‘And your son?’
‘He’s great too. He’s eight now.’
The professor makes a sound commonly used to acknowledge that children grow up quickly. I pull a facial expression in agreement. If I’m drunk enough at the end of the night, I’ll hug him and thank him for the support he lavished on me. ‘Are you still teaching?’ I ask.
‘No. I’m retired.’
‘Enjoying your retirement?’
‘Yes. Very much.’
‘Where are you sitting?’
He points to a table. I look at the names around his, all notable academics. Mine isn’t there. I scan the seating plans for tables towards the back of the dining room. My name isn’t there either. Perhaps the PR firm didn’t put it on the list. This might prove embarrassing. I’ll be all dressed up with nowhere to sit.
‘I don’t know where I’m supposed to be,’ I say, with a nervous laugh.
‘There.’ He points. ‘The table at the front.’
‘Oh.’ In my head this is followed by ‘Crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap.’
‘Fantastic,’ I say. ‘Thanks. Enjoy your meal.’ Why, oh, why have I been seated on one of the front tables with the head of the Literature and Philosophical Society, and a multi-millionaire aristocratic couple, plus other luminaries? I wanted a table at the back with some boys, getting drunk, cracking jokes and eating steak. I’m going to have to be clever and polite and sober. I look for Emmeline’s name. Thankfully, she’s at the table next to mine.
I step off the last tram home and zigzag along the pavement, soaking up the silence of the winter’s night. The road is beginning to ice over. A wagon rumbles past, spitting out grit. The lights seem brighter and the dark feels darker. I should have worn a thick coat and a scarf. If I’m not careful, I’ll slip and land on my arse.
In Jackson village up ahead I can make out the sparkle of Christmas lights. As I walk in that direction a knot of anxiety tightens in my stomach. As I curve the road leading to our estate the panic rises. I’m hard-wired to expect trouble. I expect Rhodri to hit me because he’s the man I live with. I know absolutely that he won’t, but even so, it’s what I expect. And so, when I turn the key to my house and drop my things in the hall, hang my coat up, part of me is waiting for him to appear slyly around a doorway and frighten me like Damien did. I expect him to pin me to the floor or push me up against a wall.
‘You look sober,’ Rhodri says, hurrying me through the door, and into the kitchen, where he wraps his arms around me. ‘You’re so cold.’ He rubs my hands between his. ‘Good evening… good food?’
‘Food was okay,’ I say. ‘I could have done with a thicker piece of steak.’ It’d been so long since I’d eaten good meat that I’d have happily eaten an entire cow.
‘I thought you’d be well and truly pissed by now.’ He laughs. ‘Hot drink?’
‘What is it?’ I quiz. ‘It smells funny.’
‘Valerian tea,’ says Rhodri. ‘Helps you sleep.’
The pre-Rhodri me would have thought valerian was a tropical disease.
The following morning I begin work on a new freelance PR assignment. All this DIY is expensive, and I’ve got to earn some cash to pay off the loan. I’m at a meeting, trying hard to think about Asian lesbian, bisexual and transgender performing artists. One of whom is sitting directly opposite me, in a bar in Leeds.
‘… so what I really don’t want…’ says Narinder.
Concentrate, I tell myself. Concentrate. We awoke to discover that the bath pipes Eddie had sealed are leaking. All night, as we slept, water dripped through the floor-boards, causing the paint on the kitchen ceiling to break out in angry blisters.
‘… is…’ continues Narinder, sternly.
I twirl my hair around my index finger while chewing a pen. I’m trying not to imagine that the bulging ceiling will burst and wreck my lovely new floor and kitchen cabinets. What if the ceiling collapses? How much will that cost me?
‘… for the group to be exoticized in any way.’
I’m not getting this: exoticized how, exactly? Narinder is wearing biker boots, combats, a black T-shirt, has a boyish crop and looks as if she wants to beat the life out of me. I write it down anyway, in capital letters for effect. DO NOT EXOTICIZE.
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘could you explain?’
‘You know,’ she snaps, ‘the Asian-lesbian thing.’
‘We could approach women’s pages,’ I say. I’ve worn my cutest dress for this meeting, red ballet-style shoes, and a smudge of make-up. The look I aspired to was ‘approachable’, but I’m sensing I come across as a homophobic fairy. ‘If you tell me what you do,’ I encourage, ‘we can go from there.’
That afternoon, on the train back to Manchester, I call Rhodri. I expect him to ask me how my morning has been, or to reveal something about his, or Jack’s, but no conversation is forthcoming.
‘Have you had a good day?’ I ask, wondering if I can push him to do more overtime. I’m baffled by how we’re going to pay for Christmas presents this year.
‘Eddie is here,’ he says, ‘fixing the leak. When is he planning to fit the bathroom?’
‘Tomorrow.’
Rhodri sighs unhappily. ‘I’m going,’ he says. ‘What time are you back?’
‘Around six,’ I say.
‘So you want me to collect Jack from after-school club?’
‘That would be great,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
‘See you later, then.’
‘Can’t we chat?’
‘You know I don’t like to talk to you on your mobile.’
We’ve argued about this for years. I’d hoped that when we lived together Rhodri would relent and use a mobile phone for convenience. But he’s resolute. Because he doesn’t approve of mobile phones, he therefore discourages me from using one. Mobile-phone masts allegedly cause children to contract leukaemia and die. Mobile phones are made on the breaking backs of underpaid workers in developing countries. Everything about the mobile-phone industry is bad, except they keep you in touch with loved ones when you’re far from home. But I don’t want children to contract leukaemia and brain tumours just so that I can have a telephone conversation about my lesbian encounter. I don’t want to add to the already catastrophic CO2 emissions depleting the ozone layer to the point at which one day my future grandchildren will drown. Not to mention those families across the world who are being torn apart by melting polar caps, so I blow Rhodri a kiss and hang up. Then I feel dreadful for making him talk to me on my mobile phone in the first place.
When I finally arrive home it’s much later than I’d expected. I cycled from Piccadilly to Jackson against a biting headwind that slammed against me causing my nose to bleed. The usual forty-minute bike ride took well over an hour. Whatever there is for dinner I’ll eat it, even if it’s roasted rabbit shit. Not that that would happen: no one cleans out the hutch but me, and roasted rabbit shit isn’t vegan.
I drop my bag on the kitchen floor and pull off my cycling gear while I admire my shiny new oven. Something’s simmering on the hob, voices are bubbling away in the living room, and my stomach is craving something tasty. ‘Hi, love!’ I call cheerily.
Jack runs into the hall to greet me, throwing his little body at mine, so I lift him up, balance him on my hips like a toddler and kiss him. ‘You look like you’re having lots of fun, what are you doing?’
‘Making posters,’ says Jack, showing me something that looks suspiciously like a protest placard.
‘Let me see,’ I say.
Just then a gangly, bearded lad I’ve never seen before walks into the kitchen to check the pan. He murmurs a gruff hello, then heads back into the living room. I follow him. ‘Evening,’ I call to Rhodri from the doorway. ‘What’s cooking?’
‘Nothing. Where have you been? I called you on your mobile loads of times, and you didn’t answer. I was worried.’
‘I was cycling. It was windy. I didn’t hear it.’
‘I called three times.’
‘Vegan glue.’
Silly me. Of course it’s vegan glue, rather than a pan of soup on a freezing cold day when I’ve been out working since eight thirty this morning.
‘So, there’s no dinner?’
‘No, didn’t have time.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Making subvertising posters.’
Subvertising posters are witticisms that are pasted over advertisements to subvert their money-grabbing consumer messages.
‘Can I have a word?’ I say, motioning to Rhodri that this ‘word’ should be in private. The bearded lad looks worried – and so he should be because I’m starving and there’s no dinner on the table. ‘Who’s that in the living room?’
‘Joel.’
‘Where do you know him from?’
‘Activist meetings.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Twenty-two.’
Now, at twenty-nine Rhodri and I aren’t exactly ancient, but I do feel uncomfortable that this young lad is being drawn into subversive activity in my house. One thing could lead to another and, before you know it, I’ll be playing Simone de Beauvoir to Rhodri’s Jean-Paul Sartre, and I haven’t enough energy or time for another lover; especially one with a beard.
‘Not appropriate, Rhodri,’ I say pointedly. ‘The house is a tip. We’ve a bath being fitted tomorrow. We need to move furniture around so Eddie can get to things.’ I can feel myself becoming more and more irate. ‘Too much on. Not appropriate to be making subvertising posters tonight. No. Not happy.’ The angrier I become, the less able I am to speak in full sentences.
‘This is very important,’ Rhodri says sternly. ‘Christmas is approaching and there is already a deluge of advertisements. People will be spending on credit cards, and think of all the waste that will end up in landfills, not to mention the appalling working conditions suffered so that we can buy cheap goods. Mass consumerism is bad for the environment. The corporations are plunging people into debt, making us think we need to buy things. No one is concerned about climate change, you know that. If things carry on as they are, we may not have a future.’
This is just what I need after an afternoon of mollycoddling an Asian lesbian with the temperament of Jaws – a lecture on the end of the world being nigh.
‘Another night, but not tonight,’ I sing.
‘It’ll always be a bad time. We’re going out after midnight to paste the subverts up on billboards.’
‘What’s that?’ I say, pointing to a jar.
‘I had to empty the bottle of washing-up liquid for the glue.’
‘What’s that?’ I say, pointing to the pan.
‘Flour and water.’
‘What am I supposed to eat?’
‘Make something.’
‘Please not tonight. Do this another night,’ I whine, motioning to the boxes and stacks of furniture. ‘I need you to help me with all of this.’
But Rhodri refuses. He glowers at me, disgusted that I would prevent him from taking action against corporate monoliths. I want to throw myself on the floor, arms akimbo and legs kicking up a storm, wailing, ‘No no no no nooooo! Think about us. Think about our debt. Think about my world.’
Oh, what’s the point? Rhodri thinks I’m one of them – one of the uneducated in need of eco-conversion, even though I cycle rather than drive, use Ecover rather than Flash, and install energy-saving lightbulbs in the house. Whatever I do, it’s never enough.
I go upstairs, piss in the bucket, come down to wash my hands in the kitchen, boil the kettle, wash Jack by the oven, pack him into our bed, then begin to heave boxes from his bedroom to mine to make a path leading to his bed, where the new bathroom suite, still wrapped in cardboard and cellophane, awaits to be plumbed in when Eddie arrives tomorrow.
9
The race is on to restore order in time for Christmas Day. Rhodri’s mother, Margaret No. 3, is arriving early tomorrow morning to help us reorganize the house now all the dirty work is finished. This very minute Damien’s stepmother, Margaret No. 2, is busy ridding the kitchen of dust left by the workmen. If I could have summoned the army to help, I would have done. Jack has brought the rabbits into the kitchen to keep warm: unable to get a good grip they skate across the laminate floor, leaving poo pebbles behind them.
As Margaret No. 2 and I haul boxes from living room to kitchen and bedroom to kitchen, Rhodri saunters about the house in his dressing-gown, sneezing and blowing his nose. ‘You go out strolling the streets of Manchester at midnight in December and you’re going to catch a chill.’ Of course I don’t say that. I’m a woman lacking a spine. Instead I coo: ‘Would you like some paracetamol, sweetheart?’
To which Rhodri unsurprisingly says, ‘No,’ because pharmaceutical companies commit endless bad deeds.
At least we have a toilet now, which no longer leaks into the kitchen.
I don’t understand what’s happened: a few months ago Rhodri said, ‘Let’s spend Christmas together this year. We’ll host Christmas dinner.’ I had the perfect Christmas planned out for Jack. I even had a new kitchen fitted and invited my father over, my stepmother, Eleanor, and my stepbrother, Luke, to spend the day with us, but now Christmas Day is rapidly approaching, Rhodri is spouting ridiculous things like: ‘I don’t see why you have to spend money.’ What am I supposed to feed everyone on Christmas Day? Deep-fried dandelion leaves?
‘How much can you give me towards Christmas?’ I asked him last night. Three hundred pounds seemed a reasonable amount.
‘I haven’t any money.’
That’s just perfect. Neither have I. What fun we’ll all have. Fortunately, my stepmother is lending us her plastic Christmas tree. Christmas trees are, of course, another bone of contention. I can’t win on any level. Unless I make my entire Christmas decoration collection out of discarded cardboard boxes and I haven’t got the time.
As I mull this over while making a hot toddy for Rhodri, Margaret comes into the kitchen and closes the door behind her. ‘Where is Rhodri?’ she whispers.
‘Gone back to bed,’ I whisper back.
‘Good. Tell me if he’s coming.’
Margaret digs into her bag, pulls out some rubber gloves and a bottle of bleach. Then she pours it over the worktops and kettle, scowling as she scrubs away turmeric and cayenne-pepper stains. ‘See?’ she says. ‘Just a little bleach, and it all comes off.’ A look of pleasure creeps over her face: ‘I’ve been dying to do this for days,’ she says. ‘A brand new kitchen worktop ruined because you won’t use bleach.’
‘But it’s bad for the waterways,’ I begin, ‘and all those chemicals… our lungs…’ Lord help me, I’m starting to sound like Rhodri.
I loiter about the kitchen anxiously. If Rhodri catches a whiff of this cleansing orgy he’ll go berserk. I open the door, no sign of him. In which case I can polish the bookshelves.
Okay, I’m going in.
I pull a tin of Pledge from Margaret’s secret supply, spray it on the wood and begin to polish. Usually this is done with warm water and washing-up liquid. The effect just isn’t as good. I’m having such a wonderful time, singing along, admiring the wood and feeling free. Margaret is making contented sounds from the kitchen as she washes the dishes. It’s akin to a scene from Snow White, minus the birds, when Rhodri stumbles down the stairs and catches me red-handed.‘It stinks,’ he says.
Uh-oh, now I’m in trouble.
‘I can’t sit in here.’
Oh, bother.
‘It smells clean,’ Margaret calls from the kitchen.
‘It smells chemical,’ argues Rhodri.
‘Where’s he going?’ asks Margaret, staring at Rhodri as he strides into the garden.
‘I’m not going to return to the house while you spray that stuff,’ he says, and then begins a half-hour protest in the back garden, wearing his dressing-gown, in the middle of a freezing afternoon in December.
Marga
ret turns to me. ‘If he was my man, I wouldn’t let him get away with that.’
But he’s not her man, I think, he’s mine, and I do feel a little fondness then for Rhodri and his insane ways.
*
The following morning I find myself wondering what kind of lunatics wrap Christmas presents in brown-paper bags they’ve lifted from the vegetable aisles in supermarkets. Eco-lunatics like us, that’s who. It’s not stealing, exactly. The bags are free and there are no customer notices saying, ‘One bag per purchase’. Our so-called gift situation is like this: I take a book from my bookshelf (a nice hardback I received as a review copy or bought from a charity shop on a whim) scrawl ‘Happy Christmas Mum/ Dad/Nana xxx’ in my poshest handwriting, slot it into a paper bag, Sellotape the ends down, then draw a quirky festive picture on the front, et voilà, Christmas presents sorted out. Horror! This reminds me of when Jack was a baby and I wrapped up some of his old toys to go with the new toys to make it look like I’d bought him lots of presents: we were nouveau pauvre.
It’s the thought that counts, yes? And we don’t want to contribute to this evil eco-disaster that masquerades as ‘a celebration’.
The Christmas-card situation is thus: no Christmas cards for immediate family, a kiss and smile should do the trick. For those people I do need to write a Christmas card to I have one of two options: pull out a used card from the dozens I’ve hoarded in a box over the years, snip the greetings section off, and I have a Christmas postcard! Another option is to get an A4 piece of paper, fold it in half, cut a festive picture out of a magazine, stick it on the paper and write ‘Happy Christmas!!!!’ inside. If I get Jack to do this we’ll look creative, not skint, and recipients will think I’m one of those mums with heaps of spare time for crafts and baking with my talented child. Little will they know that I oversee a strict PVA glue factory line.
Small thought: am I making Christmas cards off the broken backs of knackered horses? Better hide the glue just in case.
Today I’m feeling good because I’ve just found out that the Asian lesbian, bisexual and transgender performing artists are happy with my PR work. I didn’t exoticize them. ‘That’s great,’ I said. Some producer is going to make a non-pornographic documentary about their experiences so my work is done.
Single Mother on the Verge Page 6
