The Meltdown of a Banker's Wife

by Gill Davy-Bowker

  ‘I’m a lady, sweet pea,’ answered one of Kelly’s new friends in a gruff voice. ‘My name is Sophie.’ Sophie? how could she be called Sophie? Sophies were dainty, fairy-like creatures dressed in pink, surely? Oh well, thought Mel, I suppose it’s quite sweet that she’s kept her own name … She was sure she should have renamed herself Greg or Dave or something. Sophie smiled. She knew what must be passing through Mel’s head. She’d seen it all before.

  ‘Ice cream, please!’ they pleaded.

  ‘OK … Kelly … can you look after the bits and pieces while I take the kids for an ice cream and a paddle?’

  ‘Yerk,’ answered Kelly.

  ‘Shall I come with you?’ offered Sophie.

  ‘No, I’ll be fine thanks. You just relax,’ squeaked Mel, dragging the children away as fast as she could.

  ‘Was that really a lady, Mummy? She had a beard!’ asked Amy innocently. Mel really wasn’t sure whether this was the time to get into a discussion with small children about gender issues. She was still dreading the day when Amy asked her where babies came from, so anything more complex was not going to be on the agenda. So she chose to pretend that she hadn’t heard and reached the ice cream van before Amy could open her mouth again. There was a long queue, but luckily there was a Punch and Judy show they could just about see and hear. Mel thought how very true to life it was. Especially the crocodile and the sausages. There was probably some deep psycho social meaning behind the theme of the crocodile’s affinity with sausages, but, at present, it was just too mindblowing to contemplate.

  What the hell was Kelly doing? Had she only just picked this scary gang off the street or were they friends she had known for a long time? What was Kelly doing being totally plastered in the middle of the day? And she’d thought that Kelly’s husband had the problems!

  ‘Mummy! I want candyfloss! Can I have candyfloss, please?’ begged Amy.

  ‘I want a fishing net!’ joined in Michael.

  Well, what was the harm? And Kelly could damn well wait for them now.

  ‘OK. Then you can have a go on a roundabout if you like.’

  ‘Yay!’ they agreed. Ivan and Matilda seemed quite happy with any arrangement, so the five of them had a lovely time together. Amy and Michael were completely covered in pink sticky goo by the time they decided to return.

  Good grief, it was difficult to orientate yourself on this beach. Where was their spot? How had Kelly managed to find her way back in the state she was in?

  ‘Mel!’ growled a deep resonating voice from afar.

  ‘Mel!’ She could see Sophie in the distance and was glad that Sophie was so big and so loud.

  Kelly was asleep on her back with her mouth wide open, snoring loudly, a can delicately tipped over with its contents seeping into her hair. The rest of the girlies were sitting around drinking and burping. It was a charming scene. Mel looked at her watch. Oh my God! The ‘Parking Gestapo’ would be clamping her car anytime soon! They had to get packed up and back and Kelly was bloody unconscious. First, she would have to degunge the children in the sea because the bees were trying to pollinate them. While she was doing that, she’d have to come up with a plan pretty damn quick.

  ‘We’ve got to leave soon before the car gets clamped,’ she informed Kelly’s new friends.

  ‘Cool … we’ll help. We’ll carry Kelly if we can’t wake her up. How about it, girls?’ Problem solved! Mel hoped so.

  So that’s how Kelly ended up head down over the shoulder of a burly lesbian covered in bike chains and leather. She hung like a rag doll, swaying with the movement of the woman carrying her.

  ‘Bit of a goer, your girlfriend, eh?’ observed the gargantuan woman to Mel. ‘If I were you, I’d keep her on a short leash. “Flirt” is too small a word for this one! Sorry to tell you this, love, but perhaps you should look around for someone else? You could get anyone you wanted, you know.’ Mel reddened. Please God let this be over soon! she thought. ‘What’s your name?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Mel. Um, what’s yours?’ Oh my God, she thought, it sounds like you’re interested in her! You’ll be asking her if she comes here often in a minute.

  ‘Tracey. Pleased to meet you, Mel,’ she smiled, gold teeth glinting in the sunshine.

  ‘Yep,’ said Mel, abruptly, looking to the ground. There was a yawling sound from Tracey’s little burden and vomit proceeded to drip enticingly down Tracey’s back.

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Mel.

  ‘Don’t worry darling. No harm done. Happens to me all the time!’ laughed Tracey. Amy and Michael were unnaturally quiet following this strange gang with Ivan and Matilda to the car. Mel racked her brains trying to remember where the car was parked. Finally she saw a familiar-looking area and there was her car, in one piece and unclamped and … hoorah! No ticket on the windscreen. There was, however, a rather pointy-nosed, pinched character of a traffic warden getting frighteningly close to the vehicle, so Mel ran on ahead and opened the car doors. The traffic warden stared at her and Mel stared back at the traffic warden. An unblinking, unflinching Clint Eastwood-style stand-off followed and if it hadn’t been for the happy band of burly women carrying a vomiting wretch fireman-style and four rather out-of-place small children, this impasse may have progressed to something more serious. But it seemed the warden thought better of getting a ticket in at the last chance, much as he may have enjoyed it. He turned and left.

  ‘Right,’ growled Tracey, not even slightly out of breath, and since they’d just walked a mile and Kelly could hardly be described as a featherweight, that was quite a feat.

  ‘Where do you want her?’ she asked. Mel felt pretty strongly that she didn’t really want Kelly anywhere. Certainly not in her lovely, beautifully upholstered car.

  I suppose that’s the advantage of leather upholstery, she reasoned. It’s quite easy to rid of pools of bodily fluids.

  She took some towels and a beach mat out of her bag and laid them over the back seat.

  ‘If you can squash her up a bit so the kids can get in their seats, it would help! Thanks so much,’ Mel gushed as though this sort of thing happened to her every day. She tried to ignore the stares of passers-by at the strange scene and thanked her lucky stars that her car hadn’t been clamped into the bargain. Obligingly, Tracey and the others folded Kelly’s legs and arms so that she ended up on her side in a foetal position, perfectly placed between the child seats and on top of the makeshift sandy protective covering.

  ‘Thanks, girls!’ she smiled perkily. Well, it was better to end up in a situation like this with a mob of strong, buxom, scary but practical women, than with the sort of spa-going, nail bar attenders she normally hung out with. But, on the other hand, if she’d been with her normal, frilly bunch, she wouldn’t have been in this position in the first place.

  ‘That’s OK,’ said the girls. ‘Here’s my number!’ competed Tracey and Sophie in unison. ‘If you ever want more commitment in a relationship, just call!’ Tracey winked. So did Sophie. Then they left.

  ‘Mummy! Kelly’s smelly! Do we have to sit next to her?’ shouted Amy.

  ‘No choice, darling. Well, I suppose I could put one of your seats in the front …’

  ‘Yes, Mummy! Me! Me!’ bellowed Amy.

  ‘No, Mummy! Me!’ argued Michael.

  Ivan and Matilda quietly sneaked into the very back of the car. This was going to take some careful consideration, as Mel’s brain was fried and all she wanted was a relatively peaceful and tantrum-free drive home. As Amy was the child who could cause more harm and devastation in one minute than Michael could, she decided upon putting Amy in the front although she knew it wasn’t very fair.

  ‘OK, Amy … you can sit in the front but Michael can have an extra treat for having to stay in the back with the smell, OK?’ Amazingly, this seemed to resolve the dispute quite nicely and they headed back for London with the radio on, trying to cover up the gentle retching sounds exuding from Kelly as they drove.

  Kelly was just starting to wake up a
s they approached her house. She looked dreadful, with long, beaded strands of dribble all over her face and her hair matted to the side of her head where the beer had dried and set. The other side of her head had a great frizz ball of hair sticking out at a wayward angle. Amy and Michael mercifully dozed off and she had hardly had a peep out of Ivan and Matilda. Mel fervently hoped that Robert would be in so he could get Kelly inside, cleaned up and put to bed and could reassure and comfort the children. It can’t have been very nice for them to see their mum in that state. She was worried that they seemed so subdued.

  Hooray! she thought. The lights were on and Robert’s car was parked in the driveway.

  ‘Oh God. I feel awful!’ said Kelly.

  Mel shot out of the car, up the driveway and rang the doorbell. It took a while for Robert to open the door and when he did, he looked rather ruffled and had what looked like lipstick on his collar. Surely not?! Well, she didn’t have time to contemplate the scene because she heard a ‘flump’ as Kelly fell out of the car onto the pavement, legs akimbo like a not-so-sweet baby ox. She was trying to balance against the car to get to the back and let her children out, but she looked like a mime artist, pushing against invisible forces and trying to walk through real matter. Robert peered down the driveway.

  ‘Well … help me then!’ ordered Mel. So he followed obediently in stockinged feet to the car. Stockinged feet! He had fishnet stockings poking out from the ends of his trouser legs. This was altogether too weird for this time of day when she’d had enough weirdness to last a lifetime. Robert approached the back doors and let his children out. They looked like a pair of mucky urchins. It seemed as if both of them were a little shell-shocked but they hadn’t been weeping silent tears as Mel had feared. In fact they didn’t appear that surprised to see Kelly in this state or to see their father in stockinged feet and … Oh My God! Was that the remains of false-eyelash-effect mascara on his lashes!? It must be the light, she thought. Please let it be the light. Kelly was holding on to the car with her bum swaying back and forth, resembling a person with no sea legs trying to stand on a small rubber dinghy out in a less than clement sea.

  ‘Can you carry her in? I don’t think she can let go of the car. I’ll bring the kids.’

  Gingerly, Robert approached his wife, carefully trying to gain a hold. ‘Gerroff me!?’ Kelly said.

  ‘Kelly, come on. What have you been doing to yourself?’

  ‘I would ask you the same thing,’ replied Kelly, but at least allowed Robert to support her up the drive. Mel decided it was best to make a quick getaway. She’d seen enough for today. She didn’t want nightmares. She left Kelly’s things by the door and shot off down the path, making excuses that she had to get the children home to bed.

  ‘Don’t you want a drink?’ offered Robert. He really didn’t seem to want to be alone with Kelly, but it was not Mel’s problem.

  ‘No, thanks anyway. Hope she’s better soon! Bye!’ she trilled, relieved to be leaving.

  ‘What was wrong with Auntie Kelly, Mummy?’ asked Amy.

  ‘I think she might have a tummy bug,’ lied Mel.

  16

  ‘That’s twice in one week, Mel! We’re going to have to get the car valeted. It’s like a swamp in the back seat. What was Kelly doing anyway? Since when has she been drinking in the daytime?’ huffed Alan. He was right, it was getting beyond a joke. The leather was starting to soften with all the gastric juices that had been splattered on it. It was quite an interesting biological experiment really. One could observe how the fly can digest its prey on a gigantic scale.

  ‘I really don’t know what’s going on between Kelly and Robert. Methinks something is “rotten in the state of Denmark”, so to speak,’ insinuated Mel.

  ‘Or perchance Robert’s rehearsing for a pantomime?’ reasoned Alan hopefully.

  ‘Yes, that’ll be it! Mind you, it’s only May. Bit early for a pantomime,’ but Mel hoped that Robert was indeed planning to tread the boards. A nice, simple, wholesome and unthreatening explanation.

  She changed the subject. ‘Well, they’ll both be back in school on Monday!’ she said brightly. ‘Last half term before summer hols. They’re growing up so fast! Where’s all the time gone?’

  ‘They’ll be teenagers before we know it,’ agreed Alan. ‘That reminds me, Mel. I wanted to apologise for the amount of time I’ve been spending in work.’

  ‘Well, thanks for acknowledging that. I was beginning to wonder how we’d managed to make the children! We couldn’t do it now … that’s for sure … unless we used a turkey baster and some dirty magazines!’

  ‘Thing is though, Mel … the boss is telling me that I’m not committed enough. He says that my “work/life balance” is far too weighted towards home and family and that I’m never going to get beyond first base.’

  ‘I do not believe it, Alan! Come on! You’re having an affair aren’t you!? This is all some elaborate excuse. You’re buttering me up with apologies then saying that you need to spend more time away! Good grief, Alan, do you think I was born yesterday? I …’

  ‘Mel, honestly! Big Swinging Dick is coming over from the States at the beginning of July. Boss says that I need to show one hundred per cent commitment or my balls are on the table. And he says that he’s wondering if I’ve got balls to put on the table!’ Alan cringed.

  ‘It’s difficult for me to support you on the “balls” front, Alan,’ Mel sniffed. ‘I haven’t seen them in a very long time! Who the hell is this Big Swinging Dick anyway? I mean … has he got a life?!’

  ‘No, Mel. I don’t think he has. All the top dogs at Ponsonby and Tosser have wads of dosh. They’ve got huge penthouses. They’ve got private jets. They’ve got herds of call girls. But no, I don’t think they have what you and I might describe as a life,’ sighed Alan. ‘In fact, I often wonder if they’re human at all. Half of them are paranoid, jumpy, temperamental cocaine-heads.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me you need to start a cocaine habit as well, are you? Seriously, Alan, what’re you going to do then? Are you going to sell out and spend every waking minute at work?’

  Alan sighed deeply. ‘I really am going to have to, Mel. For the moment anyway. “If we snooze we lose” they’ve told us. That means my job and our livelihood. They’re going to cut staff and the ones that will stay will be the ruthless bastards who don’t care what they sell or to whom, as long as it makes wads of dosh.’ He really seemed to be unhappy at the prospect. Mel decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, although she couldn’t see how they could continue any sort of meaningful relationship at all if he was away swinging his balls about more than he was already. But she had to admit that she hadn’t exactly helped the situation by burning down the kitchen.

  ‘Well, as long as we get a decent holiday all together this year and you leave your bloody work gadgets at home.’ Mel decided to get some benefit out of the situation. ‘And,’ she continued, ‘do you think I could go on a spa weekend with a couple of friends soon? I really could do with a break. I feel like “Old Mother Hubbard” at the moment!’

  ‘Mmmm. Let’s see what we can do, eh?’ Alan said, noncommittally. Mel decided not to push it. Alan looked too withered and worn and she didn’t want him reporting to her that his stupid misogynistic boss thought he was being henpecked.

  17

  ‘I don’t want to go to school!’ wailed Michael.

  ‘I don’t either, Mummy!’ chorused Amy.

  Monday morning. The usual frantic routine. Too much to do, too little time.

  Finally they were walking to the school gates.

  Lunchbox? Yes! Uniform? Yes! Hair combed? Yes! Overclothes on top of underclothes? Yes! Good grief! This was organised after a week off from the routine. And all with no kitchen and a house full of builders.

  She dropped Amy off first.

  ‘Bye, Mummy,’ snivelled Amy, kissing Mel’s cheek. Then off went Michael, all grown up in his uniform. Mel felt overcome with sentimentality and was just about to cry wh
en Poppy came up behind her.

  ‘Boo! Long time, no see, Melly! How was your week?’

  ‘I really don’t know where to start and I’m not sure I want to at the moment! How was yours?’

  She knew she was soon going to wish she hadn’t asked that question as undoubtedly Poppy and her megastar deity of a husband, Tarquin, would have been jetsetting over as much of the posh world as possible in a week, taking the nanny along with their child, Algy. Mel wasn’t sure what Tarquin did for a living but they seemed to have a life of opulence and luxury that she could only dream of. And they did it as a family.

  ‘We popped over to the villa in San Gimignano for most of the week. Just lying about by the pool. That sort of thing, you know!’

  Mel wished she did. It was difficult to empathise with someone who could swan off to her own villa in Tuscany at the drop of a hat when she could only ever hope to spend it with friends throwing up everywhere in the Home Counties.

  Home and daytime TV beckoned. Morning chat and scandal programmes posing as therapeutic, philanthropic clinics. Really they were today’s ghoul and freak shows. Mel would never have admitted it, even to her bestest friend, but she loved watching them. That was how sad she had become. Along with magazines of the same genre, these shows made her feel better … made her feel like at least she wasn’t as badly off as some. People washing their very dirty linen in public made her feel … she shuddered to let the thought take shape in her mind … superior. Mel decided to stop analysing her attitudes and behaviour and just get a cup of coffee and veg in front of the TV for a bit. She already missed the children, although when the children had been there all the time, she yearned for time to herself. Still, Michael was only in school for three days a week at the moment so she might as well make the most of her freedom.

  On the show today was a woman of eighty years of age who liked dressing in black PVC and lace and had a favourite PVC skin-tight jumpsuit with a quick-release crotch. She enjoyed the attention of many a young buck and her granddaughter had phoned the show to try to put a stop to the woman’s licentiousness. Then there was the bald, fat man who liked to wear terry nappies fastened with a safety pin and covered by plastic pants … (God knows where he bought such items?!). He also wore a frilly bonnet and booties and sucked a dummy. His particular fetish was being fed milk from a bottle by a woman in twin set and pearls and being burped over her shoulder afterwards. This stuff was real TV gold. Mel was sure she wasn’t the only person who believed that. The whole country probably watched it in secret. Even Kelly and Robert’s life seemed rather dull and straight compared to this lot. It put things into perspective and that’s what was good about it. She was just settling down nicely when the phone made her jump.