Tessa Hadley - Clever Girl

— You all think you’re so bloody special, don’t you?

And that was it. That’s how disaster comes, without any fanfare — though none of us could take it quite seriously for a moment or two, even Nicky, who looked down at his jumper soaking with blood, more surprised than anything. Baz, still holding the knife, seemed as bewildered as the rest of us, and Daphne hit at his hand with the rolling pin which she’d snatched up from the draining board, kicking the knife away into a corner of the room before she and Neil tackled him to the floor. Sheila ran out to the phone box to call an ambulance and the police. Then before the ambulance men could arrive, Andrew was suddenly at the door — and by that time I knew already that Nicky was dead, I’d been kneeling with his head on my lap, holding his hand, and I’d felt the life go out of him. I sent Andrew to pick up Lukie from nursery and look after him while I went to the hospital. And then when I got back from the hospital I saw Andrew just that once more, when I collected Lukie. They’d spent the afternoon together at the zoo. I told Andrew I could never see him again, ever. Never. I wouldn’t listen when he tried to talk me out of it, I never responded when he phoned or wrote to me afterwards, not ever. And I never did see him again. I only had word of him from time to time, through Sheila.

ONE DAY WHEN FRED CAME IN from school, before he’d even put down his briefcase or taken off his coat, he said he thought he’d found God. It was part of his style to make these pronouncements, like a character in grand opera. Sometimes he would even sing snatches of opera to accompany them. And I used to think how if I’d been his lover or his wife these pronouncements delivered with such oracular solemnity would have got under my skin and made me impatient with him. (I’d have been annoyed by knowing that under the ironic play, sending seriousness up, he actually took himself so seriously.) As it was, I was tolerant of him, and didn’t mind these games. The heavy black overcoat I’d found for him in a charity shop was too big, it swamped him like a cloak and added to the operatic effect, along with his big liquid eyes and drooping, doggy, olive-skinned long cheeks.

I was making a chicken pie, lifting the round of rolled-out pastry on to the dish full of pieces of chicken and ham in a creamy sauce flavoured with lemon.

— I didn’t know God was lost, I said, concentrating on centring the pastry correctly, so that the hole I’d cut came down over the uplifted beak of the china blackbird meant to hold the pastry up. — Where did you find him?

— Don’t mock, Stella. My life’s burdened with sin, I need to change. It can’t go on.

— You’re not in love again, are you? With the new chaplain or something?

He groaned. — You see? How it’s impossible to talk without joking about my spiritual life. I’m not blaming you.

My little boys, aged three years old and seven, were playing out in the garden. Fred’s flat was in the basement of a tall, wide Edwardian house built of red stone; the kitchen door opened on to a paved yard where I hung out the washing and grew a few flowers in pots — not very successfully because the yard only got the sun for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Stone steps led up into the garden proper which was a wild place, crazily overgrown. It was supposed to be the responsibility of the old lady who had once owned the whole house and now lived in the first floor flat, but she had given up bothering with it; when we offered to help she said she didn’t want us interfering. Judging by the state of her flat (her entrance was at the side of the house, up a metal staircase like a fire escape) she had given up bothering in there, too. Sometimes she was standing at her window and caught sight of the boys playing in the garden; then she rapped on the pane and shook her fist at them like a pantomime witch (Rowan showed me, screwing up his face and hunching his shoulders aggressively, growling).

The garden was surrounded with high walls built of the same red stone as the house; a portion at the end had been concreted over years ago to make a car park, which no one used because the gap where the drive ran between the side of the house and the wall was too narrow for the newer cars. The garden must have been handsome once. Massive boulders in the rockery were studded with fossils, roses still bloomed along a rusting arcade where ancient espalier apple trees had been trained. The roses and the apple trees sprouted in disorder, convolvulus smothered everything, brambles were invading over a wall, evergreen trees had grown too tall and cast long, blue shadows. The lawn and the flower beds were tangled with weeds and the drive was pitted with potholes; dock and buddleia sprouted through the asphalt. The boys had a den in the shrubbery. I knew that Luke sometimes climbed into a tree and sat on top of the wall, looking down into the ordered garden next door while Rowan waited obediently below, craning upwards to know what his brother saw. Luke led Rowan around everywhere by the hand, taking care he didn’t step in anything or get stung by nettles. He knew his brother better than anyone did, including me — how best to cushion him against disappointment.

From time to time they made their way back to me down the stone steps (usually because one of them needed the lavatory: Luke would question Rowan sternly, in order to avoid accidents). I loved the sight of them bare-chested in the sunshine, dirty-faced, scruffy because I cut their hair myself, not very well. They wore clothes handed on to me by friends whose children had outgrown them: I patched the knees of the trousers when they wore through, and let down the hems or sewed strips of different fabric around the bottom as the boys grew taller. I gave them picnics to take along on their adventures, packed into Rowan’s little red suitcase. I never spied on them but once when I was on my way to the dustbin I caught sight accidentally of them unwrapping the packets of biscuits in their den, sitting very seriously to eat them, side by side. Not wanting to break in on their secret, I crept away.

— I need a framework, Fred said, lifting the crust from the chicken pie with his knife and fork to sniff the steam. — I’m bewildered by too much freedom. That’s why I’m thinking of converting. It isn’t the chaplain — he’s very unattractive. And he’s a dreary Anglican, anyway.

— Do you have too much freedom? I said. — You’re always complaining about how school takes every moment of your time.

— In my moral life, I mean.

— Oh, in your moral life! I didn’t know you had one.

— What’s a moral life? Luke asked.

Fred began to explain, wiping his mouth on his napkin. Drinking in new information, Luke watched his face intently. — It’s the life you lead in the light of your conscience. Choosing whether to do right or wrong, trying to work out what right is.

— What’s your conscience?

— Well, that depends on whether you believe in God, or Freud. The question is: how does your conscience know what’s wrong?

Fred always answered the children’s questions fully and with scrupulous seriousness. They loved this, and would follow him round the flat interrogating him (‘Have you ever been in a war? Who invented writing?’), until he had to summon me to rescue him. I could imagine what kind of a teacher he was at the expensive private boys’ school he pretended to hate: satirical, calculatedly eccentric, inspiring, sometimes arbitrary; disliked by the sporty boys, worshipped by a few clever ones, and with deadly enemies on the staff. By that time his persona at the school was probably larger and more dramatic than anything really going on in his private life. I teased him, but he was chastened and wary and as far as I knew kept his desires mostly to himself. Occasionally he disappeared to town in the evening and came back very late, always alone.