‘No thanks, Mum.’
‘But to celebrate, to celebrate your being here—’
‘I’m driving.’
‘Just one glass—’
‘Mum, no thank you. And anyway, I haven’t come to celebrate anything.’
Laura sat down in the chair next to Simon’s.
‘What do you mean?’
Simon took his glasses off. He said awkwardly, ‘I’m glad – really glad – to see you looking so much better.’
‘I am!’ Laura said. She smiled at him. ‘Of course I am! I just couldn’t bear not knowing what was going to happen to me. But once I knew I was staying, everything fell into place.’
Simon leaned forward. He put his elbows on his knees. He said, staring out across the grass and the borders and the greenhouse to the field that rose steeply behind the house, ‘I’m not sure you can assume that.’
Laura said sharply, ‘Simon I hope this nonsense isn’t going to start all over again.’
Simon glanced at her, over his shoulder.
‘Nonsense?’
‘You ordering me about as if I had no mind of my own, as if I had no say in the matter.’
Simon said slowly, ‘I am not advising you about one more single thing.’
‘Excellent,’ Laura said. ‘Now let me get you something to drink.’
‘No,’ Simon said. ‘No. I’m not staying.’
‘But you came for lunch! You said you were coming for lunch!’
‘I didn’t,’ Simon said. ‘You did.’ He sat up straight and turned towards her. ‘I’ve got something to say to you.’
Laura put her head slightly on one side. She smiled, the small, dignified smile she had used on Wendy.
‘Pleasant, I hope, darling.’
‘I’m not acting for you any more,’ Simon said.
‘Acting?’
‘I can’t be your lawyer any more,’ Simon said.
‘What?’
Simon looked straight at her.
‘I can’t cope with you any longer. I can’t handle being your lawyer in this matter. I shouldn’t ever have agreed in the first place, but I did and now I have to get out before any more damage is done.’
Laura put her hands to her face. Her eyes were wide.
‘I’m not quite sure—’
‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘I was sorry for you, I am sorry for you but you’ve exploited me and played games with me and set me against my own family, and I’m afraid I’ve come to the end. I’ll help you find a new lawyer, but it won’t, most definitely, be me.’
Laura said, with rigorous control, ‘I’m not quite sure I understand what you are saying—’
‘That I’m still Simon,’ Simon said. ‘But I’m not your lawyer any more and I can’t compensate you for anything Dad has or hasn’t done.’
‘I see,’ Laura said. She moved her hands a little. ‘This doesn’t sound like very typical Simon talk to me. I imagine that Carrie—’
‘She doesn’t even know I’m here. No-one does, except the office. And they don’t know what I’m here for.’
Laura said unsteadily, ‘I can’t quite believe this.’
Simon said nothing. He crossed his legs. He observed that the sole of his left shoe was beginning to part company from the upper.
‘It’s very hard,’ Laura said, ‘to believe that I am hearing this from you, of all people. Perhaps I was silly; I’m sure I am in many ways silly, but I really thought you understood, that – well, that you minded for me.’
Simon stared at his shoe.
‘I do.’
‘Do you?’ Laura said. Her voice rose a little. ‘You tell me you are abandoning me but you still care?’
‘Yes,’ Simon said.
‘Oh Simon,’ Laura said, ‘who has made you so heartless?’
‘You have.’
‘I — ‘
‘You’ve pushed me to the limits, and beyond.’
‘Don’t speak like this to me, don’t—’
‘Mother,’ Simon said, ‘I love you. As my mother. I always will. I’ll stand by you as much as I can, as much as you make it possible. But you are not first with me. You were, I’m sure, when I was little. All mothers are like that, to their little children. But you aren’t now. You haven’t been, since I married.’
‘I knew Carrie came into it!’
‘Not because of anything she’s said,’ Simon said. ‘Not because of any pressure she’s brought to bear on me. But because—’
‘Don’t say it!’
He shrugged. He took a step away, out from the shade of the new umbrella.
‘OK. If that’s what you want.’
Laura moved towards him.
‘What am I supposed to do? What do I do now?’
Simon put his sunglasses on again.
‘Find a new lawyer.’
‘How do I do that? How can I know who to choose? Who will I be able to trust?’
‘I’ll send you a list,’ Simon said. He took another couple of steps away.
‘Don’t go,’ Laura cried. ‘Simon, don’t go! I’ll do anything, I’ll—’
‘Sorry,’ Simon said. He turned and blew a sketchy little kiss towards her with his right hand. Then he took his car keys out of his pocket. ‘Got to go.’
Laura cried, ‘You can’t leave me like this!’
He didn’t look at her again. He said, ‘Bye, Mum,’ almost with his back to her, and then he went quickly across the terrace and out of her sight round the corner of the house towards his car.
Rachel was standing by the kitchen table, eating crispbreads out of the packet. There were scattered crumbs all across the table. She glanced up when Simon came in.
‘What are you doing here?’
He dropped his jacket over the nearest chair back and tugged his tie loose.
‘Thanks, darling, for the welcome—’
‘It’s ten-past four,’ Rachel said. She put a forefinger in her mouth to dislodge a piece of crispbread. ‘Why aren’t you in the office?’
‘I have been in the office.’
‘Why’re you home now?’
‘I wanted to be,’ Simon said. He went over to the sink and turned the tap on. Then he stooped and drank from the tap, his face sideways on to the water, holding his tie out of the spray.
‘You never come home early,’ Rachel said.
Simon stood up and wiped his mouth on his shirt sleeve.
‘Then today’s different, isn’t it? Can I have one of those? I’m starving.’
‘They’re pretty boring.’
He bit into it and crunched. She watched him.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘None of your business,’ Simon said.
‘Why won’t you tell me?’
‘I will. In due course. Where’s Mum?’
‘She isn’t back yet.’
Simon reached across the table for the crispbread packet.
‘When will she be back?’
Rachel looked at the clock.
‘Soon.’
Simon took two crispbreads out of the packet.
‘I’m going to have a shower. Before she gets back.’
‘Lucky her.’
‘Rachel,’ Simon said, ‘when Mum gets in, will you tell her I’m here?’
‘OK.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
She watched him go out of the room and heard his feet go up the stairs, quite fast, as if he were running. Then she heard various doors open and shut and the thud of his feet across the floor above and then the unmistakable groan and shudder of the shower being turned on. Rachel never used the shower. She preferred baths. She liked lying in the bath with the door locked and her music on, very loudly, so that if anyone banged on the door and told her to hurry up, she genuinely wasn’t able to hear them.
She folded the torn edges of the crispbread packet over and put the packet in a cupboard. Then she took out a small cardboard drum of raisins and tipped some into her hand. Then she took a tired apple o
ut of the fruit bowl – Carrie would never buy new fruit until the old fruit was eaten – and sat at the table, chewing at the apple with one hand, and picking at the wood grain on the tabletop with the other. Simon had looked, well, sort of OK. Not exactly happy, but not tired and grumpy either. She heard the shower being turned off. He’d wind a towel round himself and pad into his bedroom before drying, leaving blotches of wet on the carpet. Jack did that, too. Perhaps it was men. Rachel looked at Simon’s jacket, hanging on the chair back. It looked male, too, even without Simon inside it. Rachel sighed. Thinking about men made her think about women, too, and she didn’t want to do that at the moment. She’d thought about love for years, it seemed, years and years. It was really all that she and Trudy had ever talked about. But now – or for now – she discovered she didn’t want to think about it. It didn’t seem an adventure, if her family were anything to go by, it just seemed to be a mess.
A key turned in the front-door lock and the door opened.
‘Hi!’ Carrie called.
‘Hi,’ Rachel said, nibbling tiny last pieces out of her apple core.
Carrie appeared in the kitchen doorway. She was carrying her bag and her briefcase and her jacket.
‘Hi, Rach. Whew, it’s hot.’
Rachel put the apple core down on the table.
‘Dad’s back.’
‘What, home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he ill?’
‘No,’ Rachel said. ‘He’s having a shower. He said to tell you.’
Carrie leaned forward and dumped all her things on the table. ‘Heavens.’
‘I heard the shower turn off—’
Carrie straightened up. She put her hands to her hair and let them fall again.
‘He’ll be down in a minute.’
‘He wants you to go up,’ Rachel said.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rachel said. She got up and picked up her apple core. ‘Why don’t you go and see?’
Simon was standing in their bedroom, dressed only in his boxer shorts, towelling his hair. Carrie stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. She took one shoe off and flexed her toes.
‘Hello,’ Simon said.
Carrie stepped out of her other shoe.
‘You’re early.’
‘I couldn’t concentrate. I went back to the office, but I was just too restless.’
‘Back?’
‘Yes,’ Simon said. ‘After I got back from Stanborough. I went to see Mum.’
‘Oh,’ Carrie said. She bent and picked up her shoes. In a careful voice she said, ‘And how was she?’
‘Devastated,’ Simon said.
Carrie didn’t look at him. She went past him slowly in her stockinged feet and dropped her shoes by the sofa.
‘What about this time?’
‘Me,’ Simon said.
Carrie turned to look at him. He stopped drying his hair and threw the towel on to the bed.
‘I went to tell her something.’
Carrie sat down on the sofa and bent forward to massage one foot.
‘I went to tell her,’ Simon said, ‘that I’m not acting as her lawyer any more.’
Carrie stopped massaging. She stared at the piece of carpet immediately beyond her foot. It had a stain on it, a small greyish stain about the size of a fifty-pence piece. It could be anything, tea, coffee, mascara, ink, mud. If she were a proper housewife, a true home-maker, she would have dealt with it long ago, long before it had settled itself so firmly into the carpet that nothing would shift it.
‘I told her that she was on her own now,’ Simon said. ‘That I’d always be her son but I couldn’t be anything more than that. And that I’d had enough of being manipulated. I had quite a lot of things planned to say about the nature of love, too, about generosity in love, but there wasn’t a chance really. Rather a waste. I’d done a lot of rehearsing in the car.’
Carrie stared at the stain. There seemed to be two or three of them. The harder she stared, the more they seemed to multiply. She felt Simon come and sit down next to her. He was damp and warm. She could see his thigh and calf out of the corner of the eye nearest to him.
‘Carrie,’ Simon said.
She turned her head and put her face down on her knee, sideways on, so that she was looking away from him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Simon said, ‘I am so, so sorry.’
She felt his hand on her back through the cotton of her shirt. She imagined how her back would feel under his hand, bony and unhelpful.
‘Could you sit up?’ he said. His hand moved to her arm. He helped her to sit up. She felt she couldn’t do it, on her own.
‘I went to tell her that you come first,’ Simon said.
She looked at his chest. It was very familiar, the way the hair grew, the moles and the shallow grooves of flesh and bone. He put his arms round her. She laid her face against his shoulder. He lifted one hand and pressed her head into his shoulder.
‘I should have done it years ago,’ Simon said. ‘When I first met you.’
He kissed the back of her head. She lifted her hands and put them tentatively on his sides. Then she slid them round his back and held him.
‘I don’t know if I couldn’t see or I wouldn’t see,’ Simon said. ‘But the thing is, I do now.’
Carrie nodded. She thought: I’m going to cry. I don’t want to cry, I hate crying. Simon loosened his hold on her, disengaging her arms, and then put one arm under her thighs and one around her back and lifted her across his lap. He said, right into her face, ‘All yours now. All yours. If you’ll still have me.’
She shut her eyes. She felt him lick along under them, where the tears were. She nodded again. ‘OK,’ she said. Her voice sounded tiny, as if it came from far away.
‘OK.’
Chapter Eighteen
Penny had left the customary pile of folders in Guy’s chambers. He had asked her not to leave them without at least forewarning him of the court order of any day, but as she was incapable of ever doing exactly as she was asked, she left them stickered with yellow adhesive notes instead, covered with her small, sloping, unformed script. It was the handwriting of a twelve year old and it would probably never change. When Penny was a narrow old woman of eighty, she’d still be writing with the writing of somebody of twelve.
He sat down at his desk. He had risen at six that morning, in order to catch a train to Stanborough that would have him in his chambers by eight-thirty. Because he had woken, Merrion had woken, too, and they had showered and dressed around each other, silent with the faint oppression of another Monday morning, and with the knowledge that it was better to say nothing much than to court even the smallest danger of saying too much when there was neither time nor atmosphere to say it in. He had left the flat before her. She’d kissed him. Neither had said anything significant, even then, just, ‘Speak later.’ He had gone down those long flights of red-carpeted stairs very slowly, a weight upon him, silent and muffling.
He shuffled the folders. Mr Weaverbrook was again among them. Guy did not feel like Mr Weaverbrook. He did not feel like anything that reminded him of the intractability and persistence of human things. He put his fingers into his waistcoat pocket and took out his father’s watch. Ten-past nine. It was unlikely, Guy thought, that his father had ever looked at that watch and confessed to himself that he did not feel like dealing with the working day ahead. He would have regarded such thinking as unprofessional and self-indulgent. ‘I don’t mind if you don’t want to do it,’ Guy’s father would say, only half-humorously, to his sons, ‘I only mind if you don’t do it.’
The telephone rang. It might be Merrion. She had a conference at nine-thirty. He picked the receiver up and waited, half smiling.
‘Dad?’
‘Simon!’
‘Hello,’ Simon said. He sounded shy.
‘Hello to you, too. This is a very nice surprise.’
‘Is it?’
‘I was just looking at t
he day ahead and wondering–’ He stopped and said, slightly heartily, ‘Monday morning. You know.’
‘Yes—’
‘How is Jack?’
‘A bit better. I think. At least he ate something over the weekend.’
‘No sign of the girl?’
‘No,’ Simon said. ‘I rather think even Jack doesn’t want to see her.’
‘I wonder.’
‘Dad—’ Simon said.
Guy looked at the ceiling. There was a plume of discarded cobweb hanging from the light fitting. It swayed slightly in the faint draught. There were two, now he came to look at them.
‘Has Mum spoken to you?’ Simon said.
‘Silly question.’
‘It’s just – well, I went to see her at the end of last week.’
‘Yes,’ Guy said levelly.
‘No,’ Simon said. ‘Not like that.’
‘Like how, then?’
‘I went to tell her that I can’t act for her any more. Legally, I mean. It’s caused so much trouble, it’s—’ He stopped, and then he said, ‘I should never have agreed in the first place.’
Guy looked down at his blotter. With his free hand, he picked up a pen and wrote ‘Simon’ on his blotter. Then he drew a box round the name.
‘Good for you,’ he said.
‘I thought,’ Simon said, slightly hesitantly, ‘that you ought to know. I ought to tell you.’
‘Thank you. That was brave of you, telling your mother.’
‘She—’ Simon said, and stopped again.
‘I can guess. But you’ve survived.’
‘Yes!’ Simon said. His voice rose a little. ‘Yes, I have. In fact, I – well, it seems to have sorted out quite a lot of things.’
‘I’m so glad. What will Mum do now, for a lawyer?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll suggest some names, of course—’
‘So it’s back to the drawing board.’
‘Dad, it couldn’t actually be any further back than it is at the moment, anyway.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Look,’ Simon said, ‘are you busy at the weekend?’
‘I don’t know,’ Guy said. He was conscious that his voice sounded surprised. ‘I don’t know yet. Why—’
‘Would – well, would you like to come over? Sunday supper, or something?’
‘That’s very sweet of Carrie—’
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