Too Close to Home

by Aoife Walsh

  By the time there was a lull, because Selena and Ash were both chewing at the same time, Raymond had his fists twisted up in Nita’s hair. ‘It’s good to see you here, Gil,’ she said, turning her head from where it was resting sideways on the highchair tray. ‘Is everything going well with the shop, and everything?’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ he said, sucking fish off his fork. ‘I’m delighted to be here, Anita. Dining with not one, but five beautiful women – I’m the envy of every man in London.’ It was so cheesy Minny felt her mouth go dry, and Nita practically shuddered. Minny could see Selena’s eyes moving round the table, counting to make sure one of the five was her.

  ‘Well, we’re very pleased to have you. I’m sorry it’s all a bit chaotic, but Fridays are always like this – I didn’t get home till half past five, so Mama had to look after everything as well as cook.’ She paused but he was busy eating. ‘So – Minny,’ she said, turning in desperation, ‘tell me about this teacher. What’s her name again?’

  ‘Mrs Lemon.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Minny shrugged. She had no interest in talking about it in front of the whole world.

  ‘No? Anyone got any plans this weekend?’ She filled her mouth up with stew, looking as if she was in pain. ‘This is really wonderful, Mama.’

  ‘It had better be. The pan will smell of fish bones for a month, and so will my fingers.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Gil said, stopping guzzling, swallowing a belch and reaching across Ash to pat Babi’s hand. Aisling promptly dropped her fork, which clattered against her glass. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a woman’s scent reminding you of the good food she’s given you.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Minny said under her breath. She saw her mother look down at her plate with round eyes.

  ‘Anyway,’ Nita ploughed on after a pause, ‘something exciting happened to me today. It looks as if we might be asked to take the play to the Edinburgh Festival!’

  ‘What’s the Edinburgh Festival?’ Aisling asked.

  ‘Can I come?’ Sel looked anxious. It had taken about a year for her to get over not being allowed to be in the play – their mother’s drama group was for kids with disabilities and special needs, but Selena didn’t see that as a reason why she shouldn’t get the starring role in every production.

  ‘When?’ Minny didn’t want to ask what would happen to them.

  ‘What would happen to them?’ Babi demanded.

  ‘It’s just an idea.’ Sometimes their mother looked like she was going to cry; it was the kind of face she had. ‘It’ll probably come to nothing. And if it did, it would only be four or five days at most.’

  Babi snorted. ‘I can’t help remembering what happened the last time you went away for a few days.’

  Nita went scarlet.

  ‘What happened?’ Selena asked, tipping up her bowl to get the broth.

  ‘Nothing,’ Babi snapped. She shouldn’t have said it, not in front of Gil. The last time Nita had gone away on her own she had come back pregnant with Raymond.

  When the stew was all gone and they were eating boring Neapolitan ice cream, because the dairy-free stuff Ash had to have only came in dull flavours, Babi asked Gil to help her with the clearing away. ‘No, Mama, you did the cooking,’ Nita protested. ‘The girls and I will take care of it.’

  ‘No, no,’ Gil said, all jovial. ‘You’ve got enough to do, Nita. And I’m sure the girls would rather be painting their nails or something, eh? I enjoy being shut into a confined space with Milena.’ Minny tried not to gag. She had an unwelcome memory of the day, around last Christmas, when he and Babi had only just got together and she turned round in the greengrocer’s and they were smooching behind the counter. It was also the first time she had seen unpicked Brussels sprouts, sticking out alternately from sticks. She had found them disturbing.

  ‘I don’t paint my nails,’ Selena remarked, mixing her ice cream up so it would turn into a weird sludge she could drink. ‘I’m not allowed to use make-up till I’m older. But I’d like to go and read some of my Bible.’

  ‘Still slogging away at it then, Selena? What do you think of that?’ He nudged Minny.

  Minny thought it was mental, obviously. ‘I think it’s up to Selena.’

  ‘It’s great literature, apart from anything else,’ her mother said brightly.

  ‘Well, so they say, but I could never get my head round that. Seems to me a little girl could find better things to do, playing with her friends or what-have-you. Still, it’s not up to me, is it?’

  ‘No,’ they all said together.

  He put an apron on, to clear the table. Over his horrible belly. It was the flowered apron their father used to wear when they made bread on Sundays. Minny couldn’t relax until they’d finished stacking the dishes up and Babi had replastered her face and she and Gil had gone out; she never did proper homework on Fridays, but since they weren’t allowed the TV on, because Ash was doing hers and Sel was drawing urns and daisies around the edges of her sums, Minny looked at some doctored Soviet photographs in her history textbook for a while. She thought she wouldn’t mind a job like that, just rubbing people out. Then Ash had finished what she was doing and left the computer, so Minny glanced at her emails. She was about to shut it down when a new message flashed in from Uncle Kevin, with the subject ‘Marvellous Minny’.

  ‘Minnymouse!’ it started, which was what she’d been called when she was little – all one word, like that, like lollipop or cantaloupe. ‘You are a martyr to your own brilliance, and to this terrible woman who is obviously sexually unsatisfied in her marriage or perhaps never actually learned to read but has risen to the eminence of English teacher only through trickery and deceit. I’m speaking to Mam later if I can get hold of her and I’ll have her on the rosaries for you every night that you get a decent teacher next year who might stand a chance of appreciating you. I loved the sound of Mr Fahey who took you to see The Tempest, he sounded just my sort of man. I’m guessing from what you didn’t say about him that he’s handsome and sad with sensitive hands and hair falling into his eyes. Am I right? Don’t tell me if I’m not. Anyway it doesn’t much matter as long as it’s someone bright enough to be glad to have a pupil who can string a couple of clauses together and actually reads books that aren’t about vampires. You should tell her all the Salinger books you’ve read, and Vonnegut – can you imagine? It might put an end to her. Your mother’s right, you’d love Jane Austen. Also I was just thinking the other day, you’re ready for Steinbeck. I introduced your dad to him when he was fourteen and it was love, it truly was. The time might be ripe.’ Sometimes Minny got a great urge to call her uncle, and hear him talking like that, even if she couldn’t see him. He never even came to visit his own mother any more; it must be three years since he stayed at Granny’s and probably more.

  Actually, Minny realised, she missed her granny too. She wondered for a second if Nita was deliberately trying to stop them seeing much of her. Nita had always been driven a bit nuts by Granny, who filled them full of fizzy drinks and sweets whenever they went to her house, and did things like taking them out for milkshakes even though Aisling was dairy intolerant. They’d never rowed, but once when Granny was round, Minny had found her mother alone with her back to the kitchen door and her arms stretched out pressing against it, whispering things to herself. But no, unless her mother was playing a very long game, it couldn’t be that; she used to get Granny round to babysit and everything. That would have been more awkward now, with Raymond and all, but anyway they were old enough not to need a babysitter any more. Since the baby came, and especially since she had to go back to work afterwards, Mum had chilled out a lot about them being home sometimes by themselves. Usually Babi was meant to be there, but it wasn’t as if that made much difference, apart from the cooking.

  After the baby was in bed Minny sat about waiting for people to come downstairs and start annoying her. In the end she turned the telly off and wandered upstairs. Ash was in the bath singing to herself.
Her mother was drying Sel’s hair while Sel brushed it, standing with her eyes shut. Minny waited in the doorway till Nita looked up. ‘Shut the door, sweetie. I don’t want to wake the baby.’

  Minny did shut the door, with herself outside it. She heard the dryer being turned off, Sel yelp in protest and then her mother put her head around the door.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Is there something you want to talk about?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Is it about Ash?’

  ‘No,’ Minny snapped. Then she said, ‘Well, Mrs Fansham told me to tell you she was upset in chemistry but wouldn’t say why.’

  Her mother blew a raspberry. ‘That woman. Thank God the school year’s nearly over. Look – never mind. You want to talk about something else, don’t you? The thing is, I’ve promised to read to Selena before she goes to sleep.’

  ‘Mum, Selena has been reading the Jerusalem Bible to herself for a year now.’

  ‘I know, but she’s only seven, I like to do bedtime stories when I can. And she’s a bit sensitive at the moment. I’ll be down soon. I promise.’

  She wasn’t especially. It stayed unusually quiet downstairs, and Minny started watching a film she didn’t want to watch because her book was in her bedroom. It was the second ad break before her mother came in.

  ‘Feel like helping me with the washing-up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, go on. If I sit down now I’ll never get it done, and we’ll get up tomorrow feeling as if we live in a fish bin. Please. I’m extremely tired. You don’t have to do anything, just stand in there and talk to me.’

  Minny sighed and got up, because she had nothing better to do. Even though, as soon as they were in the kitchen, Nita threw a tea towel in her face so that she could dry. Normally just one of them did all the tidying, because the kitchen was too little and two people got in each other’s way; and usually the baby was still up and crawling around tripping you up, or throwing the magnetic letters off the fridge across the room. Most of them were missing now. Minny had arranged the remaining ones into rude words yesterday, and then Selena had come along and tried to change them into Biblical terms, but her concentration wasn’t very good for things like that so now the fridge said ‘vargin’ and ‘bullocks’. (‘Bullocks?’ her mother had asked her. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Oh yes, all the farmyard animals come up in the Gospel,’ Sel said airily.) Minny got the giggles now, wondering if Gil had noticed them.

  It was easier to have a conversation when you were doing something, and even with Carole King playing so her mother stopped talking to dance every few songs, she still got quite satisfactorily worked up about Mrs Lemon. ‘Stupid woman. If she treats you like that, how’s she teaching her non-gifted pupils?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘I hope to God you get a decent one next year. You’re so bloody-minded about the subjects you like, especially English, I’m always afraid they’ll see your brains as a nuisance and shut you down, the way the maths teachers did with Ash.’ Aisling didn’t learn maths at school now; Nita taught her at home. The teachers said the way she learned was incompatible with the way everyone else in the class needed teaching. ‘It’s probably inevitable in any school, but it’s so frustrating. I get really resentful about it. It’s like those self-service checkouts in the supermarket that have signs on saying, “Sorry, no fifty-pound notes.” Well, what if a fifty-pound note is what you have?’

  Minny had finished drying the knives and leaned against the oven. Her mother’s face was reflected in the kitchen window, lit up with her hair flopping around it. Minny told her about meeting Franklin Conderer that afternoon – she’d wanted to mention it earlier over dinner, but it was like an unwritten rule that you didn’t talk about one grandmother in front of the other unless you absolutely had to. Too much like tickling a bear. ‘Why has he moved in with Granny?’

  Nita dashed her hand against her head. ‘I was going to tell you that. It went clear out of my mind. I rang her just this morning and she told me he was staying. I think it all happened fairly fast as far as Judy was concerned – he’s been in some trouble lately, and his mother’s not in a great condition at the moment, and it came down to him having to go into care for a while because there was no one else to look after him, and then someone thought of Judy. Bless her heart, taking him in. She’s always felt bad about him though, and especially since poor Lou died and he had no one. I mean, besides his mother.’

  Minny digested this. Her granny and Franklin’s had been best friends back in the nineteenth century or something when they were both student nurses in London; that was the whole reason they’d known him. When his gran died, his aunt Lou used to bring him round to see Judy; and then he’d lived with Lou for a while when they were about seven or eight. He was at their school, probably for about a year. Then she got ill, and he had to go back to live with his mum in North London. Today was the first time she’d seen him since the aunt’s funeral. Franklin’s mother was a disaster. Minny had known it at age seven; she always seemed drunk or something, and usually angry when you did see her; and when she wasn’t there she was talked about in hushed voices. ‘Is it for good then?’

  ‘I think they’re playing it by ear. I imagine it depends on how he takes to it, being round here, and if he can keep out of trouble. I never thought he was a bad kid though.’ Nita never thought anyone was a bad kid. ‘He had issues. No wonder. I hope it works out.’ She looked like a painting in the dark window. Chiaroscuro, that was what they called it; Minny’s dad used to take them to the National Gallery and walk them up and down, talking all the time. ‘Why don’t you have a boyfriend?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m serious.’

  Nita peeled off her rubber gloves, ready to make Minny dance to ‘Natural Woman’. ‘What on earth would I want a boyfriend for? I don’t have time to kiss my babies at the moment. Between work and you lot and this house coming down around our ears I can’t see myself contributing much to a successful romantic relationship, can you?’ She seized Minny’s hands from behind her back. ‘Besides, my self-worth’s just fine.’

  ‘That’s why people have men, is it?’

  ‘One of the reasons. And I’m not much interested in sex right now either.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’

  ‘Well, it’s true. Maybe when you’re all grown up I’ll regain my libido.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Yes?’ She spun Minny around. ‘I’ll be a foxy – what – fifty-seven-year-old. A bit like my mama.’

  ‘That is pure ram, Mother.’

  ‘Prude.’

  There was a patter of feet on the stairs, then a silence, and then Sel put her head sheepishly around the door. ‘I’m thirsty.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I didn’t like the dark up there.’

  ‘What were you reading after I left?’

  She peeped through her fringe, over the rim of the glass. ‘The Book of the Apocalypse.’

  Nita sighed. ‘Elise was telling me at work today that her son got nightmares from Harry Potter. Some people have no idea.’ She snapped the iPod dock off at the switch. ‘Come on, I’ll tuck you in again.’

  Just as they were trooping out of the kitchen into the hall, the phone went in the back room. It was unusual for it to ring so late; it sounded like cannon fire. Selena plunged for it. ‘Hello?’ she shouted. Nita winced and shut the door. Minny was looking at Selena, wondering who was phoning at that time.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked, because Sel was just listening. Sel held out the receiver. Their mother took it, then, without putting it to her ear – still holding it at arm’s length – she said, ‘Go upstairs now, girls. I’ll be up in a minute. Go on, up.’

  Minny climbed the stairs behind Selena, and followed her into Aisling’s room, where Ash was lying on her stomach reading an atlas. She looked round at them.

  ‘Dad’s on the phone,’ Selena
said, her eyes dramatically wide, but her voice sounding surprised that it was such a strange thing to say. Dad, Dad. The last time she’d called him anything to his face, she hadn’t been five yet. She’d only just started school.

  Aisling didn’t seem exactly amazed. Minny leaned against her radiator the way she did when it was on, in winter. Selena was looking from one of them to the other. ‘Aren’t you as-tonished?’ she demanded.

  Minny shook her head.

  ‘Why not?’

  Minny shrugged.

  ‘I spoke to him last night,’ Ash said, turning back onto her stomach.

  ‘You what?’ asked Minny.

  ‘He rang last night. You were in the bath. And Selena was in bed. And Mum was still out at work. So I picked it up.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said, “Is that Aisling?” And I said it was. And he said it was him. And he asked how I was, so I said I was fine. And then he didn’t say anything else, so I put the phone down.’

  ‘Good.’

  Selena looked at her, but didn’t say anything. She sat down on the end of Ash’s bed and tucked her feet up. Ash carried on turning the pages of her atlas. Minny looked at the wall opposite, covered almost completely with a motley set of maps and timelines. There was only one thing framed, a huge cartoon drawing of a scene from Wacky Races with an extra car that had Minny and Aisling in it. Uncle Kevin had drawn it and sent it to them for Christmas the year Aisling was six. She used to love Wacky Races. Minny wondered again how come Aisling had got to keep it when they got separate rooms. She looked at the poster next to it instead and counted the Roman emperors on it.