Cuckoo (45 page)
He blushed in his usual way, from the sides of his nostrils to the tips of his ears.
‘Hey, look!’ Nico cried, running over. ‘Rose and Simon, sitting in a tree, K.I.S.S.I.N.G!’
‘That’s enough of that, you,’ Simon said. He got up, ran towards Nico and scooped him up. Effie, Liam, Anna and Yannis swept towards them, piling in with whoops and shouts.
Rose stayed where she was, turning the hand Simon had held over and over, inspecting it and wondering how it had deserved such kindness.
‘Fancy lunch at the pub?’ Simon called from in amongst a tangle of children. ‘My treat.’
It was such a long time since Rose had eaten out that she had forgotten that it was a terrible idea to take more children than adults into a pub. Despite the long, fizzy drinks and bags of crisps that Simon had bought them to help pass the time, the children grew bored waiting for their ham, eggs and chips. When the food eventually did arrive, Rose was feeling rather pissed from the two pints of bitter she and Simon had each had, standing as they did on top of the wine. Then there was the usual flurry of activity while salad garnish was deposited from the children’s plates onto those of the adults.
In amongst their attempts to keep the noise down and minimise the disruption to the other patrons of the pub, Simon and Rose had little chance to talk any further. For that she was grateful. She felt that the relatively calm exterior she was presenting to the world was only a very thin membrane. Underneath that, there was a scrambled mess of spoiled, rotten matter – like the curdled lump you might find under the harmless-looking skin of a very old tin of gloss paint.
As they ambled back up the lane towards their respective homes, Simon turned to Rose. The beer had mellowed him even further. He had the air of a faithful bloodhound as he looked into her eyes.
‘Do you want us to stop by for a bit? I could help you out, sort out anything that needs doing, while you put your feet up.’
‘I can’t ask you to do that – not to come into the house while
she
’s there. But . . .’ a great opportunity had suddenly occurred to her ‘. . . I
am
a bit done in. Is there any chance you could have the big kids for the afternoon?’
she
’s there. But . . .’ a great opportunity had suddenly occurred to her ‘. . . I
am
a bit done in. Is there any chance you could have the big kids for the afternoon?’
Nico, Yannis and Anna, who had been passing a football between themselves a couple of yards ahead, stopped, turned round and looked at Simon expectantly.
Simon opened and closed his mouth as he looked at them all. This obviously wasn’t what he had had in mind. But then he lifted up his hands as if to admit defeat.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘How could I resist those three little faces? Four little faces,’ he corrected himself, turning to look at Rose. ‘I’ll even take Floss for you if you like. Janka’s around, so it’s not as if I’ll be single-handed.’
‘And I’m a great help with Flossie, too,’ Anna piped up.
‘Of course you are,’ Simon said.
‘Thank you so much,’ Rose said, as they approached the gate to The Lodge. She passed the buggy with Flossie in it to Simon. ‘There’s nappies and a couple of bottles of milk in the changing bag. I’ll be round about seven to pick them up.’
‘No rush. There’s no school. Come when you’re ready. Miranda’s up in Town for the weekend, so I’m on my own timetable,’ he said, a little ruefully. ‘In fact, why don’t you come round and watch a film with us later if you’re up to it? I’ve got a great pirate of the new Terry Gilliam. Completely impenetrable plot-wise, but visually amazing enough to keep this lot quiet.’
‘I’ll see how I feel,’ she said.
‘No worries if you don’t feel up to it,’ he said. ‘Just wait and see.’
It’s as if he doesn’t want to leave me, she thought. As if he knows what I’m going to get up to.
‘Bye then,’ she said finally, then turned and passed through the gate. Instead of going down into the house, she hid behind the hedge until she heard the hustle and bustle of the children disappear down the lane; until she knew she was completely alone.
Although it was only two o’clock, the light had a late-afternoon feel to it, or perhaps it was the beer that made it seem so. Rose crept into the kitchen and fished in her apron pocket to find the key to Gareth’s studio.
She tiptoed up the stairs to Anna’s bedroom. Gareth was still in there, huddled under the duvet. She held her breath for a few minutes to check he was still breathing. She was soon rewarded with a loud inhaled snore. After he had settled himself again, Rose took herself back down the stairs.
She went out to the Annexe to check on Polly. Tiptoeing up the steps, she knocked on the door.
‘Come in,’ Polly said in a small voice.
Rose took in the scent of the room. Polly had attempted to mask it with her perfume, but the same dark faecal taint surrounded her as it did Gareth. She lay in the bed, propped up by pillows, one long, thin hand resting on the top of the duvet, the other holding a book of Rimbaud’s
Oeuvres Poétiques
, as if she had arranged herself to look like Mimi in
La Bohème
, instead of an Englishwoman with diarrhoea.
Oeuvres Poétiques
, as if she had arranged herself to look like Mimi in
La Bohème
, instead of an Englishwoman with diarrhoea.
The room was a mess.
‘How are you?’ Rose whispered.
‘On the mend,’ Polly smiled weakly.
‘You still up for Brighton tomorrow?’ Rose asked.
‘Try to stop me,’ Polly said, the smile vanishing from her face.
‘I’ll book a cab to get us to the station; I don’t want to disturb Gareth. Do you want a wake-up call?’ Rose said. ‘We’ll have to leave by seven.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Polly said.
‘Good, good. Anything I can get you?’
‘Just a glass of water, please.’
Rose went over to the kitchen area and turned on the tap. Standing there at that sink, she was reminded of a different era in her life, one that had been full of hope, when she, Gareth, Anna and Andy lived here and everything was looking up, before the roof went on the house, before she got pregnant, before Polly came to stay. She remembered doing the washing-up in this same spot, after a robust, roast-chicken supper that had felt well-earned after a day of hard graft.
Some part of Rose wished now that she could take a big demolition ball and knock The Lodge and everything it meant and contained down. She would erase it, and then move back into the Annexe to live the uncomplicated life of a hermit, or a nun.
She passed the water to Polly, who took a couple of sips then put it by her bedside.
‘I think I’ll try and get a little sleep now,’ Polly said. ‘So that I’m fresh for the morning.’
Fresh, thought Rose. Now, there’s a word.
She slipped down the stairs and skirted around the side of the house, just pausing to look up and check that Polly wasn’t watching her from the Annexe window. It wasn’t that she really cared about being discovered by Polly. It was one thing Gareth trying to stop her – he had the physical strength to do so; but Polly she could cast aside with one sweep of her arm if she so wanted. In fact, she thought as she headed over the back lawn, past the site of the fox murder, it was a wonder that she had managed to restrain herself so far. She could have just reached out and brought Polly down.
Taken her out
. Wasn’t that the expression?
Taken her out
. Wasn’t that the expression?
Winding her fingers in the curlicues of the key, she slipped it into the studio keyhole. Before opening the door, she paused for a second. Did she really want to do this? If, as she suspected, she were to discover something she didn’t want to find, how would that change things? Perhaps it was better to go on not knowing. Perhaps it was better simply to work at ousting Polly so that their lives could, gradually, assume the perfect future they had once envisaged for themselves.
But she didn’t have the discipline for that, not at this point. Like a child with a carefully wrapped Christmas present, she wanted to see inside now. She thrust the door open and allowed her eyes to adjust to the gloomy, blind-drawn interior.
She snapped the lights on and the shrouded shapes gave up their secrets. If she were to be discovered down here, she could always say she had come to get the coffee cups for the dishwasher – she could count twelve dotted around the place. And then there were the wine glasses, quite a few of which had a familiar red shade of lipstick around the rim, and the empty bottles, which she could say she was fetching for the recycling.
Really. It wasn’t very careful of them.
But there was worse to come. Rose looked around. The place looked like a tip. This was normal. It was the one area of the house where Gareth could let his true nature express itself. Every surface was covered. Rose moved towards a long bench that ran down one side of the room, almost four metres of it. You really couldn’t see it through the drift of paper, drawings and pens that smothered it. For a horrible second, Rose thought there were some body parts in amongst it, but when she explored further with her fingers, she realised it was just dried up Sta-Wet palettes full of great nubs of nut-hard acrylic paint in all sorts of flesh tones.
She went over to the old plan-chest that she remembered helping Gareth salvage from the renovation of a couple of the art studios at Goldsmiths. On top was a six-inch pile of A1 sheets of Bristol board. Rose rifled through. Some fell to the ground, and she left them where they lay. The work, all pencil and charcoal, and ink, was of angular curves, of belly skin, stretched between hipbones, of tiny breasts with nipples like thumbs, a rack of ribs for a back.
He had inked some of the drawings. Rose looked hard at those. With their loose black stockings, their curls of pubic and underarm hair, their sad, sex eyes that gazed directly at the viewer, they brought Egon Schiele to mind. But there was something else there. A melancholy air of Christos.
This was extraordinary work for Gareth. Rose could see that. While the influences were plain, he had taken it way beyond. This was work that had Gareth’s own stamp on it. His agent, and his gallery, would be very pleased indeed. It was beautiful work – fresh, exploratory, yet commercial and very, very accomplished.
Of course, there was the question of who the model was.
Rose looked at the tumbled, unmade sofa bed that stood over against the far wall. On the floor, just by it, was a pair of black stockings that she recognised from the work. She walked over and picked them up, letting the fine stuff fall through her fingers. Underneath was a little pair of black knickers. Silk. She picked them up and sniffed them, like she did if she found Anna’s underwear lying around, to see if it needed washing. This pair certainly needed to go in the machine. But their scent was heavy and musked, a million miles away from Anna’s pissy little girl tang. A white residue stained the gusset, as if these had been forced up inside the wearer in a heated moment . . .
Rose knelt on the floor and sniffed the bed, where she found long dark hairs. And my God, she thought, this bed needs stripping and washing. She had to fight every bone in her body to stop herself pulling the sheets away and bundling them up.
She stood up and tried to picture the scene: Polly lying on her back, Gareth doing to her what he had done to Rose only a couple of weeks before. Her bones against his strong chest. Him burying his face down there underneath her concave belly.
The spring that had been drawing back inside Rose was finally released. She grabbed a pillow from the bed and slammed it down again and again, until it burst and its tiny feathers fluttered down, like she had imagined, like the aftermath of a ruck of angels. She ripped the sheets from the bed and emptied tube after tube of expensive paint over them. She dragged the paint-smeared sheets around the room, like naked girls in a 1960s action painting. The feathers joined in with her, swirling and falling, embedding themselves in the paint.
She stopped for a minute, panting, and surveyed her work. Then she went for the drawers where Gareth kept all his equipment. She rummaged around until she found a Stanley knife. She went first to the stinking, stained knickers and shredded them. Then she took herself to the pile of Bristol Boards, to the best work Gareth had ever done, and she slashed each one of the drawings until she was surrounded by a pile of ribbons. Finally, she went to the large, impressive oil and acrylic paintings of Polly that Gareth had propped up around the two empty walls of the studio, the work Rose had failed to notice until now, and gouged each set of staring soulful eyes out, leaving dark holes where there had once been his work, his looking, his taking. It seemed appropriate: payback time exerted by Rose on behalf of his poor birth mother for what he did to her with
BloodLine
.
BloodLine
.
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