Flying Under Bridges

by Sandi Toksvig

  ‘Where the hell is Adam? Got a little promotion present for him!’ William winked and dug his sister in the ribs. What a jolly time everyone was having for a will reading. Mother appeared with a small plate of canapés, so carefully arranged that they defied anyone to take the first one.

  ‘He’s putting up a picture in the who ha,’ she explained.

  William rushed from the hall. ‘Better lend a hand. Better lend a hand.’

  ‘Philippa, my dear.’ Mother and Pe Pe kissed the air. ‘Take these in, would you?’ Mother handed her the canapés and went back into the kitchen to look for St Paul in the celery.

  Pe Pe and Eve went to sit in the sitting room where Pe Pe took off on some long story while disarranging the canapés into her mouth.

  ‘We’ve had the result of the sperm tests,’ she announced, smiling broadly as if they had won an award. Eve tried to imagine what tests you could possibly set sperm. How could they hold a pencil? Did some of them get nervous beforehand? Did the tests count against success in later life? Pe Pe didn’t need Eve’s contribution. She swept forward, her majestic bosom giving the impression of figurehead and galleon under full sail in one sculpted piece.

  ‘There’s a problem with William’s production apparently. There just aren’t enough of them.’

  Eve’s brain clicked away. It was like a defective but relentless computer. She knew that men made sperm twenty-four hours a day. That the average man could release four hundred million sperm at every ejaculation, but it only took one to— ‘The doctor showed us under a microscope. There should be hundreds, but William’s are a bit like waiting for a bus to come along. It’s happening to lots of men. They say it’s stress. Too much pressure to be a modern man. Really, we women ask too much of them …’ Pe Pe dived headlong into the wonderful world of William’s sperm and Eve’s part in their downfall.

  She could just see Adam and William in the dining room. Maybe Adam’s injury had brought out the worst of the man in him. He valiantly defended his wounded manhood with a lot of laddish acting, which William also excelled at. More like two workmen faced with some tricky building maintenance than family members.

  ‘… so I said to Engleby — you remember Engleby, branch manager at Littleton — “Haven’t seen old Hopkins around much.” Spilt all the beans.’

  William examined the picture, while Adam made the hammer comfortable in his hand ‘Really? Hello, Lillian.’ Mother appeared with the starters and a wet cloth. She carefully wiped the edge of each plate as she put it down on the table.

  Adam carried on. ‘Yes. Dead.’

  ‘Engleby?’ asked William.

  ‘No, Hopkins. Bit of rumpy-pumpy with the secretary. Popped off in the act.’

  ‘Bad heart?’

  ‘Well, nice in his own way. Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. Dicky ticker.’

  William clutched the picture to his chest. ‘Couldn’t she have phoned someone?’

  Adam shook his head. ‘No. Heavy fellow. Lillian, dear, the picture hook?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Mother hurried off.

  ‘Who was heavy? Hopkins?’

  ‘Yes. Took her two hours to get out from underneath him.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Oh nice, you know.’ Adam undulated his hands in the air in the shape of an absurd hourglass. That was a pretty woman. A woman who existed from the neck down and was made up entirely of breasts and bottom. Eve remembered when Adam had felt that way about her. When he had admired her breasts. Stroked them and talked to them. Then they did what they were supposed to do. They fed the children and began to embarrass him. They darkened, stretched and withered. Fell victim to gravity and the daily trap of foam and wire. Adam never felt right about her breasts again after Eve fed Shirley at the office picnic. She was three months old.

  ‘How could you let me down like that?’ he yelled all the way home in the car.

  ‘Let you down? What was I supposed to give her? A chicken leg?’

  Now Eve’s breasts were not sexy. They were a pillow for Adam’s head. He was nice about them, about her waistline. He said he liked the fact she was ‘motherly’, but Eve was not at all sure that was what she wanted to be. Motherly. It suggested sensible shoes, pants with a double gusset and body hair in unexpected places. She didn’t want to be his mother.

  …. We have to try to capture what little sperm there is to do the job.’ The Australian fertility lecture continued without any need for Eve’s assistance. ‘The thing is that sperm can survive outside the body at room temperature for at least two hours, so the doctor says.

  Mother reappeared with a small hook. Adam took it and held it up to William. ‘Looks like we arrived in the nick of time. Going to use this hook were you, Lillian?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think I’ve got another.’ She looked at the hook closely. ‘I can’t understand it. That’s the one the ‘Last Supper’ used to hang on. If it was good enough for our Lord…’

  Adam whispered out of the side of his mouth to William, ‘Looking lovely as usual but no idea.’ He turned to Mother and spoke rather too loudly, as if she were slightly infirm. ‘You can’t be too careful, Lillian, you have no idea the claims we get in from damage done by people hanging pictures incorrectly. I see it all the time. Don’t worry, we’ll manage. Any chance of a drink?’

  ‘Of course, Adam, of course.’ She went off to subdue drinks into appropriate glasses. Adam took the painting from William. ‘Now, what have we got here?’

  William sucked in air through his teeth at the complexity of the job ahead. ‘Well, I think you’re right about that hook for a start.’ He took the picture back from Adam and weighed it in his hands. ‘That’s a number-one hook she’s got there. Can’t carry this kind of weightage. You want at least a two or three hook if we’re talking this kind of poundage per painting.’

  Mother returned with a tray of glasses and a warm bottle of Blue Nun. ‘Haven’t you done it yet? It’s only the one picture. I do want it up before the lawyer gets here.’

  Adam and William grinned to each other. ‘Only the one picture!’ exclaimed Adam. ‘Don’t you worry your pretty little head. Be done in a jiffy.’

  ‘Well, I want it just here.’ Mother pointed to a spot on the wall.

  Adam smiled. ‘Wish it were that simple, eh, William?’ William began tapping the wall with both hands as if he suspected it might have TB. ‘Wish I had my pipe detector. You seen those, Adam? Electronic device. Just sweep it across the wall and beeper goes off if there’s any kind of pipe in the way.’

  ‘Marvellous.’ Adam held the painting up where it was to go and then put it down again. ‘Good point, you know, about the pipes. I wonder if Lillian has any plans for the house.’

  ‘Electrics as well. It also does electrics. I think people don’t realise that forty-three per cent of household fires start with people doing DIY through electrics.’

  ‘Perhaps we’d better wait. Get that detector thing.’

  ‘Yes. I usually carry it in the car. Can’t believe I didn’t bring it with me.’

  Adam put down the hammer and moved to pour them a drink. Pe Pe’s eggs were on full alert.

  ‘No alcohol, Willie!’ she called from the sitting room. ‘Remember your production!’

  William sighed and splashed soda in a glass noisily. He and Adam went out into the garden. Adam seemed to have lost his limp. Eve knew she shouldn’t have done it, but while they were gone she went and hung the picture where Mother wanted it. In the middle of the wall above the sideboard. Pe Pe kept talking while Eve banged in the picture hook and put up her father. He looked down at her from his new vantage point. It was strange. Now he seemed to be smiling. Maybe it depended on the angle. Eve wasn’t ready to have him look at her yet. It was too soon. Still, it was better than what used to hang there. Mother had taken up oil painting by numbers some years ago and had done a huge canvas of the Last Supper. It was when she was going through her phase of first needing glasses but refusing to wear them. Some of the numbers ha
d gone a little awry. Consequently, Jesus’s face was a slightly strange orange colour as if he’d come direct from an all-night tanning parlour. All the apostles appeared to be suffering from slight indigestion, which was not surprising as the food on the mildly red table was primarily blue.

  Eve put the hammer away. Mother saw her do it but never said a word because Shirley arrived. Shirley, Eve’s beauty, her triumph. Nineteen years of perfection. She looked immaculate in a way that Eve had never quite managed. Neat skirt and jacket with a delicate silk blouse. Her hair was cut into a shoulder-length bob and hung exactly where she had commanded it. Shirley had taken a job at one of the High Street building societies during her ‘gap’ year before university. She was good and had taken to dressing with a kind of shop-front authority. Eve and Shirley hugged the way Eve had always hugged her children. As if her life depended on it. Shirley patted her on the back and moved away.

  ‘Hello, Mummy. Hello, Nana.’ Mother and Shirley hugged the air around each other and Shirley smiled again at Eve.

  ‘I’ve bought Father a present… for his promotion.’ She went out into the garden to find Adam. Eve could see him opening his gift and smiling. She stood watching through the plate-glass window in the dining room. Adam’s promotion. It was a funny idea. He’d got a promotion for selling insurance policies. He had scared enough people into paying money so they could be less scared. What if you die? What if you can’t work? What if your house burns down? What if you get a terminal illness? What if your wife does, or your kids or your dog? Insurance for everything and anything that could happen.

  Eve had never had a promotion. Not for doing anything. She had spent twenty-five years administering not just food but nutrients, not just comfort but bonding, encouraging social skills, teaching everything from speech and table manners to road sense and human relationships. That’s what Martha told her. Eve hadn’t realised. She had probably even got better at it as she got older but no one ever gave Eve a promotion. No one ever said, ‘Have a raise in salary, Eve. You’ve earned it. Here, have a new plaque with your name and title on it for your kitchen door.’ She did it because it was her job. She did it because somebody had to. Because she was … what was it? The angel in the house. Eve could see herself reflected in the window. Her floating image seemed to be wherever she looked — in foil, in a mirror, in the window. She had not seen herself for a long time and now suddenly she was everywhere.

  Pe Pe had taken little breath in her conversational monologue, so Eve felt obliged to go back and listen. Mother still had the toy box and the old doll’s house that Father had made in the sitting room. Perhaps she thought some of the family still needed occupying. Eve picked up a ‘Swimming Barbie’. It was a curious doll. Eve had forgotten about her and her athletic ability. Barbie hadn’t lost her touch. Her arms were still able to swivel round her head in a frightening manner. Eve tried to imagine her as a real woman. She had read somewhere that Barbie’s breasts were supposed to be the ideal female shape but she didn’t seem right. Eve held out the doll and looked at her. If Barbie were a real woman, Eve reckoned she would be six foot tall with size one feet. All her perfect breasts would do was make her unable to stand up in even a mild breeze. Wheelchair Barbie.

  There was a lot of Barbie in Pe Pe — stupid name, same hair origin, bouncy flesh tone. Eve wondered what Pe Pe’s breasts were like. Perfect, no doubt, like the rest of her. Germaine Greer says there are different types of breast, but really the ideal is that they are exactly the same size. Eve couldn’t remember ideal for who. Pe Pe’s looked the same — they were both huge. Desmond Morris said that women developed breasts so men would have sex with them from the front. Nothing to do with feeding then. Pe Pe’s certainly suggested sex from the front. In fact they suggested sex with everyone on the front. Pe Pe talked about sperm and babies but Eve wanted to say to her, ‘How do you get so fit and still have such big breasts?’

  They were remarkable endowments. Give her a black eye if she ever took up golf. Eve wondered which shape they were: the fried-egg shape (broad spreading base with nipple held close to underlying muscle), the sweet-potato shape (narrow based and comparatively long) or the standard shape — which is apparently rare — perfectly hemispherical with nipple exactly at the centre point. Adam wouldn’t mind any of them. He always used to say he was a ‘breast man’, like it was a cut of roast. He loved that wet T-shirt competition at the club, but not breastfeeding. Not in public.

  ‘I read somewhere that there is a tribe in New Guinea who use tight girdles on men as well as women so that the men have hourglass curves too.

  ‘What?’ Eve realised that Pe Pe was staring at her. ‘What are you talking about, Eve?’

  ‘New Guinea,’ managed Eve, surprised to find that she had spoken out loud. ‘I should like to go there. Actually, I should like to go anywhere.’

  Pe Pe went out to the garden. Perhaps she wanted to make sure William was still making sperm on his day off. Perhaps she too thought Eve was mad. It was funny William and Pe Pe not being able to make a baby. They were so good at everything else. Such a Martini couple. Mrs Harris at Number 28 had five children and she and Mr Harris didn’t even speak most of the time. Apparently the last was an accident, which always struck Eve as an odd expression. She wondered what it meant. Perhaps Mrs Harris had fallen off a kitchen stool and on to her husband’s penis when he happened past? She wondered why people had sex when they were not even getting on. Adam and she hardly had it when they were thrilled to bits with each other.

  Martha was late as usual and arrived at the same time as the solicitor. He was a young man, maybe twenty-five, very smart and sleek. A dark, three-piece suit, but very modern and a careful haircut. Eve knew Mother would like him because he looked like a missionary. In fact, when Eve opened the front door, she half suspected he’d come round to sell copies of the Watchtower and tell them why Jesus ought to come into their lives.

  He put down his briefcase, smiled at Eve and seemed to set his eyes to twinkle as he put out his hand. ‘John Antrobus. Hogart, Hoddle and Hooper.’

  Eve smiled. Wasn’t that nice? Hogart, Hoddle and Hooper. All the Hs at law school must have got on. She managed to keep the thought to herself.

  ‘You must be the granddaughter,’ he said, twinkling away.

  Eve giggled. She hated herself but she giggled. ‘No, the daughter.’

  ‘Good heavens,’ he breathed.

  Eve and John shook hands and he gently placed his other hand on top of the handshake as if to confirm the whole thing. It was May when their hands bonded. Before Christmas he’d be dead and Eve would have killed him.

  But that day Eve was polite. Middle-aged, middle class, polite. ‘My daughter’s going to be a solicitor. She’s going to university in September. We’re just waiting to hear which one.’

  Eve’s younger sister, Martha, stood impatiently behind John Antrobus as she waited to come in. Martha was uninterested in him. She was wearing a selection of clothes that were fighting a heavy rearguard action against becoming an ensemble outfit. Large swathes of natural fibres suggested Eve’s sister had dressed while fleeing a burning building. She also wore a turban for reasons Eve never fathomed. They were not a turban sort of family. Not in Edenford, but then Martha had not been around for some time. She taught women’s studies at a university in Bangkok and had only come home for the dealing out of her father’s spoils. She was staying at the University Women’s Club in London and was impatient to get back there. She did not understand her family and, to be fair, they did not understand her. Martha’s only concession to them all was that she had brought a gift of a pineapple, two melons and a lemon.

  ‘I thought fruit would be good,’ Martha said, when John finally stopped twinkling and stepped into the house. The kitchen door flew open and Mother appeared wiping her hands on a tea towel.

  ‘Oh, Martha, sweet of you but I’ve got fruit. The one thing we didn’t need.’

  Eve smiled. Everyone except Martha smiled, as if the whole fru
it thing was just fine.

  ‘Christ!’ said Martha, and stomped off with her pineapple to get a drink.

  Mother was mortified. ‘So unnecessary. I’m so sorry.’

  Eve made the remaining introductions. ‘Mother, this is Mr Antrobus from the solicitors.’

  He shook Mother gravely by the hand. ‘I know it’s a difficult time, but may I say you are an inspiration to us all.’ Mother nearly fell on the floor with delight. She preened as he moved on. ‘Perhaps we had better get started,’ he said, getting more sonorous by the minute.

  ‘Oh no. Lunch. We must have lunch,’ insisted Mother.

  ‘I couldn’t, really.’ Mr Antrobus held up his briefcase. ‘You see, it’s a little awkward. Perhaps not as straightforward—’

  There was no arguing with Mother. ‘Nonsense. Lunch!’

  The Great Provider called everyone in and the men did lots of handshaking with the man from the law. Martha sat smoking at the table until Mother began unnecessary coughing. Mother brought in an unnecessary damp cloth and put it beside her plate. She lived in mortal fear of spillage, hence the large plastic tablecloth, just in case.

  Adam and William sat in the carvers at either end of the table while the rest of the family gathered at the sides. Mother went back for something. She always went back for something. She sat and stood so many times during a meal that as a child Eve had felt confident someone had placed a small electric charge in her seat. She was an age in the kitchen so Eve went to see if she could help. Mother was wrapping the remains of the hors d’oeuvres in cling film, struggling to get three leftover olives neatly contained. Eve knew better than to interrupt. She watched her mother wrap the three olives as if the family’s future sustenance depended on them.

  ‘Everyone is waiting,’ she said at last.

  ‘Waste not want not,’ Mrs Cameron replied, taking her time to preserve one cheese cracker and a single centimetre sliver of liver pâté left from the canapés.