Tessa Hadley - The Master Bedroom

— David couldn’t bear me to talk about it. He thought I was just dabbling, you know: making games out of serious things. I believed it was Francesca when it fell. I hadn’t been thinking about her or anything: I really didn’t think about her much. Of course I’ve always known about her, but I hadn’t ever seriously tried to imagine what she did. You were a friend of hers, weren’t you? Then out of the blue — only it wasn’t blue, was it? it was horrible weather — this body came hurtling down onto my car. It was so heavy, the whole car leaped under the blow. It shook me out of my skin. Without giving it a second thought, I understood that it was her.

— Free association. Perfectly natural. You probably thought about her more than you realised you did.

— But ever since then I’ve been possessed.

Kate looked for a flare of madness in the wholesome face: perhaps these earthbound types were more susceptible to the freaks and fumes of delusion, having no resistance when once they stumbled in.

— Really, as if something jumped inside me that I haven’t been able to shake off in all this time since. First, I couldn’t let David touch me. I’d think every time he came near me: it’s in his hands. Death or something. Don’t imagine I don’t know how unfair that is.

— You didn’t think for one minute David ‘drove her to it’, did you? That only happens in films. With Francesca he was the most considerate, the gentlest, the most decent.

— Oh don’t! said Suzie sharply. — I know!

— She’d moved out from their home anyway, with the baby. With Jamie. She was filthy to David. I’d seen them, during that time before she moved out; although I’d gone to the States by the time she died. The poor girl was ill, she was depressive, she’d overdosed once already, I believe, when she was a teenager. She was a bore with it all. Forgive me speaking rudely of the dead.

— A bore! No one’s ever said that to me before.

— It might be a useful thing for you to know.

Suzie shuddered: perhaps melodramatically. — Since the thing with the swan, I’ve been behaving so badly. As if its message was: make a mess of everything you’ve got.

— You funny creature, said Kate. — How old are you?

— Thirty-five, said Suzie gloomily. — I’ve made such a fool of myself.

— With these friends of yours? I hope you’ve had a good time doing it.

— I couldn’t tell you what I’ve done, I’m too ashamed. She laughed and covered her face with her big hands, the skin around her fingernails torn and sore. — I’ve got a bad streak in me. I knew it would come out. Blame my misspent youth.

Calmly Kate asked if she was going to make up with David.

— That’s what I wanted you to tell me. Should I go back? Are we right together? You’re his friend.

— No, said Kate. — I mean: no, I won’t tell you.

Suzie peeped between her fingers. — Do you want him for yourself? He likes you, doesn’t he?

— I don’t know what you’re talking about.

— I rather thought you liked him.

When, late in the afternoon, faint sunshine touched the stones in the garden, Suzie said she wanted to swim. Kate — who told her she would die if she did, especially after drinking alcohol (they had finished the bottle) — stood watching, swaddled in coat and scarves and gloves and hat, while Suzie, shivering, stripped on the beach. The low blurred chilly sun was reflected in the rocking water, a silver path from the horizon. Suzie had her black swimming costume on under her clothes; she stepped long-legged, lean-thighed, across the shingle, laughing and grimacing, balancing with her arms held out.

— You’re mad, Kate called. — I really think you’re mad. You’d better come back. I’ve no idea how to cook those lamb chops.

Suzie only waved, stepped in, tottered at the shock of cold, forged on up to her knees, then with a shriek plunged, and swam crawl with strong strokes into the glittering path. Kate watched the black shape of her head bobbing, disappearing and reappearing against the dazzle; she was wrapped in the sensation of absence, the gulls crying and circling, the crash and drag of the waves, the freezing wind slicing underneath her clothes. After a while she worried that Suzie must be going much too far, there would be currents out there, the sea was treacherous; she was seized with the idea that she would be left alone on the shore for ever like this, holding the towels. How absurd: she was entirely alone, all the houses on the quay were probably holiday lets, there was no one to call for rescue; what would she do if suddenly she couldn’t see Suzie, and there was only the emptiness of the ocean left, meaning nothing? Accidents really happened: it really had been foolhardy to swim in this cold, after all that alcohol. For a moment the stupid girl with her raw ragged life seemed as mysterious as if she was lost. Kate imagined having to tell David. Then she caught sight of the black bobbing dot of a head again: grateful, she saw it turn and head back towards the beach. She clutched the towels against her chest inside her coat, to warm them.

David woke when it was very early, perhaps just after dawn. He was filled with joy, from a dream he’d had; even as he came to complete consciousness the joy didn’t dissipate but persisted, as if it was something he must act upon. Mostly these days his dreams were an idiotic mishmash of petty anxieties, repressed resentments, sexual pressures, and he took no notice of them; but aesthetically this one satisfied him. He had been standing with Kate Flynn in a room that had seemed to belong in his own house; now he only thought he remembered it from other dreams. There were high windows on all sides of the room, as though from outside you could have seen right through it; the space was full of air and light; in fact gusts of birds darted past them as if blown out of trees around, although both of them knew this wasn’t normal, indoors. Kate had stepped back giddily, with a little laugh, from the swooping birds, and he had steadied her against his arm; then he reached with his other hand inside her clothes, where it was intensely warm, and took out something. They bent together over the little brown bird that sat hot and still in his palm, too frightened to fly, its whole body beating with its fear.

— It’s a wren, he said. He was pleased to recognise its tininess, its wood-brown spotty breast, its pert uptipped tail.

— What a lovely metaphor, said Kate.

He thought in the dream that that insight was typical of her, typically clever, that he would never have understood by himself what the bird meant, or known the word to use. But when he woke he realised that of course it was he who had understood, because everything that was in the dream was his.

— In truth, he thought with absolute clarity in his waking self, — she’s the one I want.

He was afraid of staying in bed, dwelling on his dream, in case he consigned it to becoming only a sex fantasy among others; he dressed quickly and went downstairs. There was no sound from the kids; Suzie was here, asleep in the study; Jamie was home too, his bike was in the hall, the attic steps were down. David picked up his car keys and went out. Suzie for once could get the kids to school; he didn’t care if she heard him drive away.

Outside in the muffling greyness, yellow light beamed out from windows in one or two of the other houses, promising and homely as lanterns; his steps scrunched on the gravel drive damp with dew. When he was a child he had loved listening from his bed to the sounds of cars starting up in the early morning, then droning away from him through the sleeping streets; now he felt himself inside the kind of significant adventure he had attributed to those adults then. He wasn’t sure yet whether he was going to go to work today or not. The streets he drove through were mostly empty; he imagined a comradely connection with the few cars that passed him, lit up as he was, obscurely purposeful like him.