Out on a Limb

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  This, however, is not true.

  One of the more enduring legacies of my marriage is an aged red petrol-powered lawn mower. Though one might assume such a thing to be more usually something that ends up in the ‘his’ pile, Sebastian and Jake’s dad was going to live abroad, and so many things normally testosterone-related ended up with me by default.

  I wasn’t, it has to be said, the grass-cutting half of the marital partnership at that time, any more than he was the clothes-washing one. I did, however, learn, as a woman on her own must. I even once stripped it down and cleaned the filter.

  But o n this particular morning, its filter is academic, as (as is always the way with these things) it’s almost entirely out of petrol. And the few drops I had left in my red plastic petrol can have clearly, in the absence of applying themselves to lawn mowing, decided to become vapour instead.

  So I have to pop down to the petrol station in order to get some more. Which turns out to be no sort of pop, but a marathon chore. As I wait at the back of one of eight separate queues of four cars each, all of whom seem to be off on some holiday, or away day or theme park or beach, I wistfully wonder quite why it is that I’m not doing something similarly edifying. And then, having wondered, I reach the sort of conclusions that I decide I really mustn’t wonder any more. I must Get Out More, that’s what I must do. Go and re-engage with the world.

  The sad truth, of course, is that I have been in self-imposed purdah. Such it is with mistresses. Thank God I’m not one of those any more.

  I’m just coming back into the house, all petrolled up, when I become aware of some warbling from the depths of my handbag.

  A mobile phone warbling, and once I get it out and check it, I see it’s a text message from my good friends at Vodafone, who are telling me I have two missed calls. I also notice, belatedly, that the answerphone light’s winking in the hall, so I poke the play button on that while I scroll through to see.

  ‘Gabriel Ash,’ the deep voice says without any preamble. ‘I’ll try your mobile instead. Bye-ee.’

  I like the ‘bye-ee’. It’s so sunny day jolly. I bring the call register screen up. He has.

  When I connect I think I’ve dialled the wrong number at first, because it’s not Gabriel Ash who answers. But then I realise I can’t have, because I didn’t dial the number, but pressed the return call button. So it has to be right.

  ‘Hiyah!’ says Lucy Whittall’s pretty, sing-song voice. ‘How are you ?’

  She talks as if I’m her long-lost sister in Halkidiki, but I find I don’t mind in the least. ‘Oh!’ I say. ‘Hi. Um, fine thanks. You?’

  ‘Fabulous! Fab ulous!’

  ‘Good. Er…I think Gabriel was trying to get hold of me?’

  ‘Yep,’ she says. ‘Indeed he was. He’s driving at the moment, but it was about some stuff you have for him? He wanted to stop by and pick it up?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s right. I’m sorry – I was out. When did he want to call in?’

  ‘Hang on. When d’you want to do it, Gabe?’ I only half hear his reply. ‘You still there?’ she says.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘We were wondering if we could stop by sometime today if that’s okay with you?’

  ‘Sure. What sort of time?’

  ‘Hang on.’ A second exchange follows. ‘Are you home now?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then, let me see. An hour or so? An hour or so, you think, Gabe? An hour or so suit you okay?’

  Only the silliest and most insecure of persons could possibly do what I decide to do next. But in my defence I am intermittently both of those things, particularly at this juncture in my life, and it’s not every day you have local – nay, national – celebrities turning up at your house at short notice, and one must be prepared. Yes, I think, as I motor around the lawn with teeth rattling velocity. I must achieve two things above any other. I must cut the grass and then I must put on my wafty skirt and flip flops and some mascara and lip gloss. I must, above all, above everything in fact, not look like a fright when I answer the door.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh!!!’ exclaims Lucy Whittall, thrusting her face alarmingly at my bosom an hour and a half later. ‘Aren’t you just the sweetest, sweetest, sweetest little dog?’

  Spike, who’s in my arms, speaks several languages, of course, but none quite so fluently as Adoring Female Person With Long Fingernails. His tail’s going so fast it could power a faerie wind farm. I hope he doesn’t crack up and wee all down my front.

  ‘He’s called Spike,’ I tell her.

  ‘Spike!’ she cries. ‘Oh, you little cutie, you! You absolute cutie ! Oh, Gabe, we just must so get a dog!’ She fans at her face with her teeny tiny clutch bag. ‘God, but isn’t it just boiling today?’

  Lucy Whittall, who belies this incontrovertible fact by looking as though she is cocooned inside her own invisible air-conditioning system, is wearing a wispy gauzy scrap of something in peach. The sort of dress that you could twizzle up and stuff into a very small matchbox, but which probably cost many hundreds of pounds.

  And worth every last penny of anyone’s money. Except perhaps mine, because I’m not Lucy Whittall. And it just wouldn’t look like that on me. She, of course, looks every bit as fabulous as she feels. And I feel even stupider for having changed for the occasion. Who did I think I was kidding, getting all tarted up for a five minute encounter on a doorstep?

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I agree. As does Spike, who’s dripping spittle down me now. ‘I’ll, er, just go and fetch the bag for you. Won’t be a tick.’

  ‘Actually,’ she confides, ‘I know it’s very cheeky, but d’you mind if I skip in and use your loo? We’ve just driven back all the way from Monmouth, and I’m absolutely busting for a wee.’

  ‘Oh, of course!’ I pull the door wider. ‘Come in, then. Come in. I point. ‘That door there. Help yourself.’

  I hope she’s not going to have to help herself to fifteen sheets of loo paper to mop wee from the toilet seat as well. With the amount of young males coming and, well, going in my house, I could really do with having one of those hourly check procedures that they have in motorway service stations by operatives called Janet. When did I last check it? Oh, fret fret fret fret.

  ‘All go here, then,’ observes Gabriel Ash, glancing heavenward as he steps over the threshold to wait, while the boys twang and bang enthusiastically upstairs.

  ‘Oh, that’s my son and his friends. Practising.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Practising. I see.’

  I don’t know quite what they were doing in Monmouth, exactly, but he has the slightly reticent air of a man for whom one’s fiancé’s toilet stops are just one more inconvenience in a day that has already been overburdened by them. I wonder where they’ve been. I wonder when he manages to fit work in. When does she, come to that? Or perhaps, like me, they are having a day off as well. A day off à deux. Or perhaps he still has work to get to. Who knows? I’m just wondering whether to offer him a drink or something, when an unfamiliar mobile ring tone starts up and he delves into a jeans pocket, stepping back onto the doorstep and making a gesture which I presume means he’ll stay out there till he’s done.

  Which is exactly what he does. Which means I either have to shut the front door in his face, or leave it open and risk Spike making a bid for the heady freedom of the street. I take Spike back out into the garden and shut him safely out there, and am just returning to the hall when Lucy Whittall emerges from the downstairs cloakroom, blowing her nose delicately on some loo roll. Which I hope isn’t indicative of anything too noisome and swampy, but rather fear probably is.

  ‘That’s better!’ she exclaims. ‘God, that was close. I really thought I was going to wet my pants! Hey, I couldn’t trouble you for a glass of water as well, could I?’

  Gabriel joins us in the kitchen just as I’m pouring Lucy Whittall a glass of orange squash, and heaping rebukes on myself for not having anything more stylish on offer. Had the
y only come tomorrow, I’d have had Ribena as well. Oh, it’s life in the fast lane at my place.

  I nod towards the table, where the carrier bag full of his father’s things sits. ‘That’s it, there,’ I tell him, and he approaches it. I pour him a squash too.

  ‘Who was on the phone, a ngel?’ Lucy Whittall asks him.

  He frowns then. ‘Maria.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And manco morto, in essence.’

  Lucy Whittall pulls a face. ‘Come again, ange?’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ he says, frowning. ‘I’m telling you, she’s not going to budge on this one, Luce.’

  She turns to me. ‘Tsk,’ she goes. ‘All this nonsense over a few scraps of fur. I mean, I ask you, Abbie. Is it really such a heinous crime? We’re only talking a bit of trim on the facings and hoods.’

  As I don’t have the first clue what it is she’s asking me, let alone what he was telling her, I am at a loss to know how to respond.

  ‘Her bridesmaid’s dress,’ Gabriel Ash explains as I pass him a glass. ‘For the wedding. Lucy has her heart set on an ivory fur trimming. Maria – my daughter – is not happy about it –’

  ‘Which is ridiculous,’ Lucy interjects swiftly, though quite jovially. ‘When you consider Italy must be one of the leather goods capitals of the world! I mean, what’s the difference? It’s all skin, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Except fur is farmed,’ says Gabriel, evenly. And involves lots of dead bodies as well. I get the impression they’ve had this discussion several times before.

  ‘Oh, and like cattle aren’t ? Like we don’t stuff down zillions of burgers each year?’ She wafts a hand towards him. ‘Anyway, she’ll come round. You know what teenagers are like. It’s all principles this and principles that, but once she sees it –’ She turns to me again. ‘Abbie, they’re to die for. To die for! – she’ll change her mind quick as you like.’

  W hich unfortunate choice of words – conjuring, as it does, visions of butchered bunnies and blood-spattered wedding trains – is not lost on any of us. Least of all, Lucy, who throws back her head and laughs the sort of hearty laugh that you might normally associate with, well…a jolly mink farmer, I suppose.

  It’s at this point that One Black Lung all shuffle into the kitchen. Jake looks me up and down a bit, obviously bewildered. ‘Blimey,’ he says, removing his baseball cap to scratch his head. ‘You going off to a party or something, Mum?’

  As the kitchen is now playing host to enough sweat-soaked armpits to make breathing an extreme sport, I suggest we drink our squash in the garden. I had not planned on a garden party, obviously, but Lucy Whittall is showing absolutely no impetus as far as going anywhere is concerned, and every intention of sitting on my patio and entertaining her new quartet of fans.

  Which is actually quite nice, I decide, once I’m over my sartorial blushes. I can’t remember the time I last had anyone out here. That is, if you don’t include Charlie. And my mother doing her downward facing dog on the lawn and terrifying Mr Davidson next door.

  Though initially looking reluctant, Gabriel Ash, who has perched himself on one of my B and Q special offer of last year garden set chairs, starts to make a cursory inspection of the contents of the carrier bag, while Lucy fires questions at the boys about their band.

  ‘Wow,’ she says, at length. ‘Can you play something for me? I so love Metallica. I went to see them when I was your age, you know.’

  This intelligence fills them with almost as much joy and awe as if Lars Ulrich himself had fetched up in the garden and asked them if they’d like to come round and try out his drums. Questions are fired at her. Mouths hang open in quiet reverence. Suddenly her all-right-for-an-oldish-bird status has morphed into the sort of cool to which, in teen land at least, very few can aspire. She’s seen them. She’s been there. She was there. Which is all. Before you can say hold my breath as I wish for death, they’ve scooted her off for a quick blast upstairs.

  Uncertain what to do while the impromptu concert takes place, and mindful that Gabriel Ash is now delving deep into his carrier bag, I collect up their tumblers and head back inside.

  But clearly not delving that deep, for he follows me in soon after.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ he says, placing the carrier back on the table, and heading purposefully towards the sink with his own glass.

  ‘Oh, no. Give me that,’ I tell him. ‘You are not washing up in my kitchen. No way.’

  He doesn’t seem to find this funny, but he does hand it over.

  ‘You get used to this, do you?’ he comments, indicating towards the ceiling with an eyebrow, and pushing his now redundant hands into his jeans pockets.

  I nod. ‘I barely hear it. Well, I do hear it, obviously. But not in the sense that it bothers me to hear it. I enjoy it.’

  ‘They certainly sound accomplished.’

  ‘I have great hopes.’

  He stops and listens. ‘You’re absolutely right to. They’re good. And speaking of great hopes, did your mother tell you about the offer on the house?’

  ‘No, she most certainly didn’t,’ I answer. ‘When was that?’

  ‘Only this week. So perhaps she doesn’t know yet. I only found out this morning myself. I think Corinne was going to speak to your brother-in-law about it. Perhaps she hasn’t called him yet.’

  Yeah, I think. Whatever. It’s all academic anyway. Till such time as mother can be cranked out of her persistent meditative state and back into flat-hunting gear.

  He takes his hands out of his pockets and folds his arms across his chest. ‘Anyway, assuming everything goes through okay, I think we’ve settled on twelve thousand for the conservatory.’

  He seems self-conscious standing in my kitchen, which is odd. Perhaps he should whip his leg out and I could pummel it for a bit. Perhaps then he’d look a little less stiff. ‘Well,’ I say, because I don’t doubt he’s had a hand in it. ‘That’s very generous of you. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  W hich conversational avenue putters to a halt, on account of his unexpected lack of seeming to have anything further he can think of to say. Most curious. Perhaps I should have let him fill the sink up after all. Perhaps he feels more comfortable with his hands in some suds.

  ‘Well,’ I say brightly, because I’m a well brought-up girl and know my manners. ‘You were certainly right about the weather.’

  He nods. ‘We do our best,’ he says. ‘That’s what they pay us for, after all. Though we certainly don’t always get it right.’

  ‘Mainly you do,’ I say, because he looks like he’s brooding heavily on this failing. ‘I mean, I know everyone likes to moan on about weather forecasters getting it wrong all the time and everything. But you actually don’t much these days, not when you sit and analyse it, do you?’

  ‘Even so, it’s still an inexact science. You can predict all you like, but weather systems are essentially pretty unpredictable things. No, you’re right. We do pretty well. Better than we’re given credit for, that’s for sure. But blaming weather forecasters is a national sport. Be a shame to spoil the fun, wouldn’t it?’ He looks like he’s having absolutely no fun whatsoever at this moment, and I wish I knew why. ‘Anyway, it would get pretty boring if you knew exactly what the weather was going to do every single day, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose. But it must be a very satisfying sort of a job, though,’ I say. ‘You know, being in a position to predict the future.’

  He seems to want to ponder that concept. I wait. ‘Except you’re not actually doing that,’ he says eventually. ‘Not really. What we mostly do is just collect and analyse all the data we get from all the observation points and the satellites. Plus we do have a very, very big computer. Can make billions of calculations per second. It’s really all about maths and not at all about checking if the cows are sitting down.’

  ‘But you must need to be pretty clever, though. To take all that information and work
out what it means for the future.’

  I open the dishwasher door and start putting the glasses in, while h e looks out of the kitchen window. ‘Oh, I’m definitely not that,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘Much as I wish I was, I’m no better at predicting the future than anyone else is, believe me.’ I notice that ‘we’ has changed to ‘I’, and that his tone of voice has altered as he says this. And I realise, glancing up from the dishwasher, that he’s no longer looking out of the kitchen window either. He’s turned around and is looking at me now. And in a way that I can only describe as pretty damned earnest. So much so that I almost feel I’m going to have to look away. How odd. ‘Actually,’ he says, and he lowers his voice now. ‘In some departments, let me tell you, Abbie, I am woefully inept.’

  He’s still looking at me oddly, and I think he’s about to say something else. But he doesn’t. Instead he splays his fingers and pushes both his hands ever so slowly through his thicketty gold hair, and then he tips his head back and sighs.

  Sighs heavily. And watching him, suddenly, I twig. Suddenly I realise what this is all about.

  D’oh. I’m so dense. ‘Your father,’ I say, nodding towards the carrier bag on the kitchen table. Of course. Why didn’t I think ? No wonder he’s so agitated. This is evidence that changes everything, isn’t it? It’s one thing to harbour hatred for a father you think abandoned you, quite another to square it with the demands of your conscience when faced with the fact that you got it all wrong. That he actually loved you very much. And that perhaps, after all, you should try to forgive him. Or, rather, should have. And now can’t. The poor man. I hold his gaze, and he flops his hands down to his sides again then considers me silently for several moments. Then, just as I think he’s about to speak, he shakes his head.

  It’s actually a sort of head shake-come-sigh combination. God, there was me thinking he’d be so pleased with what I found, but of course it’s just so much more complicated than that. It has shocked him. It doesn’t fit with how he feels about his father. Has, in fact, blown all that away. ‘I know,’ I say, closing the dishwasher door and straightening. He’s looking at the bag now himself. ‘But there’s no point in beating yourself up about it, is there?’ I tell him briskly. ‘No point in regrets. No one could have predicted that he’d die so suddenly, could they?’ He’s looking at me again now, but I’m not sure he’s listening. He seems lost in thought. Somewhere else altogether. ‘But I do understand how seeing all this must make you feel,’ I go on anyway. ‘I do know what you mean.’