Temper

Temper

Phoebe Walker

Fairlight Books

First published by Fairlight Books 2023

Fairlight Books

Summertown Pavilion, 18–24 Middle Way, Oxford, OX2 7LG

Copyright © Phoebe Walker 2023

The right of Phoebe Walker to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by Phoebe Walker in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is copyright material and must not be copied, stored, distributed, transmitted, reproduced or otherwise made available in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

ISBN 978-1-914148-29-3

www.fairlightbooks.com

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Designed by Anna Morrison

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Contents

Autumn

Winter

Spring

Summer

Acknowledgements

About the Author

For Sam

Autumn

Life in slow motion, I think. Then I think severely, that is pedestrian, and beneath you. Every morning he kisses my hair, the knot of his tie resting on my forehead, and I say,

Have fun and be yourself.

And he leaves. Much later, hours and hours sometimes, I get up and wash at the basin, under a small window open to the cooling air, then go downstairs to make coffee. I peel an orange and stare at my screen. Sometimes I am full of purpose, answering emails and arranging calls, tap tap. I look up dance classes and swimming timetables, day trips, festivals, restaurants. I’ve never tried Nepalese cuisine, never visited the Christmas markets at Cologne, now only four hours away by train.

I search for recipes by a single ingredient: glass noodles, pinto beans, courgette, honey, cashews. At 3pm, I eat mounded handfuls of speculaas biscuits, which here come shaped like macarons and are covered in milk chocolate. I marvel at myself.

It’s the smoking that gets me out of the house.

*

Today we had a thunderstorm. I’ve rarely experienced a storm in the morning, before the bins have even been taken, and I enjoy it, the early havoc of light and coarse rain.

I am so stupid here. I go into a shop and pick up the sort of things a woman like me picks up: hair mousse, satsumas, hand cream, linseed crackers, carnations. At the till the (invariable) woman smiles and says—

And I stare and say, Sorry? I even put a craven inflection on it, Zhorry, to make it sound as if I am possibly not English, and so worthy of a little more patience. And then she repeats what she has said in immaculate English, and I say Aha, and pay. Usually, she is just asking about coupons, or plastic bags. Zhorry.

*

I can’t get away from this internal posturing, desperate, like someone turning endlessly in front of a department store mirror, piping, And from this side? And this side? with terrified eyes.

There’s a gap where my sense of place should be. It’s quite a useful one sometimes. It allows me to sit on the cusp of an opinion. I can nod along when people around me say: Of course, here they have a different way of doing things, and not all of it is done well; their record on the things they’re fêted for actually lags way behind – way behind – their European counterparts; it’s not all tolerance and equality, it’s not all plain speaking. And environmentally? Well, count all the bikes you like, they’re not doing half of what Sweden, Norway, Germany are doing; they’re actually a big polluter, relatively speaking. But you won’t get anywhere talking to any of them about that.

And then, when others say to me: You must be so happy not to be in the UK any more. I mean, everyone I know wants to get out. It’s all austerity, splendid isolation, permanent crisis. It gets worse, every week it gets worse. Whereas, here – well, you’ve just got to look around you: the libraries, the parks, the public transport, the schools, the recycling, the municipal flower displays! Everything just works. They really have nailed, nailed, their civic infrastructure. You won’t want to go back, after a year or two here. I mean, you’re not planning on it, are you?

I agree to all of this, at different times. Sometimes I’m the one saying this – or at least, saying certain phrases – the way when I lived in London I agreed that it was a relief to live among so much culture, energy, the buzz of the city; and when I returned north, to the half-abandoned fringe of coast on which I’d grown up, to the friends who hadn’t left, I said how wonderful it was to have space, to have quiet, to pay a sensible price for a pint.

Here, this is less tact than diffidence, but it leaves me feeling unaffiliated, drifting aimlessly in the void between two countries, with no predilection, no plan for movement towards one or the other. And you can choose, I tell myself sourly, to go either way. What fortune, to be able to base a choice on liking, to be worried only about the lack of it. Here, the Netherlands, with its seeming ease and order, is the least complicated place we could have come to. I am well aware that this is the tamest and most tepid flight we could have made.

*

It was hot today, the last gasp before the cooler weather sets in. I felt at a loss. I’d know how to feel in this weather at home, I think – what my plans would be, who they’d be with. Heat and light bring to mind yellow grass, hasty plans, swoops onto the chiller cabinets of express supermarkets, emerging from damp train carriages, spilling like blood through the sutures of the bus, knowing there are glowing hours ahead. The heat would be in me, and around me, unaccustomed warmth in my mind, beneath my skin. Here, I experienced the heat only as something physical, something practical. I changed my outfit, stuck my bare foot into a patch of sunlight on the sofa. There was nobody to call.

*

How’s it going? Where’s it going? I know Robin gets asked things like this by his colleagues, whose minds run in these nevertheless life-affirming channels. He works for a company that manufactures all kinds of foodstuffs, its logo found everywhere from baby food to biscuits. His career was the engine of our move here. The granular nature of work in this kind of megacorp is incredible: his job involves keeping a close eye on the global supply of seeds and legumes. I went to a drinks reception at his offices this week, to welcome newcomers, and was greeted immediately by a woman, a stranger, who said to me: We have heard so much! And we will get him to marry you! She heaped my plate with four skewers of chicken, dunked in satay sauce. After I had eaten one, the same woman leant over my shoulder and said blandly: No one should eat so much meat in one day.

I’m forgetting what it’s like to have colleagues. It’s such a con, I tell people bravely, the nine-to-five, the forty-hour week. Since I’ve started freelancing, since I’ve been working for myself, by myself, I get a day’s work done in four hours – less! Nobody is interested in hearing this, they smile and mime envy, but it invites no interest, no genuine sense that this is something to be desired. And maybe they’re right. My spare hours do stack up aimlessly, slabs of white-walled afternoon spent topping up my water glass. Footsteps in the street bring me soundlessly to the window, like a cat, to watch others, busier than myself, recede purposefully in the direction of the city.

A woman, one of our neighbours, came to collect a parcel that had been left at our house. She introduced herself as Suzanne and, looking at me closely, invited me to join her at her house – 7b, just a few doors down – for a cup of tea or a glass of wine sometime. It’s good to know your neighbours, she added. We both know the chances of this invitation ever being taken up are close to zero. I imagined knocking on her door one Monday evening, slyly brandishing a bottle of red. I imagined what we’d talk about: her family, her work, my infinitely more slender grasp on both, both of us silently wondering what the other is doing here, Suzanne, in my company, and me, in her country, doing very little for one another.

*

Our landlady came today to check the fire alarms. She insisted on explaining to me the history of the house and of its street, the point of which seemed to be that we are fortunate enough to find ourselves living in a real-life Upstairs Downstairs, occupying the space that once would have held servants’ quarters. Downton Abbey! she said, and moved as if to nudge me. I went to tuck a lamp’s trailing cable behind a drawer, and she immediately made some minute adjustment to it, then said, It’s as you prefer, of course.

*

I scalded my soup today, again, and spent ten minutes scraping potato sludge from the pan. Food is on my mind, of course. The past afternoon I spent with other women, colleagues of Robin’s, or partners of his colleagues. After half an hour the sticky ball of conversation rolled, predictably, around to food. It started as a veiled interest in other people’s health. What gym did people go to? one person asked. What classes were others signed up for? Someone said they did spin, because it gave them a higher resting metabolism. Means I can do this more, she said, picking out a doughnut from an untouched box that lay on the table, taking a ceremonious bite.

One woman asked if that really worked. Someone else said it didn’t for them. They had to watch what they ate like a hawk. And it hadn’t always been like that. Up till about my mid-twenties, she told us, I could eat what I liked. And drink whatever, I was out every night. Almost.

There was a collective sigh of nostalgia, then it was on to personal strategies, laid out and coyly compared, larded with cries of, Oh you are good; Oh, I’d never have that much self-control! Dinners replaced by palmfuls of fish fingers, baked dark brown to leach out the excess oil. The cloudy procession of Tupperware, the plastic shrunk to almost purposeless dimensions, but in fact fit for holding one slender branch of grapes, or six almonds, or a tablespoon of quark, to be enjoyed mid-morning. I mustered my own contributions, half-heartedly: the years of sugarless jellies, the carob-coated raisins, and received a series of knowing nods from the others.

I said all this, despite knowing full well that with friends, with family, I happily play the glutton. I demand a third portion, a fourth. I dip my spoon, with apologies, into the central pot; I fish out nuggets of meat and swallow them with audible relish. I hover beside the dishwasher, spooning alternate helpings of dry rice and stock juices into my mouth. I abhor waste, I say loudly, food waste is a sin. Any left? Pass it down! is a common cry at communal dinners, and I grin and beckon it on, and I load my plate, and I fill my mouth.

And despite the glee of