Although used to her sister’s trials of love, they never ceased to overwhelm and upset Alex. She wanted to storm round to Alan’s house, shriek at him, throw the lunch he had prepared at the wall and then tell him exactly what he was doing to her sister. But, Lettie would never allow this and therefore Alex had to console herself once more with the role of the comforter, the confidante and the picker-up of pieces.
The hours ticked away on the grandfather clock in the corner of the kitchen. It was the clock that the vendors had left as a housewarming gift, saying it “belonged here” and wouldn’t be right in the awaiting bungalow. The clutter of walls, alcoves and shelves painted in colours chosen from rearranging the spice jars in a wholefood shop, soothed Lettie’s nerves and calmed her thoughts. The currant biscuit made in her nephew’s cookery lesson at the play club was welcoming and filling, albeit a little grey from excessive kneading.
The routine had been played out between the two women too many times before, but was not the least bit less serious because of it. They took turns to chop vegetables, wash up, hug, hold hands, make more tea, talk and listen. The door leading to the rest of the house was firmly shut and the kitchen was out of bounds to the family. Rich was more than happy to carry out his role of gathering the children and heading off for chips on the harbour front. He rather hoped that a Pavlov-type response wasn’t being engendered and Lettie’s distress meant no more than indulgence and junk food to the self-obsessed children.
As the ritual danced to its conclusion, Alex felt she was able to manage the final step that was needed to move them on from the kitchen. She needed to make sure Lettie felt safe, felt it had been all talked through and out of her system and she needed her to be in a lighter mood.
Lettie looked up to Alex with the same expectant look as she had as a child, waiting for her older sister to make it all better.
“So, shall we cut his bollocks off?” began Alex.
“Definitely. And stuff them in his mouth.”
“How about propping them against an enamel bath in a cold bathroom and hitting them with an old plank?”
“Yes, OK then,” Lettie conceded. “As long as I can kick a teapot against them…”
The two women laughed and walked together into the sitting room, now able to move on to chat about mundane things such as their mum’s new haircut and Rex’s fleas.
Rich had returned with the children, who were bloated and happy and were now playing a game of snap with no rules whatsoever. As long as five-year-old Francis and six-year-old Sally won equal amounts of points over Rich and were allowed to screech ‘SNAAAP’ at intervals whilst crowing over their sibling, all was well. The sisters stood close, voicelessly comforting each other yet joining in the family banter and yelling with joy as Rich lost miserably once more.
Noting an invisible sign from his wife, Rich wheedled out of another game and said, “I know, why don’t we all go for a walk along the river? We can walk Aunty Lettie and Molly home first if they are busy and then we can take Rex for a swim. Right, get your shoes on you two. No, now. Come on, last one ready has to piggyback me down the hill!” It worked, and Rich blessed the remaining time he had when it would. He was dreading the days when his children despised him with such zest as his brother’s teenagers did his brother.
They walked along the riverside path, making sure that Lettie was part of the group at all times. She felt happy and more confident with everyone around her and the episode with Alan suddenly seemed less important. She checked herself quickly – no, it was important. He had used his last chance. Remember the fear, remember sitting on the floor crying; it wasn’t allowed to happen again. No. No going back.
Transporting Lettie safely to her door, Rich checked the house to make sure it was safe and empty as Alex helped Lettie to complete the clearing up, wiping the remainder of the sauce from the skirting boards that had been missed earlier. Lettie was settled into a chair as her sister busied herself and the children played in the garden. First thing on the agenda, kettle on. Second, goodies in the fridge, paper on the table, third, contact the locksmith to get the locks changed and in the meantime, put the deadlock on.
Alex and her family left Lettie alone after ensuring that all was well and that she felt settled and calm. Tea served in a proper manner had similar soothing effects on Lettie as another vein-full on a junkie. It signified peace and calm and the complete teapot, tea cosy and bone china mug (with blackberries on) combination was well worth the effort. Lettie gripped her hands round the mug and mentally surveyed her lot. She tried to imagine how others would see her; she still saw herself as an eighteen-year-old who looked great in jeans. A bit of self-knowledge might come in useful.
Thirty-five years old wasn’t too bad, she thought. Still time to start again: not old enough to be set in her ways yet. She’d always been happy with her height, which was lucky really. Although her body had been neglected for the last year or two, she felt that it was redeemable. A few more celebrity diets should shift that extra stone. Lettie checked her “Rich Chestnut” hair in the mirror and decided that a quick trip to the chemists would put those roots right again. Perhaps she should spend a little more time each morning, rather than just pulling it into a ponytail – oh, for goodness sake, she cursed to herself, you’re supposed to be sorting your life out, not your hairstyle.
She tried to think as Alex and Rich would – what did they see when they debated her life – what aspects of it did she actually need to change? On the whole she enjoyed her job as a waitress in the Sea View. The hectic nature of the summer months, were balanced by the gentler winter hours and she enjoyed the variety and interaction with the public. She felt the pictures that she drew and painted of Lyme, scenes she sold to customers through displays in the tearooms or the occasional co-operative exhibition, gave her an edge over the other waitresses. When her mother tutted that Lettie really should have gone to college, like she had said, and that she would be a doctor now if she had only pulled her finger out, Lettie could rise above it because she was waitressing in order to support her art.
She liked living in Lyme Regis; she liked the beaches, the cliffs and the atmosphere. Even her mother living an interfering-distance from her front door wasn’t too bad a deal, especially when it was raining a lot.
No, it was really just Alan. The presence of Alan. She would go for walks to avoid being at home. She would sit at the end of the harbour reading as the spray of the sea chilled her until she knew he’d have got tired of waiting and gone off to meet friends.
She had been proud when she bought her cottage, luckily in the days before Lyme Regis was considered quaint and within weekend driving distance of affluent city dwellers. Two lodgers helped pay the bills and were a partial safety net; Alan would never have considered moving himself in when there were lodgers cluttering the place up – far too student-like for his tastes.
She currently let her two spare rooms to Lisa, a quiet and introverted thirty-year-old accountant and Charles, a gregarious and earnest psychology (distance learning) student and fossil addict living rather comfortably and pointlessly off his father’s funds. She enjoyed the rapport that they had and she was still able to make full use of her home and garden and not be hiding as the mad woman in the attic, as had happened with some previous tenants.
Her stomach flipped once more as she realised that they had possibly heard some of the day’s fracas – facing them for the first time afterwards was not something that Lettie relished. She would also have to warn them that further unpleasantries might arise when Alan learnt that the key that had opened the door to enjoyment, sex, good food and a loan shark with nil repayments for the last six years, was no longer working.
Alan Bentley was an insurance salesman who roamed the West Country nailing vulnerable leads into purchasing his policies, playing on the family values that he ignored so heavily in his own life. Intelligent and confident, Alan was able to put his customer executive (aka salesman) training into as much use in his private life
as he did his career. Relentless calling of people by their names and making them feel special charmed them into hearing his pitch. Then sudden withdrawal tactics at a show of uncertainty allowed him to clinch the deal, be it the sale of a policy, the loan of fifty pounds or a toe-tingling blow job in order not to lose his vibrant company.
Growing wise to his withdrawal techniques and standing their ground had lost his company merely a few clients over the years, but to Lettie the cost had been two bookshelves, countless mugs, the rack of coats and now the dinner set. Yes, it was time to seek a new insurance company and possibly to reconsider whether she actually needed a policy at all.
Lettie started from her chair as she heard a scrabbling at the door, then felt relief as she recognised Lisa’s voice through the letterbox. As she let Lisa in, Lettie began apologising about the deadlock, but there was no need as Lisa’s unassertiveness immediately accepted responsibility. Her usual lack of eye contact meant that Lisa didn’t even see the red eyes until she sensed there was something wrong when they were both well inside.
“Oh my God – are you OK? Has something happened? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But…are you OK?”
“I am – now. I wasn’t, but I am now. Thanks,” Lettie replied and added, “yes, Alan and I had another row, but no, it won’t be happening again.”
Lisa had lived with Lettie for nearly six months. The two women liked each other instinctively and got on well together, albeit on a relatively superficial basis. Each respected the other’s need for space and more urgently, Lisa’s reluctance to be in other people’s company long enough to be depended on for a lively one-to-one conversation. Tourist guides would describe Lisa as “Lyme Regis’ best kept secret.” She was intelligent and wealthy, although possibly the wealth was as much through a reluctance to spend rather than just her impressive salary for a thirty-year-old woman.
Her working wardrobe did not help others to discover the secret; the curves were not shown off to their best advantage and she had not yet the maturity or confidence to buy a means of looking smart that was actually comfortable, tending instead to buy standard accountant suits and trying to make herself fit into them. Her blonde crowning glory favoured a chignon, despite wax treatments that made it shine when it fell about her shoulders, and this served to enhance the “don’t even think about letching at me” image.
Lettie always felt that at the correct time, Lisa would unclip her creation, shake down her tresses and seduce her prey. However, that certain something was somehow missing and instead of gasping, “But Lisa, you’re beautiful!” she was more likely to trigger, “Oh, I’ve er, never seen you with your hair down. It’s quite long, isn’t it?”
But, seeing Lettie still obviously in distress, even Lisa couldn’t skulk off upstairs to put on her at-home uniform of backside-enlarging tracksuit bottoms, breast-unflattering T-shirt and ponytail. Her need for Lettie to respond positively to her questions of “being OK” helped to reinforce it in Lettie’s mind, that actually, apart from the occasional spotting of a shard of china or a smear of gravy on a cupboard door, she very nearly was.
Lettie explained briefly and as unemotionally as possible what had happened and to her surprise was interrupted by the younger woman: “I was beaten up by my boyfriend once. I was twenty-one. It was terrible – just three weeks before my Finals. Luckily he lived in Scotland, so I never saw him again. That was the last proper boyfriend I ever had.” She said it more to herself than to Lettie, but Lettie’s grasping of her hand across the table brought her back to the present and she continued in a matter of fact voice, “I never told anyone. Said I’d tripped going to the loo in the night.”
Her eyes jolted to meet Lettie’s who appreciated the admission. It wasn’t just her then; it did happen to other people. “Thank you for telling me. Somehow it’s helpful to know it’s not just me. Don’t worry, I won’t tell a single soul. Oh, talking of single souls, that sounds like Rizzo.”
The bang on the door was so indignant that it couldn’t belong to anyone else but Charles Antony Riser, known almost universally as Rizzo, to his parent’s distress – just like his father had been, before he struck it big. His father’s success at creating a specialist tool for the auto trade had catapulted him and his wife to the position in life in which they knew they should reside. Unfortunately, the grass had been a sickly shade of yellow when they reached the other side of the fence and their attempts to fit in with the wealthy, but socially fickle, Manchester set had met with failure at their first dinner party.
Their obvious lack of love for each other had made the conception of Rizzo quite a painful process, which had not been repeated, and therefore their only option was to envelope their son in their wealth and ambition and wait for him to take the lead. Unfortunately, Rizzo had taken their wealth, but had not been overly concerned about burdening himself with their ambition.
“’E’s just buggering about,” said his father to his mother.
“No, no. He’s developing networks and finding his skills in the world,” replied his mother to his father.
Unfortunately, buggering about was probably a more accurate description. This had led Rizzo to a six-year distance learning degree course in psychology that allowed him the spare time to indulge his current passion for fossils – hence the residency in Lyme Regis. His plan would carry him into his early thirties before any real work need begin and if his parents were happy to assist, he was more than happy to let them.
Rizzo’s suitability for a first class degree, with honours, in procrastination, should one have existed, had led to his few weeks’ stay with Lettie – “while he looked for somewhere suitable to invest in” – dragging on for five months with no signs of termination. Lettie was more than happy with this arrangement; Rizzo’s zest for his untenable lifestyle and his devil-may-care attitude made him a fun housemate and the three bantered together around the television or the kitchen table in a way that would surprise the professors watching over Charles and his unopened textbooks.
He was a handsome person – “man” would be too strong a word for him as his skin was unfettered by stubble, and his cheekbones and eyelashes made older ladies grasp for his arm. His hair flopped over his eyes and he would push it back habitually to reveal his innocence. It was a look that nurtured his mother’s protection, but his father’s wrath, and many of their arguments were based around their son’s inability to fend for himself and comparisons about what they had been doing at his age.
As diplomacy was one of the skills that Rizzo had not yet mastered, “Oy! What’s going on here? What’s with the locks? Under siege now are we?” were his first, not unexpected, words as Lettie unlocked the door to him.
Now feeling an old hand at explaining, she repeated, “Alan and I had a row, but he’s not coming in again; the locksmith is on his way to change the locks. Now get in, stop gaping and put your bag of rocks out the back.” Rizzo accepted this as easily as he accepted the cup of tea that was pushed across the table to him.
“It happens more than you think, you know,” he said, feeling a case study for Module Four coming on. “I have some statistics somewhere.”
“You usually do,” sniggered Lisa.
“You just haven’t read them yet,” added Lettie, the three dropping easily back into their banter. “But, on a serious note,” she continued, “Alan doesn’t know that he isn’t coming back yet, that the stuff that he left here will soon be sitting in a cardboard box outside his mother’s back door. Therefore, we may have a few unpleasant moments coming our way.”
“You know,” said Rizzo, assuming an, as yet untested, professional air, “I should probably chat to him. He’ll no doubt have a number of unresolved issues left over from childhood that he’d do well to talk through. You’ll probably find that his father terrorised his mother and his grandfather his grandmother before that. These things are learnt, not assumed. I think I have a case study upstairs somewhere…”
“No. You stay right there.
” Lettie rose to meet him, putting out her hands to prevent him getting any further. “You keep out of it and you stay away from him. Understood?
“His grandfather may have thrown cups at his grandmother, but he will not find out whether chucking them at me is learnt or assumed by talking to you. Understood? UNDERSTOOD?” Rizzo looked sheepish and nodded.
“The thing is,” he started, “everyone deserves a chance to be cured you know — Yes, understood.” Lettie’s stare had been honed at a place where parents think that because they are on holiday, their children running around a tearoom is acceptable behaviour. Therefore it was also very effective on a psychology student whose belief in his own abilities was not mirrored by that of his tutors.
Lettie surveyed the two of them sat in her kitchen, the apple-green walls enhanced by the light coming in from the conservatory and the sound of the river rolling by on its journey to the sea. However, the ambience wasn’t matched by the ongoing conversation within the room. Lisa was quiet and thoughtful, interjecting only occasionally and Rizzo was still desperate to show that his talents and theories were as good as he claimed. I’ll have to watch that one, thought Lettie, seeing stubbornness in his eyes.
But the look in Rizzo’s eyes was more to do with the dreams of a person who sees the A to Z route, but doesn’t pay a great deal of attention to the twenty-four letters in between. He visualised a scene being played out in the same kitchen that he now sat in…
He, Rizzo, is sat at the table, expressionless. Clutching Rizzo’s arm is a man in a ruffled shirt with a tie pulled down into a knot at his sternum in a desperate effort to release the restrictions that were stifling his sobs. Rizzo hears a sound at the door and turns noiselessly so as not to disturb the balance of the therapy.
He sees Lettie, staring at the scene, anxiety in her eyes. Her expression conveys her need for information. Behind her, Lisa grips Lettie’s shoulders in support, as she too peeps in. Rizzo satiates the two women by nodding in a “things are going as anticipated” kind of way. The women’s expressions change from intense concern to relief and they turn and smile at one another, acknowledging the expert at work in front of them.
Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons Page 2