Thursdays in the Park (2 page)

She must have dropped back to sleep, because the next thing she heard was, ‘Morning.’ She watched George carefully
placing the hot mug of tea on the bedside table. ‘It’s a spectacular day.’ He pulled back the heavy curtains enthusiastically, letting the early spring sunshine flood the room, then stood smiling down at Jeanie, hands on his hips. His grey hair was neatly combed, tortoiseshell glasses crooked as always – one ear was higher than the other they’d decided years ago, although it didn’t appear so to look at him – giving him an intensely vulnerable air.

‘What’ve you got on today?’

She yawned. ‘Interview with a new girl for the shop. Jola doesn’t trust herself after she chose the last one. Meeting with a new supplier of vegan packed lunches; checking out a second-hand chill cabinet – the one by the window’s knackered. Then Ellie.’ They both smiled at the thought of their granddaughter. ‘You?’

George moved off towards the door with his customary gangling lope. ‘Not as much as you, old girl. Golf this afternoon. Give that adorable little girl a huge hug from her grandad.’

His tone was deliberately cheerful, but she detected – as always since the insurance company he’d worked for, man and boy, had ‘offered’ him early retirement five years ago – a desire to seem busier than he was. He had only once alluded to it, a few months after leaving his job: the feeling that he was now ‘a bit of a spare part’, as he put it. But it had changed things between them. She had felt almost guilty at first, getting off to work with her customary enthusiasm every day and leaving him to hover idle and lonely between golf
games. He had rallied, however, taking up his boyhood hobby of buying old clocks, pulling them apart and mending them, and now the house was thick with them: every available surface tick-tocking, mostly out of synch, as if the shelves and bureau tops themselves were alive. Only in Jeanie’s bedroom was there quiet. But she felt her husband’s obsessive nature, contained in the face of a useful career, was slowly burgeoning. And with it an uncomfortably familiar need to control her. This had always been there between them, but recently it seemed to have lost its sense of humour.

As Jeanie turned the corner to her daughter Chanty’s street that afternoon, she felt herself tensing. If Chanty had been there, it would have been fine: Jeanie and her son-in-law, Alex, knew how to comport themselves in company. But Chanty would be at work, at her documentary editor’s position at Channel 4 – she seemed to work more hours than there were in the day. When it was just her and Alex it was more in the nature of a Mexican stand-off.

She walked up the steps of the Victorian terraced house, first moving the empty green recycling bin the collectors had casually slung on the path.

‘Jean. Come in.’ Her son-in-law managed a half-hearted smile as he stood back to let her pass.

Is it a sine qua non that artists smell?
Jeanie asked herself, holding her breath against the whiff of stale sweat from his paint-spattered tee shirt. And for the millionth time:
What, exactly, does Chanty see in this man?
She could see he
had once been a ‘pretty boy’: large blue eyes and jet-black curls, and he could certainly be charming when he chose. But she found his expression self-regarding and a little petulant, as if the world had not delivered on its promise. Now he was approaching forty, the looks he must have traded on had not kept up with him, though he still behaved as if they had.

Jeanie forgot her son-in-law as her two-year-old granddaughter came running towards her, a grin a mile wide lighting up her huge brown eyes, her arms outstretched: ‘Gin, Gin . . .’

Jeanie bent down and lifted the child in her arms, wrapping her in a close embrace, burying her nose in the pure, sweet softness of Ellie’s skin. ‘How’s it going, Alex?’

Alex shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘Childcare was never going to be my muse of choice.’

Jeanie didn’t rise; she couldn’t afford to, not in front of Ellie. ‘So when’s the exhibition? Isn’t it quite soon?’ she said brightly. She hadn’t meant this as a needle; she was merely making conversation, but his sardonic smile told her that he took it as one.

‘I’ve postponed it.’

Jeanie turned away and began gathering Ellie’s coat and shoes. ‘Oh . . . that’s a shame,’ she said mildly. ‘Come on,’ she addressed Ellie, ‘let’s get your coat on and we’ll go to the park and feed the ducks.’

‘There’s no point in churning stuff out under pressure. It’ll happen when it happens. I need space.’ He stood propped
against the mantelpiece in the sitting room, holding forth as if he were entertaining guests at a soirée. The room was sparsely furnished, the stripped floor covered with a pale sisal rug, bare of anything but the large brown leather sofa, a stylish dull-orange Conran armchair with wooden arms, a padded stool and a giant flat-screen television. Jeanie knew this was partly a style decision, the decoration being paintings, colourful and mostly abstract, and a modern rectangular mirror covering the area above the fireplace. They had obviously come to the conclusion that while Ellie was small it was pointless to deploy anything that might be knocked over, damaged or damaging to their child.

Jeanie felt her heart begin to race with indignation. ‘Space’? He needs ‘space’? This arrogant, weasel-faced layabout, who takes advantage of Chanty’s misplaced love on a daily basis to feed, clothe and house him, never contributing a single, solitary penny, and resenting his own beautiful daughter, has the nerve to whine about ‘space’! And to crown it all his paintings to date were, in her opinion, derivative, abstract, sub-Hodgkin crap.

‘I’ll bring her back around five.’ She tried to smile but felt the anger sticking to her face like a neon sign.

‘Sure . . . whenever . . . see you later, sweetie.’ Alex bent to kiss his daughter on the top of her head, avoiding his mother-in-law’s eye.

‘Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye.’ Jeanie took a deep breath and sang to her granddaughter as they walked
up the hill to the park. She berated herself for her inability to be more grown-up. But she had been there when Chanty, eight months pregnant, had collapsed on her parents’ kitchen floor, clutching the monstrous note Alex had left:

This isn’t working for me,
I’m not ready to be a father, I have so much to achieve.
Please forgive me.
I love you, but this has all been a terrible mistake.
Alex x

The note wasn’t scribbled in an agony of flight, which vastly added to the offence in Jeanie’s mind. No, it was carefully penned with black, heavy flourishes on a thick cream card, set out in column format, for all the world like an invitation to a party.

Chanty had literally been unable to breathe, and by the time George had called an ambulance and they’d sirened her off to A & E, it was clear Chanty was in labour. So this man she was now supposed to like and accept – love, even – had put the very life of his daughter, and indeed Jeanie’s daughter, in jeopardy through his selfishness.

Ellie took it all in her small stride, however. She’d spent forty-eight hours in an incubator to stabilize her breathing, but she’d never looked remotely frail. No thanks to Alex.

‘Again . . . again, Gin,’ Ellie was insisting. So Jeanie sang again, watching with delight as Ellie’s blonde curls swung to and fro to the tune.

But if Chanty had chosen to forgive him, and George – not being the sort to dwell on these things much – had managed to get past it, Jeanie had not. Every time she saw him she was reminded of her daughter’s face, permanently ravaged by tears, as she struggled to cope with her baby alone in the months before Alex had condescended to return.

The playground was empty except for one boy of about four and his father, who were racing round on either side of the roundabout, spinning it at high speed and shouting with laughter.

‘Swin . . . swin . . . come on.’ Ellie, released from her buggy, made straight for the swings. This, experience told Jeanie, could go on for hours, her granddaughter falling into an almost trance-like state as she swung, urging her grandmother, ‘Higher, higher!’ if Jeanie threatened to slack.

Today Ellie was spellbound not by the swing, but by the boy and his father. Her face lit up with laughter as she watched their antics. Then suddenly the boy let go of the blue-painted handhold and raced across the spongy playground tarmac towards his ball, cutting directly across the trajectory of Ellie’s swing. Jeanie heard the shout, ‘Dylan!’ at the same time as she lunged for the swing basket, jerking her granddaughter to a halt as the boy sailed blithely past, quite unconscious of the inch of daylight that had spared him a nasty injury.

‘Dylan!’ Jeanie turned and saw the man’s face, white and shocked as he ran over to his son and, instead of berating
him, just held him tight until the boy squirmed free and went back to his ball.

He rose to his feet, and although he was a thickset man, his movement was surprisingly graceful and fluid. Jeanie watched him brush his hand backwards and forwards across his greying, corn-stubble hair in a gesture that reminded her of a child with a comfort blanket.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks a million.’

Jeanie shrugged, smiled. ‘It happens all the time.’

‘Well, it can’t happen to Dylan, not even once.’ His tone sounded almost desperate.

‘Your son’s OK, a miss is as good as a mile,’ she said soothingly, thinking he must be a playground novice to take on so.

The man looked blank for a second. ‘Oh . . . God no, this isn’t my son, it’s my grandson. Dylan’s my daughter’s boy. You’ve probably guessed I don’t come out with him much. In fact, this is only the fourth time she’s let me.’ He breathed deeply. ‘And it’d have been well and truly the last if that swing’d hit him.’

‘Down . . . down, Gin,’ Ellie was insisting. She had her eye on Dylan’s ball. Jeanie lifted her out and she ran off to stand staring shyly beside the older boy.

‘Let the little girl play too,’ his grandfather called out, to which Dylan paid absolutely no attention.

‘So how old’s your daughter?’

Jeanie laughed. ‘Touché . . . Ellie’s my granddaughter . . . she’s two and a bit.’

He laughed too, holding his hands up in protest. ‘It wasn’t flattery, honest. I just assumed.’ He looked away, embarrassed.

There was an awkward silence and Jeanie glanced around for her granddaughter, who was now totally involved in chasing Dylan and his ball, shrieking with laughter whenever he allowed her to get close.

‘Odd thing, grandchildren,’ the man said, gazing after the boy. ‘I didn’t think it would be such a big deal.’ It was almost as if he were talking to himself. ‘But I find he means everything to me.’

His words surprised Jeanie, not because she didn’t believe in their sincerity – or the sentiment, for that matter – but because it seemed such a personal remark to make to a complete stranger.

‘I know . . . I know what you mean,’ she found herself replying, because she too had been overwhelmed by her feelings for her granddaughter since the first moment she’d held Ellie in her arms, waiting as they prepared the incubator at the hospital for the little body. It had literally been love at first sight. ‘Perhaps it’s because we don’t feel old enough,’ she said, smiling.

The man laughed. ‘That’s certainly true.’

‘It’s a bit like a drug,’ she went on. ‘If I don’t see her for a couple of days I get withdrawal symptoms.’ She laughed, shy suddenly, in a very British way, about the strength of her feelings. Because she hadn’t been one of those mothers who pester their offspring to make them a grandmother. In
fact when Chanty had told her she was pregnant, Jeanie had been a bit daunted, selfishly fearing the interference in her busy life.

Dylan came bounding up to his grandfather. ‘Grandpa, she won’t leave me alone . . . she keeps getting in the way every time I kick the ball.’

The man shrugged. ‘She’s only little, Dylan. Be kind.’

The boy looked up at him, a frustrated frown on his face, and Jeanie thought how exceptionally beautiful he was with his golden skin and bright, water-green eyes.

‘Go on,’ the man urged, ‘play with her for a bit. It won’t hurt you.’

Dylan stomped off, clutching his ball possessively to his chest.

‘He’s a lovely child.’

He nodded proudly. ‘So’s your granddaughter.’

Which was true. Ellie mostly took after her mother – strong, blonde and single-minded – but Ellie’s was the cherubic blondeness of babyhood, coupled with George’s vast, limpid brown eyes.

‘I’d better be off.’ Jeanie called to her granddaughter and moved towards the buggy.

‘Maybe see you again,’ the man suggested.

‘Maybe.’

‘I take Dylan every Thursday now. My daughter works and the childminder’s going for radiotherapy at the hospital on a Thursday – she’s had breast cancer.’

‘Oh . . . I hope she’s all right,’ Jeanie muttered politely.

‘It gives me a chance to see Dylan,’ the man went on, then stopped. ‘Sorry, that sounds callous. I didn’t mean I was happy she had breast cancer . . .’ He tailed off.

‘No, I’m sure not.’ She smiled at his confusion. ‘Well, bye then.’ Jeanie hurried off to scoop up her granddaughter in an effort to save the man further embarrassment.

Jeanie tossed the hot penne with the tomato and basil sauce and tipped it into a large blue earthenware bowl. It was quiet in the big kitchen, the sun casting a soft, golden glow on the garden beyond the French windows. This was the room she liked best, and where they spent most of their time. To Jeanie the Georgian house had a stiff, solemn nature, and although the rooms had high ceilings and good proportions, it felt somehow sad. But the kitchen was south facing and, since they’d put in the windows on to the terrace, full of light. George had wanted an Aga when they’d refurbished the old kitchen, but Jeanie had insisted on a sleek, modern Bosch gas range, and warm terracotta tiles to replace the dreary linoleum. It was now a bright, clean room, the glass-fronted dresser painted in National Trust Woodlawn Charm blue, the colour picked up on the cornices and door.

George had seemed very pensive since he got back from golf, and now he sat silently at the end of the kitchen table,
a glass of red wine in one hand, his corduroy slipper flapping gently to and fro on his crossed foot. A copy of
Time
magazine was in front of him on the wooden table, but he wasn’t reading it; he was staring at his wife.