by Simon Mason
Dad appeared on the landing, his chin covered in shaving foam. ‘Just take off your goalkeeper gloves,' he said. ‘Poodle?' he shouted. ‘Are you nearly ready?'
‘Nearly,' Lucy shouted from the spare room. ‘Don't come in yet.'
Ten minutes later, Dad, Mum and Will were waiting by the front door.
‘Lucy!' Dad shouted. ‘You've got to come now!'
As he spoke, she appeared at the top of the stairs. Dad made a gurgling noise, and then there was silence.
Lucy was dressed as a bee.
She was wearing Mum's old black jumper with yellow crêpe paper stuck in hoops all the way round. On her legs were black tights. On her feet were her new yellow wellingtons. On her head, stuck into her black Alice band, were two pipe cleaners with conkers on top painted black. When she turned round, she showed a long chopstick-sting on elastic round her waist, and, above her shoulders, a pair of enormous gold-framed, sparkly, gauzy wings.
‘Christ Almighty!' Dad said, and nobody told him off. ‘Where did you get all that from?'
‘I made it,' Lucy said.
‘I got the wings,' Will said.
They all stared at her, mesmerized.
‘It's beautiful,' Mum said. For a moment she just looked at Lucy, and Lucy thought it was all going to be all right. Then Mum seemed to give herself a shake. ‘But you can't wear it,' she said. ‘You'll have to get changed.'
Mum looked at Dad. Dad looked at his watch. ‘No time,' he said.
Lucy smiled.
Mum went into action. ‘Then we'll take the bridesmaid's dress with us. She can change when we get there. We should just be able to make it.'
Lucy was still crying when they arrived at the church.
Dad turned round in his seat and said, ‘We love your bee costume, Poodle. As soon as the wedding's over, you can put it back on, I promise.'
They left the car and ran to the church.
Mum was one of the ushers, so she had to stand at the church door telling people which side of the church to sit in.
‘Over to you,' she said to Dad.
‘But,' Dad said.
‘There's a vestibule round the side,' Mum said. ‘She can change there.' Mum looked at her watch. ‘You've got five minutes.'
In the vestibule, Lucy was still crying. Will was holding her hand, even though she hadn't asked him to.
‘Come on, Poodle,' Dad said. ‘As soon as the wedding's over you can be a bee again.'
He began to undress her. ‘I must say, this is really something,' he said, as he struggled with the wings. ‘What did you do, weld them on?'
Lucy hardly heard him. She could feel the tears running down her cheeks and dripping onto her shiny yellow wellingtons. She wished she was in her room at home and could squeeze into the space between the bed and the wall, and pull the doll's blanket over her head until she disappeared. She couldn't disappear in the church vestibule. Instead she had to stand there while Dad took off her wings. She thought that she'd never wanted anything so much as to wear her bee costume at the wedding. She was so full of unhappy thoughts, she didn't hear Dad give a sudden moan.
‘Oh God!' he said. ‘It's her!'
Lucy looked up, and saw Madeleine's mother, Ruth, coming down the path towards the vestibule. She had both Lottie and Sandy with her, and she was smiling at Dad.
Dad ground his teeth. He went to pieces. ‘I can't remember their names,' he said. He looked at Lucy.
Lucy shook her head.
‘Please, Poodle,' he whispered.
She shook her head again.
‘Will!' Dad whispered hoarsely. ‘Quick! What are their names?'
Will looked up from his Beano, across at Ruth and back to Dad. ‘Dunno,' he said. He was his father's son.
Dad's neck seemed to bulge.
‘Poodle,' he begged. ‘Poodlefish, why won't you tell me?'
‘I want to be a bee,' she said.
Dad was trapped. He saw he was trapped and gave another moan. Ruth, smiling at him through the glass pane of the door, had her hand on the doorhandle.
‘All right,' Dad whispered. ‘All right.'
‘Sandy, Lottie, Ruth,' Lucy whispered.
‘Thank God!' Dad exclaimed. He leaped forward to open the door for Ruth.
‘Lottie,' he said to her with great warmth. ‘How are you on this big day?'
The organ was beginning to play the wedding march as Dad slipped into the seat beside Mum.
‘Everything OK?' she asked.
Dad looked straight ahead of him, saying nothing. She noticed he was trembling slightly.
‘Is it?' she asked.
Without turning his head, he said in a low, deep voice, ‘I've done a terrible thing.'
Before he could say any more, the organ music swelled to a crescendo and everyone turned to look at the bride. Or not, actually, at the bride. At the bridesmaids. Or not, actually, at the bridesmaids, but at one bridesmaid in particular. A bubbling noise of surprised excitement spread through the congregation, followed by a warm murmur of appreciation. Everyone was craning their necks to get a good view, people were pointing and smiling, and some were even applauding.
Mum said to Dad, ‘I don't think I can look. Just tell me if Madeleine's smiling.'
At that moment, Madeleine came past in her white dress, and Dad said, ‘Look now.' And as Mum turned, Madeleine broke off smiling just long enough to mouth the words, ‘I love it!'
She went past, and behind her came the bridesmaids, three navy blue taffeta bridesmaids and one bee, pink-faced, a little trembly and very pleased.
For months afterwards it was the habit at Quigley family occasions to bring out the wedding photographs. There was the one of the bee sniffing a large paper rose. There was the one of the navy blue taffeta bridesmaids standing round the bee, admiring its stripes and wings and wagglers. And there was the one of the bride giving the bee an enormous smiley hug. The photographs would come out so often, and people would say the same things so often, that the bee herself would sometimes get a bit bored.
‘I love the stripes best,' Mum would say, and the bee would say, ‘I know. You told me before.'
‘I love the wagglers,' Dad would say, and the bee would say, ‘Yes, I know that already.'
‘I like the wings,' Will would say. ‘Didn't I buy those?' And the bee would say, ‘I know all that! Stop going on!'
Mum
On the morning of Mum's birthday, the day she was going to the ballet with Dad, she made Will and Lucy get up earlier than usual because Will was going on a school trip and had to dress as a Saxon. His cloak, jerkin, belt and leg-thongs were laid out on the floor ready.
Will and Lucy hated getting up, even at the normal time. All the Quigleys hated getting up. Their moods were not good first thing in the morning. But today of all days, Mum was determined to be calm and sweet and good-natured.
She gave both of them a tiny little shake.
‘Time to get up,' she said sweetly. Will woke up but didn't move. Lucy didn't wake at all. ‘We have to be extra quick this morning,' Mum said brightly.
Lying clenched under the duvet with his eyes screwed shut, Will knew at once it was going to be an awful day.
‘All right,' he heard Mum say eventually. ‘Five minutes to come to.'
This did not alter Will's mood. Five minutes was nothing. Anyway, he knew that she wouldn't actually wait five minutes. Practically straightaway, it seemed, just as he was going back to sleep, she went into action again, pulling off his duvet before he could grab it, and talking. Rearing up suddenly in front of her, he cried in a terrible voice, ‘What's the time?'
‘Nearly seven o'clock, Will,' Mum said when she had recovered, and, as if struck on the head, he fell back at once and rolled onto his side and immediately began to breathe deeply. Sometimes, if he concentrated hard on the darkness behind his eyelids, he could make himself fall asleep. It felt like pitching forward slowly into something soft. If he breathed slower and slower, he would start to topple forward into the
darkness, and he would sort of melt into the bed. But just as he was melting, Mum gave him another shake, and he gave a hopeless groan and realized crossly that he was awake.
‘Now you, Lucy,' Mum said.
Lucy's eyes were gummed together. She kept them tight shut, and clung like a monkey to her duvet as Mum tried to pull it away. With the duvet half off, it was as cold in the bedroom as it was outside, and the brightness of the electric light hurt her eyes, even though they were still tightly shut.
They struggled for a moment, then the rest of the duvet came away.
‘Come on, Poodle,' Mum said in a sympathetic voice. ‘You have to get dressed now. Tell me what you want to wear.'
‘Bed,' Lucy shouted.
Eventually she got up and started dressing. It was awful. The legs of her knickers jumbled themselves together, and the armholes of her vest vanished, and none of the buttons worked, and her shoes hurt.
‘I feel sick,' she whispered as she groped for the sleeve of her cardigan.
‘Never mind,' Mum said. ‘You'll feel better when you open your eyes.'
‘These leg-thongs are the wrong sort of leg-thongs,' Will was saying. Taking off the leg-thongs, he asked what the point was.
Mum patiently explained the point. ‘But I am starting to get a teeny bit annoyed,' she said.
‘And why can't I take my spear?' Will said, ignoring her. ‘Everyone else will have weapons. You never let me have weapons, and everyone else always has all sorts of weapons.'
Mum somehow stopped herself shouting. Closing her mouth, she turned round and quietly left the room. Her lips, Will and Lucy noticed, were tightly shut as if her mouth was full of something unpleasant.
Will sat on the floor, still scowling at his leg-thongs, and Lucy sat on the bed, still scowling at him, and both of them felt that it was terrible to have to wake up at all, let alone wake up earlier than usual. For a moment they wondered if perhaps, just maybe, they were being unfair on Mum. But neither of them moved until they heard her coming back up the stairs, when they jumped up and finished getting dressed in a great rush, and stood there with their shoes undone and their hair unbrushed, scowling and waiting to see what Mum would do.
Mum stood in the doorway breathing deeply. She smiled a smile which wasn't a smile. Will and Lucy knew what it was. It was a sort of warning, and they felt cross and upset all over again.
‘Today of all days,' Mum said quietly, ‘I am determined to be calm and sweet and good-natured.'
But she said it so quietly, Will had to shout, ‘What?'
She repeated it. ‘It isn't going to be an awful day,' she said in the same calm, quiet voice, ‘because we're all going to be calm and sweet and good-natured.'
‘Calm?' Will said in disgust.
‘Yes, calm.'
She came into the room with that calm smile. ‘So take your football boots off, Will,' she said pleasantly. ‘The Anglo-Saxons didn't wear them.'
She brushed Lucy's hair and Lucy yelled, and Mum said, very calmly, ‘The thing is, Lucy, you really shouldn't chew your hair.' ‘It's nothing to do with chewing!' Lucy yelled. ‘It's to do with pain!'
And Mum said calmly, but with feeling, ‘I do hope we're all going to be calm and sweet and good-natured.'
Eventually they went down for breakfast. There was no Red Berry Special K, and Mum had to explain four times that they couldn't have chocolate spread on their toast because it wasn't the weekend, which was one of the stupider family rules, and in the end they all ate cornflakes in silence.
‘I think things are going to get much better now,' Mum said as they left the house.
But at the end of the road, Will walked backwards into a brick wall for reasons which he couldn't afterwards explain, and going through the park, Lucy soaked the same foot in two separate puddles, and in the end they were late, and, though it seemed incredible, everyone was cross with them for being late and wet and in pain.
These were some of the reasons why their morning was so awful, despite the calm.
Their day at school was awful for different reasons. On Will's trip, no-one was armed except Timothy, and Mr Sheringham took his weapon off him because, he said, the Anglo-Saxons had not invented the automatic pistol. Later, during the copper-beating session, Will hammered his thumb and the nail went purple. At lunchtime he discovered that rain had got into his lunch-box, and all his sandwiches were wet and tasted of washing-up water.
Back at Parkside, Lucy got her sums wrong and was spoken to in what she called a ‘dark green' voice by Miss Putz. She hated her lunch, which was cool stew with a skin on and ‘scab pudding' for afters, and, to make things worse, it rained all afternoon so they had to stay in the classroom at break, with all the windows steamed up, and everyone in a bad temper.
At last school ended.
Lucy and Will waited for Mum by the gates.
‘I think today has to get better now, Will,' Lucy said. ‘Don't you think so?'
‘I bet that's just what she'll say,' Will said in disgust. ‘You just watch. She'll say that it's a good day after all, you just watch her. She hasn't had her thumb hammered flat.'
Mum arrived at four o'clock, half an hour late, having been delayed in heavy traffic on the ring road.
‘Did you have a good day?' she asked. Her voice was bright, but there was something wrong with her face. It was a funny pale colour.
‘It was a rotten day,' Will said. ‘And you promised it wouldn't be.'
Mum said she was sorry. She said, rather quietly, that she hadn't had a very good day herself.
‘Absolutely rotten, as I knew it would be,' Will said, and Lucy burst into tears because she'd just remembered how terrible the stew and scab pudding had been.
After they had finished tea, Mum lay on the settee in the front room, which she didn't usually do. She didn't do anything, she just lay there in silence. There were creases in her forehead, and her face was that funny pale colour.
Will and Lucy looked at her for a while, and when she didn't open her eyes they had an argument. Mum kept her eyes closed. The creases in her forehead got deeper, but she didn't open her eyes even when they started shouting.
‘It's mine, Will,' Lucy said.
‘No, it's not, it's mine,' Will said.
‘Isn't!'
‘Get off, Lucy!'
‘You have to give it back!'
‘Get off, Lucy!'
Something overturned. There was a crash and Lucy began to scream.
‘Now you've really done it, Lucy,' Will shouted.
Mum finally opened her eyes, and was cross, despite what she'd promised.
‘Give it to me,' she said in a quiet, cross voice. ‘Give me whatever you're arguing about.'
Scowling, Will handed it to her.
She held it in the palm of her hand.
‘Is this it?'
She held up a small, slightly soft red lump of something, about the size of a marble.
Will was scowling so hard he couldn't talk, but Lucy shouted, ‘It's mine! It's mine! You promised, Will!'
‘What is it?' Mum said, looking at the small red lump.
There was a short silence while the children considered this unimportant question.
‘From the cheese,' Will said shortly.
‘What?'
‘It was round the cheese.' ‘This is what the argument was about?' Mum said. ‘The wax from round the Edam at teatime?'
‘It's mine,' Lucy wailed.
This would be the moment when Mum usually shouted, but she seemed too pale to shout, and anyway the telephone suddenly rang. Lucy answered it. It was Dad, phoning from a train. Lucy talked to him for a while.
‘I'm fine,' she said in the cheerful voice she always used on the phone. ‘Yes, she's fine too. We had Damn for tea. No, it's a cheese. Yes, it was nice.'
Then she gave the phone to Mum. The children listened to her. ‘Yes?' Mum said into the receiver. She did not use a cheerful voice.
Then she said, ‘Oh.' And then, ‘How late?'
And finally, in an even quieter voice, ‘I'd rather not go at all than go on my own.'
When she put the phone down, Lucy said she was still hungry, and Mum said she could make herself a sandwich, and her voice was so quiet Lucy could hardly hear her.
Lucy made her favourite sandwich, which was peanut butter and pickle, and gave half to Will, and made another, even bigger sandwich, which neither of them wanted, and when they came out of the kitchen Mum had disappeared.
They shouted for her for a while but there was no answer.
‘She's gone to Philippa's,' Will said. ‘Typical. This really is an awful day.' But he said it unenthusiastically because he was so tired. He began to read The Beano.
‘She was angry, wasn't she?' Lucy said. ‘She was angry with us.'
Will didn't say anything. The house seemed very quiet without Mum. It was incredible to think how much noise she must make when she was there.
‘Why is she at Philippa's, Will?' Lucy asked after a while. Will shrugged.
‘When's she coming back?' she asked.
‘Dunno,' he said.
It was very quiet in the house.
‘It was an awful day, wasn't it, Will?' she said.
Will didn't say anything. He had the feeling that it was time to stop saying how awful the day had been. He stared at his Beano without reading it.
‘I think we should sit near the front door,' Lucy said, and they went and sat in the hallway. They held hands even though neither of them had said anything about needing to, and listened to the noises outside, a car going past with a shush, footsteps ticking on the pavement, a far-off siren like Will's clarinet when he made a mistake.
Still Mum didn't come back, and the house was very quiet.
‘Suppose she hasn't gone to Philippa's?' Lucy whispered. ‘Suppose she's gone somewhere else?'
‘Like where?'
‘I don't know. Just somewhere else.'