Breaking the Chain (10 page)

‘I’m bored,’ Jack said again, drumming his feet on the front of his seat.

‘Only boring children get bored,’ his father said crisply, without turning his head. ‘Stop banging about and look out of the window. There’s all sorts of interesting things going on out there.’

‘What things?’ Jack asked, disbelieving. Conrad didn’t answer.

‘Animals in the fields,’ Fay said, turning to look at him. ‘Big lorries on the road. Look, there’s a man on a motorbike!’

‘Where?’ asked Jack, after a pause.

‘Well, he’s gone now, darling. You have to be quick and look straightaway or you’ll miss things.’

‘Don’t like motorbikes. I want to get out.’

‘We can’t stop or we’ll be late getting to Grandma’s. Why don’t you have a little sleep, and then the journey won’t seem so long?’

‘No!’

Conrad sighed. ‘Contra-suggestible little bugger,’ he muttered.

‘Bugger,’ said Jack happily. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger, bug –’

‘Quiet!’ said his father. He glanced at Fay. ‘I’m sure the girls were never like this. They sat on the back seat and looked at picture books or drew things at his age. Why can’t he be like them?’

‘You expect too much of him,’ Fay said, defending him as always. ‘He’s only just four, after all. Boys are often slower, and perhaps being left-handed doesn’t help?’

‘I was reading by three and a half,’ Conrad said.

‘Yes, dear, but you were a genius,’ Fay said with heavy irony. ‘Hope says that Duncan didn’t read properly until he was seven.’

‘Yes, and look where he’s got in life! That’s what I’m afraid
of. I don’t want my only son to end up with no qualifications as a jobbing bloody gardener!’

‘Bloody,’ Jack said. ‘Bloody fucker. Bloody bugger –’

‘Stop it!’ his father interrupted. ‘You shouldn’t be using those words at your age.’

‘You did,’ Jack said stoutly. ‘You said bloody gardener.’

‘That’s different. I’m grown up, so I can say what I like.’

‘Snot fair,’ Jack said, waving his doll above his head.

‘Life isn’t fair,’ Conrad said, ‘as you will doubtless find out one day.’ He started to pull out from the middle lane to overtake, when a car which was already going past them at high speed, blasted him with its horn. Conrad swerved back and forth several times before regaining the centre of the middle lane.

‘For heaven’s sake, Con,’ Fay said angrily, ‘think what you’re at! Didn’t you see him coming?’

‘Obviously not. Jack’s flaming doll was in the way.’

Fay turned round again. ‘Put your dolly down, love, you’re stopping Daddy’s view of what’s behind us. You see that little mirror up there? Daddy looks in that and he can see through here and out of the back window, so then he knows when he can and when he can’t go out into the fast lane.’ Jack was silent. Fay thought he was looking rather pale. Perhaps I should have given him half a Kwell? She thought.

‘I feel s …’ Jack said, and vomited down the back of Conrad’s seat.

An hour behind Fay and Conrad, Roderick Moon was driving his two sons and what seemed like a ton of luggage, in the same direction. He had a white Range Rover that he kept for occasions such as this, his sports car being too small and too special for grubby family use. The eldest boy (his namesake, Rod) now fourteen, was sitting in the front seat next to him, silent as usual. From time to time Rick glanced sideways at him. He was almost good-looking, he thought; only a mild outbreak of acne and lovely thick hair. What a pity he was so withdrawn and uncommunicative. He’d hardly spoken a word all journey, except to contradict his brother. Rick was sure that Rod did it on purpose to punish him for his frequent absences. It is also
possible that Rod, on the verge of manhood, was getting tired of basking in his father’s reflected glory. This thought had, however, not yet occurred to Rick.

‘… And the guy who shot the vampire wasn’t exactly a baddie,’ Pete, the younger boy said, from the back seat. He was going through the plot of a recent film he’d seen, at mind-numbing length. ‘… But the vampire wasn’t really a vampire either, you see. He only sucked blood when there was no Coca-Cola available. He –’

‘No he didn’t,’ Rod said with authority.

‘Yes he
did!
And the guy that shot him was trying to kill the werewolf, but he missed because the vampire had just seen a can of Coke and made a grab for it and …’

‘That was
before,’
Rod said scornfully.

‘NO IT WASN’T! … And then the … now you’ve made me forget where I was!’

‘Never mind,’ Rick said. ‘It sounded as though you’d got to the end anyway.’ He wished Pete would just keep quiet, or at least learn to tell a tale half competently. At present estimation, he had all the makings of a prize bore. Body language seemed to be a complete mystery to him; even in its grossest form. People might yawn quite openly in the middle of his discourse, but Pete would ignore the signs and plough on grimly, oblivious. He must have inherited it from his mother, Rick thought. Poppy had never known when to stop either!

‘Oh yes …’ Pete said, gathering strength again. ‘I remember now. The werewolf was only a werewolf after dark, and when the guy who wasn’t a baddie really – remember I told you? -went and shot him, it was just at sunrise and the werewolf was changing back into a rhino, which is what he was in daytime, and the bullet was designed to kill werewolves not rhinos, and it bounced off the rhino’s extra thick skin, because he wasn’t a werewolf by the time it hit, you see, and ricco … ricco … bounced off again and hit the can of Coke and … No, that was later. Anyway then the –’

‘Oh shut your head!’ Rod said, turning to him irritably. ‘You’ve got it totally arse about face, and it’s boring Dad to infinity and back anyway.’

‘It’s not, is it, Dad?’

‘Well, not quite as far as infinity,’ Rick said absently, concentrating on passing a Mercedes.

Pete subsided into a sulk and began pulling at a bit of interior trim which was coming loose. A blessed silence took over. Rick wondered if everyone’s sons niggled each other as much as his did. He wished he liked them both, or either of them, more. The main thing was, they were his and he had the custody of them. That was what mattered.

Earlier that day the boys had banded together in an unlikely alliance to protest about going all the way to Somerset to spend Christmas in that gloomy old house in the boring country, with their grandmother who was mad and their grandfather who was okay but not worth the long journey. Rick had read them a lecture on families and duty, and how it was only for three days so they needn’t whine about it. It looked to him like being three days of hard work. He sighed. Then he remembered the expensive presents he’d got for them, all wrapped up in the boot of the Range Rover. They would be putty in his hands when they’d opened those!

Phoebe allowed herself a double ration of diary on Christmas Eve, knowing that there would be no chance to read much for the next few days. She had decided that she really must read them in chronological order, so she had started again, this time at the beginning in 1946. Not every day had an entry. Nancy appeared to write only when there was something that she considered worth saying. Phoebe felt a growing admiration for her, and an increasing sense of privilege at her own fortuitous opportunity to read the diaries. It made her feel as though she was being taken into Nancy’s confidence, as though she were a special friend. She felt for her in her miseries, triumphed with her over her adversities, and identified strongly with her in her infrequent moments of joy. Phoebe had been there too. She knew how it felt, and knowing the end of the story lent it an added poignancy.

Phoebe assumed, of course, that Nancy’s ‘P.’ and ‘H.’ were Peter and Hope, and it gave her a thrill of satisfaction to be allowed to spy on their early lives. Nowadays when she was with Peter and he outwitted her with his effortless verbal superiority,
there now remained within her the unshakeable confidence that he might be cocky, but he didn’t know everything. There were things, very personal things, that she knew about him,
and he didn’t know that she knew!
Similarly when Hope was sour and complaining, Phoebe now knew that she had been like that since 1951, if not before! It wasn’t a special attitude she reserved for Phoebe, it was her strategy for responding to life in general.

Phoebe saw Peter through Nancy’s eyes and took sides with him against Hope. She imagined him to have been even taller and more handsome then; crazy about Nancy, but trapped by honour in a dismal marriage. Nancy’s own marriage to Hugh Sedgemoor had taken place when she was 25, in 1946, Phoebe discovered. Hugh had had a bad war and emerged from it with low self-esteem and boundless obstinacy. He had wanted to write thrillers, so after a very short uncommitted search, he had given up looking for work altogether and had been supported from then on by Nancy, who had a good career at the university and a flat of her own in London. He had never got published. Nancy seemed to Phoebe to be, in turns, fond of and exasperated by him. She couldn’t decide which emotion had been the dominant one. It came across the pages as a rather uncomfortable and unsatisfactory marriage, similar to hers and Duncan’s.

Saturday, 8 September 1951 – Party at S.’s house. Hugh too ‘busy’ as usual. Went alone. Met an extraordinarily mismatched couple, Peter and Hope Moon. She looked like death for most of the evening, barely spoke to anyone and obviously hated every minute. He, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more charming. He has very intense blue eyes and a tremendous fund of funny stories. For some reason we seemed to hit it off at once. Felt rather guilty about his poor forlorn wife, but she made no effort whatsoever. I think I shall have to watch myself with P. Such men are dangerous! Hugh in a mood when I got home and didn’t respond to my feelings of optimism and elation. As usual he took all the wind out of my sails and left me feeling irritable and unfairly deflated, then guilty as always. I’m truly sorry that so far he’s failed to get published, hates his
lack of ‘status’ and can’t bear to be quizzed about his ‘job’ at parties, but am I supposed to commit a sort of social suttee because of his hermit tendencies? To hell with that!

Poor Nancy, Phoebe thought, so full of life, so full of hope, but ultimately to die alone. She wondered what (if anything) Nancy would have done differently if she had been able to start again from 1951. That thought made Phoebe consider her own life. Would she have done things differently? Would she still have married Duncan, given the chance to do otherwise? It was too late for Nancy, but it wasn’t too late for her. There were always options. They closed down and got smaller and smaller as you got older and older, but Phoebe wasn’t even halfway through life yet. It was with that hopeful thought in mind, that she prepared to do battle with Christmas.

A twenty-two-pound turkey … Phoebe thought, going over her calculations again to make sure they were correct… at fifteen minutes a pound, equals five … and a half hours, plus a bit to be on the safe side, say six hours. Lunch for two o’clock, so turkey in at … eight, and the oven on to preheat at about half past seven. Right! She glanced around for a clock. There wasn’t one in Hope’s kitchen. There weren’t enough working surfaces in Hope’s kitchen either, and nothing was where it ought to be. There was no logic in the places where things were, so how could anyone be expected to perform to a high standard there? It was enough to drive a normal person mad, let alone a resentful daughter-in-law.

‘Duncan!’ Phoebe called. ‘Can I borrow your watch?’ No answer. Duncan
never
heard when she called, even if he was just at the end of their garden and she was at the back door. Phoebe often thought that even were she to play the bagpipes at full blast between screams, he would still be happily oblivious, pottering about absorbed in his own affairs, with his ears turned off. She was being unfair, she knew she was. No one in the other rooms of the big house would hear anyone calling in the kitchen. The walls were too thick; the distances too great. She went on with her mental list: chestnut stuffing already elegantly prepared by Fay. Forcemeat stuffing for the neck still to be done. Bread sauce to start. Christmas pudding waiting on its trivet all set to steam … sprouts and leeks could be done later. Spuds (two sorts) first, and parsnips, then carrots. Fay had brought her own home-made brandy butter. The clotted cream was in the fridge. We need some actual brandy later, Phoebe thought, to flame the pudding, and a sprig of holly with berries to go on top. Perhaps the boys could find me one.

‘Did you shout? We were just out in the hall,’ Fay said, coming in with a sulky-looking Jack, doll in hand. She looked harassed.

‘I haven’t got a watch,’ Phoebe said. ‘I was hoping to borrow Duncan’s.’

‘Have mine,’ Fay said, slipping her hand through the gold bracelet and handing it to Phoebe.

‘Are you sure?’ Phoebe asked. ‘It looks dangerously expensive. What if I splash it with gravy?’

‘I want to watch TV!’ Jack demanded in a shrill whine. It was clearly not the first time he had made his wishes known.

‘Darling,’ Fay said patiently, ‘I told you just now, Granny hasn’t got a telly this year. I’m very sorry but there it is.’

‘She had one last week,’ Phoebe said surprised, putting the watch on.

‘She
says
it broke down the day before yesterday, so she got rid of it,’ Fay said, pursing her lips sceptically. ‘I think it’s a plot to force the young to, quote, “do something more intelligent”.’

‘At Christmas?’ Phoebe was scandalized.

‘Wonderful timing as ever,’ agreed Fay.

‘NOW!’ shouted Jack.

‘How about opening some presents?’ Phoebe suggested to him.

Fay frowned a warning. ‘No,’ she said, ‘he’s already opened all but the major ones. Hope seems to have a new rule this year, expounded at great length last night. She says that they shouldn’t be opened until after lunch, because
presents are not the most important part of Christmas.’
She put on a Hope-like voice to convey her disgust.

‘She hasn’t suddenly got religion?’ Phoebe asked.

‘No, she’s just being bloody-minded. It’s a sort of power game with her; keeping us on tenterhooks until
she
gives us the go-ahead, and not before.’