The Awkward Age Read online

  “What can I do?” she asked, brightly. A new approach. Sunny and amenable.

  “You’ve done enough,” said James. He sounded almost cheerful.

  Nathan said, “I think we should be allowed to put a case.” Beneath the table his knee pressed reassuringly against Gwen’s. “You can’t sentence us without hearing the case for the defense.”

  James began to spoon warmed baked beans onto the plates Julia had lined up beside him. “This is a kangaroo court. I can do whatever I damn well please.”

  “Can I have mine—” Gwen began, wanting to ask for her beans on the side, not actually touching her toast.

  “Nope.” James was giving every indication of enjoying himself, but then said, in a different tone, “You’ve betrayed our trust. I am deeply disappointed in you both.”

  “But—thanks—we haven’t,” Nathan explained, accepting the two plates that Julia had brought to the table and setting one down in front of Gwen. Julia turned back for the others. “It’s only been a few weeks, it didn’t make sense to get everyone all upset if it was nothing.”

  “It is nothing,” James told him, taking his place at the table, opposite his son. He cut into his toast with relish and said, with his mouth full, “It’s nothing whatsoever. Whatever it is or was, it’s done. Finito.”

  Gwen, who had been elongating and then releasing a single coil of hair, raised her head, her eyes flashing with rekindled fury. “It isn’t nothing! You can’t just say that—you don’t know anything. You can’t tell us what to do!”

  Julia set down her fork with a clatter. “Don’t you dare shout at James like that. This is absolutely inappropriate, Gwendolen, and I forbid it.”

  “Why do you even care what I do? You’re such a hypocrite, you don’t tell me anything about your life, you barely even talk to me anymore except to tell me to, ‘be nice, be nice, be nice,’ and ‘Oh, by the way, a family of total strangers are moving in, kay, thanks, and I’m going to need you to be a totally different person now,’ and we’re all meant to be best friends and you don’t even notice or care that everybody’s miserable except you two obsessed with each other, and now something nice has actually happened for literally the first time in my life and you only care what it means for you.” She was out of breath and paused. “Well, sorry if it’s not convenient. Nathan’s my boyfriend. You didn’t tell me when you first got together and you don’t tell me anything about your plans for this family and I would have thought you’d be pleased to know I have someone who cares about me while you’re busy replacing me in your new fabulous life. I’m a—a superfluous person.” She dropped her head and began to sob, her face now entirely concealed behind a mass of russet hair that had fallen forward, perilously close to her plate. Julia opened her mouth to reply, but closed it in stricken silence. That Gwen should feel safe, that Gwen should feel cherished: these objectives had been her life’s work. Her anger began to drain from her like water from a pool.

  “Can everyone please lower their voices.” James was speaking in a singsong half-whisper, in the tone of one addressing much smaller children, at nap time. He picked up his remaining crust and began to mop up tomato sauce. “One at a time, please tell us what’s been happening. Calmly. Nathan?”

  Nathan looked to Gwen and then back to his father. “Can we please scratch everything that happened today, and can you listen as though we’d brought this to you ourselves?”

  “No. Next question.”

  “Okay, fine. Look, we like each other, okay? And I know it’s a little weird that you guys are dating and now we’re dating and we all live in the same house, but we both understood the ramifications of it all beforehand and considered it worth the risk.”

  “You did, did you. How very mature. Well, we all live in the same house, as you so charmingly put it, because you are our offspring and we are your parents. This isn’t a Noel Coward play; it’s not just some unfortunate coincidence in a boardinghouse. I do not allow it, and that’s the end of the story.”

  “We’re not related, we never could be even if you guys— We were adults before you even met.”

  Both Julia and James began to laugh, which was enraging, and after a moment James set both his palms on the table and stood up, scraping his chair back loudly. “Enough. I’ve had enough hilarity for one night. Nathan, I am phoning your mother, with whom you will now stay this evening, and in the meantime, Gwen, please go upstairs. Take whatever sustenance you need for a good twelve hours, I don’t want to catch sight of you again until tomorrow.”

  Gwen, whose usual trick of storming to her bedroom had been whisked unexpectedly from her arsenal, looked wrong-footed and gave James a scathing glance. “You’re sending me to my room. Like someone from the olden days. Fine, I’m going. But newsflash, you’re not my father. And you can’t stop us seeing each other; we both live here.” She, too, stood, clutching her plate in both hands as if in line at a soup kitchen. “You can’t lock me in my room forever.”

  James already had his phone to his ear. “I will look seriously into the legality of it. Pamela? Yup. Yup. Minor change of plan. Can I deliver your son in half an hour?”

  15.

  “Did you have to tell her? Couldn’t you just have said he was coming to visit?”

  Taking off his coat, James paused, looking surprised. “She is his mother.”

  “Yes, but . . .” Julia could think of no good reason other than her own, visceral objection. Pamela’s involvement was perhaps the only way to make the circumstances feel more calamitous. She could not get past the suspicion that this latest, repugnant development was due to Pamela’s own unwelcome pheromones and sexually permissive influence wafting through the house. She felt an urge to burn sage leaves, or perform some other sort of occult, neopagan cleansing ritual, and then, thinking that this was perhaps precisely what Pamela herself might do, wondered if she was actually losing her grip. She thought, but did not say, I don’t like Pamela.

  “Nathan would have told her himself anyway,” said James, reasonably, dropping the car keys onto the coffee table and collapsing into an armchair. “But also we have to be honest with one another. I’d be mad if something happened on her watch that she didn’t share with me.”

  “It wasn’t ‘on our watch,’ we could hardly have known—”

  “I’m not saying we could have stopped them, you know what I mean.”

  “This is nauseating,” said Julia, laying her forehead on the arm of the sofa. She rejected the memory of Nathan’s hand lost beneath her daughter’s T-shirt, the pert denim globe of his backside aloft as he lay almost on top of her child. “I quite literally cannot believe this is happening. It cannot happen. They’ve chosen the one thing that will make our family life impossible. It’s genius really, when you think about it. It’s the perfect sabotage.”

  James moved to sit beside her and laid his hands on her back. The warmth of his palms seeped through her sweater to her skin. “I think it’s also teenagers doing what teenagers do.” She lifted her head slightly but before she could protest he continued, “But let’s say you’re right and there’s a part of them trying to rebel and make things difficult or, what I think is more likely, looking for attention they might feel they’ve lost recently. It’s still pretty new for them, seeing us together. That’s twice the reason to show them what we’re made of and to handle it like a team. We’ve done a lot of family stuff recently, so maybe it’s time to go back to the beginning, making sure you get time alone with Gwen every weekend and I get time alone with Nathan. They’re good kids.”

  “But that’s the point, they’re kids. They have no idea what a mess this could be; I don’t think they even really get why it’s so totally and utterly wrong, and revolting. And all those things she said—I’ve been selfish and I’ve hurt her and—”

  “Stop. For right now Pamela’s happy to have him and that will give them time to cool off, or pretend it never happened o
r whatever. They’re apart during the week when he’s at school, so it’s only weekends we have to just say, no, obviously this is unacceptable. We’ll put a stop to it and that’s that. We’ll figure it out, but you have not been selfish. You do nothing but think of her. There’s still some mulled wine, if you want?”

  Julia shook her head. “It wasn’t very nice, I don’t know what they put in it.”

  “Maybe they weren’t concentrating.”

  “Oh, don’t,” said Julia, but she laughed, in disbelief. “This is actually appalling.”

  “Yes,” agreed James. “Let’s fire them and get better ones. But you know what, I’m pretty confident it will be okay. Probably the entire point was for you to see them and now the point’s made.”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Yup. Loud and clear.”

  • • •

  FOR HIS PART, Nathan felt hopeful. He had charmed his way out of stickier scrapes than this one. He understood why everyone was angry but it would not alter the course of his behavior and now, safely across London, he had lost all traces of his own indignation and merely felt enlivened by the drama.

  Gwen was not at all his usual type. Valentina, he’d known with pride, was a nine, a point docked for her high-strung madness. (His friend Edmund’s scale did not even consider faces, let alone personality, merely the hardware on display from the neck down.) But Nathan had eventually become bored and exasperated by Valentina, and what security and confidence he derived from having a steady girlfriend had been undermined by their relentless rows. It had seemed passionate and romantic at first, but whatever her physical attributes, he did not want a girlfriend who was always angry. Gwen Alden was a solid eight to eight-and-a-half. She was catwalk tall and could definitely be described as willowy, and her red hair was so startling that it transcended the traditionally disparaging label “ginger” and recategorized her as “striking.” She had a beautiful face. He liked her laugh, and her belief, however resentfully held, that he was an academic genius. It was worth a little heat from his father, and in any case, his mother was bound to take it in better spirits. As long as he furnished her with a few details, she usually said yes to anything.

  • • •

  BOXING DAY CAME the nadir. Julia sat on the end of Gwen’s bed, her head bowed, her fingers interlaced in her lap.

  “I’ve been up all night,” said Julia, softly, “trying to comprehend why. I am very disappointed.”

  Gwen almost laughed at this grave, teacherly cliché, for she, too, had been lying awake slightly manic with nerves and a sense of guilty defiance. It would be a day of reckoning. She restrained the giggle and said, “I’m sorry.” And then worried this was a concession, added primly, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “You cannot possibly have thought this was a good idea.”

  “It’s not an idea. I like him. It isn’t like we planned it or anything.”

  “It’s not appropriate.”

  Gwen sat up and flung the covers off. Shouting would be awkward as she still had in her retainer, but she was too cross to pause and remove it. “Who says? You can’t actually control everything we do, we’re adults.”

  “Adults! This is precisely the opposite of adult behavior. If you can’t see why this is fraught with awkwardness—”

  “It’s not like I didn’t find it awkward when you started going out with James. It’s not like I didn’t find it awkward when he took over Dad’s house. That was pretty bloody awkward, if you ask me.”

  “Can you not see that’s a little different?”

  “No,” said Gwen, stubbornly. “I can’t. In any case, it’s done now.” To shore up her sense of dignity she removed her retainer at last, clicking it into the purple plastic case on her bedside table. She then padded over to her desk in search of her glasses, feeling vulnerable and at a disadvantage, with the world blurred.

  “What’s done? You mean it’s over?”

  “No, it’s done. He’s my boyfriend. There’s nothing you can do.” She and Nathan had never actually discussed the status of their relationship but he hadn’t contradicted her when she’d made her announcement the night before, and this bolstered her confidence. And then on impulse she added, “We’ve been together for ages.”

  Julia looked startled. “How long?”

  “None of your business. You don’t consult me with what you do with your love life.”

  “Gwen, that’s enough. Don’t be rude.” And then in a different, quieter tone, “Gwendolen, darling, what do you mean by ‘love life’? How serious has this become? Many things are not my business but what happens under my roof is my concern. Are you—are you sleeping with him?”

  And suddenly a conversation previously unimaginable to both of them was taking place. Gwen felt a simultaneous sense of injustice and betrayal. Here was conclusive proof of how wretchedly little Julia understood—about what was and wasn’t appropriate, about life in general, and specifically about her own child who had not yet removed a single item of clothing in the presence of any boy, Nathan included, and who did not even want to go to bed with anyone. She might as well have asked whether Gwen had taken up skydiving. Clearly her mother had stopped paying attention some time ago. Gwen had become a stranger to her, capable of anything. Self-pity threatened, but Gwen forced herself to focus on what she had for solace. And so she swallowed the outraged, honest denial that had risen and gambled instead. “Why is our sex life anything to do with you?”

  As soon as the words were out a gulf opened between them, a lake of a lie. It’s not true! she thought, as loudly as she could, but the lie lay between them now, an expanse across which it was impossible to hear one another. Already she ached to confess, and already knew she never would. Watching her mother recede into the distance with the steady inevitability of a departing ship, she thought, hopelessly, one day it might be true. Sex was at present entirely unimaginable, but Julia had begun to cry, and then left in silence, and so it must be believable to her.

  Gwen had felt known her whole life, known and cherished, and had, she realized, taken that charmed state entirely for granted. She now saw it for the flossy, muffling cocoon of naïveté and infantile solipsism it must always have been. A delusion. Only her father had entirely loved and accepted her, and he would certainly never have let Julia spend the rest of Boxing Day charging around in derangement demanding that James write a prescription for the Pill, nor allowed her to leave a frantic and humiliating message on the GP’s out-of-hours answering machine after James had said his own involvement would be inappropriate. Without her father, no one saw her. Except Nathan.

  part two

  16.

  “I’m outside. What on earth is the delay?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Philip, words he’d spoken to Iris so often that they had become a ritual of greeting. “I need just another moment.”

  Iris ensured that her heavy sigh was audible before hanging up the phone, and Philip returned to the shoes he had been laboriously tying. This adventure should have begun some time ago but he had been on the computer for most of the afternoon, hunting down and then printing out an essay on Beckett to read to her. It was a habit they had developed early on in their relationship, started in imitation of Philip’s mother who’d been a determined autodidact and who, in her rare moments of liberty, would take herself off to the Swiss Cottage Library. Her English had eventually been excellent but drama had always remained a hurdle, so if she took Philip to queue for returns, it would be for a play about which she had already spent snatched moments reading. Denied so very many avenues of education by gender, circumstance, and war; now, newly British, newly emancipated, she would not sacrifice a single drop of insight or pleasure by failing to understand a nuance, a reference, a history. At first amused when she’d discovered what she referred to as Philip’s homework, Iris had then begun to depend upon him whenever they went to the theater.

>   “Oh, Philip will tell us all about it,” she’d say, idly. “What do we know about the play, Philip?” And Philip would produce his notes from the inside pocket of his jacket, folded sheets of scrawls and citations, the fruit of an afternoon’s study.

  Today, it was true, he had lost track of time. It would not help to suggest that she come in and wait in the living room while he finished putting on his shoes and then found his scarf and located his other glasses (mysteriously absent from the coil pot Gwen had made to house them). Instead she would sit, idling in a taxi vibrating with the diesel engine and her increasing vexation, for as long as it took him to emerge. She was happiest when he’d anticipated her early arrival and was waiting for her on the pavement when she swept up, barely needing to stop before they could motor away from this scene of his embarrassing isolation. The existence of this modest flat irked her.

  “What were you doing?” she snapped, when he joined her in the taxi.

  “I thought you’d like Harold Bloom for the interval. On The Lady with the Dog.”

  “Ever since the Lessing comment I’ve gone off him, though perhaps it’s time to make up. Thank you for the James Wood, though; I read it this morning. Oh, and I’ve booked us smoked salmon, for the interval.”

  “Thank you,” said Philip, humbly.

  “How did you like the Rosamond Lehmann?”