Michael, Michael

by Wendy Perriam

  She ran some water in the sink, then spooned the last scrapings from a dish of chicken curry straight into her mouth, followed by a few crumbs of apple pie. Dinner over, she soaked the dishes, squirted them with Squezy, then swung round to face her daughter. ‘Now, tell me how you are, Toots. I want all your news, and especially how your birthday went. Maybe you don’t realize, but it’s the only one we haven’t spent together.’

  Tessa didn’t answer, was aware of her mother’s eyes on her. April hadn’t yet turned back to her pile of washing-up, but was fixing her with the most intense and searching scrutiny she had received in nineteen years. Suddenly, she walked over, dish-mop in her hand, placed an arm on her daughter’s drooping shoulders.

  ‘You’re pregnant, Tessa, aren’t you? You’re going to have a baby.’

  Tessa tried to speak and couldn’t. She could feel her mother’s dry coarse hair tickling on her neck; the bolster of her bosom soft against her face; her arms a shield, a shelter.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ said April simply.

  Tessa glanced down at the wet spots shining on the lino, hardly believing they were tears. She’d been determined not to cry; dared not cry in case she couldn’t stop. She cleared her throat, still groping for the words to express her relief and yet astonishment. How on earth could her mother know like that, when she hadn’t so much as mentioned the subject? Was her stomach bigger than she thought; her breasts noticeably enlarged?

  ‘H … how ever could you tell, Mum?’ she blurted out at last.

  ‘I suppose mothers have a sixth sense,’ April said, mopping her nose and then Tessa’s tears with the same soggy wad of Kleenex. ‘And there’s a different look about you, Toots – something in your face.’

  Tessa gripped her hand, equally surprised by her mother’s quiet acceptance – no hysterics or histrionics, no recrimination.

  ‘Don’t cry, my pet,’ April said again, offering her the Kleenex box.

  Tessa wiped her eyes, edged away a little. Her mother smelt of curry and cheap scent. ‘I … I’m not crying because I’m pregnant, I’m crying about the father.’

  ‘What about him, Tootsie?’

  ‘Well, he … he doesn’t want the baby, but’ – she shrugged – ‘I can accept that, just about. He’s got his own ambitious life, and he thinks I tricked him anyway, because he made a special point of checking I was on the pill. What hurts is …’ She broke off again, recalling Michael’s letter – its cold dismissive phrases; the raging rabid jealousy she’d been fighting since she read it. She suddenly lurched up to her feet, let out a howl of fury. ‘Mum, I still can’t quite believe it, but he’s been two-timing me from the first moment I laid eyes on him. He never said a word till now, but he’s more or less engaged to someone else.’

  April strode back to the sink, so indignant now herself, she started lashing at the dirty plates with her dish-mop, spitting out disparagements. The father of her daughter’s child was a rat, a crud, a shitbag …

  ‘Don’t, Mum! I can’t bear it. I love him. I still love him.’

  ‘You can’t love a man like that, Tess – a liar and a cheat.’

  Tessa stared down at her hands. Michael had kissed those fingers, sucked each one right into his mouth; used his teeth to graze them, his tongue to circle their tips. He owned her body now and she couldn’t wrench it back; couldn’t stop loving him, whatever her mother said. However much he hurt her – physically or mentally – she knew it wouldn’t change her basic feelings.

  ‘It’s not that Robert, is it? – the one you never let me meet? I knew there must be something odd about him.’ April was still laying into plates, banging knives and forks down on the metal draining board.

  Tessa shook her head.

  ‘Well, just you tell me who the hell he is and I’ll go straight up to Oxford and give him …’

  ‘He’s not in Oxford any more.’

  ‘Where is he then?’

  ‘He’s … gone.’ The word stuck in her throat – a terrifying hopeless word. She grabbed a tea towel, started drying up the cutlery, polishing each fork until her hand hurt. But he’s coming back, she told herself; he must be coming back. He couldn’t simply end things with a letter.

  She was suddenly aware of the silence in the room. April had stopped her clattering, and was standing rigid at the sink, both hands in the water still, but doing little more than fiddle with the mop. Her rouged but shiny face looked tired and almost old; her lipstick smudged; the brave glitter on her eyelids melting into greasy silver creases.

  ‘Listen, Mum, he’s coming back.’ This time she said it out aloud, as if speaking the words was enough to make it happen, and could dispel the utter wretchedness on her mother’s wilting face.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, more brazenly. ‘He’s definitely coming back.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Now this is my treat, Tessa. I don’t want any argument.’

  ‘But you’ve only just …’

  ‘No argument, I said. It’s the first thing I’m doing for my grandchild – feeding its poor mother up. When I was sixteen weeks, I had a belly like an airship, and yours doesn’t show at all yet.’

  ‘So, how the hell did you guess then? You haven’t really explained it yet.’

  ‘Mothers simply know these things,’ April said complacently, settling back in her chair. She reached out for the menu, an extensive one, swanking in a clammy vinyl cover; the same oppressive shade of burgundy as the squiggled carpet, the flock-patterned swirly walls. ‘Now, what are you going to eat, love? The fried Pacific prawns are nice, although beef might be a safer bet – if it hasn’t got mad cow disease. You have to be so careful when you’re pregnant. Or there’s always plain chop suey, or …’

  ‘I’ve told you, I’m not hungry, Mum.’

  ‘Well, how about some egg-drop soup? That’s nourishing, but very light.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Tessa listlessly. The last thing she wanted was to be sitting in Yum Sing’s at five minutes past midnight, but her mother had seemed reluctant to go home. She was having trouble with a lodger, so she claimed, although she’d tried to laugh it off, had looked a shade embarrassed, as if she were keeping something back. Could ‘trouble’ mean involvement, either sexual or emotional? Surely not, when Ken was on the scene?

  They’d already spent an hour discussing the whole business of Michael and her pregnancy, before eventually escaping from the deserted Horse and Groom. She was tired now, even irritable; resentful of the happy couples sitting all around her; one man forking noodles into his girlfriend’s red-lipped mouth; another twosome clinking glasses and drinking to each other. Was Michael also toasting his engagement, feeding his new woman – that mysterious hateful female he’d known for seven years? According to his letter, they’d met originally at Christ Church when he was reading physiology. A brilliant girl, no doubt, and with all the social graces, who wouldn’t let him down with her below-stairs accent or her uncouth comprehensive school. Strange he hadn’t mentioned such a paragon before, if she meant so much, and had been earmarked as the partner of his future.

  ‘I made it quite clear,’ his letter said, ‘that I wasn’t free to love you, Tessa.’ A blatant lie – he had never said a word. In fact the whole thing sounded devious; a string of trumped-up excuses to get him off the hook. His shadowy fiancée didn’t even have a name, but was referred to merely as ‘she’.

  ‘She and I are both too busy to live together, so there’s been no formal engagement, but I have to let you know that I’m totally committed to her.’

  ‘Totally committed’. Those words hurt most of all. Michael was totally committed only to his career. She picked up her knife, made angry little slashes at the table. She had struggled with her selfish instincts, her longing to possess him; fought an inner battle with herself, until she was willing, even eager, to make Heloïse’s sacrifice and refuse to tie him down. Instead, he’d tied himself down with marriage-bonds and manacles – the very constraints she’d done her best to spare him. The on
ly things she’d asked for were regular discussions about the baby’s health and progress, the occasional visit from his father – if and when he had the time – and the odd card or teddy bear.

  ‘Shall we have the fried rice or the boiled, Toots? Or perhaps we’d better order both. That waiter’s looking a bit cheesed off. He probably doesn’t like us waltzing in so late, then hardly eating anything.’

  Tessa shrugged. ‘Chinese waiters all look pretty grouchy.’ Even now after storms of words and tears in the sweltering pub kitchen, her mother hadn’t really grasped how much Michael meant to her. Would anyone ever understand – or realize just how devastating it was to have to accept that the most momentous experience of her life had been, in his eyes, little more than a casual fling, something on the side? He’d been doubly unfaithful, not only to her, but also to the other woman, the one he’d promised total deep commitment. She felt sorriest of all for the poor rejected baby, who’d been offered not a teddy, but a coffin. Michael had even had the gall to say that he had no proof the child was his – a barb which really wounded, with its implication that she was as promiscuous as he was. And even her anxious shaken mother had seemed more concerned about Oxford – the appalling thought that she’d have to give it up – than about her losing Michael’s son.

  ‘It’s a bit gloomy in here, isn’t it?’ April said, smoothing out the tassel on the menu, as if it too needed comfort. ‘You’d think they were trying to save on the electricity.’

  ‘I suppose it’s meant to be romantic.’ Tessa continued stabbing with the knife. Fine for all the other couples, drinking to their engagements or their special anniversaries; sharing food and lives. April must have forgotten the pain of being alone, now that she had Ken. The smugly happy pair of them were probably more or less engaged, as well, totally committed like Michael and his lovebird. Maybe Ken had popped the question in this restaurant, which was why April knew the opening hours, and could recommend the fried Pacific prawns.

  ‘Ah! Here’s the other waiter coming. At least he doesn’t look as if he’s buried half his family and divorced the other half. Now listen, Tessa, once I’ve given him our order, we’ve really got to talk.’

  ‘We’ve talked.’

  ‘No, we haven’t – you have. That’s fine. I’m not complaining. I needed time to take the whole thing in. It’s a shock for me – of course it is – but what’s done is done, I always say, and we’ve got to put our heads together and work out how we’re going to cope. Just a sec – what was it you wanted – the chicken with cashew nuts?’

  Tessa nodded. Who cared what she ordered? She could always push it round her plate, or offload it on her mother’s.

  April pointed to the number on the menu, to make sure the waiter understood. He looked small and weedy beside her; his pasty skin rebuked by her bright lipstick, which she’d reapplied, together with more silver on her lids. ‘And the Pacific prawns for me, please. And we’d both like some fried rice, and a dish of those bamboo-y things, and two crispy pancake rolls and …’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Wait! We’ve got to have prawn crackers. And if this lovely man could find me some tomato sauce – not that soya stuff – then we’ll all be home and dry.’ April banged the menu shut, blew her nose, lit a half-squashed Silk Cut, then leaned back in her chair. ‘Where was I? Yes, the baby. Now, what I’m going to do first is change my job – hand my notice in to Connie at the pub, and go back to hairdressing. I can take it with me then.’

  ‘Take what with you?’

  ‘The baby. I know you call it ‘‘him’’, but supposing it’s a girl? In fact, now I come to think about it, it’s bound to be pink bootees. My mother had six girls; my sister’s got her Alice and Anita, and my Grandma, who I never met, had …’

  ‘Mum, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Well, Valerie’s dead keen for me to go back to the salon. She phoned me just last month and told me I could more or less dictate my terms. I shall! I’ll ring her up tomorrow, and say if she’s no objection to a carrycot, or the odd poo or puke or grizzle, we’re in business. After all, it’ll only be in termtime, won’t it, and that’s less than half the year. And if the kid gets too much of a handful, well Val’s mum lives over the shop, and she’s nothing much to do all day except play kiss-kiss with her budgie. She’d probably jump at the chance of a little human company, even if it’s not quite talking yet, or saying ‘‘Pretty Boy’’.’

  ‘You mean, you’ll …?’

  ‘It’s the obvious way, love, isn’t it? You can’t give up your college place – it would break my heart, and Dave’s – and I don’t want my precious grandchild being bundled off to strangers, or stuck in some old musty library, with a load of corpses just outside the window.’

  ‘But, I …’

  ‘No ‘‘buts’’. And here’s our food. Or the crispy whatsits anyway. I’d better save this fag for later.’ She stubbed her cigarette out, let her fingers brush the waiter’s arm. ‘And he found the ketchup,’ she cooed at him flirtatiously, dousing her pancake roll with sauce.

  Tessa refused her mother’s offer of the sauce-bottle, a hideous red plastic object in the shape of a tomato. She couldn’t concentrate on food, when so much was at stake. She had been offered a solution. Her child might not have a father, but he’d just found a willing grandma, one who’d called him precious, one who shared his genes. Wouldn’t he be better off with his own relative, his flesh and blood, than with casual Liz or hard-boiled Alexandra? But could she really expect her mother to disrupt her life, return to a job she’d once described as ‘one I like, but which doesn’t like me’? April had a way with hair, and had always been a favourite with her clients, but the chemicals and bleaches brought her out in rashes, so that she had to work with blistered swollen hands. And the hours were much longer than at the Horse and Groom – not so late, admittedly, but all damned day from nine. Her mother would have thought of that – and relished it – more money for the baby. But was it fair to saddle her with all that fag and grind, duplicate the problems she’d endured already, nineteen years ago?

  Tessa stared down at the tablecloth, which was a murky shade of pink, as if it had absorbed a tinge of burgundy from the surrounding sombre walls. A host of other doubts and fears were churning through her head. April would do anything to prevent her losing Oxford, but suppose she lost it anyway?

  ‘Listen, Mum, there is a ‘‘but’’. Balliol may not have me back. They might insist I take a year off, or even drop out altogether.’

  April made a strangled noise through her mouthful of hot batter. ‘Over my dead body! And I mean that, Tessa Reeves. I’ll lie down in that busy street right outside your college, if they start ordering you to leave. Anyway, they won’t. Now you’ve got those first-class honours, you must be their big star, their strawberry on the gâteau. If they had the sense they’re born with, they’d lay on a proper nanny for you, instead of wasting all that money on croquet-bats and boat-races and more books than any normal person could read in umpteen lifetimes. And while they’re about it, they could root up those old tombstones, and find a cot and pram. Not that I trust nannies. Mrs Lawson had one, and she left a mite of just three months alone in a dark house while she went to meet her boyfriend.’

  ‘Oh, Mum …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re an angel, honestly.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I could never keep the wings on, and I don’t think angels smoke – not Silk Cut, anyway.’

  ‘Do you really think it could work?’

  ‘We’ll make it work. We’ve got to.’

  ‘But what about … Ken?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, if you’re going out a lot together, who the hell will babysit? And anyway, he might object. I mean, you’ll be busy enough slaving in the salon, without adding full-time Grandma to your list of jobs. He’ll hardly get to see you.’

  ‘That should suit him fine.’

  ‘What do you mean?’


  April pushed her plate away. One stray beanshoot hung trembling on her lip. She removed it, wiped her mouth. ‘I’m afraid it’s over, Tess.’

  ‘Over? But …’

  ‘No, don’t say anything – or I’ll probably cry my eyes out.’ April riffled through her handbag for her compact, snatched an anxious glance in it, as if checking that her misery wasn’t showing on her face. Then she licked her finger, smoothed her eyebrows with it, and sat up very straight; seemed to be making a fierce effort to compose herself, control her shaky voice.

  ‘His wife came round last night, and there was a really nasty scene. That’s why I was in such a sweat about going home this evening. She knows what time I get back from the pub, you see, and I was frightened she’d call in again, start effing and blinding, the way she did before. I didn’t want to tell you, love. It’s all so sordid, isn’t it? Mind you, I had no idea she and Ken were close. He swore blind the marriage was over – kaput, he said – dead and buried, not a spark of life left in it.’

  ‘Men!’ stormed Tessa, breaking off as the waiter glided up, and began unloading all the dishes from his tray. She felt mad with him, as well, for no other reason than he was the same sex as Ken and Michael. Why should April always lose her chances, never find a partner who would cherish and pursue her, rather than sling her on the scrapheap? All the time she’d been pouring out her own woes, her mother hadn’t said a word about how she was suffering just as much; but had offered help, support and love, while starved of them herself.

  ‘Listen, Mum, we’ll manage. We’ll show the bloody pair of them! Who needs men, anyway?’

  ‘That’s the spirit!’ April said, heaping rice on to her plate. ‘And, whatever else, we mustn’t let ’em stop us doing justice to our dinner. It’s funny, Tess – the more miserable I am, the more I want to stuff myself. Last night I had a real old binge. I ate almost a whole chocolate cake, then I made some Ready Brek, and sat there, snivelling into it, with that woman’s voice still squawking from the radio, though it was tuned to Des O’Connor.’