Sisteria

by Sue Margolis

  Now all that was about to change. At last Naomi was ready to make peace.

  ***

  One thing the two sisters had never argued about was what a dreadful mother Queenie had been.

  They always said her child-rearing methods had more in common with a sixteen-year-old unmarried mother living off benefit than a lower-middle-class Jewish mother with a husband living off a modest but adequate housekeeping allowance in Gants Hill. In a neighbourhood teeming with the kind of kvetching, overprotective Jewish mothers who fussed about overbites and breastfed their offspring matzo balls until they left home, Queenie’s style of mothering stood out like a black pudding on Yom Kippur.

  Although she never raised a hand to the girls, she neglected them emotionally and physically from the moment they were born. Family gossip had it that even when Beverley and Naomi were babies, Queenie seemed to want nothing to do with them. She would leave them in their cots to scream for hours while she lay in the bath drinking tea and reading Harold Robbins. When the crying became too much she would feed them by putting a bottle of milk - complete with floating fag ash - in the cot, propped up on a pillow.

  By the time Beverley was eight and Naomi was three she thought nothing of leaving them alone in the house while she spent hours drinking coffee in Lyon’s in Ilford or wandering round West’s and Bodgers picking up and putting down clothes she couldn’t begin to afford. When she finally got back, she would barely react when Beverley cried and said they had been scared and hungry and asked her why she had been such a long time. Queenie would simply draw on her cigarette and tell her not to be such a baby. Occasionally she would console her by reading to her - usually from Harold Robbins, minus the dirty bits.

  Their father, Lionel, was an equally inadequate parent. A meek, mild-mannered man with a girlish giggle, no eyebrows to speak of, and that bulbous bit on the end of his nose, he occasionally nagged his wife about the pissy smell in the lavatory and the festering piles of washing-up, which from time to time developed maggots. But because he feared losing his beautiful Queenie, whom he worshipped and who he was sure had only married him out of pity, he was too scared of saying or doing anything which might put their marriage at risk. He never reproached his wife for her neglect of the children.

  By the time she was ten, Beverley had become a second mother to Naomi. Each afternoon, she would come out of the juniors at Gearies School, collect her sister from the infants, walk her home and let them both in with the front-door key she wore on a ribbon round her neck. Then she would make tea, which usually consisted of clumsily applied Marmite on toast and baked beans.

  Both girls did surprisingly well at school, although their mother never showed the remotest interest in their academic progress. In her last couple of years, Naomi in particular developed a fierce ambition. She craved the plaudits which went with adult success, because at some subconscious level she saw them as a substitute for the maternal love and attention she still needed so desperately. She used university (Sussex, English) as a stepping-stone to a career. Beverley, on the other hand, went to university (Nottingham, history) in search of a husband and the care and security she hoped marriage would bring. She found this in Melvin. At the time, it didn’t matter to her that, although she loved him, she wasn’t ‘in love’ with him, that for her he was a clone of every other sweet, intellectual but never quite alpha male lad she had ever met at the Ilford Jewish Youth Club. Because she was certain Melvin adored her, would wrap her in affection and do his best to take care of her, she chose to ignore the fact that she wasn’t particularly attracted to him physically.

  When Beverley and Naomi’s father died in the mid seventies, a light seemed to go on - as opposed to off - inside Queenie. As the years passed she seemed to positively blossom. She gave up smoking, became a doting grandmother who baked the children slightly wonky Jane Asher birthday cakes and began taking a more than perfunctory interest in the state of Beverley and Melvin’s finances. As Queenie began to get in touch with her Jewish mother within, it became clear to Beverley that Lionel hadn’t quite been the devoted husband he’d always appeared. Exactly what had gone on between her father and her mother she had no idea - Queenie had never once spoken ill of Lionel - but there was no doubt in her mind that he had contributed in large measure to Queenie’s behaviour.

  By now Beverley’s attitude to her mother had softened considerably. She knew she would find it hard to forgive her for the past, but she’d stopped hating her. Occasionally, over a cup of tea, she would broach the subject of their miserable childhood. Clearly distressed, Queenie would immediately change the subject. Beverley never had the heart to press her.

  Time and again, Beverley tried to share her thoughts on their parents’ marriage with Naomi, but her sister, who believed Lionel had been led a dog’s life by their mother, wouldn’t hear a word against him. She always made it clear that as far as she was concerned their mother had been spawned by Beelzebub and deserved absolutely no compassion.

  ***

  Five years ago, when Queenie began to develop severe arthritis in her left hip as well as very high blood pressure, it was Beverley who began to worry about her falling over in the bath or having a stroke. It was also Beverley, fed up with phoning her mother ten times a day to check she was still alive, who decided Queenie could no longer live on her own. One Sunday morning while Melvin was in the park playing maladroit football with his usual gang of wobbly, overweight Jewish professionals, Beverley invited Naomi over to discuss what should be done.

  Things had got off to a shaky start the moment Naomi arrived. Even though she was earning a fortune in her spare time presenting corporate videos, she was still working as a local TV news reporter in Luton. Nevertheless, she swanned into the house looking down her nose like a dowager who’d taken a wrong turning and ended up in Moss Side. Clearly fearing contagion, she air-kissed Beverley on both cheeks, actually, to Beverley’s astonishment, saying ‘Mwah’ as she did it.

  ‘Oh, come on, Naomi,’ Beverley said, laughing and giving her sister a proper hug, ‘this is me. Your big sister, not one of your telly-kissy chums.’ She then led Naomi into the living room, which had just been redecorated.

  ‘Oh, so you went for pale lemon anaglypta,’ Naomi said as she took in the new colour scheme. ‘And ruched nets with just a blush of pink. Do I detect an ironic nod towards fondant fancy?’ She lowered her voice. ‘Who did you get to do it, Mr Kipling?’

  ‘Sorry?’ Beverley said, missing her sister’s last remark.

  ‘Oh, no, nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Actually,’ Beverley went on, ‘we didn’t give it much thought. To be quite honest, interior design isn’t my and Mel’s strong point.’

  ‘Really? You’d never have guessed.’

  ***

  A few minutes later, over coffee and a couple of slices of Beverley’s home-made marble cake, Beverley mooted the idea of Queenie moving in.

  It was a full five seconds before Naomi spoke.

  ‘Move in? With you?’ she repeated flatly, clearly astonished at the suggestion.

  ‘Yes. Why not? I’ve sort of mentioned it vaguely and she seems to be up for it.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. Three meals a day. You running round after her. Who wouldn’t? You’re mad, Bev. For Christ’s sake, the woman fucked up both our lives. Now you want her living with you? Sharing your house? Why can’t we just put her in a home? Then we wouldn’t have to do much more than visit her on her birthday with a couple of giant bars of Fruit and Nut.’

  ‘Come on, Nay, she’s a bright, intelligent woman. She’d die if she had to spend all day sitting in front of the telly with a load of old people.’

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘Stop it, Nay,’ Beverley came back at her. ‘Even you don’t wish her dead.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Naomi said reluctantly. ‘Well, it’s no skin off my nose, I suppose, if you have her come and live with you. Just don’t involve me, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh,
God, no,’ Beverley said. ‘This would be entirely our responsibility. Although it did occur to me that you might have her from time to time - for the odd weekend or few days here and there - just to give us a break.’

  Naomi nearly choked on her marble cake.

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ she snapped. ‘If you think I am having that neglectful, self-centred old bat living in my flat then you’ve got another think coming. Plus, it may have escaped your notice, darling, but we are not all little home bodies. Unlike you I have a career. I am up at six and don’t get home till ten at night. There is no way I can look after her. What’s more, I’ve just bought a new white sofa from Conran and I’m not having her sitting and weeing all over it.’

  While Naomi brushed cake crumbs off her expensive navy trousers on to the carpet, Beverley made the point that Queenie was still perfectly continent and reiterated that it would only be a couple of times a year, but Naomi wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Great,’ Beverley said. ‘So I get landed.’

  ‘No, Beverley, you haven’t simply got landed,’ Naomi said, about to shoot from the lip. ‘You’ve chosen to get landed. There’s a big difference. Do you know something, Bev, you’re a fool. You’re a fool for giving a damn and you’re a fool because you’ve made nothing of your life. You married too young, you had children too young and all you’ve succeeded in doing is turning yourself into a sad domestic drudge, a fat semi-animated matzo pudding with nothing better to do all day than worry about whether her children are wearing vests. Now you want to martyr yourself into the bargain.’

  Instead of standing up to Naomi, Beverley immediately burst into tears.

  ‘I may not have a career,’ she sobbed, ‘but at least I’ve got a husband and children to love and who love me back. Who do you have to hug when life gets rough?’

  ‘Easy. My Alfa Spider,’ Naomi snapped, standing up to go.

  At that moment, Melvin walked in. He had come home early because the game had been rained off and had been standing in the hall listening to the last minute or so of the sisters’ exchange. Melvin traditionally mishandled disagreements. While he would smile inanely at being grievously insulted, he couldn’t even take a dud transistor radio back to Dixons without getting so worked up that he frequently ended up threatening to punch out the lights of some blameless seventeen-year-old shop assistant. On this occasion, however, for once in his life, Melvin got it right. He simply walked over to Beverley, put his arm round her and in a very quiet, calm voice suggested that Naomi leave, carry on enjoying her life as a weather girl or whatever she was, and never show her face in his home again.

  ‘My pleasure,’ she hissed. ‘And for your information, I’m a senior news reporter.’

  ‘Yeah, right, famous throughout Luton,’ sneered Melvin. A few seconds later the door slammed and she was gone.

  Beverley was more proud of Melvin at that moment than she had ever been.

  ***

  Today, five years on, Beverley could only think about all the time she and Naomi had wasted. ‘Pair of idiots. Somebody should have bashed our heads together ages ago,’ she said, taking a couple of crispbreads out of the packet and spreading them with cottage cheese. The warmth she was feeling towards her sister was suddenly overtaken by the animosity she was feeling towards her lunch. Why did going on a diet always involve eating sheets of stuff which tasted like they should come in a flat pack with an Allen key and cheese which looked like it had already been digested once? As she took a bite and grimaced, it occurred to her that Benny had eaten nothing all day. Her son had refused to go to school that morning, claiming he had silicosis.

  ‘Silicosis,’ she repeated with more than a hint of ridicule.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve been up all night coughing,’ he said weakly, falling back on his pillow, like some Victorian heroine in a swoon. ‘Plus I feel tired and my legs have gone all weak.’ He illustrated his point with a few seconds of highly theatrical hacking and wheezing.

  ‘Benny, this is Finchley, not a twenties Nottinghamshire pit village. You do not have silicosis.’

  She felt his forehead. Neither did he have a temperature.

  ‘I promise you, there’s nothing the matter with you other than you’ve been reading too much D.H. Lawrence. Come on, Benny, I’m not daft. I suspect the only reason you don’t want to go to school is because you have a piece of course work due in today which you haven’t finished. Well, you’re going to have to face the music. You’re not ill. Get up and go to school.’

  ‘I can’t, Mum. Honest, I feel dead ill. I want a second opinion.’

  ‘OK. I’ll tell you again. You’re fine.’

  ‘God,’ he said indignantly, ‘why won’t you ever believe me? If I say I’m ill, I’m ill.’ There was more melodramatic coughing.

  She looked down him. Despite the bleached head, and the hairy arms sticking out of his Cradle of Filth T-shirt, to her he still looked about three. What was more, he had changed emotional tack and was now looking up at her with huge pleading eyes.

  Even though she had no doubt he was swinging the lead because he hadn’t done his homework, she knew she would give in eventually - on the strict understanding that Benny spent the day catching up.

  ***

  While Beverley threw the second crispbread into the swing bin and began making a plate of Benny’s favourite peanut butter, chocolate spread and jam sandwiches, her son lay in bed and continued to gaze at the Year Eleven school photograph.

  Sixth row back, third from the left, there she sat. Lettice Allard, the love of Benny’s life, his wanking muse and the reason he had refused to go to school. He had been desperate to stay at home not because he had got behind with a school assignment, but because he was exhausted, having spent the entire night trying to work out whether he stood even a remote chance of pulling this exquisite blue-eyed goddess.

  Yesterday during lunch break, when a gang of them got together to smoke some weed at Lettice’s house, which was just over the road from the school, he’d felt pretty sure she’d given him reason to hope. But he couldn’t be certain. On the other hand there had been that long, sexy look she’d given him, not to mention the hair flick. Correction. Two hair flicks. These had to be sure signs of her unspoken desire. On the other hand, maybe he’d misread the signs and her desire was only unspoken because she didn’t desire him.

  Somehow, the conversation got round to circumcision. As usual, Lettice had been riding on her PC high horse. (She’d inherited her overbearing manner and politics from her mother, a Marxist aristo who had married beneath her.) She began by saying that in her opinion circumcision was the institutionalised mutilation of infants who couldn’t give their permission. A lad called Neil then accused her of being the knob police. She lost her temper. He then accused her of being ratty because she was menstruating. She gave a high-pitched screech of fury.

  ‘For your information, Neil,’ she said, ‘women don’t menstruate, they femstruate.’ She took a deep breath and returned to the subject under discussion.

  ‘Anyway, all I know is that when I finally decide to renounce my celibate state, there’s no way I’m doing it with a bloke who doesn’t own a foreskin. It’s just so unnatural.’

  She then turned to Benny, smiled and performed the first hair flick.

  ‘By the way, Benny, you might be interested to know that while I was on the Web looking for stuff on female circumcision the other night, I found this group of circumcised men who are totally vexed about it, and call themselves circumcision survivors. They’ve even worked out ways to reclaim their foreskins.’

  She went over to the leather-topped desk standing in the bay window and picked up half a dozen print-outs. She handed them to Benny.

  ‘I thought being Jewish and all that you might find it useful... I mean, you must be pretty angry with your parents for having you chopped without your permission.’

  Benny, hugely embarrassed by this public discussion of his penis, yet simultaneously flattered by the idea of Lettice hav
ing spent even a few seconds considering its existence, let alone its well-being, coloured up and said he’d never really thought about it.

  ‘Well, maybe it’s time you did. I mean...’ she said, throwing him an unmistakably sexy look.

  She smiled at him for what must have been a full five seconds. This was followed by the second hair flick. Blushing, Benny folded up the papers and slipped them into his jacket pocket. Was she giving him the come-on? He just couldn’t be sure. But as he lay in his bed, he knew he had to do everything he could to make her his. And what was more, he had no doubt about the first step.

  Benjamin Moshe Littlestone was about to renege on the covenant Abraham had made with God five thousand years ago, not to mention trample on the generosity of his ultra-orthodox Uncle Shmuley, who had flown all the way from Montreal for Benny’s bar mitzvah bringing with him a set of the finest kosher phylacteries from Israel.

  Benny was to set about reclaiming his foreskin.

  Chapter 4

  Melvin pulled up at the traffic lights in his rusty 1982 VW Passat. Immediately, his mobile started to ring. He stabbed the send button and straight away wished he hadn’t.

  ‘Och, Mr Littlestone. I’m glad to have caught you. McGillicuddy here... from the bank.’

  The words ‘McGillicuddy’ and ‘bank’ in the same sentence were usually enough to have Melvin hyperventilating into a paper bag. The man may have just agreed to extend his overdraft, but historically Mr McGillicuddy was rarely the bearer of glad tidings where Melvin was concerned.

  ‘Ah, how are you, Mr McGillicuddy?’ he said, a touch too jovially, failing to conceal the anxiety in his voice. ‘How are you getting on with the hairpiece?’

  The lights turned green, but Melvin didn’t notice.

  ‘Well’, Mr McGillicuddy said uneasily, ‘truth to tell, that’s the reason I’m ringing. Of course I could be worrying about nothing. I mean, mine could be a one-off experience, but I thought I ought to inform you...’