Thursdays in the Park (3 page)

‘Why were you so late back?’ he asked.

Jeanie’s heart sank.
Here we go
, she thought.

‘I went to look at a new organic salad producer. In Potter’s Bar. I told you.’

‘But you said that was at two. You can’t have been there five hours, surely.’

Her husband’s eyes drilled into her, as if he was trying to search her soul. The tension, even at a distance, was palpable.

‘I went back to the shop afterwards. I needed to do stuff.’ She sighed and plonked the bowl of penne on to the table with unnecessary force.

‘Ah . . . so when did you get back to the shop?’

‘Stop it, George, please.’

She always found herself responding to George’s ludicrous monitoring as a reflex, before she remembered that by answering she was giving his anxiety credence.

‘Stop what? I was just enquiring about your day. Isn’t that what husbands are supposed to do?’

Jeanie saw him take a deep breath, and knew that the inquisition was over for the time being. To give George his due, he did try and control himself once the involuntary spasm had passed.

‘How was the game?’ she asked, placing beside her husband a block of fresh Parmesan she had taken from the deli cabinet
in the shop. George was usually full of his golf, regaling her with tales of skulduggery committed by his Thursday partner. Danny, if her husband was to be believed, enjoyed cheating more than he enjoyed the game itself.

But this evening George just pushed his glasses back up his nose and took the serving spoon his wife proffered.

‘Oh . . . OK. Danny won as usual.’

‘And?’ Jeanie grated some cheese over her pasta.

She saw her husband take a deep breath.

‘Jeanie.’ He paused, then planted his hands squarely on the table on either side of his plate, his thumbs grasping the rough underside. ‘I’ve been thinking . . .’

Jeanie frowned, waited. George sounded unusually ponderous.

‘Go on then,’ she said impatiently, when her husband said nothing further. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, and it seems the right time, with you coming up sixty next month.’ Again he paused.

Jeanie found her heart was beating hard. Was he going to tell her he was leaving her? Perhaps he’d had a mistress for the last decade and he wanted to spend his declining years in her arms, she thought whimsically. It might account for things. She shook herself. ‘Yes?’ she urged him on.

‘You know we’ve been saying for ages we’ll get a weekend cottage? Well, I’ve been thinking, and it seems daft to me, having two houses when there’s just us.’

Jeanie nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right. It would have been
good to have somewhere to escape to, but there’s always a pressure to go all the time, and my busiest time is the weekend.’

For a moment they ate in silence.

‘I didn’t mean that quite,’ George went on, beginning to fiddle with the bread on his plate, breaking it into tiny pieces and balling each piece up before dropping it back on to the pile.

Again Jeanie waited, puzzled, as her husband slowly, meticulously munched on his pasta.

‘I meant that instead of getting a weekend place, we should sell up and move to the country. Live there.’

‘What?’ Jeanie was stunned. ‘Sell this house? Are you serious?’

George blinked and swilled his wine round his glass before taking a long sip. ‘I know. It’s quite a step.’

‘But this house has been in your family for generations.’

‘What difference does that make?’ He sounded genuinely surprised.

‘What country? Where?’ Jeanie didn’t know where to start, this was so totally out of the blue. George had been living in the rambling Highgate house when she first met him in the seventies. Back then he was camping on the sofa in what he called the morning room, amongst his deceased Uncle Raymond’s books and paraphernalia, not having a clue how to proceed. It had been Jeanie who had taken it in hand, packing away the heavy Victorian furniture in the attic and bringing the house into the twentieth century with bright
paint and modern fabrics. Despite her own reservations, Jeanie had always thought George loved living there.

‘But there’s the shop, I can’t leave that,’ Jeanie went on, still in shock from her husband’s announcement.

‘Well, you’ll retire when you’re sixty, won’t you. Any time now.’ He grinned.

‘Retire?’

‘Jeanie, you’re sixty next month. People retire at sixty, women anyway. You’ve often said what a nightmare the shop is, how tired it makes you. I’ve been retired for years,’ George pointed out reasonably.

Jeanie got up and began pacing the tiles, her supper forgotten. ‘For heaven’s sake, George. Sixty is no age these days. And anyway, it should be my decision when I pack it in, not yours.’ She glared at him.

‘I’m not deciding anything . . . calm down, won’t you, old girl.’ George shook his head in bewilderment. ‘I thought you’d like the idea. This is only a discussion. You always say you love the country.’

‘Stop calling me “old girl”. You know I hate it,’ she snapped. ‘Yes, I love the country for a weekend, to loll about in with a book, go for the odd walk. But I don’t want to live there. What country, anyway?’ she asked again.

George sighed. ‘Dorset, I thought, near the coast, sort of Lyme way. It’s beautiful there.’

Jeanie stared at him. ‘You’ve really thought this out, haven’t you?’

Her husband nodded. ‘I want to get out of London, Jeanie
– I don’t see the point in us being here any more. It would give us a new start, you and me.’

‘You were bored to death when you grew up down there,’ Jeanie commented, ignoring the rest of his remark. For a long time now she had suspected that he resented her involvement in her business. He had never said as much, but there had been hints.

‘Yes, but I was a teenager. Things are different now, obviously. At our age we want different things from our life.’

‘You might. I don’t,’ Jeanie retorted. ‘What about all our friends, your golf? What about Ellie?’ She thought mention of her granddaughter would be the trump card that would put an end to this nonsense.

‘Ellie can visit, come and stay for weekends and holidays. She’ll love it, it’ll do her so much good to get out of London. And we’ll make friends. There are even golf courses in Dorset, believe it or not.’ George grinned. ‘Listen, Jeanie, just think about it, that’s all I’m asking. It seems ridiculous, two old people rattling around in this vast house, and since Mrs Miller retired the place isn’t even clean. We could put the money to much better use.’

‘Money isn’t an issue, as you well know. The cleaning’s gone to pot, but that’s easily rectified. Jola has a friend who’s willing to come a couple of mornings. I just need to get it organized.’

He looked at her, tolerantly amused, as if anything she said was of little importance. ‘I’ve set my heart on this, old girl.’ He spoke softly, with his usual deceptively mild manner, but Jeanie heard the finality with dread.

‘I said stop calling me that. We’re not old,’ she muttered weakly. ‘Really, George, we’re not. Only middle-aged.’

With that the discussion was closed, but Jeanie spent a sleepless night. George always got what he wanted. It was his house, and finally, if he decided to sell it, there wasn’t much she could do to stop him. He was old-fashioned in that way. Although she was the businesswoman who ran a successful health-food shop on the high street, it was George who took care of the business side of their lives. He decided how to invest their money, whether they needed repairs to the house or extensive garden, when it was time to get a new car, and he dealt with all the bills. She was perfectly capable, but he wouldn’t have considered involving her. Would he really sell this place without her agreement, she wondered, as dawn began to lighten the sky and his cautious tread set off on its usual path.

Chanty opened the door to her parents. ‘Shhh . . . Ellie’s still asleep and she’s been a nightmare all day. We’re in the garden.’

They tiptoed through the house and out on to the fashionably faded decking. Easter lunch was laid for eight on the wrought-iron table – white cloth, polished glass and silverware glinting prettily in the April sunshine. It was surprisingly warm. Jeanie wished she’d brought her sunglasses.

‘Hi there, Alex.’ George moved to shake his son-in-law’s hand. Alex had made an effort today. The habitual shabby
tee had been replaced by a crumpled blue shirt, and to Jeanie’s relief he smelt of soap rather than paint and stale sweat.

‘Who else is coming?’ Jeanie indicated the table.

‘My oldest schoolfriend, Mark, and his wife and children. You won’t mind it not being just family, will you?’ Alex sounded almost defensive, as if he were challenging Jeanie to disagree.

‘How nice. I don’t think we’ve ever met them, have we?’

Chanty came out of the house with a tray full of glasses and a champagne bottle.

‘No, you won’t have.’ She set the tray down. ‘They’ve been in Hong Kong for five years. Mark’s made his mint now and they’ve just bought a pile in Dorset.’

Jeanie shot a glance at George, suddenly certain that she was being set up. Chanty wouldn’t meet her eye. Alex smiled triumphantly.

‘How lovely.’ She refused to rise to the bait, but Alex couldn’t resist.

‘We thought it’d be good for you to bond over West Country property.’

Jeanie accepted a glass of champagne and moved to one of the deckchairs in the shade of the cherry tree. This isn’t fair, she thought.

‘Isn’t this lovely,’ she repeated, but the tension could be cut with a knife.

Her daughter squatted down in front of her.

‘Mum, Alex is just winding you up. We asked Mark and
Rachel because we haven’t seen them since they got back, not because of Dad’s moving thing.’

Jeanie smiled, but she felt miserable.

‘We can’t talk about it now, but are you so dead set against it? Ellie would love it, you know . . . all that fresh air and freedom. You’d see more of her than you do now, what with giving up the shop . . .’

‘If Ellie needs fresh air, then why don’t you and Alex move to bloody Dorset?’ she snapped.

Chanty looked patient. ‘Don’t be snippy, Mum, you know I can’t be a commissioning editor from Dorset, and I have to work.’

Jeanie bit her tongue before she made some damaging slight about her idle son-in-law. ‘And I have to work too,’ she countered.

‘Well, you don’t
have
to.’

‘Not financially, no, obviously not. But for me, I have to work for me.’ Ridiculous tears welled behind her eyes. ‘Your father seems to have written us off, Chanty. I’m not old; I may not be in my first flush, but there’s life in the old dog yet.’

Chanty smiled. ‘Of course there is, Mum,’ she assured her unconvincingly. ‘You look years younger than your age. But moving to the country isn’t fatal. Loads of people live there quite happily, you know.’

‘Yeah, yeah, and there are even golf courses.’

Her daughter looked puzzled. ‘We all thought you’d appreciate being able to wind down a bit.’

The bell rang, and Jeanie heard Ellie cry out from her upstairs bedroom.

‘I’ll get her.’ She hauled herself out of the deckchair and went to fetch her granddaughter.

Jeanie’s shop suddenly took on a different significance for her. When she opened up on the Tuesday after Easter, she looked lovingly at the boxes of wheatgrass and spinach piled up outside the door, at the inevitable pool of water the chill cabinet had leaked across the wooden floor, the baby tomatoes that had softened into rot overnight, the endless sell-by dates which would have to be checked. And when Jola arrived and said the new girl had quit before she’d even started, she didn’t even blink. Yes, much of the business of running a shop was frustrating, but she loved it. It was what she did and she was very successful at it.

She had refused to speak to George for the rest of Easter Day. The lunch had gone beautifully: the lamb was perfectly pink, the queen of puddings was a triumph, Alex’s friend and his wife were surprisingly charming considering they were friends of Alex. And Alex himself seemed less edgy in their company. But Jeanie had just gone through the motions. No one would have realized, except perhaps her too-perceptive son-in-law, but that was one of the few perks of maturity: you knew how to dissemble.

Tuesday was busy. Everyone was back from the Easter break, and she and Jola barely had time to draw breath until the afternoon. But as she smiled and chatted to her customers,
stacked shelves, organized deliveries, she was conscious of a shadow over her day, like a half-forgotten dream.

It was with some relief that she read the text message from her friend, Rita:
Court booked 4 5pm 2day. B there or b sqre. Rx
.

Rita, a tall, tanned, athletic South African, was already on the court when Jeanie arrived in Waterlow Park. The weather had clouded over and there was a cold April breeze, but Rita had stripped off to display her habitually immaculate tennis dress and sparkling white trainers. Jeanie, by contrast, wore grey tracksuit pants and a black tee shirt. They were evenly matched on the court, the weekly game a fight to the death. Rita, with her long reach and killer serve, hit harder than Jeanie but moved more slowly. Jeanie was quicker round the court, more creative with her tactics and marginally more accurate. Neither could claim to have the upper hand over the years, and so every victory was exhilarating and very sweet.

But today Jeanie felt stumbling and lumpen, as if someone had tethered her feet.

‘Christ,’ Rita shouted when she’d walked away with the first set. ‘Wake up, Mrs L., this is like playing by myself.’

Jeanie waved her racket apologetically. ‘Sorry, sorry, I can’t seem to get going.’ But the second set was no better.

They gathered their stuff before the hour was up and went to sit on their favourite bench with a view over the distant city. The sun was setting, bathing the park in a cool, soft light.

‘Speak,’ Rita demanded.

‘You know we’ve been thinking of getting a weekend cottage for a while.’

Rita nodded.

‘Well, George has taken it into his head that that’s not enough. He wants to sell up and move out of London altogether. He seems deadly serious, and he’s got the rest of the family involved. Chanty started getting at me at Easter. And Alex. They all see it as a fait accompli. Sell the shop, you’re old, you don’t have to work, etc.’