‘Where are you off to?’
‘I thought I’d head to the village.’
‘I was going myself, maybe grab a coffee. Lucy said there were a couple of interesting shops, and a café or two. I could go with you. I mean, I was gonna drive …’
Why Heather would need to go in search of expensively produced coffee when she had stocked the kitchen with about three hundred capsules, Charlie didn’t know. Why he felt vaguely afraid of being alone with his daughter-in-law, he also didn’t quite understand. His peaceful stroll had been hijacked into a four-wheel-drive outing. Daphne would say he should go.
‘Sounds lovely.’ He smiled at Heather, as sincere a smile as he could muster. Scott was watching.
They parked in the middle of the village, Heather effortlessly reversing her frankly enormous beast of a car into a space that he wouldn’t have thought was big enough for it.
‘American driver,’ she offered in explanation, although he hadn’t said anything. ‘This is actually pretty small. I used to drive a Buick Enclave, which is basically a tank.’
‘And you’re so little.’ He wondered, as soon as he’d said it, whether he was allowed to say things like that in 2020. She didn’t seem to mind.
‘Power steering!’
Once she’d fed the machine and put a ticket on the dashboard, she put her arm through his, and steered him in the direction she wanted to go. ‘Lucy told me there’s a great florist, and I want to get some things for tomorrow.’
He supposed she meant his birthday. But he discovered he was happy enough to be led. Daphne might have called it a Ready Brek glow. It was one of her phrases, and it applied to this sunny, sweet-natured daughter-in-law she would never meet, with her ready laugh and her unbridled enthusiasm. She brought with her a … a lightness. He liked it. She was quite fun to be with, exclaiming over this and that. She bought a round, old-fashioned wicker basket in one of the first shops they came across, and proceeded to fill it with some cheese from a cheesemonger (‘How do you say it – monger? I never heard that before’), paper bags of fudge (‘Don’t tell my cardiologist – this is basically sugar, right?’) and an armful of bright blooms from the florist (‘You haven’t seen these, Charlie. They’re a surprise’). When she had eventually exhausted the charming but admittedly limited array of independent shops on the main drag, she plonked the pair of them into chairs at a coffee shop, where they ordered tea and a teacake for Charlie, cappuccino for Heather. ‘Nothing to eat, thanks. I’m gonna demolish that fudge later.’
When the drinks had come, and the waiter had gone, she put her elbows on the small table, and rested her face on her hands, leaning forward towards him. ‘I wanted to thank you, Charlie, for this holiday. It is incredibly generous and kind of you.’
He was touched that she would make a point of saying so, especially so early on. ‘You’re welcome. I was just so glad everyone could make it.’
‘To celebrate your big day? How could we not?’
‘Ah, that’s sweet.’
‘And I’m glad – really glad – to have the chance to get to know everyone better. Well, at all!’ She laughed. It was a nice sound. ‘I know Scottie kinda sprung me on you all. And I came with some baggage, I appreciate.’
‘That’s no way to talk about your beautiful girls.’ He was teasing, but her face was suddenly quite serious.
‘You know what I mean, though, right? Must have been a shocker for you all.’
‘It was a surprise. I’ll grant you that. He hadn’t said much.’
‘He hadn’t said a word. Secretive little bugger, your son, hey?’
The way she said ‘bugger’ was funny – a quintessentially English pronunciation in the middle of her New Jersey drawl. He found it endearing. ‘Well, he plays his hand quite close to his chest.’
She cocked her head, and narrowed his eyes. ‘Was he always like that?’
Charlie considered the question. ‘I suppose he was always the most …’ he searched for the right words ‘… self-contained of our kids.’
She nodded encouragingly, wanting him to say more.
‘Yes. He never seemed to need us as much as the others did.’
‘When I first got to know him, I wondered if there’d been some trauma – some deep upset in his past.’
‘I don’t think so. Not that I would necessarily know about it.’
‘Oh, I don’t think there was. That’s kind of the point of Scott. I don’t think he’d ever really put himself in the way of drama. Until he met me, of course!’ She laughed.
‘Precisely! He seems very glad he did.’
‘I hope so.’ Her smile was fond. ‘I certainly am.’
He concentrated on buttering his teacake. He wasn’t sure he was brilliant at deep-and-meaningfuls, although he really wanted to be. He had probably spoken more about relationships and feelings in his two days at the cottage than he had in the past ten years. He was certainly trying.
‘What about the other two? They weren’t like that, huh?’
‘Not at all. Laura – she was always so close to Daphne. Not so much to me, I suppose. Fathers and daughters … I loved her to bits, always. But there was a sense that I got everything second-hand, through Daphne.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘The real closeness was between the two of them. She misses her mother, terribly, still, I know.’
He realized he didn’t know anything about Heather’s mother. He might have asked, then, but Heather asked first.
‘And Nick?’
He sighed. ‘And Nick always wore his heart on his sleeve.’
‘I like him so much.’
Charlie smiled. ‘I do too.’
‘He’s so sad.’ She shook her head, not meaning to sound asinine. ‘I mean, of course he is. I didn’t know him before, not really … but …’
‘He was always so happy. You know, from a baby. Smiley. Daphne always used to say she couldn’t get round the supermarket for people wanting to talk to him, even when he was really little. He used to just beam at them, and they were like moths to a flame … Some people are like that, aren’t they?’
She nodded vigorously. ‘Yes.’
‘Carrie was the same, that was the thing. The lucky, lucky thing for those two. She had that glow about her. They were – they were an amazing couple, together. Powerful. It was like two and two made seventeen. So many friends, so much energy. They really were quite wonderful.’ He could feel himself getting tearful. It was so bloody unfair. He swallowed hard on the lump in his throat, willing it away. Old men, damn it, cried so easily.
‘Poor Nick. It’ll take him a while to start to come back to life.’
Charlie looked at her sharply. ‘That’s how I see him. Not quite alive.’
‘He’s hibernating. It’s how he’ll heal. He’s alive, I promise. He just has to rest his heart. He’ll come back to you, the kids, to the world.’
It was quite a profound thing to say in a coffee shop on a sunny day to someone you didn’t know very well about someone you knew even less well. Charlie was surprised. It felt like she understood, not discordant at all. ‘You sound like you know a bit about loss, Heather.’
She looked down at her mug. ‘Not the kind Nick’s suffered. But I’ve lost. We all have, by now, though, right? I’m nothing special. We all carry scars.’
Charlie nodded.
‘If you don’t, you haven’t been doing it properly. Haven’t risked anything.’
Ah, he thought. How true that was. How true.
Heather’s voice was even gentler now. ‘You must miss Daphne even more than normal at times like this.’
She was really going there, as Ethan might have said. ‘My dear,’ he put one hand over hers, ‘you have no idea how much.’
She squeezed the hand. No words.
When they got back to the house, Scott came out, clearly having heard the car on the gravel. ‘Had a good time?’
‘Fantastic,’ Heather offered. ‘I gotta get these flowers in some wat
er.’ She jumped out, collected her basket from the back seat, slammed the car doors and hurried inside.
Scott went to the passenger side where Charlie was easing himself out.
‘God, these seats are high – and I’m not quite as agile as once I was.’
Scott took his elbow, and Charlie let him. Once his feet met the ground, he smiled at his son. ‘She’s quite a woman, your wife.’
‘Yeah?’
Charlie looked into his son’s eyes. How strange it was. When your son was little, you crouched to get on his level. Then he grew, and you shrank, until eventually, you almost had to put your head right back to meet his gaze. ‘She’s rather wonderful, isn’t she?’
Scott broke into a wide, warm smile. ‘I think so, Dad. I think so.’
‘Your mum would definitely have approved.’
‘Really?’
‘She’d have loved her.’
Scott watched his father walk into the house. He swallowed hard, and blinked back a sudden tear.
33
The allure of the swimming-pool could be ignored no longer. The younger kids had been begging for ages. Eventually, Meredith took matters into her own hands and went upstairs with them to change. They reappeared, Arthur in a back-to-front swim nappy, armbands already inflated and yanked on, just to wrist height. He and Delilah were so excited that they were bouncing from one foot to the other.
Nick admitted defeat and went to put on his trunks. Scott said he’d swim too. Charlie demurred, despite the pester power, but promised to go upstairs and change into his shorts, then come down to the pool and dip his feet into the water. No one had seen Laura for a while, and Heather was apparently going to work on Hayley’s backhand on the tennis court. Hayley might have been less keen on this activity in the midday sun if she hadn’t caught a glimpse of Lucy’s hunky young electrician when he’d parked on the drive. Liking the look of him, she’d seized the opportunity to flip her ponytail and flaunt her brown legs in her short white tennis skirt while he fixed the floodlight. Life was a catwalk.
It was a big pool, for a private house. There was a set of shallow steps at one end, and a small diving board at the other, and halfway along one side a circular Jacuzzi protruded. Nick activated the electric pool cover from the wall while Scott pushed back the doors that opened one side of the pool to the garden. ‘I’ve forgotten my goggles,’ Meredith trilled, running towards the house. ‘I’ll just go grab them.’
Scott was examining the hinging system on the impressive doors. Fully opened, there were no piers or corners. They must have cost a fortune, but they really did achieve the inside-outside thing very well. ‘Heather is taken with these doors.’
Nick thought of Scott’s house in Haslemere. He’d only been there a couple of times. ‘You haven’t put in a pool?’
‘Not yet. She’s taken with the pool, too.’ Scott smiled ruefully.
Nick laughed.
‘We could have a pool at home, Daddy!’ Bea chimed in excitedly.
‘Where, darling?’
‘In our garden.’ She gestured at the Jacuzzi, arms echoing the shape. ‘We have room for one of these!’
Nick tilted his head to one side. ‘Not really.’
She put her hands on her hips defiantly. ‘We could move the climbing frame.’
Nick kissed the top of her head. ‘The one Daddy spent three days putting up? You love that climbing frame.’
Bea pondered the dilemma. She did love the climbing frame. ‘Then we need a new house. With a much bigger garden.’ The men laughed.
‘You can go and live with Uncle Scott and Auntie Heather, if you like. They’ve got bags of room for a pool and a climbing frame.’
‘Can I, too?’ Delilah’s eyes widened with excitement.
He ruffled his younger daughter’s head. ‘Oh, the loyalty. Charming, Lila.’
There was a sudden loud splash.
Arthur, undetected, had waddled down to the deep end, and jumped straight in.
His armbands had not been on properly, and one bobbed alarmingly to the surface, floating free.
For a second they all froze.
Scott was nearest. He didn’t hesitate. Still wearing his watch, his shirt and his glasses, he ran full pelt a few metres, then dived in from the side, emerging seconds later with Arthur held aloft in his arms. The toddler wasn’t in the least concerned, spluttering furiously, then squealing with delight as water streamed off him.
With his nephew under one arm, Scott paddled to the side where Nick took Arthur, standing him on the tiled edge. He pulled his son close, his heart racing from the punch of adrenalin. ‘Mate, don’t do that to me again.’ Arthur giggled unrepentantly, too young to understand the admonishment, as Nick put his armbands on properly, then turned to his brother. ‘Thank you.’
‘No worries.’ Scott heaved himself out and sat on the side, pulling his soaking shirt away from his skin, catching his breath.
‘God, is that watch waterproof?’
Scott glanced at his wrist. ‘To a thousand metres.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Aw, Nick. It’s just stuff …’
Nick patted his brother’s shoulder gratefully.
‘Uncle Scott, you didn’t take your glasses off.’ This was Bea, her hand clamped across her mouth in a stifled giggle.
‘Silly me.’
‘Very silly,’ Delilah piped.
‘Oh, he’s silly, is he?’ Nick scooped up Delilah and, without taking off his own T-shirt, jumped in with her in his arms.
Bea whooped, and splashed in beside them, followed swiftly by Arthur, who marched once or twice on the side, then stepped in.
They all surfaced, water flying, laughing, happy. Charlie and Meredith heard the commotion from the pathway. Meredith flew past the old man, anxious not to miss any more of the fun.
It was a good sight. His two sons, still dressed but dripping, encircling his three youngest grandchildren and all of them laughing. Charlie’s heart was full. This was what it was all about.
34
It turned out that 1 August was Hayley’s birthday as well as Charlie’s. He wished they’d said ages ago. Perhaps he was supposed to know: Daphne would have known. Heather, Hayley and Meredith’s birthdays would all have been duly noted on the side bar of the calendar and in Daphne’s ancient bulging Filofax, bought when they were first on sale, never to be missed or forgotten. In fairness, Charlie wasn’t sure he’d ever been told. He was eighty, Hayley turning sixteen. She’d been born on his sixty-fourth birthday, on the other side of the world. Heather had made a big thing of saying, early on, that Hayley’s celebrations were planned for later, when all her friends were back from their respective summer holidays, nearer to the start of term. Today must and should be all about Charlie.
As if Charlie might mind sharing. As if Charlie really cared that it was his birthday. Turning eighty was the hook on which he had hung the holiday, that was all: an excuse. Birthdays had never meant much to him, but since he’d lost Daphne, much like Christmas, New Year and every other so-called ‘special day’, they had merged into each other. All his adult birthday memories starred her, and without her to make more, he couldn’t be bothered. He woke early, but stayed in bed, listening to Radio 4. He could hear people moving about downstairs. He knew they had something planned – and he would win an Oscar for looking touched, and feeling moved, but he would mostly be play-acting. He worked hard at hiding his uninterest in a world without her. It wasn’t as dark as that made it sound – he wasn’t suicidal, wasn’t even waiting to die: that would be overstating it. It was just that his emotional range had been irrevocably changed when she died. The bandwidth of feeling had simply been restricted. He just knew he would never be as happy, or as excited, or as elated as he had once been with her, or, probably, as sad, lonely and bereft as her dying had left him. It just wasn’t possible.
But they’d all come, ostensibly for today, to celebrate with him, so, for their sake, he was going to give it a damn goo
d try.
You’re not so bad, you silly old sod, he thought, as he swung his legs out of the bed to get dressed. There were plenty in far worse shape at his age. Even more who didn’t make it that far. A bit blind, a bit deaf, nowhere near as strong as he had once been. Less hair on his head, more in his ears and nose, which, incidentally, were bigger than they had ever been. Skin, wrinkled. Muscles, stiff. Joints, achy. Brain, slower, no point denying it, even if he still did a crossword every day, and The Times Quiz, in which he occasionally scored double figures. But still going … still going. Daphne would be ten years older too, if she were here. How would age have treated her? ‘They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them …’ He didn’t know why those words came into his head as he buttoned his shirt and stepped into his khaki trousers, but they did. Age sure had wearied him.
They were all waiting for him when he descended the stairs. His family. Someone – he suspected Heather – had marshalled them all. There was bunting hung between the two big lights above the scrubbed table, which supported a pile of cards. And presents, wrapped in bright paper, tied with ribbons. There were balloons – how had they managed that? Helium balloons in loads of different colours, with ribbons tied on them, floating up against the ceiling, here and in the hallway. It really looked very jolly. Bea was front and centre, proudly holding a plate of muffins, with tapered candles in them. Someone must have lit them just when they heard him coming down. Nick hovered, crouched, anticipating spillage. Delilah and Arthur, holding hands, looked at their dad, awaiting his nod. When it was given, they started shouting the words to ‘Happy Birthday’ and everyone – even the teenagers – joined in. They made quite a chorus. It was almost overwhelming.
When they had finished, the smaller grandchildren clamoured for cuddles, eager to insinuate themselves into the centre of things. Bea did indeed spill muffins on the floor, and for a moment her bottom lip trembled with the promise of tears, but Charlie gathered her onto his lap, kissing her, and Heather quickly picked them up, invoking the five-second rule and gently stroking Bea’s cheek.
The Family Holiday Page 17
