Balancing Act (15 page)

Jeff had persuaded Grace to go for a meal with him in a local pub. She had demurred at the prospect of dinner, but had agreed to lunch, and maybe also a walk, since the pub he had chosen was in a country park, on a canal, and was quite difficult to find. He said it was a great pub, serving real
ale. Grace said she wasn’t interested in beer, he knew that, and he said he’d only mentioned it to give her a flavour of the place, to emphasize its individuality.

The pub was brick-built and in a complicated location, with a tree-covered hill behind, a canal and a railway line in front, and a crowded car park. Jeff said they could go for a walk, and then come back for a drink and a bite of lunch when there weren’t so many people.

Grace said, ‘It’s going to rain.’

Jeff was wearing walking boots and a tan suede bomber jacket that Grace didn’t recognize. It was the wrong colour for him. Too gingery. And his hair needed cutting. He pulled a huge commercial umbrella out of the Nissan Pixo and flourished it at her. ‘All prepared!’

Grace sat in the open doorway of the passenger seat, with her feet on the tarmac. She said, ‘Jeff, I don’t really want to go for a walk.’

He lowered the umbrella to the ground and leant on it, as if it were a walking stick. He said, ‘Do you mean with me?’

Grace gestured at the parked cars all round her. She said, ‘I don’t want all this. I don’t want today to be a – a
date.
’

‘Then why,’ Jeff said slowly, ‘did you agree to come?’

She looked up at him. She was wearing a cotton scarf like a headband, subduing her hair. She said, ‘You badgered me. You went on and on at me till I said yes. I shouldn’t have.’

‘
I
see,’ Jeff said.

‘Do you?’

‘You give in, you agree, because you haven’t got the guts to tell the truth. Ever. Have you?’

Grace pushed her scarf back an inch. ‘I was planning to tell you in the pub. In a public place. I don’t want to be in a country park with you – I want to be where there are other people.’

Jeff gave a snort. ‘Am I that scary?’

‘No,’ Grace said. ‘It’s just easier for you not to lose your temper when there are other people about.’

Jeff leant on the umbrella and squinted up at the sky. He said, ‘Here’s me, doing your family quite a favour, because one member of it –
not
your granddad – means a good deal to me, and all the time, this particular person is planning to dump me in the public bar of a busy pub on a Saturday lunchtime.’

‘It’s no surprise to you,’ Grace said. ‘Don’t pretend it is. And I never asked you to take Morris in.’

‘Extraordinary how nothing is ever your fault.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Grace said. ‘Doing nothing is. Appeasing and placating and giving in is. I didn’t want to come out with you today, but I thought I ought to. I thought I ought to say we’re finished to your face.’

‘Are we?’ Jeff said, still staring at the sky.
‘Finished?’

‘Yes, we are.’

‘Suppose I don’t see it that way?’

‘You can’t have a relationship with someone if they don’t want one back.’

‘But you play games with me, Grace. You give me little hints, little chances, and then you turn your back. There’s a nasty word for girls like you.’

Grace stood up. She said, ‘I’m trying to do the right thing. But you can only ever see things from your own point of view, so doing the right thing is wasted on you. I’m going into the pub to ask them to call me a taxi.’

Jeff held up his hand. ‘Wait.’

Grace suppressed a sigh. She was waiting to feel the familiar clutch of fear. It was certainly incipient, somewhere in the pit of her stomach, but it wasn’t leaping up her throat yet. She looked at Jeff and said flatly, ‘What?’

‘I’m not a bully, Grace. I’m not unreasonable. But I have had a lot to put up with. You’ve messed me about something
chronic. On top of all I’ve had thrown at me ever since I was a kid, I meet someone like you, who only wants to add to everything I’m dealing with already. You’re a massive stress, Grace. Massive.’

She waited.

He jabbed at the ground with his umbrella. ‘But I happen to think you’re worth it. I really do. I think you’re a girl in a million.’ He smiled at her. ‘That’s why I took your granddad in.’

Grace opened her mouth to say an instinctive thank-you, and shut it again. Instead she said, ‘Morris can come back to my flat tonight.’

Jeff stared at her. He shook his head disbelievingly. ‘You are a piece of bloody work. Didn’t you hear a word I said?’

Grace went on looking at him in silence.

He said in a different tone, ‘Is there someone else?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Who were you having a drink with then, the other night?’

‘A colleague,’ Grace said. ‘He manages the factory.’

‘It’s pretty sad, your life, isn’t it?’ Jeff said. ‘If it isn’t work, it’s family. And as family
is
work, that’s all it ever is.’

Grace moved a step or two away. ‘I’m going into the pub.’

He shrugged. ‘I won’t stop you.’

‘And you can tell Morris to pack. It’s been good of you having him. We all think that.’

‘
We
,’ he said contemptuously. ‘The fucking family again, the royal fucking we.’

‘Stop it,’ Grace said.

‘Make me.’

‘I don’t want to. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you. I just want to say goodbye and I’m sorry that it didn’t work out.’

He moved towards the boot of the car, opened it, and threw the umbrella inside. He said wearily, ‘Get in.’

‘No, I—’

‘I’ll drive you back, Grace.’

‘No.’

‘Your granddad can stay till he moves to your mum’s cottage.’

‘No.’

Jeff slammed the boot shut. He didn’t look at Grace. He said, more distastefully than angrily, ‘Have it your own fucking way.’

She took a huge breath. ‘Thank you—’

‘I won’t stop you,’ he said. ‘Why would I try to stop you? In fact, what have I ever—’ He paused and then he said, ‘Just go.’

‘I’m going.’

‘I just wish—’

‘Don’t,’ Grace said. ‘Please.’

He turned his back. Grace began to walk rapidly between the cars towards the pub, feeling in her pocket for her phone. She wouldn’t ring a taxi, she thought. She would ring Neil. Neil had said she should get in touch if she was ever stuck, or needed help, or there was anything he could do. He wasn’t on a hike that weekend, she knew, so he’d probably be in the factory, doing those strangely attractive weekend rounds in the empty rooms, among the empty work stations, while the kilns hummed on like the factory’s heartbeat. And if he was in the factory, perhaps he wouldn’t mind coming out to Consall, or wherever she was, and driving her back to Stoke.

As she reached the pub entrance, a car roared out of the car park behind her; Jeff’s Nissan Pixo, being driven as if it were a Ferrari. She watched it for a few seconds, careering down the lane and over the canal, and felt a pang of distaste at how messy their final exchange had been and how badly she had handled it, despite all her new intentions. And, however much she tried to pretend otherwise, there was a small
and deeply unpleasant sliver of regret. Was it for Jeff, or just her old friend, habit? She dialled Neil’s number and put her phone to her ear. How long did it take to stop missing what was familiar, even if that very familiarity had only been bad for you?

‘Grace!’ Neil said, his voice warm with surprised pleasure.

She looked down towards the canal. There was a longboat coming slowly towards her with a man and a dog by the tiller and two children waving enthusiastically at the stern.

‘Neil,’ she said, ‘I’m really sorry to interrupt your Saturday, but I’ve done a bit of a stupid thing.’

I
t was, Ashley noticed with an undeniable sense of achievement, after midnight. Leo had gone upstairs an hour earlier and Maisie, who had found pretexts for three appeals to her parents during the evening, had finally gone to sleep with an abandonment that suggested she had never thought of doing anything else. After Leo had gone to bed, Ashley had spent at least twenty minutes tidying up – picking up toys from the floor, smoothing out the clothes in the ironing basket which had been corrugated by the tumble-dryer, polishing the sink and the taps with wads of kitchen paper.

‘Don’t do it,’ Leo had said earlier. ‘Don’t waste your energy doing domestic stuff that doesn’t matter. Save your energies for work. That’s the
deal
, Ash. It’s what we agreed.’

Leo had said a very great many things that evening in addition to that remark. In fact, he had startled Ashley with his sheer assertiveness, the force of his opinion. She wasn’t used to that. She wasn’t used to a Leo who didn’t quietly oblige or elude or compromise; she was familiar with a Leo who had always appeared to accommodate other people at almost any cost to himself. In fact, there had been times since Maisie was born when Ashley had wondered if, being so used to her father’s capacity for tolerance, she had instinctively
chosen a mate who resembled him, at least in this respect. Leo didn’t sulk or shout or insist, just as Jasper never had. It might be difficult to motivate him to finish projects – or, as in the case of the so-called garden, even to start them – but there were no flashes of temper or any evidence of a desire to dominate. Which made his pronouncements over supper – a very passable kedgeree that he had even managed to get the children to eat earlier by putting it down in front of them unannounced and subsequently refusing to bargain – all the more extraordinary. He had swallowed a mouthful then said, not looking directly at Ashley, ‘I saw your dad yesterday. He came round. And I’ve agreed that we’ll take Morris in – for the moment anyway.’

Ashley had dropped her fork, like someone reacting melodramatically in a movie, scattering grains of rice across the table.

‘What?’

Leo had loaded up another forkful, spearing a piece of fish. He said casually, ‘I think Jasper rather took to him. I mean, he didn’t
want
to, having built up such a head of steam about the past, but then he was a bit disarmed when they met, and he discovered that Morris had his reasons for behaving as he did, even if they aren’t ones you’d necessarily accept.’

Ashley picked up her fork again and jabbed at the air, in Leo’s direction. She said, ‘
What
did you say just now, about us taking him in?’

Leo took a gulp of water with his free hand, then looked at Ashley. ‘Morris told Jasper he doesn’t want to be in Stoke. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near Staffordshire. He only went there to find Susie, because he knew she’d be there. But it’s got bad memories for him and he’d love to leave. So Jasper thought that he could come to London and that we could have him here.’

Ashley shouted, ‘We could
not
!’

Leo waited a moment. He put his fork down. ‘Why not?’

‘He’s a detestable old man! I don’t want him here. I don’t want him anywhere near my children.’

‘Your dad didn’t find him detestable.’

‘No!’ Ashley shouted again.

Leo said, ‘We’ve got a spare room. He likes kids. He could babysit.’

‘I don’t
want
him here! I don’t want him in our lives!’ She was breathing hard. ‘I
forbid
it!’

Leo said calmly, ‘You can’t.’

She glared at him. ‘What d’you mean, I can’t?’

‘You can’t forbid something out of hand like that, not any more.’

‘What are you
saying
?’

‘I’m saying,’ Leo said steadily, ‘that I’m running our home life now. I may not be doing it exactly as you’d like it done, but you can’t insist on domestic control if you’re no longer responsible for it. Ash, be reasonable. We’ve only been at this new regime a few weeks, but it’s working. The kids are happier and better fed, you’re less stressed and I’m getting there. It’s going to
work.
But if I decide that I wouldn’t mind another adult in the house – just for a trial period, mind, I’m not suggesting any more than that – then my decision will carry. I run this side of things; you run the earning side. You can’t do both, and you can’t cherry-pick the bits of my part of the deal that you’d still like to have charge of.’

Ashley sat back in her chair, her hands on the table. She said wonderingly, ‘How long have you been thinking like this?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s come on me gradually. A week or two, maybe.’ He turned to look round the room behind him. ‘It’s a bit of a mess, but that doesn’t matter.’ He turned back to look at her again. ‘My aim is to get stuff
done
, not to do it
perfectly. Food, clean clothes, conversation. That’s it. Fred doesn’t give a monkey’s whether I’ve ironed his T-shirt or not. And don’t say you do, because that’s only because you’re afraid you’ll be seen as a bad mother if he isn’t pristine. Nobody judges me like that.’

Slowly, Ashley leant towards him again. She said, ‘You’ve winded me. I don’t know what to say.’

He gestured at her plate. ‘Eat up.’

‘I’m not sure I can.’

‘Eat it, Ash. You know what a sweat it is to make food that people won’t eat.’

Ashley said, as if still trying to grasp the idea, ‘You told my dad that we’d take Morris in, to live here?’

‘Trial period only. I said three months.’

‘Three
months
?’

‘He may drive
me
crackers. The kids may not like him. But I said we’d give it a go.’

‘We—’

‘Yes, Ash.
We.
It’ll take the heat and melodrama out of this whole situation. It’ll calm things down. It’ll calm your mother down.’

‘So I don’t have
any
say?’

He smiled at her. ‘If you have a really good reason, of course you do. But you don’t. Anyway, I’m running the family now, and I say we give old Morris a whirl. It’s an experiment. And I’ll be the first to admit it if it doesn’t work.’

‘Why won’t you even
discuss
it?’

He smiled at her. ‘Because I know what you think. Flat denial born of prejudice.’

‘But—’

‘Look at me, Ash,’ Leo said, leaning forward.

Reluctantly, she raised her head.

‘And give me your hand.’

‘No.’

‘Ash,
give
it to me.’

She put one hand out across the table towards him. He grasped it firmly. He said, ‘My dad was a tyrant at home. A petty tyrant. He was overbearing and I hated it. I hated it for my brother and me and especially for Mum. Well, that was a generation ago, and he was old-fashioned then. Now, there’s a woman like you in about a quarter of all UK households – a woman who out-earns her partner, partly because of the long overdue emphasis on girls’ education and partly because the modern workplace needs brains rather than brawn. I’m fine with that, Ash. In fact, I’m more than fine – I think you are amazing, doing what you do, and doing it so well. I’ll make sure our kids know I think that, too. But the balance has got to level out a bit to make it work at home. I’ve got to be able to call the shots round here – not moral or ethical ones about the kids, they’re for both of us – but I’ve got to be able to run this house my way, not your way, with me doing the donkey work and you not here.’

Ashley nodded slowly.

Leo said, ‘Your dad was a bit of a pioneer, if you think about it. Didn’t you ever resent Susie being so wrapped up in the business?’

Ashley whispered, ‘That’s why I wanted to be around, for Maisie and Fred.’

‘But it drove you mad. It drove you nuts not being able to concentrate on your job.’

There was a long pause. Then Ashley said, still in a whisper, ‘I know. Guilt—’

‘I don’t have guilt,’ Leo said. ‘But I don’t have your drive, either.’

Ashley closed her eyes. She said quietly, ‘I love my job.’

‘You’re allowed to. You are absolutely
allowed
to love doing what you are good at.’ He squeezed her hand, ‘You’re
allowed
not to take a back seat. Ash—’

‘Yes.’

‘Look at me,’ he said again.

She opened her eyes.

He said, ‘I’m not diminished by you being the breadwinner. I’m just going to do the other stuff rather differently from the way you did it.’

‘Which includes having Morris living here.’

‘As an experiment.’

She sighed. ‘OK. As an experiment. I suppose. Leo, I don’t
know
him.’

‘None of us do. I don’t.’

‘Does Ma know?’

He gave her hand a little shake. ‘Maybe by now. Maybe your dad has told her now. But she kind of forfeited the right to have a say in where he goes.’

‘She thinks he’s going to the cottage.’

‘He doesn’t want to.’

Ashley slowly withdrew her hand. She said, ‘Does it matter if he doesn’t want to?’

Leo grinned. ‘Things don’t tend to work if the participants don’t want them to. Look at you and—’

‘Please don’t.’

He was gazing at her. After a pause he said, ‘Ash, I’d love us to go upstairs now. But I know it’s no good asking. I can see from your face that you aren’t in the mood.’

She stared at him. ‘Are you telling me that after a day of Maisie and Fred and the house and kedgeree, you still feel like
sex
?’

He went on grinning. ‘Yup,’ he said.

Well, she thought, you had to marvel at that. You had to admire and rejoice in a man whose self-esteem seemed so undiminished by the domestic round. She’d got up from the table then, and kissed him with gratitude and wonder, while at the same time making sure that it was a kiss that could not
be construed as a prelude to anything further. He’d laughed when she took her mouth away, and said that if there was nothing worth staying awake for, he’d take himself off to bed, and she’d heard him going up the stairs humming, like a man who had a lot to look forward to. She had been amazed to find herself half hoping he’d come down again and just – just take over.

When a few minutes had passed and it had become clear he was not planning on returning to carry her dramatically upstairs, she had tidied the kitchen, checked her emails and turned on the television for a final discouraging world news bulletin. When midnight came, it brought with it a peculiar sense of elation she couldn’t identify, because, technically, everything she had heard that evening should have caused her heart to sink, rather than to lift. She aimed the remote at the screen and looked for a few seconds at the blank rectangle of black glass in its glossy black frame. ‘Telebusy,’ Maisie called it. ‘Can I watch the telebusy?’ Ashley dropped the remote on to the low table beside a Barbie wearing, obscenely, nothing but an open mauve plastic mackintosh, and Fred’s blue sippy cup with its half-worn-off transfer of Elmer the Elephant in his patchwork skin.

Home life, she thought. Work life. Family life. And now Morris! Maisie will hate his hair.

‘I don’t want you to think of this as a date,’ Grace said to Neil.

He smiled at her. ‘I wouldn’t dare. Anyway –’ he looked round the museum café ‘– breakfast, or brunch or whatever this meal is, is as vanilla as it gets here.’

Grace looked past him, through the floor-length windows towards the huge blond block of the Central Library.

She said, ‘I love it here. I often come.’

‘It reminds me of an Edinburgh tea-room.’

‘That’s why I like it. Welcoming. Unthreatening.’

He laughed. He said, ‘Scones. Milk in a metal jug. Have you heard from Jeff?’

Her head snapped round. ‘No,’ she said abruptly.

‘Are you expecting to?’

‘I’m not thinking about it.’

He nodded. ‘Good girl.’

She leant forward and said earnestly, ‘I’m not the good one, Neil. You’re the good one, taking Morris in for us all.’

‘For
you
, to be precise. And for your mum. He’s no bother.’

‘Another person in your private space is always a bother.’

‘It’s not that private,’ he said. ‘It’s where I lay my head, that’s all. And he’s off at the garden centre all day. They’ve sold fifteen of his bird houses, he told me. He bought me a bottle of whisky as a thank-you, and I haven’t the heart to tell him that I must be the only Scotsman living who doesn’t drink the stuff.’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘I’m a beer man,’ Neil said. He reached for the teapot. ‘Beer and tea.’

Grace pushed her cup towards him. She said, ‘And now he’s going to London.’

Neil poured. The tea was clearly too dark, and cooling. Without speaking, he got up and took the teapot back to the service counter for a refill. Grace watched him, his sturdy figure in unfashionable jeans and a slightly shabby corduroy jacket. The sight was undeniably comforting. The woman behind the counter, smiling and obliging, plainly thought so too. Grace saw her put teabags into a clean pot and fill it from the urn, and then wave away Neil’s obvious efforts to pay her for a second pot. He came back to the table and set the tea down.

Grace said, ‘That’s one reason I come here. They’re so lovely, the people.’

Neil resumed his pouring. He pushed her cup back towards her. He said, as if there’d been no interruption, ‘So Morris is off to London.’

‘Yes. Ashley rang me. They’re going to have a trial of three months, having him living there with them.’

‘Is that OK?’

Grace added milk to her tea. ‘She sounded a bit stunned. She said—’ She stopped.

He looked up at her. ‘What?’

She said awkwardly, ‘It’s sort of … family stuff.’

‘Not to be shared with the factory manager, you mean?’

Her face flamed. She said hastily, ‘It’s got nothing to do with – with that. It’s just that I don’t know you very well.’

He said comfortably, ‘Only well enough to ask me to rescue you, last Saturday.’

‘Neil, I’m so sorry.’

‘You, young lady,’ he said, his tone still entirely unoffended, ‘have got your wires a bit crossed, haven’t you? Especially with your granddad in my bed and me on the sofa?’