by Hazel Prior
At least I tried. I think I’ve earned myself a beer. It’s still early—only about 10 p.m.—so I text Gav, then head out. He’s usually up for a pint once he’s got his kids to bed.
He’s already at the bar of The Dragon’s Flagon when I arrive. We get some drinks and wedge ourselves into a corner.
“How’s things, then, mate?” he asks after the first glug or two. “Any better?”
“Think I’ve turned a corner, yeah.”
“Good man. So you’re finally over Lynette?”
“Sorry, did you just swear?”
“Right, I get you. We won’t mention the ‘L’ word.”
I suppose it’s a good thing I saw her and the builder like that. It was a total ouch to the heart and the timing could hardly have been worse, but at least it’s done now. There’s no two ways about it: Lynette’s out of my life now.
“Tell you what, though,” I say to Gav. “News flash: I’ve got myself a new granny.”
Gav always makes you feel like what you’re saying is important. He listens in encouraging silence as I describe everything: my dire first meeting with Granny V and my crap attempts to make amends on the phone just now. When I mention that Granny V lives in a mansion in Scotland, he gives a low whistle.
He swirls his beer round for a minute. “You know what I think?”
“No. But you’re about to tell me.”
“OK, mate, right you are. I know you two didn’t exactly hit it off, but I reckon it’s worth trying again with this Granny Veronica. She’s your only family, after all. Given time, you could become something special to each other.”
I grin. “You haven’t met her, mate. She’s a cold, cold fish. She’d make an icicle look warm and fluffy.”
He grins back at me. “OK, I’m getting the idea she’s not exactly cuddlesome.”
“Hell, no.”
Then his face darkens. “But, seriously, mate, you should keep making an effort. The older generation are kind of . . .”
He’s struggling to find words, so I give him a few options. “Boring? Selfish? Mean?”
“No, I wasn’t going to say that. They’ve got this different take on things because they’ve been through so much. They’re not just full of wrinkles, they’re full of . . . stories. And so often we don’t bother to appreciate them till they’re gone.”
He’s sounding a bit choked up. He’s still hurting after his own mum’s death. I’d forgotten about that. His mum was loaded, too (not as much as Granny Veronica, of course, but doing nicely, thank you). She never thought to help Gav out with all his financial problems, though. Even when his eight-year-old daughter got cancer.
Gav was besotted with his mum in spite of it all.
The conversation’s getting too heavy for both of us, so we leave it there and get into talking about bikes. He’s thinking of upping our stocks of top-end electric bikes. We don’t do much top-end at the mo. It’s too risky.
On the way home, I have another think about Granny V. Gav’s right, of course. I need to keep trying.
* * *
—
There seem to be dead socks everywhere. The floor’s littered with them. I gather them up and put them in the plastic bag. I’ll take them to the launderette straight after work. I keep trying to get back on track, otherwise I’ll just slither back to where I was before I met Lynette, and I don’t want that. So I’m in the process of giving the flat a major overhaul. Over the weekend, I finally changed my sheets, hoovered the carpet and scrubbed the grime off the inside of the oven.
I’ve started trying to get back into shape, too. Yesterday I cycled long miles into the countryside and made myself a good, healthy dinner: lemon chicken and steamed French beans with sautéed potato. What’s more, I ate it without switching on the telly. I listened to music instead. Sixx:AM’s “This is Gonna Hurt.” Stabbed my potatoes to the rhythm and lacerated the beans. It was ace.
I’ve made that lemon polenta cake. You don’t go wasting expensive cake ingredients, do you? I could take the train up to Scotland this week and deliver it into Granny V’s hands, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it. She hates me, I’m sure, and I’m finding it pretty difficult to like her. I still keep thinking about the way she gave up her own baby, and how that might have affected the whole of my dad’s life—and how differently things might have ended up for me, as well.
But still, I shouldn’t have spoken to Granny the way I did.
I stroll over to Weedledum and Weedledee and give them a quick water. The cake is sitting on the table, next to the plants, wafting warm, cakey, lemony smells through the flat. The mere sight of it is making me feel guilty.
So I make a decision and take it into work with me.
“Cake for you, Gav,” I mumble as I dump it onto the shop counter. “Just to say . . . you know. For the support. For everything.”
I’m not good with words at the best of times, especially when I get a lump in my throat like this.
“Patrick, mate!” he cries, all smiles. “You shouldn’t have.”
“I should. I’ve been behaving like a right jerk for weeks,” I say. “Take it home to your missus and kids.”
I don’t manage to say sorry in so many words, but I think he gets it.
After work (a much better day: Madam, I’m happy to tell you your bicycle is now in perfect working order) I make that long-awaited visit to the launderette. I’m just on my way back to the bus stop now with a bag full of clean clothes. Coldplay is rippling through my headphones, and I can’t help headbanging a bit, you know how it is. I must look a right prat. I’m crossing the road and skirting a big puddle when, out of nowhere, this massive lorry roars up and nearly goes smack into me. It swerves just in time, horn honking, brakes screeching and all. Nearly gives me a heart attack.
The driver is a bald man with a red face. He swears at me through the windscreen. I mouth, “Sorry, mate,” to him and carry on.
I’m kicking myself for saying, “Sorry, mate.” Yes, I should look before crossing, but he was seriously over the speed limit. I give the finger to the back of the lorry as it zooms down the road. I’m way too late for the guy to notice.
Makes you think, though. If I’d been killed, would anyone care? Gav, maybe. Yes, Gav would be genuinely sorry. Judith (the ex who still speaks to me—“You’re a nice guy, Patrick, just an awful boyfriend”) might shed a tear. Lynette? I don’t think she’d give a damn, not now she’s got builder boy. Anyone else? Granny McC? Somehow I don’t think so.
I reckon Granny will live for-bloody-ever. Longer than me anyway. Especially the rate I’m going. And when I do get myself run down, my guess is she won’t even notice. That carer woman of hers will be all clucking with sympathy, and Granny V will just go, “Eileen, would you kindly desist. I am extremely busy arranging napkins.”
When you nearly die, your life is supposed to flash in front of your eyes, isn’t it? Well, that didn’t happen with me; I just got angry driver glare. But now I seem to be getting a kind of delayed reaction. Little bits of my childhood keep pinging into my brain while the music drums in my ears. I’m getting flashes of my five foster families. Five, no less! They ranged from the seriously strict to the unbelievably lax. I remember being locked in my room at the Millards’ place just for swearing. I remember Jenny and Adrian Fanshaw lecturing me about how lucky I was. I remember going through the Gregsons’ wallets and helping myself. It was shameful but I couldn’t help it; I needed the money for drugs. I was a kid with issues.
I did all right on the whole, though. There was always food, there was always shelter, there was an education of sorts. There was a certain brand of cautious love. None of those guys counted as parents, though.
At seventeen I started working for Charlie, a local mechanic. I quite liked taking cars apart and putting them back together again. Charlie was decent. I stayed with him for four years, until
he went bust. Then I was jobless for a bit, then did a spot of gardening for a couple of toffs, then got together with Judith, then split up with her.
After Judith came Lynette. I first saw her when her car broke down and she was standing in the street manically punching numbers into her smartphone. She looked stressed (not any old stressed; short-skirted, hair-tossing, lip-pouting stressed—sexily stressed) so I offered to help. I’m OK with cars and had her bonnet up in no time. Managed to sort it for her.
Lynette fell for my manly griminess—that’s what she told me later anyhow. She wasn’t grimy herself. Far from it. She was the opposite of Judith in every way. Well–turned out, well-read and well-intentioned. We moved in together quite quickly. That is to say, I moved in with her. She was renting this big, smart flat and working as a solicitor. She tried to “save” me, which . . . well, it kind of semi-worked. At least, I became a lot less dependent on the grass. She got me into healthy eating instead. Never thought I’d get hooked on broccoli, but I did! And for a while I got clean off the drugs. I transferred my addiction into running and cycling. Bought myself a good secondhand bicycle from Gav’s and, while I was at it, got myself a job there. Lynette said it would do as a stopgap but I’d have to get something full-time sooner or later. I’m still waiting for that to happen.
Anyhow, Lynette is history now. I seem to have ended up with a curmudgeon of a granny instead. How bizarre is that?
I find it hard to get my head round the fact that Veronica McCreedy is the mother of my dad. I don’t give him a lot of thought, to be honest. I know nothing about him, anyway. I remember once or twice when I was a tiny kiddo pestering Mum about who he was cos my friends at nursery school all seemed to have dads, and where was mine?
Mum’s answer was always the same: a quick, harsh “You have no dad.” Followed by a speedy change of subject. Only one time she added: “If he’d stayed it might have been different.” She never said that again, though.
Mum and I were in a caravan, first of all. Well, a clapped-out old camper van that was parked up in a disused bit of scrubland. Later we moved into a council house, but I don’t remember much about it except that Mum had wedged old newspapers into all the cracks to keep out the drafts. It didn’t really feel like home.
Mum tried lots of jobs, but they never lasted long. She was always up and down, I remember. One minute singing gaily, the next in floods of tears. When I was six, shortly before she decided life wasn’t worth living anymore, she came into the bedroom while I was busy building a castle out of bricks. Her shoulders were slumped, and her cheeks were wet. “Patrick,” she sighed. “My darling boy, I’m sorry about everything. Sorry I’m so useless.” I had no idea what she meant. To me she seemed to be doing just fine. She fed me, clothed me, got me to nursery school and all that. But I guess it must have cost her too much, both in money and energy. Looking back now I can see she sacrificed things. Her social life, for one. She didn’t really do friends. She must have been lonely. She did her best to hide her unhappiness from me, but wow, it must have been huge.
Because one day she just left me with a babysitter, a woman I didn’t know at all. I remember the babysitter giving me sausages and beans that night and getting fretful, looking at her watch. Then she spent a long time on the phone. She put down the receiver and dialed more numbers. Her voice sounded increasingly desperate.
She started saying to me, “Don’t worry, Patrick, I’m sure she’ll be back soon,” and then it was, “I’ll just pop you to bed. Mum will be back in the morning.” And then, when morning arrived and there was still no sign of Mum, it was, “Right, Patrick. We’re going for a little drive.”
I was passed on to some more people I didn’t recognize, who took me by the hand and told me I had to be a brave boy. Mum wouldn’t be back for some time yet. Later they told me it was looking like Mum wouldn’t be coming back at all. And later still I found out she had put stones into her pockets and walked into the sea.
* * *
—
I get to the bus stop and stand there with the commuters and shoppers. They all look like they’ve got their act together. Self-worth, that’s what it is. That guy with the suit and tie, holding a black umbrella. I bet he and his wife and kids all go out for a Thai meal every Saturday night. And the couple holding hands. They can’t wait to get home to peel the clothes off each other. And that woman with the dyed blond hair is texting her partner, saying, “I’m on the way home. Be there in twenty.” And sticking lots of x’s at the end.
Being single again makes me listless. I’m totally over Lynette, but I have to admit she dominated every single fricking corner of my life. I never had the chance to dwell on depressing thoughts when she was around. Now that she’s gone, life seems to have filled up with this cold, creepy silence. I feel like a beer bottle once all the beer’s been drunk. Not needed. Worthless. Empty.
TERRY’S PENGUIN BLOG
21 November 2012
Penguins are feisty and stubborn. They just never give up.
For example, there’s our lonely black penguin, Sooty. He is still sitting on that nest, patiently waiting, hoping beyond hope that one day his princess will come.
Then there’s this bold character you see in the photo. The penguin in question (which may be a he or a she—it’s hard to tell but I reckon it’s a she) decided she wanted to climb up a very steep iceberg. Who knows why she decided to do this? Anyway, nothing was going to stop her. I watched as she crawled up a near vertical slope, made it halfway to the top but then slithered back down all the way to the bottom. She collapsed on her side, feet and flippers splayed out at undignified angles. Undeterred, she scrambled to her feet straightaway. She looked up toward the summit. No way was she going to let that slope defeat her. She stuck both flippers out on either side for balance, waddled up a little way, skidded, waddled some more, fell on her front, got up again. The last little bit of the iceberg was particularly steep. She stuck her beak in the snow and used it as an anchor to pull herself up. Not dignified but it worked. She finally made it to the top, and I have to admit I clapped when she got there. She did look smug.
You have to admire that kind of persistence.
• 10 •
Veronica
THE BALLAHAYS
JULY 2012
I shall have to muster a quite extraordinary quantity of determination. But that is always the case if you want to achieve anything at all in life.
I remember when I was a child I expected hugely wonderful things to simply fall into my lap. Many people suffer from this illusion, I believe. They carry on expecting the wonderfulness to turn up round the next corner nearly the whole way through. In my case, however, that expectation died early. At a particular moment, about seventy years ago, all my dreams evaporated into thin air. Everything since then has been simply a marker of time. Life has been a trail of insignificant events, spooling uselessly along, forgotten the minute after they happened. Appointments with the doctor, dentist, optician, pediatrician. Standing in the queue at the supermarket. Instructing Eileen regarding laundry. Instructing Mr. Perkins regarding petunias. Sleeping. Reading. Crosswords. Flower arranging. Tea.
I have bothered to keep going merely out of habit. Yet those diaries have given me a sharp prod. They’ve reminded me of something I’d forgotten: my former spark. Ever since reading them, this inner voice has been taunting me. You used to be a human dynamo, it whispers. You used to throw yourself at things. You used to rise to any challenge. But have you actually done anything, anything at all of worth, in the last half a century?
I must try to do something before it’s too late. Not just something with my money but something with my life, whatever dregs are left of it. Naively, I had hoped that the discovery of a new family member would provide a solution on both counts. I was wrong.
I need to find an alternative; a mission, something that inspires me. There are, alas, few thing
s on this planet that match that description.
One has presented itself recently, however. As I clean my teeth, I glance up from the basin. It is still there, admitting no doubt, spelled out in my own writing across the mirror.
“Why not?” I ask my reflection.
Veronica McCreedy looks back at me with fire in her eyes.
* * *
—
Eileen is wearing a hideous pink-and-white-checked overall. She has a distinctly bleachy smell.
“Did you want me to clean the bathroom mirror, Mrs. McCreedy?” She has come downstairs, it seems, specially to present me with this question. I am, at this moment, busy hunting for my reading glasses, which have gone missing again, as is their wont.
“Really, Eileen, need you ask?” I reply. “It is your job to clean whatever needs cleaning.”
“Yes, I know that, but there seems to be a message written there in brown pencil. I wasn’t sure if it was important. Something about a locket, an island, somebody called Adele and . . . and penguins?”
I do not like her tone. It is that half-concerned, half-amused voice that she uses when she suspects I might be finally succumbing to dementia.
“‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t,’” I quote. “That is from Hamlet, you know.”
“Yes, I’m sure it is, Mrs. McCreedy. But what about the writing on the mirror?”
“The writing on the mirror is merely a reminder,” I tell her. “Pen and paper are never at hand when one requires them, so I was using my ingenuity, as needs must.”
“A reminder?”
“Yes. Not that I am in the least likely to forget, of course. My memory is entirely reliable and one hundred percent intact.”
“So you keep saying,” she mutters.
I glare at her. “You may clean the rest of the mirror apart from the corner with the words written on it.”