These Days of Ours (10 page)

That was the trouble with mother/daughter chatter; with Mum there was no safer ground. Contrariness was her default setting.
Especially when it comes to me
.

‘Gosh,’ said Julian. ‘Is that the time?’

‘Have you changed your hair?’ Mum inspected Kate’s fringe, flattened by the regretted hat.

‘No. Why?’ Kate put a self-conscious hand to her head, steeling herself.

‘It looks nice.’

‘Oh.’ Kate grinned.
A compliment!

‘For once.’

Count to ten
, Kate advised herself. She and Mum were constantly cracking, yet never broke. She envisaged herself dashing about with sticky tape, endlessly repairing, endlessly making
good. It stood to reason that this eternal, rolling dissonance – it never flared into anything more specific – had to be at least fifty per cent her fault. However hard Kate tried, they
always ended up in the same place. A place of mild discontent, of petty grievance and pointed words.

With that in mind, Kate felt able to broach a forbidden subject.
I could be as nice as pie all afternoon and she’ll
still
wish I was more like Becca, so I may as well do some
work on Dad’s behalf.
‘Mum,’ she said, hoping her gulp wasn’t audible, ‘we need to talk about Dad.’

‘What do you mean?’ Mum’s face was all vigour.

‘I mean,’ said Kate, cowed by that expression, ‘why don’t you give your blessing to his China trip?’

A small groan escaped Julian: the groan of a man who knew he wouldn’t escape any time soon.

Kate was carefully casual. ‘Now that you’ve got your caravan, and Dad’s about to retire, you could even go with him. Marriage is about compromise, after all.’

Kate’s own marriage was a see-saw: lately she’d sensed or maybe just suspected a pulling away in Julian so she’d made more of an effort. Not just in the bedroom –
although she was astounded at the effect a red basque had on Julian’s state of mind – but by listening when he talked about the nuts and bolts of the property world. She would nod and
ask pertinent questions, watching how his aristocratic face, drawn from a template that stared out of portraits in stately homes, would flush as he talked her through the latest deal. He
didn’t return the favour but she didn’t expect that; Kate’s career was small potatoes compared to his. Secretly, Kate preferred the immediacy of her party supplies emporiums,
where she satisfied small needs and there was a justice to each transaction quite unlike Julian’s massive profits and macho jubilation at having ‘won’.

Mum trembled as she said, ‘Don’t you lecture me, madam. You and Dad might be close but you don’t know everything. Things are different now.’ She screwed up her lips, as
if trying to keep in something dangerous. ‘Very different.’ The moment passed and she said, ‘Ignore me, love. I’m worn out.’

‘That’s because you’re always down here, helping Becca out.’ Kate didn’t understand why both her mother and her aunt flew constantly to Becca’s side as if she
was dealing with quintuplets. ‘Maybe if you spent more time with Dad and—’

‘Spend time with Dad?’ Kate’s mother interrupted, insulted. ‘Dear God, if you knew the half of it.’ She disappeared, pushing brusquely through Flo’s fans.

‘
Right.’ Julian rubbed his hands together. ‘You managed to upset your mother even more quickly than usual, so we might as well go.’

‘Thanks for the support.’

‘I’m joking, silly,’ said Julian. ‘Not about going home. I’m deadly bloody serious about that.’

‘Kate!’ Becca descended on them, her face flustered. ‘There you are!’ she said, as if her cousin had been hiding. ‘Could you pick up some empty glasses? Put them in
the dishwasher?’

Before Kate could answer, Julian said, ‘We’re guests, not staff.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Kate.

‘But I do,’ said Julian, turning away, grabbing a glass from a passing tray. ‘Not that it matters.’

Diligent, Kate toured the garden with a growing stack of glasses. Seeing Charlie and her dad confabbing on a garden bench, she put them to one side and played truant.

As she approached, she heard her father say, ‘She’d be so proud of you, Charlie.’

‘She would,’ agreed Kate, perching on the arm of the seat, leaning against Dad. They all looked at Flo, happily playing with Dad’s tie, and thought of the grandmother
she’d never meet.

It had been a classic alcoholic’s death. A year earlier, on a mellow early autumn day like this one, Charlie’s mother had slipped on the stairs and plunged to the bottom, lying
against the door her son had to force open after two anxious days of getting no response to his calls. He’d half expected such a calamity all his life but that didn’t seem to soften the
blow. Charlie had sunk into a morass of guilt and anger and, most shamefully and only whispered to Kate, relief.

Becca, embedded so firmly in her own family, the epicentre of a web of relationships, had sympathised with his grief, but found it harder to empathise with the aftermath. Charlie, with no blood
relations left, felt himself sticking out in the universe like a sore thumb. Becca seemed grateful for Kate’s willingness to talk and talk around the subject with Charlie once she’d
exhausted her own compassion.

Maybe because she’d lived through Charlie’s youthful realisation that he had to parent his own hapless mother, Kate got it. She understood the ins and outs of Charlie’s complex
remorse and furthermore she understood how it formed the platform for his love for Flo.

The child was
his
. Flo was tied by blood to her orphan daddy who had never known his own father. When Kate sensed the profundity of that connection, it had been the turning point in the
rediscovered harmony with her old friend. It was to Kate that Charlie had whispered, desperately,
Let’s hope Death takes some time off, now.

‘Flo reminds me of your mum,’ said Kate’s dad, taking her on his lap.

They all knew that to be untrue, but Charlie smiled.

The shoulder Kate leaned against was bony. ‘When,’ asked Kate, ‘are you going to resist Mum’s diets, Dad?’ Kate couldn’t allow him to age; she’d been
trying not to notice the slackness of his face, the diminishing of his frame. His one good suit hung loose on him. ‘Step away from the crispbreads and low fat cheese.’

‘I’ve demolished a few slices of cake today,’ said Dad conspiratorially. ‘You and Becca were up all night baking, I hear. Whatever happens, you’ll always have each
other, you girls.’

‘That’s a bit maudlin, Dad,’ said Kate. ‘For a christening.’

As talk turned, inevitably, to the Yulan House orphanage, Kate listened patiently and without much real interest to the news of the foundations being laid for the new wing, and the fresh push in
fundraising it would need. Kate’s mother was unaware that the bright new website, featuring smiling photos of Jia Tang and her growing clutch of charges, had been funded by Dad: for the sake
of Minelli harmony, it must stay that way.

The whitewashed compound outside Beijing didn’t feel real to Kate. It was so foreign, so
other
, in the sharp sunlit images she saw only on the screen of her Dad’s iPod.
‘Lovely,’ she said, absent mindedly, as Dad showed her yet another shot of yet another squealing child dashing about a dusty yard. Her days and her thoughts were so thoroughly accounted
for on this small patch of home turf that she had nothing left over for her father’s pet project.

Not so Charlie, it would seem. ‘Remember when we ran the marathon together to raise money for the kids?’ asked Charlie. ‘How much did you raise last year? A grand, wasn’t
it?’

‘Nearer two.’

‘How come you didn’t run it this year?’

Dad shook his head. ‘Those days are gone, son.’

Detecting a morbid edge to Dad’s mood, Kate launched into an impassioned case for her father to finally travel to China and shake Jia Tang’s hand.

‘There are things to sort out at home,’ said her father.

‘Like what?’ Kate was fired up about the injustice. ‘Painting Mum’s toenails? This is your
dream
, Dad, and it’s achievable. One of us should see our dreams
come true. I’m working on Mum.’

Dad’s
No!
was adamant and he welcomed the change of subject Becca brought with her, as she forced them to budge up on the bench. ‘Nobody’s
touched
the quiche. I
put some on a plate for Julian but he’s on his phone doing some property deal.’ She nodded approvingly. ‘That man’s never off duty.’

‘Hmm,’ said Dad.

‘Come on, Charlie.’ Becca prodded her husband. ‘Time for Flo to do another circuit.’

‘Sometimes, Flo has a look of Kate, don’t you think?’ Dad smiled at Flo’s effusive burp. ‘Same dreamy eyes.’ He carefully passed her to Charlie.
‘She’s all yours, almost-son-in-law.’

‘Ha!’ laughed Becca, from halfway across the garden. ‘Almost!’

‘That was a close shave for all of us,’ laughed Charlie. ‘Phew!’ He wiped his brow as he followed Becca.

‘He was joking, love.’ Dad’s smile faded when he caught the look on Kate’s face.

‘I know that.’ She laughed. It had a tinny sound, like a broken toy. ‘I’d better go and find Julian.’ She picked up her glass burden once again. ‘He’s
fretting to get home.’

‘I know how he feels,’ said Dad.

There were people everywhere, all of them in Kate’s way, leaning over each other to grab at tiny triangular sandwiches as if famine had broken out. A semi-circle of fawning women
surrounded Charlie, who was jiggling Flo and holding forth knowledgeably on formula milk and nappy rash. Uncle Hugh hovered, rocking back and forth on his heels. Somehow his title had got lost in
the mix; Aunty Marjorie was more of a grandmother than Uncle Hugh was a grandfather. The look on his face said different. Kate noticed how he tailed the hiccupping little bundle as the baby was
shown to the masses, exuding quiet pride in his miracle of a granddaughter. He jumped out of Kate’s way with a
Sorry, love!

Taking two more laps of the garden, looking for Julian’s golden head above the fray, Kate wondered what kind of a daddy he would make. Would he take to it as passionately as Charlie, who
had confounded everybody with his enthusiasm for Flo, after he’d begged Becca to wait?

As she entered the house, its cloistered feel was welcome. Kate paused in the quiet passage. Julian was philosophical, never accusing, but she felt his impatience. She felt his suspicion, never
uttered, that
she
was the reason they had no children.

Closing her eyes Kate let it wash over her, the feeling that somewhere, circling the stars, drifting through the universe, was a child. Her child. It would come when it was ready; it would come
at the perfect time.

There was no way to share this certainty with Julian, a man who believed only in what he could touch and feel.

Suddenly, Aunty Marjorie materialised, and marshalled Kate’s help in handing out yet more quiche.

Looking for somewhere to dump the tray – when would Aunty Marjorie learn that her quiche tasted of flip flops? – Kate skulked by the downstairs loo, eavesdropping on the genteel
argument leaking through the door.

‘You never think of me, do you? Tell her. Or I will!’

It was, Kate realised, her mother’s voice. She pressed her ear to the door.

‘Do you think it’s easy,’ said her father, in a hushed howl, ‘to tell your own daughter such a thing? That you’re leaving her?’

‘But you can leave me easily enough. Is that it?’

The door was yanked open and Kate slid away like a cat burglar as her mother stormed out, making, no doubt, for Aunty Marjorie like a menopausal heat-seeking missile.
Where are you,
Julian?
She scanned the party, as a hand caught her arm.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ said her husband, drawing her into the utility room, a temple to white goods that smelled of fabric conditioner.

‘I’ve been looking for
you
.’ What she expected Julian to do about her parents, Kate wasn’t sure, but he would do something. Julian always took charge. He would
straighten out what must be a misunderstanding. Her father was a stayer. Like her. Like Julian. Some things in life you could rely on.

Or so she hoped. ‘You first,’ she said.

‘I’ve just wound up a ve-ry sweet deal.’

In the new spirit of wifely enthusiasm she asked was it the wharf, or the big old warehouse in Spitalfields or maybe the deconsecrated chapel ripe for conversion?

It was none of those profitable but dull things. ‘It’s a house.
The
house.’ Julian nodded encouragingly until Kate caught up with him.

‘What?’ She put her hands to her face.

She hadn’t made a very compelling case for the house. Scepticism had been writ large all over Julian as Kate guided him through high ceilinged rooms hung with yellowing paper, all reeking
of damp and mould and dead people’s lives. The reasons she loved the strict, tall, Georgian building were all to do with the heart. The house needed rescuing; she never could resist a sob
story.

The house yearned to be loved. True, it was tough love it craved. Walls must be torn down, floorboards pulled up. Out of the rubble a handsome home would emerge, its elegant windows shining and
its painted front door ajar, welcoming them into its peachily lit parlours, and bedrooms in the eaves and a kitchen glowing like a furnace of happiness in its belly.

‘Just like that?’ Kate was giddy. Only this morning the house had been a mere idea.

‘Why hang about? I move fast. As you know.’

He was triumphant, a Napoleon in a linen suit. Kate bit her lip, damming up the question that wanted to be asked.
Why didn’t you tell me?
She hadn’t wanted it dropped at her
feet, like an offering. She’d wanted them to negotiate together, plotting and scheming. ‘You’re amazing,’ she said, meaning it, absolving him speedily.

‘It’s a long time,’ said Julian, ‘since I felt this excited about a purchase.’

That was what she needed to hear. ‘I have so many plans.’ Once she started talking about reclaimed fireplaces she might never stop. ‘It’ll be
ours.
’

Julian’s ferocious work ethic had inspired her to build her own mini empire in the image of his enterprise. With the money he loaned her – she insisted it was a loan; he was relaxed
about it – Kate had bought the three shops she used to manage. She was proud of that, gave it her all, but the house would be their joint project. A home for them both, not a showhome
pad.