An Enormous Yes

by Wendy Perriam

  Except there didn’t appear to be any, or anything in the way of bread. Having searched the cupboards, she tried the fridge instead, but none of its contents seemed remotely suitable for breakfast: Camembert, smoked salmon, a bag of ready-washed rocket salad, a selection of stuffed olives and two bottles of Chardonnay. She pounced on a single yogurt, half-hidden at the back. She would replace it as soon as Sainsbury’s opened – in fact, do a full-scale shop. She had come down here to help, so, even if she couldn’t persuade her daughter to rest, at least she could take on the major chores.

  ‘Hi, Mum! Sleep well?’

  ‘Yes,’ she lied, admiring Amy’s slinky black-lace peignoir. Thank God she was now dressed herself, rather than wandering round in a hefty, hairy dressing gown. ‘Can I get you some breakfast, darling?’

  ‘No, thanks. We don’t eat breakfast.’

  ‘But surely now you’re pregnant…?’

  ‘Mum, don’t fuss, OK?’

  Deflated, she said nothing. When she was pregnant, she’d had to eat a couple of biscuits the minute she woke up, just to prevent her vomiting, and even then she had suffered extremes of nausea the whole of the first trimester. And at fourteen weeks, two bouts of glandular fever had left her so low in mind and body, her initial resolve to return to a Whitechapel bedsit and make it as a single mum had been swallowed up in a tide of despair. But Amy, thank God, was never ill; hadn’t experienced even a twinge of morning sickness and, apart from that slight show of blood, claimed to barely notice she was pregnant.

  ‘Well, how about a nice pot of tea?’

  ‘Mum, there’s no need to wait on us. Hugo and I are so used to doing our own thing, we don’t expect room service!’

  Maria decided to make herself scarce. ‘I thought I’d have a little recce, to get to know the area. So, if there’s any shopping you want ….’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’re eating out today.’

  Well, so much for her cosy Sunday lunch. ‘In that case, I might go further afield – take myself to Tate Modern, perhaps.’

  ‘No, we’re going to a lunch party and you’re invited as well. Sorry – I forgot to tell you last night. Nicholas and Chloe said they wanted you to come.’

  ‘But won’t I be in the way?’

  ‘Far from it. Chloe said she can’t wait to meet you. She’s pregnant too, you see, and madly jealous because she’s going bananas trying to find a nanny – or at least one who won’t break the bank or run off with Nicholas! But if she tries to poach you, beware, Mum! She’s expecting twins. And, by the way—’

  She broke off as her mobile rang. ‘Stephen? … it’s OK, I can talk…. Oh, I see. I’m extremely sorry to hear that.’

  Having seen Amy’s look of despondency, Maria prayed that nothing dire had happened. She wasn’t to know, however, since her daughter told the caller that she was moving to another room, to ensure total privacy. And, as she made her way towards her mini-office, Hugo drifted in, looking equally snazzy in a striped silk dressing gown.

  ‘Morning,’ he yawned, pouring himself some orange juice, before filling the coffee percolator.

  Maria itched to do it for him, but that, too, might be classed as ‘fussing’. Besides, she always felt slightly daunted by her son-in-law. When Amy first announced she was in love with an engineer, Maria had imagined a down-to-earth mechanic and was thus unprepared for the suave, well-spoken Cambridge graduate, already working as project manager on a huge, upmarket shopping mall. Even now, she hardly knew him, apart from his outward shell. His confidence and competence were so different from her own self-doubt; his unqualified success a reproach to her hapless early life.

  Apart from his one-word greeting, he hadn’t spoken another syllable and she feared he might resent her presence in the house, especially on his precious Sunday off. Yet it was he, in fact, who had phoned her after Amy’s mini-crisis and begged her to come immediately. Like Amy, he was busy, though, and, indeed his mobile was now shrilling, too, so she tactfully retreated to what Amy called ‘the granny-flat’. If she had nothing else to do, at least she could pass the time trying to find a suitable outfit for a stylish London lunch party.

  ‘Delicious chicken,’ Maria enthused. ‘You must let me have the recipe.’

  ‘Ask Waitrose,’ Chloe laughed. ‘I never cook – can’t see the point, with their “Gourmet Entertaining” range. All you have to do is heat it up – which even I can manage!’

  ‘So that paté wasn’t yours?’

  ‘God, no! I wouldn’t have a clue as to how to make a paté. All three courses are courtesy of Waitrose. Though I sometimes ring the changes by buying M&S. They’re pretty good as well.’

  Good, maybe, Maria thought, but much more economical to buy a whole chicken, make the casserole from scratch – and several other meals as well – and have the liver, giblets and carcass to use for a nourishing soup.

  ‘So how does it feel,’ asked Julian, the tall, distinguished-looking barrister, sitting on her right, ‘to be here in the capital, rather than in a village in the wilds?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen much of it yet – although we came here today on the underground and I was amazed by how crowded it was. When I lived in London in the sixties, the tube was almost empty on a Sunday. I was also struck by all the different nationalities and hearing every language under the sun. That’s another big change from forty years ago.’

  ‘Still, I envy you being around then,’ Deborah chipped in – an elegant and ultra-skinny female, who looked as if she might snap in half. ‘Or weren’t the Swinging Sixties quite as swinging as they say?’

  ‘I think it depended on who and where you were. I happened to be at art school, so my friends were pretty bohemian.’ She wouldn’t admit what an outsider she had felt – a devout Catholic and a country cousin, with only mediocre talent and none of her fellow students’ vaunting ambition and self-belief. In truth, she had been out of tune with almost every aspect of the sixties. Drug-taking, mini-skirts, sexual licence, student protests and the hippy quest for freedom – all went against her Church’s stress on chastity, obedience, modest dress and self-abnegation.

  ‘And do you work as an artist now?’ Nicholas enquired. ‘Actually, we’re looking for a painting for our sitting-room, so if you have anything we could see …’

  If only, Maria thought. She had sold nothing since two tiny watercolours, way back in 1968, and had painted depressingly little during most of her adult life. For many of those years, she had, in fact, worked in galleries, but more as a glorified sales assistant than as a dealer in fine art. And such jobs had been hard to find in rural Northumberland. Even those galleries that did exist only managed to survive by making frames and selling art materials.

  ‘I’m sorry, no,’ she said, embarrassed at being the centre of attention and even by her voice. The others’ Oxbridge accents made her own Northumbrian burr seem somehow more pronounced.

  Fortunately, Chloe changed the subject and began extolling some fantastic day-spa she’d discovered near Sloane Square. ‘Amy, if you feel in need of a boost, book yourself in for a “pamper-day”. I had one last week and it was total and utter bliss! It started with a mud treatment. Mud draws out all the impurities in the skin, you see …’

  A pity she hadn’t known, Maria reflected, then she could have utilized the facilities of the deplorably muddy lane beyond the cottage. Judging by the pre-lunch conversation, these modish thirty-and-forty-somethings all tended to favour a hedonistic lifestyle – although it had struck her as peculiar that, while they had no time to cook, ‘me-time’ was apparently no problem. Fiona met her personal trainer for daily sessions in the gym, Caroline ‘couldn’t survive’ without her weekly facials, and even Alexander had actually admitted to having Botox treatments. And, as for manicures and nail extensions, they were clearly de rigueur.

  ‘I’ve been using our local nail-bar,’ Deborah observed, returning to the subject. ‘But I’m not exactly thrilled with it, so maybe I’ll change to your place.’

&nbs
p; Maria studied Deborah’s nails: super-scarlet, super-long. Wasn’t it just a tad absurd to waste an hour or more varnishing or extending ten outgrowths of dead keratin?

  ‘Yes, I highly recommend it. In fact, I intend to be a regular now, and in just a few years’ time, we’ll be going en famille. You see, they already do men’s grooming days and they’re about to introduce these special pamper-packages tailored to the under-fives.’

  Maria found it hard to countenance that tiny tots at playschool were in desperate need of body-wraps or pedicures. She knew her mother would be horrified by these lives of high consumption and high debt. Economy had always been Hanna’s watchword, since, if you did have money to spare, your duty as a Christian was to give it away to those in greater need. She would scrape out the last morsel from every can and carton; fry left-over Christmas pudding in slices, long after Christmas Day; iron the Christmas wrapping-paper so it could be reused the following year; save scraps of soap, to be melted down into a serviceable new bar. And, because she and Hanna shared a home, she herself had adopted similar practices. Now, she worried that perhaps Amy had resented such a frugal way of existence and that her present pursuit of wealth and power was simply an overreaction. Although, in all other ways, of course, she and Hanna had showered ‘their’ child with love. Indeed, ironical as it might seem, it was she who had made her daughter confident, ambitious and with a deep sense of inner worth, so determined had she been to compensate for those first two years of neglect.

  ‘What do you do as your job?’ she asked Fiona, the blonde and bosomy woman on her left, once the conversation had moved away from beauty salons.

  ‘I’m a headhunter, like Amy, only I specialize in financial services rather than in marketing and retail. I see my role as a matchmaker – trying to pair the client with his ideal, perfect candidate.’

  Maria disliked the word ‘headhunter’, with its overtones of cannibals, but her daughter used it all the time. She glanced anxiously at Amy, knowing how dejected she was about this morning’s phone call. Apparently, the man who’d rung had been her lead candidate for the post of marketing director of some prestigious firm but, just this weekend, he had decided against the job and so was pulling out of tomorrow’s meeting with the CEO. Which meant that Amy’s months of hard, painstaking work and delicate negotiations had been a total waste of time and, the minute this lunch was over, she would have to sort out the mess.

  Aware her mind was wandering, Maria resumed her small talk with Fiona. ‘So I suppose you’re as busy as Amy?’

  ‘Absolutely. High pressure goes with the job.’

  ‘And have you also worked in Dubai?’

  ‘Sadly, no. They say it’s the shopping capital of the world and I’m an incurable shopaholic!’

  Was she a prig or, worse, a killjoy, Maria wondered, in that she regarded shopping in the same light as manicures? Hanna’s influence again, of course. Her mother considered it wasteful to buy more clothes or household wares when the old ones were still serviceable. Luckily for Hanna, though, she had never had to mix in so fashionable a milieu. Compared with these sophisticates, she herself felt overweight, under-dressed, homespun and decidedly ancient. The irony was that, when caring for her mother, she had been the ‘young’ and trendy one.

  As if for comfort, she forked in more potatoes – Waitrose again, presumably, since they had been lavishly cooked with onions and cream – then took a swig of her Sauvignon Blanc, savouring its bouquet. It was an unaccustomed treat for her to eat and drink so well and, indeed, to eat and drink in company, and as for the voguish dining-room, it was like something from the Design Museum, with its extensive black-glass table and high-backed, grey-steel chairs. Even the vase of roses – exotic beauties in the subtlest shade of pink – looked as if they’d been hothoused in Kew Gardens.

  ‘No, we thought we’d try the Maldives this year. We did consider Peru, but …’

  The talk was now of holidays, although, distracted by her surroundings, she had missed the details of who was going where.

  ‘No holiday for us, alas.’ Chloe gave a sigh. ‘I’m already as big as a house, so I wouldn’t be seen dead in a swimsuit. You’re lucky, Amy. You hardly show at all.’

  ‘You’re meant to flaunt your bulge these days,’ Caroline observed, pausing with a forkful of chicken halfway to her mouth. ‘Even wear a bikini at nine months!’

  ‘Oh, that’s just gross.’ Chloe shuddered.

  ‘So when are your babies due?’ Maria enquired, feeling guilty for not having asked before.

  ‘Well, officially, it’s May 5th, though they’ll probably be delivered early. But, however gruesome the labour is, I honestly can’t wait.’ She patted her protuberant stomach with a grimace. ‘What I’ll be like in another three months doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘Don’t they usually do a Caesarean for twins?’ Maria asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s the norm, but you can opt for vaginal delivery if the babies are in the right position and there aren’t any complications and, frankly, I’d prefer that to having an ugly scar.’

  ‘Is a scar any worse,’ Caroline demanded, ‘than being left saggy and incontinent, which you risk with a normal birth?’

  Alexander screwed up his face in revulsion. ‘Look, we’re meant to be eating, if you don’t mind! And, anyway, all this pregnancy-talk is really pissing me off. I hope you lot realize that, as little as a year ago, none of us was even thinking about procreation. Yet now three of our number have fallen for the myth that life’s not complete without an adorable little sprog – or three.’

  ‘It’s not a myth. Speak for yourself!’

  ‘I am – and for Deborah, too. Neither of us have the slightest desire to clutter up our lives with dirty nappies, screaming infants and – least of all – sky-high university fees just as we’re hoping to retire.’

  ‘Infants don’t have to scream,’ Chloe retorted, tartly. ‘Nicholas and I are studying Gabriella Bruno’s book and—’

  ‘Who’s she?’ asked Deborah.

  ‘The latest parenting guru. If you follow her methods, you can train a baby to sleep through the night when it’s only a few weeks old.’

  Maria tried to keep a straight face. Gabriella Bruno had clearly never met a baby as restless and super-alert as Amy. In any case, ‘training’ made babies sound like dogs.

  ‘She’s called the Queen of Routine,’ Nicholas chipped in. ‘And she insists on a super-strict timetable. It pays off, though, she claims, because you don’t hear a squeak from your baby, once it’s been broken in, so to speak.’

  Maria winced as the terminology changed from dogs to horses. Poor Nicholas and Chloe, she thought, picturing their hungry, self-willed twins blithely ignoring any guru’s strict routine. Thank God she would be in charge when it came to Amy’s baby and could feed it on demand and give it nice, old-fashioned cuddles in the middle of the night, if it so desired. None of those present actually had children yet, so the reality might come as something of a shock. Chloe and Nicholas’s place was as unscathed as Amy and Hugo’s – in fact, it put her in mind of a show-house – and she feared its serene perfection was unlikely to withstand the chaos of the new arrivals.

  ‘Another thing,’ Chloe added, ‘is that, according to Gabriella, once your children are older, you need only spend fifteen minutes a day with them, so long as it’s quality time and you switch off your mobile and don’t do emails and stuff.’

  Maria all but expostulated. A mere dog or cat required more than fifteen minutes’ ‘quality time’. And even if the children went en famille to a day-spa, presumably they and their parents would all be in separate cubicles, each with a different beautician.

  ‘Spare me the details,’ Alexander yawned. ‘I still stick by my belief that Deborah and I have chosen the better path.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Deborah echoed, giving her husband a maddeningly complicit smile. ‘I mean, if you’re supposed to learn from your mistakes, why do some parents have more than one child? Take our friends
, Nigel and Fay. Fay gave birth to this horrific little creature who shrieked the place down and more or less destroyed the house. And, would you believe, far from learning their lesson, they went ahead and had a second son, equally delinquent.’

  ‘Never mind Nigel and Fay.’ Alexander made a sweeping gesture, all but overturning his wine glass. ‘It’s you poor sods I’m worried about. When you’re haggard and near bankrupt – and about to be landed with grand-kids, even more expensive and unruly than your own – Debs and I will be going on world cruises, or relaxing by the pool of our luxury villa in Mustique.’

  And, thought Maria, taking an instant dislike to this smugly arrogant banker and his unsympathetic wife, you won’t have the faintest notion of just how much you’ve missed.

  Chapter 6

  ‘MEET MARIA,’ THE tutor said, steering her towards the group of men and women, all standing by the window, chattering and laughing. ‘She’s new – and new to London, so be sure you make her welcome.’

  Everyone began telling her their names, half of which she missed, as they melded in a jumbled blur. At least the class seemed friendly, though – people clustering around her and asking her about herself. And the studio was the perfect setting: a bright, high-ceilinged room; all the available wall-space hung with paintings in a brilliant edgy style.

  ‘Is this all your work?’ she asked the tutor, once the general conversation had died down.

  ‘No, none of it,’ he laughed. ‘This isn’t even my studio. Mine’s a bit on the small side, so a fellow artist lends me his, just for these Friday classes.’

  She was still surprised by how different he was from the persona his name suggested. Felix Frances Fullerton had led her to imagine someone distinctive, or maybe eccentric; not this average sort of chap, of middling build and height, conventionally dressed in grey trousers and blue shirt. The only things that marked him out as an artist were the length of his hair – grey, untidy hair, falling onto the collar of his shirt – and the paint-stains on his battered leather boots.