Martha noticed the new prints as soon as she came in.
‘Just the right finishing touch. Perfect. Where did you find them?’
‘I didn’t find them. They were a present from William. He came across them in a junk shop and had them framed for me.’
‘Oh. They look exactly the sort of thing you’d choose yourself.’
‘That’s what William said.’
This was her opportunity. Again, she let it pass.
‘David, have you and Sophie really had a quarrel?’
David, who was studying The Waratah, turned away from it, grinning.
‘Not exactly a quarrel. We had an energetic exchange of views. I said I’d like to knock some sense into her silly head and she said all I had in my head was the stuffing they put in cricket balls and the covering was just as thick. She threw that over her shoulder as she left. A nice turn of phrase, I thought, and delivered on the run.’
‘What was the use of shouting at her?’ asked Martha. ‘You won’t turn her off him, you’ll just make her more determined.’
‘No use at all, but I enjoyed it. I’ve had my say and now I’m prepared to resign myself and be polite to the bastard.’
Being polite to the bastard was a very good prescription for family life, in Ella’s opinion.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘I’m sure William will be glad to hear it, too. He’s afraid you’re going to challenge him to a duel.’
That did bring a smile, which improved the atmosphere, so that they sat down to dinner in harmony.
‘Oh, this is nice,’ said Martha. ‘You can’t really talk in a restaurant.’
‘Don’t get this food, either,’ said David, who was applying himself with energy to the dish of osso bucco and saffron rice. ‘This is great, Mum.’
Martha persisted, ‘But we do need to talk.’
‘Yes. Well. The thing is, Mum, that I want to give up teaching.’
‘You must give up teaching,’ said Martha. ‘You can’t spend you life at a job you hate.’ She said to Ella, ‘I’ve been telling him that for ages.’
‘I want to go back to studying. I want to study accountancy.’ As he pronounced the word he looked apologetically at Martha.
‘All right. I know I was being ridiculous.’
‘Suppose you finish your dinner,’ said Ella, seeing a debate in prospect. ‘It seems a very good idea to me.’
‘Yes. A pity to waste this.’
Over biscuits and cheese and the last of the wine, he began again.
‘I want to be an accountant. I haven’t fallen in love with money, I don’t think it’s the greatest good, but keeping your eye on it, watching where it goes – that seems like a useful sort of job. It’s figures I like. Can’t handle people but I’m certain I can handle figures. Martha would have to keep us while I’m studying.’
‘You know I don’t mind that. I do wish it was something else, but it’s your choice.’
‘Apart from anything else, I don’t know enough. I want to learn more. There’s always something new to learn about money.’
Ella said, ‘I don’t see your problem.’
‘We meant to move to a bigger place, but if I give up work, we can’t afford to move. We argue this round and round. It’s now or never for me. We can’t start a family till I’m established. If I put off the move any longer we’ll both be too old.’
He paused and took breath.
‘So what about joining forces? Getting a house together? You’d have a decent margin for investment, we wouldn’t be lumbered with a mortgage.’
‘And mutual support,’ said Martha. ‘That’s important, too. We’ve been looking at a house, we think you’d love it. It’s a big old weatherboard place with fruit trees in the garden.’
A living house, a house with footsteps and voices – Ella wanted this so much and she could not have it.
This is where I pay, she thought. I thought I had got away with it, but the bill always comes in. My darling children, I can’t live with you because you don’t know me. I’m a vandal, a fraud, a mad woman.
‘It needs a bit doing to it,’ said David, ‘but it’s livable and structurally sound.’
Her silence was disconcerting them.
‘We wouldn’t impose, Ella. David and I would manage the cleaning between us. I suppose you’d have to be cook, but I’d be kitchenmaid. Why shouldn’t it work? We’re all reasonable people, aren’t we?’
On that subject, Ella could not answer for herself.
‘It needn’t be forever, Mum. If you’d really rather have a place of your own, we would raise a loan and buy you out, as soon as I have the qualifications and get a job. We’ll do that in any case, as soon as we can. I’m not going to waste time, you can be sure of that.’
Don’t put it like that to me, David. Don’t tell me you need my help. I have to say no and I can hardly bear it.
They looked at her in silence, mortified by the memory of their enthusiasm.
David said at last, ‘What about Sophie, Mum? I don’t see how that affair can last, and where is she to go if it breaks up? I know you’d always give her a home, but she mightn’t feel like asking you. She might be embarrassed.’
In spite of her distress, Ella found time to wonder what could embarrass Sophie.
‘I think it will last, you know. William is a more responsible person than you think. He is the one who is holding out for marriage.’
Martha uttered a sound which, though sad and helpless in tone, was still a giggle.
‘So she’ll be keeping him, I suppose.’
They were recovering from their disappointment, or perhaps had not given up hope of persuading her.
He managed to smile over his words, saying, ‘I do think that is different, though I admit I don’t quite see how. But even if he is responsible, she isn’t. If the affair breaks up and she starts drifting among those characters … Wouldn’t it be better if there was a home base she could come back to? There’s something very wrong with Sophie, Mum. You tried to warn us, to tell us she was in a bad way over Dad, but we just didn’t know how bad.’
Martha said as no doubt she had said before, ‘There’s nothing we could have done about it, if we had known.’
‘There’s not much doubt that it was Sophie and her pals who broke up the living room. The police gave Dad the idea that it was an inside job – not in so many words, perhaps, but he could tell by the questions they were asking. Who had keys to the house? Who might have a serious grudge? It looked to them like a cover-up, somebody trying to fake a break in to cover malicious damage. I tell you, Dad was stricken. He asked me if any of his children could hate him so much. Well, it wasn’t me and it certainly wasn’t Caroline.’
Malicious damage. Nasty words but she had to admit they were accurate.
‘Sophie didn’t do it. I was there after Sophie took the furniture. Everything was all right then.’
David shook his head.
‘Sorry, Mum, but that’s what you would say, isn’t it? If you went in and found the damage and knew she’d been there, you’d cover-up for her.’
She was not such a brilliant liar as she had supposed.
They had heard the falsehood in her voice and had misinterpreted it.
‘Perhaps she thought she was doing it for you. I don’t know. It’s hard to take, hard to understand.’
Tracked down by Fate, Ella said flatly, ‘I did it.’
‘Oh, come off it, Mum. That’s going a bit too far.’
Martha however was sitting very still, except for her slowly nodding head.
‘I did it, I tell you. I went to get the sewing machine. I didn’t mean to go near the living room – well, I did it. That’s all.’
Now she was naked, the last shred of parental dignity ripped away, a madwoman laying about her with a meat mallet.
David protested, ‘They say there was filth scrawled on the walls.’
Gobsucker. Lucky that ink had been washable.
‘I did my best, or my worst.’ She added angrily, ‘You should have known it was me. It’s always the injured party. Did anyone have a grudge? Yes, I had. Well, there it is. I did it and I can’t say I’m sorry.’
She was sorry, however, that she had tried to cover her traces. That was the really humiliating part. ‘Being a mother doesn’t turn you into an angel.’
Martha said softly, ‘We have never known till this moment how terrible this has been for you.’
David’s thoughts were unreadable.
Martha said, ‘It was only a bit of glass. Not like destroying people.’
Her eyes were on David. She knew there were better things than glass at risk.
She said again, ‘I think it was therapeutic. Feelings can be beyond words. They still have to be expressed or they’ll do permanent damage.’
Therapeutic. Now her behaviour was classified. There was a place for it in the inventory of human nature.
David came to put his arms round her.
He said only, ‘Well, we’ll just have to put up with you for the sake of your cooking,’ but his voice was as expressive of love and pity as was Martha’s face.
‘If you want to live with me, you have to know what I’m like.’
Instead of answering, he tightened his embrace to a hug, then let her go.
‘I think we had better keep this to ourselves,’ said Martha. ‘There are certain people who might not understand.’
‘Or might understand too well,’ said Ella.
‘There is that, of course.’
‘I can’t have people thinking Sophie did it.’
Martha said, ‘The fiction will stand.’
David nodded.
‘Dad’s only too anxious to believe in the vandals. I don’t think he’s told anyone else what he thought. He didn’t explain why he wouldn’t claim the insurance and he was under pressure there. He was too shattered, I think. I can convince him.’
‘It will all be forgotten,’ said Martha. ‘We are going to be the villains of the piece. They will be quite sure we were feathering our own nest, if we set up together.’
Ella said, ‘You must talk it over with Max and make sure that he understands what you are doing. After all, anything I own will be a matter of inheritance, eventually. Becky’s interests will be involved, so it’s important to have it all clear.’
‘Now I know where David gets it.’
‘I’ll do that, Mum. Keep him in the picture.’ He began to smile. The smile broadened. ‘We’d better keep an eye on the lavatory walls in the new place.’
‘And that,’ said Martha, ‘will be the last word said on the matter. You will come and look at the house with us, won’t you, Ella?’
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.