Not Funny Not Clever

by Jo Verity

  She thumbed the reject key and shoved the phone back in her pocket. ‘It’s okay.’ There was nothing that Alex could tell her at this moment that she could conceivably want to hear. ‘It’s not important.’

  They were still going strong at midnight, Jordan steadily acquiring the whole of London and covering it with hotels, whilst the adults talked about… Next morning Elizabeth couldn’t recall exactly what they had talked about but it was all very easy, very pleasant.

  They were picking their way across the garden towards the gap in the hedge, when Mimi announced, ‘Dad, we’ve had this great idea. Why don’t we take Jay with us tomorrow?’

  ‘Pleeeaase, Dad.’

  The girls linked arms with their father and leaned their heads against his shoulder.

  ‘Why don’t we all go?’ Angel said. ‘The beach is fab. And you’ll be doing us a favour. Dad’s a total pain if he hasn’t got anyone to play with.’

  Dafydd laughed. ‘It’s good to know you’ve got your old dad’s interests at heart. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. The house is on the rustic side but we’ve got plenty of space. And we can always do with more people to play cricket.’

  The girls jumped up and down, clapping their hands and squealing with delight.

  ‘Hold your horses, you two’ Dafydd turned to his guests. ‘Seriously, you’re very welcome to join us, but don’t let these harpies bully you into submission. Sleep on it. Get back to us in the morning.’

  Jordan had been silent throughout the exchange. It was impossible to see his face in the darkness, but Elizabeth guessed that he would like to go.

  As they passed the tent, recalling Carl’s gentle reproach – ‘If we treat Jordan like a child then he will behave like a child’ – Elizabeth asked, ‘Where are you sleeping tonight, Jordan?’

  ‘In the house. Might as well. Save moving my stuff.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘A fiver will cover today. You can pay tomorrow.’

  ‘Fine.’

  15

  WEDNESDAY: 9.40AM

  ‘What d’you think?’ Diane asked. They were in the kitchen making breakfast. ‘Carl’s got rehearsals all week. But he says he’s happy for us to go.’

  ‘He’s obviously planning to ship in another woman as soon as you’re out of the way,’ Elizabeth said.

  She had slept soundly, not waking until gone nine. Then she’d lain in bed for a while, enjoying the message which Alex had left on her phone. Mum? Are you okay? I’ve been trying to get you all evening. No one’s answering on the number you gave me. Is Jordan okay? His phone’s going straight to voice-mail. Look. What’s going on? Can you ring me back?

  ‘So, what d’you think?’ Diane persisted.

  ‘Jordan would love to go, I’m sure of that. By the way, we’ve got to get into the habit of calling him Jay. Think of it as an initial, not a name.’

  ‘Jay. Okay. That’s one vote for Gower then.’

  ‘What’s the set up? Is it Dafydd’s holiday place?’ As she spoke his name, a frisson of pleasure – surprising yet agreeable – caught her off guard.

  ‘No idea. But he said that there was plenty of room and he wouldn’t have invited us if he didn’t want us to go.’ Diane clapped her hands together. ‘Come on, Lizzie. What’s your problem?’

  My problem? I’m starting to like this man.

  ‘Actually I was looking at it from your point of view. What with one thing and another, I thought you might feel uneasy about being away from home.’

  ‘I’d feel a damn sight easier if I’m sixty miles away.’

  ‘Sixty miles. Is that all it is?’

  ‘Thereabouts. And we’re only talking a couple of days. It’s not the other side of the world. We can be back here in an hour if we need to be.’

  Elizabeth pretended to weigh it up. Were she to appear too keen, Diane would latch on to her crush (that’s surely what it was) straight away and blow it out of all proportion. ‘Okay. Why not?’

  Diane grinned. ‘See? It’s simple.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Saying yes.’

  Diane finished her coffee. ‘Could you drive us down? Carl needs the car.’

  In that instant of saying ‘why not?’ an image had flashed through Elizabeth’s mind. She was in the passenger seat of Dafydd’s sporty blue car, bowling alongside sandy beaches and curling seas, laughing and talking. (Surely George wouldn’t mind if she had a flesh-and-blood friend. Besides, George didn’t drive. Not when he was with her, anyway.)

  The blue car morphed into a silver Audi, Diane next to her and Jordan in the back.

  ‘Sure. No worries.’

  ‘Great. I’ll ring Dafydd and get the details.’ She paused in the doorway. ‘I forgot to ask. How’s the cat?’

  ‘The …? Oh, much better thanks. On the mend.’

  Diane’s reference to the cat reminded her of her promise to keep in touch with Maggie. It made no difference to her neighbour where she was, nevertheless it didn’t feel right that, having said she’d be in one place, she should be somewhere else.

  ‘Hi, Maggie. Everything okay there?’

  Maggie assured her that the cat was fine, the garden looked lovely and squatters hadn’t moved in.

  ‘We’ve been invited to Gower for a couple of days. Diane’s friend has a house down there.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful. Don’t give this place a second thought. Oh, and how are things going with what’s-it?’

  ‘Jordan? Okay, I think. Certainly no worse than if we’d stayed in London.’

  Jordan was, as near as it was possible to tell, pleased when she knocked on his bedroom door to tell him that they’d decided to go. He immediately began stuffing his possessions into the rucksack.

  ‘I shouldn’t think you’ll be needing all that,’ she said.

  ‘I might.’

  She lingered, expecting him to demand yesterday’s negotiated wages. When he didn’t, she took a five-pound note from her pocket and held it out.

  ‘Oh. Yeah,’ he said.

  Returning to her room, she spread the contents of her bag on the bed. London clothes. Perfect for a week in the city but wholly unsuitable for the beach. What should she take? To begin with, she wouldn’t need the beaded bag or those flimsy sandals. They weren’t going to a hotel. They couldn’t expect Dafydd to supply everything – anything, really. They would need towels – bath and beach. Bedding, too. But for what? Single or double beds? Camp beds? Air beds?

  Diane joined her. ‘Dafydd wants to leave at midday.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking. We should take towels. And did he mention bedding?’

  ‘No. But you’re right as usual. That’s why I need you in my team, Liz. You’re so practical.’ She thought for a second. ‘Why don’t we take sleeping bags?’

  The slithery spectre of sleeping bags loomed, musty and dusted with the exfoliations of previous occupants.

  ‘I could take the duvet off my bed,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Save dirtying something else.’

  Diane wrinkled her nose. ‘Mmmm. We can’t be sure where we’ll end up. I think sleeping bags would be more flexible, don’t you?’

  When she went downstairs, Jordan was standing in the hall, earpieces in place, rucksack at his feet.

  ‘That’s a silly place to stand,’ she said.

  When he showed no sign of having heard, she raised her voice and tried again. ‘No point in standing there. We’re not leaving until twelve. You’d better have something to eat before we go.’

  He picked up his rucksack and started towards the kitchen.

  ‘Put your bag in there,’ she pointed to the living room, ‘out of everyone’s way.’

  Her sons used to hang around like this, able-bodied yet incapable, teenagers yet still needing to be nagged to go to the lavatory before they went anywhere. On one memorable occasion, she and Laurence had been ferrying luggage to the car, parked some way down the street. They were going to Cornwall so it must have been August. It was raining, a sharp wind driving th
e rain through the open front door and soaking the hall carpet. ‘Shut the door,’ she’d called to the boys who were scuffling on the landing, attempting to push each other down the stairs. As they returned to pick up the last load and make a final check of the house, the door slammed and the boys came towards them down the street, laughing and trying to trip each other up. Every window had been secured, every door locked, and the house keys – hers, Laurence’s and the set of spares – were safe inside the house. ‘But you told us to shut the door,’ Ben had pleaded in their defence.

  Diane was on the phone. ‘Okay … see you soon.’ She replaced the handset. ‘Dafydd says sleeping bags would be good. And the girls want us to bring the tent.’

  ‘Will we have room for it?’

  ‘Dafydd said if he folds down the back seats of the estate, he can take all the bulky stuff plus one passenger. We’d better sort out the tent. Jordan, you can give us a hand when you’ve finished that.’

  Jordan was standing in the corner of the kitchen, spooning cornflakes into his mouth, the heaped bowl raised close to his chin. Once he had finished the cereal, he drank the residue of the milk directly from the bowl.

  Elizabeth winced. ‘Jordan…’

  He lowered the bowl, a milky moustache smeared across his downy lip. ‘What?’

  He’s nothing to do with me.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Taking the tent down was straightforward but persuading it back into its two drawstring bags was anything but.

  ‘Stupid bloody thing,’ Diane muttered as the slippery fabric continually made its getaway.

  ‘You must remember how it fitted in, Jordan,’ Elizabeth pleaded, after the umpteenth attempt. ‘Wasn’t there an instruction sheet?’

  Jordan, arms dangling at his sides, shrugged. ‘Carl … dunno.’

  Defeated, they stuffed the overspill into a bin liner, leaving a giant footprint of crushed, yellowing grass as the only evidence that the tent had been there.

  Dafydd’s estate car pulled up outside on the stroke of midday. Elizabeth wouldn’t have guessed that he was fussy about punctuality. But, thinking about it, his job was governed by the clock. A TV weatherman had to be in the right place at the right time or the whole schedule would go to pot. No leeway, no latitude. Come rain, come shine. Literally.

  They exchanged greetings and Dafydd opened the car door. He nodded towards the mound of luggage piled next to the garden gate, ‘Shove that in here. Stacks of room.’

  Punctual he might be but one glance at the muddle of rucksacks, holdalls and carrier bags jumbled behind the back seat, told her that he knew nothing about packing. She itched to take the whole lot out and start again – show him how it should be done. Instead she opened the boot of the Audi. ‘We’ll put our things in here. C’mon Jay. Biggest at the bottom.’

  Jordan, presumably concerned that any suggestion of reluctance might provoke her into letting ‘Jordan’ slip, did as she commanded.

  ‘Push them tight together. That’s it,’ she encouraged. ‘We’re aiming to eliminate voids.’

  ‘Nice and tight. No voids,’ Dafydd murmured, solemnly, as he helped Jordan.

  A piercing finger-whistle alerted them to the arrival of Angel and Mimi who came strolling towards them down the pavement. Today their hair was in schoolgirl plaits. They wore bikini tops beneath skin-tight cotton cardigans, and miniscule flounced skirts on top of leggings. As if to compensate for their shrunken clothes, each carried an outsize handbag – Angel’s white and Mimi’s yellow. The bags glinted and rattled with buckles and chains, more like horse tack than handbags.

  ‘Right.’ Dafydd rubbed his hands together. ‘How are we going to do this?’

  ‘We’ve worked it out,’ Mimi said. ‘Nothing personal, Dad, but Angel and I want to go with Jay.’ She flashed a smile at Elizabeth. ‘We’ll come with you, if that’s okay.’

  ‘All right with you, Diane?’ Dafydd asked.

  ‘I’m easy.’

  You’re not kidding.

  He produced a road map and spread it on the bonnet of Elizabeth’s car. ‘This is where we are and,’ he traced the route with his finger, ‘this is where we’re heading.’

  Elizabeth noted the clean nails on his square-ended fingers and how, when they caught the sun, the hairs on the back of his hand shone like gold.

  ‘Postcode?’ she asked.

  He chanted the code, leaning through the open window as she keyed it into the sat-nav.

  ‘Best hang on to the map in case technology fails. The final ten miles are a bit tricky but it’s well signposted.’

  Without discussion, Angel took the front seat while Mimi and Jordan climbed into the back.

  ‘Ring me if you get lost,’ said Diane. Then she ducked into the seat next to Dafydd and they pulled away.

  Elizabeth kept up with them for a mile or two but, once they joined the motorway, jockeying traffic separated them and she lost sight of the red estate amongst the vehicles streaming west. She kept to the inside lane, doing a steady sixty-five. The Audi was eager to go faster but she kept her speed down, not wanting to overtake Dafydd.

  Angel, who had been sitting side-saddle, talking to her sister and Jordan, turned to face the front. ‘I’m glad you’re coming. It’s more fun when there’s a crowd of us. You’re going to love it. It’s my favourite place in the whole world.’

  Elizabeth glanced at the girl seated next to her. Little more than a child, her declaration implied that she had circumnavigated the globe. When she was Angel’s age she’d been abroad twice – the first time with a school group, to visit the war graves near Ypres, and the second on a package tour to the Costa del Sol with her parents and sister. On both occasions, she had travelled by coach. Had anyone invited her, when she was seventeen, to name her ‘favourite place in the whole world,’ she would have been stumped.

  ‘Why d’you like it so much?’

  ‘The beach is awesome. Great for surfing and all that stuff. But it’s not that. We’ve had such brilliant times there. Summers and Christmases. I love the way it never changes. Well…’ She frowned then smiled again. ‘When I go there it’s like I’m cwtching by the fire, in my dressing gown.’

  ‘Coo…?’

  ‘Cwtching. Snuggling. Only nicer. Another thing – the house always smells the same, but I couldn’t exactly tell you what of. If you blindfolded me and dumped me there, I’d know where I was. Does that sound weird?’

  ‘Not at all. In fact I read the explanation of that not long ago. It’s fascinating. Smell is the sense most closely linked to memory. Apparently it’s because smell is based on chemicals. We have specially adapted areas in our noses which detect them. They hook up to the most primitive part of the brain which is where our deepest memories are stored.’

  It sounded vague and worthy and not at all fascinating.

  ‘Awesome,’ Angel said politely. ‘Anyway, the house started off as a bungalow but when we were born my grandparents had two more rooms built in the roof space.’

  ‘It belongs to your grandparents?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t Dad tell you?’

  ‘No. No, he didn’t.’ Elizabeth frowned. ‘Won’t they mind if a car load of strangers turns up?’

  ‘They’re not there at the moment. But they’re happy for us to go.’ She looked down at her skirt and fiddled with a stray thread of cotton. ‘Gran’s getting a bit … forgetful, so they’re staying with Auntie Peg in Swansea. Until they work out the best thing to do.’

  They drove on, the air-conditioning in the car insulating them from the heat that shimmered off the carriageway.

  ‘Whereabouts in London d’you live?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘Balham.’

  ‘I don’t know south London very well.’

  ‘It’s okay, I suppose. It’s quite posh.’

  It was more apology than boast.

  ‘We – Laurence and I – have always lived in west London. And Jay’s from—’

  ‘Stoke Newington. Yes. He said.’

&n
bsp; Elizabeth checked the mirror. Jordan and Mimi were sharing an iPod, one earpiece in his left ear, the other in her right.

  Mimi and Jordan. Ahhh. That’s what’s brewing.

  They drove on through the generic motorway landscape, the bilingual road signs the only thing that located them firmly in Wales. Now and again, they passed one that was breathtakingly tortuous.

  ‘How on earth do you say that?’

  Angel laughed. ‘It’s…’ unfeasible combinations of consonants rolled off her tongue.

  ‘Do you speak Welsh?’

  ‘Yes. We all do. Except Sam.’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Mum’s … boyfriend. He freaks out if we speak Welsh when he’s around. He thinks we’re talking about him.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit mean?’

  She wasn’t looking at Angel but she sensed her stiffen.

  ‘Sorry. It’s none of my business.’

  The girl kept her head averted, looking out of the side window, and Elizabeth assumed the exchange was over until Angel muttered, ‘He should make the effort to learn.’

  The sky was almost white, as though it were fading in the blistering sun. Monday night’s storm, if it had raged here, had failed to revive the parched grass on the roadside verges. Pylons marched across the landscape. They passed a golf course, green and incongruous in the bleached countryside, featureless but for bunkers and groves of saplings and Lego-like figures dotted here and there. At one point, the road ran alongside an unnatural-looking expanse of water which might have been a gravel pit. A road sign alerted drivers to the likelihood of crosswinds and within seconds the car lurched, as if an invisible ogre had reared up out of the pewter-grey water, huffing and puffing, forcing Elizabeth to tighten her grip on the wheel. A little further on another sign warned drivers to look out for stampeding deer. She hadn’t expected Wales to be such a dangerous country.

  Ahead and to their left, where low-lying ground met the water of the Bristol Channel, the sky thickened to a yellowish haze. Elizabeth could make out a vast industrial complex covered with huge, squat sheds, cranes and warehouses. The site was spiked with chimneys belching smoke in various shades of grey.