he’d been roused by sounds of violence. It might be the schizophrenic upstairs: had he started trouble? There was banging from somewhere. Before Paul had collected himself completely out of the dream, he shouted out for his daughter, to see she was all right. Then there was silence, only not empty, more like a wakeful aftermath. He identified too late the noise of lovemaking that had broken through his sleep: banging probably because their bed was cheap and pushed right against the wall, perhaps noises forced out from between the lovers’ clenched jaws, however Pia may have tried to keep them from her father’s ears. No wonder this thrilled in the air as violence. Paul had been embarrassed to wonder, the first nights he slept in the flat, whether his presence behind these flimsy walls might be inhibiting for his daughter and Marek; he had reassured himself vaguely, when he never heard them, that they might not be making love anyway, in her advanced state of pregnancy, or that the walls were soundproof after all.
The bedroom door opened, Pia came out in her nightshirt, closing the door behind her. He thought she was very angry.
– Dad? You shouted.
– I’m sorry. I think I woke up out of a dream. A nightmare.
He was sitting up on the sofa with the duvet pulled across his lap. In the light from the street lamps her shirt was fairly transparent, so that he saw her distended shape – long legs, mounded stomach, breasts growing heavy – almost as if she stood there naked, intimidating. The pregnancy appeared to him for the first time as the blatant outward sign of his daughter’s secret sexual life.
– How long are you going to be staying, Dad? Because there isn’t really room here. Isn’t there anywhere else that you could go? This really isn’t working out.
He took out two thousand pounds at the bank, which they gave to him in a brown envelope. When he went to say goodbye to Anna at the cafe, he pressed the envelope into her hand.
– Please take it, he said. – I got some money unexpectedly. You’ll have a lot of extra expenses over the next few months, with your father’s illness and everything.
The place was busy, humming. At several tables people were waiting to have their orders taken.
– Oh. Thank you.
Anna looked quickly at the envelope, she didn’t open it to see inside, only put it away in the money bag the waitresses wore around their waists, glancing to see if the other staff were watching. She must have felt the thickness of the wad of notes, though. He didn’t know how to read her expression, whether she was offended by the present, or grateful, or even slyly triumphant.
– It was very good of you to put me up at the flat. In my hour of need.
– It’s no problem.
She was remote, as if his gift had turned him back into a stranger, a customer. He had imagined kissing her before he left, just a grown-up peck on the cheek. But there was no way he could carry it off in front of all these people.
X
T he aspens’ absence beside Tre Rhiw, as Paul came up through the garden, disfigured everything. Planes of sky and slanting field were exposed in a new relationship with the house, which was thrust nakedly forward. On the near side of the garden wall was a line of new, very young trees, each with its stake and its beige protective casing – this planting undertaken without him was another shock. Around them the earth was still raw, but above the little casings leaves of brilliant yellow-green fluttered out like flags, flaunting their growth. Elise must be watering them every night, in this dry heat. The doors to the workshop were open at both ends and Paul walked through it, half- expecting to find her.
The house door stood open too. He heard the television as he crossed the yard, where the sunlight struck with a new ferocity because it wasn’t filtered through the trees; for a moment he was blind, coming into the smothering dimness of the hallway. Peering into the cubbyhole where the television pictures weakly danced, he took in a lungful of its familiar stale morning air: musty cushions, little girls’ farting, souring milk spilled from their cereal bowls.
– Hello! It’s Daddy! Becky said in cheerful surprise, making no move.
– Where is he?
Joni had to crane to see him around the bulk of Gerald, who was slumped on the sofa between the girls. The girls were snuggled against him, and Gerald had his arms round both of them. Before Paul’s eyes learned to adjust, he seemed more like a blockage of the light than a positive presence. Then he made out where the black hair was pushed behind Gerald’s ears; the ears stood out as pale, delicate for a man of his build. He was looking up at Paul.
– Oh, it’s you! said Elise, arriving out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her striped butcher’s apron. She was wearing her hair in some new way, pulled loosely into a tail at the nape of her neck; she must have allowed it to grow longer since he left. He hadn’t thought he’d been away long enough for anyone’s hair to grow.
– You could have phoned, she said. – To warn us you were coming.
– But here I am. Who helped you put in the trees?
– Gerald.
Gerald seemed to have gone back to watching the television. The presenters of these children’s programmes were manic, they contorted their faces with dismay or were orgasmic with enthusiasm.
– I’ll put coffee on, Elise said. – Would you both like coffee?
– Please, said Gerald, not looking up again.
Paul followed her into the kitchen. In the light he saw that his wife’s hair was growing out, an inch from her parting: not grey exactly, but a faded neutral, weaker than the strong honey colour of the rest. He couldn’t sit down yet, he was too restless, moving about the room, picking things up and putting them down – the pepper grinder, blackboard for shopping lists, plastic bottle of washing-up liquid, vanilla pod in a jar of sugar – as if they might have altered while he was away.
– For goodness sake, said Elise, lifting the hotplate cover, putting on the kettle to boil. – Sit down, Paul.
The kitchen smelled of baking, little cakes were cooling on a wire rack. He tried to catch her around the waist from behind. Something had changed in how she moved and held herself. He thought she was wearing an unfamiliar perfume.
– Not yet, she said, pushing him away. – Let me make this coffee. Why don’t you put up the umbrella, and we’ll have it in the yard? The weather’s so lovely.
– I noticed how, with the trees gone, the yard’s in full sun.
– We have to not be thinking of those trees all the time. It’s pointless getting worked up about them.
– Tell me about the day when Willis came back.
– Not now.
She explained that she had paid for the new aspens out of Evelyn’s money; she had thought it was a good thing to spend it on, something that would endure and would be a reminder to them of Evelyn, for at least as long as they lived at Tre Rhiw. Her tone was as if she was justifying herself, rather belligerently.
So far the new trees were doing fine, they had all survived.
– Gerald dug and I gave the orders. We got them all planted in a day.
– Good team.
– It was good for him. Paul, he was in a bad way.
She dropped her voice, stirring the coffee in the pot, imagining Gerald must still be in the cubbyhole with the children. At that very moment Paul watched through the kitchen window as Gerald stepped out, blinking, into the yard. He stumbled, surprised by the bright light, unearthed from where he had been hibernating. Hands pushed in his pockets, head down, he started with his usual shambling walk down through the garden in the direction of the path along the river to the station. Paul didn’t point out his departure to Elise.
– When he was first here he couldn’t read a book, or even a newspaper. I had to phone his department at the university, to say he was sick. Some days he didn’t get up, except to use the lavatory. He lay there with his eyes closed, or watched television. He started to smell, even the girls noticed it. In the end I had to run a bath for him, I made him get in it, then while he was in I put his clothes in the washing machine. I bought him a toothbrush and
