They were sitting at the kitchen table, the toast neatly stacked in the toast rack, the butter in curls, the marmalade glistening fatly from the cut glass dish. The cereal had been eaten in as much silence as is commensurate with Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and the first cup of coffee had been drunk. It was like a gavotte, not a step out of place, not a smile cracked. They were both waiting for the perfect moment and finally, it came.
‘I notice the hanging baskets are not in place this morning.’ Mike Green had rehearsed the start of this conversation for a while and had thought that this was the perfect opening.
His wife carried on buttering her first slice of toast, over and over, corner to corner as though her life depended on it. ‘Really?’ It wasn’t what he had hoped for, but it was at least an opening for the next sentence.
‘They’re actually on my car. Upended on my car, to be exact.’
‘I’ll clean them off if you can give me a moment after breakfast.’ She looked up at him and a more experienced husband would have known to say no more.
‘It’s not the mess I really mind,’ he said, in his most sanctimonious tones. ‘It’s the fact that it was done at all. It’s the lack of gratitude.’
‘Gratitude.’ It was a wonder the coffee didn’t freeze over. ‘Gratitude? You know who did it, then. Someone who should be grateful, I’m assuming.’
The vicar was a bit confused now. They had both been awoken by the noise the previous night or, to be more precise, the small hours of that selfsame morning. No words as such had been audible, but the gist was clear. And, just before the front door slammed as if to break off its hinges, there had been the unmistakeable sound of two large baskets of petunias hitting the bonnet of a 1999 Audi estate. ‘Well … it was Chris, surely.’
‘Surely?’
Even the fairly novice husband was beginning to grasp that all might not be well. ‘It may have been vandals, of course …’ He waited hopefully for a reply, but there was nothing. ‘But I have to say, Sarah, that it seems beyond the bounds of coincidence that your son comes in blind drunk and the garden is ruined.’ He picked up a triangle of toast and began to butter it. He then loaded it with marmalade and took a huge bite. ‘Also,’ he began, his mouth full but she had decided to speak.
‘Do you know how repulsive I find that habit?’ she said, in a mild, conversational tone.
His eyes bulged and he swallowed his toast. ‘Repulsive? What?’
‘You always talk with your mouth full. I assume you do it so that you leave no spaces for someone else to fill with words of their own. But as I seem to have silenced you temporarily, I will tell you now that yes, I expect it was Chris who tipped up your precious petunias. I hardly call that ruining the garden, however, which, when I looked last, runs to nearly an acre of lawns and flowerbeds, tended by me and a gardener. Tell me, Mike, where is the lawnmower?’
‘Umm … it’s in the … garage?’ Gavin would have been proud.
‘No. In fact, we don’t have a lawnmower. Unless you count Mr Curtiss, the vicar’s warden, who mows the grass every Thursday without fail after he has done the churchyard. So, don’t whine to me about your bloody garden!’
‘Sarah! Language!’
‘Oh, please!’ She was in her stride now and, although not a naturally foul-mouthed woman, could feel the words queuing up, just begging to be said. ‘Don’t be a sanctimonious arse, Michael. Chris has been through some of the worst weeks of his life. I haven’t been much of a mother lately. I should have seen the signs. He was never happy, not even as a child, but I just didn’t think. Claire more than made up for them both, she has done nothing but smile from the day she was born. I think I always considered them like day and night. But now, when he is struggling to rebuild something, all you can come out with is your sodding petunias.’
Words struggled for precedence in Mike Green’s mouth but in the end nothing won and he sat there, mouth still half full of toast and marmalade, stunned.
‘I married you against my own better judgement,’ she continued. ‘I have never been and never will be a religious woman. If you ask me, it is all a load of hypocritical, superstitious claptrap. However, I do, sometimes, quite like you. When you let your guard down you can be quite a nice man. But, honest to God, Mike, you really should learn to think before you speak. It doesn’t matter how long we stay married; I will always be mother to my children before I am wife to you.’
‘How long we stay married?’ He looked stricken. He had assumed it was for life. If it wasn’t, how would he ever hold his head up in the parish?
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said, reaching over and patting his hand. ‘I’m not going to leave you, not going to show you up. I’ll do the café, I’ll do the jumble sales. I’ll be the vicar’s wife, don’t you fret. But the last days have opened my eyes, Mike. I had a child who needed me and I didn’t notice. It’s too late, I expect, but I am going to try and put that right.’
There was a crash overhead.
‘Oh,’ the vicar said, with a trace of venom in his voice. ‘Number One Son is awake, from the sound of it.’ The sound of scurrying footsteps and a hurriedly-slammed bathroom door completed the picture. The sneer on Mike Green’s face nearly earned him a faceful of marmalade, but his wife had said her piece and she was back in vicar’s wife mode again. ‘Perhaps you should go up and see if he needs his arse wiping as well!’
The vicar hadn’t used a dubious word since, as he recollected it, 1983 and the shock of what he had just said carried him out of the room and out of the house in a cloud of high dudgeon. The sound of his car reversing at speed out of the drive, accompanied by the crash of petunias hitting the drive and was followed by the blast of an angry horn.
Saturday morning at St Blasius’ vicarage. Welcome to the weekend.
Chris didn’t feel at all well. He did at least remember most of the night before. This was an improvement on some of his really wild nights – or, perhaps more correctly, his regretful mornings – from the days before he met Megan, but he still felt very, very ill. It was Saturday, it had that to say for it, not that that made that much difference to him these days. But he felt less of a pariah on a Saturday, because if someone met him in the street, they wouldn’t immediately assume he was unemployed. He could also lie in bed a while longer and perhaps if he stayed there long enough, Mike would have gone out. Through a muzzy head, he thought he heard sounds of raised voices from the kitchen, which was immediately below his room. But he couldn’t believe it – it must be just the ringing in his ears. What he couldn’t mistake was the sound of a moderately clapped-out car reversing at some speed out of the drive. The blood drained from his face as he also recognised the sound of a couple of dozen petunias and their accompanying baskets and soil sliding off the bonnet. It may have been worse than he thought.
He dressed hurriedly, making sure to wear something different from his not-terribly-glad rags of the night before. Nothing screams ‘Drunk!’ than wearing the same clothes twice running. He went downstairs gingerly; there was nothing in the sound of reversing to tell him who was behind the wheel and he really wasn’t up to Mike and his mock-gentle tones this morning. He stuck his head around the kitchen door and there was good news and there was bad news.
The good news was that it was his mother sitting there at the table, cradling a mug of coffee and looking thoughtful. The bad news was that he hadn’t grown out of his unfortunate idiosyncrasy of being completely nauseated by the smell of toast when he was hung over. He legged it down the hall and made it by a whisker to the downstairs loo, where he was violently sick. It made him feel better, paradoxically and he made his way back into the kitchen, fairly sure that he would stay the course this time.
His mother looked up. ‘Feeling okay?’ she said, but her voice was devoid of even her fake bubble this morning.
He slid into Mike’s abandoned seat. ‘I’m as well as can be expected for someone who sank more alcohol last night than I usually drink in six months. Also, as well as can be expec
ted for someone who – and I’m pretty sure this wasn’t a dream, unfortunately – tipped a couple of hanging baskets over his stepfather’s car.’
She smiled, but thinly, with no meaning in it. ‘I’m glad you don’t feel too bad,’ she said. ‘And no, it wasn’t a dream.’
There was a silence, during which Chris wrung out a mug of coffee from the cafetiere. It was almost stone cold but at this point it didn’t matter that much. It was wet. It was caffeine – that scored it two out of two.
‘And, in case you were wondering,’ she continued, as though there had been no pause, ‘he was angry, yes.’
‘Sorry.’ There was probably more to say on the subject, but just at that moment, Chris was stuck for an answer.
‘Hmm. Yes. Me too.’ She got up and put the kettle on. This was going to be a three cafetiere morning, she could tell.
‘No, Mum, really, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. But … well, it hadn’t gone well, the stag do. And I just felt a bit …’
‘Frustrated. Join the club.’ She turned to face him. ‘I know you and Claire don’t like Mike.’
He made small noises of dissent, but nothing sounded very convincing, so he stopped.
‘More especially, I think, you don’t like what he’s done to me. I know I’m not the woman I was, but I thought …’ She bowed her head and buried her face in her hands. Then, she squared her shoulders and looked up, wiping her tears with angry fingers. ‘I needed someone to lean on. He was there. That’s all there is to it. And if I seem to you to be a sanctimonious old trout sometimes,’ she looked at Chris and forced a smile, ‘I suppose it’s because sometimes, I am a sanctimonious old trout.’
He laughed and shook his head.
‘But this morning, I decided to have a shot at being your mother for a bit. And so that’s why the vicar has stormed out. I don’t know when he’ll be back but I do think it might be a good idea if the petunias had been swept up before then.’
‘I’ll get straight onto it,’ Chris promised. It seemed the least he could do.
‘But also, darling, I think it would be a good idea to look for somewhere else to live. Speaking for myself, you could live here forever if you wanted to, but … well, it is the vicarage, I suppose. And he is …’
‘… the vicar. Yes, I had spotted that. I was going to go down to the benefits office on Monday anyway. I know I can't go on like this.’
‘Are you sure that Dave wanted to sack you?’
‘No, not at all. But he’s moved Tamsin in and got rid of Jacintha. She was all bound up in it, I know. She wouldn’t pee on me if I were on fire and I think I blew it when I let him know that his affair was common knowledge. There’s no enemy like someone who knows you know where all the bodies are buried. And besides all that … I really can't gather up the strength to go through all that again. I’m not sleeping.’
‘Is it the dream?’ She had returned to the table with the fresh coffee and poured them each a mugful.
‘Dream?’
‘The one with the dog. You were always having it when you were a little boy.’
‘Was I? It can't be exactly the same. In this dream, I’m showing someone a house.’
‘When you were tiny, it was a dog in your bedroom. When you went to school, it was in the changing room. It just goes where you do. Your dad even suggested once that we actually get you a dog, but I thought it would scare you.’
‘Dead right, if it was like this one. It’s got jaws this big.’ He stretched his arms out to his sides, to show the extent of the dogs bite.
‘Well, it wasn’t a good idea. And Claire was allergic to pets in most cases, anyway. That’s why we never had any.’
Chris mulled it over for a moment. How could it be that he had been having the dream for so long with no memory of it? ‘Anyway, yes, I do have the dream. But it isn’t just that. I just can't get to sleep. My mind is always racing, but then, when I have to do something, I just can't get the enthusiasm.’
‘Could you be depressed, darling?’ she asked, gently. ‘Dad used to …’
‘No!’ What was it with everyone? ‘No, I’m not depressed. I’m just a bit miserable over this job and Megan and everything.’
‘Look, darling, why don’t I ring Megan and see if we can have Kyle tomorrow? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. The weather won't be nice for that much longer, autumn’s almost here and we could take him to the park.’
‘A bit of a cliché?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Dad taking the kid to the park? No. If I am to see Kyle, I want everything to be normal. I want to have my own place, with a room for him with some of his toys there. I want it to be an ad hoc arrangement, some days with me, some with Megan. I don’t want it written in stone, every third Sunday afternoon until the crack of doom.’
His mother was stricken. Of course that’s what he wanted. It was what they all wanted. But he was learning, on a sharp curve, that we can't always get what we want. ‘Another time, then,’ she said, burying her nose in the mug and steaming up her glasses. She looked up at him, going cross-eyed as she had when he was a child. She even got a small chuckle out of him.
‘Can I just do one thing at a time? I might be able to manage that. Multi-tasking just isn’t in my remit just now.’
‘I understand, darling. And I don’t want you to go straight away. It’s just that I think it would be better for you if you were living somewhere else. You wouldn’t have to be worrying all the time about whether you were being a nuisance. Not that you are … oh, dear, I’m not making myself clear at all.’
He reached over and patted her hand. ‘I understand. I’ll do it on Monday. And meanwhile, to show willing, I’ll make sure I haven’t bunged up the computer. Can you get me in? Mike never let me have the password.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! As if that matters. Yes, of course. Are you ready now?’
He drained his mug. ‘Yes. I just need to clear out my browsing history – I know how annoying it is searching through someone else’s crap when you’re looking for something.’
‘Why don’t you pop outside and just sweep up those petunias?’ she suggested. I’ll get you logged on and then we’ll be back on track for the morning?’
He got up and went round to the back door, dropping a kiss on her head as he passed. ‘Just fyi,’ he said softly into her ear, ‘Claire and I always knew that you were still our mum.’ She squeezed his arm and leaned into him briefly. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.
Sarah Green was not really a computer person. She didn’t do internet banking. She preferred to read her books on paper and watch her films on the television set, safely stowed behind faux Jacobean doors in the sitting room when not in use. She had heard of Skype but for all she knew, it could be one of those new breeds of dog, like a cockerpoo or a labradoodle. If she were to be asked to describe it, it would be somewhere between a Scottie and a Lhasa Apso. But she could log on and she could retrieve and send emails. And she was a dab hand at shopping online; she could whip around a virtual Tesco like a ninja. She could hear sounds of sweeping from the front of the house as she settled down at the computer. She pressed power and the computer leaped into life; it had only been sleeping. She tutted to herself. Chris didn’t help himself, sometimes. He knew how annoyed Mike got when he didn’t log off properly. The screen did its colour-changing thing as usual but didn’t go to screen-saver; a picture of Mike and Sarah at their wedding reception, all smiles. Instead, a message told her that her browsing had been interrupted; did she want to resume? She clicked okay as a matter of course and in that micro-second between click and screen her world imploded.
Chris had swept up all of the petunias and the soil and had knocked out the moss which lined the hanging baskets. He looked at the remains and thought he could probably rescue a few plants, but would that then look worse than the missing baskets? He decided that no baskets at all would be the best plan; anyone seeing four rather crushed petunias with soil ground into their leaves migh
t be rather puzzled. Not having hanging baskets, on the other hand, was more the norm than otherwise, especially with autumn just around the corner. He took a shovel from the garage and disposed of the evidence on the compost heap and stacked the baskets by the door of the shed. He realised that he hadn’t been getting outside much the last few weeks. He had always been out and about in the course of his work, walking between houses whenever he could. But he had been hunched over the computer for too long, playing solitaire as often as not, but lacking the will to go for a walk for the sake of it. But he felt better already, his headache almost gone, the smell of fresh, clean air in his lungs and clinging to his clothes. Yes, from Monday he would make sure he walked at least five miles a day, until he got a job, that was, and he would soon be a new man.
There was something about the look of his mother’s back as he went into the study that made Chris’s heart hit the back of his mouth. There was no muscle tone in it, she was slumped, boneless, with her head dropped forward. ‘Please, God,’ he whispered as he tried to force his legs to work and run to her. ‘Please, God, no … no!’
‘Mum?’ He tried to make his voice sound normal, but he knew it didn’t. ‘Mum? Are you okay?’
She didn’t answer, but as he got closer and could see the screen, he could see why she was so quiet. Grimly, without even a glimmer of pretence of pleasure, two dead-eyed women writhed around each other on the screen. The lighting was bad, the direction worse and when any dialogue did briefly occur, it was banal in its gross obscenity. A horrible thought struck Chris.
Downward Page 11