by Fiona Neill
‘I’m not going to ask,’ she says, as I stretch my arms towards her, and she starts to pull me out.
‘We need to roll her slightly on her side,’ she shouts to Robert Bass, clearly enjoying the challenge.
‘This cork is going to pop,’ she shrieks gleefully.
Robert Bass manhandles me into position and I slide out on to the pavement, my dignity in tatters.
‘We’re just practising,’ I tell her. ‘It’s the same size as a chimney.’
Later that night, I considered the incident. A certain familiarity had entered the equation, more Laurel and Hardy than Love Story, and for a short while the idea that we might become friends, as Cathy had suggested a couple of months ago, took hold. I felt relieved. I could now take Tom’s necklace, when it reappeared, in good faith.
11
‘You should know a man seven years before you stir his fire’
I KNOW THAT Christmas is going to be a study in diplomacy when my father answers the door on Christmas Eve, wearing a woolly hat. It is one of those brightly coloured Afghan affairs with earflaps. It could be an affectation to provoke Petra, who frowns on this kind of sartorial rebelliousness. Most probably he is wearing it because it is so cold in their farmhouse on the edge of the Mendips. I hug him hello, holding him tightly, out of genuine affection, but also to calculate how many layers he is wearing. It’s a better augur of what lies ahead in terms of temperature than any thermometer.
‘Don’t think I don’t realise what you are doing, Lucy,’ he whispers in my ear. ‘The answer is three, not including my vest.’ The subject of heating in my parents’ home is older than me. The general consensus is that the house is poorly insulated, the radiators inefficient and the double-glazing woefully inadequate, because it was bought cheaply from someone doing phone sales in the mid-seventies. My parents are famously fond of a good bargain.
The wide inglenook fireplaces, which promise so much warmth with their stone seats either side of the hearth, blow down cold air and suck up the heat remorselessly. Many times over the years, I have seen guests arrive and go into the sitting room, take off their coats and jumpers when they see logs crackling on the fire, only to spend the rest of the visit surreptitiously replacing those layers to avoid offending my parents. They have come to enjoy the spectacle and have been known to place bets on who will cave in first.
It is a cruel deception, the warmth and cosiness of a fire without any heat, like a loveless marriage. At least from a distance it is possible to maintain the illusion of comfort. If you get too close, the realisation that there is no hope of getting warmer somehow makes you feel even colder. So we learnt long ago to huddle together on the two sofas in the sitting room. These are soggy beasts with geometric patterns that date from our childhood. In a classic piece of improvisation, my mother has placed a couple of pillows underneath the main cushions to compensate for the worn springs. Even those with generous buttocks are known to wince if they sit down too heavily.
The underlying truth of what Tom has dubbed the Cold War is that my parents have a Presbyterian view on comfort derived from their experience as children during the Second World War and have never really abandoned the idea of rationing. Even though my father swears that he doesn’t switch it off at night, all through the winter, after the ten o’clock news, the heat is mysteriously sucked from the radiators amidst a great deal of gurgling and rattling, and any nocturnal visits to the bathroom are a teeth-chattering experience.
It is almost six months since we last came to visit and the distance means I view my parents with unwonted dispassion. So I note that my father looks a little older and shabbier. My mother has cut his hair and it hangs in great gashes along the edge of his frayed collar. When he lifts up an arm to hug me, I notice a gaping hole in his jumper. Long black hairs poke from his ears and nostrils like unpruned bushes.
He has put on a tie to please Petra, who believes a man isn’t really dressed unless he is wearing one. In combination with the hat, however, it somehow looks like another attempt to irritate her. Of course, once I tell him that she is running away to Marrakesh to live with a former lover, he won’t feel the need to poke fun at her. It is the kind of action of which he approves but would never engage in himself. Like me, he enjoys living vicariously.
Tom braces himself for one of my father’s firm handshakes. He has kept on a pair of leather gloves as a precaution. He now stands a good half-head above my father and puts his left hand on my father’s shoulder in an effort to weaken his grip.
My mother lurks in the background. For reasons I find impossible to fathom, she engages in all kinds of domestic brinkmanship with Petra. I notice that the wooden floor in the hall is polished, but when I move a china plate on the stone windowsill to make room for the car keys, a ray of sun shines in and highlights layers of dust. She will have changed the sheets in the spare bedroom but forgotten to clean the bath. The larder will be its usual muddle of old newspapers, plastic containers that she is resistant to throw out and piles of laundry in black bin bags sitting in exactly the same spot as the last time we visited.
Since she met my father while she was teaching at Bristol University and still has a part-time job in the English department, she has an excuse for the anarchy. I, on the other hand, having chosen a different route, have no similar plea bargain.
The fact that I gave up work not long after Joe was born was a source of discontent to my mother, who couldn’t believe that I abandoned the job I loved, to stay at home with my children.
‘You’re going to become a housewife,’ she said with barely veiled horror, closing the door of the larder so that Tom couldn’t hear us. There was no shade on the light, and the draught that blew underneath the door from the kitchen caused the bulb to sway gently. Shadows danced around the walls, making me feel dizzy.
‘Stay-at-home mum is the more politically correct term,’ I told her. I knew this would be a difficult conversation. Because although my mother professed her liberal parenting credentials at any opportunity, she was actually very prescriptive about how my brother and I should live our lives.
‘It’s Tom, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘He wants a meal ready on the table when he comes home. He wants to turn you into his mother, imprison you in twinsets.’
Since she was wearing a wool polo-necked jumper underneath a long dress with loud, blousy patterns that someone unkind might call a kaftan, I ignored her comment about Petra’s wardrobe.
‘We don’t really cook much in the evening unless he does it,’ I said. ‘Compared to a lot of men he’s actually quite helpful, and he knows that I am genetically challenged on the domestic front.’
‘Are you criticising the way I run my home?’ she said. I couldn’t help laughing. For all her vociferous disdain of anything that smacked of domesticity, she was always defensive at any suggestion of deficiency on that front.
I think she took it personally, as a slight on her own decision to keep working. No matter how many times I told her that thirteen-hour shifts until eleven-thirty at night were less compatible with bringing up children than her own brief absences to go and deliver lectures on D. H. Lawrence, she still returns to the subject with disarming frequency.
Returning to the house where you grew up with your husband, children and mother-in-law in tow is a discombobulating affair at the best of times. On the one hand there is a reassuring familiarity in the surroundings and the repetition of ritual. The knowledge, for example, that you must take a paper clip upstairs if you want to have a bath, in order to get the plug out. Being woken up at 6 a.m. by the noise of my father making early-morning tea on the Teasmade in my parents’ bedroom. Knowing the exact level of force needed to make the downstairs toilet flush. On the other hand, memories bump into you without warning, jostling for position, forcing you backwards in time. Although mostly benign, there is a feeling of loss of control over their ability to hijack your thoughts at any moment. None of this has any emotional resonance for Tom, the children, or Petra, who a
re likely to view everything with a critical eye.
On this particular visit, however, my childhood memories are colliding with something that happened much more recently during the much-anticipated trip to the aquarium in the last week of term. In that short space of time so much has changed that it feels that what came before happened years ago. Since then the five o’clock insomnia has evolved into something more oppressive. Instead of giving me time to indulge in medium-term mental freewheeling – where to go on holiday, for example, or how to persuade Emma to give up on Guy – I am now filled with a creeping anxiety that insinuates itself into every tiny muscle, sinew and tendon. The only positive repercussion is that I have exploited this nervous energy to get up at six o’clock in the morning to clean, tidy and buff our house to perfection. Tom is getting suspicious. It seems incredible that life can pivot so much in such a short space of time.
There is a loud bang on the ceiling in the hall and my father winces. I tell the assembled company that I am going up to deal with the children, who raced up the narrow wooden staircase almost as soon as they came through the front door, heading for the bedroom that used to belong to my brother Mark. But at the top of the stairs, instead of turning right to go down the passage to the children’s room, I turn the other way and creep along the landing into my old bedroom. I need to be alone to digest events of the final week of term, even if it is only for ten minutes. And I have to formulate a strategy for forthcoming dealings with Robert Bass.
The room remains a shrine to Laura Ashley, with its matching curtains and wallpaper in familiar floral designs. The only nod to my married status is a small double bed that used to be in the spare room. I lie down, knowing before my head rests on the pillow, that the mattress is so soft that my feet will be higher than my head and we will wake up every morning with horrible headaches and Tom will start to worry that he has a brain tumour. If I survive the week, at least I will know that the blood vessels in my head are made of stern stuff.
I crawl in between two cold sheets, pull up three heavy woollen blankets, and a bedspread in a different Laura Ashley print on top. It feels reassuringly heavy and slowly my body stops resisting the weight of the blankets. For the first time since the trip to the aquarium, the catalyst for this anxiety, I feel the tension leave my body. Underneath me I can feel another scratchy wool blanket. But sleeping on sackcloth for a week might assuage some of my guilt.
I should be using these precious moments alone to focus on Christmas, to wrap up the presents that I bought for Tom during a guilt-fuelled spree, organise the children’s stockings, or help my mother gain the upper hand over Christmas dinner, a challenge that she is usually unable to rise to. Instead I lie here endlessly running through things, looking for clues that might have forewarned me about what happened.
The school trip to the London Aquarium began on a low note when I saw Alpha Mum board the bus with a Dorling Kindersley Guide to Aquatic Life. Joe’s teacher looked askance. She does a very good line in subtle looks that manage to conjure a number of emotions in a single gesture. Withering, dismissive, and faintly impatient is her favourite blend when dealing with Alpha Mum.
‘I have done a little quiz so that the children don’t get bored on the journey,’ Alpha Mum said, standing at the front of the bus beside the driver and waving sheets of paper. ‘And I thought that we should also record all those with allergies, just in case the packed lunches get mixed up in transit. Also, I have brought a comprehensive first-aid kit, including adrenalin.’
Then she walked down the aisle a couple of paces and sat down beside me. Joe went to the back to sit with his friends. I noted that in spite of his neuroses, he seemed quite popular, and proudly pointed me out to his friends. Please don’t let her start the conversation about how she is worried her toddler might not get into the right nursery and therefore miss out on early promotion at Goldman Sachs. Although I have transgressed, I don’t deserve this, I thought to myself.
Robert Bass followed close behind her. He shrugged his shoulders when he saw that the seat next to me was taken. I sensed a hint of relief in his expression but as became apparent later, this was a misjudgement. Had Alpha Mum not taken the seat, I would have been able to more accurately gauge his mood by assessing whether he chose proximity or distance, and that might have altered the ensuing course of events. It had been a few days since our last encounter, which had marked what I thought was a renewed intimacy in our relationship.
Alpha Mum opened her handbag and put the papers into a file, and then smoothed down the front of her neat, tailored trousers.
‘I’m worried about nurseries,’ she said. In front of us sat a herd of Yummy Mummies, including Yummy Mummy No. 1, who was discussing exactly how many staff to take to the Caribbean at Christmas and whether a full-time or part-time cook was optimum. I was not deemed worthy to participate in this particular debate although I would have come down heavily in favour of a full-time cook.
Worries are very subjective. Mine included concern that there wouldn’t be a bottle of wine waiting for me when I got home, worry that Tom was going to discover the cigarettes hidden in the wardrobe, and alarm that I had taken both sets of car keys with me. If only that was still the extent of my troubles.
And it was still an hour to the aquarium.
‘The one where we have got a place has no interest in encouraging pencil grip,’ Alpha Mum said. ‘I didn’t breastfeed for a year, give up work, and cook organic meals every day for my child to end up at a substandard nursery.’
I must have looked confused, because then she said, ‘Breastfeeding raises IQ by an average of six points.’
‘Perhaps you need to relax a little,’ I suggested. ‘Have some fun, regain perspective. It’s easy to lose sight of yourself in all this.’
‘I refuse to let my children fall by the wayside,’ she said.
‘The thing is,’ I told Alpha Mum, ‘there is no point in worrying about things that are simply out of your control.’ She looked intensely at me.
‘The thing is, Lucy, that what you put in you get out,’ she said.
‘Why would you want four neurotic overachieving children competing with each other and displaying attendant personality traits?’ I said. ‘Is that a recipe for happiness or self-fulfilment?’ And for once she fell silent.
Then my phone beeped. Robert Bass was texting me from two rows behind. Daring.
The thing is, Lucy, that there’s a seat beside me, the message read. I looked behind me and he waved.
I should have been more alert to this overture, but I had been too distracted the previous weeks by the repercussions of Petra’s decision to move to Marrakesh. Despite his initial calm acceptance, Tom had become convinced that her artist was a drifter, who was going to live off the proceeds from her house sale. I was trying to persuade Tom that he should give him a chance before he passed judgement. Curiously, as my feelings towards Robert Bass subsided, my concern that Petra was misjudging her situation increased.
So, when it came to the only interactive part of the trip to the aquarium, my mind was wandering far from Robert Bass.
‘Who wants to tickle the stingrays?’ shouted Joe’s teacher.
‘Me,’ I shouted back enthusiastically.
‘I thought we might let the children have a go first, Mrs Sweeney,’ said the teacher, eyeing me warily. ‘And then we will take them for lunch to give the parents a little break.’
So when the children melted into the background to go and eat their packed lunches, I stood on the step that surrounded the tank of stingrays and put my left hand in the water. It was unexpectedly icy and my sleeve immediately got wet. My fingers ached with cold, but touching one of these strange flat fish had become imperative. I wriggled my fingers slowly to keep them warm and to try and attract a fish, because that is what I had seen other people doing. Each time they came tantalisingly close, then turned just as I was about to touch them, showing off their shiny white underbellies and silently opening and shutting their coat-h
anger-shaped mouths. By this time, my sleeve was wet up to my elbow, but I didn’t care. In my head, having physical contact with a stingray had become inextricably linked with my state of mind. If I could touch one, I reasoned, then everything would be fine. For ever. A pump forced the water round the large tank so that when I looked down at my hand, the fingers rippled involuntarily. It was impossible to keep them completely still. I concentrated on another stingray that seemed to be swimming on my side of the tank, not letting him out of my sight, willing him to come over. He was the largest one there, the kingpin, and the edges of his fins were threadbare with age. He moved towards me with his long nose haughtily poking out of the water, like a dolphin performing tricks, and then flipped on to his front, exposing his back and stopping in the water right in front of me. He felt cold and smooth, and I ran my fingers up and down his back. He flapped his fins in apparent pleasure and struggled to stay still, swimming against the pressure of the water. Then as I continued to stare, I was aware of another hand approaching my own under the water. For a moment I felt annoyed. I had waited patiently to commune with this old man of the sea, and now someone was trying to insinuate themself into my moment.
This hand, however, was making no attempt to tickle the fish. Although through the water the perspective was distorted, it was obviously much larger than mine, and I watched in a detached kind of way as it slowly glided to where my own hand was tickling the stingray and then, for a brief moment, it gripped the back of my hand and a voice said, ‘The thing is, Lucy, I think I’m out of control.’
I looked up. Of course I knew it was Robert Bass. He stroked the back of my hand underwater for what seemed like ages but was probably no more than a few seconds, and I was annoyed to feel a familiar stirring within. I was so close to his face that I could examine the pockmarks thoroughly and suddenly they gave him a weathered look that was very attractive. He stared at me and, for a moment, I thought he was going to try and kiss me. Then he simply took out his arm and walked away. I stood there aimlessly, trying to absorb what had just happened. Then I noticed Alpha Mum watching me from a bench in a dark corner on the other side of the room. Her sleeves were rolled down around her wrists and her arms were crossed disapprovingly. She couldn’t see what happened underwater, but there was no doubting the intensity of our gaze, nor our physical proximity.