A Quiet Life(112)

That Bennett, Sybil remembered, whose house was near theirs in Derbyshire? Hadn’t he had to resign in disgrace, though? That was all nonsense, Winifred said; Peter said he had taken the rap for someone else. So the conversation drifted into the social meanderings where Sybil was happiest; anecdotes were told that framed people in the group, judgements were handed down, until Winifred said she had to go, she was meeting a friend later. She got into the little car she drove, blowing a kiss to Laura out of the window, making her promise she would see her soon in Geneva.

Laura expected her departure to trigger Sybil and the children to leave too, but Sybil showed no sign of wanting to go. As the children scrambled back under the rhododendrons and out of sight at the back of the garden, she went on sitting on the terrace, crumbling a last slice of fruitcake. The sun was weaker now and Laura was cold, but she was also pleased that Sybil wanted to stay. She had never got over that sense that Sybil looked down on her; that Sybil felt that however long Laura was married to Edward, however well she served tea in her English garden, she would never belong inside the group. But now, by showing no sign of wanting to go, it was as though Sybil had decided to move for a moment into Laura’s world.

‘Don’t let Winifred make you feel unsatisfied with your life,’ she said, clearly thinking about Winifred’s critical observations. ‘Obviously you have to look after Edward right now.’

Laura was glad that Sybil wanted to support her, but she had to admit that she thought Winifred had a point. After all, it was not as though she had children. She had only this house, this garden, empty while Edward was at work. She said something about how it was different for Sybil, who had a family to look after.

‘Well, I don’t do that much – Nanny does most of that side, you know. Which is a blessing, given that they run rings around me. I can’t understand how she keeps them under control.’

Laura had never heard Sybil say anything against herself, anything that suggested that she was not entirely the arbiter of all that was good. She quickly moved into the role that Sybil was presumably asking her to occupy, that of reassurance, telling her how beautifully the children were behaving. But Sybil’s voice in response was raw.

‘Because you’re here. That’s why I can’t face going home till bedtime, when Nanny will be back from her day off. They’ll just rampage if it’s only me and them. I don’t know why – it’s as though they sense some weakness in me. They know I can’t say no to anything.’

Laura reassured her again, saying that wasn’t weakness, it was love, a mother’s love.

‘I don’t know.’ Laura knew that Sybil’s own mother had died when Sybil was very young, but she would not have dared to mention that herself. It was Sybil who gestured towards that knowledge. ‘I just don’t know whether I can be that. I didn’t have it. And Toby, he’s like my father, he hardly sees them. Not that they seem to care. They only like one another.’

Laura was disoriented by this new Sybil, angry and vulnerable, sitting there on the terrace because she was reluctant to go home with her children. She knew that she should feel sorry for her, but in some way Laura felt energised; Sybil had always been so confident, so removed from Laura’s own awkwardness and mistakes, but now the power balance in their relationship seemed to be shifting. Sybil was still talking, and for some reason she was talking about Edward and Toby and their mother. Laura and Edward had been up to see Mrs Last in her new home the previous week, and Laura had found the visit excruciating. ‘Of course she can’t bear us, taking her sons away,’ Sybil said grimly. Laura asked whether that was it, and said that Mrs Last didn’t seem to care much about whether Edward was happy or not; she didn’t seem to care for him at all.

Sybil was silent for a moment, and then her words were puzzling to Laura. ‘The first time I met her, there was something so strange in the atmosphere – it was as though … Laura, can I say something? When I got to know Edward, I’m not sure, I felt …’ Laura was held, riveted by the sense of a confession coming. ‘It’s been on my mind so long,’ Sybil went on, and then she stood up without warning. ‘Alice! Stop that!’

The children’s play had degenerated; there was shouting, tears, stamped feet and folded arms. Sybil rushed forward and tried to find out what had gone wrong, and tried to make Alice say sorry to George, but Laura could see how the children screened out her words, that her repeated reprimands were melting before their intransigence. In the end Sybil had to drag George towards the car, as he yelled in crescendos. Laura heard her muttered threats, felt her embarrassment, and tried to look as though it was all nothing, that she had hardly noticed the children’s bad behaviour.

When the children were both pushed into the car, Sybil got into the front seat and Laura saw her shoulders sag as she got out the key. But she rolled down the window. ‘Thank you for a lovely afternoon,’ she said, reverting to her usual formal manner. ‘Sorry it had to end so abruptly.’

‘You were going to say something – about Edward?’

But the moment had passed. Sybil shook her head and put the key in the ignition.

Learning to bake, learning to develop her photographs, learning to prune the roses – as the weeks went on Laura began to appreciate these little physical triumphs over the shapelessness of the world. Deep within her was a sense that she and Edward did not deserve happiness now. But gradually she realised she was still determined to find some kind of contentment anyway, and maybe this was the way one built it, day by day, out of small pleasures and gentleness. It was on a fall day she had spent digging holes in the cold earth to plant what seemed absurd numbers of snowdrop, scilla and white narcissus bulbs alongside a taciturn gardener from the village, that she found herself counting days in her head, noting the changes, the sickness, the heaviness in her body, and realised she was pregnant again. When Edward came in she was in the kitchen, washing the earth from her hands in the sink, wearing a green sweater of his over an old grey dress.