Where the HeArt is Page 6

  Ann's friends' lives carry on much as they were before she left. There are snippets about the new National-led government; some are worried about their public service jobs. The women cabinet ministers are universally disliked, at least among Ann's friends. That’s discouraging. She cuts and pastes her way through replies to the messages, glad of the connections with home. Nothing from Ex. Good. Not much about her, either, except for one comment from a mutual friend that Paula doesn't know what to do about a couple of things still in the house she thinks Ann will want.

  Everything about the house is settled, her mother writes. Paula has been very cooperative. Would Ann regret anything, she worries, like leaving that lovely oak hall table? It's only a table, for heaven's sake Mum. Oh, and Dad has done very well for her on the money for chattels—she knows that, is slightly embarrassed by it, he sent her a list—and is she having a good time? It’s lovely to get news of family members, even if she can barely remember what they look like. Is she taking photos? Oh shit, thinks Ann, I need a digital camera.

  All that news from home leads to a restless night and it’s nearly nine in the morning when she wakes. Down in the kitchen things are different. The twins are happy enough in their high chairs, breaking up toast and dropping bits on the floor. Last night's dishes have not been done, it looks as though Joshua has left half eaten cereal and half-drunk coffee. There are noises coming from the toilet down the passage. Ann knocks on the door.

  “Chloe, are you all right?”

  “No. Yes. Twins.” And some more Ann can't figure, then the sound of heaving. Omigod.

  “Okay, you two, eat it or lose it,” Ann announces to the two high chairs.

  “Mummy,” says one. “Mummy,” says the other. Questioning rather than upset.

  “Mummy's in the toilet throwing up,” says Ann cheerfully, “so it's me you've got for now.” And she wriggles her ears and crosses her eyes and laughs. The twins look at each other, then laugh with her. When Chloe appears twenty minutes or so later the kitchen is tidy and the twins are practising saying their version of “Aunty Ann” and their own names and pointing and Ann is learning to tell them apart.

  “Tea? No, you like coffee in the morning, right?” Chloe looks like she might be leaving again, she stands poised for movement for a moment, then turns and fills the jug.

  “This is how it goes,” she says. “Last time it lasted six weeks. Joshua's going to see if he can get some time off work.” She’s getting Chris out of his high-chair, then Jo. They chase each other around the table a few times then retreat to the toy corner. “You haven’t had breakfast …”

  “I'll do it,” said Ann, dropping two slices of bread into the toaster. “Would you …? No. Okay.” She pours boiling water into the coffee pot. “You like tea, right?”

  Chloe nods. “Weak, no milk. My mother would come over from Europe,” she says, “but it's a bit difficult, she thinks kids need a smack now and then, quite now and then, actually, and I—we—don't think it's right and so it's really awkward…”

  “I could stay on for a bit.” Ann is as surprised as Chloe at her offer.

  “But you're on holiday. And you've got plans.”

  “Nothing I can't change. A hostel in Paris I can put off for a few weeks, a Eurostar booking ditto, a flight back to New Zealand I can delay. I'd like to stay, really.”

  “I don't know what to say. I'm a coper, I don't need anyone's help, not usually. But you've just seen. It's lucky they were in their high chairs … But you haven't, you know, had them yourself …”

  “I haven't had children, you’re right, but I'm quite competent, you know, and you'll be here, just, well, what we used to call chundering at unpredictable moments. I think I'll enjoy getting to know you all and being helpful in a family kind of way.”

  There hasn't been a lot of that in my life.

  “How about you talk to Joshua about it tonight. I could stick around until the new year if that was helpful. But what about today? I was going to go into the Courtauld, but I could put that off.” She passes the other woman her cup of tea and sits down with her own coffee and toast.

  “No, no, you go. I've a friend coming around later this morning, with her three-year-old, I'll manage all right. I always do. Anyway, I seem to have stopped for now. Maybe it won't be as bad as last time. And thank you for your offer, it's very kind.” Chloe still sounds doubtful. Ann is warming to the idea of being in a family with young children, not to mention a chance to put off making decisions. Oh, all right, she admits to herself, and not going back to New Zealand until after Christmas, not having Mum and Dad “do” Christmas for her, or convincing them not to, not fielding invitations from friends, not having them deciding whether to invite her, or Ex, or Julie, or all three or none. Not being there would be great, and being here would be well, interesting, okay even, especially if “I-can-manage” Chloe can stand having another woman around for so long.

  Jo has climbed onto her mother's lap and Chloe is stroking the child’s hair, staring into space.

  Ann doesn't know how much the other woman knows about why she is travelling, so she tells her it all, and tells her how she isn't just being kind. While she’s talking Chris stops his play and tries to climb up with his sister. Ann's attempt to get his attention and lift him onto her lap are a complete failure and he starts to cry. Chloe holds out her arm and adjusts Jo and cuddles a child on each knee. Ann smiles at her and gets a weak smile back. This is Chloe's world and maybe there’s no place for Ann in it. Staying in the attic for a few days, beers with Joshua, might have to be enough.

  “You're a lesbian, then. Joshua didn't say.” Ann prickles.

  “Well, yes. Does that matter?”

  “No. It's just—interesting. I worked for an accountant who was a lesbian once. She was a great boss, but her private life was a shambles.” Ann is carefully silent. “Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, I just had no idea, I guess I'm trying to fit you into my picture of Josh's family or something. Does he know?”

  Ann can't believe her cousin has not passed on to his wife any of the conversation they had the other night in the Pestle and Mortar. She told him her life story, or at least the short version, and he talked about growing up in Liverpool. Joe had been a good enough father, a bit brusque and outdoorsy, fascinated by machinery and how things worked in a way that Joshua could never share. He had wanted a son to do mucky, noisy things with machines with him and eventually accepted that the youngest, Jane, was the one who shared his passion. Joe, he said, would have preferred he and Jane to swap interests. Tracy taught infant school and wanted to get married and have babies, but had a penchant for unsuitable—as in lacking in provider potential—men. His mother? She died after he left home; they hadn’t been close.

  “Yes, he knows, I told him when we went out for a drink.” Ann stood up. “If you're sure you're okay for now I'll go off and commune with some Cézannes. And my offer stands.” She didn't say, unless the idea of a lesbian looking after your kids freaks you out. “And my reasons, too, both the helping ones and the selfish ones.”

  Ann watches Chloe stand, with a sleeping child on each shoulder, nod at her and mouth, “thanks’ as she heads off to the children’s room.

  It’s cold out. Cold and wet. November in London. She hurries to the underground station. Because it’s just outside the city's congestion charging zone small cars are packed into the narrow streets and a red-faced man is trying again and again to back into a space that can only be thirty centimetres longer than his car. She waits on the platform for a train that goes via Charing Cross. There’s no rain when she exits to The Strand, but it’s still cold, still grey, and people are still huddled into their coats. Ann rather likes the bleakness, but maybe that’s because it suits her, well, not exactly mood, because she’s far from dismal, but suits her in a way that sunshine, or the ebullience of spring would not, not right now.

  The Courtauld Gallery is nearly empty. She wanders around, enjoying the impressionists and Manet, keeping her hand
s in her pockets at the Rubens because she wants to stroke the skin of the women. She has come for the Cézannes, though, for compositions where he sought, as he had written somewhere, a harmony parallel to nature. Today it’s Montagne Sainte Victoire that holds her. That mountain of Provence that he made famous, not so big in fact, but monumental in this painting. She is looking at the way the colours change, very, very gradually as the painted space moves further into the apparent distance, leaning forward to see the brush strokes that carefully layer the paint multi-directionally, and for a moment she is under the over-arching tree, in its shade, the heat of the sun palpable from a few feet away, the air full of summer insect sounds, leaves falling, air moving. Just for a moment she is there; then she isn't.

  She meanders through the drawings, marveling at the turn of a hand, a drape of cloth, the way a line can define the expression on a face, shading make an arm or a leg solid. She knows, again, that one of the attractions of paintings and drawings like these is the illusion of depth that an artist can create on a flat surface. In the actual landscape of the Cezanne she briefly inhabited, the distance from the tree that frames the mountain to the mountain itself is something like ten kilometers. In the painting there is no distance from the tree to the mountain-top; near and far is an illusion on the single plane of the canvas. Saying the mountain is far off is like saying the sun rises and sets knowing that it does neither, that the earth turns on its own axis, moving each place in its surface towards and away from the sun. Yet even with this knowledge, sunrise and sunset are a wonder.

  Out on The Strand, the light is fading. Ann is hungry. Too late for lunch, too early for di—supper. She sends Chloe a text that she'll not be in until after supper unless Chloe texts her back that she needs her, and sets off for Covent Garden. Something to eat and a movie, she thinks, they can talk about me in my absence and I'll see what's what when I get in. She doesn't want to want to stay on as much as she does, but apparently that’s how it is; she hopes that Chloe and Joshua will say please, please stay until well into the new year, we'd love you to and you could be a real help to Chloe while she's like this and Joshua can take more time off work when the babies are born. Babies? Omigod. Ann stops walking and the man behind her stumbles, scowling, to avoid a collision. What if Chloe has another set of twins?

  She buys a huge falafel from a place at the edge of Covent Garden and finds a movie theatre showing The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas. At the end of the harrowing film it’s still only seven o'clock so she goes to Bolt! the next film on the schedule, and laughs her way to the end in spite of its heavy-handed message.

  Back at the Kennington House, Joshua and Chloe are in the sitting room watching television. Ann puts her head around the door,

  “Hi,” she says.

  “Hello,” says Chloe. She has the remote in her hand and turns off the programme. “Can you come in for a moment?”

  “Come on in cuz. Pull up a seat. We were talking about you, and your offer to stay on for a bit.” Joshua is hearty again.

  “Hold off a minute, she's had a whole day to think about it, she might have changed her mind.” Chloe is careful.

  Would you like me to have changed my mind, Chloe? Ann doesn't say it. “How was the rest of today?” she asks.

  “Not bad. I had some lunch with my friend Trish that stayed down. Cooking supper wasn't fun, smells do me in. Look, Ann, about your offer to stay on. I'm glad you told me about your, um, things, unlike Mr Silent here.” She pokes her husband in the ribs with her elbow. “I like it that there's something in it for you, as well as doing us a favour. So, anyway, if you're sure it would suit you to stay on until January, that would be great, wouldn't it Josh?”

  “It sure would, I can save my time off work for later …”

  “Wonderful! Great! Let's have a celebratory—cup of tea! I'll make it.” What is it with me? Ann is thinking as she makes the tea. What's to be so pleased about in staying on to help a vomiting mother with two little kids. In winter. So I won't make Paris until January, what's Paris like in January? She starts when she realises Joshua is in the doorway.

  “You're very cheerful about taking us on for six weeks,” he says. “Brilliant! Though I thought this was an art tour.”

  “Art and family. So the family bit just got bigger. It was my Mum's idea to tour around the rellies, fortunately you live in places I wanted to go. Here, take these in.” She'd found some chocolate biscuits and a tray for the teas.

  Chapter 8

  Jo and Chris are in their pushchair—stroller—side by side, enclosed in a transparent plastic cover. The footpath is barely wide enough in places; Chloe's skill at curbs and corners is impressive. She has stopped being defensive and is showing Ann the ropes—how to use the washing machine and dryer, how things in the kitchen work, and now, where the local shops are. Once a month they get an order of heavy and bulky supplies online from Tesco's and have it delivered. Ann knows where the list is kept.

  Local shopping is all on the flat, with a small supermarket and a local branch of the public library on the way, more or less, to the park. Most of the housing is terraced, a lot of it newer than Chloe and Josh's. Chloe is chatting, explaining how they would like to buy their place off her parents, but the mortgage would stretch them even if she got back to work. “Hah!” she says, and falls silent.

  A few minutes later she asks, “Can I tell you my nightmare?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Another set of twins. Four children under three.”

  “Uhuh. I can see that would be a nightmare.”

  “There would probably be some help from social services, and I probably wouldn't be very good at taking it. Oops, hold on.” Chloe puts her hand on her stomach for a minute, then takes a deep breath and resumes walking. Ann has seen her do that in the house; presumably she has a wave of nausea and it passes. Not always.

  “You'd think getting pregnant by accident was practically impossible these days, wouldn't you?”

  Ann has no answer, so remains silent.

  “I guess it's my own fault, I don't like the pill, and what with breast-feeding for eighteen months I haven't been as careful as I should. We thought one more in a year or so, then one of us would get cut, you know— she made a scissors movements with her fingers. “I could probably get an abortion, but I won't, that doesn't seem right when it was our own carelessness.” Ann is pleased to hear Joshua being allocated some responsibility for the pregnancy.

  They stop off at the library, where Ann gets some novels for the re-reading plan she hatched overnight. She has some Austen and Byatt’s Possession and at the last minute adds Great Soups. Chloe offers full use of her library card, and hands it over when their books have been issued. The liveliness of the library appeals to Ann and the variety of people who use it, quite a number she assumes to be Somali, given the special section of Somali books and videos. The adult women are mostly with other Somali women, along with small children, or on their own, wearing jackets or coats over their long clothes, always with a headscarf.

  “People come here because it’s warm,” says Chloe. “Though they do seem to be getting books, especially the children.”

  Successfully negotiating the stroller through the parked cars to cross the street, she announces “Next stop, the park.” as several large drops of rain plop onto the stroller cover. “Damn! Make that ‘next stop our place’.” And she does an on-the-spot-turn. Jo and Chris laugh and want her to do it again, so she does.

  Ann insists on manoeuvring and heaving the pushchair up the seven front steps. She’ll make chicken lasagne and baked potatoes for supper, with an unseasoned portion of lasagne cooked separately for the twins.

  Over the next days the weather is utterly miserable, the cold bitter, there’s no chance of getting the twins to the park. They have periods of running in the house, all around the ground floor rooms, kept from the stairs by a latched gate they will soon be able to climb, or rather haul themselves up and fall over. They remain very focused
on their mother, so Ann concentrates on dealing with the washing, in all its stages, and supper. Chloe has strategically-placed buckets for when nausea overcomes her. Jo and Chris both from time to time lean over a bucket and say, “Jo—or Chris—being sick,” making movements as though their stomachs were heaving. “Mummy’s being sick,” said cheerfully by either Chloe or Ann or occasionally Joshua, becomes part of their days.

  Another of Chloe's friends comes to visit, with yet another young child. They all live locally, and walk to each others’ places. Most of their conversation is about the children, their houses, their husbands. Apart from saying hello Ann doesn’t try to take part.

  She goes to the Tate to see the Turners that had wowed her on an earlier visit, and to the British Museum, where she wanders aimlessly, unable to settle her interest on any era or display, and finds herself thinking about what she will cook that night. There are no new art events. The city is beautiful in its own way.

  Chloe rests as much as she can and isn't going to her doctor until ten weeks, she believes in letting nature alone for those first, crucial weeks. Ann gets the habit of going to her attic room after she and Joshua have cleaned up from supper, and keeping up with her emailing home, then reading. She doesn't feel any need to go out in the evenings. Email and facebook contact with her friends at home is enough to counter any loneliness for lesbians, for now anyway.

  One night as they are loading the dishwasher Joshua suggests a cuzzie beer.

  “You and Chloe could go,” she counters. “You never go out together.”

  “Nothing like kids to ruin your social life. I'll ask her.” He comes back a moment later. “She says thanks but no thanks, she's half asleep in front of television.”