Balancing Act (11 page)

Anyway, Ashley thought, moving her hand softly against the denim of Leo’s jeans, look at me. I’m doing exactly what Ma did and Leo is doing exactly what Pa did. In fact, I’ve battled to do my version of what Ma did. I’ve tussled with guilt and pressure and exhaustion and anger, but somehow I’ve always known that I’d rather battle than give up either side of my life. I couldn’t bear not to be a mother. I couldn’t bear not to work. I couldn’t bear, most of all, to be beholden to some man to pay the bills, not to be independent, not to call my own shots. So we’ll see if it works out, this new regime, this new deal between us. The children have eaten more vegetables this last week than in the rest of the year put together. And by the time I’d paid Cheryl, and her tax and all the National Insurance, there wasn’t much change out of seven hundred pounds, which is what Leo brought in, just about, when he was working.

So even if we won’t be better off, we won’t be much worse off either, and psychologically we’ll be in far better shape. I won’t be running to stand still any more, to pay for childcare we both knew was inadequate. Ashley looked at Leo’s sleeping face again, and felt so very grateful to him for making it possible.

She reached up to kiss him in gratitude, gently, but meaningfully. On the sofa cushion beside her, her phone began to vibrate, its screen flashing. ‘Grace,’ it read.

She scrambled off the sofa and carried the phone to the far end of the room, pressing it to her ear. ‘Gracie?’

‘Sorry it’s so late—’

‘That’s OK. Are you OK? Where are you?’

‘In my flat,’ Grace said. ‘I’m at home, with all the doors locked.’

‘Did you go away with Jeff, this weekend?’

‘No.’

‘No? But nobody could find you—’

‘I was here.’

‘You sound odd. Are you—’

‘I’m fine,’ Grace said. ‘I was going to run away, and then I didn’t. I stayed here. I just – well, I just shut down, here. I’ll go into work on Wednesday.’

Ashley leant against the long cupboard where the mops and the vacuum cleaner lived. She said, ‘We haven’t talked properly in ages.’

‘I know.’

‘Not since we came up to meet Morris.’

‘He’s gone,’ Grace said.

‘I heard.’

‘He’s at Jeff’s place.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where’s Ma?’

‘I thought that she was up in Stoke with you,’ Ashley said. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t go in today.’

Ashley shifted a little. She said, ‘You don’t sound quite right to me.’

‘I don’t know whether I am—’

‘There’s been a lot going on down here. Cara and Dan and me. Leo …’

‘What about Leo?’

‘He’s taken the children over.’

‘Wow,’ Grace said. ‘Is that OK?’

‘I don’t know yet. But he seems determined to make a go of it.’

Grace said suddenly, ‘I’m in a bit of a mess.’

‘Gracie. Are you pregnant?’

‘No!’ Grace said. ‘God, no. But – look, I can’t say what I want to say over the telephone. I’m just a bit done in by everything up here—’

‘Come to London.’

‘Well,’ Grace said doubtfully, ‘I might.’

‘Come this weekend. Come on, Grace. Just come. I can tell you everything. It’s been such a mental time, Ma’s house and Morris and trying to restructure stuff and everything. You can see the children.’

‘I’d like that.’

Leo appeared suddenly at the other end of the room, rising from the sofa in a haze of sleep and standing, swaying slightly, outlined against the muted television screen.

‘Get a train on Friday,’ Ashley said. ‘The children’ll be thrilled to see you.’

‘Yes,’ Grace said. ‘OK.’

Ashley felt a little surge of vitality, an electric charge of being in control, and strong enough to prop up those who were faltering. ‘Fab,’ she said, ‘see you Friday,’ and flipped her phone shut. Then she walked across the room and put her arms round Leo. ‘I was going to kiss you just now,’ she said, ‘but my phone rang. So I’ll do it now, instead.’

‘Michelle says that you know where Grace was this weekend,’ Susie said to Neil Dundas.

It was late afternoon and the factory was quiet. It was the time of day Neil usually liked best, walking through
those long rooms filled with the day’s productivity, the air settling after the disturbance caused by a couple of hundred occupied people, the kilns humming their way through their night-long programmes.

He said, not pausing in his rapid checking of a truckload of ghostly fired jugs, ‘I don’t. I didn’t.’

Susie was holding a clipboard against her. She always had a clipboard when she went round the factory, for scribbles and sketches. She said, ‘I rather think you did. I think she told you.’

Neil picked up a jug, inspected its base and put it back. ‘She told me she was going away for a few nights and that she’d be back on Wednesday at the latest, and that nobody was to worry.’

‘Why do you think that she told you?’ Susie said.

Neil turned to look at her. He said firmly, ‘Because I wouldn’t make anything of it, and I’d leave her alone.’

Susie crossed both arms across her clipboard. ‘I’ll ignore that.’

Neil turned back. He said, ‘Did you need her, anyway?’

‘What?’

‘Well, did you need to speak to her this weekend?’

‘I needed,’ Susie said reprovingly, ‘to check that she was all right.’

‘Can’t help you there.’

Susie waited a moment, and then she said, ‘It seems she didn’t go anywhere. She’s just staying in her flat.’

Neil began to push the truck aside, to make way for another. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Neil,’ Susie said, ‘what’s eating you?’

He pulled the second truck loaded with small tureens into place. He said, ‘Forgive plain speaking, but you can’t have it both ways.’

‘I like plain speaking,’ Susie said. ‘What do you mean?’

He turned to face her. ‘This might be a family business. But it’s a business. There are orders to fill, and it’s my job to fill them. It isn’t my job to keep an eye on your family. You shouldn’t be asking me where Grace was this weekend.’

‘But she told you—’

‘She told me,’ Neil said, ‘because I wouldn’t make anything of it. It was a
fact.
She said she wouldn’t be in on Monday or today. One of the casters is off too, because he’s taking his mum to hospital, and we can’t use the flatware machine tomorrow because it’s being serviced. Those are the staffing
facts
I am working around. Grace was merely one of them.’

There was another pause. Then Susie said, ‘Point taken.’

Neil turned back to the tureens. He said teasingly, ‘Thank you, Boss.’

‘But I would have liked to see Grace this weekend,’ Susie said. ‘I was out at Barlaston with the architect, and I’d have liked her opinion. She didn’t answer her phone.’

Neil said nothing.

She watched him for a while, and then she said, ‘Have you made the samples for the coffee-shop special edition yet?’

He let a beat fall and then he said, ‘Yes, I have,’ in the tone of one who really wanted to say, ‘Of course.’

Cara had bought an organic, free-range chicken. It had been an eye-watering price – even if not as eye-watering as a poulet de Bresse, which she had not permitted herself even to consider – but it came covered with assurances of quality and compassionate rearing, and in any case, Dan loved chicken. Which was the whole point. When Dan got back from a punishing cycle ride, Cara would have stuffed the chicken with breadcrumbs, olives, lemons and basil, and roasted it to perfection. She would even use some of the aged balsamic vinegar they had bought in Modena together in the stuffing. Dan would notice and approve of these details, and he would
realize what she was saying, in roasted chicken rather than in words.

The thing was, Cara discovered, that she didn’t want to say sorry. She didn’t think that there was any need to apologize for feeling so acutely and suddenly protective of her mother, nor for simultaneously resenting Dan’s attitude. That attitude – that demand to know exactly how Susie had been browbeaten into submission – had really offended her. It had stuck in her gullet, both because it assumed that the two of them were detached from, and somehow superior to, the rest of the family, and also because it assumed that Susie was some kind of obstructive, obstinate idiot. Which was, Cara felt, most unfair.

These feelings were extremely disconcerting. They had never happened before. Before, she and Dan had taken for granted that their united front was naturally progressive in the best possible, incontrovertible way. But something had shifted, and that certainty no longer appeared so unassailable. Cara had a hot flush of shame at the memory of some of the conversations about Susie that she had had in the past with Daniel. Now, for some reason, her exasperation with Susie felt like something she was naturally allowed to have, just as Ashley and Grace and Pa were, but that Daniel and Leo – if he ever joined in – were not. Absolutely not. If Daniel spoke disrespectfully of Susie again, Cara was determined to put him forcibly right. Conversations about Susie’s limitations would be severely policed in future. She felt very strongly about that.

On the other hand, she knew that Daniel was often right. There was no question about that. He was a brilliant commercial director, and he was also very patient, really, in his dealings with the whole Moran family. Pa loved him, after all, and so did she. He was her chosen companion, her best friend, her ally and her supporter. He had backed her up
in so many business disputes where she had actually turned out to be right. They agreed about friends and holidays and leisure pursuits and money and, crucially, about not having a baby. She really wanted to make peace with him and to demonstrate her very real love for him, but she couldn’t say sorry. So the perfect chicken, filling the flat with its irresistible aromas when he returned and found candles lit and music playing, would wordlessly say it all for her.

As was her habit, Cara laid out all her ingredients on the kitchen counter. It would be soothing to chop and slice and stir, and she was keenly aware of needing to be soothed. This sudden urge to defend Susie, almost to
protect
her, had apparently come out of nowhere, striking her not while she was still arguing crossly in Susie’s kitchen, but on the way home, when she had been flooded with sudden anguish about leaving Susie alone in Radipole Road with the aftermath of their exchange to deal with. But what was that about? There’d been plenty of occasions in the past when she’d felt nothing but fury at Susie’s abiding unreasonableness or obduracy, and hadn’t felt a shred of remorse. In fact, over time, she’d got quite used to switching into exasperated-daughter mode in almost every conversation with her mother, and who could blame Dan for picking up on that and following her lead? She had grown to regard her frustrated attitude towards her mother in their business dealings just as the way things would always be. She had fallen into a habit, taking Dan with her. And now that habit had been roughly, unavoidably shaken.

But by what? Cara began to fish the olives out of their jar of oil. Could it possibly be the arrival of Morris? Could it be that his appearance on the scene had made starkly vivid the idea of Susie being casually abandoned as a baby by her parents, however loving and capable her grandparents had been? Was the presence of this strangely elusive but burdensome old man a catalyst for the kind of empathy that Cara
had never felt before? Had never, if she was frank with herself,
bothered
to feel before? She lined the olives up on her chopping board and began to slit them open to extract the stones. Had she and her sisters just never looked beyond their own emotionally secure childhoods, to picture what Susie had never had? Had they just focussed on the advantages she had undoubtedly received, or the comforts and security that her achievements had given them all?

She lifted the board and scraped the olives into her bowl of breadcrumbs. Whatever had happened in her mind, it was deep and disconcerting. It was also preoccupying her in a way that preparing the stuffing for the chicken didn’t seem to be helping with at all. And in addition, she realized with dismay, it was making her lonely. Because of the complexity of her feelings, and their contradictions, she couldn’t discuss them with the one person she had grown to rely upon turning to. She could give Dan a perfect chicken by way of not saying sorry, but she couldn’t ask for his help in disentangling her feelings. It was a most unwelcome first in their marriage.

She picked up the lemon and the grater, held them over the bowl of breadcrumbs, and suddenly couldn’t see. Oh God, she thought. Oh
God.
I’m crying.

‘F
or a slip-cover tin,’ the production director said to Susie, ‘you’re looking at about a pound a tin, for orders over three thousand. And for hinged-lid tins, about half that.’

They were sitting in his office, which had been converted from a Victorian barn within sight of the M6. The barn, and the farmhouse it had once served, had long since lost all agricultural connections, and were now reincarnated as a small light-industrial estate with a tidy road system edged with orderly municipal planting. Susie, who liked randomness in natural things, found these trips to Tinware for Today aesthetically offensive, but it was a small British company, founded by an enterprising man who had grown up in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and therefore it ticked all her required boxes for local manufacture. She had discovered the company almost fifteen years ago, when it was just a fledgling start-up, and had been the first manufacturer to give it a substantial order. Since then, she had gone there twice a year, to present her new designs in person and to talk them through, in every detail, with the team who would produce Susie Sullivan tin trays, lunchboxes and biscuit tins. Susie looked at the prototype tins on the production
director’s desk. They were unadorned in any way, just cylinders and cubes of silvery tinware, with the odd heart shape or oval among them. There was a small, round tray to one side, gleaming like a moon.

She had not made a specific point of flagging up this visit. If Daniel or her daughters wished to look at her open diary, they would notice that the biannual visit to Tinware for Today was scheduled, but she had not drawn their attention to it. It wasn’t deviousness, she told herself, it was more a need to reassure herself that she was still in charge, that the company functioned on fuel provided by her input and her hands-on approach. In any case, Nick Jarvis, the production director of Tinware for Today, was new to the job, and therefore needed to be made aware of the significance of Susie Sullivan pottery to his company. He also needed to know who was ultimately in charge. He was looking at her now, slightly questioningly, and then said with a hint of defiance, ‘That’s a very good price.’

Susie reached out and touched a lunchbox, with its pleasingly retro handle. ‘It is,’ she said. She didn’t look at him. ‘Too good, in fact.’

He gave a small bark of laughter. ‘I don’t have many customers who complain about
that
!’

Susie went on looking at the lunchbox. She said lightly, ‘Well, I’m not your average customer.’

Nick pulled himself together. He said hastily, ‘I never intended to imply that.’

She picked up a cylindrical tin and inspected it. ‘This is seamless.’

‘Of course.’

‘And what we pack our cookies in.’

He said politely, ‘I’m aware of that.’

‘And you are offering it to me at much less than I’ve paid for it before?’

He smiled, and said with a small air of triumph, ‘That’s the current price, Mrs Moran.’

Susie put the tin down carefully. She said casually, ‘And where are you sourcing the sheet metal from?’

Nick said cheerfully, ‘China, of course.’

She looked directly at him. ‘Exactly.’

‘But—’

‘I don’t want to use sheet metal from China,’ Susie said, ‘however cheap it is. I want to use the sheet-metal manufacturers I’ve always used, in Sheffield.’

‘But that might be twice the price—’

‘My pottery,’ Susie said, still regarding him, ‘my brand says Made in Britain underneath every item. Made in Britain. Every mug, every paper napkin, every biscuit tin. To me, Made in Britain means that everything – the china clay, the paper, the tin, the glass,
everything
about the product is made and sourced here. There are manufacturers in my industry, Nick, who have their products made in China and only decorated here, which still have Made in Britain stamped underneath. That, to me, is a lie. I won’t have it. I want Made in Britain to mean what it says. And that goes for the tinware we buy from you.’

Nick shifted in his chair and pushed his designer spectacles up his nose. He said, ‘I haven’t had many dealings with Sheffield—’

‘Well, you’d better start.’

‘If you’re prepared—’

‘I’m prepared,’ Susie said. ‘I’ll argue the price with you, but I’m prepared.’

He said unwisely, ‘I’ll get back to you with a quote—’

‘No, you won’t,’ Susie said. ‘You’ll ring them now. While I’m here. We’ll get a price sorted before I leave. And the design. I need to talk to your team about the design, as I always do.’

Nick leant forward, smiling, but his smile was far from
certain. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you could leave your ideas, your sketches …’ He stopped. Then he said, ‘My second bad idea, obviously.’

Susie smiled at him kindly. ‘You have a lot to learn.’

He attempted a shrug and thought better of it halfway through. He said lamely, ‘I’m three weeks in.’

‘And I,’ Susie said, ‘am well over thirty years in. Probably since before
you
were born.’

‘Not quite.’

‘Long enough to know both my product and my customers, wouldn’t you say?’

Nick nodded.

Susie stood up. ‘You ring Sheffield,’ she said, looking down at him, ‘while I go and find the design team. No –’ she added, holding out a hand to stop him rising, ‘don’t move. I know where I’m going. And when I’m back, we can haggle over what I am prepared to pay for sheet metal made in Britain.’ She paused and gave him a brief smile. ‘OK?’

Jeff said he owed Morris a drink. Even a double. He said that his boss was so thrilled with the prototype bird house that Morris had made that he, Jeff, was benefiting from the reflected glory.

Morris, sitting on the couch in Jeff’s sitting room, looked at his hands and said that it was nothing. ‘I made spirit houses in Lamu. They were an idea that came from Bali or someplace, originally. You had this little house on a pole outside your own house, for the spirits to live in, and you left them offerings – flowers and things. I made them in exchange for – well, it was a barter thing. Kept us going sometimes.’

Jeff was sitting on the floor, propped against the wall by the television. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, elegantly crossed at the ankle. He said, ‘
Us.
You don’t talk about her much.’

‘Who?’

‘Grace’s granny,’ Jeff said.

Morris sighed. He said, ‘Paula.’

‘That her name? Grace’s grandma was called Paula?’

Morris smiled to himself. He said, ‘I called her Stella. Stella the star. She never grew up.’

Jeff was watching him. He said, ‘In what way didn’t she grow up?’

Morris pulled a face. ‘She never thought about the next day. Or the next week, or year. She was all impulse and reaction. Rain or shine, she just lived it, like a cat or something.’ He glanced at Jeff. ‘She’d never have managed life here.’

Jeff took a swig from the can of Coke Zero he was holding. He said nonchalantly, ‘D’you think Grace is like her?’

‘Why d’you ask?’

‘Just wondered.’

‘Did you now?’ Morris said.

Jeff set the can down on the carpet tiles beside him. He said, ‘Grace is very special.’

‘Yes,’ Morris said shortly.

‘And it sounds as if Stella was.’

‘She was an eternal child,’ Morris said, ‘if that counts as special.’

‘Maybe that’s why I want to look after Grace.’

‘Really?’

Jeff nodded solemnly.

‘Well,’ Morris said, still looking at him, ‘she’s got Stella’s hair.’

‘I love her hair.’

‘She was one big freckle after a year in Lamu. Reminded me of a flame or something, red hair and all those freckles.’

Jeff smiled to himself. He said confidingly, ‘Grace has freckles—’

‘I don’t want to know,’ Morris said.

Jeff looked tolerant. ‘‘Course you don’t. You’re her granddad.’

Morris nodded.

Jeff picked up his drink again and squinted at the can.

‘You got plans for this weekend?’

‘Not unless my daughter calls me.’

Jeff said, ‘Think I’ll try and see Grace.’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, we haven’t been in touch this week somehow. Not since you moved in, in fact. I’d – I’d like to know her reaction to that.’

Morris adjusted some of the woven bracelets around his left wrist. He said, ‘You want her to say thank you?’

‘Oh no,’ Jeff said.

‘Really?’

Jeff looked sideways, towards the window. ‘I’d – like to know if she’s noticed.’

‘Well,’ Morris said, ‘I would think she’s noticed that I’m not in her flat, wouldn’t you?’

Jeff said, suddenly piteous, ‘I miss her.’

‘Me too,’ Morris said.

Jeff swung his head back to look at Morris and said decisively, ‘I’m going to call her this weekend.’

Morris smiled at him. ‘No point.’

‘What d’you mean, no point? What would you know—’

‘She isn’t there,’ Morris said.

‘Isn’t where?’

‘She isn’t at home.’ Morris went back to rearranging his bracelets. He said with just a hint of satisfaction, ‘She’s gone to London for the weekend.’

‘I love you,’ Maisie said to Grace.

She had climbed into Grace’s bed some time before dawn
and was now lying on her side, her head on Grace’s pillow and her nose only inches from Grace’s own.

Grace was struggling to open her eyes. She said indistinctly, ‘I love you, too.’

Maisie pushed her face even closer to Grace’s, so that her breath was warm on Grace’s skin. ‘But I
really
love you,’ she said.

Grace didn’t try to open her eyes. ‘You mean,’ she said, ‘that you want me to wake up.’

‘Yes,’ Maisie said.

‘I can’t.’

‘Oh,’ Maisie said, in imitation of her mother’s inflection, ‘I think you can.’

‘Not yet.’

‘It’s the morning,’ Maisie said.

‘No—’

‘Oh yes,’ Maisie said. ‘Mumma went downstairs to make tea.’

‘Did she?’

‘So it’s time to get
up.
’

Grace put a hand on Maisie’s solid little side. ‘Don’t bully me, Mais. Please.’

‘I want you to
play
with me.’

‘Not yet.’

‘Now!’

‘In a minute,’ Grace said.

‘You don’t say that,’ Maisie said sternly. ‘You
never
say that. Not to a
child.
’

Grace laughed and opened her eyes.

‘That’s better,’ Maisie said approvingly.

‘You’re awful.’

Maisie moved so close that her eyes crossed, trying to see Grace properly. ‘I need to play Lego Friends.’

‘Not
need
,’ Grace said.
‘Want.’

Maisie took no notice. She said, breathing into Grace’s mouth, ‘You have to help me.’

‘She doesn’t
have
to do anything for you whatsoever,’ Ashley said from the doorway.

Maisie shot up in bed. ‘Mumma! It’s the morning!’

Ashley was carrying a tray of mugs. She wore a cardigan of Leo’s over polka-dotted pyjamas and her feet were thrust into immense sheepskin slippers that made her look like Donald Duck.

Grace raised herself on one elbow. ‘Oh, Ash—’

Ashley put the tray down on the bedside table. ‘Hot chocolate for Maisie. Tea for us. Budge up, I’m getting in.’

‘But I need to
play
,’ Maisie said.

Ashley kicked off her slippers and began to climb into bed beside her sister. She said to Maisie, ‘Have you done a pee?’

‘Yes,’ Maisie said.

‘Fibber,’ Ashley said. ‘Go now.’

‘No.’

‘Go
now.
Or I will pour your hot chocolate down the loo.’

Maisie began to slither slowly out of the bed. She said, ‘I don’t want to go by myself.’

Grace reared up a little further. ‘I’ll come with you.’

‘No,’ Ashley said. She put a hand on her sister’s arm. ‘She can manage perfectly well on her own. Anyway, Leo’s in there. Shaving.’

‘I don’t want Dadda to help me.’

‘Then do it yourself.’

Maisie had reached the floor. She glowered at her mother. She said, ‘Don’t talk to Grace.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t talk to Grace when I’m not here.’

Ashley said, laughing, ‘But she’s my sister!’

Maisie walked very slowly to the door. She looked back
at them, side by side in bed. She said, ‘I got there first. I was there in the night time.’ Then she slid from view.

Grace struggled to sit up. She said, ‘She’s wonderful.’

‘Did she wake you?’

Grace pushed her hair back. ‘Not when she got in, whenever that was.’

‘I think she’s going to be a bit like Ma when she grows up,’ said Ashley. She handed a mug of tea to Grace. ‘Where
is
Ma, by the way?’

Grace took the tea and held it with both hands. ‘Not at home, I don’t think. Maybe in Barlaston.’

‘We should know.’

‘We often don’t.’

‘No,’ Ashley said, ‘we often don’t. And she doesn’t want us to. Is it a kind of control?’

Grace took a gulp of tea. ‘God, that’s good. That first mouthful of tea in the morning – nothing like it. It might be control, but I think it’s more to do with liberty. I think she kind of craves freedom – can’t bear to be told, or confined or anything.’

‘Which is where Cara and Dan have got it so wrong,’ Ashley said, settling back into the pillows. ‘They tried to assign her a
role.
And even if she didn’t hate the role itself, she wouldn’t have been able to stand the mere idea of having one in the first place. Certainly not one that someone else has devised for her.’

Grace said, ‘Did Cara think of the idea? It doesn’t sound like Cara.’

‘It was Dan.’

‘Oh,’ Grace said. She held her mug against her chin. She said, ‘He so wants the company to prosper and
grow.
’

‘Grace,’ Ashley said, interrupting, ‘we can talk about them later. We’ve got all weekend to talk about the company. But what about
you
?’

Grace closed her eyes briefly. She said, ‘Nothing much.’

‘
Gracie.
Don’t be irritating. Tell me.’

Grace reached to put her mug down beside the bed. She said slowly, ‘I – just started some things that I can’t finish.’

‘Morris? Jeff?’

‘Both.’