One Day, Someday

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  She looked at me in such a penetrating way that I wondered for a moment about her nocturnal movements. ‘So don’t you want to do it, then?’ she purred.

  We set off down the road. ‘Well, obviously, now it turns out that Stefan is keen on the idea, I wouldn’t exactly say that. It’s just the—’

  ‘The principle, I know. Yeah, yeah. OK. Fair enough. But it also turns out I was right, doesn’t it? So we’re all sorted, aren’t we?’ She clapped her hands in her lap. ‘Ooh, I can’t wait!’

  The inexorable march of stark inevitability trotted along my train of thought. ‘I was a bit taken aback that Stefan was so keen, to be honest. I didn’t think it would be his sort of thing at all.’

  ‘Ah, but, Lu, you’re forgetting. He’s an artist, isn’t he? A painter. Who paints. I told him I thought it might be a good way to get a bit of publicity. Get noticed. And he leapt on that one, I can tell you. Leapt on it. Big-time. Oh, I think I’ve got his measure. He seems very ambitious. So I just hope he’s as good an artist as you say he is - I don’t want a load of amateurish splattings adorning my bedroom walls. Take note.’

  Which strange irony had a decidedly nice feel to it: although, of course, I was well able to relate to the deeper resonance that was to be found in work of a more abstract persuasion, I could still appreciate that, to an untutored eye, the word ‘splattings’ wasn’t altogether too far from the mark. But it was a short-lived feeling, because she then said, ‘And I have to say, Lu, if you don’t mind me saying, of course, which I’m sure you don’t, that now I’ve met Stefan I’m not altogether sure what it is that you see in him. He’s a bit, well - how can I put this? - intense, don’t you think?’

  ‘And he wears a lot of sad clothes,’ chipped in Leo, as if from nowhere.

  ‘Who does?’ asked Simeon.

  ‘Mum’s new bloke. He’s a dork.’

  I threw them both a glare through the rear-view mirror. ‘Thank you,’ I barked, feeling suddenly, inexplicably, tearful, ‘and for God’s sake, will you stop playing with that window, Leo?’ I pressed the ‘lock’ button. ‘What do you mean “intense”?’

  Del shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, you know, a bit up himself. All that stuff about the lack of sincerity in western consumerist principles and so on. You can’t deny he does have a tendency to drone a bit.’

  ‘He does no such thing. He is just an intellectual. He has opinions about things. He cares. He’s—’

  ‘Just a tiny bit self-absorbed, wouldn’t you say?’ She flipped down the sun visor and opened the flap on the passenger mirror. ‘Wow, lights! How sweet! And how very useful.’ Then up again. Thwack. ‘You have to admit that, Lu. He’s a bit kind of, well, studiously obscure. You know? Or maybe that’s why you find him so attractive. I don’t know. You tell me.’

  ‘He’s just interested in ideas,’ I persisted, though with the knowledge that I might as well try to run particle acceleration by her. ‘He’s a university lecturer, remember. Discussion, debate, aesthetics, philosophy—’

  ‘Aesthetics, philosophy, my backside - while the rest of us just grub around in life’s pig-bin, I suppose?’ She stroked the walnut on the dashboard. ‘Hmm. I like that finish. Don’t you? Anyway, grubber or otherwise, I just found him a bit superior. And a little strange, if you must know - what’s with that risotto thing he brought with him?’

  ‘I told you, he’s a vegan.’

  ‘Oh, come on. He had milk in his coffee, didn’t he?’

  And on his Sugar Puffs, now I came to think of it.

  ‘Come on, Lu,’ Del was saying, ‘don’t you think he’s just a little pretentious?’

  ‘Look, he can’t help it if—’

  She tutted. ‘Well, far be it from me to make judgements about people - but you know me, I speak as I find. Anyway, I’m sure he’s very nice once you get to know him. Which reminds me. Where’d you get those fab flowers in your toilet? From Stefan? They must have cost a fortune.’

  ‘Them? Oh, no.’ I shook my head firmly, determined to seize the opportunity of making up some ground at last. ‘He wouldn’t be so showy and insincere. They’re from your lovely Mr Delaney, actually.’

  ‘From Joe? Why?’ I could hear the boys sniggering in the back.

  ‘He had them bussed round last Friday as an apology for all the grief he gave me last week. Specifically, to apologize for that debacle over Angharad’s birthday, I presume.’

  ‘Well, how absolutely lovely!’

  ‘No, they’re not. They stink of corpses. Plus, really! I pulled up at the traffic lights and turned to face her. ‘It’s so unutterably naff.’

  ‘Unutterably naff? How can you say that? I think it’s a really nice gesture. How could anyone not be pleased to get a bouquet of flowers?’

  ‘That’s not the point. The point is that it’s sad. And inappropriate. And manipulative. And pretentious, come to that. And it doesn’t impress me in the least. I mean, if he was hard up it would be different. Or if he’d actually gone to any trouble over it - that’s the real point. It means nothing. It was just a phone call. Send her some flowers and smooth things over. An empty gesture. Which I was not impressed by, I’m afraid.’

  Del stared at me for a few seconds, then raised her eyebrows an inch and tutted again. ‘Keep your hair on, Mrs Touchy,’ she said mildly, patting me. ‘I only asked.’

  Actually, I have felt more charitably disposed towards Joe Delaney since he kissed me because, however unexpected and inappropriate it was, it has at least caused a shift in the power dynamic. Nothing dramatic or tangible, but it has cast a different light over what has gone before, extravagant floral excesses included. But I’m certainly not having Del know that. Not after she’s called Stefan strange. And intense. And superior. And obscure. And self-absorbed. And … oh, how dare she? If only she knew! But, on balance, I’m glad now I didn’t tell her about last night.

  And thank God I never mentioned the poetry.

  Wednesday 9 May

  True to his prediction, Joe did indeed need his arm to be rebroken and reset. A bed had been booked for him for the Thursday, and because he was on the morning list and had to be admitted the night before, I dropped him off at the hospital on my way home from work.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, as I pulled his holdall from the back seat, ‘I need you to do me a favour. I’m supposed to have Angharad tomorrow, and I’m going to be stuck in here. Could you pick her up after school and bring her in or something? I know it’s a hassle, but Rhiannon is on some book-club seminar or something and won’t be back until seven thirty or so. And she’d like to come in and see me, and - well, yes?’

  I handed him the holdall. ‘Can’t you miss a week?’

  He shook his head. ‘I missed last week.’

  Hmm. ‘But surely it would be easier if you saw her at the weekend instead, wouldn’t it? You do have her weekends sometimes, don’t you? It’s not as if you’re going to be up to much tomorrow evening anyway. And what about her tea?’

  He considered for a moment. Then nodded. ‘Yes, you’re right. She’ll need to be fed. So you could stop at Burger King or somewhere on the way, couldn’t you?’

  ‘But how’s she supposed to get home again?’

  ‘I thought you could take her, couldn’t you? Rhiannon doesn’t live far from you.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t, Joe. It may have escaped your notice, but I do have a child of my own to look after.’ I got back into the car and did up my seat belt.

  He stooped to peer in through the window. ‘Please? Pretty please? It’s not as if it’s really out of your way or anything.’

  ‘That’s hardly the point. What am I supposed to do with Leo?’

  He exhaled and put the bag down. ‘Can’t you bring him with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, then. Whatever you’d be doing with him anyway, I suppose. What does he normally do when you’re at work?’

  ‘I told you. My sister looks after him.’

  ‘And she wouldn’t mind, w
ould she? Oh, come on, Lu. Please? It won’t be that late.’

  I switched on the ignition. ‘It’s not about that. It may have escaped your notice but the job specification I was originally given did not, as far as I remember, include spending my evenings running around all over Cardiff.’ Or playing nanny to other people’s children, for that matter. But I didn’t say that. Because it would have been mean.

  He shrugged. ‘OK, so you’ll be a bit late. Take the morning off instead. Have a lie-in or something.’

  ‘But I don’t want to take the morning off instead.’

  ‘So don’t!’ He stood up straight again, and snatched up his bag. ‘God, Lu, why do you have to make such an issue of everything!’

  There’s been some sort of spillage on the A469, so that by the time I get home (and still muttering to myself - what a deeply, deeply exasperating man), Del’s car is already parked outside. Along with Stefan’s bike, a small yellow sports car and a van that says Hightime Productions on the side. There is also a cluster of beautiful people in the front garden, hovering in the sunshine like an art installation. They all look on politely while I, cringing slightly, swing the Jag carefully into the drive. Roomaround. Oh, God. And I haven’t even cleared away the breakfast things.

  ‘There you are!’ announces Del, in a booming contralto, sweeping down alongside the car and swinging the door open for me. I feel as if I’ve just turned up late to a party. Everyone else seems to be on happy pills or something. She gushes and flaps and twitters at me. The prospect of impending celebrity has obviously gone to her head - and with rather unfortunate consequences for her relationship with her wardrobe. She seems to be wearing a bedspread. And it is clearly contagious. Stefan, who should know better as he is quite beautiful enough anyway, has put a large diamante stud in his nose.

  Urrgh, urrgh, urrgh. TV people, if this lot are anything to go by, are very, very shiny. They have shiny smiles, shiny teeth, shiny hair, shiny footwear, and astoundingly shiny (and hence rather scary) expressions. The only misfit in this dazzling confection of media-glitz is the resolutely unshiny Damon Denton, whom I recognize immediately, even without his trademark circular saw. He is matt and unshaven and ordinary, and has flecks of emulsion on his jeans. He glides a reverential hand over the bonnet of the Jag, then sniffs and says, ‘Well nice. Well nice motor. Pretty poky?’ Someone else, whom I don’t recognize but who is possibly the shiniest of them all, in a gold leather trenchcoat, extends a slim bejewelled hand. ‘Lucy!’ she purrs at me. ‘Lovely to meet you. I’m Manda Producer.’ She says this without a discernible pause between the words Manda and Producer, so it is moments before I realize that it’s not that she has a name like a vampish South American soap actress, but that it’s actually her job title. She releases my hand and beckons to the others. ‘And this is Kit Davis-Donovan, who’ll be working with Del, here, and our Tia. Tia Slater, who’ll be working with you.’

  Tia Slater is not so much shiny as fairy-dust shimmery. She is wearing a tiny powder blue fluffy sweater and jeans that begin about an inch above her crotch. She proffers her own small but very workaday hand and says (rather predictably, I decide), ‘Ciao.’ Hands are shaken, pleasantries exchanged, and we all troop off into the house.

  Where I have, it seems, an Anaglypta complication.

  ‘The thing about Anaglypta,’ Kit Davis-Donovan is saying, twenty minutes later, ‘is that you have to decide where you stand with it. Do we go Anaglypta? Go down that road? Do we?’ The Roomaround recce team are clustered on my three-piece suite, clutching mugs of tea. Though Manda has yet to take off her coat. There is a ripple of disconsolate hmm-ing, to which Kit nods an apologetic acceptance before turning to me. ‘Where do you stand on blown vinyl, Lucy, my love? Have you had any thoughts at this stage? Been up long? Hmm. Looks like it. And a touch soiled in places, if you don’t mind me saying?’

  I do mind him saying, but I’m sure my sensibilities have a far rougher ride yet to come, so I shrug and tell him I have no strong opinions on the matter and that I’m happy to put my walls in his hands. Heads are shaken, notes are referred to and, though it is not actually said by anyone, I feel very much like I’ve misrepresented myself somehow. As if I’d made up some O levels.

  And in truth, I’m clearly making light of this. I must bite the bullet. I do not have an Anaglypta complication. I have an Anaglypta crisis. I have a wallcovering irregularity of mammoth proportions. I have a category-A logistical disaster. A bad start. A question mark over my televisual suitability. A difficulty that must be addressed before my humble abode is deemed appropriate as prime-time TV footage. In short, I have a layer of lining paper, a layer of wallpaper, a layer of blown vinyl, and at least four (three since I’ve lived here) layers of vinyl matt emulsion on top. They will have, they tell me, about seventeen hours.

  ‘Well,’ says Kit brightly, ‘we could always camp out in the van and get it whipped off tonight, I suppose.’

  Hur hur hur, goes Manda. Hur hur hur.

  ‘Or you could leave it,’ suggests Tia, from the safe haven of being in charge of Del’s biennially steam-stripped and perfectly plastered bedroom. ‘Go for retro. Go for kitsch.’ She is sitting next to Stefan on my sofa. And their knees are touching.

  ‘Isn’t kitsch a bit kitsch, these days?’ he asks, very seriously. ‘I mean, wasn’t kitsch last year’s thing?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ argues Kit. ‘Not if we put a different spin on it. Ideas, team? Come on! Heads together.’

  ‘You’ve got pattern here, though, remember,’ chips in Tia, casting a disapproving eye over the bit of wall behind the sofa. You’ve got fresco-city. We’re not just talking a random wood chip here. I’m not altogether sure you wouldn’t just be talking nightmare city, scheming wise. It’s got to come off. Really it has. Don’t you think, Lucy? Wouldn’t you like to be shot of it?’

  I tut and roll my eyes as if getting shot of my Anaglypta has always been the first, and not the last thing on my mind.

  ‘So how about we just bloody take it off and be done with it?’ says Manda. ‘I’m sure Lucy and Stefan here could make a start, couldn’t they? Couldn’t you? I don’t see any problem with a bare-plaster opening scenario. Do you?’

  Kit frowns. ‘Bit DIY SOS, don’t you think? Bit Home Front?’

  ‘When’s tea, Mum?’ says Leo, who has wandered in.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ I say.

  ‘You said fifteen minutes half an hour ago.’

  ‘No, I didn’t. I said it would take fifteen minutes. I didn’t say I had actually started it. I won’t be long. Why don’t you and Simeon go and—’

  ‘You’ll have to let us have a Twirl, then.’

  ‘I will have to do no such thing. You can—’

  ‘But, Mum, we’re starving.’

  ‘Which is precisely the way I would like things to remain. Off you go.’

  ‘But, Mu-um—’

  ‘I said no.’

  ‘But, Mu-um—’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mummy. Let them have a Twirl. Go on,’ says Damon Denton. ‘Don’t be such a meany.’

  Meany indeed. I go and get the Twirls.

  Because we used to have a hatch, and because we decided to dispense with the hatch by means of a bit of hardboard, a dozen tin tacks and a painting (as us plebeian DIYers are wont to do), I can hear Manda and Kit’s summit talks while I’m turning the boys’ chicken dippers. As clear as an acid-etched cupboard-front window motif.

  ‘Dump it?’ he’s saying. ‘Go with the oast house, after all? We’re only talking a few bricks there. It is an option.’

  I can hear a pen clicking. ‘Not,’ she says. ‘I spoke to Sal at lunchtime. It’s for definite. He’s fucked off and is not returning. Why the fuck do these dysfunctional couples apply? Anyone would think we were a branch of bloody Relate! So not, period. Because there’s some talk of a writ flying about as well. Though why anyone with a fireplace surround as monumentally grotesque as that would have the slightest inclination to hang on to it is way beyond me
. Hur hur hur. And the other couple were such primitives, didn’t you think? Did you see her earrings? Don’t think I could bear it. Nope. We’ll have to push on with this one. Sad but true, kitten. Stout gloves, I’m afraid. Stout gloves.’

  By the time I have dished up the children’s tea, measurements have been recorded, brows have been knitted, notes have been taken, and Kit Davis-Donovan has pronounced himself full of some ‘so now and radical’ scheming ideas for my through-lounge. But it has also been decided (by whom?) that my Anaglypta will definitely have to come off before they begin. There is talk of perhaps sloshing up some magnolia emulsion but, as they finally take their leave, even the Roomaround whiz-kids have conceded it’s a lot for me and Stefan to fit in in the next six days.

  I wave them off and head back to the kitchen with the feeling that I have made a very grave error of judgement. I am not attached to my Anaglypta particularly, but am far less attached to the sort of activity that will end its long association with my walls. That’s their job, isn’t it?

  ‘Six days! Well, thanks a bunch, Del! Like I haven’t anything else to be doing between now and next Wednesday, have I?’

  She pours me some wine and puts a reassuring hand on my arm.

  ‘Don’t fret,’ she soothes. ‘We’ll all help you. With the four of us doing it - Leo and Sim can help as well, can’t they? - we’ll soon have it off.’

  ‘Actually, I’m not sure how much of a help I can be,’ Stefan counters.

  Del tuts. ‘Ho! And you an artist! You of all people should be good with your hands.’

  He shoots her a look. He seems to have her measure now. ‘No. I meant that I’m not sure I’m going to be that free over the next few days. I have a full teaching commitment this week and a big study to finish. So I—’

  ‘Big study?’ asks Del. ‘You have a decorating sideline on the go, do you?’ She knows very well that this is not what he means.