Rosie Thomas - A Simple Life

‘I hear that your husband is very brilliant.’

They both looked across the room to Matthew. He was describing something to the postgraduates, and making decisive chopping gestures in the air with his capable hands as he did so. There was a ripple of laughter. At the same time Dinah noticed a rushing stream of children headed by the largest Kerrigan child. Jack was watching a little to one side, rubbing at the frame of his spectacles, where they rested on his nose.

‘Yes,’ Dinah agreed. ‘He is.’

Brilliant was the word that went with Matthew.

‘Matthew Steward is exceptional,’ people said, colleagues and supervisors and professors. ‘He is an unusually brilliant young scientist.’

Dinah had once been eager to hear this praise and had treasured it, adding it grain by polished grain to the glowing heap of her love and admiration for him. She looked down at her empty glass.

‘Have you got enough liquor over here?’ Nancy Pinkham enquired. Without waiting for an answer she sloshed out more white wine from the bottle she was carrying, and then refilled her own tumbler. She blinked at Dinah over the rim as she drank.

‘So. Settling in?’

Dinah could see without looking too hard that Nancy was getting pissed, not angry as the word would mean here and at home would need the added off , but simply and eagerly pouring wine down her throat. The distinguishing of terms and the homely associations of the expression itself cheered her up, and so did Nancy’s relaxed way with the bottle.

‘Yes, thanks. I’ve found the way to the mall and I know where to buy coffee and the best bagels.’

‘And your kids?’ Nancy asked.

Merlin had appeared at Matthew’s side. His father’s hand rested on his shoulder as he talked, but Merlin was looking around for Jack.

‘When they get into school, they’ll be fine.’ That was next week. Dinah and Matthew had already met the elementary school head, and the boys’ class teachers.

‘Sure. Listen, come over one morning and have a drink. Coffee, even.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘Mm. D’you know what?’ Nancy moved closer, so that Dinah smelt her perfume and the wine on her breath. ‘One of the graduate students said to me that you were kind of surprising-looking. For a professor’s wife .’

The disclosure implied a potential for intimacy between Nancy and herself that Dinah welcomed. The room seemed to change shape, becoming more familiar, enclosing her with all these well-meaning strangers. She forgot her separateness and found that she was laughing.

‘No pince-nez or grey hair in a pleat, you mean?’

Nancy pursed her lips. ‘Evidently.’

‘Which postgrad?’

‘Sorry. Not the cute one. One of the others.’

‘Well, just my luck.’

Nancy regarded her. She held her glass rakishly tilted.

‘I guess you make your own luck, don’t you?’

‘I suppose.’ Dinah directed her thoughts away into a vacuum, and then, once they were neutralised, let them slowly return to here and now. It was a long-practised technique.

‘Have some of this carrot cake, Dinah, won’t you?’ Dee Kerrigan asked.

‘Oh, Dee’s carrot cake is famous .’ Nancy wobbled on her high heels.

The party was slowly coming to an end. Mr Dershowitz had fallen asleep with his mouth open and his knobbed hands splayed on the arms of the chair, and there was an ominous absence of children except for the Steward boys. Jack was reading a book in the corner.

Matthew came to Dinah’s side. His hand rested on her hip, transmitting the semaphore of partners: time to leave now, wouldn’t you say? I’m ready if you are …

Dinah felt her physical connectedness to him. At that moment he was utterly familiar, solid and intelligible. Her husband. He was her anchor, her compass needle steadily indicating magnetic north. Her signals went back to him: yes, we should go now. Home to our very, very, very nice house on Kendrick Street …

They summoned the boys and said their joint goodbyes. The Kerrigans’ hospitality pursued them out of the front door and into the mild afternoon with offers of sitters and recipes and telephone numbers. As the Stewards walked the few steps across the grass beneath the sugar maple to their own door, Dinah thought that they must look like a neat, bright family in a commercial. For what? Something safe – medical insurance, breakfast cereal, building society? She played with copy lines in her head: one small step, a big jump, how many miles, miles to go before we sleep, dum dum deedum . Then she remembered with a shock that she didn’t do that any more. No more copywriting, no niche of her own. She was Matt’s wife, Jack and Merlin’s mother, this was Franklin, Massachusetts. Not London. Not Sheldon, the village in Hertfordshire where they had lived.

The heat had drained out of the air at last. The end of the summer, and the afternoon was cool with a seductive, resinous breath of autumn.

‘Enjoy yourself?’ Matthew asked her.

‘Yes. Yes, I did. I liked Nancy Pinkham.’

‘Joey Kerrigan’s a schmuck,’ Merlin said.

‘Is he? Why’s that? What does it mean, exactly?’

‘Dad, he just is, I can tell.’

Merlin’s eyesight was better than his brother’s, but the two of them were very alike. Both boys were small for their age, inwardly assertive, externally wary, inquisitive and critical. They were clever, like their father, but as yet without his practised charm. Their hair kinked at the crown in the same way. Their close resemblance and their vulnerability touched Dinah, and made her heart twist with a determination that all should be made well for her children.

The front door banged shut. It had an annoying spring closure that Matthew would have to fix. Packing cases and boxes lined the hallway.

‘Can we get a dog?’ It was Jack who asked, from halfway up the stairs.

‘No,’ Dinah said, and Matthew, simultaneously, ‘I should think so, why not?’

Because a dog is permanent. A dog says this is where we stay. I don’t want that, to be so far away, we’ve talked about it and yet not talked, and Matthew always evades me .

‘Yesss.’ Triumphant Jack punched the air with his fist. ‘Did you hear, Mer? Dad says we can get a dog.’

Only a dog, what difference will it make? We’re here now, with this house, neighbours, school for the boys, Matt’s big job. What did I tell myself, back at the Kerrigans’? That he’s my anchor, my compass needle …

Or not?

‘I’m not walking it. Not once. Not a single bloody step. Nor cleaning up after it. Right?’

Matthew leaned and affectionately kissed Dinah behind the ear.

‘Absolutely right. My lady dog-lover.’ Then he wandered away, picking up a stack of scientific journals from one of the half-emptied boxes.

Dinah walked on into the kitchen. The sun shone into this room. There was a view from the window beyond the pine table all the way up the street to Mr Dershowitz’s. The boys’ footsteps clunked on the uncarpeted boards overhead.

Dinah stood at the window, her hands resting on the sill, looking out at Kendrick Street. Matthew’s work had brought him here, and so naturally she and the boys were with him. And in truth it made no difference, did it, wherever they lived?

Using the familiar strategy, she told herself that she had her husband and two children, the promise of novelty and the possibility of new friendships. There were boxes to be unpacked, and books and pictures and familiar pieces of furniture to be arranged in rooms that would accumulate their memories, given time.

And it might even turn out that Matthew and she were not running away at all. That their paths were parallel, not divergent, not leading away into a future she was unable to decipher.