by Judy Astley
‘Um – I’m just going next door to see Cathy. See what I can suggest about the sun and her yoga,’ Jay said, and fled. By the time she got back they’d have finished eating, the kitchen would be filled with unappetizing dirty dishes and it would be time for her next Shape-Shake. Oh the joylessness of it, the tragic avoidance of mouth-watering anticipation. How much, she wondered, could a nice fast blast of liposuction hurt? Quite a lot, she imagined as she plodded down the front steps, quite a lot in both body and bank account.
None of the nurses were even halfway fit. And if he had been the type who was into women in uniform, Rory would have been disappointed. These wore shiny shapeless, pale blue overall things and looked like supermarket checkout staff. Whenever they touched you they put on thin Durexy gloves as if you were dodgy meat that was going off. There was only one with a bit of a foxy look to her (a slinky walk and pouty pale lipstick) and even she looked like her back end was made of concrete under that outfit. And hardly anyone from school had been in. Of his mates, only Alex and Mart had bothered to turn up but they hadn’t stayed long, just long enough to lob him a tatty-looking sympathy card which Ellie had said you only sent when people died (‘From the whole form’ they told him, but it only had twelve names in it and two of those looked faked), before they sodded off to watch Arsenal coming to well-deserved grief on Mart’s dad’s massive widescreen Sky set-up.
There was no Sky TV in here and even if there was, he’d never get near it for all the elderlies glued to Emmerdale. There was no sign of Samantha Newton. He hadn’t expected her to come in (but you could dream . . .) and her name wasn’t on the card – it was the first thing he’d looked for. He pictured her now, doing Sunday things at home. She might be sitting on her bed, all newly showered and scented, painting her toenails sparkly pink. Her body would be naked under a not-quite-big-enough fluffy white towel with little beady drops of water still scattered across her shoulders. She’d probably got a couple of soft toys on her pillow – a squashy teddy and Garfield or a polar bear, maybe both. And she’d probably got a picture of that Timberlake tosser on her wall. Somebody older anyway, somebody with a gristle-hard body and too much attitude. He hated being sixteen – your head and your dick were going on twenty-two but to women you might as well still be seven.
Rory wished he was at home. He felt OK now, though he didn’t want to go back to school yet, not while the stitches were still in. School was a hard place if you felt a bit vulnerable. Some wanker or other would think it so amusing to leap on your back in the corridor and hurl you to the floor just to see how much your wound could bleed. What he wanted was to be at home on one of the big pink sofas in the sitting room, with his feet up and the telly on and the smell of Sunday-type cooking wafting in from the kitchen. He’d even like to see Ellie looking cross about something Not Being Fair.
Rory didn’t really understand this Tasha girl who kept coming in and sitting with him. I mean, he thought, she was no minger but she was only a kid, in Ellie’s year. Did she have a thing about hospitals? Did she want to be a doctor or something and was soaking up the atmosphere? Of all the things there were to soak up in here, atmosphere wasn’t the one there was most of. He’d seen more stuff come out of people in the few days he’d been in than he’d thought any human body could possibly hold. That poor old bloke in the end bed – no wonder he’d died. Pulling the curtains round his bed hadn’t really helped – he could still hear all the mopping and wiping and imagine all the tubes and stuff. Jesus. And when they’d trolleyed him away to the morgue the wheels had creaked and clanked like a ghost’s chains. It was enough to give you nightmares, and he’d know where the blame would start if he spent his adult life in therapy dealing with an aversion to high white metal beds.
It wasn’t long to go now. Dr Melissa would be round soon for a final check – she’d said some time after twelve thirty – and then his mum was coming and he could go home. A small childlike bit of him hoped she’d been in his room and given it a surprise makeover. Clean sheets and a start-again vacuumed floor had a hugely comforting appeal. Though any surprises were likely to be Jay’s, he suddenly thought. I wonder, he mused, if she’s ever read Out for the Lads before.
If Jay longed for a minimal look when it came to household furnishing, then it could be said that Cathy in the house next door opted for maximal, if such a word existed. Dishing the Dirt had clients like this – premises which Jay and Barbara referred to as the heart-sink homes (that is, from a cleaner’s point of view – their occupants tended to be jolly folks with happy lives as full and colourful as their houses), crammed from cellar to attic with ornaments and mementoes, every one of which had to be moved and dusted and washed and polished. Cathy’s philosophy was that if you’d had a lovely time, whether it was a simple fun lunch with a friend or a full-scale holiday, then it was essential to bring back something to remind you of it. From the stuff stacked on each room’s wall and surface – everything from an extensive plastic snow-dome collection to hundreds of pretty jugs, wooden carvings and postcards tucked onto every ledge – Jay would say she’d had a lifetime of daily outings filled with delight.
‘Come in, come in! Fancy a drink? A Sunday morning livener?’ Cathy was pulling faded hyacinths from a pot at the top of the front steps. She was a welcoming soul with her hair tied back in a long black plait, and a smoker’s off-white smile occupied a good half of her small bony face.
‘No thanks, I’ve got to drive later. Wouldn’t mind some of that lovely tea you have though.’ There was a spicy scent in the hallway, cinnamon, Jay guessed, something warming and Christmassy and probably grated into an apple pie.
‘Camomile?’ Cathy suggested.
Jay shook her head, ‘Actually not camomile, thanks. Reminds me of my five-minute detox – don’t ask!’
‘OK, you sad dieter. I’ve got a wonderful blackcurrant and elderflower mixture – come on through to the kitchen, but you’ll have to excuse the mess.’
Every surface in the kitchen was covered with unwashed plates, glasses and cutlery. Wind chimes clanked lightly outside the French doors and a pair of overfed stripey orange cats lay on the wooden rocking chair, entwined on a velvet leopard-print cushion.
‘I had a few people in last night and got too pissed to do the dishes.’ Cathy grinned at her, looking sheepish. ‘It must look like your worst professional nightmare.’
Jay laughed. ‘Just reminds me of what’s in my kitchen. I’d love to say I never bring my work home, but with my job it’s impossible. It’s easier to keep up with other people’s cleaning than it is with my own. When I get home and trip over the bags and shoes in the hall I sometimes long for an empty white space with nothing but a lilac leather chaise longue, hours of nothing to do and one single brand new copy of Vogue.’
‘Impossible with a family, and anyway you’d hate it. You should come to my yoga class – take some time to chill.’
‘Do you know, I just might. Talking of which, what’s this about the sunlight and the office roof? Can I have a look?’
Jay followed her neighbour’s taut-muscled bottom up the purple-carpeted stairs to the big back room that Cathy had converted into her yoga and meditation sanctuary. The stairwell walls were filled with well over two hundred framed art offerings by Cathy’s now grown-up children, ranging from nursery powder-paint handprints to classy A-level life studies. With her persistent professional head on, Jay found herself working out that the best you could do for the highest ones would be to tie a feather duster to a broom handle and give them a whoosh-over to keep the cobwebs down.
Cathy’s yoga room was an unexpected contrast to the rest of the house. It was an almost bare, empty space painted a soft sage green and containing nothing but a pair of pink yoga mats and a selection of candles on the window ledge. Crystal prisms hung on threads at the window, reflecting baby rainbows across the dark polished wood floor. The two women stood and looked down into Jay’s garden, at the end of which was Greg’s glassy two-domed office, reminiscent of a s
mall version of the Eden Project.
‘I always thought he should have made the two sections the same size,’ Jay commented. ‘To me they look like a pair of badly matched breasts.’
‘Have you told Greg that?’ Cathy laughed. ‘What did he say?’
‘He said it was better than what the last person had told him, which was that they reminded him of caterpillar eyes. He quite liked the idea of glass breasts. I caught him doodling possible ways of giving them nipples.’ She shielded her eyes as the sun came out from behind a cloud and a spear of light bounced off the glass below. ‘I can see your point about the light reflecting into here. Greg needs to smear some mud over the surface or something.’
‘No, no, definitely not. You can’t have muddy knockers in your garden,’ Cathy said. ‘I had a bit of a think about it last night and I’ve got some old silk prayer flags I’ve had for years. I’m going to hang a couple of them from a batten up here at the top of the window. That should do it. Look good too – they’re orange, colour of peace.’
‘Hmm, peace, serenity. Imagine that – you know, Cathy, I think I just might join your yoga class. When is it?’
‘Thursday evenings, seven fifteen, down at the leisure centre.’ She squeezed the top of Jay’s arm gently. ‘I think you’ll enjoy it, it’s time out just for yourself. Recharge those batteries and get a tone-up at the same time.’
Jay laughed, prodding her hips. ‘A tone-up would be very welcome and as for the batteries, well they’re the only things about me that’s flat these days.’
Rory still looked pale and Jay could swear he was a good couple of inches taller than when he’d left home to go to school that day he’d got so ill. He seemed thin too, as if he hadn’t quite enough nutritional resources to keep up with the extra growth and had simply stretched. It might not be an illusion – her mother and Win had always been Old-Wife certain that any time a child spent lying ill in bed would guarantee a growth spurt. I must have been a supremely well child, in that case, Jay concluded as she shoved Rory’s washbag into his rucksack. And possibly that would account for why Delphine had grown so fast so young. That grumbling appendix of hers (along with Win’s conviction that she was in danger of ‘outgrowing her strength’) had kept her languishing in bed on many a rainy school day. She’d been fed so much comforting Heinz tomato soup and Lucozade at these times that Audrey had once said she was surprised the girl hadn’t turned orange.
Jay was glad to see Dr Melissa in the corridor as they said goodbye to the nurses and left the ward. The little blonde Kylie lookalike was click-clacking along in a pair of powder blue kitten-heeled mules that looked as if they were left over from a much more exciting time the night before.
‘Going home, Rory? Sad to be outa here?’ Melissa treated him to a stunning smile and he grinned back, though directing his blushing expression towards the floor.
‘Um – could I just ask you something?’ Jay ventured. ‘Do appendix problems run in families?’
Jay tried not to interpret Dr Melissa’s expression as that of someone pitying ignorance, but it wasn’t easy.
‘Not that I’m aware of?’ she told Jay, the Antipodean upward lilt back in place. ‘Is there someone else at home with symptoms?’
‘Oh no, no, everyone’s fine,’ Jay said. ‘It’s just my cousin, when she was a child she suffered a lot from what was called a grumbling appendix. I just wondered . . .’
The echoes of Melissa’s laughter bounced off the walls in a kind of quadrophonic cackle. ‘Hey that old myth? Appendixes don’t grumble? They’re either quiet and well-behaved or they explode, like Rory’s did? There’s no middle ground. Your cousin probably had a bit of irritable bowel going on? Or constipation, that’s all? Grumbling appendix – no way, ha ha ha!’
Well it surely wasn’t that hilarious, Jay thought as they made their way down in the lift, the echo of shrill Queensland mirth following them. She thought of her mother suddenly and wished she’d been there – how completely unable she’d have been to stop herself wagging her finger at clever little Dr Melissa and putting her straight: ‘It’s appendices dear, not appendixes.’
EIGHT
Yoga
‘When she gets here, do I still have to call her Auntie Delphine, like when I was a kid?’ Rory asked Jay, as Barbara drove them in a Dishing the Dirt van to have a look over Charles Walton’s apartment.
‘No, just call her Delphine. I’m sure she won’t mind. And if she does . . .’
‘If she does,’ Barbara cut in, ‘just call her madame. She certainly sounds like one, from all you’ve told me.’
‘A madame?’ Rory’s voice was so full of astonishment that it skittered over several octaves. ‘What, like in a . . . ?’
‘No, no, I meant demanding, difficult. A bit of a prima donna,’ Barbara said, laughing.
Jay didn’t have to wonder how he knew about the brothel sort of madam. She’d had a quick flick through the Out for the Lads magazine that had been poking out from under the scrunched-up single socks (why did they all blame the tumble-dryer fairy? Couldn’t they just look?) the toast crusts, and the homeless CDs that had been under his bed when she’d given his room a tidy-up while he was in hospital. It had been quite fascinating and informative, that article on Bawds in the ’Burbs: Out of Town Pleasure Palaces. She’d wasted a comfortable twenty minutes sitting on Rory’s bed, reading about unexpected down-your-avenue red-light venues, and, although they didn’t exactly print the address, there’d been one mentioned that could only be a couple of streets away from home. She was pretty sure she recognized the big mimosa tree that was just visible in the picture. ‘Pleasure Palace’, it had struck her, seemed a grandiose description for a house that looked like a typical, if over-decorated, four-bed Victorian villa. No wonder its upstairs windows had those tarts’-knickers blinds. She should put a Dishing the Dirt card through the letterbox to see if the proprietor was in need of a cleaning service and in possession of a sense of the ironic.
‘We should tell Planet Man about it,’ she’d suggested to Greg. ‘Maybe he’d like to point his telescope the other way for a change.’
‘Oh no, don’t let’s. I’d quite miss the old perv.’ Jay hoped he’d been joking, but you could never tell with Greg and he hadn’t been laughing at the time. Peculiar things went on in his head – as she imagined did in the heads of most men – and it might well be that the thought of being watched was giving him a bit of an edge, sexually speaking. She’d let it pass, Jay decided, seeing as things were currently going well in that department, but she really must do something about those useless, flimsy curtains: the fantasy of being watched was one thing. The near-certainty of it was quite another. Planet Man might also be equipped with a high-tech camera and a streak of impish madness. She could end up starring as an unwitting Reader’s Wife for Rory to find in one of his lad mags, or, possibly worse, flyposted mid-coitus to the side wall of Waitrose.
Rory was staying away from school for a couple of weeks and didn’t appear to intend wasting his time catching up with any studies. He complained a lot, as if it was to be expected in his condition, although not about itching stitches or his aching wound. What annoyed him was that his viewing of Diagnosis: Murder and Bargain Hunt was too often interrupted by Imogen coming up from the basement with the Mothercare catalogue to ask his opinion on cots and changing mats. It may have been a pretty desperate avoidance of potty-selection that led him to choose to come out with Jay and Barbara, but as this was merely a costing exercise and there was no danger of him being asked to lift a duster and apply polish to a surface, she’d understood that even he, with a teen’s capacity for junk-viewing, could become bored with daytime TV.
‘Is he loaded, or what, then, this Charles geezer?’ Rory asked as the van swung in through the security gates of the Swannery, the block where Charles Walton lived.
‘I was wondering the same myself,’ Barbara said, peering upwards through the windscreen towards the absurdly futuristic penthouse. It was perched at a dan
gerous-looking angle on top of five storeys of otherwise reasonably staid red-brick and deep-windowed flats, converted from a former riverside storage depot. Charles’s penthouse was, most of it, two floors high, partly set back from the block’s edge to provide a deep deck, and looked as if the building contractors had decided: hey, to hell with it, let’s commission the top layer from a different architect, one who’d had nothing to do with the design of the rest of the building. It was a mad structure of glass slabs and lime green concrete with a silver sail-shaped roof, quite recognizably, to Jay, the work of Greg.
Greg had laughed at the agent’s brochure description of it as the Ultimate Penthouse. He said that the best fun in redesigning a big block like that was that you got to play with the bit at the top. It was very much, he explained, like being a kid on the beach embellishing a whole hot day’s worth of carefully built sandcastle. The bottom bits, the hard work of digging out and shoring up and scooping out a moat (or in this case a car park), were about providing stability and structure, but at the top you got to be as fancy as you dared with as many turrets and flags and shell patterns as you wanted. Buildings were much the same. The ground-level ones that would never have got through the outline stage without guffaws of hilarity from planning committees were passed without question when they were 100 feet up. You could stick a massive purple metal marquee up there for all they cared, as long as it topped off the building in an icing on the cake, flash-cash-attracting sort of way.
Jay remembered Greg’s excitement as the building took shape – the flats being a fairly run-of-the mill former industrial conversion, but the roof apartment being a work of pure architectural indulgence for him. And now, she thought as Barbara drove the Dishing the Dirt van into the underground car park, now her nice, neat, matching-bag-and-shoes cousin Delphine was going to be living in it. The thought had very much pleased Greg. He was delighted at the chance to go and keep an eye on how his design was shaping up as real-life living space, rather than as hyper-smart glossy-magazine fodder.