Back to Vanilla

by Jennifer Maschek

He left her to the TV and made a mug of brickies’ tea for her and a pu-erh for himself, eating two dried figs while the kettle boiled. He took his upstairs, laid out some running clothes for the morning so he wouldn’t wake Lorna up before needed, showered and fell asleep as soon as his head sank wearily into the pillow.

  Six days later, the same household was in celebration mood. It was the last weekend in May and the sun was straining a little, but there was a definite feeling that summer was well on its way. This was enough to stop Lyall’s usual internal groan when his wife suggested it was time for the annual unveiling of the family firepit.

  Jane had hinted that another of her stream of “old friends” up from London might be joining them for what Lorna insisted on referring to as her “birthday tea”, although Lyall always found it hard to imagine his mother-in-law at any meal other than dinner, perhaps, or supper. She was distinctly not a tea sort of woman, and he assumed the idea of a birthday tea was to fulfil some image of what Lorna would ideally like from a mother.

  However, the two got on remarkably well, the kids adored their grandma, and she was a thoroughly entertaining woman. If a mother-in-law offers a template for the future wife, Lyall could have done a lot worse, as his best man had told him at his wedding.

  When Jane pulled up in a cab outside, escorted by a tall, leathery-looking guy in Ray-Ban aviators around the same age that she had just turned – sixty – the household was just returning to a semblance of tranquillity after an earlier domestic squall. Emily had grown impatient with her younger sister’s fondness for making leaf boats in the yellow and blue paddling pool they were sharing, and simply stood up, stepped on to the grass, lifted an edge and tipped out the water. Little Maidie sat there wet, cold and wailing, inconsolable until Lyall had refilled the pool and gone through the motions of chastising Emily (while winking at her, indicating that this was for Maidie’s sake).

  Oblivious, the eldest girl, Hattie, was in a familiar state of repose, lying tummy down in the oversized garden hammock, one arm trailing towards the ground, the other clinging to a book (she was reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, as usual a choice that was not quite appropriate for her nine years). Very little seemed to rile her and life would have been considerably less hassle had Lorna and Lyall simply stopped at the one.

  And so, as the doorbell rang, the two younger girls were seemingly at peace again, sitting at opposite sides of the inflatable pool, while Hattie swung gently in the hammock, and Lorna chopped erratically at a pile of tomatoes and onions in the kitchen. Lyall put down the wire wool he was using to scrape the remainder of last year’s veggie dust, and a layer of light rust, from the barbecue grill and walked through to welcome the two guests into his home.

  He led Frank, whom he was mildly surprised to note was American, to Lorna in the kitchen, where the guest delivered two cloth bags of assorted Waitrose delights, ranging from Pimm’s and strawberries to gingerbread rabbits and a selection of gaudy, almost neon cupcakes. Lyall continued through the French doors into the garden with Lorna.

  The two girls stopped splashing, looked up and bounded over in a shower of droplets, giving their grandma a quick, wet hug, before following the direction of her nod into the kitchen. Hattie rolled gracefully from her swaying haven and, without her sisters’ customary fuss and bustle, came over for a kiss and headed off to join in the unpacking of the goodies.

  Lyall sat back down on the patio wall and continued scrubbing. Jane settled in a deckchair on the edge of the grass, intuition or experience making her pull it just shy of where the eventual barbecue smoke would be drifting. Hattie popped out, mouth bulging with icing and sponge, another cupcake in her left hand and a large glass of Pimm’s and tonic, with a slice of cucumber and a sprig of mint, in her right. She handed the glass to her grandmother, spat out a crumby but genuine thank you, and retook her place on the hammock swinging from a metal stand further down the long lawn.

  “So, how was London? Good birthday?”

  “Absolutely divine, Lyall,” she replied, taking the cucumber from the glass and munching on it like an unexpected but welcome snack. The fervour with which she approached anything sensual continued to endear her to Lyall, and he guessed it contributed to her undiminished popularity with her escorts. “There are always job opportunities for book doctors of your calibre, should you ever fancy a change of scene. I still know quite a few people.”

  “I appreciate the kind thought, Jane, but I’m guessing your need to move back there is tainting your view of our life up here, rather than me having some pressing need to alter my scenery. I’m perfectly happy, plus...”

  He paused; they were both all too aware of the main ties he had to the area.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I never miss the place so much as when I’m actually down there, though. I suspect I’m just that rare breed of person who is simply at their happiest wherever they are at that precise moment. Years of hard work and retreats to get to this point, though,” she continued, winking at him. She took another taste of her drink and pulled the sunglasses that were resting on her forehead down over her eyes, before sinking back into the deck chair.

  Lyall continued to scour the metal, which was starting to shine a little, a fine dust of particles scattered over the top of his black T-shirt. It was a Father’s Day gift from two years ago, with the words “You look as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot” embellished across the front.

  “So, how is the old bugger?” Jane asked, her ritzy accent softening the tone of the query.

  “Big question. Big, big question… Ach, all right, I think. He seems all right, and I see him often enough. Honestly, I don’t know.”

  And then a breathing space. Jane was not a woman for whom surface answers were sufficient, and a chance to think through and articulate what was going on made him simultaneously want to change topic and to confide all; the fact that she knew how to leave a silence without it becoming inelegant helped.

  As if on cue, Emily came out, clearly sent, with a bottle of Peroni, his second of the day and highly welcome, although he was irked by the fact that he measured of his intake so carefully.

  “How’s the comic?” Jane asked Emily. “Did I pick the right one? To be honest, sweetie, I only looked at the free gift and the pink front cover… and who could resist those kittens?”

  “Thank you, Grandma. I love its little bag and the tiara,” Emily shouted back, without the need for the usual prompt to remember her manners, as she headed back into the house.

  “I think he’s okay,” Lyall finally continued. “I mean, I know he’s better than he was, but that flat’s just wrong – what the hell is he still doing there? And I’m guessing he’s spending more time in it than out of it. I just don’t know what to do. I try not to preach, but it’s so bloody hard.”

  “He’s an exasperating man, Lyall. And you’re right, it’s hard not to nag, and it’s not something you can help him with unless he needs it… knows he needs it and asks for it… but it’s difficult for an outsider like me to witness what he’s doing, so I can only imagine how you feel. Does he see the girls much?”

  “It’s been a few months. Four, maybe five. Lorna… long story short – maybe I told her too much about his drinking, about his weird behaviour, and she won’t let him near the place at the moment. Perhaps she’s right. I just don’t know.”

  He knew exactly how many weeks it had been.

  It was a Sunday afternoon in early February and Lyall had caught the bus over to his dad’s. It was a short walk from the stop to the home, presumably for the convenience of the aged inmates (and while Alasdair referred to “retirement apartments”, a home is exactly what it was). However, from Lyall’s observations – and he tried not to see too much of this vision of a potential future he’d rather not contemplate – most of them rarely left the building.

  He’d stopped knocking after Alasdair had sold the old place and moved into Gran’s. Lyall and his family had scored slightl
y over £100,000 from the transaction, his father telling him that he’d rather he see him spend his inheritance now, while he hung on to the sheltered flat as a longer-term investment for the time being; with property prices continuing to rise slowly but steadily, it might well provide a handy little wedge further down the line. So, having been hit by the familiar stale but not unpleasant whiff of the elderly as he walked in through the main door, Lyall turned the key he’d first got when he began dropping off weekly groceries for his grandmother, eight years ago.

  The one-bedroomed flat was pleasant enough, although as a permanently temporary resident, Alasdair had done nothing with or to it in the six years he’d been there. It was not exactly a shrine to his mother, yet it was distinctively an old woman’s flat in décor. The only significant contribution Alasdair had made was the tangle of bikes and piles of bucolic magazines that Lyall had to thread his way through, stirring up a midge-like cloud of dust flecks.

  The mood was melancholy, dark, although Lyall was aware that this was probably more a manifestation of the heavy shoulder slump he invariably felt on walking into the place than anything to do with a lack of light, and on this occasion, he hesitated a little and didn’t yell out his normal warning greeting.

  The glowing screen visible from the lounge door as he entered showed a naked girl… woman really (although at 37, and with daughters, anything under 20 had become absolutely sacrosanct for Lyall). Her hair was scraped into two perky dark blonde bunches, and she was widely and incongruously splayed on an antique red velvet chaise longue, buzzing vigorously with a mammoth black dildo, the sculptured head of which kept disappearing into her silky folds. Lyall found himself momentarily paralysed by the change of timbre in the vibrator’s hum as it retreated and re-emerged. The fact that she was pink and shaved smooth added to an illusion of childhood, and Lyall could see now that she was clearly playing to a market, with freckles dotted on to her pouting face; he then saw, from an awkward side angle, the punter for whom she was performing.

  Humped in the swivel chair in which he currently spent most of his waking hours sat his father, blue and red checked flannel dressing gown cord dangling down so that the garment hung loosely on either side, a vodka bottle minus all but two fingers of spirit on the table by the laptop.

  The curtains were closed and, with the table at the far end of the small room littered with empty beer cans, the flat had the musty smell of an old pub after a busy weekend. The only light radiated from the screen on which the girl-woman sighed and panted and egged Alasdair on as he bowed in to towards her a little. He looked old; unshaven and bristly, exuding a desperation that reminded Lyall starkly of his grandmother’s last few days on this planet, when he’d visited her in the nursing home that had replaced this as her final dwelling.

  Alasdair’s left hand was placed at the edge of the desk, those long gnarly fingers laid on the wooden surface, while the right moved slowly and coaxingly over his semi-covered groin. His mouth slightly open, he spat small white flecks as his incoherent mumbles echoed the girl’s encouragement with an enthusiasm that lapsed, in the few long seconds while Lyall watched, into semi-despondency.

  He walked out of the flat and closed the door feeling profoundly sad, aware that his name was being called in the background, but no desire had ever beat so strongly within him as the need to get the fuck out of that place.

  4. Jane

  She did, of course, know precisely why Alasdair wasn’t about to darken her grandchildren’s doorstep for a while yet. Considering what her daughter had just told her about the unfortunate scene Lyall had walked in on, she just felt sorry for both father and son. And when she added this to the collection of stories Lorna had shared over the years, the repercussions of what looked like a desperately lonely descent into the bottle, she could not in truth say she wouldn’t have done the same at that stage of motherhood.

  She understood the depth of that maternal instinct to insulate your children from the nastinesses of the world. She was also aware, though, that her daughter had always seen life in more black-and-white terms, whereas for Jane the boundaries were invariably and increasingly prone to merging. Added to this, she knew, there were more dimensions to Alasdair, to anyone, than simply what you saw, and she had the advantage of a certain distance, which perhaps allowed her to be kinder.

  Their first meeting had, she supposed, been a highly staged one 12 years previously, and slightly fraught for their children, then much younger adults. They were both there clutching hands and waiting as she walked into the Mediterranean-influenced restaurant in London’s Upper Street, which, she’d been assured, catered superbly for her daughter’s newly discovered vegetarianism.

  There was a bustling little shop area as she walked in, which turned into a larger eating room down the centre of which ran two long wooden tables, space for maybe 14 people on each, and with more discrete tables for two and four lining the edges. Brass lampshades punctuated the centre of the ceiling. The place was mainly painted white, but made colourful by organic elements everywhere, the rich purples, reds, greens and yellows of fruits, vegetables and grains temptingly mixed in various combinations in bowl upon wooden bowl. Where the salads ended the cakes began, glossy and tempting. The place was not packed but already semi-buzzing by 7pm on a Thursday evening. The food smelt delectable and she was hungry.

  Lyall was, on the surface at least, as laidback as ever, if a little more attentive – concerned about her drink, her lack of spoon, and his father’s increasingly late arrival – whereas her daughter had simply been quiet, like she always got when something felt important to her. The little she’d gleaned about Lorna’s future father-in-law she intuitively liked the sound of, although the anecdotes came out in fits and spurts, which, she had to confess, possibly made him seem more compelling.

  When she pieced together the facts, he was a journalist, Scottish, had divorced Lyall’s mother as a result of what seemed simply to be a straightforward drifting apart, when the boy was just eight, and she knew both that he’d insisted on having joint custody and that there was no hint of it having been contested. Having spoken at length via Skype to Lexi, whom she wasn’t due to meet in person until the wedding in late September, she liked her a lot, and had picked up no trace of animosity towards her ex. In reality, Lexi spoke of him much more kindly than Jane would ever have spoken about Lorna’s dad. It fact, her Edinburgh uptightness softened along with her eyes when his name came up. These were all good portents.

  Lyall, she had picked up, had spent much of his childhood crossing between homes in the Scottish capital, before studying English at UCL, his first taking him straight on to a job as an editorial assistant down the road from where they now sat chatting about the menu, the smells surrounding them, increasingly keen to sample the food.

  They were just reaching that tricky stage of waiting where the small talk has fizzled out and there’s no point sinking your teeth into anything deeper, when he pitched up. Back then, not so long ago really, Alasdair cut a tall, solid presence, a self-assured man in his mid-50s dressed in a dark jacket, flamboyantly frilled white shirt and a green tartan kilt; the latter item of clothing took Jane completely by surprise, but not as much as the mesmerising effect his general demeanour had on her. At that moment, she had no idea what she’d been expecting, but this amiable and charismatic figure had most certainly not been it.

  “So, can you believe that these two youngsters haven’t learnt from the blighted lessons of their forefathers, and still insist, in the 21st century, on tying the knot?” was his opening line, as he approached the table. And after shaking hands with his son, whom he hadn’t yet seen during that visit, before clasping him into an enormous bear hug, he gripped his future daughter-in-law warmly to his chest and turned to Jane.

  “Here’s the point where I should perhaps comment on the apple not falling far from the tree, seeing two such beautiful woman standing together,” and his smile was warm, “but I would never be quite that glib.” He held her shoulder
s gently as he kissed both her cheeks.

  “Though may God strike me down if it’s not the truest thing I’ve ever said,” he whispered into her ear, a cheeky smile in his voice.

  “Hmmmm, you didn’t mention, Lyall, that your father was such an old flirt,” she said, play-pushing his left shoulder back.

  “Yeah, well, it’s one of the many things about him I’ve tried to keep hidden,” laughed Lyall, joined by his father, who muttered, “And not so much of the ‘old’, young lady.”

  As Alasdair took his place at the table, the waitress reappeared to drop off an extra menu and take his order for a large Glenmorangie, leaving the next ten minutes as a chance to catch up and peruse the food on offer.

  As they waited and chatted, Alasdair shared a little of his day in London, which had begun at 3.47 that morning, he said, in the nearby Travelodge where he was spending two nights. He was down South to interview a prominent member of the shadow cabinet who was debating resignation after what Alasdair felt was a storm in a teacup, and, he suspected, a manufactured one to get rid of the guy at that. But he wouldn’t bore them with the drearily futile machinations of the Westminster village, he said.

  Perhaps more interesting, he told his audience, was that 3.47am wake-up. At that precise and rather inconsiderate time, his immediate neighbours in the hotel had begun a loud altercation. This surprised him, he said, as he had been led to believe it was all love and honey next door. Several hours earlier he’d popped into the small and unappealing hotel bar for the final snifter of the night and bumped into a guy – mid-30s, jeans and a black casual jacket – in the process of having one bottle of red uncorked and, on the spur of the moment, adding another for good measure.

  After some banter in the lift, primarily targeted, Alasdair said, on the inebriated man’s fascination with his kilt and his heritage, and his insistence on endlessly repeating the line “Donald, where’s yer troosers?”, which had him in roaring stitches every time, they had realised they were walking the whole way together, parting only at their second-floor doors, numbers 271 and 272. He spoke with an absolute dryness and total attention to detail, coupled with the wry eye-twinkle of a chap revelling in spinning a yarn.