Fraser's Line (11 page)

‘I will think about what you’ve said. I promise.’

‘There’s one thing I want to ask you. Have you wrapped up your wife’s affairs?’
‘It’s funny you should say that. Joanna asked me if Edie had left a will, and although I’m pretty sure she didn’t, I haven’t looked through anything. I did get rid of all her clothes, but she kept her paperwork in a locked bureau, and I haven’t had the heart, up to now, to go through it.’

‘That’s something you will have to do, one of these days, and if you don’t mind me being there, I could come, when you feel you can do it. I needn’t look at anything, but if it would give you a little more strength, I would be happy to do that.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You really are very kind. I rather think that might help a lot.’

By now they were almost back to where they had left the cars.

‘You have made me feel much better,’ he said. ‘I’ll think about what you’ve said, and let you know. I realise what I should do, and what I must do where all the personal papers and so on are concerned. I’m going to see Mother on Saturday. After that I will be in touch.’
‘Promise?’ she asked, as he held the car door open for her to get in.

‘Scout’s Honour. ‘Oh, there was something else Joanna said.’

She rolled her car window down and waited.

He leaned down to speak to her. ‘Do you know, her latest boyfriend is a Pakistani!’

‘And that’s bad?’ asked Angela.

‘Well, it’s obviously most unsuitable. She said I’d disapprove, and then she told me that.’

‘And do you disapprove?’

‘Well,’ said Fraser, ‘the thing is …’

‘Yes?’ prompted Angela.

‘The thing is…’ Fraser, was searching for words.

Angela waited.

‘The thing is, I hate Indian food!’ he exclaimed vehemently.

She must try and be more organised this time. What a pity that when Fraser had come last week she had run out of energy. Marjorie regretted that growing old meant everything became a great effort. She had planned to tell him all sorts of things – things she should have dealt with a long time ago – but when it came to it she had simply not been able to do it.

Dear Fraser still seemed vulnerable. Here he was, a grown man and a grandfather, but she often saw the small boy who had come face to face with tragedy when he was very young, and who had had his world shattered. How could she have put all the facts before him then? He had already learned one of life’s hardest truths – that it is the people we love the most who have the power to inflict the deepest pain. He had dealt with it by closing down the part of his mind that held the painful memories. He had pushed away the unwelcome facts, and tried to carry on as if nothing had happened. She had let him, because it seemed too cruel to do anything else. And yet she longed to say, ‘Do you remember when you and daddy planted those seeds? Do you remember how we all went on a picnic?’ Rightly or wrongly she had not done so, with the result that the subject of his father had become increasingly difficult to bring up.

And now she had left it almost too late. When he came this time she would tackle it straight away. She would show him the letters and the old photographs, and the certificates, and she would try to tell him as much as she knew.

But would she be able to remember everything when she needed to? That was another problem. Her deteriorating mind kept playing stupid tricks on her. How strange it was that she could close her eyes and see scenes from those early happy days, as clearly as if they had happened yesterday, and yet she frequently struggled to remember what she had been about to do, or why she had gone into the kitchen, or where she had put her glasses this time!

It wasn’t surprising that her days felt disjointed because she kept falling asleep. She’d put on the television to watch Countdown, and it would be all over, and she hadn’t seen any of it. She couldn’t seem to stop her head falling forward, then her eyes closed, and she was off. Of course it was a different matter when she was in bed at night. Then she often tossed and turned for hours. But for some reason the day time passed in a series of dozes, some longer than others.

When did Fraser say he would come? She thought he had said Saturday. She wondered what day it was today, and decided she should get up and go and look at the calendar. She would do so in a minute. As soon as she felt a little stronger. And as soon as the nagging pain had died down. Meanwhile she would just sit there a little longer, just a few more minutes.

Her head drooped forwards, and she slid into unconsciousness once more.

Michael had a puncture. It was most annoying because he was on his way to pick up the twins and this meant he would be late. The children were not allowed to go outside – quite rightly, as they were very young – and a teacher or carer always stayed until the last pupil had been collected. However, it wasn’t a nice feeling to be the last parent to arrive on the scene. You were always eyed rather aggressively, and the question as to why you were late and had kept them waiting hung unspoken in the air.

He prided himself on being able to change a tyre quickly, but even so it was going to mean twenty minutes that he hadn’t bargained for. And the spare didn’t look too healthy. He should have kept a check on it, instead of leaving it until the need arose. But you always think these things aren’t going to happen today, and then they do. He wondered if there was enough air in it to limp along to the nearest garage, which, of course, would add another five minutes to the time.

Suddenly he realised he was thinking like Sarah! Under her influence he seemed to be measuring out his days in valuable time slots which, once allocated, could not be changed without causing a major disruption.

When did she get like that? She wasn’t when he had first married her. She had been fun, in those days. Now the fun element seemed to have evaporated, along, sadly, with much of the love-making, since she always appeared stressed. She kept him going on promises, such as, ‘When we’ve got the new bathroom sorted out, with the extra shower, it will be a lot easier to get us all ready in the morning, and things won’t be quite so frantic.’ But they had been, because now the twins had to take additional things with them, since their day contained extra activities, and rounding up something that was missing put the mornings firmly back on the ‘frantic’ list once more.

He realised that they had got into a spiral, and couldn’t see how to get out of it, or when things would calm down. He had been all in favour when Sarah had suggested having her own small business – but he had thought it would just be a part-time occupation, something for her to do working from home, that she could easily fit in during the day, and which would give her an interesting outlet for her energies. That’s how it had started, but it had grown rather bigger and become all-encompassing, so that now she rented a small office and had an employee working for her. When the twins were babies she had used a baby-minding service, but now they were of school age the whole thing had got incredibly complicated. He did what he could, but he had his own computer enterprise, which fortunately was lucrative. This was just as well, since there seemed to be no end to the demands for money these days.

Michael felt stifled by it all, as the pressures squeezed tighter. What he needed was a breath of fresh air from time to time. Surely every chap had a right to that? He did not know how he would survive if he wasn’t able to escape briefly every now and again. But it wasn’t easy to manage it. And it was getting harder and harder.

The car wheel was changed. He must get some more air – and then face the wrath of whoever was looking after the twins today.

That Saturday morning the sun was shining brightly, although, with the approach of Autumn, it brought little warmth. The leaves had a wonderful golden glow, marvellous to behold, but heralding to all who looked up that they were about to die. The seasons were moving on.

Fraser had set off early, wanting to arrive at his mother’s house before she had a chance to get too tired. He had rung her the previous day to remind her that he was coming, and had found that she did know, and hoped to have everything ready for him. But her voice had sounded subdued, and the usual liveliness was missing. The call had left him with a worried feeling, and he was glad he was going to be seeing her that day.

Perhaps Margaret was right and it really was time she went into a care home so that she could be looked after properly. Then he suddenly had an idea. She could come and live with him! He could probably afford to have his place adapted for her needs – put in an extra bathroom – perhaps make a sort of little granny flat on the ground floor! Then he could engage some daily help to see to her needs, do some cleaning and cooking. Now that would be a great advantage – perhaps they might even know how to cook sausages! Of course, Margaret would help too, so everything wouldn’t be entirely on his shoulders. He was warming to the idea, and wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. Honesty compelled him to admit that it would not have been a possibility when Edie was alive – there would have been too many difficulties to surmount. Edie would probably have resented all the thought and effort he would have had to put in for the arrangement to be possible, and then she wouldn’t have liked him spending a lot of time with his mother. No, it would have been unthinkable before – but now …

He wondered why Edie had stopped coming with him in the later years when he went to visit Marjorie. For many years she used to accompany him on most of his visits, and Marjorie, as he would have expected, had swept her up in the warmest of welcomes and always showed great pleasure at seeing her. He could not really remember when the excuses had begun – perhaps it was about five or so years ago. Whenever he had told Edie he was planning to visit Marjorie, she would say she had a headache, or there were too many things she had to get finished, or she really needed to shop for an item that was urgently required. It took some time, because Edie was so convincing, before he realised that in fact she had no intention of coming any more, and he did not ask her why, for fear of upsetting her. Once, in a roundabout sort of way, he had tried to raise the subject with his mother, but she had simply replied that probably Edie had very good reasons, and did not seem offended about it. So Fraser had not pursued the matter.

A vague feeling of doubt was beginning to stir inside him. Had he been deluding himself all these years? He couldn’t have been so mistaken, could he? It was true that Edie was, well, a bit moody, and he was never quite sure whether he would find the happy, laughing, attractive woman, full of vitality, who so fascinated him – or the unresponsive one who brushed aside his approaches and seemed to be engrossed with her own thoughts. But he had learned to ride these times out. He prided himself on knowing how to handle her. He was constant in his attitude towards her – always sunny and affectionate, knowing that before long she would revert to the loving wife who was so dear to him, and eventually she would reward his patience in ways that took his breath away.

In the days just before she died – it was still difficult to think those words, let alone say them – she had been at her scintillating best – bright, sparkling – a joy to watch and to be with. He could not believe that one cruel blow of fate had, in a matter of seconds, taken her away.

His mind dwelt on some of the many happy times – often they were when he had taken her away for a short break, or a holiday. He had always booked the best he could find so that she would be thoroughly pampered. Once the girls had grown up and they were free to go away together, they had travelled abroad as often as he could spare the time. In fact it hadn’t always been easy to take those weeks away from the business but he had felt it necessary to make the effort, since Edie seemed to get such a lift from these experiences. He had put that down to her childhood upbringing which, although not one of poverty, had certainly not been lavish. Edie had seemed to get so much pleasure from a few touches of luxury.

There had been many good times, and he recalled some of the highlights. There was the romantic weekend in Paris where she had loved trying out her quite good French, and going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, with its incredible views over the city. Then there had been a week in Madeira, with its dramatic cliffs, and botanical gardens, and they had both revelled in the experience of taking tea on the verandah at Reid’s Palace. They had been served by deferential waiters and waitresses, in beautifully starched black and white uniforms, who produced the most delicate of sandwiches, and wonderful warmed scones with cream and jam, and cakes – everything so quintessentially English except for the setting! In Crete the amazing Palace of Knossos, built over 4000 years ago, had fired Edie’s imagination, but then a strange thing had happened. On the return journey the knowledgeable guide had regaled her coach load of tourists with the story of the successful kidnapping of Generalmajor Karl Kreipe, war time commander of the German occupying forces, by a group of daring British officers, immortalised in the book ‘Ill Met By Moonlight’ by W. Stanley Moss. Edie had suddenly gone quiet, and looked very uncomfortable. Fraser had never understood why, and had really forgotten about the incident until now, when these memories were flooding back. Perhaps the loveliest setting, and the one they had both enjoyed the most, had been Bermuda. The beaches, with their soft, powdery, pink sand had brought out the child in Edie, and she had run barefoot, laughing, delighting in the sand between her toes. There had been many happy times to remember and Fraser felt pangs of longing as he recalled these events.