Thursdays in the Park (26 page)

George stood looking at her, making no move towards the house.

‘We’ve still got another hour of light,’ he muttered, casting a regretful eye at the shrubs he was pruning.

‘Look, I didn’t ask her here. But you must come; it’s so rude to leave her sitting there all alone.’ Jeanie was
exasperated, but hardly surprised. They had been in the house for nearly six weeks, and George had spent almost all of that time in the garden. His previous obsession – the scores of clocks he had collected over the years – had been ignored since the move and were still in packing cases stacked against the wall in his new study. These days he would eat breakfast with one eye on the door, then be out until dark – in every weather – only returning in the early afternoon to raid the fridge for a cheese sandwich and a cup of cold coffee left over from breakfast. When he came in at night he was exhausted; he’d pour himself a large whisky and sit silently over supper before shuffling off to bed. He was perfectly civil to Jeanie, but seemed hardly to know who she was. Jeanie knew he was still depressed, but oddly he didn’t appear unhappy, just fixed in his own tiny world. She thought about what would happen if one day there was no cheese for his sandwich. Would he go and buy some? Because he never left the house. She had tried again to get him to see a local doctor, someone he didn’t know. She’d thought it might be easier for him. But the same answer came back. ‘Nothing wrong with me, just a bit tired.’

‘George, dear.’ Lorna struggled to the edge of the sofa.

‘Don’t get up,’ Jeanie insisted, since George didn’t.

‘How long is it since we saw each other?’ Lorna went on, leaning back gratefully on the cushions. ‘Your dear mother’s been dead such a long time now, but I see you’ve inherited her passion for the garden.’ She turned to Jeanie. ‘Did you see her garden? Heavens, it was a sight to behold; people
came from miles to see it.’ She laughed. ‘When Imogen let them, of course.’

George sat down, his hands still filthy, his gardening clothes making him look like a tramp, but said nothing, just shot the odd glance at Lorna, a confused look on his face. Lorna didn’t seem to notice, however. She just talked on and on, telling them the history of the area, the house, stories of the ‘dreadful’ Barkworth and the sainted Imogen, sipping happily on her glass of white wine, until George suddenly got up and left the room. He’d barely said one word to her. Lorna pretended not to notice.

‘Sorry.’ Jeanie was tired of excuses. ‘He’s not been well recently.’

The old lady nodded in sympathy. ‘Retiring sometimes has a funny effect on men, don’t you think?’ she suggested, when Jeanie didn’t say what was wrong.

‘It’s not that. The doctor said it might take a while,’ she said, wincing at her own pathetic avoidance of the truth. But she knew the stigma attached to mental illness, and she wanted George to be accepted by the locals without awkwardness. Lorna, she hoped, would spread the word that he was ill at the moment and not just rude.

As the train pulled into Waterloo, Jeanie felt a frisson of excitement. She had spent most of the journey worrying about George. This was the first time she had left him to go to the shop. It was Lorna who provided the solution. She had dropped by to say that ‘Sally-from-the-village’, who
cleaned for her Mondays and Fridays, was looking for more work. Sally was exactly what Jeanie had hoped for: a warm, middle-aged woman who laughed a lot and seemed quite sanguine about George. She would come in on the days Jeanie was away, and call if there were any problems.

As Jeanie made her way up Highgate Hill, she fell into the old pattern of looking out for Ray. The wilds of Somerset, where the possibility of meeting him was virtually non-existent, had proved something of a relief these past weeks, but as she breathed the air of North London – familiar over a lifetime – the renewed chance of seeing him plunged her straight back into a mood of heightened awareness and thudding heart. She tried to rehearse what she would say if they bumped into each other, but she never got past imagining how it would feel to look into his eyes again.

‘That’s different.’ She checked the new shelving arrangement, and was aware of Jola’s anxious wait for her verdict. ‘It’s much better, less cluttered. What have you done with the maize products?’

Jola grinned in relief. ‘I put them here, under tins. No one like them, you know. I throw much away because out of date.’

‘You’re right, the pasta tastes filthy. I suppose there are more wheat-free options to choose from now, and spelt. No, it looks good.’

‘How is country?’

Jeanie sighed. ‘It’s OK. I’d rather be here.’

‘And Mr Lawson? He better now?’

‘Sort of. So . . . where’s Megan?’

Jeanie liked the new girl. Perhaps a bit of a cliché of the straightforward, enthusiastic Australian, but she genuinely seemed to enjoy working for Jola.

‘She never late, she happy to work weekends, she very good with customer, never get angry,’ Jola enthused when Megan went on her lunch break.

‘Sounds perfect . . . so you don’t really need me any more.’ Even though she said it in jest, for a second Jeanie thought she might cry. It was the sudden conviction that indeed she was now redundant, retired, no use to anyone, except to provide George with cheese for his sandwich and whisky for his supper. Highgate seemed to have survived her absence very nicely. Of course Jola protested, but a bleakness settled over her nonetheless.

‘I’m going over to see Ellie at lunchtime,’ she told her. Despite promises that the family would practically live in Somerset, they hadn’t yet visited beyond a rushed Saturday morning the week after the move, when the house was still stuffed with tea chests and bubble wrap and felt more like a furniture warehouse than a home. Chanty said she was too tired, it was too far, and Alex, of course, had his exhibition to finish. She’d missed her granddaughter terribly, and worried the child would have forgotten her.

It was raining as she made her way down the hill to her daughter’s house. The autumn had been beautiful till the previous week, more of an Indian summer, but now there
was a raw edge to the wind, the promise of things to come. Jeanie tried to shake off her despondency, but even the thought of little Ellie failed to lift her mood. On the opposite side of the road, on the corner of Hornsey Lane, she noticed a couple standing together beneath a large dark-green umbrella. She couldn’t see their faces as the umbrella was pulled low, but as she drew level with them, the wind gusted, jerking the umbrella upwards. As the movement caught her eye, she looked and saw Ray. Ray and a girl; Ray with his arms round the girl; Ray laughing into the girl’s eyes . . . the beautiful girl . . . the young, beautiful girl.

Jeanie literally thought she would be sick, there and then, on the pavement, in front of the passers-by. Be sick and then die. She found she could not move, as if all the blood had drained from her limbs. The umbrella had been pulled back into place, and moved off slowly down the hill. Ray had not seen her, but still she stood there. Finally the sickness passed into something much worse: absolute despair. She dragged herself left off the main road and managed somehow to get to the house.

‘Jean, come in. Are you OK? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’ Alex drew her solicitously into the sitting room. ‘Ellie’ll be awake in a moment, she’s so excited you’re coming.’

Jeanie managed a smile. ‘Could I have some water, please, Alex.’

Her son-in-law didn’t move, just stood looking down on her. ‘Are you ill?’

‘I’ll be fine; I just had a bit of a turn,’ she assured him, but even to herself her voice sounded strained and weak.

‘What sort of a turn?’ Alex persisted, and through the fog she wondered if he was remembering his disbelief in the face of his daughter’s injury.

‘Honestly, I’ll be fine. I think I forgot to eat today, what with the train being so early, and then all the stuff I had to deal with in the shop,’ she burbled on, finding reassurance in her ability to speak at all.

Alex looked relieved. ‘That’s daft at your age. You have to eat, especially breakfast. Chant did a programme on it. Apparently schoolchildren who eat breakfast do better than those who don’t, because after a night of starvation the brain needs fuel to function.’ He laughed. ‘Obvious, really. I’d have thought you’d have known it, Jean, with all your health-food experience.’

‘I did, but you know how it is.’ She laughed as heartily as she could, and saw it was enough to convince Alex.

‘I’ll make you some toast and tea, then we’ll get Ellie up. Marmite or honey?’

‘How’s the exhibition coming along?’ she asked as she munched the honey toast. The fact that she hadn’t eaten all day she knew had absolutely nothing to do with her ‘turn’. All she wanted now was to process what she had seen, to turn the knife in the wound, but she forced her thoughts back into her daughter’s kitchen. ‘You seem quite relaxed,’ she told her son-in-law.

Alex took a deep breath. ‘You’ve caught me at the eye of
the storm. It’s a brief window which exists between relief that I’ve finally finished the work and terror that everyone’ll think it’s crap.’

‘So you’ll be nervous on Thursday, then.’

‘Um, nervous?’ He shivered. ‘ “Nervous” doesn’t come close. I’d say more . . . cold sweat arena.’

‘I can’t imagine,’ Jeanie told him.

‘You’ll be there, won’t you? And George.’ He hesitated. ‘How is George, by the way?’

‘I don’t know if he’s up to it yet, Alex. He never goes anywhere, and I think even the train may be a step too far.’

‘That bad . . . Chanty seems to think he’s better.’

‘He’s not miserable like he was, more . . . cut off, lives in his own world,’ she explained.

Ellie had not forgotten her. The child wouldn’t leave her grandmother’s knee, except to drag her up to her room to show Jeanie her toys, burbling on excitedly the while. Jeanie would have liked to have taken her out, but the rain was pouring down now, bouncing off the garden decking in ‘dancing dollies’ that delighted Ellie as they watched at the window.

‘They dancing, Gin . . . dollies dancing in the rain.’

‘So how’s nursery? Do you like it?’

‘I do,’ Ellie said solemnly. ‘Jack’s my friend. I saw a puppet show, Gin.’

‘Was it fun?’

‘It was,’ the child answered, making Jeanie smile at her verbal formalities. Her speech had come on so much in the missing weeks.

‘My dolly called Becky, looook, she’s toiny and hungry. I got some mork in my bag.’ She got out a plastic bottle from the pink zip bag she carried about and began to imitate feeding the doll. ‘Now she has to go to sleep,’ she said in imperious imitation of an adult, as she laid her in the pink carrycot and covered her tenderly with a blanket. Alex was standing in the doorway.

‘I’m hoping this bodes well for the future,’ he joked.

‘Don’t count on it.’ Jeanie laughed back. Only her granddaughter was capable of taking her out of herself, but in the moments of lull, the image of Ray and the girl came flooding back, dragging her under like a rip tide.

‘Supper’s ready, Ell,’ Alex said. ‘Sausages . . . and ketchup.’

‘Ooooooh.’ Ellie grinned widely, her eyes sparkling. ‘Sodsidges and ketchup. You hungry, Gin? You can share some of mine.’

‘I’m afraid I have to go, darling.’ Jeanie got up off the bedroom floor.

‘You could stay for supper. Chanty’ll be back in an hour or so.’ Alex grinned sheepishly. ‘I don’t want you keeling over the moment you leave the house. Chant might think I don’t learn from my mistakes.’

‘Thanks, Alex, but I ought to get back to the shop. There’s so much to catch up on.’

‘Are you enjoying Somerset, then?’

He seemed a changed man now his work was finished. The sniping had stopped and there was a real concern in his question. So much so that Jeanie felt her throat tightening.
Until today, she realized, she had always fantasized that there was a chance, even if she chose not to take it, that she could be with Ray again. And as a result, Somerset still felt like a staging post, somewhere that did not quite require her commitment.

‘I don’t know how to answer that,’ she said eventually, fighting back the tears.

‘Is it George? It must be very hard, with him in such a broken-down state.’

She saw Ellie’s little face cloud with worry.

‘You sad, Gin?’ The little girl came and stood beside her, her arm round Jeanie’s leg, the other hand gently stroking her knee.

Jeanie took a deep breath.

‘I’m a bit sad, darling, but I’ll be OK.’ She picked up the small, warm body and gave her a hug.

‘I’d better be off,’ she said, holding herself together through the goodbyes, down the steps, the wave to her granddaughter and son-in-law, the walk along the road to the corner; but once round the corner she broke down.

The flat above the shop had the dreary chill of an unoccupied space. There had been no one there for nearly two months. Jeanie had had it painted in a neutral white, and replaced the cheap furniture with some from the Highgate house. It was potentially a good space. The sitting room/kitchen was light, with windows at either end, the front on to the high street, the back on to the gardens. The
top floor had a good-sized bedroom and a bathroom. She could make it lovely, she told herself, as she turned the heating on and looked for the tea. She hadn’t loved the old house so much; there had always been a pervading gloom in the dark, high-ceilinged rooms. But it didn’t feel right to be in Highgate and not in the place she’d called home for thirty-five years. All she felt able to do now was wrap herself in the mulberry wool throw from the old kitchen and lie on the sofa in numb disbelief.

Rita looked around the flat inquisitively. ‘Hmmm, bit of a comedown from the mansion, but potential as a pied-à-terre, certainly.’ She threw herself into the armchair. ‘So how’s it going, darling? You look dreadful.’

Jeanie had rung her friend and told her about Ray, and Rita had insisted on coming over.

‘I feel a fool.’

‘Why? You’ve done nothing foolish . . . unless you count dumping your one true love.’

Jeanie didn’t react.

‘Sorry, darling, I can see you’re not in the mood for my teasing.’