Tessa Hadley - The Master Bedroom

— I have got an aunt on my mother’s side, he said. — But she’s nothing like you. Why do you care what people think?

— You’re such a nice boy. Temporarily, I suppose you’re my fate. But you’ve no idea of the trouble you’ve made for me.

— Temporarily?

— Of course. Do you picture yourself pushing my bath chair?

— What’s a bath chair? He was looking among ruby-dark tea roses with an air of choosing.

— Don’t pick one for me now, after we’ve seen her: it’s too late. Anyway, I don’t like roses.

— Being young isn’t like what people think it is, Jamie said to Kate that night. She had plugged in beside the bed her steel lamp from London with two creamy glass globes, like little moons, so they could see one another. — Before I knew you, it was like looking at real life — people actually feeling things and being things — through a closed window.

— The people on the other side of the window, of course, were looking back enviously at you.

— I was afraid of never getting to be actually real. Having Dad and Suzie’s life: driving round picking the kids up from things, or dropping them off, booking two weeks’ holiday a year, machines at home to do everything, that nobody uses. It’s like a picture of a life. Only in here is real, because it doesn’t pretend to be. That’s a paradox.

— You’re so clever, aren’t you?

Propped on her elbow, she traced the effort of thought on his face with her finger.

— You know how to do things, he said. — Everything you touch, you know how to do it. As if there’s a hidden pattern.

— If only you knew. Everything I touch, I spoil: apart from Billie. What would decent people think, of what we do? You ought to be afraid of me.

— I don’t care about decent people.

Carol called at Firenze to invite Kate to supper.

— Get a Billie-sitter, she said. — Ask Alison. It would be good for you.

— Do I look as if I need good doing me? Kate, measuring out tea from the caddy in the kitchen, turned herself full-frontally for her friend’s appraisal. Kate had recently had her hair cut; her badger-stripe was swept strikingly back from her face and her head seemed lighter, freed from the thick bob.

— I had a bit of colour put in, she confessed, approving herself in the little skewed mirror over the sink. — On the hairline where there was some grey.

— As a matter of fact, you do look well. Carol ducked to peer in as well. — My whole wretched mane is grey, she complained, flattening it brusquely. — Not true grey; just as if the blonde had gradually leached out. Actually it’s not you I’m worried about: I’m worried about the other person I want to ask. But, seriously, how are things?

— I have my music, Kate said, imitating her mother. — All my life, I’ve been consoled by art. Oh, and also in the evenings we’ve started backgammon: a different Billie steps out from behind the confused one, ruthlessly competitive, sharp as nails. We keep a book: I’m losing. And I hate the idea of work, I’m ashamed that I didn’t liberate myself long ago. Everybody should try it.

— Not everybody of course could afford to, murmured Carol conscientiously.

— I’m sleeping like a baby. Aren’t you amazed by that? Who is this other worrying person you want to ask to supper?

— My brother. You do like him, don’t you? I know you used to think him a bit of a prig. Only I’ve got a feeling something’s going wrong with him and his wife: she’s away, again, with the children, he’s all on his own, working too hard. I thought we could try and cheer him up.

Kate poured boiling water into the teapot from an impressive height. — I don’t know, she said. — I’m awfully busy.

— You could talk to him about music. In the evenings on his own I think that’s all he does: plays CDs from his collection.

— Surely no one uses that word these days: prig? It’s out of an Edwardian children’s book.

Kate came late to the supper party, so that they had started eating without her. Carol had invited a couple of other friends: someone who worked for the Refugee Council and a publisher from one of the subsided Welsh presses. The first-floor flat, bright and jolly, opened off a bleak common stairwell with timed light switches; as soon as the door swung open Kate knew she was in the wrong mood. She was hot and she had chosen to wear a tight-fitting black dress; Carol and the other woman, Angharad, were in T-shirts and trousers. Kate explained that the taxi driver had been late bringing her sitter.

— Have you left children? Angharad the publisher asked sympathetically.

— No: senile old person.

Kate stalked on loud heels into the kitchen to find gin. David half got up out of his chair to greet her, but when she sat down she made sure she didn’t sit by him; she knew her discomfort settled on the conversation like a cloud, despite the wide-open windows and cheerful dishes of salads and vegetarian curries. Picking over chickpeas on her plate with a fork, she turned her attention onto Colin, who was nervous in the strong light of it, mentioning his absent wife sooner than was strictly necessary. Because he seemed to want to, Kate let him believe that her parents had come as refugees from Hitler’s Germany: his professional respect struck in.

— You know why we Jews play the violin so well? she explained loudly. — So that we can pack our livelihood in one small case and get out at a moment’s notice. Don’t I play the violin well, David?

David with his mouth full was at a disadvantage; he had been applying himself earnestly and silently to his plate. He nodded his head with obliging eagerness, putting the back of his hand over his mouth, swallowing hard.

— Although, he added, scrupulously honest, when his mouth was clear, — I don’t suppose it’s that easy to earn a living, playing the violin. I mean, unless one has a professional training.

— Don’t be so literal, dear, said Carol. — Kate only wants you to flatter her. She isn’t really calculating for a fascist takeover.

— Sorry, said David. — Of course not. She’s a very good amateur player.

— Colin will have to flatter me, Kate said. — David’s the truth-teller. He never will.

Colin, uneasily in thrall to her tragic past, prevaricated: said he had never heard her play. She invited him to the next concert given by her quartet; he said his wife had played the cello when she was a girl; Kate yawned. The conversation, limping, took refuge in politics, the number of women AMs in the Assembly. Carol brought out hazelnut and chocolate torte (home-made: she was good); they all eyed it embarrassingly keenly, because their minds weren’t elsewhere. Only Kate refused it.

— I don’t like women politicians, she said.

Angharad was steely. — That’s a ridiculous statement, in the twenty-first century.

— Are we in the twenty-first century? I’m always forgetting, aren’t you?

— No one’s having that argument any more. Even the reactionaries are only quarrelling over the methods of achieving parity.

Kate shrugged. — I used to be a feminist, of course. Everyone goes through a phase. But now I’m glad men rule the world. Who wants to, anyway? What a bore.

— Take no notice, Carol said, cutting big slices in compensation. — She’s only being provocative.

— Women are too weak, too far-seeing, too deeply drawn by emotional tides. Too pessimistic. If there were only women, we’d still be living in caves, prophesying through our genitals. Civilisation’s such a foolish optimism, really: it takes men.

David laughed inappropriately.

— You are just being provocative, Angharad said, smiling as if she wasn’t amused.

Carol handed cream. — You’re too naughty, Kate. Don’t tease. Anyway, you’d be useless in a cave. Don’t forget I’ve slept with you inside a tent: you hated that.