Raking the Ashes (7 page)

And so that wrangle came, like every other, not to a proper conclusion, but to an end. Yet most of the time we were still perfectly happy. That summer, Ed came home to help me move our mother yet again as her condition worsened, but I remember it as one long pleasant time. Poor Mum’s relief at no longer being ‘strongly encouraged’ to get out of bed each day was plain from the start. Her brain worked no better in the new place; but, no longer baffled by handles and switches and taps, she clearly felt warmer and safer,
and
her fantasies became less fearful. I started coming home from the nursing home in perfectly good spirits.

‘Good visit?’

‘Went a treat.’

‘So who did she think you were today? Good or Bad Tilly?’

‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ I told him wryly. ‘Even within an afternoon it shifts about. Today I even wondered if it might depend on something as simple as where I happen to be sitting. I mean, she did ask, “Where’s that other one? You know, the one with hair like yours who sits reading the paper by the window?” But when I said, “Mum, that one’s me as well. It’s just that sometimes I sit over there because the light’s better,” she just let it go – except to say she hoped the other one didn’t come back till after I’d gone.’

‘Why’s that?’

I burst out laughing. ‘Because she’s rather standoffish, apparently. And Mum says she much prefers
me
.’

Geoff pulled the cork out of the celebratory bottle of wine that signalled Duty Done. ‘So what do you reckon, Tilly? Has she settled enough to be left for a whole month? Is France on or off?’

And France was on. When I looked back, I realized that I hadn’t had a proper holiday in as long as I could remember. And Geoffrey did it all. He fixed up a
lovely
rented cottage in an apricot orchard. There was a tiny shaded pool. Cows stared at us over the hedges. And everywhere we walked, we saw signs warning us of bulls. I felt my bones melt as days drifted past. I didn’t notice what we talked about, and, in that heat, all conversations were desultory.

It was a magic, magic time. I’d look at Geoffrey, looking down at me with real desire, and think myself so lucky. He’d put his arm around me as I picked my way in high heels down the rutted path on the nights we went out to smart restaurants. He peeled me oranges, and skimmed the dead bugs off the surface of the pool before I swam. And I have never in my whole life thought, I’d love these days to last for ever, as I did then.

Then we drove back to the ferry. Even the crossing seemed to be part of the holiday. It was only as the car tyres rolled over the noisy metal sheeting between the boat and the quayside that Geoffrey showed his first doubt. ‘We could just skip this visit. He doesn’t know we’re coming. We could just shoot up to the motorway straight away, and miss the traffic.’

‘Geoff, he’s your
father
.’

‘We’ll simply pop in, then. Just for a cup of tea, that’s all. We’ll make it clear right from the start that we’re not staying.’

I was intrigued. Did he suppose his dad was going
to
hate
me? Geoffrey kept glancing at his watch. ‘What’s the problem?’ I asked him. ‘Even if we don’t get as far as home tonight, it doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s not that.’

‘What is it, then? You keep on checking the time.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Geoff,’ I said. ‘Stop the car.’

‘Don’t be daft, Tilly.’

‘I mean it. Stop the car.’

He pulled up on a garage forecourt, out of the way of the pumps. ‘What is the
matter
?’

‘I want to know why you’re looking at your watch every few seconds.’

‘I’m not.’

I sat there patiently, watching the traffic flash past as if I’d be happy to sit there for ever. ‘All
right
,’ he said at last. ‘Maybe I am. I didn’t realize that I was, but maybe I am.’

‘But
why
?’

It was like watching something made of mud attempt to think. He made the process appear downright painful. ‘I suppose …’

‘Yes?’

‘I suppose …’ He squirmed. ‘I suppose I’m worried that, the later we get to Briar Cottage, the drunker he’ll be.’

Too right! Geoff’s father might not have been
swaying
or puking, or saying, ‘See you, Jimmy!’ every thirty seconds like half the drunks in Aberdeen. But he was no picnic to visit. He spent a lot of time pretending I wasn’t there, and, when he did admit that I was on the planet, he wasn’t pleasant. He made a face as I kicked off my sandals – honestly, you’d have thought I’d stepped out of my knickers – and glowered as I picked my way barefoot down the bank into the tiny brook that ran along the end of his garden. I paddled in a daft way, up and down, willing the moments to pass. He stared at me with utter scorn for a while, then said to Geoffrey loudly enough for me to hear, ‘Is she always this idiotic? Doesn’t she realize she’s ruining my precious marsh marigolds?’

Mortified, I clambered out and, in a desperate attempt to prove myself more sensible than a paddling toddler, asked, ‘Do you get much pollution in the stream?’

‘None,’ he said, ‘till you stepped in.’

I couldn’t help but gasp. I don’t believe that, since I left primary school, anyone has ever been so rude. I would have thought that I’d misheard, if he’d not followed it up as we were leaving. Staring down at the car as I was climbing in, he said to Geoffrey, ‘What’s that on the back seat?’

Geoff glanced at the unopened packet of batteries lying there, waiting to go back to the shop to be
exchanged
for ones the next size up. ‘Oh, that’s just one of my mistakes.’

In the wing mirror, I saw his father’s thumb jerk my way and, with the car windows open, heard him say it clearly enough. ‘You mark my words, boy. So is she.’

We must have driven for at least a mile with neither of us saying anything. I could only suppose Geoff was waiting for some explosion. But what did it matter to me? Geoff had as good as warned me. And, after all, it’s not as if I were eighteen and dying to be part of a brand-new family, or planning to have children who might want to paddle in the stream in their turn, and call the grumpy old fart ‘Grandpa’. So after a while I said, quite fascinated by the whole grisly experience, ‘Do you know, I do believe your father is the rudest man I’ve ever met.’

Geoff’s fingers tightened round the steering wheel. ‘Well, he was
drunk
. I did warn you.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘You did warn me. And a good thing too, since he is almost unbelievably offensive.’

That’s when he said it. ‘Tilly, he is my
father
.’

People who use cloth for brains have always got on my nerves. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you are right that he’s your father. And I am right that he’s the rudest man I’ve ever met. Both of these statements can be true at the same time, and both of them are.’

I don’t know what made me mutter under my
breath
, ‘Unless, of course, you were
adopted
.’ But that was a step too far. Geoffrey fell in a sulk that lasted for sixty miles. I did try pulling him out of it once or twice. I twittered on about the colour of some cows in a field, as I recall. And once or twice I remarked on the number of squashed pheasants. But after a while I felt more cross than guilty. After all, what was Geoffrey doing except for closing down a conversation that was making him a shade uncomfortable? Well, he might prefer to live in his own little Noddy world in which no one – not even his father’s most recent victim – had the temerity to point out that the man was rude; but I’m on the planet too, and I didn’t see why I had to sit beside him in the car all the way home, forbidden to speak of what was uppermost in my mind, or talk about the visit properly. After all, it would have been
interesting
. Had Geoffrey’s father’s behaviour been unusual for him? Or was that always the sort of thing he dealt out to strangers? And, if it were, then when did he turn that rude? Who let him get away with it till it became a habit? Did he have any friends? I would have loved to hear Geoff’s views on why his father acted the way he did.

But Geoff preferred not to think about it. And that, from his point of view, was that.

If he’d been stupid, I am sure I could have let it go. I might even have been able to bring myself – by
Doncaster
, say – to come out with something emollient: ‘I’m sorry what I said about your dad upset you so.’ (The weasel marital apology: not sorry I said it – just sorry it upset you.) But anybody who can fix a jammed photocopier must have a working brain. So I was just annoyed at Geoff’s sheer stubbornness. I knew from the clipped way he brushed aside my questions on our choice of route that he was trying to make me feel like a naughty child who’d gone too far. And that led to our next argument.

‘Can we change places?’ I asked him after a while.

‘I’m quite all right,’ he said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘I expect you are. It’s just that I would like to drive for a bit, please.’

‘Tilly, we’re nearly there.’

‘I’d like to drive, please. Would you stop the car.’ As if the very road were on my side, up popped the sign for a lay-by. ‘That will be fine,’ I said firmly.

‘Tilly—’

‘It is my car, Geoffrey.’

He’d forgotten that. And, interestingly, that is what swung the matter. He started moving towards the inside lane. In the lay-by, the two of us switched places without exchanging a single word. I know what I was doing. I was refusing to be driven a single mile further by someone who wouldn’t talk to me. It’s a control thing, like picking up the bill after an
argument
in a restaurant because you can’t bear to be beholden to someone whom you’ve decided you don’t like.

Not speaking seems a whole lot loftier when you are busy changing lanes. After ten miles or so, Geoff started talking. Not about his father. (That would have been too much of a climb-down – not to mention a topic of real interest.) About something utterly bland and forgettable, like weather or cars. But the message was definitely: end of sulk.

Still, I kept concentrating on the road. And when, as we unpacked the car, he tried to wrap up our holiday by saying something really nice, I hurried out of earshot. When he came up to bed I was already pretending to be asleep, though I was back to planning my escape. I lay there with the ‘Sorry, Geoff, this isn’t working’ speech echoing round my brain, and ran through the pros and cons of selling the house and moving to a flat in the city. Finally I dozed, but only as lightly as I could, since I was determined to beat the alarm clock and switch it off before it woke him. In the morning, I didn’t even make toast in case the smell floated up the stairs. And I was safely outside on the doorstep a full ten minutes before the taxi arrived. I was determined not to hear a single word about our future till I had had the time to tell him that we didn’t have one.

I flew up to Aberdeen with every nerve end charged for parting. So I blame the North Sea. Lean with your arms stretched flat along a railing, and stare out. From a rig deck there’s nothing to distract you: no strips of sand, no walkers on the beach, no rocks on which the breakers slap, and slide back down again in dark wet patterns. All that we have is waves. Great powerful, timeless, surging waves. They are mesmeric. For a few minutes or so, your brain keeps tossing up the stupid surface thoughts. ‘This will be here for eternity.’ ‘I could stand here for ever.’ ‘This will go on and on when I am dead.’ But after a while, you simply watch. And watch, and watch. On land, it’s cold or hunger that makes you move on in the end. We’re so wrapped up, we could stay warm as far north as the Arctic. And life’s so dull that all we do is eat too much, then snack on chocolate. It can be noisy, depending on who’s clanging about above or below. But if you choose the right spot, most of the hum of the generators blows away, and leaves you with just the wind whipping around you.

In sets that sense of being tiny in the universe. An ant. An apple pip. Something so small and unregardable you may as well not exist. You are reminded of all the aeons you weren’t here, and no one knew or cared. You think of how, within a few years of your vanishing, things will be like that again. You look at all those
waves
and think, I am a blink in time. I go two ways. Sometimes I find it quite exhilarating. Thrilling. Inspiring. I feel as if I could go anywhere, do anything. Impatience seizes me. I want to pack in this small life and pick another. Choose to be anything. Fly!

At other times in comes the void. I get the sense that life is worthless, pointless and drab, and nothing matters. A grey fog settles and clings. Usually I’m glad to get off a rig. On days like these, it makes no difference. I go through the motions, gather my stuff together and scramble aboard as usual. But it takes time to come back to myself and feel a person, not just a walking, talking ‘thing’ pacing out life on the planet.

Back at the terminal, there was a message. ‘Please phone Geoff.’

‘I’m off home anyhow,’ I lied to Donald. But he had picked up a ringing telephone. ‘Oh, right. No, she’s still here.’

He handed it to me.

Geoffrey.

‘Hi, sweetheart. Back at the terminal, having a cup of tea with Donald before the taxi arrives?’

I looked at the mug in my hand, with steam still rising. He could, I knew, have caught me almost any time, on almost any day, and got it almost as close. If a man goes to the trouble of asking you about your day and listening to your answers – triumphs and
grumbles
– and cares enough to remember, then he will learn how your weeks work. I could imagine some woman who adored Geoff making a call to say much the same to him. ‘Hi, Geoff. Are you busy explaining to Mrs Mackie the jobs that came in since she went off for lunch?’

Someone.

Not me.

But still, the grey mist lifted. Believe me, I so wanted us to part that I tried clinging on to it. I almost felt myself trying to hug depression round me. But sad, weird moods come and go as they choose, and this one chose to go. All I was left with was a warm and loving feeling. This man so cared for me that, all through his day, he kept me firmly in his mind. He knew where I might be, and what I might be doing. Who I was with and how long it might take. I mattered to him. So I mattered.