"Are we doing the right thing in leaving Karen on her own?"
John sighed to himself. He took a pride in doing the right thing in the judge's throne and in his battles with the LCD. Never before was he forced to work out the right thing to do in his private life when the directions were not clear, what appeared to be right was afterwards shown to be not the highest wisdom. Only it wasn't the Court of Appeal pointing out the precise details of the errors of his ways, it was his own conscience that muddled fact and emotions.
"You heard her, George. Quite frankly, the whole idea is against my better judgment but I'm not as inclined as I once was to believe implicitly in it, and certainly not out of court from my most recent track record."
"John," George urged softly. Laying her hand delicately on his knee as he drove them down the street in his grey convertible. The top was down to day and the wind gently blew past them and ruffled George's hair. The sun and the wind outside tried to bolster their spirits but neither of their senses felt responsive. John had latched onto the immediate job in hand of navigating through the busy London streets. George was less fortunate, not having this convenient prop.
Charlie shared a house with two fellow students located just far enough away to deter any working mothers and fathers from just "dropping in." All students eagerly reached out in those few years for an alter ego who is single and free of family connections. This was part of growing up. The presence of nervously fussing mothers with tins of home made scones and bringing presents of totally unhip dresses that they thought was "just the thing for
Summer was enough for any student to cringe in embarrassment. For this reason, Charlie's distancing of herself from her mother was safely concealed from her fellow students and the darker, long established strains in their relationships was Charlie's secret.
George lay back, her thoughts darkened by the prospect of meeting her daughter. She had accepted the traditional view that a death as a powerful reminder for the living to be more caring of each other and to be a reminder of mortality. When it cuts short a life before it had really begun, the shock is more brutal. But what could George say to her?
"Every time I see Charlie these days, it feels as if we are strangers who just happen to share the ….I mean to be related," George suddenly found her voice and stumbled at the end. Of course, Charlie took John's name, not hers and it was her doing to divorce herself from John and revert to the name of Channing. "I mean I ought to love her but………"
"Charlie has all her life laid out in front of her. Time is a great healer if……"
"Exactly."
"George, we go in as a united front. We are her parents," John firmly pronounced."
He means well, George thought sadly. Too many memories were too easily recalled of when they were anything but united. She was all too aware that Charlie had grown up with this discord and how deeply it had marked her.
"All very well, John, if we were ever the conventional husband and wife with two point four children," George sadly intervened, the weight of reality burdening on her shoulders. "Right now, I don't feel exactly like a conventional anything and Charlie has long since given up on me."
John smiled reassuringly at George though deep down, he had to admit that George was being realistic and not neurotically beating herself up. He felt duty bound to make the best case that there was as a one time married couple who were still friends.
"Don't worry, we'll manage if we stick together."
George flashed a fleeting smile back at John. He meant well but he had no idea of what it felt like to be the villain of the piece in this domestic situation. No matter how outrageous John had been in his philanderings, past and present, Charlie treated him with that tolerant attitude which suggested that she was older than he was. George had left the family and she felt that she had never given the love to her daughter that was conventionally expected as a mother. Despite her wayward and willful personality, she had been imprisoned as securely in what was conventionally expected of her as anyone of her class and background in this respect. Growing older doesn't necessarily give anyone the freedom to break loose the chains as easily as might be thought. She knew very well that if her presence was acknowledged by Charlie that would be an achievement.
Now that they were temporarily removed from Karen's situation, they were traveling in limbo together, in a strange manner disconnected from their everyday lives. Driving around in the same car gave them a strange sensation of a once familiar feeling, long since removed from their daily experience by time but more sharply recalled to life than at any other time. They were up close to Karen to be part of that emotionally dislocating process called grief, which churns up so many memories of the past, which is layered down deep in forgotten memories due to the immersion in day-to-day activities. These memories are not as the inscriptions in an old diary or scrap book but vivid, felt, relived. While pain and anger had been woven into the fabric of their relationship, so had the good times and their shared happiness, just like the times long ago that they had….driven round in a car together.
At the same time, grief dislocated their automatic grasp on managing the mundane matters of the present so that accidents sneak up on them. It was for this reason that it occurred to neither of them to phone Charlie up in advance to tell her that they were coming. They simply assumed that Charlie would somehow be there when they called.
"You two guys go out and enjoy yourselves," Charlie called out barely five minutes before John's car pulled up outside her house. "I just want to have a day on my own. Say hi from me to the rest of the gang." She had one of those days when she simply wanted to slob round the house, curled up in bed with a book and wasn't in a 'going out' mood.
Accordingly, she was puzzled when she heard the sound of a car pulling up, right outside the house. It must surely be for her neighbours, she thought as she lay in bed in her upstairs room, which overlooked the front. She hadn't bothered with a shower or putting on makeup and was dressed in her nightie. Her room was casually informal and required anyone entering her room not to tread on the assorted belongings that she had left strewn around. It must be a Jehovah's Witness, or a door-to-door salesman or someone who had called at the wrong house, she thought, as she heard the front doorbell ring. No one had phoned her up on her mobile, that essential tool of her social life, so it must be a mistake. Sighing in exasperation, she slung on a pair of worn out jeans that she picked up off the floor and a T-shirt, and walked in her bare feet to answer the fourth ring and her eyes squinted through the gap left by the half open door. She felt totally disheveled and peevish with the attitude that any caller had better take her as she was. To her total shock and horror, her version of 'the flying saucer has landed' assaulted her disbelieving eyes.
"Dad. What on earth are you doing here?"
John paused for thought before he spoke. His feelings were mixed between a confused recognition that he had slipped up in not phoning up as he always did and annoyance at her tone of voice. He felt strongly, if irrationally, that he had been through an emotional wringer in this last twenty-four hours give or take a few and that Charlie ought to be more appreciative. George stood back, feeling that she was once again the Invisible Woman. At least Charlie was taking notice of John even when she was clearly trying to pick a quarrel with him.
"You're right, Charlie. We should have phoned. We've just come from the house of a mutual friend of ours who has had a big upset in her life. Might we come in?"
John's measured, controlled tones got through to her. Even in her frame of mind, she could not turn down a simple apology, not from her dad. She flicked her gaze at George, her mother, and that glance accepted her across her threshold.
"If you had only told me you were coming, I would have made myself more presentable. I'm afraid the house looks a bit of a dump."
"Of course, we have to take your present surroundings as they are. There is no question of blame or guilt," John's stout rejoinder tried to reassure her.
Wrong move, John, George thought to herself. You are immediately summoning up the specters of adolescent guilt feelings that you are trying to dispel.
"If you want to freshen yourself up, by all means do so, Charlie. Your father and I will be happy to wait in the living room until you are ready."
"Wait there. I want to tidy it up before you set one foot in it. I've only just got up, as I am sure you have noticed. There's no telling what sort of state it's in."
Charlie belied in one sweep that adolescent 'devil may care' persona she liked to assume when she was with her friends and strictly no grownups in sight. It upset John to see the brief glare Charlie directed at her mother and the sarcastic thrust with which it was accompanied.
"It's your house, Charlie. We are guests in it. You do as you see fit."
Charlie stomped off, irritated at her father's persistent use of the word 'we' and highly conscious in that way she normally denied to herself, how perfectly glamorous her mother always appeared. Isn't there ever a time when she has a lock of hair out of place or her makeup isn't perfect? But then, that is the attribute of the ice maiden. There is never a flaw in her appearance. She whipped round the room briefly, stuffed a few things behind the settee, took the ashtrays, overflowing with dog ends and shoved them into the bin into the kitchen and fluffed up the cushions.
"You can come in now."
Gingerly, John and George entered the room. To their eyes unused to the room, it looked quite tidy and nothing for Charlie to get worked up about. They politely took a seat and smiled at Charlie.
"Well, I did say you have to take the place as it is," Charlie said defensively, conscious of the lingering odour of the chip pan from yesterday's late night cooking.
"I remember my flat at university," John said heartily. "It was none too tidy as I recall."
"Well, you're a man," Came the blunt rejoinder.
Charlie thought carefully, trying to work out the real reason for the extraordinary reason why both her parents had called together. This had not happened before. Out of the mists of memories of the last time she saw dad, the real reason emerged.
"I know why you have both called," She said sharply. "Last time I saw you, dad you were on at me to come to that classical performance of yours. I suppose you are going to have a go at me about that."
John's reaction totally confused Charlie. She had expected her father to snap into full parent denunciation mode, not of course that he would seek to forcibly circumscribe her movements in any way, shape or form but he expected her on this one occasion to put herself out, if not for her mother's sake but for his. She expected him to be so confoundedly reasonable about his point of view, something that Jo had ranted at him from time to time. She was expecting a formulation something along these lines and stated to get angry in advance of him speaking. The reaction she got was utterly different.
"Oh, that," John said vaguely, a distant look in his eye. He was struggling to recall that event. He could observe it as a hugely satisfying period in his life, which brought that dimension of himself out, the amateur musician, for a cause, which was noble. It felt that it belonged to some other dimension where it enjoyed a towering importance in his life but was not where he was right now. "I suppose you were a little remiss in not coming to see it but it can't be helped right now."
"Your father performed brilliantly," Added George in spontaneous generosity.
Charlie shook her head in bewilderment. Their reactions could not be pigeon holed in the adolescent folklore, which knew how to deal with homelife. The more she thought about it, the way they were didn't add up.
"I don't understand you. You are both acting completely weird. I thought you had conspired together in some parent type of game playing to make me feel guilty….."
"I never do that, Charlie," protested John, words, which made George, smile to herself for the first time. Her excellently established exchange and mart of perceptions of John she had established with Jo had taught her better. Charlie was right of course.
"Do you want tea or coffee? I'm afraid it will have to be in a mug."
Both John and George winced inwardly at student primitivism but graciously accepted two teas. It was a small price to pay if it meant that their daughter was becoming more human. They sat around patiently while Charlie busied herself round behind closed doors in the kitchen. For the first time, they were achieving at least a surface feeling of normality.
Charlie emerged with two steaming hot mugs and sat opposite them.
"Why did you come?" Charlie pursued again but without her aggression but more in a real spirit of enquiry.
"I suppose I ought to have explained more clearly. Karen, a friend of ours who also played in the classical performance you mentioned had had a sudden bereavement. Her son who is of a similar age to you committed suicide in unpleasant and upsetting circumstances. He had dropped out of university and was alienated from his mother. We were over her flat trying to comfort her as best as we could which isn't much in these circumstances." John's mouth twisted in pain as he uttered these words and with the consciousness as he took in the surroundings that those events must seem a million miles away from her. "Karen wanted some time on her own which threw your mother and me together. We could not help but think that we had not seen you recently and just wanted to pop in and have a chat about nothing in particular."
"Gosh, I'm so sorry, dad."
Charlie's manner was totally transformed. She understood better than her parents knew as she knew of other students who had cracked up. They weren't to know of this, not her father who still thought in terms of the sixties, which sounded so cool with free love, smoking pot, sit ins and no student loans. Life at university affected some people in different and peculiar ways, in being removed from that emotional support, close supervision or straightjacket, depending on your point of view. They were away from that ambiguous comfort zone of home life and some went off the rails, drank too much or suffered a mental breakdown. It was all down to the temptations of adolescence, which the older generation should not theoretically know about.
"I can understand why you're here. Sorry I was cross earlier on. I had planned to have a day on my own but, hey, you can do better than what you expected out of life."
Charlie's smile lit her face and her eyes were on him alone. It gratified a gaping need for approval, which he kept, scrupulously hidden from the functionaries of the LCD and with his droll affectations in his conversations. For long periods he was a single parent but George still belonged to Charlie and, increasingly, to him in their own fashion.
"As long as we are all friends. That's what matters," John hinted.
Charlie flashed her mother a token glacial smile without any real feeling and started to chatter away to her father, which upset George. When her daughter's attention was distracted, her smile at John was, by contrast, one of real gratitude to John in sticking up for her as best as he could. He could be infuriating in his indirectness of manner but her sympathies went wholeheartedly out to him that he was doing a tricky balancing act in not provoking an argument with Charlie. She made a mental note to tell him later of this. In her present state of emotional nakedness, it seemed only the natural thing to do.
"Are you planning to visit us over the holidays, Charlie?" John ventured at last.
"It depends," Came the non-committal reply. That depends on if I'm around, a very depressed George reflected however rock like and dependable John tried to be. That casual question finally triggered the question she did not want to really ask. The physical proximity and body language of her parents continually nagged away at her and broke down the barrier.
"Are you too sleeping together?"
"So what if we are. After all, we are your parents"
Charlie promptly shut up with a sulky expression on her face. George was silent but was hugely proud of John's loyalty and courage in openly sticking up for her and facing her out. John pretended to ignore her obvious silence and took his courage into his hands in pursuing the point.
"You know, you ought to be closer to your mother, Charlie," John urged ever so gently.
"Easier said than done, dad. Don't forget, you brought me up from the age of six, not my mother apart from the token visit," Charlie said coolly and dismissively.
"Life is too short to maintain hostilities, Charlie, whatever the respective rights and wrongs. Someday you'll know that."
"Whatever, dad."
He gave up in despair. She didn't really see what he, Karen, George, Yvonne and so many others knew, whether parents or otherwise. All it takes is a little maturity and experience and above all time. Both John and George had every reason in the world to know that, regrettably, there is no control over what time is allotted to you or those you hold dear and should not be taken for granted.