Out on a Limb

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  There is a look, a distinct and unequivocal look that becomes standard between sisters over time. My own sister, who joins us in the kitchen moments later, catches my eye and it passes between us, just as it has done for decades. It’s a look with one meaning, and that meaning is clear. ‘Damn,’ it says. ‘Now we’ve got trouble.’

  Chapter 3

  MY FIRST POSTCARD – HURRAH !

  Frontside: Eiffel Tower by night.

  Backside: Dear Mum, just to let you know we’re still alive. Though only just, as Jonathan spent most of last night throwing up. He blames the snails. Yeah, right. On to Madrid manyana. (Not sure I spelt that right!) xxx Seb.

  It was Sebastian who made my mind up. Not consciously, naturally, for he didn’t and still doesn’t know that his mother is – no, was , and only briefly at that – a mistress and a harlot and a fallen woman. Some things are best left unsaid. But it was Sebastian’s plan – to take time out from the daily grind of exams and revision, to see a bit of the world, to get drunk on weeknights, to meet interesting people, to sleep on a beach under the stars, to ponder the fundamental questions about being, to exist on pizza and beer, to just exist, period – that put the idea in my head.

  Not that much of that sort of thing hadn’t been in my head already. There must have been umpteen rainy Monday mornings when, like any other sane person, I would dream of escape too. Going somewhere else. Being someone else. Getting on a bus. Climbing aboard a train. And like any other person, when a plane flew overhead I often wished I was on it too.

  But in my head as in right in my head; as in a cohesive, realisable, actual resolution to my problems – that came only when planning Sebastian’s gap year made me realise that herein lay a solution of sorts for me too.

  I couldn’t go off inter-railing round Europe with a backpack, of course. Couldn’t afford to, and wouldn’t want to, in any case. There was – is – still my lovely Jake to consider, but as I had recently made the final payment on my mortgage (a spur on its own – how could I be that OLD?), there was a small chunk of cash I could usefully re-route. And as Sebastian and Jake’s dad, who among his many virtues, had the foresight to have been born into a family that included at least one elderly, indulgent and maiden aunt, and therefore the wherewithal to fund at least a part of both his sons’ ventures into academia, I could, if I could just pluck up the impetus to do it, re-route it mainly to me. And so organise a kind of mini gap-year of my own, and extricate myself from Charlie’s clutches.

  In a manner of speaking, at any rate. Like most of the population who were once beguiled by notions of fulfilment as promised in NHS recruitment ads, I worked in the health sector and thus I wasn’t rich. So I would still have to work. And I would still want to work. But, for once, for the first time, for a little time at least, I could do it on my terms; i.e. not quite as much and not quite as hard, and with a day off each week to do just what I pleased. And if what I pleased was still a matter for some thought, the sheer relief at having actually made the decision was enough to make it feel like a gap year. A gap, at least, and all I had to do was leap into it. All very straightforward. Not .

  Because it wasn’t just me that was involved. One of the most difficult aspects (in a circumstance positively awash with difficult aspects) of finding yourself romantically involved with someone who turns out to be not actually available to be romantically involved with you, is that often – all too often – the relationship is based on a marked inequality of need. There are straightforward cases, of course. He’s unhappily married, she’s unhappily married and they go off, as one, To Be Together. But lots of cases are not like that at all. In lots of cases, he’s unhappily married, yes, but not so unhappily he’s about to do anything about it bar have his wounds licked by someone pleasing and solicitous, with a helping of sex on the side. And she’s single. Or divorced. Oh, yes. Almost invariably.

  There are many other permutations, naturally. But it seems to me that if you winnowed all unhappily-but-not-quite-enough men out of date-based society, you’d deal with a huge chunk of affairs at a stroke.

  Oh, Why did I – how did I – get involved with Charlie? How could I have been so naïve?

  *

  Because naïve I most certainly was. Naïve to the point of imbecility. For many months I laboured under the misapprehension that Charlie – poor Charlie – was separated from his wife. Not that I didn’t have good reason to, because although it was generally (and, of course, politely) accepted that he was just away from home because of his job, that was precisely what he told me. And it did all figure. He lived here, in a flat, and his family (his GP wife, two sons and one stepdaughter) lived elsewhere. I thought – and it’s laughable, with the benefit of hindsight – that I was the only one who knew the real story. The only one close enough to know the stark truth. And I accordingly felt for him. Felt moved. Felt sorry ; poor, poor Mr Scott-Downing (or so my early thinking rattled), pretending all was well, keeping up the pretence, when in reality his marriage was in meltdown. I’d been there. I empathised. I knew how these things went.

  Of course, not being a complete simpleton, I didn’t live under that misapprehension for very long – just a couple of infatuated, intoxicating months. But that was easily enough time for it to matter. Long enough to ensure there would be damage to undo. He was lonely, unhappy, disorientated and regretful. And very much in need of a friend. And I, in the grip of the mother of all adolescent crushes, was not at all adverse to providing that friendship. I was flattered, beguiled and not a little overwhelmed. When you are five years divorced and a little light on the love front, the attentions of an attentive and charming alpha male can be pathetically difficult to resist. Thus we fell into smiling, then we fell into chatting, then we fell into both sitting in his office for whole stretches. And then we fell into meeting, and then the meetings became dinners, and then, finally, finally , we fell into bed.

  A very long, very tentative, very hesitant courtship. But a short sharp shock of a dénouement. Which happened when, one sunny Monday, I saw the light. Well, saw by the light, at any rate. His fridge light, to be precise. Which illuminated a large dish of chilli within it. And also my terrible folly.

  I recall the moment well. I was in Charlie’s little kitchen making us a cup of tea. And there was this casserole dish – this very large, hefty, family-sized casserole dish – sitting on the shelf in his fridge. I opened it – the smell was pungent, intense – and it was about a third full of the sort of rich dark aromatic chilli that had been many hours in the making. I put the lid back on the casserole. I got the milk out. I fished the tea bags from the mugs. And I thought ‘hang on. Who made that chilli, exactly?’ And then, having rejected the very first (and most obvious) thing that came to mind, I cast frantically about for other plausible reasons why Charlie, living alone in a flat, and being someone I already knew to be not particularly enthusiastic on the home-cuisine front, would have such a large vat of left-over chilli in his fridge. A proper, home-made chilli. A home-made chilli following a weekend in which he mostly spent his time not at home – travelling to Oxford to see his kids. A weekend in which he had precious little time to go and buy the myriad ingredients he would have needed to make such a thing. It didn’t figure. I added milk to the mugs, and I pondered. I would just have to make it figure, wouldn’t I?

  Perhaps his mother? No. She was in a nursing home, wasn’t she? A friend, then? His step-daughter? A neighbour, maybe? Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps he did make it himself. Or, okay then, perhaps sh e – perhaps his almost-ex-wife did? Perhaps the impression I’d been given by Charlie (that she wouldn’t make a chilli for him if he was the very last man on earth and hadn’t eaten for a month) was wrong. Perhaps they were actually on fairly good terms; post-modern, co-operative, friendly even. Perhaps they were going to have an-amicable-divorce. Perhaps she made him this chilli to illustrate the fact.

  I put the milk back in the fridge, and locked the chilli smell away again.


  Or p erhaps not, I thought. And my stomach endorsed it. Perhaps, in reality, there was to be no divorce. So I stopped casting about for reasons to be cheerful and, expecting the worst, I took the mugs into the living room. I smiled. He smiled back. I said ‘Who made the chilli? Come on, own up. Can you cook after all?’

  And Charlie stopped smiling. He frowned and said ‘ah.’ Though he didn’t really need to, because right between ‘own up’ and ‘can you cook after all?’ his expression had already answered my question. It looked stricken for an instant and then it look relieved. Thank God, his expression said. Because I’ve had enough of lying. Now I can tell you the truth.

  And seeing that expression made me all at once realise that deep down, some clear-thinking, unconscious part of me actually already knew. So I was, in a way, though mostly mortified, obviously, just a bit relieved as well.

  I’m going to be just fine, of course. I was happy before I met him, I am happy again now it’s over. He, on the other hand, went into this unhappy, is coming out of this unhappy, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. I can’t make him happy. The logistics won’t allow it. So all that’s to be done is to move on.

  But it does make me realise that the crucial thing (for the purposes of a thorough analysis of why Charlie, who I no longer love, is still ever present in my mind, like a persistent cold sore) is that if you slip into an affair born out of any sort of problem, then woe betide you. Because you are merely the symptom, and when you are removed, the problem, of course, still persists.

  As does the problem with my mother.

  ‘Your turn,’ says Pru, without pre-amble or explanation, less than five days after Hugo’s lifeless body has been relocated to the hospital morgue. Explanations are unnecessary. I have been allocated the technical duties of dealing with the undertaker, sorting out some clothes for them to dress him in, ringing and advising such people as I can get hold of, drafting a short notice to put in the local paper, and taking care of the tropical fish. Light work, in comparison to looking after Mum. ‘I’m sorry,’ Pru adds. ‘But she’s driving me nuts.’

  I had, being essentially a good and dutiful daughter, offered to take Mum home with me on the day Hugo died. My sister, however, had insisted. I had initially been somewhat taken aback at her uncharacteristic readiness to cart Mum back to Bristol with her (my brother-in-law, among other things, not being noted for his selfless devotion to his mother-in-law at the best of times, for which absolutely no one could blame him), but, given the longer term implications of the situation – that, given her recent op, Mum wouldn’t be able to manage on her own for a good few weeks yet – it wasn’t long before it (admittedly rather uncharitably) dawned on me that getting in first, and for a finite duration, was a very clever way of lessening the likelihood of being stuck with her for terribly long. A sort of biting the bullet now in the hopes of relief later. As in passing the bullet on to me.

  ‘What a surprise,’ I say, perfectly equably. Because I’m really not surprised, and I really don’t mind. And I must do my bit, after all. ‘Has Mum spoken to his daughter yet?’ I ask her.

  Hugo has a daughter, who is called Corinne, who neither of us have ever met. Mum has seen her a few times, though only by accident, because though the last Mrs Hugo long pre-dated our Mrs Hugo, Mum and Hugo as an item – Mum and Hugo as in married – did not, it seems, go down very well. I don’t think it was Mum, particularly – I think it would have been the same with anyone. None of us were really sure why that should be, but families are complex and not always to be fathomed, and as Mum didn’t seem to care much either way, we didn’t have reason to either.

  Anyway, Corinne (plus her family) has apparently been away on holiday for a fortnight. Between them, Mum and Pru have been calling her home twice daily, and yesterday they connected. With a woman – the next door neighbour, apparently – who’d popped round to check on her gerbils. I don’t know Corinne any more than Corinne knows me, but I really do feel for her now. This will all be such a terrible shock. There’s no love lost, for sure – she even boycotted the wedding – but whatever the differences between her and her father, it seems a shame she has to find out like this.

  ‘I did. This morning,’ Pru tells me. ‘And she says she’s okay with the date.’

  ‘Poor thing.’

  ‘Yes. Poor thing. She sounded pretty pole-axed. I’ve given her your number so you can run the arrangements by her. She said she’d call you this evening. That okay?’

  ‘That okay.’

  ‘And I’ll drive Mum over once Doug’s in from work. About seven? We’ll stop at hers on the way to get some clothes. And her address book, of course. She’s got a guest list she’s working through. You know, friends she’s inviting –’

  ‘Guest list? You make it sound like a party.’

  Pru tuts. ‘Not me . But, hey. You know Mum.’

  I do, and yet I don’t. We are still all observing the proprieties at the moment. And in fairness to her, when she and Pru arrive (plus my eleven-year-old niece, Chloe, who has come along in the hopes Jake will be here for her to dote on), Mum does look very much the newly bereaved widow. Pale. A tad distracted. A mite shaky. A little quiet. And though I know much of her current demeanour probably has as much to do with having been present at my nephews’ eighth birthday party as her recent bereavement, there is still an air of quiet grief about her. Which is novel. Mum doesn’t do quiet as a rule. Or, indeed, going to bed at ten.

  This, however, is exactly what she does.

  ‘I’ve made Sebastian’s bed up for you,’ I tell her , on our way up the stairs. ‘With two quilts. And I’ve plugged in the fan heater, too.’ I know it’s June but my mother can’t be doing with draughts. Or plants in the bedroom, for that matter. Or semi-skimmed milk. Or Ainsley Harriott. Or frozen peas. Or Gordon Brown’s mouth. Already compiling a things-she-can’t-be-doing-with memo in my head, I leave her to orient herself.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting in the kitchen, when the silence is shattered by a bone-shaking scream. I climb the stairs, breathlessly, three at a time.

  She’s sitting up in bed, with a hand clutched to her nightie. ‘What on earth’s happened , Mum? Are you okay?’

  She’s still a little shaky. She’s had a nightmare, I imagine. But she’s certainly wide awake now.

  ‘It’s understandable you’re having bad dreams,’ I tell her gently. ‘What with everything that’s happened. Your mind’s probably teeming with horrible thoughts.’

  ‘It’s not that !’ she snaps. ‘It wasn’t a dream ! It was opening my eyes and seeing THAT! ’

  I fetch the ladder, move the bed out, climb the treads, get my balance. And then I carefully remove Jordan from the ceiling.

  Chapter 4

  A TEXT !

  Hi M . Hi J . Hi S. Got yr txt. Sorry bout Hugo. Wot a shock! Poor nana. Hope she bearing up. Give her hug 4 me. Madrid 36 degrees 2day!!! Hope Barcelona cooler. XXX.

  It was a terrible day for a funeral. And not just because it was also the day I should have been starting my new job and now couldn’t (irksome though that was). It’s because funerals, to my mind, demand a bit of meteorological gravitas. Roiling black cloudscapes. Squally rain. Hail. None such on this day however. All elbowed out of the way by the sun. You never did see such a big blue sky (except perhaps in Madrid, of course). There wasn’t so much as a cobweb of a cloud, and the heat was so fierce they had to keep spraying all the wreaths. My mother was fanning her face with her order of service – a hastily compiled pamphlet with a cross on the front that had been printed on paper in that washed-out shade of green that made it look like an old take-away menu.

  ‘I told you I should have worn my lilac,’ she hissed at me. ‘I’m melting in this wretched thing.’

  ‘Shh. We’ll be inside soon,’ I hissed right on back at her. Why is it that, however much you don’t think you ever will, there always seems to comes a time when you start speaking to your parents as if they wer
e your children?

  To be fair, i t’s not that you can’t wear lilac to a funeral if you want to. Some people even make a point of stipulating that they’re sent off by mourners in colourful clothes. It’s just that the ‘lilac’ to which my mother referred – she’d shown me – was a boat-necked affair with a slit up the thigh and an explosion of lace at the way too high hem. The last time she wore it, as far as I can remember, was to her friend Celeste’s seventieth bash. But though the evidence from the photos made it clear it wasn’t remotely out of place on that occasion – there were as many pastel wash-n-wear crystal pleats as there were bottles of Cristal – here she’d just look like she’d mistaken St David’s crematorium for a branch of Castle Bingo.

  ‘Well, I just hope they’ve got air-conditioning in there,’ she muttered crossly. ‘Or, believe you me, I shall be dropping dead as well.’

  In order to make the most of what little breeze there was, I took the wheelchair for another quick turn around the guests. Because of her knee replacement-replacement her right leg shot out in front of her horizontally, like a ladder on a window cleaner’s van. I perhaps should have tied a bit of rag around her ankle, because it preceded her at crotch height and kept jabbing people’s bottoms. She looked a bit like a short prow maiden minus the prow. Which was fitting, at least, because she met Hugo on a boat.

  Oh, I so didn’t want to be at a funeral. I particularly didn’t want to be at this funeral. I knew I had to support my Poor Dear Mother, of course, but already it was beginning to look like there was going to be trouble, because everyone DNA-related to Hugo seemed alien, hostile, from an entirely different clan. And none of them seemed to want to talk to us. Which was odd. His daughter Corinne, who I had now spoken to on the phone and who I also recognised from various photos, was shooting us looks of such naked hostility that even the peonies between us were wincing.

  So it was with a powerful sense of things being not quite right that I picked up the sounds of raised voices in the distance, and noted the vicar, who must have been roasting in his funeral frock too, hurrying across the lawn at the behest of the undertaker, who seemed to be in a very un-undertakerly state of flap.