Alan’s living room in Thornleigh when the children were in their early teens to find the whole family sitting on their ugly, squashy vinyl couches massaging each other’s bare feet while they watched television. Paul and Leonie and Ruth and Alan, all in a sort of distracted, fleshy chain of idle fondling and stroking. Wendy had not known where to look. It had seemed to her obscene. Alan knew it, and enjoyed her discomfort. He called out to her, Siddown, Wendy. Want a foot rub? and had laughed at her prim smile, her stiff, bodily revulsion.
When Ruth’s children came to Wendy and Jim’s house there was always a dinner table, and serviettes, and sometimes (not always; they were not pretentious) a decanter. She had never been pretentious or prim, but in Ruth’s house she was made to feel it, repelled by what was natural to Ruth and Alan, and battered by their hardhearted jokes.
When Ruth and Alan came to Wendy’s house the tables were turned, but Wendy took care—Jim did not need to, it came effortlessly to him—to treat them generously. She was careful to instil a sense of warmth and comfortable, well-travelled chaos about the house. Nothing was untouchable. The children were encouraged to pick things up, even the most delicate things: the dried seahorse they had found on a beach in Sri Lanka, the little blue bird’s egg from an orchard in Puglia. She and the children would hover over the things, their heads touching, and she would say to them, One day you must go there. We might even take you.
Once, long ago, Ruth had said to Wendy in a grave, warning voice: ‘They’re my children, you know.’ And Wendy had not said anything. She had not said, Yes but you don’t own them, they can make up their own minds.
She had never said it to Jim, or even acknowledged it fully to herself, but in some hazy depths of her future Wendy had hoped she and Jim, in giving to the children without expectation, in standing back and urging them out into the world, would be rewarded. She saw now she had hoped Ruth’s children would, of their own adult volition, choose to become Jim and Wendy’s children too. Or even, perhaps, instead.
Wendy was shocked at the raw clarity of this admission, here in the dark room. But the disgrace of it was immediately extinguished by the much larger, cold fact that things had not turned out that way. For the fact was that once they left home, Ruth’s children quickly drifted away and hardly ever saw Jim and Wendy at all.
And then, two years ago, Wendy had turned over in the night and reached out, as she often did, to lay her palm flat over Jim’s calm, sleeping back. And she had found it stone cold.
She was filled with dread again, here in the room.
She reached out and took hold of the little plastic tub, and clutched it in her fist beneath the pillow.
Ruth peered mournfully at the menu, and Leonie leaned back in her chair. They were having lunch in the little beachside taverna where the wedding would be held in two days’ time. There were tables and wicker chairs set on a concrete slab, in the shade of a large awning. All around them were olive trees, and musty yellow grasses, and across the pale gravel track of the road was a grey-pebbled beach, a bank of deep turquoise water, the sky.
Wendy watched her niece across the table.
Ruth and Wendy had met Leonie down on the waterfront, where the boat masts tinkled and sang, and motorbikes buzzed along the dusty road. Seeing her from a distance, Wendy was filled with a rush of love. Despite the adult facts of Leonie’s life—her own children growing up, a bad divorce and her job in the upper echelons of a large bank—here, standing in the sun with the sea behind her, one hand shading her eyes and the other arm waving vigorously in the air, Leonie still seemed the lanky, eager teenager Wendy had drawn into her arms so often.
She hurried ahead of Ruth across the street to greet her niece, calling, ‘Leonie!’, and holding her arms wide.
But
When Ruth’s children came to Wendy and Jim’s house there was always a dinner table, and serviettes, and sometimes (not always; they were not pretentious) a decanter. She had never been pretentious or prim, but in Ruth’s house she was made to feel it, repelled by what was natural to Ruth and Alan, and battered by their hardhearted jokes.
When Ruth and Alan came to Wendy’s house the tables were turned, but Wendy took care—Jim did not need to, it came effortlessly to him—to treat them generously. She was careful to instil a sense of warmth and comfortable, well-travelled chaos about the house. Nothing was untouchable. The children were encouraged to pick things up, even the most delicate things: the dried seahorse they had found on a beach in Sri Lanka, the little blue bird’s egg from an orchard in Puglia. She and the children would hover over the things, their heads touching, and she would say to them, One day you must go there. We might even take you.
Once, long ago, Ruth had said to Wendy in a grave, warning voice: ‘They’re my children, you know.’ And Wendy had not said anything. She had not said, Yes but you don’t own them, they can make up their own minds.
She had never said it to Jim, or even acknowledged it fully to herself, but in some hazy depths of her future Wendy had hoped she and Jim, in giving to the children without expectation, in standing back and urging them out into the world, would be rewarded. She saw now she had hoped Ruth’s children would, of their own adult volition, choose to become Jim and Wendy’s children too. Or even, perhaps, instead.
Wendy was shocked at the raw clarity of this admission, here in the dark room. But the disgrace of it was immediately extinguished by the much larger, cold fact that things had not turned out that way. For the fact was that once they left home, Ruth’s children quickly drifted away and hardly ever saw Jim and Wendy at all.
And then, two years ago, Wendy had turned over in the night and reached out, as she often did, to lay her palm flat over Jim’s calm, sleeping back. And she had found it stone cold.
She was filled with dread again, here in the room.
She reached out and took hold of the little plastic tub, and clutched it in her fist beneath the pillow.
Ruth peered mournfully at the menu, and Leonie leaned back in her chair. They were having lunch in the little beachside taverna where the wedding would be held in two days’ time. There were tables and wicker chairs set on a concrete slab, in the shade of a large awning. All around them were olive trees, and musty yellow grasses, and across the pale gravel track of the road was a grey-pebbled beach, a bank of deep turquoise water, the sky.
Wendy watched her niece across the table.
Ruth and Wendy had met Leonie down on the waterfront, where the boat masts tinkled and sang, and motorbikes buzzed along the dusty road. Seeing her from a distance, Wendy was filled with a rush of love. Despite the adult facts of Leonie’s life—her own children growing up, a bad divorce and her job in the upper echelons of a large bank—here, standing in the sun with the sea behind her, one hand shading her eyes and the other arm waving vigorously in the air, Leonie still seemed the lanky, eager teenager Wendy had drawn into her arms so often.
She hurried ahead of Ruth across the street to greet her niece, calling, ‘Leonie!’, and holding her arms wide.
But
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