Mothers & Daughters (13 page)

‘She was very fond of you,' I said. Which was getting on for the truth. Once we'd gone to see her in the convalescent home
and without even a word she'd taken toddler Jaz off into the grounds, leaving Dad and me sitting by the bed like fools for half an hour. Certainly she'd been more tolerant of Jaz than she ever was of us.

‘Did Grandad miss her when she died?'

‘He was devastated.'

I shifted round so I could get at Dad's other side. He blinked mildly at me, as though he knew I was there to do him a service even if he wasn't sure what that service was. ‘Soon have you looking tip-top,' I told him.

‘Can he hear you, though?' asked Jaz.

‘Of course he can.'

She looked at me pityingly. Meanwhile Matty had been ferrying fistfuls of gravel from the yucca and was using them to fill the slots in his jigsaw, crouching intently. Small white stones trickled from his grasp and bounce-scattered across the floor.

Jaz turned back and assessed the scope of the operation. Then she pushed her hair back behind her ears and joined in, smoothing out the piles of gravel with her finger for him, patting them into place, picking at the ones that had bedded down in the carpet fibres. It was nice to watch, their two heads bobbing next to each other.

When all the holes were filled to his satisfaction, Matty began trying to force each dog on top. His small fingers pressed against the varnish so hard the skin turned white. Getting no result, he swapped dogs and pushed again. ‘Gone,' he said. ‘Gone, gone.'

‘Will they not go in?' I said. ‘Naughty doggies.'

‘Gone!' He lifted up the jigsaw piece and banged it down.

‘Nanna'll help,' I said, switching the shaver off. Jaz shook her head.

‘Let him work it out for himself, Mum.'

Matty slammed the board a few more times, then drew his
arm back and flung his dog across the room. It landed near my feet, so I reached down and rescued it. ‘Bad dog,' I said.

But when I raised my head, Matty was picking at the stones with his index finger and pushing them away, out of the hole. Jaz reached over and took the dog off me, and put it down next to him. When the slot was clear, he tried again, only with the wrong dog. I could see his frustration mounting and it was twisting me up inside.

‘Matty,' I began.

‘Look,' announced Jaz in the tone of a children's TV presenter. ‘Look who's coming.' And she walked the right dog, the blue dog, along the edge of the board and onto his hand. His frown disappeared instantly, and where I'd have held the piece ready for him to slot in, she just passed it across, then waited till he'd worked out which was the right way round and we could give him a cheer.

‘You're very good with him,' I said. Jaz shrugged. I was thinking, If only my mother had had a tenth of that patience.

Dad cleared his throat suddenly, then leaned forward as if to get a better view of his great-grandson. I got up off the bed and went to put the shaver away, keeping my eyes on him all the time. It seemed that, at any minute, he would speak.

‘Ta,' said Matty. ‘Ta, doggy.'

Jaz said: ‘It's trying to give him the attention of two people, you know?' She handed another piece over.

‘Grandad's watching you,' I said. ‘Matty, can you wave at Great-Grandad? Say “hiya”.'

‘Hiya.'

‘Because I don't think Ian's really sorry,' she went on. ‘Sorry he's been caught, that's all. That's what I told him: “If you were bothered about your wife and child, you'd never have done it in the first place”.'

I stroked Matty's head, for comfort.

‘What gets me, Mum, is how he tried to make it sound like I had something to do with it.'

‘I'm sure he didn't exactly mean that—'

‘You weren't there!'

‘All I'm saying is, some men aren't very good at coping when children are young. They can feel shut out. Maybe that's what he was—'

‘So instead they go and jump on the first bit of skirt that comes their way.'

‘I'm not saying it's right, I'm not making excuses for him.'

‘Not much.'

A memory of Phil with his head in his hands, sitting on the stairs, weeping.

‘I'm really not, Jaz. Only trying to explain what might have gone through his mind.'

‘As though his
mind
had anything to do with it,' she snapped, pushing the jigsaw away and struggling to her feet.

‘Will you try talking to him again? David would come over.'

‘Oh, I'm quite sure he would,' she said in a tone I didn't much like. ‘No, that's it. In fact, all Ian's speech-making did was make it clearer to me. I'm definitely getting a divorce. Definitely. It's over.'

I glanced across at Dad to see if anything had registered. He looked anxious, but probably not more than usual. I'd talk to him some more about Jaz next time, when I was on my own. Reassure him, explain.

‘So,' I said cautiously. ‘How are you going to arrange things with Matty?'

She didn't acknowledge me in any way. I might as well not have spoken. I could feel the fury sparking off her.

The sunburst clock ticked on, and we sat there watching Matty trying to force a green dog into a white hole, three
adults playing mute: Dad because he couldn't speak, Jaz because she wouldn't, and me because I didn't dare.

The bouquet was waiting for me when I got home. It was propped against the front door, which meant Jaz spotted it immediately.

‘What's that?' she said, even though it was perfectly obvious.

I got out of the car and hurried over to see. The card was inside a miniature envelope; on an instinct I whipped it out and stuck it in my pocket. The plastic holder I dropped deftly behind a bush. Jaz didn't see because she was checking Matty's straps.

‘My God,' she said, when she got close. ‘I bet those cost a bit.'

‘Yes,' I said. I turned the key and stepped into the hall.

‘Who are they from?'

‘I don't know,' I said truthfully.

‘Is there no card?'

‘Can't see one. Are you having a drink?'

She was peering around the sides of the bouquet. Any minute now, I thought, she's going to stick her hands inside and begin parting the stems.

Eventually she gave up. ‘No, I won't, thanks, because if I leave it any later Matty'll have his nap too late on and then I won't be able to get him off at bedtime.'

‘OK, then. Well, drive safely and I'll see you Wednesday.'

‘Yeah.' She paused in the doorway. ‘It's not Dad, after a reconciliation, is it?'

I smiled. ‘The flowers? Could be.'

She huffed, and left.

I walked through to the kitchen, holding the flowers ahead of me like an Olympic torch. Vases were in the base unit next to the cooker, so I laid the bouquet in the sink and squatted
down to search. All my mother's crockery was stashed in here: her big blue and white serving dishes, her Lustreware tea set, her pressed glass bowls, and at the very back, her Crown Devon vases. I drew out the tallest, a pale blue ribbed funnel, and as I did so I could hear Phil go,
You're turning this house into Pincroft, that's what you're doing
. Because he'd hated the antimacassars with their embroidered peonies, and the uranium glass dressing-table set, and the ebony brush and mirror set that hung in the hallway. ‘This old tat,' he used to say. Left to himself we'd have had a palace of vinyl and brushed steel.

I put everything back carefully in its proper place, and carried the vase over to the drainer. Then I set about unravelling the cellophane. Little sachet of plant food to make up, stem bases to cut or split, and all the time I still had my coat on and the card was burning a hole in the pocket. Dorothy Wynne's grand-daughter, the flowers might be from, although I'd already had a thank you card after the business with little Libby. Or Moira, as a pick-me-up because she knew I was having a difficult time. I positioned the gypsophila and ferns, and fed each bloom in one by one: yellow dahlias, yellow and white asters, a lily, white carnations. I coaxed them into place, then stepped back to consider the effect. Finally I topped up the water level and slid the vase onto the windowsill. Only then did I reach into my pockets and bring out the card.

My turn to apologise, I think. Onwards and upwards. David. X

I was touched by this little act of thoughtfulness. We'd not spoken since the fall-out – I'd wanted to ring, but hadn't dared in case he somehow blamed me for what had happened. But perhaps he now understood how little control I had over Jaz.

Relief made me suddenly exhausted, and I had to sit down.

A bouquet of flowers. What would Phil think if he came
round with the lawnmower and saw them? He'd be shocked to find they were from a man, that was certain. His ex-wife didn't have boyfriends. No subterfuge, either; I really didn't. When the girls at the gym joked or moaned about their partners, I laughed or frowned along with them. When they turned their attention to my love-life I always responded straight away with another question. Amazing how easy it is to divert someone straight back onto the topic of themselves. Jaz (drunk) asked me once why I'd never dated after Phil and, unable to break the habit of a lifetime, I'd gone, ‘Would you like me to?' ‘No,' she'd said. ‘Too complicated. Too weird.' And that was the topic closed. But it wasn't Jaz who stopped me from dating, or even Phil. It was me.

I used to pick up magazines packed with true-life stories suggesting lovers were waiting to ambush you on every corner.
Crash Course in Romance – how a bump in the car led to a ring on my finger! He came to fix my burglar alarm – now it's wedding bells I'm hearing!
And probably if you put yourself about a bit, as my mother would say, you would find someone who wasn't revolting.

I wasn't in bad shape. Nor did I move in a world entirely of women. Men came into the shop sometimes, occasionally eyed me up. There was the haberdasher, Gavin, who used to flirt with me a little; he was nice, but he was married. Launce, who ran the photography class, had made several comments that might have been taken as overtures, but he was a lot older than me and anyway, it's possible he was only being friendly. One time I'd been asked out for a drink by Dorothy Wynne's gardener, a sharp-nosed Celt with sandy lashes and a bulging Adam's apple, not my type at all. So that had made me wary for a while of engaging in any ordinary polite chat, because the embarrassment of rejecting even virtual strangers was too distressing. I hate upsetting people.

But you did have to want to get out there, throw yourself into the hurly-burly. I found that hard. Even when we were teenagers, Eileen would be walking up to boys and chatting like it was no bother, while I'd be observing from a safe distance. ‘Stop studying the ground all the time,' she'd say to me sometimes. ‘Put your head up. Smile.' So I did, and look who I caught.

Now I found myself thinking about fluff-haired Derek, the first boy I ever kissed, how he danced with me at Pamela Martin's fourteenth birthday party, and how nothing had come of it afterwards because he was too shy to seek me out and I was too shy to put myself in his way. I remembered the brief crush I'd had on Tom Street, school football captain and future head boy, after he mended my locker door for me and commented how tidy I kept my books. But it was Phil, always Phil hanging about on the edges of my teenage consciousness, so that even when I was going out with Peter Robbins, who was decent and bright and not bad-looking, I couldn't help but keep a watch on Phil and secretly rejoice when he broke up with Margaret Hodgkiss.

For our first date he took me to the motorway bridge – it sounds so dull but it wasn't – and we watched traffic and talked. I remember saying to him, ‘You're more serious when you're on your own.' I don't know what he said back, but I do recall him taking off my scarf and dangling it over the parapet, and laughing at my protests. I thought I'd die of happiness.

I could see him now, perched on our coping stones, swinging his legs. Mum never liked him but then, she liked nobody. Dad kept his mouth shut.
It's this other woman
, said Eileen, from thirty years ago.
That's who you should be angry with
.

On the windowsill, my flowers shone.

CHAPTER 11

Photograph 39, Album One

Location: Longleat Manor, Wiltshire

Taken by: Bob

Subject: the Knot Garden. Although the spectacular colours here won't show up on black and white film, he'll remember them, he thinks
.

It's been a grand day out so far, in his new Austin 30 with its cream wheel trims, its rounded rear windscreen, the smart blue and black dashboard. The kind of car you want to take on a decent run. ‘And what makes you think I've got time to swan off on a great long trip?' was Frieda's response when he first suggested the drive, but she's come anyway
.

Inside, the house was like nothing you could dream of: great long galleries hung with tapestries, a staircase like the one Vivien Leigh fell down in
Gone With the Wind,
a twenty-seat table, ceilings so elaborately decorated it hurts your neck to take in all the detail. ‘Have you seen?' he keeps asking Frieda. He's like a boy in his enthusiasm. ‘Think of the dusting,' she says, shuddering. But he doesn't let that put him off his stride. What riches, what grandeur. It's overwhelming, the idea that anyone could live here, day to day
.

Now they're out in the grounds and he's imagining what it must be like to be a lord. ‘Who would you have wanted to be, if you could be anyone in history?' he asks Frieda
.

‘A man,' she says
.

‘What man?' he says
.

‘Any man,' she replies, and strides off, leaving him among the flowers. What's that supposed to mean? He's a patient bloke, but there are times he could go and sit in the driver's seat and lean his head against the Austin's horn
.