Green Grass (19 page)

‘Sorry, I had to do it now. I'd totally forgotten and Grass must have a tether by this weekend so we can start getting the garden under control.' She smiles apologetically at Inigo, very much as if they are mild acquaintances at a parish council meeting, and clasps her hands, blinking encouragement. Clearly
Laura has not been trying to imagine herself in Inigo's shoes, as he has just been urging her. Inigo is crestfallen and at a loss.

Making the most of his morose and abjectly confused air, Laura announces, ‘I think you should know that we have a ferret and a pug on order. I'm picking them up on Friday.'

Inigo is gob-smacked. He opens and closes his mouth several times, but that's all. Laura is hugely relieved. Really it has gone rather well. She lies back in her chair relaxing her hands; she's been twisting her handkerchief since she and Inigo got home from work; she hardly stopped to eat supper, and even then it was spaghetti so she twisted that instead. It has been a burden, concealing the truth from Inigo, and she'd hoped he would be back in Germany for at least another week. It's not that she doesn't miss him, it's just his absences create such a welcome break in routine, as well as unlocking spare hours Laura never thought she'd see again. These spare hours are more precious than ever now she is embarking on a new and rapturous love affair with Norfolk.

She leaves the room under the pretence of making tea, but forgets what she's doing when she gets to the kitchen. Her thoughts are running away with her, and she couldn't bear for him to know that she is thinking like this. It feels like treachery to acknowledge that if
Inigo had been in England when Hedley offered her the Gate House, she would never have dared to take it. She is longing for him to go back to New York and get on with making his biscuits for the
Death Threat
show. In fact, despite the outrageous way he broke it to her, Laura cannot now think of one good reason why Inigo shouldn't take the fellowship at the Met. Of course he should. It would be marvellous. But there's no way she's going with him.

It's odd that he hasn't seemed keen to discuss it; instead he harps on about the Gate House and whether it needs damp proofing and how to get gas there. She never thought it could happen, but a bit of Inigo is turning into his mother, the home and hearth bit, already quite pronounced enough in Laura's view. Look at him now, flicking through a magazine to find a new cooker for the Gate House. It's madness. It's got a perfectly good Rayburn. OK, so it needs to be filled with coal three times a day, but that's fine. Hedley lights it the afternoon before they come, to give it a few hours to get up to speed, and if the house is a little smoky, there are windows which can be opened. Honestly, Laura can't see what Inigo is fussing about.

She can, however, see the spirit of his mother Betty, her fat short hands raised in alarm at the prospect of putting up with something old when you could have
a new one, nail polish dripping blood red as she stabs her fingers through her hair and shakes her head, fussing and worrying about every breath the twins took until they were five and she began to find them a bit much. A widow, she remains unceasingly anxious about Inigo, her youngest child, her only son. Inigo's two sisters fled the suffocation of their mother's love in their late teens and both emigrated to Canada, but Inigo couldn't leave her, he knew it would break her heart. When he had his first show in New York and was away for months setting it up and travelling, Betty lost two stone, mainly from her upper arms, as she willingly showed anyone who would look. She would have pined away entirely, had Inigo's gallery not taken pity on her from her daily phone calls, and sent her a ticket to come over for the opening night. Inigo was not pleased. Laura met him the day Betty left again, and Inigo was ripe for freedom and for fun.

That was a long time ago, however, and while Inigo hasn't started to look like his mother, he has already inherited her old-ladyish fussing skills. On balance it is better he fusses like her than looks like her, given that Betty has black-rooted platinum hair and immaculate make-up, incorporating shimmering blue on the eyelid and a slick of rhubarb pink on the mouth. Inigo has not inherited her gait
either – although the scampering trot with which she approaches life is, Laura is convinced, caused by the effort it costs her small feet, never encased in shoes without heels, to support her colossal bust on an otherwise sparrow-like frame.

Inigo is bashing the page of a magazine now with one finger, reading out the copy for the cooker of his choice. ‘Yes, you see it says here that it has an electric oven and gas hobs, and if we could just get gas there – or wait – what if we get an industrial cooker …' He is off, flipping thorough the magazine again.

Laura takes off her shoes and curls her legs under her, wondering how far from the point Inigo will go this evening. It doesn't matter. She too wants to avoid talking about what is happening to the small safe unit of their family. And what about the new animals? Can he possibly have accepted them?

‘I'll look it up tomorrow, or later tonight on the internet.' Inigo has finished with that topic. He stands up, and moves towards Laura and puts his hands on her shoulders. ‘Let's go to bed now,' he says, his eyes darkening as they do when he gets passionate. He leans down and lifts her hair from the nape of her neck, breathing in the scent of her, his breath on her skin making her shiver with irritation more than pleasure. He is trying to control her again. Inigo kisses her forehead, then her eyes, obliging her to
close them. ‘Just give me the dog woman's telephone number first, will you?' he murmurs. ‘I'll send them a donation and thanks in the morning, but you can't have the dog, it won't work. The house I can deal with, even the goat, but not a bloody dog, or one of those foul feral beasts. I won't have it.'

Laura leaps up as if he has poured scalding water on her back. She twists round to face him, scooping her shoes back on because subconsciously she wants to be taller for this. ‘It doesn't matter what you won't have because you won't be here,' she says quietly, and she can't look at him because there is pain and panic all over his face and it makes her hurt too.

‘I might not take the fellowship.' Inigo moves to stand leaning on the fireplace, looking down into the empty grate, his back hunching and knotting as he flexes his fists in his pockets and clenches his jaw to stop himself turning around to reach out for Laura.

Oddly detached, as though this is all happening on television and not to her, Laura steps forward to lean on the fireplace next to him.

‘Look, why don't we just let things run for a bit,' she says. ‘You're busy with
Death Threat
, whether or not you take the fellowship, and I want to try a bit of rural life while the children are still at an age where I can get them to come with me. I think it will be good for them.' She puts both hands around
his arm, hoping he will turn to face her. ‘I think it will be good for all of us.'

The silence is enormous. Laura isn't sure what she has just said, but she has stood her ground. When Inigo moves round to look at her, she meets his gaze steadily, her face grave. Unexpectedly, she sees a slow smile at the corner of his mouth. Honestly, he is impossible; now she's grinning back and it should be awful right now, not funny. He hasn't taken her seriously. As if he can hear her thoughts, Inigo whispers, ‘You're just so irresistible when you're serious.'

Laura gives up. She links her hands behind his neck and kisses him slowly. Later, in bed, fitted against him in a coil of sheets, she remembers the pug is still on order. Most pleasing.

Laura has owned a dog for three weeks now, and while she would say without hesitation that her own life has improved one thousandfold, Inigo has told his analyst that their life as a couple has become unspeakable. Laura is never at home, or indeed at work. She is either on the Heath with Zeus, as Aïoli has been rechristened, or she's at puppy training or at dog psychology sessions. Indeed, Inigo has decided to see an analyst mainly out of jealousy because Zeus was seeing one. Inigo's counsellor finds this most interesting, and is using Inigo as a case study for his book on regression. Laura pays scant attention because she is house training Zeus, and can't think of much else.

In protest, and because he needs to be there, Inigo has gone to New York. There, everyone is making a huge fuss of him, most particularly those who want to appear both international and intellectual. He is the toast of the town, but Laura has no issue with
his absence and certainly has no idea when he may be back. Her domestic life has vanished with Inigo, and she very much enjoys not having to cook proper meals or having to keep the house rigorously tidy. She finds it a huge relief that the eggs are just in their box now, not balanced precariously, and that no magnets are suspended between doorways, nor are candles teetering askew on the mantelpiece. The space left by the absence of his glittering, restless energy is comfortable and easy. Laura, folding clothes she doesn't bother to iron with Inigo away, imagines how cross he would be to think of her settling comfortably into his being away as if it were a pair of slippers, huge padded slippers in the shape of Garfield. How Inigo would loathe the idea. She almost feels guilty for enjoying it.

Laura sorts the clothes into piles and takes a small heap of rainbow-bright garments into Dolly's room. Swinging open the door she is too vigorous and the handle bumps the shelf behind, dislodging a pile of books which thud down onto a rack of CDs. The discs spin out across the floor, slicing silver blue as they skate beneath the bed, under the chair, everywhere. Cursing her clumsiness for catching her out here where it matters, rather than in Fred's room where it wouldn't, Laura drops the clothes and kneels down. A throb of exhaustion, familiar accompaniment to
all her clearing up, pulls at Laura's shoulders, and she sighs. Dolly is missing Inigo horribly. Laura alone is not enough parent for her, and not the right one for her baleful, leg-swinging insolence. Impotence wells daily as Laura tries to get Dolly to do her homework, or run down the street for a pint of milk.

Later that afternoon, Dolly plonks herself and her school bag on the kitchen table and drinks milk out of the bottle, her eyes on Laura even as her head is tilted back, and in them a wordless challenge. Laura takes a deep breath and turns away towards the window, hugging Zeus with ridiculous tears hot behind her eyes, ashamed that she has no idea what to do, or what to say to her daughter. The idea that she can help Hedley with Tamsin is a joke now. Her own daughter has become a hormonal teenager almost overnight, and none of the preaching works in practice. Dolly's answer to the smallest request is to flick her hair and reach for the telephone to call Inigo. As she does this at any hour of the day or night with no regard for the time lag, her relationship with Inigo is volatile. A curt ten seconds during a breakfast fracas over whether or not Dolly would eat anything other than crisps before school had her in tears.

‘He said, “It's three in the morning so this had better be bloody important,”' she sobbed to her
mother, wilting and pulling her jersey down over her pulled-up knees.

This moment is the catalyst for Laura suggesting she brings a friend with her to Norfolk, a breakthrough moment so satisfying in its effect on Dolly's deportment and her mood that Laura decides Fred must have someone too.

Locking the car on the Heath road high above Hampstead village, Laura gulps the summer air hungrily. The tantrums Dolly indulges in at the moment are suffocating; it is a relief to get her to school and take Zeus out for his daily stroll. Everything Laura imagined about having a dog is true; and that it should be true about an almost toy dog is doubly pleasing. Walking Zeus is a vital release from life at home, and she is fascinated and entertained by the dog-walking fraternity she has befriended. Conversations with them involve no questions or observations relating to anything but the dogs, and are thus very soothing.

This morning, Laura is pleased to see Lola, a woman who walks a pack of eight dogs most days. Lola is on the slope below the Plague Pit, giving her gang a good run off their leads. Laura greets her, noticing that Lola's plum-coloured wig is a little lopsided today.

‘Hello there, Zeus,' says Lola, stooping to pet him.
It is usual on the Heath to greet the dog, not the owner. She nods at Laura and then down at her own clothes. ‘I'm all muddy because at ten to seven this morning, I saw Sue Whippet coming towards me – she's a loose cannon now, that woman – she used to walk with me sometimes but I changed my times.' Lola nods vehemently, and the tangle of dog leads round her neck jangles. ‘I did. I can't stand her, I'm just not up to it at that time of day. You know what she's like?'

Gripped, Laura shakes her head, keeping her eyes on Zeus as he pings between Lola's dogs, rolling over and jumping with them in the springy grass.

‘She's one of those types who say, “If you can't afford a Bosch fridge, you shouldn't have an Italian greyhound because they can open all the cheaper models.” Her whippets are like hell hounds—' Lola breaks off as she and Laura approach the Men's pond and lets rip an earsplitting cry; all her dogs come racing up from their distant points of play. Without breaking the stride of her conversation, she attaches each one to the correct lead and gives them a chocolate drop.

‘How do you audition the dogs you walk?' Laura asks.

Lola sucks in both cheeks, and assumes a haughty expression. ‘All the dogs I take on have to work
together, and I don't like collecting them from apartment blocks.'

‘What do you mean?' Laura asks blankly.

Lola clucks. ‘You know, all those big marble entrance halls and closed-circuit cameras – you can imagine what it's like going up in the lift to fetch the dog with this lot in tow. Mayhem. Specially on the way home. I like a dog with his own front door.'