by Maeve Haran
She thought about it. She was sure Julia had got the wrong idea. Wenceslaus would never take advantage of a vulnerable married woman, she was certain of it. But had he somehow given out the wrong signal? Should she talk to him? Ask him if anything had happened, just to reassure herself?
‘Don’t worry, it may never happen,’ a voice interrupted her thoughts. It was Bill, braving her woman’s wiles with a nice cup of tea.
Normally she wanted to kill anyone who came up with this ridiculous platitude, but today it seemed rather endearing. ‘Thanks, Bill. I don’t think it will either, but I’m not sure my daughter agrees.’
Laura could hear the shouting as she parked in the driveway. Simon and Sam, head to head, were arguing in the hall. She stood for a moment, listening, trying to decide whether to go in and intervene.
‘This is bloody ridiculous,’ Simon was shouting, ‘you can’t just announce you never want to see me again. I’m your father!’
The louder Simon shouted, the cooler Sam became. ‘I’m twenty-two. I’m a fully-fledged adult. I can make any decision I want!’ Laura stood listening by the open front door.
‘This is all your mother’s doing. She’s always been good at playing the victim. She’s turning you against me. I’d heard this is what happens. It’s why I stayed with her so long because I knew if I left she’d badmouth me to you and Bella.’
‘Dad,’ Sam’s voice was calm but implacable, ‘shut up. You’re in the wrong. It would come better if you showed a bit of regret or apology. We might understand why you left if you tried to explain instead of blaming it all on Mum.’
‘But some of it was her fault!’
‘Maybe it was. Marriages don’t always work. I get that. Half my class at school had divorced parents. And they nearly all behaved as shittily as you. Moving out with no warning, selling the house when it was the only bit of stability left, like Ben’s parents did. I suppose you’re intending to do that too.’
Simon was silent and had the grace to look chastened, as well he might. He ought to be proud of his son. Sam was terrific.
‘Of course, you’ll need somewhere for your new family.’ The deadened tone in which Sam said new family made Laura want to weep.
‘I don’t want to lose you, Sam,’ Simon said finally. ‘You’re still my son, you’ll always be my son.’
‘I expect you’ll get over it when you have a new baby.’ He paused, and if it hadn’t been sweet, straight-talking Sam, Laura would have sworn he was being deliberately mocking. ‘I’m told new babies are very time-consuming.’
‘Yes,’ Simon hesitated, ‘well, to be honest, I hadn’t planned that part. But Suki’s never had a child so it’s natural she’d want to have one.’
‘You’ll have to hope it’s a girl. You’ll be too old for football.’ Laura could see that hit home, but then Sam was entitled to fight back, even if it was below the belt. ‘I suppose fathers are older now.’
Laura noticed how tired and grey Simon was looking, his debonair charm wearing as thin as a cheap suit.
‘Yes,’ Simon attempted a wan smile, ‘just don’t mention Picasso. Everyone mentions bloody Picasso. Sam . . . will you come and have a meal with me? It’d mean a lot.’
Sam shook his head. ‘Sorry, Dad. It’s all a bit raw for me. I thought you and Mum were happy, you see. Now I can’t help distrusting people, especially you.’
‘I’m sorry about that, Sam, you were always such a trusting person.’ There was actually a catch in Simon’s voice, though whether the emotion was for Sam or for himself, Laura couldn’t tell.
‘Was I? Well, I’m not any more. In real life love isn’t the way it was in Keats and Shakespeare. They seem to have left out the bit about loving a woman till they’re middle-aged then buggering off with someone thirty years younger.’
‘Sam, don’t be so cynical. Please.’
‘Well, if I am,’ for the first time his voice sounded genuinely angry, ‘we’ll know who to blame, won’t we?’
Laura decided it was time she intervened.
‘Simon. I thought I heard shouting. Are you all right, Sam?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘I didn’t ask you, Simon, I asked him.’
‘What difference does it make if I’m not?’ Sam demanded angrily. ‘Is Dad going to change his mind and come home again and will we all play happy families?’ He turned to Simon. ‘Dad, I know you want me to forgive you, to say it’s all OK, but it isn’t. Bella and I feel replaced, as if we didn’t count any more. That’s probably why she—’
‘Sam!’ Laura interrupted. ‘It’s up to Bella.’
‘What’s up to Bella? You’re all just trying to make me feel guilty, that’s why I didn’t try and explain myself before. But I do feel guilty. And I do love you both. But I have loyalties to Suki too and now to this baby.’
‘Yes, Dad,’ Sam said wearily. ‘We get it. But it was a choice and you made it. I can’t just say, “Don’t worry, these things happen.” I may not have been in love but I know whether it’s OK or not to treat a friend badly just because it suits me.’
Simon looked helplessly from his son to Laura. He could try and plead that he’d fallen in love, been bowled over by passion, but standing here in his old home, it didn’t seem convincing or seem solid. ‘I’m sorry you feel like that.’
‘Yeah. Well . . .’ Sam had said all he had to say. He left them both in the hall.
Laura watched, and realized she’d never felt more proud of her son.
‘Time you went, I think,’ she said to Simon. And then, when they were alone in the hall, added, ‘Are you still going ahead with this unreasonable behaviour nonsense?’
‘Yes. Are you going to defend it?’
‘My lawyer says it’s just a formality; it doesn’t matter what the grounds are. We might as well get it over with. It’ll be easier for Bella and Sam.’
He paused, looking around at the familiar surroundings almost with an air of loss. ‘And you?’
‘Don’t mistake guilt for love, Simon. Love is a lot harder. It involves sacrifice to keep it going. Maybe you’ll find that out one day.’
‘And maybe I won’t.’
How strange that in all these years she hadn’t seen that it was only himself he really cared about.
As he walked to his car, she felt something lighten in herself. She saw that if she had to leave this house, she wouldn’t mind that much after all, as long as the money she was left was enough to get somewhere big enough for her and Sam. The memories here were no longer the solid base of her life. It was time she created some new ones. And she was glad again that Bella’s baby would not be born out of misplaced vengeance but as a new beginning.
Claudia looked out of the window and saw that the sun was shining. She decided to walk to her parents’ house. Fresh air and birdsong were just the tonic she needed and Vito would enjoy the walk.
‘Bye,’ she called to Don as he sat in his usual chair doing the crossword. ‘See you later.’ At least he wasn’t surreptitiously rooting through the house for more things to take to the dump. Claudia was beginning to think she’d have to nail things down.
It was a glorious morning, one of those days that lifted the heart. A pale yellow sun blazed in the hazy blue of the sky and a veil of mist still hung in the tree tops giving the scene a dream-like quality, as if the light were being filtered through net.
‘Hey,’ Claudia confided in Vito, ‘if I’m not careful, I might find myself liking it here. At least on days like this.’
Twenty minutes later, humming ‘As I walked out one mid-summer morning’, one of Don’s old favourite folk songs, she rang her parents’ doorbell feeling in better spirits than she’d been in since they’d moved here. The countryside, she had to admit, had its delights.
Silence. Then she remembered that this was the day the ambulance picked up her father for his weekly check-up. Still, her mother ought to be in.
She took out her key and went in, leaving the little dog in the hall. Her
mother wasn’t keen on muddy paws.
There didn’t seem to be anyone on the ground floor. ‘Mum!’ she called up the stairs. Getting no reply, she ran up to her parents’ bedroom and opened the door. The curtains were still drawn and she was about to go back downstairs when she heard a movement.
Claudia turned on the light to find her mother, still in her nightdress, sitting on the end of their bed, still as a statue.
‘Mum, why are you sitting here in the dark?’
There was no response.
‘Mum, what’s the matter?’ She sat down next to her mother. ‘Have you been taking the tablets the doctor gave you?’ This, Claudia saw, was a stupid question. She manifestly had not.
Claudia went to look for them. They were, as she had expected, unopened. She started to run a bath, putting in some of her mother’s favourite Floris bath essence. ‘Come on, Mum,’ she said gently, ‘let’s get you into the bath.’
Olivia still didn’t move.
Claudia kneeled down and put her arms round her mother.
‘Mum,’ she held her tighter for a moment, ‘I love you, Mum.’
Olivia seemed to wake at last and turned to her. ‘I love you too, dear. I’m not sure I showed it enough. You were always your father’s girl.’ She took Claudia’s hand in hers. ‘I’m not well, am I? I feel like I’m drowning in mud; can’t move, can’t see, can’t breathe.’
‘The pills will help. Time to get up now. The bath’s running. I’ll make a cup of tea and have a bit of a tidy while you’re having it.’
Her mother got up and began to move in a strange shuffling walk that wrung Claudia’s heart.
She saw how much they’d all relied on Olivia. Her mother had been like a heat source, radiating energy. Now it seemed she could hardly drag herself out of bed.
At the bottom of the stairs she heard Vito bark, wondering what had happened to everyone. Claudia went down and picked him up. ‘Oh, Vito, what am I going to do?’
The thought of Betty, wonderful, indomitable Betty, flashed into her mind. ‘Tell you, what, Vito, I think we need a Bluebell Girl around here!’
She would enlist Betty’s help tomorrow and maybe together, with the help of the medication, they could get Olivia to turn a corner.
There was one more thing Sal had to do before she could lie on her sofa and watch Christmas TV: go to the office party.
It was the last thing she wanted to do, but she knew how bad it would be for morale if the brand-new editor didn’t show up. She wouldn’t have to stay that long, just enough time for her presence to be noticed and for her to congratulate the people who had worked so hard.
Thank heavens, for reasons of budget, it was being held in the magazine’s office, not some noisy night club with blaring music, strobe lighting and a hubbub so loud you couldn’t hold even the most basic conversation.
Once upon a time, she would have been the last to leave, draining the last dregs of the free champagne, game to go on to whatever late-night club or dubious drinking dive was proposed next. She’d seen the sun come up over the river a fair few times as she hailed bleary cab drivers on their way to hearth and home. All in all, it hadn’t been too bad a working life. She’d had a lot of fun over the years.
Bloody hell, her inner voice whispered, you sound as if you’re checking out!
Sal pulled a stylish black sheath dress from her wardrobe and matched it with a pair of heels she hadn’t worn for years. With the wig she actually looked passable as long as you didn’t look too hard. She added a pair of sunglasses, to hide the fact that her eyelashes had departed down the bathroom drain after the last round of drugs. She’d managed to compensate for the loss of eyebrows by pulling the fringe of the wig down almost into her eyes.
On the spur of the moment she added the black fur hat and surveyed herself in the long mirror. It all came together with surprising dash, if a trifle over the top. She looked as if she’d escaped from the après-ski slopes. She could say it was her new Isabella Blow look. After all, better to be thought mutton dressed as lamb than mutton that had gone completely bald.
She swallowed her anti-nausea pills and had to sit down for a moment. People had warned her of one of chemo’s more delightful tricks – that you could be starving and feel sick both at the same time.
Into battle! She spurred herself on.
Fortunately, a black cab was passing – this was no time for economy, she could always come home on the bus, but she wanted to arrive with a bit of éclat.
The party was in full swing when she got there.
‘Champagne?’ asked a waiter holding a tray.
Sal helped herself to an elderflower spritzer which at least had the advantage of looking, if not tasting, like fizz. ‘I’m on antibiotics,’ she told him, to explain her abstinence, then she worked her way round the room, chatting to everyone involved with New Grey, from the lowly office boy to Michael Williams.
By 9 p.m. she was dead on her feet, and had started edging towards the door to make her escape.
‘You look terrific.’ Sal turned to find Rose McGill in a purple shift designed for a woman a third of her age. Somehow Rose carried it off by sheer force of personality. ‘Very Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago.’
‘And about the same vintage. Maybe we should get her to write for New Grey!’
‘Have you had any luck with your mystery blogger?’
‘Still pursuing her. She’s very hard to get.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.’
‘Maybe she’s famous!’
‘Maybe she’s Julie Christie!’
Sal eyed the door longingly. What acceptable excuse could she plead to leave this early?
‘Rose, I’m afraid I must go. I feel I’m coming down with something and I don’t want it to ruin Christmas.’
‘Of course.’ Sal felt Rose’s X-ray vision examining her wig, her dark glasses and the lashless eyes beneath. ‘You are all right, aren’t you? Only sometimes you seem a little bit tired.’
‘Just end-of-the-year exhaustion. Now, Merry Christmas to you and a very happy new year. I hope it’s a prosperous one for us all.’
She leaned forward to embrace Rose and her hat and wig very nearly fell off. Sal clutched onto them in panic. ‘I really must go,’ she lied. ‘I’ve got a taxi waiting downstairs.’
‘Then I’ll come with you,’ Rose announced. ‘I can’t bear these noisy parties. Fun for the young, though.’
When there was no sign of a cab, Sal pretended to be furious. ‘Always the same at Christmas. Probably didn’t want to go north of the river.’
A distinctive red double-decker was approaching. ‘Tell you what,’ Rose enthused, ‘we can go on the bus. I adore using my Freedom Pass.’
Sal, on the other hand, had been known to pay full price at the cinema rather than admit to being an OAP. How bloody stupid that felt, given what had happened to her since. For another half an hour, feeling like a dug-up corpse, her eyes itching and her nose running because her nose hairs had followed her eyelashes and brows down the sink, Sal fended off searching enquiries from the magazine’s proprietor, conducted at maximum volume, and it was the most blessed of reliefs when Shepherd’s Bush roundabout hove into sight.
‘This is me. See you on the third of Jan.’
Back at her flat, Sal collapsed onto her bed, dragging off the hat and wig and falling asleep fully dressed.
Christmas passed for all four in very different ways: Sal spent it alone with a Marks and Spencer’s individual Christmas pudding and frequent visits to the loo. Claudia persuaded her parents to come to her house and christen the new kitchen, even managing to get her mother to wear a paper hat. At Bella’s and Sam’s request, Laura cooked the same Christmas dinner she always cooked and stuck religiously to every familiar ritual from stockings on their beds to presents at midday and a chocolate pudding after the turkey. Ella had two Christmases. The first was cooked by Wenceslaus, ably assisted by Minka, on Christmas Eve, which they called Wigilia, the vigi
l, since, Wenceslaus informed Ella, Christmas Day is not the big day in Poland. Cory came too while Julia and Neil visited the other relatives, thank God.
Minka, dressed in her trademark stripper chic, kept glancing at Cory’s subtle beauty, accentuated by a dark-blue velvet dress which matched her eyes, then glancing at Wenceslaus to see if he had noticed it too.
But he was entirely involved with making sure the table was laid correctly. ‘At Wigilia there must be food from the four corners of the earth. Grain from the fields, fruit from the orchard, carp from the water and mushrooms from the forest.’
‘I’m surprised you can face mushrooms after my sister almost poisoned you,’ Cory teased him.
‘Yes,’ Wenceslaus laughed, ‘I may forget the mushrooms this year.’
Ella watched, fascinated, as he laid straw under the tablecloth to remind them that Jesus was born in a stable, lit a candle in the window to welcome the Christ child and, last of all, laid an extra place at the table. ‘For weary traveller or relative who is dead that you wish could be present here.’
Cory suddenly jumped up and ran from the table.
‘Have I upset your daughter?’ Wenceslaus asked, looking shaken.
‘She’s thinking of her father,’ Ella explained. ‘They were incredibly close.’
‘I am so sorry. I should have remembered it was not so long ago.’
Ella was about to get up from the table and follow her when Cory returned holding a blue lamb’s wool jumper.
‘It was Dad’s,’ she announced and Ella saw she was not sad but shining with happiness.
‘I thought we’d given all his things away.’
‘I stole it from the pile and kept it in my room. I used to go to sleep holding it.’
Ella reached over and squeezed her hand.
‘Don’t worry,’ Cory smiled back, ‘it’s fantastic. Now he’s here with us at the extra place. I think this is a great custom. We should do it every year.’
They tucked into dumplings and herring, noodles with poppy seed, then gingerbread biscuits and spiced honey cake, washed down with a rather outrageous amount of Polish vodka.