Calamity in Camberwell

by Alice Castle

  Despite her efforts, there was still the hint of a frown etched beneath her thick fringe. And then, on the seat beside her, she spotted the wedding present, still in its pristine white-and-silver paper, the card wedged into the silver ribbon trim at a jaunty angle. Drat. She’d completely forgotten to hand it over. She glanced over at Jen’s, but the door was firmly shut. Oh well, she needed to get going now anyway; couldn’t keep the kids waiting. Ben wouldn’t have minded too much, but Belinda MacKenzie’s boys each had a full half-hour practising of their many musical instruments to slog through as soon as they got home, and who knew what other improving activities lined up by their tireless mama on their behalf.

  Beth pulled away from the kerb, just remembering in time to switch her headlights on. It was early September, but already the evenings were growing darker.

  ***

  Jen closed the door as quietly as she could, and padded back to the kitchen, her feet in their cosy socks making barely a sound. She’d just shut the door when it crashed back on its hinges, whacking her in the shoulder. Jeff stood in the doorway, staring at her. She wasn’t sure whether to look him in the eye or not. Sometimes it was things like that which set him off. Eventually, as the silence stretched and she rubbed her arm, she decided to risk it. She darted a look upwards. Big mistake. At once, he was right up against her, pushing her backwards. When she felt the cold steel of the sink against her back, she realised she had no further to go. Now the metal was digging in, and her shoulder was throbbing, too. She kept her eyes fixed on his sweater, which was about all she could see. What was it that had set him off this time? Better wait for him to speak.

  ‘Nothing to say now? Different when your friend isn’t here,’ he sneered. ‘Not so brave now, are you? So defiant? What have you got to say about me now, eh? Eh?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Jeff,’ said Jen quietly, trying but failing to keep weariness and fear out of her voice. It was hard to sleep at night and, God knew, the days were hardly restful.

  ‘You were talking about some man you fancied, weren’t you? I could tell. Don’t pretend. You know that doesn’t work. You know I can see inside your head. I can read your thoughts. You don’t have any secrets any more. You’re my wife,’ he said, taking her by the arms and shaking her.

  Jen took a deep breath and wondered how long it was going to go on for this time. It was getting harder and harder to know what might trigger him. A chance word, even a look. Any expression he didn’t like. Any outfit slightly more daring than her usual uniform of jeans.

  ‘Jeff, please. We’ve got to stop this. This isn’t right. Just let me go,’ said Jen, trying to keep her voice low and as emotionless as possible. Displays of feeling, weeping, or begging were like kerosene on his fire, she knew to her cost.

  ‘Let you go? Not until you’ve apologised. Properly,’ he growled in her ear.

  Jen, a silent tear now running down her face, nodded grimly. She was glad she hadn’t had time to turn the kitchen light on. The darker it was while she did this deed, the better.

  Chapter Two

  Back at her own tiny house later that evening, after dropping off Belinda’s boys and nobly declining a glass of Chardonnay the size of a goldfish bowl, Beth settled down on the sofa, laptop open.

  Despite the Wyatt’s job, she still had several freelance projects on the go. It was a terrible nuisance, in many ways, keeping them alive, but Beth was too anxious about the long term to put all her eggs in the school’s basket. Having something to fall back on was crucial. It had been this which had been lacking in her bleakest days following James’s death. After all, it wasn’t possible to have another husband to fall back on. She never wanted to go back to that desperate sense of abandonment and sheer, soul-aching loneliness again. Belt, braces, and plenty of extra buttons, too, were her way every time, with everything.

  Her black and white moggy, Magpie, climbed aboard the sofa with a less-than-graceful scramble. Beth looked at her fondly, and stroked the velvet-soft fur. While she now sometimes picked up their groceries at the Morrisons superstore on the way to or from tutoring, Magpie expected only the finest cat food and would accept no substitutes. Own brands didn’t cut it, and certainly nothing that was ever on special offer in Camberwell. At this rather unflattering angle, Beth could see the result in lots of furry, snowy-white undercarriage. Smaller portions in Magpie’s bowl might be the way forward. For a second, the cat locked eyes with her, challenging bright green meeting serious grey.

  ‘Oh, all right then, Magpie. You win. Again.’

  Beth wrenched her mind from the ruinous price of cat food and was delving into her least favourite of the freelance chores, when she heard a noise up above. Curious. Ben had always been a brilliant sleeper, and she thanked her stars for it. Surely, that couldn’t be? But it was. He was calling for her.

  A full hour passed before she collapsed back onto the sofa, and this time she did succumb to a glass of wine. Not one quite as enormous as Belinda’s proffered crystal goblet, but still enough to make the freelance work impossible, even if she’d still had the oomph to get on with it. She could count on the fingers of one finger the times when Ben had had trouble sleeping recently. A naturally buoyant and lively little chap, he wore himself out in the playground every day and was normally more than ready for bed by eight each night, though he regularly protested he wasn’t tired and, indeed, had never been tired in his entire life.

  But tonight, something had changed. He’d woken up and been unable to get himself back to sleep. Even with Beth reading a heavy dose of the soporific start of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, featuring endless descriptions of the ancient grandparents before the golden ticket flutters excitingly into view, it had still taken ages to get him soothed.

  Beth wished she didn’t know what the problem was. But there was only one culprit looming large in her mind. The tutoring. It was the obvious change in their routine.

  True, Ben had also just moved years at school, and there had been the usual reshuffling of the pack that was his class at the start of September, including the very conspicuous absence of his former friend Matteo. That entire family had upped sticks and rejoined the expat community in a hurry, after some grisly goings-on in the summer. Beth wasn’t sure what she felt about that. While there was a lot to be said for avoiding the social embarrassment of encountering a psychopathic child poisoner and his parents on the streets of Dulwich, it was far from ideal that the menace had just shifted country. But as he had been under the age of criminal responsibility at the time of his crime, he was a problem Beth had no choice but to leave to Interpol.

  Ben had been at the Village Primary from Reception onwards, and Beth dearly loved the little Hansel-and-Gretel, red brick state school in the heart of Dulwich. He didn’t seem to miss Matteo, and she’d thought he’d settled back into school routine after the long summer break. Most of his friends – no, who was she kidding? All of them – had been tutored for years, so it wasn’t as if he didn’t know the ins and outs of the business. But that had been as a spectator. Had Beth given Ben the misleading impression that he was somehow above getting extra lessons? That he didn’t need them?

  She really wasn’t sure if he did need them or not. It was at times like this that she missed James, as a sounding board as well as a husband. It would just have been nice not to have to make every major decision alone. All right, maybe she actually meant it would have been great to have someone else to blame, if things seemed to be going a bit pear-shaped. One disturbed night wasn’t shouting major psychological damage, true, but she didn’t want that even to be a faint possibility.

  She put down the now-empty glass and found her phone, lodged under a bit of Magpie’s spreading embonpoint. She scrolled down to find her mother’s number. It had been over a week since they’d talked, ridiculous really when they lived so close. But her mother had a full bridge schedule to maintain, and Beth… well, she was always running around with Ben, work, and the rest of the cavalcade.

 
; ‘Mum? It’s me. I’m a bit worried about Ben. Do you think tutoring is too much pressure?’

  There was a pause. Beth could imagine her mother, Wendy, putting down her English Bridge Union magazine with a sigh. Beth made it a rule not to trouble her too much, and when she did, she often wondered why she’d bothered at all. Her mother almost never managed to say what she wanted to hear.

  ‘You know, Wyatt’s isn’t the only school in Dulwich, darling.’

  ‘Does that mean you don’t think he’ll get in?’ Beth shot back.

  She pictured Wendy sitting up a little straighter in her high-backed, velvet-upholstered chair, next to the fake gas fire that she insisted was just like the real thing but so much less trouble. Her nightcap of sherry would be at her elbow, on a dear little occasional table that had belonged to her grandmother. Wendy was only in her late fifties, but she had somehow catapulted herself on, lifestyle-wise, into far later years. Beth saw it as a defence against being asked for too much help with Ben, or providing any sort of emotional support for her daughter. Now, for example, she would be itching to get back to her magazine, and away from this tricky conversation. Beth could picture her regaling her bridge friends tomorrow with tales about the endless demands her daughter made, and how utterly exhausted she was as a result.

  ‘Not at all, darling,’ Wendy continued, her voice tremulous. ‘You know I think he’s as bright as a button. I’m just saying, you need to register him for the state schools as well. And then there are some grammar schools not that far away. Liz at the bridge club was saying they’re terrific, and of course they’re free…’

  ‘You think I haven’t thought of all that?’

  ‘Darling, I know you’ll have it all in hand. It’s just that I haven’t thought of it before. I’m only thinking out loud. Of course, you know I’d do anything, if there was something I could usefully do, though heaven knows what on earth that would be… but you have my total support in whatever you choose to do. You don’t need to worry about that, you really don’t.’

  Beth, now rigid on her sofa, almost snorted with the ridiculousness of this comment. Her mother, who’d lost her own husband without too much effort or pain many years ago to the then-fashionable executive heart attack, had been thoroughly cossetted by everybody ever since and had certainly not troubled herself overmuch with fruitless anxiety. And hadn’t she been right? Things had turned out just fine. Beth’s father’s large life insurance policy had paid out handsomely; his pension rolled in as regularly as the tide; and the house was mortgage-free. And both Wendy’s children were independent and relatively well balanced, thought Beth, brushing swiftly over her brother Josh’s inability to commit and her own terrier-like enthusiasm for dangerous puzzles.

  Besides, worrying was what Beth did best. Telling her not to do it was like instructing her not to breathe. She closed her eyes and counted to three. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said heavily.

  ‘Any time, darling. Just call whenever you need to chat. I’m always here,’ said her mother quickly, putting the phone down with evident relief.

  Alone again with her thoughts, Beth decided that yes, she was right to press on with the tutoring. Ben was as bright as a button – her mother was right on that front at least – and with any luck that could mean a bursary and the end of her agonies for good. Or some of them, at any rate. But however much she attempted to suppress the thought, Beth knew perfectly well that Dulwich was stuffed with clever little boys who’d all be sitting the entrance exam together. And more, many more, would be bussed in from all over London and the surrounding counties to have a pop at it. The chances of Ben trouncing all of them were slimmer than an After Eight mint, on the Dukan diet, posing sideways in Spanx underwear. And if she got Ben into the school without the financial ballast of a discount behind her, she would just be setting herself up for massive stress every time one of the termly accounts whacked onto the mat or thudded into her inbox.

  ***

  Katie wasn’t the only one to spot the bags under Beth’s eyes the next morning at the school gates, but she was the only person brave enough to mention them. As usual, her solution to the problem was more yoga. Now running a slew of successful stretch classes based at the most fashionable exercise studio in the village, Katie had less time for hanging out and coffees than before, but could still spot a friend in need at fifty paces.

  ‘Ok, well, if you won’t sign up for a regular class, then you’re coming with me to Jane’s, right now,’ she said, steering Beth away from Belinda MacKenzie’s orbit and back towards the epicentre of the village.

  One of the few things that Beth and Katie really disagreed on was Jane’s – still the most popular café in the village two years after its arrival had frothed all rival cappuccinos out of contention. Beth was not foolish enough to pretend that you’d get better coffee anywhere else. It was just that she didn’t always want to be swimming in the Dulwich goldfish bowl. At Jane’s, you were pretty much guaranteed to have everyone you knew sitting within earshot. Katie, blessed with a sunny temperament and a firm belief in a benign universe, didn’t really care who heard her woes, if she ever had any, and certainly did mind about whether she was drinking a reasonable latte or not.

  This morning, with Beth at a low ebb, she was able to manoeuvre her into the one relatively discreet table in the place, at the back, near the loos, without much more than a token protest. After submitting with her usual cheery good grace to the chaotic queuing system, Katie made her way back to the table with her spoils – a brace of cappuccinos and two enormous, golden pain au chocolats as large as rolled-up carpets.

  Beth’s protests that she’d already had breakfast were half-hearted at best, and she was soon covered with light, flaky crumbs, from chin to knees, and had a happy but slightly guilty smile on her face.

  ‘I needed that!’

  ‘I know, hon. So, what’s up? And don’t say “nothing”. I know there’s a problem. It’s all over your face.’

  Beth sighed. ‘Great. That’s all I need. Oh, it’s Ben, of course. The tutoring. Am I doing the right thing? What do you really think? Does he actually need it?’

  ‘I know you’ve got some ingrained doubts about it all.’ Katie was still nibbling at her pain au chocolat. Most of it was finding its way to her mouth, not the surrounding area. Beth looked at her a little jealously. God’s sake. Katie even made marshalling supremely flaky pastry look easy. ‘Maybe think about it this way. Is it likely to do him any harm?’

  ‘Well, he woke up screaming last night.’

  ‘That could have been anything! Honestly, the time we’ve had lately, it’s a wonder we don’t all wake up yelling most nights. And it’s much more likely to be, you know, that whole business last term, rather than anything else. A couple of maths questions after school aren’t going to cause a massive hoo-ha, particularly for a smart kid like Ben. He gets on ok with Belinda’s boys, doesn’t he?’

  Beth gave it some thought. The two youngest MacKenzies were always lumped together as an alliterative pair – Belinda’s boys, Bobby and Billy. It was hard to define any distinctive characteristics to separate them. They were a bit like the Two Ronnies, except not as funny, or the Chuckle Brothers, but much funnier. Robust, verging on porky, with jolly, round faces and the sort of physique which meant the rugby pitch was already singing a siren song, they probably did have personalities of their own, but you’d have to get to know them really well to work them out. When yelling at them to be quiet from the driving seat, which happened regularly on the trip back from Camberwell, Beth didn’t bother trying to work out who was doing what any more. A quick shout of, ‘Billy! Bobby! Shush!’ seemed to suffice. Not that they were a problem. It was just like having a carful of Labrador puppies.

  ‘I doubt it’s them. They’re actually sweet boys,’ said Beth. ‘Maybe I’m just getting this a bit out of proportion.’

  Katie smiled at her over the rim of her cup. ‘It’s been known.’

  ‘Ok, ok. I’ll calm down. I probably just ne
ed something else to focus on. I need to get my head down at work, really sort out these display boards. Did I tell you I’m doing another mini exhibition to go with all the Christmas concerts?’

  ‘You didn’t. Sounds great, nothing better than a bit of slavery to go with all the tinsel. But I think you need something else to take your mind off work stuff as well, something that’s just for you…’

  ‘You mean the redecorating? I got those tins of paint ages ago, and I meant to get round to it over the summer, but…’

  Katie rolled her eyes a little. ‘I mean something that’s not more slog for you. There’s no way you’d hire someone to do the painting, so you’d just use up all your spare time getting gloss paint stuck in your hair. That’s no fun, Beth. You need a distraction, something enjoyable.’

  ‘I enjoy DIY,’ Beth remonstrated. ‘Well, the idea of it. To tell the truth, I’m just really sick of having those cans cluttering up the place. They’ve been in the hall all summer. It’s got to the point where we’re using them as makeshift storage units. Ben keeps his school shoes on top of one tin and my bag goes on the other. If I’m not careful, they’ll become a permanent fixture.’

  ‘Yes, well, I mean something apart from the decorating. It’s fine, if that’s what you want to do, but it’s not for you, exactly, is it?’

  ‘What do you mean? It would be for me. Well, for me and Ben, but definitely for us. I’m not with you?’

  ‘When was the last time you did something that was just for you alone? Not you and Ben, not for the family home, for the good of everyone. Something for you only.’