The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva

by Sarah May

  ‘He’s not in,’ Arthur said. ‘He’s not in,’ he said again, his voice breaking this time.

  Just then the sound of a mower starting up filled the air.

  ‘That’s him,’ Arthur shouted, pushing open the side gate and disappearing into the back garden, closely followed by Findlay.

  There was Joe driving his new sit-on mower, Toro, towards them, crashing through the buddleia and waving happily.

  Joe was happy. Today. Most days. Generically happy.

  The impression was overwhelming and unavoidable.

  Waving back, Jessica looked out over the garden vibrant with unfashionable, seasonal colour and felt a strange, unnerving sense of comfort. The lawn was early summer soft: a bright, vibrant, fledgling green. The borders were packed with perennials and annualsthe guardians of suburban dreams, bringing the men and women who cultivated them to their knees when there was nothing else left to.

  Joe came to a stop where the crazy paving patio began and, leaving Toro’s engine running, jumped down and held Jessica tightly in a hug that was primal in its reassurance.

  After being introduced, he hugged Margery just as tightly, making her gasp, before swinging Arthur up into the air and rubbing Findlay’s head.

  Then, squinting at the boys, he said, ‘Who wants a ride?’

  Arthur squealed with excitement and Findlay silently conceded as Joe hauled them both up onto the mower. Turning Toro round, they accelerated back up the garden, Joe letting Arthur take the wheel and not caring when they drove into the wigwam of sweet peas.

  ‘Your sweet peas,’ Margery said.

  Joe either didn’t hear or chose to ignore this.

  Margery and Jessica stood silently observing the demise of the sweet-pea wigwams as Joe helped the boys off Toro and went over to the barbecue he’d built himselfbased on one him and Lenny, Jessica’s step-mother, used at their time-share villa in Portugal.

  Margery could almost smell the parties and gatherings that had taken place here in the back garden on Marine Drive. She rarely bought anything other than mince, liver, pork fillet andoccasionallya small chicken if Edith was coming to lunch. She wondered what it would be like to order enough meat for twenty people or more. During what she considered her long life so far, Margery had hosted very littlenot even her mother’s funeral; not even Tom’s. They hadn’t let her anywhere near Tom’s. Wherever she went, she was the guest grudgingly invited, grudgingly welcomed. Margery had experienced every nuance of social abandonment among family, friends and strangers.

  The air filled with the smell of barbecue.

  She heard Joe Palmer’s voice coming from somewhere close by. ‘You stay where you arethis is your day off. Sangria?’

  Then Jessica’s, ‘Dad, I’m driving.’

  ‘It’s weakloads of lemonade in it. I’ll make you a coffee after.’

  Why couldn’t Robert have married into a family like this? Not that barrage of dogs, Wellingtons, loud echoing voices and flat smiling faces that concealed cruelties Margery didn’t understand. The few times she’d been to visit Beatrice and Marcus in Gloucestershire it had been like Bluebeard’s Castle. There wasn’t a door in that Georgian house she hadn’t been afraid of opening.

  And the lack of warmth and intimacy that pervaded every peeling, rotting nook and cranny of that house had been grafted, by Robert’s bride, onto Robert himself, and now Robert was trying to live his life without love and fool Margery, of all people, that he didn’t even need hers. Her thoughts turned to Robert himselfwhat a beautiful, healthy baby he’d been. And the joythe joy she’d taken in him, despite the way they’d looked at her on that maternity ward, despite the lack of flowers and visitors. The other women on the ward didn’t know her, didn’t know of her, but her story was clear as day and they kept their distance. You wouldn’t think that the distance between hospital beds varied much, but it did. To the eye it might look the same…if you were to measure the distance between beds it would have been the sameespecially in that place with that Sisterbut the distance wasn’t the same. There was her bed, then there was everybody else’s bed.

  ‘Margery?’

  For a moment she thought it was visiting time in the ward; that somebody had come for her after all. She squinted up through bright sunshine at a familiar face she couldn’t place.

  ‘Margery? Sangria?’

  She smiled at Joe, utterly terrified. She had no idea where she was.

  ‘Margery,’ Joe said again, then broke off. ‘You all right, love?’

  ‘Joe,’ she said at last. ‘Joe.’

  He crouched down, a jug of sangria in his hand, raising it into the air between them. ‘Or d’you want water?’

  ‘I want that.’

  Joe chuckled warmly and poured her a glass.

  Margery took a sip, aware that her heart was racing.

  Joe disappeared back into the house.

  ‘Not too close,’ Jessica yelled at Arthur, who was running towards the barbecue in pursuit of a football.

  Robert never got a chance to play with anybody like that, Margery thought. Never got any invitations anywhere. For a moment, watching Findlay kick the ball back to Arthur, she couldn’t think where she was. Who were these people? Did they mean anything to her at all? She watched a ladybird crawling across the back of her hand, then took another sip of sangria and looked away.

  Jessica was staring at the cedar tree at the end of the garden, where Joe had started to build a tree house for Arthur.

  Beyond the cedar tree there was a line of Scotch pines, bent crooked by sea winds. When smoke from the barbecue blew the other way, there was the scent of pine needles baking in the sun against the cracked, bald patches of lawn under the trees. Jessica thought she could smell creosote as wellfaintlyand turned back to the barbecue and the smell of cooking meat instead.

  Then Joe reappeared, carrying two salads.

  Margery got laboriously to her feet. She had to be useful; that was her role in life. ‘Need some help there, Joe? Don’t worry…’

  Joe wasn’t worrieduntil Margery tried to wrestle the salads from his hands.

  ‘I’m fineMargery, I’m fine.’

  ‘You can’t do everything, Joe.’

  ‘Let me just get these to the table.’

  ‘You go and sort out the barbecue.’

  Margery pulled the salad dish out of Joe’s hands and, failing to grasp it in her own, had no choice but to watch it fall onto the crazy paving where it smashed, the broken pieces mingling with the salad.

  Arthur and Findlay stopped their game and came running over. ‘What’s happened?’ Findlay yelled then, embarrassed, ‘Grandma—’

  ‘Stay on the grass,’ Jessica shouted, ‘There are pieces everywhere.’

  Margery still hadn’t said anything.

  Joe crouched down.

  ‘Oh, Dad.’ Jessica scraped up orange, olives and mint leaves, glancing up at Margery, whose shoes were covered in pomegranate seeds.

  ‘How did that happen?’ Margery said at last.

  Joe, who’d just cut his hand, disappeared into the house.

  ‘I don’t know how it happened,’ Margery said to Jessica.

  ‘Margeryit’s finejust an accident. Come on. Boysaway from the barbecue,’ she yelled at Findlay and Arthur who, bored, had drifted back over to the fire.

  The smell of barbecue was sending a neighbour’s dog into paroxysms and the constant yapping was beginning to make Jessica panic.

  ‘It’s all ruinedcompletely ruined. I ruined it,’ Margery carried on, watching Jessica scrape the salad and remains of the bowl into a pile. ‘He must have spent ages on this.’

  ‘The meat’s ready,’ Findlay called out. ‘I SAID THE MEAT’S READY.’

  They all stopped.

  Joe opened the kitchen window and poked his head out. ‘What’s all the noise about?’

  ‘It’s all ruined,’ Margery said again as Joe reappeared on the patio with dustpan and brush.

  ‘It’s only salad.’ He scraped it i
nto the bag he was holding. ‘I’ll make another one.’

  ‘You can’t make another one,’ Margery insisted, tearful.

  ‘I think I’ve got enough of everythingapart from olives. We’re almost out of those.’ He stood up, wincing again.

  ‘You all right?’ Jessica asked, watching him.

  ‘I will be if I stop bending down like that,’ he said.

  ‘He can’t make another salad,’ Margery said to Jessica as Joe made his way back to the kitchen.

  ‘Dad loves cooking, Margeryit’s fine. Come here.’ She put her arms round Margery, who sniffed a couple of times.

  Unsure what else to do as Jessica hosed down the patio, Margery drained her cup of sangria then stalked unevenly up the garden to where Arthur and Findlay were playing.

  ‘Who are you?’ Arthur asked as she bent down to peer at them through the branches of the cedar tree.

  ‘I’m Findlay’s grandma,’ she said.

  Findlay didn’t back her up and Arthur didn’t respond to this.

  After lunch, Joe got Margery into the lounge where he switched the TV on for her. Once he’d left the room, Margery’s eyes scanned the walls full of brightly coloured photos of Lenny and Joe taken in global locations: cruise ships…winter breaks in Barbados…the villa in Portugal…snorkelling among coral…riding camels in the desert. Margery felt disorientated to the point of nausea. It wasn’t the places that bothered hershe had never really dreamt of travel although she had always said she wouldn’t mind a trip down the Nile before she diedit was the overwhelming sense of life lived. She had tried to live, but every time she’d tried, something had been taken away from her, and every time that happened she was left with that feeling of waiting again; forever waiting for something…anything to happen. So much time to fill in, always; so much time.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ Joe said, emerging from the house with a tray and sitting down at the wrought-iron table. ‘Have the boys got sun cream on?’

  ‘Course they’ve got sun cream on.’

  ‘It burns quicker down here on the coastit’s the salt in the air.’

  ‘Dadthey’ve got sun cream on.’

  They sat in silence, drinking their coffee, happy to observe a dragonfly that had landed on the table near the sugar bowl.

  ‘Arthur’s getting big,’ Joe said after a while. ‘My mum used to always say that you lose them when they start school.’

  ‘I’ll be happy for any childcare I can get my hands onhowever it comesand if it’s free, all the better.’

  ‘How’s it goingwork?’

  ‘It’s not,’ Jessica said, listlessly.

  ‘And Ellie?’

  ‘Ellie’s…God, she’s difficult.’

  ‘Understatement,’ Joe chuckled. ‘I know you don’t want to hear it, but you’re too similar, that’s what it is.’ Then, suddenly serious, ‘If it all gets too much, you know you’ve got a home hereall of you. I’ve always said that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Me and Lenny aren’t going to just stand by and watch you—’

  ‘Dad,’ she cut him off, ‘I just need to make this moment workhowever rudimentary my attempts look to the outside world.’ She sighed, her eyes on the dragonfly. ‘I mean having Ellie so young and then losing PeterPeter was one thing,’ she said with difficulty, ‘but then, Elliethere’s just never any let-up…’ She broke off. ‘Is it this hard for everyone?’

  ‘Noyou’ve had it harder than most.’ He gave her leg a squeeze. ‘You’re doing brilliant, Jessbrilliant.’

  Jessica nodded, not wanting to cry.

  ‘I need to make this work to get beyond it.’

  ‘I know you need to make it work, I just don’t want you thinking you’ve got to do it all by yourself. Come and make it work down herewith us.’

  ‘Don’t ask me again, DadI might just say yes.’

  ‘You know how much Lenny loves the kids.’

  ‘Dad!’ Jessica warned him.

  ‘Calm down, love,’ Joe said, taking hold of her hand. ‘Just calm down.’

  The dragonfly took off.

  ‘Why didn’t you and Lenny ever have kids?’ Jessica said suddenly. She’d said it without even thinking. Watching Joe, she realised for the first time that Joe must only have been in his mid-thirtiesthe age she was nowwhen he’d met Lenny.

  Joe looked at her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said quickly, ‘it’s none of my—’

  ‘We tried.’ He shrugged.

  ‘You wanted kids?’

  ‘More than anything,’ he said with difficulty. ‘The things we tried…the doctors we saw…and then it got to the stage where the longer it went on, the more it felt likeI don’t know, it’s difficult to explainbut like that was something that wasn’t going to happen to us.’

  Jessica, listening, was trying to work out when this had happened, chronologicallyhow old must she have been: twenty?

  ‘Anyway,’ Joe said, looking at her, ‘People weren’t so keyed up on the whole infertility thing or IVF or anything like thatnot that it was infertility. More like an inexplicable genetic incompatibility. Did I say that right?’

  Jessica nodded.

  ‘I could have children with any woman other than Lenny. Lenny could have children with any man other than me.’

  Jessica tried to process the full implication of the choice they had both clearly made, and realised suddenly that if she had known this about Lenny sooner, it might have changed everything between thembecause she had never trusted Lenny; had always presumed Lenny and Joe wouldn’t last.

  To be fair, the relationship between Lenny and Jessica never had the best of beginnings. The year she was fifteen, the year she lost her motherJessica realised her dad was having an affair. A year after that, the woman her dad had been having an affair with while her mother was still aliveLennymoved in with them and became her stepmother. It was obviouseven to an emotionally decimated sixteen-year-oldthat Joe was uncontrollably in love with Lenny. Now, for the first time, Jessica realised just how much Lenny must have been in love with Joe, and howfar from taking anything away from her at that timeLenny had in fact given her a man who wouldn’t otherwise have been up to being a father.

  ‘I have a feeling she might have gone up to London and seen someoneat the time. But she never said anything to me. Anyway, nothing came of it.’ Joe smiled, unsure why.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Lenny? She’s wellworks too much, but I can’t get her to stop. She’s in Birmingham today.’

  ‘Birmingham?’

  ‘A lot of soldiers in hospitals in BirminghamScottish soldiers with partners in Scotland who can’t visit because they haven’t got any childcare and the MOD won’t issue rail passes…. We should get these boys to the beach soonthere’s a haze coming in; might rain.’ Joe got to his feet.

  ‘What about you and Mum?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Me and Mum, what?’ Joe said, staring at her, surprised. They never talked about Linda; rarely ever had done.

  Jessica was as surprised as him at the question. Only lately, she had begun to feel haunted by the failure of her parents’ marriage, and wondered, increasingly, whether her real struggle lay not in trying to be herself, but in trying not to be her mother.

  ‘Why didn’t you and Mum have any more children? Why was there only me?’

  Joe was silent for a moment. ‘Things were difficult after you were bornwith Linda. I think we both sort of knew we couldn’t go through that again.’

  ‘How difficult?’

  ‘Well, you know how it isonly with Linda it was worse. She was put back in hospital when you were six months oldon a general psychiatric ward.’

  ‘A psychiatric ward?’

  ‘I thought you knew.’

  ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘She just couldn’t copethe shock of responsibility, I suppose. But it never got any better. I didn’t want her in hospital, but I ran out of ideas and nothing I did made anything any better; didn’t even make things bearable. But…’
>
  ‘But what?’

  ‘When they started the electric shock treatment, I wished I hadn’t taken her.’

  ‘You never told me Mum had to have electric shock treatment after I was born,’ Jessica said, unnerved.

  ‘That’s what they did thenpeople didn’t use the expression “postnatal depression”. They said she was depressed and that’s the treatment they advised and I’d sort of gone under myself and suddenly we were in this place neither of us had any control over.’ He paused, staring unseeing up the length of the garden. ‘I don’t think we ever got over it, and we both knew we couldn’t go through that again.’ He broke off. ‘You all right? You did ask.’

  ‘I knowI know.’ She looked at him. ‘Have you got any notes or medical records or anything?’

  ‘Whatof Mum’s? No.’

  After another minute’s silence, Jessica said, ‘What’s the time?’

  ‘The time? Around two.’

  ‘We should take the boys onto the beach.’

  Neither of them moved.

  ‘I did love her at the start.’

  Jessica watched him, unconvinced. ‘You don’t have to say that.’

  ‘I did love her at the start,’ he insisted. ‘I meannot being able to get your keys in the front door your hands are so busy shaking with excitementlove.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever loved her. She didn’t seem to get anything out of being around me and I never got anything out of being around her. Most of the time, I just couldn’t work out the point of her. I don’t think a single day of my childhood went by when I didn’t wish her dead.’

  ‘Jess,’ Joe said, ‘that’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘Then when she did die…’

  ‘What?’

  Jessica shrugged, her eyes fixed on the cedar tree at the end of the garden that Findlay and Arthur had been attempting to climb for the past thirty minutes. ‘I don’t know…’

  She forgot what she was about to say. There, on the baked mud beneath the cedar, was a small dog.

  She shielded her eyes from the sun and stared. It was digging for something. ‘Whose dog is that?’ She pointed.