Raking the Ashes

by Anne Fine

  We both sat waiting. In the end, he whispered, ‘Will she do that?’ And then, before I could make the horrible mistake of answering the wrong question, he carried on hastily, ‘Will Mrs Dee really leave me alone and not say anything?’

  Interesting, isn’t it, the balance of a child’s world? That he’d prefer to feel quite safe about his head teacher than use the one and only chance he’d probably yet been offered to ask an honest question about his mother. I was reminded of just how ghastly school can be, and how very much I had hated it.

  ‘I’m sure I can persuade her to let it drop.’

  ‘What about Dad?’

  ‘You leave him to me,’ I assured him, knowing full well that no child in his right mind would ever worry for long about trouble emanating from Geoffrey. So that’s the plan we followed. I took the money in, and I explained to Mrs Dee. The way I told it, Frances was already halfway into her coffin, and I left Mrs Dee with the impression that, if she said a word to Harry, the poor scrap would almost certainly rush out to hang himself from the first available rafter. In any event, she let the whole business drop. Harry went back to sleeping peacefully. Next time I came home, there was talk of ‘merit points’ and even, a couple of weeks after that, a spell as ‘acting prefect’. I had odd moments of unease. After all, given how fiercely I’d ticked Geoff off for keeping secrets from me, it seemed a little soon to start down the same road myself. But Harry was clearly so much happier pretending the whole sorry mess had never happened, so I, too, put it out of mind on the grounds that I had sorted things out with the minimum upheaval.

  And so the weeks went by in growing harmony, and we were all relaxed and happy. Harry and Minna wrote letters to their mother. She rang as often as she could between her yoga classes and having her ‘psychic pressure points’ massaged, and learning T’ai Chi. ‘She’s really taking time out to “swim in the waters of Lake Me”,’ I remember saying once, larding only the slightest veneer of sarcasm onto an expression Frances had used more than once in her letters to the children. ‘This must be costing her the bloody earth.’ Geoff simply shrugged. But I was not surprised when, only a short while later, word came that she was coming home.

  ‘With Terence?’

  ‘No. That’s well and truly over. And, anyway, he’s only just started his new job.’

  Again, it was all news to me. ‘Terence? New job?’

  Geoff looked a tiny bit rattled. ‘Didn’t I mention it? It seems he was offered a place at some fancy new medical consultancy in Palo Alto. “Offer he couldn’t refuse” sort of thing.’

  It didn’t sound the level of information commonly gleaned from children more given to saying things like ‘Terence can curl his tongue round like a straw’ and ‘Terence’s mother’s cat farts all the time’. I couldn’t help probing a little. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I can’t for the life of me remember.’

  ‘Dad had a letter from him.’

  ‘Really?’ I spun round. I hadn’t realized Minna was in the doorway.

  Neither had Geoff. ‘No, I don’t think so, poppet.’

  Oh, ho! Clearly no female was too young to start being fobbed off by Geoffrey. But, ‘Ye-es,’ she insisted in a petulant tone I’d not heard from Minna before. ‘You gave the stamp to Harry. It had bees on it.’

  Good on you, sweetheart, I remember thinking. Starting to grow up at last. But Minna’s first tiny stab at stubbornness was lost on Geoffrey. ‘Darling, I think you’ve probably got a bit mixed up.’

  ‘No. You made us toss for it, and Harry won.’

  More than one way to skin a cat. ‘I have a stamp or two upstairs,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure that one of them has bees on it. Shall we go up and look?’

  Did Geoff think I was stupid? He didn’t even follow us up to the bedroom. So after giving Minna the task of rooting through my messy dressing-table drawer in search of stamps that weren’t there, I went through to slide the collector’s album I’d bought for Harry out from under his bed, see his fresh acquisition for myself, and realize that, in spite of all my efforts, my place in this family still didn’t amount to a heap of beans. Geoff hadn’t even bothered to show me the letter Terence had obviously written him – here was the stamp to prove it with its yellow bees – and now his daughter had inadvertently reminded him, he actually preferred to brazen it out than get my opinion about anything in it.

  I wasn’t going to beg to be a real part of this shitty, crumbling family. I handed Minna some old and very pretty Turkish coins to make up for the stamps she couldn’t find, then sent her packing. Staying in the bedroom alone, I rang Donald. ‘Phone here,’ I ordered him. ‘Ring in five minutes and say there’s been a blow-out and I’m to drop everything to get on the job.’ I had a little think. March … Beaches … ‘Tell him the problem’s in a rig off Casablanca, and I’m to be back-up on shore.’

  Donald burst out laughing. ‘Tilly, you’re a monster. Who’s the lucky man?’

  The lucky man turned out to be Faisal, the perfect stranger in the bar: rich, well-dressed, smelling of musk and sandalwood. His hands were gentle and his manners perfect. Like Geoff, he went at the business of giving pleasure with at least as much attention as he gave to getting it. Also – and unlike Geoff – he played two-handed bridge and quite liked gambling. After two days, if I hadn’t been so off men I do believe that I might even have cancelled my own room, such was my confidence that the rest of the week would continue to be so delicious a pleasure. And I was right.

  * * *

  I came home with two thoughts in mind. Never get married. And let bygones be bygones. So you could argue I was in the best of moods when I stepped in the house.

  Geoff played his part. ‘My God, you look fantastic! You look so tanned.’

  ‘There was a tremendous amount of hanging about,’ I offered, not untruthfully.

  ‘Well, you look wonderful.’

  We went to bed. I made up quite a lot of stuff about the blow-out (mostly culled from a rather fine disaster video the men had been passing around on the rig a couple of weeks earlier) and the next few days rolled along peacefully enough. Since I was working from home, I took the children skating twice. Then, at the weekend, I went off to visit Mother in the nursing home while Geoff took Minna and Harry round to see Frances, who had just flown home.

  I was gone no more than a couple of hours. Still, when I got back, supper was already in the offing. I sniffed the air and called out, ‘Whatever it is, it smells delicious.’

  Geoff popped his head round the kitchen door. ‘I hope you’re hungry. I’ve made heaps. Far too much.’

  I had a kind thought. ‘You could take some round to Frances.’

  Clenching his wooden spoon in his mouth as if he were a Spaniard biting a long-stemmed rose, Geoff did a couple of flamenco heel clicks and took my coat. ‘Just what I planned.’

  ‘Why? Is she looking peaky? Has she lost more weight?’

  ‘She looked quite well, I thought.’

  I found that hard to credit. ‘Really? Quite well? Or “quite well, considering”?’

  ‘Quite well, considering,’ he had to admit. Then he went all the way. ‘Actually, she looks bloody awful.’

  ‘Will she be able to cope?’

  ‘She says she thinks so.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ I said. (I did sincerely wish her well.) And that was when Geoff put his foot straight in it. ‘Yes. Listen, Til. I know I should have asked you first, but I did say to Frances that, if she can’t manage, then we’ll have Harry and Minna back.’

  ‘Back?’ I glanced round. Sure enough, in the short time that I’d been out of the house, all Minna’s cut-outs had vanished from the hall table. The sports gear wasn’t in the corner. The coat rack looked less colourful and cluttered. ‘What? Have they gone already? Without even saying goodbye?’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I didn’t think.’

  For a moment I went blank. Then – think of a live wire on the loose. The question is, will it touch anything? If it does, hair w
ill startle and skin will fry. And, if it doesn’t, no one would know the difference. I’m not quite sure how long I stood there, wondering where to go next in this quite hopeless quest to make this man see me, not just as some living, breathing instrument of use to him and his family, but as a human being in my own right, with actual feelings. It took a while to gather courage to look his way. But, when I did, I saw him eyeing me uneasily in the hall mirror. He’d worked out that he’d blown it yet again. All he was wondering now was which form the attack would take, and when it would come.

  And I couldn’t be bothered. It was as simple as that. I couldn’t raise the energy to make the effort. As all the fellows on the rig would say, ‘Shit, or get off the pot.’ The man was hopeless. Either he was thick or he was stubborn. I found it hard to believe that someone with brains enough to tie his shoelaces could be so stupid as to continually fail to learn from experience. But there you are. It had to be a possibility. The only alternative was that he was determined to make it crystal clear that he was always to be in total control of any decision relating to his former wife and children, whatever the cost to the two of us.

  But, given the way he blinded himself, whenever convenient, to those children’s emotions, that seemed unlikely.

  No, he must be thick.

  So there I stood, watching him in the mirror watching me. The moments passed. I thought about how men talk on the rig. How, when you listen, it becomes quite clear they have a gift for shoving separate chunks of their lives into separate boxes. (Look at Sol. Loved me, and quite sincerely loved his wife.) Men who would kick themselves for idiots if they designed a drill system with no regard for the pumps, or planned a draining line without a thought for the electrics, can blunder their way through their personal lives like utter imbeciles, seemingly incapable of taking more than one person’s feelings into account at any one time.

  So. The same old hairy question. Stay, or go? Tick, tick. I watched poor Geoff endure each waiting moment like a man who can’t breathe till the guillotine falls.

  Meanwhile, the smell of casserole filled up the hall.

  ‘What are you cooking?’

  He fell on the straw he’d been offered. ‘Boeuf bourgignon. I thought we should celebrate having the house back to ourselves.’ He couldn’t wait to take the chance to steer away from danger. ‘I made a berry pannacotta too, and there’s some of that heavenly cheese we keep finding at Lacey’s.’

  I straightened up and told myself: Right, Til. You work on and off oil rigs, so it could fairly be argued that, at least in part, you are a rigger. And at a moment like this, what would a rigger say and do?

  Nothing more to decide. ‘Jolly good!’ I said. ‘Foul visit to the nursing home. Horrible disapproving nurse and Mum more bats than ever. It seemed to drag on for hours. I’m bloody starving. How long will supper be?’

  I clearly hadn’t put aside all power of feeling. When I saw Frances the following weekend, my heart went out to her, clinging to the side of her front door, looking so thin, drawn and shaky.

  The children rushed past her into the house, late for some telly show. I hung about, pretending to have a problem with the strap of my shoe, till they were out of earshot. Then, ‘Sure that you’ll be all right?’ I asked. ‘It can’t be a picnic without Terence here to help. Can’t I send Geoff round to mow your lawn, or bring you some groceries, or something?’

  ‘No, really, Tilly. Thanks. I am managing.’ She switched hands on the door, ready to shuffle back in the house. Then she said, over her shoulder, ‘Oh, there is one thing. If you could just make sure he doesn’t forget to pick me up on Wednesday.’

  I didn’t blink. ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘Three fifteen should be fine.’

  ‘Three fifteen. Right.’

  I went back to my car, waved and drove off. Three days till Wednesday, all without the children. Twice we had leisurely meals in which the words ‘Oh, by the way, Til, did I remember to tell you what’s happening on Wednesday?’ would have fitted in as well as any other.

  But nothing. Nothing. Not a peep.

  The fact is, you can make all the grand decisions you want to put aside one failing part of your relationship – be lofty, even – decide what you value most, and let the rest go hang. The problem is, only the dead can do it. Nobody else can keep it up. The world is crawling with people who told themselves, ‘I know my partner’s a jerk. But this is a nice house, and children need two parents. I’ll hold tight.’ What happens? Within a day or two the pudding plates are flying because he’s said the wrong thing yet again, or she has made the exact same mistake he’d known from the start she would make. The fact is, feelings matter. So I make no apologies for watching Geoffrey like a hawk, smiling invitingly over our intimate suppers (Oh, go on, Geoffrey. You can talk to me. It’s perfectly safe.) and even switching round my next few days on rig so I would definitely be there on Wednesday.

  From the impassive way Geoff started the day, you’d have thought nothing would happen. In the morning he shot into town, but that was just for batteries for his camera, and he was back within the hour. I made the lunch. I let the conversation dangle, making a point of showing I was in an easy mood, and leaving giant gaps in which the words ‘Oh, by the way, Tilly …’ would fall as naturally as morning rain.

  They only came as he was going out of the door at two o’clock. ‘Oh, by the way, Til. I want to swing round the suppliers this afternoon to pick up a few things. If you’re around, can you let in the children?’

  Bugger the children. By three I was sitting in my car round the corner from Frances’s house. Geoff’s car had to pass me on the one-way street. I watched it sail by and pulled out to follow, knowing I didn’t really need to keep the two of them strictly in view on the short journey. After all, where else would the pair be headed in term-time, halfway through the afternoon, except to their children’s school?

  I only bothered to hang around so I could see how long the meeting lasted. (Over an hour.) Geoff had to drop off Frances, so I was home first. ‘You got in the house all right, then?’ I congratulated Minna, nodding at the door key she’d left on the side.

  She was triumphant. ‘Harry had forgotten. He looked under all the wrong flowerpots. I kept on telling him, “It’s that one, Harry,” but he wouldn’t listen. And I was right.’ She didn’t notice I was barely listening. ‘Look, Tilly. I’m making another glitter picture. It’s a princess.’

  Across the top of her thick sheet of paper, she ran a smear of glue, then picked up her tiny tube of glitter and sprinkled on silver. Raising the edges, she tipped and blew until she had a shower of twinkling stardust across her painted navy sky. ‘Do you know what that is?’

  ‘Radioactive dust?’ I asked sourly, startling her mightily.

  Out in the garden, Harry was lying backwards across the plank bottom of the plaited rope swing, letting it untwist. ‘The clouds are spinning, Tilly.’

  He didn’t see my face because he was leaning back so far his hair brushed the ground. ‘Til, when you went off to big school, did they ever flush your head down the lavatory?’

  New one on me. But, on the track of information myself, I thought it prudent to offer a soothing answer. ‘No. There was a good deal of talk about it in my primary school, but once we all moved up to secondary, nothing ever happened.’

  Relieved, he hauled himself upright and smiled. I took a chance, and went fishing. ‘So, Harry, what do you think they’ll all decide today?’

  ‘Who?’

  Was he just checking? ‘You know. Your mum and dad and Mrs Dee.’

  ‘Oh, them.’ He sighed. ‘It isn’t just Mrs Dee,’ he told me gravely. ‘It’s all the teachers. And I think they’ll agree that I’ll be better off at Park Place School than Wallace Secondary.’

  ‘Less head-flushing?’

  He pouted. ‘And more exams. And horrid purple blazers. And sports all Saturday morning.’ He sighed. And it was only as an afterthought he tacked it on. ‘But Gran says that she thought the t
ennis courts were brilliant.’

  I took it gently. After all, she might have simply seen a catalogue. ‘So Granny went round the school with your mother?’

  ‘And Dad.’

  See? ‘And Dad.’ Say what you like about deciding not to care, these things will send their poisonous bubbles up through any coating of tranquillity, however well laid down. A fucking nerve, to fix a time when Granny – who was barely on the radar – could look around a school, but not take me, who had looked after them for five whole months, and given up the one room in the house I used to still call mine, and made such efforts to be good to them.

  Good job that Harry was back to spinning, and didn’t see the look on my face. ‘Til? What’s insurance?’

  God, what a question. ‘It’s just money you pay in, and the insurance company gives you a whole lot more back if something bad happens.’

  ‘What sort of something bad? Like someone dying?’

  Even through my distraction, alarm bells rang. I did my best. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ To make it clear he might be worrying in vain, I added, ‘Or the house burning down. Or the car crashing. Or stepping on your watch. Or losing your wallet.’

  But he was on the ball, as usual. ‘Gran said to Mum, if they decide to send me to Park Place, she ought to think about taking out insurance for the school fees. And Mum snapped back at her and said, “I’m not dead yet, thanks! I think I’ll just take my chances.”’

  ‘Good on your mother,’ I said absently, still brooding on the fact that, yet again, I’d been left out of things.

  Harry pulled himself upright to give me one of his searching looks. Then, falling back again, he launched into quite a long speech. ‘I thought you’d say that. You often stick up for Mum, don’t you, Tilly? Connor’s dad’s girlfriend is horrible about his mum. His dad says he’s to ignore it, and just not listen. But you quite like Mum, don’t you? She says you even told her you’d send Dad round to do the garden for her if she can’t manage. So you must like her a bit.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I have no problems with your mother.’