by Anna Maxted
On Sunday morning I call the police and ask what they can do if a woman is being hit by her partner. The cold reply is that if the victim herself doesn’t make an allegation, nothing. I call Tina on Sunday and Monday and Tuesday because I am determined that she see sense and dump Adrian this week but she doesn’t answer and I don’t want to leave a message and then it’s Christmas.
On the morning of 24 December my mother and I receive a last-minute invitation to Christmas Day lunch from Vivienne. I reject it because I don’t feel like being around a complete family. I’d feel like a spare part. Which – now I’m fatherless – maybe I am. My mother also rejects it then changes her mind because otherwise she’ll ‘just sit at home getting miserable’. This is an understatement considering that even the Grinch would walk in our door and start craving fairy lights. My mother is making a point to God. She hasn’t even displayed the cards she’s been sent – they lie in a scrappy pile on the kitchen table. I arrange the cards in a neat row before I go to work and suggest we light Chanukkah candles, sod it, any candles – frankly I’d set myself alight if I thought it would make the house less gloomy – but she’s having none of it. She finds the beauty voucher I bought her hidden in the napkin drawer and sulks and says I’ve only bought it to make her feel bad. At this point my patience twangs and I reply sharply that the only person making Cecelia feel bad is Cecelia. And I’m right. She’s vetoed joy. So yesterday I purchased a small turkey, a bag of potatoes, and a jar of cranberry sauce (I was about to pick a bag of frozen peas when a wave of apathy swept over me and I thought stuff the peas) and dumped them in the fridge in defiance.
At 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve I watch my colleagues twirl round the office in a haze of tinsel and mulled wine and goodwill and feel detached. I wonder what Tom’s doing now and if I’ll ever see him again. I think of us together and it feels like I imagined it. I knew it wouldn’t last. I am staring into space when something whooshes through the air and makes a loud thud. I jump and see that Mr Grouch the doorman has dumped a fat bouquet of roses on my desk. Flowers! I never get flowers! I am a flower-free zone. ‘For Laetitia?’ I bleat in disbelief.
Mr Grouch scowls, says, ‘You’re Helen, incha?’ and stumbles off.
The blood fizzes in my head and I think, Tom? Tom! Flowers from Tom to say he likes me again! I take a sidelong glance at the fire escape just in case he’s climbed up the building à la Richard Gere and is loitering with the intent of whisking me away. He hasn’t. But roses. The symbol of romantic love! He’s sorry for bellowing! He’s contrite and I’m right! I fumble for the card and rip open the envelope. My hands are clammy and shaking as I read the message:
Darling Helen. It’s been too long. Love Jasper, xox.
My hopes shrivel and I feel like James of The Giant Peach fame when he drops the magic bag of life-enhancing grubs and they wriggle and disappear into the soil. Marvellous things could have happened to me but I messed up and now I have nothing. I stare at the note and wonder what Jasper wants. I expel an angry little puff of air through my nose. He’s got a nerve. Still. Nice flowers. I smile reluctantly. Cheeky sod. I suppose he isn’t that bad. He is nothing like Adrian. He’s just a rogue. At least he doesn’t hassle me about my living arrangements. I sniff the roses. I don’t suppose it’d do much harm to meet for a drink. I touch the soft pink petal of a rose. Pink roses. Does this mean I’m gay?
I am breathing in the scent of my pink roses like other people breathe in oxygen when my mother rings to tell me in a grumpy voice that she’s sorry for being grumpy and if I don’t want her to go to Vivienne’s tomorrow she won’t go. She doesn’t want me to spend Christmas in an empty house, she knows for a fact that Morrie wouldn’t like it. (For a non-believer he was surprisingly fond of Christmas.) When she says this I feel like most normal mothers feel when their child takes its first step. ‘Mum,’ I say softly, ‘that’s very considerate of you, but I’d feel awful if I stopped you going to Vivienne’s. I want you to go.’ To which she replies ‘Oh good!’ and puts the phone down. I am wondering if it’s possible to pinch oneself and awake in another dimension, when Lizzy bounces up and asks if I want to help her and Brian decorate her tree tonight. The plan is to eat wholemeal mince pies, arrange baubles, and attend Midnight Mass. Although I’d love to, I feel she’s asked out of compassion and I don’t want compassion so I pretend I’m busy.
‘But I’ll come with you to the soup kitchen tomorrow!’ I burst out, before I can stop myself.
Lizzy’s hand flies to her throat and she exclaims, ‘Oh Helen! But you can’t! I rang and they’ve already got more seasonal volunteers than they can cope with!’
I blush scarlet and mutter, ‘Doesn’t matter. I’d have depressed the tramps, anyway.’
Lizzy pauses then retreats, and I see a cartoon in my head of me as a human turkey eating turkey alone. With a heavy heart I ring my grandmother to see if she wants to join me for what I confidently predict will be the most depressing festive meal of my life.
To my relief Nana is spending the day at her friend Nora’s thank you, they’ve plotted their television schedule and they’re playing bingo in the evening with people from the Fellowship Club. As she says, there’s nothing to celebrate, you won’t find her pulling crackers, not this year. She’ll be at home on Boxing Day if I want to visit, but I shouldn’t come between two and three thirty because she’ll be watching a Cary Grant film. And if – as Cecelia’s mentioned – I’ve bought her a china ornament of Princess Diana’s head, she doesn’t want it because she’s got five already and her mantelpiece is full up.
When Christmas dawns I am feeling Grinchish and consider cooking the turkey, slinging it in the Toyota, speeding to the cemetery, and hurling it at my father’s grave.
Well, if this mess isn’t his fault, whose is it?
Chapter 35
OWNING A LARGE gob and a short attention span, I remember very little of what I learned at school, which leaves me with not much. But I do recall a story we translated in our French class because, as they say in fairytales, it smote my heart. It was about a factory worker who was so poor he couldn’t afford to buy his little girl a Christmas tree. So he postponed Christmas. And when all the rich families threw out their Christmas trees in the New Year he crept to the rubbish dump and took one. And so his little girl got her Christmas tree and had the best Christmas day ever.
I don’t have much in common with that little girl except that this year my Christmas comes late too. The day itself isn’t bad either. Surprisingly peaceful. I act as wardrobe consultant to my mother, who is desperate to out-glam Vivienne. ‘Are you sure you won’t come too?’ she says, in a rush of excitement. ‘There’ll be people your own age – some cousins, I think, and Jeremy and his friend Simon.’
I sigh and say, ‘Jeremy and his boyfriend Simon. Vivienne’s in denial.’
I briefly consider going – Jeremy is warm, cuddly and irrepressibly cheerful, Prozac in human form – then decide that Vivienne is sulphuric acid in human form and I need to be alone. I give my mother the beauty voucher and she gives me a static pair of blood-red silk pyjamas. ‘You shouldn’t sleep in a tatty old T-shirt,’ she explains kindly, ‘men don’t like it.’ Neither of us refer to my father. We tiptoe around his absence, which pollutes the air like a thick smog. The effort is draining and I wave my overdressed mother out of the door with relief. Then I wrap myself in my duvet and read my present to me – The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy – with the television on mute.
I can’t be bothered to cook the turkey so I make potato wedges and dip them in cranberry sauce. I break up the reading and eating with naps. I wonder what Tina’s doing. I pray that Adrian skis into a tree. And I try and fail to interest Fatboy in his new clockwork mouse (he sits down next to it, lifts his leg high like a ballerina, and starts licking what Luke refers to as his ‘willy case’).
Boxing Day is quiet too. Nana Flo rings to retract our invitation as she has an upset tummy. This is not a huge surprise as she always has an upset tummy o
n Boxing Day because she treats Christmas lunch as if it were the Last Supper. So I challenge my mother to a game of Monopoly which is a mistake as she bunks jail, resents me buying Mayfair, and defrauds the bank. Peace is only resumed when I lose. Then I read my book and my mother opens the door because she thinks it might be snowing and sees that Fatboy has brought us a seasonal gift, a sweet little dead robin redbreast. Peace is in chewed bits, until I spot that an Only Fools And Horses repeat is about to start on BBC1. And that’s the jingle bells over with.
The real excitement starts ten days later.
My mother returns to work. I find a flat. Michelle forces Marcus to get his back waxed. It’s all too much – where shall I begin? Actually that’s a rhetorical question because if I keep Marcus’s Discovery Of The Meaning Of Pain to myself for one moment longer my head will explode from pent-up gloating. I hear the tale from Lizzy, who heard it from Brian, who heard it from Sara, a beauty therapist at their health club. And I think, glory be, there is a God.
Marcus was sent by his fiancée to get his back waxed and it took Sara forty-five minutes! And she was mortified because he was screaming! Screaming! The B-word and the F-word so loud when there were people in the other rooms having massages! She put the wax on him and he screamed that it was scalding! When it was hardly even hot! Sara said, ‘Now you know what women go through!’ and he said no way did a bikini wax compare to this, because it was ‘just two strips’! And Sara stopped feeling sorry for him and said, ‘I assure you it’s not just two strips!’ And he was so hairy that afterwards he looked like he was wearing a tank top! She didn’t know if she should carry on down his arms! And then it turned out he worked at another gym but was too embarrassed to have it done there! And he only did it because his fiancée had made him!
Lizzy rarely gossips but waives her morals on the grounds that this isn’t hearsay, it’s reportage. Secretly I suspect she’s never forgiven Marcus for forcing her to admit in public that her ex-boyfriend’s penis was ‘medium’. This peek at Marcus’s new life in bootcamp almost arouses my sympathy. But I manage to quash it and am recoiling at the thought of my one brief tussle with Gorilla Back and wondering what – apart from desperation – possessed me when the phone rings.
It’s my mother. She is calling from the staffroom. Everyone has been so lovely. They all missed her. Her children have made her a Welcome Back banner out of coloured tissue paper. They’re all on their best behaviour. She thinks Mrs Armstrong’s had a word with them. She’s so pleased to be back. And Mrs Armstrong has made her promise that if at any time she even begins to feel she can’t cope she’s to say so instantly and Mrs Armstrong will do all she can to assist. She has heaps to do, the schedule is crazy, but she doesn’t care. Anyway she’s got to go now, she’s about to take a maths lesson.
As my mother clanks down the phone, I marvel. Either Prozac or Cliff are agreeing with her. Or today is a fortuitous day. Marcus gets his comeuppance and I get to hear about it. All thirty four-year-olds in Cecelia Bradshaw’s class refrain from vomiting down their tops, wetting their pants, or poohing down their legs. It’s got to be fate. I consult my star sign to see if it agrees with me. (I believe my horoscope for as long as it flatters – the moment it starts chiding is the moment I dismiss it as gobbledygook.) Apparently Jupiter ‘the planet of growth and opportunity’ is busybodying around in my sign, so I should expect ‘exciting developments’.
I hunch over the page, nodding. Fact is, when you live at home, do a menial job, and have no love or social life, the torture of a former fling and the fleeting contentment of a problem parent assume thrilling proportions. I gnaw at my lip and wonder if I should have another go at Tina this afternoon. She has successfully avoided me and my self-help books for the last fortnight but her star sign says that Jupiter’s muscling in on the portion of her chart that ‘accents the structure’ of her existence and is ‘likely to bring changes’. Perfect. I’ll ring her after lunch.
It’s 12.02 and I’m about to start work when the Joop!-drenched Adam calls to say that he’s found the perfect property for me, it’s right up my street, I gotta view it immediately, it’s well cheap, no chain, cracking use of space, it’s spot-on, it’s in a much-sought after location, handy for public transport, could do with updating, hundreds of people are interested, if I don’t hurry it’ll go, and there’s sod all else around and I’ll be stuffed. By now I am well acquainted with Adam’s freestyle interpretation of the Property Misrepresentations Act and don’t believe a word. But seeing as Jupiter is breathing down my neck, I decide I should see this (from what I can gather) bite-sized, ramshackle, prehistoric flat situated under a railway bridge.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘How about six forty-five tonight?’
‘Yeah?’ says Adam, who doubtless expected me to put up a fight. ‘Lovely jubbly! It’s a date!’
‘No it isn’t,’ I say.
Lizzy and I meet him in his office at 6.32. Adam ignores me and leers at Lizzy who is wearing a short skirt. I don’t mind – partly because I’ve been shunned by men a lot higher up the food chain than Adam, and partly because if I was a bloke I’d choose Lizzy’s tall tanned elegance over a pale-faced shortarse too. But mainly, my indifference stems from fretting over whether I should tell Lizzy about Tina. I know I promised to keep quiet and that Fatboy’s corpulent life depends on it. But. I am convinced that if I was to tell Lizzy about Tina, for once I’d be divulging classified information for the right reason. Because when I rang Tina this afternoon she tentatively agreed to meet me tomorrow at my house on the condition that I ‘don’t have a go at’ her. So I’m wondering quite how I am going to have a go at Tina without her noticing and as Lizzy is the diplomacy queen and I’m the diplomacy pauper, I need her advice. Yet however I justify it, the sharp stark words ‘but you promised’ peck at my brain. Eventually – just as Adam spies a parking space and swerves violently into the kerb – I settle on a compromise.
I say in a low voice, ‘Lizzy. You know Adrian, Tina’s bloke? Well, what would you say if I said that I’d spoken to a woman who went out with him a while ago, and who said that he’d, ah, roughed her up a bit?’ Admittedly, this is a feak weeble adaptation of the truth and I’m aware that anyone else would decode it in a picosecond. But Lizzy’s intolerance of evil (she’s the direct opposite of Fatboy in that sense) is a guardian angel that wards off unpleasant imaginings. It wouldn’t occur to her that I was talking about Tina.
As it is, she pulls an astonished face and says briskly, ‘I can’t believe it! Adrian’s so nice! It can’t be true!’
Surprised by her vehemence, I say mildly, ‘Well, that’s what she said.’
Lizzy retorts – in the incredulous tone of a child on hearing that babies aren’t delivered by storks – ‘Is she sure?’
To be honest, I’m taken aback. I expected shock, horror, and flapping ears. Not obstinance. I say, ‘I don’t think she made it up, Lizzy, I honestly don’t.’
But Lizzy says firmly, ‘Adrian is so nice! And polite! She must have imagined it. And really, I don’t think it’s good of this person, to tell you nasty things like that.’ With that, Lizzy clicks open the lock, slinks out of the car, and slams the door. I feel like I’ve just tried to sell her double glazing.
Miserably, I glance at our surroundings. We are standing in front of a neat terraced row of wedding cake houses. They are all white, with beautiful bay windows and brightly painted doors. Adam opens the gate to the pebble-dashed exception. It is truly the cut-glass vase among wedding presents. ‘Maybe you could get a builder to scrape off the pebbles,’ whispers Lizzy, ‘and remove the rusting fridge from the front lawn.’
I nod and smile. I don’t trust myself to speak to her, just yet. So I say sweetly to Adam: ‘I’m not sure why you’ve brought us here unless it’s a joke, but will you ring the bell this time so the owner doesn’t have to run upstairs in his pants?’
Adam coughs and replies, ‘The owner doesn’t live here any more.’
He pushes open the shabby
front door and I understand why. The owner probably looked at the decor one day and died of fright. The stairs are wonky, creaking, and uncarpeted. The walls are covered in what I can only describe as a garish travesty of wallpaper and so, inexplicably, is the ceiling. Despite the breathtaking clash of orange and brown swirls, the effect is drab. Lizzy murmurs, ‘How very, ah, unique!’ I take a deep breath to stop myself suffocating.
‘It’s got a lot of potential,’ says Adam brightly. I sigh and follow him into what masquerades as the kitchen.
‘The owner obviously had a fetish for brown,’ I say with a sour look at the stained mud-coloured lino. ‘And an allergy to cleaning,’ I add, on seeing the grimy sideboard.
‘But the joy of this flat is that it’s crying out for you to stamp your own personality on it!’ replies Adam. ‘Under this lino lies a vintage wooden floor!’
I glance at him and say hopefully, ‘Is there?’
He nods, ‘Yeah, well there’s floorboards, innit?’
At the same time Lizzy cries, ‘Helen! I think this may be an original New World Gas Range cooker! Yes, look it’s got two doors! Ohmigod! I’d die for a cooker like this! I can’t believe it! It must be at least fifty years old! Adam, does this come with the flat?’
Adam looks longingly at Lizzy and says, ‘Yeah. Lush, innit?’
I huff and say, ‘It’s a piece of old junk’ but Lizzy insists that it’s ‘an antique’. Then she discovers the Formica is – underneath its coat of grime – gold-sequinned.
‘This is unbelievable!’ she squeals. ‘It’s a treasure! It hasn’t been changed since the war!’
I growl, ‘Yeah, the One Hundred Years War.’
Adam shows us into the bathroom which is so small that only two of us can fit in it at once. Lizzy waits outside. ‘Original tiling!’ she whispers, ‘Helen, you’ve got to have this!’
