by Fiona Neill
Luke was a chameleon. He could adapt to any environment. He always had a revolving door of friends. Ailsa had tried to convince Harry this could be a virtue, but where she saw freedom of spirit and curiosity, he saw lack of direction. The truth was that Luke had always been more her child than Romy and Ben. She imagined him in his forties, seeing a therapist, trying to unpick his relationship with his parents and the therapist finding fault with her overindulgence. Would he realize that Ailsa had to love him more because Harry loved him less?
She remembered something Luke had said last year, just before she had finally decided to accept the job in Norfolk, when she was at her lowest ebb. He was sitting at the kitchen table, allowing Romy to style his shoulder-length hair. They were talking but Ailsa could hear nothing except the voice in her head on a loop. Stick or twist. Stay or go. She would have liked to present all the information to a statistician, who could have worked out the probability of where they would be least unhappy. Because now it was all about damage limitation. Harry would do whatever she wanted. He always said this with an affectionate arm around her shoulder but it just added to the weight of her decision. He would give up his job for her. He would take time out to write his book and take care of the children.
‘Mum’s having a gap year from parenting,’ she heard Luke say to Romy. It was meant to be a joke but the truth stung. ‘She’s trying to find herself.’
‘It must be challenging teaching at a school where your children are students,’ said Matt, interrupting her thoughts. He was holding drinks and carrying a packet of crisps under each arm. When did pupils become students? Ailsa wondered. How long was it before she turned into a service provider? He tore open the crisps, apologized for spilling them, and used the side of his hand to corral them into a neat pile in the centre of the table. Grateful for something to do with her hands, Ailsa picked at them.
‘I want no more to do with them than they want to do with me.’ She took a couple of gulps of cider and enjoyed the way it warmed her stomach. ‘It’s a good incentive to stay away from trouble.’
True. But not reflective of the last year in London, when Luke had become a chronic problem. The head teacher had only kept him on because she couldn’t afford to lose her deputy.
‘My mum used to teach at my school,’ Matt explained. ‘She was an English teacher.’
‘And how was that?’
‘Fine, until she left my dad for the History teacher.’ He licked a finger and used it to soak up stray fragments of crisps. ‘That’s why I ended up doing science A levels. They offered the possibility of a more rational existence.’ Her eyes must have narrowed.
‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘I wasn’t going to say anything.’
‘No, but you were thinking it,’ he said. ‘Your face is very expressive.’
‘Is it?’ asked Ailsa, trying not to arch her eyebrows in surprise.
‘But in response to your thought, I’ve never gone out with anyone older than me before. The relationship between my mum and the History teacher lasted less than a year and then she moved back in with us as if nothing had happened.’ His eye line moved from the crisps she was holding in the palm of her hand, up her arm to her shoulder and finally to her face.
‘How was that?’ asked Ailsa.
‘The house became tidy again.’ He shrugged, his mouth full of crisps. ‘They were nicer to each other. Because they’d almost lost each other, I guess. Mum’s knowledge of history had improved but they never watched any war movies together again. My younger sisters took longer than me to forgive her. Order was restored.’ He leaned towards her and rested his arms on the table, palms flat on the surface, fingers splayed. She was surprised by the dark hair on his forearms, even though it perfectly matched his thick head of hair. His left leg was now anchored to the inside of Ailsa’s right knee. He gulped down his beer.
‘Everything leaves a trace though, doesn’t it? Even though you can’t ever measure the imprint with absolute accuracy,’ she said.
‘End of therapy session, Ailsa.’ He leaned back but his leg stayed in the same position. ‘I’m over it.’
She shifted position. She was talking about her childhood not his, but he didn’t realize.
‘Sorry,’ said Ailsa. ‘I’m trying to delay talking about Luke.’
‘Luke?’
‘Legal highs. I presume it was him.’
‘I don’t teach Luke. That was Stuart Tovey. He was going on about his brother taking Ritalin and how he’d been using it to stay awake longer to revise for exams. He was telling Marnie that it had a similar chemical structure to cocaine. I looked it up on the Internet. He’s right. It’s a stimulant. Like Adderall. We should probably all be taking it.’
It was a joke but Ailsa didn’t react so he continued. ‘I had a word with him. Talked about delayed gratification. Told him that if he wanted to screw up his life he should at least put it off until he’d done his A levels.’
‘Sounds as good advice as any. Nothing else has worked with him.’ She picked up the cider again and took a few more sips.
‘Stuart is trouble. Not in a malicious way. In a risk-taking adolescent kind of way. Teenagers can be reckless.’
‘So can adults,’ Ailsa said.
‘Really?’ he said. ‘What’s the most reckless thing you’ve done? Apart from coming to the pub with me.’
His mobile phone rang. He looked at the screen. Years in a classroom meant Ailsa was expert at reading upside down and she could see it was Rachel calling. He quickly answered and leaned back in his chair.
‘I’m in the middle of something,’ he said. ‘Can I call you later?’
Seconds later Ailsa’s phone rang. She knew without looking that it would be Rachel. She caught his eye and let the call go to voicemail.
‘It was Romy I wanted to talk about.’
This was unexpected. No one ever complained about Romy.
‘She seemed a bit unsettled in class so I kept her back at the end of the lesson. After a bit of meandering she told me that my relationship with your sister means that Rachel isn’t pulling her weight with your father. Thinks it’s causing you a lot of stress. She asked me to get Rach to help out more.’
‘Well, that’s not what I was anticipating,’ said Ailsa in the even tone that she had perfected over the years when she was uncertain how to react to a situation.
‘I’m telling you this as a friend, rather than a colleague,’ he quickly added. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it on school grounds. Didn’t want to muddy the waters. But I thought you should know. And I also wanted to say that I won’t add to your problems. I’ll encourage Rachel to help out.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied, because what else could she say?
Later she would stew over the detail. But Ailsa grasped that in a matter of seconds the balance of power in their relationship had subtly shifted so that somehow she was now beholden to Matt. He had crossed the boundary into her personal life. She couldn’t dismiss Romy’s worries because the essence of what she was saying rang true and the content wasn’t particularly contentious.
She stared into her cider so that he couldn’t read her expression. What puzzled her was why Romy had confided in him. Of course she argued with Harry about Adam. It didn’t require huge amounts of insight to imagine her father’s presence generating pressure. But this was the regular Sturm und Drang of family life. It wasn’t sufficiently calamitous for Romy to need to share it with one of her teachers.
‘She seemed worried that you might move from Luckmore if this isn’t resolved,’ said Matt.
‘Why would she worry about that? She hates living here,’ said Ailsa.
He shrugged. ‘That’s not the impression she gave me. Another round?’
Ailsa looked at her watch. It was ten o’clock. Ben would already be in bed.
‘Sure. But make it a half, please.’
Ailsa parked the car just beyond the house so she could slip inside unnoticed. She ha
d given Matt a lift back to school to collect his bike and it was almost eleven o’clock by the time she got home. She shut the door behind her and leaned against it for a moment, pleased to be back, noting that this was the first time she had thought of Luckmore as home. She was growing to like this house. She liked the futuristic-looking toilets with their hidden cisterns and toilet bowls that appeared to float against the wall; she liked the way the wooden floor didn’t reveal any history, the brand-new oil tank and the hatch where you could pass food from the larder to the kitchen. She was glad to be living far from her friends with their anxious questions about how things were going. It was a good house to keep secrets. She didn’t turn on the light, and found herself drawn to the big window that overlooked the Fairports. There was a crowd of people sitting around their kitchen table. It was littered with empty wine bottles. They were in the midst of yet another party. Where did they find the stamina?
She observed the man sitting beside Loveday talking animatedly. And how she took him by the hand and turned it towards the ceiling. She was probably going to read his palm. Ailsa heard herself snort. Given that Loveday had come round to ask where and when she was born so that she could start plotting Ailsa’s astrological chart, it wouldn’t be surprising. Instead Loveday slowly traced a line across his wrist. This was more unexpected. Careful how you react, Ailsa thought; the biggest problems start with the tiniest gestures. The man obviously knew this because his hand balled into a tight fist and he pulled it away as though he had been stung.
She could now see his face and was taken aback to realize it was Harry. Wolf was watching and shook his finger at Loveday, laughing as you might at a child who had done something naughtily endearing. Harry’s gaze nervously flicked from Wolf to Loveday. Everyone suddenly turned to stare at the other end of the table. Ailsa saw her father get up, his trousers stained red from a glass of wine he must have just spilt. She could tell from his slow, somnambulant movements that he was drunk. Harry got up, presumably to help Adam, but instead he headed towards the sofa, where a child was stirring beneath a blanket. Harry bent down beside him and Ben sat up and rubbed his eyes. What was Harry thinking, keeping him out so late on a school night? For the second time that evening she tried to summon anger that she didn’t feel. Let Harry sort out Ben and her father, thought Ailsa. She went upstairs and checked on Romy. She was asleep on her side, her fingers curled around the edge of the duvet. Her curtains were open. Ailsa went over and shut them.
8
It was Aunt Rachel who gave the game away about Mum and Dad. She didn’t mean to. But Rachel likes a drink and can be very mouthy after a few glasses of wine. Mum always says she is the perfect example of how the same qualities that make you good can also make you bad.
Since Rachel has what my parents describe as ‘a very chequered history’ with men, I was surprised Mum had ever confided in her at all about her problems with Dad. Still am really. Perhaps Mum decided it was payback time for all the hours she had spent at the kitchen table with Rachel excitedly describing a new relationship or sobbing over the end of an old one. If Mum had asked me I would have told her that the same quality that made Rachel such awesome company might make her a flaky confidante. It didn’t make her a bad person. That’s just how she rolled.
‘Rach’s life is like one long Abba song,’ Dad used to say whenever she turned up at our old home wearing sunglasses and clutching a bottle of wine. She would head off downstairs with barely a glance at him. Sometimes he’d whistle the tune to ‘Mamma Mia’ as she and Mum talked in the kitchen oblivious to the rest of us. It was more a tease than criticism. Dad was quite fond of Rachel.
I remembered that as Mum sympathized and gave advice she would always be doing something else, like ironing, or cooking a week’s supply of chilli con carne, or doing an Internet shop, because she couldn’t afford to stop. BTM – before the Miseries – Mum obeyed all the laws of physics. She was constantly in motion although I wasn’t convinced her forces were in balance.
Rachel would always sit in my seat at the kitchen table. As she spoke, she would run her nails up and down its oak surface, leaving tiny hieroglyphics that Luke and I named after the boyfriend that had caused the latest upset. Because even when she ended a relationship, there was still a drama. When Granny was alive she used to say that Rachel felt things more than anyone else, as though her heightened sensitivity was a superhuman quality that elevated her above the rest of us. Dad said she lacked self-control, and although I wasn’t sure what he meant I agreed with him. But back then I knew nothing about the complications of love.
The deepest grooves, a series of stubby lines close to where I still sit, we called Steve after a man who broke her heart because he chose a life of abstinence as a Buddhist monk and was sent to live in Mexico. Mum’s theory was that Steve was a good man, but because Rachel lost him to religion rather than another woman she couldn’t generate the anger necessary to truly purge him from her system. After Steve, boyfriends tended to have one or two of Steve’s ingredients but never enough to replicate the exact recipe. I wasn’t sure that Mum’s cooking metaphor worked but we all understood what she meant.
Last year Steve came back from Mexico for a visit. I overheard Rachel tell Mum he wanted to have sex with her one last time but she turned him down because she didn’t want the responsibility of holding back a man trying to reach nirvana.
Then there was a small series of concentric circles by Ben’s seat for Budgie, an enormous motorbike courier Rachel met after he delivered a package containing a script to her home. It was a horror movie, the first one my aunt had ever worked on. Apparently she had been brought in to try and give the central character emotional depth.
Rachel’s relationship with him was completely physical, Mum explained to Dad. ‘Sounds good to me,’ Dad had teased. They used to banter like that, as if they had some private language that the rest of us couldn’t speak as fluently.
Rachel spent quite a lot of time trying to work out why she found Budgie’s blend of leather and motorbike fumes quite so intoxicating. Finally, Mum, who was usually really patient, told her that all she was doing was trying to inject the relationship with a mythology it didn’t deserve. ‘Never forget, sex is a chemical addiction, Rach.’
I tried to imagine Dad being an addictive substance and felt slightly sick.
I also overheard Rachel telling Mum that she preferred having sex with Budgie when he wore his leather trousers, even though the leather chafed her thighs so badly that it looked as though someone had had a go at her with a cheese grater. Even more interestingly, Budgie could only have sex to the sound of a motorbike revving in the background. Mum had laughed so much when Rachel told her this and even more when she revealed that it had to be a 990cc Harley-Davidson engine. Rachel had finally managed a smile. She knew it was time to tell Budgie the relationship was over. ‘You can’t compete with a motorbike,’ were Mum’s last words on the subject.
And of course now there was Mr Harvey, my Biology teacher. I had overheard Mum on the phone earlier in the week explaining to Rachel that she couldn’t, for professional reasons, listen to her talk about their sex life. But because Mr Harvey was a new teacher who was very hot on pastoral care and mistakenly thought that age made you wise, he asked Rachel’s opinion about issues at school and she in turn told Mum what was going on. Which was something Mum described as a virtuous circle.
So this is how I learned the reason Stuart Tovey was such a freak was that his stepdad knocked his mother around. Mr Harvey thought this accounted for his outbursts of anger and poisonous attitude towards women, especially female teachers. I didn’t understand why watching your mother getting beaten up by your stepdad would make you angry with her rather than him or how this might make you offer a tenner to a girl in the year below to give you a blow job in the lunch break, but apparently Mr Harvey did. He firmly believed that deviancy was created, not inherited. And like Mum he went on and on about context all the time.
I was less sure. I w
as born on 22 June, the same day that, in 2003, a DNA sequence of the human genome was finally unravelled. So maybe my view was coloured. But Dad told me researchers have discovered a gene that is linked to antisocial and aggressive behaviour and that murderers and psychopaths have a smaller and less active pre-frontal cortex. We now know that anything from baldness to eczema is genetic. So maybe Stuart was born plain bad rather than made bad. And, as Ben said, the only fact you needed to know about Stuart Tovey was that it was best to stay away.
Mum also told Dad that apart from the fact that when Rachel went out on their first date people wondered if Mr Harvey was her son, he came ‘without any obvious complicating issues’, so perhaps there would be no grooves on the table. I wondered if Jay came without complicating issues and knew instinctively that he didn’t.
Grandpa had been staying with us for around ten days when Rachel came to visit. Apparently she couldn’t come earlier because of work commitments, Mum explained as we sat around the kitchen table waiting for her to arrive. Apparently all the actors in her zombie film were getting together for a script read-through. There were always lots of apparentlys with my aunt.
Since the film would be less than two hours long Mum couldn’t understand why it had taken ten days to get from beginning to end. It was a fair point. Dad didn’t react because he knew that while Mum could say what she liked about Rachel, nobody else was allowed to criticize her.
‘That’s the thing about zombies, Mum,’ said Ben seriously, after listening to Mum complaining. ‘They’re very unpredictable. That can be a big problem. Especially if there’s a horde.’
