“I hope it’s alright, but this is just a very little something, I had a pattern and I just thought, something cozy. Good for snuggling on the sofa.”
The gift turned out to be a white knitted blanket with a perfect rainbow cabled into its center. “It’s gorgeous,” Gwen breathed. “This is amazing, I can’t believe you can do this! Thank you so much.” She hugged Joan, who flushed, looking pleased.
“Oh, it’s only practice it needs. I can teach you if you’d like; you’d pick up cable in no time. Phil told me that you liked rainbows, so.”
“I do, and I love knitting, I just haven’t had that much practice. I do mostly polymer clay, and a tiny bit of oils. But knitting’s cool ’cause you can do it while you do other stuff, like watching TV or whatever. I’ve been sitting at home a lot for the last few weeks; I could have knitted myself, like, a whole house.”
Joan’s expression softened. “You know, when I first married I had baby fever, and I thought it would be easy-peasy. I got pregnant straightaway and at eight weeks I had a mis.” Julia froze, horrified. Gwen was looking down at the folded blanket on the table, unmoving, and it was impossible to see her face. “The hardest time of my life, till then. And back then no one talked about it, we were just meant to get on with it, pull your socks up, try for another, make it right that way. I don’t know why anyone thinks that’s the answer; it isn’t. Or isn’t for everyone. I didn’t want to try again so we didn’t, not for two more years. I was scared that maybe my body couldn’t do it and it would all happen the same way. And I was very sad for a time. So sad. But then I started to get better and then all those years later when I lost my Steve all I could think was, ‘We had those precious years together first, just the two of us, just to be married.’ And I’ve got my boys, and that time we had, back then I wouldn’t have chosen it for all the world I was so desperate to have a family, but they were beautiful years. We got to know each other. We grew up. I can’t wish it differently.” She ran her fingers idly over each colored arc of the rainbow, in turn. “I like rainbows, too, you know. They’re hopeful. My first Schnauzer dam was called Rainbow because she had these lovely stripy markings, not really what you’d want in a pure Schnauzer, very odd; that’s why I got her in the end; the breeder said no one would take a funny-looking scrap like that so she was left on the shelf, but in the Poodle crosses it just came out beautifully. And what a temperament. Twelve, she lived to. She was my precious girl, she saved me, after Steve. She saved me.”
Julia was cringing, waiting for some unforgivable rudeness, and felt a rush of anger when Gwen raised her head and she saw a tear slip down her face. But Gwen was looking at Joan intently. She said, “We had Mole, and he saved me, too.”
“They just know, don’t they, dogs,” Joan agreed, and she and Gwen smiled at each other.
45.
A, a, b, c, c. Oxford would not take him. Imperial would not take him. It was University College London, another world-class institution, and it was unimaginable, the end of the world. Controlled while on the line to Nathan’s housemaster, James had put down the phone, paused, and then slammed his palm into the doorframe, leaving a fine spiderweb of cracks beneath the heel of his hand. The next minutes were a blur, from which Julia could only recall the gist of her own soothing, reasonable words—she had talked about perspective, about difficult circumstances, about a sense of achievement, personal fulfillment, and who you actually were as a human being mattering more than historic names—but only moments later found herself screaming that he should think himself bloody lucky his child was being educated at all when her own child’s life had come close to ruin; somehow James was roaring that she wanted Nathan to fail just because Gwen made destructive choices; her outraged denial of this indefensible accusation had been loud, but had not been convincing to either of them.
She hadn’t wanted Nathan to fail. But Gwen had suffered, and Nathan’s impermeable cheer, his impending success, the new stage he was impatient to begin had all filled her with envy. He seemed shatterproof, and she could not quite let go of its unfairness. It was Gwen’s strength and affliction to feel to the quick even a glancing blow, while Nathan had been so effectively in denial about its existence that the loss of his child made no lasting impression. And now to grieve for something so petty—how could James truly think a university so important? It was ludicrous. What message did James’s own disappointment convey to his child about what mattered in life? She would have liked a little less emphasis placed on the boy’s curriculum vitae, a little more placed on his character. No. Julia could not pity Nathan. She could not even like him, even in these last weeks when his devotion to Gwen had apparently returned, and redoubled.
James and Julia went to bed in a frosty silence, unaccustomed and distressing to both of them. They had never before raised their voices in anger and it was only now, after the smashing of that precious, celebrated myth (we are a couple who always speak with gentleness, we are a couple who sleep each night face to face, we are a couple unlike other couples) that each had realized the wonder of it. After all, they had weathered more treacherous storms. As parents they made very different choices, true, but James had proven himself wise and generous to his marrow, a better man even than she’d known. And Julia’s gratitude, above all else, had never left her. She had expected to live the rest of her life without love and had found James, and had never before lost sight of that revelation. But tonight she had abandoned her gratitude when James had seemed to forget his own. He made it clear he blamed Gwen. An act of sabotage. Had he really said that? Not quite, but almost.
? ? ?
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, she woke to find that they had moved together in sleep and were entwined, arms and legs wrapped tightly around one another, the sheets kicked off and entangled at their feet. James was sleepily kissing her face, her eyelids, her mouth, and she had begun to cry and to whisper frantic words of love and of apology before it began to dawn that what had roused them both was furious shouting, somewhere in the house. They froze, pressed tightly chest to chest, breath held as if sharing a narrow hiding place. Against her cheek Julia felt James furrow his brow as he listened. He dropped his forehead against her collarbone, and rolled over with an exhausted groan. Julia fumbled on the floor for her dressing gown and followed James downstairs. As she passed her practice room the door opened and Saskia emerged, sleep-tousled and squinting, mumbling something indistinct.