The Other Family Part 15

She looked at her Lorca, and sighed. The piano was only one thing that was putting her at cross purposes with her family just now, that was making her behave in a way that she was ashamed of, like listening at Chrissie's bedroom door and hearing her tell Sue that her three daughters were too selfishly concerned with their own futures in these new, unwanted circ.u.mstances to concern themselves with hers. Hearing her say that had made Amy feel more frustrated than furious, more despairing of Chrissie's inability to see what seemed to Amy both transparently clear and manifestly right and fair. It was no good, Amy thought, no good, blaming the people in Dad's previous life, or Dad for having had a previous life, for the utter, angry misery and shock of finding yourself facing the future without him.

Amy knew that Chrissie thought her being interested in the Newcastle family was Amy's way of somehow bringing her father back to life, or cheating his deadness by finding intimate connections of his who were still very much alive. But Amy, overwhelmed with grief as she was at some point in every day still, had no illusions about how dead Richie was. Rather, what she had discovered to her amazement since his death was how alive she was, not just in straightforward, physical, physiological ways, but in terms of the richness and diversity of her heritage, which gave her the sense that she had more dimensions than she had ever imagined. She was Amy, living with her family in North London, with a considerable talent for the flute, and an agile (her mother would say frequently perverse) mind, and she was now also Amy with this alluring and almost exotic North-Eastern legacy, this background of hills and sea and ships and fish, this weird and wonderful dialect, this intense sense of place and community, which had produced a boy as shaped by but as simultaneously alien to that background as she felt herself to be to hers. She couldn't think quite how if ever she could explain this to Chrissie, but the eager interest in the Newcastle family was not really about them, or even about Dad. It was about her. And, at such a time, and after such a shock, it really was not on, in any way, to do more than hint that your att.i.tudes and opinions were rather about yourself than about your dead father or the family he had belonged to before he belonged to yours.

She pulled the Lorca towards her and opened it randomly. She gazed at the page without taking it in. She felt dreadful about Chrissie, dreadful about her palpable apprehension at the future and revulsion for the present. But she couldn't help her by pretending to feel and be something other than she felt and was. She couldn't want to keep the piano or hate the Newcastle family just to make Chrissie feel temporarily better. Nor could she, just now, think of a way to explain to Chrissie without angering and hurting her further that, if Chrissie tried to refuse her the freedom to go and explore her newly realized amplitude, then she was going to just take the freedom anyway. What form that taking would a.s.sume she couldn't yet visualize, but take it she would.

Amy sighed. She shoved the book and the newspaper into her schoolbook bag, and stood up. The coffee and cake came to almost four pounds; four pounds, it occurred to her, that she really ought to be saving towards whatever future this freedom urge resolved itself into. Oh well, she thought, today is today and the carrot cake has given me enough energy to face Mr Ferguson as he comes out of cla.s.s.

She put a crumpled five-pound note on the table and weighted it with her coffee cup, and then she sauntered out into the street, her book bag over her shoulder like a pedlar's pack.

Sitting inoffensively at her desk in the office on Front Street in Tynemouth, Glenda wanted to tell Margarett hat whatever she had on her mind and Glenda wished Margaret to know that she was extremely sympathetic to all burdens on Margaret's mind there was no reason to snap at her. She had merely asked, out of manners, really, if Margaret had enjoyed her evening with Mr Harrison, and Margaret had responded with a sharpness of tone that Glenda thought was quite uncalled for that fancy French food was not for her and that Bernie Harrison took way too much for granted.

Glenda swallowed once or twice. She drank from the plastic cup of water she would much rather have had tea which Margaret told her she should drink because everyone in Scott's office in Newcastle had this fetish about drinking water all day long.

Then she raised her chin a fraction and said, 'Did he make a pa.s.s at you, then?'

Margaret, reading gla.s.ses on, staring at her screen, gave a small snort.

'He did not.'

Glenda wondered for a second if Margaret was in fact slightly disappointed that Mr Harrison hadn't tried anything on. Then she remembered that they had known each other since primary school, and that Margaret never made a particular sartorial effort if she had a meeting with him, and dismissed disappointment as an idea.

Instead, she took another sip of water and said, 'Oh,' and then, after a few more seconds, 'Good. I suppose-' and then, a bit later and defensively, 'I wasn't prying-'

Margaret said nothing. She went on typing rapidly Glenda knew she was writing a difficult e-mail to a young comedian whose act Margaret considered better suited to the South than the North-East with her mouth set in a line that indicated, Glenda imagined, that her teeth were clenched. Glenda was familiar with clenched teeth. Living with Barry's methods of enduring his disability had resulted in so much teeth-clenching on her part that her dentist said she must do exercises to relax her jaw, otherwise she would grind her teeth to stumps and have a permanent headache. She opened her mouth slightly now, to free up her teeth and jaw, and tried not to remember that Barry had managed to start the day in as disagreeable a mood as Margaret now seemed to be in, and that neither of them appeared to be aware that the person who was really suffering was her.

Margaret stopped typing. She took off her reading gla.s.ses, put them back on again, and reread what she had written.

'Doesn't matter how I put it,' she said to the screen. 'A no's a no, isn't it? He won't be fooled.'

Glenda drank more water. She would not speak until Margaret spoke to her, and pleasantly, as Margaret herself had taught her to do when answering the telephone to even the most irritating caller. It was hard to concentrate with a personality the size of Margaret's, in a manifestly bad mood, eight feet away, but she would try. She had commissions to work out the clients Margaret had represented for over ten years paid two and a half per cent less than those she had had for only five years, and five per cent less than anyone taken on currently and she would simply do those calculations methodically, and drink her water, until Margaret saw fit to behave in what Glenda had learned to call a civilized manner.

'Poor boy,' Margaret said. 'Refusal sent!' She glanced up. 'Coffee?'

Usually, she said, 'Coffee, dear?'

Glenda said, as she always said, 'I'd prefer tea, please.' Normally, after saying that, she added, 'But I'll get them,' but this morning she added nothing, and stayed where she was, looking at her screen.

Margaret didn't seem to notice. She went into the little cubbyhole that led to the lavatory and housed a shelf and an electric plug and a kettle. Glenda heard her fill the kettle at the lavatory basin, and then plug it in, and then she came back into the room and said, 'I've got Rosie Dawes coming at midday, and I'm giving lunch to Greg Barber and I'm going to hear these jazz girls tonight.'

Glenda nodded. She knew all that. She had entered all these appointments in the diary herself.

Margaret perched on the edge of Glenda's desk. Glenda didn't look at her.

'You know,' Margaret said, in a much less aggravated tone, 'there was a time when I was out five or six nights a week at some club or show or other. There was always a client to support or a potential client to watch. I used to keep Sat.u.r.day and Sunday free if I could, in case Scott could manage to come home, but the rest of the time I was out, out, out. I never stayed till the end, mind. I'd stay long enough to get a good idea, and then I'd speak to the performer at the end of their first set, and say well done, dear, but I never stayed for the second set. I'd seen all I needed to see by then. I'd go home and make notes. Notes and notes. I don't do that now. I don't make notes on anyone. And I don't go and see many people now, do I?'

Glenda half rose and said, 'I'll get the kettle.'

'I was speaking to you,' Margaret said.

Glenda finished getting up. She said, 'I thought you were just thinking aloud.' She moved towards the cubbyhole.

'Maybe,' Margaret said. She didn't move from Glenda's desk. 'Maybe I was. Maybe I was thinking how things have changed, how I've changed, without really noticing it.'

Glenda made Margaret a cup of coffee with a disposable filter, and herself a powerfully strong cup of tea, squeezing the tea bag against the side of the cup to extract all the rich darkness. Then she carried both cups mugs would have been so much more satisfactory but Margaret didn't like them back to her desk, and held out the coffee to Margaret.

'Thank you, dear,' Margaret said absently.

Glenda sat down. This tea would be about her sixth cup of the day and she'd have had six more by bedtime. Nothing tasted quite as good as the first mouthful of the first brew loose tea, in a pot she made at six in the morning, before Barry was awake. She took a thankful swallow of tea, and put the cup back in its saucer.

Then, greatly daring, she said, 'So what did happen last night?'

Margaret turned her head to look out of the window. She said, 'Bernie Harrison asked me to go into partnership with him.'

She didn't sound very pleased. Glenda risked a long look at her averted face. Bernie Harrison agented three times the number of people that Margaret did, as well as handling a lot of Canadian and American and Australian business. Bernie Harrison had offices near Eldon Square, and a staff of five, some of whom were allowed their own strictly regulated expense accounts. Bernie Harrison drove a Jaguar and lived in a palace in Gosforth and had an overcoat Glenda had hung it up for him several times when he came to see Margaret that had to be cashmere. Why would someone like Margaret Rossiter not leap at the chance to go into partnership with Bernie Harrison, especially at her age? Then a chilling little thought struck her.

'Would there be still a job for me?' Glenda said.

Margaret glanced back from the window.

'I turned him down.'

'Oh dear,' Glenda said.

Margaret got off the desk and stood looking down at her.

'My heart wasn't in it.'

'What d'you mean?'

'When he made his proposal,' Margaret said, 'I waited to feel thrilled, excited, full of ideas. I waited to feel like I've felt all my working life when there was a new challenge. But I didn't feel any of it. I just thought, It's too late, you stupid man, I'm too old, I'm too tired, I haven't got the bounce any more. And then,' Margaret said, walking to the window, 'I spent half the night awake worrying about why I didn't leap at the chance, and in a right old temper with myself for losing my oomph.'

Glenda leaned back in her chair.

'You aren't that old, you know.'

'I do know,' Margaret said. 'I'm behaving as if I'm fifteen years older than I am. And the thing that's really getting to me is that I have got energy, I have, it's just that I don't want to use it on the same old things.'

Glenda drank her tea. This was a profoundly unsettling conversation.

'What,' she said nervously, 'do you want to use it on?'

Margaret turned.

'Don't know,' she said. 'Simply don't know. Stuck. That's the trouble. Restless and stuck. What a state to be in at sixty-six. All very well at thirty, but sixty-six!' She peered at Glenda. 'Was I a bit sharp with you this morning?'

Scott had arranged to meet Margaret in the pub close to the Clavering Building. It was more a hotel than a pub proper, with panelling inside, and a dignified air, and was not, therefore, a place Scott frequented much. When he got there late, having run some of the way up the hill from work, after yet another bruising and unwanted encounter with Donna Margaret was sitting with a gin and tonic in front of her, and a pint for him on the opposite side of the table, jabbing in a haphazard sort of way at her mobile phone. Scott bent to kiss her. He was aware of being breathless and sweaty, and his tie fell forward clumsily and got entangled with her reading gla.s.ses.

Margaret said, extricating herself, 'What's the dash, pet?' She put her phone down.

'I'm late-'

'You're always late,' Margaret said. 'I allow for you being late. Have you been running?'

Scott nodded. He collapsed into a chair and took a thirsty gulp of his beer.

'Magic-'

'The beer?'

'The beer.'

'You should have rung. There was no need to half kill yourself, running.'

'I needed to work something off,' Scott said.

'Oh?'

'A work thing.' He pulled a face. 'The consequence of me being wet and indecisive. A work thing.'

'I can't decide either,' Margaret said. She twisted her gla.s.s round in her fingers. 'That's why I wanted to see you.'

Scott grinned at her.

'This work thing,' he said, 'I can decide. I do decide. And then I just can't do it.'

Margaret lifted one eyebrow.

'A woman thing?'

'Maybe-'

'You want to tell me about it, pet?'

'I'd rather,' Scott said, 'hear what you want to talk about.'

Margaret picked up her gla.s.s and put it down again.

She said, 'I had dinner with Bernie Harrison. In all the years I've known him, coming up sixty years, that would be, he's never asked me to have dinner. Drinks, yes, even a lunchtime sandwich, but never dinner. And dinner is different, so I wondered what he was after-'

'I can guess,' Scott said, grinning again.

'No, pet. No, it wasn't. Bernie prides himself on being a ladies' man, but ladies' men like Bernie don't like risking a failure, so I knew I was safe there. No. What he wanted was quite different. He wanted to offer me a partnership in his business.'

Scott banged down his beer gla.s.s.

'Mam, that's fantastic!'

'Yes,' Margaret said carefully, 'yes, it was. It is. But I said no.'

'You what?'

'I said no, pet.'

'Mam,' Scott said, craning forward, 'what's the matter with you?'

She took a very small sip of her drink.

'I don't know, pet. That's why I thought I'd better talk to you. I've been worrying about you being aimless and unfocused, and then I get the offer of a lifetime at my age, and I find I'm just as aimless and unfocused as you are. I turned Bernie down because, as I said to poor old Glenda, whose head I bit off for no fault of her own, my heart just wasn't in it. I thought, How lovely, but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel I could match either his expectations or my own, so I turned him down. And I've been, as my father used to say, like a man with a hatful of bees ever since. I don't expect you to come up with any solutions, but you had to know. You had to know that your stupid old mother just blew it, and she can't for the life of herself think why.'

Scott put a hand across the table and took one of Margaret's.

'D'you think it's Dad?'

'Could be. There's no practice for these things, after all. Could be shock and grief. But it's been weeks now, we've had weeks to get used to the idea.'

'It's unsettled still, though,' Scott said. He squeezed Margaret's hand and let it go. 'All that antagonism from London, and no sign of the piano.'

'Do you really think the piano will make a difference?'

Scott shrugged.

'Having it sorted will make a difference.'

'But it isn't going to change our lives. We know what we needed to know, and that's a relief, even if I can't understand why the relief hasn't let me go, hasn't liberated me to get on with things, instead of having to prove things all the time, like I used to.'

'Mam, I'm sure you could change your mind-'

'Yes, I could. I'm certain I could. But I can't. I want to, but I can't. I can't see the point of changing anything, but I don't feel very keen about just chugging along with nothing unchanged either. I am not impressed with myself.'

'Join the club,' Scott said.

Margaret eyed him.

'Who is she?'

'A colleague. A work colleague. I let her get the wrong idea and now she won't let go of it. She's a nice girl, but I don't feel anything for her.' He paused, and then he said with emphasis, 'Anything.'

'Then you must make that plain.'

'Oh, I do. Over and over, I do.'

'There's none so deaf as those that won't hear-'

'Mam,' Scott said suddenly.

'Yes, pet?'