Mothers & Daughters (42 page)

Bully for him, I thought. Saint Page. ‘What do you reckon to him?' Phil had asked me on the drive back. ‘Is he on the level or what?' ‘I think he is on the level,' I'd replied. That didn't mean I had to like him, though.

‘It was only to thank him again.'

‘I don't mind you discussing me, Mum.'

What's he got that I haven't
? I wanted to say.
How come you'll listen to him and not to me
? ‘I expect he confirmed you'd had a terrible upbringing and everything that had happened to you was my fault.'

Jaz shook her head. ‘He gave me a right bollocking, actually. In a nice way. He told me to grow up.'

‘Oh,' I said.

‘But he was fantastic with me. Not just letting me stay; more than that. The way he listens and just sort of suggests things subtly, so you can work out what you think without being hassled. Not telling you what to do, but, you know, guiding you. He's laid-back,
and
super-moral. It's difficult to explain. When I was at uni . . .'

‘What?'

‘He was very kind. He's been like a dad.'

‘You've got a dad.'

‘Yeah, right.' She pulled a sneery face.

‘You never give him a chance,' I heard myself say. ‘He cares a lot about you.'

Jaz raised her eyebrows, but she didn't say anything.

We reached the top of the High Street. ‘Where do we go from here?' I asked.

‘Down Overdale Road. It's near the Catholic church.'

A side of town I hadn't visited since the days of the divorce. This was the back of the library and the health centre, a row of Georgian buildings housing law firms and accountants. Makinson & Todd had been my solicitors. The brass plate was still up, and I wondered whether at this moment, a woman like me was sitting in Mr Todd's office, unpicking her marriage.

‘David cares about you too,' I added recklessly, as we crossed to the opposite pavement.

‘He can fuck off.'

‘Jaz, if it wasn't for his intervention, Ian would have had the police after you.'

She sighed and swapped the bag to her other hand.

You don't seem to realise what a bloody dangerous game you were playing, or how I had to fight to keep you out of trouble
, I wanted to shout at her. But before I could marshal the right words, she changed the subject.

‘You've been moving stuff round.'

‘Where?'

‘Your house.'

‘I've been having a clear-out.'

‘It's good, it looks bigger.'

‘It should do. I've been right through, taken eleven bags to the tip and five to the charity shop. There were still a load of your dad's car mags in the hall cupboard, plus all my mother's sewing patterns, balls and balls of dish-cloth yarn, parish magazines going back to the Seventies. Suddenly I have all this extra storage space. Just the shed to tackle. Although, I might leave that now.'

Now you're home, I meant.

We turned onto Overdale Road.

‘Tell you what, Mum: I wish I could go through my head like that and drag out all the bad memories. Sort through and
dump the rubbish. Why should I have to cart it round with me all my life?'

I guessed she was imagining Ian with the other woman, or recalling the night she found out, or the rows afterwards. Or maybe it was Tomasz she couldn't shake out of her mind, or Sam, or the boy who killed himself. Into my own consciousness came, unbidden, a memory of Dad standing in his living room, unable to tell me where he was and near to tears. I had no clever answers to offer my daughter.

Instead I said, ‘Ian must be glad to have Matty back.'

Something softened in her face. ‘Uh-huh.'

‘And Matty pleased to see his daddy.'

‘Yeah.'

‘He must have missed him so much.'

‘Don't push it, Mum,' she said, but without real heat. Then, ‘Here we are. This is it.'

We were standing outside a large cream and orange Edwardian villa. ‘Can we go in?'

‘The estate agent's due any time now. What do you reckon so far?'

‘Fine,' I said, trying not to look at the unloved square of lawn. ‘It's a quiet road. I can't imagine the Catholics get very rowdy.'

She put down my bag and leaned against the coping stones. ‘I meant to ask, are you free tomorrow afternoon?'

‘Yes. Why? Do you want me to go look at another flat with you?'

‘I need to see Grandad.'

To my shame, I almost said,
Why
? ‘He's no better, there's no change in him.'

‘I want to go anyway.'

‘Come round when you're ready, then.'

‘Should I bring Matty?'

I gave her a look, mock-despairing. ‘What on earth do you think I'm going to say to that, hey?'

At least I got a proper smile out of her.

The day was fine, sharp and bright, and, as if in response, Dad seemed on better form than I'd seen him for a while. He was up in his chair, shaved and dressed, apparently watching the birds on the feeder outside his window. He didn't look up when we came in, but he hasn't done for nearly two years now. I know the way things are with him, though it doesn't stop me hoping.

‘You're looking well,' I said, kissing his cheek. Jaz came in behind me with her changing bag in one hand and Matty's reins in the other, plus a carrier of toys and snacks to keep him entertained. I watched as she unpacked, laying out his Duplo first.

‘He likes the stones in the yucca pot,' I said, but this time Matty only glanced at the corner, and settled down in the middle of the floor.

Meanwhile Jaz drew out what I thought at first was a large black book, and propped it on the table: speakers for her iPod.

‘Are we having music?' I asked, with some slight anxiety. Jaz's tastes could be off-beat.

‘Uh-huh,' was all she said.

While she scrolled and fiddled with the cursor, I set to unfastening Matty's reins. He hardly registered my interference, so focused was he on separating two blocks. I thought, That's changed too. He wouldn't have been able to concentrate at that level three months ago. Then, out of the speakers, a ribbon of violin started, so pure it was like a pang of grief.

‘Bing Crosby,' said Jaz, ‘Pennies from Heaven.'

‘Oh, Jaz,' I said. Even Matty paused to listen for a few moments as Bing's low voice cut in over the orchestra.

‘Thought it might cheer Grandad up.'

Both of us shifted our chairs round so we were half-facing him, and I took his hand. His eyes stayed fixed on the feeder. ‘Matty's here,' I said. ‘And Jaz. Come to see you.'

‘Plus, I don't like it when it's too quiet,' she said.

‘Your generation, you need a soundtrack wherever you go.'

‘Silence does my head in after a bit. Doesn't it yours?'

‘When you live on your own, you have to make friends with silence. I rather like it.' Bash bash, went Matty. ‘Although, when he was away . . .'

The music played on, sweetly.

‘I've been thinking,' said Jaz, ‘about when I was little. Did you know, Nick was brought up by his grandparents? His mum and dad were missionaries. Like Victorians or something. And where they were working wasn't always safe, so they left him with his mother's parents, which was fine with him because he loved it there. He says that family is the most important thing there is, after God. Family's a gift. People don't appreciate what they have.'

Matty was gathering his blocks together, corralling them into a pile in the centre of the carpet.

Jaz said, ‘I think I can understand now what you were trying to do, Mum. When you let Ian see Matty behind my back.'

A fearful hope surged inside my chest. ‘Can you?'

‘I told Nick about it, and he said I hadn't thought it through. What might have happened if I'd shut Ian out completely, how he might have retaliated. The damage. To all of us. I couldn't see that.'

‘That's what I was worried about; I tried to tell you.'

‘I know. You still shouldn't have done it, but—'

‘And David. David was only ever trying to help.'

‘He's just a git.'

‘Why do you hate him so much, Jaz?'

‘Why do you
like
him so much, Mum?'

She held my gaze till I looked away.

Suddenly Dad cleared his throat and we both jumped. Bing was ‘Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ating the Positive', a track I knew was one of his all-time favourites.

‘Gosh, can you remember Grandad singing this in his shed?' I asked. Jaz still eyed me suspiciously, but I carried on. ‘It was a summer afternoon, probably a couple of years after Grandma died; you'd have been about eight. He was making some sort of rack for his beans, working with the door open because the day was hot, and you and I were on the lawn making daisy chains, except you couldn't because your nails were bitten to nothing and you couldn't split the stems. There'd be a burst of hammering, then a couple of lines, then more hammering. It made you laugh. And later on you were asking about the picture on the syrup tin he used to keep his nails in, and he told you the story of Samson killing the lion, and the bees making a nest in the carcase.'

‘And out of the strong came forth sweetness
. God, yes, I do remember that. I used to love going to Grandad's. He always did fun things. I was never in trouble at his house.' She was leaning over the arm of the chair, in a posture that reminded me of how she used to ask for a bedtime story. ‘I wish I could remember more from that time. You think you'll never forget something, or that it'll never end, and the next minute it's gone. Why do we let the good stuff slip away?'

‘That's why I take my photographs,' I said. ‘Pin down the past.'

Jaz closed her eyes. ‘Tell me about when I was little, Mum.'

‘What about it?'

‘Anything, really. I want to see if I can get it back again.'

So I told her, off the top of my head, some random memories: taking her when she was a toddler to Eileen's, and finding
her in the kitchen eating cat biscuits from the bowl; about Mojo hanging by his teeth off Phil's thumb; her first words, how she learned to swim in the sea at Weymouth, the llama in Paignton Zoo that spat down Eileen's coat, the time she made a Hallowe'en mask and accidentally cut a hole in the bedspread beneath. While my dad gazed out of the window, and Matty sorted and re-sorted his bricks, the past pulled up the past the way roots pull up soil.

In turn she told me about wetting her knickers once when we were on a picnic, and throwing them in a hedge. How she'd watched Phil pour Coke on next door's lawn, and how he'd sworn her to secrecy and given her five pounds to keep schtum. How she'd killed my lobivia cactus out of revenge because it had spiked her. She talked about seeing us in the audience at the school play, and how it had distracted her but she'd also been pleased we were there. She recounted a sledging session with Eileen, and how Nat had once tried to get her to bleach the ends of her hair with Toilet Duck.

Matty moved between us, sometimes offering Duplo to me, sometimes to his mum. At one point he dropped a piece and, in pursuing it, he bumped into Dad's knee. He might as well have walked into a table leg, and I ached for the acknowledgement that would never come: the freckled hand coming down to caress the curls, the friendly word.

‘Let's not leave Grandad out,' I said.

‘No.'

Jaz moved her chair again till it was very close, and spoke into his face. ‘Do you remember when you let me practise bandaging on you, Grandad? And I did your arm in a sling and I made you keep it on all through teatime?'

‘I didn't know about that,' I said.

‘Oh yeah. I wanted to do him up like a mummy, head to toe, but there wasn't enough bandage.'

‘Otherwise he'd probably have let you do it.'

‘And those pigeons,' she went on, speaking loudly as though he was deaf. ‘Do you remember taking me to see your friend's racing pigeons? We had to go down this long path between people's gardens and then there was a massive shed, and all this noise coming out. You said it sounded like a bunch of Grandma's friends, tutting and moaning.'

‘Car,' said Matty. ‘Car, Mummy.'

Jaz indicated over her shoulder at the bag on the floor. ‘Oh, could you get it out for him?'

‘Of course.'

I knelt down and opened the bag, and Matty shuffled in next to me. Together we made a performance of peering inside. ‘Uh-oh, I think there's a mouse in here,' I said, making my hand scuttle under the canvas. ‘Watch out!'

When he giggled, I whipped my hand out and tickled him so that within seconds I had him shrieking with laughter, bucking and flailing against me, butting me in the chest with his head. I put my arms round his solid little body and squeezed him to try and restore some calm, but he still wriggled like a demon. ‘Watch out,' he said, making his own mouse and aiming it at my stomach. ‘Watch out, Nanna!'

‘Honestly, you two,' went Jaz, behind me. Part of me was screwing myself up against a telling-off, but she only said, ‘Get that car of yours, Matty, then you can run Nanna's mouse over if it starts being naughty again.'

I laughed, partly from relief.

You let her rule you
, I heard Phil say again. Yes, I thought, perhaps I do. Perhaps other grandmothers don't tread on eggshells the way I have to. But I'm so damn grateful to have Matty back, and so petrified she'll take him away again, that I'll do anything it takes not to rock the boat. She can impose any condition she likes. I'll drain the pond dry, cut my hours
at work, have him any nights she decides, at the drop of a hat. She only has to name her terms. If that makes me feeble, then that's too bad.

I knew now there was no way I could carry on seeing David. His gentle kindness and support belonged to a very particular time that was gone. Already some of the memories were patchy and imperfect, though I could still conjure the modulations of his voice, his confident stride, the detail of his mouth and eyes. I should have taken some pictures of him, but there were too many events and revelations in those months that I didn't want to acknowledge; photographs would have fixed them more firmly into reality. Jaz was right, the bad images would hang around longer, but it would all pass away eventually. Everything would go. New hurts and new happinesses would overlay each other, till the weeks without Matty, with David, were almost nothing. That was the way it had to be.