Glenda half rose and said, ‘I’l get the kettle.’
‘I was speaking to you,’ Margaret said.
Glenda finished getting up. She said, ‘I thought you were just thinking aloud.’ She moved towards the cubbyhole.
‘Maybe,’ Margaret said. She didn’t move from Glenda’s desk. ‘Maybe I was. Maybe I was thinking how things have changed, how I’ve changed, without real y noticing it.’
Glenda made Margaret a cup of coffee with a disposable filter, and herself a powerful y strong cup of tea, squeezing the tea bag against the side of the cup to extract al the rich darkness. Then she carried both cups – mugs would have been so much more satisfactory but Margaret didn’t like them – back to her desk, and held out the coffee to Margaret.
‘Thank you, dear,’ Margaret said absently.
Glenda sat down. This tea would be about her sixth cup of the day and she’d have had six more by bedtime. Nothing tasted quite as good as the first mouthful of the first brew – loose tea, in a pot – she made at six in the morning, before Barry was awake. She took a thankful swal ow of tea, and put the cup back in its saucer.
Then, greatly daring, she said, ‘So what did happen last night?’
Margaret turned her head to look out of the window. She said, ‘Bernie Harrison asked me to go into partnership with him.’
She didn’t sound very pleased. Glenda risked a long look at her averted face. Bernie Harrison agented three times the number of people that Margaret did, as wel as handling a lot of Canadian and American and Australian business. Bernie Harrison had offices near Eldon Square, and a staff of five, some of whom were al owed their own – strictly regulated – expense accounts. Bernie Harrison drove a Jaguar and lived in a palace in Gosforth and had an overcoat – Glenda had hung it up for him several times when he came to see Margaret – that had to be cashmere. Why would someone like Margaret Rossiter not leap at the chance to go into partnership with Bernie Harrison, especial y at her age? Then a chil ing little thought struck her.
‘Would there be stil a job for me?’ Glenda said.
Margaret glanced back from the window.
‘I turned him down.’
‘Oh dear,’ Glenda said.
Margaret got off the desk and stood looking down at her.
‘My heart wasn’t in it.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘When he made his proposal,’ Margaret said, ‘I waited to feel thril ed, excited, ful of ideas. I waited to feel like I’ve felt al my working life when there was a new chal enge. But I didn’t feel any of it. I just thought, It’s too late, you stupid man, I’m too old, I’m too tired, I haven’t got the bounce any more. And then,’ Margaret said, walking to the window, ‘I spent half the night awake worrying about why I didn’t leap at the chance, and in a right old temper with myself for losing my oomph.’
Glenda leaned back in her chair.
‘You aren’t that old, you know.’
‘I do know,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m behaving as if I’m fifteen years older than I am. And the thing that’s real y getting to me is that I have got energy, I have, it’s just that I don’t want to use it on the same old things.’
Glenda drank her tea. This was a profoundly unsettling conversation.
‘What,’ she said nervously, ‘ do you want to use it on?’
Margaret turned.
‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘Simply don’t know. Stuck. That’s the trouble. Restless and stuck. What a state to be in at sixty-six. Al very wel at thirty, but sixty-six!’ She peered at Glenda. ‘Was I a bit sharp with you this morning?’
* * *
Scott had arranged to meet Margaret in the pub close to the Clavering Building. It was more a hotel than a pub proper, with panel ing inside, and a dignified air, and was not, therefore, a place Scott frequented much. When he got there – late, having run some of the way up the hil from work, after yet another bruising and unwanted encounter with Donna – Margaret was sitting with a gin and tonic in front of her, and a pint for him on the opposite side of the table, jabbing in a haphazard sort of way at her mobile phone. Scott bent to kiss her. He was aware of being breathless and sweaty, and his tie fel forward clumsily and got entangled with her reading glasses.
Margaret said, extricating herself, ‘What’s the dash, pet?’ She put her phone down.
‘I’m late—’
‘You’re always late,’ Margaret said. ‘I al ow for you being late. Have you been running?’
Scott nodded. He col apsed into a chair and took a thirsty gulp of his beer.
‘Magic—’
‘The beer?’
‘The beer.’
‘You should have rung. There was no need to half kil yourself, running.’
‘I needed to work something off,’ Scott said.
‘Oh?’
‘A work thing.’ He pul ed a face. ‘The consequence of me being wet and indecisive. A work thing.’
‘I can’t decide either,’ Margaret said. She twisted her glass round in her fingers. ‘That’s why I wanted to see you.’
Scott grinned at her.
‘This work thing,’ he said, ‘I can decide. I do decide. And then I just can’t do it.’
Margaret lifted one eyebrow.
‘A woman thing?’
‘Maybe—’
‘You want to tel me about it, pet?’
‘I’d rather,’ Scott said, ‘hear what you want to talk about.’
Margaret picked up her glass and put it down again.
She said, ‘I had dinner with Bernie Harrison. In al the years I’ve known him, coming up sixty years, that would be, he’s never asked me to have dinner. Drinks, yes, even a lunchtime sandwich, but never dinner. And dinner is different, so I wondered what he was after—’
‘I can guess,’ Scott said, grinning again.
‘No, pet. No, it wasn’t. Bernie prides himself on being a ladies’ man, but ladies’ men like Bernie don’t like risking a failure, so I knew I was safe there. No. What he wanted was quite different. He wanted to offer me a partnership in his business.’
Scott banged down his beer glass.
‘Mam, that’s fantastic!’
‘Yes,’ Margaret said careful y, ‘yes, it was. It is. But I said no.’
‘You what?’
‘I said no, pet.’
‘Mam,’ Scott said, craning forward, ‘what’s the matter with you?’
She took a very smal sip of her drink.
‘I don’t know, pet. That’s why I thought I’d better talk to you. I’ve been worrying about you being aimless and unfocused, and then I get the offer of a lifetime at my age, and I find I’m just as aimless and unfocused as you are. I turned Bernie down because, as I said to poor old Glenda, whose head I bit off for no fault of her own, my heart just wasn’t in it. I thought, How lovely, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel I could match either his expectations or my own, so I turned him down. And I’ve been, as my father used to say, like a man with a hatful of bees ever since. I don’t expect you to come up with any solutions, but you had to know. You had to know that your stupid old mother just blew it, and she can’t for the life of herself think why.’
Scott put a hand across the table and took one of Margaret’s.
‘D’you think it’s Dad?’
‘Could be. There’s no practice for these things, after al . Could be shock and grief. But it’s been weeks now, we’ve had weeks to get used to the idea.’
‘It’s unsettled stil , though,’ Scott said. He squeezed Margaret’s hand and let it go. ‘Al that antagonism from London, and no sign of the piano.’
‘Do you real y think the piano wil make a difference?’
Scott shrugged.
‘Having it sorted wil make a difference.’