Thursdays in the Park (7 page)

Jeanie gathered Ellie up and gave her a hug before tackling the pram and the steps.

‘Daddy’s cross,’ the child commented, as if there was nothing unusual about this.

Jeanie didn’t trust herself to reply.

It was a relief to see Ray. She’d been shaken by Alex’s spitefulness.

‘Hey, good to see you.’ Ray rose from the bench on the wooden decking by the pond when he spotted her approach. He was looking particularly handsome, she thought, in a
blue cotton shirt and jeans, very fit and spruce. She looked around for the boy.

‘Where’s Dylan?’

‘His dad’s taken him to a kids’ music festival he’s running.’

‘But you came anyway?’

Ray smiled. ‘Didn’t want you to think I was avoiding you, after . . . well, you seemed in a bad way the other day. Hi, Ellie.’

Jeanie took Ellie out of the buggy and started to break up some bread for the ducks.

‘That’s bad for them, you know,’ he said seriously.

‘It’s organic, I got it from the shop.’

He laughed. ‘It’s not its purity that’s the problem, it’s the bread itself.’

‘Oh? I thought people had been feeding birds with bread for ever.’

Ellie was munching happily on the stale lump of rye loaf Jeanie had handed her.

‘Throw it, darling, throw it to the ducks.’

Her granddaughter carefully passed a bit through the netting covering the fence, then stuffed the rest in her mouth.

‘They have, but that doesn’t make it good for them. Apparently it gets stuck in their guts and makes them ill. If you think about it, it’s not surprising. I mean, bread is processed food.’

Jeanie thought about this. ‘I suppose. . . I should know, I run a health-food shop.’

‘For people, not ducks, though.’

They both laughed and for a second their eyes met. As the gaze held, Jeanie felt the breath stop in her lungs and her heart begin to race tight against her ribs.

She dragged her eyes away and sat down hard on the bench, realizing she was shaking. Ray remained leaning with his back against the fence, his elbows propped on the wooden railing. Disconcertingly, he continued to stare at her flushed face.

The little girl ran about the decking chasing pigeons, totally contained in the sheer exuberance of her freedom.

‘I’ve just had another run-in with my son-in-law, Alex.’ She began to talk, to say anything that came to mind, avoiding his eye.

‘You mentioned the relationship was difficult.’

Jeanie nodded, willing her heart to quieten. ‘He asked me to look after Ellie full-time so he can paint.’

Ray looked questioningly at her, a soft smile playing about his mouth.

‘And that’s bad?’ He saw her rising indignation. ‘No, no, I’m sure it is.’

‘Well, obviously,’ she replied tartly. ‘No one seems to notice this fact, but I run a shop.’

‘So you said no.’

‘And he was vile to me . . . but now I feel guilty. I know he’s a pain, but I suppose it can’t be easy to look after a child when you’re trying to get an exhibition together. Ellie looks as if butter wouldn’t melt, but she’s relentless.’

‘Can’t he take her to a childminder a couple of days?’

‘Chanty won’t hear of it – she does two mornings at nursery already.’

‘You do what you can, but in the end it’s their problem.’

Jeanie looked at him, nodded. ‘You’re right, it
is
their problem, I suppose. But I don’t want him causing trouble with me and Chanty again, making it difficult for me to see Ellie.’

Ray shrugged. ‘Maybe you should trust your relationship with your daughter more.’

‘I sound paranoid, don’t I,’ she sighed. ‘It’s just it was hell when we fell out. I couldn’t bear to go through that again.’ She explained about Alex’s behaviour before Ellie was born.

‘Look, I’m no role model, Jeanie. I keep telling myself to do the same with Nat, to trust her. And in the end, I believe they want us in their lives as much as the other way round.’

‘Right.’ Jeanie got up resolutely, anxious to avoid any further intimacy, yet she felt, ridiculously, that she had known this man for whole lifetimes. ‘Let’s go to the other play area, so Ellie has something to do.’

‘Wobby log, wobby log,’ Ellie chanted as they came up the hill.

‘I’m impressed,’ said Ray. ‘Dylan can’t manage the log.’

‘She means the squared-off one, the safe one, not the very wobbly one!’

Jeanie’s heartbeat had returned to normal as she held her granddaughter’s hand along the line of suspended wooden bricks, but she didn’t dare look at Ray.

‘Go on,’ she challenged him, ‘you do it.’ She pointed to
the smooth, round log which swung lazily on its moorings, smugly challenging all comers.

‘If you hold my hand,’ he grinned.

‘No chance . . . look, Ell.’ She pointed at Ray. ‘Ray’s going to walk across the wobbly log without falling off.’

She never thought he could, but without a word Ray hopped gracefully on to the supporting block, stretched his arms out like a tightrope walker and stepped coolly on to the log. It hardly moved as he crossed, just shook slightly with his weight. As he reached the other end, Jeanie heard clapping, and turned to see a group of adults and children who had gathered to watch his performance.

A little boy was jumping up and down in excitement. ‘Do it again, do it again.’

Ray hesitated. ‘OK, once more.’

‘Show-off!’ she teased him, when the audience had gone.

‘You made me.’

‘True . . . so when did you learn to do that?’

‘I ran away and joined the circus as a boy.’

Jeanie looked hard at him.

‘OK, I’m trained in aikido – grounding and balance.’

‘Martial arts?’

‘Yup, but not very martial, aikido is as much about the spiritual . . . I’ll explain it one day. I have a school, club, down at the Archway.’

Jeanie began to understand where that impression of learned calm came from – and Ray’s obvious fitness.

Ellie had spotted a couple of older boys and was
following them cautiously around the trees on the edge of the play area.

‘Chanty and Alex are away next week . . . Brittany. So I won’t be here,’ Jeanie said, not looking at Ray. She felt jumpy, on edge with him so close.

‘Meet me anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’ She stared at him.

‘I mean . . . meet me, Jeanie.’ His voice was suddenly low and intense, his grey-green eyes – Dylan’s eyes – alight.

‘I . . . I can’t.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

Jeanie sighed in exasperation. ‘Ray, I’m married, I can’t just meet you. I hardly know you.’

‘It’s just a drink! I wasn’t suggesting anything inappropriate, although . . .’ He couldn’t help smiling as she glared at him.

‘Just a drink,’ he repeated, clearly repentant. They both attempted to laugh, but the sound was forced and tense. Jeanie glanced quickly round the playground, and wondered that the others hadn’t seen what was happening between her and this tormenting man.

‘I’m sorry.’ He saw her sudden distress. ‘It was an impulse. I . . . well, it’s a while since I’ve felt like this . . . I thought it might be fun.’

‘I said, I can’t.’ But her reply held a certain reluctance, which he couldn’t have failed to notice.

She watched as he reached into his jacket and pulled out a card. ‘If you change your mind,’ he said as he handed it to her.

The walk back passed without Jeanie noticing. Her body, with Ray’s card burning a hole in her jeans pocket, seemed to have come alive, as if every cell had suddenly been sparked out of a long torpor. The reality was that for the first time in a decade . . . no, she corrected herself, for the first time in her whole life, she was faced with a physical desire that threatened to stop her heart.

Her courtship with George had been sedate, she remembered. She’d been carried away by his quiet gallantry – every door held open for her, his refusal to allow her to pay for anything, to go home on her own – this in a time of bra-burning and rampant feminism. And he’d been a droll, amusing companion who planned every evening like a military operation, taking her to theatre in the park, foreign films, pubs by the river. Her work as a nurse was stressful and exhausting, badly paid, and it had been so restful to know that at the end of the day George would pick her up in his white convertible MG and whisk her off for yet another treat.

Then her father had died. Out of the blue, working on yet another sermon, he had simply keeled over with a massive heart attack. Her distraught mother had found him when he didn’t answer her call to supper, face down on his text, stone dead. George had taken charge, coming with her to Norfolk, finding the funeral directors, informing the relatives, organizing egg and ham bridge rolls for the wake, taking the death certificate to the town hall. He hadn’t imposed on her and her mother’s grief, just been
silently strong and supportive. And Jeanie had fallen in love with him.

But the physical attraction had been different with George, and nothing, she thought now, that compared with the fireworks one look from Ray could arouse. She pushed open the white picket gate that led to Ellie’s house, hardly able to deal with the complex emotions she was experiencing.

‘We can’t put Rita next to Danny, he’s such a bore,’ Jeanie remonstrated.

George pulled a face. ‘That’s not very nice.’ He tapped his pen on the tidily compartmentalized diagram that he had spent hours constructing and that now lay between them on the kitchen table, finally circling Rita’s name and drawing an arrow to the other side of table one. ‘It’s only dinner; they can move around after the main course. OK, let’s put her between me and Alistair.’

Jeanie scrutinized the new order. ‘No, that won’t work because it leaves Sylvie next to Alistair and we can’t have husbands and wives together.’

‘This is a mess! We’ve been doing it for hours and we haven’t even sorted one table.’ George threw his pen down.

‘Tell you what.’ Jeanie’s face brightened. ‘Why do we have to stick to this stupid man–woman–man placement? Why don’t we just put all the names in a hat and pick the first ten
for table one, second ten for table two, etc? It’ll be original and everyone’ll be amused. Let’s live dangerously, shake it up.’

George looked anxious, then she watched him control himself.

‘Hmm . . . OK. Yes, it could work. But what if I’m next to Marlene?’ They both started to laugh.

‘Tough.’

‘And you get stuck with Danny . . . or Simon D.? Is that still tough?’

Jeanie frowned, ‘Of course not. This doesn’t apply to
me
, it’s my birthday. If I get a rum pick I’ll change it, but the rest of you will have to fend for yourselves. I’m over these tired, middle-class conventions.’

George grinned. ‘OK. Could be explosive, though.’

‘I hope it is.’

He got up and fetched the salad bowl from the side and they spent the next ten minutes cutting out the names to fill the four tables.

‘Who’ve you got?’ Jeanie closed her hand over her two choices.

‘Your not-so-interesting aunt and Jola’s boyfriend. That’s not fair, he doesn’t even speak English. You?’

Jeanie smiled. ‘Bill and John Carver . . . how lucky is that?’

‘You cheated.’ George snatched the papers from his wife’s hand and searched for any identifying marks.

They began to laugh again.

‘Aunt M. is good value, she’s the generation who knows how to sing for her supper.’

‘Not necessarily conversation you’d enjoy, though.’ George shrugged, smiling. ‘Look, it’s your party, this is a good idea; let’s just finish the rest.’

‘OK, but tea first.’ Jeanie got up to fill the kettle. ‘I wish Aunt Norma could come, I’ll miss her. I can’t believe she’s doing a walking holiday at her age.’ As she spoke she heard herself utter the dreaded phrase and roundly chastised herself.

Moving about the kitchen, gathering cups from the dresser, tea bags, checking the milk’s sell-by date, she felt utterly discombobulated. She had agreed to meet Ray later. She’d told herself that this wasn’t going to happen, that she would never go behind George’s back. But the night after she’d seen Ray in the park, George had called her ‘old girl’ once too often, punctuating his relentless eulogies about the countryside with this patronizing epithet. It had been in a fit of ‘What the hell?’ that she had texted Ray.

She told herself it wasn’t written in stone. She could back out any time. But her decision to meet him shadowed even the simple task of making tea for her husband. George seemed out of reach, distanced by her betrayal, and as a result she had an instinct to treat him better, more carefully, knowing as she did so that this guilt-induced behaviour was craven and contemptible.

They met at the park at six, in the usual place on the decking by the duck pond. Jeanie realized when she saw him that although she had spent the week persuading herself that she
shouldn’t go, in fact there had never been any real doubt that she would.

What about that drink? J
she had texted him.

Hurray! When?
he had replied.

Nothing had happened yet, she told herself firmly, and nothing would. It was a harmless flirtation. So she fancied a man in the park, so what? She was old and silly and according to her family no longer knew her own mind. But nevertheless, the guilt and the lying had already begun.