The Cactus

by Sarah Haywood

  “Oh, I know you want to be brave, love, but it’s no trouble. Chrissie’ll cope without me for once. She’ll just follow behind in the Merc with the twins. You’re the one that needs me at the moment.”

  Strangely, Edward decided to travel in Rob’s mud-spattered van rather than in comfort with Aunt Sylvia and me. My aunt kept reaching across the leather seat to stroke my hair or pat my knee, her flashy rings and bracelets glinting in the sunlight as she did so.

  “I understand you must be absolutely mortified by your behavior. I know I would be. But these things can happen to anyone. Nobody’ll think any the less of you. Nobody’ll think you’re having a nervous breakdown, or that you’ve got some kind of genetic weakness or anything.”

  “I know that. Why on earth would they think that, anyway?”

  “Well, you know, with your family history. On your dad’s side, I mean. But nobody at all’ll be thinking that, so don’t you worry.”

  * * *

  My parents’ backgrounds were very different. While my father was from a solidly professional, metropolitan family of lawyers and accountants, my mother was from a hard-grafting Midlands family of manual laborers and factory workers. My father, himself, was a lecturer at a redbrick university, and was well-respected before his decline. It was at the university, in fact, that my mother and father met. My mother, a typist in the faculty office, had had her eye on my father for months before they ever spoke. He always dressed in a smart but jaunty manner: well-tailored tweed blazer, bow tie, suede shoes. They were both in their late twenties, and my mother’s family had begun to think she would remain an old maid. When my father sidled up to her desk one day and asked whether she would like to go for afternoon tea with him, she felt like a character in one of the silly romantic novels she continued to devour until the end of her life.

  After six months of afternoon teas—which later became trips to museums and stately homes and talks by the university’s classical music society—my father’s proposal of marriage was eagerly accepted. The tearooms, museums and stately homes turned out to be a smoke screen, though. Following my parents’ picture-book church wedding, and despite my mother’s pleas, their outings became limited to pubs, inns and taverns, indeed anywhere that had a bar.

  In contrast, Aunt Sylvia, who’s fifteen years younger than my mother, was always ambitious for a life of luxury. She began her hoped-for ascent at the tie counter in Rackhams department store; apparently, she’d applied to work at the makeup counter but had been turned down, which surprises me greatly considering how much of the stuff she’s always troweled on. Although Aunt Sylvia managed to mesmerize a number of wealthy young men with her charms while wrapping their neckwear, she was always peremptorily discarded once they’d got what they wanted from her, or so I deduced from her conversations with my mother.

  Eventually, giving up on her dreams, my aunt decided to take her chances with the builder who was sorting out my grandparents’ rising damp, had a low-key wedding at the local registry office and nine months afterward gave birth to my cousins Wendy and Christine. The builder, Uncle Frank, despite his unpromising beginnings, turned out to be exactly what Aunt Sylvia had wanted all along: a person whose main aim in life was to accumulate as much money as he possibly could. His line of business went from domestic repairs and maintenance, to buying, renovating and reselling properties, to building housing developments. The family went from a modest three-bedroom semidetached house on a suburban estate, to a 1960s detached house on a cul-de-sac, to an architect-designed ranch-style bungalow on a country lane. The upward trajectory of Uncle Frank’s career was in exact opposition to the downward trajectory of my father’s. I wonder if that gave Aunt Sylvia a flicker of satisfaction, despite her conspicuous displays of support and sympathy.

  * * *

  The funeral car pulled up outside a turreted Victorian pub, a peeling sign declaring it to be The Bull’s Head. Aunt Sylvia expressed surprise that this was the venue for the wake, and for once I had to agree with her. In the potholed car park there was another flaking sign, indicating that the function room was down an alley to the side of the pub. Somebody, presumably one of the publican’s minions, had stuck a sheet of A4 paper below the sign with drawing pins. On it was written Patrisha’s do this way, with a smiley face drawn underneath. The narrow alley between the blackened sandstone of the pub and the breezeblock wall of the builders’ yard next door was littered with cigarette ends, broken glass and something rubbery from which I averted my eyes. There was a smell of urine and blocked drains, and an insistent buzz of flies. I dreaded to think what our more genteel guests would make of this.

  At the end of the alley was the function room, a pebble-dashed single-story extension. Walking from the fetid heat of the alley to the coolness of the room, I was hit by a new smell: a cocktail of stale beer and disinfectant. In the glare of the flickering fluorescent strip lighting I surveyed the room. The linoleum-tiled floor was the color of congealed blood, the sparse, high-up windows were laced with cobwebs and the wood-effect Formica tables lining each side of the long room were pocked with cigarette burns. There was a buffet table set up in the middle, on which was laid a selection of stodgy, carbohydrate-dense dishes and tooth-rotting, sugary drinks. Edward and Rob were already propping up the pine-clad bar at one end of the room. An almost empty bottle of red wine stood between them, and my brother was talking much too loudly. A few other people had arrived already and were standing in small groups, looking uncomfortable. Leaving Aunt Sylvia inspecting the buffet table, I marched over to Edward and his friend.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” I hissed. “I trusted you with this. I was against the idea of holding the wake in a pub from the start, but I thought at least you’d choose a decent one, as you’re such an expert. This is an insult to Mum’s name. I’m ashamed, Edward. How am I going to face our guests?”

  “Careful, Suze, or you’ll have another funny turn,” he replied, gulping down the dregs from his glass. “I know the landlord. He’s done us a good deal—mates’ rates. It means more money in your pocket at the end of the day.”

  “It’s not about the money. It’s about doing the right thing.”

  “Have a glass of wine and lighten up. We’ve got four cases to get through.” He reached behind the counter and pulled out another bottle, which he unscrewed and sloshed into his glass.

  “Don’t mind him,” Rob said in a low voice. “He’s got his drinking head on. It’s not surprising, today of all days.”

  “He’s always got his drinking head on, and you’re just encouraging him. You’re as bad as each other.”

  “I’m keeping an eye on him, as a matter of fact.”

  “Ha.”

  Turning away, I spotted Uncle Harold entering the room. Until today, I hadn’t seen him since my father’s funeral more than twenty-five years ago, although he and my mother had stayed in touch by letter and had paid each other the occasional visit. His military demeanor was unchanged, despite the fact that he was now in his eighties. It was evidently down to me to welcome our more important guests, it being apparent that Edward had no intention of moving from the bar. I crossed the sticky floor to greet my uncle, who was accepting a glass of wine from a heavily pierced girl holding a tray of drinks.

  “Feeling better now, are we, Susan?” Uncle Harold asked, grimacing as he took a sip from his glass.

  “Oh, yes, back to normal. A bit of a stomach bug.”

  “Good, good, that’s the spirit. Chin up, old girl. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted you moping about and feeling sorry for yourself. Never helped anyone, that sort of behavior.”

  “Absolutely, Uncle Harold, I agree. I’m focusing on the practicalities, sorting out the estate and so on. No time for self-indulgence. By the way, I must explain—this choice of venue is due to an embarrassing error. We were supposed to be booking The Bull, which is a lovely old Tudor coaching inn, but Edward got in a mudd
le when he looked for the number in the Yellow Pages and ended up booking The Bull’s Head instead, which, as you can see, is totally unsuitable. I hope you don’t think this is the sort of place we’d choose deliberately.”

  “No, no, Susan, I quite understand. I realized straightaway that there must’ve been a terrible mistake. You have my sympathy. And for the death of your mother, too, of course.”

  “Thank you. And how are Aunt Julia, and Hugo and Sebastian?”

  “Oh, everyone’s doing splendidly, but very busy as usual. Julia was devastated that she couldn’t make it today, but she has charity fund-raising commitments that she couldn’t possibly cancel. You know how it is. Hugo’s in Antibes at the moment on the yacht and Seb’s on some tedious business trip to Brazil, otherwise I’m sure they’d be here, too.”

  I wasn’t quite so sure. I’ve always had the distinct impression that Uncle Harold’s family regarded ours with a mixture of haughty disdain and condescending pity. No doubt Uncle Harold kept in touch with my mother, and had attended her funeral, out of some old-fashioned sense of familial duty.

  As the conversation was foundering, Edward appeared, swaying at Uncle Harold’s side, bottle in one hand and glass in the other.

  “Great to see you, Harry,” he roared, putting his right arm plus wine bottle around Uncle Harold’s shoulders. He clinked glasses with him with such ferocity I was surprised they didn’t shatter.

  “Good afternoon, Edward. Deepest sympathy, and so forth. You seem to be bearing up. Been raising a few glasses, have we?”

  “It’s what Mum would’ve wanted. I keep telling Suze that, but she’s got no sense of fun at all, have you, darling sis?” He attempted to put his left arm plus glass around my shoulders to link the three of us together, but I managed to duck out of the way.

  “I’m sure Susan is dealing with things her own way, Edward. And between you and me, although I understand that you want to give your mother a good send-off, I’d suggest that you have a little break from the pop.”

  Edward was put out by Uncle Harold’s lack of bonhomie and removed his arm. I looked around the room. There were small knots of people chatting quietly, eating white bread sandwiches and drinking cheap orange juice from plastic cups. There was one group consisting of my mother’s neighbors, most of whom I knew by sight; another group of slightly more arty types, who I assumed were from my mother’s reading circle; and a third group, centered around the vicar, who were clearly from St. Stephen’s. Aunt Sylvia, Wendy, Christine and the children, who had just finished loading up their plates from the buffet, came over to join Uncle Harold, Edward and me. While I made the necessary reintroductions—my father’s and mother’s sides of the family not having met for many years—Edward, who appeared to have forgotten he had a glass in one hand, took a slug from his bottle.

  “Wendy, Chrissie, looking as luscious as ever,” he slurred, leering at them. “You’d never know you two were such scrawny kids.” They both tittered, uncertainly.

  “You remember the twins, don’t you, Harry? Last time we were all together, at Dad’s funeral? What would we have been then? Early teens, late teens? Not you, Harry, you’ve always been old.” He sniggered, then continued on his theme. “Wendy and Chrissie were plain Janes back then. And now look at them with their long blond hair and curves and everything.” He waved his wine bottle in an undulating motion. “It’s legal, isn’t it, to marry your cousins? Not that it’s necessarily marriage I’m thinking about.” Nobody knew quite what to say to this.

  “Yes, very charming young ladies,” Uncle Harold volunteered. “So nice to meet you again, and your delightful mother.” Aunt Sylvia blushed through her pancake foundation.

  “Well, Sylvia was a bit of a looker in her day, too, weren’t you?” Edward continued. “I remember when I was a boy, and you’d come visiting with your tight skirts and your slinky tops and your high heels.” He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “Very confusing to a growing lad, all of that.” Aunt Sylvia blushed a deeper shade of pink and instinctively fastened an extra button at the top of her blouse.

  “Shut up, Edward, you’re embarrassing yourself and everyone else,” I told him.

  “What was I saying earlier, Harry? No sense of fun, my big sister. She’s like a black hole into which all joy and pleasure is sucked.”

  “Now, look here, Edward,” said Uncle Harold. “We can all see that you’ve had a few drinks, but I’m not sure any of these ladies are enjoying the way this conversation is going. Perhaps you’d like to go outside for a breath of fresh air and come back when you’re feeling better.”

  “Feeling better?” shouted Edward. “There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just all these boring old farts getting me down.” The conversations in the small groups ceased, and everyone turned to see what was going on. Edward found he had an audience. “All you lot,” he continued, gesticulating around the room. “You should be having a knees-up, you should be getting pissed and having a party. Celebrating a life. And all you can do is stand around making polite conversation and nibbling sandwiches. Bloody well enjoy yourselves, can’t you? It’s free booze, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Edward, listen to your uncle,” urged Aunt Sylvia. “You’ve gone too far. You’re upsetting everyone.”

  “Oh, put a sock in it, you dozy cow.”

  “Edward, that’s enough,” I said, grabbing his arm. He shoved me away with more force than was necessary, and I stumbled backward on my stupid heels. Rob, who had joined our group at the start of Edward’s outburst, caught me before I fell to the ground.

  “Take it easy, Ed,” he said, helping me to steady myself. I shrugged him off.

  Uncle Harold, who was used to dealing with obstreperous underlings, endeavored to take charge of the situation, but was regaled by Edward with a barrage of obscenities. Eventually Rob persuaded Edward, still cursing, to retreat with him to the bar, where he attempted to wrestle a fresh bottle of wine from my brother’s hands. I apologized profusely, of course, to Uncle Harold, Aunt Sylvia and the room in general. It was clear, however, that nobody wished to prolong the debacle further, and people soon began to make their excuses and leave.

  “Going the way of his father,” I heard Aunt Sylvia whisper to Wendy and Christine as they and the children scuttled off to their appointment at Cadbury World.

  “All be right as rain in the morning, you’ll see,” muttered Uncle Harold, undoubtedly relieved to be heading back to his impeccable family life.

  Within minutes, it was just Edward, Rob and me in the room. I stormed over to them as Rob was trying to insert the arms of my swaying brother into his jacket.

  “You’ve ruined things for me for the very last time, Edward. If you think I intend to let you stay in that house, your brain’s even more addled than I thought. I’m going to make you regret you’ve got a sister, just like I’ve always regretted having a brother.”

  Back at our mother’s house, while my cab was waiting outside, I threw my clothes into my suitcase and grabbed an old holdall from the cupboard under the stairs. Into it I shoved my mother’s jewelry box, a set of silver dessert forks and a few other small items of value that I thought Edward might be tempted to sell. Slamming the door and heaving my luggage down the garden path, I felt a surge of strength from the pure hatred I felt toward Edward.

  September

  5

  On the first Saturday of this new month I set about drafting an email to Mr. Brinkworth, the executor of my mother’s estate. Although it was only a few days after my mother’s disastrous funeral I was feeling livelier than of late, perhaps because the morning sickness was abating, because I was becoming accustomed to it, or because the air was cooler and fresher. As I was about to click Send, there was a ring on my doorbell. I assumed it was the postman, as visitors to my flat are rare, particularly uninvited ones. Opening the front door, and expecting to have to sign for a parcel, I was astonished to find
my erstwhile “escort” Richard standing there, as formal as a Jehovah’s Witness. Before I could close it again, he inserted a highly polished brown brogue between the door and its frame.

  * * *

  Regrettably, it isn’t just my mother’s highly suspect will and Edward’s offensive behavior that I have to contend with at the moment. I haven’t, until now, been inclined to address the other matter directly, not because I’m ashamed or “in denial,” but because it takes time to come to terms with a new situation: to assimilate the facts, to mull them over and to decide how best to proceed. You will have realized I’m in the early stages of pregnancy. But you’re forty-five years old, single and of limited financial means, you might well be thinking. I am, of course, acutely aware of those facts, and have been considering very carefully the options available to me.

  I want to make it crystal clear that I’ve never had the slightest desire to become pregnant. I decided a long time ago that neither a husband nor children would feature in my life, valuing as I do my complete autonomy. That’s why the understanding I had with Richard suited me so well. We first met over twelve years ago. I happened to be glancing one day through the “lonely hearts” column in a copy of the Evening Standard that someone had left on the Tube—not because I was lonely or was looking for a partner, but simply from boredom and idle curiosity—when a particular item caught my attention. I can still remember the wording:

  Highly presentable man, midthirties, no desire to settle down, seeks independent, strong-minded woman for commitment-free mutual appreciation of the dramatic, artistic and gastronomic highlights of London and of each other.

  I checked that no one was looking, tore the listing out of the newspaper and put it between the pages of my diary, where it stayed for the next few days. I must admit, I was feeling a little jaded by life at the time. I was thirty-two or thirty-three years old; living in London no longer seemed to be offering me the possibilities for excitement it once had; and my acquaintances from school, university and work were all rushing like lemmings into marriage and parenthood. “Why not?” I thought. “What have I got to lose?” It would be pleasant to attend the theater, galleries and restaurants with a companion. There would also be the ancillary benefit of having more intimate contact with someone on a regular and reliable basis.