Queen K, page 8
There’s been a misunderstanding, she thought, as she watched him go. A misunderstanding. She felt herself become stuck on that thought, that word. A misunderstanding.
Now her mum got out of the car and Dmitri shut the door behind her. She had the same look she always had when she was anywhere near the school: that look of defensive bravado barely masking a quavering, tremulous hope. Alex went towards her.
Kata was wearing a massive purple hat that swooped all over the place; some small round baubles – were they meant to be grapes? – tumbled off one side. Her skirt suit was purple and her shoes were purple and very high.
There were all sorts of events: a tour of the classrooms, of the new chemistry lab, of the extended art block, a presentation and some speeches on the lawn. And then everyone stood around on the lawn while small girls from a lower year brought them plastic bowls filled with strawberries and cream.
Being around her family seemed to embolden Harriet and make her revert to type. She had horsey-looking parents with braying voices. Her mother always wore a battered straw hat with a silk scarf tied round it and seemed to be confidently acquainted with all the other mothers; her siblings were numerous and boisterous. When she and her clan passed Alex and Kata, she gave Kata, in her heels and tight-fitting suit, such a withering and open look of disdain, so forceful and venomous even by Harriet’s standards, that Alex knew her mum, already painfully sensitive at events like this, would register it.
‘Hello, Harriet,’ Kata called out, and Alex heard the tremor in her voice. She still remembered Harriet’s name from that encounter three years before when Alex had started at the school. Alex looked away, not wanting to witness Harriet’s response. She heard laughter, but at least she didn’t see the look, the look she was sure Harriet would have given her mum. When she did return her gaze she saw that her mum’s hand, as she moved her plastic spoon down towards her pot of strawberries and cream, was shaking. As she brought the spoon back up towards her lips her hand shook a glob of cream and a small fat strawberry onto the purple lapel of her jacket. The jacket was suede, the worst kind of material to get stains out of. That stain would sit on her lapel for the rest of the day, even if she fussed at it with a napkin or tried to wash it out.
At that moment Alex felt a hand on her shoulder. ‘Alex!’
She smelled the clean sweep of Tatiana’s blonde hair, took in the sunny, untroubled countenance, the air of absolute belonging and ease; there was so much of it that if she were next to it she couldn’t help but be fortified, feel it seeping into her. Her mum was now holding herself still. Her pursed lips and the vast mirrored expanse of her sunglasses gave nothing away.
‘How’s it going, Alex?’ Tatiana was saying. ‘Oh my God, I love your outfit, you look so chic.’
Alex was wearing jeans and a plain shirt.
‘And you must be Alex’s mother,’ Tatiana reached out and shook Kata’s hand, still holding Alex to her side. ‘It’s so nice to meet you. You look amazing too. Style obviously runs in the family.’
Alex wondered if her mother would be aware of who Tatiana was, if she’d seen the TV show. It was likely. She could tell that her mother was paying attention to Tatiana with every conscious cell; at the same time, her right hand was fidgeting, anxiously, with the lapel of her jacket that bore the stain, trying to fold it inwards. It wouldn’t stay there, it kept flopping out.
‘Oh, I don’t know why they insist on serving this strawberry and cream thing,’ Tatiana said. ‘There are multiple casualties every single year. Last year I thought I’d destroyed a skirt, I spilled cream all over it. The skirt was red suede but it did come out, so don’t worry, your beautiful suit is safe.’
Kata’s hand had been on its way up to her lapel again. It paused mid-journey and then continued. Instead of fussing the lapel in on itself she used her hand to smooth it out into its normal position. She patted the stain, now fully visible, looked at Tatiana, and they both laughed.
‘Yes, this would not be my usual choice of afternoon snack,’ she said.
She held her pot out to Alex. ‘Go and put this in a trash can.’
The bin was some way away on the other side of the lawn, next to the library block. Alex weaved her way through families. Some of them had brought picnic rugs and spread them over the grass. As she made her way back she saw that Tatiana and her mum were still talking. They were both laughing. Alex kept on walking towards them; occasionally milling people blocked them from her view. Tatiana didn’t seem to have her own mother or father with her. Alex didn’t remember ever having seen them at the school. It was hard to imagine Tatiana needing parents.
She glanced to the right and saw that a girl called Jess, and some others, were heading in Tatiana’s direction. ‘Tatiana!’ she heard Jess call. Tatiana kept on smiling and chatting to Kata, appearing not to have heard. But she must have heard because – still chatting – she raised a hand and moved it back over her shoulder, palm out, a ‘stop’ gesture. ‘Tats!’ Jess called out again. Alex saw Tatiana reach out a hand and put it on her mum’s upper arm, smiling, then turn briefly in the direction of Jess. The moment her face was turned away from Kata, Tatiana’s smile disappeared. She shook her head, warningly, at Jess and mouthed the word ‘No’. Jess stopped, said something to the others, and they walked away. Tatiana turned back to Kata, smiling once again.
Alex realised she’d stopped walking and was standing still. She was close enough to see both her mum’s and Tatiana’s face quite clearly and it had been striking, the swiftness of the change in Tatiana’s expression from when she was facing Kata to when she was facing away, the bright sunny smile turned on, then off.
She started walking again, she went up to where they were standing, she put her arm around her mother’s back and held her.
‘I have invited Tatiana to come and stay with us in the summer holiday.’
Alex felt the arm holding her mum go rigid. For a moment she imagined using it to knock her mother to the ground.
*
The day was interminable. After the speeches on the lawn one of the teachers made an announcement through a megaphone and they were all herded off to the main hall, to sit through yet more hymns and presentations and skits and on and on and on.
‘It will be awkward having Tatiana to stay, Mama, she’s not even in my year, she’s so much older than me, she’s about to leave school,’ Alex said.
‘Don’t be silly. She likes you, she told me you are great friends.’
‘And you know that she’s on a reality TV show?’
‘Oh?’ said Kata, noncommittally, not responding further. Alex knew that had she been learning this news for the first time her reaction would have been greater. Her chin was raised, her pout set.
‘You know how Papa will feel about that. You know how he is about keeping things private. Tatiana is the last sort of person he wants coming to the house.’
Tatiana’s Instagram followers were in the hundreds of thousands. She posted every moment of her life in her stories.
Kata shucked off Alex’s concern. ‘You know he’s always in Moscow working. He’ll be with us maybe just a few days here and there over the summer. And anyway, he wouldn’t even notice about the TV show. When would he ever watch a thing like that, to know?’
Alex thought of making the point that he needn’t have watched it himself in order to know, that there were people around him whose sole job was to make sure he knew everything he had to know, but a feeling of apathy overcame her. She mustered her last bit of strength to argue her point, but then Kata was saying: ‘You want Tatiana to come and stay. It is very good for you, to make friends at your school. Tatiana will be a very good friend for you.’
Alex watched her mother’s mouth moving, she took in the narrative being rewritten, so boldly, with such unconcern – did her mother even know she was doing it? – as if she, Alex, were not there, as if her very being were not a fact in the world. There was something annihilating in it. She realised she was standing still and that her mother was walking on ahead.
*
They were slowly crowding into the assembly room, filing down the aisle, then turning left to inch their way along a row of wooden chairs. They reached their allotted chairs and sat down. Alex was right at the end of the row. On the other side of her mother sat a woman with a ruddy face full of broken veins beneath a thatch of hair. Alex could see dog hairs on her tweed trousers. She had the air of the military about her.
The situation her mum had got her into was not irrevocable.
Nothing need be done today. In a few days’ time, she’d tell Tatiana that something had come up, something unforeseen, that made her coming to stay impossible. And on the same day she’d ring up her mum and tell her … something: Tatiana had filming commitments, Tatiana had an internship in Washington DC for the whole of the summer.
Her mother’s perfume was very strong. It always was, because she tended to apply it several times throughout the day. She did so now. An act on the stage had finished, there were claps all round, and her mum leaned forward to her handbag, got out her travel-sized perfume bottle, and daubed the pungent liquid over her neck and wrists. The smell was intense.
Alex saw the military-looking woman’s nose crinkle up; she turned towards Kata, tutting and shaking her head.
‘Honestly,’ she was saying. She turned to the man sitting on the other side of her – now he really did look like a general, or was it a colonel? – who was equally red-faced with a disciplined moustache, and began to mutter.
Her mum was oblivious.
A new batch of students was taking to the stage. Tatiana was one of them. It was a group of leavers; they embarked, in tandem, on an earnest speech about how grateful they were for all the school had done for them.
Kata was radiant as she watched Tatiana. She put her arm around Alex again, pulled her in close. The military woman was still glancing sideways occasionally, tutting and muttering. But her mum remained oblivious. She could not be touched. She stretched her legs out in front of her as far as she could, she crossed one over the other, she leaned right back in her chair.
Alex gave the military woman a cold, cold look. She held the look until the military woman looked away.
Leave my mum alone you stupid ugly red-faced bitch, she was thinking.
When she’d forced her to look away she took her mother’s moist and manicured hand, she looked at her gazing up so happily at Tatiana on the stage, the first time she’d seen her mother at ease in all the times she had ever visited the school.
She gave in.
She didn’t say anything to Tatiana, she didn’t make up any reason for her not to come.
*
It was starting to get chilly on the rocky outcrop. I shifted. Alex was shivering. Goosebumps stood up on her skinny calves. She pulled at the sleeves of her thin jumper. She tucked her fingers inside the fabric and hugged her arms around her knees.
‘Do you want to head back?’ I asked.
‘Mama takes everything and makes it her own,’ she said. ‘I was having a shit time at school. I was. And now I’m letting this Tatiana girl come here, just to make Mama feel better.’
I thought of the vase of flowers Alex had put beside her mother’s bed.
‘Because you are kind,’ I said. ‘You want to make her happy. And what can you do? You love her, after all.’
8
When I heard the sounds of Kata’s arrival the next day I left my room and went down the long hall, eager to see her. Sebastian and Irina were fussing around her. She looked as I remembered, the same glossy hair, the same glossy lips. Body statuesque, chin raised in practised hauteur. If anything, she looked slightly younger, her skin more taut. Did I sense the traces of a lower face lift? Her skin shone with chemical peels; I guessed she’d had a fair few of those up in the mountains. ‘My chook,’ she said to Alex; she bent down and air-kissed around Alex’s head.
She was undeniably a presence, arcing her grand slow movements through the air, but as I stood there and watched her I felt something I hadn’t felt back in Courchevel. I felt contempt for her, and it was because of the things Alex had told me. You are a silly, selfish, grasping woman, I thought. You live your life in bad faith.
‘Irina, please bring some tea to my room. Melanie, hello, welcome, I hope lessons are going well, we will speak later. Now, I need to take a rest.’
With those words she disappeared to her room, Alex following her.
That night Alex came into the kitchen when Sebastian and I were in there; she went to the cupboard and got out a box of Ladurée macarons. ‘Mama and I are going to watch stuff in her room,’ she said. ‘But you guys should use the TV room. What do you think you’ll watch?’
‘Oh no, honey,’ Sebastian said, giving an exaggerated yawn. ‘I’m too tired tonight. Straight to bed for me.’
‘Same,’ I said. Neither of us would have used the TV room without Alex’s being there. Our legitimate terrain was our bedrooms and the kitchen. Use of the other rooms required the authorising presence of a bona fide member of the household. It was touchingly innocent of Alex to be unaware of this.
Over the following days Alex spent a lot of time with her mum, hibernating in the master suite with her, as she’d said she would.
I would walk past and hear murmuring coming from in there: always it was Kata’s voice, talking, talking. I wondered what she was talking about, how she found so much to say to her daughter. I asked Sebastian if Kata and Alex always spent this much time together when they were in the same house.
‘It depends,’ he told me. ‘They are very close.’
‘It’s funny,’ I said. ‘From what Alex told me, I wouldn’t have got that impression at all.’
‘It’s ups and downs, you know,’ he said. ‘They go through their phases.’
Mum’s casts were off. She kept me updated with photos and the occasional video call. Her image showed up on my phone a couple of days after Kata’s return. The word Mum pulsing on my screen, over the picture of her, looking pretty with her hair in a messy bun, doing something to a flower bed.
The early morning light fell soft over my white sheets. I sipped on my warm coffee. She was drinking coffee too.
‘What are you up to today?’ I asked her. ‘Are you back at work yet?’
My Aunt Janet had a Holistic Beauty and Wellness Salon in Totnes.
‘Three clients this afternoon. Quite an easy day.’
‘Which treatments?’
‘Pedicure, Gua Sha Facial, Non-Acid Peel.’
‘Gua Sha is the massage with the green jade stone?’
‘Green jade roller.’
‘What does it do?’
‘It boosts circulation, it’s good for lymphatic drainage. I thought I gave you one, darling?’
‘Yes, you did,’ I said.
I felt warmth in my chest, hot little coals. A prickling behind my eyes. Early morning caffeine always heightened things. But still. There were topics on which Mum was expert and when we kept to these topics she was the parent I’d always longed for. It was why I always sent her pictures of plants I didn’t know the names of, even though I could easily have downloaded the app that tells you such things. Ficus, the answer would whizz back, authoritatively. Rubber Fig.
I saw that it was nearly half past eight.
‘I’d better go, I’ve got to get ready for lessons.’
‘OK darling. Speak this evening?’
‘Maybe some morning later this week,’ I said.
Evenings were her danger time.
We had been eating dinner together, the four of us – Alex, Sebastian, Irina and I – in the dining room. Now, Kata and Alex ate in Kata’s bedroom in front of her TV and the rest of us grabbed dinner when we could. Sebastian and Irina had duties in the evenings so we ate separately, ad hoc, depending on Kata’s wishes and plans. No longer the masters of our own time, we took scraps where we could, where the opportunity presented itself. ‘Wanna watch an episode of something?’ Sebastian might ask, coming to my room at 9 p.m. We’d settle down to watch; half an hour later Sebastian’s phone would buzz. ‘Kata wants me to book her a spa appointment for tomorrow,’ he would say, and off he would go to his laptop. We both felt nostalgic for the communal rhythm of our nights before Kata had arrived. I imagined what it would be like if Sebastian and I owned the apartment, and Alex lived in it with us. The texture we would establish. It would not be prey to contingencies. It would be something on which we could rely. Each night would find us in the TV room, curtains drawn, watching movies together. Or maybe, if the place was ours, we’d no longer feel the need to cling to this ritual. Maybe we’d leave the curtains open and let the wind from the marina blow in. Maybe some nights we would watch movies, and some nights we would not.
If a text came through from Mum after about 5 or 6 p.m. I tended to delete it without reading it, but a couple of days after our morning call one came through just before lunch.
Why don’t I take a few days off and come out to see you? Janet won’t mind. It’s been ages since I had a holiday.
Not a good idea, I wrote back. I’m working. Plus Monaco a v expensive place to stay and obviously you can’t stay here.
Not Monaco, she replied. Have found reasonable Airbnb in village up in hills. You can come when you have time.
PS Your dad and I stayed near there on our honeymoon!! Be interesting to see that part of the world again.
You mean you’ve already reserved it?
No, just thinking about it. They have some availability next month.
But at ten-thirty that night messages came through and I couldn’t stop myself looking at them. First there were honeymoon photos of her and my dad, photographs from her album. Him handsome in a summer suit, her girlish and excited beside him, on the terrace of a grand hotel. Him at the wheel of a vintage open-topped car. ‘An Aston Martin!’ Mum had told me, what felt like millions of times. I’d seen the photos millions of times too. After the photos there was typing for ages, but the message, when it came through, was just a single word:
