The Frances Garrood Collection

by Frances Garrood

  “Well, yes. But you can’t see much of her in this picture. I meant Angela.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You don’t have to pretend, Jay. She is pretty. And it must be nice to — well, to have a pretty wife.”

  Jay took the photo from her and replaced it in his wallet.

  “Pretty doesn’t seem important somehow,” he said. “But yes, Angela’s pretty. And she’s nice. And I think she will be a good mother. Is that enough for you?”

  Alice swallowed hard (I won’t cry. I won’t). “I suppose the hardest thing is — that you have a photo of them both in your wallet. That you carry her — them — around with you. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  “Well, that’s what you do, isn’t it?” Jay said wearily. “People ask to see a photo, and that’s what they expect. Especially people who know us both.”

  A waitress came round with a none-too-clean cloth and wiped their table.

  “We haven’t finished yet,” Jay said. “And we’ll have two more coffees, please.”

  The waitress shrugged, and went off to fetch the coffee, leaving the table wet and smeary.

  “I don’t think I’ll have any more coffee,” Alice said, getting up from her seat. “I ought to get going.”

  “Pressing engagement?” Jay managed a smile.

  “No pressing engagement. Just that we — this — isn’t going too well, is it? And perhaps we’d better leave things for a few days. To give us both time to think.”

  “No.” Jay caught her arm. “Don’t go. We need to talk. We can’t leave things — well, like this.”

  “I thought you were in a hurry.”

  “This is more important.” Jay picked up his jacket. “Let’s talk in my car.”

  In the car, Jay took Alice’s face between his hands and forced her to look at him.

  “Alice, have you any idea — any idea at all — how hard all this is for me? I know it’s awful for you. We’ve discussed that, and I’ve done my best to understand how you must feel. But it’s just as difficult for me.”

  “How can it be?” Alice tried to look away again.

  “It just is. In a different way, but it is. Of course the baby’s wonderful, and I know I’m going to be besotted with her, but it’s you I want to be with, to spend my life with, to grow old with. You’re the one. You’ll always be the one.”

  “You’ve never said it like that before.”

  “No, because there wasn’t any point, was there? It would only have made things harder for you. But I sometimes wonder whether you realise how much I love you. How much I need you. How do I get it into your stubborn little head how much you mean to me? What do I have to do?”

  “Oh, Jay! I don’t deserve you.” Alice gulped back the tears that were threatening. “I’ve been such a cow recently, and you’ve taken it all on the chin.”

  Jay took her in his arms. “Darling, let’s not play the blame game,” he said. “And let’s not waste any more time over recriminations or guilt or any of that stuff.”

  “Because we haven’t much? Time, that is.” Alice’s voice was muffled against his chest.

  “I don’t know.” Jay kissed the top of her head. “I honestly don’t know. In a way, it’s up to you. I think I can carry on like this, especially if the alternative is losing you altogether. But is it fair on you?”

  Sitting back in her seat, Alice gazed out of the car window. The lorry drivers were leaving now, climbing into their cabs, shouting their farewells. A dog (a stray?) sniffed about among the debris by the rubbish bins. The sky darkened with the threat of rain. She sighed.

  “I just don’t see how it can work,” she said. “It’s not fair on you, either. You, Angela, or the baby. You have a family now. You’ll want to do the right thing by them. I’m the — the outsider. I’m the one who has to go.”

  “Don’t make any decision yet, Alice. Please. Give me — us — a chance.” He took her hand in both of his and held it against his cheek. “Can we see how things go? This — situation is unknown territory. It just may be easier than we think.”

  “We’ll see how things go, then.”

  But driving home, Alice knew — as she had known for weeks — that there was no decision to make. She and Jay had no future together, and it wasn’t so much a matter of what would happen as when. In a way, a short sharp ending would be so much easier than all this pretending and procrastination, but still she couldn’t bring herself to make that final break.

  That evening, Alice reached an all-time low. Quite apart from her problems with Jay, Finn was away for the night with a friend, and the house echoed with emptiness. She missed the clatter of his feet up and down the stairs, the ringing telephone, the thump-thump-thump of his music vibrating through the house. This is how it’s going to be, she thought. Gap year or no gap year, one day I shall be on my own, and this is how it will feel.

  When the telephone did ring, she jumped.

  “Hi,” said a cheery voice.

  “Hi, Trot.”

  “Thought you could do with a bit of cheering up.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You’ve seemed pretty down recently, and the gap year thing — well, the timing wasn’t too great. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “So, shall I come round? I’ve got some cheap plonk.”

  “Do you ever have any other kind?”

  Trot laughed. “You know me so well.”

  He came round with his plonk, and Alice made beans on toast for them both.

  “So, tell me,” said Trot when they’d finished eating and Alice was fetching another (much nicer) bottle of wine, “what’s up?”

  “It’s the baby,” Alice told him. “Jay’s wife’s had her baby, and things aren’t — well, they’re becoming very complicated.”

  “I’ll bet.” Trot poured more wine.

  “To put it in a nutshell, the end is in sight, although I don’t think either of us is ready to accept it yet. Jay says it’s up to me, and I suppose it is, but it’s so hard.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “I love him so much — I need him so much. How am I going to manage without him? What am I going to do?” Alice blew her nose and took several deep breaths. “But I’m not going to cry.”

  “Cry away if it helps,” Trot said.

  “No. No more crying, Not yet, anyway.”

  “How can I help?” Trot asked after a moment.

  “You can’t. Not really. No one can.”

  “I can listen.” Trot made himself comfortable on the sofa. “I’ve been told I’m quite a good listener.”

  So Alice, fuelled by wine and sympathy, poured out all her unhappiness of the past few months, while Trot, who really did seem to be listening most attentively, continued to refill their glasses and make all the right noises.

  “So there you have it,” Alice said when she’d finished. “One big problem; one simple solution. I just can’t bring myself to make the break.”

  “No need to just yet,” Trot said. “In the meantime, why don’t you come to bed with me?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t look so shocked. You need comforting, and sex is the best comforter I know. Plus, we have done it before.”

  “But I don’t remember anything about that!”

  “Neither do I. Does it matter?”

  “But — what about Jay?”

  “This has nothing to do with Jay. Besides, he sleeps with his wife, doesn’t he? That baby must have come from somewhere.”

  “But we were drunk last time!”

  “Well, we’re not exactly sober now, are we?”

  “That’s true.” Alice looked at Trot, who was freshly shaven and wearing clean jeans and sweatshirt, and felt a sudden flicker of suspicion. “Trot, did you plan this?”

  “Not exactly plan, no. But I thought it might be rather nice. For both of us. And for old times’ sake. Why not?”

  “I suppose I ought to be angry.”

  “Why?
You can always say no.” Trot finished off the last of the wine. “So, what do you think?”

  Alice looked at Trot. He was certainly not unattractive. He had nice eyes and a very endearing smile, and everything about him was comfortingly familiar. And while she wasn’t particularly bothered about the sex, just at that moment, she could imagine nothing nicer than a strong pair of male arms around her.

  “No strings?” she asked after a moment.

  “Absolutely no strings,” Trot said, pulling her to her feet.

  Alice stumbled against him and giggled. “Can you have a one-night-stand if you can’t even stand up?”

  “Course you can.” Trot took her in his arms and kissed her. “That’s better. Now all we have to do is pick up from where we were — how many years ago, was it?”

  Gabs

  Gabs hated November. It seemed to her the bleakest, most hopeless of months, with all the nice weather behind you and nothing to look forward to except Christmas. She and Steph usually spent a dutiful Christmas with their father, but since Steph’s dramatic fall from grace, this year they might get away without it. They might even have a nice Christmas together, just the two of them — provided of course that in the meantime Steph had managed to climb down from her high horse and forgive Gabs.

  Steph seemed to have taken Gabs’ treatment of Father Augustine personally, and while her anger had abated, she had taken to treating Gabs with a cool contempt, which was, if anything, worse.

  “What about Christian love?” Gabs demanded after a particularly unpleasant exchange.

  “What about righteous indignation?” countered Steph.

  “That’s all very well, but you’re not the injured party. And he didn’t bear any grudges.”

  “Father Augustine,” said Steph, “is a particularly good man.”

  “I’m not disputing that. I know he is. But isn’t it time you moved on? It’s done. It’s in the past. There’s nothing I can do to change things. If I crawled all the way to Rome on my hands and knees, I couldn’t put the clock back.”

  “I know.” Steph sighed. “I’m just — disappointed, I suppose.”

  “What, disappointed in me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, come on, Steph! You know me. You should have got over being disappointed in me years ago.”

  “But this was different.”

  “I know. But can we please put it behind us? I’ve paid a bigger price than you’ll ever know for what I did, believe me. I’ve been to hell and back recently. I never thought I had a breakable heart, but I have. And it’s unbearably painful. I need you, Steph. I really need you. Not to forgive me or condone what I’ve done. Just to be — well, my sister, I suppose. To be there.’ She paused. “I think you need me, too.”

  “Well, you have been very supportive,” Steph admitted. “I don’t know how I’d have managed without you.”

  “Well, then?”

  “But there’s Clive.”

  “Ah. Clive.”

  Clive had been another bone of contention, for while Gabs continued to disapprove of him, he and Steph seemed to be getting on rather well, and while they certainly weren’t sleeping together (perish the thought), they appeared to be, if not an item, then something very like it.

  “Okay. How about this? You try to forgive me for Father Augustine, and I’ll do my best to like Clive. How would that be?”

  “It would be a start.”

  After that, things began to improve. Gabs made a real effort with Clive (although for the life of her, she couldn’t see what Steph saw in him), and the subject of Father Augustine was finally dropped.

  But Gabs continued to think about him, to dream about him, to long for him. Oddly, her longing was no longer physical; it was more a craving to be part of his life, to meet him, speak to him, even just look at him. Gabs’ view of men was on the whole a jaundiced one, for she often saw them at their most depraved. The men she met in the course of her work could be self-serving, disloyal, and greedy. Some were merely pathetic, but they rarely aroused her sympathy. But in Father Augustine she had seen, perhaps for the first time in her life, real integrity, and it had had an enormous effect on her. Here was a man who seemed able to put his own needs entirely to one side; to sacrifice what might have been for what he felt called to do, with no guarantees or even necessarily any expectation of happiness. His was a life of service and dedication, and this was something Gabs had never come across before.

  Then there was the shame. Hitherto, Gabs had been quite comfortable in her own skin. She knew she had her failings — didn’t everyone? — but she also knew that she was intelligent and caring. She never deliberately harmed anyone, and she was a good and loyal friend. She even managed to justify her activities with her clients by reasoning that if it wasn’t her, it would be someone else, and she was providing a useful service. She knew for a fact that what she did helped to keep some marriages going, for if it were not for her, many of her clients would almost certainly have left their wives. She injected into their lives the spice their marriages lacked, leaving the wives (poor innocent cows) to have the babies, wash the socks, and put the meals on the table.

  But her encounter with Father Augustine had changed the way she saw herself. What she had done had been little short of wicked, and his integrity had only served to show up her lack of it. For the first time in her life, Gabs didn’t like herself. Where before she had seen resourcefulness, now she saw only opportunism; what she had liked to think of as a spirit of adventure she now realised was selfish risk-taking. As for her entrepreneurial skills, they were no more than greed. Skill didn’t come into it.

  But if Gabs was beginning to see herself in a different light, she wasn’t going to change overnight. This was partly due to apathy — she was just too miserable to care — and partly because it was hard to know where to start. When she confided this to her sister, Steph was surprisingly helpful.

  “Why not start with little things?” she suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, how about that difficult old woman you go on about? You could start by making an effort with her.”

  “I do make an effort!”

  “Do you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Well, make a bigger effort.”

  So the next time Gabs visited Miss Kershaw, she agreed to cut her toenails. This may not sound like a major breakthrough, but for Gabs it was, partly because she had a thing about feet and partly because she had an even greater thing about Miss Kershaw.

  “Careful! Careful!” screeched her patient as Gabs hacked away at the horny misshapen extremities, which, she thought, would have been better served by a farrier.

  “These — are — tough,” said Gabs between gritted teeth.

  “That’s because they’ve been left too long,” said Miss Kershaw.

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “Not mine. I can’t be expected to reach all the way down there.”

  “Well, it’s not mine either,” said Gabs, coming up for air.

  “Yes, it is. I asked you last time.”

  “What about the chiropodist?”

  Miss Kershaw sniffed. “I don’t get on with her.”

  “Is there anyone you do get on with?”

  “What?” Fortunately Miss Kershaw was rather deaf.

  “Nothing,” muttered Gabs, returning to her task. “There. All done.” She put down her scissors and got up from the floor.

  “You’ve missed a bit.”

  “No, I have not.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “How about — how about I paint them for you?” Gabs asked. “I’ve got some nice polish in my bag.”

  “But it’s November!”

  “So?”

  “So who’s going to see them?”

  “You are,” said Gabs. “And I am. And anyone else who comes to see to you.”

  Hearing no further objections from her client, Gabs set to and did a really nice job, transforming the
unpleasant yellow talons that were Miss Kershaw’s toenails with a nice shade of cherry red.

  “Isn’t that better?” she said when she had finished.

  “Hmm.” Miss Kershaw removed her reading glasses and scrutinised her new red toes.

  “Don’t like it,” she said. “Horrible colour. Makes me look like a tart.”

  Gabs grinned. “Miss Kershaw, take it from me: you will never, ever look like a tart.”

  “I still don’t like them. Clean it off again.”

  “No time, I’m afraid,” Gabs said, biting her tongue. “You’ll just have to live with them.”

  “Well! How dare you speak —”

  But Gabs was already out of the door.

  So much for good deeds, she thought sourly as she got into her car and started the engine. Perhaps she wasn’t quite ready for that new start after all. The little acts of kindness as recommended by Steph were of little value if they benefited neither the recipient nor herself.

  Later that afternoon, she had an appointment with Gerald, and she had finally decided to tell him she was calling it a day. Since his unsuccessful proposal, Gerald had been difficult and demanding, as though determined to ensure that Gabs paid for her folly in refusing him, and Gabs had had enough.

  “I don’t understand why you won’t marry me,” he kept saying. “I’m rich, we get on — what’s the problem?”

  And try as she might, Gabs couldn’t convince him that she was never going to change her mind.

  “I don’t want to get married,” she told him. “Not to you; not to anyone.”

  “All girls want to get married,” Gerald told her.

  “Not this one. Besides, there’s — there’s someone else.”

  “You never told me that!”

  “Well, it was none of your business, was it?”

  “Are you going to marry him?” Gerald demanded.

  “I’ve told you. I’m not going to marry anyone.”

  “So, you’re still free!”

  “Gerald, I am not free, as you put it, and I don’t want to marry you. For the last time, I don’t want to talk about this anymore!”

  So Gerald had taken to a new and rather alarming police dog act, in which he chased Gabs round the room and tried to bite her ankles. It was amazing how quickly this rather plump little man could scurry along on his hands and knees, and he had surprisingly sharp-looking teeth.