‘Nah,’ Eliot said, ‘I’m helping a mate service his powerboat’.
‘You sound so Australian, darling’.
‘Yeah. Well’.
Vivien said, ‘I’m having dinner with Dad on Saturday. Again’.
‘Yeah’.
‘Do you know why he’s asked me a second time?’ There was a pause and then Eliot said, ‘Why shouldn’t he?’
‘Well, we’re separated—’
‘So?’
‘If you’re separated, it’s usually because you don’t want to see each other’.
‘Don’t you want to see Dad?’ ‘Yes, darling, I do, but—’ ‘That’s fine, then,’ Eliot said. Vivien gripped the telephone.
‘I don’t want to ask you anything unfair, darling, but -but do you know if Dad has a girlfriend just now?’
There was another pause and then Eliot said, ‘I’ve no idea’.
‘So he hasn’t said anything to you? Named any names?’
‘We don’t talk about that,’ Eliot said. ‘We talk about footie’.
‘Of course—’
‘Ma,’ Eliot said, ‘I have to go. I’m meeting someone’. Vivien looked at her watch.
‘How nice. Are you having supper with someone?’ ‘A few beers,’ Eliot said, ‘till Ro finishes her class’. ‘Lovely to hear you, darling. Give my love to Ro’. ‘Cheers,’ Eliot said. ‘Take care’.
Vivien put the telephone down. While talking to Eliot she had drawn a huge pair of parted Roy Lichtenstein lips, with teeth just glimpsed, and a high shine. It was the biggest mouth she’d drawn for ages, taking up half a page. She wondered briefly if it meant anything, and if so, what. Possibly something a bit excitable, louche even, the same sort of thing that had propelled her into buying some suede sandals, on impulse, in a colour the girl in the shop described as watermelon. They were rather high, higher than Vivien was used to, and would need a little practice. Before Saturday. Vivien put out a hand and tore the drawing of the big lips hastily off the pad.
Rosa had left a note propped up against the kettle that morning. She had also remembered to put the box of Grapenuts back in the cupboard. The note said she was meeting a friend for a drink after work and she wasn’t sure when she’d be back so not to bother about supper. Then she’d drawn a small sunflower with a smile and added, ‘Hope you hadn’t planned anything?’ Well, Vivien had, of course, because she couldn’t help planning. It was one of the elements that Max always wanted to loosen up in her, this propensity to live life in detail before she actually got to it. There were two tuna steaks in the fridge, and some borlotti beans soaking, and a bag of salad leaves. Well, they could all probably wait another day, and if they didn’t, she could freeze the tuna and cook up the beans and – oh, stop this, Vivien said to herself, stop this and focus on the fact that you had a lovely time last Saturday having dinner with Max and that he plainly did too because he’s asked you again.
She went out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the landing. Rosa’s bedroom door was shut. Do not open it, Vivien told herself, just do not because a) it is her room for the moment and b) you won’t like what you see if you do. She walked on down the landing and into her own bedroom, decorated entirely in white during a moment of feeling I-am-a-strong-woman in the aftermath of Max’s departure, a feeling that hadn’t lasted. The pink suede sandals were sitting neatly at the end of the bed. Vivien sat down beside them, kicked off her shoes, and bent to buckle them on.
Beside her bed, next to a china tray of all her manicure things, the telephone began to ring.
‘Are you hoovering?’ Edie asked.
‘No’.
‘In white cotton gloves?’
‘Naked, actually,’ Vivien said. She lay back on the bed, the telephone to her ear, and thrust one leg upwards to admire her pink sandal.
‘You sound happy—’
‘I’ve just spoken to Eliot’. ‘Not that kind of happy,’ Edie said. ‘Who is he?’ Vivien hesitated a moment, turning her foot this way and that. Then she said, ‘Max’. ‘No change there then’. ‘We had a really good time on Saturday—’ ‘Did he kiss you?’ ‘Edie!’
‘Did he?’
‘No,’ Vivien said. ‘I haven’t been kissed for years’. ‘Nor have I’.
‘Yes, you have. On stage’.
‘That doesn’t count and it isn’t usually what you’d choose, anyway’.
‘Russell kisses you—’
‘Yes. But …’
‘Did you ring,’ Vivien said, lowering her leg and raising the other, ‘to talk about kissing?’
‘No. But I do rather wonder why you’re seeing Max again’.
‘So do I’.
‘But you like it—’
‘Yes’.
‘Well, do it,’ Edie said, and then, without a pause, ‘Matt’s coming home’.
‘What?’
‘He’s broken up with Ruth and he’s miserable and he’s coming home’. Vivien let her leg fall.
‘Poor boy. Was it about a flat? Rosa said something—’
‘I had to shout at Russell,’ Edie said. ‘He thinks you spoil children if you help them. Or at least, that’s what he says he thinks’.
‘Thirty per cent of people between twenty-four and thirty still live at home—’
‘How do you know?’
‘I read it somewhere’.
‘Excellent,’ Edie said, ‘I’ll tell Russell. If he goes on like he’s going on, he’ll make Matt feel a freak. Do you think I should buy a double bed?’
‘Don’t you have one?’
‘For Matthew!’ Edie shouted.
‘Why?’
‘Well, they all sleep in big beds now. Everyone. Nobody over ten has a single bed’.
‘But if Matthew hasn’t got Ruth,’ Vivien said, ‘who will he put in it?’
‘Someone else, I hope. Someone who doesn’t put her ambition first’. ‘I thought you liked Ruth—’
‘I did. I do. We got on famously. But I want to kill her for hurting Matthew’.
Vivien turned on her side. She could, from this angle, see herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door to her bathroom. It wasn’t a bad angle, in fact, nice curves of hip and shoulder, good ankles, far enough away not to see what happened to bosoms when collapsed sideways.
She said, ‘Shall I tell Rosa?’
‘No thank you,’ Edie said. ‘I’ll tell Rosa. I’ll ring her at work’.
‘She’s going out with someone after work—’
‘Who?’
‘I do not know,’ Vivien said in a voice that implied the opposite.
‘Vivi—’
‘Rosa here,’ Vivien said, ‘Matt back with you. At least Ben’s holding out’. ‘Trust you’.
Vivien rearranged her legs at a better angle. ‘Poor old Russell,’ she said.
Rosa much regretted having asked Lazlo to have a drink with her. She knew she shouldn’t have, for the simple reason that she didn’t really want to, but there was something about supper the other night, and the Cheryl Smith person flirting with her father, and excluding her from conversations with her mother and Lazlo by constantly referring to their rehearsals together, that had compelled her to say, in Cheryl’s hearing at the end of the evening, to Lazlo, ‘What about a drink on Wednesday?’
He’d hesitated.
‘Wednesday—’
‘I’m afraid,’ Rosa said, ‘it’s the only night I can manage’.
‘You aren’t rehearsing,’ Cheryl said to Lazlo. ‘Not Wednesday’. She glanced at Rosa. ‘You could go wild on Wednesday’.
Lazlo nodded.
‘Thank you. I’d like it’.
So here she was, in the refurbished bar of a central hotel, sitting on a black leather stool with her elbows on a tall metal table, waiting for Lazlo. Edie had not heard them make the arrangements, and Rosa had said nothing on the subject. She hoped that Lazlo, despite his puppylike devotion to Edie, hadn’t said anything, either. She wanted to have one drink, and leave, and somehow make it not at all possible for him to suggest either another one, or another meeting. After he’d told her he thought she was spoilt, it was difficult to think of him without dislike, but also, rather disconcertingly, without feeling distinctly interested. It was awful, really, what flashes of temper compelled you to do, flashes of temper induced by seeing other people apparently more at home with your parents than you were yourself.