The Awkward Age Page 9
Julia turned out every kitchen cupboard and had not unearthed a bottle of sherry, a foregone conclusion as she had never known a bottle to be in the house. But she had hunted nonetheless, if only to show James her attempts to be hospitable. He had been nothing but charming to Iris and Philip today, which meant she did not feel she could say, Why is your mad ex-wife descending upon my house?
“Gwen?” she called, lightly. “Would you like to make some mulled wine for when Pamela arrives? We’ve got cloves and I’m sure there’s some star anise somewhere. You could look up a recipe online.”
Gwen mumbled something to Nathan beside her, who laughed.
“I’ll help if you like,” he offered, “you may not be aware of it but I am an excellent mixologist.”
“You’re an underage mixologist,” James called, from the kitchen.
“My blends are purely in the interests of science, I assure you. Help me up, sous chef,” Nathan commanded Gwen, who crossed her wrists obligingly and hauled him to his feet, and Julia’s free-flowing anxiety about Pamela’s impending visit was momentarily staunched by this heartwarming camaraderie between the children.
13.
Pamela did not arrive until six, for “driving past” turned out to mean that she was en route from Sussex to her hotel in Ladbroke Grove. “Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands,” Iris was heard to mutter, refusing James’s offer of a fourth cup of tea.
When the doorbell rang it was Gwen, to everyone’s surprise, who sprang to her feet and rushed to open it. Pamela swept into the hall, drawing in behind her a theatrically cold wind. Iris, never anything but ramrod straight, threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin a fraction.
“I’m just so thrilled we could do this,” trilled Pamela, as if answering an invitation extended months ago that had been fiendishly difficult to honor. She kissed Julia. “I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to see my babies on Christmas Day. Will you send one of them out with me to help bring pressies from the car?”
A pair of Nathan’s sneakers lay abandoned by the front door and Gwen slipped these on, laces untied, and trotted out after Pamela. Once introductions had been made Pamela arranged herself in an armchair and looked about with satisfaction, scanning the room until she had educed a tentative Mexican wave of returned smiles. Only Iris remained impassive, regarding Pamela as she might a stage on which an amateur theatrical production of mixed reviews was about to begin.
“Isn’t this a lovely nest you have? If I miss anything from London, it’s these sweet little Victorian terraces. Now, shall I make my presentations?”
“It’s commendable how well prepared you are for a spontaneous visit,” observed Iris, regarding the pile of gift bags and boxes that Gwen had obediently carried in behind Pamela, like a bellboy.
“Oh, everything was in the car for tomorrow in any case, but I was whizzing past and thought, why not? A Christmas sherry with you all. I’m so pleased to meet you, I’ve heard such wonderful things about you from James. And you”—here she addressed Philip—“of course I’ve read your papers on OP presentations and have so many enormous bones to pick with you, so I am utterly overjoyed we’re meeting like this, I just have a hundred thoughts to share. Perhaps later I will sweep you off into a corner.”
“Pick swiftly,” advised Iris, “our bones are going to have to go quite soon, I’m afraid.”
“No sherry, Mom, but we’ve been mulling wine in your honor,” said Nathan, coming in from the kitchen. Gwen followed behind him carrying a tray of mugs. She was being oddly obliging, Julia thought. Perhaps later she would begin a campaign to be allowed to go to Trafalgar Square alone with her friends on New Year’s Eve, or to attend the overpriced, underage driving course she’d discovered in Elstree. It was possible she’d broken something in the kitchen.
“That accounts for the gorgeous smell. I can have half a glass, I’m sure, I’ve eaten enough mince pies to line my stomach for a week. Or I suppose I could be devilish and have a whole one and pick up the car tomorrow.”
“Why not have tea?” Iris suggested.
• • •
TO NO ONE’S GREAT SURPRISE, Pamela outstayed her tentative welcome. Iris had long since abandoned any noble thoughts of outlasting her and had called herself a taxi, without the aid of Philip’s app, and the two of them had gone home. After a nod of permission from Julia, Gwen had escaped to her room where she flopped on the bed with her laptop, relieved and exhausted and glowing from a series of audacious, snatched intimacies with Nathan—his hand on her knee beneath the lunch table; their socked feet touching, fleetingly but in plain sight, as they’d all watched the Queen’s speech. Alone in the kitchen they had whispered while on the stove the neglected mulled wine reduced to a sticky, overboiled syrup and they had to rescue it with a second bottle, one of James’s better Pinot Noirs. There had been a sea change. The wrongness of family occasions with James, the pressure in her chest, the slight constriction of her throat during all festivities without her father—this was the sixth Christmas—were alleviated by the support and camaraderie of a boyfriend, even a secret one. And his weird mother seemed to like her.
“I really must get going,” Pamela was hooting, in an ever-increasing volume that suggested she was coming farther up the stairs, away from the front door, “but you must give me the tour before I go. Show me the kids’ rooms.”
A light tread followed. “Right at the very top is our bedroom,” she heard, “really no need to go up there; it’s a mess. My practice room is here, where I teach; this is where Saskia sleeps when she stays—”
“Wonderful!” Pamela boomed. “You must be so inspired there.”
“Yes.” Their voices got louder as they came up half a flight of stairs and stood outside Gwen’s door. “That’s Gwen in there, we won’t disturb her, I think she said she was going to nap, then the bathroom across the hall, and this is Nathan’s.” The door beside Gwen’s creaked open.
“Isn’t he a pig?” Pamela declared, with a hint of pride. “And everything’s just giant with boys, isn’t it—giant stinking shoes, and giant stinking clothes just strewn about everywhere. You really are a saint to take all this on. He said you’ve been doing his laundry! When he’s with me of course I insist he does his own. Still. Not long before he’s off and this could be the baby’s room, inshallah.”
Gwen, bewildered, stood and padded forward to listen more closely. Her mother coughed, and she heard Pamela barreling onward, “Oh no, don’t blush, I am sorry, I know it’s none of my business, but it would be just so invigorating to have a new little one in the family, don’t you think? And it’s not yet quite too late if you were really determined. No. Are you? No. I could have sworn you were just a scrap of a thing! Are you really? What a complexion. Right, on that note—on that note, lovely lady, I’ll be off. Maybe I’ll scoop up Saskia to come and spend a girls’ night with me at the hotel, then you can reclaim your peaceful music room.”
The footsteps descended once again. Gwen remained still, her heart pounding. She remembered a long-ago supper table and herself at six, nibbling at the tail of her dinosaur-shaped cheese on toast, on the single occasion she had asked her parents about siblings. Then, too, it had been at someone else’s prompting—another child at school with a brand-new baby brother had warned Gwen that the same fate could just as easily befall her own slim and attentive mother. “We are perfect just us, don’t you think?” Daniel had said, and Gwen had nodded, chewing steadily, and the three of them had held hands around the table. In childhood when friends had stayed over and Julia had kissed them each good night, first Gwen, and then the little girl beside her, Gwen would lie awake until long after her guest was breathing steadily, unable to sleep until she could pad downstairs alone to find and reclaim her mother. To see her kiss another child good night was a torment. Julia would look up, surprised, and explain that she had only wanted Katy to feel welcome. She would open her arms to her hot, distres
sed little daughter and Gwen would bury herself there, breathing away the horror of their last parting, and the memory of Julia’s infidelity. She had only one mother; her mother had only her. Their devotion was balanced, and equal. Never, not once in all these last distressing, enraging, unprecedented months had she ever considered that her mother and James might have a baby. But anything was possible. Weren’t there women in India having triplets at seventy-five, or whatever? She’d thought her mother too old for a boyfriend, and yet here was James. She remained by the door, winded.
Gwen picked up her laptop and sent Nathan a message. He was in the kitchen, too far away for her to hear his phone beep, but a minute later the door opened and he slipped in, closing it behind him and grinning.
“You are daring today,” he said, coming toward her and putting his arms around her bony shoulders. “I thought we weren’t taking undue risks.”
“I’m feeling daring.” And then emboldened she added, “So what are you waiting for?”
Nathan needed no further encouragement. His mother and sister had gone; he had seen his father and Julia side by side in companionable industry, emptying the dishwasher. Encouraged by this new, indoor comfort and Gwen’s uncharacteristic brazenness, he pushed her backward, gently, onto the bed. She would not let him lie on top of her exactly, but he pressed beside her, one leg slung over hers, his crotch pleasingly close to her firm upper thigh. Every now and again he moved as if to readjust, and inched their bodies a little closer into alignment. And it was in this position, with one of his hands lost beneath the printed logo of her T-shirt, that Julia came in and found them.
14.
“Fuck!” Julia shouted, startling all three of them. Gwen had never before heard her mother use the word and it sounded comical, and disconcerting. Julia clapped her hands across her mouth and looked, for a moment, as if she was about to vomit. “What the fuck is going on in here?” But she did not stay for the answer and instead backed out, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you,” she kept repeating. “I can’t believe you. I don’t believe this.” She turned on her heel and left. A moment later, while Gwen and Nathan were still straightening their clothing, the front door slammed.
“Nathan?”
“Here.”
James came in, surprised to see the children standing up in the middle of Gwen’s bedroom, looking at one another in awkward, complicit silence. “Hey, guys. Was that the door? What’s up?”
“We’ve got something to tell you.” Gwen threw her shoulders back and went on, in a voice that managed to be both imperious and confiding, “We were going to wait a bit longer but—Nathan and I are together.”
James frowned. “What?”
Gwen bit her lip and looked to Nathan for reassurance but he was staring out of the window with his hands crossed behind his head, like a man before a firing squad.
“Together. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Dating.”
James was staring around the room somewhat fixedly, his gaze moving from Nathan to the bookshelves of magazines and trinkets and assorted dolls’ furniture, the mobile of Polaroid photographs suspended with rainbow ribbons from two reshaped coat hangers, to the homemade beaded necklaces slung over the bedpost, to the colony of clay figurines in various stages of completion, guarding the expanse of her desk like a mismatched terra-cotta army. “No. I don’t even— I can’t— I don’t even know where to begin. This seems like a recipe for—what? You’re not serious.”
Gwen, unable to help herself, began to giggle. It was gratifying, after diverse and concerted efforts, finally to see James unsettled.
“How long has this been going on? Nathan, will you turn around, please? Does Julia know? Is this why she just left, is she okay? Was she . . . Hang on—” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I expect to see the two of you downstairs, at the kitchen table, in five minutes. Do not—I repeat DO NOT CLOSE THE DOOR OF THIS BEDROOM. Five minutes. Downstairs.”
• • •
WHEN THE CHILDREN DESCENDED they were hand in hand, a brief chain gang of penitents. This solidarity seemed staged. Gwen looked mutinous and defiant with lifted chin and narrowed eyes, and appeared to be gripping Nathan as if leading an uncooperative child around a supermarket. Nathan was gazing at the tiled floor. A blush crept up his neck and cheeks. They were very sorry, he said, with an unmistakable smirk in his voice. Still, he did not move to free himself from Gwen.
“We’re all going out,” James said, shortly. “Julia and I have discussed it. We’re going to the pub and we’re going to sit and talk like adults. Right now.” He gave Julia a small smile of solidarity before returning to face the children looking thunderous. Beside him she dug her thumbnails into the pads of her ring fingers. Just breathe, James had said. I’ll talk to them. Nathan would soon be back at boarding school Monday to Saturday. Obviously he must stay away at weekends, too, she thought, and in the holidays they could take him directly from Westminster to Heathrow. The children would not sleep another night under the same roof.
Gwen would merely have to be dispatched to a convent in the Hebrides. There were ways, she thought, to—what had James said just now?—curb the insurrection. He had offered castration, a chastity belt, sedation, bromide in the tea, digging a basement and locking them in it for eternity together to get on with it. Or we could leave? Two weeks in the Caribbean? I bet Pamela would take ’em. A few days of a legume-only diet would kill the mood pretty quickly, I promise you. He’d worked hard to calm her. Should James and Nathan move out for a month? Probably that was the best solution but—the idea of him leaving made her frantic. She had waited her whole life for him, she thought, fiercely, and if he left, he might never return. To wake up alone another morning was unthinkable—if Gwen chased him from the house, Julia could not imagine forgiving her easily. Never before had she felt so assaulted by her daughter. And never had she come so close to slipping, and telling James what she thought about his son.
Nathan had taken out his phone. “Why do we—”
“I’m not interested in one syllable from either of you until we are sitting around a table like adults, in a neutral space.”
“But—”
“And I have a beer in my hand. Seriously. Just zip it, Nathan. We’ve been in this house all day and I need air.”
“But—”
“Be quiet. You’ll both do as you’re told, for once. And you will leave your damn devices here and talk like civilized humans.”
Nathan fell silent and Julia rose from the table, fortified. She was too angry to look at Gwen, too angry to speak to Gwen, but James had taken charge and she sagged with inward relief, leaning heavily against the strength of his resolve. He would speak for them both, until she felt able. He could be calm, where she would have raved. He was a good father. He would stop this madness in its tracks.
Nathan and Gwen relinquished their phones sulkily, but without protest. James hesitated, about to set them on the coffee table and then seemed to change his mind and slipped them into his own pocket. Coats were gathered in silence, and they all waited by the front gate while James switched on the alarm and double locked the front door.
They set off down the road in single file—Nathan toggled tight into his hoodie, followed by Gwen, then Julia and James. The pavement was deserted, but light glowed behind curtains and shutters. They walked down the terraced street, rich sand and ocher London stock beneath gnarled and naked winter-stripped wisteria. Functional, nuclear families inside home after home, Julia imagined, obedient, rosy-cheeked children bringing pride to their misty parents at the foot of sap-heavy Douglas firs. Gospel Oak, by Norman Rockwell. I can’t believe them, Julia had said to James, moments earlier. He’d shrugged, his thumb moving gently across her knuckles and said, Remember their ultimate aim in life is to piss us off. We don’t capitulate to terrorists. And she had found herself laughing—with disbelief at her undented happiness, at the power of James’s voice to lift her
heart, with gratitude that the sight of his face turned toward hers still made her throat catch, that his eyes upon her could make all the rest mute and fade into insignificance. Her daughter had launched a missile at her life and yet here was James, and so everything was okay, even when it wasn’t.
The pub was closed. It was Christmas Day; their beloved, unrenovated local had bowed out of the race. Better to stay at home, its dark, etched windows advised; it would not compete with marked-down supermarket beer and glutted lassitude, and the rising screech of seasonal family tension. MERRY XMAS, read a small sign on the door in red felt tip, and then on a sloping second line the assurance, REOPEN BOXING DAY.
James swore. He caught Julia’s eye, and she wondered if he was about to laugh, but when he faced the children he looked stern once again. He shooed them away, homeward.
“Back. Now.”
“That was what I was trying to say,” Nathan muttered, as they began to trudge back the way they’d come. “Nothing’d be open.”
They had been out of the house for approximately three and a half minutes. As they turned onto their own street sloppy raindrops began to fall, landing splashily in shallow puddles from an earlier downfall. London seemed under water; it felt like the middle of the night. Back inside they moved by unspoken consensus into the kitchen. Julia put on the kettle, as if they’d been adventuring in the cold for hours. James went to the cupboard and took out two tins of baked beans. Julia went to the bread bin. Gwen opened her mouth to request a bagel, thought better of it, and closed it again. Nathan and Gwen sat side by side at the kitchen table, waiting and watching while their parents began to orchestrate supper. Gwen had begun to find the silence unbearable, which she suspected was the intention.