by Helen Harris
Sylvia mouthed, “Daddy.”
Anand stamped his foot and scowled horribly. “I’m not going back to Daddy’s,” he shouted. “I’m not!”
He ran back into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him, hard.
“What was all that about?” Jeremy asked.
Sylvia scarcely hesitated. “I’m afraid he was shouting ‘I’m not going back to Daddy’s’. And he didn’t have a towel around him. I have to go Jeremy, otherwise he’ll catch cold.”
“I hope you realise,” Jeremy told his mother, “that you are making my life completely impossible. Now I’ll have to come and sleep at your place too so that we’re at least observing the letter of the law. Then, technically, Anand will still be spending the night with me.”
“Oh no,” Sylvia exclaimed. “Don’t do that.”
“For Christ’s sake, why ever not?” Jeremy sounded enraged.
“Don’t deprive me of my evening with Anand,” Sylvia pleaded. “If you must come, at least wait until he’s gone to bed. Please.”
There was a pause at the other end. Then Jeremy said “Fine” and banged the phone down, just like a petulant child himself.
Anand ate his soft-boiled egg and bread and butter soldiers in Sylvia’s kitchen. He leapfrogged exuberantly down the corridor in his new slippers and spent some time croaking and demanding flies for his supper before he would settle down. For afters, Sylvia made him a mug of cocoa with a saucer of mixed biscuits. She was taken aback when he commented with raised eyebrows, “What – no fruit or vegetables?” What was childhood coming to? Would he be demanding prunes or cod liver oil next? She replied, rather frostily, “There are currants in the biscuits Anand.”
After he had brushed his teeth, with gusto and without being told to, they settled cosily under a rug on the sofa for his bedtime story marathon. Sylvia had been looking forward to this no end and she was deeply disappointed to realise, only halfway through the second book, that Anand was slumped against her, sound asleep. For a while, she sat there, adoring the feeling of his small warm body snuggled trustingly against her. Then she began to wonder how she would get him to bed. She wasn’t quite sure if she could safely carry him all the way to his room. But if she woke him up and made him walk there, he might start crying and then not settle again. If she left him asleep on the sofa, Jeremy might disapprove when he got here. In the end, she scooped Anand up bravely, wrapped in the rug and staggered with him all the way to his bedroom, at one point narrowly missing tripping on the trailing fringes of the rug.
She had just tucked him up successfully when Jeremy rang the bell. He was in a filthy temper. Ever since the Separation, Sylvia had noticed, he had been neglecting his appearance, wearing any old clothes and often going unshaven at the weekends. Once or twice, she had even wondered whether he was washing as often as he should. This evening he looked particularly seedy, standing at her front door glaring at her, with a small overnight bag over one shoulder.
“He’s fast asleep,” Sylvia said proudly. “We’ve had a lovely evening together.”
“Well I’m glad you have,” Jeremy answered resentfully, “because you’ve completely wrecked mine.”
He came in and dropped his bag in the middle of the front hall.
“Can I make you some cocoa?” Sylvia offered.
Jeremy snapped, “No.” He said, “let me take a look at Anand.”
Rather offended, Sylvia led him down the corridor to Anand’s bedroom. Nothing to find fault with there surely? Anand lay sound asleep in his irreproachable bed, his arms and legs flung wide, the vivid green brushed cotton of his new pyjamas setting off his lovely golden colour. The whole room was bathed in a gentle apricot glow from the man in the moon night light. Sylvia turned triumphantly to Jeremy and saw that he was crying.
“This is such a bloody mess,” he whispered. “Why did it all have to turn out like this?”
Sylvia wanted to hug him but didn’t dare. She whispered back, “Come and have a drink dear.”
Jeremy poured himself a whisky. He said irritably that Sylvia never made it how he liked. He turned down all other offers of food and drink and sat glowering in silence. Sylvia tried to entertain him with tales of how beautifully Anand had behaved at the aquarium and the hilarious game they had played together, comparing the fish and the sea creatures with people they knew. Jeremy remained unresponsive.
Eventually he heaved a giant sigh and said, “Look, there’s no point pretending nothing’s wrong and you haven’t created the most massive problem by taking it into your head to bring Anand back here because you have. And it’s not over yet either.”
Sylvia quavered, “What do you mean?”
“Smita,” Jeremy answered furiously. “She’s going to have a field day over this.”
Before Sylvia could answer, he stood up abruptly. “Anyway I’m going to bed now. I’ve got a splitting headache.”
Sylvia refrained from pointing out that, in that case, he shouldn’t be drinking whisky. She asked where he wanted to sleep.
Jeremy looked surprised. “I’ll sleep in Anand’s bed of course. We almost always do when he sleeps over.”
Sylvia frowned. She didn’t like the sound of that one bit but, clearly, there was no point discussing anything with Jeremy when he was in such a shockingly bad mood. She got him another pillow and a fresh towel and wished him sweet dreams. He mumbled something bad-temperedly before closing the door.
In the middle of the night, Sylvia sprang awake. She knew something in the flat was different but she couldn’t remember what it was. After a second or two, it came back to her; her son and her grandson were asleep in the other bedroom. Her flat was inhabited. She lay there for a little while, excited, savouring the novelty and imagining the two of them sleeping side by side in Anand’s small bed. Then she had an irresistible urge to go and look in on them. In a London house at night, it was never completely dark.
She got up silently and padded over to her bedroom door. It opened with the smallest click. There was barely enough light to see in the corridor but once she opened the other bedroom door there would be light from the night light and from the street outside. She hesitated before turning the door knob. Anand would doubtless sleep soundly but Jeremy had always been a troublesome poor sleeper. If he woke, she would murmur, “Just checking” and close the door again immediately. He ought to be touched that she was so vigilant.
The door opened almost without a sound and in the room beyond no one stirred. Sylvia stood in the doorway and waited for her eyes to adjust. Jeremy had switched off the man in the moon night light but through the pastel curtains there was enough light from the street lamps outside for her to see quite clearly the two sleeping figures in the single bed: the tall fair father and the small dark son. Really, when you stopped to think about it, there was almost no physical resemblance between the two of them at all. But they were sleeping in exactly the same position; both lying on their right-hand side, Anand curled within Jeremy’s sheltering length, both holding their clenched right fist to their forehead as if deep in troubled thought.
Sylvia watched them, beside herself with delight, before tiptoeing out. How come she had no recollection of ever looking in on Jeremy sleeping when he was a boy? Was it because, infuriating child that he was, he had hardly ever slept? Had she avoided peeping in at his bedroom door for fear of rousing him? Or was it because the ayah had always done that while she herself was off somewhere partying?
Suddenly it struck Sylvia that everything in her life had happened at the wrong time. She had waited ten long years to have a child by which time, frankly, she had rather gone off the idea. When she should have been enjoying being a mother, she was clinging on to the rollercoaster of married life with Roger in his heyday and, if the truth be told, retaliating with a few little flirtations of her own. By the time her marriage had settled down into the cosy companionship of middle age, Jeremy was away at boarding school in England and it was too late to form a proper relationship with him. W
hen she and Roger could finally look forward to a rosy retirement back in England, Roger had promptly dropped dead.
Everything had been topsy-turvy, nothing had gone as it rightly should have. And now, when she was well into her sixties, here she was in the grip of this belated surge of maternal feeling which had taken her completely by surprise and made her do all sorts of things which she should almost certainly not have.
Unable to go back to sleep, she went and sat for a little while in the living room in the dark. All sorts of foolish and improbable scenarios involving herself and her grandson played out in her mind. She told herself sternly to get a grip. Tonight, however delightful it was, was not going to be repeated. Her twin catchphrases of “Buck up” and “Righty ho” seemed to crouch on either side of her like two antiquated firedogs. In the morning, when Jeremy had taken Anand away again, they would be all she had left.
Sylvia knew she would remember the day she heard the news of Jeremy and Smita’s Separation for the rest of her life. It happened on a Sunday towards the end of August. The day had begun unpromisingly, with muggy weather and confusion. She had gone to visit Ruth, expecting finally to meet Siggy, the elusive baby brother, only to discover that she had somehow got the Sundays muddled up and he was not due to come until the following weekend. It was the third time they had failed to meet each other and Sylvia had been so sure it would be third time lucky. Not that she harboured any especial expectations about their meeting but it seemed to matter a great deal to Ruth who was obviously not getting any younger.
After Siggy had pulled out of their first Sunday lunch appointment some three years earlier, with that silly excuse about being marooned on the Isle of Wight, Sylvia had felt rather huffy to be honest. Then she had been so taken up with her grandson that when Ruth had suggested another meeting a few months later, she had said rather importantly that she was far too busy.
A fairly long time had gone by and Sylvia was not sure anymore whether it was at Christmas 2005 or Christmas 2006 that Ruth had again tried to introduce Sylvia to her beloved Siggy. The occasion had been a pre-Christmas tea with, Sylvia remembered, warmed mince pies and an iced Christmas cake. Imelda had gone back to the Philippines by then and been replaced by the less forbidding Gloria.
That time, Ruth and Sylvia were already sitting sipping their tea and wondering why Siggy was so late when the telephone rang and Gloria brought in an even more preposterous message; Siggy had been unavoidably delayed on some emergency business for the Magic Circle and was only now setting out from – of all unmagical places – Loughton in Essex. He was most awfully sorry but he would not be there for at least two hours. Ruth had been mortified and Sylvia, who considered herself pretty thick-skinned, felt undeniably hurt. She wondered why on earth Ruth’s brother was so reluctant to meet her. At the same time, she could not help concluding that he sounded a frightfully eccentric person.
Ruth, wringing her hands, explained that Siggy had been for years a member of the Magic Circle, a professional association of magicians and he was regularly called out at short notice if a fellow magician was taken ill or was unable to perform at a function. It was a bit like being a doctor, Ruth said; if you were called out, whatever time of the day or night it was, you simply had to go.
Sylvia had to leave before Siggy got there; Heather Bailey was expecting her for a pre-Christmas drink – or six, poor Heather – and she couldn’t linger. Part of her was glad she had an excuse to hurry away; if someone stood you up twice, then that was only what they deserved, wasn’t it? But part of her regretted missing Siggy a second time; she had always loved magic and the idea of meeting a real live magician was intriguing.
So Sylvia was particularly cross with herself for making a mess of the arrangements the third time round especially since, by the time the following Sunday came along, she was in no fit state to contemplate any social occasion. She and Ruth tried to make the most of the mishap. They talked even more than usual and, in the course of the afternoon, Ruth told Sylvia about her difficulties with her daughter. She was called Giselle although a particularly unkind slap in the face was that she had changed her name as an adult to Ganit. Sylvia commiserated; she remembered a trying period during Jeremy’s teenage years when he had insisted on being called Jed. Thankfully, it had passed. A troubled young woman, Giselle had in the late Seventies emigrated to Israel, to Ruth’s absolute horror: the distance, the instability of the region, the barbaric lack of manners of the people. She had gone to live on a kibbutz and married a man who worked in the fields. In due course, she had three children (all boys) and then, to cap it all, she had developed this highly inconvenient fear of flying so that if Ruth wanted to see her grandchildren – who incidentally had no manners at all – she had to travel all the way to Giselle. Ruth suspected the phobia had an ideological element. Sylvia tutted but she couldn’t really understand Ruth’s horror. Surely one faraway hot country was pretty much like another, wasn’t it? She allowed herself a brief reverie on the bus back to Maida Vale afterwards about a teenage Anand who insisted on being called Ant.
She got back to her flat after her bungled visit in the early evening. She didn’t feel like supper, she had as usual eaten a hearty tea at Ruth’s and, as was all too often the case these days, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself.
It was a warm, stuffy evening so she opened all the windows and sat down in the living room, where Anand’s multi-coloured building blocks were strewn across the floor. She contemplated the void of her existence and then the telephone rang.
It was Jeremy and he barely said, “Hello.”
He said, “I have some really bad news, I’m afraid.”
Sylvia’s heart stopped.
Gobbling his words so she could hardly follow what he was saying, Jeremy announced, “Smita has told me she wants a divorce.”
In the next room, Roger, from whom Sylvia had not heard a sound for more than two years, growled, “Bollocks.”
Sylvia struggled to speak.
“Hello?” Jeremy said irritably. “Hello?”
Sylvia gasped, “I’m here.”
“Well, why don’t you say something then?” Jeremy snapped. “Please don’t make this any harder for me than it already is.”
Sylvia managed to utter faintly, “Oh my dear.”
She couldn’t get any further; she felt the sickening vertigo of certainties falling away around her. Forget Jeremy and Smita; who would get to keep Anand? She reached for a chair as her legs gave way beneath her. Smita, the winner, of course Smita would take all.
Jeremy was shouting in one ear, “Look, this is a bloody miserable situation without you as usual making it worse,” and Roger was blaspheming in the other. Sylvia couldn’t hear herself think.
“Please don’t shout,” she said faintly, to neither of them in particular.
Jeremy calmed down somewhat but Roger continued to turn the air blue.
Jeremy said, more quietly, “Things haven’t been good for a long time. Maybe you’ve noticed? But I honestly never thought it would come to this.”
“Is there any chance,” Sylvia asked shakily, “that she might change her mind?”
Jeremy said, “Uh-huh,” which Sylvia supposed meant no.
“She’s changed so much since we got married,” Jeremy went on. “She’s become so driven, so hard. I thought when Anand was born she might ease up a bit but she seems to have done the exact opposite.”
Sylvia forced herself to ask weakly, “What about Anand?”
Even Roger fell silent.
Jeremy answered, “Well, of course, that’s the absolute worst of it. The mother always gets custody, doesn’t she? I never ever imagined that I would have to live apart from Anand.”
Sylvia heard a sound which might have been a sob or maybe just a throat clearing.
“Where?” she asked, pretending she hadn’t heard the sound. “Where will you and Smita both live? Where will Anand be?”
“Well, for now,” Jeremy answered bitterly, “
It seems Smita gets to stay in our flat with Anand and I have to move out.”
Sylvia boiled at the injustice. “What grounds,” she asked indignantly, “what grounds does she have for wanting a divorce? You’ve always done what she wanted.”
“Don’t start,” Jeremy snapped. “It’s really not the time.”
“I’m not starting anything,” Sylvia said indignantly. “I’m merely pointing out that you’ve always let her have her own way – which is true – and so it really doesn’t seem fair that now she’s the one demanding a divorce and she gets to keep everything.”
“Fair,” Jeremy repeated bitterly. “Whoever said that fairness had anything to do with it? Look,” he went on. “I didn’t intend this to be a long call. I’m sure you’re not enjoying it either. I’m sorry it’s come to this; I realise it’s not easy for you either. Let’s talk again in a day or two, ok? Please only call me on my mobile from now on.”
“Wait!” Sylvia cried out. “Wait. When is all this going to happen? Where will you be? How will I get to see Anand from now on?”
“I’m going to stay at a friend’s place for now,” Jeremy said evasively. “Someone you don’t know. I suppose I’m going to have to find somewhere. Smita and I are going to have to work out a lot of things. I’m afraid you’re just going to have to hang on a bit about seeing Anand until things are a bit more sorted. To be honest, it’s not top of the list right now.”
Sylvia screamed, “It is top of the list! It should be top of the list. You can’t keep him from me.”
“Mum!” Jeremy yelled. “For Christ’s sake, this is not about you! Look, let’s talk again when we’re both a bit calmer.”
Sylvia only registered several days later that Jeremy had called her “Mum”. After he rang off, she leapt up in confusion, not at all sure where she was heading but probably to Belsize Park to hang onto Anand for dear life. She turned her ankle badly on a building block and fell awkwardly.
So already Anand was slipping out of her grasp since she spent the next two months with her leg in plaster which of course, on top of everything else, complicated poor Jeremy’s life no end.
