Never Any Sometimes
Michael W. Thomas
‘Dad, we’ll be late.’
Phil
Holmwood came to the head of the stairs and looked down at his middle daughter. He saw her place one hand on her hip and
clutch the top of the bannister post with the other. It looked as though she’d been rehearsing
various attitudes of reproach and, just too late, chosen that.
‘I’m
nearly ready,’ he said, not adding, ‘For what?’
It
had been quite straightforward. He’d
drive to Birmingham International for the Euston train. Having heard nothing, he’d assumed that his
wife’s Eurostar had got in on time and the connection was fine. An hour before leaving, though, he saw a
figure loom at the front door, one that the patterned glass could not break up.
Rebecca.
She’d blown in already speaking.
No Eurostar for Mum. No faffing
at Euston. Pam’s visit to an old friend
in Normandy, Phil learned, had been one big surprise. Already there were a couple she and the
friend had known while studying: a varsity romance, marriage in the second year. She’d lost touch with them but the friend
hadn’t. And apart from that, said
Rebecca (her all-weather phrase), the couple were returning on the same day as
Mum. So…Eurostar forgotten, online
search, Pam booked on their flight to Manchester, their car waiting, a swift call
to Buffery Manor just outside Alcester where they were staying on their way
back to Swanage, a room for Pam, table for seven that evening – and apart from
that, Pam heading off with them tomorrow morning, their special guest at
Swanage for, ooh, however long she liked.
‘What
about Gilly?’ Phil had asked, glad of a bannister post himself by that
point. ‘Are we meant – ?’
‘Nelly
Dean’s seeing to her.’ The relish with which Rebecca abused the name of her
older sister Gwendolen was, like her catch-phrase, undimmed.
‘Dad,
come on,’ she called up now and Phil, descending the stairs, wondering if he looked
all right but knowing he’d soon be told if not, thought glumly of that
programme which, in original circumstances, he’d have been back for. ‘We’re not having one of those Smart TVs’,
sounded Pam in his head. ‘Any of those
catch-up thingies and you’d be living in it.’
‘Is
your tie supposed to look like that?’ Phil shifted uncomfortably under his
daughter’s fashionista gaze. Mercifully,
she didn’t comment on anything else.
They hardly spoke on the way to Alcester. She’d delivered the news and, from long experience,
Phil knew that his part was as some nameless lord in Shakespeare: a nod, a hmm,
a ‘Say you so?’
*
Retirement: his pending –
just part-time now – Pam’s early and glorious. Always off, she was. The friends she had. The new friends she made. Arrangements changed on the hoof. Sometimes their annual holiday was grafted
awkwardly onto her jaunts, usually meaning that he had to come back on his
own. This Swanage thing wasn’t unusual:
believable but with a ring of desperate invention, as of a rooky playwright
trying to finish Act Three with an hour before curtain up. He’d long assumed that, once he was done
working, she’d invite him to join her on the wing. Now he suspected she wouldn’t. He’d have to go mad-capping on his own,
bumping into her, so to speak, only for the occasional long-calendared
holiday. ‘The garden needs sorting,’ Pam
had said more than once. ‘Not to mention the attic.’ Thus was the last phase of
his strutting and fretting defined. Or
not, he thought as they neared Alcester.
He had nothing in mind and for sure he wasn’t one of nature’s
madcaps. Still…
*
Far too bright. Several times Phil looked up at the
faux-chandelier above the table and was mightily glad when the restaurant was dimmed
just before their starters came.
Caroline
and Jim. And James. From the start of the evening, from the
handshakes and mwah-mwahs and drinks in the bar, he’d quietly scrupled to add
‘it’s James’ when anyone became as informal as the occasion seemed to merit. Phil felt as though, rather than actually
eating his dinner, he was being interviewed on his fitness for same. James had been a financial advisor on the south
coast, capricious stocks and that.
Something in the suburbs, thought Phil.
Their garden was attended to by a local treasure. Their attic was James’ den in the sky. Swanage, thought Phil. He’d heard jokes about it. No doubt there was a young lady from there.
But
the wife said ‘Just Carol’s fine’ and asked everyone all about themselves in a
way that was jolly rather than intrusive.
Court clerk had been her line.
The tales she could tell – and did, a few, in a way that nicely balanced
openness with the time-honoured disclaimer at the start of novels: any
resemblance, living or dead, quite coincidental. Phil liked her. He wondered if he’d met them before, way
back, but there’d been no chance to check with Pam and neither she nor they
mentioned it, Carol because she was happy to be in the moment, James because he
was James.
Phil
looked across the table at his eldest, quietly smiling, showing interest in all
she heard. Gwendolen’s birth had soon
put paid to any hankering he’d had for a son.
From an early age she’d been his … no, not ally…more his rapporteur in
the world of children. Yes, at times
she’d grizzled as a girl, rolled eyes as a teenager. Underneath, however, there’d been wisdom,
forbearance, especially where her mother was concerned. She’d take some unjustified telling in a way
that somehow left Pam on the wrong foot, illustrated Wilde’s dictum that you
should forgive your enemies as nothing annoyed them so much. She must have done some fancy dancing, Phil
thought, to get there this evening with Gilly.
Perhaps she’d have a late-nighter afterwards on the laptop: a primary
school didn’t run itself. Perhaps her
Rob had been due to go out but was suddenly in charge of their two. He wouldn’t have demurred. As soon as they’d met him, as soon as he’d
said his first charming words to Pam, Phil knew that here was another polite
wrong-footer.
‘Are
you okay there, love?’ said Carol, leaning to the head of the table, and Gilly
smiled and said yes. They were better
about all that these days, thought Phil, hotels and such. Plenty of clearance between them and the
adjacent tables and hardly anyone gave the wheelchair a second look. A stunner, their youngest had been, which,
looking back, was probably the only thing that drew that clown to her. Vanished clown now, thankfully. Motor-mouth Alex. Big talk, bright horizons, but underneath,
well, the average sloth was quite outclassed.
After Gilly’s accident, though, the cat got his tongue. ‘I’ve tried to
love her,’ he’d insisted, barging into the house that time, getting in first
before the rumblings of divorce. ‘I’ve
done all I can…it’s so not easy…she can’t help it, I know and…but I’ll always
love her.’
‘Wonder
if she could have helped it,’ Pam had murmured sometime later. ‘Five goes it
took her, the test. I mean, Philip, was
she really watching the road?’ He’d
exploded at her as he’d never done before or since. Perhaps, he wondered now, she lived life on
the wing because she was never quite sure that it wouldn’t happen again. People you met hither and yon, winging like
you, they were safe. Mild disagreements
over the wine-list: that was probably as fractious as it got. But Gilly was doing just fine, a respected
copy-editor, nicely settled in her adapted house, paying her way, going on
holidays but sweetly steering the talk elsewhere if Phil suggested she might
like one with mum and dad. ‘He’s a
catch, that Alex,’ Pam had said, often.
Like her big sister, Gilly knew her mother.
‘And
apart from that we were late as it was so there was nothing I could do about
his tie,’ Rebecca had a special gurgle
to go with her boom-boom remarks. It
sort of spilled out of the final word – as now, when Phil found all eyes upon
him.
‘One
of my clients,’ said James, ‘was just the same.
Chain-store chappie, sports and leisure.
Fairish taste but could never match the tie. One had South Sea girlies all over it.’
‘You
must have had a good look,’ said Gwendolen, at which Carol laughed, James
didn’t and Pam said ‘’Scuse me, Gwendolen’ in a chill rush. She’d never called her Gwen. Gilly gave her father a smile, almost nothing
but warmer than Pam’s at her Christmas best.
Rebecca, determined that the topic should remain her party, reached over
and tugged Phil’s tie: ‘Silly old bit of rag, eh, dad?’ she said in a brittle
voice.
‘No
more need of ‘em once you’ve junked the working boots,’ Carol twinkled, laying
a hand on his arm. ‘You’ll have a ball,
promise.’
‘Will
he?’ The table fell silent. Everyone
watched Pam as she drew herself up.
‘Will he now?’ She turned to
Phil. ‘A ball with the garden and the
attic, my lad, and all your old tat to dispatch. That’ll see you out and then some.’
‘Mum.’
Gilly edged herself forward in her chair.
Pam
stared into her eyes as if attempting hypnosis: ‘And when does he ever visit
you, my lady? Hey?’
‘Mum,
he sometimes – ’
‘There
was never any sometimes when I was on at him.
Take her out, I said, get her comfortable behind the wheel, smooth the
way for the lessons.’
‘He
offered, mum. I was the one who –’
‘Well
if he’d ignored you and gone ahead and done it then maybe…and maybe you and
Alex – ’
‘Mum.’
Gwendolen now, quiet, firm, the head teacher curbing a loose-limbed child.
‘Shush,
you, Nelly Dean,’ Rebecca hissed at her.
‘You and your granny name.’
‘Rebecca
that’s enough.’ Suddenly all eyes were
back on Phil and he was in shock. Out of
nowhere he’d sounded as he had when working up to that explosion at Pam. Gilly eased back slowly in her chair and
stared at a point beyond the table. But
there was no further need for shushing.
Whatever it was, the enormity of what Pam was about to say overtook her. She sank back, confusion in her eyes. What had she been at? Showing real grief at last? Confessing the
toll of a bottle of wine? Courting another explosion to underscore how the
coming years would play out, two paths, his ‘n’ hers, east and west? Any or all, Phil thought. After another silence, during which James
harried a mushroom round his plate, he asked Carol if Swanage was still a
tourist pull.
‘Can’t
move for them,’ she said. ‘Have to fight
my way to the front door. Not.’ She and
he laughed together. Gwendolen mentioned
a holiday there when she and Rob were first going out. The evening steadied itself.
*
Another surprise: the
Buffery had a cancellation: ‘I’d brought some things on the off-chance,’ said
Rebecca; then, parrying the offer of a lift next day, ‘I’ll train it. Pick up my car from –’ She indicated Phil with a twist of the thumb.
Bonhomie
was mustered for the goodbyes. Phil
waited in the car park, waved to Gwendolen and Gilly, then set off. Hanbury, Droitwich, the Worcester road. However it looked, he thought, he hadn’t come
up smelling like a rose so he shouldn’t think it. Anything for a quiet life was all very well
but the interest on it could sting your eyes.
Had he pushed Pam away and not cared?
Rebecca too? Did Gwen and Gilly
love him in spite of himself? He
considered his upcoming freedom and Carol’s twinkle: ‘You’ll have a ball,
promise.’ As he turned for the Worcester
road he saw himself online, checking suitable hotels, booking rooms for
two. This time he wouldn’t fade away. This time he’d insist. And he pictured Gilly’s almost-nothing smile.
The End
www.michaelwthomas.co.uk
