On Top of Everything

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  ‘What is it about her that threatens you so much, Florence?’ my mother wanted to know. She had her psychologist hat firmly wedged on her out-of-control hair, never a good metaphorical look. Mum had not trained as a psychologist but you would never guess this by talking to her. She had read a lot of books on the subject and could have made quite a career out of offering unsolicited advice to those she felt were in need of her particular brand of ‘therapy’.

  ‘She doesn’t threaten me at all, Mum,’ I answered. ‘But allow me a little room to express my “feelings” about a woman Poppy’s age arriving on my doorstep announcing herself as Monty’s wife.’

  I had long learned to throw the whole expressing-your-feelings business back in my mother’s face but on this occasion it fell flat.

  ‘Hostile,’ Mum mouthed to Poppy.

  Harry’s cellphone, which was sitting on the coffee table, started to ring at that point but when I reached for it I saw that the name ‘Charles’ was flashing up on the caller ID.

  I had been extremely pleasant to my husband all evening despite fighting a dreadful urge to fling myself across the dinner table and rip his throat out. He was so much his old self it just didn’t seem right that he in fact lived around the corner and had a boyfriend. He wasn’t even uncomfortable with my family which he jolly well should have been because he had betrayed me so awfully. And they should have been very cross and quite mean to him in a show of solidarity for me, their actual daughter and sister. Instead there was a slightly congratulatory mood in the room. Jovial almost. This enraged me so much that when I saw ‘Charles’ flashing on the phone I opened the window and threw it out into the courtyard.

  Hostile, my foot.

  My mother pursed her lips in a very cat’s bottom fashion and decamped for the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, Florence, please, please, don’t be angry,’ Poppy pleaded, her freckles sticking out adorably below her imploring blue eyes. ‘I can’t bear to see you like this. I know you’re hurt but anger won’t help you heal, you know it won’t.’

  ‘Am I not allowed a moment or two of wanting to kill the former love of my life for abandoning me?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes, of course you are, but you’ve already had those moments,’ she said. ‘You must think about moving forward. And anyway, it’s not Harry I’m worried about. He can look after himself. It’s Crystal.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean she seems like a thoroughly decent person and the universe has brought her and Monty together so you shouldn’t be the one to drive them apart.’

  ‘How exactly am I driving them apart?’ I asked my sister. ‘By having them living here in my house, by feeding and watering them?’

  ‘You are not being very nice to her,’ Poppy said. ‘In fact, you’re being quite horrid. And she’s Monty’s choice. They’re in love!’

  ‘Just because he chose her doesn’t make it right,’ I snapped. ‘For God’s sake, grow up, Poppy. And what do you know about love anyway?’

  I couldn’t have hurt her more if I had spent weeks working on it. She was right, that was the problem. I was being horrid. But it wasn’t my fault. My hurt had curdled into anger and was giving my inner fishwife the upper hand which was helping no one. Especially me. Poppy bit her trembling lip.

  ‘Don’t let what has happened to you turn you into a terrible person, Effie,’ she said, and she too scuttled off to the kitchen.

  I sat there in the sitting room where I had spent so many happy occasions over so many years and felt misery seep into every corner of my body. Then a funny muffled ringing tone trickled up the outside of the house and warbled in the window just as Harry came in asking for his phone.

  It was not my night.

  ‘She’s making a terrible mess of the place,’ I heard my father say as the family departed not long after.

  ‘Oh, someone can always put it back together the way it was,’ my mother said cheerily.

  I slumped back on the sofa and pulled Sparky awkwardly into my lap. He wasn’t that keen on me now Crystal had moved in but I wasn’t having a bar of that. I needed him.

  The truth was, I’d made a terrible mess of everything. And no one could put it back together. Ever. Plus, as Poppy had pointed out, I was turning into a terrible person and it didn’t make me feel better, it made me feel worse, so what was the point? I liked myself much more when I just wanted my son to be happy, no matter what, although of course I had never imagined a ‘what’ the likes of Crystal.

  Try as I might after that night to be a better person, to be more open and accepting of Monty and Crystal, most of the trying was done theoretically. In practice, I just wanted my son back and felt extremely resentful of her for stealing him from me.

  I would manage to be my pleasant old self on the rare occasions when it was just him and me together but the moment she appeared in the kitchen, in the back yard, on the stairwell, my charm would evaporate.

  Something despicable in me, previously untapped, made me turn my nose up at the vegan meals she cooked even though they smelled quite heavenly. I left pork chops sitting boldly in the fridge where she could be repelled by them. I barely thanked her when she did my laundry although no one had washed my smalls for me for years. I let conversation fizzle out when she attempted it. Still, I couldn’t help but learn a few things about her, about them.

  They had met at the health spa where they were both working. He’d been doing gardening and maintenance and had torn a shoulder ligament, she was the resident massage therapist who’d tended to it. It was love at first sight, for both of them. Yes, Cupid had drawn back his bow and now here she was living in my house, bringing organic peanut butter into my kitchen, and no doubt having large amounts of sweaty erotic sex with my previously pure and virginal (busty riding-school girl notwithstanding) son.

  Worse, my previously pure and virginal son revealed that he was no longer planning to do a business degree as he had always said he would, but wanted to become a film director.

  He chose an evening when Crystal was out with her Earls Court friends to drop this on me and his father, who had not been to visit since the phone out the window incident but was there for another restrained attempt at a family supper for which I had to give him credit. I wouldn’t have come near me with a forty-foot barge pole. But still, he came, kissed me nervously on the cheek (which for the first time I allowed) and said: ‘Will you promise to leave my telecommunication devices alone?’

  His good humour disappeared when Monty mentioned his change of heart on the career front. ‘Are you bloody mad?’ Harry exploded. ‘Do you know how many unsuccessful film directors there are out there? Most of the successful ones can’t even get jobs, let alone the newcomers.’

  ‘Well, thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad,’ Monty said, ‘but I met a producer in Australia who said the industry is always looking for new blood and anyway what was all that bollocks about following your heart when you gave up law?’

  ‘That was entirely different,’ Harry snapped. ‘I already had a lucrative career to fall back on. And with all due respect, what would a producer in Australia know? By all means, become a film director, Monty, but show some sense and do it when you are my age.’

  ‘How do you even get to be one?’ I wanted to know. The only other film director I could think of was Madonna’s husband and he came from a wealthy background, I thought. Plus he had a rich wife and Crystal didn’t look as though she had much more than a Tibetan hoping stick to her name.

  ‘There’s a two-year MA course at the London Film School,’ Monty told me. ‘It’s pretty highly regarded actually and the fees are a bit steep but I could work in the evenings and at the weekend and Crystal will help support me. She’s behind me completely.’

  Well, she would be, wouldn’t she? Little madam, talking Monty out of the dream we’d had for him and letting him follow his stupid heart.

  ‘There’s no money in it, Monty,’ Harry said, exasperated. ‘There won’t be, ever.’

&
nbsp; ‘Who says I care about money?’ Monty challenged him. ‘There’s more to life than money, Dad, as you should know. How’s the writing going, by the way? Making any money out of that yet?’

  Harry turned puce with rage or embarrassment, I wasn’t sure which. In all our years together there had been very little turning puce. This sort of stand-off was totally alien to us, we’d never had one before, and all I wanted to do was soothe the waters even though I too thought being a film director was pie in the sky.

  ‘We just want you to have some security for the future,’ I told him. In case you get a real wife when you are older, I added, silently. ‘Is that so bad?’

  Monty’s cellphone rang and his eyes lit up when he saw who it was.

  ‘Back in a mo for more of this scintillating patronising,’ he said, and went to his room to take the call.

  ‘Could Monty wanting to be a film director be the beginning of another roll of three?’ I asked Harry, sick to my stomach, once he’d left the room.

  ‘Please, Florence,’ Harry answered grumpily, ‘you know I don’t believe in that nonsense.’ He seemed particularly agitated. Nervous, almost, once I came to think about it. ‘He could have such a future in the City, that’s the shame of it. He’s so clever, he has the right personality and I always thought he had the drive. But now? I just don’t know. There’s no money in film-making, God, any halfwit knows that. It’s what rich kids do when they can’t think of anything else. Monty’s too clever for that.’

  He checked his watch, not for the first time, and it occurred to me that ‘Charles’ was waiting for him somewhere, which tickled my anger bone.

  ‘Oh well, as long as he’s happy, I suppose,’ I smiled, doing a complete turnaround while taking a noisy slurp of wine. ‘And he did always love going to the movies.’

  Harry, of course, was on to me straight away. ‘Yes, Crystal must be a movie lover too, I suppose. Indie types, I imagine. With sub-titles. And she certainly seems to make him happy.’

  I plonked my wine glass down on the coffee table with an angry thunk but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘What? Going to throw that out the window too?’

  I considered making Harry the target, but decided against it. I pictured my mother mouthing ‘hostile’ across the room. Besides, if he left, I would be on my own and I really didn’t feel like it.

  ‘Was it us?’ I asked instead. ‘Did we go wrong somewhere along the line? He’s always been so sensible, so, normal. And now … I hardly recognise him.’

  ‘I’ve been over it a hundred times myself, Floss, and I’m damned if I can work it out,’ he answered. ‘I try putting myself in his shoes but you and I were married at the same age so there’s not much of a leg to stand on.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ I started but I didn’t have the energy to continue.

  There were so many buts. But we had known each other for years. But we were both the same age. But Harry went to university as planned.

  Perhaps we could try using the collapse of our own marriage to — well, that was the thing. To what? Stable door unlocked. Horse bolted.

  ‘I’m going to go and hook up with Crystal,’ Monty said, popping his head around the door. ‘See you later, Mum. Catch you tomorrow, Dad.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t think we quite finished what we started. Your mother is right about getting some security, Monty. Would you please not just consider getting a business degree first and then pursuing the film thing, if you still want to, afterwards?’

  ‘Dad, enough with the security,’ Monty said. ‘I mean what security do you have now, anyway?’

  I thought Harry might be hurt by this but he shot me a strange, twitchy look.

  ‘Actually, the subject of security has been weighing heavily on my mind lately,’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to mention it but it’s been … well, the thing is I’m going back to the law. As of Monday I’m working for Johnson Klint Boyle in the City.’

  I could not believe my ears. ‘You are what?’ I demanded. ‘Please tell me you are joking. That’s ludicrous, Harry. You hate the law. What happened to your novel? The one you’ve always dreamed of being published? The one you have been working on all these years? What happened to exploring the truth instead of lies? What happened to all that?’

  ‘Yeah, Dad,’ Monty chipped in. ‘What happened to that?’

  Harry faltered. ‘I just decided that in the circumstances the law was the best place for me,’ he said, somewhat limply.

  ‘The circumstances?’ Monty and I repeated at the same time.

  Again, Harry faltered. ‘I’d like you to keep the house, Florence,’ he said. ‘I think that’s only fair. And you should be able to do with it what you want. The tearooms, I mean. It’s Rose’s place and you’ve always loved it more than I have. But I need somewhere to live and I need an income and to practise what I’ve been trained for seemed the best way to achieve that.’

  He flicked a look at Monty, which I took to mean he didn’t particularly want our son in on this conversation but it seemed a little late for such considerations.

  ‘You said that the law crippled you, that it was killing you, that it made you dangerously unhappy,’ I reminded Harry.

  ‘Yes, I said that,’ Harry admitted. ‘And at the time it was true. It’s just that now …’

  ‘It’s just that now what?’

  ‘Let it go, Floss,’ Harry warned me gently.

  ‘Let it go?’ I felt yet more anger building from somewhere deep inside me. ‘It’s just that now what, Harry?’

  Harry bit his top lip and looked around the room.

  ‘For God’s sake, Harry, stop pissing about. You have a boyfriend and Monty has a wife. Do you really think my life could get any worse? That anything could shock or surprise me more than it already has?’

  ‘It’s not the worst thing in the world, me having a wife,’ Monty said. ‘Or Dad being gay. It doesn’t mean we don’t, you know, love you or whatever.’

  Was it me putting my son in a position where he had to point something like that out? Of course I didn’t think he didn’t love me any more just because he now loved someone else. More. Like Harry did. Or did I think that? Was I that pathetic? No, I bloody well wasn’t.

  ‘I just want to know what happened to the whole being dangerously unhappy thing, Harry,’ I said, anger pushing me further than I ideally wanted to go. ‘Am I allowed to do that?’

  ‘There’s nothing to be gained by hashing it out any more than we already have, Florence,’ he said. ‘It’s just the way it is.’

  ‘The way what is? Am I not entitled to find out why the change of mind? For years you tell me something is crippling you, killing you, making you dangerously unhappy and …’

  I’ve said it before, I can be slow at times. But I get there in the end.

  Of course. It hadn’t been his job making Harry unhappy all that time, I realised as I watched him avoid my gaze.

  It had been me. It had been us.

  A little cold hard nugget inside me expanded in that moment, pushing out any of the spare bits of loveliness I had been trying to keep tucked away in case I needed them. I hated Harry with all of what was left of my heart. Hated him. So, me loving him had crippled him and made him miserable. Well, boo bloody hoo.

  ‘So, everything is somehow my fault, is that it?’ I asked brightly. ‘I’ve been responsible for being your wife and mother of your son and chief cook and bloody bottle washer all these years and I’ve done such a terrible job and made you so unhappy? I should have tried harder, you are right to take no responsibility for yourself, to completely blame me …’

  ‘I don’t blame you. This is not about —’

  ‘Get out of my house,’ I told Harry. ‘And don’t ever, ever come back.’

  ‘Mum, I don’t think —’ Monty started to placate me again but I turned on him too.

  ‘Please, go and meet your “wife”,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about me, darling. Don’t either of
you worry about me. I’ll be absolutely fine. Just go.’

  I didn’t want Monty to go, I wanted him to stay and give me a hug, tell me everything was OK. But everything wasn’t OK. And I didn’t see how it ever could be.

  They both left, at which point I had two choices: I could go upstairs and hang myself from the coat hook on the back of the bathroom door even though it had been wiggly for about four years and sometimes fell off when you hung a bathrobe from it, or I could do what I did best: bake. It had been a while but the urge was suddenly overwhelming.

  I started off with a dozen chocolate cupcakes. When the smell of them baking in the kitchen chased away a small fraction of the angst reverberating around the house, I baked a dozen more: vanilla. When that improved the atmosphere yet again, I made a dozen chocolate and vanilla marbled. And when I ran out of chocolate, I made lemon cupcakes that were so delicious Sparky and I had two each and could have polished off the whole lot.

  The act of measuring the ingredients precisely into my favourite bowl seemed somehow therapeutic. And I know you are not supposed to beat a cupcake mixture too vigorously, but at times I could not help it.

  Harry was a real bastard, I could see that now. For all his careful consideration he was still ultimately blaming me for something about which I had no knowledge and over which I had no control and that was not fair. The trouble was that every time I saw him I felt worse. It would be better, I decided, if he was dead. But unlike me, who was getting thinner and paler as the days went on, he was still rather irritatingly looking the picture of health. All that going to the gym and getting ‘a hand’ with ‘Charles’ was turning him into some sort of a stud. Yes, I decided, dead would be good.

  But as I whipped up a fourth mixture adding some frozen berries I’d found in the freezer, I remembered what Will had said about not wanting it any other way. Without Harry, there would be no Monty and without Monty it really would be the wiggly coat hook. So, I found Crystal hard to accept, but as I’ve said, she was quite a difficult person to actively loathe. She had so far proved to be so sensitive and obliging it was hard to find fault — I had to really work at it. True, I was enraged to see her organic peanut butter hidden behind the toxic kind on the pantry shelf, but deep down I knew that organic peanut butter was not really in itself a heinous crime.