Friday, 7 April. 6 p.m.
Martha was glad to get home and leave it all behind her, even if Sukey was there with Pomeroy taking up most of the kitchen space. They appeared to be on a prolonged visit. She hadn’t heard yet when they planned to leave and return to Bristol. But Sukey was ‘between jobs’ and that, she supposed, was what life was like as a student/actress. She only hoped that her daughter, beautiful and talented though she undoubtedly was, had a career Plan B, because in her opinion acting was a profession that needed a decent back-up plan. Pomeroy, her boyfriend, was far too arrogant to bother with anything so mundane as a back-up plan, even though he didn’t exactly have work lined up either. He was, as far as Martha could tell, content to do very little except criticize her daughter. What she couldn’t work out was why the hell Sukey put up with it. She eyed him across the kitchen as he poured himself a glass of wine. She supposed he was handsome in a dissolute, lazy, casual sort of way. He had floppy brown hair, very smooth skin, quite nice brown eyes and good teeth. He was average height and build but, in Martha’s opinion, he was nothing special. He wasn’t unintelligent, but an education at one of the top public schools combined with overindulgent parents and a plain and intellectually compromised sister all added up to a spoilt brat who overrated his place in the world, in Martha’s opinion. Whereas Sukey had more or less grown up in a single-parent family where her mother worked hard to keep them, and considered herself lucky to get any acting work, Pomeroy simply lapped them up as his due – when he got any parts at all. He was, Martha surmised, not that popular even in the indulgent world of the thespians. His arrogance, she felt, might well cost him his career.
She’d heard his voice as she’d let herself in through the front door. Hectoring. ‘Well, I wouldn’t take it. I mean, it’s beneath you.’ The laconic, lazy tone of his voice had sent needles up Martha’s spine. She’d longed to intervene.
Sukey’s voice back had sounded timid, cowed – which made Martha’s blood boil. She hadn’t brought her daughter up to accept this lowered state. ‘I don’t know, Pomeroy – at least it’s a job. It’ll pay the rent, you know.’
When she’d entered the kitchen they’d already opened a bottle of – quick glance – expensive wine. Sukey was looking beseechingly across while Pomeroy looked – well, he looked perturbed. She looked again, checked she’d read him right.
That was interesting. Maybe her daughter was, at last, sticking up for herself?
‘Hi, Mum.’
Martha scrutinized her daughter’s face. It looked thinner these days – a bit like what her mother with her Irish talent for finding the right word would have called ‘peaky’.
While Pomeroy looked … smug. Instinctively Martha knew her mother would dislike Pomeroy on sight. No doubt about it. Sparks would fly whenever, if ever, they met.
She eyed the half-empty bottle of wine. Sukey eyed it too with a hint of guilt. It was Chasse du Pape, twenty-five pounds a bottle. Without a word Sukey crossed the kitchen, fetched a glass from the cupboard and poured Martha a huge slug, which she handed to her with a look of mute apology from big blue eyes. Martha took it as one anyway. ‘Thank you, darling.’
‘How was your day, Mum?’
At least she was making an effort.
‘I’ll be honest, Sukes,’ she said, sinking into a chair, ‘not great.’
The conversation was halted by a huge noise coming from the front door. Voices, doors slamming, footsteps. A people-quake. The next moment Sam was filling the kitchen with his presence and that of four of his mates. Their sheer ebullience more than filled any awkward silences. All their talk was of offsides and passes, chances missed and a certain amount of teasing about stamina, speed, goalposts hit. Boy talk. Football talk. Apart from a ‘Hi, sis’ to Sukey, the pair at the table were virtually ignored.
As was Martha, until she said the magic words. ‘Anyone hungry?’
Silly question.
There is nothing like one’s family to bring you down to earth, Martha thought as she opened the fridge to cheese, tomatoes and olives, defrosted some French bread, found some leftover apple pie and cream.
It was all soon gone.
The evening was saved. Whatever Pomeroy and Sukey had been talking about when she had arrived home was shelved. By the time Sam and his team members had dispersed it was ten o’clock and she was not ready for any sort of confrontation with Pomeroy, who had a habit of scoring points and almost visibly chalking up any ‘victories’ whether it be about general knowledge or travel or anything else that he considered himself an authority on, which basically covered everything.
And, in Martha’s opinion, covered nothing.
Strange that a life can be so neatly divided in half – the traumas and tragedies of her work, and her harum-scarum home life. Unlike Gina, Patrick and Alex, for whom the unhappiness of home and work or school had somehow seeped into their personal life and infected their entire existence.
She wouldn’t have it any other way but, it appeared, they had had no choice.