So there he was, Michael, and he was holding a tray with a pot of tea, some toast and scrambled eggs, which he knew I was very fond of, and some black grapes, and chocolates. Actually, very expensive chocolates. And from his face I could tell there was nothing to worry about. He’d got hold of money from somewhere, he said, plenty to keep us going. He sat on the chair over by the window while I ate (I’m afraid I did bolt it all down, rather). He said nothing, just looked out across the courtyard and down the drive, and refused to taste the grapes.
I’m not stupid. I was still eating when I said, what did you sell to buy all this? Must be quite a bit, I said, and just to show him I wasn’t cross with him, or even in the least upset, I smiled. So then he told me about the books and fans and bits of china and all of it, and he was surprised at how little I cared. I was surprised myself. All I said was that they were only things, not even in perfect condition. I was thinking to myself that I could always doctor the inventory if the need arose (which I didn’t anticipate) until I remembered that I’d burned the inventory months ago. So there wasn’t even that to worry about. Then he looked out of the window again and said he could see Steph coming, and he would walk down the drive to meet her. Now that did surprise me, because I didn’t know she had gone out, and I said so. Michael just gave me a look and said no, he would explain, and everything would work out. I wasn’t sure he meant it. But already I felt much better so I got up and went downstairs.
That day, looking out of Jean’s bedroom window while she ate, Michael watched Steph in the distance bending into the wind on her way up the drive, just as she had done the day before. Once again he felt that she was escaping danger by a hair’s breadth; by the merest chance she was being delivered back to him rather than borne away and destroyed. She was oblivious, of course, like a sleepwalker gliding across a motorway. He watched her with growing anger, feeling that he had been dangerously inattentive. How could he have allowed her to go off like that in the first place? If she had no sense of danger, then clearly it was up to him to have it for her, and he should have been more insistent. He had almost forgotten that when he had told her that morning about the risks she was taking she had seemed not so much to disagree with what he was saying as simply not to be hearing him at all.
They had sat at the kitchen table over mugs of tea and all the time that he was talking, she had appeared to be waiting. And then, without the least hostility, she had patiently drained her mug and declared that she must be off, just as if he had never opened his mouth. Michael had set about adding water to the teapot to get another cup out of it for Jean, feeling so angry and miserable that his hands shook. He had calmed himself down so that he could take Jean her tea without her seeing the state he was in, but he need not have worried. She had been so dopey- just sleepy, Michael tried to tell himself- that she would not have noticed anyway. Back downstairs again he realised that he would have to get a grip on himself if he were to accomplish the tasks he had set himself for the day. He had no choice but to concentrate on those. It was not possible to deal with so many dangers all together; selling the stuff that he had already put in the van, getting cash and buying food were as much as he could cope with. In fact, an agenda of such complexity and risk was beginning to fill him with the kind of depression that in the old days would have immobilised him for a week. Because it was risky: driving the untaxed, uninsured, un-MOT’d van into Bath, selling to Mr David, shopping openly with a large sum of cash. Any one or all of them could go wrong. If something did, if the van were spotted, if Mr David (always of uncertain temper and sometimes malicious) screwed him over, then Michael’s entire new life would fold in upon itself and disappear.
Michael had never developed the habit of anticipating too closely the consequences of his actions, beyond taking the usual steps to avoid immediate chaos. He had never been convinced that anything he might do could be important enough to have consequences that would matter that much. That had changed. With the knowledge that he now had something worth keeping came a huge fear that he might lose it. He saw that what he was about to do might destroy everything, but he was also looking straight into the blank fact that he had no other options. His existence, and Steph’s and Jean’s, were at risk anyway, endangered by a simple lack of money. He could not make them safe from that without first exposing them all to other risks, and he would have to concentrate. It would not be his fault if, while he was fending off one danger, Steph was out God knows where creating others. He would deal with her next.
So when he saw Steph trudging along, head down (her mood never was reflected in the way she walked, it was always the same slow tread, hands in pockets) he thought, here it comes, the next thing. She was still making her way up between the fields. The sight of her alone, not yet within the boundary of the garden, appalled him. He watched from the window, timing it carefully until Jean had finished eating. Then, anxious not to hurry or show his fear, he took the tray and reassured Jean that everything was fine. He clattered downstairs and ran outside, his panic rising.
Steph might be making her way back, but he was not fooled. She was shaking herself loose, moving beyond and away from them. What was wrong with her, that she needed to go outside, to mix with other people? What was wrong with him, that he was tolerating it? Was she blind? As long as they lived quietly, keeping themselves to themselves, there would be no need for actual secrecy, certainly nothing as blatant as outright lying. But if other people came poking in, if other people were actually being encouraged, how long before certain things came out? God knows what she might already have told them, these people she was ‘working’ for. And who, anyway, were they? He suspected that not only did she not really know, she was so blind and trusting that she did not even recognise the importance of knowing.
She had no right to spoil everything like this. He marched down the drive to meet her. As he drew closer he broke into a run, shouting, and the noise shook a few birds out of the trees at the far side of the paddock. Steph stopped, looked up and watched them rise and fly off, in that moment realising that Michael would reach the point where she was standing within the next ten seconds, and that he was probably going to hit her. She lowered her head and waited for it to happen so that it would be over. She had no firm opinion on the matter, but it had come as a slight surprise that he was turning out to be the same as the others, after all.
Out of breath and half-sobbing, Michael grabbed her by the arms. His voice was a thin wail. ‘Jesus Christ! Isn’t it enough for you! Isn’t it enough? Don’t you see you’ll ruin it? Look at me! What’s the matter with you?’
But Steph barely raised her head.
‘What’s the matter with you! Isn’t it enough, all of us here together?’
Steph tried to pull away for a moment and then, throwing him a look of puzzlement, she cried, ‘Together? All of us? Oh sure, all of us, minus Miranda!’
Surely he would hit her now, after a remark like that.
‘Miranda’s dead,’ she said, ‘in case you’d forgotten.’