Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

‘I didn’t go to your house that much, did I?’ Daphne looked wistful. ‘It was so calm and peaceful there. Everyone behaving themselves. Your mum so kind. Now I think I probably should have spent more time there with you.’

Jane’s parents did not try to prevent her visiting Daphne, but gave the impression they were not entirely happy about it either. They were warily intrigued by the cautiously modified details Jane relayed: foreign mother, rather famous writer father, peculiar food, lots of visitors. For Jane, the Greenslay household was her escape and refuge – almost an obsession. At Barnabas Road she was able to forget the rules. There was a long list of all the things she did there for the first time. First midnight feast. First fag – up in the tree house. First wine. First sight of a fox. First sneaking out of the house at night. Even her first kiss.

That kiss happened when she was fourteen – too late to admit that she hadn’t done it before.

It was a Friday in September, and she’d gone to stay the night with Daphne. ‘A school project’, she told her parents. There was already a whiff of damp autumn in the air, but the house was warm and alive with bustle. Unusually, all the Greenslays were at home. Ellie was cooking some strange-looking but delicious Greek pasta shaped like rice, baking it in tomato sauce with pieces of garlicky chicken. ‘She tries to make us seem like a great big happy Greek family,’ Daphne complained. ‘But we’re not and she knows it. It’s like she’s playing a game. Tomorrow she’ll probably go away and leave us stranded.’

The excitement of the day was Ed’s latest acquisition – a hot tub that had just been installed and was due to be tested that evening. As Daphne and Jane laid the table, he gushed about his new toy. ‘I tried them for the first time in San Francisco. Utterly beguiling. And extremely beneficial as well as pleasurable.’ As he spoke, he waved his arms around, his harlequin sleeves flapping, his long face animated.

‘Edmund, my love,’ interrupted Ellie from the sofa where she was resting after her efforts at the stove. She was wearing a long, draped dress gathered under the breast and was smoking a French cigarette. ‘Do give me a glass of wine.’ Ed opened a bottle of Chianti – the sort wrapped in raffia – and poured a glass for his wife and himself. ‘It’s all the joys of a hot bath, but under the stars,’ he continued. ‘You feel rejuvenated, almost reborn – part of nature, but held in the safe, warm water.’

‘I expect Professor Freud would have had something to say about amniotic fluid and a return to the womb,’ said Ellie, rather sharply.

‘And would you deny me that, my angel?’ Ed countered.

A record of Greek music was playing – a deep, female voice singing tragic songs of rebellion – and Ellie joined in with the march-like chorus. The air was thickened with scents from the rich sauces, Ellie’s perfume, and the plumes of smoke she blew up towards the ceiling from a tiny cigarette made from a rolled leaf tied with red thread. ‘They’re from India,’ explained Daphne, enjoying her expertise and showing Jane the little paper package of bidis.

When they sat down to eat, Jane discreetly engineered herself next to Liam, Theo’s old friend. Both boys were nineteen and considered brilliantly clever. About to return to St Andrews for their second year studying physics, they were already planning postgraduate work. Jane had not admitted to Daphne how much she liked Liam, though it had gnawed at her for ages. She appreciated his delicate, pale hands and the way he exploded into high-pitched laughter. He was mysterious, with fishy green eyes swimming behind black-rimmed glasses and half his face hidden by hair. Sitting beside him at the table, she felt the heat from his thigh. When Edmund toasted ‘the scholars’ return to the Northern wilds’, she clinked her glass against his, looked straight into his eyes and felt her heart flip. Ellie always served a drop of wine for the children at family suppers and they usually said, ‘ Yeia mas.’ Theo managed to refill everyone’s glass, including the girls’, while his parents’ attention was elsewhere. He smiled wine-red lips when Edmund opened another bottle.

‘It’s real Californian redwood – the hot tub,’ Daphne said proudly, perhaps to boost her father’s morale; neither Ellie nor Theo was impressed by Ed’s purchase. ‘It cost $995! I saw the bill.’

‘Yes, well, there’s lots of pumps and pipes and so on,’ said Ed with a mildly shifty air. ‘It looks simpler than it is. And then there’s all the bubbling business – you get a hydromassage at the same time.’ Jane felt shocked to hear of so much money being spent on a glorified bath in the garden. ‘It’s the nearest you can get to being out in the wilderness at a volcanic hot spring, gazing up into the universe. And that’s not to be sniffed at – even in a back garden in Putney.’

The teenagers did the clearing up – grumbling, but it was agreed that Ed and Ellie would have first go in the tub. Jane spotted them from the kitchen doors, moving shadows as they got undressed, and then, once they were in the water, she saw the glowing tip of whatever they were smoking.

‘Definitely hash,’ said Theo, eyeing his parents. ‘Old hippies. I suspect Ed’s preparing for one of his “nocturnal perambulations”. He always likes to be “in the mood”.’

‘A bit Jack-the-Ripperish,’ laughed Daphne. ‘Not sure I’d want to come across him stoned out of his head down a dark alley.’

‘Claims it nourishes the muse,’ mocked Theo. ‘I don’t know how he or Ellie get anything done. I find the stuff makes my mass-times-the-acceleration-of-gravity go berserk and I can’t get up.’ He smiled at Liam, who looked knowing.

‘OK, Theo, stop trying to impress,’ said Daphne. ‘We’ve heard that witticism before.’ She rolled her eyes at Jane. ‘He just means it makes him feel heavy.’

Jane didn’t care about the explanation; she was looking at Liam’s full lips and the evidence of minor shaving activity around them. Daphne continued to needle her brother. ‘And if you can’t handle it, poor little poppet, maybe you’d better go and work out some more theories. There’s a good boy.’ Theo didn’t react, merely taking a cloth and wiping the table with excessive care, as though he had more serious things to think about. The five-year gap between him and Daphne gave him the edge in ignoring her provocations.

The parents came back indoors wrapped in towels and carrying their clothes. Their eyes were glassy pink. Ed said it was even better than he remembered. ‘A revelation.’ Ellie looked quite pleased too and they both left the room to go upstairs.

‘So, it’s our turn!’ said Daphne. She fetched some towels and the two girls went out into the cold, uninviting garden. The hot tub had been positioned near to the plane tree, as far as possible from the house but without being exposed to the river. ‘It feels like going into the wilderness,’ said Jane. They left their clothes on the tree-house ladder, then tiptoed gingerly across the damp, slightly muddy grass, and ascended the wooden steps. The water was astonishingly hot. ‘Mega death bath,’ said Daphne, groaning as she lowered herself into the frothing bubbles. Jane followed her, submitting to the pain and then letting out a similar moan as her body relaxed into the heat. They leaned back against the edge, their arms along the redwood rim, peacefully paddling their feet and gazing at the mandarin-tinged clouds above the city.

They had been there long enough to stop talking and sink into a silent but companionable reverie, when Jane spotted a figure making its way through the dark garden. Without her glasses she couldn’t tell who it was, but it soon became clear. Ralph wasn’t as jovial and pretentious as usual. ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.’ He was evidently speaking in the singular and addressing Daphne. ‘Hello, Jane. How are you?’ His voice lost its urgency and interest as he acknowledged her presence and Jane raised a wet hand in greeting, not replying. He was leaving for New York in a few days and, privately, Jane believed it was a great idea. It was horrible to see Daphne like his pet dog, his toy.