Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart (27 page)

Sylvia thought her way quickly round her rather empty fridge. “Soft boiled egg with bread and butter soldiers,” she answered, “and one of Grandma’s special treats for after.”

“And,” Anand asked, “would I get a bedtime story?”

Again, Sylvia was indignant. “Of course you’d get a bedtime story, Anand. Don’t you always?”

“Not always. Not if Mummy’s busy or Daddy’s tired. Sometimes I just get a conversation.”

“Well,” Sylvia said firmly, “at my house, you’d most definitely have a bedtime story, several even.”

Anand asked, “How many?”

If the bus hadn’t come along so quickly, Sylvia might have got cold feet. What she was doing was, after all, obviously wrong. But the bus to Maida Vale came almost the minute they reached the bus stop. Anand yelped with excitement and Sylvia didn’t really have time to think about the consequences of her impulsive act.

They clambered aboard. Anand touched Sylvia’s Oyster card to the reader and then ran eagerly upstairs. Sylvia followed him with difficulty; had the steps of the stairs always been this high? When she finally hauled herself up to the top deck and stood there panting, scanning the rows for an empty seat, Anand had completely disappeared. For a second, Sylvia was panic-stricken until she realised that he had found a pair of empty seats near the back of the bus and sat down and promptly become invisible. His small black head bobbed
up and he waved and called cheerily, “Here, Grandma, here” and several passengers smiled indulgently. Proudly, Sylvia took her seat next to him. She didn’t tell him off for having run ahead because after all, on a bus, it was hardly a risk, was it?

Anand had the seat by the window, Sylvia had the aisle. Secretly, Sylvia hoped that the bus would get so crowded she would have to take Anand on her lap but it didn’t happen. They sat companionably side by side, Anand keeping up a steady running commentary on what he could see from the window and Sylvia regaining her breath after the stairs. She would have to call Jeremy and confess what she had done pretty soon after they got back. Jeremy almost always got home by six on the afternoons she spent with Anand so she must make sure to phone him soon after that so he wouldn’t worry. She felt apprehensive and guilty. Yet, on the other hand, what had she actually done wrong? A doting grandmother taking her grandson home with her for the night; what could be more natural than that?

Anand seemed perfectly happy as they made their way back along Sutherland Avenue. The front doors all looked exactly the same and he kept asking playfully, “Is
this
one your door Grandma? Is
this
one?”

They let themselves into Sylvia’s normally deathly quiet apartment and straight away it became lively and noisy. Even the dull rooms seemed suddenly brighter. Anand was excited to see his frog pyjamas and his frog slippers and then he wanted to have his bath straight away, before supper, so he could put them on. Suddenly, Sylvia
noticed it was nearly seven o’clock and she still hadn’t got round to ringing Jeremy. Leaving Anand playing happily in the bath with the family of inflatable turtles, she went hunting for her mobile phone to see if Jeremy had left her any messages. Oh blow, she hadn’t remembered to switch it on.

Full of dire foreboding, she rang him on her home phone. She couldn’t be bothered to switch on the wretched mobile, to tap in her code – which she could never seem to get right – and wait for that silly little electronic fanfare which told you it was ready. Since when had machines started to trumpet the fact that they were ready to work? It was nothing to be proud of; they were
machines
.

Jeremy picked up straight away. He was livid. “Where the
hell
are you? I was worried sick.”

“Why on earth should you worry?” Sylvia asked evenly. “You knew Anand was perfectly safe with me.”

“I didn’t know
anything
,” Jeremy answered angrily. “I couldn’t get through to you on your phone. I kept ringing and ringing. It was incredibly worrying; anything could have happened.”

“Well, all’s well that ends well,” Sylvia said soothingly. “We’re both absolutely hunky-dory. I’m just sorry I forgot to turn my phone on and you got yourself into such a state. Silly me.”

“But where
are
you?” Jeremy demanded. “When are you intending to get back?”

“Well,” Sylvia said, “actually we’re at my flat.”

Jeremy nearly shouted. “
What
?”

“There’s no need to shout Jeremy,” Sylvia said
reprovingly. “We’re at my flat. Anand’s going to spend the night here, if that’s alright with you?”

“Are you
mad
?” Jeremy shouted. “Anand
has
to spend the night here with me. It’s in the access arrangements. You can’t just ride roughshod over a legal agreement. What’s got into you?”

Sylvia couldn’t make head or tail of what Jeremy was talking about. Defensively, she said, “I don’t understand why you’re making such a fuss, Jeremy. Anand
wanted
to come and spend the night here.” Meanly, she added, “He kept saying, “I don’t
want
to go to Daddy’s.”

There was a hurt silence at the other end. Then Jeremy said, with an obvious effort, “It’s very hard on him, all this to-ing and fro-ing and compartmentalization: Mummy’s place, Daddy’s place.”

Sylvia wanted to say sharply, “Well, shouldn’t you both have thought about that before splitting up?” but she feared the consequences. Instead, she said brightly, “So it’s probably the perfect solution for him to come to
me
from time to time. He’s certainly having a whale of a time.”

“Don’t you understand?” Jeremy burst out. “He
can’t
stay the night with you. In the access arrangements, he spends one night midweek and every other weekend with
me
. And that’s where he
has
to be. Otherwise the whole thing breaks down and it’ll have to be renegotiated – which, I hardly need to tell you, will be a nightmare. I’m afraid you’re going to have to bring him back.”

“But I can’t,” Sylvia cried out. “He’s having such a lovely time Jeremy. I’ve got new frog pyjamas for him and we’ve got a special supper planned and then
dozens
of
bedtime stories. I can’t just bring him back. He’ll be devastated.”

“Listen,” Jeremy said furiously. “If Anand spends the night at your flat and Smita gets to hear about it which she certainly will – we can hardly ask a four year old to keep secrets from his mother – then she will probably go straight to her solicitor and want to change the access arrangements and that will delay the divorce even further and basically you will have screwed everything up for everybody. So please, however much of a fuss he kicks up, you need to bring him back here
now
. You know what, put him on the phone.”

“I can’t,” Sylvia said triumphantly. “He’s in the bath.”

“In the
bath
?” Jeremy yelled. “For Christ’s sake! He’s been in the bath the whole time we’ve been talking and you haven’t gone to check on him once? Is he ok? Go and have a look.”

“Oh honestly Jeremy,” Sylvia tutted. “There’s really no need to make such a fuss. He’s four, not a tiny baby.” Still she called down the corridor, “Everything alright Anand dear?”

There was absolute silence.

“Did he answer?” Jeremy panicked. “Did he answer? Is he alright?”

“For goodness sake Jeremy,” Sylvia said condescendingly. “Do stop making such a dreadful fuss. I’ll go and look in on him if it makes you happy.”

She virtually ran down the corridor. Anand was absorbed in an extremely splashy game which involved the smallest turtle swimming at high speed from his Mummy
at one end of the bath to his Daddy at the other. The bath had obviously overflowed a number of times already.

She went back to the phone. “He’s fine,” she reported, hoping Jeremy wouldn’t notice the catch in her voice.

“So get him
out
of the bath,” Jeremy said tersely, “and bring him back here.”

“But Jeremy,” Sylvia said reproachfully, “what are you thinking of? Are you seriously suggesting I bring him in his pyjamas on the bus? Or put him back into his dirty clothes after his bath? And what about his supper? It’s already late for him to be eating.”

“Look,” Jeremy said. “I can see you’ve created a pretty problematic situation – and not for the first time, needless to say. But unless you want to totally mess up everyone’s plans for the foreseeable future, you’re going to have to stick to the access arrangements which have been agreed with the solicitors just like everybody else. Anand has to spend tonight with me.”

The bathroom door was thrown open and Anand emerged, naked, golden and dripping wet.

“Who’re you talking to?” he asked suspiciously.

Sylvia mouthed, “Daddy.”

Anand stamped his foot and scowled horribly. “I’m not going back to Daddy’s,” he shouted. “I’m
not
!”

He ran back into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him, hard.

“What was all that about?” Jeremy asked.

Sylvia scarcely hesitated. “I’m afraid he was shouting ‘I’m not going back to Daddy’s’.
And
he didn’t have a towel around him. I have to go Jeremy, otherwise he’ll catch cold.”

“I hope you realise,” Jeremy told his mother, “that you are making my life completely impossible. Now
I’ll
have to come and sleep at your place too so that we’re at least observing the letter of the law. Then, technically, Anand will still be spending the night with me.”

“Oh no,” Sylvia exclaimed. “Don’t do that.”

“For Christ’s sake, why ever not?” Jeremy sounded enraged.

“Don’t deprive me of my evening with Anand,” Sylvia pleaded. “If you must come, at least wait until he’s gone to bed.
Please
.”

There was a pause at the other end. Then Jeremy said “Fine” and banged the phone down, just like a petulant child himself.

Anand ate his soft-boiled egg and bread and butter soldiers in Sylvia’s kitchen. He leapfrogged exuberantly down the corridor in his new slippers and spent some time croaking and demanding flies for his supper before he would settle down. For afters, Sylvia made him a mug of cocoa with a saucer of mixed biscuits. She was taken aback when he commented with raised eyebrows, “What – no fruit or vegetables?” What was childhood coming to? Would he be demanding prunes or cod liver oil next? She replied, rather frostily, “There are currants in the biscuits Anand.”

After he had brushed his teeth, with gusto and without being told to, they settled cosily under a rug on the sofa for his bedtime story marathon. Sylvia had been looking forward to this no end and she was deeply disappointed to realise, only halfway through the second book, that Anand
was slumped against her, sound asleep. For a while, she sat there, adoring the feeling of his small warm body snuggled trustingly against her. Then she began to wonder how she would get him to bed. She wasn’t quite sure if she could safely carry him all the way to his room. But if she woke him up and made him walk there, he might start crying and then not settle again. If she left him asleep on the sofa, Jeremy might disapprove when he got here. In the end, she scooped Anand up bravely, wrapped in the rug and staggered with him all the way to his bedroom, at one point narrowly missing tripping on the trailing fringes of the rug.

She had just tucked him up successfully when Jeremy rang the bell. He was in a filthy temper. Ever since the Separation, Sylvia had noticed, he had been neglecting his appearance, wearing any old clothes and often going unshaven at the weekends. Once or twice, she had even wondered whether he was washing as often as he should. This evening he looked particularly seedy, standing at her front door glaring at her, with a small overnight bag over one shoulder.

“He’s fast asleep,” Sylvia said proudly. “We’ve had a lovely evening together.”

“Well I’m glad
you
have,” Jeremy answered resentfully, “because you’ve completely wrecked mine.”

He came in and dropped his bag in the middle of the front hall.

“Can I make you some cocoa?” Sylvia offered.

Jeremy snapped, “No.” He said, “let me take a look at Anand.”

Rather offended, Sylvia led him down the corridor to
Anand’s bedroom. Nothing to find fault with there surely? Anand lay sound asleep in his irreproachable bed, his arms and legs flung wide, the vivid green brushed cotton of his new pyjamas setting off his lovely golden colour. The whole room was bathed in a gentle apricot glow from the man in the moon night light. Sylvia turned triumphantly to Jeremy and saw that he was crying.

“This is such a bloody mess,” he whispered. “Why did it all have to turn out like this?”

Sylvia wanted to hug him but didn’t dare. She whispered back, “Come and have a drink dear.”

Jeremy poured himself a whisky. He said irritably that Sylvia never made it how he liked. He turned down all other offers of food and drink and sat glowering in silence. Sylvia tried to entertain him with tales of how beautifully Anand had behaved at the aquarium and the hilarious game they had played together, comparing the fish and the sea creatures with people they knew. Jeremy remained unresponsive.

Eventually he heaved a giant sigh and said, “Look, there’s no point pretending nothing’s wrong and you haven’t created the most massive problem by taking it into your head to bring Anand back here because you
have
. And it’s not over yet either.”

Sylvia quavered, “What do you mean?”

“Smita,” Jeremy answered furiously. “She’s going to have a field day over this.”

Before Sylvia could answer, he stood up abruptly. “Anyway I’m going to bed now. I’ve got a splitting headache.”

Sylvia refrained from pointing out that, in that case, he shouldn’t be drinking whisky. She asked where he wanted to sleep.

Jeremy looked surprised. “I’ll sleep in Anand’s bed of course. We almost always do when he sleeps over.”

Sylvia frowned. She didn’t like the sound of that one bit but, clearly, there was no point discussing anything with Jeremy when he was in such a shockingly bad mood. She got him another pillow and a fresh towel and wished him sweet dreams. He mumbled something bad-temperedly before closing the door.