by Louise Voss
“So I noticed,” she said, rubbing her toe. “You’re a good girl, really. I’m sorry Mummy’s so tired this morning.”
I watched as she stuck the spout of the kettle under the cold tap, filled it up, plonked it on the stove, struck a match, and lit the gas ring. She shivered as the blue flames licked around the kettle’s sides, and when she turned around to get a bowl out of the cupboard, her face looked like another square of her dressing gown—taut, shiny, and puffy.
Fattypuff, I thought, making a mental note to ask Sam if she agreed with my diagnosis. We had discussed the strange fluctuations in my mother’s girth, and referred to the two extremes as either Fattypuff or Thinifer. I liked Mummy best when she was neither, when she was just in the middle. Then she let me pretend she was my pony, or made biscuits with me, or showed me how to glue strips of paper together into multicolored chains. Her makeup stayed on all day, and she was happy.
“Will you help me make a snowman later, Mummy? ”
We weren’t into an advanced Fattypuff condition yet, so I was reasonably hopeful of an affirmative answer. But it was not to be.
“Why don’t you wait till Sam comes over? I’m sure she’d like to build a snowman with you.”
“What about Dad? Will he help us? ”
Mum pressed in the silver foil top of one of the milk bottles with her thumb and tried to pour the milk into the flowery milk jug. Nothing happened.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Mum said, much more crossly than I thought necessary. “The wretched milk’s frozen!”
I heard the sound of the front door opening and then closing again before I had time to run into the hall.
“Where’s Daddy gone?” I asked, trying not to think of my father being swallowed up by the snow.
Mum sighed and sat down, as if the milk and I were in some kind of conspiracy against her.
“Nowhere, dear. He just popped down to the shops to pick something up for me from the chemist, that’s all. So about this snowman: I’ll get you a carrot for his nose if you go and fetch two pieces of coal from the coal scuttle for his eyes. How about that?”
It would have to do. I hoped Sam knew how to construct men out of snow, because I had not the first idea. On cue, there was a scuffling outside the back door, and a timid knock.
I brightened. Mum unbolted the door and admitted a chilly Sam, making her stand on the mat and stamp the snow off her little blue wellies first, before allowing her in properly.
Sam looked like a stuffed toy animal, with numerous layers of coats and woollies, scarves, mitts, elasticized waists, cuffs, and neck bands. Her outer coat was so thick that her arms were forced unnaturally away from her sides at forty-five-degree angles to her body. A red face peered out at me through swathes of nylon parka fur.
“Coming out to play? It’s nearly stopped snowing,” she chirped at me.
I looked at Mum, and she nodded, as happy to see Sam as I was.
I submitted to the swaddling routine and trotted nervously out into the back garden with Sam, leaving Mum slumped on a stool at the breakfast bar with a steaming cup of black tea.
It was a bit like seeing the ocean for the first time ever—scary to begin with, and then completely exhilarating when you got used to it. I noticed with surprise that despite the chilly flakes on my face, I felt much warmer outside than I had earlier in the sitting room.
I looked at the orange nose and black eyes in my hands.
“Do you know how to do snowmen? ”
Sam shook her head. “Like sand castles? ”
I shrugged. “Maybe. But we haven’t got a spade.”
“And it’s a bit cold, isn’t it, snow? ”
Sam pointed at the frost sparkling on a tree branch above our heads.
“Let’s do dancing instead, like at a ball. We can pretend that the tree is the chand-liere—you know, the big lampshade things they have with candles and stuff.”
I had no idea what she was talking about but obligingly dropped my carrot and coal, reached one gloved hand around her waist, and pressed the other woolly mitt against hers. We waltzed clumsily around the garden, trying to step in a fresh patch of snow at every twirl.
“I think Mummy’s going Fattypuff again,” I said.
Sam nodded knowingly but changed the subject. “Oh, dear. Who are you going to be today? I’m going to be Valerie Singleton.”
I considered for a minute as we trod the light fantastic. The garden seemed much bigger when it was all white, with no edges.
“Sandie Shaw, but I call her Shelley Beach. She’s a singer, you know. I really like that song she does about church fetes.”
Sam nodded again, equally knowingly. “Yes. That’s my favorite, too.”
We did a few more circuits of the lawn, dancing further and further out until we were almost at next door’s fence and our footprints had claimed every bit of pure snow.
Mum opened the back door and stuck her head out. “Keep off my flower beds, you girls, or you’ll squash my crocuses!”
MAKING AMENDS
THERE WAS A TAP AT THE DOOR. GRACE, THE NICEST NURSE, STUCK her head in. “Are you up for a visitor, Helena?”
“Who is it?”
“It’s Toby Middleton. He’s asking to see you.”
I hesitated. Time to mend a few bridges. “Okay.”
I reached for my dark glasses and hastily smeared a slick of Burt’s Bees lip gloss over my chapped and bumpy lips. Funny how there was once a time when I wouldn’t let anyone see me without extensive makeup. That all seemed kind of pointless now.
Toby sidled into the room, alone. “Hello,” he said nervously.
“Hi,” I replied. “Please sit down.”
“Thanks. Oh, hey, you aren’t lisping! And your teeth look great.”
“Thanks.”
He sat and waited for the apology we both knew he was due. Inwardly, I commended his courage—a lesser man wouldn’t have risked another ear-bashing. But I supposed if your wife was in a coma, you didn’t really care about getting abused by a battered old harridan like me.
“Listen, I’m really, really sorry about what I said before. You’re not a scumbag or anything, of course you aren’t, and thank you so much for the card and the daisies, you really shouldn’t have, after I behaved so appallingly. I feel like a total shit, with your wife so ill and stuff.… How is she? ”
“Still the same, but thanks for asking. I wanted to apologize to you, too. I think we both felt a bit vulnerable that day. I should have been honest with you from the start.”
Toby took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. I noticed his thick, textured wedding ring. Rugged and solid, like him.
I nodded. “It all just got too much for me. I’ve been so paranoid about the press after that hideous picture of me they got right before the accident. And then when I started to cry like that—I suppose I assumed the worst, that you were going to expose me again—”
“What do you mean, again? That piece I did on you was very complimentary! ‘Blue Idea’s Green-Eyed Dear’—terrible headline, I know, but it wasn’t exactly an exposé.”
Toby sounded quite hurt, but when I looked at him, the corners of his mouth were twitching upward.
“No, not that you’d expose me again—actually, I quite liked your article, even though my eyes aren’t green at all, more swamp-colored really—but that I’d get exposed again. It’s all been so humiliating, and I’ve lost my job, and—oh God, I’m doing it again. Going on about me when you’ve got such awful problems.”
Toby grinned properly. “Well, as Bette Midler said, ‘That’s enough about me; what do you think of me?’ Actually, it’s quite refreshing to hear someone else’s woes. I get sick of talking about mine. Have you really lost your job? What do you do these days? I’m sure I’d know about it if you were in another band.”
Somewhat huffy that he wasn’t aware of my DJ incarnation, I told him about the New World breakfast show.
“Cool. A DJ! Yes, that figures. I b
et you make a brilliant DJ. I don’t live in London anymore. We moved to the country so Kate could have a bigger studio—she’s a potter—and we don’t get New World out in Hampshire. Otherwise I’d definitely have tuned in to your show.”
“But I’m not a DJ anymore. At least—oh, well, it’s a long story. So why is Kate in hospital here if you live in Hampshire? ”
Toby took a deep breath, and I winced at the thought that I was being insensitive.
“Sorry. Listen, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.… ”
“It’s fine. It’s really quite nice talking to someone who isn’t upset about her, too. She had the accident here in London, one night—I didn’t even know she was in town. She’d told me that she was going to see someone about a commission in Portsmouth, but I suppose the meeting must have been moved up here. So when they phoned to say there’d been a crash, I didn’t believe it could be her.
“Anyway, they moved her to this hospital because it’s private—we’ve always had BUPA, thank God—and it has an ICU and plastic surgery. When she’s better she’s going to need some work on her face—she’s got a major facial fracture, running from her eyebrow down to her jaw. They’ll have to put in a titanium staple.… It seemed silly to have to move her again when this hospital’s so good, so Ruby and I have been staying with my sister Lulu in Fulham. That’s where Ruby is today.”
I nodded sympathetically, my face aching at the memory of my own recent plastic surgery. My injuries suddenly felt trivial in comparison—a few dozen stitches, a couple of strips of skin relocated from thigh to face. At least I had had no truck with titanium staples, whatever the hell they might be.
“So are you still a journalist?” I tried not to spit when I said the word.
Toby noticed and took me to task. “Hey, there’s a bit of a difference between a journalist on the Melody Maker and a tabloid hack, you know. Don’t tar us all with the same brush. Anyway, no, I’m not. I never made very much money from my writing, so I jacked it in and eventually set up my own Internet music company. It means I can work from home and be close to Ruby and Kate—well, Ruby, anyhow.… Kate hasn’t been around much recently—she’s taken on quite a few big commissions, and organizing those seems to take more time than actually making the pots. God knows what’s going to happen with them now.…”
He stood up abruptly. “I really should go and see Kate. I just wanted to check that you’re okay and feeling better.”
He rammed his hands into his jeans pockets as if he thought I might grab them and beg him to stay.
“Thanks,” I said. I had been wondering if I dared ask him to come again, but his gesture decided me against it. Besides, he had enough on his plate.
Toby opened the door and looked back toward my bed. All of a sudden he seemed fascinated by the jug of water on top of my locker.
“Um … would it be okay if I popped back again tomorrow? It’s, you know, really nice to have a conversation with someone when I come and visit Kate. It gets quite hard to, er, just sit and talk to a person who doesn’t reply. Would you mind?”
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Glen Campbell
WICHITA LINEMAN
THE HEL-SAM BOX OF IMPORTANT STUFF!
KEEP OUT!! UNLESS YOU ARE
HELENA JANE NICHOLLS OR SAMANTHA GRANT!!
In the event of the untiemally death of either of us,
this box is to go immidiatally to the other one’s house and stay there.
No-one else is ever, ever, allowed to look inside.
It’s all completely Top Secret.
I sat back on my heels and admired my handiwork, purple felt-pen blotches all over my hands. Sam was lying on her stomach next to me, laboriously gluing shiny paper flowers onto an old hat box, her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth.
“What do you think?” I waved the piece of card at her.
“Needs some glitter,” Sam replied.
“Give us the glue, then.” I grabbed it and squeezed twirls of Bostik around the edges of my cardboard notice. I shook generous quantities of silver glitter over an area approximately sixteen square feet, some of which managed to land on the intended target.
“Watch it!” said Sam crossly as I frosted her flowers, the whole hat box, our hands and faces, and the carpet. “Your mum will kill us if she sees the mess in here.”
We were illicitly camped out in my parents’ bedroom, because later that day a new, extra-specially comfortable bed was going to be delivered, to help Mum sleep better. It was to be a surprise for her from Dad, who had dismantled the old one and gone to take it to the dump. Its departure had left a brighter, lusher, thicker square of blue carpet, protected from years of harsh sunlight by the darkness of the bed’s cool underbelly. Impossible for us not to play on.
“This is our magic carpet, to fly us away,” I’d said as we crept into the room.
We had adopted Ali Baba positions, kneeling up, arms folded across horizontally, imagining the square slowly lifting up and out the window, carrying us to a place where Dylan’s Chinese burns and homework didn’t exist.
However, the carpet’s stubborn refusal to levitate eventually became a little disappointing, so we had transformed it into a stage instead, and choreographed a Guys and Dolls dance routine to show my mother on her return from the doctor’s, a sort of “Welcome New Bed” ceremony.
We were all set: hair blow-dried into monster flicks; as many plastic necklaces as we could find in Mum’s jewelry box; me, a Guy, sporting Dad’s bright green best shirt, its flared collar flapping around my neck like Dumbo’s ears; Sam wearing a matching (or as close as we could get) chartreuse towel round her waist as a skirt. She always got to be the Doll because she was more petite. (Actually, I wasn’t much of a fan of Guys and Dolls, but I went along with it, because Sam would have to do the Carl Douglas “Kung Fu Fighting” routine with me later.)
But ages had passed, and still we hadn’t heard the sound of Mum’s key in the lock. So to while away the time, we decided to decorate the hat box, which had been designated the Hel-Sam Box of Important Stuff.
“Can I keep it at my house?” Sam asked when I had finally succeeded in sticking the decorated label on its lid.
“Okay. For a while.” I was frantically trying to brush glue and glitter off the sleeve of Dad’s shirt. By this stage I was quite keen to be rid of the evidence. “I’d better sweep this carpet—stay there, I’ll be back in a minute.”
I was just galloping down the stairs to retrieve the carpet-sweeper when the front door began to open. I could tell immediately, before Mum had even entered the house, how uptight she was—it was a Thinifer period, and I had developed a kind of sixth sense about the state of her moods.
“Hello, Mummy, come and see—me and Sam have got a dance for you,” I said nervously, helping her out of her swing coat.
“Sam and I,” Mum corrected automatically. Several beads of sweat had managed to struggle through the thick blanket of face powder covering her forehead, and she stopped in front of the hall mirror to pat them away with a tissue.
“And we’ve decorated the hat box you gave us. It’s going to be the Hel-Sam Box of Important Stuff. We’re not watching telly, like you said. We’re amusing ourselves.”
I took my mother’s hand and tried to drag her upstairs, and for the first time she noticed my appearance.
“Helena—what on earth are you wearing? And what’s that all over the sleeves? Felt pen? And glue? You’re covered with glitter! How could you be so naughty and thoughtless, to do gluing in Daddy’s best shirt!”
My head drooped. “But I had to wear it; it’s part of your surprise,” I said in a small voice. “Come and see.”
I was miserably aware that Mum was working herself up into a full Thinifer rage. Her eyes were bugging out, and a drop of the escaping sweat on her forehead was making a bid for freedom down the side of her cheek.
“For heaven’s sake, Helena!” she snapped. “I told
you and Sam to play quietly until I came back. I did not tell you to root through your father’s wardrobe and then get his best shirt all mucky. And if there’s that much glitter on you, what sort of state is your bedroom floor in, might I ask? ”
“It’s perfectly clean,” I said truthfully, my heart sinking further. Mum bustled past me and up the stairs.
“Good. I’m sorry, Helena, but I’m too tired to watch you do anything at the moment. I’m going for a lie down in my … Oh!”
I raced up after her, to find Sam standing in the middle of my parents’ bedless room, clad in necklaces and a green towel, hair in a flick that could put your eye out—but thankfully with no incriminating signs of the box, glue, felt-tip pens, or colored paper. Even more fortunately, the sun had gone behind a cloud, making the glitter in the carpet invisible.
“What have you done with the bed?” screeched my mother, as if Sam and I had personally carried it, iron bedstead, mattress, and all, down the stairs and into the coal shed.
“Nothing,” we chorused.
I didn’t want to let out the secret, but some explanation was obviously required.
“You’re getting a new bed. It’s a surprise from Daddy,” I admitted reluctantly.
“It certainly is,” said Mum, tight-lipped. “Now just go away, you two, out from under my feet. Put that towel back in the airing cupboard, and that shirt’ll have to be washed. If the glue doesn’t come off it, you’ll be buying Daddy a new one from your pocket money. And who gave you permission to put on my necklaces and use my curling tongs? Go! ”
Sam shot out of the room, but I lingered for a moment. “But why can’t we do our dance for you, Mummy?”
She flopped down on the vanity stool in front of her dressing table and fanned herself with a copy of last week’s Radio Times, which she’d picked out of the wastepaper basket for that purpose.
“I’m sorry, love,” she said, making an effort. My mother always seemed to be apologizing to me. “Maybe later, eh?”
I lost my temper. Hot tears of frustration burst out of my eyes, and I stamped my foot on the magic carpet. “You’re always sorry, and you’re always telling me to go away! Well, one of these days I’ll go and I won’t come back! In fact, I’m going to go and live at the Grants’—Mrs. Grant never tells me to go away! In fact, I wish Mrs. Grant was my mother instead of you. So there!”
