Attachment (14 page)

Jean had no idea how long she’d been soaking when she heard Vic hollering. It used to drive her crazy, the preference of her family for yelling over walking ten feet into the next room. Now it filled her with happiness.

“Mum!”

“Yeah?!” She wasn’t above yelling back—not ready to abandon her soak.

“It’s Dad!”

“I’m in the bath! Get a number!” Silence. Mark’s call seemed to make the water go cold. She wrapped herself in a flowerpower Barbie beach towel—more Maya. She did like the look of that cosmetics console, though—a dozen shades of pink and purple eye shadow arranged in the drawers of a chromed bureau for a doll. Jean dressed quickly. Checking the mirror, she raised her eyebrows to reverse the frown that had become her neutral gear and went downstairs.

“Dad sounded good,” said Vic, sitting on the counter, fiddling
with her empty wineglass. It didn’t seem
very
long ago that she and her friends were standing right here on crates, rolling out cookies.

“And?” said Jean. “Did you get a number?” Jean was sure the answer would be no; for all she knew, he’d called from a hotel in Mayfair.

“He said they were about to go in to dinner but he’d call back and that he hadn’t killed anything or anyone. And, oh yeah, that everyone including him is drinking ‘lakefuls’ of Riesling.”

She could feel her daughter eyeing her as she got out the plates and cutlery, padding around in a pair of loose yoga pants that hadn’t made the island cut and Maya’s giant Garfield slippers.

“Hey Mum, you look really good in those.”

“These flattering pantaloons?” Jean held them out at their greatest, clownish width. “What do you think? Ideal pants for a pantisocracy, everybody gets a pair.”

“No thanks,” said Vic, “not even for the greater good. But
those,
on the other hand, now you’re talking.” Vic was smiling down at Jean’s feet.

“Oh yes, I know,” Jean said, frowning. “Aren’t they
gorgeous.
I must get my own pair, some black ones. Sort of panthery, you know, for evening.” She pointed one bulbed orange toe. “Do you think Elizabeth might be jealous?” Jean picked up the cat and stroked her silky gray coat. Then she told Vic about Maya’s other contribution to family fashion, the unorthodox quiff.

“I can’t
believe
Dad put that stuff in his hair,” Vic said, refilling her glass.

Jean, who hoped this story wouldn’t be wheeled out too often, doubted she could have this kind of fun with a boy child. At such moments, she positively envied single mothers.
This
was the basic relationship; even biologically they were on the same side. “Take it easy,” she said. “You haven’t eaten anything.” And then, not wanting to go that way, she said, “Poor Dad. We are
not
telling him. He’ll be miserable.”

“Of
course
we’re telling him. In fact, I think we should call right now and make an announcement over the PA system at the
Biergarten.
”

Biergarten.
Jean smiled. She herself had pictured a long, dark dining hall festooned with link sausages and lined with mounted boars’ heads and, for servers, Fräuleins with yellow braids and heaving bosoms, packed into scoop-necked peasant blouses. And where was the Fräulein Giovana in this festive scene? Upstairs, she supposed, kneeling by the bed and praying.

The doorbell was so loud that after more than twenty years it still made Jean jump.

T
he two women
sat opposite each other across the scrubbed pine table, the low enamel lamp casting a circle of yellow light, and sipped their noodle soup in silence. Jean thought Victoria looked too thin. She’d never been fat, but now, sucking broth off her porcelain spoon, she had that sunken, haunted Hubbard look where you could easily make out the shape of the skull. But that was all you could make out.

Her generation was so secretive, Jean thought. “Do you see much of the old gang?”

“Some,” said Vic, laughing at her mother’s archaic slang. “Maya, obviously. And Fi. It’s Charlotte’s party tomorrow night, though I hardly ever see her now that she’s at Cambridge.”

Quite a few of her friends were a little older, but then Vic had grown up alone with her parents. Or with her parents, alone. “What, the gang plus Vikram? It must be a
little
different.”

“Yeah, course it is.”

Jean sighed, giving up. “What is that
pink
on your eyes?” she asked, changing tack. Eye shadow, obviously, but evenly spread over both lids, deepening in hue at the brow bone, like stage makeup spread not to cover but to illustrate a bruise. Worried about her Phyllis-like tone, she added, “I like it.”

“You
do
?” Vic said, tapping her eyelids as if to check that the swelling had gone down. “My friend Sophie gave it to me.” She said, glancing up, “I mean your friend Sophie.”

“
My
friend Sophie? Do I have a friend called Sophie?” Jean asked, rising to clear the bowls.

“I told you about her in my letter. I wanted to ask you…well, I think she’s Dad’s friend really. I guess. Or her mother was or something.”

“You mean Sophie de Vilmorin.”

“You
do
know her!”

Why Vic was so delighted Jean couldn’t imagine. She remembered the postcard in the Wallace Collection: the pale duchess. “Funny you should mention her because just today I saw a portrait that looked like her. I couldn’t think who it reminded me of and that’s who. Serendipity. Salad?” She didn’t like Vic’s blazing eyes, looking at her as she would have, at least a few years ago, if Jean had confessed to a casual acquaintance with Kylie Minogue. “What was she doing here, anyway? You said in your letter that she’d come round.”

“I invited her. But then she said
you’d
invited her too, when you saw her in the dry cleaners, was it? I kept seeing her around—I thought maybe she was some weird Camden lesbian. She was always smiling at me—and then one day, me and Vikram and Maya were having breakfast at the caff and she like came right up to me and said ‘You are Victoria Hubbard?’” Vic said her name with a good French accent, opening her eyes wide to show alarm. “So we got talking and she said she used to
live
here. Here in Albert Street—in this house.”

“
Tu exagères, ma fille.
She stayed here once—for maybe three weeks. A month, max. When you were about eighteen months old, or less.” Jesus, Jean thought,
was
Sophie de Vilmorin a predatory lesbian? There was definitely something creepy about her that day in the dry cleaners. If she was nursing a crush on Vic, that would explain it.

“Anyway, she asked if she could see the house again and how it was like the happiest time of her life here, and that she babysat me, and she was like
there,
in the room, when I said my first word—‘minibar.’ So I knew it was true.”

“Babysat? She’s making herself sound like our au pair. Which she wasn’t—no one was. You never had any kind of nanny, a fact of which I’m rather proud. Though you may see it differently. And your first word, I’m sorry to inform you, was ‘doh’—for ‘dog.’ You used to point a little bent finger at every dog in Primrose Hill and say ‘Doh!’ True, ‘minibar’ was not far behind, when we stayed at the Carlyle on that glory trip to New York, to show you off to Gran and Noddy. Sophie wasn’t there.”

Jean felt uneasy contradicting the compelling account of an acquaintance-cum-intruder. But as she’d tell herself later, sleepless at dawn in her empty bed, this threatened feeling, this insane suspicion, was simply the product of her own moral degeneration—something she really couldn’t allow to infect her every judgment and feeling.

“So you brought her to the house?”

“Yes, I did. It was a great evening. We looked at all the old albums for hours and it was amazing. She remembered everything, like the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling and the cracked blue glass on the landing loo door. The broken loo chain.”

“Lucky her.”

“We were going to call you, but then I don’t know what happened.”

“What happened is that you didn’t call me.”

“Oh Mum, I hope you don’t mind, but she stayed for a few days. This is what I wanted to tell you. I thought it was all right. As she’d stayed here before and everything. Maya had just moved out and so, well, I gave her your room.”

Jean shuddered, dissembling through extreme attention to salad tossing. “Look, darling, you have basically very good judgment, but the truth is, well, you can’t just have people to stay. Not because we don’t trust
you…
The responsibility is just overwhelming, for
anyone
—and these things do have a way of spiraling out of control…” Here she could speak with authority. “When was that anyway? What’s she up to?”

“It was a few weeks ago. That’s the thing. I don’t really know. I think she lives in Paris, but she didn’t give me her number or anything. She was around Camden’cause I saw her on and off for ages. And then she was gone. Maybe this is weird, but I kind of miss her. She was really nice and wanted to know all about you and Dad and St. Jacques and stuff—I gave her your e-mail address, though I guess she didn’t write.”

Jean suddenly remembered the French e-mail for Mark she’d seen in their in-box before leaving St. Jacques; she’d completely forgotten to tell him about it. Perhaps it wasn’t a business e-mail at all. Perhaps Sophie
had
written, just not to her. “I’d be a bit careful if she turns up again, darling. She doesn’t seem to be a very stable person. Understandably enough.”

“How do you mean ‘understandably,’ Mum?” Vic looked so worried that Jean saw she was going to have to give her something.

“She had a pretty rough start, to say the least. You know that Sophie is the daughter of an old girlfriend of your father’s. Sandrine, a French girl he was nuts about a hundred years ago. Nineteen sixty-seven, I guess it was, because Dad was seventeen. He spent the summer with her family, in Brittany. St. Malo.” Vic clearly was waiting for more.

“You really have to ask Daddy, but the thing was, Sandrine then went off with someone else. And she got pregnant. It’s a very sad story,” Jean pressed on, mopping spilled vinegar from
the table. “Maybe Sophie told you. Her father died on the day she was born. Some horrific car accident, actually on his way to the hospital to see her for the first time. Terrible. Poor little thing.”

“Wow. She didn’t tell me that.” Vic looked puzzled, maybe a little hurt, to think her big new friend hadn’t trusted her with this pivotal fact.

“Yes, there was flooding all across Europe that spring—you must’ve heard Dad talk about it—Easter, I think it was. Well, we saw her a couple of times when you were little, but then we lost touch. I’m sure Mark used to have some contact with the mother, Sandrine. Though I seem to remember she moved away to…Canada? I don’t know. It really was very sad. Want some ice cream, sweetie? Mango sorbet from Manzi’s. Or mint—tastes so much like toothpaste, you could even skip brushing.”

“No thanks, Mum. Vikram and I don’t eat sugar.”

That, to Jean’s relief, was the end of the conversation. They’d thought about going to see a movie—a romantic comedy, of course, without Mark in tow—but instead, after dinner, they settled in the living room with refilled wineglasses. Jean closed the shutters while Victoria flicked through
TimeOut.

“Cool,” she said, reaching for the remote. “
When a Man Loves a Woman.
That’s the one with Meg Ryan as a drunk. Just started.”

“Oh, good. I never saw that. Who’s the man, Dennis Quaid?” Jean tucked her knees under her and took Elizabeth onto her lap, nestling down into the big squashy blue sofa. Which, she noticed, was a whole shade dirtier. “He’s her real husband, you know. Or was.” Probably had an affair with a younger, curvier actress, Jean thought. And then Meg had her lips done, as if that was going to help.

“No wonder she’s a drunk,” Vic offered.

“She isn’t
really
an alcoholic. And I think Dennis Quaid’s a hunk. That
smile.
Of course he’s only about three feet tall. They’re all midgets. I wonder why they split up. She is kind of annoying—so cute-as-a-button.”

“Not in this one. What they call a ‘brave role’ round Oscar time.”

“No, brave was that orgasm in
When Harry Met Sally.
”

“Brave or desperate. Yoo-hoo, Oscar! By the way, I know she isn’t really an alcoholic, Mum. Andy Garcia, it says here.”

“Ooh. Even better,” Jean said, happy but nearly ready for bed. “Vikram looks a little like Andy Garcia, does anyone ever say that? Hey, Dad never called back.”

“Too busy draining all that sweet wine?” Vic said, taking another sip.

Jean must’ve fallen asleep because the movie was almost over when Vic said, “I really wish Meg would fall off the wagon. She’s
so
much better drunk.” The phone was ringing in the kitchen.

“Where’s the
phone
?” Jean asked, annoyed it was no longer in its cradle on the side table and that Vic didn’t even seem to hear it.

“It broke.”

Typical of a much younger Vic, Jean thought, racing to the kitchen phone: “It broke,” “It fell”—never “I dropped it.”

“Hi!” Jean said, straining to hear. It was Mark. “Sounds like you’re calling from a nightclub—where
are
you?” She tried to ignore an image of Giovana facedown in his lap at the darkened back of an after-hours club, Mark stroking her hair while he talked to home, her head like a silky little spaniel. When she hung up, she patted Elizabeth, who was purring at her ankles. Then she pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and headed for the stairs.

“Good night, darling,” she called from the living room
level, still climbing. “I’m hitting the sack—won’t make it if I stop. Mwa.”

“Night, Mum. Wake me up, okay? We have to get the train at one forty-five.”

“I will.” She paused, smiling to think Vic needed to be shaken awake for an afternoon send-off, until she saw her daughter was crying, the light dancing over her face in frantic blue geometries. “Oh, no,” she said, “what is it?”

“It’s so sad,” Vic said, laughing now, and so pretty with her big, brown, tear-shined eyes. “She just isn’t falling off the wagon. I keep willing her to, but she won’t. It’s a
tragedy,
Mum. Sleep tight.”

The coffee was snoring through the electric drip, and Jean was replaying Mark’s message—listening, she had to admit, for non-German background noises—when the phone rang. She pushed the stop button on the answering machine, and when she slid the glass coffeepot from its burner to pour herself a cup, the black stream kept coming. Now Jean had a ringing phone and hot coffee bleeding across the counter. She tossed a hastily wrung shred of a sponge at the mess just as the answering machine kicked back in.

“Hello, Mrs. Hubbard. This is your escort for the evening. The last showing of
Shroud of Dew
—and, mind you, it
is
three hours long—begins at seven o’clock. I hope you won’t think me a total shit if we meet there, as I have to go to Sussex now, for the day. Lunch!”

She winced at his “loonch” and “Soosix,” listening with both hands on her throat, like a person feeling for swollen glands. Dan was still talking. “What was it you said about being judged by the lunches you chuck? Well no chucking the film, or supper for that matter, which is on me if we survive to eat it. So see you there, at the box office, six forty-five? I’ve booked the tickets in your name. Bye, now.” Click.

Jean had been standing watching the phone in her robe and Maya’s Garfield slippers, still holding her neck as if only her hands were keeping her head from falling off—too horrified to pick up, too horrified to sip the coffee that made such a mess. She was more horrified still when she realized Dan hadn’t left a cell number. She quickly dialed 1471 and was told “Number withheld.” She’d call him at home—just say Vic decided not to go to her party after all. His number
had
to be here among the two decades’ worth scribbled by different hands in many pens on the wall around the kitchen phone.
“Yes,”
she said when she spotted it,
Dan Manning—H,
for home. She stabbed at the buttons as if there was smoke everywhere and she was calling the fire department.

“This is Dan.”

“Dan! It’s Jean!” she shrieked.

But he kept on talking. “I don’t seem to be here at the moment…” With a jammed ballpoint, the only pen in sight, Jean carved the number into the side of the cereal box. Only when she’d finished and he signed off did she realize it was the office number.

“Shit,” she said. “Shit, shit,
shit.”

“Good morning to you too,” Victoria said, wandering in, midyawn, coming to a stop in front of the fridge. Both arms rose and trembled as if they were hefting invisible weights. She rolled onto the outsides of her feet. For once Jean was too distracted to worry about her daughter’s instep. The big yawn lifted Vic’s big T-shirt, grazing her slim bowed thighs and showing, at full stretch, her underpants. God she’s tall, Jean thought. And Jesus, she’s wearing a thong.

“It was Dan Manning leaving a message I couldn’t intercept
because someone not mentioning any names didn’t clean the coffee machine.” Jean’s indignation suffocated her shock at Vic’s underwear—too many syllables for so small a garment.

“What’d he want that freaked you out so much?”

“You don’t like Dan, do you.”

“He’s all right,” Vic said dismissively. “Just that he slept with Maya about thirty seconds after she split up with Gavin.”

“Really?”

“He’s a total predator.”

“Well, she
had
broken up. Did he cheer her up at least?”