Ashley was astonished. ‘Oh, Ma!’
Susie gave a daisy-patterned jug a little nudge to the left. She said, surveying it, ‘When are the other children coming?’
‘In ten minutes,’ Leo said. ‘Amanda’s bringing Felix and the baby, and there’s a couple more from school.’
‘Right,’ Susie said. She crossed the room to a box packed with various items from the new range to be photographed, and picked out a couple of mugs. ‘Wish me luck,’ she said, and went out of the kitchen. Everybody present – Ashley, Leo, Morris, and the photography crew, headed by the company stylist, who had chosen Maisie’s catalogue clothes – watched her go in respectful silence.
Maisie’s room was dim. She or Morris had pulled the curtains across when she retired to bed, leaving the eerie gloom of partly obscured daylight. Maisie lay on her side in bed, her thumb in her mouth, and stiff folds of glistening gauze clamped in her arms.
Susie put the two mugs she was holding down among the litter of small plastic objects on top of Maisie’s chest of drawers. Then she said, ‘I think I’ll draw the curtains.’
‘No,’ Maisie said, round her thumb.
Susie went across to the window. ‘The thing is,’ she said, pulling them apart, ‘that I can’t see in the dark. I’m not a cat, I’m a grandmother, and I need light to see by.’
Maisie took her thumb out. ‘My eyes hurt!’ she shouted.
Susie went back to pick up the mugs, and then sat down on the edge of Maisie’s bed and held them out. ‘See those?’
Maisie squinted. ‘Yes,’ she said reluctantly.
‘What’s on them?’
Inch by inch, Maisie half sat up. Her newly cut hair clustered round her head in soft curls.
‘You look lovely,’ Susie said.
Maisie peered at the mugs, ignoring the compliment. ‘Balloons,’ she said.
‘And this one?’
‘Flags.’
‘Bunting, actually. And there’s some with kites. We’re going to take pictures of them, you see – pictures of you, and Freddy and Felix and all the others, with this lovely new china, for a special children’s catalogue. We’ve never had a catalogue just for children before, so you will be the first children ever to be in a catalogue on your own. This is special china for that catalogue, special china for children. It’s called Balloons and Bunting. That’s the name of the range. It was designed by your Aunt Grace.’
Maisie crawled slowly out of her nest of gauze and bedclothes and reached out to touch the mug.
Susie said, ‘What colours can you see?’
Maisie sighed. It was astonishing, Susie thought, to bellow your eyes out for over half an hour and be without a blotch or a tearstain ten minutes later.
‘Red,’ Maisie said. ‘Blue. Green.’
‘But not pink.’
‘I like pink.’
‘So do I,’ Susie said. ‘But deep pink. Or soft pink. Not bubblegum pink.’
‘Pink is my favourite.’
‘This china, Maisie, is for all children. Not just you. This is for boys as well as girls, and big children as well as little children. And for these very special photographs, we need all the children – and you are the chief child – to wear colours that match the balloons or the kites or the bunting. So if you wear bubblegum pink, you won’t match. So you can’t be in the photos, I’m afraid. Fred will be, and so will Felix and his sister, but we’ll have to do without you, because you won’t match. It’s very sad, because we wanted you to be the chief child in the photos. But there we are.’
Maisie sat for a moment, looking at the mugs. Then she looked back at the garish shimmer in her bed.
‘If you scream again,’ Susie said pleasantly, ‘I will just go downstairs and leave you here, and tell the cameraman to photograph the other children because you won’t be coming. What a pity. What a shame.’
Maisie gave a shuddering sigh. She glanced with distaste at the dark-blue dress hanging trimly on her wardrobe door. Then she climbed slowly off her bed and stood in front of Susie, her chin raised in defiance. ‘I’ve got my Sleeping Beauty pants on,’ she said, ‘anyway.’
‘I saw the studio lights were still on,’ Neil said, ‘so I guessed you’d still be working.’
Grace was sitting at the big table, staring at the screen of her laptop. She had hardly glanced up when he came in.
‘I’m not working,’ she said. ‘I’m looking at the photos from the shoot today. Ashley’s just sent them. They’re amazing. Absolutely amazing. We’ve always had good photos, but we’ve never had ones as good as these.’
Neil went round to stand behind her, instructing himself, as he did so, not to lean too close, not to allow his mind or his senses to register anything beyond what was on her screen. It showed a picture of Maisie and Fred, apparently only lit by the candles in the background. Maisie, in dark blue, her stout striped legs ending in red suede boots with thick soles, was standing on a chair concentrating on pouring milk from a Balloon jug into a Kite mug in front of Freddy. He was in his high chair, in a checked blue shirt with buttoned cuffs, and he had flung his short arms into the air in a gesture to match the look of rapture on his face. Both children appeared entirely oblivious of any camera, their faces caught in the glow of what they were doing.
‘It’s a winner, isn’t it?’ Grace said.
Neil cleared his throat. He moved sideways to avoid the distraction of Grace’s vulnerable back view. ‘It certainly is.’
‘There’s loads of them. That one is obviously the cover shot, as Ash says, but there’s lots of others nearly as good. A fantastic one of a wonderful baby with her face almost obscured by the mug she’s drinking from. And a sweet little boy counting M & M’s on a Bunting plate.’
‘You must be thrilled.’
‘I am,’ Grace said. ‘They plainly had such a good day.’
Neil propped himself against the table and crossed his arms and ankles. He said, ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant you must be thrilled with the range. All your own work.’
Grace gave the laptop a shy smile. ‘Well, that too.’
‘The idea of a children’s catalogue—’
‘I think that was Ashley.’
‘No,’ Neil said, ‘it was you. It was Ashley’s idea to increase the number of catalogues, but the idea of having one to launch a specific children’s range was you.’
‘Oh,’ Grace said. She didn’t look at him.
‘And the designs for that range were yours, too.’
Grace leant forward to look at a picture of Maisie sitting on a stool, with a bowl in both hands, staring straight and solemnly to camera. She said, almost under her breath, ‘It’s just as well that today was good, actually.’
Neil waited. He watched her flick through a few more slides. He noticed, slightly to his despair, that as well as the scattering of freckles across her nose and cheekbones, she had a single darker one, almost like a beauty spot, just above the left-hand corner of her mouth. He said, too loudly, ‘Say again?’
Grace didn’t look at him. She said, ‘Ma rang. Just before Ashley sent these through.’
Neil looked down at his feet. He said as brusquely as he could, ‘Remembering episodes in the past, Grace, are you sure you want to share this kind of thing with me?’
Her face flamed. ‘Oh God.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’d just like to be sure. Where I stand.’
‘I should never—’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t.’
She gave him a quick glance. Her face was still pink. She said, ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
‘Nor do I. I just don’t want it to, again. I’d prefer not to know than be sent back below stairs.’
Grace cleared her throat. She shook her head, then said, ‘I want to tell you. Please don’t hold an insane and clumsy stupidity against me.’
‘Look at me,’ he said.
She turned her head, very slowly. She said, ‘I’m so sorry. I really am so sorry.’
> ‘I know. And I’m a chippy Scot. But I won’t mention it again.’ He held her gaze. ‘What is it? What did Susie want me to know?’
Grace swallowed. She pushed her hair off her face in a characteristic gesture. ‘Cara went round to see her, on her own, on Sunday night. In order to say – to tell her – that she and Dan have decided to leave the company.’
Neil gave a long, low whistle.
‘Yes,’ Grace said.
‘Leave?’
‘Yes.’
‘Leave completely? Quit being commercial and merchandizing directors?’
‘Yes.’
Neil uncrossed his ankles and moved to bring a second chair close to Grace’s. He sat down and leant towards her.
‘Why?’
Grace turned to look at him. She said, ‘Why do you think?’
‘Isn’t it a bit drastic?’
‘Not for them,’ Grace said. ‘No, I don’t think so. You can’t go on wanting and needing change, and not getting it, for ever. And anyway—’ She stopped.
‘Anyway what?’
‘Anyway,’ Grace said carefully, ‘they weren’t ever as committed to the product as some of us. It was the systems they liked. They are brilliant at running and promoting a company, and that’s what they’re going to do.’
‘Which is?’
‘They’re joining this friend of theirs, Rick Machin. They’re going to start up something new with him, rebranding companies which have got tired or are losing momentum. Any kind of company, Ma said, starting with a hotel chain and a firm that makes warehouse systems. She said Cara was very fired up about it, about the idea, the independence—’
‘Independence?’
‘From a family company, I suppose.’
Neil straightened up. He looked round him. ‘D’you keep wine in that fridge?’
‘No,’ Grace said. ‘Only milk.’
‘You need more than milk. So do I. This may even be a more-than-beer moment.’
‘Neil,’ Grace said, ‘we shouldn’t be celebrating.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking of shock. Medicinal drinking.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Shock.’
He stood up and held out a hand to her. ‘Come to the pub with me. Bring those pictures.’
‘Neil—’
‘Don’t turn me down.’
‘I wasn’t going to. I was just going to say how weird I felt, how I thought I shouldn’t feel what I’m feeling.’ She reached forward and closed her laptop. Then she stood, too, and stayed there, looking down.
‘Which is?’ he said.
She didn’t move, but he could see that she was trying, without much success, to suppress a smile.
‘Excited,’ she said.
‘I can’t stop crying,’ Cara said. ‘I don’t know why I keep crying. I don’t want to cry like this.’
Jasper pushed a box of tissues towards her. He said, ‘I had a Latin teacher once whose favourite saying was “There is no change without sacrifice”.’
Cara snatched a handful of tissues and blew her nose. Her appearance, Jasper noted fondly, was as together as it ever was, but her nose was touchingly pink.
‘Coffee?’ he said. ‘Tea? Something stronger?’
She made a little waving-away gesture, then she blew her nose again. She said, ‘I want this new future to happen. I really do. It’s exactly what we like doing and we can do it together. But it’s just awful, leaving. I feel like I’m leaving far more than I ever felt it on my wedding day. That felt like adding Dan. This feels like – like emigrating.’
Jasper ran water into the kettle. ‘When you girls were growing up, I learned not to come running if one of you screamed blue murder. It usually meant you’d only broken a fingernail.’
‘This isn’t melodrama, Pa,’ Cara said. ‘It’s real drama. Dan and I are changing every single relationship in our lives except the one we have with each other.’
Jasper put a Susie Sullivan teapot – Poppy Fields range – on the counter and dropped in a couple of teabags. He said, ‘Sweetheart, we’re all doing that, even your mother. We’ve all been flung up in the air and we’re all coming down again in different places. It won’t mean the end of things. It’ll just mean seeing it all from another angle.’
Cara opened the fridge and took out a plastic container of milk. She said, looking into the fridge, ‘Heavens, there’s nothing in here. Just milk and a lemon and some contact lens saline.’
‘There hasn’t been much more than that for ages.’
Cara shut the fridge and put the milk down by the kettle. She said, ‘Is that why you’re moving out?’
Jasper put both palms down flat on the counter and stared at the kettle. He said, ‘The state of the fridge is a symptom. Not the disease.’
Cara said, on a rising note, ‘Don’t give me something else to cry about. Don’t tell me you’re leaving Ma—’
‘Of course I’m not.’
‘But if—’
‘Cara,’ Jasper said, picking up the boiled kettle and pouring water into the teapot, ‘we’d hit the buffers in this house a long time ago. Your mother doesn’t really want to be here any more than I do. Life has moved on from here, you’ve all got your own places, I have something ahead of me for the first time in a very long time, and Susie – well, she needed a bit of a kick up the backside. You can get quite as stuck at the top of a company as you can at the bottom.’ He turned to look at Cara. ‘You and Dan dropping your little bombshell was exactly what was needed.’
‘I’m as heartbroken as I’m excited,’ Cara said. ‘I’m longing to leave, and I can’t bear the thought of it. I think I’d suffocate if I had to stay, but I can hardly stand the thought of not knowing everything that Gracie and Ashley know.’
Jasper held a mug of tea out to her. ‘Biscuit?’
‘Are there any?’
He smiled at her, and raised his own mug. ‘Probably not.’
‘I wish you hadn’t suggested it then. I could kill for a chocolate Hobnob.’
‘That’s better,’ Jasper said. ‘It isn’t like you to get yourself in such a state.’
Cara was opening cupboards in search of a biscuit. With her back to him, she said, ‘It is, you know. I’m a car crash under a very organized exterior.’
Jasper let a beat fall, then he said, ‘So is your mother.’
Cara turned round. She held something in her hand. ‘Ginger nuts,’ she said.
‘Don’t read the best-by date. It’ll be prehistoric. And they’ll be soft.’
Cara put the packet down on the counter and peered at it. ‘2009.’
‘Biscuits don’t go off. They get stale but they don’t get maggots.’
Cara ripped the packet open. ‘They look weirdly OK. Have one.’
Jasper took a biscuit and dipped it quickly into his tea. ‘Delicious. I wonder who bought them? I never buy ginger nuts.’
‘Ma’s inner chaos is her energy,’ Cara said. ‘Mine too. What luck we married steady men.’ She took a bite of biscuit herself and added through it, ‘Has she seen this flat you’ve found?’
‘She doesn’t need to.’
‘But Pa, if it’s your London base—’
‘My London base,’ Jasper said. ‘Where she is very welcome.’
Cara stared at him. ‘Aren’t you even asking her?’
‘No.’
‘But—’ Cara began, and stopped.
‘Where am I finding the money, you mean?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘I’m using what my parents left me, for a deposit. Followed by my share of the sale of this. It’s only a studio flat.’
‘But Pa—’
‘Cara,’ Jasper said, ‘I’ve been the follower for years and years. I’ve accommodated and tolerated and compromised, and to a large extent I haven’t minded any of that. In fact, for part of the time, part of me quite liked it. But I don’t like it any more. I have suddenly got a small, oddly shaped but definite future. I have a studio. I have a
band. I haven’t had a band for over thirty years. The band means that I won’t be doing the following, I’ll be doing a bit of leading instead. Susie can join me whenever she’s free to. I don’t want another woman, I don’t even want your mother to be much different. But I do want to do my own thing now, and I’ll be pleased as Punch if sometimes she’d like to set aside her own priorities – like the company, like this ridiculous cottage – and join me.’
Cara was still staring at him, over her mug. She said wonderingly, ‘What’s got into you?’
He smiled at her. ‘Something not a million miles from what got into you and Dan.’
‘Did someone say something?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Who? What? Did—’
He shook his head. He was still smiling. ‘Cara, you don’t need to know. It’s your first lesson in not needing, from now on, to know everything.’
‘Hard—’
‘But not impossible.’
Cara turned to look down the kitchen towards the parrot cage. Polynesia was gazing almost dreamily into a little punnet of blueberries that Jasper had put there earlier. She had the air of someone who had been quietly, unobtrusively, listening.
‘And her?’ Cara said. ‘Polly?’
‘With me, of course.’
‘Does Ma know?’
Jasper put his mug down. He crossed his arms. ‘Sweetheart,’ he said firmly, ‘Ma knows everything.’
Morris had discovered how to use the washing machine. He had also worked out the various clips on the harnesses on Fred’s buggy, Fred’s high chair and Fred’s car seat. He had mastered all the idiosyncrasies of the door and window locks throughout the house, and the vagaries of the pilot light on the boiler. He had had a boat on Lamu for years, a fishing boat, and looking after and operating that, as well as his precarious dwelling, had stood him in good stead as far as practical skills were concerned. He found the business of helping run a house was as little trouble to him as getting Leo to relinquish a lot of tasks had been. When it came to house-training this strange old vagrant from a tropical island, Morris thought, Leo had been pleasantly surprised to find himself pushing at an open door.
Balancing Act Page 27