Vintage Babes (20 page)

‘I’m not, but when Beth comes it’ll be somewhere for her to play. Something for her to do,’ I had defended myself.

But I am a soppy grandmother, though I had never expected to be, either. Before Beth was born, when other women had produced pictures of their grandchildren or talked about their exploits, my eyes and mind would glaze over. ‘They’re just kids, ordinary kids doing ordinary things,’ I had wanted to say. Nothing special. Boring! Then Lynn had produced a child ‘trailing clouds of glory’ and overnight everything changed.

It may seem pathetic, but watching Beth grow from a baby into a toddler into a little girl has given me so much pleasure. Unimagined delight. I’ve even found myself telling people about the funny things my granddaughter has said. Cringe-making or what? And I have a selection of Beth’s playgroup paintings Blu-tacked to my kitchen cupboards and photographs of her in the living room. The birthday and Christmas cards she’s made me have all been saved. I even have one of those naff bobbing dogs on the back sill of my car, a present from Beth.

I regret not having had more children, sorely regret not insisting that Tom and I should have tried again after our son died. But, as Tom had pointed out, I had already had four years not working which, if I waited to become pregnant again, gave birth and spent time at home with a second toddler, could stretch to seven or eight – and time out in journalism is like time spent on the moon. The damage to my pension pot would also be serious. Now it doesn’t seem much of an argument, but then I was unsure and biddable.

I also suspect Tom was frightened that if I had become pregnant again, I might have lost another baby. The thought had tormented me, too.

When Lynn was young, Tom hadn’t been much help. He wasn’t a hands-on father like Justin, and never took her to farm parks for dad and daughter bonding – though farm parks hadn’t been invented in those days. Nor the bonding concept, either. But Tom had been fighting his way up the newspaper ladder and, while I subsequently descended several steps, he continued to climb. And has reached the topmost rungs. The last time he spoke to Lynn he confirmed what my father had read – that he has strong expectations of becoming the paper’s editor.

As Beth started to fill a red plastic bucket with sand, I looked for my cigarettes. I purposely don’t smoke when she is around, but now I needed something to calm my nerves. No, you don’t, I reprimanded myself. Be strong. You can manage.

‘There are clean sheets in the airing cupboard,’ I said, as Lynn came into the kitchen. ‘I’ll help you make up the beds.’

All the bags had been carried in and put upstairs. There seemed to be a large amount of gear to be fitted into one fairly small room.

‘Already done,’ she reported.

I thought of the meal situation. ‘Later I’ll pop out and buy food.’

‘For us? Not necessary. I’ve brought some,’ replied my efficient daughter.

‘Want a coffee?’ I asked.

‘Please.’

After switching on the kettle, I looked in the cupboard for mugs, but the shelf was empty. A precarious mountain of crockery was stacked on the drainer – most of it from lunch, but some which had been there for eternity – and I carefully extracted two mugs. I would have a coffee, too. Remember to collect the mugs from upstairs, I instructed myself, and bring them back into use.

‘You should have a dishwasher,’ Lynn declared.

‘It’s not worth it for one person.’

‘It is if that person never dries up.’

This was an old argument, one which I didn’t have time for right now. A completely modern kitchen with wood-style laminate flooring was something else Lynn had promoted, but the present cord-carpeted set-up suited me fine. A new kitchen did not feature on my must-have list.

‘I believe you and Justin fought in front of Beth,’ I said. ‘You need your heads banging together.’

‘She was in bed and she heard us and came downstairs. We didn’t know she was there.’

‘You must’ve been making one heck of a din,’ I accused her. ‘The sooner the two of you stop playing silly buggers and get back together again, the better.’

‘We’re not going to get back together. Ever,’ Lynn declared. ‘It’s over. Finished. Kaput.’

My stomach clenched and a lump of acid anxiety formed in my chest. The statement sounded definite. Horribly, sickeningly definite.

‘Is there someone else involved?’ I demanded. ‘Have you – has Justin, met someone?’

‘No! We’re incompatible, that’s the trouble. The big trouble. We don’t communicate any more.’

I spooned instant coffee into the mugs. ‘You’re willing to break up Beth’s family, to throw away her security and make her suffer? Aren’t you being selfish?’

Lynn scowled. ‘You and Dad broke up my family.’

That cut deep. It made me feel so guilty.

‘But you were twenty. Beth is four.’ I looked out at the sandpit where the little girl was carefully tipping out a sandpie. I loved her so much. I would do my utmost to try and protect her and stop her life from being disrupted. ‘She needs to grow up with her mother and father together. It’s her birthright!’

‘So I’m supposed to spend the next sixteen years co-existing with Justin, wasting my life?’ Lynn gave a harsh laugh. ‘Thanks very much.’

I made the coffee. Should I repeat Jenny’s fact that children from broken homes stand a far higher chance of having emotional difficulties and difficulties at school? And add that they are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem and drift into drugs and crime? But how could I say all that when, at base, history seemed to be repeating itself? Though I hadn’t walked out and wrecked a family. Tom had.

‘You and Justin have been together for six years and he’s a nice guy. A really nice guy. Honest, dependable, friendly.’ I handed Lynn a mug. ‘Yes, he can go over the top when it comes to watching football, but even though that’s irritating, in the scheme of life it’s a minor irritation, and it’s a stupid reason to split up.’

‘It isn’t just the football. There are other things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Him being mega tetchy. I say one wrong word and he flares up. Like him deciding he doesn’t want any more kids. He’s always said it’s up to me, but when I suggested we have another –’

‘You did?’

Eager for a second grandchild, I had spoken of how nice it would be for Beth to have a brother or a sister, but Lynn had vowed there was plenty of time.

She nodded. ‘I’ve been feeling broody. But when I suggested another baby, he said no. Refused to give a reason, just no.’ She scowled. ‘I’m also fed-up with him going out and getting wasted with his mates.’

‘Justin isn’t that much of a drinker,’ I protested.

‘He never used to be, but lately –’ She rolled her eyes.

‘Perhaps he feels he needs a break once in a while. A break from you. And maybe that’s what you need, a little space and time and then you’ll start thinking straight.’

‘I am thinking straight,’ Lynn insisted. ‘When he isn’t being hyper-critical, Justin sits there in silence. A moody silence. He’s not interested in me and in what I want.’

‘Which is?’

‘Mum, this is not your problem,’ she said impatiently. ‘I’ve left him and that’s it. Naturally Beth is my premier focus, but I also have myself to think about.’

‘Have you thought about where the two of you will live and what you’ll live on?’

On the four mornings a week when Beth attends playgroup, Lynn works for an estate agency in Dursleigh. She was with the firm before she become pregnant and, after a baby break, easily fitted back in. She possesses a ‘magic touch with clients’, so the head of the firm once informed me when we met in the village – which had me walking on air.

‘Beth starts proper school in September and then I’m going to increase my hours at the agency to five a day, five days a week, excluding school holidays. I’ll earn decent money, but Justin will have to cough up, too. He can afford it.’

Justin runs the Dursleigh branch of a kitchen installation company which started off small and local, but is now opening up showrooms all over the county. He earns a good wage and, thank to the sales he makes, a regularly high commission, and so was able to put down a reasonable deposit on the town house which is Lynn’s pride and joy. Or should that be
was
her pride and joy?

‘As for where Beth and I will live,’ Lynn continued, ‘don’t worry, I’m not a boomerang kid.’

‘I didn’t think you were.’

There seems to be a growing trend for adult children to return to live with their parents. A couple of my neighbours have divorced offspring in their thirties and forties who have come back to the family home, in one case bringing their own two children with them. Not the easiest of arrangements.

‘I’ll put out feelers for somewhere to rent,’ Lynn said, and finished her coffee. She washed her mug, dried it and put it in the cupboard. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going upstairs to unpack.’

Left alone, I watched Beth as she continued to play, constructing a circle of sandpies. Lynn had said the break-up was not my problem, but it was. The thought of my daughter as a single parent and of my granddaughter living apart from her beloved daddy knotted me up inside. It made me want to cry. To crawl under the sheets and sob. I had to persuade Lynn to return to Justin and resume their family life if, indeed, he was amenable. I must bring them back together, but how?

Justin and I had always got on well, so should I contact him? No, that might make Lynn feel I was switching allegiance and going behind her back. Should I sit her down and give her a damn good talking-to? In her present mood, it seemed unlikely she would listen. But she had always listened to her father. That’s what I would do, I would get Tom to speak to her.

On the face of it, asking a man who had deserted his own family to argue in favour of keeping another family together may seem a foolish exercise in the motes and beams department, but for over twenty years Tom had been a caring husband and father. And after our divorce, he had made sure that his relationship with Lynn, which had always been close, had continued. Later he had met Justin and liked him, and now he cared about his granddaughter. Beth has told me how Granddad speaks to her on the telephone and sends her pocket money. He would promote a reunion.

Delving into my bag, I found my cigarettes and lit one. Forgive me, Max, but this is a time of unusual stress.

Since the divorce, my contact with Tom had ceased. There had been no reason to keep in touch and once when he had suggested, via Lynn, that we should meet and take Beth out for the day together, I had refused. The idea of acting the happy united grandparents did not appeal. Lynn sees him several times a year; often on her birthday, over Christmas, for dinners out in London. She has also met her two young half-brothers and Kathryn, the slick chick. She is scathing about her. Thank goodness. I don’t know what I would have done if she’d liked her.

‘Wears too much make-up, is subservient to Dad – yes, Tom, no Tom, three bags full, Tom – and hangs on his every word. Whereas when he got arrogant, as he can do at times, you used to shoot him down in flames. She’s also so damn twittery she drives you insane,’ Lynn had said.

This had been a surprise. I had imagined that Kathryn, being one of today’s young women, supposedly ass-kicking and man-chewing, would be far more assertive than me.

The last time I saw Tom was a brief, chance meeting at the hospital when Beth was born. I had been to visit the mother and child and was on my way out, sighing over the wonder of a newborn baby – the tiny fingers, the old man grimaces, the funny little sounds – when I’d turned a corner and walked, slap-bang, into Tom. I had laughed, blushed and felt unusually nervy. It stands to reason that if you love someone enough to marry them and live contentedly with them for years, then they must have something going for them. And if you separate, and the divorce isn’t too nasty, a degree of affection, of attraction, will remain.