When they met she had been raising Gwen alone for five years, with the volatile intensity of hostages long held together. He had come to Julia for piano lessons and she had found, over time, that her weeks began to shape themselves around his classes. He had an easy charm and made her laugh. With a series of caveats she eventually agreed to coffee, ostensibly to discuss his musical progress (which was poor, if dogged). On their first date, timed to coincide with Gwen’s Geography field trip to study glaciated landscapes around Keswick, Julia had sat, prim and awkward and resistant, had spoken little but had drunk a great deal of red wine, and had eventually launched herself upon James in the taxi home with an alarming and volcanic hunger, and had spoken her first honest, unguarded words to him, hungover and ashamed the next morning. This was an English first date, as she remembered it. To James, its speed affirmed his growing conviction that they were meant to be together. For they were meant to be together. He was all she’d never dared to want.
Until that time, Gwen had been absently polite when James arrived each week—just another of her mother’s students traipsing to the first-floor music room with Chopin nocturnes and a mediocre hand span—but overnight had sworn him mortal enemy, blood-deep rival, her father’s bitter adversary and her own. She had lost one parent, and would not yield her mother without a fight. Julia feared Gwen and feared for her, and had never before withstood her daughter’s rages. But she had uncovered a new, accidental source of strength: she had fallen in love. Despite the obstacles, James brought sunshine and she had begun to believe, with his help, that her own happiness could start to heal her daughter. This new relationship was entirely different from her marriage, and for that she was grateful. It made it simpler, somehow, to find for James a chamber in a heart that had for so long been only Gwen’s. James encouraged Julia to relax, to take him for granted, to believe that he was hers to grow old with, but she would not. Such wasteful complaisance would be unforgivable when their luck was too extraordinary. That their two fragile human hearts continued to beat each hour she knew to be a miracle. Joy was a passing alignment of stars, a flash of sun burning gold flames on water before the clouds came. Julia knew life to be a series of calamities. She waited for the piano to fall, the tornado to strike, and in the meantime her own pure happiness thrilled and frightened her. If only Gwen didn’t hate him so much.
? ? ?
JULIA CAME DOWN to find both children already in the kitchen, still in pajamas, still deftly, stubbornly ignoring each other. Nathan stood spooning porridge into his mouth before the open fridge door, staring into its cavern with steady interest, as if watching television. He had not yet styled his hair, which meant a lengthy tenure in the bathroom lay ahead. It stood electrified in thick dark tufts above his dark brows, and his milky complexion was slightly roughened by excessive unnecessary optimistic shaving. Julia had not yet grown accustomed to the boy’s minute interest in and attention to his own appearance, which far outstripped her daughter’s daily maintenance. The other day she had come upon him sprawled on the sofa while his girlfriend, Valentina, iced and plucked his eyebrows. He had waved in lordly greeting, unembarrassed.
Gwen lay extended on the tiled floor beside Mole, stroking one of the Labrador’s black silky ears and whispering apologies for the upcoming disturbance. Mole yawned hugely in reply, black wax lips contracted, long pink tongue extended and curling upward. Gwen took this to be the end of the conversation and stood up. She was taller than her mother, taller even than Nathan. She had the alien, angular proportions of a fashion model, Julia knew, and desperately hoped the idea would never occur to her. In any case, Gwen moved not with grace but with clumsy, gangling awkwardness. It would be charitable to believe that she had yet to learn her own proportions, that she’d simply grown too quickly, but she had been almost six foot tall since she was thirteen—three years, now—and still she bumped into walls, and tripped over invisible objects, and banged her knees beneath tables. Today she had piled her exuberant red curls on her head and skewered the fat knot with a striped black-and-yellow pencil. She bent to brush her knees, vigorously. Her glasses slipped down her nose and she pushed them back up with her knuckle.
“Must you?”
“Must I what?”
“Darling, you’re getting dog hair all over the kitchen.”
Gwen gave a last swipe at her pajama bottoms. “It’s not my fault he sheds. Oh! So listen, I found my black jeans, they were—duh, duh duh!—in my school bag. The mystery is solved.”
Behind her Nathan had begun to whistle “Yankee Doodle,” softly, out of tune. Julia carried the kettle to the sink, fantasizing about coffee and silence. “Good morning, Nathan,” she said, in his direction. Then to Gwen, remembering, “Have you got the dog stuff together for Grandpa?”
Gwen nodded toward the door. “There. He said just bring food and tablets, he’d use his own bowls.”
Nathan was still gazing into the fridge. Misty cold expensive air reached Julia. Eventually he extracted a basket of raspberries, which he then began to plop one by one into the saucepan of remaining porridge bubbling over on the hob. Julia averted her eyes. She had stayed up late last night, cleaning the kitchen.
“Oatmeal?” he offered, extending the saucepan toward her.
“No, thank you.”
“I might have some,” said Gwen, freed by her mother’s presence to speak to him directly. “But you’re meant to wash raspberries, they’re covered in stuff.”
“I wouldn’t take undue risks in that case,” said Nathan, tipping the mess into his own bowl. He scraped the pan then set it, empty and encrusted, back on the hob. Their methods varied but on balance the children were equally rude to one another, and James had told Julia he thought they could be safely left to duke it out between themselves. Privately, she was inclined to blame Nathan, who goaded.
Julia sipped scalding coffee and went through her list again. The windows had been done; she had taken out the rubbish but there would be more generated by the children; something needed to be done about the heating. James would happily do it all when he returned, but she had grown used to running her household alone, and could not bring herself to tempt fate by depending upon him. They were really leaving, and it would soon become clear whether this idea of a family trip had been foolhardy or inspired.
Nathan took out a chopping board and announced his intention to make a vegetable omelet, following this with the news that he had never attempted an omelet before, but how hard, after all, could it be? It was important to travel on a good, square meal. He was back in the fridge, taking out eggs, butter, milk, tomatoes, several zucchini, and the whole cheese drawer, which Julia knew from experience was almost impossible to get back onto its plastic runners once it had been removed. Had James been here he would have put a robust and efficient kibosh on this plan as Nathan was unlikely to starve between Gospel Oak and Terminal Five, and had not yet finished packing. But James was not yet back from his jog, and Julia had so far avoided disciplining or even advising his son. She looked at her watch. The morning was slipping from her grasp, and they still had to drop the dog with Philip.
2.