by Hilary Boyd
It was Sunday and they were going to visit Aunt Norma for tea. She always prepared a proper tea: fingers of white bread and butter with the crusts cut off and a magnificent wooden cake stand with biscuits on the top, fancies in the middle and a big, round fruit cake on the bottom, to be eaten in your fingers, of course. Oh dear, yes, Aunt Norma had a horror of cake forks, said they were a ‘nasty Continental invention’. They drank lapsang souchong, leaves not bags, naturally, out of fine bone-china cups and saucers, and Aunt Norma always trusted Ellie with her own china mug and a tiny amount of tea. A trust which, much to both Chanty and Jeanie’s surprise, the child never betrayed by spilling a single drop on the cream carpet.
‘Mum?’ Chanty kept glancing over as they drove round beside Wimbledon Common. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? You look so tired.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Are you still upset by the business with that man in the park?’
‘I . . . probably best not to go into that again.’
Chanty’s profile was tense. ‘I had to ask, Mum, about Ellie. You’d have done the same if it’d been me.’
‘It’s not that. I’m fine, honestly, darling.’
‘Tell me, Mum . . . please. I’m sorry I doubted you. It wasn’t you, really, it was just when Alex told me what Ellie had said.’
Jeanie laid a hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘I’ve told you, it’s not that.’
‘Well, what is it, then? Dad says you’ve been totally not-yourself, he’s worried you’re ill. Please tell me . . . is it the move? Dad said you loved the house.’
‘It was a beautiful house, but that doesn’t mean I want to live in it. I’d rather not have this conversation now, if that’s OK. I’ll be fine. I will.’
But her daughter was not a quitter. She pulled over to the side of the road in one of the streets behind Wimbledon Village and stopped the car.
‘Sorry, Mum, we aren’t going to Auntie Norma’s until you’ve told me what’s wrong.’ She glanced over to check that Ellie was still asleep, then folded her arms and waited.
Jeanie was too exhausted to argue. ‘OK . . . well, I suppose it is the move. I don’t want to go, to give up my shop. I don’t want to . . . well, give up on life.’ She saw Chanty begin to line up her objections and held her hand up. ‘Don’t tell me the advantages of Somerset. I’m not a fool, I can see them for myself, but . . . well, I’ve felt recently that everyone has stopped listening to me. You, Dad, you don’t seem to trust me to know my own mind any more. Take the park incident . . . or lack of incident, you could say. You implied I was dotty enough not to have remembered my own actions. And then not to believe me when I told you the truth. And Dad, well, Dad has just bulldozed me over this move. I said right at the start that I didn’t want to live in the country full-time. I suggested we get a cottage if he wanted to spend more time out of London. God knows we can afford it. But he just hasn’t listened. He’s just gone ahead and offered for somewhere, and he doesn’t seem to hear me when I say I don’t want to move. In fact, over the last few years, since he retired, he’s become more and more dictatorial. He never used to be like this, he was pretty easy-going before. Perhaps it’s him you should be worrying about, not me. My problem is simple. I don’t want to sell my shop. And I don’t want to rot in the country with him.’ Her voice was harsh and strident as she sat pressing her hands together in her lap, not looking at her daughter. ‘I’m sixty, not a hundred and sixty, and I’ve done nothing to warrant this lack of respect from either of you.’
There was silence. ‘Oh, Mum . . .’
‘Please . . . please, don’t . . .’ She knew that Chanty’s sympathy would be the last straw. She was only holding on to herself by sheer force of will. ‘I’ll be fine, I said. I’ll get over it.’ Despite her best efforts, the tears were close to the surface now. ‘It’s just been a difficult time.’
‘I feel this is partly my fault.’ Chanty paused, looking stricken. ‘But you and Dad are OK, aren’t you? I mean, you’re getting on all right generally?’
It was the first time Chanty had ever asked her that, and she had a sudden powerful urge to tell her daughter the truth. No, it’s not OK, it hasn’t been for years: your father’s hiding something; I’ve met a man I want to run off with . . . the man in the park.
‘Dear Dad,’ Chanty was saying, ‘you always know exactly where you are with him. That speech he gave at your sixtieth was just heavenly, don’t you think?’
Jeanie thought this was less than subtle as a ploy, but she nodded anyway.
‘You must talk to him, Mum. Tell him how you feel. If you truly don’t want to move, I’m sure he’s not going to make you. And as you say, you could get a cottage for a while and see how it goes.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she repeated for what seemed like the hundredth time, and this time she tried to perk up, to let her daughter know that she did indeed feel better, when in fact nothing had changed at all except that Chanty’s worst fears had been allayed.
‘Yeah, but talk to him, Mum, promise?’
Jeanie smiled and promised and Chanty started the car.
She was in the shop on Tuesday morning when she looked up and was shocked to see Dylan standing there. He was with a woman perhaps in her late twenties, a pale, anxious-looking person with a nonetheless pretty face, who kept a tight grip on the hood of Dylan’s striped sweatshirt, pulling him back whenever he took a step. Dylan grinned up at Jeanie.
‘Hi, Dylan. How are you?’
The woman looked at her curiously.
‘We meet in the park sometimes,’ Jeanie explained, ‘with my granddaughter, Ellie.’ She knew this must be Ray’s daughter, and she was finding it hard to still her heart.
‘Oh, yes . . . Dad said. And Dylan’s mentioned her,’ – she pulled an apologetic face – ‘not always kindly.’
Jeanie laughed and was surprised at how normal she sounded. ‘I’m afraid Ellie’s obsessed with your son.’
Dylan grinned. ‘She wants to play all the time but she can’t because she’s too little.’
‘Yes, well, you should always be kind, you know that,’ the woman muttered sternly to him. ‘By the way, I’m Natalie.’
‘Jeanie.’ They nodded, smiled. ‘How is your father?’
The girl nodded again. ‘Yeah, he’s OK. Says he’s very busy with the centre.’ She looked at Jeanie. ‘Do you still go to the park? Dylan hasn’t mentioned you for a while.’
Jeanie pretended to be busy with the till. ‘Not Waterlow . . . my daughter likes me to take Ellie to Priory Park instead, she thinks the play stuff is more stimulating.’
This sounded so patently ridiculous that she wondered Natalie didn’t laugh in her face, but Natalie just nodded seriously.
‘I know what she means . . . the new area in Waterlow is great, but it’s not really for children your granddaughter’s age. Priory’s a bit far for us, we’re North.’
‘Grandpa does the wobbly log,’ Dylan interrupted, looking for confirmation from Jeanie.
‘He certainly does, and brilliantly too.’ She saw the pride in his eyes at her words.
Natalie was searching the shelves. ‘Do you have any rice milk?’
‘Rice milk, oat milk, soya . . .’ Jeanie pointed to the shelf.
‘Soya’s bad for you, it gives you cancer,’ Natalie announced in her light voice to no one in particular, ‘unless it’s fermented, which milk isn’t. These look beautiful,’ she said, indicating a basket of pears. She carefully selected two and put them on the counter.
‘I had one for breakfast, they’re delicious.’ Jeanie wondered if Natalie knew about her and Ray, then remembered her expression of mild curiosity when she had greeted Dylan and thought not. She was sure Ray wouldn’t have sent her, although part of her wished he had.
‘Does Ray still take Dylan on Thursdays?’ she found herself asking, then bit her tongue on the words.
‘When he can. But the childminder has finished at the hospital, so he sometimes does other days. Do you have any
spelt loaves?’
Jeanie picked one from the window, put it in a paper bag and set it beside Natalie’s other purchases. The young woman bore little physical resemblance to her father, but Jeanie saw the same set of the mouth, implying control perhaps, or a determination to do the right thing.
‘Give him my regards,’ Jeanie said, no longer able to bear the reminder this woman and her child represented, however unintentional, yet at the same time wanting to talk about Ray till hell froze over. It was two weeks and four days since she had walked away from him in St James’s Park, and true to his word, he had left it up to her to be in touch.
Jeanie felt she was involved in a daily battle of endurance, where she rose almost earlier than George, already exhausted, then used every means at her disposal to stop herself from thinking about Ray, from contacting Ray, and from comparing the way she felt about George to the intensity of her fleeting liaison with Ray. She failed on a daily basis on the first and last: it was only in her determination not to contact Ray that she succeeded. She felt this was no mean triumph, but the comparison threw into stark relief how intensely angry she was, angry in a solid, ancient, historic way, with her husband.
‘Why don’t you just leave him?’ Rita demanded, finally losing patience with her friend. ‘It’s making you ill.’
They were sitting on Jeanie’s terrace with a large glass of Sauvignon each, the only light coming from the kitchen behind and a candle flickering in the wind on the far edge of the table in front of them. Jeanie had a navy jumper on, but Rita was wrapped in a knitted throw from the kitchen sofa, only her strong, square face and her drinking arm visible above the mulberry folds. For once she was too focused on her friend’s problem to request they go inside.
‘Leave George?’
‘Er, yes, George. Who else?’ Rita shook her head. ‘You make it sound as if the idea was ridiculous.’
‘It is. How could I leave him? We’ve been together almost my entire adult life.’
‘And that’s a good reason to stay?’
They stared at each other in silence, both of them aware that this was not the first time they had had this unsatisfactory conversation.
‘If you’d said, “I can’t leave him because I love him”, then that’d be a valid reason.’
‘I do love him,’ Jeanie said quietly, but with conviction.
She heard her friend’s exasperated sigh.
‘Yes, but does he love you? Bill wouldn’t dream of even considering a move that I . . . that both of us . . . weren’t totally happy with. You have to tell him, Jeanie.’
‘About Ray?’
‘No, not about Ray, you dozy mare. Tell him you won’t, I repeat won’t, not “don’t want to”, but will not move to the country.’
‘But maybe it’s for the best, Rita.’
Rita banged her glass down on the wooden table. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Listen to yourself.’
Jeanie flinched. ‘Shhh . . . keep your voice down.’ She looked backwards to the kitchen.
‘He’s out, Jeanie, he can’t hear.’
‘He might come back early.’ George had gone to a retirement dinner for a colleague at his old firm. Jeanie had thought it strange he should want to be reminded of the team who had chucked him on the scrap heap so soon, but George had been insistent he go.
‘So he hears. I think it’d be great if he did, since you’re clearly not going to mention it to him.’
‘Please, Rita, don’t be mean. I can’t take it.’
Rita’s face softened and she leaned towards her friend. ‘Sorry, darling, but I can’t stand to see you so down. This is really important. If George sells up and you go with him to the country, that’s it. You’ll have made your bed. This is the moment to make a stand. Just tell him, please. Or I will.’
Jeanie looked horrified at Rita’s threat. ‘Promise you’ll do no such thing. OK, OK . . . I’ll talk to him. But I know he won’t listen. He’s convinced himself, and Chanty, that I don’t know my own mind, and that when I get down there it’ll be bucolic perfection.’
Her friend didn’t reply, just went on looking at her as if there was nothing more she could say.
‘And you know what? If I just go along with it, and get as far away from temptation as I can, perhaps I will enjoy it. Perhaps’ – she paused – ‘I’ll forget this madness . . . forget him.’
‘And that’s what you want?’
Jeanie shrugged. ‘Maybe, yes . . . the alternative seems just too extreme, too ridiculous.’
‘What is the alternative? Seriously, what options are you throwing about in your mind?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Well, leaving George, running off into the sunset with a man I barely know – not that he’s asked me to – dumping my family and decades of what has been a good marriage. Not perfect,’ she added in response to Rita’s raised eyebrows. ‘But I have been happy . . . content . . . you’ve seen.’
Rita nodded. ‘Things change though, Jeanie. Don’t forget, you’ve maybe got another thirty years of George.’
They both laughed.
‘Put like that . . .’
‘What’s the joke?’
The two women jumped as George, smart in a dark suit and navy tie, suddenly popped his head through the French windows.
‘Oh, we were just imagining what it would be like to leave our husbands and run off with a tasty toy boy,’ Rita replied comfortably, while Jeanie tried to still her heartbeat, grateful for the semi-darkness.
‘That would be funny,’ George said with a laugh. ‘Can I get you ladies a nightcap?’
Rita yawned and began to unravel herself from the throw. ‘Thanks, George, but I think I’ll be on my way.’
‘Now I feel guilty for breaking up your evening,’ George said, swaying slightly. ‘Please, stay, have one more. A brandy, perhaps? I’ve got some really good Armagnac . . .’
‘No, I really must be off.’ As she bent to kiss Jeanie goodbye, she hissed fiercely in her ear, ‘Talk to him. Now.’
‘I’m a bit tipsy,’ George declared, unnecessarily, once he’d shut the door on Rita. He smiled loosely at Jeanie, waved his hand at the bottle of brandy he’d dug out of the cupboard. ‘Come on, have a snifter.’
Jeanie knew it would be impossible to get any sense out of him in this state, but she suddenly wanted to be with him, to have fun with him, to test, almost, what was left.
‘OK . . . just a small one.’
13
Tonight? The usual? Ray’s text had said in reply to Jeanie’s.
She had weakened. George had left that morning for a golfing weekend at Gleneagles. It was an annual trip that his golf-buddy Danny organized with six other men. They would fly to Edinburgh, where a chauffeur-driven people-carrier would pick them up and drive them to the hotel. They would spend the next two days playing an intensely competitive private tournament. The winner had the dubious honour of paying for everyone’s dinner on the Sunday night. George wouldn’t be home till Monday.
Having waved her husband off to the airport, his golf bag heavy on his shoulder, Jeanie had ploughed through the Friday morning at the shop in a daze. She told herself she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, while knowing all along that she could and she would. The text she sent as she’d sat on her lunch break in Caffè Nero, her hand shaking so much she could hardly fashion the words, had merely said, Would you like to meet up? and then she waited.
Nothing. She checked to make sure her mobile was working. It was. Nothing. Her heart wouldn’t stop racing, she could eat nothing, but still the mobile stayed silent. By three o’clock she had begun to train herself into the possibility that he didn’t want to see her again, that what had barely begun was now over. But she didn’t believe it.
When his text finally came, she missed it. Margot was back, eliciting information from Jeanie about hyaluronic acid and whether it would help her skin rashes. She got back to the till and saw the message, and thought she might faint.
‘Bad news, dear?’ Margot asked kin
dly, watching her face.
The Greek restaurant was practically empty; it was early. Jeanie had left the shop deliberately late, so as not to have too much time to think, then hurried across the park, taking great gulps of the soft evening air. Her body felt pumped with freedom and exhilaration at what she was doing, her steps so light it was as if she were flying.
Ray was waiting for her, leaning against the wall of the restaurant, his face also alive with anticipation.
‘Hi.’
‘Hello.’
Both stood silently, suddenly shy, until she leant against him, feeling the softness of his shirt, breathing in the heavenly scent of his skin, and his arms went round her. From habit she glanced about.
‘No one’s looking,’ he said softly. But she drew away from him.
‘Drink?’ he asked, and opened the door of the restaurant.
They ordered the house red. Jeanie pretended to study the menu, but the items danced in a blur.
‘I can’t decide . . . I . . . don’t know what I want.’
Ray looked up at the waiter. ‘Can we have a large bowl of chips, please?’
‘Is that all?’ The boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and looked concerned, as if he might be blamed for this customer’s vagaries.
‘For now,’ Ray added as a sop as he handed back the menus.
Jeanie breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Just what I need.’
She quickly gulped a mouthful of wine. ‘I shouldn’t be here . . . but George went away for the weekend.’
Ray raised his eyebrows, smiled.
‘I promised myself I wouldn’t, but . . . well, here I am.’
‘Let’s not even think about why or how or what. Let’s just have tonight, have now.’ He fixed her with his light, laughing eyes, and she just nodded.
Their chips arrived, hot and salty, delicious.
Ray, when asked, told her about his family, his childhood. ‘Dad wasn’t drunk or feckless, but he was away at sea most of the time, and Mum couldn’t cope. She’d worry all the time, and I guess us boys didn’t make it any easier. Jimmy was always getting into trouble, but then she never disciplined us.’