Highly Unsuitable Girl

by Carolyn McCrae

  Perhaps, Anya thought somewhat surreally, if she had had a flash forward all those years ago and could have seen herself now, sitting by Geoff’s bedside, holding his hand in his last few days of life, she would have imagined they were still married, that none of the past 20 years had happened.

  “But then, as you said, if we had stayed together you would never have had your kids and David and Linda say they are really nice. It was so obvious that you love them to bits and when you wake up you must tell me everything about them. I used to read the Courier to see if there was anything about you so I saw all the announcements. Isn’t that silly? I was so pleased for you but so very, very jealous.”

  There was no response from Geoff, his breathing remained slow and even so she kept talking in her soft, expressive voice. “You know Geoff, when I realised I couldn’t have children I thought it was the most liberating thing in the world. I was like any man and could have sex as much as I liked and I would never have to worry about Durex or coils or pills or anything. I felt so lucky. What did I know? It cost me you, well there were probably other factors involved there, but it was really the children thing wasn’t it? Then it cost me Peter. I suppose that marriage was over well before he realised children were important to him. I was so jealous of Tim for having Maggie and Matthew, and so jealous of you with your brood. I kept getting the local paper, kept looking out for anything that related to you all. All those years I don’t think I ever really let you go. It wasn’t that I was worried about having no one to look after me in my fast approaching old age it was that I was worried that my years on this planet weren’t marked in any way. OK, maybe a few properties would have my name on the deeds if anyone bothered to read them. OK, maybe some children existed because of what I’ve done to their parent’s lives. But they weren’t me, they weren’t part of me. No part of me is going to remain on this planet after I’m gone and that has bothered me so very much. I do wish, more than anything in the whole wide world that I could have had your children. Life, for both of us, would have been so different. I’m so, so sorry.”

  She realised that her voice had risen and she looked up from Geoff’s hand to his face to see if he was awake but he had not moved. She watched the drip drip drip of the liquid as it flowed from the bottle into the tube and through the needle into his arm. She stroked Geoff’s hand rhythmically as she thought about how different their lives could have been.

  In a resolute but calm and low voice, she said things that should have been said years before.

  “I never told you why I couldn’t have children did I? I wonder why you never asked, I suppose it was one of those things that we just took for granted. I should have told you though, maybe it would have made a difference. I was sterilised when I was 7 years old because my mother had been raped by either her father or her brother, I don’t know which. I’ve always felt like it was my fault, perhaps that’s what made me so ashamed and so angry with the world. I should have told you years ago, it might have made everything different if you’d known.”

  She felt she had said too much, so she stopped talking and almost dozed off in the warmth of the room with the machine’s hypnotic beeping.

  It could have been seconds or minutes or an hour, she had no sense of time, when she felt his hand squeeze hers. She opened her eyes to see him looking intently at her. Then his eyes slowly closed and opened again, like a two eyed blink in slow motion. He closed his eyes again and Anya sat stroking his hand as the setting sun brightened the sky and then its absence darkened it.

  “Anya?” It was a young man’s voice, remarkably similar to that of the young Geoff.

  She turned to see three children, standing by the door, Geoff’s children. She wondered how long they had been there.

  “Hi. He’s asleep.”

  She wondered briefly how a room so full of people could still be so quiet.

  “Hi Dad.”

  “Hi Kids.”

  “Have you been asleep Dad?” Rose asked, staring at Anya with a mixture of curiosity and hostility.

  He looked deliberately at Anya “Not for one moment.” and then, turning to his children, smiled.

  “You’re Anya.” The older of the two boys held his hand out. Anya took it and was relieved to feel the firm handshake. It wasn’t friendly, perhaps there was an element of suspicion in the way he looked at her as he shook her hand, but it was contact. “Uncle David said you’d be here. I’m Geoffrey the Third, known to all as Gezza.”

  “Hello Gezza. Yes, I’m Anya.”

  Geoff was still looking at Anya smiling almost imperceptibly.

  “And you must be James.” She turned to the younger boy who copied his elder brother and shook her hand firmly.

  “Dad wants you to look after us.” Rose’s tone was not friendly, she was simply stating a fact.

  “That’s why I’m here. I’ve only known your Dad is … ill … since yesterday. It’s a lot to take in.” “You will though won’t you?” James’s voice was almost pleading. “Aunty Margaret’s staying with us and it’s absolutely awful.”

  Anya felt the weight of their stares, Gezza curious, Rose antagonistic and James desperate.

  “We’re just an excuse for her to control another chunk of the world.” Rose spoke with obvious resentment. “Or try to.”

  “And she drinks. There’s no gin left.” James added.

  “James.” Geoff’s admonition was so quiet they almost didn’t hear it.

  “It’s true Dad.” Gezza stood up for his young brother. “She drinks far more than Mum ever did and she’s horrid. She’s always saying how much better behaved her ‘Matthew and Young Margaret’ were when they were our age…”

  “…and how we’re all letting you down by not behaving as well as they did, and we’re not.” Rose looked as if she was about to cry, her bravado gone.

  Anya caught the look in Geoff’s eyes. She tried to understand something of the pain he must be feeling as he faced leaving his children to grow up without him.

  “You really don’t want your Aunt Margaret to look after you?” She spoke calmly as if to adults. Any decision had to be made swiftly. Rosie was older than she had been when she had started to go off the rails. ‘By her age,’ Anya thought, ‘I’d been having sex for nearly two years. What are the chances Rose is doing it? And what are her chances of getting pregnant if she has no reason not to and no guidance on how not to?’ Gezza, nearly 16, was trying to be the strong one, old for his years, being forced to grow up too quickly. ‘He’s probably had to be’ Anya reasoned ‘feeling responsible for his siblings against a resentful, alcoholic, lesbian mother and a weakened, increasingly ill father’. James seemed the quiet one ‘but quiet can so often mean vulnerable, sensitive and confused’ he would need help to be brought out into the world. These children did not need Margaret to bring them up, and most certainly not Kathleen.

  They needed her.

  “We could look after ourselves.” Gezza’s tried to sound convincing, perhaps he realised this was a last stand against the devastating changes that were about to be made in their lives. Perhaps he had hoped that they could stay as they always had, just with no parents in the house.

  “Gezza that’s very noble of you, noble and brave, but you’re suggesting taking responsibility for James and Rose without knowing what that might involve.” Anya did not know either but she thought perhaps she had a little more of an idea than Gezza.

  “I don’t need looking after. I’m 16. I can look after myself.”

  “You will, but not yet.” Geoff spoke quietly.

  “So can I, I’m nearly 15.” Rose added her unnaturally high pitched voice to the discussion. Anya wondered if she was finally realising what her father’s dying was going to mean to their lives.

  “Do you understand the sacrifices you would have to make Gezza?” Anya held Gezza’s defiant eye, a defiance that Anya knew would only be a front to hold back fear. “You couldn’t go to University, you couldn’t do so many of the things you do now, the week
end sport, the hanging out with your friends.” She was guessing, but she had lived in the town long enough to know what a boy of his age would be doing. “Those are the things you should be doing at 16. Not checking that the bills have been paid and that your brother and sister have done their homework or have clean underwear.”

  They were the first parental responsibilities that came to her mind. She knew it was an inadequate list but it had the desired effect. Gezza turned away.

  “Anya’s right.”

  They all looked down at Geoff.

  “But it’s not up to us, it’s up to the court.”

  Anya looked at Gezza’s back, turned against her as he pretended to look out of the window, Rose was near to tears, she turned to James.

  “James? Can you explain? Your dad’s pretty tired.”

  Gezza turned around, he wasn’t going to give up being the spokesman for his family. “When Mum left us she said she wanted a life for herself, we were holding her back from being the person she had always wanted to be.” As he spoke Anya realised he was repeating, word for word, what their mother had said to them. She felt a wave of anger against the woman and made herself concentrate on what Gezza was saying. “At first the court said she had to have custody because Dad wasn’t well enough. But she didn’t want us, she was only fighting Dad to hurt him, and Uncle David managed to persuade the court that it would be wrong to give custody to someone who didn’t want us. The magistrate didn’t want to do it but she gave temporary custody to Dad. She said we had to come back when…”

  “…when I’m dead.” Geoff finished the sentence his son couldn’t.

  “Sorry, you’re going to have to be a bit clearer.” Anya was confused. “Does this mean you only need me until,” she looked straight at Geoff knowing she had to be as strong as he was being, “until your Dad is dead? Then it’s back to court?”

  “But if we’re got a stable home environment they’d look at it from the starting point of keeping us together.” It seemed to Anya that James was also repeating a phrase he had heard others use.

  “It’s not going to be easy.”

  Anya tried to grasp the scale of what Geoff was asking her to do; learn to be a parent, provide that ‘stable home environment’, help his children face up to their father’s death, then convince the court to keep the family together whilst no doubt having to fight Margaret and Kathleen every step of the way.

  And that would only be the beginning.

  “Will you take them on Anya?” Geoff lifted his hand and reached out towards her. “I wasn’t asleep.” He was speaking very slowly and she could hardly make out what he was saying. “I heard every word. I’m sorry.”

  As she looked at him she realised there was something wrong, his eyes closed slowly, reluctantly and she realised there was no resistance in his hand, it was limp in hers.

  “Rose,” Anya said calmly “please go and get a nurse. I think your father needs some help.

  They waited outside the room in silence as nurses walked in and out of the room pushing trolleys of equipment and men in white coats talked seriously, but inaudibly as they walked down the corridor without a word to the four anxious faces waiting for news.

  “Is he OK?” James asked a nurse after half an hour. He was given a slight smile in reply that was probably supposed to be encouraging.

  “He’ll be OK won’t he?” James asked Anya as if, as an adult, she would know the answer better than he.

  “I think he was just a little faint. He must be very tired. It’s been a very difficult day for him, sorting out the future of the three people he loves most in the world. And he does love you three, more than you could ever imagine.” She put her arm around Rose, James sat next to her and slipped his arm through hers. “You should have heard him talking about you, he’s so proud of you all.” For a moment she was back in the golf club bar, champagne in hand, listening to Geoff talk about his children. If only she had known then what was to come. Things would have been different, she would have made them different.

  The quiet corridor was disturbed by a shrill sound.

  “What are you doing here?” Anya opened her eyes to see Margaret staring at her with undisguised hatred. She hadn’t acknowledged the presence of the children and she ignored them. “You!” She was almost screaming with anger, “I’m talking to you! What the hell are you doing here?”

  Anya had no time to reply before another, also once familiar, voice joined in.

  “Take your hands off those poor children.” Kathleen tried to push Anya’s arm off Rose’s shoulder and pull James away from her. The strength and the violence of her actions surprised them all.

  Anya knew that a bearing of dignity and restraint was the best answer to such open hostility. She did not answer, she simply tightened her hold on Rose and James and smiled at them in what she hoped was an encouraging way.

  “I asked you a question. What are you doing here? Answer me!”

  “She’s here to see Dad.” Gezza was the first to speak.

  “I wasn’t speaking to you young man. I was talking to that woman.”

  “Anya. Her name is Anya.” James spoke very politely but they all heard the defiance in his voice.

  “I know her name. I know exactly who she is. I want her to tell me what she’s doing here.”

  “She has no right to be here, no right at all.” Kathleen added her voice in support of her daughter.

  “I told you.” Gezza spoke with what Anya thought was admirable insolence. “She’s here to see Dad. What’s the problem with that? She was married to him.”

  “Was. Was. She was married to him. She hasn’t been part of this family for a very long time. Thank God!” Anya remembered what James had said about Margaret’s drinking and she thought perhaps she was drunk.

  “Well Dad wants her to be part of the family now.” Rose spoke up finding a voice as firm as her brother’s.

  “What could you possibly mean by that?” Kathleen was at her imperious best.

  “She’s going to marry Dad again.” Gezza had made the decision.

  Rose glanced at her brother, smiled and took up the theme, “Then she’ll be our proper step-mother and she’ll look after us, then you and the court can’t do anything about it.”

  Anya hoped no one caught the look of sheer panic that she felt must show on her face. She was aware of, without actually hearing, the gasp of ‘No!’ from her ex- and soon-to-be-again sister-in-law.

  “Well there’s no reason why not and a lot of reasons why.” As James spoke Anya heard a calm reason not shown by his siblings. Anya realised she was seeing their personalities in microcosm: Gezza the impetuous but protective one with the burden on his shoulders of being the eldest; Rose the emotional yet pragmatic one and James the thoughtful, logical peacemaker.

  “Will you do it Anya?” Gezza asked her rather formally “Will you marry our Dad?”

  “Don’t you think we’d better ask him first?”

  Ignoring them Kathleen walked towards Geoff’s room. “We’ll see about that.” She opened the door just as the nurse was wheeling the trolley out smiling, oblivious to the drama that had been played out in the corridor. “He’s better now, it was just a faint. You can go back in but don’t get him too excited.”

  Anya noticed the subtlety of the re-arrangement as they filed into the room. Before they had all left she had been on one side of his bed with the children ranged against her amongst the drips and accoutrements of medical surveillance on the other. Now she sat in the chair she had left just a few minutes before with Gezza standing to her right and Rose and James to her left facing Kathleen and Margaret across the bed.

  Anya took Geoff’s hand, shocked again at the slightness of him.

  “Geoff. For God’s sake don’t try to laugh but your children have just asked me to marry you.”

  “Good idea.” He smiled, it was almost the smile of the Geoff of old.

  “You think so?”

  “I do.” Still smiling, he closed his ey
es.

  Ten days later, the 8th April 1995, Anya was to become Mrs Geoff Philips for the second time.

  Friday 7th April 1995

  My last night as Anya Cave. Tomorrow it’s Mrs Geoff Philips. Again. But for how long? The hospital won’t let me stay more than a couple of hours at a time as he gets so tired. I know he likes me there, stroking his hand. I’ve told him about all the things he never asked before. I read pages from my diaries. ‘I want to know you before it’s too late’ he said. How am I going to get through all this? What could we have been if we’d stayed together?

  They’re using more and more drugs, that means it won’t be long. I must stop being self-pitying, I have no right to be when he isn’t in the least.

  When we left the hospital last Wednesday I drove the children home. They had to tell me the way as I had no idea where Geoff lived. I was horrified to see it was Kathleen’s old house. The kids explained that Geoff moved into the house (after all it was his) when he married Fiona and the children have lived nowhere else. I won’t move them what with all the other things happening in their lives but changes will occur. It’ll help keep the children occupied. But living here will take some getting used to.