Tessa Hadley - The Master Bedroom

— Perhaps we ought to check the gas, he said.

Ann ran.

They hurried Billie to the downstairs cloakroom and David, supporting her, held her arm awkwardly under the tap in the small basin, cupping the water in his hand to bathe the injury.

— I’m making a bit of a mess in here.

There was water all over the floor; they jostled together in the cramped space, Kate pressed up behind him, peering over his shoulder — Is it bad? Casualty?

— No, I don’t think so. But the trick is to go on cooling it even after it feels all right.

Billie complained the cold water hurt, and tried to pull her arm away.

— Just a little longer, Mummy. He knows what he’s doing.

— Do you have cling film? That’s good for putting on a burn.

— I don’t keep it.

— Then a clean soft cloth will do. Don’t worry if it blisters. But perhaps I ought to come back and see how it is in the morning.

He could feel, even as he concentrated on Billie’s arm, the forceful pressure of Kate’s body against him, through her dress and his clothes. The sensation was unexpectedly fiery; he had thought that she would be cold, underneath all her layers. He turned his head to look in her face, so close at his shoulder that he could taste the coffee on her breath.

— Should I call by in the morning? It would be no trouble.

Agitatedly she stared back at him, as if she was recognising something.

— Oh: no, she said. — Thank you. There’s no need, you’d better not. She’ll be all right. Actually, I’ll ask our doctor to pop in: he’s been our family doctor for years, such a nice chap, he always tells me he’ll come out for Billie for the least thing, he doesn’t mind. He’s got a bit of a thing about you, hasn’t he, Mummy?

David felt rebuffed. — Would you try to find a couple of dry towels? Nothing fluffy, preferably, which could stick: something smooth like linen would be best.

Kate went gratefully to look.

She gave Jamie a ring for his birthday present, fishing it out for him from an old shirt box full of bits of the apparatus men once used: cufflinks and collar studs and tiepins, a buttonhook, a shoehorn, a gold pocket watch, a cut-throat razor, a hairbrush with yellowed bristles.

— We’ve been burgled once or twice — not recently — but they only took stupid things, toasters and television sets, money. They looked for jewellery, but not thoroughly enough: there’s a secret panel, would you believe, in one of the drawers in the wardrobe. Perfectly obvious, I’d have thought, to anyone not out of their mind on drugs. I don’t even know: were these things my father’s or my grandfather’s? They look too antique for my father. I suppose Billie put them away in here, because she couldn’t bear to throw them out. She nursed the three of them, you know. She’s not such a delicate flower, really.

— The three of who?

— My grandparents, then my father. One heart (I think my grandmother didn’t come downstairs for years), one cancer (my grandfather, who went first), one tuberculosis of the spine. They did have servants, of course. For my father, she paid a nurse: she told me, the woman used to tiptoe down into the kitchen at night to eat. Billie used to try to feed her more at mealtimes, she pretended not to want it, left stuff on her plate like a fine lady. Here, have this to remember me by.

Warily he looked at the plain gold band.

— Should I take it?

— Of course you’re not to wear it, not on your finger. No one must see.

— Then what should I do with it?

— Haven’t you any romance? Wear it on a chain around your neck, next to your heart. Sell it, if you like, and drink the proceeds. Anyway, I expect my grandfather had hands like bear paws: the ring would never fit.

In fact, it fitted Jamie’s fourth finger perfectly: Kate would have to adjust her idea of Sam Lebowicz.

— I don’t want to remember you, Jamie said, putting the ring away in his pocket. — I mean, I want to have you now, in the present.

After the day when David fell asleep on her sofa, Kate clung to his son with more ferocity. All the time she was telling him that they had to stop, they couldn’t go on like this; she told him that he would never have any idea what she had given up for him.

— What kind of thing? he asked miserably.

— Possibilities.

She accused him of boasting about his conquest to his friends. He was pale with dismay that she could imagine such a thing was true; she knew he wasn’t capable of it, but couldn’t stop the flow of her fury. Physically, at the same time, her surrender to him was extravagant, complete. Pictures and the aftershock of sensations from their love-making intruded all the time into her thoughts while he wasn’t there. He was set impenetrably apart from her by his youth, however close they came. She wondered if this was how men felt, making love to very beautiful women: like pressing up against a simulacrum of the desired object, battering at a trick of flesh in desperation for it to yield possession. Thwarted, she hunted shamelessly in Jamie for signs of his father, the taut cords in the neck, the delicate ears, the fine flickering purple of eyelids; who knew, perhaps the swirls of body hair too, perhaps his long feet, the taste of sweat on his stomach? Sometimes his youth was tedious and she punished it.

— There are so many things I can’t tell you, she said.

— Go on. I’d rather hear them.

— I don’t mean I mustn’t tell you, or I shouldn’t. I mean, even if I said them in words you couldn’t hear them, they can’t pass through the distance between us.

He stared intently. — You can tell me. Try. It’s what I want to know.

— There’s no point.

She wouldn’t make love to him anywhere but in the master bedroom; he liked her own room with her things around them, but she couldn’t let it happen there. One night when they were together in the big bed, the door opened; no doubt they had forgotten to bite down their noise. They scrabbled for the bedclothes to pull over their nakedness, and Kate struggled up; Jamie hid his face in the pillows. Billie in her nightdress stood against the light from the landing behind, her silvery hair spread on her shoulders.

— Go away, Kate yelled. — What are you doing in here?

— Mama?

Billie took uncertain steps towards them, unsteady, blinking. She never came into this room, she was afraid of it.

— Leave us alone, Billie! Go back to sleep!

— Mutti? Tremulously, not able to believe her eyes, she peered at them. She spoke in Yiddish, which she always pretended not to understand. — Are you here? Is it you?

CAROL HAD A phone call from Kate.

— You were right, she said. — I am finding Billie difficult. I think she’s getting worse. She follows me round all over the place. She talks about the marks I got for my O levels. Sometimes I think it’s me that’s losing my mind: I begin to wonder which century exactly I’m in, I start to think I’ve come back from the dead. I’d like to be alone, just for a day or two.

— Do you really want to be alone? Carol said.

— To collect my thoughts.

— I know somewhere you could go.

In the end it was arranged: Carol would move in with Billie for a few days while Kate went down to the Parrog in Pembrokeshire. Betty and Bryn were pleased to have the place warmed up and aired. Betty sent her love, she knew how hard it was, she had thought Kate was so brave, moving in to live with her mother, she was happy to do anything she could to help. There were clean sheets in the airing cupboard; Carol, who would drive her down, could show her how the Rayburn worked. (Carol worried, but to herself, over whether Kate would manage the temperamental stove.)