Reasons to Be Cheerful

by Nina Stibbe

  Having Tammy around was actually quite nice to begin with. I can’t say it was lovely because I felt uncomfortable and she was a bit annoying and there was the awful prospect of her being permanent. But I was on strange terms with my mother, and, since she now had Andy to pick up Danny from Curious Minds, I was more or less redundant.

  Also, Tammy brought some nice things with her. The salad spinner, her Elancyl body massager–a beauty secret of slim French women–and a hairdryer that made your hair smooth and sleek, and curled it under (or out, whichever you fancied). She had all sorts of cosmetics which I played with, and a foot-shaped bucket which you could fill with warm water and bubble bath and put your feet in while watching TV.

  She went down to work every day though, as usual, and would sit out in the waiting room–working to rule, doing her nails, and reading Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins. She barely spoke except to say, ‘Sign here, and here, and here,’ and, ‘Please refrain from tapping on the glass.’ And if the patients asked to make a six-monthly appointment, she’d say, ‘Give us a ring nearer the time,’ which was one of my old tricks.

  Without Tammy’s support, the ‘Masonic Improvements’ came to a standstill. The days went by and JP’s new slim-fit Latimer dental tunics began to strain at the buttons. And, because he couldn’t wear anything underneath the Latimers, his body hairs poked through. He had itchy dry skin from leaning on his elbows and not moisturizing after his bath. And, to cap it all, he’d bumped Jacobs the accountant’s car outside the golf club, which had not only humiliated him but landed him with an £80 bill.

  20. Mrs Greenbottle

  Melody was in town for a few days visiting her parents, the Longladys. We arranged to meet at the Belmont Hotel, which was just around the corner from the surgery, so we could have tea in the new conservatory and then go back to mine for a scale and polish. I politely asked after her parents and Melody told me her mother was having crazy visions and uncontrollable weeping and had asked her father to take a vow of chastity. I said how sorry I was, but Melody brushed it off.

  ‘You know what she’s like,’ she said. ‘She’s been reading Margery Kempe the mystic, that’s all.’

  She was far more concerned (and appalled) by the state of my life.

  ‘How did it all go so wrong?’ she wanted to know. She meant, how had I ended up flat-sharing with the dolly-bird girlfriend of my xenophobic boss? And how was it that my only friends were a vicar and his wife? And how had I let my boyfriend start having sex with my mother?

  She gulped her tea and looked at me with pity.

  ‘God, what a fucking mess,’ she said.

  She put it very well and we laughed. I told her Andy and I had pretty much split up, if indeed we’d ever really been together, and that I’d never had to go on the pill or use the thigh-vagina, things having never gone quite that far, and that we had always remained top-half only.

  Melody and I had been friends since the age of nine when we’d lived next door to each other. Mrs Longlady had forbidden her to play with me because of my mother being divorced, but she’d done it anyway. She’d been such a funny little thing and here she was now, so self-possessed and fiery. She was wearing a soft denim pinafore with nothing underneath it. The bib and inch-wide straps were not altogether big enough to fully cover her front, and the occasional glimpse of her breasts was slightly distracting.

  ‘And what are you wearing?’ she said, looking pointedly at my shoes. I have never in my life known a more maligned article of clothing than that pair of sandals.

  I explained my athlete’s foot. She made light of it–just as she had regarding her mother’s mental breakdown–and called it a minor ailment, and then asked how I thought Andy, or anyone, could be interested in me sexually, let alone rampantly, while I had those on my feet. She lectured me on ‘the language of shoes’, explaining that her own choice of footwear–tiny leather ballerinas–would put people in mind of a nimble young woman pirouetting or turning, or being lifted, or flitting, or dying dramatically. While mine (she biffed a sandal with her foot) only conjured a filthy old monk at morning prayer asking God’s forgiveness for masturbating all night. And was that fair on the rest of the world?

  ‘They’re just sensible shoes,’ I said.

  ‘But don’t they remind you of an old monk?’

  ‘Well, OK, yes, I suppose, but mine is only gathering medicinal herbs.’

  A waiter lurked and I felt suddenly quite self-conscious and told Melody we should go and get her teeth polished. Then I reminded her that I had athlete’s foot and shouldn’t even be out.

  Her teeth were in good condition but I mentioned her unusual bite–a class three occlusion, or, to use the vernacular, Habsburg Jaw. And told her that JP was taking on orthodontic patients if she wanted, but this would necessitate a three-monthly visit and she wouldn’t want to commit. We went upstairs and gossiped benignly. Melody couldn’t stay long because of a dinner plan with her family, and I couldn’t fully relax with Melody’s breasts moving around like the sea under a pontoon, appearing one side then the other of the straps.

  Tammy appeared and flopped on to the beanbag. She’d just eaten ‘Biryani of the Week’ at the Koh-i-Noor and a pint of wine with it, she said, and now just wanted to go to sleep. The drop down to the beanbag was greater than she’d expected and she shrieked, then laughed, and then looking up, saw Melody’s pinafore and stopped laughing. She began lecturing Melody on clothing and decency. Which included, ‘It just makes me feel so sad to see you dressed like that.’ And continued, ‘Go and look at yourself in the mirror and see how you feel.’

  Melody picked up her duffel bag and went. I felt it a shame, but slightly deserved after her attack on my sandals. We heard the front door slam and then Tammy burst into tears.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she said. ‘It’s only the human body–who am I to tell you young ones what to wear?’

  I agreed and reminded her she’d been on an emotional roller-coaster, and that made her feel better.

  ‘Yeah, I’m all over the place,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Well, go then.’

  Tammy and I decided to throw a dinner party, the main purpose being to bring about a reconciliation between her and JP. Had she been a real friend, I’d have begged her not to go back to him and listed all the things that made him untenable as a life partner and a human being. But I was desperate to have my flat back to myself and therefore I wanted this reconciliation as much as she did, or even more so. Also, I liked the idea of showing off the DIY I’d done on the flat.

  Tammy was extremely excited about it, which shows just how gloomy she had become. Food-wise, she was thinking something along the lines of a Greek mezze with everyone dipping bread into different bowls of stuff but suddenly remembered a thing she’d read about passengers on a cruise ship all going down with dysentery after sharing a bowl of sour cream and chives. It only took one of them to dip and dip again to introduce the deadly germ.

  So, no dipping. Grilled cheeses and salad with olives and maybe a moussaka–though we’d have to call it mince-and-aubergine bake so as not to put people off.

  ‘The food would really go with the look you’ve created,’ said Tammy, which was a very good point, the flat now having a bistro-cum-taverna look since my granny Benson had come back from Knossos with various olive-themed objets d’art and a replica fresco, and the kitchenette window had a gingham half-curtain that I’d run up myself from a pattern in a magazine.

  ‘Who to invite, though?’ I wondered, meaning other than JP.

  ‘Let’s throw caution to the wind…’ said Tammy. ‘Let’s invite everyone.’

  She had read an article recently, entitled ‘Cortion to the Wind’, in which the writer, Sali Cortion, surprises herself by doing a series of inadvisable things, and everything going well and her ending up marrying a blind cellist. I’d read this article too, and found it a bit fanciful.

  ‘I don’t think we should overstretch ourselves,’ I said.
>
  ‘That’s just the sort of thing that Sali had always told herself. And that had been holding her back… from marrying a cellist.’

  ‘Are we sure JP will actually turn up?’

  ‘He will if we tell him Pa Vogel will be here. A Freemason, who might get him the nod.’

  ‘Are you talking about my father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not sure he is a Freemason.’

  ‘But you said he was.’

  ‘Only because you wanted me to.’

  Tammy seemed disappointed. ‘Invite him anyway,’ she said. ‘JP would be sure to come if there was a chance of getting him.’

  ‘What if JP tries a funny handshake on him?’ I asked, laughing.

  ‘He won’t try the handshake, he’s not a Freemason yet. Give him credit.’

  ‘Ah, but if I invite my father I can’t really invite my mother.’

  ‘Why, did they have a custody battle?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but divorced people tend not to socialize together.’

  ‘Mia and André get along just fine,’ said Tammy, ‘and Liz and Richard.’

  Inviting my father would be fine–he was a good mixer and I liked the idea of JP trying a funny handshake on him. It would only be a problem if he wanted to bring his wife. I phoned him. He was delighted.

  ‘And shall I bring Rosemary?’ he asked, as I knew he would.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ he said, but he didn’t say any more.

  My siblings and I had done rather well with our stepfather who only helped us or kept his nose out. Our stepmother, though, was tougher to deal with and harder to like. She believed in God so fiercely she had no faith left over for people. And we, her husband’s ex-family–being unruly, materialistic, agnostic at best, and always looking for laughs–presented a constant threat to her children’s moral development.

  I must have been twelve when she claimed, in front of everyone, that when she had first met me, some years previously, I had had an imaginary friend–a middle-aged woman called Mrs Greenbottle, who had been by my side, advising me, from a young age. This was not true but it was difficult to convincingly deny it–because of course a twelve-year-old would deny such a thing. My siblings sniggered about it and my stepmother even went so far as to apologize for mentioning it–as if she’d broken a confidence between us.

  I’d never had an imaginary friend, and if I had, I’d never have had a middle-aged one and I’d never have called her Mrs Greenbottle. I’d have had an assertive teenager with a passion for justice called Ruth or Justine or Toni, and I said so to my stepmother.

  She explained that I had invented a sensible mother figure because that was what I was craving. But I wasn’t. If I was craving anything it was a jolly stepmother to make things easier in our quest to befriend our estranged father. I soon got bored with denying Mrs Greenbottle and when she popped up (which was only ever when my stepmother summonsed her), I’d just go along with it.

  One day, though, when my stepmother had overstepped the mark in criticizing my mother’s latest boyfriend, pregnancy or car, I turned Mrs Greenbottle back on her.

  ‘Mrs Greenbottle wants you to stop being horrible about my mother,’ I told her.

  ‘Mrs Greenbottle must know that I’m not being horrible. All I wish is that Mummy could be better and help you reach your potential, and stop harming herself with drink and promiscuity.’

  ‘Mrs Greenbottle doesn’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said.

  ‘I think Mrs Greenbottle knows very well. She’s not a fool.’

  ‘How do you know? She’s my imaginary friend, not yours. I invented her to turn a blind eye. She loves Mummy just the way she is.’

  ‘Perhaps Mrs Greenbottle doesn’t care about Mummy?’

  ‘You don’t even know her,’ I said.

  ‘I know that she’s a very good woman.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry but she says she’s not coming here again because of your nastiness and cheap bacon.’

  And though that was the last I ever heard of Mrs Greenbottle, I still couldn’t risk her in front of my friends and work colleagues.

  Tammy felt we should not invite Andy–the whole point of the party being to get JP in the right mood (to take Tammy back, though that wasn’t spelled out).

  ‘Andy has a detrimental effect on JP’s mood,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why.’

  ‘He knows Andy thinks he’s a cretin.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I agreed it was best not to invite him. He wouldn’t enjoy it and if I told him my motive, he’d think me manipulative, and if I didn’t, he’d think me insane.

  ‘We’re going to have a right old mix of people,’ I said.

  ‘That was the very thing that made Sali Cortion’s party a success–the variety of people,’ said Tammy, listing them. ‘A grumpy senior colleague, her piano teacher–good-looking but crotchety–competitive sister and boyfriend–whom she dislikes–a neighbour who has been known to complain about Sali’s piano practice, her grandmother, the grandmother’s companion and a few others.’

  ‘Yes, but doesn’t she wake the next morning thinking, “I dreamt I invited an odd assortment of people to dinner. Thank God it was only a dream,” and then remembers it wasn’t a dream–she really had thrown caution to the wind?’

  ‘Yes, you read it too!’ said Tammy. ‘And it goes really well.’

  So, as well as JP, we invited Reverend and Mrs Woodward, my sister, her new boyfriend, Melody (who stayed in town an extra day especially), my father, Priti Mistry, and Jossy and Bill Turner. In the event, Jossy was away on an artists’ retreat in Norfolk, so Bill brought his nurse, Rhona, instead. My mother ended up coming because when I rang her for moral support, instead of offering advice, she asked why she hadn’t been invited, so I had to say, ‘Come if you like.’

  And she then said, ‘Thank you, I was going to come anyway,’ which she did.

  When I asked Priti I warned her that JP would be there.

  ‘You know, the horrible dentist,’ I said.

  But Priti didn’t care. She wanted a free evening out, plus she and Tammy had bonded at Jazzercise over having powdery leg skin.

  On the night, the flat looked lovely. Tammy had moved all her things into my bedroom and turned the lounge back into a lounge. I’d spent £1 on a bunch of carnations, which I put in a jam jar, and it looked like a watercolour painting. We brought all the chairs up from the waiting room and lit a few candles in bottles. Tammy threw a red scarf over a lampshade so it would give a more forgiving light and I referenced Blanche DuBois, who did the same to hide her wrinkles.

  JP arrived first, all dressed up in corduroys and a horrible silky shirt, holding a bottle of Bull’s Blood and a box of mint Matchmakers. He was self-conscious and drifted about saying I’d got the flat looking ‘very modish’ but making it very clear he was the landlord by looking closely at certain things, like the knob on the heater and the window frames. Tammy, in a spotty dress, acted shy and kept herself busy cutting bread and snipping parsley and saying, ‘Excuse me,’ and opening the fridge. My mother arrived next, struggling with a pudding she’d been given by a friend who catered for weddings, something that looked like the phone book but was probably a manuscript, and Angelo the dog–whom she was dog-sitting while Miss Smith had her varicose veins stripped. I rushed to take Angelo’s lead, picked him up and kissed him.

  ‘Abe’s going to try to put in an appearance after his dressage lesson,’ my mother said, ‘and Andy should be here soon.’

  ‘But Andy wasn’t invited,’ I said.

  JP made a half-hearted protest about Angelo the dog, or maybe Andy, and my mother stared at him and said, ‘Is there a problem?’ and it almost caused a scene but I think JP knew better than to start on my mother.

  She then made an announcement about not feeding Angelo titbits because he was getting out of condition since being back with Miss Smith, whom she’d seen giving hi
m ginger cake.

  My sister arrived next and her new boyfriend was none other than JP’s son, JP Junior.

  JP and Tammy stared, open-mouthed, both too shocked to speak. I was furious with her for having this secret and not telling me.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said to my mother, ‘she’s going out with JP’s castrated son.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said my mother.

  ‘Junior?’ said JP, and JP Junior gave his father a manly hug, and Tammy went over to say hello too.

  My sister bundled me into the kitchenette to ask why I hadn’t mentioned that JP and Tammy would be here.

  ‘If you ever bothered speaking to me, or listening to me, or asking how my life was going, you’d know they’d be here,’ I said. ‘Tammy is fucking living here and I’m only having this bloody party so she can move out.’

  Tammy and JP, at the opposite side of the room, probably heard most of this but only looked confused.

  My mother asked outright, in front of everyone, where the couple had met (Tammy’s fortieth), before launching into a short talk on the doctor/nurse relationship and that JP Junior needn’t think that Thomasin would let that cliché play out. Then thankfully, Bill Turner arrived with his nurse, and then Melody, who went straight up to Tammy to have a few private words, and they held hands briefly. Then Priti arrived with some bread in tinfoil. She was wearing flip-flops with socks, which made her look as though she’d escaped from a hospital.

  Then the Woodwards. Reverend Woodward looked bizarre in ordinary blue jeans which had been pressed with a hard crease down the leg, and topped with a black shirt and vicar’s collar. My mother tackled him on it.

  ‘Why are you wearing your dog collar at a party?’ she said. ‘You’ll put us all on edge.’

  ‘It’s my uniform.’

  ‘No one else has seen fit to appear in their work clothes,’ she said, gesturing to JP. ‘You’re not about to give a sermon, are you?’