Joanna Trollope: Second Honeymoon

She was standing at the corner of the house, where the side door to the kitchen was. She had Arsie in her arms.

‘Tea!’ Edie shouted.

‘Look,’ Edie said, ‘I’m sorry’.

She had made tea in the big pot with cabbage roses on it. It was extremely vulgar but it had intense associations for Edie, as everything in her life did, everything that reminded her of a place, a person, a happening.

She said, ‘I was fed up with you because you wouldn’t understand’.

‘I do understand,’ Russell said.

‘Do you?’

He nodded, tensing slightly.

‘Then tell me,’ Edie demanded. ‘Explain what is the matter’.

Russell paused.

Then he said, ‘It’s the end of a particularly compelling – and urgent – phase of motherhood. And it’s very hard to adjust to’.

‘I don’t want to adjust,’ Edie said. She poured tea into the huge cracked blue cups she had found in a junk shop in Scarborough, touring with – what was it? A Priestley play, perhaps.

‘I want Ben back,’ Edie said.

Russell poured milk into his tea.

‘I want him back,’ Edie said fiercely. ‘I want him back to make me laugh and infuriate me and exploit me and make me feel necessary’.

Russell picked up his teacup and held it, cradling it in his palms. The aroma of the tea rose up to him, making him think of his grandmother. She had saved Darjeeling tea for Sundays. ‘The champagne of teas,’ she said, every time she drank it.

‘Are you listening?’ Edie said.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but you forget I know’.

She leaned forward.

She said, ‘How do I make you mind?’

‘Good question’.

‘What?’

He put his cup down.

He said, seriously, not looking at her, ‘How do I make you mind?’ She stared.

‘What?’ she said again.

‘I’ve been out there,’ Russell said, ‘for about three hours. I’ve been sifting through all sorts of rubbish, things that mattered once and don’t any more. And that’s quite painful, knowing things won’t come again, knowing things are over for ever’.

‘But—’

‘Wait,’ Russell said, ‘just wait . Rosa’s not going to ride that trike again, Matt’s not going to hit with that bat, you’re not going to read under that lampshade. That’s not comfortable, that’s not easy to know, to have to accept. But we have to, because we have no choice. And we also have something left’.

Edie took a long swallow of tea and looked at him over the rim of her cup.

‘Yes?’

‘You talk about wanting Ben back. You talk about his energy and neediness and that way it makes you feel. Well, just think for a moment about how I feel. I didn’t marry you in order to have Matt and Rosa and Ben, though I’m thankful we did. I married you because I wanted to be with you, because you somehow make things shine for me, even when you’re horrible. You want Ben back. Well, you’ll have to deal with that as best you can. And while you’re dealing with it, I’ll give you something else to think about, something that isn’t going to go away. Edie – I want you back. I was here before the children and I’m here now’. He put his cup down with finality. ‘And I’m not going away’.

When it came to business, Bill Moreton prided himself on his firing technique. His father, who had died before Bill was twenty, thereby bequeathing his son the luxury of mythologising him, had been a general surgeon. His basic belief had been ‘Cut deeply, but only once’, and Bill had adopted this mantra as his own, and had carried it, grandiosely, into the world of public relations where, in the process of building up a company, there had been a good deal of hiring and firing to do.

Because many of Bill’s hiring choices were disastrous, he got in plenty of practice at subsequently firing them. He was impervious to any suggestions, however diplomatically put, about his judgement, and equally resistant to criticism about the manner in which he eradicated his own errors. The sight of an inadequate employee was a living reminder of Bill’s own inadequacies, and he could not endure it. The only way, he had discovered, to avoid confronting his mistakes was to summon the employee in question to his office – paperwork already in place – smile, sack them, smile again and show them the door.

Which was exactly what he planned to do, this cool April day, to Rosa Boyd. Rosa was twenty-six, perfectly capable at her job, and a good-looking redhead if you liked your women on the big side and redheaded into the bargain. The reason for sacking Rosa was not the one Bill planned to give her, smilingly and briefly. He was going to tell her that she was not, he regretted, suited to public relations work because she lacked the patience to build up a relationship with a client that could take, oh, five or six years in some cases, with the client behaving most capriciously from the outset. What he was not going to tell her was that the company’s figures, drawn up as they always were in anticipation of the end of a tax year, were alarmingly poor, and that he had decided -against his accountant’s advice – to sack two members of staff because to sack one would have looked like victimisation. And so, Victor Basinger was to take early retirement – fifty-four was too old, anyway, for the PR game – and Rosa Boyd was to go.

Bill stood by the window of his office, contemplating the blank view of the adjoining building it afforded, and rehearsed what he would say to Rosa. He had to be careful to adjust his tone to precisely the right pitch because even a hint of too much of anything might betray his uncomfortable knowledge that, for all professional and practical reasons, it should not be Rosa Boyd walking into his office to be sacked, but Heidi Kingsmill. The difficulty was that Heidi was an aggressive and volatile personality who had, five years before and by sheer fluke, brought the company one of its most reliably lucrative accounts. The fact that Heidi had done absolutely nothing constructive since, and was an emotional liability, could not be admitted. Nor could the fact that Bill had spent an energetic night with Heidi after an office Christmas party four years before and, although Heidi had not as yet exploited this fact, she made it perfectly plain that she always – if pushed – could. Bill’s wife had invested some of her private money in his company, and might be required, shortly, to invest more, and she was a woman who set a great, even hysterical, store by fidelity. So, all in all, it was Rosa Boyd who had to go, in order to keep a space of clear blue water between Heidi Kingsmill and Mrs Moreton.

Bill heard a sound behind him. Rosa Boyd was standing in his office doorway, her right hand resting on the doorknob. She wore jeans and an orange tweed jacket and boots with immensely high heels. Her hair was loose. She looked to Bill about eight foot tall and mildly alarming.

‘Rosa!’ Bill said. He smiled. ‘Hello’.

Rosa said nothing.

Bill moved round his desk and patted the chair nearest to Rosa invitingly. ‘Sit down’. Rosa didn’t move.

‘Sit, Rosa,’ Bill said, still smiling. ‘This won’t take a minute’.

Rosa gave a small sigh, and relaxed on to one leg.

‘Come in,’ Bill said. ‘Come in and shut the door. This is just between you and me. We don’t want the office hearing, do we?’

‘They know,’ Rosa said.

Bill swallowed. He patted the chair again.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Rosa said, before he could begin, ‘They’re taking bets. On how quickly you’ll do it’.

Bill looked at the opposite wall.

‘I’m going to win,’ Rosa said. ‘I said it’d be under a minute. And I’m right’.