by Sue Welfare
‘Well, he could be, couldn’t he?’ protested Liz. ‘You hear about these kinds of thing on the TV all the time. All sorts of stories about smooth con men, gold-diggers conning older women,’ continued Liz, indignantly, looking at Julie for support.
‘He certainly looks very smooth to me,’ purred Julie.
On the sun lounger, Maggie’s expression had iced over and her voice dropped to something quiet and dangerous. ‘I do know what I’m doing and even if I don’t it’s my right, my choice, to do those things. I’ve broken my ankle, Liz, not lost my mind.’
Liz sniffed; it seemed that in her opinion, at least, the matter was up for debate.
It was the final straw. Maggie pulled herself up to her full height. It didn’t take a genius to work out that she was hurt and angry and had had quite enough. Even Liz couldn’t miss the thunderous expression on her face. She said in a steely voice, ‘I treat you with great respect, Liz – sometimes when it’s the last thing you deserve and I expect the same in return. If I wanted your opinion, trust me, I would ask for it. Contrary to your opinion, I am not a complete fool. I’d also like you to know that Guy has asked me to marry him.’
Despite herself Kate practically skipped back into the kitchen with joy. It looked for a moment as if there was a real possibility Liz might spontaneously combust.
‘Oh my God. But that’s absolutely ridiculous,’ Liz spluttered. ‘He’s – he’s so, so –’
‘Young.’ Kate, bearing a dish of new potatoes lovingly tossed in butter by the young and oh so lovely Guy, finished Liz’s sentence for her. ‘I’ve already said that, but apparently Mum already knows.’
Julie nodded enthusiastically. She was too polite to take notes but it looked as if the thought might have crossed her mind.
‘How can you be so bloody flippant? And how come you knew about this and didn’t tell me?’ Liz growled, rounding on Kate.
Kate winced instantly, wishing that she had kept her mouth shut. ‘Well, I’ve only known this week, Liz and – well, I was surprised and a bit shocked too, but Guy’s a lovely man, once you get used to the idea, and I’ve had a lot of other things on my mind at the moment.’
Julie Hicks nodded enthusiastically, apparently hoping for more from Kate. Instead Kate and Liz both looked at Maggie who sighed and then said, ‘With hindsight I probably should have said something earlier, but it’s a job to find the right time. I wasn’t sure what to say, and I wasn’t totally sure about how I felt about Guy –’ Maggie didn’t get the chance to finish her sentence.
‘And are you telling me that you’re sure now?’ Liz snapped
‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Maggie with a warm smile.
Liz was ashen. ‘So have you said yes then?’
‘No, not yet,’ said Guy, appearing with a tray of wine glasses. ‘But it’s just a matter of time. I’m slowly wearing her down, aren’t I, honey?’
The boys were out of earshot. Maggie laughed, Julie laughed, Kate laughed, Liz didn’t. Three out of four wasn’t bad, Kate thought. Maggie looked magnificent. Angry and pale, but magnificent.
Kate and Guy, who was now dressed in jeans and a white tee-shirt, went back into the kitchen where he was putting the finishing touches to a chicken Caesar salad, ably assisted by Jake. Beside them, Danny was struggling with a bottle of wine. He’d got the bottle between his knees, gritted teeth and a look of furious concentration.
‘Do you want me to help you with that?’ asked Kate, nervously.
‘He’ll be fine,’ said Guy, waving her away. ‘My advice would be to stay out there and stop any fist fights breaking out.’
To her surprise, Danny grinned. God knows what Guy had told him but it was obvious they were sharing some boys’ joke. Kate almost regretted not being in on it. And then Jake giggled. ‘Guy said that Auntie Liz will have to call him Daddy when he and Grandma Maggie get married.’
Kate snorted and then Danny did. Suddenly they were all giggling and laughing and holding their sides because it hurt so very much, even though Kate knew it was stupid and it wasn’t that funny, and was probably hysteria brought on by stress and pain and too much sunshine.
‘What exactly is going on in here?’ Liz demanded, standing in the doorway, all chin and outrage. Which of course made it all the worse. Kate laughed so hard that she thought she might pass out from lack of oxygen.
‘I really hope that you’re proud of yourself,’ Liz snarled. Kate wasn’t certain whether she was talking to Guy or her but whichever it was it didn’t matter. Jake sobered up first and headed outside, carrying the salads.
Lunch was a trial. Guy flirted shamelessly with Maggie all the way through; you’d have to have been dead not to sense the electricity sparking between them. Liz, torn between walking out in a huff and staying under sufferance, decided to stick it out and look alternately affronted and offended. But if she was waiting for an apology it was going to be a long time coming. Maggie was still seething.
So the wine flowed and the salad was served and across the table Liz, who had a very low tact threshold when she felt under threat, waxed lyrical and long about what she feared might happen to her inheritance. Although Liz didn’t actually say that – she talked about some documentary she’d seen on ITV and then talked about how the grandchildren’s inheritance had been eaten up by court costs and God knows what else. Although she added quickly, in case anyone accused her of being mercenary, that her main concern over what she referred to as ‘the current situation’ was what people might think and the effect meeting Guy would have on her girls.
Kate, delighted to have her boys with her and not be the main topic of conversation, got pleasantly drunk, while Julie, eyes alight with the sheer joy of it all, looked from face to face totally unable to believe her good fortune. Kate smiled and took another sip of Chardonnay. She had no doubt whatsoever that come tomorrow morning, she and Maggie would be right up there on the Gossip Top Forty with Pippa the cross-country lesbian.
Meanwhile back in Windsor Street, Joe, half asleep and as naked as the day he was born, lay back on the bed, hands tucked behind his head. Comfortable amongst muddled sheets and crumpled pillows, he stared up at the ceiling, wondering if Kate had Chrissie’s work number anywhere and what would he have to say to persuade her to come home? There had to be something.
Joe ran a hand over his belly. He felt much in need of some company. Female company, company that would make him feel good and relaxed. Very relaxed. Joe turned over to squint at the clock beside the bed, trying to work out exactly what time it was. When the phone alongside it rang, it felt as if somehow his looking had startled the phone into life and he wondered for a moment whether it was Chrissie.
Chrissie might be psychic; stranger things had happened particularly between lovers. Maybe that was it, maybe they were twin souls. Perhaps she had sensed him thinking about her. Perhaps she was calling to tell him she was already on her way home. And then, with the phone still ringing, Joe thought some more about who else might be phoning him – most likely it was Bill, calling to tell him what a tosser he was. Not that Bill had ever said it in so many words but you didn’t need to be psychic to work out what was going on in his head. Joe had seen that look on his face.
Or maybe it was Kate. Of all the possibilities this one disturbed Joe the most, he wasn’t sure if he could cope with it being Kate. Unless of course she had finally had a change of heart, come to her senses and forgiven him, although even then he wasn’t sure he was prepared for the long hard journey back to salvation and absolution.
The phone stopped and gratefully he rolled over onto his belly, closed his eyes, relieved of the burden of finding out who it was, and then just when he thought that the coast was clear, it started again, ringing on and on. It was too much.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Joe? Where the fuck are you?’ growled an angry male voice.
It took Joe a moment or two to sort through the fog. ‘Who is this?’ he said tentatively. At least it wasn’t Kate, he thought wi
th relief.
‘What do you need, Joe, fingerprints, for Christ’s sake? North London Light and Sound? Ring any bells? We’d got a meeting booked for two o’clock, you said you’d be here. You promised me, Joe. I’ve got three people waiting in my office, including that uppity bloody Yank you stood up on Saturday morning, all desperate to see the presentations for the launch of their company’s new product. All coming back to you now, is it? You know, the one you told me was a piece of piss? I’m fresh out of bullshit, Joe. Any ideas how I can stop the three of them from walking right out of here and taking my bread and butter with them?’
Joe felt something cold and dark shift in the bottom of his belly. ‘I thought that was tomorrow,’ he stalled. Actually he hadn’t got any idea, not a clue, when the meeting was or even that he had one. He’d forgotten all about it. Joe paused for an instant. There had to be a solution, and of course there was: this was Kate’s fault, she should have reminded him.
The man at the end of the line was silent but it was one of those heavy messy silences that suggests lack of patience and not being much impressed.
‘I can be there in an hour,’ Joe offered hopefully.
It didn’t do the trick. ‘Don’t bother, Joe, this is once too many, mate. I’ll send you what we owe you.’
‘Wai –’ Joe began, but it was too late, the phone went dead in his hand.
After a few seconds Joe clicked the button to give him an open line and then rang directory enquiries. They had three numbers for the department store where Chrissie worked.
‘Chrissie?’
‘Joe? What do you want? What the hell’s the matter, why are you ringing me at work?’
‘I’ve lost my fucking job, Chrissie, I don’t know what I’m going to do. You’ve got to help me.’
Chrissie covered the receiver. It sounded as if he might be crying. ‘Joe, can you hear me?’ she said, after the worst of it had abated.
‘Yes,’ he snuffled miserably. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’
Chrissie glanced round the office. They had called her up off the shop floor to take the call; told her it was an emergency. Bob’s sister-in-law winked at her. Chrissie managed a very convincing brave smile. ‘Where are you now?’ she asked in an undertone.
Joe, still wrapped up in the duvet, blew his nose. ‘I’m at home. I’ve just come back to bed. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m going to do, Chrissie. The bastard bumped me just like that. That’s the trouble with being a freelance, if they can undercut you they will, you know. All the work I’d done for that bloody presentation and he just rang me up out of the blue.’ At least that bit was true; Joe hadn’t been expecting him to ring. ‘And then he said he was letting me go. Not even a sorry. Just like that. I don’t know how much more I can take. I wondered if Kate had rung him up and let him know the score – thick as thieves, those two.’
It wasn’t true, up until that moment it hadn’t even occurred to him, but Chrissie clucked in a comforting way and then said, ‘Don’t be silly, Kate isn’t like that. Just stay where you are, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
Joe smiled to himself as he dropped the phone back on to the bedside cabinet. It seemed he had found the thing that would persuade Chrissie to come home.
Speculatively, he sniffed an armpit; there was plenty of time to have a quick shower before she arrived. He glanced around the bedroom. It would look more convincing if he hung his good trousers and best leather jacket up on the back of the door, slung a clean shirt and a tie on the chair so that it looked as if he’d ripped them off in disgust and disillusion. Sprayed a bit of aftershave about the place. Mustn’t forget the shoes, Joe thought, as he padded naked across the landing towards the bathroom. Women? He could play them like a banjo.
Joe switched on the shower; he’d be good at set designing. It would be a good career for a creative like himself. He turned sideways to admire himself in the bathroom mirror and then turned slowly to get the full effect. He sucked in his belly and put his hands on his hips; not bad, not bad at all for a man his age. Damned good-looking as well. There were a lot of guys who’d give their eyeteeth to be in the kind of shape he was in. Turning the shower on to full blast he stepped into the torrent wondering what the traffic was like and how long Chrissie would be; she preferred the bus to the tube. Or was that Kate?
The first course of lunch had been delicious in all sorts of ways.
Dessert was fine, although a little fraught when Julie – several glasses into the Australian Chardonnay – suggested that the back garden at Church Hill, before remodelling and presuming that Maggie and Guy didn’t move beforehand, would be a grand place to hold a family-style wedding reception.
Liz went a very peculiar colour and had to get a drink of water.
Coffee was an altogether calmer and quieter backwater as Liz, exhausted, finally began to run out of steam and Julie lolled contentedly in one of the garden chairs, drunk as a skunk.
Guy, Kate and the boys cleared away the remains of lunch.
‘Once we’re done here do you fancy a walk?’ Kate asked, as they stacked the last of the things into the dishwasher.
Jake nodded. ‘Okay.’
‘And how about you, Danny?’
‘Sure.’
They all had things of their own to talk about that didn’t include Maggie and Guy. It felt good to leave the others to it. Beyond the garden Denham was busy basking in the mid-afternoon sunshine. Kate smiled and said hello to at least half a dozen familiar faces as she and the boys walked down through the town, for once relishing the sense of belonging, albeit in reprise, to the community she had grown up in.
So few things had changed; there was a new housing estate here, a change of shop front there, a new supermarket up by the old courthouse, but in essence, fundamentally it was the same place. Denham still had a real sense of itself, and was as slow and warm and tolerant as it had ever been.
There was a part of her that had always longed to come home and regretted that Danny and Jake hadn’t had the same kind of safe, roaming, uncomplicated childhood that she had.
City people, Kate knew, made the mistake of equating rural with ignorance or stupidity or bigotry while her experience of it was so very different. Here it was still possible to truly be part of a community, to carve a niche, to know the names of almost everyone you met. Kate sighed, considering what it might feel like to belong all over again. Maybe it would have been better if she and Joe had spent their lives here instead of in London.
When Danny was born they had considered it for a while, but Joe said he’d never make it in the sticks, it was hard enough in the city. No work, no decent gigs or venues. No, the country was the place to retire to when you’d made your money. And then of course there was the little matter of Kate’s job which, at that point, was even then paying the lion’s share of their bills.
Head full of might-have-beens, Kate glanced at the boys, striding out ahead of her, already showing signs of the men that they would soon become.
‘Where to?’ asked Danny over one shoulder.
‘The Rushpool.’
Danny nodded, Jake, who was closer, grinned. ‘We ought to have brought a fishing net.’
Kate shook her head and smiled; the world may crumble around them, but boys will inevitably still be boys. They walked down past the market square and the town hall, buying an ice cream on the way, heading out along the road that eventually led to the river before dipping away into the great rolling expanse of fenland.
A brisk ten minutes’ walk away from Church Hill was a piece of parkland at the back of the railway lines, a public space given by some benefactor or other to the people of the town. Parts of it – around uncleared boggy pools – had been allowed to run riot as a nature reserve, while other areas around a big fishing pit, the Rushpool, although barely tame, were mowed so that wild meadow plants could thrive.
Over the years Kate and her mum and dad had regularly brought the boys here when they were on holiday, as babies
and toddlers and small boys eager to track down newts and frogspawn and play in the wild flower meadow.
Today the silky green water of the pool was shot through with great stands of yellow iris and citrus water lilies, dragonflies embroidering the surface with their long Persian blue bodies. From time to time, big lazy well-fed fish would break the surface to frighten off the insects.
In the boggy areas, buttercups, hogweed, long tall grasses and rich green reeds filled every available inch of land and mire. Here and there butterflies hung from the flowers, tongues out, wings closed, feasting on the summer harvest.
Nobody spoke and Kate was almost reluctant to begin the conversation that she knew she ought to have with the two of them. She took a deep breath but before Kate could begin Danny said, ‘Jake and me talked about all this stuff on the way down here. And last night with Bill.’
‘So are you saying you don’t want to talk about it any more?’ Kate replied slowly, watching their faces.
Danny shrugged. ‘Dunno, I feel horrible. Sick. Really sick. I keep thinking that it’s a dream.’
Kate looked at Jake; his face was as pale as fresh milk. God, why on earth did they all have to go through this? Wasn’t the rest of life tough enough?
‘I love Dad,’ Jake began. Kate could feel and hear the tears in every word. ‘But –’ he stopped and sniffed.
‘What, love?’ Kate encouraged after a few seconds.
‘But you can’t go around doing stuff like that if you’re married. It’s gross – and not with Chrissie.’
‘Are you going back to him?’ asked Danny.
Kate sighed. It was the question that had haunted her all week. How on earth did she discuss the pros and cons of going back with an eleven-year-old and a fourteen-year-old who had such a vested interest in the outcome?
‘I’d understand if you didn’t,’ said Danny slowly. Kate saw a flush of shock, crimson and raw, rise and roll across Jake’s face.
‘I don’t know, Danny. Most things in life aren’t as black and white as they might look from the outside. What if something I did made your dad want to be with Chrissie?’ It was a thought that had come back to her again and again and refused to leave.