Miss You

TWENTY-ONE Gus

They were forecasting snow on the radio.

From the moment I woke up, a sense of foreboding hung around me. I’d been up several times in the night because Bella was developing a cold—not a sniffle, but a chesty infection that sent anguish through my body every time she coughed.

I dithered over my cereal. Charlotte had already gone to work, a piece of toast clamped between her teeth as she closed the front door. My mother was chatting to Flora at the kitchen table. I went upstairs and took Bella’s temperature again, almost hoping it would be high enough to give me the excuse to stay home from work, but it was only just above normal.

“Make sure she gets lots of fluids,” I told my mother, as I slid my thick winter coat on over my suit.

“I have had two children of my own, you know.” Her eyes stared blankly for just a moment, before she pulled herself back to the present.

“Call me if she gets any worse, won’t you?” I said, as I stepped out onto the gloomy Wandsworth street. The sky was ominously grey and overcast. “Perhaps Floss should skip nursery today, so you don’t have to take Bella out in this?”

“She’ll be perfectly all right,” said my mother. “We don’t want to miss nursery school, do we, Flora?”

The traffic was lighter than usual, probably because of the weather warnings, so I arrived at work early, which made the morning drag with a seemingly endless procession of young children with nasty coughs similar to my daughter’s. I gave the same advice about fluids and Calpol for a raised temperature, soothing words about viruses not responding to antibiotics reiterated as reassurance to myself as much as to the mothers.

At lunchtime, the snow finally arrived, soft, thickly falling flakes bringing their own white light to the small square of garden outside my office window. I gazed out, in a trance-like memory of the wonder I’d felt as a child, when the arrival of snow had presaged only fun. I imagined Flora’s delight at seeing it for the first time. At the weekend, we would build a snowman together. Perhaps I should call in at Toys R Us on the way home and buy her a sled? I pictured Flora and her little friends’ excited faces pressed against the window of the nursery school, waiting to be let out onto a soft white carpet that crunched under the soles of their wellies. When my phone rang and it was the nursery school, it felt almost as if I’d willed the call.

“We were wondering if someone is coming to pick Flora up...” the teacher said.

“I’m sorry?”

“She’s been waiting twenty minutes.”

“My mother’s probably stuck in the snow.”

My brain went straight into overdrive, picturing my mother slipping on an icy pavement and smashing her head. In the flurries outside my window, Ross’s face loomed, his teeth white, his eyes hidden behind mirror ski goggles.

“It’s not snowing here,” said the teacher.

“Have you called her?”

“On the mobile and the landline, twice,” she said.

I imagined my mother slumped on the kitchen floor in cardiac arrest.

Or perhaps Bella had taken a turn for the worse? Now I saw them sitting anxiously in the GP’s waiting room.

I knew I shouldn’t have come to work.

“Could you possibly keep Flora there?” I said, trying to control the whirr of hypotheses and think of a practical plan of action. “I’ll come as soon as I can.”

“Flora can stay for the afternoon session if you like? We can give her lunch?”

I’d forgotten there was an afternoon session.

“Yes! Good idea. Thank you. I’ll pick her up from that.”

I hung up and pressed the speed dial for home, my hand shaking. There was no reply.

The senior partner was eating a sandwich at her desk when I explained the situation to her, feeling like a truanting child in front of the headmistress.

“Of course you can go, Angus,” she said in a bored voice. “But it’ll probably be nothing. It usually is.”

My colleagues’ professional duty to assess what was in front of them coolly and without emotion seemed to permeate their personalities. Or maybe people who wanted to be GPs were just like that naturally, and I wasn’t made of the right stuff.

My mother’s car was still parked outside the house when I got back. The weather couldn’t seem to decide whether it was snowing or raining. When I opened the door, the television was blaring so loudly, I wondered if the problem was simply that she hadn’t heard the telephone. Was she becoming deaf? Perhaps I should suggest a hearing test?

I found her in the front room, fast asleep, a glass of water balanced precariously on the arm of the chair. I switched off the television. Upstairs I found Bella in her cot, also sleeping. Her forehead felt hot, but although I could still hear a slight rattle in her chest, her breathing was less shallow than it had been that morning. No one had died. My heartbeat leveled as I walked back downstairs to the kitchen.

I filled the kettle, alarmed to notice on the draining board an almost empty bottle of Tesco’s own-brand vodka.

Charlotte always bought Grey Goose.

An image of Charlotte pouring herself a vodka tonic, just a few days before, flitted across my mind.

“Are you trying to tell me I’ve got a drinking problem or something?” she’d asked me.

“What?”

“Have you watered my vodka?”

“Of course not!”

She’d sniffed the glass.

“I’m sure it’s not as strong as it used to be!”

“Perhaps you have got a problem, then!” I said.

We’d laughed about it.

I stared at the vodka bottle, then remembered the glass on my mother’s chair. There had been occasions recently where her alcohol consumption had slightly concerned me. Three glasses of champagne before Christmas lunch followed by wine during the meal and several refills of her brandy “nightcap.” I hadn’t said anything. It was Christmas, after all.

Surely she wasn’t drinking every day? Not during the day? Not while she was in charge of our children? Surely not when she was going to drive?

I picked up the bottle and walked back down the corridor to the front room.

My mother’s eyes opened slowly and locked on to the bottle in my hand.

“Only the tiniest drop,” she stammered, sitting up quickly, knocking the glass onto the floor. I picked it up and sniffed it.

“I think it’s probably more than that,” I said.

“Helpss her ssleep,” she said, slurring a little.

A beat. I realized she was talking about Bella.

Running back into the kitchen, I sniffed the half-empty baby’s bottle on the table and, unscrewing the top, sipped a little of the fluid. Formula laced with alcohol. A baby white Russian. No wonder she was sleeping so well!

My mother was behind me now, summoning excuses. “She gets herself so hot and bothered with all this crying!”

“She’s a baby!”

“You were the same, of course. Very colicky.”

“Did you drug me, then?” I asked, expecting her to scoff at the suggestion.

“A little bit of gas on occasion, when we lived above the practice.”

“Bloody hell! No wonder my head was in the clouds!”

My mother looked confused, as if she suddenly couldn’t compute why I was at home.

“Can you tell me how much you’ve had today?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level and doctorly.

“Just a glass. No more than a unit or two.”

When you ask patients how much alcohol they drink, the ones with a problem always know the recommended quantities, and admit to just below that figure, casually, as if they’ve never really given it a thought.

“I don’t usually,” my mother was saying. “Jussh today...”

She stared out of the window where snowflakes were now falling past the orange street lights.

“Because of the snow?” I asked.

She beamed an insanely gratified smile at me, as if I’d finally understood her.

“So, how many of these do you get through a week?” I picked up the bottle, trying to keep my tone matter-of-fact.

“One at the most,” she said.

A glance at the ceiling.

“I’ll just go and check on Bella, shall I?” she said, but I was up the stairs before she’d got to the first step.

She had forgotten to lock the door to her bedroom. There were two empty vodka bottles in her suitcase. She’d arrived on Sunday evening. She was drinking half a bottle of vodka a day on top of the wine she always had at dinner, and we hadn’t noticed.

Bella started coughing. I picked her up. Her nose was blocked with yellow gunk, and her diaper was full, but she didn’t seem any worse than she had that morning.

“There she is, the little darling!” said my mother as I brought her down, as if she’d already forgotten our race for the stairs. “I’ll just go and get Flora, shall I?”

“No!”

“I’m fine to drive.”

“Of course you’re not!”

I put Bella in a snowsuit and took her in the car with me.

Flora was thrilled to have done a whole day like the older children and was full of chatter about the snowman they’d built in the playground. I bought her a Happy Meal in the drive-thru for being such a good girl, and sat in the stationary car, with the snow now falling thickly around us, wondering what on earth we were going to do.

Charlotte was already in a bad mood when she called because I hadn’t answered her texts about where we should meet before the show. We’d been invited to the National Theatre by her head of department.

“Something’s happened and I can’t come,” I said.

“But you know how important this is to me! Are the girls OK?”

“They’re fine.”

“So?”

“I really can’t explain now. We’re all fine.”

“Is Caroline there? Well, why on earth...?”

“Apologize on my behalf. Say I’ve got a cold, or something nastily contagious, if it makes it better. Do you think you’ll be able to get home?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Charlotte.

She arrived back, after midnight, slightly flushed and goading me about how marvelous the play was. She’d got a taxi on Waterloo Bridge with no trouble at all.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with this bloody country,” she said, slipping into bed beside me. “An inch of snow and everything stops. I mean, it’s not as if we don’t get snow. London’s at the same latitude as Moscow, for God’s sake. In Switzerland, the snowplows come out and everything goes on as usual. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“No, I was awake. I wanted to explain.”

“Explain” was probably the wrong word to choose because it made me sound apologetic.

“Yes, what is the great mystery?”

“You know Bella has been sleeping so well since my mother arrived? Well, today I discovered the reason. She’s been dosing her bottle with vodka.”

I was expecting at least “Oh my God!”

“I remember my grandmother saying they sometimes used to do that,” Charlotte mused. “It obviously works!”

“You’re not suggesting it’s OK?”

“Oh, relax, Angus, for God’s sake! She’s perfectly fine, isn’t she? I don’t expect it’s done much harm.”

“I really can’t see any way a doctor can approve, even tacitly approve, of giving alcohol to a baby.”

“All right, all right. I do agree, if that makes you any happier.” Charlotte yawned and turned over, as if the subject was closed.

“My mother’s an alcoholic.”

The word was difficult to say. I wondered if I was experiencing something of what people felt going to AA for the first time.

“Don’t be absurd!” Charlotte murmured.

“Remember you were worried how much you were drinking? Well, it turns out you weren’t, but she was. That’s where the vodka was going and she’s been bringing her own secretly. I found two empty bottles in her suitcase, Charlotte! The school called me because she hadn’t picked up Flora, and when I got here, she was passed out, completely pissed, but still thought she could drive when I woke her up.”

Charlotte suddenly sat up and turned on the bedside light.

“Are you sure?”

“She’s a danger to the children and to herself.”

“Well, we’ll have to get her some help.”

“Yes, but in the meantime...”

“What?” Charlotte asked.

“We’ll have to find someone else. Or I’ll have to look after them...”

“You can’t be serious!” Charlotte shrieked. “We’re exchanging contracts on the house next week.”

“We won’t be able to.”

“Think about it, Angus. Our sale will fall through, Caroline’s sale will fall through. If we lose that house, we’ll never move. Prices are literally going up every day!”

“We’ll just have to stay put then,” I said.

Charlotte stared at me.

“What is more important?” I persisted. “The girls’ safety, or moving upmarket?”

“God, you’re so fucking pious!” Charlotte screamed, then got out of bed, taking the duvet with her, went downstairs and slammed the living-room door.

In the morning, I woke up to find her sitting at her dressing table applying make-up.

“Are you in work today?” I asked, surprised.

She didn’t reply to my question, but, staring at my reflection in the mirror, simply stated, “I’m not sleeping on the sofa again.”

“Good,” I said, blearily.

“You’re the one who can do that from now on. Or perhaps you could have the nanny’s room, since your mother’s gone.”

“Gone?” I sat up.

“She says she knows she’s never been welcome here and she’s driven off on an icy road, so I hope you’re satisfied!”

“But that’s crazy. It’s not my fault. I want to help her...”

“She says you’ve blown everything completely out of proportion, as usual.”

“And is that what you think?”

“I’m not prepared to live in Wandsworth all my life!” Charlotte yelled, then, as if surprised by the noise she’d made, picked up her handbag and went out for the day.

It wasn’t so much the sex, because it hadn’t been frequent since Bella’s birth. Initially I’d been afraid of hurting Charlotte after the stitches, and then we always seemed to be so tired. But I missed the companionship of sharing a bed, the familiar rhythm of my wife’s breathing, even her huffing and pulling the duvet over her head when I got out of bed to tend to our daughter.

Curiously, the financial meltdown provided a ray of hope for us. For a couple of months, London house prices plummeted. Suddenly it was a buyer’s market and when we made a low offer for a little house at the top of Portobello Road, it was accepted. Even Charlotte had to admit that it was a much more suitably sized property for us. Paradoxically, it was my mother’s absence that made it possible. I’d taken a few weeks of unpaid leave which stretched on to what my boss called “a mutual parting of the ways.” With no childcare or redecoration costs, and interest rates going down, we had just about enough money and I had the time to search out the best mortgage deal and organize the packing. The girls thrived and Charlotte was freed to do the things she needed to promote her brilliant career, like working late and flying to conferences in glamorous destinations like Monte Carlo and Doha.

When we’d settled in, we invited my mother to visit, but she claimed she was too upset by my accusation. I thought the problem was more that she didn’t think she’d get through the weekend without alcohol, and eventually Charlotte, who took the girls to see her every couple of months, conceded that was probably the case. There’s not much you can do to help someone who won’t admit they have a problem.

At weekends, Portobello Road is an impassable throng of tourists, but during the week, especially early in the morning, it’s virtually empty. On fine days, after dropping Flora off at school, Bella and I usually walked all the way down the street looking for Paddington Bear in the windows of antique shops, trying to guess which one was Mr.Gruber’s. We’d read the Paddington books so many times that the pages were falling out of our copies. I was almost disappointed when one day, Bella pointed excitedly at a life-size toy bear, complete with duffle coat and wellington boots, standing on a chaise longue deep inside one of the shops. But the following day he had gone, perhaps proving more attractive to customers than the secondhand furniture. So our quest continued.

By the time the antique shops petered out, and the street became a food and clothes market, Bella had usually fallen asleep, and I often whiled away the morning reading the newspaper with a coffee and one of the delicious little custard tarts with a glaze of burnt sugar that they served in our favorite cafe. One spring day, as I was maneuvering the buggy through the door, I heard someone shouting, “Gus! Gus!”

Nobody had called me Gus for years, so it took a moment to register Nash waving across the road at me. I hadn’t seen her in person since Flora was a baby, but I had occasionally watched her on television because the American medical drama series she starred in had become a huge hit in the UK too. With her hair dyed a deep crimson color, she looked much sleeker and more stylish than before, and as we pushed through to the back of the cafe where there was a table with room for the buggy, I was aware that other customers were nudging each other as they recognized her face.

“How long are you back for?” I asked.

“Indefinitely, I’m afraid. I was in a motorbike accident,” she informed me.

“Are you OK?”

“No, actually I died,” said Nash. “Oh, wait a minute, you’re only on the second season over here, aren’t you? It’s what happens to ballsy female leads. We get tamed or we perish...”

“What a shame,” I said, adding quickly, “Everyone thinks you’re great.”

“Really?” said Nash.

I caught a glimpse of her old endearing neediness beneath the immaculately groomed exterior.

“Even Charlotte,” I told her. “And she’s a specialist herself now.”

“Wow!” said Nash, flicking her gleaming curtain of hair back over her shoulder. “So, what are you up to these days?”

“Still looking after the kids. It’s a long story. This is Bella, by the way.”

“Cute,” said Nash, glancing at my sleeping child, then giving me a long, appraising look. “I could never see you as a doctor...”

“How come?” Now I was the needy one.

“Too insecure. You need to have a certain confidence in your decision-making skills... I did a lot of research for the role...”

“Obviously,” I said.

“So what are you going to do, Gus?” she asked.

The perennial London question. In a thriving capital city, your job defines you.

“I haven’t thought that far,” I said, as Bella began to stir. “Look, why don’t you come back to ours for some lunch?”

Our front door opened straight into one big room which served as the living room, dining room, and kitchen. I had fastened felt boards to the walls to display the girls’ art, along with a few of my sketches of them.

Nash looked at the drawings as I prepared a simple lunch of pasta with cherry tomatoes and basil. “Who did these?”

“I did.”

“They’re good, Gus. I always knew you must have a hidden talent!”

“Perhaps that’s something I could do... you know, in Covent Garden, those people who draw the tourists?”

Nash stared at me. “Jesus, Gus, only you could be thirty years old and thinking of a career as a street artist!”

I put a steaming bowl of pasta down in front of her.

“How about becoming a children’s portrait artist?” She blew on a hot forkful. “There must be some loaded parents around here?”

“A couple of people have asked me, you know, when they’ve picked their kids up from play dates, but I’ve never thought of charging...”

“God, Gus, you haven’t changed!” Nash laughed.

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re so—I don’t know what the right word is—fey, maybe? Unworldly. Dreamy.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. The quality I’m talking about—it’s not unattractive.”

“Charlotte thinks it is.”

I said it without thinking.

“Does she?” said Nash, intrigued.

I always believed that things would improve between Charlotte and me. In the new house, we usually slept in separate bedrooms, but there were still occasions, like after the children’s birthdays, when all our tiny guests had departed, goody bags in hand, and our daughters had gone to bed hugging their new toys, that we would open a bottle of champagne to toast another milestone on the journey we were on together. A goodnight kiss would turn into something more intimate, and our bodies knew each other so well, the physical imperative would take over.

I was sure that there would come a time, perhaps when we were on holiday, when everything would magically revert to how it used to be. We did rent a cottage for a week on the north coast of Cornwall. On the beach, we looked like the sort of family you’d see in a Boden catalogue, casually well dressed, smiling in the sunshine, and oh-so middle class. For the children, Charlotte and I always put on a united front, agreeing on table manners, limiting high-sugar snacks, listening to what they told us, encouraging them to explore rock pools and create pictures with seaweed. Charlotte wasn’t as down and dirty with the digging as I was, but she was competitive; so suggest a game of softball, or a race to build the best sandcastle, and she’d throw herself into the challenge. We even enjoyed ourselves on the rainy days, visiting the local museums, buying big net bags of imported shells to make our own art on paper spread out over the kitchen table.

It was only after we’d kissed the girls goodnight and switched off the light in their room that our relationship also shut down. Charlotte had a book; I did the washing-up. We might mention something the kids had said that had amused us, but otherwise an unnavigable gulf of silence stretched between us. I went to bed first and pretended to be asleep when Charlotte got in beside me. And then I’d lie still and anxious until sleep blotted out the sadness and a new morning brought the glorious chaos of small children clambering into the bed and creating the energy for another day.

“Why don’t you and Mummy have one big bed at home?” Flora once asked.

I looked at Charlotte for an answer. She was always better at finding the words to say nothing than I was.

“Daddy snores so loudly, Mummy can’t sleep, and Mummy has to go to work,” she said.

And so I obliged by closing my eyes and snoring as loud as I possibly could, with my girls’ laughter pealing around us.