Growing Up for Beginners

by Claire Calman

  But of course Vicki had never read it, or probably even heard of it, so the cutting reference just sat there pointlessly, cutting no one.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The ones with the red “A” are yours. Obviously.’ She looked at him as if he were ever so slightly stupid. ‘Do you need a hand shifting them to your car?’ She folded her arms and did not meet his eyes. He picked up the roll of white labels resting on top of a box to give himself something to fiddle with.

  ‘No, thanks!’ determinedly capable and cheerful now.

  He dipped to lift the first box. Jesus, why was it so bloody heavy? Books, no doubt. He tried to look as if his arms weren’t about to snap in two from the strain and grinned at Vicki.

  He was definitely going to say something. As he walked to and from his car, hefting the boxes, he tried out a series of nicely barbed gambits in his head: So, I see Ian’s got his smug loafers well under the table then?... So how long have you been shagging Ian?... Nice you’ve found a new hobby – fucking that smug Ian – did you give up on the Tupperware-collecting then? Just what was it that appealed to you most about him – his wallet or his car? It had to be exactly right – sharp, wounding – something that conveyed that of course he knew exactly what was going on, had known for some time, in fact, but he simply didn’t give a toss. He had such a rich, full life he was above fretting about such trivial things.

  ‘How have you been keeping?’ Vicki asked, as he settled a box into the boot.

  ‘Me? I’m fine!’ La-la-la – why wouldn’t I be? Sure, you’ve just ripped out my heart and kicked it around your stripy lawn like a deflated old football, but why wouldn’t I be completely fucking fine?

  ‘Good. You’re a decent man, Andrew.’ She looked up and met his eyes at last. ‘You’ll find someone nice to be with, I’m sure of it.’

  She said this as if his pet gerbil had just died but soon he would feel strong enough, hopeful enough, to toddle along to the pet shop and choose a new one and all would be well again.

  ‘I’m sure of it.’ He slammed the boot closed. ‘Though I’m very much relishing being single actually. And there are – I have – very much – I have plenty. Plenty. Of things… happening. Irons in the fire. And so on. Yes, indeed.’ He twirled his car keys with a cavalier recklessness and they spun off the end of his finger halfway across the drive. Shoulders slumped, Andrew walked over to retrieve them, and it occurred to him that perhaps turning up on a Sunday morning rather put paid to the idea that he was out wildly carousing with different women night and day.

  ‘Well, I’m glad,’ said Vicki. ‘You deserve to have fun.’

  Annoyingly, Vicki was refusing to be riled, for some reason. How very unlike her. Now he would bring her to her knees with a devastating one-liner. He would leave her feeling bruised and pathetic and, most important of all, guilty. It had to be perfect, though. He opened the driver’s door and stood there, wishing he were sweeping into a chauffeured Rolls-Royce or at least a scratch-free Audi. There was moss around the window seals, he noticed. The footwell mat on his side was almost worn right through. For God’s sake, surely he could at least get himself a new rubber mat? He would do that, yes, he would stop off at a garage on the way back and splash out on a new mat. Terrific.

  ‘Leave any you can’t fit in your car now,’ she said, giving a small wave and moving out of the way. ‘But please text before you come next time in case I’m busy.’

  ‘Sure.’ He nodded.

  ‘Have a good day then. Take care.’

  Here it comes. Verbal annihilation. He drew himself up tall, ready to deliver. He looked at her, at her neat hair, as she reached up to tuck it behind her ears, her tiny feet in her high-heeled shoes, her fingers fiddling with the gold chain she always wore round her neck, a present from her mother before she died. She looked like a child dressed up in her mummy’s grown-up shoes.

  ‘You too,’ he said. ‘Take care of yourself, OK?’

  She nodded and waved and went back into the house.

  He stood there for a moment. Thought about taking a leak down the side of Ian’s smarmy car – God, that would be great! – then swivelled his head round and realised there was a fair chance of being seen by a neighbour and reported to the police. Still, he had to do something – anything – even a tiny gesture of… of… defiance.

  He looked at the cocky yellow pansies in the urns and thought of ripping one up and leaving it right in the centre of Ian’s gleaming car bonnet, letting sticky clods of soil mar the paintwork. Hmm. His eye caught the number plate again. God, of course. So obvious. Quickly, he went back to his car, rootled in the glove compartment for a black pen, and grabbed the roll of white sticky labels. A small amendment would clarify matters, he thought.

  As he got into his car and started the engine, Andrew looked back at his handiwork, at the number plate now specially personalised for Vicki’s perma-tanned paramour: FOOL 1.

  20

  Motion Sickness

  She would tell Roger that she does not want to go on a cruise. Eleanor is a grown-up, after all, with her own opinions and wishes. Of course, many people would be thrilled at the prospect: staying in a comfortable suite with a sea view on a luxurious ocean liner for weeks. Gourmet meals and flowing wine, entertainment every night, cabaret, dancing, exotic destinations; it would all be absolutely delightful – if you liked that sort of thing. So why didn’t she want to go? Eleanor rolled the question around in her head, like a marble in a maze, trying to find the exact spot where it might click into place. It’s not as if she isn’t fond of the sea, quite the contrary; she loves the sea, loves to swim in it, be part of its otherness for a spell, and she loves to watch it while sitting on the shore, is fascinated by the way it changes every second, the play of light on water, the power of it, the way it shifts from crashing against the rocks to the softest shushing sound as it strokes the sand. Perhaps it was simply that she suffered from motion sickness, so the idea of spending so long on a boat was unappealing? Although really it was nothing like as bad as when she was a child, and if she took a tablet an hour or so before, she was usually OK. But this was no ferry trip out to an island; this would be living on a ship every day and every night for weeks. Already she felt queasy at the thought.

  Those vast ships are extremely steady now, she knew. Maybe it was the idea of being trapped with the same bunch of people night after night at dinner, whether you wanted to see them or not? She imagined the daily farce of ducking behind pillars and potted palms to avoid some awful man whose unstated mission is to bore her to death by explaining bloody hedge funds or some frightful woman with a braying laugh who wants to show off her Prada handbag.

  But these were not proper reasons, reasons that had an empirical value, that would mean something to Roger. These were silly, Eleanorish reasons that would carry no weight. Still, surely it wasn’t unreasonable for her to have a say in where and how she would like to go on holiday?

  She would say to Roger, ‘Darling, I’ve been thinking about the cruise. It’s incredibly kind and generous of you but I’ve decided that I don’t want to go. Can we discuss booking something else instead? A different kind of holiday?’

  She picked the words over in her head, modifying the phrasing here and there. Was ‘decided’ too strong a word, perhaps? Should she focus a little more on Roger’s generosity? Maybe amend ‘don’t want to go’ to ‘would perhaps prefer not to go’ – adding a pause or two, so that she wouldn’t sound too awkward or stroppy. Roger meant to be kind, of course. He wanted to treat her, to help her relax, give her a break. It’s just that it was difficult for him, at times, to understand that… well, that not everyone is Roger, that another person might not have exactly the same likes and dislikes as he does.

  So that is what she would say. The words cycled over and over in her head. The only difficult sentence really was the one about not wanting to go. She timed it. Four seconds. Four seconds out of a lifetime. She would say it and then the words would be out there, in the world, and she wo
uldn’t be able to take them back and Roger might not be entirely happy and the infamous Cloud might descend – one of Roger’s legendary black moods that engulfed the household from time to time – but then he’d let it go after a little bit… at some point certainly… and they’d book something else, a couple of weeks in Italy or something, and it would all be fine.

  Roger came home from work late, at a little after half-past eight. She could tell he had had a bad day by the heavy thump as he slammed his car door in the driveway, and the excessive force used to shut the front door. Maybe this wasn’t such a good day to raise the topic after all? He preferred it when she appeared in the hallway at once, but still she lingered, relishing these last few seconds of solitude. She waited a few moments more, pointlessly opening the oven door and shutting it loudly so that it sounded as if she were in the middle of some vital cooking task. Now he’d be taking off his stiff work shoes and abandoning them in the middle of the hall floor for her to tidy away while he put on his sheepskin slippers.

  ‘Hello?’ he shouted out, already sounding annoyed by her failure to be there to greet him at once. ‘I’m home!’

  ‘Just coming!’

  Eleanor glided through to the hallway, paused to kiss his proffered cheek, hung up his coat and scarf, and said nothing as he went and plonked himself in his armchair in the sitting room, even though it was now twenty to nine and she was hungry and supper was not improving by being left in the oven all this time.

  ‘Glass of wine, darling?’ Her voice was bright.

  ‘Yes.’ He sank back heavily in his chair. ‘Definitely. Is there any of that decent Beaujolais left?’

  Well, no, she thought, because you finished it yesterday, so of course not, but no was not really a word Roger liked very much if someone else was saying it.

  ‘I don’t believe so, but there’s a very nice bottle of claret. How about that?’ She caught herself using her coaxing voice, the tone she would use to soothe a toddler out of a tantrum.

  ‘All right. I really prefer Beaujolais. As you know. Claret can be so tannic.’

  ‘This one is quite smooth, I think.’

  ‘You don’t even drink red!’

  ‘No, but I read about it somewhere. It’s supposed to be very good.’

  ‘Oh, well, if the Sunday Times says it’s good, then who am I – mere humble mortal that I am – to disagree with the experts?’ He was mocking her because Eleanor was ‘always’ referring to things she had read in the newspapers.

  She brought him a large glass and he sniffed it, then sipped it, gave a small nod.

  ‘Um, supper’s ready – any time you’d like it? Shall I…?’

  ‘I’m barely in the door, darling. Give me five minutes, will you?’

  ‘Of course. Sorry. I just thought you might be hungry as it’s quite late.’

  ‘Not especially. I had a huge lunch with a client. You go ahead and eat without me, darling. You know how you hate eating late. Go on. I’ll have a snack a bit later if I want anything – some cheese or something.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, yes, you go on. Let me just chill here with the paper for a bit.’ He picked up the folded newspaper from where it lay on the side-table waiting for him, stretched out his legs on his footstool.

  The chicken breasts sat, shrunken and shrivelled, in their diminished pool of sauce. The gratin potatoes were cracked and dried out. On the kitchen table, a bowl of salad wilted. Eleanor stabbed a piece of chicken with a fork, added a spoonful of the potatoes and a pile of leaves. She tipped some homemade vinaigrette over her portion of salad.

  She sat at the kitchen table and unfolded her cloth napkin, then got up again to fetch the book she was reading at present – a political biography. Roger could have called her to say he would be late, or that he wouldn’t want supper after all. She could have eaten over an hour ago. She really hated eating late unless they were going out for dinner. She opened the biography and looked at the page. Her gaze travelled across the words, onto the next line, and the next. At the bottom of the page, she glanced back up the sheet of words and realised she had absolutely no idea what she has just read. Roger had pronounced the book fascinating and told her she really ought to read it, rather than silly short stories or poetry that don’t tell you anything useful about the world, and so she had started to read it. But she did not want to read it. The thought struck her quite suddenly that she didn’t care; she told herself that she certainly should care, surely most proper grown-ups would care, politics is so important, obviously, and no doubt it is extremely interesting how this man came to be an MP and then a member of the Cabinet, but really she didn’t give a toss and she would rather hurl the book across the room, to hear the nice, resounding whump such a heavy hardback would make as it hit the wall.

  I want to read a novel, I want to sink into another world and belong to it for a while. I’d like to be able to read a bloody book of my own choosing without lying awake in a cold sweat thinking that my husband will find its hiding-place.

  A tear fell onto the page. And then another. No. Eleanor does not cry. It serves no purpose, after all. She snapped the book shut and quickly dabbed at her eyes with her napkin. She wasn’t hungry any more. The chicken was stringy and dry, the potatoes parched and joyless. She poked a few salad leaves into her mouth and chewed them dutifully but suddenly felt like a sheep chomping on grass. Maybe she’d wait until tomorrow to say about the cruise? Maybe Roger would be in a more receptive mood tomorrow.

  Do it now. Go on. Now.

  She approached the doorway to the sitting room; hovered at the entrance.

  ‘Would you like some more wine? Or anything?’

  ‘Yes, a top-up would be good.’

  She started to turn away.

  ‘And have we got any nuts or anything? Nibbles? Those cheese crispy things I like?’

  ‘There’s still the chicken for supper if you’re peckish?’

  ‘I don’t fancy all that, really. Anyway, you can have it for your lunch tomorrow, can’t you, so it won’t go to waste.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She retreated to the kitchen and returned with the wine and a small dish of salted almonds.

  ‘Oh. No cheese crispy things?’

  ‘Sorry, there aren’t any.’ Eleanor could picture them in their plastic tub in the kitchen cupboard. A tiny act of defiance.

  He picked up his wineglass and shut his eyes.

  Do it. Say about the cruise.

  ‘Um… ’ She came further into the room and perched on the arm of the sofa several feet away from him, suddenly realising that her prepared script would not do, would not do at all.

  ‘You know, I was just wondering about the cruise… thinking about it a little bit… and… I mean, I happened to be thinking about it today and I—’

  ‘No need to worry at all, darling.’ Roger opened his eyes and glanced at her. ‘It’s all sorted. I was just about to tell you. Booked and paid for.’

  ‘You’ve booked it?’

  ‘You are a funny old thing, always fretting about everything.’ He rested his head back again and smiled. ‘You know you can rely on me, darling. I booked it today from work. Got Linda to do it, actually, as I was so busy. Just as I said. Suite with an ocean view. In fact, Linda managed to wangle us an upgrade so we’ve even got our own big balcony. She really is marvellous. Eight glorious weeks. I can’t wait.’

  ‘Eight weeks?’ She felt faint.

  ‘Yes, I know we thought four or five but might as well make the most of it while we’re at it. And the longer one gives you such an incredible itinerary. Jolly lucky I can take so much leave, but I’m so on top of everything, of course, and Jake can follow up where necessary. Best time of year to go climate-wise – Jan, Feb – though obviously I know you’ll miss the delights of the British winter.’ He laughed. Roger liked to tease his wife about her love of crisp winter days and thick snow. ‘Just think, we’ll be able to sit out on our own balcony every night, sipping cocktails looking out to sea.’r />
  ‘I thought we were still discussing it?’

  Roger turned to look at her, perhaps unsettled by the unfamiliar tone of his wife’s voice.

  ‘We have discussed it. And I left the brochure out for you so you could peruse it at your leisure, with all the relevant pages correctly flagged.’

  ‘I thought we would, I don’t know, talk about it some more?’

  ‘What would be the point in that?’ Roger laughed. ‘The only sticking point, remember, was over whether I’d be able to take so much leave. But Alan was fine with it. What else is there to discuss?’

  ‘Well, it’s just… you know… that’s a very long time… and I have my – my own commitments – my work and the choir – and—’

  ‘But it’s not even a proper job, your conservation thingy, is it? More of a hobby, really.’

  ‘But I said I’d take the paid position. It starts in mid-February. We won’t be back in time.’

  ‘Well, so you’ll start in March instead. So what?’

  ‘Because I said I’d start earlier.’

  Roger sighed heavily.

  ‘I can’t imagine a couple of weeks either way will make a jot of difference, darling. And if they don’t like it, you can always tell them to stuff their silly little job and get something else to amuse you once you come back from our trip, can’t you?’

  ‘It’s not a “silly little job”. It’s important. And there’s my print-making.’

  Roger puffed out a sigh.

  ‘Oh, that! Well, of course your “Art” must take precedence.’ He took a deep drink of his wine. ‘What it is to be an artist. Everyone else better just kneel at the altar of your creativity. For Christ’s sake, Eleanor, take a fucking sketchbook or something. You’ll have aeons of time with nothing to do, no house to take care of, no fiddling about in the kitchen, you can doodle away to your heart’s content.’

  There was a silence. She dug her nails hard into the palms of her hands. Tears pricked her eyes but she bit her lip to keep them in check.