by Anna Maxted
Jack shrugged.
I glared at the ground. I felt irritable, because this meeting was not turning out like I’d hoped. Be fair, I reasoned to myself, it was in essence a business meeting. It was civilised. Friendly. But we weren’t even holding hands. I could sense his distance.
‘I feel,’ I said, ‘like I’ve unearthed a lot of sadness.’
‘You knew you were never going to uncover anything … lovely.’
‘Huh.’
‘Hannah. Look at what you did. You thought you might have got it wrong, so you went in search of the truth. And you succeeded. And look what it’s got you. The chance to maybe make things better with Angela, begin on a new level. Even Ollie.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Ollie will go back to his silent old self. It will be like this never happened. It was a fluke he told me anything at all. With Ollie, it’s like Back to the Future, where he’s got to be in the car as the lightning strikes the clock tower – you’ve got a split second – all the stars are in alignment and, for some reason, Ollie opens up, shares his feelings, and then, bam! it’s over, and if you missed your chance, that’s it, never again.’
‘Maybe. But that split second could be enough to make all the difference. Maybe he’ll be a little different to his son and wife. He’d never consciously want to be like Roger. You did something. You uncovered the main facts, and you used them for the good of now. Now has been re-routed. And so the future is altered, for the best. Angela is right, in a way. The tiny details of the past no longer matter.’
Chapter 45
The heat had gone out of the summer, which made you forget it had ever happened. One chill day was all it took.
Driving home, I thought about retrieving my earmuffs from the back of the wardrobe, and wondered if Jack was right. I might have ignored him and hunted down Jonathan anyway, but I didn’t have the heart for the chase. My heart was otherwise engaged.
A week before, Jack had said he loved me. Now I wondered, did that statement carry a lifetime guarantee? Or was it like a £5 voucher for my local Indian takeaway, that ran out after six days? Jack had to be aware that my feelings towards him hadn’t changed, and yet he showed no inclination to make a further move. I suppose that meant that, despite what he said, he didn’t trust me. Or that I’d done something wrong, revealing my immaturity. Too bad. I wasn’t going to call him again, it was his turn.
I speculated on what might occur if I resolved never to call. Would he never call either? It fascinated me, the possibilities, or lack of them, that you could create for yourself if you were stubborn enough. You could fold in on yourself, smaller, smaller, tighter, tighter, an origami person, until you shut out every chance of giving joy, of getting it. You could miss so much. You would feel safe but sad, in your empty high-walled castle of a life. I didn’t want to be like that, not any more. It was secure, but no fun. There were no surprises, every adrenalin hit was courtesy of the office.
But then, what could I do with a man who refused to believe in me?
The phone rang as I walked in, and I leapt on it.
‘Hell-ow?’ I said, in what I hoped was a friendly voice.
‘Hannah!’
‘Yes,’ I said. The warmth drained away. I switched from summer to winter like the weather itself.
‘I’m on my way to yours. I’ll be there in a sec, get your coat, and I’ll pick you up.’
‘I don’t think so. Perhaps I could refer you to our last conversation. I believe it ended with you slapping me round the face.’
Roger plainly believed in that great untruth, that time heals all wounds. No it doesn’t. What about the ones that go septic? Get gangrene? Then a leg has to be lopped off. My wound was green and stinking and oozing pus. Time wasn’t improving it; a wound isn’t like a fine wine.
‘Well, you hurt me too. I still have the green bruise. Oh, but this isn’t important right now, I can’t—’
It had taken me a while to realise that Roger was so self-obsessed it practically qualified as a disorder. Narcissism! There you go. They classify everything. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to believe. It is easier to block unpleasantness than to deal with it. Although I had a nasty feeling that all the unpleasantness in my personal life that I’d succeeded in blocking had managed to squish through around the edges, tarnishing my view of the world, influencing my every thought, opinion, action, reaction. Put it this way, I was the only girl I knew who slept with a machete in the bed with her (sheathed, but nonetheless).
It was like a punch to the stomach to see my father as he was. None of us is perfect, but at the other extreme, no one wants to discover that their hero is nothing but a composite of flaws. He was actually incapable of feeling what I felt at his betrayal, even of imagining what it might be like. There was no identification. I might have been a different species.
And no excuse, even if I were. I’d never say that the Siamese next door and I were friends, but she always gets a rip of burger, chicken nugget or kebab if I come home late after a job. She shows her appreciation with a purr and a silky slither around my ankles. It’s a nice moment – human, cat, sharing a common pleasure, a love of good food. But what gets me is her courtesy. She’s friendly, she knows I’ll be friendly in return. Chairman Miaow is more emotionally astute than Roger Lovekin! It was a bit much – I had more of a synthesis with a feline than with my own father, and I’m not even a cat person!
So was it worth trying to punish him if he really was incapable of understanding what he’d done to me? There’s no point in eliciting a ‘sorry’ from someone who doesn’t mean it, and I suspected that my father never would. He didn’t comprehend other people’s pain, only his own.
And how very convenient that would be! Like pleading insanity after you’ve bludgeoned someone to death. If he didn’t comprehend my pain, I would quit trying to make him understand it, but that didn’t mean he was free to go. No. If his pain was all he understood, then I would have to concentrate on poking and prodding that.
‘Roger,’ I interrupted, ‘I’m surprised you dare show your face around here, what with all your so-called friends in the Suburb gossiping about Angela’s affair. Everyone completely understands why she did it. Your behaviour towards her was vile. Which is why everyone you know must be asking each other why she confined herself to a mere affair. Why not leave him? Oh, the kids, of course – but now the kids are grown, why stay? I’m sure they’re all thinking that—’
‘You knew!’
‘What do you mean, I knew? Of course I knew! You never bloody let us forget, did—’
‘Not the affair. You knew she was planning this?’
I hesitated. I didn’t want to ask ‘planning what?’ because I wouldn’t want him to think he had anything on me, any knowledge that I didn’t have, anything he might be able to blackmail me with. He was the slimiest of toads. I had given him so much, so many years of my life had been devoted to him, I was not going to give him one more minute. Think, Hannah. Be logical. I cleared my throat, and took a chance. I said, ‘Are you suggesting I knew that Angela was planning to leave you?’
My father’s voice rose to a shriek. ‘I knew it!’ he yelled. And my heart gave an almighty thump. She’d done it! She’d actually done it! A niggle of memory bothered at my brain like a tadpole at a piece of meat. Yes. Jack. Talking to Jack. He’d asked if I’d spoken to Angela this morning. Because of something I said. Oh, think, dense girl!
‘I can’t believe she’s done this to me and you didn’t tell me, I can’t fucking belieeeeeeeeeeeeeeve it!’
I held the phone away from my ear and looked at it with distaste. Ha ha har. I’m glad Roger’s suffering now.
That was it! That was what I’d said to Jack. That was when he’d asked if I’d spoken to Angela. Which meant … dur, you’re so thick … which meant that he knew she was planning to leave him. Because Jonathan had told him! Aha! Ar har! A-sodding-ha! Oh. But Jack hadn’t told me. He’d just refused to give me Jonathan’s number. So. I was right. He didn’t trust me. H
e didn’t trust me not to tell my father! Despite all that I knew. Thanks for that show of faith, Jack.
Out of interest, I put the receiver back to my ear.
‘… with him, isn’t she? All her stuff gone, the dirty dishes on the side, and not even a note! Now I’m warning you, you tell me where they—’
‘Ah, Roger. Go to hell and scare the Devil,’ I said, and put the phone down.
Chapter 46
The next morning my mother rang, sounding coy.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I did it. I left your father.’ She paused. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
My reflex response – ‘Of course not!’ – was on my lips. I held on, gave it some thought. It was a strange thing to say, not exactly a real question and possibly a dig. I decided to ignore it and said instead, ‘Thank God you did – it will allay some of my guilt.’
I wasn’t trying to manipulate any particular response, but she said smartly, ‘Don’t say that. You mustn’t have any, I won’t have it. I take full responsibility for everything.’
This flustered me. ‘You do?’ I said. ‘For … being weird after I was born?’
My mother sighed down the phone. ‘Hannah.’
I waited.
‘Hannah,’ she said again, with a little gasp, as if a cork had been unpopped, ‘it’s true, I … I didn’t know then. Babies are egocentric. So when a baby’s miserable and her mother doesn’t smile back at her, the baby thinks, it’s my fault. It feels guilt. The little baby! The next day, Mummy feels better, manages a smile. It’s confusing for the baby. The … my inconsistency was damaging. I can’t tell you how I feel about that. When you were four, five, I had everything more … under control, and we were great friends.’
‘Oh, I know,’ I said. ‘I’m not asking you to feel guilty for anything that … happened later. That was all his fault. Blame him.’
‘Well. Hannah, I improved, but the distance between us was already there, and that was thanks to me, and while your father was wrong to use that … weakness against us both, it would be unfair to blame him wholly. You, however, should not feel guilt. Please.’
I was silent.
Then I said, ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘I’m so glad,’ she replied. And then, ‘Would you … do you think you might like to come round and see us?’
Jonathan lived on the sixth floor of a mansion block in a smart area of London; it was three stops to Bond Street, I checked on the tube map. Voice-over work must pay well, because teaching certainly didn’t. My mother opened the door. If I’d had the breath, I’d have asked why they couldn’t invest in a lift. Instead I grinned at her, inanely.
‘God,’ I wheezed. ‘You don’t look like you.’
Her eyes were wide, her lashes curly and her lips pink. O-ho. The stealth application that Gab had been talking about. She looked kittenish in a white jumper and a longish suede skirt, with leather boots that disappeared under it. The boots and skirt were a light brown. Beige? Fawn? Taupe. Toupee? (My knowledge of shades still lagged.) There was a touch of Lady Penelope about this get-up, and I was impressed. I always saw her dressed for duty. This was for pleasure. I blushed.
She leant in for a chaste kiss. It would be a while before we were throwing ourselves at each other.
‘Come in. Jonathan’s making coffee.’
I snorted.
She glanced at me, nervous, and I clapped a hand over my mouth. ‘Sorry. It’s just that, well, catch Roger making coffee.’
My mother smiled thinly.
I covered by babbling. ‘Oh, this is nice, isn’t this nice, how nice this is.’
Actually, it was not at all my taste. For a start, the man had a real live vine growing in his kitchen. I suppose the skylight made this possible, but I kept glancing at the leaves, hoping they were plastic. There were pots and pans dangling from, as far as I could tell, the ceiling, I presume so that Mr Coates (I couldn’t call an old teacher by his first name; I was too puritan) could whip up a three-course meal without having to haul utensils out of cupboards. I didn’t like it. It felt cluttered, lazy, utilitarian. Put that scrap metal away! There was no unity, no style, no vision to Mr Coates’s home. It seemed to be composed of a load of random stuff, every unrelated item bought and found a corner for no finer reason than because he liked it.
Mr Coates’s first words to me were, ‘I have to confess to being a little scared to meet you.’
I stood a few feet away from him, so that he couldn’t make a sudden lunge and kiss me. I knew what these arty people were like. ‘We’ve met about a thousand times,’ I said. ‘Mostly when I was four, but even so!’
Mr Coates gestured towards a wooden chair that looked as if it had escaped from the Three Bears’ cottage. ‘Yes, but we’ve not met in these circumstances.’ He glanced towards my mother.
I was about to blurt, ‘Oh, yes we have, when I burst in on you and Angela naked.’ This would have been a faux pas, and thankfully I realised it before the words emerged. I cleared my throat and all but bowed as I said, ‘If you make my mother happy, then you don’t have to be scared of me.’
Mr Coates coughed and said, ‘Good, great.’
I beamed at my mother, who laughed, although it sounded as if she was being strangled.
I took the mug of coffee that Mr Coates had set down on the farmhousey pine table before backing away. He was acting like I might throw it at him. Meanwhile, Angela looked as if she was tied to a totem pole.
I worked back through what I’d said and realised I might have come across as threatening. I was about to clarify, then thought better of it. If he was all he said he was, then like I said, he had no reason to be scared of me. If he wasn’t … then he should consider himself warned – there would be comeback.
I sipped my coffee, and I saw him wink at Angela and stroke her arm. He didn’t even mouth, ‘You OK?’ but she nodded and smiled. He placed a mug in front of her, and pulled out one of his tatty old-woman chairs for her. I watched Angela smooth her suede skirt and sit in it. I was perched on an identical seat, and I have to say, it was the hardest piece of wood I’d ever sat on.
I’d just formed this thought, when Mr Coates cried, ‘Bollocks, the cushions!’
My mother and I stared as he dived towards a green-stained pine cupboard door and heaved it open. Behind it sat a prehistoric washing machine. The thing was crammed with cushions.
‘I wanted to wash them before you arrived,’ he said, dragging a sodden one out.
My mother gasped. ‘Jonathan … maybe it might have been better to take the cushion covers off the cushions to wash them … perhaps?’
She sucked in her lips, and her shoulders started to shake. Mr Coates frowned at her and then a smile crept across his face. The two of them burst out laughing. My mother was bent over in mirth, and Mr Coates was wheezing, clutching his knees, and they were gazing right at each other. It was lovely to see. She didn’t look like the person who, as I remembered, had once said, ‘excuse me’ after every hiccough for twenty minutes.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mr Coates, regaining composure, darting a mischievous glance at my mother.
‘Don’t be,’ I said. And I smiled. A real, genuine, warm smile. I saw that the vine, the pine, the rabble of tin, it didn’t matter. I saw, yet again, that it wasn’t things that made a home, it was the people in it.
*
It was a strange thing to see my mother like this. As if she were a teenager again. She patted her hair, giggled, and hung on his every word. I thought he was a genuine person – despite the actorly diction – but she seemed to think he was some kind of god. When he pottered off to the toilet, she gazed after him as if he were Hercules having said ta-ta before embarking on his seven labours. She turned back to me with effort.
‘How is Jack these days?’ she said.
As I hadn’t mentioned anything, I presumed she’d heard some gossip from Mr Coates. This didn’t delight me.
I replied, ‘We see each other now and then.’
I
thought this was a fair answer. Jack hadn’t called since our meeting in the park. Nor had he said, ‘See you later.’ His exact words, as he’d hailed a taxi: ‘Now you look after yourself, Ex-Wife.’
I was not a woman who had the time or intellect to drive herself crazy analysing male linguistics. But even at a glance I could tell that this fond farewell was a few levels cooler than burning love. In fact, it was the Jack I had always imagined him to be – a person to whom a lover like me was inconsequential fun, a mere pastime, a party favour. All right, I was being overdramatic. I knew I meant something to him. But did I mean everything to him? Or was I more on the level of an onion bhaji? Once, the uncertainty wouldn’t have bothered me, but now it did. Which I didn’t like. I felt ruffled. I consoled myself that I wasn’t an expert in this, and the most likely explanation was that a normal person’s intimacy level naturally waxed and waned like the moon. It wasn’t possible or sane to be all snuggly-woo with other humans twenty-four hours a day. You’d be mentally drained. Empty inside. To keep a sense of who you were, you had to back off, to gather your wits. I was sure even Jason’s shrink would agree that to be an emotional Open Sesame! day in, day out, was a little warped.
My mother said, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ in a voice that was unconvinced. She took a dainty sip of coffee. ‘And, how are his parents?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, suddenly embarrassed that I didn’t.
‘Does he talk about them?’ said Angela.
I became aware that she was ever so gently making a point, although what it was I had no idea. As we were rebuilding our relationship I didn’t say what I wanted to say, which was, ‘I haven’t seen him for bloody days, so shut up about him, all right?’
‘No,’ I said instead. ‘Not much.’