‘Oh I love you. Do you have any idea how – Oww! Stop it! You’re too big!’
Both of them launch themselves back on top of her triumphantly. A physical pummelling from two children is a far more appealing option than an emotional post mortem. Ruby gets up, her bottom lip protruding. She tucks her hair behind both ears and folds her arms. Uneasily Angel sits up, biting her own bottom lip: knowing Ruby, something unpleasant is coming. Like storm clouds gathering on the horizon, a cross patch of frown appears on Ruby’s freckled forehead.
‘Mummy, I know you say you love me but I don’t feel it,’ Ruby says dolefully, and spouting tears she jumps off the bed and runs out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Angel gazes after her, panic and astonishment freezing her heartbeat for an infinite moment before the pulse begins racing at double speed through her body and the familiar sense of being hopelessly overwhelmed and under-equipped for life kicks in.
Escaping from this feeling, or trying to, is the impetus Angel needs to drive her to this point where she looks at her life and can say loud and clear, ‘This is not what I want.’
Everything is about running, moving, getting on. Getting somewhere. But not out. No matter how fast she runs, Angel cannot get out. Maybe it is shock, or post-traumatic stress, but here in her bedroom on this summer morning, Angel suddenly has the sense of the plug being pulled out. No more impetus to stay on the treadmill.
She lies back down on the bed and examines this new sense of just being.
‘Mum, what are you doing lying there like the other kind of Mummy? Where’s Dad? He doesn’t seem to be here and we’re supposed to be playing tennis this morning.’
Jem is in the room too, now, his face extra shiny, hair wet and shaggy from the shower. He twirls his tennis racquet on one finger and drops two balls out of his T-shirt. ‘Those were my boobs. Ruby did them for me. She’s really stressed – or she was, that’s why I had to pretend to have bloody tits. What’s going on today? Why is everyone so weird? And where is bloody Dad?’
Jem whacks the bedspread aside and bends to look under the bed. ‘Not hiding under there.’ He shakes his head sorrowfully to make Foss laugh.
‘I’m going out,’ announces Foss, scampering gleefully out and down the stairs, making the droning aeroplane noise that for him signifies great pleasure. Jem is still in the room, chatting about a film he has seen, then he coughs and says, ‘Right, I think I’ll leave you, Mother,’ in a joke-stupid voice and he wanders out, whistling.
How incomprehensible that the silent, grunting teen person Jem should have chosen this awful moment to say more, and be more cheerful than he has been all summer. It is as if every conversation he has not had before has been absorbed into him until he has overflowed and now it is all spiralling out of him in a rippling stream of questions, observations and good cheer, on and on for ever without end, like the music on a self-playing piano.
‘Right, I’m off, Mum,’ says Jem. ‘When are you going to get up?’
‘In a minute,’ Angel replies to his back view and the door as he leaves.
Angel clambers off the bed again, and on this second attempt opens the curtains. Sunshine bounces in lighting dust in laser beams, whitening the shadows on Nick’s side of the bed and ironing them out so the linen expanse glows with supernatural emptiness.
He is not here. Angel looks out at the garden. Spires of foxglove skeletons and giant fennel heads like bronze clouds rocket through the roses, butterflies dance along the catmint at the front in small scoops, fluttering a lacy pattern like a scalloped edge; and even from a floor above, Angel can hear the drone of bees threading clumsily in and out of the lavender. The rioting, happy sunlit garden is absurd.
There is nothing outside to reflect the ethereal oddness Angel feels. She ought to go for a run, to connect with the world, to get healthier and to feel the sense of achievement that this small activity brings her, but she can’t today. She moves closer to the window, wanting to dissolve into the glass, to become transparent and to be neither in nor out, invisible and unyielding, there and yet not there. A breeze sighs across the lawn and the morning settles with a sense of heady laziness and the stillness that is summer at its most luxurious. Tears prick in Angel’s eyes because it is too late and she can only see the stillness, she does not feel it within her. The summer loveliness is separate and cannot heal her.
Downstairs, the back door judders and Foss and Ruby dart into view, Foss’s mad frizz of hair a chrome yellow mop in the sunlight, Ruby still singing breathless teen lyrics, fortunately indecipherable to the normal human ear. The children vanish behind the hedge towards the trampoline and the whispering depth of foliage engulfs the sound of them.
Angel loves the garden. She realises that the gathering sadness of her and Nick breaking up has got in the way of her knowing this. But it is true, and today the lilies in the border beneath her window and a sweep of nasturtiums are vibrant reminders. The vigour and the sumptuous determination of plants, and indeed weeds, is inspiring. Angel decides that she will weed the paths.
The moment she steps outside, dragging a wheelbarrow with no air in the tyre, Angel feels the relief of doing something practical lift her spirits. When she and Nick moved to this house there was no hedge, no deep beds of swooning summer flowers, no Mr McGregor vegetable garden. Angel had very little idea about gardening, beyond the names of a few overblown roses and a vague desire not to be able to see the whole area in one glance, when she began to love her garden. And its success is both a mockery of her marriage and one of its triumphs. She pulls a clump of thistle stems from the back doorstep and chucks them into the wheelbarrow.
Nick’s interest in outside is determinedly limited to rectangles of grass for sport. This has its uses, and the lawn is impressively green, flat and flawless. Nick’s dedication to it is relentless. And molehills are his speciality. He has frequently sat out all night with a gun, waiting to exterminate the small furry terrorists whose assault on the grass is to Nick an outrage to sense and sensibility. Nick sitting on a kitchen chair in the starlight, the barrel of his gun glinting like a cartoon baddie-.-.-.-the memory makes Angel smile. They both played their part, she could see that, and all of the life they made together was worth doing. And Angel had always been grateful that getting him to cut the grass was never a problem – stopping him was another matter. Nick would rather mow the lawn than work, eat, fuck, or talk. Pretty well anything except watching sport and going to AA meetings was put to one side for lawn care. The rules for anyone playing on the lawn often became unfeasible: socks only, no shoes was the first one, then a ball made of sponge.
‘I feel such a dork,’ said Jem. Nick announced the rules at the beginning of each summer, setting an example for his whole family when he left his trainers on the gravel and skipped on to the grass in his yellow socks. ‘There’s something about socks that is so pensioner – next Dad will have us all in those grey shoes they wear for bowls. I am not getting my friends to do this and that’s final.’
‘Don’t even think the thought,’ hissed Coral. ‘He was talking about bowls the other day but I managed to persuade him that it is only for sad tossers.’
Nick’s lawn passed from lumpy mess to immaculate untouchable sward without ever stopping at the in-between phase where children could play on it.
The frequent and inconsistent exception to this regime was when Nick himself wanted to play a decent game of football with the children. Then, suddenly it was fine to be on the lawn in trainers, skidding towards the goal and ploughing the surface.
It is smooth now, and Foss and Ruby have dragged a paddling pool out on to the middle and Jem is filling it with a hose while they squeal and run into the cold spray.
‘Jem, try and squirt me,’ taunts Foss. ‘I am out of reach.’
‘Oh no you aren’t.’ Jem runs after him, Ruby trips him up and they lie in a heap laughing.
‘Mum, come and save me,’ Jem shouts, and Angel leaves the wheelbarrow and joins them, grabbing Foss and t
wirling him in the air. She is sure for a moment that things will change. Something will happen and life will move forward. It always does.
Nick
Ely Cathedral looms out of the flat green surface of the Fens, improbably large in shades of grey, sailing like a ghost galleon towards Nick as the train jerks into Ely station on his way to London for a meeting. The train judders past the tin roofs of allotment sheds. Solid against the sky, the octagon tower has a cobweb of scaffolding obscuring its elaborate caryatids, and the spires around it remind Nick of the thorns around Sleeping Beauty’s castle in the fairy tale. And frankly, as with her thorns, they just don’t look worth trying to penetrate. What princess has ever been worth a spike through the arse? And what princess is ever glad you have bothered, or even notices the effort you have gone to for her? None he has known for sure.
Behind the pinnacles and spires and the monumental tower, the sky is watery blue, and the bank of thick clouds clumped on the horizon is the only movement in the scene out of the window. In the opposite direction yellow fields of oilseed rape patchwork the endless flatness, criss-crossed with dykes and dissected by the railway. The open doors of the train send a sudden gust of air into the carriage, and on it the delicate scent of blossom drenched with recent rain. The sun suddenly rolls out from behind the clouds and the Fenland looks full of promise, and flowers and possibility.
Like Angel when he met her. He didn’t even notice the thorns around her, they were hidden beneath so much budding optimism. Nick is surprised to find the thought of her all those years ago suddenly in his head. He sees her clearly in his mind now, and what he sees is the moment they met. Here on the train, at Ely where she got on. Twenty years ago, maybe a little more, maybe a little less – and anyway who is counting – Angel walked down the carriage, her hands touching each seat back as she passed. She sat down right opposite him, unaware that she had just invaded his life and was going to occupy it for the foreseeable future. She smelled of roses kicked with musk, the whiff of patchouli oil, and her scent coiled round him, intoxicating his senses while he gazed at everything he had ever wanted. He didn’t know that was what she was, actually he didn’t know much really because he was smashed – but he was always smashed then. And smashed didn’t mean falling over drunk, or not at that point on that particular spring afternoon in May, it just meant a little bit high. It was funny, he would not have thought of Angel as his type. Her strawberry-blonde hair and smudge-grey eyes were too English for him, and her glowing skin and soft supple body were way too healthy. She was out of his league as far as health went. She has no addictions – or none that were visible then. But she peeled off her coat and a purple T-shirt was tight across her breasts and her arms had freckles and fine, pale golden hairs, the sight of which made him shiver. Her throat disappeared into the faded scoop of the T-shirt and there was a dark brown mole on her collarbone, and he was consumed with an urge to lean over and kiss her neck just there. It was the beginning of a hot summer, years before air-conditioning was installed on Anglia Rail and before smoking was sidelined to a single carriage at the end of the train. Angel’s bare legs gleamed when she crossed them, absently pulling at the hem of her denim skirt, vainly attempting to get it somewhere near her knees. She hadn’t noticed him looking at her yet. All she was carrying was a book, and as soon as she sat down she started to read it. The book was called Hangover Square. Nick rarely spent a day without a hangover. The book was clearly a sign flagging the way. Eagerly Nick succumbed to his favourite compulsion, desire. Just now he wanted everything – a drink, a shag, a cigarette, a connection, a conquest. He wanted it all, and yet he would have traded everything for love – his need for love raged through him, unmet and untamed, opening every wound so he could have screamed with pain. But instead of screaming he did what he always did to pick up a girl. He became consumed. He threw himself into falling, rushing desire; a charge so great he could never believe it was not a magnetic force.
So Nick leaned towards this beautiful freckled magnet, his eyes running over her like he wanted his hands to, his elbows on his knees. He was utterly sincere when he said, ‘You are incredible. I want to buy you a drink and pay you a lot of attention.’ It didn’t always work, but he’d had two vodkas already on the train, some subtle opiates at home before he left, and nothing to eat since God knows when. This girl looked good enough to eat and the adrenalin required to be so up front was a fix like any drug. And what the hell; to be turned down was nothing like as bad as not having any drugs. The look he got back from Angel smouldered for a moment then ignited in a smile that was surely all about sex.
‘OK,’ she said. And at that point neither of them was able to see that the chemistry between them was as toxic as the chemicals coursing through Nick’s veins.
Had things been different, perhaps their affair would have run its short course. But Angel was pregnant. She would have left him otherwise, at some point over that summer. She was not in love with him, she was still in love with Ranim; she did not pretend otherwise, though she did not say so either. Nick felt that on some level he had known this. But he wanted her. And everything he was doing at that point of his life was bad for him, so what would have made him pick a girlfriend who was good for him? Angel looked so perfect, she looked like the answer. She was unfinished business. In fact, she was unfinishable business, but Nick wanted to try. When Coral was born, they became a family. Angel tried to find Ranim, but every letter was returned. Nick remained constant. Angel gave up. Nick believed he had won her. Everyone else thought he had rescued her. And at some level he thought it too.
Jem
Sometimes I just feel so real. It is a weird feeling and it makes me realise how not real most of my life is, and how I hang around without really living or seeing or hearing except though a filter of my headphones and my mobile phone. But something about today got to me when I woke up. Maybe it was the fact that the sun had warmed the patch on the pillow right next to my head but the rays had not hit me in the face, so when I moved my head I was suddenly in this warm patch, clean-smelling like the airing cupboard. I was already smiling when I became aware I was awake. Then the cornflakes were super crunchy and the milk tasted just right, and I was standing by the fridge eating the third bowlful and I must have been making a noise because Coral came in and said, ‘Are you on drugs, man? – that’s just cereal, you know.’ And I nodded with my mouth full, thinking, Yeah, she’s right, but it’s delicious.
I would have definitely eaten the whole packet if Ruby hadn’t come in prancing and singing some boy band noise pollution.
‘Hey, Roobs, what about the song I taught you about you?’
She does this hip thing, wiggling as if she is twenty-five and performing in a lap dancing club, and it’s like punctuation to show she’s finished one song. Then she starts on the Rolling Stones. I brainwashed her with: ‘Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday’, but she breaks off before I can check that she knows the whole verse.
‘I want you to grow bosoms now to trick Mummy and Daddy,’ she commands, proffering a pair of tennis balls and tugging at my T-shirt. God, small children are insane, but then, why not? Obediently, I stuff the tennis balls inside my T-shirt. Going into Mum’s room did puncture the ultra reality a bit, because I started to imagine I was in a time warp and I was seven again like Ruby. Sometimes I can remember things so immediately it feels like they are happening now. This time it was smelling Mum’s perfume which she always wears and she has always worn, so it is as much her as the way she laughs, maybe even more so because the perfume isn’t separate at all in the way laughter can come into a room with the person not there yet. But the scent is in every room with Mum always, and usually it’s hardly noticeable, it’s just there, but sometimes, like this morning, it comes and wraps around me like a hug from her.
I don’t know why Dad isn’t here. I don’t notice him by his own personal absence, or by his smell, thank God, but by the presence of things he should be in. His trainers are at the bottom of the bed on the sid
e that he should be sleeping in right now if he wasn’t up and ready for our game of tennis and wearing the trainers. Normally though, he is not ready, and is pretending to be asleep with his pillow over his head while Foss and Ruby spring about the place. There is nothing very unusual about him not being here; he’s been away on and off for ages, but with the way I feel today it is weird. When I say to Mum, ‘So where is Dad, then?’ she look at me as though I am talking to her through mists and layers of time and in a language that she has to translate to understand. Basically her eyes are darting about me and she is trying to avoid answering me. She doesn’t want to say where he is. And I get it. This is the moment that I know she doesn’t love him any more, even though I am not aware that I know it yet. And I don’t know if she knows it either. What I am aware of at this moment is my insides have swooped, doubled up like I have been hit in the stomach and on through to my spine and ribs. They are crumbling and if I knew what to panic about, I would be panicking.
Ruby still thinks I am playing the boobs-are-tennis-balls game with her again. I mean we had that one yesterday, why would I want to do it again? The trouble with little kids is they never give up and they never forget that you said you would do something, no matter how throwaway you were feeling when you said it. But I can’t. Everything that was real and felt good before I spoke to Mum is flat and heavy now. And Coral isn’t here so I can’t even talk to her about it.
Nick
Nick wakes up with a bad taste in his mouth and it isn’t alcohol, that’s for sure. The light sneaks through thick brown darkness in the room, and all of his senses battle to make sense of what he can see is not a familiar place. It smells of old cigarettes, so it is definitely not his bedroom at home. There, Angel’s scent and the fresh-air breath of clean laundry mingle in the air with sunshine and sleep. The room is always warm, and always soft, and in his mind he can see it. The odd thing is there is nothing of him or his in it. The pale pink walls with gold-feathered wallpaper, the raspberry richness of the velvet bed-spread, the rack of shoes and boots in the fireplace – all of them are Angel’s. Somehow Nick has got into the habit of trailing a small suitcase around with his book, his trainers, a toothbrush and a couple of shirts, and this is the only bit of him he can see in his mind’s-eye view of the marital bedroom.
A Perfect Life Page 11