by Hilary Boyd
Ellie rushed along the hall to welcome Jeanie that evening, waiting to be picked up, then throwing her little arms round her neck. She was fresh from the bath, her hair still damp, her face glowing pink and clean. She pointed proudly to her pyjama top.
‘Gin . . . look, Gin, it says I an angel.’ She laughed and snuggled into her grandmother’s body. ‘Mmmmm . . . I bin waiting for you.’
‘Your top is right, you are an angel.’ Jeanie buried her face in the child’s sweet-smelling hair.
‘She’s been dying to see you.’ Chanty smiled, directing them to the garden. ‘Dad’s already here. Alex is doing a barbecue.’
Jeanie took Ellie outside and settled in one of the chairs on the wooden decking. George was hovering, a glass of wine in his hand, but he seemed uncomfortably on edge.
‘We’ve had an offer.’
‘A good one?’
‘Amazingly, the asking price. They’re only the fifth couple to see it. But the agent said there were two other people after it, and they panicked.’
‘That’s fantastic. I’m not surprised, it’s a lovely house.’ Alex avoided Jeanie’s eye and addressed George. ‘So you’ve accepted?’
George nodded, but he didn’t seem to be as jubilant as Jeanie expected.
‘You don’t seem very happy about it,’ Jeanie remarkd.
He stared at her vacantly. ‘No, I am, I’m delighted. I thought it would be much more of a drama. I did call you to tell you, but your phone was switched off.’
Jeanie watched Alex poking ineffectually at the chicken pieces. It was clear the coals were not nearly hot enough, but he didn’t appear to have noticed. There was definitely a strange atmosphere; everyone, including Chanty, seemed disconnected. She did a puzzle with Ellie on the garden table. Ellie knew the jigsaw back to front and triumphantly slotted the pieces in place as quickly as her small hands could manage. It wasn’t till her granddaughter was tucked up in bed that Chanty emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray with a bottle of champagne. Jeanie saw her flash a smile at her husband.
‘Are we celebrating the house?’ George asked.
Neither Chanty nor Alex replied until the champagne was poured.
‘We have something to tell you,’ she said, and Jeanie could see that she could hardly contain her excitement. Alex had stopped cooking and stood beside her, looking sheepish, as he always did when faced with a family occasion. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Jeanie was instantly lifted out of her tiredness.
‘That’s wonderful! How fantastic, darling. When’s it due?’
‘I’m about ten weeks already, so just after Christmas.’
She hugged her daughter, patted her son-in-law on the back.
‘Ten weeks and you didn’t tell us?’
‘I didn’t know till this morning. I suppose all the stuff with Ellie distracted me, and it was only when I started being sick that I realized something was up.’ Chanty leaned over and kissed her husband on the cheek. ‘Alex worked it out.’
‘But this is such bad timing,’ Jeanie wailed. ‘We’ll be miles away when it’s born.’
‘You can stay up here. It’ll be fine, Mum. I’ll need you to help with Ellie big time.’
‘Does she know yet?’
Chanty shook her head. ‘The books say to leave it till much later; they have no concept of time at that age.’
Jeanie smiled. ‘She ain’t going to like it!’
The conversation, mainly between the women, flowed on, no one noticing that George had fallen silent and was sitting morosely nursing yet another glass of wine in the corner of the garden. When Alex announced the chicken and sausages were ready and they took their seats at the table, George didn’t move.
‘Dad? Come on, we’re ready to eat.’
George looked round, but still made no attempt to join them.
‘George?’ Jeanie went over to him. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Not so . . . good, old girl.’ She could hear the effort he was making to get the words out.
‘Are you feeling ill?’
George stared up at her. ‘I don’t feel great . . . muss say.’ He waved his glass at his daughter and son-in-law. ‘Wonnerful news . . . give me a grandson . . . why not . . .’
Chanty looked crestfallen. ‘Dad, you’re drunk.’
George laughed and nodded. ‘I s’pose I am . . . sorry ’bout that . . . but it’s been a helluva week.’
‘George, let me take you home . . . come on, get up.’
Jeanie gestured to Alex to help her, but George was having none of it and jerked his arm from her grasp.
‘I’m talking . . . I’m telling them ’bout my week.’
‘Stop it, George. You’re not making any sense.’
‘I’m making perfect sense . . . they should know about my week . . . because my wife is having sex with another man . . . and I told her . . . told her about Missa Acland . . . so she knows now . . . and it’s been a helluva week for all of us.’
There was a shocked silence.
‘Who’s Mr Acland?’ Chanty looked to Jeanie, accusation in her eyes, as George had slumped into silence, his glass hanging loosely in his hand.
‘It’s a long story and one best told another time, darling,’ Jeanie whispered, signalling to Alex to take George’s other arm.
‘Missa Acland . . . Stephen Acland Esquire . . . buggerer esstraordinaire, played with me . . . chess.’ He pointed drunkenly at Jeanie. ‘She knows now . . . helluva week . . . helluva . . . sorry . . .’
Then George began to cry, weak, plaintive whimperings it was an agony to listen to.
‘Mum? What’s he talking about? What’s going on?’
Jeanie gave up trying to move her husband. ‘It would be better coming from him, but seeing as he’s in no fit state . . .’
The chicken and salads sat untouched on the table between them as she told them the story, watching their faces register bewilderment, then disgust, then harden gradually into anger.
‘A war hero,’ Alex muttered through clenched teeth.
Chanty looked devastated. ‘That’s so horrible, Mum. I can’t believe he never told anyone. Poor Dad . . . how do you deal with something like that?’
George suddenly staggered to his feet. ‘Did you say something ’bout food?’ He stood, swaying for a moment, staring unfocused at them, then slid gently to the wooden decking, spilling what remained of his wine and knocking his glasses to the ground. Chanty burst into tears.
‘I’ve never seen Dad like this; it’s dreadful, just dreadful what happened to him. Help him, Alex, get him inside.’
Alex came home with Jeanie in the car, and together they undressed her husband and put him to bed. He was barely conscious, only occasionally rousing himself to mutter another raft of incoherent syllables.
‘Will he be OK?’ Alex pulled the duvet over his father-in-law with surprising gentleness. He looked at Jeanie. ‘Shouldn’t we walk him up and down or something, give him black coffee?’ He smiled apologetically. ‘I’m not much of a medical whiz, I’m afraid.’
‘I think he’s better just sleeping it off. I don’t think he’s actually drunk that much; most of it’s shock, him not dealing with the abuse thing. I’ve tried to get him to see a therapist, but he refuses.’
‘It must be terrible, suddenly confronting your past like that. God, he’s going to have one stonking hangover tomorrow.’
They left George and went back downstairs.
‘Thanks so much for your help, Alex.’
‘Are you OK? This can’t be easy for you either.’
For the first time in her relationship with Alex, she felt a genuine warmth for the man.
‘Let’s just say things have been better.’ She patted his arm. ‘Look after Chanty . . . and Alex, that’s such great news about the baby.’
His face lightened. ‘It is, isn’t it? I never thought I wanted one, let alone two, but hey . . . I’m thrilled.’
18
Jeanie ached for Ray. It seemed to her
that she wanted him more than breathing. But a crowd of dreary, but imperative, practicalities lined up and took over her life. So she carried him silently around with her, refusing to believe she would never feel his touch again, never experience the gentle intensity of his lovemaking. And despite reaching for her mobile a hundred times a day to call him, she resisted, because what did she have to offer him while she stubbornly stuck to her sense of duty?
The truth was that George needed her; he had sunk into a deep, reactive depression. Since the night at Chanty and Alex’s house he had become largely unresponsive, shuffling aimlessly round the house like an old man. He didn’t change his clothes unless Jeanie removed the old ones; he only shaved when she reminded him. He shut himself up in his clock room all day, but when Jeanie went to see if he was all right, he was just sitting in front of the same clock pieces that were there the day she had gone to tell him about Ray.
‘You’ve got to see Andrew. You’re not well,’ she told him every day.
‘I don’t need a doctor. I’m a bit low, that’s all. I’ll be fine when we get to Somerset. Just can’t seem to get my energy up,’ George would invariably reply.
The new house seemed to be his answer to everything. Jeanie had rung the doctor herself. Andrew Hall had been their GP for over twenty years and was a bluff, dependable bear of a man with two impressive cauliflower ears acquired in his tighthead prop days on the rugger field.
‘I can’t do a thing unless he wants me to, Jean, you know that,’ he’d said.
‘But that’s the nature of depression, isn’t it? He doesn’t realize how ill he is.’
‘Has something triggered it, do you know?’
‘He’ll have to tell you that . . . but yes.’
‘Fine, fine, quite understand. Get him here and I’ll do what I can. But unless you feel he’s a danger to himself or others there’s not a thing I can do without his consent. Is he suicidal at all? In your opinion?’
Jeanie considered the doctor’s question for a moment.
‘No . . . no, I don’t think so. But how can you tell? God, what am I to do? I’m at my wits’ end with him.’ She had fought back the tears, but the doctor knew her too well.
‘Shall I drop round? Do you think he’d open up to me in a casual sort of way?’
George had greeted Andrew with a weary smile.
‘What are you doing here? The old girl been on to you, has she?’ He cast a shrewd look at his wife.
Andrew’s hearty guffaw rang hollow. ‘Course she has, that’s her job, and a jolly good thing she did by the look of you.’
George had thrown his hands up in frustration.
‘I know Jeanie worries, but I’m fine, honestly I am. Just a bit tired, that’s all. It’s always nice to see you, Andrew, but go away, please, and look after someone who’s really ill.’
Andrew had signalled to Jeanie to leave them alone, but when he spoke to her later he was uncharacteristically gloomy.
‘You’re right, he’s in a bad way all right, but he wouldn’t talk to me at all. Went on about his handicap and Somerset, but got irritated when I said he looked rough. Sorry, Jean. All you can do is keep an eye on him and if you think he’s getting worse, or might do himself harm, get on to me at once. These things tend to be self-limiting; they wear themselves out over time, but it could be a while. Don’t give up on him.’
So Jeanie resigned herself to waiting and watching. And although she saw no signs that George was getting worse, she didn’t like to leave him for long periods and decided to take on someone to help Jola in the shop earlier than planned. She would have had to do so when they moved – before George’s collapse they had agreed she should come up three days a week until the business was sold.
As August approached, the days – baking hot, they kept saying, like no summer since the dawn of time – were filled with small, round, coloured stickers. Red for Somerset, blue for storage – the Old Rectory was smaller than their Highgate house and had no attic for Uncle Raymond’s vast stock of Victorian furniture, which George refused to sell – and yellow stickers for the Sally Army, who most obligingly came round with a van and a team of eager helpers to take away everything that filled neither of the other categories. The more Jeanie looked at the quantity of stuff to be processed, the more she despaired. If you counted Uncle Raymond’s tenure, the house had not been properly cleared for over eighty years. George would have been good at this, she realized, with his obsessive, methodical attention to detail; he’d even have enjoyed it. But there was no help from him and some days she had an overwhelming desire to find some giant bin-bag and just empty the entire contents of the house into a skip.
‘How’s Dad?’ Chanty whispered, looking around the kitchen for her father. Jeanie noticed her daughter seemed to talk constantly in whispers these days.
‘Don’t worry, he’s in his room, he can’t hear.’ Jeanie moved to fill the kettle. ‘And even if he was sitting right there at the kitchen table, he probably wouldn’t react.’
Chanty looked horrified.
‘What are you going to do, Mum?’
‘I can’t do anything.’ Jeanie sighed. ‘I’ve spoken to Dr Hall, and he says that unless he is a “danger to himself or others”, as he put it, he couldn’t help him until he asked him to.’
‘That makes him sound like a lunatic. What does he mean?’
‘He means suicide, Chanty. Depressives are vulnerable, obviously. But Dad’s not suicidal,’ she hurried on, seeing the look on her daughter’s face, ‘really he’s not, darling.’ She wasn’t lying; she thought this was true.
‘But how can you know?’ Chanty’s voice rose in panic.
Jeanie handed her a cup of tea and pushed the milk carton across the table. She remembered that Chanty was pregnant and more sensitive than usual.
‘I can’t, not for sure, but he seems to be marking time till we get to the country. He talks about it all the time. He believes things will be OK then, so I’m hoping they will.’
But Chanty was a doer, and she clearly found Jeanie’s laissez-faire attitude baffling.
‘What if they’re not, Mum? You’ve got to do something now, not wait on the off-chance. Suppose he does decide to . . .’ She couldn’t say the word.
She got up and began to stride restlessly around the kitchen.
‘God, it’s hot. I wish this bloody weather would break.’ She turned to her mother. ‘Maybe you should give up the shop and Ellie and stay here with him, Mum.’ Her look was one of entreaty but also of desperation. ‘I mean, you’re giving up the shop soon anyway. I know it’d be hard for you, but there’s so much at stake.’
‘Darling, please, calm down. It’s quite understandable that your father is depressed, given the circumstances.’ She noted her daughter’s accusatory glance. ‘Blame me all you like, but we have to deal with what’s happening now. Go up, talk to him, see for yourself. I’m looking after him all I can, but he doesn’t want me hovering about him all day; he tells me to go away.’
Chanty glanced towards the door, then at her watch. Jeanie could see her reluctance.
‘Go on, he won’t bite. It’ll put your mind at rest.’ She smiled understandingly and Chanty smiled back.
‘Sorry, Mum, for getting at you. It’s just Dad’s always been so solid, so unflappable. Nothing ever seemed to faze him. I hate it.’
‘So do I, but I have to believe he’ll be all right. In time.’
As Chanty got to the door she hesitated. ‘That man . . . Ray. Are you still seeing him?’
Jeanie shook her head and got an approving nod. It made her furious. She wanted to haul Chanty back and tell her the truth about her feelings. Tell her how sick she was of considering her family above herself. But this is my choice, she reminded herself firmly as she gathered her daughter’s empty mug. Her father had always told her and her brother Will that a thing was not worth doing if it wasn’t done with grace, and she knew he was right. What worried her was that she had placed herself between a rock and a h
ard place. She was capable neither of looking after George with grace, nor of leaving him with it.
‘Can my have some blarna, Gin?’ Ellie had spotted the banana Jeanie had tucked into the hood of the pram.
‘You can have some later, in the park.’
It was almost too hot to be out, but Jeanie had decided to take Ellie to the paddling pool at the Lido. These days, whenever she walked anywhere, especially the park or the Heath, she looked for Ray. She longed to catch sight of him as much as she dreaded it. Nothing had changed, but even the pain of seeing him when there could be no follow-up seemed better than this terrible, empty longing.
‘No . . . now. My want blarna now.’
Ellie began to whimper and Jeanie gave in and handed a chunk of fruit to her granddaughter. These times with Ellie were so precious to her. She felt, ridiculously, that the child somehow shared in her courtship with Ray, that she had given them her blessing. The thought that she should give up the visits to entomb herself with George – who wouldn’t care, or even notice her presence – was unthinkable. But there was always the guilt at leaving him, and when she returned home it was with a certain apprehension.
She reached down to put Ellie’s red sun hat back on.
‘No . . . don’t want it.’ The child snatched it off again and flung it on the pavement.
‘You must, darling. The sun’s very hot, it’ll make you ill.’
‘No . . . noooooo . . . don’t want it . . . Noooooo.’ Ellie struggled and squirmed as Jeanie tried to tie the strings beneath her chin, the protest quickly escalating into a full-scale tantrum. The hat was on, but her granddaughter still wrenched at it as she screamed, her little face red and sweating, her huge brown eyes awash with rage.
‘Let’s not go to the park, let’s go to Gin’s house.’ She made a quick decision, not having the energy for this battle today. At least the house would be cool. She repeated it over again to the toddler until she heard through her screams.
