Joanna Kavenna - Inglorious

‘Of course, of course, you must go,’ she said.

Judy disappeared. Will had gone away. Rosa found a pile of magazines on the sofa, furniture magazines, gardening magazines, magazines about childcare. Guides to the Lakes. Country Life. House and Garden. Already she was aware of it. It seeped from the sofas, coursed across the dog baskets, flickered at the grate. There was an overwhelming sense of goodness to the house. Altruism, understanding and love. It swept you in, deposited you by a raging fire and a few handsome dogs. Rosa patted them each on the head. ‘Good dog,’ she said. ‘Good good, steeped in goodness, little dog dog.’ She ambled round, looking at the big plush curtains, read some cards set out on the bookshelves, loving notes from friends — ‘Thanks so much for a gorgeous stay. So lovely to meet the fabulous Eliza, and to see those sweeties Sam and Leila again. Love to all of you’; ‘Congratulations, my dear friends, on the birth of your third! Hope you’re all doing very well. All my love …’ They were doing the right thing, making a life for themselves. Three children, it was a towering achievement. And the place was a work of art, with the vivid upholstery and the fire spitting in the hearth and the neatly varnished window-frames. Everything was immaculate.

When Will returned, with a tea set on a tray, she was humbled and grateful. Now she looked at him carefully, he did look older. Perhaps his hair was thinning on top. Flecks of grey in it, anyway. Nothing too blatant, a subtle shift towards midlife. He had a few lines around his eyes. His hair had grown long at the sides. He had taken off his muddy wellingtons and his jacket, and was wearing shabby blue jeans and loafers and a green V-necked sweater. He put the tray down on a solid oak table. ‘Do you take milk?’ asked Will and Rosa nodded. She did. ‘Just a spot, thanks so much.’ A spot , she thought? Serving out tea from a silver tea service, Will looked incongruous. He had a furrowed brow, and sharp blue eyes. He looked like an overgrown choirboy with a holiday penchant for rugby. It was a curious combination. Judy obviously liked it. His children, judging from the photographs scattered around the room, were all as stocky as him. He would breed a tribe of prop-forwards who would never be ill.

He was staring at her, thinking of something to say. Determined to practise virtue in all its forms, Rosa reeled off pleasantries. She was digging in her store of remembered questions. It was a while since she had been so stubborn and polite. She said, ‘Well, you have a lovely house. How do you find it living here? Do you like it? How do you find the region? How did you find the house?’

‘Rosa,’ said Will, uncurling his big legs and setting his feet firmly on the floor. ‘I love it. We live in total bliss. You should try it.’

‘Any time, Will. Any time you feel like a house-trade, your lovely farmhouse for a room with a view of the train tracks, just let me know,’ she smiled.

Will smiled back. ‘Sounds great. Just what we need, an away-break in the city slums.’

‘How old are your children? What are they like? Are you planning more?’ asked Rosa.

Will rattled off their ages. Rosa nodded profoundly and failed to commit any of them to memory. Meanwhile Will was explaining that they wanted more children. Another one at least. Maybe two. ‘It’s genuinely miraculous. You hear everyone talking about it, and you can’t possibly understand it, but then you produce this being, and after a few weeks you can’t imagine that they never existed before. It’s extraordinary. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s so much work, of course. The work is insane. We farm some of it out. We have a nanny who lives a few doors away. She must be about to leave now. But she’s here most of the day. That’s a great bonus. And we have people from the village who help. But you know, we never sleep. One of them sleeps through the night, the other wakes up; Eliza goes mad at dawn, you know, it’s crazy. But still, it’s extraordinary how much I love them all.’

He was still smiling, beaming with wonder. When people talked about their children Rosa smiled and looked intent, but it seemed to her as if they alluded to something hermetic. Still she nodded, batted a few more questions towards him, about the neighbours and the sense of community, a few more platitudes, a compliment on the tea which was making her long for a hit of coffee.

He was grateful she was making the effort. Later, she knew, he would be just as polite to her. ‘Oh, they’re wonderful,’ he said. He meant the neighbours, she thought. Rosa was nodding with conviction. Now, as Will said: ‘Yes, the neighbours, really great. Some of them are incomers too. It’s such a quiet valley, the Duddon Valley, where we are. By summer there are fewer tourists than elsewhere. And we’ve helped a bit with local events. It’s sublime’ — as Will continued, Rosa felt her expression was becoming fixed, like a mask. ‘Sublime,’ she said. ‘How lovely.’ She nodded and smiled again. She couldn’t drop the smile for fear of losing it altogether. Will, she thought, I am quite sure that you are dear to the gods. They have poured blessings on your head. There was a pause and Rosa was hunting for something else to say when Will puckered his brow and said, ‘Rosa, I’m very sorry about everything that’s happened. About the death of your mother. And I couldn’t believe it when I heard about you and Liam. Neither of us could believe it.’ His expression was open; he looked like he meant it.

‘Well, thanks,’ she said.

‘We just wanted you to know that.’

‘Good of you,’ said Rosa. ‘But really, it’s fine. No need for sympathy. I was knocked back for a while, but now I’m fine.’

‘I have to say, you look a little strained,’ said Will. He was leaning towards her, he seemed to be thinking about putting a hand on her arm. But he didn’t. ‘You look like you haven’t been having the best time of it recently.’

But that was a funny thing to say. Who ever had a best time? How did you get a best time? Tell me where to go for a best time , she thought, and I’ll be out of here in a flash . But she stopped herself again. Discipline , she thought. Gratitude.

‘Oh that’s because of a lot of other things,’ said Rosa. ‘Other stuff. You know, existential.’

‘No, really, you look very worn.’

He was sipping his health tea and looking pensive. He seemed to find it painful, personally painful, that Rosa was so mashed. She was sure he was a good man. She certainly had them both pegged as good people. Their mantelpiece displayed it, all those shots of community functions and smiling small children. They were virtuous and productive. She had known them for years. She had met them — she could barely remember when she had met them. A long time ago, it must have been through mutual friends. A party, in the days when life was a pattern of parties and everyone thought they were unique and possibly immortal. In those days no one thought much about the essential unknowability of things in themselves, an sich and the rest. They hardly cared a jot if space and time were merely intuitions, and they hardly considered the ens realissimmum. If they thought about it, they talked it through over a beer, but in a detached way, as if it didn’t directly concern them. Mostly they drank and fell in love. They trusted the physical world, invested heavily in it. Judy and Will met during that period. She had known Judy first, yes, she remembered a few coffees with Judy early on, and she remembered something about Judy and Will meeting and becoming so compelled and excited by each other that Judy cried. Was that real? Or a disturbed echo of something else? She had always thought of them with affection, though distantly, people she semi-knew but liked. When they lived in London she and Liam had them round for dinner a few times a year. That was cosy, and then they met at parties, in large groups. It was the closeness of their scrutiny that was freaking her out. But if you lugged bags of unwashed breeches around the country, pursued by rapacious bank sharks, you had to accept it. Still she thought it was strange he wanted to question her so closely. For all he knew, she was truly mad. He was lucky she still had some of the carapace stuck to her.