On the other hand, once the adoption was legally formalized, she would make it clear that Kitty could continue to see the child whenever she wished. Surely, Rosa thought as she drove, far too fast, down Carradine Street, the triple thrust of her argument (huge savings, no responsibility, ease of access) must win the day. She had already forgotten her previous assumption—that Kitty’s maternal instinct was minus nil—which made immediate nonsense of hook number three.
And as things turned out, none of the previous dialectic was of use anyway. Because at the moment of pressing the bell at the house and hearing it jangle in that so-familiar way in the sitting room, all Rosa’s careful reasoning evaporated and she was left, trembling with the urgency of her appeal, on the doorstep. And when Kitty opened the door and said “Hi” and clicked back to the kitchen in her feathered mules, Rosa, mouth desert dry, followed floundering with uncertainty.
The kitchen was just the same. This was both a surprise and a comfort. She had been sure that Esslyn must have changed things around. That Kitty must have wanted new furniture, wallpaper, tiles. Apparently not. Rosa looked at the eggy, fat-smeared plate and the frying pan on the burner and noted the lingering fragrance of the full English breakfast. All this grease couldn’t be doing the baby much good, she thought proprietorially. Which brought her back to her reasons for being there. As Kitty removed a butter dish, its contents liberally garnished with burned toast crumbs and smears of marmalade, Rosa reviewed the situation.
Momentarily she wondered if she should throw herself on Kitty’s mercy. Reveal how she’d always longed for a child and that this might be her last chance. Almost immediately this idea was rejected. Kitty would just give the thumbs down. She would enjoy that. Seeing Rosa on her bed of nails. The thing to do—why hadn’t she thought of it before?—was to offer money. Rosa had five thousand pounds in the bank and some jewelery she could sell. That was the way. Not to let Kitty see that she was desperate but to remain calm, even casual. Just to slip the subject almost lightheartedly into the conversation. Won’t be much fun coping with a child by yourself. Or, I expect you feel differently about having a baby now that Esslyn’s gone. Kitty removed more crumbs from the table by the simple expedient of sweeping them onto the floor with the sleeve of her negligee, and asked Rosa to take the weight off her feet.
As soon as she did so, Rosa felt the move was a mistake. She felt uneasy and at a disadvantage. Kitty put the frying pan on top of the dishes already in the sink and turned on the hot tap. The water hit the handle of the pan and sprayed upward and all over the tiles. Over her shoulder Kitty said, “And how’s dear old Earnest?”
She always referred to Earnest in this manner, as if he were a shambling family pet on the verge of extinction. An ancient sheepdog, perhaps. Or elderly spaniel with rapidly stiffening joints. The point of such remarks, Rosa knew, had always been to force a comparison between her husband and Kitty’s, the man Rosa had loved and lost. Normally it evoked a response of irritation shot through with bitterness. Now, noticing these dual emotions twitching into life, Rosa made a determined effort to repress them. Apart from not wishing to give Kitty the satisfaction of knowing she’d drawn blood, any feelings of antagonism would assuredly work against a successful outcome to the mission. And, Rosa comforted herself, whatever Earnest’s shortcomings in the youth and glamour stakes, he did have the undeniable advantage of still being alive. That should give him some sort of edge, if nothing else.
She settled back a little more easily in her chair. Outside the waxen dark green leaves and scarlet berries of a cotoneaster framed the kitchen window through which the winter sun streamed, further gilding Kitty’s already extremely honeyed curls. It was intensely hot. The central heating was on full blast, and Rosa sweltered in her heavy cape. Kitty was wearing a shortie cream satin nightie styled like a toga, slit almost to the waist on one side, and a spotted blue chiffon cover-up with little knots of silver ribbons. And not a knicker leg in sight, observed Rosa sourly. And her stomach still as flat as a pancake. She noticed with some satisfaction that, without her armory of blushers and shaders and pencils and lipsticks, Kitty’s face looked almost plain.
Kitty dried her hands on the dish towel and, leaning against a radiator for extra warmth, turned to face her visitor. She had no intention of offering coffee or tea. Nor any other form of sustenance. Kitty did not go in for female friendships at the best of times, and certainly not with women old enough to be her mother and with a hefty ax to grind. Now, watching Rosa’s greasy, large-pored nose, which seemed to Kitty to be positively quivering under the urge to poke itself into matters that were none of its business, she braced herself against what she was sure would be a great slobbery wash of false sympathy and sickly reminiscence.
Rosa took a deep breath and shuddered under her heather-mixture bivouac. She felt immobilized by the complexity of her thoughts. She saw now that she should have blurted out the reason for her visit, no matter in what garbled and emotional form, the minute she entered the house. The longer she sat in the untidy, homely kitchen (only a high chair needed to complete this picture), the more bizarre did her request appear. And Kitty was no help. She had made no welcoming gesture; not even the one regarded as virtually mandatory in any English home when a visitor calls. Realizing she had missed the boat on the instant-clarification front, Rosa had just decided to approach the subject snakily, starting with a formal expression of sympathy, when Kitty spoke.
“What’s on your mind, then?”
Rosa took a huge lungful of air and, not daring to look at Kitty, said, “I was thinking now that Esslyn’s dead, maybe you wouldn’t feel able to keep the baby, and was wondering if I could adopt it.”
Silence. Timidly Rosa looked up. As she did so, Kitty lowered her head and covered her face with her hands. She made a small sound, a little plaintive moan, and her shoulders trembled. At this Rosa, who was basically a kindhearted person, experienced a spontaneous welling up of sympathy. How callous, how imperceptive she had been to assume that, just because Kitty made no public display of sorrow she was unmoved by the shocking fact and manner of her husband’s death. Now, observing the thin shoulders shaking in despair, Rosa pushed her chair back and, awkwardly holding out her arms, made a tentative, somewhat clumsy move to comfort the sobbing figure. But Kitty shook off such consolation and crossed to the open door where, her back to Rosa, she started to make terrible jackdaw squawks and cries.
Rooted to the spot, impotent, distressed, and self-castigating, Rosa could only wait, her hands held beseechingly, palms upward, continuing to offer solace should it be eventually required. At last the dreadful noises stopped and Kitty turned, her face puffy and red traces of tears on her cheeks, her shoulders still feebly vibrating. And it was then Rosa realized, with a tremendous shock of outrage and indignation, that Kitty had been laughing.
Now, shaking her head apparently with disbelief at the pricelessness of the situation, Kitty pulled a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her negligee, mopped her streaming eyes, and dropped it on the floor. Her shoulders finally at rest and her breathing quieted, she stared across at Rosa, and Rosa, still mortified but starting to get healthily angry, stared back.
Everything became very still. And quiet. A faucet dripped, making a dull, soft-spreading sound. Already, only seconds into this embarrassing and faintly ridiculous confrontation, it was getting on Rosa’s nerves. She stood (she would have said stood her ground), and could think of nothing to say. In any case, she felt it was not up to her to speak. She had described why she was there, and invoked in Kitty an explosion of grotesque mirth. Now, it was up to Kitty to either explain her behavior or bring the interview to an end.