Balancing Act

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘It really was that colour on Saturday,’ Susie said. ‘And the house is so sweet – just a cottage really. I made the offer at lunchtime and Mrs Whatsit from Lyndhurst had said yes by mid-afternoon. Exchange of contracts by the end of the month and completion to suit me. Perfect.’

  Ashley did not look across the table at her sister. She knew, from a sidelong glance, that Cara was looking down at the figures in front of her, and not at either the screen or her mother. Cara wanted a normal Monday meeting, as scheduled. She was trying to move on, round an immovable, immutable obstacle. Susie, on the other hand, only wanted to talk about the house.

  ‘I’ll use it when I’m in Stoke. I’m there a day or two a week, as it is, and maybe Jasper will come and join me sometimes.’ She paused, and then she said, ‘I’m longing to show it to you. And the PR people. It will be great for publicity.’

  Neither Ashley nor Cara said anything. Cara was scribbling in the margins of her notes, her head bent. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, so that Ashley had a clear sight of the tautness of her jaw. It looked as if her teeth were clenched again. Ashley’s dentist had told her that she must make a conscious effort not to grind her teeth, and to relax her jaw and her shoulders. ‘Drop both,’ he’d said. ‘Your shoulders are not attached to your ears.’

  Susie looked across the table at Cara. ‘Where’s Dan?’

  Cara didn’t look up. She said, ‘He’s got a meeting, Ma.’

  There was a brief pause. Then Susie said, ‘We always have a Monday meeting, the four of us.’

  ‘I know,’ Cara said. She put her pen down. ‘But it was the only time this particular management consultancy could see him.’

  Susie sighed. ‘Not that again.’

  ‘Ma, it’s a recognized process of development. We’ve been through all that – you know we have.’

  ‘And I’ve accepted it. From fifteen to twenty is a logical progression—’

  ‘But not,’ Ashley said, ‘what we could do.’

  Susie drew the laptop towards her and leant forward to study the picture on the screen.

  Cara said, ‘Could we talk about gifting, instead?’

  ‘Of course,’ Susie said, not looking up.

  ‘It’s growing,’ Cara said. ‘The personalized stuff is just flying out, particularly on the internet. Can we—’

  ‘No,’ Susie said suddenly, shutting the laptop smartly. ‘No, we can’t. This will lead on to you telling me that I must delegate more, that it’s no longer all about me and I must recognize that. And I don’t want to hear it again.’

  ‘But you just said—’

  ‘Cara,’ Susie said, ‘I will talk about anything, but I am not going to be lectured. And it has nothing to do with family, before you accuse me of that, either. I am buying this house because I must have somewhere of my own – somewhere I can think, and draw, and plan, somewhere I am not badgered to let go of this, or change that, or delegate the other, until I sometimes feel that nobody remembers where this company, and all the people who depend upon it, came from in the first place.’

  Ashley put the heels of both hands into her eye sockets and pressed until there were preoccupying explosions of colour behind her closed lids. This moment was not unlike today’s breakfast, in essence, when Fred, holding his plastic bowl of cereal out sideways, his round brown eyes fixed on her face, had slowly and purposefully tipped it upside-down. Watching the cereal fall to the floor was very like watching her mother breathe now, with deliberate regularity.

  She said from behind her hands, ‘Ma, we never quarrel.’

  Susie said, staring straight ahead, ‘I’m not quarrelling.’

  ‘But we must,’ Cara said tightly, ‘be able to discuss everything. Freely. We must.’

  ‘I know,’ Susie said. She was gripping her laptop now. ‘I know we must. But I just can’t – can’t give up what I know is the heart of the thing.’

  There was a silence. Then Ashley took her hands away from her eyes and said, ‘I wanted to talk about the late-spring catalogue.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And some proposed partnerships for special editions.’

  ‘As long as they are a good fit for us.’

  ‘She knows that, Ma,’ Cara said wearily.

  ‘And I imagine,’ Susie said to Cara, ‘that you are waiting to tell me that mug sales are down sixty per cent—’

  ‘Forty-four, actually,’ Cara said.

  ‘But you won’t even acknowledge that I am buying this house. And that this house, in the heartland of what this company is all about, is also going to feed the creativity that lies at the very centre of everything we do.’

  Cara and Ashley looked at each other. Cara shrugged slightly. Then they looked at Susie.

  ‘If you want it,’ Ashley said, ‘you have it.’

  Susie picked up her laptop. ‘You’ll see,’ she said.

  It was an hour before the factory workers clocked off for the day. Five days a week, they were in before six in the morning and gone by three in the afternoon, leaving behind them the ghostly racks of cast but undecorated ware to be fired in the kilns overnight.

  Grace was always soothed by the factory. It was partly those long, dusty, brilliantly lit rooms dedicated to the steady application to making something; partly the people – the casters and the fettlers, the jiggers and jolliers, the girls cutting the sponge shapes with soldering irons, the women decorating and banding on their paint-splashed revolving tables, the glaziers dipping each piece into the lavender-hued tanks of glaze, all by hand, every piece touched by hand and it was also partly being out of the studio, away from the telephone, away from problems. There was no point taking her phone into the factory. She couldn’t have heard herself think, let alone speak. And there was such a luxury in switching the thing to mute and leaving it behind on her desk, as if it were no more important than an empty notepad.

  The casting shop was always impressive. Fourteen casters working between pairs of immense slatted benches, with the liquid clay slip in which they worked piped along the ceiling in great yellow hoses. Seven tons of it each day, seven tons of china clay and chemicals and water mixed each night in the blunger until it was the right consistency to run down the hoses and into those plaster-of-Paris moulds which produced the mugs and the jugs, the teapots and the vases, the bowls and the cups – over four hundred pieces from each man every day, lined up on the wooden trucks to be wheeled away for fettling.

  Grace paused beside Barney Jilkes. He had a visible gold tooth, a snake tattooed around his neck and had left school at fifteen, following his father down the mines for a year – ‘Only a thousand feet down. I were too young to work the coalface’ – before taking a trade test to work at Wedgwood. His mother had been on the switchboard there; she was known as the Voice of Wedgwood. He’d applied for a job at Snape Pottery the moment Susie had taken it over, almost as a prank. ‘I’d never worked for a woman before. Thought it’d be a laugh. Best thing I’ve ever done.’

  ‘Bloody awful day,’ he said to Grace now, not pausing in what he was doing for a second.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Three losses! Three! I never have losses. I haven’t lost anything in months!’

  ‘There you go, then. Think of those months, not today.’

  ‘I’ve let myself down,’ Barney said. He reached forward to fill a mould and the snake on his neck rippled faintly.

  Grace said, ‘Nobody’ll say anything.’

  ‘They don’t say. But they think it. They know. Me dogs’ll know, the minute they see me.’

  ‘Forget it, Barney. The rest of us will. You’re a brilliant caster.’

  ‘Five hundred and fifty-two pieces, me best day.’

  ‘How are the whippets, talking of dogs?’

  Barney’s expression softened. He rubbed a plaster-flecked fist against his temple. ‘Champion, Grace. Especially the little blue.’

  ‘If it’s any comfort,’ Grace said, ‘I’m having a mildly shit day, too.’

&n
bsp; Barney wagged a finger at her. ‘Now, now, language.’

  ‘You’re a fine one to talk.’

  ‘I’m a fella, Grace. And you’re a—’

  ‘Please don’t say lady.’

  He grinned, and stepped sideways to set a small tureen on the truck beside him.

  ‘Dogs,’ Barney said, ‘is easier than this lady-and-gentleman malarkey. They don’t bother messing about. They’re just dogs and bitches.’

  Grace moved on, smiling, down the casting shed, through the area where the dense great discs of china clay awaited the blunger and on into the fettling shop, where rough edges and seams were smoothed off with knives and sponges. She always paused here, among the regimented shelves of unfired ware and the blue-overalled women – always women, in a fettling shop – and thought of her great-grandmother, coming here in search of a job and finding herself in front of the great man himself, except that he was a youngish great man, and the assessing way he looked at her had little to do with judging the kind of fettler she might make. It was the stuff of fairytales, really it was. Jean McGrath, from an Irish Liverpool terraced house in Burslem with no indoor lavatory, being asked out to tea, and then a country walk, and then the cinema, by Mr Snape of the pottery. Who then produced a ruby and diamond engagement ring from his pocket and went down on one knee in a field out at Barlaston, asking her to marry him and promising her a country house on this very spot if she said yes. Of course, she said yes. And she got a husband and a baby and Oak View. And even if the baby turned out to be a deep disappointment – so weird, Grace thought, to have a grandfather alive who was never spoken of – the baby’s baby more than made up for it. When she thought about that – when she thought about what Ma had done, not just for herself but for people like Barney, and Maureen here, in the fettling shop – she felt that … well, she felt that if she wanted fifty cottages in Barlaston, she could have them.

  ‘Grace,’ someone said.

  She turned to see who had spoken. It was Harry, who had spent a lifetime working the kilns, and now, in retirement, took tours of schoolchildren round the factory. He said, ‘Michelle’s looking for you.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘There’s someone up there in the studio, looking to see you.’

  ‘Not—’ Grace said, and stopped.

  Harry patted her arm. He smiled, showing the gleaming new dentures he was so proud of.

  ‘Not him, Gracie. Not lover boy. It’s an old geezer, Michelle said. Asking for you.’

  ‘You don’t know me,’ the old man said.

  He was very thin, and tanned, and his white hair fell in a curious kind of bob on either side of his face. Michelle had found him a chair, but he wasn’t sitting on it, he was standing behind it, his hands resting on its back. He was dressed in crumpled linen trousers and a long embroidered quilted coat over a tunic of some kind. There were silver and turquoise beads round his neck, and a sort of tooth, curved and whitish, threaded on a long leather thong.

  Grace stayed where she was, just inside the doorway. ‘No,’ she said uncertainly. ‘Should I?’

  The old man smiled, and raised a braceleted hand as if to wipe the smile off.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not. You’ve never seen me. I don’t expect you’ve seen a photo of me, even. I’m your black-sheep grandfather.’

  Michelle and Ben froze into sudden stillness in front of their computers.

  Grace said stupidly, ‘What?’

  ‘I’m your granddad,’ the old man said mildly. ‘Morris. Your old granddad Morris.’

  Grace took a huge gulp of air. She said, slightly breathlessly, ‘What … what are you doing here?’

  He laughed, and waved a hand behind him. ‘When I walked in,’ he said, ‘you could see these kids thinking that.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘I ran out of life, there. It just happened. After your grandmother died.’

  Grace said wildly, ‘She died?’

  ‘Two years ago,’ Morris said. He had a disconcertingly unhurried manner. ‘Lung cancer. We flew her down to Mombasa, but it was too late.’ He paused and looked down sombrely at his hands. ‘Poor chick.’

  Grace leant against the door frame. ‘I can’t think straight.’

  He said, ‘Well, you could give your old granddad a hug, couldn’t you?’

  She didn’t look at him. She said, ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, unoffended, ‘there is that.’

  ‘How did you find us? I mean, d’you even know who I am?’

  ‘You’re Grace. And –’ he turned and gestured behind him again, ‘these kids are Michelle and Ben.’

  ‘How do you—’

  ‘The website,’ Morris said. He smiled again. ‘There’s everything on the website, isn’t there? Even photographs. You up here, your sisters down in London. I even have greatgrandchildren, down in London. It’s been amazing, that website. Told me everything.’

  Grace took a step or two into the room. ‘Does – does Ma know you’re here, in England?’

  He said calmly, ‘I shouldn’t think she even knows her own ma is gone.’

  ‘But,’ Grace said, suddenly intense, ‘what are you doing here?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Doing?’

  ‘Yes,’ Grace said. ‘What are you doing – after decades of no contact, no responsibility, nothing – suddenly turning up here and imagining that any of us would be remotely interested in seeing you?’

  There was a silence. Michelle and Ben were still staring stiffly at their screens. Morris took his hands off the chair-back and came towards Grace. He had moccasins on his feet, and no socks. He held his hands out towards her, just as Jeff had done earlier, and then dropped them again.

  He said, ‘I was hoping, I s’pose—’ And then he paused.

  She didn’t smile.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘Grace,’ he said. ‘I’m eighty-one. I just ran out of road.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Daniel had shut himself in the boardroom. As the office was otherwise open-plan, the boardroom door was the only door in the place, and shutting it made a resounding statement, particularly if you were the only person inside. If closing the door sent a slightly intimidating message to everyone else, then that suited his current purpose just fine.

  His purpose was, in essence, to calm down. He could have gone for a walk, of course – into Bishop’s Park across the road, or over Putney Bridge with its satisfactorily huge view of the river – but something told him that his agitation might only be increased by leaving the office, and it would be better, really, to take his iPad as an acceptable accessory into the boardroom, where he could pace or gaze out of the window or – the most luxurious option of all – have a private sotto voce rant about his mother-in-law and her family and the state of the business.

  With, as ever, the exception of Cara. Daniel was truly sorry for Cara. Cara was not in the office today because she had had to go up to Stoke by train with her mother and Ashley, to meet this outrageous old man who had suddenly turned up in Grace’s studio and announced himself to be Susie’s father, Morris. At first, when Grace had rung with this implausible story, no one had believed her. It was insane, in these days of worldwide communication, that anyone so closely related could just turn up out of the blue, like a character in a soap opera, all melodrama and improbability. But then the inevitability of the facts began to emerge, never mind the physical presence of the man, and a creeping combination of acceptance and curiosity began to overtake their initial shock and disbelief. The old man in Grace’s spare bedroom – his possessions, such as they were, carried in a huge dusty bag fashioned from something indisputably African, patterned in deep red and black – was indeed, it seemed, Susie’s father, Morris Snape, returning like an elderly prodigal son to the place he had so emphatically and ungratefully rejected half a century before.

  The horror and shock, Daniel had to admit, were – at first, at least – far stronger than the curiosity. Susie was
appalled, as were her older daughters. Grace, with this profoundly unwelcome guest in her flat, was said to be despairing. At two in the morning after the revelatory first phone call, Daniel had been aware of Cara lying awake and churned up beside him. He had reached out a hand to take hers, and she’d gripped him as if he were a lifeline and hissed, ‘I don’t want this.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He left Ma. As a baby. He abandoned her.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He’s a selfish monster. He’s never grown up. He’s only back because he’s run out of options. He just wants to be looked after. And money. Of course, he wants money.’

  Daniel edged further across their kingsize bed so that he could put an arm across Cara and hold her. ‘Your poor mother.’

  ‘She’s in shock.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s awful, Dan, to have to be responsible for someone you really can’t bear.’

  Daniel had tightened his embrace. He had never had much time for his own parents, but luckily had always been deemed the difficult one, so leaving his filial obligations to his two sisters had merely provoked their resigned acceptance of the inevitable. They had, indeed, formed a small trade union of two responsible, concerned adult children, shouldering the consequences of a third – male, of course – ducking out of his duty. When he had married Cara, his sisters could add ‘gold-digger’ to his list of failings and cut another notch in their bedpost of virtue. Their general attitude was to be very sorry for him, for his lack of concern and sensitivity, but never to chastise him. As his elder sister, Sally, said to Cara at every opportunity, ‘He knows who he’s let down, Cara. He knows it perfectly well. As I expect you do. Neither of you need reminding by me.’

  Daniel let Sally’s attitude slide straight off him. As far as he was concerned, she was his sister in name only. She had not cared for his arrival when she was three, and she failed to learn to care for him subsequently. Indeed, she had extended that failure to appropriating their youngest sister, Julie, into her team, excluding Daniel to such an extent that when he met Cara he unleashed upon her all the emotion that had been banked up throughout his childhood with no outlet to offer release. He was like someone, Cara told him, delighted but also slightly dazed, who had a perfectly good home inside their head, but who desperately needed a house to put it into. He’d thought about this, and then he’d said, ‘The thing is, Cara, that you are everything to me. Everything.’