A Family Man

by Amanda Brookfield

  ‘No, Matthew Webster,’ she said through sobs, ‘this is not the place.

  Shame on you. Shame on you.’ Somehow, he steered her towards the entrance to the stairwell. The air inside felt so damp and chilly that he shivered inside his shirt. Though her hand remained limp and unforgiving he managed to keep a firm hold of it for the journey down the twisting stone steps, driven by a fear that the day’s dramas would be rounded off by physical injury. It was a relief to emerge back into the May sunshine in the piazza below. Beth, still sobbing quietly, shook herself free of his hand.

  ‘We need a coffee,’ he said, injecting the words with as much compassion as he could, wanting her to know that he too felt bad.

  Watching Beth press her trembling lips to the rim of a large espresso a few minutes later, he was half tempted to be kinder still, to retract everything he had said and resort to the easier, sweeter road of reconciliation. That she had calmed down made him like her a bit more too.

  ‘I guess it was that call this morning, huh? Got you thinking about … you know, Kath …’

  ‘Something like that,’ he whispered, for the first time play-acting his part a little, deciding that to attempt a rundown on the infinitely more complicated reasons behind his change of heart would cause unnecessary pain. There was just so much truth a being could endure in one day, he reflected dryly, thinking not just of the woman opposite him but of his marriage, how he had filtered out the truth as it suited him, not reading the signs, till they were too entrenched to be discernible and there was nothing left to save but their son.

  31

  The funeral and cremation of Matt’s father-in-law took place on the Saturday following his return from Umbria. All resolutions to resist any more of Louise’s kindness crumpled at her sensible offer to drive them both to Berkshire for the ordeal. In spite of numerous notices in all the main papers, and even a couple of radio announcements – the inspiration of Lionel’s brother who had connections with the BBC – there had been no word from Kath; a result which Matt could have predicted from the outset, but which nonetheless increased his sense of responsibility and compassion towards his mother-in-law. Every time he rang, in a bid to offer at least telephonic support during the course of the week, she seemed to be in a state of near-hysteria.

  It’s like a badly scripted soap opera, he confided to Graham, neglecting his Friday night review in order to pen one of several e-mails inspired by the subject. Beside him the first rays of the sun were firing up the green dome of the War Museum. Next door Joshua lay gooey-eyed with sleep in front of the small bedroom telly.

  Hysterical mother, mourning the man whom she seemed to do a bloody good job of hating for thirty-five years and clamouring suddenly for the only daughter in whom she used to stick pins for recreation. And, oh yes, not forgetting, of course, the daughter has meanwhile repeated the cycle of familial bliss by running out on her own husband and son. Not only unbelievable but HILARIOUS!! I mean, Jesus, who needs entertainment when life throws up such baskets of goodies? Makes the all-female version of Richard III – to which I must shortly return my attention – seem positively tame. (Not a feminist statement at all, the press blurb said, but simply because the parts were too good for men to keep all to themselves.

  All Shakespeare’s ladies were played by men, of course, a fact which many people forget and which I’m sure could lead to some enormously profound observation on my part if only I could be bothered.) Must check out. Think of me today. Cheers.

  Checking his inbox as he was closing down the computer an hour later, Matt was pleased to find that Graham’s response had already made its way back through cyberspace.

  The funeral of the in-law of an ex-wife is a tall order. Good luck.

  Sorry not to have been a great correspondent recently but things have been gathering pace on the work front – looks like I’m going to be moving capital cities again, opening an office in Sydney. Leaving any moment. Too good a package to refuse. Glad you made that trip here when you did, as Aussie will be rather harder to visit. Bye. Graham.

  Louise arrived so far in advance of their agreed time that Matt invited her in for coffee. She was looking drawn but glamorous in a close-fitting knee- length black dress and matching coat. She had been getting thinner recently, he realised, noting the faint hollows in her naturally round cheeks and the new angular prominence to her jaw. As he put the kettle on Josie arrived, looking contrastingly dishevelled, but cheerful and full of chatter about plans as to how she and Joshua would fill the day. At the sight of Louise in the kitchen, she tensed visibly, adopting an expression of such sullen hostility that Matt found himself wondering suddenly about the missing purse. For the first time since the incident a flicker of suspicion entered his mind. As if reading his thoughts, Josie caught his gaze and held it defiantly for a few seconds, before making some excuse to leave the room. Telling himself that he was imagining things, Matt went to say farewell to his son, searching the little face as he had done all week for any signs of perturbation at the notion of having lost a grandparent to an eternity of good times in Heaven. When he had first broken the news it had been the connection with Kath that had interested him most. ‘So is Mummy with her daddy, then?’ he enquired, frowning from the effort of picturing the scene.

  Matt had been tempted to say yes, to give a version of events that would put the seal on their private tragedy once and for all. It took some courage to stick to the truth. ‘No, Josh, Mummy hasn’t died. She’s had to go and live somewhere else where we can’t see her,’ he said, repeating the old explanation with some weariness. ‘Not because she stopped loving you, but because she stopped loving me. It’s hard to understand, I know. When you’re older I hope it will be easier.’ Kneeling before him in the hall that Saturday morning, however, Matt was relieved to see that his son appeared to be in no need of a recap of such harsh truths. The five months since Kath’s departure were a lifetime for a four-year-old, he realised, giving a parting ruffle to the tousled hair and wishing that adult rhythms could adjust so deftly.

  ‘Shit, I haven’t got any flowers,’ he exclaimed, on seeing a wreath of pink and white roses laid out on the back seat of Louise’s car.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, we’ll say they’re from both of us.’

  ‘No, I must get something. Stop at the shop on the corner, would you? Mr Patel always has a bunch or two.’ Sure enough, next to the trestle tables of vegetables spread before the now repaired front window, was a black plastic bucket containing several clusters of red and yellow carnations, their colours prettily offset by wiry-stemmed sprigs of tiny white flowers. Seeing Matt approach, Mr Patel himself came scurrying outside, grinning warmly and waving his hands at the sky.

  ‘Such very fine weather we are having now. This is why we love England so. Sunshine and not too hot.’

  ‘Reckon these would do for a funeral?’ asked Matt, brandishing two bunches of the carnations.

  The grocer’s face fell. ‘Oh, no, Mr Webster, you are having to go to a funeral on such a day as this. Was it – is it – someone in your family?’

  ‘Not my immediate family, no.’ Matt made a face, touched by the concern in the older man’s tone, but not wanting to be drawn into any involved explanations.

  ‘And your lady friend is driving you.’ Mr Patel gestured approvingly at Louise, double-parked alongside with her hazard lights flashing. ‘That is good.’ He beamed, nodding his head. ‘And I have my new window and new bolts on my door. We are all surviving, Mr Webster, with God’s help.’

  ‘I guess we are.’ Matt smiled back. ‘Twelve pounds I owe you.’ He fished in his wallet for a note. ‘There’s the ten and if you hang on a minute I…’ He began searching the pockets of his suit jacket, momentarily forgetting that as an outfit that had required the dust brushing off its shoulders from lack of use it would be unlikely to yield much in the way of small change.

  ‘Oh, but ten will be fine, Mr Webster.’

  ‘I’ve got a twenty.’

  ‘No, no,
ten is good. Your lady is looking impatient.’ He winked and then, as if suddenly recalling the solemn business of the day, gave a grave shake of his head and hurried back inside the shop.

  ‘Best I could do,’ said Matt, waving the carnations at Louise with a rueful grin. He placed his humble offering next to the wreath and then strapped himself into the front seat, managing to complete both manoeuvres without any obvious glances in the direction of Louise’s hem-line, which seemed to have retreated several inches up her thighs. Although slim, she had wide ankles and dimples in her knees. An almost pretty face was marred by too much make-up and hair so tampered with that it had assumed the shiny straw look of a Barbie doll. Guilty at so uncharitable an appraisal, Matt kept his head turned firmly towards the window, where parades of scruffy shops were receiving dramatic illumination from the May sunshine. ‘It’s going to be hot,’ he said, loosening his tie and laying his jacket across his knees.

  ‘I thought South Circular, M3.’

  ‘Sounds fine. I’m in your hands.’ He tipped his head back against the rest and closed his eyes.

  ‘Busy week?’

  ‘Mad. Five nights out on the trot. Making up to my boss for being away.’ Matt kept his eyes closed, seeing not images from that week’s clutch of theatres but the shadowed lighting of the Umbrian hotel bedroom in which Beth and he had played out the last unimpressive gasps of their relationship. The showdown in the Florence café had been followed by the frustrating and somewhat anticlimactic discovery that it was impossible to change their tickets for an earlier flight home. In no mood for the dining room, they ordered their evening meal from the room service menu and ate sitting at separate ends of the small sofa, watching telly. Since it was considerably warmer than it had been the previous night, Matt had opened the shutters and latches of both windows as far as they would go. He chewed his way through the food mechanically, not tasting anything, aware only of a light breeze on the back of his neck and a mounting sadness at being in so spectacular a place with entirely the wrong person. No amount of wanting to be in love again could make it happen, he realised bleakly, no matter how hard one shut one’s eyes.

  They had retreated to the big double bed early, huddling on to their respective sides in tacit respect of the oceans of new emotional distance between them. None the less, in the small hours, long after Matt had imagined his companion to be asleep, he had felt a warm palm reaching across the icy linen waste, massaging its way up his thigh, in a bid, he supposed, for some sort of passionate reconciliation. Matt, who felt passionate only about his ineptitude in getting himself into such an impossible situation, had to use considerable physical strength to keep the hand at bay.

  ‘Just sex, Matt,’ she pleaded, flailing to release his grip on her arms, ‘to make us both feel better. Like a way of saying goodbye.’

  ‘I don’t … I’m sorry, I can’t – it wouldn’t feel right.’

  Beth had thrown herself back on to the pillows with a snort of a laugh. ‘Jesus – of all the guys in the world, I have to pick the one who needs his brain engaged to have sex.’

  Matt opened his mouth to deny the accusation, only to falter at the realisation that, although not quite true, it was probably a compliment. In truth, he felt perfectly capable of having sex; indeed, he would almost have welcomed the diversion. Yet at the same time he could not face the deeper emotional tangle that would no doubt follow on from such indulgence, the hopes it might arouse in the cold light of morning. Instead, grim-faced and clutching two pillows and the counterpane, he decamped to the sofa, contemplating how a combination of wishful thinking and physical attraction had masked the now obvious fact that the pair of them were, and always had been, hopelessly ill suited.

  The sofa was very narrow and fitted with cushions that sagged uncomfortably under his body weight. Telling himself that a sleepless night was the least he deserved, for blind stupidity if nothing else, made the minutes pass no more quickly. It was not until the eruption of a rather charming Italian version of the dawn chorus that he finally lost consciousness, only to wake a couple of hours later with a stiff neck that lingered for days afterwards.

  ‘Tired?’ ventured Louise now, speaking a little too loudly out of the fear that her companion was falling asleep.

  Matt, tearing his concentration back to the present, rubbed the back of his neck and yawned.

  ‘Sorry your trip to Florence didn’t work out,’ she continued carefully, having spent several minutes privately rehearsing how to broach the subject. Although Matt had made the state of play between him and his press agent girlfriend quite clear on his return, the combined diversion of Joshua and the crisis of Kath’s father had made it hard to satisfy her curiosity as to the details.

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Matt stretched. ‘Just confirms that I’m crap at relationships, I guess.’

  ‘It does nothing of the kind,’ she replied stoutly. ‘You’ve just been unlucky. And you are marvellous with Joshua, which is the most important relationship of the lot.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He opened his eyes properly and turned to smile at her. ‘You are always very kind.’

  Louise flushed. ‘And I’ve been meaning to say, I just loved your article on Andrea Beauchamp. She really seemed to open up to you.’

  Matt chuckled, flattered in spite of himself. ‘She did a bit. Can’t think why. Took pity on me, I think. Single parents of the world unite. And she even hinted I might be a contender to write her life story, all twenty-eight years of it.’

  ‘Wow, that’s amazing – would you like to?’

  Matt frowned, shaking his head and returning his gaze to the window. The clogged grime of Wandsworth had been replaced by the ordered world of the rural suburbs, shining and civilised under the hot sun. ‘If the money was right, maybe. She’d hardly be an easy employer, but then …’ He hesitated. ‘It’s beginning to dawn on me that when Josh starts at full-time school – wherever the hell it is —’

  ‘I thought he’d been accepted by St Leonard’s.’

  ‘He has, but I’m just not sure either that it’s the right place or that I could keep pace with the fees.’

  ‘I see.’ She looked surprised. ‘Sorry – you were going to say something and I interrupted.’

  ‘Just that if I carry on like this I’m hardly going to get to see him at all. Being out four or five times a week doesn’t matter so much now because he’s around for the afternoons and heading for bed by the time I leave. But as he gets older the evenings are going to be when he needs me most. Even if it’s only for help with French vocab and how to construct an equilateral triangle without a compass.’

  ‘God, I wouldn’t have a clue on that,’ burst out Louise with a laugh, before adding in a different, smaller voice, ‘Anthony’s never around in the evenings.’

  ‘No, but at least one of you is there.’

  ‘True.’ She smiled tightly. ‘When the time comes I’ll just have to swat up on geometry.’

  ‘But of course it’s not just the homework,’ persisted Matt, ‘it’s more being there, to have arguments with, to grate against, to have a laugh and a …’ He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

  ‘The truth is I love what I do, but it’s so dreadfully antisocial and selfish. The thought of abandoning it fills me with terror. But then I can’t help thinking that if I got commissioned to write one book it might lead to another – Oliver has had all sorts of offers since his name got into print. Or maybe I could simply broaden my base,’ he continued, thinking out loud, ‘become a freelancer, more of an arts generalist. Money could be a problem, but with property so high, if I got short of cash I could easily sell up and move somewhere else …’

  ‘Oh, Matt, you wouldn’t want to move,’ she exclaimed, adding quickly, ‘But you are so right, about change – it is scary, it takes courage, but sometimes it is the only thing to do.’

  ‘Sentiments which Kath would no doubt share,’ he remarked darkly. ‘You know, I still can’t help wondering where the hell she is. I’ve tried not mindi
ng, but I can’t help it.’

  ‘Neither can I … neither can Gillian.’

  Reminded thus of the sombre business of the day, they continued the rest of the journey in silence, sealing their windows tightly so as to enjoy the full benefits of the air-conditioning.

  The pews of the small Saxon church were so packed that Matt found himself wondering what hidden charms had lain buried in the bristling grey- lipped exterior of his father-in-law. Or maybe death did trigger a genuine volte-face in emotions, he mused, remembering Gillian’s outbursts of despair on the telephone that week, the peculiar display of longing for someone towards whom she had shown so much criticism and hostility.

  Seeing only half a pew’s worth of space at the front of the church, left obviously for Gillian and the bevy of supporters who had helped her cope with the trials of the week, Matt and Louise turned towards the back, where several small wooden chairs had been set out in front of the vestry door.

  While the organ wound its way through an introductory, Matt cast his eyes up to the gnarled beams criss-crossing the ceiling, recalling with some wonderment that this was where he and Kath were originally to have sworn undying love; until Gillian’s manipulative tantrums over organising the event had propelled them towards a registry office instead. Outside, the mid-morning sun was pulsing life into the stained-glass windows. Each segment of glass shimmered like liquid, projecting faint rainbow images on to the worn stone floor. Motes of golden dust danced in the sunbeams, angled from the windows like heavenly wands. Taking it all in, the celebratory beauty of it, somehow ironic against the dark clothes and taut faces of the congregation, Matt felt his eyes fill with tears; not for Lionel, he realised quickly, so much as for himself, for the rubble of his personal life, and because of one of those sporadic stabs of loss – invariably triggered by a funeral service – for his mother.