Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart (28 page)

In the middle of the night, Sylvia sprang awake. She knew something in the flat was different but she couldn’t remember what it was. After a second or two, it came back to her; her son and her grandson were asleep in the other bedroom. Her flat was
inhabited
. She lay there for a little while, excited, savouring the novelty and imagining the two of them sleeping side by side in Anand’s small bed. Then she had an irresistible urge to go and look in on them. In a London house at night, it was never completely dark.

She got up silently and padded over to her bedroom door. It opened with the smallest click. There was barely enough light to see in the corridor but once she opened the other bedroom door there would be light from the night light and from the street outside. She hesitated before turning the door knob. Anand would doubtless sleep soundly but Jeremy had always been a troublesome poor sleeper. If he woke, she would murmur, “Just checking” and close the door again immediately. He ought to be touched that she was so vigilant.

The door opened almost without a sound and in the room beyond no one stirred. Sylvia stood in the doorway and waited for her eyes to adjust. Jeremy had switched off the man in the moon night light but through the pastel curtains there was enough light from the street lamps outside for her to see quite clearly the two sleeping figures in the single bed: the tall fair father and the small dark son. Really, when you stopped to think about it, there was almost no physical resemblance between the two of them at all. But they were sleeping in exactly the same position; both lying on their right-hand side, Anand curled within Jeremy’s sheltering length, both holding their clenched right fist to their forehead as if deep in troubled thought.

Sylvia watched them, beside herself with delight, before tiptoeing out. How come she had no recollection of ever looking in on Jeremy sleeping when he was a boy? Was it because, infuriating child that he was, he had hardly ever slept? Had she avoided peeping in at his bedroom door for fear of rousing him? Or was it because the ayah had always done that while she herself was off somewhere partying?

Suddenly it struck Sylvia that everything in her life had happened at the wrong time. She had waited ten long years to have a child by which time, frankly, she had rather gone off the idea. When she should have been enjoying being a mother, she was clinging on to the rollercoaster of married life with Roger in his heyday and, if the truth be told, retaliating with a few little flirtations of her own. By the time her marriage had settled down into the cosy companionship of middle age, Jeremy was away at
boarding school in England and it was too late to form a proper relationship with him. When she and Roger could finally look forward to a rosy retirement back in England, Roger had promptly dropped dead.

Everything had been topsy-turvy, nothing had gone as it rightly should have. And now, when she was well into her sixties, here she was in the grip of this belated surge of maternal feeling which had taken her completely by surprise and made her do all sorts of things which she should almost certainly not have.

Unable to go back to sleep, she went and sat for a little while in the living room in the dark. All sorts of foolish and improbable scenarios involving herself and her grandson played out in her mind. She told herself sternly to get a grip. Tonight, however delightful it was, was not going to be repeated. Her twin catchphrases of “Buck up” and “Righty ho” seemed to crouch on either side of her like two antiquated firedogs. In the morning, when Jeremy had taken Anand away again, they would be all she had left.

Sylvia knew she would remember the day she heard the news of Jeremy and Smita’s Separation for the rest of her life. It happened on a Sunday towards the end of August. The day had begun unpromisingly, with muggy weather and confusion. She had gone to visit Ruth, expecting finally to meet Siggy, the elusive baby brother, only to discover that she had somehow got the Sundays muddled up and he was not due to come until the following
weekend. It was the third time they had failed to meet each other and Sylvia had been so sure it would be third time lucky. Not that she harboured any especial expectations about their meeting but it seemed to matter a great deal to Ruth who was obviously not getting any younger.

After Siggy had pulled out of their first Sunday lunch appointment some three years earlier, with that silly excuse about being marooned on the Isle of Wight, Sylvia had felt rather huffy to be honest. Then she had been so taken up with her grandson that when Ruth had suggested another meeting a few months later, she had said rather importantly that she was far too busy.

A fairly long time had gone by and Sylvia was not sure anymore whether it was at Christmas 2005 or Christmas 2006 that Ruth had again tried to introduce Sylvia to her beloved Siggy. The occasion had been a pre-Christmas tea with, Sylvia remembered, warmed mince pies and an iced Christmas cake. Imelda had gone back to the Philippines by then and been replaced by the less forbidding Gloria.

That time, Ruth and Sylvia were already sitting sipping their tea and wondering why Siggy was so late when the telephone rang and Gloria brought in an even more preposterous message; Siggy had been unavoidably delayed on some emergency business for the Magic Circle and was only now setting out from – of all unmagical places – Loughton in Essex. He was most awfully sorry but he would not be there for at least two hours. Ruth had been mortified and Sylvia, who considered herself pretty thick-skinned, felt undeniably hurt. She wondered why on earth Ruth’s brother was so reluctant to meet her. At the
same time, she could not help concluding that he sounded a frightfully eccentric person.

Ruth, wringing her hands, explained that Siggy had been for years a member of the Magic Circle, a professional association of magicians and he was regularly called out at short notice if a fellow magician was taken ill or was unable to perform at a function. It was a bit like being a doctor, Ruth said; if you were called out, whatever time of the day or night it was, you simply
had
to go.

Sylvia had to leave before Siggy got there; Heather Bailey was expecting her for a pre-Christmas drink – or six, poor Heather – and she couldn’t linger. Part of her was glad she had an excuse to hurry away; if someone stood you up twice, then that was only what they deserved, wasn’t it? But part of her regretted missing Siggy a second time; she had always loved magic and the idea of meeting a real live magician was intriguing.

So Sylvia was particularly cross with herself for making a mess of the arrangements the third time round especially since, by the time the following Sunday came along, she was in no fit state to contemplate any social occasion. She and Ruth tried to make the most of the mishap. They talked even more than usual and, in the course of the afternoon, Ruth told Sylvia about her difficulties with her daughter. She was called Giselle although a particularly unkind slap in the face was that she had changed her name as an adult to Ganit. Sylvia commiserated; she remembered a trying period during Jeremy’s teenage years when he had insisted on being called Jed. Thankfully, it had passed. A troubled young
woman, Giselle had in the late Seventies emigrated to Israel, to Ruth’s absolute horror: the distance, the instability of the region, the barbaric lack of manners of the people. She had gone to live on a kibbutz and married a man who worked in the fields. In due course, she had three children (all boys) and then, to cap it all, she had developed this highly inconvenient fear of flying so that if Ruth wanted to see her grandchildren – who incidentally had no manners at all – she had to travel all the way to Giselle. Ruth suspected the phobia had an ideological element. Sylvia tutted but she couldn’t really understand Ruth’s horror. Surely one faraway hot country was pretty much like another, wasn’t it? She allowed herself a brief reverie on the bus back to Maida Vale afterwards about a teenage Anand who insisted on being called Ant.

She got back to her flat after her bungled visit in the early evening. She didn’t feel like supper, she had as usual eaten a hearty tea at Ruth’s and, as was all too often the case these days, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself.

It was a warm, stuffy evening so she opened all the windows and sat down in the living room, where Anand’s multi-coloured building blocks were strewn across the floor. She contemplated the void of her existence and then the telephone rang.

It was Jeremy and he barely said, “Hello.”

He said, “I have some really bad news, I’m afraid.”

Sylvia’s heart stopped.

Gobbling his words so she could hardly follow what he was saying, Jeremy announced, “Smita has told me she wants a divorce.”

In the next room, Roger, from whom Sylvia had not heard a sound for more than two years, growled, “Bollocks.”

Sylvia struggled to speak.

“Hello?” Jeremy said irritably. “Hello?”

Sylvia gasped, “I’m here.”

“Well, why don’t you say something then?” Jeremy snapped. “Please don’t make this any harder for me than it already is.”

Sylvia managed to utter faintly, “Oh my dear.”

She couldn’t get any further; she felt the sickening vertigo of certainties falling away around her. Forget Jeremy and Smita; who would get to keep Anand? She reached for a chair as her legs gave way beneath her. Smita, the winner, of course Smita would take all.

Jeremy was shouting in one ear, “Look, this is a bloody miserable situation without you as usual making it worse,” and Roger was blaspheming in the other. Sylvia couldn’t hear herself think.

“Please don’t shout,” she said faintly, to neither of them in particular.

Jeremy calmed down somewhat but Roger continued to turn the air blue.

Jeremy said, more quietly, “Things haven’t been good for a long time. Maybe you’ve noticed? But I honestly never thought it would come to this.”

“Is there any chance,” Sylvia asked shakily, “that she might change her mind?”

Jeremy said, “Uh-huh,” which Sylvia supposed meant no.

“She’s changed so much since we got married,” Jeremy went on. “She’s become so driven, so
hard
. I thought when Anand was born she might ease up a bit but she seems to have done the exact opposite.”

Sylvia forced herself to ask weakly, “What about Anand?”

Even Roger fell silent.

Jeremy answered, “Well, of course, that’s the absolute worst of it. The mother always gets custody, doesn’t she? I never ever imagined that I would have to live apart from Anand.”

Sylvia heard a sound which might have been a sob or maybe just a throat clearing.

“Where?” she asked, pretending she hadn’t heard the sound. “Where will you and Smita both live? Where will Anand
be
?”

“Well, for now,” Jeremy answered bitterly, “It seems Smita gets to stay in our flat with Anand and
I
have to move out.”

Sylvia boiled at the injustice. “What grounds,” she asked indignantly, “what
grounds
does she have for wanting a divorce? You’ve always done what
she
wanted.”

“Don’t start,” Jeremy snapped. “It’s really not the time.”

“I’m not starting anything,” Sylvia said indignantly. “I’m merely pointing out that you’ve always let her have her own way – which is
true
– and so it really doesn’t seem fair that now
she’s
the one demanding a divorce and
she
gets to keep everything.”

“Fair,” Jeremy repeated bitterly. “Whoever said that fairness had anything to do with it? Look,” he went on. “I
didn’t intend this to be a long call. I’m sure you’re not enjoying it either. I’m sorry it’s come to this; I realise it’s not easy for you either. Let’s talk again in a day or two, ok? Please only call me on my mobile from now on.”

“Wait!” Sylvia cried out. “Wait. When is all this going to happen? Where will you
be
? How will I get to see Anand from now on?”

“I’m going to stay at a friend’s place for now,” Jeremy said evasively. “Someone you don’t know. I suppose I’m going to have to find somewhere. Smita and I are going to have to work out a lot of things. I’m afraid you’re just going to have to hang on a bit about seeing Anand until things are a bit more sorted. To be honest, it’s not top of the list right now.”

Sylvia screamed, “It
is
top of the list! It
should
be top of the list. You can’t keep him from me.”

“
Mum
!” Jeremy yelled. “For Christ’s sake, this is not about
you
! Look, let’s talk again when we’re both a bit calmer.”

Sylvia only registered several days later that Jeremy had called her “Mum”. After he rang off, she leapt up in confusion, not at all sure where she was heading but probably to Belsize Park to hang onto Anand for dear life. She turned her ankle badly on a building block and fell awkwardly.

So already Anand was slipping out of her grasp since she spent the next two months with her leg in plaster which of course, on top of everything else, complicated poor Jeremy’s life no end.

He camped out at his friend’s for a few weeks.
Sometimes, at the weekend, he would grudgingly come and stay over with Sylvia and help her bad-temperedly with all the things she couldn’t manage to do with her leg in plaster. He refused to discuss Smita or the divorce and was generally as disagreeable as he could be. He only brought Anand with him once, in spite of Sylvia’s pleading.