Olivia's Luck

by Catherine Alliott

  Half an hour later they breezed in, arm in arm, and it was Claudia and I who were rendered speechless. Far from nervous they held court, recounting stories of how they’d met, teasing each other and giggling like a couple of children, as Claudia and I sat and stared, our heads going back and forth from one to the other, like the Centre Court crowd at Wimbledon.

  ‘I finally plucked up the courage to ask your mother to a hospital dinner dance, you see. Well, you should have seen the assembled company’s faces when “Poor Old Howard” turned up, not only accompanied, but glamorously accompanied!’ He squeezed her hand and grinned.

  ‘Poor Old Howard, my eye – you were the life and soul of the party and clearly had been for years! “A guinea a minute” the sister beside me informed me you were!’

  ‘Nonsense, a shy retiring chap like me? No, no, I was brought out of my shell that night.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t exactly need a tin opener, did I? I’d hardly finished my coffee when you were on that dance floor, dragging me up!’

  ‘Ah, but I could sense you were itching for a canter, my love. Those dancing feet of yours had been tapping away under the table from the moment the band started up and, my goodness, what a mover! What rhythm! I could hardly keep up; thought I was going to have a coronary!’

  ‘You’d be in the right place for it!’

  ‘Don’t you believe it. Some of those colleagues of mine shouldn’t be allowed to operate on a rabbit.’

  ‘Oooh, I’ll tell them you said that, Howard!’

  ‘Do,’ he twinkled. ‘That way I’ll lose my job and we could both take graceful retirement. I could potter about in the garden, digging up plants instead of weeds, tramp mud through the house and get under your feet all day. I’d probably drive you mad!’

  ‘Stark staring, and there’s no “probably” about it!’

  ‘Hey – we’d be demons at cribbage, though, wouldn’t we, love?’ He nudged her. ‘We could play all day!’

  ‘Howard,’ she laughed, ‘we practically do that anyway!’

  Well, Claudia’s mouth simply wouldn’t shut, and as I followed her back into the kitchen with a pile of empty plates I had to tell her to stop staring.

  ‘I don’t see why. They don’t notice. It’s as if we’re not even there! Mum, it’s so extraordinary, it’s like she’s a totally different person. It’s like – well, like she’s possessed or something, like someone’s cast a spell! And her hair! All sort of blondie and swept back and – and white jeans, for heaven’s sake! Granny doesn’t even wear trousers, let alone jeans! And now they’re talking about going on a cruise. Granny would have said that was s-oooo … what’s the French word she says?’

  ‘Bourgeois.’

  ‘Exactly! “Too bourgeois for words, darling” – can’t you just hear her? Jesus, I just can’t believe it!’

  ‘Shh, they’ll hear you, and don’t swear.’

  ‘I’m not swearing, but, Jesus!’

  ‘Claudia!’

  She stared at me, eyes still wide. Then she gave herself a little shake. Came to.

  ‘Well, I think it’s brilliant,’ she said soberly. ‘In fact, I think it’s more than brilliant, I think it’s wicked. But just think, Mum, she could have been like this all along, all sort of fun and larky! Isn’t that awful? That it was all lurking inside her and we didn’t know?’

  I smiled sadly, began wiping up. ‘I know. That’s exactly what I thought when I saw her the other day.’

  ‘Hey!’ She caught my arm. ‘D’ you think he’s got a son?’

  ‘I think he has, actually. I know he’s a widower and I’m sure he said he had a boy. Why?’

  ‘For you, of course! Maybe it’s in the genes; maybe he could work the same magic for you!’

  I put the tea towel down. Turned to face her. ‘Claudes, am I a bore? Do I lack fun? Am I a grouch, now that Daddy’s gone?’

  ‘Of course not, Mum.’ She plucked a strawberry from a bowl and sailed out through the back door. ‘You were like that before he went!’

  Later, when Claudia took Howard off to see her guinea pigs and Mum and I were alone, side by side in deck chairs and straw hats, mopping our brows periodically – me, hastily averting my incredulous gaze from the pink canvas deck shoes Howard had ‘impulse bought her in Harrods’ – I shaded my eyes into the distance, to where Claudia and Howard were, down at the hutches.

  ‘Mum, d’you think Claudia’s had enough of that school? If she goes on into the seniors she’s got seven more years of it.’

  ‘Hmm?’ She came back from smiling at Howard’s back. ‘Oh, she’s talked to you then?’ She licked some cream from her fingers and set aside her strawberry bowl.

  I stared. ‘No, why, has she talked to you?’

  ‘Oh yes, she rang the other night. We had a nice long chat. Yes, she’s bored there now. She’d be happy to go.’

  I sat forward, gaped at her open-mouthed. ‘Well, why the hell doesn’t she tell me that!’

  ‘I don’t know, darling.’

  ‘And where does she want to go? To the High School?’

  She gave me a sideways glance. ‘No. She wants to go to boarding school.’

  I stared at her, aghast. ‘Boarding school! No! Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘Because she thinks it would be great fun, as I’m sure it would.’

  I felt very sick suddenly. ‘She wants to get away,’ I breathed shakily. ‘She’s had enough of living in a broken home with a distraught, neurotic mother and – oh God – she wants to get out of here!’ I clutched my mouth but a small sob escaped. My baby. Wanted to leave home. My only child.

  Mum laid a hand firmly on my arm. ‘Which is precisely why she didn’t tell you. She knew that was how you’d react, so she wanted to sound me out first, and that is absolutely not why she wants to go. She’s an only child, Olivia; she needs the company. She’s read all the books – Mallory Towers, Angela Brazil – she thinks it would be a hoot, and so it would!’

  I swallowed. ‘I never meant her to be an only child. I still think … maybe …’

  ‘I know you do, I know, and believe me, you’ll go on thinking that until your menopause.’

  Of course. Like she had, too. Hoping against hope that my father would come back, and me, knowing full well I was destined to be an only child, as Claudia surely did too. And dying to get away. I remembered reading all those books, dreaming of midnight feasts in the dorm, pillow fights, shrieks of laughter, a world away from the sourness that pervaded my childhood. Financially it had been out of the question, of course, but I’d deliberately worked my little socks off at school, dreaming of university when finally, finally I could escape. It gave me an actual physical pain in my gut to realise Claudia felt the same way. I breathed deeply, blinking back the tears.

  ‘Think about it,’ Mum said, as Claudia and Howard came slowly back up the lawn. ‘There’s plenty of time. She doesn’t have to go this year. She’s not eleven for a couple of months, she’d be quite the youngest in her class. She could go next year.’

  ‘But – I’d miss her so much. I’d miss her!’

  ‘Of course you would, but you know, boarding schools are so different now. She’d be back practically every weekend.’

  I couldn’t speak. But she’d be gone. Effectively, she’d have left home. And she was all I had.

  ‘Promise me you won’t talk to her about it until you’ve calmed down, OK?’ muttered Mum urgently.

  ‘OK,’ I whispered, for they were back, bearing guinea pigs.

  ‘Howard likes Edward best,’ announced Claudia, holding a speckled one aloft. ‘But the only thing is, he says he’s not Edward at all, he’s Edwina, which might explain why, cooped up with Pandora all day, they’ve never had babies!’

  ‘I knew my medical training would come in handy one day,’ laughed Howard. ‘If only for sexing guinea pigs!’

  Later, when they’d gone, I gave Claudia a big squeeze as she went off for her bath, burying my face in her hair. She stepped back in alarm.
/>   ‘M-u-um! My shell necklace!’

  ‘Sorry.’ I took the broken bits from her. ‘I’ll mend it.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s OK, I didn’t really want it any more.’ She ran up a few stairs, then halted, turned, her hand on the banister. ‘I didn’t mean what I said about you being a grouch, you know. You’re not.’

  I managed a grin, but couldn’t speak. Nodded instead. My chin wobbled. She was waiting for me to answer.

  ‘I know,’ I whispered.

  She stared. ‘Mum!’ She jumped down the last few steps and I dissolved. Hands on face, ambushed by tears. Stupid. Couldn’t help it. Didn’t want to.

  ‘Mum!’ she cried in alarm. I sat on the bottom step and she sat beside me, hugging my neck hard.

  ‘Is it Dad?’

  ‘Yes!’ I sobbed, grateful for that. ‘Yes, yes, it’s Dad.’

  She sighed, and hugged me some more, but then abruptly, her arm froze.

  She sat back. ‘It’s not Dad, is it? Gran told you, didn’t she!’ She wriggled free and moved along the stair so she could see my face properly.

  Damn, I rooted in my pocket for a hanky, this was so awful! So like I’d sworn I’d never be, loading guilt on to children, so like my mother – never, never, never! I sat up straight and blew my nose.

  ‘Don’t be silly. This has nothing whatever to do with that. I’m just a bit tired and overwrought, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m not going,’ she said vehemently, shaking her head violently. ‘No way, no way. I’m not going. I knew this would happen, knew that’s what you’d think! You think I want to get away!’ she wailed.

  My tears dried up the moment hers started. ‘Now, Claudia, listen. We must think about it.’ I wiped my nose determinedly, stuffed the tissue back in my pocket. ‘We certainly mustn’t rule it out, and in fact the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a very good idea. You’re on your own so much here, and now that Daddy’s gone –’

  ‘No!’ She sobbed wretchedly. ‘You think I don’t love you! You do, you think I don’t love you, and it’s just not true!’

  Well, that set us both off. Tears streamed in torrents down our faces as we hugged, kissed, wailed, reassured each other, said how marvellous we both were, how incredibly special, then wailed some more, until finally, totally spent, we sank back on the stairs, exhausted. Somewhat dazed and startled by our mutual hysteria, we stared into space for a while, sniffing a bit. Then we sat up, blew our respective noses, got to our feet, and arm in arm, went as one to the fridge for the chocolate fudge cake. Setting it between us on the little scullery table we dragged up stools, and armed with a spoon apiece, dug straight into the middle, sniffing loudly. Naturally, in time, our equilibrium recovered, as naturally, in time, our blood sugar levels were raised.

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said sternly, between dripping chocolatey mouthfuls, back in mother mode again. ‘We’ll go and have a look at one or two, and then we’ll see, OK?’

  ‘But not too far away,’ she warned, waving a spoon bossily at me. ‘It’s got to be close, and back at weekends.’

  ‘Agreed.’ I nodded.

  We pitched back into the calories again.

  ‘Becky’s going,’ she said licking her spoon, ‘and she’s taking her pony. Maybe I could have one too?’

  ‘Becky’s going?’ I looked up, surprised. Becky was a great mate of Claudia’s, and one I thoroughly approved of. A sweet girl with an incredibly close-knit, happy family.

  She regarded me wisely over a spoonful of chocolate. ‘Mum, you don’t have to be orphan Annie to go to boarding school, you know.’

  I blinked, surprised. ‘No. No, I suppose you don’t.’

  The following day Molly came round. As we basked, beached-whale-like on sun-loungers on the terrace – Molly, considerably more whale-like than me, tossing and turning uncomfortably in the shade, groaning, and swigging intermittently from a strange bottle of chalky white liquid which allegedly assuaged the heartburn and wind – I told her about Claudia. Henry was splashing happily in an ancient paddling pool I’d found, as Claudia dashed inside to find some boats for him to play with. Still such a child, I thought desperately, as she ran back out, armed with the boats. Too young to go, surely?

  ‘It’ll be good for her,’ pronounced Molly roundly. ‘She’s incredibly sociable and she’ll have a terrific time. God, I never wanted to go, far too cringing and pathetic and tied to Mummy’s apron strings, but think how you would have loved it!’

  ‘I know,’ I said sadly, knowing precisely why. I gazed at my daughter sailing the flotilla in a circle round Henry, ducking them occasionally and making him giggle.

  ‘Of course, the only one who’ll lose out here is you,’ said Molly abruptly.

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘On your own.’

  ‘Thank you, Molly, it had crossed my mind.’

  She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. Was silent for a moment.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Molly, I do hope you’re not about to say, “Perhaps you could get a dog”?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t, but – well, how’s Sebastian?’

  ‘Oh, thanks!’

  ‘No, but seriously, I thought he was terribly nice.’

  ‘Molly, you met him once, and then you nearly had a baby on his feet.’

  ‘Ah, but I liked him,’ she nodded unconvincingly, lips pursed. ‘I could tell he might be right for you.’ She puckered her brow. ‘He had, well, he had, um … kind eyes.’

  ‘Nonsense, he was all sort of glowering and wall-punching when you saw him.’

  ‘Yum-yum.’

  ‘And, if anything, he’s got a particularly steely gleam to his eye. You couldn’t even pick him out of an identity parade. You obviously haven’t the faintest idea what he looks like.’

  ‘Even so,’ she persisted, sitting up, ‘I feel I know him.’ She cupped her hands around an imaginary crystal ball, shut her eyes and contrived to look mystical, mouth twitching. ‘And I feel … yes, I feel he could make you … very happy … my dear.’ She reached out and clasped my hand.

  ‘Bog off,’ I said, snatching my hand away as she giggled wildly. ‘And don’t wee on my sunbed, please. It’s a new one.’

  ‘I wasn’t about to – have to be hysterical for that – and, anyway, it’s the wind that seems to ambush me these days.’ She shifted uncomfortably on the bed. ‘You know, there’s a lot to be said for elective Caesareans. Quite apart from anything else you get them two weeks early – which considering I’m likely to be two weeks late, would mean a month less of this malarkey – and if I’d gone down that route I’d have had the bloody thing by now, straight out of the sun-roof.’ She reached into her handbag and lit a cigarette. ‘You know in Brazil – first one this week so stop looking so disapproving – in Brazil, no self-respecting Brazilian beauty would dream of having a natural birth. What – and get your precious birth canal all shot to bits? Good heavens, what would your average, swaggering, polo-playing husband think about that? That’s not what it’s there for at all.’

  ‘Bit late now, isn’t it? You told me Henry came out like a human cannonball. Nearly knocked the midwife out.’

  ‘Well, quite, so there’s no hope for me,’ she said gloomily. She beamed, suddenly. ‘So back to you. Back, via birth canals, to Sebastian, in fact.’

  ‘You are so disgusting, Molly Piper.’

  ‘But didn’t you say you’d seen him recently?’ she persisted, twisting round to face me.

  I sighed. I had. More than once, actually. Twice, to be precise. After our supper I’d phoned him to say thank you, and he’d asked if I’d like to see a film with him later on in the week. Naturally that had led to supper in a little bistro afterwards, and then walking home, we’d spotted a poster advertising an open-air concert in the park, which naturally we’d gone to too, a few days later. (On both of these occasions incidentally – and much to Claudia’s horror – Maureen had stood in as baby-sitter. I could tell at a glance that nothing would get past those sharp eyes – part
icularly Lance and Nanette – and after a couple of evenings with Maureen, Claudia had become really quite proficient at needlepoint, which, I thought, on balance was better than oral sex.) But I digress. Yes, Sebastian liked me, that I could tell, and I don’t say that with any degree of smugness or insensate conceit, either. It’s just that I’m not the sort of girl men instantly fall for, so when it does happen it’s all the more apparent. And I liked him too, but not in the same way. I liked his dark, intelligent good looks, he made me laugh, he was droll and dry, and I liked the rather quizzical gleam he got in his eye when he was about to say something amusing. In fact I couldn’t fault him but, at the end of both evenings, I was left with that same hollow, empty feeling I’d had when I’d come back from his house that first night. After the concert in the park, I cried when I shut the front door. It was me, of course, I knew that. Not him. I never asked him in for a coffee because I felt it wouldn’t be fair, and he never made a move in that direction because he hadn’t been given so much as a smidgen of a sign that it would be acceptable. Lately, though, I wondered if I should, just for the hell of it. This wasn’t Lance, after all; it wouldn’t be that casual, would it? This was a man I liked enormously, but whom I just wasn’t in love with. Surely then, it couldn’t hurt? In fact, it might even help – might help me to fall in love, be better again. I so desperately wanted to be better. To be normal, not to be living in this ghastly limbo land, waiting to see what would happen next.

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen him,’ I sighed.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And … well, he’s very nice,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Thought so,’ she retorted smugly. She sat up and pursed her lips. ‘Right, tell you what, why not bring him round for supper? Better make it sharpish, though, otherwise I really will have this baby on his feet. How about Friday?’

  I turned to look at her properly. She was being suspiciously determined about all this. ‘Sure, I could bring him,’ I said slowly. ‘But what’s the rush? Why the indecent haste?’

  She was quiet for a moment. Put her sunglasses on, sat back and gazed out at the view, which, with the sun glancing off a riverful of floating water lilies, was carrying on like an Impressionist painting.