‘I can be acerbic too—’
‘I know.’
‘Three kids,’ Merrion said. ‘Think of it. How old is she?’
Guy rested the newspaper on Merrion’s stomach.
‘Forty-ish. Maybe less.’
‘Wow. Three kids.’
‘But not a promising career at the Bar.’
‘Why did you say that?’
‘To stop you making pointless comparisons.’
‘It doesn’t, however.’
‘Carrie’s father is a doctor. A GP in East Anglia. Her mother died quite a long time ago. That’s hard. Carrie loved her.’
‘Lucky her.’
Guy had bent over to look at her.
‘Why do you insist on regarding your mother in this way?’
‘Because it’s how it is.’
‘I think you’ve never grown out of thinking how glamorous it would be to be an orphan.’
‘Wrong.’
‘I would never have expected to be close to my mother,’ Guy said. ‘I didn’t regard our relationship as confidential and nor, I think, did she.’
Merrion reared up from the sofa and kissed him.
‘But that’s because things were different in your day—’
‘Long, long ago?’
‘Right,’ she said. She grinned.
He smiled back.
‘And now I can’t talk to my own children, either.’
Merrion swung her feet to the floor and felt about for her shoes.
‘Can you talk to Carrie?’
He put a hand out and took hold of a handful of her thick hair.
‘I’ve never tried. It hasn’t seemed, well—’
‘Proper?’
‘Perhaps. She’s Simon’s—’
‘But with a mind of her own?’
‘Oh yes,’ Guy said. ‘You’ll see that. At once.’
Merrion thought it must be Carrie, sitting at a corner table with a glass of red wine in front of her, scowling at the crossword in the newspaper. She was tapping her teeth with a pen. She had fair hair held up here and there with combs, and she wore a grey overcoat slung across her shoulders. Merrion made her way among the tables, holding her heavy briefcase up high out of people’s way. She stopped in front of Carrie’s table and rested her briefcase on the edge of it.
Carrie looked up.
‘Merrion?’
‘Yes—’
‘You’re taller than I thought.’
‘Five eleven,’ Merrion said.
Carrie gave a faint smile.
‘Lucky you. All my children will be taller than me any minute and then the last possibility of discipline will vanish.’
Merrion pulled a chair out and sat down. She put her briefcase on the chair next to her and shrugged out of her coat.
‘Wine?’ Carrie said. ‘I’m afraid you have to go and get it.’
Merrion stood up again. Carrie watched her weave her way to the bar. She wore a black suit, the jacket quite fitted, the skirt narrow. She looked good in it, Carrie decided, good figure, good carriage, interesting hair. She imagined Guy looking at Merrion. Very exciting. Very gratifying. Very – well, unexpected, fresh, energetic. She thought of Simon looking at her, too, confronting the fact that she was distinctive, almost dramatic, but not vampish, not obvious, not in any way easily dismissable. Simon would be in a terrible confusion. So would she, for that matter, watching him watching Merrion. She took a big swallow of her red wine. Thirty-one! When she, Carrie, was thirty-one, she’d had three young children and no money and no ambition much beyond getting to the end of each day without spinning off into a vortex. She glanced at Merrion’s briefcase. She certainly hadn’t had a career. The word didn’t exist in her vocabulary, not then. If it had, she’d have scorned it, anyway.
Merrion put a glass of white wine down beside her briefcase. Carrie looked at her hands. No ring.
‘No ring,’ Merrion said. She was smiling. ‘Guy wants one. I don’t. So, no ring.’
‘Will you have a wedding ring?’ Carrie said.
Merrion slid into her chair.
‘Shouldn’t think so.’
Carrie looked at her own hands.
‘I wear mine to work because it makes me look more approachable. Married equals cosy. I work in a medical practice. I manage it, in so far as I manage anything much.’
Merrion took a sip of her wine. She said, ‘Did you just want to have a look at me?’
‘Yes,’ Carrie said. She took a comb out of her hair, and stuck it back in again, in exactly the same place. ‘I wanted to see the reality. When someone’s just a name in a situation like this, they can become a sort of bogy.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Merrion said, ‘I’ve never been in anything remotely like this in my life before.’
‘There’s a lot of drama—’
‘Plainly.’
‘And things get distorted. People get angry.’
Merrion looked down into her wineglass.
‘Like your husband.’
‘Like Simon.’
Merrion said hesitantly, ‘He has his mother to protect—’
‘We’ll talk about that,’ Carrie said, ‘when we’re further down the line. If we get that far.’
Merrion picked her wineglass up and put it down again.
‘Presumably you have an agenda.’
‘No,’ Carrie said, ‘I told you. I just wanted to see the reality. It’s odd when a crisis happens in your partner’s family – you are at once absolutely involved and not involved at all. You spend a lot of time grappling with emotions on someone else’s behalf. I just felt I could cope with what Simon’s coping with if I met you.’
Merrion gave her a quick glance.
‘Guy likes you.’
‘I like him,’ Carrie said. ‘People have awful times with their fathers-in-law, being pawed or ignored or bossed about. He hasn’t done any of that. He leaves me alone.’
‘He’d like to talk to – to your husband.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know much about how men in families work together,’ Merrion said. ‘My father died when I was three. I haven’t any brothers or sisters.’
Carrie picked up her wineglass.
‘They’re different. They watch each other all the time. They interpret actions instead of talking.’
‘Are they competitive?’ Merrion said.
Carrie gave her a sharp look.
‘Yes.’
Merrion drank some wine.
‘I see.’ She flicked a glance at Carrie. ‘So you have your own position to defend?’
‘Don’t go so fast,’ Carrie said.
‘I’m learning,’ Merrion said. ‘I’m learning all the time.’
‘You’ve had seven years—’
‘A secret love affair,’ Merrion said, ‘is a piece of cake compared to this.’
‘Preferable?’
‘In a way. But you can’t keep it that way, either.’
‘My aunt Cath,’ Carrie said, ‘says life is like trying to pack kittens in a basket. You get the last one in and the first one is already climbing out the other side.’
‘I’m not particularly possessive,’ Merrion said, rolling her glass between her hands, ‘but I’ve been taken aback by the degree to which people belong to other people. Or believe they do. Not feeling free to act is one thing entirely. But not feeling free to even decide is quite another.’
‘Perhaps you never gave much thought to Guy’s life outside yours before.’
‘Perhaps,’ Merrion said. She looked at Carrie. ‘And perhaps nobody in Guy’s life outside mine gave much thought to Guy, before.’
‘Whoops,’ Carrie said. She emptied her glass and began to put her arms into her coat. ‘I ought to go. I told a lie about where I’d gone so I’d better not make it a very long lie.’
‘Why did you lie?’
‘My daughters would be insatiably curious and Simon would be hurt.’
‘He’d think you disloyal?’
Carrie said nothing. She stood up and stuffed her newspaper into her handbag. Merrion stood, too. She moved the table a little so that Carrie could get out.
‘Can I ask you one more thing?’
Carrie paused, but she didn’t look at her.
‘What?’
‘Did I pass the test?’
‘What test?’
‘You know,’ Merrion said, ‘the real reason we’re here. Which am I? Friend or foe?’
Simon drove down to Stanborough alone. He had told Carrie he was going, but not Alan. Alan would have offered to come, too, and Carrie would have encouraged him to. Both of them, Simon knew, wanted to save him from Laura and, at the same time, neither of them understood the precise nature of his obligation to her. Carrie said, in fact, that the precise nature didn’t trouble her much: it was the strength she found so hard to contend with.
‘We’d never have married!’ she’d screamed long ago during one particular row (the children had been lined up along the landing, horrified and spellbound), ‘if I hadn’t been pregnant! Your mother would have seen to that!’
Laura had, admittedly, told Simon he was far too young to think of marrying. Twenty-one was absurdly young, especially for a man, especially for a man not yet qualified, one year out of university. And twenty-one was too young for Carrie, too, particularly as, having abandoned medicine for no good reason Laura could see, she hadn’t decided what else to do. Of course she got pregnant! What else was there for her to do, in her self-inflicted dilemma, but get pregnant and have all subsequent decisions taken out of her hands? Vainly, Simon had tried to explain that Carrie didn’t want to be pregnant, hadn’t meant to be, was only going to go through with it because the baby was Simon’s, Simon’s and hers. Laura saw Simon as trapped. Simon saw Carrie as trapped. Carrie saw Simon as trapped, twice over.
‘Her. And now me.’
‘I want you.’
‘I hope you do.’
He did. Seventeen years later, he still did. Carrie was the one decision – if, indeed, she’d ever been anything so crisp and deliberate – of Simon’s life that he had never doubted. He took her on, hoping at some unexpressed level that she’d set him free. And she did. Or, almost, anyway: certainly, as much as she could, as much as he’d let her. If he really let her, he’d either be driving down to Stanborough now with Alan, or not be driving down at all.
Carrie had asked Laura to come and stay.
‘I won’t, thank you. It’s sweet of you, but—’
‘Just a few days,’ Carrie said, her eyes shut, concentrating on making her voice sound as she wished her feelings felt. ‘Change of scene, a diversion.’
‘The dogs—’
‘Can’t they go into kennels?’
‘I don’t like to send them, at the moment. I don’t like to leave them.’
‘Bring them then—’
‘Oh, I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that. They never go anywhere, you see. It really is good of you, but I’m better here, really I am. Perhaps Simon—’
‘Bloody maddening,’ Carrie said, after she put the phone down. ‘All that pure obstinacy masquerading as the poor victim.’
Rachel was leaning against the wall by the telephone, waiting for Trudy’s line not to be engaged.
‘D’you mean Gran?’
‘I do, as it happens. But you shouldn’t have been listening.’
‘You shouldn’t shout then.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Carrie said, sweeping past Rachel with an armful of unironed laundry, ‘that your grandmother is enough to make anybody shout.’
Rachel looked at her father.
‘Wow!’
‘Sometimes,’ Simon said stiffly, ‘it’s a bit hard for one generation to understand the problems of another generation.’
Rachel grinned.
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Very funny.’
‘C’mon, Dad. Gran’s never been very nice to Mum.
Has she?’
‘Rachel,’ Simon said, ‘I don’t really want to talk about it. Not now.’
Rachel turned her back and began dialling Trudy’s number.
‘Or ever,’ she said.
She was right, of course. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to have to say out loud that he agreed with Carrie’s view and Rachel’s view – even if he did – because of the implications and consequences of such a confession as far as Laura was concerned. In fact, this Thursday afternoon driving westward, he felt fairly irritated by Laura himself, not just because of her attitude and current conduct, but also because it was so fiendishly difficult to get time away from the office, and his partners were beginning to complain.
‘C’mon, Simon,’ Ted Freeman had said, ‘your father hasn’t died, has he?’
Sometimes recently, Simon thought it might have been a lot easier if he had. If Guy were dead, there’d be none of these recriminations and resentments and endless, hopeless, pointless conversations about what went wrong. He could see Laura, as a widow. She’d make a very decent widow, quiet, carrying her grief and solitude with a sort of small distinction. Simon felt he could have handled the widow in a way he seemed unable to handle the wronged wife. Mothers make widows quite naturally, he thought, it’s a kind of tradition. But mothers as abandoned women? Simon saw the turning off the Stanborough ring road almost too late and wrenched the steering wheel round, without signalling, causing a furious blaring of horns from surrounding braking cars.
‘Sorry,’ he mouthed through the window glass. ‘Sorry.’ Stupid to do that. Stupid. He knew the Stanborough roads as well as he knew any besides those in his own part of South London. He leaned forward a little in the driving seat, as if to concentrate better. Six miles now. Six miles down lanes he had cycled so endlessly as a boy, not looking where he was going so much as staring at the speedometer to see if he was covering this stretch a few seconds faster than he’d done it the day before. He thought of Carrie. ‘Plus ça change,’ she’d say.
Laura was stooping in the garden, pulling the dead heads off daffodils. The dogs were lying six feet away, waiting for her to do something more interesting. Above them, the apple trees were in fat bud. When she saw the car come down the lane, Laura crossed the rough orchard grass to the drive, so that she was standing, waiting, when Simon pulled up.
‘You are so sweet to come.’
He bent to be kissed.
‘You look tired,’ she said. She touched his forehead.
‘Probably because I am.’
‘Did you have any lunch?’
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes—’
‘I had a Twix bar,’ Simon said. ‘I bought it when I stopped for petrol.’
‘Why didn’t you buy a sandwich? Something sensible?’
‘Because, Mum, I wanted a Twix bar.’
Laura put her hand inside his arm.
‘I’m going to make you a sandwich now.’
‘Thank you,’ Simon said. He glanced down at her. She looked small and pale and neat. She had her pearl earrings on. When she took off her gardening gloves and put a hand out to calm the dogs bounding round them, he noticed that she was no longer wearing her wedding ring. She’d always worn it, along, usually, with her engagement ring, which she used to twist backwards, if doing any rough jobs, to protect the stones in it.
‘No ring,’ he said.
She didn’t look at him. She disengaged her arm and took a step ahead and opened the back door. She said, over her shoulder, ‘Well, it’s over, isn’t it?’
Simon said, ‘I haven’t seen him—’
‘Haven’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Have you spoken to him?’
‘Once.’
‘And?’
‘It lasted three minutes,’ Simon said. ‘My fault. I lost my temper.’
Laura said, her voice warmed with pleasure, ‘I don’t blame you.’
Simon moved across the kitchen towards the bread bin. It was squa
re and made of white enamel, with BREAD stencilled on the side in black. He had known it all his life. He put a hand on it now, as if for reassurance.
‘I’ll make your sandwich,’ Laura said.
‘Mum, I really can—’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it. I want to.’ She pulled a chair out from the table. ‘Sit down.’
He sat, awkwardly. She took a banana out of the fruit bowl and put it down in front of him. ‘Eat that while you’re waiting.’
He looked at the banana. He said, ‘I’m not ill, Mum. I’m not a child, either. I’m just a father of three with rather more on his plate than is quite manageable just now, who, as I do most of the time, missed lunch.’
Laura was slicing bread, and cheese. She said brightly, ‘How’s work?’
‘There’s an endless amount of it and seemingly no time to do it in.’
‘But you have partners—’
‘Yes, I do. But we have more work than we have people to do it.’
‘Why don’t you hire someone else?’
Simon pushed the banana away from him.
‘Because the figures don’t quite permit that yet.’
Laura put a plate down in front of him. It bore a thick brown-bread cheese sandwich. His mouth watered.
‘Then we’re going to have to come to some arrangement.’
He looked at her. She had turned away and was rummaging in the cupboard.
‘What?’
‘Well, I can’t expect you to do everything for nothing. Not with Carrie and the children to support. Here we are. Apple and walnut chutney. I made it last September.’
‘Mum,’ Simon said, ‘what are you going on about?’
Laura went past him, putting the chutney jar on the table as she went, and plugged in the kettle. Then she turned back to Simon. Her expression was bright and slightly detached, as if she’d been rehearsing what she was about to say.
‘I told you,’ she said, ‘it’s over.’
‘I know that—’
‘And I don’t want to have anything more to do with it. Or him. I telephoned him this morning and told him so. I want – I want to erase him.’
Simon pushed the sandwich plate away, too.
‘But, Mum, nothing’s sorted. Not the house, nor money, nor Dad’s will or pension, not the divorce, nothing. We haven’t even started.’
‘I’m not starting,’ Laura said. She spooned tea into a teapot.
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