Chapter 31
31
H er father, it seemed, still needed her. The phone call a couple of days ago, had been him wanting to arrange lunch; the call and the venue, coming as a surprise to Kay. They barely lived a hundred yards from each other. She could have popped in for lunch that day, or the next. But he had insisted. He wanted to take her somewhere special, he’d said. Besides he was busy, and today, Tuesday, was the only day he could do.
Busy? Kay hadn’t asked. If that was the case, she was only glad. In the months following her mother’s death, dropping in to see him had begun to be something she could not bring herself to look forward to. A fact that she was ashamed of. But conversation had become stilted and slow, and more and more it had begun to feel to Kay as if her father preferred the company of the TV to her. So, if the tide had turned and he was busy, it was good. A little strange, and obviously something to do with those phone calls, but good. And lunch out like this, was very good. Especially somewhere this special.
Finishing what had been a delicious ploughman’s lunch, she put her knife and fork down, wiped her mouth with a napkin and turned to look at the river, the floating tendrils of weeping willow, a pair of swans gliding across the dark surface. This had been her mother’s favourite lunch spot. They hadn’t been in years and as soon as Kay had walked out to the garden, she’d remembered why. The slope had become too steep for her mother to navigate with the walker. And the doorway had been too narrow for the wheelchair. ‘Mum loved it here,’ she said, and made a mental note. She must do the ringing next time. If her father was ready to face the world again, and it looked like he was, she could start by inviting him to places just like this. Scenes where they could both hear the whisper of memory. It would be a way to keep her mother close.
‘That’s why I chose it,’ her father said, and he too put his knife and fork down, although Kay noticed, he hadn’t eaten much. ‘Have you booked Cyprus yet?’
‘Not yet.’ Always the same question. She smiled. ‘I told you Dad, I’m waiting until after Caro’s wedding.’
‘I see.’ He nodded. ‘And that’s all you’re waiting for?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alex will be OK.’
She went to speak, but he got there first.
‘And I will too, Kay.’
‘OK.’ As she picked up her glass, she turned away. The question, the directness of it, had thrown her. Marianne had stopped asking, Alex, she never saw. Caro was pre-occupied and, if she were to be honest, since school had finished, she had been floating along in a be-numbed stream of non-commitment. ‘Dad,’ she started. ‘I ––’
But he raised his hand, and, when he was sure she wasn’t going to continue, lowered it again. ‘I brought you here to today to tell you something.’
She nodded, watching as he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He was going to tell her about those phone calls, she was sure, which would of course be difficult for him. ‘If,’ she said, and smiled. ‘If it’s about the history course you’ve started, I already know.’ The least she could do, was make it easy. Keep it light. Act like she had no idea.
But her father wasn’t smiling. In fact, as he returned his handkerchief to his pocket, his face was as serious as she thought she had ever seen it. ‘This feels like the right place,’ he said, ‘to tell you that I’m courting.’
At the sound of the word, so old-fashioned, so potent, all the clocks moving all the parts, stopped moving. Her head, her heart, her fingers, resting on her glass. Only now it had been said, did she realise how afraid she had been of hearing it. ‘Courting?’
He nodded. ‘Actually, Kay, it’s a little more than courting. I’ve asked the lady in question to marry me.’
Marry? No sound came out, her lips shaping a word that made no sense.
‘I expect you’ll think it’s too soon.’
She didn’t speak. Like a cyclist pedalling in reverse, she was trying to loop it back, pin down the conversation to the point where it had spun out of control. Telephones calls were OK. Courting was hard, but manageable. Marry. That was the place . I’ve asked the lady in question to marry me.
‘I don’t want to see you upset, love.’
‘I’m not upset,’ she said, the shifting weather on her face making a mockery of her words. Her mother had only been gone twelve months.
Her father nodded. ‘I understand it will come as a surprise.’
The quiet way in which he spoke, the gentle courtesy, masked a lethal blow. Like a bomb arriving in a silk case. Slip it off, peek closer - which she had no intention of doing - and BANG! ‘It’s only a year,’ she whispered.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You know yourself, Kay. Your mother was gone long before then. Long before.’
And how could she argue with that? Swallowing back a cruelly sudden grief, she pulled her sunglasses down and made a fist of her hand, balling it at her mouth as she leaned on her elbow. It was true that her mother had been gone longer than a year. So much longer, she couldn’t place the last time she had been present: wholly present. Pieces had fallen away so quietly, no-one had noticed. If her mother had forgotten an appointment one week, she’d remembered the next. If she couldn’t remember where she had met Kay for coffee one day, she would have no problem recalling both the place and even the table they had sat at, the next. It wasn’t until the gaps started to overtake the whole that they knew. Her father was right; of course he was. Coming out to lunch like this, where her mother would spend half the time asking where she was, and the other half staring into space, no-one could say she had been present. Composing herself, she pushed her sunglasses back on her head. ‘Can I ask who?’ she said. It was still wrong. Who on earth would her father know well enough to ask them to marry him?
‘Of course you can.’ He didn’t hesitate. ‘Elizabeth Parsons.’
‘Lizzie!’ Kay’s jaw dropped. ‘Lizzie, dad? You hardly know each other.’
‘Actually,’ he said. ‘I remember Elizabeth very well from when you first started at the school. I’ve always held her in the highest regard. And your mother and I always exchanged Christmas cards with her.’
Kay stared. She was remembering the way Lizzie and her father had chatted for so long at her retirement party. The way Lizzie had handed her cup over, the way her father had taken it, the fluid synchronisation of the movement. ‘This is ridiculous!’ she said tightly. ‘You’ve known her for a couple of weeks!’
‘In which we have met frequently and spoken every day.’
‘Met frequently? Where?’ Slapping a hand on her chest, she stopped talking and took a deep breath.
‘Elizabeth,’ her father said simply, ‘has made me smile again.’
There was nothing she could think of to say. Words that would be easy for him to hear … words like, I’m happy for you, dad … or, If you’re happy, dad … were simply too hard for her to form.
‘I don’t want to keep looking back, Kay.’ His handkerchief was out again, a shaky hand dabbing a watery eye, and Kay could not look at him. ‘I wouldn’t change a single thing,’ he said, ‘but with what is left, I want to be able to look forward.’
‘But why the rush?’ she rasped, and when she swallowed it was like swallowing nails.
‘Well.’ He paused. ‘Lizzie is ninety. And I am eighty-six. It’s probably best we count in weeks, rather than years.’
‘But you don’t have to get married!’ Her fist was at her mouth again. She could barely contain her anger. ‘What about Mum? What would she think?’
And for the longest time her father didn’t answer. He folded his hands together and dipped his head. ‘Your mother and I,’ he said, as he looked up, ‘had a long and happy marriage, Kay.’
‘Sixty years.’
’Sixty years,’ he echoed. ‘Where Elizabeth didn’t even manage one day.’
Kay clamped her mouth shut. That’s not a reason, she’d been going to say. That’s not a reason to marry someone! It was only the stamp of family that stopped her. It didn’t matter that he was eighty-six and she was fifty-two: the roles remained. She could no sooner tell him what he could and could not do, than Alex could tell her.
‘I would like to be able to give Elizabeth that,’ he said. ‘So, I have asked her, and she has accepted. On the condition,’ he added, ‘that you have no objections. That was her only request.’
Her jaw was tight, her lips thin as wire as she picked up her glass and said, ‘So that’s what this is all about? To see if I have any objections?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ He nodded. ‘And of course, if you’re not comfortable, we wouldn’t expect you to attend the ceremony.’
She turned. ‘Attend?’
‘It would be very simple, Kay. Elizabeth has no relations, and we’re not going to any expense. A registrar can perform the ceremony at the retirement home, and after that, I have decided to move there myself. I think it’s time.’
Hand shaking, she lowered her glass. ‘You’re going to move, Dad?’
‘It’s what I want, Kay. We enjoy each other’s company very much, and at my age that’s all I can ask for.’ He blinked. ‘Actually, it’s more than I can ask for.’
Kay didn’t speak. She looked across to the swans, their tapered bodies, perfectly aligned as they glided across the water. The movement was so smooth, so coordinated, the river remained a mirror, not a ripple rising up to spoil the glassy surface.
‘You asked me what your mother would think?’
Slowly, she turned.
‘I can’t answer that,’ her father said. ‘But I know that if it were the other way round, I would want to see your mother happy.’
It didn’t matter that she was angry. It didn’t matter that as she looked at her father now, she felt bewildered by the speed at which he was making decisions. It was of no consequence that she felt betrayed for herself, and her mother. It didn’t even matter that it was Lizzie, a woman she had always admired. She had no choice. If she left her father today, withholding her approval, he would phone Lizzie and tell her and all that would have been achieved was a raising of the level of unhappiness in the world. Turning back to the river, she picked up her glass. ‘If it’s what you want,’ she said. ‘I have no objections.’
It was hours later, cocooned within the floral sanctuary of her bedroom, lit by a mauve moonlight, that Kay opened her phone and began typing.
If you’re ready to meet. I am too.
Goose’s response came through five minutes later.
I would like that. Can you make tomorrow? Do you have anywhere in mind?
Tomorrow is fine. You choose.
She let her phone drop and lay back on her pillow. Everyone was moving on, her son, her father, Caro, Helen, Marianne. If she didn’t get started, if she didn’t take a first step, she really would be left alone, stranded on a lonely hill, scanning the horizon for any sign of life.