Spencer's List Part 10

'What about?'

'Her cat.'

Upstairs the toilet flushed. Fran turned down the oven and put the plates in to warm. Peter ate another olive and looked at a cycling magazine. Sylvie didn't appear. Fran wiped the kitchen surfaces with the special kitchen-surface cloth and poured herself a second gla.s.s of wine. The lid of the saucepan rattled insistently as the water boiled away.

'Do you think she's all right?' asked Fran.

Peter looked up and frowned. 'Perhaps I'd better check.' He disappeared upstairs and it was nearly five minutes before he returned, this time accompanied by Sylvie. Fran was draining the broccoli and said h.e.l.lo over one shoulder as she bashed the colander vigorously against the bottom of the sink.

'Sylvie's got a bit of a headache,' said Peter in a lowered voice, looming beside her.

'Oh.' Fran gave the figure sitting at the table an apologetic look. 'Sorry.'

Sylvie, one hand to her head, smiled slightly. 'That's all right. It's very nice to meet you.'

Her voice was sweet and soft. 'It's really kind of you to cook for me.'

'Oh, well, I hope you enjoy it,' said Fran, rather awkwardly. 'Pleased to meet you too.'

It was a very quiet meal; it felt almost as if someone had turned down the volume in the house, and Fran was aware of every clunk of cutlery against china. Sylvie sat at the head of the table, with Fran and Peter on either side. She ate extremely slowly and carefully, holding the knife and fork like delicate surgical instruments and conveying one tiny morsel to her mouth at a time. She had a round, pale face, rounded grey eyes, and long straight hair of an improbable silver-gilt colour. She spoke little, but listened carefully, fixing her eyes with unwavering attention on the face of whoever was talking. At one point she coughed slightly, and Peter reacted as if to a starting-pistol, flying to the sink for a gla.s.s of water and placing it tenderly beside her plate.

'Peter says you've been having trouble with your landlord.'

Sylvie swallowed what was in her mouth, put her fork down and then very gently tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. Fran looked at her, waiting for a reply, and then noticed with a shock that the grey eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g with tears.

'Oh G.o.d, sorry, I didn't mean to '

'No, no, it doesn't matter.' Sylvie searched within the overlong sleeves of the vast green jumper she was wearing Peter's jumper, Fran suddenly realized and found a tissue with which she blotted her eyes. Peter watched, his face heavy with concern.

'It's been a really difficult week.'

'Oh dear,' said Fran, inadequately.

'He says I've got to get rid of my cat.'

'Oh,' said Fran.

'One of the other tenants has complained. Her son's got asthma and she thinks he might be allergic to cats and, to be honest, I hadn't properly read the terms of the lease and it actually says no pets.' Her eyes filled again. 'I know he's only a cat. I know it sounds silly...'

'No it doesn't,' said Peter.

'It does, I know it does.' She gave Fran a rueful, rather watery smile. 'I'm not usually stupid about animals, truly.'

'Fran likes animals,' said Peter.

'To eat,' said Fran. 'Only joking,' she added, catching his expression.

'It's just that he was a stray, so I feel he's been abandoned once already...'

'Oh right,' said Fran, feeling mean.

'So if he goes I'11 have to go too. And things have been difficult at work, one of my colleagues is ill and we're having to cover for him, so it felt like one more problem to have to cope with. But anyway ' she shrugged gamely and blew her nose ' I'm fine really. And it's lovely to come round here this evening.' She loaded a minute flake of fish onto her fork, lifted it halfway to her mouth, looked at it, and then lowered the fork back onto the plate. 'That was really delicious, Fran, but I don't think I can eat any more.'

Fran sc.r.a.ped the remains of the pie into the bin and dumped the plates into the was.h.i.+ng-up bowl. Immediately after finis.h.i.+ng her meal, Sylvie had excused herself and Peter had followed her upstairs a few minutes afterwards. Fran had no idea whether they were going to reappear or not and in the meantime a panful of plums from the farm was stewing gummily on the stove and the custard had developed a lovely thick skin. She went out into the hall and c.o.c.ked an ear up the stairs; she could just hear the low rumble of Peter's voice, but not what he was saying. She went halfway up the stairs, and a faint sobbing became audible in the gaps between the rumble. 'Anyone want pudding?' she called. There was no break in the pattern of the noise.

Iris was cleaning out the cupboard under the sink. It was the kind of esoteric out-of-sight-out-of-mind housework with which she didn't normally bother, but the u-bend had developed a slow leak and a sludge of semi-liquid was.h.i.+ng powder now covered the interior. She had mended the leak with gaffer tape and was sc.r.a.ping up blue gunge with a spoon when the phone rang.

'Mu-um!'

'Hang on.' She started to rinse off her hands. 'Bring the phone through to me,' she called. There was no response. Blue bubbles sluiced into the plughole.

'MU-UM, it's for you!' Robin called again, louder this time.

She shook her hands to dry them and hurried along the narrow corridor to the living room. Robin lay on the sofa, feet hanging over one end, the phone flopping in his outstretched hand.

'It's Fran.'

'Thanks.'

'No problem,' he said, as if he'd just done her a favour.

'Are you hungry?' asked Fran abruptly, as soon as she took the phone. 'Only I've got a lot of pudding on my hands. Not literally, of course.'

Walking up to Fran's front door, Iris trod on something that made a crunching noise, and she lifted her foot to see the fragments of a roof slate strewn across the path. She held out a chunk of it to Fran as she opened the door.

'Oh f.u.c.k, not another one. And it's not even windy.' Fran cast a vicious look at the roof as though suspecting it of sabotage and then ushered her in.

Iris was always struck by the amount of s.p.a.ce in Fran's house. Part of the reason was the obvious one Fran and Peter had a whole two floors rather than the botched downstairs conversion that she occupied with the boys. Admittedly her flat had a large extension out the back, containing the bathroom and a third bedroom, but it had been built prior to the days of planning regulations and therefore lacked both aesthetic pretension and the usual number of sockets, cupboards and windows.

The other part of the reason was the lack of clutter: no plastic bags in the hall, no jackets over the chairs, no copies of Viz on the floor, no ironing on the table, no school bags apparently loaded with pig iron sitting immovably in the centre of the living room. Fran's rooms were freeways; her own were permanently covered in roadworks.

'Sorry about the mess,' said Fran, as they went into the kitchen. The room smelled wonderfully of hot cinnamon, and Fran filled two bowls with stewed plums.

'Custard?'

'Yes please.'

'Wine?'

'Yes please.'

'I'm two gla.s.ses ahead of you so I'll fill you up. Aren't you normally at your dad's on a Tuesday?' she asked incuriously as she poured.

'Yes. Normally.'

Fran looked at her sharply and handed over the gla.s.s. 'What's up? Is he all right?'

Iris took a large drink of wine and considered her answer. 'He's having an affair,' she said, and the words sounded as unlikely to herself as they did to Fran.

'What?'

'I turned up at the house yesterday when he wasn't expecting me, and I think he was in bed with someone.'

'Who?'

'Mrs McHugh.'

'Who's she?'

Iris paused. 'Captain of the women's crown green bowling team.'

Fran laughed so hard that she spilled some of her wine. 'Well, good for him,' she said, raising her gla.s.s in a toast. Iris didn't reciprocate. 'What's the matter?' asked Fran.

She could hardly explain even to herself. She had spoken to no one about what had happened at the house yesterday; had been walking around in a daze, one brain-filling emotion replacing another like a Roman Candle puffing out green, then pink, then yellow smoke. And yet underneath the successive waves of amazement and bewilderment and baffled apprehension she could sense something much more complex taking shape in her mind, not yet fully constructed, but ominous in form.

'Have you ever met my father?' she asked.

'Once. The time he came round to prune your ivy. We didn't exactly chat.' Fran remembered a thin, tall, relentlessly unsmiling man, who had ripped every last rubbery stem from the garden wall and left it as naked as a bleacher.

'Well you saw that he's not someone who finds a great deal of joy in life. He's a very serious man, he always has been, and he's never had much time for... for fun.'

'And what's she like?'

'Mrs McHugh? She's... frivolous.' Fran laughed incredulously. 'She is. She almost skips around '

'How old is she?'

'Early seventies. Her first name's Tammy ' Fran snorted ' and she wears little hair slides and sings songs at the church social.' An enduring image in Iris's mind was the sight of Mrs McHugh clad in a nightie encouraging the audience to clap along as she sang 'It's nice to get up in the morning but it's nicer to stay in bed' while brandis.h.i.+ng an oversized alarm clock. 'She's the sort of person that people say "oh she's a one" about.'

'Well she obviously is a one,' said Fran, 'luring your dad to bed.'

Iris closed her eyes for a moment, trying to orientate herself in this new world, and Fran refilled her gla.s.s. 'Your mum wasn't anything like that then?'

'Oh no, nothing like that at all. My mother was very shy. Very, very shy. She hardly ever opened her mouth in public. I think she was worried about her lack of education she thought she might let Dad down if she said anything.' Or let both of them down, in fact, her autodidact husband and his swotty daughter. She had always waved aside her own genetic input, insisting that Iris 'got all her brains from her father'. In the event, of course, it had been Iris who had let everybody down, throwing away her career and closing the book on Unwin social progress for yet another generation.

'So what's the problem is it that you mind him taking up with someone else?'

'No, it's not that. At least I don't think it's that. It's...' Iris tried to pin down her thoughts. 'I think it's the first time,' she said, slowly, 'that he's ever done anything that I couldn't completely predict. It's the first time that I can ever remember him stepping outside his ' she groped for a phrase ' moral framework.'

'Is she married then? Mrs McHugh?'

Iris gaped in horror. 'Married? No, she's a widow.'

'Sorry, when you said "moral framework" I thought you meant...'

'I meant they're not married to each other.'

'Oh I see.' Fran topped their gla.s.ses up.

She didn't though, thought Iris. She liked Fran, liked her enormously, but talking to her was sometimes like talking to someone from another continent. Everything from Iris's own life had to be explained, translated. 'It's that he's broken his own rules and he's never done that before. He's always been so inflexible; he's never believed in second chances, you have to do everything exactly right the first time. He's always '

The phone rang and she jumped. Fran answered it and handed it over. 'Robin. Or Tom.'

'Hi, Mum.' It was Tom. 'Where do you keep the sticking plaster?'

'It's in the bathroom cupboard, top shelf. Why? What have you done?'

'Cut my hand.' He sounded pathetic.

'How?'

'I dropped a gla.s.s.'

'He was being a prat, Mum,' shouted Robin, in the distance.

'Well how bad is it?'

'It's about an inch long.'

'Is it still bleeding?'

'No, but I think there might be a piece of gla.s.s still in it.' He sounded (as he always did when injured, or ill) about six years old.

'Well hold it under the tap for a minute, and I'll look at it when I get home.'

'Thanks, Mum.'

She put the phone down.

'Emergency?' asked Fran.

Iris shook her head. 'He's not exactly a stoic.'

'Which one?'

'Tom.'

Fran went to the fridge and took out another bottle. 'You know, don't mention it to the boys, but I still can't tell them apart. I wish they'd get their hair cut differently.' She uncorked the wine. 'Where were we?'

Iris felt embarra.s.sed. 'I was going on about Dad. Sorry.'

'No no, don't apologize.' Fran sloshed some more wine into her gla.s.s and sat forward keenly. 'You were talking about his morals.'

'Oh.' The moment broken, she found herself suddenly reluctant to continue. Fran's eager expression made her uncomfortable; it was as though she were listening to the plot of a soap opera. Iris herself had been the focus of enough gossip in the past 'fancy that happening to Iris of all people' to want to avoid doing the same to her father.

Fran saw her hesitation. 'It's OK,' she said. 'You don't have to tell me. I'm being nosy, I know I am.'

'It's not that,' said Iris. She felt mean, and smiled to soften the severity of the moment. 'I think perhaps I need to mull it over for a while.'