by Hilary Boyd
‘Who else is coming?’ Jeanie indicated the table.
‘My oldest schoolfriend, Mark, and his wife and children. You won’t mind it not being just family, will you?’ Alex sounded almost defensive, as if he were challenging Jeanie to disagree.
‘How nice. I don’t think we’ve ever met them, have we?’
Chanty came out of the house with a tray full of glasses and a champagne bottle.
‘No, you won’t have.’ She set the tray down. ‘They’ve been in Hong Kong for five years. Mark’s made his mint now and they’ve just bought a pile in Dorset.’
Jeanie shot a glance at George, suddenly certain that she was being set up. Chanty wouldn’t meet her eye. Alex smiled triumphantly.
‘How lovely.’ She refused to rise to the bait, but Alex couldn’t resist.
‘We thought it’d be good for you to bond over West Country property.’
Jeanie accepted a glass of champagne and moved to one of the deckchairs in the shade of the cherry tree. This isn’t fair, she thought.
‘Isn’t this lovely,’ she repeated, but the tension could be cut with a knife.
Her daughter squatted down in front of her.
‘Mum, Alex is just winding you up. We asked Mark and Rachel because we haven’t seen them since they got back, not because of Dad’s moving thing.’
Jeanie smiled, but she felt miserable.
‘We can’t talk about it now, but are you so dead set against it? Ellie would love it, you know . . . all that fresh air and freedom. You’d see more of her than you do now, what with giving up the shop . . .’
‘If Ellie needs fresh air, then why don’t you and Alex move to bloody Dorset?’ she snapped.
Chanty looked patient. ‘Don’t be snippy, Mum, you know I can’t be a commissioning editor from Dorset, and I have to work.’
Jeanie bit her tongue before she made some damaging slight about her idle son-in-law. ‘And I have to work too,’ she countered.
‘Well, you don’t have to.’
‘Not financially, no, obviously not. But for me, I have to work for me.’ Ridiculous tears welled behind her eyes. ‘Your father seems to have written us off, Chanty. I’m not old; I may not be in my first flush, but there’s life in the old dog yet.’
Chanty smiled. ‘Of course there is, Mum,’ she assured her unconvincingly. ‘You look years younger than your age. But moving to the country isn’t fatal. Loads of people live there quite happily, you know.’
‘Yeah, yeah, and there are even golf courses.’
Her daughter looked puzzled. ‘We all thought you’d appreciate being able to wind down a bit.’
The bell rang, and Jeanie heard Ellie cry out from her upstairs bedroom.
‘I’ll get her.’ She hauled herself out of the deckchair and went to fetch her granddaughter.
Jeanie’s shop suddenly took on a different significance for her. When she opened up on the Tuesday after Easter, she looked lovingly at the boxes of wheatgrass and spinach piled up outside the door, at the inevitable pool of water the chill cabinet had leaked across the wooden floor, the baby tomatoes that had softened into rot overnight, the endless sell-by dates which would have to be checked. And when Jola arrived and said the new girl had quit before she’d even started, she didn’t even blink. Yes, much of the business of running a shop was frustrating, but she loved it. It was what she did and she was very successful at it.
She had refused to speak to George for the rest of Easter Day. The lunch had gone beautifully: the lamb was perfectly pink, the queen of puddings was a triumph, Alex’s friend and his wife were surprisingly charming considering they were friends of Alex. And Alex himself seemed less edgy in their company. But Jeanie had just gone through the motions. No one would have realized, except perhaps her too-perceptive son-in-law, but that was one of the few perks of maturity: you knew how to dissemble.
Tuesday was busy. Everyone was back from the Easter break, and she and Jola barely had time to draw breath until the afternoon. But as she smiled and chatted to her customers, stacked shelves, organized deliveries, she was conscious of a shadow over her day, like a half-forgotten dream.
It was with some relief that she read the text message from her friend, Rita: Court booked 4 5pm 2day. B there or b sqre. Rx.
Rita, a tall, tanned, athletic South African, was already on the court when Jeanie arrived in Waterlow Park. The weather had clouded over and there was a cold April breeze, but Rita had stripped off to display her habitually immaculate tennis dress and sparkling white trainers. Jeanie, by contrast, wore grey tracksuit pants and a black tee shirt. They were evenly matched on the court, the weekly game a fight to the death. Rita, with her long reach and killer serve, hit harder than Jeanie but moved more slowly. Jeanie was quicker round the court, more creative with her tactics and marginally more accurate. Neither could claim to have the upper hand over the years, and so every victory was exhilarating and very sweet.
But today Jeanie felt stumbling and lumpen, as if someone had tethered her feet.
‘Christ,’ Rita shouted when she’d walked away with the first set. ‘Wake up, Mrs L., this is like playing by myself.’
Jeanie waved her racket apologetically. ‘Sorry, sorry, I can’t seem to get going.’ But the second set was no better.
They gathered their stuff before the hour was up and went to sit on their favourite bench with a view over the distant city. The sun was setting, bathing the park in a cool, soft light.
‘Speak,’ Rita demanded.
‘You know we’ve been thinking of getting a weekend cottage for a while.’
Rita nodded.
‘Well, George has taken it into his head that that’s not enough. He wants to sell up and move out of London altogether. He seems deadly serious, and he’s got the rest of the family involved. Chanty started getting at me at Easter. And Alex. They all see it as a fait accompli. Sell the shop, you’re old, you don’t have to work, etc.’
Rita snorted. ‘Bastards! They can’t tell you what to do with your life.’ She peered into her friend’s face. ‘You’re not falling for it, are you?’
Jeanie shook her head. ‘They even invoked Ellie, saying it would be good for her to have fresh air and freedom.’
‘Ridiculous. It’s never about the children. George won’t sell without your say-so.’
Rita was married to Bill, who did exactly what she said at all times, without even a whimper.
‘I mean, what’s he going to do?’ Rita went on. ‘Drag you off to some muddy cave by your hair?’
Jeanie laughed. ‘Perhaps you’d respect him more if he did!’
She knew Rita tolerated George, even liked him, but had never understood why Jeanie gave in to him so much.
‘No, seriously, darling, what’s he actually said?’
Jeanie sighed. ‘It’s not so much what he’s said about the country, it’s his attitude to me, to us. He genuinely believes that we’re old. He actually said it. ‘Now we’re old . . . you won’t want the shop forever.’ I’m sure he resents me working. He reckons that as soon as I’ve seen sense and quit we can sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after together. Being old.’
Rita began to laugh. ‘Christ.’
‘And it wouldn’t be so bad if it were just him, but when your own daughter tries to shuffle you off, then you begin to think there must be some truth in it.’
She looked at her friend’s concerned face. ‘I don’t feel old, Rita. I feel fit and full of life. OK, I get tireder than I used to, I forget things more, maybe, but I reckon that’s just finding something to blame when in fact I’ve been tired and forgetful my whole life at times.’
Rita grabbed her hand. ‘Look at me,’ she ordered. ‘You, Jeanie Lawson, are not old. You’re middle-aged – which may be worse, come to think of it – but by no stretch of the imagination are you old. You can’t be! I’m the same age.’
Jeanie squeezed her hand.
‘I mean, look at you. You’re beautiful. No one would gu
ess for a second that you’re nearly a senior citizen.’
They both began to laugh. ‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘But I’m serious. You could easily pass for forty-eight.’
‘So what should I do?’
‘This isn’t about being old or moving to the country though, is it?’ Rita’s gaze rested for a moment on her friend’s face, and Jeanie knew what was coming. ‘Let’s shift, I’m freezing.’ Rita was seldom warm in what she termed ‘this godforsaken climate’.
‘Don’t start,’ Jeanie replied crossly.
‘Well, darling, it has to be said again. You didn’t hear me last time. Why . . . why do you let that man control you? Why do you let him get away with it all the time? You’re a strong, intelligent woman, Jeanie. Wake up. They’re sneaky, these people.’
‘What people . . . what do you mean?’
‘People like George.’ Her friend ploughed on unapologetically as they crossed the park. ‘Full-on passive aggressive . . . compulsive controllers. To meet George you’d think butter wouldn’t melt. He’s charming, polite, amusing in a quiet sort of way.’
Jeanie thought this summed up George perfectly.
‘But Jeanie, he’s . . . well, to put it politely, he’s got issues. He’s too smart to do it in front of me, but sometimes his guard slips. Remember the other week, when he tried to stop you having a drink, then dragged you off almost before we’d had pudding?’
Jeanie nodded.
‘You didn’t want to go, Bill and I could see that, but you let him bully you.’ The frustration in Rita’s voice was clear. ‘Why?’
‘Because . . . because he gets so anxious.’
‘Anxious?’ Rita spluttered. ‘You kowtow to him because he’s anxious? That’s ridiculous. What’s he anxious about?’
Jeanie shook her head. They had reached the top of Highgate Hill. This was where their ways parted, Rita heading to her house on one of the leafy lanes opposite Kenwood, Jeanie to hers on the far side of Pond Square. They both paused on the corner by the bus stand.
‘I don’t know. It’s just George. He wasn’t always like this.’ She felt a strong desire finally to tell her friend about that night when George had rejected her, when things had changed irrevocably for them both. But she didn’t want to add to Rita’s disdain for her husband. Nor did she really know how to explain the enormity of the event after all this time. Over the years she’d begun to wonder if she’d exaggerated it. She knew couples often stopped having sex and slept in separate bedrooms; theirs was a long marriage. But another part of her knew that something significant had happened to George that day. Something that he was unable, even with all the pressure she had put him under, to tell her about. And she couldn’t even imagine what that might be.
‘Well,’ said Rita brightly, ‘if he wasn’t always like it, then he doesn’t have to be like it now, no?’
Jeanie shrugged. ‘I suppose. But I don’t know why . . .’
Rita waited, but Jeanie didn’t say any more.
‘Look, darling, the bottom line is that you are not old, you work, and you most certainly don’t want to move to the country. So things are getting serious. If you get dragged away from a dinner party, that’s tiresome but not fatal. But to be dragged to Dorset? The country’s vile, don’t forget: full of mud, the sartorially challenged and farm shops where a cabbage that’s been sitting there for eighteen months costs twice the National Debt.’
They both laughed.
‘So I tell him I’m not old, I’m not giving up my shop, and I’m definitely not moving to the country.’
‘Hurray!’ Rita held up her hand inviting Jeanie to a high five. ‘Seriously though, Jeanie, it really is time to take a stand.’
‘He’s not a bad man, Rita . . . I really don’t think he can help himself,’ Jeanie finished weakly. Her friend just rolled her eyes and strode off towards the roundabout with a farewell wave, her tennis bag slapping rhythmically against her back.
Later that evening, as she stood alone in the kitchen preparing the salad for supper, George still closeted with his clocks, she remembered what her Aunt Norma had said about being sixty.
Her aunt was her father’s only sister, recently turned ninety and still living, happily independent, in her house in Wimbledon. A quick-witted bird of a woman with the sharp blue eyes that Jeanie had inherited, she had been in MI5 in the war and then looked after her ageing parents single-handed. But by the time she was sixty they were both dead, and Aunt Norma, previously a stalwart gloved and hatted spinster of the parish, took on a distinctly bohemian air as she turned the dining room into her studio and began to paint. ‘Sixty is heaven,’ she had told Jeanie as they sat having tea. ‘The world is done with you, you become to all intents and purposes invisible, particularly if you’re a woman. I like to think of it as your third life. There’s childhood, then adult conformity – work, family, responsibility – then just when everyone assumes it’s all over and you’re on the scrap heap of old age, freedom! You can finally be who you are, not what society wants you to be, not who you think you ought to be.’
‘Isn’t that a generation thing?’ Jeanie had asked. ‘Our lot are liberated now; since feminism we can do what we want.’
Aunt Norma had nodded wisely. ‘Can you, now? Can you really?’ She had smiled, her blue eyes beady. ‘It seems to me there are still expectations . . . family and such.’ She’d shaken her head. ‘But then, what do I know?’
4
Jeanie was late getting to the park on Thursday. It was cold and it looked like rain, but there were still a number of bored-looking mothers huddled in the playground with their children – and the man from last week. She’d hardly given him a thought, and was not altogether pleased to see him. She liked to potter on her own with Ellie and had never involved herself with the other playground adults. He was on his mobile, propped up at the head of the slide as Dylan threw himself head first, arms outstretched, down the metal run.
He waved and smiled when he spotted Jeanie, quickly finishing his call and putting his mobile back in his jacket pocket. ‘Hey . . . how’s it going?’
‘Fine . . . you?’
Ellie demanded the swing, and for a while they were separated as they monitored their grandchildren’s play. Jeanie deliberately avoided his gaze.
Dylan teamed up with another boy of his age, and they raced off round and round the perimeter of the playground.
The man wandered over to the swings. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about the other day.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was . . . kind of intense . . . went on a bit.’
Jeanie laughed. ‘Nothing to apologize for.’
‘No, but you must have thought me a bit odd.’
She said nothing, not knowing how to reply. She had not thought him odd exactly, but there was an unsettling air about the man, as if he wanted something from her, and she wasn’t sure what it was.
‘It’s just this whole playground thing is new to me and I’m not sure of the etiquette.’ He laughed apologetically.
‘Oh, there is no playground etiquette,’ she assured him with a laugh. ‘Except always making sure that whatever happens it isn’t your child’s fault!’
‘Junior version of the blame game?’
Jeanie nodded. ‘Do I sound cynical?’
He shrugged, grinned. ‘ “Realistic” has a better ring – anyway, I’ll leave you in peace.’ She watched as he pushed through the metal gate of the playground and went to lean over the fence round the duck pond.
‘Down . . . down, Gin.’ As Ellie stood up in the swing, Jeanie felt the first drops of rain. She searched in the bottom of the pram for the plastic rain cover, but it wasn’t there, only a squashed packet of nappy wipes, one of Ellie’s battered cardboard books and a rotting banana skin.
The playground was emptying fast. She heard the man shout to his grandson, ‘Dylan! Dylan, come on, boy. It’s about to tip down.’
She noticed the boy paid no attention to his shouts as sh
e packed Ellie, protesting vehemently, into the buggy and hurried for the gate. As she was starting up the hill the heavens opened. Not just rain, but a torrential downpour, and she knew it would be stupid to attempt the fifteen minutes home until it had eased off. She changed course towards the cafe, only a short walk from the playground, Ellie still screaming her lungs out and struggling against the buggy restraints and the rain.
The cafe was empty. She chose a seat outside, but sheltered by the covered space in front of the building so Ellie could run about, and bought herself a cup of tea and a carton of apple juice for her granddaughter.
While she sat, already wet, looking anxiously at the sky and wondering how long it would last, Dylan’s grandfather appeared with the boy.
‘Me again.’ He was out of breath from running up the hill but still seemed bent on apologizing to her. Her heart sank as she realized she was trapped with him for the duration of the storm.
Dylan began running up the buggy ramp into the cafe and down the steps, repeating the circuit with Ellie in hot pursuit, the pair of them laughing breathlessly as they ran.
‘Phew.’ The man shook out his wet leather jacket and placed it over a chairback on the opposite side of Jeanie’s table. Seeing her fierce look, he grinned mischievously. ‘All we need now is a shower curtain and a large knife.’
Jeanie couldn’t help laughing.
‘Well, you’re eyeing me as if I’m an axe-murderer. Best-case scenario, a stalker.’
‘Are you?’ She found herself studying his battered, handsome face, and far from finding the sliding look of a stalker, saw an appealing openness, and a deliberate, almost learned calm, as if he had taught himself to be still.
‘Not intentionally.’
‘You can see my point.’ Jeanie defended her position with a smile.
There was a scream and they turned to see Ellie flat on her face on the concrete. Picking her up, her little face suffused pink with shock, Jeanie cuddled her tight and waited for her screams to subside. Dylan hovered anxiously.
‘I didn’t do anything,’ he muttered, eyes to the ground, as if he were used to being blamed.