Growing Up for Beginners

by Claire Calman

  ‘Well, OK then. Thanks.’

  He felt perhaps he should say something else, as this was clearly it. It would be useful to have a manual for this kind of thing: Useful Phrases for Awkward Situations. To give himself a few moments to think, he bent down and opened up the box. It contained his few remaining books, his sturdy walking boots in a plastic bag, plus his old green fleece. Almost the same colour as Olivia’s coat, he thought.

  They stood in silence for a few seconds, then Vicki reached into her pocket and stretched out her hand towards him.

  ‘And there’s this, too, of course.’ It was a ring he had bought her. Not an engagement ring, as they had never officially become engaged. It was an eternity ring, with alternating diamonds and sapphires all the way round in a gold setting.

  ‘But I bought it for you.’

  ‘I know, and I love it, you know I do. But…’

  He closed her fingers round it.

  ‘It’s yours,’ he said. ‘What am I going to do with it anyway? It’ll only sit in a drawer, gathering dust.’

  ‘You could always give it to another girlfriend?’

  ‘No. I chose it for you. Please keep it. It doesn’t have to mean anything – it’s just a pretty ring for a pretty woman. Have it.’

  ‘Well, thank you then, if you’re sure.’

  He nodded then picked up the box to put it in his car boot; came back to fetch the floor lamp and the wok.

  ‘Well, goodbye, then.’ Should he kiss her? It seemed weird to leave with just a wave.

  ‘Andrew?’

  ‘Yup – what?’

  She looked very small suddenly, waif-like even.

  ‘I need to tell you something, OK?’

  ‘Vicki, look, if it’s about Ian, I know. It’s OK – I get it. You and him. Personally, I think you’re too good for him but I’m not exactly impartial. I wish you well, really I do.’ He rested the lamp down again, holding it by its stem.

  ‘Thank you.’ She looked down and away, focused on the garage door for a moment, then back again. ‘Erm… it’s kind of awkward…’

  ‘Come on, you can tell me anything, you know that. Whatever my shortcomings,’ he puffed out his cheeks, ‘– and I accept that they are numerous – at least I hope you know there’s nothing you can’t say to me. What is it – you’re getting married? You’re having triplets? You’re moving to Alaska to hunt seals? I can handle it. I’m a big boy now.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Yes to which bit?’

  ‘Not Alaska.’

  ‘Getting married then?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Pregnant?’

  Another small nod. Andrew clutched the lamp more tightly, as if it were a crutch.

  ‘With triplets?’ Keeping his voice light.

  ‘No, luckily.’

  ‘Well, congratulations. Take care of yourself, OK?’ He dipped forwards to kiss the top of her head.

  ‘You, too.’

  He attempted to slide the lamp into the body of the car, then looked at her sideways.

  ‘How far along are you? Just as a matter of interest.’

  She stared down at the drive and said nothing.

  ‘Vicki, it makes no odds to me now anyway. Tell me,’ he said, wedging the lamp with an old blanket.

  ‘Nearly five months.’

  Well, that explained the need to chuck him out so speedily, at least.

  ‘I see.’ He stood upright and turned to face her.

  ‘Don’t be upset,’ she said.

  He shook his head, unable to speak for a few moments. Then he got into his car.

  ‘Upset? Why would I be upset? Cheers for that. Have a brilliant Christmas.’ He slammed the door and drove off.

  35

  Ding-Dong Merrily on High

  ‘Do you realise that this will be the first time since the children were born that neither of them will be home for Christmas?’ Roger pointed out to his wife a couple of weeks beforehand, as if she could possibly have failed to notice this appalling fact.

  Hannah would be away until the beginning of March, and Daniel had pleaded to spend Christmas with his girlfriend, Alice, at her parents’ home in Wales. He promised to pop up for a visit before Christmas, but he’d have to go back to Bristol for New Year as he’d been offered extra shifts of bar work and would get good tips at this time of year.

  ‘I’m sure your dad would give you some money for Christmas if you—’ Eleanor had said on the phone.

  ‘Nah, Mum, let’s not go over this again.’

  ‘I understand. Of course it’s better if you’d rather earn it yourself.’

  ‘You know what he’s like. If he does anything for you, even if it’s only passing the salt, he makes you feel so obligated it’s just not worth it. And if you dare to disagree with him, he gives you that look and we all have to deal with the bollocky Cloud for days.’

  ‘Come on, Dan, he’s not that bad.’ Eleanor tried to laugh it off.

  ‘No, he is that bad, Mum. You’ve just become so used to it that you’ve convinced yourself that it’s normal. It really isn’t. Alice’s dad is like a totally different species. Last time we went there I had this heated argument with him about Welsh devolution and then I panicked because I thought he’d go all freaky weird and awful like Dad does. But you know what? He was fine. It just didn’t bother him. When I told Alice about Dad, she thought I was hyping it up ridiculously to make her laugh.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Except it’s not funny. Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Anyway. Never mind. Tell me more about their place in Wales…’

  And then, as promised, Daniel had come up to London last week for a visit, though only for two days in the end as he and Roger had clashed again and it had all become rather fraught.

  So now Eleanor had the prickly problem of what to do about Christmas Day. If she didn’t rope in some additional guests, then it would be an extremely Unholy Trinity of Roger, her father, and herself – hardly a winning combination, even for an hour, never mind an entire day. And it would be ridiculous to cook a whole turkey for just the three of them, but Roger would never sanction an alternative. One year, she had made beef Wellington for a change, and Roger was so enraged by this unfathomable provocation that he’d exploited every opportunity to take pot-shots at her. Could she pass the cranberry sauce? Oh no, there wasn’t any because you only serve it with turkey… Where was the stuffing? Oh, of course… And no little sausages wrapped in bacon, then? What a shame that beef was so rich and heavy – now he didn’t have any room for her homemade Christmas pudding…

  Until she’d had to excuse herself and dash to the loo, where she had cried and fantasised about Roger’s keeling over at the table from a heart attack, falling face down into the beef Wellington. She could picture his face smacking into his plate, fragments of pastry and mushroom duxelles spattering out in a two-foot radius across her best damask tablecloth.

  It wasn’t exactly that Roger and Conrad didn’t get on. Actually, yes, it was exactly that. It was odd really as there were certain ways in which they were not unalike. They were both rather precise, good on detail, prone to pedantry, rather poor at seeing things from someone else’s point of view – maybe that was why they rubbed each other up the wrong way? But in other respects, they were incredibly different. Roger could not compete with Conrad for intellect or erudition; her father was unquestionably far more learned, more articulate, and better read. He outranked Roger in every regard other than wealth and it was that, no doubt, that put Roger on edge. He liked to feel he was indisputably the most important man in the room, the unchallenged alpha male, but if Conrad were there, he wouldn’t be.

  ‘I wonder if it might be nice to invite a couple of extra guests for Christmas lunch?’ Eleanor had suggested once Roger was safely well into his second glass of wine over supper. She always made suggestions in the form of very tentative questions as Roger did not like being ‘bossed around’.

  ‘Whatever you like, darlin
g.’ Roger waved his knife about expansively. ‘Christmas has always been very much your domain, hasn’t it? Happy to go along with whatever you think is best.’ The idea of Roger’s ‘going along’ with any decision made by his wife was so preposterous that Eleanor had to crush her napkin against her mouth for a moment to stifle a laugh. ‘Let’s ask Peter and Maggie. It’s always lonely for them since their son emigrated to Australia.’

  ‘Mmm, though they probably have other plans by now.’ Oh bollocks, she’d walked straight into that one. Eleanor tried to keep a smile fixed in place. Peter and Maggie Harris could bore for Britain, but they had been friends of Roger’s for many years.

  ‘And maybe a couple of neighbours?’ At least she could hope to dilute them with other guests. ‘Jane? Her husband died earlier this year.’

  Roger sniffed. ‘I suppose we ought to, then.’

  ‘And Freddie, the guerrilla gardener? He’s on his own, too.’

  ‘Ye-e-e-e-s, I suppose we could.’

  She tried to think of some way of diverting onto a different path now but, inevitably, Roger then said through a mouthful of potato: ‘And Mum, obviously.’

  ‘Mmm, of course. Super.’ She never used the word ‘super’. It was like a flag of insincerity waving above her head. She looked down at her plate. Please, please, don’t make me drive her. I can’t bear it. Can my Christmas present just be that I don’t have to endure being stuck in a car with Joyce? That’s all I ask for.

  ‘I’m happy to go and pick her up in the morning while you’re cooking and fiddling about with the turkey.’ He paused and she knew he was waiting for her to offer to take his mother back to the care home where she lived, an hour’s drive away.

  ‘More wine?’ She quickly picked up the bottle, desperate to head him off at the pass. ‘Do you like this one, darling?’

  She could feel him looking at her, then he sniffed and said, ‘Then you can take her back in the evening, can’t you?’

  ‘Why doesn’t she stay over in the guest room? And one of us can take her back on Boxing Day?’

  ‘No, you know she only likes to sleep in her own bed.’ There was no evidence to support this but, equally, it was impossible to disprove. Roger seemed to be fond of his mother but not to the extent of wanting to be in the same building as her for more than a couple of hours at a time; he would find her presence at breakfast the next day irksome. ‘You’ll have to take her late afternoon or evening on Christmas Day. You can do it straight after we’ve had tea and Christmas cake.’

  ‘Mmm, but then I wouldn’t be able to have more than one glass of wine if I have to drive… which is a bit of a shame. I know you put so much thought into planning which wines to serve.’

  Roger sighed, as if having to deal with his wife’s alcoholic tendencies was a daily trial.

  ‘You’ll have to drive your father back, anyway, won’t you, so what’s the difference?’

  ‘Actually, he insisted that he’d be happy to walk. I’ll nip down and pick him up in the morning so he doesn’t have to walk both ways, but you know how he loves walking.’

  ‘Over five miles? In the dark?’

  ‘He walks that most days anyway for pleasure and to keep fit. I did offer to drive him back, too, of course, but—’

  ‘Good. Well, you won’t mind taking Mum then, will you?’

  ‘Fine.’ She got up, cleared their plates from the table and switched the kettle on to make Roger his coffee.

  It wasn’t just that Roger’s mother was mean-spirited and never had a kind word to say about anyone (other than her peerless son, of course, even though he was the one who had carefully chosen a care home an hour away so that he wouldn’t be able to visit her too often); Joyce never read a book or watched a film or visited a garden or wondered about the world or formed a view about anything interesting. Her topics of conversation – and conversation was not really an apt word as she had no feel for the warp and weft of an extended exchange of views and thoughts – were restricted to tight-lipped pronouncements on her preferred TV programmes, how well Roger was doing at work and in life, and how lucky Eleanor was to have landed a catch like Roger as he was so successful and well-paid, and it must be lovely to have such a big house and live in the lap of luxury and not even have to do your own hoovering. She wouldn’t have known what to do with herself if she’d had servants at her beck and call day and night, that was for sure and certain…

  Eleanor had always managed to bite her lip and not point out that one cleaner once a week hardly meant that there was no housework to do the rest of the time, and did not constitute twenty-four-hour hot and cold running staff.

  36

  The Last Letter

  Cecilia could no longer kid herself that all was well. Olivia hadn’t been to Sunday brunch with Madeleine for three weeks; she rarely missed a week unless she was away. Nor had she made an impromptu visit with a thoughtful treat – flowers, fresh-ground coffee – the way she often did. Cecilia had left messages on her elder daughter’s landline and mobile, saying her knee and ankle were fine now, and asking Olivia how she was. She even dug out her own mobile, which the girls bought for her last birthday and which she never used because the buttons were too small and fiddly and she forgot to charge it. Painstakingly, she attempted to compose a text message. It was ridiculous. How could she possibly say all she needed to say in a stupid, truncated little message? It reminded her of the old joke about how many elephants could fit into a telephone kiosk. There was so much she wanted to say, should have said a long time ago. She had always meant to, once Olivia turned eighteen, but then she was so excited to be going off to university, spreading her wings, that Cecilia hadn’t wanted to weigh her down with heavy talk about the past. And she’d told herself that perhaps there was no need after all. Olivia would surely ask when she wanted to know more, and Cecilia would be brave then and tell her the unadulterated truth and it would all be out in the open. But then Olivia had never asked.

  With Olivia not there, Cecilia and Madeleine trudged through rubbery scrambled eggs and flaccid bacon without an ounce of pleasure. Neither of them was even consistently successful at making toast. Once again, a slice had somehow become folded and trapped in the slot of the toaster and begun to burn. The smoke alarm went off and Madeleine leaped to her duty, grabbing a tea-towel and madly flapping it at the alarm until it stopped, while Cecilia tugged out the mangled toast with a pair of wooden chopsticks and plonked it on her plate; no point in wasting it.

  Olivia’s absence sat in the kitchen with them, a palpable ghost. They tiptoed around the Olivia-shaped space, sticking to topics that would have had her stealthily reaching for the Sunday papers if she were there – an out-of-the-way shop with divine wools and threads; the latest creations of Cecilia’s determinedly eccentric friends; where exactly the dividing line sat between turquoise and aquamarine – but every mouthful of joyless food, every sidestep in the conversation to manoeuvre around her, served only to remind them of her.

  Cecilia pushed away her half-eaten plate of food.

  ‘Has she said anything to you, at least?’

  Madeleine wrinkled her nose. They had trod this ground more than once before.

  ‘Almost nothing.’ She met her mother’s gaze so Cecilia was sure she must be telling the truth.

  The girls were so different in temperament. Madeleine didn’t just wear her heart on her sleeve; she ran her feelings up the flagpole and waved them in the breeze for all to see. Olivia, by contrast, tended to bottle up her feelings. Outwardly, she might seem completely calm, revealing not the tiniest clue that she was upset, then she’d suddenly dissolve into tears, or flame into anger when you were least expecting it, like a wild creature rearing up from the depths of a beautiful still loch.

  ‘She just said she was upset about something but didn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘And it’s not boyfriend trouble, you think?’ That would be so much easier to deal with, after all. Cecilia rested her chin in her hands. ‘I would ask, but I
know she thinks I’m too intrusive and don’t respect her boundaries enough. She should be glad. My own parents were completely uninterested in me, though, goodness, I remember this one time when I had to climb in the window naked because I—’

  ‘Mum. Not now.’

  ‘Sorry. I just want to know my girls are happy, that’s all.’

  ‘I know. Look, do not, not, not let on I told you, but she did have a couple of dates with this guy. You might even have seen him yourself; he lives round here. You know those people who were whingeing about your apple tree before Olivia got it pruned?’

  ‘Not that timid little man who came round? He’s much too old for her, surely? Well, perhaps he has hidden charms…’

  ‘No, not him – the son. He’s thirty-something. And not little. Average. Not bad-looking, I suppose, but not my type. She said he made her laugh and he was clever, too. Right up her street.’

  ‘So… hmm… this man became her lover, and then he dumped her, you think?’

  ‘Oh, gross, Mum. Don’t put it like that. I don’t know if she even slept with him. Probably not, knowing Liv. She always waits ages. Anyway, after their first couple of dates, she was all glowy and beautiful – you know what she looks like when she’s really happy?’

  ‘Completely radiant.’

  ‘Exactly. And she was always hovering over her phone and they were texting like teenagers. But then the next time – afterwards, she was crotchety and mean: telling me to pick up my wet towel and not to leave the milk out, blah blah, and being all bossy and big sister-ish. And I said, have you had a row with your boyfriend and she said, “He’s not my bloody boyfriend, OK?” and then she finished off the honeycomb ice cream and didn’t save any for me.’

  ‘Maybe it’s just man-trouble then.’

  ‘Maybe…’ Maddy shoved aside her plate. ‘You could call her?’

  ‘I did. Several times. But it went through to the message thingy each time.’