Various Pets Alive and Dead

by Lewycka, Marina

  ‘Jason says you can make carrots into rockets, miss.’

  She looks about seventeen, though this must be biologically impossible, and Clara guesses she’s at least in her late twenties. She has the same intense grey eyes as Jason, and the same pale skin, but on her it looks not sickly but delicate, almost translucent.

  A surge of protectiveness takes Clara by surprise. ‘Please, call me Clara. My mum’s going to do a vegetable-carving demonstration later.’

  She smiles, peeping up through angel curls. ‘Is the new headmaster here, miss? Jason says he’s reyt nice.’

  ‘He is. I’ll point him out to you.’

  Jason is watching with a look of tender anxiety. ‘All right, Mam? All right, miss?’

  ‘Mm. We’re not having much luck with our plants, Jason,’ she confides. ‘We can’t even give them away.’

  ‘Nah, miss. Yer doin’ it all wrong.’

  He takes the sign reading ‘greenhills trees – free to good homes!’, turns it over and, using the petition-signing pen, he writes in big letters on the back.

  SPESIAL OFFER MINACHURE TREES ONLY t1 GRAT VALUE !!!!!!

  Just then, out of the corner of her eye, she spots Mr Philpott waving an agitated brown-suited arm from the far side of the room. She gestures to him to come over. He shoulders his way through the crowd.

  ‘’Amlet …’

  Then his eyes fall on Mrs Taylor.

  ‘Fair nymph!’ He straightens his bow tie. ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question.’

  Mrs Taylor blushes and her cheeks go all dimply. ‘I couldn’t agree more, sir. I hope Jason’s not been too much trouble. If he is, just tell me, and I’ll wallop ’im.’

  ‘Mr Philpott …!’ Clara whispers, but he’s far away in Elsinore.

  Suddenly there’s a commotion at the back of the hall – then a single loud familiar voice. ‘Come along, Oolie! This way!’

  A tall figure is shoving her way forwards, gripping a small dumpy girl by the hand, moving with a sort of swaying sidestep, as though she’s on the run from Strictly Come Dancing, a long silvery rain cape glittering behind her. Clara winces. What on earth’s her mother wearing? At times like this, she wishes Doro was someone else’s mum whose eccentricity she could enjoy at a distance.

  Oolie is looking anxious and clinging on to Doro because she doesn’t like crowds. When she catches sight of Clara, she runs up to hug her.

  ‘’Allo, Clarie. We pottied them plants, din’t we, Mum?’

  She pokes a finger into the compost and licks it.

  ‘Yes, darling. Leave them alone now,’ says Doro. ‘Sorry we’re late, Clara. I brought some vegetables for the carving demonstration, like you said.’

  She flings off her silver rain cape, rolls up her sleeves and rummages in her carrier bag. Then she clambers up on to a chair and booms in a voice that carries right across the hall, ‘Parents and pupils, please can I have your attention! I’m going to demonstrate some simple carving techniques.’

  Even after nearly forty years in Yorkshire, her mother’s vowels still bear the unmistakeable ring of the South. Oolie, by contrast, speaks with the accent of her Doncaster special school.

  ‘What’s she gooin’ off about?’

  ‘To grace your table with beautiful and appetising vegetable art!’

  Grace your table! Clara recalls the grungy yellow table in Solidarity Hall, cluttered with unwashed plates, unemptied ashtrays overflowing with dog-ends of spliffs, and the dried-out remnants of vegetarian casseroles.

  In a few deft strokes Doro cuts semicircular petals around the globe of a radish and with a flourish plops it into a jug of water, which Clara brought to water the seedlings.

  ‘The secret is to soak them in cold water!’

  The room falls silent; all eyes are focused on the tall middle-aged madwoman standing on a chair with a radish in one hand and a paring knife in the other.

  ‘Soon, the petals will swell and open out!’

  Clara feels herself redden as people jostle closer for a better view, while her mother repeats the whole embarrassing exercise on some more radishes. Then she brandishes a monster carrot.

  ‘Now I’m going to carve a rocket!’ She starts to chisel.

  ‘Marvellous, innit?’ murmurs Mrs Taylor.

  Unobserved by Doro, Oolie is fishing the radishes out of the water with her fingers, and popping them in her mouth. Clara tries to catch her eye to warn her off, but Oolie ignores her. Jason has disappeared.

  Then, she spots Mr Gorst/Alan at the next stall saying goodbye to Miss Hippo (about bloody time) and inching through the crowd towards her table, his eyes twinkling dangerously. Her heart quickens. Beside him is another man, a stranger, tall, suntanned, handsome in a greying foxy way, with gimlet eyes and steely hair.

  ‘Let me introduce Councillor Malcolm Loxley, our Chair of Governors.’

  ‘Can I interest you in a tree?’ she says.

  ‘You can interest me in anything, love. I’ll have the cherry.’ He hands over a pound with a rakish grin. Her eye falls on a small enamelled flag of St George pinned in his lapel. A football fan? A patriot? A Doncaster chauvinist?

  ‘How about a carrot rocket, Councillor?’ Doro calls, from the heights of her chair, where she’s still chiselling away.

  ‘Who …?’ asks Mr Gorst/Alan in a whisper.

  ‘My mother – she’s demonstrating vegetable carving.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Fascinating.’ Then he notices Mrs Taylor. ‘Who …?’

  ‘Mrs Taylor, Jason’s mother.’ Clara introduces them. ‘This is Councillor Loxley, the Chair of the Governors, and this is the new Head Teacher, Mr Gorst/A …’

  Jason has reappeared, sitting under the table opening up the bags of plastic bottles. She gives him the Look, but he carries on regardless.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir … sir.’ Mrs Taylor’s gaze moves between Councillor Loxley and the Head. Somehow, as if by psychic power, the top button of her blouse pops open. ‘I thought it were ’im.’ She gestures contemptuously towards Mr Philpott.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Philpott … a misunderstanding,’ Clara whispers, seeing his face darken.

  But now another crisis strikes. Oolie has disappeared.

  ‘Oolie! Oolie!’ Doro peers down from her chair.

  Clara starts searching. Her little sister will be getting panicky – she’s so short she can easily vanish in a crowd.

  Suddenly there’s a shriek. ‘Watch out!’

  She looks up in time to see a rocket-shaped carrot whizzing through the air. Over on the far side of the room, Mrs Salmon yelps and staggers against the coffee stall. Scalding coffee sloshes into the tightly packed crowd. The convulsion spreads in a shock wave. Shoulders shove, bums bump, elbows and heads collide – whoops! There goes the history display! Miss Hippo lets out a genteel historical mew.

  The floor is awash with coffee, rainwater, plastic bottles and darting children. Something catches Clara’s foot, she tumbles and grabs out for the nearest thing, which seems to be Mr Gorst/Alan’s upper leg. She feels … Before she can feel anything interesting, he reaches for her hand and pulls her to her feet so sharply that she knocks Doro’s chair – ‘Sorry, Mum!’ – who teeters and topples – ‘He-e-elp!’ – bringing down the Greener Greenhills display and the councillor, who lands on top of Mrs Taylor, who lands on Clara. It’s all getting very intimate and confusing. Mrs Taylor’s blouse pops another couple of buttons. Out of the chaos, Mr Philpott surfaces from under the table, hauling Oolie-Anna by the hand. She lets out a loud radishy burp.

  ‘’Ere she is. C’mon, you little clown.’

  Clara tries to throw him a warning look, but it’s too late – Doro has gone berserk. ‘Don’t you ever dare call her that, you bumptious ignorant old man! She’s not funny! She’s perfect! Do you understand?’

  ‘Mum, for goodness’ sake!’

  She’s never seen Mr Philpott look so scared.

  Oolie starts to wail. ‘I am funny! I wanna be on TV! I wanna shag Russell
Brand!’

  Under the table, someone sniggers.

  ‘Jason!’ yells Mrs Taylor, also berserk. ‘Gerrout o’ there, you little fucker!’

  Jason emerges, slyly exchanging grins with Oolie. Mrs Taylor, still half unbuttoned, snatches a plastic bottle from the floor, and whacks it down again and again and again on his skinny shoulders, until Clara intervenes.

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Taylor. I’m sure he didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘Like fuck ’e didn’t!’ says Mrs Taylor.

  It isn’t until she’s halfway home on the motorway that she remembers she forgot to check on the hamster. And something else is bothering her. What happened to the tree seedlings? They have all disappeared without a trace.

  DORO: Pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will

  Holding tight on to Oolie-Anna’s hand as they struggle up the stairs of the moving bus, Doro thinks, ‘I really shouldn’t have shouted at that funny old man. He probably thought he was being kind.’ She remembers now, with a flush of embarrassment, that she knows him slightly from allotment meetings. She also regrets shouting at Oolie, though her daughter’s concept of naughtiness undoubtedly includes throwing things at people. Now she’s sulking and saying she wants to go and live with Clarie, and Doro has to stop herself from saying, ‘Clarie doesn’t want you, Oolie. She’s got her own life to live.’

  ‘Look, Mum! Greggs! Let’s stop!’

  Oolie raps on the window of the bus as it lumbers through the town past the dismal straggle of cut-price shops and karaoke bars. Greggs bakery is one of Oolie’s favourite haunts. Given her tendency to pile on plumpness, Doro has to be strict with her – especially as she’s not averse to the occasional cream puff herself. That’s another reason she feels Oolie isn’t ready to move into a place of her own. She would eat all kinds of rubbish, and who would keep an eye on her?

  ‘Ssh. We’ll have lunch when we get home.’

  That officious social worker with his clipboard and his patronising leaflets really got up her nose, trying to tell her that she was being overprotective and that Oolie-Anna must ‘step outside her comfort zone’ and ‘connect with her personal dreams’ and ‘blossom into the fullness of her individuality’. For pity’s sake. Who does he think invented individuality and personal dreams, back in the seventies?

  ‘Hey! He’s well fit!’

  Oolie waves both hands at a traffic warden busily ticketing a row of cars by the shopping parade. Although she didn’t mention this to the social worker, Oolie’s uninhibited sexuality is also a worry. Would Oolie remember to take the pill every evening if there was no one to remind her?

  ‘Come on, Oolie. We’re there.’

  Clinging on to the handrails they stagger down the stairs and out on to the pavement of Hardwick Avenue, where Oolie makes a beeline for a puddle left by the recent rain and stamps in it with both feet.

  Their inter-war semi is set back behind holly bushes in a quiet tree-lined street where their neighbours are dentists and accountants; it has three generous bedrooms and a small sunny garden – it’s the sort of house they could never afford if they moved back to London now, they’d be lucky to get a one-bedroomed flat for the same price. It’s because of the deindustrialisation of the North, Marcus explained. All the time they thought they were experimenting with revolutionary ways of living, the real revolution was slowly taking shape under their noses: the demise of manufacture, the triumph of finance.

  Since he’s retired from the Institute, Marcus has ensconced himself in Serge’s old room, which he uses as a study. If Serge wanted to come home to finish writing up his PhD, they’d have to come to some arrangement. Goodness knows what Marcus gets up to in there. He says he’s writing a history of the non-Communist non-Trotskyist left – the Fifth International, he calls it. It can’t be good for him to spend so much time picking over the past, which only makes people unhappy. Yes, he’s become much more withdrawn and grumpy recently.

  She puts the kettle on and opens the fridge for milk.

  ‘Be the change you want to see.’ Mahatma Gandhi’s words are fixed to the fridge door with a green frog magnet; they’ve taken the place of ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need’, which hung on the fridge door at Solidarity Hall, held in place by a red flag magnet.

  She takes a cup of tea upstairs and sets it down on Marcus’s desk.

  ‘How’s it going, love?’ She ruffles his hair with her fingers.

  He starts and looks up at her, smiling, blinking owlishly behind round glasses, as though he’s just woken up from a deep sleep.

  ‘That Italian comrade who came over in 1984 – can you remember his name?’

  ‘Bruno. Bruno Salpetti.’

  Doro shuts her eyes for a moment, and finds she can remember not only his name but the rough-smooth texture of his cheeks where the stubbly bit ended and the baby-soft bit began, the clean smell of his soap, the fine black hairs on his forearms and belly, and the thicker mass of black curls below.

  ‘That’s it!’ He scribbles it down. ‘Was he in Potere Operaio?’

  ‘Lotta Continua.’

  Does Marcus know about her and Bruno? And, after all these years, would he mind?

  ‘That was my first encounter with the politics of autonomy. Listen to this.’ He leans forward and reads from the screen of his computer. ‘ “Although the workers have to sell their time to the capitalist who owns the workplace, their human needs and desires are opposed to those of the capitalist.” ’

  ‘My most beautiful compagna,’ Bruno had called her. It’s a long time since Marcus said something like that. Yes, in those days she could still give Moira Lafferty a run for her money, despite her long auburn hair and DD boobs. The new men, it seemed, weren’t that different from the old men.

  ‘ “Autonomy is the workers’ struggle to assert their own personal and economic goals …” ’

  Even Fred the Red, who spent his days wandering in the wordy thickets of Marxist theory and his nights with a succession of tearful girlfriends from London, found time for Moira. In fact, he was probably the father of Star.

  ‘ “… in the face of the employer’s relentless pursuit of profit …” ’

  The dictates of sisterhood meant you weren’t supposed to feel angry or jealous towards other women, because we were all victims of sexism, and we had to solidarise. Beautiful women were oppressed because they were only sought after as sex objects, and plain women were oppressed because they weren’t sought after at all.

  We were sisters, Moira and I, she reflects. We stuck together like sisters, but we also squabbled and fought like sisters, especially over Bruno Salpetti.

  Bruno arrived in Solidarity Hall from Modena in 1984, at the start of the miners’ strike, declaring he wanted to share the straaggling of the proletaariat. He slept on a mattress on the floor of the Marxism Study Centre, which had long since been transformed into a playroom for the kids. His only luggage was a little backpack which contained a selection of readings from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, a razor, and a pair of very small black underpants. (Moira, needless to say, found some pretext to investigate and whispered her findings to Doro.) The razor went unused – he grew a beard, which usually Doro didn’t fancy on men, but on him it looked excitingly leonine. The underpants appeared on the washing line with pleasing regularity. He broke the monotony of their bean-grain diet with wonderful spaghetti dishes made with fresh tomatoes and olive oil; he maintained that Gramsci had more to offer to the revolution than Trotsky; and he believed in, and practised, free love. He was only twenty-five, but what’s a decade or so between friends?

  Moira, as you would expect, was the first to get in there.

  ‘He’s got a dick like a gorilla!’ she reported with characteristic refinement.

  Doro felt a flush of annoyance. What does she know about bloody gorillas?

  ‘Oh, really,’ she said.

  It was bad enough that Moira was bedding Bruno at any time of day or night, bu
t she had to advertise what a good time she was having with little crescendos of shrieks and sighs that could be heard in every corner of the house. Although it was solidly built, there was something about the layout of Solidarity Hall which meant that sound percolated through stairwells and corridors. And whatever you were doing you had to stop and listen – there was no escape. Once it was the curly-haired milkman collecting his money; Doro was on the doorstep in her dressing gown, fumbling in her purse for some change, and suddenly his ears pricked up. Their eyes met. A little smile spread across his face and he looked at her enquiringly.

  ‘She’s got TB,’ said Doro. ‘She often coughs like that. I expect she’ll die soon. It’s quite tragic.’ She slammed the door.

  The kids naturally were curious, and Nick explained that it was a sign that Moira was very happy. This was confirmed for them one day when two women from Women Against Pit Closures came collecting for the soup kitchen which had just been set up in the village hall. Doro invited them in and offered them tea. They entered gingerly, stepping over the debris in the hall, looking curiously at the posters on the walls (‘THE TEARS OF PHILISTINES ARE THE NECTAR OF THE GODS’ was still there), sniffing the lentil-flavoured air. Sticking close together, they followed her down the long gloomy passage into the kitchen, where Clara and Serge were having an after-school snack of peanut butter and cornflakes at a table which hadn’t been cleared since last night. As they sat down and Doro put the kettle on, the ceiling above started to creak, and the sounds of Moira’s bliss were suddenly very audible.

  ‘By ’eck, she sounds ’appy. Must’ve seen t’ fairies at bottom o’ t’ garden,’ said the younger one, who was called Janey.

  ‘D’you rent ’im out?’ asked the older one, called June, who had a smoker’s voice and a sagging crinkled face.

  ‘Yes,’ said Doro, ‘but there’s a queue.’

  They exchanged quick looks.

  Janey said, ‘D’you want to ’elp us in’t kitchens?’