and some borlotti beans soaking, and a bag of salad leaves. Well, they could all probably wait another day, and if they didn’t, she could freeze the tuna and cook up the beans and – oh, stop this, Vivien said to herself, stop this and focus on the fact that you had a lovely time last Saturday having dinner with Max and that he plainly did too because he’s asked you again.

She went out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the landing. Rosa’s bedroom door was shut. Do not open it, Vivien told herself, just do not because a) it is her room for the moment and b) you won’t like what you see if you do. She walked on down the landing and into her own bedroom, decorated entirely in white during a moment of feeling I-am-a-strong-woman in the aftermath of Max’s departure, a feeling that hadn’t lasted. The pink suede sandals were sitting neatly at the end of the bed. Vivien sat down beside them, kicked off her shoes, and bent to buckle them on.

Beside her bed, next to a china tray of all her manicure things, the telephone began to ring.

‘Are you hoovering?’ Edie asked.

‘No’.

‘In white cotton gloves?’

‘Naked, actually,’ Vivien said. She lay back on the bed, the telephone to her ear, and thrust one leg upwards to admire her pink sandal.

‘You sound happy—’

‘I’ve just spoken to Eliot’. ‘Not that kind of happy,’ Edie said. ‘Who is he?’ Vivien hesitated a moment, turning her foot this way and that. Then she said, ‘Max’. ‘No change there then’. ‘We had a really good time on Saturday—’ ‘Did he kiss you?’ ‘Edie!’

‘Did he?’

‘No,’ Vivien said. ‘I haven’t been kissed for years’. ‘Nor have I’.

‘Yes, you have. On stage’.

‘That doesn’t count and it isn’t usually what you’d choose, anyway’.

‘Russell kisses you—’

‘Yes. But …’

‘Did you ring,’ Vivien said, lowering her leg and raising the other, ‘to talk about kissing?’

‘No. But I do rather wonder why you’re seeing Max again’.

‘So do I’.

‘But you like it—’

‘Yes’.

‘Well, do it,’ Edie said, and then, without a pause, ‘Matt’s coming home’.

‘What?’

‘He’s broken up with Ruth and he’s miserable and he’s coming home’. Vivien let her leg fall.

‘Poor boy. Was it about a flat? Rosa said something—’

‘I had to shout at Russell,’ Edie said. ‘He thinks you spoil children if you help them. Or at least, that’s what he says he thinks’.

‘Thirty per cent of people between twenty-four and thirty still live at home—’

‘How do you know?’

‘I read it somewhere’.

‘Excellent,’ Edie said, ‘I’ll tell Russell. If he goes on like he’s going on, he’ll make Matt feel a freak. Do you think I should buy a double bed?’

‘Don’t you have one?’

‘For Matthew!’ Edie shouted.

‘Why?’

‘Well, they all sleep in big beds now. Everyone. Nobody over ten has a single bed’.

‘But if Matthew hasn’t got Ruth,’ Vivien said, ‘who will he put in it?’

‘Someone else, I hope. Someone who doesn’t put her ambition first’. ‘I thought you liked Ruth—’

‘I did. I do. We got on famously. But I want to kill her for hurting Matthew’.

Vivien turned on her side. She could, from this angle, see herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door to her bathroom. It wasn’t a bad angle, in fact, nice curves of hip and shoulder, good ankles, far enough away not to see what happened to bosoms when collapsed sideways.

She said, ‘Shall I tell Rosa?’

‘No thank you,’ Edie said. ‘I’ll tell Rosa. I’ll ring her at work’.

‘She’s going out with someone after work—’

‘Who?’

‘I do not know,’ Vivien said in a voice that implied the opposite.

‘Vivi—’

‘Rosa here,’ Vivien said, ‘Matt back with you. At least Ben’s holding out’. ‘Trust you’.

Vivien rearranged her legs at a better angle. ‘Poor old Russell,’ she said.

Rosa much regretted having asked Lazlo to have a drink with her. She knew she shouldn’t have, for the simple reason that she didn’t really want to, but there was something about supper the other night, and the Cheryl Smith person flirting with her father, and excluding her from conversations with her mother and Lazlo by constantly referring to their rehearsals together, that had compelled her to say, in Cheryl’s hearing at the end of the evening, to Lazlo, ‘What about a drink on Wednesday?’

He’d hesitated.

‘Wednesday—’

‘I’m afraid,’ Rosa said, ‘it’s the only night I can manage’.

‘You aren’t rehearsing,’ Cheryl said to Lazlo. ‘Not Wednesday’. She glanced at Rosa. ‘You could go wild on Wednesday’.

Lazlo nodded.

‘Thank you. I’d like it’.

So here she was, in the refurbished bar of a central hotel, sitting on a black leather stool with her elbows on a tall metal table, waiting for Lazlo. Edie had not heard them make the arrangements, and Rosa had said nothing on the subject. She hoped that Lazlo, despite his puppylike devotion to Edie, hadn’t said anything, either. She wanted to have one drink, and leave, and somehow make it not at all possible for him to suggest either another one, or another meeting. After he’d told her he thought she was spoilt, it was difficult to think of him without dislike, but also, rather disconcertingly, without feeling distinctly interested. It was awful, really, what flashes of temper compelled you to do, flashes of temper induced by seeing other people apparently more at home with your parents than you were yourself.

She saw Lazlo before he saw her. He was in black, with a brilliant turquoise-blue scarf looped round his neck, and for a moment, she thought – indignantly, as if he had no business to be so – that he looked almost attractive. She waved. It took him some time to see her and when he did, he only gave the smallest of smiles.

‘I hope you haven’t been waiting—’

She indicated her glass.

‘I needed a drink’.

He dropped a black canvas rucksack under the metal table.

‘Can I get you another?’

‘Thanks,’ Rosa said. ‘Vodka and tonic’.

He nodded and went off to the bar. She wondered if he had enough money to pay for their drinks and then reflected, rather grimly, that she hardly had, either. But Lazlo would be on the minimum Equity wage, and as he wouldn’t, like everyone else, be legally entitled to an adult wage until he was twenty-five, that would be the barest minimum.

When he came back with her vodka and a bottle of beer, she said, rather shortly, ‘Sorry. I should have paid for those’.

‘No, you shouldn’t’.

‘I asked you for a drink’.

He shrugged.

She added, ‘And now you’ll think I’m even more spoilt’. He hitched himself on to the stool opposite her. He said quietly, ‘It wasn’t about that. I shouldn’t have said it anyway’.

‘Why not, if it’s true?’

He picked up his beer bottle.

‘It isn’t the kind of thing you ought to say to anyone twenty minutes after meeting them’.

‘OK,’ Rosa said. She raised her glass. ‘Cheers’. He tipped his bottle towards her. She said, ‘Well, what did you mean?’ ‘Please forget it—’

‘I meant not to mention it but now I have and I’d like an answer. What did you mean?’

He hunched forward over the table. He looked weirdly glamorous. Perhaps it was the exoticism of the scarf. It was made of silk, the kind of rough silk that came from somewhere in the Far East.

‘I’d really rather—’ ‘Lazlo,’ Rosa said, ‘please’. He gave her a quick glance.

‘Well, I suppose I just thought you – you gave the impression of taking things for granted’.

‘What things?’

He shrugged.

Your mother. Your parents. Having a home, somewhere to go to’.

Rosa put her hands in her lap. She looked directly at him.

‘Haven’t you?’

‘Not really. Not like that’.

‘Haven’t you got parents?’

‘My father lives in Arizona. My mother married a Russian and they have two children and live in Paris. My sister is a medical student, nearly a doctor, and she lives in hospital accommodation’.

‘And you?’

Lazlo looked sheepish.

‘This is turning into a sort of pathetic Dickens-style sob story—’

‘Where do you live?’ Rosa said. ‘In a room—’

‘Where?’ ‘Maida Vale’. ‘Well, that’s—’

‘Kilburn, actually,’ Lazlo said. ‘In a room in a house belonging to my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s grandmother’. Rosa leaned forward.

‘Why?’

‘Because she charges me almost nothing because she likes having a man in the house. She’s panicked about security’.

‘Is it awful?’

Lazlo was silent. ‘Depressing?’ Rosa said.

‘Well,’ Lazlo said, ‘I don’t have hang-ups about old people, but this is pretty extreme. She won’t ever open the windows’.

Rosa took a swallow of her drink.

‘Does it smell?’

Lazlo nodded.

‘So when this play is on, you’ll be travelling from Kilburn to Islington?’

‘Lots of people do,’ Lazlo said. ‘Theatre people all have to live in awkward places’.

‘Theatre people,’ Rosa said mockingly.

He flushed.

‘I am one,’ he said, ‘I’m an actor. So is your mother. I don’t know why you feel the need to sneer’. ‘I’m not sneering—’ ‘Well, that’s what it sounds like’. ‘Sorry’.

‘OK’.

‘I am sorry,’ Rosa said. ‘Truly’.

Lazlo said nothing.

‘Please,’ Rosa said, ‘I am truly sorry’.

He looked up slowly.

‘I believe in it,’ he said.

‘The theatre?’

‘In acting,’ Lazlo said seriously. ‘In – in its radiant energy. In being possessed, and passionate, yet still yourself after a performance. I like having to concentrate this way, I like having chosen something so difficult it makes me display fortitude’.

‘Well,’ Rosa said, ‘I certainly hadn’t thought of any of that’.

‘You didn’t listen to your mother’.

‘My mother never said anything like that in all her life’.

‘She didn’t need to,’ Lazlo said vehemently. ‘She didn’t need to say it. If you’d ever taken her acting seriously, you’d have seen it’.

Rosa said nothing. She fidgeted with her glass. Rising up in her, unwanted but not to be denied, was a peculiar wish to say sorry again somehow, to show herself in a better light.

She said slowly, ‘Your room. Your room in Kilburn—’ He looked irritated, as if dragged back to banality from something much more compelling and important.

‘What about it?’

‘Have you told my mother?’

‘What?’

‘Have you told my mother,’ Rosa said, ‘about how you have to live?’