by Liz Byrski
Eileen adored Archie and never missed an opportunity to remind Zoë that he had made her respectable, that he had fathered two beautiful daughters, looked after them well and treated her, Eileen, as if she were his own mother. But Archie had also taken Dan into his life and treated him as his own, never favouring his daughters over his adopted son. Zoë thought her mother ought to have learned something from that, but Eileen had steadfastly chosen not to.
‘Well, I hope she’s all right,’ Eileen says now, pushing aside the chopping board and knife, her task complete. ‘This girl, I mean.’
‘Why shouldn’t she be? I’m sure she’ll be lovely, and I want us all to make her feel at home.’ Zoë piles the meringue mix onto the baking trays, swirls it with a fork into a perfect circles and, smoothing a small depression in the centre of each, slips the trays into the oven. She is surprisingly nervous and she constantly reminds herself that she mustn’t be cross about his secrecy. It was only yesterday evening, just before the girls were heading out to their party, that Dan had mentioned a girlfriend.
‘Are you doing the usual New Year barbecue thing tomorrow?’ he’d asked.
‘We sure are,’ Archie had said. ‘Jane and Tony, the neighbours, my sister and her mob. All the usual suspects.’
‘And Rob,’ Rosie said, winding a long strand of blonde hair around her finger.
‘That’s your latest conquest?’
Rosie nodded. ‘Yep, he’s doing architecture too; we do our assignments together.’
‘Among other things,’ Gaby cut in, leaning up against Dan, who had his arm around her waist.
‘You’d better watch out if you want us to take you to the party,’ Rosie said. ‘You are, like, so close to spending New Year’s Eve with Mum and Dad.’
Gaby let out a howl. ‘No, Rosie, please, you promised.’
‘Anyone would think you two were still in the playground,’ Zoë said.
‘But she’s . . .’ Gaby began. Archie cut her off.
‘Okay, cut it out. It’s the season of goodwill and that includes goodwill to sisters.’
With a big sigh, Gaby dropped sulkily into a chair and put her feet up to rest on Dan’s good leg. She glared at Rosie, who totally ignored her.
‘Could I invite someone tomorrow?’ Dan said. ‘Only if you wouldn’t mind. I know it’s a bit late notice but . . .’
And that was when he’d told them; the girls had pestered him for details, and he’d resisted, laughing, and managed to get away with telling them nothing. ‘You’ll meet her tomorrow,’ he insisted. ‘You’ll just have to wait until then.’
Zoë washes the mixing bowl and clears the fruit debris from the table, watching from the corner of her eye as Eileen, stick in hand, makes her way out to the deck to sit in her favourite chair. Archie, who had collected her from the retirement home earlier this morning, has slipped out again to pick up some ice. Meanwhile, Dan, his leg resting on a chair, is supervising Rob priming the barbecue while the girls look on. Taking off her apron, Zoë glances around the kitchen and then wanders down to the bedroom and stands in front of the full-length mirror. Should she change into something else? The emerald green dress, perhaps; it’s a bit more formal than she would usually wear but why not? It’s a new century, Dan’s back, there’s something to celebrate. She steps into the dress and finds some white beads, wondering as she does so whether Dan’s new girlfriend is doing the same thing; staring at herself in the mirror, wondering if she looks okay, worrying about meeting his family.
What has Dan told her about them while she’s known about them but they haven’t known about her? If he’s really serious about her, things will change. Zoë doesn’t like that idea much but she knows it’s inevitable. And it might be fun, like having another daughter around.
As she fiddles with her hair, Zoë remembers an excruciating visit to Tunbridge Wells, when she wore a dress that was far too short, and talked about being descended from a convict and sharing a house with Harry. It all seems . . . is, actually . . . so very long ago.
‘You worry too much,’ Archie had said this morning. ‘And you look beautiful. Just as beautiful as the day I first saw you down on the jetty, trying to teach Dan to fish. Ha! And what a disaster that was.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s the only reason I went out with you,’ she’d said. ‘So Dan could learn to fish.’
‘I’ve always known that. But considering Dan rapidly turned out to be a natural fisherman, you’ve hung around a long time.’
‘I’m a glutton for punishment,’ she’d said, throwing a pillow at him. ‘And, anyway, by the time Dan had learned to fish I’d discovered you had power tools.’
Zoë hears a car on the drive; it’s Archie back with the ice, and Jane and Tony are pulling in behind his truck. Jane is still the only member of Eileen’s family who has anything to do with them. Zoë runs her hands through her hair, and goes outside to greet the visitors.
Dan, who has scrambled up onto his crutches, makes his way to the deck. ‘Hey there, Aunty Jane,’ he says and Jane turns in surprise.
‘Dan! You’re home!’ she cries and, turning to Zoë, ‘You never said.’
‘I didn’t know until he turned up yesterday afternoon.’
‘How wonderful.’ She hugs him. ‘But your leg . . .’ She looks him up and down with concern.
‘I’m fine, Jane, although it’s not the best way of getting home for New Year.’
Tony puts down the esky and throws his arm around Dan’s shoulders. ‘Great to see you. What’s up with the leg?’
‘Shrapnel,’ Dan says, in his usual noncommittal way, and they all know not to ask questions.
Archie hands out beers, and Rosie gives Jane a glass of champagne. ‘This is Rob, Aunty Jane,’ she says, drawing him forward, his blonde hair flopping over his forehead. ‘He’s doing architecture too.’
Gaby throws her arms around Jane’s waist. ‘Isn’t it cool that Dan’s back? But he’s a boring old grump – he wouldn’t come out with us last night.’
‘I should think he was nursing his leg,’ Jane says, smiling again at Dan and rubbing his arm affectionately. Dan has always been Jane’s favourite; it matters to both of them, and to Zoë, that there is one other person in the family who knew his father.
Neighbours begin to trail in through the back gate, and bottles of wine and plates of food are handed over, and there is much hugging. As the front doorbell rings, Dan hops onto his crutches and heads into the house.
‘He looks pretty good,’ Jane says, turning to Zoë.
She nods. ‘A lot of pain, apparently, but he’s coping okay.’
Jane smiles and hugs her again. ‘Poor Zoë; it must be hard. Anyway, happy new century,’ she says, raising her glass. ‘Aunty Eileen looks well too. Better go and say hello.’ She walks over to where Eileen is surveying them all from a distance, pulls up a stool and sits down beside her.
‘Here, Mum,’ Rosie says, putting a glass of champagne into Zoë’s hand. ‘Rob is wearing his Christmas present. D’you think it looks good?’
Zoë looks at Rob’s youthful neck, and the heavy silver chain that is the result of Rosie agonising in front of shop windows for hours.
‘It looks absolutely perfect, darling.’
She sips her champagne and looks around her in satisfaction. This is the best time, she thinks, when people start to arrive and before anyone drinks too much and before the hassle with food; now there is just talk, laughter and goodwill. At the far end of the verandah, Archie is standing with Dan and a woman in a lemon-yellow dress, who is almost totally hidden by the lattice. Zoë’s stomach gives a little lurch. She makes her way towards them, stopping briefly to greet Rob’s parents, feeling almost as nervous as she had in Tunbridge Wells.
Dan’s face is glowing and he gives her a smile of such delighted anticipation that Zoë’s heart soars for him.
‘Mum,’ he says, wobbling slightly on his crutches, ‘Mum, come on over, I want to introduce you.’ He straightens slightly and touches t
he woman’s arm, nodding towards Zoë. ‘Sweetheart, it’s my mum,’ he says and the woman turns towards her. ‘Mum, this is Justine.’
TWENTY-ONE
Rye – New Year’s Day 2000
It’s three in the morning in Sussex, and it’s snowing. Julia, unable to sleep, pulls back the curtain at the front window and looks across the cobbles to the moonlit churchyard, where the grass and the sprawling bare branches of the catalpa tree are covered in a fine white blanket. She has put on her thick dressing gown and two pairs of Tom’s socks, but it’s cold here at the front of the house. She lets the curtain drop and goes back to the kitchen, where she has opened up the front of the Aga, and pours herself a good-sized brandy.
She is unbearably restless and rather irritable. It’s ridiculous, she thinks, sipping the brandy, holding up the crystal balloon so that she can see the fire through its prisms. It’s ridiculous that she’s spending the first hours of the new century worrying about two men who are fast asleep upstairs.
Is this what it’s come to? All that studying and writing, speaking at public meetings, letters to The Guardian, papers she’s written on the status of women, and on nuclear weapons and the arms race, and on starting and building a business. And here she is in the kitchen, wearing Tom’s socks and worrying about men. Well, not worrying about them exactly because they, of course, are perfectly fine. What she’s worrying about is being fenced in by their needs and their wretched plans; their sixty-eight project and now Tom’s mad idea of buying a place in the Algarve. Is this how it is to be from now on, now that Hilary is no longer there dispensing her moderating influence? Does her future lie in cooking roast dinners, while they talk about how they’d run the country if it were up to them? Listening to Tom’s analysis of Gordon Brown’s pernicious plan to sell off the gold reserves, and Richard’s raving about why NATO had to bomb Kosovo, and how it was a good thing that Clinton survived impeachment?
How, Julia wonders, is it that she – a woman who chained herself to the fence day after day at Greenham Common, spent a week in prison and slept for months under canvas with hundreds of other women through torrential rain, gales and sweltering heat to protest about cruise missiles – is now being dragged, once again, towards a life resembling her mother’s?
‘He’s a dear man,’ Hilary has said of Tom on so many occasions, ‘the armchair politician, the intellectual activist. That’s our Tom, rarely a man of action, bless him.’
‘Bless him, indeed,’ Julia says aloud now, ‘I’ll brain him if he doesn’t shut up about the Algarve.’
He’d started banging on about the Algarve again at dinner; ‘beautiful coastline, great restaurants, tennis, golf’. Julia loathes all games, especially those that involve equipment. In fact, she hates most physical activity, with the exception of walking. At school she frequently forged notes from Anita asking that she be excused from hockey and netball due to a heavy period or any other excuse she could think of. Crashing around on an ice-bound hockey pitch or shoving her way through a game of netball was never her idea of fun. And these days, the only one thing she would enjoy less than playing tennis or golf in Sussex is playing tennis or golf in the Algarve with a lot of ageing expats.
Julia pours herself another drink, remembering a bright September morning in 1981. She was sitting on damp grass, her bum numb and cold, while chained to the fence of the US air base at Greenham Common and longing for someone to bring her a mug of tea. Then she saw Tom walking towards her. She remembers the look of joy and amazement on his face. And she remembers his words.
‘I had to come, Julia. I saw you on the nine o’clock news; you looked absolutely amazing. You are amazing.’
Julia’s memories form a lump in her throat as she recalls him sitting beside her on the damp grass.
‘I can’t tell you what it means to find you again,’ he’d said. ‘Have you . . . could you . . . do you think you could ever forgive me?’
That Saturday he’d stayed all day at the peace camp and, later, when it was someone else’s turn to be chained to the fence, they’d gone into Newbury, and there, in a small café, Tom had told her about the stillborn baby and the subsequent breakdown of his marriage to Alison. ‘I doubt we’d have lasted together even if the baby had lived,’ he said looking at Julia. ‘I meant what I said that last day in Paris; it was you I loved, you I wanted to marry, that didn’t change.’ He inhaled sharply, sitting up straighter. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘what about you Julia? It seems such a weird place for you to be. From millionaire’s wife to Greenham Common. I mean, what are you really doing at a peace camp?’
She’d given him a long, hard look. ‘I’m a millionaire’s ex-wife, Tom,’ she’d said, ‘and I’m protesting about US nuclear weapons. Remember you told me there are two sorts of people, those who watch from the sidelines and those who get involved? Well, I’m getting involved. What about you?’
He never had got involved in a practical way, although his interest was unquestionable and he’d always supported her in everything she did. He was generous and encouraging, but he was the analyst, who could deconstruct everything, explain the pros and cons, even predict what would happen next. His eyes would burn with enthusiasm, but he had never overcome his reluctance actually to get out there and rattle a few cages.
The odd thing, Julia realises for the first time, is that back when she and Tom first met, the difference in their ages hadn’t mattered. And it hadn’t mattered when they met again twelve years later and got married. But she’s starting to wonder if it matters now. Although he’s only sixty-eight, Tom seems to be delighting in the role of old codger, cheerful, generous, intelligent, occasionally belligerent, and he wants to take her along with him. Julia takes a big swig of her drink. Well, she isn’t having it. She’s only fifty-four and has important stuff of her own to do. In the months since Hilary’s diagnosis and then her removal to the hospice, she, Julia, has lost her focus, but she’ll get it back. She is not going to let Tom paddle her into the still waters of the elderly, and she is certainly not decamping to Portugal as her parents decamped to the Costa Blanca in the seventies, drinking cheap gin and patronising the Spaniards.
And then, as if all this isn’t enough, there’s Richard, ringing up a few days before Christmas and saying he thinks he’ll pop home for the holidays, as it’s bloody freezing in New York. She’s pleased to see him, of course, as is Tom; he’s delighted to have someone to open his best claret for, someone to help him put the world to rights. But since he arrived, Richard’s either been shaking his metaphorical stick at anyone who disagrees with him, or getting drunk and maudlin about being single at sixty. He’s still making noises about getting back with Lily but doesn’t seem to have talked to her yet. What is it with these men as they get older, Julia wonders? Are they becoming their fathers?
Well, today there’ll be some changes. They can cook their own bloody lunch; she’s going to the hospice. She knows that it’s Hilary’s deteriorating condition that is making her short tempered with the men; there has to be someone to absorb her distress. So, when she’s seen Hilary, she’ll go for a long walk – it doesn’t matter where, because somewhere out there, she’s going to find her old self and bring it back. If she doesn’t, the next thing she knows, she’ll be sighing again – this time all the way to the grave.
It is after nine when Richard wakes and stumbles out of bed to the bathroom, only to find Tom occupying it.
‘Get a bloody move on, man,’ he calls through the door. ‘And isn’t it time you put in a second bathroom?’
‘And where exactly would I put it?’ Tom replies, to the sound of running water. ‘On the roof? There’s always the one in the outside laundry, it still works.’
‘It’s fucking snowing,’ Richard says, longing momentarily for his centrally heated Manhattan apartment with its two bathrooms.
‘Well, come in then,’ Tom says, ‘you haven’t got anything I haven’t seen before, unless you’ve grown a second one.’
‘I should be so l
ucky,’ Richard says, opening the door and hurrying across to the lavatory. ‘Although it wouldn’t make much difference; these days, I rarely get to use this one for anything interesting.’
‘Might be different with two, though,’ Tom muses, studying his lather-covered face in the mirror. ‘You’d be a curiosity. Women would probably pay you.’
‘Bring it on!’ Richard says, turning his back to him, clutching the one in question and pointing it in the right direction. ‘Beats paying for it.’
‘Do you?’ Tom asks. ‘Pay for it, I mean?’
‘That’s a rather personal question.’
‘Yes, well, you are peeing in my space.’
‘Okay then; for the record, no,’ Richard says. ‘Not these days, not for years. I did occasionally in the past, when there was a complete drought. You?’
Tom shakes his head. ‘Never. I thought about it, especially when I was doing all that travelling – Amsterdam, Berlin, Geneva. Some of my colleagues used to add it to the expense account. But I’m a chronic recidivist when it comes to actually doing things. Ask your sister.’
‘I don’t need to,’ Richard says, crossing to the basin and edging Tom aside so he can rinse his hands. ‘She’s always complaining about it.’
Tom holds his razor under the stream of warm water and then bends over the basin to slosh the lather from his chin. ‘I know. Can’t help it, I’m afraid. I’m not like you; never did have the desire to leap the barricades or fight off the truncheons.’ He wipes his face on a towel, and the two of them stand side-by-side, looking at their reflections.
‘Two thousand, eh?’ Richard says, shaking his head. ‘Another century. We made it.’
‘Brothers-in-arms,’ Tom says, grinning. ‘Project sixty-eight: the book, the documentary, the fame and fortune.’
Richard rolls his eyes and, mimicking Julia, says, ‘Whenever are you two going to grow up?’