Happy Birthday and All That

by Rebecca Smith

  ‘Please could you just take them,’ Posy pleaded. ‘Just take them without it being an issue.’

  ‘OK. OK.’

  ‘I’ll go and pack the swimming things,’ said Posy. ‘And you can get some chips on the way home.’

  ‘I said OK,’ said Frank. Honestly, he was only saying what he thought.

  ‘Or you could even take them to McDonald’s …’

  She had to be out of her mind. Did she think he could stand swimming and McDonald’s in one day? He saw hell in a Happy Meal, desolation in the accompanying toy. The marriage of Disney and McDonald’s. A marriage made in heaven, so perfect that it made his head spin.

  ‘Posy,’ he yelled after her, ‘I forgot to tell you I have a gig tonight.’

  ‘OK,’ she called down the stairs.

  It seemed to make no difference to her whether he was in or out.

  He was wrong about this. She was glad he was going out because she could have cereal for dinner.

  November

  As she trudged through the brown slippery muck of autumn leaves on the pavement (and who knew what it concealed) she could feel the dampness seeping into her boots. They needed polishing. She kept her head down. She had reached that stage of motherhood where any adornment was superfluous. Rings had been the first to go when James was newborn because she feared scratching him or catching his hair on them. She had seen how the hospital midwives turned their rings around when they were bathing the babies. But it all seemed so precarious. What if she forgot and scratched him? Only her plain gold wedding band remained.

  Earrings and necklaces were next to go, when James got to the reaching and grasping stage. She remembered the rumours about girls at school who had their earlobes torn in fights. Soon she jettisoned scarves and bracelets, anything that wasn’t needed for decency. (No time! No time!) Long ago getting ready to go out had been such a big deal, and took at least two hours. Things had happened after a Badedas bath. Now, in the unlikely event of her and Frank going out together in the evening, the only thing she was concerned about was whether the babysitting plans would work, and whether any of the children would be ill so that they couldn’t (or perhaps didn’t have to) go. She wondered if the harried mothers of the future would feel incomplete and sad when they started going out without their navel ornaments. At least that was one loss that she wouldn’t feel. She had forgotten what going out could be like, the excitement and the streets smelling of popcorn, even when there was no popcorn.

  And so Posy was transformed and things were left behind. But she was aware that somewhere carousels were turning, there were people laughing in swing boats, dancing in white dresses, stepping out of limousines. That there were hotels with golden mirrors, reflecting golden mirrors to infinity. Her gloveless hands were chapped, the nails unpolished, her fingertips had become so scaly that she could have snipped bits of dead dry skin off them. Somewhere people were trying on sequinned, embroidered shoes. Posy had her pram-pushing hat on. You couldn’t carry an umbrella and manage a pushchair at the same time. She’d had it for years. It pulled down a long way, was made of some kind of artificial velvet stuff and was brown. She was very fond of it. When Flora had given it to her she had said, ‘Does it make me look like Ingrid Bergman, you know, with this mac on? It has a certain stylishness …’

  ‘Oh exactly,’ Flora had smiled.

  So here was Posy, a dumpy Ingrid Bergman, plodding through Portswood in her hat.

  When she was little she had loved watching old musicals. She had hoped that when she grew up life would be like that, a long romance where everybody suddenly burst out singing: a glorious cycle of song. There would be neat little dances, and somehow everyone would know all the words.

  ‘Huh!’ thought Posy, ‘And I am Marie of Roumania.’ She was on one of her endless circuits, school - pre-school - shops - home - pre-school - home - shops for whatever she had forgotten - school - home, punctuated by the endless making of, and clearing up after, meals. She was dragging herself along, it was like wading through mud. She looked down to see if perhaps her boots were on the wrong feet. ‘Some marched asleep,’ she thought. How was it that everyone else managed? Was it only her that made such heavy weather of it all? Or perhaps everyone else was the same: only just managing to muster the fifteen minutes of cheerfulness required in the playground twice each day.

  A wax-jacketed figure loomed up beside her and then skidded on the leaves, pushchair wheels coming dangerously close to Isobel’s. They could get stuck like that for ever, a pair of stags, antlers locked. It was Fraser and Lizzie’s mum, also known as Jan, in an expensive hat that matched her jacket. Posy thought it made her look like a stuffed olive. It amazed Posy that she had friends with hats like this. What had they all come to? Now we are all pillocks in stupid hats, endlessly going to the cashpoint and posting letters, she thought. She would often see someone from a distance and think, ‘What a stupid hat. Imagine going around in a stupid hat like that’, then up close she would realise that it was one of her friends, and that the hat was just like her own. How the mighty are fallen, she thought. Look upon my fleece ye mighty and despair. If she tried hard she could remember a time before fleece had taken over the world; a time when a fleece had been golden, or on a sheep, or at a stretch, the brown bobbly acrylic lining of old ladies’ zip-up boots. Come to think of it, a pair of those boots would be jolly useful.

  ‘Horrible leaves,’ said Jan.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Posy asked.

  ‘Fine, thanks. Just slipped. They should clear all this muck up.’

  ‘I read somewhere that our autumns are getting as good as New England’s. Climate change. More rain or something.’

  Jan wasn’t really listening. Posy saw her surreptitiously look at her watch. I am this boring, boring even to Jan, she thought.

  ‘I think we’re in good time. Three minutes in hand.’

  Time to slip and fall over and not cry, unless you were a toddler, and then you could howl as loud as you wanted, or time to buy something at the newsagents, or just to be early and stand cold and damp in the playground.

  ‘Didn’t see you at the school fireworks,’ said Jan. The Parousellis never usually missed a School Association event.

  ‘Oh we bought tickets,’ said Posy, feeling guilty. ‘But everybody had such bad colds, and Izzie started a temperature, so we had to miss it this year.’

  ‘Always next year,’ said Jan with a smile that was intended to offer comfort and encouragement.

  (Posy didn’t tell her that Frank had said, ‘Thank God we don’t have to go to something for once.’

  ‘But Frank, it’s Bonfire Night!’ she’d said, looking astonished.

  ‘Oh why do you have to celebrate everything?’)

  Ahead of them two young men were getting out of a jeep, laughing and unloading golf clubs.

  ‘They look too young to play golf,’ said Posy.

  ‘Even the golfers are getting younger these days.’ This was pretty funny for Jan. The young men looked very pleased with themselves, full of bonhomie. As the mums drew close one of them took off his baseball cap and tossed it into the boot of the jeep.

  ‘Good,’ thought Posy. It left him with a dreadful line between the hat-flattened hair and the hair below it, what the Parousellis called ‘horrible-hat-head’. Posy wished that Frank and the children were there to see such a fine example. She snorted.

  ‘Horrible-hat-head,’ she explained to Jan who looked blankly at her. The golfers were oblivious to them. Posy knew that pushing a pram had rendered her invisible to at least half of the human race. Often this pleased her. She could pass by unseen.

  She had to stop for a moment to wipe Izzie’s nose, then her own, on the same sodden tissue. Can’t even have a cold to myself now, she thought.

  Up ahead of them they could see the signature pale-blue baseball cap, ancient brown bomber jacket, khaki canvas trousers tucked into socks, and van Gogh boots of another of the playground regulars. Nobody knew his name, he was kno
wn only as Karim’s grandfather. His outfit would have looked cool on a student or a DJ. Posy wondered at the shopping trips, perhaps to Help the Aged, that had resulted in his attire.

  He did nearly all of the dropping off and picking up of his two grandsons and his little granddaughter who was at the pre-school. He always smiled at Posy and her children, held the school gate open for them with exaggerated gestures of gallantry, and commented on whether or not Isobel was asleep.

  ‘The more they sleep, the more they grow,’ he told her, and she constantly wondered the extent to which this was true. He carried an umbrella for each of the children, two Bug’s Life ones and a Fetch The Vet one, but didn’t have one of his own, so would use one of the children’s if they weren’t with him. The diameter of these kiddies’ umbrellas was barely larger than that of his head. He ran errands and did most of the shopping for the family too. Posy often saw him heading back from Somerfield or the greengrocer’s with a pushchair loaded up with shopping. The family lived in the same street as the Parousellis, but up the other end. She saw him so often that she had come to rely on it, and think that if she saw him then all would be well, and all would be well, and all manner of things would be well.

  He waited at the gate to the playground and held it open for them and the pushchairs, giving a little bow as they went through.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Posy. Jan just smiled and nodded.

  ‘She awake today,’ he said, pointing at Isobel with his chin.

  ‘Yes, she’s already had her nap.’

  ‘And where is little one? He asleep?’

  ‘Just at home with his dad.’

  ‘Another day off for Dad?’

  ‘He’s a musician. It’s always his day off,’ Posy explained.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘He plays the double bass, you know.’ She mimed it.

  ‘I see, I see,’ he said, as though this was of special significance. Then the children started to come out and all adults’ conversation ceased.

  It was Wednesday which meant ballet. They went straight from school. The classes were held in the pavilion of some private gardens. Poppy had just been promoted to the second class. She would be ready to take Grade 1 that year.

  Posy desperately hoped that Isobel wasn’t going to want a feed. The idea of doing it on one of the benches where the mums waited during the class … She had brought a beaker of water. Perhaps that would fob her off.

  When the weather was fine taking Poppy to ballet was a treat. Children played in the gardens whilst the parents vaguely kept an eye on them. Isobel would often sit happily in her pushchair or on Posy’s knee, watching what was going on. If it rained they would be cowering on the veranda. They couldn’t hear the music from outside, but Posy liked to watch the class through the window; seeing Poppy who was quite good, but often a beat behind the others, was like seeing a ghost of her former self. Young, hopeful Posy, pretty in pink. The teacher, Miss Miranda, was in her early twenties and was Poppy’s heroine. She had married in the spring and was now pregnant. She had a very small, neat bump and still looked elegant and graceful in her jazz dance trousers and black T-shirt. Posy couldn’t imagine her with swelling ankles and a moon face.

  ‘She’ll end up like us,’ said Jan beside her.

  ‘Oh!’ said Posy. It was like a blow to the stomach. She felt her eyes fill with tears but Jan didn’t notice. Stupid, stupid, sentimental, disappointed Posy.

  ‘I brought you that catalogue,’ said Jan, and she found it in her shiny brown leather bag. That bag must have cost more than Posy’s whole outfit. ‘“Dance Direct”,’ said Jan. ‘Really good value.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Posy. ‘Hours of amusement.’ She could read it while she fed Isobel or in the bath.

  ‘I do love going to the ballet shops, but this will save some time.’ Actually it wouldn’t; she would spend ages looking longingly at the outfits, the crossover cardigans, ‘practice’ tops, trousers that were ‘also suitable for streetwear’. Perhaps a pair of the dance sneakers would have her springing the plod to and from school. Perhaps ‘Premier Dancewear’s bi-coloured knitted stripy boot-leg pants’ would make her lithe and energetic and young again. There were posters and videos, scrunchies and rolls of ribbon, bags of resin and shellac for hardening pointe shoes. She even found the packets of kirby grips alluring.

  She gazed and sighed, looking at the dancers modelling special socks ‘ideal for moving from class to class’. Socks over tights, now that was a great look. These dancers were all that she hadn’t been, and now would never be. If only, she thought, if only I could be one of those jolly mums who make jokes about stretch marks and tucking their tummies into their knickers.

  She could order tap shoes for herself and Poppy, and they could take lessons together. It appeared that they came in canvas for only £7.95 a pair. She wondered if any of the practice things would fit her, they looked really fluid and comfy … She flicked the pages backwards and forwards, her eyes round and greedy for the images of the beautiful, young, unspoilt bodies. Oh to be like that… ah, here was something for her. Plume’s ‘full body sack’. It had ‘tank straps which tie at the front’ and was ‘oversized for better comfort’. She might as well flap the catalogue shut and throw it away. She knew that she would look fat and ridiculous in everything.

  Oh just give up, Posy, she told herself. She would order the regulation RADA leotard, gauzy skirt and poignant little ballet socks for Poppy. Aunt Is and Aunt Bea provided the cardigans. The only thing Posy would really benefit from buying herself was a pair of leg warmers as she suffered badly from cramp in the winter; but she probably had a pair of them from the eighties, stashed away in some binbag in the loft. In her early teens she had longed to be one of the ‘Kids From Fame’. She stuffed ‘Dance Direct’ into her bag. She would order the stuff for Poppy later.

  She gave it one last glance, the outside back cover, she hadn’t studied that yet. Books. Diet For Dancers by Robin D. Chmelar and Sally S. Fitt. The ‘S’ must stand for ‘Super’. It promised ‘A Complete Guide to Nutrition and Weight Control’, as well as ‘How to Lose Fat, What to Eat and When to Eat, Fads and Frauds, Menus and Meal Planning, and Eating Disorders’. That was the thing for her.

  It was Stir Up Sunday. Posy had heard it on the radio.

  ‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people,’ it had said.

  ‘This is what life is meant to be like,’ she told Frank.

  Isobel was asleep. The dishes were done, Poppy and Tom were helping her to make Christmas puddings. James had sloped off to watch a video and she had let him go.

  ‘You have to come and stir it, and make a wish when I call you,’ she had said.

  ‘All right Mum, I do want to help you, it’s just that I’ve made enough bread and stuff in my life.’

  ‘Go, go! Pudding-making isn’t compulsory, but wishing is.’

  ‘Can I watch Power Rangers?’

  ‘No. Something nicer. Iron Giant or something.’

  It was a Delia recipe, and Posy had made it many times before. This year she was making four puddings, one for Frank’s family, one for her aunts, one for Kate and one for themselves. It was really very easy, just a lot of stirring and endless steaming. One by one the children made their wishes.

  ‘I’m not going to put it in the basins till Isobel is up, so she can have a go,’ she explained. ‘I’m not sure what she’ll wish for.’

  ‘Some bananas maybe,’ said Poppy.

  ‘We’ll have to get Daddy for his wish,’ said James.

  ‘Oh yes, I almost forgot him.’ Frank had disappeared to his shed. ‘Go and get him, please honey.’

  A few minutes later Frank and James came into the kitchen.

  ‘So I have to make a wish, do I?’ he said, as though he hadn’t done this every year since James was a baby. Posy passed him the spoon.

  ‘Smells good.’ It smelt of mostly beer. ‘Right, what shall I wish for?’ he asked. Then the phone started ringing.

&nb
sp; ‘I’ll get it,’ said Posy. ‘You make your wish.’

  A few moments later she was calling out, ‘Frank, for you.’ She came back into the kitchen. ‘Sounds like one of your pupils. Somebody young. I hope it’s not someone giving up.’

  ‘Frank. It’s Melody.’

  ‘Oh, how are you?’

  ‘I can’t stop throwing up.’

  ‘Something you ate?’

  ‘Not really. I have to see you.’

  ‘We’re out at The Oak tonight, why don’t you come along? We haven’t seen you for ages.’ Frank’s ‘we’ meant The Wild Years, not him and Posy.

  ‘I have something to tell you. I’m pregnant.’

  Silence from Frank.

  ‘Frank, I said “I’m pregnant”.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that. Not now. Not on the phone. No way. Oh God. No way.’

  ‘I have to see you. We have to talk.’

  ‘You know my situation here.’

  ‘Frank …’

  ‘I can’t talk to you now. Sorry. I have to go.’ Poppy was standing in front of him with a wooden spoon. ‘Sorry. I have to go. I’ll call you back.’ He hung up before he heard what she called him.

  ‘Just one of them wanting to change times,’ he told Posy.

  ‘Don’t forget to put it on the calendar.’

  The gig at The Oak that night wasn’t a great success. Melody came but refused to sing. She told The Wild Years that she wasn’t feeling well. She certainly looked what Frank’s mum would have called ‘peeky’. Her eyes were sticky with tiredness and mascara. Frank had been through this so many times, the signs were unmistakable. During the first set she sat by herself, folding and refolding beer mats or staring deliberately at nothing. When their break came the other Wild Years headed for the bar. Frank sat down beside her.

  ‘I haven’t had a cigarette in two weeks,’ Melody told him. ‘I just feel too sick.’

  ‘Good. I mean not that you feel sick, although everyone always says that’s a good sign. I mean good, well done.’

  ‘Whaddya mean, “Good. Well done.” What’s it to you?’