Family Secrets

by Liz Byrski

  Even through the fog Kerry thought this made sense, but she also worried that if she stopped forcing herself out to work, gave up the effort of sticking to a routine, she might disappear further into the abyss. As they drove home she wondered whether it was the feelings that had haunted her during Gerald’s final few years as much as his actual death that had brought her to this point.

  That was almost two weeks ago and nothing much has changed. And while she’s taking the thyroid tablets the anti-depressants remain unopened in the bathroom cupboard. To take them seems like an admission of failure. Having Erin there is a godsend, though, and slowly Kerry has been smothering her pride and accepting more and more of her help. But her predominant state is still one of numbness interspersed with bursts of anxiety and always this debilitating lassitude. Several times she has wanted to call Connie but what would she say? Should she apologise for the way she’s been acting for the last few years, and if so what then? How could she explain the complexity of it? It would be hard enough face-to-face but impossible over the telephone to the other side of the world. But she yearns daily for Connie’s tomato sandwiches and big mugs of sweet tea, less for the food itself than for what it meant about the love and comfort of childhood, about tenderness and acceptance. And even though Chris, and now Erin, struggle to find ways of reaching her none of it seems to make any difference.

  A few minutes later she is spooning the cake mixture into the tin when Erin appears in the kitchen doorway kicking off her boots and pushing her greying hair back from her face. Kerry loves the way Erin looks; ever since she’s known her she’s looked like a woman totally at ease with herself. She’s fifty-three now and to Kerry she is beautiful, but in a way that doesn’t fit with any of the ads for beauty products. She is confident and apparently unconcerned that she is now clearly ageing, something she neither tries to hide nor seems to dislike. She is the same as when they met, and yet she is also different; better, Kerry thinks, more profoundly herself, warmer, wiser and more forgiving. The chance of attaining those qualities herself seems remote.

  Erin crosses the kitchen, sticks a finger into the cake mix and then into her mouth. ‘Good lord that’s to die for,’ she says, licking her finger. ‘Do we have to wait for it to cook or can I not just eat the mixture now, with a spoon?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ Kerry says. ‘Your hands are filthy and, anyway, my status as domestic goddess rests on this cake.’

  Erin laughs. ‘Well, not much chance of it rising then!’ she quips and they both laugh.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Erin says. ‘The thyroid thing, the depression – would it help you to go away for a while, a week or two? Somewhere nice. I can look after the kids. I mentioned it to Chris but he doesn’t think he could get time off until the end of term, but you could go … if you feel you could actually face the effort.’

  Kerry tries to imagine herself getting on a flight to somewhere peaceful, exotic – Bali, maybe – but the prospect defeats her. It’s not just the process of getting there, but the idea of being completely alone in a strange place when just getting out of the door each day is hard enough. She smiles. ‘Thanks, Erin, it’s a nice idea, but I don’t think I can get my head around it right now. I need to be somewhere safe and familiar. That must sound stupid but …’

  ‘Not stupid at all,’ Erin says, rinsing her hands under the tap. ‘It was just a thought. But the doctor did say you should take time off and I know it’s none of my business but you’ve done nothing about that yet.’ She sticks a clean finger back into the cake mix and Kerry bats her hand away and slides the cake into the oven.

  ‘I’m thinking about it,’ she says, ‘really I am.’

  It’s hours later, two in the morning, when she wakes suddenly, her heart beating furiously from some strange and muddled dream, and sits bolt upright. Chris shifts slightly and turns onto his side and Kerry swings her legs off the bed and wanders silently to the window, opening it slightly to feel the cold night air on her face. She stands there for a while, looking out over the shadowy garden and up at the glorious array of stars in the night sky. She feels huge and bloated, like a great leech that has grown fat on the blood of others and has now turned upon itself devouring her from within, and somehow that feeling seems to relate to the dream. She sees Chris struggling blindly to help her, the children confused – walking wide circles around her – and Erin, who can see it all more clearly because she is to some extent an outsider, trying to tell her something. Behind her she hears Chris stirring, the bed creaking as he pulls himself up into a sitting position.

  ‘You okay?’ he asks through a yawn.

  She locks the window into its half-open position, walks back to bed and climbs in beside him. ‘Erin talked to me about going away …’ she says, and he reaches over and takes her hand. ‘I think she’s right, a week perhaps, maybe two, how would you feel … ?’

  ‘I’d feel you were doing the right thing,’ he says.

  ‘This’ll sound stupid after the way I’ve behaved but I really want to be with Mum, though even if she were here I couldn’t, I doubt she’d want me around. So perhaps I could just go to the house, maybe I could call Farah and …’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he cuts in, ‘do it first thing in the morning.’

  ‘I’ve never taken time off in term before.’

  ‘So you have an outstanding record of reliability.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No buts.’

  ‘Farah might say no.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t mind?’

  ‘Mind? Glad to see the back of you,’ he says, wrapping his arms around her. ‘I’ll get the whole bed to myself.’ And he pulls her closer to him and they lie there spooned together, facing the window, the cool night air on their faces until she falls asleep again.

  Thirteen

  ‘I wonder what Phillip’s like now,’ Connie says, sitting on the edge of her hotel bed to pull on her shoes.

  ‘Unkempt, vastly overweight, with a shiny and bulbous red nose from drinking too much,’ Flora says.

  Connie laughs, dropping her shoe, enjoying the image. ‘You’re so unkind. Why d’you think he’ll look like that?’

  ‘Because they always drank too much – but Phillip is single and divorced, so doubtless lives alone, probably in a refined sort of squalor, his surroundings decaying around him. That’s the fate of older men who live alone, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh,’ Connie says. ‘I mean, it’s a stereotype, isn’t it, especially of men of our generation? Do you think Gerald would have gone that way if we’d split up?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Flora says, peering closely at herself in the dressing table mirror. ‘Mum did everything for him, he never had to cook or clean anything, he scattered his clothes around the place and she or Mrs Peacock collected them up, washed and ironed them, and put them back in the wardrobe exactly where he could expect to find them. She never made any attempt to encourage him to look after himself or take responsibility for anything at home, then you came along and did exactly the same thing.’

  Connie gets to her feet and pulls on her jacket, sighing as she does so. ‘I never intended that to happen,’ she says. ‘When we got married I was sure I could change him, educate him about how to live. Arrogant, I suppose. I thought it would be pretty straightforward, but trying to change Gerald was like trying to get a tsunami to change direction. In the end it was easier just to give in and get on with it.’

  ‘He thought you loved doing it for him,’ Flora says. ‘He told me that when I was staying with you. One day when you were out I told him he treated you like a domestic servant and that at his age he should know he had to take responsibility for looking after himself.’

  ‘Did you really?’ Connie says, amazed, trying to imagine that conversation. ‘I bet he took a dim view of that.’

  ‘A very dim view. Said he wasn’t having any of that hairy-legged women’s lib stuff in his house.’

  ‘Good hea
vens,’ Connie says, ‘I’d no idea. He did improve in many ways, you know, and I guess I should have dug my heels in. Marriage is a strange state …’

  ‘Mmmm, well, you don’t need to convince me about that,’ Flora says, pulling on her own coat now and looking around for her bag.

  ‘I mean, when you live with someone day after day for years compromise becomes a habit,’ Connie says. ‘It’s the way the relationship works, especially with someone like Gerald; you talk a lot about trivial things like whether the fence needs repairing, or what vegetables to plant. It feels like cementing the companionship, a way to tell if it’s still working. If you can rub along, side by side, dealing with all the small things, it feels secure, it can become a substitute for intimacy …’ she hesitates. ‘We didn’t have much of an intimate life,’ she says. ‘I don’t just mean sex. Gerald didn’t really do simple intimacy, and affection was hard for him too. So for me, I think, asking his opinion about small things was a way of trying to get that back, trying to share things with him. But I think it bored and irritated him.’ She walks to the door, waiting for Flora to turn off the bathroom light.

  ‘Good thing I’m gay,’ Flora says, following her out of the door. ‘I’d never have survived living with a man. Shall we go?’

  ‘Okay, seriously, let’s guess what Phillip’ll be like,’ Connie muses as they wait for the lift. ‘I’ll go rather well preserved but conservative and somewhat unimaginative. Probably thinks of himself as a bit of a ladies’ man, nudge nudge, wink wink, and wearing a blazer with grey flannels and …’

  ‘Not a cravat,’ Flora says, ‘please don’t let him be wearing a cravat, I’ll wet myself if he is.’

  ‘Five pounds says he’s wearing a cravat,’ Connie wagers.

  ‘You’re on. I say he’s wearing a baggy corduroy suit with leather elbows, and a viyella shirt with egg on it. Oh lord, why are we even doing this? We’re in London, we could be going to the theatre or a movie or having fish and chips.’

  ‘We’re doing it for old times’ sake,’ Connie says, and she shoves her arm through Flora’s. ‘Now try to behave nicely and let’s see who spots him first.’

  *

  Phillip is deliberately early, fifteen minutes early in fact. He’d been determined to get his favourite corner table, cosy but not cramped, and he was unaccountably nervous so he’d hurried and installed himself there with a glass of house red which is, as usual, very good. He likes this restaurant and not just because it’s only a few minutes’ walk from the shop. The menu is interesting and the food lives up to its promise, the staff are friendly, a nice unpretentious place to meet friends. In fact it was here, only under different management, that more than thirty years ago he’d seen Gerald for the last time. He hadn’t realised it would be the last time of course, but that’s how it turned out. They’d sat here in this corner and eaten one of the huge stodgy lunches it served in those days, steak and kidney pudding with mash probably, or maybe roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and killed a couple of bottles of wine.

  Phillip had been a lot fatter in those days; an indiscriminate eater and drinker, his clothes were uncomfortably tight that day. He’d hated the way he looked, especially compared with Gerry, who was looking lean and energetic, and very well dressed. And as he thinks about it now Phillip remembers Gerry mentioning then that he had his sights on a move into politics. They’d eaten too much and drunk too much, and sat there too long chewing the fat, so that by the time they wandered out into the street it was already dark – one of those depressing winter afternoons when night fell at half past four. They’d said goodbye on the corner, and Gerry had wandered off towards Euston Road and Phillip had walked home. He was still married to Lorna then and he remembers going straight into the kitchen and telling her that he wanted to lose weight, that he never again wanted to feel fat, bloated and ungainly among his peers. Lorna had laughed at him but with some relief, and he was soon munching carrots, lettuce and cottage cheese and wishing he’d never mentioned it. He’s glad of it now though, because he’s dropped several stones, still plays cricket sometimes and walks a lot. ‘Thanks for that, Gerry,’ he murmurs, ‘you looked as though you’d go on forever that day, and now you’re gone and I’m still here.’

  Phillip checks his watch, five past seven, no sign of Bea yet, and no sign of Flora and Connie, and at the thought of them the energy that had him worrying about what to wear, what to say and how to behave, and had him here fifteen minutes early, suddenly disappears into some black hole and he wishes he was home in his flat, with sardines on toast and the BBC news. He should just have let them pop into the shop as they’d suggested and now he’ll be stuck with them for the evening. Two women in their late sixties whom he hasn’t seen for decades; what will they talk about? Two hours, at least, of stilted conversation, all of them wishing they were doing something else. Why is he doing this? Old times’ sake, he reminds himself, looking out into the street where it is still quite light. But what old times? They’d barely known each other then, and what would they have in common now, the three of them – just a dead man, and an afternoon in a punt that is probably best forgotten. Old times might be best left as just that, rather than updated.

  ‘Phillip?’ A voice takes him by surprise. ‘It is Phillip, isn’t it?’

  And there they both are – the past right there in his face, two women, totally changed but absolutely the same, and as he jumps to his feet a sudden and unexpected surge of emotion makes him catch his breath, and he is transported back to the Phillip he once was, by the company of people who knew that he had once been young.

  ‘Flora? Flora – how wonderful,’ he says, ‘how amazing, you look just the same.’

  ‘The same only different,’ she says, ‘as do you.’ And she holds out her hand to shake his but he ignores it and hugs her and he feels her hug him back. And over her shoulder he sees Connie, smiling at him, tilting her head to one side as she watches him and Flora, and then stepping forward to hug him herself. How extraordinary, how sudden, this weird sense of connection, this merging of old and young selves, this gift from the past right here in real life, and a feeling that he really does know them.

  ‘You look very different from what we imagined,’ Flora says when they are settled in their seats. ‘No ravages of drink and debauchery.’

  ‘And we’d lined you up to be wearing a blazer and a cravat,’ Connie says. ‘The linen has taken us by surprise.’

  And in that moment Phillip knows that this is going to be a splendid evening and that the past, in all its various intricacies, is just the past, and this is a clean slate on which their new old selves can begin to write. And now he wishes that he hadn’t asked Bea, it was thoughtless and insensitive, and she will bring the past with her, not just the memories but the Gerald baggage. She is a law unto herself and may decide to scrawl indiscriminately all over the clean slate.

  *

  Bea is deliberately late, fifteen minutes late. She wants to get a look at them before she walks into the restaurant and she’s confident that Phillip will have nabbed his favourite table, which means she’ll be able to see quite clearly from across the street. It’s a pleasant, mild spring evening, people are still hurrying along Marchmont Street on the way home from work, diving in and out of Brunswick Square to pick up a takeaway meal, or grabbing last minute shopping in Waitrose. There are tourists too, looking slightly lost, or peering at maps and rummaging through the stalls of second-hand books outside Judd’s. Bea loves Bloomsbury, in all weathers and at any time of the year. She has lived here for almost forty years and it has never lost its attraction for her.

  This evening, as she walked here along the laneway by Coram’s Fields, she’d resented doing this, sharing her place in the world with people who had the power to trample over the past, label it as theirs without even knowing the painful reality of her place in it. But it’s too late for that now, she’s almost there and she needs to remember that it’s all a very long time ago and they were all very different people
then. What’s the point of raking over the past? A part of her wishes she had refused Phillip’s invitation but she very much wants to get a close-up look at both Connie and Flora. Were it not for that she’d be sitting in her flat with a bowl of soup and a good book, and Oscar Peterson playing in the background.

  She pauses at the corner and sure enough she can see straight through to where Phillip is sitting with two women. The three of them are laughing and he pours wine into their glasses and they raise and clink them in a toast. She’s too far away to see them clearly but neither looks like wispy, weepy Connie. Must try to stop thinking of her like that, not the best start to the evening, and she steps off the kerb and crosses the street, reassuring herself that if it’s truly deadly she’ll feign a headache and leave early.

  ‘Here she is,’ Phillip says, spotting her as she makes her way through the restaurant. ‘Over here, Bea,’ and he gets to his feet and to her surprise the women stand up too. Flora so much like Gerry, the same searching, grey-green eyes, the same tall, rangy build, a strong handshake – how well those looks last, Bea thinks. Is this how Gerry looked? The likeness is unnerving, destabilising, just like looking into his eyes.

  ‘And this is Connie,’ Phillip says. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever met.’

  The woman who takes Bea’s hand is sturdy, with clear fair skin and thick hair once blonde, now streaked with grey. She is shorter than Flora, about Bea’s own height, and shapely, her figure still curvy and well defined by her red fitted jacket and a skirt that flares at mid-calf – this is a woman who has never, ever been either pale or wispy.