by John Clanchy
Not Mr McIvor, though. He’s a real creep, Mr McIvor. He’s our Maths teacher and he’s always in a suit or a jacket and tie, even if it’s a hundred and fifty degrees. Everyone’s a bit frightened of him, not because he belts kids or anything – they’re not allowed to now, they’ve got to get permission from the Principal and write it in a book – it’s because he’s so creepy. And a real perv. He’s always coming around when you’re doing problems and standing right next to your desk and leaning over to see your working or to ask if you need any help but actually he’s trying to look down your blouse. He’s always offering to help the girls – he says it’s because he doesn’t want us to get Maths-phobia, it’s never the boys, so we all reckon we’ve got Mr McIvor-phobia or Aristotle-phobia because he’s always going on about Aristotle and how important Aristotle was and if only we could see the clarity of his mind. So we all call him Mr Aristotle, but we don’t want to see the clarity of his mind. So all the girls do their top buttons up as soon as he comes in the room and that nearly gives him a stroke on the spot, for a start. Except for one or two who don’t care. Like Liz Fabretto – her father’s Italian – and she’s got the biggest ones in the class by a mile, she’s bigger than Liz Hurley. They’re just humungous. Anyway, she’s not frightened of Mr McIvor. She sometimes – if she hasn’t done the homework or she just wants to stir – she leaves the whole top three buttons undone and that means he’s hanging around her the whole class while we’re all cacking ourselves and not doing any work at all. We had this Maths test a week ago, and it was supposed to be about theorems and things, like Pythagoras and others, and Liz, she had this bit of paper on her desk, just to stir him, because we’d talked about it at lunchtime before the test, making up stupid sentences when we should have been revising, and she had this bit of paper when you weren’t supposed to have anything on your desk because it was a test, and Mr McIvor, Mr Aristotle, that is, comes up beside her and whispers, but the rest of us can hear it because we’re all listening, and he goes, ‘What’s this, Miss Fabretto?’ Miss Fabretto, if you don’t mind – it’s like we’re still in the nineteenth century or something. He does that all the time. Miss Vassilopoulos he goes to me when all the other teachers just go Laura, but when he goes Miss Darling we all give him a big stir by drawing in our breaths in a whistle, like we’re shocked or something, and if thirty people do it at the same time, it can sound like some huge vacuum pump or something, and it even shocks us and there’s silence for a minute afterwards. But Mr Aristotle doesn’t turn a hair, he just says, ‘Get on with your work,’ in this real creepy, pervy way. Anyway he picks up this bit of paper off Liz’s desk and he’s frowning as he reads it, looking real strict like he’s caught her cheating and that, with the theorem already written out, and then his face just goes Huh? because on the paper it’s got The angle of the blouse is equal to the sum of the squares perving into it, which everyone in the class knows because we were laughing about it, making up all these stupid theorems at lunchtime. And we thought if Mr Aristotle saw it, he’d just crumple it up and put it in his pocket or throw it in the bin because he’s so creepy and unruffled all the time, but he goes really white instead, not red like he’s angry or embarrassed or anything, but white like he’s going to faint, or maybe pass out, and when he says something then, it’s like he’s hissing like a snake or something, but it’s not just to Liz, the whole class can hear it. ‘What do you mean by it?’ he hisses, ‘What are you suggesting?’ he goes. ‘Are you making an accusation –?’ He’s gone totally spazzo and hormonal by this stage. I suppose it’s cos he thought he might get the sack or lose his job, or something. But when we talked about it later, we decided he wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t been guilty anyway. Because why would you? Any other teacher, they’d just take no notice and throw it away. And that’s why he’s so creepy. Mum talked to me once and said if teachers or anyone did that sort of thing, I should talk to her about it, not make a big deal or anything but just let her know. But you couldn’t. It’s nothing anyway, but you couldn’t talk to your mother about it. I mean, how embarrassing. It’s not as though he’s dangerous or anything, he’s just a creep, that’s all. And one or two of the kids in the class actually like him. But they’re mostly nerds and have read about Aristotle anyway. He’s such a fake. Mr McIvor, I mean. I haven’t read about Aristotle yet, even though he’s Greek.
‘Well,’ Toni’s saying, ‘you could ask Craig to the first part of the party and Simone to the second part. After supper and that.’ Simone and Craig have had this big relationship for nearly all year, and they’ve just broken up and they won’t talk to one another, they won’t even go in the same room together. But they’re both my friends, and I want to invite them both.
‘I don’t think that’d work,’ I tell Toni. ‘I mean, how could you send someone an invitation to the first half of a party? And what would you say anyway, if everyone’s having a good time – you’ve got to go at eleven because Simone’s coming then? And even if you could,’ I say, ‘how could you get rid of him if he said he was going to stay?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Toni says.
Anyway we don’t know what to do, so we put on this Spiderbait disk again, even though we’ve listened to it about a hundred times already this afternoon and Mum’s yelling, ‘Haven’t you two girls got anything else to listen to?’, but we tell her we don’t want to listen to anything else, all the kids have got it, and we dance a bit and think about it, but we can’t come up with any answer. So we don’t mention it for a while, and Toni says:
‘Did you ask your Mum?’
‘About the sleep-over?’
‘Mm. And about your Mum and Dad and the others going away for the weekend.’
‘Yes, and she said no.’
‘Is that a No no, or just a no?’
‘I think so.’
‘What’d she say?’
‘She said it’s not the house and she knows we’d be responsible and that, but everything’s just too difficult with my Grandma. She’s sick and things.’
‘Is she still? She was sick a long time ago.’
‘Yes. And Mum can’t just pack up and take her off somewhere for the weekend, even if she was happy about it.’
‘Why?’
‘Cos she’s frail, or something.’
‘Your Grandma?’
‘She’s got this … She gets upset if she doesn’t have her things. You know, everything she knows and she’s got used to, around her.’
‘It’s just if they’re all here –’
‘I know. Mum says we’ll just have to use half the house, and they’ll all go down to Grandma Vera’s rooms and shut the door in the corridor, like we were in a separate house anyway. And then we can make all the noise we like so long as we don’t upset the neighbours, and Mum and Philip won’t come into our part unless we ask them, or I need Mum to help with supper or something.’
‘We can do the supper –’
‘That’s what I told her. And she said, if some people want to sleep over, they can, as long as they’ve got their parents’ permission, so it’d be just like we’d have it anyway if they weren’t there.’
‘But they will be.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘But would your Mum let you?’
‘Mine? You must be joking, Lolly. My Mum has trouble with me sleeping over, and it’s my own house.’
‘Seriously, though, would she?’
‘No way. She’d chuck a fit. But your Mum’s always been different, you know?’
‘Yeah, I know.’
Advanced views was the way some people put it – one or two of the other kids’ parents, and Grandma Vera of course. ‘Advanced views are not a proper basis for bringing up two daughters,’ she’d say. She and Mum used to have just the worst rows over Katie and me. What we could do, where we could go, what time we had to be home from everywhere. Not any more, though. Grandma Vera never keeps up an argument now. Even if she’s upset, she forgets what the point was or says something
weird that’s not even English. Or goes spacey altogether. It’s Mum and me who have the rows now. Like when I asked her about the party and she said no, the family couldn’t just pack up and go away like that.
‘You don’t trust me,’ I said then.
‘That’s not it, I do trust you,’ she said. ‘I trust you as a person. I don’t entirely trust your judgement –’
‘There,’ I said. We’d been through this about a hundred times by then.
‘Laura,’ she said, ‘they’re not the same thing.’
‘They are. You just said, you don’t trust me.’
‘Your judgement.’
‘It’s the same thing.’
‘It isn’t.’
We were only getting more and more angry. She has this way of spreading her hands, on a table or the sink or something, like she’s totally calm and reasonable, and that’s when you know she’s really upset, and about to lose it. Whereas I just shout, I suppose, and throw my arms.
‘Look, darling,’ she says, and she’s got her hands spread and is leaning on her arms, and I know she’s going to be super reasonable. And say no. Again. ‘I know you’re responsible …’ she says.
‘Well, then.’
‘But you’re only fourteen.’
‘Jennifer Capriati was only thirteen when she was playing tennis and travelling all round the world –’
‘Yes, and look what happened to her,’ she says.
This is the trouble with Mum – you’ve got to pick good examples. It comes from being a teacher, I suppose.
‘Look, darling,’ she says again – and that tells me she’s really annoyed – ‘you might be responsible … Okay, okay,’ she says, and she’s got her hand up like a policeman, ‘you are responsible, I don’t doubt that, but what about some of your friends?’
‘I’m only asking people I like.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘It’s never the point when I want something,’ I say. And she finds this harder to answer than examples.
‘The point is, I’m responsible not only for you,’ she says, ‘but for your friends. I’m responsible to their parents as well. And, above all, I’m responsible for Grandma Vera. This is her home, just as much as yours and Philip’s and Katie’s and mine. And she can’t be moved …’
‘I’d go away if Grandma Vera wanted to hold a party,’ I say.
Mum just looks at me with her eyebrows up, and I realize this is another bad example.
‘You just don’t trust me,’ I say again. Because I know this gets her the most.
‘It-isn’t-a-matter-of-trusting.’ She sticks her teeth out as she says this, like she thinks I’m deaf and learning to lip-read or something …
‘It’s everyone sleeping over, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘You think we’re all going to be –’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘If we wanted to do that, we could do it now. We could do it when no one was home, or up the back of the school, or in the gym or the park or someplace …’
‘Laura.’
‘You just don’t trust us,’ I say. And I know I’m shouting and going round and round in circles and this would be a good point just to walk out and slam the door, and I’m about to, when she says in this tired voice:
‘It’s true …’
And I look at her.
‘It’s true,’ she says, ‘that I want you to come to things in their own proper time. And not to rush at things and make hopeless mistakes.’
‘Like you did,’ I say, and she flashes, as if she’s going to slap me. ‘Having me,’ I say.
‘Oh, Laura,’ she says, ‘you can’t think that.’
And she suddenly looks beaten and a bit old, and all I can say is, ‘Well –’ And then, while she’s still standing there with the same face, I find I’m saying, ‘You don’t have to go away. Or Grandma Vera. We’ll just have the front of the house,’ I say. Just when maybe she was right on the point of giving in. It’s crazy the way you fight, and then when you’re actually just about to win …
Just crazy. Because the next thing is, I’m saying, ‘Can I help?’ And that’s simply the best time ever when we’re standing there together in the kitchen and Katie and Grandma are somewhere else and Philip’s not even home yet and it’s just Mum and me, and it’s like the years in between Dad and Philip, when there’s only the two of us and we’re just doing something side by side and not even talking, I’m washing a lettuce and she’s making cold rice and putting spices and lemon and pine nuts in it like we still did sometimes when we came back from Greece, and there’s no anger or anything left and sometimes I’m singing or humming a bit, or she is, and she asks me what it is, and I sing a bit of it for her, but we’re not really talking. About anything, you know. Just being together. I really love my Mum when we’re like that.
‘Is Grandma Vera really that sick?’ I ask her after a while.
‘Yes, she is.’ And then she stops, and she’s got the tea-towel in her hand, but she’s stopped whatever she’s doing. To look at me. As if this is really big, and she’s telling me a secret. Which I already know, of course. In fact we’ve had this same conversation three or four times already. But we both want to keep having it. And I like it, because it makes me feel grown-up and Katie doesn’t know, and Mum’s kind of asking me to help. Though she never actually asks. But I feel she might, if that makes any sense. ‘She’s dying,’ Mum says. Like she still can’t get her mind round it.
‘But not soon,’ I say.
‘That’s the point,’ she says. ‘No one knows. It could be soon, it could be as much as two or three years. Longer.’
‘Does Philip know all this?’ I say. ‘What does he think?’
‘Philip’s a man.’
We think about this for a moment, or I do. And then I say:
And it’s because of this … Alzheimer’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘But if it’s only her memory,’ I say, ‘or because she says funny things …’
‘But it’s not. You see how stiff she’s become, how she shuffles, how she –’
‘That’s just old. That’s age.’
‘It depends.’
‘You can’t die, can you, just cos you’re stiff or your memory’s bad?’
‘No, it’s not that she’ll die of. It’s what causes the disease that she’ll die of. It could be something really simple like a cold or the flu or a fall that kills her, but it’s what’s underneath that matters. In her case it seems like it’s a mixture of genes –’
‘You mean we’ll get it as well?’
‘Don’t be silly. It’s a mixture of genes and her own system. And how she’s lived. She’s got arteriosclerosis – you know, where your arteries all get clogged? – and her X-rays showed she’s had lots of little strokes. Silent strokes.’
‘Silent?’
‘You don’t necessarily know you’ve had them. You might just get dizzy, or not remember where you are for a while, maybe have a fall. And then you recover. But blood’s been cut off to the brain, and the damage has been done –’
‘And the doctors can’t fix it?’
‘No.’
‘And then when there’s enough damage … ?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lots and lots of little strokes …’
‘You can only take so much. And something very small can carry you off. A cold, the flu, choking on your food … And she knows this. At least I think she does. And that’s why she’s so frightened.’
‘How do you know she’s frightened?’
‘It stands to reason, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you be frightened?’ ‘Maybe she likes it. Being looked after all the time. Not having to worry.’
‘Well …’ Mum says, like she doesn’t want to talk about it any more, ‘I’m sure I’d be frightened,’ she says. And she’s not talking to me like a grown-up any more but like a child. And that’s why I keep pushing her:
‘Yes, but that’s you. Maybe inside Grandma Vera’s okay. Maybe she unde
rstands everything and just can’t get the words out. How do you know she’s frightened, or anything?’
‘I don’t,’ she says.
And that, I suddenly see, is what frightens Mum. That she doesn’t know. And I wonder then if she really wants to.
Just for the moment, though, it’s actually Toni who wants to know:
‘Is she a bit spaz, or something?’ she asks.
‘Who?’ I say. I know who, of course. I just say this because it’s none of her business. Toni can be a real busybody sometimes.
‘How come I’ve hardly even met her then?’
‘Ton-ia,’ I say.
‘Well, how come?’
‘You’re supposed to be my friend.’
We don’t talk for a while and then, when she’s going home, she says:
‘Are you going to ask her again, then?’
‘Who?’
‘Your Mum, of course.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. And I want to, and I don’t.
Grandma Vera
Ruth Daley went in a home – was it Daley? – with the ankles. She was such a good friend, whatever happened to Ruth? Was it Ruth? No one ever comes out of a home. You don’t see people coming out of a home. You could stand outside a home for years and never see anyone coming out – only visitors and people with flowers and boxes and things, going in. You go in a home. You go in. In.
