Tessa Hadley - The Past

After lunch their grandmother retired mysteriously to her room, and came down later in a different dress, unless she was gardening. In those late afternoons, their mother sometimes played the piano, and the sound came floating out past Alice, eating through the daisies in her playpen set on the lawn, to where Hettie and Roland were busy in the stream, building a dam across it, Hettie snapping out orders to Roland. The music while it lasted seemed to frame and characterise their life in a way which was poignant and satisfying, as if they could see it from a long way off. The children were always surprised that their mother could play at all; the piano seemed to speak quintessentially of acres of empty time, dedicated to dreamy introspection — which they did not associate with her. Then Jill would break off impatiently, when she made a mistake in the middle of some rippling passage, crashing both her hands down on the piano keys crossly, slamming the lid shut. They were half-aware that their mother was boiling up with trouble, the whole time they were adapting to life in Kington, settling down there. — I can’t bear this, she said aloud once rather calmly, with her hands still raised in that impressive way, curving and passionate, poised above the notes.

— What can’t you bear? Sophy said.

She was patting out a soft dough for scones, with floury hands, on the kitchen table. Jill had come in to cook the baby’s supper and was crouching, banging through the saucepans in a corner cupboard, looking for a small one.

— Not being able to play through those pieces I used to know. It’s so frustrating.

Her mother began pressing a glass into the dough, cutting rounds of scone and setting them out on a baking tray, while Jill sat back thoughtfully on her heels on the linoleum, with the saucepan in her hand. — And that’s not all. There’s quite a lot I can’t bear, just at the moment. My husband, for instance, if you really want to know. That marriage is pretty much over, I should say. I made a mistake with Tom, and it hasn’t worked out. So there we are.

She put on a sprightly, debunking voice, as if all this was a subject for a light, bright, clever irony; and Sophy went on pressing down the glass into the dough, close up each time against the last cut-out round, for minimum waste. — I knew something was wrong, she exclaimed, but without looking at her daughter.

— I’ve decided to come back and live down here, Jill said. — Mikey Waller’s helping me look for a place to rent. Perhaps I could find a little job — I thought you wouldn’t mind looking after the children, just a couple of mornings a week.

— What kind of little job?

— Anything. I don’t care. I thought of asking in the library.

— You’re a wicked girl, Sophy said. When she had stamped out as many rounds as she could, she gathered up the leftovers, pressing them together into a new ball, flattening this with deft fingers. — To tempt me so dreadfully. I can’t think of anything I’d rather have in the whole world than all of you living down here. I’d be so happy, having you nearby all the time. Or here at the rectory for goodness sake: what are all those spare rooms for? Helping you look after the children. I’d like it more than anything.

— But, Jill said. — You’re going to say: but, it’s not possible. But, I have to be good, or something. We can’t all just have what we want in life. You’re going to remind me of my duty, that I ought to stay with him. For the sake of the children or whatever. Those things don’t mean anything any more, Mum. They don’t count for anything. Women have seen through them. Anyway, you haven’t even asked what’s wrong.

— So what’s wrong?

Jill sighed and put up the cool metal of the saucepan against her face. — He sleeps with other women for a start. That’s the easy bit.

Sophy began stamping out new scone-rounds, dipping the glass into the flour bag, grinding it down thoughtfully into the dough. — How many other women?

— Mum, you’re funny. What does it matter how many? I don’t know. One at least, quite definite, that he’s owned up to, recently. I found her underwear, if you want to know the sordid detail, in my bed, when I stripped it to wash the sheets. All crumpled up, sort of fossilised because I don’t wash them that often, down over the edge at the end, caught between the layers. He brought her home when I took the children off to Candice Markham’s for the weekend. They must have hunted everywhere. She had to go home without her knickers, poor Vanda. She must have thought he’d stolen them, to keep in his pocket or something. Frilly red nylon ones, that couldn’t possibly ever have been mine: in the underwear department I’m still very much the vicar’s daughter, in my white cotton. Poor Vanda. He doesn’t even like her very much.

Jill said she was sure there’d been other women too. — Two at least, that I have suspicions over. He’s probably with someone right now. Some dirty little Parisian Maoist he’s got off with on the manif , the manifestation . Or perhaps there’s a woman at Bernie’s — you may have spoken to her, when you telephoned.

— I think that one’s with Bernie.

— Well, who knows? She may sleep around. The point is, Tom doesn’t seem to have qualms, as long as he can get away with it. But the unfaithfulness really isn’t the major problem. Maybe he’s right that we don’t need to own each other. Maybe I could get lovers of my own, we could balance things out.

It was lucky, Jill thought, that she was sitting here on the floor. From her unusual perspective, everything in this kitchen — that was familiar as life itself — looked unexpected: so that these extraordinary words, which didn’t belong in here, could flow freely out of her mouth, liberated by the room’s new strangeness. She could see from where she was sitting the grubby stained underside of the kitchen table, the side which was not bleached each week by Mrs Cummins, and metal struts that had been screwed in at some point, fastening the top more securely against the legs.

— The real problem is that I don’t admire Tom any more. I don’t just mean him being unfaithful: though of course that makes me sick and jealous, it’s bound to. But I mean intellectually, as a thinker and a writer. I used to believe he was so brilliant. I chose him as my guide to everything, he showed me how to find my way in the world. But now I can see the lazy patterns in his thinking, all the short cuts. He doesn’t really know half as much as he pretends he does. He’s full of enthusiasms, but doesn’t think things through deeply. I can follow a complex argument better than he can, I can see through falsity more quickly, I’m better at connecting things up together. I’m a better writer. What am I supposed to do with that discovery? I don’t know how to be with him if I can’t look up to him. I’m programmed to believe that the man I choose must be my master. I know that’s an absurd expectation, but I can’t seem to unpick it from where it’s stitched into my psyche.

Jill had never said any of these things aloud before; she hardly even knew if they were true. And her mother didn’t care anyway, about cleverness. She wouldn’t be on Jill’s side over that, she believed that women should keep their scepticism and criticism hidden, not risk exposing themselves — as the men exposed themselves — by pronouncing with any certainty. She would disapprove of the language of intellectual competition which Jill had used, she would have her secret irony at that. But at the same time, she must be at least half-triumphant, hearing all these things about Tom. In recent years Jill’s relationship with her mother had often seemed to be a silent tussle, Sophy’s unspoken judgement against Tom pushing up against her daughter’s defence of him. Now Sophy was painting the tops of the scones with egg and milk beaten together, and she asked what Jill was going to cook for the baby’s dinner. Would Alice eat the cauliflower cheese left over from yesterday? Jill stared hopelessly inside her empty pan. — She didn’t like it very much, did she? I was imagining some boiled potatoes, with peas and grated cheese on top.