"Just a little job, Mum. Just something to get you out a bit. Dad'll drive you crazy, otherwise."
Evie didn't think Ray would like her to have a job, even a little one. He would be affronted by it, insulted. Working for him in the Royal Oak was one thing—for Ray, after all, a publican like his father, the Royal Oak was almost a vocation—but slipping out to earn money from another source was quite another. It would be seen as a disloyalty. She could possibly do some voluntary work in a local hospital, or a library, or an old people's home, but she didn't think a paid job would be possible. It was all very well for Verena, married to a man of a completely different generation from Ray's, a man who almost expected his wife to have a life of her own, just as it was all very well for Evie's daughter-in-law, Nathalie. Steve had always been so good to Nathalie. Steve saw Nathalie as a person in her own right in a way Evie knew Ray could never do, a way which he would regard as unmanly. Evie had never said to Steve—or, indeed, to a living soul—"I wish your dad was more like you," but sometimes, sitting on her leather sofa with her feet up on its matching ottoman, she wanted it so badly she almost cried.
She loved it when Steve brought Polly round. Polly was a source of delight and fascination to both her grandparents at the Royal Oak—she was the one person in the world Ray Ross would stop whatever he was doing for—and the recipient of endless presents. Evie knew Steve didn't like the kind of things she bought Polly, but Polly loved them. Polly and her grandmother shared an excited appetite for the excessively feminine, for glitter and flowers and Hello Kitty handbags. Evie kept the things she bought for Polly in a velvet-padded chest—it was really a dressing-table stool—behind the cream sofa. Polly called it her treasure box. She also understood that most of the items in the treasure box belonged at the Royal Oak in a way that could not be translated to Steve and Nathalie's flat, thus constituting a small conspiracy with her grandmother that Evie relished. Only over a few items, such as the Barbie bicycle that had been her fourth birthday present, did she fight so remorselessly to be allowed to take them home that Steve felt it would have been both unkind and excessively priggish not to let her. Some afternoons, before evening opening time, Evie opened the treasure box and gloated over its tinselly contents, imagining Polly's face—often profoundly serious when truly affected—when she saw the new additions, the sparkling toenail polish, the stick-on butterfly tattoos, the jeweled bow hairslides. Although she always loved seeing Steve, it was an acute disappointment to Evie if he came to the Royal Oak alone. The sight of his bike, chained outside with Polly's little seat on the back, gave Evie the same fluttering rush of feeling that the sight of Ray Ross's motorbike had once given her, more than forty-five years before.
Polly's been, she'd tell Verena, on the line to the Isle of Man, and Verena would sigh. Verena had two boys for whom their grandparents at the Royal Oak constituted no more than a peculiar annual week's holiday, punctuated by plates of chips and flavored uncomfortably by their mother's tension. "She's a wonderful child," Evie would tell Verena, "wonderful. She has such an imagination," little suspecting that in the Isle of Man, Verena was rehearsing the phone call to her brother that she'd make the moment Evie put the receiver down.
"Thanks a million," Verena planned to say to Steve. "Thanks a million for thrusting Polly down Mum's throat, thanks a million for making sure she never gives Jake and Stuart a thought, thanks for being the perfect son, dancing bloody attendance, showing me up, cutting me out."
She never actually made the calls. She never rang Steve at all, except at Christmas, and if he thought of her in return, he gave little sign of it. He told Nathalie that that was how his family were, how they'd always been, that they didn't make a big deal of one another, didn't need each other really. Nathalie always smiled when he said that, as if she knew, as if he was demonstrating yet again that natural families couldn't, in the end, hold a candle to chosen families, that real family life was a matter of free will and love, not of blood. And so it was a surprise to Steve to find himself climbing the back stairs of the Royal Oak towards his mother's sitting room, impelled by an unease he could neither quite define, nor tolerate alone.
Evie was on her sofa, her knees covered by a blanket she had crocheted herself out of squares of mauve and purple wool. She gave a little start when Steve came in, pointing the remote control of the television at him involuntarily, as if it were some kind of defensive weapon.
"Ooh, I thought it was your father—"
"He's downstairs," Steve said.
Evie struggled to get up from under her blanket.
"No Polly? Where's Polly?"
Steve bent to kiss his mother's cheek. Nathalie had taught him to do that. Before Nathalie, it had never crossed his mind.
"She's at school, Mum. Nathalie's picking her up."
Evie pushed the blanket onto the floor.
"Why didn't you wait till you could bring her? I've got something for her."
Steve paused, and then he said awkwardly, "Today's a bit different, Mum."
Evie looked up sharply. She stopped trying to get up and stayed where she was, on the edge of the sofa.
"What's happened?"
"Nobody's hurt, Mum. Everyone's safe."
"What's happened?"
Steve lowered himself into the easy chair his father used. He sat leaning forward in it, staring at the carpet.
"It's nothing bad, Mum—"
"Then why are you here?" Evie said. "Why are you here without Polly?"
"I wanted to ask you something."
An expression of instant wariness crossed Evie's face. It was an expression very familiar to Steve, an expression he'd known all down the years when Evie was steeling herself to decide to do something for her children in defiance of her husband.
"Don't worry, Mum," Steve said. "No action. Only an opinion."
"I've never been afraid to act, have I?" Evie said, her voice rising on a tiny note of resentment.
"No. You never have."
"And I wouldn't be now. Especially if it was for Polly."
"This isn't about Polly," Steve said, "it's about Nathalie. About Nathalie and me—"
Evie looked hard at him.
"You never—"
"No," Steve said. He made a wide gesture with both hands, as if utterly dismissing the notion that there could ever be anything wrong between Nathalie and himself.
"I always said you should get married," Evie said. "It isn't fair on Polly. I've always thought that."
"I know," Steve said. He shut his eyes for a moment. He had no energy for embarking, yet again, on his defense of Nathalie's strongly expressed desire to live with him, but not to be married to him.
He said firmly, "It's not about that."
Evie bent sideways to pick up the blanket and began to fold it.
"What then?"
Steve said carefully, "You know how Nat's always been about adoption and stuff, you know how she's always said she wasn't bothered by not knowing her real mother, by not having a natural family?"
Evie patted the folded blanket on her knee, as if it were a cat.
She said placidly, "She's always been good that way."
Steve looked across at her.
"Well, it's all changed."
Evie stopped patting.
"What has?"
"Everything. How she feels, what she wants. Everything. Almost overnight she's gone from saying she's fine about it to saying she isn't fine at all and she wants to find her mother. Her—natural mother."
Evie shook her head.
"What's brought this on?" She looked across at Steve.
"What've you done?"
He shrugged. He felt the anger he'd always felt when his mother used that tone to him, when she'd cornered him by the door to the cellar, or coming out of the bathroom, or in his bedroom, and said, "What've you done to upset your father?"
He muttered now, as he always used to, "Nothing."
"Well, if it's nothing," Evie said, "what've you got to be upset
about?"
"I'm not upset—"
"Then why are you here? Why haven't you brought Polly?"
Steve looked down again at the carpet between his feet. It was beige, trellised in darker beige with a bunch of stylized pinkish flowers in every diamond shape. He tried to remember what Nathalie had said, how Nathalie had explained to him that his mother only used that sharp tone to him because she daren't ever use such a tone to his father.
He said as patiently as he could, his gaze still on the carpet, "Mum, I don't know where I stand."
"Well, you would," Evie said, "if you were her husband." Steve's head jerked up.
He almost shouted, "I am her husband! In everything that matters!"
Evie gave a little jump. She set the folded blanket beside her and got up from the sofa. Then she pulled the ottoman across the carpet until it was close to Steve's chair and sat down on it.
"Sorry, dear."
"This isn't about doing the respectable thing," Steve said. "This isn't about what the neighbors think."
"No, dear."
Steve looked miserably at his mother.
"It's been a shock, Mum."
Evie put out both hands and took Steve's nearest one between them. Her hands felt familiar, broad and warm and surprisingly soft after all those years of kitchen work.
He said, "She even told—someone we know—how fine she was about being adopted only ten days ago. When Polly had her ear seen she said it shook her a bit but only for a moment. She talked to Dave and I thought that'd sorted it. But it hasn't. It's done the opposite. She's now absolutely set on finding her mother. She just came out with it. Out of the blue. I'd put Polly to bed, we'd had something to eat, we were just sitting there talking about nothing much and wham, bam, she says it. Tells me she's made up her mind, says it's the thing that's been missing all along, that nothing I can say will stop her so I might as well help all I can." He glanced at Evie. "She's getting the details of a search service."
Evie squeezed Steve's hands. He could feel her rings, gold bands set with diamond chips, now worn to mere slivers, pressing into his own fingers.
She said, "What's upset you then? What's upset you about this?"
He looked down again.
He said gruffly, "That she just tells me. Doesn't ask me, doesn't—consult." He paused, and then he said, "And—and it makes me feel I'm not enough. Not enough for her."
"Well, dear," Evie said. "You'll never be her mother."
"She's got a mother."
Evie considered. There'd never been any difficulty, as far as she was concerned, in dealing with Lynne. They got on fine, the two grandmothers, Lynne's superiority in being the first grandmother because of being Nathalie's mother nicely balanced by Evie's quietly complacent knowledge that she was the grandmother with the blood connection to Polly. This superiority was not something, she discovered, she cared to have challenged. She took her hands gently away from Steve's and folded them in her lap. The sudden image of a new competing grandmother, a grandmother with all the cards, was both disconcerting and unpleasant.
She looked down at her hands and adjusted her rings.
"Does Lynne know?"
"Not yet."
"It won't be easy. Not for her."
"No, I know. I've told her that."
"And David?"
"She's making him do it too."
Evie stared at Steve.
"Making him?"
"He doesn't want to. But they've persuaded him between them, Nathalie and Marnie."
Evie looked across the room at the framed color photograph of Lake Ullswater at sunset which Ray had given her several Christmases before.
"Suppose her mother doesn't want to be found—"
"Why wouldn't she?"
"Oh," Evie said with emphasis. "Plenty of reasons."
"Well, I think Nathalie'll risk that."
"She's risking a lot, isn't she?"
Steve sighed.
"She says she's risking more if she doesn't look." He put his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together. "She says she's never felt so strongly about anything, except having Polly."
Evie said slowly, "Well, you'll have to let her, dear."
"It isn't a question of let."
"Then you'll have to help her."
"I know. I said so, didn't I?"
"I didn't like my dad," Evie said suddenly. "Sometimes I hated him. He was a real pig to my mother. Probably that's why I—" She stopped and took a little breath. Then she said, "But at least I know who it was I didn't like."
"Same as Dad and me," Steve said.
"Don't say that—"
"It's true." He glanced at her again. "Will you tell Dad about all this?"
"He won't like it," Evie said. "He doesn't like apple carts being upset."
"Me neither."
Evie patted his hand.
"Maybe it'll settle things—"
"They weren't unsettled, Mum!"
Evie straightened her back. She looked across the room again at Lake Ullswater, and then she said, "Then why is she doing it?"
Titus was waiting by the railings that ran round two sides of St. Margaret's Church. Sasha had said she would meet him there at six-thirty, so he had arrived twelve minutes after six-thirty with studied carelessness and found that she was even later. It was, in fact, now ten to seven. Titus had read the painted board announcing the name of the Vicar and the times of services and the proud boast that this was the finest Arts and Crafts Movement church in the area several times. He had also examined the facade (not his chosen architectural period), counted the railings (over-engineered and certainly nineteenth century) and vowed to wait only two more minutes before pushing off, only to break each vow a second later. Girls, Titus told himself, did punctuality in the same way that they minded about clean cups and glasses and knew where the car keys were. Girls liked plans and arrangements: they were the ones who wanted to know what time and where so that they could decide what to wear and whether to put any makeup on. It was girls, Titus reminded himself, while silently promising he would not look up at the clock on the church tower again, who were the halves of relationships that got anxious about the impression they made, who seldom had the upper hand, who felt this pleasing need to be accommodating and understanding. At least—Titus irritably kicked the stone curb into which the railings were set—that is how they had always been—seemed—for him. He knew he was a short-arse. He'd realized, at about fifteen, that he was going to be his mother's height and not his father's, and he'd made his plans accordingly. At least he was broad, even if he was short, and there was nothing the matter with his face or his tongue or his hair or the quickness of his wits. It was soon plain that there was nothing the matter with his ability with girls, either. He'd gone through so many girls by the time he was twenty that his brothers were forced to cover their envy with sad attempts at mockery and derision. Titus affected to ignore them. Instead of rising to the baits, he merely nicked their girlfriends from under their noses, and carried on. And on, and on, until he met Sasha.
He unwound his muffler and laced it fiercely in and out of several railing spikes. Sasha. What was it about Sasha? Sure, she was gorgeous, but she was idiotically tall, which made him look a prat, and she could be appallingly earnest and New Agey and she dressed in a kind of fake butch way he couldn't stand. He hated her boots, hated them with a passion, and she wore them all the time. When she wasn't wearing them, when they were lying around next to his on the sitting-room or bedroom floor, he'd say, "Look at those! They look as if they belonged to some bloody navvy," and she'd smile and say idly, "Upset you, do they?" and he'd have to show her that he was man enough to disregard all the boots in the world. He'd once tried to buy her sexy boots, boots with spike heels and tight ankles, and she'd laughed at him. She'd just laughed. And then she'd turned and walked away, taking huge strides in her bloody navvy boots. Titus gave his muffler such a vicious tug that the wool creaked under the strain. Above, the church clock struck s
even.
"Wow, you're punctual," Sasha said.
She was standing behind him, in the long naval overcoat she'd found in a forces' surplus store. He began to unwind the muffler.
He said, deliberately not turning round, "You are half an hour late."
"I'm dead on time."
"You said six-thirty."
"I said seven."
"Balls," Titus said. "Bollocks."
"You use such weird language," Sasha said. "Wherever were you educated?"
"You know perfectly well."
"If you're going to sulk," Sasha said, "I shall find someone else to play with."
Titus whipped round.
"I'm not sulking."
Sasha bent a little and kissed him on the mouth. He felt the brief sliding wetness of her tongue. He snapped the muffler off the railings and round her neck in a single deft movement.
"Gotcha."
Sasha waited a moment and then ducked her head free.
Titus said, "I've been here for half an hour."
Sasha sighed.
"We've had that conversation."
"We didn't finish it."
"I did," Sasha said. "Are you going to shut up about it or am I walking away?"
Titus hesitated a moment, then he pulled his shoulders back, slung his scarf over one shoulder and took Sasha's hand in a purposeful manner.
"Sorry," he said. He grinned up at her. "I've had a pretty crap day."
"Ah," Sasha said. She began to walk pulling him with her.
"What's 'ah'?"
"It's 'I've had a crap day so I'm going to give someone else a crap evening,' is it?"
"No," Titus said, "I'm not."
"What kind of crap?"
"Steve—"
"Ah—" Sasha said again. She swung Titus's hand a little. "I like Steve."
Titus made a huge effort not to say, "He's married," and said, instead, in a goody-goody voice he would never have dreamed of using in front of his brothers, "I like him too."
"So?"
"He was in a mood. A big mood."
"We all get moods."
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