Tessa Hadley - The Master Bedroom

By the time Suzie came to bed he could tell that she had drunk quite a lot more; she stumbled over her shoes on the floor, swearing under her breath, and instead of folding her clothes or putting them in the wash basket she let them fall where she took them off. She showered for a long time to sober up. When she climbed into bed he had already put out the light on his side, and he closed his eyes as if he was asleep; pressing up close against his back, she made him too hot.

— Tell me about Francesca, she pleaded into his pyjama top, her voice muffled so that at first he wasn’t sure what he’d heard.

— Whatever for? I’m asleep.

— Tell me. It’s important.

— You know all there is to know.

— No, I don’t. We hardly ever talk about her.

— When someone’s dead, after a while there’s nothing new to say. That’s natural.

— You treat it all so calmly. If I died, would you be this calm?

He turned over to face her in the dark.

— You used to not want to discuss all this.

— I know. But now I can’t stop thinking about her.

— Don’t think about her. It was a sad, awful story. Better to let it go.

— Which way did you go to sleep together, when you were lying in bed like this? Which side did she like to lie on? What did she wear to bed?

David dutifully thought about it. — I can’t remember, he said. — I don’t know what she wore.

— You must be able to remember.

— We kept such different hours. I’d be getting up to go to work sometimes as she was coming to bed.

He did remember then that when Francesca was very pregnant she could only sleep sitting up in an armchair. But that was also when she began to imagine it wasn’t a baby growing inside her but a demon, which would split her open and kill her when it was born. He didn’t want to tell Suzie about that.

The next day on the way back from work — he was early, a meeting had been cancelled — David decided on an impulse to turn right at a traffic light instead of going straight home, and to call in on Kate Flynn. It was weeks since he’d been to her house after the oratorio. Somewhere washing about among the tissue boxes and empty crisp packets on the back seat of the car was the impossible book she had lent him; he had felt so puzzled and slighted when he opened it at home and found he couldn’t read it, that he had meant simply to drop it through Kate’s letter box sometime, and not to go out of his way to see her again.

But she might have made a genuine mistake; and anyway he was disappointed now, standing in the dusk at Firenze’s front door, when the bell chimed somewhere far off and in the long minutes he waited after it no one came to let him in. The pillars of the portico were crumbling and corroded; a black mould grew across the white steps. Through the windows to either side of the door he couldn’t see anything but the porch with its checkerboard tiled floor and empty flowerpots and rotting deckchairs; the fringed cream blinds pulled halfway down were worn to threads. He hadn’t known he was thirsty to talk with Kate Flynn until she wasn’t there. He nursed her book under his coat, shielding it from a drizzling, sideways-blown fine rain that had started as he got out of the car; he didn’t even try to post it through the letter box (which was anyway, simplifyingly, too small). He had never been any good at talking: Suzie complained of it, even his mother teased him for it. All the short time he was married to Francesca, he had kept a young man’s silence like a seal across his lips. At work of course he talked, but there it had consequences, and was about substantial things. He didn’t know where this urge to spill his private thoughts had sprung from, sharp and precise as other appetites.

Turning his collar up against the rain, he made his way back to where he’d parked the car; then lifting his head as he felt for the keys in his pocket he saw Kate and her mother crossing the road from the park, Kate holding up over them both a huge black umbrella. Mrs Flynn looked more frail out in the open, wrapped up in a brown crocheted beret and scarf; she walked with a stick, head down, her mouth slack from her efforts. Kate in her black-and-white checked wool coat was not fussily solicitous but had adjusted her pace to her mother’s slow advance, looking around with that high gaze of hers which although she was short seemed to glance across the tops of things, trees, roofs, passing cars. David was suddenly shy. He thought he could read the succession of expressions on Kate’s face when she recognised him — blankness, surprise, faint irritation — and he was reminded of weekends when he was eleven or twelve and Carol and Kate, reluctant, had been detailed to ‘keep an eye on him’ when his parents went away; he had known with indignation at the time that he was more safe and sensible than they ever were.

— This is a bad moment, he explained himself. — I was only bringing your book back. I’ll come another time.

— Oh, don’t go, Kate said. — We need company. Perhaps you could get Mummy in. I’ll put the kettle on.

Mrs Flynn gave no sign that she recognised David, but submitted to his care. They made their way together up the side path to the door; the asphalt was worn into treacherous pits or upreared over tree roots, and the old lady gripped David’s arm with her free hand. The cold breath of the house, sour milk and damp towels, came to meet them from where the door stood open onto the entrance hall. He could hear Kate running water in the far-off kitchen. In the hall he asked Mrs Flynn if she would like to take her coat off, and obediently she began to unwind the scarf from her neck. Now that she was no longer in forward motion, a rusty old habit of deprecating charm started up in her.

— The park was glorious, she said. — They keep it up so well.

— Don’t take anything off, called Kate. — That dreadful man still hasn’t fixed the boiler.

— We love our park, Kate and I. It’s such a joy. We’ve always been so lucky, having it on our doorstep.

— I think it’s funereal, said Kate, still in her coat, carrying cups into the drawing room on a tray. — It’s like a cemetery. All the new trees, and every bench you sit on, in memory of someone whose favourite place it was. I began to think I’d find one with my name. We had to go into the glasshouse to keep warm. Full of sparrows zinging about, drunk with relief, thinking it’s summer.

— The borders were magnificent! murmured Mrs Flynn, although she obediently kept her coat on.

Kate frowned at her as if she had a headache. — Don’t be silly, Mummy. It isn’t even properly spring yet. Everything that had grown up had lain down again under that snow we had, we were dejected, our feet were cold, and then it began to rain. We clung to David when we saw him because without him we might sink into bottomless despondency.

She found matches to light the gas fire, and brought in the teapot in a dirty knitted cosy; outside it seemed to grow dark very early, partly because of the dead creeper that hung in a matted blanket from the veranda, sagging as the rain soaked into it. They sat in the gas-fire light; Kate on a cushion on the floor made no move to switch on the lamps, nursing her teacup for warmth, a mess of bangles clashing on her thin wrists. The cups were bone china, tiny, rosebud-patterned, and David had swallowed down his tea in half a minute.

— You gave me a book I couldn’t read, he said, holding it out to her.

— Oh? Kate looked vague. — Which one was it?

— I don’t mean it was too difficult. I mean it’s in some language I can’t read. Polish, I think? Did you realise you were doing that? What did you mean?

Kate opened it quickly and then snapped it shut with her loud laugh, that he flinched from sometimes.