Separate Beds (9 page)

(3)
Buy store brands
.

Annie applied a stiff dose of internal abrasive. The years of plenty had taken their hold and, she had to confess, the spirit was not entirely willing. Halting in front of the dishwasher section, she was faced by the ecologically OK brand she normally purchased, which was more expensive than the brands considered harmful to the environment. She hovered, fretted, considered and finally plumped for a cheaper one.

(4)
Pay with cash
.

‘Excuse me.’ It was the woman in the pink pashmina. ‘Do you know if they have lobster here?’

Later, unpacking in the kitchen on her return, Annie was surprised to see that the total haul was still as bulky – and the bill had not been much reduced. She sat down to check it.

While she was thus occupied Emily, resembling nothing so much as a blind mole, shuffled into the kitchen and dropped a pile of laundry on the floor.

Annie glanced at her watch: mid-morning. Not so unusual. ‘What sort of time is this?’ She cupped her chin in her hands. ‘Were you writing last night?’ Emily shrugged. ‘Did it go well?’

Emily stuffed a couple of bras, a pair of yellow and grey striped socks (the wasps), knickers in all shades, including a thong that resembled garden twine, into the washing-machine. ‘It’s OK, Mum, you needn’t feel obliged to be interested.’

‘But I am.’

Emily threw her a look. She slammed the machine door shut and twiddled the dial. ‘I was up late looking for a job. The novel will have to wait.’

Annie twisted the bill between her fingers. ‘Will you believe me when I say I’m sorry?’

Emily now made for the kettle. ‘Let’s not talk about it. OK. You want me to get a job. I’ll try to get a job. End of.’

That scraped the raw place in Annie’s heart. Emily was out to emphasize their differences in a manner that hurt. Of course children were different and separate from their parents, she told herself. Of course she mustn’t waste time thinking it could be any other way.

Emily had never confided, would probably never confide, in Annie about The Writing – those confidences were reserved for Tom. But neither did they talk much about other things, which Annie longed to do.

What do you think
, she might have expected to ask Emily,
of your boyfriend, or current politics, the latest novel …?
Or, if she ever got married, would Emily want a white wedding dress?

Annie watched Emily slap the lid on the kettle, and an old sorrow drilled away like a maddened woodpecker. With
a rush, she asked, ‘You haven’t heard anything from Mia, have you?’

‘Nope.’ Emily filled the kettle. ‘And, frankly, I’d rather not.’

Emily had never spoken so plainly before, and Annie was taken aback. ‘Emily, that’s an awful thing to say.’

Emily dropped a teabag into a mug. ‘The way I feel at the moment.’

‘Ah,’ said Annie. ‘Goodbye to writing is hard.’ She laid the back of her hand fleetingly against Emily’s cheek. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Yes, I’m officially joining the grown-ups.’ She softened. ‘Sorry, Mum. That was awful of me. Early-morning grouch. But since we’re on the subject … it’s just … When Mia lived here everything she did was right, and everything I did was wrong.’ She poured boiling water into the mug.

‘That’s not true.’

Emily lifted her eyes briefly from the task in hand. ‘If you say so.’ Her tone was final. She jabbed at the teabag. ‘But she was your favourite …’

‘Not true either.’

Emily barely took a breath. ‘It’s always puzzled me, Mum, that you of all people gave up looking for her.’

‘I did try, you know that. But the university wouldn’t help.’ Annie’s stomach contracted at the memory. ‘They weren’t allowed to tell me where she had moved to. Otherwise I would have gone there.’ She pushed the milk jug over to Emily. ‘It’s much easier than I imagined to go missing if you’re really determined. I went to see someone about it and they told me it’s surprisingly common. Children do fall out with their parents. A lot. And irrevocably. Mia was over
twenty-one and she had made her mind up. Then … then she sent me a letter. After that …’ She shrugged and turned away so that Emily couldn’t see her distress.

Emily bent down to check the washing-machine. ‘Would you have come after me, Mum?’

‘You know I would.’

‘And you wouldn’t have given up?’

Annie turned back to her. ‘How do you know I’ve given up?’

‘But you have.’

‘No, I haven’t. I think about her … one day … Emily, I
haven’t
given up.’

Emily was sceptical. ‘OK, Mum. OK.’ She grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl. ‘Where’s Dad?’

‘No idea.’

Emily swallowed a mouthful of tea, hooked her ankle around a chair leg, sank down on the seat and made an obvious effort to throw herself into this woman-to-woman chat. ‘Have you and Dad talked over things yet?’

‘Not really.’

All of a sudden she looked severe and very adult. ‘Mum. Dad’s lost his job, for God’s sake. You
should
be talking it through.’

Emily was right. Annie shifted uncomfortably. ‘It’s not so easy,’ she said.

Mummified in the duvet, Tom dreamed the dream that had tormented him most nights since his sacking. No, no, not sacking …
redundancy
.

Once again, he strides into his office in central London, its cluttered and frequently dusty aspect a testament to how
hard he concentrates on the important issues. There are books piled with abandon on the desks and floors, potted plants, unclaimed coffee mugs, unexplained sheets of plastic, a pair of scissors cast aside on a desk top. He stops to survey it and to listen to the hum that sounds underneath the general clatter – the hum of connection to the world he so richly enjoys. This place is a nexus, a hub, and is known the world over, and he, Tom, plays his part in it.

Maddie is already at work, tapping away on her keyboard, and the agendas for three meetings scheduled for the day are laid out on his desk. He seizes the first. ‘Outreach Strategy for the Upcoming Year’. His name figures a satisfying second on the circulation list, below that of the chief executive’s.

Then he is transported to the meeting room, cunningly constructed with the minimum of light and fresh air to cause narcolepsy within fifteen minutes. Never mind: Tom is in his element, dominating the meeting, enjoying the attention of the chief executive.

In the office, the urgent phone calls are backing up. Maddie hands him the list of ‘must do’ for that day, and he sits back in the chair with a sensation of invincibility. It has taken years and hard graft for Tom and his peers to get where they are and they enjoy to the hilt playing Lords of the Universe.

‘It was,’ he tells Annie, who mysteriously materializes in the dream, ‘about passion, commitment and the excitement of communicating. It was about not giving up.’

He woke shaking. He hadn’t eaten the previous night and, come to think about it, he hadn’t bothered with lunch either. His stomach growled.

It was over. It was all over – that life. It had ended as he
walked out with the P45 and a cardboard box containing the few contact details he had managed to secrete, rubber bands, a half-finished tube of cough sweets, a stapler … and the rest of the useless stuff.

It was not yet dawn and the chill of a winter Monday morning was cradled in the unheated house. He knew he had to get out. Still stupefied with sleep and dreams, he got dressed in his corduroy office suit by mistake. No matter. Stopping only to grab his overcoat and scarf, he let himself out of the sleeping house and walked rapidly down the streets.

He hadn’t thought what he was doing – but his feet of their own accord took a route he knew as well as the lines on his hand. Short walk. Bus. Another short walk past newsagents, the Inns of Court, the area where pigeons congregated and the latest coffee shop to arrive in the area.

Viewed from the pavement, his old office looked just the same – a smallish window among several dozen in a magisterial block. It had a sill that required maintenance and offered a convenient hotel for the summer pigeon that found its way there each year, only to disappear in winter. Office bets were that it
was
the same pigeon.

He shaded his eyes and gazed for a long time up at the building in which he had spent a considerable part of his life. It was extraordinary,
unthinkable
, that he had nothing more to do with it, or it with him.

It was fashionable to say that work should not dominate an individual’s life. But Tom rejected that as dogma. If you loved something, believed in it, sacrificed for it, then it was going to dominate. Stupid to deny it.

He paced up and down for a little while, keeping the square block in his sights. Then he grew jumpy, and a blush
of embarrassment and humiliation suffused him. What if any of his former colleagues saw him – a superannuated, ghostly figure haunting his former glories?

He fled towards the narrow strip of the embankment that opened up into gardens. Here, in the semi-dark, he sat on a park bench and contemplated the river in which was reflected the city lights. On the bench opposite a tramp slept, wrapped in newspaper, cider bottles littered by his feet. The faintest of mists hung over a sluggish river. The scene had its beauty, a little unearthly, a little tacky.

Dropping his head into his hands, Tom’s tears soaked his fingers. There was no logical reason to feel ashamed, yet he did. And guilty … He carried a sufficiency of that already. He was letting the family down.
Thank God no one could see him here
. How would they cope financially? Who would employ him? Why him? What would he tell people?
Thank God he had held his head high when he left
. What would his friends and colleagues think? Used to the Tom with the top, interesting job, how would they view the Tom with no job?

Combing methodically through his memory, he tried to unearth the reasons why
he
had been chosen to go.

A second tramp shuffled by, a plastic bag stuffed into his coat pocket.

Tom fingered the cuff of his redundant suit. The cold crept around his feet, his stomach lurched and his loneliness settled like ice around him.

Welcome to the world of the outcast and the sad
.

He wished he could talk to someone.
Annie, Annie, why have we forsaken each other? Will you understand, or is it too late? Is there nothing I can do to put it right?

The chimes of Big Ben rang eight o’clock. Decided, stentorian sounds that summoned workers to their jobs. But not him.

Cold and stiff, Tom returned home for breakfast. Neither Annie nor Emily asked any questions but watched him devour his toast and coffee with a tactful sympathy that set his teeth on edge.

Afterwards he grabbed Annie as she was putting on her coat. ‘Got five minutes?’

She glanced at her watch and said, ‘If we’re quick’, a reminder – as if he needed it – that she had a meeting. Tom ushered her upstairs, booted up the computer and pointed to various columns on the screen. ‘Just so you have an idea. This is the money we have in the bank. This is my pay-off. This is your income. And these,’ he pointed to the fattest and fullest column, ‘are the outgoings.’

Annie examined the screen. ‘Seems doable.’ Carefully neutral, she added, and he knew she was trying to spare his feelings, ‘For the time being.’

‘For the time being?’

‘Until you get a job.’

Tom pointed to a figure in a column. ‘Do you still think we can manage on that?’

‘We’ll have to.’ Annie was searching in her handbag. She produced a hair tie, pulled back her hair and anchored it. ‘If we can’t we’ll have to plunder your pay-off.’

‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve been advised to put most of it into a pension. It helps the tax position.’

Annie peered at the screen. ‘Is that wise? Aren’t the markets a bit queasy out there?’

‘The adviser reckons it’s only a hiccup,’ he said. ‘By the autumn things will be on the rise again.’

‘That leaves us with practically no capital.’ Annie looked round. ‘Tom, you didn’t tell me you were going to see someone about the money.’

‘No.’

‘I see.’ She stuck her hands into her coat pockets. ‘You didn’t think I should be there?’ There was a glimmer of hurt and sadness – which hurt Tom too.

In the circumstances, it was a reasonable question – but he didn’t know how to answer it. Not least because he felt a fool and a failure. Not least because he felt he couldn’t communicate with his wife.
Tom, the great communicator
. Instead, he reeled off a list of financial arrangements that was made up of pension down-payments and locked-in savings-account deposits. ‘But I can’t expect much from any of it at the moment. Interest rates, et cetera.’ He appealed directly to her: ‘It’s too early for me to take the company pension without incurring a huge penalty. Are you OK with that?’

‘So your pay-off is more or less used up?’

He glanced at the screen. ‘That’s right.’

‘You should have consulted me, Tom.’

‘Yes.’

The bedroom was far too warm. Tom got up to turn the radiator off and open the window. ‘We’ll have to ration the heating.’

‘So you
are
relying on my salary.’

Tom thought of his early life and beliefs. Then – and Annie had often heard him do so – he had denounced the power of money as corrupting. ‘Be careful what you wish for …’ ran the old Chinese maxim. ‘Correct.’

Head to one side, she considered this new configuration in the family finances, one that, to a degree, tipped the balance of power in her favour. ‘Right,’ she said, and Tom could have sworn she was not displeased – and he hated that.

Remember when the twins were born? Before their arrival, she had staggered around in a daze, a mass of aches, pains and alarms, finally grounded at thirty-two weeks by the weight of two babies pressing down into her pelvis. He had ferried the groaning, incontinent, nervous, thick-witted (by her own admission) Annie into the hospital and sat impatiently beside her, primed to provide steady, reassuring, consoling back-up. But, as the machinery of birth swung into action, he had been pushed aside. Instead he had observed from the wings a centre-stage Annie taking triumphant charge as her – their – babies debuted in the world.