Tessa Hadley - The Past

— Do you mind this? he said distractedly.

She reassured him that she didn’t mind, and tried to unbutton his shirt in turn and undo his tie, encouraging him to undress; but he wouldn’t, and she thought perhaps he didn’t want to be naked in such a filthy place. At least she managed to slide the shirt up his chest, so that it bunched under his arms. He undid his trousers and kicked off his shoes, that was all; Jill spread out the slithery pink eiderdown on the bed for them to lie on, then took off her tights and knickers. She could feel that the feathers in the eiderdown underneath her were clumped together with damp. Mikey’s body, what she could see of it, was very different to Tom’s, so brown and lithe and heedless; Mikey’s was thick and white with a flat, broad, sad bottom, and his back was freckled. All the time he was kicking off his shoes, having to yank at the laces, hopping on one foot, then manoeuvring to get on top of her and inside her, he had his eyes closed, or half-closed. And he said strange gasping things, said he loved her and had always loved her — but she was sure this was only the rhythm of his encouragement to himself, giving himself sentimental permission to let go. His extremity helped to bring on some strong sensations of pleasure for Jill, though they didn’t get anywhere very far.

— Are you protected? he asked in a shamed voice, muffled against her shoulder, when it was all rather quickly over. — It’s a bit late to ask.

— Oh yes. Don’t worry about that.

This wasn’t actually the truth, but Jill didn’t care, it was the last thing on her mind. After Mikey had zipped up his trousers, turning away from her to do it, she saw there was quickly a wet patch darker against the dark material, and thought that Rose would notice in the office, and that the women would notice when he took his suit to the cleaners. She was glad she’d left some mark on him.

Ali had fallen off the front wall into the road. Now she had a huge blue-green lump on her forehead, and was sitting in all the dignity of her sorrows at the kitchen table, being comforted by her grandmother. Her face was blotched from crying and there was still some low-level snuffling, but actually she was beginning to feel proud of the seriousness of her accident. Sophy was playing pat-a-cake with her and feeding her little bits of buttered toast with jam. Her fall was the other children’s fault: Hettie had lifted her up to sit with them in their den in the privet hedge on top of the wall beside the gatepost, but of course she was too little to keep still, and kept leaning over to poke her fingers into the crumbly mortar between the stones, where trailing weeds were rooted and creatures lived. It was a long way down to the road. The others had led her inside with solemn faces, each holding by the wrist onto one of the poor hands with dirty grit stuck in the soft pads of flesh, which were flecked with blood: the blasts of her howling were like trumpets announcing them.

But their grandmother wasn’t cross — Hettie and Roland were having buttered toast and jam too, and drinking milky tea copiously sweetened. In the aftermath of the drama the atmosphere in the kitchen was hushed and admonished, almost holy. Hettie got out the painting book Sophy had bought her last time she was in town; you painted with clear water and the colours came out magically in the paper. It was satisfying work, cutting out all the compromise of creative endeavour. Roland sat arranging his plastic letters, pretending he was making words. Then he actually did make one, copying it carefully out of Sophy’s cookery book: plain, from plain flour. Hettie made a big fuss of him. — It’s a real word, isn’t it, Granny? See now, Roly, you can write! You can really write.

It began to be evening, their mother was late. They had eaten their dinner at midday, so there was no serious meal to cook; Hettie and Roland were sent over to buy eggs from Mrs Brody for their supper, holding hands to cross the road as Granny told them, even though there were almost never any cars. If they’d become positively enthusiastic about eggs, despite the slime, it was partly because they were drawn to what was thrilling and dreadful in this quest to fetch them. The Brodys’ farm was dark, not pretty like Roddings where Mrs Smith grew flowers and the windows and doors of the farmhouse were painted a bright jolly green. Even the Brodys’ red-brown cows smelled worse than the Smiths’ black-and-white ones and seemed more outsize and sinister, stretching their throats and bellowing with eyes rolled back, jostling and clambering onto one another in the muck, in the grim yard of furrowed concrete. Weeds grew through a heap of tyres, and the hens pecked around the wrecks of ancient cars; high in the barn wall above them the evening light shone through the ruined empty dove cote. When Mrs Brody came to the kitchen door she was always nursing a cup of tea against her apron, as if she were keeping it warm — her teeth were brown from all the tea she drank, and sometimes the children didn’t understand her because she spoke with a broad accent. She put the money they paid her in a cracked old mug on the windowsill, painted pink and gold, that said A Present From Ilfracombe. Their granny always washed the eggs before she used them.

Roland’s concentration was entirely taken up, on their way back across the road, by holding on to the precious paper bag, one hand supporting it from underneath. But something made Hettie look around consciously, as if Kington became real to her for the first time — not as a mere background to her thoughts and plans, but having its own authority. The evening was as wide open as a spacious room. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and everything was touched with a warm russet-pink light — the rutted lane, the green growth in the hedges, the clouds of midges so excitedly stirred up. She asked her brother, didn’t he just love it here? Even the Brodys’ dirty farm seemed part of her happiness. Some bird plummeted past, belly low to the road; then those birds seemed to be all around them, darting and twittering in their high-pitched restlessness which was also soothing. Roland shrugged her enthusiasm off as if it were frivolous, distracting him from his mission. He carried the paper bag scrupulously inside the house.

A car was approaching through the lanes, disrupting the quiet; when it came into sight Hettie recognised the red one from the estate agents. She knew that her mother had been looking around for places they could move into — they might come and live down here in the country, and she would have to start at a new school. Although this prospect was fearful, she felt sure now that it was what she wanted. The car stopped noisily just short of where Hettie waited at the garden gate, and then for a few minutes more her mother didn’t get out even though she had seen Hettie and waved to her, but sat on in the passenger seat, talking with the man who was driving. After she had climbed out, she leaned in through the window again, thanking him, telling him she’d be in touch, and then the red car reversed into the Brodys’ drive and drove off, its noise subsiding in the evening air. Her mother was standing with the light behind her, and it was shining through her hair which had come down somehow from its French knot while she was out. She was fixing it now, standing in the middle of the road with the hairpins in her mouth, hands up behind her head, twisting round the long tail of her hair and skewering it in place. Because of the brightness, Hettie couldn’t see her face properly; she didn’t like to rush up to her while she was preoccupied, but began her confession anyway.

— Alice had an accident. She has a bump. It was my fault, I shouldn’t have put her up on the wall, only she kept on begging me.