Happy Birthday and All That

by Rebecca Smith

  She decided to spend her twenty pounds from the Aunts on something for herself, a fitness video or yoga classes or something. Perhaps she would start going swimming, she used to love swimming; if she took Isobel to a parent and toddler session she might be able to do it, or maybe they should all go more often. She pictured the children shivering, somebody would be crying, and they would all get ear infections and veruccas. Maybe not. Perhaps if she found lessons for the children then she and Frank wouldn’t need to go in with them. She realised that she had lost the thread.

  Eventually the pre-school door was opened and Tom marched in. She saw him find the card with his name and photo and hang it up on the board to show that he was there, then sit obediently down on the mat to wait for everything to start. He didn’t even notice her kissing the top of his head and saying, ‘Bye bye darling, I’ll pick you up at lunchtime.’ Of course she would. She was pleased that he was taking her so much for granted. She would have to remember not to eat whatever he brought home today. The week before Tom had been really upset when she had absent-mindedly eaten the model snake that she’d found in her pocket. It was saltdough, she’d thought it was pastry, had been really hungry, and hadn’t even noticed what it tasted like. They had been meant to take it back to paint that week.

  In Safeways she bought things that the children would like to eat at her birthday tea. Jammy Dodgers were Poppy and James’s favourites. Tom liked Iced Gems. Doughnuts, Jaffa Cakes and Hula Hoops were essential too. Circles of French bread and some grapes and plums would salve her conscience. She saw that the Iced Gems were now made with added vitamins. Well that was all right then. Flora could be relied upon to bring a cake.

  She had forgotten the fruit. She went back to start again, and caught sight of her big moony face reflected above the pumpkins. She quickly looked away, down into her basket. No wonder I am so fat, Posy thought, if this is what I buy. She decided that she herself would stick to the bread and fruit.

  Teatime. Caroline and Finn were waiting on the doorstep when they got home from school. Caroline had a big bunch of earwiggy but gorgeous yellow roses from her garden, some ginger body lotion, and a glass jar of sea-salt scrub with sweet almond and evening primrose oils. (It would also have been lovely if the next morning Tom hadn’t accidentally knocked it into the bath, causing chips and a crack and a salty, slippery slick.) Kate and her children brought slices of mango dipped in chocolate and a pair of mugs with oranges on. (Oxfam Traid-craft without a doubt.)

  Flora arrived with a fat sponge cake with pink icing, decorated with crystallised violets and rose petals. It was the nicest thing of the day so far.

  Posy went to the back door and yelled out into the garden, ‘Come on Frank, it’s teatime.’ She was never sure whether or not Frank could hear her yelling at him when he was in his shed. If he was playing, then he definitely couldn’t. It was maddening.

  ‘Poppy, go out and bang on Daddy’s door and tell him that it’s teatime and we want him to come in.’

  ‘But I haven’t got my shoes on Mum.’ Poppy was worried that everything would be eaten before she got back.

  ‘Put your wellies on then.’ Yet more hesitation. ‘Come on. It is my birthday. Please be helpful.’

  ‘Yes, hurry up Poppy, it is Mum’s birthday,’ James said, surreptitiously counting the doughnuts.

  ‘OK. This is a birthday treat for you, Mum,’ Poppy said.

  ‘Well, thank you. I’ll remember this.’

  ‘I have to do everything,’ Poppy muttered as she stomped towards the back door, then a terrible scream.

  ‘Muuuum! Help! There’s a slug on my welly!’

  Aunty Flora to the rescue. She picked the slug up using some kitchen roll and hurled it into the outer darkness of the mahonia bushes near the back door. Then she and Poppy went to fetch Frank. They could see him through the shed window.

  He was smoking and staring into space. Well honestly, thought Flora, he might at least make the tea on his wife’s birthday. Frank had actually forgotten that it was Posy’s birthday. He was trying to catch at the hem of a song that he had heard in a dream, a new song; but it was eluding him. He could just feel some of the notes. He’d had the whole thing off perfect when he was asleep. Flora and Poppy banged on the window. The song was gone.

  ‘Daddy it’s time for tea.’

  ‘I’m not hungry, honey.’

  ‘But Daddy, everybody’s waiting for you and there’s birthday cake!’

  Flora gave him a very stern look.

  ‘Birthday cake? Then I’m starving!’

  He chucked the almost-out end of his roll-up into the bushes to join the slug.

  ‘It’s pink with real flowers on,’ Poppy told him. ‘And there are Jammy Dodgers.’

  Whenever Frank saw Flora he was mightily relieved that he had married the right sister. He infinitely preferred Posy’s dark curls to Flora’s fair ones. Strange, he thought, that the features that were so appealing in the one, when slightly altered, could seem almost unpleasant in the other. That must be it, seeing the one you loved slightly changed. There was something surreal and sinister about it, as though a deception was being perpetrated. Or perhaps, he realised, it was just that he sensed Flora’s constant disapproval of him. She might as well be wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with ‘You Should Pull Yourself Together. Get A Proper Job. Start Winning Bread.’ Perhaps he should get one made for her for her birthday.

  It was like that baffling story in Genesis where Jacob is palmed off with the wrong sister. ‘And lo, it was Leah!’ Frank was jolly glad that he had managed to marry the Rachel of the pair at first go.

  But Posy didn’t look that pleased to see him when they all walked into the kitchen. All she said was ‘Oh. You’re here now.’

  Everybody else was sitting around the table. Posy was holding the baby and trying to make tea at the same time.

  ‘Bit dangerous, that,’ he told her. ‘Watch out with that kettle.’

  She thrust the baby at him and continued, adding extra milk to his mug. He liked it with just the tiniest dash.

  ‘Tuck in, everyone,’ said Posy. ‘Don’t wait for me.’

  ‘No. You’re only the birthday girl,’ said Flora, but they all started anyway.

  ‘How’s the band then, Frank?’ Caroline asked. ‘Still getting the gigs? Still pulling in the crowds? Making megabucks?’

  ‘You bet,’ said Frank, his mouth full of Pringles.

  ‘The big mistake people make with Pringles, Wotsits, Hula Hoops, all of those things,’ said Flora, ‘is ever having one.’

  Her own plate was a neat arrangement of thin circles of French bread with Flora Light and marmite, grapes, plums and cherry tomatoes.

  ‘Don’t you like Wotsits, Aunty Flora?’ Poppy asked. She was sitting between Flora and Frank resting her head on Frank’s shoulder whilst trying to hold hands, when both hands weren’t needed for eating, with Flora.

  (At least Poppy still likes me, Frank thought. Flora and I are united by loving these children.)

  ‘It’s not a matter of liking, or not liking them, sweetie,’ Flora said. ‘It’s a matter of making a choice not to eat them, feeling happier if you choose not to eat them.’

  Poppy looked baffled.

  ‘But I like choosing them and eating them,’ said James. ‘We all do.’

  ‘Not Flora,’ Frank heard himself saying. ‘Flora Poppins. Practically perfect in every way.’ Flora chose to ignore him. It was meant as an insult. She took it as a compliment.

  Posy got up from the table, even though she had only just sat down. She put on a CD. The Quintet of the Hot Club of France.

  ‘This is partyish,’ she said. She felt as though everyone was forgetting that it was her birthday. Shouldn’t they all be being very nice to her? This was just another step into the fog of Mummy Invisibility. Your birthday no longer matters.

  ‘I should have got a magician to come,’ she said. ‘Pass the Skips.’

  ‘Skips really do have the worst smell in the world,�
�� Flora said, shaking her head as she offered her sister the bowl. How could Posy possibly be going to eat some?

  ‘No, no. That’s Pickled Onion Monster Munch,’ said Posy. ‘Skips are lovely. A real delicacy. They remind me of being a sixth former.’

  ‘Your Madeleine,’ said Kate.

  ‘No, she’s Posy,’ said Frank.

  ‘Ha ha. I think macaroons would be nicer, or florentines, but it’s Skips that really take me back,’ Posy said. She let one melt on her tongue and assumed a wistful expression. ‘Sometimes I would eat two bags for lunch and an apple, and that would be all. Very successful if you’re dieting. They’re only about 97 calories a bag.’ It was only later that she’d come to think about ‘empty calories’ and ‘nutrients’ and ‘fat content’. As a teenager her aim had been simply to eat as few calories a day as possible. At that time deciding to eat anything at all was a wrong decision.

  ‘My favourite sixth-form lunch was a peach and a flake. Hardly any calories. Or a Cuppa Soup and two Ryvita,’ Flora said.

  ‘Pas devant les enfants,’ said Posy, remembering that one of her main ambitions for Poppy was that she wouldn’t have an eating disorder.

  ‘You started it,’ said Flora. ‘Anyway, I remember you getting hot cheese and onion pasties from the bakers.’

  ‘That’s my girl!’ said Frank.

  ‘I may have, once or twice. Or bought them for other people. Oh, do you remember that lovely floppy hot chocolate in brown plastic cups in the canteen?’

  ‘I do remember some awful girl spilling vending-machine chicken soup all over my beautiful woven wicker pencil case. It was dreadful. I could never get the smell out.’

  Posy had often been paralysed by shyness or embarrassment, and ordering anything from the dinner ladies had been beyond her. How were you supposed to know which one to ask for beans or peas or lasagne or jacket potatoes? So she missed the hot dinners and chose the things that you helped yourself to: apples, plates of cream crackers with yellow bendy cheese, or, if it was a day when she was feeling brave and could justify eating, she might have just the hot pudding. This was easy enough because it came from a separate hatch with just one lady. Chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce. Comfort in a cruel, cruel world.

  ‘Time for cake!’ Flora announced. She cleared a space in front of Posy and lit the candles. Everybody sang. Posy blew the candles out in one go. Then they had to be relit seven times so that James, Poppy and Tom, Finn and Kate’s three children could each have a go.

  ‘Wish, Mummy, wish!’ James shouted, as Flora passed Posy the bread knife.

  ‘I don’t need to wish for anything. I have everything that I could possibly need because I have all of you,’ Posy said.

  ‘Oh you have to wish for something.’

  ‘I wish I could have a magician at my next birthday,’ Posy said.

  ‘Silly Mummy. It won’t come true because you told us,’ said Poppy.

  ‘Wish again Mummy, but keep it a secret.’

  She closed her eyes and made another slice in silence, and then cut pieces for everyone. Frank was given his last of all. ‘Here you are, Carpenter,’ she said.

  ‘Makes you the Walrus,’ he said.

  ‘I am the Walrus,’ she said, looking down at her stomach.

  ‘Cut us another slice.’

  Posy smiled at him. He thought, ‘that is the first time she has really looked at me all day.’ He was profoundly grateful for Poppy’s continued devotion. He felt her slip her little paw, sticky with cake and party food, into his.

  The band was red hot that night. Against all odds for Frank as his had been a really crap day. It started just after seven which was unheard of for him. Posy had lain there groaning that she had been up all night, and couldn’t he get them up, just this once? So he had. He wasn’t made to get up early, and of course Isobel’s nappy had leaked something foul and yellow right up her back and on to her vest and Babygro. Posy couldn’t have put it on properly in the night, or maybe she’d known. He supposed that somehow she had known, she always knew everything like this, and that was why she had refused to get out of bed, had made him do it. He dipped Isobel in the sink to get her clean, dumped the disgusting baby clothes in the bath for Posy to sort out, and then took Isobel in to Posy for the morning feed. He plonked her down on the bed and went off to make the tea. All this before 7.30 and he still hadn’t had a cigarette.

  He wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. He thought that he was doing everything right until Posy came storming down, thrust Isobel back at him and snarled something about having already done that feed an hour ago. And then she was furious about the baby clothes - as if that was his fault. She said that he was leaving a trail of destruction and detritus for her to clear up. Talk about unreasonable. She had burst into tears so Frank thought that the best thing he could do in the circumstances was to get himself out of her way. He had gone back to bed.

  He heard James, Poppy and Tom going downstairs laughing. At least someone in the house was happy. Then he heard Isobel start her usual ‘Our, uur’ moan in her highchair. It could really bore through your skull. It meant that she had finished her breakfast and wanted to get down. Posy must be too distracted to attend to her. Then he heard an argument breaking out, and Posy yelling at him, pretending to be polite.

  ‘Could you please come down here and help me!’ When he arrived in the kitchen she said ‘Thank you’ in her meanest voice. ‘I’ve been calling you for five minutes.’

  What a lie!

  ‘Any tea in the pot, Pose?’ he said to wind her up further. ‘Come on. Give us a kiss, darlin’.’

  ‘Uur. Uur. Uur,’ from Isobel.

  ‘I haven’t had the luxury of enough time to make tea,’ she told him.

  ‘Mummy’s cross with me today,’ he told the children, but they’d started arguing over the toy from the cereal packet. He saw that it was actually very desirable, a little credit card type thing with some real stardust under the plastic, lots of information, and a pretty, Hubble-ish picture about where it was from.

  ‘Wow. That is cool,’ he told them. ‘I know, I’ll have it.’ He did feel a sudden need for it.

  ‘Aw Dad.’

  ‘’Snot fair.’

  ‘I was the one who found it.’

  ‘I need it for something.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Frank. ‘OK. First one to be completely ready for school or pre-school can have it. The one who comes second can have the next one.’ He put it into his back pocket. Isobel was still going ‘Uur, uur’. He lifted her down from her highchair. Posy swiped at her with a flannel, rather roughly, Frank thought. He didn’t see the point of endlessly cleaning them up. You were fighting a losing battle. Why not ignore the build-up of snot, yoghurt, crumbs and ickiness during the day and just give them a good hose down at bath time? Posy really could save herself a lot of time if she cut out all the unnecessary stuff. He decided not to say anything though.

  It was foggy. Once Isobel stopped moaning he could hear that tune coming at him again. It had been going on all week. He thought it might just be in his head. They often heard the ships’ foghorns. He and Posy loved it on New Year’s Eve: they would rush outside after midnight to hear them all honking away. This was different though. The notes seemed to have merged and were playing a tune ‘Du da der du doo da da …’ again and again. Nobody else seemed to be hearing it.

  ‘Hear that, Posy?’

  ‘What?’

  But it was gone.

  When they had all slammed out of the house for school and pre-school and Music Time he went out into the garden for a smoke. He heard the tune again.

  ‘Du da der du doo da da …’

  Once back inside he saw that the answering machine was flashing. Bound to be some long complicated message to do with some committee, or Flora’s merry barking. He listened anyway.

  ‘Hello Frank, this is your grandad. Hello Posy. Hello children. I wonder if you could pop in today, Frank. I just need a little bit of help with something. I’
ll expect you this morning, shall I? And could you go to the hardware shop on the way and get me a new sink-catcher? You know what I mean. Your mother has decided to throw mine away. Thanks. Grandpa.’

  Frank liked the way that old people signed off their messages on answering machines, as though they were reading from little slips of paper. They probably were. But Hell’s flaming teeth! Sometimes he wished he had a proper job so that he could disappear for hours on end. Perhaps he should invent one. Coming up with the salary to fool Posy might be a problem though.

  He knew what else Grandpa wanted. Another two months had gone by. Time for another BettaKleen campaign. Grandpa’s legs might not be quite up to it this time. If they could just take the books round, and go back in a few days to collect the orders … perhaps Grandpa would feel up to helping him (helping him - get that!) to do the deliveries too when they came in.

  Dear God. He hadn’t been put on the earth for this.

  Grandpa dwelt alone in the flat above ‘Fancy Ways’. His flat was used by the family as an overflow stockroom, and his views of Portswood High Street were sometimes partially obscured by boxes of ornaments, out-of-use display units, stacks of wrapping paper and out-of-season cards. This wasn’t enough to spoil his enjoyment though, there was always something going on, some drama unfolding for him to watch - a pedestrian pensioner vs. student riding on the pavement road-rage incident, a delivery at Peacocks, a shop having a new awning fitted, the endless roadworks, the semi-derelicts on the bench near the library, the traffic wardens hard at work with their ticket books - always something to cheer him up.

  Frank left a note for Posy, ‘Gone to help Grandpa with something.’ Perhaps that would make her appreciate him a bit more. He could, unfortunately, be down at the shop in less than fifteen minutes.

  He managed to delay himself a little by going into Portswood Hardware, one of his favourite shops. He knew that they needed lots of things - there were endless projects and fixings of things that Posy wanted him to do - but now that he was here his mind went blank.

  ‘Looking for something?’ the kindly man in grey overalls asked him.