Chapter Three #2
Richard sensibly had put on his reading glasses whereas I’d forgotten mine.
Jaqueline, I’m sure, does not need reading glasses, but if she did ever choose to wear them purely as a fashion accessory they’d either be delicate frames inlaid with mother of pearl or one of those ridiculously cool chunky neon sets that manage to look both retro and entirely on trend.
While Richard was scrolling through the menu as happy as a pig in muck (or an affluent person in an expensive restaurant perhaps), I was glaring daggers at him for being so insensitive as to book somewhere like this when he knows Joe and I are strapped for cash at the best of times, but particularly when we’re about to fork out thousands of pounds on university accommodation.
I wished Joe was here just to make a funny joke about the cost and suggest that we Harpers stick to the bar snacks, but he’d gone to play a round of golf with a client from work, not an ideal situation but one that he felt was necessary to securing a particular contract.
I had reacted with mild surprise when he told me.
He’s never shown more than a passing interest in golf previously and I suspected he was just trying to get out of lunch with my brother.
Which would have been entirely reasonable.
I would do the same to avoid spending time with his family, although I’d have to come up with a better excuse than playing golf.
Anyway, Layla clearly picked up on my subtle distress signals – sweaty hyperventilation, clutching of the throat, cries of ‘we’ll be destitute, we’ll end up in the workhouse’ – and murmured ‘I’m not really that hungry actually, Mum,’ across the table.
‘I’ll probably just have something small. ’
‘Nonsense!’ boomed my brother. ‘We’re here to celebrate, Layla! To send you off in style! Anyway, it’s my treat, so fill your boots.’
‘Oh, Rich, are you sure?’ I said, considerably cheered by the fact that I wouldn’t end up spending hundreds of pounds on some flavoured froth served in a watering can, just to be polite to my brother.
He nodded his head, a wry acknowledgement of his largesse.
‘Of course,’ he said, holding aloft a glass of champagne that had magically appeared from somewhere (at least the drinks were served in conventional vessels as opposed to sustainable hemp bags).
‘I am hugely proud of my niece. Congratulations, Layla!’ He tilted his glass in her direction.
‘You’re about to embark on the best years of your life. ’
This seemed to be an unduly pressurising statement, the whole idea of enforced fun and people insisting that something ‘will be amazing’ often being a guarantee that it will instead be a bit shit, and that if you don’t enjoy it, it’s your fault – but that’s probably just me being churlish and neggy.
Richard does take a genuine interest in his niece’s educational progress and bizarrely seems to feel that any level of success achieved is due to the small number of genes she shares with him.
This situation has only been reinforced by the fact that the university she is heading off to is the same one he attended as an undergraduate.
‘Have you thought about which societies you want to join yet?’ he asked her as we clinked our glasses (half for me as designated driver – bit annoying, if I’d known Richard was paying for limitless champagne I’d have booked a taxi and really got amongst it).
‘Uhm, I thought maybe hockey? But I’m not that good so…’
‘Hmm, yeah, hock-soc always did run a fantastic bar-crawl – it would be good to get in with them. Out on the lash every night.’ He gave her an expansive wink, and I suppressed a cringe.
‘Do you know when their team selection takes place? Probably you’ll find out at Freshers’ Fair. Have you got the date for that?’
‘Somewhere in the online welcome information, isn’t it?’ I said, examining the bewildering array of fruit-infused waters available on my tiny phone menu and wondering when we had just stopped calling this squash. ‘Did I see you looking at it on Instagram?’
‘Uhm, I think you were the one scouring all the university related Instagram accounts, Mum,’ said Layla, laughing. ‘I expect you know more about Freshers’ Week than I do.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said loftily, moving further down the menu to peruse the extortionate artisanal sharing platters as a new member of waiting staff placed an open-weave hessian sack of bread rolls in front of me. ‘Anyway, it’s all very exciting, isn’t it?’
This was Layla’s cue to launch into a lengthy discussion with her uncle about how much she was looking forward to university, all the different things we’d bought to make her transition to student accommodation as easy as possible, and how generally I was being the perfect student parent – involved, yet totally relaxed and chill about everything – but before she could begin Jaqueline’s voice cut across the table.
‘Hugo,’ she hissed. ‘Non!’
Hugo had spotted the bread sack and reached across his father to help himself to a warm roll. Not unreasonable given that he was six and probably quite hungry.
‘Oh, that’s fine,’ I said, pushing the sack in his and Lawrence’s general direction. ‘I think they’re to share. You boys help yourself.’
‘Non.’ Jaqueline’s tone brooked no argument. She glared at her small son and then glared at me. ‘He must wait until he is asked, Harriet.’ Jaqueline never calls me Hattie. I think she finds the name faintly ridiculous. Like a lot of things. ‘He knows this. He is just being greedy. Aren’t you Hugo?’
Hugo looked down at his empty plate with a sorrowful expression.
‘He’s probably starving,’ I said. ‘It’s fine.’ I lifted up the side of the ridiculous sack and angled it towards him as about a million crumbs fell between the gaps in the weaving and showered the rough-hewn beams of the oak tabletop. ‘You help yourself sweetheart.’
He looked longingly at the bread for a moment, glanced at his mother and thought better of it. I realised I had overstepped the mark. Fair enough. I’d probably have been furious if Jaqueline had undermined any of my parenting rules, not that I really had any.
‘Sorry,’ I mouthed at him.
About ten awkward minutes later Jaqueline asked both boys if they wanted a roll and they accepted with full solemnity, although I imagine by this time the bread was cold.
Richard had stayed well out of the exchange.
I wondered, not for the first time, how their roles are defined as parents.
Clearly Jaqueline is the disciplinarian, but does that make Richard the indulgent one?
Seems unlikely. Maybe the way that the two of them parent is normal, and it’s me and Joe who are the indulgent ones?
Who knows. And who knows whether it makes any difference in the long run.
Children seem to grow into functional adults almost irrespective of parenting trends and perhaps the only noticeable difference is for the parent themselves, how hard they make their own lives.
Layla is now a genuinely lovely, polite, considerate human being but I don’t have to cast my mind too far back to recall the sullen, prickly and frankly obnoxious individual my daughter was during those years when her hormones kicked in and her rebellious streak kicked out.
Looking at my nephews sitting bolt upright in their seats, hair swept into side-partings, chinos pressed and clean, Hugo’s charcoal quarter-zip looking suspiciously like cashmere, Lawrence (aged four) wearing a polo shirt without a single stain or thread awry – I couldn’t really imagine either of them becoming teenage delinquents. But then, you never know.
‘Actually, Jaqueline and I were wondering,’ said Richard, when our starter arrived. ‘Whether you might like to have the boys for a few days. You know. Once Layla’s gone?’
‘Uhhm…’ I began, a little surprised by the request.
‘This is not true, Richard,’ Jaqueline’s voice cut across the table.
‘We were not wondering about it – you and I. You were wondering. On your own. But, yes, in principle, I have no objections to the boys going to stay with their aunt and uncle when we go to Rome.’ She poked her fork at an elaborate construction of pesto mousse.
‘But also, I have no objection to them staying with your mother, or Magdalena, or the house-sitter, as before.’
‘Who’s the house-sitter?’ I said, momentarily distracted from my own calendar being arranged for me. I knew that Magdalena was the boys’ nanny. She’d been working for Jaqueline since Lawrence was born. But they evidently had more staff at their disposal than I’d realised.
‘From an agency.’ Jacquline shrugged Frenchly.
‘A stranger?’ I said. ‘You’ve left the boys with a complete stranger?’
‘Sometimes.’ She slid a morsel of parmesan and pesto into her mouth. ‘Maybe for a weekend if Magdalena is away. Maybe longer.’
‘We usually ask Mum,’ Richard interjected quickly, seeing my expression. ‘We have used a professional sitting service once or twice, but only for the odd night.’
Jaqueline raised an arched eyebrow very slightly but chose not to add anything.
‘Well, you absolutely should have asked me,’ I said, feeling a little distressed by the idea of my nephews languishing under the care of some zero-hours-contract worker whose only qualification was the ability to stop a house being broken into.
‘I’d have been happy to have them. We’d have enjoyed ourselves, wouldn’t we boys? ’
Hugo and Lawrence looked nervous and nodded politely.
‘Oh, that’s really kind of you, Hattie.’ Richard cut into a tiny rectangle of grey pastry, which I assumed was his woodland mushroom velouté.
‘It’s just for a few days in November. We’ve booked this gorgeous hotel, haven’t we darling.
’ He looked at Jaqueline, who nodded imperceptibly.
‘And we thought. Well – I thought – that it might be nice for you to have some kids around the place once the house is empty. Stop you feeling gloomy.’ He gave me a sympathetic smile.
‘You are worried about being lonely,’ Jaqueline said, completely matter of fact.
‘The empty nest, yes? It is an English thing.’ (I can’t convey just how dismissive the tone was on ‘English’).
‘But a mother’s sadness when a child grows and leaves the home – it is not fear for the child that makes the mother sad.
It is much more about the mother than the child.
Her own fears. Her concern for herself.’
‘Well, not entirely,’ I began.
‘This “empty nest syndrome”,’ Jaqueline did the air quotes. ‘It is – how do you say – self-absorbed, self-indulgent, yes?’
‘So anyway,’ said Richard, grimacing slightly at his wife’s efforts to sabotage his plan of buttering me up.
‘Yes, so I thought a bit of boisterous behaviour, a bit of noise – it would make the house feel homely again, in Layla’s absence.
’ He gestured to Hugo who looked as though he’d never done anything boisterous in his entire life.
‘And it would be a huge help for us. Magdalena has annual leave booked. She’s off to Spain to see family.
And obviously we can’t really ask Mum. Never know where she’s going to be nowadays. Or who she’s going to be with.’
Jaqueline smiled at this. ‘Your grandmother,’ she said, leaning over to Layla with a conspiratorial air. ‘She is living her best life. Yes?’
Layla laughed. ‘She sure is. Although it sounds as though Maurice’s chest pain has put an end to the Marrakesh trip.’
I could tell from Richard’s face that he had not heard about either Marrakesh or Maurice’s chest pain. In fact, he didn’t really look as though he’d heard of Maurice. He was clearly ten steps behind me in terms of information on Mum’s dating life. And by ten steps I meant ten men.
‘Well,’ I said, steering the conversation to the matter at hand – which appeared to be my brother strong-arming me into a week of childcare under the guise of preventing my spiral into loneliness and isolation, while his wife just insulted me in her usual fashion.
‘I’d be very happy to have them. Just let me know the dates. ’
I hunkered down against the table trying to catch the eyes of my nephews, who were concentrating on their plates of saffron-infused quail eggs. ‘We’ll think of some cool things to do, okay boys? When you come to stay.’
I received two tentative smiles for my efforts.
‘Great, that’s a plan then,’ said Richard, returning to his velouté with an air of relief.
‘I thought it would work out well. And I’m sure we can fit around your timings.
’ He polished off the last flake of ash-coloured pastry.
‘After all, it’s not like you go out to work or even do much outside the house is it, Hattie.
From what Mum says, you’re always at home.
’ He smiled magnanimously, as if he’d just paid me the most enormous compliment. ‘And with Layla gone…’
‘What? With Layla gone, my days of leaving the house, or having any sort of meaningful existence are pretty much over?’
And everyone laughed nervously.