by Sharon Owens
‘What’s that you said? Who are they again?’ Emily asked, flicking through her scrapbooks for a wooden peg supplier.
‘They say they’re your parents, Miss Reilly. They’ve come to London to surprise you.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Emily, love – surprise!’ Emily heard her father call down the phone, and then she heard the receptionist asking him to please not take possession of the handset again.
‘They have certainly succeeded in surprising me,’ Emily said to herself as she closed her eyes and suppressed an urge to panic.
‘A Mr and Mrs Reilly … Shall I send them up?’ the receptionist said again.
‘Just one second,’ Emily gasped, snapping out of her self-pity.
Her heart was twanging like an elastic band. She stood up suddenly, and then sat down again. There was no way she could let the staff meet her parents. If that happened, she’d have to resign with immediate effect. Her parents were simply so loud and spirited and Irish that she’d never be able to live it down. She’d never be able to live them down.
‘Miss Reilly, are you still there? Is there a problem?’
‘Yes. I mean, no … there’s no problem. I’ll come down immediately,’ Emily said shakily, slamming the phone into its cradle and bolting out of the office.
She’d have to take them out somewhere – anywhere, as long as it was a long way away from the magazine. All she needed now was to give that vinegar-faced Jane Maxwell yet another excuse to look down on her. All she needed now was her poor father blathering on about politics. And her hiccupping mother, shuffling along behind him and looking bored rigid. Emily ignored the lifts and went galloping down the stairs. Her breathless rasping was echoing round the bare grey walls.
‘This cannot be happening to me,’ Emily said to herself. ‘It just cannot be happening.’
She burst into the bright, airy communal lobby (Stylish Living shared the building with several other publications) and glanced frantically around for her parents. Please let this be a practical joke of some kind, she pleaded silently. She didn’t know who would play a stupid trick like this on her, but she still hoped it was a trick. But no, it was only too real. There they were, as large as life! Her father was chatting away merrily to the owner of the magazine. What rotten luck that Mr Carson was passing through the foyer at the same time Mr and Mrs Reilly bowled up looking for their beloved only daughter.
‘I’ll tell you what’s at the heart of the problem back home,’ her father was saying. His hands were outstretched like a plaster saint. ‘It’s a bunch of numbskulls in charge. The half of them never even finished secondary school, never mind gracing the corridors of a university. Now, I think you’ll agree with me, you just can’t let anybody off the street into power.’
‘Well, now …’ said Mr Carson nervously, looking left and right and up and down for some excuse to flee, ‘… many of our own MPs are very well educated, but they haven’t always acted as they should … And I certainly wouldn’t be an expert on Irish politics, Mr Reilly.’
‘That’s Northern Irish politics, do you mean? Irish politics is that other crowd down in Dublin.’
‘Daddy, is it really you? How lovely to see you,’ Emily almost shouted. ‘What a lovely surprise. Come on away from Mr Carson, now, and don’t be keeping him back. He’s a busy man, Daddy; you’ve no idea how busy. How did you all get introduced so quickly, anyway?’
‘Ah, Emily, I overheard your father asking after you,’ Mr Carson explained, a bead of sweat on his upper lip.
It was a rare thing for the owner of the magazine to be lost for words, but this bedraggled couple had scared the living daylights out of him. The fact that Emily’s parents looked like two extras in a Tim Burton film didn’t help matters. Those clothes of theirs were years old. For all Mr Carson knew, one of them might have a cut-throat razor in their pocket.
‘Emily, love, how are you?’ Mr Reilly said.
Emily’s father held out his arms to her, and his smile was as bright as sunshine. Emily was mortified to see he was wearing a pair of white leather golfing shoes with tassels on them, a shiny tan suit that must have been thirty years old, and an ancient, padded yellow anorak with at least six blue toggles swinging off it. His thick grey hair was combed into a steep quiff and worn long at the back. He gave the impression of a cheesy 1980s bingo caller about to climb Mount Everest.
‘Hello, Dad. Hello, Mum,’ Emily said, equally brightly.
How could she let Mr Carson witness her acute embarrassment? She wished she could snap her fingers and transform her parents into two tiny glass marbles that she could scoop up and drop into her pocket. Then she felt a wave of hot shame envelop her; it swept up and down her body like an electric shock. Would there ever be an end to this cycle of guilt and shame? she wondered.
‘Hello, Emily,’ Mrs Reilly said slowly. She raised one hand in greeting and then let it fall heavily, as if she were too weary to hold her hand up for another second. ‘It’s nice to see you.’
Emily thought her mother was slightly tipsy. Mrs Reilly was sitting on a black leather banquette near the reception desk. She was wearing a pink tweed coat and carrying a very large pink handbag. The effect was slightly marred, however, by a pair of dark brown woollen tights sagging over extremely spindly ankles. And yes, a pair of grey Converse trainers completed the ensemble. Emily’s mother had always preferred comfortable footwear to what she called ‘court shoes’. Her hair was also far too long for a woman of her age. With those untidy curls and awful brown tights she looked like a cross between Shirley Temple and a bag lady.
‘What the hell … ? I mean, what are you doing here?’ Emily whispered as her father enfolded her in his arms.
Mr Carson saw his chance and sprinted towards one of the lifts. Emily saw him jabbing the lift button a dozen times before the doors finally began to open, and he immediately slithered through the chink. The doors closed again, and Mr Carson was swept away to blessed freedom.
‘Well, now … What do you think we’re doing here?’ Mr Reilly began. ‘We’ve come to London to see our only child. And to say thanks again for saving us from that little spot of bother we had with the poker club. And sure, we never go anywhere. So I thought I’d take your mother here on a bit of a holiday.’
‘A holiday,’ Emily croaked, wondering if they’d spent all their benefit money on the travel costs.
They’d be broke now for a fortnight, so she’d have to reimburse them when they went home again in a couple of days.
‘Aye, a couple of weeks’ holiday will do us the world of good. Get away from the old routine, you know? Get away from the same old streets and the endless rain, and the motormouths and gossips. And those cheeky hoods throwing beer bottles at our back door. The parents should be ashamed of themselves, letting their kids drink in a public place.’
‘Two weeks, Dad? Where are you staying?’ Emily asked weakly.
‘We’re staying in your house, Emily – where else would we stay? This is a budget holiday we’re on, do you see? We haven’t got the money to be checking into the Ritz.’
‘I know that, yes, but I’ve not got a house. I’ve got a flat on the third floor of a house – and no spare room. And I’ve to go to work every day, Dad,’ she said, but it was no use.
‘We can sleep on the floor, love. We can throw the sofa cushions down and make a bed; don’t be worrying about us. Just give us a key and go on to your work each morning. You work away, love, and we’ll come and go as we please. Sure, we’ll be out all day, anyway – looking at the sights. We’d hardly come all the way to London and then spend the whole visit sitting on our arses, would we?’
‘Just how did you get here, Dad? Did you fly?’
‘Aye, and now our arms are killing us, I can tell you,’ he laughed. ‘No, seriously, we got the ferry in Belfast, love. We just took a mad notion yesterday, do you see? And then we got a train from Liverpool, and then a nice man at the train station showed us what Tube to get on. And her
e we are.’
‘Where are your bags, though?’
‘What bags? We don’t need any bags. Haven’t you got soap and towels at your place? Your mother has our night things in her handbag, and we’ll buy some odds and ends in the shops as we need them. We hadn’t really time to pack a load of stuff – and we hadn’t a nice suitcase, anyway.’
‘Are you in trouble, Dad? Were you playing poker again?’
‘I was not playing poker.’
‘Were you, Dad?’
‘No, I swear it.’
‘Promise me.’
‘I promise. Are you not going to hug your mother? She made a real effort to dress up for you, Emily. And you know that boats give her a bad stomach. I thought she was going to throw up when it got a bit rough halfway over. I’m telling you, her face was as green as grass.’
‘Oh, Mum,’ Emily said, remembering her mother’s terrible nausea on boats. ‘How are you feeling now?’
‘I’m not so bad,’ said her mother dully.
Mrs Reilly glanced around at the gleaming white walls and metallic grey ceiling. She seemed mildly disappointed by the foyer in Emily’s building.
Perhaps she was expecting something grander, Emily thought crossly. Perhaps she was expecting a doorman in a green coat with gold epaulettes, and a massive flower arrangement on a mahogany desk. Well, she’d just have to settle for a black leather couch and a glass desk with a vase of daffodils on it.
‘You see an awful lot of scruffy types in London,’ Mrs Reilly added. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Even on the Falls Road itself you wouldn’t see such poor raggedy people.’
Emily went over and sat down beside her mother. She sat deliberately facing away from her father, so that he had no choice but to leave the desk and come and join them. Otherwise he would have tried to involve the receptionist in their conversation. That was her father all over, Emily seethed – any amount of time for complete strangers, but hardly a minute for her. She had no idea what they were doing here in London, but no doubt she would find out soon enough.
‘Raggedy people,’ Mrs Reilly said, and then she yawned and closed her eyes.
‘I expect they’ll be the immigrants?’ Emily’s father said. ‘You see them everywhere, wearing those big puffy coats. I expect they find it cold over here?’
‘Hush, Dad, you mustn’t say things like that. You mustn’t say anything racist in London, not ever,’ Emily told him. ‘Mum, don’t go to sleep here, please.’
‘What’s racist about asking if somebody is cold? I’m only saying they must be cold here. Why can we not talk about the foreigners, Emily? It’s no shame to be a foreigner. Weren’t the Irish always great ones for emigrating? It was Irish navvies that built America. And they built most of this country too. That’s the great pity of it, really, because the Irish did most of the hard work years ago – and now there’s nothing left for these foreign lads to do, except maybe for sweeping up and washing dishes.’
‘Hush, Dad, please, I’m begging you. Will you stop talking about immigrants and politics? Nobody here wants to talk about those things, right? It’s not polite. It’s not acceptable. Mum, will you wake up!’
‘Well, I’m sorry if we’re an embarrassment to you,’ her father said loudly.
‘I told you she wouldn’t be pleased to see us,’ Mrs Reilly added sadly, blinking herself awake again.
‘I am pleased to see you,’ Emily soothed.
‘You don’t look too pleased,’ her mother told her.
‘Oh, Mum. You never change,’ Emily snapped finally.
The three of them sat sulking silently on the banquette.
The security guard at the main door began to smirk, while the receptionist busied himself with sorting the mail into pigeonholes. Emily couldn’t help being sorely irritated that her parents seemed to belong in the 1940s. For pity’s sake, her father was only fifty-three and her mother was fifty. How had they managed to assume the beliefs of two old relics from a bygone era? Was it their insular lifestyle that had made them this way? They surely hadn’t failed to spot that there were plenty of what they called ‘foreigners’ in the professional classes?
‘What say you take the rest of the day off, and we’ll go to Madame Tussauds, hey?’ said Mr Reilly, trying to rescue the situation. ‘And then we’ll go to Buckingham Palace and give the Queen a shout?’
‘Look, Dad, I’m really sorry. But I just can’t take any time off work right now. I’m acting up for my boss.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I’m the boss now,’ Emily explained.
‘You’re the boss of the whole magazine?’ her father asked, his eyes as wide as saucers.
‘Just for a while,’ Emily said, thinking that he’d assume she was a millionaire now.
Arabella hadn’t actually discussed a pay rise for Emily, because she was hoping she’d be back at work within two or three months. And Emily was almost glad of that – she didn’t want Jane to find out she was getting a pay rise and use the information to start a mutiny.
‘The boss of the magazine, did you hear that? Well, that’s just brilliant news altogether. The big boss at last, hey? I hope they’re paying you top dollar, Emily?’
‘Never mind that now. Dad, tell me, have you both eaten? I can take you round the corner for something to eat. And then maybe I could see you both back to my flat in a taxi. I am sorry, but I’ve got to work today. We’ve so much to do. And I’ve no assistant to help me, because I used to be Arabella’s assistant. Do you understand?’
‘Well, that’s a crying shame,’ Emily’s mother said at once, suddenly coming out of her sleepy reverie. ‘We come all the way to London to see you – we come to London for the first time ever – and it turns out you’re too busy to show us around.’
‘Mum, I’m working. You should have told me you were coming.’
‘Ah well …’ Emily’s mother said heavily, then sniffed loudly.
She obviously had no concept of the nine-to-five. She obviously didn’t know that a person with a proper career couldn’t just take time off without applying for it days – or even weeks – in advance.
‘It’s only a magazine about houses,’ Emily’s mother muttered darkly. ‘Aren’t the shops all stuffed to the rafters with magazines about houses? I’m tripping over them every time I go to the doctor’s. Speaking of which, it’s not like you’re a surgeon and there’s somebody lying in the hospital waiting for a heart operation. Well, is it?’
Emily closed her eyes and swallowed down the urge to remind her mother that she’d never had a career of her own. And that she’d never had to pay her own rent either, or run a car. Her parents had probably been on benefits for so long, they’d forgotten where the benefit money came from in the first place – from time-poor taxpayers like Emily.
‘Now, don’t be making a big thing out of it, woman. Emily can’t help it if she has to work, can she? She’ll take us out tonight for a nice supper, won’t you, Emily? And to one of them fancy shows in the West End maybe?’
‘I’d love to, Dad, I really would. But meals out and theatre tickets are very expensive,’ Emily said quietly. She didn’t want the security guard or the receptionist to know she was up to her neck in debt. ‘I haven’t much money to spare at the moment.’
‘So much for being the boss,’ Mrs Reilly sniffed.
‘Excuse me?’ Emily said.
‘Oh aye, I forgot about that side of things,’ her father said humbly. Then he bit his lip with embarrassment. ‘Yes, indeed … the lack of money is a real scourge, Emily, love. Nobody knows that better than me. Well, we can manage rightly on a bag of chips and a stroll by the Thames, hey?’
‘Oh, Daddy …’
Emily wanted to hug her father there and then and tell him how much she loved him. She also wanted to strangle him for coming over to London without giving her a warning first, and for promising Emily’s mother a lovely holiday when he must have known the three of them hadn’t a spare penny between them
.
‘You both stay right here, okay?’ she said. ‘And I’ll go up and get my coat and handbag, and tell the staff I’ll be out of the office for an hour or so.’
‘Yes, love,’ he smiled.
‘Don’t be too long,’ her mother added. ‘I’m starving.’
Emily caught the lift back up to her floor and told Jane she’d be out of the office for an hour or so. Then she locked Arabella’s desk, so Jane couldn’t go for a sneaky rummage in it.
‘Is it something to do with Arabella’s arrest?’ Jane said bluntly as Emily passed her desk on the way out again.
‘No, it isn’t. Don’t be silly,’ Emily replied.
Emily had told the staff that Arabella’s recent arrest had been a simple case of mistaken identity. But Jane’s gossip radar had gone into overdrive, and Emily knew it was only a matter of time before Jane resorted to going through Arabella’s bins late at night looking for clues.
‘Just get on with your work, everyone,’ Emily said loudly. ‘I’ll be back before you know it. Petra, if anyone rings and asks for me, please take a message.’
Petra Dunwoody rolled her eyes.
‘Yes, Miss Reilly,’ she said. ‘Of course, Miss Reilly …’
Jane giggled.
Emily left the office before Jane could think of some excuse to accompany her down to the foyer.
Ten minutes later, Emily and her parents were sitting in one of the purple velvet booths of a bohemian café nearby, having just ordered tea and sandwiches.
‘Now, Mum and Dad, let’s get one thing straight; I am very pleased to see you.’
‘But what?’ her mother asked suspiciously.
‘But I’m afraid you’ll have to do your best to have a nice time in London on a non-existent budget,’ Emily told them firmly. ‘I wish it was different, but that’s the situation.’
‘That’s okay,’ Mr Reilly said cheerfully. ‘We’ve got enough for Tube fares. We can go and see things that are free. And just eat at your place.’
‘Thanks, Dad, you’re a great sport,’ Emily said, patting him tenderly on the arm.