Daughters-in-Law (38 page)

Rachel stood there for a minute or two, not making any attempt to move. And then she said with an effort, “If no one has rung by tomorrow night, by Sunday night, can I ring then?”

But Ralph came. They were clearing up a desultory lunch that had taken place with the welcome companionship of the Sunday newspapers when they heard wheels on the gravel outside.

“Who—?”

Rachel flung down the tea towel she was holding and made as if to dart for the door.

“Wait,” Anthony said.

“But—”

“Wait!”

She paused, almost quivering, like a dog thwarted of chasing after something unimaginably tempting.

“Whoever it is,” Anthony said, “we can see them here.”

It was Ralph. He was thinner than when they had last seen him, a month ago, and he had dark circles under his eyes, but he had an air of energy they hadn’t seen in him in ages. Beside him, Anthony could feel Rachel collect herself. She reached up to kiss Ralph’s cheek.

“My goodness, darling,” she said in an entirely normal voice, “a haircut.”

Ralph grinned. He lifted one foot towards her.

“And a shoeshine—”

Anthony said, not smiling, just looking straight at Ralph, “Where are the children?”

“At home.”

“In Aldeburgh?”

“Of course,” Ralph said. “Where else?”

“And . . . and Petra?”

“With them. Where else would
she
be?”

Rachel turned towards the table.

“Sit down. Sit down, and I’ll make some coffee.”

“Not for me, thanks,” Ralph said, “I’m rather pushed for time. I’m going back to London tonight.”

“Going back—”

“But we thought—”

Ralph said calmly, “I’ll be down next weekend. And the weekend after. Until we let the house.”

Rachel lowered herself carefully into a chair as if she had a bad back. She said faintly, “Let the house?”

Ralph took a chair opposite.

“Yes.”

Anthony leaned on the table.

“Could you explain—”

Ralph smiled at him. He seemed in a sunnier mood than Anthony could ever remember. He said, “Why else d’you think I’m here?”

“We don’t know,” Rachel said. She sounded close to tears again. “We don’t know anything—”

“You do,” Ralph said. “You do know. Luke rang you. Didn’t he?”

“But we don’t know
enough
—”

There was a small silence. Then Ralph said, “I’ll tell you.” Anthony straightened up and moved round the table to sit
next to Rachel. He had an instinct to take her hand, and a conflicting one to show no reaction whatsoever. So he sat there, his own hands clasped loosely on the table in front of him.

“Tell us.”

“We’re going to let the house for the winter,” Ralph said. “I’m going to be in London in the week, and back at weekends, till we’ve let it. Petra is going to see the agent in the morning. Then we’ll go to London for the winter. We’ll find somewhere near Luke and Charlotte, playgroups for the boys; Petra can work a bit in the cafés and places round Columbia Road. Then we’ll come back to Suffolk for the summer.”

Rachel said, “You’re . . . leaving Suffolk?”

“For the winter, Mum. It’s called a compromise.”

“So you and Petra—”

“None of your business, Mum,” Ralph said pleasantly.

“Can’t I even know if you’re no longer planning a
divorce
?” Rachel cried.

Ralph tipped his chair back. He said carelessly, “No. We’ve made this plan. We’ll try it. We’ll see if it works.”

“But when will we see the boys?”

“When you come to London.”

“London,” Rachel said disgustedly.

“You’ll have to learn to like it,” Ralph said. “You both will. We’ll all of us be there.”

Anthony said slowly, “But Petra . . . in London?”

“Sure,” Ralph said. “Why not? She’ll find her feet again.”

“Does . . . does she like this plan?”

Ralph looked directly at his father.

“She suggested it.”

“And—”

“And,” Ralph said, “Sigi suggested you come to London and stay with them. Regularly. You’ll want to, anyway, when the baby comes, won’t you?”

“Of course,” Anthony said. He glanced at Rachel. She was looking fixedly at the far end of the table, the place where Anthony always sat when the table was full, full of people, full of food and noise and activity.

She said, with just an edge of sarcasm in her voice, “And Charlotte? Did Charlotte have a message for me, too, as to how I might live my life in the future?”

“She sent her love,” Ralph said. “She sent it twice, actually.” He stood up. He said, looking down at his parents, “Petra would send hers, too, if she did that kind of thing. But she doesn’t. You know she doesn’t. She never has. But it doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel it. She feels a lot, in fact, she’s more honest than all of us in what she feels. True to herself.” He paused, and then he said, “We’ve got to learn to do things differently, both of us.” Then his gaze sharpened, and he said with emphasis, looking straight at his father, “Just as you and Mum have got to do. Differently. Okay?”

They sat there for a long time after he had gone, side by side at the table in the quiet kitchen. Various little village cries and calls filtered in from the outside, and a car or two went by, but inside the house it was like being under a bell jar, suspended out of time and the turning of the world. Anthony didn’t know how long they sat there, didn’t know if he was actually thinking or was just allowing his mind to float, unfettered, across what Ralph had said, and what he had implied. In either case, he was startled when Rachel said abruptly, “Well, I suppose I could revive the bed-and-breakfast idea.”

He stared at her.

“
What?
”

“You know,” Rachel said. “Ages ago. I thought I’d do bed-and-breakfast in the summer. It would mean tarting up upstairs a bit. The bathrooms are the complete reverse of state-of-the-art, whatever that means.”

“Could . . . could you face it?”

She turned to look at him.

“Oh yes. If I have to. And . . . and now, maybe I do?”

He leaned sideways, and kissed her cheek.

“Good girl.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m admiring you—”

“Well,” Rachel said, getting up, “go and admire me in the studio. I’m going to spread the stuff out on the table, and think. I’m going to think how to do whatever it is the boys want us to do.”

“Just like that?”

“No,” she said. She gave a little smiling grimace. “With difficulty.” And then she said, “And you can do a difficult thing too. You can get rid of those bird bones.”

But I can’t, Anthony thought now. I can’t and I shouldn’t. Getting rid of them has nothing to do with changing this stage of fatherhood; it has to do with something essential in me, something that makes me who I am. Ralph said Petra was true to herself. I don’t know if that means merely unaffected, or something deeper. But I am a painter of birds, in my true heart, and I need my bones.

It was full dusk now. There were oblongs of pale, filtered light from the high north windows, and smaller rectangles from the windows along the west wall, but the rest of the studio was softly dark, only the easel standing high above the surrounding bulky shapes of the furniture, like a crane on a building site. There was a board on the easel, on which Anthony had pinned a sheet of rough, handmade paper preparatory to drawing all the birds that came to the bird table that Rachel kept supplied outside the kitchen window, the robins and tits and dunnocks, even the occasional goldfinch, which he would draw in charcoal, then paint in watercolor, choosing poses that indicated
where each bird intended to move next. Maybe he would include a wren.
Troglodytes, troglodytes
, nine centimeters long, nine grams in weight, two broods a year in little dome-shaped nests made of moss. Wonderful.

He smiled up at the shelves where the bird bones still glimmered faintly in the gloom. There’d be the wren up there too, what there was of it. He went slowly across the room in the darkness, avoiding all obstacles out of familiarity, and laid his hand upon the doorknob. He looked back. It would all be there in the morning, dusty and disordered to all eyes but his own, which saw it, either in reality or in recollection, as a place of evolution and a place of promise.

He went slowly across the gravel to the house. A huge yellow September moon had hoisted itself among the trees behind the roof, and there was a little sharp edge to the air, a little bite, that was as invigorating as brushing one’s teeth. The kitchen window was a warm golden square, and through it he could see Rachel bending over a sea of brochures and folders on the kitchen table. He stood and watched her for a while, his wife, the woman he had married, yet not that woman, as he was not that long-ago man.

He opened the back door. A surge of warmth came out to greet him.

“Anthony?” Rachel called, not turning.

He closed the door behind him. He remembered Ralph.

“Who else?” he said.

J
OANNA
T
ROLLOPE
is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed bestselling contemporary novels. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire,
Britannia’s Daughters
, and, under the name of Caroline Harvey, a number of historical novels.

Joanna Trollope was born in Gloucestershire, and now lives in London. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Daughters-in-Law

Rachel Brinkley has devoted herself fiercely to her three sons and continues to do so now that they are all grown-up. But when her youngest, Luke, marries Charlotte, Rachel finds that her control begins to slip away. Charlotte and Rachel butt heads almost immediately, but when Rachel’s son Ralph discovers his wife’s affair, that quickly takes center stage. Even Edward, the eldest and most settled son, finds his marriage to Sigrid troubled by the family drama.

As these rifts rise to the surface, the Brinkley family is forced to find new loyalties and call old assumptions into question, while Rachel must find a way to preserve the relationships she holds most dear.

1. The novel opens with Anthony fixating on his soon-to-be daughter-in-law’s figure. How does this affect your opinion of him? Does it set any expectations for him as a character or for the book as a whole?

2. Early in the novel, Petra is regarded as the standard by which the other daughters-in-law are judged. Who suffers most from this comparison: Petra, Charlotte, or Sigrid?

3. The daughter-in-law relationship is traditionally more fraught than that of the son-in-law. Why do you think this tension exists? Whom did you identify with the most? The daughter-in-law or the mother characters? Why?

4. The novel shifts perspective many times. How do the varying viewpoints shape your reading experience? Did you like certain characters better than others? Would you have preferred more from a particular viewpoint?

5. How does the author avoid stereotyping the characters? How realistic are the ways in which the characters grow and change throughout the novel? How would you characterize Ralph as a father and husband in comparison to Edward and Luke?

6. Did you find yourself taking sides with any of the characters? Which incidents were the most polarizing? How did your sympathies for the characters shift throughout the novel? Did you understand Rachel’s outburst over Charlotte and Luke’s announcement? Why or why not? Was her reaction forgivable? How would you have responded if your mother or close family member acted similarly?

7. How large a role does proximity and distance play in the family relationships in
Daughters-in-Law
? Would Sigrid be frustrated with her own family if they were closer, as Edward argues? How large a role does distance play in your own family?

8. How did you react to Luke’s refusal of Marnie’s help? What would you have done if it were you?

9. How much of a role does obligation play in Petra’s relationship with Rachel and Anthony? With the rest of the family?

10. How understandable and/or forgivable were Petra’s actions regarding Steve? Is it an affair even if they never had sex?

11. Steve goes from being a source of comfort to Petra to being verbally abusive. Did you predict this shift? Were you surprised by their argument or by Petra’s response to his proposal?

12. Do you think there are any heroes or villains in the book? If so, who are they?

Daughters-in-Law
portrays women from several different generations, ranging from Rachel and Marnie to Petra and Charlotte. How did you go about finding their voices?

I suppose finding the voices of women of different generations is a function of the imagination. While I’m actually writing, I am describing a movie running in my head, complete with sound track, and I’m also conscious of inhabiting each head as a character speaks. So I suppose that what I’m doing is somehow
being
each person as I make them speak, irrespective of their age or gender.