Balancing Act (17 page)

‘What do you mean by everything?’ Susie said, putting the jug gently back on the dresser.

‘Changes,’ Grace said.

‘Changes? What changes?’

‘The need for them.’

‘But we
are
changing. We’re changing all the time. We’re evolving—’

‘I’m not talking about the product, Ma. I’m talking about management. The way we’re structured. The way we’re paid. The way we interact with each other.’

Susie leant on the kitchen wall next to the dresser. She felt that she ought to flare up at this moment, hold her ground, fight her corner as she always had, as she had believed that she should. But for some reason, she couldn’t find either the conviction or the energy to resist.

Grace said, ‘Ma?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you OK?’

‘Perhaps,’ Susie said uncertainly. ‘Probably. Gracie, I don’t really know.’

‘What are you doing at home, on a work day?’

‘I’m leaning on the kitchen wall.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I just feel – exhausted.’

‘You’re never exhausted.’

‘Darling,’ Susie said, pressing her forehead to the wall. ‘What do you think I should do?’

‘I think,’ Grace said, ‘that you should pull yourself together.’

Susie gave a rueful laugh. ‘You don’t sound very worried about me.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Thank you, darling—’

‘I’m not, because you can sort this. You can sort all of it.

If you want to.’

‘
Want
to!’

‘Yes,’ Grace said. ‘And now, Ma, I’ve got to go. I’ve got work to do.’

‘Could you possibly give a message to Neil?’

‘No,’ Grace said, ‘I couldn’t. You’ll have to ring him yourself.’ And she put the phone down.

Susie stayed where she was for a few moments, her phone in her hand. Then she said to Polynesia, ‘She put the phone down on me. Grace actually put the phone down on me.
Grace!
’

Polynesia stirred not a feather. She went on looking out at the garden, her back to Susie. A car went past, down Radipole Road, too fast, music blaring, leaving the atmosphere quivering faintly in its wake. Susie took her forehead away from the wall and dropped the phone on the table. Even Grace had said that the major log in the current jam had her name on it. Grace! She walked back down the kitchen to stand by the new portable cage.

‘Are you all just leaving me?’ Susie said to Polynesia.

Ashley said firmly that she didn’t want to talk in the office. Daniel had suggested the boardroom, but Ashley said that she would prefer to be out of the office altogether, so the three of them were in a wine bar on the Fulham Road, sitting on velvet-covered chairs round a plate of Spanish ham that Daniel had ordered with their drinks. Ashley was drinking fizzy water, and had had a haircut, Cara noticed. It suited her. As did her navy-blue sweater dress, which Cara didn’t recollect seeing before – any more, as a matter of fact, than she remembered those particular ankle boots. Cara tried very hard never to assess, let alone judge other women by what they wore. But you couldn’t help
noticing
, could you?

Ashley rolled a piece of ham into a cigarette shape and ate it, ignoring the bread basket. She added a wedge of lime to her water. She looked remarkably together, Cara thought,
especially for someone with two small children at home, let alone an unwanted grandfather in her spare bedroom. Cara shuddered inwardly at the thought of Morris anywhere near her and Dan’s flat, their private space. But Ashley looked strangely unruffled. In fact, since these recent upheavals in her private life, Ashley had looked a great deal less harassed and flung-together than she had done in the days of Leo being out at work and a full-time nanny at home.

Cara glanced at Daniel. He seemed in no more of a hurry than Ashley to get down to business. He was sipping thoughtfully from a glass of Riesling – Riesling was his latest wine thing – and asking Ashley peacefully about how things were at home, and she was replying, equally comfortably it seemed to Cara, that it was all remarkably OK, thank you, and the children had rather taken to him, and he was weirdly quite easy to have around, and had even made a start on the garden, having an aptitude for plants and outdoor spaces. Even Maisie, Ashley said, whose wellington boots were as pristine as when they left the shop on account of her fierce insistence on only ever wearing her buckled shoes, had consented to put them on to join Morris in the garden. It was a first. She had thought Maisie was going to be like one of those cats that single girls have as baby substitutes, who are terrified of any surface that isn’t carpeted because they are never allowed out.

‘Doesn’t he creep you out a bit, Ash?’ Cara said.

Ashley picked up a second slice of ham. ‘Less than I thought he would. He’s very clean. And now the hair’s gone—’

‘Gone!’

‘He had it all cut off. For Maisie. They went to the barber together. It’s so short now, it’s practically shaved. A definite improvement. And Maisie has stopped bossing Fred around, now she’s got Morris to boss instead. So that’s a relief.’

‘I’m glad something is,’ Cara said. She took a sip of her
wine. ‘Ma’s in a very odd mood, she hasn’t mentioned the Parlour House for ages, Grace is being very elusive, and Pa is having some kind of mid-life crisis and hiring a studio in
Hackney.
What’s all that about?’

‘Perhaps it’s nearer these gigs he’s doing,’ Daniel said. He glanced at Cara. ‘Should we be going to hear him?’

She gave a small snort. ‘No. Absolutely not. He’s got this state-of-the-art studio at home—’

‘But perhaps it feels a bit disconnected,’ Ashley said.

Cara shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don’t think that we can worry too much at the moment about Pa’s
Great Gatsby
desire to relive the past.’

‘That’s a bit harsh.’

‘I’m feeling harsh,’ Cara said. ‘I’m angry with both of them. Pa has just stepped away from us, and Ma is expecting us to fall in with what she wants, because in the end we have to. They’re both being a kind of exaggeration of what they used to be, and totally ignoring each other, as if they have no responsibility for one another. It’s driving me nuts. So I’m trying not to think about it. I’m practising detachment. It’s wonderful when it works.’

Ashley looked across at her brother-in-law. She said, ‘What do you think, Dan?’

He gave a small shrug. ‘Not a lot, actually.’

Cara looked aggrieved. ‘Dan!’

He smiled at her. ‘Other things on my mind, sweetheart.’

‘You’re so lucky, not being family,’ said Ashley.

‘I know.’

Ashley took a sip of her water. She said, laughing a little, ‘Maybe that’s the only thing you have in common with Leo!’

‘I like Leo.’

‘I’d be very fed up with you if you didn’t like Leo.’

‘Ashley,’ Cara said suddenly, turning towards her, ‘why are we here?’

Ashley sat back. She crossed her legs and flicked something invisible off her sweater dress. Then she said, ‘Me, actually.’

‘Go on,’ Cara said. She looked at Dan for his customary support. He didn’t look back. He was smiling in a mild kind of way at Ashley.

‘Two things,’ Ashley said.

‘Well?’

‘The first is the catalogues. I want the photoshoots to happen at my home now, as I said before. My home which might soon have a garden. It’s too late for an Easter catalogue now as well as the spring one, but I want one for next year. As well as early and late summer, with special gifting pages. And I want to change the design and the typography – matt finish and italic handwriting. And before you object, I have worked out the costs, and increased sales will more than compensate for the price of producing and mailing more catalogues as well as updating the website.’

She stopped and picked up her glass. Cara glanced at Daniel again. His expression hadn’t altered. She said aggrievedly, ‘You never consulted
me
.’

Ashley took a gulp of water. She said, ‘I am now.’

‘That speech didn’t sound like a consultation. It sounded like a fait accompli. Dan?’

Daniel shifted a little in his chair. He said imperturbably, ‘I can’t see any real problem with any of that.’

‘Dan!’

Ashley nodded at him. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘But
I
don’t agree,’ Cara said. ‘
I
’m not just passing this on the nod. I need to see the figures.’

Ashley regarded her. ‘I’ll email them to you.’

Cara leant towards Dan. She said, ‘What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you even asking her questions?’

Daniel reached out and patted Cara’s wrist. He said, ‘Let’s see what the second thing is first, shall we?’

‘Don’t patronize me.’

‘Angel, I’m not—’

‘Your
tone
is patronizing.’

Ashley cleared her throat. ‘Could I just tell you about item two? I have to go in two minutes.’

‘Oh,
do
you?’ Cara said crossly. ‘First, drag us here, all secrecy and self-importance, and then tell us you’re in a hurry?’

Ashley sighed. ‘I’ve got children at home.’

‘Don’t remind me.’

Daniel squeezed Cara’s wrist. ‘Let her speak, sweetheart.’ Cara glared at Ashley. ‘Well?’

Ashley looked straight back at her. She said, ‘It’s about money.’

‘Ah.’

‘What I’m paid. How I’m paid.’

Daniel’s grip on Cara’s wrist tightened. He said, ‘Which is …?’

‘We know from research, don’t we,’ Ashley said, as if reciting, ‘that men are four times more likely than women to ask for a pay rise. And women are notoriously bad at asking about pay anyway. However, if a woman’s pay is set by a committee and based on strict performance criteria, they not only do much better for themselves, but they frequently outperform men. So I want that to happen to us. To all of us. I want the way we’re paid to be decided by all of us on the board, and then to be related to performance. Including Ma.’ She switched her gaze to Dan. ‘Well?’

‘Wow,’ Cara said. She looked at Dan too. ‘Bombshell—’

He said, in the same strangely distanced way, ‘Sounds intriguing.’

Ashley said, ‘I’m going to push for it. I’m telling Grace next and then Ma. And I’d like your backing.’

Cara was still looking at Dan. She said, ‘We’ll have to talk about it.’

‘I want a decision soon,’ Ashley said. ‘I don’t want to lose momentum.’

Cara leant towards Daniel. She said in a low voice, ‘What’s the matter?’

He gave her a benign smile. ‘Nothing.’

‘Yes, there is. There
is.
You’re never this disengaged, you’re never not involved—’

‘Well, maybe I am now,’ he said.

‘Now?’ Cara said. Her voice was alarmed. ‘What d’you mean, now?’

He gave Cara’s hand a brief final squeeze and let it go. Then he picked up his wine glass. ‘I just mean, sweetheart, that I’m possibly not as involved as I was till very recently. And I don’t mean just me – I mean you, too.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘It’s just possible, Ashley, that none of this will concern Cara and me for very much longer. But of course we’ll help you. For now, that is. For now.’

T
here were moments most days when Grace reflected how hard she would find it to share her life with anyone on a permanent basis. It was a rare day when she didn’t close her front door on the world outside with a feeling of thankfulness and release. She remembered, in childhood, not in the least minding being allotted the smallest bedroom at home, as long as it had a door that closed and no space for a second bed. She had to be coaxed into having friends for tea or birthday parties, or going on school trips, as if the very notion of disliking communal activities was just too peculiar to be permitted. It wasn’t, she tried to explain throughout her growing-up years, that she didn’t
like
other people; it was just that she really needed lots of time on her own. Her idea of company, she wrote in a school essay when she was twelve, was to be in her room at home with the door shut, and the rest of the family somewhere else in the house, but not beside her. Her English teacher had written at the bottom, ‘Well expressed, even if the sentiments are a little strange!’ But then, as Grace had observed, her English teacher had been the kind of woman who would have thought she had fallen off the edge of the planet if she wasn’t in perpetual communication with
someone.

Since Morris had left, and Jeff had sidled from centre stage (even if Grace couldn’t quite believe that he had gone for good), her flat had settled back into itself once more. She had toured it nightly for the first week, adjusting and tweaking, to remind herself that it was hers, and hers alone, spreading her sketchbooks out, hanging favourite garments on cupboard doors, buying pots of herbs for the kitchen windowsill and bunches of flowers for everywhere else, even putting a jug of forced Cornish daffodils on the lavatory cistern. Late in the evenings, before she went to bed, she would move things about, changing cushions or lamps, altering the position of pieces of furniture, in order to surprise herself in the mornings by seeing the flat anew. This habit was a private but intense pleasure, like being alone. It gave her a sensation of quiet control and also a low but definite hum of excitement. In those first weeks after Morris went south, Grace revelled in her own private power.

Which was only increased when Ashley rang to say she had decided that their pay structure should be changed, and what they achieved should be reflected in what they earned. Grace was lying on her sofa, with her stockinged feet propped on one end and her head on the other. She said thoughtfully, ‘How would you quantify that?’

‘By sales. We look at those and then estimate how we share the profits. Sales are the only yardstick we have for measuring any of our successes, if you think about it, and the only way we can tell if our performance is getting better.’

Grace lifted one foot and balanced it against the opposite knee. She said, ‘What did Cara think?’

‘She was a bit ratty. But she was in a ratty mood, anyway. I think Dan liked it. Dan’s obviously planning some big new move for the company. He wouldn’t talk about it, except to say he wanted to discuss it with Cara first, so it’s bound
to be something that’ll upset Ma. All Dan’s plans upset Ma. Where is she?’

Grace fitted her left kneecap into the arch of her right foot. She said, ‘Up here somewhere, I think. I haven’t seen her today. But she was in the factory, I know, because the girls have been painting the ribbons on the Maypole range, and she’ll have taught them how.’

‘Is she out at Barlaston?’ Ashley said. ‘What about that house?’

‘I haven’t asked her.’

‘Well, now Morris is here—’

‘Is he OK?’

‘Don’t you mean us? Are
we
OK?’

‘Are you?’ Grace said.

‘Most days, yes. None of this
should
work, but it seems to. Morris has been taken up by all Leo’s yummies, and Leo has a couple of private pupils he’s tutoring.’

Grace took her foot off her knee and wriggled it. She said, ‘What about Pa?’

‘What about him?’

‘I rang him,’ Grace said, ‘and he said he couldn’t talk because he was with somebody.’

‘Jesus, d’you think—’

‘No, not that kind of somebody. He sounded just the same as normal, only preoccupied. Is he ever at home?’

‘I don’t think either of them are,’ Ashley said. ‘I haven’t seen Ma in weeks. Maisie and Fred might as well not have a grandmother.’

‘Better than smothering.’

‘She wouldn’t know how to smother if you paid her,’ Ashley said. ‘It’s all she can do to relate vaguely.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No, it’s not,’ Grace said. She swung herself slowly upright.
‘Why are we all working with her if she got it so wrong?’

‘Gracie—’

‘What?’

‘Do you get the feeling that something’s about to happen? That we’re all waiting for something to happen?’

‘Is that what you’re trying to do? Make something happen?’

‘If you mean the company—’

‘I do,’ Grace said.

There was a pause. Then Ashley said, ‘I’m alone in the office. Everyone’s gone home. It’s – great.’

Grace laughed. ‘Alone at last. My ideal.’

‘It’s not being here alone, so much,’ Ashley said unexpectedly. ‘It’s the feeling of being in charge. I like it. I’m sitting at Dan’s desk, and I’m looking right down the office, all the way down to the double doors at the end, and I like it, Grace. I really, really do.’

On the train to Stoke-on-Trent Jasper wondered if he was behaving like a character in a third-rate thriller. It was, after all, undeniably furtive to arrange for a neighbour to call in and attend to Polynesia, and then to set off for Euston station without informing either Susie or his daughters. Of course, since he wanted to surprise Susie, there was no point in alerting her, but it was not in character – or at least, not in the character he seemed to have inhabited for almost forty years – to conceal anything quite so deliberately from his children.

He had, over time, developed a method of telling them about his arrangements. He would simply announce in a breezy tone that he was off here or there, but because it never involved any length of time away from Radipole Road, the girls had got into the habit of hardly hearing him, of thinking vaguely, ‘Oh, it’s Pa. He won’t be long,’ as if he was a kind of immovable fixture, like a human landmark that had
been there for millennia and could thus be taken for granted.

It had come as a surprise to him, a few days ago, to realize that he was going to have to break the easygoing habits of a lifetime and take action because, astonishingly, not only was Susie not going to, but she couldn’t. He had avoided her for some time now, because she aroused in him such unmanageable and complicated feelings of anger and distress and bewilderment, but recently something had diminished the anger and increased the distress – maybe it was knowing that she had been at home, alone, without him, in a bizarre reversal of their roles. The anger was an old friend and therefore familiar. The distress was new and violently uncomfortable.

The only course of action, he decided, was to surprise Susie and confront her. And an essential part of the surprise – which would increase the likelihood of getting an authentic response – was for their encounter not to happen in a known context. What was known – or over-known, for God’s sake – was Radipole Road. Radipole Road held not a single element of novelty or surprise for either of them, and in Jasper’s view it was no longer the cradle of all that was beloved in that family’s history, but rather a hollow reminder of what had once been, and was no more. He had decided firmly that it would be useless to try and talk to Susie in Radipole Road. But it would be wrong to confront her at the office, as well as embarrassing for Cara and Ashley. No, it would be best to appear out of context, to seek her out in the very place where she was least expecting him. And so, after a call to the architect who was refashioning the Parlour House to establish Susie’s whereabouts and timetable, Jasper was on his way to Barlaston, via Stoke-on-Trent. His only real responsibility, Polynesia, was at home in her cage with a list of instructions about her welfare on the kitchen table. The neighbour had a key and a list of emergency numbers. If
he hadn’t been on such a mission, Jasper thought, his gaze fixed unseeingly on the flying countryside outside the train windows, it might have almost felt like an adventure. Stoke-on-Trent twice in a matter of weeks! Unheard of.

‘I can’t believe how difficult it is to talk to you,’ Daniel said to Cara.

Cara was pulling towels off the bathroom rack, prior to washing them. She said huffily, ‘That’s hardly
my
fault. I’m here, aren’t I?’

He stepped into the bathroom and tried to take the armful of towels from her. ‘I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean you’re hard to talk to. I meant that we seem to be so busy that there’s never a proper opportunity.’

Cara held the towels defensively. ‘Don’t. I’ve got them. I can’t talk properly to you, Dan, if I don’t feel you’re on my side.’

‘I am
always
on your side.’

‘You weren’t the other night. You were siding with Ashley. And you keep going off on your own, and it isn’t all cycling, and I’m not going to demean myself by asking—’

‘Please put the towels down.’

‘No!’

‘Cara, sweetheart,’ Daniel said, ‘that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about. But not round the laundry.’

She relaxed her hold on the towels very slightly. She said, her tone still doubtful, ‘What are you on about?’

He said with exaggerated patience, ‘Where I keep going. What I’m doing. Why I didn’t bother arguing with Ashley in the wine bar.’

Cara waited. Daniel reached a second time to take the towels out of her arms. He said, ‘Please, Cara.’

She let them go. She said, ‘But I want to put a wash on—’

‘I’ll do it. I’ll do it in two minutes.’

Cara said, suddenly flaring up, ‘The last few weeks have been such a battle!’

Daniel dropped the towels on the floor. He stepped over them and took Cara by the shoulders. He said, looking seriously at her, ‘I know.’

‘I wish it wasn’t. I wish it was like it used to be.’

‘Come and sit down.’

She pointed at the floor. ‘I have to—’

‘In a minute. We’ll do it in a minute.’

‘Dan—’

‘Cara,’ Daniel said, ‘I have a plan. I have a plan about our future.’

She shook her head. ‘Please don’t. It’ll be a great plan and she’ll just reject it, and then I’ll be left with her unacceptable triumph, and your frustration, and as usual I’ll—’

‘It has nothing to do with your mother. My plan has absolutely
nothing
to do with your mother. Or even the company.’

Cara put her hands to her mouth. ‘Daniel, don’t—’

He let go of her shoulders and put his arms round her.

He said, his cheek against the side of her head, ‘I said think outside the box, didn’t I?’

‘Yes,’ she said doubtfully.

‘Well, I have. I’ve thought of our skills and our experience, and then I’ve thought of where we might employ them. Somewhere where they aren’t thwarted all the time.’

Cara said nothing. She was very still, holding herself stiffly in his arms.

Dan said, ‘I don’t really want to have this conversation in the bathroom.’

She sighed.

He waited a few moments, then he relaxed his hold and slid his hands down her arms to take one of her hands. ‘Come and sit down.’

She allowed herself to be led towards the sofa, and then to be seated on it.

‘Look at me, sweetheart.’

She raised her chin.

Dan put one hand under it and said sadly, ‘You look miserable.’

‘I am.’

‘It’s exhausting you, all this, isn’t it?’

Cara looked away from him, dislodging his hand. She said, ‘I wish I didn’t get so uptight about it all. I wish I could just stand back and get on with my job. But I can’t. I can’t help being wound up by Ma any more than she can help winding me. I’ve always reacted to her like this. I can’t seem to do normal. It’s all huge and fine, or huge and awful. Mostly the latter. I wish she wasn’t such a big part of my life, but she is, whatever she does or doesn’t do. And I’m worn out by it.’

‘I know,’ Daniel said.

‘And then,’ Cara said, swinging her gaze slowly back to take him in, ‘I want to protect you and side with you, because I actually think you’re right about ninety-nine per cent of the business stuff, and I know that’ll be a battle too, and I get in a state about that as well, and I take it out on you even though I know it’s not fair.’

Daniel said gently, ‘I know all that. I get it. Which is why I think we should put a stop to it, once and for all. You can’t go on like this.’

‘We can’t stop it. I mean, how can we?’

Daniel didn’t try to take her hand again. He simply said, looking steadily at her, ‘We leave.’

He waited for her to stare at him in amazement. But she didn’t. She looked down at the sofa instead, and sighed again. She said quietly, ‘Is that where you’ve been?’

‘I’ve been seeing Rick Machin. Talking about setting up with him. Yes.’

‘I thought as much.’

‘Did you?’

She raised her eyes. She said, ‘You hinted at it before.’

‘Well, now I’ve done more than hint. Are you up for it?’

There was a long pause, and then Cara said, unsmiling but determined, ‘I’m up for it. I think.’

The lounge of the hotel in Barlaston was as uninhabited as it had been the night that Susie and Morris had been there. The fire was burning unenthusiastically, and rain was hammering on the two sets of huge windows, obscuring the view. Jasper and Susie were sitting opposite each other on the sofas flanking the fire, with a pot of tea on a tray between them, and a plate of biscuits which Susie had already dismissed as not worth eating.

‘They’ll taste of custard powder. We’ll get a sandwich if you’re hungry.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Jasper said. ‘I had breakfast on the train. Full English. With baked beans.’

Susie poured the tea. She said, ‘Do you not like my house because of how it is, or don’t you like it on principle?’

He crossed his legs and leant back. He said, ‘I’m no good at country houses or cottages. You know that.’