Authors: Elizabeth Buchan
Very much as she was taking charge now.
A shoal of fish with brightly coloured fins and tails swam across the screen, which then went blank. Tom pressed a button, and a graph of the UK stock market flashed up, detailing a jagged, uncertain path – like a drunkard’s.
‘Tom,’ said Annie, from behind him, ‘I do think that if you’re relying on me financially, if only for short time, you should have taken me with you to see the financial consultant.’ He looked round. She was buttoning her coat in an unnecessarily exaggerated manner. ‘I won’t go on about it because I know it’s difficult for you. But …’
His face burned. ‘Won’t you be late for work?’
At the weekend, Tom announced he was off to see his mother to break the news. Annie offered to accompany
him but he knew he had to deal with this alone. She thrust a bundle of magazines into his hands. ‘Take her these.’
‘Shall I give her your love?
Annie hesitated. ‘Yes, do. Of course.’
Traffic was bad around Streatham, which meant that the car was in danger of overheating, a habit it had recently developed.
Oh, God
,
would they need a new car?
He wound down the window, and a cocktail of fumes and cold air slapped him in the face, reminding him how he hated the interminable tundra between Christmas and spring. How he longed for sunshine, buds on trees and inconvenient café overspill on pavements.
Reflecting on what he was going to say to his mother, he acknowledged that he should have brought Annie along. Hermione might not be Annie’s favourite person, but his wife’s mediation skills would have helped to negotiate this tricky visit in a civilized manner. Annie was all too aware that he could flare up at his mother’s (frequent) criticisms and, all too easily, end up saying something unforgivable.
Remember?
… Annie informing him she was catching the train to Manchester in order to find Mia. ‘You must come too,’ she had told him, in the new, cold way she had adopted since that awful night. He owed his daughter that, she said.
After what he had said
.
But he hadn’t gone. Annie had, but she had returned empty-handed …
The queue of traffic edged past the street market, which was in full swing. Exotic fruits were piled high on the stalls – mangoes, papayas, guavas and plantain were being dished out with amazing speed and a rat-tat-tat of repartee. On the
fish stall, red mullet, sea bass and gurnard stuck their heads out of crushed ice, and cheap leather belts hung like ancient biltong on an adjacent stall. It struck Tom that it had been a long time since he had been out and about during the week in a non-working capacity, triggering a fresh surge of misery.
The questions ground on in his head.
How long had everyone known at the office? Had he been secretly marked with failure? Had it sat grinning on his shoulder for everyone to stare at except him? Had he failed the test-he-hadn’t-known-he-was-sitting long ago and the bosses played him out until it suited them?
What he needed was a
Rough Guide
to the parallel world of the unemployed to instruct him on unemployed behaviour and what to do next.
Don’t you worry
.
Their loss. Plenty more jobs
… What if the kindly intentioned friends and relations who had phoned or spoken up knew nothing? What if the financial cataclysm outside was so bad that men – correction,
people
– like him had seen the back of their final job? And what could you do about age?
Cursing, he opened the window and breathed deeply.
Half an hour of grinding traffic further on, he arrived at the Manor House Home and, since the tally of visitors was always below zero, slotted into the car park in one automatic manoeuvre. Switching off the engine, Tom nerved himself.
Mother, I’ve lost my job
. Or,
Oh, by the way, I don’t work for the BBC any more
.
He got out of the car and almost slipped on a leaf-slick from the enormous sycamore shielding the home from the car park. Here, the air was sweeter and gentler, and the garden surrounding the house presented an attractive vista
of greens and browns. It was all pleasing enough but, in his view, it could not in any way surpass the allure of London’s dirty, clogged streets and its shriek of traffic. Furthermore, this was the last place he wished to be.
His finger hovered over the speed dial on his mobile. James would have something bracing and acerbic to say about the feminization of feelings.
We all have to bloody wail, these days
. Then he remembered James was no longer part of his life.
He couldn’t confide to James that he wanted his job back, with a deep, visceral longing. Or that its loss had destabilized him almost to the point of breakdown – which he feared. He wouldn’t be the first or the last to lose his wits over a job which had been taken away.
Approaching the house, Tom almost collided with a tall, unsteady figure clinging to a low wall. He hastened forward. ‘Hallo, Colonel. Are you having trouble?’
Colonel Anscombe looked up with a pair of cataract-clouded eyes. ‘Can’t quite think where I am.’
‘Near the front door. Is that where you want to be?’ Tom hooked his arm gently through the colonel’s – the old gentleman was wearing one lace-up shoe and one dilapidated slipper.
‘Where I want to be?’ The colonel seemed startled by the question. ‘I want to go home and to bed with my wife.’
Tom swallowed. Colonel Anscombe’s wife had died some ten years previously and his yearning for her neither wavered nor diminished. It was one of the constants of the Manor House Home.
‘Take me home.’
The appeal was piteous and, faced with such distress
about which nothing could be done, Tom’s own concerns receded. He glanced at the front porch where Esther, one of the care workers, was remonstrating with Mr Gilchrist who was carrying an old-fashioned, and very battered, attaché case. This was quite normal. From time to time, Mr Gilchrist’s memory developed a snag and he believed that he was sailing on HMS
Windrush
from Jamaica to the UK and was required to guard his luggage.
‘OK, Colonel, shall we get you inside and see if we can find a matching shoe? The slipper looks a bit treacherous.’
Having delivered him safely into the care of Esther, Tom skirted around the main wing. The plate-glass windows allowed the inhabitants – he had to stop himself referring to them as ‘inmates’ – a view of the garden. They also permitted you to see in.
As usual, the television was switched on in the lounge. In the chairs clustered around it, Mrs Taylor was staring hard at the screen, but her companions were mostly asleep.
His mother was playing bridge in the conservatory and bullying her partner. ‘Do keep up, dear,’ Tom overheard her say, in chilling tones, to the misfortunate paired with her.
Tom had inherited her dark colouring but, at eighty-two, her hair was now white, and the only suggestion of that mitochondrial link remained in her dark-grey eyebrows. Through the glass, she appeared more diminished than he remembered from the last visit. When he was small, she had always been whippet thin, but
strong
, and a Turkish cigarette would have been in evidence when she played cards (smoked fastidiously down to the stub).
Her decision to sell her house and move into the home had come as a shock. Tom had argued long and hard against
it. He didn’t know about care homes and what happened in them, but he felt instinctively they went against the grain. Think communal eating and sheets you could never be quite sure belonged to you.
‘You don’t know,’ Hermione had countered. ‘You don’t know how dark it is when you’re alone.’
‘But you like living on your own.’ Tom had been genuinely astonished.
‘Only while I liked it,’ she replied. ‘Now I don’t.’ She had looked away. ‘My body aches, Tom. It’s not going to hold out for ever.’
As he watched, Hermione manipulated a card between increasingly swollen fingers, laid it on the baize and snaffled the trick. Her opponents – three of her cronies dressed in the uniform of elastic-waisted skirts, Viyella blouses and long cardigans – looked fed up.
It seemed to the grieving, shattered Tom that the scene possessed a ghostly quality. Life continued helter-skelter outside that picture window but it no longer involved those behind it. His mother turned her head and the once strong profile was presented to her son. ‘Work is the great thing,’ she was fond of reiterating, and had brought up her son to regard it as his first priority. She was equally fond of the truism ‘Girls are different’, but would never specify exactly how different.
He imagined his mother’s reaction to his news. A slight narrowing of the eyes. A hint of chill stealing into the precise tones. A flicker of alarm and contempt. ‘In my youth,’ she was also fond of saying, ‘men earned and women worked.’
Tom turned on his heel and fled.
Fool. Coward
.
Jobless
.
Emily had overslept again – whenever did she not? Hurrying out to a meeting in the City, Annie stopped to talk to her as she mooched over a late breakfast of yoghurt and tea. ‘The writing …’ she reiterated. ‘You can take it up later.’
Emily winced. ‘Stop right there, Mum.’ Her tone was intended to banish Annie into the Arctic regions inhabited by tactless mothers. ‘I don’t expect you to understand, so there’s no point in discussing it.’ She dipped her spoon into the bowl. ‘Dad’s given me my marching orders and I’m ready to sell my soul. I
know
I’ve been indulged. OK?’
Annie ploughed on: ‘Writing is always better when you’re a bit older.’
Emily clattered her spoon dismissively. ‘You’re not to worry about
me
, OK?’
Annie knew that Emily’s subtext was,
Not while you’ve got Mia to worry about
.
Time flowed backwards through the kitchen, pulling Annie through its hoops. She heard the echoes of three young children, heard herself scolding the seven-year-old Emily while a detached ten-year-old Mia observed.
She was unprepared for Emily’s next remark. ‘Mia was easier to deal with, wasn’t she?’
Startled, she stumbled over the answer: ‘I thought we’d been over all this … She wasn’t my favourite. She wasn’t easier …’
‘Oh, yes, she was. Plus she did everything better. I’ve always been the difficult one. Or, rather, that’s how you see
me.’ Emily smiled grimly. ‘It’s OK, I’m used to it.’ She added, ‘Dad understands.’
Annie tried not to mind that, beside Tom, she was found wanting. ‘Aren’t we past all that, Em?’
Emily returned to the yoghurt. ‘Sorry. You’re right. I worry what
you
think, and you don’t know what
I
’m thinking and none of us knows what Mia feels. It’s a mess.’
The words were harshly uttered for Emily had not been endowed with an easy manner. While Mia had only to smile and raise a finger and people ran in all directions to do her bidding, Emily scrapped and fought to survive at school, and slunk home more than once with knees patchworked with grazes from playground encounters. Annie had endured many a sleepless night.
Annie braced herself. ‘Can we discuss it another time? I’m a bit pushed.’
‘Not a subject you wish to tackle? Sure. Point taken.’ Emily jumped up and shoved her bowl into the dishwasher. After a moment, she turned round and said quietly, ‘You know what today is, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Five years today since she went.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you can think of nothing else.’
It was a statement, not a question. ‘Yes.’
‘Me too.’
A sharp prod of surprise under Annie’s ribs. ‘I didn’t think you’d remember.’
Emily sighed ostentatiously. ‘What do you expect, Mum? The family feeds off my sister’s absence.’ Annie’s hand flew to her hair and Emily’s blue eyes narrowed. ‘Calm down,
Mum. Calm. OK?’ There was a pause while all manner of history sifted past, and then she continued, ‘You’re right. We must concentrate on Dad.’
‘Actually, I did want to discuss him, Em. Can I? I’m a bit worried about him. Will you keep an eye on him? He’s going to need a lot of TLC …’ She visualized the wounded Tom roaming the house. ‘Yes, TLC.’
Emily’s eyes danced with amusement. ‘I love it.’
‘Share the joke?’
‘Just something Dad said. I hesitate to say this, Mum, but isn’t propping up Dad
your
job?’
‘It’s everyone’s job. And don’t look like that. We’re a family.’
‘Now she tells me.’
Annie ignored her. ‘He’ll have to adjust massively. I’ve seen it often. Once someone leaves an office, that’s it. It’s a sort of death. Everyone remembers you, hopefully with affection, but you’re no longer vital to it.’ She paused. ‘You’re spoken of in the past tense.’
‘Poor Dad.’
‘I don’t think he’s sleeping very well.’
‘How would you know, Mum?’ Emily inquired, with a tinge of embarrassment.
‘Do you expect me to answer that?’ Annie gathered up her bag and briefcase. ‘So, you will look out for him?’
‘I always look out for Dad.’
‘Yes, you do.’ Annie paused. ‘You do.’
Passing the recycling bin on her way out, Annie knocked it askew. She bent to push it back into place and spotted a Christmas card trapped behind it.
It was the one with the detail from the da Vinci painting,
The Virgin of the Rocks
, showing the mysterious, yearning angel.
That previous, plenteous, lushly provisioned Christmas, which the angel had been sent to celebrate, had been Annie’s creation. All that time and trouble with the décor and details – the shopping lists, the research as to where to buy the best nuts and flowers, the tasting of Christmas cakes, the lavish wrapping of presents. It had consumed and exhausted her, leaving her with no energy to think about anything else.
At Christmas lunch, Tom and she had largely avoided each other’s eyes, Jocasta and Hermione had exchanged frosty words over Maisie’s feeding habits, and Emily had looked as if she would rather be anywhere than in her own home. Picking her way through the stuffing and thyme-roasted potatoes, Annie had waited for the moment she dreaded.