Balancing Act

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘Going to London.’

  She said, ‘I haven’t rung her since I heard. And she hasn’t rung me.’

  ‘She hasn’t rung me either. Normally, she’s on the phone twice or three times a day, but I’ve heard nothing since Thursday. She’s in London?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘And that cottage?’

  Grace managed to look at him. She said, ‘It’s just sitting there.’

  He moved a few things round unnecessarily on the table top. Then he said, with sudden force, ‘You mustn’t do that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just sit there.’

  She looked at him intently. ‘What do you mean?’

  He said, ‘You know what’s the matter with girls like you nowadays? Clever, talented girls like you? You get discouraged. That’s the problem. You get disheartened, dispirited. You won’t go for gold because you grew up believing you’d never get it. Shall I tell you something?’

  Her mouth was slightly open. She shook her head faintly.

  He said, leaning forward, ‘You’re a better designer than your mother.’

  She made a rapid, dismissive gesture. ‘Oh, I’m not.’

  ‘You are,’ he said. ‘You may not have her get up and go, or her drive and tenacity in business, but you’re a better designer, you understand how things work as well as how they look. If you put yourself out in the marketplace, you’d be snapped up.’

  Grace said, almost in a whisper, ‘That sounds almost like sacrilege.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s a bigger fan of your mum than I am. But she’s got to see what she has in you, the potential the business has in you. And the beginning of that is you seeing it, overcoming all those years of being obliging and not speaking up and sorting out other people’s mistakes. You should assert yourself.’

  Grace put out a hand and moved a couple of teaspoons to lie parallel to one another. She said uncertainly, ‘Ashley said something of the sort.’

  ‘Good for her.’

  ‘So if two of you …?’

  He picked up the teapot again and held it over her cup questioningly. He said, with emphasis, ‘Then it must be true.’

  Cara stood in the boardroom doorway with an expression of astonishment.

  ‘Ma!’

  Susie was sitting at the table, her laptop in front of her and several sketchbooks scattered about. She said levelly, not really looking at Cara, ‘Don’t sound so amazed.’

  ‘But it’s Saturday!’

  Susie put her glasses on. She said, ‘I know it is. And I could be as surprised as you. What are you doing here on a Saturday?’

  Cara took her bag off her shoulder and dropped it on the floor. ‘Where’s Pa?

  ‘Rehearsing,’ Susie said briefly.

  ‘With Brady?’

  ‘I presume so.’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Cara said, pulling a chair out.

  Susie made a show of peering at something on a page in the nearest sketchbook. ‘He doesn’t want me to know.’

  ‘Ma,’ Cara said, ‘don’t be an idiot.’

  ‘He doesn’t want me at the gig. He isn’t rehearsing at home. It’s just more of the same.’

  Cara sat down. She had planned to start mapping out a new gifting strategy to drive the company’s growth in a way that would both satisfy Daniel and Rick and also be acceptable to Susie. She wanted to come up with something original. But as she had tried to explain to Dan, not all newness worked merely because it was new. And when you were faced with someone like Susie, who preferred depth to novelty, the problem was, in marketing speak, challenging. Which meant very difficult. And to find Susie sitting here, in the very place where Cara had sought space and quiet to think, translated very difficult into impossible. ‘Shall I make some coffee?’

  Susie waved a hand towards a cafetière on the table. ‘Made some.’

  ‘It’ll probably be cold. I’ll make some fresh.’

  ‘I think that we should start discounting the monochrome diamond mugs,’ Susie said, as if Cara hadn’t spoken. ‘Don’t you always say discount the very minute sales start to decline?’

  ‘Ma—’

  ‘And the under-ten-pound price point. Don’t you think there should be a far bigger range there, for the summer, in London?’

  Cara said gently, ‘Ma, I said that to you weeks ago.’

  ‘Well, now I’m agreeing.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Gifting for tourists and visitors.’

  ‘Ma—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What are you working on there?’

  Susie held up her sketchbook. Cara leant forward. ‘Shells?’

  ‘Summer range,’ Susie said. ‘Blue on cream. And starfish. I might call it Seaside. Or Bucket and Spade.’

  ‘Right,’ Cara said, almost inaudibly.

  Susie picked up her sketching pencil. She said, not looking at Cara, ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I was going to work.’

  ‘Were you? On what?’

  ‘Ma,’ Cara said, ‘what’s eating you? Why are you in such a temper?’

  Susie added a detail to a shell. She said, still looking at the page, ‘I’m not in a temper. But I’m – hurt. Upset. Yes, that’s what I feel. Completely and utterly upset.’

  Cara adjusted herself to sit very upright, her hands folded in her lap. She said steadily, ‘Do you want to tell me why?’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘Yes, Ma, you do.’

  Susie stopped drawing and threw her pencil down. She took her glasses off and looked across the table and out of the window. ‘Suddenly,’ she said, ‘nobody is talking to me. This is my company, and all our livelihoods, and lives, are bound up in it, and nobody is telling me what is going on.’

  Cara waited. She thought of Dan, on one of his vigorous Saturday-morning cycle rides, and tried to imagine how he might urge her to – to manage herself, in this situation. He would be on her side, at least, and that, with a small but steady flame of fury beginning to burn in the pit of her stomach, was both a spur and a reassurance.

  Susie went on, still looking away from Cara, ‘I find all kinds of plans and arrangements are being made, both private and professional, without even mentioning them to me, let alone consulting me.’

  Cara said steadily, ‘You didn’t tell anyone about your visit to Tinware for Today. The first we knew about it was when Dan got a quote from the sheet-metal people in Sheffield.’

  Susie ignored her. She said, ‘Arrangements about Morris. Taking no notice of the Parlour House and the plans I’ve made for it. Going to see Rick Machin without even mentioning it to me.’

  Cara crossed her arms. She waited a moment, and then she said, ‘Everyone else knew. Everyone else was in agreement about Morris coming to London. Ashley told me that yesterday.’

  ‘Nobody told me. Nobody told me anything.’

  ‘I’m sure Pa did.’

  Susie looked down at the table. She said, in a tone of bruised surprise, ‘He told me as a fait accompli. He never asked me. He just said he had stayed with Grace and met Morris and been to see Leo and it was sorted. Just like that!’

  Cara said steadily, ‘It is just like that.’

  ‘I – I can’t quite believe it.’

  ‘Believe what?’

  ‘That you’ve all taken all these decisions without even asking me what I thought!’

  ‘Ma,’ Cara said, ‘we knew what you’d think.’

  ‘Which was what?’

  Cara took a deep breath. Then she said, ‘Control, control, control.’

  There was a highly charged silence. Then Susie said, ‘Is that what you really think?’

  ‘It’s part of what I think.’

  ‘You make it sound as if I want my own way at all costs.’

  ‘It sometimes feels like that.’

  ‘Cara,’ Susie said, raising her head, ‘don’t you see?’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘That I want to make things r
ight? For as many people as I can? Is that – is that just control?’

  ‘I think,’ Cara said, ‘it’s how it ends up seeming, yes.’

  ‘But I believe—’

  ‘I know what you believe,’ Cara said, interrupting. ‘I know what you’ve achieved, for hundreds of people, because of what you believe. It’s wonderful. You’re wonderful. But you think that there is only one way of doing everything. And that isn’t right. It isn’t working. You have to be able to see that there are different ways of realizing your vision, and they aren’t automatically wrong if they don’t coincide with your way.’

  Susie got up and went round the table to the window. Cara didn’t look at her. She sat where she was, her arms folded, and waited.

  After a long and uncomfortable pause, Susie said without turning round, ‘Is this a plot?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you all get together and decide to defy me?’

  ‘No. It’s just happened. We couldn’t get past you, so we’ve had to go round you. Separately. Dealing with what had to be dealt with, as it came up.’

  ‘Even Morris.’

  ‘You didn’t know what to do about Morris.’

  Susie turned round very slowly. She said unexpectedly, ‘No, I didn’t.’ And then she added under her breath, ‘I hated that. Not knowing what to do.’

  ‘You’re allowed,’ Cara said, surprising herself, ‘not to know what to do when you’re the child.’

  Susie’s gaze sharpened suddenly. She looked directly at Cara. ‘D’you mean – you?’

  Cara nodded. The energizing flame of anger inside her had turned into something much less easy to harness, threatening tears. She swallowed hard.

  ‘Would you like just to say whatever it is you want to say?’ Susie said.

  Cara shook her head to dispel any incipient weeping. She said loudly, ‘I hated you putting work before me when I was growing up. I hated not being able to do anything about it. I just had to take what was handed out to me.’

  Susie came slowly back to the table and sat down. She said softly, ‘Of course.’

  ‘We just had to take what you decided. Ash, Grace, Pa. Everyone. It’s always been about what you wanted.’

  ‘Or what I was compensating for.’

  Cara scrabbled in her bag for tissues. ‘We all do that. You’re not unique.’

  ‘I know.’

  Cara found a pack of tissues and extracted one. She said, blowing her nose, ‘There’s always choices, Ma. Always. You can’t blame other people for what you choose, whatever the circumstances.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to. I was just explaining—’

  ‘Why,’ Cara said, suddenly raising her voice, ‘don’t you stop explaining and justifying and try just saying bloody sorry instead?’

  Susie gave a little gasp. Then she said, ‘I am sorry. I’m sorry about more than you can imagine.’

  ‘And Pa?’ Cara demanded. She thumped her bag down on the floor again.

  ‘What about him?’

  Cara blew her nose again. Then she said, in the same tone but without the volume, ‘Why don’t you try saying sorry to Pa, for starters?’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Brady and Frank had a conversation about whether they should ask Jasper outright if they weren’t welcome at Radipole Road any more. Neither of them wished to have to spell out what a good gaff it was to visit, how much they appreciated a well-equipped studio, never mind the fish and chips and red wine, as well as the fact that as Jasper’s missus had her own busy life, they were never interrupted or made to feel that they had outstayed their welcome. Without wishing to come right out and say so, they both admitted that they missed the advantages and comforts of Radipole Road, and were disquieted by the possibility that their visits had been stopped because they had been seen to be taking advantage or being exploitative. It occurred to them that Susie might have counted the number of empty wine bottles in the recycling bin. Or thrown a strop about people having the run of the house behind her back. Or something.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Frank, ‘you upset her by teaching that parrot to swear.’

  Brady was nursing a pint of Guinness. Its health properties were such, he was wont to say, that it didn’t really count as alcohol. Even pregnant women drank it. He said gloomily, ‘She was swearing long before I got to her. It wouldn’t be that.’

  ‘I reckon that Jas and his missus have had a falling-out,’ Frank said. ‘It’ll be money. It never works, in the end, a woman out-earning a man.’

  ‘Jas is OK with that.’

  Frank turned his glass round thoughtfully. He said, ‘I wouldn’t be.’

  ‘Jas has never known anything different. Thirty-five years I’ve known him, and she’s always made the money.’

  ‘Worms turn,’ Frank said.

  Brady lifted his glass and carefully drank a mouthful of thick foam from the top of it. He said, ‘I’ll bet you it’s not us, it’s to do with them.’

  ‘That’s what I just said.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Frank said. ‘They’ve had a falling-out and we’ve copped it.’

  ‘Ah,’ Brady said. ‘But we’ve had more work – and with Jas – since we haven’t been to his.’

  ‘Nothing to do with it.’

  ‘I’ll bet you it’s not just coincidence.’

  ‘Whatever it is,’ Frank said, ‘it’s got him off the pot.’

  Brady picked up his glass again, and halted with it in mid air. He said, staring at the door, ‘Talk of the bleeding devil—’

  Jasper came sauntering into the pub, paused, looked round, clocked them with a gesture and went over to the bar to order a drink.

  ‘Do we say anything?’ Frank said.

  Brady set his glass down again. ‘One more mouthful of this and I’ll be game.’

  ‘Don’t ask about his marriage.’

  ‘Don’t be a dickhead,’ Brady said. ‘Would I?’

  ‘I’d like to know …’

  ‘He doesn’t look to me like a man out on his ear.’

  ‘I meant about his studio,’ Frank said.

  Jasper came slowly towards them, concentrating on not spilling his drink. He said cheerfully, ‘Lowlife in a low pub. I knew I’d find you here.’

  ‘I’ve been drinking in here for a good fifteen years,’ Brady said. ‘Maybe twenty.’

  Jasper looked at their glasses. ‘I’ll get a second round in.’

  Brady put his hand flat on the top of his glass. ‘Not for me, mate, ta all the same.’

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘Save it for Friday,’ Frank said.

  ‘What’s the matter with you both? I want to celebrate.’

  Frank looked at Brady. Brady said, ‘It’s been so long, mate, I’ve forgotten how.’

  Jasper set his glass down carefully in front of him. He said, ‘I’ve found a studio.’

  There was a pause. Then Frank said, ‘You’ve already got a studio.’

  Jasper slid a handful of change into his jeans pocket. He said, ‘In Hackney. It’s in a converted factory. Amazing. All studios with kids making a million things in them. Knitwear, shoes, light fittings. And then there’s this studio, completely soundproofed, just sitting waiting for us, like it was meant.’

  They sat in silence, regarding their drinks.

  Then Jasper said, ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  Brady gave Frank a quick glance. He said, ‘Jas, mate, we thought we had a studio. At yours. No studio’s going to be as good as that one.’

  There was another pause, and then Jasper said firmly,

  ‘No.’

  ‘No what?’

  ‘I don’t want to use that studio. Not any longer.’

  ‘Ah,’ Frank said, too quickly. ‘We wondered if we weren’t welcome any more, if Susie—’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with Susie,’ Jasper said. ‘It’s my decision. I don’t want to play in that studio. Not any more.’

  They regarded him, and then looked at each other.

>   ‘Jas? You OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘It’s gold dust, that studio.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Hackney’s not exactly Fulham—’

  ‘That’s what I like.’

  ‘You having a bit of a crisis, mate?’

  Jasper picked up his glass and took a gulp. He said, ‘I’m bringing the parrot.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve bought a travelling cage. When we use the studio, I’m bringing the parrot.’

  ‘You off your trolley?’

  ‘No,’ Jasper said. ‘I’m back on it, as it happens.’

  Frank said, ‘So it isn’t us? It isn’t something we’ve done?’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Us not coming round to yours any more.’

  Jasper looked at him. He was laughing. ‘God, no,’ he said.

  ‘God, no. You two are the reason we’re moving to Hackney.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Can’t you see?’ Jasper said. ‘Can’t you see that I’ll be free?’

  Morris sat opposite the children at the kitchen table. Maisie was eating toast soldiers and Fred was packing discs of banana into his mouth as if it was essential to accommodate all of them. While she ate, Maisie was watching Morris with a steady and appraising eye.

  She had declined her father’s suggestion that she might help Morris to unpack. Morris had arrived with his strange luggage on a National Express coach from Stoke-on-Trent, having refused a train ticket and paid for the bus himself. In addition to the carpet bag, he had brought a bird house for the children, painted celadon green with their names on the sides, garlanded with flowers and butterflies.

  ‘Say thank-you,’ Leo had said to Maisie.

  She’d shrugged. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can. You can say thank-you for the lovely bird house.’

  Maisie had tugged on Leo’s arm to get him to bend over her. She’d said in a hoarse whisper into his ear, ‘There are no birds in it.’

  ‘There will be,’ Morris had said. ‘When we put it outside. In the garden. With nuts and seeds in for them to eat. They’ll come when there’s something for them to eat.’

  Maisie had looked as if she’d believe that when she saw it. She’d accompanied her father firmly downstairs, leaving Fred investigating the carpet bag.

  ‘I’m your great-granddad,’ Morris had said to Fred. ‘I never thought I’d be anything, and here I am with you.’