Tessa Hadley - The Past

Ivy was alone in the den on the front wall, setting out clock patience again, when — breaking into the peace which had seemed impermeable — the Pattens’ car was suddenly all noisy presence in their lane. Its shiny red roof slid sinisterly close below her, then the car turned into the courtyard of the barn conversion opposite, crackling over the small stones and spitting them behind it. Hopeful, Ivy watched Janice Patten climb out from the driver’s seat: it seemed wholly possible that, through some fluke or break in Ivy’s flawed child understanding, Mitzi might come bounding out of the red car when Janice opened the rear door, and pay her necessary visit to a succession of sniffing places around the yard. Then everything would be all right again. But Claude Patten got out of the car instead, and stood stretching and groaning on the gravel. Janice only took some bags off the back seat. But if their dog was dead, how could they be so ordinary?

The last king — diamonds — appeared too soon; Ivy collected her cards together and climbed down from the wall, then wandered inside the house. Alice was playing something melancholy on the piano in the drawing room, and the music filled her with superstitious dread. She retreated upstairs, not announcing to anyone that the Pattens had arrived. Alone in her bedroom, she climbed under her duvet and began reading a book she had borrowed from the shelves in Alice’s room, and had read at Kington before. All the time she was aware of voices coming and going downstairs, and felt herself passed over. When at some point she smelled baking she realised, martyred, that she hadn’t had lunch. Finishing the book she put it back and took another one. Reading was consoling, when you knew in advance everything that had to happen.

Roland drove into town while Pilar was out with Harriet, to get the newspapers and check his emails — although Alice said they didn’t want newspapers, not at Kington. — Can’t we not know the news, just for a while? The world will get along fine without us being aware of what’s happening in it.

— No one says you have to read them.

— But if I don’t they sit expectantly, the news leaks out of them.

Molly asked to come: she wanted to show Kasim the amusement arcades she had loved when she was a child. On the way into town the young ones sat together in the back seat of the Jaguar; Roland imagined Kasim’s hand on Molly’s leg, bare under her shorts, against the leather upholstery — although he’d never actually seen them touching and there was no sign of anything more between her and Kasim than a frisson of attraction. Roland had always been delighted by his daughter — her easy compliance, her grace; he loved her easily, with a strong current of feeling. Because it was obvious she wasn’t intellectual, he had never put any pressure on her to do well at school; that dreary parental fixation on achievement seemed to him a distraction from the real values of art and thought. Now he was taken aback by how much the idea of her sexual life troubled him. He didn’t like Kasim; it was a strain keeping ahead of him in conversation, negotiating with his ignorance, his quick cleverness, his high opinion of himself. He flattered Roland almost negligently, as though he were bound to be pleased by it, and cheerfully pronounced his bleak verdicts on politics, on the economy, on the future of the planet. Roland was glad when, after he parked behind the Co-op, they agreed to go their separate ways.

In the library he was scrupulously polite, charming the librarian, then checked his emails among the spider plants and oversized romances and the tiny chairs in the children’s section. A publisher wanted a foreword for a new series of film scripts; someone wanted a keynote for a conference on film iconography; his agent had forwarded him some nice remarks on a piece he’d written for the Guardian — it all reconnected Roland with his public self. He couldn’t imagine a life without work at its heart; it was a frame redeeming everything flawed and incomplete. What he dreaded was coming to the end of his interest, finding himself bored; in his thirties he had panicked, feeling trapped inside his university department, then made strategic efforts to develop a career reaching beyond it. He tried to imagine how it must be for Alice, having pinned all her aspirations on her personal fulfilment and her relationships. Perhaps everything would be different if she had succeeded as an actress.

When he had finished in the library he bought himself coffee and a sandwich, and sat with his newspaper at a café table on the pavement; catching sight of Molly and Kasim wandering past, he pretended not to notice them. Kasim was biting into a burger wrapped in a greasy napkin, Molly was licking ice cream. Strolling along with the crowd of desultory holidaymakers, they didn’t look quite like everyone else. No matter how scruffily and carelessly they were dressed they were marked out by their class and education, and by Kasim’s brown skin — these old-fashioned resorts were still remarkably white, it was striking when you were used to the crowds in the big cities. Roland couldn’t help himself chafing at the narrowness and dullness of the little town. Sitting out like this on the street in any small town in France or Tunisia or Brazil, he’d have felt alive and stimulated, observing everything excitedly, drinking it in. He couldn’t enjoy this place, it was too familiar, it was home.

Molly and Kasim had played ice hockey in the arcades, skimming flat discs on a table, then fished for furry toys with a mechanical arm. They had exchanged the reams of tickets they won for a white china vase in the shape of a crumpled boot, which Kasim said he was going to give as a present to Alice, just to watch how it put her on the spot, having to appear grateful when it was the ugliest thing she’d ever seen. They had passed a tattoo parlour on their way up the street, and now he was trying to coax Molly into having a tattoo.

— Just a teeny, teeny little one. Just a tiny butterfly, say. On your ankle.

— You’re joking! You must be joking. I’d rather die.

— I don’t know what you’re worried about. Come on, I gave up smoking, don’t you think I’m suffering? It’s only a little needle pricking away at the surface of your skin, just the very surface. It doesn’t take that long. A couple of hours, say. Little needles full of ink. That’s all. They keep them very clean. Your ankle’s a long way from your brain.

— You’re doing it deliberately, she exclaimed, only half enjoying it. — You’re teasing me! I know you are.

Ivy’s mother, looking in suspiciously from the bedroom door, asked what she was up to. — Why aren’t you playing outside in this lovely sunshine?

— Why should I? I hate everyone.

— Don’t be silly. The Pattens have arrived, and Janice has come over. Alice has made a cake. Needless to say she’s left a fine mess in the kitchen.

— I wanted to make a cake, Ivy said. — It’s not fair.

Her mother shut the door and went away.

When Ivy heard Janice Patten’s voice downstairs in the drawing room — deep as a man’s, but chattier — she left her book open on her pillow and dawdled reluctantly down the staircase, first hanging over the banister to listen, then trying to enter the room invisibly: she would have liked to snake along the floor on her belly then conceal herself under a chair. But Janice was on the lookout. — I spy with my little eye, she said in a sprightly, fake-surprised voice, — I do believe it’s Princess Ivy.

Janice had an idea that her neighbours were arty and eccentric, and saved up stories about them: they were part of the local history along with their grandfather, even if they were letting that lovely old house decline into a dreadful state. Ivy had forgotten she was wearing the silky petticoat. It was stained and torn now and she had only put it on again this morning as a kind of penance. Giving up snaking, she plonked herself, pouting, in a chair.