Living With It

by Lizzie Enfield

  ‘I’ll help,’ Harvey offers, and I smile at the obvious appeal the task has for him.

  ‘What subject is this for?’

  ‘PSHE.’ Vinnie grins, clearly relishing it as much as his older brother.

  ‘Prick,’ Harvey dictates, sitting next to him. ‘Blockhead…’

  ‘I don’t think you can have “prick”,’ I interject. I’d never have let Gabriella get away with saying the word when she was nine, but it’s harder with the boys. They’re exposed to everything much earlier by virtue of having older siblings.

  ‘Does that mean he can’t have “wanker” either?’ Harvey challenges.

  ‘Harvey!’ I try to convey warning in my tone.

  ‘Gay.’ Harvey doesn’t question this time. He just points at the page, indicating Vincent should write it down. But he glances sideways at me, in anticipation of an admonition.

  ‘You shouldn’t use “gay” as a term of abuse,’ I oblige, but my heart is not in it.

  All I am thinking about is Iris’s deafness. What can I do? The damage is done. I can’t undo it. I can try to explain myself. But I know Ben is not always receptive to my explanations.

  I’ve hurt him before – unintentionally, but hurt him nevertheless. I’ve been thoughtless towards him, but Ben can twist thoughtlessness into deliberate intent.

  ‘Pig, idiot, blobfish.’ Vinnie’s terms of abuse are less crude than his brother’s.

  ‘Dickhead, condom face, the C word.’ Harvey knows better than to actually say the word.

  ‘Don’t write that down, Vinnie.’

  ‘Darling,’ Vinnie says, a note of triumph in his voice.

  ‘That’s not rude, egg-brain,’ Harvey insists.

  ‘It is.’ The childish anger Vinnie hasn’t quite yet learned to control, especially where his brother is concerned, creeps into his voice.

  ‘“Darling” is a term of affection, peewit,’ Harvey laughs at Vincent. ‘You say it when you love someone, Tinky Winky.’

  ‘Not just.’ Vincent’s voice is quivering. ‘Mum says it to Dad when she’s cross with him!’

  I adjust the lid on the saucepan, clattering instead of reacting, and Eric appears. I look at the boys, wondering if they are aware of the tension between us. They must have noticed. They are old enough to spot the difference between kind and considerate, and merely civil. And Gabriella is picking fights at every opportunity, keen to show what she thinks of me.

  I remove the pan of pasta from the hob and begin spooning it on to plates for the children.

  ‘Can I have pesto?’ Vincent asks.

  ‘Not today,’ I say.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Harvey’s not allowed it and we’re about to go out.’

  Vincent still gets tetchy about not being able to eat things with nuts in himself, unless I’m there to supervise. But I can’t risk it. Harvey can’t remember the last time he ate a nut and what happened. I’m worried that, now he’s reached the age where he thinks he’s invincible, he may not take his condition seriously. He may be tempted to try something. I want to be there if he does.

  ‘OK.’ Vincent accepts it, this time. ‘Is it nearly ready?’

  ‘It is ready,’ I say, as Eric appears and echoes me.

  ‘Ready!’ He makes it unnecessary for me to call ‘E’, ‘Eric’ or ‘darling’ – or anything else.

  ‘Is Gabriella all right at the moment?’ her English teacher, Mr Gill, asks us. ‘She seems a little distracted.’

  ‘Distracted’ is one of those euphemisms that could cover a whole range of behaviours.

  ‘Does she?’ I ask. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, she usually contributes to the class a lot. She’s one of the most able in it. I can usually rely on her to answer a question and get the others to take her lead. But today she seemed to be somewhere else.’

  ‘She’s probably just tired.’ Eric jumps to her defence. ‘She’s been working quite hard.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mr Gill says. ‘It was only today really. As a rule she’s a huge asset to the class.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘And Harvey is too,’ he adds, as if making the connection suddenly between Gabriella and her younger brother. ‘Did he show you the poem he wrote about Marmite?’

  ‘No,’ I say, and am then surprised when Eric responds.

  ‘Yes, it was very funny.’

  ‘It was brilliant,’ Mr Gill continues. ‘Really brilliant. Shakespearian in style and epic in quality.’ He goes on to wax lyrical about Harvey but my mind is wandering. I’m worried about how everything is affecting Gabs. I need to talk to her, make her realise it’s not her fault, make sure she doesn’t let it affect her school work, not this year, when she has GCSEs.

  ‘Who are we seeing next?’ Eric asks as we stand up after our allotted ten minutes with the English teacher.

  I look at the list Gabriella handed me earlier. ‘Mr Coles.’

  It’s a bit of a bunfight, parents’ evening at this huge comprehensive school, the mums and dads of three hundred children all milling about in the school hall and its surrounding classrooms, trying to find the teachers their offspring have made them appointments to see. People miss their time slots; queues begin to build behind the desks of the core subject teachers. We’ve gone home before having missed one or two of our allocated slots.

  But we see Mr Coles. He tells us he thinks Gabriella could get into Oxford or Cambridge to read music if she wanted.

  ‘But obviously the next stage is A-levels. Has she thought about where she wants to do them?’

  ‘She’s not decided yet,’ I say, and Eric is unusually quiet. ‘Do you really think she could get into Oxford or Cambridge?’

  ‘I do, if she keeps working as hard as she does and continues playing at the level she is – quite easily if she wanted to,’ he replies.

  ‘That’s very encouraging.’ I smile and I look to Eric to say something, but he is looking around as if anxious to be gone. ‘Well, thank you,’ I say to the music teacher, standing up.

  ‘Are we done?’ Eric asks, and I know what he’s thinking because it’s what I’ve been thinking too. Gabriella’s musical ability no longer seems the blessing it once did; instead it’s a thing which underlines the terrible position Maggie and Ben find themselves in.

  ‘What do you think I should do, Eric?’ I say to him in the car as he fixes on the road. ‘Should I call Ben? Or write?’

  ‘I found another elderly lesbian professor the other day,’ Eric responds. ‘But I didn’t send it.’

  This is game which Eric and Ben have been playing since their twenties. They spot pictures in the newspaper of men who, as they’ve got older, begin to look more like ‘elderly lesbian professors’ (the sexism is not lost on me). Sometimes emailing each other pictures is the only contact they have with each other for months. But it seems to serve as communication.

  ‘He’s told some of the others,’ I say. ‘So he must know that we know.’

  I want Eric to say that he will call him, take the responsibility at least for that first move. I want him to see how the land lies and find out if any contact from me will be welcome. I want him to speak to his oldest friend, for God’s sake.

  I take my phone out of my bag. ‘I’ll just text Gabs to make sure everything’s OK at home.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Eric mumbles, but he’s concentrating on the road.

  I send a brief message to Gabby. Then another to Ben.

  I’m so sorry to hear your news, I write. Is there anything we can do? Please let me know. Bx.

  I stare at it for a while. It doesn’t say it all, but I think it says enough for now – enough for a text, anyway. I press Send.

  A few minutes later, my phone vibrates in reply.

  It’s from Gabs.

  Fine, is all it says, brief and to the point.

  Ben, Tuesday evening

  What time will you be back?

  I read the text from Maggie as I wait for the next s
et of parents to pitch up to my desk in the school hall.

  On paper, I don’t have that many appointments. The kids make them themselves, but sometimes the parents decide to stop anyway, if they catch a teacher without a queue.

  Last appointment is at seven-thirty, I text in reply, and stare at my phone as the message sends. I keep staring at it. I can’t quite believe that I have heard nothing from Isobel.

  ‘Mr Deakin, do you have a moment?’ An anxious-looking woman wearing a strange jacket that looks like a fake sheepskin rug comes up to my desk. ‘I’ve not got an appointment, but I wondered if I could have a quick chat.’

  ‘Sure.’ I nod at the empty parent chair and I think to myself that the jacket must be hot. It’s very stuffy in the hall. It’s clearly some sort of fashion thing, but it seems faintly ridiculous to be wearing it in here.

  ‘I’m Alice Penwarden’s mother,’ she says. ‘Gina.’

  ‘OK, Gina,’ I say, trying to think who Alice Penwarden is.

  ‘You don’t actually teach her,’ Gina says.

  ‘Ah.’ I wonder why she wants to talk to me, then.

  ‘Alice has Miss Effingham for drama,’ she tells me.

  ‘She’s here tonight,’ I say, nodding to the desk where Julie Effingham is sitting chatting to a bloke with a beard.

  Gina leans forward and lowers her voice. ‘Yes, well, it’s you I wanted to talk to.’

  ‘Well,’ I say, and brace myself for some sort of confrontation I’m not in the mood for, ‘if you’ve got a complaint about Miss Effingham, it’s not me you should be speaking to.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not a complaint,’ Gina assures me before adding, ‘not exactly.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Well, it’s just that Alice is very gifted, at acting – she’s been going to classes since she was five,’ she tells me, and I struggle to maintain my politely interested face. I can’t stand these parents. The ones who think their child is a genius and want to make sure we are absolutely certain of it too.

  ‘I’m sure she is,’ I say.

  ‘She is.’ Gina smiles, oblivious to my sarcasm. ‘And yet she keeps being overlooked for school productions. I’ve spoken to Miss Effingham about it before, but – ’

  ‘I’m sure if Miss Effingham is aware of her talents – ’ I interrupt her, but Gina cuts in right back.

  ‘Well, she doesn’t seem to have taken it on board,’ she says, her voice rising slightly. ‘And I wondered if you could do anything about it.’

  ‘I’m not sure exactly what you want me to do?’

  ‘You could speak to Miss Effingham and make her aware you think Alice should have a role in your next production.’

  ‘But I don’t think Alice should have a role,’ I say, smiling. I am irritated, but I try to keep it pleasant. ‘I don’t even know who Alice is.’

  I don’t think I’ve been rude – I think I’ve been fairly reasonable, actually – but Gina Penwarden behaves as if I’ve told her her daughter is incapable of auditioning for even the back end of a pantomime horse. ‘Well, really,’ she says, pushing her chair back and standing up. ‘I’d expected more.’

  I bite my tongue because I am tempted to shout after her. The urge to scream ‘What? What did you expect?’ is almost overwhelming. In fact I want to go after her, take her by the scruff of her stupid jacket, pull her back to the chair and make her sit down and listen to me.

  I want to say to her, ‘Listen, Alice Penwarden’s mother. I’m sure your daughter is very talented and she probably could, or possibly even should, have a part in the next school play. I don’t know because I don’t even know who she is. And quite frankly I don’t care. What I do know about your daughter is that she can hear and she can speak, and if the fact that she doesn’t get the starring role in the school production is the greatest of your worries then you’re lucky.’

  I don’t do that. I take out my phone again, wondering if, while I was commiserating with Mrs Penwarden about her poor, talented, overlooked daughter, it has crossed Isobel Blake’s mind to commiserate with me about my damaged, deaf one.

  She must know by now, for fuck’s sake. She’s probably at a parents’ evening herself right now. They are taking place today up and down the country. I’d have expected her to text, call – send an email even – anything… something. But nothing – that’s weird. There’s never not been anything.

  I saw less of Isobel on a daily basis in our final year but I still saw her a lot. She shared a house off the Unthank Road with Yasmin and Siobhan. Siobhan is based in Africa now. Three years of development studies put her on a fast track to save the world. I’m not exactly sure what it is she does but I know it’s worthy. That makes me sound more cynical than I actually am. I liked Siobhan and she’s doing what she always wanted to do, which is more than can be said for the rest of us.

  Anyway, I lived a few streets away, sharing a house with Paddy and Sally and a boy called Tom. I’ve no idea what happened to him.

  So we still hung out together a lot: walked to campus together, popped round for coffee, that sort of thing. Isobel still cooked a lot. If I was ever in danger of going hungry, she could always be relied on to feed me.

  We even went to Cambridge together once, to see Eric, which was weird. I left early, left them to it, but it was OK. We got on OK. Our friendship was still strong. But as the end of our final year loomed I began to wonder what would happen to us all when we went our separate ways. All of us, but me and Isobel in particular. I knew we’d lose the particular closeness forged from simply spending so much time together.

  There was a lot going on at the time: exams, job interviews, parties, getting rid of stuff we’d accumulated, because we were going to move out of the places we were keeping it. I saw Bel here, there and everywhere but not really on her own, not to sit and chat till the small hours, as we used to, until she dropped by one evening when no one else was around. Paddy and Sally had gone down to London to look for a flat there together. They needed to find somewhere as Sally was heavily pregnant by then. Tom was out, so I had the house to myself and was enjoying the space, when there was a knock at the window and I saw Bel standing in the front garden, miming at me to get off the sofa and open the door.

  ‘Busy?’ she asked.

  She could see I wasn’t.

  ‘Very!’ I replied.

  ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Yes.’ As soon as she asked, I realised I was, but as usual there was very little in the house to eat. ‘But the cupboards are bare.’

  ‘Aren’t everyone’s?’ she said. ‘It feels odd, doesn’t it, knowing we’re all going soon? Do you want to come back to ours and I’ll cook?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll cook. Stay here and I’ll pop to the corner shop and get some food.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Bel said.

  And we walked to the shop in a strange semi-awkward silence and she hovered while I bought some pasta and splashed out on mince and a tin of tomatoes – and a bottle of wine. ‘It’s an occasion,’ I said, taking it out of the carrier bag, when we were back at the house.

  ‘Is it? What occasion is that, then?’

  ‘I’m cooking for you, for starters,’ I joked, but then I felt more serious. ‘And this could be the last time we sit and have a meal together, here anyway. We move out in a week, and after that…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I opened the wine and poured her a glass. That seems like a normal thing to do now. But we were students, it was a gesture, and it was not lost on Isobel.

  ‘We’ll still see each other, Ben. Cheers!’

  ‘It won’t be the same though, will it? Cheers. We’re moving on. You’ll be in London. Eric too. I don’t know where I will be. I haven’t got beyond taking some of this lot back home.’ I gestured at the stuff I’d begun to pile up in semi-organised stacks – books, LPs – everything except clothes and my single plate.

  I was busying myself with the rest of my meagre shop when Bel got up
and came over to me. ‘I’ll miss you, Ben,’ she said, slipping her arm around my waist.

  She could have done that as a simple, easy gesture, a way of saying, ‘Look, we’ll always be close,’ but I took it as something more.

  I turned round towards her, so we were no longer standing side by side in that ‘Love Is’ cartoon pose, but facing each other, close.

  Isobel could have stepped away, but she didn’t.

  So I kissed her.

  She could have stopped me, but she didn’t. She put her glass of wine down and she pulled me to her, close enough that she could feel me hardening against her. And we carried on kissing as I moved my hand inside her shirt, across the warmth of her skin then down inside the waistband of her jeans and on to her buttocks.

  Only when I moved my hand further still and stopped kissing her mouth and began kissing her breasts instead did she pause. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said as I moved my hand around to the front of her jeans. ‘I’m with Eric. He’s your best friend.’

  I stopped then, stood up and looked at her.

  ‘I won’t tell him,’ I said, looking into her eyes because I wanted her more than ever before, because I was fearful now that this was the end for us, whatever it was that ‘us’ had morphed into.

  I expected her to protest a little, but all she said was, ‘Can we go to your room, then?’

  She closed the door behind us and I yanked the curtains shut.

  ‘Ben…’ She paused by the door and I thought then that she was going to stop, but she came over to me. ‘I just wanted to say goodbye.’

  Briefly I wondered if she meant that that was all she’d come round for – literally just to say goodbye, not to say goodbye like this. But I didn’t ask her; I just pulled the T-shirt I was wearing over my head and began fumbling with the buttons on her blouse.

  She put her hands over mine and again I wondered if she was having second thoughts. But what she was stopping was my button-fumbling, just so she could take her shirt off, deftly, as deftly as she removed her jeans and knickers. And she was standing in my room naked and beautiful and so fucking desirable I wondered how I’d got through the last couple of years, screwing other people when I still wanted her.