by Hilary Boyd
‘Gin’s house . . . yers, let’s go to Gin’s house, see Grandadz.’ The tantrum stopped abruptly. The only sign was the occasional heaving breath beneath the sun hat, which Ellie had now forgotten about.
Jeanie gave her a drink of water and some more banana as soon as they reached the house.
‘Let’s do sticking.’
‘Sticking . . . yers . . . hurray, my love sticking.’ Ellie clapped her little hands with excitement and went straight to the cupboard where the box was kept. George had made a huge collection of things for Ellie to stick, from loo rolls to foil, burnt matches and dead flowers. ‘Save that,’ he’d command as Jeanie was about to thrust something in the bin.
‘Where’s Grandadz?’
Jeanie called to George but got no response. She settled the child at the table with the glue stick and paper and went up to the clock room. Her husband was asleep in his chair, his head lolled to one side, his hands clasped across his stomach.
‘George . . . George . . . Ellie’s here.’
George jumped and stared at her uncomprehendingly.
‘Come down, she’s asking for you.’
He got silently to his feet. ‘I must have dropped off.’
Ellie jumped down from the table. ‘Grandadz . . . Grandadz . . . come and huwp me stick. Look . . . I got a feather.’
Jeanie watched as George lifted the little girl for a hug, the man and child still for a moment in their close embrace, then sat beside her, picking different bits from the box and handing them to her to paste. Ellie heals us all, she thought, as she noticed her husband silently listening to Ellie’s flow of insistent questions. His face, recently so blank and wooden, had been softened into life by his granddaughter.
Jeanie typed up the letter giving their tenant above the shop formal notice. He was a student in his last term at Byam Shaw art college and was due to leave in a couple of weeks anyway, but Jeanie wanted to make sure he did, as she intended to paint the place up and stay there herself on the nights she was up for the shop. George, before he got ill, had been nagging her almost daily to sign up with agents and set the sale in motion. But although it preyed on her mind, she had done nothing about it. Now she guiltily took advantage of George’s lack of interest, and made a decision to postpone the sale. She told herself it was too much to deal with at the moment, but the truth was the shop was the only thing keeping her sane. And the only thing which would give her an excuse for leaving Somerset each week.
‘I go for lunch now?’ Jola put her head round the office door.
‘Yes, of course.’ Jeanie stretched. ‘Is it that time already?’
‘You want me wait for you check on Mr Lawson?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m sure he’s fine. I’ll go when you get back.’
Jola had been very philosophical about George’s illness.
‘He get well soon. You see, this not last long. My mother, she have depression two, three times already. Now she take pills, she very happy.’
‘But George won’t see the doctor,’ Jeanie told her, at which Jola shook her head.
‘No good, you tell him. Pills very good, he must see doctor. You take him, no nonsense.’
Jeanie went through to take over the till, dogged by a habitual restlessness and distraction. The move was barely ten days away and seemed increasingly unreal. But it was true that over the previous week George had begun to focus intently on the packing, taking over from her the distribution of coloured stickers. Jeanie would come home to long, carefully written lists allocating every chair, lamp, clock, etc. a place in the new house.
She had watched his face light up as they drew on to the gravel drive of the Old Rectory the week before, watched the way he straightened his shoulders as they greeted the spruce James with his Peugeot and took possession of the keys to their new home. James showed them round again, and explained the boiler and the window locks, the septic tank, but it was the garden George seemed most taken with, spending ages, while Jeanie half listened to the agent, pacing round the lawn and the shrubs, peering closely at the plants, touching some of them gently as he passed as if they were long-lost friends. Finally the impatient rattling of the agent’s car keys prompted Jeanie to tell James he could go. It had been a strange feeling as she clutched the envelope of keys and realized that this was now, officially, her home. She wanted to run down the drive in the wake of the fast-retreating car and stop him so she could hand them back – this alien house certainly did not feel like home.
On the drive back to London, George had said not a word, slumping into his familiar blankness, and Jeanie had wondered what the house represented to his disturbed mind. She worried that whatever magic he attributed to it would prove ineffective in reality. It wasn’t possible to heal psychological trauma by avoiding it, displacing it, despite George’s valiant efforts over the last fifty years.
The bell on the shop door roused her and she looked up to see Natalie and Dylan.
‘Hello, Jean.’ Natalie smiled, apologetic, as if she thought she had no right to be where she was.
‘Natalie . . . Dylan, how nice to see you.’
‘I’m going to big school,’ Dylan announced proudly. ‘This is my school bag.’ He handed over a blue backpack with the school logo emblazoned in white on the front for her inspection.
‘Wow . . . that’s very smart.’
‘My friend Sammy’s going to the same school as me, but he hasn’t got his bag yet.’ His eyes, Ray’s eyes, were laughing and bright, animating his perfect features, and Jeanie wanted to wrap him in her arms, to breathe in the essence which would somehow be his grandfather’s also.
‘That’s great,’ she said instead. ‘It’s good to have a friend when you start school.’
Natalie laughed. ‘Such enthusiasm.’
‘Long may it last. How’s your dad?’ She put the question with her head lowered, tidying the perfectly tidy pile of biodegradable brown bags on the counter.
‘Oh, he’s away. He’s been gone for weeks now. He suddenly took off on a friend’s boat. They’re sailing down to the Dalmatian coast. I’m not a sailor, but all Dad’s side of the family are. He loves it.’
‘I love it too. I haven’t sailed since I was young, but I grew up by the sea in Norfolk; my friend Wendy had a small sailing dinghy. I lived for the times I was out on the water.’ She didn’t know why she was telling Natalie this, she just wanted to keep them there for a bit longer. ‘The Dalmatian Coast is beautiful, I’m told,’ she added, hearing the longing in her voice.
‘Dad’s going to teach Dylan to sail when he’s a bit older. It terrifies me.’
Jeanie watched her anxious face with sympathy and remembered her own mother’s constant neurosis and fits of rage when Jeanie disobeyed her and went out on her friend’s boat.
‘I’m sure he’s a brilliant sailor,’ she said, forgetting to conceal her passion. All she could think of was Ray, tanned, salt in his hair and on his lips, face towards the sun and the clean, sharp breeze off the sparkling Adriatic. Her desire to be with him was like a deep pain. She realized Natalie was looking at her closely.
‘Sorry, I was miles away . . . it’s an age since I’ve been out in a boat.’
‘Um, well . . . I didn’t come in for anything really, we were just passing and Dylan saw you through the window.’ She turned to her son. ‘Say goodbye to Jean, Dylan.’
‘We’re moving to the country, to Somerset, next week,’ Jeanie suddenly blurted out after their retreating figures.
Natalie looked surprised. ‘Oh, Dad didn’t say. So you’re selling up, I suppose.’
‘No.’ Jeanie’s tone was firm, and she realized any intention of putting the business up for sale in the near future was just a fiction.
‘Good, it’d be a shame to lose the shop,’ Natalie called over her shoulder as Dylan pulled her purposefully on to the pavement.
‘Hmmm . . .’ Rita’s beady gaze rested consideringly on her friend’s face. ‘So you’ll still be up each week, eh?�
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Jeanie nodded.
‘Would this have anything to do with a certain Park Man?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re still seeing him, aren’t you, you dirty dog.’
‘I wish. He’s away, sailing. But even if he weren’t, I wouldn’t be seeing him.’
‘So how do you know he’s sailing then?’
‘His daughter dropped by at the shop.’
Rita’s face fell.
‘So you’re really going through with this, this ludicrous commitment to die in Dorset.’
Jeanie couldn’t help laughing at her friend’s tragic countenance. ‘It’s not the dying that concerns me, it’s the living. And it’s Somerset.’
‘Whatever. So what does His Nibs think about you deserting him for the shop every week?’
‘He doesn’t know or care at the moment. I did tell him, but he didn’t take it in. It’s just for a while, Rita, until I get used to being there. I just can’t do it all at once.’
‘Darling, you don’t have to justify it to me. I don’t think you should do it at all, ever, let alone in easy stages.’ She paused. ‘We’ll have to move our tennis to one of the nights you’re up.’
Jeanie suddenly felt overwhelmed. Chanty had been round again that morning, fretting over her father, fretting over Alex’s September exhibition, worrying about how they would cope when the baby came.
‘I wish you weren’t going, Mum,’ she had admitted, much to Jeanie’s irritation.
‘You and me both,’ had been her tart reply, which had caused her daughter to burst into tears and declare that ‘everything seems to be falling apart in this family’.
Now Jeanie looked across the cafe table at her friend. ‘I’ve made a mess of things, haven’t I?’
Rita’s face was full of concern. ‘Oh, darling, you have rather, but I’m sure you’ll sort it out somehow.’
Jeanie’s tears turned to laughter at Rita’s brutal honesty.
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ she said, but Rita wasn’t listening.
‘By the way, does Ray’s daughter know about you and him?’
‘No . . . no, I’m sure not. She thinks we’re just friends . . . we’re not even that now.’
‘Hmmm . . . I suppose there’s no reason you couldn’t take up with him again, sort of on the side, when you come up. It’d be the perfect solution, no?’
Jeanie looked shocked.
‘On the side?’
‘Well, don’t tell me it hasn’t crossed your mind.’
Of course it had, she was only human, but she knew seeing Ray like that would never be enough.
‘Ray isn’t someone you have “on the side”. He’s not like that.’
‘All men are like that,’ Rita assured her cheerfully. ‘I know I encouraged you to run off with him at one point, but this may be the better option in the short term. I mean, George isn’t well at the moment, but he’s a tried and tested safety net, so to speak.’
‘You’ve changed your tune,’ Jeanie snapped.
‘As I keep telling you, I’ve only got your best interests at heart, and I’ve thought a lot about it all. Age is no bar to an affair, I stick by that, but risking your whole way of life . . . you know I’m right, or you would have legged it long ago.’
And Jeanie realized that Rita was right. She was a coward through and through, clinging purely for security to a dying marriage there was little hope of resurrecting, while making out to everyone, including herself, that she was being noble, looking after George and putting the family first. And now it was too late: she’d been punished for her cowardice. Ray was getting on with his life. She thought of the boat again and almost enjoyed the masochistic stab of pain the knowledge brought. He was probably sharing a chilled glass of white wine with some lithe bit of boat totty as they spoke.
19
‘George! George.’ She could see the back of his head bent over a patch of shrubbery at the far end of the lawn. It was the first she’d seen of him all day. The old friend of his mother’s stood beside her, waiting patiently, breathing heavily from her walk up the drive. Lorna was a large, ponderous woman with sparse grey hair gathered in an untidy bun. She could have been seventy or ninety, with her swollen, purplish feet beneath the brown wool skirt pushed uncomfortably into pumps. Jeanie was sure they were put on specially for the visit.
‘I live, oh, hardly three hundred yards away.’ She waved her thick arm towards the village. ‘Four at the most. I can’t believe the coincidence, Imogen’s son buying the Old Rectory.’ She laughed, the sound more like a hearty wheeze. ‘I heard the name Lawson, but I thought no, it couldn’t be. It’s been empty for so long, it must have been waiting for you.’
‘It is a beautiful house.’
Lorna shrugged. ‘Was. It used to be much more beautiful before that dreadful Barkworth man ruined the front with those ghastly Victorian-style bays.’ When Jeanie looked a bit baffled, Lorna went on, ‘Victorian? On a Georgian rectory? I told him, but he wouldn’t listen, said it didn’t matter and that different styles were always added at different times. Of course this is true, but Barkworth isn’t exactly Victorian, is he?’
Jeanie assumed not, but didn’t feel qualified to comment on what she considered rather pretty bay windows on either side of the front door.
‘Spoils the whole thing, in my opinion’ – Lorna sighed heavily – ‘but then what does my opinion count for in the end? People do what they want these days, don’t they?’
‘Come inside and have a drink. I’ll give George another shout.’ She was worried that if her neighbour didn’t sit down soon she might keel over.
‘George, didn’t you hear?’ She tugged at his sleeve. ‘Please, come on and meet Lorna. She’s an old friend of your mother’s. Do you remember her? She says she met you often when you were young.’
George stood looking at her, making no move towards the house.
‘We’ve still got another hour of light,’ he muttered, casting a regretful eye at the shrubs he was pruning.
‘Look, I didn’t ask her here. But you must come; it’s so rude to leave her sitting there all alone.’ Jeanie was exasperated, but hardly surprised. They had been in the house for nearly six weeks, and George had spent almost all of that time in the garden. His previous obsession – the scores of clocks he had collected over the years – had been ignored since the move and were still in packing cases stacked against the wall in his new study. These days he would eat breakfast with one eye on the door, then be out until dark – in every weather – only returning in the early afternoon to raid the fridge for a cheese sandwich and a cup of cold coffee left over from breakfast. When he came in at night he was exhausted; he’d pour himself a large whisky and sit silently over supper before shuffling off to bed. He was perfectly civil to Jeanie, but seemed hardly to know who she was. Jeanie knew he was still depressed, but oddly he didn’t appear unhappy, just fixed in his own tiny world. She thought about what would happen if one day there was no cheese for his sandwich. Would he go and buy some? Because he never left the house. She had tried again to get him to see a local doctor, someone he didn’t know. She’d thought it might be easier for him. But the same answer came back. ‘Nothing wrong with me, just a bit tired.’
‘George, dear.’ Lorna struggled to the edge of the sofa.
‘Don’t get up,’ Jeanie insisted, since George didn’t.
‘How long is it since we saw each other?’ Lorna went on, leaning back gratefully on the cushions. ‘Your dear mother’s been dead such a long time now, but I see you’ve inherited her passion for the garden.’ She turned to Jeanie. ‘Did you see her garden? Heavens, it was a sight to behold; people came from miles to see it.’ She laughed. ‘When Imogen let them, of course.’
George sat down, his hands still filthy, his gardening clothes making him look like a tramp, but said nothing, just shot the odd glance at Lorna, a confused look on his face. Lorna didn’t seem to notice, however. She just talked on and on, telling them the history of the area,
the house, stories of the ‘dreadful’ Barkworth and the sainted Imogen, sipping happily on her glass of white wine, until George suddenly got up and left the room. He’d barely said one word to her. Lorna pretended not to notice.
‘Sorry.’ Jeanie was tired of excuses. ‘He’s not been well recently.’
The old lady nodded in sympathy. ‘Retiring sometimes has a funny effect on men, don’t you think?’ she suggested, when Jeanie didn’t say what was wrong.
‘It’s not that. The doctor said it might take a while,’ she said, wincing at her own pathetic avoidance of the truth. But she knew the stigma attached to mental illness, and she wanted George to be accepted by the locals without awkwardness. Lorna, she hoped, would spread the word that he was ill at the moment and not just rude.
As the train pulled into Waterloo, Jeanie felt a frisson of excitement. She had spent most of the journey worrying about George. This was the first time she had left him to go to the shop. It was Lorna who provided the solution. She had dropped by to say that ‘Sally-from-the-village’, who cleaned for her Mondays and Fridays, was looking for more work. Sally was exactly what Jeanie had hoped for: a warm, middle-aged woman who laughed a lot and seemed quite sanguine about George. She would come in on the days Jeanie was away, and call if there were any problems.
As Jeanie made her way up Highgate Hill, she fell into the old pattern of looking out for Ray. The wilds of Somerset, where the possibility of meeting him was virtually non-existent, had proved something of a relief these past weeks, but as she breathed the air of North London – familiar over a lifetime – the renewed chance of seeing him plunged her straight back into a mood of heightened awareness and thudding heart. She tried to rehearse what she would say if they bumped into each other, but she never got past imagining how it would feel to look into his eyes again.
‘That’s different.’ She checked the new shelving arrangement, and was aware of Jola’s anxious wait for her verdict. ‘It’s much better, less cluttered. What have you done with the maize products?’