Close Relations by Deborah Moggach Page A

addition to this he had constant calls from his regular customers – maintenance, emergency repairs. He was up at six, out of the house by seven. Like all builders his own home remained full of half-completed tasks. When the girls were small it had taken him four years to put in a proper kitchen; she had had to nag him to get it done and finally threatened to walk out. He hadn’t taken her seriously, he never took her seriously. And she hadn’t walked out, had she? She was still here.
    It was lunchtime on Monday. Dorothy sat in the office extension. One window overlooked the front yard; the other overlooked the garden. She was typing up the estimate for a new job. In the front yard, two of the lads were loadingpanels of Gyproc onto the van. Gordon breezed in.
    â€˜Got the Selwood Avenue invoice, love?’
    She gave it to him. ‘I’ve left off the VAT.’
    â€˜Thanks, pet.’ He pocketed it.
    She put on the kettle. ‘She seemed very quiet yesterday.’
    â€˜Who did?’
    â€˜Prudence.’
    â€˜She’s a quiet girl.’
    â€˜Shouldn’t call them girls.’
    â€˜They are, to me.’ He lit a cigarette.
    She fetched two tea-bags. ‘How do you think Maddy looked?’
    The phone rang. He picked it up. ‘Kendal Contractors . . .’
    She looked out of the window. At the end of the garden, on an old stretch of hard standing that had once been a garage, sat the caravan. It had been parked there for years, quietly rotting.
    â€˜. . . in the woodwork, you said?’ Gordon was talking on the phone. ‘Well, rot’s a fungal infection, give it a sniff . . .’
    Through the woods, the schoolchildren shouted. They echoed through the years. If she narrowed her eyes she could see her daughters playing in the caravan, playing houses.
    â€˜. . . it gives off, well, a fungal-type smell . . . slide in a knife and see if it gives . . . I’ll send one of the lads around tomorrow . . .’
    She remembered their holidays, parked in the sand dunes near Hythe. Maddy was shouting, she could hear her. Why was Maddy always angry? Nothing Dorothy said could comfort her.
    Gordon put down the phone. ‘I’m off.’
    â€˜Gordon! There’s a sandwich here.’
    But he had gone. All that was left was a cigarette, smouldering in the ashtray. He never stubbed them out properly.
    Through the trees the school bell rang. The voices ceased. In the front yard, the lads drove away. Dorothy sat there in silence. Yesterday, for the first time in years, she had seen allthree of her daughters together. It had been a curious sensation. Oh, it was lovely, of course, that Maddy was home and that they had all gathered together, briefly, as a family. But it had been painful too. The undercurrents had risen to the surface, nothing had changed. Maddy contradicting her father; Gordon rising to the bait. Prudence the peacemaker looking diminished, as she always did in her sister’s house. And yet, at the same time, her daughters seemed like strangers. By seeing them together, she realised how unknowable their lives had become – even Louise, to whom she felt the most close, with whom she had domestic life and the grandchildren in common. Her own role as a mother was long since over. Her role as a grandmother was almost over too; Imogen and Jamie no longer needed her.
    Dorothy sat there with her pile of invoices. Was this all there was to it? You raised children, you made a home, you kept the business ticking over. And in the end you were left alone with a husband who fidgeted to be somewhere else.
    Dorothy was not a rebellious person. She had been brought up by strict parents. Her father had run a haulage company, her mother had raised a family. Dorothy herself had followed in her mother’s footsteps; she had just accumulated more money on the way. Suddenly she envied her daughters their freedom. Even their