Mothers & Daughters (33 page)

CHAPTER 26

Photograph 632, Album Five

Location: Carol's sofa

Taken by: Laverne

Subject: baby Matty, swaddled like a papoose, lying across Carol's lap with his eyes closed in blissful sleep. Everyone is sagging with relief because the marathon crying session's finally over. ‘You've certainly got the magic touch, Carol,' Laverne says as she squints through the viewfinder. ‘Oh yes, Grandma knows best,' says Dorothy Wynne
.

At the edge of the shot you can see Jaz's hand reaching across to reclaim him
.

When the call came next day it was David, not Ian.

‘What was his reaction?' I asked fearfully.

‘I need to see you, to explain,' he said. ‘Are you in this afternoon?'

‘Helping at the County Show. Akela's dad's been rushed into hospital, and they're an adult short to oversee the hot drinks.'

‘And you can't get out of it?'

‘I promised, they're expecting me.'

‘I'll see you there, then.'

Which is why he found me with my ear against a tea urn, trying to listen for sounds of bubbling. ‘I don't know whether this is working,' I explained. ‘How long do you think it takes to boil something this size?'

David touched the side lightly with his fingertips. ‘When did you switch it on?'

‘Half an hour ago.'

‘Should be on the way by now.'

‘That's what I thought.'

Boys in green sweatshirts buzzed around the tables shaking out paper cloths, setting down sugar bowls, unstacking chairs in a scene of cheery industry.

‘And the generator's working?' David was saying.

‘Definitely. Can't you hear it?'

He left the urn and followed the lead to the back of the tent while I made up two big containers of orange squash. A minute later he was back.

‘I've pressed the re-set button. It should be fine now,' he said. ‘Is there anything else I can do to speed things up here? When can you get away?'

‘Soon as Dove gets here, but she was having a replacement windscreen fitted this morning so she can't come till that's finished.'

‘It really is all go, isn't it?'

‘Chaos in every area.' And I thought of the clearing I'd been doing at two that morning, unable to sleep and so turning out more of the accumulated junk of the last eight years.

Charlie Blunt appeared at my elbow with a column of shrink-wrapped plastic cups he couldn't open. While I was wrestling with that, two Cubs larking about burst a full bag of sugar over the grass.

‘I'll go and have a wander,' said David, ‘come back when
you're less rushed. You need to give your full attention to what I've got to tell you.'

As he walked away, I felt the panic begin to unstring me again.

He was waiting by the birds of prey tent opposite. I came up by his side, and we watched a falconer trying to coax a buzzard off his glove and onto a perch. The bird kept baulking and flapping its wings, but the man persisted until at last the buzzard settled where he wanted it. Then it sat, swivelling its head in a way that made me feel ashamed for looking.

‘Ian's making an appointment with a solicitor first thing,' said David. ‘I think it's time. I feel that if she'd had any intention of getting back with him, she'd have been in contact.'

‘We don't know that for sure.'

‘Some men would have been to the police by now.'

‘Ian wouldn't do that.'

‘He's talked about it. I've told him to wait.'

I couldn't help marvelling once again at the level of influence David held over his son.

‘But if the situation carries on much longer, Carol—'

‘I know.'

‘So he'll get an application for contact in place, and the moment Jasmine reappears, we can start it moving through the courts.'

What if she still blocks him? I was thinking. But David was ahead of me.

‘If the application's approved,' he went on, ‘and I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be, then she'll have to comply. Breaking the terms of a contact order can be serious. Ultimately, you can go to prison for it.'

‘Oh my God.'

‘I don't mean to frighten you, I'm just saying, that's the law.
Fathers' rights. Ian's rights.' He patted my shoulder in what I assumed was an attempt to reassure.

‘I wish she'd just come home!' I burst out.

Some of the birds shifted on their perches, talons flexing nervously.

‘She'll have to, sooner or later. There's too much needs attention. Her books, her work, Ian says half her clothes are still in the wardrobe. There are people she'd need to notify, health visitors and such. Even if you don't know exactly where she is right now, Carol, she hasn't vanished into the ether.'

‘She'd leave clothes, she wouldn't be bothered about coming back for them. Not if she's decided to keep away.'

‘I agree if she was on her own she might be able to melt into the crowds, but she's got Matty with her. He has no passport, he'll need registering with a doctor if she settles for any length of time. We know Jasmine's car registration. When her savings run out she'll have to start using cash machines, and then we can check the joint bank statements.' David counted off each point on his fingers. ‘It might take a little while, but we'd find her.'

He took my arm and began to lead me back from the pen, away from the tents and people, towards the boundary of the field. As we drew near the hawthorn hedge he said, ‘And look at it this way, Carol: once a proper framework's in place, it'll be easier for them to talk to each other.'

‘Jaz hates being told what to do, though.'

‘It wouldn't be a case of that. I'm talking about a formal dialogue, Jasmine working with a solicitor to draw up terms and responses she approves.'

‘So the marriage is over.'

His pause told me all I needed to know.

‘But even if they divorce, they can still work as a team for Matty. I believe Jasmine will do that, when it comes to the crunch. Don't you?'

‘I want to say yes.'

Soon the showground would be open. Marshalls in fluorescent jackets stalked between the stands, reeled out cables, consulted clipboards, spoke into two-way radios. The public would stream in: hundreds of families enjoying a sunny day, with no idea how lucky they were.

‘There's one thing I need to ask you,' I went on. ‘You know what you said once, about me being like the postman or the butcher?'

David looked puzzled.

‘You said,' I went on, ‘that if I tried to get access to Matty, I'd have no chance because I had no legal rights. Was that it, or did I misunderstand? Because I was thinking, maybe
I
could apply for a contact order as well, if necessary.'

He was looking puzzled. ‘You? A contact order?'

‘She was pretty cross with me before she went.'

‘Not so cross she'd block you from seeing Matty.'

I'm never letting you near him again
, I heard her say.
You just can't be trusted, can you
? ‘I only want to make sure where I stand.'

‘What exactly did she say to you, Carol? Did she say she wouldn't let you see him?'

Over the rustling of the trees I could hear the megaphone squawking a way off, and someone playing ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth'. I said, ‘She came out with a lot of things, the way you do when you've had a shock. When she comes home, we can talk it through. But I thought it was as well to know the legal position. That's all.'

We began to walk along the edge of the field. It felt pleasant to match his pace, to be physically close to someone bigger and stronger than myself, who smelled of good aftershave and who knew where he was going.

‘A couple of years back,' he said, ‘I was on a train to
London. There was a lad, a youth, swearing into his phone, legs sprawling out in the aisle so everyone who went past had to step over them. The carriage was packed and the language wasn't nice. No one said anything for a while; you know what people are like. But then he started playing thumping music with offensive lyrics, very aggressive. An elderly man in the seat behind him stood up, looked over and asked him politely to turn it down or put his headphones on. The boy ignored him, so the man's friend, also in his sixties or seventies, I'd guess, stood up and repeated the request. This time, the response was a volley of abuse and the volume cranked up.'

‘What did you do?' I was waiting for some tale of heroism on his part: how David, the voice of confident reason, saved the day.

‘Nothing, to my shame. The boy was a few rows down from me, and I was busy working on my laptop. I suppose I decided it wasn't my problem.'

‘Well,' I said, ‘people get knifed for interfering these days. So what happened?'

‘The two old men started singing.'

‘Singing?'

‘That's right. I hadn't realised before, but they were part of a group, some choir or other. When I looked properly, the carriage was full of white-haired men in blue blazers – on their way to a performance, I assume, or back from one. These two struck up with “Bye Bye Blackbird”, and within a few bars there were twenty, thirty doing all the descants. It was loud, too.
A capella
can be deafening at close quarters. They completely drowned out the boy. By the time they'd got to the third verse, he'd gathered his stuff together and stomped off to another section of the train. We never saw him for the rest of the journey.'

As David had been speaking, I was seeing it unfold, watching the delighted expressions spread from seat to seat, hearing
the swelling chords, feeling the buzz that comes from being united. ‘Oh, I love that song. My dad used to sing it when he was working in the garden.'

‘After they'd finished, everyone broke into a round of applause, so they launched into “The Black Hills of Dakota”, and then “If I Had a Hammer”. Other passengers were joining in. The whole atmosphere was like a carnival. I've never forgotten it.' David was staring into the middle distance thoughtfully. ‘The shift in who controlled that carriage was amazing.'

‘And?'

‘It taught me a lesson. I suppose what I'm coming round to is that you mustn't ever think you're powerless. You should never sit back and assume there's no hope. If it comes to it that you do need to fight for Matty, I'll be right behind you; we'll work together, and whatever's ahead, we'll give it our best shot. Yes?'

The gates ahead of us had opened and people were streaming onto the field.

‘Do you want to know something terrible?' I said. ‘There are moments I think I hate my own daughter. She was such a lovely baby, I had control of her then. I suppose you think I'm awful for saying that.'

‘Not awful, just honest.'

‘Does it all boil down to power, in the end? All the relationships we ever have, is that what they're about?'

‘You need a drink,' he said. ‘So do I. Let's go find one.'

‘Life is a Roller Coaster' sang the Tannoy as we picked our way forward.

I shouldn't have worn a skirt and mules, or I should have chosen a different place to go walking. Last time I'd been down the public footpath by the old railway bridge had been with
Matty, early spring, when the grass and weeds were still short. We'd watched a jackdaw pulling a tuft of wool off barbed wire, and Matty had found a pile of ash from a bonfire and paddled around in it till his shoes went grey.

Now, coming towards the end of summer, the track was waist-high nettles and sticky burr and thistles, and my calves and shins were striped with welts. It was madness to keep going, but I did, stamping down the taller stalks so they snapped and lay prone. Every one of them felt my wrath. Ten times I'd tried phoning Jaz this evening, all the while knowing I'd get the same recorded message, but unable to stop myself.

‘The difference is,' David had explained, ‘Ian's name is on the birth certificate. Yours isn't. It's a crucial difference, in law.'

‘But all the hundreds of hours I've spent with Matty, all the love I've given him. That counts for nothing?'

I didn't believe him, but afterwards he'd helped me Google the facts. Thirteen and a half million grandparents there were in the UK, providing a massive 60 per cent of all the country's childcare. Without our input, the job market would collapse and families go under, lose their houses, fall apart. If grandparents ever chose to go on strike, there'd be economic crisis.

And that was only looking at cold finance. What about the emotional stability we gave our grandchildren? The continuous sense of who they were, where they'd come from? We were the ones with time to spend, and experience. We held the family stories. We were the ones who passed on the great secrets of their parents' youth: that their mum was once a naughty girl, or their dad a frightened little boy. It was from us the very young often had their first exposure to disability, learning how to work round a physical restriction with practical good humour.

The love we gave was different, too: less judgemental, unclouded. Some of us had got it wrong with our own kids, but
we knew the way forward now and were determined to make good. All this we did willingly and for free.

Yet if Jaz did ban me from seeing Matty, I wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Theoretically, as David said, I could try for a contact order, but to do that I'd first have to approach the court and request permission to apply for one. Like having to ask for a key to a cupboard in which was locked the key to your door. Throughout the legal proceedings, the onus would be on me to prove I had a meaningful relationship with my grandson (even though I worked five days a week and only had him in my spare time and had once nearly drowned him). Matty, my very best advocate, would be able to contribute nothing.