Cuckoo (42 page)
She bent down and opened the Aga door to check on the meatballs that sat fatly bubbling in their red sauce. She tore a couple of leaves of basil and dipped them in olive oil, then scattered them on the top, closing the hot, heavy door behind them and lifting it onto its latch. She hadn’t completely lost her touch, then. Encouraged, she made a large batch of flapjacks to fill the empty biscuit tins.
She poured herself a glass of good red wine and stood in the middle of the kitchen looking up at the Annexe, enjoying the blackcurranty vanilla scent as it travelled down her throat, filling her belly with warmth. It was a beautiful evening. The sun, which she knew was on its way down behind her, stained the eastern portion of the sky in her sights a violent pink. Little puffs of white cloud were scattered carelessly around. A Tiepolo sky, she thought. She half-expected fat little
putti
to spill down and start careering in from the garden to help her serve the supper.
putti
to spill down and start careering in from the garden to help her serve the supper.
The more she thought about the Brighton trip in this new light, the more she felt a sense of calm lay an easy hand on the churning that had been creeping around her belly for the past couple of weeks.
The kitchen door opened. Gareth had come up early for supper. His hair was rumpled, his clothes a little stained and dirty. He stood on the threshold looking around him in such a wild way that it spiked Rose’s calm.
‘Hi, honey, did you have a good day?’ she asked in her best Doris Day voice.
‘Have we got a spare fuse?’ he said.
‘In the drawer by the washing machine,’ she said, pointing to the pantry, as if he might not know where that would be.
‘Fucking new coffee-machine. Pile of crap,’ he said.
Shit, she thought.
‘I go down there today, gasping for my coffee, and what happens? It farts and –
poof
– nothing. So I’m going to try the fuse first. If it’s not that, I’m sending this piece of junk back to Amazon.’
poof
– nothing. So I’m going to try the fuse first. If it’s not that, I’m sending this piece of junk back to Amazon.’
‘So you didn’t get coffee then today?’ she asked. ‘How on earth did you manage?’
‘Whisky,’ he grinned.
‘Wow.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t start,’ he said, walking straight past her and into the pantry, where she heard him rummaging and cursing into the drawer.
‘Supper’s nearly ready,’ she said.
‘I’ll take these down after and do it,’ he said, putting the fuse and a Phillips screwdriver on the dresser.
‘Nico, can you run up and get your mum?’ Rose called through into the living room. Instantly the boy, her new little star, jumped up and slipped on his trainers to leap up the steps to Polly’s hideout.
She didn’t know why he was trying to please her today, but she liked it.
‘Anna and Yann, could you be the waiters?’
They came through happily and started to set the table. Rose was as pleased with them as if those little golden cherubs had actually spilled down from the sunset. Perhaps it was the wine, but she was full of hope for the evening.
Gareth sat and poured himself a large glass of red. She looked at the raddled shape of him and wondered how much whisky he had got through during the afternoon.
‘How was work though, seriously?’ she asked, as she trimmed a lettuce she had picked from her cold frame into the salad spinner.
‘I’m getting a little sidetracked now,’ he said, looking into his glass. ‘It’s the drawing. I’ve realised I haven’t been looking enough recently – well, not for the last couple of years, what with the house and everything – so I’m turning to the world around me and I’m drawing and drawing. Giving the brain a rest, you know, and reconnecting the synapses.’ He sighed and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’ve gotten a bit rusty, truth be told,’ he said.
‘You’ll soon be back on track.’ She leaned over and touched his hand. ‘I have every faith in you.’
‘Do you?’ he said, holding her gaze in his. Something in his eyes chilled her. Her hand prickled.
‘’Scuse me, madam, sir.’ Yannis was brandishing a place-mat, shaking it out ready to lay it in front of Gareth. Gareth broke away from Rose and leaned back.
‘Why, zank you, seer.’ Yannis’s waiter had inexplicably become French. ‘Can I get you anysing, m’syer?’
‘Why, I’m just dandy, thank you,’ Gareth said, trying to turn on the jolly.
‘No leetle tastee beets?’ Anna, who had been putting Flossie in her high chair, joined in with the insistence.
‘Do you have any olives?’
‘Ah’ll just ask Chef. Do we have any oleevs, Chef?’
‘Oui,’ Rose said, moving to the fridge and finding a rather ancient jar of black olives sitting like biology lab specimens in some cloudy brine.
‘’Eer you are, sir.’ Yannis plonked the jar down in front of Gareth.
‘My, the presentation in this joint is tip-top,’ Gareth said, rubbing his hands together.
‘She’s not coming.’ Nico burst breathlessly into the kitchen. ‘She says she’s done in.’
‘What on earth has she been doing?’ Rose asked as she took the spaghetti off the Aga.
‘She had to run the house while you were ill, Rose. Perhaps she just wants a night off,’ Gareth said, unscrewing the jar of olives and fishing one out with his fork.
Rose hoped that her outraged gasp was hidden by the rush of water as she tipped the spaghetti through a big colander. With tight lips she moved around the kitchen getting the remainder of the meal onto the table, trying her very best not to slam the pots and pans as she did so.
‘Can you grate some of this?’ she asked, putting a lump of Parmesan, a Microplane and a small board down in front of Gareth.
She doled the meatballs out onto plates that she had piled with spaghetti. Yannis passed them around the table, placing them down in front of their recipients with a neat little bow.
‘I mean,’ Gareth went on, dusting the final crumbs of Parmesan off the Microplane and onto the board, ‘it’s not as if Polly’s got your constitution.’
‘What on earth is that supposed to mean?’
‘I mean, look at you, Rose. Just yesterday you were in bed half-drowned with some sort of virus or something, and here you are up, about and back on top of everything. Not everyone’s like you, you know.’
‘Thank goodness,’ Anna giggled.
‘What?’ Rose turned sharply towards her daughter.
‘Joke?’ Anna asked, splaying out her hands.
‘That’s not funny, Anna,’ Gareth said.
‘Sorry.’ She looked down at her plate.
‘It’s OK, darling.’ Rose leaned across and ruffled Anna’s hair.
‘You’re a marvel, Rose, no-one can deny it,’ Gareth said, tucking into his plateful with knife and fork, avoiding her eyes. ‘This is fantastic.’
‘Nico, can I ask you to take this up for Polly after the meal?’ Rose said, tucking a bowl over the spare portion she had plated up and putting it over by the counter. It wasn’t that she was trying to prove the truth of Gareth’s words about her domestic brilliance. It was something she wanted done anyway.
‘She won’t eat it, you know,’ Nico said.
‘Well, there’s no harm in trying,’ Rose said.
‘I don’t know anyone else like you,’ Gareth said. ‘These meatballs are delicious. More so than usual, even. What did you do?’
‘It must be the special salt that Nico got,’ Rose said, winking at the boy, her ally. Nico smiled like a cat that had been sitting on a table for hours trying to get someone to stroke him.
‘Extraordinary,’ Gareth went on, sloshing another glassful from the bottle. ‘Shall I open another?’ he said.
‘Why not?’ Rose shrugged, as he got up and went to the wine rack.
After a dessert of rhubarb crême brulée, which Gareth declared to be ‘A Total Marvel’, the children cleared up while Gareth and Rose sat at the table finishing the second bottle.
‘This is nice,’ Rose said. ‘Bit like the old days.’
‘What days were those?’ Gareth said.
‘Oh, you know,’ Rose said vaguely, looking around. ‘Can you handwash that?’ she asked Nico, who was just about to put her special knife in the dishwasher. ‘On second thoughts, I’ll do it. It’s fiendish sharp.’
When she turned back to Gareth, he was draining his glass and making ready to stand up.
‘Best be off,’ he said. ‘Those drawings won’t draw themselves.’
‘Oh. OK. All right then. Don’t forget that fuse,’ Rose added as she got up to wash the knife.
‘See you tomorrow, then,’ he said, leaning over and giving her a kiss on the cheek.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Anna’ll want to sleep in with you tonight, and what with Floss and all of that, I think I’ll somehow get a better night’s sleep down in my studio again. I’m planning on working late anyway.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK.’
And, with the fuse and screwdriver in his hand, he turned his back and went out through the door, to spend yet another night in his studio, away from Rose.
Thirty-Nine
Despite Gareth’s pronouncements about her constitution, Rose was feeling pretty worn out. The wine hadn’t exactly woken her up, either, so as soon as she had the children bathed, read to and put to bed, she drew herself a long, deep bath, tipping in a generous helping of her best Aveda rose-scented bath oil and lighting a couple of candles. As she lay there in her bathroom, the steam drawing great clouds of scent around her piled-up hair, she thought about the look in Gareth’s eyes earlier that evening. She had seen it some time before . . .
Then something began to come back to her. If she ever managed to be honest with herself, Rose would have to say she had a difficult relationship with the truth. Like most people, she supposed, there were many secrets she wouldn’t tell anyone else about. There were some things some people knew and not others. Then there were a couple that only one or two people knew about and she would quite possibly kill to stop Gareth knowing. That Greek beach with Christos was one of those things. But there was only herself now to know about that. Killing wasn’t a necessity for that secret to stay put.
She stirred in the bath, an involuntary movement brought on by the memory of Christos. The scent of roses was renewed, invigorated by her movement, and for a heady moment she was back there with him; that smile of his was tangible once more. But his eyes soon became Gareth’s and she remembered when she had last seen that look. During the bad times, the times when Gareth was so low during the build, she had spent an evening with Andy. She had wanted to get out of the house, away from the smell of Gareth’s mood, and had suggested a trip to the pub, knowing that Gareth wouldn’t come and would therefore have to babysit.
So, after supper, she and Andy had walked slowly down the lane into the blue-black night. It was the beginning of spring and the hedgerow was full of bud. Rose could pick out the light dots of primrose flowers on the dark verge, like a set of gentle lights guiding them along their way. There was a gorgeous lemony scent in the air, of freshness and new beginnings. In her pregnant, heightened olfactory state, Rose thought she could detect the smell of a newborn’s head.
They sat in the pub, and Andy drank three pints of local bitter while she nursed one half of Guinness. Rose was an unapologetic consumer of stout during pregnancy since her first midwife in London, a venerable lady originally from Jamaica, had told her to view it as medicinal on account of its iron content.
As Andy drank, he talked. He told her, for the first time, about his early romantic yet disastrous marriage to a French woman and how he had never been able to love anyone since. He told her about how, after Françoise and he had separated, he had tried to return to the States to be closer to his parents, but then they died, and Bush got elected, and the War on Terror started. Fed up with it all, he had returned to the foothold he had retained in France, with the dual aim of being closer to his brother and living a simpler life. And as Andy talked, Rose began, once again, to wonder if she hadn’t landed the wrong brother.
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