— You’re breakening it!
Leah looks at the daisy chain. Naomi is correct: Nat has breakened it. Now Spike finishes the job, snatching it and scattering the pieces back over the lawn. The screaming starts up. Leah assumes the bland smile of child appreciation. Frank stands up and gathers a kicking child under each arm.
— They’ll be going to church school, for our sins.
Frank’s default mode with Leah is a sort of self-parody. Leah thwarts him by faking innocence, forcing him to spell out whatever he is trying to say obliquely.
— Church school? Already?
Natalie says:
— It’s all ridiculous: it’s a free school, but apparently we need to start going to church. Put the effort in now. Otherwise they won’t get in. Somewhere not too stressful, I hope. What’s that one Pauline goes to?
— Mum? Maybe she goes once a month. To St. Somewhere, I don’t know it. I’ll ask, if you want.
Frank releases his children and sighs.
— Isn’t it your turn soon?
Michel takes that one. His topic, his realm. A conversation now begins about the inside of Leah’s body and how, if Michel had been listened to, it would have been far busier these past few years. Leah concentrates on Natalie. She is here in her body but where is her mind? At work? In some glamorous extra-marital passion? Or just wishing these people would leave so she could get back to her real life, family life?
— Damn! The banana bread. I forgot about it. Naomi, come and help me serve it up.
Leah watches Natalie stride over to her beautiful kitchen with her beautiful child. Everything behind those French doors is full and meaningful. The gestures, the glances, the conversation that can’t be heard. How do you get to be so full? And so full of only meaningful things? Everything else Nat has somehow managed to cast off. She is an adult. How do you do that?
— So… Michel. How’s it going, man? Let’s get an update. How is the hair business? Do people still… in a bad economy?
Frank’s face registers the mild panic of being left with his wife’s strange friends.
— Actually, I am moving into your region, Frank, in a small way.
— My region?
— Day trading. On the Internet. After we spoke last time, you know, I bought a book and…
— You bought a book?
— A guide… and I’ve been trying a little myself, small amounts, just to begin.
Frank’s face suggests a further explanation is needed, he detects an improbability somewhere. It is a very subtle form of humiliation but it will still be passed from Michel to Leah in some converted form, like a liquid turning to a gas, later today, or tomorrow, in an argument, in bed.
— Well, Leah’s father left her, us, a small amount.
— Oh, OK! Well, a small amount is a good place to start. But now look, I don’t want to be responsible for you losing your shirt, Michel… I work for one of the big boys, you see, and we have a sort of safety net, but when it comes to individual traders, you know, it’s worth remembering that—
Leah sighs, loudly. It’s childish but she can’t help it. Frank turns to Leah with a pacifying, weary smile. He places a corrective finger on her shoulder, a little tap.
— Micheclass="underline" all I was going to say is it’s worth signing on with an online site, like Today Trader, or something like it, and playing with fake money first of all, get in the swing of things…
— Can I be excused? I think Olive needs a shit and I don’t want her to do it on your perfect lawn.
— Leah.
— No, no, no, it’s fine. Michel, we’ve known each other a very long time, Leah and I. I’m used to her funny ideas. Spike, why don’t we take Olive to the corner and back, before she goes home. Let’s go find some bags, OK?
Leah and Michel are left sitting in the grass, cross-legged, like children. This house makes her feel like a child. Cake ingredients and fancy rugs and throw cushions and upholstered chairs in chosen fabrics. Not a futon in sight. Overnight everyone has grown up. While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became.
— Why do you treat me like an idiot all the time?
— What?
— I ask you a question, Leah.
— I didn’t mean to. I just can’t stand him talking down to you like that.
— He didn’t. You did.
— Who is she? Who is this person? This bourgeois existence!
— Bourgeois, bourgeois, bourgeois. I think this is the only French word you know. You’ve become one of these English people… who hate all their friends.
Frank re-emerges through the French doors. If Frank were more observant he might catch them in their Punch and Judy mode, frozen in attitudes of disgust and fury. But Frank is not terribly observant, and by the time he looks up they are what they always seem to be: a happy couple in love.
— Do you know where the lead is?
Behind him, Nat strides back out, looking serene, unreadable. Naomi is hitched up on her hip like the baby she was not too long ago. Her wild afro curls shoot out in a million directions. Leah observes Michel staring at the child. He has an expression of deep longing on his face.
17
— Auntie Leah! Auntie Leah! Mummy says SLOW DOWN.
Leah stops, looks back. There is no-one and then round a corner Nat appears, sighing dramatically. The buggy is empty, Spike is in her arms, Naomi is tugging at her t-shirt. Gulliver, about to be pinned to the ground by Lilliputians.
— Lee, you sure this is right? Doesn’t look right.
— End of this road. On the map it sort of winds round and back on itself. Pauline said it’s hard to find.
— I can see the magistrates’ court and… a roundabout? Kids, stay close, stay in. It’s like walking the hard shoulder on the motorway. Nightmare. Kennedy Fried Chicken. Polish Bar and Pool. Euphoria Massage. Glad we took the scenic route. This can’t still be Willesden. Feels like we’re in Neasden already.
— The church it what makes it Willesden. It marks the parish of Willesden.
— Yeah but where is it? How does Pauline even get here?
— Bus, I spose. I dunno.
— Nightmare.
The road winds. They find themselves on a thin strip of pavement with a bollard at the end, clutching the children as the cars zoom by either side. To their right a foreclosed shopping arcade and a misconceived office block, empty, every other window broken. To their left, a grassy island nestled beside a dual carriageway. Intended as a green oasis, it is a fly-tipping zone. A water-logged mattress. An upturned sofa with ripped cushions, foully stained. More eccentric items, suggesting lives abandoned in a hurry: half a scooter, a decapitated Anglepoise, a car door, a hat stand, enough rolled-up lino for a bathroom floor.
In a pause between cars they run as one animal across the wide road, and then release each other, panting, hands on knees. Advised to “take it easy” for forty-eight hours, Leah feels a lightness in her head. She turns away, lifting her head slowly, and spots it first: an ancient crenellation and spire, just visible through the branches of a towering ash. Another twenty yards and the full improbability of the scene is revealed. A little country church, a medieval country church, stranded on this half acre, in the middle of a roundabout. Out of time, out of place. A force field of serenity surrounds it. A cherry tree at the east window. A low encircling brick wall marks the ancient boundary, no more a defense than a ring of daisies. The family vaults have their doors kicked in. Many brightly tagged gravestones. Leah and Nat and the children pass through the lych-gate and pause under the bell tower. Blue clockface brilliant in the sun. It is eleven thirty in the morning, in another century, another England. Nat uses the baby’s muslin to wipe her forehead of sweat. The children, till now raucous and complaining in the heat, turn quiet. A path threads through the shady graveyard, the Victorian stones marking only the most recent layer of the dead. Natalie maneuvers the buggy over uneven ground.