Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency

Perhaps it might have been possible. Perhaps if Malcolm had never left, she’d now be wandering over, asking how they were settling in, when the children would be starting school, offering advice about plumbers and local carpet-fitters, meeting the children and the husband, inviting them over for a drink with Malcolm and her children some time in the next day or two. But it was hard to see how she could manage that on her own. Alice didn’t seem to understand the rules of the situation. All the other neighbours did: the day before, Katherine had been walking slowly down the road, and the door to Mrs Arbuthnot’s had opened, issuing Mrs Arbuthnot, a scarf on her head and a shopping trolley, setting off for the supermarket. Mrs Arbuthnot had seen her approaching, and rather than continue and be forced to meet or ignore her, she’d performed a small pantomime of forgetting, slapping her forehead almost and shaking her head, going back inside until Katherine was safely past. Katherine blushed. Of course, she couldn’t know anything about Malcolm yet, could only have wondered about him not coming home, the car no longer in the driveway, or maybe she’d seen the business with the snake, heard Tim’s wailing. That sort of ignoring would not go on for ever, but only until these things were not the most recent and conspicuous subjects to talk about in a chance encounter. But Alice didn’t seem to know that, and raised her hand uncertainly. Her husband, opening the car, saw the gesture, and looked over the road to where Katherine stood. He waited, watching in the interested way of someone who hadn’t met her yet. Katherine smiled, but she could not wave because of the bags in her hands. She put them down, turned, and went back into the house.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to your party,’ Nick said, when she had got to work. ‘I was terribly looking forward to it. I don’t know what happened. It was all a bit chaotic. I went home and called my brother, you know, in New York, and then I sat down with the paper, just for five minutes, before getting dressed and coming up to your party, and all of a sudden I woke up and it was four hours later. I don’t know what happened – it must have been getting up so early for the market. And then, of course, it was far too late to come. I felt such a fool. I was so looking forward to it.’

‘That’s all right,’ Katherine said, stripping the leaves off a box of roses, her sleeves rolled up over her reddened forearms, Marigolds protecting her hands. They were white roses, just flushed with pink at the ends of the petals; lovely, unlasting. She had her back to him, her face down, concentrating on her task, and she let very little into her voice.

‘Was it a good party, though?’ Nick said.

‘Oh, it was just the neighbours mostly,’ Katherine said. ‘You’d have been bored.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Nick said. ‘I’m sure I would have loved it. Nobody ever asks me to parties. Well, there’s nobody I know who would invite me to a party, apart from you. I feel such a fool.’

‘Don’t be hard on yourself,’ Katherine said, but there must have been something wrong with the way she said it, because Nick came up behind her and put a hand on her arm, as if he was about to turn her round to face him. The touch of him: she actually flinched. She could not endure the sensation.

‘Don’t be cross with me,’ he said, taking his hand away. ‘I can’t bear it if you – if anyone, I mean, if anyone’s ever cross with me. It’s just something I hate. It’s so silly, too, to fall out over something like that.’

‘Oh, no one’s going to be cross with you,’ Katherine said. She meant it to come across contemptuously, but it came out wrongly, as a confession of loneliness. Nick’s statement, which ought perhaps to have been that admission of loneliness, had instead been amused, self-reliant, adding to his confidence rather than anything else. Katherine had assured him that nobody could possibly be cross with him, and the words had their face value, a confession of admiration. All at once she was in tears, and gulping, trying to wipe her face with her arm and scratching herself with the rose in her yellow-gloved hand.

‘Katherine, don’t,’ Nick said. Without turning she could not tell whether concern or embarrassment would be in his face, but in a moment he took the rose from her, laid it on the pile, the right-hand one, of prepared roses, and he turned her round, her face lowered, not ready to meet his eyes and what might be in them. He so rarely used her name. No one did.

There was still quite some laundry to get through; that had been neglected in the days before the party and now it was keeping her busy. At home, she set the dinner to cook, and went through into the utility room to get on with it in the meantime. The children were in the sitting room, watching the noisy television they all seemed to get something out of. A year or two before they had extended the house. A garage had been built on the strip of land to the side, and what had been the garage, separated from the house, was turned into the dining room and, behind it, an intermediate sort of room, leading from the dining room into the garage.

After dinner, that evening, Katherine went back to the utility room. She had to do something to fill her mind with blankness. You could not hear the telephone from there, but the children would get it, and fetch her. Anyway, there was nobody to ring her, and if it rang, it would only be one of the children’s friends. The washing-machine had done one load – shirts and blouses – and was now starting on another, underwear. Normally, she would have transferred the shirts to the tumble-dryer, a newish acquisition, but today she wanted the chores to keep her busy, and she was ironing her way through a damp pile.

The door opened, the one from the dining room. It was Malcolm. She stopped and looked at him. He was wearing the suit he had been wearing that day, but a shirt she had never seen before, and no tie. He’s been buying new shirts while he’s been away, she thought, with a flush of anger. There were no children behind him; they’d probably taken themselves upstairs, whether to bed or just to be on their own. They’d been avoiding her, but now she didn’t care. After all, he’d come to see her first.

‘Are you back?’ she said harshly.

‘Yes,’ Malcolm said. ‘Yes, of course I’m back.’

‘I was worried,’ she said.

‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ Malcolm said. ‘But you know why I went like that.’

She stared at him, and thumped down the iron. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, frankly, I don’t know why you went like that. I haven’t the faintest idea.’ She had to raise her voice; the washing-machine with its noisy rhythms was going into the racket of its spin cycle.

‘You want me to tell you?’ Malcolm said. ‘All right,’ and he started to speak. He was telling some sort of story, and in his hands, his face, you could see the weight of the conviction behind the story; telling what had led up to this, and what he had been doing the last few days outside the house, where he had been. His face went from pleasure, enjoyment as he thought of something, and rage, pain, irritation and puzzlement. He came into the utility room, and started walking up and down. But she could hardly hear any of it. His voice, always rather soft and low, stood no chance against the furious racket of the washing-machine. She watched, fascinated, and in all honesty not all that interested. It would probably be better, in the long run, not to know. She knew, afterwards, exactly how long Malcolm’s explanation had taken, because it was the exact length of the spin cycle. It took four minutes and twelve seconds. The spin cycle came to an end, juddering across the amplifying concrete floor, and made one or two final groans before going into a quieter reverse. It was Daniel and Tim’s socks in there, mostly black.