Cooee

by Vivienne Kelly

  ‘Of course,’ she goes on, thoughtfully, ‘it would mean you and Dad would be here together. Would that be uncomfortable for you, do you think?’

  It will be exceedingly uncomfortable, of course. As I’ve explained, Steve and I didn’t split up with the kind of cold-fish amity other couples seem to achieve on occasion. We were bitter and hot and hurt; we shouted and screamed; we wounded each other with express calculation. We never actually hit each other, but we came close. Well, I did, anyway. And now we avoid each other with resolute circumspection.

  But I have thought about all of this. Steve and I are grandparents, now, and perhaps it is time to face up to our joint obligations. Grandchildren are different. There will be birthdays, Christmases, school sports, school concerts. There will be ballet performances and netball matches and tennis finals and maybe eisteddfods and piano competitions. Trophy presentations, prize-givings, all the trappings that accompany clear public evidence of excellence. (Not that I’m necessarily expecting these, you understand; but they might happen all the same.) There will be graduations and debuts. And then there will be more weddings. So if I can manage to be grown up about all of this, Steve can, too.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I say, casually. ‘Max will have to be invited, of course.’

  Kate nods. ‘Max is part of the family, too,’ she says, seriously.

  I am pleased she says this. I tell him about it, later, that evening, when we’re having a whisky in the light stone courtyard leading in from Rain’s well-equipped kitchen — silvery granite-topped benches, best-quality Swedish appliances, capacious and ingenious cupboards in pale mountain ash.

  He tinkles the ice in his glass, gazing down at it and saying nothing. I think I can tell, however, from his faint crinkly smile, that he’s glad Kate has said this, that he interprets it as her cementing his relationship with Sophie, with her family.

  So Kate’s reception proceeds. She chats about it a lot: it fills her mind. Invitations are sent out for a Sunday afternoon. We are each to bring a gift: not a physical, wrapped gift (though I intend to bring one of those, too: I have bought a glorious snowy crochet wrap which will, I realise, be of strictly limited use but drapes superbly and seems to me to establish my gravitas as a grandmother), but a metaphoric gift, a spiritual gift, which requires each of us to nominate the essential quality that in an ideal world we would pass on to a baby aspiring to the best of everything. In short, we are to be fairy godmothers.

  I give much thought to what I will propose as my gift to Sophie. I am not blind to the possibilities this occasion offers for Steve and me to insert vengeful blades sleekly between each other’s ribs, but I am determined to rise above this, to demonstrate my large-mindedness, my benign serenity. Should Steve meanly come up with some quality such as fidelity, I am prepared to look mildly hurt and to forgo my corresponding opportunity. Forewarned, I smugly believe myself forearmed.

  Max is interested in what he sees as Kate’s ingenuity and engages to think seriously about his own gift, but for some reason we do not discuss our intentions.

  Before we leave for the reception, I glance out the back door and see that the wattle is in vibrant bloom. Yellow has always seemed to me to be Sophie’s natural colour, and even at that stage of her life its radiance carried its own appropriateness for her special glow, her sunlit essence, her goldenness. I rush out with secateurs and mutilate the young trees, carving out great swathes of vivid flowers, which deposit themselves all over the fine leather of Max’s back seat on the way over. Ever since then, whenever I see the electric lemon fuzz of early cootamundra blossom, I remember Sophie’s fairy godmother party.

  I realise when we get there that the wattle has been a mistake: Kate exclaims over its beauty but is clearly at a loss when trying to find a suitable vase, and it makes the devil of a mess of her carpet while she struggles with it. Never mind: it gives us a way to get through the awkwardness of Steve, who has already arrived and has obviously decided to behave well. He nods at me, shakes Max’s hand mournfully, and mutters something which may not be gracious but at least is not provocative.

  So we’re all sitting around and dandling Sophie and covering awkward gaps with exclamations over her beauty and intelligence. Then, at a sign from Kate, the hapless Gavin shambles over to the fireplace and looks about him with myopic satisfaction.

  ‘Thank you all for coming,’ he says, and meanders on for some time about Sophie, and Kate, and how happy he is to be married to Kate, and the importance of families.

  We sit on the cheap, velveteen lounge suite and listen to him with more or less pleased looks on our faces. Kate is on my right, I recall; holding Sophie and watching Gavin with approval. Dominic is beyond her, tight, tense, closed in. (Dominic was about fifteen. He still had the slim fawnlike look of prepubescence; when he wore bathers you could see the delicate angular projections of his shoulder blades, jutting out as if his skeletal structure hid wings that were trying to bud through the bones. His chest and arms hadn’t filled out. His voice was just breaking and his skin still had a childish sheen to it. He was so beautiful he made you weep.) Steve is beyond Dominic; his shoulders are hunched and he stares at the carpet.

  And on the other side of the room — in the old armchairs Steve has given Kate, the armchairs he and I bought when we were first married — sit Zoë and Henry. I hadn’t expected Zoë and Henry to be here and I’m not sure why they are: I’d thought it was only the immediate family; but I’m determined to be good-tempered about everything today. Max is next to me (I’ve made sure of that), on the other side of me from Kate. I see Steve glancing at him, every now and then. Sophie is making gurgling noises, bless her.

  Gavin comes, with slow humour and elephantine tread, to the end of his speech. He beams at us all and then says, with no particular emphasis: ‘And my gift to my daughter is charm.’ And he goes and sits down.

  Kate breaks in to protest. ‘You have to say why,’ she cries, dissolving into laughter.

  We have all been instructed thus. It is not enough simply to give: we must speak to our gifts, describing the manner in which we wish them to manifest themselves and the reasons for our choice. Gavin has, of course, forgotten this. Smiling ineffectually, he lumbers to his feet again and considers.

  ‘I haven’t got it,’ he says. ‘Charm, I mean. I’ve never had it.’

  Some people make ineffectual demurring noises. (I don’t.)

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ he continues. ‘I know I haven’t. I’ve always wanted it. I’ve always been — how would you put it — beguiled by charming people. They make you want to be with them; they make you want their good opinion; they make you want to do things for them. People who have that — they’ve got the battle won. That’s what I want for my little girl. If she’s got that, I reckon everything else will follow.’

  Kate applauds and the rest of us, unsure about whether we are meant to join in, clap in a piecemeal kind of way as Gavin, blushing and ungainly, sits down again and tries to look as if he has some marginal capacity for self-possession. Later on, as we have a quiet drink in the courtyard at Rain, Max will say to me that he found this speech touching.

  ‘Touching?’ I say, mystified.

  Max regards me in what seems a slightly odd way.

  ‘You really don’t like Gavin, do you?’

  Briefly, I investigate my emotions.

  ‘I don’t like him or dislike him. I don’t know what she sees in him. But I don’t specially dislike him. It’s just that he irritates me. How can she go to bed with him, Max? He’s like a long, thin puppet, a clown puppet; his head bobs around as if his neck’s on a spring; he’s so gangly and bumbly and he always looks so damn worried.’

  ‘But you don’t dislike him,’ says Max, laughing.

  ‘No. He drives me mad, but I don’t dislike him.’

  ‘It was a very honest speech,’ says Max.

 
Anyway, whether Gavin was touching or not, we now move on to our next contributor, skulking palely in the corner.

  ‘Dad!’ calls Kate, who is the self-elected emcee for this occasion. ‘Your turn.’

  Steve has actually written out a speech, which he drags from a back pocket and self-consciously unfolds. ‘I have thought a good deal about this,’ he reads, flat and hurried. ‘I have found it a difficult task.’

  I school my features to look earnest: it will not do to snigger.

  ‘It is a new thing for me to have a granddaughter,’ continues Steve. ‘I find I am quite surprised by it. It seems to me only the other day that Kate was still a little child herself and I do not know where the years have gone. But here we are, and suddenly here is Sophie, who is now a part of our family.’

  Steve pauses and takes a deep breath; a light sweat gleams on his upper lip. I am puzzled. Grace and sophistication are not attributes of Steve’s: I realise this; indeed, no one knows it better than I, but he can normally exhibit a kind of bluff self-possession that serves him better than this awful rehearsed floundering. Suddenly I wonder if he is as disconcerted by my presence — and, of course, by Max’s — as I am by his. I suppose it’s possible.

  ‘I have thought a lot about Kate’s request and I have tried to come up with something that is appropriate for me to give Sophie as her gift from me,’ Steve goes on, so clearly uncomfortable and embarrassed that these sensations are communicated to us all like a rabid infection.

  ‘Of course I understand that whatever I come up with it will only be my wish for Sophie and not actually a real gift, no matter how much I would like it to be. Still, it is important to wish for the right thing. And so I have decided to wish for Sophie not beauty or wealth or talent but something else that I think is more important. I am wishing her resilience. You don’t ever know what life will bring you, and whatever it does bring you, you have to try to bounce back from. This is something all of us know from different experiences, in different ways.’

  He pauses and glances around, in a dissatisfied, unfocused way. ‘So,’ he finishes, lamely. ‘So. That is my wish for Sophie.’

  Again, as he sits down, the patchy applause dribbles around, Kate clapping over-enthusiastically and the rest of us still not sure about joining in. It’s a bit like a school prize-giving where none of the students like each other very much. I’m relieved. Resilience is okay, as Steve’s wish. Fidelity I would have had trouble with.

  ‘Max!’ Kate declares. ‘Your turn.’

  Max stands, with the graceful diffidence he’s so good at. He’s not at all nervous, unlike his predecessors, but he’s not going to err on the side of over-confidence either. Oh God, he speaks so well, and I am so proud of him! He says, with his own gorgeous quiet understated charm, how glad he is to be here, how much he appreciates everyone’s forbearance and warmth and how good it is to feel part of a family.

  He goes on: ‘I’ve never been part of a family — or at least, not for so long that I almost can’t remember it. I’d been on my own for a long time, before I met Isabel. Frankly, I’d expected always to be on my own. And it’s such a privilege, such an honour, to be accepted among you all.’

  He pauses, and glances around with that candid and somehow vulnerable look of his, the one that always slays me.

  ‘Like all of you, I’ve thought a lot about what I’d like to bequeath to this bewitching scrap of humanity here. And I thought perhaps at first I’d focus on this element of her life: her centredness in a family, the way she nestles in the heart of her family. It’s an extended family, I grant you, and my membership of it is a surprising part of it, I know. But it’s a group of related people who all — whatever else they do or don’t share — do share a profound and confident wish that Sophie’s life will be the best life that it can possibly be, that we can possibly help to make it.

  ‘And so it seemed to me that it would be redundant to wish Sophie a strong and embracing family. She already has that. It encircles her and protects her; it provides her with all the support and love and sustenance she needs. And so the best gift I can give Sophie is a spirit of adventure, a spirit that will tempt her away from the safety and comfort and shelter of her family into the excitement and challenge of the unknown. A spirit that will lead her to test herself, to find how limitless her limits are, to leap into space and fly.’

  Max actually goes over to Kate, and leans over her to kiss the top of Sophie’s head. It’s quite a theatrical thing to do, and I think a brave one. We all clap him (I am a little too enthusiastic, but really, I am so proud of him), and Kate turns to Dominic.

  Dominic is unfazed, of course. He has notes — three or four small squares of paper — and holds them carefully, periodically shuffling the front one to the back as he speaks. He has prepared so well that he knows which notes are on which piece of paper.

  ‘So much,’ he says, glancing around in a rather peremptory way, as if to make sure he has our attention. ‘So much one would like to offer to Sophie. So much one would like to have oneself, that somehow one doesn’t have. I suspect we will all offer Sophie something that shines the more brightly for us because it isn’t in our own possession.’

  Shines the more brightly! Ah, what an orator. What a future this kid has! How articulate, for fifteen! I recall Steve telling me (in one of our stilted antagonistic sessions during which we consult about the children) that Dominic is in the debating club at school. Even the president of it, perhaps. I must find out.

  ‘I am no exception,’ continues Dominic. ‘I’d like Sophie to have something I’ve always wanted. Try as I might, it’s always eluded me.’ He pauses.

  There is something I can’t quite read about him. He’s speaking so eloquently, so lucidly: he’s mixing it so impressively with the adults; you’d expect him to be enjoying himself. Dominic’s used to occupying the limelight in a variety of contexts and normally he adopts its sheen with aplomb. Not so today. There’s something missing. He’s not relishing any of this.

  ‘What I wish for Sophie …’

  There is an awful second or two during which he seems to look into the middle distance and gulp slightly, and forget what he’s saying. Just as I’m becoming nervous, however, he gains control and returns to us.

  ‘I’d like Sophie to believe in herself,’ says Dominic, to my utter astonishment.

  Was there ever a child, I think, born with greater self-belief than Dominic?

  ‘I’d like her to be deeply confident within herself. Not stupidly arrogant, not up herself. I’m not talking ego; I’m not talking conceit. Just a realistic and abiding self-belief. I reckon that’ll see her through more than anything else.’

  I am so thunderstruck by this assertion and its implications that I miss a beat or two of Kate’s mild and inconsequential connecting remarks and the next thing I know Zoë has bounced up.

  ‘It’s been a very interesting exercise,’ says Zoë. ‘I’d like to thank Kate for the opportunity to think through some of the questions that her request inevitably generated. In thinking about what we would wish to give Sophie, as Dominic has so intelligently pointed out, we have all thought about what we ourselves would like to possess. And that naturally leads to a reappraisal of our own lives. Henry and I’ — she ducks her head towards Henry in an acknowledgement — ‘have spent many hours discussing the matter. It’s been most instructive.’

  She smiles at us all, in a pleased way, as if we should be especially grateful for the chance at self-instruction.

  ‘What to wish for?’ proceeds Zoë, clearly enjoying herself. ‘Kate didn’t make it clear whether she wanted our gifts to be qualities, that is, an integral part of Sophie, or conditions, things like money, extrinsic to Sophie but available to her. So it was, for instance, open to any of us to choose great wealth, or immunity from disease. These would be good gifts. Instead, all of us so far have concentrated on qualities
. This is what Henry and I decided, too, though of course I mustn’t pre-empt Henry’s choices in this matter.’

  I suppose this is how Zoë talks when she gives a class. It’s rapid, crisp, articulate, assertive. She feels no doubt, no diffidence. The outlines are clear; the colours are bright. We sit there, listening like obedient schoolchildren.

  ‘I think the reason we have all instinctively focused on qualities is that we implicitly acknowledge our own roles in our destinies. It would be possible to wish for Sophie, say, happiness, but happiness is something we achieve ourselves, not something that can be handed around on a plate. If Sophie is to be happy — and I certainly hope she will be — she must win that happiness herself. Nobody can give it to her.’

  I’m trying not to look bored, but it’s getting harder by the moment. It’s just like Zoë, to turn all of this from a family celebration into a purely didactic occasion in which she can herself play a leading part and make a lot of unfounded assumptions about life and how other people live it. I recognise in her comments a barbed reference to my own circumstances, and hear her voice as it has sounded forth on other occasions, earnestly telling me that I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul, and so on.

  Zoë smiles, holding her hands clasped in front of her. She looks as if she is about to announce the winner of the under-twelve hurdles.

  ‘I wish Sophie a love of learning,’ she says. ‘Through learning Sophie can become whatever she wishes. She can discover great opportunities and she can make the most of those opportunities. In some ways I feel this was an entirely predictable choice for me to make — exactly what you would expect of a tunnel-visioned, obstinate, old-fashioned, chalk-’n’-talk teacher.’

  She laughs, slightly, as if she thinks this description of herself will seem inadequate to her audience. ‘But there it is. Sophie, I wish you a fine education, and I wish you the capacity to make the most of it.’

  Zoë looks as if she will go on for a long time in exhortation and explication, but fortunately Kate breaks in with delighted exclamations. She turns then to Henry.