Capital

Perhaps the problem was that she hadn’t had a clear idea of what that broader life might have been: travel, or going out more often, or, or . . . what, exactly? Petunia had always liked colour but she didn’t feel she had had much of it in her own life. Or rather she felt she had had all too much of one single colour, grey. Since Albert’s death, Petunia would sometimes have the feeling that she could look back over her life and see nothing but grey. From a moral point of view, it is not possible to be too good; but from the point of view of daily living, making your way in the world and demanding your share of its good things, there is a way of being good which does not help you. Petunia had some of that too-quiet, too-undemanding goodness. Given a choice between someone else’s needs and her own, she would always opt to put the other person’s needs first. And this was one of the things which now made her sometimes feel that everything about her life had been spent in a narrow range of monotones.
    Now she was at the end of her own street, Pepys Road, where she had been born and where if she had any say in it she would die. She must have taken this trip ten thousand times in her life. She had done it in a thousand different moods; in fact one of the happiest days of her life had been when she made this very same walk, back from the doctors’, on the day she found out she was pregnant. She had gone in the door sad, she had gone in exhausted, she had gone in feeling flat, fat, sexy, giggly, furious, absent-minded, tipsy from holiday sherry, in a flat rush to get to the loo, in every physical or mental state possible. She had gone through a phase of being frightened that robbers would rush up behind her as her attention was on opening the door, and grab her bag or force their way into the house; but that fear, and others like it, had long since passed. It was still the same house and still the same door and still the same her walking through it.
    We want what you have. Petunia thought about that strange card for a moment. She still found it hard to imagine anyone saying those words to her face.

11
     
     
    Bogdan the builder, whose name was not really Bogdan, sat at the kitchen table in the Younts’ house. He was drinking strong tea from a mug; he had come to like tea and fully understood why the English took it seriously. In front of him was a sheet of paper with numbers on it and a pen and a plate with a biscuit which he had taken out of politeness but did not intend to eat. Across from him sat Arabella Yount, who was drinking weak Lapsang Souchong out of a cup and adjusting her hair behind her ears. She was wearing make-up, tiny diamond earrings, and what she called ‘non-going-out clothes’: a pink velour tracksuit.
    ‘Don’t spare me, Bogdan. Is it horrible? Just how bad is it? I can’t bear the suspense. Is it truly awful? It is, isn’t it?’ said Arabella happily.
    Bogdan, whose name was Zbigniew Tomascewski, put his pencil next to the first line of items on his list and said:
    ‘It is not too bad.’
    Arabella sighed in relief.
    ‘But it will not be cheap.’
    Arabella picked up her cup of tea, sipped it, and shrugged. Zbigniew said:
    ‘I find some things cheap, I am careful but not too careful, eight thousand. I buy new, everything top-spec, five-year guarantee – you know me Mrs Yount, my personal guarantee – twelve thousand.’
    ‘Does that include the thingies, the electricity thingies?’
    ‘The wiring. Yes, it includes everything we discussed.’
    Arabella was having some alterations made to her dressing room and to Joshua’s bedroom. The lighting in the dressing room was unsatisfactory. Arabella felt that the bright lights around the mirrors flattened the planes of her face and made her look like an Eskimo.
    ‘I should probably check with Roger. I should, but I can’t be bothered. That’s fine. When did you think you might be able to start?’
    Zbigniew was a sharp student of his British customers and knew that in this country builders had a reputation for specific things: they were expensive and lazy; they were never available when you wanted them; they took over your house and behaved as if it were theirs during the work; and they left things half- finished and went off to another job so that the last phase of the work dragged on for months. He set out always to be the opposite of all those things and to stick to this policy at all times. So although he had a few things due