Tenterhooks

by Suzannah Dunn

  ‘Georgia came to yours,’ she says.

  ‘Georgia was five, she was with you, she didn’t have any choice.’

  ‘Choice?’ Mum’s eyebrows flex into an arch of dismay. ‘What choice do I have?’

  I wish that I had never mentioned choice.

  She deflates dramatically. ‘Well, I suppose I’ll just have to go on my own: yet another place that I’ll have to go on my own.’

  I wish that I was still in bed. I unscrew the lid from the jar of marmalade and reach inside with my fingernail to extract a strand of peel.

  ‘You don’t have to go.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she sings with sarcasm from the mirror.

  I was only trying to help. But I know what she is trying to do: she is trying to imply that I do not understand the nuances of village life, that I am naïve, oblivious to obligation, unschooled in the ways of the world. But I do understand, and she does not have to go. Nobody goes.

  ‘I’ve been invited,’ she stresses, ‘so I’ll go.’ I’ve started, so I’ll finish.

  Everyone is invited, and nobody goes. But I know what she will say if I say that nobody goes: Mrs Simmons goes, and Mrs Darley, and Gemma’s mother … A long list of locals. Then I would have to stop myself from saying, See what I mean? – Nobodies.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continues, ‘I swapped my shift to a late, especially.’

  Now she will say, But I don’t know why I bother …

  On cue, she turns from the mirror with, ‘But I don’t know why I bother, because my efforts aren’t appreciated.’

  Unappreciated by me, she means, or Vinnie, or Georgia: Ungrateful bloody kids.

  She swoops over the table, removing the cornflakes packet, jar of marmalade, loaf, butter, milk, which I would have done in time, in my own time.

  ‘And Georgia insisted on wearing those dungarees again this morning (one day, I’m going to have to do something drastic about those dungarees). I said, You can’t wear those, PLEASE, GEORGIA, NOT to church. And her Ghostbusters T-shirt.’

  The cornflakes, marmalade, and loaf thud into the cupboard like skittles.

  ‘What do you care?’ I call to her over the noise, stretching from my chair into the crockery cupboard for a coffee cup. ‘You’re not religious.’

  She snatches ahead of me into the cupboard, slams a coffee cup onto the table in front of me.

  ‘Oh, I’m not worried that God will think badly of me; I’m worried about everyone else.’

  She disappears again into the hallway. ‘I’ll be back around twelve.’

  ‘Glad you told me: I’ll see to the bunting.’

  I hear a distant tut. And an even more distant, ‘Lola!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you come and fetch these things.’

  What things?

  ‘Now, please.’

  I switch on the kettle and stride down the hallway towards the front door. Mum is outside, in the driveway, picking tea towels from a rhododendron bush.

  ‘They’ve had a good airing,’ she says, turning to me with the small pile.

  Suddenly, behind her, the bush moves: our neighbour, Gordon, leaning over from his driveway. His smile is enthusiastic: those huge white teeth, that huge brown moustache. I have never seen him miserable; his face seems not to have been made for misery.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Judd; good morning, Lola.’ He nods to each of us, two small bows. His hand, coming through the leaves, offers a small cactus. ‘Cactus weather,’ he says. ‘And this one is spare.’

  He is always giving us spares. The tea towel bush was spare.

  He works with plants: outside and in, designing. He works from home, with a small van. From the doorstep, I can see the van, parked in his driveway: glossy racing green, painted with thick cream letters, Brierly Landscapes.

  Mum looks down into his hand and says, ‘Oh, thanks.’ Hugging the tea towels, she nods in my direction.

  I step down from the doorstep and reach for the little pot.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ Mum says flatly to Gordon. ‘It’s lovely.’

  It is a small hairy stump: the usual cactus.

  Mum shuffles backwards and nudges me towards the porch.

  ‘Are you going to the service?’ Gordon asks.

  She stops. ‘Service?’

  ‘Leavers’ Service?’

  ‘Oh, Leavers’ Service, yes.’

  ‘I do love Leavers’ Service,’ he enthuses, ‘I think it’s my favourite. I’m hoping to pop in.’

  Gordon is leader of the choir. He conducts the Carol Service every year and takes the choir on tour to old folks’ homes. He sings solo at weddings on Saturdays. He organizes the jumble sales and bazaars in aid of the church roof.

  ‘Is Georgia leaving?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Goodness, she’s growing up,’ he says appreciatively.

  ‘Yes,’ says Mum wistfully.

  He turns to me. ‘And has school finished for you, Lola? Exams over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And will you go back in the autumn?’

  I shrug. ‘Depends on my results.’

  ‘Ah, yes. And what will you do, if you go back?’

  ‘Don’t know. Depends. French, perhaps. History.’

  He nods thoughtfully. ‘Well, if you need any work, we’ve been thinking of having some help in the house: nothing heavy, and of course we’ll pay whatever you tell us is the going rate.’ A deepening of the many creases of his smile.

  But before I can say a word, Mum is telling him, ‘Sorry, Gordon, but I’ll be keeping her very busy in this house over the summer.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ he nods towards my hands, the cactus, ‘you like gardening?’

  ‘If I know her,’ Mum says, ‘the only thing that she’ll be planting in my garden this summer is herself, on my sunlounger.’

  We mumble and smile our goodbyes, and I follow Mum indoors, into the kitchen.

  Frowning over the cactus, she decides, ‘Dump that in the spice-rack for now.’

  I am furious with her: ‘Why did you tell Gordon that I’m busy? Why did you say that I couldn’t work for him? You know I need the money.’

  ‘It’s not right,’ she says, fussing over the tea towels.

  ‘What’s not right?’

  ‘Him.’ She jerks her head towards the porch, the front door. ‘Going to church.’

  Because Gordon lives with Derek; they live together.

  ‘Mum, you’re not religious.’ The second time today that I have had to remind her.

  She places the pile of tea towels emphatically on the table. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong.’ She picks up and flaps one of the tea towels. ‘They’re unhealthy.’

  ‘Well, they look very healthy, to me.’ They have permanent suntans. By nefarious means, I have heard Mum say, meaning sunbeds.

  ‘They’re unnatural.’

  Looking over the garden, I argue, ‘Weeds are natural but you don’t like them.’

  Behind me, she slaps the tea towel onto the table. ‘Will you stop this?’

  I turn around and tell her, ‘You started this: I asked you why I couldn’t work for them – remember? – and you started all this.’

  She clasps her forehead in a display of exasperation. ‘I don’t want you to go next door. He shouldn’t have contact with children.’

  ‘I’m not a child.’ I turn off the kettle and splash water over the granules in the bottom of my cup. ‘And, anyway, where’s your licence?’

  ‘I don’t need a licence,’ she has begun re-folding the tea towel, ‘I’m normal.’

  ‘You think so?’

  She freezes, dramatically. ‘What did you say?’

  I make a show of my silence, closing my mouth hard.

  ‘Lola,’ she lowers and smooths the square of cloth, the foundation for her new pile of folded tea towels, ‘there are young men in and out of that house all the time.’

  ‘So?’ I puncture the surface of my drink with a dri
bble of milk. ‘There are young women in and out of this house all the time, but that doesn’t mean that we’re up to anything with them.’

  A glance bounces towards me, and away again.

  ‘And who do you expect them to have in and out of there? Maiden aunts?’

  Two tea towels down and several more to go, she gives up and hurries into the hallway. ‘I’m late,’ she calls back, and, ‘get dressed.’ And, finally, from the porch, ‘I don’t care what you say, it’s not normal.’

  Normal: man, woman, children. So, what are we? It is three years, now, since Dad told Mum that he wanted a divorce, and moved into somewhere new with Auntie Doreen from three doors down. Three years since our house was sold and the four of us moved here to Corner Cottage. Three years, and Mum still says that we are New-to-the-neighbourhood. Last autumn, Gordon and Derek moved into the derelict house next door and began renovations. Why do we know them as Gordon and Derek, when, to them, Mum remains Mrs Judd? Perhaps she has never told them to Call-me-Angelina: almost a year, and no Call-me-Angelina. Last Christmas, a card came from Gordon and Derek, big names, splashes of ink, like autographs; but Mum’s reply – small, neat, and carefully joined-up – was From all at Corner Cottage.

  Three weeks, now, since my holiday began. This morning I lay for a while on the sunlounger with a tea towel draped over my eyes to block the sunlight. Mum was tackling the washing line, flapping pillowcases and swearing at wasps. Suddenly she said, ‘Hellooo.’ Her voice was directed away from me. I pushed the tea towel back onto my forehead and opened my eyes. Mum was standing on tiptoe, peering over the fence into Gordon and Derek’s garden. I knew from the tone of her voice that this exclamation was no mere greeting, I knew better than that: this was an enquiry, Who-are-YOU?

  The reply came obligingly from the other side of the fence: ‘Hiya, I’m Tilly.’

  ‘Hello, Tilly.’ She did not move, she wanted more information.

  ‘I’m doing their housework,’ her answer came eventually, ‘twice a week.’

  ‘Oh, are you?’ More information required.

  ‘Yes.’ This was said a little unsurely: she was a stranger to Mum’s tactics. Vinnie and I would have said, Well, no, actually, funnily enough, that was a barefaced lie.

  ‘It’s a lovely old house,’ said Mum, turning to gaze at it. What was she hoping to see that she had not already seen during all these months of craning over the fence? She has no interest in the house; her interest is in the inhabitants. ‘A lovely old house.’ Pointedly, no mention of the inhabitants.

  ‘Yes.’ The tone remained happy.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well,’ said Mum, ‘see you again, no doubt.’

  ‘Mondays-and-Fridays,’ sang the voice, implying cheerful resignation, unquestionable regularity.

  I managed to shift the tea towel back over my eyes before Mum reached me.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ she breathed over me.

  ‘Could I fail to hear that? Along with everyone else in the neighbourhood.’

  A little later, when Mum was indoors, I heard a radio on the other side of the fence. Radio One had never blared before from Gordon and Derek’s garden. Mum likes Radio Two; Vinnie and I have to fight hard for Capital. Whenever I hear Radio Two, I am tortured by my visions of the people who sing the jingles: a choir of ex-dancers from The Andy Williams Show who wear sky-blue catsuits and have pageboy haircuts? Gordon and Derek’s radio tends to murmur voices: usually the urgent but restrained voices of newsreaders, sometimes the hectoring of a quizmaster and the easy smoky banter of the panel, the appreciative laughter of the studio audience welling and retreating over coughs and buzzers. More often during the summer there is the rustle of the cricket commentary. When I heard Radio One, I peeked through a hole in the fence and saw a pair of hands dipping into a full laundry basket. They were bony white hands, ribbed with ink-stain veins. A small round bone rolled in a socket on each wrist. The fingers snapped at a handkerchief in the basket, and I backed away.

  Everything that I know about Gordon and Derek’s house, I know from the hole in the fence. I have never been inside the house or the garden. But Gordon and Derek have a lot of visitors. Mum often rushes from the washing line to announce, There are fwendies next door again for dwinkies. And then we will hear cheerful voices rising and falling, so that the garden sounds like a swimming pool without splashes. They have had drinks for the Amateur Dramatics, a garden party for Italian Intermediate, and a barbecue for the Cricket Club. We were invited on each occasion but Mum always had an excuse.

  Now Mum has sent me into our front garden to fetch Georgia’s bike. ‘What’s that doing there?’ she shrieked from the lounge, where she is on the phone to Grandma. This shriek will have grated on Grandma, who, last year, told me, Your mother has let herself go; who fails to see that it was Dad who did the letting go.

  ‘What? Where?’ I replied between mouthfuls of cold tinned rice pudding.

  ‘Georgia’s bike!’ she screamed. ‘What’s Georgia’s bike doing out there in the front garden?’

  I tried, ‘Grazing?’

  But she was not amused, she screamed louder: ‘Go and fetch that bike, please, Lola. Now, please, Lola, before some gypsies decide to try their luck.’ Then I heard her return her attention to the phone, sighing irritable comments into the mouthpiece: comments about Georgia and me, probably, and then Vinnie, for good measure; and then, probably, her favourite complaint, Am I made of money? Do these kids of mine think that I’m made of money?

  When I passed the doorway, I told her, ‘Fear not, I’ll give chase.’

  She looked up and narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Mind you,’ I added, gliding from her view, ‘they’ll not get very far. No one gets far on a Ladyshopper.’

  Now, stepping into the driveway, I see Tilly on the doorstep of Gordon and Derek’s house, smoking. Her eyes are unfocused in the cloud of smoke which is moving stiffly from her slack mouth into the hot still air and clinging to her hair. Her face is angular, regular, unmarked; unlike mine, with dimples, pimples, freckles, mole, snub nose, crooked teeth. Her skin a clear film on the surface of her skull, her pale hair is pulled tightly into a ponytail. How old is she? Older than me, slightly? Suddenly I realize that she reminds me of Mum, of Mum in the old days. Suddenly I realize how much Mum has changed: how gravity has taken a toll on her most delicate parts, made her flesh loose on the underside of her arms, beneath her chin, around her neck, and thickened her hands and ankles, the very places where she should taper. Now Tilly sees me, and smiles by widening her eyes and raising her faint eyebrows. No, not quite a smile but a signal. I try something similar in return as I step back indoors with the bike, the shade of the hallway speckling the inside of my eyelids.

  Four weeks since school ended, and today I am writing to my French penfriend, Claudette, in the hope of a free stay sometime in France. Aujourd’hui il fait chaud, comme d’habitude. Mum has insisted that I use her old school dictionary, which she fetched for me from the loft. Zut alors. Now she interrupts me again, her shadow falling from the doorway onto my paper.

  ‘She’s there again,’ she slurs excitedly through a mouthful of pegs.

  ‘It’s Friday, she comes on Mondays and Fridays, so of course she’s there.’

  ‘She’s a sweet kid.’

  I suspect that she has never seen Tilly smoking on the doorstep. She hates all smokers. She told Vinnie, last week, that if he ever came home again smelling of cigarettes, she would wash him down with carbolic acid. I think she meant soap.

  ‘A very sweet kid,’ she says again, stretching, blocking even more sunlight.

  Whenever I see Tilly, she gives me the unsmiling smile. It is an acknowledgement rather than a greeting, as if she has been expecting me to be there – at my bedroom window, or on the patio, or behind the fence, or in the shed – and as if she regards us as co-conspirators.

  ‘She always says hello.’

  ‘That’s because you say hello to her. What do you expect her
to do? Ignore you and walk away?’

  Sunlight springs back onto the page, and Mum wanders over to me. ‘She always looks cheerful,’ her face swoops close to mine, ‘which is more than you can manage.’

  I slap down my pen.

  She moves away, to the window. ‘I wouldn’t want to work in there,’ she peers into the garden, ‘because that house lacks a woman’s touch.’

  That house: through the hole in the fence I have seen a cascade of green velvet curtain at the french windows; from the road I have seen a bowl of roses on the windowsill.

  ‘No kids’ mess, though,’ I say.

  ‘Well, no,’ she concedes, bending to the vegetable rack to choose some bakers from the pile of potatoes.

  I have had five weeks of this freedom, now. I can see the postman in the distance, passing from house to house by jumping over borders and rockeries. Next week, he will arrive here with my exam results. I am waiting for Mum; we are going shopping in town before she goes to work.

  ‘Just you wait and see,’ Mum shouts from the bathroom. ‘Just because we’re late, that bus will be early today for the first and only time in its life.’

  I step down from the doorstep. Gordon is loading the green van with cardboard boxes. I step back onto the doorstep.

  But he has seen me: ‘Good morning, Lola!’ he shouts over the bushes, with a wave of a tough, tanned hand.

  I smile in reply.

  ‘And is life treating you well?’

  I shrug.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Judd, and what a lovely dress, if I may say so.’

  Perhaps not her worst dress, but I would never have gone so far as to say lovely.

  Mum pushes past me and peers warily at Gordon. ‘Thank you. And good morning.’

  ‘We’re off today for two weeks of sun, sea and sand,’ he continues, cheerily.

  I can sense Mum thinking Sex.

  ‘I’m picking Derek up from the office at lunch time, and off we go!’

  Mum swings her shopping bag against her shins. ‘Going somewhere nice?’ She glances up the road towards the bus stop.

  ‘Chianti country,’ he bellows, slamming the door of the van.

  Mum frowns, puzzled.