27. Magnus
MAGNUS
The photograph from the presentation arrives while Kit is trying to push his fist into his mouth.
My executive stands at the front of a room I had expected to address. Behind him is the first slide from the presentation we prepared together. He looks entirely at ease.
The message beneath it is brief.
Went well. They’ve asked me to lead the follow-up discussion next month. I’ll send the notes this afternoon.
I type congratulations. I mean it. I also look at the photograph longer than necessary.
That introduction would have been useful. The room contains people I have spent months arranging to meet in that particular setting. They have met a capable representative of my company. They have not spent the morning listening to me.
There is no sensible reason to resent him for doing precisely what I asked.
I send the reply and set the phone out of reach.
Kit starts to fuss. I check the fist, then the other end of him. It’s the other end.
On the changing mat, he kicks one foot free before I have finished fastening his clothes. I have learned to lay everything beside me first. I have not learned how to convince him that this would be quicker if he stopped helping.
“You’ll be cold,” I tell him.
He stares at the window.
The clean clothes go on. The old ones go in the bag Dulcie keeps beside the table. I wash my hands, pick him up again, and sit in the chair with him against my shoulder.
The house is quiet. There is no audience for the fact that I have managed it. Kit wants to be comfortable, not impressed.
I can provide that for a while.
When the blue door opens, I look up before Dulcie calls hello.
She comes in carrying her school bag and a large paper envelope. There is a sticker on the bag which appears to be a piece of fruit with an occupation.
“How did it go?”
“We finished.”
The pleasure in her voice changes her whole face. She sets the bag down, comes to the chair, and kisses Kit before reaching for him.
I pass him over. She settles him against her and sits on the sofa.
“Did the big doorway get its people?”
“The names first. Apparently some people are long.”
“The names.”
“Yes. I needed a moment too.”
She tells me about the staircase, then a page which opens into two houses with a road between. She uses her free hand to show me the fold. I turn a clean envelope sideways, trying to understand where the hinge goes.
“Like this?”
“Almost. That would cover her dad’s house when you closed it.”
She takes the envelope, changes the fold, and holds it up.
“There.”
I look at it. “That works.”
“It did.”
She is smiling down at her own clumsy paper demonstration. I remember deciding that her work could disappear because I had enough money to make its wages unnecessary. There was never a calculation for this expression in my plans.
“What made you laugh?” I ask when she laughs at a memory she hasn’t told me yet.
She tells me. I look toward her kitchen.
“Don’t,” she says. “I am not losing two more spoons.”
“I was considering a better retrieval method.”
“That’s how it begins.”
Kit interrupts us. Dulcie looks down and loosens the blanket around him.
“Did the presentation happen?”
“Yes. It went well. He’ll handle the follow-up too.”
“You wanted that meeting.”
“I did.”
She looks at me. I leave the answer there. She has not deprived me of an opportunity by going to work. Two things required my time, and I honored the one I had already promised.
After a moment she tells me where the finished book is standing. On the low shelf, with room around it for the pages to open.
I can picture her putting it there.
Two days later, my mother hands me a guest list with Cressida’s name halfway down the second page.
“She’s invited?”
“Of course.”
“Remove her.”
Dorothea looks across her desk at me. “It is Arthur’s birthday. She has known him most of her life.”
“You know what you’re doing.”
“I am inviting people to my house.”
For a moment I want to give an instruction and have it obeyed. There are places where that still works. This room has become one where I have to decide what I will do when it doesn’t.
“Does Arthur know she’s coming?”
“He has the list.”
I turn the page. I check the rest, including the relatives who were at the lunch and the few friends who weren’t. No hidden names tucked beneath a general assurance about family.
“You won’t arrange photographs involving Dulcie or Kit without her agreement,” I say. “No announcement. No toast about their future.”
My mother folds her hands.
“Is she planning to make an occasion of refusing everything?”
“I am telling you before she decides whether to attend.”
“How considerate.”
“If you want them here, behave as though their presence is a choice.”
She looks at the list rather than answering.
I take a photograph of both pages. She doesn’t stop me.
Outside, I call Arthur from the car before starting the engine. I ask whether he would like Dulcie and Kit to visit separately if she chooses not to come to the gathering.
“I’d like to see them,” he says. “Any way she cares to arrange it.”
“And Giles?”
“Of course Giles.”
I tell him I will pass that on. He asks whether this is about Cressida. I say yes, in part.
“Don’t tell Dulcie what I want instead of asking her,” he says.
“I won’t.”
At the next agreed visit, I give her the whole list. Kit sleeps in his crib upstairs. I tell her the conditions I set before she reads it. Then she reads both pages while I sit opposite her.
“Your mother invited Cressida.”
“Yes. I asked her to remove her. She refused.”
“What did she say about the photographs?”
I tell her exactly. Not that Mother understands. Not that everything will be fine. The actual answer about making an occasion of refusing.
Dulcie lays the list on the table.
“Arthur would be happy to see you at his own house,” I say. “With Giles. I asked him. You don’t have to manage my mother to see my grandfather.”
“I know.”
She studies the list again. I let the silence continue, although every part of me wants to offer an arrangement which will make the decision easier to direct.
“I want to celebrate him,” she says at last. “There are people there who are kind to me. I don’t want your mother deciding which family occasions I’m allowed to have.”
I nod.
“Dad will come. We’ll go in his car. If I say we’re leaving, we leave.”
“I understand.”
“You can tell her he’s coming.”
“I will.”
She picks up her phone and calls Giles. I hear her ask whether he is free, then explain what she wants without lowering her voice for my benefit.
I sit beside the list I gave her and listen to her make a plan that contains a way out.