Tessa Hadley - The Master Bedroom

She made a quick disclaiming face. — But not to me.

Kate suggested he come back to Firenze for coffee. He drove knowing he ought to feel irresponsible because he was slightly, uncharacteristically drunk; actually he felt exalted and confident, and when they climbed out of the car he breathed in deeply the cold night exhalation of vegetation from the park. The woman Kate had asked to come in and sit with Billie was watching television in the library; David hadn’t ever noticed before that the Flynns had television. Kate thanked her effusively, called her ‘my lifesaver’, got out her purse to pay, hurrying her off in a performance of patrician condescension that Suzie would have bristled at.

— Put the kettle on, she called to David. — I’m going up to make sure Billie is all right.

He wandered through several rooms whose light bulbs when he found the switch were either blown or grimly dim, and found himself eventually where he remembered a glassed-in conservatory area led down to the kitchen at a right angle to the main house, beside the garden. The cavernous space with its pantomime-sized table and gigantic plate racks on the walls was comically disproportionate to Kate’s and Billie’s needs; when he searched for coffee most of the cupboards were empty. An electric cooker had been installed long ago beside the disused gas range. Water thundered into the kettle from a high tap over the square enamel sink; the kettle at least was electric, although its flex looked dangerously frayed. Kate’s black cat mewed throatily to be let out of the back door. David couldn’t find instant coffee, and then guessed that Kate might only make real, and found that in the huge old cream-coloured fridge whose loud motor with its changes of mood was insistent as a personality in the room.

A small plastic-framed mirror hung askew from a hook over the sink and while he waited for the kettle David looked at his reflection, skin greenish in the bleak central light. He saw himself as Kate had suggested, authoritative and complete-seeming, mysterious just because he didn’t have any time to spare for introspection; then looked quickly away, ashamed of the falsity of consciously seeing this. It occurred to him for the first time that Kate might be expecting him to make a pass at her. He didn’t think of himself as the sort of man women wanted to do this: but Kate’s type — London types — might take it for granted that if two people liked each other enough, finding themselves conveniently alone, they would end up in bed together. Why not, after all? His wife had abandoned him and gone off with strangers. Why not make it simply an extension of friendship?

But he knew he would only be appalled and embarrassed if anything like that started up. Hadn’t Kate tried to kiss him on some occasion, when they were teenagers, and he’d made a humiliating mess of it? Francesca had once called him ‘unimaginatively monogamous’. He made the coffee hastily, the glow from the alcohol all subsided. Kate came and leaned in the kitchen doorway, watching him doing it, telling him funny stories about Billie, directing him to where the coffee cups were kept, and the sugar. They were proper old porcelain cups, green and gold, with saucers; if you held them up to the light you could see it shining through a woman’s face set in the base. He avoided looking directly at Kate. He didn’t think he was attracted to her physically, anyway. There was something off-putting in her extreme thinness under all those layers; the idea of peeling them away was more forensic than sensual. Also, she smoked, she was smoking now, blowing smoke at the ceiling, knocking her ash into the sink, waving the cigarette carelessly in a dangling hand. He said that actually he was tired, his exhaustion after the busy week had just hit him, he must hurry off to his bed as soon as he’d drunk his coffee. Even the word ‘bed’ seemed too intimate; he winced as he used it. He imagined that Kate could see through him; that her eyes, if he’d been able to meet them, would have been full of mockery at his predicament.

Halfway home, he was furious with himself for his gaucherie and for his ridiculous idea. How rude he must have seemed, falling over himself to get away. And he regretted now the stupidly squandered opportunity; so bitterly that he almost turned around and drove back. But how could he have explained? He had wanted to sit with Kate in the library with its pink-shaded lamps and walls of books, unravelling himself: the ache of longing for companionship, now he was cheated of it, was overwhelming. At home he sat for a long time outside in the car before he could face going into the house that seemed by contrast so transparently empty.

For half an hour on Sunday evening David thought that the film he and Kate had seen lived on in him: in his voice quaking with rage and his trembling hands he was horrified to feel that same righteous male violence. Suzie came back late, hours later than she had told him to expect them; he had been frantic with worry. And when she came in, she was stoned, really stoned, so that looking for her in her eyes he couldn’t find her, she was veiled and blurred and lost to him. The van with its farting exhaust had dumped them and made its derisive exit: when he came out from his study, his family crowded in the hallway seemed transformed by their short time away, tanned and dishevelled and staring with exhaustion. They even smelled alien: of some mix of smoke and earth, pee and petrol. He was outraged at the idea of Suzie’s irresponsibility, getting into that state while she was in charge of the children.

— It was good, Hannah and Joel insisted, but unsmiling.

He bathed them tenderly and put them in clean pyjamas; they didn’t even ask for stories, they melted into their sleep almost as he lifted the duvets over them. While he did all this he heard Suzie throwing up noisily in the en suite bathroom.

— What is this about? he said. — What are you doing?

She was propped against the sink with her T-shirt off, in only her bra and trousers, her hair dripping wet as if she’d been pouring water over her head to try and sober up.

— Having fun, that’s all, she said idiotically, with the water running down her face and neck. — But you wouldn’t know about that.

— It’s a peculiar kind of fun. Look at you. The children are wiped out. They have to go to school tomorrow. So do you: but that’s your business.

— What are you accusing me of?

— You can go where you want, he said. — But you’re not taking the children away with that crew again.

— They had a fantastic time. Just because they’re tired now.

— Who was driving? David said. — What had he been smoking?

— Oh, I’m going to go and sleep in Joel’s room, Suzie said, pushing out of the bathroom past him, picking up her pillow from the bed, rummaging unsuccessfully in a drawer for pyjamas, slamming it shut with the clothes still hanging half out of it.

— I’ll go and sleep in there, sighed David, performing weary patience. — You stay here. You might need to be near the bathroom.

He moved to close the drawer.

— I don’t want you to touch me! she exclaimed, backing off, hugging the pillow to her chest. — Don’t even touch me.

He hadn’t thought of touching her, but when she shrieked at him he felt vividly a tingling in his hand, as if he’d slapped her face with all his strength, knocking her head sideways with the blow; he stood away from her quickly, letting her go. Slumped down onto the side of the bed, he felt the blood pulsing thickly into his ears and his throat. He heard her vomiting again, in the other toilet.

In the morning Suzie was chastened, she reassured him that Neil had been perfectly safe to drive, Menna had been fine, only she had been poorly, she must have reacted badly to something, she was sorry. And the children, although they drooped and whined all week from the late nights, dropped fragments of delighted narrative of their adventures for him in voices that didn’t expect him to be able to understand: the nights so dark, the torch that failed, the barbecue built from stones, the thieving goats. Jamie remarked conversationally that the skunk Suzie’s friends had been smoking was probably hydroponically grown and much stronger than anything she had been used to; that would be why it had made her ill. David heard him out in silence and then shrugged, as if it was a matter of indifference to him. Suzie didn’t talk about going away for any more camping weekends; in fact, he knew she gave the tent back to Giulia. She didn’t mention Menna, although he presumed that when she said she was going out for a drink with friends it was with them. She went on sleeping in the top bunk in Joel’s room.