Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart (20 page)

“Exactly,” Smita said smartly. “Exactly. And that is why
I
want to spend Anand’s first Christmas with
my
family. Besides,” she added resentfully, “your mother gets to see Anand all the time. We can hardly keep her away. My parents haven’t seen him for weeks.”

She ended the argument by switching on the television and Jeremy made a fool of himself by leaping up and
switching it off again. He hardly ever shouted at Smita but he shouted at her now: “Why do you always have to treat her so horribly, Smi? Tell me, what has she ever done to you?”

When Smita began to interview nannies, it felt to Jeremy like a continuation of their argument even though he knew it wasn’t. Of course Smita had every right to resume her career, not to throw away everything she had worked so hard for. But did she always have to get her own way?

As he heard her on the phone to agencies, busily discussing her requirements – Monday to Friday, 8 am to 6:30 pm – he felt wretched. He started to worry about ghastly accidents, about neglect and abuse; Anand lying in his cot, unstimulated, hour after hour, Anand harmed in undefined, unspeakable ways, Anand hurt.

None of the first applicants were anywhere near suitable. Smita agreed with him. But a second round of interviews yielded a capable young Bulgarian woman whom Smita thought would do. The young woman, her name was Galina, looked curiously like Smita, a slightly shorter, broader version of Smita, with utterly black hair parted in the middle and a business-like manner. She stated very plainly in the interview that being a nanny was not her long-term goal. She was studying to become an accountant in the evenings, at weekends and the nanny job would just be to fund her studies.

“I like that,” Smita said to Jeremy afterwards. “I like the fact she’s an intelligent person, with goals of her own. I wouldn’t want Anand to be cared for by a moron.”

Jeremy imagined Galina’s capable but uncaring hands handling Anand and he felt utterly miserable. But he knew there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. It was like the first vaccination which had marked Anand’s perfect body. This was the first flaw to mar his vision of Anand’s perfect childhood.

Jeremy supposed that he must have talked about his concerns to his mother. But he was sure that he had not said anything which might have encouraged her to do what she did next.

Three days after Galina’s interview, while Smita was checking up on her references and debating how long before her own return to work Galina should start, their doorbell rang, relatively early on a Saturday morning and Sylvia’s voice trilled through the intercom, “Yoo-hoo! It’s Mary Poppins!”

She seemed to take forever coming up the four flights of stairs, they could hear her huffing and puffing – and thank goodness Mrs Castellini hadn’t chosen that moment to stick her head out of her front door or they would doubtless have been waiting all morning. They were totally shocked when Sylvia finally made it to their front door, out of breath but grinning, unbuttoned her heavy winter coat to reveal a frilly white apron and launched into a breathless but jaunty version of “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” She even produced a little silver spoon from her pocket which she waved about theatrically. She then kissed them both resoundingly and announced excitedly, “I’ve come about the job.”

Jeremy’s first thought was that she must be drunk. To
turn up like that, unannounced, in fancy dress and singing; surely it was the only explanation. But she didn’t seem drunk. She seemed in fact particularly focused. She took off her coat and handed it to Jeremy. “Hang it up dear,” she instructed him. “It’s a bit wet.” She then turned purposefully to Smita who was glaring at her, outraged but speechless and said kindly, “Let’s sit down dear and I’ll explain to you what I have in mind.”

Jeremy waited for Smita’s certain sharp response: “I was just on my way out actually” or “Sylvia, I’m really busy right now.” But Smita must have been too shocked to say anything because she followed Sylvia slowly up their glass stairs, a furious but silent figure.

As they entered the big front room, Anand, who was lying on the new sheepskin rug pumping his legs, made a sudden experimental sideways flip, almost a roll and at the sight of his mother and grandmother side by side in the doorway, he beamed with delight and gave a strangled little yelp of sheer happiness.

Smita and Sylvia couldn’t help turning to one another to exclaim over what he had just done.

Grudgingly, Smita offered her mother-in-law a cup of tea or coffee. But Sylvia turned down the offer and gestured determinedly towards the armchairs. “No, no, my dear,” she said, “Let’s get down to business straight away. There’s no time to be wasted.”

Jeremy hovered uncertainly in the open plan kitchen, making tea and coffee anyway and listened to his mother’s proposal in total disbelief.

“I’ve been thinking,” she began, the moment she was
seated, “and what you two are about to do doesn’t make any sense at all to me.” She jiggled Anand, whom she had picked up, with Smita’s permission, on her knees. “You are about to hand this little chap over to a total stranger five days a week. You are going to pay that stranger a considerable sum of money to look after him. While, down the road, you have his grandmother, one of his grandmothers –”

“Kensington is
not
down the road,” Smita snapped.

Sylvia ploughed on: “One of his grandmothers, who is willing and able, who would
love
to do the job, who would not need to be
paid
. Maybe I couldn’t manage it five days a week, it’s true, but one or two – of course I could! Think how good it would be for Anand to be cared for by a close relative rather than a complete stranger. I would do all sorts of things with him which a nanny would never dream of. He’d have so much more
fun
with me, wouldn’t you sweetpea, wouldn’t you? Yes, of course you would! And if
your
mother should be able to come down from time to time, Smita, of course I would gladly, gladly let her have my days with Anand. They could be Anand’s ‘grandma days’, we could take it in turns, if Naisha wanted, if she was able. And think of all the money you would save. Thousands and thousands of pounds, I dare say. Please say yes, my dears, please; it makes such perfect sense.”

As if to show how well she would do the job, she propped Anand cosily onto her left shoulder and stood up and walked around the room, patting him lightly on the back and humming a nursery rhyme. She overdid it, accompanying her jolly “Tom-pom-pom” with a high-spirited
little jig and as she came back towards the armchairs, she caught her foot on the edge of the sheepskin rug and nearly fell. Smita exclaimed and made a grab for Anand but luckily Sylvia managed to regain her balance enough to land very heavily sideways in the nearest armchair with Anand still safe in her arms.

“How on
earth
,” Smita hissed at her, “do you expect me to leave Anand with you
all day
? Look, you can’t manage to be with him for five minutes without something happening. How could you possibly have sole charge of him from morning till night? It’s a job for a fit active
young
person, not someone in their sixties. I don’t mean to be unkind. Maybe you could just about cope now while he’s a small baby but how would you manage in a year or so’s time when he’s an energetic toddler racing around? You haven’t thought this through at all. I mean, I understand you love him and you want to spend time with him and that’s sweet. But it doesn’t mean you can be his nanny. In fact, the whole thing’s completely
silly
, surely you can see that? I need someone as a nanny whom I can tell what to do and go off to work knowing that they’ll get on with it. Whereas, I’m sorry Sylvia, but you and I haven’t seen eye to eye on a number of issues to do with Anand and how do I know that, as soon as my back was turned, you wouldn’t just do your own thing and take no notice of what
I
want?”

Sylvia flushed. “Fashions change in childcare,” she answered evasively. “It doesn’t mean that the old ways are necessarily no good.” She added coyly, “
My
son turned out alright, didn’t he?”

Jeremy and Smita exchanged glances across the room. Smita’s was one of scarcely contained fury, Jeremy’s was pleading.

“Let’s not go there,” Smita said crisply. “There’s really no point us discussing it anymore, Sylvia. I appreciate you mean well, really I do. But there’s no way,
no way
you can be Anand’s nanny. I’m sorry.”

Jeremy, watching from the kitchen, feared his mother might cry again, showering Anand with her tears. He had winced repeatedly while Smita was speaking; he thought she was being unnecessarily hard on his mother. Was there really no room for compromise here; couldn’t she be granted a regular afternoon or two, if not a whole day? Smita hadn’t seen his mother taking care of Anand during his visits to her flat. She had no idea how competent Sylvia could be.

Sylvia didn’t cry. She looked down fixedly at Anand on her lap and there was something in what Jeremy could see of her expression which scared him inexplicably; sadness but also an unbudgeable resolve. Anand began to wriggle, looking up into his grandmother’s face and making nearly musical “Da-da-da” noises.

In response, Sylvia began to jiggle her knees – perfectly nimbly – and sang to him, “Ride a cock
hoss
, to Banbury
Crorss
” while Anand gurgled with pleasure.

Jeremy stole a look at Smita. Surely she would melt a little in response to this tableau; the devoted grandmother and the blissfully happy grandchild. But Smita had a wry curdled expression on her face and her mind, Jeremy knew, was made up.

He asked his mother, “Would you like to have brunch with us?” But before she could answer, Smita stood up and intervened. “But we were going shopping. Have you forgotten or are you trying to get out of it?”

Sylvia stood up too. She kissed Anand lingeringly on the top of his downy head and she replied, “No, no, I can’t stay anyway, thank you, Jeremy dear. I’m invited to lunch with Ruth Rosenkranz. She has a special guest coming.”

“Who?” asked Smita.

Sylvia seemed not to hear her. She deposited Anand carefully back onto the sheepskin rug, where he at once began to wail and asked for her coat.

While Smita was getting it, Jeremy asked his mother quietly, “Are you alright?”

She nodded bravely. With Smita’s help, she got her heavy coat back on, over the frilly white apron which she was still wearing. As an afterthought, she tried to take the apron off inside her coat and became distressingly entangled. After some stilted goodbyes, half covered by Anand’s crying, she left and, the minute she had gone, Smita rounded on Jeremy.

“You set her up to this,” she shouted. “Didn’t you?”

Jeremy was holding Anand by now, trying unsuccessfully to soothe him and he answered unnaturally softly, “Of course not. Why on earth would I do that?”

Smita burst into tears of fury. “I can’t believe you did this,” she sobbed. It’s like a betrayal. How
could
you? How
could
you?”

Jeremy still spoke incongruously softly, jiggling Anand and patting his back. “But I’m telling you Smi: I
didn’t
. It’s
all her idea. Why would I set her up to suggest something you were clearly going to veto?”

“Because,” Smita shrieked, “because ever since Anand was born, you’ve been ganging up with her against me. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about; all those long visits to her flat, all her tips and tricks for dealing with babies you keep passing on to me, the steady drip-drip message that a baby should be cared for by its mother, that going back to work is a selfish, harmful thing to do. D’you think I’m deaf and blind to what’s going on here?”

“Smita,” Jeremy interjected desperately. “You’re wrong. Nothing like that is going on, nothing.”

Smita ignored him. “For years, for
years
you’ve been telling me what a disastrous mother she was, how remote, how uninvolved. And now I’m expected to believe that, overnight, she’s somehow turned into this perfect caring figure? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“She has changed,” Jeremy said, still in the same low controlled voice. “She’s not a perfect caring figure – by any means – but she has changed and I think you could give her a chance. If you didn’t have such a closed mind about her.”

Smita yelled back at him. “She was a disastrous mother and I’ve got no doubt she’ll turn out to be a disastrous grandmother too. Look at what nearly happened just now; she nearly fell headlong with Anand in her arms. It could have been
awful
. Don’t you dare, don’t you
dare
leave her alone with Anand or something terrible will happen, you wait and see. Now give him to me since you obviously can’t manage to get him quiet.”

She snatched Anand who immediately stopped crying as if a switch had been flicked and strode out of the room.

One floor down, their doorbell rang. “You get it,” Smita called. “He needs changing.”

Sylvia stood at the front door, looking apologetic. “I’m awfully sorry,” she whispered, as if she had heard their raised voices on the way up. “I seem to have left my handbag.”