‘Why is she crying?’
On the Friday night, Laura cried from eight thirty to nine thirty. She couldn’t explain it, she said, she didn’t know why.
‘It’s just all so sad.’
The girl sat on her legs on the sofa in her yellow fluffy dressing gown; she looked like a canary with ruffled feathers.
Nick was standing by with eyebrows to attention. He took Astrid aside when she went to make tea. ‘Is it the, um, the er, time of the month?’
Astrid gave him a scathing look.
Ah, but it smelt like a good home! They’d had Mrs Watson’s cracked pepper sausages and mash for supper with onion gravy. He’d stopped in at the butcher’s on the way home: E. F. Watson and Sons. It was like going back in time, when you were your trade, when your living was your family’s and your family was your living. One went in through the stable door, lifting the latch and teasing apart the steel strings, and entered into 1935 – a clean humble place where everybody was addressed by their surname. Mrs Watson sat in there at the desk, feet splayed, hip on the mend, cushion in the small of her back, back to the window, preferring for a view the sight of her boys at work. Her vision of happiness was seeing fifty-year-old boys with meat cleavers hammering offal on wooden blocks, and each one coming with a smile to the counter, proud of the cut, and then the joke-fighting and shoving for a turn at the scales. And just behind them was the cold room with the biggest handle in the world, and beyond that was the back door, invariably open on to an English garden where Mr Watson’s ghost tended to the marigold borders.
‘Three pounds seventy-three, please, Mrs Watson!’ called out one son. And Nick left a few pence for the Lifeboats box and earned Mrs Watson’s warm approval.
He daydreamed on the way home, about him and Astrid having a butcher’s shop together. But things were not happy when he got in. If boys gained something at puberty, then it seemed that girls lost something. Laura was gloomy and distant. She went off after supper and Astrid went after her. They were like the hands on a clock, he thought, one always after the other. Sometimes he was jealous when he saw how they clove to each other, on the sofa or in bed. They could lie quietly, thought in thought; they wore each other at times.
He felt lonely. Roy was determined to sleep; even the rapport of the cracked pepper and pig fat, sent up from Nick’s stomach and out via the bellows of his cheeks, failed to stir the dog, who was head in paws, frowning.
Astrid wasn’t reaching Laura that evening.
‘You’re a hard person,’ she accused her mother. ‘You were hard on my dad. I know you were!’ And when Astrid disputed it, Laura said in the most piteous voice, ‘See! You’re cross with me now!’
The noise of this conflict caused Roy to prick up his ears. Nick slurped his wine shamefacedly and the dog went for a second fly-by licking of his bowl.
Glass empty, bowl clean, the man and dog exchanged looks, regretful of their consolations with all this noise and pain.
‘I’m not bloody cross, Laura!’
The dog panted with hopeful idiocy. In mimicry, Nick put his own tongue out. The dog put his tongue away and stood back as if in review of his opinion of the man.
Nick topped up his glass.
Astrid came downstairs, her face thunderous. She went straight to the computer. Ten minutes later, she had all she needed and by way of evidence showed Nick the email Danny had sent Laura. He put his reading glasses on slowly since his wine glass was balancing on his tummy.
‘Oh, don’t bother then,’ she said.
‘Now, just a minute, Astrid, now don’t get pissy with me . . .’ She ripped the page away from him.
The dog shrank back in retreat and Nick heard the conservatory door shutting softly in his wake.
‘Astrid. Let me read it, please, and calm down.’
She sat, perching again, biting her fingernails while he reviewed it. When he paused to take another sip of his wine, she bristled and was about to remove the paper from him again until he stopped her.
‘Well,’ he said, in conclusion, setting it aside.
‘That’s it! She’s not going to him any more!’
‘Astrid.’
‘Did you read it?’
‘Yes. I must say that in circumstances where . . .’
‘Oh, Nick! Don’t give me the solicitor bollocks, just be bloody
Ken, will you?’
He twitched his nose, took another sip, put the wine glass down, took a moment before swallowing. ‘Well,’ he said, in a different way, allowing time for ill will to develop, as Ken might, ‘he’s an arsehole, isn’t he?’
‘Thank you! What are we going to do about it all?’
‘I’m going to go and see him.’
‘What are you going to say?’
‘I’ll tell him to lay off all of this.’ He read out the offending sentences. ‘“The doctor says that I’m very ill, Laura. This is just between us, and don’t tell Mummy as she won’t understand. She’s a very hard person. It means the world to me to see you, Laura. Life is pretty empty without you. Remember our song, I teach it to all the birds that pass my window . . .”’ He changed voice here. ‘Talk about overegging the pudding! How did you get tangled up with this joker anyway? “Tell Laura I love her . . .”’ he warbled with great pathos.
‘Don’t! She’ll hear you. I don’t want her to know about this. She’s supposed to have a “private correspondence”, as she puts it.’ Astrid was vibrating with anger. Such passion, so close to the surface; she and Danny were now both in love with the same person, he thought. They’d gone from lovers to competitors.
‘Maybe she’s too young for anything private, Bunny,’ he said, folding his glasses. ‘She’s not as grown-up as you think. This is a big burden to carry. I mean, for God’s sake let the kid have a life . . . “Tell Laura I nee-eed her.” He’s making some sort of girlfriend out of her, isn’t he? If only people would not make lovers out of their kids. Dear me. Or if they love them, can’t they do it a bit quietly, a bit privately, and keep it under their hats, so to speak? That’s how it used to be. A bit more indifference would go a long way.’
There came from upstairs an elongated sob.
‘I’ll go,’ he said.
‘Don’t say anything!’ she hissed.
Nick got up and went out of the room and, passing by him, gave the dog a look, raising his eyebrows at him. The dog returned a bloodshot look as it put its nose up its tail. ‘Coward,’ said Nick.
He went upstairs to find Laura poring over a picture book of fairy tales her father had given her, wiping the tears from her chin with the back of her nightie sleeve.
‘It’s a sad story, this one, Nick, isn’t it? “The Little Match Girl”.’
‘Yes, baby, but why do you keep reading it then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Does it help in some way?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see. Does it help you feel sad, and you want to feel sad – or you feel you ought to?’ He was a little pie-eyed for this stuff, admittedly, but catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he thought he looked rather good.
‘Yes.’
‘Hmmm.’ He forgot where he was going, thrown off course by the effects of the third glass of wine and catching sight of the photo-booth pictures of Laura’s mother and father canoodling and, in the last one, Astrid with her tongue out.
Laura followed his eyes. ‘Sorry, Nick,’ she said.
‘Oh no, no,’ he said in his solicitor’s voice, ‘don’t be. Don’t be.’ She put a small hand on his. ‘You’re always a bit left out, aren’t you?’
‘Now don’t start worrying about me! I’m a big boy!’ He sat tall, wobbling. ‘Look, baby, if you’re feeling sad about your daddy . . .’
‘I am!’ she said with vehemence, pressing his hand.
‘Then why don’t I take you to see him tomorrow?’
‘It’s not his weekend!’
‘It doesn’t matter, this once. Mummy won’t mind.’
‘She’ll be angry.’
‘No, she won’t. Look, you sleep tight, sweetie-pie, and I’ll arrange it all and drive you up there tomorrow morning.’
‘OK then.’
She slipped down into her covers and gave him a grateful look. He put the covers close around her chin.
‘All right, petal. Now sleep tight. And by the way, that match girl thing, it’s just a story some twisted horrible stepfather invented to make his stepdaughter be a good girl.’
‘Oh,’ she said, and gave him a look that was right out of her mother’s collection. ‘Night, Nick. Don’t get too drunk.’