His eyes were alight with horror.
‘What’s “puking”, Mummy?’ asked Hope.
Elizabeth didn’t answer. She looked sorrowfully at Mr Richards. He smiled and turned to Hope.
‘Puking’s throwing up, sweetie,’ he said.
Hope nodded.
‘Sounds like it,’ said Gordon. ‘Sounds gross.’
‘You’d better get her to the hospital, then,’ said Elizabeth in a tone of voice that suggested they might never go at all unless she urged them to. Let’s get this episode over with, she was thinking, seizing the initiative as if it had been her own all along. She smiled graciously at the chef. ‘I can wait for my coffee, Pedro; it’s no problem. I’ll watch over the children and spend a little time with them.’
As Pedro took off his apron and rushed out after Mr Richards, Elizabeth picked up the telephone. ‘Shall we call Daddy, children? I’ll bet he’s waiting to hear from us.’
She paced around the kitchen with one hand on her slim hip, the phone jammed against her ear, ringing forlornly. Then she looked at her watch and counted off the five-hour time difference on her fingers. It’s nearly eleven there, she thought, why hasn’t he called us? Maybe his flight into Heathrow was delayed.
She dialled both numbers again, the cell phone and the house. No answer. Then Elizabeth made herself put the phone down. Leave it alone, she told herself, he’s somewhere. Eventually he’ll call.
And she repeated it out loud to the children, smiling through her frustration and her sense, all over again, of not being missed.
‘Daddy’s somewhere,’ she said, ‘and he’ll call eventually.’
‘Is he taking care of Puck?’
‘Don’t worry about Puck, Gordon. Francine will take care of Puck.’ Grimly she thought to herself, God knows, I’ve paid her enough.
The gleaming, cavernous kitchen seemed chilly to Elizabeth. There was no food cooking, the wide counters were empty. Row upon row of saucepans and pots hung clean and ready, row upon row of knives. Industrial, uninviting. This could never be her domain. She budged in between the children’s stools, and circled her arms around them, giving them each a squeeze.
‘Are you tired, you two?’
They didn’t answer, recognizing this as a trick question.
So Elizabeth tried, ‘Do you want anything else to eat?’
Gordon said, ‘What else can we have?’
She stepped away and opened the refrigerator. What she saw inside made her feel even colder; she was reluctant to break in on the chef’s mysterious, suspended preparations—heads of lettuce, a whole pimpled yellow chicken, meat marinating in something red with yellow slicks of fat hardened on the surface, packages wrapped in white paper and sealed with light brown tape, the prices scribbled on the outside in waxy red crayon. She made herself open a drawer at the bottom of the refrigerator. She couldn’t engage with any of it—could hardly recognize it as appetizing or imagine why anyone would want to eat it.
‘There’s fruit,’ she said without expression. ‘I can make you some fruit. Or salad? Do you want me to wash some lettuce for you?’ She shivered, thinking of the icy water.
Gordon said, ‘That’s okay. Thanks.’
Hope piped up, ‘I like grapes and strawberries for fruit.’
‘Okay, grapes.’ Elizabeth went to the sink with the plastic bag of grapes, rinsed them and shook them off and brought them to the counter. She didn’t open a drawer or a cupboard to look for a colander or a cloth or a napkin or a plate.
‘I don’t know where anything is,’ she explained, as if the children might have views on her lack of culinary commitment.
Beads of water clung to the grapes and spread over the counter where she put them down. Her hands were wet. She shook them and the drops fell on the floor. She wondered why Pedro was taking so long.
Hope plucked the grapes off one at a time, munching, staring into space. Then she said, ‘We couldn’t find any horsies, Mummy.’
Elizabeth said nothing. She felt a flush of anxiety rise under her eyes.
‘We looked in all the fields.’
‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Where’s my pony?’
‘Tomorrow we’ll find out all about ponies,’ she said vaguely. ‘It’s late now, and, anyway, Mr Richards who manages the farm went with Norma. Remember?’ There, she thought, no farm manager. Settle down, Hope.
She looked at her watch again. She thought about turning on the lights. It wasn’t dark yet, but the sun had gone beyond the corner of the house. The kitchen seemed dim, the children puny, marooned in it. She wondered how the television worked. That would brighten things up. Then she caught herself: get a life, she thought, by which she meant to remind herself that television was for people who had absolutely nothing better to do, for the lonely, the weak. She was not ready for last resorts. Not by any means.
There must be a newspaper somewhere which she could look at. And she cast her eyes around the room. It was bare, bleached, a place of work, without sin or distraction. Without home comfort.
And her thoughts veered in a new direction. What kind of mother is so restless, so impatient, that she reads the newspaper when she ought to be looking after her children?
Elizabeth sighed. How she longed to be a good mother. It was something she really cared about and could entirely justify. But how was it done? So much of it seemed to be standing by while the children did what they would do anyway even if she wasn’t standing by. How could she engage with them, really? How should she? They could carry you anywhere, unplanned, into chaos, wasted time, and Elizabeth felt it must be right to let them do that, in small things anyway. It wasn’t all about exercising her own will. It couldn’t be. Children called for self-immolation, for non-existence of some kind.
Was it because she cared so much that she found it so hard—getting inside their heads? But she knew that wasn’t it. She knew that when she got close to imagining what things looked like through Gordon’s eyes, through Hope’s eyes, she couldn’t actually bear it, the desperate emotions, the pell-mell striving, the life-and-death fussing which never achieved anything. Childhood wasn’t something she could do again. She had fought too hard to grow up herself. She stood back from childhood. She soothed it down. She skirted around it.
‘Let’s go upstairs and have a bath.’ She nuzzled Gordon’s neck.
Hope asked, ‘Do we have to go to bed now, Mummy? Before Norma gets back from the doctor?’
‘Hope likes Norma at bedtime, Mummy,’ Gordon announced.
‘I know,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But I can read you a story tonight and tuck you in.’
Hope looked away, frowning.
‘And maybe Norma will be back in time. You can surprise her by being all ready.’ Elizabeth tried to sound encouraging; she tried not to command.
In a noble voice, Gordon said, ‘Norma’d like that, Hopie, wouldn’t she?’ Gordon got off his stool and put his arms around Hope and lifted her down to the floor. ‘Be good for Mummy, Hopie. Mummy gets tired.’
He preened for his mother, knowing that he was being the angel grown-ups liked to praise. But Gordon had no idea just how big a hole he was trying to fill. He was like the little Dutch boy with a finger in the dike.
So they had the baths and the stories, and Elizabeth took off her shoes and climbed into Hopie’s little pink and white bed and the three of them nestled there sleepily like puppies. They were slightly hungry and they were numb with fatigue; it made them weak, cozy, gentle. After a while, when both of the children had fallen