Though the thought of Nina, waiting for her in vain, eagerness dulling into disappointment, would have deepened Ella’s depression, there were better reasons for making the effort to find her notes, dress for the outing and take the train to Newtown. Teaching was so orderly, so predictable; her daughter-in-law Martha would not have agreed, probably – Martha survived by pumping up idealism and optimism as a form of adrenalin – but then, teaching Nina was a special case. A bright, untaught girl discovering with joy the power of her intelligence, she radiated what Martha would call positive feelings; Ella looked forward to being cheered by them.
Today, walking through the streets of Newtown, with their strangely compacted dwellings, their air of age and experience, signs in foreign languages and small, exotic restaurants, gave her some of the relief that foreign travel is supposed to bring to the heartbroken. The rejected suitor flies to Africa to hunt lions, the deceived wife takes the train to Newtown to teach English to a young Chinese.
Almost, she smiled.
There it was – it was the prospect of being welcome, of having Nina’s beautiful, honey-coloured Madonna face joyful at her arrival that lifted her spirits.
After all, the lesson was disappointing. Nina opened the door to her smiling, but the smile disappeared. She said, ‘Hullo. How are you? Please come in,’ but without her usual mischievous pride in the achievement. She led her into the kitchen, showed her homework, took Ella’s praise without a smile, listened earnestly to Ella’s exposition of the present continuous tense of the verb but did not understand it.
‘Nina, I cook. I make cakes. I drive a car. I teach English. What am I doing now? Am I driving? Am I cooking? Am I teaching?’
This small failure seemed to Ella enormous. It wasn’t the day for it.
Nina was depressed by it, too.
‘I am very stupid.’
‘No, you are not stupid, but there is something wrong. What is wrong today?’
Nina opened her copy of My First Picture Word Book and turned the pages, searching. She stopped to put her finger on a picture, a baby, mouth open, roaring, tears cascading. ‘You,’ she said. ‘Not baby.’ She shook her head, reproving herself. ‘You are not a baby.’ Her finger followed the trail of a tear. ‘You. Why?’
‘Unhappy.’ She hadn’t wanted this, she had wanted escape. But why not say it, after all, see how it sounded exposed to the air?
‘My husband and a woman.’
Nina frowned over the words as if she were translating a puzzling message, then enlightenment came and brought silent tears. She knelt in front of Ella, took her hand and let her tears fall on it; oddly, she wiped them away not from her eyes but from Ella’s hand, as if it shared her weeping. As she dried Ella’s hand, she murmured in her own strange, singing language, a sound of lamentation, sympathy, consolation. Ella, listening, shed a tear or two but as if it were for some other woman or for all women who met this misfortune, not with the great burst of weeping which her own required. That was just as well, since she didn’t intend to carry a tear-blubbered face home in the train, or anywhere, ever.
‘Don’t be unhappy, Nina. Enough, now.’
This time, Nina wiped her eyes.
‘Yes. I forget now,’ she promised firmly.
An apology for the intrusion.
‘We do the lesson now?’
Ella shook her head.
‘Next week. The same lesson next week. Okay?’
She kissed Nina on the cheek. Apology understood and accepted.
She carried home with her the memory of Nina’s weeping face as a charm against that other one.
There was an old VW kombi van standing in the road in front of the house. Sophie’s boss was apparently still here – thoughtful of her not to block the driveway.
Dinner. Thinking of Nina, she had forgotten dinner.
She was so bored and irritated by the thought of dinner and every other detail of daily life, every small thread that had to be picked up again with effort, that she considered lying down to die. If one could die by lying down, of course – killing oneself would be the greatest effort of all. Besides, people who committed suicide were sending a message. She had no message to send.
Sophie called, ‘In here, Mum!’ from the dining room. She at least sounded happier and looked up cheerfully from the page she was reading.
‘This is Rob, Mum.’
Rob stood up and shook hands.
‘Sorry to hear about your problem, Mrs Ferguson,’ she said with surprising bluntness.
Her voice was light and rapid, but with a tone of confidence or conviction which made it impressive.
‘Thank you.’
Ella looked at her with attention, because of her importance in Sophie’s world. She was tall and thin, but broad-shouldered, had short, dark hair and quite beautiful eyes of a light brown that was almost golden, finely shaped features set too far apart in a broad face, like a beautiful face seen under water. She was wearing a silk shirt like Sophie’s, of intense blue instead of tawny yellow, and a short gold chain instead of Sophie’s agates. Thirty-five, perhaps. Maybe a little more.
She had sat down to her papers again.
‘By a freak of fate, which is well known for its freaks, I suppose, this script we are working on is about a teenager caught in a marriage breakup. I had no idea, of course – I’m not sure I should be involving Sophie in it.’
‘If you think I’m like that awful Angela who puts funnelweb spiders into people’s shoes …’
‘I don’t want to put ideas in your head, mate. Something nasty might turn up in mine. Seriously, Mrs Ferguson, what do you think?’
Ella, who was contemplating funnelwebs and regretting that she hadn’t taken notice of the other’s shoes, controlled herself.
‘I can’t see any harm in it. It might be a very good thing.’
‘Attagirl!’
Rob looked confused.
‘That was a bit familiar, wasn’t it? Sorry.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Ella warmed to her, since it was her own weakness to speak without thinking, but mainly when she was annoyed.
‘Did you get your shirt in Hong Kong, too?’
She had intended this as a hint of thanks and was startled at the sharp, wary glance it drew from Rob. One would think she had intended it as criticism.
‘Both such lovely colours.’
‘Nothing like silk for holding colour,’ Rob agreed with reserve.
‘Is it all right, Mum, if Rob stays to dinner? We want to go on working tonight.’
Ella sat down.
‘I forgot all about dinner. I meant to bring something back. There’ll be something in the freezer. Of course, you’re welcome.’ She smiled, or at least moved the appropriate muscles. ‘It didn’t sound much like it, did it?’
‘I got the subtext. It was fairly welcoming. My cue, after all. I don’t want to impose. I’ll go out and get something. Is there somewhere I can buy Chinese – if you don’t mind Chinese?’
Ella was wondering what a subtext was but could not ask, for fear of shaming Sophie.
‘That would be very nice. Thank you.’
Sophie added, ‘There’s a place opposite the station, the Small Palace Garden. They do a good Mongolian lamb.’
‘Small Palace Garden. That’s a charming name.’
Sophie chuckled. ‘Note it down. It might come in useful. Do you want me to come with you?’
Was she being impudent? That was her boss, after all. Perhaps film people were different.
‘Just give me the directions.’
Rob responded to impudence with an amiable grin.
Yes, it was a different world.
When Rob had gone, striding freely, shoulderbag swinging, jeans and sneakers oddly out of harmony with the glowing silk shirt, Ella said, ‘She’s very informal, isn’t she?’
‘They’re all like that, Mum. And she’s brilliant, truly. It’s wonderful working for her. Do you mind about dinner? Things were going so well, I kind of forgot.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Poor Mum. You look as if you’ll never mind about anything, ever again.’
‘I’m tired, that’s all,’ said Ella sharply. ‘There are things I mind about and always will. You’ve always been able to invite your friends and there’s no reason to stop that. Besides, it’s better to have something going on.’
‘I rang up. I told Caroline and Martha. David wasn’t back from his football training.’
‘How did they take it?’
‘Just what you’d expect. They’re coming over on Sunday afternoon. And Pam will be down tomorrow. I hope that was right.’
‘Yes.’ Ella sighed. ‘Well, it had to be done.’
Sophie began to clear the table, gathering scattered pages and sorting them into numbered folders.
‘It’s all very orderly. I thought creative people would be untidy.’
‘The orderly part is my job.’
She stacked the folders according to number while Ella watched respectfully, thinking how grownup she seemed at this moment, more so than David who was eight years older. Perhaps it came from doing work she really liked – no, David did like teaching. Sophie was utterly involved, working with concentration. That was it.
‘Can I get you a sherry, Mum?’
Something in her tone brought back the feeling of Nina’s tears on her hand.
‘I can get my own, you know.’
‘I’m in training for a gofer.’
‘What’s a gofer?’
‘Go for this. Go for that. I’m Rob’s gofer.’
‘It’s good she isn’t embarrassed. Most people would run away.’
‘Not Rob. She’s not so easily embarrassed. But would they? Do you think people will shun you?’
Ella shrugged.
‘Well, Pam won’t, that’s for sure,’ said Sophie. ‘I don’t suppose anyone else matters much. Funny old world, though.’
She shook her head in wonder at the nature of the world.
Rob had found the Small Palace Garden and also the pub. They ate Mongolian lamb, shrimp sweet and sour with fried rice and drank riesling.
How suitable this seemed, dishing food from cartons at the table. It was like a scratch meal on moving day.
Rob ate quickly, tidily and with great appetite, but drank sparingly.
‘Alcohol makes the ideas flow,’ she explained, ‘but it makes them seem better than they are. Very treacherous.’
Since Sophie’s intake of alcohol was so far limited to a glass of wine at dinner, and Ella did not feel inclined to outdrink them both, there would be another opened bottle to join yesterday’s claret in the fridge. One result of crisis: cooking with wine.
‘That spider. Did it bite anyone? The funnelweb the girl puts in the shoe.’
Rob was pleased at the question.
‘Not the one it was meant for. Making emotions visual, you know, that’s the thing. Hatred, it is. Hatred of the father’s girlfriend. She has it in a jar, calls it Hannah, that’s the other woman. Have to find out how long a funnelweb would live in a jar.’
Sophie asked, ‘Do we have to experiment?’
‘Somebody at the Museum will know, I suppose. There’s a lot of detail I won’t go into, but she does sneak it into the other’s shoe. It’s comatose, might be dead; she tips it into Hannah’s shoe, then she goes off to college.’ Rob paused to chew and swallow a mouthful of lamb. ‘The bus trip is really the significant bit, because she keeps seeing the word “murder” in all sorts of contexts, like headlines, WALLABIES MURDER WHOEVER THEY ARE AT TWICKENHAM and so on. Newspaper placards, a man reading the newspaper, headlines on the sports page. I haven’t worked it all out yet. I spend a lot of time staring out of bus windows. She gets out of the bus and bolts back, spider gone, frantic search, flashback to the headlines, etc., the word “murder”, while she scrabbles among shoes. I think it has to bite her – a bit obvious but we need a spot of delirium to round out the plot.’ She said, apologetically, ‘Well, you did ask me.’
‘I think it’s fascinating.’
‘It’s my first full-length effort. I’ve made a couple of shorts, did quite well with one of them. I’m fairly wrapped in it. I don’t usually talk about work in progress. Ideas tend to evaporate.’
‘Money,’ said Sophie. ‘That’s what they talk about.’
‘It’s the main consideration. Working on the well-known shoestring and frayed at that.’ She turned to Sophie. ‘I’m trying to get Martin to take an option on a story of William’s. That might keep him going a bit longer.’ She said to Ella, ‘William Anstey. Do you know his work? Very good first novel. He’s on a grant but the money’s running out before the novel, unfortunately. It puts him in a delicate situation.’
‘What will he do then?’
‘Register for the dole. Then he’ll have to waste his time going for jobs he doesn’t want and won’t get. Frustrating.’
‘Humiliating, too,’ said Ella.
‘I don’t think William humiliates easily. It’s a waste of time, that’s all.’
‘It seems to be a very interesting world you work in.’
‘In spots.’
‘How did you go with Nina, Mum? Mum’s a volunteer English teacher. Nina’s her Chinese student.’
‘That’s an odd name for a Chinese.’
‘It isn’t her name. It’s as close as I can come to it. She breaks down into giggles when I try to pronounce her name so I call her Nina. She doesn’t mind, she likes having an English name.’
Why was she talking so much? To forget that odd sensation of Nina’s tears falling on her hand? She had set down her fork and clasped the left hand over the right, the weeping hand.
‘We have trouble with names. Sometimes they’re unpronounceable so they come out as Natalie and Linda and so on. Sometimes they’re rude. We have one girl called Weewee – at least it’s spelt H-U-I H-U-I but it’s pronounced Weewee. Her tutor changed it to Vivi.’
Why didn’t she shut up?
Rob, however, was listening with interest.
‘It must be a very satisfying job.’
‘This one is a bit special because she didn’t get to go to school in China. She didn’t even know she was intelligent. She was so frightened when she started and now she’s so happy. I don’t like to build on it, I don’t want to expect too much of her, but I can’t help having hopes for her.’
‘God, how marvellous. For you, I mean. Making her a present of her own mind. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing? I wish I had two lives. I’d do that with the other one.’
‘It isn’t always like that. You don’t often meet one like Nina.’
She picked up her fork again.
‘It gives you a real charge, doesn’t it? It would me, too. But to think of intelligent people walking about illiterate, not even knowing they are intelligent – that’s another reason for making good films. They reach everyone.’
‘So long as they can spell M-U-R-D-E-R,’ said Sophie.
‘Down, Fido!’ Rob said amiably.
Not at all like Ella’s first boss, Mr Westerway.
‘Why don’t you take your work into the living room this evening? We could put the heater on. It’s getting quite chilly.’
Rob considered, then shook her head.
‘Your living room daunts me. Oh,’ she answered Ella’s look, ‘in a very nice way. It’s like a dignified old person I love very much. It might limit my vocabulary. Antiques put me off, usually, but yours have charm. That lovely old sideboard – ’
‘They call them chiffoniers.’
‘Chiffonier.’ Rob filed the word. ‘I could use that in a film set. And the enchanting clock with the pop-up carnations.’
‘Austrian porcelain. It cost far more than we could afford. I saw it in an antique shop and fell in love with it, so Bernie bought it for my birthday.’
Her voice had dwindled. The wake had been going well until they remembered the corpse.
Sophie was wiping her nose. Rob wore the abstracted air of one secretly biting her tongue.
Abruptly and overloudly, she said, ‘Any takers for the rest of the fried rice? When I eat, I stoke up.’
Ella shook her head.
‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said, carrying her memories of that birthday into the kitchen to be dealt with in private.
After coffee, she went up to the bedroom, where the rage threatened, terrifyingly. In haste she built up the face again: grape eyes, full cheeks, swinging black hair, mouth, chin, throat, piano wire, tension, release. She waited a moment, steadying her breathing, then picked up the phone and pressed the button for Pam’s number.
Pam had been waiting by the phone.
‘Oh, love!’
‘Yes. Sophie rang and told you.’
‘I’ll be down tomorrow. I would have come tonight but Sophie said she had someone coming. Odd, I thought. That’s kids for you.’
‘She couldn’t help it. It’s her boss. They’re downstairs now, working on a film script.’ Her voice brightened, since that was a cause for pride. ‘She’s a very interesting woman and it’s a help for Sophie, to keep working. She’s taking it terribly hard, poor kid.’
‘Okay. I take it back. Sophie said you’d gone to your student. That seems almost too normal.’
‘Perhaps it is. Perhaps I haven’t stopped being normal yet.’
Outwardly, at least.
‘Look, love. Would you like me to come now? I could come straight upstairs and not disturb them. I could bring sleeping pills if you don’t have any.’
After a pause for thought, Ella answered, ‘Not tonight. I think it’s all catching up with me. I’m dead beat.’
That was no lie. She was yawning widely.
‘Okay. Sleep well and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
She did sleep deeply until 5 o’clock, then woke tense with rage. Quickly she built the face – that was becoming easier – and performed her ritual murder. The face bloomed like a hideous orchid and vanished. She slept again and woke at 7.