A Perfect Life

by Raffaella Barker

  So where does it all go? I don’t know why I am asking that question because I really don’t want to know.

  Matt, Coral’s boyfriend, does this flick of his hand and I have learned it now. If you relax all your fingers and turn them slightly inwards then flick your wrist hard away and back, your fingers slap together with a whiplash crack, which I find I can use instead of quite a variety of words.

  I can use it instead of ‘Sod off’ when some random person in the street jostles me. I can use it instead of ‘Excellent’ when I’m watching sport and someone scores or takes a wicket. I can use it instead of ‘Oh bollocks’ when things go wrong in sport. I can use it when Mum or Dad does something wicked like tells me we are going on holiday or gives me some money – mind you, the holiday thing hasn’t actually happened since I learned how to do this and that was a year ago, but when it does, I will be able to express that I am pleased.

  It makes Mum laugh when I do it, and I always like her a lot when I make her laugh like that. I think she may not be the greatest mother – although I don’t know what is the greatest mother – but I do like her as a fellow human being at those moments.

  I can also adapt the finger flick to be a menacing message if people on the bus start taking the piss or something, or if some creep at school gives me a hard time or a teacher goes nuts about homework. Right now, though, it expresses that I am grossed out by everyone – by Gosha and her ice cream eating, by Ruby and Foss, by Mum. And I have cracked my fingers together so much today that the knuckles hurt. I want to talk to Dad, or even see him and watch the cricket with him. He hasn’t answered his phone once today. I haven’t seen him for over a week and it’s crap. Last time we spoke he said, ‘I want to spend some time with you, Jem, let’s fix something up.’ I wish he hadn’t said it if worrying about it is what’s keeping him away.

  I bought two loaves of bread, some soft cheese and a packet of my favourite ham and I still had thirty-five quid. I felt a bit guilty keeping so much money, so I bought three packets of chocolate chip cookies, some sausage rolls and a bunch of bananas, but I still couldn’t spend more than seven pounds and I couldn’t think of anything else to have for the picnic except cigarettes. So I bought a packet of those too. The picnic is for the little ones and me. I think I’ll keep the cigarettes, though. I might see if Foss wants to try one, but that would be evil and corrupting as he is only four. Mind you, because he is only four there is a good chance that he will have a go. No one did that to me when I was his age, but then I only had Coral. And Mum. Mum used to smoke then. She and Dad both did, and I hated the smell like I hate the smell of petrol. For me the very worst of all is still a car with someone sitting in it smoking cigarettes at a petrol station. Bad smell and possible explosion, it’s a pretty crap combination. It’s funny how it makes me want to puke and yet I can smoke as many cigarettes as anyone else if I’m in the mood. But mostly I don’t think about them except as a way to get chatting to people, and as something to do at school. It’s so stupid because everyone I know started smoking at school just to have something to do. When I’m on my own I sometimes remember that I could climb out on the roof and have a cigarette but there isn’t much point. Dad and Mum know I smoke and they don’t mind. Actually, it’s more random than that. Mum caught me smoking with Matt watching MTV the other night and she looked at the cigarette in my hand and the smoke, which I couldn’t stop creeping out of the corner of my mouth even though I tried to until I could feel my tongue curling up with the poison of nicotine, and the walls of my mouth probably yellowing and all the taste buds dying because I so did not want to exhale smoke in her face. But she stood there grinning and then she burst out laughing. How humiliating is that? Your mum laughing at the sight of you smoking. I think it has damaged me. Most people think I am really lucky that my parents don’t give me a hard time, but I want them to give me a hard time about something. There must be something they care about? I flick my fingers together again and try not to think what I feel, which is that they only care about themselves. I am not important enough.

  I don’t know where Coral is – actually, I do, she’s at Matt’s house, and even though she is a bossy cow at times I wish she was here now.

  But she just said, ‘I can’t handle Mum and Nick and this atmosphere, I’ve got to get out of here.’ I haven’t seen her since. And whenever I call her, she’s got her phone turned off. I am pretty pissed off with her in fact, and with Dad, because guess who gets left holding the babies – well, let’s just say it isn’t Mum, that’s for sure.

  How have I got myself into being the one left at home? Why don’t I have anywhere to go or anyone to go with? I could see my friends, but at the moment, whenever I think of calling them, I think of calling Dad at the same nanosecond and I always call his number first and when he doesn’t answer his phone I get this sick-pit-of-my-stomach churning feeling and I can’t call my friends, I just go and sit with the Polish eating disorder in front of the TV until the feeling evaporates. I don’t know what the feeling is, but it’s getting in the way of my life.

  Dad not being here is in the way of my life. Mum and the kids are totally in the way of my life. Literally. Mum appears in the TV room and somehow she is carrying both of them. She staggers across the room and her eyes are manic. Ruby’s arms are round Mum’s neck and her hands are lost in Mum’s thick hair; she is clinging to Mum and Mum is clinging to Foss, holding him out in front of her. His legs are curled up and he is howling.

  ‘Christ, I can’t stand this any more,’ shrieks Mum. ‘You take them, Jem, please, now and go anywhere – somewhere – but I need some space or I will explode and kill all of us with the machete.’

  ‘I want the machete!’ roars Foss, squirming in her grasp.

  ‘Well, you can’t bloody have it,’ Mum pants. ‘You are much too young and you should never have got it down. Never. If I catch you chopping up anything – lamps, salami, cushions or people with that machete again I will remove all your privileges.’

  ‘I haven’t got any privileges,’ Foss snarls back. ‘You took them away. They’re in the jar on the dresser and you think I don’t know they’re there but I do and I hate you.’

  I wonder what he thinks privileges are.

  ‘What’s in the jar on the dresser?’ I hiss to Ruby. She is of course being super-angelic and sitting with her hands in her lap, watching Foss. This is a show I know well: one of them is always good when the other is bad. It’s sick, but it makes sense.

  ‘Souvenirs, of course,’ Ruby whispers back. ‘She took his badges and stuff from the war museum when she found him with the bullets last week.’

  An Oscar winner could not have better executed her expression of pious regret, and I would definitely believe she cared about Foss if I had not been witness to an ugly scene last week. Admittedly, on that occasion Foss had a gun and some bullets and they were not toys, and he had tied Ruby to a tree in the garden with the intention of shooting her, but the bullets didn’t fit the gun. They were cartridges for a shotgun and no one can remember what happened to the shotgun so they were pretty safe as Foss’s weapon was a starting pistol. Ruby was hideous and I would have shot her if I were Foss. She was taunting him, calling him a dork and sticking her tongue out.

  When Coral and I were small it was different. Though come to think of it, Dad wasn’t around much then either, but that was because he was either pissed or stoned. He was not much good for a game of cricket until I was about eight, but then neither was I, I could hardly throw a ball. I did have tantrums, though. Coral never joined in with my arsy behaviour, and even all those years ago, when I didn’t know what I was thinking at all, I vaguely had the feeling that Coral was more grown up than Mum.

  There was a day when Mum and I were in the car waiting for Coral outside her school. I was probably six and Coral was eight. It was summer and Mum was wearing a red T-shirt. We were both eating ice creams and playing a game of zooming them past each other and having a lick. Mum zoomed her ice cream past me and it d
ropped in a huge dollop right on her tits. Actually it was a scoopful, not a dollop, so it just looked like another boob had landed. I can remember how much I laughed. Mum couldn’t stop laughing either and she picked up the ice cream dollop and threw it out of the car just as Coral emerged round the corner from her school gate.

  ‘Mummeeee,’ she hissed. ‘What are you doing? Look at the state of you.’ Mum’s hair had fallen out of the ponytail she wore it in, she had streaks of mascara on the back of her hand because she had laughed so much she cried then wiped her eyes. She probably looked about fourteen, and I reckon she felt about fourteen until Coral came along. Mum sighed and twisted her hair back neatly. Coral rolled her eyes and threw her satchel in the open back window so it landed next to me.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, you know,’ said Mum. ‘We were just having fun.’ And she leant sideways, reaching her arm across to kiss Coral as she got into the car. Coral bobbed away and her black plaits shone bluebottle green in the sunshine and I looked at her straight parting and the slender brown nape of her neck, and Coral turned her face to look out away from Mum and her eyes shone with tears and disappointment. And I looked at Mum’s neck, pinker and with wisps of blonde hair, turning the other way as she started the car and looked down the road and I sensed that Mum was scared of Coral. It did not make me feel great about Mum. And I can remember that feeling exactly, even though it was years ago. Right now, Mum is pink again and she has shoved Foss and Ruby in front of me.

  ‘Can you go now, please. I’ll drive you somewhere and you can have a picnic while I get on and I’ll come and pick you up later.’

  This is always happening. It is crap.

  ‘No, Mum, you come too, you’re our mum and I don’t want to look after your kids, I am one of your kids. I am not taking them to the fucking beach again for you.’

  Mum’s eyes widen and she looks mortified. It is a bit like a face lift – there are no wrinkles visible on her face at this moment and what she is thinking passes almost visibly under the top layer of skin – a red flush of anger and then blood pulsing blue through the veins on her forehead and she goes pale with shock.

  ‘OK, I’ll come.’

  Big fucking deal, Mum.

  Angel

  Bumping down the track to the creek, the sun shines yellow and metallic and the glare bouncing off the sea invades behind Angel’s eyes like strobe lighting in the dark. The tide is out, beached boats are scattered lopsided and drunk on the mud banks. Gorse scratches the doors of the car and the wheels flatten the coarse brown grass as the car inches towards the furthest possible point Angel dares to drive. The grass springs up again behind the car, feathering against the children’s bare feet as they sit in the boot, the tailgate open, facing backwards.

  ‘Ouch, it’s spiky, Mummy,’ squeals Ruby. Angel glances in the rear-view mirror. The ritual of this journey is unchanging; as soon as the car leaves the road and hits the grass track, the children pile into the dog zone in the boot, where normally they would be sick rather than spend five minutes. But a small amount of peril alters it, and Foss and Ruby jostle to sit with their legs dangling out over the bumper and their bare feet catching the grasses. When Angel is in a good mood, ‘which is only when we’ve got other people with us,’ remarks Jem as they turn off the road today, she often becomes very relaxed, some might say careless, allowing the children to climb on to the top and hold on to the roof-rack bars to lurch along the bumpy track like monkeys harassing a carful of tourists in a safari park.

  A pair of birdwatchers, nylon jackets bunched round their waists, squeeze themselves against the gorse, flattening their whole bodies as the car passes. Angel smiles at them and waves thanks. They stare back, their faces blank with disapproval. This is how Angel interprets their expressions. Actually, they may just as easily be registering blank uninterest. She is aware of her own hypocrisy; if she saw any other cars down here, she would be indignant, even as she drives her own down the almost impenetrable track. But if they walk it will take hours, and Foss and Ruby will moan. Jem will have to carry one of them and she will have to carry the other, and then what about carrying the picnic? And the person missing is Nick, who would be carrying everything if he were here.

  Today Angel feels both crushed and heavy. Defeated and convinced everything is her own fault. As if clinging to a rock in a fast-flowing water, she holds on to the belief that breaking up is the right thing to do. She will not look at the possibility of compromise. She can’t. Therein lies too much confusion. And her mind is fragmented by shock and she has no conviction that what is happening is right. It just is. So what is the point in debating? Just now she has no instinct, no nothing, beyond scratching, stabbing anger, flaring and demanding like eczema. ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ she hisses as the car dips into a gaping pothole and Foss starts to cry.

  ‘He banged his head, Mummy,’ shouts Ruby, her voice full of reproof.

  ‘Poor him,’ replies Angel, and Ruby’s glare in the rear mirror reflects her own insincerity. Some deep exhalations, focusing on the horizon . . .

  ‘MUM! STOP! STOP!’ Jem yells furiously. Angel slams the brakes on and turns round.

  ‘What is it? Can’t you lot just be quiet for a minute?’ But none of them is there. Foss has fallen out and is lying in a pothole some distance behind, bawling. The other two have jumped out and are running back to get him. Angel only feels irritation. And disgust at herself, but now is not the time to foster a whole new culture of dislike.

  ‘I’m coming!’ She gets out and runs back. Jem and Ruby have got Foss up, and brushed the sand off him. The three of them are walking along the path with Jem holding both their hands. Angel is not needed. Good. Her phone chirrups in her pocket and turning to the sea she answers it. It is Nick.

  ‘Look, I’m coming back. In fact I am back. I’m at home. We need to talk. There is stuff we have to sort out.’

  He sounds far away and separate. Angel feels no desire to bridge the gap, no connection to him. Nothing.

  ‘Yes, there is, but what will you tell the children?’ Is that all she can think of to say? Is that how things move forward? Angel, numb with worn-out anxiety, is still amazed at her own capacity for nothingness. And Nick’s.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replies after a silence. ‘I think we need to talk first.’

  Angel walks off the path at a right angle to the three children. They are watching her. Foss needs her to pick him up and hug him, but she ignores him to talk to Nick. She feels ragged and distanced from everything.

  ‘How long are you coming back for?’

  There is another silence, then Nick says again, ‘I don’t know. I haven’t got any answers to anything at the moment. Look, we’ll talk when you get home.’

  ‘OK, see you later.’

  Angel puts her phone back into the pocket of her skirt and turns back to the children, rubbing her face in the hope that she can expel the numbness and become carefree.

  Ruby grabs her hand. ‘Come on, Mummy, let’s skip.’ Skipping is a monumental effort of coordination between limbs as wooden as a puppet’s, and a brain battered by confusion.

  Focusing with deliberate concentration, Angel manages a version of skipping, and Ruby smiles and grips her hand more tightly.

  Back at the car Foss is assembling three crab lines with hooks and bits of bacon. His tears are forgotten, and he is businesslike.

  ‘We’ll get the crabs and then I want to get some lug worms for fishing in the pond at home,’ he tells Jem.

  ‘Yeah, worms are great, but what about a bucket of fish, too?’

  Foss considers for a moment then nods. ‘Yes, I think so, and then I can put them in the pond and fish them out again.’

  ‘Cool,’ grins Jem. Angel catches his eye in the car mirror and they both smile for a fleeting second. Angel’s heart springs, loving this tiny exchange, loving Jem.

  Driving on to the rutted broad space beside the track, Angel fixes her eyes on the horizon, chooses the largest of three pairs of sunglas
ses in the glove compartment, and parks the car. So much of her mothering has been carried out by remote control, often in the past because she was trying to work, that it is an effort to remember how to do simple things like going to the beach with the picnic stuff and the children. Nick is back. He could stay. Maybe they can live in the house together and he can just sleep in a different room? Maybe it would be better to have him there like that than to have no one?

  ‘Mum, are you listening at all?’ The cheerful companionship among the children has vanished into a storm of crosspatch arguing and car-door slamming. Jem sounds completely pissed off. Foss is bellowing again – what is the matter with that child today? Can he not get some grip on himself and exist alongside everyone else?

  Ruby snatches the towel she and Foss had been tussling over and wedges it into her pink bag. Standing, legs apart, with a crocheted white hat on and a pair of red shorts and an old green T-shirt, Ruby swings her beach bag and stares across the marshes towards the frills of waves and the sea. Angel’s eyes sting and tears roll down behind her sunglasses. There is a picture on her mother’s mantelpiece of Angel at the beach at the same age. The beach is different; in her picture Angel is about to get on a donkey to ride across Scarborough Sands. Clean and ordered, with no idea of the joy of mud sliding, or the warm silk water of a saltmarsh creek. When she was small, Angel hardly ever got dirty or played in water; there was no one to do it with except her mother, and her mother found the beach too hot. She can see the picture in her mind’s eye. Ruby’s gaze, with her puzzled brow and an expression in her eyes of confusion, shares with it a yearning for something to make sense, which crosses more than thirty years. Angel doesn’t know whether the picture in her memory or the one in front of her is more poignant. Certainly the one in front of her is more urgent.

  ‘I want to swim,’ says Ruby crossly.