He unlocked the bathroom door, walked slowly back to the bedroom, resolving to tell Penny how sorry and ashamed he was; swamp her in apologies, as he had eight years ago. Now, as then, he marshalled all his arguments, determined to convince her that he wasn’t just a selfish brute, but had considered her daughter too. Pippa might well be jealous of a sibling, especially one who was more his child than she was, so surely he’d been right in thinking that the only reasonable compromise was to accept her as his own?
And I’ve done that, he pleaded silently to Penny. She’s Pippa Hughson now, not Pippa Clarke. And you know I’ve made a will, for no other reason than to ensure that she’ll inherit in exactly the same way as any natural child of ours.
His hand groped for his cigarettes, then realized they weren’t there. He hadn’t said a word yet, but was standing in defensive silence watching Penny rock the baby; her cheek against its face, its pudgy hand clasping at her pendant. He felt utterly superfluous, an intruder, a voyeur.
Penny raised her head and saw him, put a warning finger to her lips. ‘Have you escaped too?’ she whispered, her doting gaze returning to the child. ‘I came up to change Simon, but then he went all sleepy on me and I hadn’t the heart to disturb him. But I’m getting really desperate for a pee. Here, hold him for a moment, darling. I’ll be back in two ticks.’
His first instinct was to resist, but before he could say anything, she had motioned him to the chair and handed him the bundle. He sat stiffly with the dead weight on his lap. He had never learned the knack of handling babies, and they never failed to rouse in him a whole set of different fears: fear they’d scream, reject him; fear of their vulnerability, their terrifying smallness; fear that he was freakish for not wanting one of his own. He stared down at the fuzz of reddish hair. In fact, this could be their child, the son they’d never had. Weren’t men supposed to crave sons – to carry on their line, or to complete them or fulfil them or extend their individual lives? Anne Boleyn had been put to death for failing to produce one. So what was wrong with him?
‘That’s better!’ Penny said, returning from the bathroom, still straightening her skirt. ‘And now I’m about it, I think I’ll change my shoes. These sandals of Ros’s are pinching at the toes.’
He watched her balance on one foot, wrestle with the buckle, then kick the sandal off. At first he had found it distasteful that she and her sisters should swap their clothes so readily, wear each other’s cast-offs, as he put it, but now he almost envied them that special sort of intimacy. You could only really share your clothes with people who were close; whose sweat and stains and body-smells you accepted as freely as your own. Perhaps he’d been wrong about Pippa’s reaction to a sibling. Instead of being jealous, she might have welcomed another child, someone she could have turned to as an ally or a soul-mate, a support against the grown-ups.
‘By the way,’ said Penny, rubbing her cramped toes, ‘Ros is pregnant again. Her doctor’s just confirmed it.’
Daniel shifted the baby, which seemed to be slipping from his knee. Penny’s tone had been studiously casual, but he could guess the depth of feeling she was struggling to conceal. He had never realized till this moment how acutely she must suffer every time she was presented with a newborn niece or nephew, without ever producing a new infant of her own. He stroked a tentative finger across Simon’s downy hair, trying to imagine it erupting into Pippa’s wiry mop. There was still time to change his mind. Penny was only thirty-one, three years younger than Ros. If he could somehow overcome his fears, they could actually conceive a child tonight. Penny would be ecstatic at the thought, and it would set the seal on his new start, his renunciation of the past – and Juliet.
Simon began whimpering and threshing about in his arms. Was he clutching him too tightly, or had he hurt him in some way? That was the whole problem – the way you could damage a helpless child and not have the faintest notion that you were doing anything wrong.
No, he couldn’t change his mind. The risk was too great, and forty far too old for a nervous first-time father. ‘Look, I … I’m sorry,’ he said bleakly.
‘Whatever for? You should be glad, you chump! Brian and Ros are over the moon! You know how they’re always joking about wanting their full rugger team!’
‘No, I meant I …’ Why bother to go on? There was no point in dragging up the past, repeating the same arguments, re-living the same fears.
‘You do say funny things,’ Penny murmured, pulling on her moccasins. ‘There, that’s better. Now hand me over Dozy-Drawers and I’ll take him back to Lindsay. Aren’t you coming down, darling? It must seem a bit peculiar – us both sneaking off upstairs.’
‘I’ll just look in on Pippa, see if she’s all right.’
‘Okay, don’t be long. You know what we agreed – we’d get the party over first, then try to talk to her afterwards.’
He nodded. It wasn’t a question of talking: he simply felt he ought to show her that she hadn’t been forgotten. He stood outside her room again, as hesitant as before. If only he could get through to her, resume their usual dialogue. They had always been so close, had struck up a rapport almost from the start, reacting to each other at some deep unconscious level, so that he’d sometimes felt she was more his child than Penny’s. But now he hadn’t the remotest idea of what was going on in her mind. Had she sussed out his affair, and was responding with silent disgust, or did she hold him responsible for ousting her real father? Or perhaps it was less to do with him than with the fact that she’d reached puberty – the age of disillusion, when children no longer saw the world as a cosy, rosy place, or their parents as infallible. He remembered himself at thirteen, becoming more judgemental of the adult world in general; regarding his friends’ parents with prissy disapproval on account of their various trifling misdemeanours. Maybe Pippa despised him for smoking (and had scant faith in his promise to give up), or found him introspective and bad-tempered. Once, she had thought the world of him – continually drawing pictures of him in her art lessons at school, or making ‘cakes’ for him at home from greyish scraps of pastry, or presenting him with treasures such as a lop-sided desk-tidy, lovingly constructed from half a dozen toilet rolls and rather too much glue. But now she shut him out – literally as well as metaphorically.
He tapped lightly on her door, then opened it a crack, knowing that she wouldn’t say ‘come in’. She was sitting on the bed, picking at her thumbnail, her pale face listless; her eyes fixed on the floor. He felt a rush of conflicting emotions: pity and protectiveness, annoyance and resentment, even self-reproach because he had failed in his resolve never to let his eyes stray to the vicinity of her breasts. Those newly developed breasts were an embarrassment to both of them. She did her best to hide them by wearing baggy tee-shirts, but they were both self-consciously aware that she was no longer Daddy’s little girl. And yet her face was still so childlike, with its rounded cheeks and translucent fragile skin – no adolescent spots amidst the galaxy of freckles. She seemed a mass of contradictions: the stridently red hair at odds with her diffident expression; her coltish legs and bare and grubby feet contrasting with the womanly curves above.
He forced his eyes away; had to make a constant effort not to look at the changes in her body, but the fact that he should want to look worried and confused him.
‘D’you mind if I come in?’ he asked, pitching his gaze somewhere between her ankles and the carpet.
She made the slightest inclination of her head; holding her hand in front of her face, as if even that must be protected from his scrutiny.
He positioned himself just inside the door. If he kept his distance, he’d seem less of a threat. ‘Do you want another cup of tea? There’s plenty in the pot.’ He noticed that she hadn’t drunk the first one, and that the plate of sandwiches he had brought up earlier on had been left untouched on her desk.
‘No, thanks.’
Her voice was so low it was practically inaudible, but at least she had actually spoken. Some days she wou
ld say nothing at all, turning meals into endurance tests as he and Penny tried to keep the conversation going across her mutely miserable form. Weekends were still worse – their once gregarious daughter sitting silent in her room, utterly indifferent to what was going on in the house; refusing to join him in the garden or go shopping with her mother; apathetic even when her friends phoned.
Encouraged by her two whispered words, he enquired about the birthday cake – was there any chance she’d changed her mind and would come down after all? It would be such a shame if she didn’t blow the candles out, and besides, what about the wish? She only got one wish a year, so she ought to make the most of it.
Not a flicker of response. He was probably taking the wrong line, treating her like a baby. When he was thirteen, he’d been precocious for his age – at least in terms of his intellectual interests – and Pippa was very similar. Ironically enough, it was largely he who had made her so. He’d introduced her to Keats and Dickens when other children were still reading picture-books; taught her French and chess; accompanied her on the piano when she played her guitar, and encouraged her to try her hand at more challenging types of music than those provided at school. Yet now he was resorting to wishes – childish magic to make things sweet and simple again, and banish the bad fairies.
He cleared his throat, tried a different tack. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come down and see the dogs? You know how Arthur adores you. And there’s another little terrier thing, sleeping on a blanket in my study. He’s a bit raggedy round the ears, I’m afraid. Apparently he got involved in a dog-fight, and Auntie Jo rescued him …’
It was useless going on. She wasn’t even listening, just staring out of the window, watching a plane plough a deepening furrow through the sky. The rain had stopped, giving way to an eerie, brooding stillness, as if time had been suspended, summer swallowed up. This morning’s vivid colours were engulfed in a grey gloom; the once cloudless sky now overcast and scummy.
Suddenly he felt weary; drifted to the window and sat down at her desk. A bird flew past – a magpie – a flash of metallic blue highlighting its gleaming black and white. One for sorrow, he mused, instantly dismissing the thought with a twinge of irritation. He was for ever telling himself he wasn’t superstitious, yet he had noticed in these last few weeks that he seemed increasingly susceptible to irrational ideas.
He fidgeted with the books on her desk, noticing the Pierre Lapin – Peter Rabbit in French – which he’d bought her years ago and read to her each night, alongside the English version. In only a few months, she had learned to recite it with him, stumbling over words like parapluie and épouvantail, which he patiently corrected. Perhaps he’d worked her too hard, expected too much of her too soon. Yet she appeared to enjoy the nightly ritual, and would rush up to him eagerly with the book open at page one, chanting: ‘Flopsaut, Trotsaut, Queue-de-Coton et PIERRE!’
That exuberant child had died, to be replaced by one who froze him off, ignored her favourite books, lost her prized possessions, rebuffed her former friends.
‘What’s Emma doing today?’ he asked, glancing surreptitiously over his shoulder to check on her reaction. Emma Hayes was her best friend – or had been for the past eight years. The two had met at primary school, and had soon become inseparable.
Pippa shrugged, scuffed her foot against the edge of the divan.
‘Why not invite her round tomorrow? We could save the cake till then, if you like, and have another party – just you and her and us.’
She might have been stone deaf for all the acknowledgement he received. He snatched up a pencil and started doodling on her scribble-pad. On his thirteenth birthday, he’d been stuck in bloody boarding school, where no one gave a toss whether he was happy or not, hungry or not, and there was more chance of a caning than a cake. Pippa’s school was paradise compared with the barbarities of his. He didn’t believe in private education (partly on principle and partly because of his own grim experience), so when they’d moved house, they’d deliberately picked this area on account of one particular state school. Northfield had an oustanding reputation, due largely to its head – the formidable Miss Whittaker, who had transformed a previously run-of-the-mill establishment through a combination of idealism and sheer bloody-minded obstinacy.
But perhaps he’d been misguided, after all. Penny had voiced doubts herself when they were still at the decision stage; feared Northfield was too big. They had been to see a much smaller school, but this time he’d objected on the grounds it was girls-only. He was well aware at an intellectual level that single-sex schools were often preferable for girls, who achieved better academic results without pressure from the boys. But emotionally he distrusted them. His own segregation amongst three hundred macho males had left him shy and callow, so that when he had finally escaped at the age of eighteen and a half, he’d blushed to the ears every time he’d been forced to meet a member of that strange species known as females. He didn’t want his daughter similarly ill at ease, or emerging into adult life with an impressive string of A-levels but no basic social confidence.
The choice of school had proved quite a problem, one way and another. They had tried to keep their options open, and even considered a Church of England school with the unlikely name of St Willehad’s. It was smaller again, and said to have high standards, but the thought of endorsing a religion he didn’t actually believe in made him feel uneasy. It had been bad enough at Grey-stone Court – kneeling in a cold chapel every morning, begging an unresponsive God to please let the place burn down, so that he could be shipped back to his parents in Lusaka.
Now he was beginning to wonder if he had allowed his personal history to influence him unduly; whether in trying to save Pippa from what he himself had suffered, he had overlooked more subtle sorts of problems.
Dammit! He was frowning again. He ironed his forehead with his fingers as he turned to face his daughter. ‘How d’you feel about going back to school on Monday, darling? I could take you in the car, if you like, and you can always leave at lunchtime if you’ve had enough by then.’ It was probably best to take things fairly slowly at first, give the child a chance to find her feet. On the other hand, he certainly didn’t want her to miss any more of her school work, or fall seriously behind. She was no longer strictly ill. Dr Steadman had given her the all-clear, confiding to him and Penny that the sooner she got back to normal, the better she would feel. It wasn’t good for adolescent girls to moon around doing nothing in particular, or cut themselves off from their friends.
He coughed, to fill the silence. Pippa’s expression was so forlorn he couldn’t bear to look at her. Instead, he looked around the room, trying to derive some comfort from his surroundings. This small untidy lair contained a potted history of his marriage: their wedding photo with Pippa as a scowling bridesmaid; the bear they’d bought her to keep her company when they went away on honeymoon; Penny’s graduation photograph tacked up on the noticeboard beside snapshots of their holidays abroad. It also expressed the dichotomy between Pippa as a child and Pippa as a woman. Her cuddly toys were still lined up on the bed, yet there was an assortment of new make-up on the dressing-table, and a slinky black silk skirt lay crumpled on the floor.
There was another sort of conflict – between the Pippa he knew and the one her schoolfriends saw. It was de rigueur in her crowd to rave about pop music and be interested in boys, and she gave a convincing performance on both counts. But he was well aware of the strain involved in concealing one’s true self for the sake of conformity. He had done the same at her age: avoided at all costs the stigma of being different from his peers. He found it rather strange that she was growing to resemble him in temperament – becoming highly strung, withdrawn and over-sensitive. Whatever had happened to Phil’s and Penny’s genes, which should have made her extrovert and bouncy? Or perhaps he had simply influenced her by a sort of slow osmosis.
He glanced at her again. She was still sitting in grim silence, one foot jigging nervously, as if his v
ery presence frightened her. Alison had mentioned consulting a psychiatrist, but he recoiled from the idea of his daughter being turned into a ‘case’; so-called experts sinking probes into her skull, dredging up a rich haul of neuroses which would only alarm her more. Then they’d turn their microscope on him, no doubt; ferret out his affair, blame him for her condition. They were bound to suggest that he too needed therapy – or radical restructuring, more likely.
Suddenly, he caught her eye. She looked away, confused, and he too felt uncomfortable; made a show of studying her noticeboard. One of the faded snapshots had, in fact, attracted his attention: the three of them in Venice – Penny in a crazy hat, and Pippa in his arms. The child was smiling up at him, offering him a lick of her ice-cream; their faces almost touching. It had been so easy then to please her, in those uncomplicated days when she was still a non-stop chatterbox, and long before she’d developed breasts or started insisting on strict privacy, barricading the bathroom door if she so much as washed her hands. All he’d had to do was buy her little treats, read her bedtime stories, give her piggybacks.
He pushed his chair back, overcome by a simple longing to feel her arms looped round his neck again, her warm body on his lap. That was out of the question, but surely some small affectionate gesture wouldn’t hurt? He stepped towards the bed, made a move to sit beside her, reaching out his hand.
She flinched as if he’d struck her, retreated to the far end of the bed. ‘Look, I’d rather you left me alone – okay? I’ve told you loads of times.’ The words were quite distinct this time, and quite unequivocal. He blundered to the door, angry with himself as much as Pippa. All his good intentions of keeping his distance had been blown apart by one spontaneous move. It was impossible to win. Whatever procedure he adopted, he was met with blank rejection.
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