VIVIENNE EPWORTH LOOKED out of the window of Starbucks.
‘It’s had quite a history, that china cabinet,’ her mother was saying. ‘We found it in . . .’
‘Westmoreland,’ Vivienne said.
‘Yes, darling, exactly. When Westmoreland was Westmoreland. I shall never know why they gave up those lovely county names. In a village, I can’t remember where precisely. Though we had just crossed the border from Cumberland. We were travelling around. We used to do that a lot before you were born. Such a camp little man in the shop. It was a bookshop but he also sold antiques. There was some jewellery on a willow-pattern dish. I tried on a brooch, little garnets in a crescent shape, and he said, “Be careful, dear, the pin is rather acute.” Daddy and I often laughed about that.’
Vivienne and her mother, Frances, were in Beaconsfield, which was close to where Frances lived. The cabinet referred to was several miles away in the corner of Frances’s dining room, with an old print of Alnwick Castle to its left and a pencil sketch of two little girls, Frances and her sister, Jane, to the right. Frances could summon up pieces of her furniture like genies from a bottle. The rain hadn’t left off; it spotted the glass and stained the road dark. A charity sales tout, a tall ponytailed girl wearing a green tunic, was hailing passers-by. She was especially physical – extending her arms and barricading the way. People walked round her, raising their umbrellas, stepping off the kerb to give her a wide berth. Even the elderly, of whom there were many in Beaconsfield, laboriously manoeuvred their shopping trolleys off and then on again, as if the girl were a burst water main or a piece of street furniture, maybe a bollard. Frances was facing inwards with her back to the street. She adored Starbucks. She liked the sofas and the newspapers and the froth in the coffee. She said the name as if it fizzed. There was no persuading her. To her it seemed young and louche and, compared with the place some of Frances’s friends went to, which had pink paper napkins and served coloured hot water, Vivienne acknowledged that she had a point.
Vivienne had been seeing her mother for Lent. Every Friday morning. Her daughters, Bethany and Martha, had given up chocolate. Richard had given up alcohol and she, Vivienne, had given up her free morning. For the rest of the week she worked at a bathroom design centre in Ruislip where she was manager. Friday was the only time that felt approximately her own. The self-denial wasn’t pure mortification; it had a weary purpose behind it. Perhaps this was always the case with mortification. Vivienne needed to steel herself for the task and Easter was a convenient deadline.
For nearly a year Frances had talked of downsizing – trading in her ample semi, with its stairs and landings, for neater accommodation all on one level. She had lived alone since her husband, Vivienne’s father, died, coping for most of that time, though routine turned into effort. Frances wished her house would shrink. ‘I need an easy-to-manage box,’ she said. ‘Preferably above ground. I’m going to be seventy, you know. Three score years and ten. That’s Your Chap’s recommended cut-off point.’ She had accumulated piles of particulars but refused to visit prospective properties on her own – by which she meant without Vivienne – citing random hazards such as wet floors, marble floors, unexpected changes of level involving steps, vendors who didn’t speak up, vendors who weren’t her sort of people.
They had clocked up three of these mornings already. This was the fourth. They followed a pattern: viewings, then coffee and, over coffee, Frances verbally arranged her furniture around the properties viewed and failed to fit it in. Vivienne could see the arrangement going on for ever. House-hunting involved so many things that gave Frances pleasure: talking to strangers, looking at people’s possessions, being driven round half-remembered suburban lanes, having her daughter to herself. She hadn’t been told that she was a Lenten penance. The weekliness had been a mistake, Vivienne reflected, wondering whether she should have factored in a lapse. Was it even possible to factor in a lapse? The slippery nature of the word suggested not. Richard, for instance, would undoubtedly have benefited from a relaxing glass of wine. He had been rather low since New Year and uninterested in sex, even on an occasional basis. Once or twice when he was working on an audit away from London she had the silly idea that the change of scene might ginger him up. Rather self-consciously, on the night of his return – or on edge the following morning because of the girls and the time factor – she waited for Richard to make a move and he didn’t. So she didn’t.
Vivienne tucked her sleek short hair behind her ears and touched one of her moonstone earrings, twisting it round in the piercing. Perhaps the absence was never long enough. She stared out at the rain.
The previous evening, Prayer Clinic had prayed for a couple called Ross and Julia. Ross had been diagnosed as having a rare cancer but had failed to tell Julia. He had even had treatment without telling her. Julia was a friend of one of the group – not herself a member of St Dunstan’s – so, in the general chat afterwards, they had discussed the situation in some detail. Prayer Clinic was in some ways rather like Book Club, where everyone ended up talking about characters and their actions in relation to their own lives, only in Prayer Clinic the comments were more respectful and sympathetic because the people were real. Everyone present, including Vivienne, had agreed it was impossible that any of their husbands would have withheld information about a serious illness, or that they themselves wouldn’t have known intuitively that something was wrong. She hadn’t been quite truthful. Even as she heard herself chiming in, saying the same as the others, only in a slightly different way, she could imagine all too clearly Richard keeping quiet – being brave and hoping to be cured without fuss. She should have said, ‘Hang on a minute. I made a mistake. Richard might well be a Ross-type person. He’s very uncommunicative.’ Her proclaimed confidence in female intuition had also been wishful thinking. Her own was almost certainly faulty, like a lamp with a poor connection.
Vivienne’s friend, Paula de Witt, would have shone a light into the dimmest corners of Hartley, her husband. Everything about Paula was on full power. She was even able to witness – had the nerve to witness – stopping people in the street and talking to them about their insecurities and inviting them to groups and Sunday worship at St Dunstan’s. She had a super smile and thick fair hair, which she secured with bright-coloured combs. Vivienne was only able to hand out leaflets. That was hazardous enough, since people were often quite rude. She recalled the man, wearing a Stetson, standing on the traffic island at Piccadilly Circus, addressing the crowds with the help of a microphone. She had examined his expression – the blank look in his eyes – and wondered if it was panic.
‘Where shall we go next week, darling?’ Frances was asking. ‘I’m tempted by Princes Risborough, or do you think that’s too far out? You’re the one who would have to make the journey. In an emergency it would be a long way for you to drive.’
‘What sort of emergency?’ Vivienne picked up her cup of coffee and drained it. Some aspect of the depressing street scene – or her mother’s voice – had influenced her mood. She was shocked that Frances had abandoned fitting her furniture into the flats they had visited that morning. She had only got halfway through the second property that they had looked around. She hadn’t reached the most promising one yet: a pleasant flat in Burnham Beeches with a lift and a wide balcony, large enough to sit out on. She was in it just for the ride.
Frances looked wistful. ‘If anything should happen to me.’
‘Something’s far more likely to happen to you in “Lostwithiel” at the far end of the garden or coming down the front steps. You know how steep they are. They also have that odd dip in the middle where the frost settles,’ Vivienne said.
‘Please don’t use that horrible word, dear. The house has a number, not a name.’
‘It’s engraved on the wall.’
‘Well, we never look at it and it’s not part of the address,’ Frances said. ‘Nobody uses it.’
Vivienne reached down for her bag and took out her purse. It gave her a jolt when her mother said ‘we’ in the present tense, as if her father’s death had been a trick and Frances actually had him banged up in a cupboard. She had always organised Douglas, and his death hadn’t put an end to that. ‘She’s out of the house. Now’s your chance, Daddy,’ Vivienne muttered. She hoped he had had some quiet moments of rebellion.
‘What was that?’ Frances asked.
Vivienne shook her head. Somewhere she had jotted down what time the pay and display ticket ran out. The array of cards in her purse, debit and credit, the loyalty store cards, the wodge of banknotes, suggested she was grown-up. ‘I really think the best thing would be for you to go through all the particulars we’ve collected so far and decide which of the flats you’d like to see a second time,’ she said. ‘The agents will stop taking you seriously if you keep flitting from place to place. And you should put the house on the market. It’s the right time of year.’
‘Flitting, did you say? Surely not, darling.’
‘They’ll lose interest,’ Vivienne said. ‘They want to tie up deals.’
Frances shuddered slightly. ‘So, you’re saying no to Princes Risborough?’
‘I am,’ Vivienne agreed. ‘Are you ready to go, Mummy? There aren’t many minutes left.’
The chugger with the ponytail and green tunic had stopped someone. A man with tinted spectacles and a white stick. How insensitive of the girl to have collared someone too blind to avoid her. Vivienne was shocked. She hoped he wouldn’t agree to anything.
‘We need to pay, darling. I think it’s my turn, isn’t it?’ Frances said in her sweetest voice.
‘I paid at the counter when we came in,’ Vivienne said. ‘We’re in Starbucks.’