Lessons in Duck Hunting

by Jayne Buxton

  Millie wanders into the room in her nightie, clearly having paid no attention to my frantic urgings for her to get ready.

  “Why are we going to the park now, Mummy?” It’s a reasonable question.

  “Because it’s a fantastic day for the first time in ages, and I thought it would be fun to have hot chocolate and muffins under that big tree near the climbing frame. Don’t you think?”

  Millie considers this proposition. I’m not entirely sure she’s buying it.

  “What do you think, Millie?” I try again.

  “Okay. I’ll get ready,” she says, turning and walking back to her room to dress. In the meantime, Jack bounds into the room wearing his jeans and holster, but, as yet, no shirt.

  “Yippee. We’re going to the park!” he yelps.

  “That’s right. But you’d better hurry or we’ll miss the sunshine. Quickly, go and find a shirt and sweater.”

  Jack and Millie are both pretty quick to get dressed, but it’s torture waiting for Jack to decide between his two pairs of trainers.

  “Do you think the blue or the white today, Mummy?”

  “Jack, it doesn’t matter. Oh, all right . . . the blue would be best,” I say irritably. “Come on, or all the muffins will be eaten.”

  We rush out the door, Millie dragging her pink skipping rope, Jack hugging his orange striped Tigger rugby ball. Thank goodness the sun is so warm, as I’ve not paid much attention to outer garments.

  We take a slight detour to pick up two hot chocolates, a skinny cappuccino and three blueberry muffins at Starbucks. By the time we arrive at the park I am breathless with anticipation, and my stomach feels as though an entire school of goldfish are swimming around inside it. I can’t see anyone. Of course, you wouldn’t expect to see a park full of people at eight-thirty on a Saturday morning, even a very sunny one, but I had convinced myself that this is where my Stroller man was headed.

  We make our way over to the sprawling apple tree by the pond, which is, happily for Jack, directly in front of a large multitiered wooden climbing frame. Frame is a terrible understatement for such a substantial edifice. It’s more like a fort, complete with slides and poles, and every sort of ladder imaginable. Jack rushes up one of the slides to get to the top, urging Millie to follow him, and leaving his hot chocolate to go cold on the bench where I’ve parked myself. Millie takes a couple of sips, followed by a bite of her muffin, but then the lure of the fort is too strong even for her and she is gone.

  Then I spot him. I can just see the top of his head above the highest part of the wall around the sand pit. It keeps disappearing, then reappearing, as if he is periodically leaning forward to dig a hole or turn a bucket upside down. What a relief. I’d have felt so foolish if this whole escapade had been in vain. All I have to do now is enjoy my cappuccino and the sunshine, and wait until he notices me.

  My coffee is about half-finished when he climbs out of the sand pit and looks around the park, shielding his eyes from the sun. He notices me immediately, I can tell. But he’s too far away for a nonchalant greeting, so he drops his hand and turns and says something to Grace, who is still playing in the sand. After a few seconds, Grace emerges with her bucket and spade, and begins to toddle toward the climbing frame, followed by her father. She is far more sensibly dressed for early March than my own children, sporting a big woolly sweater and a little striped hat with a bobble.

  I wave and laugh at Jack and Millie just for something to do. I realize it would have been far easier to convey a sense of relaxed indifference if I’d brought a newspaper. A newspaper would also have served as a prop—Marina’s seventh P. Marina recommends taking a prop—something that could invite comment or questions from interesting people—along on outings whenever possible. On the other hand, Marina also says you should sometimes sit in restaurants and on park benches without anything at all to read, as this will make you appear more open to conversation. Clearly there are nuances to the whole question of reading-material-as-prop that I haven’t quite grasped yet. But it’s all pretty academic today, because I’m sitting newspaperless on the park bench when Stroller man sits down beside me.

  “Hello again,” he says cheerfully in his lovely, soft drawl. “I thought I was the only poor sucker who had to be out at the park before nine.”

  “Clearly not,” I reply, smiling. “Millie and Jack couldn’t wait to get here once they saw the sun.” I’m praying neither of the children blows my cover by now running over and demanding why I’ve dragged them here. “What’s your excuse?”

  “Ah, this is a regular event for me. Grace just doesn’t sleep. She wakes up at five every day and by seven-thirty we are going a little stir-crazy so we often head out, usually in this direction. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, she falls asleep on the way and I can head back and catch a few minutes sleep on the sofa before the day starts properly.”

  There is no mention of a “we” in any of this, I notice. I’m pondering the range of possible explanations (including the distinct possibility that his wife is the type who refuses to partake of her fair share of the early morning torture readily dished out by toddlers) when he obliges me by providing one.

  “Ever since my wife died, Grace has been all over the place. I don’t have the heart to be tough on her, so I just go along with it. I’m not really sure that it’s the right thing to do, if I’m honest.”

  There is so much to respond to in these words that I don’t know where to begin. When did she die? How did she die? How do you cope? My God, your wife died and your child is barely three.

  “I’m sure that you’re doing whatever is right for her at the time,” I offer inadequately, after what feels like an interminable silence.

  Then I really am devoid of inspiration. Intimacy has been thrust upon me without any warning whatsoever. The worst I’d been expecting to deal with was a divorce from which he might not be fully recovered. No, to be honest, the worst I’d been expecting was the discovery that Grace’s mother was waiting at home with a pot of hot coffee and some freshly warmed pain au chocolat. I certainly wasn’t prepared for a tragedy of this magnitude. Clearly, this would not be a suitable Duck Decoy.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say after a time. “About your wife.”

  “Thank you,” he says. “It’s been just over a year now, so we’re starting to settle down. Of course, it’s going to take a lot longer than that for us both to get over it, but at least there’s some semblance of normalcy most days.”

  His eyes are soft, but not tearful, his look thoughtful rather than forlorn. You might say that his eyes are set close together and his face a little long, but his features all pull together into something that’s quite lovely. I think it’s that deep smile crease on one side that does it. His dark blond hair, which is longer than it should be, has been tousled by the intermittent gusts of light March wind, and a couple of strands are falling across his right eye. I can’t decide whether this makes him look a mess, or disheveled in a Ralph Lauren poster-boy kind of a way.

  Jack runs up and begins tugging at my arm, instantly dispelling the air of solemnity that had begun to envelop us. There is simply no opportunity for extended bouts of self-pity when children are around, as I well remember.

  “Mum, Mum, can we play rugby?” he demands.

  This is something of a small disaster. I am truly hopeless with a rugby ball. I can kick a soccer ball quite respectably, and even manage to bowl a cricket ball within a reasonable distance of the wicket, but there is something about the queer, pointed-egg shape of a rugby ball that turns any ball thrown by me into something downward spiraling and pathetic. Jack always forgets this. He begs me to throw to him, only to barrage me with accusations of ineptitude a few moments later.

  Still, it must be done. I allow myself to be pulled up from the bench, then turn toward Grace’s father (it now seems starkly inappropriate that I don’t know his name), raising my eyebrows like the Cat in the Hat and smiling one of those lopsided, tight-lipped smiles that doubles as a mock g
rimace, and is the mark of minor, everyday parental suffering endured in good spirits.

  My rugby ball throws are as humiliating as I’d feared they’d be, but luckily Grace’s father’s attention is directed elsewhere; he seems to have lost sight of Grace. He gets up and wanders around to the other side of the climbing frame, where he presumably finds her because he doesn’t reemerge wearing a panicked expression. I’m grateful for the few minutes of unobserved practice this gives me; Jack has already begun to sigh and grumble about my inability to throw the ball at a height that he can reach.

  When Grace’s father does reappear he shouts “Hey, would you like me to throw you a few?” to which Jack responds by immediately turning toward him beaming irrepressibly. I’m left standing like a lemon behind Jack, but neither of them seems to notice. I take the opportunity to go in search of Millie before Grace’s father asks me if I’d like to join in.

  I find Millie sitting with Grace in the two-story playhouse that marks one end of the climbing frame. Grace is showing Millie the contents of her pouch-shaped bag, which appears to include a couple of Polly Pockets, two twenty-pence pieces and several colored beads from a broken necklace. Millie is doling out the appropriate “oohs” and “ahs” as she examines each item. She gives me a wink— which is actually more of a double eye scrunch—and a smile that says Isn’t she sweet?

  I’ve been standing watching them for a few minutes when Jack comes hurtling breathlessly around the corner, rugby ball in hand.

  “Mummy, Tom is a great rugby player. He does really good throws, and they don’t even play rugby in America! Please don’t come back, will you? I want to play some more.”

  Then he’s gone. Back to join the All England Squad no doubt.

  Children really are quite useful sometimes. If it weren’t for Jack I’d probably have left the park still thinking of Tom as Grace’s father, or Stroller man. Or Tom and I would have had to endure some sort of awkward mutual introduction, complete with handshake. Jack has probably told Tom my name, so now we can skip all that.

  I wait another five minutes beside Millie and Grace before wandering back around to the other side of the climbing frame to join Tom and Jack. I figure five minutes is a decent amount of time: To Jack it will still feel as if I’ve not been long enough, but Tom might be getting bored. I stroll up to them just as Jack dives for a ball Tom has thrown a few feet to his left. Now, if I’d thrown that ball he’d have stood still fixed to the spot and shouted at me for my inaccuracy.

  “Thank you so much for doing this,” I say to Tom. “Jack loves it, and I’m just not good enough for him.” I figure I may as well come clean on this; he’d probably noticed anyway, or Jack will have told him.

  “No problem. Your Millie is looking after Grace, which is great for me. It’s nice to be able to play boy games sometimes—playing make-believe with those little Polly Pocket things can get quite tedious after a while.”

  Don’t I know it. I’ve always found little girls’ doll-related games mind-numbingly boring. It wouldn’t be so bad if they played them quietly in a corner somewhere. But they always want you to take an active role. Mummy, you be the blond one and I’ll be the brunette. First you say you want me to come over, then I say no I can’t I’m busy cleaning my house, then you say please because you have a new puppy to show me, then I say . . . and so on. Thankfully, Millie seems to have grown out of this sort of play, and Jack never requests any participation in the elaborate scenes he creates for his cowboys and Indians. He’s quite happy to play goodie and baddie simultaneously.

  “Ohh, aren’t they awful?” I groan. “You’ll be pleased to learn that it’s quite a short-lived phase.”

  “That’s a relief,” he says. He’s standing about two feet away from me now, and Jack is just beside him, looking at me with furrowed brow. I will have ruined his life, of course. Mummy, today my life is terrible, he said once. I am always astonished to hear someone so young express such lugubrious sentiments.

  “Much as I’d like to throw the ball all day, I guess I’d better get going. I’m hoping Grace will now be tired enough to nap a little,” Tom sighs. Is that his reluctance I can sense, or mine?

  “Yeah, we’re going to get going soon too,” I say casually. “Things to do.”

  “Anyway, it was nice to meet you. It’s Ally, isn’t it?” Good old Jack. I wonder if he told him David doesn’t live with us anymore as well.

  “That’s right. Nice to meet you too. Might see you here again at the crack of dawn!”

  I watch him as he fetches Grace and plonks her into the stroller. It has occurred to me that we could all walk home together. After all, we must live reasonably close to one another or I’d not have seen him passing my house so often. But I’m not sure I’m ready for a walk home. That’s an awful lot of conversation to have, and I haven’t fully absorbed our earlier exchange. I’m getting conflicting signals from different parts of myself, and it might take me a while to figure out which ones are the ones to follow. So I tell Jack and Millie they can have ten more minutes and let Tom and Grace leave ahead of us.

  CHAPTER 17

  PROGRESS REPORT

  It’s Monday. This morning I told Philippa to stand guard for a call from Celia Harris and to put her through to me no matter what. It’s eleven a.m. and I’ve heard nothing, which makes me nervous. Surely all that business of assembly and staff meetings has been concluded by now? Surely she could have found a minute to put me out of my misery.

  I’m also annoyed with myself for leaving my home number on Hamilton and Sons’ answering machine. I should have left my work number as well. I’m just contemplating leaving them another message when Nicki appears at my desk brandishing what looks like the draft promotion plan for Seville Sunset. It takes me a second or two to tell whether she’s about to alert me to a disaster requiring a week to sort out, or lighten my mood with some good news. Based on the flourish with which she places the plan on my desk, and the proud tilt of her chin, I decide it’s the latter.

  “Well, that’s the last retailer on board,” she says in a cocksure tone. “And, you’ll never guess who’s agreed to provide a quote for the celebrity-snips print campaign for Pure Gold.”

  “Who?” I ask obligingly. I am actually very keen to know. The celebrity-snips campaign has so far proved to be a bit of a headache. We’d all been so enthusiastic about the concept of getting different celebrities to wax lyrical about marmalade, sort of like a grocery version of the “Who was your favorite teacher?” campaign run by the Department of Education last year. They managed to get Sting and Juliet Stephenson; so far all we have managed is a lukewarm commitment from Trevor Fishman, the celebrity weatherman.

  “Rachel Ireland!” she exclaims.

  “What? For the fee we were offering, or several hundred thousand pounds?”

  “For the normal fee! Can you believe it? It turns out she’s an incredible marmalade fan. Eats it every day for breakfast, and even takes it with her to hotels in America. She so loves the idea of preserving the tradition of quality marmalade that she jumped at the chance. She also liked the sort of homespun, organic sound of Cottage Garden Foods.”

  Cottage Garden Foods is not Robinsons it’s true. But it is far from the small, village-based enterprise its name evokes. We have a factory, and professional marketing people, and, thanks to Frank Peterson in Finance, a strong bottom-line focus. But if Rachel Ireland thinks we sound homespun and organic I’m not going to disabuse her of her opinion.

  “Nicki, that is stupendous news,” I say. “Now it will all be plain sailing. Who wouldn’t want to sign up once they know Rachel’s involved?”

  “Exactly. I thought you’d be pleased.” Nicki is beaming. “Now, for something a little more mundane. Anna says have you organized that trip to Valencia. You know, the ‘bonding’ thing,” she says, making bendy-bunny ear movements with two fingers from each hand.

  “Oh, God no. I’ve been putting it off,” I say, slumping back into my chair. It’s funny how busin
ess trips to glamorous places lose all of their allure when you have children. When you’re a single parent they’re even worse. There’s so much organization involved, and so much, well, absence.

  I’ve been thinking of sending Nicki, though strictly speaking she’s far too junior. There’s no question though: she would enjoy it far more than I would.

  Or would she? Valencia means Spain, which means Spaniards. Men of middling height with dark hair and olive skin—just my type. Isn’t this the kind of opportunity Marina would say must never, under any circumstances, be turned down? Can I really risk sending my assistant off to the orange groves to have her return recounting lurid tales of her affair with a swarthy Spaniard she happens to meet in the hotel bar when she’s there?

  “Would you like me to go?” offers Nicki. That does it.

  “No, no. That’s really kind of you, but historically this sort of thing has always been done at my level. You know how they are, they might take offense if we don’t send someone they see as senior enough. Ridiculous, I know.”

  Nicki looks disappointed, and I feel like a fraud. I’m on the verge of suggesting that she go with me, but I stop myself just in time. Old way of thinking: always go places with other people so you have someone to talk to. The Proactive Partnership Program thinking: go everywhere alone to maximize opportunities to meet new people.

  “Oh, okay,” Nicki concedes. “When shall I say you’re going?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll fix something with Philippa. Just tell Anna it will be within the next month,” I say.

  Nicki nods and walks back to her desk at the other side of the room, her shoulders drooping with resentment.