time to go home, but David isn’t ready to do that. He wants to avoid his wife and her watchful eyes a little longer. It’s as though Antonia knows. Her brown eyes are huge when she looks at him: perceptive, worried, knowing. ‘Robbing Peter to pay Paul?’ they say. ‘Don’t do it, David.’
Eyes like saucers, he thinks, to deflect his churning thoughts. The Tinderbox story. I have a wife with eyes like saucers. Who would have thought?
He picks up a gilt-framed photograph from the desk and smiles. It’s of three generations of Proctors: Charlie, his father and his son Rupert, with only a nose in common. He remembers Charlie’s father well. Harold, Harry to his friends, so much like Charlie, fair and genial, old fashioned to a fault. He thinks fondly of Charlie’s mother, Valerie, a horsey woman both in hobby and looks who is still going strong. Always such a warm and welcoming family, eager to draw him into the fold of their love when his parents were absent.
‘What would I have done without you, eh?’ he says to the photograph.
A memory strikes him, of being clutched to Valerie’s huge bosom. She was wearing a coat with a real fur collar and it made him sneeze. He’d been holding back the tears and the sneeze was such a relief.
‘I was only a boy,’ David mutters. The sneeze allowed him to cry.
He wonders when he last looked at a photograph of his own parents. Indeed, does he still have any? Has he ever shown one to Antonia? He doubts it; she’s never asked. Their meeting at a night club and their simple yet heady marriage only months later at the registry office was like a natural start. They’ve never looked back to a life before then. It seems to suit them both.
And yet he’d adored his parents. He can still vividly recall the frenzied beating he’d given Smith-Bates at boarding school when he’d taunted that his father shagged his mother from behind. David called him a bloody great liar, told him to shut his ugly face. His father was stern but kind. He was certain his dad would never do such a repugnant thing to his flame-haired flawless mother, but Smith-Bates refused to back down. So David struck out, fuelled by longing and need for his parents, who were in Singapore at that time. When he was forcefully peeled away from Smith-Bates, the master asked him to explain why he’d done it, but he couldn’t bear to repeat the profanity and so instead faced the consequences. Even as the lash was brought down on his small palms he was resolute. His pride at defending his mother’s honour had been worth it.
‘Live with honour. Die with pride,’ he remembers, looking at his grown-up palms and desperately wishing the adult could match those words.
He glances at his watch and a thought occurs to him. He remembers Charlie’s chuckle when he opened the desk drawer to show David his stash. ‘There for times of trouble and strife, David!’
Leaning down he pulls open the drawer on the bottom right. The Glenfiddich bottle is more than half full. ‘To trouble and strife! Cheers, Charlie,’ he declares to the photograph, settling back down in Charlie’s chair and taking his first liberal swig.
The ringtone penetrates the evening silence and Antonia answers immediately from her bedside telephone.
‘Hello, Chinue, love. How are you keeping?’ Candy Farrell asks in her small voice.
‘It’s Antonia, remember? I’m fine. How are you, Mum?’
‘I was wondering if you were coming to visit. I haven’t seen you for so long …’
‘I was there on Sunday. I brought you some lovely flowers. And I’m coming again this Sunday, just as usual.’
‘Will Jimmy be coming?’
Smoothing her hair, Antonia tenses, but keeps her voice even. ‘No, Mum. Dad’s dead. Remember?’
‘Are you sure, love? I thought I saw him.’
‘I’m absolutely sure, Mum. EastEnders will be on the telly soon. Why don’t you check the television page and I’ll see you on Sunday.’
Antonia replaces the receiver carefully and gazes at the tree whose branch taps at the shuttered bedroom window, reminding her to stand and view the garden from upstairs, to appreciate its size and splendour and to remember just how lucky she is.
‘Human beings, we’re all different, either inside or out,’ her mother used to say. ‘But we’re all the Lord’s children. There’s good in everyone.’
She used to be full of wise words, her mum, even when she was bowed and bruised. But now that same person telephones her two or three times a day, forgetting a conversation she’s had only moments earlier, sometimes completely oblivious of her daughter’s weekly visits and yet still seeing the man who had no good in him at all.
She turns away from the window with a sigh, recovers her book from the pillow and continues to read.
Olivia is at the sink with her back turned as Mike enters the warm kitchen. He’s come home from work earlier than usual and feels ridiculously nervous. A few days of staccato conversation have passed since her rollicking and he’s been saying and doing nothing on the basis of least said soonest mended. It’s one of his mother’s many wise words, though she rarely practises what she preaches. But mid-afternoon at the office today, Judith tucked her blonde bob behind her ears and gave him one of her mind-reading looks. ‘Still a crap husband?’ she asked, handing over the post for signing.
‘Possibly,’ he replied. He couldn’t help but smile as he looked at her. She was trying to find a hip on which to place her hand, but she was huge, far larger than he remembered Olivia being when pregnant. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Well, you’ve worked late the last couple of days and I haven’t seen you come back from lunch with a Thornton’s bag or with a huge bunch of M&S flowers, and you don’t seem the Interflora type of guy to me.’
Mike felt himself flush.
‘Oh God, don’t tell me you resorted to flowers from Netto. That’s grounds for divorce!’
He sat back and raked a hand through his hair. ‘To be honest, I’ve done nothing. Olivia hasn’t said anything and I thought it might make things worse.’
So, Judith put him straight with her round, open, friendly face. She didn’t know what the problem was, but doing or saying nothing was not an option. ‘Venus and Mars and all that crap. It’s true, men and women don’t understand each other. But speaking on behalf of womankind, while chocolates and flowers don’t solve anything, they certainly help. From the way you look, my guess is that you need to clear the air. So go home early, surprise her, tell her that you love her.’
So here he is. Olivia turns from the sink just as he reaches her. She looks worn and so very pale.
‘For you,’ he says, handing over a bunch of yellow roses with a wry smile. ‘Not very imaginative, I know. It’s just a token to say sorry.’ He kisses her cheek and can sense the stifled sniggers of his girls sitting at the wooden table behind him. ‘Can we talk later?’
Olivia smiles faintly, nods and takes the flowers.
‘Aren’t you going to snog?’
‘Hannah!’
‘Well that’s what they do on the TV.’
‘I think you mean kiss, young lady,’ Olivia says. ‘I’ll put these in water.’
As Olivia moves away, Mike looks at Rachel, his face a question, but she shrugs her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispers.
‘Well, these are for you two,’ he says, pulling out two chocolate bars from his pocket and hiding them behind his back. ‘Which hand? You go first, Hannah.’
Hannah pulls at his right