Balancing Act (7 page)

Dan passed his napkin across to her. Then he reached to touch her elbow. He said, ‘I know, sweetheart.’

She blew her nose on the napkin and said gratefully, ‘I know you do.’

‘That’s why I want to talk to Ashley. I want to try and depersonalize the whole thing. I want the brand to be as cosy and domestic as ever, but I want the company to grow up and be altogether more professional.’

Cara blotted her eyes and put the napkin down. She said, ‘But what about Ma?’

‘That’s it, really.’

‘What, Dan? You’re not plotting …’

‘I’m evolving,’ Daniel said. ‘I want to evolve the company. Susie could be the best ambassador the company could ever have.’

Cara looked at him for a moment, then she sat back and put her hands in her lap. ‘Wow,’ she said admiringly.

He glanced up. ‘D’you get it?’

‘Our spokeswoman,’ Cara said. ‘Our living advertisement. On panels, talking about entrepreneurs …’

‘Woman entrepreneurs.’

‘School boards, mentoring groups, non-executive positions in other companies …’

‘All that.’

‘Well done, Daniel!’

‘And,’ he said, ‘if she can’t bring herself to send Morris away, it’ll shield her from him. She’ll be too busy. We’ll keep her too busy.’

Cara beamed at him. ‘What if she won’t agree?’

‘That’s why we need to talk to Ashley.’

‘And Grace?’

‘I don’t want to sound heartless,’ Dan said, ‘but I can’t save Grace without her consent.’

‘Morris, Jeff …’

‘Did you and Ashley bully her when you were kids?’

Cara looked indignant. ‘Never! Anyway, she was too dreamy to bully. You could never get a grip on Grace. Still can’t.’

He leant across the table again, holding out his hand. ‘So. My plan?’

She put her hand in his. ‘Go for it.’

‘You look worn out,’ Leo said.

Ashley made a face. ‘It’s the default look for all working
mothers of small children. Panda eyes, washed-out clothes garnished with sick …’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘Oh good,’ Ashley said. She was lying on the sofa with her shoes off.

‘I meant,’ Leo said patiently, ‘that you look as if you’ve had a really harrowing few days, which you have.’

‘And tomorrow it’s the shop visit to Bicester Village, plus a meeting.’

‘Ash,’ Leo said, ‘don’t do that. Don’t destroy relaxing time by winding yourself up about tomorrow. Anyway, you like shop visits. You like going to Bicester.’

Ashley gave a small groan. She closed her eyes.

Leo crossed the room to sit beside her. Behind him, in the kitchen part of the half-done family room, candles flickered on the table he had set for supper.

‘Ash,’ he said again.

She opened her eyes and regarded him balefully.

He said, ‘What would you say if I told you that you never had to work again?’

Ashley stared at him for a moment. Then she said, ‘I’d be thrilled for half a day and then I’d go mad.’

‘Quite.’

She struggled to sit up. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well,’ Leo said, ‘we can’t go on like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘Muddle and chaos and Cheryl, and you shattered and the kids fed crap and nobody really
settled.’

Ashley was now upright and looking at him with suspicion. ‘Leo, what are you saying?’

‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking after you’ve assured me again that you really do want to work.’

‘Of course I do! If there was anyone else doing my job in the company, I’d want to kill them!’

‘Fine. Good. Just checking. And what about home life?’

Ashley gave the room a cursory glance. ‘Hardly magazine standard, but roughly on a par with everyone else of our age and stage.’

‘But could do better?’

‘Of course it could be better. Nicky was better. Cheryl’s only average on good days. I asked Maisie what she liked about her and she said her eyeliner.’

‘I have a plan,’ Leo said.

‘We can’t have a plan right now. Not with all the Morris stuff going on—’

‘The Morris stuff makes it perfect timing for a plan. That Barlaston house of your mother’s, and now Morris – it’s ideal. It throws everything up in the air. You’re brilliant at what you do in the company, but you need more clout. Maybe a pay rise. Maybe a payment structure like your parents have. I don’t know. I don’t care much, except that I want to see you listened to more. And you won’t be listened to more if you can’t give more mental energy to work, and you can’t give more mental energy to work if you’re worrying about Cheryl feeding the kids badly and spending time in cafés with other nannies instead of teaching Maisie how to ride her bike. So …’ He paused and looked at her. He was smiling.

‘So?’ she said.

‘
I
’m going to do it.’

‘What?’

‘For a year, anyway. We’re sacking Cheryl, saving the money and I’m going to look after the kids and run the house.’

Ashley gulped. ‘But what about your teaching?’

He waved a hand. ‘That can wait.’

‘But Leo …’

‘I want you to have this chance,’ he said. ‘I want to be
at home with the children. I want to do this family thing properly. I
want
to.’

Ashley nodded slightly. She said, ‘Are you sure? All that repetition? Making lunch every day for Fred that he won’t eat? Hanging out with other mothers at playgroup? Hearing about other fathers on business trips to Singapore?’

‘All that. Quite sure.’

Ashley got slowly to her feet. ‘Gosh.’ She looked down at him. ‘I was quoting you in Stoke. I was telling them that you always say, work with what you have.’

‘Well, then.’

‘Everything seems in a bit of a state of flux, at the company.’

‘Perfect.’

‘The big meeting cancelled because of Morris, Dan and Ma being at loggerheads; Grace not knowing what she wants so everyone thinking they know for her; do we export, don’t we …’

‘Exactly.’

Ashley put a hand out and ruffled Leo’s hair. ‘You can’t just do the house and the kids. You’ll go mental.’

‘I won’t. I’ll be good at it. I’ll like being good at it.’

‘Just a year.’

‘Or more, if I like it.’ He smiled up at her. ‘I might even get round to the garden.’

‘I’ll believe
that
when I see it.’

He stood up too, and said happily, ‘So you’ll be the breadwinner, won’t you?’

She nodded again, without complete conviction. ‘Maybe.’

‘No. Certainly. That’ll be our deal. You bring home the bacon. I’ll cook it and feed it to the children.’ He put his arms round her. He said into her neck, ‘It’ll be brilliant.’

‘Sacrifices worry me.’

‘It’s not a sacrifice,’ he said. ‘It’s what I want!’ He pulled
back and looked at her. ‘My wife, the breadwinner.’ He smiled and kissed her nose. ‘Just like your mother.’

Jasper was asleep. He was lying on his side with his back to Susie, in his usual sleeping position, and his breathing was quiet and even in a way that was almost impossible to achieve if you were only pretending. But then, if he was pretending, Susie thought, it was because he didn’t want to talk any more: he was tired of what she wanted to talk about, so, asleep or really awake, it was clear that he was of no use to her.

Nor was it any use lying awake in the dark going round in mental circles. It would, surely, be more profitable to get up and go downstairs and attempt to comfort herself with the soothing ritual of tea-making – proper tea leaves in a proper pot – rather than lie in a tangle of thoughts and creases under a duvet which was alternately too hot or not warm enough. Jasper’s imperturbable capacity to sleep through life’s turbulences had been infinitely comforting and instructive at the beginning of their relationship; now it was beyond mere irritation, and was a symbol of his increasing detachment from everything that concerned her. His languid humour had been irresistible to her once, so sophisticated, so darkly witty. Now it just seemed, too often, to be merely childish, tiresome evidence of his inability to take life seriously, to see what had to be done, day after day, just to make things work.

Well, she thought, turning away from him on to her left side for the umpteenth time, it was no good finding fault with every useless man in her life right now, no use deploring them for their shortcomings. In fact, uncomfortable though it might be to think about, was there something similar in Jasper and Morris? Was there something in her father’s deeply flexible – to put it politely – approach to life that she had unconsciously chosen to replicate in her marriage? And
what about her role in whatever had gone wrong in either the past or the present? Her father had never come to find her, but then she had never been out to find him either, or her poor little mother, because it was always easier to stay where she was, safe and admired and encouraged, and where, above all, the action was. What she could not explain to Jasper was that the sight of Morris in his beads and crumpled linens was filling her with terrible guilt, guilt at having made so little effort as a daughter to either parent while her mother was alive, and then being filled with nothing but revulsion when her father stumbled into their carefully constructed lives, bringing with him no reproaches of his own beyond the fact of his continuing and now almost helpless existence.

I can’t tell even Jasper that, Susie thought, staring at the faint lines of city night light at the edges of the bedroom blinds. I can’t admit all that. Any more than I can face what I might have done to him – to Jasper – all through these years, and to the girls in various ways. The sort of thing Ashley might be inadvertently doing to those littlies of hers, my grandchildren. Grandchildren? What am I doing with grandchildren, when I can’t even sort out my feelings about my own father? What am I doing fussing over jug spouts and pansy prints when I don’t have the answers to such huge human questions? Except that without the jugs and the pansies, I probably couldn’t face anything, manage anything, achieve anything. I love them. I love thinking about them. I love the fact that because of them over two hundred people earn enough money to feed and clothe their families. I
love
that. I do.

She turned on to her back once more. Jasper hadn’t stirred. He breathed on, steadily, peacefully, regularly. She put a hand out to touch him, and then hesitated and pulled it back again. Be fair, she said to herself, be fair. You told him that whatever you decided had to be something you could
live with, so apply that smug statement to him, as well as to Morris. Don’t ask him to do what he can’t do, feel what he can’t feel. Morris isn’t his problem, and you’ve made it plain he’s not a problem for sharing. Why did you do that? God knows, but you did, and it’s done now. You’ve slammed the door in Jasper’s face, haven’t you?

She stared hard at his back in the gloom. He was sleeping, as he’d slept for as long as she could remember, in boxer shorts and a huge, thin, Sea Island cotton T-shirt, navy blue or black, and laundered now to a uniform dark grey. She watched the slight rise and fall of the fabric as he breathed, and felt her thoughts ebbing and flowing with his breaths – thoughts of remorse and anger and guilt and resentment and disappointment and determination and fear and sadness and satisfaction. And worry. There was always worry. It lay in wait at every turn, unhurried in its persistence, but always ready to seize an opportunity. And what, it said to Susie, at twenty to four in the morning as she lay wakefully beside her slumbering husband, are you going to do about Grace?

‘M
y granddad worked here,’ Morris said.

Grace stood just inside the doorway of the Parlour House’s small sitting room, and watched him. He was wearing a long, sleeveless knitted waistcoat over his linen tunic, its edges blanket-stitched in brown wool. He pointed at the floor.

‘There’d have been a central drain here in the old dairy, running all along. A channel – a stone channel. My granddad didn’t learn to read till he got married. My granny taught him.’

‘Oh,’ Grace said. She glanced out of the windows. They were very dirty, and the sky beyond them was no brighter.

‘I expect she was ashamed that he couldn’t read,’ said Morris. ‘It’s quite a common thing in families, shame.’

Grace went on looking out of the window. She said, without emphasis, ‘Yes.’

‘I went off before my old dad really woke up to being ashamed of me. And then I come back all these years later, and it’s waiting for me, as if it had never been any different.’

Grace said uneasily, ‘I don’t actually think it’s that.’

Morris turned to survey the fireplace. It was made of reconstructed stone, and had a phoney, quilted look. ‘Oh?’

‘I don’t think that anyone’s actually ashamed of you. But it’s a bit disconcerting that you don’t seem to feel any shame yourself. That’s what I mean, I think.’

‘How do you know what I feel?’

Grace said with more spirit, ‘By how you act. You act as if you weren’t responsible for yourself and nobody should have ever asked you to be.’

Morris said, slightly defensively, ‘I took myself off, you know. Out of everyone’s hair.’

‘Leaving a baby.’

He looked at her. ‘Is that what everyone’s so worked up about? Our leaving your mother behind? Where she’d have ten times the life we could ever have given her?’

‘That’s not the point. That’s easy to say, looking back.’

‘Even you,’ Morris said. He pushed his hands up into the opposite sleeves of his tunic. ‘Even you end up holding that against me.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘And would your mother have had a fraction of the success she’s had if she’d grown up on a beach in Lamu speaking Swahili and running wild? You have no idea how basic life was there, how many handouts we were grateful for. Our house wasn’t much more than a shack. We shouldn’t have stayed. But it’s the first place we landed when the balloon went up with your great-granddad, and we got stuck. We meant to move on – at least, I did – but somehow we stayed. I’m telling you, if it was no life for us two, what kind of life would it have been for a clever child?’

Grace sighed. ‘It’s no use making excuses with hindsight. You left her. You didn’t keep in touch.’

‘Nor did she.’

Grace took a step back towards the door to the little hall. ‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Or, even better, that you never said it.’

He said, as if grumbling to himself, ‘You don’t know what it’s like, never to get used to being who you are.’

Grace took a deep breath, as if to steady herself. She said, in as level a tone as she could manage, ‘Well. Do you think you could live here?’

Morris looked up at the small chandelier on the ceiling. It was made of wrought iron and pink glass. ‘I should think so.’

‘Ma’s going to rip it apart. She’s going to kind of empty out the ground floor, and start again. It would mean camping here, really.’

He gave a small shrug and took his hands out of his sleeves. ‘I’ve never lived any other way, duck.’

‘But in a tropical climate. This would be cold and uncomfortable.’

‘Not in summer.’

‘We don’t have summers any more. Not real ones.’

He eyed her. ‘Trying to put me off living here, are you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But trying to get you to be realistic. Ma says you can live here, but I’m just telling you that it won’t be comfortable.’

He went slowly across to the window. He said, looking out, ‘You want your flat back.’

Grace sighed. ‘I want my privacy back. I’m used to privacy.’

He turned round, grinning. ‘You want to move that boy in. That Jeff boy.’

‘No.’

‘Good-looking boy.’

‘I don’t want Jeff—’

‘You do,’ Morris interrupted. ‘That’s the trouble. You want him, and you know he’s no good for you. But you’re giving in to the wanting, aren’t you?’

Grace said nothing. She stared fixedly at the fireplace.

‘Know something?’ Morris said. ‘I was wrong just now.

I was wrong to say you didn’t know what it was like, never getting used to being who you are. You
do
know, don’t you?’ He let a beat fall, and then he said softly, ‘You’re just like me. Aren’t you?’

Cheryl said that being sacked was fine by her. She hadn’t liked the job much anyway – though don’t get her wrong, the kids were quite cute – because the early starts really messed up her life and the commute was terrible. And frankly, the money wasn’t all that wonderful, and she’d got a friend who worked shifts in a call centre who made the same money without the hassle, and some weeks she had three days off in a row, which Cheryl thought was really how the work–life balance should be.

‘Why don’t you apply for a job there, then?’ Leo asked her pleasantly.

She had rolled her eyes slightly. ‘Oh, I will. When I’ve had a holiday. My boyfriend’s getting a summer job in Ibiza, in one of the clubs.’

‘Cleaning, is he?’ Leo said, suddenly exasperated.

She stared at him, the penny dropping abruptly. Then she hoisted her fringed handbag on to her shoulder. ‘I don’t have to take this,’ she said. ‘Not from someone who hasn’t even
got
a job. And a
man
, at that!’

When the front door had slammed behind her, the house had shuddered and then seemed to settle, quietly and steadily, as if reminding itself that dramas were an aberration and not part of a regular pattern. Leo climbed to the top of the house, to tidy the children’s bedrooms, and then descended all the way down to the basement kitchen, collecting laundry and used mugs as he went, until he reached the washing and drying machines, those symbols of cleanliness and order. In seventeenth-century Holland, he remembered from A-level History of Art, cleanliness had been seen not just as a virtue,
but as a symbol of social harmony and prosperity. There was no reason why a load of his own family’s laundry, washed, ironed and restored to its relevant shelves and drawers by him, shouldn’t have an equally congenial effect on all of them. When Ashley had been pregnant, or having her two brief, impatient spells of maternity leave – ‘I can’t pretend that I’m not itching to get back to work, however much I’m thrilled to be a mum,’ she’d said frequently – he had been an excellent house husband, after all. Susie had wanted to pay for a nanny, but Leo had put his foot down, insisting on their need and ability to manage alone, just the three or subsequently four of them, and had been rewarded by the grateful gleam in Ashley’s eyes. He could resume the role that had, temporarily anyway, suited them very well. He could at least try. Whatever he managed would be a first step, at least, towards reclaiming control of their lives and ultimately – grandly – their destiny.

It was a comfort to think that he and Ashley were both simultaneously reclaiming authority over their working and domestic schedules. Here he was, stuffing socks and T-shirts into the washing machine, with Fred having his morning sleep upstairs and the prospect of a buggy walk to collect Maisie from nursery school, followed by a commendable lunch of leftover chicken casserole. And there was Ashley, at work after a fine morning walk to get there, with a healthy packed lunch in her work bag and a firm intention to speak to Cara and Dan at the end of the day, in order to explain their changed domestic circumstances and her intentions for her professional future. By the time she got home, the children would be bathed, fed (tomato soup and cheese toasts, possibly), and even if supper wasn’t started, the kitchen would be tidy and welcoming. He felt a small surge of elation. If this was contributing, then maybe it was going to be more fulfilling than he had dared to hope.

He straightened up. Above his head, Fred was abruptly awake and bellowing, rocking his cot so that the headboard banged against the wall. There was a distinct mark on the wall already, which threatened to develop, any minute, into a crack in the plaster. It was obviously necessary to move the cot away from any wall, at once. It was also necessary to put washing powder into the machine, select the right programme for reasons of economy and ecology, and switch it on. Leo hesitated for a moment, his hands full of a tangle of Maisie’s tights. The banging upstairs intensified, culminating in a crash. And then there was silence. Leo dropped the tights and ran.

‘Pa!’ Grace said, holding her telephone to her ear.

‘Don’t sound so surprised.’

‘Well, I am. I haven’t spoken to you for ages.’

‘Days.’

‘And it’s the afternoon.’

‘Where are you?’ Jasper said.

‘In the studio.’

‘So you’re back.’

‘Back?’

‘From Barlaston,’ Jasper said. ‘From – the new house.’

Grace cast a glance at Michelle and Ben’s studiously turned backs. Then she crossed to the studio door and let herself out on to the iron landing at the top of the outside staircase.

‘I’m outside now,’ she said, ‘and it’s freezing.’

‘Gracie,’ Jasper said, ‘I’m ringing to see if you’re OK.’

Grace screwed up her eyes. In the yard below her, a gaggle of schoolchildren were being herded from the factory towards the pottery café. In the school holidays, you couldn’t move for children painting pottery in the café, pottery that then had to be labelled and fired and labelled again. It had been Susie’s idea, fifteen years ago – long before everyone
else had thought of it – children putting their names, their handprints, their mother’s names on—

‘Grace?’

‘Pa,’ Grace said, ‘I’m fine. I really am.’

‘But Barlaston …’

‘I think it’ll work. I think he’ll agree to live there, even with builders in. He’s not really bothered about comfort.’

Jasper made an exasperated sound. ‘I don’t care what bothers him or doesn’t. You know what I want.’

‘Yes. Ma told me.’

‘I don’t want you exploited, either. Making you show him round the house is exploitation.’

‘I offered to,’ Grace said.

‘She shouldn’t have let you.’

‘It’s easier for me, I’m a bit distanced. I’m not his daughter.’

‘You’re mine,’ Jasper said, ‘and I’m worried about you. You don’t sound right to me.’

Grace turned to face the wall of the studio. It was a little less windy with her back to the yard. ‘I’m tired, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I’m not used to having anyone else in the flat.’

‘He shouldn’t still be there.’

‘Pa, please.’

‘I’m coming up to Stoke. I’m going to sort it.’

‘No!’ Grace shouted.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t want it sorted. I mean, I don’t want you to sort anything. I’ll sort it my own way.’

‘Don’t you want help?’ Jasper said.

Grace leaned her forehead against the brick wall of the studio. It was cold and rough and impersonal. ‘I don’t want any more dramas,’ she said.

‘I won’t make a drama. You know me, I don’t do drama. But I draw the line at having you exploited in all this nonsense.’

Grace closed her eyes. She said, without thinking, ‘I’m not being exploited. I’m just – trying to work out who I am.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t mean that. I didn’t mean that, Pa. I just mean, please can I do things my own way?’

‘Even if it means other people bullying you?’

‘They’re not.’

‘Oh God, Grace,’ Jasper said, suddenly weary, ‘have it your own way. Reject help. Tell me I shouldn’t have rung.’

‘I like you ringing,’ Grace said lamely.

‘I haven’t seen you for weeks.’

‘Only about three.’

‘Grace, what is going on?’

Grace took her forehead away from the wall and rubbed it. She said, ‘We’re really busy. I mean, exceptionally, for this time of year. Usually it goes completely dead after Christmas.’

‘I didn’t mean that. As well you know.’

‘I’m OK,’ Grace said. ‘And I’ll be down to London soon.’

Jasper said sharply, ‘When you’ve finished doing your mother’s bidding.’

There was a sudden surprised silence.

‘Gosh,’ Grace said. ‘That wasn’t like you.’

Jasper took a breath. He said, ‘Perhaps you should pay more attention.’

‘To you?’

‘Yes, actually.’

‘If you and Ma are fighting,’ Grace said, ‘it’s none of my business.’

‘I see.’

‘Pa, I have to go. I’ve got work to do.’

Jasper sighed. ‘Sorry, Gracie.’

‘Me too. Sorry, Pa.’

‘Will you ring me? If I can do anything?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

‘Bye, darling.’

‘Bye, Pa.’

Grace clicked her phone off and dropped it into her pocket. Then she opened the door to the studio. Michelle was standing by the kettle, her weight on one hip, holding the Valentine’s mug that she had appropriated for her own use – ‘Be prepared,’ she said, ‘that’s my motto’ – a single teabag held between finger and thumb.

She looked at Grace. ‘Lover boy?’

‘What?’

‘On the phone. Was that hot Jeff?’

Grace took a chair at the central table with its back to the rest of the room. ‘It was my dad,’ she said. ‘If it’s any of your business.’

Ashley decided that she would not talk to Cara and Dan in the boardroom. That would look altogether too elaborate. It would be better to sit at the meeting table, where buyers and other visitors were welcomed, in the alcove flanked by shelves of pottery grouped by design, and with a view out to the south and to the river. There were high stools around this table, which lent the area informality, and a whiteboard on the wall which gave the sales figures in the shops for the week, divided by coloured marker into three columns – the actual sales, the target sales, and the sales compared with the same week in the previous year. Ashley knew those figures by heart, as she did every week. Dan had already said that he was not interested in seeing any more minus signs.

Ashley had made coffee in the Italian screwtop device which Cara and Dan said made the best coffee. Ashley suspected they said that because the process was more laborious and therefore, in their opinion, more authentic. Dan had refused an office request for an espresso machine, pointing out that the building had an excellent café on the ground floor, but
he had imported an electric ring to sit beside the office kettle all the same, to enable the coffee pot to be used. Ashley told herself that she would not even comment on that, let alone allow herself to get steamed up about it. Dan and Cara were a pain about coffee, as they were about anything to do with food and drink, and Ashley just had to accept that, in the same way she had had to accept having a mother who was late for every school sports day – if indeed she made it at all – and having a lovely-natured, supportive husband who, it seemed, was without significant personal ambition. They all were as they were. And just at this moment, she was determined to focus on raising her personal profile in the company.