‘Oh God! Oh God!’ She swerved to the side of the road and stopped. Vomit dripped down her face and warmly oozed into her ears. But would you believe it? Kelly was still asleep. Mel went around to the back doors of the car and opened the one near the road’s verge. Assorted children fell out. Michael looked green and had a small amount of vomit speckled on his trousers. Most of it was all over Mel and down the back of the driver’s seat, dripping gloopily like lumpy oil onto the newly-valeted carpet. Meanwhile, Ivan ran around in circles, bent slightly forward, thighs together and bottom poking out at a 30-degree angle.
‘Toilet!’ he cried. She looked desperately around for some leaves and some cover and settled for the grass verge which was shielded from view of the road by the wings of the open car doors. She found some wet wipes and told Ivan not to worry as poo was totally biodegradable. Kelly was still asleep. All hell was breaking loose and Kelly snoozed through the lot! What was she on? Mel wished she could have some.
‘Oh, you’re awake then!’ Mel exclaimed as Kelly opened both eyes wide and blinked in a lizardly sort of way. Kelly slowly became aware of her surroundings – the smell in particular.
‘Eeugh! What’s that smell?’
‘Look at me, Kelly,’ suggested Mel quietly. ‘Look at my hair. What do you see?’
‘Oh my God! Is that puke in your hair? Oh my God!’
‘Indeed,’ nodded Mel wisely. ‘I really don’t know what to do now. We’re nearly at Aphid World but we can’t very well go in like this, can we?’
‘Have you got some wet wipes?’ Kelly enquired weakly.
‘Been there. Done that. No more wet wipes.’
Kelly had just found Ivan’s little offering on the grass verge and Ivan was busy scrubbing away at his bottom with a dock leaf.
‘I know!’ smiled Kelly in a Eureka sort of way. ‘Let’s go to one of those motel places and have a shower!’
Mel regarded her friend for a while, wondering which planet she had hailed from.
‘You have noticed that we’re on a B road? We left the motorway nearly an hour ago.’
‘No!’ gasped Kelly. ‘It’s not that far from the motorway to Aphid World!?’
‘That’s what I thought. But I was horribly mistaken. We’ve been in the Twilight Zone for an eternity.’
‘How about a river? Isn’t that a stream down there?’
It was quite a warm day, so it was within the realms of possibility to go and wash down in the stream. Mel felt so revolting that embarrassment and practicality had gone straight out of the window.
‘Brilliant idea! Then we could wash and and have a picnic in the field! You’re so clever!’
Mel’s relief was infectious. The children jumped up and down wanting buckets and spades and swimming costumes. In the end they closed the doors to the smelly, dripping car and set off towards the babbling brook. There were cow pats in the field but no actual cows, luckily. Being city people, it was doubtful they could have survived an onslaught of cows. The bank of the stream was a bit muddy, but both women had flat pumps on, as did the children. But as they mulched closer to the water the mud became more tenacious, yielding very grudgingly to their efforts to pull their feet out of it and, one by one, they decided it best to remove their shoes and go barefoot. They weren’t going to give up now. The kids were enjoying the adventure immensely; even Michael, who normally hated getting dirty. Finally, red in the face, they found some dry bits of grassy bank not churned up by large farm animals and sat down. Quite how Mel was going to get the sick out of her hair, she didn’t know, but it would feel great, she was sure, just to put her head under the clean, bubbling water. In fact, she was beginning to feel quite the ‘I am at one with nature’ earth mother type. ‘This is the life!’ she thought. ‘Who needs all the trappings of civilisation?’
They all took their outer layers of clothing off and tiptoed carefully across the stony river bed. It was very cold as they started splashing each other but it felt brilliant.
‘Kelly, could you pour some water over my head and try to get the sick out, do you think?’
And so this went on until they smelt rather sweeter and felt cooler. Finally they climbed out and discovered that they would just have to put their clothes on without getting dry, because one never has a towel when one needs one. And strangely, Michael and Amy had forgotten completely about vampire water, so that was another problem solved.
Soggily, Mel turned and scrambled up the bank, Kelly and the children behind her. She was suddenly aware of warm breath on the back of her neck and a slappy-tongue noise. Slowly she raised her head to come eye-to-nose with a cow. The cow eyed her placidly, licking its nose. Mel felt sweat ooze from every one of her pores; her throat tightened and the hairs on the back of her neck tingled as they stood themselves on end. She felt just like a startled spikey cat. The children behind her began to make noises and Kelly quietly caught her breath. There were things she had heard about how to deal with a cow or a horse. Something about not running away, not letting them smell your fear … that sort of thing. Was the best thing to lie on the ground in front of it? She couldn’t remember because she didn’t meet many large herbivores in her part of Kingston-upon-Thames. The seconds seemed like hours as she and the cow looked at each other. Was that an angry look in its eye now? Sweat poured from her armpits and dripped down the back of her neck. The stench of fear must have been all-pervading she was sure, but the more she tried to stop herself sweating, the worse it got. Amy broke the silent impasse. ‘Mummy, it’s all right. She’s a nice cow. Just walk past her.’ Trust Amy to act more maturely than her mother! But she was glad for this little voice of reason and slowly she began to move in as dignified a fashion as she was able, given that her feet were sinking in mud and she felt she was about to wet herself.
‘All right, Daisy,’ comforted Amy as she and the others followed Mel past the cow. Mel could see the field between them and the car now. There were an awful lot of cows in the field. Young cows. The kind that get excited and chase you!
‘Split!’ she semi-whispered. Kelly, Ivan and Matilda went one way and Mel, Amy and Michael went the other, in the hope of meeting at the car. Feeling every cow’s eyes on them they staggered through the field barefoot, hardly noticing the thistles and stones. Every hoof fall threatened. As they all converged at the gate by the car, they could hear low and ominous mooing and several sets of hooves very close behind. Just getting over the gate, the troupe turned to see a whole field of cows right behind them staring wildly, it appeared, at their bottoms. Just in time, they left the field and realised that today was not the day to complete their journey to Aphid World. They looked at each other – it was like a scene from Tenko. Even the children didn’t argue when Mel suggested they just went home. The smell in the car was such that they kept the windows open all the way, but never mind. They had lived to fight another day.
9
‘Mel!’ exclaimed Alan the next morning. ‘What the hell happened to my car? It looks like a swamp! I’m supposed to be picking up the boss in that later.’
‘I’ll clean it up! I’m sorry, bit of an accident,’ replied Mel lamely.
Just once, she thought, just bloody once I’d like to have a lovely calm day out. I bet Kelly never agrees to come with us anywhere ever again.
A few hours later, the car still smelt a bit but there was nothing more to offend the eyes. So Alan was bringing his boss back for dinner. Great! It would have been nice to have been warned. It would have been nice to actually be consulted. Well, if he thought she was going to go into domestic goddess mode, he had another thing coming. She was toying with the idea of serving beans on toast or a Pot Noodle. That would teach him not to take her for granted … But on second thoughts, Alan had seemed pretty preoccupied recently and there seemed to be some trouble at work. Still, was that her fault? Oooh, I could scream, she thought. Finally, she hit upon a brilliant compromise … She would order in food from a takeaway and pass it off as her own! But what would they be expecti
ng? What did this boss of Alan’s actually eat? He hadn’t told her anything! She felt like leaving the disaster for him to discover when he marched into the house with his boss later, but thought better of this idea. She phoned him at work to which he had travelled by Tube that morning. He was using the car as a taxi service for a probable drunken boss that evening.
‘Hello, Alan Simkins,’ he answered his office phone.
‘Alan – what does your boss expect me to cook tonight? What does he eat?’ wailed Mel.
‘Oh love, I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought about that! … Um … he likes seafood … I think.’
‘Seafood … What … prawns? That sort of thing?’
‘Oh yes. I’m sure prawns would be fine.’
‘What shall I do with the prawns, Alan? Does he like Thai, Chinese, Indian, French, Spanish, Italian? I mean, which ball park are we aiming for here?’
‘Ooh. French sounds about right, I think. What do you think?’
‘Are you sure that he’ll be OK with that?’ she asked, getting out the Yellow Pages and a couple of recipe books.
‘Mummy! Are we making cakes!?’ shouted the children as they leapt on her from behind.
‘Yes darling. I’m sure French prawns will be just what the doctor ordered,’ reassured a rather distracted-sounding Alan. ‘I’ll see you about six. Oh! Can you pick me up from the office?’
‘Pick you up! For goodness sake, why didn’t you say all this before?’ Oh, he really was too much! Was she supposed to wipe his bottom for him as well!?
‘Thanks, love. See you later!’
The phone was put down at the other end whilst Mel was left to wrestle with the children and save Alan’s career single-handedly. She only had (she looked at her watch in dismay) another six hours to do it in because she’d have to leave the house at four-thirty to get to his office by six o’clock at that time of day and she’d have to sort out the bloody congestion charge.
‘Oh pants!’ she shouted out loud.
10
The trip around the supermarket with two children was the usual nightmare and then some. It was hot and humid and everyone in the place seemed to either have trolley rage or was getting in the way. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that Michael wanted to sit in the trolley seat but was really too big for it now. Amy tried to get in the seat before him. The trolley was seriously unbalanced and since all its wheels spun in different directions at the best of times, it was like something out of one of these impossible feat shows from Japan trying to get through the amply-sized beckoning supermarket portal. Mel’s hair clung to her head and sweat dripped off the end of her nose as Amy bent the trolley seat and Michael pulled the shopping scanner off the wall and tried to zap her with it. He was flicking the scanner this way and that – one woman cried out in pain as the red laser light flashed in her eyes. She felt the security guard’s gaze boring disapprovingly into the back of her head and she wished she could just crawl into an empty box in the middle of the aisle. It always struck her as amazing that more people didn’t abandon all hope and just sit down in the aisle and start rocking and sucking their thumbs. No one seemed in the brightest of moods. They were either miserable, stupid, bloody-minded or a combination of all three possibilities.
She really had intended to buy fresh ingredients and make the meal from scratch … honestly … but in the end, she was beaten by Amy who fished a large spider out of her little velvet pouch purse and was having a vivid conversation with it. She didn’t notice until someone screamed. Mel grabbed some ready meals from the freezer cabinet and shot to the scan-it-yourself till. Normally she avoided these things like the plague; it said things loudly and repeatedly so that everyone in the shop would know how much it despised and loathed her.
‘Unexpected item on the till!’
‘Unexpected item on the till!’
‘Please remove and start again!’
‘Please remove and start again!’
No sooner had she got the hang of it than Michael was helpfully plonking sweets on the conveyor belt, which didn’t help. She grabbed Michael by the hand, pulled him over to her side and removed all the sweets. She had just started to get some order into her scanning when Michael started wailing and dribbling out of his nose.
‘I want some sweets! Waaa!’ screamed Michael as he hung off her arm and then proceeded to lie on the floor kicking his feet. Michael had never had a tantrum before. She had always dealt with Amy’s by ignoring them so she went with that plan. People started tutting and staring. She heard one woman say to another,
‘Honestly, children these days! They’re so spoilt. I blame the parents. They’re so busy having careers and swanning around pampering themselves.’
‘Yes, I agree with you, Gladys. A lot of these mothers are either on drugs or drinking all the time. Poor little thing! Look at her … she’s totally ignoring him!’
‘Look at her hands, Mavis … They’re shaking! And her eyes … Ooh! Don’t like the look of them. Poor little devils having a mother like that!’
Gladys approached Michael. ‘Aah, you poor dear. Would you like a sweetie?’
Michael quietened down a bit in the hope of a reward. Mel felt like she would have to spontaneously combust at any moment and Amy showed the two kind elderly ladies her pet spider.
‘Look Willy … these are two nice old ladies. Come and say hello.’ She shoved the spider right under Gladys’s nose and the latter went cross-eyed behind her varifocals.
‘Aagh! You little swine! Ooh! Mavis, get me my spray! I’m having an attack!’
Mel turned to look at the two ladies, relieved that she had been saved from having to murder them. Gladys seemed very energetic and noisy, shouting at the top of her voice and dramatically fanning herself with a shrink-wrapped mackerel. She looked rather too energetic to be at death’s door, Mel thought. And Mel was a trained nurse, after all, so she should know! Meanwhile the manager of the shop hurried forth and offered chairs to the ladies in a quiet area. He also offered them both a cup of tea and relieved Gladys of her mackerel.
‘What appears to be the problem, ladies?’ he enquired. Mavis slowly raised an accusing finger and pointed it at Amy. ‘That dreadful little girl has a venomous creature in this shop and she threatened Gladys with it.’
Amy promptly went red and started to cry, hugging her little velvet pouch to her chest.
‘You are horrible ladies! He’s my pet and he’s kind and much, much cleverer than you! He didn’t scream at you, did he!?’
Michael had completely forgotten about his tantrum and was sitting on the floor watching the show, as was everybody else in the store, it seemed. Gladys looked Mel up and down.
‘It’s not surprising that the child is mad with a mother like that! She looks completely insane!’
‘Don’t you talk to my mummy like that!’ said Amy, smacking Gladys on the arm.
‘Yes!’ agreed Michael. ‘Our mummy is the best mummy in the world!’
Mel couldn’t help the tears as they escaped down her cheeks and she gave both her wonderful, loyal, loving, clever children a hug and a wet kiss.
Paramedics turned up to check on Gladys with her imminent heart attack.
‘Hi Mel! How goes it?’ asked one of them. Turning, she recognised Brian. She’d had many a handover in A+E from Brian when she was in the working world. She was so relieved to see a friendly face. The face of someone who would know that she wasn’t on alcohol or drugs and wasn’t mad. Someone who knew her as Mel The Nurse and The Person and not just the wife and mother.
‘Brian!’ she trilled. ‘How lovely to see you!’
‘What have you been doing? Causing trouble again, are you?’ he grinned.
‘Thanks for the support Bri! I promise to do the same for you one day!’ she warned, eyes glinting mischievously.
‘When are you coming back to work?’ he asked.
‘Ooh! This lady caused it all. She’s mad … she should be locked up,’ piped up Mavis. ‘My poor friend wa
s just concerned for the children and …’
‘Now why don’t we all have a seat, a cup of tea and calm down?’ suggested the manager.
‘That sounds like a good idea, once I’ve checked her over,’ replied Brian, sitting Gladys down and checking her blood pressure and pulse. He took her into the ambulance. Gladys was now fine although he advised her to go with them to the hospital to be on the safe side.
‘Honestly Brian … we did nothing. Michael was having a tantrum and …’
‘Don’t worry, pet!’ soothed a woman in the queue next to them. ‘I saw everything. They were being very unpleasant, those ladies. I would have thumped them!’ And with that, several others came forward to agree.
‘I’ll pack your bag for you, love,’ said an assistant, patting Mel on the arm. ‘Then you can come and rest for a bit. OK?’
Mel was so grateful. At that moment, she realised the world wasn’t entirely created out of a huge pile of poo. There were actually decent people in it. It was all she needed to get her through this horrendous ordeal.
‘Thanks so much,’ she breathed.
‘Hope to see you soon in work!’ winked Brian as he placed the insistent Mavis in the back of the ambulance with her friend.
11
They arrived home and Mel unpacked the shopping, looking at the eclectic mix of ready meals, bits of fish, frozen prawns, gin, tonic, milk and bread that she seemed to have taken with her from the supermarket ordeal. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with any of it. Her brain was in complete meltdown, so she put everything in the fridge and poured them all some squash.
‘Let’s sit in the garden,’ she suggested. It was one-thirty but everything would have to wait.
‘Yay!’ agreed the children and as good as gold, they went out into the garden and sat on their swings, while Mel sat at the bottom of the slide.
It was so hot that she couldn’t stay outside for long and she brought the children in to cover them liberally with sunscreen. She found some sunhats and they went out again to play, with Mel safe in the knowledge that she had followed all the care in the sun instructions that any good mother should. It was now two o’clock. She would have to leave for the City at four-thirty. Right – what was she going to make for this soirée? She looked at the shopping in the fridge. So she had, let’s see … packs of garlic prawns; extra prawns; garlic bulbs; some broccoli; carrots; onions; gin; tonic and ice cream. What on earth was she going to make with that lot? She’d gone out with the watch words ‘French’ and ‘prawns’ in mind, hoping to come up with some inspiration during the shopping trip, but the trip had been so traumatic that she had only remembered the basic essence of the thing. Onions and garlic equalled French and she had prawns. Brilliant. There was no way she was going to any shop again today. She had plenty of wine and bottles of beer but she had to come up with something decent for a meal for Brian’s boss, surely. It was then that she noticed the disaster area which pre cake-incineration night was known as the kitchen. There was still a sooty pall about the place and the oven was rank and smoky-black when she opened it. That was it. Either she couldn’t pick the blokes up from work or she couldn’t tidy up and cook. Something had to give. She phoned Alan, who seemed rather miffed that she was giving him such an ultimatum. She reminded him that it would have been a lot easier for all concerned if he hadn’t launched this plan on her last minute. What was she … a bloody miracle worker? Alan preferred that she picked them up because he couldn’t face travelling on public transport in this weather. So that was that. She was all out of inspiration and, at most, could only make a cosmetic attempt at cleaning the kitchen. She would have to light the house in a haze of candles; spray the entire smelly area with air freshener; get takeaways and try to ensure that the boss was guided away from the kitchen. She toyed with the idea of roping off the area à la ‘stately home open to the public’, but there was no time and it would only look suspicious. She looked through the Yellow Pages and found a French restaurant which might be able to help her out. So she would pop around there and order something from the menu, then come home and try to tidy the kitchen; make herself presentable; and go to pick up the men. Simple! Except that each of these jobs, especially the one involving making herself presentable, would take longer than she had. Oh well, onwards and upwards, she supposed.
The Meltdown of a Banker's Wife Page 3
