“Who's there?” croaked Polly from her tangle of sheets.
“Ah, you’re awake, then. Hungry?” The voice was a man’s: familiar somehow, though all the people she had cared about were long gone away, she had thought.
She thrashed about in the bedclothes like a dolphin caught in a net. Soft footsteps approached and, with startling strength, lovely warm hands raised her and settled her against the pillows. “What’s the time?” she demanded.
“Breakfast time.”
“I never. I don’t eat breakfast. Bring me a cup of coffee and my packet of fags. I’ve work to do.”
A clink of crockery. “The lady of the house says no smoking in bed. But I’ve made you some decaf in a little espresso cup.“
“I like espresso in my espresso cup,” said Polly tartly.
“The lady says you can’t have espresso, darling. But drink this up, and let me help you eat something, and then if you’re a good girl I’ll bring you your pencil and your sketchpad.”
“I don't want them. I can't see to draw.”
“As you like.”
A spoonful of something was raised to her lips. She shut them firmly and turned her head away.
“Come on now,” coaxed the voice.
Polly loosed her lips to say, “I’m not a bloody baby.”
“Nobody said you were. But you won’t be good for much if you don’t eat.” In went the spoon. Something burned down Polly’s throat, utterly without taste. Unless heat was a taste, of course.
“I want something real to eat,” she spluttered.
Laughter. “What is real?”
I wish I knew, Polly thought. Aloud she merely said, “Let’s see whether that coffee tastes of anything but old armpits.” It tasted, she discovered, chiefly of milk, and she spat it out onto the blankets.
“How about I read to you?” the voice suggested.
“Story time,” mumbled Polly. Like a good child she subsided against her pillows and fell quiet.
My sons! Newest generation of this ancient city of Thebes!
While the voice rose and fell, Polly wandered back into herself, down a long gallery hung with pictures.
She stopped before one: a laughing darkhaired man with a chisel in his hand.
“Where have you been, carissima?” he asked her.
“Where have you been, that’s the question,” retorted Polly. She studied his image carefully. There was something familiar in the brush strokes – of course, they were her own. She had drawn him first that day she’d gone to his workshop. Standing in the doorway, pencil in hand, watching him work, sun on her bare head, she had roughed in the S-curve of his spine, his upraised hand with the mallet, his weight shifted onto one leg. He had been humming a tune she didn't recognize. The strokes of her brush, as she gazed at the painting, were full of that tune. Even in middle age, his hair silvering, he had had a boy’s elastic grace, a boy’s almost feminine prettiness. She had loved to watch him. Even now . . . She leaned against the door as he turned away from her into his work. Tap tap tap went the mallet against the chisel, and flakes of stone fell away. Or was he tapping at her door, and were those her clothes – her dress, her teddies, her stockings and garters – which flaked away and fell to the floor? Or was it his studio door someone rapped at, a woman, rattling the knob, calling his name? Painting him, she had wiped away all the inconvenient history so that he stood before her free of it all, rejoicing in his freedom.
His image dissolved in its frame, and she found herself looking at a boy, fourteen perhaps, who stood dressed in pyjama trousers, with his back to her, meditating in the kitchen doorway. She regarded the concavity of his smooth bare back, his black hair curling up at the ends, and for a moment she wanted to eat him alive, the little god. Then she remembered that he was her grandson Owen.
“God, look at you,” she said, because she always spoke her thoughts aloud, and, "What's happened to your mother?"
He did not look at her or answer her question. “Sophie’s had to take back her fiddle. You said you’d pay for it, and you didn’t.”
“I will, darling, don’t worry.” Polly fumbled about her for a fag.
“It’s too late, Gran.” His voice roughened. “They sent notices and notices. And they won’t let her have it again.”
Polly struck a match. “She’s a grown girl. A little disappointment won’t hurt her.”
“Disappointment?” He turned to look at her coldly. “What if, Gran, somebody had let you have all your brushes and canvases and paints and things on a loan – say I was supposed to pay for it, so that you could go on painting? What if I thought I’d rather have something else, and I had the money in my pocket to pay for your things, but I bought my things instead, and the shop came and made you bring back yours. Tell me, Gran,” he said. “Would you be disappointed?”
“You make me sound a monster,” said Polly.
He turned his back on her again and stood in the doorway as if walking into the kitchen were an action requiring serious forethought.
“I didn’t buy things for myself,” she said.
The boy said nothing.
Polly shook herself. Were the whole summer holidays going to take this tone? “This is bloody unpleasant,” she declared.
“All right, I’ll stop,” said the voice at her elbow. “Want me to stay with you, or do you want to sleep?”
Polly’s hand, on the coverlet, rose of itself and pawed in the direction of the voice. “Stay,” she heard herself saying. Then, "Go away."
Ruth was standing over a sinkful of cut flowers, a phalanx of crystal vases arrayed on the drain board at her elbow, when Michael returned with Polly’s breakfast tray.
Ruth glanced at the uneaten porridge and raised an eyebrow.
“She didn’t want to eat,” Michael said, setting the tray on the table.
“Did you try to make her?”
“How can I make her?” He picked up the cigarette packet and shook it. “Mum.”
“It’s a filthy habit anyway.” She held up a cluster of blooms: narcissi and freesia from the florist’s, winter jasmine she’d cut from the garden. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “Mind if I go out for a bit?”
Ruth turned to face him, her hands still dripping with flowers. “To do what, may I ask? I’ve got a long list of chores for you.”
“That’s all right. I won’t be long. Let me take the list, and I’ll have it done by – “
“Noon?”
“Easy.”
She put down the flowers and fished in her pockets for the list, which he plucked from her fingers and read. “Cake. Wine. Sausage rolls – “ It was his turn to raise an eyebrow.
“Well,” she said defensively, “people eat them.”
“Indeed they do. Prawns – what are you doing with prawns?”
“I have a smoked salmon already,” Ruth said, not listening. “Oh, bin liners. Get more bin liners, Michael. We’ve got to think about cleanup as well as the rest of it.”
“Bin. Liners.” Michael pulled a pen from the jar on the table and amended the list. “Anything else?”
“That’s it, I think. Everything else we’ve got already. Damn, there’s the phone.” As she reached for it, he edged out of the door, and she heard his retreating footsteps on the stairs.
“I’m sorry, love,” the nurse said from somewhere out beyond Fenstanton, where she lived. “But the doctor says my foot’s broken, and I’ve got to keep off it. Today of all days.”
“Yes.” Ruth began counting to ten in her mind.
“I did want to see her specially today. It’s a disappointment. And I hate to leave you short-handed. Today of all days,” she said again.
“It can’t be helped,” said Ruth, stopping at seven. Only after she’d hung up did she think to feel sorry for the nurse and her broken foot.
When the phone rang again, seconds later, it was Sophie. “Oh, Ruth,” she said, her voice feathery with anxiety, “has Alasdair rung you yet?”
“No," said Ruth. "Why? Is something wrong?"
"Oh, no, no, not that I know of. It's just that he said he'd ring you as he was setting out to fetch us -- Helena and the girls are coming here, and then we'll all drive to yours together -- and I wondered whether he'd rung, because that would mean he'd left, and then I'd know to put my coat on, you know -- "
"Well," Ruth said, "I don't know any more than you do. Sorry. Has Helena gotten there yet?”
“I’m waiting for her now. No, wait a moment." Sophie gave a self-deprecatory gasp. "I'm not. How stupid of me. Alasdair was fetching them first, and then they're all coming here to get me, and then we come to you. It's twenty-two minutes from Alasdair's to my house, but if he's stopping at Helena's, then that's another ten, at least. I needn't rush to put my coat on, then, I shouldn't think, should you?"
"I think you can sit down and watch television for a few minutes," said Ruth. "Are you bringing an extra tablecloth."
“Oh!” She could feel Sophie startle on the other end. “Why, I’d completely forgotten. I won't turn on the telly just yet. I’ll get it out now and put it on the bench by the door, with my handbag – or I'll --“
“Do that,” Ruth said, not unkindly. “And Sophie – there’s another wrinkle. The nurse just rang, and she’s broken her foot, and I don't know how we're going to manage Polly at the opening. I know there's lots of us, but I'd counted on stationing her someplace with Bobbie and letting them be.”
Sophie sighed a plangent little sigh. “I’ll talk it over with Helena and Alasdair. Perhaps we can -- oh!” she broke off with a cry. “They've just driven up. They didn't ring after all, how thoughtless of them. Alasdair's tootling the horn, and I haven't got my coat on. I must fly.”
“Tablecloth, Sophie,” Ruth shouted down the phone, while on Sophie’s end, the handset clattered into its cradle.
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