Cara was still looking at Dan. She said, ‘We’ll have to talk about it.’
‘I want a decision soon,’ Ashley said. ‘I don’t want to lose momentum.’
Cara leant towards Daniel. She said in a low voice, ‘What’s the matter?’
He gave her a benign smile. ‘Nothing.’
‘Yes, there is. There is. You’re never this disengaged, you’re never not involved—’
‘Well, maybe I am now,’ he said.
‘Now?’ Cara said. Her voice was alarmed. ‘What d’you mean, now?’
He gave Cara’s hand a brief final squeeze and let it go. Then he picked up his wine glass. ‘I just mean, sweetheart, that I’m possibly not as involved as I was till very recently. And I don’t mean just me – I mean you, too.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘It’s just possible, Ashley, that none of this will concern Cara and me for very much longer. But of course we’ll help you. For now, that is. For now.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
There were moments most days when Grace reflected how hard she would find it to share her life with anyone on a permanent basis. It was a rare day when she didn’t close her front door on the world outside with a feeling of thankfulness and release. She remembered, in childhood, not in the least minding being allotted the smallest bedroom at home, as long as it had a door that closed and no space for a second bed. She had to be coaxed into having friends for tea or birthday parties, or going on school trips, as if the very notion of disliking communal activities was just too peculiar to be permitted. It wasn’t, she tried to explain throughout her growing-up years, that she didn’t like other people; it was just that she really needed lots of time on her own. Her idea of company, she wrote in a school essay when she was twelve, was to be in her room at home with the door shut, and the rest of the family somewhere else in the house, but not beside her. Her English teacher had written at the bottom, ‘Well expressed, even if the sentiments are a little strange!’ But then, as Grace had observed, her English teacher had been the kind of woman who would have thought she had fallen off the edge of the planet if she wasn’t in perpetual communication with someone.
Since Morris had left, and Jeff had sidled from centre stage (even if Grace couldn’t quite believe that he had gone for good), her flat had settled back into itself once more. She had toured it nightly for the first week, adjusting and tweaking, to remind herself that it was hers, and hers alone, spreading her sketchbooks out, hanging favourite garments on cupboard doors, buying pots of herbs for the kitchen windowsill and bunches of flowers for everywhere else, even putting a jug of forced Cornish daffodils on the lavatory cistern. Late in the evenings, before she went to bed, she would move things about, changing cushions or lamps, altering the position of pieces of furniture, in order to surprise herself in the mornings by seeing the flat anew. This habit was a private but intense pleasure, like being alone. It gave her a sensation of quiet control and also a low but definite hum of excitement. In those first weeks after Morris went south, Grace revelled in her own private power.
Which was only increased when Ashley rang to say she had decided that their pay structure should be changed, and what they achieved should be reflected in what they earned. Grace was lying on her sofa, with her stockinged feet propped on one end and her head on the other. She said thoughtfully, ‘How would you quantify that?’
‘By sales. We look at those and then estimate how we share the profits. Sales are the only yardstick we have for measuring any of our successes, if you think about it, and the only way we can tell if our performance is getting better.’
Grace lifted one foot and balanced it against the opposite knee. She said, ‘What did Cara think?’
‘She was a bit ratty. But she was in a ratty mood, anyway. I think Dan liked it. Dan’s obviously planning some big new move for the company. He wouldn’t talk about it, except to say he wanted to discuss it with Cara first, so it’s bound to be something that’ll upset Ma. All Dan’s plans upset Ma. Where is she?’
Grace fitted her left kneecap into the arch of her right foot. She said, ‘Up here somewhere, I think. I haven’t seen her today. But she was in the factory, I know, because the girls have been painting the ribbons on the Maypole range, and she’ll have taught them how.’
‘Is she out at Barlaston?’ Ashley said. ‘What about that house?’
‘I haven’t asked her.’
‘Well, now Morris is here—’
‘Is he OK?’
‘Don’t you mean us? Are we OK?’
‘Are you?’ Grace said.
‘Most days, yes. None of this should work, but it seems to. Morris has been taken up by all Leo’s yummies, and Leo has a couple of private pupils he’s tutoring.’
Grace took her foot off her knee and wriggled it. She said, ‘What about Pa?’
‘What about him?’
‘I rang him,’ Grace said, ‘and he said he couldn’t talk because he was with somebody.’
‘Jesus, d’you think—’
‘No, not that kind of somebody. He sounded just the same as normal, only preoccupied. Is he ever at home?’
‘I don’t think either of them are,’ Ashley said. ‘I haven’t seen Ma in weeks. Maisie and Fred might as well not have a grandmother.’
‘Better than smothering.’
‘She wouldn’t know how to smother if you paid her,’ Ashley said. ‘It’s all she can do to relate vaguely.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s not,’ Grace said. She swung herself slowly upright. ‘Why are we all working with her if she got it so wrong?’
‘Gracie—’
‘What?’
‘Do you get the feeling that something’s about to happen? That we’re all waiting for something to happen?’
‘Is that what you’re trying to do? Make something happen?’
‘If you mean the company—’
‘I do,’ Grace said.
There was a pause. Then Ashley said, ‘I’m alone in the office. Everyone’s gone home. It’s – great.’
Grace laughed. ‘Alone at last. My ideal.’
‘It’s not being here alone, so much,’ Ashley said unexpectedly. ‘It’s the feeling of being in charge. I like it. I’m sitting at Dan’s desk, and I’m looking right down the office, all the way down to the double doors at the end, and I like it, Grace. I really, really do.’
On the train to Stoke-on-Trent Jasper wondered if he was behaving like a character in a third-rate thriller. It was, after all, undeniably furtive to arrange for a neighbour to call in and attend to Polynesia, and then to set off for Euston station without informing either Susie or his daughters. Of course, since he wanted to surprise Susie, there was no point in alerting her, but it was not in character – or at least, not in the character he seemed to have inhabited for almost forty years – to conceal anything quite so deliberately from his children.
He had, over time, developed a method of telling them about his arrangements. He would simply announce in a breezy tone that he was off here or there, but because it never involved any length of time away from Radipole Road, the girls had got into the habit of hardly hearing him, of thinking vaguely, ‘Oh, it’s Pa. He won’t be long,’ as if he was a kind of immovable fixture, like a human landmark that had been there for millennia and could thus be taken for granted.
It had come as a surprise to him, a few days ago, to realize that he was going to have to break the easygoing habits of a lifetime and take action because, astonishingly, not only was Susie not going to, but she couldn’t. He had avoided her for some time now, because she aroused in him such unmanageable and complicated feelings of anger and distress and bewilderment, but recently something had diminished the anger and increased the distress – maybe it was knowing that she had been at home, alone, without him, in a bizarre reversal of their roles. The anger was an old friend and therefore familiar. The distress was new and violently uncomfortable.
The only course of action, he dec
ided, was to surprise Susie and confront her. And an essential part of the surprise – which would increase the likelihood of getting an authentic response – was for their encounter not to happen in a known context. What was known – or over-known, for God’s sake – was Radipole Road. Radipole Road held not a single element of novelty or surprise for either of them, and in Jasper’s view it was no longer the cradle of all that was beloved in that family’s history, but rather a hollow reminder of what had once been, and was no more. He had decided firmly that it would be useless to try and talk to Susie in Radipole Road. But it would be wrong to confront her at the office, as well as embarrassing for Cara and Ashley. No, it would be best to appear out of context, to seek her out in the very place where she was least expecting him. And so, after a call to the architect who was refashioning the Parlour House to establish Susie’s whereabouts and timetable, Jasper was on his way to Barlaston, via Stoke-on-Trent. His only real responsibility, Polynesia, was at home in her cage with a list of instructions about her welfare on the kitchen table. The neighbour had a key and a list of emergency numbers. If he hadn’t been on such a mission, Jasper thought, his gaze fixed unseeingly on the flying countryside outside the train windows, it might have almost felt like an adventure. Stoke-on-Trent twice in a matter of weeks! Unheard of.
‘I can’t believe how difficult it is to talk to you,’ Daniel said to Cara.
Cara was pulling towels off the bathroom rack, prior to washing them. She said huffily, ‘That’s hardly my fault. I’m here, aren’t I?’
He stepped into the bathroom and tried to take the armful of towels from her. ‘I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean you’re hard to talk to. I meant that we seem to be so busy that there’s never a proper opportunity.’
Cara held the towels defensively. ‘Don’t. I’ve got them. I can’t talk properly to you, Dan, if I don’t feel you’re on my side.’
‘I am always on your side.’
‘You weren’t the other night. You were siding with Ashley. And you keep going off on your own, and it isn’t all cycling, and I’m not going to demean myself by asking—’
‘Please put the towels down.’
‘No!’
‘Cara, sweetheart,’ Daniel said, ‘that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about. But not round the laundry.’
She relaxed her hold on the towels very slightly. She said, her tone still doubtful, ‘What are you on about?’
He said with exaggerated patience, ‘Where I keep going. What I’m doing. Why I didn’t bother arguing with Ashley in the wine bar.’
Cara waited. Daniel reached a second time to take the towels out of her arms. He said, ‘Please, Cara.’
She let them go. She said, ‘But I want to put a wash on—’
‘I’ll do it. I’ll do it in two minutes.’
Cara said, suddenly flaring up, ‘The last few weeks have been such a battle!’
Daniel dropped the towels on the floor. He stepped over them and took Cara by the shoulders. He said, looking seriously at her, ‘I know.’
‘I wish it wasn’t. I wish it was like it used to be.’
‘Come and sit down.’
She pointed at the floor. ‘I have to—’
‘In a minute. We’ll do it in a minute.’
‘Dan—’
‘Cara,’ Daniel said, ‘I have a plan. I have a plan about our future.’
She shook her head. ‘Please don’t. It’ll be a great plan and she’ll just reject it, and then I’ll be left with her unacceptable triumph, and your frustration, and as usual I’ll—’
‘It has nothing to do with your mother. My plan has absolutely nothing to do with your mother. Or even the company.’
Cara put her hands to her mouth. ‘Daniel, don’t—’
He let go of her shoulders and put his arms round her.
He said, his cheek against the side of her head, ‘I said think outside the box, didn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ she said doubtfully.
‘Well, I have. I’ve thought of our skills and our experience, and then I’ve thought of where we might employ them. Somewhere where they aren’t thwarted all the time.’
Cara said nothing. She was very still, holding herself stiffly in his arms.
Dan said, ‘I don’t really want to have this conversation in the bathroom.’
She sighed.
He waited a few moments, then he relaxed his hold and slid his hands down her arms to take one of her hands. ‘Come and sit down.’
She allowed herself to be led towards the sofa, and then to be seated on it.
‘Look at me, sweetheart.’
She raised her chin.
Dan put one hand under it and said sadly, ‘You look miserable.’
‘I am.’
‘It’s exhausting you, all this, isn’t it?’
Cara looked away from him, dislodging his hand. She said, ‘I wish I didn’t get so uptight about it all. I wish I could just stand back and get on with my job. But I can’t. I can’t help being wound up by Ma any more than she can help winding me. I’ve always reacted to her like this. I can’t seem to do normal. It’s all huge and fine, or huge and awful. Mostly the latter. I wish she wasn’t such a big part of my life, but she is, whatever she does or doesn’t do. And I’m worn out by it.’
‘I know,’ Daniel said.
‘And then,’ Cara said, swinging her gaze slowly back to take him in, ‘I want to protect you and side with you, because I actually think you’re right about ninety-nine per cent of the business stuff, and I know that’ll be a battle too, and I get in a state about that as well, and I take it out on you even though I know it’s not fair.’
Daniel said gently, ‘I know all that. I get it. Which is why I think we should put a stop to it, once and for all. You can’t go on like this.’
‘We can’t stop it. I mean, how can we?’
Daniel didn’t try to take her hand again. He simply said, looking steadily at her, ‘We leave.’
He waited for her to stare at him in amazement. But she didn’t. She looked down at the sofa instead, and sighed again. She said quietly, ‘Is that where you’ve been?’
‘I’ve been seeing Rick Machin. Talking about setting up with him. Yes.’
‘I thought as much.’
‘Did you?’
She raised her eyes. She said, ‘You hinted at it before.’
‘Well, now I’ve done more than hint. Are you up for it?’
There was a long pause, and then Cara said, unsmiling but determined, ‘I’m up for it. I think.’
The lounge of the hotel in Barlaston was as uninhabited as it had been the night that Susie and Morris had been there. The fire was burning unenthusiastically, and rain was hammering on the two sets of huge windows, obscuring the view. Jasper and Susie were sitting opposite each other on the sofas flanking the fire, with a pot of tea on a tray between them, and a plate of biscuits which Susie had already dismissed as not worth eating.
‘They’ll taste of custard powder. We’ll get a sandwich if you’re hungry.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Jasper said. ‘I had breakfast on the train. Full English. With baked beans.’
Susie poured the tea. She said, ‘Do you not like my house because of how it is, or don’t you like it on principle?’
He crossed his legs and leant back. He said, ‘I’m no good at country houses or cottages. You know that.’
‘You gave me such a fright just turning up like that. I was so surprised to see you that at first I couldn’t think who you were.’
He grinned. ‘I know. I could see.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you said you couldn’t talk to me there. You said whatever it was would have to wait till we were somewhere else and concentrating.’ She looked round at all the empty sofas and chairs. ‘We’re here now. So what is it?’
Jasper let a beat fall and then he said, in as relaxed a tone as he could manage, ‘Us.’
Susie drank some tea, and then, with a not entirely
steady hand, put the cup down in the saucer. She said, clearing her throat and endeavouring to sound as unconcerned as he did, ‘Have you followed me all the way to Staffordshire to tell me that you want a divorce?’
Jasper inspected the nails on his right hand. He said, ‘Not necessarily.’
‘Please don’t play games with me.’
He shifted his gaze from his nails to Susie. ‘I don’t play games, Suz. You know that. I never have. Unless it’s the guessing games that I’m forced to play because I never know where you are or when you’ll be back, or what you’re planning or thinking or wanting or feeling. I haven’t come all the way up here to ask you anything. I’m through with asking. I’m done with guessing. I’ve come to tell you something instead. I’ve come to tell you what I plan to do.’
Susie gave a little shudder. She said, ‘You’ve met someone else.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ he said exasperatedly. ‘I’m not interested in romance. I’m not up for another relationship. Suz, it’s me I’m interested in.’
She put her hands briefly up to her face. ‘Sorry. Sorry, Jas. I just thought—’
‘That I’d have consoled myself in the time-honoured way?’
‘Well, you’re a very attractive man—’
‘And so bloody conventional as to have an affair when I don’t like the way my marriage is going?’ he demanded.
‘No. Of course not. No, sorry. I just meant—’
He leant forward, his elbows on his knees. He said with real energy, ‘Suz, it’s pretty impossible being married to you. I’ve been in a smouldering rage about it, a lot of the time for almost forty years. But I’ve never been remotely interested in anyone else. No one else has ever come close. You may be – you are – absolutely bloody maddening to be married to, but you are the mother of my children, and you have also taken all the colour out of other women for me. No, I do not want a divorce.’
Susie was sniffing. She took a crumpled tissue out of the sleeve of her jacket and blew her nose hard. She said indistinctly, ‘Thank God.’
‘He has nothing to do with it.’
She said, laughing uncertainly, ‘I’m so relieved.’
Balancing Act Page 24
