by Neal Doran
She was a secondary school English teacher. She’d encouraged Rebecca to look beyond the easy placement at the local firm to finish her training. She’d wanted Rebecca to go off and do legal aid work in deprived areas, work for NGOs, and for a time Rebecca almost thought she would go and do that. She did have a social conscience, she’d thought to herself, and she did want to make a difference. But the prospect of being mugged in some rough part of London by a junkie, or the lack of decent toilet facilities in an overseas village, were enough to have her reconsidering her potential as a doer of good.
Ed and Rebecca would have dinner with his family maybe once a week or so during the times they were properly together. While fiercely proud of her son, and confident that he would go on to do great things, Joan wasn’t blind to his faults: the way he distanced himself from people, and could be sullen. At dinner-table discussions she would almost shriek in frustration at his lack of imagination, and call on Rebecca to back her up when she thought Ed was going out of his way to wind her up.
When Rebecca and Ed had finally, irrevocably, broken up (apart from one, no more than one, early slip-back), Rebecca had been more upset than she expected. He’d gone off for a year to study in Jerusalem and had been quite clear that she shouldn’t wait for him, and he wouldn’t be saving himself for her. She’d been six months into her legal training, and living in a flat with a girl she was no longer getting on with, when it happened. Joan had said the regular invite to Sunday lunch was still open and – weirdly, she now realised – Rebecca had taken her up on it. Rebecca and Joan had continued to keep up with each other since.
At first it was Joan listening to Rebecca try and cope with the fact her son hadn’t wanted to even try a long-distance relationship, and analyse what it was about her that was behind that decision. Looking back, Rebecca assumed she was probably missing Ed too, and having someone to talk about him with was a comfort.
For years after that particular need was gone they’d stayed in touch, meeting for lunch or coffee, emailing regularly. Rebecca kept on bringing her problems to Joan in a way she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, with her own mum. Taking advice from Penny was impossible. It may well be the same advice that Joan would give, but Penny wouldn’t get the chance to deliver it: her tone would drive Rebecca mad, the idea that she might know better impossible to accept.
Joan could tell her she was being too passive, or stubborn, and Rebecca would consider it. She’d normally decide she wasn’t, but she was open to the suggestion. Criticism like that from Penny would cause a family row that would mean she would only visit home in order to pick up Matty and take him out to Mickey D’s or Nando’s for at least the next month.
Her relationship with Joan had distanced, though, over the last couple of years, and it was because of James. Not usually the jealous type, he’d been very wary of the woman he called Rebecca’s ‘dream mother-in-law’. He’d been insistent it ‘wasn’t normal’ and would always ask why Rebecca felt the need to keep up with her, whenever the name of Joan arose. If Rebecca had gone ahead and met up with her, a string of questions about what they discussed – and how Ed was doing – would follow, alongside a sustained period of borderline huffing. In the end, James’s campaign had kind of worked. Rebecca started putting off catch-ups, and made do with emails rather than phone calls. Joan would write lengthy and funny reports on life in her Christmas cards. But they hadn’t seen each other in probably two years now and Rebecca realised, a little shamefully, that she hadn’t even told Joan she was pregnant yet.
Now, sitting in a Ruislip coffee shop that looked to be too nice to be part of a chain, but was part of a chain, Rebecca hoped there’d be someone she could be honest with, and get some honest answers from. Joan had strode into the café and didn’t see Rebecca at first. She stood, as ever looking taller than she actually was, with her black hair streaked with grey, tied back in probably the same way she’d tied it back since she was Rebecca’s age. Wearing jeans and a fitted tweed jacket over a polo neck, she didn’t look that much like a retired teacher, but more like an image from a 1960s photo of a philosopher or intellectual. Rebecca remembered that one of the things that had always struck her most about Joan was how cool she was.
‘Rebecca, look at you!’ Joan said as she hugged her, and Bomp. ‘And how come I’m hearing about this just now? I would have brought a present!’
‘Thought it was best to tell you in person.’
‘Being superstitious like your mother, were you?’ Joan asked with a raised eyebrow.
‘Maybe something like that. But how are you? You look great!’
‘You probably expected I’d become old and wizened since we last caught up, hmm? I’m doing very well thank you. Retirement suits me. I’ve never been so busy. Taking a leaf out of that son of mine’s book and doing my PhD. Plus some tutoring on the side. And I’m writing a novel!’
Perhaps James has been right all along, Rebecca thought, she probably is my dream mother-in-law.
They ordered teas and cakes, and Rebecca updated Joan on due dates, and how the pregnancy was going for her so they could compare symptoms – Joan had a terrible time with her ankles, she remembered fondly. The older woman asked personal but pertinent questions about how planned the event was, and whether this was to be the first of a big family – something Joan had been hoping for, but which just hadn’t worked out for them after Ed was born. Catching up and sharing stories, Rebecca for a few minutes forgot why she had wanted to see Joan. For a short while she was a cheerfully pregnant woman catching up with a dear old friend. Then she found herself going quiet, toying with the crumbs of her piece of carrot cake.
‘Penny and Howard must be thrilled to be grandparents I bet,’ said Joan.
Rebecca looked at her, and could see from her face that she knew.
‘I’ve got a free rail pass, I get the Tube everywhere.’
‘So you’ve seen the mural?’
‘And we still read the local paper, what’s left of it that isn’t supermarket ads.’
‘It’s the most humiliating thing that’s happened to me in my life.’
‘Even more when Ed brought you home from the picnic in the park and you’d spilled white wine down the crotch of your jeans? That skirt I lent you? The look on your face, I think you would rather have gone home looking like you’d wet yourself.’
Rebecca smiled at the memory.
‘Have you talked about it?’ Joan asked.
‘He’s constantly talking about this campaign of his. He’s trying to get on the radio, writing to MPs, even the local bishop I think. And then Maggie’s endlessly reaching out to the arts community, and Mum’s mainly worried about not being photographed twice in the same outfit.’
‘Yes, but have you talked to him about it? What happened?’
‘Well. No. I mean you can’t really bring that sort of thing up…’
‘He’s your father.’
‘Exactly!’
‘Your family…’
‘They want to talk about it all the time. Dad keeps wanting to sit down and “connect”. I’m running out of excuses – even as a pregnant woman.’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand children. Even when they’re grown up. If he was the one who didn’t want to talk to you that would be the wrong thing too.’
‘We had a journalist call at the house today, asking questions.’
‘From the Focus? They should know better than doorstepping pregnant women, and with your father-in-law—’
‘It wasn’t the Focus it was the Evening Standard. Or at least that’s what he said. Trying to get a family angle. Trying to…’
Rebecca stopped, the reality of the morning catching up with her.
‘I’m supposed to appear at the trial. Explain that Dad has a bladder condition that means he can’t, y’know, go that easily.’
‘It has been so long since I saw you,’ said Joan draining the last of the tea in the pot into her cup, ‘you retrained as a urologist?’
‘It was a chat we had. It does explain why he might have taken some time.’
‘And this was before the arrest?’
You couldn’t get much past Joan. Rebecca thought for a minute before taking the plunge.
‘No. No it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘But he says he was going to go to the doctor.’
‘That’s a big thing to ask a pregnant daughter to do.’
‘But if it was a big misunderstanding, it might help this thing end. I really just don’t want to even have to think about it.’
‘Would it be a problem? If he was?’
‘It’s not the gay thing. It’s the cheating.’
Joan casually looked around the café, thinking.
‘Are you sure it’s just that?’
‘Of course!’ Rebecca said, sipping her drink, holding it in front of her face. Then she clinked it down suddenly. ‘I don’t want a gay dad.’
It felt such a relief to say that to somebody.
‘I know that’s terrible,’ Rebecca said.
Joan stretched across the table and patted Rebecca’s hand.
‘You should see some of our friends deal with gay children, even the liberal ones. They say it’s fine, but it takes some time. You can tell by the way they talk about it, it’s a while before being relaxed doesn’t sound forced. I guess it works the other way around too.’
‘I never thought it’d be a problem.’
‘What about if the same thing came up with this one?,’ asked Joan, nodding at Rebecca’s belly.
‘Only matters they’re happy,’ she said firmly. She was certain of that.
‘There you go. There’s hope. You can deal with your dad.’
Rebecca shrugged.
‘If he is,’ said Joan. ‘I mean, you don’t seem to be convinced he is, and you say there’s an innocent explanation.’
Rebecca looked down, and didn’t answer at first.
‘What do you think?’
Joan paused, studying the artfully mismatched photography on the walls. Rebecca tensed, her head down.
‘I don’t know your family that well, apart from what I see about your dad in the papers, and the occasional party we would have all been at years back. When you were seeing Ed the idea that we might meet up was terrifying for you both.’
She smiled warmly at Rebecca before she continued.
‘But this is one of my theories about people. Sometimes when you meet someone, they seem to be searching you, looking for something you’re not showing. Almost like they want to catch you out. And it doesn’t even have to be in a vindictive way. But I think it comes from something inside them. An assumption that because they’re putting on a front, that everyone’s hiding something. Your father…’
‘So you think he is?’
It was Joan’s turn to shrug. ‘There was always something. I could never have said what it was.’
‘But he just loves winding people up. His way of being friendly to strangers is to tease them.’
‘Maybe that’s it,’ conceded Joan politely. ‘I’m writing a book. At the minute everyone in my head is secretly gay, or having an affair, or an alcoholic. If I were doing science fiction I’d probably say he was an alien.’
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t in touch when I heard,’ she continued, ‘I should have been, but…’
‘I hadn’t spoken to you in ages, it was probably my turn.’
‘I thought you’d moved on, and good for you that you have. But I should have dropped you a line.’
‘It’s my fault,’ said Rebecca. ‘James thought it was a bit strange that I wanted to keep in touch with my ex’s family. He’s not usually the jealous type, but this for some reason… Maybe it’s because I don’t really get on with his mum.’
‘So this is an illicit meeting?’ asked Joan with a wink. ‘Already I feel twenty years younger. Is he doing OK with this?’
Rebecca explained again how her husband was being supportive, but had worries of his own on the job front. Joan joined the string of people expressing surprise at how long it was taking him to find something new. Rebecca started rubbing her tummy and didn’t say anything. It was her new answer to everything when the difficult questions started. But Joan, she knew, would not let a bit of silence throw her off a subject.
‘So look. What are you going to do? You won’t talk to your father about his problems. You won’t talk to your husband about how you’re worried he can support your family. So who are you going to talk to? Apart from your bit on the side, obviously.’
Rebecca shrugged slightly as she popped a Gaviscon from its foil packaging.
‘I’ll say this – and take this as a lucky sign of the interfering you avoided when you decided not to stay together with my perfect son – but you need to talk to your husband. Too much pussyfooting around and not enough talking can break a marriage.’
‘It’s a difficult time for h—’
‘It’s a difficult time for you both. And you get two votes right now. And you owe it to him not to be the one who’s holding something back.’
They smiled at each other, both aware that Joan was sounding like a bossy mother.
‘I’ll stop nagging. And I’d better go, before we get papped by your newspaper stalker.’
They hugged goodbye, Rebecca promised to keep her up to date with Bompalomp news, and Joan left. With her went Rebecca’s clarity. The talk had left her more confused about what she had to do. She was going to try and talk to James, though. She hoped that might help.
Chapter 29
James didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he hadn’t wanted to go home from work that night, knowing what lay ahead. But the evening had worked out worse than he expected.
The tears were nothing new. The going over again and again how terribly their parents were behaving was standard – as was the picking away at the edges of the question of whether Howard was a cottager or not. It wouldn’t be said openly, of course. They always discussed whether he had done it or not without actually saying what it was that he might have done. The new offences supposedly recorded on his business trips to suppliers up north made dancing around the subject trickier, but she’d come up with some new moves to tiptoe around that.
Jesus, he found that annoying.
That night he hadn’t even been able to change the subject to Bomp. She hadn’t wanted to look forward to what their family would be like. And lately, with her increased unpredictability, the never-ending list of things they needed to spend money on, and going over and over decisions for a birth plan they’d figured out weeks ago, that wasn’t much fun either. He was beginning to worry what it would be like when the baby was actually here. Also, how his day had gone would rarely get a mention. Not that he wanted to talk about it.
He worried what this new-found lack of tolerance meant about his marriage. James thought back to his old job – the earlier days when he was working his way up, always hanging out with the slightly older guys he was on a team with. They’d always treated their wives as another tricky client to manage, phoning them at six to say they wouldn’t be home for a while because they had to do an appraisal of the junior manager, and giving him a wink as they packed up for the pub. James had always wondered why they couldn’t just tell the truth, that they’d had a shitty day and needed a quick pint to depressurise. He’d been sure then that was what he would do.
Now he was turning into one of them. Or maybe he could finally see their point.
But if he was becoming one of those guys for whom a family is just another ball to juggle, alongside clients who always expect their work to be done as a priority, and bosses who think you could always be working harder, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. It had started off OK. They were both furious about the idea of the journalist coming to their home, and it was James who wanted to call him up and give him a bollocking. But as Rebecca had pointed out, it would have been James that would have looked like a raving lunatic if the guy did manage to get anything in the paper. He was the enemy, and he
united them. They plotted ways to engineer his downfall involving celebrity honeytraps and fake stories that would make his name dirt in papers the world over. But when they started talking about what he said…
James had been trying to say that what was important to them was each other. That it was the life they were building together that mattered the most, and that they had no control over what other people chose to do.
But saying ‘fuck ’em!’ about Rebecca’s parents wasn’t the most eloquent way of getting that across.
He’d apologised as soon as the look on her face registered in his head, but it was too late by then. It was the statement that signalled the gloves were off, that no blow was too low, and there’d be no penalties for hair-pulling or eye-gouging. Within minutes she’d accused him of not caring about her family. She’d asked, in that infuriating lawyer-ish way, why he hadn’t got a new job yet. It felt like an accusation that he didn’t care enough about their future, and a trap intended for him to incriminate himself. He’d accused her of always having to be the victim, and of refusing to face reality and get on with life.
But it hadn’t really cleared the air. She’d asked him what that was supposed to mean, and instead of answering, he’d decided he’d had enough. And when he’d slammed the door and headed up to the half-finished baby’s room he didn’t feel any better. Maybe if he’d stormed out of the house entirely it would have been better. But it was pissing it down raining, and he hadn’t wanted to go out in that. And he hadn’t wanted to go to their bedroom because, well, it was like being a stroppy teenager. So he was stuck in what was little more than a box room with nothing for company but a half-finished IKEA chest of drawers that needed taking apart almost completely because he’d used the piece that was supposed to be the top as the base, meaning the unlacquered MDF would be showing.