Peter was glad of the excuse to phone Helen, glad, too, of the unguarded incredulity of her response, as if he was seeing a glimpse of something behind the new wall of civility that sat between them like bulletproof glass.
‘And has Cassie kept her?’
‘It would appear so, for the time being.’
‘And what do Charlie and Serena have to say about it?’
‘They're kind of shell-shocked, I think, torn between seeing the sense of it and wanting whatever is best for the… for Gemma.’
‘Pretty name.’
‘Yes, I thought so too.’
A silence followed, while Peter fiddled with his pen-stand and tried to think of something to say that might prolong not only the conversation but the small tremor of intimacy it had allowed.
‘It's obvious what will happen, though,’ Helen continued, her voice hardening. ‘Jessica will change her mind and come charging back to reclaim the poor mite just as Cassie has got too embroiled to want to give her up. It will be heartache all round… again.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Oh, really? And what do you think will happen?’
The hardness was teetering on sarcasm now. In the background Peter could hear Genevieve saying something. He strained his ears – something about tea and television. ‘I don't know what will happen,’ he confessed. ‘But apparently Jessica said that if Cassie doesn't want the child she'll give her up to social services. She said, too, that she doesn't want to be contacted. She put it all in a letter. She's even sent Ed's first maintenance cheque back.’
‘Hang on…’ Muffled noises followed while Helen put her hand over the receiver and said something to settle Genevieve. ‘It's unbelievable,’ she said, back on the line, ‘how early some lives go off the rails.’
‘Rather than going off them later, you mean?’
‘Don't start, Peter,’ she warned, in such a low whisper that he had to press the receiver to his ear to hear her. ‘Now is not the time.’
Peter, who wanted badly to ask if that meant there would be a time – and for what exactly – inquired instead after his daughters.
‘They're good,’ Helen replied, speaking normally again. ‘Genevieve's happy so long as she is allowed to wear those horrible pink shoes with everything and Chloe has agreed, at last, that her aunt's wedding warrants something more than a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I'm taking her shopping tomorrow and have high hopes of returning with a dress.’
He laughed. ‘Good luck.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied, her voice too dry for Peter to be sure whether the words had been accompanied by so much as a smile. He held his breath, hoping for a clue, or for further funny revelations about their children, or any sign that she knew he knew how she felt. Instead she said she had lots to be getting on with and would see him in Chichester at the North Street register office the following Saturday.
‘Theo's coming with me – we're taking my mother out to lunch first.’
‘I know. That's fine.’
‘My lawyer says he still hasn't –’
‘No, I've been so busy. Tell him it won't be long.’
Spying a distorted image of Peter's wide face and long nose through the peephole in the front door of her flat a couple of hours later, Jessica's instinctive response was to drop to her knees. When the bell rang a second time, longer and more shrilly, she put her hands to her ears, muttering expletives. A moment later the flap of the letterbox opened above her head.
‘Jessica, please, if you're in there, I haven't come to cause trouble. I can understand why you don't want to let me in. It's not about Gemma. Gemma's fine. My sister's taking good care of her. I want to talk to you about something else. I want to help –’
‘I don't want your bleeding help,’ she shouted at last, tipping her face up towards the flap to be sure of being heard. ‘Leave me alone. I'm all right. Fuck off.’
‘I know you're all right – that is, I hope you are.’ Peter, crouching awkwardly with his knees burning and his back at an uncomfortable angle, pressed his mouth closer to the flap. ‘Please, could you let me in for a few minutes?’ The door swung open so suddenly that he pitched forwards on to all fours, landing on the doormat.
Jessica looked down at him, her mouth curled into a sneer. ‘Yeah? And what do you want to talk about? You've got one minute starting…’ she folded her arms and tapped her foot ‘… now.’
‘I want to help you,’ muttered Peter, clambering to his feet, aware that he was going to have to work hard to retain the impulse that had driven him, on a dank January evening, to the ugly concrete block of flats where the disastrous dual family conference had taken place seven months before. He had forgotten what an adversary the girl was, how forcefully antagonistic. It dawned on him that he had been expecting her ordeal to have softened her in some way, made her more accessible. Instead she looked more sure of herself than before, aided considerably by the fact that she had lost not only the bulk of her pregnancy but the puppy fat she had been carrying. Noting the flattering tight blue jeans and crisp white T-shirt, the lank hair freshly dyed a charcoal black that set off the blazing ferocity of her green eyes, Peter had to remind himself that she was seventeen, adrift and badly in need of help. ‘What you did – your child –’
‘I thought you weren't going to talk about that.’
‘No… sorry.’ Peter cleared his throat. ‘Your mother – I was so sorry to hear that she –’
‘Good riddance.’ Her foot was tapping faster. ‘Is that it? Or…’ Jessica smiled slyly, narrowing her eyes ‘… or was it something else you were after?’
‘Something else? Heavens, no,’ Peter muttered, his voice thick with dismay and disgust. ‘How could you?’ He stopped, recalling the vile insinuation she had made during the dreadful family meeting, but saw in the same instant that such a mind-set could only be the by-product of mistreatment and suffering. The thought steadied him. ‘Jessica, I can assure you I want nothing. I have come here simply to acknowledge the ordeal you have been through by offering you the chance of a fresh start. That is to say, if you wanted to take A levels…’ There were snorts of derision at this but Peter pressed on. ‘… or maybe a vocational course of some kind, I would pay the necessary fees.’
‘I've got a job, thank you very much.’
‘A job,’ he echoed, struggling to keep the wind in his sails. ‘Something you like, I hope?’
Jessica hesitated as her newly acquired working life, dodging Jerry's groping at the hair salon, shimmered like a bad dream. ‘I'm training to be a hairdresser.’
‘Ah, I see and you have the money for that, do you?’
Jessica clutched her head with her hands. ‘Why are you so fucking keen to give me money?’ Her tone was scoffing, but also incredulous. ‘What's it for, eh? What do you want in return?’
‘Nothing.’ Peter shook his head wearily: he had not considered that the notion of giving something for nothing should be so unimaginably foreign to her. ‘You haven't had the easiest start in life. With the unwitting assistance of my nephew you have somehow…’ Remembering his conversation with Helen, he had been tempted to say ‘gone off the rails' but feared that this damaged, touchy creature – now at least deigning to talk to him – might take offence. ‘Believe it or not, and I know you might find this hard to understand, helping you would help me. What I would get in return is the knowledge that I'm doing some good for somebody who deserved a few more choices than have so far come her way. It would be between you and me,’ he continued, perceiving from the flicker in her eyes that she was interested. ‘We would tell no one.’
He still had his foot in the door, keeping it open out of a dim instinct that she needed space – the reassurance of not being trapped – for any understanding between them to have a chance of taking root.
‘So I choose a course or something anywhere I like and you pay for it?’
Peter nodded. ‘That's about it.’
‘Cos it would make you feel better.’
‘Yup.’
‘Like I'm your private charity or something.’
Peter was on the point of denying this accusation when he saw that she was now rolling her eyes and grinning.
‘You're potty, you are.’
‘Er… yes, probably. Peter smiled sheepishly. ‘I'm also quite wealthy, and I've had a devil of a year doing nothing but making people I care for miserable, and to perform this one small favour for you would go a long way towards helping me atone for at least some of that.’ He stopped, warned off by her expression of irritated puzzlement.
‘I'm not sure I want to go back to studying.' She frowned. ‘To be honest, I'm not that keen on hairdressing either… but I'd quite fancy doing a beautician's course or something. Would you pay for that?’
‘Of course.’ Peter, aware that the battle had been fought and won, felt sufficiently relaxed to give a little bow. ‘I shall be at your service. Here…’ He took a business card out of his pocket. ‘Look into it and call me when you've made your mind up or if you just want to talk it through. Okay?’
Slowly, cautiously, she took the card but didn't look at it. ‘And it's like… between you and me?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Well, thanks, then. I might do it, I suppose.’
‘Splendid. Excellent.’ Peter held out his hand, keeping it there as she hesitated, studying it – like an animal sniffing out foe or friend – then slid her palm briefly across his, no more firmly than a feather brushing his skin.
‘And Gemm's okay, is she?’ she asked, folding her arms tightly across her chest.
‘Oh, yes…’ Peter began, prevented from saying more because a lump the size of a tennis ball swelled at the back of his throat. ‘If you wish you hadn't, you must say…’
Jessica shook her head twice, so vehemently that the flat, blackened hair spun out from her ears. ‘I wanted the best for her – a mum who'll love her right and a big family and that.’
‘You're a remarkable girl.’
Jessica shrugged, whether out of modesty or because she could not comprehend the compliment Peter found it hard to be sure. ‘So I might call you,’ was all she said, waving the business card at him as he walked away.
‘When you're ready.’
In the three easy strides it seemed to take to reach the lifts Peter felt as if he was walking on air. Going down in the dingy box he had a merry conversation with a toothless pensioner about the weather, animated by warmth that had nothing to do with the double lining of his cashmere overcoat.
Back in the contrastingly sumptuous surroundings of his own flat in Barons Court, he hung Roland's curious whisk of oils above the hall table, then cooked himself a pork chop, two rashers of bacon and a scoop of frozen vegetables, which he washed down with several glasses of good claret. Undressing for bed a little later, he took his wallet out of his breast pocket and carefully – tenderly – examined the worn, out-of-date photos of his family that he carried next to his heart. There was a picture of Delia there too, hidden at the back – a good one, showing off the soft slope of her fair hair and the striking feline set of her eyes. Peter waited for the usual reflex of physical longing. It came at last, but was so faint – so suffused with remorse – that it was easy to crumple the image in his fist, then drop it into the wastepaper basket next to his bed. ‘Life goes on,’ he murmured, fetching a final glass of wine to accompany his night-time reading and get him to a point where fatigue overrode the discomfort of sleeping alone.
Anyone inclined to align the notion of good weather with good fortune might have felt a dampening of spirits on glimpsing the canvas of steely grey pressing on the South Downs the following Saturday morning. Serena, however, striding across the fields with Petra, her head full of mental lists for the catering requirements of the wedding party, hardly noticed it. The finger food was already stacked on trays in the larder – well away from the prying paws of Samson and his new canine accomplice – and she had left Charlie setting out glasses and bottles along a crisp linen tablecloth she had laid over the dining-table. Still to do were the beds: Keith's sister Irene and his two boys were staying the night, as were Peter and Theo. Roland, too, wanting to keep out of the way of the honeymoon night, which his mother and prospective stepfather had elected to spend in Midhurst, had asked if he might stay over. They wouldn't be having a proper holiday until the spring, Elizabeth had explained, when they were going to take all three of their children to visit Maria in Umbria. Helen, perhaps not surprisingly, had refused Serena and Charlie's tactful offer of the barn for the night and insisted that she and the girls would leave for London straight after the reception. Cassie had also warned that she might not stay long, that it would depend on Gemma. The whirligig of Serena's thoughts paused there. Few events in her life had shaken her more deeply – or caused her more pleasure – than the thrusting of her son's unwanted child into the arms of her sister-in-law.
‘But I'm also madly jealous,’ she had confessed to Charlie, once all the obvious questions had been asked and Sid had assured them several times that his granddaughter was fine and that the arrangement had his wholehearted support. ‘A baby girl – Ed's baby girl, for God's sake, our granddaughter and Cassie gets to bring her up.’
Once, not long ago, such an admission would have been like gouging the scab off a deep wound. It was a measure of how far they had come – of how close and mended they were – that Charlie had merely smiled, nodded, stroked her arm and said of course she felt that way, and it was only natural, but that like any set of deserving grandparents they were going to get all the best of it and none of the worst. Cassie would do the hard stuff and they could hover in the background, ready to spoil Gemma whenever it was required.
In all the furore it was Ed who had somehow been forgotten. Poor, angry, bewildered Ed. Serena sat down on a tree stump with a sigh and clicked her fingers at Petra, who gave a reluctant last sniff to a rabbit-hole, then dropped obediently at her side. Squinting back towards the house, Serena could just make out the blue curtains bunched to each side of her son's bedroom window. His reaction to the news had been instant and unequivocal. ‘Jessica's won,’ he had shouted. ‘Can't you see? She's won. She wanted a piece of our lives and she's got it.’ He had slammed the door and pounded the stairs to his bedroom. Half an hour later Melanie's little red Fiat had appeared in the drive for the few minutes it took Ed to thunder back down the stairs and get into it. He had remained with his girlfriend's family ever since, phoning once to ask if he was expected to buy his aunt a wedding present and again to say he would make his own way to the register office.
It was understandable, Serena reasoned now, patting Petra's glossy head as she got up from her perch and headed back towards the house. He had thought his huge, terrible problem solved – or at least removed – only to find that it had been lobbed back at his feet. For, under the guardianship of his aunt, the daughter whose existence he had opposed from the moment of her conception would now be brought up on the doorstep of his own home, incorporated into family functions with all the rights of any other little Harrison. However much Ed was away, studying, working, forging his own life, he would have to know her, even if the task of disclosing her true parentage remained years away.
But, as with all problems, these days, Serena found herself soothed by the perspective of the past. Ed had not disappeared this time. He was sulking at his girlfriend's house; a very nice girlfriend, with a place to study English at Edinburgh, a sharp sense of humour and a fascinatingly tiny diamond stud in her nose. He would come round eventually, she was sure, rejoin the muddle of family life, shifting as it did from one day to the next. Cassie had been desperate to talk to him – had even mooted door-stepping him at Melanie's – but Serena and Charlie, advising her during the course of their own reintroduction to Gemma, had suggested she let the initial shock of the news wear off first. ‘But I want to take her to the wedding,’ Cassie had cried, still a little hysterical from her new responsibilities and lack of sleep. ‘That will be a bigger shock than any
thing, won't it, when he sees her? And she's got his eyes too, don't you think? Large, blue and deep-set – they're the spitting image.’
All three adults had peered into the pram, whose comfort, in its occupant's opinion at least, had been heightened by the addition of a little square of honey-coloured sheepskin. ‘Did yours like dummies?’ Cassie had asked, tugging at the little pink plastic loop sticking out of Gemma's mouth, which caused a fierce suction protest in response.
‘No, just their thumbs and bits of blanket, and Tina loved that bunch of plastic keys – do you remember, Charlie? We didn't dare go anywhere without it for months.’
‘Of course,’ he had whispered, ‘I remember every bit of her.’
Serena, still only half-way across the field, breath swirling in front of her in bursts of white mist, felt tears prick her eyes as she recalled the moment and the little person in the white sleepsuit who lay at the heart of it. Watching the busily pumping legs and fists, the strengthening focus of the blue button eyes, Serena had felt both incredulous and ashamed at the fear her conception had caused. So small, so brave, so perfect. It was impossible now not to delight in her; impossible too, for Serena at least, not to feel that, from the first fighting moments of the harrowing birth, all that fear had been turned on its head. Small and fragile Gemma might be, but she was rebalancing – redeeming – them all, much as the tiniest light can signal a way through the thickest dark.
Roland, standing among his cousins in the first row facing the registrar's desk, was aware of the tight leather of his new shoes pinching his toes. His feet had grown, just as he had feared they would when Cassie bought them. Only pulled out of their box – dusty from so many months' residence at the back of his wardrobe that morning, there had been no question of purchasing another pair. Yet it seemed fitting, somehow, that he should wear them – his wedding shoes – in spite of the radical change to both the venue and the participants. His mother, tottering round the kitchen that morning, making tea and not drinking it, buttering toast and not eating it, stabbing at her hair with clips and combs, had muttered about her own footwear (cream stilettos to match her new skirt and jacket) and the unlikelihood of getting through the day without breaking an ankle.
The Simple Rules of Love Page 59
