by Louise Dean
‘Dad will never be fat. Thank God,’ she said, scoffing at the very idea of it. ‘I mean, I hope I take after him. I’ve been dieting since I was born. It’s so hard, though.’
Nick had a feeling at times she played games with him, as if she were going through her fancy-dress trunk, trying on different people.
‘He’s very cool, my dad, Nick.’
‘Yup.’
‘No offence.’
‘None taken.’
‘I mean, his clothes and everything. He listens to, like, um, drum and bass and stuff.’ She was using an American inflection, he noticed. ‘He has the coolest decks.’ But here she ran out of anything else to say and he saw that she folded her hands and sat as primly as a little old woman at the front of the bus, and she fell silent until they reached their village.
‘He doesn’t need me,’ she said when they turned off the main road into their lane.
* * *
‘Well, it’s good he has someone in his life to look after him,’ Astrid said, pressing her advantage when they had a cup of tea together.
The old man was outside. The clouds had come over and still he sat there. Nick greeted him and touched his shoulder when he came home, and Ken touched his son’s hand with a small pat but sat there stiff-backed as if on sentry duty.
‘Who’s he expecting to come up that hill anyway?’ Astrid peeped out at him through the kitchen window.
Phone under her chin as she rang the babysitter, she looked at her hands as she chopped vegetables for Laura’s supper and saw those of an old woman. They were rippled when laid flat, as if a stone had been dropped into a pool. She was taken aback. There was no way of stopping it then: getting older.
She felt her daughter’s head on her back and her hands around her waist. ‘You’re home now,’ she said, turning round to enfold her. ‘We’re all home together,’ she said, seeing Ken come in. He came in as far as the kitchen table and stood in front of them all and, after a moment, yawned.
Laura and Astrid exchanged smiles. Laura took charge. She invited Ken up to ‘settle in’ to his room. ‘Perhaps you’d like to freshen up?’
When she got up to the spare room, she went back halfway to see where he was. He was very slow coming up the stairs.
‘This is the guest room. You can put your things in the drawer,’ she said, when he got there at last. He appeared to have nothing with him. This was a disappointment. ‘Oh, well. You can take your coat off.’
But he declined.
‘There is an en suite,’ Laura said in the manner of her grandmother, Linda, ‘and there are some little bottles in there Nick has stolen from hotels, which you can just help yourself to. It’s a shame there aren’t tea- and coffee-making facilities,’ she said.
‘Isn’t it?’ She checked his face.
‘It’s very nice, thank you.’
‘Well, we’ll watch some television now, shall we?’ she said, with the authority of a matron.
She sat next to him on the sofa downstairs, not too close, checking his face for vital signs every time a joke was made on the television.
‘He’s very silly,’ she said hurriedly about the TV host, seeing Ken’s blank face. ‘Perhaps you’d like Noel Edmonds better?’
‘Oooh?’
‘Noel Edmonds. Or there’s an old programme on you might like. Morecambe and Wise.’
* * *
‘When he says “who”,’ Laura observed to Astrid in the kitchen, ‘it’s as if he’s pulled a sock inside out. It’s all the wrong way round. The “w” is at the end not the front.’
She took him in a small plate with three biscuits.
‘Help yourself.’
‘No, ta.’
‘You can put your feet up, if you want,’ said Laura.
‘On the table?’
‘Yes, we all do.’
‘No, ta.’
‘Shall I help you put them up?’ And she began lifting them one at a time, squatting down to do it, with him wheezing with laughter and telling her to leave off and calling out to Nick, ‘’Elp me, son, ’elp me, ’ere, Nick! Nicholas! This young lady’s roughing me up in ’ere, an old chap like me . . .’ His voice was high and loony.
‘You’ll be much more comfortable with your legs up.’
Laura had another patient. And the little match girl, the daft old sod, the bighead and the beautician all sat side by side on the sofa, watching TV with Roy making occasional attempts to mount Ken’s leg.
When there was a close-up of a young girl on the television, Astrid said, just as the thought came to her, without censoring herself first, ‘She’s beautiful.’
‘Not as good-looking as either of you two gels,’ said Ken, shaking off Roy, who was straining to get to the biscuits. ‘Cor, get ’im off me, will you, dear? ’E’s trying to have it off with me leg.’
‘Would you like a blanket?’ Laura asked him.
‘We’ve got the babysitter coming any minute, Laura,’ said
Astrid.
‘Lovely being ’ere, innit?’ Ken said, giving the mantelpiece a dusting with his melancholy eyes. There was no photo of him there. ‘What a nice home it is,’ he said sadly.
‘Don’t get too used to it, Dad,’ said Nick, and he got an elbow in the ribs from Astrid.
‘Well,’ he said to her when they were upstairs, changing, ‘corny old sod, buttering you up with all that rubbish.’
She sprayed her collarbone profusely with the scent of Mimosa and he squirted a mean drop of his aftershave on his own neck and, on patting each place dry, removed the scent to his palms. Then, wiping his hands on his trousers, he pronounced himself ready.
‘Like father, like son,’ she said, looking down at his slightly pointed new shoes.
Chapter 45
There was nothing that Astrid’s parents, Linda and Malcolm, liked more than eating out. They’d been into it since the late sixties. They’d introduced Astrid to the meal out in 1976 with a small cut glass of German wine on her sixth birthday. (Steady! said Malcolm.) They were careful when it came to the larger things such as cars and lavish when it came to the smaller things, such as hand cream, and as it seemed to fall between the two they went to ‘a meal out’ in both trepidation and titillation. It could be deemed a pure waste of money if it were something Linda could cook herself and the place was empty, or it could be their finest hour if there were ‘people’ there – people who would see that they too knew the difference between a foam and a coulis.
They got there early. Linda had a cream clutch bag that matched her heels and fine good ankles on show, bronzed. Her hair was forked and fluffed and sprayed and, since her eyelashes were sparse, she’d decided to have a go with some false ones. Brown so as not to be too silly. It was a high-risk strategy and she’d have to be careful not to blink. She never winked under any circumstances. A woman of her age couldn’t get away with it. A woman of her age could get away with navy and white, a nautical look, and good jewellery. Malcolm wore his safe jacket, tweed in winter, linen in summer and spring, and chinos. A little anchor emblazoned into the cuff of his sock struck up a repartee with his wife’s theme. He wore a white polo shirt. They both wore wedding rings. Hers had extensions, two up, two down, in diamonds, given on anniversaries coinciding with boom times.
They were early. It gave them time to look over their bifocals at the clientele and through them at the prices. They would choose something middle of the road, no matter who was paying.
Linda checked the room. If she spied people who squirmed and salivated and were all excitement and clung to their glass and gobbled and craned their neck to see the desserts or keep track of where the cheese trolley was going, she gave Malcolm the tip-off, with a discreet sideways tilt of the head, saving him from extending any untoward friendliness in that direction.
Nevertheless, she was on the edge of her seat and had to swallow once or twice at the mention of bacon and at the term ‘pan-fried’.
They rose when the other couple came in, she in a half
-curtsy with cramp in her right leg, he going the whole hog, with both hands clasping his would-be son-in-law at the forearm. They exchanged partners for the continental double-kiss which came to England in 1986 along with the eponymous breakfast. Congratulations were said and Malcolm brushed off Nick’s apology for not having asked him before proposing to Astrid.
‘No, no, not at all. We’re not people for all that sort of fuss and pomp and ceremony, are we, Linda? No, no, no,’ he said pleasantly, dragging the thing out to the point that they all felt they’d been standing a long time. ‘Not at all! Nick.’ And he pronounced his name with the relief of one finding safe footing at last.
Astrid smelt on her mother the terribly strong perfume she’d worn for over twenty years; it reeked of credit-card activity in House of Fraser. When she looked at her, she saw only the signs of struggle – the pink powder pressed upon upper lip hair and stubble alike, the grey frizz at centre parting that no hair colour could long subdue, and the sagging skin just before her ears. Astrid felt sad, and it occurred to her why for some time she’d preferred to speak to her on the phone rather than see her mother. The voice was more her, as she liked to think of her, than the sight of her was.
As they sat down, a sharp look passed from Linda to Malcolm and was stowed somewhere between his bottom lip and the bread roll, its meaning private. Nick pottered across to speak to the small lady who waited tables, explaining they’d need a fifth chair.
In came Ken at last; he’d stopped to get his breath and told them to carry on ahead. ‘I’ll get there. I’ll get there.’
He came in like a desperate man, clasping the door handle and shoving the structure back into its frame, making quite a noise. It was as if he’d been wandering the souks of Northern Africa for many months, shoeless, before finding the British Embassy. It was as if he came with news of the enemy at the city gates. All eyes were upon him.
‘All right,’ he said.
He resisted the removal of his mac from the waitress.
Ken’s ideas about a ‘meal out’ were at variance to Linda and Malcolm’s by about fifteen years. He was born before the war.
He sat in his chair in his coat and took the menu Nick gave him, shaking it open. ‘All right,’ he said again with a nod to the table. He looked alternately aggrieved and disgusted as he studied the menu. He cleared his throat every few seconds as though about to say something, thus shooting holes in their fledgling conversation.
The ladies fluttered in and out of topics mooted deliberately by Linda to be exclusionary – dealing, as they did, with people only they knew, and cryptically.
‘So, I saw Jane Deakin the other day.’
‘Poor woman.’
‘She’s let herself go.’
Ken slapped the closed menu down on to the table, ‘All too dear,’ he said, tight-lipped and final.
Nick’s professional experience in dealing with difficult people in challenging circumstances persuaded him to coax the old boy.
‘It’s actually very reasonable, Dad. A nice, elegant menu, not too pretentious. If you tot it up, it works out quite a good deal if each of us takes the prix fixe.’
But he wasn’t speaking Ken’s language. ‘Too dear,’ Ken reiterated.
‘There’s liver and bacon, Dad, on at fifteen. You like liver and bacon, don’t you? That’s right up your street.’
‘Do me a favour! Fifteen nicker for a bit of offal. They sin you coming, sunshine.’ Ken made a bid for the other couple’s opinion. ‘What d’you think, Malcolm? Dear, innit?’
Nick leant back in his chair, putting his mouth close to his father’s ear, to escape the audible range of their table.
‘Just fucking order something, all right.’ Ken closed his eyes.
‘Have you got an engagement ring yet?’ Linda asked her daughter.
‘Not yet.’
‘Not yet? I know that with Danny you didn’t bother: We don’t do conventions, Mummy. I’ll say! But at your age I would have thought you’d have been traditional. The ring is the man’s pledge to support you. It’s a symbol of his troth. It’s not nothing.’ She turned to her husband.
Malcolm was still poring over the menu. ‘Mutton. You don’t see a lot of that any more,’ he said, taking off his glasses and smiling warmly at Linda as he closed the menu.
Ken cleared his throat. ‘I’ll have the tamada soup.’
‘The . . . what’s that? I can’t see that on the menu . . .’ said Linda, with murderous eloquence.
‘There’s always a tamada soup on the menu.’
Malcolm tried to look wry and debonair, both old-fashioned and modern, with one side of his face doing the 1950s and the other lost in space.
‘Tomato soup.’ Astrid came to the rescue. ‘As in Heinz.’
‘That’s the job,’ said Ken.
‘He doesn’t get out much,’ said Nick to the waitress.
‘And tap water, please,’ said Ken. ‘From the tap, please, miss. Yes. Thank you. And I’ll have some bread with my soup, ta. I don’t drink much, do you, Linda? Don’t feel the need.’
The bottle of red that Nick ordered was opened by the waitress under Ken’s disapproving noises, measured out under his unforgiving eyes, sipped to the sucking in of his breath, and under such scrutiny it completely failed to inebriate.
‘People seem to need to drink to have a good time these days.’ Ken shook his head.
‘It doesn’t always follow,’ said Nick, knocking back his glass and pouring himself another.
After some talk of the wedding and putative dates ventured during the main course, some careful, none-too-enthusiastic chat, and one or two poor laughs supplied by elements proposed by Linda that they would not be including – such as a disco – Ken started to grind his teeth. He was bored. If a conversation were started by either of Astrid’s parents, he’d start talking over it to Nick, or torpedo it with a sullen remark.
‘’Ot in ’ere, innit?’
‘Take your coat off then.’
When Malcolm began an amusing anecdote about the prime minister, Ken nudged Nick, nodding at his steak rind, ‘You leavin’ that?’
‘Do you want it?’
‘Naargh. Raw. Fancy servin’ it like that.’ Malcolm gave up.
Nobody seemed to want a dessert and so they went straight to coffee and Ken deigned to have a milky one. He drank it down, then sat and fiddled with his coat sleeves and cleared his throat a number of times.
‘I know I shouldn’t go white with the dress, but I am tempted since it does feel like a new beginning,’ began Astrid, broaching the subject most likely to meet her mother’s disapproval and thus best dealt with here and now.
Ken cut in.‘Do you believe in Jesus, Linda?’
‘I’m not much of a churchgoer, I’m afraid.’ And she began to serve her signature cold starter on the subject. ‘When you see the suffering in the world, and what has been done in the name of religion . . .’
‘I was like you once, Linda.’ He put his elbows on the table.
‘I was ignorant.’ He patted her hand. His touch caused her to startle; an eyelash came loose and she tried to blink it back.
‘It makes you nervy to talk of it, dunnit? I can see that. It did me an’ all. But when ’e comes into your life and you don’t say no to ’im, everything changes.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘That’s all right, dear. At our age, things ’appen to you all of a sudden, and good job, because time ain’t exactly on our side no more. See, if you start crying at nothing, if you start shivering for no reason, and if you feel sorry, if you regret fings,’ he used his other hand as a fist to smite his breast, ‘if you start to finkin’ about what other people are going through, and ’ow some people are kind-’earted by nature, not greedy and graspin’, and you fink, Blimey, I’ve ’ad it easy, a’n’ I? Then you know He’s close by.’ His voice rose.
‘Steady!’ said Malcolm with a splash of a grin.
‘If you feel sure that your life’s been a failure, that you’ve been a miserable excuse
for a youman bein’,’ and here he cleared his throat, for it was thick with emotion, ‘then ’e’s with ya.’
‘Thanks for that, Dad.’ Nick turned in his chair to find the lady there like a good nurse. ‘Can we have the bill, please?’
Linda excused herself.
Ken threw a backward nod. ‘She ’eard me. No mistake. What about you, Malcolm? You believe?’
Her father caught Astrid’s eye. ‘Absolutely,’ he lied, and the three of them broke into smiles of relief and pleasure.
‘That was a quick conversion, Dad.’
‘Good man,’ said Ken gravely. ‘I tell you something, mate. Once you say it, you’re almost there. You’re almost ’ome.’
‘Talking of which,’ said Nick, putting his code into the machine proffered by the lady.
With the bill settled, Linda rejoined them underneath the bright lights of the restaurant and, ready to double-kiss, they took turns with each other’s forearms rather like the little dancing couples on Trumpton, turning and spinning, but Ken hung back and gave them a nod. ‘Ta-da.’
When, at last, Linda and Malcolm passed by the restaurant window outside and braved a flash of a smile and a parting wave, he fixed Linda with a pointed finger.
‘Nice couple,’ he said as Nick held the door open. He stood for a moment on the kerb, looking up at the stars and taking a deep breath. ‘Nice evening, wannit?’
Nick put his arm around Astrid as they walked down the hill.
‘Dear old Lord! Could they tuck it away! Still. As long as you’re ’appy, Nick, you two, that’s the thing. The thing is, well, you look ’appy, don’t you? And I tell you something, I’m pleased. I couldn’t wish for more.’ And he put a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘Good boy,’ he said.
Astrid linked arms with both of them as they stepped down on the uneven concrete into the car park. ‘Well, I think that went well,’ she said.
‘Steady!’ cried Malcolm, as their car shot forward on to the
High Street under Linda’s hasty release of the clutch.
They’d gotten away lightly, though they didn’t know it. They hadn’t met his mother yet. Neither had Astrid.