The Accidental (31 page)

She saw her children clearly, as if she were far above them, as if she were one of those black Grand Canyon ravens flying over the top of them. From here she could see that they were each on separate roads, on separate maps, and the maps were mere graphics, like the diagram maps in the Highway Code which explain how road junctions work. Hundreds of these junctions and all their possible connections to other junctions stretched away ahead of them both like a web of lit synapses. But as each of them came to the next clear junction and made the decision about which way to turn, whole huge areas of the maps under their feet snapped into darkness. Worse, the maps were made of nothing but paper. They were newspaper-thin, laid like primitive animal traps over a drop as deep as a mile. At any moment, if either of her children stepped too heavily or put a foot wrong, the maps might rip or buckle, or might just be blown away.

But right then, right in front of Eve’s eyes, a huge cat, a wildcat of some sort, loped across the moonlit road on to the grass in front of the empty house. It had a rabbit or some other sort of small creature hanging dead from its mouth. It saw Eve on the porch of the house. It stopped a few feet away from her and stood and looked at her.

Then it turned its head and continued on its way at the same uninterested pace across the grass towards the back road, disappearing into the trees.

Fuck, Eve said under her breath.

She got up off the porch and looked to see if she could see where it had gone. There was no sign of it. There was nothing, either, to tell her it had really happened, but it had, she knew, because of the way her heart battered her chest. She had never, except in a zoo or in pictures and films, seen a real cat bigger than a domestic cat. It had been a bobcat, or a cougar, or something she didn’t know the name of, as big as a large dog, with visible tufts of fur at the tips of its ears. Its look had been calm and measured. It had been five whole seconds long.

She went back across the grass to her car. She got in. She dropped the newspaper on to the passenger seat and reached forward to start the engine and drive back to New York on the highway that smelt of skunk and burnt tyres.

But she rested her head on the steering wheel instead. She thought about Astrid, her girl, and Magnus, her boy. She imagined them here in the car, Astrid grumpy and annoying in the back, Magnus fiddling with the radio or peering at the night sky through the windscreen in the front. She imagined she was driving slowly enough along one of these back roads and that there in front of them, just crossing the road with its big paws, was that wild cat.

Astrid would love it.

Magnus would know exactly what type of cat it was.

She fell asleep in the driver’s seat and when she woke up again it was light.

Hello, Eve said.

The woman was cool but flustered. She was holding an old dog by the collar. She was blonde, thin, very well dressed and so extraordinarily hostile that Eve found herself taking a step back away from the opened door.

You’re late, the woman said.

I am? Eve said.

I expected you at eight sharp, the woman said. Next time use the back. This is the front door. Rebecca, she yelled. Come down here and take this dog.

A small blonde girl in a t-shirt and jeans came down the stairs behind the woman and slipped past her without touching her.

Hello, Eve said to the girl.

The girl dragged the old dog out past Eve and round the outside of the huge house. The woman had turned, walked along the hall of the house and stopped. She made an exasperated noise. Eve followed her into the house.

Officially I just want to make it clear that I don’t find an hour’s lateness in any way acceptable, the woman was saying still with her back to Eve as she walked on down the hall past the stairs, which swept upwards like stairs in a film. I’m not an unlenient person, she was saying, but I have standards I will expect you to meet.

Several sentences began in Eve’s head.
Who exactly is it that you
, and
I’m not the
, were the gist of all of them. But out of nowhere, instead of any of these things, she said:

What if I told you my car broke down?

What happens to your car, the woman said, is simply not my problem.

The kitchen they now stood in was huge. A set of stoves took up the whole of a wall. There was a breakfast bar with dishes all over it and there were more dishes in the sink. The woman spoke without looking directly at Eve. She spoke to a spot about six inches to the right above Eve’s head.

Dishwashers. Here, the woman said. Detergents. Here. Utensils. Floor and surface detergents. Here. The supplies the agency requested are in the laundry cellar, and you will have brought everything else you need with you. You will have discussed the itinerary with Bob at the agency. If you’d like to show me your copy we can talk it through.

I’m afraid I don’t know anything about your itinerary, Eve said.

You don’t know anything about?

The woman looked astonished, then furious, then so disappointed that Eve actually felt sorry for her.

Well, she sighed. I think I’ll need to speak to Bob at the agency. Your name? she said.

It’s Eve, Eve said.

The domestic help is here, a child’s voice shouted from somewhere further back in the house.

I can see that with my own eyes thank you very much Rebecca, the woman called back. And how do you take your coffee, Steve? she said.

Oh, Eve said. How nice. Lovely. Black, thanks, no sugar. Thanks.

The woman poured some coffee from a standing jug into a clean cup. She emptied the coffee from this cup into another cup. She put the empty first cup, still steaming, down in front of Eve and gestured towards the dishwasher.

The answer to that question is, you don’t take your coffee at all. Not on my time, the woman said.

Then she left the kitchen, carrying the coffee in the second cup out in front of her like a ceremonial trophy.

Eve began to laugh. She stacked plates from the sink into the first of the open dishwashers until the woman reappeared in the kitchen. Her neck, below her made-up face, was very red. She had a young Latin American woman with her and two blonde children by her side, the same girl who’d collared the dog and a boy a few years younger who looked like the retarded dwarf in Disney’s Snow White.

The woman came forward and took both of Eve’s hands in hers.

Steve, the woman said. I’m so, so dreadfully sorry. You really must forgive me. I’m so, so dreadfully embarrassed. I can’t believe I.

I’ve loaded this dishwasher, Eve said to the Latin American woman. I hope I did it the right way, but they’re pretty much the same the world over, aren’t they, dishwashers I mean?

The Latin American woman said nothing. She looked down at the floor, noncommittal. She was in enough trouble as it was.

Take our visitor through to the master living room, please, Rebecca, the woman said.

Why is she called Steve? the boy asked. Why is she called a boy’s name?

Nathan, sweetest darling, the woman said. Go to the family room and watch tv.

Eve followed the girl back into the hall.

This is the foyer, the girl said. This is the staircase. This is the master living room. We have three other living rooms on the ground floor. If you’d like to see them, you can.

The master living room will do fine, thanks, Eve said.

You can sit there, the girl said waving her hand at a sofa big enough for five or six people.

Thanks, Eve said. She kicked off her shoes. Tell me something, Rebecca, she said.

The girl was watching Eve from a sofa the same as the one Eve was sitting on, over on the far side of the room. She looked at Eve’s shoes. She looked at Eve’s feet. She looked at Eve as if Eve were a circus freak.

I’ve been travelling, Eve said. I’ve come a long way. Help me with the answer to a question. Who lives in that smaller house, the one that looks a bit ruined, down by the road?

The girl pretended she didn’t hear. She opened a book and pretended to read.

Little Women, Eve said. Which are you, then? Married, tomboy, vain or dead?

A laugh burst out of the girl, then silence again.

Any idea who lived in that house? Eve said. Or who lives there now?

The girl looked coolly back at her. She shrugged.

Thanks, Eve said. Big help.

The sofa she sat on was opposite a glass wall that looked out over a decking scattered with tasteful wooden loungers in front of an expanse of grass as big as a small London park, and finally, behind that, on to one of the fields of flawless horses.

Does your mother look after those horses? Eve asked.

We have people to look after our horses, the girl said without looking up from her book. My mother is an architect. She designed this house.

Your mother is an absolute nightmare bitch from hell, Eve said.

The book fell away from the girl’s face. The girl stared at Eve, open-mouthed.

Ha ha, Eve said. Got you. But it’s true. You know it is.

What’s true and who knows it is? the woman said.

She had come into the room with a small tray loaded with cups, plates of crusty bread, biscuits, cheese, thin layers of meat. In her other hand she held the same coffee jug from the kitchen.

Nothing, the girl said. No one.

She looked terrified.

Coffee? the woman said.

I don’t know if it’s permitted to me to drink my coffee on your time, Eve said.

The woman gave Eve a warm confidential smile.

Mother, may I take Sonny to the woods? the girl said.

Keep him away from the Dunlops’ geese, Rebecca. And when you get back, you’ll have to smarten yourself up considerably, the woman said.

The girl left the room.

You’re like me, the woman said. Black, no sugar.

You remembered, Eve said.

Jerry isn’t arriving till quite late this afternoon, I’m afraid, the woman said. He has to pick up his eldest from college. In fact we held Richard’s eighteenth birthday out here last fall, though I don’t think I recall you being here for that occasion.

No, Eve said. I was probably in Europe at the time.

She saw out of the corner of her eye the girl peeking at them through the window, round the edge of the outside wall. When the girl saw herself be seen she stepped back out of sight.

The truth is, you really are very, very early, the woman was saying. To be honest we aren’t expecting anyone till this evening at the earliest and most people are arriving late tomorrow.

That’s me in a nutshell. First late, then early, Eve said.

Which explains my
faux pas
, the woman said. Again, I hope you’ll forgive me.

No, Eve said. It’s unforgivable, the way you behaved. And not just to me.

The woman waited for Eve to laugh. When Eve didn’t, she laughed anyway.

Well, Steve, she said, it’s great to have you here. I’m afraid I have a horribly busy schedule, but you’re welcome to rest in your room until later, or to do whatever you’d prefer, explore wherever you–Oh! Did I hear you say that you had a problem with your car?

It’s just down the road. I left it on the verge by the first house, the house by the swamp, Eve said.

You have such a great accent, the woman said.

Thanks, Eve said.

It’s so classic, the woman said. It sounds like–it sounds like–I can’t say what exactly it sounds like–

Is it the BBC? Eve said.

Yes. The BBC, the woman said.

When the woman left the room Eve packed as much of the food off the plates as she could into the pockets of her jeans and her jacket before a different older Latin American woman, carrying a thick wedge of what looked like new white towels, came to take her up the main staircase and along a glassed-in modernist walkway, then along a more traditional corridor. She led Eve through a door. She left the towels on a chair in the gleaming ensuite.

Thank you, Eve said.

You’re very welcome, ma’am, the Latin American woman said.

She shut the door after her. The noise the door made as it shut was decorous.

Eve stood in the middle of the room and put a sandwich together from the bits of food she’d folded into her pockets. She ate it. She made another. She ate it. She arranged the rest of the food on the bedside table.

The room was fashionably spare. It had a large fan in its ceiling. Its walls were wood-lined; the whole house smelt of this same sweet wood. One wall had two windows overlooking a swimming pool, a set of stable buildings and a field so green it was somehow shocking. Its other walls were hung with photos of people with horses, or people on horses. Eve recognized the blonde woman in three of them. She was with a man, quite handsome, unsmiling.

Jerry.

The girl was in only one of the photos. She was much younger in it and almost unrecognizably joyful.

The other photographs were all shots of the dopey small boy dressed as a cowboy, with guns and a waistcoat and stetson, on the back of a white-maned pony that was too big for him.

There was no photograph of anyone who might match Richard (18) being picked up from college this afternoon. Son from an earlier marriage, Eve thought.

She made another sandwich with the slices of food and bread, and ate it. She sat on the edge of the perfectly made bed.

She decided she’d sleep in the car.

I was born. And all that. My mother and father. And so on.

Never mind that. Imagine the most beautiful palace. It’s the most beautiful palace in the world. Now imagine it multiplied. It’s a palace made of palaces. Its palaces are honeycombs of layered stone and light. There are courtyards, arches, galleries, whole rooms of constellations, because artisans cut stars through rock hundreds of years ago and the sun is still spilling stars all over the floors and walls of the palaces. There’s a beautiful fountain. Stone lions carry it on their backs. There’s a ceiling like a heaven made of broken curves of light. At a distance the walls look like they’re made of intricate lace. From close up you can see the intricate lace is made of stone. Carved in the arches of a gate there’s a hand and then a key. Carved in the palace walls, the words: no conqueror but God.