Freeing Grace

by Charity Norman

  ‘You might like to hang on to this,’ she said, handing Leila a bottle of mineral water. ‘Don’t worry, nobody noticed. I think it was probably those wretched beef wellingtons. I should sue Pertwell’s, if I were you. Let’s hope the whole mob doesn’t come down with food poisoning.’

  Grateful for this generous fiction, Leila accepted the bottle.

  Her sister-in-law nodded efficiently. Her hair had abandoned its clip. ‘I’ll see you off. David, why don’t you nip ahead and fetch the car from wherever it’s parked?’

  As they made their way down the salmon-pink drive, Monica rubbed her palms together, as though wrestling with some dilemma.

  ‘Look . . . I’m sorry. I gather my mother was extremely rude and tactless.’

  Leila dipped her head, screwing up her face in pained recollection. ‘I was pretty rude to her. And today, of all days. Unforgivable.’ She sighed. ‘I seem to be churning out a lot of apologies at the moment.’

  ‘No. What she said to you was quite ridiculous.’

  ‘Even Christopher managed to behave better than me,’ moaned Leila.

  ‘Ah!’ Monica looked smug. ‘I put him on the teetotallers’ table at the last minute. We were plying him with sparkling grape juice all the way through lunch.’

  ‘That’s a cunning plan.’

  ‘Nicky’s idea.’ Monica’s smile faded. ‘I know I’m a bit pompous at times, Leila. It isn’t easy, you know, being Hilda’s daughter. I love her dearly, and she has many qualities I admire, but she was never the most sympathetic of mothers.’

  Leila was taken aback. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘None of us could ever match up to her expectations. The boys went off to boarding school. They had some other influences. I didn’t.’

  Fascinated, Leila watched her sister-in-law’s robust profile. All the no-nonsense arrogance, the overblown confidence, was gone.

  Monica raised her shoulders. ‘Dad wasn’t home much, but when he was around their incompatibility was exhausting. They’re celebrating forty years of civilised dislike. They’ve actually made an art form of it.’ The two continued to stroll. ‘We’ve each dealt with it in our own fashion. I’ve tried to do the Right Thing. Married money, set up Pertwell Party Solutions, produced grandchildren.’ She put a hand to her mouth.

  ‘Oh, gosh. Sorry. That was crass.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Go on, Monica.’

  ‘Well, Michael’s become completely materialistic. Designer clothes, car and wife. It’s the only form of self-expression he allows himself, and it earns him parental approval.’

  ‘Ah. I get it!’ Leila laughed suddenly. ‘David’s gone the other way, hasn’t he? Black sheep, black cassock, black wife. He’s thumbing his nose in style.’

  They had reached the end of the drive. Monica stood stolidly on the pavement, gazing at Leila with a faint, admiring smile. ‘Listen. Don’t say another word about that row,’ she advised. ‘And for heaven’s sake, don’t go apologising. Promise me? I’ll be cross if you apologise. She was well out of order.’

  ‘So . . . we pretend it never happened?’

  Monica nodded firmly. ‘Absolutely. Don’t give it another thought. I predict the old girl will treat you with more respect in future.’

  The car drew up beside them and David jumped out, leaving the engine running.

  ‘Thanks for a great day,’ he said, hurriedly kissing his sister. ‘Here’s a birthday present for Freya—if you could pass it on? Say our goodbyes for us.’

  Before they pulled away, Monica leaned down to Leila’s open window.

  ‘Well done, Leila,’ she said, clutching Freya’s parcel. ‘Well done. And I truly hope the two of you will become parents soon. You’ll be so much better at it than I am.’

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I spent the best part of three weeks in London, trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t a fly in the Harrison web, all wrapped up and waiting to have my blood sucked.

  Matt sent a stream of text messages, but nothing much seemed to have changed in Coptree. A couple of social workers had set up camp down there, and the Harrisons were all busy behaving like one of those grinning families in the toothpaste adverts. I decided I was well out of it.

  I stayed with some old friends, Bill and Lottie, in Hammersmith. I kept out of their way as much as I could. They had a new baby, and all night long I heard it crying, and then doors creaking open and poor old Bill or Lottie padding patiently along the corridor.

  They had a toddler too, called Florence. She was pretty cute, actually. I owned a greenstone key ring in the shape of two humpback whales. It was just a gimmick, made for the tourists who go whale-watching off Kaikoura. Mum sent it for my birthday. The whales were a mother and calf, and when you pressed the button their eyes would flash and you could hear this whale song. It was a love song, mother to child. It was an eerie sound, really, but when I showed it to the little girl, Florence, she was totally fascinated. She’d sidle up and pull the keys out of my pocket, and then plump herself down in a corner with her legs stuck out, and press the button. She used to sit there for ages, imitating the electronic cries and running her fat little finger around the outlines of the whales. Drove us all nuts. In the end I let her keep the thing.

  I wasn’t in the house much. I completely rejigged my finances and the tenancy in Clapham. I collected gear and visas and inoculations. One of the jabs was in my butt, and the man-hating nurse used a bloody monstrous needle.

  I caught up with a lot of people. Didn’t see Anna, though. I tried phoning her, even dropped in at the flat one evening, but she wasn’t there so I left a note. Just standing at the door—every scratch on its surface was like an old friend—made me feel screwy, as though I was living two lives at once.

  Early one morning, about a week after I’d left Coptree, Florence came banging on my bedroom door. She waddled up to the bed, wearing pyjamas that made her look like Tigger, and smacked a letter down on my face.

  ‘Postman Pat!’ she squawked, and walloped me on the nose five more times with the envelope until I hid under the duvet. I heard her laughing uproariously, and surfaced just in time to see an orange-striped bottom disappearing around the door. Then I heard whales singing, out on the landing.

  I knew the handwriting on the envelope. I’d seen it before, scrawled across a postcard with a picture of two Arab sailing boats in the sunset.

  Hadn’t expected her to give me another thought.

  Dear Jake,

  I told you I’d write. Only rogue English bluestockings use real paper nowadays!

  It’s crazy here. Nothing new in that, I hear you say. The place has been crawling with busybodies of various shapes and sizes. Clipboards and serious expressions. They want Grace to visit us here so they can assess us looking after her. Our own granddaughter! How patronising is that? Nobody assesses other grandmothers who take care of their children, and I bet most of them aren’t as capable as I am. Hamisi was looking after eight grandchildren—who assessed him? This is officious, bureaucratic and intrusive.

  You have to hand it to Perry and me. We’re giving the performance of our lives. If we were in a Gilbert and Sullivan ( United Fronts, they’d call it) we’d keep bursting into song. Perry’s the dashing military man, gallantly pulling out chairs for his interrogators. You’d never recognise him. He’s all twinkly and self-deprecating. And I keep twittering away.

  God, Jake, what is this about? Grace, of course. We must rescue our precious child. Did you see, there was a horrible story in the paper this week about foster carers who abused the children in their care— systematic cruelty over twenty years of fostering. Twenty! I’ll spare you the details. It makes me shudder to think of Grace, all alone with nobody to protect her.

  On the brighter side, Matt’s a new man. He’s stopped truanting and is trying to catch up on coursework. We’re getting on so much better.

  Well, I hope your arrangements are going smoothly. I hear you’ve got yourself a heroic new truck, simply bristling with mach
ismo. Boys and their toys. Have you reconciled with Anna yet, down on bended knee? Go on, risk a little.

  We look forward to your return, whenever that may be. Mealtimes are rather ghastly, as you can imagine, and we could do with a little cheerful normality.

  With love,

  Susie, or Deborah, or whoever I am x

  I folded the letter and slipped it between the pages of my book, intending to read it again later. If they put their minds to it, maybe the Harrisons could pull this thing off. They were, after all, the baby’s family.

  I hopped out of bed and headed for the shower, wondering whether or not I was pleased to represent a little cheerful normality. Perhaps it was better than nothing.

  I’d arranged to see a solicitor later that morning. It seemed like a good time to get a will drawn up, since I was planning to drive across the Sahara and various war-torn regions. It wasn’t going to be very complicated. Mum got the lot, or my brother Jesse if she checked out first. Dad was specifically to be excluded from everything, whatever the circumstances. It would almost be worth getting myself killed in Chad or somewhere just to see the old git’s face when he found out.

  That same evening I had dinner with Lucy at an Italian near her flat. She was nipping down to Coptree the following morning, to see Grace and meet the assessment team. She’d been going home quite a lot, apparently.

  ‘I’m slightly worried about Dad,’ she remarked casually, her eyes determinedly on the menu. ‘He’s not in a very good place.’

  I was concerned despite myself. Lucy was always a mistress of understatement.

  ‘How’s that?’

  She squeezed some garlic bread between her finger and thumb. Her mouth had tightened a little.

  ‘He went downhill fast when Deborah left,’ she said. ‘He seemed to improve when she first got back, but it was short-lived. In fact, now he’s worse. He puts on a wonderful act for the social workers and then collapses.’

  ‘Anything to be done?’

  ‘Well, maybe he could try a change of medication. But he’s refusing to see the doctor again.’

  With an obvious effort, she changed the subject and began gossiping about Kenneth the bored security guard who had got himself onto a reality television show. This, I have to say, was riveting news. We forgot Perry for a while; we laughed and chatted just like old times, until, innocently tucking into my cannelloni, I mentioned that I’d heard from Deborah. Fatal mistake.

  Lucy looked as though I’d laced her wine with paint stripper. ‘You’re not still hanging around her, are you?’

  ‘I’m not hanging around anyone.’

  There was a burst of applause from a group of young professionals at the next table. Stripy shirts. Loosened ties. Eating, drinking and being merry as tomorrow they might be sacked. One of them was opening birthday presents.

  ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘I don’t fancy your stepmother.’

  ‘Jake.’ She shook her head, sadly. ‘You fool no one except yourself.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘You don’t know yourself.’

  ‘That’s a mercy.’ I leaned closer. ‘Don’t you feel even a little bit sorry for Deborah? She’s never had the freedom you have, and her brain’s just as good as yours. You probably owe your success to her.’

  ‘Some of it, certainly. And your point is . . . ?’

  ‘She had to give up her education and her freedom when she was just a kid. And now here she is, back where she started.’

  ‘She made her bed. She can damn well lie in it. You just watch out she doesn’t lie in yours, too. If she hasn’t already . . . ?’

  Exasperated, I dropped my fork with a clatter. ‘Look, I’ve told you . . .’ I stopped, suddenly baffled. ‘Why the anger, Luce? It doesn’t suit you at all.’

  A waiter brought us salad in a square bowl, casting a longing glance at Lucy’s legs. She thanked him in a spray of Italian and watched with narrowed eyes as he hurried away. Then she said, ‘You have no idea.’

  I waited, but she just attacked her pizza like George sighting the dragon. At the next table, they were arguing about the bill. Someone asked to see the manager.

  ‘So tell me,’ I prompted. ‘If I’ve no idea.’

  She tipped back her chair, eyeing me. ‘She’s left me and Dad before, you know.’ Her chin was tilted, dark head high on her ballet dancer’s neck. ‘Yes, I see you do know. I was a tiny child. She slipped into the place of my mother, made me love her, and then . . .’ She gave a little shrug. ‘She left. I cried for weeks. I wrapped myself up in a curtain, hiding from life. I thought the world had ended.’

  ‘But she was young. Much younger than you are now.’

  ‘Is youth an excuse, Jake? Really?’ She let her chair drop forward with a reverberating crash. ‘The day she came back to us was one of the happiest of my life. Ironic, isn’t it? She only scurried home because she was pregnant.’

  ‘She missed you. She told me so.’

  Lucy looked cynical. ‘My father is worth a thousand of her. He forgave her infidelity, he forgave her betrayal. He did the right thing and he married her. Took her word for it that Matt was his. And was she grateful? Oh, no. She had to start going on her smutty holidays.’

  ‘I don’t think it was as simple as that.’

  ‘Oh? Were you there?’

  I met her eyes. There was a dangerous gleam in them.

  ‘Well, I was. I didn’t suspect a thing until a few years ago. Couldn’t believe it when I found his letters.’

  I was lost. ‘Found whose letters?’

  Her mouth curved, bitterly. The manager had arrived at the next table: a small, bald man in a suit. He was looking at the bill while a waiter hovered nearby.

  ‘What’s his name? Rod, that’s it. Rod. How appropriate. Perhaps you’ve met him? No, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know. He writes a sizzler, does Rod. Ought to send them off to Playboy, make his fortune. I found lots of them in her desk. The pile hasn’t grown recently. I expect he sends emails instead.’

  Lucy knocked back her wine, lowered it to the table, glared at me. ‘Right up to that moment when I found her little gold key and opened the drawer, I worshipped her. I thought she was the most beautiful, the sweetest, the cleverest woman in the world. Matt and I were her little team of cheerleaders. We thought she loved us as much as we loved her. And the whole time, we were no more than an inconvenience.’

  ‘No,’ I protested. ‘No. That isn’t right.’

  ‘What other interpretation is there? All those years she brought us up, she was longing to be somewhere else, with someone else. Not with us or our father. All those years, she wasn’t the person I thought she was. And as final proof of our irrelevance—whoops!—she’s dumped us again.’

  I considered whether I could safely repeat anything Deborah had told me. Probably not, I decided. I’d only dig myself into a hole.

  ‘Did you have it out with her?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I did. She never tried to deny it. She couldn’t, could she?’

  ‘I hope you didn’t show these letters to Perry?’

  ‘I spared him that. But he knew, for God’s sake, he isn’t stupid. He was vulnerable, her prisoner. But she didn’t care, oh no. She just dangled her next trip to Africa in front of him with her pussycat smile.’

  The group at the next table were finally paying the bill and standing up to leave. Lucy leaned forward, looking into my eyes.

  ‘It was evil. He was down, and she kicked him, just for fun. Not once, Jake. Again, and again, and again. Year after year, she trotted off with her tail up like a bitch on heat. He was forced to wave and smile and chirrup, “See you soon, my darling, come home soon!” ’

  There wasn’t anything I could point to as factually incorrect in all of this. But it wasn’t quite fair, all the same.

  ‘I think she has her own side of the story,’ I argued. ‘And Perry’s symptoms began before they were even married.’

  ‘Agreed. But if she had been loyal, he might hav
e beaten them.’

  ‘It can’t have been easy to be married to him.’

  She snorted. ‘Do me a favour. There are plenty of women who would be delighted to take Dad on. He’s cultured, he’s dignified, and he’s still a handsome man.’

  I sighed. ‘Even so . . . not easy, Luce.’

  ‘I had to come home and be with him,’ she said. The fine, clear eyes were brimming. ‘Every time she went away. I watched my darling father disintegrate, and at the hands of a person I had once adored. How would you feel, Jake? Would you want to forgive?’

  I thought about my own father. Jesse and I could tell when he was in a rage just from the way he thrashed his quad bike up to the sheds; just from the fury of the engine note. We used to hide in the orchard, and we could hear him yelling and Mum crying, but we couldn’t protect her. Forgiveness wasn’t on the cards, so far as he was concerned.

  Lucy was watching me. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I thought not. Well, neither do I.’

  It was a week or so before Florence delivered another letter.

  Dear Jake,

  Well, it’s been grim. The Gestapo have turned up repeatedly—as promised—and the novelty is wearing very thin, but I’ve been domesticated and steady enough to look after ten granddaughters. Grace comes here as part of the assessment, and she has stolen all our hearts. Her cot’s in my room! Perry is sweet with her, seems genuinely head over heels. He picks her up at the first murmur and never wants to put her down. She’s the only thing that lifts his mood.

  As for Matt, I’d say they have a real bond. Grace lights up when he hoves into view. But it insults our precious time to have these people watching us. Turns our love into a spectator sport.

  Someone called the ‘Children’s Guardian’ showed up today. A scarily elegant Indian woman. Effortlessly authoritative. Her job, apparently, is to speak for Grace. That must involve some mental gymnastics, since the poor child’s only four months old. Anyway, we got on rather well. I wanted to confide in her.

  The court hearing is next Thursday. Stuart thinks the local authority will withdraw their application on the day. Then they’ll ‘place’ her with us. That’s Big Brother speak for letting us have her. There will still be some sort of order—Stuart did explain it all to me, but I got bored and started writing shopping lists.