by Anna Maxted
But I suppose I understand why Tina didn’t want to pursue it. What I didn’t understand is why Adrian pleaded not guilty and was instantly bailed as if his crime was forgetting to pay a parking ticket. ‘But it’s unbelievable!’ I screeched, when Luke relayed the scandal. ‘She’ll never be safe! He’ll probably come round tonight and blow up the house! Jesus! Don’t you dare let her drive the Escort without testing the brakes.’
Although that last warning was applicable with or without Adrian’s interference, Luke objected to my pessimism. One of Adrian’s bail conditions was not to contact Tina. And maybe by the time the case came to trial in three or four months, Tina might have decided to testify. And if I, Helen, were to testify – ‘you bet your bottom I will’ I interrupted crossly – maybe justice would be done. ‘One would hope,’ I said bitterly. Meanwhile, he, Luke, was watching out for her now.
‘Luke,’ I snapped – more meanly than necessary – ‘As I’m sure you’re aware, Tina has just been dragged out of a stifling, abusive relationship with a domineering tyrant. The last thing she needs is to be dragged into another one.’
Luke was, predictably, upset. ‘Shhh!’ he wailed. ‘She’ll hear! It’s not like that! She doesn’t think of me like that. She’s fragile, Helen, she’s nervous of being alone. She’s scared. I’m good for her! I’m helping her to stay away from Adrian. I’m protecting her, I promise! She’s still keen on the bastard! I’m distracting her! It’s the truth! Tina’s confused. But she trusts me. We talk. We’ve got a lot in common.’
I was tempted to reply, ‘Don’t make me laugh, your accessory of choice is a Head sports bag and you pronounce Gucci “Goo-ky”.’
But in keeping with my new ninety-eight per cent spite-free personality I restrained myself. After all, if Luke was hardening Tina’s heart against the Evil One, he was not a tactless, bumbling goof but a talented miracle worker who should be left alone to complete the proselytising process.
This realisation didn’t stop me being a teensy bit jealous of Luke’s abrupt conversion from my ever-hopeful platonic friend to Tina’s.
Excepting this emergency call, I don’t hear from him. I don’t ring Tina as – according to her new interpreter – ‘She’s knackered and not up to chatting. But when you see Lizzy can you thank her for the fruit and the, the er, St John’s wart stuff and the tea pee oil.’
I do as I’m told, sit tight, and pass on the message. When I tell Lizzy, she says, ‘Oh I feel terrible, terrible! Adrian was so smiley! And all those flowers! And all the phone calls! Who would have thought it? Do you think I should send Calendula too?’
I say it’s a kind thought but Tina already has a diary. And anyway, I’m sure she’ll be in touch if she needs anything. She doesn’t. So when Luke rings on Saturday I am gagging for information. And my, do I get it. Although Luke is so hyper and gabbly it takes all my concentration to understand him.
‘Okay, Tina’s brothers, Max, Sean, and Andrew, were spitting blood when they heard about Adrian. They went mental, Max especially, he’s the youngest, he was gonna go round and sort him right out. But Sean said no, they had to be clever about this, yeah, because Adrian sounded like the sort to press charges, so anyway, Tina doesn’t know it, but Sean calls this mate of his, Tony, who knows this bloke Ray, and Ray is one mean bastard, so Tony has a word with Ray, Ray runs a security firm, providing bouncers for clubs and shit, he’s ex-army, he used to be a bodybuilder, he’s a big bloke, like about eighteen stone and menacing and you can pay him to warn people of the error of their ways, yeah, and he’ll send somebody round, and so right, Sean tells Ray about Adrian and Ray hates wife beaters, it’s his worst thing, he calls himself The Equaliser, and two of his men turn up at Adrian’s door at two in the morning and they burst in and strap up Adrian’s hands with his belt, and Adrian shouts that he’ll go to the police and Ray says in a soft way that Adrian doesn’t talk unless Ray says so, Ray is the person who decides who talks around here, and he doesn’t give a toss about the police, and what’s more the police don’t care about him, and as is apparent Ray knows where Adrian lives and Adrian will know when he’s coming and anyway there’s another ten of him out there, and then Adrian goes dead quiet and they rip up his living room carpet, right, and they roll him up in his own carpet and stuff a hanky in his mouth and they remove him, okay, and they drive him off in Ray’s black 4 × 4 and it’s got leather seats yeah, because people cack themselves, and Adrian cacks himself! It stinks! And they take Adrian to this dungeon thing, like a cellar but worse, and they warn him, Sean’d said don’t hurt him, just warn him, and Ray, Ray can lift a man by his neck with one hand, he’s got hands like plates of meat – like a big steak, I think, rather than a chicken drumstick, or maybe his thumb muscle is like a really big drumstick, I dunno – anyway, and Adrian was down with them for three hours and then they dumped him naked in the road outside his office and Ray spoke to Tony who spoke to Sean yesterday and said that Ray didn’t think Adrian would be telling tales to anyone. Or bothering Sean’s sister again.’
Dear me. Maybe Adrian should have listened when Tina asked him nicely.
Unsurprisingly, I think about Tina for the rest of the afternoon. I will her to come through this. Maybe one day she’ll look back and wonder at how it happened. Imagine. To be so blind to a person’s true nature. To wave away their crimes as involuntary, like epileptic fits. To be so optimistic that when that person is killing you, you smile as they wield the knife. I sit and marvel at the measure of Tina’s madness. And then it strikes me. We’re both mourning relationships we wanted but cannot have.
I can’t understand why Tina loved Adrian but she did.
As for me, I am and will always be in love with Tom. But for the moment my thoughts aren’t about him. I’m thinking of the other man, not in my life. And I think the same thing over and over, like a chant. I think, I never was a Daddy’s girl and now I never will be.
Chapter 44
WHEN A RELATIONSHIP breaks down, people always declare, ‘It isn’t the big things, it’s the little things.’ And if the relationship in question was Marcus and Michelle’s, I wouldn’t hesitate to agree with them. But in my case, the little things were fine. My relationship with Tom breaks down because of a big thing – my endless stupidity. Following that, it’s the little things that break me down.
For instance, I open the Observer, read the first line of a report by a journalist who has travelled to the Arctic with a Greenpeace ship, glance at the adjacent photograph, see it is captioned, ‘A starving polar bear begs for food from the ship’, and burst into tears. I buy a large packet of posh crisps from the supermarket, stuff six into my mouth and think ‘hmm, these aren’t very crunchy,’ stuff three more in to make sure, think ‘these crisps taste funny,’ peer into the bag and see what appears to be a large crushed cockcroach but is more likely a mass of black rotting potato. I have flashbacks all day and can’t eat my Dime bar.
And I visit my mother, and notice a folded card on the side table. It looks like an invitation to a seventies club night so I open it and see a faded picture of a tanned man and a pretty woman laughing and feeding each other spaghetti – my parents, twenty-five years ago, eating at a tacky restaurant in Portugal. The pain curdles as I realise she must have hunted for it, in a moment – an hour? a day? a week? – of loneliness. I have an image of my mother desperately digging through boxes in the attic for this wisp of memory and – much as I try to banish it – it won’t go away.
We haven’t spoken about my father for ages. It’s as if, after months of fighting it, my mother has retreated into her pain. I know the sadness is swelling inside her like a cyst but I am scared of prodding it in case it all pours out in a hysterical rush and I’m unable to finish what I started.
‘Maybe you should have another supper party,’ suggests Lizzy, ‘It might cheer her up.’
I sigh and say, ‘Liz, she’ll be cheered up for five minutes then she’ll go home and feel even worse. And also, I don’t have any friends left apa
rt from you. And I’ve only got two chairs.’
Lizzy retorts, ‘People can sit on your floor, on cushions!’
I say quickly, ‘That wouldn’t work – I’m a one-cushion household.’
Lizzy perseveres, ‘You, and me, and Tina, and Luke, and er, your mother, it would be lovely!’
‘It would be awful,’ I say. ‘It worked as a one-off because everyone knew they’d never have to do it again. It would be like, oh, I don’t know, like trying to recreate the Beatles.’ Lizzy doesn’t see the connection and says so. I ignore her and say, ‘So would Brian be forced to attend this torture evening or is he excused by his doctor?’
Lizzy pouts. ‘We’re no longer an item,’ she says breezily, ‘I ended it.’
‘What!’ I shout. ‘Why? Why haven’t you told me? How dare you! Not tell me, I mean.’
Lizzy explains that closure was only reached yesterday and she was going to tell me but we’d been talking about Tina and Luke, and me and Tom. ‘You and Tom.’ Me and Tom. Even being in the same sentence as him makes my blood rush. How sad is that? I sigh and demand an explanation.
‘Was it something Brian did?’ I ask.
‘Sort of,’ says Lizzy.
‘Something offensive?’ I suggest.
‘Kind of,’ says Lizzy.
‘Offensive to you personally?’ I enquire.
‘Yes,’ says Lizzy.
‘Repellent?’ I bark.
‘Awfully,’ says Lizzy.
‘Something his own mother would be ashamed of?’ I say, squirming with pleasurable distaste.
‘Definitely,’ says Lizzy.
‘Jesus!’ I say, my mind overrun with wild scenes of t’ai chi orgies and punch-ups in the Gap over a last pair of dungarees. ‘What on earth did he do?’
Lizzy pauses. ‘You’ll think I overreacted,’ she says hesitantly.
‘No I won’t,’ I say.
‘Yes you will,’ insists Lizzy.
‘Elizabeth!’ I squeak. ‘Look at me! I’m in an agony of not knowing! End it! Just say!’ I feel beads of sweat on my upper lip. I hate it when people dangle a pearl of self-disclosure in front of your nose then whip it away on the specious grounds that you’ll judge them.
‘Okay,’ says Lizzy reluctantly, ‘but only if you—’
‘I promise!’ I screech. I clasp my hands as if in prayer and fake an innocent expression. Lizzy falls for it and reveals that she dumped Brian – kind, generous, gentle Brian who buys her figs and kisses her hand – because she was irritated by the sound of him eating. And I thought I was shallow.
Once I would have been comforted by Lizzy’s revelation. I’ll live in solitude and die alone, but yippee, at least I’ll have back-up. But the news doesn’t even dent my misery. If anything, I feel sorry for Brian. The punishment seems disproportionate to the crime. ‘Couldn’t you have asked him to chew more quietly?’ I say.
Lizzy huffs and says crossly, ‘There was more to it than that.’
I can’t resist. ‘What?’ I say.
‘The way he swallowed,’ says Lizzy. I give up.
Later though, at home, I try to fathom the peculiar workings of Lizzy’s mind. ‘You see, Helen,’ I say aloud to the silent room, ‘she wouldn’t mind this. She’d love it. She prizes her own company.’ It’s only when I say the words that I realise. I don’t mind it either. After listening to the excruciating mindwarp of Lizzy’s rationale, the stillness of my own company is a relief.
I put on a Kate Bush CD, and spend the remainder of the evening erasing every trace of Jasper from the flat (flecks of shaving foam on the bathroom mirror, two copies of Country Life by the toilet, three yellow toenail cuttings on the lounge floor, and – from the kitchen cupboard – an Oxford University mug bought from a gift shop off Leicester Square). By 11 p.m. I feel better than I did. I realise that if I can’t have Tom I don’t want anyone, just me. For a second I consider unplugging the phone as a symbol of my new independence. Then I think, don’t be mad. I go to bed early and read C is for Corpse.
The next day I ring my mother and invite her round for coffee. ‘You don’t need me now you’ve got your flat done,’ are her first words.
‘Now Mummy, you know that can’t be true,’ I say sternly, ‘or why would I be inviting you over?’
There is a sullen silence before she replies, ‘I don’t know. You want some more chairs?’
Her obstinacy should frustrate me but it doesn’t because I guess that right now, she needs to do this. And our honeymoon was bound to end sometime. Not that I plan to nurture the return to dysfunctionality. I say in a gratingly jolly tone, ‘Actually, I invited you purely for the pleasure of your company, but I’d hate it if you felt you had to come—’
‘I’ll be round at five,’ snaps my mother.
She shows up, ready for battle. I knew it wouldn’t last. I offer her coffee (‘only if it’s decaff’ – it isn’t); I offer her tea (‘only if it’s Earl Grey’ – it isn’t); I offer her water (‘only if it’s mineral’ – it isn’t). Then I realise that tap water contains minerals so I shout ‘Okay!’ and pour her a glass. When I present it she sniffs it suspiciously and gives it a small push away from her.
‘Aren’t you going to offer me anything to eat?’ she says.
‘Yes, of course,’ I say in an injured tone, trying to recall if I ate that Dime bar or if it’s still in my bag. ‘Hang on a sec.’
I rush to the bedroom, tip the bag’s contents on to the floor, and snatch the Dime bar from the smoking heap. I unwrap it (it looks nicer) arrange it centrally on my best plate (the best of two) and present it with a flourish. She inspects it from a distance, craning her neck slightly but otherwise not moving a muscle – precisely the way in which Fatboy inspects supermarket own brand cat food. I say briskly, ‘This is a very superior confectionery, it—’
She rudely interrupts with, ‘It’s a Dime bar.’ My discomfited expression makes her smile for the first time and she adds gruffly, ‘Bernadette Dickenson always has one for lunch. She’s got twelve fillings.’
I take this friendly snippet of information as a peace offering and say, ‘You don’t sound very happy, Mum.’
She reacts as if I’ve just sworn. “Happy!” she spits. ‘Happy! No I am not “happy”! I am extremely un-happy. My husband’s dead as a dormouse! How can I be happy? I’m a widow! My whole life’s unravelled!’
I wince and mutter, ‘Sorry, bad choice of word.’
My mother glares. Then she blurts, ‘It was your father’s birthday and you didn’t call me!’
I blurt, ‘So why didn’t you call me?’ I feel myself tensing.
My mother folds her arms and bawls, ‘You can’t criticise me, I’m too upset!’
I grit my teeth and say, ‘I tried you, twice, and you were engaged both times. I thought if you wanted to speak to me you’d call. You know, like a grown-up?’ My mother gasps as if I’ve slapped her. Immediately, I feel bad. I say gently, ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t want to upset you more than you were already upset. I know highdays and holidays are tough.’
She replies wearily, ‘It’s not the high days and holidays. It’s the every day.’
‘Oh Mum,’ I say sadly. I lean across and touch her arm. She covers her eyes with both hands and weeps into them. I grimace, and wait. After approximately six minutes (an age in weeping terms) the weeping halts. She tells me she spent three hours on the internet eavesdropping on a chat-room for the bereaved. ‘Oh,’ I say warily. ‘And it didn’t make you feel better?’
My mother shakes her head like a dog emerging from a pond. ‘It was terrible!’ she cries. ‘Everyone’d been shot!’ Ah. ‘They’d all had worse deaths than me!’ she exclaims. ‘Much, much worse! I felt like a fraud! And then, the Christian said look to God, and they all started rowing with her!’
I feel it’s advisable to move on, fast. ‘Mum,’ I say, searching for a grain of wisdom and, in my haste, finding a platitude, ‘grief is a private, internal thing. No one can say their pain is worse than yours bec
ause they don’t know. So maybe it’s not good to compare. Maybe it’s better to talk to people who know you. You can always talk to me.’
My mother squeezes my hand silently, and nods and sniffs. Then she splutter-laughs through her tears and says, ‘The only person I liked was Emma from Kansas. Her teenage daughter died in a farm accident and they had an open coffin, and one of their friends looked in and said to Emma, “She looks good though . . . ”! It was like when Harold Reel’s mother told me I should be relieved because divorce was worse.’
I laugh in shock and exclaim, ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Then we laugh together at the senselessness of some people.
And we start talking about Dad. My mother tells me about their first date. He took her to a French restaurant where they ate snails and got food poisoning. ‘It wiped me out for a week! My mother insisted I move back home. Your father had to take me on three more dates to make up for it!’ she cries, flushed at the memory. ‘Of course, my mother didn’t believe it was the food! She thought I had morning sickness. My own mother thought I was “fast”! She didn’t say so to me, of course, but I crept to the bannisters and heard her whispering to my father. Morrie used to say my mother had a whisper that could shatter eardrums! Oh he made me laugh. Although’ – she frowns, almost to herself, and I can tell she’s immersed in her own little world – ‘I never could get him to put his teacup in the sink. Never! And God forbid I should speak to him when there was golf on television. “You don’t need to hear golf, do you?” I’d say!’
My mother chuckles and I pitch in with, ‘Mum, he wouldn’t speak to us when anything was on the telly. He was worse than Nana! Remember when he took time off to watch Wimbledon and I ran in to show him a mug I’d made in pottery – what was I? Eight? – and I ran in front of the TV and he missed a match point and scowled at my mug and said, “That’s sod-all use, it’s the shape of a pine cone! How are you going to drink from it?” I threw it on the floor and ran upstairs!’
