Daughters-in-Law (32 page)

“Of course—”

“We could go up to your flat?”

“Yes—”

“I’ve never seen your flat. Charlotte said I couldn’t see it until you’d got some curtains. I don’t mind about the curtains, of course I don’t, but she wanted it to be perfect for me to see, bless her.”

“It’s not exactly perfect,” Luke said, “but the bed’s made, at least. I’d better warn you though, it’s a bit of a steep climb. Five floors.”

“Game for that,” Marnie said brightly.

Luke looked at her. She still played tennis after all.

“Okay,” he said.

“Well, then?”

He glanced at his screen. What he was doing wasn’t urgent
but it was better uninterrupted, all the same. But now he had been interrupted, and by something and someone about whom he felt more obligation than curiosity. He saved the file.

“We’ll go up,” Luke said.

The flat, Marnie thought privately, was charming but impossibly small. While Luke made coffee, Marnie washed her hands in the midget bathroom—no bath, only a shower, and the shower curtain missing half its rings—and noticed, fondly, that the only shelf was crowded with Charlotte’s hair and beauty products. No change there, then, and how nice of Luke not to mind. Gregory had hated to see anything feminine not confined to a dressing table. He’d loved it all there, as much cut-glass powder-puff nonsense as Marnie liked, there, but the bathroom was a purposeful place in his view: he would never have seen it as synonymous with even an atom of self-indulgence.

Luke had laid out coffee mugs, and a milk jug, and a cafetière on the low table in front of the sofa, and removed several magazines and garments that had been scattered there. Marnie looked at him with approval. Young men of his generation saw nothing dangerous in being domesticated, just as her older sons-in-law were such hands-on fathers, to the point where she had sometimes wanted to urge Sarah and Fiona to remember that those children were their mothers’ responsibility too. She sat down on the sofa and looked about her.

“Lovely light room.”

Luke began to pour coffee, still standing.

“Makes up for the size—”

“And you two so tall—”

“It’s a great location.”

Marnie thought of her walk up to Arnold Circus. It had not been through anything that her own upbringing could have
described as a great location—there’d even been a sad little secondhand-clothes market happening on the pavement under a railway bridge—but then, things had changed, like this competent young man who was her son-in-law making her coffee with perfect ease, never mind earning his living in a way which had absolutely nothing to do with the settled old professions of Marnie’s childhood. She accepted a mug of coffee. It smelled wonderful. She smiled at Luke.

“Thank you, dear.”

He sat down on a square upholstered cube opposite her.

“Now,” he said.

He looked perfectly friendly, but also slightly in a hurry. Marnie said, “It’s about Charlotte and the baby.”

Luke took a swallow of coffee.

“Tell me.”

Marnie had rehearsed this bit. She sipped her coffee and set it down on the table in front of her. She smiled at Luke again.

“I have been thinking about this baby of yours—”

Luke smiled back.

“Me too.”

“And it’s lovely that you, especially, are so thrilled about it. So different, I have to say, from my generation where, whatever a man felt about his babies, he wasn’t really encouraged to show it.”

She paused. Luke waited, still smiling. Marnie said, “I don’t want to worry Charlotte, and we all know that she hasn’t the best financial brain in the world, but . . . will you be all right for money?”

Luke drank some more coffee. He said, switching his gaze from Marnie to his mug, “A bit strapped. But fine,” and then he added, as an afterthought, “thank you.”

“Well,” Marnie said, her head slightly on one side, “I have a little plan.”

Luke didn’t look up.

“To your advantage.”

Luke glanced quickly at her.

“Just to help you over this stage, just for a little while.”

“It’s very—”

“No,” Marnie said. She leaned forward. “It’s not kind. It’s what one always wants to do for one’s children, as you’ll discover for yourselves. The thing is, dear Luke, that Charlotte has always been rather sheltered. Her sisters would call it spoiled, but it’s what happens, often, to the baby of the family, especially if that baby is as pretty as Charlotte. And although I know she is in one way thrilled about this baby, I know that part of her is quite nervous, too, scared even, and I thought I could do something to help that, and help you at the same time. I want, you see, to give you a maternity nurse, to help with the baby after the birth, and reassure Charlotte that she is going to be a wonderful mother, as we all know she is going to be, and I think I will engage someone for six weeks, or two months even, to give you both a chance to get back on your feet because a baby’s arrival is a big thing, believe me, a very big thing indeed. But—” She held up a hand to prevent Luke saying what he was plainly agitating to say. “But that’s not all. You can’t possibly fit a nanny in here. You can’t, actually, fit a baby in here, not with all the things babies need, especially these days. So I am going to help you. I am going to help you pay for a bigger flat, and one with a lift, you’ll find you can’t possibly manage all those stairs without a lift, and with a baby, and I shall go on helping you until you are both in a position to help yourselves. I don’t want any thanks, or any argument. It is absolutely my pleasure to do this for you and my Charlotte.”

She stopped and picked up her coffee and smiled into it, in the sanguine expectation of Luke’s relief and gratitude. There
was a silence. The silence was, she supposed, because Luke was slightly stunned at the imagination and scope of this offer, but then the silence went on, and on, and she was forced to look up from her coffee to find Luke scowling into his.

“Luke?”

He gave a little jerk, as if he was trying to shake himself into order.

“What do you say, dear?”

Luke looked out of the window. Then he looked at the ceiling. Then he looked at a point slightly to one side of Marnie and said with an effort, “I’m afraid . . . not.”

“Not! What
do
you mean?”

Luke managed to drag his gaze on to his mother-in-law.

“I mean, Marnie, that it’s really kind of you, but we’ll manage.”

“Luke, you can’t. Charlotte can’t—”

“She’ll have to learn,” Luke said. “Just like me. We’ll both have to learn. Like our friends have who’ve got babies. Like everyone does.”

“But there’s no
space
here—”

“We’ll cope.”

“But,” Marnie cried, louder now, “there’s the stairs, all those stairs—”

“We’re looking at other flats,” Luke said.

“Then let me help you!”

“No!” Luke said loudly.

There was another, sharper silence. Marnie said with dignity, “Did you just shout at me?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Luke said. “It’s kind of you, but we can’t accept—”

“Charlotte might accept—”

“You won’t tell Charlotte,” Luke said firmly. “You won’t go behind my back.” He leaned forward a little. “You
won’t
.”

Marnie turned slightly to stare out of the window.

“I don’t understand your reasons—”

“Don’t you?”

“No. It seems to me that you are just being obstinate. Showing male pride. I know all about male pride. I lived with it. I lived with it for almost forty years. You don’t want to accept help for the mother of your child because you want to be the only provider.”

Luke said, slightly dangerously, “I am so not the same kind of man as Charlotte’s father was.”

Marnie said nothing, bolt upright on the sofa, staring out of the window. Luke went on, “I don’t want to . . . can’t accept your offer, for all our sakes. Charlotte and I will never grow up unless we learn how. And we can’t be beholden. We have all the right to learn to be independent that you all had. Frankly, Marnie, we can’t be
patronized
this way.”

Marnie swallowed. She said tightly, “I can only hope you are thinking of Charlotte.”

Luke stood up. He had the distinct, and faintly alarming, air of someone bringing an interview to a brisk conclusion. He said, looking down at Marnie, where she sat on the sofa, “It’s precisely because I’m thinking of Charlotte that I’m declining your offer.”

And then he moved across to the door to the hall, and held it open.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rachel said.

She was standing in the kitchen, fresh from the garden, with earthy knees to her jeans and her hair held off her face by a spotted handkerchief that Anthony recognized as his own.

“I was going to. I always intended to. I was just waiting until I had marshaled my own thoughts about it—”

Rachel went over to the sink and jammed the kettle roughly under the tap to fill it.

“So I imagine she didn’t ask to see me.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“What about the boys?” Rachel said, banging the kettle down on its base and switching it on. “How were the boys?”

“Lovely,” Anthony said. “Sweet. They looked fine.”

Rachel moved to stand by the sink, gripping its edge, and staring out of the window above it into the garden.

“Why do you suppose she came?”

Anthony went to stand beside her.

“Because,” he said, “she isn’t without gratitude.” He put a hand on Rachel’s. “Don’t focus on her not asking to see you. Don’t take it personally all the time—”

“But I’m
hurt
!” Rachel cried.

“Yes.”

“I’m . . . I’m really fond of her. I’ve been fond of her for years—”

“You love her,” Anthony said.

Rachel nodded furiously. She took her hand out from under Anthony’s and brushed it across her eyes. She said, “And I was so grateful to her. For taking on Ralph. And letting Ralph be Ralph—”

“Until,” Anthony said, “he was too much Ralph.”

The kettle clicked itself off.

“Tea?” Rachel said.

“Please—”

“Is she going to live with this man?”

“I don’t know. She said he was just getting her through. She didn’t sound like someone in love to me, but maybe I just didn’t hear that because I didn’t want to.”

Rachel got two mugs out of the cupboard above the kettle. She said, more calmly, “What exactly did Ralph do?”

Anthony sighed.

“What he always does. What suited Ralph. Not listening. Not listening, ever.”

“I don’t listen,” Rachel said. “I should start with myself. I should hear myself sometimes.”

She dropped tea bags into the mugs. She said, “She really didn’t want to see me—”

“I think she was afraid to.”

“In case I barked. I might well have barked. I’ve always barked when I’m frightened.”

Anthony waited a moment, then he said, “
Are
you frightened?”

Rachel poured boiling water into the mugs, and stirred the tea bags round with a spoon. She said lightly, “Yup.”

“Of . . . what exactly?”

Rachel flipped the tea bags out into the sink.

“Of losing my usefulness.”

“
What?
”

Rachel walked briskly past him to the fridge and took out a plastic bottle of milk. She said, splashing milk carelessly into the mugs of tea, “What am I for, now, exactly?”

“Rachel!”

“Look,” she said, not looking at him. “Look. I’ve run a house and garden, I’ve brought up three boys. They’ve all married. They’ve produced three children. One to come. And they are doing just what I did, what I wanted to do, which is what I started doing when I came here and married you. Which is to live my own life, start my own family, make my own world. And it’s
been
my world. And now it isn’t—”

In his studio that afternoon, Anthony had been listening to a radio interview with the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama had said, in his light, benevolent way, that as far as he could see most of the public trouble in the world was made by men, and most of the domestic trouble was made by women. Anthony visualized the Dalai Lama, in his spectacles and his maroon-and-ochre robes, sitting at their kitchen table and listening to Rachel describing how her life had outrun its purpose, and
wondered what version of Buddhist resignation to the vagaries of the human journey he would recommend.

“Are you listening?” Rachel said.

“Very much—”

“This huge house,” Rachel said, “an acre and a half of garden. You and me. At least you’ve still got the studio.”

Anthony said, “You could run cookery courses again.”

“I could.”

“There was that little shop you thought of, the deli shop, at Snape Maltings.”

“Wrong time. It’s no time to start something up. Anyway—”

“Anyway?”

“I haven’t the heart,” Rachel said. “I’m too sad. And too fidgety. I’ve got to get used to being good at something no one needs me to be good at anymore.” She looked at Anthony. She said, “I love being a grandmother.”

“I know.”

“I miss . . . I miss all that.”

“Yes.”

“Suppose she takes the children to live with this man—”

“Suppose,” Anthony said, “she doesn’t.” He picked up one of the mugs of tea, and took it to the chair he always sat in, with its blue-checked cushion and view right across the room. He said, “You say you’re frightened. Don’t you suppose Petra is frightened too?”

Rachel sighed. She put her hands to her head and pushed off the spotted handkerchief.

“I expect she is—”

Anthony took a gulp of tea.

“Well, then,” he said.

Charlotte was charmed when Sigrid rang to ask if they could have lunch together. Or coffee, Sigrid said, if she was busy. But she’d love it if they could meet. She gave Charlotte the feeling
that this was evidence of how sophisticated a relationship between sisters-in-law could be, when the bond caused by marrying brothers served, in the end, as no more than a beginning to something that had a life of its own.

“Lunch, please,” Charlotte said, “I’m always so hungry at the moment. It’s such a relief not feeling sick anymore. I’m eating breakfast and elevenses and lunch and tea and supper. So lunch would be lovely.”