‘What’s got into you, Nell? Gabby often tells me what she’s bought. Things for Josh, usually. We have a joint account, for goodness’ sake.’
‘I know you do, but has Gabby ever bought anything biggish, or personal – clothes, for instance – without asking you first?’
‘Of course not. We have to budget, we both need to know what we can afford and what we are spending each month.’
‘So you talk it over with Gabby before you buy anything major, like a new tractor, do you?’
Charlie clicked up the latch of the back door. He knew it was pointless trying to talk to Nell when she was having what his father used to call ‘a feminist moment’. Or, and this had on one occasion caused Nell to throw one of his grandmother’s vases at Ted’s head, ‘the wrong time of the month’.
‘You know perfectly well that Gabby and I have a joint domestic account and I run a farm account with Alan that has absolutely nothing to do with Gabby. It’s business.’
‘Yes. But you hold the strings for both accounts. If Gabby contributes largely to the domestic account, why can’t a new car for Gabby, who is also running a business, come out of the business account she indirectly contributes to? That would be fair, don’t you think?’
Charlie stared at her in much the same way Ted used to; as if she had flown from another planet and was talking a foreign language impossible to decipher.
‘Nell, I don’t understand where you are suddenly coming from. When I can, I will buy Gabby another car, perhaps at the end of the summer. I can’t afford one before that. Gabby hasn’t mentioned anything about her car. You seem to be the one with the problem.’
He shut the door carefully behind him.
Nell stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the closed door. She had been dismissed so often in the years of her marriage, she should be used to it. But the small personal trigger spread like a stain across her heart. Like an interior bleed spreading into something beyond tears. An isolation that might have turned into a wail of anguish, if she had ever let it.
This moment in the flagstoned kitchen, full of the things I touch every day, is the life I led with two strangers. Until Gabby.
Charlie was right, in a way. It was her problem, this terror of meanness; because meanness slid slyly into all areas of life. Emotion, time, love and sex. But she knew her attitude to Charlie was coloured by Ted, and this was not fair. How could Charlie possibly understand why she randomly pounced?
People blamed mothers for selfish or thoughtless men. Nell did not. She believed it an entirely genetic thing that might be mitigated by example, but that was all. Despite Ted’s rampant chauvinism Nell had always insisted that Charlie helped with certain chores and cleared up after himself. As a child he had complied, but as soon as he married Gabby he appeared to take it for granted that all domestic chores were now her role.
Gabby, young and eager to please, had been complicit in this assumption. Once started, how difficult habit and conditioning were to break. There was nothing offensive, not even self-conscious selfishness on Charlie’s part, but his and Gabby’s roles were clearly delineated.
Charlie, like Ted, had never bothered to find out how painstaking and scientific restoring could be. How tiring. Hours of matching and patching, testing, waxing – all with someone else’s precious property.
It pained Nell to watch Gabby clearing up after her son. Mud under the table where he had not bothered to take his work boots off. Never replacing the lid of the marmalade. The paper would be left scrumpled in a heap as if a cat had had a field day with it. It never occurred to him to carry his plate or mug the short distance to the sink. Small, thoughtless things, not important in themselves, yet indicative of his general attitude to who it was who cleared up after him.
Out of the kitchen window the day was dying, the sky crimson, covered with dark cigar-shaped clouds. In the fields a cow mooed repeatedly for her calf. Nell thought of Elan, standing with his whisky watching the same sky from his cottage. No children, no lover. Just the fading embers of another day with canvases full of the thing that lay unspoken in his heart.
She stood listening for the sound of Gabby’s car. Elan had said once, watching a childish, pregnant Gabby, ‘The girl wraps herself so close, Nell. She is too contained, too careful to oblige. This Gabby is easy to love, yet I have a sense of someone else, infinitely more complex, carefully hidden, but I don’t think we are ever going to be allowed to glimpse that little person.’
Out of the growing darkness Nell heard the sound of Gabby’s car coming up the lane. She relaxed, smiled, moved quickly flicking lights on, busy creating order and warmth at the end of the day. As she had always done for Gabby, so that she should never come home to darkness and an empty house.
‘I’m going into town, I need some materials for work,’ Gabby said to Charlie over breakfast. ‘Do you need anything?’
Charlie looked up. ‘You could go to Industrial Farmers for me. I ordered a new hay feeder.’
‘Will it go into my boot?’
‘Just, I think, but it’ll go on your back seat if you slant it towards the back window.’
Nell came into the kitchen and Gabby turned to pour her coffee. She said quickly the thing she had been rehearsing in her head and which was now easier because Charlie wanted a favour.
‘While I’m in Penzance I thought I might buy myself a mobile phone. It would be useful when I’m out working. It means I can take calls, and I won’t lose business.’
Charlie reached for another piece of toast. ‘What’s the matter with the answer-machine in your workroom? People leave messages if you’re out. Mobile phones aren’t cheap, you know.’
‘You’ve got one,’ Nell said before she could stop herself.
‘I have men all over the place, Nell, and I need to know where people are and that they can contact me.’
‘Well,’ Gabby said, ‘the other reason I thought it might be a good idea was if my car broke down. It would be quite nice to know I could ring someone, Charlie.’
‘I think you should definitely get one, Gabby,’ Nell said, meeting Charlie’s eyes and holding them. ‘Especially with the age of your car.’
‘The good thing is I could put it against my business, Charlie.’
Charlie grinned at her. ‘You are sweet, Gab, you haven’t earnt enough to pay tax yet.’
‘That’s because I haven’t been working full time. Now I am, the work should come in.’
Before Nell could interfere again, Charlie said, ‘It’s up to you, Gabby. It seems a waste of money to me, but if you want a phone, go ahead.’
Nell felt like saying, big of you, but she bit her lip and made for the door.
‘If you are going for supplies, Gabby, I need some more Japanese tissue and beeswax.’
‘OK,’ Gabby smiled, relieved; horrified at how easy it was to lie.
‘I’m off.’ Charlie got up from the table. ‘I’m going to check the pheasant pens, then straight on to the auction at Tresillian to try and get that bailer. Did you remember to make me a flask of coffee and sandwiches, Gabby?’
‘Yes, they’re in the old scullery next to your cap.’
‘Thanks.’ He shrugged his jacket on.
‘What are the chances of you getting the bailer?’