According to YES

by Dawn French

  Thomas interjects, ‘Come on now, surely we can settle this …?’

  Alerted by Iva, Kemble appears at the door. ‘Nat, what’s going on?’

  ‘Natalie was just leaving, Kemble, it’s fine, go back to your room,’ says Glenn.

  There is a pregnant pause as the study reverberates with the realization of how Glenn has just spoken to Kemble. Is this really going to be allowed to pass?

  Rosie audibly sucks in her breath, ‘Excuse me, I’m going to check on the chaps …’ and she leaves.

  Natalie is the one to name it, ‘Really, Kemble? “Go back to your room?” Really?’

  Kemble responds, ‘It’s not … like that …’

  ‘It’s exactly like that. That’s the whole damn problem. When are you going to …’

  Glenn interrupts, ‘Allow me to remind you where you are, Natalie. Our family home. Perhaps right now would be the perfect time to re-acquaint you with the front door?’

  ‘For Christsakes, Kemble, find your spine, before it’s too late,’ says the furious Natalie as she is swept from the room, ‘and please spend some time with the boys …’

  ‘Thank you. Goodnight,’ Glenn firmly closes the door behind Natalie. Kemble hangs his head. Thomas takes a long slurp of his whisky, and Glenn turns to them both, for all the world as if nothing has happened. ‘So, what are tomorrow’s plans …?’

  Rosie has returned to the TV room to watch the end of the movie with the twins, who are blissfully unaware that their mother has just been and gone. They are so gripped by the film, they’re frozen in time and sit on the sofa like statues, absolutely still and hardly breathing. Red even has a nub of popcorn in his hand held still, two inches from his mouth, exactly as he did when Rosie slipped out of the room twenty minutes before. Guns are firing, robots are exploding, baddies are annihilated, the planet is ending. This stuff requires concentration and commitment. Rosie looks at their lovely little faces in the glow of the Friday night TV light. Their utter naivety moves her. Suddenly, the film finishes, and they both jump in unison and bounce about on the furniture to celebrate the triumph of the Transformers, the saving of the world as we know it, and the general fabness of the movie. In amongst their unbridled excitement, and without thinking, Red even jumps into Rosie’s clutches with his arms about her neck. They all shriek and scream until they collapse on the floor, exhausted, the small chests of the eight-year-olds panting, and the very much larger chest of Rosie heaving for breath.

  Rosie gasps, ‘Mercy! Save me, guys, save me from the Decepticons. Honestly. I’m terrified. Megatron could get in here any day …’

  ‘OK, wait’ says Three, jumping up, ‘Red, get those cushions. We gotta build a repeller round her, quick, quick, quick!’

  ‘OK, OK, OK,’ agrees Red, racing round and gathering the big cushions from the sofa and all the small ones from everywhere else. Together, they construct a shelter around her. Somewhere in them they know this is play, but somehow it’s also very urgent and important, so they take real care about how they do it. It must be safe and secure. Built properly.

  When it is complete, and Rosie is utterly protected inside the hot fuggy cushion fortress, Three calls to her ‘OK, Rosie! You’re safe now!’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Red, ‘we’re gonna guard you from out here, OK?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Three, ‘eyes peeled for Megatron, Devastator, and Starscream.’

  ‘Yeah, we got guns,’ Red decides, and immediately they both carry invisible machine guns and patrol up and down. When they stand together, they are a serious multi-headed junior Cerberus, defying anyone to enter.

  ‘Three?’ Rosie muffles from inside her cocoon.

  ‘Yes?’ he replies.

  ‘I’ve worked out your superpowers, y’know, they’re so obvious, I don’t know why I didn’t get it straight away.’

  ‘OK what are they?’ Three is properly interested.

  ‘Well, like Red, I’m pretty sure it’s multiple abilities. Firstly, enhanced mental strength, plus intuitive telepathic aptitude, and also I think possible force-field projection, because look what you just did – you used all of those skills. And now I’m totally safe.’

  ‘Yeah. Right. Yeah,’ agrees the cautious Three. ‘Good.’

  ‘Awesome,’ his brother chimes in.

  Thomas has secretly watched the last few minutes of this through the slightly open door. He chuckles to himself at the fact that the ferocious, vigilant mini guards have failed to notice him, but he is so pleased that they are happy. He takes a moment to watch the scene, and he prays that this extraordinary woman doesn’t leave.

  Bed

  Later, in their tidy clean bedroom, Thomas and Glenn prepare for bed. They have their familiar rituals, there’s comfort in all of it. The way Glenn collects their respective nightclothes from under their respective pillows and places them on the bed on the sides where they respectively sleep. Although, on the face of it, Glenn infantilizes Thomas with this routine, Thomas chooses to experience it differently. He knows her need for order, her fear of chaos and consequently her love of habit, so he doesn’t let her control land on him too heavily. He leaves her be, to do the routine things that help her feel secure, without minding too much. Of course, if Glenn oversteps the mark, or is rude to anyone, Thomas finds it less forgivable, but this customary bedroom stuff? No problem.

  There is an intimacy and ease to all that goes on in the bedroom and en suite bathroom every night. Very little is said between the two of them, as they move around quietly, undressing, washing, brushing their teeth and climbing into bed. Thomas is prone to humming barely audible jazz classics under his breath. Very often Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin or Ella Fitzgerald. No song ever finishes, it’s only snippets and shards of fractured lines. This disjointed music is the soundtrack to their bedtime, and neither even notice it any more.

  Thomas sits on his side of the bed, and ever since he was a young man, he has taken his clothes off in the same order, with his trousers and underpants coming off first so that when he sits on the bed, it’s his bare arse that whoofs down onto the counter­pane. Glenn used to nag him about this, about how unhygienic and unattractive it was, about how easy it would be to choose a different option and take his shirt and vest off first, perhaps? He used to listen and nod in agreement. She was right, there was a different order, but the plain truth is that he will always ignore her on this, because one of life’s small and infinitely achievable daily pleasures, as far as Thomas Wilder-Bingham is concerned, is the simple fleshy contact of bum on crisp bedlinen. It’s nothing short of delightful. He is clean, what’s the problem? So, he decided long ago that Glenn’s request for underpants at all times would remain in his domestic inbox so to speak; acknowledged, but never really attended to. They seem to have both settled for this.

  So here he is, naked arse on fresh bedspread, taking off the rest of his clothes and putting on his pyjamas, which is in itself a compromise because he would always rather sleep nude. This was a minor battle he lost, conceding that Glenn is right when she surmises that older bones need to be kept toasty. His only renegade gesture is that, before the pyjamas finally triumph, he has a little strut around naked as a jaybird. This is usually how he brushes his teeth, and so in front of his mirror he gets to inspect his ageing frame. As a former athlete this ever-increasing physical dwindle is difficult to witness, but he comforts himself with the fact that, compared to so many of his colleagues, he’s in pretty good shape for his years. Of course, his body is a surrendering version of what it once was, but it’s upright and still strong. He doesn’t seem to have developed the manboobs he dreads, and although he is thicker in the girth, his flesh is still tight on his torso, he has no folds or overhanging stomach, he’s just wider and sort of relaxed. He has a Sunday kind of a body, which is taking time off from exercise, and not giving a toss.

  Like most men, Thomas spends most of his naked time cradling his balls and looking at his cock in the mirror. He likes it. He is fascinated by how his pubic hair ha
s been the last hair on his body to turn white. Why is that, he wonders? Is it to do with daylight? Even his leg hair is paler, and other than a few Nantucket weeks in the summer, his legs rarely get the sun. He takes a certain pride in the fact that this private fuzz still shows signs of the reddy-blond he once was. He’s still got the fire, even if no-one’s stoked it recently, the embers are vaguely red. Well, he thinks as he flicks the bathroom lights off, he’s the proud producer of an assured erection every morning, so frankly, that’s the sign of a healthy functioning groin, what else does he really need to worry about? Sharpe hasn’t got a boner when he wakes up, because he doesn’t wake up any more, because Sharpe is dead. Yeah, yet another one of his close friends is dead. Damn, he must decide about that poem, he must do it tomorrow.

  Glenn is sitting on her side of the bed, with her white cotton nightdress on, facing away from him. She is taking off her watch, her necklace, her large sapphire ring, and placing them in a porcelain dish on her bedside table. He stands on his side of the bed facing her and wishing she would turn and look at him, look at his available body. Look at him and smile and want him, beckon him into the bed in ‘that’ way. She doesn’t, she hasn’t for too long a while. He sighs and sings quietly as he climbs into the inevitable pyjamas, ‘say “nightie night” and kiss me, just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me …’

  Up up up the service stairwell goes Rosie. She has found an internal staircase outside the back door of the kitchen, where Iva goes to put the garbage into a huge communal shute. The apartment is quiet, the boys are asleep, so she has slipped out. She has a need for fresh air and space, so she follows the steps up four floors til they turn into a narrow staircase, then into smaller wooden stairs which lead to a big clunky iron door. She heaves the bolt back on it, then leaves it like that so that the door can’t close behind her while she steps out onto the roof of the building.

  Immediately, she takes a big gulp of the cold city air. It’s not clean in her lungs, but it’s certainly bracing. The cold tightens her face and she pulls her cardigan close around her. The roof has various blocked-off areas on it which she assumes are the back brick walls of a penthouse or perhaps a service area, and there is a huge looming mausoleum-type tower with green copper roofs on its various levels. The open arches reveal the outline of a giant water tower inside. Rosie walks towards the edge of the building and leans on the balustrade. The buildings next door are much lower and beyond that is a distant garden and then 5th Avenue, and then the park, so dark at night. Everything else is lit by hundreds of tiny lights. Lights from thousands of windows, and millions of cars below and trillions of stars above. Rosie looks out over Manhattan and wonders, is she in the right place?

  Four floors below, Thomas is doing the buttons up on his pyjamas and looking at the same slightly lower view. Is he in the right place?

  Round and Round the Garden

  It’s a Saturday breakfast, later and more casual than weekdays. A just-so breakfast with no real fun in it except that no-one is in their office clothes or school uniforms. Even Thomas has his jogging pants on, demonstrating his eternal intention to run on the weekend. He hasn’t done so for many years, but wearing the gear allows him to delude himself that he might, and that in itself makes him feel healthy.

  The twins are flapping about like gannets around the raisin-toast and sliced melon on the side table.

  Glenn attempts to calm them, ‘Boys, shush please, don’t squabble,’ and she puts her hand on the back of the coffee pot. ‘Iva, can we have hot coffee please?’

  Iva scurries off.

  Rosie is right next to the boys and is secretly initiating some of the push ’n’ shove as she whispers under her breath only for their ears, ‘Yeah, but this might be the last raisin-toast left in the universe, we need to stockpile.’

  ‘Yeah,’ they agree, grabbing many more slices. Red even slips one into his pocket.

  Three is loading his plate high with melon, ‘and dragons love this stuff, we could distract them with it.’

  ‘Excellent work, number three, good precautionary thinking,’ Rosie agrees.

  ‘Do sit down boys.’ Glenn punctures the muffled fun. As they take their seats around the table, Glenn surveys her domain, and her sparrow’s portion of muesli. All is in correct order.

  Then, Kemble shuffles in, still in his P.J. bottoms and the t-shirt he’s obviously slept in. He is trying very hard to hide a monumental hangover. He yawns, dry-mouthed, scratches his head and heads for the coffee.

  ‘Hey Dad,’ the twins say, virtually in unison.

  ‘Hey guys,’ he yawn-speaks back to them.

  ‘Are we with you today?’ Three really wants to know.

  ‘Um, I have to go into the office today, which is a bummer, but know what? – we could catch a movie tonight, how’s that?’

  ‘Great!’

  ‘Yay!’

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘Awesome.’

  ‘OK, deal,’ Kemble says, ‘I’ll check out what’s on.’

  The boys’ delight is palpable. The promise of time with their dad lifts them into a happy froth. It’s going to be a good day.

  Rosie notes the general optimism and chances a suggestion to Kemble, ‘About the various activities for the boys actually. I was wondering if, by any chance, we could make a little garden on the roof? I’ve been up there and it would be perfect.’

  ‘A garden?’ Red and Three are immediately excited.

  Kemble looks straight at his mother for approval. Glenn says nothing initially, using the expectant silence as a chance to sip her freshly squeezed orange juice. She then ventures, ‘It sounds like dirt, mess and noise.’

  Red can’t help himself. ‘Hey, we could have a fountain … and other way cool stuff …’

  ‘Like herbs and … growing stuff …’ Three chimes in.

  ‘Yeh, and a secret doorway … that leads to a secret place that … like … I’m the only one who knows where it is …’

  ‘Yeh, ’cept you’ve told us now, dude!’ his brother laughs.

  ‘Oh yeh. Duh. Shoot myself!’

  Glenn takes another important long slow sip.

  ‘When I suggested activities, Miss Kitto, I was thinking more of museums, galleries and concerts. Perhaps I was mistaken, but I thought that a British nanny, of all people, would appreciate a cultural itinerary?’

  Rosie is quick to respond, ‘Well, this would certainly be a learning activity, and we would all benefit, not only from the … salad things we might grow, but the … flowers … and how lovely would it be to have cocktails at sunset up there?’

  Glenn cuts through the crap, ‘Do you know anything about gardening?’

  Rosie assumes a confident face, and then, frankly, lies her bum off, ‘Of course!’

  Iva passes by with the new coffee and gives Rosie an ‘oh really?’ sly look with a raised eyebrow.

  Rosie has the bit between her teeth now, ‘and I could teach them the Latin names of the plants …’

  Kemble avoids Rosie’s pointed gaze. So she turns to Thomas, who is staring right at her.

  ‘I really think it’s too much mess,’ says Glenn, firmly. The twins groan with disappointment. Thomas looks down at his newspaper. The subject, it seems, is closed.

  Then, from behind the paper, Thomas’s voice is heard loud and clear, ‘Well, it gets my vote. Go ahead.’

  Glenn stares at Thomas, or at least, at the newspaper behind which he is. He lowers the paper and resolutely looks only at Rosie and the boys, both of whom are punching the air like triumphant goal-scoring footballers.

  ‘Miss Kitto, we’ll discuss it and inform you,’ Glenn says, in an attempt to regain control.

  ‘No, we won’t,’ retorts Thomas. ‘It’s decision time now. I will talk to the janitor. A garden sounds great. Do it. And I’ll pay.’

  ‘Go, Granpop!’

  ‘Yay, Granpop!’ the boys shriek, and rush round the table to hug him and Rosie.

  Kemble watches carefully as his mother
puts her juice down and smiles tightly at the scene. She is trying to cover up the fact that she has just been defeated. He wishes he had his father’s courage.

  Iva brings fresh milk into the room, ‘Surprise guest at the door, Mrs W.B.’

  ‘Oh God,’ huffs Glenn under her breath, dreading that it might be Natalie again.

  All eyes in the breakfast room swing round to the door as in marches Teddy, age eighteen, taller than both his father and grandfather, and feigning a bucketful of adolescent confidence. He drops his bag inside the door, flicks his shaggy hair and announces, ‘Edward Wilder-Bingham is in the building! Stay back! No pictures!’

  The twins race at him and jump up at their big brother like excited terriers. First on his feet amongst the grown ups is Thomas, who immediately goes to his eldest grandson and embraces him with a back-slapping manhug, ‘Hello Teddy, great to see you.’ Teddy grins unselfconsciously and hugs his grandfather, the only man in his life he considers to be a great role model. The marked difference in his perfunctory ‘Hey Dad’ greeting to his father and the equally awkward ‘Hey Ted’ back is telling.

  Glenn goes to him, holds his shoulders and looks him up and down, drinking in how quickly he has grown and changed, and how much like her darling Kemble he is becoming, physically at least. Teddy fidgets under this attention. She kisses him lightly on both cheeks, ‘My, you look more like a man every day, you are such a Wilder-Bingham, look at you,’ she tells him, and instantly brands him. Teddy knows full well that whilst she might be stamping family ownership on him with such a comment, there is a subtext. She is simultaneously rejecting his mother Natalie, her family, and all they stand for. Glenn has assumed this stance ever since the divorce began and of course it places the boys in a difficult position. Especially Teddy, who is old enough to feel real empathy for his mum.

  ‘It’s study week,’ he explains as he sits down and tucks into his breakfast, ‘and Mom has to be in France from tomorrow, so I thought it would be great to hang with you guys.’