Daughters-in-Law (19 page)

He stared around him at the kitchen. It wasn’t Petra’s kitchen the way his mother’s kitchen was his mother’s kitchen. It was, in a way, their kitchen, or at least the kitchen that he and Petra had allowed to evolve out of a pleasant square room with a sink and a cooker in it. He had painted the walls blue so that Petra could add birds, and clouds, and constellations, and they had arranged the pieces of furniture they had nonchalantly acquired from here and there in a way that was comfortable if not especially aesthetic, and then they just lived there, and the laundry pile acquired its place just as the kettle
did, and the cereal boxes and the plastic mugs the boys used. Would he, Ralph wondered, miss it? If they had to leave this kitchen, this house, and move somewhere so that Ralph, in this suit plus shirt and tie and cuff links, could travel on a train every day to a world of glass and steel that held for him, at this precise moment, all the nostalgic glamour of Singapore, would he really care?

The kitchen door to the outside opened. Kit, in his Spider-Man T-shirt, came in holding an earthy carrot and a stick. He held out the carrot.

“Look!”

“I’m looking—”

“I pulled it,” Kit said.

“Well done. Will you eat it now?”

Kit dropped the carrot on the floor.

“No.”

“Wow,” Petra said from the doorway. “Look at you—”

Ralph struck an attitude.

“What do you think?”

Petra was holding Barney. She bent to deposit him on the floor. He made straight for Kit’s dropped carrot.

“Not really my kind of gear,” Petra said. “But cool.”

“Can you iron it or something?”

“Okay—”

“I don’t have any shirts—”

Petra went back outside and reappeared with a trug of vegetables.

“Look.”

“Kit said that to me—”

“Kit just yanks them. I grew them. Carrots, spinach, radishes, lettuce.”

Ralph came across the kitchen and peered into the trug.

“Very impressive.”

“I like it,” said Petra.

“The allotment?”

“Growing things.”

Ralph went back to the kettle.

“Maybe we’ll find a house with a garden. A garden big enough to grow stuff in it.”

“I like the allotment,” Petra said.

Barney was eating Kit’s earthy carrot. Kit was standing by the table, his stick between his legs, like a hobby horse, wedging pieces of Lego into a toast rack. The table had Petra’s sketchbook on it too, and several newspapers and jars, and a carton of milk and a hammer and some bowls left over from breakfast with cereal dried to their sides. Petra put the trug down on her sketchbook. She said, “This house is okay.”

Ralph tipped coffee out of a foil packet into a cafetière. He added boiling water from the kettle and replaced the plunger on the cafetière. Then he pushed it down, slowly and carefully, before he said, “I’ll be earning at least sixty grand. Just for starters. More after a three-month trial.”

“I can’t think about that much.”

“Well,” Ralph said, “you should.”

Petra bent down, took the carrot out of Barney’s grip, wiped off most of the earth on her T-shirt hem, and gave it back to him.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What doesn’t?” Ralph said.

Petra rubbed her hands against the front of her T-shirt.

“The money,” she said.

Ralph left the coffee and came across the kitchen so that he was standing close to her. He said, “We need the money, hon.”

“Only a bit—”

Ralph put out his arms and turned her to face him.

“Petra. Lesson one. If you don’t have money, you don’t have
somewhere to live, you don’t eat, you don’t have clothes. Lesson two, if you don’t have work, you don’t have the money for the above. Okay?”

Petra didn’t look at him. She nodded.

He said, “You’re not working—”

“I could. I did.”

“Yes. But you’re not working now. You haven’t worked since Kit. I don’t mind. I don’t mind if you don’t work. But one of us has to. I was, and I’m going to again.”

“Yes.”

“And I can’t work from this house anymore.”

Petra said nothing. Ralph bent down to look in her face. He said, “I’ve got to go
out
to work now. I’ve got to go to
London
.”

Petra took a step back, out of his grasp. She said to Kit, “Eggy toast for supper?”

Kit was focusing on his Lego, breathing heavily. He took no notice.

Ralph said to Petra, “It’s just going to happen.”

Petra climbed over Barney to get to the fridge and opened it in search of eggs. She said, without heat, “Why do we go on liking things that hurt us?”

Ralph went very still.

“D’you mean me?”

Petra didn’t reply.

“D’you mean,” Ralph said, “that I’m trying to hurt you?”

Petra straightened up, a carton of eggs in her hand.

“Not trying. But it’s happening.”

Ralph said tensely, “How else do you suggest I support you all?”

“There’ll be something—”

“But not something I want to do.”

Petra found a bag of sliced bread under the newspapers on the table.

“D’you want to do this, then?”

“Yes,” Ralph said.

She looked at him. She wore an expression of complete bafflement.

“You
want
to wear a suit and go to London on a train and work all day in an office and never see daylight in winter?”

“Yes,” Ralph said.

“You want it to be like it was in Singapore?”

Ralph picked up the cafetière and started to pour coffee into a mug.

“Yes,” he said.

“What’s happened to you?”

“I’ve been given another chance to do something I’m good at doing.”

“We had money before—”

“But I couldn’t manage myself,” Ralph said. “I thought I could, but I couldn’t. I’m not a manager. I’m good on a team; I’m creative when I don’t have to be in charge. I’ll be a bloody nuisance, but I’ll get results. I’ll get results if I’m free.”

“Free—”

“Yes.”

Petra pulled slices of bread out of the bag. She said, “You’d better
be
free then.”

“Thank you.” He held up the mug he had just filled. “Coffee?”

Steve Hadley had got to know Aldeburgh quite well. Ever since Petra’s card had arrived—a card on which she’d painted a male lapwing with its spiky crest, and in which she’d enclosed a ten-pound note—he’d spent a lot of his spare time in Aldeburgh, looking out for her. She’d said she had two little boys, and although he saw quite a number of smallish young women with children, not many of them seemed to have only boys.
But Steve was in no hurry. He’d got all summer to patrol the coast through Aldeburgh, from the great scallop-shell sculpture to Benjamin Britten, all the way to the southern point of the town, where the tall seafront terraces petered out into the marshy stretches of mingled river and sea. He had Petra’s card in his pocket. She’d sent it to the director of the nature reserve, with the money as a donation, and the director had given the card to Steve, saying as you’re the only Steve she can have meant you’d better have it, nice little painting. It was a nice little painting. Without it, and the trouble she’d plainly taken to do it, Steve doubted he’d have bothered to try and find her. But the painting and the memory of her sleeping in the sand combined to lodge her in his mind in a way that was pleasantly intriguing. So, after work, and on his days off, Steve ambled about Aldeburgh and ate fish and chips sitting on the shingle, and waited.

He finally saw her just as he was about to go home, one afternoon of a day off, and he was standing looking at the primary school, admiring the little bright boat modeled on to the white wall, when she came past, with a buggy containing a big baby and a little boy beside her, dragging a bit on the buggy and emitting that kind of low-grade steady whine that Steve recognized from his brother’s children.

He stepped off the pavement into the road in front of her.

“Hi,” he said.

Petra looked uncomprehendingly, and then her expression cleared. She smiled at him. She was wearing an Indian embroidered tunic over jeans, and sneakers, and her hair was tied over one shoulder in a long ponytail.

“Hi—”

He put his hand out.

“I’m Steve. From Minsmere. Remember?”

She nodded. She said to the little boy, “I went to sleep in the
sand and my car keys fell out of my pocket. This man found them.”

Kit paused in his whine. He looked uncertainly at Steve. Steve squatted down in the road in front of him.

“I’ve got nephews your age—”

“I’m three,” Kit said guardedly.

“I bet you are.”

“I’ve got a digger.”

Steve stood up.

“Lucky man.”

Petra said, “Why are you in Aldeburgh?”

He smiled at her.

“Looking for you.”

“Were you?”

He pulled the card with her little painting out of his pocket.

“Been carrying that around for weeks—”

“I don’t want you stalking me,” Petra said.

“No,” he said, “I was just waiting. Hoping a bit. You know.” He looked back at Kit. “What’s your name?”

“Kit.”

“And his?”

“Barney,” Kit said, and then, “He’s always eating.”

Steve laughed.

He said, glancing at Barney, “Looks it.”

Petra was studying him. She said, as if she had suddenly decided something, “We’re going to my allotment.”

Steve nodded. He said hesitantly, “Can I come along?”

“Okay—”

He motioned to Barney’s buggy.

“Shall I push him?”

Petra moved sideways.

“Okay,” she said again, and then, “I’m married.”

“I thought you would be.”

Petra took Kit’s hand.

“Four years—”

“It’s not a problem.”

“A problem?”

Steve began to push Barney towards the footpath to the allotments.

“I mean, I like you anyway. I like you for going to sleep in the sand and painting the lapwing. You’re different.”

“It’s not a help,” Petra said, “being different. Kit’s different, too. Aren’t you, Kit?”

Kit looked across his mother at Steve pushing the buggy. He thought that he couldn’t usually hold her hand because of the buggy, and he liked holding her hand and he liked it that there was nothing in her other hand either. He regarded Steve with approval.

“Yes,” he said to his mother.

“I don’t want to talk about liking,” Petra said to Steve. “I don’t want anything like that. I’m not in a good place right now. I was just going to the allotment because I feel better there, it settles me.”

“Fine by me,” Steve said.

Barney twisted round in his pushchair and noticed that his mother had been replaced by this stranger. He began to roar.

Petra bent sideways. Kit could see where her free hand was going. She said helplessly, “Oh Barn—”

“Come on,” Steve said suddenly. “Tally-ho! Race you!”

He set off at a surprisingly fast run down the path, neatly skimming and swerving the buggy to avoid the bumps. Barney’s roars almost immediately subsided into squeals and then shouts of delight.

“Come on!” Kit cried to Petra. “Come on, come
on
!”

And he began to run forward, tugging her, and she came stumbling behind him, and he knew she could feel his
excitement because she was laughing too—in his charge, and laughing.

Steve was very helpful in the allotment. He mended the bolt on the gate, and dismantled the canes supporting the sweet peas that had died from lack of water, and dug a root or two of early potatoes, and stopped Barney from eating some woodlice, and made Kit a track for his digger with a line of old bricks he found on someone else’s allotment, which they plainly didn’t want, he said, because the whole thing was so overgrown and gone to seed. He didn’t bother Petra with talking, he just took the fork from her to dig the potatoes, and mended the gate with the screwdriver on the Swiss Army knife he had in his pocket, and crouched down wordlessly beside Barney and fished the woodlice out of his mouth without drawing attention to what he was doing. When they left at last, Barney without protest allowed him to strap him into the buggy and steer him out through the gate, and Kit waited until Petra was through before he slid the mended bolt into place, and took her hand again, and this time her free one held a bunch of sweet williams, which was fine, because they were only flowers.

And when they got to the school, Steve stopped pushing, and said, “Well, I’ll say good-bye now.”

“D’you want a coffee?” Petra said.

He shook his head.

“I’ll be on my way, thanks.”

She held out the flowers. He shook his head again.

“I’m not much of a flower man, me—”

Petra laid the flowers across the handles of the buggy. She said, “Thanks for your help.”

“Thanks for your company.”

Steve looked down at Kit.

“See you, digger man.”

Kit said, “Are you coming to my house?”

“No, mate. I’m not.”

“Yes!” Kit said.

“Tell you what,” Steve said, still looking at Kit and Petra, “you could come to mine, though. You could come to my house.”

“Yes!” Kit shouted.

“There’s enough stones at my house,” Steve said, “to fill a million diggers.”

He glanced at Petra. She was looking at the sweet williams.

“How about it?”

She lifted one sneakered foot and kicked off the brake on the pushchair.

“Okay,” she said.

Rachel sent Ralph the particulars of a house in Ipswich, by e-mail. It was semidetached and unremarkable, but it had three bedrooms, a hundred-foot garden, and was seven minutes from the station. She attached, also, a train timetable of services from Ipswich so Ralph could see how early he might get into the office and how late he might be able to leave, since the journeys either end of the train travel were negligible.

Ralph thought the house looked fine. It had probably been built between the wars, but it had the space, and the location was perfect. Rachel said, in her accompanying e-mail, that she and Anthony could probably find a way to help with any shortfall in buying a house more expensive than the one they were selling. They hadn’t discussed it yet, but she was sure that it wouldn’t be a problem, Anthony could sell some paintings or sign a new contract, Ralph wasn’t to worry. And she’d researched schools and there was a good Church of England primary half a mile away, and two preschools nearby with vacancies for the autumn term. The garden had plenty of space
for Petra to grow vegetables. Should she go and view it, on his and Petra’s behalf?