Rumours and Red Roses

by Patricia Fawcett

  Simon was half asleep in a chair and, across the room, a TV soap character was babbling incoherently on the screen.

  Becky picked up the remote and switched it off.

  ‘Hey …’ Instantly, he was awake. ‘I was watching that.’

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ she said with a smile. ‘I want to talk to you anyway.’

  ‘That sounds ominous.’ He drew himself up, rubbing at his shoulders. ‘Something wrong? Is your mum OK?’

  ‘Oh yes, she’s fine,’ she said. ‘I had lunch with Marina the other day.’

  ‘I hear she’s got a new boyfriend.’

  ‘She has. He sounds nice. But the thing is she dropped a bit of a clanger about us. About the family.’

  ‘What? What has she been saying?’ he asked, a wary look passing over his face. ‘Discretion isn’t one of her strong points.’

  ‘Don’t I know it?’ Becky said, remembering the conversation in the hall of Marina’s flat on the night they met. ‘She tells me that your grandfather William is still alive. It made me feel such a fool. I thought he was dead and you never said otherwise, Simon.’

  ‘Oh, that. I was going to get round to telling you.’

  ‘Then it is true?’

  ‘Yes.’ He pulled a face. ‘Sorry. I was going to tell you.’

  ‘When? I would like to meet him and don’t you think your grandfather has a right to see his great grandchild?’ She hadn’t meant it to sound confrontational but it came out like that.

  ‘Of course he has. It’s not like that.’

  ‘What do you mean? What is it like? You weren’t trying to keep it from me deliberately, were you? I would have liked to know, Simon. I have a right to know. You are so lucky. I don’t have a father, let alone a grandfather. I never knew either of mine.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know why I didn’t tell you. I meant to. It’s just never come up. Dad doesn’t like to talk about it and Mum’s none too keen either.’

  ‘I have noticed,’ she said, remembering how, if it had come up, mention of the past, the subject was very adroitly changed. ‘Come to think of it, there aren’t any pictures around her house, are there? Family pictures. Why not?’

  ‘It’s a long story. It goes back a long way. There’s been a family rift. My father hasn’t spoken to his dad for years, not after it happened. There was a bit of trouble and dad’s mum, my granny Isabel …’ He shook his head. ‘There was a scandal. You don’t want to know.’

  ‘Try me,’ she said, feeling more and more infuriated. ‘Why aren’t there any photographs of her? Oh, come on, Simon, this is ridiculous.’

  ‘I do have a few photographs somewhere, a few I rescued. I’ll root them out for you if it bothers you that much,’ he said, his face tightening so that he suddenly looked quite different. ‘But, bloody hell, Rebecca, I don’t know why you’re getting into such a state about it.’

  ‘I’m not in a state. Just curious, that’s all,’ she said as he jumped up and went into his study. She could hear drawers opening and closing, a few low curses.

  He rarely swore, which made it doubly shocking.

  She must have really upset him.

  Afterwards, after she had looked at the meagre collection of photographs, she decided she would let it rest a while before tackling the subject again. But the next day something happened that brought it all up again and she vowed to have it out with him that night.

  ‘According to Adele’s grandmother Chrissie, your grandmother was an interesting lady. A red-head. Isn’t that a surprise? Tall and elegant, she says, and half-Scottish. Isn’t it just great that a complete stranger knows more about her than I do? What does that make me look like?’

  ‘Chrissie?’ He picked up on her use of the Christian name which, surprisingly, Adele’s gran had insisted she use. ‘When did you meet her?’

  ‘Today. By accident,’ she said as he stared at her. ‘And there’s no need to look at me like that, Simon. I’d met up with Adele to do a bit of shopping, if you must know. We had the children with us and bumped into her grandmother in town. It was just as well we did. She had sneaked off, she said, without telling Adele’s mother where she was going. She had taken a taxi into town.’ She frowned as she recalled Chrissie’s tired face. ‘She had been all the way down the park to look at her old home. Isn’t that sad? They’re turning it into a children’s nursery and they’ve ripped out the front garden to make a car park. That really knocked her for six because there were some beautiful roses in the garden and they had just dug them up and tossed them aside. As a matter of fact, I think she was beginning to realize that she’d taken on too much by walking so far. She looked very shaky so what could I do but bring her back here for a cup of tea to revive her before Adele took her home? It seemed ridiculous to take her to a café when we live in the centre of town. You don’t object to that, do you?’ she asked sharply, not liking his mood of the past few days.

  ‘No, of course not. Sorry. Bring whoever you like here. What is she like?’

  ‘She’s a fascinating lady. After Adele introduced me, she asked if we were related to Bell’s Laundry …’ She smiled a little. ‘And when I told her yes we were, that’s when she said she was acquainted with the family. She mentioned Isabel. She was right,’ she added, taking another look at the sepia photograph she had stashed away in her handbag. ‘She was a very good-looking woman. You can’t see the colour of her hair in this photo but, you know, sometimes Samantha’s hair has a reddish tinge to it in a certain light. Perhaps she takes after her.’

  ‘I hope not,’ Simon said bluntly.

  ‘This would look lovely in a frame,’ Becky said, holding it against her chest, indignant on Isabel’s behalf at Simon’s reaction. ‘I shall display it if Esther won’t. I’ll speak to her.’

  ‘Don’t do that yet,’ he said. ‘Not until I’ve spoken to her.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake …’ She shut up at that point, reluctant to have a full-blown row for she and Simon did not do rows but it was close to heading that way. It was as if the family just wanted to forget about William and she didn’t like that at all. They couldn’t possibly be ashamed of him, could they? When they first met, Simon had talked about him proudly, she recalled, about how he started up the business from nothing, so what could have happened in the past to cause a nonspeaking situation between Johnny and his father? She would not dream of asking Johnny because, deliberately after what had happened to her mother, she avoided one-to-one situations. Not that he would make a play for her, his daughter-in-law, but she was uncomfortable with him. According to Marina, William was ill, had a distressing illness, and the family couldn’t do this, shut him away like this, stick him in a nursing home, ignore him, as if he was a leper.

  ‘He’s got a form of Alzheimer’s. He’s very rarely lucid these days. It’s not as if he knows what’s what so it would be a dead loss visiting,’ Simon persisted although she saw that he looked guilty as hell. Marina was right. We all suffer from it in one way or another.

  ‘Does anybody go to see him?’

  ‘No. And don’t look like that. It’s just upsetting all round.’

  ‘I don’t care. Upsetting or not, I want to take Samantha. Marina says to plonk her on his knee and it might unlock all the memories. If it cheers him up, even for a little bit, it will be worth it. And I would like to see him too.’

  ‘All right, Rebecca. I’ll take you. Hang on …’ He whisked his diary out and consulted it whilst she frowned. What could be more important than this? ‘We’ll go over on Sunday, the 16th. OK?’

  ‘Fine by me,’ she said, still feeling irritated and annoyed that this was causing friction between them.

  Simon put the diary away, managing a rueful smile at last and a murmured sorry. ‘But be warned,’ he added. ‘It won’t be easy.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  IT WAS SATURDAY and with Simon happy to look after Samantha for a while – a bit of daddy/daughter bonding – Becky was treating her mum to a slap-up lunch in what was generally
regarded as the swankiest hotel in town.

  ‘Of course, all that sun over there does your complexion no good, no good at all,’ Shelley said, as they settled at a table by the window. The view wasn’t so great, just the busy street and shoppers battling against a stiff breeze today, and Becky preferred to look inwards, to watch the other diners. ‘That sun makes your skin all leathery. I tell you, I spend all my time trying to avoid it. Can you credit that? When you live here and you hardly ever see it, you’re desperate to sit out in it when it decides to show its face. I spend a fortune on sunblocks and face creams. There’s this particular cream which all the ladies swear by and I daren’t tell you how much it is for a bottle this size.’ She indicated the minuteness of it with her hand. ‘Alan has no idea. Money just comes in and goes out like the tide. No worries, he says. He gives me two hundred dollars just like that and off I go shopping. Two hundred dollars – Australian money, that is. He’s like that. When I think about your dad, how tight he was, I can’t believe they’re so different. We had to account for every penny when you were little. Mind you, we never had enough money but for all that we were happy. That says a lot, doesn’t it? Can you believe it, Becky, how it’s turned out for me?’

  ‘I’m glad for you. You worked hard, Mum. Thank goodness you don’t have to flog away at Ivana’s any more. You’re well out of that, especially now you’re getting older.’

  ‘Enough of that. I went to see her yesterday and we had a nice chat. She sends her love and …’ She reached for her voluminous handbag. ‘She’s sent this little frock for the baby. Turned up trumps this time.’

  ‘How kind.’ Becky took it out of the bag. It was lovely, a little baby dress of the sort girl babies used to wear, pale pink with white smocking. ‘It’s gorgeous. We’ll have to find a special occasion to wear this.’ She very nearly said ‘when we visit her great grandfather’ but she was keeping quiet about that for the moment. She would tell her mum about it later, depending on how it went.

  ‘Ivana’s heart’s in the right place,’ Shelley said. ‘She missed me, she said. And the customers miss me, too. I bumped into Mrs Wearmouth and she said her hair hasn’t been the same since I went. Isn’t that nice to know that people miss you?’

  Becky nodded. Her mum, in spite of the deep tan she was so desperate to avoid, was looking all right. She was wearing navy trousers today, which meant there were no worries about the length of her skirt, and a surprisingly old-fashioned blazer-jacket in a sunshine yellow. It made her look, although Becky would never have said it, like a holiday camp rep. Her hair was back to being blonde but it was nowhere near as brassy as it had been, a much softer honey colour which suited her. Added to that, she had several gold bracelets clanking round her wrist and numerous gold chains – the real thing, she was at pains to point out. She didn’t do costume stuff anymore. Yes, Australia and marriage to Alan had done her a world of good.

  ‘Now, you can have whatever you like, Mum,’ Becky said, opening up the menu. ‘It’s my treat. Don’t worry about the price. Choose what you want.’

  ‘Too true I will.’ Shelley frowned at her. ‘What did I just tell you? I’m married to Alan now and he’s made a killing down under. You should see him these days, Becky. He lives in these shorts, cut-off denims, and he won’t wear a top, just his bare chest, and he always has a wad of money stuffed in his pocket. If he ever got mugged …’

  They ordered their meal and sat back to await its arrival. Becky chose the light luncheon wine, choosing an Australian one in honour of her mum. For a moment, just as she was perusing the wine list, their eyes met and her mum gave a broad grin at the absurdity of it.

  Who would have thought it? What a difference a few years could bring. They neither of them made any comment on it but Becky knew they were both thinking it.

  ‘It’s a beautiful country, love,’ Shelley said in a quieter voice, watching the waiter as he smartly turned tail and went off in search of their wine. ‘It’s almost worth the flight, which takes forever and a day. You should see the sky, Becky. It’s so big and so blue. And did you know the stars are different in the southern hemisphere? Alan told me that. We went out on to the balcony one night and he said to me, “Just look up at those stars and tell me what you see, Shelley, love.”’

  ‘And what did you see?’

  ‘Stars,’ she said simply. ‘I mean, until he pointed the different constellations out, stars are just stars, aren’t they? I can’t say I’ve ever taken a lot of notice of them. It makes me dizzy looking up like that. I never realized before …’ She picked up a fork, fiddled with it. ‘I never realized how squashed we are here, how tight the sky is. You get such a feeling of space out there. The weather is just wonderful.’

  ‘We’ll have to come and visit sometime,’ Becky told her, noting the shining eyes. Thank goodness, she was happy, and that’s all she could wish for even though she was counting the days now to her mum going back and dreading it. She had got used to her being around again and it would be no easier to say goodbye this time round. As for Samantha, well, she was really beginning to get to know this new grandma, smiling when she saw her and holding out her little arms to be carried. And she often surprised the two of them having a little giggling game together.

  ‘You wake up to sunshine every blessed day,’ her mum went on, smiling flirtatiously at a different waiter as their starter arrived. ‘It’s our winter now but it’s not a bit cold. And we’re right next to the sea. There are miles and miles of lovely beach and surf. It’s called Paradise Beach and it is. It reminds me a bit of Blackpool except it’s sunny and there aren’t any donkeys.’

  ‘What about the insects?’ Becky asked mischievously, for she knew her mum was none too keen on them. ‘What about those little poisonous spiders that lurk in the lavatory pan? What are they called?’

  ‘Redbacks,’ Shelley said, tucking into her garlic mushroom starter with relish. ‘And if you ask me, that’s just a tale. I haven’t met one yet and I haven’t seen a single snake either. Mind you …’ She paused and shuddered. ‘I did find this enormous spider in the bathtub. It looked like something out of a joke shop except it was real and moving.’ She laughed at Becky’s expression. ‘I ran out screaming in just my bra and pants and when I went back in sometime in the afternoon it wasn’t there any more, which was worse really because I couldn’t help worrying about where the bugger had gone.’

  ‘Ssh.’ Becky glanced round as her mum’s voice had risen in her telling of the tale. ‘How is Alan?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s doing very well. Fit as a fiddle and brown as a berry because he spends all his time outdoors. He might as well sling a hammock in the tree and sleep out there for all I see of him. The honeymoon’s well and truly over. He’s bought a yacht with his brother.’

  ‘Wow. That sounds lovely.’

  ‘It is. It’s very plush. I don’t want to know how much it cost. Alan’s brother made his money in the music business and he’s loaded. They’re going to charter it out to tourists. Swimming. Snorkelling. Diving. You name it, Alan does it on the water. He might as well have webbed feet these days.’

  ‘What about you, Mum? What do you do? You don’t like getting your feet wet.’

  ‘No. I still can’t swim. I’ve tried but all I do is swallow a gallon of water and I’m frightened I’ll drown. Alan’s tried to teach me but he has no patience. I just can’t get the hang of it so having a pool is a waste of time. Alan’s not keen on me working so I spend my time round the house, like I told you, although now that we have this girl coming in to help out with the housework there’s not a lot for me to do. She’s a nice girl, oriental, but she doesn’t get into corners. She wafts around. Ivana would have a fit if she saw her. “Get a move on,” she would say. I have to follow her around with a duster. You do right not to have a cleaner. I have to tidy up before she arrives and put everything back in the right place when she’s gone.’

  ‘It must be a long day, doing nothing,’ Becky said thoughtfully, noticing her mum wa
s starting to look melancholy.

  ‘I find things to do. I wish I could get interested in reading like you but I haven’t the attention span. So, I potter around and dangle my legs in the pool. But …’ She hesitated. ‘It’s lonely, love. I have no friends yet, Becky. A few ladies who pop by but they’re not friends, not like Ivana and the girls at work and the neighbours in the old house.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’ Becky pushed her plate aside. For all the stars this hotel might have, she had tasted better smoked salmon. ‘Are you unhappy?’

  ‘How can I be unhappy, you daft so and so?’ Shelley asked, looking across at her plate. ‘Finish that up. It looks bad leaving something on your plate. I’ll have it if you don’t want it.’

  ‘No.’ Becky held on to her plate. ‘We can’t swap plates in a place like this.’

  ‘He wasn’t happy about me coming over,’ her mum said suddenly. ‘He doesn’t understand. I told him straight. “I’m a grandma,” I said, “and I haven’t seen my little mite for such a long time and she’s had a big operation …”’ Her eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘“And I wasn’t there for Becky when she needed me so you can sod off,” I said to him. “I’m going and that’s that.” I used his credit card to book the ticket, upgraded at that, so he’ll have a shock when he gets the bill. A return ticket costs a fortune.’

  Becky smiled, reaching over to touch her hand. ‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘You’ll make it up with him when you see him.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Shelley paused as their plates were removed. ‘That’s just it, you see. I had a lot of time to think on the flight over. I’m homesick, Becky.’

  ‘Homesick? What are you talking about? You’ve just been telling me how wonderful it is, all that sunshine and the beach and everything. How can you be homesick?’ she asked, looking out on to the grey and blustery summer day.