the hot, soapy bath in which I took refuge. There would be a scrabble of thin limbs, a displacement of water, and a wet, bony little form attached itself to me. Sometimes Sam appeared too and asked, ‘Can I come in?’ And we ended up in a heap of wet bodies and giggles. Unless I was tired and snapped at them.
As I got dressed in a pair of old jeans and a jumper, I noticed that my hands were shaking. Stop it, Rose, I admonished myself. You must think. You must be strong. I went downstairs to pull back the curtains, write the note to the milkman, begin the business of living through today, tomorrow, the next day and the one after that.
Later in the morning, I went out into the garden. During the winter, the roof of the shed had yielded to frost and its age, though I secretly suspected the squirrels, and had sprung a leak. Inside there was a scum of moisture from the previous day’s rain. I hoicked out the fork and secateurs and carried them over to the lilac tree. Lilac is greedy: it drains every drop of moisture from the soil, the garden dipsomaniac, but mine got away with it because of the pleasure I took in its scent and heavy, erotic flowers, but the patch under it remained the one place where I struggled to make any plant thrive, however often I got down on my knees and coaxed.
A solution was to cut a rain tunnel into its branches now before the new growth was too thick or the tiny infant blossoms had appeared, when I could not bear to cut them away.
Dead wood is easy enough to target: it takes only a snip here and there and the dry, brittle spikes fall away. But last year’s growth was strong, sappy and lubricated with coming spring. It resisted my invasion: it did not understand the need for a rain tunnel. For half an hour or more, I fought with it, and my secateurs bit deep into pulpy flesh, leaving scars that would weep into the rain.
Anyway, I needed Nathan on the stepladder to finish the job properly. My sense of balance had never been good, and he had never let me up the stepladder. ‘I want you alive,’ he said. ‘How would I manage without you?’
I began to cry again.
I seized the fork and drove it into the earth. At best, digging was a calming activity; at worst, it induced exhaustion. I did not care which. This many-times-performed ordinary task must help me: it would provide reassurance that energy continued to flow over obstacles, and that digging and weeding would always be required. Even if a wife was not.
Despite applications of mulch, the earth remained stubborn and fractious, clagging the tines. The handle whipped out of my hands. Again, I lifted the fork and sank it into the dry, lumpen clay. This time, it struck a root mass and refused to budge.
‘Go on, damn you,’ I muttered. ‘Please.’ But it was no good: the fork was stuck. I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
A click sounded in my head. Almost immediately, there was an alteration in my vision of the merest fraction, but what I saw was wider and larger, less exclusive. It was like cutting into a piecrust to discover that underneath was rotten meat. It was like peering at my picture of the roses to see not only the ruffle of the petals and tender green calyx, but the canker, the sulphurous weal, burning on the bud.
How had I missed the rot on the Iceberg rose? Or the woodlice and wireworms snaking through the meagre patch I had turned over. Or the spume of stones, the shard of orange plastic and a ringpull from a can. Woven, too, around these underground citizens and invaders were the lusty, ubiquitous roots of bindweed.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Vee, when she rang later that evening. ‘Did you have any idea? I haven’t talked to you properly for so long, Rose, that I don’t know what’s been going on.’
Once upon a time, we would have known exactly what was happening in each other’s lives, but recently, not so much. Our once close, interconnecting friendship had been the victim of our busy lives. Vee was the books editor on a rival newspaper – ‘Rivals make the
Vee sounded tired and I felt guilty that I had bothered her. ‘No, I didn’t but I wasn’t looking. He didn’t buy new underwear, or put on aftershave, or read poetry. Vee, I’m sorry I bothered you, but I couldn’t think of who else to turn to.’
‘Of course you should have rung me. But I was on the way to my ex-nanny’s wedding. The last thing I wanted to do on a precious Saturday but all in a good cause. I wanted to make sure that the current one realized how solid and friendly our relationship could be.’
I understood the subterfuges to which a working mother descended. They were justified on the grounds that no moral scruple was greater than ensuring the care and comfort of children – which left pretty much a blank sheet where behaviour was concerned.
‘Look, would you like to come over here? I could fix some supper.’
I was having difficulty focusing on anything, and the idea of leaving the house made me panic. ‘No, no, it’s fine. Just talking to you is enough.’
‘Have you told the children?’
‘I can’t bear to. Not just for the moment.’ Sam would go silent with shock; Poppy’s red mouth would pale and tremble.
‘Rose, I know how you’re feeling, believe me. You must call me, day or night.’
‘Thank you.’
There was nothing more to add.
I went on the hunt for Nathan’s whisky and found it in his study. An empty glass with a thumbnail of peaty residue in the bottom stood beside the bottle. No doubt he had drunk it while he waited for me to come home and planned his escape from our marriage. I disliked whisky but I poured myself a slug and it obliged me by punching into my empty stomach.
I thought of Minty shaking her shiny head, the soft whoop of her laughter, and Nathan joining in. I supposed some of their amusement had been directed at me.
I had the strangest sensation that my body had become a foreign entity to which I held no key; neither did I possess a map to its arrangement of skin, bones and blood. I held out a hand. Would my fingers flex? Would I manage to swallow? Would the air in the tiny alveoli in my lungs perform its chemical exchange? A pain pulsed above my left eye, and my throat was sore from crying. Shock, of course: my body had raced ahead of my mind. Although I had listened to Nathan, heard the front door snap behind him, and I had inhabited an empty house for a day and a night, a part of me did not believe that he had gone.
Nathan loved his study. The notice on the door said, ‘Keep Out,’ and he had insisted on installing two phone lines and purred when they rang at the same time. His study had been the dry run for the office, and in it he reflected on weighty office matters. He had taken pains also to set up systems to deal with bills, insurance and family finance.
I sat down at the desk, opened a drawer and was confronted by his neat arrangement of Sellotape, biros and screwdriver. On the notepad by the phone was written, ‘Ring accountant.’
It was a fair bet that he had – before quitting the study to sack his wife. Nathan always worked methodically through the tasks he set himself.
A long time ago Vee had accused Nathan of being unimaginative, but I argued that he was the opposite. It was precisely because he could imagine only too well the disasters that might overtake his family that he took such pains to anticipate them.
Hanging above the desk, at the point where it would have caught his eye each time he raised his head, was a framed photograph of Nathan and his colleagues at last year’s Christmas dinner. The men – they were all men – were in dinner jackets, which conferred clubbable conformity and suggested that the occasion, which was about eating and drinking, was important. I had teased Nathan about that.
He was seated between the chairman and the editor, and when he first produced it, the photograph had given me pleasure, for he looked so toned and relaxed. It read differently now: shining in Nathan’s expression was not the natural pleasure of a man at ease with his work and home but, rather, the excitement of a man who had embarked on a different course entirely.
Chapter Seven
