Life Begins Page 7

  Venturing back into the hall, she found Theresa and Henry standing with their arms loosely round each other’s waists, laughing about something. Speaking in a steady, careful voice, fighting a fresh, even worse bout of dizziness, she announced that she would like to pick up her car the next day and phone for a cab, if that was all right by them, if they had a number, though, of course, she could use her own phone. She plunged her hand into her bag, groping, finding only keys, the mirror, her purse, an unravelling tampon. Then the hall floor heaved and she had to reach out to steady herself again, knocking a print of bluebells that hung next to the stairs. ‘Sorry… I seem to be a little…’

  ‘Oh, poor you,’ cried Theresa, rushing over and pulling her into her arms.

  Enfolded in the motherly softness of her friend’s embrace, Charlotte closed her eyes, for a moment so intensely at ease that she could have gone to sleep. When she opened them again the hall floor was rushing past, like a fast, dark river.

  ‘Poor thing,’ Theresa crooned, stroking Charlotte’s shoulder-blades with the same tenderness that had soothed away Matilda’s crying fit a few hours before. ‘You look worn out. But don’t bother with a taxi. Henry will drive you home, won’t you, Henry?’ She exchanged a glance with her husband over the top of Charlotte’s head, meeting his rolling eyes with a beseeching glare.

  ‘Of course.’ Henry adjusted the bluebells and reached for his coat.

  A few minutes later Charlotte was hunched in the passenger seat of the Volvo, her feet wedged between a plastic bag bulging with library books and a pair of football boots shedding brittle clods of mud. ‘Sorry about this.’

  ‘No need.’

  Charlotte hugged herself, rolling her neck from side to side in a bid to ease the throbbing in her head. ‘Are you going to it?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘The party. Martin and Cindy’s party. Are you going? I saw the invite.’

  ‘Ah… that.’ Henry, as if in hope of escaping the unmistakable, incomprehensible danger of female emotion, accelerated through a red light.

  ‘Not that I mind,’ said Charlotte, stiffening as the pressure of the car’s sudden speed pushed her back into her seat. ‘I don’t mind in the least,’ she added, bursting into tears.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear… Charlotte.’ They were at another red light, impossible to jump this time.

  ‘Ignore me,’ Charlotte gasped, batting furiously at her streaming eyes. ‘I’ve been doing this sort of thing lately – not just when I’m drunk. It’s unspeakable. I have nothing to cry about – nothing. I’m almost forty, I’m a free woman, I should be able to control myself.’ She rocked backwards as Henry accelerated again, from a standstill this time. ‘Are you ever unhappy when you shouldn’t be, Henry?’ she sobbed, groping through the blur of her tears for a tissue and finding nothing but the tampon.

  ‘Of course. Everybody is. Here.’ He took a hand off the wheel and pulled a crumpled but clean handkerchief out of his coat pocket.

  ‘Thank you… You’re so kind… Everybody’s so… kind.’ She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose loudly. ‘I’ll keep it and wash it… Thank you, Henry.’

  ‘Here we are,’ said Henry, with some relief, pulling up outside the wrong house and then having to edge along the pavement to a much darker patch of the street. He double-parked with the intention of making a quick getaway, but then, moved by the stillness of the undrawn curtains, the front gate creaking on its half-broken hinge, he pulled into a space instead. ‘I’ll see you to the door,’ he declared gruffly, feeling a twinge of something like anger on Charlotte’s behalf. He hadn’t taken sides – one did one’s best not to with divorcing friends – but Martin had a lot to answer for, he mused grimly, taking Charlotte’s elbow as she got out of the car and keeping hold of it for the walk down the disintegrating tiled front path to the doorstep. ‘Got your keys?’

  ‘Yep… somewhere.’ She shook her bag, which jangled. ‘Thank you again, Henry.’ She put up her face for a kiss, which was duly delivered. And then, because of the stony silence of the narrow black-windowed house – the sudden nose-pressed-up-against-it glimpse of what she was going through – Henry put his arms round her and hugged her hard. Which was fine and brotherly and generous, except that Charlotte emitted a little sigh and pressed against him so fiercely that he could not but feel the litheness of her slim frame and the quick bird-pulse of her heart. Oh dear, he thought, not for the reasons he had used the phrase in the car, but because she was attractive and needy and he had never thought of her like that before. Oh dear. Copper hair, the scent of lemon on her neck – what man wouldn’t have felt the same?

  Floppy, tipsy, oblivious, Charlotte clung on until Henry had wrested the keys from her hand and steered her towards the open door. He reached inside and put the light on, keeping his feet and as much of his body as he could on the doorstep, resisting the urge to help as she battled with the sleeves of her coat.

  ‘Good night, then.’

  ‘Good night, Henry, and thank you.’ The coat came free at last, exposing in the process a portion of bare shoulder and accompanying bra strap of over-laundered pale grey. Henry was sure he would have found a man-eating strap of lacy satin infinitely less affecting. As it was, the flash of underwear, like the dark, unblinking windows of the house, opened his eyes to an entirely new version of his wife’s friend – wronged, attractive, alone.

  But not alone, Henry reminded himself, shaking his head in some bemusement as he walked back down the path to his car. She had Sam, after all, and a bunch of close friends that included his wife and himself. The knee-jerk of attraction was just that – an involuntary twitch, typically male, probably – or so Theresa would say if he were ever to confess to it.

  Which would be an act of madness, obviously, Henry mused, kissing the back of his wife’s dark curly head some twenty minutes later as he snuggled into bed next to her, remarking, when she said he had been a long time, that there had been a conspiracy of red traffic-lights to slow him down.

  Chapter Five

  Gradually my hair thickens and darkens to an auburn flame. I grow tall. I grow breasts. I turn heads. I have become acceptable. I learn how to shave my armpits and the finer pale hairs on my legs. I pluck my darkened eyebrows to thin arches and show off my calves in short skirts, tights and suede pixie boots. Adrian becomes a bore, hanging around on my weekend breaks with Bella, his wide face heavy with hope and disappointment. Bella and I lose interest in the stableyard, trading pleadings to be allowed to ride horses, with negotiations on night-time curfews for excursions into town. We listen to the Boomtown Rats and Genesis, swap lipsticks, and test each other on valency tables and French vocab.

  During the autumn term that I turn fifteen, Letitia becomes bug-eyed and skeletal and leaves the school. I am Charlie to everyone. I am free.

  My parents are to return to England at Christmas. My father has been told he has a weak heart and should replace office work and overseeing vineyards with rest. Bella comes to stay for two weeks of my last holiday in Constantia. The warm wind blows hard across the valley, flicking our hair across our hot faces as we lie by the pool. We wait until my mother goes shopping and mix cocktails of vodka, Martini and lime juice, which we suck from long glasses through straws. We each put an animal sticker on our tummies and watch as our skin goes pink round them. Bella’s is a cat, mine a snail. We smoke and gossip about our friends, our teachers and our families. Bella confides that she cheats in maths exams by writing formulae on the inside of her elbows. She says that once, towards the end of a long day’s hunting, she felt small spasms of pleasure deep in the pit of her pelvis. She says that she likes our English teacher, not Mr Coots, who does grammar, but Miss Garth, with whom we have been studying Jane Eyre. She slurps her cocktail, not looking at me. I say Miss Garth is pretty and that her secret is safe with me, that I am good with secrets. But something is called for in return, I know that. One confidence requires another. I have only one secret that I care about, that burns still,
fuelled by the velvet brown eyes of the girl who comes each day to clean and cook. She is called Charity and she watches my father intently, swinging her wide hips in her brightly coloured dresses, her pink heels slapping against her flip-flops as she works the mop across the floors.

  I have this secret but I find I cannot release it, not even with Bella, open like a soft blowsy flower on the sunbed beside me, not even with the floating sense of well-being from our vodka limes.

  So I tell Bella instead that I hate my mother. And as I speak the words I feel their truth. I hate her for the distant look in her green eyes, for the limpness of her arms when I need to be held; for the dog-eared novels that shield her face as she takes her rests on the sofa or in the middle of her wide, canopied bed. I hate her for sending me, so ill-equipped, to the grey skies and grey slate roofs and soggy hockey pitches of England. But above all I hate her for her ignorance, for the state of not knowing in which she coexists with my father. Even in the thickest African heat, her fingers, her face are icy cool, detached, ungiving. If she feels so to me, how must she feel to him? Where is the striving to love and be loved? Where is her heart?

  On the last day of the holiday we peel off our stickers and squeal with delight at the white silhouettes on our bellies. Bella’s, less well tended against the hazards of bathing and washing, is a little blurred, especially round the tail, but mine is a perfect snowy cartoon of a snail, the hump of its shell-house firm and round, the feelers on its head pointing like arrows that know their mark.

  The upheaval of the move to England seems to last for ever. The house in Tunbridge Wells is small, apparently, so we have to sell many things. The lines on my father’s sun-weathered face deepen. Perhaps wanting to make the most of his weakening heart, he works harder – or, at least, for longer hours – than I can ever recall, leaving as the sun is only just beginning to burn the horizon and returning when the darkness is as thick as tar and the winds cold. My mother’s naps grow longer, while Charity kneels at open boxes, folding tissue paper round the points and curves of our worldly goods.

  As the jaws of the removal-van doors bang shut, I feel the closing of something else, deeper and irretrievable. During the farewells to the servants it is my father who weeps. Their future is unsure, he explains. They have no savings like him, no pension plans and investments, no certainty of a roof over their heads. Charity, I notice, stands a little apart from the others, her yellow-turbaned head high, her black-eyed gaze fixed somewhere between the still green slopes of the hills and the scrubby tops of the higher skyline beyond.

  There is a last-minute glitch on the house, forcing us to spend several nights in a small hotel. The walls between our bedrooms are thin. I listen to the rise and fall of their arguments, starting softly, then louder, then soft again, like a song. The snail fades, shrinking to invisibility, shrinking into my skin.

  By Saturday evening Charlotte was still feeling so under par that, phoning Theresa to reiterate thanks for Henry’s gallantry, she dared to speculate that a virus, rather than her over-indulgence, might be responsible. But Theresa cackled so loudly in response that she hurriedly withdrew the suggestion, inwardly squirming at what Henry must have reported when he finally got home. Charlotte herself could recall only snapshots of what had followed Henry’s kindness – holding the banisters to get upstairs, spilling her first effort at a glass of water, waking several times with her temples pulsing and her nightie wringing with sweat.

  Jason, who took it in turns with his partner Dean to man the bookshop on a Saturday morning and who was the softer-hearted of the two, had taken one look at her and pointed at the storeroom, where there was a comfy chair to sit on and a pot of fresh coffee. Even so, it was only with the aid of mouthfuls of analgesics that Charlotte had got through the shift, resenting the swarms of customers brought out by the spring sunshine instead of enjoying them as she usually did. Most were en route to cafés or the park and had buggies and small children in tow. Normally Charlotte relished the challenge of eliciting delight from despairing parents by plucking hidden or unlikely winners out of their small section for younger readers. That morning however, she had clung to the till, leaving her boss to charm customers, and concentrated hard on making no mistakes with the chip-and-pin machine, which was new and likely to flash commands she did not understand.

  The highlight of this endurance test had been a phone call from Tim, announcing that Mrs Stowe was dithering still – but promisingly – and that Mrs Burgess had offered the asking price on her house and wanted to organize a survey. ‘And what about dinner?’ he had added cheekily. ‘Do I deserve that yet?’ Charlotte, aware of Jason listening intently from the far corner of the shop, curious and critical, since her contributions that day had been so visibly flawed, had whispered, yes, of course, and promised to call him back.

  Instead, she had retreated to bed with a mug of soup and slept for fourteen hours. She awoke groggily the following morning to the double-blow of a realization that she still hadn’t called Martin and had her mother’s company to look forward to over lunch.

  ‘Are you on your own?’

  ‘You mean sans Sam?’ quipped Martin.

  Charlotte hesitated. She felt nauseous still and there was music in the background, reminding her unhelpfully of how her husband had often liked to conduct conversations with the volume up, insisting he was listening if she spoke, but tapping a foot or a finger so that she knew his first allegiance was to the rhythms of the soundtrack rather than her voice. ‘I’m worried he’s getting picked on at school.’

  ‘Really? He hasn’t said anything to me.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t, would he? I mean, you don’t, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Martin, are you really listening?’

  ‘Of course I am. Have you said anything to the school?’

  ‘Yes, I saw Miss Hornby on Friday. She said he was a bit quieter than usual, that they were keeping an eye on things.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then.’

  ‘Right. Fine. Stupid of me to mention it.’

  He sighed heavily. ‘Charlotte, don’t start, okay? Look, I know kids bullying each other is a subject close to your heart –’

  ‘No, Martin, you don’t know anything,’ she snapped, wishing suddenly that she could erase his knowledge of her, the little things gleaned, inevitably, during the course of twenty years. ‘Sam is not himself. I know him and he is not himself.’

  ‘That’s hardly surprising, is it now?’ Martin said slowly. The music had stopped, leaving a stark backdrop of silence. We’re all feeling our way along here, Sam included. And he’s almost thirteen – it’s a difficult age. And he’s got a thing about being small, he told Cindy. I’ve had a word with him, explained that I didn’t get my growth spurt until at least fourteen, that some boys start really early and with others it can take much longer.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s good,’ Charlotte conceded, trying not to mind the Cindy aspect of the story, the thought of Sam curling up next to her on his bed, or maybe the sofa, opening his heart.

  ‘Was there anything else?’

  ‘I may need to borrow some money,’ she blurted, unable to think of any clever or subtle approach to the subject. ‘I’ve found a house – it’s just a semi-detached cottage, but it’s more expensive because it’s next to the park. I’ve at long last found a buyer for our place, but there might be a shortfall.’

  A moment of unmistakably stunned silence was followed by an incredulous laugh. ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte, but no. We’ve just settled everything, remember?’

  ‘I meant as a loan.’

  He laughed again, more kindly. ‘Look, I can’t. Cindy and I have got a big new mortgage on top of what I’m already shelling out for you and Sam. Financially I’m right up against the wire – I thought you knew that. In fact, I cannot believe,’ he continued, the sneering incredulity back, ‘that you could actually think I might be in a position to help.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Charlotte repl
ied quietly, reminding herself that there was still the bank manager and ways of getting anything in life if one wanted them enough.

  A heavy downpour had brought a small army of snails out from the flowerbeds on to the zigzag of crazy paving leading up to her mother’s front door. Charlotte trod carefully between them in her high heels, musing upon the appealing notion of carrying one’s home on one’s back instead of having to wrench free of one place and crawl in search of another that suited better.

  Halfway down the path she paused to look at the familiar black and white mock-Tudor front of the house, recalling how physically crushed her father had seemed from the moment he had been forced to occupy it. It was the heart, of course, the weakening heart, but Charlotte, thinking of him as she always did on any trip home, remained certain that some deeper spirit had died as a result of the enforced transfer from Africa to England. He had taken up gardening, but only in the most desultory fashion and because it allowed him to chain-smoke his untipped Player’s cigarettes out of earshot of the muttered reprimands of her mother. His only other occupations had been sleeping and watching television, often at the same time, with a half-drunk mug of tea, or an ice-packed gin and tonic balanced on the arm of his chair.

  Her mother, in contrast, as if it was merely the African heat that had sapped her energies, had found something akin to a new lease on life. She joined the Women’s Institute and a bridge club and went regularly to church, taking her turn on the rota of coffee mornings and flower-arranging. During the evenings she prepared dinner on a tray, laying it like a miniature table, complete with napkin, glass of water, pepper and salt and a side-plate of bread and butter, often eating her own meal at the kitchen table with the radio on while he dined alone in front of the television. There had been separate beds too, a pair of narrow singles side by side, and then suddenly, at some invisible moment, separate bedrooms, one at each end of the landing. When he grew too weak even for gardening, Jean had taken these duties upon herself for a while, too, donning green wellingtons and an eccentric floppy-brimmed hat, clipping her secateurs across the rose stems with a businesslike ferocity that matched the expression on her face.