A Quiet Life(96)

‘Where are you going?’

‘To find Nick.’

‘At this time?’

‘He said he was going to that club on U Street …’

‘You’re too drunk, stay here.’

‘You’re too drunk, you’re too drunk – that’s all I ever hear from you. So I spoilt your little party – why does that matter so much?’

‘It was for you – the whole evening!’ Laura said, but she wasn’t even sure if it was true; what had it all been for? But Edward went blundering out of the house and she went back into the living room. Despite all the drinking that everyone else had done, she felt clear-headed and cold. She sat down in an armchair and kicked off her high-heeled shoes. One heel knocked against something. That book, that Tchernavin book was still there, under the chair, she realised. She pulled it out and began to read. The minutes, the hours, passed as she did so.





5


The sky was as luminous as ever, that summer at Portstone. Despite their complaints, Tom and Ellen had rented the same house again for a fourth summer. Already memories were being built around the house and the people who came there every year; memories of the summer broken by Father’s death would dominate, but the following summer was the one when Janet cut her leg on a rock, the summer when Kit tried to teach Laura to play tennis, and last summer was the one when it rained for a week solidly.

This summer was as yet unmarked, stretching out ahead of them, the first summer of Ellen’s new son, and Laura wanted to feel hopeful that somewhere in the huge cleansing charge of the green water or in the high voices of children on the shore they could recapture a lightness that she wanted to be part of their lives again. A renewal. But on the first day, even though she struggled into the sea, Edward lay on the sand, a hand over his eyes.

‘You seem pretty tired.’ Kit was sitting next to them. He too seemed weary, strung out and expectant as they all were.

‘Washington is quite tough.’ Edward sat up and looked at the book Kit was reading. ‘Is he any good?’ It was a book by an American poet Laura had not heard of, and Kit passed it to him. Edward looked through it for a while.

‘I can’t make head or tail of it.’ There was resignation in his voice as he put it down.

‘I can’t read poetry myself,’ said Tom, ‘never saw the point of it.’

‘I used to,’ Edward said, lying back on the sand again, ‘but now it feels so hard – to get its secrets out. Reading all these reports, day in, day out …’

‘Do you spend your life in meetings?’

‘That’s it.’ Edward picked up a stone and sent it skimming over the waves. ‘You need some silence in your head to read poetry.’

‘Maybe I have too much silence,’ Kit said, in a would-be light way, but Laura caught a complaining note in his voice. She knew that since his failure in Washington he had drifted rather, and was currently just teaching tennis in the locality. As time went on, the differences between the two brothers seemed to become exaggerated: Kit was more and more languid and diffident in his manner, while Tom seemed sturdier and more settled.

Laura felt a headache starting, and wandered back up the shore to the house, where Ellen was sitting in a rocking chair, nursing her baby. She was nervous around Laura, obviously wondering how the sight of her second child would affect her sister. But although Laura had held him a few times, the softness of the first hair on his skull and the curled balls of his fists did not touch her emotionally. The wall that she had built around herself, brick by careful brick, was much too high for that. As they sat and talked, Janet ran in with a ball in her hands.

‘Where’s Father?’ she demanded.

‘Say hello to your aunt,’ Ellen ordered.

‘Hello,’ Janet mumbled, looking at her shoes.

‘Father is probably busy now, why do you need him? You were going to stay with Ora till lunchtime.’

Janet started throwing the ball in her hands up and down, speaking in a singsong. ‘Daddy was going to play with me, he was going to teach me tennis,’ and just as she said ‘tennis’ she lost control of the ball, which bounced out of her hands and onto the baby’s head.

‘Oh, you stupid—’ Ellen’s voice was explosive, and her hand whipped out and slapped Janet hard, much harder than anyone would expect, on her cheek. Janet put her hands up to her face, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘And that,’ Ellen said, slapping her again, on her legs, where Laura saw now that the red mark joined existing bruises. Janet ran from the room, leaving a sick, horrible cloud of the consciousness of pain behind. As soon as she was gone, Ellen started complaining about her behaviour. Laura said nothing – she may even have nodded. But in her mind she was lost in their own childhood, lost in the realisation that patterns of violence she had hidden so deep, that she had never admitted, even to herself, ran like veins of coal through Ellen’s family life, and as soon as she could she excused herself and went upstairs. She knew that there was a bottle of bourbon in Edward’s closet.

That evening, Kit drove off to the station to pick up Joe. Tom had planned a cookout on the shore, and brought together his usual group of holidaymakers – half a dozen couples and a few of their older children who were excited to be out so late. The day had been hot, and for once the heat seemed to be lasting into the evening, as Tom and his friends built a fire of driftwood on the edge of the pebbles for the barbecue and set up the drinks on a trestle table.