Playing with the Grown-ups

by Sophie Dahl

  In the photographs her mother had peppered around her bedroom Swami-ji looked benevolent, but Kitty knew it was all an act. She did some detective work to catch him in his sorcery before it was too late.

  'Mummy, has the Swami bloke ever said something secret to you, and told you not to tell anyone else, no matter who?' She tried to say this casually, as they walked up the lane.

  'You are intuitive, Kitty,' her mother said. 'It's SWAMI-JI. "Bloke" is disrespectful. Yes, my mantra. This is a special thing you say over and over again when you meditate. Each devotee of Swami-ji has a mantra that belongs just to them.'

  Kitty's stomach started somersaulting but she tried to look calm.

  'Are you allowed to tell me your mantra?'

  'No,' her mother said smiling. 'One day when you meet him, Swami-ji will give you your very own.'

  'Please tell me. I swear on my life I won't tell anyone,' Kitty said, wheedling. She knew that if her mother told her the spell would be broken.

  'No. I can't.' Marina was final. 'Now stop it, please.'

  'Please tell me, PLEEEAASSE you;'re the best mother in the world . . .' Kitty smiled and shook her arm.

  'No. Why am I not allowed to have anything of my own, just one thing? I don't have to share everything.'

  Kitty didn't understand her, and it made her angry.

  'I think the Swami man - ji, is . . .' She searched for the word, and then shouted it: 'SHIT.'

  The word hung pleasurably in the empty lane. Her mother was silent, and for the first time since her spiritual awakening, she looked angry. This gave Kitty a small fleeting pinch of victory. She did think Swami-ji was shit; he was making her life unbearable. The truth was out.

  Her mother grabbed her arm tightly.

  'What has Bestepapa been saying to you?' she asked in a voice like tar.

  Kitty wriggled away and glared at her.

  'I can think someone's shit on my own and I can walk home on my own,' she said, running up the hill towards Hay House.

  She left her mother standing frozen, like Lot's wife in scripture class.

  Her mother stayed in her studio for two days. She appeared briefly to take Sam and Violet to nursery, and to kiss them goodnight after their bath. Kitty decided that maybe they were quite fun after all, and sat on the bathroom floor and watched as Nora sponged their funny little twiglet arms and legs.

  When her mother saw her, she said hello politely as though Kitty were an acquaintance at a cocktail party. Kitty longed to say sorry, but her mother was a fortress whose walls she could not penetrate. Instead Kitty smiled at her extra hard, so she would know. Her cheeks hurt with the effort.

  Nora passed Kitty a Quality Street, a caramel, her favourite.

  'You can pick the programme,' she said. 'I think Grease is on Channel 4.'

  'Nora, can I ask you something?'

  'What is it, Pest?'

  'I know I'm big, but can I sleep in your bed?'

  Nora radiated heat from her flannel nightdress, and Kitty pressed her feet against her soft shins. Nora fell asleep tickling her arm, and Kitty marvelled for the umpteenth time how the small form of Nora was capable of producing such industrial noise in sleep. She whistled and gnashed her teeth; she fought unseen sleep burglars with her small fists. Finally she stilled and emitted deep rumbling contented snores.

  'Sleeping with you is like sleeping with a washing machine,' Kitty whispered happily.

  Nora gave a warm snore in response.

  When Kitty was sure Nora was fully steeped in sleep, she slipped into Marina's bedroom and wedged herself in amongst her pillows, awkwardly trying to fit her body in the imprint of her mother's. Swami-ji stared at Kitty accusingly from the bedside tables. 'I'm sorry,' she said to him firmly, 'but she's my mother. Not yours.' She crossed her fingers superstitiously, and turned all of his pictures face down.

  'Won't you come to London with me, Mama, to meet him?' Marina asked. 'Please, I think it could change your life.'

  Kitty saw Bestemama shake her head.

  'What makes you think my life needs to be changed, Marina? Answer me that. I'm happy.'

  'How do you know?' her mother said. 'How can you know anything until you've tried it?'

  'I just know, Marina,' Bestemama said with a stark sigh.

  When her mother asked her to meditate with her in the studio, Kitty was thrilled. They sat cross-legged on the floor in the dark, and they shut their eyes.

  'Clear your mind of all wandering thoughts,' her mother whispered, her voice sounding like the lady vicar's from Songs of Praise. 'Be still and allow the grace of God and the Guru to wash over you like water.'

  Kitty tried. Every time she was nearly still a thought would pop into her head and flood it with disturbance.

  'What's for supper?' her head said. 'Be quiet,' Kitty told it silently. 'Katrina Donnelly has ginger hair, which means her pubes must match, and Miss Jackson is a lesbian,' her head answered. It was exhausting. She tried to think pure thoughts. Instead her head swam with images of buxom page-three girls. Kitty was hungry. She knew they had been there for hours. Her bottom hurt. She opened one eye. Her mother sat glowing like a pearl in the dark.

  'Mummy?' she said in a hushed voice.

  Marina looked like a statue. She didn't answer.

  'Mummy?' Kitty felt frightened. Maybe she'd fallen into a religious coma.

  She poked her in the arm. After she'd poked for three minutes her mother said, 'What is it, darling?' She looked at Kitty in confusion, her silver eyes glazed.

  'I think we've been here for HOURS. We've missed supper, what will I eat? I think it's definitely past my bedtime.' Her mother looked down at her watch, a Patek Philippe, a present from Mr Fitzgerald.

  'Kitty, we've been here for ten minutes. Why don't you go to the big house and I'll see you down there in a few hours.' She said this kindly.

  'Do you know what?' Kitty told the canaries in the garden. 'Soon I will be able to meditate for two whole hours.'

  'Who are you talking to, Kit?' Elsie came out of the laundry room.

  'To the canaries. I think they're listening.'

  'Lord, you're odd,' Elsie said.

  To Kitty Saturday mornings meant chocolate croissants with strawberry jam which she wasn't allowed during the week because, according to Bestemarna, 'Flour cements the bowels.'

  She was savouring her croissant with great oozing pleasure when her mother walked in, dangling her car keys.

  'I'll be back in a minute,' Marina said, not addressing anyone in particular. 'I'm going to pick up a friend from the train station.'

  'Who, darling?' asked Bestemama, hiding the Telegraph on her lap.

  'Just a friend from London.' She sailed out, her chiffon billowing behind her like a flag.

  'Will you bring me some rhubarb and custards?' Kitty shouted after her.

  Nora took Violet and Sam up to the farm to feed the chickens, so Bestepapa could have his 'hour of peace'. He smoked his pipe, looking fondly at a picture of Nelson Mandela in the paper.

  'Brave fellow, that one. Don't know about the wife though. Seems a bit suspicious if you ask me.'

  'We weren't,' said Ingrid, glancing up from the Tatler. 'Mama, do you think I'd make a good marchioness? The Marquess of Blandford is looking for a wife.'

  'No marriage yet, please,' Bestemama said. 'You need to concentrate on your career.'

  'Hear hear,' said Bestepapa. 'What do you want a mar-quess for anyway? Find a man who is good with his hands like Morris.'

  Elsie snorted.

  'Maybe it's Mr Fitzgerald that's coming from London,' Kitty said, wiggling in her chair.

  Elsie snorted again.

  'Don't hold your breath,' she said.

  Forty minutes later, they heard her mother's car crunching on the gravel, followed by footsteps on the garden path. The front door opened.

  'Did you bring me my sweets?' Kitty called.

  'No,' her mother said. 'But Shanti bought you all some prasad to eat.'

  Lurch
ing behind Marina was a lumbering pink woman in a gold sari with violently yellow hair. In one hand she held a tambourine. The woman wore anklets on her surprisingly small feet, that swung with little bells as she walked, announcing the arrival of a much more delicate sort of a person than she was. She carried a lumpy bag made from hemp, and Kitty realised that if 'prasad' came from that bag, she probably didn't want to eat it.

  'Namaste,' Shanti said, hands folded reverently, her body wobbling, a great pink trifle. She hit the tambourine for emphasis.

  Bestepapa looked confused, Bestemama furious and Elsie spat out a mouthful of crunchy nut cornflakes, which hit Ingrid's arm.

  'Yuck,' Ingrid said. And it was unclear to which particular thing she was referring. Shanti seemed unperturbed by the reaction her appearance had provoked.

  'I am the director of Swami-ji's spiritual centre in London. I think you know that we have become a big part of Lakshmi's life - oh sorry! You will all still know her as Marina, more on that later - a big part of Marina's life, and she ours. We thought that you might perhaps be . . .' She searched for a word. 'RESISTANT to the idea of us. Lakshmi speaks so highly of you all, and wanted me to visit with you so I could . . . explain our philosophy, and I thought if Mohammed can't come to the mountain . . .'

  'The mountain will come to Mohammed!' Marina finished the sentence, and clapped her hands like a four-year-old.

  'Lakshmi wants me to give you the chance of spiritual redemption.' Shanti winked.

  'Who's this Lakshmi type she keeps talking about?' Bestepapa whispered to Kitty.

  'I think she means Mummy, but I'm not sure,' she hissed back through her teeth.

  'Would your guest like a cup of tea, Marina?' Bestema-ma asked stiffly, unable, it seemed, to address the hulking stranger in gold.

  'Not to bother,' Shanti chuckled. 'I bring my own; goat's milk is still hard to come by in most households . . . Fresh chai. Would you like to try some?' She pulled out a thermos from the lumpy bag and sat down, uninvited, next to Bestepapa, who edged away from her as though she carried a virulent strain of disease. Marina sat next to Kitty and patted her. She sat very quietly so she wouldn't be asked to leave.

  'Would you like to take the stage, Lakshmi, or should I?' Shanti asked her mother in a confidential voice.

  'I think I can start.'

  Shanti gave her what was obviously a Sanskrit thumbs-UP.

  Her mother took a deep breath.

  'I've made a lot of decisions recently, life-altering decisions, which have not been easy. I have prayed a lot, and sought the guidance of elders from my spiritual community.'

  Here Shanti shot the Larsens a syrupy smile.

  'And I hope, as I have, that you will come to a peace and understanding about them. Firstly, I have changed my name to the spiritual name of Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance.'

  Ingrid and Elsie stared dumbly, in disbelief.

  'I understand it may take some getting used to . . . Secondly I have decided that in order to practise my spirituality freely, when Swami-ji goes back to America in September I will follow. I'm going to live in New York so I can be closer to his ashram in Pennsylvania, but so I can also carry on with my painting. I've already found a gallery there that wants to represent me.'

  'What about your children, Marina?' Bestemama whispered, pale-faced, her hands scratching in the air.

  'Violet and Sam and Nora will come with me, but I've decided it would be too disruptive to Kitty's education at this stage to put her in a foreign school system. So I've started looking at boarding schools in England.'

  Kitty shut her eyes and held her breath. If I can hold my breath and keep my eyes shut for two minutes, she thought, when I open them everything will be normal and this will all have been a horrible joke.

  She heard Bestepapa say in a strangled voice, 'Kitty must stay here. This is her home.'

  She started counting, one elephant, two elephant, squeezing her eyes so tightly that not a glimmer of light penetrated them. Her lungs felt like they would burst.

  When she was at ninety-seven seconds she heard her mother say, 'Swami-ji thinks Kitty should stay in England. Not here, but at boarding school. He has given his blessing.'

  Kitty heard Shanti warble, 'Swami-ji knows best.'

  She thought she was going to die, right there in the dining room with her eyes shut and her family gathered around her.

  She cried out, 'But he doesn't even know me! How can he know what's best?'

  Her mother turned and stroked her face tenderly.

  'I know it doesn't make sense now, darling. I know this is a shock. I know it may seem selfish. But I'm doing what in my heart I know is best. Best for all of us. I promise you, it WILL make huge sense when you are a grown-up.'

  After that there was more shouting. Shanti shuffled out towards the garden, dabbing at her moist face with a tissue. Her mother said awful things to Bestepapa. She said he was controlling, that he was incapable of showing his love, that she was a grown woman and that he had ruined every relationship with a man she'd ever had.

  She started crying when she said, 'I would have had a chance with Fitzgerald if it wasn't for you. He would have left his wife. He loved me, he really, really loved me. You frightened him away. You threatened him. Kitty could have had a father, you bastard.'

  Bestemama sprang up like a lioness.

  'What did you say?' She spoke just above a whisper, but it filled the room like a scream.

  'He's ruined my life,' her mother said in a child's voice.

  'You are a fantasist, Marina, if you think any of what you're saying is true.' She looked as if she were seven feet tall. Her whole body radiated with anger. 'Your father has worked hard his entire life to make sure you girls are secure. He has given you EVERYTHING. But it's never enough for you. Nothing is ever enough. What more could we have done? Answer me that. You have been pandered to and indulged more than anyone else in this house. And this is how you respond to us? With this poison? Your father is TIRED, Marina. He has fought in a war. He built this house with his hands. You are exhausting him with all of this.'

  Kitty looked at Bestepapa's hands, as though she was seeing them for the first time. They were long and limply mottled with age. They were tired hands. She had never noticed before.

  Elsie and Ingrid flanked Bestepapa's chair. Marina and Kitty sat alone at the other end of the table. Kitty saw they were now two separate families. She did not want her mother to cry, but she did not want to see Bestepapa folded in, as though he had been shot. She certainly did not want to go to boarding school. The shouting continued, unabated.

  Kitty took her mother's hand.

  'Mummy didn't mean it!' she said. 'She's just upset, aren't you? Mummy?'

  There was a palpable shift in the room. In a breath, Bestemama took Bestepapa to his bedroom to lie down. Ingrid and Elsie muttered something about going to the village, and sped off in Ingrid's MG, leaving Kitty and Marina alone in the dining room.

  Her mother looked into her eyes.

  'You're my best girl, you know that, don't you?' Her voice, though it still quavered, was strong. 'From now on it's you and me, kiddo. That is - if you don't mind, of course.' She smiled at her.

  Although Kitty thought this sounded potentially lonely, a thrill passed through her at the thought of being just the two of them against the world. She forgot the existence of everyone else, the looming prospect of boarding school and separation, a sea of separation.

  'I don't mind,' she said, and she smiled back.

  She calls her Aunt Elsie from inside the duty-free shop as she toys half-heartedly with miracle wrinkle creams. Elsie is up at 6 a.m.; her Pilates teacher comes to her immaculate apartment at 6.30 every morning.

  'Oh Kit-kat,' she says. Her voice is still laced with hills and home, although she has lived in New York for fifteen years. She lives on Park Avenue in an apartment with silent polished floors.

  Elsie's first apartment, on Elizabeth Street, would in its entirety fit into her present
sitting room. Kitty remembers lying with Elsie on the cream sofa in the little flat, watching reruns of Full House on Sunday mornings; Elsie drinking coffee with smudged eyes, saying she was going to marry John Starnos one day soon. At night Kitty could hear her aunt's every footfall, padding over uneven floorboards, as she double locked the front door to keep them safe, blew out all the candles, turned off the lights, slipping into her bedroom, with a creaky twitch of the door. Through the thin walls that divided them, Joni Mitchell sang them both to sleep.

  Now Elsie is married to an Italian sculptor, and they have two brown-eyed sons, who call her 'Mommy'. Kitty laughs at this, as Elsie seems shocked that she could have birthed a child with brown eyes AND an American inflection. Over a recent empathetic cup of tea, Kitty said gently, 'Did you really think they would come out with English accents? You do live in New York.'

  'Well, I did rather, darling. I thought they'd pick it up from me. I thought it might be genetic.'

  At which they looked at each other and fell about.

  Kitty has absent-mindedly applied half of the make-up counter to her face. She catches sight of her panda-bear eyes in the mirror. 'Oh shit,' she says, wiping off lavender eye shadow with furious fingers.

  'Do you have a warm coat?' says Elsie, interrupting her theatrics with reason. 'I was just there for the collections; it's freezing.'

  'I'm wearing a warm coat, one you'd approve of. It's cashmere, but I look like a nursery pudding spilling out of it, it's so tight now.' Kitty looks at her body with mild affection. It is a stranger's body.

  'Yum! Nursery puddings, like one of Nora's. She made the best rice pudding I've ever eaten. You will take care of yourself, won't you?'

  'I will, Else. Lots of love,' Kitty says, rubbing away the last stubborn streak.

  On the plane the stewardess's chatter calms her.