by Hilary Boyd
When she returned to the car, Stella found both Jack and Arthur fast asleep. The sight through the open window made her smile. Jack’s head was leaning back on the headrest, his mouth slightly open, his hands clasped in his lap. He was wearing a blue polo shirt and jeans, his greying hair in untidy waves that didn’t look as if they’d seen a comb in weeks – obviously Lisa was not in residence. For a moment she just gazed at him, his face so familiar, before knocking on the side of the car to wake him.
Jack shot up, looking bleary-eyed and confused for a moment. He quickly glanced back at his grandson, who was also stirring.
‘What news?’ he asked, getting out of Stella’s car and stretching.
‘The bleeding’s stopped, thank goodness. And they say the baby’s heartbeat is still strong. But they’re worried it might start again and then they’ll need to do a caesarean. So she’s being monitored carefully. She’s got to stay in over the weekend.’
Jack nodded. ‘How is she?’
‘She was very tearful earlier. Wanting Eric. But she’s asleep now. Worn out with all the drama, poor girl.’ Stella looked at her watch. ‘I suppose I’d better get Arthur home. He’ll need some lunch.’
‘I can do that. You stay here.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course. I’ll take him home, you keep an eye on Evie.’
Stella smiled her thanks.
‘And I can stay with him tonight, if you don’t get back. Don’t worry about us.’
She nodded.
‘Keys?’ Jack asked.
He took the key Stella proffered, then laid a hand on her bare arm. Stella found herself putting her own over his, just for a brief moment.
‘Text me,’ he said.
As she walked back to the hospital entrance, she felt very keenly the comfort of a shared responsibility for her family. This is how it’s supposed to be, she thought.
Stella stayed at the hospital all afternoon. There was no change in Eve’s condition, but her daughter was miserable and seemed worryingly tired, sleeping a lot. By the time she got back to the house, Arthur was in bed and Jack was reading him a story, but it was tacitly assumed that Jack would still stay over. Stella did not want to be left alone to worry about her daughter.
38
‘Bloody hell,’ Jack said, his tall frame lolling back on a kitchen chair as he clutched a glass of red wine and let out a massive yawn. ‘You forget how relentlessly exhausting kids can be.’
Jack had decided to make cupcakes that afternoon to occupy his grandson. He’d never made a cake in his life, but he didn’t care how they turned out; at least he would have entertained Arthur for an hour or so.
‘Bibi doesn’t do it like that,’ Arthur immediately piped up as he stood on a chair by the kitchen table and watched his grandfather plop a large slab of butter into the bowl. ‘You have to make little pieces.’
Jack duly complied. He was enjoying himself – he’d never been in sole charge of Arthur before.
‘I do it, Grandad. Let me,’ the child kept repeating, trying to snatch at everything. And when Arthur tipped the flour from the stainless-steel weighing pan into the mixing bowl, he did it with such enthusiasm that the flour billowed up in a cloud, settling on Jack and his grandson’s eyelashes and hair, coating their cheeks and making Arthur shout with laughter.
‘You’ve gone all white, Grandad,’ he pointed gleefully at his grandfather.
‘So have you, sweetheart.’
‘I’m not white,’ the little boy said, touching his cheek experimentally. But Jack scooped him up and took him to the mirror in the hall, where Arthur gazed at his reflection in wonder. ‘I’m like a snowman, Grandad,’ he said, grinning from ear to ear.
The cupcakes had turned out surprisingly well. Jack had felt a real sense of contentment later, when he made himself a cup of tea and he and Arthur sat eating the little cakes – still warm – his grandson’s face smeared with creamy butter icing and multi-coloured sprinkles as he chomped into his third.
Stella nodded. ‘I know.’ She took a gulp of wine. ‘Do you remember it being as hard as this when Jonny and Eve were small?’
There was a split second of electric silence. She mentioned Jonny’s name, Jack thought, stunned. It was something she hadn’t done in general conversation almost since the day he died.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘We were young, I suppose. And when you do it all day, every day, maybe you get into a rhythm?’ He gave a rueful laugh. ‘I wouldn’t know, it was you who did most of it.’
‘Silly to say it now,’ Stella replied, after a moment’s silence, ‘but I wish I’d enjoyed him more, when I had the chance. I remember sometimes I’d look ahead at a long day alone with Jonny and groan.’
‘You and a trillion other mothers, I imagine.’
‘Maybe.’
Jack heaved himself up and went to fetch the chicken he’d cooked for supper. He laid the roast in front of Stella, handing her a sharp knife – she’d always been the better carver, he remembered – then went to drain the peas and butter the new potatoes, setting the pans on the kitchen table, serving spoons sticking out – not something Lisa would ever countenance.
‘Mmm, looks good,’ Stella said appreciatively, as she began to carve the chicken. ‘Thanks for doing this.’
‘No gravy, I’m afraid. Couldn’t summon the energy,’ Jack said.
They ate in silence, but it was an easy silence; he had no desire to talk for the sake of talking.
When the landline shrilled, they both jumped.
‘It might be the hospital,’ Stella said, springing up. But Jack was ahead of her.
‘Hello, Eve’s phone.’
He heard a young female voice say, ‘I’m calling from RAF Mount Pleasant. I have Dr McArdle for Eve Holt. Who am I speaking to?’
‘Jack Holt, Eve’s father. I’ll take the call.’
‘Thank you. Please hold, sir.’
There was a click, a long pause, then Eric’s voice came on the line.
‘Jack?’
‘Eric, hi.’
He watched Stella get up, moving to stand near him, hands on her hips as she waited to hear what their son-in-law was saying, a concerned frown on her face.
‘Where’s Eve?’ Eric asked.
‘Umm, slightly bad news, I’m afraid. She had a bit of a bleed earlier and she’s in hospital. But she’s fine,’ Jack said quickly. ‘The bleeding’s stopped. They’re just keeping her in for observation.’ Jack felt guilty presenting such a relatively sanguine picture of his daughter’s condition, when Stella had told him the doctors were, in fact, monitoring her closely and that Eve seemed unusually exhausted and weak. But there was no point in making Eric’s flight home even more anxious.
‘Oh, no. God … poor Eve,’ Eric said, then stopped abruptly and didn’t ask any more questions. Almost, Jack thought, as if he were afraid to hear the answers. ‘I’ve got bad news, too. There’s been a massive storm and we haven’t been able to take off. I’m sure it’ll blow over by tomorrow, but it looks like I won’t be home till Sunday now. I wanted Eve to know.’
When the call was finished, they both resumed their seats at the table, the remains of their food now cooling on their plates.
‘I’m quite happy to stay another night, if you want.’ Jack paused. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m rather enjoying this grandparenting thing.’
Stella didn’t reply, but the gentle half-smile he caught before she bowed her head to her plate implied she agreed.
‘Not his fault, the storm,’ he added, wanting to distract himself from the sudden burst of tenderness he was feeling for the woman opposite.
‘Hmm,’ said Stella, with a cynical raise of her eyebrows. ‘Not his fault there’s a storm, no. But very much his fault he left it so bloody late to come home.’
He hadn’t heard Stella criticize Eric before. ‘You think?’
‘Well, what would you call it?’ she demanded. ‘Leaving his pregnant wife to fend for herself while he po
nders whether the sea ice is the same temperature as it was last year?’
Jack couldn’t help laughing. God, how much he’d always loved Stella’s feistiness. She never let him get away with anything. ‘From what Eve says, she hasn’t been exactly straight with him,’ he commented.
‘True, but the man’s got a brain, apparently. OK, so he didn’t know about the placenta praevia, but he could have worked out that things don’t always go according to plan with pregnancy. And now the idiot might not make it home for his baby’s birth.’
Later, when they were sitting with their mugs of mint tea, a slab of Fruit and Nut on the table between them, Stella asked, ‘So where’s Lisa? Does she know what’s going on?’
‘About Eve, you mean?’
She gave him a quizzical look. ‘About Eve and about you staying here?’
He shook his head. ‘I haven’t had a chance to speak to her yet. She’s up in Yorkshire on a shoot, been away all week.’
‘Don’t you think you ought to?’
‘I’ll text her in a minute. But she won’t mind. Not under the circumstances,’ he said, knowing the reverse was probably true.
‘Of course she won’t mind, I didn’t mean that. She’d hardly be jealous of an old bag like me. But shouldn’t she know where you are?’
Jack was going to leave it at that, but then he found himself saying, ‘The truth is, I haven’t told her because I’m a wimp. She will mind. She resents all the time I spend with Eve and Arthur. And she’s definitely jealous of you.’ He took a breath. ‘So now you know.’
Stella’s eyes widened. ‘That’s ridiculous; she’s gorgeous.’
‘I know. But … Anyway, we’re doing nothing wrong. Just being good grandparents.’ Then he couldn’t resist adding, ‘Unless you fancy another snog?’
For a moment Stella looked horrified and let out a self-conscious snort, then they both gave in to decidedly shamefaced laughter.
They stood on the landing together around midnight. The laughter had been an acknowledgement, Jack thought later, that they’d put the embarrassment of kissing on the night of Jonny’s memorial behind them. Because afterwards they’d begun to talk for the first time about their past together, remembering with much amusement all sorts of random events. Like the time they’d pitched up to a party in some gin palace somewhere in the suburbs. They’d found mounds of cocaine in glass bowls, naked guests in the steaming Jacuzzi on the terrace and porn movies being projected on to the white walls of the massive living room. Initially, they’d both been intrigued rather than shocked – until their host asked Jack for his car keys. At which point he’d lost his sense of humour and dragged his wife away, both of them gasping and doubled over with laughter as they ran down the gravel drive and escaped on to the silent suburban close.
‘Good night,’ Stella whispered to him now.
For a moment he held her gaze in the semi-darkness. ‘Yeah … goodnight, Stella.’
Neither of them moved. A board creaked under his foot as he shifted his weight. She glanced at Arthur’s door. He felt his heart pounding. Surely she must hear it too. He wanted to kiss her so badly. But she turned away, lifting her hand in farewell.
As he dropped off to sleep, having still not told his wife where he was, he insisted to himself, yet again, that he had nothing to feel guilty about. But as they’d sat and laughed together, reminisced, swapped opinions, or even sat in silence, he knew he was being as unfaithful to Lisa as if he’d laid Stella across the kitchen table and fucked her.
39
Arthur was fractious as he sat on Jack’s knee the following morning, grizzling because no one could find his blue dinosaur. He wanted his mother.
‘Will you bring him in later?’ Stella asked Jack as she cleared the breakfast table. She was just about to leave for the hospital, although Eve had called and said that she’d had a good night and not to panic about coming in.
‘It might help if he sees his mum. But then again, it might make things worse.’
Jack’s phone buzzed and he turned the screen towards him.
‘It’s Lisa, I’d better take it.’
Stella picked up Arthur from Jack’s knee. ‘Come on, sweetheart, let’s go outside and see if the birds have eaten any of the seeds you put out.’
Arthur considered this, then his face broke into a smile. ‘I think they’ve eated them all up, Bibi,’ he said, sliding out of her arms and running towards the open doors to the garden.
Stella followed, but couldn’t help catching the start of Jack’s conversation with his wife. Horrible though it was to admit, she felt a sudden pang of jealousy as she heard Jack call her ‘Lisi’, his voice carefully affectionate. The pang was swiftly followed by the painful awareness that Jack probably loved his wife, just as she loved Iain.
She slammed the glass doors to the garden more vigorously than she intended, so she wouldn’t be able to hear. Then she talked very loudly to Arthur about the robin and the blackbird, the fluttery sparrows that darted about the garden. And in her heart she prayed to be released from Jack Holt’s presence. She had loved the last two days with him, and she was furious with herself for enjoying them so much. He’s married. And so, to all intents and purposes, am I, she thought. But when she and Jack were together, it was as if they existed in a bubble where no one else – including Iain, including Lisa – could reach them.
When Jack finally emerged on to the terrace – the call had lasted almost ten long minutes – he gave her an embarrassed grin and waved his mobile in the air.
‘Sorry about that.’
‘How is she?’
‘Fine. Busy as usual. She sent her love.’
‘I hope you gave her mine.’
They both stared silently at Arthur, who had found a pile of gravel he’d collected a couple of days before and was joyfully mashing the stones into the grass with the toe of his Crocs.
‘He probably shouldn’t do that,’ Jack said. ‘It’ll play havoc with the mower.’
Eve barely reacted when Jack told her that Eric would be a day late. She still seemed lethargic, listless, stuck there in that stuffy hospital room. ‘I won’t be home anyway.’
‘But they think Monday?’ Stella tried to encourage her daughter. She and Jack had decided, in the end, to all go in together and see Eve, on the grounds that Arthur might cheer her up.
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, he’ll be back late Sunday.’ She stroked her hot forehead. ‘He can pick you up.’
‘Eric was so upset when he heard you were in hospital,’ Jack said, his voice as falsely upbeat as her own. ‘He’s dying to be home. He sent masses of love.’
Stella thought Jack was over-egging it. Eric wasn’t the type to say he was ‘dying’ to do anything, or send ‘masses’ of anything either, but she didn’t contradict him. She looked at him over Eve’s head and gave a small frown. He gave her a worried smile in return.
‘Come on, sweetheart,’ he said, ‘cheer up. All this will be over very soon now. You and Eric can settle down to things in that gorgeous house with your lovely family. Just hang in there. You’re going to be fine.’
Eve turned anxious eyes up to her father. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling, Dad. I don’t know … it’s all been wrong.’
‘You’re worried about Eric?’ Stella asked. ‘The RAF won’t fly if it’s dangerous, sweetheart.’
Eve gazed at her. ‘I know, Mum. It’s not Eric … I’m scared for the baby.’
They sat outside as the light faded, the early August evening warm and muggy after days of rain and miserable temperatures. Stella had put a fish pie – not one she’d made herself – in the oven earlier and shaken a bag of salad into Eve’s wooden salad bowl. Jack had opened a nice Fleurie he’d collected from his stash at the cottage. They were already over halfway through supper, the fish pie eaten, a saucer with a triangle of Brie beside two figs waiting on the iron garden table.
It had been hard seeing Eve so down and Jack appeared pensive. She wasn’t sure if he’d re
ally heard what she was telling him about a book she’d been reading about the brain. Apart from the hospital visit, the rest of the day had passed peaceably enough. One of the bannister struts on the landing was loose and Jack had fixed it. Stella had washed his shirt and smalls. She had directed Jack and Arthur to pick the bits of gravel out of the lawn. She’d given Arthur his bath, and Jack had read him The Gruffalo while she cleared up the bathroom.
‘Could we have made it, Stella?’ Jack suddenly leaned forward, eyeing her intently. ‘I still loved you, you know, even at the end.’
Surprised by his heartfelt declaration, she gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘God, Jack. It was so long ago.’
It wasn’t what she meant to say. If she’d waited another second and thought about her reply, she might have said, ‘So did I,’ which was the absolute truth. But she spoke in a hurry and it came out wrong.
He continued to gaze at her. She had lit the remains of an ivory pillar candle – the wax collapsed on one side from the breeze – which flickered between them, sending shadows across Jack’s face so that she couldn’t quite make out his expression.
‘Stella …’ He took her hand gently in his, his eyes never leaving her face. Her heart thumped softly as Jack brought his face closer, then hesitated, his mouth twisting slightly. But a split-second later, he pulled away.
‘Sorry,’ he said, looking out across the darkening garden.
Stella, disappointed, felt a sudden spurt of anger. ‘This is stupid. We’re just being indulgent and it’s got to stop.’
Jack pushed back his chair, the iron screeching on the flagstones of the terrace in the quiet garden, and stood up. He paced for a moment as she sat in confused silence. A bat glided swiftly over her head towards the trees, its presence like a soft breath on her cheek as it shot past. The candle flickered and went out as a sudden gust of wind blew across the garden. They had not turned the kitchen lights on and they were left in semi-darkness, only a faint glow from the upstairs landing illuminating their faces. Jack stopped pacing and sat down again, letting out a long sigh.