Games People Play (35 page)

‘Mum says sorry,’ I say awkwardly, sliding my phone back into my tracksuit pocket. ‘She’s stuck in traffic, and she says she’ll meet us here, and then we can walk along to the restaurant.’

‘OK,’ he says easily. He leans back in his chair as the waitress brings us our coffee. Everything he does seems easy for him. He is very different to Mark, I think, who was a bundle of nervous energy. Of late, I have been concentrating very hard on remembering all Mark’s bad points, in an attempt to get over him once and for all, and slowly it seems to be working. It’s strange how someone’s ‘bad points’ don’t even exist when you first fall in love. Then, gradually, you begin to identify them, and although they still don’t bug you, you can see how they have the potential to.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asks Karl, amused. I blush, realizing that I must have been frowning.

‘My ex-boyfriend’s bad burping habit,’ I reply, pouring milk into my coffee, and Karl snorts with laughter.

‘I see. Well, thank you for the honest answer. Is this why he is your ex-boyfriend?’

‘No,’ I say moodily. ‘He didn’t want to be with me anymore because he thought that my dad was too domineering.’

‘Ah. The famous Ivan.’ Karl blows on his black coffee and takes a sip. ‘Susie has told me quite a lot about Ivan.’

‘None of it good, I expect.’ I suddenly feel grumpy and out of sorts, and wish Mum would hurry up. I wonder if she’s told him about Dad’s charges? I hope not. I decide to bow out of the lunch and leave her and Karl to it – I don’t want to play gooseberry.

‘He’s actually not a bad person,’ I say abruptly. ‘He’s just his own worst enemy. He pisses people off without really meaning to. He’s so driven that he expects everyone around him to be the same, and sometimes it comes across as arrogance or bullying. But I feel sorry for him. He felt that his own career was a failure – at least, in his eyes – so he put everything into mine...but mine isn’t working out how he planned either. Now his girlfriend has left him too. He can’t keep a relationship…’

I laugh cynically. ‘But then again, neither can I. Like father, like daughter.’

The door of the café swings open and Mum bursts in, sooner than expected, waving hesitantly at us and simultaneously smiling and grimacing as she narrowly avoids tripping over a pushchair which has been carelessly parked by the counter. She’s got such a beautiful smile, although it looks a little strained today, probably as a result of having to rush. She hates being late.

But it usually lights up her entire face – when she smiles, she could pass for a woman my age. Her hair is bright blonde – not a bit brassy – and shiny in the way I’d love mine to be. I watch Karl watching her, and think: Yes, they’d make a nice couple.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she says, rushing over and embracing us both over-enthusiastically. ‘But luckily it all cleared just after I rang you. How are you, Rach? How’s the physio going?’

‘Really well, Mum. He says I’ll be off the crutches in a few weeks. It’s killing me today though.’

She kisses the top of my head as I pop a couple of ibuprofens, washing them down with still-hot coffee.

‘Poor baby. You’ll be back in the tournaments in no time,’ she says, and I feel that old wash of emotions: fear, excitement, resignation ...confusion. Do I want to?

I shake my head slightly as if to disperse the thought. ‘I don’t think I’ll come for lunch after all, thanks, I’m just going to get a cab back to Gordana’s and put my feet up.’

Mum pulls up a seat and shrugs off her coat. ‘Oh Rachel, are you sure? We were looking forward to you joining us. I wanted to take you to that nice little bistro round the corner, and I thought we could— Oh!’ She stops abruptly, staring at the door.

Dad is standing in the doorway, letting in all the cold air, glaring at us. He looks appalling: unshaven, his hair unkempt, eyes bloodshot, clothes rumpled as though he’s slept in them. He moves almost stealthily towards us; it’s more frightening somehow than a lunge, although he still manages to knock into the same pushchair Mum nearly tripped over. He doesn’t seem drunk, just clumsy with rage. The pushchair’s occupant, a lolling toddler, wakes up and starts to wail. The staff behind the café’s counter exchange worried glances across the domes of choc-chip muffins as Ivan advances, pointing a shaking, accusatory finger at Mum. Even Karl loses his complacent laid-back expression and straightens up.

‘Happy now?’ Ivan snarls at Mum, whose face has turned the colour of the dirty magnolia wall behind her. She reaches out to try and put a restraining hand on his forearm, and then obviously thinks better of it and drops it back down again, knocking over the salt grinder on the table. It falls with a bang, and the top comes off, scattering salt crystals like rough diamonds.

‘What are you talking about, Ivan?’ she asks quietly.

‘As if you don’t know!’

‘I don’t know, Ivan. Sit down and say what you’ve got to say without embarrassing us all, or just leave now.’

She begins methodically to pick up each spilt salt crystal on the plastic tablecloth by pushing her index finger down on top of it, then flicking it off on to the floor, trying and failing to act unconcerned.

‘Dad. Please, just sit down with us. Have my seat – I’ll get another one.’

‘No, don’t get up, Rachel,’ says Karl, quickly dragging another seat over to our table. ‘Here is a spare chair.’

‘Who’s he?’ Dad demands like a madman, jerking his head towards Karl. It crosses my mind that maybe he really has had a breakdown.

‘Dad – Karl; Karl – Ivan. Karl’s a friend of ours from the skiing holiday.’

‘I need to talk to you, alone,’ Dad says, ignoring the introduction and glaring at Mum again.

Colour is rising back into Mum’s neck and face, but apart from that, she remains cold and composed. People at the nearby tables are staring and whispering.

Dad crumples suddenly, sinking on to the chair and burying his face in his arms. Now he’s closer, I can smell that he has been drinking after all. I’ve never seen him drunk before, except at parties or Christmas.

I try to exchange glances with Mum, but she won’t look at me. Karl scratches his head.

‘Everything’s ruined,’ Dad says in a low, hopeless voice. Tears spring into my eyes at his tone. I’ve heard him angry, defensive, leery, accusatory; but this is new and, frankly, much more worrying.

Karl pushes back his chair and stands up. ‘Right,’ he says calmly, ‘I think we should all leave. You three need to talk privately. I will wait somewhere else.’ He takes in the agog faces of everyone else in the café. ‘OK, everybody, the show is over.’

All the other customers suddenly become deeply interested in their bacon sandwiches or custard slices as Karl marches up to the counter and pays for our coffees. Numbly, Mum and I follow, and Dad reluctantly brings up the rear.

What a sorry excuse for a parent, I think as we trail outside again into the cold December air. This would never, ever, happen in my Fantasy Family.

‘You go with Karl,’ Mum says, clutching at my elbow. ‘I need to talk to your father. I’ll call you when we’re finished and maybe we can meet up later.’

I am so worn down with emotion that I’m not even sure I can summon up the energy to find out what this is all about. I feel like lying down in a darkened room for the next six months with a cool damp facecloth over my eyes. In the end, though, I do ask.

‘What’s going on? Is this to do with you getting arrested, Dad? With Anthea? What?’

‘Don’t worry about it, Rach,’ says Mum, still in that strained voice. ‘Go and have some fun.’

Fun? I’ve just told her my knee’s killing me and I want to go home and chill out. But it doesn’t look like I have any choice.

‘Karl, I’m ever so sorry about all this,’ she continues. ‘You don’t really need to be plunged into the midst of our family dramas, do you?’ She smiles, but it’s not a real smile.

‘It is no problem,’ he replies. ‘I certainly am not complaining.’ He turns to me. ‘Come on. I think a nice bottle of wine to start will be good.’

‘I never drink during the day.’ I crane my neck to see where Mum and Dad are going. They appear to be heading back towards the club.

‘You don’t have to train, drive, or play later, do you?’

‘No, but . . .’

‘We have a nice time then,’ he says firmly. ‘Let them sort out what they need to sort out. Where shall we have lunch?’

I stop on the pavement. My knee is hurting, and I feel it is a little insensitive of him not to ask me if I’m up to it, since I’ve already complained that I’m in pain.

‘Actually, Karl, I’m not really all that hungry. I’m happy to hang out with you for a while, but I’m just not sure that I want to sit in a restaurant. My leg gets really stiff when I can’t stretch it out.’

‘You want to go for a walk instead?’ He looks doubtfully at my crutches, and then up at the cold grey sky.

‘No...sorry, can’t really do that either.’ I am partly doing this out of bloody mindedness – I feel pushed into it and, while Karl seems perfectly nice, I’m not sure that I want to spend time with someone just because I’m told to go and ‘have fun’. In truth, it probably wouldn’t kill me to go for a hobble, since the painkillers will kick in soon, and I’m supposed to keep things moving...

‘Well, what shall we do then?’

We stand in silence for a moment. I can’t think of anything, except girly stuff like shopping, or a manicure. Wonder what he’d say if I suggested that?

‘I am a tourist,’ he announces after a while. ‘This is a historic part of London,
ja
? Are we near the Hampton Court Palace?’

‘Quite near,’ I say doubtfully. ‘We’d have to get a cab there. It’s just along the river a way.’

‘The river!’ he says, brightly. ‘I love to go on boats. Can we go on a boat trip?’

At first, I look at him as if he’s crazy. It’s December. It’s cold. I’m not even sure if boats are running at this time of year. In the end, I shrug.

‘I don’t see why not. There’s a boat which goes from here to Hampton Court, actually – or least in summer it does. The jetty’s just around that corner. But I doubt that there’ll be anything to eat on board, other than crisps and so on. And I thought you were after a nice bottle of wine?’

‘Good thinking, Batman,’ he says, and in his German accent it sounds funny enough to make me smile. ‘But this is no problem. If the mountain will not go to Mohammed...’ He drags me in through the automatic doors of a convenient branch of Marks & Spencer and sits me down in the café area while he rushes off with a wire basket draped over his forearm. ‘Is there anything you don’t like to eat?’ he calls over from the fruit and vegetable section.

‘Well,’ I call back. ‘I’m not keen on anchovies, All-Bran or Brussels sprouts, but since none of that is standard picnic food, I think I’ll probably be OK.’

To my surprise, I feel an unaccustomed lightness of spirit, as if I know that I’m going to escape from all the doom and gloom for a few hours. Loath as I am to admit it, something tells me this afternoon might be fun.

Gordana

I’m so tired today. My insides hurt and my skin hurts.

It is so dry that it feels like it’s all going to flake right off and float away from me. And now I cannot stop worrying about Ivan.

Even Ted can’t understand how Ivan turned out the way he did. Nor can Rachel, or Susie, or my friends at the tennis club – the ones who know me well enough to acknowledge Ivan’s grumpiness and all the shortcomings.

‘But he had everything!’ they say. ‘You’ve given him nothing but love and encouragement and support!’

The thing is that they don’t know the truth. Not even Ted, to whom I tell everything eventually. And when you find yourself in a situation like this one; a situation where you must lay everything out for scrutiny like tidying an underwear drawer, not knowing if there’s going to be time to reassemble it all in the correct way – I believe this is called ‘putting your house in order’ – well, then you suddenly realize that it’s time to start getting a little more honest.

So this is what I ask myself now: is it my fault that Ivan is the way he is? Cross, over-competitive, even perhaps a liar. Nobody knows what a bad mother I was – still am. I cover it up with my ‘Ivan darling’s and my ‘baby boy’s, but they are just sweet words. I wanted to be pregnant so that Paul Tyler would marry me and I wouldn’t have to work in the Ford factory any more, but I didn’t think as far as being stuck with the baby those long five years before I managed to get Ted.

I went into some sort of big emotional freezer when Ivan was born and I realized I was going to be on my own; that I’d never be the next Sandie Shaw. It sounds silly now, but I remember how my chest ached with the importance of it to me then. I had nothing, and I could see nothing good to come. My parents didn’t like me; they died believing me to be a disgrace and a burden.

And Ivan was so difficult, especially when he was a toddler, pooing on the floor and hitting me and shouting ‘NO’ whenever I ask him to do anything. He got a bit better once he went to school, and once Ted came into his life. I decided with a big relief that perhaps he’d just needed a father figure, and the absence of one during his early years caused the troubles I had with him.

Ted saved me from the worst of myself regarding Ivan. I remember the first time he took us both out, rather than just me. We had done many dates: drinks and dancing, movies and kissing; and I’d been putting it off for weeks, but eventually I gave in to Ted’s constant suggestions that the three of us had a day out together.

‘I’m going to be in your life,’ he kept saying. ‘So it’ll be the three of us, not just you and me.’ I knew he was right – but oh, how much I dreaded it.

Ivan was five. Ted took us to Bournemouth for the day in his white Hillman Imp – the only car I have ever seen with the boot in the front and the engine in the rear, like some sort of unfortunate deformity, although Ted was stupidly proud of it. We drove for what seemed like hours with Ivan whining down the back of my neck. In the end I had to let him sit in the passenger seat, and I was sent to the back seat, which made me feel so car sick that I couldn’t speak.

Ivan cheered up then, of course. He always does when he gets his own way.

It was not the sunny day that the weather forecaster had told us it would be, with his stick-on sunshine over the outline of the south coast. Instead there were dark purple clouds rolling across the sea, turning it choppy and cross-looking. I sat huddled in a mackintosh, shivering on a thin groundsheet while Ted and Ivan played cricket. They kept asking me to join in, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to take off my shoes – too cold, and so many shells with the razor edges – and I have never been able to catch a ball properly. We were the only ones brave enough to sit on the beach.

Ted had thought of everything: picnic hamper, two windbreaks, thermos flasks of tea, fish-paste sandwiches. It was a big surprise to me that a single man could be so organized without a woman to help him – in fact, I almost wondered if he had a wife back at home, cutting the sandwiches into their neat crustless triangles and wrapping them carefully in the grease-proof paper. None of the men at the Ford factory would ever have done that for a girlfriend and her son, I was sure of it.

I was also pleased to notice that he did not wear a knotted hankerchief on his head and a string vest, like men at the seaside often did. He looked quite handsome, I thought, in his crisp white shirt rolled up and open at the collar, and dark trousers held up with braces. I had picked a good one. A bit short, but no matter.

Ivan was loving it, at least, so for a while he was cheerful. It was such a big space for him to play in, not like my parents’ tiny square back garden with the high fences all round, and the grey patches of grass. I even managed to read a whole chapter of my book without interruptions.

Ted said, ‘What extraordinary ball skills he has, for a child of his age!’ and for the first time, I noticed it myself. Ivan had never played cricket before, but he was taking great big whacks at the ball and nine times out of ten, hitting it. He could run fast, too, skidding for the stumps over the wet sand. He was winning, and drinking up Ted’s admiration – until Ted decided to put some pressure on.

I watched anxiously as Ivan’s mood changed. I could see he needed a poo, but when I called him over and asked him, in a whisper, he declared that it had ‘gone back in again’. But this also made his temper worse.

‘Not fair!’ he yelled as Ted hit a mighty six. Ivan didn’t even try to run after the ball, which the wind was carrying away along the edge of the waves.

‘Run, Ivan,’ I called from the groundsheet, and he just scowled at me, folded his arms and stamped his foot, leaving little hoof-shaped hole in the sand.

‘Run, Ivan,’ said Ted, pointing towards the escaping ball. ‘Otherwise you won’t get a chance to keep winning, will you?’

This was incentive enough, and Ivan trotted off after it, as Ted winked at me, and I rolled my eyes at him.

Ivan threw back the ball with one powerful heave for a five-year old, and it landed at my feet.

‘Mama, you be bowler now!’ he ordered, and I reluctantly stood up.

‘All right, but I cannot run,’ I said, wishing I had brought some deck shoes instead of my sandals with heels.

I cannot really remember how the big row started – I suppose that I did not throw the ball to Ivan’s satisfaction, but soon he was having a monstrous tantrum.

I think I also by accident kicked over one of his sandcastles, such a puny effort that I didn’t even realize it was meant to be a fortified building; I just assumed it was a small hump on the beach. Anyway, he began to shout and scream and lash out with his bare feet at me.

I was embarrassed, and ashamed, at his behaviour in front of Ted, whom I was still wishing to impress. There was a scuffle as I tried to restrain his windmills of arms. I accidentally trod on his toe, and he yelped with pain.

The worst thing of all: I felt moment of gladness when I first realized I’d stepped on his foot, and then what did I do? For one second, I stepped harder. I let the hard heel of my sandal grind into his bare foot. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to cause him a tiny portion of the pain he’d caused me, compensation for the life he had snatched away from me with his own many demands.

Then I came to my senses, the guilt shooting through me like a red firework, so strong that I was nearly sick. A bruise the colour of the dark clouds was already coming up on Ivan’s skin, and I thought I must surely have broken his toe. I wanted to die from the guilt. His tantrum became huge sobs as I tried to rock him better.

That was the first time I wanted to hurt him. The first of many, many times; and I worry now that this is what has made Ivan the way he is. I never beat him out of rage – although I did smack him when he was naughty, same as my parents smacked me; and like he used to smack Rachel to make her learn things on court.

Instead, when I hated Ivan, I used to ignore him. I withheld the hugs, the kind words, even the eye contact. I put him into the same freezer I was in; lifted the lid from inside and let him climb in to shiver next to me. Not touching me. I punished him that way. And I never told Ted I did it.

I saw a mother at the Marsden do the same thing to her two-year-old when I went for my most recent chemo session. The little girl was whining and pulling her mother’s skirt, jumping up and down and begging, just begging to be picked up and loved. But the mother wouldn’t even look at her. I saw the desperation in her blank eyes as the child’s cries got louder and more insistent and I thought:
You must just pick her up!
It look so cruel when you see someone else do it. But when I did it, it was because I just couldn’t face it. I couldn’t face that big amount of neediness. I wanted to say something to the mother. I wanted to shout loud at her: For goodness’ sake, look at what you are doing to that child. She’s two years old, she doesn’t understand what you’re going through! Another part of me wanted to put my arms around that mother and say: But I do understand. It’s wrong, and if you keep doing it, it will damage you and your relationship with this child – but I understand, because this has happened to me too.

‘What’s the matter?’ Ted asks me as he watches me thinking about all this. There am I, believing I am doing a convincing impression of somebody trying to make a banana cake in the bread machine – but it won’t cook, so I am wondering whether to put whole tin in the oven instead – but he knows that I am not worrying about banana dough.

‘Nothing,’ I say, but the timing of his question is, as always, on the spot, and I have to turn my head away from him and switch on the oven. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t married such an honest man.

He puts down the financial section of the Sunday newspaper he has been reading – or I thought he had been reading. Jackson is sitting adoringly at his feet, good as gold, dribbling on a chew, and I can’t remember what it was like before he lived with us. He is good companion for Ted, and he will take Ted’s mind off things when I go.

No, don’t think that. I will not allow it to happen.

‘Come on. What’s on your mind?’

‘It was very bad idea to try and make a cake in this machine. It is going to be heavy as a brick. I don’t think it is ever going to cook! The instructions say cook for forty minutes. It’s already been an hour and a half, I don’t know . . .’

Ted comes to me and puts his arms around my middle from behind, pressing his cheek in between my shoulders. Because I am taller than him, he fits there very nicely. He’s always done this. It makes me feel safe, like a boat tied to a big ring on a harbour wall.

‘Dana,’ he says, using the pet name that only he calls me. ‘Are you afraid? Because you know Mr Babish says you’re doing well, fighting really hard. I know it’s awful for you but—’

‘It’s not that.’

‘What, then? Surely not the banana cake.’

I feel his mouth form a smile into my spine, and I manage a little fake laugh. But I am a fake, so that is no surprise. The surprise is how he could have lived with me for all these years and not known the sort of woman I am. The sort of woman who maybe does not even really love her only child.

I shove the bread tin into the oven and turn to face my husband.

‘It’s Ivan.’

Ted sighs. ‘What’s he done now? Good grief, it’s like when he was at school, always getting into trouble. Has the headmaster called?’

I burst into tears, and Ted is shocked. I cry so rarely. ‘No, then, it’s not Ivan. It’s me. There is something I must tell you about me and Ivan.’

Ted steers me over to a chair and sits me down at the kitchen table. He hands me a piece of kitchen towel.

Jackson regards me mournfully and then flops his head back on to his paws, and Ted crouches down next to me. ‘Tell me.’ They both have the big anxious eyes.

I jiggle my leg up and down. ‘That money Ivan borrowed...’

‘What about it?’

‘We ask him to pay it back every month.’

‘Yes? He has been, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes. But I thought he couldn’t really afford it.’

Ted looks puzzled. ‘Then why did you ask him to pay it back? And how is he paying it back? I let you take care of all that because you insisted you wanted to. If there were problems, you should have let me know!’

I feel the shame of it, perhaps for the first time. Ted is like a mirror to my conscience. A speckly old mirror that you can’t see clearly into, but still a mirror. I reach out and grasp his hand.

‘He is paying it back because he knows I don’t love him. He doesn’t want to let me down.’

Ted shakes his head. He looks very tired. ‘What do you mean, Dana? You aren’t making sense.’

I breathe in, feel my fake reconstructed breast rise with my real one, pulling at the scar. ‘He owes money to many other people, builders and what-not. But he pays me back instead of them. He hasn’t paid anybody else, and now he will be bankrupt.’

‘What in God’s name did you let him do that for?’ Ted drops my hand and stares at me incredulously. ‘He’s in enough trouble already!’

‘I didn’t know. He just told me. And then I check with Esther – you know her husband took job as accountant for Ivan – and she told me in secret that it’s true; many red bills and demands come in, and Ivan gets grumpy and takes them away quickly. I was cross with her for not telling me this before.’

‘But ...But ...you’ve let him get into such debt, just to pay you?’

I lift my chin and look him in the eye. ‘I told you, I didn’t know. He would have lost the club by now anyway if he had to pay it back to a mortgage company.’

‘Ivan is a fool,’ says Ted, who never say bad things about anybody.

‘But it is my fault,’ I say. ‘Imagine! He is so afraid of letting his mother down that he goes bankrupt first. What kind of mother am I?’

This is the trouble with too many changes in life. They make you look hard at everything which went before, and you will see what mistakes you have made.

Ted stands up and hugs me – how high his waist-bands have got! He cannot change the white hair and the saggy skin, but we can stop him dressing like an old man too. I must buy him some new trousers.