The Love of a Family

by Rebecca Shaw

  By the time they got round to eating the cake that evening, they were so excited that they didn’t seem like the solemn quiet boys they’d been ever since they’d arrived. They were bubbly and happy and Graham caught her eye and smiled in gratitude.

  When they’d each finished a slice and Myra had enjoyed it better than any food for years Piers said, ‘Viv would love a slice of this, she said so when she was here. Would it be rude to ask for a slice to take across to her? Say no if you want, if it’s not all right.’ She heard the longing in his voice and couldn’t say no.

  ‘I like children to be generous. Yes, why not, but it’s from you not me. Right?’

  Graham stood by the front door to watch Piers walk across to Viv’s and realised too late that with one hand virtually unusable Piers wouldn’t be able to hold the plate and ring the doorbell at the same time. ‘Hold on there, Piers, I’m coming!’ But he was too late, the plate, the cake and the napkin ended upside down on the doorstep.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get another piece, it’s all right don’t panic.’

  But Piers did. He’d struggled to be brave ever since the accident and just when he tried to do something nice, he completely ruined Viv’s surprise.

  ‘I’m so sorry, so sorry.’

  Graham whispered, ‘Look, she hasn’t heard us we can go home, get a fresh slice and come back as if we’ve just arrived. Come on quick.’

  So the pair of them slipped back across the road put the cake he’d dropped into the bin and went back with a fresh slice and a spanking new paper napkin to ring Viv’s doorbell.

  Graham pressed the bell and left Piers to wait for her to answer the door, thinking it would be better for Piers’ confidence if he coped by himself.

  Viv was delighted. ‘Oh! Piers, how wonderful! Thank you so much. Come in.’

  So he went in to Viv’s comfy kitchen and sat with her while she ate her cake.

  ‘This is beautiful. Really beautiful. Myra is clever isn’t she? I make cakes but I’m sure they’re never as good as this.’

  ‘She says she’s going to make me one just like it for my birthday.’ Piers hesitated and then added, hardly daring to ask for confirmation, ‘Do you think she will?’

  ‘I’ll make sure she does. It would be lovely wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I told her I’d always had shop birthday cakes you see, having no mum . . .’ Without warning, just as Viv had put a huge lump of cake in her mouth and was unable to speak, Piers broke down. It seemed as though a dam had opened and the tears flooded down his face completely out of control. Viv passed him a tissue and made no attempt to stop the torrent of tears coming down his cheeks because she sensed he needed to let all his upset come out. She washed up Myra’s plate, put the crumpled napkin in the bin, and then took him on to her knee, put her arms round him and hugged him tight. When the tears slowed down she wiped his face with a tissue, and began to sympathise with him. ‘You’ve been such a brave boy all this time, you did right to have a good cry. We won’t tell anyone you and I. OK? Feeling better now?’

  Piers nodded. ‘It’s comfy sitting here.’

  ‘Well, that’s ’cos I’m well padded. I never have been thin though I’ve always wanted to be.’

  ‘Well, don’t, you’re all right.’

  ‘If that’s the case then I’ll stay as I am. Your Auntie Myra is what I have always wanted to look like, slim, able to wear anything at all.’ She gave him an extra squeeze and he smiled back. ‘She’s doing all right isn’t she, Myra?’

  ‘Oh! Yes. She’s getting better. We’re going to have Little Pete in the kitchen for a while each day. He’s very good, he doesn’t do a poo or anything and we haven’t trained him. I’m getting a rabbit too for my birthday and then he’ll have a friend.’

  ‘What will you call it?’

  ‘Haven’t thought about that. I could call it Viv, couldn’t I?’

  ‘If it’s a girl.’

  ‘If it is will they have babies? I’d love to have baby rabbits.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that, better ask your Uncle Graham.’

  ‘He’s all right is Uncle Graham, you know, he tries so hard to be a dad. He isn’t, but he does try.’

  ‘It’s hard work being a dad when you have never been one.’

  ‘I suppose so. Myra’s getting better at being a mum. She was hopeless to start with, she got it all wrong. I wanted to stay at home that day, you know,’ he raised his broken arm to show her what he was talking about, ‘but she made me go back to school and I screamed and yelled all the way, but she made me go, then for just a teeny weeny second she almost let go of me and I turned to run home and that was when I hit the car. Don’t tell her I’ve said, will you? I haven’t been cross about it, she really didn’t want me to have an accident.’

  ‘Of course she didn’t, she may seem like a dry old stick, but she wouldn’t have wanted that. Now, I think it’s time you went home, it’ll be your bedtime soon and you’re looking tired. Wash your face under the tap then no one will guess about . . . you know . . . here, dry it on this hand towel. Now I’m going to see you across the road, just in case. Anytime you want a chat come over, but mind you tell Myra where you’re going else she’ll worry.’

  So she watched him across the road and called, ‘Goodnight, thanks for the cake.’

  Back at home, Uncle Graham helped Piers have a shower with his plastered arm wrapped in a sheet of plastic he had brought home from work. The hot water felt lovely on his bruises.

  Oliver came upstairs when he’d finished his homework and they had a chat before lights-out.

  ‘How’s the arm today?’

  ‘Not bad. I think I’ll go to school next week. It’s nice being at home but it’ll be nice see my friends. I suppose they wouldn’t let me go out at playtime though. Will my arm be better by my birthday, Oliver? Do you think I might have a birthday party? A proper birthday party? Or perhaps a trip to the cinema and then a birthday tea at home with a cake? Like that one Myra made today.’

  Oliver honestly didn’t know if birthday parties figured large in the Graham and Myra household so he had to be tactful. ‘I’ll ask Uncle Graham for you, man to man.’

  ‘Yes please. I think I need to go to sleep now.’

  Piers was asleep almost before Oliver had left the room. In Oliver’s mind there was nothing like going straight for the jugular as soon as an idea hit you, so he said as he walked into the sitting room, ‘When it’s Piers birthday on the twenty-fifth, could we have a party or something to celebrate? He’d love that, especially after his broken arm and everything.’

  Myra had one of her shocked moments, something the old Myra was good at, but before she could get a word out Graham had said, ‘I don’t see why not. It would be good for him to have something to look forward to wouldn’t it, Myra?’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it.’ Her mind raced through what would be expected of her, balloons, food, invitations, food, cake, games, food. She couldn’t face it, she really couldn’t. A host of boys running about all over the house whooping and fighting. Certainly not.

  Graham reassured Oliver. ‘Leave it with us, Oliver, it’s a very thoughtful idea and well worth doing. You’d help wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I would. But we’d need cake like the chocolate one we’ve had tonight . . . with candles. That would be great. He’ll be so pleased.’ Before Myra could naysay the idea, he turned back to the door. I’ve some revising to do for a test tomorrow so I’m going to do that before bed. OK? Goodnight.’

  Myra, sitting in her favourite easy chair, was too preoccupied to reply. She wasn’t doing a party and she didn’t care what they tried to do to persuade her. They could scream and cry, trash the house, do what they liked but she wasn’t going to give in. Definitely not. ‘I’m not doing a party and that’s that.’

  ‘If it was on a Saturday, I’d be here.’ Graham recognised the resistance in that grim expression of hers, he’d seen it all too often these last years. But even Graham had res
ervations about it. He knew nothing about what ten-year-old boys wanted these days. Party games for a start, what did kids play at parties nowadays?

  ‘You’ve organised boy’s birthday parties before have you?’

  ‘Well, no, but we could try.’

  ‘And make fools of ourselves.’

  ‘Not necessarily, we might surprise ourselves.’

  ‘We’re not party people, Graham, never have been and never will be. A party we organised would be a crashing failure and then where would his image be? We’d be a laughing stock and not just amongst the boys, their parents too. No, it’s not on.’

  ‘He’s had a rough time these last few months and I very much want to make things up to him. A successful party would improve our street cred enormously in the boys’eyes.’

  Myra shook her head. ‘I’m afraid he’ll have to do without. Put another couple of logs on the fire will you, I’m cold.’

  She settled down to watch TV, dismissing the party idea as a non-starter. Her giving a party for a load of boys? Not likely. She wouldn’t know where to begin. How could she? She glanced across at Graham and read his mind.

  ‘You’re still thinking about it I can tell, well you can stop as of now. I’m not having it. Absolutely not and if you organise it without me agreeing to it I shall go out all day on the day, not lift a finger towards anything and leave you with the lot. Food. Games. Whatever.’ She folded her arms to emphasise her decision. He might think he’d got the hint of an upper hand at the moment just because she’d been more accepting of the boys these last few days, but he was very, very mistaken.

  ‘But we need to do something for him. Just going to a restaurant the four of us isn’t a celebration now is it? Not for a boy of ten.’

  ‘It’s more than we do for my birthday,’ said Myra, indignantly.

  ‘Because you refuse to go anywhere. I’ve tried booking a weekend away, or even just the theatre but you won’t go. So I buy you a present, that’s all.’

  She held up her hand. ‘Stop there. So that’s what we’ll do for Piers. A present.’

  ‘It’s not enough, Myra.’

  ‘It has to be enough for me.’

  ‘But you’re a grown-up and you haven’t been recently orphaned and been in a road accident. He needs something special. I’m not saying we have to do the full works every year but you must see that this year he could really do with a bit of a fuss.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry.’ Pause. ‘No, actually, I’m not sorry. I’m not doing a party. Full stop. Now don’t mention it again.’

  ‘I shall if I choose to.’

  Myra boiled at this unheard-of outright flaunting of her authority. ‘You heard me. I said no.’

  ‘For once, Myra, you don’t get the last word on this. If push comes to shove I shall have to do it all myself because I insist he has a party of some sort.’

  ‘I shan’t allow it. You might think you’re in charge here Graham Butler because you bring the money in, but you are not. I am.’

  She glared at him and her rage almost turned to amusement as she thought how short-lived Graham’s rebellion had been. They’d managed this long with Myra ruling the roost and she wasn’t going to let that change. Then she noticed a steely look in his eyes, she’d only ever seen it before at John’s house on the morning of the funeral.

  Graham took a deep breath and said, ‘I have never in my life laid a finger on you in anger and never would, but I am at my limit, Myra, I really am. I am this close,’ he held his index finger and his thumb a hair’s breadth apart, ‘to saying something I might regret. Your kind of stubborn arrogance has no place in this house any more. I will not be controlled like this. I’ve had it up to here.’ He leapt to his feet, his hand raised on a level with his face, and for one terrifying moment Myra actually believed he was going to hit her, despite his fine words. But he didn’t, he lifted her gently to her feet and with his eyes centimetres away from hers he said quietly now, ‘You’ve had your own way for far too long and it’s embittered you, Myra. You must understand and get it right, in there, in your head, that these two boys are not just mine, but because we’re married they are yours too, and I shall make sure we do treat them as they should be treated, with thoughtfulness and consideration and respect until . . . until it turns to love on everyone’s part. Right?’ He loosened his grip on her arms and she sank back on the sofa as he stalked out. All she could hear above the noise of her pounding heart was his footsteps thudding up the stairs, one, two, three . . .

  Thoroughly wound up by Myra’s intransigence Graham couldn’t sleep. As the hours rolled by he went inch by inch over the deterioration of their relationship and saw clearly how it had all come about. Tonight he’d accused her of being arrogant, maybe he used the wrong word but it all came to the same thing. She’d had her own way because she had been too wrapped in her own misery to accept support from him, let alone see that he needed support from her, as well. Progressively their lives had become more bleak as the years went by and the operation she underwent which finally finished any hope of future children had been the final blow. He recollected the loving relationship there’d been between his brother John and Mo, and envied them with a depth of feeling he’d almost forgotten he possessed. But then the loss of John hit him afresh. He couldn’t afford self-pity. He knew John would have given anything for some more time with his boys, and Graham had to make the most of that time, he had to do John proud.

  He turned over and thought about the boys. He and Myra would have to sort out their differences, but that could wait. Right now, it was the boys that needed their time. Oliver was so like himself at his age, intelligent, highly motivated, tenacious, it was a pleasure to witness. He’d found an envelope, while he’d been collecting things from John’s house, full of the boys’ school reports, and he saw in Oliver’s reports the same remarks he used to get in his. Odd that. A matter of genes he supposed. Except Oliver was artistic too and that wasn’t a Butler trait at all. As for Piers, from his reports he seemed to be a happy popular boy who talked too much. Graham smiled at that, he could well believe it. He finally settled to sleep with the problem of Piers’ birthday still foremost in his mind, but determined to solve it by asking for ideas at the office.

  Myra, thinking the whole idea of a party had been dropped after what she’d said, got a surprise the following night when Graham came home from the office, because as soon as they sat down to eat, Graham said to Piers. ‘I’ve been thinking about your birthday.’

  Unfortunately for Myra, the thought of a party had niggled away at Graham all day and would not let his mind rest. He said he had asked at work what others did for a boy’s tenth birthday party and was overwhelmed with suggestions from the downright dreadful to the highly impossible.

  Oh, have you, thought Myra and as she looked at him a flicker of anger ran through her. Whatever he might be going to suggest she did towards this so-called party, she would shoot down in flames. But – and it took her a moment to work it out – that flicker of anger came very unexpectedly mixed with a stirring of desire for him. He was full of enthusiasm, as he always used to be, she thought – and full of determination, even if that was directed against her wishes.

  ‘How about, seeing as you don’t know many boys at school yet, being new, if you asked say two boys to go to the cinema with us and then come home for tea and one of Myra’s stunning cakes . . . with candles of course. I’d suggest bowling or ice skating or something if you were fit, but your plaster won’t be off will it, so you wouldn’t enjoy that as much as the cinema. Any film you like. Two boys would fill the car up with Oliver and you and me, so Myra wouldn’t be able to go with us, but I’m sure she’d rather be at home making a nice tea for us all for when we get back, wouldn’t you Myra?’

  Piers looked as though a huge fluorescent tube had been switched on in his body; he glowed from head to foot with joy. The change in him was Graham’s reward.

  ‘That would be fab, Uncle Graham, just fab, perhaps another year we c
ould do the ice-skating or something when I haven’t broken my arm.’

  ‘Exactly. So the cinema it is.’

  ‘We’ll need invitations won’t we, Myra?’

  Her immediate instinct to always say no was pushed aside by Piers’ hopeful face and instead of saying ‘No! I’ll ring their mothers, we can do without the expense of invitations’, she saw how important they were to him and said instead, ‘Of course, it wouldn’t be a party without invitations, we’ll go and buy them tomorrow.’

  Oliver reminded her about the birthday cake.

  ‘Yes, and a birthday cake. With ten candles.’

  Myra felt she had been outmanoeuvred by Graham because she’d finished up with a kind of a party, but doing the one thing she could quite enjoy, in the house all alone getting the tea organised. And for only two extra guests – which also thankfully meant no games and everyone delivered home once the candles were blown out. Some kind of a reasonable compromise she supposed.

  She’d laid awake for half the previous night dwelling on Graham’s surprising reaction to what he called her stubbornness. It was the first time in fifteen years of marriage that he’d behaved like that, when his backbone had manifested itself and he’d said what he wanted to say and not what she had planned for him to say. He was wrong though, she thought, she was neither arrogant nor stubborn. Well, perhaps a bit stubborn on occasion – her mother always said she was, too. But never arrogant, she was humble really if anything at all, yes, humble, but determined, she decided.

  The next morning Piers was watching children’s TV with Oliver while he waited to go shopping for the invitations, and Myra had gone upstairs to change Graham’s bed linen. But now she knew they were there, she couldn’t resist climbing up to get the baby vests out of the wardrobe for a second look. She unstuck the adhesive flap straight away and slipped them out, held one to one cheek, another to the other cheek and loved the cuddliness of them. They could have been Piers’ vests. Ones he’d worn perhaps and she’d kept in a sentimental moment of yearning for him to be a baby again. For a few minutes she lost herself in her imagination, Piers newborn, Piers beginning to crawl, Piers taking his first steps, Piers starting to talk. Or Oliver, she imagined herself brushing his beautiful baby curls, in her mind, she wound them round her fingers, every single one of them, held his hand, kissed his rosy cheeks.