by Marie Browne
“I like maths and I like money and I think I’d be good at it because you keep telling me I’m a pedantic little pain in the neck.” Sam had given us a big grin.
I’d looked around at our ‘interesting living situation’ and thought ruefully about our sad and tiny bank balance. “This is some sort of teenage rebellion, isn’t it?” I’d said.
Sam had just looked blank as his dad laughed.
“I think that’s great,” I’d said. Then I’d had a brilliant idea. “Tell you what; just to give you a taste of the lifestyle, after Christmas you can take over the shopping budget. Any savings you make you can keep half.”
Geoff choked on his tea; he obviously could see the problems with this plan that I had failed to divine.
Sam lit up. “Deal,” he’d said.
I lifted my head from the table and glared at my grinning husband. “You knew what would happen, didn’t you?”
“Yep.” He got up and began to put back the multiple layers needed to head back into the freezing outdoors.
I carried on glaring at him as he chuckled his way out of the boat and then starting getting myself together. This shopping trip was going to be one long ordeal. As good as his word, Sam had indeed taken over the task of cutting our shopping budget and consequently his pocket money had increased by an average of five pounds a week. To make that saving however, took at least a hour longer in the supermarket than I’d ever taken. Every product had to be scrutinised, weighed, and compared. There were big discussions about luxury items, unless of course they were what he wanted, and we’d had some fair arguments in the aisles. Just to save time, I’d taken to letting him sort out the basics. Anything on the luxury list, I snuck back and purchased while he was at school. He was going to make a great accountant … if he managed to live long enough to graduate.
By the time Sam and I returned, frazzled, fraught, and missing quite a few things I felt we’d need, Charlie had come home and was helping Geoff move the first of our new worktops into place.
Dumping the shopping bags I stood and stared at the new black work surface while the family stared at me, waiting for the verdict.
“Oh, it’s just gorgeous!” And it was, the black of the slate was beautiful against the tiles of the splash-back and, even more wonderful, it had increased the height of the surface by at least two inches which for my height was just brilliant. “I love it.”
Geoff grinned as the boiling kettle began its panicked hooting. “Good, I’m glad you like it. You can make the tea.”
“Oh, OK.” I made the tea and handed him the steaming mug.
“Erm …” He grimaced at me. “Could you just put it down on the floor and grab me a tea towel?”
I shrugged and put the mug down. “What’s the matter, have you cut yourself?”
Geoff shook his head. “Can you put the towel on my lap?”
Curiouser and curiouser. I laid the tea towel across his legs and stepped back wondering what on earth the problem was.
Geoff winced and looked up at me. “You’re just going to stand there and watch me aren’t you,” he said.
I nodded.
With a sigh he reached down and picked up the mug of tea. I was shocked to see how much his hand was shaking. Despite obvious attempts to keep it under control, he slopped the liquid onto the carpet, over the arm of the sofa and then proceeded to pour a fair amount into his lap. Gritting his teeth in concentration he attempted to get the vibrating, quivering mug to his lips.
“Whoa … WHOA!!” I grabbed the mug and held it away from him. “What the heck is all that about?”
Geoff reached for his mug his fingers palsied and quivering. “It’s from the stone cutting.” He grasped one hand in the other and it looked as though he was trying to shake a dice. “I was at it for two hours straight and now I can’t stop them shaking.” He bit his lip and stared at his hands as they twitched and fluttered in his lap. “I’m sure it will stop soon,” he said.
“O … K.” I took his tea away and poured it into a travel mug. Securing the top well, I handed it back to him. “Try that.”
“Thanks.” He managed to get the mug to his lips without burning himself although he did manage to bash himself in the nose and chin a couple of times before he got the cup lined up.
Trying not to giggle, I looked around at the kitchen. “Did you only get the one done?” I winced as I realised what I’d asked.
“Yes, Marie.” Geoff’s voice had a grating, irritated quality. “I just got the one done.”
I leant over and gave him a kiss. “One is great,” I said. Then found myself something to do, very quickly.
With the terrible weather, the dark nights, and the general pile of other stuff that took up most of our time it was another two weeks before the second work surface was even attempted.
Geoff managed to find all sorts of reasons to put it off. Eventually I cornered him and threatened to make him drink coffee if he didn’t tell me what the problem was.
He sighed and slumped onto the sofa. “Do you remember the last work surface I put in?” He asked.
“Well, yes.” I glanced at the new black stone surface. “It was only a couple of weeks ago, even I’m not that forgetful yet.”
“No, you twit.” Geoff rolled his eyes. “Not that one, the opposite one.”
I glanced at the sink still sunk within the green and cream tiled surface. “Well it’s there.” I shrugged, “what’s the problem?”
“If you think back you’d remember how much trouble that caused me,” he said.
I thought back and, yes, he was right. He’d had to recut the surface three times because he seemed to have a completely blind spot about where to cut the hole for the basin.
“I seem to have a complete blind spot about holes in work surfaces.” Geoff shook his head and shrugged. “I can do far more difficult calculations than this. Every time, I just get worried and it all goes wrong. If I mess this up we can’t replace that length of slate without spending a vast amount of money. I’m just really terrified that I’m going to screw it up.”
“OK.” I wandered off, grabbed the keys to the storage unit and without another word went out.
It took me about an hour to find all the bits and pieces I needed. Staggering back into the boat I dumped them all in front of Geoff. There was a roll of lining paper for walls, a can of contact artwork glue, charcoal lengths, and a craft knife.
Geoff studied the pile for a moment then looked up at me with raised eyebrows. “Very nice, dear,” he said.
I ignored him. “We’re going to make templates,” I said. “You make one, I’ll make one, and then we’ll lay one on top of the other and check that they are completely the same. If they are, we’ll take one and lay it on the stone.” I picked up the aerosol can of contact glue and waved it at him. “We’ll stick the damn thing to the stone so that it absolutely can’t move and just to make matters even more sensible we’ll draw around it with this.” I picked up a white chinagraph pencil. “I knew keeping all this art stuff from college would come in handy.”
Geoff grinned up at me. “And if it goes wrong again, I won’t feel bad because we’re both to blame.”
I nodded. “Or between us we’ll get it very right.” I raised a fist into the air and said in a flat voice. “Yay! Go team us.”
Three hours later and we had another piece of slate cut out and laying on the frozen grass. We both stood and stared at the white circle that was drawn in the middle. In all honesty, I stood and looked at it while Geoff spasmed and flinched. He’d been doing the cutting and was, once again, twitching like a globophobic at a child’s birthday party.
“How exactly are you going to get that piece out?” I asked.
“I’m going to drill lots and lots of holes all the way around the pattern.” Geoff alternated between making fists and shaking his trembling hands in the air. “Then I should be able to put a jigsaw down one of the holes and just do a quick dot to dot all the way around.”
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��Hmm …” I stared down at the piece of stone. “Would you like a cup of tea first?”
Geoff shook his head. “Nope, there’s no point putting this off, let’s just get on with it shall we?”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “Why don’t you use one of the angle grinders?”
Geoff shrugged. “They’re really not very good at doing curves,” he said. “And, apart from that, I only have one left, the other one blew up.”
“Oh.” I really hoped it was ours that had died and not the one we’d borrowed from our neighbour.
Within an hour we were carefully carrying the stone through the front doors. Leaning the piece of stone against the side of the boat, Geoff wandered over and stared at the sink. “Now, I’ll have that cup of tea,” he said.
As the light faded he finally managed to remove the sink and all its plumbing from the old unit top. We stood, balancing the stone work surface between us.
“Well, let’s see if it fits.” Geoff had that little crinkle of skin between his eyebrows that always appears when he’s worried.
I laughed. “It’s too late to worry about it.” I hefted my end of the stone up and, twisting, forced him to follow me until the stone was horizontal. We laid it carefully down on the top of the unit, let it go and stepped back to study it.
“Oh damn it all,” Geoff moaned.
“What? WHAT?” I stared down at the surface, the hole appeared to be exactly where it should be. I couldn’t see what was upsetting him.
“We’ve increased the depth of the surface by nearly two inches.” Geoff stuck his head through the hole and peered at where the taps needed to be placed.
“So?”
Pulling his head out of the hole Geoff grabbed the mixer tap and brandished the end toward me, it had a long screw thread, about two inches of it. “It’s now too deep for this to fit.” Staring at the wall for a moment, he stood and ran the tip of his tongue over his lower lip, one of those little habits that always helped his thinking process. Eventually he turned to me and grinned. The little crinkle between his brows disappeared. “I can fix that,” he said. Dropping the tap unit into the empty cupboard below the newly cut slate he headed for the door.
“Hey!”
He stopped and looked back at me with a quizzical expression.
“We got the hole in the right place though.” I gave him a big grin.
Geoff gave me an obviously fake confused look. “I never doubted it for a moment.” He shrugged at me. “Why, were you worried about it?”
“Get out.” I threw a cushion at him as he ducked out of the door and into the darkness.
Chapter Two:
February’s Sleet And Ice. Peace And Quiet Would Be Nice.
Saturday, the 4th of February and I found myself staring out of the window with a vaguely melancholy air. Of the twelve, February has always been my least favourite month. March isn’t much better for weather, but at least it has the occasional promise of spring. February has nothing to recommend it at all. Rain and wind sweep across the flat Cambridgeshire landscape. With no hills to break up the view the vast grey skies seem to go on for ever. Staggering around in the ankle deep mud with the frigid wind whipping the tip of my nose and my ears into luminous red pain I couldn’t find anything to enjoy at all. Even the wildlife wasn’t bothering to venture out from whatever bolthole each animal had found for itself. The days, although short, seemed completely endless.
On this particularly unexciting February morning, Sam was playing some convoluted game on the computer, Charlie was still asleep, and Geoff was trying to find the enthusiasm to go and pump out the bilges. As the kettle boiled my mobile chirped. I picked it up and grinned. Maybe my oldest, Amelia, would have some interesting news.
I didn’t hear from Amelia as much as I really would like but, as she always reminds me, she is an old married woman, I have to accept that she has her own life now.
The luxurious wedding had taken place the previous July and had been terrifying, irritating, and positively gorgeous in equal measures. It had been a classical wedding with a marquee in the garden of Amelia’s new parents-in-law. I was terribly grateful to Doreen, Chris’s mother, for taking on a lot of the trauma. She was wonderfully organised and there was no doubt that without her input and skills the whole thing would have been a very different affair.
I have to admit at being torn between being horrified at the overall cost and slightly jealous that we just didn’t have the funds to put more toward the opulent affair.
On the day, Amelia had gracefully stepped down the aisle toward the man who would shortly become her husband. I surreptitiously checked Chris’s face for the telltale signs of possible flight risk but there were none. His whole face was just alight with happiness. Charlie, unusually decked out in a deep purple satin dress, stilettos and flowers, looked both uncomfortable and elegant. It’s a real shame she shuns this sort of outfit – it suits her so well.
Helen, my paramedic friend, is a keen amateur photographer and had been drafted in to do the wedding pictures. She’d proved to be not only a great photographer but, when an elderly relative collapsed at the dinner, she and her paramedic husband, Dave, were able to get her sorted out and keep her comfortable until the ambulance arrived to take her away. They were certainly the heroes of the day.
Seven months later and the newlyweds seemed happier than ever.
“Hey, Mum.” Amelia sounded a little upset, maybe I’d got it completely wrong, I hoped I hadn’t.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing, why would you think there’s something wrong?” she asked.
“Just a little intuition: one, you’re phoning me on a Saturday morning, two, you have your voice pitched just a little higher than usual, you sound slightly breathless and you’re snapping at me,” I said.
“Oh.” There was silence for a couple of moments then she sighed. “Don’t freak out, I’m pregnant.”
Six entirely separate thoughts crashed through my mind at the same time. In no particular order they were: you’re only twenty-four, you’re too young, you can’t afford it, aww a baby, you haven’t finished your degree, but you’re still my baby.
There was another thought however, that, growing in ferocity, it repeated and repeated, getting louder and louder until it drowned out all the others: I’M GOING TO BE A GRANDMA …. NOOOOOOOOO!
“Mum?” Amelia’s voice broke the shocked cycle of panic that was threatening to reduce me to a puddle. “Say something. Oh damn, I knew you wouldn’t be happy.”
“NO! No.” I took a deep breath. “I’m fine, it was just a bit of a shock and I had to get my thoughts in order before I said anything.” I picked up the thought that was threatening to make me cry and firmly squashed it. “Are you happy about it?”
“YES!” her voice changed completely, “Well, I am now that I’ve stopped being sick.”
“So when is it due?”
“He, it’s a him.” She laughed. “I’m four months pregnant and I’ve had my first scan, the nurses wouldn’t commit to telling me if it’s a boy or a girl but I’m fairly sure it’s a boy. He’s due in June.”
Arrrgh! That’s only four months away. I was going to be a grandma in just four short months. I took another deep breath and forced a laugh. “That’s great, really great! We get to buy the pram. I call dibs.”
We chatted happily about baby stuff for another fifteen minutes or so and then she rang off, relaxed and cheerful.
Geoff handed me a cup of tea as I carefully placed my phone on the work surface. “Are you all right, Grandma?” He gave me a cheeky grin.
“I don’t know why you’re laughing.” I took a big gulp of tea. “You get to be Grandpa.”
Geoff blinked. “Oh yeah, I suppose I do. Well, how about that?” He wandered off with a smile.
The next morning I stared at myself in the mirror. Despite knowing full well that I was indulging in every tedious cliché that I could, I checked very carefully that I hadn’t been visited by the ‘g
ranny fairies’ overnight. No, I still didn’t have a perm and my hair wasn’t blue. I didn’t feel the need to wear a pastel cardy, or learn to knit, and I already wore sensible shoes so that really wasn’t going to be an issue. Being told that you are going to be a grandma does some very strange things to your psyche. You can fool yourself into believing that you are still young and daft until ‘that’ word starts getting tossed around. Suddenly you worry about falling and breaking a hip. You worry that you are forgetting things more than usual and there is a vague acknowledgement that all the wrinkles that have appeared over the last five years have inevitably been leading up to ‘this’ particular moment.
Luckily, two days later, I had Charlie to pull me out of my decline.
“Hey Mum!” She leapt through the doors of the boat and after throwing her helmet and leathers onto the sofa came rushing over and gave me a hug.
I hugged her in return and then stepped away. “What have you done?”
She gave me a big and obviously fake smile. “Nothing! Why do you always think the worst of me?”
“I don’t think the worst of you … I know you.” I bent down and gave her a hard stare. “Now, tell me … what … have … you … done?”
“Oh, all right.” She flung herself onto the sofa, landing on poor Mortimer who rolled over and tried to suck her ears. “Now don’t freak out …”
Well this was a déjà vu moment. “Oh God, you’re not pregnant are you?”
She laughed. “I really don’t think that’s likely, do you?” She ran her hand over the shorn sides of her head. The dreadlocks had recently come off after she’d found a spring from a biro and a dead spider matted in them and she had completely freaked out about it all. She now sported a short and wide blonde Mohican with dark sides. Like everything it looked good on her even if it was a little extreme. Being an art student pretty much meant she could get away with any style she wanted to.
“Drugs?”
“No!” She looked slightly horrified.
“Alcoholic? Armed robbery? GBH? Running away with the circus? Joining the Army? Murder?”