As the gates opened electronically and I crunched up the gravel drive ahead of him to the pretty Georgian facade, he recognized the car.
‘Darling!’ I heard him call behind me as I parked.
I tried not to, because he was categorically in the doghouse, but I couldn’t help grinning broadly as I got out. Normally we’d both be looking around nervously for Mum, but as he swept his hat from his head and gave me a huge bear hug, my feet lifting off the ground, it was a relief to know that for once – and for the first time in years – we were not under the censorious gaze of Mum or Ginnie. They’d wonder if we weren’t being too frivolous and silly. Too over the top. I loved my dad in a way I could never love Mum because I could be completely at ease with him, without wondering what would come next or how I should form my next sentence. The extra squeeze he gave me as he set me down told me he felt this too, and as I linked his arm and went inside I had to remind myself I was not here to have a good time with my father. I certainly wasn’t to go to the pub with him, share a few drinks, or have a laugh, like two naughty schoolchildren. I was on a mission and should adopt a serious expression and get down to it, pronto.
‘This is a surprise, darling,’ he was saying, already rubbing his hands with delight as he shut the front door behind us. We went through the lofty, stone-flagged hall and he headed straight to the sherry decanter on the far side of the sitting room. ‘Drink?’
‘No, thanks, Dad. I’ll have a coffee,’ I told him firmly.
‘Sure?’ He turned with surprise from the drinks tray on the Pembroke table. ‘Nothing stronger? Bloody Nuisance, perhaps?’ Dad’s name for a Bloody Mary, on the grounds that it involved him finding Worcester Sauce and slicing lemon, et cetera.
‘Quite sure,’ I said primly, perching on the tomb-like sofa. He looked disappointed. ‘And perhaps you shouldn’t, either,’ I scolded. ‘Mum wouldn’t be too thrilled to see you drinking so early, would she?’
‘Well, she’s not here, is she?’ he scoffed belligerently, pouring himself an extra-large one.
Error. I’d thought by introducing Mum early, I’d bring him up short. Remind him where his duties lay. Historically he’d have adopted a shamed expression, put his tail between his legs and got straight in his basket. Not today. His eyes gleamed at me alarmingly from the other side of the room.
‘Not here to tell me when to get out of bed, whether I can tune the radio to a station I like, or if it’s too loud. Not here to tell me not to whistle when I shave. Not here to tell me what time to get my paper, or if I can have a few biscuits – let alone a drink. She can’t even give me permission to go and prick out my dahlias in the greenhouse. I can’t tell you how liberating it is, Ella. Her coming to stay with you has been the most tremendous success. I can’t thank you enough. Given us all some much-needed space.’
I blinked. ‘Well, except me.’
‘Oh, quite. Except you. And you’re simply splendid to have suggested it, darling,’ he said admiringly.
‘I didn’t!’ I squeaked. ‘Ginnie did.’
‘Oh, did she? Oh. Right. Got the wrong end of the stick there.’
Clutching a veritable bucket of sherry he came across and sank happily into the armchair my mother forbade him to sit in, the most comfortable, pale-pink squishy one, on which his Trumper’s hair oil, she said, made a nasty mark. Was it my imagination or did he give his head a little rub as he settled into it? This wasn’t going quite as I’d envisaged.
‘You mean … you don’t mind she’s gone? Mum, I mean?’
‘Good Lord, no. Blessed relief,’ he said with feeling. ‘All she did was nag. Nag nag nag nag nag.’ He waggled his head from side to side. ‘And I’m quite sure she needed a holiday.’ He gulped his drink.
‘Well, it’s more than a holiday, Dad,’ I said sternly. ‘She’s moved out.’
He looked unmoved. Shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
I flinched. My father didn’t say things like ‘Whatever’.
I ploughed on, my face very grave. ‘This is deadly serious, Dad. You’re in a real pickle here. There may be no way back. Honestly, between you and me, I think there’s a very real chance she might move out for ever.’
‘Oh, for ever is such a nebulous concept, isn’t it?’ he said airily, waving his hand in the air. ‘Especially at our age. Good heavens, one of us could go tomorrow!’
I frowned, sensing the nub. I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘Is that what this is all about? Sensing mortality round the corner and all that? Getting to a ripe old age and wondering if you’ve really lived? I mean – you know – emotionally?’
He widened his eyes at me in surprise. ‘Well, I haven’t, have I? I’ve been here, with your mother.’
There was no answer to that. I opened my mouth. Shut it. Swallowed hard. Tried a different tack.
‘Daddy – Daddy, look. She’s desperately sad and tremendously upset about all this. Humiliated, too.’
‘Well, I certainly don’t mean to humiliate anyone.’ It wasn’t said with any great contrition, though. He sipped his drink thoughtfully. ‘Maybe it’s best she’s gone. If she feels like that. Has a little break from the village.’
‘Well, she could hardly stay, could she?’ I burst out. I slipped out of my coat, which I’d yet to remove, and flung it down beside me, folding my arms briskly. ‘Not with you carrying on like this for all the neighbours to see!’
He blinked. ‘That doesn’t sound like you, Ella,’ he said in mild surprise. ‘Sounds more like the other females in my family. And, anyway, I’m not Carrying On, as you put it. I’m just having a lovely time with a cracking girl.’ He leaned forward eagerly. Set his drink aside and rubbed his knees with both hands. ‘And she is a cracking girl, Ella!’ he assured me, eyes twinkling.
I sighed, knowing the knee-rubbing of old. He wanted to divulge. Share. I sank back into the sofa feeling utterly defeated. Round one had definitely gone to him already. ‘Go on, then,’ I said bitterly. ‘Tell me all about her. I can see you’re dying to. And, actually, I might have that sherry after all.’
‘Oh, she’s one hell of a good sport,’ he said, getting up with alacrity and bustling to pour me a drink. He helped himself to a little more at the same time. ‘A real gem. She trained Buster, you know, which is no mean feat, as I’m sure you’ll agree. But she had him walking to heel and sitting on command – even lying down and waving his legs in the air!’ A hideous image of my dad doing much the same sprang to mind and I hid my face in the drink he handed me. ‘And just as Buster fell for her charms, well, blow me if I didn’t, too! I found I couldn’t wait for the next training session to come around. I hustled over there with old Buster like nobody’s business, I can tell you. I’d love you to meet her, darling. She’s frightfully jolly. You’d like her enormously.’
‘Dad … I’m not sure that would be entirely appropriate, would it?’ I said, giving him an incredulous look as he sank back down in the pink armchair, sherry sloshing because his glass was so full. It was lost on him.
‘Eh?’ He looked blank. ‘Oh, well. As you wish. You’ll just have to take my word for it.’
‘Won’t I just?’ I said witheringly, wondering what on earth had got into the man. I was also wondering why this wasn’t going to plan. Or perhaps that was the problem, I thought suddenly: there hadn’t been a plan. Let’s face it, I’d been far too engrossed with thoughts of my own marriage, I realized guiltily, to formulate one about my parents’ on the way down. I was rather glad Ginnie wasn’t here to witness the mess I was making of this. She surely would have had bullet points, I thought, going hot. She always did. Swore by them. Written in her precise hand on a pad of snowy paper as she picked up the phone to do battle with a teacher, a carpenter who’d overcharged, friends, even, who she wanted to persuade to come to some charity lunch. She didn’t move without them. I avoided my sister’s gaze in a framed, black-and-white studio photo on the side.
‘She’s popping over later,’ Dad told me breezily.
I jumped. ‘Ginnie?’<
br />
‘No, Maureen. If you change your mind you can stay for lunch.’
‘Dad!’ I was genuinely outraged now. ‘Dad, you can’t!’
‘What?’ He looked startled. Drink paused en route to lips.
‘Well, have her here, in Mum’s house! Having lunch together, in her kitchen, at her table. You just can’t, it’s so disrespectful.’
He regarded me openly now: candidly, like a child. Set his drink aside carefully. ‘Ella, you have no idea how I’ve suffered. How I have had to measure every word, every phrase, every moment, in your mother’s presence. Surely I can have someone to lunch, in what is, after all, my house too? The house I’ve paid for?’
I couldn’t think what to say to that. He made it sound so innocent as well. Perhaps it was? I licked my lips.
‘But, Dad,’ I persisted, trying a different approach, ‘this isn’t what you want long term, surely? I mean, on any permanent basis? To replace Mummy with this dog-handler?’
‘Maureen is more than a dog-handler and I resent your tone. She is an exceptional woman. Exceptional. And as to replacing your mother, no, of course not. Your mother is your mother. If she’d like to live here, that’s fine. As you say, it’s her house too. Maureen and I can go elsewhere.’
I went cold. ‘You mean … you’re definitely leaving her? For Maureen?’
‘Well, I wasn’t going to, darling, but she’s moved out, hasn’t she? And if you’re saying she won’t come back if Maureen is around, then of course we’ll accommodate her. I was very happy with the situation the way it was, frankly. Don’t know why she had to change it.’
Had he a screw loose, this father of mine? I stared. ‘What – you carrying on with Maureen, and still living with Mum?’ I exploded.
‘Well, it’s no different to the way you and Sebastian live your lives, is it, love?’ This was said gently. His old grey eyes were soft. I gazed at him. Of course it wasn’t. There were some very pertinent parallels. Was he aping us? Like some child, repeating learned behaviour? My tweedy father going all bohemian, because we were?
‘Of course, I know there are differences,’ he said, seeing my face. ‘But there are as many complications here, in this house, as there are in yours. That’s what I’m trying to say. Who was it said every happy family is the same but every unhappy one is unhappy in its own particular way?’
‘Tolstoy,’ I muttered.
‘Exactly. There are reasons, love. This is not just bonkers Dad having a late-life crisis and going off the rails. Sugaring off with a buxom wench down the road because the opportunity presented itself. I was driven to this as much as Sebastian, for whatever reason, feels he was.’
I felt myself quiver inwardly. My mouth was dry. ‘We must all take responsibility for our own lives, though, surely, Dad?’ I said with as much self-control as I could muster. ‘Our own actions? No one told you to marry Mum, to work in the City, play bridge, shoot. You made all those decisions. If your life became restricted within those – those traditional parameters, it was presumably because you let it be?’
My father and I had surely never talked like this before. He regarded me sadly.
‘Yes, I did. I was compliant. Complicit, even. Because it was easier. Men are often like that, you know. We get coerced.’
‘Yes. I know. Because you’re nicer,’ I said quietly.
‘No, just … lazy, I think. More apt to give in. Give way. For an easy life.’
We were silent a moment. I thought of how Mum had undeniably bullied and coerced him for years, and how, in one brief passage of time – in the space of half an hour, perhaps, after a dog-training session at Maureen’s, Dad hanging on for a coffee and a chat – her life’s work had been undone. All that channelling of energy into her husband. All that intricate knitting together – managing him, she’d call it, manipulating, he might – had unravelled at the pull of a thread. Perhaps in the catch of an eye; a quick recognition of unhappiness on Maureen’s part.
‘And what does she want from this?’ I asked miserably, looking around at the fringed sofas, the tapestry cushions, the expensive oils hanging by gilt chains from the picture rail circling the eau de Nil walls.
‘Oh, nothing,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just to be mates, as it were. She’s a widow, you see. Gets lonely, too. Just, you know, lunch. Scrabble. She’s taught me crib.’
‘Crib?’
‘Cribbage.’
‘Ah.’
‘We play in the pub.’
Anyone would think my mother was being a spoilsport.
On the large tapestry stool between us was a pile of magazines. On top was a brochure for the Bunch of Grapes Inn: a pretty, rural pub in a row of Cotswold stone houses, with rolling hills behind. Ah. Not just scrabble. I seized it triumphantly.
‘Love nest?’ I asked grimly, flourishing it.
My father looked surprised. ‘Oh, no, chap across the road. Dan, you know, married to Jennie. He brought it over. He stays there when he goes on his vintage-car rallies. Couldn’t rave about it enough. He was here for a beer the other night. I’ve never been myself.’
I believed him. Put it down shamefully. It also occurred to me that Dan would never have come across if Mum had been here. He was a nice man, but a bit scruffy. Always mending old cars. And a beer, eh? He’d probably plonked himself down in that pink chair and had a lovely chinwag with Dad. I felt sad. For how many years would Dad have liked that? Other things, too?
‘Although I don’t think I could be blamed if I had,’ my father said abruptly. ‘It’s not as if your mother enjoys that side of life. Hasn’t done for years.’ I realized suddenly where we were. Too much information, and yet … important information. Because, what the bloody hell did she expect? If she’d turned the tap off years ago. He wasn’t a dog, my dad. Wasn’t Buster, to be told what to do, but have no fun himself. Yet, my parents were in their late sixties. Was it right for Dad to expect it to go on and on? And, if so, maybe he had a point: maybe the modus operandi he was adopting, with him visiting Maureen and my mother turning a blind eye at home, was just dandy. Everyone was happy, and who cared about the neighbours? One thing was for sure. Mum moving out wasn’t going to get my father begging her to come back. She and Ginnie had definitely miscalculated there. He’d just move Maureen in. I rubbed my temples nervously with my fingertips. Felt panic rising.
‘OK, Dad,’ I said quietly. ‘I take your point about Mum. Being a bit – intractable. But don’t do anything drastic yet, OK? Don’t … you know …’
‘Move Maureen into the master bedroom? Oh, no, darling, I wasn’t about to do that. But we can surely share a little cheese on toast by the Aga, eh? Do the crossword together? Oh, look, here she is. Do stay. You’ll love her.’
I rose, horrified, as, sure enough, through the front bay window, I could see a bouncy redhead with a wide smile and ample hips come swinging through the electric gates pushing a bike with a basket. She looked a bit out of breath. When she spotted Dad she waved madly and he waved madly back. She gave me a cheery, unabashed look too. Ma in The Darling Buds of May sprang to mind. She looked nice. Propping her bike against a tree, she took a package out of the basket.
‘Um, I won’t stay, thanks, Dad,’ I said hastily, grabbing my coat. ‘I’ve got to get back. But I’m glad – well, I’m glad I came to see you.’
‘Me, too, darling,’ he said distractedly. His eyes were still shining delightedly through the window and he was hastening, not to escort me to the back door, which I was cravenly making for, but to the front, which Maureen was approaching. ‘And give everyone my love, won’t you?’ he said absently as he hurried across the stone-flagged hall. ‘Ginnie, all the grandchildren. Your mother, too.’
‘Yes, and – any particular message? I mean, for Mum?’ I hovered nervously, knowing he was about to swing wide the door.
‘Darling!’ he boomed, as I ducked smartly into the kitchen. ‘You look ravishing, as usual!’
This, I suspected, was not the message to my mother.
&n
bsp; I slipped away through the kitchen and out of the back, shutting the door quietly behind me, but not before I heard Maureen say, in what my mother would sniffily dismiss as estuary English: ‘Ooh, Angus, you’ll never guess. I found those soft herring roe you like in Morrison’s. Seventy-five pence a pound!’
As I tiptoed around the side of the house to my car, it occurred to me that my Dad did like soft herring roe. Talked of them fondly from his days in the army, when he’d had them fried and on toast. It also occurred to me that, to this day, I still didn’t know what they tasted like. In forty-odd years, my mother had never cooked them.
CHAPTER NINE
I went to the Rose and Crown for lunch, partly through need of a large drink and partly out of nostalgia. I’d done my first underage drinking in this pub; had wrinkled my nose in disgust at my first Dubonnet and lemonade with my friend Fi from down the road, hiding cigarettes under our stools so they billowed as if we were on fire, fearful our mothers would come in, even though they’d probably never set foot in here. The Snug Bar was much the same: low, bulging ceiling, faded sporting prints on dark-mustard walls, red Dralon-covered bar stools with lower ones clustered around little tables. The only comfortable seats were the worn leather armchairs by the inglenook fire, which blazed away even at this time of year, its chimney piece cluttered with horse brasses, tankards and country memorabilia. Occupying these two comfortable chairs, which, once I’d bought my drink, I’d been planning to head to, were, to my surprise, my nephew and a young girl.
Hugo had obviously seen me before I’d made him out in the gloom, and, having the advantage, had already arranged his features into a Greet The Aunt And Introduce The Girlfriend ensemble. He stood up as I came across with my gin and tonic.
‘Hugo! What are you doing here? I thought you were doing some holiday job in London. Some internship?’
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