by Judy Astley
Lucy slumped into the car, her slanted eyes narrowed and her mouth pouting sullenly. ‘I forgot. I never forget. Why did I forget? Have you got my stuff?’
As Nina pulled away from the pavement, she could see Sasha waving but Lucy ignored her, she’d moved on mentally straight from school to work. She was already turning round and searching through the bag on the back seat for a change of clothes and the essential box of food. Nina joined a trail of slow-moving traffic approaching Putney Bridge.
‘What would you like to do this weekend? Perhaps Sasha could come over tomorrow and I’ll take you out somewhere,’ Nina offered.
Lucy, her mouth full of her favourite Dairylea cheese and salami sandwich, carried on munching but waved her hand to indicate something was about to be said. Eventually she swallowed, laid the half-eaten sandwich down in her lap and turned to her mother. ‘Mum. There’s something I want to say. You mustn’t be cross, promise?’
‘Well it depends. Have they just invented Saturday morning detention at school and you’re about to tell me you’ve got one?’
Lucy laughed. ‘Huh, no I’m too much of a goody for that. No it’s weekends. Since Dad, you know, went.’
Nina pulled up at the traffic lights behind a Body Shop truck, and the hope that it was using lead-free petrol crossed her mind.
‘What about weekends? Don’t you like going to stay with Daddy?’ she asked anxiously. Perhaps Lucy detested Catherine. The shaming truth was that she rather hoped she’d say exactly that.
‘Weekends, they’ve got like . . .’ Lucy sighed with the frustration of finding the right expression ‘. . . like they’re weekends, something different, something that’s got to be really special, every single time.’
Nina thought for a moment, choosing words carefully. She heard Lucy crunch hard into an apple. ‘Well that’s because they have to be shared out. I expect Daddy just wants to give you a really good time so you’ll want to keep coming to stay with him. It’s he and I who are getting divorced, you see, not you and him.’
‘Mum. It’s not just Dad. It’s you as well. You’re always wanting to make them sort of special too. I mean when Dad was there we never got dragged out to the zoo or the Kingfisher pool or to the theatre. Well we did, but not all the time anyway. Now you’re both doing it. I want to be just ordinary, do nothing.’
The traffic was on the move again and Nina concentrated on manoeuvring beneath the Hammersmith flyover. For a Friday evening, as many people seemed to be hurtling into London as out of it.
‘Well tell me what you’d really like to do then. What’s your idea of a perfect Saturday?’
Lucy didn’t hesitate: ‘Getting up at 10.30 and lying on the sofa in my dressing gown and my Totes and eating Coco-Pops right there, not at the table, and watching cartoons on telly for as long as I want.’
‘Is that it?’ Nina laughed, though it didn’t sound too bad. It was the child’s version of lazy Sunday mornings in bed with a choice of both intellectual and inane newspapers and coffee and croissants. She remembered mornings like that with Joe. Before the children they’d involved making love among the itchy crumbs, sharing a shower and then going to the pub. Now he probably did all that with Catherine, who, just as she had, thought they were making the most of the pre-baby stage.
‘Yes.’ Lucy turned an anxious face to her. ‘And can you tell Dad, because Catherine thinks television is all rubbish unless it’s a documentary about old dead history people and she thinks we should only eat muesli with no sugar, and never ever on the sofa.’
Nina smiled. ‘I don’t expect she’ll change her mind about that until she has children of her own.’
‘She doesn’t need any though, does she,’ Lucy decreed firmly, ‘because she’s got Dad to look after.’
Nina sighed heavily. ‘Oh Lucy, how can you of all people have picked up the idea that men are there to be looked after by women? He’s a grown-up, not a baby or a pet.’
Lucy went into peals of gleeful laughter. ‘I knew you’d say that!’ she shrieked. ‘It’s so easy to get you to fall for it!’
Nina listened to Lucy’s laugh. Even with the indulgence of a mother she had to admit it wasn’t a pretty sound. From somewhere among her and Joe’s ancestral way-back, their younger child had inherited an irritating high-pitched bray that ended on a cackle. If there was, as now, just something small to be delighted about there might just be the cackle on its own. Once it had been a sort of party piece, this donkeying, egged on by any amazed audience to almost uncontrollable shrill hysteria which only ended with Lucy streaming-eyed and choking and threatening to throw up. Nina had hoped she’d grow out of it. There was still time, but it was hard to fight habit.
The audition was at a dingy rehearsal studio close to the Albert Hall. Nina thanked the patron saint of car salesmen for allowing them to persuade her that all she needed was the little Polo to replace the Passat she’d shared with Joe. In a couple of years when Emily went off to university, she’d probably be open to the suggestion that all she needed was a motorbike. It was quite an exhilarating thought, speed and power, leather, freedom. There she’d be, magnificently mid-menopausal, flying on her Harley Davidson and there Joe would be, changing his tiny son’s (son’s?) nappies and wheeling a slow buggy round the park, worrying about swings, dogs and bad men . . .
‘Ready?’ she asked Lucy. Lucy’s school uniform lay in an untidy heap, thrown onto the back seat from the front. She’d changed, expertly managing not to expose her young body to bus passengers and van drivers, into jeans and a sweatshirt.
‘I’ll just brush my hair,’ Lucy said, delving into the vast canvas bag that always went with them on these outings. ‘Do I look OK? Are you sure this is what Angela said they wanted?’ Her triangular little face, peering through the long hanks of pale hair that she was vigorously brushing, looked anxious. Nina felt sudden sympathy for her. Perhaps Joe was right, perhaps there was more of an element of pushing Luce into this than Nina was prepared to admit.
‘“Clean casual,”’ Nina reassured her. That’s exactly what Angela said. But – you don’t have to do this, you know, we could just go home. We could have a pizza, go to a film if you want.’
Lucy leapt out of the car, throwing the hairbrush onto the seat and slamming the door. ‘No! No I want to do this!’ she yelled through Nina’s window. ‘I like it. I like everyone looking at gorgeous lovely me!’ Nina climbed out of the car and fed the meter while Lucy fidgeted and scuffed at the pavement. ‘We can have a pizza later, if you like,’ Lucy said, sounding, Nina thought, as if she was the grown-up calming a truculent child. Everything felt upside down.
Monica Dyson’s diary hung from a shabby old orange silk bell-rope next to the phone. She picked it up and flicked through the pages, squinting and holding the book at arm’s length. Just as she did every time, she then sighed deeply and put on the reading glasses that hung round her neck. It always felt so like giving in to despicable weakness. She peered over the top of them at the book and then turned to Graham who was halfway down the stairs, up and ready for the night shift, smelling of shaving foam and cheap deodorant.
Monica sniffed and wrinkled her nose. ‘You’ll make them nauseous,’ she complained. ‘Those poor patients of yours – the pong of hospitals is bad enough without you adding to their woes.’
Graham sat on the bottom step to put his shoes on, smiling gently and ignoring the complaints. He heard them every day: that one, or the one about the colour of his socks (‘Purple? With brown shoes?’) or the way he’d parted his hair (‘Are you sure about the left? I always thought the left was for men who bat for the other side’).
‘They don’t mind what I smell like, as long as I smell clean,’ Graham told her patiently. ‘And anyway it’s for me. Takes my mind off all the Dettol and pee.’
‘Ugh! Just don’t tell me!’ Monica shuddered, an all-over undulation that started from her gritted teeth and quivered down through her shoulders, body and rather weak knees. She sat down on the flower-em
broidered stool at the walnut Davenport from which she did all her telephoning and letter-writing.
‘I was just checking the diary,’ she told Graham. ‘It’s this Sunday I said we’d have lunch at Nina’s. Don’t forget.’
Graham stood up and went to the hall mirror to adjust his tie. He did it slowly, as he did most things, his fingers working laboriously as if he had to instruct them individually what to do. His face was becoming pink, Monica could see in the mirror, and she waited in quiet triumph while he battled for the right words.
‘I can’t come, not this Sunday. There’s a couple of F-117s flying in to Waddington. We’re all going.’
They both knew, from years of experience, that there was a choice of reactions from which Monica, this time, selected wounded disappointment. She could have had let-down anger, or stalwart resignation. Graham’s announcement was a nuisance but didn’t rate a deep sulk.
‘Oh but darling you promised!’ she wailed, waving her arms and letting them settle into an outstretched entreaty. ‘Nina will be so disappointed, and you haven’t seen the girls for simply ages.’
Graham turned to face her, the tie no more straight than when he’d started. ‘It’s all right, I’ve already told Nina. She doesn’t mind at all. She says she’ll send a taxi to collect you so there’s no problem about you getting there.’ He opened the front door. ‘I must go, I’ll be late. Will you be all right?’
Monica was looking petulant, slumped at her little desk. ‘Why can’t she drive over and get me herself? Too much trouble I suppose.’
‘Because she’ll be doing the cooking, that’s why,’ Graham told her. His quiet but affectionate ‘goodbye’ was completely lost in the slamming of the front door, leaving Monica sure that he’d simply walked out on her. She felt thoroughly aggrieved, and was determined to enjoy it.
Chapter Four
‘Emily! Lunch in half an hour! Grandma’s coming up the path right now!’
Nina’s voice cut through even Alisha’s Attic in the headphones and Emily knew that this time, the fourth time of asking (demanding), she really did have to get up. She opened her eyes and squinted into the semidarkness of her room. There were shadows of abandoned clothes hanging everywhere: over the back of the futon, on and under the futon, across the desk, all over the pink deckchair, and a huge collection – every coat and jacket she’d bought and borrowed over the past five years – shoved onto the hook on the back of the door. At night in the real deep dark, just before she went to sleep, she sometimes imagined that the bulging bundle hanging on the door was a real person, a massive, hunched-over evildoing sandman come to sprinkle nightmare dust in her eyes. Come to think of it, she decided now as she pulled the headphones off, the idea of any dust, good dream-making or bad, being sprinkled in your eyes was a horrible one, like a cold gritty day on the beach. I’d rather have no dreams at all, she thought, stretching and yawning.
Lucy opened Emily’s door, but wisely, since she had forgotten the rule about knocking first, didn’t come any further.
‘It smells disgusting in here,’ Lucy complained, holding her nose. ‘It’s even worse than Humphrey’s cage. I’ve come to remind you it’s your turn to clean him out. And I can’t find his exercise ball.’
Emily slid out of her bed, picked up a black crumpled jumper, sniffed at it and hurled it towards her overflowing laundry basket. ‘Me and Chloe couldn’t find an ashtray so we used it, well half of it anyway. It’s probably still in the garden. Look, the other half’s right here.’
From among the dusty muddle of discarded homework, candlewax, old tissues and cluttered make-up on her desk under the window she picked up a half-sphere of transparent plastic, part of the ball in which their hamster liked to roll around the sitting room, looking exactly like, Emily remembered her dad saying, a total loser from Gladiators. She felt a twinge of guilt about that; he’d also said, one of the last things before he moved out, something really obvious about making sure the cat didn’t get in while Humphrey was running around. He’d said it as if he was trying to think of things to say that would make them remember him, so they’d go round the house saying ‘Dad says . . .’ and keeping him with them. It had made her really angry that this way he was doing leaving and staying at the same time. The very next time she’d been in the house on her own, she’d hauled the cat out of its sleep on the top stair to show it the rolling hamster, and had watched, wondering if she really had the cold soul of a torturer, while the frantic cat batted the helpless little rodent round the room.
‘It was Dad’s fault,’ she muttered now, like a lifesaving mantra as she shuffled through the knickers in her drawer, looking for some that didn’t really matter, seeing as it was only a boring Sunday, with just Gran (or Grandmama as she preferred being called) coming for lunch.
‘What’s Dad’s fault?’ Lucy still hovered by the door. She was very interested in breasts at the moment and hoped to catch sight of Emily’s, so she would know, if these things ran in the family, what she could expect hers to look like quite soon.
‘Oh nothing, just sod off,’ Emily hissed at her, throwing her copy of Man-Date at her.
‘Mind my face!’ Lucy yelled, chucking a shoe back, ‘I’ve got a re-call for Barbados next week!’
Emily stalked across and slammed the door, though Lucy, fearing more violence, was already halfway down the stairs. ‘You and your fucking beauty!’ Emily shrieked after her.
‘Goodness, that girl’s got your temper!’ Monica said to Nina in the kitchen. She pattered about, dipping her finger in the mint sauce, looking for napkins in the wrong drawer and downing most of her sherry in three fast slugs. Nina concentrated on stirring the gravy, wondering what would be the least petulant and childish reply to that little comment of her mother’s. Only Monica had really been allowed full use of good old-fashioned anger in the house when Nina had been a child. Lack of consideration of any sort would set her off, directing equal rage towards a neighbour with a waywardly overhanging tree and towards her husband for going off to Bognor with a barmaid. Any display of rebellious fury by Nina or Graham would be skilfully quashed by recourse to a threatened migraine. ‘You’re making me ill,’ Monica would plead as teenage Nina stormed ‘It’s not fair!’ when Graham, two years younger, was allowed to stay nights with friends and Nina had to be home by ten. Monica would drape a purple crocheted shawl round her broad shoulders and put one delicately probing cyclamen pink fingernail to the pulse on her temple. ‘Throbbing, my skull is throbbing!’ she would wail, throwing herself on the lavender chenille sofa and pleading for the curtains to be closed and camomile tea to be brought. Graham learned very young that anger was a profitless emotion and became doggedly passive, learning how to get his own way by appealing to his mother’s awe of his male supremacy, watching, placid, treasured and contented as Nina battled her way through adolescence.
‘Hi Grandmama.’ Emily, smelling of an optimistic overdose of deodorant, drifted into the kitchen with her hairbrush.
‘Not in here, Em, go and brush it in the downstairs cloakroom,’ Nina told her.
‘Hello darling,’ Monica air-kissed Emily, and sniffed. ‘Interesting perfume,’ she said. ‘Peach blossom and L’Air du Silk Cut if I’m not mistaken. Poison, darling, absolute poison.’
Emily smirked cheekily, ‘What, the peach blossom, Gran? You’re right – it’s disgusting. Just didn’t have time to shower though. I’ll be back, just got to brush hair.’ And she was gone.
‘She’s just like you were,’ Monica said admiringly. ‘Nothing but trouble.’
Nina laughed. ‘You make it sound as if I was the perfect daughter. I must say it would have helped if you’d given me that impression at the time.’
‘Oh but I was your mother. Mothers are for laying down the tracks and making sure you children run properly on them. Grandmamas are for indulging and adoring from a safe distance. She’ll turn out fine, one day, you’ll see.’
Nina poured the gravy into a jug. ‘I don’t even begin to doubt it
actually. She’s not a problem, you know.’
Monica laughed heartily, almost choking on the last of her sherry, ‘Oh darling of course she’s a problem! She’s a girl – they’re always at loggerheads with somebody, especially their mothers. Boys now, they were born to please their mothers. They do it all their lives, it’s that special bond. You wouldn’t know of course, only having girls.’
Nina slowly counted to ten. ‘Let’s eat, shall we?’ she sighed. ‘Everything’s ready. Can you call Lucy while I put the vegetables on the table? She’s outside, up in the treehouse playing with the hamster.’
Monica went to the kitchen door and looked back at Nina. ‘You’ll have to carve, won’t you,’ she said, eyeing the steaming, rosemary-spiked leg of lamb doubtfully. ‘Such a pity Graham couldn’t come. Carving does need a man.’ She was out in the garden before Nina could reply.
Nina sighed and picked up the carving knife. ‘Any fool can carve meat,’ she muttered, piercing the skin viciously with a fork. Hot juices spurted up and caught her on the chin, making her suddenly want to cry. ‘Any fool with enough practice.’
‘Cheese and prosciutto croissant or smoked salmon bagel?’
Joe had both the huge stainless steel fridge and the emerald Perspex breadbin open and was peering into them alternately. Sunlight streamed in through the window, making all the apartment’s pale wood surfaces look bleached like parched driftwood.
Catherine lay nestled in the cushions on the cream sofa surrounded by newspaper. Joe looked at her, watching her sleek yellow head turn prettily sideways to an attitude of cute thought. If she puts her finger to her chin, like 1950s fashion models, I’ll know she’s deliberately posing, he thought. It occurred to him that this might be a near-critical thought about her, the first in their three cohabiting months. It might be something to do with the hints about babies: now he was just waiting for her to drop in something about being hungry enough for two, or to catch her shoving a cushion up her dress to check out what pregnancy would look like in the mirrored door of the wardrobe. He was quite relieved when she simply turned to him, pose-free and said, ‘Both, if there’s enough. I feel wickedly greedy.’ She grinned and bit her lip, resting her chin on the back of the sofa and watching him. Now she’s posing, Joe decided, turning away and reaching into the fridge for the cream cheese. ‘It’s all that exercise,’ Catherine said, narrowing her eyes at him suggestively.
