by Fiona Gibson
‘Do you want to come, Charlie?’ Dad asked.
My brother looked up from the table where he was using Letraset to caption the various bottom-feeding fish in his drawing. ‘Okay,’ he murmured.
‘We’d all love to,’ Mum chipped in with false gaiety. ‘Lynette could come, too, couldn’t she, Frankie? Could you arrange an extra ticket?’
‘If I must,’ he murmured, heading out to tend to less demanding young life, currently sprouting in seed trays in the greenhouse’s steamy warmth.
Dad drove swiftly toward Bristol, where Frankie’s Favorites was filmed, speaking only when he needed Mum to light his cigars. Soon we’d left winding tree-lined lanes and were passing through towns that looked gray and bleary, as if they were just waking up. Charlie was twelve, with a face that had arranged itself into smooth-skinned handsomeness. Lynette, my best friend, sat between us in the back, nibbling the licorice stick from her Sherbet Fountain.
The inside of the car was thick with sweet, woody smoke, even though Mum had wound down her window. ‘I feel sick,’ Lynette complained as we reached the fringes of Bristol. Everyone looked shiny and uncomfortable except Charlie, who was pretending to nap with his head resting on a bunched-up sweater.
‘Enjoying the ride?’ Dad asked, pretending he hadn’t heard Lynette.
‘Yes, Mr Moon,’ she said miserably. She had a thin line for a mouth, like a puppet’s, and millions of peppery freckles. Her dad was in jail for hitting a man with a plank from a skip. Mum had suggested I replace her with another best friend, preferably one whose dad wasn’t locked up for GBH, but I’d pointed out that the plank incident was hardly Lynette’s fault. I couldn’t believe her dad had actually done it. I’d met him lots of times. He’d made tomato and Salad Cream sandwiches for us to eat in a tent in their garden. Until his arrest, I’d nurtured a secret fantasy in which Lynette and I swapped dads for a weekend or even the rest of our lives.
‘New car, Lynette,’ Dad told her. ‘Superior suspension. French.’ We had a white Citroën that rose when you turned on the engine. Dad reckoned that French cars were the most stylish, and you couldn’t buy that kind of style—although he did buy the Citroën, obviously.
Mum murmured gentle responses as he complained about Woman’s Life refusing to increase his fee. Her fine, straight hair brushed against her bare shoulders like a thin curtain. ‘If you don’t acknowledge your own worth,’ Dad ranted, ‘no one else will.’ I couldn’t imagine Lynette’s dad, banging up in Dartmoor, saying anything so pompous.
We arrived at the studios and glided into Dad’s reserved parking space. A small, pillowy woman beetled across the car park toward him. ‘I must thank you,’ she said, breathing potent spearmint into Dad’s face. ‘I had no confidence, never dared to make my own mayonnaise…’
Dad switched on his TV smile. ‘Well, thank you…’ He raised his eyebrows, awaiting a name.
‘Gloria.’
‘Mayonnaise really isn’t that difficult, Gloria.’
‘I know that now.’ She wafted her eyelashes at him.
Lynette dug her toes into the gravel and kept stealing looks at Charlie. Mum stood primly in her mock-croc sling-backs, gripping her handbag as if it were a grenade she was about to throw.
The studios had too many corridors and reeked of powerful cleaning products. ‘Eleanor, kids,’ said Lisa, a production assistant, ‘we’ve got great seats for you today.’ She clopped briskly in red high heels to the center of the front row. Most of the seats were occupied by chattering women in luridly patterned outfits: matching tops and skirts or summery dresses. The effect was like being presented with hundreds of clashing wallpaper samples at once.
When Dad marched on to the set, he feigned surprise at the clapping and cheering. He scanned the audience, pretending not to know us, and said, ‘Ladies and gentleman, welcome to another great show! This evening—’ it was 10:00 a.m.‘—we’re creating a spectacular dinner party to astound your friends. We’re cooking up chilled cucumber soup, pork in an apricot sauce, and finishing with a delicious meringue dessert which will—’cue saucy eyebrow wiggle‘—cause anyone who tries it to melt in your arms….’
More laughter. ‘I’m here,’ he boomed on, ‘to take the fear out of the kitchen. So—’ he swept grandly to his spot behind the red-and-white counter‘—let’s get cooking!’
Lynette picked licorice from between her teeth. Charlie yawned, and Mum dug at him with her elbow. She despaired of him sometimes. All that time he spent alone in his room—it wasn’t normal for a boy of his age. I once heard her saying on the phone, ‘He’s turning out just like his father. I just can’t reach him.’
Frankie’s Favorites wasn’t like how it looked on TV. It wasn’t just Dad in the kitchen, but a flurry of nimble assistants swooping in to wipe work surfaces and place finished dishes on the counter. Lynette starting giggling when Dad started on about the best end of pork. As far as I could tell, the assistants did the real cooking. All Dad did with the pork thing was place little chef ’s hats on the sticky-up bones.
As the show finished, at the part where the credits would roll, Dad beckoned Charlie, Lynette and me onto the set to try the dishes. The cucumber soup had a greasy film on top. Dad offered Lynette a knobble of pork. She grinned into the camera lens, a parsley leaf gummed to her bottom lip.
I was embarrassed to eat with the cameramen’s equipment zooming too close like glowering eyes. I imagined my classmates, in their normal homes, snorting at Stella Moon trying to nibble meringue in a delicate manner. My mouth felt too mobile, my lips unwieldy. I’d lost control of my face.
We drove home clutching goodie bags containing plastic aprons with Frankie’s Favorites logos on the front—two entwined Fs on a plate, straddled by cutlery—to join our vast collection of Dad-related paraphernalia, and a pamphlet entitled Buffet Recipes in Full Color.
‘You’re so lucky,’ Lynette whispered as we pulled up outside her house.
Perhaps she was right. Dad had spent an entire day with his family, which meant, I decided, that he did care about us. Most of the time he was busy being famous, which was hardly his fault. In many ways, we all breathed more easily when he wasn’t around.
Back at school after the holidays, Lynette bragged about how exciting it had been, appearing on telly with millions of people watching. I didn’t tell her that she’d have to wait weeks to see herself on TV.
We had a summer holiday that year. A proper one, requiring Hawaiian Tropic coconut oil and all of us being flung together. We flew to Alicante and stayed in a tiny apartment filled with fried-food smells and whining mosquitoes. Charlie and I spent every day plowing through the warm turquoise sea. One evening I noticed Dad touching Mum’s knee under a restaurant table. I was shocked, not to witness this display of affection, but at the realization that I’d never seen my parents touch each other before.
A woman in a loosely crocheted dress strode over to our table. ‘Isn’t this amazing?’ she said. ‘Here we are, on our holiday, and Frankie Moon’s sitting six feet from our table!’ She had that crackle-glazed skin that comes from decades of intense sunbathing. You could see her flesh-colored bra through the holes in the crochet.
Dad dabbed his lips on a white napkin and shook the woman’s hand. Mum seemed to have shrunk into her spotted sundress. She hated being bothered in public. She pulled that face—swooped-down lips, guarded eyes—while the woman delved into her handbag for a scrap of paper for Dad to autograph. ‘You make everything look so easy,’ she gushed. Mum had removed her hand from Dad’s thigh and was gazing down at her steak in its pearly sauce.
Each evening after dinner I’d sit on the small concrete balcony and write my holiday diary in meticulous script. Charlie must have crept out—I hadn’t heard him—and suddenly read aloud: “‘The best thing is Mum and Dad have stopped arguing.”’ I tensed, anticipating mocking laughter, but instead he said, ‘It’s just normal, you know.’
‘What’s normal?’
‘Parents rowing. They
all do it. You take it too much to heart—you’re too sensitive.’
‘Lynette’s parents never fight.’
‘How can they? He’s in jail.’
I managed a smile and said, ‘D’you think we’re lucky, being rich?’
‘We’re not that rich.’
‘We’re in Spain, aren’t we? Who else do you know who comes to Spain?’
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I suppose we’re lucky.’
‘I wish we weren’t. I wish we were just normal.’ I shut my diary firmly.
Charlie leaned over the concrete balcony to gaze down at the street, where a young couple had emerged hand in hand from the Banana Moon bar. ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘Me, too.’
Then our luck changed. Frankie’s Favorites was canceled. Dad’s viewing figures had slumped dramatically; it seemed that no one wanted to make Grand Marnier soufflés anymore. His slot was replaced by Lite Bites, a breezy show filmed on location with the emphasis on low-fat cooking. Yogurt replaced cream. Artificial sweeteners took the place of sugar in pastries and cakes. It was, Dad asserted, ‘Just a fad. It’ll flop, wait and see.’ Lite Bites spawned its own spin-off magazine and range of low-calorie desserts (‘Not naughty…just nice’).
‘What will happen to us?’ I asked Mum.
‘What do you mean, darling?’
‘Now we’ve got no money.’
‘We’ll be fine,’ she said, mustering a wide smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Charlie and I had to make do with our old uniforms until the end of the school year, despite the fact that his sweaters were unraveling and my pinafore had an immovable inkblot on the front. I noticed that, if we didn’t finish our orange squash, Mum would pour it back into a jug that she’d place in the fridge. One newspaper nicknamed Dad ‘Frankie Coronary’ and ran a cartoon depicting two ambulance men carrying a stretcher. One speech bubble read, ‘Did you hear Frankie Moon’s been sacked?’ The other man said, ‘Damn, that’ll put us out of a job.’
My move to secondary school coincided with Lynette terminating our friendship abruptly. I’d hear her in the playground, singing, ‘What’s the recipe, Frankie?’ Although I’d try not to look, I knew she was honking away with her new best friend, Victoria Nixon, and the boys with whom they sneaked to the bottom of the hockey field. I had no desire to be taken to the bottom of anywhere by a boy. I certainly didn’t want to return to class with bits of dandelion leaf stuck in my hair. ‘ Hey, swot!’ Lynette yelled across the playground. ‘Been to orchestra practice lately?’ At the word orchestra her new cronies yowled with laughter. She might as well have said, ‘Had the inside of your bottom inspected lately?’
‘You’re worth fifty Lynettes,’ Mum said later. ‘She’s just jealous.’
‘Jealous? Of what?’
‘Your playing, of course. Your talent. And was that a love bite I saw on her neck the other day?’
‘I want to stop playing the flute,’ I said dully.
‘I’m sure it was. A purple mark, right here…’ She indicated the hollow above her collarbone.
‘Mum, I’m sick of being different.’
She folded her thin arms around me and said, ‘Be proud of what you are, Stella. Don’t give up.’
‘Okay,’ I managed to say.
‘You’ll find a new best friend, I promise.’
As usual, Mum was right. I was scooped up by Jen, whose fine-boned beauty allowed her to get away with gaining top marks in spelling tests and owning a viola. I’d assumed she was too blessed with looks and talent to bother with me, until our school trip to London. She was sharing a room with Linda Dewy, a fragile girl who cried for her mum and tried to barricade herself in the hotel lift.
Jen was mesmerized by the sprinkling of stars in the Planetarium. She blurted out, ‘We’re so lucky, being here, but Linda’s up all night crying and spoiling it all.’ For the rest of the week we were inseparable. Jen said, ‘What I like best about you is that you’re so un-homesick.’ We wondered what the opposite of homesick might be, and decided there wasn’t a word for it.
I took photos of things, not people. A stuffed bat, suspended by a clear plastic thread, and an enormous speckled turtle shell in the Natural History Museum. Swans in St James’ Park. Celestial globes at the Planetarium. The other kids photographed each other in front of landmarks—Big Ben or Tower Bridge—or messing around in bath-towel togas and complimentary shower caps in the hotel. I’d been thinking about Charlie and tried to take the sort of photos he’d like, although I could visualize him already, flipping through my pictures at breakneck speed, pausing only to study the tortoiseshell.
I loved being away from the clouds of tension that hovered between my parents. I felt so free from Dad’s ill-humor, and Charlie’s sullenness, that I even forgot to miss Mum. Jen didn’t care who my dad used to be. She was the only person outside our family who knew how bad things had become. I returned home feeling as light as the air that Mrs Bones urged me to suck into my lungs.
Dad made a new series eventually—Frankie’s Feasts—that was described by one newspaper as ‘ludicrously overblown,’ and was canned after six episodes. The Mirror had ditched Dad’s column, although Woman’s Life limped on for another year or so. No one wrote fan letters anymore, not even in green pen, and no bras were pushed through our letterbox. Dad looked exhausted. His face appeared to have flattened, and turned beige—the color of envelopes containing final demands. He spent long, tense evenings in his study, shuffling papers around in a Café Crème fog.
Mum confided, ‘If Woman’s Life drops him, I’m going to start looking for work.’ She’d dropped her ‘It’ll be fine’ act and grown gaunt and pale, which made her startling blue eyes look bigger than ever. I was shocked by the concept of her doing anything other than glide around, looking pretty.
She was offered a job as an orderly at the hospital but gave it up after something bad happened involving one of the doctors and a utility closet. He’d ‘tried it on with her’, apparently. She came home with her eyebrows knitted together with tension, and told Dad, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ Instead of buying new clothes, or even the fabric to make them, she wore the burnt-orange trouser suit until it went thin and finally transparent at the knees, and had stopped having her hair trimmed in a sharp line. I heard Dad telling her, ‘For God’s sake, Eleanor, you’re letting yourself go.’
I wanted to help her but didn’t know what to do with a worried grown-up. While I waited for her to come from work—she’d taken a waitressing job at the Golden Egg—I’d blast Crispy Pancakes under the grill to be served with thick slabs of beef tomato. Mum didn’t seem to enjoy food anymore. I raided Dad’s coin jar to buy Lite Bites magazine, but was forced to improvise as we never had the red peppers or mange tout that the recipes required. Mum picked at my offerings, growing even thinner, and would sparkle only when she talked to her friends on the phone.
‘What’s wrong with Mum?’ I asked Charlie, finding him sprawled, belly down, on his musty eiderdown.
‘She’s just tired,’ he said. ‘She’ll be okay when Dad gets a proper job again.’ Both of us knew that Dad had never had a proper job.
‘Don’t you care?’ I snapped at him.
Charlie looked up from the books that were spread all over his bed and said, ‘Of course I do. I just don’t worry like you do.’ He must have felt bad for being so dismissive because he appeared in my room later that evening with a folder covered with sticky-backed plastic in which I could store my loose pieces of sheet music.
I started to spend as much time as possible at Jen’s pebbled-dashed semi that smelled not of cigar smoke and worry, but of her mother’s freshly baked scones. I’d really believed I was lucky when Lynette had told everyone at school about our trip to the Bristol studios. Being Frankie Moon’s daughter was, I’d reckoned, the best thing that could happen to a person.
And then I grew up.
5
New Friends
Robert wants things to be civilized. He pu
shes back nut-colored hair and says, ‘She keeps going over stuff I should have done after the boys were born—how she felt trapped in the house with two babies. Like I can do anything about that now.’ We’re sitting at opposite sides of my living-room table. My hands feel like new accessories that I’m not sure what to do with. I fill them with wads of sheet music and my coffee mug, but that makes them feel unbalanced.
‘I’m sure things will get easier,’ I say.
‘It’s been nine months. She’s still finding new things to be mad about.’
‘Like what?’
‘I feed the boys the wrong things—when I take them back she inspects their mouths to make sure their teeth haven’t crumbled. And I don’t do enough with them. Or I do too much, and bring them back exhausted.’
Verity was the reason he didn’t show up for lunch last Saturday. She’d been calling him all morning, spitting anger into the phone, blaming him for Jack’s nappy rash and for leaving the buggy outside to be splattered with rain and seagull droppings. He’d gone for a walk along the seafront to shake off the bad feelings. Our lunch thing, it had blown right out of his head.
Robert opens his flute case. It’s an ebony instrument, its silver keys dull with neglect. Through the wall from Diane’s house comes the one with operatic wailing: ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ There are more sounds: girls’ yelps, like a real fight’s going on, involving fists and maybe some frantic hair pulling. Diane is smoking a cigarette in a deck chair in her front garden. Her jeans are rolled up to her knees, her putty-colored calves on display, feet resting in a plastic washing-up bowl of sudsy water.
No one on Briar Hill uses their front gardens to lounge in. Even if I were overcome by an urge to soak my feet, I’d never loll out there with strangers wandering past and gawping. ‘I’ll have to speak to her about this noise,’ I tell Robert. ‘It’s only been a week, and it’s driving me—’
‘I’ve never seen you angry,’ Robert says, smiling.
‘It’s not funny.’ I peel cellophane from the thin bunch of petrol-station carnations he brought to say sorry, and stuff them into a vase. They’re a bleached-peach color, browning at their frayed edges. They look sorry.