Tessa Hadley: The London Train

She was cranky and rather barking and abrupt, but her performance of her character was unapologetic as if it was often required of her to produce it, even exaggerate it. Cora said yes to the brandy. Barbara’s hands were bleached pink, thick-fingered, with naked nails. The coffee was thick and bitter, Cora spooned sugar into it. – You’ve got a son? That’s nice. How old is he? Do you have any other children?

– Only Noggin – who’s Noah really. He’s nine. Ten, ten of course. Christ, if you make those sort of mistakes at the school gate, they alert social services. That’s why I usually send my husband to pick him up.

– So you’re a painter, then.

Puzzling, Barbara peered at her more closely, finishing her toast. – If you’re not sure, what are you doing here?

– I’m Robert’s wife. I’m looking for him.

– How disappointing. I thought you were going to buy a picture. My agent had mentioned she was sending someone, I assumed you were them. Robert who? You’re not a wronged wife, are you? She gave a shout of laughter. – I haven’t had one of those come calling for a long time. I warn you, Gummo bites, if anything turns nasty. We’ve had a whole succession of dogs, named after the Marx Brothers. The name’s got nothing to do with her missing any teeth.

– I’m not wronged, Cora said.

She explained which Robert she meant.

– God almighty: that Robert! But I haven’t seen him in years. So you’re Cora ! But didn’t you bugger off? Someone told me you had.

– We’re separated, Cora said. The word seemed carping and finicky, as she used it. – But because he’s gone missing, I’ve got involved in trying to find him. I don’t know why I thought he might be here.

– Nor do I. What do you mean, ‘missing’?

Cora explained. A copy of the Telegraph was still in its polythene packet on the breakfast table. Barbara tore it open while Cora was talking, laid it flat while she spread another piece of cold toast, turned through the pages noisily.

– Oh look, here it is, she said. – Poor old Bingo.

– Bingo?

– Robert, Bobby, Bobby Bingo. There’s even a picture of him. Calls for his resignation. ‘Lax regime,’ it says. What nonsense. It’s a miracle these places don’t go up in flames more often, if they’re so full of terrorists. Nothing about him having done a runner.

There was also the usual picture of the dead man. Robert in his photograph was on his way into the inquiry, so it must have been taken within the last few weeks. Cora searched the picture for any signs of distress; but he was remote from her, competent, locked up inside his public role, only glancing accidentally and obliquely towards the camera. Smiling, he was passing some remark to a colleague – it made him look blithely insensible to the seriousness of the case.

– He’s kept more hair than some of my old boyfriends, Barbara said. – I used to think he’d get awfully stuffy, if he stayed on in the Service too long. Has he got stuffy? Is that why you’re separated?

– No, said Cora stiffly, – nothing like that. Robert’s got a very independent mind. I can’t imagine why he’s disappeared. It’s not like him: even if this inquiry’s blown things out of all proportion. He takes everything in his stride. What would he be afraid of? He would face things out.

– Anyway, he isn’t here.

– I made a stupid mistake.

Bar suggested that Cora might as well see her pictures, now she’d come. Perhaps she hoped she could still make a sale. She was completely stony broke, she said – they were in danger of having the house repossessed. Her husband was a landscape artist, away at present working on a commission on Fair Isle, building a causeway. Photographs of a row of stakes in shallow water, a path of white stones winding round a hill, must be his work. Bar’s studio was in a long attic conversion, cleaner and brighter than the rest of the house. Cora was ready to dislike the pictures, but they weren’t what she had expected, less forthright, more fantastic: skirts and petticoats of real cloth were dipped in pinkish-yellow plaster and then embedded in a dark paint surface where they dried to caked stiffness. Touches of over-painting added what might have been embroidery, or rusty bloodstains. How surprising that this brusque, barking woman was making art about femininity, which Cora thought of as her prerogative. Bar seemed to forget Cora had only come to the house to look for Robert, and talked about processes as if she must be fascinated.

Cora said she hadn’t known Bar was an artist, Robert had never mentioned it.

– For years I mucked around, not doing anything seriously. Then, would you believe, the same month I was signed by Hyman’s, I discovered I was up the duff. Hell! Talk about a late developer.

Cora was suffering, she was crushed. This was the world Robert really belonged to; where they all had nicknames for one another – Bingo and Bobs and Bar. Everything they did came to have importance somehow, even if they started out in life caring only for horses and hunt balls. Bar was vague about prices, but found a list from an old exhibition, where they were way out of Cora’s reach. If Bar asked her what she did, she thought she wouldn’t mention the library, she would say that she taught literature.

With a yelp Barbara remembered Noggin.

– Do I smell of brandy? They think I’m the mother from hell. Also, that I’m old enough to be his grandmother. They’ve probably already got their eye on a suitable foster family.

She offered to take Cora to the station, if she didn’t mind going via the school, which was in the next village. Cora was grateful, wanting only to escape. Gummo curled up behind the front passenger seat, diffusing a bad smell like old cooked vegetables into the close quarters of the car. Bar drove fast, braking violently in the single-lane roads when she met anything coming the other way, cursing and reversing expertly. Cora had to open her window. Then after all they were early, and had to sit waiting outside the school in a queue of parked cars, because Bar couldn’t face the playground.

– It’s a ghastly microcosm, isn’t it?

Cora said she wouldn’t know, she didn’t have children.

– Well out of it. Other parents look to see if you’re using the wrong washing powder, or giving your children laudanum to make them sleep. If only I could get my hands on some. Nog’s out of control because his dad’s not here. He rampages. I’m lucky if he’s in bed before midnight. And I can’t get started on my work till he’s out of the way.

The school was Victorian, with twin doorways for Boys and Girls, behind a venerable church; those were the days, Bar said. Then she sat slumped behind the steering wheel with her eyes closed, suggesting the performance of her personality was exhausting. Opening them, she talked about Robert as if they’d never left the subject.

– His cutting out like this isn’t so untypical, actually. From what I remember. He’s rather an Olympian, you know. Well, I expect you know. High-handed. Like when after he left school he was so absolutely set on going into the army – which I thought lunacy – then something or other happened in the early stages of training to make him change his mind, and he just walked away.

Stonily Cora stared forward through the windscreen, jealous of Bar’s claim to prior knowledge of Robert. She hadn’t known any story about him wanting to be in the army.

– Literally walked away. Set out on the road, and came home. Well, I expect he caught a bus or something. But straight home. Except they didn’t really have a home, of course, after their parents smashed. So to my parents’ house in Devon actually, of which he used to be very fond. He was in all kinds of trouble for absconding; people had to run around after him, pulling strings so that he got away with it. I don’t remember the details. When he’s finished with something, he just drops it, tramples it on his way to the next thing. I should know. Bingo was my dearest, bestest friend when we were kids. It’s a shame. We should never have got in the sack together. Fucks everything up, always. Avoid the sack. Too late of course for you. But good advice. And not much of a lover anyway. You won’t mind me saying that, as you’re separated.