The Other Family

by Joanna Trollope

  She pul ed the Lorca towards her and opened it randomly. She gazed at the page without taking it in. She felt dreadful about Chrissie, dreadful about her palpable apprehension at the future and revulsion for the present. But she couldn’t help her by pretending to feel and be something other than she felt and was. She couldn’t want to keep the piano or hate the Newcastle family just to make Chrissie feel temporarily better. Nor could she, just now, think of a way to explain to Chrissie without angering and hurting her further that, if Chrissie tried to refuse her the freedom to go and explore her newly realized amplitude, then she was going to just take the freedom anyway. What form that taking would assume she couldn’t yet visualize, but take it she would.

  Amy sighed. She shoved the book and the newspaper into her schoolbook bag, and stood up. The coffee and cake came to almost four pounds; four pounds, it occurred to her, that she real y ought to be saving towards whatever future this freedom urge resolved itself into. Oh wel , she thought, today is today and the carrot cake has given me enough energy to face Mr Ferguson as he comes out of class.

  She put a crumpled five-pound note on the table and weighted it with her coffee cup, and then she sauntered out into the street, her book bag over her shoulder like a pedlar’s pack.

  Sitting inoffensively at her desk in the office on Front Street in Tynemouth, Glenda wanted to tel Margarett hat whatever she had on her mind – and Glenda wished Margaret to know that she was extremely sympathetic to al burdens on Margaret’s mind – there was no reason to snap at her. She had merely asked, out of manners, real y, if Margaret had enjoyed her evening with Mr Harrison, and Margaret had responded – with a sharpness of tone that Glenda thought was quite uncal ed for – that fancy French food was not for her and that Bernie Harrison took way too much for granted.

  Glenda swal owed once or twice. She drank from the plastic cup of water – she would much rather have had tea – which Margaret told her she should drink because everyone in Scott’s office in Newcastle had this fetish about drinking water al day long.

  Then she raised her chin a fraction and said, ‘Did he make a pass at you, then?’

  Margaret, reading glasses on, staring at her screen, gave a smal snort.

  ‘He did not.’

  Glenda wondered for a second if Margaret was in fact slightly disappointed that Mr Harrison hadn’t tried anything on. Then she remembered that they had known each other since primary school, and that Margaret never made a particular sartorial effort if she had a meeting with him, and dismissed disappointment as an idea.

  Instead, she took another sip of water and said, ‘Oh,’ and then, after a few more seconds, ‘Good. I suppose—’ and then, a bit later and defensively, ‘I wasn’t prying—’

  Margaret said nothing. She went on typing rapidly – Glenda knew she was writing a difficult e-mail to a young comedian whose act Margaret considered better suited to the South than the North-East – with her mouth set in a line that indicated, Glenda imagined, that her teeth were clenched. Glenda was familiar with clenched teeth. Living with Barry’s methods of enduring his disability had resulted in so much teeth-clenching on her part that her dentist said she must do exercises to relax her jaw, otherwise she would grind her teeth to stumps and have a permanent headache. She opened her mouth slightly now, to free up her teeth and jaw, and tried not to remember that Barry had managed to start the day in as disagreeable a mood as Margaret now seemed to be in, and that neither of them appeared to be aware that the person who was real y suffering was her.

  Margaret stopped typing. She took off her reading glasses, put them back on again, and reread what she had written.

  ‘Doesn’t matter how I put it,’ she said to the screen. ‘A no’s a no, isn’t it? He won’t be fooled.’

  Glenda drank more water. She would not speak until Margaret spoke to her, and pleasantly, as Margaret herself had taught her to do when answering the telephone to even the most irritating cal er. It was hard to concentrate with a personality the size of Margaret’s, in a manifestly bad mood, eight feet away, but she would try. She had commissions to work out – the clients Margaret had represented for over ten years paid two and a half per cent less than those she had had for only five years, and five per cent less than anyone taken on currently – and she would simply do those calculations methodical y, and drink her water, until Margaret saw fit to behave in what Glenda had learned to cal a civilized manner.

  ‘Poor boy,’ Margaret said. ‘Refusal sent!’ She glanced up. ‘Coffee?’

  Usual y, she said, ‘Coffee, dear?’

  Glenda said, as she always said, ‘I’d prefer tea, please.’ Normal y, after saying that, she added, ‘But I’l get them,’ but this morning she added nothing, and stayed where she was, looking at her screen.

  Margaret didn’t seem to notice. She went into the little cubbyhole that led to the lavatory and housed a shelf and an electric plug and a kettle.

  Glenda heard her fil the kettle at the lavatory basin, and then plug it in, and then she came back into the room and said, ‘I’ve got Rosie Dawes coming at midday, and I’m giving lunch to Greg Barber and I’m going to hear these jazz girls tonight.’

  Glenda nodded. She knew al that. She had entered al these appointments in the diary herself.

  Margaret perched on the edge of Glenda’s desk. Glenda didn’t look at her.

  ‘You know,’ Margaret said, in a much less aggravated tone, ‘there was a time when I was out five or six nights a week at some club or show or other. There was always a client to support or a potential client to watch. I used to keep Saturday and Sunday free if I could, in case Scott could manage to come home, but the rest of the time I was out, out, out. I never stayed til the end, mind. I’d stay long enough to get a good idea, and then I’d speak to the performer at the end of their first set, and say wel done, dear, but I never stayed for the second set. I’d seen al I needed to see by then. I’d go home and make notes. Notes and notes. I don’t do that now. I don’t make notes on anyone. And I don’t go and see many people now, do I?’

  Glenda half rose and said, ‘I’l get the kettle.’

  ‘I was speaking to you,’ Margaret said.

  Glenda finished getting up. She said, ‘I thought you were just thinking aloud.’ She moved towards the cubbyhole.

  ‘Maybe,’ Margaret said. She didn’t move from Glenda’s desk. ‘Maybe I was. Maybe I was thinking how things have changed, how I’ve changed, without real y noticing it.’

  Glenda made Margaret a cup of coffee with a disposable filter, and herself a powerful y strong cup of tea, squeezing the tea bag against the side of the cup to extract al the rich darkness. Then she carried both cups – mugs would have been so much more satisfactory but Margaret didn’t like them – back to her desk, and held out the coffee to Margaret.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ Margaret said absently.

  Glenda sat down. This tea would be about her sixth cup of the day and she’d have had six more by bedtime. Nothing tasted quite as good as the first mouthful of the first brew – loose tea, in a pot – she made at six in the morning, before Barry was awake. She took a thankful swal ow of tea, and put the cup back in its saucer.

  Then, greatly daring, she said, ‘So what did happen last night?’

  Margaret turned her head to look out of the window. She said, ‘Bernie Harrison asked me to go into partnership with him.’

  She didn’t sound very pleased. Glenda risked a long look at her averted face. Bernie Harrison agented three times the number of people that Margaret did, as wel as handling a lot of Canadian and American and Australian business. Bernie Harrison had offices near Eldon Square, and a staff of five, some of whom were al owed their own – strictly regulated – expense accounts. Bernie Harrison drove a Jaguar and lived in a palace in Gosforth and had an overcoat – Glenda had hung it up for him several times when he came to see Margaret – that had to be cashmere. Why would someone like Margaret Rossiter not leap at the chance to go into partnership with Bernie Har
rison, especial y at her age? Then a chil ing little thought struck her.

  ‘Would there be stil a job for me?’ Glenda said.

  Margaret glanced back from the window.

  ‘I turned him down.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Glenda said.

  Margaret got off the desk and stood looking down at her.

  ‘My heart wasn’t in it.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘When he made his proposal,’ Margaret said, ‘I waited to feel thril ed, excited, ful of ideas. I waited to feel like I’ve felt al my working life when there was a new chal enge. But I didn’t feel any of it. I just thought, It’s too late, you stupid man, I’m too old, I’m too tired, I haven’t got the bounce any more. And then,’ Margaret said, walking to the window, ‘I spent half the night awake worrying about why I didn’t leap at the chance, and in a right old temper with myself for losing my oomph.’

  Glenda leaned back in her chair.

  ‘You aren’t that old, you know.’

  ‘I do know,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m behaving as if I’m fifteen years older than I am. And the thing that’s real y getting to me is that I have got energy, I have, it’s just that I don’t want to use it on the same old things.’

  Glenda drank her tea. This was a profoundly unsettling conversation.

  ‘What,’ she said nervously, ‘ do you want to use it on?’

  Margaret turned.

  ‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘Simply don’t know. Stuck. That’s the trouble. Restless and stuck. What a state to be in at sixty-six. Al very wel at thirty, but sixty-six!’ She peered at Glenda. ‘Was I a bit sharp with you this morning?’

  * * *

  Scott had arranged to meet Margaret in the pub close to the Clavering Building. It was more a hotel than a pub proper, with panel ing inside, and a dignified air, and was not, therefore, a place Scott frequented much. When he got there – late, having run some of the way up the hil from work, after yet another bruising and unwanted encounter with Donna – Margaret was sitting with a gin and tonic in front of her, and a pint for him on the opposite side of the table, jabbing in a haphazard sort of way at her mobile phone. Scott bent to kiss her. He was aware of being breathless and sweaty, and his tie fel forward clumsily and got entangled with her reading glasses.

  Margaret said, extricating herself, ‘What’s the dash, pet?’ She put her phone down.

  ‘I’m late—’

  ‘You’re always late,’ Margaret said. ‘I al ow for you being late. Have you been running?’

  Scott nodded. He col apsed into a chair and took a thirsty gulp of his beer.

  ‘Magic—’

  ‘The beer?’

  ‘The beer.’

  ‘You should have rung. There was no need to half kil yourself, running.’

  ‘I needed to work something off,’ Scott said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A work thing.’ He pul ed a face. ‘The consequence of me being wet and indecisive. A work thing.’

  ‘I can’t decide either,’ Margaret said. She twisted her glass round in her fingers. ‘That’s why I wanted to see you.’

  Scott grinned at her.

  ‘This work thing,’ he said, ‘I can decide. I do decide. And then I just can’t do it.’

  Margaret lifted one eyebrow.

  ‘A woman thing?’

  ‘Maybe—’

  ‘You want to tel me about it, pet?’

  ‘I’d rather,’ Scott said, ‘hear what you want to talk about.’

  Margaret picked up her glass and put it down again.

  She said, ‘I had dinner with Bernie Harrison. In al the years I’ve known him, coming up sixty years, that would be, he’s never asked me to have dinner. Drinks, yes, even a lunchtime sandwich, but never dinner. And dinner is different, so I wondered what he was after—’

  ‘I can guess,’ Scott said, grinning again.

  ‘No, pet. No, it wasn’t. Bernie prides himself on being a ladies’ man, but ladies’ men like Bernie don’t like risking a failure, so I knew I was safe there. No. What he wanted was quite different. He wanted to offer me a partnership in his business.’

  Scott banged down his beer glass.

  ‘Mam, that’s fantastic!’

  ‘Yes,’ Margaret said careful y, ‘yes, it was. It is. But I said no.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I said no, pet.’

  ‘Mam,’ Scott said, craning forward, ‘what’s the matter with you?’

  She took a very smal sip of her drink.

  ‘I don’t know, pet. That’s why I thought I’d better talk to you. I’ve been worrying about you being aimless and unfocused, and then I get the offer of a lifetime at my age, and I find I’m just as aimless and unfocused as you are. I turned Bernie down because, as I said to poor old Glenda, whose head I bit off for no fault of her own, my heart just wasn’t in it. I thought, How lovely, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel I could match either his expectations or my own, so I turned him down. And I’ve been, as my father used to say, like a man with a hatful of bees ever since. I don’t expect you to come up with any solutions, but you had to know. You had to know that your stupid old mother just blew it, and she can’t for the life of herself think why.’

  Scott put a hand across the table and took one of Margaret’s.

  ‘D’you think it’s Dad?’

  ‘Could be. There’s no practice for these things, after al . Could be shock and grief. But it’s been weeks now, we’ve had weeks to get used to the idea.’

  ‘It’s unsettled stil , though,’ Scott said. He squeezed Margaret’s hand and let it go. ‘Al that antagonism from London, and no sign of the piano.’

  ‘Do you real y think the piano wil make a difference?’

  Scott shrugged.

  ‘Having it sorted wil make a difference.’

  ‘But it isn’t going to change our lives. We know what we needed to know, and that’s a relief, even if I can’t understand why the relief hasn’t let me go, hasn’t liberated me to get on with things, instead of having to prove things al the time, like I used to.’

  ‘Mam, I’m sure you could change your mind—’

  ‘Yes, I could. I’m certain I could. But I can’t. I want to, but I can’t. I can’t see the point of changing anything, but I don’t feel very keen about just chugging along with nothing unchanged either. I am not impressed with myself.’

  ‘Join the club,’ Scott said.

  Margaret eyed him.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘A col eague. A work col eague. I let her get the wrong idea and now she won’t let go of it. She’s a nice girl, but I don’t feel anything for her.’ He paused, and then he said with emphasis, ‘ Anything.’

  ‘Then you must make that plain.’

  ‘Oh, I do. Over and over, I do.’

  ‘There’s none so deaf as those that won’t hear—’

  ‘Mam,’ Scott said suddenly.

  ‘Yes, pet?’

  ‘Mam, can I say something to you?’

  Margaret sat up straighter.

  ‘I’m braced for it, pet. I deserve it—’

  ‘No,’ Scott said, ‘not about that. Not about Bernie. It’s just I wanted to ask you something because I’d like to know I’m not the only one, that I’m not a freak like Donna says I am, that I’m not unnatural or pervy or weird or anything, but do you just feel sometimes, when it comes to other people, that you are just – just empty? And at the same time you have a hunch, which won’t go away, that there is someone or something out there that might just fil you up?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Since the evening of the green-apple Martinis – not an evening to be remembered without wincing, on several fronts – Chrissie had been much on Sue’s mind. Chrissie had always been such a contrast to Sue, so organized in her life and her person, so apparently able to make decisions and steer her life and her family in a way that was invisible to them but satisfactory to her, so very much an example of that exasperating breed
of women who, when interviewed in their flawless homes about their ability not to go mad running four or five people’s lives as wel as their own, plus a job, smiled serenely and said it was real y just a matter of making lists.

  Sue had never made a list in her life. There was a large old blackboard nailed to the wal in her kitchen on which the members of the household –

  Sue, her partner Kevin, Sue’s sister Fran, who was an intermittent lodger, and three children – were supposed to write food and domestic items that needed replacing. But nobody did. The blackboard was used for games of hangman, and writing rude poems, and drawing body parts as a chal enge to Sue to demand to know who drew them, and then forbid it. But Sue wasn’t interested in chal enges about which child was responsible for a row of caricature penises drawn in mauve chalk. Sue, just now, was interested in why her friend Chrissie seemed to have disintegrated since Richie’s death, and be unable to access any of the admirable managerial and practical qualities that she had manifested when he was alive. It shocked Sue that Richie’s clothes stil hung in the bedroom cupboards and that the only change to their bedroom had been the removal of two pil ows from the bed. It shocked her even more that his piano stil sat in the room where he had practised, hours every day, which now was in grave danger of becoming the most lifeless and pointless kind of shrine.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Sue said to Kevin, ‘if she wasn’t hunting for hairs in his comb.’

  Kevin, who was twelve years younger than Sue, and worked for a high-class local plumber, was reading the evening paper.

  He said, without looking up, ‘Wouldn’t you do that for me?’

  Sue looked at him. Kevin had had a shaved head ever since she met him.

  ‘Very funny. But Chrissie isn’t funny. She might be griefstricken but I think she’s more loss-stricken. The structure of her life was founded on that bloody man, and that’s gone now he’s gone.’

  Kevin said, staring at the sports page, ‘What a wanker.’

  ‘She loved him,’ Sue said.

  Kevin shrugged.

  ‘Kev,’ Sue said, ‘Kev. Are you listening to me? You like Chrissie.’