“Soon,” he said. “ I’ll be up soon. I’ll just do this.”
She nodded and made her way slowly upstairs.
Max loaded the dishwasher, then sat at the kitchen table. He waited until Judy was out of earshot. He heard the gurgling in the old pipes, which meant she was running a bath, then went to the phone. Although he knew it was irrational and Judy could not possibly hear him, he conducted the conversation in a whisper. He would not take the risk that she would hear him. When she had finished in the bathroom, he was already upstairs, preparing for bed.
Chapter Eleven
When Stella Laidlaw woke early that Monday morning, she knew it was going to be one of her bad days. A bullying father and a weak, overindulgent mother had left her with a great capacity for self-pity and an inflated idea of her own importance. She was special. She deserved attention, consideration, to be spoiled. When her family failed to live up to her expectations, she threw childish tantrums, swearing, shouting, and breaking crockery, or she punished them by retreating into herself. If she felt any guilt after these scenes, she reminded herself that she was ill and that excused everything. When she woke on that Monday morning, she felt unbearably tense. The skin on her face itched as if it had some allergic reaction to the air in the bedroom. Her hands were sweating. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps. When she had gone to her doctor with these symptoms, he talked of panic attacks, suggested that she might learn some useful relaxation techniques. But Stella knew what she needed to relax and it had nothing to do with lying on the floor taking deep breaths. Today the tension made her angry. She blamed her discomfort on Max, on James, and most venomously on Alice Parry.
At breakfast Stella was at her most imperious, demanding hot coffee and fresh orange juice, and when James provided these, they were rejected or ignored. She wore a white dressing gown with wide sleeves, and to Carolyn, who saw her as if for the first time, she looked like the white witch from Narnia. Carolyn was as tense as her mother. She had found it impossible to sleep and her face was grey and strained. She felt as if she were under the weight of a terrible responsibility, as if she were the parent and these unhappy adults were her children. She stood up and began to pack her schoolbag with books.
“You’re not going to school!” Stella cried. “ Not today. You’ve had a terrible shock, darling. You must stay at home.”
“No,” Carolyn said, frightened. “I’d rather go to school.”
“Why don’t you stay with your mother today?” James said, and she returned to the table, unable to stand the thought of one of Stella’s scenes.
Stella’s swings of mood were unpredictable, savage, and cruel to a sensitive child. Carolyn hated it most when her mother made a fuss in public, but she knew that the times when Stella was silent and withdrawn caused her father the most pain. Yet whatever her mood James was gentle with his wife. He spoiled and petted her, bringing her presents, flowers, dresses. Then he was rewarded by her laughter and her tears of contrition and her protestations that she loved him more than anyone in the world had ever loved before.
After breakfast Stella went to her room. She sat in front of the mirror and stretched her long swan’s neck so that the lines of tension in her face disappeared and she looked beautiful again.
Carolyn began to stack the breakfast plates on the draining board in the smart new kitchen that Stella had planned the summer before then lost all interest in. James hovered behind her, and she felt his misery so much that she turned round to face him. Now that Aunt Alice was dead, she had no-one else left to love.
“Look what she’s doing to us!” Carolyn said.
“She’s ill,” he said.
“If she’s ill she should go to hospital.”
“She doesn’t like hospital.”
“I don’t care,” Carolyn said. “ We can’t go on like this. She’s dangerous. She makes us all different. I can’t stop being angry. The doctor thinks she should be in hospital.”
Her father looked confused. “No,” he said. “You don’t understand. She would hate it.”
Once, not when Stella was loud and dramatic, but when she was tired and childlike, James had sent for the doctor and asked for his help.
Carolyn had sat, unnoticed, at the other end of the room and listened to the conversation. She remembered quite clearly what the doctor had said.
“Can’t you give her anything?” James had pleaded. “She seems desperate.”
“It would only make her worse. That’s part of the problem.”
“What can I do?”
“Stand up to her. She knows she can manipulate you.”
“But I want to help her.”
“Then persuade her to go into hospital for a while. She needs time away from you both to sort herself out. You look after her too well. She needs to face up to her problems herself.”
“I don’t know,” James had said. “It seems so hard. I’ll think about it.”
He had tried to take the doctor’s advice, but whenever he did talk to Stella indirectly about going to the hospital, as if by magic she would improve. She would emerge from her bedroom and begin to play her part in the house again. She would help Carolyn with homework and encourage her in violin practice. She would make herself beautiful and go with James to civic functions or into Newcastle to the theatre. She would plan dinner parties and the house would be full of other well-dressed people.
For Carolyn the times of normality were almost worse than the periods of depression, because she knew with a helpless certainty that the relief was only temporary. Each day, when her mother was well, she would wake up wondering if this would be the day of crisis, when Stella would erupt in temper or retreat into silence. At the same time she knew that this anxiety was wasteful and she should make the most of her mother’s happiness while it lasted. There was no-one to talk to about this worry. When her mother was well, her father seemed able to convince himself that she would remain so for ever. Only Aunt Alice seemed to understand a little of Carolyn’s insecurity, and now she was no longer there to provide comfort and sympathy.
Stella did not come downstairs until lunchtime and then she ate very little.
“I’ll have to go out this afternoon,” James said. “ You don’t mind? It’s work. I’ll not be long.”
Stella looked at him incredulously. “ But no-one will expect you to be there today,” she said. “They’ll have heard about Alice.”
She was wearing black stretch leggings and a long black sweater, which reached almost to her knees. Her hair was tied back from her face. Her eyes were dark-rimmed and hollow. She wore vivid red lipstick.
“I’m sorry,” James said. “Really, I have to go.”
Carolyn was surprised. Usually he never stood up to her mother.
“But I hate being on my own.” Stella slammed her coffee mug onto the table. “ You know I hate it.”
“You won’t be on your own,” James said mildly. “ Carolyn will be here.”
“But I don’t want Carolyn,” she screamed. “ I want you.”
Carolyn felt tears suddenly come into her eyes, as if she had been slapped. She knew her father was upset enough, so she turned away. She did not want him to see her crying.
“That’s ridiculous,” James said uncomfortably. “ I’m sorry. I really have to go. There’s this week’s paper to put together. I can’t leave it all to the others.”
He put his arm round Carolyn’s shoulder and squeezed it, then prepared to leave the house. As he went out through the front door, Stella shouted after him: “You care more about that paper than you do about me!”
When he had gone, the house was quiet. Stella wandered into the sitting room and picked up a magazine. It was a long, narrow room with a window at the end overlooking the garden. There was a view down to the river. It was lit by the cold light of the remaining snow outside. There was a marble fireplace and the chairs were covered in marble-patterned fabric in a frosty blue. Carolyn followed her into the room. She never liked her mother’s company when she was in this mood, but if Stella was left alone she worried. She laid out the pieces of a jigsaw on a low, white table and knelt on the carpet to do it.