Pat Barker - Double Vision

‘It’s not that.’

‘What, then?’

‘I’ve always known it can’t last. I accept that. And whenever you go, I won’t try to hold you back. You will go with my blessing.’ That sounded cringe-makingly pompous, but it had to be said.

She nodded. A few minutes later, still silent, she started to get dressed.

At the door, as she was leaving, she said, ‘Oh, I almost forgot. Beth wants to see you.’

‘What about?’

A shrug, and she was gone.

He couldn’t guess what the summons to the farmhouse might be about. If it had anything to do with Justine, he was prepared to hit back. He no longer saw his brother’s wife as the fragile half-erased victim of Robert’s more forceful personality, but as somebody altogether more formidable. But she had no possible right to interfere. Locking the door, deciding that no, he didn’t need to wear a sweater for the quick walk up the lane, he planned what he would say: something about the advisability of taking care of her own family first. Adam was getting a bloody raw deal in this situation, and, if provoked, he was prepared to come right out and say so. At some level, anyway, she must know that.

He walked to the farmhouse along the narrow path that led between high hawthorn hedges bursting into leaf, passed the pond with its rutted edges, green goose shit everywhere, and the geese themselves hissing and swaying towards him. The back door was open. In the band of sunshine that fell across the stone-flagged floor, there were three pairs of wellingtons, standing side by side, two of them green, the other, smaller pair in navy-blue and red. Once, not so long ago, he’d have felt a twinge of envy.

Beth’s voice came drifting out to him. ‘In here.’

She was in the conservatory. None of the windows was open, and he felt the clammy heat slick his face with sweat before he reached her. She was standing in front of a long table filling pots with compost. There were blue hyacinths blooming in a bowl beside her, spiralling up towards the light. Her fingers were covered with soil. She wiped the sweat away from her upper lip with one freckled forearm and smiled at him.

‘Hello,’ he said, and stood waiting. When nothing, apart from the returned greeting, was forthcoming, he said, ‘What a marvellous colour.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? I like them so much better than the pink ones.’

He waited. She seemed to be finding this difficult.

‘Robert and I were wondering if you’d do something for us?’

‘Of course. Anything I can.’

‘It’s just that, you know we’ve been planning this little trip to Paris? It’s not long, just the three nights, but I’m a bit worried about leaving Justine here on her own. We’ve had a few silent calls, and… well, they’re always a little bit disturbing, aren’t they? You always think it might be burglars checking to see if you’re in…’

Or one of Robert’s girlfriends trying to reach Robert.

‘I mean, I know she’s nineteen and plenty of girls that age have their own children…’

‘Not ten-year-olds.’

‘No, that’s true. Anyway, we were wondering if you’d step into the breach, as it were.’

‘You mean live in?’ He was enjoying this.

‘Yes, I think it would have to be in. There are plenty of beds.’

‘And Justine would be…?’

‘She’d be here too. And of course she’d take care of Adam during the day, so you wouldn’t have to stop work. Only we’d be happier if you were here at night.’

‘Sounds all right to me. When?’

‘Next weekend. We thought Friday till Monday.’

‘Yes, fine. What brought this on?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She was about to say something bland about the long winter, working too hard… ‘Things aren’t good,’ she seemed to surprise herself by saying.

‘Between you and Robert?’

An embarrassed nod, but then immediately she began to back off. A lot of it was just tiredness, Robert working all hours, she was doing a full-time job… ‘And this is a big place.’ She gazed round her with a hopeless expression, though the house was beautifully kept.

‘You’re obviously happy doing what you’re doing now. The garden…’

‘Yes, but —’

‘I suppose it’s a big place to run on one income.’

‘No, we could afford it, all right. The truth is I think if I were “just a housewife”…’ She was sketching inverted commas in the air as she spoke, but she meant it. ‘…Robert would get bored with me. Correction. Even more bored. You know he’s seeing somebody?’

Everybody, according to Justine. ‘No?’

‘I just wondered if he’d talked to you.’

She didn’t know, she was just guessing. ‘No, and I wouldn’t want him to.’ He hesitated, wishing he hadn’t started this conversation. ‘He won’t leave you.’

‘You mean he won’t leave Adam.’

That was exactly what he’d meant, but he could see she mightn’t find it encouraging. ‘Marriages go through all sorts of phases, Beth. The fact is you chose each other. And that says something about you which is probably still true.’

Stephen was feeling uncomfortable. His only qualification for advising on marriage was having made a mess of his own.

‘You know what I’d really like?’ she said, suddenly brightening. ‘A greenhouse. A big one, the kind they have in nurseries, not one of those fiddly little things. That’s what I really like — plants.’

‘Then go for it. You’re lucky to have a passion like that — most people don’t. And it’d fit in better with Adam.’

‘Oh, Adam’s all right.’

As if summoned, like the devil, by the mention of his name, Adam appeared in the doorway. Stephen turned to him. ‘You know what, Adam, I think it’s time we went and saw Archie again.’ One of the most successful days he and Justine and Adam had spent together had been at the Bird of Prey Centre. ‘If we’re very nice to Phil, he might let you fly him this time.’

Adam was beaming.

‘Who’s Archie?’ asked Beth.

‘An eagle owl,’ Adam said. ‘He’s huge, isn’t he, Stephen? Bigger than an eagle.’

‘And he’s in love with Phil, isn’t he?’

Adam giggled. ‘He keeps trying to mate with his glove. When can we go?’

‘Next weekend, when Mum and Dad are in Paris.’

‘Right,’ Adam said, and marched up the stairs, not looking back.

Stephen turned and found Beth looking at him with a rather wry expression. She said, ‘It’s very easy, you know, being an uncle.’

‘Oh, I’m sure. Uncles aren’t responsible for how they turn out.’

And so, that Thursday, after driving Robert and Beth to the airport, Stephen moved some of his things up to the farmhouse and started playing house with Justine. That’s what it felt like — a holiday from adult life. The mere fact that the house was not his gave him an Alice-in-Wonderland feeling. He seemed to be wandering around between the chair legs while items of furniture loomed above him, mysterious with withheld significance. They made him feel insubstantial, these rooms with their carefully selected antiques, the fruits of years of settled, successful endeavour, and yet the feeling was not entirely unpleasant. Like Goldilocks in the house of the three bears, he had a sense of danger and transgression. He and Justine cooked meals for themselves and Adam, and sat down at the long table in the kitchen to eat them, and there was always this feeling of innocence and danger combined.

It was a happy time. He felt as irresponsible and carefree as Adam, or rather as Adam would have felt if he’d been a different sort of child. But even Adam seemed to feel liberated. He flew Archie, and Stephen took photographs of the moment when the eagle owl landed on his glove. Adam’s face was screwed up in fear, braced to take the weight, then amazed, as the great wings settled and folded and the golden eyes turned on him, that the bird was so light.