by Tess Stimson
When Katherine’s children were younger, I was welcome in her home. My son-in-law may have been looking after the children in theory, but in practice, I was the one who dropped them off at ballet and football, helped them with history projects, babysat when both their parents were off working. Free from James’s malevolent shadow, I loved my grandchildren in a way I hadn’t dared love my daughters. And Katherine knew her husband’s limitations; she was grateful to have me to stay. These days, you’d think I was bringing the Black Death across her threshold.
My stockinged toes curl over the edge of the top stair. Katherine really should have helped me buy that lovely ground-floor apartment in Salisbury. At my age, I shouldn’t have to deal with stairs. I can’t believe she couldn’t manage the bigger mortgage, given the amount she’s earning. She was just being contrary.
With my free hand, I pat my cardigan pocket. Wouldn’t do to lose my phone now.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath and let go of the banister.
Katherine isn’t the child I should have had, because James Drayton isn’t the man I should have married. I knew the wedding was a mistake even as I walked up the aisle, but at just eighteen years old I had little choice in the matter. My parents didn’t approve of the local boy I loved, so they bundled me into marriage with my father’s business partner, and that was that.
James wasn’t a bad man. I didn’t love him, but that’s not necessarily a prerequisite for a good marriage. The problem was, James did love me. Quite horribly, in fact; and he never forgave me for it.
Perhaps if I hadn’t been quite so young, I’d have known better than to spurn him so openly. I’d have understood how to handle his ardent approaches in bed without humiliating him, and to turn his passion to my advantage. Who knows, maybe I might have learned to love him back, given time. But what girl of eighteen either knows or cares about such things?
At forty-one, James seemed like Methuselah to me, so grey and lined and old in comparison with Robert, the boy I loved. When Robert kissed me, I felt it in every part of my young body: my nipples hardened, my legs buckled, and I burned with hot, throbbing need. At James’s clumsy touch, I felt nothing but revulsion. Robert was strong and virile, and if he was penniless, he still made my heart beat faster and my breasts ache. How could James, obsessed with his investments and his businesses, dry and dull as ditchwater, possibly hope to compete?
But my father was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. His property business had been driven to the wall by a mixture of bad luck and foolishness; he owed far more than he could hope to repay in two lifetimes. When James Drayton offered to invest in his company in return for ‘encouragement’ in his marital hopes, my father leaped at the chance. Knowing he’d had no choice didn’t make his betrayal sting any less.
London might be swinging, but decent girls still obeyed their parents in those days. Robert called me a coward and ran off to join the army. Bitter and lovesick, I determined to make my husband as unhappy as I was. I was more successful than I could have hoped: his ardour quickly coalesced into cold, implacable hatred, and with divorce out of the question, our marriage became a war of attrition. Every night, James came to my bed to demand his rights. I lay there as cold and stiff as a board, refusing to give him the satisfaction of letting him see me cry. With no job, and as yet no child to distract me, I had plenty of time to sit at home and brood.
And think about Robert, the man I should have married.
A year later, Robert came back. He gave me a simple choice: leave James now and run away with him, regardless of the consequences, or I would never see him again.
I had twenty-four hours to choose. I was up all night, literally sick with fear and indecision. The thought of spending the rest of my life without Robert, locked into this appalling marriage for ever, was unbearable. But if I left, James would withdraw his financial backing, and my parents would be ruined. He’d fight divorce tooth and nail; in the end, I might win my freedom, but I’d end up penniless.
Leave James, and I would destroy those I loved. Stay, and I destroy myself.
When he returned for my answer, I chose Robert. As James watched, white-faced with shock and anger, I ran upstairs to throw skirts and blouses into my suitcase, dizzy with the enormity of what I was doing. Once more I was overwhelmed with nausea, and yet again ran to the bathroom to vomit.
And then realized I’d never be able to leave.
The balance of power in our marriage changed for ever with my daughter’s birth. James had won, and he went on winning. I couldn’t ever leave him and risk losing my child. So I bit my tongue and accepted defeat as graciously as I could. When Katherine was born, I let James name her after his viper of a mother and ignored his snide remarks about the baby having Robert’s eyes. I knew he didn’t really believe she was Robert’s child; for a start, the dates didn’t fit, and as she grew older, it became obvious she was James’s spitting image. True, he greeted Katherine’s arrival with complete indifference, but that was hardly surprising. James was a cold man at best, and babies are the province of women, not men. I told myself he would show interest in his daughter when she was old enough to become interesting.
But three years later, when Lindsay was born and James fell in love at first sight, I realized James’s dislike of Katherine was personal.
James had discovered the best way to hurt me was through my elder daughter, and he never missed a chance to twist the knife. He lavished time, money and affection on Lindsay, but never so much as glanced Katherine’s way. Her Father’s Day gifts went unopened, her childish paintings were consigned to the bin. If Lindsay brought home a C, she was celebrated as if she’d won a Nobel Prize. Katherine earned straight As year after year, but never received a single word of praise. The harder she worked to make her father proud, the more he criticized her.
I never interfered. I loved Katherine, of course I did; but she was also the anchor trapping me in this miserable marriage, the reason I’d lost Robert. And so I kept silent and watched my daughter struggle to understand why she didn’t deserve to be loved.
Only once did I speak up: when she brought Edward home. I knew he wasn’t the man for her, and was initially confused by James’s uncharacteristic enthusiasm for the match; he even offered to pay for the wedding, the first time he’d ever willingly given his elder daughter anything. But then I realized James could see in Edward precisely what I saw. James realized his prospective son-in-law was a reed that would break in the wind. He’d weigh Katherine down, stop her from following her dreams. I couldn’t bear my daughter to follow me into a dead-end marriage with a man who didn’t deserve her. Katherine was twenty-three and had more courage in her little finger than I’d ever possessed. She’d defied her father to put herself through university, and again when she took the summer off to travel to Italy. The world was her oyster, if she wanted it.
I did everything I could to dissuade her from marrying Edward, but without success. ‘You’ve never taken an interest in anything I’ve done before,’ she said coldly. ‘Why should I listen to you now?’
It has given me no satisfaction to be proved right.
‘It could’ve been a lot worse,’ I tell Katherine brightly when she comes to collect me from the hospital on Sunday afternoon. ‘No bones broken, that’s the main thing.’
Katherine frowns. ‘You still haven’t explained what really happened, Eleanor. Did you have some sort of turn? Were you feeling dizzy?’
‘I’m perfectly fine, dear. Ask the doctors. I tripped, that’s all. Loose carpet probably. Lucky I had my phone on me to call for help, or it could’ve been a lot worse. I did tell you I was having trouble with stairs.’
Katherine eases my wheelchair down the ramp towards the hospital car park. ‘Well, obviously you’ll have to come home with us now,’ she sighs. ‘I can give you Agness’s bedroom, and she can take the sofa-bed in the den.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t, dear. I wouldn’t want to put you out . . .’
‘Eleanor, what wi
ll put me out is having to drop everything and dash to the hospital on another mercy run,’ she says crisply. ‘I need you at home, where someone can keep an eye on you.’
‘I’m not a child, Katherine.’
‘A child would be easier to deal with. A child would do as it’s told.’
‘How did Agness enjoy her party last night?’ I ask disingenuously.
Katherine jolts the wheelchair to a halt. ‘Clearly you know the answer to that,’ she says tightly.
‘She’s fourteen, dear. You can’t expect to wrap her in cotton wool, not these days. Of course she wants a little freedom and independence, it’s only natural. She works hard at school, she deserves a little fun. All work and no play, remember.’
‘Agness certainly doesn’t work hard at school,’ Katherine snaps, ‘as you’d know if you ever actually read her school reports. As for all work and no play, I brought home straight As every single term and I wasn’t allowed to join the Youth Club, never mind stay out at raves all night! She’s fourteen, Eleanor! I was still playing with dolls at that age!’
‘Things are different these days, dear. You have to move with the times. You can’t get stuck in the past, Katherine, or you’ll be left behind.’
Katherine grasps the wheelchair handles and pushes me through the car park to her ancient Land Rover with rather more vigour than necessary. I realize she didn’t have the easiest time growing up, but this sort of chippy grudge-bearing does no one any good.
Nor am I in the least surprised that Agness is behaving badly, once I have a taste of the atmosphere at home. One could cut the tension with a knife.
‘This isn’t good for the children,’ I tell Katherine as Edward finally storms out of the house following a taut, whispered ‘discussion’ in the kitchen that fools no one. ‘No wonder Agness is upset. I may not always have agreed with your father, but we never argued in earshot of you children. We showed a united front.’
‘No, you never argued with Dad,’ Katherine says bitterly. ‘You left that to me.’
‘You get more flies with honey than vinegar, Katherine. You never did learn.’
She slams the empty kettle on the stove. ‘Would you like to know what Ned and I were arguing about?’ she challenges.
‘I’d prefer not to get involved, dear. It’s none of my business.’
‘It never is, is it? Look the other way, pretend everything is fine. That’s you all over.’
‘I’m not one to air my dirty linen—’
‘Ned wants me to put you in a home,’ she interrupts fiercely. ‘He wants us to sell the house I bought you so we can pay off some of our debts. I’d say that’s your business, wouldn’t you?’
‘He’s just upset,’ I say serenely. ‘He doesn’t mean it. Where would I live?’
She stares at me for a long moment.
‘How do you do it?’ she demands finally.
‘Do what, dear?’
‘Sail through life without ever having to get your hands dirty. Letting everyone else take care of you, take care of the mess and the chaos.’ Her body is rigid with anger. ‘When was the last time you worried about paying the mortgage, Eleanor? When did you last lie awake wondering if you were doing the right thing sending your son to a school you couldn’t really afford, when he’d probably be much happier at the local comprehensive anyway? You’ve never taken responsibility for anything in your life. You’ve never even held down a job!’
Her voice shakes; I can’t determine whether it’s with fury or tears.
‘You’ve no idea what it’s like to work a seventy-hour week just to keep a roof over your family’s head when you’d much rather be at home making jam tarts with your babies! You sit there like a cuckoo with your beak open, take, take, take, expecting me to buy you a house, pay your bills, jump whenever you snap your fingers. Lindsay’s just as bad! Katherine’s the one with the big job, she can afford another set of school fees. When do I get any say in the matter? What if I don’t want the big job any more? What if I want to give it all up and go and . . . go and keep bees?’
‘Do you want to keep bees?’
‘No, of course I don’t want to keep bees!’
‘Then why mention them?’ I reach for my biscuit and dunk it in my cooling tea. ‘We all make choices in life, Katherine. And we all have to live with them.’
‘But that’s just it! I didn’t have a choice! Dad didn’t give me a free ride like Lindsay! I had to fight for everything. And you never stuck up for me, not once!’
‘I really don’t see what any of this has to do with me.’
Her voice is scathing. ‘Of course you don’t.’
I sip my tea. Katherine is more like her father than she imagines. Best to ride the storm and let it blow itself out.
‘Don’t you think I’d like to stay at home baking pies while someone else worried about how to pay for the apples?’ Katherine exclaims. ‘Every day I go into work sick with worry in case this is the day I’m fired and I have to come home and yank Guy and Agness out of school. Do you know how long we could survive without my salary before we lost the house – yours too? Four months. That’s it. I’ve got enough put by for four months. I spend my life battling to keep my head above water at work, and then I come home and have to start all over again. Sort out the car insurance. Check the council tax has been paid. Book the cat into the cattery while we’re away this summer. Make Guy an appointment at the dentist. Organize the boiler to be serviced. It never stops!’ She sucks in a deep breath. ‘I’m just a glorified skivvy and no one ever, ever offers to help!’
My daughter needs to learn to count her blessings. She’s pushing forty, and she’s suddenly realized her life hasn’t turned out the way she thought it would. Well, we could all say that.
‘Do you,’ I ask equably, ‘ever actually ask?’
Kate
‘It had nothing to do with Eleanor,’ I insist. ‘What happened was hardly her fault.’
‘Oh, I think Eleanor has to shoulder some of the blame,’ Julia says evenly.
Eleanor has spent her life wrapped in a cocoon like a spun-glass ball, too precious to be exposed to real life. It would be foolish to expect her to change now.
Why did she never, ever speak up for me? Not once? What did I do that was so wrong?
Despite myself, I start to cry again. I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, already ashamed of my emotional meltdown. Until now, I haven’t told a soul what happened two months ago; apart from Julia, Ned is the only other person who knows. I don’t whine or cry; certainly not in front of other people. I pull myself together and get on with things. I’m a coper. ‘Ned knows how much pressure I’m under,’ I mumble. ‘It’s not like I wanted Eleanor to come and stay. It’s bad enough Agness kicking up such a fuss about giving up her bedroom without Ned taking her side.’
Julia picks up the tissue box and silently hands it to me.
‘This is ridiculous.’ I blow my nose firmly. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me . . .’
‘Kate. Darling. Quite aside from what happened in February, at the ripe old age of not-quite-forty you’ve just done something utterly impulsive and selfish for the first time in your entire life. You haven’t thought about the effect it might have on your husband and children. You haven’t even put work first. You’ve behaved completely out of character, and now you’re wondering if you’ve lost your mind.’ She sits back with a sigh. ‘I’m not surprised. It’d be a miracle if you weren’t in a mess.’
I screw the tissue up into a ball. ‘I hate to ask, but do you think you could take me to the airport? Or drop me in the village so I can get a taxi? If I leave now, I can probably make it home in time for dinner . . .’
‘Everything’s suddenly fine, is it?’
I drop my eyes to my lap, nervously shredding the tissue into pieces.
‘You can’t brush this under the carpet,’ Julia says softly. ‘Less than ten weeks ago, you lost someone you loved. Maybe it was for the best, but it�
�s still a major deal. Ned should never have reacted the way he did—’
‘That had nothing to do with me leaving,’ I say sharply.
‘Of course it did. It’s the only reason. You haven’t forgiven him,’ she says calmly.
I should never have told Julia the truth. She knows me too well.
‘Thousands of women have it much worse than me, and they don’t just down tools and run away,’ I protest. ‘I don’t know why I got into such a state. Not enough sleep, I expect. Working too hard.’
‘Look, Kate. I’m not going to tell you what to do. You can tell yourself you’re under pressure at work and the kids and your mother and Ned all drive you mad, but we both know that’s not why you’re here. Everyone thinks about walking out of their lives now and again, but most of us never actually do it. Something tipped you over the edge.’ She sighs. ‘What happened to you was huge. You’ve been burying your head in the sand for weeks, but sooner or later, you’ll have to deal with it. Until you do, there’s no point going back.’
I can’t go back. I feel dizzy with fear at the mere thought. I drop my head between my knees. I can’t breathe. I can’t get any air . . .
‘Kate? Kate, are you OK?’
Julia thrusts a glass of water into my hand. I gulp it gratefully, forcing the panic back down. Don’t let the fear win.
‘Oh, Kate. Look at you.’ She puts her hand over mine and smiles gently, her blue eyes filled with pity. ‘You’re a wreck. What use do you think you’d be, going home like this? You’ll end up having a nervous breakdown. You can’t go anywhere until you sort yourself out.’
