by Louise Dean
– which is fine, by the way – but what’s more, and this is how nutty he is, Ed, the old sod, he wants to divorce his second missus, and for me to do the paperwork. But then she does a runner, doesn’t she? And he’s on and on all the bloody time about going to meet his maker. This morning it was all, “I’m lonely, Nick.” Honestly, Ed, it’s like having a kid.’
‘Poor old fucker.’
‘And Astrid seems to think I’m a chip off the old block now.’
‘Dear old Ken, we used to live high on the hog thanks to him. You’d get that cheque and we’d pop down to PizzaExpress and stuff ourselves with dough balls and Valpolicella and raise a glass to old Ken and his clients at the DHSS.’
‘No, we didn’t.’
‘Many a time.’
‘I never got any money from Ken.’
‘Don’t be an arse! We used to whoop when the envelope came through the door. We used to do a jig.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Course we did. Memory’s a selective thing, matey, I can tell you. There are plenty of things I’d prefer to forget.’
‘I don’t remember it at all.’
‘He used to send a hundred here, a couple of hundred there, and I used to say, Christ, you’re a lucky sod.’
‘I used to work at that champagne bar . . .’
‘Oh yes, you did, but not for long. You got fired. You were nervous of opening the bottles, you big jessie.’
‘I’d forgotten about that. Kettner’s, it was called.’
‘Well,’ said Ed, breaking off a piece of the Toblerone that was left, ‘I expect you remember things about me I don’t.’ He popped it in his mouth.
‘Not really.’
‘Hmm.’ Dozie chewed.
‘I wasn’t much interested in your goings-on.’
‘I didn’t have much in the way of goings-on.’
‘There was the fat bird.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, then swallowed the mouthful. ‘Your poor, poor, poor old mum,’ he went on theatrically. ‘Pearl. I knew who she was, of course, because you’re the spit.’
‘When did you meet her?’
‘When she came up.’
‘She didn’t come up.’
‘We were at McKenzie Road, and one day she just turned up, rang the bell and I went to the door and I knew it was her right away. So I called you and you came down; you were having a lie-in, or more like a love-in . . .’ he said, his eyes vacant as a butler’s, looking but not seeing. ‘We’d had a bit of a night in The Prince, and you got your end away with that girl from the poly, and you came down downstairs and I kept saying, Ask your mum in for a cup of tea, Nick. And she said, Ni-ick? I remember it well. You gave her short shrift. Said you were tired, it was too early and why hadn’t she called, and so on. She’d come all that way, hadn’t she? And I did take you to task over it and we fell out, and you moved in with that girl for a while. What was her name?’
‘I can’t remember any of that! Was I even there?’
‘Mandy? I think it was,’ said Dozie, breaking off another lump. ‘Want a piece?’
Nick shook his head. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘You wanted so much to be the angry young man.’
They sat there in the morning light, their feet sticking to the lino, surrounded by dirty dishes and empty bottles, the pine table stained, place mats encrusted, the nauseating sweet vinegar of wine in their mouths no matter the coffee they sipped.
‘You had your good points too. You were quite fun on occasion. Well, if you were shit-faced you could be rather amusing. You were ambitious of course, what I’d call a real eighties man, though of course the eighties had just ended. Callow youth. That’s the phrase.’
‘Cheers.’ He peeled one sole then the other from the floor and felt for the crumbs, which he rubbed off. ‘So, I let my mother stand at the door after she’d been a couple of hours on the train.’
‘It must have been more like four, what with changing stations in London. I can see her now. She was a country mouse, quivering on the doorstep. And all that way she’d have been thinking she’d soon be in the warm embrace of her favourite son.’
‘All right! No need to lay it on. I was only eighteen.’
‘Twenty.’
‘Well, there must have been a good reason.’
‘Yes. That girl, Mandy, she was upstairs. You were giving her one. That was it. Embarrassing, the utterances from that room of a Friday night. You know they don’t mean it when they go on like that.’
‘What made her come anyway?’
‘Who? Your mother? To see you.’ He raised his eyebrows and took a swig from his mug. ‘I’d imagine.’
‘Well, trust her not to ring in advance or write or anything.’
‘Yes. That was really shit of her. Really deplorable,’ said Ed, popping a finger into his back teeth. ‘Still, she must have learnt her lesson because she didn’t come again. More coffee?’ He got up and shuffled over to the kettle. ‘Sometimes, mate, sometimes, well, take old Tim Taylor – he’s happily married with four super kids – sometimes failure, as they say, can be as good for one as success.’ He measured out two spoons of coffee into their mugs.
‘In any case, the thing is to take from this hoo-hah with your dad what you can or what you need. I mean, you know what you want, Nick, more than anyone else I’ve ever known, you’ve always had the next thing in your sights and got it,’ he doused first one then the other with boiling water, then slapped the spoon against the sides of the mug, ‘but you’ve never known what you need.’
‘I just asked Astrid to marry me.’
Ed sat down so heavily on the bench that it lifted at Nick’s end. ‘No!’
‘Yes.’
With his mouth open, Ed undid the top of the port bottle and poured an amount into each of last night’s smeared tumblers. ‘Bugger me,’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’ Nick found that he could drink it quite easily. And, accepting another glass, said to Ed, ‘Seriously, mate, I’ve changed. Since I met Astrid, since I moved back home . . .’ It was the hangover; it made everything feel like it mattered. ‘I sort of think maybe it’s time to pick up the pieces with my family.’
‘That’s good, mate. Well, you know, as two quite obvious heterosexuals, I don’t think an arm around the shoulders could be misconstrued.’ He clasped Nick and shook him. ‘Had my doubts about you of course in that department, but this proposal thing has cleared them up. It was that George Michael rough-shaven look you sported, that’s what made us wonder. And all the exercise. And that fad diet you went on.’
‘What fad diet?’
‘Few years back.’
‘I stopped drinking for a couple of weeks one January.’
‘That’s the one.’
Chapter 38
Laura sat in the back of the car on the way home from the station, taking it in, their news. She seemed pensive. After a while she said, ‘Is there a drug that makes you see things in different colours and makes you happy?’
He took the day off on Monday to go down to Hastings. He got up at six and sat on the toilet. It was the best seat in the house, affording views across the valley. The oak tree had sprouted ginger leaves and in this secret early hour cast a golden aura. Horses hung their heads in the long wet grass. A red post van crept down the far hill, turning off its lights halfway down, acknowledging the day just come. It occurred to him that it might be one of the first days of summer.
He wanted to share it with her. He made tea then coffee in an attempt to stall her, but Astrid was not to be delayed. She was going to work.
She applied a number of different creams in a regimented order, make-up followed, hair somewhere in between, and she begrudged his presence, moaning as he passed behind her, trying to get sight of what she was about.
She was humourless about these procedures, terrified he’d see her back-of-thigh cellulite in a bad light – or, worse, a good light – or of being caught confounded by a thong and having to go at it t
wo or three times, having bunting left and bunting right and something like parcel string up the middle. The bathroom door with its scraping drawl was a noise that put fear in her and, sure enough, she’d hear it the minute she began to daub fake tan on her lower legs and was arsehole to the air.
‘Will you just sod off, please!’ she screamed. There was no audience participation when it came to beauty, everyone knew that, but Nick seemed intent on getting onstage.
Downstairs, Nick and Roy got in each other’s way, waiting for the bride-to-be – for Astrid emerged wedding-day-ready daily, beauty being her business – and she came down the stairs radiant of smile, magnanimous in her evasions, thin-skinned and irritable.
‘Can he not spend a minute outside, that mutt?’ she said, clasping her pale skirt.
And with his almost human understanding, Roy sheathed his tongue, turned round and pushed the conservatory door with his head to let himself out. And then he’d invariably turn round again in that room, poke at the door with his head once more and reappear with tongue out and a great grin as if they’d not recognize him as Roy, the brown and white dog.
The pair bothered her on her way out, Roy with his spittle loose and free and Nick with the same line of questioning he’d pursued all the way home from the Croziers.
‘Blood means something, Astrid. Doesn’t it?’ he said. Grumpy because of the bags under her eyes that the eye
cream was no use for, she had imperfections top of her mind only and was dwelling on the vision of that great clod Katie, dusting off her shoes with the hair-colour wheel, and of Sally, the new girl with the perma-cold, hands as idle as her brain.
‘Doesn’t it, Astrid? I have to do it, don’t I? I have to make it right again. I can do that. It’s within my power.’
They’d been through it on the M40. She’d been enjoying her own train of thought. ‘Oyster silk? Champagne silk? Décolletage? Low back? Online or Selfridges? Or why not just go the whole hog! White?’ But he’d kept interrupting, harping on, just like his father in the car when they went to Dave’s for lunch.
And there they were now on the threshold of the conservatory with him grabbing at her and importuning her. So she agreed thoroughly, conclusively, and left him there, mulling it over in his socks and underpants.
By the end of the lane, in her mind she was already in Rye and taking big Katie aside and giving her a speech. You either got beauty or you didn’t. It was an illusion that used a smidgen of science, a dollop of magic and a shedload of willpower. And money. Katie, have you ever been hungry? For days. Katie, have you ever been bothered by the ridges on your nails? Katie, have you ever thought – surgery? Katie, beauty is not brassy; it’s steely.
Big Katie was a big mess. Nice girl, bad skin.
Then she was thinking of Sally with her flawless skin and her gormless gob. No matter what the punter said, with Sally the reply was a limp ‘Brill-i-anne’. No ‘t’. She had a rota of two customer-friendly questions: ‘Is that pressure OK for you?’ or,
‘Been on holiday this year?’ And she delivered these in a sing-song nasal voice thick with insincerity. But she was sincere. Sally was the most boring girl Astrid had ever met. She was the perfect cipher, the sort of girl women wanted sloughing their hard skin.
As Astrid sped past the beautiful small doll’s houses of Beckley, amid the chestnut trees with their candelabra alight, she thought how they’d woken that morning in each other’s arms and it came to her, out of nowhere it seemed, Maybe, just maybe, he loves me, as he says he does, regardless of ‘beauty’.
She’d tried so hard for so long to be perfect. Just like Linda, only what her mother took as a standard for home furnishings, Astrid applied to her body. Nothing can be perfect; only misery.
She would have to call her parents and tell them their news. She knew how they’d respond. Her mother would be tight-lipped and ask her if she was sure and she’d add ‘this time’ with her customary loading.
How do you know he loves you? Astrid guessed her mother might well ask her. One day she’d ask Laura the same thing.
Pulling into the car park with that thought uppermost, she looked in the driving mirror and saw she looked clean, straight and clear-headed, and the lovely silver car responded with all of its power, just as she wanted it to, and just for a moment, it came to her that she was the woman she always wanted to be. The woman she’d imagined she’d be when she was a kid. She’d achieved what she set out to do. She’d done it all.
She got out of the car and swung her bag over her shoulder, clicked the key button.
Because he can’t leave me alone. I can’t be five minutes alone when he’s at home. He hovers at doors or comes right in and I have to jettison the razor, legs half-shaved. He can’t leave me alone. He wants my secrets. He wants all of me; that’s how I know. He’s lost without me. He needs me.
And, walking into the spa, she left the door open and let in Nick and Laura and Roy and their home and she dumped her bag and coat on reception, something scruffy she’d never done before. Then she went back out and up to Jempson’s café and bought thirty doughnuts, and she came back and made a full jug of coffee. She assembled them, all the staff, notwithstanding the ladies with cricks in their necks waiting to have shampoo washed out, notwithstanding the poor woman on her knees with her eyes screwed shut, holding the paper knickers up her crack in the waxing room, ready for part two of the Brazilian.
She told them she was getting married.
‘Aw. Brillianne,’ said Sally.
And the others were more fulsome than truth could possibly allow for, being indentured to her really, and they set to billing and cooing and pandering to her with talk of hair extensions for the big day.
She wanted to tell them, There’s more to life than beauty. But they were young, and there was a time for everything. For now all she said was, Help yourselves.
Downstairs in the plasterboard-partitioned treatment rooms, on towel-clad gurneys, women lay pending beauty. Immobile, cotton pads on eyelids with lashes tinting, fingers splayed with varnish drying, face masks congealing, they lay still as still, breathing slow.
Chapter 39
They were not the only ones eating doughnuts that morning; Nick and his old man sat down at a picnic table in the funfair in the Old Town, with a bag of six. Roy was soon done with the sea. He tore down the pebbles, took a shit by the sign forbidding it, then raced full tilt at the sea. When it chased him back, he flew back up the beach, sought Nick’s legs and stayed there, panting.
They were sitting opposite the dodgems.
‘Daft little sod, innie?’ said Ken fondly, patting the dog’s head. Inscrutable, with the hot dough occupying their mouths, and their thoughts to themselves, the three of them – Ken, Nick and Roy – looked into various distances, considering their prospects: marriage, death and seagulls.
The Polish woman on the token-sales kiosk stared out of her booth with equal melancholy. The rides played old glory tunes, and the Polish boy on the dodgems helped himself to a slow turn, standing on the back holding the pole, leaning with a lovelorn look on his face. Three children were hoisted skywards on the ride near by and given a bone-shaking a couple of metres into the air to loosen any change or sweets from pockets, and when their heads were well banged against the vinyl, they were released in jolts back to the ground. The blonde who pressed the button of the ride wore an expression of great disappointment.
They washed down the doughnuts with weak coffee. Nick caught Ken giving a spiteful look to the man who took a seat beside them. The chap sat a toddler girl upon the picnic table; he could not stop himself stroking her head, over and over again, as he jollied her along with endearments.
‘Nervous wreck, innie?’ said Ken, his lips pursed. Nick cracked a grin and Roy followed suit.
Ken sipped his coffee. ‘P’raps I oughta have been more like that old-timer,’ he said, wiping his chin and gesturing with his thumb at the sixty-year-old, who was exclaiming and chortling now that the girl rummaged th
rough his wallet.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well . . .’ he said in his habitually inconclusive way, asking you to join the dots.
‘Spent more time at funfairs?’
‘In a way. In a manner of speaking. I didn’t have much to do with Dave’s nippers and that was my fault. They’re nice kids, you know, but they don’t know me. And I don’t suppose you’ll ever get round to having kids. So that’s it. I could have been down ’ere, you know, like that old geezer. I mean, look at him. But he still manages to get himself down here to give the kid a good time.’ The child started crying and Ken flinched. ‘Coo dear! Noise! Come on, let’s walk down the fish ’uts.’
He steadied himself with a hand on Nick’s near shoulder. Nick went slowly, feeling the wobble of his father’s body through the shaking hand.
The dream he’d had that morning surfaced as they walked. It had happened so close to his waking state, it seemed real. In it he’d been gagging, bent double, aware of something in his throat, a thick phlegm he couldn’t shift, choking him, and he’d been in their conservatory, grasping at furniture, his vision upside down. It had come to him: My God, I can’t die like this, not like this. He’d wanted help. But he couldn’t get anyone’s attention. He couldn’t call out. And yet the word he wanted to pronounce, the word that stuck in his gullet, that he was trying with all his might to force through the phlegm was: ‘Mum.’
He looked down at the wink le-picker shoes his old man wore and smiled to think this was the man his mother fell in love with.
‘Tell me again what your mother said, will ya?’
‘She asked us all over for tea, next Sunday. All of us. Dave and Marina and the kids, me and Astrid and Laura – I told her I was living with someone – and she said, tell David to bring Ken.’
‘So, she only wanted me on me own, like, then. She didn’t ask after June.’
‘She seemed to know you were on your own.’
‘She must of asked Dave,’ he said. He nodded, grim as a secret agent, hands in mac, stooping, examining his shoes.