Grace had taken a midweek half day off work to meet her parents for lunch and a walk. Now that they were ‘getting on in life’ she had started carving out portions of her calendar to make time for them, in compensation for her inattentive twenties and the many times she had squeezed them in rather than giving them the time they deserved. While they wouldn’t exactly appreciate the ‘getting on’ bit, Peter and Helen were happy to spend time with their daughter on any premise.
Grace had a little time beforehand and popped in to a bookshop to pick up something for her dad. Peter was a heavy reader, but it was all newspapers, journals and magazines these days and not enough novels or improving books. She browsed the tables and saw books that she had read or wanted to read and almost bought one as an evangelical gift, wanting him to like what she liked. There was a section at the back of the shop full of books about history and other deadly serious subjects. It seemed to be some sort of crèche for older men who had been left there while their wives had gone off shopping elsewhere. Grace lifted up a whopper about Stalingrad and thought about how nothing says ‘gift’ quite like a great big hardback. Of course, she could always gamble on something exotic: short stories by an up-and-coming South American writer, or a debut novel by a young woman that had a bit of sex in it. In the end, she settled for a novel by an established middle-aged American writer, which was signed by the author, meaning that the purchaser was guaranteed millionaire status within a few short years. Still showing the born fairness of an eldest child, she also picked up something for Helen, which was easy: a cook book or something about the garden would do, books that she didn’t realise Helen was sick of. She checked her phone briefly as she queued: a few emails she was copied in on, but nothing she needed to get involved in, she hoped.
She got to the restaurant early and sat upstairs. It was an Italian, chosen as a safe middle ground for everybody. Helen would try anything, but Peter was very much a man of his generation and was terrified of leaving a restaurant hungry. It was nicely busy, having just survived a period of buzz-driven fashionability. She waved across the room when they arrived.
‘Hi love, I hope you weren’t waiting long,’ said Helen.
‘Not at all. Great to see you both.’
‘Hey Gracie,’ said Peter with a gentle ‘my girl is all grown up’ smile. ‘You look nice.’
Grace did look well. She still had a bright, natural complexion and was at a point in her career where the money was good and she knew which clothes suited her and she could afford them most of the time.
‘Before we start, I’ve bought you both a little something. Now Dad, I know you’re particular, but this one’s supposed to be good and I think you’ve read one of his previous ones, the one that won the award, and I read the back and thought you’d like it. Mam, I got you this—it’s Indian cooking, which I know you’re not that into, but you might find something.’
‘Ah thanks pet, you’re very good,’ said Helen. ‘So how is everything? All okay with the flowers and cake or are they still being sorted out?’ Grace had been let down with some of the wedding arrangements, which had taken several late evening phone calls with Helen to talk through.
‘I think it’s okay. I found this really nice florist. Now, he doesn’t really do weddings, but he has enough stock to put together the bouquets and the altar flowers and then I’ll just get some bows and stuff for the aisle ends. My cake man is still to get back to me. I must send him a quick text later on,’ said Grace, putting her phone on the table. ‘Sorry! I’m on a half day and they know not to call me unless it’s life or death, but you know.’
‘How’s Andrew?’ asked Peter, ‘Looking forward to it all I hope. You can tell him I got my suit. Dark blue, so he can go ahead and get the crushed purple velvet.’
Grace smiled as she drank her water. ‘Thanks all the same Dad, but I think we’ll keep that for the honeymoon.’
‘The two of you should come over this weekend,’ said Peter, ‘It’s been ages since we all sat down together and had a chat. I was just saying to your mam that it would be good to see Andrew a bit more often now that he has negotiated your hand in marriage.’
‘He’s probably busy—all that travelling. When is he going to be home?’ asked Helen.
‘Not till next week. He’s in Amsterdam. He has a few free days but it’s not really worth it to fly home, so we just Skype in the evenings. I’ll find out when he’s back and we’ll get together with you ahead of the big day. I can’t believe it’s only two-and-a-bit weeks away. I’m pretty organised though. It’s really just the stuff that you can’t do until the last minute that’s left. How’s my favourite brother?’
‘He’s fine. Still chipping away. He’s entering a competition for the Chamber of Commerce. Trying to come up with a new way of signing emails. I’ll tell him you send your love. He needs to get his suit sorted, I keep telling him. He’s a funny size, so he mightn’t get it in Marks. I told him to make sure his shoes and belt match. And we’ve sorted out the whole plus one business with Leonard, by the way, so that’s all taken care of.’
‘Ah, great,’ said Grace, ‘I’m getting really tight for numbers. I was slightly hoping some of the work crowd wouldn’t come. I’ve never really mixed work and family before.’
‘We’ll do our best not to disappoint or be disappointed,’ said Peter. ‘Should we order some food? Are we having starters?’
The menu had plenty of crowd-pleasing dishes, but no pizza or Spaghetti Bolognese or that sort of thing.
‘I’ll order from the set menu,’ said Grace, ‘I know what I’m having. Actually, they’ve been really good to me at work. I’ve been spending loads of time on the internet and on personal calls. They’re letting me get away with it, so really I shouldn’t be saying I hope they won’t be there. Sorry, I’m rambling – back to the business at hand. I’m going to have the asparagus and bacon to start and then the truffle gnocchi thing.’
‘“Notchy”? I thought it was pronounced “G’knocky”?’ said Peter. ‘I think I’ll have the soup and some pasta—the chicken one.’
‘Same for me, except I’ll order the bruschetta to start and then the mushroom risotto,’ said Helen.
‘That’s not the same,’ said Peter.
‘I meant I’ll go for the set menu too, but thanks for your vigilance.’
They ordered from an impossibly good-looking waiter, who poured on all the usual Italians-love-their-food stuff, recapping the order while looking into Grace’s eyes.
‘I think he liked you,’ said Peter after he had gone, ‘Might be a good catch—all those tips, tax free.’
‘Maybe Andrew would let me take a second husband for when he’s out of town.’
‘One husband is more than enough for anybody,’ said Helen, ‘I can’t believe you’re actually going to be married. We’re cautious marryers in our family. I had a good long look at the field before picking my man.’
‘I knew that if I waited, all the good-looking girls would eventually drop their standards until they reached my level,’ said Peter.
‘It was weird when we got engaged,’ said Grace, ‘I didn’t know what to call Andrew when I was talking about him. I couldn’t say boyfriend, and fiancé just sounds so contrived. I remember being in a pub and queuing in the toilet for a cubicle and seeing the sign saying “engaged” and thinking, “aw, that’s me.” So silly.’
The starters arrived, brought by a waitress who didn’t stare into anyone’s eyes, not even Peter’s when he asked for some salt.
Grace’s phone buzzed on the table.
‘I’ll leave that,’ she said, making a point of not dividing her attention, but still leaving the phone where it was.
‘So, have you guys any plans for any trips? You should make the most of having some time off together after all these years,’ said Grace. She was forever encouraging them to go on a few city breaks or take a sun holiday so that they could be together without Hungry Paul, something which she felt would do them and him the world of good.
‘Nothing organised,’ said Helen, ‘We’re all just looking forward to the wedding now. But we were thinking of doing something in September. July and August are too warm and your dad doesn’t take to the sun.’
‘All the same, I would like to get my skin tone up from its current shade of Art Gallery White to at least magnolia,’ said Peter through a spoonful of unsalted soup.
‘Have you thought about giving your brother something to do at the service? Nothing too central or anything, just, you know, to include him a bit,’ said Helen.
‘Yeah, of course. I’d love him to be involved, but I’d like to find something he’d be enthusiastic about. You know what he’s like when he’s going through the motions. He just drags himself around without meaning to. And I don’t want him to spend the whole morning worrying about not messing up. I’m not being a perfectionist: I’m just happy we’re all going to be together on the day.’
‘What about getting him to do some prayers?’ suggested Peter, his soup finished by the time the salt arrived.
‘The problem is, he’s not really a churchgoer—nor am I, if I’m honest—so he might be worried about when to bow or where to walk or when it’s his time to come up. What if I asked him to bring up the offertory gifts? Slight risk of a spill or something, but he should be okay.’ Grace was yet to eat the first piece of asparagus she had loaded onto her fork.
‘It’s usually the two mothers who do that. What about a reading?’ suggested Helen.
‘Same problem as the prayers with all the faffing about. Also, sometimes he just freezes when he’s in front of a crowd, although I don’t think it scares him one bit. He just gets a little mesmerised. It’s like he realises how seldom you get to stand before a crowd so he just waits there and takes it in until someone ushers him off. I saw him do it at school once when he won a science prize. He just stood there like a waxwork. Maybe I’ll get him to hand out the missalettes, you know, asking people if they’re with the bride or groom, that sort of thing, like they do on TV weddings.’
‘Maybe. It’s not a bit social for him is it?’ said Peter, looking at Grace’s fork.
‘How about if he does it with Leonard? A bit of moral support for him. They are plus ones after all. That has to count for something. Eat up love,’ said Helen.
‘So long as it’s not too peripheral for him. I mean he’s part of the inner circle with us three, so I want him to feel included,’ said Grace, speaking with her mouth full, finally.
‘Oh, I’d say he’ll be happy with that,’ said Helen, ‘The whole day will be big for him, so I think we have that sorted. I’ll tell him and I’ll remind him again about the suit. Peter gave him some money for it which is still in his drawer, so he’s no excuse to keep delaying. I’ll get on to him about it when I get home. Any particular colour you’d prefer him to wear or not wear?’
‘Just whatever he likes,’ said Grace, ‘I have certain colours I like to wear when I need confidence for an interview or presentation, so maybe he’s the same. I’ll leave it to him.’
‘I’m not sure about that. He’s not good with decisions unless it’s something he cares about. Maybe I should ask him to pick the same colour as the bridesmaids’ dresses, or would that make him look like the best man?’ asked Helen.
The three of them often talked like this about Hungry Paul. They had always seen themselves as the bumpers along the bowling lane for him to bounce between, saving him from mundane dangers and guiding him towards his achievements, modest though they were. It was sincere, well-meant and maybe even necessary. And yet, when you love somebody it can be hard to know where the boundary of solicitude ends and interference begins. It was testament to their sincerity that each of them—quite separately and without discussing it—had begun to entertain their own private doubts on this question. How do you know whether you are a force for good? How do you ever know if the world would not in fact be lost without you? At what stage does a hand become a hold? The fact that Hungry Paul offered no resistance to their efforts was not necessarily proof that they were helping him. It could equally be supposed that his lack of independence was not the justification for their intervention, but the result of it. Helping someone can so easily become a habit for both parties and people are often more comfortable being the helper than the helped.
Peter had always said that Hungry Paul was Helen’s ‘sunfish.’ Years ago, before they had kids, Helen and Peter visited the aquarium in Monterey, California. A preference for aquariums over zoos was one of the early examples of how the Venn diagram of their personal tastes often overlapped in idiosyncratic ways. Among the lithe coral reef sharks, alien jellyfish, and camouflaged rays, was what looked like a floating, severed head: a large, lopsided, sideways swimming fish, with reflective skin and a slightly lost expression on its face. It was a sunfish and Helen said it was her favourite. Peter looked at her when she said this. He looked at the concentrated sincerity on her face. Usually he would tease her about being wilfully alternative in her choices, but even he knew that this was a very personal moment. Though she didn’t say so, he realised that she had picked the sunfish as her favourite because she knew nobody else would pick it. It would have pained her beautiful heart to think that there was a living thing that would go through life unloved and she was compensating for that with a special, deliberate effort to love it. In the same way, when her son was born after two miscarriages and almost didn’t make it, she had promised that if he survived she would not expect or ask any more from him for his whole life than that. And that is why she had accepted Hungry Paul as he was and let him follow his natural, meandering course through life as her sunfish.
Peter’s own father had died when he was only nine and he had grown up without really knowing how boys and men were supposed to act, so he had always held back and looked inwards rather than trying to project his own unsure version of himself on to the world. When Helen was pregnant with Grace, they didn’t find out the sex of the baby before the birth and Peter carried an uneasiness throughout that time that it might be a boy. He had barely enough maleness to get him through his own life, never mind imparting it to a son. When Grace was born he felt relieved that he would at least get some practice as a parent before having to face raising a boy. When Hungry Paul was born, there was little time for abstract problems, as the first few weeks were full of worry and sleeplessness. Later, at school, Hungry Paul always seemed a vulnerable child, who was small for his age and had few friends. Peter continually worried that his son would be bullied. This vicarious vulnerability made Peter feel guilty—was he worried about Hungry Paul or just worried about himself, that he wouldn’t know how to handle it if his child was being victimised? When Hungry Paul left school, perhaps Peter could have done more to help him find a job he was good at—he had an aptitude for science and could think well, but he just had no ideas when it came to a career. But Peter had let Hungry Paul find his own way or, to be accurate, find no particular way at all. As his father, Peter had a nagging sense that through some paternal means unknown to him—man-to-man chats or fishing trips maybe—he should have prepared Hungry Paul for the world a little better.
When Hungry Paul was brought home from the hospital, Helen and Peter made a big fuss of Grace, about how she was a big sister and what an important job that was. A few years later, when Hungry Paul started school, Helen had a formal chat with Grace about the duties and responsibilities that fall to the older sister of someone like her brother. Grace had taken these conversations seriously: she was just as keen to be a model daughter as she was to be a model sister. Without anything further being said, and without her ever deliberately deciding anything, Grace had seamlessly continued to act as Hungry Paul’s guardian angel through to secondary school and on into both their adulthoods. In fact, she had never even considered whether the duties assigned to her as a young girl had ever been lifted. As she planned her wedding and looked ahead to her marriage, she began to question whether she could move on to a new life without letting go of her old one. She found herself encouraging her parents to make Hungry Paul more independent, and to become more independent themselves. Somewhere at the back of her busy mind, she wondered who would look after Hungry Paul when they were gone if he couldn’t look after himself. The thought of that role falling to her—she was the only realistic candidate for it—panicked her. She didn’t want to become frozen in time with the boy she first met at the age of three, so she set about making other plans, committing herself to Andrew as a way of relinquishing her duty towards Hungry Paul.
And so, with such deep undercurrents causing undetected ripples at the surface, three people who loved each other very much, and who loved Hungry Paul very much, chatted over an Italian meal about the details of their lives. It was a long conversation, as Grace ate ponderously but with the approval of her parents, for whom every moment in her company was suspended in time. Over coffee they got to talking about married life, and Grace lobbed in the speculative question about what made Peter and Helen have such a happy marriage, a question that would be awkward for any couple who had had their fair share of private arguments over the years.
‘There is one thing,’ ventured Peter, fluttering his eyelids at Helen ostentatiously.
‘Dad, I’m serious. I’d like to know. How come your marriage has lasted so long, when so many others haven’t? Some couples split up after their kids leave home, or when they both retire and have to share their lives again after years of running a household, so you’re never out of the woods I guess.’
‘Well, if you only want serious answers,’ began Helen, ‘I think you have to put your relationship first. I mean really first, not just say that it’s No.1 in Valentine’s cards and things like that. I mean, you even have to put it ahead of your kids. Otherwise, you get sucked into being a parent and forget to prioritise your husband or wife and before you know it, you find yourself in the worst situation of all: married with children, but deeply lonely. As you both change, you will periodically lose each other. You need to find each other again and—here’s the trick—instead of trying to rekindle what you had, you need to reinvent yourselves and your relationship. You have to keep starting new relationships with the same person. This won’t make any sense to you now, but at some stage in your marriage to Andrew this may become very important.’ Helen explained all this carefully, like someone who had learned it the hard way. Peter didn’t even try and take the edge off the heavier tone it had brought to the table, realising that his darling wife was speaking very much from the heart.
‘Thanks Mam. It sounds difficult. Sounds like something that’s really easy to get wrong.’ Grace was leaning forward with two hands on her glass of water as she spoke.
‘You shouldn’t worry ahead of time, love. Just trust your instincts even if they get buried by busyness. Anyway, this has all got serious all of a sudden. Why don’t we go for a walk? I’m going to regret that cheesecake when I weigh myself at Silver Slimmers next week—at my age you pay for every dessert twice.’
Helen made the writing-a-cheque sign to the good-looking waiter and they began gathering their things before the inevitable fuss over who would pay, Grace pushing her dad’s hand away from the bill.
Outside, the March weather had yet to make up its mind. After such a long, lingering winter, the sun—in the places where it fell—seemed brighter than it really was. They linked elbows, feeling overfull and squinting into the wind, as Grace’s phone buzzed in the bottom of her bag.