Keep Calm and Carry On.
It’s a slogan you see everywhere these days, it’s even printed on one of the tea towels that’s draped over the radiator in our kitchen. It might have recently become part of popular culture, but that slogan has its roots in wartime strength and self-sufficiency, and today I vow to be its living embodiment, because Maria’s death is a tragedy that has thrown our family into crisis, and somebody needs to keep their head.
My head is actually gripped in a vice of white pain, the worst kind of almost-migraine hangover, and I’m as parched as if I’d trekked the Kalahari, but action has always been a better kind of pain relief for me than anything you can buy from the chemist. It helps keep feelings of shame at bay too.
The bereaved family has only been in our house for about an hour, but already it’s the baby who is proving most difficult to handle, so I’ve decided to take charge of her.
She’s a gorgeous creature, utterly charming, and I’ll admit to feeling quite fond of her already. The au pair was tending to her but she’s rather uselessly gone to bed, though the poor girl did look beyond exhausted, and I suspect that she and I are possibly suffering similar symptoms from the after-effects of alcohol this morning, although I have the benefit of having slept.
Tessa didn’t come home last night. It’s a very heavy thought because you’d have to be born yesterday not to work out that it’s likely she spent the night with another man. If she hadn’t reacted so defensively, I might have believed that she’d crashed out at the house of a girlfriend. She’s in shock, of course, and that will have modified her normal behaviour, but she and I dance such a game of accusation and recrimination that I know guilty and defensive behaviour when I see it. I’m an expert in it myself, after all.
As I cradle her baby daughter, my thoughts keep travelling to Maria, and the secret knowledge that I never warmed to her. She was a beautiful woman, like both her girls, but I found her prickly and, if I’m honest, shallow.
Tessa disagreed fairly strongly, so we didn’t discuss it for fear of a row, but I didn’t like the way Maria and Philip pushed Zoe so relentlessly on the piano. As far as I could see, the poor girl never got to climb a tree or feed a chicken on that farm if she could have been practising her arpeggios. Philip wasn’t as bad as Maria, but he was guilty of it too. I don’t know why Tess excused her sister and Philip this behaviour. My best guess is that she carried around guilt about being the high-achiever, the good girl, and she felt happy because Maria might finally have a chance to match those achievements, albeit via her daughter.
The invasion of our house is strange. Where yesterday I lost the battle with the urges, compounded by the silence of the place, today I find my self-control is performing fairly well. Odd, given the circumstances, and the levels of tension that are prevalent, but welcome nevertheless.
When I take the baby upstairs to attempt to change her nappy, I waste three of the damn things before I get one on to her. It’s not easy to fit a clean outfit thing on those slippery limbs either, but I rather like the way she grabs my hand as I try. It stops the dratted tremor.
On the way downstairs, I pause by the bathroom door. I have a bottle or two of vodka stashed under the bath in there, tucked away behind the cladding. My throat wants it, my lips want it, and my head wants it. It has even stolen my heart.
As I prevaricate, the baby puts her fingers in my mouth – she’s obsessed with doing that, for what reason I cannot guess – and I pull her hand away and lick my parched lips. Come on, Richard, I tell myself. Pull yourself together. Somehow, it feels wrong to drink with her in my arms. She’s the antithesis of my grubby pre-owned path in life; she’s fresh and new and unspoiled and I will not sully her.
I move on past the bathroom and down the stairs.
Later, when Tessa is up to it, we must talk, she and I, about where she was last night, and the conversation will no doubt be as sad and bitter as so many of our others, perhaps worse.
In the meantime, I shall try to be of practical use.
‘Most Gracious Grace,’ I say to her, ‘would you care for something to eat?’
As we arrive in the kitchen, I feel strengthened by the fact that I resisted taking a drink, and I make some firm resolutions. I shall look after this baby so that the others don’t have to. I shall try to resist asking my wife where she was last night, because she has just lost her sister.
I will not let this bereaved family down, and I will not let my wife down.
I have my first small success when Grace appears to relish eating mashed banana.