Whatever it takes, p.21
Whatever It Takes, page 21
‘No doubt. Ironic, since you invited him to do the work because you believed Sara needed Charlie to be away from home.’ Mark had yawned and added, ‘You shouldn’t get involved in other people’s marriages. It’s not like we haven’t got enough on our plates.’ The sting of the words was not abated by the fact that he’d pecked his wife on the cheek before he’d turned out the bedside light.
Eloise didn’t want to be involved in their marriage, she wanted to take a bath, and she believed that one might lead to the other. Maybe Mark’s theory that Charlie didn’t want to go home to Sara was horribly accurate. After all, whilst Eloise did not sign up to the 1950s good wife brigade (she didn’t believe Sara ought to greet Charlie with a pair of warmed slippers and an inch of whisky on the rocks whenever he came home), she did think Sara needed to welcome him to some extent. Independently, Charlie and Sara had confided in Eloise that the welcome Charlie was most likely to receive when returning home at weekends was Sara throwing his slippers or drink at him. Charlie had communicated as much through hints and sardonic jokes; Sara had given Eloise a word-for-word account of every squabble. Their rows had reached a new intensity since Charlie had refused to try another round of IVF.
Truthfully, Eloise was desperate to regain control of the situation but she was floundering. She was aware that Mark probably thought she was petty to be concerned with the bathroom décor right now, considering everything else, but Eloise was focusing on the bathroom project because it should be manageable. It should be within her control and nothing else was anywhere near manageable. Eloise felt like a spinning top. It was all she could do to think five minutes into the future. For the first time in her life planning and plotting and preparing seemed not only redundant but taunting. Who could have prepared for the events of the last few months?
There’d been too much to deal with. Moving home, Sara’s ongoing and failing attempts at IVF treatment, Mark’s furious reaction to finding out that he was adopted and that his parents had kept it from him all these years, Margaret’s terrible diagnosis, not to mention all the necessary preparations for Christmas. The children were rehearsing for their nativity plays and needed to be run to and from school, there was the extra Christmas shopping and cooking, she had to write cards, wrap gifts, hang tinsel . . . the list seemed endless. She knew it was wrong but Eloise had quietly sighed with relief when her parents had said they’d like to stay in Portugal this Christmas. Two less people to worry about. Eloise had so wanted the girls’ first Christmas in Dartmouth to be perfect. Now, she’d lowered her expectations. Now, her hope was that they’d avoid actual bloodshed.
Yes, there was so much going on. Except in her bathrooms. They were a place of calm and serenity. Some might say inertia.
To date, Eloise had been as sympathetic as she could be with regard to Charlie’s delaying tactics. She was prepared to walk a tightrope between her two friends as they struggled to recover peace in their marriage. She was aware that her home was being used as a haven. Or maybe not exactly a haven – not considering the number of cold, impenetrable silences that had littered the stairway and sitting room of late – but at least if not a haven, then a hide-out. However, some of the mystery as to why progress in the bathrooms had been so slow had been revealed today and Eloise’s patience was being tested to the limit.
Eloise had seen Erin and Poppy safely into their classrooms, and was planning on heading straight to Margaret and Ray’s house to see if there was anything they needed from the shops, when she’d paused – just for a moment – to pat the school goat. She’d started chatting to Bernadette Walton, Becky and Tim’s mother, and, despite her best intentions, Eloise couldn’t resist a bit of a grumble about the fact that she feared her plumber might never leave, although she’d been careful not to mention him by name.
‘Oh, goodness, don’t I know what you mean!’ said Bernadette. ‘I’ve had months of the same with Billy Warrell. I was tearing my hair out but then last month I found a new guy. He’s been a marvel. Didn’t need much from him. A new basin in the downstairs loo and a bit of tiling, but he turns up every morning, does a good couple of hours of work for me, then cleans up and clears out because, as you probably know, I do a bit of child minding and it’s not easy to have a plumber in the house once the little ones arrive. Too many potential hazards. But this chap is so flexible and reliable. I can’t recommend him highly enough. I can give you his number if you like.’
‘Oh no, honestly. I couldn’t sack my guy,’ Eloise said. She really couldn’t, even if she wanted to.
‘Think about it. He’s almost finished up at mine now, there wasn’t much to it.’ Bernadette paused and looked momentarily concerned. ‘Although I understand he’s pricing up Lucinda Pickering’s kitchen now. I think that will be a big job, but maybe he could fit you in around that.’
‘No, honestly I—’
‘I’ll text you his number.’ Bernadette wouldn’t take no for an answer and within a moment she’d pulled out her phone and composed a text to Eloise at a speed that a fourteen year old would be proud of. An instant later Eloise’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Out of courtesy, she’d checked the message.
She could not believe it.
‘Is your plumber called Charlie?’ she asked, incredulous.
‘Yes.’ Bernadette beamed. ‘Do you know him? I bet you do. He’s quite dishy.’ Bernadette smiled and then set off down the lane. She threw a cheery wave over her shoulder and yelled, ‘Call him.’
Eloise was left with two thoughts tumbling around her head. One, how remarkable it was that people still said ‘dishy’ nowadays, and two, would it be an overreaction to punch Charlie out cold? Eloise had steamed all the way home.
No one liked being taken advantage of. Eloise was good natured. She gave people the benefit of the doubt. She tried to be decent. Decent mattered to her. Kind was a bonus. She strived for kind but if she fell short and just landed at decent, then she was OK with that. If Eloise was on your team, there was nothing, nothing at all, she wouldn’t do for you.
Charlie was married to Eloise’s good friend, they’d known each other for five years, he was her husband’s great pal; just one of those factors alone would have meant that Eloise was on Charlie’s team. All three meant that she was prepared to go in goal, wave a couple of pompoms for him, and even dress up as the mascot! Hadn’t she just offered to carry a baby for them, for God’s sake? The very least she’d expect in return was a bit of commitment to her bathroom plumbing. Was it too much to ask?
Loyalty.
Loyalty was intricately woven into the fabric of decency. The weft to the weave. Loyalty was the backbone of every army and the mechanism of every school playground. Loyalty was important. Sometimes it was even more important than reason or logic. Loyalty, of sorts, was the thing that guaranteed grumpy old aunts weren’t ignored at Christmas but invited into homes where they might just be a bit less grumpy. Loyalty was what allowed saggy, familiar bottoms to win over pert ones (which they often did but fidelity didn’t get the publicity infidelity did). Loyalty was all.
There was no question, it was disloyal of Charlie to be retiling Bernadette Walton’s downstairs loo when he was supposed to be re-vamping Eloise’s bathroom!
Eloise considered a way into the conversation as she sat on the floor, next to Charlie, back up against the unplumbed bath. She didn’t want to tower over him, nailing home the point that she was the client, the boss, and he worked for her; she wanted to be sensitive. Side by side they had the same view. A view of the porcelain loo, incongruously standing in the hall, waiting to be plumbed in, sparkling, free from its box. It was an oddly intimate view.
‘Charlie, at the school gate today I got talking to one of the mums and I heard something that, frankly, I’m concerned about.’
Charlie took a long slurp of his tea; his green eyes twinkled over the top of the mug. He hazarded a guess. ‘Competitive stuff? You don’t need to get worked up about that crap. Erin and Poppy are bright girls and very popular, from what I can tell,’ he said firmly.
Eloise momentarily basked in the compliment, losing focus. She had to visibly shake herself and remember what it was she needed to discuss with him. ‘No, it was nothing to do with the girls, something altogether different. Bernadette Walton told me you’ve been doing some work for her.’
‘Has she got a problem with it?’ He looked agitated, ready to leap up, grab his tool kit and dash out of the bathroom. Everything about him suggested white knight on a steed rescuing a damsel. Somehow his demeanour reminded Eloise of the very first time she’d met him in her Muswell Hill kitchen, when he’d come to their rescue by fixing their boiler.
‘No, she doesn’t have a problem with it,’ Eloise said, placing a restraining hand on his arm. ‘I do.’
Charlie turned to Eloise, confusion flooding out of his eyes. ‘Why?’
‘Because you are supposed to be working for me,’ she said flatly.
‘Jealous?’
‘Stop being daft. Charlie, you can’t be in two places at once and you are supposed to be doing my bathrooms.’
‘I am.’
‘Well, yes, but . . .’ Eloise faltered. How could she say he wasn’t working hard and fast enough without causing offence? ‘Every hour you spend on her cloakroom is an hour less on my bathrooms.’
‘We never agreed exact hours.’
‘No, but you know I’m in a hurry.’
‘We never said this work had to be exclusive.’
‘But it’s a big job. I thought it was understood—’
‘We don’t actually have a contract.’
Charlie held eye contact throughout the exchange. His twinkling green eyes, which Eloise thought she knew as well as her own brother’s, had a flinty edge to them that she’d never noticed before. There was no contract because they were friends. Eloise thought about what Charlie was saying for a moment and in that moment the hardness she thought she saw in his eyes vanished and she was left thinking she’d imagined it, especially when it was replaced by eyes that were clearly begging for understanding.
‘The thing is, Eloise, the extra cash came in useful. The cost of the IVF is crippling.’
Eloise felt embarrassed. ‘Of course.’
‘We’re in, well, a bit of trouble.’
‘Financially?’
He lowered his head and nodded.
‘But we paid you in advance,’ Eloise pointed out gently.
‘I already owed most of what you paid me. All of it, actually, and a bit more. There’s none left. I had to take Bernadette’s work to earn some cash to buy materials for yours.’
‘Oh.’ Eloise had no idea what to say. Charlie and Sara lived well. They lived the way Eloise and Mark did. A life full of occasions and treats. She’d had no idea they were stretched. ‘I see.’ She didn’t, but what else could she say? She patted his arm, offering the sort of comfort she might offer a baby that was fretful for a nap.
‘Sara doesn’t know the extent of our problem. Not exactly. I don’t want to worry her. Financial pressure is the last thing she needs but we’re getting towards Christmas.’
Eloise weighed up the situation. Charlie didn’t seem to think he’d done anything wrong by working on Bernadette’s cloakroom or by pricing up Lucinda’s kitchen. Maybe he hadn’t. Perhaps she hadn’t been clear about her terms and needs. She had so much going on right now that she wasn’t sure she was doing anything very well at all. It was probably all down to her poor communication. The irritation and sense of betrayal that had churned inside her as she’d walked home from school began to abate.
‘OK, I see. Well, no biggie but, to be clear, moving forward, I’d really prefer it if you only worked for us.’ Eloise couldn’t bring herself to say ‘you must’ or even ‘if you only worked for me’. It sounded too imperial. She was hampered by the English middle-class impulse to be overly polite. ‘At least until this first bathroom is done. I mean, if there’s a problem with cash flow, then we could . . .’ Eloise trailed off. She wasn’t sure what she could do. She didn’t feel comfortable offering more money on top of the amount they’d already paid since he hadn’t spent that on the materials for their job. Eloise stared into Charlie’s eyes trying to decipher what he was thinking.
‘I get it, you want me exclusively,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want me working for anyone else.’
‘Well, no, there’s a time issue.’ Eloise held his gaze, hoping he’d understand her point.
‘You want me to yourself.’
Eloise didn’t see it coming. She really didn’t. Suddenly, Charlie’s lips were on hers, he firmly and expertly put his hand on her head and pulled her to him. She’d be lying if she didn’t admit it was a good kiss; firm, confident, practised, yet, despite that, it was the worst kiss of her life. She pushed him away with more violence than was strictly necessary.
‘What the fu—’
Eloise scrambled to her feet and leapt to the open doorway. She turned back to Charlie, almost as though she needed to check what had actually happened. She watched him slowly stand up, saunter towards her and smile. It was an arrogant smile. Almost a leer.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell Mark or Sara. It can be our secret.’ He stretched out a hand and put it on the side of her ribs. His thumb nestled against the slight curve of her breast. She was paralysed with shock. He was . . . he was . . . he was touching her up! She jumped backwards, banging her foot against his tool box and nearly tripping over. ‘Steady, you don’t want an accident,’ he added.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Because you wanted me to.’
‘No, no, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did. You know we’d be good together. I’ve seen you watching me. For a long time now, Eloise. A long time. Isn’t that why you invited me to do this job? What are you waiting for?’
She didn’t answer him. Instead, she ran out of the room, down the stairs and out of the front door, without even stopping to pick up her bag. She needed air.
26
Christmas was such a lovely time of year, thought Margaret. Dartmouth looked at its best in the winter. No noisy, dishevelled tourists dropping litter or wearing garish, floral cagoules to interrupt its majestic beauty. On a good day, Dartmouth glistened. Truly, it did. There were the silver-cobbled streets that sparkled whenever the stones were wet and there was the weak morning sun, low but determined in the December sky, reflecting light all the way across the frosty fields, gleaming as far as the eye could see, and there were the shiny boats bobbing and mooching in the – the – the home thing.
Margaret’s stomach started to churn and she felt sweat creep on her neck. What was that word? Damn it. Where had that word gone? The word for the home of boats, near the edge of land, still in the sea. Blast it. It annoyed her! Upset her! She told herself the word would come to her. Eventually. Although it might not. Less of the words were coming to her nowadays. They stayed away. Lost in a blackness. In the cloud. She must not let it distress her. What was she thinking about before? Oh yes, the weather.
There was sometimes snow in Dartmouth. Not lots of it, like in Scotland and the north, not enough to be inconvenient or destructive. Margaret had always thought northern snow was like women in the north; powerful and dramatic but a bit of a handful. And southern snow was like southern-county women; pretty and manageable, never too much trouble. Margaret had been born in north Yorkshire but lived in Dartmouth and was no longer sure what sort of woman she was.
Of course there were wet days, when the rain simply relentlessly poured, running down the hills in muddy, land-based trajectories. Days when the sea and the sky both looked bruised and angry. But even so, Margaret loved Christmas time.
Ray and Margaret always bought their tree from the tree farm in Capton, always had. Ray would strap it to the top of the car and they’d drive carefully home along the windy, wiggly roads that were flanked by mud mounds and bare, prickly bushes. Once home, they’d build a fire and enjoy a glass of champagne as they dressed the tree. Margaret liked to play the old soundtracks; it was law that Bing Crosby had to be dreaming of a white Christmas as she pulled out the box of decorations from the back of the wardrobe and began to decorate.
Normally, this ritual was her very favourite of all the possible Christmas-time rituals. She’d feel a bubble of excitement erupt in her stomach every time she unwrapped an ornament, carefully releasing it from its cradle of tissue. Most people of their generation dressed their tree with large tartan bows, red and gold tinsel and lots of those little wooden ornaments; tasteful, uniform. Not Margaret and Ray. Margaret had bought two enormous silver baubles on their honeymoon and she’d collected special trinkets every year since. One each. First, there were two a year, then finally – thankfully – three. The hand-picked ornaments were imbued with meaning and personality. They were treasured. A glass cat, Santa on a scooter, a hand-knitted heart. An ornament each, year after year, they’d built up the tree’s wardrobe and when Eloise had come along, Margaret had started to buy one for her too, and then the girls. They needed a big tree now and still it was packed full. Brimming with small tokens of care and thoughtfulness.
Habitually, as Margaret un-swaddled each cherished toy, she’d say to Ray, ‘We bought this one in Bath, Ray. When Mark was eight’, or ‘Remember this one! We bought it in Canada, and stowed it away until Christmas, now that was a trip!’ Ray would smile politely, pretending to take an interest but not seeing anything other than a slightly tatty toy for the tree. To Margaret, the ornaments were like old diaries or photo albums; potent, splendid and proof that they’d lived, made memories and had fun.
But not this year.
This year Ray and Margaret had bought the tree as usual; in fact, it was nicer than usual because Emily, Erin and Poppy had gone along to the tree farm too. They’d ran around in the rain, gulping in the smell of spruce. Ray had splashed out and gone for a six-footer; whether this was to abate their excitement or to prolong it, it wasn’t clear. When they’d returned home, they’d lit the fire, put on the music, popped the champers and then they’d all turned to Margaret; excitement gleaming in the girls’ eyes, expectancy waiting, more patiently, in Ray’s face.
