Joanna Trollope: The Other Family

‘No, you’re not.’

‘I’m—’

‘Look at you,’ Scott said, ‘look at you. You’ve had something done to your hair, and that’s new.’

‘What’s new?’

‘That dress.’

‘Oh,’ Margaret said airily, ‘this.’ She looked out at the river. ‘Everything I’d got suddenly looked so tired.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you say yes as if you know something I don’t know?’

‘Mam,’ Scott said, ‘I don’t know anything you don’t know. The difference between us is just that I admit it.’

‘Admit what? ’

‘That I feel better. That you feel better. That we al feel better.’

‘Al ?’

‘Yes,’ Scott said firmly, ‘Mr Harrison too.’

Margaret took a sip of her drink.

‘What has Bernie Harrison got to do with it?’

‘You tel me,’ Scott said.

Margaret smiled privately down into her gin and tonic.

‘Why’d you ask me here?’ Scott said. ‘Why’re you al tarted up?’

‘Don’t use that word to me—’

‘Why, Mam?’

Margaret looked up.

‘Are you in a hurry, pet?’

‘No,’ Scott said. ‘Wel , yes, actual y. I’m meeting some of the lads from work.’

‘And the lasses, too?’ Margaret said.

Scott said, smiling, ‘There’s always the lasses too.’

‘Ah ’

‘Never mind ah. I want to know what’s going on. I want to know why you asked me here.’

Margaret looked round the bar in a leisurely way, as if she was savouring something. Then she said, ‘Bernie’l be here in ten minutes.’

‘And? And ?’

‘I just thought,’ Margaret said, ‘that I’d like to tel you before I told him. That’s al .’

It was late when she got home, but the night sky over the sea was dim rather than dark, and the sea was washing peaceful y up against the shore below Percy Gardens. Margaret liked the sea in its summer mood, when even if it lost its temper it was only briefly, unlike the sustained furious rages of winter when she could stand at her sitting-room window and see the spray flung angrily upwards in great dramatic plumes. But in the summer, there was less sense of frustration, less of a feeling that the sea was outraged to find its wild energies curtailed by a shoreline, by the upsettingly domestic barriers of a coast road and a crescent of houses inhabited by people who thought they had the capacity to control and contain whatever was inconvenient about nature.

Margaret paid off the taxi, and walked, in her new summer shoes, to the edge of the grassy oval of grass in front of Percy Gardens, so that she could see the sea, heaving and gleaming and spil ing itself, over and over, on to the stones below her. Bernie Harrison had wanted to take her somewhere impressive to celebrate, but she’d said no, they could eat there, in the brasserie of the hotel, and when he said wasn’t that meant for much younger people than they were she said speak for yourself, Bernie Harrison, but I feel years younger than I did only a week ago.

Their steaks had come on rectangular wooden platters, like superior bread boards, and Bernie had found a very respectable burgundy on the wine list to drink with them, and Margaret had to hand it to him, he hadn’t crowed over her once, he hadn’t said, ‘What kept you?’ or, ‘About time too,’ he’d just said, over and over, that he was so pleased, so pleased, and, if he was honest, relieved too.

‘Have you told Glenda?’

‘Of course not. Would I tel Glenda before I told you?’

‘I think,’ Bernie said, reflecting on how nice it was to have chips with his steak, how nice it was to be with a woman who didn’t think chips were common, ‘she’l like the plan, don’t you?’

‘She’s been on at me ever since you first suggested it.’

‘Margaret,’ Bernie said, putting down his knife and fork, ‘Margaret. How do you feel?’

She glanced up at him.

‘If you can’t see that for yourself, Bernie Harrison,’ she said, ‘you need your eyes seeing to.’

He put her into a taxi in a way she found entirely acceptable, no chal enges, no fake gal antry, no showing off. He’d just kissed her cheek, thanked her and said, ‘We’l both sleep happier tonight,’ and then slapped the roof of the taxi as if to wish her Godspeed on the journey home and somehow more than that, on a journey into something that was, of course, more of the same, but with a twist, with a new injection of vitality, a new optimism.

She took several deep breaths of the sea, and then she turned and went careful y back over the rough grass to her front door, and put the key in the lock.

Dawson, with his strange, rare and precise intuition, was sitting eight feet inside the door, waiting for her. When she came in, he lifted himself to his feet and arched his back slightly and made a smal , interrogatory remark.

Margaret looked at him. She remembered him as that smal , battered kitten with a bloody eye and patchy fur and felt a rush of affection for him, not only for what he was and what he had overcome, but because he had by now walked so much of her path with her, had seen her out of some considerable shadows into, if not blazing sunlight, at least light-dappled shade.

‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t,’ Margaret said. ‘Just this once.’

She fol owed him into the kitchen. He paced ahead of her, not hurrying, confident of his smal victory, and, as ever, blessedly, uncomplicatedly detached.

He sat down with dignity beside his food bowl and watched her while she found a smal square tin of his special-treat cat food in the cupboard and peeled back the lid, releasing a rich, savoury aroma that made him run his curling pink tongue round his whiskers.

‘There,’ Margaret said. ‘There. You fat old bul y.’

She straightened up. Dawson folded his front paws under himself, in order to bring his chin down to the level of his dish. He was purring triumphantly.

‘Night-night,’ Margaret said. ‘Enjoy. See you in the morning.’

And then she turned to close the door and switch off the light.

Upstairs she put on the lamp by her bed, and opened the window, and drew the curtains halfway across so that there was enough space for a slice of summer dawn to fal through in the morning. Then she took off her new dress, and hung it up on a corner of her wardrobe, and put on her padded dressing gown and sat down at her dressing table to begin the rituals of the end of the day.

In front of her lay the Minton dish, waiting to receive her pearls and her earrings. It wasn’t quite empty, already containing two safety pins, a pearl button, and the wedding ring she had taken off those months before and al owed, subsequently, just to lie there until it became out of familiarity no more significant than the safety pins. She picked it up now, and looked at it. It had meant so much, once, had symbolized something when the marriage was happening, and even more when it was over. It had been, for years, a talisman, a token of validation, of justification, proof that she had been, in some way that had mattered very much at the time, more than just herself.

She examined it. What a dul thing it looked now. How gladly at that moment would she have given it to Amy’s mother, to that woman who’d had so many reasons, so much time, to believe that she was entitled to it. She wasn’t going to think il of Richie now, she wasn’t going to waste precious energies on stacking up the case against him, nor was she going to do the same for Chrissie. Amy hadn’t talked much about Chrissie except to say that she hoped she real y would take this job and this flat, and start to lead her own life at last, but Margaret had had the strong sense that when Richie died he’d left his castle in London and the people it contained grievously undefended. Amy, of course, was in no place to see that yet, might not see it for years, but already she seemed to want a freedom for her mother, a wish Margaret much approved of, a wish that suggested, at the very least, that life with Richie, for al its beguiling charms, had not made al owances for much liberty in the lives around him.