Tessa Hadley - The Master Bedroom

She had bought a postcard in the post office. Along with her fountain pen, she fished it out from her bag: a photograph of the triumphant figure of Justice from over the Crown Court in the city centre, with bandaged eyes and swinging scales. ‘Dear Max,’ she wrote, cramping her big black italic hand into one half of the space; she didn’t want to have to put the card in an envelope, in case Sherie didn’t get to read it too. ‘Greetings. I am well, amid more civilised mœurs de provence . My days are dedicated to art, and my nights to the cellist in our new quartet. And how are you? Kate.’

It wasn’t strictly the truth. She didn’t in fact find the cellist at all attractive, although she suspected he could be encouraged, if it amused her or she grew desperate, to harbour a moody thwarted passion for her. It would be in keeping with his sorrowful paisley shirts washed to pale thinness, his lion’s mane of hair with its secret bald patch, and the divorce he clung to as part of the explanation for himself, as martyred saints in paintings carry round the wheels that they were broken on.

David came home from work one evening to find not only Giulia in his living room but also the new teacher, Menna, the fortune teller. David had been at a tabletop multi-agency exercise, rehearsing contingencies for a flood in the Bay area, in a big room hired out for functions at one of the leisure centres: behind his concentration all day there had floated the liquid echo and splashings from a swimming pool and the thudding chock of balls, perhaps in a basketball court. All the various authorities and agencies at these events competed to make their points, and public health came low in the order for commanding attention. ‘We don’t have time to wait for you to consult the books,’ one of the policemen had said to him at some point.

The women were sitting with the curtains drawn and only the lamps switched on, drinking wine, huddled intimately on the floor among the cushions, their talk intent, their heads bent close together: Giulia’s hair faded dark-blonde and Suzie’s honey-coloured, the new girl’s black and shiny as a china doll’s, in a long plait. They looked up and paused when he stood in his heavy coat in the doorway with his briefcase, but only as if he were a stone fallen into their stream, interrupting its flow for a moment. The new girl’s face was doll-like, too: with white perfect skin and too-small symmetrical features, eyes rather burningly coal-dark, outlined in black pencil. The children were in the snug, watching EastEnders , cuddled up one either side of Jamie. David and Suzie disagreed over whether the soap was suitable: the idea of its lugubrious quarrelling imprinted on their infant minds depressed him, but she said if he wanted them not to watch it then he had to be home in time to do something else with them. She said if they didn’t watch it they would feel different to the other kids at school, and he kept to himself the thought that it was better, to be different. The house was burrowed deep into its comfortable evening; whatever they’d all had for supper was cleared away in the kitchen and the dishwasher churned. He poured himself a glass of wine — the girls were on their second bottle — and chose something from the freezer that looked roughly the right size and shape to microwave for his supper, not bothering to wipe away the ice crystals to find out what it was.

— I’m sorry, Suzie called into the kitchen. — I didn’t keep anything for you. I didn’t know what time you’d be finished.

When he’d eaten the gluey food and came with his wine to sprawl on the sofa, their talk petered out conspiratorially. EastEnders was finished and Joel came running to snuggle in his lap, hooking an arm round his neck, the light little body just beginning to elongate out of baby roundness. Hannah showed off her series of ballet positions in the middle of the room, proficient but not graceful. — Do you know, Daddy, that Menna can tell fortunes?

— Oh yes, David, Giulia urged him, an enthusiast for everybody’s gifts. — Why don’t you let Menna tell yours? Suzie, have you got playing cards?

— He never would, said Suzie, not looking at him.

— She’s uncanny. She can tell you things about yourself you can’t believe she knows.

— I can’t say I find that an appealing prospect, David said firmly.

Instead Hannah dragged Jamie from the snug and made him sit cross-legged on the carpet to have his fortune told: he had always since she was tiny given himself up like this to her command. David couldn’t tell what Jamie thought; he was smiling slightly, but that could have meant irony, or just dope. The women and the children watched intently, Hannah breathing noisily with her mouth open. The girl was probably closer to Jamie’s age than to any of theirs.

— D’you want to do this? she asked him.

Jamie said he didn’t mind. She shuffled and cut the cards with deft expertise, handed them to him to cut again, and then dealt them with crisp practised movements into rows. Her hands were small, fingers sore and puffy round the bitten nails; there was no elaborate mystification, but something was commanding in her matter-of-fact concentration. David couldn’t help imagining she had been soaking up everything they gave away about themselves, to bring it out later as her triumph. With sudden significant slowness, Menna turned a card over, then another one; her glance flicked from them up to Jamie’s face. — The watcher, she said, — from his vantage point: lots of sky.

Suzie nudged Giulia’s arm in triumph. Jamie smiled steadily back at Menna.

— Books, she said, frowning, peering. — Lots of books. I can’t read what’s written in them, yet.

She lingeringly turned over another card, making it snap. A tiny jolt of surprise seemed to register in her shoulder blades. David thought it was an effective touch. — Oh, she laughed. — How interesting. She looked at the other women. — Trouble.

— What kind of trouble? Suzie said.

— The usual kind. What do you think, at his age?

— Oh, Jamie. Giulia touched him reassuringly on the shoulder. — You don’t have to go on with this if you don’t want to.

Jamie only shrugged and looked amused. — Perhaps I ought to know, he said.

David broke the spell, getting to his feet. — I think these children should go to bed. I’ll take them up.

There were furious wails of protest; Menna paused with the next card ready to turn over.

Giulia pleaded. — Let them watch. It’ll only take a few more minutes.

Menna turned the card over slowly, stared at it. Then she shook her head. — It’s gone, she said: blankly, as if it didn’t matter to her one way or another. — Something’s blocking me. I can’t see it.

She pushed the cards away, muddling the carefully dealt piles.

— Oh, David! Suzie complained, with real regret. — That was you. Your fault.

Hannah couldn’t forgive David all the time he was putting them to bed; she sulked, and spat her toothpaste on Joel’s feet, and stubbornly wouldn’t even come to listen to the story. Joel was free to choose something safe; his favourites were all about railway cats or jolly postmen or good little trains, he endured Hannah’s more frightening choices in a stoic stillness. David thought Joel liked the opportunity to have his father to himself; he recounted little muddled snatches of school life, wanting confirmation that what seemed only strange and arbitrary added mysteriously somehow up to sense. He put his hands on his father’s face and held it looking into his, so he could be sure he had all his attention. While David was reassuring Joel, he heard Jamie pull down the ladder to his attic and then pull it up again behind him.

The women when he came downstairs were confiding together in low voices, so that he knew they didn’t want him to join in. He could hear that Suzie was telling them about escapades from her teenage life, about going to rock festivals with her friend and bringing boys back to the tent. She had only been fourteen when they did this. She had told David these stories — or some of them anyway — when they were first together, including the fact that she had caught herpes from one of these boys, and had had to attend an STD clinic afterwards. He hadn’t been shocked; he was a doctor, he took a practical approach. But it did shock him — he couldn’t help it — that she told the stories now, to this woman she hardly knew, and in a voice as if it was all funny or even glamorously wicked. He left them to it, and went into the study to check his e-mails.