by Anna Maxted
Marcus’s face turns purple. He bellows, ‘You dare speak to me like that, you vicious little cow! Your fucking cat brought in a pigeon! A great big frigging pigeon flapping round my kitchen, shitting on the surfaces!’
Even though I loathe Fatboy’s bird-catching habit, I roar, ‘Don’t you know anything, you big fat fool, a pigeon from a cat is a present! He bought you a present!’
Marcus is screeching so loudly his voice cracks: ‘It took me two hours to catch it! Two hours! I was meant to be at the gym!’
I yelp: ‘For what! To make your pecs bigger and your pecker even smaller?’ This strikes me as funny and I start laughing.
Marcus shakes a hammy fist in my face and snarls, ‘I want you out tonight! Do you hear me, tonight! And that fat slug of a cat – because if I catch him do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to step on his fat orange head and crush it to a pulp!’
I say in a voice dripping with sarcasm, ‘Hey, big man!’ and then, in my normal voice: ‘Marcus. Guess what. You don’t scare me. You and your threats. Shout as much as you like. You’re powerless. Impotent.’
It’s true and he knows it. He can’t touch me any more. I march past him. Then I retrieve Fatboy from Luke’s wardrobe – his favourite hiding place because it’s full of warm, soft, dirty clothes – and carry him to my bedroom. ‘Angel Baby,’ I say, ‘pack your things, we’re moving out!’ Fatboy catches sight of himself in the mirror and hisses. I hate to say it, but he’s as thick as a brick. I suspect he’s a warning that I should never have children.
I ring my mother and ask if she minds if I move in tonight. She says, ‘Oh. Okay. I don’t know where you’ll sleep though. There’s no bed in the study and Florence is in the guest bedroom.’
I reply, ‘I can sleep in the lounge on the sofa.’
She pauses. Then she says, ‘But me and Florence are watching The Horse Whisperer.’
I sigh and say, ‘Well I won’t go to sleep until you’re finished then, will I?’
Pacified, she replies, ‘No, good.’
I put down the phone. I rest my head in my hands and think, if only my mother had owned a cat we’d have all been spared a lot of grief.
Chapter 29
WHAT IF MY obituary states to the nation that I had a knack of failing at almost everything I did? I start fretting about this on reading about Mr Cane in the Daily Express. ‘The prosecutor said Mr Cane, who had not been reported missing, was a shy, introverted loner who appeared to have a knack at failing at almost everything he did . . .’ I sit on the train and I can’t get the sentence out of my head. A knack at failing at almost everything. What a terrible legacy. It churns me up because I feel that I’m heading the same way.
I now live with my mother and grandmother, both of whom prefer Robert Redford to me. I’m too feeble to live on my own. I’m still Deodorant Monitor. And Tom hates me. I haven’t got a capsule wardrobe. We’ve destroyed the ozone layer. I’ve got an itchy spot on my stomach which may be a flea bite. A forest fire somewhere hot has just decimated millions of trees. Which negates the fact I recycled all my newspapers last week. A meteorite is probably going to smash into Earth. And I can’t stand what I’m wearing. Someone is poisoning dolphins. I have a fear of estate agents so am doomed to live with my mother for ever. My hair is as flat as if I’d pasted it to my head. And no one even noticed that Mr Cane was missing. By the time I get into work I’m feeling a bit low.
So it doesn’t help that when I return from the toilet, Laetitia screams across the office in a voice as loud as Concorde taking flight, ‘Helen – private call for you – it’s your Community Psychiatric Nurse!’ I freeze and stare, as does the entire office. Laetitia trills sweetly, ‘Shall I transfer him to you now?’
I stare at her in dismay and say, ‘If you must.’ She smirks. I decide to intercept her invitation to the Has-been Debutantes’ Christmas Ball and amend the dress code from ‘Black Tie’ to ‘Beekeepers’.
I snatch up the phone. ‘Yes?’ I hiss, cupping the mouthpiece.
‘Helen Bradshaw?’ says a warm voice. ‘Sorry to hassle you at work. Cliff Meacham – your mother’s CPN. Hope she warned you I was going to call!’ I swallow. I am bubbling with rage at his indiscretion when he adds, ‘Your colleague wouldn’t pass me on unless I identified myself. But we can schedule the call for another time if you prefer.’
I forgive him and make a mental note that Laetitia’s invitation will also read ‘Please Bring Own Hive’. I sigh and say, ‘Could you call back at lunchtime?’ Infuriatingly, he can. And he does.
Thankfully, Laetitia is lunching ‘a contact’ at the Ivy, and so the office is deserted. I expect Cliff to leapfrog the pleasantries and land on the point, but he seems determined to chat.
‘So you’re a journalist!’ he begins. ‘How exciting! Do you interview lots of famous people?’
‘Masses,’ I reply, trying not to laugh outright.
Cliff is so enthralled by his glamorous vision of my profession that I invent three celebrity exclusives so as not to disappoint him. His interest is beguiling, and I am explaining why Demi saw fit to confide in me about her marriage difficulties before she told, ah, Bruce, when I realise I’m a mile out of my depth and should bail out now.
‘Anyway, enough about her. She’s a very private person. What can I do for you?’ I say politely.
Cliff drags himself back to mundane reality and tells me it’s important for him to understand my mother, her relationship with my father, and how she’s changed since my father died.
‘But I thought you asked her all that,’ I say. He tells me it’s useful for him to hear my impression of events as well as hers. I say, in the understatement of the year, ‘She’s been a bit up and down.’ He doesn’t say anything so I add, ‘I’ve tried to look after her but she misses my dad.’ I stop. Nothing.
Then Cliff says casually, ‘And how do you look after her?’
I tell him about the cooking and the gallery trips and the reiki and the supper party and the listening and the forcing Vivienne to invite her to dinner.
Cliff says, ‘Wow.’
I’m puffed from talking but Cliff doesn’t notice. He asks about ninety more mother questions. He wants to know who I think is the strong one in our relationship. He wants to know whose needs I think take priority. He wants to know everything I’d prefer not to tell him.
Then he asks, ‘And what happens when you need looking after?’ I’m stumped.
‘I don’t follow,’ I say.
‘Well, when you need mothering, what happens then?’
A question which would have been more appropriate when I was four. I say brusquely, ‘It’s not really like that.’
I hear Cliff take a deep drag on his home-made cigarette. ‘I see,’ he says in an indefinable tone. He coughs, excuses himself, then says that as from tomorrow, my mother has a weekly appointment at the clinic, and ideally, he’d like me to attend at least one session with her.
‘I’d love to,’ I lie, ‘but I’m afraid I can’t.’ Cliff pauses. ‘Work,’ I explain. He suggests that maybe I could think about it. ‘Yeah sure,’ I say briskly. ‘Anything else you need?’ I say this as a shooing ploy but he ignores it. He explains that it’s helpful if he understands the family ‘as a whole’.
I’m nodding and saying ‘mm,’ and wondering what Cliff does for fun, when he asks me how my life has changed since my father died. Spaghetti in my head. I think of my post-orgasm outburst and my insides float with panic. I itch to slam down the phone and bolt. After a full minute, Cliff says, ‘I sense you’re having difficulty in talking about how you feel.’ He must have The Ladybird Book of Psychiatry open on his lap at page seven.
I reply tartly, ‘I’m not feeling anything.’ It’s nearly true. Cliff is disbelievingly silent. I blurt, ‘I’ve been too busy at work and looking after my mother.’ Cliff remains silent. It’s like talking to a stone. Hey, maybe he is actually a cliff. ‘She’s been very upset since, you know,’ I say.
‘What
?’ he says.
‘My father’s death!’ I snap. What did he think I was talking about? Her team’s relegation?
‘She cut her wrists!’ I exclaim. Cliff seems to expect elaboration so I tell him what happened, even though I’m sure my mother has told him at rambling length. I make it plain to Cliff that the wrist-cutting night was the only Monday night I’d missed and of course, after that, I’d never ever miss one again. I don’t want to be accused of parental neglect a second time.
But when I’ve finished Cliff says, ‘You’ve been devoting a lot of your time to your mother.’
I nod and realise he can’t see me nodding. ‘Well, she needs me now,’ I say. Cliff goes silent again. Jesus, I’d hate to be his girlfriend. I joke, ‘I turn my back for one minute and bam! She’s whittling at her wrists!’ It’s not one of my best jokes and Cliff doesn’t laugh. He says it sounds to him as if my mother was trying to force me to look after her. ‘But I was!’ I squeak. I bloody knew we’d get round to this.
Then he says it sounds as if she was trying to punish me for not being there. ‘Well you got that right,’ I say sourly.
‘But Helen,’ he says, ‘what about your life?’
I am speedily tiring of our conversation. It’s like an extremely dull quiz show without the cash prize incentive. ‘What about it?’ I say sharply.
‘You can’t be living it totally for your mother,’ he replies.
‘No, but—’ I start and then stop. ‘I’m not. She needs me. Anyway, I’ve got nothing better to do. She’s got no one else,’ I say crossly.
‘She’s got herself,’ he replies.
I am about to remark on the fatuity of this comment when Cliff adds that it isn’t healthy or normal for a mother to be so dependent on her child – child! I’m older than he is, the little schnip! Cliff says the higher I jump every time she pulls a strop, the worse it will get. ‘It’s just not helpful,’ he concludes.
Oh, so it’s my fault. ‘No it is not your fault,’ says Cliff quietly. ‘You are not responsible for your mother’s behaviour. Only your own. The most helpful thing you can do for yourself and your mother – in that order – is to let her learn to manage her own grief.’ Easy for him to say, sitting in his clinic, smoking his stinky cigarettes, never having experienced the wrath of Cecelia Bradshaw Upon Not Getting Her Own Way.
‘And so I just ignore her, do I, until she leaps from a window?’ I say sarcastically.
Cliff – who is turning out to be as charming as halitosis – admits that resisting my mother’s demands is a gamble. But he also says if I’m always available to bail her out, neither of us will ‘move on’. I’m not sure I like the all-inclusive nature of that last statement.
‘What do you mean by that?’ I say haughtily.
Cliff coughs and says, ‘If you can’t deal with pain, the easiest thing to do is to put it back in its box. If a person spends all their time worrying about someone else’s pain they distract themselves from their own.’
I feel uneasy so I say stiffly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Cliff hesitates, then changes the subject. ‘Okey-doke,’ he says. Bet he doesn’t say that in front of his right-on friends. ‘Helen, tell me a little about your relationship with your father,’ he says in a melty-honey tone.
I say sourly, ‘What’s to tell.’
Cliff waits. Does that classify the situation as a cliffhanger? ‘Well, for instance, what did you like to do together?’ he prompts.
‘Not much,’ I say. Analyse that up your bum. My shoulders are so hunched they’re level with my ears. I look at the clock. Christ, I’ve been on the phone to this man for thirty minutes! Hasn’t he got a life to lead? I pick at a mystery green crust under my left thumbnail and say, ‘Look, I’ve got to go. I need to get a sandwich. Anyway, I thought this call was about my mother.’
Cliff pauses. I can hear him flicking his lighter. I suspect he’s about to say something pompous. I’m not disappointed. ‘Helen,’ he says. ‘When someone dies, a door opens into a room where there’s grief. There may be more rooms. If you have the courage you can look further. Some people shut the door again.’
He then starts wittering about ‘closing’ and asks if there is anything else I want to say but there’s nothing.
I stare into space for ten minutes then start calling estate agents.
Chapter 30
I ROUNDED UP all my favourite memories this morning. They have one thing in common. Food. Being taken to a grown-up party and asking the hostess for fruit salad ‘but only the cherries’, and getting them. Eating a boiled egg on a ferry and not being able to finish it – a magic bottomless egg that went on for ever. Michelle’s grandma buying us comics and a Curly Wurly each. A peach in Spain as big as a ball, my skin smelling like toffee in the sun. Reading the words on my mother’s cottage cheese pot – ‘low fat cheese’ – and asking, ‘Mummy, how can cheese be low?’ and making her laugh. All delicious.
But my best edible memories revolve around Christmas. Helping my mother make a currant-filled cake for her class and scraping out the bowl. Baking gingerbread men at school with cut-out shapes. Stuffing myself with Quality Street (except the purple ones) until I felt sick. Asking for six roast potatoes and leaving three and my father being too merry to boom, ‘Your eyes are bigger than your stomach!’
My father was fun at Christmas. He’d creep into my bedroom late on Christmas Eve and plop a Terry’s plain chocolate orange into my stocking. (I prefer milk chocolate but he wasn’t to know.) We’d drive to the garden centre and choose a tree and I’d breathe in the smell of fresh pine and and he’d say, ‘Daylight robbery!’ or ‘Peculiar shape!’ And he’d buy himself a cigar and me a pack of sugar cigarettes and we’d smoke them in the car on the way home. Naturally, this tradition came to an end when I turned seven, but I think of it today and I want to drag him out of his grave.
I am dreading Christmas without him and so is my mother.
Understandably, Vivienne’s benevolence does not stretch to inviting Cecelia round for Christmas dinner. Especially now she comes with the unseasonal condition of Nana Flo (who is to parties what myxomatosis is to rabbits). I know my mother perceives this as a slight because at breakfast she declares, ‘I’m not doing Christmas this year, I’m staying in bed. So don’t expect any presents!’
I pause from feeding Fatboy his Turkey and Giblets Pâté and exclaim, ‘But Mummy, we can’t not do Christmas! Even Michelle does Christmas!’
My mother snaps, ‘Michelle’s father is still alive!’
I am about to say, ‘Look, I know it’s hard for you,’ when I think of Cliff flicking his lighter. I say calmly, ‘I’m still alive. Nana’s still alive. Just. What about the cake we made together?’
My mother slams down her tea cup. ‘I don’t care about the stupid cake!’ she whines. ‘It’s not the same without a man in the house!’ Indeed it isn’t. There are no willies lurking under trousers.
‘Oh, Mum,’ I say sadly, ‘I know it isn’t. But why can’t we have a quiet Christmas, just the three of us?’ She sticks out her lower lip. She must have learned it from one of her kids. It’s so comical – a four-year-old’s expression on a fifty-five-year-old face – I have to bite my tongue to stop myself laughing.
‘I can’t be bothered,’ she says defiantly.
‘Mum,’ I say, ‘is this because you’re going to the clinic today?’
My mother snorts and says, ‘No. It’s because I want nothing to do with Christmas and I refuse to go Christmas shopping. I shun it!’ Fine.
‘Alright, Scrooge,’ I say sternly, ‘then Nana and I will have to celebrate it ourselves. Won’t we, Nana?’
Nana Flo, who has just shuffled in carrying her hot water bottle, shrugs and mutters, ‘Nothing to celebrate.’
I feel foolish for thinking that Nana would help me out. She doesn’t go a bundle on helping people. Not even herself. I remember last Christmas when, in a burst of benevolence, I bought us tickets to see Les Misérables.
(I wasn’t sure what it was about but it sounded perfect. And I felt guilty for not visiting her in six months.) As I was working that day I suggested that we meet in the foyer. She rang me at 5.45 p.m. and announced she couldn’t make it, as ‘if you haven’t the time to come and fetch me what’s the point?’ This from a woman who’s been travelling on buses ever since they were invented!
I look at Nana Flo in her ugly black shoes and beige tights and drab frock and the opal brooch at her neck holding it all together and I wonder if she has ever been happy. And I’m not just saying that. Really, I wonder. ‘Nana,’ I say, ‘when do you think you were, ah, when do you think you were happiest?’
Nana Flo’s pinched face seems more colourless than usual. ‘On my wedding day,’ she says.
‘Of course,’ I mumble. ‘Well, I’m going to work now, see you both later.’ I scurry out of the door, berating myself for my gabbering stupidity. Nana Flo married Grandpa Gerald on her eighteenth birthday, a fortnight before Hitler invaded Poland. A week after war was declared, Grandpa Gerald was conscripted. Two months after that Grandpa Gerald was blown to smithereens by a shell during training.
I think Nana Flo put her grief back in its box.
I am still brooding about my grandmother being robbed of her sweetheart before he had the chance to be very brave and fight the enemy like a lion when Michelle calls to inform me that she and Marcus are engaged. Her exact words: ‘I guess you were his final fling!’ And I guess I’m thinking about the shreds of my grandfather strewn across Salisbury Plain because – when I regain the power of speech – instead of saying ‘Would you like me to recommend a quack specialising in penile augmentation?’ I say I’m pleased and I hope they’ll be happy. My voice sounds high and thin but not, I hope, hysterical. Michelle – who has obviously psyched herself up for a flouncy row – sounds taken aback. She says ‘Oh!’
Then she adds, in a deflated tone, ‘Oh sure! Thanks. And I, uh, I hope you’ll be happy with that guy, even if he is a complete jerk. He ruined my fiance’s shirt. It was an Armani!’
