The Facts of Life (39 page)

On the second night, a ghastly possibility had struck her – that Sam, of whom, after all, she knew so little, might have turned violent. Through her own misplaced sensitivity, she had let her brother disappear with a dangerous man. Jamie might be unconscious in hospital. He might even be lying on the floor of his flat, dead or dying. Her mother’s words echoed sinisterly through her head: ‘If he disappears, you wouldn’t know where to get hold of him.’

Ashamed and worried in equal parts, she had swallowed her pride and called Jamie’s office that afternoon. There was a long pause before the telephonist connected them.

‘I was going to call you,’ he said at once, without greeting.

‘Sorry,’ she said, flustered with relief at hearing his voice. ‘I’ll be quick. You’re not meant to get personal calls in the office any more, are you?’

‘Oh sod that,’ he breathed. He sounded exhausted, strained. Burning to question him, she found herself only hastily checking he was coming to the concert and he gave her his promise.

‘You vanished after the march,’ she blurted at last.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘You didn’t worry? Something came up.’

‘Ah,’ she said and hung up moments later, blood boiling at his casual use of the time-honoured evasion even though she knew it was impossible for him to talk openly in his office. She was wounded that both men could so easily neglect her and irritated for having given herself occasion to
feel
so wounded.

Waving aside his disappointment with a sweet compliment about enjoying the rare opportunity it gave him to have her all to himself, her grandfather walked her to a small, expensive restaurant in a narrow lane off Gloucester Road. The management and cuisine were French, so he could rely on the waiters not to recognise him.

‘So,’ he said, after their wine had arrived. ‘Tell. How’s work?’

‘Oh. All right,’ she told him. ‘I’m in Cynthia’s good books at the moment because Aldo Maclnnes is already looking like a certainty for the Booker shortlist and he’s one of my babies.’

‘That’s good. Worth reading?’

‘Not really. Well. Yes, of course it is, but I know what you like, and you wouldn’t like Aldo.’

‘Ah.’

‘And it looks as though I may have got us the next Judith Lamb but there’s no skill in that – even authors with a high moral tone have their price.’

He frowned for a second at the streak of bitterness in her voice.

‘But you’re happy there?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose so.’

‘You must come down for a weekend again soon. The house misses you.’

‘I will. I was – I was busy this weekend and the weekend before that I was being dutiful in Essex.’

He raised an eyebrow as he tore a chunk off his roll. The territory of her mother’s marriage was well mapped out between them so that much could be conveyed in shorthand.

‘Oh he’s not so awful when you’re patient with him,’ she said, taking as read his unspoken comment on his son-in-law. He only snorted in reply then sat back to make room for the arrival of soup. ‘Why’s she so angry about that writer asking questions about you and Myra Toye?’

He tasted his soup, salted it, then took another spoonful, pondering the question. His hand shook slightly as he replaced his spoon. When he answered, it was elliptically.

‘Your mother’s never really forgiven me for sending her away,’ he sighed.

‘When?’

‘She was nine. No. She was ten.’

‘But she liked her school,’ Alison insisted. ‘She always talks about it as if she did.’

‘That’s because she’s since decided it was something of a status symbol to have been sent there. It was a very, very good school. Better than anything she found for you. I didn’t want to send her away, but it wasn’t much of a life for a little girl. She was only a baby when your grandmother died, not even a toddler yet.’ He paused in tearing another piece off his roll and raised his brows, shrugging off his words in a way that yet failed to conceal lingering pain. Alison knew at once that these were memories with which he rarely tampered. ‘She stopped crying for her long before I did,’ he said. ‘I was earning quite well by then, so I found a nanny. Molly.’ He smiled to himself at the recollection. ‘Molly,’ he said again, enjoying the name’s pillowy sound. ‘Haven’t thought of Molly in years. Very strong, devoutly Christian and an even worse cook than your grandmother. Anyway, Miriam adored her and I felt safe leaving them together for days on end. But eventually Molly’s father was widowed and she had to go back to Somerset to look after him.’

‘She must have been heartbroken,’ Alison said dispassionately.

‘Who? Molly?’

‘No. Mother. Miriam.’

‘She was. Molly was all the mother she’d known. There was Sally’s mother, of course, but she wasn’t well and couldn’t see her that often. I’ve … I’ve never seen a child as
angry
as she was after that. All the sadness came out as a quite extraordinary spell of rage. She broke things. She took scissors to her dresses. She was sweet and clinging with me – it was all directed at
things
– but I got the message. I tried a couple of other nannies but Miriam’s trust had gone and, I suppose, in a way, so had mine. I didn’t want to hurt her again – how could I tell how long the next one might stay? I thought at least in a school she’d have a stable group about her. And I’d be sure she was getting a good education. I promised myself I’d make a special effort to be with her during her holidays. I told myself she’d have friends of her own age at last instead of some choked-up, ageing virgin. I bought her presents. Dolls. Dresses. Books. It was terrible.’

Alison finished her soup, watching him carefully. He had never talked with her like this before and she was not entirely sure she wanted to be the recipient of such confidences. Not right then.

‘I’d had such a bad time away at school,’ he continued. ‘I’d always sworn no child of mine would go through that, but what option did I have?’

Alison shrugged supportively, then saw he was not looking to her for a reaction but was facing some jury of the mind.

‘I drove her there,’ he said. ‘It was a beautiful place. Early Victorian I think – I’ve always been hopeless at knowing things like that. A park dotted with follies. A lake. Horses. I decided maybe girls’ boarding schools were not the same as boys’ ones. Mine hadn’t been like
this
! She seemed excited too at first, but then she found her way to a telephone and used to ring me up and cry. I spoke to the headmistress. Perhaps it wasn’t working out? I said. Perhaps I should take Miriam away, but she said it was all perfectly normal and she’d soon settle down. And she was right. There weren’t any more phone calls and I started getting little Sunday morning letters from her instead. Two sides, tidily written, perfectly cheerful, asking for money and so on. She made friends. She found she was good at art.’ He paused and looked directly at Alison. ‘I should never have done it.’

‘But if she was happy …?’

‘Happy without me –’ He broke off as a waiter took away their empty bowls and topped up their wine glasses. ‘I pushed her away,’ he continued, brushing his crumbs into a tidy heap on the tablecloth. ‘I showed her she could thrive on her own. I made myself redundant. When she came home in the holidays I could see the school’s effects. She was growing up. She was almost poised. She brought friends home to keep her company and she sat at the dinner table with them and
made
conversation to me. It was enough to curdle the blood.’

‘Is that why you made such an effort with me and Jamie?’ she asked and realised she had been too open, too obvious from the way he answered with only a cursory, wordless nod.

‘Now she’s decided I sent her away so I’d be freer to have affairs.’ He curled his lips at the word. ‘Probably some stupid self-help book she’s been reading has put the idea into her head.’

‘She doesn’t, Grandpa. Honestly. Only the other day she said you hardly
knew
Myra Toye. She was quite angry at the suggestion you might –’

‘What your mother believes,’ he broke in, ‘and what she says don’t always tally. She’s quite pathetically respectable in her way. It’s all my fault. When she went to art school in London, I thought there might be hope for her. When she moved back home and brought all those hopeless, long-haired boys and chickens and looms and things, when she started that wretched market stall in Rexbridge, when she had you without getting married, I thought, yes, she’ll be all right. I didn’t fool myself we’d ever be close, but I thought at least she wasn’t lost. I thought she’d at last have a life. An original life. Then when she stopped all that it was the triumph of education over nature. I’m not such a monster of self-centredness as to believe she married that … that amoral cipher of a man just to get back at me, but I can’t help feeling I ended up with the daughter I paid for.’

Alison wondered what had drawn this unusual acrimony from him. She worried that it might be Jamie’s neglect, hoped it was merely the result of one of her mother’s fortnightly telephone calls. A different waiter brought their main courses – chicken for him, fish for her – which, to her relief, seemed to mark a change of subject. They slipped into habitual roles of
roué
and
ingénue
, comforting, because long since outgrown.

‘And what about you?’ he teased. ‘Do
you
have affairs?’

‘No,’ she said and grinned down at her
Sole Véronique
. ‘I don’t think I’d know one of it hit me in the face.’ At this juncture the role required a blush but she merely looked knowing. She had never been able to blush on cue the way Jamie could. She had read somewhere that this ability, along with the inability to pronounce one’s Rs – a failure Jamie only lapsed back into when drunk – was an indication of rich sexual responsiveness. The information was absurd, but she felt nonetheless hurt by it. It was yet another little shard of genetic injustice, like her sloping shoulders, tendency to burn in the sun and inability to hold a melody – each of them inherited from her mother.

‘You
should
at your age,’ he said with that tactlessness to which the old are privileged.’ ‘Your first bloom has barely left you.’

‘Nobody has
affairs
any more, except adulterers,’ she pointed out.

‘Alright,
sex
then,’ he countered.

‘Why does everyone think it so important?’ she asked.

‘It helps one grow. It reminds us we’re alive.’

‘But it’s so time-consuming and upsetting. It gets in the way of everything.’ She knew she was playing devil’s advocate but she wanted to see what he would say.

‘But that’s half the point, surely?’ he insisted. ‘If affairs, sex, whatever, could be timetabled, they wouldn’t be half so beneficial. Joan Crawford used to give her husbands timetables to make love to her – “5.30 feed children, 6.30 cocktails, 7.30 make love” – and look what became of her!’

‘She became one of the highest earning women in America and lived to a ripe and rich old age,’ Alison retorted, having caught a sneaking admiration for Joan Crawford from her friends at the helpline.

‘A
monstrous
old age!’ he laughed.

They talked on through puddings, dessert wine and a round of unwise, strong coffee. Then Alison remembered she had to work the next day and her grandfather paid the bill and called for a taxi. A lull followed as they waited and the atmosphere between them, cleared by good humour of family acrimony, became charged instead with nostalgia and regret.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘since it’s been an evening for honesty, do you think Jamie will ever marry?’

‘No,’ she said, adding, after a slight pause, ‘never with a woman. Probably not with anyone.’ Despite the absurdity, she held off from saying ‘man’ but she saw him wince.

‘I suspected not,’ he said. ‘And what about you?’

She thought a moment, fingering her coffee spoon.

‘I thought you were always telling us not to plot destinies.’

‘I am. I do. But let’s say, for once, you had the choice. Would you?’

‘Not marriage,’ she said cautiously. ‘I don’t really see the point. It seems to me the benefits are too unevenly distributed. But I’d like to
find
someone. Live with them. I don’t know why I say that because I love my own company, I prefer it really. And I’m not lonely. Not what I think of as lonely. And I hardly ever meet couples who don’t make me grateful to be single. But. Oh. I don’t know. Why does anyone want to live with
anyone
? I know women who do it over and over. Cynthia’s one of them. Serially domestic. And they never learn that they’re happier single. I’d like to think it’s conditioning and we could overcome the urge with logic and politics, but I’m afraid it might be biological. We’re programmed to share, for better or worse.’ She saw him smiling, the kindness of his gaze tinged with irony.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I think half the trouble for me and Jamie is that we grew up with the ideal of your marriage.’

‘But Sally was dead long before you were born.’

‘So? We soon found out about her. Miriam told us. About how she fell in love with you even though you were her patient and Jewish and German and younger than she was. And then The Roundel and writing for films and how she pulled you through when everything was so awful –’ She heard herself reach instinctively for her mother’s euphemisms. ‘Maybe it’s just because it ended so tragically. Who knows? Maybe if she was still alive and we’d known her and seen you both together arguing and cooking and buying groceries, it would all be less romantic. But it was so perfect.’