I hold back from pointing out that she must have been out to get here. She doesn’t look in the mood to enjoy a joke. She’s home from college early. Teacher training is it? I can’t remember. Yes, teacher training. She looks very pale.
‘I had to come and see you.’
‘It’s good to see you, Clare. Everything all right at college?’
‘No,’ she says. She stares at me. Her ‘no’ swells like a bubble she’s blowing, one that will fill the whole church.
‘Well, why is that now, Clare? Are you having problems?’ I sit on the pew half-turned towards her and smile encouragingly. I have learned all this recently at a counselling course I was sent on. It was supposed to improve our skills in the confessional. Don’t judge. Listen. Give the other person space. Think about your body language. I’ve never felt quite natural since.
‘I can’t stand it any more,’ says Clare, in a low, flat voice.
‘What is it you can’t stand, Clare?’ That was another thing the course told us. Communicate. Use first names. Be there for the other person.
‘The way you are,’ she says, looking straight into my eyes. I’m so knocked back that I forget all about counselling her.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Pretending all the time. Pretending nothing’s ever happened. Treating me just like anyone else.’
‘Now wait a minute, Clare.’ We’ve had a course on this too. It’s not uncommon, they told us. Women get ideas about priests. Fixations. They ring you up all the time. They’re forever in and out of the presbytery at late hours, helping organize the Eucharistic Ministers’ rota or the Mother Teresa jumble sale. But I have to say I’ve never been troubled in that way myself.
‘Don’t tell me to wait a minute,’ she spits out, ‘I’ve been waiting three months already.’
‘Clare, I think you’ve got hold of the wrong idea –’
‘Oh have I!’ she almost shouts. ‘Have I! And what about all those letters you’ve written to me? What about what happened at Easter?’
It’s a delusion. A complete delusion. I’ve heard of these, too. It’s all coming clear. She imagines we’ve had – well, I suppose you would have to call it a relationship. A relationship. I look at her pale face and the soft brown hair round it, always very clean, swinging with the shape of her head. Surely a girl like Clare doesn’t need to be having delusions.
‘I thought a priest would be different, but men are all the same!’ shouts Clare, and puts her hands over her face. I think she’s crying, but she doesn’t sob, or go red, or need a handkerchief. She takes away her hands, and then there’s a silence, while she picks at the edge of a First Communion poster and glares at me.
I have two alternatives. I could gently counsel Clare into accepting reality, or I could rage back, protesting my innocence and telling her she is mad. But I do neither. A breeze moves in the dark, quiet church. It lifts her hair and lets it fall against the skin of her neck. I find myself smiling. The smile curls round my face like a cat who has come to sleep on a warm hearth. For a long time, it seems, Clare’s angry eyes meet mine while my smile continues to grow and settle as if it has come to live with me. The busyness of the morning falls far away, like the clutter swept into the bin-bags. I have no words for what I am feeling. I smile at Clare.
Slowly, her face changes. First she looks puzzled, then little by little a dull pink flush sweeps up over her pale skin, to the edge of her shiny, clean brown hair. Suddenly she looks down and fumbles with the straps of a brown bag she wears slung over one shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, Father,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –’
She looks quite different. Not flaming with anger. Not even looking me in the eyes any more.
‘It was stupid. It was a stupid idea. Oh, I feel so embarrassed.’
And she looks it.
‘You made a mistake, that’s all,’ I say, as gently as I can. My smile has gone.
‘No. No, you don’t understand. It was a –’ she pauses, and then she gets the word out, ‘joke.’
‘Joke.’
‘Well, not really a joke,’ she says hurriedly. ‘It was to raise money for charity. We were all sponsored to do our most embarrassing thing. You know Rosie Tyler? She’s from the parish. She’s got to walk down the High Street wearing a see-through blouse. It’s for charity, you see. So I thought my most embarrassing thing would be …’ she tails off.
‘Do they all –’ I cough. My voice always gives out on Sundays after the Masses. ‘Do they all – know what it was? What you were going to do?’
‘Oh no! No!’ Her flush is fading. ‘Nobody knows, except the student organizer. Otherwise it’d be awful, wouldn’t it? We just have to promise that it really is our most embarrassing thing and it’s not illegal. Nobody checks up. Well, they couldn’t really, could they?’
‘How much will you make?’ I ask.
‘I’ve been sponsored for fifty-eight pounds,’ she says, quite proudly.
‘Well, Clare, what do you need? A signed statement saying you’ve done it?’
‘Oh no, nothing like that. They take our word for it. I mean it’s not that serious.’
I grin, she grins back. I walk her to the back of the church, talking of anything. How are her studies going? Her parents will be glad to have her home for the summer. No, of course it’s all right, Clare. Maybe I’ll be putting it in one of my sermons. I could do with some new jokes.
The door opens, letting in a slice of dazzling sun, and she smiles and waves, relieved that I’ve taken it so well, her clean hair bouncing and shining. I wave back, then I shut the door after her.
It’s not that serious. A joke. How could it be anything else? A girl staring at me like that, really looking at me. Her face pale, then flushed red. Wanting something from me. Her clean hair, her warm skin.
‘A grand day, Father.’
‘Yes, a grand day.’
Family Meetings
Not eat meat! What do you mean, not eat meat? Everybody eats meat, why do you have to be so special? You’ll get anaemic. You’re pale and pasty enough as it is. Just look at you. And you’re always tired. Always complaining when I ask you to do anything. No wonder. How can you expect to have any energy if you don’t eat meat? I might have known there’d be some nonsense or another as soon as you went away to college.
Crayfish. What about crayfish? You’re not telling me you call crayfish meat! Things with claws that scuttle about at the bottom of the river, you can’t call them meat. Meat doesn’t scuttle about.
You’re going to upset Pappy. You know how he loves to barbecue for you children.
He’s missed you, you know.
Besides, just look at the price of all that fresh fruit you’re eating! And you gobbled up nearly the whole of that jar of peanut butter.
I just don’t understand you any more. What do you come home for if it’s just to shut yourself away in your room the whole weekend, eating peanut butter and apples?
But when you smell it cooking on the barbecue, doesn’t it make you feel hungry? Just a little bit? Ulli?
‘Mummy, I’ve got a fantastic idea!’ says eight-year-old Ulli. ‘I’m going to bake a cake for all of us this afternoon, then at seven o’clock I’m going to ring my bicycle bell and it’ll be time for the meeting.’
Ulli’s mother turns round from the desk where she is adding up figures in a large blue stiff-bound book. She seems to find it difficult to take in the sight of her daughter.
‘What? What meeting?’
‘I’ve decided we’re going to have a family meeting. We each have a sheet of paper and one of my pencils, my new ones. Then we have to write down all the things we want to talk about in the meeting.’
‘What do we want to talk about?’ asks her mother. The lazy edge to her voice is very familiar to Ulli, but this time she ignores it. She plunges on.
‘It’s a meeting about the family. It’s about what we like and what we
don’t like, and how we can improve the family.’
‘Is this one of your projects from school? One of Miss Ilmanen’s pet ideas?’
‘No, it’s my idea! I’ve just thought of it. We’ll sit round in a circle. We can have the cake while we’re writing the things down.’
‘The boys won’t do it.’
‘It’s ice hockey tonight. They don’t have to. Just you and me and Pappy?’
‘Well. All right. As long as it doesn’t take too long. I’ve got work to do.’
Ulli’s mother would like to turn back to her work, but somehow it’s hard to do that when her daughter is standing there, glossy with pleasure over some nonsense that Silja really can’t understand.
‘What kind of cake will you make?’ she asks at last.
‘A lemon cake. You don’t like coffee, and Pappy doesn’t like chocolate.’
‘For goodness sake don’t try to do it without the recipe card, the way you did last time. That sort of thing is only funny once.’
‘No, Mummy.’
‘Be careful in the kitchen. I don’t expect to have to clear things up after you. Good cooks tidy their own mess, you know.’
‘Yes, Mummy. You won’t know I’ve even made a cake, I promise. Oh yes you will! You’ll smell it baking.’
‘You’d better tie your hair back. Here, let me. There you are. Now off you go. I mustn’t lose my place in this.’
At one minute to seven, Ulli stands poised with her bicycle bell outside the sitting-room. Her mother is still deep in accounts. Pappy is pouring out drinks for the adults. Ulli races back to the kitchen to fetch herself a glass of juice.
‘Silja! Come on now!’ shouts Pappy. Ulli wishes he wouldn’t. He takes sides every time. Two against one, one against two. Now Mummy won’t join in properly.
‘Mummy!’ she calls, trying to make her voice polite and yet strong enough to carry through to her mother.
‘All right, all right. There’s no need to shout, Ulli. I’m here,’ says Silja. She comes in, blinking because she has only just taken off her glasses. Her fine dark hair is tangled and there is a red dint on her nose where the bridge of her glasses pinches it. Her eyes look very blue, Ulli thinks. They look through and past her family.
‘Here I am,’ she repeats, smoothing her dark red skirt over her hips.
‘You can sit where you like,’ says Ulli, taking her mother’s hand and towing her into the sitting-room.
Ulli has put out three of the pale beech dining chairs in a circle in the middle of the best rug. On each chair there is a sheet of paper, a pencil, and a blue or a green or a violet file to lean on. In the centre of the circle there is an iced lemon cake, marked into generous wedges, a jug of water and three tumblers.
‘Choose a colour, Mummy, then you can sit in that chair.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter where I sit,’ says Silja.
‘It does, it does, Mummy! Choose your favourite colour. Blue or violet or green.’
‘Don’t be silly Ulli, you should know my taste by now, I hope. I like warm colours. Red and yellow and gold.’
‘But what about out of these? You’ve got to choose.’
‘Very well then. Blue.’
‘Then this is where you sit. Take your piece of paper.’
Pappy, Mummy and Ulli all sit down in their chairs. Ulli cuts the cake. Pappy takes the large slice she holds out to him, but Mummy only wants a taste.
‘Half that, Ulli!’
Don’t try to give her all that, you little idiot! You know she can’t stand it. You know she’s got a thing about other people putting food on her plate. Remember how Pappy used to pick up her dinner plate with its one potato and little heap of red cabbage, and tell her she couldn’t go on like this, she was starving herself. And he’d pick up the serving spoon and put on more potatoes, one, two, three, the biggest, best ones he could find, and he’d hand her back the plate with the sort of flourish that men only use when they’re taking their wives out to dinner in company. She never ate the potatoes. After that she wouldn’t even eat the one potato she’d chosen for herself. She’d start whisking plates around and then the boys would say they were still starving and so they’d get the potatoes, slid off her plate.
And I’d sit there with my mouth closed, eating just what I’d been given and no more. No wonder Pekka used to pinch my leg under the table.
Mummy wasn’t too thin.
Let’s face it, she just didn’t like cake. She had never liked cake. Not even cakes made by her dear little daughter who had read far too many children’s stories about little girls whose mothers died and left them to take charge of the kitchen and the younger children who learned to love their big sister just as much as their real mother. And of course, to take charge of the father. The father who watched anxiously in case his little daughter grew old before her time. The father who put out a hand to press hers affectionately when she brought him his evening coffee and shooed the little blonde toddler into the kitchen so that Pappy could have his five minutes with the newspaper. The father who looked up in the long quiet evenings to see his faithful little daughter darning in the big chair opposite which had been her mother’s, her fair head drooping under the lamplight …
White cakes, oozing buttercream fillings as viscid as oil. The tops dredged with sugar. A stink of vanilla in the kitchen all afternoon.
‘Oh no, Mummy, I don’t want any. You have it.’
White cakes that set her mother’s teeth on edge.
Ulli turns over a sheet of paper which has been lying facedown on the rug. It has a heading in red ink, much decorated with curls and squiggles, rather like the curls and squiggles with which she decorates her cakes. The text is HOW TO IMPROVE THE FAMILY. Seeing it down like that in red and white, Ulli’s mother laughs.
‘If this is part of a school project, Ulli,’ she says, ‘I think I’d rather you left it at home.’
‘Now, we each take our piece of paper and write down all the things we do like and we don’t like, and then how to improve the family.’
‘So are you the chairman?’ asks Pappy.
‘No, Mummy is. I’m the person who collects the papers and reads them – what’s that called?’
‘The secretary,’ says Pappy. ‘Then I’ll be treasurer.’
‘What’s that, Pappy?’
‘The one who gets the money,’ he says with a grim little smile at Silja.
‘Or the one who spends it,’ she responds.
‘It’s time to do the writing,’ says Ulli. ‘And if you want more cake you can have it while we’re reading out.’
For a few minutes no one speaks. Silja jots down a few words, casual, bored. Then she tenses over her paper. She writes faster and faster, covering her sheet of file paper with spiky writing. Her smile has gone. Pappy makes headings and writes neatly under each one. Ulli writes steadily and without hesitations, as if she is copying out a composition which she has already done in rough.
‘Time to give in the papers,’ she says.
The papers are collected and shuffled.
‘You’ll never be able to read mine,’ says Pappy, who is proud of his strong, flowing black handwriting, which looks perfectly uniform but is in fact very hard to read.
‘Yes, I will,’ says Ulli. ‘You’ll see in a minute. Now, I’ll start with the things we don’t like.’
‘Give mine back a minute,’ says Silja abruptly.
Ulli is about to do so, but Pappy puts out his hand and stops her.
‘No, Ulli, read it as it is. After all we’re supposed to be honest, aren’t we? Isn’t that the idea?’
‘For Heaven’s sake!’ sighs Ulli’s mother. ‘Have it your own way.’
‘ “THINGS I DON’T LIKE ABOUT THE FAMILY”,’ reads Ulli. ‘ “Pappy and the boys peeing on the toilet rug. Pappy and the kids following me into my bedroom whenever I go in there to get five minutes’ peace, just to ask me whether I’m all right. Not having anywhere private except the bathroom, and after more than ten m
inutes you start bashing on the door.” This must be Mummy’s,’ adds Ulli. ‘Oh, there’s another bit. “Ulli sulking all day long and then being Miss Sunshine as soon as Pappy steps in the door.” I can’t read this last bit.’
‘It begins, “Miss Ilmanen”,’ says Silja.
‘Oh, I didn’t think it could be that. You can’t put Miss Ilmanen in, Mummy. She’s not part of the family.’
‘Isn’t she? You’d think she was from the way you go on about her. Miss Ilmanen says this. Miss Ilmanen doesn’t like that. Miss Ilmanen says the evening meal together is the centre of family life. Miss Ilmanen’s got a beautiful new wool skirt in blue, my favourite colour. Miss Ilmanen liked my story. I’m sick of the sound of “Miss Ilmanen”, if you want to know. She seems a very ordinary young woman to me.’
There is silence while Ulli’s fingers scrabble for the next piece of paper.
‘You read it, Pappy,’ she whispers.
‘This is mine,’ says Pappy. ‘ “THINGS I WOULD DO TO IMPROVE THE FAMILY.
Learn to speak Greek
Have plastic surgery
Dig for gold under the silver birches
Write a best-selling autobiography.” ’
‘But it’s all nonsense, Pappy! You haven’t done it properly.’
‘Yes, it’s all nonsense, chicken. That’s the only way I can make sense of it.’
Ulli’s face is no longer flushed. It is pale, and the little scar over her right eye which she got ice-skating last winter looks dark. She reaches down and picks up her own sheet of paper.
‘I’ll read mine,’ she says. ‘ “THINGS I LIKE ABOUT THE FAMILY: Mummy. Pappy, Jorma, Pekka, Kai. When we do things together. When I do cooking and everybody likes it. Our house. THINGS WHICH WOULD IMPROVE THE FAMILY:
We should not have bad temper or argues.
Pekka should not pick on Kai.
We should be more friendly.
We should have respect for each other.” ’
‘I’m sure she must have done this at school,’ says Silja to Pappy. ‘Have respect! Where’s she got that from?’
‘Not from home, that’s for sure,’ says Pappy, and then there is a stony, glittering silence.
Love of Fat Men Page 10
