‘And do you cook?’ he managed, struck suddenly by the thought that the bony, speckle-faced creature, tucking her skinny arms into a scruffy leather jacket, didn’t look as if she knew how to eat properly, let alone prepare meals.
‘Oh, yeah, I love it,’ she exclaimed at once, her face lighting up. ‘I can do all sorts. I’m not bad, am I, Sophie?’
‘Not bad at all,’ agreed her protector, giving her an affectionate push out of the door and mouthing ‘Thank you’ over her shoulder at Matt.
Dennis arrived the following afternoon, with one suitcase and Hoppit attached to an old chewed lead. As he opened the door, Matt’s heart surged with a confusion of gratitude and despair. He was hiring a damaged teenager and a geriatric to care for his child, he thought desperately, helping ease the old tweed coat off Dennis’s shoulders, and suppressing the urge to shout at the dog, who was yelping round his ankles in celebration at being released from five hours of confinement in rail carriages and taxis.
‘I’ve hired this funny stick insect of a girl,’ he said, once they were sitting with mugs of tea and a crusty fruitcake bought from Mr Patel’s that morning, along with almost a hundred pounds’ worth of groceries to see them through the week. The shopkeeper, watching Matt struggle up and down the aisles trying to control both his son and two of the miniature trolleys, laden with readymade meals and cans of beer, had invited Joshua to sit up on the counter next to the till, where he was given a calculator to play with and treated to a sticky lollipop.
‘Looks like you found yourself some help anyway,’ he had remarked, eyeing the heaps of food as Matt’s Switch card whirred through the machine. ‘And one with an appetite too.’
‘My father,’ Matt confessed, adding quickly, ‘But the advert worked very well in the end – a nice girl is going to help out with baby-sitting.’
‘So I take your notice down now?’
‘Yes please, for the time being anyway.’
As Matt staggered towards the exit, Mr Patel had shouted some machine-gun dialect to the door marked ‘Private’ at the back of the shop. A moment later the boy called Rajeet, a small, wiry teenager with bright eyes and the first brush of dark hair on his upper lip, appeared and seized several of the bags from Matt’s hands. He proceeded to accompany them all the way home, grinning at Joshua, who skipped alongside, waving the last remaining dot of his lolly like a baton.
‘I could have coped without the girl, you know,’ said Dennis, managing through the slurps at his tea to sound hurt.
‘Of course, I know that. The thing is, I want you to help me check her out,’ Matt ventured slyly, ‘decide if she’s up to continuing the job once you’ve returned to Yorkshire and I’m based at home. She’s a funny-looking thing, comes from a bit of a tough background, but is full of energy and eagerness to please. And she was great with Josh, which matters most of all. I’ve asked her to come for the first time at five on Wednesday, when I’ve got to be at the theatre and I thought you might welcome reinforcements. She’s also promised to take charge of the housework, clean the kitchen floor and keep the ironing under control.’
‘Ah, in that case she can come as often as she likes,’ laughed Dennis, his pride salvaged as Matt had guessed it would be.
The rest of the day was spent running through Joshua’s daily routine, going over the route for the walk to Bright Sparks and double-checking the whereabouts of vital phone numbers and key items of food. Joshua himself was very quiet, less pleased than Matt had expected at the sight of his grandfather and more than usually uncooperative about staying in his bed. By nine thirty that night he had come down to the sitting room so many times Matt was finding it almost impossible to conceal his impatience.
Dennis, wearing an expression of determined detachment, retreated to the television, where he sat nursing one of his endless mugs of tea, his slippered feet resting on Hoppit’s bony back. Having dealt with the pretext for the intrusion – on this occasion a mislaid toy – Matt slung his son on to his hip and carried him back upstairs.
‘I’ll stay for a bit, shall I?’ He pulled the duvet up to Joshua’s chin and dropped his head on to his hands, wondering which one of them would fall asleep first.
‘Daddy?’
‘What is it?’ Opening one eye, Matt reached out and stroked the pale forehead. The bruise was already a faint yellow splash, while the skin on either side of the cut – the protective gauze pad long since abandoned – was already closing over the split, knitting with wondrous neatness into a small ridge of a scar. ‘How’s that head?’ Matt brushed his lips across the butterfly stitches.
‘Is Granddad staying for ever?’
‘No, just for a bit, until Daddy can do his work at home.’
‘Is he staying instead of Mummy being here?’
‘Sort of. To help Dad.’
‘Will Mummy come back?’
‘Josh, I’m not sure. Sometimes grown-ups have to do things that are hard to explain. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you, I know she does, she just —’
‘Jessica said you can’t go to big school without a mummy.’
‘Well, Jessica is wrong,’ said Matt fiercely. ‘Granddad and I had to manage without my mummy when I was young and —’
‘Has Mummy died as well, then?’
‘No, she’s just had to go away for a long time. She loves you but she doesn’t love Daddy – which happens sometimes with grown-ups. As you grow older you’ll meet loads of other kids whose mummies and daddies don’t live together …’
It was a few moments before Matt realised that the target of these reassurances had fallen asleep, the eyelids dropping at last into the most perfect portrait of peaceful oblivion. He stayed kneeling by the bed for a few minutes, wrestling with why, when it came to the question of motherly love, he always sprang to Kath’s defence, and wondering whether it was purely for Joshua’s sake or because he himself really believed such things to be true. If she had loved him how could she have left him behind? But then, thank God she had, he thought, stroking his son’s pale cheek with his fingertips. In the dim glow of the nightlight he could see Joshua’s eyeballs rolling restlessly beneath his eyelids, scrolling through invisible images; finding comfort, Matt hoped, wishing he could provide some comparable solace for the harsh realities of the outside world.
15
No matter how placid the weather in the rest of London, the square mile housing Matt’s newspaper’s headquarters in Canary Wharf seemed always to be the epicentre of a localised gale. As he stepped off the light railway, the familiar blast of wind off the river pulled the skin tight on his face. He leaned forward as he walked, as if to forge a passage with the top of his head, feeling that he could have leaned on his entire body weight without hitting the ground. As usual, the area was buzzing with bulldozers and cranes, ten years of intense development having done little to erase the impression of a building site with aspirations beyond its means. For every finished construction, there were three more still in their infancy. Recent problems with the Jubilee Tube extension had triggered a new set of temporary signposts and a corridored maze of yellow ticker-tape. Clusters of grey-faced commuters and a few hardy tourists with cameras were emerging from a side staircase and being syphoned round a series of orange bollards towards the broad stone steps leading up to street level. Crossing to the tower block that housed his employers, Matt had to dodge round three overladen skips half blocking the road. On the pavement next to them four men in hard hats were huddled round an open manhole, shaking their heads and rubbing their chins doubtfully.
Matt crossed the marbled foyer of the ground floor with mixed feelings. It was good to know that his old life was still there waiting for him. Yet at the same time he experienced a tingling disquiet at the realisation that, while his personal circumstances had changed so radically, nothing at the paper would have altered at all. Where work had once embodied a world entirely and effortlessly separate from home, he had already had to make a conscious effort that morning to keep his th
oughts from straying back south of the river to home; not to remember Joshua’s crumpled white face pleading for him to stay, not to worry that his father’s morning routine of two fried eggs and half an hour on the loo would jeopardise his ability either to be vigilant or to arrive at Bright Sparks at the appointed hour.
He entered the lift with a group of other people. Among them was a woman from a neighbouring department whom he remembered as having taken time off to have a baby the year before. He recalled the unflattering bulk of her, not just during the last few weeks but when she returned to the office three months later, still clearly exhausted and not yet adjusted to the new demands of her life. There had been a few surreptitious snide remarks from male colleagues, not just about her figure but about women and work in general, about the questionable nature of female career commitment. The injustice of it, only dimly felt before, hit Matt so hard that for a second or two he considered shattering the sleepy silence of morning lift etiquette and posing some companionable enquiry. He tried to catch her eye but she looked away, impatiently pressing the button for her floor and leading the way out the moment the doors parted.
Overcome with sudden shyness at the thought of running the gamut of greetings en route to his desk, Matt made a tactical withdrawal to the toilets. He was sick with nerves, he realised, splashing water on his face and holding out his hand to stare, appalled, at the tremor in his fingers. His freshly shaven cheeks looked faintly yellow in the glare of the basin light and there were violet shadows under his eyes. Somewhere deep inside his temples he could feel the tick of a pulse.
‘Matthew, good to see you back.’
Matt spun round, pinning his shaking hand out of sight behind his back as the tall imposing figure of Philip Legge, the newspaper’s Senior Arts Editor to whom even Oliver had to pay homage, strode across to the urinals. ‘Good to be back, thanks Philip.’
‘Very sorry to hear of your domestic troubles,’ he went on, throwing the words carelessly over his shoulder and going on with equal nonchalance, ‘And I gather from Oliver that you are hoping to redraft your contract, reduce your hours and operate as a freelancer from behind a desk in Kennington. Not an idea that fills me with glee, I must admit. And it would mean a considerable cut in salary, but Oliver says you are well aware of that.’ He paused, bending his knees slightly as he zipped up his trousers. ‘But it just so happens a very promising CV has recently been pushed my way – a young girl, but a grafter by the sound of it, and great credentials. I’ve agreed to see her after the morning meeting. I’d like you to put your head round the door too, take her for a guided tour. There’s just a chance she could plug the gap your new plans are going to leave. I make no promises, mind.’
‘No, of course. I’d be more than happy to meet her. Thanks Philip.’ Matt was aware of hovering awkwardly during the course of this exchange. It was a relief when the editor turned for the washbasins. He found himself choosing the moment to blurt, ‘I am sorry to muck you around…wanting to reduce my hours in the office…it’s purely for personal reasons. It was never part of my game plan.’
‘Few decisions are,’ Philip retorted, shaking the drops off his hands and running them briefly under a noisy jet of hot air. The sudden curtness in tone reminded Matt both of the warning that no promises had been made, and the fact that any show of warmth on the part of this particular boss was rarely to be trusted. Philip Legge was known for his unpredictable oscillations in the treatment of his employees, being jocular one minute and lashing out with scathing acerbity the next. Having succeeded to his own elevated position through a notorious capacity for ruthlessness quite as much as hard work, his efforts at compassionate man-management were both infrequent and painfully laboured. Since his arrival on the paper two years before, the arts sector had been pared down to a rigorous and cost- effective minimum. Without the protective buffer of Oliver – who enjoyed a status beyond normal office hierarchies – Matt was sure he would not have survived so long.
Philip pushed open the door and invited Matt to accompany him back out into the corridor, remarking as they set off, ‘Oliver says you’ve nailed the elusive Andrea Beauchamp to an interview. Well done.’ He chuckled, rubbing his palms together. ‘Now there is a creature blessed with an extraordinary abundance of natural charms. And unattached again, according to the tabloids.’ He threw Matt a sly sideways glance. ‘Hey, maybe you could be in with a chance – stranger things have happened.’ He burst into such loud laughter that several heads bent at desks looked up as they passed. Matt laughed as well, while inside he quailed. He was still too sensitised and raw even for such well-intentioned jibes, too close to the stammering hopelessness of real life, where there were no such fairytale resolutions to ease the pain.
During the morning meeting Matt did his best to appear on the ball, readily agreeing to the assignments suggested for him and assuming a look of concentrated interest as Oliver and Philip went head to head over several issues of priority. Shakespeare at the York Playhouse in Leeds or Beckett at the Birmingham Rep; Tennessee Williams at the Bush in Hampstead or Lorca at the Tricycle in Kilburn. The faces of the men grew flushed as they talked. Instead of following their arguments, Matt found his thoughts drifting to Kath, to the early days. He could picture the flat in Shepherd’s Bush as if it were yesterday; the bed with the folded magazine under the wobbly leg, candles flickering on the mantelpiece, some of the jazz music they both liked pulsing softly, Kath with her legs gripped round his waist, her eyes wide, pulling him into their stare as her hands pulled him deeper into her body. Had it been True Love or True Lust? Were the two things separate or one and the same? The pencil he had been holding snapped in two.
‘Any thoughts Matthew?’
Matt, whose daydreaming had progressed to the unhappy realisation that an ability to screw each other senseless was no guarantee either of harmony or of expertise in parenting, looked up from the broken pencil and blinked. For one mad moment he almost said as much out loud. ‘I think they all sound interesting …’
Phillip clicked his fingers impatiently, returning his attention to Oliver. ‘I’ll go with you on this one. We can save the Birmingham Rep for that piece you’re going to do on the North-South divide …’
Matt tried to imagine Kath with her casting agent, or photographer, or whoever he was; tried to imagine the extent of her emotions – the lust, love, desperation or whatever it was that had driven her away. It must have been pretty powerful. To walk out like that. To give up Joshua. He pressed the broken sections of pencil back together, pushing so hard that the join was barely visible. Unless … He let the pencil fall from his fingers, for the first time confronting the awful possibility that Kath would change her mind, that she might return to snatch their son from the school gates, or initiate one of those heart-rending custody battles one read about. Sunday visiting rights and access every other Christmas wouldn’t do, he realised. They might have done once upon a time – before, when Kath was still around – but not now, not any more.
‘Matthew?’
It was Oliver speaking. They had left Philip’s room and were walking down the corridor back towards the open-plan medley of desks that housed the lower echelons of the arts workforce.
‘That all went well, don’t you think?’ There was a faintly laboured edge to his usual hearty tone.
‘Yes … except … I was just thinking … what exactly are a father’s rights, Oliver, do you know?’ Matt faltered, embarrassed at how his preoccupations were getting the better of him. ‘I mean, these days does a mother still automatically get custody?’
‘Why? Has Kath been in touch at last?’
‘No, but now I’m worried she might …’
‘I am sure the pair of you would work something out,’ Oliver murmured, casting Matt a look of concern but not breaking stride, ‘there’s always a way through these muddles.’
‘Yes. Of course there is. Thanks.’ Matt pulled back his shoulders, making an effort to walk more purposefully. ‘Philip has asked me to
meet this girl he’s interviewing, so I’d better get a move on. Catch up with you later.’ He raced off in the direction of his desk, not seeing Oliver’s despairing shake of the head.
The potential new recruit was as good as her CV suggested, and very pretty, which Matt was sure would sway Philip Legge even if he didn’t admit to such things. Seeing the sparkle of ambition in her eyes, the glow of youthful self-confidence, he felt the dim stirrings of envy.
Maybe he should even feel threatened, he mused, waving her off at the lifts after his guided tour was done with. Maybe he was going to end up losing even more than a wife and the mother to his son. The thought was still haunting him as he joined the end of the canteen queue for lunch.
Oliver’s hand arriving on his shoulder made him jump.
‘Word is the curry’s very good.’ His boss tapped the side of his small beaky nose in the manner of one disclosing a state secret.
‘Actually I was thinking I might bail on this.’ Matt nodded at the line in front of them; ‘go out for a sandwich and some air instead.’ He did his best to sound upbeat, masking the sudden and urgent longing to be on his own. But Oliver excelled at being obtuse or obstinate, usually making it impossible to tell which.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s about to rain. And if you bugger off who am I going to sit with?’
Matt reluctantly took a tray and shuffled forwards. The notion of Oliver not having a choice of willing lunch companions was laughable. The man was an institution, a minor celebrity in his own right, with a warm word for everyone, whether it was the extraordinarily beautiful SriLankan lady who cleaned the loos or one of the endless string of temps who circulated round departments covering for maternity leave, flu and nervous breakdowns. On the rare occasions he ate in the canteen, he was the sort of man who people squeezed together to make room for.
A Family Man Page 12