The Generation Game

by Sophie Duffy

  A martyr? I am not a martyr. Or am I? Is that what I am doing? Why am I so set on doing this myself, dealing with it all on my own? Maybe she is right. Maybe he should know about both babies. No. I can’t tell him. He’ll think I am being a child, that I still haven’t grown up. But why should I care what he thinks? Of course I care what he thinks. I’ve always cared what he thinks, ever since I was a little girl leaping over Bernie’s bamboo canes…

  “Are you alright, Philly?”

  “Will you tell him for me?”

  “It’s something you should really do, Phil.”

  “I can’t.”

  She shrugs. “If that’s what you want, I will. It’s about time he settled down.”

  “He’ll never settle down. Not with me at any rate.”

  “Do you want him to?”

  “I’ve always wanted him to.”

  And, not surprisingly, she asks: “Then why the bloody hell did you marry Adrian?”

  Good point.

  “Lots of reasons. Stupid reasons. All the wrong reasons… I’m sorry.”

  “So you should be.” She smells Lucy again, to keep her on the straight and narrow. “It happened. Can’t change that. And I suppose I should be apologising too. For taking him back.”

  “Yes, you are supposed to be saying sorry. Adrian is actually technically my husband. I’d almost forgotten.”

  “Sorry.”

  There is an ocean of silence in which we thrash about, trying our best to get back to dry land, then I catch hold of you, my little bobbing life-raft… well, Toni hands you back to me after planting a kiss on your little boxer nose.

  “Lucy might make him settle down,” she says, ever the optimist.

  “We can manage on our own.”

  “You need a family.”

  “She’s my family.”

  Toni gets up to leave, but can’t quite bring herself to go.

  “Do you remember Diana?” she asks.

  “Ye-es,” I say, unsure where she is going with this.

  “Then you’ll know there’s no such thing as a happy ending.”

  And I remember that day, early Sunday morning, Joe waking me up with a mug of tea, his rugby player legs. Bob in tears on the phone. The underpass in Paris. And the week that followed.

  “But we still have to aim for it,” Toni goes on. “Adrian’s my happy ending. Not your archetypal happy-ever-after ending, a little 21st Century, but an ending all the same. With a chance of some happiness attached to it.”

  “And I’ve got Lucy.”

  “Yes,” she says, “you have. But it would be nice to have someone else too, wouldn’t it? Someone else to share it all with.”

  She leaves us then and makes a very important phone call to her mother, who is a great aunt of sorts but, more importantly, a grandmother – news that will take Sheila completely by surprise. Toni then tracks down Justin on his mobile, in Warsaw. Tells him she is an auntie.

  Then it is Sheila’s turn to break the news, working the grapevine. She goes to the shop and tells Bob he is a grandfather. I don’t know what look passes over his face but I sense that in that moment I am forgiven. I am his daughter once again.

  It is left to me to tell Helena and I finally pluck up courage early the next morning, while you are still sleeping and there is comparative hush in the vicinity. I get my hours mixed up and realise too late that it is in actual fact the middle of the night in Toronto. But the phone is picked up and above the crackly line I can make out a faint, husky voice murmuring a panicky Hello?

  “Congratulations!” I say. “You did it!”

  “Philippa? Is that you? What exactly have I done?”

  “Become a grandmother!”

  “No, I’m not… really… am I? Tell me.”

  So I tell her. I tell her everything.

  “Terry,” she murmurs, bemused. “Who would’ve guessed?” There is a pause where all I can hear is the crackly line… or is it her wheezing chest? “I’d come and see you if I could.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I’ve got emphysema.”

  “I thought that’s what old coal miners got.”

  “And old smokers.”

  Oh dear. Emphysema. That doesn’t sound too good. I don’t go into detail about Adrian or Justin nor any of the other things I really should be saying, like why were you such a rubbish mother? Not right now.

  “It was good talking to you,” I mumble. “I just wanted you to know.”

  “Thank you, Philippa. I’m so glad for you. Take good care of that little girl of yours. What’s she called, by the way?”

  “Lucy,” I say. “She’s called Lucy. It’s the closest I could get to Lucas.”

  “Lucas,” she breathes and I realise the crackles are definitely down to her. “Well, you’ll know soon enough then. You’ll know what this has all been about.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’ve gotta go. Orville’s calling. We’ll speak soon.”

  And she is gone.

  As I put the phone down and contemplate crying, who should walk in but a slightly older, slightly balder Bob, fresh off the Paddington train, carrying a bunch of Andy’s wilted roses.

  “I’ve come to stay for a bit,” he says, kissing me on the cheek as if he’s just back from a therapy walk on the moors. “If you’ll have me.”

  My Mr Bob Sugar.

  Chapter Twenty One: 2006

  Bob’s Full House

  You are three months old. You are small and doll-like but your eyes do not click shut when you lie down; they flutter closed and then I can see the shell-skin of your lids that reminds me why I chose your name. And your heart? It’s beating well, stronger and stronger.

  We live on our own, you and I, getting on like a house on fire (whoops, memories of Wink), in the big four bedroom house in East Dulwich. Adrian has crossed back over the River Thames to old familiar territory, the double-fronted Victorian villa where he and Toni are living together again. They are soon to go to Africa, several months ahead of Madonna, to acquire a baby. But Toni and Adrian will do it with the help of Adebayo, quietly and without fuss. They will bring home a plump little orphan girl with no family to her name. She will live happily in Belsize Park surrounded by people from all four corners of the globe in a family house that has been crying out for her for years. In a house that has finally become a home, its cavernous kitchen finally filled with noise and mess that even Toni’s cleaner won’t keep on top of so that, to Auntie Sheila, it will look like that burglar has returned at long last.

  You and I, on the other hand, are now ready to leave this cosmopolitan city behind, heading west to the place that is part of my very blood and bones. We are leaving Paddington and its huge iron and pigeon-splatted glass canopy, my own little girl wrapped in a yellow shawl on a warm August morning. A shawl I bought because it reminds me that Helena once swaddled me in a similar one (haven’t I learnt anything?) which was passed onto Andy, his burial shroud.

  We are not alone on our journey. We have someone to escort us across the capital and through the Underground. Someone to help us onto the train. To help stow the luggage on the overhead rack. To hold Lucy while I eat my egg and cress sandwich. That someone is Bob.

  We are taking the train as Bob no longer drives; his nerves are not up to it these days. I myself have given my Laguna to Joe and Rebecca who need a second car with their kids’ schedules and no money.

  “You have a political conscience after all, Phil,” he says as I hand him the keys.

  “You obviously don’t have an ecological one,” I retort, quick off the mark for once. ‘Fancy owning two cars.’

  Valerie and Lesley, the fluffballs, are so happy with Evelyn and Judith that they are staying put. So I needn’t worry about them curling up in the cot or triggering asthma attacks. I’ll do anything to keep you safe. To keep you with me.

  The rest of our worldly goods – rather more than Helena and I owned – are following on in a removal truck. The house in East
Dulwich has a For Sale sign (guess-which-estate-agent?) nailed to a post in the front garden. For now, we’ll be living with Bob, at the shop, the only place in the world I want to be.

  “A new start,” says Bob as he spots me gazing wistfully at the white chalk horse on the hill at Westbury.

  “A new start,” I agree. I make a bold move and reach into the pocket of his cardigan where I know I’ll find his bottle of pills. “You don’t need these anymore, not with me looking after you.”

  He frowns, uncertain how exactly I plan to do that when I already have plenty to keep me occupied.

  “Have you heard from Sheila?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “She’s picking us up from the station,” he says. And when I don’t respond to this, he adds: “I should’ve told you.”

  The last time I saw Sheila was on Bernie’s soggy lawn, running full pelt at me, shrieking like a mother gull protecting her young. Protecting Toni. I’m not exactly looking forward to seeing her now, with my own maternal instincts kicking in. Kicking off. But she has to meet you sometime.

  “She’s pleased,” Bob says, sensing my anxiety. Which is bordering on terror. “Really pleased.”

  “Is she?”

  “She just wishes Justin would come home.”

  “He will be soon.”

  “He will?”

  “I had a letter. Here, have a look.”

  I rummage in the changing bag and pass it to him, a much longer affair than the note scrunched into my hand on the eve of my sixteenth birthday. Not in his unjoined-up scrawl but typed on his laptop in a hotel somewhere in Eastern Europe. I’ve read it over and over, each time hearing his Brummie twang, hardly daring to believe the words I never thought I’d hear. Showing them to Bob might make them come true.

  Dear Phil

  I could send you an email only somehow a letter seems more right. Don’t ask me why. More formal, I suppose. More important.

  Toni’s told me all about Lucy. She told me she was an auntie and it took me a while to work the rest out. And she told me something else. That this wasn’t the first time. Phil, you should’ve said. All in all I’ve made a right mess of things. I’m selfish and restless and always think I know best. I thought you’d be better off with Adrian, even though he’s a mardy pillock. But you had a home, a job, a life, security – all the things you craved ever since your mum left you all those years ago. I was wrong. You were wrong. You had all those things in Torquay. All I had to do was put my hand up and you could’ve had the full set. The missing link. But I kept on moving. Kept going to those foreign places that were just about as far away from you as I could go. Because I thought you’d never say yes. I thought you’d laugh in my face.

  I’m coming home in a few weeks. I don’t know what I’ll find when I get there. But I hope you’ll let me through the shop door. I hope you’ll let me hold our daughter. Please let me hold you and make it right. My homecoming queen.

  Terry.

  And there, in that final word, that name, I decide I will.

  Sheila is waiting for us on the platform as we get off the train, the anxious grandmother, desperate to get her hands on you, stunning in your yellow shawl.

  “She’s gorgeous, Philippa. Absolutely lovely.”

  “Hold her,” I say, passing you over.

  As the train pulls out of the station, I fight the feeling I am in an old film, Brief Encounter or The Railway Children, though there is no steam, no red bloomers, just the August sunshine, but the emotion is swirling all around, the three adults wondering where all the years have gone, wishing Bernie and Wink had lived to see this day.

  Before leaving, I take one last look up the track, letting the breeze brush over me, breathing in the sea air. I am home. We are home.

  Sheila drives us, slowly and very carefully, to Bob’s News. “I’ll call back later,” she says. “Give you a little time to settle in.”

  As her Volvo disappears, Bob and I are left standing outside the shop.

  “You won’t recognise the place,” he says. “I’ve made some alterations.”

  The alterations include a new till, a new line in healthy snacks, (How are they doing? Not very well) and a new lowered false ceiling thus dispensing with the need for fingerless gloves in winter. Out the back, the kitchenette has been upgraded to one of B&Q’s finest. And out in the yard, Andy’s rose bush is flourishing. Then we go upstairs… which is a revelation! All the woodchip has been stripped off and replaced with smooth new plaster painted the colour of the sky over Torquay on a good day. Which makes a change from the old beige. A job lot so every room has been done over. The living room, the bathroom, Bob’s room, Helena’s room, every room but one: mine, which remains the same with the wallpaper of bluebells that match the Cavalier’s eyes so well. And there he is, the old swashbuckler, hiding in the pattern, lying in wait until bedtime tonight when he will be astonished at what I’ve brought home.

  “Why didn’t you do my room?” I ask Bob.

  “I thought you’d want to be consulted.”

  “You never wanted to see me again.”

  “Let’s not be reminded of all that.” He straightens a picture on the wall, Adam Ant in all his glory. “It’s over now. You’re back home.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Back home.”

  I should feel a little bit sad, disappointed, that my life has come to this, living back home at my age (nearly forty-one!) but I just feel relief. And the best thing about my room is that now I will share it with my daughter who will sleep in a cot purchased by her grandmother, Sheila. Not a lick of lead paint to be found.

  Later, after Sheila has called back and we’ve consumed one of her cottage pies made especially for the occasion, we sit around the living room, Captain preening himself on his perch, the television off, the window open, so we can hear the gulls and see the twilight sky that was once partially obscured by an unstable horse chestnut tree.

  “Helena would be proud,” Sheila says, holding you, stroking her little fingers. She is content, her granddaughter, gazing up at Sheila’s shock of badly dyed hair.

  “I need you both to do something tomorrow,” I announce grandly, for we are on the brink of a most historical event.

  Bob and Sheila swap a look, wary at what I am about to suggest. I have no idea at this moment that tomorrow this wariness will be justified.

  Tonight I will not draw the bedroom curtains. I don’t want the Cavalier scaring my little girl. There is plenty of time for them to get acquainted. For now I want to watch the stars, those I can pick out of the sodium glare of the great metropolis of Torquay. I want to think of your namesake up there, a special speck of stardust watching over you. Watching you grow up.

  You wake me bright and early for a feed and a nappy change and for once I manage to leap out of bed rather than crawl. Today I am on a mission. I’ve waited a long time to be qualified for it. Over thirty years. Now I am a mother I can go in the backyard and dig up the Time Capsule.

  Breakfast is a quiet affair. Sheila has stayed over (‘saves me going home and back again as you want me here tomorrow, Philippa’). She and Bob eat their magic muesli which I notice has worked its way into the pantry. I make my way through half a loaf of Hovis, breastfeeding being hungry work, even with apprehension swirling round my stomach. What if everything has gone mouldy, like on Blue Peter? What if I find it all too sad, just as I am beginning to get a grip on my new life?

  Bob’s latest shop assistant, Karen, is a genuine Devonian who, when her husband lost his dairy herd to foot and mouth, was sent out to earn some money while he diversified and did a PGCE (he couldn’t do any worse than me). So Bob and Sheila are free to come out the back.

  We stand in the yard, Bob and I, a trowel apiece. Sheila sits in one of three deckchairs, cuddling you, saying how pretty you look in her new (ridiculously puffy and lacy) summer dress and matching mini sunhat that she bought as a coming home present.

  “Mind Andy,” Sheila warns as we start digging.

  �
�Don’t worry,” I reassure her. “He’s nearer the rose bush.”

  The unidentifiable shrub has grown considerably over the years and Bob and I are having some trouble with woody roots but after a while, as my muscles begin to ache (even though they are in pretty good shape from baby-carrying), Bob’s trowel finds some resistance. Something hard.

  “A stone?”

  “No,” he says. “I think this is it.”

  “It’s not soggy then?”

  “No. I wrapped the tin in polythene when we dug it up before. Things were getting damp.”

  “You did? But you weren’t supposed to look.”

  “You weren’t supposed to look. And you didn’t. You fainted, remember. We had to lug you inside and lie you out on the sofa. I felt I’d missed my vocation as an undertaker that day.”

  “I don’t remember as a matter of fact. Not much anyway. Only that I woke up and missed Andy’s fur beside me.” There is a pause before I ask: “So did you? Did you look in there?”

  “Yes,” he says, sombre, smearing some dirt across his forehead in an effort to wipe off the sweat forming there.

  I am worried now, seeing the wariness creeping back. Why did I have that last piece of toast?

  Bob gets back to the matter in hand and pulls the tin from the earth. After a moment’s hesitation, he brushes the clumpy red soil off the top of the polythene with his soft shop-boy hands, and removes the tin. Then he stands up and presents it ceremoniously to me. I sit down with it on a deckchair, the one Helena used to sunbathe while I splashed about with a washing-up bowl of soapy water. The smell of Fairy liquid mixed with sunshine. Rainbow colours dancing on the water. Bubbles floating in the air. Crushed red geranium petals at my feet…

  “This is it then,” I say, prising the rusty lid off with a screwdriver that Bob has fetched from the lean-to.

  Yes, this is it. Lucas’ life in a box, a chocolate tin, lined with Helena’s misplaced Laura Ashley blouse. I handle each of the items in turn, most of them pretty well preserved, though smelling of a potent cocktail of dead air and sweet memories:

  A set of decimal coins.