Tessa Hadley: The Master Bedroom

— It’s a treasure trove, said Carol. — You need to have it all valued; you need an antique dealer to give you an idea what it’s worth. You need to sort out the things you want for yourself, to keep.

— I know, Kate said. — You’re so sensible. But I can’t be bothered.

— The folk museum might be interested in the haberdashery stuff. If you didn’t want to sell it.

The rooms in the turret had been locked since Kate could remember: a pantomime-sized key that had hung for ever on a hook in the kitchen, labelled mysteriously ‘store’, had fitted the lock when Carol tried it. Inside, in two circular rooms joined by a spiral stair, ill-lit through tiny windows whose frames were so rusted they wouldn’t open, was all the overflow of Sam Lebowicz’s business: in good condition, compared with most of the contents of the house, perhaps because the rooms had been shut up so airlessly tight. There were piles of flat boxes of sample stockings in cotton lisle and silk, one of each kind, all shades of brown and beige, folded weightlessly between sheets of tissuepaper: there were also two pink plaster feet for modelling them, pointing toes fused together. There were busts, too, their blank faces painted and over-painted in the styles of different decades; and suspender belts, knickers, corsets, brassieres, camisoles, liberty bodices, knitting patterns, brown-paper packs of balls of wool, a flutter of invoices. It all smelled of old lavender. For a couple of hours Kate had wondered over all this, exclaiming with delight at the workmanship, the virgin appeal of items untouched, the seductive feminine idea behind this underwear in baby pinks and creams and satins and with tiny buttons, threaded ribbons: in such contrast, surely, to the flawed and bloodied bodies to be stuffed inside them? She lifted up wisps of embroidered silk nightdresses, petticoats: who bought these things? When you thought of what the miners earned, in those days. Dreaming betrothed girls, perhaps; spinster schoolteachers. Then she lost interest and locked the door on it all again.

Carol this time found her dozing on the sofa in the drawing room, wrapped in an eiderdown, with the gas fire full on as well as the central heating. Books — contemporary paperbacks, not old books — were opened face down all around her on the floor.

— How many, Kate? I’m only clever enough to read one book at a time.

— Nothing written now has enough in it. I have to swap about, as soon as I get the hang of what they’re up to; they’re only ever up to one thing at a time.

— You’re full of prejudice. I’ve read some brilliant new novels recently. Carol, unwinding from her scarf, fighting out of a jumper, pressed notes on the piano. She sighed. — I can’t believe Billie isn’t going to play it ever again. Without her, the piano’s dead too. It used to have such sweet songs in it.

— I miss her body heat, Kate admitted. — Even her old body helped: the two of us kept warmer together than I can get by myself now.

— It’s sweltering in here. There must be something wrong with you.

— Everything’s wrong with me.

Hot-faced, quelling impulses to fling windows open, Carol frowned down at her. — You don’t get enough exercise. It’s a good thing that you’re leaving here, you know.

— You’re so unfeeling. You want to be rid of me.

— It breaks my heart, in fact: you’ll never know what this place — the two of you in it — has meant for me. I’ve so loved having you at home this year. But it isn’t good for you. I’m glad you’re getting out, now there’s nothing to keep you. Only I wish I felt confident that you knew what you were going back to in London. Will they give you your old job again? Those people are still in your flat, aren’t they?

— There’s always Max’s. Kate was vague.

— You are joking? You can’t go and live at Max’s! Not with Sherie there.

— Or there’s America.

— America? said Carol. — That’s new. Which probably means it’s serious. Oh, Kate: America’s a long way off!

— Is it? Kate said doubtfully. — I wonder if it’s far enough.

— Do you still have your old friends there?

— You mean my lovesick professor? We haven’t spoken in fifteen years: but I may look him up again. Perhaps I’ve found myself thinking yearningly of him, recently. I might get in touch.

— But wasn’t he nuts? Hadn’t he taken too much LSD?

Kate’s look was sententious. — Time’s a great healer.

— Not of blasted synapses. Anyway, he’ll be ancient now, he’ll be worrying about his pension. If he can still add up.

— Me too, I’m worrying about mine. I ought to settle down, really.

— I suppose you might, sometime. Why do I always expect you to surprise me with the next thing?

— I can’t keep the surprises up, you know, just for your entertainment.

— And what will you do with Sim?

— I wanted to ask you about that.

David only saw Kate Flynn once more before she left Cardiff. He knew that she was selling Firenze and leaving, because Carol told him so. When he came with his mother to see The Marriage of Figaro at the Millennium Centre he did wonder if Kate would be there: he wouldn’t have bought tickets, just in case, but Betty bought them, and then he thought, it’s a huge place, the odds are against Kate’s coming, but even if she does, we’ll miss one another. He tried not to think about Kate at all: it was as if he kept a heavy door shut against what he knew, against what had happened. Whatever he had imagined, sitting outside Firenze that night in his car, he must keep at bay. It was the kind of mess that women like Kate made: better not to know too much, better that the boy had gone to his grandmother’s for a while. Apparently Jane was helping him make his university applications. Probably Jamie had had a crush on Kate; they must have met through Carol. David was lucky to have got out of such a tangle. He remembered sitting there in the car, and Kate coming out into the garden, in the dark, in the wind, to look for him; and he had been determined not to make a move, not if she wouldn’t come over to him, to explain, to make everything all right again. He tried not to see it all, what an idiot he must have looked, what a puritan, stuck like a dummy in the driver’s seat, weltering in his judgement against her. But he couldn’t change what he was. He was lucky, really, that it had all come to nothing. His life with Suzie had resumed, they were companionable again, she had moved back into their double bed; he was relieved and grateful.

Betty loved going to the opera with her son. (Bryn couldn’t manage opera: too highbrow for him, he said, made him fidgety.) She was dressed up in a new green silk dress, with her best Welsh wool stole; at the first interval they met people they knew and chatted, exchanged Christmas plans. How could his mother actually sound excited about Christmas after so many repetitions, getting the decorations down from the upstairs cupboard, putting them away again? She had her little line about The Marriage of Figaro , how pleased she was that they were doing it in proper eighteenth-century costumes; she knew she was old-fashioned, but she hated it when they messed around with the clothes. David went to look for the interval drinks he’d ordered. As he claimed their tray, he looked down over the balcony, behind the great front of the building with its carved-out lines of poetry, to the level below, and saw Kate with a gang of friends, all laughing and noisily declamatory. He recognised the blond American he’d seen at Kate’s party, and Ann the viola player. None of them looked up to see him.

David was shocked: he’d somehow pictured Kate as left behind, sad and alone in the old house, mourning. When he’d worried about bumping into her at the opera, he’d imagined her here by herself; instead, she was sitting while the others stood round her, as if she was holding court; she threw back her head at someone’s joke and clasped her hands round her knee where her legs were crossed in some kind of dramatic silver-and-black skirt. Light flashed off her angular modern jewellery, her bony shoulders were bare. They were all drinking beer from bottles; relaxed, they made the place their party, so that everyone outside it seemed stiffly polite. One of the crowd sang: exuberantly, badly. Kate sang back; more laughter; then the blond man demonstrated something musical, marking great swoops and patting tiny tensions in the air with his hands. If they irritated David, he couldn’t tell himself it was because they were uncultured, or too self-admiringly fashionable; if anything, from his angle on the balcony above, they were collectively interestingly ugly. Kate had had her hair cut, she’d had something else done to it that David didn’t like, although he could see that it worked, it was striking: more streaks were added among the dark hairs to her authentic white ones, so that their effect was lost, or multiplied.