by Judy Astley
Through the mists of her quasi-absence during this meal, she’d heard her voice talking to Cass about Charlie, sympathizing with Pandora about the gruesome backstage conditions at the very fancy restaurant she worked in, yet feeling completely disconnected. She’d kept glancing across at the kitchen window that was now all taped-up cardboard, and she’d wondered, with mild amazement, where that had come from, the wild urge to smash something? She was the calm hub of this family, the one who made it tick. A shrink would call her the ‘enabler’ in the house. She was the keeper of the lists (birthday, Christmas, shopping, holiday plans and so on). She wasn’t supposed to shatter. Windows weren’t supposed to shatter.
Conrad was the one whose artistic mood swings took up the breathing space here. Usually, it was all about him. The girls seemed barely out of their teens and still brittle, testing the murky depths of life. Just now, shaken by their mother’s explosion, Cass and Pandora were still being polite to each other, almost exaggeratedly sweet-natured, passing the salad down the table without being asked, collecting plates and putting them into the dishwasher as soundlessly as they could, as if frightened that a sudden noise would provoke another fit of mayhem. They needn’t worry. She was over that now. The attention was on Conrad. It was all right – she was used to that and it felt comfortable.
‘Well, what do you want to do about your birthday then?’ Sara eventually asked. ‘I mean it is a special one, surely? Shall we go away somewhere? All of us? Maybe Venice? We had such a blissful time there, I remember.’
Conrad pulled a face. ‘Absolutely not. I don’t want to travel anywhere. I don’t intend to go on a plane ever again.’
‘Now you’re just being peevish. Spoiled, like a kid,’ she told him.
‘Second childhood, bring it on!’ he laughed, reaching across and taking her hand. ‘We can have temper tantrums together, now you’ve brought out your violent side. Only not abroad, if that’s all right with you. Let’s trash the UK.’
‘You can get to Venice by train. It’s easy,’ Cass pointed
out.
‘I still don’t want to go. All those hours, too close to strangers. Almost worse than flying.’ Conrad shuddered.
‘OK, well that’s your choice made, but what about the rest of us? Does that mean you won’t come away with me anywhere if it involves flying, ever again?’ Sara asked.
‘Darling, you can find plenty of other people to travel the world with. Call on your stable of trusty men. Ask Will. If he’ll go and see horror movies with you I’m sure he’d be up for weekend mini-breaks. And what about your oil-stained-mechanic admirer who supplies the veg boxes? He’d be handy for carrying your baggage.’
‘Why would I want to go anywhere with Stuart? I’ve never been further than the pub on the Green with him.’ Was he losing his mind, she wondered? Where had this come from? ‘I barely know the guy. And Will’s got Bruno to go on holiday with. I quite like travelling with you actually, Conrad. Sharing experiences, having conversations. All that. It’s called a relationship.’ Why was he being like this? Only a couple of hours ago he was murmuring comfort words into her hair.
‘But we’ve been just about everywhere we’ve really wanted to go by now, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘We can impose ourselves on your mad sister Lizzie in Cornwall if we want to get away. Or explore the outlying edges of this lovely British mainland. Why ask for the Maldives? We have Stonehenge! Get it? Good that, I thought!’
‘Hmm. Going all New Voyager on me isn’t a top placatory tactic,’ Sara warned him, taking up the long sharp knife from the cheese plate and waving it at him. Cass and Pandora backed away, nervously.
‘Mum . . . Just . . . like, put it down?’ Pandora carefully took the knife from her mother’s hand and placed it out of reach.
‘Well – he’s annoying me, so childish!’ Sara said. Conrad smiled at her, blew her a kiss. She tried not to smile back, though it was difficult. He was pouring more wine and looking too pleased with himself, knowing quite well he’d got round her, as ever. No party. No big-deal celebrations. That was fine, so long as that was what he really wanted.
‘You’re as bad as each other, you two,’ Cass told them, glancing at the taped-up window. It was one of very few ordinary, small-sized windows in this house of wall-sized safety glass and wood. It was lucky, Cass thought, that her mother hadn’t gone mad with a sledgehammer and written off half the building. Perhaps that was next. Lucky she’d moved back in, really, as it looked like she wasn’t the one most in need of supervision.
‘You’re not just telling me you don’t want to do anything special because I threw that stupid jar, are you?’ Sara persisted. ‘Is it because you think a bit of organizing might send me right over the edge?’
‘No, Sara.’ He sounded tired suddenly, she thought. ‘No, I really don’t want any fuss. Please. Just . . . nothing.’
He was quite capable of being this insistent now, but when it came to the crunch he could well sulk and accuse them all of not caring. He was too used to her being the calming influence. Come to think of it, she probably did tend to treat him a bit like a child, second time around or not. Maybe she always had been the one who did the taking care of: fending off the persistent admiring women who couldn’t believe a man as famously attractive as Conrad didn’t want to take advantage of sexual offers. And then there were his clients . . . all those egos having their portraits painted. They always started out thinking they wanted the manic, quasi-abstract Blythe-Hamilton portraiture, but no one could accuse Conrad of being a flatterer when it came to paint. Somewhere deep down the subjects all preferred attractive to honest, or to down-right cruel, in some cases. She’d been the one on the end of the phone when they wanted to whine that Conrad hadn’t stinted when it came to portraying their excess body fat or facial wrinkles.
The knife having been confiscated, Sara broke off a chunk of Yarg cheese with her fingers, leaving big untidy shards of it scattered on the plate. It didn’t matter. It was just cheese. Lots of things didn’t matter, possibly the least of them the sharing of aircraft space with a reluctant voyager.
‘It’s fine about flying. And the train. And everything. It’s up to you, darling. Suit yourself,’ she told him.
He looked at her in surprise. ‘Don’t you want to know what I do intend to do?’
She kissed him lightly as she passed him, on her way to make coffee. ‘No, not really. Now I know I don’t have to organize anything, why don’t you just surprise me?’
He looked slightly nervous at her unexpected abdication. ‘Oh all right, Sara. I’ll do that. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
Paint It Black.
(Keith Richards/Mick Jagger)
‘Mum you are so brilliant. Are you really sure you don’t mind? I mean, babies are quite hard work and every-thing . . .’ Cassie was whirling round the kitchen, scattering crumbs from her croissant as she went from fridge to cupboard to kettle, creating maximum air turbulence out of a simple matter of making two mugs of tea.
Charlie sat on Sara’s lap, trying hard to reach the bowl of gloopy baby cereal on the table. One fist had already been in it and he’d smeared creamy streaks across the glass tabletop, an activity that pleased him enormously and that he was eager to repeat. Sara tried to distract the baby from his mission, guiding another spoonful of the stuff (which smelled horribly like wallpaper paste) towards his mouth. He turned away, his big wide eyes fixed on his mother, who was now packing her laptop into her bag.
‘Of course I don’t mind. We went through all this last night,’ Sara said, with more conviction in her voice than in her head. ‘If you can’t take care of him and you won’t ask Paul, then aren’t I the best person to have Charlie while you’re at college? And it’s not as if you have to be there all day every day. Don’t worry about it, just go – it’ll be fun for me!’
Well, how else would the girl be able to continue with her course? Whatever arrangement Cass eventually worked out with Charlie’s father, she was still going to
need plenty of backup. Guiltily, Sara now wondered if she should have been more persistent with her offers of help earlier. She’d tried, offering Cass some simple me-time, but Cass had usually turned her down. Perhaps if she hadn’t, it wouldn’t have come to this. If Cass hadn’t been so determinedly independent and if Sara had insisted (for Cass’s own good) on taking Charlie for a while on a proper regular basis from the start, she and Paul might still be together and coping well with their baby and with each other. As it was turning out, Sara was just glad Cass had chosen a university only thirty minutes’ drive away, rather than Leeds, Liverpool or somewhere impossibly distant. What happened when things went wrong for those highflyers who’d picked US Ivy League universities? The ones who’d flown off full of brainy confidence but who ran into trouble somewhere along the line, simply because emotional trauma didn’t stay out of your way on account of your IQ being in genius range. You could hardly keep whizzing across the Atlantic to hug a heartbroken daughter every time a relationship went into meltdown. By the time you rolled up to the campus with a box of extra-strength tissues and a comfort-size bar of Fruit and Nut, the girl would surely be about to leave for a party with an instant new love of her life and tell you it was OK, she was over it, but ta very much for the chocolate.
‘It’ll just be a couple of days a week till the end of the uni year – so it’s only till June, really . . . though I suppose then I’ll need some kind of job.’
Cassandra looked so much happier this morning than she had the evening before, when she’d seemed defeated by the pressures of boyfriend, babycare and life. It was a strange meal, the girls being so careful about what they said, and Conrad with all this new mad stuff about not wanting to travel any more, and looking as if he had a secret that he was desperate for someone to ask about. Sometimes, Sara thought, it was a toss-up which, out of Charlie and Conrad, was actually the baby. Maybe this attention-seeking was what people meant by second childhood.
‘Gotta dash – said I’d pick up Miranda on the way. Bye-bye my lovely baby.’
Cassandra dropped a kiss on Charlie’s fuzzy head, grabbed her bag of books and car keys and opened the back door. For a moment, she hesitated in the doorway, the sunlight shining through breeze-blown blonde hair. She looked back at her mother and Charlie, eyes glittery.
‘Thanks so much, Mum. I really couldn’t . . .’
‘Cass – just go!’ Sara was close to getting up and shooing the girl out of the door. She would be late for her lecture if she didn’t leave now, but it seemed important not to return to chivvying her as if she was still a schoolgirl putting off the dread moment of a maths test. ‘It’s all right, honestly. He’ll be fine with me. Now quick, Cass, slide out before he notices.’
And Cassandra was gone.
‘So. Looks like it’s just you and me for the day, Charlie,’ Sara said to him as she carried him to the sink and ran cool water over his sticky hands. He grabbed for the stream of water, trying to catch it. She clasped him firmly as she tried at the same time to reach for a towel to dry him. He seemed to have got water all over him, even in his hair. There was quite a lot down her, too.
‘Here – let me.’ Conrad came in through the back door and took Charlie from her. Charlie wriggled and swiped at Conrad’s face with his wet hands.
‘Thanks, darling. I’d forgotten how squirmy babies can be. Here, let me dry him.’
Conrad held Charlie up in front of him and looked into his face. Charlie stared back, mesmerized, then broke into a broad toothless smile, his blue eyes wide and sparkling.
‘He’s beautiful, isn’t he?’ Conrad said quietly. ‘Remember Cass at that age? She was still about half the size of the other babies.’
‘I know.’ Sara slid her arm round Conrad, remembering. ‘So tiny. I thought she’d never grow. When she was born, all the other babies in the hospital were so huge by comparison. I know the midwife said the tiny ones catch up fast but it was hard to believe she ever would.’
It had been a terrifying time; Cassandra had been born six weeks early, labour having got under way for Sara during a private view in a Cork Street gallery full of what were described as ‘political landscapes’. Conrad had been deep into conversation with Peter Blake about the Everly Brothers, and she had tuned out from their chat and into the depths of excruciating backache, assuming she needed no more than a glass of water and a comfortable chair. An hour later, Cassandra had whizzed into the world in an ambulance on the King’s Road as if she simply couldn’t wait to get her life started. She’d weighed four pounds – well within an easy-survival range, but her lungs weren’t ready to function, she was sleepy and jaundiced and seemed to have used up all her energy getting herself born. Conrad had said, as he watched her breathing unevenly in her incubator, ‘It’s as if she’s taken one look at the world and wondered why she bothered.’ Terrified that by saying this he’d jinxed their baby’s survival, he and Sara had gone to the hospital chapel and lit candles for her. Neither was religious. If asked, they’d fill in the ‘agnostic’ box, but sometimes, they agreed, you just had to go for all the help that might be out there.
‘Shame I won’t see him grow up,’ Conrad said now, looking as if he’d only just calculated the age gap between himself and his grandson.
Sara put her arms round him, hugging him and the baby together. ‘Oh of course you will! You’re well and fit and you could go on for years and years! You’ll probably see his children!’ she laughed, letting go of them and making a start on cleaning the sticky table.
‘No, Sara, I won’t.’ Conrad sat on one of the twisted-selm chairs, still holding Charlie close to him. ‘I really want you to know this and not to laugh it off. I don’t want to get older than this. I can feel it creeping on and I intend to sidestep it. Outwit the Reaper, play him at his own game.’
‘Conrad? Are you crazy? Don’t say that – it’s that be careful what you wish for thing! And anyway, what do you mean, exactly? How can you possibly just . . .’ Sara stopped wiping the table and crossed her fingers, because the awful word was surely one you shouldn’t say casually. ‘Just . . . die?’
Was he going to tell her something terrible? She knew he was, just knew it. He must be ill. Terminally. How could she not know? How had he hidden the kind of symptoms that could kill? Ridiculously, she didn’t want to remember this moment as one where she was covered in crumbs and dried baby food, hearing life’s worst possible news with a soggy J-cloth in her hand. She went to the sink and bought herself some time, washing her hands, smoothing anti-ageing hand cream all over them, very, very slowly.
‘You’re so young,’ Conrad was saying. She turned round and realized he wasn’t speaking to Charlie but to her.
‘No I’m not!’ She laughed, but it was the nervous kind. ‘Not any more! I’m a classic midlifer, surely, heading for trouble?’ The man from the pub slid in and out of her thoughts, just quickly, like a single, half-caught, subliminal frame accidentally slotted into a movie. Get out, she told the image. Not now.
‘You’re still young enough to start again with someone else, Sara. Young enough to make a whole new life, even have another child if you wanted to. There are plenty of men out there who’d snap you up.’
‘Now I know you’re crazy! Men who are looking for women aren’t looking for the forty-something ones,’ she said, feeling more scared than she would allow him to know. ‘And anyway, why would I want one? I’ve been happy with you since day one. You know that. And even if I could, I don’t want any more children. That’s what I did with you – I’d never want them with someone else.’
‘All the same . . .’ He smiled, but looked sad. ‘I don’t want you to waste the rest of your youth taking care of an old man who is going into swift decline. I don’t want to be seventy.’
She put her arms round him and kissed him gently. ‘I know you don’t, darling. I don’t suppose I’ll want to either, if and when the time comes.’
‘We’ve had a good time, haven’t we?’ Conrad asked her.
/> ‘Yes. The best. But we’ll go on having a good time.’
‘When I’ve gone, just remember it was good. And that I’ll be OK about going. Don’t be sad, will you?’ He took her hand, stroked her palm softly with his thumb.
‘Conrad, of course I’ll be sad! I’ll wear deepest black, get Philip Treacy to make me wonderful hats and I’ll lie in a darkened room playing early Dylan to remind me of you.’
‘Sara, please, you’re saying this as if it’s a joke. I’m just trying to be realistic here. I’m so much older than you . . .’
And suddenly he looked it. Sara felt scared for him, for her, for the unsaid something that was in the air.
‘Hey, hush. We always agreed age would never be an issue. Nothing’s changed.’
‘It has, though. I’m old. I wasn’t old then, just older. Now I’m heading for seriously old.’
‘You’re frightening me, Conrad. Just tell me one thing, honestly.’
‘Maybe – ask away.’
‘Are you ill? Do you secretly know there’s something seriously wrong with you? Because I couldn’t bear not to know. If there’s something, please don’t keep it from me; don’t try and go through it all alone.’
Conrad didn’t hesitate. At least here, he could be honest. ‘No. I’m not ill. I’m actually fine. Physically. As far as I know. As far as anyone can know.’
‘All right. That’s all I wanted to know. Now please, can you stop thinking about the dying thing? You’ve still got loads of living to get on with.’
He sighed and stroked Charlie’s suedey head. ‘Sara – I. . . OK, let’s leave it for now. I know – shall we go out somewhere? Take this little boy out and show him some of the world?’
