The manageress of the salon had seen quite a lot of girls like Dil y. In fact she was rather tired of girls like Dil y and wasn’t going to waste her breath, yet again, explaining that the current employment market was not a pick-and-choose, plenty-more-where-that-came-from scenario any more. So she looked at Dil y – pretty girl, and a deft worker – and said she should of course make up her own mind, but that the salon needed an extra girl, on the terms she had specified, immediately, and that the job would be given to the next suitable candidate who came through the door, which might be that very afternoon. She then turned away to talk to a client in a very different, animated manner, and Dil y went out into the street feeling, aggrievedly, that she hadn’t in any way merited being treated like that.
She continued to feel uneasy, heading for the underground. She’d gone for the interview at her friend Breda’s insistence, and everything about the salon, and the people, had been real y nice. It was just the hours. It was OK, wasn’t it, to decide for yourself about the hours? It wasn’t right, was it, to ask someone to work part-time, and then tel them that half that part-time was going to be Saturdays and Sundays? That wasn’t fair. Dil y was sure that wasn’t fair. Dad had always told them that work would never satisfy them if their hearts weren’t in it, and how could your heart be in something where you felt you were in some way being exploited because you were only a junior therapist, and part-time at that?
Dil y argued with herself al the way home. She texted Breda, as promised, to tel her about the interview and that she wasn’t sure about the job, and Breda texted back ‘MISTAKE’ in capital letters, which wasn’t the reaction Dil y was expecting, so she deleted the message, but the word
‘mistake’ clung to her mind and seemed to echo there like an insistent drumbeat. Her discomfort was increased by not being sure how Chrissie would react to her story, because there was a danger – a definite danger – that her mother might look at her as the manager of the salon had done, and Dil y wasn’t at al sure that she could take that. Everything had got so unpredictable lately, and the whole Amy thing was just making it worse.
The best thing to do, Dil y decided, was to hope that Chrissie would be at home alone, and that Dil y, instead of recounting the story as it had happened, could slightly readjust the narrative to conclude that Chrissie’s opinion had to be sought and acted upon before Dil y could, real y, either accept or decline the job offer.
But Chrissie wasn’t alone. Chrissie and Tamsin were in the sitting room and Tamsin had evidently been crying. She was sniffing stil , crouched in an armchair clutching a bal ed-up tissue. Chrissie was on the sofa, sitting rather upright, and not, to Dil y’s anxious eye, looking especial y sympathetic.
Dil y dropped her bag in the doorway.
‘What’s going on?’
Chrissie said to Tamsin, ‘Do you want to tel her, or shal I?’
Tamsin said unsteadily, teasing out shreds of her tissue bal , ‘It’s Robbie.’
Dil y came hurriedly round the sofa and sat down next to Chrissie. She said in a horrified voice, ‘He hasn’t dumped you?’
Tamsin shook her head.
‘Wel then—’
‘But he might!’ Tamsin said in a wail.
‘What d’you mean?’
Tamsin began to cry again.
‘He told Tamsin,’ Chrissie said, ‘that he was tired of waiting for her to move in with him, and that he could only suppose that her reluctance meant she didn’t real y want to, so he’s told her to go away and decide, and tel him final y in the morning.’
‘Wel ,’ Dil y said, abruptly conscious of her own currently single state, ‘that’s easy, isn’t it?’
‘No!’ Tamsin shouted.
Dil y glanced quickly at her mother.
‘I thought,’ Dil y said to Tamsin, ‘that you wanted to move in with Robbie?’
Tamsin howled, ‘I can’t, I can’t, can I?’
‘Why not?’ Dil y said.
‘Because of Mum,’ Tamsin wailed, ‘because of Mum and this flat and Amy – and Dad dying. And everything. I can’t.’
Dil y swal owed.
‘There’s stil me—’
‘You haven’t got a job—’
‘I might have!’
‘Oh God,’ Tamsin said, ‘ might this, might that. Why don’t you ever do something?’
‘Why don’t you?’ Dil y said crossly. ‘Why don’t you move in with Robbie?’
‘Exactly,’ Chrissie said.
They both turned to look at her. She had spread her hands out in her lap, and she was looking down at them.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ Chrissie said, ‘when or how I was going to say this to you. I certainly didn’t plan on saying it today, but here you both are, and now seems as good a time as any.’
She paused. Tamsin sat up a little straighter, and lifted her arms, in a characteristical y settling gesture, to pul her ponytail tighter through its black velvet band.
‘I think the house is sold,’ Chrissie said, ‘and I think I’m going to take the flat. And I’ve definitely accepted the job, for a trial period of three months, even though I don’t think of it as that, I think of it as something I’l do as wel as I can until I can do something better. I get the feeling Leverton’s understand that.’
The girls waited, watching her. She went on surveying her hands.
‘I haven’t thought what I’m going to say for very long,’ Chrissie said, ‘but the reason I’m talking to you is that, having had the thought, or, to be honest, having had it suggested to me, it strikes me as the right thing to do. The right way forward.’
She stopped and looked up. Tamsin and Dil y were sitting bolt upright, knees together, waiting.
‘What?’ Tamsin said.
‘There’l always be a home for you with me,’ Chrissie said, ‘always. And there’s one for Amy now, of course, if she wants it, which she doesn’t seem to. But it’s there for her, a bedroom, even if she isn’t in it. But – it’s different for you two, isn’t it? And it’s different for me now too, different in a way I never imagined, never pictured, and I can see that none of us are going to move forwards, move on from Dad dying, from life with Dad, if we just go on living round – round this kind of hol ow centre, if you see what I mean, living al clinging together because that’s al we know, even if it isn’t doing any of us any good.’
She paused. Dil y looked anxiously at Tamsin.
‘So?’ Tamsin said.
‘I think,’ Chrissie said careful y to Tamsin, ‘that you should go and live with Robbie. I think you should make Robbie your priority as you once appeared to want to because if you make me your priority you’l get stuck and then we won’t like each other at al . Wil we? And Dil y. I think you should take any job you are offered and ask about among your friends for a room in someone’s flat—’
Dil y gave a little gasp.
‘And discover,’ Chrissie said firmly, ‘the satisfaction of standing on your own two feet. I’l help you as much as I can, but I’m not suggesting you live with me for exactly the reasons I gave Tamsin. It won’t be easy, but we won’t get trapped in resentment, in the past, either. We are al going to try and make something of our lives and of our relationship. I don’t actual y think our relationship would survive living together. Do you?’ She stopped again, and looked at them. She seemed suddenly to be on the edge of tears. The girls were gazing back at her, but neither of them was crying.
‘And so,’ Chrissie said, not at al steadily, ‘I intend to live in that flat on my own after the house is sold. You’l be so welcome there, any time, but you won’t be living there. You’l be living your own lives, lives where you can begin to put the past behind you, where it belongs. Elsewhere.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
Margaret had done what Scott caled getting them in. She was at one of the low tables with armchairs, in the first-floor bar of the hotel overlooking the river, and she had ordered a gin and tonic for herself, and a bottle of Belgian beer for Scott, and it was very pleasant
sitting there, with the early-evening sun shining on the river and the great bulk of the Baltic on the further shore with some daft modern-art slogan on a huge banner plastered to its side. Amazing what people thought they could get away with, amazing what people put up with, amazing to think of the contrasts. There was the pretentious nonsense al over the Baltic – it had just been a flour mil when Margaret was growing up – and then, at the other end of the scale, there was the old Baptist church in Tynemouth, now deconsecrated and a warren of gimcrack little shops with Mr Lee’s Tattooing Parlour right under the old church window which said ‘God is love’ in red-and-white glass. Just thinking about it made Margaret want to snort.
‘Penny for them, Mam,’ Scott said, dropping into the chair opposite her.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t want to know.’ She waved a hand at the Baltic. ‘That rubbish, for starters—’
‘He’s a serious artist,’ Scott said, ‘and if you don’t behave, I’l take you to see his video instal ation.’
‘You wil not—’
‘Amy liked it,’ Scott said.
Margaret’s expression gentled.
‘Amy — ’
Scott grinned.
‘She’s texting, al the time.’
Margaret said, ‘Dawson liked her. Even Dawson. He won’t sit on just anyone’s lap.’
‘We’ve al gone a bit soft on Amy—’
‘Wel ,’ Margaret said more briskly, ‘she’s got work to do.’
‘She’l do it.’
‘She’s not very practised. She’s been sheltered. Over-sheltered. She thinks money’s just pocket money. She doesn’t know anything about money
—’
‘She knows enough to get Mr Harrison to give her a job.’
‘Nonsense,’ Margaret said.
Scott pul ed out his phone, and pressed a few buttons. Then he held the phone out to his mother.
‘Read that.’
Margaret leaned forward, putting on her reading glasses. She peered at the screen. She said, ‘So he says there’s work for her. I doubt it. He’l only have her fetching coffee.’
‘She won’t mind that. She’l be learning. She’l get to see his acts. She’l be performing. She can sing.’
Margaret leaned back.
‘I know she can sing. It’s not much of a voice yet but it’s in tune—’
‘Bang on the note.’
‘Don’t make a fool of yourself over her, pet,’ Margaret said.
Scott took a swal ow of his beer. He grinned at his mother.
‘She’s on a mission to find me a girlfriend.’
‘Good luck to her.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Scott said, ‘I don’t mind if she manages it—’
‘What’s got into you?’
Scott raised his beer bottle towards his mother.
‘Same as you.’
‘I’m just as I was,’ Margaret said.
‘No, you’re not.’
‘I’m—’
‘Look at you,’ Scott said, ‘look at you. You’ve had something done to your hair, and that’s new.’
‘What’s new?’
‘That dress.’
‘Oh,’ Margaret said airily, ‘this.’ She looked out at the river. ‘Everything I’d got suddenly looked so tired.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do you say yes as if you know something I don’t know?’
‘Mam,’ Scott said, ‘I don’t know anything you don’t know. The difference between us is just that I admit it.’
‘Admit what? ’
‘That I feel better. That you feel better. That we al feel better.’
‘Al ?’
‘Yes,’ Scott said firmly, ‘Mr Harrison too.’
Margaret took a sip of her drink.
‘What has Bernie Harrison got to do with it?’
‘You tel me,’ Scott said.
Margaret smiled privately down into her gin and tonic.
‘Why’d you ask me here?’ Scott said. ‘Why’re you al tarted up?’
‘Don’t use that word to me—’
‘Why, Mam?’
Margaret looked up.
‘Are you in a hurry, pet?’
‘No,’ Scott said. ‘Wel , yes, actual y. I’m meeting some of the lads from work.’
‘And the lasses, too?’ Margaret said.
Scott said, smiling, ‘There’s always the lasses too.’
‘Ah ’
‘Never mind ah. I want to know what’s going on. I want to know why you asked me here.’
Margaret looked round the bar in a leisurely way, as if she was savouring something. Then she said, ‘Bernie’l be here in ten minutes.’
‘And? And?’
‘I just thought,’ Margaret said, ‘that I’d like to tel you before I told him. That’s al .’
It was late when she got home, but the night sky over the sea was dim rather than dark, and the sea was washing peaceful y up against the shore below Percy Gardens. Margaret liked the sea in its summer mood, when even if it lost its temper it was only briefly, unlike the sustained furious rages of winter when she could stand at her sitting-room window and see the spray flung angrily upwards in great dramatic plumes. But in the summer, there was less sense of frustration, less of a feeling that the sea was outraged to find its wild energies curtailed by a shoreline, by the upsettingly domestic barriers of a coast road and a crescent of houses inhabited by people who thought they had the capacity to control and contain whatever was inconvenient about nature.
Margaret paid off the taxi, and walked, in her new summer shoes, to the edge of the grassy oval of grass in front of Percy Gardens, so that she could see the sea, heaving and gleaming and spil ing itself, over and over, on to the stones below her. Bernie Harrison had wanted to take her somewhere impressive to celebrate, but she’d said no, they could eat there, in the brasserie of the hotel, and when he said wasn’t that meant for much younger people than they were she said speak for yourself, Bernie Harrison, but I feel years younger than I did only a week ago.
Their steaks had come on rectangular wooden platters, like superior bread boards, and Bernie had found a very respectable burgundy on the wine list to drink with them, and Margaret had to hand it to him, he hadn’t crowed over her once, he hadn’t said, ‘What kept you?’ or, ‘About time too,’ he’d just said, over and over, that he was so pleased, so pleased, and, if he was honest, relieved too.
‘Have you told Glenda?’
‘Of course not. Would I tel Glenda before I told you?’
‘I think,’ Bernie said, reflecting on how nice it was to have chips with his steak, how nice it was to be with a woman who didn’t think chips were common, ‘she’l like the plan, don’t you?’
‘She’s been on at me ever since you first suggested it.’
‘Margaret,’ Bernie said, putting down his knife and fork, ‘Margaret. How do you feel?’
She glanced up at him.
‘If you can’t see that for yourself, Bernie Harrison,’ she said, ‘you need your eyes seeing to.’
He put her into a taxi in a way she found entirely acceptable, no chal enges, no fake gal antry, no showing off. He’d just kissed her cheek, thanked her and said, ‘We’l both sleep happier tonight,’ and then slapped the roof of the taxi as if to wish her Godspeed on the journey home and somehow more than that, on a journey into something that was, of course, more of the same, but with a twist, with a new injection of vitality, a new optimism.
She took several deep breaths of the sea, and then she turned and went careful y back over the rough grass to her front door, and put the key in the lock.
Dawson, with his strange, rare and precise intuition, was sitting eight feet inside the door, waiting for her. When she came in, he lifted himself to his feet and arched his back slightly and made a smal , interrogatory remark.
Margaret looked at him. She remembered him as that smal , battered kitten with a bloody eye and patchy fur and felt a rush of affection for him,
not only for what he was and what he had overcome, but because he had by now walked so much of her path with her, had seen her out of some considerable shadows into, if not blazing sunlight, at least light-dappled shade.
‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t,’ Margaret said. ‘Just this once.’
She fol owed him into the kitchen. He paced ahead of her, not hurrying, confident of his smal victory, and, as ever, blessedly, uncomplicatedly detached.
He sat down with dignity beside his food bowl and watched her while she found a smal square tin of his special-treat cat food in the cupboard and peeled back the lid, releasing a rich, savoury aroma that made him run his curling pink tongue round his whiskers.
‘There,’ Margaret said. ‘There. You fat old bul y.’
She straightened up. Dawson folded his front paws under himself, in order to bring his chin down to the level of his dish. He was purring triumphantly.
‘Night-night,’ Margaret said. ‘Enjoy. See you in the morning.’
And then she turned to close the door and switch off the light.
Upstairs she put on the lamp by her bed, and opened the window, and drew the curtains halfway across so that there was enough space for a slice of summer dawn to fal through in the morning. Then she took off her new dress, and hung it up on a corner of her wardrobe, and put on her padded dressing gown and sat down at her dressing table to begin the rituals of the end of the day.
In front of her lay the Minton dish, waiting to receive her pearls and her earrings. It wasn’t quite empty, already containing two safety pins, a pearl button, and the wedding ring she had taken off those months before and al owed, subsequently, just to lie there until it became out of familiarity no more significant than the safety pins. She picked it up now, and looked at it. It had meant so much, once, had symbolized something when the marriage was happening, and even more when it was over. It had been, for years, a talisman, a token of validation, of justification, proof that she had been, in some way that had mattered very much at the time, more than just herself.
The Other Family Page 29