[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.’Christine sits at the kitchen table now and listens to the wrangling in the bathroom, her husband’s ineffectual protestations as the children fight over a certain squeaky bath toy they both lay claim to.From out of the corner of her eye, she sees the familiar tiny dark shape of a mouse run the length of the skirting.If she puts another trap out, she’ll have to remember to tell Al to check them before the kids get up tomorrow.Finding a dead mouse is likely to set them both off, demanding a funeral and burial, which would make them late for school.She gets up and finds two traps in the pantry, in behind the jars and plastic containers and the box full of herbal cough and cold remedies, valerian tea and rescue remedy.Back when the kids were born, she and Al would never have dreamed of treating them with any commercial preparations from the chemist.And they’d been lucky: the kids never got sick; she hadn’t been in a hospital since Hannah was born.Rescue remedy, she thinks as she replaces the little bottle on the shelf.And can’t stop her mouth twisting into a humourless, cynical curl as she dabs some peanut butter onto the mousetraps and sets them, pushing them cautiously back into shadowy corners with the tip of her finger.‘Al!’ she calls at last.‘Will you get the kids out of the bath, for God’s sake? Dinner’s been ready for half an hour!’She finds herself watching him, sometimes, still a little incredulous at the dreamy way he handles life, how everything seems to flow around him.Once at a barbeque held at the community centre where he works, she’d impulsively asked a colleague how he managed everything there at the office.‘Oh, fine,’ the woman had said, surprised.‘Al just does his own thing, you know? It all comes together in the end.’Here at home, she never sees it coming together.Everything, on the contrary, seems to be teetering on the verge of coming apart.That, or just sinking into neglect, like the wheelbarrow half-full of compost and the shovel which has been buried in weeds for over a fortnight, outside the kitchen window.He never rises to the bait, either.Once, when he’d wandered in from the study and said, ‘What have you got planned for dinner?’ she’d snapped, ‘What have you got planned?’ but he’d only looked surprised and answered mildly, ‘Nothing.Is it my turn?’He only makes one dinner, though: tuna and pasta casserole.Christine supposes she should be grateful he’s so laid-back — relaxed with the kids, always in the same amiable mood.But he’s so vague, that’s the trouble, so blind to how much organising she has to do around him to keep it all running.It’s like she has three kids, not two.Now she watches him dump clean folded clothes out of the washing basket onto the rug, slowly picking through the pile looking for fresh pyjamas for the kids.‘Hurry, Dad! Hurry!’ whines Hannah, jiggling naked and impatient on the spot.Christine drinks in the sight of her strong little back, the sturdy muscles in her legs as she jumps from one foot to the other.Al looks up at Hannah and raises his eyebrows, tickles her with one teasing forefinger.‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ he says, and Jamie guffaws with laughter at his sister, who complains even louder and kicks out at him.He aims his Jedi fighter plane warningly at her.Al doesn’t even notice.He glances down at the pyjama top he’s holding and with one distracted but surprisingly adept movement reaches his hand inside to the label and shakes it right-way-out.If they do the tests in the afternoon, Christine wonders, will they keep her down there tomorrow night if the results are bad? She tries the word in her head, exploratively, trying to take the terrifying sting out of it.Malignant.Malignant.Would they be so prompt, or would some other specialist have to make the decision? Does she have tuna and pasta in the pantry, just in case?‘I need a cardboard box,’ Jamie announces after dinner, ‘for my school project.’Christine finds him an old four-litre wine cask.‘What’s this for?’ she asks as he cuts a hole in one end.‘We’re making models.It’s going to be a little world, kind of.Like, I’m going to put blue paper in here, for sky? And some little sticks like trees.And when people look through the hole it’s going to look like a real place.’‘Wow, that sounds good.When does it have to be ready?’‘Tomorrow,’ he replies calmly.God, sometimes he’s so like Al it scares her.‘Shall we go and cut some sticks and twigs, then?’ she suggests.He glances out at the twilight and shrugs.‘OK.’‘What are you going to stick them in, to make them stand up?’She watches his serious seven-year-old face consider this, and wants to take his arm and plant a kiss on the faded temporary tattoo of Buzz Lightyear there on his skinny bicep.‘Playdough,’ he says at last
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]