by Adale Geras
*
Gray knew he would feel awkward talking to Adrian. He’d always had a problem with him, ever since he’d first met and married Maureen. Even when Adrian was very young indeed, he had known exactly how to make Gray feel like an unwanted intruder. He’d been a spoilt toddler who’d grown into a spoilt child, and even though the rows they’d had throughout Adrian’s adolescence were over long ago, even though Gray had to admit he’d become a reasonably okay adult, it was always difficult, even now, to know what to talk about, the kind of attitude to adopt, how to behave. He shuddered as he recalled a scene from Adrian’s childhood that seemed to set a pattern for their relationship.
Maureen had gone out somewhere. Gray could no longer remember where. Jon was about five, which made Adrian seven. He’d worked out a plan for the day which involved taking the boys to the park for a kickabout with a football, followed by a session in the playground on the brightly coloured equipment that always seemed to be swarming with kids.
‘I don’t need you to push me,’ Adrian said on the swings, so Gray had turned to Jon. When they reached the roundabout, Adrian leaped on it and refused to move over so that his brother could sit next to him. ‘Get off,’ he’d screamed at Jon. ‘No little kids on here.’ As if to emphasize his point, he’d spread out his legs as wide as they would go. The girl sitting next to him moved up, clearly scared. Adrian could look very threatening for a small child. He glowered at Gray and stuck out his tongue.
Even now, he could remember how furious he’d felt and what hard work it had been to keep his voice even and pleasant. He said, ‘I’m not asking you, Adrian. I’m telling you. Make room for your brother or you’re off that roundabout and we’re going home.’
‘Get stuffed!’ Adrian screamed. No one looking at them would have seen it like that, but he knew how nearly he’d lost it, how close he was to grabbing the boy by both legs and pulling him forcibly off the turning roundabout. He managed to control himself sufficiently to stop the bloody thing going round, then reached out and picked the boy up under his arm, as though he were no more than a baby. Adrian started to shriek. Gray shouted, ‘SHUT UP! I’ve had quite enough of you for one day. We’re going home.’ He found he couldn’t breathe properly. Jon was clinging to his legs, frightened by his brother’s screams.
Adrian managed to keep screaming all the way home. Maureen came out to meet them, looking as though Gray had taken her beloved son and cut him up into small pieces.
‘Mummy! Mummy! He hurt me. He wouldn’t let me … My arms hurt. He hurt me. He’s horrible. I hate him. Send him away.’
Perhaps he had hurt the boy. Perhaps he hadn’t been as gentle as he ought to have been. Later on, he’d explained everything to Maureen, but he could see that, in her heart of hearts, she believed her son’s version of events. Nowadays, when they met, Maureen was like a kind of buffer between them, but one to one … that was different. Gray was quite sure that the shadow of that tantrum and many others even worse fell over them every time they met.
Gray had no clear idea of why today’s meeting was strictly necessary, but he’d been nagged into accompanying Maureen to town. She’d persuaded him to take one of the days off work that were owed to him and he wondered whether he’d agreed partly out of guilt. Perhaps he’d fallen in with her plans without much of a struggle because he knew that his heart and attention weren’t with his wife, but with Lydia.
While Maureen was having her hair done, her son and her husband were supposed to air … Gray wasn’t quite sure what they were supposed to air, but he knew Maureen was concerned that Adrian shouldn’t feel left out of the wedding preparations. Also, she’d mentioned Isis. Gray had been so shocked to see Lydia in Charlotte Parrish’s house that he hadn’t properly registered Zannah’s daughter, but she’d seemed a nice enough child.
‘Hello, Doc,’ said Adrian. ‘Been waiting long?’
‘No, no, not long at all. Can I get you something?’
‘Stella, please. God, it’s hot, isn’t it?’
‘Stifling. You okay out here, or would you rather go inside?’Gray had taken a table under an awning in the pub’s garden. It wasn’t his kind of pub. Too trendily done up and full of braying young people, but the garden was pleasant and it was convenient for Adrian’s work.
One thing about chichi pubs: they had waiters so you didn’t have to go up to the bar.
‘Bit like France, isn’t it?’ Adrian said, after Gray had ordered. ‘One of the benefits of the EU. How are things at the hospital?’
‘Oh, you know.’ Gray smiled. He’d never known how to talk about his work. It absorbed him completely while he was doing it. The patient in front of him, draped in hospital green, almost a non-person away from the clothes and accessories of their life, became the only thing in the world he cared about. He always concentrated utterly on everything that was going on, aware of the others in the theatre: surgeons, theatre sisters, occasionally students. Everyone seemed to think that all an anaesthetist had to do was pop a mask over someone’s face and that was it. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Gray got to know whom he was going to meet before the surgery. He followed their progress afterwards, sitting at their bedside to make sure they were recovering properly and enjoying (he admitted it, he was proud of it) the admiring – you might even call them fond – looks the nurses gave him. Not many people would take the care you do, one sister had told him a couple of years ago. But it was true. He loved his work and sometimes wondered if the reason he was so passionate about it was that it was the one place in the world where his private emotions fell away to nothing. It felt to him sometimes as though he left them with his clothes when he changed. After an operation, as he put his own garments on again, he became himself once more. Until then, he belonged to the patients. Also there was no ambiguity about who he was at work. The person he was when he was in the hospital was clear through and through: that was how it felt to him. Who he was in his non-working life seemed muddied and confused and sometimes downright unhappy: unfaithful to his wife and in love with a woman who was married to someone else. He’d always known she was married, but how much easier it was to put that knowledge out of one’s mind when you hadn’t met the poor bugger you’d cuckolded. Shit. That wasn’t a word he liked and certainly not one he relished using in relation to himself, but it was a fact. One night only … Did that make it any less of a cuckolding?
‘Sorry, Adrian, I was miles away. Did you say something?’
‘Just asked when Mum’d be joining us.’
‘About two-thirty I reckon. Can’t imagine what takes hairdressers so long.’ He almost smiled. Adrian, he told himself, is as reluctant about this heart-to-heart as I am. Had Maureen said anything to him? Okay, nothing ventured. He took a sip of his beer. ‘Your mother’s quite immersed in all this wedding palaver. How about you, Adrian? Does Zannah nag you as much as Maureen nags me?’
‘She has her moments. Told me the other night that she didn’t want to be Whittaker. I wasn’t having that.’
‘So, what does she want to be called?’
Adrian looked a little puzzled. ‘Ford, I suppose, but I’m not going to have that. We didn’t really decide anything. But I’m determined. I reckon she’ll be Mrs Whittaker in the end.’
‘You finding Cal a bit of a problem?’
‘Cal?’ Adrian frowned. ‘I’m not eaten up with jealousy, if that’s what you mean. Never see him.’
‘Zannah does, though, doesn’t she?’
‘Only when he comes to pick up Isis or bring her home. They have to be friendly for her sake, don’t they?’
‘Yes,’ said Gray. ‘Kids always have to come first.’
‘Did you think of that when you met Mum? When you married her?’
‘Well, it might not have looked like that to you, Adrian, but yes, we did think of you. And you weren’t the most co-operative toddler in the world either.’
‘It got worse, too, didn’t it? I was the teenager from hell.’ He sounded almost boas
tful.
Gray smiled to show there were no hard feelings. This was true, but even though Adrian’s Conan the Barbarian days were long over, he’d always found it impossible to feel love for Maureen’s son. He’d been quite pleased when Jon, his own son, had decided to go and work in South Africa. Much as he missed him, it made life easier to have him far away and not constantly existing as a contrast to Adrian. I love Jon, Gray thought, and although I get on with Adrian okay and don’t mind him now, I don’t love him. I never have. Now that he was no longer allowed to email Lydia, his messages to and from Jon were the one thing that made it worth switching on his laptop. Adrian was talking. Gray made an effort to tune in.
‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that … say again.’
‘Isis herself is more of a problem. I feel much more jealous of her than I do of Cal Ford and I can’t admit it, which makes life difficult. I know Zannah loves me but she’d give me up in a minute if it came to a contest between me and her daughter.’
‘It won’t come to that, though, will it? You’ll be a good stepfather.’ Gray wondered as he spoke whether he believed this.
‘Sure. Like you. I bet you thought you were the best, right?’
‘I was. You can admit it now.’ Gray smiled to show he was joking.
‘But you weren’t my dad, were you? And my mum loved you. I wasn’t too keen on that idea.’
‘While your dad was alive, he never came anywhere near you. You never knew him. You just made him into a hero because he wasn’t me. Right?’
Adrian shrugged. ‘S’pose so.’
Something occurred to Gray. ‘Adrian, are you happy with this big wedding stuff? Did you and Zannah talk it over?’
‘Course we did. As we’re having a big wedding, I’m the one trying to persuade her to invite more people. She won’t hear of it. She’s got her own ideas about everything. She might look delicate but she’s stubborn, you know.’
Like her mother, Gray wanted to say. Instead he asked: ‘Do you love her?’
‘Are you serious? What kind of question is that? She’s fantastic. I said it at the engagement party. I’m the luckiest man in the world. I meant it.’
‘Good.’ Gray put his lager down. ‘That’s great.’ He wondered privately what love meant to Adrian. Would he be faithful to Zannah? Did he dream about her? Run conversations with her through his head when they were apart? Perhaps Adrian lacked imagination. He blithely assumed that Cal Ford was out of his fiancée’s life. And that’s the difference between us. I torment myself by imagining Lydia and her husband in every sort of situation. I wish I were more like Adrian. It makes life much easier. He didn’t seem too keen on Isis. Well, he probably likes her better than I liked him when he was a child, Gray thought, and I’ve managed to hide it for thirty years. In all the fights, in all the sulks, I’ve never let on that he wasn’t as loved as Jon is … but he must have known. He probably picked up on my feelings. Children, even not very imaginative ones, are good at doing that.
‘Another Stella?’ he said, trying to catch the waiter’s eye.
‘Why not?’ Adrian said, and leaned back so that his chair was balanced on two legs. It was the way he had sat when he was a boy at the kitchen table and in those days it had been a constant source of irritation. Things had moved on. I don’t, thought Gray, give a damn how Adrian chooses to sit.
*
‘And how, pray, is the future Mrs Whittaker?’ Adrian slid into the chair opposite Zannah and added, ‘I’m so sorry I’m late, darling. Frantic at the bank today. And I met Doc for a drink at lunchtime.’
‘It’s okay, don’t worry. I haven’t been here long.’
They were having dinner at one of Zannah’s favourite restaurants, a French bistro called La Chaumière, whose garlic mushrooms were alone enough to justify a visit. It was a small, plainly decorated place which had the feel of a private house. You had the impression that you were dining en famille and Zannah loved that, but Adrian, she knew, thought it was rather like not going out to dinner at all. Nevertheless, he was indulging her tonight. Now, he was frowning slightly and probably wishing he were somewhere altogether flashier. She was surprised to find herself noticing things about him these days, physical things that she had obviously been blind to when they had first started going out together. His mouth was sometimes downright sulky when he wasn’t getting his way. The blue eyes that had so enchanted her could freeze over and stare at her as though she were a stranger, but fortunately that had only happened on a couple of occasions. And anyway, she told herself, he’s probably noticing things about me that he didn’t take into account before, like the bags under my eyes, or the way I sometimes don’t do my hair properly before coming out and just twist it up any old how as I did tonight. It was natural, she supposed, for the first glorious infatuation to wear off a bit, and as long as you still loved the person when it was gone, all was well. She loved Adrian, she was quite sure of it and this introspection came from the fact that she was letting organizational matters get away from her. Control freak, she heard Em’s voice say in her head. Relax. Everything’s going to work out fine.
Zannah was feeling somewhat … She didn’t know exactly what to call it. Originally, she’d intended them to have a quiet evening at home, discussing important things. For instance, she’d spoken to Edie and made an appointment for them to see the vicar at St James’s next weekend and she was hoping Adrian wouldn’t be difficult about that. They needed to discuss the order of service and the music. She’d already booked the date and the time: eleven-thirty. Also, she’d been wanting to discuss names again. She’d intended to leave it after their last discussion but now Adrian had raised it. She didn’t say anything while they were ordering, but as soon as the garlic mushrooms arrived, she took a deep breath and plunged in: ‘Adrian, you called me Mrs Whittaker just now. Remember?’
‘By this time next year, it’ll be your name.’
‘Well, that’s just it. I don’t think it will be.’
‘What d’you mean? It’s my name … ’
‘But not mine.’ Zannah took a sip of her wine. ‘I have to have the same name as Isis. It’s what she’s used to.’
‘She’ll have to get unused to it then. Lots of kids do, don’t they? Have a different name from their mother … Or she could become Whittaker too.’
Zannah looked at Adrian and wondered whether he was being deliberately stupid. It was hard to tell from his impassive face. She said carefully, ‘I don’t think Cal would be too pleased with that. She’s his daughter. You wouldn’t allow your child to carry someone else’s name, would you?’
‘Too right! Our kids will be Whittakers through and through.’
‘Gratrixes, too, I hope. Maybe I should go back to being Suzannah Gratrix.’
‘Over my dead body. I don’t hold with that feminist nonsense. And,’ he leaned forward and looked at her in a way that Zannah perceived as almost threatening, ‘I notice you didn’t have any objection to being Mrs Ford, did you? Well, by the same token, you’ll be Mrs Whittaker from the day we get married.’
There was no answer to that. She’d agreed to be called by Cal’s name, so now she didn’t have a feminist leg to stand on. Still, the logistics were complicated. She’d be Whittaker and Isis would still be Ford. She’d have to explain the ramifications to her daughter. Thank heavens she was old enough now to understand, or at least Zannah hoped she would. Would she mind? She was more persuadable than Adrian, that was certain. A tiny unworthy thought – Isis would love me whatever happened – floated into Zannah’s head and she pushed it away at once, but an echo remained and she felt she was being unfair to Adrian. Should she give in on this matter? Would ‘Mrs Whittaker’ be so dreadful? Perhaps it was a small price to pay for domestic harmony.
The garlic mushroom plates had been taken away. Adrian stroked her hand and said, ‘I’ve got a suggestion to make, Zannah. Don’t jump down my throat, just listen.’
‘Okay,’ said Zannah.
‘Have you given any thoug
ht to Isis living with Cal? They’re obviously devoted, aren’t they?’
Zannah looked down at the salmon, lying pink and slathered in a yellowish sauce in front of her. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, Adrian. You know Cal’s always flying off on assignments. How d’you imagine he could look after her properly? To say nothing of the fact that she’s settled in a school, with friends and familiar teachers … and there’s me, Adrian. Don’t you know anything about me? Don’t you know that Isis is the most important person in my life?’
‘I thought I was,’ Adrian sounded sulky.
‘Oh, don’t be childish, please!’ Zannah was in severe danger of losing her temper. I mustn’t, she thought. I can’t make a scene here in front of everyone. ‘You know what I mean. Isis is my child. You must understand, surely. It’s different. It’s not the same kind of love. Nothing like.’
‘I see. Bottom line: she’s more important to you than I am. If it came to a choice between us, you’d choose her. Am I right?’
‘I don’t have to choose between you! I thought I could have both of you. Why can’t I? Other people have husbands and children. Why can’t I?’ Tears stood in her eyes and Zannah was uncertain what to do. If she wept, Adrian would be all sweetness and indulgence, she knew, at least for the time being. He hated tears. He behaved almost as though he was afraid of them.