The Day Of Second Chances (28 page)

‘The physical therapist told me to stay active,' said Honor. ‘It's either this or go out and join a netball team.'

Jo made a sound that was half a laugh, as if she weren't sure whether Honor was making a joke or not. ‘Well, if you're sure. It's a lovely day. There's a chair out in the garden if you want to take them out there.'

‘Stop fussing. Go.'

‘And there are snacks in the fridge, some yoghurt. Oscar likes the kind with no bits in, and Iris likes the kind with bits in. And some cheese strings. And—'

‘It is looking after children,' said Honor. ‘Not rocket science.'

‘Well, to be honest, sometimes I think looking after children is harder than rocket science. At least in rocket science you get to sit in a quiet room.'

‘I can manage. Go.'

‘I'll have my phone,' said Jo, and gave her children a last kiss before she left them, as if she were leaving for a week, rather than a snatched hour or two with her lover. To her surprise, Honor felt Jo swoop down and plant a kiss on her own cheek, too.

‘Thank you,' she said, squeezing Honor's hand, and then she was gone.

Honor paused, taking this in. Had Jo ever kissed her before? Perhaps once in the early days, when she and Stephen were young and fresh in love. Or out of duty on their wedding day.

A little hand tugged at her sleeve. ‘What are we going to do, Ganny H?' demanded Oscar.

‘Honor,' she told him. ‘My name is Honor.'

‘OK, Ganny H. Can we play Angry Birds?'

Iris crowded up against her legs, too. Children had no sense of personal space. Their little bodies were warm against her and they smelled of milk and biscuits.

‘Your mother said we shouldn't spend all our time playing video games.' But what did one do with children, how did one occupy them? ‘Why don't you play with your toys for a few minutes and we'll work out what to do?'

‘No!' said Iris, but both of them wandered off. Working in tandem, they pulled their toy box open and began excavating items.

It had been over forty years since Honor had been in charge of a very young child. Despite what she'd said to Jo, she had little idea of what it entailed. What she remembered best about her own early motherhood was that it had been hugely, overwhelmingly, despair-inducingly boring.

She had loved Stephen, desperately, from the moment he was born. And yet nothing in her life had prepared her for the tedium of feeds, cleans, burps, walks, sleeps. The lack of any time to herself, hardly any time to think. She was aching for Paul – even more so because Stephen looked just like him, right from the first. She wondered every minute whether she'd done the right thing in not telling Paul. She mourned the person she'd lost, even as she was caring for the person she'd gained.

And she couldn't work, of course. There were no lectureships available in London when she'd returned, and she couldn't bear the thought of writing to Paul to ask for a reference anyway. She'd decided to take a career break whilst she looked after Stephen. But the work had been her life, and without it, she felt invisible. Lost.

Her father was a revelation. Shimon Levinson changed nappies, prepared feeds, went for walks with the pram up round and round Clissold Park. When Stephen could walk, he used to lead Shimon around by the hand. Her father brought his grandson to
shul
even though Honor protested that she was not bringing up her child in any superstitious religion – no, not even Reform. And then her father had his second heart attack, and she lost him, too.

When she'd thought about it since, she believed that she might have had a touch of post-partum depression, though it wasn't the sort of thing that was talked about then. Mostly it was the boredom, and the dark dragging time before dawn, and the days with hours and hours to fill with nothing. Waking up and thinking
Oh God, what shall I do all day?
The other mothers in the park were so young, so
married
.

She began to work when he was napping, once he was a toddler and settled into a routine. She began researching, reading, planning articles to write so she could build up her publishing history for when she was able to apply for a lecturing post again. In her head she would translate from Russian into English as they walked, as Stephen exclaimed over a bug or slipped pebbles into his pocket.

She remembered every moment, it seemed, of his life when he was older. But from those first three years, she remembered very little: sunshine in Stephen's hair, the rattle of pebbles in his pocket. She must have spent hours and hours with Stephen. She knew she had. Honor frowned and pressed herself to remember more; came up with the damp corner of a blanket that Stephen had sucked, the scent of sterilized glass bottles. The imprint of a hand on her cheek as she rocked him to sleep.

Hardly enough for three years.

She remembered better the corridors she went to in her own mind to avoid thinking about Paul, to avoid acknowledging to herself that motherhood was boring, that she was drowning in everyday tasks and lack of sleep and no conversations except for the concrete. To avoid thinking of the nights when she dreamed of that moment at the top of the staircase, looking downwards and seeing Paul standing there. To stop questioning herself about whether she was doing the right thing in not telling him.

When Stephen was three, she had taken up a part-time lectureship at University College London. Her colleagues stayed late, went to conferences, travelled for research, spent years on publications. She was passed up for promotion again and again, not because of her intellect or her academic rigour, but because her work had to fit around school hours and childminders. She was able to dedicate more hours to her work as Stephen grew, but she had lost ground. She never fulfilled the brilliant promise of her Oxford days, and never had enough time to spend with her son, either.

Oscar and Iris were doing something complicated with wooden bricks, something that required Oscar to give his sister orders and for her to scurry back and forth with more and more bricks, fetching and carrying and dropping. Had she got down on the floor and played with Stephen, as Jo did with her children? Perhaps she had sometimes and didn't remember it now?

She hadn't. She had read with him, and talked with him, and when he was older they had gone on long walks together, to galleries, to libraries, through the cemeteries to learn names and dates.

Why hadn't she played?

A crash and a cry of dismay from Iris, and Honor hauled herself to her feet. Bricks littered the floor in every direction. If they stayed in much longer, the house was going to be a health hazard. ‘We are going to the park,' she announced.

‘No!' said Iris, jumping up and down and throwing a brick into the air with delight. It clattered to the floor, uncaught.

‘Yes!' Honor told her, and the little girl laughed.

‘Will you push me on the swings?' Oscar asked.

‘Unless it kills me.' She considered the large bag that Jo took with her on all excursions with the children, and decided against it. ‘Can you live with a dirty nappy for an hour, Iris?'

‘No!'

No.
The only power given to wilful toddlers and cantankerous old women.

‘I can change nappies,' said Oscar.

Honor thought this was highly unlikely, but she nodded anyway. ‘Then you will be in charge of nappies and I will be in charge of snacks.'

‘Ice cream?' said Iris hopefully.

‘Ice cream it is.'

‘I will bring all of my trucks!' declared Oscar and he started off to get them. Honor stopped him with a hand on his tiny shoulder.

‘Think this through,' she told him. ‘You are small, and your sister is smaller. Your truck-carrying capability is not as large as you may think. Meanwhile I am elderly.'

‘What's elderry?'

‘Old. I'm old. And unable to carry every one of the dozens of trucks that you possess.'

‘Not if we take your purple scooter,' suggested Oscar slyly.

She put out her hand to touch the top of his head. He was very short: sturdy, with his mother's gingery hair and his father's husky voice. He wasn't related to Honor at all, which was perhaps why she had no impulse to correct him. What she did with him and said to him was unlikely to matter. She would probably be gone by the time he was of an age to remember her.

‘You,' she said, with new respect, ‘will go far in life.'

‘I will go to the
park
.'

‘No!' yelled Iris. She jumped up and down and shook her head, her dark curls bouncing. ‘No, no,
no
!'

‘“No” may seem like a rational and attractive proposition when you are two,' Honor said to her, ‘but when you get to my age, you will realize that you have to take the opportunities that life throws at you, before it is too late. Perhaps even after it is too late.' She clapped her hands together, and for the first time in a long time, she felt something small tickling inside her chest. Something a bit like anticipation. ‘Shall we fire up the scooter?'

Oscar led them straight to it, marching across the garage like a little soldier on a mission. He put the large fire engine that he was carrying into the basket at the front of the scooter. ‘Can I drive?'

She found the button to open the garage door and then turned to Iris, who was chewing on her sun hat. ‘Can you get on the back of the scooter? And when I sit down, you will have to hold on to me.'

‘No,' said Iris, nodding, and clambered on to the seat.

‘Can I drive?' Oscar asked again.

‘No,' said Honor. ‘But you can do something better. Do you have sharp eyes, Oscar?'

‘I have
really
sharp eyes. I can see
everything
.'

‘Good. That's exactly what I need.' She stooped down as far as she could, lowering her voice confidentially. ‘I need you to stand in front of me on the scooter, with your hands on the handlebars. And you need to keep a sharp eye out for things in front of us. Things we might crash into. Can you do that?'

‘Yeah!'

‘Well done.' She climbed onto the seat, reaching her arms either side of Oscar, perching on the edge of the seat to leave room for Iris. She found the starter switch by feel, and started the electric motor. The children squealed in excitement.

‘Can we go fast?' asked Oscar.

‘Fortunately, we cannot.' She positioned her hand on the throttle, ready to go. ‘Now, hold on tight, children.'

‘No!' cried Iris into her ear.

The scooter jerked forward. She steered towards the light. ‘Now, do we go left or right to get to the park?'

‘Left! No, right!'

Something occurred to her, and she slowed the scooter to a crawl. ‘Do you know the difference between left and right, Oscar?'

‘Umm …'

‘Ah.' She stopped the scooter. After a moment's thought, she unbuckled her watch from her wrist and put it on Oscar's left wrist. ‘So if we need to steer in the direction of the watch arm, you say “watch”. And if we need to steer the other way, you say—'

‘No watch!'

‘Very good. So which way is the park?'

Oscar considered. ‘No watch way.'

‘Right it is. Tell me when we've reached the pavement, Oscar.'

His hair tickled her chin as he nodded. She started up the scooter again and proceeded forward at a crawl, listening to the gravel under the wheels, until Oscar announced, ‘Now!'

She steered right and the scooter ran smoothly off the drive onto the pavement. ‘Now, Oscar, it's your job to tell me if we're going to bump into anything. All right?'

‘I'm
very
good at this,' said Oscar.

‘I'm certain that you are.'

The park was less than a quarter of a mile away and entailed crossing two roads. Oscar guided her to the dipped kerbs, using his watch hand, and together they checked for traffic, Honor hushing the children so that she could listen. At the second crossing, Iris started bouncing on the seat and yelling, ‘Park!'

‘You must be quiet and calm, so that your brother and I can concentrate,' Honor told her, and Iris immediately subsided.

‘Can you see any cars coming, Oscar? Look carefully.'

‘No cars, Ganny H.'

‘No cars!' agreed Iris.

Honor thumbed the throttle and they rolled off the kerb. ‘Pa-ark,' sang Iris, in her ear, and Honor saw movement to their right. Belatedly, she heard the car coming: a low hum of engine, hardly louder than the scooter's electric whine.

Where was the brake, how did she stop? She yanked her hand from the throttle and the scooter jerked to a halt. Iris banged against her back.

‘Ow!' yelled Oscar.

She heard the car pass in front of them. It was close enough so that she could feel the breeze it created, and smell its warm tyres.

‘I think,' she began, and realized that she had no breath to speak with. She waited until she could breathe again, and said, ‘I think this may be more dangerous than I anticipated.'

‘I'm OK,' Oscar told her. ‘I just bumped my arm. Can I press the button to make it go?'

‘No,' said Honor. Her hands were shaking slightly as she started up the scooter again. She listened carefully and turned her head to either side several times before she crossed the road and rolled onto the pavement leading to the park. Slowly, steadily, the scooter's engine labouring against the slight incline, they made their way to the play area. Both the children jumped off the scooter.

Honor's heart was still hammering. Her palms were damp.

‘I help you,' said Iris, and Honor felt a little hand creep inside hers. She let Iris assist her getting off the scooter. Oscar held the gate open for them and then the two children were off, running and shouting to each other, into the grey area where she couldn't see.

‘Stay inside the play park,' she called to them, and followed the fence along counterclockwise until she found a green-painted bench to sit on. She could hear the children talking to each other.