Second Honeymoon

Chapter Twelve

Lazlo was being very quiet. Lying on his bed against the wall between their bedrooms, Matthew wondered if he was sitting staring into space like a petrified rabbit or earnestly reading the Theban plays in his pursuit of true professionalism. He was a nice enough guy, Matthew thought, even if slightly geeky, and obviously pathetically grateful to be in Rosa’s room after his months of confinement among the cat-litter trays in Kilburn. His pathos made Matthew regret his outburst over money. He shouldn’t have done it, he shouldn’t have shouted at his father for asking for money or his mother for not asking Lazlo for more. You only had to look at Lazlo to be reminded of some student character out of Dostoyevsky, all skin and bone and burning passion, and not a penny to his name.

He shifted a little on his pillow. All those years of living a wall away from Rosa meant that every creak and thump from the other side was familiar, as was the fact that the closer to the window you moved the more audible sounds became. Rosa, of course, was something of a banger and crasher, flinging drawers shut and slamming doors. Lazlo on the other hand made no sound at all, as if elaborately tiptoeing about, closing cupboards with stealth, inching himself on to his bed with his breath held. It was, Matthew supposed, rather like starting at boarding school, where he had never been, but which must be plagued by the consciousness of the nearness of strangers. He lifted his fist and held it up in the dusky late-spring dark. If he swung it sideways, he could thump the wall and imagine Lazlo starting up, gasping, dropping his book. It would be a childish thing to do, of course it would, but perhaps childishness was what descended on you when you found yourself back in your boyhood bedroom after years – yes, years – of living independently.

He lowered his fist and laid his hand across his chest.

‘Come back,’ Ruth had said the other night. ‘Please. Come back’.

She’d been in bed with him, or he with her, whichever, they’d been in her bed – their old joint bed – in her new bedroom, where he’d never intended to be, where he wasn’t drunk enough or convinced enough to be, but where he somehow still was, holding her, with her head roughly where his hand now was, and her saying, almost into his skin, ‘Please come back. Please’.

He’d stroked her hair back from her face, saying nothing. After a while, she raised herself on one elbow and said, ‘Don’t you love me any more?’ and he said, truthfully, ‘Of course I do, but that doesn’t solve everything,’ and she said, ‘It does, it can,’ and he said, tiredly, ‘We’ve been through this. We’ve been through all this, over and over’.

‘But you came tonight,’ Ruth said. ‘You’ve made love to me’.

He couldn’t say it didn’t mean anything because that was neither true nor constructive. Of course going to bed with Ruth was significant, even important, but at the same time he hadn’t meant it to happen, hadn’t wanted it to happen, and now that it had, he was filled with a dreary desolation. He had only made things worse. He had only made Ruth hope again for something that couldn’t happen because it was too messy and too insoluble and, above all, too late.

He’d kissed the top of Ruth’s head and squeezed her bare shoulders and then began to disengage himself as gently as he could. He’d waited for her to start crying but she hadn’t, merely remaining where he’d left her, crumpled and silent, a picture of misery and reproach. Once dressed, he stood in the doorway of the bedroom and wrestled with what he might say. Sorry was pathetic, thank you for dinner was ludicrous, I love you was unkind and dangerous. In the end he simply said, ‘Bye,’ and went out of the flat and into the lift, and leaned against the wall of it with his eyes closed. How was it possible to get, entirely without intending to, into a position where you kept somehow inflicting pain on someone you loved? When she had rung him and begged – awful, mortifying word, but accurate for how she’d sounded – him to come round for supper, it had seemed more difficult and elaborate to refuse her than to agree. And then he had ended up making things worse than he had ever intended, concluding by responding to some primitive urge to flee that had got him out of the flat and down to London Bridge Underground Station and then left him to trail back to North London cursing himself.

From next door came the sound of Lazlo opening his window. Matthew imagined him leaning out, breathing, marvelling at where he found himself. Perhaps he was feeling as Matthew had felt before he met Ruth, both luxuriously free and equally luxuriously lonely. Matthew turned on his side, and punched his pillow up under his neck. If you couldn’t just un-love someone, he thought, perhaps you could at least starve that love a bit, practise not allowing yourself to express it or react to its impulses. He shut his eyes. No calls from now on. No emails. No contact. Nothing.

‘We have six days,’ Freddie Cass said, ‘until press night. And I am far from happy with this scene’.

Edie did not look either at Lazlo or at Cheryl. Cheryl was probably, anyway, looking as if any imminent reprimand had nothing to do with her, and Lazlo would be expecting the worst.

‘Don’t strut, Cheryl,’ Freddie Cass said. There was a pause. Then he said, ‘Don’t bleat, Lazlo’. And then, after another silence, ‘Good, Edie’.

‘I’m supposed to strut,’ Cheryl said, boredly, ‘in this scene’.

Freddie ignored her.

He said to Lazlo, ‘You’ll be blind by the end of the scene. Blind. Who’ll care about that if they’ve heard you whining for favours?’

Lazlo cleared his throat. Edie willed him not to apologise.

He said, ‘I am whining. I’m very unattractive by now. I’m completely self-centred because I’m dying’.

Freddie Cass waited. Edie glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at Lazlo, as was his wont when addressing someone, he was looking across the stage to where an electrician was dismantling a spotlight.

‘I’m not getting that’.

‘I’ll try again’.

‘Yes,’ Freddie said, ‘you will’. He sighed. ‘And you, Cheryl, will stop playing the little tart. Even if you are one’. He moved forward, towards the footlights, and touched Edie on the shoulder as he passed. ‘As you were’.

Edie went past Lazlo, upstage to the spot where the door to the garden would be when the set was up. Lazlo caught her eye as she passed him and gave her the briefest of winks. She widened her eyes at him. He looked quite undismayed by what Freddie had said, quite unlike his usual easily wounded self. He looked, astonishingly, like someone prepared to stand their ground. Perhaps, she thought, picking up the shallow flower basket that Mrs Alving was to bring in from the garden, this new energy and confidence could even be attributable to the simple fact that she had offered breakfast to Lazlo that morning and then overseen him while he ate it. He ate like Ben, with that peculiar combination of indifference and absorption that seemed to characterise hungry young men, consuming two bowls of cereal and a banana and four slices of toast as if they were simultaneously vital and of no consequence at all. She’d felt an extraordinary satisfaction, almost a relief, sitting opposite him with her coffee mug, and watching him eat. It had been so pleasurable that she had turned to Russell, to smile that pleasure at him, and found that he was reading the paper like someone in a pantomime, with the paper held up high, a screen against the outside world.

She reached across and banged the paper with a teaspoon.

‘Oy’.

‘One moment,’ Russell said, not lowering the paper. ‘Rude,’ Edie said cheerfully. ‘Meals are for conversation’.

Russell moved the paper sideways so that only Edie could see his face. ‘Not breakfast’.

Lazlo put his second piece of toast down. ‘Sorry,’ he said contritely. Edie smiled at him. ‘Not you,’ she said, ‘him’.

Russell moved the paper back to its original position.

‘If you ever marry,’ he said, not addressing Lazlo by name, ‘you’ll discover that all roads of fault and blame lead to “him”’.

Edie put her coffee mug down. She looked at Lazlo.

‘More toast?’

‘No thank you,’ Russell said.

‘I wasn’t addressing you. You have only had one slice of toast since the dawn of time. Lazlo, more toast?’ He looked longingly at the sliced loaf on the counter.

‘Could I …’

Edie stood up.

‘Of course you could’.

Russell shook the paper out like a bed sheet, and folded it with care.

‘I’m off’.

Edie, putting bread into the toaster, turned to glance at the clock. ‘You’re early’.

‘No’.

‘You never get in before ten’.

Russell said nothing. He stood up and pushed the newspaper across the table to Lazlo. ‘Have a good day’. ‘Thank you’.

He looked briefly across the kitchen, at Edie’s back. ‘See you later’.

She turned and gave him a wide smile. Then she blew him a kiss. He went out of the room, and they could hear him treading heavily up the stairs to the bathroom.

‘If it would be easier,’ Lazlo said diffidently, ‘I could always take breakfast up to my room’.

The toaster gave a small metallic clang and ejected two slices of toast on to the counter. Edie snatched them up and tossed them hastily on to Lazlo’s plate.

‘So overenthusiastic, that thing. And nonsense. About breakfast, I mean’.

‘I don’t want to upset anyone—’

Edie looked straight at him.

‘You aren’t. Russell is fine. Eat your toast’.

He began to butter it. She walked behind his chair, giving him a tiny pat on the shoulder as she did so, and went out of the room and up the stairs to the bathroom. Russell was bent over the basin, brushing his teeth. Edie leaned against the door jamb and crossed her arms.

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘I could always do breakfast in relays. Matthew at seven, you at eight to fit in with your new work schedule, and Lazlo at nine’.

Russell stopped brushing and picked up a wet flannel from the edge of the bath and rubbed vigorously at his face with it.

‘Very funny’.

‘There’s no need,’ Edie said, ‘to be so unwelcoming. So rude. That poor boy is about as intrusive as wallpaper’.

Russell tossed the flannel into the bath.

‘It’s not him,’ he said, ‘as well you know’.

‘So,’ Edie said, ‘things change. They don’t go according to plan. What you picture as the future doesn’t turn out to be the reality of the future. That’s how it is, Russell, that’s how it’s always been. That’s life’.

He turned from the basin and walked past her into their bedroom to find his jacket. She detached herself from the bathroom doorway and went after him.

‘Russell?’

‘I am not complaining about life,’ Russell said, hunting in his jacket pockets for something. ‘I’m not objecting to the way things happen, the way things just turn out. What I find so difficult is when changes are made deliberately and obstructively’.

‘You mean me asking Lazlo here—’

Russell found his travel card and transferred it from one pocket to another.

‘You could construe it like that—’

‘You mean yes’.

He sighed.

He said, ‘You seem to be finding every excuse not to be alone with me’.

Edie gave a small bark of incredulous laughter. ‘Really? And who urged me to audition for the Ibsen?’

‘That’s different’. ‘Is it?’

‘That doesn’t involve your personal emotions’. Edie let a small silence fall, and then she said witheringly, ‘How little you know. And you an actors’ agent’. Russell took a step towards her. He looked down at her. He said, ‘This is fruitless’.

‘If I can’t even offer a lodger more toast without getting jumped on, it probably is’.

He put his hands on her shoulders.

He said, ‘I had just hoped that we could move on from what we’d been doing for close on thirty years to something we’ve never had a chance to do’. He took his hands away. ‘I suppose I was hoping to be married. Pure and simple. Just married’.

Edie reached out and straightened his jacket collar.

She said, ‘Maybe we have different ideas about what being married means’.

‘Not always—’

She looked up at him.

‘But this is now,’ she said. ‘We’re not dealing with always, we’re dealing with now. Which means me going downstairs now, and seeing what else I can stuff into that boy’.

Russell made a huge effort.

‘Well, he’s certainly appreciative—’

‘Yes,’ Edie said with emphasis, ‘he is,’ and then she left the room and went down to the kitchen where she found Lazlo putting plates in the dishwasher and Arsie on the table regarding the butter.

Lazlo straightened up as she came in. He was smiling.

‘That was so great,’ he said. ‘I never eat breakfast. I never thought about it’.

Now, looking at him across the stage, whether it was breakfast that was responsible or not, Edie could see that something had turned a corner in Lazlo. When he made his entrance, in five minutes or so, and stood by the table, fingering the books on it, and saying, ‘“Everything’ll burn, till there’s nothing left to remind me of my father. Here I am, burning up too,”‘ they would all know, Freddie Cass included, that the whole production had moved into another gear.

Sitting on the grass in the park in her lunch hour, Rosa texted her brothers.

‘Mum’s 1st night. All go together?’

She was not quite sure what these texts would produce. Matthew would probably say they should leave it to Russell to organise, and Ben would probably say he was tied up, which meant that if he came he would want to bring Naomi, and he wasn’t at all sure how he felt about exposing Naomi to his family. Whatever their response, however, Rosa had felt a powerful need to contact them over the opening of the play, a need to be included, or rather, in order not to look as if she wanted to be included to be the first to organise something in a way that looked responsible and concerned for family.

It was odd, but for the last week or ten days, Rosa had felt uncomfortably preoccupied by family. She had said carelessly to Kate that it was weird the way her family were all living at present, but her real feelings, she discovered, were far from careless, especially now that Vivien was distracted by her rekindled romance with Max. She was holding him off, she told Rosa, there was no question of him getting what he was asking for right now, but it had introduced an even stronger note of impermanence into Rosa’s situation, a note that now resounded steadily in Rosa’s head, like a drum beat. The thought of Matthew back in his bedroom and Lazlo now ensconced in hers was not exactly uncomfortable, but it did serve to remind her, in a way she didn’t care for, that she too had reverted to a dependency that was hardly something to be proud of. And even if she had a job now and was proving competent at it – what she would have felt like if she hadn’t been able to demonstrate that competency didn’t even bear thinking about – and had made the first, tiny inroad upon her indebtedness, she still had the glum sensation of doing no more than bumping along the bottom. She could produce small bursts of fierce gaiety for Kate, or for Vivien, but she had no faith in them. Any more, really, than she had in the prospect of her family turning to her with relief and delight as the organiser of a happy, conventional family party to see their mother’s first night.

She turned her phone off with a sigh, and dropped it back into her bag. It was better, she had learned in the last few months, not to be distracted by waiting for messages that never came. She could also tell herself, unconvincingly, that she was obeying office rules. She got to her feet. Rather to her manager’s surprise, she would also perhaps obey another rule, and return to work ten minutes before the end of her lunch break, rather than five minutes after it. And she would apply herself to invoicing all afternoon and, at the end of it, if she hadn’t heard from her brothers, she would ring them and establish herself as the prime mover in the suggestion that could only be applauded.

‘Is this a bad moment?’ Vivien said, into the telephone.

There was silence the other end.

Then Edie said, ‘When have you ever considered such a thing?’

‘Well, I thought you might have been rehearsing—’

‘I have’.

‘And be tired—’

‘I am’.

‘Well,’ Vivien said, ‘maybe I could ring a bit later’. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at home,’ Vivien said, ‘in my hall, speaking on my landline telephone, sitting on the chair next to my telephone table’.

‘You sound really peculiar’.

Vivien craned up so that she could see herself in the mirror on the opposite wall. She touched the back of her hair.

‘I don’t look it’.

‘Oh good. I look like the wrath of God. These last rehearsals are always completely exhausting. One minute you think you’ve got the play and the next minute you think you’ve lost it’.

‘That,’ Vivien said, ‘was really why I was ringing’.

‘My play?’

‘Yes. I was thinking of coming for the first night’. There was another silence. Then Edie said, ‘What’s brought this on?’ ‘What on—’

‘You’ve never been remotely interested in me and the theatre. If I was more into victim-speak, I’d say you’ve never supported what I do. I suppose it’s having Rosa there that makes you feel you’ve got to show willing’.

Vivien said carefully, ‘Not exactly’.

‘What then?’

‘I wondered,’ Vivien said, recrossing her legs and turning one foot to appreciate how her instep looked in a higher heel, ‘I wondered if I could bring Max. I thought Max and I might come together, and maybe bring Rosa’.

‘You’re joking’.

Vivien decided to keep her nerve. ‘No, not at all. I’d like to come and so would he and we’d like to come together’. ‘But why?’ Edie demanded.

‘Why?’

‘Max doesn’t know a play from a puppet show and this, Vivi, is Ibsen’. Vivien leaned forward. ‘This is different’.

‘What is?’

‘Max. Max and me. It’s all going to be different’.

‘Oh God,’ Edie said in a resigned voice.

‘I want to reintroduce Max to everyone. I want you to stop sniping at him and give him a chance, and I want to remind him that I have a very interesting family’. There was a snort from Edie’s end of the telephone.

‘Russell, at least, has always been very civil to him’.

‘Civil,’ Edie said. ‘What kind of word is that?’

‘I don’t know why you’re being so dismissive. We’re not divorced, you know. He’s still my husband. You’ve known him for twenty-five years’.

‘Exactly’.

‘All I want,’ Vivien said, threading a pencil into the coil of the telephone cable, ‘is to be able to bring my husband to watch my sister as a leading lady next Tuesday in the company of my brother-in-law and my niece and nephews’.

‘Oh, all right,’ Edie said, ‘play happy families if you want to’.

‘You are so ungracious—’

‘Not ungracious,’ Edie said, ‘just realistic’. ‘Edie,’ Vivien said, ‘this feels very real to me’. There was a further pause, and then Edie said, in an altered tone, ‘Are you sure?’

‘About Max?’ ‘Yes’.

‘Yes,’ Vivien said, ‘I’m quite sure. He’s never talked to me the way he’s talked recently. He wants to do things my way, he wants to join my life, if I’ll let him, rather than try to make me join his, the way he used to’.

‘So no more girls and flash cars and daring you to do things you don’t want to do?’

‘No,’ Vivien said.

Edie said, more thoughtfully, ‘D’you think anyone can change that much?’

‘Oh yes,’ Vivien said, ‘I’ve changed, after all. I’m much stronger than I used to be’.

‘Um’.

‘I’ve told Max, Edie. I’ve told him he can only come back if there really is a change, if certain things just never happen again’.

‘Come back?’ Edie said.

‘Yes. He’s asked to come back. I’ve made him wait, of course, but I’m going to say yes’.

‘Vivi,’ Edie said, her voice sharpening, ‘is Max suggesting coming back to the cottage?’

‘I told you. I said he wanted to join my life, not the other way round, and I don’t want to leave the cottage. I like it, and I like Richmond’.

‘So Max is moving back into your virgin bower—’

‘My bedroom. Yes’.

‘And what happens to Rosa, may I ask?’

Vivien slid the pencil out of the telephone cable and began to draw a huge eye on her telephone pad, in profile, with absurdly lavish lashes.

‘Actually, that’s a bit difficult—’

‘She can’t stay there if Max is there!’

‘No’.

‘So you’re throwing her out—’

‘Well,’ Vivien said, adding lower lashes to her eye, ‘I’m going to ask her to find somewhere else. I’m cooking a special supper for her tonight and I’ll tell her then. I’m sure she’ll understand’.

‘You are amazing—’

‘I mean, she’s seen it coming. She’s been so sweet, waiting up for me and being so interested’.

‘Oh, good,’ Edie said faintly.

‘To be honest, I think she’s seen it coming’.

‘Well, not to would be like missing an elephant in your bathroom—’

‘She’s doing so well,’ Vivien said, ignoring her sister. ‘She’s working hard and not going out and—’

‘That’s enough,’ Edie said. ‘Rosa is my daughter’.

‘I’ll tell her very gently—’

‘Frankly,’ Edie said, ‘you could do it on your knees, and in a whisper, and it still wouldn’t alter the fact that you’re telling her to go’.

Everyone in the house, Edie was certain, was awake. There had been faint movements from the top floor for hours and, although Russell was very still, beside her, there was a kind of subdued alertness about his stillness that indicated he was not asleep. The clock radio beside their bed showed two-forty-five and the curtains glowed with the half-dark of summer city night-time. Only the cat, in a trim and resolute doughnut at the end of their bed, was asleep. Above and beside her, all the other occupants of the house were as restless as she was.

She turned her head on the pillow and looked at Russell. He was on his side, face turned towards her, eyes closed. His hair, worn rather long as it always had been, and thank goodness it wasn’t thinning, was ruffled. He was breathing neatly and evenly through his nose. His mouth was closed. Even in the dim light, Edie could see that really Russell had worn very well, that he hadn’t got wizened or paunchy, that he hadn’t, despite a considerable nonchalance about looking after himself, let himself go. He looked, lying there, like a real person to Edie, like someone you could trust because what you saw you got. He looked, as a man, as a human being, as far away from Vivien’s Max as if he’d come from another planet.

He’d always, in fact, been amused by Max. He’d been much kinder, if Edie was honest with herself, about Vivien’s feelings for Max than her sister had ever been able to be. When Max had appeared once in a camel-hair overcoat, Russell had been much more good-natured about it than Edie had been. He let her make jokes about second-hand car dealers but he didn’t join in. He was of the opinion that if this liaison had ever made Vivien happy then that was all that was necessary to know. Sometimes Edie had admired this forbearance; sometimes it had driven her nuts.

She reached out a hand and touched one of his.

‘Russ’.

He didn’t open his eyes. ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Mmm’.

‘I think the boys are—’ He said, ‘Nothing to do with us’. ‘Probably Matt’s thinking about Ruth and Lazlo’s thinking about Osvald’.

‘Probably’.

She took hold of the hand she had touched. ‘Vivien rang today’.

‘Mmm’.

‘She’s started it all up again with Max’. Russell opened his eyes.

‘Has she?’

‘Yes. Big time. Dates and flowers and promises it’ll all be different’.

‘Well, perhaps it will’. ‘You know Max—’

Russell gave a small yawn. He squeezed Edie’s hand and then extracted his own and tucked it under his shoulder. He closed his eyes again.

He said, ‘Maybe he’s changed’.

‘That’s what she says’.

‘Maybe she’s right’.

‘Well, I do hope so,’ Edie said, ‘because she’s letting him move back in again’. Russell opened one eye. ‘Good luck to her’.

Edie moved her face an inch or two closer to Russell’s. ‘She’s staying in her cottage. She says that’s what she wants. Max is coming to live with her’.

‘Yes’.

‘Russell. Listen. Vivien’s cottage is where Rosa is living. Rosa is living in Vivien’s spare bedroom’.

Russell opened both eyes and lifted his head from the pillow.

‘Oh my God—’

‘She’s there now,’ Edie said. ‘She’s had supper with Vivien because Vivien was cooking something special in a really weaselly Vivien-ish way before telling her she was throwing her out’.

Russell gave a groan and turned over on to his back. Edie could see that he was staring straight up at the ceiling.

‘I just keep thinking about her,’ Edie said. ‘I keep picturing her lying in bed there, with Vivi all excited and starry-eyed through the wall, wondering what on earth she’s going to do now, where she’s going to go, how she’s going to tell us that yet another thing has gone wrong’.

Russell said nothing. He lifted an arm to scratch his head briefly, and then he lowered it again.

‘Look,’ Edie said, ‘I know how you feel. I know it’s difficult. I know it isn’t what you want. But I can’t bear thinking about what Rosa’s feeling, I can’t bear her thinking she’s got nowhere to go. I just can’t bear it’. She paused, and then she said, ‘I want to make it a bit easier for her. I want to make a move before she feels she has to. I want to tell her she can come home’.