Joanna Trollope: Second Honeymoon

‘Two incomes—’

‘And a baby’. Rosa gave a little snort. ‘I’d love a baby’.

Russell picked his plate up and exchanged it for Rosa’s empty one. Rosa looked down. ‘I couldn’t eat all that—’

‘Rosa,’ Russell said, ‘I’ve listened to you. I’ve listened to you very patiently and I quite agree with you that Bill Moreton was a second-rate boss who behaved accordingly. But you’d been in that job eight months. He didn’t exactly owe you a pension and a gold watch’.

Rosa said nothing. It seemed to her that she was behaving exactly as she always vowed she would never behave again when with a parent. She could hear in her voice an undertone of whining and cajoling that reminded her of raging nights, when she was seven, or nine, or eleven, and had prayed fervently to be an orphan. She swallowed hard, against the plaintiveness.

‘It’s a very nasty thing to have done to you,’ Russell said, visualising Edie listening to him, ‘especially when it so plainly wasn’t justified and you were made a scapegoat. But it was just a job, wasn’t it? Not a vocation. Not even a career’.

Rosa pushed her father’s plate aside.

‘It isn’t that’.

Russell sighed.

‘No’.

‘You see,’ Rosa said, ‘I’m in debt’.

‘Ah’.

‘I owe nearly six thousand on my credit cards’.

Russell leaned back. It occurred to him to ask how the situation had arisen, but then it struck him forcibly that he did not, somehow, want to become involved in the reasons because that would mean reaction and, even, responsibility. He loved Rosa. He loved her dearly, but she was twenty-six.

He said, as gently as he could, ‘That will take a while to pay back’.

She nodded.

‘Have you thought of that?’ Russell said. ‘Have you made any plans?’

She said, in a small voice, ‘I’m beginning to’.

‘Economies,’ Russell said. He picked up his wine glass and put it down again. ‘My mother loved economies. If she could make one haddock fillet feed four she was triumphant. She thrived on economies’.

Rosa said sadly, ‘Then I don’t take after her’.

‘Frugality was rather encouraged in the fifties,’ Russell said. ‘Post-war and all that. Now, it just looks as if you are crabbed of spirit and letting life pass you by’.

Rosa leaned forward.

‘I think it was trying not to let it pass me by that got me into this mess’.

‘Josh,’ Russell said, without meaning to.

‘Oh, Dad—’

‘No,’ he said, hastily. ‘No. I shouldn’t have mentioned him. We must focus on what is rather than what was’. She gave a faint smile. ‘I knew you’d help—’ ‘It depends—’

‘On what?’

‘On what form you see that help taking’. Rosa said quickly, ‘I’m not asking for money’.

Russell gave a little sigh.

‘I don’t want money,’ Rosa said, ‘I want to straighten myself out. I want to find another job and work hard and meet new people and make a plan and change the way I do things’.

‘Mmm’.

‘Don’t you think that’s right? Don’t you think I sound like you’d like me to sound?’ ‘Oh I do—’

‘Well, then?’

‘I’m just waiting,’ Russell said. ‘Patiently, fondly even, but wearily and warily, to see what it is you are working up to say’.

Rosa fiddled a bit with the cutlery left on the table. ‘I’m not very proud of myself’.

‘No’.

‘I hate having to ask this—’

‘Yes’.

‘But can I come home?’

Russell closed his eyes for a fleeting second.

‘I know it’s not what you want,’ Rosa said. ‘I don’t want it either, really, if you see what I mean, but it wouldn’t be for long, probably only a few months, but if I’m not paying rent, the rent money can go towards the credit-card debt, and it would make such a difference, it would make all the difference—’ She stopped. Then she said, much more slowly, ‘Please, Dad’.

Russell looked at her.

He said sadly, ‘I’m so sorry, darling, but no’. She stared at him.

‘No!’

‘I want to help you,’ Russell said. ‘I will help you. But you can’t come back home to live’.

Rosa said, stunned, ‘But it’s my home!’

‘Well, yes, in a way. It was your childhood home, your growing-up home. But you’re grown-up now. You need your own home’.

‘Of course!’ Rosa cried. ‘In an ideal world, that’s exactly what I’d have by now! But I can’t, can I? I can’t have what I ought to have because of what’s happened!’ She glared at him. ‘I cannot believe you said no’.

Russell sighed.

‘It isn’t about you. It’s about us, Mum and me. It’s -well, it’s our home’. ‘Your family home’. ‘Yes, when children are dependent—’ ‘Ben was allowed to stay, Ben was always—’ ‘Ben has gone,’ Russell said. ‘So there’s room for me’.

‘Rosa,’ Russell said with sudden force, ‘it’s not about room, it’s about distraction. It’s about Mum and me having time to be married again, it’s about us, having time and space for that’.

‘What?’

‘You heard me’.

‘But,’ Rosa said, gesturing wildly, ‘I’m not going to stop you! I’m not going to get in the way of your – rediscovering each other, if that’s what you want—’

Russell said carefully, ‘You may not mean to’.

There was a pause.

Then Rosa said, in a quite different voice, ‘I see’.

‘Good’.

‘I see that you don’t want Mum’s attention diverted from you for one little single, baby instant’.

‘No—’

Rosa stood up clumsily, shaking the table. ‘Fool yourself if you like, Dad,’ she said, ‘but don’t try fooling me’.

‘Rosa. Rosa, I really would like to help you, I really want—’

‘Don’t bother,’ Rosa said. She gathered up her bag and scarf and telephone. ‘Just forget I said anything. Just forget I even asked’. She twitched her bag on to her shoulder and glared at him again. ‘Luckily for me, I have friends who care’.

Edie watched the cat make a nest for himself in a basket of clean laundry. It wasn’t ironed – Edie had never been able to see ironing as other than faintly neurotic -but it was clean, or had been. The cat had dug about in the basket, tossing small items contemptuously aside, and rearranged pillowcases and shirts until there was a deep well in the centre, with comfortable, cushioned edges to rest his chin upon. Then he sank down fluidly into it and closed his eyes.

‘Arsie’s missing you,’ Edie said to Ben on the telephone.

Yeah,’ he said, ‘poor old Arse. But I can’t have him here’.

‘No, I wasn’t suggesting that’.

‘Naomi’s mum has allergies’.

‘Does she?’

‘And our room is only about big enough for the bed’. ‘It doesn’t,’ Edie said lightly, ‘sound very comfortable—’ ‘It’s ace,’ Ben said. ‘It’s fine. Brilliant. Look, I’ve got to go’.

‘Why don’t you come to supper one night?’

‘Well—’

‘Bring Naomi, of course. And her mother, if you’d like to—’

‘Mum,’ Ben said, ‘I’m late’. ‘Just supper’.

‘Going!’ Ben called. He’d taken the phone from his ear. ‘Going. Take care, Mum. Gone!’

Edie stepped over the washing basket and began to sift restlessly through papers on the kitchen table. Russell had produced catalogues in an uncharacteristic manner, catalogues about garden furniture and modern lighting and city-weekend breaks in Europe. He’d also brought flowers, a bunch of anemones that drank a jug of water a day, and a novel that had won a literary prize, and a bottle of oil to put in her bath scented with something she’d never heard of called neroli. It was touching, all this, Edie thought, shuffling items about, but it was also mildly irritating. As conduct, it reminded her of a dog her sister, Vivien, had once had, a small spaniel-ish dog, which always wanted to sit on your knee and gaze into your face with an intensity that required you to give something in return. Not only did Edie not want, particularly, to be given flowers and bath oil and weekends in Ghent, but she also, most particularly, did not want the accompanying obligation.