Downstairs in the hall the front door is wide open and there are plastic trays of groceries on the floor, milk and fruit and sliced bread, lots of ready-meals. I can hear Hilda in the kitchen, but I don’t stop to say goodbye to her. And I don’t wait for the bus, I walk into town, all the way across the Downs. I’m so relieved, on my way back, that I didn’t get carried away and tell Valentine about Luke. I won’t say anything to anyone about this visit, I decide, not even to Madeleine. Valentine is a crazy irrelevance, he’s pitiable and ridiculous. (I know that’s what Mac would think if he ever met him.) I try to conceive of him with detached kindness and sympathy, as if he were one of the service users at the Gatehouse. But my connection with him feels like a liability, it feels loose inside me, a door swinging open on to danger.
On the train going home, I can’t concentrate on my book. The carriage is crowded and my legs ache after my walk across the Downs, the glare of the low sun is in my eyes. I wish I’d upgraded to first class as Mac is always telling me to do (but if I spend my money on that, it seems to turn my time at the Gatehouse into playtime, a self-indulgence). I see Mac standing on the platform at Taunton station when the train draws in: he has Ester with him and one of Ester’s friends. I’m filled with a rush of gratitude for his waiting there so faithfully and reliably; I’m moved by the idea of his kindness and solidity, my dear companion. I thought I’d calmed down but in fact all the emotion left over from my reunion with Valentine is still washing round inside me, I’m brimming with feeling. They don’t see me at first when I get down, they’re looking in the wrong direction (towards first class). The girls are in the green-striped dresses which are their school uniform. (Mac insisted on all this, the private school, the violin lessons, the tennis coaching. He’s talking already about Oxbridge. We quarrelled over it to begin with — I wanted Ester to go to the local state school, I hate the pushy privilege of the private places. And then I decided I didn’t care where she went as long as she was happy.)
The girls come running towards me as soon as they see me — of course her friend is only running because Ester is; when Ester wraps her arms round me she stands waiting awkwardly. I’m glad the friend is there because her cool, appraising stranger’s glance steadies me, so that I don’t spill over with my tenderness. My children prefer me to be dry with them, slightly withheld. Ester’s showing off, she’s full of some story which she’s garbling deliberately, about how she and Amy are doing their science project together and how they nagged at Daddy until he agreed Amy could come and stay the night so they could work on it. Ester drapes herself round Amy’s neck, Amy looks self-conscious. In the company of her friends, Ester overdoes it as if she’s studied carefully how to be a gushing schoolgirl; alone with us she’s quite different, astute and watchful, almost prim in her reserve.
Mac’s putting on weight, I think: I notice because I’ve been away from him for a few days. He could easily be mistaken for Ester’s grandfather. On the whole, though, he’s not ageing too badly: he has that tough good skin which doesn’t collapse, there’s something appraising and sensual still in the heavy-lidded eyes, and he stands so perfectly upright that people think he must have been in the military. Picking up my bags he tells me about the science project and about the ice-cream the girls have wheedled him into buying. He loves this role as the doting, bemused father. I can’t enter into his wholeheartedness, I think. I’m not wholehearted. He makes some comment about having me back from doing my good works, and then I’m irritated even though it’s only a few minutes since I got down from the train overflowing with love for him.
The train leaves and the spacious red-brick station resumes its air of being under-used and sleepy. Carrying my bags to the car, Mac asks me how it’s been in Bristol and I’m disconcerted for a moment, thinking he must know somehow about Val; then I realise that he means the weather. Mac loves to talk about the weather, updating me frequently: not as the small change of conversation, but with deep interest in an unfolding story, as if it’s eternally surprising. He follows the forecasts on television with the same responsible seriousness as he follows the news; although he’s retired he hasn’t given up his old pattern of attending to the world as if real things depended on his being accurately informed.
— Dull here, he says. — A lot of cloud over the estuary. Rained a couple of times, but nothing much. They’re saying it may brighten up tomorrow.
I can’t believe he never notices my lack of enthusiasm for these reports.
— I’ve no idea, I lie. — I was indoors all day. (Actually I put my face up into a bitter squall of rain, on my way home across the Downs.)
— Give me the car keys, I say. — Let me drive.
Mac doesn’t like driving through the country roads at twilight, but I feel better as soon as I’m behind the steering wheel. We get out of the town and I take the back route, though there’s always a risk of getting stuck behind farm vehicles: the road winds through apple orchards to begin with, then up between the hills. Under a low ceiling of blue-grey cloud a strip of paler light is stretched along the horizon like a ribbon of creamy satin. Birds seem to start up, as I squeeze round the narrow corners between the hedgerows, from under the very wheels of the car. I imagine Valentine reading absorbedly in his room, like a dedicated St Jerome in his cell in a medieval painting. Mac is giving me a detailed report, as he always does, on all the things he’s achieved while I’ve been away — he’s bought straw to put on the shrubs in case it’s a hard winter, he’s cleaned out the shower head, he’s made his special bolognese sauce with chicken livers, to go with the pasta tonight. (I wonder whether Amy will like chicken livers.) The girls are chattering in the back seat: Ester is courting Amy, fussing over her excitedly, holding on to Amy’s hand in her lap.
— I want to show you everything, Ester says. — You can hold the guinea pigs, I’ll show you my secret den. You can read my diary if you want to. You can find out all about me.
Amy is not ready to commit herself.
I know Mac is listening and smiling in the seat beside me, tense with protective love for Ester, fearing in case she gives herself away too easily. Some dark shape — a cat, or a fox — flows across the road for an instant ahead of us, then disappears into the hedge. I switch on the headlights and the car seems to leap forward into the night.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Dan Franklin and Jennifer Barth, Caroline Dawnay and Joy Harris. Thanks to Deborah Treisman (versions of three chapters in Clever Girl first appeared as short stories in the New Yorker). Thanks to Shelagh Weeks and Stephen Gregg, for inspirations.
About the Author
Tessa Hadley is the author of the four previous novels, including Accidents in the Home, which was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award, and The London Train, which was a New York Times Notable Book along with her short story collections Sunstroke and Married Love. Her stories appear regularly in the New Yorker. She lives in London.
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