Raking the Ashes (20 page)

High as a kite with happiness, he gave me another hug. My brain was spinning. What had the boy just said? ‘We would have had to wait another whole year’? What, with the date of the wedding already spread around? And what was all that about Tara’s mother changing her holiday plans? Why should that even have fetched up as an issue, if the fact that I was committed to the inspections hadn’t been part of the discussion right from the start?

Maybe it was. The longer I thought about it, the more possible it seemed. Take Harry’s blithe ‘Dad said, since it was a wedding, you’d probably be allowed to switch things round.’ I’d taken Harry merely to be repeating some typically emollient Geoffism after the date had been fixed, so he would not have to confront his son with hurt at the bridal couple’s sheer insensitivity. But could it have been said a good deal earlier?

Before the plans were fully made?

I stared in the dark mouth of the bag clutched on my knee. My powder compact, lipstick, cheque card, tissues, car keys, comb. And there, tucked in amongst them, the little folded note.

Could it be possible? Was there truly hope?

‘So where is Gloria going on this holiday?’ I asked, to buy more time to work things out.

‘One of those frondy islands in the Seychelles, I think.’

‘Lovely! Next week?’

‘Tomorrow.’ The mention of time brought Harry back to the present. He rose from the table. ‘Married man now, eh? Got to follow orders. Better keep mingling.’

‘Yes. That’s the ticket, Harry.’

As soon as he’d gone, I drew the note out of the handbag, fresh and clear as the day I had forced Geoff
to
write it.
No lies, no leaving information out, no sneaky little deceptions of any sort. That is the deal
. And, underneath, the old familiar signature written a little unsteadily from the sheer shock of the demand. Don’t get your hopes up, I told myself. Don’t think too far ahead. Harry’s account of things might have been garbled with champagne and the excitement of the prospect of his first night with his virgin bride. Perhaps he has the story all mixed up.

My knees were shaking as I left the marquee and worked my way round the garden (carefully avoiding Geoffrey) in search of the one person who might, by a word let drop, send me home singing.

At last I found her.

‘Gloria!’ (Step carefully, Tilly.) ‘A wonderful wedding! Brilliantly organized and everything perfect. I was just thinking you must be absolutely ready for a break after all the upheaval. And now your brand-new son-in-law tells me you’re off to the Seychelles.’

She launched into the details of her holiday. I didn’t have to prompt. Out it all came – how she decided where to go, what made her choose that travel company, and the fright when she thought she would lose her deposit.

‘So
frustrating
,’ I murmured sympathetically. ‘If you leave cancelling till too late, you can be charged almost the full cost of the holiday.’

She looked quite shocked. ‘Really? My golly! I was lucky, then. I only stood to lose a couple of hundred pounds.’ Discreetly, she dropped her voice. ‘But after all, this trip’s not going to be at all cheap, so even that would have been irritating.’

In my mind’s eye I had the sharpest image of Geoffrey, way back in April, hanging up the phone starry-eyed at the news of the christening. I heard our voices as clearly as if the little exchange had taken place yesterday: ‘What with the wedding date at least being fixed …’ ‘I didn’t know.’ ‘Well, no. Minna’s only just told me.’

I took the deepest breath. ‘So,’ I asked Gloria innocently, ‘what notice would you have been able to give? Just the full month?’

She stared as if she thought I might be tipsy. ‘
Three
months, Tilly.’ Scrabbling in her handbag, she pulled out the packet she’d been hiding from Tara all day, and tapped out a cigarette. ‘Pretty well to the day. I remember distinctly because the woman in the travel office told me that, if the worst came to the worst, she’d be able to save me from falling into the next penalty period, but only because her computer had been down the day before.’ She glanced round nervously to check her daughter wasn’t watching her, then lit her cigarette and took a deep drag. ‘But then you came up trumps! So I was lucky.’ Like some sophisticated
dragon
, she let the smoke slide out of one side of her mouth. ‘Tilly?’

I don’t know what she thought she was seeing on my face. Exhilaration? Relief? Pure blinding ecstasy? Perhaps she took me for the sort of soppy soul prepared to be thrilled by somebody else’s good fortune. In any case, she grasped my arm and told me warmly, ‘I ought to thank you for offering to switch your work dates around so very promptly.’ She gave a throaty giggle. ‘Really I should buy you a drink, but—’

I don’t know how she would have finished up. Perhaps: ‘– but it’s a free bar.’ Or even, ‘– but it looks to me as if you might have had a few already.’ But I had interrupted. ‘I must say, Gloria, if you really do feel that you owe me a favour, I wouldn’t say no to one of your cigarettes.’

She beamed. ‘Another smoker? Bliss!’ She peered round, clearly still on the look-out for her stern daughter, then offered furtively, ‘Come round the back of the marquee and we can sin together.’

We picked our way in our high heels around the guy ropes. I clutched my handbag safely to my side, all too aware of its precious paper cargo. However you stretch it, halfway through April to the first week in June is not three months. And there, hidden safe inside, lay my reprieve, fresh as the day I dictated it:
No lies, no
leaving
information out, no sneaky little deceptions of any sort. That is the deal
.

My open sesame. My brand-new passport out.

I took the cigarette that Gloria offered me. As I inexpertly puffed great clouds around us, then fell into splutters, the dizzying feeling of freedom grew and the coughs turned to laughter. Suddenly I found myself confessing to my hostess with perfect honesty, ‘You see, the problem is that I don’t smoke really, Gloria. Never – well, hardly ever. Only if, like today, it is a very,
very
special occasion.’

THAT IS WEAK
people for you. Their only strength lies in their little secrets. The only power that they have comes from keeping things from others. And,
bingo
! That was it. Geoffrey had hanged himself on the old, old habit. The only question was, why had he been so stupid as to try and grub up a tiny bit of goodwill from a woman he hadn’t even met yet, at such risk to his life with me? I can only assume he was confident I wouldn’t find out – or, if I did, that he’d be able to ride out the storm. It was that same incorrigible complacency that causes all too many husbands to lose their wives – that lasting and impregnable assumption that, just because they themselves are too smug and idle either to change themselves or anything around them, the woman they live with will not rouse herself to change anything either. Geoff knew as well as I did
that
our life together was built on a fault line. Right from the start we’d felt the tremors and quakes. What Geoff had chosen to forget is that it’s both halves of a couple, and not just one, who are free to decide that some companionable old rift has become an unbridgeable chasm. He thought I’d stay because to stay was easy, and idleness ran through him like letters stamped through seaside rock. It stopped him ever facing facts that might have stirred his stumps. But one of the facts that he’d refused to face was that my life with him had always had one thing in common with that marriage to Bill which ended with such ease: it wasn’t the time we spent together that kept it going, but the time we spent apart. We had no joint ambitions and no common plan. We didn’t even share passions. In fact, I felt like someone living in a pleasant hotel. I was well fed, the rooms were comfortable, and, day to day, everything ran on oiled wheels. But, at heart, none of it was anything to do with me. That was the way he had preferred to keep things, and that’s the way they’d grown.

But in the end everyone gets to choose. And you can settle for emotional fog blurring the edges of failure. Or you can get out.

Interesting that they all tried stopping me. ‘He probably thought he was just being nice.’ Donald tried to defend him.

‘
Nice?
Telling some stranger in Sussex I’ll be able to make a date I won’t, just to save her the inconvenience of shifting her holiday?’

‘You know how these things happen. You want to be helpful and it just sort of slips out because it would be so convenient if it were true.’

Ed said the same. ‘Oh, Tilly. Why make such a meal of it? The poor clown probably intended to ’fess up from the moment he said it, then simply didn’t dare.’

Next time we slept together, I asked Sol, ‘Why wouldn’t he have
said
?’

Sol pushed the flaming curtain of my hair away to stare at me somewhat incredulously, but all he said (and rather mildly) was, ‘Tilly, you are a rather frightening person when you get angry.’

So there you are. Three men. And all agreed on it. All sticking up for one another, as usual. I have to admit it enraged me. All week I stamped round the rig, staring at all those signs I’d copied out to intrigue Harry all those years ago.
NO SMOKING, NO EATING, NO DRINKING. NO ENTRY BEYOND THIS POINT WITHOUT A SAFETY HARNESS. YOU BREAK THIS RULE, WE FLY YOU OUT
. And that does happen. Only the week before, we’d lost a good motor man simply because he wouldn’t follow the company rules about pushing wheeled gear along catwalks. Oh, yes! Men can be quick enough to act if the issue is one, like an all too likely compensation
claim
, that might affect company profits. Or to squawk if it personally affects
them
. Try cheating Sol on a deal, and I can’t see you coming out unscathed. I wouldn’t mess with my brother about things that matter to him. And as for Donald – even mild-mannered Donald – try telling lies to him about whether or not you’ll make it up to Aberdeen in time for the next relay out. You’ll soon see your cards in your hand. But point out some personal betrayal that matters to you, and they’ll be practically queuing up to urge you to let it slide. ‘Come off it, Tilly. He was trying to be nice’ (or ‘keep the peace’; or ‘stop you getting upset’; or any one of a million excuses for not having the guts to be straight). They just can’t see decisions have to rest on something over and above just being ‘nice’. Once you start off down that street, we could all go round making other people’s lives a misery, all the while telling ourselves we’re acting from the best of motives. It would turn out as easy to call Geoff a fine upstanding man for trying to save Gloria a pittance as label him craven for telling lies to me, presumably in order to keep a little bit of an edge on his own family – the only thing he had and I didn’t. The only thing that was still offering him a tiny bit of self-esteem.

But it’s not for each of us to decide for ourselves which things in life are going to be important. We have to get a grip on our subconscious minds, the feelings we
hide
, not just from others but from ourselves as well. We have to live so others know where they stand. That’s why, beneath the surface crap of things like good manners and a reasonable amount of willing helpfulness, lie other, tougher things. Because they’re more important, they’re even given a different name. We call them
virtues
.

And one of the virtues is honesty. But none of them could see it. They simply couldn’t see it. ‘You’ve made me tell a good few whoppers on your behalf,’ Donald kept reminding me.

‘Hark at the pot moralizing about the kettle,’ scoffed Ed. ‘Have you forgotten how you lied to Geoff about where Mother’s money went?
And
bullied me into supporting you.’

‘You are deceitful too,’ said Sol. ‘I expect you’re being deceitful now, simply to be in bed with me.’

I closed my ears to all of them. I refused to listen.

Easy enough to put the question to me now. ‘Tilly, why didn’t you just walk away?’

You
try it. There’s a staying quality about weak people no one can match. It is a tyranny. Live with a man while, one by one, he loses his savings and his property, his income and children, and I defy you at the end to have the guts to say to him, ‘And now I’m leaving too.’ I think I had no choice. You can ask: ‘Why
didn
’t you solve the problem by selling up and splitting everything two ways?’ I think the answer’s clear: why on earth
should
I? I’m not the one who dribbled my assets away, one after another, in the face of all warnings. If you spend years indulging yourself in ‘thinking everything will work out right’, you can’t expect everyone round you to compensate you if things go sour. Fools suffer. That is the way of the world. I might have had a bit more sympathy if Geoff had been an idiot by birth – someone too stupid to understand a contract, or grasp the hidden costs of a loan. But sail through life sunny and carefree, deliberately ignoring the possibility that things might go awry, and you should pay the price.

Besides, it was entirely his choice to try to come after me. (Admittedly I knew he would. But is a woman to be held to blame if a man’s made it plain he is unlikely to make the slightest effort to manage without her? If he gets needier and needier over the years, is she supposed to choose only those paths that take into account the fact that, in his determination to be a leech, he might well follow?) All very well for you to say now, so accusingly, ‘Tilly, you
must
have known exactly what would happen.’ I can still answer fearlessly: ‘It’s a free country, isn’t it? That was up to him.’ In any case, the way I looked at it, he’d wasted years of my life. When I met Geoffrey, I was only in my
twenties
, flame-haired and made for passions that would follow fast on one another’s heels. Now I was forty-three, with streaks of grey I couldn’t even be bothered to hide, and such a habit of settling for whatever came next that I felt I’d let the life I should have lived slip through my fingers. It seemed to me he’d taken my best years. And, if I’m honest, I was angrier – oh, far, far angrier – than simply wanting to leave.