Mothers & Daughters (15 page)

‘I do think children need a father figure.'

‘Glad to hear you say so.'

‘It's true. Mine had more to do with bringing me up than my mother ever did.'

‘How was that? Was she ill?'

‘No, just nowty. You know, peevish, perpetually bad-tempered. Don't get me wrong, she did all the practical side, the washing and the meals. But it was Dad who made the time. He was marvellous with Jaz when she was little. Nowadays it's obviously different, because of his—'

‘Watch out, gas masks at the ready, folks.' Ian was standing in the doorway swinging a nappy sack on his finger. ‘Where do you want this, Carol?'

‘Straight outside, black bin. Thanks.'

When he'd gone, David said, ‘How often do you see your father?'

‘I usually go Sunday mornings. The year he first went into Willowbrook I visited most evenings, but as time went on he got, I don't know, lost in himself. And it's hard to sit there, watching him decline.'

‘I imagine it is.'

‘So now it's once a week, and my evenings are spent at the pool or the Scout hut or the gym.'

‘Ah, yes, your women's gym.' He raised his eyebrows. ‘And what goes on there?'

‘What do you think goes on? We do circuits—'

‘Just women?'

‘Just women.'

‘I couldn't join, then?'

‘I wouldn't have thought so.'

‘That's discrimination.'

‘Not really. It's not as though you're denied the opportunity to exercise somewhere else. Anyway, if you were prepared to stick on a pink leotard, we might have you.'

The back door flew open and Ian blundered in. ‘I don't know what that child's been eating,' he complained, positioning himself at the sink and squirting soap into his palm. ‘You could strip paint with the fumes.'

From the next room we could hear the sound of engine clashing with engine.

‘The joys of fatherhood,' I nearly said. But just in time I realised I hadn't the confidence to make that sort of joke. We weren't on those terms any longer, probably never would be again.

Something else he'd fractured with his infidelity.

CHAPTER 12

Photograph: newspaper clipping, loose between the pages of
The Marvellous Stories of Jesus
from the bureau, Sunnybank

Location: Tannerside church hall

Taken by: the
Wigan Observer

Subject: Carol, aged about ten, sits with her mother and six other women at a decorator's table covered in 1,200 palm crosses. Every single one has been hand-made; Carol thinks she could construct a palm cross in her sleep. The hallway at Pincroft has been full of bundles of unsplit reeds that need separating, trimming and folding to make a loopy, top-heavy crucifix. Palm reeds dry your fingers and leave the skin powdery, a sensation Carol hates, though it's satisfying to watch the pile of squashy crosses grow. She likes to arrange them by size, compare the biggest with the smallest. ‘Why can't we ask people to keep the ones they had last year?' she enquires of her mother. ‘Because you can't,' snaps Frieda. ‘Because it's about renewal,' explains the vicar. Carol's crosses will end up in hospices and old folk's homes, as well as with parishioners like bow-legged Mrs Greenhalgh. For the next twelve months those wispy tokens will be tucked behind calendars or picture-frames,
pressed into Bibles, or drawing-pinned to chimney-breasts. It's a pleasing thought
.

Meanwhile Frieda surveys the table, her Passiontide labours complete, and hums to herself. Lent's the time of year she likes best, that period of contemplation and denial before the brashness of Easter. Her favourite hymns deal with blood, thorns, decay, scaffolds, toil, chariots of wrath, encircling gloom and Herod
.

It occurs to Carol that her mother would probably like a full-size cross of her own; would bang in three of the nails herself
.

After David and Ian had gone, I put Matty down for his nap, cleared away the train track, then went and lay on my own bed for a while. The house felt very empty. It reminded me of that first week Jaz left for Leeds and how I'd kept every radio in the house turned on, singing along to the music, answering the presenters back. Not that I ever saw a huge amount of Jaz in those days, even when she lived in the bedroom next door to mine. I'd hear her music, though, and smell her incense; her clothes were in the washing basket and her little pots in the fridge. All those years of nagging people to clear up after themselves, and suddenly tidiness equalled absence. The coat hooks by the front door laid bare after a lifetime undercover, the newel post naked at last. I was able to stand in my own hallway and hear the tap dripping in the kitchen, Laverne's wind chimes on the back porch, my own breath.

And without warning, my memory flicked to Phil, and the week of his leaving. I could see him now, standing in the kitchen with his car keys in his hand, while his suitcases waited at the bottom of the stairs.
Please, I'm so sorry. Can we not talk it through one more time?
Me, still in my slippers,
commanding him from my threshold with the towering strength of the righteous.

He'd gone straight from me to Penny, and he'd been there ever since. Not so sorry after all, then.

A glow of outrage started up in my chest as I remembered snippets from afterwards: the call from the ironmongers telling me my wallpaper was in, when in fact Phil had placed the order for Penny; replying to all the Phil-and-Carol Christmas cards that year; discovering Mrs Wynne had told everyone it was Phil who'd left me. The wearying, wearying round of explanation, for months afterwards. Fielding other people's embarrassment and, worse, their pity.

Damn him to hell and back. Eight years gone, and he still had the ability to wind me up.

On the bedside table Matty's monitor made a rustling sound, and over the airwaves I heard him sigh. Then more silence.

I slowed my breathing deliberately, relaxed my muscles, and found myself wondering about David's not-girlfriend. At first I could only conjure up Jacky, complete with wedding hat. But then I thought of that advert for Sandals holiday resorts, and the mature couple who run through the waves, and I thought, Yes, that'll be her. Superior, upgraded, glossy. The sort of woman you'd never find travelling with a coachload of Beavers, singing ‘A sailor went to sea sea sea'.

There it came again: Phil's face as I shut the door on him – his face the first time I asked him who Penny was – his face as Jaz got in the car to go to Nat's for a sleepover and I turned to him on the doorstep and said, ‘We need to talk.'

Then the bell rang for real, and Matty woke and started crying and I ran to get him and staggered downstairs with my hair still messed up from the pillow and it was the man himself, bloody Phil at the bloody door.

We stood and stared at each other.

‘You!' I said.

‘I've got your lawnmower,' he said. ‘What? What have I done now?'

I let him in anyway.

When he'd carried the lawnmower through to the shed he stood for a while on the patio, considering. Meanwhile I strapped Matty into his high chair, warmed a bowl of mash and mince and watched through the kitchen window as my ex-husband squatted down by the pond and poked at the reeds, got to his feet, strolled to the fence and peered into Laverne's garden. I was on the verge of going out to ask what the hell he thought he was doing when he started back up the path. But even then he seemed to be studying the paving slabs as he went, pausing to nudge with his toe at some unevenness, pressing down a bit of moss further on.

Finally he reached the back door.

‘When you've quite finished,' I said.

‘You've a slate missing off your roof.'

‘Yes,' I said, though it was news to me.

‘By the chimney.'

‘I know.'

‘Best get it seen to while the weather's fine.' He saw my expression. ‘All right, I'm only trying to be helpful.'

‘If you want to help, you can supervise your grandson while I clear away.'

‘Okey-dokey.' He settled himself at the table, grinning. I passed over the bowl and Phil set it down on the tray. ‘Chowtime, old chap.'

Matty looked at him indifferently, then picked up his spoon and began to bite the handle end.

‘And here's his drink,' I said, holding out the beaker.

‘Lucky Matty.' Phil looked hopefully in the direction of the kettle, but I ignored him.

‘Don't let him bang it around or the lid comes off.'

‘No, Miss.'

‘And pull his bib back down, will you? It's all round his throat.' I turned away and began to tidy round the sink.

‘So,' I heard him say, ‘everything all right with you?'

‘As much as it can be,' I said. Stupid question.

Matty gave a little yelp that turned into a giggle. When I looked round, Phil was pulling some kind of comedy face. Dinner sat untouched.

‘Oops,' he said. ‘Come on, Matt, let's get this show on the road.' He guided the spoon into the food and loaded it up.

‘Matty can do that himself. I just need you to supervise.' I went back to wiping down the drainer.

‘Any sign of Jaz and Ian getting themselves sorted?'

‘Not yet.'

Just for a second I imagined telling him exactly who'd been here an hour before, what secret deals I'd been working.

‘Oh well, probably best leave them to it. They're adults.'

‘Yes.'

‘But you're OK in yourself?'

‘Why wouldn't I be?'

‘Jesus, Carol, I'm only asking.'

‘Watch your language,' I said. ‘Little pitchers, big ears.'

The waggling zip pull on Phil's pocket had caught Matty's attention and he'd stopped eating. I put my dishcloth down, ready to take over.

‘It's all right, I can manage,' said Phil. ‘Come on, lad, chop chop.'

When he failed to get any reaction, he took the spoon himself and started making energetic scooping movements with it. Any minute now, I thought, he's going to pretend to eat it
himself. And yes, there he was, smacking his lips half an inch above the spoon end with the hyperactive glee of a children's entertainer.

‘Marcel Marceau would be proud.'

‘I've got his interest, though.' Without warning Phil opened his mouth wide, bared his teeth, and lunged at the bowl, snapping his jaws. ‘Mr Crocodile's after your stew.'

‘He doesn't like it. Phil, look, you're frightening him.'

‘Rubbish. He's laughing.'

‘That's fear.'

As if to make some sort of statement, Matty took the spoon back and dropped it over the side.

‘I'll get it,' said Phil. He bent down, reached in between the metal legs of the high chair, got a purchase on the smeary spoon handle, and retreated. Only, in levering himself back up again, he caught the tray with his shoulder and tipped it up. The bowl of cold mash slid backwards, caught against the lip, flipped up and emptied itself down Matty's front, before slipping off his lap and bouncing onto the lino.

‘Oh, for
goodness
sake.'

‘Give us a break, Carol. I'm doing my best.'

That's half the trouble, I nearly said. Even your best is bloody useless.

I picked up the roll of kitchen towel and started to unravel it.
You're just not comfortable in the role of Grandad, are you?
went my head.
Like you weren't comfortable in the role of Dad
.

‘I'll get Matty down for you, shall I?'

‘No. Leave him there till I've wiped this mess off the floor. And mind your feet; you're treading in it.'

You were nervous of Jaz
, I told him silently,
from the word go, and the bigger she got, the worse it became. And your approach to nerves is to go into joker mode, whether it's appropriate or not. I can still remember passing that girl in the hall at one of Jaz's birthday
parties, and her saying, ‘Mr Morgan's weird.' And I'd gone in and there you were, prancing round the table, wearing false teeth made out of orange peel and a party ring as a monocle. The only people laughing were the mums
.

The stew had splashed further than I could have imagined. There was a great streak of it up the cupboard door below the sink, and blobs of pale mash across the tiles as far as the cooker.

And don't get me started on Mr Sock; you never knew when a joke was over. Asking her friends to park their broomsticks by the door, calling Natalie ‘Miss Sunshine' to her face. That time Nat turned up crying and you asked if it was because she'd bought the wrong shade of nail polish again. Trust me, they didn't see the funny side. No one ‘lightened up'
.

Phil had sat down again, and Matty was throwing himself from side to side with a violence that made me glad the high chair had wide legs. I placed the bowl in the sink and turned on the tap. ‘Get some spaghetti hoops out of the cupboard, will you, while I sponge his trousers. We'll start again.'

For a few minutes it was almost like old times, buzzing about the kitchen, getting in each other's way. Phil always did want to open the cutlery drawer at the exact same moment I was reaching over it to the toaster. But now he was asking questions all the time: ‘The whole tin? Is a teaspoon OK? Does his cup need a wipe?' Then, as I was chopping toast into strips, he said, ‘Penny's not been well.'

I tried not to pause, to keep the knife going while I considered how on earth to respond. Your ex-husband confides that his new partner is feeling under the weather. Do you a) punch the air and say S
erves the bitch right!
b) give him the long, cool look of someone who doesn't give a damn, or c) express polite sympathy. I carried on chopping, even though the toast fingers were now of julienne dimensions. What did he mean, ‘not well'? Were we talking a nasty cold, or cancer? If I stood here
biting the inside of my cheek and said absolutely nothing, would he elaborate?