To Have and to Hold Read Free Page A

too late,’ he said.
    â€˜Since when have you got so healthy?’
    Viv took a cigarette. ‘Some things are too late.’
    Irene, through her smoke, was still squinting at Douglas.
    Viv said: ‘For Ann, anyway.’ She thought: I haven’t sat in a car with both my parents for fifteen years, since they’ve been divorced. It takes this to do it. She said: ‘It’s too late for Ann.’
    â€˜She can’t have any more babies.’
    â€˜Why?’ said Rosie.
    â€˜Because she’s had a hysterectomy, which means –’
    â€˜I don’t want shoes like this, I want them without any straps and with little heels.’
    â€˜Well you can’t.’
    â€˜Tamsin has and Rashida has and –’
    â€˜Shut up.’
    They were sitting in a shoe shop. Rosie twitched her foot.
    Viv said: ‘She loved your get-well card.’
    â€˜Mum, why can’t I –’
    â€˜Shut up!’
    A shop assistant came up. Viv tried to exchange apologetic glances but the assistant ignored her.
    â€˜Can she try these?’ Viv said, holding up a sandal. She turned to Rosie. ‘Then I’ll get you both some tights.’ She had a strong desire, today, to buy her children new clothes.
    As they walked back home she tried again.
    â€˜Ann’s coming out of hospital tomorrow.’
    But Rosie and Daisy were barging ahead to catch
Grange Hill
on the telly.
    Viv went into the kitchen and dumped her shoulder-bag, with its crackling Barclaycard counterfoils, on the table, and put the carrier-bags on the floor. Why should they understand?
    Later, however, she went into their bedroom and there was Rosie, laying her kangaroo on the floor and tucking it up in a blanket.
    â€˜What’re you doing?’ asked Viv.
    â€˜She’s in hospital. Be quiet.’
    Ken drove Ann home. She was silent. In the hospital it had been hard to find things to say. He had saved up stories for her, stories from work, but they were mostly the alcoholic adventures of Bob and Al, the chippies who talked the most, and they sounded sordid in the telling so he had stopped.
    In the next ward there had been babies crying, quite distinctly. Ann had had to listen to that all day. Probably all night too, though neither of them had brought the subject up. There were so many things that could not be mentioned; he hadn’t realized how much of their life was concerned with the future, with building for a family. He couldn’t even talk about the extension because its real, unsaid name had always been a playroom, a child’s room facing the sun and connecting to the kitchen. So he had told her about the car breaking down, which really wasn’t much of a topic. He had wanted to make her smile, he had wanted to tell her about surveying the house in Wainwright Avenue, how he’d been shining his torch into the gaps in the lath and plaster and all the time some little girl, an inmate of the place, had been tying his shoe-laces together. He had wanted to tell her how the lady of the house had come in to ask him about the extent of the rot, and how he hadn’t been able to move. But he couldn’t tell her this. So they had sat in silence, and he had held her hand and asked her about the food. And she had said that soon she would be out of there and she wanted to come home.
    They drove towards Finsbury Park. It was 3.30 and the schools were coming out. A lollipop lady stepped into the road and Ken stopped the car. Children, holding their mothers’ hands, crossed the road. Blue anoraks, red anoraks, a little boydropping some paper and his mother smacking him. Ken switched on the radio.
    â€˜. . . and now, with news from Beirut, here’s our correspondent . . .’
    He twiddled the dials, revving the car. It seemed to take an age for the children to pass; didn’t they understand? He glanced at Ann’s profile.
    He ushered her into the hall. The house was neat and tidy, as if