Afterwards (4 page)

If Alice picked up now, he’d be offended. She’d done it before and he’d been confused at first and then very curt. He finished his message with a pause and then a thank you.

– I’ll call him after we’ve finished.

– Is this your weekend to see him?

Martha was holding her plate out. Alice shook her head and carried on serving. It had bothered her too, that he’d got the weeks confused, but she didn’t want to think about that now. Two beers on an empty stomach, plus nerves: Alice thought the evening might be getting ahead of her before it had even begun. Joseph got another bottle out of the fridge and held it up like a question.

– I’ll wait a bit, thanks.

– I’ll have it.

Keith reached for the beer, and turned to Alice while he was opening it.

– You grew up with your grandparents, didn’t you?

– Partly. We lived with them until I finished primary school.

– Oh yeah, okay. I think Martha might have told me once.

Alice had talked about this with Keith before, she could remember it quite clearly, and thought Keith probably could as well. He was just moving the conversation on, or maybe he thought Joseph would be interested: she looked across the table and saw he was waiting for her to go on.

– Mum got pregnant when she was at university. A firstterm fling with someone in the year above, medical student. When she found out I was on the way, she went home to live with her parents.

When Alice started nursery, her mother went back to university and trained to be a teacher. She found them
a flat on their own once she started earning enough. It only had one bedroom, but the kitchen was big, the best room in the place, so they put the sofa in there and her mum slept in what would otherwise have been the living room. It was only five minutes on her bike to her grandparents’ house.

– I still went there most days after school, until I was well into my teens.

Did her homework at the kitchen table while Gran supplied her with juice and toast. They used to play piano as well: her grandmother disapproved of how little music Alice had in her timetable. So they played duets, perched on the stool together, one pedal each, once Alice could reach, the other foot planted on the ground. Her mum would pick her up when she finished work, put her marking in the basket on Alice’s bike, and they would take turns wheeling it home along the evening streets, talking about what to cook for tea, what to watch on telly.

Martha said she envied Alice, never got to know her grandparents properly, not her grandfathers anyway, and Joseph agreed:

– My Nana lived round the corner when I was little, but both my Grandads died before I came along.

He’d been very quiet until now, and Alice was glad he felt like joining in the conversation. She smiled at him:

– David’s a bit like my Dad, really. Or the closest I’ve got.

Joseph had asked about her father once, when she was talking about her mum and Alan:
what about your Dad dad then?
Alice had been half expecting the question, and she’d started to tell him: that she never knew her father while she was growing up, just his name and what he’d been studying and where his parents lived. Her mum had always kept the address in case Alice ever wanted to look him up. She’d got that far talking to Joseph about it, but then she felt herself stop. Hadn’t known him long enough yet, maybe. She’d had friends for years and never told them: Martha was the only person outside her family who knew about the letters she’d sent him. Her dad had been the one who stopped writing, and that just wasn’t something she liked people knowing. Too recent, still too confusing. So Alice had stopped talking, shrugged and smiled at Joseph for hesitating, but she couldn’t continue, and she’d liked the fact that Joseph accepted it: hadn’t asked more questions, or changed the subject for her, just let her be quiet about it. He nodded at her now over the plates and bottles, and Martha picked slices of cucumber out of the salad bowl.

– What’s he like then, your Grandad? We met your Gran a few times, but I’ve only ever spoken to him on the phone.

Alice smiled. She wanted to say that she loved her grandfather, but she was too aware of Joseph, sitting across the table from her. She didn’t think she’d be like this if he weren’t there.

– You heard him on the phone. He can be funny like that sometimes. A bit formal. Mum says he’s not very good at being sociable. Gran always took care of that
side of things. They were married forty-odd years, so I expect he’s forgotten how.

Joseph was smiling at her now, probably at the colour in her cheeks. Alice thought of how her mum planned to stay the whole week after the funeral, but Grandad had started getting impatient with her after only three days.

– I’m making him sound awful, aren’t I? Best not to crowd him, that’s all. He was crowded by the three of us for years. Me, Mum and Gran. ‘House full of blessed women!’

Alice laughed. A refrain from her childhood. Bellowed from the corridor in the weekday morning bathroom rush.

– I never knew if he was angry or happy when he said that. Both, I imagine. But I should go and call him anyway. Is there a bottle open?

Joseph and Martha were stacking the dishwasher when Alice came back from the phone with her empty glass. Keith was at the table, shuffling a pack of cards.

– Joseph’s going to teach us Brag.

The early awkwardness had gone, and Alice was happy to have them all together, filling the kitchen with their wandering about, nicely drunk. Her grandfather had been fine on the phone: she’d heard him smiling when he said he’d looked at the calendar already, realised his mistake.

– I can come this week anyway, I don’t mind at all.

– No, no. I’ve got plenty to be getting on with in the garden.

Joseph took them through a couple of hands, explaining the game as they went, patient and amused at Martha’s mock ill-humour about rules she didn’t understand. Keith ran out and bought more wine from the offlicence before it closed, and they all stayed up too late, playing cards until there was nothing left to drink and Keith got his pipe out. Alice groaned and pushed back her chair.

– Not for me.

– Ten more minutes. One more hand.

Martha passed the cards to Alice to deal and Keith told her it was unfair on them for her to leave while she was winning. Joseph laughed:

– She can be sly like that.

– We’ll leave the pack where it is, then. Pick up in the morning.

– It is morning.

When they got into bed, Joseph said he could hear the first train running. Alice listened for a while, lazy and drunk, with the warmth of his legs stretched out against hers. Drifting, her limbs wine-heavy, she closed her eyes and remembered her grandfather, quiet and removed, out in the garden.
Did we have a reason for you coming?

Alice called her mum the next day, partly to tell her about her grandfather’s mistake, partly just because she missed her. Her mother lived three hours away by train. She’d come to London more often while Gran was ill, and in the weeks after, so seeing less of her again was another thing for Alice to adjust to. They’d had fierce rows while she was in her teens, and when Alice went to her gran for comfort, she used to say they were too close in age, and lived too close together. But their tempers were short-lived, and they stayed in that one-bedroom flat until Alice went to college. Her mum moved in with Alan a few months later, and a year or two after that he got a job back at his old school in York, so they moved out of London. Alan was headmaster there now, and Alice’s mum ran the biology department in another school, a little nearer their home. She used to joke about giving the sex education classes: ex-teenage single mother, not the best role model. Said she felt a fraud, warning them of the perils, because she’d never regretted having a daughter, even though Alice had come along a bit early.

Alice’s mum wasn’t worried about Grandad: told Alice she’d been waiting for something like this, ever since Gran died.

– He won’t show it like we would, but it’s bound to come out.

– I half feel like going out to see him today.

– I’d leave him be, love. I expect he does want to get some gardening done, he wouldn’t have said it to be polite.

– No, I suppose not.

Alice liked the way her mum was about Grandad: clear, pragmatic. She didn’t seem to get upset by his bluntness the way Alice did, so it was reassuring to talk to her. Alice often called her, in the evenings after she’d visited her grandfather, to get a bit of perspective down the phone. And she knew her mum liked to have a second opinion on how he was getting on.

– How’s he been the last couple of times? Apart from forgetful.

– Fine. A bit weary. But he’s keeping up with everything. The house, shopping.

– He can cope with more than you think.

They spent the rest of the call planning a week together for later in the year: Alice and her mum wanted to go up to the Dales, with Alan for a couple of days too, if his work allowed. His grandparents had farmed up on Swaledale and their house was still there, three miles from the nearest village. Alan and his brothers shared the upkeep, used it as a base for walking and holidays with their families. They’d got it hooked up to the grid for power a few years ago, but the water was still off the hill, so the supply was unreliable and had to be boiled for drinking, and the only good source of heat was from the kitchen stove. Alice remembered sleeping next to it her first time in the house: Easter was early that year and came with snow. The bedrooms were perishing, so they’d moved the mattresses downstairs. She was sixteen
then and the three of them had spent the school holidays up at the farm. Her mum had been seeing Alan for a while and Alice knew the holiday was meant for her to get to know him properly. She hadn’t done it consciously, but spent most of the fortnight avoiding him. They got on fine in London, and she couldn’t explain it, but suddenly couldn’t bear to be at the table with him eating, hated seeing his piss in the toilet in the mornings. Flushed it away before sitting down, although she knew she wasn’t meant to because the water was low. She was amazed that Alan never lost his temper, despite her behaviour. Even after she had a bath without asking and the tank ran dry, and he had to get gallon cans from the outhouse and drive miles to the nearest standpipe.

Alan was always generous with the house: let Alice use it, would never take money for bills or maintenance. He’d long ago shown her all the best walks, how to keep the stove lit if you were out all day, and where the water tank was on the hillside, so she could keep an eye on the level. Alice usually went there with her mum now, but she’d taken friends up before, and boyfriends. The old farm was an acquired taste: the country was bare, the slopes around grey with scree, and the house was a steep walk from the only road out. Not always inviting, especially in winter, when you had to leave a warm car and scramble up the track with rucksacks and supplies. Alice tried to remind herself how awkward she’d been that first Easter visit, but it was hard not to be disappointed if friends ignored the sky and heather and complained about the draughts instead, the lack of mobile reception. She’d cut short a stay once, driven back south three days early, because she couldn’t take any more of her then-boyfriend’s moaning. Late summer
and the house had been full of daddy-long-legs, dancing along the walls. For Alice, these were a familiar part of August at the farm, but they just drove her boyfriend mad. He couldn’t sleep with the rustle of their spindly limbs in the room, spent the evenings battering them with newspapers until Alice decided she’d had enough. She told Alan about it a year or so later, after they’d split up, and he laughed when she apologised, belatedly, on behalf of her sixteen-year-old self.

Alice didn’t have many friends who still went on holiday with their parents. It used to embarrass her a little when she was younger, after she’d left school, and while she was at college: summer weeks spent walking the Pennine Way with her mother while everyone she knew seemed to be hitching around Italy or clubbing in Barcelona. Took Alice years before she admitted, even to herself, that she enjoyed walking more than dancing all weekend and the come-down after.

Alice was six the first time they went away, just the two of them. Her mother had just qualified, had her first teaching job lined up for the autumn, and they spent three July weeks in Dorset: a graduation present from Gran and Grandad. The money had been intended for a week in a cottage, but Alice’s mum decided on staying away longer, cancelled the reservation her parents had made and booked a caravan instead. Alice loved the instant mash and tinned spaghetti meals her mother cooked those weeks, the biscuits eaten straight from the packet. They stayed up late together playing memory instead of washing up, and kept their pyjamas on until lunchtime, both knowing Gran and Grandad would have dressed hours before them. The nearest beach was
shingle, and rough on cold toes after swimming, but Alice asked to go there nearly every day because she liked the pebbles. Local legend had it that they were larger at one end of the beach than the other, something to do with waves and current, and fishermen sent adrift could always tell where on the wide bay they had landed by the size. Alice and her mum tested the theory, working their way along the beach, filling their pockets. She couldn’t remember if they’d drawn any conclusions, just that she’d spent hours laying the stones out in size and colour sequences on the windowsills of their caravan. Milky blue-grey, deep red-brown, some green and some almost orange: all of them were prettier when they were wet, and she dribbled water onto them from the teapot, until her mother started frowning about the puddles on the lino. So Alice waited until she wasn’t looking and spat on the stones instead, rubbing them against her palms.

The caravan site was small, but had space for tents, and in their last week three students pitched next to them. Postgraduate, geology, two men and a woman, on a summer field trip. They admired Alice’s pebble collection, and told her the names of the stones: quartz, flint and chert, and one she could never remember, but they said it was harder than steel. The students seemed ancient to Alice at the time, but they would have been early twenties, like her mum. Her mother never spoke much to the parents in the other caravans, but she took to drinking her morning cup of tea out on the steps around the same time the students were eating breakfast outside their tents.