These Days of Ours

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘But?’ Kate said the word hanging in neon above their heads.

  ‘But, indeed.’ Dad seemed to ossify, turning to stone in front of her. He didn’t want to say it. Not, she knew, for his own sake but for hers. ‘It’s come back, love,’ he said.

  Kate realised that Julian was holding her up.

  ‘I’m so sorry, John,’ said Julian. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’

  ‘Are you angry with me, Kate?’ asked her father.

  ‘How could I be?’ Kate was ashamed. She should have known. One of her people had fallen and not only had she not picked him up, she hadn’t even noticed he was on his knees.

  Other people entered the room. Words like prognosis were bandied. Aunty Marjorie took her sister’s hand. Becca began to howl, as if she’d been stabbed. Charlie was bone white. Death, it seemed, was still on duty.

  It was Julian who noticed, who realised that Kate needed to be alone with her father. He herded the others back to the sitting room, suggesting strong drinks all round.

  Left in the conservatory with Dad, Kate sat alongside him on the hard bench. She took his hand, feeling his long fingers in hers, like when she was tiny. He’d stressed he wasn’t in imminent danger, that all this fuss was unnecessary, but Kate felt every moment to be priceless. As if she was already looking back nostalgically at herself and Dad sitting in the lavender dusk, holding hands. As if he had already gone.

  ‘This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I don’t want to be ill dad. Pathetic dad, in the corner with a blanket over his knees.’ Dad squeezed her hand tighter; she felt encouraged by the strength in his grip. ‘There’s still a long way to go. A lot the doctors can do for me. This is just a blip, that’s all. A setback.’

  The treatment, they both knew, could be as arduous as the ailment.

  ‘Dad, why don’t you come and live with me and Julian? Mum can come too. We’ve tons of room.’

  ‘What a recipe for disaster. You’re my daughter not my nursemaid, Kate. I want to see you live, not run around after me like some drudge. Anyway it hasn’t got to that stage yet.’

  Yet. Kate loathed that inoffensive little three letter word.

  ‘When you were born,’ said Dad, ‘you changed me into a completely different person, different to the one I was before you arrived. Since that day, I’ve been Kate’s dad. That’s brought responsibilities. Some big, like keeping you alive. Others small and easy, like picking you up from school. Do you remember me asking you what you did at school? And your answer?’

  ‘Nothing.’ It was a family joke. It soothed. And stung.

  ‘I don’t have to collect you from anywhere any more. The days are gone when you call home in tears because some friend said something nasty and you need to come home right now. But, to me, you’re still that child. Even though you’re a woman with a career and a husband and responsibilities of your own. When I think of you, out there on your own, charging about, doing your thing, I want to throw cotton wool on the ground beneath your shoes. I want to hold your hand, just like I did coming home from school. I want to insulate you against the hard corners of life. And it . . .’ Dad’s voice went damp, dwindled to nothing. ‘It kills me,’ he said, after finding it again. ‘It kills me to think of leaving you. That,’ he said quietly, ‘is why I didn’t tell you. Am I forgiven?’

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive.’ Kate stood up, to satisfy her restlessness, but sat straight back down again, scrabbling for her father’s hand. If she was to cope with this news, and be of some actual use, she had to fight the sensation that every moment could be the last she shared with him. ‘This changes everything,’ she said, blankly.

  ‘No, not for you.’ Dad sounded almost irritated. ‘I won’t have that, Kate. You’re young. You’re healthy. This is my problem.’

  ‘Wrong, old man.’ Kate’s near future had changed completely, like a watercolour dropped into a muddy puddle. ‘You’re stuck with me.’

  ‘You’re a little warrior, aren’t you, Kate?’

  ‘Me? I just bowl along in Becca’s shadow.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Dad looked insulted. ‘You’re the prize, darling. You’re the quality. I love Becca, but I’m not blind. She prods you about, positioning you here, there, where she wants you. But you have a mind of your own. At some point you’ll rebel.’

  Against what? ‘Becca means well.’

  ‘True. But she’s blinkered. You, though, you see all too clearly, although sometimes you hum and look the other way, denying what you know to be true in order to get through the day more easily.’

  ‘We’re not meant to be talking about me,’ said Kate.

  ‘I’m not well. Indulge me.’ Dad scooped up her hand and kissed it. ‘Oh come on, love, laugh. We’ll need our sense of humour to get through this.’

  And after they got through it? I’ll be without you. Kate forced a smile.

  ‘Ye Gods, Kate, is that the best you can do?’ Dad’s mock outrage prompted a more genuine grin. ‘Every day will bring us something good, you’ll see.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Dad, you sound like a guru. Let me have a bit of a cry, will you?’ Kate leaned against him, shoulder to shoulder. ‘I’m still getting acclimatised.’

  ‘So here’s a little story while you get acclimatised.’

  ‘Like the ones you used to make up for me at bedtime?’ Laying her head on her father’s shoulder, Kate closed her eyes, willing herself to be that little girl again. Safe. Ignorant.

  ‘Like I said, we’re never too old to learn something new. It happens every day. Yesterday I learned that your mother doesn’t like it if I compare her coffee to soup. Today I learned something even more astonishing.’

  He paused, forcing Kate to murmur, eyes still shut, ‘Go on.’

  ‘I thought I knew you better than I know myself, but today I learned that you’re still in love with Charlie.’

  The silence was profound. Kate contemplated letting it stretch and stretch until her blush wore off but she knew how patient her father could be. ‘That, Dad, is about the daftest thing I’ve ever heard you say.’

  ‘Denial, again.’

  ‘Dad, you shouldn’t say things like that. I mean, as if!’

  ‘If I remember correctly it was going very well up until a stupid little tiff. If your mother and I had an argument like the one that finished you and Charlie, we wouldn’t even notice it.’

  ‘That might be true but doesn’t that prove something to you? If Charlie and I were meant to be together we’d have weathered that storm.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were meant to be together.’ Dad sounded almost sly. ‘I said you still love him. Quite a different observation.’

  ‘I don’t love him, Dad.’ Kate felt her throat thicken at lying to a man in his condition. ‘Well, let’s just say if I did, what good would it do me?’

  As if the birdsong and chatter through the open doors had been stilled, Kate saw a present day where that beastly note had never been written. She saw a poverty stricken pair, struggling and arguing, long past the carefree years of unbridled lust and the belief that life was all potential. That gilded era was all they’d shared: the first sign of trouble and they’d fallen apart.

  ‘We’re different people now,’ said Kate.

  ‘I should hope so. Only dullards never change.’ Dad shifted so that Kate had to sit up. She felt as if she barely existed. She was just a white noise of anxiety. ‘Lately . . .’ Dad swallowed. ‘More than that. For some years, I’ve felt an ache in you, Kate. You look the way your mother looks when she’s got one of her heads. As if you’re not quite there. Not quite you. As if something is wrong, maybe just a small thing I don’t know, but it’s getting in the way of your happiness. A stone in your shoe.’

  ‘Happiness,’ said Kate with a small pfft. ‘What is happiness?’

  ‘There are many downsides to a life-threatening illness.’ Dad patted Kate’s hand when she mewled. ‘But the silver lining is that you see things very clearly, without the clutter. I’ve been thinking
about happiness, whether it exists, how to go about finding it. It’s not constant bliss, that’s for sure. There’s no such thing. It’s more a general feeling that all is as it should be. For you. Happiness is bespoke.’ Becoming more animated than he’d been all day, Dad said, ‘It’s nothing to do with other people’s expectations. Nothing to do with what’s best. You need to feel right in your own skin.’ He looked directly at his red eyed daughter. ‘Sometimes, Kate, you seem as if you’re acting instead of feeling real emotion.’

  ‘Don’t we all do that to some extent?’ Why were they talking about her at a time like this? Kate felt she was being harried, hassled into a tight corner. As if she’d been found out in some misdemeanour.

  ‘Possibly. But that’s no reason to relax into it. Chase the real things. Real pleasure. Real pain. Real love.’

  ‘Christ, Dad, cancer’s made you deep.’ Kate was proud of the way she faced the dreaded word and joked about it. That was how Dad wanted it, so that was the way she’d play it. Blowing her nose hard – plenty of time to cry in the car on the way home – she said, ‘There are more important things to think about. Like getting you to China.’

  ‘Too late for that now.’

  Deep in her heart, Kate disagreed. She refused to think of her father’s life as an egg timer rapidly using up its allotted sand. She would stretch time; it was never too late. ‘We’ll see,’ she said.

  Marrying into the Ameses had taught Kate two things about toff families. They have dirty kitchens and a high proportion of the men go into the woods to shoot themselves. Feet sticking to the kitchen floor, she’d heard many tales about ‘darling Uncle Josh’ or ‘good old Sir Bernard’ who’d done the decent thing and blown off their own heads in a copse.

  A third thing joined the list that Saturday night. As Mumsy took their coats – it had taken Kate some years and considerable self-restraint not to giggle when Julian called his mother by that name – Kate realised ‘Nothing fancy’ meant all lights blazing, rooms thronged with guests and, at the least, four courses of almost cold food.

  ‘Dearest Julian.’ Mumsy laid his navy Crombie over her arm. Her cheekbones were worthy of a Cherokee, embedded in an English rose complexion. Offering her face for a kiss, she dazzled in floor length black, her bearing unchanged since her youth spent modelling furs at Harrods.

  ‘And Kate, my angel.’ She slipped the Zara special offer duffle from her daughter-in-law’s shoulders. ‘Always so pretty.’ She recovered her startled expression speedily with an ‘Oh! Do you, um, have a new job, my dear?’

  My dee-ah.

  Julian spoke for Kate. ‘We’re going on afterwards. To a fancy dress.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mumsy. ‘As a nurse. That is too, too funny.’ As ever the phrase served instead of a laugh. ‘What are you going as, Julian?’ Mumsy surveyed her son’s tailoring.

  ‘Myself,’ said Julian.

  ‘Too funny,’ repeated his mother.

  A ‘girl from the village’ mixed them drinks in heavy crystal, as the crush of people in satin and bow ties tried not to stare at the nurse on Julian’s arm.

  ‘When you said nurse,’ murmured Julian, steering Kate towards a grand piano laden with silver-framed photographs, ‘I imagined something racy. You know, white mini skirt. White stockings and stilettos.’ His gaze travelled sardonically up and down her sky blue tunic and shapeless polyester trousers.

  ‘The invitation says come as your hero. Why would a sexy nurse be my hero?’ If you like your heroines compassionate, expert and committed – and Kate did – nurses were an obvious choice. Her outfit was perfect, bar one detail: the small velvet shoulder bag: even a busy nurse has to stow her lipstick somewhere.

  A harpist struck up. A ripple of applause travelled around the room like a polite Mexican wave.

  ‘I assumed you’d like some time off from hospital paraphernalia. You’ve spent most of the past year in one NHS waiting room or another with your dad.’

  ‘Or is it you, Julian, who’d like some time off from it?’

  ‘And if I do? Does that make me the villain of the piece?’

  Relenting, not wanting another argument, Kate said, ‘Of course not.’ She checked to ensure there was no dowager in earshot. ‘If it helps, I’ve got no knickers on.’

  ‘Really?’ Julian’s eyebrows shot up to where his fringe used to be.

  ‘No, you idiot, not really!’ As if she’d dine knickerless with her in-laws. Like most men, Julian’s libido sometimes got in the way of his brain.

  They wandered, scattering a ‘How do you do?’ here and a ‘Good evening’ there, to the elegant salon. ‘Is this a conservatory?’ asked Kate, chewing her fishy hors d’oeuvres beneath a soaring glass ceiling. The room had little in common with Becca’s conservatory: the chandeliers were real and it was ten times the size.

  ‘We’ve always called it the orangery.’ Julian checked her out to see if she snorted. ‘You must be tired. You’d usually say something like ooh an orangery, m’lud! I had to make do with a wendy house.’

  ‘Would I?’ Kate didn’t like the sound of her usual self; Julian shouldn’t apologise for his background any more than she should.

  ‘And you’d be right to mock,’ said Julian. ‘It’s ridiculous for Mumsy and Dad to rattle around this big old wreck on their own.’

  It was tacitly accepted that the house would pass to Julian one day. Kate could imagine the speed with which he’d sell it. He’d never understood Mumsy’s attachment to a pile of bricks and mortar. As one of the help whisked away her plate, Kate checked her watch.

  ‘Stop worrying, Kate. We’ll make it to the fancy dress.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ said Kate, who was worried. This was more like a wedding than a dinner party. ‘Is your outfit in the boot?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Julian was short, as if Kate had asked him this a hundred times.

  On reflection, she had probably asked him ninety-nine times.

  ‘I wish you’d tell me who you’re coming as.’

  ‘It’s a surprise.’

  At the head of their table the Brigadier said, ‘Shall I tell you all the secret of a long life?’ He was tall but stooped, a fairground mirror reflection of his elder son. ‘Walk everywhere. Early to bed. Plus a decent single malt every night at nine on the dot!’

  A ‘Hear hear!’ greeted this.

  Mumsy found Kate’s eye. ‘A good wife helps, doesn’t it, Kate?’

  ‘And kiddies, of course,’ Julian’s father continued. ‘They keep one young. And then the grandchildren arrive.’ He motioned to the four blond and wholesome tots sitting with Julian’s brother and their blonde, wholesome mother. Kate assumed her sister-in-law had been manufactured in a factory that churned out suitable wives for the English upper classes. That lady knew her fish knife from her butter knife, and had never graced Mumsy’s dinner table in an NHS uniform.

  ‘Speaking of which . . .’

  No, thought Kate. Don’t, please, sir.

  ‘. . . when are you two getting on with it?’

  Kate stared at the plate of roast beef which had been set in front of her. Mumsy, she knew, would save them with one of her perfectly timed interventions.

  But Mumsy was distracted by the guest to her right, who’d managed to overturn a glass.

  ‘It’s not like you, Julian,’ laughed the Brigadier, ‘to drag your feet, boy!’

  ‘Sir,’ said Julian, ‘I wasn’t born until you were forty-four, remember.’ He was smiling, easy, every inch Mumsy’s son.

  ‘Maybe, but— oh, beef! My favourite.’

  Thankful for the Brigadier’s toddler attention span, Kate relaxed.

  ‘I’ve heard,’ said Julian into her ear, ‘that one has to have sex to have babies. Or maybe that’s just a rumour.’

  Kate wondered if Julian noticed that she said nothing for the rest of the meal. He was assiduously attentive to the elderly lady on his left, displaying all the innate charm and benevolence she so valued in her husband.

  Marriage
was so intense. She found she could love Julian passionately at 7 am, loathe him by lunchtime, be indifferent to him mid-afternoon and be hopping from foot to foot waiting for him to come home at dinner time.

  That scabrous aside had soured her towards him, on a two-party night when they would need all their emotional energy to reach the finishing line.

  So Kate swallowed the bad taste, made allowances, saw his side of the story. Sexually, they’d hit a wall. She was always too tired.

  ‘Not too tired,’ Julian would snap, ‘to run from shop to shop, to chase after your dad, to drive to and from Becca’s house.’

  He was right. She must try harder. Now I sound like a dim witted schoolgirl.

  Dessert was predictably delicious, but Kate barely tasted it. She was eager to be off. ‘Come on, Julian,’ she said, as her spoon went down. ‘Off to Aunty Marjorie’s.’

  ‘Oh joy,’ said Julian, rising and dabbing his mouth with an heirloom.

  After farewells that adhered strictly to the laws of etiquette, Mumsy waved them off from the front door.

  ‘That was the first time I’ve heard a harp played live,’ said Kate, as the car ate the country lanes, nearing the light pollution of the suburbs.

  ‘And the last, let’s hope.’

  During one of the times they’d talked without armour, Julian had told Kate You’re my family now. For Kate, their marriage lived in those brief interludes of closeness; the rest of the time it merely survived.

  Poking around in the glove compartment for a tissue, Kate found the invitation to the second ‘do’ of the evening. ‘Listen, Julian.’ She quoted Aunty Marjorie’s distinctive style, somewhat different to Mumsy’s careful formality. ‘Come as your hero! Or heroine! Mustn’t annoy the feminists!’ She laughed, fondly. ‘She put three exclamation marks after feminists.’ Kate shifted in her seat. Her man-made trousers were itchy and uncomfortable and she longed for her new black jeans. She’d hesitated before buying them, turning round quickly so as to surprise herself in Top Shop’s changing room mirror. Am I too old for a ripped knee? she’d worried. Two years off thirty, Kate was looking older in subtle ways she couldn’t quite place. No wrinkles yet, no crow’s feet, but her bloom was fading. Ironically, she’d never known she had a bloom until it began to fade.