by Jojo Moyes
‘No.’
‘I think your mother likes to have someone else in the house when I’m not around. It makes her . . . more easy in herself.’
‘She didn’t want to come here with you?’ His son was staring out of the taxi window, so it was hard to tell from his voice whether he was regretful or glad.
‘She’s not so keen on aeroplanes these days. Don’t worry, son. Milagros and she, they rub along quite well together.’
The truth was, he was glad to have a little break from her. She had become obsessed with the idea of the supposed affair he was having with Agostina, his secretary, while simultaneously berating him for his lack of interest in her. If he would only agree to tighten her waist, lift her cheeks, he might find her more attractive. He tended to say little in denial – years of experience had shown him that this often made her worse – but he could never articulate the truth: that not only was he getting on, he no longer felt the intense need for physical reassurance he once had. And years of slicing open these young girls, of reshaping them, of padding them out and hauling them in, of carefully sculpting their most intimate parts, meant that he no longer had much more than a detached, artist’s appetite for female flesh.
‘She misses you,’ he said. ‘I’m not telling you this because I want you to feel guilty. God knows, you should have some fun as a young man, see the world a little. But she misses you. She’s packed you some mate in my bag, and some new shirts, and a couple of things she thought you might want to read.’ He paused. ‘I think she would like it if you wrote a little more often.’
‘I know,’ said Alejandro. ‘Sorry. It’s been . . . a strange time.’
Jorge looked sharply at his son. He was going to probe a little, but changed his mind. They had four days together, and at least one day’s fishing lined up. If Alejandro had something on his mind, he would find out soon enough. ‘So, London, eh? You’ll like the Lansdowne Hotel. Your mother and I came here in the 1960s when we were first married, and we had a ball. This time I have booked us a twin room. No point in being separated, not after all these months. Me and my boy, eh?’
Alejandro grinned at him, and Jorge felt the familiar pleasure at being in the company of his handsome son. He thought of how Alejandro had held him tightly, pulling him close at the airport gates, kissing his cheeks, a drastic progression from the reserved handshakes he had habitually bestowed, even as a small boy returning from boarding-school. They said travel changed you, Jorge thought. Maybe, in this cold climate, his son was finally thawing out a little. ‘We’ll be boys together, eh? We’ll hit the best restaurants, a few nightclubs. Live a little. There’s a lot to catch up on, Turco, and a lot of good times to be had doing it.’
Jorge’s conference finished every day at four thirty, and while the other delegates met in bars, admired glossy photographs of each other’s handiwork and muttered about their colleagues’ supposed butchery behind their backs, he and his son set about a frantic bout of evening activities. They visited a friend of Jorge’s, who lived in a stucco-fronted house in St John’s Wood, went to see a West End show, although neither liked theatre, took drinks at the bar of the Savoy, and had tea at the Ritz, where Jorge insisted the waiter take their picture (‘It’s all your mama asked for,’ he said, as Alejandro tried to disappear beneath the table). They talked of medical practice, of Argentinian politics, of money and mutual friends. Drunk, they clapped each other on the back, and said what a great time they were having, how good it was to be together, how the best times were to be had by men alone. Then, more drunk, they became tearful and sentimental, expressing their sorrow that Alejandro’s mother couldn’t be there too. Jorge, while gratified to see these unusual displays of emotion from his son, was aware that something was yet to be told. Alejandro had said a friend had died, and this explained something of his change in character, something of the sorrow that hung about him, but it didn’t explain the tension, a fine yet increasing anxiety that even Jorge, a man with the emotions of a carthorse, as his wife often told him, could sense in the atmosphere.
He asked him nothing directly.
He was not sure that he wanted to know the answer.
Cath Carter’s house was two doors along from her late daughter’s, a throwback to the days when council policy tried to put family members near each other. Jessie had told Suzanna stories of families whose members occupied whole cul-de-sacs, grandmothers next to mothers, sisters and brothers whose children had melded into an amorphous family group, running in and out of each other’s homes with the confident possession of the extended family.
Cath’s house, however, couldn’t have been more different from her daughter’s. Where Jessie’s front door and gingham curtains spoke of an esoteric taste, a love of the bright and gaudy, an irreverence reflected in her character, Cath’s spoke of a woman certain of her own standing; its neat floral borders and immaculate paintwork betrayed a determination to keep things orderly. And this from a woman embedded in chaos, Suzanna thought, averting her eyes from Jessie’s front door. She did not want to think of her last visit to that house. She wasn’t convinced she wanted to be here at all. The morning school run had just finished, and the estate was dotted with mothers pushing prams, others carrying newspapers and cartons of milk purchased from the mini-mart down the road. Suzanna walked on, her hands thrust deep into her coat pockets, feeling the envelope she had prepared half an hour earlier. If Cath wasn’t there, she wondered, should she push it through the door? Or was this the kind of conversation that needed to be had face to face?
There was a photograph of Jessie in the front window, her hair in bunches, the familiar grin on her face. It was bordered in black. There were what looked like around forty cards of remembrance around it. Suzanna glanced away from them, and rang the doorbell, conscious of the curious stares of passers-by.
Cath Carter’s hair had gone white. Suzanna stared at it, trying to remember what shade it had been before, then caught herself.
‘Hello, Suzanna,’ Cath said.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been round,’ she said. ‘I wanted to. I just—’
‘Didn’t know what to say?’
Suzanna blushed.
‘It’s okay. You wouldn’t be the only one. At least you came, which is more than most. Come on in.’ Cath stepped back, holding open the door, and Suzanna walked in, her step leaden on the immaculate hall carpet.
She was shown into the front room and directed towards a sofa, from where she could see the back of the framed picture and the cards, a few of which were turned inwards towards the little room. It was the same layout as Jess’s house had been, the interior as pristine, but the atmosphere was loaded with grief.
Cath moved heavily across the room, and sat down on the easy chair opposite, folding her skirt under her with careworn hands.
‘Emma at school?’ Suzanna asked.
‘Started back this week. Half-term.’
‘I came . . . to see . . . if she was okay,’ Suzanna said awkwardly.
Cath nodded, glanced unconsciously at her daughter’s picture. ‘She’s coping,’ she said.
‘And to say – if there’s anything I can do to help . . .’
Cath tilted her head enquiringly.
There was a photograph behind her on the mantelpiece, Suzanna noted, of the family all together, with a man who must have been Jessie’s father holding Emma as a baby. ‘I – I feel responsible,’ she said.
Cath shook her head briskly. ‘You’re not responsible.’ There was a huge weight in the words she left unspoken.
‘I really just wondered . . . perhaps if I could . . .’ she reached into her pocket and held the envelope in front of her ‘. . . contribute anything?’
Cath stared at her outstretched hand.
‘Financially. It’s not much. But I thought if there was a trust fund or something . . . for Emma, I mean . . .’
Cath’s hand reached for the little gold cross round her neck. Her expression seemed to harden. ‘We don’t need anyone�
�s money, thank you,’ she said crisply. ‘Emma and I will do just fine.’
‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.’ Suzanna stuffed the envelope into her pocket, scolding herself for her tactlessness.
‘You haven’t offended me.’ Cath stood up, and Suzanna wondered if she was about to be told to leave, but the older woman moved over to the serving hatch at the end of the room, reached through and flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘There is one thing you could do,’ she said, her back to the room. ‘We’re making Emma a memory box. Her teacher suggested it. You get people to write their memories of Jessie . . . nice things, you know. Nice things that happened. Good days. So that when she gets older Emma can still have . . . a full picture of what her mum was like. What everyone thought of her.’
‘It’s a lovely idea.’ Suzanna thought of the shelf in the shop that bore a small shrine of Jessie’s things.
‘I thought so.’
‘A bit like our displays, I suppose.’
‘Yes. Jess was good at those, wasn’t she?’
‘Better than I was. I don’t suppose you’ll be short of those sorts of memories. Good ones, I mean.’
Cath Carter said nothing.
‘I . . . I’ll try to do something that matches up, that does her justice.’
The older woman turned. ‘Jess did everything to the full, you know,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t much of a life, a pretty small life to some. I know she didn’t really do anything, or go anywhere. But she loved people, and she loved her family, and she was true to herself. She didn’t hold back.’ Cath was staring at the picture above the mantelpiece.
Suzanna sat, motionless.
‘No . . . she never held back. She used to divide people into drains and radiators. Did you know that? Drains are the type that are always miserable, that want to tell you their problems, suck the life out of you . . . Radiators are what Jess was. She warmed us all up.’
Suzanna realised with some discomfort where she had probably sat in the equation. Cath no longer seemed to be speaking to her: she was addressing the picture, her face softened. ‘Despite that fool I’m going to teach Emma to do the same. I won’t have her growing up frightened, cautious of everything, just because of what happened. I want her to be strong, and brave and . . . like her mother.’ She adjusted the frame, moving it a fraction along the shelf. ‘That’s what I want. Like her mother.’
She brushed non-existent fluff from her skirt. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘about that tea.’
Alejandro stood up suddenly in the little boat, making it rock dangerously, and threw down his rod in disgust. At the other end, his father looked up at him in incomprehension. ‘What’s the matter? You’ll frighten the fish!’
‘Nothing is biting. Nothing.’
‘Have you tried one of these damsel nymphs?’ Jorge held up one of the brightly coloured flies. ‘They seem to be biting better on the smaller lures.’
‘I tried them.’
‘Then a sinking line. I don’t think your floating one is any good.’
‘It’s not the line. Or the lure. I just can’t do it today.’
Jorge pushed back his hat. ‘I hate to remind you, son, but it’s the only day I have.’
‘I can’t fish any more.’
‘That’s because you are fidgeting like a dog with fleas.’ Jorge leant over and made Alejandro’s rod secure within the boat, then laid his own next to his landing net of stunned, glistening fish. He was nearly up to his ticket allowance of six. He was going to have to eat into his son’s soon.
He shifted on his seat and reached into the hamper for a beer, holding it up like a peace-offering. ‘What’s going on? You were always a better fisherman than me. You’re like a five-year-old today. Where’s your patience?’
Alejandro sat down, shoulders hunched. His formerly languid air had vanished over the past days as surely as the ripples he had sent spiralling outwards on the lake.
‘Come,’ said Jorge, with a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come. Have something to eat. Another beer . . . Or something stronger?’ He tapped the whisky flask in the pocket of his fishing vest. ‘You’ve hardly touched this food.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Well, I am. And if you keep thrashing about like you have been, there will be nothing left in the water for miles.’
They ate the sandwiches Alejandro had made in silence, letting the boat drift in the middle of the lake. It was not a bad flat, Jorge told him. Spacious. Light. Secure. Lots of pretty young nurses going past. (He hadn’t actually said the last bit.) Yes, he had been pretty taken with the area, the rolling countryside, the quaint cottages, the low-ceilinged English pubs. He liked the tranquillity of this lake, the fact that the English were considerate enough to restock it with fish every year. England seemed to stay the same, he said. It was reassuring, when you could see a once-proud country like Argentina going to the dogs, to know that there were some places where civilised standards, a little dignity, still mattered. Alejandro had told him then of the landlords who had rejected him for being ‘dark’, and Jorge, spluttering, had said the place was obviously full of half-wits and ignorants. ‘Calls itself a civilised country,’ he muttered. ‘And half the women wearing men’s shoes . . .’
Alejandro stared into the water for some time, then turned to him. ‘You can tell Mama,’ he said, and let out a deep sigh, ‘that I’m coming home.’
‘What is wrong with a nice woman’s shoe? Why do the women here feel they have to look like men?’ Jorge stopped, and swallowed the last of his sandwich. ‘What?’
‘I’ve handed in my notice. I’m coming back in three weeks.’
Jorge wondered if he had heard him correctly. ‘Your mother will be pleased,’ he said carefully. Then he wiped his moustache and put his handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘What happened? The pay is no good?’
‘The pay is okay.’
‘You don’t like the work?’
‘The work is fine. It’s pretty universal, you know.’ Alejandro did not smile.
‘You can’t settle? Is it your mother? Is she plaguing you? She told me about the lock of hair – I’m so sorry, son. She doesn’t understand, you know. She doesn’t see it like other people. It’s because she doesn’t get out enough, you know? She thinks too much about things . . .’ Jorge was suddenly swamped by guilt. This was why he was more comfortable with reticence. Conversation inevitably led to awkwardness. ‘You shouldn’t let her trouble you.’
‘It’s a woman, Pa. She’s killing me.’
The fact that they were in the middle of a thirty acre lake meant that no one saw Jorge’s eyes widen slightly, then raise to heaven as he uttered a near-silent ‘Thank God!’
‘A woman!’ he said, trying to keep his voice free of blatant joy. ‘A woman!’
Alejandro’s head dropped on to his knees.
Jorge straightened his face. ‘And this is a problem?’
Alejandro spoke into his knees: ‘She’s married.’
‘So?’
Alejandro looked up, his expression bewildered.
Words bubbled out of Jorge. ‘You’re getting older, son. You’re not likely to find any that don’t have a little . . . history.’ He was still fighting the urge to dance a little jig round his son. A woman!
‘History? That’s only part of it.’
A woman. He could have sung it, let the sound burst forth from his lungs. Carry across the lake and bounce back at him off the shore. A woman!
Alejandro’s face was hidden, his back bent as if he were in acute pain. Jorge composed himself, tried to focus on his son’s misery, to introduce a more sombre timbre to his voice.
‘So. This woman.’
‘Suzanna.’
‘Suzanna.’ Jorge said the name reverentially. Suzanna. ‘You – you care for her?’
It was a stupid question. Alejandro lifted his head and Jorge remembered what it was like to be a young man, the agony, the certainty and uncertainty of love.
His son’s voice was haltin
g, broken: ‘She – she’s everything. I can’t see anything but her, you know? Even when I’m with her. I don’t even want to blink when I’m near her in case I miss . . .’
Perhaps if he had been someone else, Jorge might have uttered a few platitudes about first love, about how these things became easier, about how there were plenty more fish in the sea – and some, he knew, with breasts like ripe melons and you couldn’t even see the scars. But this was his son, and Jorge, still struggling to contain his relief, knew better.
‘Papa? What do I do?’ He looked like he was about to erupt with frustration and misery, as if the act of spilling out the cause of his unhappiness had not brought him relief but made his suffering more acute.
Jorge de Marenas straightened himself up, his shoulders a little squarer, his expression dignified and paternal. ‘You have told her how you feel?’
Alejandro nodded miserably.
‘And do you know how she feels?’
The young man looked out across the water. Eventually he turned back to his father, and shrugged.
‘She wants to stay?’
Alejandro made as if to speak, but his mouth closed before it had the chance to form words.
If they had been seated side by side, Jorge would have put his arm round his son. A comforting, offhand, heterosexual-man-to-heterosexual-man sort of hug. Instead he leant forward, and laid his hand on his son’s knee. ‘Then you’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s time to go home.’
The water lapped against the side of the boat. Jorge adjusted the oars, opened another beer and handed it to his son. ‘I meant to tell you. This Sofia Guichane . . . the one who asked to be remembered to you.’ He leant back in the boat, blessing God silently for the joy of fishing. ‘Gente says she and Eduardo Guichane are to split.’
As Suzanna left, she bumped into Father Lenny. He was walking along the pavement, holding a bag under his arm, his robe swinging. ‘How is she?’ he said, nodding at Cath’s house.
Suzanna grimaced, unable to convey what she felt.
‘I’m glad you came,’ he said. ‘Not enough do. Shame, really.’
‘I don’t know if I was any help,’ she said.
