An Irresponsible Age. Lavinia Greenlaw

followed her as closely as courtiers as she plonked the baby on Juliet’s lap and shook Jacob’s hand while reaching up with her other arm to tidy her hair. His eyes flicked from her smooth copper shoulder to the damp shock of orange in her raised armpit to the tight bodice with its two patches of milky wetness. He stared frankly at her hair. That evening, as they sat smoking in the garden, Jacob asked her about her painting, which he managed to suggest he knew by reputation and not just through Juliet. Clara had scoffed at every good thing he said but did not move away, even though he was sitting powerfully close to her.

      

      Juliet’s father was known fondly in the village as Dr Kill Off. He was a dignified man with a face that naturally looked full of grief, so that the change brought about in him by his son’s death was not generally noticed. At the funeral, he had spoken in a voice so cracked and agonised that it was the sound that people remembered rather than what he said.

      Juliet and Fred walked into the church behind Mary, who was wearing the black dress in which she sang. Her parents had come – her mother, Stella, from Hay-on-Wye where she ran a chain of antique shops and her father, the architect Matthew George, from New York. Carlo carried Bella, who gave sudden shouts throughout the service and hit out with her fat fists at anyone who leant over and suggested that they take the child outside. Mary shook her head as she stared at the coffin. She could not believe that Tobias, with all his strength and capacity, could fit inside it.

      She was whispering something.

      ‘What was that?’ Carlo murmured, but she didn’t reply. It had sounded like ‘Stop’.

      After the funeral, the entire village, it seemed to Jacob, came back to the house for tea. He stayed by the French windows which gave onto the garden, smiling at whoever passed. An aunt approached. She had Juliet by the hand and took one of his and looked for a moment as if she were about to demand some sort of vow. Her mutterings of hope and approval panicked Juliet, who was not ready to admit that in these last few days something had begun.

      In the evening, there was a dinner of odds and ends: a salad of dandelion leaves that Francesca had pulled out of the lawn, luncheon meat that looked like something freshly skinned, slices of cold fatty lamb, white sliced bread, an enormous cheese that had gone glassy with age, cake left over from the tea and a blancmange rabbit. This last was placed in front of Fred who decapitated it and auctioned off the head.

      The children were in bed and so these were the children, and as such they recovered themselves and talked all at once in a condensed coded language punctuated by the same unattractive laugh. Juliet reduced it to a snort and Fred to a horse-like snicker, Clara trumpeted and Carlo rumbled. Fred made Clara a crown of dandelion leaves and flicked spoonfuls of blancmange. Mary sat next to Clara’s husband Stefan and they talked to one another. Jacob tried to catch the eye of Francesca, who ate slowly while staring past his right shoulder. He also tried to talk to the doctor, who was interjecting in his children’s banter but did not seem to listen and could not be heard.

      Later, when the parents had disappeared, Jacob went into the kitchen to get a glass of water. The dirty pans were still on the stove but someone had moved each plate, bowl, spoon, knife and fork onto the chair of the person who had used it. The table was clear and had been wiped clean. He went to find Juliet.

      ‘I was about to wash up, only half of it’s been sort of arranged …’

      ‘You mean on our chairs?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘It’s Ma’s rule. She tried to get us to help but we just argued, so she said the least we could do was to wash up our own things and when we forgot, she put them on our chairs.’

      ‘And what if you still didn’t clear them?’

      ‘They would still be there in the morning.’

      ‘But why does she still do it now?’

      Juliet looked confused.

      After Jacob had washed up, he found the family slumped in front of a television in a small room at the back of the house. Clara, Juliet, Carlo and Fred were squashed together on a sofa, their arms and legs trailed round and over one another. Mary sat on the floor at their feet and Stefan was asleep in an armchair. When Jacob said goodnight, only Mary replied.

      How odd the Cloughs looked, drained by the television’s light. Their outlines were so harsh. Fred was too delicate, epicene even, and Carlo venal. Clara in profile was a hook-nosed witch and Juliet was, well, plain. Then they all threw back their heads and laughed at something Jacob couldn’t see, and he watched their shadows bobbing on the far wall – infantile, hilarious, monstrous.

       SIX

      One Sunday morning in April, Jacob arrived at Khyber Road.

      ‘Why does he just turn up like this?’ Fred hissed to Juliet in the kitchen. ‘You must have given him the number by now.’

      ‘What for?’ retorted Juliet, who admired Jacob’s lack of manners. ‘Would you tidy up? Bake a cake?’

      ‘No, I’ve got more important things to do and anyway, if I knew he was coming, I’d leave.’ He took an ostentatious breath, ‘He’s not right.’

      ‘How would you know? You’ve hardly spoken to him.’

      ‘He doesn’t look right.’

      Jacob did look wrong: too tall for the low-ceilinged room, too clean for its murky walls, too well-made for the failing sofa. He was wearing an indigo shirt, half unbuttoned and untucked. One sleeve was rolled up over a fine-boned golden forearm.

      Apollo, thought Juliet as she came back in with a bottle of wine and two glasses. Fucking Apollo. He did take up a lot of space.

      

      ‘How’s Federico?’ Jacob asked, taking Juliet’s hand and leading her up the stairs to her room. He stood by the open window, a concentration of blue and gold against the fading blue and gold sky.

      ‘Still in love with that girl Caroline, who works on the same floor. She rents a room from this dreadful couple and I think she’s sleeping with the man.’

      ‘That sounds,’ Jacob began, pulling Juliet down on top of him as he lay back, ‘like a tedious story.’

      Juliet did not like to talk about Jacob. She wouldn’t have known what to say. He disappeared from the gallery and appeared at Khyber Road, and they would lie like this and he would kiss and stroke her, not where she might expect him to but on her calves, ribs, cheekbones and wrists. It was as if they were starting obliquely, with Jacob approaching her from the steepest possible angle so that she couldn’t see him until he was absolutely there.

      His attention turned her in on herself. She hadn’t noticed how inert she had become when she was with him or that their conversation consisted of Jacob’s questions and her answers. She made the assumptions about his quietness that people usually made, and thought of his interest in her as a pleasing but not particularly useful thing. She did not know what she felt, and anyway she was tired. Two months had passed since Tobias’s death and Juliet was not sleeping well. Her pain had not got worse but she could bear it less, her physical pain that is, for Juliet acknowledged no other. There would be a moment when the small of her back burst into flame, and then the glass and stone in her would rise, and her voice and breath were sucked down into the fire. She took the painkillers as the doctor had instructed, and more when she needed them.

      

      As Fred plucked each petal from the rose, he stopped himself saying ‘She loves me, she loves me not.’ Whether or not someone loved you was not the point of loving them. He laid the petals out and selected a dozen of the largest and roundest. Parchment, the recipe said. Parchment.

      As Jacob unbuttoned Juliet’s shirt, there was a knock at the door and Fred’s tremulous voice called: ‘Jules?’

      She