Thursdays in the Park (4 page)

Rita snorted. ‘Bastards! They can’t tell you what to do with your life.’ She peered into her friend’s face. ‘You’re not falling for it, are you?’

Jeanie shook her head. ‘They even invoked Ellie, saying it would be good for her to have fresh air and freedom.’

‘Ridiculous. It’s never about the children. George won’t sell without your say-so.’

Rita was married to Bill, who did exactly what she said at all times, without even a whimper.

‘I mean, what’s he going to do?’ Rita went on. ‘Drag you off to some muddy cave by your hair?’

Jeanie laughed. ‘Perhaps you’d respect him more if he did!’

She knew Rita tolerated George, even liked him, but had never understood why Jeanie gave in to him so much.

‘No, seriously, darling, what’s he actually said?’

Jeanie sighed. ‘It’s not so much what he’s said about the country, it’s his attitude to me, to us. He genuinely believes that we’re old. He actually said it. ‘Now we’re old . . . you
won’t want the shop forever.’ I’m sure he resents me working. He reckons that as soon as I’ve seen sense and quit we can sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after together. Being old.’

Rita began to laugh. ‘Christ.’

‘And it wouldn’t be so bad if it were just him, but when your own daughter tries to shuffle you off, then you begin to think there must be some truth in it.’

She looked at her friend’s concerned face. ‘I don’t feel old, Rita. I feel fit and full of life. OK, I get tireder than I used to, I forget things more, maybe, but I reckon that’s just finding something to blame when in fact I’ve been tired and forgetful my whole life at times.’

Rita grabbed her hand. ‘Look at me,’ she ordered. ‘You, Jeanie Lawson, are not old. You’re middle-aged – which may be worse, come to think of it – but by no stretch of the imagination are you old. You can’t be! I’m the same age.’

Jeanie squeezed her hand.

‘I mean, look at you. You’re beautiful. No one would guess for a second that you’re nearly a senior citizen.’

They both began to laugh. ‘Thanks a bunch.’

‘But I’m serious. You could easily pass for forty-eight.’

‘So what should I do?’

‘This isn’t about being old or moving to the country though, is it?’ Rita’s gaze rested for a moment on her friend’s face, and Jeanie knew what was coming. ‘Let’s shift, I’m freezing.’ Rita was seldom warm in what she termed ‘this godforsaken climate’.

‘Don’t start,’ Jeanie replied crossly.

‘Well, darling, it has to be said again. You didn’t hear me last time. Why . . . why do you let that man control you? Why do you let him get away with it all the time? You’re a strong, intelligent woman, Jeanie. Wake up. They’re sneaky, these people.’

‘What people . . . what do you mean?’

‘People like George.’ Her friend ploughed on unapologetically as they crossed the park. ‘Full-on passive aggressive . . . compulsive controllers. To meet George you’d think butter wouldn’t melt. He’s charming, polite, amusing in a quiet sort of way.’

Jeanie thought this summed up George perfectly.

‘But Jeanie, he’s . . . well, to put it politely, he’s got issues. He’s too smart to do it in front of me, but sometimes his guard slips. Remember the other week, when he tried to stop you having a drink, then dragged you off almost before we’d had pudding?’

Jeanie nodded.

‘You didn’t want to go, Bill and I could see that, but you let him bully you.’ The frustration in Rita’s voice was clear. ‘Why?’

‘Because . . . because he gets so anxious.’

‘Anxious?’ Rita spluttered. ‘You kowtow to him because he’s
anxious
? That’s ridiculous. What’s he anxious about?’

Jeanie shook her head. They had reached the top of Highgate Hill. This was where their ways parted, Rita heading to her house on one of the leafy lanes opposite Kenwood,
Jeanie to hers on the far side of Pond Square. They both paused on the corner by the bus stand.

‘I don’t know. It’s just George. He wasn’t always like this.’ She felt a strong desire finally to tell her friend about that night when George had rejected her, when things had changed irrevocably for them both. But she didn’t want to add to Rita’s disdain for her husband. Nor did she really know how to explain the enormity of the event after all this time. Over the years she’d begun to wonder if she’d exaggerated it. She knew couples often stopped having sex and slept in separate bedrooms; theirs was a long marriage. But another part of her knew that something significant had happened to George that day. Something that he was unable, even with all the pressure she had put him under, to tell her about. And she couldn’t even imagine what that might be.

‘Well,’ said Rita brightly, ‘if he wasn’t always like it, then he doesn’t have to be like it now, no?’

Jeanie shrugged. ‘I suppose. But I don’t know why . . .’

Rita waited, but Jeanie didn’t say any more.

‘Look, darling, the bottom line is that you are not old, you work, and you most certainly don’t want to move to the country. So things are getting serious. If you get dragged away from a dinner party, that’s tiresome but not fatal. But to be dragged to Dorset? The country’s vile, don’t forget: full of mud, the sartorially challenged and farm shops where a cabbage that’s been sitting there for eighteen months costs twice the National Debt.’

They both laughed.

‘So I tell him I’m not old, I’m not giving up my shop, and I’m definitely not moving to the country.’

‘Hurray!’ Rita held up her hand inviting Jeanie to a high five. ‘Seriously though, Jeanie, it really is time to take a stand.’

‘He’s not a bad man, Rita . . . I really don’t think he can help himself,’ Jeanie finished weakly. Her friend just rolled her eyes and strode off towards the roundabout with a farewell wave, her tennis bag slapping rhythmically against her back.

Later that evening, as she stood alone in the kitchen preparing the salad for supper, George still closeted with his clocks, she remembered what her Aunt Norma had said about being sixty.

Her aunt was her father’s only sister, recently turned ninety and still living, happily independent, in her house in Wimbledon. A quick-witted bird of a woman with the sharp blue eyes that Jeanie had inherited, she had been in MI5 in the war and then looked after her ageing parents single-handed. But by the time she was sixty they were both dead, and Aunt Norma, previously a stalwart gloved and hatted spinster of the parish, took on a distinctly bohemian air as she turned the dining room into her studio and began to paint. ‘Sixty is heaven,’ she had told Jeanie as they sat having tea. ‘The world is done with you, you become to all intents and purposes invisible, particularly if you’re a woman. I like to think of it as your third life. There’s childhood, then adult conformity – work, family, responsibility – then just when
everyone assumes it’s all over and you’re on the scrap heap of old age, freedom! You can finally be who you are, not what society wants you to be, not who
you
think you ought to be.’

‘Isn’t that a generation thing?’ Jeanie had asked. ‘Our lot are liberated now; since feminism we can do what we want.’

Aunt Norma had nodded wisely. ‘Can you, now? Can you really?’ She had smiled, her blue eyes beady. ‘It seems to me there are still expectations . . . family and such.’ She’d shaken her head. ‘But then, what do I know?’

Jeanie was late getting to the park on Thursday. It was cold and it looked like rain, but there were still a number of bored-looking mothers huddled in the playground with their children – and the man from last week. She’d hardly given him a thought, and was not altogether pleased to see him. She liked to potter on her own with Ellie and had never involved herself with the other playground adults. He was on his mobile, propped up at the head of the slide as Dylan threw himself head first, arms outstretched, down the metal run.

He waved and smiled when he spotted Jeanie, quickly finishing his call and putting his mobile back in his jacket pocket. ‘Hey . . . how’s it going?’

‘Fine . . . you?’

Ellie demanded the swing, and for a while they were separated as they monitored their grandchildren’s play. Jeanie deliberately avoided his gaze.

Dylan teamed up with another boy of his age, and they raced off round and round the perimeter of the playground.

The man wandered over to the swings. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about the other day.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was . . . kind of intense . . . went on a bit.’

Jeanie laughed. ‘Nothing to apologize for.’

‘No, but you must have thought me a bit odd.’

She said nothing, not knowing how to reply. She had not thought him odd exactly, but there was an unsettling air about the man, as if he wanted something from her, and she wasn’t sure what it was.

‘It’s just this whole playground thing is new to me and I’m not sure of the etiquette.’ He laughed apologetically.

‘Oh, there is no playground etiquette,’ she assured him with a laugh. ‘Except always making sure that whatever happens it isn’t
your
child’s fault!’

‘Junior version of the blame game?’

Jeanie nodded. ‘Do I sound cynical?’

He shrugged, grinned. ‘ “Realistic” has a better ring – anyway, I’ll leave you in peace.’ She watched as he pushed through the metal gate of the playground and went to lean over the fence round the duck pond.

‘Down . . . down, Gin.’ As Ellie stood up in the swing, Jeanie felt the first drops of rain. She searched in the bottom of the pram for the plastic rain cover, but it wasn’t there, only a squashed packet of nappy wipes, one of Ellie’s battered cardboard books and a rotting banana skin.

The playground was emptying fast. She heard the man shout to his grandson, ‘Dylan! Dylan, come on, boy. It’s about to tip down.’

She noticed the boy paid no attention to his shouts as she packed Ellie, protesting vehemently, into the buggy and hurried for the gate. As she was starting up the hill the heavens opened. Not just rain, but a torrential downpour, and she knew it would be stupid to attempt the fifteen minutes home until it had eased off. She changed course towards the cafe, only a short walk from the playground, Ellie still screaming her lungs out and struggling against the buggy restraints and the rain.

The cafe was empty. She chose a seat outside, but sheltered by the covered space in front of the building so Ellie could run about, and bought herself a cup of tea and a carton of apple juice for her granddaughter.

While she sat, already wet, looking anxiously at the sky and wondering how long it would last, Dylan’s grandfather appeared with the boy.

‘Me again.’ He was out of breath from running up the hill but still seemed bent on apologizing to her. Her heart sank as she realized she was trapped with him for the duration of the storm.

Dylan began running up the buggy ramp into the cafe and down the steps, repeating the circuit with Ellie in hot pursuit, the pair of them laughing breathlessly as they ran.

‘Phew.’ The man shook out his wet leather jacket and placed it over a chairback on the opposite side of Jeanie’s
table. Seeing her fierce look, he grinned mischievously. ‘All we need now is a shower curtain and a large knife.’

Jeanie couldn’t help laughing.

‘Well, you’re eyeing me as if I’m an axe-murderer. Best-case scenario, a stalker.’

‘Are you?’ She found herself studying his battered, handsome face, and far from finding the sliding look of a stalker, saw an appealing openness, and a deliberate, almost learned calm, as if he had taught himself to be still.

‘Not intentionally.’

‘You can see my point.’ Jeanie defended her position with a smile.

There was a scream and they turned to see Ellie flat on her face on the concrete. Picking her up, her little face suffused pink with shock, Jeanie cuddled her tight and waited for her screams to subside. Dylan hovered anxiously.

‘I didn’t do anything,’ he muttered, eyes to the ground, as if he were used to being blamed.

‘I know you didn’t.’ Jeanie smiled at him. ‘Ellie hasn’t got the running thing sorted quite yet.’

Dylan brightened. ‘She’s only small,’ he agreed, from the lofty heights of a nearly-four-year-old. ‘Come on.’ He grabbed her hand and pulled gently at Ellie, eager to get back to the game.

The rain poured down, cooling the air and darkening the sky, the water dripping off the overhanging roof like a curtain, cutting them off in a damp, chilly world of their own. For a moment there was an awkward silence.

‘Shall we sing? Like in the movies.’ The man grinned. ‘Ideally we need a nun with a guitar, a woman in labour, a precocious kid and a brute-turned-hero, but failing that, we could try something dramatic and gloomy of our own to pass the time till we’re rescued.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know . . . how about . . .’ He paused, straightened himself in his seat, his chest puffed out like an opera tenor, and began to sing the teenage tragedy tune from the sixties about the boy racer whose car crashes and whose dying words are:
Tell Laura I love her
. His voice was low but tunefully confident. As he finished they both began to laugh.

‘The old ones are always the best ones,’ she joked, and they sang the chorus again together, loudly this time, exaggerating the melodrama. The two children meanwhile had stopped playing, and were standing in front of them, wide-eyed at the spectacle.

‘I’m Ray, by the way,’ the man introduced himself.

‘Jeanie,’ she said, and they shook hands across the wooden table.

‘Do many of your friends have grandchildren?’

Jeanie shook her head. ‘None. My closest friend doesn’t have children, even, but none of the others have yet. I suppose they have boys . . . takes longer.’

‘Ellie’s your daughter’s child, then?’

‘Yes, Chanty works full-time; her husband does most of the childcare.’

‘So your help is much appreciated, I imagine.’

Jeanie shrugged. ‘Not altogether. I don’t get on too well with my son-in-law, there’s history.’

Ray sighed. ‘Ah, families . . . can’t live with them, can’t live without them. But Nat, that’s my daughter, seems to be coming round to me. She’s even letting me take the boy swimming next week.’