Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency

‘I see,’ Alice said, evidently wondering a little as they came into Katherine’s house. But Katherine went on, unable to help herself, and Alice helped her out with a banality she’d heard or read or seen, that there was a friendliness and openness in the north, which just wasn’t there in the south.

‘You won’t find people keeping themselves to themselves in the same way here,’ Katherine went on, forgetting that she had said exactly that of the departed miserly Watsons, who were nothing if not Yorkshire, had, indeed, according to Katherine, embodied the manners of the whole county.

‘I can see that already, the friendliness,’ Alice said, smiling awkwardly at this generous neighbour.

‘That’s kind of you,’ Katherine said. ‘But you’ll find that we’re all like that around here.’ She thought of saying that there were few people in the area who didn’t keep their door on the snib, but fell silent: this new neighbour would quickly discover that it wasn’t true, for one thing, and in any case it would have made the road sound a little common. She put the kettle on; she heard herself and her brave party voice, not able to be kind without making a comment on that kindness.

‘Normally,’ she went on, ‘I’d be at work by now.’

‘Really?’ Alice said. ‘Where do you work?’

‘Well, it’s quite a new thing,’ Katherine said. ‘I used to work, before the children were born. I mean, when I met my husband I was working at a solicitor’s, and then, after we married, I carried on working, though of course there was no real need, not at the solicitor’s, I didn’t carry on there. I worked at a school, not as a teacher, a sort of administrative job. Do you know Sheffield? No? Well, you must go and have a look at Peace Square. Most of Sheffield was bombed in the war, but that, it’s eighteenth century, untouched, really charming. That was where I worked, in the solicitor’s. Of course, when the children came along I gave up work, though you know, then, I don’t know if it was different in London, but it was quite unusual for a woman to go on working after she was married. You gave up, didn’t you, when you married, not when the children came along? It was the done thing.’

‘Yes,’ Alice said.

‘And, of course, the children – well, there were three of them, there are three of them, I should say, so it’s only quite recently that I suddenly thought, I’m bored with sitting at home all day, doing nothing, I’m going to go out there and get a job to keep me occupied. And I did, and it’s the best thing,’ she said emphatic ally, as if insisting on her point, ‘I ever did.’

‘Where do you work?’ Alice said.

‘In Broomhill – oh, you won’t know – a florist’s shop, a new one,’ she went on. ‘It’s only opened a year or two. Nick, the owner, he’s from London – he studied up here, and then he stayed, and he’s opened this little florist’s, and it’s doing very well. He was supposed to come to a party here a night or two back, but something came up and he couldn’t come. Actually, we were thinking, your house, we thought you’d probably be moved in by then and it would have been a good chance for you to meet everyone in the neighbourhood. That’s when we were planning it, and we set the date, thinking, they must be in and settled by then, the Watsons, they’d been gone so long, and then the date was fixed and the invitations sent out and we discovered, my husband and I, we’d missed you by two days. What a shame! You could have met him then.’

‘Your husband?’ Alice said. ‘I’m sure—’

‘No,’ Katherine said, ‘Nick, you could have met Nick, except that he couldn’t come. And you hadn’t moved in. I meant Nick. I don’t know why he didn’t come. Go away,’ she said, raising her voice, as Daniel wandered into the kitchen.

‘Your son?’ Alice said, nervously taking a cup of coffee.

‘Yes,’ Katherine said. ‘I’m sorry, I should have introduced you. How old are your children?’

‘Well, Sandra’s fourteen, and Francis, he’s eleven,’ Alice said.

‘So they’ll be going to—’

‘Going to?’

‘I meant their schools.’

‘Oh – I think Sandra’s, it’s called—’

‘The thing is,’ Katherine said, setting her cup down on the work surface and staring out of the window, ‘you’ve really found us at sixes and sevens this morning.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Alice said, thinking that the woman needn’t have asked her over if it was as inconvenient as all that.

‘The fact is that my husband’s left me,’ Katherine said.

All at once there seemed to be an echo in the kitchen, and both Katherine and Alice listened to the noise it made. Katherine had spoken definitely, but she listened, now, to the decisive effect of a statement she had not quite known to be true; she listened to it with something of the same surprise as Jane, sitting on the stairs listening to her mother going on. Alice listened, too; she knew that some sentences needed to be treated, once spoken, with respect, left with a small sad compliment of silence.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Alice said. ‘Was it very recently?’

‘It was last night,’ Katherine said, almost angrily.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Alice said. ‘Listen, I’m sure you really don’t want a stranger just at the moment – it was kind of you, but I’d better leave—’

‘Of course, you’ve got so much to do,’ Katherine said.

‘No, it’s not that,’ Alice said. ‘There must be someone who can come and—’

‘No,’ Katherine said. ‘There isn’t anyone, really.’ It was true. Her party rose up before her again; she found it difficult to call any of them a friend, and impossible to imagine, say, sitting with that pregnant girl and telling her anything. ‘I don’t have any friends.’

‘I’m sure it just feels like that,’ Alice said.

‘No,’ Katherine said. ‘It’s true. I’ve never had any friends, not really. You have friends at school, people you think are friends, but you lose touch with them afterwards. They get married, they go off and live on the other side of the city. And really all you had in common with them was that you were sitting in the same room with them most days, and when that stops, you don’t have anything much to talk about any more. And the people you work with, when you work, you leave, you say, “Oh, we’ll stay in touch,” and you mean it, and they mean it, but you don’t. Maybe you see them once in a while, just bump into them, and they tell you what they’re doing, their children, and you tell them what your children are doing, and then you go on and nothing ever comes of it.

‘My God, you’re wondering, what have I walked into?’

‘No,’ Alice said. ‘Don’t worry about that, I’m fine. You can talk to me, I’m here.’

‘There isn’t anyone else,’ Katherine said simply. ‘I thought about Nick. Nick, he’s my boss, he runs the florist’s. I thought he was, you know, my friend, but he isn’t, not really. I’m just counting them up. There are the neighbours – they’re just neighbours, really. There are other people – I used to meet these women for coffee in the morning, but…Can you imagine? They say, what – “We’re thinking of redecorating our lounge,” and you say, “That’s interesting, my husband’s left me.” They wouldn’t be able to say anything back. And Nick – I’ll tell you something. It’s all about Nick, really. I’m sure it is.’

‘What do you mean?’ Alice said. She felt that this woman had really forgotten the situation; she had forgotten that Alice wasn’t just a passing acquaintance she’d never see again, but someone who from now on would live opposite her. She, after all, was now exactly one of those neighbours and Katherine didn’t seem to understand that.