Out on a Limb (5 page)

I nod and then shrug. ‘If you say so,’ I answer. What a curious turn of events. I start to fill the tea pot. ‘It seems pretty sad to me.’

He says nothing for a moment. Just swooshes mugs in the water. Then he glances up. ‘You’re one of his wife’s daughters then? Abbie, isn’t it?’

I grimace. ‘Is it that obvious?’

He looks at me carefully. ‘No,’ he says, ‘it’s not. My sister pointed you out.’

He doesn’t say it pointedly, but there exists, between the words he’s just spoken and the ones I might be tempted to respond with, a certain mutual but unspoken acknowledgement of relations not being quite as they might be in that department.

‘It’s all been very difficult,’ I say carefully. ‘Well, not difficult so much as uncomfortable, really. Here we all are at the same funeral and we none of us really know each other. Not properly. It’s not been –’

‘I know. Corinne told me.’ He finishes rinsing out the mugs and cups and now he reaches across me to pick up the tea towel. He smells of coconut.

‘Parents, eh?’ I say.

And then I wish I hadn’t, because the sort of person who has not had a relationship with at least one of his parents for two whole decades (two , even – how would I know?) is probably someone with a whole different take on the concept of parents and their foibles than someone like me, who is all foibled out.

‘Your mother’s disabled, then?’ he asks me politely.

My mother’s disabled many things in her time. Stage sets, hearts, marriages, cars, at least one washing machine, a mobile phone. I shake my head. ‘Only temporarily, we hope. She’s had a knee replacement. And then she broke it, so she’s had another one.’

‘Oh, dear,’ he says. ‘I didn’t even know you could break knee replacements.’

‘Most people can’t.’ I point then, his comment having made me remember. ‘What’s the matter with
your
knee? If you don’t mind me asking. Anterior cruciate ligament?’

‘You already worked that out?’

‘An educated guess. And a fairly safe bet. I’m a physiotherapist.’

‘I know.’ He nods. ‘Your mother told me. She said you were –’

‘Ah,
there
you are, Gabriel!’

We turn, as one, to see Lucy Whittall framed in the kitchen doorway, clutching a bottle of something with a corkscrew in the top. ‘Be an angel and get this open for me, will you?’ She winks conspiratorially, and it’s mainly at me. Then she tosses her head back. ‘None of those old codgers in there have got the strength, bless ’em. Though, fair play, they all had a damn good try.’

I’ll bet. Close up, she is jaw-droppingly beautiful, with hair that really does have the colour and form of a field of wheat in a breeze. And whatever ravages her lurid past have writ on her features, the pen has been gently, even lovingly applied. She’s about thirty, I imagine – younger than me and him, certainly – with intelligent, sparkling, been there-done that eyes. And she glows – in that way that beautiful women do, in that way that can’t help but immediately alert me to my great age, my lacklustre, not-quite-any-colour hair, my insignificant bosom, my lack of lipstick, my pinny (no – my mother’s pinny), my chronic inability to get noticed in bar queues and the fact that the polish on my fingernails and toenails (the former hastily applied to go with the funeral get-up), don’t just not match, but positively clash. Oh, and that I wish I hadn’t taken my shoes off in the first place, because not only do I look like the Hispanic housemaid, but I am also a good foot smaller than them both. Yes, yes, yes, I
know
people get paid for grooming the likes of Lucy Whittall, and to the
n
th degree, clearly, but it still makes me feel like a wizened old hag.

Which is a shame, because immediately I like her.

Gabriel Ash takes the bottle and does the job in seconds, and there follows a wordless but still obvious exchange, involving his eyebrows (raised), her eyebrows (furrowed) then an expression on her part that seems to say ‘I
won’t
!’ and one on his that seems to answer ‘make sure you
don’t!
’ I could be wrong, obviously, but I don’t think I am. It’s related to the contents of the bottle.

She sashays back out and we get on with the drying, while her aura lingers fragrantly in the air. I wonder again quite why they’re here. Why
he
is. Why now? After two whole decades of non-contact? What a day this is turning out to be. ‘She seems very nice,’ I say, because I have to say something. He grins. ‘And beautiful,’ I add. ‘You know, in the flesh, as it were.’ That the grin becomes a smile is, I assume, because he much enjoys hearing that said.

And then it occurs to me that I’m silly feeling inadequate, because Charlie thinks
I’m
beautiful, too. But it’s a dozy kind of thought, and I’ve no business thinking it, because however grateful I am to have been briefly thus adored, what Charlie thinks no longer matters.

* * *

By the time we’re ready to leave the house, having dispatched the last of the guests, cleared everything away, assembled yet another cache of maternal essentials (this is beginning to feel like moving house by correspondence course), checked the doors and windows, fed the fish and the parlour palm and waved off Pru and the children, my mother has become really quite jolly.

Outrageously and highly inappropriately jolly. I’m only grateful she’s kept it buttoned up thus far. ‘Fancy that!’ she trills gaily, as we get into the car. ‘I was flabbergasted! Absolutely flabbergasted! Who’d have thought we had such a celebrity in the family?’

I note the ‘we’. And her somewhat loose interpretation of the word ‘family’. They are certainly no longer a part of ours. ‘Who indeed?’ I reply.

‘Oh, it seems such a terrible shame!’ she twitters on.

‘What does, Nana?’ asks Jake, who hasn’t up till now been listening, on account of having been plugged into his iPod for as much of the duration as possible.

‘That I never even knew about him! Such a terrible waste.’

Unlike my mother, who is patently not brooding on the loss of a potential stepson, but rather on the perceived lost Career Enhancement Opportunity (it was ever thus), Jake, naturally, is wholly unimpressed. Unsurprisingly, he’s never even heard of the weatherman, and though by now hormonally awakened to the charms of girls’ squashy bits, he doesn’t know who Lucy Whittall is either. Mainly on account of a television diet of twenty-four / seven MTV and
Kerrang
. And to him she must seem fairly aged, I guess.

Indeed, he even seems a little pre-occupied. When we get home, he goes straight upstairs to his room, and doesn’t emerge for an hour. When he does finally reappear downstairs he still looks lost in thought, and I wonder if the funeral’s upset him. But no. He’s got something in his hand, which he thrusts at me.

‘What d’you think,’ he asks me, ‘of this as a plan? I thought I could put it up in Pearson’s.’

It’s a postcard. On it is written
‘Vocalist/rhythm guitarist (must be
committed
!) to join established band ‘One Black Lung’. Pontcanna area. Our musical influence’s are Metallica, Metallica and Metallica.’

One Black Lung are called One Black Lung because Ben had pneumonia last Christmas. Neither of his lungs went black as far as I know, but it’s a catchy kind of name, even so.

‘What d’you think?’ Jake asks me again. ‘Will that do?’

I’m glad he’s okay. This funeral’s a first for him. But he’s clearly more pre-occupied with more important matters – like replacing One Black Lung’s feckless ex-member, David, who was always failing to show up for band practice, and who therefore committed that most heinous of musical crimes – lack of commitment. They’ve since been trying, and failing, to find someone else. Because they’re really very picky, and quite right too. Yes, I think, and then say. It will do very nicely. I ruffle his hair, which he hates, but I can’t help it. ‘But there’s no apostrophe in influences,’ I tell him.

Chapter 5

H
I MUM

Thanks for your text – the longest in recorded history? – sounds like everything went okay with the funeral. J says did you get Lucy Whittall’s autograph? No he didn’t say that (ho ho) but I’d better not tell you what he did say. We are sitting in an internet cafe in Monte Carlo – how cool is that? Is so posh here we almost didn’t spot the McDonalds – it’s done out like tea room and everything’s green and gold instead of red and yellow. Bizarre! Burgers just same tho’ – phew! You can see where the F1 route goes, and there’s rubber all over the roads. Yachts like you wouldn’t believe!

Cheers. Sxx

They’re certainly not letting the grass grow. Though mine sure is. Memo to self, of last Monday. ‘Day off. Cut grass. Sunbathe.’ Some hope.

Mr F W Gladstone, solicitor of this parish, and whose short letter summoned us here on this bright sunny morning, ushers us to seats and then sits down himself. His office, the walls of which are comprehensively covered with pen and ink studies of fat men bearing golf clubs, is gloomy to the point that miners’ headlamps would not feel whatsoever ridiculous, and his desk, which is as properly big and old and dusty as you’d expect it to be, is almost completely covered in piles of paperwork and files, and as he is a short man, he appears to lurk, rather than sit, behind it, in the manner of a Dickensian villain. He looks bored. But then it’s another nice day and I’m sure he’d rather be playing golf. My mother leans her crutches against the arm of her chair, and they immediately clatter to the floor.

We’re a party of five. Myself (for I am chauffeur), Pru, my mother, Corinne (in suit and killer court shoes) and the weatherman again. Who is, I assume, making like a Cardiff Council bus fleet. Not a sniff for ages, then an
embarras de richesse
. Both are looking very like they’ve recently swallowed wasps. He does smile a brief hello at us – TV type standard issue – but no pleasantries are proffered or returned.

‘He did make a will, then, did he?’ I asked my mother some days earlier. ‘Do you know what’s going to be in it?’

She nodded and flapped her hand at me (such it is with dancers). ‘Of course I know what’s in it. He’s left me everything, of course.’

It seem ed to me that there was no ‘of course’ about it. They had, after all, been married a scant three and a half years. And she was 100% out on the offspring count, wasn’t she? Not a terribly auspicious start. ‘Bet that’ll go down well,’ I said. ‘No wonder his daughter was so frosty at the funeral.’

No wonder she’s so frosty now. Because it seems Mum was right. He
has
left her everything. Well, pretty much. Mr Gladstone rattles through the formalities at a surprising lick for one so sluggish of demeanour, and then reads from what looks like an impressively long list. Long, but as it turns out, not terrifically impressive; the watercolour by… (some artist I haven’t ever heard of) I leave to George Bathhurst, the gold cufflinks and matching tie pin I leave to Edward Noble. My bowls (eh? Ah – bowling ones) I leave to Mrs Moira Bugle, and so on and so forth till we get to the last bit; the residue of my estate I leave to Diana Mary Imogen Patterson-Garland, my beloved wife.

So this was written before the tea-dance club debacle, we must assume. Or perhaps the tea-dance club debacle was in fact not a debacle at all, just one of my mother’s many flights of fancy. I watch her dab at her eyes out of the corner of mine. And as we’re seated in a kind of horseshoe I can make out Corinne’s expression too. I wonder how she feels about all this. I doubt the long-lost son was expecting anything, of course, but little though it seems Corinne saw him, she
was
his daughter, but for her all I’ve totted up is a few bits of jewellery, a Welsh quilted bedspread and a clock. She looks utterly impassive and I wonder what she’s thinking. But she’s clearly thinking thoughts that fail to register on her face.

The solicitor straightens finally. Concludes the short meeting. Thanks us for coming, gets Mum to sign something, then he turns to Corinne.

‘There are,’ he says to her, ‘a few formalities for us to deal with in relation to the property, of course, Mrs Smith. I’ll be writing to you to that effect sometime later this week.’

Corinne nods her head and leans down to pick up her handbag. It is Louis Vuitton and looks new.

A silence falls, while we digest what he’s said. Or try to. Why is he talking just to
her
? ‘I beg your pardon?’ squeaks my mother.

The solicitor turns his rheumy eyes upon her. ‘I’m sorry?’ he says.

‘What formalities?’ she adds. ‘What property are you talking about anyway?’

H e blinks and looks confused. As if having been unexpectedly addressed by a pot plant or a hole punch. ‘Er…’ he says.

‘
Er
?’ says my mother, brows aloft.

T he solicitor looks doubly confused, and now uncomfortable too. He looks at Corinne. Then back at my mother. Then he frowns.

‘Mrs Patterson –’

‘It’s Ms Garland, actually.’

‘I’m sorry.
Ms
Garland. But the question of the property…er…’

‘
What
question precisely?’

H e looks over at Corinne again and clears his throat. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Smith, but has the matter of the house not been discussed yet between you?’

Uh-oh, I think to myself.
Now
I get it. She’s planning to contest the will. Of course she is. It all fits. No wonder she’s been so reluctant to talk to us. And I can’t say I’m surprised. Though what little I know of the family suggests theirs is/was not the closest of father/daughter relationships, he is/was still her father. And no matter how much anyone protests otherwise, it must be pretty damn galling to have your father take up with some stranger in his twilight years and promptly re-direct your inheritance. Blood has been shed for far less.

But why
was
he talking just to her, in that case? And my mother, quite clearly, is on the same track as me.

‘Excuse me,’ she says sharply. She is not used to being ignored. ‘What d’you mean, discuss? There is nothing
to
discuss. The house has – quite rightly – been left to me. The will said so. It –’

‘No, it didn’t,’ Corinne says, and her gaze is unflinching. ‘And it didn’t because it hasn’t. And it hasn’t because it wasn’t his to leave you.’

Now I
am
surprised. How can
that
be? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This really does not look very good.

‘Hang on,’ says Pru, who has also clocked the eye stuff and is now looking straight at Corinne. ‘Are you telling me your father didn’t actually
own
his house?’

Corinne shakes her head then picks a speck of something from her jacket sleeve. ‘No,’ she says levelly, glancing at her brother. ‘We do.’

‘
You
do?’ Pru and I say, almost exactly as one.

‘Yes,
we
do,’ she says again. ‘And I’m afraid we need it back.’

It’s as clear as mud, as these things so often are, but we eventually manage to winnow out the most salient point, which is that the house – which was originally, it turns out, the marital home of the earlier (
an
earlier, at any rate) Mr and Mrs Hugo – does indeed belong to his children, it having been bequeathed to them by their late mother. Who apparently owned it outright. Not both of them. Just her. Which has one somewhat stupefying implication, obviously, which is why we’re probably all too stupefied to speak.

No one seems particularly inclined to tell us more, either, and the temperature in the room, already somewhat chilly, plunges a few degrees lower.

The Smith and the Ash component leave shortly after (the Smith component sweeping out as if leaving an arena having felled fifteen Christians and a goat, which seems excessive), it having been not in the least amicably agreed that they, I and Pru would communicate the next week, to discuss the ‘disposal’ arrangements. Or rather, in proper words, the sale of the house – the sale of my mother’s home from under her. Though I imagine neither of them have the tiniest interest in discussing what they think we’re going to do with our mother next. That they don’t much care seems understatement indeed. It’s almost too much to take in. So much for the idea of her contesting the will. Her/
them
, come to think of it. Bloody
hell
.

‘Can we contest the will ourselves?’ I ask the solicitor afterwards.

‘Not really,’ he says kindly, ‘you don’t have any grounds. The house wasn’t
part
of the will.’

‘Jesus, Mum! Jesus! You are absolutely bloody unbelievable!’ snaps Pru. ‘Christ, this really takes the biscuit! First some long-lost son crawls out of the woodwork, and now we find out Hugo didn’t even own his house! How on
earth
could you have failed to know something like that?’

We’re back in reception now and my mother, it has to be said, is looking somewhat flustered. Her own fault entirely. She did produce us after all. And in her own image. So it’s no less than she should expect.

‘Because I didn’t!’ she snaps. ‘How would I? Why would I? He told me he
did
! Why wouldn’t I believe him? Forgive me, Prudence, but you of all people should know a marriage is based upon trust!’

But not me, of all people? Though I don’t pause to ponder it. ‘God, but what
now
?’ I lament roundly instead. Because ‘God, but what now?’ is really all I can think. Can they really just evict her? Just like that? Legally? Surely not. I pull open the glass door and scowl at the sunshine. There must be some law to protect people like my mother, though regrettably none springs to mind.

When we emerge on to the street, it’s to find that the long-lost son, now very much found, appears anxious to press his presence home. He’s outside still and obviously waiting for us. Hovering on the pavement like he’s early for a date. Of the sister, though, there is not a sign.

‘Look,’ he says, speaking as he jerks to attention and strides (no – limps) purposefully across the pavement towards us. ‘I just wanted to say how sorry I am about all this.’

We’re both pretty quick off the mark, Pru and I, but today she’s marginally quicker.

‘
Sorry
?’ she rails at him. ‘I beg your pardon, but ‘sorry’? Well, forgive me, but don’t you think that’s just a teensy bit inadequate under the circumstances?’

H e has the good grace to lower his head slightly at this.

‘Yes,’ he admits, ‘it probably is.’ Two women walk past us at this point and I can hear the ‘Is that the man off…’ and ‘Jeepers, it is too!’ conversation swell and ebb as they pass. It must happen all the time. It must be quite distracting. But then he probably deserves it. ‘But,’ he adds, ‘you know, if there’s anything I can do…’

‘And just what is it you think you might be able to do exactly?’ I ask him now. ‘Build my mother a shed in your garden?’

I don’t know if he has a garden, of course, but I’m quite sure he must do. A big one. With a weather vane in it. And one of those things that measure rainfall, most probably. And now he has half of another one, to boot. Humph. ‘I had no idea until this morning,’ he goes on, ignoring me.

‘Oh, come on…’ I retort. ‘You expect us to believe that? Isn’t that precisely why you showed up at the funeral?’

To get his hands on the spoils ? Oh, yes, it’s all becoming horribly clear now. But he ignores that too. Just frowns and turns to Mum. Who responds in the usual Garland fashion when being addressed by a member of the opposite sex who isn’t too old to escape the radar. In the blink of an eye, she’s whipped off the scowl and is suddenly all teeth and eyelashes. ‘What I
mean
,’ he explains to her, ‘is that I really had no idea you didn’t
know
about the house. I’d assumed you were already aware.’ Which I grudgingly suppose I do believe. I mean, the solicitor didn’t, did he? But even so.

‘What the hell difference does that make?’ Pru rounds on him angrily, voicing my very thought. ‘The net result is the same. My mother is now effectively homeless!’

The mother in question rounds on her now. ‘Oh, Prudence!’ she twitters. ‘Goodness gracious me! Will you desist from airing my business all over the street!’

Pru ignores Mum. This seems to be the day for it. ‘But don’t imagine for a moment that we’re going to take this lying down. That you can just throw an elderly woman on to the street willy-nilly, because believe me –’

‘Prudence!’ my mother tinkles faux-smilingly again. ‘I am
not
elderly!’

Gabriel Ash looks pained. ‘I don’t –’ he begins.

‘Don’t
what
?’ retorts Pru. ‘Hmm? Well? Don’t
care
?’

‘Oh, for goodness ’ sake, girls,’ my mother snaps, finally. And in doing so, reverting seamlessly to the sort of tone that can still stir exit door curtains in the very back of the stalls. ‘Leave the poor man alone, for goodness’ sake! It’s not
his
fault.’ I’m not sure how she worked that out exactly. I would have said the opposite was true. But, no. He’s a man so he’s forgiven by default. She pats his arm and beams at him. ‘I do apologise for my daughters,’ she coos. ‘It’s been a stressful time for them. I’m sure we can all do this without undue hostility. I’m quite sure we can sort something out.’

‘Mother,’ Pru snarls as we drag her away. ‘Stop bloody simpering, for God’s sake!’

‘I wasn’t simpering, young lady. I was simply –’

‘You were
flirting
with him, mother.’

‘No. Being
civil
. No situation is ever made better by shouting.’

‘M um. You are homeless. This is not a time for civility.’

Or
flirting, for that matter. Good point. ‘And very
much
a time for shouting, in my book,’ I add.

But my mother, being my mother and therefore not like other people, goes ‘Goodness. All this
fuss
! Girls, calm yourselves, will you?’

‘
Calm
ourselves?’ Pru barks. I bark nothing. I’m speechless. Just how can she be so relaxed about all this?

‘Yes, darlings,
calm
yourselves. All will be well. Remember.
Que sera,
girls.
Que sera.’

I’ll give her
Que
bloody
sera.
Mum, there’s no milk… Oh, dear.
Que sera!
Mum, my boyfriend’s just dumped me… Oh, bless. But, chin up!
Que sera
! Mum, I think I cocked up my Geography O level… Darling, don’t panic . Remember –
Que Sera
. I’ve really come to hate Doris Day.