‘You don’t want to let go, do you, Dad?’
‘No, Caitlin, I don’t want to let go.’
He stroked her cheek in rueful tenderness, smudging away the tears. ‘You’re a good girl, Caitlin. The one bright spot in my life.’
She choked on another well of emotion. But she could not allow herself to be diverted. She swallowed hard and cut straight to the crisis that had to be tackled.
‘Mum rang me, Dad.’
He grimaced and turned away. ‘I suppose you got an earful.’
‘She was upset.’
He sat on the side of the bed, elbows on his knees, head down, a picture of dejection. ‘I didn’t want to go home after we’d put Dobbin down, Caitlin. Your mother wants everything her way. Won’t listen to anything else. Doesn’t care what I feel!’
Caitlin felt a strong sense of empathy with her father. It was precisely what David Hartley had made her feel. Only his needs were important.
She sat down on a chair close to him and stroked his arm. ‘Tell me about it, Dad,’ she invited sympathetically.
He shook his head but the words spilled out. ‘She nags and nags...’ Her father’s list of grievances ran a mile long but essentially they came back to one thing. He was bored out of his mind. He didn’t fit into the kind of life her mother was set on leading. ‘So I rang her from here,’ he concluded, ‘and told her the good or bad news, as the case may be.’
‘It’s bad news,’ Caitlin assured him. ‘Mum couldn’t stop crying on the phone.’
Her father’s face set in stubborn lines. ‘She’ll get over it soon enough. I’m only a nuisance to her. I’m in the way.’
Caitlin didn’t plead her mother’s case. Her father was in no mood to hear it. For all she knew, the marriage might have reached irretrievable breakdown, and she had no solution to the problem. However, it seemed to her that after thirty years there should be some foundation left for her parents to talk over their differences and come to a better understanding.
Providing, of course, that the party went ahead tonight.
That was critical. If her father refused to budge, and her mother felt humiliated in front of all her friends and acquaintances, the unforgivable would have been committed.
‘What do you want, Dad?’
‘The way it was. I would go up the street without twenty cents in my pocket and get anything I wanted. Then your mother would go and pay for it next week. I’ll say that for your mother. She could manage money. She never, in all our lives, spent more than I earned.’
‘Why can’t you do that now?’ Caitlin asked with some perplexity.
‘No one knows anyone any more. It’s all shopping malls, and no one’s got time to talk to you, and your mother wants to impress people with what we’ve got. I say we haven’t got anything. Lost the lot.’
‘We can’t put the clock back, Dad. Change is inevitable. We all have to adapt. You. Me. Mum. All of us.’
‘Your mother’s taken one path. I’ve taken another. In the diamond of life, our routes have diverged.’
Caitlin knew her rescue mission was in deep trouble. When her father started applying his ‘diamond of life’ philosophy to his own marriage, divorce was definitely on his mind.
For years now he had been shaking his head over the increasing divorce-rate, particularly among the younger generation. He likened the bottom point of the diamond to the day of the marriage. The lines leading outwards from that point represented the growing apart process that had to be stopped and turned upwards to a point of togetherness again. Young people, he had declared, weren’t prepared to work at turning the corner.
Maybe some corners were unturnable, Caitlin had argued.
From the set look of resignation on her father’s face, Caitlin had little doubt he was applying her argument to his situation.
There was a knock on the door. Probably someone from the housekeeping staff, Caitlin thought, and was relieved when her father got up to answer it. She had to do some fast thinking, approach the problem from a different angle. That was what David always did when he ran into a brick wall. It usually worked for him.
Perhaps if she pointed out the possibility of the division of family loyalties, it might give her father pause for reconsideration. He did love Michelle and his grandchildren. He might not have thought of consequences like that. There was so much to be weighed in the balance before diving off the deep end.
Caitlin recollected that she hadn’t exactly done a profit and loss sheet before parting from David this morning. But that was a serious matter of personal priorities, she firmly assured herself, with no family involved. Besides, four months hardly measured up against thirty years.
She was vaguely aware of the door being opened. She glanced at her watch. Two-thirty. By three o’clock she would need some grounds for a truce if she was to talk her mother around in time to save tonight’s party.