Diary of an Assistant Mistress
Page 14
She has never approved of "common-law wives, kept women or mistresses," and it must be something of a problem to her that both of her daughters fall into this category. Of course I keep protesting that I am not a kept woman, indeed when James lost his job he was a kept man but it is all water off a duck's back.
Of course James doesn't help matters by continually calling her Mrs MacGregor: it is in fact her name and he protests that he has to call her something - but surely not so often.
Other people find it a rather incongruous name since she is still a strikingly handsome Eurasian woman and not at all like a MacGregor, any more than my father was. I don't know what a Power is supposed to look like - a motorbike I expect.
Thursday 22nd December
Woke up with a sore throat.
Oh my God, I'm getting a cold!
Oh my God, I'll get laryngitis
Oh my God, I'm turning into a hypochondriac. Where are the hypochondria pills?
I cannot bear having someone else in the flat even - especially - mum. I would feel free to indulge my sore throat, spend the day in bed drinking Ovaltine and reading "The Handmaid's Tale" but instead I have to rush about getting lunch. Of course she doesn't want to be any bother mind you but my sister Nadine cooked her a lovely Chicken Kiev when she stayed with them - so radioactive pullet it is.
I was half way through preparing this dish when I remembered that mum was a vegetarian. I mentioned this to her and she said that she hadn't wanted to upset Nadine after she had gone to so much trouble with the lovely Chicken Kiev, although she couldn't herself 'eat the Chicken bit.'
Friday 23rd November
Mum has started looking at my marking. Of course she doesn't like to comment about the standards of children's work nowadays. She knows that other people comment about the standards of work of children but she always tells them that her daughter is a teacher.
After the key words "children" and "my daughter" it was but a breath away to how happy Nadine was with her kids (Nadine tells a very different story actually, mum) and how a home seems incomplete without infants muling and puking around the place.
And so to lunch.
Saturday 24th December
All at a bit of a loose end because we are not busily wrapping up presents for the dear little children. Granny rang Nadine to find that her dear little ones are driving her up the wall and she's just found that the batteries in the Thunderblade festive helicopter gunship have leaked acid all over the internal workings.
The recording of the Madonna concert which James insisted on watching shocked the living daylights out of mum, who spent most of the evening drinking sherry and not looking at all shocked. She supposed that people enjoyed this sort of thing nowadays and remarked brightly that it would have been quite shocking to a long list of her acquaintances in the Co-op women's guild in Aberdeen.
The women's guild still survives in Aberdeen but only just. Their
traditional anthem is "Stand up and Fight" but most of them can't even stand up, let alone fight. When mum dies, it will die too.
This got her on to the subject of her testamentary dispositions and she informed us yet again that she has already arranged her funeral with the Co-op undertakers. James asked if they gave stamps.
Sunday 25th December
Yule. Or 'Yule regret this in the morning' as dad never failed to say. I can remember that absolute bastard Father Christmas failing to give me any presents one year. I woke up, felt all over the bed, looked under the bed, searched the room and stormed downstairs in tears.
Mum and dad hadn't been to bed yet and were sitting chatting in the comfortable haze of dad's cigarette smoke with two stockings bulging with presents on the table. I was only glad mum and dad were making everything right after Santa had let me down so badly.
Although mum was a vegetarian, dad would have kept an abattoir in business, so we always had a massive turkey on Christmas day and mum always managed to 'eat the turkey bit.'
I actually don't like turkey, James is indifferent to it. So guess what we had for lunch.
And then "Where Eagles Dare" again.
Monday 26th December
Samovar is staggering around full of off-cuts of turkey, James is wondering out loud whether Mrs MacGregor would like to spend Hogmanay back in Aberdeen and when the next flight will be, I am settling down to read "Information Technology in the Middle Years of Schooling".
Lunch saw off the last of the tinned pears.
Mum announced she was going home tomorrow and Samovar threw up over the book I was reading.
Tuesday 27th December
"There really was no need to see me off."
"We had to make sure you got on the plane." James smiled, and carried on smiling when the trolley ran over his foot.
Now the flat seems empty without mum. No pleasing some people.
Wednesday 28th December
Marking and profiles.James is watching "The Guns of Navaronne."
Thursday 29th December
Profiles and marking. James is watching "The Dogs of War."
Friday 30th December
Profiles and marking. James is watching "Spanking Teenagers." I join him and we criticise the plot.
Saturday 31st December
George and Edie, Oz and Tessa came round to see the old year out. Nobody likes to think about seeing the new year in these days: it seems only too likely to bring more of the same - war, intolerance and circulars from the DFE.
Edie told George to belt up every time he raised a vaguely paternal topic, so we only spent two hours discussing the advantages of mother's milk and the correct method of episiotomy. It would have made my day complete if we had had Alistair along to relive the magic moments of his vasectomy for us. And I said so.
We resemble a trio of comfortable happily married couples - even if only George and Edie are actually married. Naturally we got around to the shortcomings of the youth of today. Where are the radicals? Why isn't there anyone out on the streets opposing the war?
["Would you have them carry pictures of Saddam or Slovodan Milosovic?" asked Edie, but hers was the only discordant note. ]
It turned out all of us, except Edie, had been in Grosvenor Square in 1968, Oz with the Young Liberal "Red Guards", James and I with the Militant tendency, Tessa was just there and of course George actually organised the whole thing and that upstart Tariq Ali had just claimed the credit!
Comfortable, middle aged and slightly out of our skulls, we calmly listened while Oz unrolled his prediction of a fascist Europe, James, his of a Socialist one and Samovar urinated on the Christmas tree lights and they went out.
Appendix 1 Dramatis Personae