by Louise Dean
Chapter 55
When their three faces pop up at the window, Marina waves the kids off with a brisk wrist. She is standing alongside Dave in the dining room. Because they resist, she taps on the window.
Pearl is leaning against Astrid, staring at her hands and smoothing over the recessed pale band of skin that persists on her wedding finger. ‘Somewhere in those woods the ring is.’
Her weight has Astrid pinned.
‘You won’t find it now.’
‘Don’t want to find it. That’s why I threw it away. I chucked it as far as I could.’
Coming back to sit on the sofa, Marina turns her head emphatically away from Pearl’s boast and scans the mantelpiece and counts two photos of Dave and three of Nick. Pearl seems to think women can speak their minds. She never had a mother to teach her; Pearl’s mother died from TB and she was brought up by her father, a smallholder. He was a hothead, by all accounts, an opinionated widower. Pearl had been made in his image. She behaved like a man, and upset people.
‘No, I wasn’t afraid to live on my own,’ she says, running on machismo boosted by the brandy. ‘I know some people are. Some people can’t bear to go five minutes on their own. Some women latch on to men and that’s it. Not you, Astrid.’
‘All right, Mum, give it a rest,’ says Dave, glancing at Marina.
‘I’ll speak as I find.’
‘Yes, but Mum, we’ve got our dad up there dead, haven’t we? It’s not a good time.’
‘I’ve had plenty of time to be quiet. I’ve had twenty years or more. I don’t know what I was punished for but I was punished all right. I don’t think you’ve asked me over to your place more than a handful of times. Not that I’d have gone. No, I’m a bloody nuisance, I am.’
‘Oh, Pearl!’ says Marina.
‘You don’t like me!’
‘That’s not true. It’s just too much gets said. I don’t know why we have to have it. I didn’t grow up with that sort of thing. It upsets me.’
‘Upsets you!’ Pearl says scornfully. ‘You’re terrified you’ll end up like me, you are. You think, Let the old witch stay put. You’re afraid of being me.’
Nobody says a word. Pearl may speak her mind, but no one else will. And it’s a mercy, Astrid thinks, because minds change.
She looks behind Pearl’s glasses. The glasses magnify her eyes but, behind them, the eyes are little frightened blinking things. Women, because they love, she thinks, have to be able to go back on things, so as not to lose what they love. No matter how Dave wants to dress it up, Ken has died alone.
The stairs shudder and Roger’s coming down backwards, as if from a tree house. He stands before them with his mouth open. He remembers to close it. He clears his throat.
‘Your father. He’s not dead, only sleeping.’
‘Thank you,’ says Nick, with a formal nod.
‘Yes, thank you,’ says Dave. ‘Do you need a hand to bring the body down now? Because I doubt that my mother is going to want to give the old man a bed for the night, if you catch my drift, and we’d best be moving things along now.’
‘He’s not dead, your father, only sleeping.’
‘All right, mate, that’s smashing. Very comforting, thanks, but it’s getting dark and we’d best think about getting the kids home. Come on, Nick, let’s go and see if we can bring him down between us.’
On the landing Dave turns, with eyebrows raised, to say to Nick, ‘Talk about gormless.’
They’re at the bedroom door, and tentative, when they hear Audrey saying, ‘I think I’ll need my aneurism hook.’
Dave throws open the door. The lampshade swings, light ranges around the room, swooning up and down the walls. The funeral director’s holding on to their father by his ears, shaking his head.
‘What’s going on in here?’ cries Dave.
The lamp steadies and the room comes to a standstill.
Ken blinks and licks his lips. ‘All right, boys?’
Chapter 56
When it turned out that Ken wasn’t dead, the undertakers enquired with Astrid for directions to the Michelin-starred restaurant in the village. She took them to the door and hesitated over its proper name for the purpose of directory enquiries. She glanced back at the sitting room, and decided against asking around the room. It was a quiet night, they’d just give it a whirl without a reservation, the undertakers said.
‘So, he’s not dead at all then,’ said Matt, coming into the kitchen, jerking his thumb at the departing undertakers.
‘No, love, no. It turns out he was only having a nap.’ She raised her eyebrows. With the interval evidently over, the three children resumed their places on the hearth, knees clasped for the rest of the show.
‘All right?’ said Ken from the sofa, when they came into the front room. ‘I tell you what, I feel a bit rough. I dunno whether I didn’t have a stroke, or something, up there. I dunno. I can’t say.’
‘It turns out he’s just been having a kip up there!’ Dave shouted at the kids as if they were in on it somehow.
‘For’y winks; it can’t ’ave bin more, son.’
Dave was hopping around like a hobgoblin, going from one foot to the other, while the old man sat on the sofa, mystified and enraptured, kept shaking his head and blowing out.
‘Rip Van Bleeding Winkle he is,’ said Pearl to the kids, nodding at Ken.
‘For’y winks it was,’ Ken insisted. ‘Thass whaddit felt like anyway.’
‘You old sod!’ Dave was dark red.
‘I come over all funny, di’n’ I? Couldn’t ’elp it.’
‘My arse,’ said Pearl, lifting one side of her bottom and poking it with a finger to make it clear to the children what she meant.
‘’Ere, Astrid,’ the old man said with a chortle, reaching across to the armchair and picking at her sleeve, ‘’ere, Astrid, I bet when Jesus come to life ag’in, he didn’t get this sort of stick, did ’e?’
‘Even the dead don’t wan’ ’im!’ Dave was losing it. ‘He only had me crying.’
‘Thass more than anyone else did,’ said Ken. ‘I ’spect.’
‘You were bloody listening, weren’t you?’ Dave slapped his own head. ‘I tell you what . . . I mean, you just couldn’t make it up, could you!’
Marina told him not to hit himself. He said it helped; he said it was helping him think straight.
‘You’ll give yourself a headache,’ she said. ‘Try and keep it together, Dave.’
‘I’m sick of keeping it together! All I ever done was keep it together when there weren’t nothink to keep together.’
‘Well, I’m not dead, am I?’ said Ken, looking pleased. ‘I mean, there is that.’
Dave slapped his forehead again. Marina told the kids to get their things.
‘There’s her there!’ Dave pointed the sniper of his arm at his mother first. ‘Not so much as a kiss ’allo, shouting bloody blue murder at the bloody dog. I mean, that ain’t no sort of welcome, is it? And then she’s cuddling up with old Golden Boy there, and not seen him in twenty years. And telling us off for not having her round more! I mean, Christ! When she did come round it was all moan, moan, moan, the kids this and that, don’t they get on your nerves, and why do we fuss over ’em so much, and weren’t they ugly babies, and don’t expect too much of them school-wise . . . Meanwhile I’ve been subbing her to keep this sodding fantasy of hers running. Self-sufficient! What a joke!’ He mimicked putting a phone to his ear. ‘’Ere, Dave, you wouldn’t believe what this plumber fella wants. You couldn’t send someone, could you? ’Ere, Dave, this council tax is a shocker. You couldn’t pay it, could you? Only its cheaper when you pay it!’
Just back from the dead, Ken was loving every minute of it. He was grinning from ear to ear, and when Dave seemed to hit a high note, he’d whoop, and stamp his feet like he was at a barn dance or a spiritualist church. ‘Go on, son, you let it all out! You get it off your chest. You tell ’em!’
‘Nothing nice ever comes out of her mouth. But th
at’s a family trait, innit? Apart from when it comes to me. I mean, I’ve had to keep it buttoned ’a’n’ I? I remember standing here, in the exact same spot I’m standing now, when I was fifteen, saying nothing, not a peep, while they brought the whole pack of cards down, the three of them . . .’
‘Dave,’ Nick intervened.
‘No, Nick! No. Nick! Nick? Who are you anyway? The prodigal son, she said, didn’t she? More like Walter Fucking Mitty. You weren’t off eating peapods or husks or whatever, were you? No, mate, you were living it up, and never a second glance behind, while me, this here great dope,’ he slapped his forehead again, ‘the butt of all your jokes since I was born, was giving her a bit of cash and takin’ orders from flaming Lazarus ’ere. Yes, you were so busy, weren’t you! Shagging Eastern Europeans! And him, Lazarus, he’s been like a torment to me, he ’as!’
He pointed out their father, who smiled and nodded and shook his head, all modest delight, as if he were hearing an after-dinner speech in his honour.
‘The miserable old shit! What’s wrong with magnolia, David? No one ever complains about magnolia! Oy, that ain’t level, son.
You’ll have to take that down and start again. And the old chestnut: Nick’s done well, innie? D’y’ever ’ear from him then? Wass ’e say then? Where is ’e now then? Yes, too big to call any of us. And us,’ he pointed out his wife, ‘we’ve had to take it, we’ve had to put up with it and, I tell you what, she’s even said to me, her, she’s said to me, Wouldn’t life be easier, Dave, if we could just move away, start up again, someplace . . .? I nearly broke my back keeping it all together, and for peanuts, out of duty really, and I never did what other blokes do, I never went on benders, I never went with other women, nothing. Take this bin out, Davie. Change that handle, will you, Davie? Why don’t we go on holidays, Dad? When I hear my name said, my heart sinks, it does. Honest. Because it’s never going to be good, it’s not going to be anything good. I should have changed my flamin’ name an’ all. You know, call me sodding Mike, or something.’ Laura mouthed ‘Mike’ at the other two and made a face and the three of them had to put their hands over their mouths to stop themselves laughing.
He was standing holding his forearms. He let a finger point like a pistol, which he waved at all of them, back and forth.
‘Well, I’ve got some news for you lot. ’Ere, Matt, you can look me up some flights on the Internet next. I want to go on a holiday. I want a break from you lot. A long one. Might not even come back.’
There was not a sound in the room, until Ken leant over on to one side of his body and cracked a knee joint. ‘Stiff now,’ he said. ‘You get stiff after sitting a while.’
‘Dave,’ Marina said.
Dave was staring at his sports socks. He made a face. ‘You can come with me, if you want,’ he said, shrugging and subsiding but not looking at anyone. ‘The kids can come an’ all. But none of this Dad that and Dad the other. I’ve had a guts full.’
‘I tell you what, i’n’ this good, eh? Here we are all together again,’ Ken said, rubbing his hands together and smiling around the room. ‘Here we are.’
And he turned to Pearl and patted her knee. Then, spotting something, he peered in at her face and, using his knuckle, so softly, he staunched the tear on her cheek and let it wet the back of his hand, and she looked at him as he did, and for a moment their expressions were the same.
Chapter 57
Astrid was ‘taking family time’. She had Katie take over on the front desk at the spa. Ken had come to stay on what, Nick assured her, was a temporary basis for the sake of his health, mental and physical, so she said to Nick she’d take the time off to mind him and plan the wedding at the same time. She ran Ken back and forth from Pearl’s on a daily basis, leaving him there after school drop-off and picking him up before she went to get Laura. The arrangement suited; she got Ken off her hands, Pearl got garden help, and Ken was much obliged to the ladies all round, a condition he seemed to have become accustomed to quickly and happily.
‘I tell you what, Astrid, I tell you what, I’m a kept man, I am,’ he trilled several times a day. ‘A’n’ I?’
‘Yes,’ she said, every time.
‘A kept man!’
Astrid took to her new role with gusto. She dispensed with the cleaning lady and thereby scuppered that woman’s plan for a breast enlargement. She wiped the dust off the furniture with a pair of Nick’s underpants. She had a whimsical circulatory system for laundry; it began with Nick’s socks found next to the laundry basket, where he left them, which morphed into a single sock on the stairwell, and another behind the washing machine, which would become later a loose sock stuffed in a bag for the charity shop and another in the drawer. She did the ironing in the evening, hanging garments from the wall lamps around the room, while listening to Laura struggle through her homework, or Ken’s belligerence on the subject of licensing hours. The impact of an extra inhabitant was far-reaching. It seemed that subconsciously the others were fouling the house to help him feel at home. She took the plates and mugs which they left just next to the dishwasher, but not inside it, and stowed them herself with merely an intake of breath. She picked up snack wrappers from sofas. Lids were left off. Cushions were used for comfort, not decoration, and she had to rescue them from the floor after they’d served their purpose. She would have liked to bring the speed and conviction of the emergency services to all the messes, spills and upsets but she couldn’t get to them in time. The fridge shelves were sticky. The clothes in the drawers were creased. The kettle had crumbs in the creases of its spout. There were unassimilated items on floors and tables and the kitchen dresser. And inside bowls, which were for display only, were left combs or screwdrivers (Ken), hairclips (Laura), a Vicks inhaler (Nick), as well as a rusty key, a duff light bulb and a store voucher. So this is how it was; family life.
‘I like it messy,’ Nick said, with a frisson when he came in one night, as if it were something really kinky.
‘Because it’s like your mother’s house.’
‘No,’ he said, guardedly, ‘not because of that.’ She dreaded their help.
To the polite enquiry: ‘Can I help you?’ came her murmured rejoinder: ‘That’s the last thing I need.’
When Ken brought his smalls downstairs shyly and demanded the right to wash them in the sink, she denied it to him, so he insisted he place them in the washing machine himself. After that there were plastic carrier bags, knotted and left in the corner of his room.
He kept himself from under her feet in a very ostentatious way, pacing up and down clearing his throat, or sitting in the front room and coughing out of boredom. It was better when Laura was home. They played cards.
He was intrigued with Laura’s comings and goings and doings to the point that he commented incessantly upon them.
‘’Ere, Astrid, the kid, she’s laying daan outside with ’er ear to the ground. Funny, innit? Funny thing to do. Listening to the ground! Wish I could!’
When they went to Pearl’s at the weekend, Laura had permission to skip off to the shed and tinker with the wire and beads in there to make earrings, all the while listening on a battery cassette player to Pearl’s collection of musicals. Laura favoured Evita.
Every time Astrid drove Ken up the track to Pearl’s house, she’d slow to gaze at the babes in the wood. Something about their plastic melancholy struck her as metaphorical; little girls petrified in plastic, never to become women. They made her think about the spa. Ken didn’t say much on the way up there; he went quiet on the approach. From his side he had a view of the field of high grass. He was spruce and clean with a gift on his lap.
They’d stop on the way over at the farm shop for him to choose his gift. She waited in the car park. The first time, he came back with a box of Maltesers. She shook her head. ‘Try again,’ she said. He went back in and came back with a box of After Eights and some yellow flowers.
‘After Eights?’
‘She used to like ’em when we went out,�
� he said defensively.
‘Used to give them to the boys.’
He was a slow learner when it came to romance, but death had much improved him. When she collected him on her way to pick up Laura from school, she’d quiz him on the events of the day.
‘Then ’er mood just seemed to change,’ he said, crestfallen one evening as they pulled into Laura’s school. So Astrid ran through things said and done to try to pinpoint the problem.
‘Should I just tell ’er then?’ he interrupted irritably.
‘Tell her what?’
‘You know.’
‘That you love her?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ he said and looked out of the window, across the school lawns, a muscle in his cheek going. ‘Too old for that caper.’
Chapter 58
The summer came, as rain and rose petals fell to the ground in big sorry clumps like wet loo roll.
Dave had already called Nick a couple of times from Spain; they were having a good time, he said, but he was keen to get back.
‘Because it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, this luxury holiday lark, right, mate? Right?’
‘Just enjoy it, Dave, while you’re there. Just relax, mate.’
‘Yeah.’ He didn’t sound comforted. ‘You all right?’
‘Yup.’
‘Dad?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘Mum?’
‘Yup.’
‘Right.’
‘Right.’
‘No news then.’
‘Nope.’
There was a silence. ‘Nick?’
‘Yup?’
‘We all right, you and me?’
‘Yup.’
‘After what I said.’
‘We’re all right, Dave.’
‘Right then.’
‘Right.’
‘Can’t wait to get home. Could murder a roast pork. Bye then.’
‘Bye.’
Nick hung up. ‘Idiot,’ he said, shaking his head and going back to the papers on his desk pertaining to Ken’s divorce.
