Balancing Act (18 page)

‘You gave me such a fright just turning up like that. I was so surprised to see you that at first I couldn’t think who you were.’

He grinned. ‘I know. I could see.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you said you couldn’t talk to me there. You said whatever it was would have to wait till we were somewhere else and concentrating.’ She looked round at all the empty sofas and chairs. ‘We’re here now. So what is it?’

Jasper let a beat fall and then he said, in as relaxed a tone as he could manage, ‘Us.’

Susie drank some tea, and then, with a not entirely steady
hand, put the cup down in the saucer. She said, clearing her throat and endeavouring to sound as unconcerned as he did, ‘Have you followed me all the way to Staffordshire to tell me that you want a divorce?’

Jasper inspected the nails on his right hand. He said, ‘Not necessarily.’

‘Please don’t play games with me.’

He shifted his gaze from his nails to Susie. ‘I don’t play games, Suz. You know that. I never have. Unless it’s the guessing games that I’m forced to play because I never know where you are or when you’ll be back, or what you’re planning or thinking or wanting or feeling. I haven’t come all the way up here to ask you anything. I’m through with asking. I’m done with guessing. I’ve come to
tell
you something instead. I’ve come to tell you what I plan to do.’

Susie gave a little shudder. She said, ‘You’ve met someone else.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ he said exasperatedly. ‘I’m not interested in romance. I’m not up for another relationship. Suz, it’s
me
I’m interested in.’

She put her hands briefly up to her face. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Jas. I just thought—’

‘That I’d have consoled myself in the time-honoured way?’

‘Well, you’re a very attractive man—’

‘And so bloody conventional as to have an affair when I don’t like the way my marriage is going?’ he demanded.

‘No. Of course not. No, sorry. I just meant—’

He leant forward, his elbows on his knees. He said with real energy, ‘Suz, it’s pretty impossible being married to you. I’ve been in a smouldering rage about it, a lot of the time for almost forty years. But I’ve never been remotely interested in anyone else. No one else has ever come close. You may be – you
are
– absolutely bloody
maddening
to be married to, but you are the mother of my children, and you have also taken
all the colour out of other women for me. No, I do not want a divorce.’

Susie was sniffing. She took a crumpled tissue out of the sleeve of her jacket and blew her nose hard. She said indistinctly, ‘Thank God.’

‘He has nothing to do with it.’

She said, laughing uncertainly, ‘I’m so relieved.’

‘But—’

‘But what? Anything …’

‘There’ll have to be some changes.’

Susie blew her nose again. She said shakily, ‘Tell me.’

Jasper leant back again and recrossed his legs. He said, ‘We are re-forming the Stone Gods. Brady and me. Plus Frank and a guy called Marco who is a jazz pianist. A good one.’

She nodded. ‘OK.’

‘It’s more than OK,’ Jasper said. ‘It’s serious. We have bookings. We’re in demand. We are building quite a following on YouTube. We sound a little like Dave Brubeck, only fresher, with a modern twist. I am composing.’

She regarded him. Her nose was pink. She said seriously, ‘Jas, that’s wonderful. I’m so glad. And … and proud.’

He nodded slightly. He went on, ‘We have an agent. We won’t make Glastonbury, but there’s a chance of one of the smaller festivals. I am going to be away a lot, this summer.’

‘Of course.’

‘I want to buy myself a place near the studio, over in East London. A one-bed flat, say.’

Susie was breathing rapidly and balling the tissue in her hands into a small hard lump. ‘Is – is that what you came to say? Are you saying that if I have my – my play place, so can you?’

He shook his head. ‘That kind of equation never crossed my mind.’

‘Well, does it now?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t. I just want somewhere of my own for my new chapter.’

‘And where do I come in?’

‘Where you always have, Suz. Where and when you choose to. You’ll have the cottage, you can come to my flat—’

‘But where will
home
be?
Our
home?’

He looked at her. He said, ‘We haven’t got one of those.’

‘We have!’

‘Not for years, Suz. A house does not a home make.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that Radipole Road no longer has any more heart in it than this hotel does. It hasn’t had for years.’ Jasper folded his arms as if bracing himself for some kind of onslaught. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I think we should sell it.’

‘
Sell
Radipole Road?’

‘Yes.’

Susie looked up at the ceiling. She said, fighting tears, ‘What about Polynesia?’

‘She comes with me. Our mascot. She can learn music instead of swearing.’

‘Oh, Jas—’

He leant forward again, uncrossing his arms. He said gently, ‘I’ve made up my mind, Suz. We’re selling Radipole Road and moving on. And for once, I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.’

‘Who are you?’ Jeff said rudely.

He was standing at the foot of the outside staircase, which led up to the design studio. Neil was three steps above him.

‘I’m the factory manager,’ Neil said. He didn’t hold out his hand. ‘Neil Dundas. And you are?’

‘You know who I am,’ Jeff said.

‘Touché. Just as you know who
I
am.’

Jeff looked round him as if expecting a sympathetic audience to materialize out of thin air. He said contemptuously, ‘This is ridiculous.’

Neil was silent.

Jeff glanced up at him. He said, ‘May I pass, please?’

Neil leant languidly against the handrail. ‘What is your business up there?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘As factory manager,’ Neil said, ‘I am entitled to ask what your business is with any of my design team.’

Jeff sneered at him. ‘
Your
fucking design team—’

‘The design team of this factory. This is a workplace. If we have visitors, their purpose has to be known to us.’

Jeff climbed a step or two so that his face was level with Neil’s. He said, ‘I don’t have to have permission from a little jobsworth jerk like you to visit a member of the family who own this place.’

‘Ah,’ Neil said. ‘You mean Grace.’

‘I mean,’ Jeff said, ‘get out of my way.’

‘Grace isn’t in the design studio. Grace is currently on the factory floor. Of course, if you have professional business with Michelle—’

‘Fuck off,’ Jeff said.
‘Loser.’

Neil put his hands in his pockets. ‘Please leave,’ he said.

‘Make me.’

‘Och,’ Neil said, ‘I wouldn’t dirty my hands doing that. I’d call the rozzers.’

‘What is the fucking harm,’ Jeff shouted, ‘in paying a
courtesy
call on Grace?’

‘Not during the working day. I have a factory to run.’

‘If you think—’ Jeff began, and stopped.

‘I don’t think anything. I’m not here to think anything
about any private life but my own. But I
am
here to run a factory.’

Jeff took a step down again. He said derisively, ‘She wouldn’t give a short-arse like you a second glance.’

Neil stayed where he was, his hands in his pockets, leaning against the handrail.

‘I’m going into the factory,’ Jeff said.

‘I’m afraid that’s not permitted. You are welcome to join a factory tour if you want to see round. They run at eleven and one.’

‘Fuck you.’

Slowly Neil took one hand out of his pocket, withdrawing a phone. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, not raising his voice, ‘you’d like to leave before I need to get you ejected.’

Jeff took another step back. ‘You don’t scare me.’

‘I don’t scare anyone. I’m not interested in scaring.’

‘What are you interested in, then? Grace? I bet you are, I bet you’ve got the hots for—’

‘I’m dialling,’ Neil said. ‘And they’re quick, if it’s the factory.’

Jeff began to retreat, shouting obscenities.

The door at the top of the staircase opened and Michelle came out. She squinted down at them. ‘What’s going on?’

Neil didn’t look up from his phone. He said indifferently, ‘D’you know this gentleman?’

Michelle took the two edges of her cardigan and pulled them tightly across her body. Her hair was piled loosely on top of her head and decorated with a large artificial flower. She looked down at Jeff for a long and considering moment. Then she sniffed. ‘Never seen him before in my life, have I?’

F
ixing her earrings in front of the bathroom mirror was, Ashley told herself, perhaps the only normal thing that would happen in a distinctly weird day. It was even weird to be up here on her own, inserting her lucky pearl and garnet earrings that Leo had given her, while downstairs four generations of her family –
four
– were gathered, waiting for the huge piece of pork that Leo had put in the oven to be roasted. Ashley had said to Leo that she didn’t much like pork, and he had replied, very matter-of-factly, that it had been on offer, it was free range, and she was very lucky to have had nothing to do with it until she put it in her mouth. Then he had kissed her firmly and told her that Morris had got Fred almost walking.

‘He puts things Freddy wants just out of reach, but not at floor level. He’s got amazing patience.’

Which was a quality, she had told herself, that she was going to have to cultivate. After all, it wasn’t something that came naturally to her, it wasn’t particularly compatible with her energy and drive, but if she wanted to have quite a large portion of her cake and eat it – and she did – then she was going to have to learn patience.

She would start by tolerating Morris. Looked at dispassionately,
Morris was a surprising asset in the house: unobtrusive, deft at making and mending, and astonishingly good with the children. But he was there. He was there all the time, even when he was behind a closed bedroom door, and his constant presence was a small inhibition on her liberty, a block on complete privacy. Add to that the way domestic control had gradually slipped from Ashley’s grasp to Leo’s, so that the contents of the fridge looked like a stranger’s to her, and the linen cupboard was now random, and shoes seemed to have spawned across every floor. Ashley felt keenly that there was still a lot to get used to, despite all the advantages, and none of it was either easy or comfortable.

Her feelings were only exacerbated by the undeniable fact that everyone seemed happier. The house felt more open, more relaxed in itself, and so did its inhabitants. Maisie, for example, was distinctly less turbulent, and no longer appeared to need to make every activity, from brushing her teeth to sharing her toys, into a power struggle upon which her very identity depended. She was still unmistakeably Maisie, but less truculently so. Her nursery school said she hadn’t wept there for two weeks.

Ashley put her palms down on the sides of the bathroom basin and leant in until her nose was almost touching the mirror. Did she look good for thirty-one? Or just average? Thirty-one was young nowadays, anyway, even if Ma had been running her own business for a decade by that age. It was never a good idea to make comparisons with Ma, anyway. Ma was an exception to almost every orthodoxy. Always had been. Ma had probably never looked in a mirror and indulged in any doubting or questioning in her entire life. Her certainty was very lucky for her, if not quite so lucky for the people round her.

Those people round her right now, in Ashley’s basement kitchen, were people that Susie would probably never have
dreamed could congregate in the same room – her son-in-law, her grandchildren and her father. Ashley gripped the basin. She had to go down to them. She had to. But she needed just a few minutes more, to calm herself about the dynamics that awaited her downstairs, the dynamics that Leo had declared needed exposure, and practice, and
normalizing
, which was why he had insisted that Susie came for Sunday lunch.

‘Like families
should
,’ he’d said, pulling a tangle of socks and tights out of the tumble-dryer. ‘Getting it right, like our childhoods never managed to be. Generations round the same table.’

Ashley straightened up and flicked her hair behind her shoulders. Leo was right, even if he did sometimes sound like the soppy Waltons. But, she thought, thank heavens for the children.

Michelle was waiting for Grace in a wine bar on Wedgwood Place. She had a bottle in an ice bucket in front of her, and three glasses, one of which was already generously filled. Grace was used to seeing her in their habitual work uniform of jeans and sweaters – in Michelle’s case, vibrantly coloured and patterned sweaters – so to see her gussied up for a night out in platform shoes and nail varnish was startling.

‘Goodness,’ Grace said, slipping her bag off her shoulder. ‘I didn’t realize we were dressing up. Sorry, I’m just as usual.’

Michelle waved a purple-nailed hand. ‘I didn’t say. Doesn’t matter. I wanted it to be a surprise, anyway.’

Grace slid on to a stool opposite. She looked at the ice bucket and the glasses. She said, ‘Is Neil coming then?’

‘Not
Neil
,’ Michelle said disparagingly. ‘Why should Neil come?’

Grace gave a small shrug. ‘I thought you liked him.’

Michelle sat bolt upright and held her left hand up, its back to Grace. She smiled triumphantly. ‘Not any more!’

Grace peered at the outstretched hand. It bore a tiny solitaire diamond, set on a slender gold band, on the engagement finger. Grace’s eyes widened. ‘Oh my God! Oh Michelle!’

Michelle nodded. She turned her hand over so that she could admire the ring herself. ‘I wanted you to be the first to know.’

‘Oh, Michelle,
thank
you.’

‘I mean,’ Michelle said, ‘he’s been proposing every hour, on the hour, since the dawn of time, till I’d practically stopped hearing him. And then after we’d seen off that useless Jeff of yours, I suddenly thought, Michelle, what
are
you doing, what on
earth
d’you think you’re waiting for? So when we came out of that
Star Trek
movie – completely idiotic, I thought – and Mark said he’d heard of some new-builds in Burslem that a housing association was only going to rent to young locals, I thought I’d just say let’s go for it, let’s apply for a house. And he was so used to me saying no, he didn’t react for ages, and then he just stood there on the pavement, with his mouth hanging open, and then he said, “D’you mean you will actually move in with me?” and I said, “No, you numpty, I’ll
marry
you.” And bless him, Grace, he burst into tears and we had to go into a convenience store and buy Kleenex.’

Grace got up and went round the table to give Michelle a hug and a kiss. ‘It’s wonderful news.
Wonderful.
Congratulations.’

‘He’d got the ring in his sodding pocket, and all,’ Michelle said happily. ‘He’s been carrying it round since Christmas. His sister knows a diamond dealer in Birmingham so he’d had the ring for ages. And of course it fits. You could trust Mark to know my ring size.’

Grace straightened up and looked at the third glass. ‘Is he coming?’

‘Yes. I said I wanted half an hour with you first.’

‘It’s a real honour, Michelle.’

‘As long as you don’t think I’m a right whatsit, waving my engagement ring in your face.’

Grace went back to her seat. She said, ‘I’m thrilled for you. Seriously. And I don’t wish it was me, promise. I don’t actually want to be engaged right now. I’m kind of – not thinking about men.’

Michelle lifted the dripping bottle out of the bucket and poured a second glass. ‘Only cava, I’m afraid.’

‘I like cava.’

‘Grace, you’re well shot of Jeff. You don’t want anyone who wants to hold you back. Mark won’t hold me back, I’m telling you, not when I’ve finished putting a few bombs under him. I’ve told him quite plainly that I haven’t got a job, I’ve got a career. And if I feel like that, goodness knows how
you
feel.’

Grace raised her glass. ‘Huge congratulations. Really. It’s wonderful. Here’s to a very happy future.’

Michelle picked up her own glass. She said, ‘If I have anything to do with it, it will be.’ She took a long swallow, then she said, ‘What about you, though?’

Grace put her glass down. She said, not looking at Michelle, ‘D’you know, I’m OK. I really am.’

‘My nan always said it was better to be on your own than with the wrong one. She made no bones about it. Said she’d never have married my granddad if she hadn’t been pregnant. And there she was, stuck. Forty-seven years.’

‘My parents aren’t far off that.’

‘I can’t imagine it,’ Michelle said wonderingly. ‘Forty-seven years of Mark.’ She laughed and flung her head back. ‘I’ll be seventy-four. What am I doing?’

‘Marrying for the right reasons?’ Grace said.

Michelle tipped her head forward again. ‘I sodding well hope so.’ She held up her glass. ‘Drink up. Toast our future.
And yours. I know we have our moments, but it’s good working for you.’

Grace looked at her. ‘Is it?’

‘Yes. Why d’you ask like that?’

‘No reason.’

‘Is there something I should know?’ Michelle demanded.

‘No. The minute there is, I’ll tell you.’

‘But you’ve got wind of something—’

‘I’m just looking at my family,’ Grace said. ‘No more than that. Just looking and considering.’

‘Here’s Mark,’ Michelle said suddenly, getting to her feet. She waved both arms wildly to attract his attention. ‘Just look at him, will you? New trainers is my future husband’s idea of dressing up.’

It was, Susie reflected, the first time she had sat down to eat with her father in her entire life. He had left England when she was still bottle-fed and she had taken great care, since his return, not to put herself in a position where she would have to eat with him. Cups of tea, yes, a glass of brandy for him, yes, but eating a meal together had seemed altogether too intimate, and too forgiving. And then her son-in-law, unencumbered by all this visceral baggage from the past, had overturned her objections in an instant. One moment Morris was becoming a sizeable problem in Stoke, the next he was in Leo and Ashley’s spare bedroom and had peeled the potatoes that accompanied an impressive joint of roast pork. Leo had bought the pork and he and Morris had prepared the lunch. They had made a rhubarb crumble and, rather approximately, laid the table. When everyone was summoned to eat, Susie had suffered a sudden pang of acute isolation: Jasper wasn’t there because he was rehearsing yet again, and his absence made her feel exposed, and without a proper role. Seeing all the food on the table and Fred in his
high chair also reminded Susie forcibly of long-ago Sunday lunches in Radipole Road, a memory which added to her discomfiture and confusion. She took her allotted place as ill at ease as she ever remembered feeling.

At least Leo hadn’t attempted to sit her next to Morris. Morris had, in fact, been placed between the two children at Maisie’s insistence, and appeared adept at feeding Fred and persuading Maisie to eat something other than just her roast potatoes. But his evident ease with the children –
her
grandchildren – proved as unacceptable to Susie as having to sit next to him would have been. Just as his calm near-ignoring of her was. He didn’t say much, except to the children. But he appeared irritatingly at ease. He ate modestly and quietly, and even if his clothes were as dated and hippyish as before, his hair was now closely cropped and lay on his bony skull in a smooth silver pelt. It was almost unbearable to notice that his hands, skeletal and liver-spotted as they had become, were still more elegant than her own. His demeanour, his mere
presence
in Ashley’s house, was deeply upsetting, and created in Susie not just resentment but a feeling that, with all her acumen and achievement and success, she had no idea how to arrange herself in his company at all.

It was Leo who found her later, in the bathroom, perched on the edge of the bath and blowing her nose ferociously into a length of toilet paper. He closed the door and came to sit beside her. He said at once, ‘It’s nice having you here, you know. We don’t see you enough.’

Susie aimed her wad of paper at the lavatory bowl, and missed. She began to get up to retrieve it. Leo put a hand on her arm, to keep her where she was. ‘Leave it.’

‘I don’t think you should be nice to me.’

‘I mean it,’ Leo said. ‘About being good to see you here.’

Susie looked at the floor. There was a series of small smudged footprints on it, as if Maisie had trodden mud in.
She said, ‘In my present frame of mind, I can’t help feeling that’s a reproach.’

Leo waited a moment, and then he said teasingly, ‘And so I’m urging Ashley to do what you did because I want her to end up without a family life?’

She turned to look at him. ‘
Have
I?’

‘Don’t be daft. This is just a transition. For you, I mean.’

Susie looked wary. She said, ‘From what to what?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘from full-on, full-time entrepreneur and businesswoman to rather more part-time all those things, in order to make way for a bit more family, a bit more home life.’

There was a small silence, and then Susie said, ‘I’m good at business. And I won’t have a home much longer. Jasper wants to sell Radipole Road.’

‘Yes,’ Leo said.

‘You
knew
?’

‘Yes. I did. I would say that wanting to sell has been coming on for a while, with Jasper.’

‘Is it because I bought the Parlour House?’

‘No.’ He glanced at her. ‘Why
did
you buy the Parlour House?’

She said simply, ‘I needed to. I really needed somewhere to help me feel what I felt when I first bought the factory. I needed to get back to the roots of it all. And I thought that buying somewhere up there which had family connections would join the dots and I’d feel as I felt twenty years ago.’

‘Not possible.’

She sighed. ‘Sometimes you have to try something to discover that it won’t work. But that doesn’t invalidate the impulse.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Is that what was going on with Jasper?’

‘You’d have to ask him.’

‘Sometimes,’ Susie said, ‘I think I am deliberately kept out
of the loop. And then I wonder if it’s just me. Maybe I haven’t listened to anyone for ages, either.’

Leo glanced at her. He said, ‘You can’t do everything. That’s why we all need to stand up and shout at you sometimes. Just to kind of say, hey, we’re here too.’

She nodded, not speaking.

He said in a softer voice, ‘You’re a cool mother-in-law, you know.’