by Julie Cohen
She remembered every moment, it seemed, of his life when he was older. But from those first three years, she remembered very little: sunshine in Stephen’s hair, the rattle of pebbles in his pocket. She must have spent hours and hours with Stephen. She knew she had. Honor frowned and pressed herself to remember more; came up with the damp corner of a blanket that Stephen had sucked, the scent of sterilized glass bottles. The imprint of a hand on her cheek as she rocked him to sleep.
Hardly enough for three years.
She remembered better the corridors she went to in her own mind to avoid thinking about Paul, to avoid acknowledging to herself that motherhood was boring, that she was drowning in everyday tasks and lack of sleep and no conversations except for the concrete. To avoid thinking of the nights when she dreamed of that moment at the top of the staircase, looking downwards and seeing Paul standing there. To stop questioning herself about whether she was doing the right thing in not telling him.
When Stephen was three, she had taken up a part-time lectureship at University College London. Her colleagues stayed late, went to conferences, travelled for research, spent years on publications. She was passed up for promotion again and again, not because of her intellect or her academic rigour, but because her work had to fit around school hours and childminders. She was able to dedicate more hours to her work as Stephen grew, but she had lost ground. She never fulfilled the brilliant promise of her Oxford days, and never had enough time to spend with her son, either.
Oscar and Iris were doing something complicated with wooden bricks, something that required Oscar to give his sister orders and for her to scurry back and forth with more and more bricks, fetching and carrying and dropping. Had she got down on the floor and played with Stephen, as Jo did with her children? Perhaps she had sometimes and didn’t remember it now?
She hadn’t. She had read with him, and talked with him, and when he was older they had gone on long walks together, to galleries, to libraries, through the cemeteries to learn names and dates.
Why hadn’t she played?
A crash and a cry of dismay from Iris, and Honor hauled herself to her feet. Bricks littered the floor in every direction. If they stayed in much longer, the house was going to be a health hazard. ‘We are going to the park,’ she announced.
‘No!’ said Iris, jumping up and down and throwing a brick into the air with delight. It clattered to the floor, uncaught.
‘Yes!’ Honor told her, and the little girl laughed.
‘Will you push me on the swings?’ Oscar asked.
‘Unless it kills me.’ She considered the large bag that Jo took with her on all excursions with the children, and decided against it. ‘Can you live with a dirty nappy for an hour, Iris?’
‘No!’
No. The only power given to wilful toddlers and cantankerous old women.
‘I can change nappies,’ said Oscar.
Honor thought this was highly unlikely, but she nodded anyway. ‘Then you will be in charge of nappies and I will be in charge of snacks.’
‘Ice cream?’ said Iris hopefully.
‘Ice cream it is.’
‘I will bring all of my trucks!’ declared Oscar and he started off to get them. Honor stopped him with a hand on his tiny shoulder.
‘Think this through,’ she told him. ‘You are small, and your sister is smaller. Your truck-carrying capability is not as large as you may think. Meanwhile I am elderly.’
‘What’s elderry?’
‘Old. I’m old. And unable to carry every one of the dozens of trucks that you possess.’
‘Not if we take your purple scooter,’ suggested Oscar slyly.
She put out her hand to touch the top of his head. He was very short: sturdy, with his mother’s gingery hair and his father’s husky voice. He wasn’t related to Honor at all, which was perhaps why she had no impulse to correct him. What she did with him and said to him was unlikely to matter. She would probably be gone by the time he was of an age to remember her.
‘You,’ she said, with new respect, ‘will go far in life.’
‘I will go to the park.’
‘No!’ yelled Iris. She jumped up and down and shook her head, her dark curls bouncing. ‘No, no, no!’
‘“No” may seem like a rational and attractive proposition when you are two,’ Honor said to her, ‘but when you get to my age, you will realize that you have to take the opportunities that life throws at you, before it is too late. Perhaps even after it is too late.’ She clapped her hands together, and for the first time in a long time, she felt something small tickling inside her chest. Something a bit like anticipation. ‘Shall we fire up the scooter?’
Oscar led them straight to it, marching across the garage like a little soldier on a mission. He put the large fire engine that he was carrying into the basket at the front of the scooter. ‘Can I drive?’
She found the button to open the garage door and then turned to Iris, who was chewing on her sun hat. ‘Can you get on the back of the scooter? And when I sit down, you will have to hold on to me.’
‘No,’ said Iris, nodding, and clambered on to the seat.
‘Can I drive?’ Oscar asked again.
‘No,’ said Honor. ‘But you can do something better. Do you have sharp eyes, Oscar?’
‘I have really sharp eyes. I can see everything.’
‘Good. That’s exactly what I need.’ She stooped down as far as she could, lowering her voice confidentially. ‘I need you to stand in front of me on the scooter, with your hands on the handlebars. And you need to keep a sharp eye out for things in front of us. Things we might crash into. Can you do that?’
‘Yeah!’
‘Well done.’ She climbed onto the seat, reaching her arms either side of Oscar, perching on the edge of the seat to leave room for Iris. She found the starter switch by feel, and started the electric motor. The children squealed in excitement.
‘Can we go fast?’ asked Oscar.
‘Fortunately, we cannot.’ She positioned her hand on the throttle, ready to go. ‘Now, hold on tight, children.’
‘No!’ cried Iris into her ear.
The scooter jerked forward. She steered towards the light. ‘Now, do we go left or right to get to the park?’
‘Left! No, right!’
Something occurred to her, and she slowed the scooter to a crawl. ‘Do you know the difference between left and right, Oscar?’
‘Umm …’
‘Ah.’ She stopped the scooter. After a moment’s thought, she unbuckled her watch from her wrist and put it on Oscar’s left wrist. ‘So if we need to steer in the direction of the watch arm, you say “watch”. And if we need to steer the other way, you say—’
‘No watch!’
‘Very good. So which way is the park?’
Oscar considered. ‘No watch way.’
‘Right it is. Tell me when we’ve reached the pavement, Oscar.’
His hair tickled her chin as he nodded. She started up the scooter again and proceeded forward at a crawl, listening to the gravel under the wheels, until Oscar announced, ‘Now!’
She steered right and the scooter ran smoothly off the drive onto the pavement. ‘Now, Oscar, it’s your job to tell me if we’re going to bump into anything. All right?’
‘I’m very good at this,’ said Oscar.
‘I’m certain that you are.’
The park was less than a quarter of a mile away and entailed crossing two roads. Oscar guided her to the dipped kerbs, using his watch hand, and together they checked for traffic, Honor hushing the children so that she could listen. At the second crossing, Iris started bouncing on the seat and yelling, ‘Park!’
‘You must be quiet and calm, so that your brother and I can concentrate,’ Honor told her, and Iris immediately subsided.
‘Can you see any cars coming, Oscar? Look carefully.’
‘No cars, Ganny H.’
‘No cars!’ agreed Iris.
Honor thumbed the throttle and the
y rolled off the kerb. ‘Pa-ark,’ sang Iris, in her ear, and Honor saw movement to their right. Belatedly, she heard the car coming: a low hum of engine, hardly louder than the scooter’s electric whine.
Where was the brake, how did she stop? She yanked her hand from the throttle and the scooter jerked to a halt. Iris banged against her back.
‘Ow!’ yelled Oscar.
She heard the car pass in front of them. It was close enough so that she could feel the breeze it created, and smell its warm tyres.
‘I think,’ she began, and realized that she had no breath to speak with. She waited until she could breathe again, and said, ‘I think this may be more dangerous than I anticipated.’
‘I’m OK,’ Oscar told her. ‘I just bumped my arm. Can I press the button to make it go?’
‘No,’ said Honor. Her hands were shaking slightly as she started up the scooter again. She listened carefully and turned her head to either side several times before she crossed the road and rolled onto the pavement leading to the park. Slowly, steadily, the scooter’s engine labouring against the slight incline, they made their way to the play area. Both the children jumped off the scooter.
Honor’s heart was still hammering. Her palms were damp.
‘I help you,’ said Iris, and Honor felt a little hand creep inside hers. She let Iris assist her getting off the scooter. Oscar held the gate open for them and then the two children were off, running and shouting to each other, into the grey area where she couldn’t see.
‘Stay inside the play park,’ she called to them, and followed the fence along counterclockwise until she found a green-painted bench to sit on. She could hear the children talking to each other.
As always, she caught the park in snatches: there was some sort of rubberized matting on the ground, presumably to make children bounce when they fell. A tracery of lines and shadow was a climbing frame; a sense of pendulum movement was the swings. She tipped her head up and felt the sunshine on her forehead and cheeks, letting it calm her. Little footfalls and chatter and laughter.
They had made it safely, and they would make it back. She would be careful. But perhaps after this, they should stay in the garden.
She laughed aloud, surprising herself. Who would have thought, at her age, that she would be embarking upon adventures? Or that those adventures would be so small and yet so important?
Someone sat beside her and she heard a conversation between two mothers about their holidays, the renovations that mother one was doing to her house, the car that mother number two was planning to buy. This was closely followed by what both of them were planning to cook for tea tonight and a detailed exploration of what each of their toddlers would and would not eat. Allegedly Liam would not eat any food that was not white, whilst Ella would not touch anything that could not be spread with Nutella, because it rhymed with her name.
If this was the level of discourse that Jo had to tolerate on a daily basis, it was no wonder she was carrying on an affair.
‘Ice cream, Ganny H,’ said Iris’s voice suddenly close beside her.
‘Can you take me to the ice-cream van?’ she asked, and was answered by Iris clasping her hand again and tugging. She stood, and her other hand was seized by Oscar.
She let them lead her, like a child, to the ice-cream van, where she bought three large 99s with Flakes, selecting the coins by feel. Then she let them lead her to another bench. The children sat on either side of her, their legs pressed against hers, their elbows bumping hers as they all ate their cornets together.
She had rarely tasted anything so delicious.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lydia
IT WAS STRANGE, having this weight of stuff to do, all the revision for the exams that would determine the rest of her life, but nothing to do right this very moment, nothing to do but think. Lydia coloured in her revision timetable with the highlighters that Mum had bought for her, took a shower, styled her hair. She rearranged her collection of Avril’s cranes that sat perched on the shelf over her desk. She’d lost one or two in the move upstairs, but there were still a lot of them, all different colours and sizes. Their wings trembled as she moved them, delicate and as beautiful.
She felt like she’d betrayed their friendship by kissing Bailey. How crazy was that?
This room was so quiet. You couldn’t hear anything that was going on downstairs, nothing at all. All the noise used to annoy her, but now she missed it. She felt cut off from everything.
I just want to be normal, Avril had said. Is that so wrong?
Promise to always tell me the truth.
Lydia sighed and reached for her running clothes, but then she thought twice about it and went downstairs to Granny H’s room. ‘Come in,’ said Granny H to her knock, but when she entered, her grandmother was lying on her bed, fully dressed, her eyes closed.
‘Are you taking a nap?’
Granny H didn’t open her eyes. ‘No, merely revisiting some memories.’
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘She is outside with her friend Sara and the children.’
‘Oh. I was just taking a break from my revision and I wondered if you wanted to read another letter?’
‘We only have one left.’
‘We can read it later, there’s no hurry.’ But Lydia wanted to read it now. Avril hadn’t answered her texts; she was losing her. She wanted some connection, something to feel that she belonged, that she was necessary in some way. Even if it was reading letters from a man she’d never met, to a grandmother whose life was largely a mystery.
‘They’re in the desk.’
Lydia found them in the top drawer. If it had been her, she would have opened them all up at once and read them, but Granny H seemed to want to eke them out. She supposed that if that was all you had of someone you loved, you had to make them last. Like a collection of paper cranes.
She took out the last unopened one and drew a chair close to the bed before she opened it. ‘It’s another robin card,’ she said. ‘In fact, I think it’s the same robin card as he used the year before. Maybe he had a lot left over. Don’t you want to look?’
‘I can imagine it. Please read it to me.’
Lydia opened the card. It was dated two years ago, and she wondered again why Paul Honeywell (her grandfather, though it was hard to think of him that way) had stopped writing. Had he died, or had the letters just stopped being forwarded? Or had he got so tired of writing without a reply, so tired of trying and trying, that he’d given up?
She thought of the paper cranes again, and she had to clear her throat before she began reading the letter aloud.
‘Dear Stephen,
Do you receive these letters, I wonder? Year after year I write them, and I picture you throwing them straight in the bin. I suppose I’m writing them for myself rather than for you, perhaps to assuage my guilt at never knowing you. Even choosing to write them in Christmas cards is selfish, because my family would never notice them in the outflux of post – but you’re Jewish by birth and might not even celebrate Christmas. All of these letters might be nothing more than an unpleasant reminder for you of a person you never knew.
‘Forgive me. Even though I may write these letters out of selfishness, I’ve tried not to be self-indulgent in them. But this has been a difficult year. Wendy died in the spring: cancer. She was a good woman, Stephen; I didn’t deserve her, and I tried to be the best husband I could to her, which meant that I was no kind of father to you.
‘In all our years together I was only unfaithful to Wendy once in either thought or deed, and that was during those years when I was with your mother. Every day I was with Honor I wished that I had met her first, before Wendy. In some ways I still wish it, though I was never brave enough to act upon it. I loved your mother more than life. I loved her more than any person except for my children. She was sharp and vibrant, in full colour compared to everyone else, and when I looked at her I saw the other half of myself.’
Lydia’s voice stopped in her
throat. On the bed, Granny H did not move. Lydia would have thought she had fallen asleep, except there was a fierceness about her, despite the fact that she lay on her back, eyes closed.
‘I was the weak one in that relationship, and I was the weak one in my marriage, too. All of my love seems to be laden with guilt.
‘And now I really am being self-indulgent. I refuse to feel guilty about your existence, Stephen Levinson, or for the fact that I write to you, without any hope of return. You are one of my children, and I love you for that, and I love you for your mother’s sake.
‘Your father, Paul Honeywell.’
Granny H drew in a long breath and let it out. Lydia folded the letter. The dark writing seemed too much to look at, too naked on the white of the card. They sat, for some time, in silence, except for the sounds of Mum and Sara and the children in the garden.
‘So,’ said Granny H at last. ‘Yes.’
Slowly, she sat up on the bed. Her eyes, now open, stared straight ahead, and seemed to be seeing someone other than Lydia, someone whom she loved and who loved her in return, so much so that they had spent nearly three of Lydia’s lifetimes apart thinking of each other.
‘I’m gay.’ Lydia blurted it out without knowing she was going to.
Granny H blinked. She turned her head and looked Lydia up and down, in that odd sideways manner she had about her these days.
‘I’m gay,’ Lydia said again. ‘I like girls. Not boys.’
‘I know what gay means,’ said Granny H, but she said it gently. ‘Have you known for some time, or is this a new discovery?’
‘I’ve always known, I think. Don’t tell Mum.’
Granny H frowned. ‘Why not? You don’t think she would be so foolish as to disapprove, do you?’
‘No – not exactly. I mean, not at all. But she’d say … I know what she’d say. She’d tell me that everything is all right and it’s all going to be fine. That one day I’ll look back on my feelings and wonder why I was so confused and hurt and it will all have just been a blip on my way to future happiness.’
