Relative Love (57 page)

‘I’d like to call it a simple business proposition, one that is mutually beneficial, alleviating the possibility of unnecessary anxiety on our side and financial discomfort on yours. The sum I mentioned is considerable and —’

‘The sum you mentioned,’ interrupted Stephen, squeezing his empty can until it collapsed under his grip, ‘is degrading.’

‘I see,’ murmured Peter, patting his breast pocket where he had stowed his cheque book and fountain pen, his mind racing over the ramifications of raising his offer and by how much. It wasn’t a question of what he could afford – for many years, money had been no object to anything in his life – but of the far more important issue of not appearing weak. The man looked harmless enough, but clearly had no qualms about playing hardball. ‘I might be able to add another five —’

Stephen shook his head, looking from Cassie’s pale downcast face to Peter’s. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ He stood up suddenly, knocking over his chair and just catching it in time. ‘Here.’ He pulled a five-pound note out of his back pocket. ‘That’s for the drinks. You could have just asked me, you know. You could have just asked me. I don’t want your stinking money. I’ll change what I’ve written if it matters so much to you. I admit I wanted – for a time – I wanted to hurt
you, you bloody Harrisons with your grand façade of a family, so
rooted
, so fucking sure of yourselves. I don’t – have never had – anything like that and part of me did want to knock it down. I admit that. But another part just wanted to tell the truth, to tell the story of your uncle as it really was. Your mother loving him was a part of that. And however despicable you think me, I understand love, I really do. Love matters. And if your family is half as strong as you like to believe then it would survive, whatever truths crawl out of the woodwork, courtesy of me or anyone else. I’ll give the version you want. But I’ll give it freely, and not as part of some sordid deal.’ He pushed the chair into the table. ‘I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused you, I really am. I may have behaved badly but I would do anything not to hurt you … anything.’ As he said these words he looked hard at Cassie, then turned and left the café, charging at the door with his shoulder in his eagerness to get out.

‘Well,’ began Peter, laughing in disbelief, ‘do you think he means it?’

‘Of course he means it,’ gasped Cassie, close to tears. ‘He’s right … It was degrading. We should have just asked him, explained what it meant to us. Our family secret is safe, Peter, but right this minute I can’t feel too good about it, I really can’t.’ She fumbled in her bag for a tissue and blew her nose. ‘We expected the worst of him and it was wrong … It’s wrong to expect the worst of anyone.’

Unable to share her dismay, Peter waved Stephen’s five-pound note at the waitress. ‘Come on, now. All’s well that ends well. What a business. Thank God it’s over. Do you think we really can trust him?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she murmured, ‘I think so.’

‘Excellent.’ Peter rubbed his hands together. ‘Now, I’m driving to Ashley House for the weekend. Why don’t you come too?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Go on. We can celebrate.’

But Cassie, who did not feel there was much to celebrate, resisted all her brother’s efforts at persuasion. Outside the café she found herself scanning the streets for Stephen, thinking that somehow he had behaved more honourably than any of them and cursing herself for having misjudged him so badly.

Perched in the apple tree at the end of the pergola Theo, with some difficulty, was keeping his camera trained on Samson, who was sitting on a branch next to him, tail twitching at the sight of a blackbird pecking on the lawn below. After what he perceived as the failure of the structured-interview approach, Theo had decided to experiment with a more spontaneous method of filming, catching objects and scenes of activity unawares. Clem, somewhat conveniently – since this new approach didn’t require her services – seemed to have lost interest in being his producer, although he had hinted that he still wouldn’t mind the odd letter. He was thinking more about this than about Samson when he caught sight of his mother scurrying across the grass in the direction of his hideout. Instead of turning his camera on her, or announcing his presence, something about her – the way she glanced anxiously over her shoulder at the house – prompted Theo to draw back into the leaves. Rather to his horror, she came right under the tree and leant against it. She was so close he could see the glints of grey in her hair and the small mole on the side of her cheek. She was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling under her shirt. It felt somehow deceitful to be watching her, but the longer Theo remained invisible the more impossible it felt to call out. He didn’t even dare switch off his camera for fear that the click
would make her look up into the branches. Samson, thankfully, had settled down on his own branch, his tail trailing like a vine, his eyes closed as if bored at the notion of chasing blackbirds or anything else. Below them Helen reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out her mobile phone.

Theo peered down in mounting horror, certain that he was witnessing something illicit and dreadful. A lover, perhaps. Oh, God, his mother had a lover. Oh, shit, oh, fuck, oh, fucking shit. She looked so furtive, so perturbed, he could think of nothing else. When Helen, speaking clearly, addressed herself to Kay, he almost groaned aloud in relief. His comfort, however, was short-lived. Close as he was, it was impossible not to hear every word; impossible, therefore, not to glean that his mother was consulting her friend because she had accidentally become pregnant and didn’t know what to do about it. Soon she was crying. Theo clung to a branch with his free hand, the camera trembling in the other. If he could have blocked his ears he would. Adult distress held no allure for him. Neither, for that matter, did the unappealing notion of his parents having sex. It was gross. Unthinkable. Almost as unthinkable as the idea of his mother, grey hairs peeking through the brown, webs of wrinkles round her eyes, the skin on her thighs visibly loose in her staid navy blue bathing costume, having a baby. Christ, no wonder she was crying. Although, Theo realised, peeking again through the branches, whatever Kay was saying was clearly helping. The crying had stopped. There was even a laugh or two. ‘Yes,’ Helen was saying, wiping her nose on the back of her arm in a way that, had he or Chloë done it, would have caused the most disgusted parental reprimand, ‘it must have happened the night of Peter’s fiftieth – we got … carried away … With the menopause and so on I thought I was safe.’

This was simply too much detail and Theo’s cheeks burned.

‘I want it and I don’t want it,’ continued Helen, sounding choked again, ‘and I’m so scared to tell Peter because he will be
so
appalled and take the decision away from me before I’ve decided what
I
think and yet, of course, the longer I leave it the harder a termination will be both physically and emotionally —’

At which point Theo fell out of the tree, landing heavily on the arm holding the camera. Samson, alarmed at the vibrating of the branch on which he had been resting, landed neatly beside him, then sauntered off across the lawn, tail high, its white tiger-tip pointing like a pencil at the sky.

‘Theo! Darling! Heavens – Kay, I’ve got to go … Darling, are you all right? Oh, my poor boy.’ Helen slipped her phone back into her pocket and knelt beside her son who was making dry racking noises at the back of his throat and clutching his arm. ‘What on earth were you doing?’

‘Filming Samson,’ he gasped, looking down at his arm, which ached badly but looked all right. ‘I was just filming Samson and then you came and I didn’t dare say and then —’

‘Can you move your fingers?’

Tentatively, then vigorously, Theo wiggled his fingers.

‘Well, I don’t think you can have broken it – I don’t know why not, falling like that. The camera’s broken, though, I’m afraid.’

When he saw the lens lying in the grass, Theo began to cry. Helen, murmuring soothingly about getting it fixed, about nothing mattering but him being all right, put her arms round him. Theo wept on, feeling four instead of fourteen, a small, secret part of him relishing this half-forgotten ritual of receiving physical comfort from his mother. In spite of the highly traumatic circumstances, Helen relished it too, feeling, as she had with Chloë that day in Oxford Street, that the bond between her and her lanky man-child, however seldom expressed, would remain unbreakable.

‘I suppose you heard everything,’ she murmured, rocking him, ‘all the things I said to Kay.’

Theo nodded, gulping.

‘I’m going to talk to Dad when he gets here this evening and we’ll work out what to do together. In a way I’d like another baby, but I’m pretty old and also I’m not sure I’ve been too fantastic in the mum department.’

‘You have,’ sobbed Theo, hugging her harder.

‘The good thing is, I’d been feeling so lousy I’d thought I was ill – really ill – so in a way it’s a huge relief. I’m so sorry you heard like that, darling, it must be quite a shock for you too.’

‘I think you should have it,’ blurted Theo, sitting up and drying his eyes with the palms of his hands. The arm felt tingly but not too bad. ‘The baby. Chloë would love it, wouldn’t she?’ He grinned at Helen, who rolled her eyes, unable to resist smiling back. ‘Yes, I suppose she would.’

‘And I’d probably
quite
like it, when it got a bit older.’

‘And Dad?’

‘Well, he likes us all right, doesn’t he? Me and Chloë. So I guess he’d probably like another one.’

‘Dad doesn’t like things he hasn’t planned, though,’ said Helen quietly, adoring her son’s simple logic, but experiencing a fresh current of fear at the thought of Peter’s reaction.

That night, while the rest of her family assembled among the glinting silver and crystal of Ashley House’s dining room for a grand feast of smoked salmon, roast beef and fresh raspberries, Cassie took her mother’s letter to her uncle from its hiding-place in her bottom drawer and burned it. She held it over a plate and lit one corner with a match, watching the paper curl and the ashes float down into a dusty pile. Love mattered. Stephen had said so, and he was right. But love was about choices too. For whatever reasons, her mother had chosen to stay with her father. And her own heart still burned for Dan, not as often, maybe, but still with an intensity that made her afraid; afraid that she would never get over it, but stagger on as an emotional cripple, with every future happiness a shadow of the one she had known.

Serena had more or less taken charge of the evening meal, while Pamela floated in the background, too wrung out by the heat for any of her usual pride about handing over the reins of her kitchen. Keeping busy was a cure for all sorts of things, she told herself, watching from her favourite vantage-point in the corner of the kitchen sofa and musing on the happy fact that this daughter-in-law had never needed much instruction about anything. Unlike Helen, who never quite remembered which wine glasses or tablecloth to use; or Elizabeth, for that matter, who insisted on chopping vegetables as thin as two-pence pieces instead of into bite-sized chunks, and Cassie who required intricate guidance on any domestic chore, no matter how small. Serena outshone them all. She knew instinctively just how things should be done. Pamela’s exclamation to Charlie on the subject that afternoon had come from the heart. With so many mouths to feed, the awful business of Boots, and Elizabeth and Helen being, in their separate ways, quite
hors de combat
(Helen with a migraine and Elizabeth with patching up her marriage) the week would have been quite unmanageable without Serena’s cool commanding hand on the wheel.

It was nine o’clock now and they were between courses. Serena had stacked the dishwasher, put the vegetable dishes to soak in the sink and retrieved a towering bowl of raspberries from the larder. Outside the air temperature had dropped, but inside the heat still hung and smothered like a lingering fever. The weathermen were talking of a break towards the end of the week,
thunderstorms in September. The children, gathered round the TV earlier in the evening, had groaned in unison at the prospect of rain, but Pamela had felt a burst of hope, as if they had all been given notice of the chance to breathe freely again and return to normality.

‘This is off, I think.’ Serena had taken an open carton of cream out of the fridge and was sniffing it. ‘Curdled like the milk this morning. Do we have any more?’

‘I think so. Try the bottom shelf at the back, behind the sausages and bacon. Can’t have raspberries without cream, can we?’

‘Here we are.’ Serena dropped with enviable agility to her knees and delved into the lower recesses of the fridge. ‘Smells fine, this one. Do you want to take it and I’ll bring the raspberries?’

Their entry into the dining room was greeted with oohs and aahs of appreciation. Charlie joined in, watching not the crystal bowl of fruit but Serena as she placed it on a central mat, then returned to her seat. He had been too hot and angry to enjoy the meal. The beef had felt like leather between his teeth, the vegetables tasteless. No amount of chewing seemed to make any mouthful easier to swallow. Each time he recalled their conversation that afternoon he felt freshly enraged. One didn’t have to be particularly religious to find the thought of unearthing a buried child repellent. But it was more than this that Charlie brooded over. It was the selfishness of how she had pursued the idea. Serena’s grief, right from the start, he realised, had been utterly selfish, quite without reference to his feelings or anyone else’s. As if she alone
owned
the right to be sad, staking it out as her special territory where no one else could intrude. Her decision, without a murmur to him, that digging up their daughter was the right thing to do was all part and parcel of that. And he was fed up with it. Truly fed up. Just as he was fed up with her porcelain emotions. What kind of a marriage was it when the husband couldn’t say anything for fear of upsetting his wife, when he couldn’t even make love to her? It was a fucking nightmare, that was what it was, decided Charlie, pressing his knife and fork together over his half-eaten dinner and thinking, with unbalanced and sudden longing, of his approaching few days in the impersonal, soothing comfort of an air-conditioned Florida hotel.