‘Even if you’re not shouting, you’re angry. You’re the one that’s getting angry, and it’s ridiculous, because I haven’t done anything,’ said Paul, descending to join his mother in the hall, rubbing his knee as he went.
‘Precisely. You’ve put your finger on it. I am angry. Yes. And I’m angry because you haven’t done anything. There is a little girl that needs you, and you have done nothing.’
‘Mum –’
‘I’m not going to argue. I’ve said my piece, and nothing you can say will change my mind, so I’m going, and I don’t want to hear any more of your excuses. I just want you to think about what I’ve said, and remember that Ella is going to be alive, God willing, for the rest of your life, and one day you are going to have to look her in the eye and account for what you’ve done. Or haven’t done. Bye. Thanks for having me.’
She pecked him on the cheek and left the house, closing the door behind her. Paul walked to the living-room window and watched her figure recede down the street. If they hadn’t been together a minute earlier, he might not have recognised her. The mother he had grown up with didn’t walk like this. His mother never walked this fast, with such bounce and purpose. This was not a woman he knew.
One Year Later
whatever made him happy
Daniel and Erin’s wedding was unusual not only because it took place in the London Eye, but also because the best man was their three-month-old son, Joseph. As the huge Ferris wheel climbed up from the Thames, ascending over the city, the registrar gave a short speech to which no one listened. Everyone either gazed at Daniel and Erin, who were gazing at one another, or at the vast roofscape slowly coming into view below, glistening in the crisp spring sunshine.
Daniel was wearing a suit that cost twenty times more than any other item of clothing he had ever bought. Erin had persuaded him to try it on ‘for fun’, then, when he had seen himself in the mirror, and had realised for the first time in his life that he was capable of dressing smartly without looking like a waiter, if only he spent enough money, he gritted his teeth and handed over the credit card. Erin’s outfit was a green vintage Ossie Clark dress that had been the subject of a brutal and frantic bidding war on eBay, from which Erin had emerged steely and triumphant. It looked simple enough, but performed an astonishing, subtle feat of concealment and accentuation, hiding the after-effects of her pregnancy while making the most of her milk-swollen breasts, in the process restoring her to a strangely enhanced version of her physical prime. When she put it on and examined herself in the mirror, she began to believe, for the first time since the birth, that she would eventually be herself again. She would not feel like a cow for ever.
The glass pod in which the ceremony took place contained only relatives, with a small number of invited friends crammed into the pod behind, pawing at the glass and waving whenever they caught anyone’s eye across the narrow void of London sky. This was not a solemn affair.
Gillian had worried that it would seem like too much of a joke, but now, as it was happening, she felt reconciled. Happy, even. No, she was ecstatic. She had been allowed only two guests of her own, and had chosen, of course, Carol and Helen. In a manoeuvre plotted by Gillian, but never discussed with Daniel, both women were accompanied by their sons rather than their husbands. Gillian felt it was appropriate, not because there was any real friendship still alive between the three boys, but because, somehow, this wedding felt like the culmination of a joint enterprise undertaken by all six of them.
Daniel had been stunned to see Matt and Paul walking into the pre-wedding reception with their mothers (though nothing Gillian did was ever entirely shocking), and he would have been angry if he hadn’t found himself buoyed up by an impenetrable bubble of wedding euphoria, and also strangely pleased to see them both.
He hadn’t seen Paul for more than ten years, and since hearing from Gillian about the lesbian-parented daughter scenario, he had wondered how the experiment was progressing. A smirk of mischievous curiosity was playing on his lips as he walked over to Paul and shook his hand.
Paul seemed strangely similar to how he had always been, and was as gay as ever, with the same detached reserve, but with a calmer, happier air to him than had ever been apparent in the past. After having made enough small talk to prevent the question sounding prurient, Daniel asked Paul how often he saw his child.
‘Every week,’ Paul replied.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I didn’t think I would, but … you know …’
‘What? Tell me,’ said Daniel. From his mother, he had heard extensive details about Helen’s intermittently successful struggle for contact with Ella, but had gleaned little trustworthy information about Paul.
‘Just … once I started, I couldn’t stop. It was tricky at first, but we’ve slowly figured something out that keeps everyone happy. I think we all found that … that the idea of a baby is very different from the reality. It sounds stupid, but –’
‘It’s not stupid,’ said Daniel. ‘You expect them to be a baby, not … a person. I mean, not straight away. Actually, maybe it is stupid, but I felt it, too.’
‘And they learn all this stuff all the time,’ said Paul, suddenly animated, ‘soaking everything up, and they change every week, but the one thing they don’t learn is a personality. That’s the amazing thing. It seems like it’s all there from the start, and all you do as a parent is … is slowly find out what it is.’
‘You think?’
‘You’ll see. Joseph will be someone completely different a year from now, but he’ll also still be exactly the same.’
‘That’s a weird idea.’
‘I never knew it would be so interesting,’ said Paul, his mouth curling into a hint of a smile, touched by some private thought of his child – a memory, perhaps, or simply an anticipation of their next meeting.
As Daniel was dragged away to greet another guest, he turned back to Paul and told him, squeezing his arm for emphasis, that it was great to see him again, and to find him so happy. Paul blushed, and when Daniel insisted they should make sure they didn’t lose touch again, he handed over a business card with his email address. Daniel slid it into his jacket and, smiling as he turned away, gave the pocket two gentle pats.
Gillian was in the midst of a garbled explanation of the son-for-husband swap made by her two friends, involving an illness and an invitation lost in the post, with Daniel all the while trying to interrupt and let her know that he didn’t mind, when Matt grabbed him from behind and hoisted him into the air.
‘Weheeaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!’ said Matt. ‘What a man!’
‘Get off,’ said Daniel, wriggling free.
‘Nice suit,’ said Matt, turning to Gillian. ‘All it takes is a wedding, and he finally dresses like a grown-up.’
‘Hello, Matt,’ said Gillian, ‘so nice of you to step in at the last moment.’
Matt gave her a blank look.
‘Instead of your father,’ she went on, visibly urging Matt with a clenched jaw and bulging eyes to back up her lie.
‘Always ready to please,’ said Matt, leaning forwards to kiss her on both cheeks. ‘You must be so proud,’ he went on. ‘And all these years, I thought he was firing blanks.’
‘Firing blanks?’
‘He’s talking about Joseph,’ said Daniel, who was beginning to wonder how much longer this conversation could progress with neither his mother nor his friend understanding a single word the other one said. ‘Do you want to meet him?’
‘Er … OK,’ said Matt.
Gillian watched as Daniel led Matt towards Erin, took the baby from her arms, and placed him in Matt’s stiff embrace.
While Matt greeted this new life with the words, ‘He’s not going to chunder on my clothes, is he?’, Gillian turned and saw Carol standing alone at the edge of the room, watching her son cradle his friend’s baby. Carol’s features were clenched, frozen with what Gillian sensed was an intermingling of jealousy and regret.
One year on from t
heir week with their sons, only Carol’s life remained unchanged. While Gillian and Helen were both active grandmothers and, for the first time in years, active mothers, Matt still had the same job, lived in the same flat, and was as uncommunicative and evasive with his mother as ever. There was never a girlfriend who lasted long enough to merit a mention. When he failed with Julia, Matt had seemingly reverted without a thought to his old tastes.
Carol had unearthed in her son a desire to improve himself, but he apparently lacked the will to act on it. Her pressure, in the course of their week together, had forced him to admit to a dissatisfaction with his life, and to a yearning for something less shallow, but ultimately the life he lived appeared to offer a close enough approximation to whatever made him happy for Matt to lack the will to undertake any disruption.
Her intrusion had rippled the surface of her son’s life, nothing more. He wanted to change, but he also wanted to stay the same, and, as for almost everyone, the latter was a more powerful urge.
Carol’s week with her son had not been a waste of time. She had, at least, learned a little more about him. They had become reacquainted, briefly, which was worth doing, but she had no desire to go again. She now knew as much as she wanted to know.
Rings were exchanged at the apex of the Eye’s rotation, the Thames now a glinting silver thread far below, squirming through a vast landscape of brick and concrete, of human struggle. As they climbed through the air, the levity of the occasion slowly tailed away, a wave of emotion spreading from Daniel and Erin through to all the guests. This was not, however hastily and casually the event had been planned, however outlandish the location, a joke. Few things in life were more profound or serious than this.
It was Daniel, as a thin platinum band was placed on his finger, who cried first. Erin’s voice wavered throughout her vows, but she remained in control as Daniel slid the ring into place. They kissed immediately, their first married kiss, deep and tender, the first, without doubt, of many thousands. Daniel felt a tear drip from Erin’s cheek on to his lips. Then the muffled sound of a cheer from the neighbouring pod penetrated the glass, and they turned to see their friends waving manically, blowing kisses and saluting them with champagne glasses. Daniel and Erin blew back a joint kiss, brandishing their newly ringed fingers, causing another wave of cheers, accompanied by the popping of champagne corks.
‘What I usually say at this point,’ said the registrar, ‘is, “You may now kiss the bride.”’
Amid waves of laughter, Daniel and Erin kissed again, her fingers pushing tenderly up over his neck and into his hair. Without letting go of one another, they tumbled towards Gillian, who handed them their best man. As Joseph entered their embrace, Daniel momentarily felt the world beyond his wife and son recede away to nothing. This, right here, right now, in his arms, was as much as he would ever need. This was the pinnacle of happiness. He felt the sensation percolate through him, burying itself into his heart, a seam of purest joy locked for ever into the landscape of his body.
Barely a minute into the marriage, Joseph began to wail, a loud, hungry protest, angrily claiming back his mother. Erin sat and put him to her breast. He drank with his eyes wide open, barely blinking, gazing at her with something more than love or hunger or need or trust, with a look that seemed to speak of some other appetite, as if she held the answer to everything, as if, just by staring at her, the universe would be revealed to him.
The Eye continued to turn, carrying them all slowly back down to earth.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Felicity Rubinstein, Alexandra Pringle, Mike Jones, Leah Schmidt, Susannah Godman, Jane Finigan, Emily Sweet, Richard Sved, Kate Webb, John and Sue Sutcliffe, and also to Saul Venit and Caroline Bourne. And thank you above all, more than I can express, Maggie O’Farrell.
A Note on the Author
William Sutcliffe is the author of four previous
novels, New Boy, Are You Experienced?, The Love
Hexagon and Bad Influence, which have been
translated into twenty languages.
By the Same Author
New Boy
Are You Experienced?
The Love Hexagon
Bad Influence
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2008 by William Sutcliffe
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN 978-1-4088-4265-2
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Whatever Makes You Happy Page 27