Behind Closed Doors

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘What are those for?’ I asked as he mopped up.

  He looked surprised. ‘These? Oh, at about three o’clock I get a bit chilly. Always have done, especially in the extremities. All goes a bit numb. Now, your mother and Jeannie are having a little Sauternes with their pudding, can I tempt you?’

  Mum and Jeannie were beside themselves now, noses practically touching across the table, about dear old Max Harrison, who, at Towcester the other day, had offered his services to the clerk of the course to ride in the four thirty after an injured jockey retired. He’d last ridden in a point-to-point in Tripoli before weighing in was in the rule book.

  ‘Should have taken him up on it!’ roared my father, who, together with the pudding wine, had brought in a plastic tub of Wall’s Neapolitan ice cream, which looked circa 1990. He began doling it out. ‘He’s a first-class jockey, won the four hundred guineas at Cheltenham in ’sixty-six. They missed a trick there. Dear God. There they are.’ He stared. The next spoonful had brought up, like a fishing trawler, a pair of spectacles. ‘Good Lord. I’d quite given up hope. Dickie! Remember I accused you of theft and grand larceny last time you were here hoovering up my victuals? Look what I’ve just found!’

  My father had a cavernous voice and Dickie, who’d nodded off again, jerked awake. Everyone bellowed with laughter as Dad dipped the glasses in the water jug and set them aside. Pudding and wine consumed, Jeannie suddenly pushed back her chair and declared it was time. I assumed they were off, but to my surprise everyone got up with alacrity and my parents led the way back into the sitting room. They all shuffled behind the sofa, where, I’d failed to notice earlier, our old bridge table was set up. With much apologizing to me, they hustled eagerly to their seats, and then proceeded to play at least six hands of bridge.

  ‘What, after all that wine?’ Helena said dubiously when I rang her later.

  ‘Sharp as tacks, all of them. It was like they’d suddenly come alive. Snapped into gear. Huge cards, obviously, for Jeannie and Mum, and pressed right up to noses, but all sitting ramrod straight, even Dickie. Highly competitive too, and complete silence all round, only speaking when it was their turn to bid. Extraordinary! I felt like the old granny, sitting by the fire with the colour supplement.’

  Helena was silent. And, I could tell, slightly disap pointed. ‘But how did they get home?’ she demanded. ‘If they’d drunk all that wine? And Dickie’s inclined to nod off and Jeannie’s half-blind?’

  ‘Camilla came for them at about five. I hadn’t realized she’d dropped them off too. Remember Camilla? The daughter?’

  ‘Yes, had a bit of a nervy breaky after the ghastly Torquil left her, but used to be rather fun. A huge party girl.’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t look so fun-loving now. In fact she looked completely wild-eyed and stressed out. As we found their coats and sticks, she was spitting to me about what a bloody nightmare the whole thing is. Jeannie and Dickie are in a converted barn in her garden, apparently. Dickie put her straight on that, though, saying it was his garden. Nothing wrong with his hearing, clearly.’

  ‘Oh yes, she and her new boyfriend are in the big house now.’

  ‘Yes, but she said that, frankly, it’s a poisoned chalice. Worse than having teenagers. All they do is enjoy themselves whilst she ferries them from pillar to post and clears up after them. Sounds familiar?’

  ‘But they can’t have fun all the time, surely? They’re too incapacitated for that,’ Helena said, irritated.

  ‘Well, that’s the thing. Apart from the physical side of things, they’re all on sparkling form in the marbles department. Honestly, Hels, even Mum gave a very spirited defence of Boris over lunch. All horribly politically incorrect, of course, about how she couldn’t care how many love children he had running around as long as he was up to running the country, and how girls these days should grow up about having their bottoms pinched because she’d lost count of the times she’d been chased round tables or ducked out of a lift when she realized who she was getting in with. Imo would have had a fit. Especially when Dickie kept patting my knee and telling me sympathetically I’d be fine, soon, and that they’d find me a nice young man. They were making a fuss of me, Hels, hoping I’d be all right.’

  She went quiet. ‘Perhaps you hit a good day.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. When I asked Mum later about the little Waitrose incident, she said; “But I simply forgot, Luce. I was miles away. Haven’t you ever done that?” And I had to admit, I had.’

  ‘What, stolen from Waitrose?’

  ‘No, but got to the door and the alarm’s gone off. I was at the self-service when I did it, filling my straw basket, baguette on top in a rather picturesque manner. I think in my head I may even have imagined I was in France. I must have forgotten to pay.’

  There was a silence and I wondered if Helena had too.

  ‘Never!’ she snorted when I asked her. ‘I was just wondering if you’d inherited some of Mum’s loopy genes!’

  It was my time to be quiet. Helena found Mum’s charm and eccentricity intensely irritating.

  ‘So what are you saying?’ she asked brusquely. ‘You don’t need to be there?’

  ‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that even this short amount of time with them has shown me they’re not incapable.’

  ‘Fish fingers for lunch!’

  ‘Yes, but so what? Some people would think it’s equally lunatic to slave away over Ottolenghi for hours.’ Helena, I knew, after putting in a twelve-hour day in the office, regularly did just that.

  ‘And the cottage?’ she demanded.

  ‘Ah, the cottage,’ I said nervously, knowing she’d freak. ‘Well, that’s another story. Let’s just say I’m very definitely in the spare room for the minute.’

  I bid her goodbye, inventing some spurious excuse about Mum wanting me in the kitchen, and hastened away.

  11

  There’d been a fair amount of stalling about seeing the cottage – procrastination tactics, I realized, in retrospect. Once Camilla had carted her parents home my parents insisted on washing up first, before we went across. Obviously I did the lion’s share while they plumped cushions. When we’d got things straight, though, I suggested again that we pop over. My father said it was getting dark. I said surely the place had lights? He then explained that the silver still needed polishing and that if he didn’t do it now, he’d forget. He sat down firmly at the kitchen table with a duster and the Brillo, glaring at my mother. That seemed to galvanize Mum. She met the challenging look defiantly, straightened up and stiffened her back. Suddenly she was up to the task.

  ‘Yes, let’s go,’ she declared. ‘Danny’s still working there, of course, but he won’t mind.’

  ‘Danny? What – the builder? Is he? I didn’t see a van.’

  ‘Oh, he walks, leaves all his stuff there. And don’t forget,’ she adopted a twinkling, merry countenance, ‘you’ll need a certain amount of imagination!’

  With her words echoing in my ears and my father avoiding my eye as he polished away, the two of us went outside. Picking our way through the undergrowth in the dusk, I held Mum’s arm. Slowly we made our way through the long grass and what remained of the gravel path to the front door of what we quaintly, and anachronistically, called the cottage. The door stuck a bit so I gave it a shove. It still wouldn’t open so I gave it more heft. In I flew, into what can only be described as a building site. I stumbled to a halt. A wall had come down between the hall and the sitting room and the remains of it, together with the sledgehammer, was still in a pile of bricks on the floor. Floorboards were up, joists were exposed, and wires hung from walls. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling and a broken window let in a cool breeze. In the midst of all this dystopian chaos, Danny was indeed very much in situ. Hunched beside a pathetic smoky fire in a blackened grate, he sat on an upturned crate, a mug of tea in one hand, a fork in the other. An open can of cold baked beans, a saucer full of cigarette ends, and the Sun newspaper
were before him on another upturned crate. He turned in surprise as we entered. Danny was seventy if he was a day.

  ‘Ah, Danny!’ My mother clasped her hands joyfully. ‘So sorry to disturb your tea break. How are you getting on?’

  Danny looked around critically, not in the least abashed at being caught on the hop. He sucked his teeth. ‘I’m not gonna lie, Mrs Hartley, it’s a long job. A very long job.’

  ‘Right. But you’ll have it done in a jiffy? This is my daughter Lucy, by the way. She’s going to be living here. Lucy, Danny.’ Anyone would think we were at a cocktail party.

  ‘Well,’ he shook his head soberly, not entering into my mother’s festive spirit, ‘there’s a lot more than I thought. A lot more. I’d say you can forget about staying here for a bit.’ He looked at me accusingly, as if I’d really got ahead of myself.

  ‘Well – clearly!’ I spluttered.

  ‘No, not for a bit, I agree,’ Mum said, patting my arm. ‘It’ll be a while before it’s ready. But not too long. Danny’s got it all under control, haven’t you, Danny?’ But Danny declined to answer. He stared around gloomily. ‘And that’s why I’ve got your old room ready,’ she prattled on. ‘Just for the time being. But I just wanted to show you how it was going.’

  Slowly, I thought, as we bid farewell to Danny. He went back to his newspaper. It seemed to me he might be bedded in for the night.

  Back in the house, I sensed a huge amount of tension coming to the surface as both my parents braced themselves for a horrific row. My father had a face like thunder, not thrilled at being caught on the back foot courtesy of something that had clearly been out of his control, and my mother was making her famous face, chin in the air, tight-lipped, defiant. There were quite a few things I would have liked to say myself, but given the amount of alcohol that had been consumed and the tired and emotional state of all parties, I heroically held my tongue. Instead I went to put the kettle on, seething inwardly.

  It was about eight o’clock by now, and my mother declared she was having an early night, which was a huge relief all round. Dad quietly watched the television whilst I went out to the car for a case of clothes which I took up to my old room. I gazed around dispiritedly. I felt like a time traveller in this familiar room with its faded rose print wallpaper and candlewick bedspread, and not in a good way. If I was the depressive type, now would be the time for it to kick in. To think about how much I’d left behind, at least in terms of a normal London life, and wonder what a woman of my age was doing, moving back with her parents. I let out a long, shaky breath and steadied myself. Then I wandered down the passage, looking in all the old familiar rooms. I pushed open the door to my father’s dressing room, where he now slept. On top of his chest of drawers were some pottery animals Helena and I had made at school. Inside his sock drawer I’d once looked for his military medals, to show the children. Instead I’d found letters from Michael. Thanking Dad for a Christmas present. But weirdly, referring to a loose tile on our roof, which he needed to get fixed in case it fell on someone in the garden. The next letter declined an invitation, on my behalf, to go to Ascot with them while Michael was away. It mentioned my car, which he said had a problem with the brakes. No one, except those who knew Michael well, and I include my father in this, would think it strange. But I’d gone cold. I knew exactly why my father had kept the letters. It made me catch my breath even now, but also feel extremely relieved to be here, and to be alone.

  I went back to my room. I hung up my clothes and put a few things in the bathroom. The rest, I decided, like so much else, could wait until tomorrow.

  The following morning, over breakfast, I tackled my parents on more prosaic matters. Like where, in God’s name, they’d found Danny?

  ‘He’s the Dugdales’ chap,’ said Mum in surprise, passing me the marmalade. ‘Worked for them for years.’

  ‘About a hundred,’ remarked my father from behind his newspaper, clearly not the instigator of this farce.

  ‘He seems a bit … glass half empty?’

  ‘You’re wrong, actually,’ said Dad, clearing his throat. ‘Danny’s glass is empty.’

  ‘And will the Dugdales mind if we return him to them and start afresh?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Mum. ‘Cynth’s been muttering at bridge about how she misses him in her herbaceous border.’

  ‘He’s a gardener?’

  ‘Well, he’s a jack of all trades. You know. Used to work on the home farm. Can turn his hand to anything.’

  ‘Except one of them is a dead loss, because he lost three fingers in the combine,’ came dryly from behind the Telegraph. Dad appeared briefly to roll his eyes meaningfully at me. Then he disappeared again. ‘I’ve unpacked your car, by the way. Put all your bedding and cushions and books and whatever in the blue spare room, for the moment.’

  ‘Oh Dad, you shouldn’t have done that!’ My father, as ever, would have been up at six this morning. ‘Some of those cases were heavy. I’d have done it!’

  I sensed, however, that whilst it had probably taken him ages and been a Herculean task, this was something he’d wanted to do to make up for yesterday’s disappointment.

  ‘Nonsense, your father can manage; he’s as strong as an ox! We’re not entirely decrepit, you know.’

  This, or words to that effect, was to become something of a mantra from my mother, repeated at regular intervals: and it was one which increasingly reinforced to me that they were precisely that.

  After I’d rung the Aga man and organized a service, then got to grips with the Checkatrade website on my laptop and made some calls, sorting out two teams of local builders to come and quote, I had a quick bath, then went downstairs. I realized the house was silent. No sign of anyone. Finally, I pushed open the study door. Dad sat in his leather chair by the window, and Mum was on her knees before him, doing something to his leg. As I appeared, she stopped. They both stared guiltily, like naughty children. Dad hurriedly dropped his tracksuit trouser.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just changing your father’s ulcer dressing.’

  I went forward and lifted his trouser leg. A ghastly sight met my eyes. A gaping wound was oozing with yellow pus. And not only that, something was moving. I made myself breathe. My father’s eyes were averted when I looked at him. I steadied myself.

  ‘Why isn’t the practice nurse doing this?’

  ‘I missed my appointment. It was on Tuesday. Something came up. But your mother’s very able. She’d have been a nurse if she hadn’t married me, you know. Didn’t you always say that, darling?’

  ‘Oh, I’d have loved it,’ Mum said, sitting back on her heels, eyes shining. ‘With a pert little cap and those dear little puffed sleeves. Skirt nipped in at the waist and—’

  ‘Yes, but she’s not a nurse,’ I said curtly, cutting into her fantasy world, so horribly like my own. ‘What’s the surgery number?’

  ‘Oh no, you won’t get an appointment now, not if you’ve missed one. They’re dragons!’ my mother breathed fearfully. Meanwhile my father got up foghorning: ‘Perfectly all right! Nothing whatever the matter!’ and shuffled off to water his tomatoes in the greenhouse.

  I got one though, an appointment. And later that day, drove him down.

  ‘Dad,’ I asked casually on the way into town, knowing from experience, with Ned and Imo, that these things were better broached in the car, side by side, and not face-to-face. ‘Is it too painful to drive? Is that why you missed your appointment?’

  He paused. ‘Only at the moment. Be right as rain soon. Pressure on the pedals.’

  ‘Right. And is that why Mum’s driving?’

  ‘Well, she’s entitled to, darling, she’s still got a licence!’ But he wouldn’t look at me. Gazed out of the window at the scenery, like Imo used to. Right. So nothing to do with him leaving the keys lying around – this was their modus vivendi. She drove, half blind and very fearful, because he couldn’t. I licked my lips. And their house was too remote for them to walk, obv
iously. The bus? Yes, maybe later, the stop was only down the lane. But I knew they wouldn’t countenance it now. Two old people on a bus with their pac-a-macs and plastic bags? No. Not yet. They were in denial as much as Helena and I were. Because why hadn’t my sister and I thought this through earlier? Why hadn’t we considered how two people in their eighties might get about in the country? But Dad had always been so capable, so strong, so indestructible. I realized the difference between a man in his seventies and a man in his eighties was huge. I swallowed, gripping the wheel tightly as I drove into the surgery car park.

  As I waited for Dad in reception, I felt ashamed that we’d been so cross with Mum, whereas in fact she’d been protecting Dad. And of course, they weren’t stupid. They both knew that if neither of them was driving, it would have been something of a crisis point as far as continuing to live at Pope’s Farm, their beloved home for fifty-odd years, was concerned. The house my father had always said he’d leave feet first.

  After a bit, Dad reappeared, looking uncharacteristically sheepish. I got to my feet. He glanced around warily, but the reception area, despite my mother’s dire warnings of hordes of people, was empty.

  ‘Maggots,’ he said shortly. My jaw dropped. I stared at him, aghast. ‘Which actually, she said, is not unusual. Nature’s way of getting rid of diseased flesh. I remember once one of my lance sergeants had them in North Africa. But not ideal.’