An Unsuitable Match

by Joanna Trollope

  Rose looked back up at him. Her expression was impersonal.

  ‘If it makes you happy,’ she said. ‘Certainly OK.’

  *

  Nat and Emmy lived in adjacent, hilly streets in Clerkenwell, Nat in a penthouse with a lodger, high above Crawford Passage, and Emmy in a studio flat round the corner. Both were heavily mortgaged, and in both cases the flats were jointly owned by themselves and their father in Australia, who had paid the deposits. Between the two flats, at the bottom of Eyre Street Hill was a pub, banded in white stone and red brick like a giant humbug, where the twins often met after work, and to which they now repaired after the meeting at Rose’s house.

  Nat set a glass of ginger beer down in front of his sister.

  ‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’

  Emmy nodded. ‘It’s fine. I don’t really know what I want. Except for Mum not to be like this.’

  Nat put his bottle of Belgian beer down beside Emmy’s glass and straddled a stool opposite her.

  ‘I know.’

  Emmy said gloomily, ‘She looks fantastic.’

  ‘Years younger. And her hair. What’s she done with her hair?’

  ‘Highlighted it.’

  ‘It’s always been just – hair. Brown hair.’

  ‘Well, now it’s got highlights.’

  Nat said crossly, ‘Floodlights, more like.’

  ‘Don’t be a meanie.’

  Nat picked up his beer and put it down again untasted. ‘Did you feel like this about Dad and Gillian?’

  Emmy was chipping varnish off one thumbnail with concentration.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Emmy didn’t look up. She said, ‘It was old news by the time it got to us.’

  ‘It was more than that.’

  Emmy said nothing. Nat picked up his beer bottle again, took a pull and held it loosely between his knees.

  ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that Dad doesn’t mean as much to us as Mum does.’

  Emmy stopped chipping and glared at her brother.

  ‘He does. He’s our father just as much as she’s our mother.’

  ‘No, Em. I mean, yes of course he is, biologically, but Mum is the one we know really well, Mum is the one who always did stuff for us and came to see us. And we saw Mum in pieces, didn’t we? We caught her crying when she didn’t think we were looking. We have intimacy with Mum.’

  ‘You mean you do.’

  ‘Em,’ Nat said patiently, ‘being childish like this just proves my point. You’re close to her, you know her. You’re probably going home to sleep on pillowcases she bought for you. You don’t want her belonging to anyone else any more than I do.’

  Emmy stopped fiddling with her thumbnail. Without looking at her brother, she said, ‘I just find her, really, really embarrassing like this.’

  Nat put his beer bottle down on the table. ‘I know.’

  ‘I mean, she’s sort of all girlish and giddy. It’s awful.’

  ‘What d’you think he’s like?’

  Emmy gave a little shudder. ‘To be honest, Nat, I don’t really want to think about him.’

  ‘But we’ve got to meet him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m quite angry about that. I’m angry with her for putting us in this position.’

  Emmy nodded. ‘Yes. But it’s happening. And we have to protect her from it being worse than it has to be.’

  ‘When we meet?’

  ‘No,’ Emmy said, ‘after. We have to make sure she sees a lawyer and that we’re there when she does.’

  ‘Em, that’s my line.’

  ‘Well, I’ve said it for you. She isn’t thinking straight. She’s kind of high on all this. I mean, she shouted. She actually shouted. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her shout in my life. It’s like someone has cast a spell on her, transformed her.’ She stopped and looked at her ginger beer. ‘Did I order that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nat said. ‘It’s what you asked for.’

  ‘I must be mad,’ Emmy said. ‘It must be catching.’ She stood up and dusted flakes of nail varnish off her T-shirt. ‘I’m going to get a proper drink,’ she said, ‘and then we can make a plan of action.’

  *

  When Laura got home, Angus had bathed the boys and read them bedtime stories, and was sitting at the kitchen table slicing peppers with the Japanese chef’s knife he had bought because, he said, it combined beauty with complete functionality.

  Laura dropped her bag on the floor, her phone on the table and came over to give him a kiss.

  ‘Boys OK?’

  ‘Clean. One asleep, one allowed to shine a torch on the ceiling as an incentive to stay in bed.’

  Laura said, ‘I’ll go and kiss them. What are you cooking?’

  ‘A stir fry. How was the family meeting?’

  Laura sighed. She pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘Oh, you know. What you’d expect.’

  ‘Your mum standing her ground and the twins up in arms?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ Laura said.

  Angus stood up and carried the board of sliced peppers over to the modern industrial cooker that stood against one raw and unplastered wall.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What do you feel about your mother falling for someone after all this time?’

  ‘I feel . . .’ Laura said slowly, and stopped.

  Angus poured oil into a wok. He waited.

  ‘I feel,’ Laura said, ‘quite a lot of things. I’m thrilled to see her so elated but I am a bit concerned she’s too elated. I think she has every right to any kind of happiness she wants, but I’d ideally have liked her to take it a bit more steadily and slowly. She looks about forty.’

  Angus tipped the vegetables into the wok and said loudly, above the sound of the hissing oil, ‘What about him?’

  Laura shrugged. ‘She wants us to meet him. She wants you to come too, to meet him.’

  Angus turned round. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. She said she wanted you to be there too. I think she just wants a bit of a buffer against the twins.’

  ‘Are they very anti?’

  ‘Of course,’ Laura said. ‘You know them.’

  Angus turned back to his wok and began to turn the vegetables rapidly. ‘Perhaps they’re right.’

  ‘Of course they are,’ Laura said. ‘A little bit. Just as I am.’

  ‘What a mess.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it’ll get worse.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘I speak as the son of a man on his fourth marriage. Dealing with one’s own emotions is one thing. Facing a parent’s roller coaster of a love life is quite another. I haven’t felt like my father’s child forever. He’s the child, if anyone is.’

  The kitchen door opened six inches and a powerful torch beam was directed through the gap.

  ‘Jack?’ Laura said.

  The torch beam wavered.

  ‘It isn’t Jack.’

  Laura went over to the door and opened it wider. Jack, in his Kylo Ren pyjamas, was standing barefoot on the uncarpeted boards of the hall outside.

  ‘Where were you?’ he said.

  ‘I was with Grandma Rose.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come and kiss me?’

  ‘I was going to. But I think you were only allowed the torch if you stayed in bed. And you aren’t in bed.’

  Jack switched the torch off.

  ‘There,’ he said triumphantly.

  Laura propped herself against the doorframe and looked down at him.

  ‘I can’t kiss you unless you’re back in bed.’

  Jack thought for a moment. ‘Am I your first and best person?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Grandma Rose says to me, “You are my first and best”. Then she says to Adam, “You are my second and best”.’

  ‘Ah,’ Laura said. She stood upright. ‘Grandma Rose.’

  Jack tucked the torch under his ar
m as if it were a truncheon.

  ‘Did you know that Grandma Rose is your mummy?’

  ‘I did, actually.’

  ‘Like you are my mummy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jack turned and began to march back towards the stairs. ‘You’ll always be my mummy, won’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘Because,’ he said, his back to her and his arms stiffly at his sides, like a guardsman, ‘That’s what mummies do, isn’t it? They are just there, forever and ever.’ He paused at the bottom step and looked back at her. Then he said warningly, ‘OK?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was difficult, Tyler found, to catch Mallory these days. Either she was on stage, or winding down from being on stage, or asleep after winding down, or rehearsing for the next – very different, very contemporary – show she was going to be in in New York, so that both her days and her nights seemed to be completely spoken for. Add to that the fact that she was never alone, that she and her theatre friends seemed to hunt in convivial, chattering packs, and it was, Tyler thought, almost impossible to engineer the opportunity to tell her about Rose.

  He had, at least, made a beginning. He had arrived at her flat at ten o’clock one weekday morning, armed with a tray of coffees and a paper carrier bag of croissants, and had scored rather a success with her half-asleep flatmates, stumbling round him in the rags and tatters of their rehearsal clothes and smudges of the previous night’s eye makeup. They seized upon the coffee with theatrical relief, and scattered flakes of croissant around them like confetti. Under cover of the distraction they caused, Tyler said quietly to his daughter, ‘I’ve met someone.’

  Mallory was crouched on the sofa next to him, squinting into a hand-held mirror while she drew a careful black line behind her eyelashes. She finished the line and then she said, not looking at him, ‘Someone? A woman?’

  ‘Of course a woman,’ Tyler said. ‘Someone I knew years ago, when I was at school. I have re-met someone from my past.’

  Mallory turned to regard him over her shoulder. ‘Someone you like.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

  ‘I’m crazy about her,’ Tyler said. ‘She’s called Rose Woodrowe.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Mallory began to draw across the other eyelid.

  ‘I wanted you to know.’

  Mallory waited until her eyeliner was applied. Then she said, ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  She began to get up off the sofa. Tyler put a hand on her arm, to detain her. ‘Can I . . .’

  She was standing by now. She looked down at him. She was smiling but she took her arm away, all the same.

  ‘Gotta run, Dad.’ She glanced up and called, ‘Avanti, peaches!’ to her flatmates, then she looked back at her father. ‘Happy for you, Daddykins,’ she said, and she was gone.

  Since then, despite many attempts, Tyler had not been able to pin her down for long enough to tell her that his feelings for Rose were serious, serious enough for him to have proposed and to have been, in so many words, accepted, and, in consequence, to be considering taking up permanent residence in England. These were all matters that he wanted Mallory to pay attention to, because although he told himself that nothing Mallory could say or do would change what was rapidly becoming a settled intention, he wanted her to know, and to have the chance to express an opinion. He also wanted to be able to say, truthfully, to Rose, ‘My kids are fine with the whole idea. Completely fine. In fact, they see you as nothing but a blessing, taking me off their hands.’

  He even had additional sentences lined up for the right moment.

  ‘They’re longing to meet you. Of course, you can meet Mallory here, before she goes back to New York, and then we can go to California together, and you can meet Seth. And Yuhui, of course. You’ll like Yuhui.’

  She would, of course, like Seth. You couldn’t not like Seth. Not only was Seth easy-going and good-natured and comfortable to be with, but his reaction on the phone to his father’s news about Rose had been both welcome and welcoming.

  ‘She sounds a doll, Dad.’

  ‘She is. You’ll see.’

  ‘You sure sound happy.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re allowed,’ Seth said, ‘to say you don’t think you’ve ever been happier, you know.’

  ‘Am I? I thought maybe—’

  ‘Mom was different. Mom’ll always be special to all of us. But we don’t want you moping alone forever. Did I tell you that Doughboy has been named in the top ten of San Francisco’s hottest foodie start-ups?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Social media has gone wild, Dad. We can’t bake fast enough. At lunchtime we got lines out the door and round the block.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ Tyler said, ‘of bringing Rose out to meet you. I’d love you to meet her. I’d love her to meet you. And Yuhui of course.’

  There was a fractional pause and then Seth said, too heartily, ‘Sure thing!’ And then, ‘Sorry, Dad. Gotta go.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Sourdough bread,’ Seth said, ‘is a way of life.’

  There had not been an opportunity, Tyler reflected ruefully, to expand upon Rose as he would have liked; nor to ask Seth if he and his sister had communicated on the topic of their father’s love life. On the evidence of their strange lifelong detachment, Tyler could only assume that whatever discussion they might have had on the subject would have been minimal at best. Even as little children, they had not really been close enough to fight, but had pursued their parallel existences as they grew up almost irrespective of one another. Now, as adults, they displayed a remarkable indifference to each other’s lives. Neither, Tyler imagined, had interrogated the other about their father’s news. In fact, neither had seemed in the least inclined to interrogate him. Tyler thought he should feel relieved but found that he only felt neglected, even a little isolated and exposed. Walking to the hotel in Holborn which had been selected as the venue for his first meeting with Rose’s three children, plus son-in-law, Tyler felt only the intense anxiety of being scrutinized while undefended and alone.

  Mallory had said that she might come. If she could. If the rehearsal didn’t run over, but they nearly always ran over. It was that kind of show. She sounded as if she was mildly irritated to be asked to fulfil a family obligation that was, in fact, no concern of hers in the first place, but yes, she would try to come as a favour to her father. Seth had said that he’d talk to Rose via FaceTime if he could, during the length of the meeting, but it was, after all, morning in San Francisco, and the mornings were, like, crazy, round Doughboy. All in all, Tyler thought, crossing Holborn in a jostle of other pedestrians, and wondering if his Brooks Brothers blazer was too stuffy and conservative a sartorial choice, nothing about this encounter or its attendant circumstances was in the least confidence-making. Except Rose herself. Without Rose, Tyler decided, pulling his shirt cuffs clear of his blazer sleeves, the prospect of meeting her children was a matter of mild, but distinct, dread. If Mallory had been with him, trotting by his side with her newly red-rinsed hair glowing like a beacon, he would have felt so much better . . . furnished. He paused at the vast archway that led to the hotel’s courtyard and squared his shoulders. He was, he told himself, over six foot after all, well dressed and personable. It was ridiculous to be nervous of a bunch of kids the age of his own children. Ridiculous. What did it matter if they didn’t like him? Not a jot. Rose loved him. That was all that mattered. Rose loved him and he loved her. God, he did!

  *

  ‘Are you all right?’ Laura said to Rose.

  They were in the open-air courtyard bar, sitting in wicker armchairs around a table under an electric brazier suspended beneath a huge green canvas parasol. The twins had taken chairs either side of their mother in a way she was trying to see as protective rather than aggressive, and Laura and Angus were sitting opposite, leaving an empty chair next to Emmy, who had already pulled her own chair away from it, as if to emphasize that Rose was part of an impregna
ble family unit. Angus had secured a bottle of white wine, which now sat in front of them in an ice bucket, and half a dozen wine glasses plus two dishes of salted almonds, which Emmy had already inspected with disappointment.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Rose said firmly. ‘But I would like a drink.’

  Angus and Nat both stood up.

  ‘Silly boys,’ Laura said fondly.

  ‘Angus pour,’ Rose said. ‘Nat sit down again.’

  Nat said, ‘I don’t want to sit down.’

  ‘Why can’t Nat do the pouring?’ Emmy said.

  Angus looked at his wife. ‘Shall I?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rose said. ‘Do it. Just do it. Don’t be childish, Nat.’

  Nat sat down again. ‘I really don’t like the way you’re speaking to me these days.’

  Rose, who was concentrating on not looking towards the entrance arch, said with elaborate calm, ‘I’m talking to you exactly as I’ve always talked to you, darling.’

  ‘No, you aren’t. You’re talking to me as if I was six. Why can’t I pour the wine?’

  Angus swung round and accosted a passing waiter.

  ‘Would you pour for us, I wonder?’

  ‘There,’ Laura said. She had her phone in her hand. ‘Simple.’

  ‘This poor guy,’ Angus said, settling himself again with a tiny air of triumph. ‘If we’re all this jumpy, how must he be feeling?’

  ‘I’m not jumpy,’ Rose said.

  Emmy looked at her.

  ‘Yes, you are. We all are.’

  ‘He said he might be able to bring his daughter.’

  ‘The actress,’ Emmy said, with emphasis.

  The waiter placed modest glasses of white wine in front of everyone, and laid a folded napkin across the mouth of the ice bucket.

  ‘Will that be all?’

  ‘For now,’ Nat said, ‘yes. Thank you.’

  Emmy picked up her glass. ‘Cheers,’ she said meaningfully.

  Rose raised her own glass. ‘Happy days, darling.’ She gestured round the circle. ‘Happy days, all darlings.’

  ‘D’you know,’ Nat said, pushing back his chair and getting up, ‘I think I’m going to get a beer.’

  Rose began, ‘Can’t you—’

  ‘No, Mum,’ Nat said, ‘I can’t.’ He picked up his wine glass and set it down in front of the empty chair. ‘Tyler can drink it.’