Women of a Dangerous Age

‘Of course you would.’ He chuckled. ‘Tell you what, though. I’ve got a little surprise for you.’

‘You have?’ She pretended to think for a moment, knowing what was coming. ‘We’re going to the pub for dinner?’ He nodded, clearly looking forward to the evening out. So no surprise there, then. Whenever she came to stay, they always had their first meal in the Swan, and the next morning she went to the supermarket and stocked up for him before making lunch, then going home.

‘We are.’ He began to do up the buttons of his jacket. ‘But that’s not it.’

‘What then?’

‘Don called me, asking for you.’ His faded blue eyes shone with pleasure at the startling effect of his news.

‘Don?’ She repeated the name she hadn’t heard for years. ‘Don Sterling?’

He nodded.

‘Are you sure?’ He must have made a mistake. Don was a chapter in her life that had been closed for many years. Yet just the mention of his name was enough to unsettle her. She checked herself. Why was that surprising? They had been sweethearts since they met in the sixth form, both determined to escape their roots and make a new start. She remembered their disbelief when they’d both been offered places to study in London, she at the Cass and he at the London School of Economics. They had shared a rundown flat in Hackney from the start. The years during which they had lived together there had meant everything. Back then, she had believed that Don was her saviour and her soulmate, each of them useless without the other. To think that she had ever been so sentimental. Her friends had loved him. Her father had loved him – as much as he’d loved anyone since the disappearance of Ali’s mother. She’d loved him.

‘Are you sure?’ she repeated.

‘Oh, one hundred per cent,’ he said, satisfied with the effect his news was having. ‘He wanted to contact you so I gave him your email address. That was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, I guess. But why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘Because he only called a couple of days ago and I knew I’d be seeing you today.’ He spoke deliberately slowly, always impatient if he thought she wasn’t immediately cottoning on, never more so than when he was primed to do something else. Right now, get down to the Swan.

‘Don! I can’t believe it. I haven’t heard from him for years.’ When he left to join the Greenpeace ship – the dream job that nothing, not even Ali, could stop him accepting – his letters, at first frequent, excited and newsy, dried up to a trickle and then nothing as he abandoned himself to his new circumstances. In return, Ali’s had been frequent and sad, abandoned as she was by the second person she’d truly loved. She’d given herself to him so completely that she didn’t have any close friends to help her through.

‘Well, maybe you won’t hear from him now.’ Her father was heading for the door. ‘Maybe he’ll think better of it. Come on, table’s waiting.’

‘Maybe he will.’

Ali followed him out into the rain-slicked street, disconcerted by the long-buried memories that were beginning to surface. ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.’ But was it really? And to have lost twice over when she had been so young: her mother, then Don. And now, again. Despite her resolve, she couldn’t stop her thoughts returning to Ian. She wouldn’t talk about him to her father, but she couldn’t get him out of her mind. Wrapping her coat around her, bowing her head into the wind, she followed her father, imagining that the evening would now follow its familiar pattern. As indeed it almost did.

The pub was its usual humming Saturday night – at least four people at the bar and one table out of seven taken. Eric nodded at the other regulars, took his usual table and ordered a bottle of wine. He read the menu through, eventually ordering the steak and kidney pie that he always had, allowing her to order scampi, before he spoke to her again.

‘He sounded well, you know. Phoning from Australia, he was. Must have done well for himself. Always liked the boy.’ He stroked his moustache with little up-and-down movements of his finger.

‘I know you did, Dad. So did I.’ She remembered with a jolt just how much and added as an afterthought, ‘He saved me, you know.’

His finger stopped moving as he looked puzzled. ‘Saved you?’

‘After Mum left, don’t you remember?’

‘I don’t know what on earth you mean.’ His face closed up, just as it always did whenever her mother was mentioned. Thirty-two years of unasked and unanswered questions lay between them. Characteristically, he changed the subject. ‘How’s the business?’

‘Tough. Money’s tight at the moment,’ she answered automatically, then the frustration she had controlled for so long surfaced without warning, not giving him a chance to deliver his stock answer to her business problems. ‘Dad, why won’t you talk to me about her? She left so long ago and I still don’t know why.’

Across the table, he unrolled the napkin containing his knife and fork, then placed them very deliberately, first one, then the other, on either side of his mat. He didn’t look up as he aligned the salt and pepper exactly in the middle of the table. He was still expecting Ali to return to the matter of her business. All he had to do was wait long enough. He was oblivious to the recklessness that all of a sudden possessed her.

‘What I meant was that I used to blame myself for Mum leaving until Don made me understand that there could have been any number of reasons. That’s what I mean by “saving” me. He showed me a way through when you wouldn’t – or couldn’t.’ She surprised herself. That was more than she’d ever admitted to her father about what had happened. But it was true. To this day, she had no idea why her mother left or where she had gone. Divorce and death were words never mentioned in her hearing. She had only been thirteen, stretching her wings, testing the boundaries by bunking off school to smoke and snog boys down in the bushes by the public playground, by lying about going shopping when she and her friend Laura went to their first X-rated film or, when she was grounded, squeezing herself through the tiny bathroom window, shinning down the drainpipe and racing off to meet Mick Kirby and his mates in the car park of the local hotel. Life was hers for the taking. Or so she’d thought. Then, one day, she came home for tea to find the table laid and her mother gone. ‘You didn’t even tell me where she went.’

‘I didn’t know. That’s why.’ He sighed as if all the life had been punched out of him. ‘I didn’t know.’ He kept his eyes on his table mat, chipping with his fingernail at a scrap of food that was stuck to it.

‘But …’ Ali had so many questions that had been bottled up since that time. Now the moment to ask them had finally presented itself, she didn’t know where to start.

‘Perhaps I should have talked to you, but I didn’t know what to say.’ He looked in the direction of the pub kitchen, as if willing his dinner to materialise and give him an excuse to stop the conversation. ‘Not talking made it easier. Still does.’

Now that, she understood completely. That was another trait she had inherited from him: batten down the hatches and pretend nothing has happened. Keep going. Show no emotion. And the truth was that now she had breached his defences and could see his anguish, even after all these years, she didn’t want to make it worse. ‘Dad, I know that. I’ve always known and I learned from you to do the same thing. But sometimes, I do still wonder where she went. How could I not? Some of the girls at school joked about her running away, and I remember telling them she’d be coming back for me. Eventually everyone lost interest. But I didn’t.’ She didn’t want to remember the alienation she’d felt throughout the rest of her schooldays until she could reinvent herself at art college.

She shifted to one side as her scampi and chips was put in front of her and watched as her father tucked into his pie, his relief at having a distraction plain. She played with her food, waiting for him to continue. However, he ate as if his life depended on it, not pausing to talk. As soon as he had cleared his plate, he asked for and paid the bill, then stood up. ‘Finished? Let’s go home. We’ll talk there. Not here.’

Back at the house, he led her into the living room, a faded memory of what it once had been. The musty unaired smell gave away how infrequently the room was used. While her father lit the ancient sputtering gas fire, Ali drew the curtains against the increasingly wild night outside before sitting on the spring-bound sofa. Her father took the chair opposite, perching on its edge, his body stiff and angular: knees bent, elbows on them, hands clasped, staring at the floor.

‘Perhaps I should have spoken to you but I thought you’d come to terms with the loss of your mother in your own way.’ He raised his eyes to her, then looked away as he smoothed his hair with one hand. ‘I didn’t want to open old wounds and make it worse for you.’

Ali’s frustration got the better of her. ‘For God’s sake, Dad!’ How, after so many years, could he not understand her better than that? ‘She was my mother. You owed it to me to tell me what you knew. You still owe me.’

He got up and crossed to the bureau at the back of the room, pulling open a desktop drawer to remove an envelope before closing it again. ‘It’s complicated, Al. Too complicated for me.’ His voice was so low that she had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. ‘Moira had such a miserable upbringing herself, constantly undermined by her father and older brother. She wanted to do everything she could to make yours the perfect childhood. But, because of that upbringing, she grew up with no faith in herself. In the end, she left because she thought she was doing the best by us. There. Now you know.’

‘But how could she possibly have believed that?’ This went against everything she remembered about her mother. ‘Why couldn’t you make her see she was wrong?’ Her agonised plea came from the young girl she’d once been. Her eyes stung with tears.

Her father was looking ill at ease. He wouldn’t look at Ali, wouldn’t comfort her. So much so that Ali had the distinct impression that there was something he wasn’t telling her. This was as hard for her as it was for him. Now they’d finally come this far, she had to know – if only to put the subject to rest at last.

‘I tried, believe me. But she left with no warning. All I had from her was this.’ He passed across the envelope that contained something solid. ‘I never wanted to tell you this, because I thought it would hurt you as much as it did me. You didn’t deserve that. But maybe I was wrong.’

From the envelope, she took out a piece of lined paper. Two rings fell out: a plain wedding band and a ring with a simple solitaire diamond. Ali turned them in her hand, then opened the paper, recognising the handwriting immediately.

Eric. Don’t come after me this time. You won’t find me. I’m giving you back my rings. Alison will have a better life without me. I love her so much but I’m not the mother I wanted to be to her, nor am I the wife I wanted to be to you. It’s better this way. I’m sorry.

Moira

‘“This time”? She’d done this before?’ The assumptions that had supported Ali throughout the adult part of her life had been whipped away without warning. She felt as if she was in free fall.

He nodded his head, unable to speak.

‘But didn’t you look for her?’

He looked so weary, so defensive. ‘Of course I looked, Al. Of course I did. What do you think I am? I was no more confident of being a good father to you on my own than she had been about being your mother. And I wanted her back.’ He paused. ‘For me as much as for you.’

For a shocking moment, Ali thought he was going to cry. But he coughed, averting his head so she couldn’t see his eyes. That was the first time Ali could remember hearing or seeing him express any feelings for her mother. She had imagined arguments, other men, affairs, fallings out of love, but never this.

‘But why couldn’t you find her?’

‘Because when someone doesn’t want to be found, they can make it almost impossible for you. That’s what she did. That note’s the last thing I had from her.’

What sort of mother could desert her only child? The shadowy figure that her mother had become over the years was taking a step towards the light. Where could she have gone? Perhaps Ali should look for her. Perhaps she was waiting to be found.

Her parents must have been in their late forties then, a little older than she was now: a dangerous age, a time when you look at what you have and what you want. Life is getting shorter. Either you act and effect a change or you settle for what you know. She understood as well as anyone what was involved and how difficult it could be. Most of all, she identified with the person she imagined her mother to be: restless, questing, searching to be the best she could. The woman wasn’t quite such a stranger any more.

Later, lying in her old childhood bed, comforted by its familiar sag, Ali thought about their conversation. Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and Queen looked down on her from the faded posters tacked to the wall, their edges curling: the few things in the house that her father hadn’t submitted to his desire for order. Perhaps there was a sentimental old fool in there trying to find a way out after all? Otherwise any other signs of Ali’s childhood had been stashed away in the chest of drawers and wardrobe or in the attic. In all these years she had never once dreamed that her mother might have left in the misguided belief that she was acting in her daughter’s best interests.

She twisted her mother’s two rings around her right ring finger. How would she have supported herself? Had Eric given her any money? Did she have some of her own? Where could she have gone? There must be more to the story than Ali’s father was giving away. But why? Who was he protecting? Her mother? Himself? Or Ali? Had she been such a terrible child? Was she the reason that her mother left? Then she remembered how Don had taught her that no one’s actions were governed by a single reason. Life was far more complicated than that.

Imagining her father through the wall, lonely in the room he had once shared with his wife, Ali wondered whether he was lying awake, staring into the dark, like her. She wondered briefly if she was destined for a life alone. After what Ian had done, she couldn’t imagine trusting herself to anyone again. When they had finally turned in, Eric was still visibly distressed, having been unable to tell her any more. After giving her a glimpse of the truth, the shutters had come down again. She would not prise any more out of him this weekend. Ali had never tried to imagine the life her parents had together. As soon as her mother disappeared, she was encouraged to forget her and, eventually, that’s what she had almost managed to do. Until now.

7

The pub was busy with early-evening drinkers as Lou pushed her way down the long Victorian bar, all dark wood and brass real-ale pumps. Behind it a couple of frazzled bar staff tried to keep up with the customers who were waiting, shouting orders, brandishing cash and turning away with their drinks held high so as not to spill them. The noise was way up the decibel scale and Lou was wondering why on earth she had agreed to meet Hooker here, a place where she’d have to strain to hear a word. Perhaps that was indeed the answer. She was protecting herself against his expected anger.

She had been surprised by how pleased her ex had seemed at hearing from her although, like Nic, he’d been un interested in her holiday beyond the fact that she’d come back in one piece. She had hoped her family might like to know what she’d got up to without them. Equally, she hoped he hadn’t interpreted the call, so soon after her return, as a sign that she had been missing him. She thought she’d detected a warmth in his voice that had been absent towards her for years. For a moment, her feelings towards him softened before she told herself to get a grip. Old habits, she warned herself. That’s all it was.

As soon as he realised that she wanted to meet him, he had suggested the Maryatt Arms, a pub she hadn’t visited for more years than she could count. Long ago, she came here with her brother Sam and his teammates after those dreaded university rugby matches. She used to stand with Jenny, shivering on the sidelines, united in their incomprehension at what was happening on the pitch, freezing to death, yelling their hearts out when Sam scored a try. The Maryatt Arms was where she’d first met her future husband. His keen sportsmanship was of course how he’d got his name. To everyone, including his family, he was ‘Hooker’. He’d caught her eye both on and off the pitch so when he offered her a drink and to educate her in the finer points of the game, she accepted. Wirier than some of his teammates, he had a certain twinkle in his eye that translated into a come-and-get-me charm. So she had gone and got him.

Lou couldn’t begin to count the number of nights she’d whiled away in this place, first with Sam and the team, and later with Hooker when they’d continued to come here, long after the matches had stopped and the players had moved on to life after university. Convenient to the house that he was then sharing with three other would-be lawyers, the pub was warm compared to the unheated chill of home, and convivial since someone or other they knew would usually turn up of an evening. Since then, the place had changed. The old boys and locals who propped up the bar were long gone, turfed out in favour of gastro-pub splendour.

She knew exactly where he’d be sitting. At the table by the fire, where thirty-something years ago (no, she couldn’t remember exactly: always a small bone of contention between them), he’d leaned across and asked her to marry him. Moments after accepting, she’d watched him get dragged off to a game of pool. Given the flak from his mother’s appalled reaction to the unromantic nature of his proposal, he’d taken Lou out to dinner and repeated it, organising the diamond engagement ring to be found in the bottom of her champagne glass. She accepted delightedly to a bored round of applause from three Turkish waiters.

Now she thought about it, the romance that was so absent from his original proposal had been absent from most of their married life. They had loved one another, of that she was sure, but those early years devoted to their careers and babies made it hard to carve out pockets of time for themselves. Their separate jobs – hers as a fashion journalist, his as a corporate lawyer – took them travelling to opposite ends of the country and sometimes of the world, leaving a succession of overpaid nannies to hold the fort. The money she earned salved Lou’s conscience – at least she was paying for the best childcare possible when she was away. By the time she began working from home, when Jamie was fifteen, Nic thirteen and Tom ten, the original driving force had disappeared from their marriage altogether. Almost without them noticing, Lou and Hooker’s paths began to cross less frequently until they had started to live their lives almost entirely in parallel.

There he was, just as she expected, nursing the remains of a pint, an untouched glass of white wine opposite him. He looked up, spotted her and raised a hand. Measuring in at just over six feet (with a heel on his shoe), he was still a handsome man, distinguished-looking some might say, with deep-set eyes, a vertical furrow running up from the bridge of his slightly skewed nose (rugby-playing break), smooth skin that, when he was feeling particularly smug, reminded Lou of a frying sausage about to split its skin. Imagining the speed with which this bonhomie would be transformed into something far less pleasant as soon as he heard her news, made her want to turn and go home. Then she remembered Nic and her resolve stiffened.

‘Excuse me?’ A young woman touched her arm. ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you Lou Sherwood?’

‘Mmm?’ Half turning, Lou took a closer look. Shiny fifties-styled hair, heavily lashed brown eyes intent on her, lipsticked lips, neat black suit, glass of champagne in hand. A distant bell of recognition clanged somewhere in the back of Lou’s mind but she couldn’t place her.

‘It’s Tess. Tess Granger. It’s been years. How are you?’

Tess Granger? Lou racked what she laughingly called her brain for something that would give her a clue to the younger woman’s identity.

‘Tess, of course.’ She was still trying to identify her while she bluffed. ‘What are you doing now?

‘After you left, I was made assistant to Belle Flanders. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have got this far.’

Aha! So they’d worked together over ten years ago at Chic to Chic. Belle had been one of the hungry young things snapping at Lou’s fashionable heels, but who the hell was Tess? She must have been there when she’d left, forced to give up her exhausting career partially thanks to redundancy but also by the equally exhausting demands made on her by Nic who was setting out on her teenage years with alarming abandon, and the two boys – so much easier. Nic was running wild, refusing to curb her will to any au pair. That and the redundancy had come at a time when Lou had begun to wonder what she was doing in the magazine world. She had become tired of the travelling and the endless demands made on her time. Her face didn’t fit any more, but she’d had enough. She’d even thought she might start her own dress shop then but Hooker had insisted the children needed their mother at home. He didn’t trust the sequence of au pairs looking after them not to fill their heads with rubbish and foreign swear words. He said only a parent could be trusted to teach their children what they needed to know. But Lou sometimes wondered whether she’d managed to teach them anything at all. However, she had begun to notice the way he had been looking at the young women they’d employed in the name of childcare, and caved in, partly for that reason and partly because she was too exhausted to resist.

‘I’m so glad it’s all worked out for you.’ Her powers of recall had totally deserted her.

‘It certainly has! I left six months after you and went to the States. Now I’m back as the new editor of Stylish. We’re celebrating.’ She gestured towards a young man and a couple who were talking and laughing at a table by the window. ‘Where are you now?’

Stylish? The glossy young rival to Vogue and this young woman was the editor. Suddenly Lou felt about a hundred years old. She looked down at – oh, no – her fleece, the convenient style bypass for the middle-aged woman. Shit! She deliberately hadn’t followed her resolve to stick to statement dressing that would advertise her business, because she hadn’t wanted Hooker to think she was making a special effort just for him. She hadn’t given a thought to the fact that she might bump into someone she knew. If only she’d changed into the pomegranate velvet coat she finished just before she went away. It had taken ages to make but the cut was so flattering, it had been worth every minute.

Hideously aware that the make-up she’d put on that morning was no longer a refuge for her almost certainly shiny nose, and praying her lipstick hadn’t leaked into the tiny vertical wrinkles that had recently been making a bid for domination around her mouth, she thanked God that her recent haircut had temporarily tamed things so at least in that department she looked acceptable. Perhaps Tess wouldn’t notice the rest.

Of course she would. Just move on, swiftly.

‘That’s fantastic news. I’m so sorry I can’t stop to chat, but I’m late meeting someone.’

‘Well, great to see you. We should catch up. Lunch or something.’ She held out a small embossed card.

Knowing Tess had absolutely no intention of following up this suggestion, Lou took the card, at the same time registering how useful the other woman might be to her. But it wasn’t too late to say something. ‘In fact, I’m setting up a new business that might interest you.’

Tess cocked an eyebrow. ‘Really? Then we should definitely stay in touch. Call me.’ But she sounded as if anything initiated by Lou would be of little interest to her.