by Anna Legat
‘Beer?’ countered Mr Palmer. ‘I was about to get one for myself?’
‘Beer’d be good, thanks. Is Charlotte –’
‘Oh, she’s coming,’ Mrs Palmer was beaming. Mr Palmer shuffled to the kitchen for the beers.
‘Maybe I should go upstairs?’ Mark offered.
‘Oh no! She’ll be here in a minute.’ Mrs Palmer winked and continued to brandish her teeth. ‘She wants to tell us something. Whatever that may be …’
‘Sorry it’s a bit warm,’ Mr Palmer handed a bottle to Mark that had never seen the inside of a fridge. I knew how much Mark hated warm beer. I’d rather drink my own piss, I had heard him say once, and though I didn’t like the language I shared the sentiment.
Charlotte saved the day. She rolled downstairs, smelling of roses. She was wearing a dress, which looked a bit too short for her: not the mini-type short, but the grown-out-of short. The waistline was right under her armpits. Trying to be feminine, she looked way out of her depth. She sat next to Mark, cornering him on the sofa. She kissed him.
‘You’ve been a bad boy, silly!’
‘Sorry … been out of sorts.’
‘So what is it you wanted to tell us?’ her mother provided a cue.
Charlotte extended her left hand. A sizeable diamond glistened on her fourth finger.
‘Is it what I think it is?’ Mrs Palmer was breathless.
‘We’re engaged!’ There was a childlike delight in Charlotte’s eyes. She couldn’t control her face: it was sparkling, like her diamond. Her mother had tears of joy in her eyes. Mr Palmer was mumbling something to the effect of ‘I never!’ and ‘Well done!’ I felt moved to tears myself and wished I were there in body, not just in spirit. At first baffled, Mark had quickly turned a corner, and smiled. I thought he was happy. He looked happy now that the announcement was done with and, after all, the sky didn’t fall on his head.
‘We’re engaged, yes. There you go.’
‘Champagne is in order!’ shouted Mrs Palmer, and in no time a bottle of Brut on ice, in a misty silver bucket, materialised on the table. The clinking of glasses and jibber-jabber of congratulations and exclamations went on for a few exulted minutes, and then the newly engaged couple headed for the upstairs bedroom. Obviously, a good romp was on the cards, but I thought I would leave them to it. I had had enough sex for one day, and I craved nothing more than to lie quietly next to my snoring spouse.
Not surprisingly Mark appeared a little dishevelled when he turned up at the hospital in the morning. It was a welcome sight: the boy had come to his senses. A bit of hanky-panky for a young, red-blooded man was what the doctors had ordered. I could see a marked improvement in his complexion alone. Charlotte was good for him. A tenacious wife is the next best thing after a tenacious mother. Mark had both – or at least he would soon – and he would go far in life. He wouldn’t have to whore himself like Tony had; he wouldn’t end up damaged like Tony had. Despite that little wobble earlier on, Mark would continue on a straight and narrow trajectory to a respectable life. The trials and tribulations would, fingers crossed, miss him altogether.
He was just about to come and tell me all about it, when Chi passed him in the corridor. Without her nurse’s uniform she looked even more like a pre-pubescent girl than before. She was wearing a sleeveless tunic and a pair of striped leggings. Her hair hung loose to her waist. It had an unnatural shine to it. She didn’t see Mark, but he did see her and decided to follow her.
Why? I silently asked him.
Her steps were small and her feet pointed slightly inwards. She was deep in thought. Like a seasoned MI5 agent, Mark let her go as far as the next street corner, then ran after her. He watched her stop at a pedestrian crossing and wait for the green light. As soon as she was on the other side, he launched himself across the busy street, forcing a Royal Mail van to come to a screeching halt and a few other drivers to punch their horns and deliver a unanimous verdict of ‘Wanker!’
No! I screamed. Another hit-and-run in the family in the same week was bound to finish me off.
Mark got on the same bus as the Vietnamese nurse. He sat four seats behind her, his eyes fixed on the back of her head. What was he thinking?
They alighted in Staple Hill. The street they dived into was a deserted, tired-looking row of uninspiring terrace houses perched directly on the pavement, with no front gardens to speak of and all cars parked tightly in the street, leaving space for only one-way traffic. Chi stopped, stooped, and fumbled in her bag, presumably looking for her house key. Only now did I notice her bag: it was intensely oriental in style with an image of an elephant embroidered in brightly coloured wool onto green canvas. She was also wearing slip-ons with big orange flowers perched on the straps. All of a sudden I wasn’t looking at that common species, humble foreign nurse, but at an exotic creature, bursting with colour and mystique.
‘Why are you stalking me?’ She was glaring at Mark, a small can in her hand, pointing at his face.
‘I am … um … um …’ Mark explained, rather eloquently.
‘You have been following me.’
‘Well … I-ah … Well, yes.’
‘Why you’ve been following me?’
‘Remember me? From the hospital? You’re looking after my mum. Only last night you didn’t turn up.’ Mark was beginning to gather his wits. He made a few steps forward.
‘Don’t. This is pepper spray.’ She waved the can in his face.
‘Yes …’ he backed off. ‘I just wanted to see where you lived. That’s all.’
‘Why?’
‘Well … Simply … I don’t know why,’ he gave up.
‘Go away.’
He didn’t move.
‘I was waiting for you last night. You didn’t come. I thought I made you up. And then I saw you, couldn’t believe my eyes –’
‘All European men say that, I’ve been warned. Go away or I will call the police.’
‘I did a stupid thing because of that.’ He didn’t seem to hear the threat. The last thing I wanted was for my son to be arrested for stalking a nurse. I was urging him to turn on his heel and go.
‘Because of what?’
‘Because I thought I … made you up. Well, not really, but since you didn’t turn up I thought, “What are you doing, man! Get a life!” And then I did a stupid thing.’
‘That’s my fault? The stupid thing that you did?’
‘Not entirely. I’m to blame, too,’ he admitted.
She laughed.
He laughed. ‘I probably sound like a total jerk.’
‘You do.’
‘Look, can I just speak to you? I just need to speak to you. I promise I won’t –’
‘Why speak to me?’
‘I really don’t know. But I have to.’
‘Is it about your mother? Because –’
‘No. It’s about you. I want to speak about you. I want to know about you. Bloody hell! What I’m really doing here is asking you on a date! How about that?’
‘Am I supposed to be impressed?’
‘No! Just … say yes?’
‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed and you’re not invited.’
‘I never said … Please don’t run away!’
‘I just said: I’m going to bed. I’ve been working all night. I’m tired.’
‘Well, I’ll sit here and wait.’ Mark slumped onto the pavement and sat with his feet wide apart. From the depths of his pocket his mobile whooshed in a text message. The nurse tilted her head.
‘Are you not going to answer that?’
‘No.’ he took out his phone, pressed a button, and blew over the thing as if it was the barrel of a smoking gun. The text message so extinguished, he put the phone back in his pocket. ‘I’ll be here, when you’re ready.’
She shrugged and walked to the front door. It took her a while to find the key. She turned it slowly in the lock. One last glance over her shoulder. Mark was still there, like a piece of litter on the pavement. She took pity on
him, which I wished to God she hadn’t. She said, ‘I will be up at six.’
The instant I saw them together I knew they were very close. It was in their body language, in their eyes when they looked at each other and in the way they spoke to each other: short sentences where more was left out than was said. This woman had to be very important to Rob, but I had never heard of her. Had I not been listening, or had he not been telling me? Granted, Rob hardly spoke of his work; it was a distant place, a necessary evil; it was a place without a soul. Drafting policy and bylaws isn’t exactly the most exciting topic for conversation. I never asked either. I didn’t have the time to listen to answers. And I wasn’t interested. I couldn’t imagine what there would be, in Rob’s job, to inspire my curiosity. Plus, I trusted him. Rob wasn’t the type to harbour secrets. He wasn’t the type to live a double life. He had enough trouble living a single one! For God’s sake, he was a man clinging to a domestic kettle for comfort!
He had his garden to tend to, muddy overalls, threadbare socks, green fingers, rows of carrots and baskets of sweet williams. He was afraid of life! He dreaded school runs, had lost countless umbrellas on the bus, and for the past twenty years had taken Rob-only annual holidays at the same bed & breakfast in Cornwall. Even the Cornish cows must have been bored stiff watching him crossing the same plains, using the same path, day in and day out – invariably in the second week of September when all the awkward kids were back at school. Rob did not do sordid affairs. He didn’t have it in him. Perhaps I was overreacting. Perhaps I had never heard of that woman because there was nothing to tell. She was just a work colleague with a sympathetic ear, forgotten every day the moment my husband stepped out of the office and caught a bus home to me.
She was, after all, a remarkably unremarkable person. Short and chubby, she had full hips overflowing like melting butter into her gelatinous thighs. Her arms were wobbly and her fingers – little chorizos. There was no wedding ring on the fourth chorizo of her left hand. Her blonde hair was tied in a bun with a few stray wisps curling around her ears. It was her face that I found unnerving. It radiated warmth. Perhaps it was in her full-lipped smile; perhaps in her innocently baby-blue eyes. Perhaps it was in the chubby cheeks, fresh and shiny like said baby’s bottom. The more I looked at her, the calmer I became. This wasn’t your typical vamp man-eater. Sex with her would be like scones with butter and strawberry jam. Conventional and predictable. She was a mother figure: Mother Earth in full-brief knickers and socks in bed.
So that was Rob’s jealously guarded secret. I relaxed. My first impression was patently wrong. Could it be, I pondered, my very own guilty conscience playing tricks on me?
They were sitting in a vast, open-plan office with twenty other office moles, each one looking just like the next: men in boring grey suits, women with sensible haircuts and comfortable footwear. They were so alike that they could become invisible and nothing would have changed. Even though they all shared this space, they didn’t seem to be distracted in any way by the presence of the others, by their voices or actions. Maybe they weren’t moles; maybe they were busy bees, the immaculate worker type that lives to work and works to live.
Rob had brought a file of papers in a brown manila folder. It was lying between him and the woman like an acceptable excuse for a breach of protocol. He was sitting on a swivel chair, angled towards the woman. She wasn’t facing her desk; she was facing him.
‘You don’t think you came back too early, Robert?’ she asked, and quickly put her chorizo bunch on his shoulder and peered into his eyes with an apologetic smile that could pass for angelic. ‘Not that I’m not glad to see you back, but … are you ready? This is a madhouse.’
‘I can’t do anything standing over her bed. It’s debilitating. I’m powerless waiting …’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t possibly imagine how bad it is.’
‘I’d rather be at work, talk to people, act normal. Time goes faster.’
‘If that helps … If there’s anything I can do? I hope you know?’
‘I need a good friend, Olivia. To talk to … ’
‘I’ll listen, if that’s all I can do. Any time, you know that.’
‘There are things I didn’t tell the kids, didn’t tell anyone. I’m pretending that I myself don’t know how hopeless it is.’
‘Pretending is like having faith,’ the angel in her was coming out of the closet as we spoke – as they spoke. I could almost understand why Rob needed her. ‘Power of mind, they say, performs miracles. If you have faith, if you keep pretending, it may never come to the worst.’
‘What would be the worst thing to happen, Olivia? I’ve been wondering about that. Is it her dying? Or is there something worse?’
‘You want her to pull through, that’s the first thing,’ the woman called Olivia told my husband firmly, as if it was something he didn’t understand and therefore had to learn by heart, like the Ten Commandments.
‘Had a word with the doctor. Georgie may well live if she’s got this far. Three days is a long time in terms of medical emergency.’
‘That’s a good thing. It’s a start.’
‘But the brain damage, you see?’ He reached for her hand. No one else saw it but me. ‘Everything adds up: the swelling, the cells that have already died and those that are still dying … parts of the brain – vanquished … there’s a fifty-fifty chance she’ll be brain –’
Rob swallowed the last word, but we all knew the word was dead. Brain dead. I made an educated guess: that equated to the IQ of an amoeba.
I felt the need to sit with someone who had absolutely nothing to say, and nothing to surprise me with. I went to see Mother. She was still – or already – up, and in her favourite chair, wearing milky-beige stockings twisted at her ankles, and mumbling under her breath without making a sound. The stale biscuit was there too – her faithful companion. Three days ago I would have complained – would’ve raised hell. Three days ago I would have sued the management for negligence; today I thought of the stale biscuit as part of the background in a slow-moving setting of growing out of life gracefully. A reassuring biscuit that puts everything into perspective. I smiled at the thing.
In that world of her own, Mother was somewhere in her early thirties and she was contriving her first night with Dad. Late bloomer in those days, but I guess first and foremost Mother was a career woman, like me. She must’ve given in to the pressures of social convention later in life. Maybe her biological clock started ticking.
It was a date, not a first one; they had been seeing each other for a few months. Nothing strenuous: just holding hands and sharing candy-floss at a funfair; no exchange of bodily fluids had taken place yet other than saliva on the lemonade bottle they took swigs from in turns.
I knew Mother had entered the dating scene late in life by the swinging sixties’ standards. I knew her original plan had been to join the police force. I knew she had even made progress towards the rank of detective constable, but then something had gone awry and out of the blue she’d abandoned the career path which was an unorthodox one for a woman in those days, but very much Mother. She had abandoned it in favour of becoming a well-grounded housewife. I remember speculating as to what had made her forsake her dreams, and I concluded she had fallen in love. With Dad. It was such a romantic notion and it had always, invariably, reaffirmed my faith in the sanctity of marriage.
Mother was going to do it: she was going to have sex with Dad – give herself to him, as they would put it aptly in those days. She had bought a new pair of silk stockings and a new bra with matching suspender belt for the occasion, and sprinkled herself with Yardley’s English Rose body fragrance from groin to armpit. Her lips were lusciously red; her dress (so unlike her!) was well … a DRESS! Nothing would have been particularly odd about this ritual and about her decision – millions of women had gone for premarital sex before her and even more would do it after her. What was odd however was her timing. Her period had just started. She examined the blood on the o
ld pad and threw it into a fire blazing in the coal stove. She wanted blood to be there when she gave herself to Dad. She wanted him to think she was a virgin, which made me realise that she wasn’t. I was astonished. She had been forever telling me and Paula about ‘saving ourselves for the right man’. She would forever put herself forward as our role model: the virgin Joan of Arc! Paula had failed spectacularly to heed Mother’s recommendations, but I had taken them well to heart. I was now heavily underwhelmed as I watched her scheme and simulate her own virginity. I felt cheated, on Dad’s behalf. She had given herself to someone else before him and made him think he was the only one … What an anti-climax! Was nothing sacred anymore? I must say I had lost a good chunk of the reverence I had for Mother and I even began to think that it was Paula, not me, who had taken after her. Maybe, I was Dad’s girl after all?
There was a knock on the door and Mother went to open it. Dad stood there: young, dashing, smiling, hopeful. ‘You look smashing,’ he said.
I decided to go home. Watching my parents have sex wasn’t at the top of my list of things to do before I die.
The cat was sitting on the fence. He adopted his usual imperious pose as he scanned the neighbourhood for signs of intrusion. An old, battered Kia stopped outside the house. The cat whipped its tail with mild irritation. He looked displeased. Anyone with an ounce of taste would be displeased. The Kia was a repulsive green. Blistering rust was creeping up the fenders. The thing had to be at least twenty years old, unsafe to push around the sandpit, never mind be unleashed on public roads! Yet it had been driven to our house by Brandon the Paleontological Chef. On board was my daughter. She had her school bag on her lap, which gave me hope she had been to school in the morning.
‘I don’t want to go home, Brandon, please!’
‘I’ve got to go to work. Someone has to work, yeah?’
