Flightsend (15 page)

'Not an awful lot,' said Oliver. 'He's no real trouble.'

'Does he live with his mother?'

'Yes.'

'Don't you see him much?'

Was this the reason for his reticence? The failure of
his marriage, separation from his son? He rarely
mentioned his ex-wife. Another relationship ended,
Charlie thought. What's wrong with everyone?

'Not very often,' he said. 'It's difficult.'

'Is he staying the whole weekend?'

'No, I'm just having him on Friday. Rosalind's got
an appointment and her usual child-minder can't
have him. But I need to sit down with Fay and Dan and
go through next year's programme. So if you could
keep an eye on him, just for an hour or two . . .'

'OK, then,' she said. It could be a repayment for all
the free tuition; besides, she was curious to see Kieran.

'Thanks, Charlie. I appreciate it.'

He touched her arm, and let his hand rest there for
a moment. She was uneasy about the way he kept
touching her; a pat on the shoulder, a hand on her
waist to guide her, his hand over hers while she was
drawing. At first, flattered by his interest, she'd taken
it for friendliness. Now, especially since the conversation
with Sean, she knew he shouldn't do it. He
was assuming some sort of right over her. She thought
of saying, 'Please don't touch me,' but saw at once how
he'd take it. He was only being friendly, affectionate;
she'd be neurotic, even conceited, to imagine she was
so desirable that he couldn't keep his hands off
her.

But no one should touch her if she didn't want
them to.

It would be easy enough to be assertive if the person
doing the touching were a stranger, or someone
drunk at a party, but the grey areas were more
difficult. When you knew – even liked – the person, or
when the gestures might express nothing more than
friendliness or reassurance, it was impossible to shout,
or be aggressive. Even more difficult when you weren't
sure whether you liked it or not.

Was she making too much of it? Probably. She
didn't seriously imagine he was planning a steamy
affair, to be conducted in the Well House between
workshops. He was a teacher and she was a schoolgirl.

'Right. Friday, then,' she said abruptly. 'Come on,
Rosie. Let's go indoors.'

'What have you been drawing lately?' Kathy asked,
that evening.

An impulse made Charlie push her sketchbook
across the table.

'These. Have a look.'

At once she wanted to take it back.

Kathy got no farther than the sketches of Rosie.
Saying nothing, she looked at each one, then turned
back to the most detailed portrait, the one Charlie
had finished at home. The one that didn't really look
like Rosie.

Finally she said, 'You know who she makes me think
of?'

'No.' Charlie dreaded the answer.
She looks like Rose.
Rose as she would have been
. That's what Kathy would say.
What had possessed her to hand over the drawings?
She'd have done better to tear them into shreds.

'She looks like you. When you were that age,' Kathy
said. 'Thank you for showing me.'

She closed the sketchbook and went upstairs.

Charlie, who'd expected tears, reproaches, even
anger, stood uncertainly at the bottom of the stairs.
She waited to hear the bedroom door closing, but
instead she heard Kathy rummaging about in
cupboards. A few minutes later she came down again,
carrying a cardboard box.

'What have you got there?'

'Photos,' Kathy said.

She dumped the box on the kitchen table and tilted
it towards Charlie. Inside, Charlie saw two large
scrapbooks, and dozens of photographs – some loose,
most still as they came from processing, in their paper
wallets.

'I should have sorted these out years ago, and put
them in the scrapbook,' her mother said. 'Do you
want to help?'

It took them until half-past one in the morning.
Sorting, identifying, writing captions. Some of the
photographs went into the scrapbook; others stayed in
their wallets, labelled and dated.

Most of the pictures that went into the scrapbook
were of Charlie. Charlie as a baby, with her father – a
strange, remote figure he seemed now, as distant as
someone in a Victorian aquatint. Charlie at about
three, sitting on a pony with Kathy supporting her.
Charlie in the nativity play at her infant school,
a sturdy, scowling angel with wonky tinsel wings.
'I love this one,' her mother said, holding up the
one of Charlie on the pony. 'We stayed on a farm
in Devon, just you and me. The pony was called
Bumble and you wanted to bring her home. Do you
remember?'

'Very vaguely.'

Charlie reached out for the photo, but her mother
held on to it.

'I'll see if I can find the negative. I'll get it enlarged
and framed.'

Charlie was assistant, letting her mother do it her
own way; she sorted and glued and labelled according
to instructions. It was more than the carrying-out of a
job long overdue; it was a journey into their past.
When Sean began to appear in the pictures Kathy
made no particular comment, other than to identify
the time and place where she could. Charlie wrote
captions, looked briefly, said little. Now that she knew
where the photos were, she could find them again
later.

'Me pregnant,' her mother said, matter-of-factly,
passing over a print.

Charlie didn't know how much that casual tone
could be trusted. Sorting the photographs had put her
mother in a strange mood: nostalgic, a little sad, but
with a sort of hypnotized calm.

'You should have been in bed long ago,' Kathy said,
when Charlie had stuck in the most recent pictures –
those of Flightsend, mainly of the nursery at various
stages of development, and one or two of Caspar. 'I
hope you won't be worn out tomorrow. Thank you.
That was a good thing to do.' She kissed Charlie and
picked up the box.

Lying in bed and contemplating the strange
evening, Charlie thought about the word
scrapbook
.
The books of photos weren't really scrapbooks but
albums; a real scrapbook would contain things other
than photos – letters, tickets, programmes, wrappers.
But the word stuck in her mind. Scraps. Scraps of their
lives. Scraps that could have been discarded, but
hadn't been.

Fridays were always busy at Nightingales, with one lot
of guests leaving after lunch and a second batch
arriving for dinner. In today's changeover, Creative
Collage and Feng Shui gave way to Watercolour
Painting and Be More Assertive.

'We'll easily tell who's here for Assertiveness,' Jon
said at breakfast-time. 'It'll be the ones who look meek
and helpless when they arrive.'

'And get more and more bolshy as the weekend
goes on,' Suzanne added. 'Expect trouble with the
orders by Sunday lunchtime.'

Charlie, having arranged to look after Rosie and
Kieran from three o'clock till just before dinner, wore
jeans and the batik top from Henrietta's, bringing her
waitressing clothes and shoes in a carrier bag. She
found Fay in the office and collected Rosie. Having
seen no sign of Oliver, she went over to the Well
House to see if he was there.

'Orriver! Orriver!' Rosie ran ahead towards the
open door, arms flailing.

'Hello there, Rosie Rascal.' Oliver appeared from
inside, picking Rosie up and lifting her high above his
head. She squealed and wriggled until he put her
down. Then he said, 'Hi, Charlie. Kieran's in here.'

A large, thick-set boy was sitting on the floor. He
looked round slowly as Charlie entered. She saw the
slackness of his mouth, the rather prominent eyes,
slow to focus; the clumsy movement as he struggled to
his feet. His arms and legs were short in proportion
to his body. It was like looking at a younger version of
Oliver that had become blurred and distorted.

'This is Kieran,' Oliver said.

Kieran stared at Charlie, his mouth open. She
thought: Down's Syndrome? Why didn't Oliver tell
me?

'Hello, Kieran,' she said; then Rosie went up and
took him by the hand.

'Tieran, Tieran! Tieran come with us.'

'They know each other?' Charlie asked Oliver, who
stood back watching.

'Oh yes,' he said. 'They've played together quite
often. You see what I mean, about it not being much
different from looking after Rosie.'

'What does he like to do?' she asked. 'What would
you like to do, Kieran? Come and feed the ducks?'

'Yeah, go and feed the ducks,' Oliver said. 'You
needn't bother too much. He's usually quite happy to
sit and stare.'

'I'll think of something,' Charlie told him. 'Right,
I'll see you back here at half-past five.'

'Have fun,' he said. 'If he needs the loo, bring him
up to the office. I'll have to take him.' He locked the
Well House behind them and walked off towards
the house.

Charlie, with her two charges, went down the
sloping lawn to the pond, one hand holding Kieran's,
one holding Rosie's. Rosie clutched the bag of stale
bread; Kieran stumbled on the uneven ground, and
Charlie adjusted her pace. Adjusted her thoughts, too.
Was this why Oliver never mentioned Kieran? Was he
ashamed of him?

'Kook,' Rosie said, pointing, as a coot bobbed out
from behind the reeds.

'
Coot
, Rosie.'

'Toot.'

By now Charlie was sure that Rosie knew the
difference between
t
and
c
, but liked muddling them
up for fun. She handed pieces of bread to both
children. Rosie, with cries of excitement, aimed hers
at the indifferent coot. Kieran tore his up with slow
deliberation, then stepped close to the water's edge
and flung a piece of crust hard but ineptly, so that it
landed in the shallows near his feet. He crouched to
dabble with his hand, waiting for the soggy bread
to float close enough to catch. Charlie watched,
slightly anxious in case he fell in; he'd be a heavy boy
to pull out of the water. But his feet were firmly
planted, and when the bread was dripping in his hand
he stepped back from the edge.

Charlie hadn't yet heard him speak. She wondered
if he
did
speak. Then Rosie came up and tried to take
the wet crust from him, and Kieran made a sound of
objection, turning away.

'It's yours, isn't it, Kieran?' Charlie said, restraining
Rosie. 'Rosie's got her own.'

The mallards had been slow to arrive but now they
clustered round with expectant quackings. One of the
bolder ones clambered out to the bank, waddled up to
Rosie and tugged at the hem of her skirt. Kieran,
perhaps thinking the duck was attacking Rosie,
flapped his arms to shoo it away. 'Nnno! Nnno!'

'Well done, Kieran,' Charlie said.

He looked at her and said, 'Woshor name?' His
voice was thick and nasal, the words slurred.

'My name's Charlie,' she said, pronouncing it
clearly. Oliver hadn't actually introduced her to
Kieran. Kieran had simply come with her, obedient
and unquestioning. Maybe he was used to a variety of
carers.

'Charlie,' Kieran repeated. He stared at her, his
head swaying a little. Then he said, 'Boy.'

'That's right, it
is
a boy's name,' she said. 'But it's a
girl's name too. Short for Charlotte.'

'Tarlotte,' Rosie said. 'Rosie, Wosary.'

Charlie laughed. '
Rosemary?
Is that your name,
Rosie?'

'Wosary,' Rosie insisted.

When all the bread was gone the mallards
dispersed, some settling on the bank to preen, some
dabbling tail-up in the water. As the children showed
no signs of boredom, Charlie sat on the grass to watch
them. Rosie was absorbed in prodding the damp grass
with a stick; Kieran went down to the water's edge and
collected five rounded stones, which he placed
carefully in the palm of one hand. Then he brought
them close to Charlie and laid them on the grass.
When he'd done this three times, Rosie became
interested. Wanting to play too, she brought a
collection of pebbles and presented them to Kieran.

Kieran lowered himself heavily to the grass and
began to arrange his stones in a pattern. Charlie saw
that he'd chosen a particular kind of stone, rejecting
most of Rosie's; he wanted the smooth, rounded rust-coloured
ones, fairly uniform in size. He put each
stone down very carefully and patted it into place with
the flat of his hand, breathing hard. Charlie watched;
Rosie copied, bringing more and more stones and
making her own arrangement. Rosie's was straight
lines with occasional heaps, like little cairns to mark a
path; Kieran was making a spiral shape.

When she took the children up to the kitchen for
orange juice and biscuits, Jon made her a cup of tea
and said, 'I feel sorry for that kid, poor little sod.'

'Oh?' Charlie was trying not to take her eyes off
Rosie. Kieran, she had found, would wait where he was
put, like a dog told to sit and stay; Rosie was likely to
knock something over or dash too near the hobs,
where Jon had two large casseroles steaming.

'He's always being dumped on someone,' Jon said.
'Last year it was Francesca.'

'Francesca?'

'Oh, I forgot – you weren't here then,' Jon said.
'She was Oliver's girlfriend – no one was meant to
know, but I used to see her sneaking out of the Well
House in the mornings. Oliver doesn't bring the kid
here much now. His wife – ex-wife – has him most of
the time.'

Charlie's thoughts had snagged on the name
Francesca
. Francesca Abbott. Oliver's star student.

'What did she look like?' she asked casually.
'Francesca?'

Jon lifted a lid, dipped a spoon and tasted, then
fetched a pepper-grinder and twisted vigorously. 'Oh –
quite striking. Tall. Thin. Cropped hair. Stylish, in a
way all her own. She wore clothes that looked like cutup
curtains and bedspreads.'

That was Francesca Abbott, unmistakably. Charlie
remembered Lisa, in the art corridor, saying, 'She's
this
year's teacher's pet. You're next.'

Uneasiness curdled in Charlie's stomach. She showed
nothing, sipping her tea, watching Kieran and Rosie.
She'd laughed at what Lisa said, but it was true.

Oliver and Francesca. Not just touching. Sleeping
together.

And now? Was Oliver cultivating her as Francesca's
replacement?

Could Jon have got it wrong? There was nothing
objectionable about Francesca being here, or looking
after Kieran. But staying in the Well House! If there
was an innocent reason for that, Charlie couldn't
think of one. Surely Dan and Fay wouldn't condone it.
But if they didn't
know
. . .

Charlie's brain was on full spin. She didn't know
what she thought. She tried to shove Oliver out of her
head, and to concentrate on the children.

When Kieran and Rosie had finished their drinks,
she took them to the courtyard, with the picture-book
Fay had left for them in the hall. They sat on the
bench, squashed together three in a row, the book on
Charlie's lap. As usual, Rosie was eager for the story to
continue, trying to prise the corner of the page from
under Charlie's fingers. Kieran sat passively, his lips
moving to some sound in his own head, not to the
words Charlie was reading.

Then, half-way through the story, he said loudly,
'Nay.'

'Nay?'

'Nay. Nail.'

Charlie looked at him, then at the double-page
spread, for some clue.

'Snay.' He pointed at the garden wall.

Then Charlie understood. 'Snail!' There was a tiny
snail as the footer to each page, making its way across
the book on a trail of slime, so that if you flicked
through the pages it appeared to be moving. She did
this to show Kieran and Rosie.

'Snay.' He pointed again. Charlie looked, but saw
no snail on the wall. 'See snay.'

It was Rosie who got it. 'Snail. Tieran maked a
snail.'

'A snail of stones! You made a snail, Kieran? Shall we
go back and see it?'

Kieran nodded vigorously. There was a trail of
dribble from his mouth to his chin; Charlie wiped it
away with a tissue. For the second time they all went
down to the pond, Kieran stumbling in his haste, talking
to himself.

'Snail, yes. I can see now. Clever Kieran!' Charlie
said, by the pattern of stones.

Rosie began to make a snail of her own, while
Kieran made adjustments to his. Charlie was in no
hurry to take them away; she didn't know how she'd
face Oliver. Soon the new guests would arrive,
exclaiming as they saw the pond, coming down to
look; but for now there was only the
prukk
of a coot
and the flick and splash as a fish broke the surface.
The water mirrored sky between the cut-out shapes
of waterlily leaves. While the harvested fields
beyond were taking on the bleached look of late summer,
the pond and its banks were still green and
luxuriant.

Charlie's thoughts kept circling round Oliver. She
resisted, thinking instead of Sean, and the postcard
he'd sent from Snowdonia. Sent it to
her
, not to Kathy.
First to the doormat, she'd snatched it up, her instinct
to hide it; but then she decided to show it to her
mother. It was a test for both of them: for Kathy, to see
if she could respond with normal interest; for Charlie,
whether she could mention Sean's name without
giving herself away.

'Look, Mum,' she said casually. 'A postcard from
Sean.'

'Oh, yes?'

The moment passed without a display of emotion
from either party.

Snowdon, Crib Goch
was the picture: a terrifying ridge
knifing the sky. Sean had written
Came across here today.
A few hairy moments! Fantastic views – you'd love it. The
course is tough, but by now I could navigate my way to any
rock you care to name, in thick fog at midnight. See you soon,
Sean
. Followed by an
x
.

Already Charlie knew the words by heart.

How
soon? she wanted to ask him. When will I see
you?

She would tell him about Kieran; she heard herself
telling him. About Mum and the photos? About
Oliver
? She wasn't sure, but she imagined him sitting
beside her, listening. She could visualize him so
strongly that his absence was a fresh disappointment.

She'd forgotten the time, here in the still hollow of
afternoon.

Someone was calling her.

'Charlie?' It was Oliver, walking quickly down the
grass slope. 'What are you doing down here? It's gone
half-past!'

'Oh, sorry.'

'I've got to get Kieran back to Rosalind for six.
Anyway, sorry to lumber you. I hope he was OK.'

'I wasn't lumbered! I enjoyed it. Look at the snail
Kieran's made—'

She moved towards it, but Oliver gave the briefest of
glances and said, 'Oh, he's always playing about with
stones. Come on, Kieran. We're going.'

He's always being dumped on someone, Jon had
said, about Kieran. Oliver thought of him as a
nuisance.

He didn't see him often; he'd told Charlie that.
Naïvely, she had imagined a custody dispute, with
Oliver frustrated in his desire to spend more time
with his son. The real situation showed him in a far
less flattering light. He was in charge of Kieran for one
afternoon, but couldn't be bothered. Had palmed
him off on someone else.

Kieran deserved better. Charlie felt a flash of loyalty
towards him. And of hot, angry resentment towards
Oliver.

Kieran walked slowly towards them. Waiting, Oliver
said, 'Thanks again, Charlie. You've helped me out of
a hole.' He smiled at her, reached a hand to touch her
sleeve. 'This colour's fantastic on you. You ought to
wear green more often.'

Charlie snatched her arm away and glared, taking
three steps back. He met her gaze, puzzled and half-smiling.
She moved towards Kieran. 'I've enjoyed our
afternoon,' she told him. 'Thank you, Kieran.'

'Eye-bye arr,' he said. Charlie saw the slow
beginning of a smile.

'I'll be back for dinner and to meet the troops,'
Oliver told her, 'and then I'll see you tomorrow for the
class.'

'No, you won't,' Charlie said. 'I'm not coming.'

'Oh?' Oliver looked a question at her, but then
glanced at his watch. 'God, look at the time. Come
on
,
Kieran. See you when I get back, Charlie.'