Mothers & Daughters (7 page)

‘I knew you'd wear a suit,' I said.

David looked surprised. ‘I've come straight from work.'

‘So have I.'

He made no comment. We can't all be property moguls, I felt like saying. Someone has to meet society's need for pot pourri and napkin rings.

‘It's a tad pretentious here, but they do a decent lunch menu,' he said. ‘Do you want to look at the wine list?'

‘I'm not sure it's a good idea to add alcohol into the mix.'

‘Why? You're not planning to shout at me again, are you?'

The moment teetered while I decided whether to take umbrage. That's why we've come to this place, then, I thought. Protective camouflage. I said: ‘I didn't shout. Anyway, it depends.'

‘On what?'

‘On you.'

‘I'll order mineral water.'

When it came, I let him pour. I asked the waitress for pasta, but I knew I was too worked up to eat.

‘So,' he said, ‘to business. What are we going to do, Carol? What practical steps can we take to help get Jaz and Ian back together? You are still agreed that's the way forward?'

‘I think so. I don't know. Yes. In the long term.'

‘OK.'

‘No one can wave a magic wand here. He had an affair.'

‘Not really an affair.'

‘Yes, David. He slept with another woman. If you're not going to call a spade a spade, then we'll get nowhere. This is a complete waste of time.'

He looked down at his serviette. ‘I'm sorry. That wasn't my intention.'

‘You do believe it was a one-off?'

‘God, yes. My son's not capable of any kind of sustained duplicity.' He made it sound almost like a failing.

‘Do we know anything more about this girl?'

David shook his head. ‘She's not important. Honestly. This – slip – was about a moment rather than an individual. We won't hear from her again.'

‘Ian told you that?'

‘He did, yes.'

‘Forgive me,' I snapped, ‘but it's a standard line. Adulterers tend not to go, “Oh, yeah, this is only the start, you ain't seen nothing yet”.'

‘All I can do is ask you to go with me on this.'

In the intervals between talking I could make out background music. ‘Three Times a Lady'.
Love
stretched over five ludicrous syllables.

‘I suppose,' said David, ‘what I'm trying to avoid is any kind of hysterical reaction – no, listen a moment. It's important to keep a perspective.'

‘Hard to have much sense of perspective when your husband's screwing around,' I said. ‘I don't believe you have any idea how it's affected Jaz. She's absolutely crushed. Unless Ian understands what he's done—'

‘Oh, he understands.'

‘Does he? You don't seem to.'

The waitress came back and we both sat mutely while she moved cutlery around. Smile smile, we went, like a couple who'd come on a date or something.

When she'd gone, David said, ‘All I'm trying to do is take the long view. After the immediate emotional reaction's died down there'll come a point where they see the bigger picture. When Ian's not consumed with guilt and fear, and Jaz isn't beside herself with anger.'

‘And hurt.'

‘And hurt. Then they'll start to see the shape of their marriage as a whole, and Matty's needs, and be able to weigh up the true impact of . . .' He faltered over the word.

‘See? You can't even call it what it is,' I said. ‘Who are you to start dictating the action?'

‘For God's sake, Carol, haven't you been listening to a word I've said? I'm dictating nothing! That's why I'm here. So we can talk it through together, and agree. I want you on board with this. Without you, any reconciliation plan of mine simply will not work!'

The smart old lady at the next table looked across, and I felt ashamed.

It's your manner, I wanted to tell him. You sound like you're running an executive meeting.

‘I appreciate you're feeling very let down,' he went on. ‘Don't make the mistake of assuming I'm not. I know full well Ian's been a bloody fool.'

‘Have you told him that?'

‘Of course I have. He's under no illusions. I just don't think there's much to be gained from continuing to shout the odds. However natural recrimination might be, ultimately it's unproductive.'

‘You're like a damn robot,' I blurted.

He blinked.

‘Sorry,' I said.

Before he could reply, the waitress arrived and set our dinner down in front of us. I bent, shame-faced, over my cloggy pasta and wished I was back in Moira's shop. At all the tables around us, people ate and drank and had a nice time.

‘If we can be practical for a moment.' David laid his fork down and looked at me. ‘I'd say the most pressing issue's actually Matty.'

‘Oh, it is.'

‘He's really the prime consideration and, in a sense, our most useful bargaining tool. But we have to tread with extreme care.'

‘Yes, I meant to say about that—'

‘After the business at the nursery, Ian's very concerned about access.'

‘Well, he shouldn't have wound Jaz up that way. It was asking for trouble. He was supposed to be waiting for me to have a word first.'

‘He misses his son,' said David. Behind him, the window began to spot with rain.

‘Yes, I can understand that. But he shouldn't have taken Matty with no word about where he was going. You hear about these men snatching their kids and emigrating with them. Or worse. Jaz was frightened. People react strongly when they're frightened.'

David shook his head. ‘The way it happened was a mistake. He only went across the road. He was watching for her; when he saw her car he was going to step out and flag her down, but I think Matty needed his nappy changing at the crucial moment and he missed her arriving. I gather she was later than usual.'

‘Don't make it sound like it was her fault.'

‘I'm not. I'm explaining what happened.'

The waitress appeared, wanting to know if everything was all right. I could tell you a tale, I thought.

When she'd gone, I said, ‘It was bad luck, then.'

‘Yes. I think he had it in mind it was going to be a kind of reconciliation. Meeting on neutral territory, and with Matty there. She refuses to see him, you know; all Ian wants to do is apologise, but she won't let him. I don't see how they can move on.'

‘You've already made that point,' I said.

It was getting Jaz to the state where she could talk rationally, make fair and sensible bargains. David hadn't a clue.

Afterwards we were ushered into a lounge area for coffee. We sat at opposite ends of a huge striped sofa, and I could tell from the way the waitress eyed me that she thought we were a couple: Love in the Middle Years. ‘You're way off the mark there, pet,' I nearly said to her. Which started me thinking about Phil and trying to picture him in a place like this, how he'd stand out. Not because of his clothes or manners; he wasn't a yob. But he never picked up on atmosphere. He'd have been winking at the staff, asking for a diet water, sticking his forks into potatoes and pretending they were dancing feet.

‘Did you know Matty's latest obsession?' I said, before my mind could get hijacked by unwanted images. ‘His thing about doorbells?'

‘Go on,' said David.

‘Well, when you go to someone's house, he has to be lifted up to ring the bell. He gets very upset if you do it first.'

‘What if there's no bell?'

‘You have to pretend. He presses a moulding or something, and you have to go “ding dong” for him.'

‘Thanks for the warning. I'll bear it in mind.'

‘You get some funny looks.'

‘I should imagine so.'

The coffee came in dolls' cups, together with a bowl of giant sugar crystals like shards of quartz.

‘Do you take Matty out much?' I asked, picturing for a moment that suit in the muddy park, or under onslaught from an ice lolly.

‘We've been out together, en famille. We generally go for a walk when I pop round to check the house.' He paused, frowning. ‘You see, Carol, that's another issue: it's my house, I own it, and yet it's my son who's been kicked out. She's actually taken it upon herself to change the locks. I could be damned awkward about that, if I wanted to be.'

I took refuge in a sympathetic expression.

‘Ian's very important to me,' he went on.

‘Obviously.'

‘I mean, having lost his mother—'

‘Yes, I can see that.'

‘For years it was just the two of us. A house of men. He's a good lad.'

‘I think he does love Jaz.'

‘Oh, he does, he does. If you can make her see that, Carol.'

‘I'll do my level best.'

‘Because this isn't a game. She really doesn't want to get into point-scoring. That's not meant in any way as a threat, I'm just stating facts. If Jaz starts being obstructive, she'll find Ian more than capable of matching her.'

I had to look away to stop myself saying, ‘Why in God's name did he start all this, then?' What kind of men was I dealing with, in this father and son? How far could I trust either of them? Then again, what other choice was there? Across the room from us, on a matching sofa, was a smart elderly couple; he was fiddling with the clasp of her bracelet, and she was smiling over something he'd said. On our left two young
businessmen studied a laptop. The tall windows sported swagged drapes; a chandelier hung from the centre of the ceiling. I really should have dressed up a bit more for this place. Had he meant me to feel outfaced?

‘Anyway, to sum up,' said David's voice from a long, long way away, ‘can I take it that you and I are, essentially, singing from the same hymnsheet? That you're willing to work with me in bringing about an eventual reconciliation? Would that be a fair assessment, Carol?'

‘Yes,' I said faintly.

‘Good.' He leaned forward and re-filled my coffee cup, even though I hadn't asked him to. ‘Excellent. Because in that case, leave it with me. I think I might have an idea.'

CHAPTER 7

Photograph: unnumbered, loose in the back of Jaz and Ian's wedding album, Sunnybank
.

Location: outside the church porch

Taken by: Carol

Subject: the bridal crowd, post-official photographs, but before everyone's gone in for the eats. Jaz is in the foreground, looking at Ian. Behind her is David, his eyes on Jaz, and in the opposite corner, Phil watches David. A fascinating range of expressions is covered in this string of vision
.

Twenty minutes ago, Phil drew Jaz aside and told her a bald lie: that he overheard her new father-in-law say her dress looks cheap. Since the wedding dress is the only item funded exclusively by the bride's family, the slur is a double whammy. Where a different girl would have flounced off to tell her mother, or tackled David on the spot, Jaz absorbs the information into herself silently. That's always been her way. She internalises everything. The words spiral down through her consciousness like black ink dropped into a glass of clear water
.

Why did you do it? Phil is already asking himself. He has no idea what prompted the invention, except that David's a smug bastard, and things have been so shitty lately with Penny
sulking about him coming to the wedding, as if he wouldn't see his own daughter married, and bloody awful it was, too, leaving her this morning in floods of tears. Christ knows what she'll have done by the time he gets back. If he goes back. Funny, but living with someone turns out to be not at all the same as having an affair with them, and their flat's too cramped and none of his things are to hand. He misses his shed. And here's David swanking about with that smart bitch at his side
.

He didn't mean to hurt Jaz. He never means to hurt anyone. Carol understands that. If he can find Carol, talk to her, it'll be OK. What he really needs at this moment is a pair of arms round him
.

We always called it ‘the shed', but it was almost the size of a garage, sturdy and brick-built and with a concrete floor. Phil used to reckon it had been a coal-hole-plus-lav, knocked through, but houses like Sunnybank came with internal bathrooms, so I think it was always a general outhouse.

Phil's kingdom, this had been, the place he retreated to when the atmosphere got too tense, or he felt outnumbered. When he reigned here, it was terrifically ordered: tools in one section, decorating materials in another, car stuff here, garden implements there. He installed metal shelves and kitchen base units, bought plastic boxes on wheels and racks that you screwed to the wall. The ceiling was high enough for him to board over half of it and use it to store miscellaneous junk, and woe betide anyone who ignored his system. Even his screwdrivers were lined up in order of size. ‘I'll shift it all, I'll shift it,' he used to say. ‘I'll come round and take my stuff away, just give us chance.' Eight years he'd been feeding me that line.

Since he'd gone, the place had become a dumping ground. Any item I was too unconfident to sling got shoved in the far
corner with the rolls of wallpaper and paint trays. Then having to clear Pincroft generated a load more bags and boxes I couldn't part with, and that I didn't have the time or courage to sort properly. For months I'd been setting myself targets – a box a week, say – and then, at the last minute, I'd find myself putting the job off, casting about for something easier to do. Because the idea of getting rid of anything without Dad's permission seemed like the grossest act of betrayal. Breaking up your parents' home: it's a job that comes to us all, one of those rites of passage, and it's just horrid.

But today I was going to roll up my sleeves and make a start. Here was one area of my life over which I had some control.