Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-one
Carly
The house is so quiet at night now. When the kids were here there’d be constant chatter and music playing. Maybe some clattering in the kitchen as Eddie and his mates suddenly decided to fry burgers at midnight, when the house would reek of burning fat. Eddie didn’t often put things away or close a cupboard door. But if he did, it would be with a colossal BANG as if he was trying to smash up the kitchen.
My father might be trying sometimes but he doesn’t do that.
And so at night, Kilmory Cottage settles into stillness, broken only by the gentle sounds of wind and sea. And tonight, as I edge closer to Frank, who I think is asleep already, I have thoughts.
Perhaps he’s not fully asleep. Maybe, if I go very gently and don’t scare him, then he might be up for it. Because it’s been a very long time since we’ve had sex. At first, when Eddie’s news broke, it was the last thing on my mind. We were so upset and, gallingly, Frank seemed to be blaming me.
I thought you gave him the contraception talk!
Then things settled a little, but it still didn’t happen because Frank was spending an awful lot of time in the shed. Still is actually. No change there. And now Dad’s here, but unlike our kids, he heads up to bed early, always by ten p.m.
So there’s no reason why we can’t do it, I decide, edging closer to Frank. I kiss his shoulder, his neck, the particularly sensitive bit by his ear. He is naked as usual – Frank can’t stand wearing pyjamas – and instead of my usual fleecy PJs I’ve pulled on a silky slip.
Already, I’m feeling a bit stirred up. Frank is still an extremely good-looking man. I don’t quite get the vibe of, ‘Oh my God, what’s he doing with that crone? ’ when we’re out together. But it’s a fact that he’s more attractive than I am. He’s been mistaken, variously, for Dennis Quaid, Richard Gere and Al Pacino – not that these men look like each other especially. But you might expect him to be in movies rather than toiling away at Dev’s garage.
I slide an arm across his chest. Frank is lying, rigid, on his back. I don’t mean rigid in an exciting way. I mean his entire body is as rigid as a door, arms clamped at his sides.
I try kissing him ever so gently again, wondering why he’s still not responding. Is he dead? He still feels warm, and I think there’s a pulse. As I snuggle closer, resting my head against his chest, I can feel his heart beating.
Thud-thud-thud it goes. So yes, there is life. But perhaps he used up all his libido in Paris? Can it wear out like a fan belt on an ancient car?
Undeterred, I gently tease the soft hair on his broad chest and kiss him there. He smells so delicious. I’ve always loved the natural scent of him. Daringly, I start to slide a leg over his, interpreting the fact that he doesn’t flinch as encouragement. I edge the leg further. Then a bit further still, my body following the leg – as if the leg is the advance party making sure it’s okay to proceed. While he’s still not responding, I’m encouraged by the fact that he hasn’t wrestled me off him or called the police. So I lower my hand from his chest, moving gently over the fuzzy warmth of his belly. Then lower still, down between his legs and around his—
‘What’re you doing?’ he barks.
My hand and leg fly off him. ‘I was just, I thought—’
‘Pulling it, like it’s an emergency cord—’
I sit bolt upright in bed. ‘I did not pull it! I just touched you. Am I not allowed to do that anymore?’
‘Sorry,’ he mutters, exhaling forcefully. ‘Made me jump, that’s all.’
‘So I gathered,’ I snap. And actually, it was an emergency just then! I needed you to make me feel loved and wanted, and that you still fancy me. Because you might not realise it but we haven’t had sex since Paris!
‘It’s your dad,’ Frank mutters, staring up at the ceiling. ‘I can’t do it with your dad here.’
I blink at him in the darkened room. ‘He’s not right here , is he? Not watching—’
‘You know what I’m talking about—’
‘—He’s not looming over us with a clipboard, taking notes—’
‘Fucking hell, Carly. Thanks for putting that in my brain.’
Huffily, I edge away from him so no parts of our bodies are touching. ‘He wouldn’t hear anything,’ I murmur. ‘You know he refuses to wear those new hearing aids. The Bluetooth ones. Says the batteries only last a day, which I find hard to believe—’
‘Talking about hearing aids is hardly doing it for me,’ Frank announces. Then he rolls over abruptly so his broad back is facing me. And within seconds he seems to be sleeping, apparently unbothered by the fact that I might feel rejected or upset. There’s certainly been no kiss or cuddle or even a touch, just to reassure me that everything’s okay.
I lie there, watching our gauzy curtains moving slightly in the draught from our creaky old window. Somewhere in the distance, a boat sounds a horn and slowly, I start to feel my blood bubbling up to a rolling boil.
There’s no way I can sleep now as Frank snores softly – blissfully! – beside me. So I swivel out of bed, tug on my dressing gown and pad through to the bathroom. Here I inspect my face in the mirror, to check whether I’m actually hideous and that’s why Frank won’t have sex with me.
My light brown hair is fading, like the board games displayed for years, and now sun-bleached in our local newsagent’s window. My cheekbones have vanished along with my favourite pink china cup. On top of that, something I can only describe as jowliness seems to be happening around my jawline and chin. My eyes – my best feature, Frank always said – have dulled from green to a dirty puddle hue. I didn’t even know eye colour could change! How is this possible? And as I peer closely, I can see that, while my left eye is normal-sized, the right one is now smaller, like a little raisin peering back at me. Midlife Shrinking Eye Syndrome, I think you’d call it. When did that happen?
Oh, I’m not hideous, I do realise that. As one of our library regulars announced to me last week: ‘Good to see you, Carly. I love seeing your homely face.’ Not ravishing like Cate Blanchett – but homely like a slab of pie. I caught Jamie laughing hysterically in the cookbook section.
‘Well, you are nearly fifty,’ I tell myself out loud. ‘What d’you expect?’
Actually, thirty minutes ago I was expecting Frank to throw me up against the headboard but never mind! I creep quietly downstairs and put the kettle on, opening a cupboard to extract a packet of biscuits from among the selection of party goodies I’ve bought for Dad’s birthday.
He’ll be eighty-five on Saturday, and although I know he won’t want any fuss, I’m planning to force a tiny celebration on him. Ana is arriving on Friday evening and the next day we’ll have a little party. Which reminds me, Eddie never replied to my message asking him to send his Granddad a card. He’s an adult man, I remind myself, soon to be a dad. He doesn’t need you reminding him to send birthday cards!
Now my gaze is pulled by the assortment of photos pinned haphazardly to the corkboard by the cooker. There’s Eddie, aged seven, delighted with his dad’s childhood train set that we’d brought back on one of our Portuguese trips. He’d played with it obsessively until everything fell apart. There are also pictures of me and Frank, in our twenties, thirties and early forties, in my pre-jowly times. And here’s Bella about to set off Interrailing, all tousled dark hair with a huge rucksack on her back. And here’s Ana standing proudly next to a portrait she’d painted, as part of her portfolio for her art school application. Then Bella again, laughingly cutting up an L-plate with garden shears, on the day she passed her driving test. I hate to compare them but I look back at Eddie, who’s heading for nappies and night feeds and car seats – he can’t even drive! We funnelled enormous amounts of cash into lessons until his instructor, grumpy old Tony Devlin, declared that he ‘didn’t have the aptitude’. Couldn’t he have told us this before we’d paid him eight million pounds?
‘Hey,’ comes the sudden voice.
‘Frank!’ With a jolt, I swing around to face him. ‘Didn’t hear you coming down.’
He is standing in the doorway in his dressing gown, rubbing at an eye. ‘Just wondered where you were,’ he says.
‘I couldn’t sleep. Want some tea?’
‘Not for me.’ A pause hovers. ‘Carly, I don’t mind your dad being here. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I know that,’ I say, filling a mug from the kettle. I’m really not keen on discussing this now. ‘You haven’t seen my cup, have you? The china one Prish bought me? It’s been missing since Eddie moved out. He must’ve taken it—’
‘It’s just, you know ,’ Frank interrupts, with clearly more pressing matters to discuss. ‘About your dad being here. It’s just …’
‘I do know.’ I nod.
Frank exhales. ‘I mean, dinner on the dot of six, never mind that I’m barely in through the door—’
‘I know , Frank—’
‘And earlier tonight, I’d literally just gone into the bathroom and he was banging on the—’
‘He’s old!’ I exclaim. ‘If he needs to go, he needs to go, Frank. He can’t help it …’
‘Okay, but what about the way he commandeers the TV? When’s the last time we watched something we wanted?’
I’m about to protest, but of course he’s right. ‘ Cash or Crash drives me mad too, you know.’
‘But it’s not just the watching, is it?’ he goes on. ‘It’s the shouting at the telly. The ridiculing those poor people who get the questions wrong. I’d get them wrong! Did you know the name of the stately home owned by the Marquis of Bath?’
‘Um, it’s Longleat—’
‘But you know what the worst thing is?’ He raps his knuckles on the table. ‘We don’t eat here anymore, like we used to, all of us sitting around together like a proper family. Now we have to eat through there, off trays on our laps, with the TV on at full volume. We can’t even talk —’
‘—I know, Frank, I hate it too!’ I turn away from him, pull open the washing machine door and yank out a clump of damp washing that falls onto the floor. ‘D’you think I don’t mind those things?’ I straighten up and glare at him.
‘The trays, the blaring TV,’ he rants on. ‘It’s like living in an old people’s home! And it’s fine, we can deal with it, but don’t be all huffy and storm out of bed because I didn’t feel like—’
‘Frank, I didn’t storm!’ I cry out. ‘And it won’t be for much longer—’
‘I’m sorry but he’s being unreasonable,’ he announces.
‘I know he is, Frank. I know. He always has been.’
‘But he hasn’t always been here .’
‘No, but I’ve always had to deal with him, don’t you see? Can’t you imagine what it’s been like all my life? I feel sorry for him now and I want to help him. But just because he’s had botulism doesn’t change who he is as a man, how unreasonable he is—’
I stop dead. Dad has appeared, with silvery hair askew, in the kitchen doorway.
‘Oh, Dad.’ My heart is banging hard.
He purses his lips and blinks slowly. ‘Unreasonable, am I?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘Unreasonable by not dying ?’
‘Dad! I didn’t mean that ,’ I start. ‘Please. We were only talking. Things just get a bit much sometimes. And why are you up? Are you feeling okay?’
‘Just came down for a drink,’ he growls, stomping to the cupboard and snatching a glass and filling it to the brim from the tap. ‘Aren’t you always saying I should drink more water?’ He takes a noisy slurp then bangs it onto the worktop and leaves the room.
‘Dad, please come back! I’ll make you some tea …’ I scuttle after him, but he is already heading upstairs.
I follow him and we stop, facing each other on the landing. ‘Please, Dad.’ I touch his arm. The sight of him standing there, a little stooped in his faded old tartan pyjamas, crushes my heart.
‘It’s all right,’ he snaps, looking away.
‘It’s not all right. I don’t want to see you upset. Look, Ana’s coming over at the weekend especially for your birthday—’
‘You know I don’t bother with birthdays. And I don’t want any fuss.’
‘Well, this year you are,’ I say firmly. ‘We’re having a party on Saturday for you—’
‘A party?’ He looks aghast. ‘No way!’
‘Please, Dad. It’s not a party -party, it’s just a little—’
‘I think I should move back to my own place,’ he retorts.
‘Oh, no. Don’t react like this,’ I start, welling up now. ‘You’re welcome to stay with us, you know that. And Ana will be upset if you’re not here.’
‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ he says tersely, shaking my hand from his arm and storming off into his room. ‘I’m going to pack up my things. I’ve been under your feet for quite long enough.’