‘Oh—’ Ruth said.
Kate tiptoed across to a handsome cot that stood against the far wall. In it was a carrycot, and in the carrycot the baby slept on his side under a blue knitted blanket stitched with letters of the alphabet.
Ruth stooped forward.
‘Oh,’ she said again.
‘I know,’ Kate said.
Ruth put her hands on to the rail of the cot and bent down towards the baby. ‘He’s perfect—’
‘Yes,’ Kate said, ‘he is’. She looked at Ruth’s tailored dark shoulders dipping into the cot.
‘May I – may I kiss him?’
‘Of course,’ Kate said, surprised. ‘Go ahead—’
Ruth’s sleek dark head went down over the baby’s for an instant, and then she raised it, but only a little. Kate looked at her hands on the cot rail. Even in the dimness of the room she could see that her knuckles were white with tension.
‘Ruth?’
Ruth’s head moved a little, as if she was trying to nod it.
‘Ruth, are you OK?’
‘Yes,’ Ruth said. Her voice sounded slightly strangled.
‘Yes, I’m fine’.
She straightened up slowly, and then she put the back of one hand up against one cheekbone and then the other.
Kate peered.
‘Ruth, you’re not OK, you’re crying—’ Ruth shook her head. ‘I’m fine, really’. Kate waited.
Ruth looked back into the cot. ‘He’s so lovely—’
‘Ruth—’
Ruth turned and looked straight at Kate. A strand of hair had glued itself lightly to her cheek. She gave Kate a small and hopeless smile.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.
Chapter Sixteen
Vivien had decided that she would treat Edie to lunch. It would be on a Monday or a Friday so as to avoid her bookshop afternoons and Edie’s theatre ones, and she would take her to the rather nice restaurant in the basement of an upmarket clothes shop in Bond Street where they could, for once, Vivien told Max, lunch together like civilised sisters ought to do. Max was reading a sports-car magazine.
‘Bond Street?’
‘Yes,’ Vivien said. ‘Bond Street’.
Max shook the magazine slightly. He was still, Vivien noticed, wearing a bracelet.
‘I don’t quite see our Edie in Bond Street. Charlotte Street maybe, or Frith Street. But Bond Street—’
‘I like Bond Street,’ Vivien said.
Max eyed her. She was stretching across the sink to open the window behind it, and he could see every minute contour under her thin white trousers.
‘Whatever you say, doll’.
When Vivien telephoned Edie later in the day, Edie said, ‘Lunch?’ as if she’d never heard of it.
‘We ought to catch up,’ Vivien said. ‘We ought to have time together to catch up face to face instead of always talking on the telephone’.
‘You’re lucky to get that,’ Edie said. ‘I’ve hardly got time to brush my teeth at the moment’.
Vivien, admiring the pillar-box-red roses Max had brought her in their tall glass vase on the hall table, said she had booked a table in Bond Street.
‘Bond Street!’
‘Yes’.
‘I don’t know where that is’.
‘Edie,’ Vivien said, ‘this is my treat so please don’t behave like a child’.
‘Oo-er,’ Edie said childishly, ‘I haven’t got clothes for Bond Street’.
Vivien leaned forward and tweaked a rose.
‘Twelve-thirty Monday and no excuses’.
She put the telephone down and went back into the kitchen. Max was on his mobile when she came in and, when he saw her, he whipped it away from his ear and snapped it shut.
He grinned at her.
‘Caught red-handed—’
She affected not to notice.
‘Oh yes?’
‘A quick call to my bookie,’ Max said. ‘Thought I’d get away with it’. He put an arm out and patted her bottom. ‘And I nearly did’.
Edie arrived for lunch dressed entirely in black. She touched one earlobe as she sat down.
‘Even diamond studs. How Bond Street is that?’
Vivien put her reading glasses on.
‘Did Russell give you diamonds?’
‘No. Cheryl lent them to me. And they’re zircons’.
‘Zircons?’
‘Posh glass, I gather’. Edie looked round her. ‘This is very posh glass, isn’t it?’
‘Edie,’ Vivien said, ‘please don’t play-act all over the place and spoil our lunch’.
‘I can’t actually,’ Edie said, ‘I’m too tired’.
Vivien looked sympathetic.
‘Are you?’
Edie picked up the menu. ‘What do you think?’
‘I’ll only think wrong,’ Vivien said, ‘so why don’t you tell me?’
Edie said, staring at the menu, ‘I’m shattered. You’d think five adults living together would lead five fully adult lives’.
Vivien said, with a small smile, thinking of Max, ‘People like to be looked after’. ‘Including me’.
‘What about,’ Vivien said, summoning a waiter, ‘some ground rules?’
‘Like?’
‘Like do your own washing, clean your own room—’ Edie put the menu down.
She said tiredly, ‘It’s more than that, really. It’s five people wanting five people’s separate space’.
The waiter paused by their table. ‘Two glasses of champagne, please’.
‘Vivi—’
‘Why not?’
Edie looked at her carefully. ‘I suppose you do look – happy’.
‘I am’.
‘Good,’ Edie said. ‘Max behaving—’
‘Oh yes’.
‘You’re sure—’
‘Flowers,’ Vivien said. ‘Treats, naughty shoes’.
‘Oh Lord’.
‘It’s like being at the beginning again, only it’s better because I know what I’m doing this time’. Edie folded her arms. ‘Is he staying in?’
‘Oh yes,’ Vivien said. ‘If we aren’t out, it’s candles on the kitchen table. Why don’t you bring Russell down to supper?’
Edie sighed.
‘Because I only have one evening a week free at the moment’. Vivien gave a stifled giggle. ‘Oops! Silly me’.
Edie said nothing. The waiter came back with two flutes of champagne. Vivien picked hers up and held it out towards Edie. ‘Happy days. Why don’t you just throw some of them out?’
Edie stiffened.
‘Oh no’.
‘Why not?’
‘I love having them there. I love having the house full again. It’s what I wanted’. ‘Even if it’s killing you?’
Edie picked up her own glass and took a tiny swallow.
‘It isn’t killing me’. ‘But you said—’
‘Oh,’ Edie said, picking up the menu again and leaning back in her chair, ‘you know me. Always saying things I don’t mean for effect’.
Vivien looked at her. Then she looked down at her own menu.
‘What about the scallops?’ she said.
Because they cost him nothing and simultaneously made him feel he was achieving something, Lazlo had begun taking long walks in the afternoon, accompanied by Russell’s copy of The Blue Guide to London. He had walked to Noel Road, to look at the house Joe Orton had once lived in, and then to Duncan Terrace to imagine Charles Lamb going in and out with perhaps his sister Mary watching for him from an upstairs window. He had been several times to the Estorick Collection to gaze anxiously at the Italian Futurist paintings and wonder exactly what made them so alarming. He had walked round Aberdeen Park and Highbury Fields, he had looked at churches and chapels and libraries and prisons, he had followed rivers and canals and handsome Georgian and Victorian terraces. And when he returned, after two or three hours of walking and thinking, he was struck both by how glad he was to be home and by how painfully impermanent that home inevitably was.