question of where to find shoes for women who had not taken a life’s vow to ignore fashion was a source of happy, fruitful speculation.
The conversation limped on. ‘Are you doing anything else this weekend?’
‘Look, Rose,’ Minty shut her desk drawer with a snap, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Right.’
I said no more. After all, even in an office, privacy was a basic right.
I had to make a decision between two reviews because one had to be sacrificed. The latest, and brilliant, book on brain activity? In it, the author argued that every seven years our brain cells were renewed and replenished, and we became different people. This seemed a quietly revolutionary idea, which would have clerics and psychotherapists shuddering as they contemplated being put out of business. Yet it also offered hope and a chance to cut chains that bound someone to a difficult life or personality. However, if I published the piece, I would have to drop the review of the latest novel by Anna West, who was going to sell in cartloads anyway. Either the book that readers
I rang Features. Carol answered and I asked her if they were running a feature on Anna West.
Carol was happy to give out the information. ‘Actually, we are. This issue. Big piece. Have you got a problem?’
‘I might have to spike our review so I wanted to make sure there was coverage in publication week.’
‘Leave it to us,’ said Carol, delighted that Features would have the advantage over Books. I smiled, for I had learnt, the hard way, that a sense of proportion was required on a newspaper, and if one had a habit of bearing grudges, it was wise to lose it.
I worked quickly to rearrange the two remaining pages, allocating top placing to the seven-year brain-cycle theory. Ianthe, my mother, would not see its point: she preferred things uncomplicated and settled.
As the afternoon wore on, the telephone rang less and less, which was perfectly normal. Minty dealt with her pile of books and transferred them to the post basket. At five o’clock, she made us both a mug of tea and we drank it in a silence that I considered companionable.
On my way home, I slipped into St Benedicta’s. I felt in need of peace, a moment of stillness.
It was a modern, unremarkable church, with no pretensions to elegance or architectural excitement. The original St Benedicta’s had been blown up in an IRA terrorist campaign thirty years ago. Its replacement was as downbeat and inexpensive as a place of worship should be in an age that was uneasy about where the Church fitted.
As usual, on the table by the glass entrance doors, there was a muddle of hymn books and pamphlets, the majority advertising services that had taken place the previous week. A lingering trace of incense mixed with the smell of orange squash, which came from an industrial-sized bottle stored in the corner – presumably kept for Sunday school. The pews were sensible but someone, or several people, had embroidered kneelers that were a riot of colour and pattern. I often wondered who they were, the anonymous needlewomen, and what had driven them to harness the reds, blues, circles and swirls. Relief from a drab existence? A sense of order in transferring the symbols of an old and powerful legend on to canvas?
St Benedicta’s was not my church, and I was not even religious, but I was drawn to it, not only when I was troubled but when I was happy too. Here it was possible to slip out from under the skin of oneself, breathe in and relish a second or two of being no one in particular.
I walked down the central aisle and turned left into the tiny Lady Chapel where a statue of the Madonna with an unusually deep blue cloak had been placed beside the altar. She was a rough, crude creation, but oddly touching. Her too-pink plaster hands were raised in blessing over a circular candle-stand in which a solitary candle burned. A madonna with a special dedication to the victims of violence, those plaster hands embraced the maimed and wounded in Ireland and Rwanda, the lost souls of South America and those we know nothing about, and reminded us that she was the mother of all mothers, whose duty was to protect and tend.
Sometimes I sat in front of her and experienced the content and peace of a settled woman. But at other times I wondered if being settled and peaceful had been bought at the price of smugness.
Fresh candles were stacked on a tray nearby. I dropped a couple of pounds into the box and extracted three from the pile. One for the children and Nathan, one for Ianthe, one to keep the house –
I picked up my book bag, had a second thought, put it down again and hunted in my purse for another pound. The fourth candle was for the erring minister’s wife, and my dulled conscience.
On the way out, I stopped and tidied the pamphlets on the table.
Even though it was dark, I continued home by the park, prudently choosing the path that ran alongside the river.
Nobody could argue that it was anything but a city park, ringed as it was by traffic, pockmarked with patches of mud and dispirited trees, but I liked its determination to provide a breathing space. Anyway, if you took the trouble to look, it contained all sorts of unobtrusive delights. A tiny corona of snowdrops under a tree, offering cheer in the depths of winter. A flying spark of a robin redbreast spotted by the dank holly bushes. Rows of tulips in spring, with tufts of primula and primrose garnishing their bases.
So far, winter had been a mild, dampish interlude. Earlier in the day, there had been half-hearted spatters of rain but now it was almost warm. It was too early to be sure, only February, but there was a definite promise of spring shaping up, things growing. I stopped to shift my book bag from one shoulder to the other, feeling the stretch and exhilaration of my life pulse through me.
I was late. I must hurry. I must always hurry.
Five minutes later, I walked up the tiled front path of number seven Lakey Street. Twenty years ago, Nathan and I had talked of restoring a silk-weaver’s house in Spitalfields, or discovering the perfect-priced Georgian family house on four floors, which – unaccountably – no one else had spotted. Lakey Street fitted between our small flat in Hackney and any wilder speculations. One day, we promised ourselves, we would upgrade, but we settled promptly into the Victorian terrace that comfortably encompassed our family and forgot about doing any such thing.
The street-lights were lit, and the fresh white paint on the window-frames was washed with a neon tint. The bay tree dripped on to me as I passed and, for the thousandth time, I told myself it was far too big, planted in the wrong place, and would have to go. For the thousandth time, I reprieved it.
Chapter Two
Six hours later we were in bed, and Nathan laid his hand on my breast in the old familiar way. There was no trouble and no barrier. It was as easy as silk sliding over silk, and I wrapped my arms and legs around him and drew him down. Afterwards, he murmured, ‘That was nice,’ and drifted into sleep.
I should have dropped off too, for we had been out late at a company dinner, but I was too tired for sleep – a hangover from the days of having small children. Recollections of the evening threaded through my mind, cobwebby, not important, but there.
‘The works,’ Nathan had ordered, as he plunged barelegged around the bedroom in his socks. He gave off an air of I-have-too-much-to-think-about, and I fetched his shirt for him. ‘Best bib, Rosie, and glam. Otherwise these damn politicians think that all we’re capable of is rolled-up sleeves and eyeshades.’
Occasionally, Nathan’s fixed ambition nettled me: it was so set, so immutable, so… predictable, and I had lived with it for a long time. Selling your soul was one thing; having the greater portion of your home life dictated by a newspaper was another. Then I reminded myself that, in my own way, I was as committed to my job, and the irritation never lasted long. I helped him on with the shirt and did up the top button. ‘Darling, that’s only in Hollywood.’
Only Nathan called me Rosie – I would not allow anyone else to muddle around with diminutives. ‘That’s because roses are too beautiful and important,’ Ianthe had once told me. ‘Roses are the only flowers that have
