Two Fridays in April (12 page)

What can Mo do, though? She’s hardly an expert when it comes to breaking down barriers – on the contrary, she has no trouble putting them up. Anyway, it’s not her place to butt in; she’d surely be seen to be interfering if she brought the subject up with Daphne. They’re not given to that kind of conversation, never were.

Still, it’s a shame to see Finn’s widow and his daughter not close. A shame, too, to witness Daphne’s all but non-existent relationship with her mother. Understandable, maybe, given their history, but a pity nonetheless.

Isobel had come to Finn’s funeral, of course. It had taken Mo a few moments to place her. ‘So sorry,’ she whispered, her mouth exactly the same red as the scarf draped about her neck,
her hands pressing Mo’s briefly between them. Wafting a perfume that smelt like gooseberries.

Her husband was there too. Mo couldn’t remember his name; he had to tell her. She can’t think of it now either. Andrew? Max? He had one of those handshakes that nearly broke bones: she remembers that all right. Cold eyes, too, eyes that had held no sympathy despite his murmured words.

She looks again at Isobel, wonders belatedly what she’s doing here alone. Mo should say hello, be civil.

She advances towards the table. Isobel continues to stare at the menu – but Mo gets the sense as she approaches, from some stiffness of the other’s pose, that she’s well aware of her presence. Was she hoping to avoid an encounter? Too late for that.

‘Isobel,’ she says – and the head lifts.

‘Oh,’ Isobel says, a hand reaching up to touch her hair. ‘Oh, it’s – Finn’s mother, isn’t it?’

Forgotten her name. Mo isn’t about to enlighten her. ‘That’s right. How are you keeping?’

‘Oh, I’m fine …’ She trails off, hand resting now on the few inches of skin above the neckline of her dress. ‘And you? How are you?’

Ill at ease is how she comes across to Mo. Embarrassed about it being the anniversary maybe, struck dumb as so many are in the face of another’s troubles.

‘As good as I can be,’ Mo tells her. Shouldn’t have come over, really. Should have left well enough alone. She catches the glance Isobel darts at the front door. Well, well.

There’s a small, awkward silence. To break it, Mo raises the hand that holds the present. ‘Una’s birthday,’ she says.

‘Una’s …? Oh, yes, Daphne did mention it. Is she … having a party?’

A party, on her father’s anniversary. How can she possibly imagine the girl would want a party? ‘No,’ Mo replies evenly. ‘She’s not inclined to celebrate today.’ Putting just enough emphasis on the final word.

Isobel flushes a delicate pink. ‘No, of course not,’ she says quickly. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

Mo makes no response, begins buttoning her jacket.

‘Chilly, isn’t it?’ Isobel goes on, indicating her glass of wine with a small forced laugh. ‘Thought it might warm me up.’

Of course she did. Far more chance of a glass of red putting the roses back in your cheeks than, say, a cup of hot coffee. ‘I won’t keep you,’ Mo says. ‘Enjoy your drink.’
And whatever tomfoolery you’re up to
.

‘Yes, goodbye then …’

And still she hasn’t remembered Mo’s name: bet she’s kicking herself with those fancy boots. As Mo leaves the restaurant and heads left for the park she passes a young woman, still a teenager by the look of her, cradling a tiny baby. Catching a glimpse of his infant face – full pursed lips, pale pink knob of a nose, unafraid moist blue eyes – Mo recalls the sheer joy she felt when Finn was handed to her for the first time, parcelled up too neatly in a thin blue crocheted blanket.

She remembers unwrapping him, gazing down at the tiny perfect creature she and Leo had created. She remembers the miracle of Leo’s eyes looking back at her, the Darling genes being carried on through their firstborn son.

She wanted more babies, of course she did. She wanted to fill
their tiny place with children, but Finn was the only one she got to hold in her arms. On five more occasions she conceived, and one after another they slipped from her hostile womb before their time. Five tiny lost ghosts, each one adding another layer to her rage, each one making her sicker with loneliness. Sharpening her tongue, hardening her heart, pulling all the softness out of her.

But whenever the anger and heartbreak threatened to overpower her, she would remind herself that she had Leo and Finn; she had a lot more than some women. Her little family brought her happiness, undoubtedly it did, even if it was a more brittle joy than it might otherwise have been.

And when Finn met and married Susan, and Una became part of their lives, Mo found herself torn. Finn’s choice of wife, it had to be said, dismayed her initially: why couldn’t he have found someone less … tainted? And while of course Susan turned out to be a perfectly adequate wife, and while it was certainly pleasant to have a child about the place again – Una was a personable little creature, despite her inauspicious start – what Mo hungered for was her own flesh-and-blood grandchild, a baby who would truly belong to Finn.

It would happen. She just had to be patient. And as she waited to become a grandmother she found herself smiling again at babies in buggies, like she used to when she was a young bride. She watched Finn’s face for news each time he came to visit her and Leo, impatient for the small, satisfying weight of a newborn in her arms again. She’d turned sixty the January after his wedding; most women that age had at least a couple of grandchildren – but months turned into years, and no announcement was made.

In time Mo had to adjust her expectations and remind herself, once again, to be content with what she’d been given. She and Leo did their bit with Una, helped out with the babysitting, turned up for the birthday parties. Life shifted track, and eventually found its new momentum, and turned them into a family of sorts.

And in due course, as is the way in life, contentment morphed once again into tragedy. Susan died shortly before Una’s seventh birthday – and later that terrible week, the discovery by Mo of Leo’s wallet in the fridge marked the beginning of his decline.

The months that followed were heartbreaking in the extreme. While Finn was struggling to come to terms with his bereavement, Leo was slipping away from Mo like her lost babies; almost every day she saw fresh evidence of his crumbling mind, and she was gripped once again by rage and terror and helplessness. She felt pulled in every direction, doing what she could for Finn and Una, needing also to tend her husband.

She had plenty of energy though, and being busy was therapy in itself. She kept a grip on the accounts in the shop, looked after Una when school finished, cared as best she could for her disappearing husband. She even had Finn and Una around to dinner several times a week – as easy to cook for four as for two, and they all had to eat, regardless of whatever else was happening. They managed, after a fashion.

But time continued its usual relentless march. Within two years Leo’s disintegration was complete, and he was entirely lost to them. If they’d been close before, she and Finn became closer as they supported one another through the aftermath
of this loss and inched together towards a fresh, sadder equilibrium.

Despite her grief, Mo forced herself to remain as indispensable to Finn as she could, looking ahead to the time when she would no longer be able to manage on her own, and he would take her in to live with him, Una by then presumably having left to live her own life. As long as she and Finn had each other, they’d cope with anything.

And then Daphne had come along.

Mo recalls the day Finn limped into the bicycle shop with a buckled front wheel, a bloody nose and a face full of cuts.
I’m grand
, he insisted, as she clucked around him.
She didn’t mean it, it’s easily done
– but Mo was furious. Pure carelessness, some featherheaded driver not bothering to look behind her before she swung her door open. Easily done, maybe – but just as easily avoided if you had an ounce of wit about you.

So when Daphne showed up the following day – bringing a cake, if you please, as if that made everything all right – Mo was strongly tempted to give her a piece of her mind. Would have too, if Finn hadn’t appeared with his ruined face. He opened the box, all smiles, said as long as she’d gone to the trouble of making him a cake he’d better introduce himself – and, of course, Mo was introduced too, so she’d had to be civil.

They’d already taken to one another: that very first day Mo could see it in their faces, in the soft smiles they gave to one another. Daphne was a lot younger than him – sixteen years younger, it turned out – but that didn’t seem to bother either of them. Finn walked her to the door that first day and they stood talking on the path outside for several minutes. Out of earshot,
none of their conversation reaching Mo, but she’d had a fair idea that another meeting was being arranged and of course she was right.

It wasn’t long before Finn was rushing off to meet her at lunchtime, leaving Mo to eat her sandwich alone in the back room. They went out in the evenings a bit too, with Una dropped around to Mo’s house or Mo making her way to Finn’s to babysit.

The more they got to know one another, the happier Finn became, and while of course Mo wanted him to be happy – of
course
she did – she found it hard to warm to Daphne. Not Daphne exactly, she was harmless enough once you got to know her, but the
idea
of her.

Everything had changed when she’d come on the scene. Finn didn’t need Mo anymore; that was the stark truth of it. Daphne took him away from her; that was the ugly truth of it. Oh, she knew she shouldn’t let it get to her – she was still his mother; there was nothing Daphne, or anyone else, could do about
that
– but she couldn’t help feeling resentful.

When they told her within six months of their meeting that they were getting married, she genuinely tried to look on the positive side, tried to focus on the fact that it was a second chance for Finn, another chance to hold his own child in his arms – but all she could see was him being snatched out of her reach; all she could see was the future she’d envisaged being wiped away.

Of course she went along with it; she didn’t have much choice. She made the best of it, wished them well, bought a hat (second-hand) and clapped along with the others when the
priest pronounced them man and wife. Then she sat back and waited for Daphne at least to provide her with a grandchild.

There was no reason why it shouldn’t happen. Daphne was a young woman, still in the prime of her childbearing years. Surely it was only a matter of time – but once again Mo’s hopes were to come to nothing. She watched the months go by with increasing frustration, each one bringing no good news at all.

Daphne had her career, that was it. Despite her rush to the altar, she was in no hurry to have babies, and she must have persuaded Finn to wait a few more years.

But of course he hadn’t had a few more years. When he died, all Mo’s hopes died with him. And it was Daphne who had stolen him away, who had claimed him as hers for his last few precious years on earth, and given Mo nothing at all in return.

She tries not to dwell on it – what use are regrets, what good will come of grudges? – but sometimes it’s all she can do to be civil to her daughter-in-law.

She reaches the park and turns in through the gate. She walks slowly along the path until she reaches the lake. The water is slate grey, the swans huddled in a mass by the little island in the centre. Not too many people around, not exactly strolling-in-the-park weather, and today Mo is glad of the solitude.

She sits on a bench and unwraps her cheese and tomato sandwich – but at the first bite her appetite deserts her, and she feeds most of it to the swans that glide across at the sight of the bread floating on the water. She watches them bumping gently together, long necks curving, tail feathers twitching, heads swooping towards the food – descendants, she imagines, of
the ones that lived here when she and Leo strolled past, newly engaged and then newly married.

She gets to her feet, brushing crumbs from her lap. She’ll do the cemetery, then head home. Her knees ache in the cold: they’ve been at her all morning. ‘You’re doing too much,’ her doctor tells her. ‘Slow down, take it easy.’ But she’s never been one to take things easy, and she’s not about to start now. Always better to keep busy; always safer to keep busy.

The walk from the park to the cemetery takes her forty-five minutes: when she was younger she’d have done it in thirty, no bother. The faster the years are slipping by, the slower she’s becoming.

The sky darkens: she wonders how long it will be before the heavens open. She never brings an umbrella – would only lose it – but she keeps a plastic rain bonnet in her pocket in case she’s caught. She’ll take the bus home afterwards: enough walking done today.

There are flowers on Finn’s grave. Yellow roses; cost a bit by the look of them. No card that she can see, but it must have been Daphne. She must have been in already. Mo should have brought flowers, never thought of it. Never thought beyond coming to say hello to him.

She rests a hip against his headstone. ‘Still here, my darling,’ she tells him. ‘Still barging my way along, upsetting everyone. Nothing much has changed. Still miss you,’ she says, ‘as much as ever. Still wish you were here, that’ll never change.’

There’s nobody around; it’s as deserted as the park was. Bleak here always, a wind whistling just now past the gravestones. She rubs her arms, trying to coax some heat into
her, the padded jacket not nearly warm enough despite the cashmere layer beneath it. She’ll wear her good coat tonight – it’s like a blanket.

She shifts her weight from hip to hip. ‘Getting old,’ she says to him. ‘Few aches and pains, not as much energy as before. Keeping busy, though. Not giving up, not till I have to. Three mornings a week at the charity shop, same old few coming in. Not exactly a laugh a minute, but it’s something.’

She traces the shapes of the letters hewn into the stone. Hard to believe poor Susan is dead over ten years. Time rushing onwards, stopping for nobody.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she tells Finn, ‘about the bicycle shop. It’s time something was done. I’m ashamed we’ve let it go this long. It’s just … I couldn’t face it up to now, couldn’t face going in and not seeing—’