The Men in her Life

much...’
    ‘No, I’ll manage,’ Clare said.
    ‘Why won’t you take anything from me?’ Philippa asked despairingly, ‘you accept presents for Tom, why can’t you see the money as a gift for Tom...?’
    There were times when Philippa’s tone could send Clare’s temperature from cool to boiling-point in seconds.
    ‘Because I won’t be bought by you,’ she insisted through clenched teeth.
    How did this start, she asked herself. We almost managed to get away without an argument.
    ‘But that’s ridiculous...’ Philippa argued, ‘that’s the sort of rhetoric Joss always came out with. It’s very Old Labour, I’m afraid...’
    It was an attempt at lightness, but Clare refused to laugh.
    ‘As a matter of fact, Joss would have loved to get his hands on your money. It was me who always refused...’
    ‘But why?’
    ‘You virtually abandoned me as a child, you ignored me as a teenager until I got a drugs conviction and then instead of helping me, you let Jack throw me out. You could have stood up for me. Instead you just stood by and watched... it was as if you wanted me to go... I was always in the way...’
    It was a child’s anger, held back for many years. Philippa looked at her, astonished that she should have blurted out something neither of them had acknowledged for twenty years. It seemed so uncalled for when all she had been doing was offering support. But it was all true. This was the moment she had returned for, she realized. This was the reckoning. She took a deep breath.
    ‘I know...’ she said, ‘I’ve thought about that a great deal, over the last few days and in Spain . I thought about you all the time in Spain ...’
    Her tone was all wrong. She managed to make it sound as if Clare had been an unwelcome intruder in her thoughts. She tried again.
    ‘I know that money can’t make up for that, but surely it would help you now?’
    ‘You mean that it would help you now. It would help you salve your conscience...’ Clare was stiff with unresolved anger. She saw Tom look over at the two of them. The constant low-level tension at home, occasionally spilling over into furious argument, had made him very sensitive to changes of mood.
    Philippa sighed heavily.
    ‘So what if it would? Would that be so unbearable? Or is my punishment so important that you’re prepared to make your child suffer...?’ she challenged Clare.
    ‘How dare you offer me advice on caring for my child... HOW DARE YOU?’ Clare screamed at her mother. The words echoed around the pool.
    Frightened by the noise, Tom got off his tractor and came running over, hurling himself at his mother’s legs.
    ‘It’s OK, darling,’ she said crouching down to his level, trying to sniff back the tears that were streaming down her face, ‘it’s OK.’ His head was buried in her shoulder, his arms tight around her neck. She looked up at her mother. There were tears running down her face too as she stared at Tom’s protective embrace with bewildered envy. Then suddenly Clare began to laugh. Her body was still shaking with sobs, but her face was strangely lit by laughter, a rainbow in wet grey sky.
    ‘What?’ Philippa asked, uneasily.
    ‘I can’t believe I just said that. I promised myself I would never say “how dare you?” to anyone... especially not here...’ she gestured vaguely at the pool.
    Philippa did not understand.
    ‘It’s what you said to me... twice... it’s one of your favourite expressions,’ Clare explained.
    ‘Is it?’
    ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Clare said, unable to muster any more anger. She stood up.
    ‘Can I have JUST ONE MORE go on my tractor?’ Tom asked her.
    ‘Oh all right,’ Clare said, looking at her watch, ‘well, I think we’ve missed that train now. And the next one gets us in too late. Would it be OK if we did stay another night?’
    ‘It would be a pleasure,’ Philippa smiled with relief.
    Clare heard the words and saw her mother’s face as she spoke, and suddenly Clare understood something that she had not understood before. Philippa came from a background where people did not hug one another or say affectionate things. The language she used was dictated by form and politeness. She simply did not have an emotional vocabulary. But that did not mean that she did not feel.
    As she lay in bed that night, hearing the swish of wind in the tall trees and the screech of brakes at the bottom of the road, she thought about her father, and where he came from. His background,