by Anna Maxted
I whip out my vanity mirror. Perhaps Andy isn’t like me, but I bet he is. I look for other people’s imperfections. It makes me feel better about myself. It’s an instant kick. Yes, I could learn to appreciate their good points, but the truth is, I don’t want to hang around on the off chance that one day I’ll gain the wisdom to see into their hearts. What, and discover they’re better than me? I do what everyone else does—give them a quick once-over then judge them on their choice of jumper. That said, I must be softening a little. Robbie, for instance. And Andy. That dressing gown was a sartorial atrocity, and as for the slippers…But none of it made me like him any less. Usually I pounce—any excuse to despise someone before they despise me. But Andy doesn’t seem to operate like most people. He’s like his sister in that respect. What you see is what you get.
I push open the door, and there he is standing in the hall, with the phone in his hand. Faded jeans, black T-shirt, and the foulest expression I have ever seen. If he was ever chased by a herd of yaks in Tibet, I’ll bet that look saw them off. If what I see is what I’m about to get, I’ll be needing a mortuary technician with flair. It’s all I can do to remember I’m house-trained.
Andy clacks the receiver into its cradle and the rage in his eyes is like a gun aimed at my head. When he speaks I am so frantic to hear, my ears scramble the sound and his voice seems to lag and warp, like a cassette unraveling in the machine. But I understand the words, seconds later:
“That was Frannie.”
28
FOR OUR FIRST “ANNIVERSARY” I BOUGHT SAUL an ax. And before you condemn me, he was delighted. He’d recently bought his garden flat in West Hampstead and was full of the joys of hacking defenseless shrubs to death. I opened my presents and my suspicions were confirmed—he didn’t understand me. He’d given me a large pointless stuffed toy dog, a blue and gold Arts and Crafts mantelpiece clock, and a Tweety Pie mug. I didn’t mind, though, it made me feel safe. In my experience, the minute a man understands you, he leaves you. But Andy doesn’t understand me at all, and it looks like I’ve lost him anyway.
“W-what did she say?” I croak, when my tongue unglues itself from the roof of my mouth. I am tall, but he looms taller, as menacing as a shadow in an alleyway. I glance past him to my bedroom and consider making a run for it.
Andy doesn’t answer.
“You know what she said,” he replies eventually.
I read the expression in his eyes and wish I was either blind or illiterate.
“But, Andy,” I splutter, “it wasn’t what it looked like.”
I’m aware that the delicate situation isn’t helped by the fact that if ever I’m suspected of guilt, I look guilty. I panic, and instantly look like a guilty person trying to look innocent.
Andy laughs horribly.
“Aw, come on, Natalie,” he says in mock disappointment. “That’s a bit weak. Can’t you do better than that?”
I bite my lip to keep control, and wish I were a better actress. “Andy, I would never do that to Babs,” I plead. “I swear, I wouldn’t.”
“Really,” says Andy, folding his arms—which I believe is body language for “I don’t like you anymore” (derog. “You filthy liar”)—“Frannie saw you with your tongue down his throat.”
“Yes but—”
“Yes BUT?” exclaims Andy in a voice so loud I jump and drop my gym bag on my foot. “Where does ‘but’ come into it? Jaaysus! She said you had a problem with her getting married, but—”
“Babs told you that?” I interrupt in a very small voice.
Andy looks briefly discombobulated (a silly word, which I’m probably only using to make him sound less scary and to make myself less scared). He quickly recovers and snaps, “We’re not talking about Babs, we’re talking about you, her supposed great mate! I don’t believe this! I don’t know what’s worse, you betraying your best friend or that…that peacock cheating on my sister. I knew there was something going on with him. I—god, what have you done to Babs?”
I feel so small and wretched I can’t even appreciate his brilliant description of Simon as a “peacock.”
He glares at me. “Do you realize what you’ve done to her? It’s treason. How’s she going to feel? Do you know what it’s like to be cheated on by someone you love? It’s like you’re filled with broken glass. What is she going to do? You’ve put her in the worst dilemma you can put anyone in.”
Anger has drained the color from his skin. I can hardly look at him. I am gobsmacked—literally, I feel numb, as if I’ve been punched in the mouth. There are simply no words in my head. I want to explain but sheer disbelief at the mess I’ve pulled everyone into sweeps the breath from my lungs. Andy shakes his head. “Don’t you have anything to say?” he inquires in a tone that hovers somewhere between bemused and disgusted. “Because I want to know what you have to say! I want to know how this came about, I want to know how it started, I want to know every breath, every word, I want the whole story, dissected, I want to know how you go about ruining someone’s life.”
I can’t imagine Tony sticking up for me like this if he’d caught Babs with Saul.
“Yes,” I burst out finally, “I do have something to say. If you’d give me the chance to speak!”
Andy’s mouth thins until it is a line. He nods once, tersely.
I can’t catch my breath and the words bust out in snatches.
“I would not—go near Simon—I—she told me he was—upsetting her—staying out late—not happy—she didn’t think he was cheating—but—she thought he might—soon—I wanted to help—I promise—I felt bad for—resenting her—I thought she was so lucky—wrong—I wanted to make it up to her—tell Simon off—stupid idea—he was so drunk—he was out of control—and then he started saying these ridiculous things, not out of lust, it wasn’t a lust thing, it was aggressive, and then the kiss Frannie saw, he just launched at me, but it wasn’t lust, it was just vicious, because when he said that stuff I hit him on the nose with my head.”
“With your head,” repeats Andy. This prompts mass panic in my facial muscles.
“Yeah,” I mutter, twitching.
I pray it looks like an ingrained nervous tic, a hangover from some distant childhood trauma, rather than a newly acquired symbol of guilt.
“But when did she tell you this? And what—you’re saying there’s no affair? No affair? I don’t know if I believe you, Natalie. But why…but then”—he frowns—“I don’t understand, if there was nothing going on, why did you wade in there? What’s wrong with speaking to him on the phone? Did Babs ask you to go over there?”
“No,” I say, feeling worse than ever. “No.”
“But don’t you see? Barging off to meet him to have a go, you knew what state he was in. Don’t you see how…how inappropriate that is? Why put yourself in that position, it’s like you were—”
“Asking for it?” I say, the boiling ugliness inside exploding into rage—rage, RAGE. A blast of heat tears through me, shredding me red and raw and scorched with the force of it. So this is what it is to feel fury, I think as I hear myself roar, the words smooth and fluid.
“I wanted to make things right and he assaulted me and you imply that I wanted it to happen! That’s a revolting accusation, and if you don’t believe me, ask Simon!”
Andy takes a step toward me and hisses, close to my face, “If you need to think it wasn’t your fault then think it! And don’t you worry, I will ask Simon, because he and I have a lot to talk about! But I tell you this: you made a big error of judgment, and Babs is the one who’s paying for it.”
He stops hissing, and adds quietly, “You say you wanted to make it right, but I think that deep down you wanted something else, and whatever your excuse, you’ve got to live with that. I’m out of this flat, as of now. I’ll collect my stuff this weekend.”
I lean against the wall as he wrenches open the door and storms out.
I did, I plead in my head, I did want to make it right. Didn’t I? My skull feels like eg
gshell. What meanly green part of me enjoyed the drama of Barbara’s misfortune? Two percent? But don’t we all want that, in the tiniest part of ourselves? We want our friends to do well, but not so wonderfully well that they spotlight our failings. We’re delighted for them to succeed in their special interests, but not those general areas where we’re striving alongside, struggling in vain.
But does that mean that I’m so lacking, my latent desire is to see her marriage fail? I don’t want that! Or is it that I want her to know what it is to suffer? I don’t know anymore. But if it is then I deserve everything I’ve got. I walk into the kitchen, drag the chair over to the larder, and remove the tin box from the top shelf. Then mechanically, joylessly, I sate my newborn anger with 4,563 calories’ worth of chocolate. Beat that, Bridget Jones. The guilt engulfs me like a dense fog. I’m punished but not purged.
29
IN TIMES OF CONFLICT—ACCORDING TO AN eminent expert—men retreat into a “cave” where they remain, solitary and brooding, for hours at a time, ignoring their poor partner’s increasingly bewildered and desperate pleas to emerge and explain, only shuffling sheepishly into the light when they have at long last processed and discharged their dark inner struggle. I’ve come to the conclusion that “cave” is a euphemism for “toilet.”
Anyway, I think they must be onto something, because after my monster munch I feel a curiously masculine need to lock myself in the bathroom for ninety minutes. I sit rigid on the floor—flanked by those dual masters of tyranny, the mirror and the scales—hugging my knees, hoping for salvation, but not expecting it. Maybe if I jumped out of the window, Babs would realize how sorry I am. I fondly imagine this scenario for a lingering moment, then grudgingly admit to myself that suicide—unlike flowers and chocolates—is not a way of saying you’re sorry. It’s a way of making everyone else sorry. Oh. That’s not very nice. But, that means I must be angry.
I’m so surprised at this, I bob up into a defensive crouch and nearly bang my head on the underside of the sink. Anger? I don’t do anger. I’m not an angry person. I am self-contained. I rarely answer back. It’s not how I was brought up. Why, I only shouted at a man for the first time this week—and there were mitigating circumstances—I had to get Chris off my property before his hair fell out. Is that the behavior of someone who’s angry?
I’m not like Frannie—Frannie is angry. She lives in a constant state of anger. Whereas most people need to drive a car to reach that level of aggression, Frannie attains it unassisted. She’s like a man who punches you for looking at him in the wrong way.
Once, she invited Babs to a football match in Southampton, and they were traveling back to London on the train, “raucous and pissed” according to Babs, when a middle-aged man leaned across the aisle and asked politely if they’d mind keeping the noise down. The word “sorry” was halfway out of Babs’s mouth when Frannie screamed—screamed—“You wouldn’t say that if we were men, and you wouldn’t say that if we were with men, you sexist prick! Fuck off and die!”
She didn’t stop screaming abuse—despite Babs imploring, “Easy, Fran, take it easy!”—until another passenger called the (male) guard, upon which Frannie turned fey and fluttery, cranking out a credible impression of a helpless little girl pig—and I choose my words advisedly—being set upon by the Big Bad Wolf.
Now that is angry.
And I’m not like that! I’m well-mannered. I’m controlled. I’m in control. Or at least, I was until my life started to unravel like a cheap jumper. Look at me! Troughing chocolate like a…a—my mother. I curl my lip. She has no dignity where chocolate is concerned. She can’t resist it. She’s a sugar slave. I remember when Babs’s parents invited us for supper, weeks after Dad left. My mother ostentatiously refused dessert, then cut nineteen “tiny slivers” off the chocolate cake like a bad carpenter shaving wood off a door, until a “tiny sliver” of cake remained. She then exclaimed to Mrs. Edwards—who’d eaten one modest slice with her espresso, finito—“Jackie! You’re so lucky with your figure!”
I can’t understand how this happened. I lean against the bath and backtrack through my decline. Feeding frenzy—after months of strictly monitoring my intake—prompted by it all going wrong with Simon, then Chris, then Andy. Oh dear, is it all about men with me? It can’t be. No. It isn’t. The Simon fiasco was a mere footnote to my friendship with Babs. Which faltered a while back. Around the time Babs met Simon and I went on a diet. Did I feel angry then? I don’t recall feeling anything. Stunned, perhaps. Wretched in the presence of a couple so smoochily, blatantly, shamelessly in love. When I was with Saul. A decent guy, yes, but not the sensitive brute I imagined for myself. Then I met Chris—the relationship equivalent of piercing my tongue—and threw away my job.
What a mess. Yet as far as I can see, it all comes back to Babs. What do I feel for her? Admiration. Respect. Love. I adore Babs. Except, it’s hard to love someone quite so heartily when their taut shiny life reflects the bumps and scratches in your own. But then, that’s your problem, not theirs. I’ve been taking my problem out on Babs. I’ve been sullen with her. How embarrassing. I’ve acted as if she was in emotional debt to me for being happier than I was. Like she owed me a love life. Well, thanks to my excruciating behavior, now I owe her. She thought I was angry. She said it, when she had a go at me for losing weight. I must be angry, then. My head shrinks into my neck like a turtle retreating into its shell. Anger is one of the worst ways of losing control. It’s primitive. Anger is such an unbecoming emotion. It makes you ugly. It turns ears red and tips of noses white, it flares nostrils so the hairs show, it squeezes sweat from skin—water and urea—an all-over wee. Sometimes when you’re angry, you spit without realizing. Unlike, say, when you’re afraid: your eyes widen prettily and your chest heaves, tricking onlookers into thinking your bust is bigger and more bouncy than it actually is. Or when you feel joy, which might bless you with dimples and a glowing complexion.
I shudder. I mean, this is like Liberace being told he’s a repressed breeder. I feel a peculiar urge to visit my mother. She’s great when you’re miserable. She won’t stand for it. She says, “Nonsense, dear!” and harasses you into jollity. Even if you’re in a subdued mood because she put you there. She’d never scold you directly, but get too exuberant and the aura of reproach was like an ice cube down your back. You’d be crushed. Instantly, she’d burst into life, bolstering, cajoling, nursing you into a good humor again.
That’s what I need. I heave myself off the floor and plod to the phone. “Mum?”
“Hello, dear! I’ve been trying to call you all day! I was frantic! Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“No, no, nothing, sorry, I’m fine, thanks, how are you?”
“I’m all of a flutter, since you ask! When did we last speak? I know you’ve been busy, dear, I didn’t want to disturb you, I don’t like to interfere, make a nuisance of myself, you know that, but I’ve got so much news, so much has happened, I’m all in a spin!”
Could it be that Waitrose has rearranged its poultry shelves? “Mum,” I say with a sigh, “please don’t say that, you know you’re not a nuisance. You sound differ—you sound great. You’ll have to tell me all about it. I was going to say, can I come over?”
“Now? Of course, my pleasure! Silly girl, you don’t need to ask! Have you eaten?”
“Oh, er, I—”
“I’ve got some bits and pieces in the fridge, I’ll put them out, and you can take what you want. I’ve got a lovely bit of lemon sole, fresh from the fishmonger, it’s never quite the same from the supermarket, I could poach it for you if you like, why don’t I do that?”
I take a deep breath and put her off poaching the fish as diplomatically as I can, then say good-bye and feel terrible. She sounds so horribly honored to hear from me, as if I’m the lady of the manor deigning to call the servant at home. I fluff my hair about my face and put on my bulkiest cable-knit to stave off the “you look so thin” onslaught. Maybe I should stick a pillow up my jumper? Even
though I feel enormous. The two pounds I’ve gained aren’t me, I feel like a kangaroo carrying a marmoset in its pouch. I drive to Hendon fast, and park in front of the feathery fan of pampas grass that my mother is so proud of (bizarrely, she believes it lends the front garden “an Egyptian quality”).
My mother opens the door before I ring it—doesn’t she ever remove that apron?—and enfolds me in a light hug (neck and upper chest touching, bosoms and lower bodies demurely apart). She releases me after two seconds, then, as I rear back, exerts a sudden slight pressure on my back, which I take to mean “stay right where you are.” I freeze as her hands squeeze my shoulders and upper arms—pinchily proprietorial—and she lets me go. I smile, uncertain. Do I meet requirements? “I’m sorry I haven’t rung in the last few days,” I say, to fill the quiet. “I kept meaning to. So, so what’s the big news?”
“Come into the kitchen,” replies my mother, beaming suddenly. “Are you sure you won’t have something to eat? Just a nibble?”
“What I’d really love is a cup of peppermint tea,” I say brightly, watching her hopes rise and fall.
My mother switches on the kettle, bustles over to the side, places the biscuit tin on the table, and draws up a chair. All the while she smiles and hums (“Sweet Home Alabama,” Lynyrd Skynyrd). I am agog. Her favored style is “downtrodden,” but today she is positively jaunty. I wonder if she’s OD’d on the diet Coke. Or trounced the opposition at Weight Watchers. She clasps her hands and grimaces at her lap, and I realize with dismay that there are tears in her eyes. Will she take offense if I ask her what’s wrong? I am steeling myself to make a possible blunder when my mother declares in a tremulous voice, “Today I spoke to my granddaughter.”
