Out on a Limb (11 page)

Perhaps he likes a challenge. Or perhaps he just has a penchant for old bags. ‘So here I am,’ he says cheerfully. Or he must have no memory. ‘Can I be one, please?’

‘Well, yes,’ I say, regaining my composure. ‘Of course you can…but aren’t you under someone already?’

He shakes his head. ‘Well, I was at the beginning of the year. I had a few sessions straight after the operation. But you know. This and that. Things started improving, so it kind of tailed off. But then I had a fall a few weeks back –’

‘Oh?’

‘Playing football.’ He looks sheepish as he says this. They always do. ‘And I seem to have done something deleterious to it. It feels like I’m back to square one.’

I reach for the nearby chair, then sit on it and take a bit of a history. (Normally – for that is the patient-friendly way at A and P – I would perch on the end of couch with him, but in this case it feels way too personal). It’s the usual story. Years and years of sport, a nasty on-field injury. Operation. Recuperation. Physio. Rehab. And then too soon back in spikes because that’s what men always do.

Men with their addiction to contact sports. Of which Candice, I know, has a different one in mind. You can’t knock on curtains, obviously, so she doesn’t. She coughs just outside. ‘Tea? Coffee? Soft drink? Magazine? Just give me a shout if you need me!’

Gabriel Ash smiles at this. And despite his earlier apparent insouciance, it seems a rather knowing sort of smile. ‘Your fan club,’ I say dryly.

Now he winces. And I realise that it’s not that at all. He’s actually just plain old embarrassed.

‘Well then, you’d best get your trousers off,’ I tell him, handing him a robe. ‘Give me a shout when you’re ready.’

Candice is still lurking with intent as I emerge from behind the curtains.

‘Tell me, just how well
do
you know him, exactly?’ she hisses. So she’s obviously been earwigging, as I thought.

I cross the room so we’re at least half out of earshot. She follows along eagerly. ‘Not well at all,’ I say. She looks disappointed. ‘He’s just my mother’s dead fourth husband’s son.’

She takes a moment or two to compute this. ‘
He
is? Cripes – why didn’t you
say
? That means you’re almost related to him! Wow! Not
related
related, obviously. But, you know, near enough.’ She grabs my arm and computes a bit more. ‘Hey, there’s a thought. Do you get to see him socially at all?’

Much as I have grown fond of Candice (and I have), her relentless pursuit of her next capital R Romance gets a touch wearing at times. I shake my head. ‘No. I don’t see him socially. Honestly, I barely know him.’ I don’t elaborate, because I am hardly intending to, either, except in the matter of Conservatory-gate, after which our paths will probably never cross again. Except perhaps in here, of course. But I doubt that would be for long. Candice looks crestfallen. Then she elbows me. ‘He’s ready.’

I wheel the TENS machine in and start untangling the leads. Back behind the curtain, Gabriel Ash is looking altogether less the shiny-happy-media-type now divested of his jacket and trousers. He has a fuzz of golden hair on his forearms, and a similarly downy thatch on his shins. He looks fit, athletic, toned, robust. As he would do, I guess. What with having been in the navy. Striding about the deck looking for typhoons on the horizon. Or whatever it is that they do.

I bend down to fish around on the trolley for the gel, and wonder what he looks like in uniform. Way better than I do in mine, I suspect.

‘I owe you an apology,’ he says, as he watches me.

I straighten. I’m blushing again. ‘What on earth for?’

He looks at me hard. ‘Not for the sins of my father, on this occasion. I think we’ve done that bit to death, haven’t we?’

‘Well, that’s a relief.’ Though there’s always his sister’s , of course. ‘But what, then?’

‘For being so short with you last week.’

I was right. He is clearly amnesic or something. I find myself smiling. And then all at once feeling humbled. And suddenly, and perhaps because of that, anxious to put things straight. Well, straight-ish. Straight as they can be, under the circumstances. Now he’s sitting before me, I realise I’ve been brooding about our unpleasant exchange of last Friday pretty much ever since it happened. I’m not an unpleasant person. Not normally, I’m not. And it’s played on my mind that he must think I am.

‘You? Short with
me
! I’d have said the opposite was true.’ I squeeze a little gel onto my fingertip and apply it to the first of the pads. ‘So it’s me who should be apologising to
you
,’ I say, sticking the pad onto his leg and now fervently wishing I’d already done so. ‘I’m not normally so ratty.’ He grins at this and raises one eyebrow. A very neat trick if you can master it. ‘No,
really,’
I say.
‘
I’m
not
. I’d just had a really bad week, and I’d been looking forward to my day off, and the last place I wanted to be was round at my mother’s house…sorry,
your
house…doing the wretched cleaning, and, well, I suspect you already realised that, didn’t you?’ He nods. ‘Anyway, there we are. I didn’t mean to be so off with you. I do know it’s not your fault. It was just you being there, and…well, it all just sort of boiled over. It’s just that the implications of everything that’s happened are…well, you know where it’s left us, mother-wise, of course. It’s been getting us
all
down, to be honest. But we’ll get her sorted. In the end.’ I find I’m frowning now. Memo to self: Don’t! You will become wrinkled and furrowed and prematurely wizened. I turn it back into a smile, ‘Well, one can but hope, anyway, eh?’

‘Phew,’ he says, grinning again. And then he looks thoughtful. Or is perhaps just still digesting my speech. ‘Were they happy, d’you think, at some point?’ he says. ‘You know, your mother and my father?’

‘Er…’ I say. ‘Pass.’ I stick another pad on his leg and shake my head. ‘No, that’s not right. I
think
they were. On the whole. Initially, anyway. It’s just that things weren’t so good in the last year or so. Not since her first operation, really. But that’s what happens, isn’t it? It’s the sort of thing that puts a strain on the best of relationships, isn’t it? And she’s not the easiest of patients. Not the easiest woman to live with, period. She’s quite demanding.’

He seems to find this amusing. ‘I imagine that the same could probably be said of my father, come to that.’

And was. By my mother. At his funeral , of all occasions. And I just know from his expression that he’s remembering that too. He must think we’re a family of acerbic old piranhas. I lower my gaze from his. ‘I really didn’t know him well enough to comment,’ I tell him hurriedly. ‘Hardly at all, in fact.’

‘Ditto,’ he says.

It’s such a leading comment that I can’t possibly pass up the opportunity to respond to it. ‘Why didn’t you see him for twenty years?’ I find myself asking. ‘I mean, twenty whole
years
. That’s such a long time. What on earth
happened
? If…er…you don’t mind me asking, that is.’

He looks as if he doesn’t. ‘Nothing that dramatic. I just ceased to consider him my father, that’s all.’

‘But why? What did he do?’

‘He left us. My mum and my sister and I. I was fourteen. And I came home from school one day to find out he’d gone. Just like that. Well, not just like that, as it turned out. There’d been some problems with his business, and he just, well…’ he shrugs, ‘…ran away. Just upped and went. We didn’t hear a word from him for over a year. Didn’t see him for another four after that.’

Despite his light tone it’s a very bleak statement. ‘What,
nothing
?’

‘I know he got in touch with my mother a couple of times. But she was always very loath to discuss it. I think she thought it would be better all round if we just carried on as if he didn’t exist. I don’t think it was the first time he’d let her down. She probably just wanted to protect us.’

‘And that’s the last time you saw him?’ It all sounds very confusing to me. This is the same man who was living in his son and daughter’s house. Most odd.

‘Oh, no,’ he says. ‘Then he came back.’

‘And?’

H e shrugs again. I suspect he has embraced the shrug as his metaphorical defence against being abandoned so cruelly. It seems such an automatic ‘yeah, whatever’ type of gesture. A form of denial in fact. ‘And I assume the deal was that we were supposed to forgive him. And Mum did, to an extent. Never had him back, of course. Nothing like that. And Corinne did too, in time, of course. I think women are better at that sort of thing, don’t you? Where men are concerned, anyway.’

Which makes me think of Charlie. And of all the little accommodations and justifications that were so much a part of my relationship with him. Thank God that’s no more. Yes, I think. He’s probably right. ‘And what about you?’

‘Ah,’ he says. And this time he doesn’t shrug. ‘I didn’t.’

I look at him. His face is impassive. His tone matter-of-fact. Which feels all wrong to me. I think of my own father, who died when I was twelve, and I can’t imagine anything ever being so bad between us that I’d ever give him up if I’d still had him. Ever give up
on
him. But that’s me. That’s not him. I’m not in his shoes.

‘And still haven’t?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he says levelly. ‘Not yet.’

‘I think that’s terribly sad,’ I say, even as I think it, because that ‘yet’ is a very big word. A word that assumes there’s room for hope. But there’s no ‘yet’ about it in this case now, is there? It’s too late. He knows that. He must know that. But he doesn’t seem to mind in the least.

Just gets back to his shrugging. ‘If you say so,’ he says.

Ken’s not in denial. He’s just dead impressed, and more than a little bit smitten. Ken, who must have treated the rogue limbs of just about every famous footballer and rugby player hereabouts over the years, is rather taken with our latest new patient. ‘I didn’t realise you were going to be attracting such high profile patients here, lovely. Got any more up that sleeve of yours?’

‘Gawd, Ken. Don’t tell me you fancy him too.’ Candice says. ‘I’ll fight you for him, you know. I saw him first. Anyway, he’s not available, more’s the pity. He’s engaged.’

‘To Lucy Whittall,’ I add. ‘They’re getting married at Christmas.’

‘And you’re married anyway,’ she reminds him. ‘Well, whatever your men’s version of it is, anyway. Whereas I’m free as a bird and badly in need of a … Ah! Mrs Threpple! How are you today? Any improvement with your groin?’

When I get home from work, buoyed by the restoration of good relations with the weatherman (who I have provisionally forgiven on the house front on account of him having, like me, a tortured soul on the parent front, even if he isn’t admitting it –
yet
), and also armed with yet more information about retirement developments, it is to find that my mother has executed a double whammy. No – I miscalculate – a triple whammy, in fact. Not only has she done all my ironing, she’s also made a pile of fairy cakes (Mother? Cakes?
Eh
?), and thirdly – and this is the biggest of them, frankly – she’s cosied up with Jake at the kitchen table, and they are having a bit of a chat. It is all very sweet. It is all rather scary. It is all too easy to see, as I’m sure she does, that her being kutched up in the kitchen with Jake presents just the sort of picture a disinterested observer would respond to with something like an ‘ahhhh…’. Granny and her grandson. Bonding over tea. A happy moment for the child in a day (as in most of them) where his poor single mother must be out earning crusts, and said grandson is forced to stay home alone with nowt but his latchkey for company. Eeewww!

‘Trojan,’ Jake’s saying, licking off pink icing, ‘means, like, hard. As in difficult.’

‘Oh, I
see
. And what’s a mosher?’

‘Well, a mosher is like…’ he considers. ‘Well, you know, as in mosh pits –’

‘What on earth is a mosh pit?’

‘You know, Nana. The bit in front of the stage where the moshers all go.’

‘What stage?’

‘
The
stage. You know, when you’re at a gig.’

‘And it’s a
pit
?’

‘Well, it’s not
really
a pit, obviously. But it still gets pretty minging…’

‘I’m entirely at sea now. W hat’s “minging” when it’s at home?’

‘Minging is not good. Minging is, well, minging. Kind of gross.’

‘
Ah
, now. As in the state of your bedroom?’

‘No. As in Louise Petworth.’

‘Who’s Louise Petwoth?’

‘Ex-girlfriend,’ I mouth from behind him.

To the uninitiated, of course, all very unremarkable. Because she is, in short, behaving like a normal granny-type person. Jesus, this is getting seriously worrying. She’ll be trying to darn his socks before I know it.

Chapter 10

B
ECAUSE IT
IS
MAINLY
the Jake effect. I can see that. Of her five grandchildren, Jake’s always been the one she’s had the closest relationship with. Not that she ever really did ‘close’ when any of them were little, any more than she did with us. There’s possibly more maternal instinct in an amoeba than that which resides in my mother’s breast.

But despite her lack of input on a practical level, Mum and Jake have always seemed to share a certain harmony of spirit. Whatever she’s got in the get-up-and-go genes department, she’s undoubtedly passed on to my number two son. Added to which, they are physically alike too, which I’m sure makes a difference as well. Where Sebastian inherited his father’s dark looks and muscular frame, Jake has his grandmother’s sprung form and long legs, not to mention her good looks and her downy blonde locks. In short, all the bits Pru and I would have liked to inherit but which, like twins, seemed to have skipped a generation. And he’s always loved her stories. The places she’s been, the people she’s met, the outrageous bits of gossip that trip so salaciously from her tongue. Oh, yes. Jake and his nana are like two peas in a pod.

Which is fine. As long as they’re not both in
my
pod, that is.

To which end, at the end of the following week, I have arranged for us to go and look at a retirement development, to which, hopefully, she will very soon retire.

Abercorn Gate is a brand new development not far from Mum’s old place. It has gold-tipped wrought iron gates, new pea green turf, a glossy young shrubbery, a rank of box clipped to within an inch of its phloem, and an awful lot of heavy wooden benches. Though fortunately – I check – none of them have little bronze plaques affixed to them detailing which dead person they’re dedicated to.

Yet
. And just to remind us of such delicate matters, the frontage is dominated by a ten foot high hoarding from which a pair of silver haired persons beam indulgently out.

‘This is nice ,’ I say nicely.

My mother looks up at their smiling faces in disgust. ‘God’ s waiting room,’ she mutters. ‘That’s what this sort of place is. God’s waiting room. It even smells of death.’

‘It doesn’t smell of death, it smells of grass clippings,’ I snap irritably. ‘Stop being so negative, will you?’

But negative seems to be her chosen role for the day. Much as ‘too bloody bad, Mum’ is mine. Things don’t improve much as we’re shown around either, despite the best attempts of the agent.

‘I don’t doubt you’ve already seen a little of the nice communal garden,’ he enthuses as he leads us inside. ‘It was landscaped by Peter Mapplethorpe, you know.’

About which, I presume, we are supposed to be impressed. This man clearly doesn’t know my mother.

He’s called Mr Preston, and is not at all like the ones that reside downstairs from A and P. For though still routinely urbane and professional, he is closer to my mother’s age than my own, which is not something you tend to see much in estate agency, them all being burned out or millionaires by thirty. He is also in a brass-buttoned blazer and beige slacks. I wonder if he’s been hand-picked for wooing ladies of a certain age. He certainly seems to be wooing my mother.

Trying to, at any rate. He’s not necessarily succeeding. ‘Communal? Won’t I have my own one?’ she asks incredulously. ‘How will I be able to sunbathe topless?’

Though ( oh, yuk!) it’s true, I know she is saying this partly for impact, so it’s to his credit (and her chagrin) that he responds to this question as if it were the sort of thing they get asked about almost every day at Abercorn Gate. ‘If you opt for the second floor,’ he answers smoothly, wafting his brochure upwards, ‘you do get a balcony –’

‘Mum, get a grip ,’ I hiss. ‘You’re seventy-four, for goodness’ sake!’

She fixes me on the end of one of her famed Garland scowls. The one that used to have chorus girls weeping.

‘Yes, Abigail.
Seventy
-four. Not ninety-four. Which hardly makes me Methuselah. Just you wait till you’re seventy-four, young lady. You’ll change your tune then, mark my words.’

Though I doubt I’ll be flashing my bosoms. I try to imagine myself as a seventy-four-year-old, and, depressingly, I can do it all too clearly. I’ll be wrinkled and worn-out and hunch-backed and exhausted, because I’ll still be looking after a one hundred and eight-year-old witch.

‘Well, I think it’s very nice ,’ I persist. ‘It’s handy for the shops, and not too far from your friends at the theatre club. And you’ll be able to make lots of new friends here as well.’

She looks at me as if I had just suggested she join EXIT.

‘Theatre club?’ says the agent politely. ‘Would that be the one in Cyncoed?’

Mum lifts her chin and strikes a pose for him. I t’s so automatic I don’t think she even realises she does it any more.

‘Why, yes!’ she simpers , changing tack on a sixpence. ‘Fancy! Do you know it?’ He nods enthusiastically. ‘I’ve been a member for oh,
umpteen
years. I’ve always tried to keep my hand in. Ah…’ She sighs wistfully. ‘These things are in one’s blood, aren’t they? (I don’t know why she’d think he’d know about that, but perhaps fellow am-drammers have some sort of secret code.) She does a delicate little frown and lifts her walking stick. ‘Though sadly, not so much lately, of course. What with my knee and so on.’ She sighs again. ‘I sometimes fear my days in the spotlight are finally behind me…’

‘Garland!’ he says, slapping his brochure against his thigh, eyes alight with excitement (God, don’t these people have
lives?
). ‘Of course! Dance with Diana!’ He la-la-las the music, with all the right hand movements too. ‘I knew it! I
knew
your face was familiar! Well, I never. How about that?!’

Mum bats her lashes happily, having discovered a new groupie. ‘Well, now, that
was
a long time ago, Mr Preston. Goodness, I’m very flattered that you even remember it! Gracious, how amazing you knew who I was! Oh, look. Now I’m blushing…’

She does the same speech at everyone. And there’s more.

‘
She Stoops To Conquer
!’ declares the agent, clicking his fingers together and beaming at her. ‘Ninety-six? Ninety-seven? In the Community Hall?’

‘Gracious,’ Mum says again. ‘You saw me in
that
?’

‘Absolutely!’ says the agent, hugging his brochure to his chest now and smiling warmly at my mother. He’s thrilled, I don’t doubt, at having seen her in person. Inflamed also, just possibly, at the thought of her breasts. But mainly, I judge, he is hopeful. Because there’s something in the very effusive nature of his manner that smacks of a man with a sale on his mind.

I wish him luck. By the lorry-load. I must live in hope.