They had been so studiously considerate towards one another, so cheerily evasive, in the hours that were left them, that he could barely wait to get away again. It was as though there was a dead thing in the flat with them and they were each avoiding raising the subject of its smell.
In the name of brotherly love, Ben had taken a large pay cut, going from being an HIV consultant in the Chelsea and Westminster to a staff grade GUM and HIV doctor saddled with a level of donkey work in overburdened clinics of a kind he had not known in years. He had dimly hoped some kind of mutual transfer might be negotiable – a temporary one, of course; he clung, for Chloë’s sake, to the idea that all this upheaval was temporary – but Winchester was a desirable posting because of the good schools and, as yet, there were no senior vacancies, even temporary ones.
He had slowly helped Bobby back to stability, helped him find a new job, broadened his horizons by buying him a computer, installing a Wi-Fi system in the house and teaching him how to use them both. He had unwittingly shown him the way to the mixed delights of online gay dating but was now beginning to wonder whether he had not wrought a subtler change simply by offering masculine company to a man too long boyed by his mother.
Chloë had visited just once since the bad sex episode. Bobby adored her and she was amused by him in short measures, although Ben suspected her brother-in-law’s late-flowering sexuality was something she found hard to stomach. When Bobby was out of the way, she had once again raised the adoption question and, instead of arguing, Ben had found himself shrugging and saying,
‘It’ll be your child. You must do what you think right.’
His tone of weary defeat, even apathy, had startled her into friendly evasion, as the bad sex had before, and they had both almost fallen on Bobby with gratitude when he returned to divert them.
Ben had just begun to admit to himself that he was happier away from Chloë than with her but that Bobby was no longer sufficient excuse for their living apart when he ran into Laura in the hospital.
ELEVENSES
While the days remained warm enough, Laura maintained a little office for herself in the summerhouse at the far corner of the garden. Her mother had only ever used it as a potting shed and, unlike Laura’s father, had never been a tidy shed keeper. Spades and forks were jumbled together with all a keen gardener’s practical detritus: tangles of tar scented twine, stakes, some still with snail shells on the top to protect the gardener’s eyes, seed trays, sacks of compost, sand and vermiculite and an insane quantity of plastic flowerpots. Her mother seemed to have passed beyond the stage of doing much propagation so Laura had cleared and wiped the home-made kitchen table from her childhood, one of several bits of furniture her father had built, which stood by the summerhouse window and swept away several generations of corpse-heavy cobwebs from the glass. It made a pleasant, fair weather work space, removedfrom the distractions of the house but not so far that she wouldn’t know if Mummy got into trouble.
Her father had never lived in Winchester – this was the house Mummy bought after his death – but the shed reminded Laura of him, not just its scents of creosote and earth and seaweed fertilizer but her mother’s cavalier way with precious tools, which he would have itched to tidy. He had been dead over ten years now but still she felt she had not mourned him as she ought. Possibly this was because Mummy had required so little of her in the weeks after his death, had made no consoling demands. Possibly it was because Laura had been living in Paris at the time, in a place not associated with him. But now she was forever being surprised by memories of him or stumbling on things unexpectedly associated with him and trying Mummy’s patience with her insistence on discussing minute details of the distant past.
She
In the name of brotherly love, Ben had taken a large pay cut, going from being an HIV consultant in the Chelsea and Westminster to a staff grade GUM and HIV doctor saddled with a level of donkey work in overburdened clinics of a kind he had not known in years. He had dimly hoped some kind of mutual transfer might be negotiable – a temporary one, of course; he clung, for Chloë’s sake, to the idea that all this upheaval was temporary – but Winchester was a desirable posting because of the good schools and, as yet, there were no senior vacancies, even temporary ones.
He had slowly helped Bobby back to stability, helped him find a new job, broadened his horizons by buying him a computer, installing a Wi-Fi system in the house and teaching him how to use them both. He had unwittingly shown him the way to the mixed delights of online gay dating but was now beginning to wonder whether he had not wrought a subtler change simply by offering masculine company to a man too long boyed by his mother.
Chloë had visited just once since the bad sex episode. Bobby adored her and she was amused by him in short measures, although Ben suspected her brother-in-law’s late-flowering sexuality was something she found hard to stomach. When Bobby was out of the way, she had once again raised the adoption question and, instead of arguing, Ben had found himself shrugging and saying,
‘It’ll be your child. You must do what you think right.’
His tone of weary defeat, even apathy, had startled her into friendly evasion, as the bad sex had before, and they had both almost fallen on Bobby with gratitude when he returned to divert them.
Ben had just begun to admit to himself that he was happier away from Chloë than with her but that Bobby was no longer sufficient excuse for their living apart when he ran into Laura in the hospital.
ELEVENSES
While the days remained warm enough, Laura maintained a little office for herself in the summerhouse at the far corner of the garden. Her mother had only ever used it as a potting shed and, unlike Laura’s father, had never been a tidy shed keeper. Spades and forks were jumbled together with all a keen gardener’s practical detritus: tangles of tar scented twine, stakes, some still with snail shells on the top to protect the gardener’s eyes, seed trays, sacks of compost, sand and vermiculite and an insane quantity of plastic flowerpots. Her mother seemed to have passed beyond the stage of doing much propagation so Laura had cleared and wiped the home-made kitchen table from her childhood, one of several bits of furniture her father had built, which stood by the summerhouse window and swept away several generations of corpse-heavy cobwebs from the glass. It made a pleasant, fair weather work space, removedfrom the distractions of the house but not so far that she wouldn’t know if Mummy got into trouble.
Her father had never lived in Winchester – this was the house Mummy bought after his death – but the shed reminded Laura of him, not just its scents of creosote and earth and seaweed fertilizer but her mother’s cavalier way with precious tools, which he would have itched to tidy. He had been dead over ten years now but still she felt she had not mourned him as she ought. Possibly this was because Mummy had required so little of her in the weeks after his death, had made no consoling demands. Possibly it was because Laura had been living in Paris at the time, in a place not associated with him. But now she was forever being surprised by memories of him or stumbling on things unexpectedly associated with him and trying Mummy’s patience with her insistence on discussing minute details of the distant past.
She
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