by Louise Dean
Her lines were working out well for her, Nick thought, bitterly, recognizing in himself the humble desire to be liked above all else.
‘Melinda,’ he tried. ‘I think we might do well to all sit down together and have some sort of discussion, maybe hear June’s point of view?’
‘JUNE! WILL YOU GET YOUR BLEEDING FAT ARSE OUT ’ERE!’ Ken cupped his mouth.
‘He was never what you call a great motivator,’ said Dave, rubbing his hands. ‘Witches out ’ere love; do you mind if we come in?’
‘Why not?’ said Melinda, closing her finger and thumb on her roll-up and slipping it into the pocket of her cut-off jeans.
‘I reckon I can handle you three all right. Come on then.’
Ken made a doorway lunge at her – he seemed to have a thing for threshold confessions, Nick noted. ‘Listen, we don’t want no trouble, we ain’t come for that. I’ve always had respect for you and Andrew and been generous with you, a’n’ I? You can’t fault me for that. Is he home? Andrew?’ He cringed.
Oh, what a coward, thought Nick, after all that pre-combat steel in the car; his father had taken off his trilby and was squeezing it with both hands.
‘Just want to sort it out peaceful an’ all.’
‘All right,’ she said easily. She showed them to the round table in the middle of the kitchen, and they stood around it but did not sit.
‘Why won’t she come down?’ their father said, looking at Melinda with sentimental eyes. Perhaps it had occurred to him that someone did not like him. It seemed to defeat him momentarily. However, anger came smartly to his solace as soon as he remembered she was wrong and he was right. ‘Sod ’er then! Now she can’t bear to clap eyes on me? Do me a favour! She leaves me on a Frid’y for a start and just buggers off without so much as a word. She could have been dead on the road! I wasn’t to know, was I? She could have had a terrible accident, couldn’t she? Been in some ’ospital somewhere, all smashed up, and I wouldn’t have known. I mean, that ain’t right, is it? To treat another youman bein’ like that.’
‘Hell, I don’t care what you are, Ken – human might be an overstatement – but look, she’s happy here. You know? She’s starting to get her head round the idea that women are not slaves.’ She leant back against a counter and, taking a tea towel, began to wipe the clay off her hands.
‘Ah, come on, Melinda.’ Dave stepped forward. ‘Be fair. I mean, you’ve only heard her side of things.’
‘I’m not inclined to be fair, Dave. I believe a woman should be treated like a queen. Have you heard of a succubus?’
Dave and Nick exchanged looks. ‘We got the car outside,’ said Dave.
‘Well, watch out, the lot of you, is all I’ll say.’ She picked up an open bottle of beer from the counter and took a swig. ‘A pack of chauvinists on a day trip. Wonderful.’
Dave licked his dry lips.
Ken carried on, alternating reasonable appeal with furious glances up the stairs. ‘Look, if it’s to be goodbye between us, me and the Queen of Sheba, I’ll abide by her decision, course I will, but can’t she least come and tell me ’erself ?’
‘Maybe she’s feeling guilty about nicking the cash,’ said Dave.
‘She can’t look me in the face for what she’s done to me. She’s ’iding from me. Well she can ’ide from me but she can’t ’ide from the Big Man.’
‘She’s playing bingo on line, actually, Kin. She got ten pounds free when she set up her account and since then she’s been playing it round the clock. She’s three hundred quid up. Bless her.’
‘Gordon Bennett, don’t she know the bank always wins? She’ll blow all the money that way! She’ll go through it like a dose of salts. Look sharp, Melinda, and go and get her to come down, please. We ain’t driven all the way from Hastings to stand about
’ere while she plays bingo.’
‘All right. Now look. She didn’t want me to tell you this, but I told her I would do if you showed your face.’ She went and closed the top of a stable door and shut out the sounds of The Simpsons theme tune. ‘She’s not been eating since she got here. Andy and I are pretty clear that she’s starving herself to death, because of you. So, you have your little chat. But whatever you do, bear in mind her health. She’s not as strong as she looks.’
And with that, Melinda took to the stairs, trudging up and calling out to June that it was ‘just’ her.
‘Kin, she calls me. Kin. Funny old accent, ain’t she? Kin. Like as in kith and kin. Like as in family.’
‘That’s not what she means, Dad.’ Dave picked up an olive from a dish on the counter and popped it in his mouth. Then he picked up a carton and read it. ‘Soya milk.’
Nick folded his arms over his chest and looked serious. ‘We should all sit at that table when she comes down.’
Dave scanned the steel-lidded glass jars on the shelf next to him. There was a long row of them rather like an old-fashioned chemist’s. ‘Lentils. Sago. Quinoa . . . what’s that then? Quinoa, acai berries, bulgur wheat . . . Vegetarians! They’re bleedin’ vegetarians, Dad. Take a look in the fridge, Nick.’
‘No.’
‘Go on. See if there’s any bacon.’
Nick pulled on the door. The fridge was a laboratory, stacked with plastic containers, its uniformity floodlit. There were three huge round tubs on the middle shelf marked ‘live yoghurt’ and
‘quark’ and ‘tofu’. Dave came over, barging into the round table in his eagerness. He pushed Nick aside and bent to look inside it, using his sober eye. ‘Not a sausage.’
‘June can’t tolerate vegetables too well.’ Ken spoke out of the side of his mouth. ‘Sometimes one’ll slip through, and she’ll swell up with the wind in her sails. She’ll say, ’Ere, Ken, there must have been something funny in that lasagne. And I’ll say, What? Like a tamada? See, her constitution just can’t handle
’em. None of ’em. No chance. Give her a bit of cauliflower cheese and it’s who let Tommy out of prison.’ On hearing the women at the top of the stairs, he dropped his voice to a whisper and said with heavy sarcasm, ‘Look sharp, she’s coming down now. The Queen of Sheba herself. Watch out.’
Chapter 32
She came round the corner of the stairwell, slippers formerly of Bulverhythe, in a pale pink sweatsuit, her handbag over one arm. She came a step at a time, testing it with one foot, finding it, settling a moment before going on again. One hand wobbled on the banister, the other was in Melinda’s grasp.
‘That’s it, now, remember you’re unsteady because you’re weak, June. That’s why.’
About four steps from the ground, she stopped and wobbled, quite overcome to see Ken. She put her hands to her face and rocked in her slippers. Melinda redoubled her grip on her.
‘Oh, those eyes. Oh, Kenneth. I didn’t think you’d come. I’d never have thought it in a million years.’
Ken moved shakily towards the stairwell and peered, wrinkling his nose to see through his glasses. Melinda stood between them, one leg raised on a step, one below it; she looked like a shot-putter, paused after the throw. It made Nick uncomfortable to see a woman display the space between her legs that way, even in denim, even in crisis. The old man cleared his throat.
‘June,’ he began, with forbearance, ‘June . . .’ She put her fingertips to her mouth.
‘HAVE . . . YOU . . . GOT . . . MY . . . MONEY?’ And he enunciated each word as though he were dealing with someone mentally ill and dangerous.
She drew her handbag in to her stomach. ‘What money, Ken?’
‘Don’t come the . . .’ He clenched his fists, but then recovered himself, ‘The money what was under the mattress. Now, by rights, that’s mine, June, you see.’
‘Well, some of it,’ said Nick, making an apologetic face as he stepped forward from the side of the fridge, ducking under the hanging light. ‘The point is, until things are worked out it ought to be held in escrow, perhaps.’
‘What things are worked out?’ said June, her face falling, looking at him
. It was clear from her expression that, if Nick were there, things weren’t normal.
‘Where’s the money, June?’
‘What? From the bingo?’ she said, with a nervous trill of laughter. ‘Did you tell him about the bingo then?’ she said to Melinda.
‘Sod the bingo! The for’y grand, June! The for’y sodding grand! Under the mattress!’
‘The forty . . . was it as much as that? No, I think it was thirty-eight thousand and fifty-six pounds, if I remember rightly.’
‘You cunning bitch! Welsh! You can’t help yourself, can you, you lot! Where is it?’
‘Calm down, Dad.’
‘Take it easy, Dad.’
‘Well, Ken, now where do you think it is? What a fuss. I don’t know!’ She doubled her chin and displayed dimples. Her eyes shone as if the prince had come and the shoe fitted. ‘Now you know me, Ken. What do you think I’d do with it? I put it in the bank.’ She offered a glamourous smile to those gathered in the kitchen. ‘I’ve said to him for donkey’s years, Better off in the bank. Well, you wouldn’t want someone thieving it while I was away, would you? And with your comings and goings, I couldn’t be sure when you’d be home. No, best way was to put it in the bank. Didn’t you look at your bank account, Ken? Have you not taken your pension out this week? You must have took some money out for your fares.’
‘We drove,’ said Nick.
‘Oh, well, you should have said, Ken!’
‘I asked you on the phone, didn’t I? You bin playing some sort of game with me!’
‘Well, now you’re here, won’t you have a cup of tea?’ Melinda went over to the kettle and pressed its button. Then
she opened the stable door. ‘You can come out now, kiddiewinks, and see your, um, see who’s here, if you want.’
They didn’t.
‘No chance of a beer, is there, Melinda?’ Dave sidled up to her. ‘Where is he then, your fella, Andy?’ asked Dave.
‘He’s upstairs, working on his poems. He’s doing an epic romance in sonnet form.’ She put two spoonfuls of tea into a brown teapot. ‘Do you want your tea with soya milk or just black, guys?’
‘All of this nonsense at our age!’ June let out a peal of laughter as she glided across the slate floor towards Ken, half his height.
Ken stood there, opening and closing his mouth and hands.
‘Tea? Ken?’ Melinda cried out, assuming he was struck deaf as well as dumb.
He turned, his mouth a firm tight line, and blinked at her. After a minute, he pulled his shoulders back.
‘No, thank you,’ he said, feeling his trilby. ‘We’re leaving.’ He turned his back on them and went to the door. ‘I won’t be made a monkey of.’
Chapter 33
As there was no such thing as a Happy Eater any more and the Little Chef didn’t have rooms, they stayed at a Premier Inn. They drove for an hour before they found it. In the pitch dark and silence of the empty roads, when Ken seemed to be sleeping, Dave put his head close to Nick and whispered to him.
‘It’s a terrible thing, though – divorce – innit, Nick? Terrible. I couldn’t even think of it. To me, right, it’s worse than dying. Worse, because you got to live through it, you got to live with the mess all around you. I mean, seeing what happened . . .’ he lowered his voice further, ‘with Mum and Dad. Christ alive, it was bloody awful, wasn’t it? All my mates, right, they’re all divorced now. We’re the only ones, me and Marina, who’re still together. See, Nick mate, we need women, don’t we? We’re nothing without them. My biggest fear, right . . .’ (Nick looked sideways at his father; he looked like a cat concentrating on sleep.) ‘My biggest fear,’ Dave went on in a near hiss, ‘is being alone, or not just being alone but being without Marina.’ And he pronounced her name as if it were holy.
Nick made a small noise through his nose, so that Dave knew he’d heard him, so as not to wake his dad and because he had nothing to add. He knew what Dave meant. In the dark, in a strange place, on a lonely road, he missed Astrid sorely, as if she were his other half.
He was only himself, or the self he liked, when she was there. He was no longer his own invention; he was Astrid’s. At the luggage belt in Gatwick, when they came home, he had been much amused by the chit-chat of the very elderly couple next to him. They worried over every single suitcase that passed. Tired and desperate, the little old man no higher than Nick’s elbow made a panicking attempt to pull a suitcase from the belt now and again so that they could further investigate, but he never succeeded in removing one. It reminded Nick of the sword and the stone. This little old chap was clearly no Arthur, and Nick was about to offer his help, but his woman said, her voice thick with adoration, ‘If you can’t lift it, John, no one can.’ And Nick had had to smile at the way in which, when it comes to each other, we see what we want.
But Ken wasn’t asleep. He had his eyes closed so that he could focus and with every mile he was becoming more and more determined. The years were weighing heavily on him, forming a diamond inside of him, a decision made.
In the morning, Nick settled the bill at reception and they ate breakfast together. Ken didn’t respond to Nick’s counsel to patch things up with June. ‘If only for financial reasons.’
Dave sat glumly eating balls of cold green melon, because he said he felt obliged to, with it being on the buffet.
Nick reasoned, ‘Look, Dad. You and June. You’ve been through a lot. You’ve got stability. And security. You’re company for each other. And you’ve been together a long time now . . .’ Ken slurped his tea. ‘Couldn’t agree more. You’re dead right, son. It’s over.’
When at last they quit the M25, and took the A21 in the direction of Hastings, Dave, back between the tombstones of their front seats, began to go through the events of the night, lionizing each of them in turn. ‘And old Nick, right . . . and she, that Melinda, right . . . and I could have cacked myself when you, right, when you said, Dad, when you said, I won’t be made a monkey of. And you should have seen their faces! Ooh, for those eyes!’
Ken took up the baton. ‘And her standing there like that, smoking like a man and calling me Kin, and there’s old Queen Elizabeth, upstairs on the bingo, and ’im – where was he, Dave, that Andy, the great big girl’s blouse . . .?’ He passed it back to Dave.
‘He was writing his poems, she said, an epic love song or something . . .’
‘Epic! Not ’arf. What a carry-on!’
‘And them thinking June was on hunger strike!’ Nick joined in. Dave blew a raspberry and they all fell about, their father telling him to stop being so vulgar, through squeaking laughter. Dave would not stop. He blew another one on his arm.
‘Jesus Christ! Them vegetarians, they’ll be able to run that place on wind power next.’
‘Well, serve her right! Serve her right. She done it to get me to chase after her, didn’t she? One thing she’d always wanted, that woman, was a man to chase after her. Fat chance,’ he said. ‘You can’t fuss round a woman. They don’t thank you for it.’
But it fell flat. As soon as he’d said it, he looked out of the window. The car was quiet. Women, Nick gathered, tried to get a man to say what they wanted to hear or do what they wanted them to do without having to ask them directly. This was called romance.
‘Nice touch, though, Dave – taking her in the care pack,’ said Nick.
‘Well, I couldn’t leave her to them nuts and beans, could I?’ Dave had leapt out of the car in the few minutes before they left the house in Wales, and had taken in the carrier bag for June. He said he’d seen Andy come down the stairs and disappear back up them fast. ‘Well, I sin his trouser-legs anyway.’
‘What was in that bag you give her then, Dave?’ Ken asked him.
‘Some Polos, a big Twix, some Quavers – or did I eat them? Bacon Fries, Nobby’s Nuts and a couple of cans of Harp. I should have taken them out, but I didn’t think of it.’
‘Well, that was very good of you, son.’ Ken nodded gravely.
‘It was,’ said
Nick. ‘I mean, it was really, really good of you, Dave. I mean, I’ve never seen a settlement like it. Goodbye, darling, we’re through, here’s a bag of crisps . . .’
‘Yup,’ said Ken sombrely. ‘He’s got a good ’eart, your brother.’
‘He has.’ Nick winked at Dave in the mirror.
‘I always said to your mother, It don’t matter he ain’t the sharpest, he’s got a good ’eart, that kid. Still, you’ve both been good boys to your old dad. I’m grateful. Don’t know how much longer I’ve got, but you came right in the end, the pair of you, and I can die a happy man.’
Dave’s hand was blasted away from his mouth first by the explosion of laughter. ‘’Ere, dad,’ he said, ‘why don’t you lay it on a bit thicker?’
The old man grunted. ‘You two’ll have plenty of time for laughing soon as you’ve left me on my tod in that shit’ole.’
Dave’s throaty chuckles and high dry-roasted snort infected Nick and Nick’s long wail at the end of each wave of laughter got Dave going again, and so they went on with the old man shaking his head and muttering, ‘Pair of bleedin’ numbskulls.’
‘So. What are you going to do about June then, Dad? No, seriously,’ Nick added quickly, hearing Dave start up, about to make some sort of joke, ‘Have her back? Take some time apart? Relationship counselling? What do you think? Is it over?’
‘Narrgh,’ he said, pulling on his lapels, trying one of his expressions and then the other. ‘Well . . .’
‘Don’t forget you’re entitled to half her bingo winnings . . .’
‘Money’s not everything, David. ’Ere, I know what it was I meant to say to you, Nick. I promised your mum you’d go and see her. That’s the thing. I promised it to her. She made me give her my word. Lying there, she was, at death’s door on the hospital ward when I saw her.’