by Fiona Gibson
We would always have that.
12
Yog-yog
Saturday, 9:15 a.m. A rap at my door. Midge’s face pressed against the front door, her pale cheek flat on the glass. I open the door a fraction. She shoves it fully open and wedges it with her booted foot. ‘It’s a bit early, girls,’ I say.
‘We thought you’d like to play,’ Jojo announces behind her.
‘Sorry, a friend’s coming round. We’re—’
‘You’re still in your pajamas,’ Midge observes. ‘I like them better than your others.’
‘Thank you, Midge.’
‘Is it a boyfriend what’s coming?’ she asks brightly.
‘No, not a boyfriend—a pupil, actually.’
‘Can we meet him?’
‘We’re going out,’ I explain.
Robert is skipping his lesson today; we’re taking the boys out instead. ‘It’ll be fun,’ Robert insisted. ‘The boys will love you being there.’
‘Why?’ I asked. Because I was female? Or a teacher and, allegedly, good with children?
‘Is that him?’ Midge shouts, hopping on my path and jabbing her light saber in the direction of an elderly man who’s hauling a wheeled shopping basket up the hill.
‘No, Midge, that’s not Robert.’
‘Is he handsome?’ Jojo inquires.
‘Not bad. Yes, I suppose so. I like him.’
‘Whooo,’ Midge says, grinning. Her foot is still firmly planted over the threshold of my house. Behind her, Jojo blows her nose loudly on what looks like a close relative to the strip of fabric Diane used to bandage my hand.
‘Okay,’ I say, ‘come in for a few minutes. You can draw at the table while I get dressed.’
They troop in, glancing around suspiciously as if I might be hiding my mysterious adult male friend under the table or behind the piano. I lift down the box of paper and felt pens from the bookshelf, which Midge spills out onto the table. By the time I’m dressed, they’ve produced a fantastically detailed drawing of a lanky henna-haired woman who would certainly benefit from a gel-filled bra. ‘It’s lovely to see you two doing something together,’ I say, ‘and not squabbling.’
‘We’re trying to be good,’ Midge murmurs.
‘God,’ Robert says, ‘those girls aren’t exactly friendly. And their mother’s the one with the Queen fetish? Don’t know how you put up with them.’
His Fiat is struggling up the hill, whining like an impatient child. When I glance back, Midge is standing in the middle of the street, a splodge of pea-green mac, flapping her light saber mournfully. ‘They’re just shy with people they don’t know,’ I say.
‘They were sizing me up,’ Robert adds, ‘as if I were a job candidate.’
‘I think you failed your interview.’
‘I’m devastated,’ he says, chuckling.
Verity lives at the end of a row of mock Tudor semis perched high above the road. It’s a temporary home until Robert re-decorates their flat so it can be sold for maximum profit. These houses’ gardens slope so steeply that any attempts to make sense of them—creating rockeries or stepped flower beds—have failed to take away their cliff-like appearance.
‘Does she know I’m coming?’ I ask.
‘She knows I’m seeing someone,’ Robert says—then, flustered, adds, ‘I mentioned that I’m bringing a friend.’
‘But does she know who—’ I begin. Robert has already climbed out of the car and is hurrying up the steps. Verity’s new boyfriend—Robert calls him the Twit—is taking her to Barcelona for three days. After keeping Robert waiting for several minutes, she appears at the door. She has a thin, vexed-looking face and bobbed hair that looks freshly blow-dried. She’d be stiffly polite when Robert had his flute lessons at their flat. Once, when she gave me coffee in which the milk floated on the surface in sour flakes, I wondered if she’d made it that way on purpose.
Verity peers down at Robert’s car. She’s wearing sandals with spindly heels and a short, skinny-strapped navy-blue dress. It’s not a mother-of-twins outfit. It’s a going-to-Barcelona-for-breathtaking-amounts-of-sex outfit. Robert is talking urgently to her, pushing back his hair distractedly. The boys appear like a whirlwind around Verity’s legs. Robert pecks her cheek, takes their reins and guides them down the steps.
They’re yelping toddler words: Dadda! Juice! Mamma! and are dressed identically in denim dungarees and red jackets. The only way to distinguish one from the other is the fact that Finn—or is it Jack?—is clutching a ginger monkey. Both boys eye me warily as they reach the bottom of the steps.
‘This is Stella,’ Robert says, ‘and she’s very nice.’ He makes me sound like an unfamiliar dish—something lacking obvious child appeal, like braised liver, that he wants them to try. I wind down the window and try to rearrange my face to look friendly and caring. Robert starts bundling one of the boys into his car seat while gripping his brother’s reins.
I should get out and help but Verity is glowering down at us with her arms firmly crossed. Robert could have picked up the children first and brought them to my house. He chose to bring me here. He wanted Verity to see me. It’s important for her to know that, while she swans off to Barcelona with the Twit, he too will be enjoying the company of a young(ish) person of the opposite sex. He glances up at Verity. I can almost see him mouth the words: so there.
Robert tries to hoist in the second child whose hands are clamped around the car door’s handle. I suspect that my smile says neither ‘friendly’ nor ‘caring.’ It feels too big, as if it might fall off my face and be lost among the crushed juice cartons and cracked polystyrene coffee cups that litter the area around my feet. Verity is still gazing down at us, making mental notes: See? Robert can’t even lift our sons safely into a vehicle. Is it any wonder I left him?
Both boys are strapped into their car seats now, and are wailing heartily. ‘Fucksake,’ Robert mutters, starting the engine. I try to soothe them but they just scream harder. I’m spending too much time in the company of small people with their unpredictable demands. Jojo and Midge visit nearly every day, banging on my door, demanding biscuits and drinks and switching on the Jacuzzi function in the bathroom. Soggy towels are strewn on my bathroom floor. I’ve found a child’s stray sock in there, and a pink glitter pen, slowly leaking onto my cream-colored bath mat.
It’s not quite the life I’d planned for myself, as I watched the endless gray sea during our ferry trip home from France. Ignoring Dad’s warning, I had continued to play my flute each morning. He hadn’t complained again. I assumed he had given up on me, as I had on him. When I grew up, I decided as the boat cut through the thrashing waves, I’d have a clean, tidy house, proper food in the fridge, and no interference from anyone.
At least the girls seek out my company, which is vaguely flattering. Younger kids seem to find me quite horrifying. For a short time Charlie was seeing a wispy young thing called Caitlin, who had a baby. The child, who had been nestling peacefully in her mother’s arms, started howling as I walked into Charlie’s living room. It was as if she’d been stabbed with a pin. I tried sitting where she couldn’t see me, and not talking, but she could still sense my presence and sobbed into Caitlin’s lamb’s wool sweater until I left the room.
The engine eventually lulls Robert’s children into calmness. We’re driving to Butterfly Land, an oversize greenhouse out in the country filled with free-flying butterflies. ‘Finn, tell Stella your monkey’s name,’ Robert says brightly.
‘Kilty,’ he mutters.
Robert explains, ‘Verity bought it. I said it was a guilty present because she’s going away, and he heard me.’
‘Kilty!’ Finn pipes up from the back.
It takes longer than it should to reach Butterfly Land because Robert’s Fiat keeps stalling at junctions and roundabouts. It’s a cool, breezy morning. Butterfly Land is filled with damp plants and butterflies with enormous fragile wings, which the boys try to swipe at while piling Maltesers into their mouths. Verity does
n’t allow the boys to have sweets or chocolate. I suspect that Robert bought them to spite her.
He has brought a tiny digital camera and wants a picture of me with the children. ‘No,’ I protest, ‘I can’t stand having my photo taken.’
‘Come on, you look lovely.’
I’m aware of my cheeks flushing as I crouch beside the children on the fake cobbles. I look up at the gray-blue eyes and the nut-colored hair that always looks windblown even on calm days, and I smile at him.
Robert takes a picture, then another. I can feel him observing me through the camera, moving closer, and put my arms round the boys to stop them escaping. A woman stops and says to Robert, ‘Aren’t you lucky to have such a photogenic family?’
She walks on before I can say they’re not mine, I’m just an imposter mother. Robert winks at me and says, ‘Yes, I am.’
The children sleep in their car seats all the way home. We carry one each into Robert’s flat and place them, still snoozing, on the sofa. ‘Thanks for helping me today,’ he says.
‘I didn’t help at all. It was fun.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘you’re really natural with kids.’
He starts to prepare the boys’ supper in the kitchen. We’re planning to eat later when the children are in bed. I’ve brought wine, which he knows about, and my toothbrush, spare knickers, moisturizer and deodorant, which he doesn’t. The flat starts to smell of tinned spaghetti hoops, the sort of tea that I’d knock together while Charlie plowed through his homework.
Finn’s eyes flick open. ‘Kilty,’ he murmurs.
‘Kilty? Oh, your monkey.’ I scan Robert’s living room and check under the cushions.
‘Kilty!’ repeats Finn, scrambling off the sofa.
Robert fetches the boys and lifts them into their high chairs in the kitchen. The phone rings, and the answer phone clicks on. ‘Hi,’ Verity says, ‘just got to the airport—could you call me please, Robert?’
She’s sensed that I’m here. Both boys are banging their high-chair trays. Finn is whimpering now, his mouth wilting like a flower.
‘Verity just called,’ I tell Robert.
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘Maybe Kilty’s in the car, or at Butterfly Land.’
‘Oh, God,’ Robert says. Jack has dunked his hands into his dish of spaghetti hoops and is now slathering sauce up his arms. Finn hurls his rubber spoon at me. Robert hurries out to check the car, but there’s no monkey. He stumbles back in, announcing, ‘I’ll have to drive back and get it.’
‘Will they still be open?’
‘I’ll make it, if I go now. I’ll put on a video for the boys. You’ll be okay, won’t you? I’ll drive as fast as I can.’
‘Okay,’ I say, feeling panic welling in my stomach. He’s leaving me in sole charge of children who think you wear spaghetti instead of eat it. I suspect that Verity might not approve of this arrangement.
Robert frees the boys from their chairs, leads them to the TV and stuffs a video into the player. Teletubbies scamper eerily across fake grass.
‘Won’t be long,’ Robert says. His kiss is so light on my lips, it might have been a butterfly landing there.
Laid out on the kitchen work top are ingredients for our grown-up meal: steaks, onions, mushrooms, salad, fancy bread with cranberries nestling like gems inside. There’s also an opened box of vanilla-scented candles. I check the boys, who are mesmerized by the TV, and freshen my makeup in the bathroom.
‘Want dink,’ Finn says at the door. ‘Want Dadda.’
‘Drink? Come on, let’s get you a drink.’ I lead him to the kitchen, find a beaker in the cupboard and fill it with water. Repulsed, he shoves it away.
‘Want Kilty,’ he mutters.
‘Daddy will be back in a minute,’ I say, trying to steer him back into the living room where a machine with a corrugated tube is squirting out pink stuff called Tubby Custard.
‘Want yog-yog,’ Finn adds.
‘Yog-yog?’
‘Yog-yog!’ he roars. Does he mean a toy, or something to eat, or a person? A rich odor is eking out from his dungarees. I have never dealt with a child’s soiled bottom—anyone’s soiled bottom, for that matter—and have no idea where Robert keeps nappies or the yog-yog. This feels like some kind of terrible test.
I check all cupboards and drawers in the kitchen. Finn assists by opening a freezer drawer, extracting an opened pack of frozen peas and stuffing a handful into his mouth. Peas ping across the kitchen like bullets. ‘Let’s pick these up,’ I suggest, ‘before Daddy comes back.’
‘Want Daddy,’ he bleats, tipping out the rest of the peas.
I search the fridge for some foodstuff to offer instant contentment but find only ancient green beans, like withered fingers, a bottle of neon-pink medicine and a pile of out-of-date yogurts in unappealing flavors named Strawberry Fizz and Toffee Delight.
The phone rings and Verity’s faraway voice drifts out of the machine: ‘Robert, just about to get on the plane. Wanted to remind you about Finn’s medicine…might need to pick up another bottle on Monday…don’t need another prescription…’
Jack thunders toward the phone. ‘And don’t forget that special cream for Jack’s bottom,’ she continues.
I block the boys from grabbing the receiver and informing their mother that they’ve been left in the care of a woman who doesn’t know where yog-yogs or nappies are kept. Frozen peas are embedded in Finn’s hair. He swipes at me with an icy fist. I offer toys from the wicker basket in the corner of the living room, and try to read The Cat in the Hat. They don’t want toys, Teletubbies or even Dr Seuss. They want Dad, who’s been gone for thirty-five minutes, although it feels like a month. The sky has darkened, as if a gray sheet has been draped over everything.
The phone rings again and Robert says, ‘Stella—can you hear me? Please pick up the phone.’
I grab it and ask, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Damn car broke down just after I left Butterfly Land. Conked out at a roundabout, the way it always does. I’ve called the garage. They’ll be here within an hour.’
‘An hour?’
‘Look, I’m sorry. We’ll still have our meal. Is everyone okay?’
I peer into the kitchen where his kids are now lying flat on their bellies, flicking peas at each other. ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘We’re having great fun, aren’t we, boys?’
I check the bathroom, then the larger bedroom, for bottom-cleansing supplies. Compared to the rest of the flat, which is littered with sticky toys and gnawed picture books, it’s very orderly. The bed is smoothed over, and vanilla candles have been arranged in glass bowls on each side of the bed. Candles, freshly made bed. My stomach shifts uneasily.
In a plastic box on the floor lies one nappy, but no wipes. I position Finn so he can watch a program about people who’ve found valuable items in their attics, and un-popper his dungarees. I peel off the dirty nappy, wipe away as much of the damage as I can with loo roll, and fix on the clean nappy. Both boys are whimpering meekly. No wonder Verity started to lose it after giving birth. She felt trapped, Robert told me, as if she’d been put in a bubble and no one could hear her.
A car door slams, followed by hurried footsteps. The boys scramble toward the front door like wild cubs. ‘No Kilty,’ Robert mouths at me, then asks, ‘Have you had a lovely time with Stella?’
‘Bad lady,’ Finn mutters.
‘Verity called again,’ I say. ‘She left a message about Jack’s medicine.’
‘Right.’ He glances into the kitchen.
‘Sorry about the mess. I changed Finn’s nappy, and he wanted yog-yog, but I didn’t know—’
‘Yog-yog’s yogurt.’
‘Oh, of course.’
‘What did she say? Did she want me to call back?’
‘She’ll ring you when she’s landed.’
I watch from the doorway as he wanders past me, into the kitchen, where he pulls out a brush from the tall cupboard and starts to sweep up the peas. I’ve messed up
, proved myself incapable of keeping two toddlers relatively clean and content. I don’t belong here. ‘Story!’ Jack chirps, waving The Cat in the Hat.
‘Later, darling,’ Robert says. He’s thinking about Verity and the Twit in their hotel room.
‘Robert?’ I say.
He carries on sweeping, his head filled with his wife and his boys and that damned lost monkey. He thinks he wants me—wants someone, at least—but there’s no room for anyone else.
‘I think I’ll go home,’ I tell him.
He doesn’t say, ‘Stay.’ He doesn’t even say, ‘I’ll call you.’ I kiss his cheek, and feel the boys’ eyes boring into the back of my head as I pick up my bag and jacket. ‘Take care,’ Robert says as I leave.
Outside, the air feels heavy and damp. The pub in Robert’s road is glowing inside. I could murder a drink, but know a couple of teachers who live in this street and don’t want them to think I make a habit of sitting in the White Mare all by myself on a Saturday night.
Most of the houses have lights on and it’s so tempting to peek in. People are busying in kitchens, preparing special meals. Girls are getting ready for pub crawls. Some are setting out already. They clatter along the pavement, their sleek hair shining in the streetlights. One girl says, ‘Hi, Miss Moon’, and I realize it’s Amber, whom I used to teach, until she decided that boys and a part-time dishwashing job at the Beachcomber left little opportunity for practicing scales.
I call Jen on my mobile and leave a message: ‘I know you’ll say it’s okay, but I’ll be coming on my own to your Christmas party.’ I’m apologizing for having no one to bring, as if Jen would mind. Like Robert with his candles, I’d made a plan. I’d intended to ask him to come to Jen’s party with me.
I walk faster now, moist air filling my throat. I call Dad, but as usual it’s Maggie who answers: ‘Of course he’s fine, dear. That’s the whole point of having him on the show. It’s a sort of pastiche. Didn’t you think he came across well?’
‘As long as Dad’s not upset…’
‘Not a bit, dear. We’re both delighted.’
‘Can I speak to him?’