Separate Beds (25 page)

‘Maisie? Year and a bit.’ Then Jake found himself telling Ruth, ‘Rather surprisingly, my father has taken to baby-sitting. I think it’s because she can’t talk back and gives him unquestioning adoration.’ He placed the toaster on the shelf. ‘Do you have children?’

‘No.’

It was clearly a subject she didn’t wish to pursue and he changed tack. ‘What do you do?’

‘I have a dressmaking business, Betty Grable. Fifties clothes.’ She gestured to her outfit. ‘I collect old patterns and make them up. The business is OK-ish. I’m working on a website and it’s building slowly.’ Again her smile lit up her features. ‘It’s good.’

For a second or two, a dazzled Jake imagined that a fresh-faced angel was hovering in his earthbound workshop. ‘Sounds good.’

Ruth vanished and Jake sat down at the bench, startled by how far the encounter had prodded the numb, cold bits of him into activity. Pretty girl.
Beautiful
girl. But, then, beauty wasn’t everything. He bit his lip. But it wasn’t nothing either and he was weary of the now-familiar ache of unhappiness and humiliation.

He scrutinized the toaster with a fresh eye. Ruth was right. Lamps, toasters, vacuum cleaners were everywhere and, sooner or later, they went wrong. And now that money was getting tighter their owners would be disposed to mend rather than discard them. How clever of her to see it. How gallant that she had pointed it out.

He reached over for his notebook and wrote, ‘Repairs done?’

Chapter Fifteen

No longer able to work in his bedroom, Tom set up his computer, plus Anglepoise light, in the sitting room – a move that had caused Annie anguish.

‘But where else?’ Tom decided he must fight for some space in the house or he would suff ocate.

‘What about the shed?’

‘I can’t work in the shed.’

‘Sheds are good, Tom. Men and sheds have a bond. Yes?’ She was only half joking. Annie was at her most cajoling but he knew she knew she was beaten. ‘I worked so hard to make this room nice.’

True. Once soothing and unobtrusively elegant, the room would be downgraded if Tom made it into his office. But since Zosia’s departure it had been a more or less permanent mess because it got left off the skimpy cleaning rota. Since it retained only a flavour of its previous existence, it had dwindled into a no man’s land. The family came and went, leaving behind papers, an empty coffee cup, a dented cushion. A stack of elderly magazines had partially toppled to the floor. The wastepaper baskets needed emptying, the window-ledges dusting, and the curtains only infrequently got looped back into their ties.

Tom applied himself to the data on the screen – the portal through which he was sucked into his silent, exciting world.

Barclays shares had reached five pounds. Compare this to the early part of the previous year when Barclays shares traded at seven
.

The process – tracing the coloured graph lines, analysing the figures, stabbing a finger on the button – was akin to the best malt whisky burning down his gullet or the first hit of a Havana on the back of the throat. Contemplating what might be possible triggered the adrenalin rush.

Having studied the data, he knew there were success stories as a result of men (it was usually men) acting boldly.
Hypothesis
: recovery would happen.
Action
: double exposure. He decided to go in
additionally
to bet on the other banks on top of what he had already bet. The still, chilled voice of reason informed him that if he only held his nerve then the ship would sail into port.

He pressed the button.

Tom swept up his wallet and keys, and stuffed them into his pockets.

Annie and Emily were at work, Hermione had ordered a taxi and taken herself off to the nearest library – ‘Bit extravagant, dear, but needs must as no one is here to take me in the car’ – and Jake was busy persuading Maisie to have her mid-morning nap.

Maisie was making her protests felt. Tom ran halfway up the stairs and called out, ‘I’m off.’ Another squawk from Maisie. ‘Jake, if she wants to stay up, let her.’

Jake appeared with Maisie in his arms. At the sight of her grandfather, her mutinous little face weathercocked into sunny delight.

‘You know,’ said Tom, ‘she might be getting too old for the mid-morning nap.’

‘Hell,’ said Jake, whose mood had not been good since he had returned from the workshop. ‘That’s all I need.’

‘Just a thought.’ Tom clattered down the stairs. ‘See you later.’

Having flung out a careless succession of warm days, the weather had decided to send out a wake-up call, and it was both windy and cool. As good a moment as any, reflected Tom, as he emerged from the Underground half an hour later, to venture back into the arena.

The offices had not changed. They were eternal and, despite the lectures to himself, he regarded them with trepidation. James had offered to meet him for their lunch in the Bombay Bicycle a couple of streets away, but Tom had felt that part of his rehabilitation should be to face where he had once flourished.

Even so, while the wind blew up dust and litter, he procrastinated for a good five minutes.

‘Nice to see you.’ Sam, the doorman, handed Tom his visitor’s pass and the greeting cheered him up.

The open-plan vista of desks and office clutter was as it had always been but there was a subtle change. Tom no longer held any power over it. The office now functioned without him.

He walked past Alice’s desk.

Alice started. ‘Goodness, Tom. How are you?’

The question did not require an answer. Alice would not wish to know, and it was impossible for Tom to explain:
Actually, I feel like an amputee
. Or:
I miss the companionship
. Or how he missed, for God’s sake, feeling overburdened and overworked.

‘Fine.’ He made the bland, unselfish reply.

Typus interruptus
, she nodded and said, ‘Good,’ while her fingers twitched over the keyboard.

Tom continued on his way. Sealed behind the glass walls of his office, James was talking on the phone. He looked up, registered Tom and a wary expression sprang into his eyes. He held up two fingers, hunched over and swung his chair around so that his back was to Tom.

Tom forced himself to stand at ease. One hand in pocket, easy expression, slightly bent knee. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched a figure sloping furtively through the corridor between the desks.

It was Ken, with whom he had worked for many years … the Ken who had clapped Tom on the shoulder and wished him the best with tears in his eyes … the Ken who now edged out of sight without a word of acknowledgement.

These people had been his colleagues, if not his friends. Their dealings together had been straightforward(ish) and comprehensible – survivors and adapters who understood each other.

But failure stank, and redundancy was felt to be contagious. Of all people, Tom knew that perfectly well.

Five minutes or so dragged past. James was talking ever more urgently into the phone. Again Tom tapped on the glass. James swung round and directed a what-the-hell? look in his direction. Tom mouthed, ‘I’ll wait in the restaurant.’

He left without a backward glance. As the lift doors closed behind him, he could have sworn there was a collective exhalation of breath.

I will not let it get to me, he swore to himself.
I will not
.

On returning home, he walked into the sitting room at
number twenty-two to discover Jake had commandeered the computer and was taking a call on Skype. A little window superimposed on the PC screen revealed the bronzed and skinny Jocasta.

Jake was hunched over the keyboard and their conversation was jarringly stiff. ‘Thirty degrees. That’s hot.’

‘It’s summer here, Jake.’

At Tom’s entrance, he looked up. ‘Sorry, Dad. Didn’t know you’d be back so soon.’ He addressed the screen. ‘Sorry, Jocasta, I have to go. Next time I’ll show you Maisie.’

‘Hold on – I need to know a bit more about my daughter.’

‘She’s having her afternoon nap.’

There was a short pause. ‘I miss her.’ Jocasta’s red mouth opened and shut.

Fully aware that he had had too much to drink during the gut-shrivelling, pointless lunch with James (which Tom had cut short), Tom threw his jacket on to the chair, pushed Jake to one side and commandeered the screen. ‘Jocasta, if you want to know about your daughter, you shouldn’t have left her. I’m not sure how you imagine that an odd question or two from your sunny spot will begin to tackle your daughter’s needs, but let me tell you something. They don’t. And they won’t.’

Compared to what Tom would have liked to spell out – betrayal and dereliction were mild variants – the words failed to scale even the nursery slopes of what he felt.

‘Dad …’

Jocasta blinked in astonishment. ‘Tom, this is none of your business. I was having a conversation with Jake.’

‘Not my business? If you think that, you’re stupider than
I thought, Jocasta. By abandoning her, you’ve made it everyone’s business.’ Tom was warming up nicely. Maisie was blood of his blood and bone of his bone, and he
would
defend her. ‘Tell me, do you lie awake at night and listen to her crying for her mother?’

There was a pause. ‘If I were you, Tom, I’d hesitate before giving me lectures on childcare.’

‘Precisely. I know what can happen. All manner of evils. And if you are referring to Mia, which I take it you are …’

Jake reached over, severed the link and Jocasta vanished. He was tight-lipped and furious. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Dad?’

‘Saying what someone should say.’

When Jake lost his temper, which was rare, he did it thoroughly. ‘And? Your point?’

Tom’s response reflected his own hurt and humiliation. ‘Maisie needs to be spoken up for. Jocasta has behaved abominably and she should be informed of that. If she can’t live with you, then she should at least live near her daughter.’

‘You should hear yourself, Dad.’ Jake’s jaw unclenched a little. ‘This is my business, Dad. Mine and Jocasta’s, not yours.’

‘I’m her grandfather.’

Jake didn’t bother to answer that one. ‘Contrary to what you might believe, I’ve given my dealings with Maisie’s mother some thought. I’m trying to preserve some kind of relationship with my faithless wife in order to help Maisie and you’ve just done your best to scupper it.’

Tom recollected Maisie’s desolate night cries. ‘Jocasta needed to be told.’

Jake was icy. ‘Don’t you understand it’s not your business?’

OK, conceded Tom. He knew perfectly well that parents have no impact whatsoever and the parental voice is the equivalent of a gnat’s whine at a football match and just as irritating.

‘… and not that we ever listened to you. And what makes you think you were such a great father?’ added the angry Jake.

His son’s words hurt him in a way Tom wouldn’t have believed possible, and goaded him to even deeper fury – and the argument took flight, snaffling up all the unresolved issues between the two from down the years. ‘At least …’ his voice swelled into a roar ‘… I supported my family!’

Jake turned a disconcerting shade of white. ‘I don’t believe you said that.’

Actually, Tom didn’t either and would have done anything to take the words back.

Jake stood up from the computer. He looked a trifle shaky but the icy tone was used to deadly effect. ‘First off, Jocasta and I are not your business. Second, you have got to accept a fact of life that your children are different from you. In my case, I did not wish to spend my life in an office under the laughable delusion that I made a difference.’

Tom winced. ‘Stop now, Jake. We’ve said enough.’

But Jake was on a roll. ‘Or that people respected me. Because nobody respects anyone. They mock you and they put up with you because they have no choice.’ He continued in a tone that Tom was startled to recognize as one he had frequently extracted from his arsenal of voices when the children were younger. ‘I’ve always thought your attitude to the office was naïve, Dad, fondly imagining, as you did,
that a Utopian partnership existed between boss and worker. It didn’t and it won’t.’ He shook his head. ‘Why you spent so much time there, I can’t begin to imagine.’

Tom held up his hand. ‘We’re done, Jake.’

‘No, Dad. You’re going to listen to me.’ Jake knitted together threads of his case. ‘I wanted to make something different of my life … to make good, useful objects that were also beautiful and desirable. I’m having trouble achieving those aims and I would have thought you’d sympathize.’

Good, useful, beautiful
,
desirable
. Jake was telling him in so many words that the corruptions of a settled salary, final pension scheme and expenses had so insidiously infiltrated his thinking that he had forgotten his early idealism.

The argument was threatening to veer way over the safety line and Jake was still mid-flow. ‘You preach one thing and demand another from your children.’

Did all his children think this? ‘So I’m entirely to blame?’

Jake shrugged.

A stunned Tom reminded himself that, however sharp their differences, Jake was his son. He made a huge eff ort. ‘Jake, I’m on your side. It may not sound it but I am.’

Jake pushed his hands deep into his pockets and studied the floor. He was clearly making a decision about which way to go. Then he looked up at Tom. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

A voice from the doorway interrupted them: ‘For goodness’ sake! The whole street can hear you.’

Both men swung around.

‘Hermione!’

‘Gran!’

‘I thought you two were killing each other.’ She observed
them both with an indulgence she never displayed to the women in the family. ‘You do get carried away.’

Hermione was dressed in a blue-green light wool skirt and matching cardigan with gold buttons, and her hair was pulled back into its customary chignon.

‘Hermione …’

‘All it takes is a little restraint,’ she was saying. ‘I couldn’t believe my ears. You should both know better. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

The two men glanced at each other. ‘Of course,’ said Tom. ‘But why don’t I make you some tea and bring it up?’