I become aware that Robin has started to tell me about someone called Sally: lovely, incredibly kind, used to boys — got two of her own. Not quite Jill’s speed, but then who is? (Helpless shrug.) And she has so many qualities, this Sally, and the boys need — well, Alex, he’s just ten — he still needs a mother.
“And you,” I say, finding some words in the dry vault of my mouth. “You need her?”
“Mmmh. I need a woman, yes, Kate. We’re not much good on our own, you know.” He waves away the proffered tartar sauce. “I can see how you might find that—”
“What?”
“Feeble, I suppose.” He lowers his glass and pinches the bridge of his nose. “No one can ever replace her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Then why replace her if she’s irreplaceable? That’s what I’m thinking. I feel caved in with sadness, as I did that day at Jill’s funeral. I always knew where to find Robin; he always seemed so rooted and so reliable. Looking at him now across the table, it’s a shock to see a lost boy. Men without wives might as well be men without mothers; they are more orphans than widowers. Men without wives, they lose their spines, their ability to walk tall in the world, even to wipe the shaving foam from their ears. Men need women more than women need men; isn’t that the untold secret of the world?
“I’m so glad for you,” I say. “Jill would be really pleased. I know she couldn’t bear the idea of you not managing.”
Robin nods, grateful to get the news out of the way, glad to pull up the drawbridge once more. With the plates cleared away, we turn to the menu again and study it like an exam paper. “How about a treacle tart with two spoons?” says Robin. “Have you heard they’re looking for a new name for Spotted Dick, Kate?”
“Chris Bunce.”
“Sorry?”
“Spotted Dick. Bunce is the venereal disease champion of the office. Ask any of the secretaries.”
Robin dabs his mouth with his napkin. “It makes you very angry, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.”
For a moment, I consider telling him about the plan. But as my superior he would be obliged to veto it and as my friend and mentor he would probably do the same. Instead, I say, “I don’t think someone should be allowed to go on being a shit because it’s not convenient to stop him.”
Robin semaphores to the waiter for the bill. “Jill always said you can get a man to do anything so long as he doesn’t notice he’s being made to do it.”
“Did she do that to you?”
“I never noticed.”
3:13 P.M. I leave Robin at the corner of Cheapside. Next, I call Guy on the mobile and tell him I won’t be back this afternoon: I have an urgent appointment with conkers.
“Conquers?”
“It’s a leisure group I’m thinking of investing heavily in. Need to check out the consumer angle.”
When I get home, the kids are so startled to see me they don’t react at first. I tell Paula to take the rest of the day off and I get Emily and Ben into their coats and we walk to the park. Or at least Em and I do: Ben refuses to walk anywhere, preferring to run until he falls over. It’s been an Indian summer and the leaves, still green and stippled with apricot, look mildly surprised to find themselves on the ground. We spend — I honestly don’t know how long we spend — kicking around in them.
Ben likes rushing into the leaves just for the rustle, for the pleasure of the noise. Emily loves to tell him off while clearly finding him adorable. The deal between my girl and boy is that he can be naughty so she can enjoy being good. Watching them screech after each other, I wonder if that isn’t a variation on the game that boys and girls have always played.
Farther along the path, under the horse chestnuts, we find the conkers. Some of the spiky cases have split on impact and we prise the glowing nuts from their pithy hollow.
“You can make the conkers harder,” I say to Em.
“How?”
“I don’t know exactly, we’ll have to ask Daddy.” Damn, didn’t mean to mention him.
Emily looks up in bright expectation. “Mummy, when will Daddy come back to live in our house?”
“Daddy,” chirps Ben. “Daddy.”
BACK HOME, I put the boy down for his nap and let Em choose a video while I start to prepare a bolognese sauce for dinner. I can’t find the garlic press and where is the grater? I suggest watching Sleeping Beauty, which was always the great sedative when Em was little, but I am way out of date. My daughter is talking about something with a warrior princess I have never heard of.
“What’s warrior, Mum?”
“A warrior is a brave fighter.”
“Do you know what Harry Potter’s about?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Harry Potter’s about braveness and loveness.”
“That sounds good. Have you decided what we’re watching?”
“Mary Poppins.”
“Again?”
“Oh, please, Mu-um.”
When I was Emily’s age, we saw a film or two a year: one at Christmas, one in the long summer holiday. For my children, the moving image will be the main vehicle of their memories.
“She’s a suffer jet.”
“Who?”
“Jane and Michael’s mummy is a suffer jet.”
I’d forgotten that Mrs. Banks was a suffragette. It’s not the bit of the film you remember. I go over and curl up on the sofa with Em. And there she is on-screen — the lovely daffy Glynis Johns, back from a rally and marching up and down the great white house singing:
“Our daughters’ daughters will adore us,
And they’ll sing in grateful chorus,
Well done! Well done! Well done, Sister Suffragette!”
“What’s a suffer jet?” I knew that was coming.
“Suffragettes were special women, Em, who a hundred years ago went out and marched in London and protested and tied themselves to railings so they could persuade people that women should be allowed to vote.”
She nods and sinks back onto me, nestling her head in under my breasts. It’s only when Mary and Bert and the kids have jumped into the chalk picture on the pavement that she says: “Why didn’t women be allowed to vote, Mum?”
Oh, where is the Fairy Godmother of explanations when you need her? “Because back then, in the olden days, women and men were — well, girls stayed at home and it was thought that they were less important than boys.”
My daughter gives me a look of furious astonishment. “That’s silly.”
“Yes, I know, love, but the suffer — the suffragettes had to show people it was silly.”
We lie there together. Em knows every song; she even breathes when the actors breathe. Now that I’m watching as an adult, Mary Poppins looks different. I had forgotten that Mrs. Banks, who wants to make the world a better place for women, is dizzily oblivious to her own children. That Jane and Michael are sad and rebellious until the nanny shows up and brings both consistency and excitement into their lives. Mr. Banks, meanwhile, works too hard — his name alone tells you that this man is his job — and is a stranger to his children and his wife, until he gets sacked and is confronted in his own drawing room by Bert the chimney sweep, who warns him in song: