Balancing Act

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘She probably sees history here,’ Morris said, looking at the pink glass chandelier. ‘Or she thinks she does. She’s made a romance out of history – out of family history. She’s made something out of nothing, because she likes it that way. The past is always safer, because it’s over.’

  Jasper shrugged himself deeper into his coat. He said, trying to antagonize Morris, ‘She isn’t romancing family history. She adored her grandparents. She owes them everything.’

  Morris nodded. He shifted his gaze from the light fitting to his son-in-law. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She does.’

  ‘Without them—’

  ‘Yes,’ Morris said again. ‘I know. She was the child they always wanted. She fitted them. Hand in glove.’

  Jasper walked across to the window and looked out at the rough little garden. There were a few celandines in the grass by now, and a blue spear or two of grape hyacinth. He debated what to say next, what other long-overdue accusations he could justifiably throw at Morris.

  Then Morris said, without rancour, ‘My old dad loved Susan as much as he couldn’t stand me.’

  Jasper waited a moment, then said, his back to Morris, ‘So that’s your excuse, then?’

  ‘No,’ Morris said equably. ‘But you could say it was my reason.’

  ‘For abandoning your child?’

  ‘We didn’t see it that way. And even if you’d like to pick a fight with me, I still don’t.’

  Jasper turned round. He said, ‘I don’t want a fight. But I want you to know what a shit I think you are.’

  Morris looked completely unruffled. ‘I’m a nuisance,’ he said amicably, ‘but I’m not worse than that. I was a young man. I was – well, stuck with a girl, a sweet girl, but only a girl, who I’d married because she was pregnant. I couldn’t be a fraction of what my dad wanted me to be, and my mother always took his side. So it seemed to me to be best if I just cleared off. Just got out of everyone’s hair and took poor Stella with me, because she could hardly manage herself, let alone a baby. So we left the baby to be managed properly, as you would see it. To be fed and cared for and disciplined and educated like you’re supposed to do with a child. Stella couldn’t manage it, and neither could I, with Stella, and with things with my dad like they were.’ He paused and then he said, ‘And I didn’t have the nerve to come back. Or to ask Susan to come to us. Living hand-to-mouth in not much more than a shack on a beach. A remittance man. A good-for-nothing remittance man, my old dad said.’

  Jasper said steadily, ‘Is any of that supposed to make what you did any better?’

  Morris looked entirely undisconcerted. ‘Of course not. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to be whitewashed. I just told you how it was. How it came about. I can’t change the past. I can’t change who I was. Any more, son, than you can.’

  ‘Don’t call me son.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Morris said. ‘I could call you lad, like my old dad called me when I was still too small to have disappointed him yet.’

  ‘My name is Jasper.’

  Morris grinned. ‘What a label to hang round any kid’s neck.’

  Jasper said furiously, ‘You are so bloody infuriating—’

  Morris held up a hand, its palm towards Jasper. ‘Peace, lad. Peace. I told you I was a nuisance.’

  ‘Too fucking right.’

  Morris lowered his hand and put it in the pocket of his strange outer garment. He said, ‘We shouldn’t fight. We’re on the same side as far as Susan and the girls are concerned.’

  ‘My girls.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘My girls,’ Jasper said, ‘who are all stressed out about what to do with you.’

  Morris looked round the room. He said, ‘If it’d help Susan to have me live here, I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever helps her. But if I was left to myself, I wouldn’t choose here.’

  Jasper eyed him. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ Morris said, ‘that I only came back here because I knew it’s where I’d find Susan. But I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in Stoke, or even in Staffordshire. This place has bad memories for me, bad vibes. I’d be happy to be anywhere but here.’

  Jasper crossed the room and leant against a wall. He said, ‘I thought you liked your billet with Grace’s boyfriend. I thought as long as you had bed, board and no responsibilities, that was fine by you.’

  Morris sighed. He took his hand out of his pocket and looked at it, turning it over and inspecting the back, where bluish veins stood out like miniature tree roots. ‘I was getting out of Grace’s hair. I read all the runes wrong, so I did what I always do. Made myself scarce.’

  ‘I thought Jeff offered.’

  ‘He did,’ Morris said. ‘He wants to get back into Grace’s good books. But she shouldn’t let him.’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  Morris said quietly, still looking at his hands, ‘She’s my granddaughter.’

  Jasper took his shoulder away from the wall. He said, ‘Only in name.’

  Slowly Morris raised his head and regarded his son-in-law. He put both his hands back in his pockets. He said, ‘If you could get over your temper with me, we might get somewhere.’

  Jasper wandered back to the window and stared out. He said mulishly, ‘There’s nowhere to get.’

  Morris waited. Then he shuffled across the room and stood beside Jasper, looking out at the garden. He said, ‘As long as I’m still breathing, lad, I’m afraid that there is. I’m here. I exist, and no amount of wishing I didn’t on your part or mine is going to make any difference. I had a bad childhood here, but I know that’s no excuse in your eyes for what I did later. But I did, it’s done, and Susan’s a marvel in spite of it – or because of it, neither of us will ever know. But if you could stop using all your energy telling me how atrocious a father you think I’ve been, we might have a chance of making my existence easier for Susan. And that’s what we both want, don’t we?’

  ‘If I fancy someone,’ Michelle said over her shoulder to Grace, ‘I’ll forgive them pretty well anything.’

  Grace was at her computer. The drawings of wellington boots her mother had sent up were not, of course, compatible with the standard leg lengths or widths of the manufacturer who was interested in using their designs. The company was English, but the boots themselves were made in China, inevitably. What Susie wanted could be made closer to home – in France, as it happened, by a superior company who offered eight calf widths for every shoe size, but the figures made no sense, even if they agreed to take Susie’s designs. The English company was cheaper, less specialized, and resistant to some of Susie’s design requests. There were battles ahead. She said distantly in reply, ‘I don’t fancy Jeff.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Michelle said. ‘You’d have to be off another planet not to. I do. Ben does. Don’t you, Ben?’

  Ben gave no indication he had even heard her. Michelle went on, ‘Ben’s pretending not to hear me.’

  ‘Get back to work,’ Grace said.

  ‘I am working. I’m just talking while I work. I have the spec of the new cat design just about there. Ben wouldn’t eat any of Jeff’s chocolate truffles because Ben wants to stay slim and lovely for someone just like Jeff, don’t you, Ben?’

  ‘Don’t answer her,’ Grace said. ‘Ignore her. Shut your offensive mouth.’

  Ben said, ‘The cat design doesn’t look right on the dinner plates. It’s too big. Maybe just the rim—’

  ‘I ate the whole box,’ Michelle said. ‘They were amazing. I allowed myself two a day. I’d rather have had Jeff, though.’

  ‘Have him,’ Grace said.

  Michelle turned round from her screen. She said, ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘But he’s part of the family! Your granddad’s living there—’

  ‘That’s neither here nor there.’

  Michelle got up from her chair. ‘I bet Jeff thinks it is.’

 
‘Well, he’s wrong.’

  Michelle came across to Grace’s computer. She said, ‘What’s got into you?’

  ‘Resolve,’ Ben said. ‘Unlike you. Anybody’s for a box of chocolates.’

  ‘Jeff isn’t anybody.’

  ‘He’s nobody,’ Ben said. ‘Being hot isn’t enough, in the long run.’

  ‘What would you know?’

  Ben turned round. He said, ‘Look at Grace.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘How does she look?’

  Michelle considered. Then she said, ‘OK, actually.’

  ‘Not like she did a month ago?’

  ‘Can I join in?’ Grace said.

  ‘Not yet,’ Ben said. He looked at Michelle. ‘Grace looks better?’

  ‘Sort of – yeah, she does.’

  ‘No Jeff for most of the time,’ Ben said. ‘All kinds of upsets, like her granddad, but not much date time with Jeff.’

  Michelle said to Grace, ‘Are you just going to let him nick your boyfriend?’

  Grace stared at her screen in silence.

  Ben said slightly scornfully, ‘Jeff’s straight.’

  Michelle bent closer to Grace. She said, ‘You’re never going to dump him. Lose the fittest man in Stoke and put your own grandfather out on the street?’

  Grace didn’t turn. She moved her computer mouse to adjust something. Then she said, ‘If you don’t get back to work, you’ll find there isn’t any work to get back to.’

  Michelle gave a yelp of laughter. ‘Who says?’

  Grace glanced up at her. She wasn’t smiling. ‘I do,’ she said.

  There was a sudden and faintly alarming silence.

  ‘Wow,’ Michelle said.

  ‘Goodness,’ Susie said. ‘Are you still here?’

  Ashley was at her computer in an otherwise empty office. Cara and Dan had left half an hour ago, saying that they were going to the gym.

  Ashley didn’t look up. ‘It was a Bicester day,’ she said. ‘I only got back at four.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Good,’ Ashley said. ‘We did a spring-sale mailshot for Bicester, and their sales were up eight per cent last week. Six mugs for the price of five shifted over three hundred.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Susie said. ‘Well done. That was a good sale catalogue.’

  Ashley focussed on her screen to turn it off. ‘Ma?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want to talk to you about catalogues, actually.’

  ‘I rather wanted,’ Susie said, ‘to talk to you about your father.’

  Ashley looked up at her. ‘Why? What’s he done?’

  Susie perched on the edge of Ashley’s desk. ‘I think it’s what I’ve done. Or haven’t done.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Grace has taken him up to Stoke with her. To meet Morris and see the cottage. They only rang to tell me once they were on the train. And they don’t seem to think they’re the ones in the wrong. I feel hurt, and I’m puzzled.’

  Ashley leant back and folded her arms. She said sympathetically, ‘Oh, Ma.’

  Susie said, ‘It’s so weird, being in Radders with no one there except a sulking parrot who won’t even look at me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you come round to ours?’

  Susie fiddled with a pencil lying on Ashley’s desk. ‘I don’t seem to feel very fit for company. I didn’t want to talk about it, somehow. It made me feel a bit – wobbly. But I’m certain, at the same time. I mean certain about the business.’

  ‘Pa did need to meet Morris.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And see the cottage.’

  ‘He’ll hate it,’ Susie said. ‘And he’ll hate Morris. It’s an awful idea, it’s a disaster. I don’t know what got into Grace. I can’t think why she didn’t tell me.’

  Ashley looked straight ahead at her blank screen. She said, ‘I wouldn’t have told you, either. And I think she’s right. You can’t control everything. You can’t just connect with Pa when it suits you.’

  There was a pause. Then Susie said, ‘He likes his own life. He likes his freedom as much as I do.’

  Ashley looked at her watch. ‘Ma, I should go. Do you want to continue this in the car?’

  Susie got off the desk. ‘Not the way it seems to be going, no.’

  ‘You mean my not instantly agreeing with you?’

  Susie said sadly, ‘It’s more complicated than that. I wanted your father uncontaminated by Morris, for one thing.’

  Ashley began to drop things into her handbag. ‘He’s not that awful!’

  ‘That’s not what you thought when we were up in Stoke.’

  ‘I’m getting used to the idea of him. We all are. Anyway, he’s … having an effect on everyone.’

  ‘That is partly what I’m afraid of,’ Susie said.

  Ashley stood up. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant he’s having an effect on our dynamic. We all seem to have moved round in the dance a bit.’

  ‘I know,’ Susie said. ‘And it isn’t good.’

  ‘But it is,’ Ashley said. She hoisted her bag on to her shoulder and flipped her laptop shut before sliding it into her workbag.

  ‘Ash?’

  ‘We’re – all a bit different,’ Ashley said. ‘All of us. It’s good. Grace. Leo and me.’

  ‘Leo?’

  ‘Looking after the children. Sacking the nanny. Like I told you.’

  Susie said faintly, ‘Like Pa—’

  ‘No,’ Ashley said, ‘not like Pa. Things are different now. It’s different for men at home these days.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And Ma—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Another thing,’ Ashley said, moving away from her desk. ‘While we’re talking about change, there’s something else Leo and I were discussing. We talked it over with Grace at the weekend. And Cara and Dan think it’s a good idea. It’s about the children’s catalogue.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I think that it should be shot at our house this time. With Maisie and Fred. We need a new setting for the family shots – we’ve done Radders to death, don’t you think?’ She reached the door and smiled back at her mother. ‘I just thought I’d mention it, so you can think it over. OK?’

  Polynesia had not touched the sunflower seeds or the out-of-season blackberries that Susie had left for her that morning. She was at the far end of her perch, against the bars of her cage, staring out of the French windows at the wet garden. She looked smaller somehow, and faintly bedraggled, as if her feathers were damp.

  ‘He’ll be home tomorrow,’ Susie said. ‘He’ll be back. Perhaps we’ll both have a lot to say to him.’

  Polynesia shrank her head down into her neck and closed her eyes.

  ‘Please eat something, at least,’ Susie said, indicating the blackberries. ‘Don’t give him something else to be fed up with me about.’

  Polynesia swivelled her head and opened one eye. Then she yawned, showing her little black darting tongue, and closed her eye again.

  Susie returned to the kitchen table, where she had left a mug of tea. A feeling, not of liberation, to which she was accustomed, but of isolation was threatening to overwhelm her. It had been coming on stealthily, ever since Jasper had telephoned from the train to Stoke the day before, and the conversation with Ashley had unleashed the final wave of it. Under normal circumstances, her reaction would have been to go up to Stoke immediately, to head straight for the factory and reassure herself of her significance there, her effectiveness, her centrality to the whole purpose and success of the enterprise. But she couldn’t do that, not tonight. Jasper was up there, with Grace. Jasper had seen the Parlour House and met Morris, and had neither rung nor texted afterwards. When she had rung him, his phone went straight to voicemail. Grace had answered her phone, but had said that she hadn’t seen her father and that she was going out for a drink with Neil before she went home. She’d been as sweet as ever, but had declined to, well, engage with her mother, not by being obstructive b
ut merely by being elusive. Ashley was at home with her family. Cara and Dan were at the gym and were then going out for a Chinese. They had suggested Susie join them, but she had felt reluctant to agree. So here she was, in Radipole Road, alone and … and lonely. There was no getting away from it. That’s what she was. Lonely. She glanced across at the parrot cage.

  ‘Please?’ she said again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Hey!’ Leo said in surprise. ‘Come on in!’

  ‘I should have rung,’ Jasper said.

  Leo stood aside, holding the front door open. On the floor behind him, Fred was sitting up on his padded bottom, jiggling excitedly at the sight of his grandfather.

  Jasper stooped to pick him up. ‘Hi there, Freddy.’

  Fred hit him lightly with the plastic brick he was holding.

  Leo said, ‘What brings you here?’

  Jasper took the brick out of Freddy’s hand. ‘Just passing.’

  ‘Really? Coffee?’

  ‘Please,’ Jasper said, and then to Fred, ‘You’re all dribble.’

  ‘He’s teething,’ Leo said. ‘Poor Fred.’

  Jasper kissed his grandson’s forehead. ‘Poor little sod. Hard to find a dry bit to kiss.’

  Leo went ahead of Jasper down the basement stairs at speed, calling over his shoulder, ‘‘Scuse the mess!’

  ‘Can’t see it.’

  ‘I decided I’d get resentful if I tidied up all the time.’

  Jasper came carefully down the stairs behind him, carrying Fred. He said, ‘Resentful of Ashley?’

  ‘Well, it might have manifested itself like that. And I didn’t want it to,’ said Leo.

  Jasper reached the bottom of the stairs and stooped to set Fred down. ‘Have your brick back now, Freddy.’

  Fred turned away, ignoring the proffered brick, and began to crawl rapidly towards the television.

  ‘He wants the remote,’ Leo said. ‘What is it about buttons and sockets and switches and kids?’