Rob brought William to the house on Tuesday evening after dinner. As she followed Sophie into the living room, a glance at her face reassured Ella that her intentions were virtuous. No villain could afford to look so villainous.
She stepped aside and said abruptly, ‘Here’s the new lodger.’
The large shape behind her stepped into the light. No threat to Sophie’s virtue there, either. He was indeed large, but with areas of smallness which made his size absurd: bulky rounded shoulders, thin torso, large hands and bony wrists, thin neck and narrow, gingery head, a small, nervous smile which he directed apologetically at Ella. The silky reddish hair, worn long and tied back, was the final absurdity.
He was older than she had expected, too old for the jeans and teeshirt he was wearing.
Feeling protective, Ella welcomed him firmly, earning a warm gust of approval from Sophie.
‘I’ll show William his room.’
Rob conceded, ‘I’ll bring the stuff from the van.’
When the stuff – a dufflebag, a carton of books, a carton of papers and an old portable typewriter – had been carried to the downstairs bedroom, Ella offered coffee and they gathered in the kitchen.
‘Get this straight, William,’ said Rob. ‘Anything I say in this house is copyright. If it’s worth remembering, I’m going to use it myself.’
William frowned, thinking it over.
‘I would have thought the spoken word was in the public domain.’
‘Not my spoken word, so watch it.’
‘I could give provenance in a footnote.’
Ella smiled inwardly, thinking Rob was well served by this sarcasm. She was being simply naughty – one might almost think jealous, if that were not absurd.
After a silent moment, she began to wonder if William had been joking.
‘We have to tell him about the food, Mum.’
Ella was eager to show her achievements there, yet wary, suspecting that the young people found her interest in food ridiculous, though they took a keen interest in the result of it.
‘Rob said you’d like to eat at odd hours, so I’ve done some cooking for you. All this shelf in the freezer is yours. Rob bought the ingredients.’
He was looking with reverence at the stacks of plastic boxes. He nodded to Rob, acknowledging the debt.
‘You owe me sixty dollars.’
‘You got all that for sixty dollars?’
‘I made a lucky buy on chicken pieces. Not much variety, I’m afraid. I spent the last few dollars on dried peas and lentils – real poverty filling. I hope you like pease pudding and lentil soup. Those foil packets are sandwiches – all roast beef. I couldn’t think of any other filling that froze well.’
‘I made the sandwiches,’ said Sophie.
‘I think it’s amazing, and very kind of you.’
‘This is sauce for pasta. The pasta is in this cupboard,’ she added, shutting the freezer door and speaking dismissively, in case she was skirting ridicule.
‘Thank you. Thanks for the coffee.’
His voice was more impressive than his appearance. Ella had expected a squeak.
‘I must go and unpack.’
‘I put towels for you in the downstairs bathroom.’
After his departure, Rob shook her head, grinning.
‘What luxury. The downstairs bathroom. Anywhere I’ve been before, the bathroom was always the bathroom. He’ll become accustomed to luxury and you’ll never get rid of him.’
‘Downstairs study, too,’ said Sophie, pleased to astonish.
Having made her impression, she added, ‘Just a box-room, really, next to my room. We called it the computer room.’
‘My God.’
‘No expense spared on our education.’
Answering the tone of the remark, Rob said mildly, ‘I don’t think that quite amounts to child abuse.’
Sophie thought that over in silence.
Ella wondered if they knew she was there.
‘There’s the guilt of not measuring up,’ said Sophie. ‘Not justifying the expense.’
‘I don’t know that anyone ever pressured you, Sophie.’
‘David felt it, Mum. He knew he was a disappointment to Dad. And what David felt, I felt. Goodness,’ – she looked back indulgently at her childish self – ‘I surely thought the sun shone out of David.’
‘Your father hadn’t had an easy time getting his education. He wanted you all to have the advantages he had missed.’
‘That’s an attitude which can lead to overkill, quite apart from the rule that everything a parent does is wrong, by definition.’ Rob added, ‘Not a trouble I’m likely to meet.’
‘Mum didn’t pressure. Mum was a buffer state.’
‘An excellent thing in a parent.’
Rob gave Ella a smile which salved her wounded feelings.
‘Well, the computer’s going to come in handy now,’ said Sophie. ‘William can finish his manuscript on the word processor.’
‘He seems very nice, to me,’ said Ella. And so reassuringly homely. Such an uncertain life, poor fellow.
To punish Rob for her ungracious behaviour, she added, ‘Don’t you think we should ask him to dinner on Friday night? It seems so unfriendly not to.’
Rob scowled.
‘We couldn’t talk film at the table and I like talking film. I like answering your questions. It helps me to organise my thoughts.’
Ella forgave Rob all offences.
‘He doesn’t really steal things, does he?’ asked Sophie.
‘Well, to do him justice, he doesn’t mean to. He sits there and sucks everything up, like a vacuum cleaner. Your talk and your face and your clothes and every fact he can pick up.’
‘Is that how people write books?’ asked Ella, who was fascinated by this mystery.
‘All gathered in from the outside? Now that’s an interesting one. No. Sometimes it’s all from the inside and it stays there, as far as I’m concerned. I suppose if you have the right proportion, outside to inside, then you’re good.’
‘Is William good?’
Rob frowned and shrugged.
‘Some people think very good. Not my style. No sense of humour. No sense of humour at all. You might have thought he was having a go at me about the footnote and if he had been I’d really like him. But he wasn’t. He was dead serious. Sometimes it takes you a long time to realise that he isn’t being funny. He was praised by the critics for delicious comic scenes in his first book and he was quite annoyed. He had no idea he was being funny.’
‘There has to be some selection somewhere,’ said Sophie, ‘between what goes in and what comes out.’
‘Yes. Perhaps he has something more important than a sense of humour, but I don’t know what it is. He’s somewhere between a genius and a crashing bore.’
Imagine, living so poorly, working so earnestly to be perhaps a failure, a crashing bore. Rob, however, had paid for his food. There must be some hope for him.
Ella was sorry now that she had asked the question which had begun the conversation. There was no danger of being overheard – the knowledge that the subject was in the house had kept their voices subdued. There was no malice intended, either – well, she had intended none, but she could not really answer for Rob.
In my house. Under my roof. There it was. Genius or bore, William now had the status of a guest.
Rob had sensed disapproval.
‘Well, I’d better be going.’ Standing up, she smiled directly at Ella. ‘May I still come on Friday, even though I’m a sullen bitch?’
Ella was taken and shaken by a powerful attraction, a longing even to touch her hand.
So that’s how it feels, she thought. That’s how it comes about.
In a moment she was herself again, saying, ‘Of course you may,’ in a tone that reproved folly.
She hadn’t changed her nature, but she had changed her thinking. It had been a beautiful moment. She could never be sorry she had experienced it.