Oh, really? I’d heard the British countryside was awash with yuppies gone feral. ‘Oh, well OK: There’s a theory that there’s a point on each part of your outer covering – your pulse points, mostly – that corresponds with your internal organs, your bloodstream, your moods, the state of your health and so forth. Acupuncturists put needles into those points to treat people. Acupressure works on a similar theory, but with massagey sort of stuff.’
‘So far so good,’ she says.
I decide to make it as simple as possible. ‘Reflexology is sort of like acupressure. I understand which parts of your feet and hands correspond to your kidneys, your liver, your lungs, your back and so forth, and I’m trained in diagnosing which parts of your body need treatment and stimulus.’
‘Stimulus?’ (She says this in the manner of Lady Bracknell saying ‘a handbag?’.)
‘Uh-huh.’
Rufus jumps in. ‘It’s wonderful,’ he tells her. ‘She’s done it for me a couple of times and it’s extraordinary. I had a headache one time, and—’
‘Well,’ she interrupts, ‘I’ve always enjoyed a good pedicure.’
‘It’s a bit more …’ I begin to protest, then think: whoa! Melody girl! Humourless proselytiser alert!
She picks up her glass. Takes a sip, pulls a face and puts it down on the table.
‘Oh dear,’ she starts fishing about with her fingers to extract the ice cubes, ‘I’m afraid this is completely drowned. I should have said. I’d forgotten how obsessed you Antipodeans are with ice. I’m frightfully sorry.’
Rufus is on his feet. ‘I’ll get you another one.’
‘We’re out of tonic,’ I tell him. I’m a tad surprised, to be honest. Way I was raised, you say thank you if someone gives you food or a drink, and if it’s not done precisely the way you like it, you shut your bunghole and take it anyway. ‘There’s some juice, or Kinnie, or Coke, but I’m afraid we’re out of tonic. Maybe he can get you something else.’
‘Oh.’ Then, in a little don’t-mind-me-I’ll-be-noble voice, she says: ‘No, no, it’s fine.’
‘I’ll go and get some more,’ offers Rufus. ‘It’ll only take a few mins.’
‘It’s the middle of the arvo,’ I remind him. ‘The shop’ll be shut.’
‘The supermarket in Victoria will still be open,’ he replies.
‘No, no, darling, don’t be silly! I’m not having you driving up to Rabat just because I’m a silly fusspot! I won’t hear of it!’ she says in a do-it-or-I’ll-be-sighing-all-afternoon voice.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he says. ‘I was going to have to go and get some anyway, wasn’t I?’
‘Well, if you really … well, thank you, darling. You are kind.’
‘Bollocks,’ says Rufus.
I would never dare say ‘bollocks’ to my mother. ‘It’ll take ten minutes at the most.’
‘I’ll go,’ I offer. I’m still not sure if I’ve got the conversation in me yet to be left alone with Mary.
Rufus shakes his head. ‘It’ll be far quicker if I go.’
‘I know where the supermarket is!’
‘Yes, but you’re hardly decent.’
‘But it won’t take a minute …’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ He fails to grasp my meaning. And there was me thinking we were such soulmates we could finish each other’s sentences.
Another little tinkle of laughter. ‘Melody, dear, let him go! You have to let the men be useful for something! Heaven knows, they’re not use for much!’ she says in that giggly confidential tone that antifeminists always use with younger women. ‘And besides,’ she continues, ‘I’m dying to have a little girlie chat with my new daughter-in-law. Go on, Rufus! Off you go, darling! Make yourself useful!’
He heads dutifully into the kitchen and I subside into my chair. And Mary sits back in hers, leans her elbows on the arms and steeples her fingers at me. ‘Yes,’ she repeats, ‘I can’t wait to have a proper chat.’
He reappears in the doorway, shirt on and car keys bouncing in his right hand. ‘Do we need anything else while I’m there?’
Temazepam, I think. I just might need some before the evening’s out. I smile, and shake my head.
‘Some lovely olives,’ says Mary, ‘and perhaps some snacky bits. I couldn’t face the Air Malta food, and Caviar House wasn’t open when I went through Gatwick. I’ll take you both out to a celebration dinner at the Ta’Cenc tonight, but I’ll need something to keep me going.’
‘Thanks, Ma,’ says Rufus, ‘that would be lovely.’
‘Good-oh,’ she says. ‘So it’s a date. Unless I’m interrupting your plans? Sorry! Sorry, Melody! I should have checked.’
‘Naah, naah, she’ll be right,’ I say, and they both look puzzled for a moment, like I’ve just come out with a slew of Swahili. ‘It’s fine,’ I correct myself. ‘I’m cool.’
‘Now, off you go! Woman talk!’
‘Bye, then,’ says Rufus, and goes into the house once more. Mary waits as the slop slop slop of his deck shoes crosses the outer courtyard and the big wooden door bangs shut.
And then she turns, and runs her eyes from the top of my head, down the length of my body and all the way back up again.
Chapter Nine
The Upstart
It’s a full thirty seconds before she speaks, and by the time she’s finished with her caustic inspection, I feel as though I’ve been given a going-over with a wire brush. There’s no more silly coquettishness about her. And her expression, now that he’s gone, is an interesting mixture of contempt and curiosity. Eventually, she unsteeples her fingers, aligns her forearms with the arms of her chair, hands dangling loosely by her thighs, and speaks.
‘So. You’ve landed on your feet, haven’t you?’ she says, in a tone that allows me to harbour no doubts that I might have got the wrong end of the stick. Lady Mary Callington-Warbeck-Wattestone means business, and an upstart like me is not a foe who alarms her.
I take a long, slow drink of water to give myself some thinking time. It’s always useful to have a prop or two to hand for these sorts of contingencies. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons so many people still smoke. Then I put my glass back on the table, very carefully and deliberately, lining it up so that the edge is up against the flourish of the cast-iron vine that runs around its surface. And then I smile and say: ‘Yip. I reckon I have.’
I don’t say any more. Purposefully, I cross my hands on the table and sit in silence, waiting to see what comes next.
Lady Mary shows off her own black belt in prop usage. She reaches sideways and plucks from the ground by her left ankle the small, plain black clutch bag she was carrying when she entered my world. Opens it and produces a lipstick that is encased in one of those tampon-shaped compacts people give each other as stocking-fillers and then usually store in backs of drawers to pass on to someone else. Quietly and deliberately, she twists the base, producing an inch-long, immaculate stick of going-on-apricot pink greasepaint, which has been worn, I notice, on both sides. Holding up the tiny mirror built into the inside of the compact lid, she sweeps the stick once across her lower lip, twice across her upper, crushes the lips together to set the colour, then retracts the stick, replaces the lid, slips the whole into the compact, pops the popper, returns it to the clutch bag, closes the catch on the bag, leans sideways and replaces it upon the ground. ‘Take that, whippersnapper!’ each movement says. ‘Did you think you could outmanoeuvre me with a water glass? Just wait till you see what I can do with a teaspoon!’
And still I wait. I’m glad I didn’t do anything as foolish as smile when I started; the expression would be all over the place after such a lengthy performance.
Eventually, she says: ‘There isn’t any money, you know. Not for you, anyway.’
This brings me up with a jolt. This isn’t a needling little prod like the last one, a small experiment to see how I will react. This is a direct accusation.
‘Sorry?’ I say.
‘I’m sure you are,’ she
says. Then: ‘Would it be too much of an imposition to ask you for a glass of water?’
I get to my feet. ‘Fridge water?’
‘Thank you.’
I’m surprised she’s given me this much thinking time. Although, of course, I quickly realise that what she’s trying to give me is stewing time. What she wants is for me to get so worked up that Rufus will come back to find me snarling. She’s smart. I guess she’s already figured that I might have a bit of a temper on me, and is hoping that she can needle me enough to show her son what I look like when something’s got me going.
In the kitchen, pulse going like the clappers, I roll the water bottle over my forehead, my cheeks and the back of my neck, and concentrate for a moment on lowering my heart rate. I take half a dozen deep breaths, do a bit of counting, and, once the moment of panic has begun to subside, I return to my mother-in-law.
She accepts the glass without thanks, takes a sip.
‘No,’ she continues, as though this hiatus had never happened, ‘Rufus hasn’t got much more than a bean to rub together. It’s all in trust, I’m afraid. Has been for years. Since the socialists started trying to get their hands on it.’
‘I may be Australian,’ I inform her, ‘but I’m not totally wet behind the ears.’
‘I’m sure you aren’t,’ she says drily. ‘I just thought I should let you know. There are so many fortune-hunters in the world,’ she says pointedly, ‘and so many of them end up disappointed.’
I take another sip of water, glance down at my watch. He’s only been gone five minutes. If he doesn’t make it back quickly, I’m in deep, deep shtook. So I decide to take the bull by the horns. ‘Mary,’ I ask as pleasantly as I can manage, ‘are you implying that I’ve married Rufus for his money? Because, you know, that’s not the case.’
She sips in turn. ‘It’s not always money. Cachet. Social status. He’s a very attractive man from many points of view.’
‘He certainly is. It sort of struck me the first time I clapped eyes on him. But believe me, I didn’t know anything about this landed gentry sh—’ I catch myself, correct my language in a hurry ‘—ebang until yesterday afternoon. He kept very shtum about that. Seriously. As far as I was concerned, he was ordinary. Well, not ordinary. Obviously. I wouldn’t have married an ordinary fella.’
Call-me-Mary lets out a laugh that’s a million miles away from the men-in-the-room fairy tinkle she affected when we first met. A rooster-like explosion of disbelief and disdain.
‘So how exactly was I supposed to tell? With my magical powers of perception?’
‘Oh, don’t give me that,’ she snaps. ‘As you said yourself, you’re hardly wet behind the ears. Where did you think this house came from? And his accent? Surely you’re not trying to tell me you couldn’t tell something from his accent?’
I force myself to relax against the back of the chair. ‘Mary,’ I say, and allow just a little trickle of I’m-indulging-you into my voice, ‘if your film industry is to be believed, ninety-five per cent of your population talks like Rufus, and anybody who doesn’t is probably carrying a gun. And besides, just look at him! The guy dresses like a scarecrow! Jeez. If I saw him in a bar, I’d probably think he was the cleaner come early.’
She blinks. Well, I guess blinks is the right word for it. Her upper lashes snap down to meet the lower ones, like the eyelids on an old china doll. ‘I don’t have the first clue what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, come on, Mary. That linen suit with the elbow patches? Those checked shirts with the holes in the cuffs that look like they ought to be dishcloths? The tweed jacket? The lining on that must have gone while he was still learning to tie his shoelaces.’
‘It’s a hacking jacket,’ she replies icily, ‘and it was his grandfather’s.’
What in hell’s name is a hacking jacket? Something you wear for coughing in?
‘Well, exactly,’ I say. ‘I mean, what sort of rich fella wears hand-me-downs?’
The blink again. ‘The sort,’ she replies – and I think, yes, I’ve got her grinding her teeth – ‘who has clothes to inherit.’
‘Oh, right,’ I reply, injecting as much airiness into the words as I can muster. ‘My lot only ever have one suit at a time, and they tend to be buried in it.’
A long, frosty silence. I check my watch. Ten minutes now. Hopefully he will be queuing at the checkout, or at least at the deli counter.
‘How’s your water?’ I ask.
‘Fine,’ she snaps again, ‘Fine. It’s water. How else would it be?’
‘Just asking,’ I say. I’m beginning to think that I might quite enjoy winding this woman up. I mean, if she’s going to think I’m a peasant, I may as well take it all the way. I bury my face in my glass to hide the smile that has started to play across my lips.
Eventually she can’t resist beginning to speak again. ‘So. You do something that involves feet?’
I nod. Think: I must remember to ask her what she does later. Just give her a little time to get settled in, first.
‘And how about the rest of the family?’ she asks. ‘Any more chiropodists in the family? Or are you the only one?’
I go for it, really go for it. Lay on the accent like peanut butter. ‘Naooouw waaay!’ I cry, hamming it up till her eardrums reverberate. ‘OI’m the inderlik-chewull in moy fimmer-luy.’
There’s a long pause, and I think that perhaps she might have realised that I’m jerking her chain. But the encrusted horror in the ‘rii-ull-uh’ that emerges from her mouth suggests that she hasn’t picked up on it at all, but has merely adjusted her own accent to show the contrast with my own proletarian vowels. I’ve noticed this before, actually: the very grand rarely have what anyone else would call a sense of humour, especially about themselves. I suppose a sense of humour is hard to develop when you’ve got so many noses wedged up your butt.
‘Aow, yih! They were happy as Larry when I went to college when I was twenty-three. An ology in the family!’
‘Really,’ she says again. ‘And what does your father do?’
‘Whaddya think? He’s a Greek Cypriot, for crying out loud. Obviously, he bought a cab, like everybody else.’
‘A cab?’
‘Yih. Done pretty nicely out of it, as well.’ Yeah. But I’m not going to tell you the half of it.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yih. After he married my old girl he jumped over the wall and set up a firm of his own. My mum helped out in the office, you know? They’re pretty much retired now, but life’s treated them pretty good, all told.’
Mary, by this time, has the sort of ghastly smile on her face that you usually only see stuck to the corners of cathedrals. ‘A taxi firm? How … Well. And weren’t you tempted to follow in their footsteps?’
‘Naaaoooouuuuw!’ I give her a really long one, watch her recoil. ‘My brother, Costa, did, though. Dad’s more of a sleeping partner these days.’
‘Costa?’
‘Yes. Like the coffee.’
‘Like the coffee,’ she echoes, and it’s evident that she’s not got the first inkling as to what I’m on about.
‘Yeah, yeah, but that’s not him. Though he’s in catering as well.’
‘In catering?’ The ‘handbag’ accent is right back. ‘What sort of catering? A restaurant?’
‘Kebabs,’ I say, and almost squirm with pleasure at the look of abject misery that crosses her face.
This is great. She thought she was going to put the frighteners on me, and I’ve turned it right on its head. Let’s face it: my mother-in-law may have had some fantasies about the unsuitability of my background, but what I’m telling her is all her wildest nightmares come true. I’m not going to let her off the hook.
‘Kebabs?’ Her voice is faint. ‘As in doner kebabs?’ She pronounces it ‘dough-ner’, as in blood.
‘Oh, yih. Doner, shish, shawarma, kofte, iskender. Pretty much anything you want, really. They’re pretty popular, and not just with the ethnic communities.’
&nb
sp; I pronounce ‘ethnic’ ‘ith-nikk’, and watch my mother-in-law close her eyes and suppress a shudder. This is fun. This is really fun.
‘He and Dad had this great idea, and it sort of mushroomed,’ I tell her. ‘Like, you know how a guy likes a few bevvies and a takeaway of an evening? And I don’t know if you know this, but our police have been cracking down on drink-driving lately?’
Mary says nothing. I don’t know if she thinks I’m extracting the Michael or not. Not, as it happens. Well, only with my delivery.
‘Anyways, they thought up the solution. Got franchises across most of the eastern seaboard. You’ve probably heard of them. KebabCab?’ I announce, keeping the relish (mild chilli, of course) out of my voice as best I can. ‘Get your fast food while you wait. Hundred-dollar surcharge if you chunder on the ride home.’
Eventually, and in a voice that contains more than a hint of a tremor, she says: ‘Well, you’re certainly going to find your new life a bit of a contrast with what you’re used to.’
‘No worries, Lady M,’ I quack, watching her jerk about like a marionette, ‘my old girl’s always kept a neat house, and if there’s no money, we could always think about opening up a couple of franchises in the grounds, eh?’
This time, I think I’ve gone too far. The light flush that has been playing over Mary’s complexion drains away, blanching her face. And, having begun to slump as I described my family history to her, she suddenly shoots erect as though she’s just got back from her duchess masterclass.
‘I didn’t say,’ she says, enunciating with vicious clarity, ‘that there was no money. I said that there was no money for you.’
It’s like having a bucket of cold water thrown over me. Once again I’m brought up short. My mother can be pretty scary, but this woman seems to have a built-in ice machine.
She raises her chin, the better to look down her nose at me, says: ‘I’ve got your measure, young woman. My son may be behaving like a cunt-struck teenager –’
It’s my turn to recoil. Cunt-struck? Cunt-struck? Where in the name of God did she learn a phrase like that?
Simply Heaven Page 6
