Tessa Hadley - The Master Bedroom

— He’s smoking, said David. — I think he smokes himself into a stupor sometimes. Don’t think there’s anything you can do about it: short of chucking him out altogether. There’s nothing we haven’t tried. He goes his own way, he doesn’t listen to us.

— I wasn’t criticising him, said Evie, startled. — He’s lovely. Isn’t he lovely with the kids? I just thought he might be unhappy.

It was true that Jamie was good with the children; they adored him. He had picked up a board game for a pound in a charity shop: Hero’s Quest, with tiny metallic warriors and orcs and wizards. He invented missions and wrote them on pieces of paper for Hannah and Joel to follow — The Masters of Morion have to recover the Red Stone of Zelton from the Chest of Azeriac — then sat with them cross-legged for hours on the floor of Hannah’s bedroom, seeming as wrapped up in the stories as they were, earnestly explaining why they couldn’t cross the threshold of Morion without the right counters. It was surely better than the children watching endless soaps on the television.

One evening when David came home the house was full of people. At first sight he might have thought they were Jamie’s friends, if they had ever visited: sprawling over the furniture in their bright-coloured play-clothes, communicating in noisy call-and-response like a bird-flock, they seemed younger than he could remember ever being. They jiggled to music as if they might break out into dancing; something folky was playing on the CD player in the study (Suzie had taken over his study, he had moved his computer into the living room). He looked around at first in vain for anyone he knew, foolishly displaced, still hanging on to his briefcase, as if he’d put his key in the door to the wrong house: then he saw Giulia and Larry in the kitchen cutting up pizza, and Menna with her stark china-doll’s face and upright dancer’s posture on the sofa. Anywhere she sat, she made a little court and was queen: staring unsmiling, she stiffened under his proprietorial survey. Two girls on the floor at her feet chattered, comparing their bare dirty soles, not seeing him.

The French windows were open; on the patio, among Suzie’s bright-blooming pots and hanging baskets, male heads he didn’t recognise at first — then he identified Neil, Menna’s boyfriend — were bent in consultation over the barbecue. It hadn’t been used this year: the charcoal surely would be damp, after its winter in the garage? Hannah and Joel held their breath as they did for him when he lit it; Evie, animated, hunkered flexibly down on her heels with her back to the patio wall, was gesticulating with her roll-up at someone he didn’t know. Her sociability, he was reminded, was rash and overexposing: the marijuana smell (would the neighbours notice?) mingled foully with the smell of the fuel they were using to start the barbecue. David didn’t like to see the children being around so many people smoking, he turned back into the hall. Suzie, running downstairs, stopped as abruptly at the sight of him as if he’d put out a hand.

— It’s my birthday, she explained on the spot, out of breath, a few feet higher than he stood on the ground.

At a blow dignified wronged restraint was knocked away. — Oh: love, I’m sorry. Of course it is. How could I have forgotten?

— No, it’s all right. I really don’t care.

— I can’t believe I didn’t think. I’ve been writing the date over and over all day.

— Don’t worry.

If her eyes glittered it wasn’t from hurt tears: she was exalted, brimming with some glee closed to him; he was sure that until she saw him she had forgotten even to expect his coming home. Giulia brought him wine from the kitchen. — Come and eat pizza: from the Dolce Vita, where Larry’s cousin’s the chef.

Humbled (and anyway hungry), he went with her. — Did Suzie tell you I forgot?

— Oh don’t worry! Larry never remembers my birthday.

— She didn’t say anything about a party.

— It was impromptu, Giulia said. — We decided today at school, when she told us she wasn’t doing anything. We phoned around.

— Let them get on with it, Dave, Larry said. — Take it from me: when the girls get it into their heads to enjoy themselves, there’s nothing for it but to light the blue touchpaper and retire.

Larry’s big handsome Italian head was marked with inherited strong lines that looked like sorrow, but he was jovial, tied into Suzie’s apron, serving pizza; afterwards he lapsed into the Telegraph with a glass of David’s whisky. David poured himself some too. He made his way round the party after he’d eaten, fuelling himself with the whisky, and found out that Suzie’s friends were care-workers, actors, shop assistants; one worked on a council play scheme, one made furniture. Perhaps she preferred them because they were funnier; the more he drank, the more he was aware of his earnestness weighing him down like a clumsy coat. Neil had triumphed with the barbecue. His tanned skin was taut against his small fine-shaped skull, puckered in crinkles beside hazy eyes; there was a dope smoker’s considering delay between his thought and his speech. David knew he ought to be more resentful of the man than of the girl, but it was Menna somehow whose self-possession goaded and exasperated him.

— Someone likes their music, Neil said, admiring David’s CDs, shelf upon shelf, carefully ordered by composer and chronology.

— David only listens to classical, said Suzie. — Way over my head. When I went with him to a concert, all I could think about was that I was afraid I was going to cough, because I hadn’t brought any cough sweets. I didn’t even have a cold or anything; but I began to feel this little tickle, rising in my throat; I could picture how all those disapproving faces would look round at me, if I spoiled everything. So I kept saving up little bits of saliva and swallowing them down, to stop my throat being dry. It was all I could think about, I didn’t hear a note.

A girl asked if David was a musician.

— He doesn’t play anything, Suzie answered. — He’s in public health. He works out which ones of us will get into the bunker. Or who to vaccinate if the flu epidemic comes.

David had an idea that he stood swaying his head like a dumb ox between them as they talked. — Is that really what you imagine I do?

She shrugged. — What do you do then? You work with death and disaster all day, don’t you? Sometimes I imagine you bring it home with you on your hands.

— But David’s working to prevent all these awful things, said Evie. — Somebody has to.

— It’s a kind of power, Suzie said. — Don’t try to tell me he doesn’t enjoy it.

David was confusedly nauseated, he closed his eyes, leaned back against the wall, and felt the room dip drunkenly under him. Later Suzie pushed the furniture recklessly back for dancing and the children came squealing and jumping into the new space. They wanted to make peace between their parents, they tugged at David where he sat slumped with his back to the wall on the floor in the study (Suzie had tidied her bed away out of sight of the guests); but he wouldn’t, couldn’t, move.

Kate and Billie arrived home on a Saturday evening. As the train rolled into the station, past the end of St Mary’s Street, they saw that the centre of town was given over to milling seething crowds of young people, the girls almost undressed in the hot summer weather, the males in the white shirtsleeves that were the minimum required by club dress codes. The swaying pale mass, moving sluggishly perhaps between venues or simply possessing the outdoors, seemed mysterious as restless spirits in a vision. Their taxi took them the back way, and still had to nudge at first through flesh that wouldn’t yield to traffic: faces leered in at the windows, one boy dropped a pie on the road in front of the taxi and, lordly, waved them to a halt while he recovered and bit into it. Billie laughed, captivated; as they got away to the suburb and the lakeside, the restored empty quiet was both a balm and a diminishment. Sim (Carol had been feeding him) greeted them inside the house in angry ecstasy, butting his hard head affrontedly at their stroking hands. Kate took Billie up to bed.