The Best of Friends (12 page)

She pushed her trolley on down the aisle towards tissues and lavatory paper. She should have brought Adam with her, to help carry, but she'd left him with the mowing and Gus with the job of neatening the lawn edges with shears. She'd agreed to pay Gus two pounds and Adam two pounds fifty an hour. Was it mad to give Adam any more money, or if she didn't,
would he then seek to acquire some by illicit means? She sighed. There was no white lavatory paper, only pastels, the colours of fruit yoghurts. Perhaps green was the most bearable, forty-eight rolls in two bales. And I must do something about Sophy, Hilary thought, I promised her a job this summer and then her wretched father chucked this giant spanner in the works and I clean forgot to do any more about it. Poor Sophy, dripping about that house with Gina either moping or trotting off to her counsellor. She can help wash up and do the bedrooms a bit, I don't suppose she'll mind what. Poor Sophy, Hilary said again, half aloud and suddenly grateful for Adam's robustness even if it did lead to waywardness, poor little Sophy. Sweet really, and a good girl, but such a drip. She stretched up and retrieved a giant box of scouring pads. It wouldn't be any good, ever, expecting anything dramatic from Sophy.

‘IT'S ALL RIGHT,
dear,' Dan said. ‘I'm just a bit tired.'

Vi parked a bright-blue jug of orange gladioli on the occasional table in his sitting-room.

‘Can't think why. You haven't done nothing all morning.'

He was sitting in one of his chintz armchairs with a newspaper, neatly folded, on his knee.

‘It's the heat. Just seems to flatten me.'

‘You haven't got a pain?' Vi said, peering at him. ‘You got a pain you're not telling me about?'

He shook his head, smiling.

‘No pain.'

‘I could bring you a bit of lunch. A slice of pie and a bit of salad—'

He shook his head again.

‘No thanks, Vi. It's the heat. Can't fancy anything much but lemonade. How's Sophy?'

Vi sat down opposite him. She was wearing a summer dress patterned with emerald and yellow splashy flowers, and she began to pleat the skirt of it over her knees.

‘Not talking.'

‘Oh dear.'

‘It's not that I think she should go on and on about it, but I just wish she'd say a bit. About her father. I mean, good or bad, he's her dad and he isn't dead, for heaven's sake.'

‘Has he been in touch?' Dan said, unfolding the
newspaper and then folding it up again exactly as before.

‘Gina says he rings every few days, but Sophy won't speak to him. She says she's writing him a letter.' Vi snorted. ‘Letters! Letters are a load of trouble, if you ask me; you can never take nothing back that's in a letter.'

‘When I was in the Merchant Navy,' Dan said, ‘I lived for letters from Pam. But I dreaded them too because she wasn't much of a hand at feelings, wasn't Pam, and sometimes a letter left me feeling worse than no letter. I thought she was hiding something or leaving something out.'

‘I wouldn't have been like that,' Vi said. ‘I'd have told you straight.'

Dan put a hand out to her. It felt cold.

‘I know. I know. But you're a very different kettle of fish, thank God.'

‘You're cold,' Vi said, dropping his hand.

‘No—'

‘Let's get you in the sun. We'll put you in a chair and I'll get my sewing.'

Dan said, ‘I'm happier here, dear, honest. It's the light. It's a bit bright for me today. And I'm not cold. I'm never cold when you're here.'

She looked at him, sitting there so tidily in his pale-green shirt with a paisley-patterned tie and a fawn sleeveless jersey.

‘If anything happened to you—'

‘It won't,' Dan said. ‘We old sailors are tough as old boots. Pickled in brine. When have you known me to be ill?'

‘Always a first time. Did you sleep last night?'

‘Like a top,' Dan said, too heartily. ‘Anyway, you asked me that. When you came in with my tea.'

Vi giggled.

‘Fancy my new nightie?'

He smiled.

‘Bit bright—'

It had been fuchsia pink, with white lace round the yoke; a dramatic sight under her mackintosh.

‘Oh, you and your bright. Anything other than beige and you put your sunglasses on—'

‘I love you,' he said.

She was suddenly still. He leaned forward a little.

‘I've never loved anyone like I love you. Didn't know I could.'

She thought she might cry. She scrabbled about in the sleeve of her dress, hunting for a tissue.

‘Oh Dan—'

‘You've changed my life,' he said. ‘Brought the sun in. Honest.'

She blew her nose fiercely.

‘What about you?' he said.

She blew again.

‘Same,' she said in a hoarse whisper. ‘Same.'

‘What a thing,' he said. ‘Us old crocks.' He was smiling at her.

‘Doesn't matter—'

‘No. 'Course it doesn't. You going to get us some of that lemonade?'

She stood up, creaking a little.

‘I'll get my sewing.'

He looked up at her, his gaze soft.

‘Which sewing?' He knew about everything she made.

‘The firescreen. The collage. You know. The Owl and the Pussy Cat.'

He smiled at her again, full of contentment.

‘You and me, dear,' he said. ‘You and me.'

The man from the estate agency said he would be as quick as possible, but he did have to measure up, he
was sure Mrs Bedford could see that. He waved a slim cardboard folder at her.

‘I have my instructions, you see.'

‘From Mr Bedford.'

‘Yes.'

‘It would have been
nice
, wouldn't it,' Gina said, knowing she was being unfair, ‘if Mr Bedford had had the courtesy to issue his instructions through me?'

The man said nothing. He wore a blue suit and a tie, she noticed, patterned with tiny penguins. He looked deeply uncomfortable. It wasn't his fault, poor fellow, that Fergus, having only once casually mentioned putting the house on the market, should then have the insensitivity to take decisive action without a further word.

‘Sorry,' Gina said. ‘Not your fault.'

‘Not exactly,' the man said.

‘Would you like coffee?'

‘If it's no trouble.'

Gina led him into the kitchen. He looked round. She could feel his admiration.

‘The cupboards are elm,' she said. ‘And the table is beech, made by a pupil of Ernest Gimson's.'

The man wrote down, ‘Split-level cooker, plumbing for dishwasher, dimmer switches.'

‘And the floor is Bath stone, waxed. My husband found the flagstones in a house that was being demolished.'

‘Western aspect,' the man wrote. ‘Fitted cupboards with shelves over. Door to garden.'

‘Are you going to say something,' Gina asked, getting the coffee-filter machine out of a cupboard, and then changing her mind and finding the instant-coffee jar instead, ‘about how perfectly the house has been restored? Because whatever my private feeling, it has.'

The man said, ‘We will emphasize that it's a
very well-maintained period property, of course.'

Gina thought, spooning coffee into mugs, that there was a horrible satisfaction in hearing High Place described so after all Fergus's dedicated commitment to it. It was somehow proof – and this a small if disagreeable comfort – that Fergus had got his priorities wrong, that no house should take the dedicated consideration that properly belonged to people. She wondered if his new house, his new London house, was getting the same loving, focused interest. He'd bought the house, he said, with a business loan, a big mortgage. When High Place was sold, they'd divide the proceeds, exactly as they had divided the contents.

‘Don't go to a lawyer,' Fergus had said on the telephone. ‘Don't start all that. Meddlesome and expensive.'

‘Why not?'

‘There's no point.'

‘Isn't there?' she said, beginning to shout. ‘Isn't there? Don't you want a divorce?'

‘No,' he said, and again, ‘there's no point. Is there? Not until you want to marry again, I suppose.'

‘And you?' she yelled. ‘And you?'

‘Oh, I won't marry again,' Fergus had said with emphasis. ‘Not me. Anyway, a divorce would only upset Sophy.'

She had banged the receiver down then, and missed the handset, and it went clattering down to the floor on its springing cord while Fergus's voice called for her without much urgency out of the mouthpiece. It was intolerable, he seemed to have trapped her in every way, parcelled up like a fly in a spider's web, with no lever to use on him in retaliation.

‘Here,' Gina said, holding out the coffee mug. ‘I'll show you the house.'

At the top, outside Sophy's bedroom door, she paused.

‘My daughter's room.'

The man, coiling up his steel measuring tape, nodded. Gina knocked softly.

‘Soph?'

‘Yes,' Sophy said.

‘Can we come in?'

The door opened, Sophy, wearing her Walkman headphones like a hairband, said, ‘What do you want?'

‘This is Mr—'

‘Ellis,' the man said. ‘Mr Ellis from Barton and Noakes. Estate Agents.'

Sophy said nothing. She turned away from them both and stared out of the window at the high grey sky.

Mr Ellis said, making an efffort, ‘Charming room.'

‘Yes,' Gina said.

Sophy said nothing. She was wearing one of her big, gauzy Indian tunic shirts over her jeans and her narrow silhouette was visible through it against the light from the window.

‘Mr Ellis has to measure it, darling,' Gina said.

Sophy shrugged. She leaned across her table and drew a magazine very deliberately across the surface to cover a sheet of paper that Gina could see was densely covered with her handwriting.

‘Double aspect,' Mr Ellis said. ‘Very nice.'

‘Sophy—'

‘Yes.'

‘When – when we've sold this house we can go, together, and find another one. Perhaps you could have a whole floor to yourself, not just a room.'

‘Excuse me,' Mr Ellis said, sliding his tape under Sophy's table to the walls. ‘Thank you. Twelve foot, ten inches.'

Sophy said, without turning, ‘It's rather difficult to
get worked up about another house right now.'

Diana Taylor had said to Gina, ‘Try not to stoke the fires of your resentment. It's so negative. Use your energy to do positive things, things that will take you forward.'

Easier said than done. Gina said, too quickly, ‘It's not my fault we have to, you know.'

Sophy whipped round. She glared at Gina, wrenched the earphones off her head and flung them towards the bed. Then, barging past the kneeling Mr Ellis and Gina, she marched out of the room, and slammed the door. There was a tiny silence. Mr Ellis retracted his tape, very slowly.

‘Sorry,' he said.

Gina looked at him. Thirty-two or -three, perhaps, bony, poor skin, unbecoming haircut, caught up in some disconcerting whirlwind while he tried to do as he had been told, and measure a room.

‘Me too,' she said. ‘Really.'

When Mr Ellis had gone – ‘I will have to check with my colleagues, of course, but I think we can estimate an asking price of two hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds' – Gina went into the sitting-room and sat at her piano. She hadn't touched it for weeks, hadn't even thought about it. There were almost never any pupils in the summer holidays anyway, and the few who had rung in the last weeks she had told, untruthfully, that she was just off on holiday. She played a bar or two of a Mozart Fantasie, a piece much beloved by Grade VI examiners, but there was no heart in it. She couldn't recall, just now, the slightest interest in music nor in those children whom, up to now, it had been her pride to get to such a standard by the time they were thirteen that they didn't
want
to give up. ‘I want you to get Grade VI,' she would say to pupils, ‘by your tenth
birthday. OK? And then by your twenty-first you'll be playing whole Beethoven sonatas.'

She sighed and took her hands off the keys, seized by a wave of nostalgia for those now powerfully appealing days of piano lessons, Sophy at school, Fergus at a sale, the ingredients for supper in the fridge . . .

‘Be careful,' Diana Taylor had said. ‘Be honest about the past. Don't put haloes round things just because they're gone. You'll exhaust yourself with regret. And longing. Longing's a killer.'

‘Can I come in?' Laurence said.

Gina turned round. He was standing in the doorway of the sitting-room, dressed in cotton trousers and an open-necked blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, holding a dish.

‘Brought you something.'

‘Laurence!'

She spun off the piano stool and rushed over to give him a kiss.

‘Chinese pancakes,' he said. ‘Purely veggie so Sophy can eat them too.' He looked at her. ‘How are you?'

She took the dish and lifted the covering foil. Six little pale half-moon pancakes lay in a pool of shiny brown sauce.

‘How sweet of you.'

‘Not very. I thought you'd prefer it to flowers which I remember you saying once you thought outright macabre on the wrong occasion.'

She looked up at him, smiling.

‘Did I? I was dead right. These look delectable.'

‘And you look a bit better.'

‘I think I am.'

‘That's really what I came to see.'

Gina went past him into the kitchen and put the pancake dish into the refrigerator.

‘Come into the garden. I'm sick of the house. I've just had an estate agent here, measuring up. It was quite extraordinarily discouraging. Sophy walked out.'

‘I know. She's at The Bee House.'