by Monica Ali
Gabriel wondered if he’d ever met this Den. Jenny always seemed to have someone new.
‘I know you liked Den and he was quite a fan of yours too but what will be will be. To tell the truth we weren’t suited and he could be a bugger he really could but he was all right, I mean we had our moments and it’s company isn’t it at the end of the day …’
Jenny talked on as she parked the car. Gabriel had no clear idea of what it was that she was trying to say about this Den and neither, he suspected, did Jen.
* * *
The pub had remained unchanged, pretty much, over the years and so lacked the ‘traditional’ feel of the pubs that had been revamped with old church chairs and agricultural tat. At the Last Drop Inn the seats were upholstered in fake leather that had long ago cracked and split and laddered many a pair of tights and even sliced a finger or two. There was carpet on the floor. There was a slot machine covering the fireplace.
‘Getting done up next year,’ said Jenny. ‘About time. Needs it, don’t you think?’
On their way through to the snug (a small and draughty room with a tiled floor but it was where they had always sat), they said hello to a few people. Remember Gabe, course you do, trilled Jenny at every stop. All right, they said, all right, Gabe, which encompassed everything – enquiry, acceptance, a general statement that all was as it should be. Bev was there with her husband. She moved her coat and bag to let them sit but Jenny said no, I’m having him all to myself and steered Gabriel by the arm.
‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ said Gabriel, ‘if you wanted to sit with Bev.’
Jenny stirred her vodka tonic. ‘See her every day, don’t I? In the chicken shed.’
‘The what?’
‘The call centre. Big old shed full of squawking birds.’ She laughed. ‘Seen her near enough every day of my life since I was about six. Think that’s when we became official Best Friends.’
‘I remember you crying one time because you said Bev had gone off with—’
‘Gone off with Mandy Palmer. I know! But she came crawling back.’
‘Boys don’t really have best friends,’ said Gabe. It must be nice to have someone know you so well. But Charlie knew him as well as any human could know another; he was sure of that.
‘That’s right,’ said Jenny. She looked at him carefully.
‘I suppose Dad’s got Tom Howarth.’
‘Yes.’
‘And it’s not as if I don’t …’
‘Have friends.’
‘… have friends. What happened to Michael Harrison?’
‘Michael Harrison? Oh, I don’t know. That poor little lad with the dirty jumpers and scabby head. You really took him under your wing.’
Gabriel sipped his pint. He felt unaccountably sorry for himself. Jen had Bev and Ted had Tom. Bev wasn’t just a friend, she was a witness to a life. There were parts of Gabe’s life that Charlie could never know about, however much he told her. There were parts of Gabe’s life – stretches in half-forgotten hotels, rooms he could no longer summon with people he could no longer recall – which it seemed he himself did not really know. They did not exist, except in his mind, and then not even there.
‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why we stopped being friends.’
Jenny took a puff on her inhaler and then lit a cigarette. She tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘He started getting in trouble, police and stuff.’ Gabriel held out two fingers and she passed the cigarette. ‘I don’t see him around. Must have moved away. Keep that one, I like lighting them anyway, first drag’s always the best.’
She narrowed her eyes as the lighter flared. They were pretty eyes. She had Mum’s long, fine nose and her top lip curved up in a sculpted arch. The oval that contained her features sat on her face like a mask, untouched by the fat of her jowls and chin. She didn’t suit being fat. It didn’t seem right. It seemed unnatural, a joke, as if she were about to burst out of there.
‘Tell me about the kids,’ he said. They talked about Harley and Bailey and Jen asked about Charlie and they talked about her as well. Gabriel wanted to tell her about Lena but the words stuck in his throat. They moved on to Dad and Nana and Jenny explained the rotation of visits to the GP, specialist and nurse; she itemized the medications, their dosage and timings and purposes, though all would be futile in the end; she explained how the shopping got done and the cooking (she made an extra shepherd’s pie on a Monday, Mary Mahoney at number 82 popped a hotpot round on Thursdays); and she listed the home visits, both official and unofficial, which had been carefully structured so that someone looked in at least twice a day. Gabe began to appreciate the enormous industry that went into it. What had looked to him like two old people muddling through was in fact a carefully orchestrated plan. He’d had no more idea of it than a diner presented with a beautiful plate, who knows nothing of what goes on below stairs.
Jenny finally stopped speaking. She seemed exhausted, as if she too had been surprised by all the labours involved. Slowly shaking her head she said, ‘I hate to do it, but it’s got to be done, Gabe. She’ll have to go in a home.’
‘Nana? But you’ve set everything up so well.’
‘For now. Just about. Oh, think about it, will you, it doesn’t get any easier from here. Dad’s going to get worse, Nana’s going to get worse and I can’t give up work and I don’t suppose you will.’ Her eyes flashed in the old way.
‘I’m sorry. You know what’s best, I’m sure.’
Jenny sucked on the inhaler. ‘Allergies,’ she said. ‘Listen, let’s talk about you. I want to hear about this new restaurant of yours.’
‘It’s not going to be anything fancy. Old-school French, but done to perfection, that’s the idea. Not a steak-frites bistro with red check tablecloths and candles stuck in bottles. More upmarket than that. And really classic food – blanquette de veau, trout meunière … that sort of thing.’
Jenny laughed. ‘Not fancy? Well, I suppose if you want to get them stars, Michelin stars, you’ve got to have all the posh food on the menu or you won’t even get a look-in.’
‘Trust me, Jenny, all I’m talking here is old-school French … beef and carrots, peach melba, it’s certainly not Michelin star stuff.’
Jenny looked sceptical. ‘It all sounds posher when you say it in French. And don’t do yourself down like that. You’ll get your stars in the end. It’s what you’ve always wanted and you deserve it after all these years.’
‘I’ve never wanted them, actually. I mean, it’s not something I’ve ever aimed for and I certainly wouldn’t be trying to get in that race now. It’s a whole other world, I promise you.’
‘If you say so,’ said Jen. ‘But you did want them something rotten. It’s all you could talk about for a while. I remember when you came back from that place in France where you worked in a two-star and you were only starting out really back then and you were so full of it, excitement, about the things you’d seen and what you’d tasted and the way they did things and you’d sleep on the laundry pile because you were on your feet sixteen hours a day. My goodness, you were keen. I’ve never seen anyone so keen on anything before or since. And it was lovely. It was lovely to see.’
‘But it wasn’t something I wanted for myself,’ said Gabe. ‘I just wanted to learn as much as I could.’
Jenny touched his arm. ‘We all had our dreams, didn’t we, but here we are.’ Her fingers tightened conspiratorially on his forearm. ‘Here we are,’ she said.
While Jenny was getting the next round in, Gabriel’s mobile rang.
‘Where the fuck were you?’
‘Rolly,’ said Gabriel, ‘wonderful to hear your voice.’
‘Two o’clock today, on-site, kitchen fitters – ring any bells?’
‘Shit, sorry.’
‘You need to get your act together, I’m telling you.’
‘I’m sorry. I had to come up north to see my dad.’
‘Well, that’s all right then isn’t it? There I was
thinking you’d let your partners down for no good reason at all.’
‘Rolly,’ said Gabriel. ‘Fuck off.’ He hung up.
‘Everything OK?’ said Jenny, dangling a packet of peanuts from the corner of her mouth.
‘Yes,’ said Gabriel. ‘No.’ He rubbed his bald patch and a few more hairs came away in his hand. ‘Everything’s fine. I’m going for a slash.’
He called Rolly from the toilets and got no reply. He left an apologetic message saying that his father was dying. As soon as he’d hung up he wished he could take it back.
* * *
The packet of dry roasted was torn open and empty when he returned to the table, and Jenny was dabbing at the crumbs.
‘I could eat these ’til the cows come home. What’s your favourite food then, Gabe? Your favourite meal?’
‘I like all sorts. French, Italian, Japanese.’
‘Toad in the hole,’ said Jenny. ‘That’s me. With onion gravy. What about you?’
‘I don’t know. Look,’ he said, ‘that stars business, it’s a mug’s game. It’s never been part of the plan.’
‘Do you remember Mum’s meatballs?’ said Jenny. ‘I made a paperweight out of one of them.’
‘Dad standing over us until we’d eaten up,’ said Gabe. Where did his sister go? He wished he could reach inside this fat woman and find her again. But if he got beneath the fat there’d still be this unknown woman in the polyester cap-sleeved blouse. He’d have to chisel through the breathless chat. And another casing which was made of cares, of Harley and Bailey and Nana and Dad. And then scrape away the small-town thoughts and habits and go in and really in, like opening up a Russian doll, until he got to the real Jenny, the one who lay on her stomach on the bed in a torn denim miniskirt and said, ‘If I’m not out of this place by the time I’m eighteen, just shoot me. Shoot me, please.’
‘I felt so sorry for him,’ said Jenny. ‘Poor old Dad.’
‘Poor old Dad? Poor me, poor you, poor Mum. She was never allowed, anyway … I don’t know. What about you? Don’t you want to, sometimes, just get back to being yourself?’
She looked at him through slitted eyes. ‘I am myself. What you see is what you get, Gabriel. And if you don’t like it you know what you can do.’
‘I didn’t mean …’
‘You didn’t mean? What? Forget it, Gabe, no, just forget it, I don’t even care. And about Mum, you shouldn’t sound so superior because Dad did his best and you’ve never had family to cope with, not like that, not when there’s someone ill for years and years and it’s not even understood properly and you’re just struggling on your own. Put yourself in his shoes, why don’t you, and then you’ll see how things really stand.’ She smoked a cigarette the way Mum used to, always held close to the face, always smoked down to the butt.
‘Nana wasn’t ill, not really, she was a hypochondriac and it was Mum looking after her anyway, not Dad.’
‘Not Nana,’ wheezed Jenny. ‘Mum.’ She could hardly catch her breath.
‘Where’s your inhaler, Jen?’
‘You were always,’ Jenny gasped, ‘so wrapped up in yourself.’
Gabriel opened Jenny’s handbag. ‘My God, how do you find anything in here?’
Jenny snatched the bag and shook it gently to sift and separate the contents, as if she were panning for gold. ‘She frightened me sometimes. Especially when she’d run off. I thought she’d never come back.’
‘Run off? Are we still talking about Mum?’
‘Her little holidays. That’s what we called them. When she’d run off with another bloke, some random person she’d met at a bus stop or in the launderette, though one time it was Daniel Parsons and he brought her back after one day and said, I’m sorry but I’ve bitten off more here than I can chew, and it was awful because Dad had to work with him and it was worse even than when she took up with the milkman and rode around with him on that bloody float and of course he denied there was anything going on but she could ride with him if she wanted to, he wasn’t going to stop her if her husband didn’t, and everyone set their bloody alarm clocks, didn’t they, to make sure they’d be at their curtains when the bloody milkman came by.’
Gabriel stared at Jenny. He saw the rag-and-bone man leering, his mother descending as plumes of steam rose from the horse. ‘You’re talking about Mum. Our mum.’
‘She was ill,’ said Jenny. ‘Four or five times that happened and then there was all the shopping, endless stuff from catalogues that Dad and me would wrap up and send back. That was the mania, the manic episodes, and then she’d be depressed. Bipolar they call it now.’
Gabe shook his head. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He went back to shaking his head.
‘I didn’t know she was so ill,’ said Jenny. ‘Not until later. She was sectioned one time, Dad never told me for years. It was the stigma. Carted off to the loony bin, children mustn’t know. The children did know, of course, the ones at school, God, kids can be so mean.’
‘You can’t tell me about Mum like that, as if … as if … Do you even realize what you’ve said? What you’ve accused her of?’
‘Oh, grow up,’ said Jenny. ‘When are you ever going to grow up?’
One of the pub staff worked his way round the tables, emptying ashtrays into a bucket and flicking a cloth about. There was a nasty taste in Gabriel’s mouth – the cigarettes, the beer – and he swallowed and swallowed and the bile rose in his throat.
‘I’m not accusing anyone of anything,’ said Jenny, when Gabriel didn’t reply. ‘She couldn’t help it. She was ill. And she probably wasn’t even having an affair with the milkman, she just didn’t see anything wrong with riding out with him. She was like that when she was on a high.’
‘But the others …’
‘I don’t know exactly and it doesn’t matter now but yes, I’m sure that some of the others … one or two at least.’
Gabe shook his head. ‘No. I’d have known. If you knew, I’d have known as well. I’m older than you.’
‘You didn’t want to know, Gabriel. I tried saying something to you once or twice when we were kids.’
‘Mum was on Valium,’ said Gabriel. The pint glass was clammy in his hands. ‘Around the time Nana moved in with us. But lots of housewives were. It kept them quiet, kept them in their place, I suppose.’
Jenny sighed so long and hard that Gabe nearly expected her to deflate. ‘That’s not the half of it. She was on serious stuff, more like a chemical cosh. And Nana moved in to keep an eye on her and you’d started your training and you were hardly ever around and Mum said we’ve not to trouble Gabe, he’s going places, that boy, and it’s not for us to drag him down with cares. And she’d sit and watch the phone because you’d said you’d ring on such and such a night and so she’d sit and stare at the phone, take a chair into the hall and set it by the little table, I don’t know why everyone kept their phone out by the stairs, and of course you wouldn’t ring and in the end she’d go up to bed and she made the staircase look like a mountain, it was such a heavy climb.’
‘I was a little shit, right?’
‘You were her golden boy. And she was your fairy queen, until you left home, anyway. I sometimes used to think it wasn’t the medication that made her go all flat …’
‘Just say it.’
‘It was like she had a broken heart.’
‘You’ve waited all these years, and you’ve never once said anything, and now you’re trying to tell me these things … that are not … they are not … and I’m supposed to take all this from you?’
‘Listen to you. Does it always have to be about you? And it’s not like I’ve never tried before. But you’ve always been the protected one, and you’ve never had to hear. You’ve never been around. What am I supposed to do? Sing hosanna when you ride into town?’
‘She embarrassed you,’ said Gabe, his eyes beginning to smart in the smoke from Jenny’s cigarette. ‘It was you as well as Dad. You could never just let her be herself.’
‘I wouldn’t bother telling you now,’ said Jenny. ‘Not for your sake, I wouldn’t bother, not in a million years. It’s only for Dad, that’s all, because he’s dying and you need to understand.’ She started to cry.
‘Jenny,’ said Gabriel. ‘Jen.’
‘I’m OK,’ she said and continued to weep.
‘Remember,’ said Gabe, ‘when she turned the sitting room into a Bedouin tent?’
‘And she had a tea towel on her head.’ Jenny laughed and then groaned. ‘But we always do this. Turn her into a fairy tale.’
‘I know she wasn’t perfect. But she could be fun, couldn’t she?’
Jenny looked at him solemnly. ‘What happened between you and Dad? I’ve always wondered. It’s like he was your hero and then overnight, you must have been eleven or twelve, and it was like, wham, woke up one morning and hated his guts. I’ve always wanted to know what it was.’
‘I think you might be rewriting history here,’ said Gabriel. He squeezed her hand. ‘Me and Dad, we always rubbed each other up the wrong way, and I’m not blaming him for anything, before you have a go at me again. Though he did keep dragging me off to the mill.’
‘You loved going,’ said Jenny. ‘And then you suddenly refused to go any more. Something must have happened and from then on it was like everything he did was wrong.’
Gabriel, all in a rush, was seized by a sense of things left undone. He’d forgotten an important meeting. He should have told Oona to finish the stock-take. Maddox was still on his case. He hadn’t found out what Gleeson was up to. Charlie needed – she deserved – something better from him. And Lena, for God’s sake, Lena. What a mess he had made of that. A vertiginous feeling came over him and he held on to the edge of his seat. ‘We never got on,’ he mumbled. ‘I thought, you know … I was taking Mum’s side, but then everything you’ve been saying, if it’s true, I don’t know, maybe I didn’t understand.’
‘Let’s get you home,’ said Jenny. ‘You look fit to drop. But isn’t it about time you sorted things out with Dad? Whatever happened, Gabriel, it’s time to let it go.’