by Gill Sims
Sylvia wafted up to me in a cloud of scarves and waved a hand at the gathering, enquiring, ‘Chérie, who are all these people? Why have you invited them?’
‘They are our friends and neighbours, Sylvia,’ I said mildly.
‘That one is an accountant!’ she said indignantly, pointing at poor Tim. ‘Poor Simon. Ellen, you are forcing him to live in a cultural desert. Why can’t you cultivate some more interesting people than all these corporate suits?’
‘Errr …’
‘And who is that woman in all the scarves! What does she look like? What is she thinking?’
She was pointing at TV Alicia now, who she appeared to have had some sort of Scarf Off with, as I swear she had popped upstairs and added some more, just so she couldn’t be out-scarved by Alicia.
‘That’s Alicia – she works in TV and is married to Tristan, who used to be at school with Simon.’
‘Tristan! Oh, do you mean Tristan Barnaby-Soames? Oh, he was a charming boy! His father owned quite a lot of Warwickshire. Delightful man. And Alicia works in TV, you say? Yes, I could tell she was artistic. I must go and say hello, I expect we know lots of the same people from when I worked in TV. And I must tell Tristan to give my love to his father from me, we got on awfully well. Lovely man. Owned most of Warwickshire.’
With that Sylvia floated off, giggling coquettishly, so I could turn my attention to the task of getting ten half-cut adults and ten overexcited children into the garden for the Easter Egg Hunt without anyone breaking their necks by tripping over our dog, who didn’t know what was going on but was determined to join in.
The Easter Egg Hunt was not as bad as it could have been. Only half the children cried because they felt their haul of eggs was unfair, a mere two managed to stand in a dog turd I had failed to pick up, and the dog was considerate enough to only steal a load of white chocolate, which resulted in some spectacular projectile vomiting from him, but which at least saved me the expense of an emergency trip to the vets.
In fact, it was all going splendidly until blood-curdling screams sent us all hurtling into the house. Katie and Tim’s little girl Lily had brought her beloved toy rabbit ‘Rabby’ (not entirely imaginative naming, but who I am to talk when Jane has a cupboard full of bears named ‘Cuddles’, ‘Fluffy’, ‘Fluffy Cuddles’, ‘Cuddly Fluff’, etc., the ever-increasing loot from attending a series of Build-A-Bear birthday parties). In her excitement at the Easter Egg Hunt, Lily had callously cast Rabby aside to go in search of sugar and E-numbers. Sylvia, in a rare oversight, had actually put down Napoleon Bonapug for a moment while she earnestly quizzed TV Alicia about whether she knew Binky Warrington-Jones or Emerald Tuftson-Smith or anyone else who had worked at the BBC over forty years ago, while Alicia tried to explain that actually she worked for an independent production company and Sylvia scoffed and loftily informed her that everyone in TV knows each other.
Napoleon Bonapug, relishing this rare moment of freedom, had waddled his way over to where Rabby lay on the floor, abandoned and unloved, and had promptly mounted Rabby with great enthusiasm. Lily had discovered Napoleon Bonapug humping away, wheezing in ecstasy, and set up howls of protest at ‘Dat doggy killin’ Rabby!’
Sylvia, instead of attempting to disengage Napoleon Bonapug, was instead cooing, ‘Oh, isn’t Mummy’s boy clever? Has ‘ooo found a friend, Napoleon Bonapug?’ oblivious to Lily’s wails and everyone else’s horror. I tried to end Napoleon Bonapug’s moment of passion with a swift boot, but deep in the throes of bliss now, he paid no heed and the only result was to add Sylvia’s screams to Lily’s as she shrieked, ‘Don’t you kick my dog, you bully!’
At this point, my own dog, having rallied after his vomit fest, decided to come and see what the fuss was about, and either deciding to appoint himself the defender of Rabby’s virtue or taking umbrage that Napoleon Bonapug was getting some and he wasn’t, or finally just seeing his opportunity to kill his arch enemy, launched himself at Napoleon Bonapug’s throat.
The screaming now redoubled, as Sylvia and I screeched at the dogs and Lily bellowed hysterically, as Rabby was still lost in the melee, and everyone else got in on the act and danced around, shouting unhelpful suggestions. A sexually incontinent pug is no match for a furious terrier, though, and while I was no fan of Napoleon Bonapug, I was concerned that our dog murdering him in cold blood in front of Sylvia might make future family gatherings a little awkward, while also thinking it was bad enough that most of the street already regarded us as dangerous pyromaniacs after the bonfire party, and I didn’t really want, ‘You know, the ones with the killer dog!’ added to that.
I was attempting to prise our dog’s jaws open, at some risk to my own fingers, when Sam had the presence of mind to empty a large jug of Pimm’s and ice over the dogs, and they finally parted. Sylvia swooped in and retrieved Napoleon Bonapug with many dramatic sobs, Rabby was restored to Lily – minus quite a lot of stuffing and with a shocked and wide-eyed expression that I swear wasn’t there before – and I realised quite a lot of the very cold Pimm’s had gone over me and rendered my t-shirt completely see-through, as well as the unfortunate effect caused by the chill of the Pimm’s. I gathered our dog to my bosom, with as much dignity as I could muster, mostly to protect my own modesty, and, gallantly ignoring the mint and strawberries nestling in my cleavage, brightly cried, ‘Who would like some lovely Easter cake?’
Everyone left shortly after that. It is doubtful now that Tim and Katie will reveal themselves to be kindred spirits, which is a shame, as it would have been most convenient. Instead, I have a feeling they might take to avoiding us.
APRIL
Friday, 1 April
Michael and Sylvia are leaving tomorrow, which is a relief, as apart from anything else, Sylvia frowns on the concept of the hallowed Fuck It All Friday. It has been a long week, with helpful contributions from Sylvia such as the evening when I was trying to persuade Peter that, yes, he really did need a bath and he could show me all the YouTube clips he wanted about how your skin and hair begin to ‘self-clean’ if you go long enough without washing, and if he wanted to be a filthy urchin child he could go and live in the woods with his Aunt Louisa, where there are no electronics, when Sylvia, a perfectly able-bodied woman, shouted plaintively up the stairs, ‘Ellen! I was just wondering if we are actually going to get a drink at all this evening?’
‘Help yourself!’ I bellowed down through gritted teeth.
‘Oh no, I wouldn’t want to be so presumptious. I suppose I will just have to wait until Simon comes in with his father to get a drink, since you are so very busy, because I can’t leave Napoleon Bonapug.’
We have also, obviously, had daily updates on Napoleon Bonapug’s post-traumatic stress disorder, after his ‘near-death experience’, as Sylvia refers to it. Apparently he is so traumatised that all he can keep down is roast chicken, hand fed to him by Sylvia. Oddly enough, he also seems to manage to keep down all my dog’s biscuits that he steals from his bowl whenever he manages to give Sylvia the slip.
Then there have been her constant references to girls that Simon went out with before me: ‘Do you ever hear anything from Catherine MacKenzie, darling? She was a nice girl, wasn’t she? I did like her. What about Toggy Wilkes-Cholmondeley? Didn’t her parents have a lovely castle? Sweet girl, she was.’
No matter that Simon points out he hasn’t seen Catherine MacKenzie since Sylvia forced him to escort her to her school dance when he was sixteen, or that the last he had heard of Toggy Wilkes-Cholmondeley was that she was very happy with her wife Elizabeth, Sylvia steamed on with all the tact and diplomacy of a Panzer tank.
Simon’s advice is usually to ‘just ignore her’, but even he admits sometimes that he doesn’t know how his father doesn’t throttle her. A couple of weeks of Sylvia is usually mitigated by a cheap holiday when we go to stay with them, in the spring holiday and in the summer, but we haven’t usually just had a week of Sylvia drifting around our house first. I was so dreading the prospect of another rou
nd of Sylvia in a couple of weeks’ time that I had lunch with Charlie and had a thorough moan about her.
Charlie didn’t tell me to ‘just ignore her’; Charlie sat and listened to me holding forth on the many iniquities of Sylvia, including the first time she held an infant Jane and said, ‘Oh dear, I assume she must look like your side of the family, Ellen, because she certainly doesn’t take after our side!’ Charlie provided much sympathy and insisted I should definitely have the chocolate fudge cake with ice cream, as a balm to my frazzled soul.
Charlie didn’t sigh and roll his eyes and say, ‘She IS my mother, darling. Can’t you just try to get along with her?’ when I banged my spoon on the table and mumbled, ‘She’s a witch!’ through a mouthful of chocolate. Charlie did, however, hold me just a little bit too tight and too long when he hugged me goodbye. I must give him Hannah’s number.
Tonight, over dinner, Sylvia raised the subject of the holidays. ‘When are you flying out, darling?’ she asked Simon. ‘SO silly that they don’t have proper Easter holidays any more, and this ridiculous “Spring Break” thingymabob instead, but at least it will be getting nice and warm by the time you are there.’
‘Ah,’ said Simon. ‘I’d been meaning to talk to you about that. We thought we might go somewhere different this year.’
Did we?
‘Oh, how lovely!’ said Sylvia. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Well, we’re going to Corfu.’
I gasped in surprise.
‘Corfu! Marvellous! I adore Corfu, whereabouts are we staying, you clever duck?’ cooed Sylvia.
My heart sank at the thought of Sylvia coming too.
‘Actually, Mum,’ Simon took a deep breath. ‘I thought you’d probably want to get home and have a break from us, so I’ve just booked a tiny villa for Ellen and me and the kids.’
My heart lifted again!
The silence around the table was not so much frosty as Siberian, until Sylvia gave a little laugh, which contained about as much mirth as an icicle smashing into someone’s heart (actually, that is something I have always worried about when I see sharp rows of icicles – what if they fall down and stab you? I also worry that if you fart outside on very cold days there might be puffs of condensation from your bottom, like when you can see your breath and so everyone will know you have just let one off. I’ve never been keen on the idea of skiing holidays for these two reasons).
‘Very funny, Simon,’ she snapped. ‘Hilarious! I wasn’t born yesterday, though. You are going to have to get up earlier in the morning than that to put one over on me! I am aware it is April Fools’ Day, you know. Now, when are you coming?’
‘Mum,’ said Simon. ‘We never actually discussed us coming. You just assumed we would be.’
‘In much the same way as you just assume you can come, you mean! You never discuss with your father and me whether it suits us for you to come and stay, you just inform me when you will be arriving. It may have escaped your notice, but we are not running a bed and breakfast for your convenience, young man!’ (This is actually a fair point. I have quite often said to Simon we should check whether his parents are happy for us to come before he books flights, but he just shrugs and says, ‘It’s fine, they like us just turning up.’)
Sylvia now had something that looked dangerously like a tear in her eye, which came as a bit of a surprise to me, as I hadn’t realised that she was capable of emotions that might damage her makeup.
She turned to me, ‘I suppose this is all your doing!’ she barked. ‘You and that stupid game of yours. As if it isn’t enough that when my friends ask if my daughter-in-law works, I have to say yes, and admit you work with computers, instead of having a nice job like Sukey Poste’s daughter-in-law who is an interior designer, now I have to tell them that actually you’ve also invented some common game about drunken mothers like you!’
‘Steady on now, old girl,’ said Michael. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Ellen’s job, and let’s not say anything we’ll regret now? Corfu will be nice at this time of year, though the sea will be cold. Hope you’ve got a villa with a pool, eh son?’
‘Ellen didn’t know anything about this, Mum,’ said Simon.
‘I did, though,’ chipped in Michael. ‘He told me a couple of days ago, asked me to keep schtum, because he wanted to surprise Ellen with it. I was going to tell you at some point, Sylvs.’
I felt a wave of enormous gratitude towards darling Michael for being so, well, jolly sporting, to use one of his phrases, about the whole thing, and not least for deflecting the wrath of Sylvia from Simon and I onto himself, so Simon’s surprise wasn’t completely wrecked by Sylvia having a massive tantrum at me.
Sylvia tottered to her feet and clutched Napoleon Bonapug to her so hard that he started choking on the piece of chicken she had just fed him.
‘I see,’ quavered Sylvia, her lip trembling bravely. ‘Well, I assume you will all excuse me, but as I appear to be superfluous to this family and no one feels the need to tell me anything, I think I will have to go to bed. I seem to have one of my migraines coming on. Perhaps I shall see if Louisa and her children would like to come instead.’
Sylvia’s migraines are the stuff of family legend, seeming to strike only when she doesn’t get her own way, thus leaving her a suitably dramatic exit clause with the additional bonus of emotional blackmail.
Despite talking constantly of the many things that can trigger her migraines (coffee, chocolate and cheese, to name but a few) she happily guzzles all of these things with no ill effects, claiming if anyone remarks on it that it is ‘other sorts’ of the forbidden foods which affect her. She is also the only person I’ve ever met who apparently suffers from claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Just sayin’ …
After Sylvia had departed stage left, in a whoosh of scarves as she swept out the door, Michael, who had visibly paled at the suggestion of Louisa and the hordes descending on them, stood up and murmured that he might just go and watch a spot of TV with the kiddos, and tactfully ambled off to the sitting room, where Peter and Jane were slumped in front of the cartoons. I turned to Simon.
‘Corfu? Really?’
‘Ellen, do you have any idea how much money you’ve made this month?’
‘Not really,’ was the shameful answer. After Simon’s lectures about tax and limited companies I had basically abdicated all responsibility for the app money to him, so he had set up a limited company to put it through and I had just arranged for the money to be paid into a business account instead of into my personal account.
I periodically looked at the emails about how many apps had been sold and tried to work out how much actual money that meant, but Simon’s sermons about VAT and everything else had left me with no idea how much remained after HMRC had taken their many cuts. I had nonetheless popped into town and paid a trip to Harvey Nicks and bought myself a pair of Louboutins. They were stunningly, utterly beautiful, but so very high that when I tried to walk in them I gave a passable impression of Bambi on ice.
‘There was the sixty grand from your February sales, which you got today, and then you’ve sold over 140,000 this month. That’s about another hundred grand to come. Before tax,’ he added prudently. ‘You’ve done it, darling. You’ve sorted our finances, and I was the dickhead who doubted you and then acted like a prize twat because I wanted to be the hunter-gatherer caveman who brought home the golden woolly mammoth. So I think you deserve a holiday that doesn’t involve my parents, don’t you? Especially after you have heroically managed to refrain from strangling my mother with one of her own silk scarves this week.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Really? That much? But why Corfu?’
Simon looked worried. ‘Don’t you want to go to Corfu? Did I book the wrong thing? Did you want to go to Barbados or something?’
‘No, no, Corfu is perfect! I just wondered why you’d picked it?’
‘Well, I found a really, really nice villa. It’s actually huge, but if my bloody mother thinks there is room for her she wi
ll whine at me until I crack and invite her along, so let’s just stick with the bijou and compact story. You said that My Family and Other Animals is one of your favourite books ever and you always wanted to go to Corfu, so I thought you might like it?’
I did say that. I haven’t said that for a very long time, because I can’t remember the last time that Simon and I talked about something like books, or travelling; conversations these days are more along the lines of who would be passing Sainsbury’s and thus could pick up some yoghurts for the children’s lunchboxes and why I am the only person who can change a lavatory roll and who had used Simon’s good screwdrivers to open pots of paint? But he remembered. And we are going to Corfu.
With extraordinary tact and restraint, I didn’t spoil the moment by demanding to know what colour the villa was and then huffing because he hadn’t read the book and didn’t know what I was talking about. Because he remembered, and we are going to Corfu, and I am extraordinarily happy.
Thursday, 14 April
We are in Corfu. It is unspeakably blissful. Getting here, though, was less blissful, as Simon did his favourite trick of morphing into a complete and utter arsehole before we set off.
This excellent, fun game began as usual a couple of days before we left, as he wandered around the house getting in everyone’s way, plaintively asking me if I had seen his sunhat (no, though I have a vague recollection I may have thrown it away in a fit of pique while tidying up because it is so hideous), or if I had bought him his special suncream because he can’t wear the ordinary stuff because it brings him out in a rash (yes, as I couldn’t face him doing his ‘scratching’ pantomime in a foreign pharmacy again, because he looks like he is doing an overly dramatic impression of a flea-ridden monkey).
By the time we got to the airport I was, as is now customary when going on holiday, extremely stressed and wondering why the fuck I married this annoying twat. Simon was also very stressed because now he had the Important Job of Checking Us In. No one except Simon can ever do Checking In, because Simon Is Man. I am Mere Woman and therefore my job was to try to restrain Peter and Jane from flying around the terminal on their little wheely ride-on children’s suitcases that seemed such a good idea when we bought them, and only revealed themselves to be lethal weapons once it was too late.