Size Matters

by Judy Astley

  Win, visiting from next door, picked sequins out of the sugar bowl and tut-tutted about A Place for Everything. On returning to her own home, she’d spend a good long time in her hallway tweaking minute threads and bits of fancy feathers off her shoes and clothes and making sure they didn’t escape into her own immaculate furnishings. Audrey saved her best domestic efforts for the garden. Whereas Win had covered her half of the semis’ gardens with no-fuss obliterating gravel (so you could hear the approaching crunch of midnight burglars, not a joyful prospect that, as Audrey had pointed out), enlivened only with small plaster statues of miniature poodles and the occasional ugly variegated shrub, Audrey had cultivated gloriously thriving beds of flourishing perennials and arrays of spring and autumn bulbs that would bring a joyful tear to Alan Titchmarsh’s eye.

  ‘Watch out for pins on the carpet,’ Audrey said as she opened the front door to Imogen and Jay, ‘I’ve been on the go with four tutus since early this morning. It’s a bugger, net. Nasty springy stuff. Tea? We’ll have to go in the kitchen, I’m cutting out a lion in the sitting room.’ Audrey led them through the hall to her kitchen.

  Behind Jay, Imogen groaned quietly. ‘No tea for me, Gran, thanks. I’ve gone right off it.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Audrey said, half-turning to look at her granddaughter and colliding with a pair of turquoise Lycra leggings that hung from the banisters. ‘That’s new. What’s brought that on? Some kind of diet fad?’

  ‘Er no. Nothing like that.’ Imogen cleared a heap of paper patterns and a bag of knitting from the chairs and sat beside Audrey’s old round pine table.

  ‘You young girls, you’re always on some new health kick or other. When we were young we ate what we were given and were thankful. But then of course,’ Audrey said, scooping several packets of cakes and biscuits out of the cupboard, ‘food was in a lot shorter supply in those days. You wouldn’t think of picking and choosing and snacking on crisps.’

  Audrey plonked her squat brown teapot down on the table and arranged three mugs in a triangle beside it. The nearest one to Jay showed a profile of the Queen’s head and ‘Silver Jubilee 1977’ written in gold beneath it. Imogen’s refusal of tea had been ignored, as they had both known it would be, and she was toying with the handle of a mug that instructed her to ‘Protect and Survive’ beneath a CND symbol.

  How had this ancient mismatched crockery lasted? Last summer Jay, forever in pursuit of the kind of order so alien to her mother, had bought a dozen beautiful large handcrafted cups, each painted with bold brash bluebells, from a potter in Devon, only to see most of them vanish in less than a year, victims of clumsy handling, of unskilled dishwasher loading or of Rory carelessly chipping them against the sink. She feared for the sink too, at those moments. Corian was supposed to be a hyper-tough kitchen surface but if anyone could make a dint in it, surely the heavy-handed Rory would be able to manage it.

  Audrey had barely poured an inch of tea into the CND mug when the back door was flung open. Win, plump and jowly, came bustling in and in one slick long-practised movement had whipped another mug from the cupboard, cleared magazines from a chair and sat down.

  ‘I saw your car,’ she said to Jay. ‘Just thought I’d pop in and say hello.’

  ‘You mean you smelled a pot of tea on the go through a brick wall,’ Audrey muttered. Win was eager and clearly pent up with things to tell, and took no notice.

  ‘You’ll have come to talk about the news,’ she said to Jay, smiling gleefully. ‘Wonderful isn’t it? I bet you’re pleased. I said you would be.’

  Imogen gasped. ‘How did you know? Who told you?’

  ‘Delphine of course. She phoned.’ Win pushed her hand deep into the massive black patent bag she carried everywhere. ‘And now she’s written. She always does prefer to write – she’s got such lovely handwriting and there’s always lovely descriptions. The scenery . . .’

  ‘But she . . . ah. Cross purposes Ithink.’ Jaygave Imogen a warning look.

  Win’s hand was now scurrying again among the many zipped bag sections for her reading glasses. She gave up the search and handed an envelope (sugaredalmond pink, lined with pale green tissue, purely and perfectly Delphine) to Jay. ‘Go on, you can read it for yourself.’

  But before Jay got the chance, Win announced the contents. ‘She says she’s going to live near Kingston, just by the river, in one of those lovely new apartments. Your Greg had something to do with those didn’t he? Penthouse.’ Win savoured the word as if it was part of a prayer. ‘She’ll be up the road practically, here for her poor mother in her old age.’

  Audrey pulled a face at Jay, who stifled a giggle. ‘And this new fiancé.’ Win took a second or two to sip her tea, grimaced and reached back to the worktop (without needing to look) for the sugar bowl. ‘This new fiancé, he’s an airline pilot.’ There was another small silence for her audience to absorb the ‘hasn’t-she-donewell’ aspect of this occupation. It was obviously part of the same prayer as ‘penthouse’.

  ‘Anyway, Jay my dear,’ she said, patting Jay’s hand, ‘he’s away ever such a lot so she says it would be a good idea for your cleaning people to go in and do a complete scrub-through before she gets here. You do do that sort of thing don’t you? Cleaning?’

  Jay, feeling close to speechless, managed to mutter, ‘Yes. Well the staff do, the girls I employ, you know . . .’

  ‘Jay stop it, you’re rambling,’ her mother cut in. ‘It’s a perfectly good job, nothing wrong with cleaning.’

  Imogen, looking round the terminally cluttered kitchen, spluttered over her chocolate mini-roll, sending crumbs scattering.

  ‘Oh nobody said it wasn’t.’ Win nodded, briskly, her several chins wobbling and setting up a sort of ripple effect. ‘Funny you should end up doing it for a job though, you being the clever one and all.’ Jay held her breath and counted. ‘What with your degree, and Delphine not even passing her eleven-plus. Not that it’s held her back, oh no . . .’

  ‘What about me?’ Imogen stood up, went to the sink and poured her tea down the drain, then refilled the mug with water from the tap. ‘What about my news? Doesn’t anyone want to know?’

  ‘Go on then dear, what have you done? Have you got yourself engaged as well? To that boy who talks nicely?’

  ‘Win, do shut up and let someone else get a word in,’ Audrey said.

  Imogen laughed. ‘Engaged? That’s like sooo naff? Apart from the big fancy ring I suppose. That’d be OK. No. I’m pregnant. You two are going to be a great-gran and a great-great-aunt.’

  There was a five second silence while the two sisters exchanged glances that seemed to include a mutual counting of too many ‘greats’ for comfort. They then duetted, ‘So when are you getting married?’

  Imogen looked puzzled, as if they’d mentioned a long-discontinued ritual that she’d only vaguely heard of.

  ‘I don’t think they’ve thought of getting married yet,’ Jay said quietly, then making the mistake of adding, ‘they’re a bit young.’

  ‘Not too young to have a baby though,’ Win pointed out, lips pursed.

  ‘They’ll be all right. They’ve got the downstairs flat to live in and all of us around to help.’ If Jay had her own doubts, she wasn’t going to let on to Win. And did she have doubts? How could she not? What about baby-care when Moggie left college and started teaching? What about . . . oh what was the point? There was a long way to go yet, time to think it through, or rather time for Imogen and Tris to think it through.

  ‘Well I think it’s wonderful. A baby is always a welcome addition.’ Audrey said, putting her arms round Imogen and hugging her tight.

  ‘You’ve said that before,’ Win reminded her sister. ‘When Jay got herself into trouble and fell for young Imogen here. Still, at least she managed to get Greg to do the decent thing.’

  Win poured herself some more tea and gave Imogen a somewhat pitying look. ‘I’ll get some wool, dear. The baby’ll need a proper layette and I don’t suppose you girls today have got the
first clue with a pair of needles. Lemon. I’ll get lemon. Boy or girl, you can’t go wrong with lemon.’

  Grapefruit. The kitchen was full of them. They were down among the oranges in the splintery old wooden fruit bowl, as if trying to hide for fear of being crammed on top of the juicer and having their soft innards cruelly gouged out. They lurked in the chiller box at the bottom of the fridge, too cold to hang onto their flavour, waiting their turn to be promoted to join the oranges and lemons. They also sat, these plump yellow globes, lined up like fat smug suns on the breadboard, occasionally lolling slowly to one side or another and down to the floor from where Rory kicked them at the fridge, with as much drama and posturing as if he had just been brought on in place of Wayne Rooney. Jay was sick of the sight of grapefruit. She was, however, three pounds lighter after barely a week. It was tempting to show off this fact, to strut about saying things like, ‘Does my bum look small in this?’ but she knew better than to tempt ridicule, more of which she frankly did not need.

  ‘You’re definitely going yellow, Mum,’ Rory had commented as Jay tackled her pre-supper half-grapefuit the night before. ‘You’re going to end up the colour of custard.’

  Jay had smiled weakly at him, feeling the cold sour juice stinging her teeth as she bit into the flesh. It was surprisingly sticky stuff, grapefruit, and it got everywhere. Despite its searing sharpness it managed to leave her fingers as cloyed as if she’d dipped them in syrup.

  After the second day, Jay had taken to eating the grapefruit in an almost secretive way. It was all right in the mornings; grapefruit with breakfast (or even as breakfast) was a perfectly acceptable food item. But at other meals grapefruit was a gatecrasher, to the extent that there was something antisocial about sitting down by herself and working her way through this diet food. It rated somewhere between medicine and ostentation. Ellie disapproved, scowling in the near-vocal way only a near-fourteen-year-old could achieve.

  ‘It’s very bad for me to have a dieting mother,’ she told Jay. ‘I’m impressionable. I’m at an age where I might get a food disorder.’

  ‘You make it sound like something you shop for,’ Greg teased her, ‘In which case I’d have thought you wouldn’t be seen dead with something your mother’s got, seeing as you’re at that age too.’

  Ellie’s scowl deepened – not that Greg noticed, being deeply involved in trying to get the hang of something deathly on Rory’s PlayStation – to the point where Jay wondered if she should warn her that she would be queueing up for Botox by the time she was seventeen if she furrowed her brow so dramatically and so constantly. Ellie had such a little face, her eyes and mouth looked far too big for it, as if she’d been allocated somebody else’s in the pre-birth handout of features. Every frown and grimace seemed to crumple too large a proportion of her skin, as if her expressions were already fully adult-size but the rest of her hadn’t yet caught up. On the plus side, when she looked really happy she was glorious, completely alight with pleasure. In repose, her expression might well tend towards moodiness apart from those giveaway corners of her turned-up mouth.

  Sometimes, in one of those horror moments that sneak up and pounce on all mothers’ imaginings, Jay frightened herself by thinking that Ellie looked like the classic teenage schoolgirl murder victim. She was little for her age, sexy without knowing it, too pretty with only nature’s help: overall a paedophile’s wet dream. She was noticeably smaller than most of her contemporaries, inches shorter and skinny-bodied just as Jay herself had been. There were times, when Ellie came home with a friend (especially the hulking Serena who’d been last year’s best friend) or Jay gave some of them a lift in the van, when it was hard to remember not to talk to these girls as if they were so much older than Ellie, as if they were the near-women they resembled.

  At the same time, she had to be careful not to treat Ellie too much like a young child. She might look barely more than primary-school age, but inside her head there must be teen stuff going on, close to fourteen years’ worth of growing and learning and thinking things out just the same as her blowsy, fleshy friends. Jay remembered well enough how hard it was to be the undersized one, to know she hadn’t a hope of getting into an over-fifteen film or to be eyeing up the boys on the way to school but knowing they’d never look twice while she was still wearing pony-print knickers with ‘age 11–12’ on the label.

  It was hard to know just what did go on in Ellie’s head. She didn’t give a lot away. Just recently though, she’d been looking as if there was something pleasing her in a secret way.

  ‘She’s up to something,’ Jay commented to Greg as they lay in bed that night under the planes, the stars and the possible observance of Planet Man.

  ‘Probably,’ Greg agreed. ‘She’s getting to the Age of Secrets. A boy, do you think?’

  ‘Doubt it. Even if she was more grown-up-looking she’d still be a bit young.’

  ‘Maybe. Though there’s thirteen, and there’s thirteen-going-on-twenty-three.’

  ‘She’s got the rest of her life to be grown-up, give her a break. She’s not even that interested in make-up and clothes. She’s like me. I was no more than a wannabe pony girl at thirteen. Boys and make-up didn’t figure at all,’ Jay said, thinking back to the after-school hours she’d spent leaning on the paddock fence at Mrs Allen’s scruffy junkyard riding school, longing and longing for Delphine to let her have her promised go on the plump little pony. This chubby toffee creature, with a cascading blond, flicky mane like the Timotei shampoo girl, was Delphine’s pet and weapon of supreme manipulation. Jay owned a sweet and loving black cat that made Delphine sneeze in an exaggeratedly suffering manner, but from Santa, the year she was eleven, Delphine received every girl’s dream of a pony complete with monogrammed blanket, grooming kit and fabulous, biscuit-coloured, squeaky leather tack. Only a child destined for sainthood could fail to be envious.

  Even many years later, when she’d bought a My Little Pony Grooming Parlour for Imogen’s fifth birthday with its miniature pink brushes, curry-combs, rosettes and ribbons, Jay had had a pang of nostalgic covetousness, recalling Delphine’s real-life equivalent. Jay’s mother Audrey had been sniffy about the pony’s expense and declared it would be a five-minute wonder, that the creature would be abandoned in a matter of weeks to languish in a field, getting fat and grumpy. But in the months of meantime, the power shift between Jay and Delphine was even more horribly unbalanced.

  The deal had been that Win would let Delphine stay for whole afternoons at the stables as long as Jay (being that bit older) was there to keep an eye on her. In exchange Jay was supposed to be allowed to share the riding time on Cobweb. Delphine wasn’t cut out for sharing. She was an only child and the pony was only hers. She was the one who could say yes or no about who got to sit on its glossy saddle. She loved power much more than she loved poor Cobweb. At Mrs Allen’s Delphine would canter round and round the sandy practice ring, flicking the pony over foot-high jumps, yelling instructions at Cobweb the whole time. ‘Bad, stupid pony!’ she’d roar, when she lost a stirrup or mistimed her approach. All the time she’d be eyeing Jay sideways, slyly smiling as she watched her hanging over the fence with an uncontrollable expression of yearning. Jay would always get her ride – it would be a brief twenty minutes or so till Delphine got bored and fidgety and demanded to go home in case Mrs Allen noticed she had nothing to do and allocated the less pleasant tack-room duties to her.

  ‘I wasn’t a bad rider, actually.’ Jay was almost surprised to hear herself saying it aloud.

  ‘Eh? What? Horses?’ Greg looked puzzled. ‘Or,’ and his tone became more animated, ‘motorbikes?’ Horses to Greg were merely optional decorative items for a rustic scene and best viewed from a safe distance. Motorbikes on the other hand were objects of desire and he knew quite well that when the time came for an edgy male menopause to strike, a shiny, bestudded Harley-Davidson Electraglide would be top of his splash-out list and he would joyously embrace his inner biker before it was too late.

 
‘Horses.’ Jay laughed. ‘What made you think I’d got a motorbike history that you didn’t know about?’

  ‘Dunno, but even after twenty-one years you can’t know everything about a person, can you? It was quite an exciting thought, picturing you zapping to school on a little Vespa or something, all straw boater held on with elastic and your skirt wafting up in the wind.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Greg. I wasn’t even a bicycle girl, let alone a motorbike one. I could never understand why on cold wet winter days some of the girls from school were pedalling down the high street having cars swoosh puddles all over them when they could be all steamy and warm on a crowded bus.’

  Greg rolled towards her and snaked his hand under the duvet and across her stomach. ‘That’s you,’ he said, snuggling into her neck. ‘A keen eye for the comfort option.’

  Jay wasn’t sure what to make of that – it was disconcertingly close to telling her she was fat and idle. Fat (ish) maybe, she conceded (though working on it . . .) but idle, hardly. Another day out with Henry tomorrow, she thought as she pit-patted her Cifwhitened fingers down Greg’s back. Such a pity Henry was a vacuum cleaner.

  FIVE