by Nina Stibbe
‘Could it be because of JP’s prejudice against coloured people?’ I asked. ‘His xenophobia.’
The three of them looked at me.
‘That is utter nonsense,’ said JP. ‘How do you explain Miss Ojoko?’
‘Miss Ojoko is his only coloured patient,’ I explained, looking at Bill. ‘He is sexually attracted to her.’
‘Lizzie!’ said Tammy. ‘Don’t say things like that.’
‘You know it’s true.’
‘Could it be something to do with his wife?’ asked Tammy. ‘I mean, the way she was treated.’
‘I didn’t treat her badly,’ said JP. ‘I left her–that’s allowed, isn’t it, for God’s sake?’
‘You left her eventually,’ said Tammy, ‘but you lied to her for years.’
‘So did you.’
Bill butted in. ‘No, no, no. It won’t have been anything like that–no one would judge you on that score.’
‘So, what could it be, Bill?’ said JP, his voice despairing. ‘If it’s about that bloody violin, I didn’t steal it, I smashed it up.’
‘I don’t think it’s about a musical instrument,’ said Bill.
‘So you do know?’ said JP.
‘People feel you haven’t behaved in a compassionate manner befitting your profession. You haven’t always helped people in need.’
‘Who’s said that?’
‘Well,’ I blurted, ‘Abe from Abraham’s Motors for one, I bet.’
‘Don’t bloody tell me he’s a Mason,’ said JP.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Bill. ‘Abe’s a Steward, and his father’s a Senior Warden.’
‘Right,’ said JP, ‘I see.’
‘And I’m afraid, in all conscience, I couldn’t back you either,’ said Bill, ‘under the circumstances.’
‘So, is it a no–or a never?’ asked JP.
‘I think it’s a never.’
The day after JP’s blackballing, Tammy invited me for a drink.
‘I need to speak to you about something,’ she said.
‘Do you want to come up to the flat?’
‘I’d rather go round to the Belmont,’ she said, and I assumed she was about to tell me she was pregnant.
When we got there, I saw she had a box containing her best cactus. I recognized its hexagonal pot and gangly limbs.
‘I’d like you to have this,’ she told me, and though it was the last thing in the world I wanted, I took it, thanked her profusely, and asked what was going on.
She told me she was leaving.
‘Leaving JP?’ I said.
‘Leaving JP and the practice.’
‘Where are you going?’ I felt strangely sad.
‘Massachusetts,’ she said. ‘I’m going with your father and his family, to be secretary and mother’s help.’
‘Oh, I see–you’re the mature American lady.’
‘Mature?’ she said.
She hoped I didn’t feel she’d betrayed me, and after a minute or two, I didn’t. But I did remind her of my plan to write for Woman’s Own about the tricks and tips of our American counterparts, and that she’d promised to do her best to get me an interview with Erma Bombeck.
‘I know,’ she cringed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘He won’t leave his wife for you, though,’ I said. ‘He’s gay.’
Tammy laughed as if I were joking. I congratulated her again, more for leaving JP than for getting the job with my father, and I wished her well.
‘Does JP know?’ I asked as we left the bar.
‘Not yet.’
Epilogue
A year had passed since I’d bought the Ossie dress from Best End Boutique and driven JP and Tammy to the BDA Winter Dinner Dance, and since Andy Nicolello and John Lennon had died. A whole year.
And I’d changed in so many ways–I’d passed my driving test on the third attempt, I’d gone on to John Player Special low tar, and my athlete’s foot had completely cleared up.
I did not stay on at the Wintergreen practice after the showdown in front of Bill Turner. I managed to get a month’s salary out of JP and went home to my old room, where I was unemployed except for faking my mother’s call sheets, editing her novel, writing articles for women’s magazines, and applying for jobs. Tammy was staying with Ann-Sofie and helping at the Lunch Box until the Massachusetts job started. She rang occasionally to ask something about my father’s family in preparation for her new job. I was able to tip her off about their love of Laurel and Hardy, and Frank Cooper’s diabetic marmalade.
One morning, early in the New Year, as I sat at the kitchen table looking at the situations vacant, my mother appeared with a letter from Patience Tidy of Faber & Faber.
‘Patience has asked to have a meeting,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we went to London together?’
She passed me the letter, which read:
Dear Miss Quietly-Benson-Holt,
Thank you for suggesting a meeting. This is unusual but since you’ll be nearby anyway, I would be happy to have a chat with you. I can’t promise to be much help but I can certainly give you a cup of tea.
Yours sincerely,
Patience Tidy
Faber & Faber
Although it didn’t sound like an offer so much as resigned compliance, I was excited and wondered if I might grill Patience Tidy on how to get a foot in the door at King’s Reach Tower. I mentioned this to my mother and she put me straight.
‘That won’t be possible,’ she said and told me I’d be going along A) for the trip and B) to mind Danny while she had her meeting because, while she fully expected Patience to be a fellow feminist, she didn’t think Danny’s presence would be conducive to a full and frank literary discussion. Patience might get tense and nervous if Danny drove one of his lorries repeatedly over Ted Hughes’s latest poem, even though that would probably be just what Ted Hughes would want. I was to entertain Danny in the British Museum and buy him lunch in a café in order to give my mother the freedom she needed.
‘Won’t Danny be at school?’ I asked.
‘We shan’t get back in time to collect him,’ said my mother. ‘He’ll have an educational day in London instead.’
When the day arrived, in spite of it being a chilly winter morning my mother chose to wear a cream-coloured safari skirt suit with flaps and epaulettes. I hadn’t taken much notice of this at home but seeing her pace about on the platform at Leicester station I referred to it in what I thought was a humorous comment:
‘Dr Livingstone, I presume,’ I said.
My mother took great offence.
‘What do you mean, Dr Livingstone?’
‘You know, you’re in a safari suit,’ I said. ‘You look like an explorer on the Zambezi or something–it’s nice, you look very nice.’
My mother had lost a bit of her confidence since Andy’s death, on top of giving up drinking, and was a reduced version of her old (new) self. It was now her habit to look at her reflection whenever possible in a shop window, or to glance down at what she could see of herself, turning her leg out to the side, smoothing her midriff, and checking her fingernails, whereas previously she’d been carefree and relaxed. I regretted making the quip. That’s the thing with ex-drunks, I thought, they’re sensitive. She might now perform less well in her meeting at Faber & Faber and it would be down to my quip. I did my best to build her up again on the train, with much literary talk and bolstering reminders of her brilliance as a mother and a writer. I reminded her that she’d called JP a xenophobe and stood up for Abe and Priti when I hadn’t, even though I was young and had nothing to lose, and so forth.
In spite of all this, I couldn’t help but question the safari suit and wished she’d worn something warmer and more suitable. I myself was wearing a tartan kilt, frilly white blouse and high-heeled maroon boots, and looked very Christmassy even though it was January. There’s a photograph of me in the outfit. I have Danny on my lap on a bench in a garden square in Bloomsbury, and I look very much like a brunette Lady Di. It would be r
ather a nice shot except I’m taking a puff on my cigarette and one eye is screwed up.
Soon it was time for my mother to go off for her meeting at Faber & Faber and I wished her luck and squeezed her hand. Danny and I went to the museum but he became bored after five minutes, not being quite old enough to appreciate the statues or the building itself, in spite of his Montessori education. So we went to a little café nearby–as agreed with my mother–and he had some spaghetti and did some drawings while I had coffee and toast. The waiters kept asking if I’d like to order something else.
‘No, thank you,’ I said, over and over. ‘We’re waiting for our mother.’
She was gone for almost two hours. I thought of Patience listening to her ideas and plots, and possibly marvelling at her safari suit. I hoped to God Patience wasn’t the jokey type and hadn’t said, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume,’ to break the ice–though maybe editors were allowed to say that kind of thing.
Danny and I read Not Now, Bernard so many times that I started to question the logic of the story and to criticize the decor in Bernard’s house, and then at last we saw our mother come swinging across the square in a whole new set of clothes–a trouser suit in mauve brushed denim with the hugest belt buckle you ever saw. I could tell by her demeanour that the meeting had gone well. She ordered a black coffee and lit a cigarette.
‘Did you win her over?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I’m to send her a reworking, and this time I’m to really get inside Calipastra’s head–I’m switching to a first-person narrative. She’s very excited.’
But there was more. ‘And I’ve got you a job interview,’ she said, waving her fists in the air.
‘At Faber and Faber?’ I asked, terrified, thrilled.
‘No, no, it’s at Lulu’s Boutique around the corner, where I got this.’ She indicated the trouser suit. ‘It’s full of lovely clothes and trinkets and they have Radio Three going all day and you’ll get a huge staff discount. I actually got a discount,’ she said, indicating the new outfit again, ‘as if you already worked there.’ She was breathless with excitement.
‘Lulu’s,’ I said.
‘And we’d be able to meet for lunch whenever I come up for editorial meetings with Patience.’
‘But I might not get the job. And where will I live?’
‘You will definitely get the job, I promise, and you can lodge with Josephine in Kilburn.’
‘I thought Aunt Josephine’s marriage was on the rocks.’
‘Oh, yes…’ said my mother. ‘But how do you know that?’
‘You read her diary, remember?’
‘God, yes, Uncle Peter was taking his meals in the pub,’ she mused, ‘and all that kind of thing, wasn’t it–well remembered, Lizzie.’
‘Won’t I be in the way,’ I asked, ‘if the marriage is on the rocks?’
‘No, it’s lovely to have someone to complain to and eat with at times like that,’ said my mother. ‘You can spy on Uncle Peter for her. It’ll be perfect, and you might even give her the confidence to sling him out.’
Danny, who was drifting off in my mother’s lap, murmured, ‘Don’t spy on Uncle Peter.’
I imagined living with my aunt and her long-term partner–who was apparently clever but for some reason couldn’t get a good job–in their lovely little garden flat. I certainly wasn’t going to offer to spy on Uncle Peter, nor would I be responsible for his being slung out. On the contrary, I’d bring them back together. For a start, I’d help him improve his CV and I’d shorten her name to Jo, because who wouldn’t want to be called Jo if they could be? And wouldn’t that put her in a whole new light?
‘I might be able to help them navigate the marriage off the rocks,’ I said.
I’d already planned an article in my head and quickly described it:
Eleven Warning Signs that Your Husband is Bored with his Food.
Not asking for seconds.
Saying the food is dry.
Saying the food is bland.
Claiming not to be hungry.
Pushing his plate aside.
Playing with his food.
Asking, ‘What’s in it?’
Making suggestions.
Looking in the fridge.
Being late for meals.
Saying, ‘Where’s the protein?’
‘I could pass on my recipe for eggs mornay, which is the most proteinous meal you can get without meat,’ I said. And we spent the next few minutes thinking up high-protein dishes.
My mother suddenly thought of an omelette which consisted of eggs and water and involved getting the pan very hot and dragging the cooked edges to the centre and throwing in a lot of pepper, cheese and chilli powder–and apparently came from Jacqueline du Pré. And I remembered cheesy bean bake and all manner of lentil-based dishes.
Then she finished her coffee, paid the bill and gathered our things. I got Danny up for a piggyback, and we wandered out to find Lulu’s Boutique.
‘There it is,’ my mother said, and pointed across the street to a quaint little shop with an awning and yellow spotlights illuminating a sumptuous window display. Three mannequins in excitable poses were togged out in at least two whole winter outfits each. Plaid shirts over cotton vests, under woollen waistcoats with toggles, fluffy cardigans, tweedy capes, silky shawls, and scarves slung around their shoulders, and floppy knitted hats and opened umbrellas. One green, one mustard, one dark red.
‘It looks just like Best End Boutique,’ I said.
My mother laughed, ‘It is Best End Boutique,’ and through the window I could see April Jickson speaking to a customer as she wrapped an item in white tissue paper. We waited for the transaction to come to an end before going in and, to my mother’s delight, when the customer came out into the street it was none other than Elizabeth Jane Howard, and though my mother knew it must get tiresome, she couldn’t help but stop her to say how much she admired her writing. Elizabeth Jane seemed pleased and thanked her for the kind words and we watched her stride away, the lead of her little spaniel in one hand and a Lulu’s carrier bag in the other–containing, I guessed, a loose mohair jumper in different shades of red.
I turned to my mother and gave her a subtle little hug before nuzzling my face into her shoulder. The trouser-suit jacket gave off a musty, new-clothes smell.
‘What happened to your safari suit?’ I asked.
‘I gave it to Patience Tidy,’ she said. ‘It was very her.’
Author’s Note
The Wintergreen Dental Practice is fictional but the background issues described–the non-availability of certain treatments on the NHS, especially for underprivileged people–are not. They seem to be an even greater problem today.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my friend Pam Baker-Clare, a brilliant and compassionate dental surgeon, who practised in Leicester from 1954 until 1996–from a surgery at her family home for many of these forty-two years, meaning she was seldom off duty. Pam’s memories, ideas and lunches have been an invaluable part of my research, as was the meeting with David Turner, dental technician of Leicester, which she arranged. Happy ninetieth birthday, Pam!
Thanks also go to Jacqui Eavis and Fergus Brown at Cathedral Practice, Truro; to Sharon Cole and Colin Storry at the Granville Clinic, Leicester; and to the staff at London’s BDA museum–all of whom helped me get to grips with dentistry and the NHS in the 1980s.
At Penguin Books, first and foremost I’d like to acknowledge my editor, Mary Mount, and to thank her, yet again, for excellent editorial guidance, for her wit and wisdom and patience and for being a complete joy to work with.
I’d also like to thank the whole team behind this book. Editorial: Rosanna Forte, Natalie Wall. Copy-editing and proofreading: Mary Chamberlain, Sarah-Jane Forder, Sally Sargeant. Contracts: Matthew Blackett, Ruth Richardson. Design: Richard Bravery, David Ettridge. UK Sales: Samantha Fanaken, Ruth Johnstone, Tineke Mollemans, Richard Clesham, Rachel Myers, Ben Hughes, Katie Corc
oran, El Beckford, Kate Gunning, Andy Taylor, Carl Rolfe, John Faiers. International Sales: Linda Viberg, Guy Lloyd. Production: Sara Granger, Hetty Kendall, Michael Perera, Ruppa Patel, Anya Wallace-Cook. Publicity: Poppy North, Anna Ridley. Marketing: Rose Poole, Georgia Taylor, Amelia Fairney. Rights: Chantal Noel, Sarah Scarlett, Lucy Beresford-Knox, Alex Elam, Catherine Wood, Elizabeth Brandon, Celia Long, Harriet Peel, Ines Cortesao. Audio: Roy McMillan, Tom McWhirter, Samantha Halstead.
I’ve thrilled to partner again with Reagan Arthur at Little, Brown. And I’d like to thank colleagues Sareena Kamath, Katharine Myers, Jennifer Shaffer, Ira Boudah, Jayne Yaffe Kemp, and Lucy Kim.
Thanks to trusted friends, Stella Heath, Julia Mount and Jon Reed, for invaluable help in reading drafts and advising as the book has progressed.
At Jo Unwin Literary Agency (JULA), I’d like to thank my wonderful minder, Jo Unwin, and colleagues Milly Reilly and Donna Greaves, for their marvellous support.
I’d like to thank family and friends, especially Meena Ackbarally, A. J. Allison, Elspeth Allison, John Allison, Paul Beaumont, Nigel Biggs, Elik Eddy, Divya Ghelani, Margrit Goldberg, Victoria Goldberg, Fiona Holman, Alfred Nunney, Eva Nunney, Cathy Rentzenbrink, Jeremy Stibbe, Tom Stibbe.
And finally, I’d like to thank my beloved Mark Nunney, for general brilliance, endless support and not minding another puppy.
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About the Author
NINA STIBBE was born in Leicester, England, and is the author of the highly acclaimed memoir Love, Nina, the novel Man at the Helm, which was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction, and the novel Paradise Lodge. She now lives in Cornwall with her partner and their two children.
Also by Nina Stibbe
FICTION
Man at the Helm
