Unchained Melanie

by Judy Astley

  This wouldn’t happen. Definitely not.

  ‘Will they know me? I’m eighty-one now, you know.’ Melanie guided Mrs Jenkins into the Ford Galaxy she’d borrowed from Perfect Patty, and hoped there’d be room for all the luggage as well as Hal, Brenda and their pair of well-grown children. It would be pushing it a bit, especially if they’d brought with them bulky Canadian presents. Somehow she kept picturing them coming through the swing doors of the Terminal 3 Arrivals Hall with a mounted moose-head (shot by Hal) resplendent on top of the baggage trolley. A couple of bottles of duty-free and a bottle of unsuitable perfume hastily bought on the plane was far more likely.

  ‘They’ll know you. You don’t forget your own mother,’ Mel reassured her. ‘And they’ve got photos of you, haven’t they?’

  ‘From Christmas. At our Brian’s.’ Mrs Jenkins went tight-lipped and folded her hands firmly round her handbag. At Christmas, at her son’s house the year before, there’d been what Mrs Jenkins had called a ‘misunderstanding’. It had involved money, of course, family disputes involving aged widows usually did. Mrs Jenkins had been protectively unspecific about the argument but had hinted that Brian was angry that she hadn’t made provision for ensuring her home would not have to be sold if she had to go into residential care. He’d suggested remortgaging for an annuity, ‘freeing up capital’ – Mrs Jenkins, vague as she sometimes was, had remembered the exact words clearly enough.

  ‘I’ll die in my own bed in my own good time,’ she’d declared soon after New Year. ‘And he can get his share of the spoils then.’ Mel trusted that Brenda, so eagerly awaited from Canada, wouldn’t prove to be just as graspingly cash-minded.

  It was quite a trek from the car park to the Arrivals Hall, but Mrs Jenkins showed no sign of flagging as they walked. She was wearing her best winter coat – smart navy blue, teamed with a pink and mauve flowered silk scarf she had shown proudly to Mel when Brenda had sent it for her birthday. The colours went perfectly with her lilac-tinted curls, which she’d had specially shampooed and set at Luscious Locks for this great occasion.

  ‘I hope the plane’s not going to be late,’ Mrs Jenkins commented as they took their places at the barrier rail alongside minicab drivers clutching name-boards.

  ‘No, it isn’t. Look up there, it says it landed about five minutes ago. Perfectly timed.’ Melanie showed her the screen above them with the flights listed. Mrs Jenkins gave it a glance, then concentrated on the doors, catching her breath each time they opened to reveal another outpouring of weary-looking travellers. She was shifting from foot to foot, either with nerves or because her narrow navy shoes were hurting her bunions. Mrs Jenkins was usually only seen in either her tartan slippers or a pair of flat capacious moccasins.

  ‘They might be quite a while yet, perhaps we should find you somewhere to sit,’ Mel suggested, looking around for seats not occupied by sleeping, sprawled people who must surely be in the wrong part of the terminal.

  ‘I’m not sitting down. I might miss them,’ Mrs Jenkins declared, clutching hold of the steel barrier rail as if Mel was about to haul her bodily across the terminal.

  At last, passengers started emerging, carrying duty-free bags emblazoned with maple leaves. Any minute now, Mel thought, feeling almost as nervous as her neighbour.

  ‘That’s them.’ Mrs Jenkins said it quietly, not moving. A portly foursome wielding a pair of heavily laden trolleys was walking slowly down the aisle towards them. They gazed through the waiting crowd, scanning for the familiar face. Brenda, Mel could see, looked pale and anxious, puffy-eyed and lank-haired, as if the journey had taken eighty hours, not eight. Then her face lit up: ‘Mom!’ she yelled. Abandoning her luggage, Brenda defied her middle-aged bulk and leapt the barrier, clutching her mother to a stoutly filled orange tee shirt. Mrs Jenkins herself looked bewildered, crushed beneath Brenda’s bulk. The rest of the family, equally sturdily built, stood around looking awkward. Melanie could only watch, as one by one the son-in-law Hal and grandchildren Barty and Lee-Ann kissed their aged relative. Apart from Brenda, who was now weeping copiously, they looked as if they’d just met a stranger. Which, of course, they had. It all seemed suddenly terribly sad: this family of remote and unconnected beings. Much as she relished being on her own, Mel hoped and prayed that Rosa would not choose to live so far away. Or, if she did, that she had a job with an airline and paid at least fortnightly visits to her old neglected mum.

  Rosa took Desi for a walk along the Hoe. It was cold; the wind was blowing in sharply from the south-east and she wished she’d worn a coat. Desi was a good person to walk with: he didn’t make daft comments about everything and everyone, nor did he, unlike just about every other student in the city, take a skate-board everywhere with him and try to impress her by doing silly tricks on it. Only the local kids were really good at it: the wannabe boardies were useless and kept falling off. There was this thing they did when they bailed, toeing the board up into the air and catching it, as if that was what they’d meant to do all the time. She knew it was just a scuzzy way of saving face when they were about to fall flat on their butts. At least two of their Hall’s residents were going round with either a wrist or foot in plaster from trying to compete with the experts. The only students who were remotely competent were the ones who hung out at the Boardriders club, real surfers, body-boarders, windsurfers – people with years of balance practice. She and Desi didn’t really fit among them – neither of them was what anyone would describe as sporty. Desi couldn’t walk across a road without tripping over his feet, and Rosa’s idea of exercise was tapping out texts to Gracie, who was now backpacking in Mexico.

  Perhaps she should have taken a year out. Most of the others had been away since school and done something mad in foreign parts. The parents of Rota-Girl Kate at the flat had shelled out £3,000 so she could impress with ‘taught at a school up a mountain in Patagonia’ on her CV. Two of the boys had done Australia, Sydney-to-Cairns, along with a thousand other kids from the British private education system. A gap year would have given Rosa time to forget about Alex. Even now she had to stop herself phoning his mobile just to hear his voice. She had stuff to tell him. Stuff he was going to need to know. One thing she knew, she wanted to go home. For good, not just for a weekend. This just wasn’t going to work. If it wasn’t for the feeling that she’d be abandoning Desi to a harsh and cynical world, she’d be on the next train to Paddington.

  Gwen simply didn’t mention the defrosted badger, so neither did Mel. In her parents’ house all was its pre-pornography tranquillity. If something had been resolved, this had happened privately and would never be mentioned again. In the sitting room with its walnut sideboard hosting a never-changing parade of Mel and Vanessa’s old school photos, Mel accepted a cup of tea, helped herself from a plate of bourbon creams and listened as Gwen told her about the holiday Howard had booked for them both, ‘As a surprise!’ Gwen was quite skittish about this, delighted that he could still astound her in good ways as well as bad. They were to go to Spain after Christmas, for a whole month – special pensioners’ rates.

  ‘It’s an apartment – and there’s two bedrooms, so we thought you’d like to come too, seeing as you’re on your own.’

  ‘Well – er, I don’t . . .’

  Gwen wasn’t in any mood to accept the word no. ‘Rosa will be back at university and you can bring that computer of yours if you’ve really got to do your work. A change will do you good. And it’s not as if you’ve anything else to do.’ She leaned forward, as if the world was waiting to hear, and said, ‘You might meet someone. There’ll be a lot of the more mature sort of men there.’

  Mel doubted this: it was far more likely there’d be a surfeit of elderly ladies.

  ‘I think perhaps I should leave them for someone else. I’m not looking for one!’ How many times did this have to be said? Mel was smiling, but her jaw was tense.

  ‘It won’t be all bingo and ballroom dancing, you know,’ Gwen said. ‘At least . . . I don’t think it wi
ll.’ She was finding room for doubts to creep in.

  ‘Even if it is, we don’t have to join in with all that. There’ll be lots to do,’ Howard reassured her. They looked more comfortable together than Mel had seen them in ages. Howard had carried the tea tray into the sitting room. He’d put it carefully on the table and then straightened the cushions on the chair before Gwen sat down. She was, Mel could see, conscious of being treated like someone bordering on regal, sporting a gracious smile like a minor royal on a walkabout, deputizing for someone grander. Even if she’d been desperate to spend a month in Spain, it would have been like tagging along on someone else’s honeymoon.

  ‘I tell you what, I’ll look after the dog for you, then you won’t have to worry about him,’ she volunteered.

  ‘Vanessa’s having him. You have a think anyway, you don’t have to decide today. There’s Christmas to get out of the way first,’ Gwen said, getting up and bustling back towards the kitchen for some forgotten item.

  ‘Dad, I really would rather not come,’ Melanie said as soon as Gwen was safely out of hearing distance. ‘You don’t mind, do you? I mean, I could come over for a weekend, just to top up your supplies of English Breakfast tea or something.’

  ‘No, it’s fine by me. You do what you want. You’ve got your own life.’

  ‘Glad to have her back?’ Mel risked asking, hearing Gwen banging cutlery around in the kitchen.

  ‘Oh yes. Though . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  Her father hesitated and glanced quickly at the door to make sure he wasn’t overheard. ‘Sometimes being on your own for a bit is a good thing,’ he said. ‘It was quite relaxing, really. Not having to set the table properly for a meal, leaving the washing up till morning.’

  Mel laughed. ‘Mum would say that was the road to ruin!’

  ‘Sssh! Just don’t tell her!’

  ‘Now I’ve mentioned Christmas,’ Gwen came back into the room with a chocolate cake, plates and her big silver cake-knife, ‘it’s been decided this year it’s at Vanessa’s.’

  Christmas. Melanie hadn’t even thought about it. It seemed to be a far-ahead group of weeks whose real high point was that Rosa would be back for a while. Last year the family had gathered on the big day at her house. Roger had been there, pretending for a day that he more or less still lived on the premises, for the sake of family peace, but not fooling anyone. Rosa had had a hangover and uttered barely more than a growl all day before hogging the bathroom for an hour, so she could slink out to see Alex in the evening. William and Theresa, Vanessa’s children, had eaten their turkey in silence and then immersed themselves in computer games. Howard had fallen asleep with a paper hat over his eyes, while Melanie, Vanessa, Roger and Gwen had kept up a bright and purposeless discussion about falling/rising standards of television programmes. Vanessa’s husband Lester had followed her into the kitchen with a view to sympathizing about Roger. He’d got too close, hand squidging her hip, saying, ‘Any time you want a little chat, that’s what family is for.’

  Now, thanks to her mother getting in quickly, it seemed Melanie was wrong-footed with no alternative Christmas planned and therefore no escape. If she went to Vanessa’s, this Christmas would be spent being new, misunderstood things to those she was with. None of these new definitions was superficially attractive: she was, variously, a spinster daughter, a maiden aunt, a lone divorcée, the in-law to be taken in for the day and patronized. If she wanted to be her more positive, single happy self, she and Rosa would have to take off somewhere else. Easier said.

  Ten

  Mrs Jenkins’s house overspilled noisy activity. With Brenda and her family in residence, Melanie could hear constant signs of occupation. From Melanie’s side of the dividing wall it was very much like having a television on somewhere in the house that you couldn’t find to switch off. Usually Mrs Jenkins was the quietest possible neighbour, but now Mel was being treated to a kind of running, thumping commentary on this long-awaited visit. This was a family that existed at full pelt. Their footsteps pounded up and down the stairs, the front and back doors were crashed shut, the TV was on day and night at a volume that ensured it could be heard from any room in the house, and Barty and Lee-Ann preferred to share their teenage taste in music with everyone within a hundred-yard radius, rather than selfishly keeping it to themselves via headphones. Perfect Patty commented with disapproval to Mel that the neighbourhood was becoming ‘rowdy’. Mel couldn’t find it in her to agree (they were only visiting for a short while, surely a bit of leeway wasn’t much to ask), but it was true that when the family all ventured out, taking in London’s sights in the quiet post-tourist-season days, the silence felt unnaturally and eerily profound.

  Mrs Jenkins was beginning to look tired. Her jaunty lilac hair was becoming wispy and wild and her shoulders sagged. This visit, longed-for as it was, overwhelmed her by the sheer bulk of her home’s extra occupants. Hal and Brenda and their teenage children were built on a bigger scale altogether, as if they’d expanded to occupy the extra space afforded by their vast home nation. Where Mrs Jenkins had small, fragile bones that were almost visible through parchment-thin skin, the visitors’ bodies were thickly insulated from the Canadian winters by meaty flesh. Their limbs were chunky and heavy, fervently over-nourished by Brenda. She had taken over her mother’s kitchen and cooked vigorously, bashing pots and pans around and yelling questions to her daughter, who tormented the poodle in the garden, offering it sticks and stealing them back again till the dog added its voice to the overall volume and yapped itself into a frenzy.

  ‘D’you wanna sandwich, Lee? How about a soda?’ Mel could hear it all, for Brenda kept the back door wide open, presumably because the late October chill was considered mild fresh air compared with a Toronto autumn.

  Hal was eager to be busy and found things to mend around the house. As he fixed the downpipe back to the wall and cleared pigeon nests from the guttering he exchanged manly comments about tools and ladders across the fence with Max, who toiled below in Mel’s garden.

  From her study window Melanie could see that Max’s fair dreadlocks were darker now, as the sun no longer bleached them. He was turning up in sweaters for a colder season, ones with felted wool, clotted and faded by years of outdoor weather. He would be leaving soon, like a migrating bird, returning (he’d promised) to finish the job in spring. The work for now was almost done – there was little left to do except buy the plants and get them into place. There was, though, a problem with Melanie’s garden wall, down at the far end. ‘It needs repointing,’ Max told her one lunchtime. ‘Look, all this section where I’ve pulled the ivy away, all the mortar’s coming out.’

  Mel peered at it as if she knew what she was looking for. It was easier just to take Max’s word for it, though even she could see that the wall looked as if someone had been stingy with the stuff holding the bricks together. It reminded her of a cake, a Victoria sandwich that had been meagrely filled with the kind of cream that disappears to nothing.

  ‘Will you be able to fix it?’ She hoped he would. She’d got used to having him around. Like the best kind of domestic pet, Max was no trouble, even quite a comfort on occasions. He kept his distance in the mornings, answered the phone if Mel was out, and had fixed the dripping kitchen tap without fuss and without being asked. He’d buried the badger, too, when the ground he’d previously dug so thoroughly had been too fine and mobile and refused to stop caving back into the hole. She knew he liked coffee with no sugar but two spoonfuls in tea, and that he had to stop doing anything noisy at 12.55 p.m. to listen to the shipping forecast on Radio 4. The idea of bringing in a set of new workmen and getting used to their preferences did not appeal at all.

  ‘Of course I can do it. Hey, I’m a landscaper, walls come with the territory. It’s whether you mind me being around even longer. I mean, plant-wise we’re nearly there. We can have the outing to the Palm Centre and do the buying next week. We can’t put many of them in the ground, of course, but we can get them into positi
on and just leave them for the winter and then when frost danger is past, that’s the time to plant them.’

  ‘If they make it through the coldest bit. It would be typical crap luck if we get one of those “coldest winters on record”.’ Mel was feeling glum. Tina Keen was having problems with the pursuit of her murderer. There might have to be one last victim so that things would shake up enough to be possible to resolve, and Mel was feeling unusually squeamish about the idea of setting up another killing. It would have to be someone who was already in the book – she was too far in to introduce a new major character. It could be the café victim’s best friend, perhaps: the girl she’d run away from the children’s home with and who’d managed to give up heroin against all odds and pressures. It seemed a wicked betrayal to kill her off after all her good efforts, but it might have to be done.

  ‘The plants will be fine. Cold damp wind is the worst enemy and you’re really sheltered here.’ Max was reassuring. ‘There’s just one thing, though. I have to take some time out, I can’t be here every day.’

  ‘Another job?’ Melanie imagined him, suddenly, making himself at home in some other woman’s kitchen, leaving his unmatched wellies by a different back door before padding across an unknown floor in his tweedy socks to fill a kettle. It would be like . . . what? Not infidelity?

  Max grinned, gazed at the floor and looked as sheepish as a caught-out child. ‘Not exactly. I’m going on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Bit embarrassing really.’ He was practically shuffling his feet around now. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll get past that first eliminator speed-round but if I do . . .’ he went on, ‘would you consider . . .’

  Oh, not the frantic-partner-in-audience role, she thought immediately, before just as quickly dismissing the idea: he’d have a wife somewhere for that one, or a girlfriend, boyfriend, she didn’t know. Perhaps she should know, by now. He knew an awful lot about her – things were a bit lopsided here.