Balancing Act (12 page)

‘We all do that,’ Ashley said. Her tone was encouraging. ‘We all hope we can sort things, and then we find we can’t, and it’s often not our fault that we can’t.’

Grace slid back down in bed and closed her eyes again. She said, ‘I shouldn’t have started it.’

‘Jeff?’ Ashley said again.

‘Cara said don’t. Cara said it was almost always dangerous online. But when I saw this photo and realized he lived so close—’

Ashley said, in an extremely reasonable voice, ‘It isn’t a crime to fancy someone, you know.’

‘But now he’s kind of hooked on hating my family, but wanting to be part of it,’ Grace said. ‘The thought of Morris in his flat is so complicated it makes me want to run away. Or go to bed for a week.’

Ashley looked down at her sister. She said gently, ‘Morris is actually Ma’s problem, Gracie. If she doesn’t want him in Jeff’s flat, then she has to put him somewhere else. It isn’t up to you.’

Grace opened her eyes. ‘I was trying to help.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean,’ Grace said, rolling on her side towards her sister, ‘I know you and Cara think Ma is holding the company back in lots of ways, and I expect you’re right – at least, partly right – but I can’t help seeing her point of view, too. I can’t help wondering what it must feel like to start something as important as the company, and nurture it all these years, and watch it grow, and employ people and become a household
name, and then be told by your children that you’ve got to change and play a different role and let them take over all the modern aspects of business that they now understand better than you do.’

There was a pause. Ashley put her mug down, too, and folded her hands in front of her. She said after a while, ‘I don’t think Cara and Dan are doing very well together.’

Grace raised her head. ‘Really?’

‘I had a weird encounter with Dan. He was waiting for me in the office car park. He asked me if I knew why Cara wasn’t speaking to him.’

Grace pulled herself into a sitting position again. ‘Isn’t she?’

Ashley was looking straight ahead. She said, ‘They came up with this scheme that Ma would step down from being the MD, really, and Cara went round to Radders to tell her this and had some kind of epiphany on the way home about Ma’s position and what they were asking of her, and she seems to have been angry with Dan about it ever since.’

‘It fell in,’ Maisie said from the doorway. She was wearing only the top half of her pyjamas.

Ashley began to scramble out of bed. ‘Not
another
one, Mais. Not
another
loo roll.’

‘Well,’ Maisie said cheerfully, ‘there you go.’

Grace said, ‘Ash, can we—’

‘In a sec,’ Ashley said. ‘I’ll just have to rescue the bog roll. And see where Leo was, why he didn’t—’

‘He went downstairs,’ Maisie said. ‘With Freddy. Freddy did a huge—’

‘I don’t want to know. Grace doesn’t want to know either. Where are your pyjama trousers?’

‘Wet,’ Maisie said. She looked up at her mother. ‘Oh
dear
,’ she said, with emphasis.

From the bed, Grace began to laugh.

Ashley turned and looked at her. She made a gesture of mock despair. ‘What to do?’

‘It’s good for us,’ Grace said, still laughing. ‘It’s so good for us. Maisie, you are just what we need.’

Maisie put her hands on her hips and struck a pose. ‘Oh, I
know
,’ she said, with satisfaction.

Jasper was watching snooker on television, world championship snooker, live from Sheffield. He would have preferred to watch football, but the only football on television that night was Spanish, and he wasn’t enough of a fanatic to prefer Spanish football to snooker. In any case, there was something quite soothing about snooker, the darkened indoor quality of it, the formality of the players’ clothes, the solid click of the balls. It was also something to be doing, an anodyne occupation for the moment – twenty-four hours after he had expected it – when he would finally hear Susie’s key in the lock.

She had rung and texted him as usual, every day. She had, also as usual, recited a list of commitments which meant that she couldn’t quite plan, as she didn’t know exactly where she’d be, when. He had given up saying, ‘But you always keep your appointments at the factory, and at everything to do with the factory, to the minute,’ because it was pointless and undignified. Her reply had invariably been, ‘But Jas, I’m always back. I always come back in the end,’ and, of course, she always had. Punctually, regularly when the girls were small, and then gradually less consistently as they grew up, until the unannounced randomness of her returns was pretty well complete. Now, this evening, he heard her open the front door, shout ‘It’s me!’ as if it could ever conceivably be anyone else, let the door slam behind her and add with relief, ‘Hello, home.’ He waited. There was a soft thud as she
dropped the bag she was carrying on the hall floor, and then the scuffle of her kicking her shoes off.

‘Jas,’ she said from the sitting-room doorway, her tone plainly anticipating a warm welcome. ‘What a few days!’

He smiled at her from his armchair, but he didn’t get up.

‘I bet.’

She padded across and bent to kiss him. She said, ‘Why are you watching snooker?’

‘I felt like sport,’ he said, ‘but not Spanish football.’

She gave his arm a kindly pat. ‘I didn’t know if you’d be here. Thought you might be round at Ashley’s again.’

‘Nope,’ he said, ‘not again. Hungry?’

She considered this. ‘Not really.’

‘Glass of wine?’

She began to move back towards the door. ‘Just tea, I think. I’ll get it. Lots to tell you.’

Jasper grunted. He turned back to the snooker.

Susie paused in the doorway. ‘Jas? Are you sulking?’

He went on looking at the television. He said, ‘Why would I be sulking?’

‘Because I wasn’t back yesterday. Because of the new cottage. Because of Morris.’

Jasper waited a moment, and then he said, ‘Even
you
must think it’s a bit odd that I haven’t met him.’

‘What d’you mean, even me?’

‘Well,’ Jasper said evenly, ‘you lead very much the life you choose to lead. Your rules are not really designed to take account of anyone else’s wishes. You are a law unto yourself, Suz. So your attitude to a long-lost parent isn’t going to be exactly conventional, is it?’

Susie came back into the room and stopped a few feet from Jasper’s chair. She said, ‘I’m not pleased to see him, Jas.’

He went on steadily looking at the snooker. He said, ‘I know. We all know. But it isn’t unreasonable, is it, to
think that when you have a big personal problem in your life all of a sudden, you might think of sharing it with your husband?’

Susie said, with difficulty, ‘I’m … not very proud of him.’

‘Which only underlines what I’ve just said.’

Susie sat down on the arm of the sofa and looked at her stockinged feet. She said, almost under her breath, ‘Sorry, Jas. I’m sorry.’

He picked up the remote control and aimed it at the television. In the silence that followed, he said, ‘Sorry about what?’

‘If – if I’ve looked as if I’m shutting you out.’

‘I’m used to that, Suz. I’m used to you and the business. But this is a bit different, don’t you think? Your own father?’

She said, still staring at her feet, ‘There’s been such a lot going on. Cara and Dan wanting changes, Ashley wanting more of a say, poor Grace in such a mess—’

‘And none of it,’ Jasper said, ‘for sharing?’

She said again, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I never know what you’re really sorry
about.
Sometimes I think you’re just sorry you’ve dropped a ball in the juggling act. Sometimes I wonder how sorry you’re really capable of being about other people’s feelings, especially if you’ve had a hand in hurting them.’

Susie raised her eyes. She said, ‘Have I hurt you?’

He didn’t look at her. ‘Yes.’

‘Jas, I never meant—’

‘Please don’t start on that. Please don’t tell me about your intentions and how they got corrupted by subsequent events. Please don’t make excuses.’

Susie was silent for several long seconds, then she said, ‘Can I at least try to do better?’

‘Like how?’

‘Like us going for a long walk together tomorrow, down
by the river or something, and having a meal out at the pub.’

‘Sorry,’ Jasper said, ‘I can’t. Not tomorrow.’

She was startled. ‘You
can’t
? What are you doing?’

‘You mean,’ he said, ‘what can I be doing – me, Jasper, who never has any commitments beyond lounging through life on his wife’s money?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I didn’t mean that. I never meant—’

‘I’m working,’ Jasper said flatly.

Susie stared at him.

He picked up the remote control and switched the snooker back on. ‘I’m playing in a gig tomorrow, Suz. With Brady. We’re rehearsing in the afternoon and playing in the evening.’ He dropped the remote on to the arm of his chair. ‘In Shoreditch,’ he said.

‘You must come more often,’ Leo said to Grace. They were washing up together. Ashley and Fred had gone upstairs for a nap, and Maisie was on a beanbag in front of a Peppa Pig DVD, with her thumb in.

Grace said, ‘I’d like that.’

Leo was washing up with conspicuous competence, rinsing the soapsuds off saucepans and peering at them to see if there were any smears that he had missed.

‘It can’t be good for you, work and play being so local all the time.’

‘I like it,’ Grace said. She was polishing wine glasses slowly, with a cloth. ‘I like Stoke.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Leo said. ‘I just mean that it’s small.’

Grace set a wine glass down. She said, ‘There’s nothing the matter with Stoke, you know. It’s me. I got in a bit of a tangle.’

Leo untied the butcher’s apron he was wearing and pulled it over his head. He said, ‘You and Ash need to see more of each other.’

‘Yes,’ Grace said. ‘I’d forgotten how well we get on.’

‘Especially now.’

Grace picked up another wet glass. ‘What’s special about now?’

Leo hitched himself on to a corner of the kitchen table. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you can see that things round here aren’t quite what they used to be.’

Grace pushed her cloth inside the wine glass. She said warmly, ‘I think it’s great of you to take on the children and the house and everything. Ash says it’s going to change so much for her.’

‘I mean it to. And for the children.’

‘Of course,’ Grace said politely.

‘But it isn’t just to avoid the childcare problems we’ve had in the past, you know. It’s more than that.’ He looked at the second glass Grace had set down beside the first. ‘The thing is, you and Ash should have as much clout in the company as Cara and Dan do.’

Grace said quickly, ‘They’re very fair.’

‘Fair,’ Leo said, ‘is all very well, from a position of power. But you and Ash don’t have the power that they do. And you should.’

Grace hung her tea towel over the back of the nearest chair. She said, ‘Maybe I prefer influence to power. Perhaps it suits me better.’

‘That’s just semantics,’ Leo said. ‘This is a family business and there must be equality. Ash and I have made a kind of deal in our marriage and home life. You and she need to make one in your working lives, too.’

Grace looked at him for a long moment. Then she said, ‘Leo, is this why you’ve decided to take on the childcare? To free Ashley up to … to go for something?’

He stood up and crossed the kitchen briskly towards the kettle. ‘Yes,’ he said, with his back to her. ‘Coffee?’

‘I
’ve come,’ Cara said, ‘to say sorry.’

She stood just inside the boardroom door, holding the handle. Susie was sitting at the table, her sketchbooks spread around and her laptop open. She glanced up at Cara as if she couldn’t quite remember who she was, and said absently, ‘You what, darling?’

Cara shut the door behind her. She said, ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I shouldn’t have stormed off.’

Susie was wearing her reading glasses. She took them off and laid them on the nearest sketchbook. She said, ‘I have to hear these things, I know I do.’

Cara took a chair opposite her mother. She said, ‘It wasn’t meant to sound so antagonistic.’

‘No.’

‘Ma, it wasn’t a
criticism.
It was meant to be a suggestion.

That’s all.’

Susie said sadly, ‘I think it’s my week for criticism.’

‘What d’you mean?’

Susie sighed. She picked up her glasses, fiddled with them a bit, then put them down again. She said reluctantly, ‘It was a rather …
painful
weekend.’

‘Ma!’ Cara said. ‘In what way?’

Susie pushed herself back in her chair. She said, ‘Is Dan out there?’

‘He’s on the phone. He’s busy.’

‘Are you both—?’ She stopped.

‘Sort of,’ Cara said. She leant forward. ‘But what about you? Was it Morris?’

‘Only indirectly.’

‘Then?’

Susie looked away. She said unhappily, ‘Your pa.’

‘Pa?’

‘He’s very angry with me.’

‘Oh,’ Cara said with a shrug. ‘Take no notice. Pa’s never cross for more than five minutes, he can’t keep it up.’

‘He’s really angry,’ Susie said. ‘Coldly angry. He was out all yesterday, playing some gig with Brady. I wanted to go and hear him, but he said no.’

‘He said
no
?’

‘He said he didn’t want me to.’

‘Childish,’ Cara said.

‘Not really. More … more like someone having to resort to doing something very obvious to get a point home to someone else who won’t listen.’ She looked at Cara. ‘Have you spoken to him?’

‘Not since last week.’

‘And?’

‘He was perfectly normal. We fixed a night for supper this week, talked about Leo and Ash a bit, he said he thought Grace was better. Nothing out of the ordinary.’

Susie said, ‘He thinks he should have met Morris.’

‘Well, shouldn’t he?’

Susie picked up her glasses again. She said slowly, ‘I don’t really want Morris mixed up with my real life.’

‘Ma, you mixed
us
up pretty quickly!’

‘I know. It isn’t rational. It isn’t even excusable. But if I
keep Morris up there, then … then I can somehow pretend that he – oh, I don’t mean that, I don’t mean that he doesn’t exist, but I can stop him sort of
leaking
into my life.’

Cara watched her mother’s fingers playing with the tortoiseshell earpieces of her glasses. Then she said, in a much less conciliatory tone than she had used before, ‘Ma, that is utter bollocks.’

‘But—’

‘Stoke means the world to you, because of the factory. The cottage at Barlaston is important, you said, because of creativity. Morris is all over all of that, you can’t help it, he just turned up there. If anybody’s shut out of what really drives you, it’s Pa.’

There was silence.

Then Susie said, ‘That’s what he said.’

‘Did he?’

‘Not in so many words. But he implied it.’

Cara waited a moment. Then she said, ‘Perhaps he’s suddenly woken up to the fact that he’s kind of – kind of sleepwalking.’

‘But he isn’t,’ Susie said, too quickly. ‘We share everything. I tell him everything.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘I—’

‘Not any more,’ Cara said. ‘You’ve got out of the habit. Buying the Parlour House wasn’t sharing. He didn’t think you should buy it, even if he let you persuade him why you had to. And now there’s Morris.’

Susie put her spectacles on again. She said more collectedly, ‘I thought you came to say sorry.’

‘Yes,’ Cara said. ‘Yes, so did I.’ She let a beat fall, and then she added, ‘And then look what happened.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Dan watched Cara come out of the boardroom and close the door behind her. He stared hard at his screen, but he was sharply aware of her going across to her own desk, saying something to Kitty, and then, to his surprise, coming in his direction. He gave no sign that he was conscious of her, but merely concentrated on concentrating. She would probably be polite and friendly and removed in her manner to him, as she had been the last few days, so he would take his cue from her and stiffly respond in kind. It was an exhausting and artificial way to behave, but at the moment there seemed to be no alternative. Cara was dictating the mood and it seemed, to his intense frustration, to be out of his hands to change it. At least there was now another date in the diary for a meeting with the management consultancy.

‘Dan,’ Cara said, in an elaborately relaxed way, ‘do you have a moment?’

He decided to play her tiresome game. He said, without raising his eyes from the screen, ‘For you, I always have a moment.’

‘Hoo – rah,’ she said. ‘Coffee downstairs?’

He glanced at her involuntarily. ‘Downstairs?’

‘In the café,’ she said, smiling widely. ‘Out of the office.’

‘Now?’

‘Right now.’

‘I have a call—’

‘Bring your phone. Tell Kitty.’

He pushed his chair back and said suspiciously, ‘Do you have an agenda?’

She widened her eyes. ‘Certainly not. Why ever would I do that?’

‘Oh, Cara, stop it.’

She said, in a much lower voice, ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘In that case—’

She indicated the boardroom door. ‘Just not in the office.’

His phone rang. He picked it up. He said to Cara, ‘I’ll follow you down.’

She made a drinking gesture. ‘Americano?’

He smiled at her. It was such a relief to smile normally at her that he felt almost giddy. He said, meaning far more than just coffee, ‘Always,’ and put his phone to his ear.

She was waiting for him at a table by the café window, looking out on to the carefully landscaped sweep of turf which hid the car park. There was a glass pot of one of the herbal teas she favoured in front of her, and a white cup and a coffee pot opposite the chair at right angles to hers. He sat down without saying anything and reached across to pour her tea.

‘Thank you,’ Cara said.

Dan poured his own coffee. He very much wanted to say something, but instinct held him back. So, instead, he took a sip or two of coffee and stared at the green swell of grass outside the long windows, trying to keep his mind as neutral as he possibly could.

Cara didn’t touch her tea. She played with the teaspoon in her saucer, and then she said, ‘It’s pretty well impossible to get it right.’

Daniel felt his stomach clench in response. He said, ‘D’you mean me?’

She flicked a glance at him. She said briefly, ‘No. I mean Ma.’

He relaxed as suddenly as he had tensed.

‘Ah.’

Cara said, ‘I’ve been feeling awful about her. I thought I’d bullied her, that we hadn’t taken into account all that she’s achieved, all she’s done for the business, for
us.
So I went to say sorry just now. I went to say that I didn’t mean to sound so hard and unsympathetic, and that we should probably
rethink our proposal about her future role, and there she is, in the boardroom, with sketches of wellington boots, for God’s sake, and her laptop open at a picture of that bloody house, and she can’t even give me her full attention, can she? She can’t even really
look
at me.’

She paused. Daniel decided to go on saying nothing. He noticed that Cara’s hands, lying on the table beside her teacup, were shaking very slightly, but he resisted the urge to take the nearest one and hold it, firmly and reassuringly.

‘And then it turns out,’ Cara went on, ‘that Ma and Pa have had a bad weekend. Ma didn’t get back till Saturday night, and Pa was playing on Sunday,
all
Sunday, and he didn’t want Ma to go and hear him. And Ma shows no sign of letting him meet Morris, although she’s planning to let Morris move into the Parlour House in a week or two, when contracts are exchanged. So Morris gets to live – well, camp, really – in a house Pa hasn’t even
seen.
And Pa is fed up about that, of
course
he is. He’s known Ma since she was nineteen and he’s held her hand through
everything
, and now she won’t let him in on the big stuff. She’s full of bullshit about it, too, coming up with all kinds of rubbish reasons why she’s keeping her life compartmentalized like this. I went in all ready to be sorry and I came out feeling damned if I was any such thing.’

She stopped again and picked up her teacup. Then she put it down again.

‘Oh God,’ Cara said, ‘I’m shaking.’

Daniel said, ‘Breathe.’

‘I am.’

‘No. Breathe properly. Big, deep, slow breaths.’

‘I want to cry. Not sad cry – furious cry. I want to help – I want to help
her
– and then she makes it
impossible.
She makes no sense. She is full of reasons, but they make no sense. She just wants her own way, more and
more. She only wants our agreement as long as it coincides with her—’

‘Stop,’ Daniel said. He took a folded handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out to her. ‘Here.’

Cara blew her nose.

Daniel said, ‘She doesn’t really want to alienate Jasper. She relies on him.’

Cara blew again and then used a clean corner of the handkerchief to wipe under her eyes. ‘Is my mascara running?’

‘No. Well, only a little.’

Cara said, ‘She’s behaving as if she doesn’t need to rely on anybody.’

‘It’s a reaction to change. Or the idea of change. A sort of defiance.’

‘It’s doing my head in.’

Daniel put a hand out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. He said, ‘Don’t lose your nerve.’

Cara turned her head to look at him.

He said, ‘We’re not wrong. We’re not wrong about the business, and the way things should be going. We may be frustrated – we
are
frustrated – but we’re not wrong.’

Cara made a face. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘What if she just digs her heels in and refuses to compromise about anything?’

‘Then,’ Daniel said, ‘we walk away.’

Cara’s mouth fell open.
What?
From the
pottery
?’

‘If we have to.’ Daniel held her gaze. ‘It’s just an idea,’ he said. ‘But you can’t find the right path unless you consider all the alternatives, even the most extreme ones. That’s all I’m saying.’

Cara nodded wordlessly. She gulped. ‘Right,’ she said faintly.

Grace decided that she would get a lunchtime train back to Stoke, so that she could go round to Radipole Road before she left and see her father. She decided this only at the last moment, over breakfast, when Ashley said to her as she swung out of the house, ‘Just remember, Gracie, don’t let anyone bully you. Not Ma, not Morris, not Jeff. You don’t have to let
any
of them make a victim of you. OK?’

Ashley had bent to kiss Grace, and then Fred, who was sitting stoutly on Grace’s knee in his onesie pyjamas, eating blueberries with his fingers, one by one.

Grace had nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Yes, you really must. Generosity is one thing. Allowing exploitation is quite another.’

‘I know. At least, I’m practising. In fact, I thought I might start this morning. I thought I might go and see Pa and get a later train after. In my
own
time.’

Ashley picked out a particularly large blueberry and popped it into Fred’s mouth. ‘You do that. Bye, lovely boy. Bye, Gracie. Come again soon.’

She would, Grace thought. She’d liked it, she’d really liked the distraction of being in Ashley’s house, and the gratification of being involved in their domestic lives. It had struck her, more than once, that family life lent a distinct perspective to everything else, a robust sense of proportion. It was demanding and exhausting, but it was also supremely constructive and purposeful. After a few nights in Ashley’s spare bedroom, she felt emboldened and heartened. She would take some of these healthy and affirmative feelings round to Radipole Road and bestow them on her father. However experienced he was at running his own life, a Monday morning was always a Monday morning, and he could do with some encouragement.

Jasper had said by text that he’d be at home all morning. When she arrived, and let herself in with her own key, she
thought he would probably already be in the studio, but he was in the kitchen instead, making coffee. There was a jar of honey on the table, and a tub of butter and two plates, with a knife beside each.

Grace kissed him. ‘Hi there, Pa. Haven’t you had breakfast?’

He was pouring boiling water into a cafetière. He said, ‘I was waiting to feel like it. And for you.’

‘I had blueberries with Fred. And half the banana Maisie didn’t want.’

‘Maisie,’ Jasper said, ‘is very decided.’

‘Very.’

He glanced at her. He said, ‘You look good.’

‘I feel it. Nice weekend. I forgot to keep going round in useless circles.’

He laughed. He carried the coffee over to the table. ‘Toast?’

‘Not really.’

‘Oh, go on,’ Jasper said. ‘Toast and honey. You know you want it.’

‘If you eat honey anywhere near Fred, the mess is unbelievable.’

Jasper settled himself in his habitual chair. He said, ‘It’s incredible how sticky babies are. Have grown-up toast and honey while you can. Put some in for me.’

Grace extracted two slices of bread from the packet. She said, ‘Ashley said you had a gig.’

Jasper poured the coffee. He said carelessly, ‘I did.’

‘And?’

He smiled at the coffee pot. He said, ‘I loved it. I did. I
loved
it.’

Grace inserted the bread into the toaster. ‘Did they love you?’

Jasper shrugged.

Grace said, laughing, ‘Pa? I bet they did.’

‘Actually,’ Jasper said, ‘we wowed them. It was a sell-out and then it just – flew. I couldn’t believe it. Three hundred people. Madness.’