by Janet Davey
I write a text to Ross: This must not happen again. I erase it and send: Where are you?
I open the fridge door and look inside, shut it again. The bread bin contains half a granary loaf. I take two slices and slot them into the toaster.
There have been too many parts to the day, each element differentiated and with its own particular hue. All they have in common is myself – and that is not enough to bind them together. On the contrary, my presence obstructs the flow. Deborah Lupton bounces along full of good cheer. She sutures the lives of the twins, the younger Luptons and Mr Lupton, the Lloyd-Barron Academy Parents’ Association, the drop-in centre for the over seventies, the Woodcraft Folk – and in the process makes a seamless whole of her own life. Ginny Lu, in a quieter way, is the same. These women are not merely good sorts, they are organising principles. The episodes that make up their days and weeks, whatever the contents, are all stamped by the Lupton/Lu in-house franking machine whereas I scrabble around guessing the correct postage for each and every item. When I get it wrong I imagine a scrawl across the outside of the package indicating the insufficiency or a recommendation that the mail be returned to sender.
I still see myself as a student type, a kind of girl hoodlum, though, apart from the tattoo of a snail shell on my left shoulder and the naturally back-combed hair, that notion hardly stands up. Some wised-up friend said I looked like Patty Hearst and, once I had found out who Patty Hearst was, it pleased me to be linked to someone who had been kidnapped by an urban guerrilla group and taken part in a San Francisco bank robbery. A London girl with a short upper lip and wide-apart eyes, I liked the conjured-up image of glamorous instability and, before the days of Wikipedia, went to the trouble of looking up Stockholm syndrome.
I have an ex-husband, Randal Doig, and an insecure job working as an archivist in the Corporate Archives of Transport for London. I am the mother of three sons. We live together in Dairyman’s Road, Palmers Green, in a thirties house with small-paned bay windows up and down, red tiles and a roof light, invisible from the street, that looks slantwise up to the sky.
In my lunch hour, in fine weather, I lie on the grass in St James’s Park. The sun feels the same on my skin as it did when I was nineteen, my eyes shut behind a pair of sunglasses.
The toaster emits a sooty smell and switches itself off. The popping-up mechanism has not worked since Ross forced in a whole hot cross bun. I look around for the meat skewer.
4
MY SONS WERE all born during John Major’s government and I often wonder whether that has had an effect on them. The privatisation of British Rail, the introduction of Sunday trading, the Dangerous Dogs Act, the Cones Hotline, Back to Basics – the tone of that administration seeped into their minds and made them obstructive. As a predictor, someone’s birth prime minister must be as good as an astrological sign. Bonar Law 1922–3: Renowned for your excellent memory and business acumen, you may be depressed at losing your grip. Don’t worry. Soon you will be ready for the next step. Try growing a moustache.
Liz Savaris, my best schoolfriend, who now lives in Aberystwyth, does not think much of my theory. Birthwise, we both scraped into Alec Douglas-Home’s term of office and so far have not come up with any points of reference, though The Way the Wind Blows, the title of A.D.-H.’s autobiography, is sufficiently fatalistic to suit most circumstances. Certainly, my own life has seen the odd twister. I call Liz whenever I need to clamour for sympathy, which she gives wholeheartedly in a real crisis but hardly at all up until that point. I rely on her, in a sense, to gauge the severity of a situation and am almost pleased to be put down because it means that, according to Liz, I am making a fuss about nothing. All kinds of awful things have happened to her and, although she never brings them up in conversation, they hover like warning angels as I prattle on.
Have you started dating? she asked when Ewan gave up university after two terms. Sometimes boys don’t like that. Well, there was Richard Watson but … Richard Watson, she shrieked, have you gone mad, Lorna? It’s either someone you already know, or a stranger, I said. Both have their pluses and minuses. He works at the Office for Budget Responsibility. But Richard Watson? she said. Ewan wouldn’t have known, I said, unless he was a fly on the wall of The Albert in Victoria Street or Richard’s grim flat off Fulham Palace Road. Another explanation might be the birth of Stefan, Liz said, referring to my ex-husband’s new son. This has all happened so bloody fast – gestation like rats – though the baby would mainly affect Ross, as he is the one who has lost his position. Ewan is still the firstborn. We would have gone off the rails among our own age group, I said. Universities tolerate time-wasters and they have their own counselling services. Why has he come home?
The middle son, too drunk on the dark and the mystery of the sea to reply to his mother’s messages, or just too drunk, returns from Cornwall in time for me to drive him to Brighton for the start of Freshers’ Week. The journey passes without much conversation. Oliver listens to music, and I, who dislike the A23, concentrate on the road. He sits with the passenger seat pushed back in semi-recline. From my sit-up-and-beg position, I see mainly his legs, the tear in his jeans at the knee, and his thumbs as they move over his phone. The clouds are high and grey and gusts of wind buffet the side of the car with hollow sounding thuds.
At one point, Oliver starts talking about wreck tours off the south coast, then, as suddenly as he began, he replaces the earpiece under a lock of blond hair and falls silent again. This leads me to believe that his mind is on diving and that starting university is an irrelevance and not in any way momentous to him. Only time will tell whether he too will return home before or after graduation and live in his bedroom.
As far as I know, Oliver has no girlfriend. He hangs out with a group of friends, and who within that group is paired off with whom I have no idea. He is free. He won’t be making those complicated weekend train journeys that Ben Allardyce and I went in for, having ended up in mutually inaccessible university towns. We used to go on three-and-a-half-hour journeys from Colchester to Nottingham, or Nottingham to Colchester, via two quite separate London terminals and sometimes Grantham as well.
I keep my thoughts to myself. They come and go, like traffic flow. It feels peaceful to be in the car occasionally smacked by the wind, Oliver beside me, the tinny beat from his music a constant accompaniment.
London suburban landscape repeats itself. Detached, mansion-sized roadside pubs with banner advertisements for Sunday roast, garden centres flanked by banks of shopping trolleys, superstores, ditto. Glimpsed countryside vanishes as fast as the good parts of dreams. I sing at one point because we are on the road and moving but Oliver catches sight of my lips and gestures to me to cut it out.
We drive towards the South Downs but instead of speeding on towards the sea – the desire for which is quickened by the sight of the coastal hills rising in a long, grey-green line – we turn eastwards at the Patcham interchange, head for the Brighton suburb of Coldean and arrive at the university campus at around midday.
I park the car while Oliver collects a key from the site manager of the halls of residence. As I wait for him to return, I smile at a couple who are lifting a television from the back of their people-carrier while their son yells instructions. More items are removed from the boot. A small fridge, a microwave oven, a rail of clothes. Shadows appear on the tarmac, generous splashes of black, as the sun breaks through cloud.
A girl poses with wide-apart arms and an open-mouthed Hollywood smile by the entrance to the block. Her father aims his phone at her. Another family stands by, luggage piled up beside them, waiting their turn for the celebrity shoot. Out come the phones and cameras. There is something sick-making about photography.
5
A SINGLE BED, desk and cupboard, all of the same blonde imitation wood, are arranged along the length of two walls and stand on a mottled brown carpet. Like a hotel bedroom, Room 8 offers a blank page on which unconnected strangers can write. I feel overwhelmed by everything
that might happen to Oliver here and also by the dullness of dull student days. I put down the bags I am carrying and go over to the square, metal-framed window that overlooks the car park.
A middle-aged man trundles two vast suitcases along the paving, his paunch thrust into prominence by the backward drag. The suitcase wheels make a noise like horses clopping in rhythm until they collide. He stops to unlock them, then sets off again. A girl follows. She struggles with an armful of garments, some loose, some enclosed in plastic covers that balloon in the breeze.
‘Are there enough days in the term to wear all those clothes?’ I say.
I turn round and see a tall youth wearing my son’s grey marl fleece and blue jeans. He is hunched over his phone. Sun-bleached hair flops forwards. He is oblivious to his surroundings. Neither man nor boy, he is in some significant way nothing to do with me, though Oliver’s possessions are everywhere – his backpack and bags on the floor, his parka flung on the bed.
The front door bangs again and on the other side of the wall something clatters to the ground. ‘Da-ad. Help me.’
‘She’s dropped the lot,’ Oliver says and the slip-sliding youth vanishes.
‘I hope it won’t be too noisy living so close to the entrance,’ I say. ‘Drunken revellers. People knocking on the window if they’ve lost their key. I remember—’
Oliver interrupts. ‘It doesn’t make any difference. They’re just rooms.’
This is the case. I am struck by his attitude – and proud of it – though aware that the realism is caused more by his attachment to his phone than by the taking up of a considered philosophical position. One day, the external world and the inner world will vanish, replaced by a series of beeps.
‘What do you want to do?’ I try out the lighting; open and shut cupboards and drawers. Raw dust of cut chipboard has settled in crevices. I pick out a long dark hair from a drawer and drop it in the wastepaper basket.
‘I dunno. Unpack. See who’s around.’
‘What about eating? Shall we go into town and find some lunch?’
‘No, it’s all right. You go home if you like.’
‘Really? You must be hungry, aren’t you? We could get fish and chips and brave the beach.’
He shakes his head.
‘Let’s go and find the kitchen,’ I say. ‘Case the joint.’
‘What? Oh, it’ll be obvious.’
I think of my own mother placing a potted scented geranium on the windowsill of my first room at university, the one that looked out onto a brick wall. Later, she folded up the drab bedcover and hid it in a cupboard.
‘OK, then. I may as well go,’ I say.
It is only after I have slung my bag over my shoulder and stand dangling the car keys that Oliver comes to and registers what is happening. ‘You leaving, Mum?’ He appears perplexed. He puts his phone in the back pocket of his jeans.
‘We could—’
‘I’ll see you off.’
I take a last look at the room. I imprint it on my mind for future reference. On the way out, I stoop and pick up a flyer that had been pushed under the door. ‘CEOs and Corporate Hoes,’ it says. ‘Come and get raped!’ The accompanying line drawing shows a be-suited man with his hand splayed over one of the spherical breasts that tumbles out of a girl’s low-cut top. Two champagne flutes brimming with bubbles complete the picture.
‘Charming,’ I say, flapping the paper at Oliver. ‘Women’s emancipation was for this? We’re heading back to the Palaeolithic era. You should report it.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Mum. It’s just fun.’
We leave the building and make our way between the parked vehicles, Oliver a few paces behind me. When we reach the car I open the boot to check that nothing has been left behind. I turn to Oliver and stretch out my arms for a hug. The goodbye is over. I get in the car, start the engine and reverse between the two large, shiny cars on either side. Oliver stands and watches. As the wheels go forward again, I see him in the rear-view mirror. He is waving; a side-to-side arm wave that would be visible from a departing cruise ship.
I head for London, aware of rain clouds coming from the west and the first drops on the windscreen. The South Downs shrink when approached from the south. Fast cars streak past, their engine noise amplified, trapped between hills. High above, a group of ramblers – tiny figures in brightly coloured cagoules – cross the road bridge. I fiddle with the radio and fail to get a signal. I know what I am going back to. It’s as if Ewan hates what’s out there, Randal, my ex-husband, said on one occasion. Out where? The world. What? As it is today; to some extent, you hate it. You make no bones about it. Certain aspects, yes, I agreed. Are you blaming me? You’re quite negative, Lorna, Randal said. Thanks, I said. Where are you in all this?
6
I SHOULD NEVER have mentioned the three poses to Randal. It was a joke, really. Our son, Ewan, sits, head bent, with the angled lamp casting a tight circle of light onto the desk; or, in the same circle of light, with his head resting on his arms; or he lies, a mound in the bed.
For Christ’s sake, Lorna, Randal said. Are you suggesting that Ewan deliberately arranges himself in one of these tableaux whenever he hears you coming upstairs? OK, I said. Let’s leave it. I was trying for humour. You are, Randal said. I am what? When I come to the house you are, let’s say, by the stove, by the sink, or getting stuff out of the washing machine. Thanks, I said. I’m doing all this on my own, don’t forget. I always was, even when we lived together. When I came into the front room you were sitting on the sofa sanding the hard skin off your feet. It doesn’t prove anything beyond my failure to prick your sluggish conscience. I only did that once, Randal said. Just once and there was a good reason. I was about to run a half-marathon. Where’s your father when you go to see him on Saturday? In his chair, I replied. Exactly, Randal said. That’s just how people are; boring and predictable. We are copies of ourselves.
He did not convince me. There is more to language than words. Ewan could be saying something to me, though I have no idea what.
I last saw my ex-husband at the beginning of the summer holidays. He was wearing a black V-necked jumper over bare flesh and had grown a millimetre of beard. Same eyes, prominent and stary, with white parts that have stayed clear as he grows older, not bloodshot, nor wobbly, like just set albumen. I watch out for signs of ageing in him. The blue is changeable in colour like spilt petrol on a dark surface. He pressed his face against the glass in the front door and tripped over the loose section of matting on the stairs, as usual. Nothing was said, and yet, afterwards – after he had gone – I felt lonely, as if I had to cope with Ewan on my own. Without being able to identify any palpable signs, I sensed that Randal had begun to distance himself from the problem. The something-must-be-done desperation that afflicted him when Ewan first took up residence in his bedroom had vanished, together with the camaraderie. It was the loneliness that alerted me.
I am back in Dairyman’s Road by mid-afternoon. The house is stuck at an earlier hour. The sun has moved round and falls like a golden highway across the remains of breakfast. Ross is at Jude’s. I begin to clear up. I have come back too soon. I should have gone to the sea, walked along the front as far as the beach huts, sat on the sloping shingle. Instead I am in Palmers Green, slotting spoons into the cutlery basket of the dishwasher, and will shortly go to visit my father. Saturday tea at the Winchmore Hill flat, Sunday lunch at Dairyman’s Road. This is what happens at weekends.
I go upstairs. Up the main flight. Up the space-saver steps. I knock gently and push the door open. The blind over the roof light is down and the room in semi-darkness, lit by the desk lamp.
Ewan’s head rests on his arms, his face is hidden. The whiteness of the nape of his neck is exposed by the halogen glow. His hair spills onto his sleeve. He makes no response to the news that Oliver is installed in his student accommodation. Standing in the doorway, I move on to some other subject. He raises his head and makes some kind of reply. I am queen of the banal in my
dispatches to Ewan. Luckily, I have a surplus of inconsequential thoughts. I try to avoid subjects that have a bearing on his situation. He set off, like Oliver, and then returned. It is amazing how much might, at a tangent, wound him in some way. I start on something and realise that hidden within is an implied criticism or a reminder of what he is missing.
7
Hello Lorna, Hope all is well with you and the boys. Is Ollie having fun in Brighton? JFP back from Malaysia – ‘hilarious’ as ever. Got the B team to do an ‘egg drop’ i.e. drop an egg safely from the roof using drinking straws and masking tape. Cluck, cluck, Whoa! Currently snowed under but should see the light of day in a week or so. R xx
RANDAL DOIG, MY ex-husband, works for the British subsidiary of a North American precision-engineering company based in South Cambridgeshire. He started there about four years ago – met Charmian. That was his line and he sticks to it, though I believe a back story exists and a degree of plotting. Speedy boarding, Liz calls it, because he was present at the gate and ready to go. I have never really known what he does but the company makes, or rather finds, custom-engineered something something something equipment solutions. I have tried to memorise the phrase and believe it contains the word ‘rotating’. He moved out of our house in Dairyman’s Road and into a rented cottage in a North Hertfordshire village that he and Charmian subsequently purchased. He comes to see the boys less frequently now and, apart from his calls from the immediate vicinity, no longer communicates by phone. He has embraced the voiceless media and sends us what are effectively round robins, alive with links to YouTube clips. As the messages sometimes contain work gossip, I guess they also go out to former colleagues who have cleared their desks and decamped. Randal is kind enough to personalise the odd sentence – usually at the beginning and again to close – and these leap out as though in a completely different font, say, Aharoni, in a lake of Tahoma.
