Angus smiled kindly. ‘Course it was, Mum.’ He got up to put his plate in the dishwasher.
‘And I could have earned a lot more if I’d carried on working.’
‘Yup,’ he agreed, shooting Lily a warning look.
‘But anyway, the money’s immaterial. I gave it all up to nurture you two. To make sure that in the holidays we – we played leap-frog. Made gingerbread men …’
‘I don’t ever remember making gingerbread men,’ remarked Lily as she munched her apple.
‘Well, OK, maybe not. But heavens, I always made your birthday cakes.’
‘Yes, but that doesn’t matter, Mum.’ She smiled consolingly.
‘What d’you mean, it doesn’t matter?’
‘Just because Jessie was allowed to choose hers every year from Tesco’s. I’ve forgotten about that.’
I stared at her, aghast. ‘Don’t you remember that enormous rabbit I made? With the liquorice whiskers? It took me four days!’
She blinked. ‘Er, vaguely. I definitely remember Jessie’s pink Barbie one though. With the necklace made of sweets. I so-oo wanted that.’
‘But – d’you not remember being pleased I was at home? When some mothers didn’t get in until seven o’clock? How I always helped you with your homework?’
Angus laughed. ‘Come on, Mum, you were always gossiping on the phone to your friends when we were doing our homework.’
‘I remember you being obsessed with cushions,’ mused Lily, screwing up her face in an effort to recall. ‘Holding them up to the curtains and whimpering, “But do they match?” ’
‘And I remember you sobbing when I got into Falcon Court,’ Angus said. ‘Dad thought something awful had happened when he got home, but you said they were tears of joy and it was all you’d ever wanted.’ He shivered. ‘Scary.’
‘Oh yes! And my Common Entrance,’ recalled Lily. ‘I thought you were going to have a breakdown. Remember when I came out of my science exam –’
‘Yes, thank you, Lily,’ I snapped. I wasn’t proud of that little episode. Lily had strolled out of her exam to be met by an interrogating mother at the school gates. I’d hustled her to the car and made her recite the entire paper, question by question, on the way home.
‘And then there were pictures of seasons,’ Lily had said, beside me in the front seat, ‘and you had to name the one with the leaves on the ground, so I said spring. That was right, wasn’t it, Mummy? Spring?’
By the time Marcus came home from work I had to have my cheeks slapped. Have brandy put to my quivering lips.
‘But she’s eleven!’ I’d wailed. ‘Where have I gone wrong?’
I regarded my children now as they faced me over the kitchen table. Slumped in their chairs, Angus, jack-knifed, he was so tall, munching their apples open-mouthed; their hair lank, their pores open, their skin greasy. Like two enormous hormones.
‘Right,’ I said faintly. ‘Right. Well, if all you can remember of the past fourteen years is an academically ambitious mother whose only sense of personal fulfilment came from her soft furnishings, it’s clearly time I moved on. Did something for myself.’
Angus shrugged. ‘We’re not fussed. Just, you know, whatever makes you happy. Chill.’ He turned and tossed his core at the bin. It hit the swing lid and went in. ‘Ye-ess. Fancy being thrashed at table tennis, Lil?’
‘Yeah, orright.’ She got up. ‘I’ll beat you though. Anyway,’ she paused in the doorway as they went out, ‘what are you going to do, Mum?’
‘I’m going to work for …’ I stopped, remembering Marcus’s mirth. Remembered too that Angus’s last school report had said he showed an astonishing grip of the Crimean War. ‘I’m going to work for an academic,’ I said quickly. ‘A very esteemed academic. If I’m lucky,’ I added hastily, remembering, too, that I hadn’t got the job yet.
‘Right.’
‘Well, aren’t you impressed?’
Lily smiled kindly. ‘It’s not exactly Stella McCartney, Mum. But it’s a start.’
Chapter Three
‘What are you wearing?’ Penny barked bossily down the phone as I whirled around the kitchen, grabbing keys, to kens for the station car park, earrings from the fruit bowl.
‘A tweed skirt, grey jacket and pearls. Too formal?’ I asked anxiously.
‘No, fine. I’m just checking you’re not still in your pyjamas. Chickening out.’
‘Good God, I wouldn’t dream of it. The children were extraordinary, Penny, most illuminating. They’ve clearly had me down as a sad case for years – think the world of women like you with proper jobs.’
‘And after all you’ve done for them?’ she said dryly.
‘Well …’
‘Come on, what did you expect? A pat on the back? A medal?’ She sighed. ‘We none of us get it right, my friend. Don’t beat yourself up too much about it. And anyway, you’d have done all this a lot sooner if it hadn’t been for your dad.’
I swallowed. Thought of Dad in the Home that Mum and I had finally given in to. Imagined him sitting there now, at a Formica table with six other inmates, having breakfast perhaps … an old man dribbling opposite him, another beside him being helped with his cornflakes. That institutional smell, a combination of cabbage and soiled clothing, an ingrained stench seemingly impervious to the efforts of the hospital laundry. A nurse, squatting brightly beside my father on her haunches: ‘Come on, Gordon, eat up!’ I shivered. Wondered what he’d say now if things had been different. ‘Going back to work, Henny? How marvellous.’ Then, mildly perhaps: ‘Who’s looking after the children? Not that Linda woman?’
I said goodbye to Penny, promising to ring when I got back, and as I replaced the receiver, heard a car in the drive. I glanced out of the window. Linda, cheeks pink with effort, was shifting her colossal weight carefully out of the front seat of her Escort. She made her way heavily across the front lawn, skirting the bird-table my father had made in occupational therapy last Christmas. It was a basic, rudimentary structure with jagged edges and rough nails, a tray on a stick, but one that he’d clearly been proud of. He’d presented it to us in the dayroom, wearing a paper hat from a cracker, swearing, as was his recent wont.
‘There. What the fuck d’you think of that?’
There’d been an awkward silence. Five years ago, he’d have looked up from the Observer, peered benignly at it over his reading glasses and observed, ‘Well, a blind man would be pleased to see it.’
Mum couldn’t impose it on her neighbours in the communal gardens at the flat in the Finchley Road, and Benji couldn’t bear to accommodate it in Chelsea it upset him so much, so it had ended up here, in my front garden in Flaxton. I thought I’d loathe it, looking at it every day from my kitchen window; reminding me of the man my father had become, but funnily enough, when I’d filled it with nuts and the birds swarmed around it regardless, I found it strangely comforting.
I hastened to the loo now, so as not to see Linda’s face when she came into the kitchen and spotted last night’s pans in the sink. There were only a couple, I reasoned, everything else went in the dishwasher, but she never failed to make me feel guilty. As I locked myself in, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Fiddled nervously with my hair. It was probably too long now I was thirty-something, but Marcus liked it that way.
‘Don’t cut it,’ he’d say crossly when I came back from the hairdresser’s. ‘I like it as it is.’
And I liked it too. Made me feel young even if I wasn’t.
I scanned the collage of photos which decorated the walls and spotted one of Dad holding Lily on a beach when she was about six. He was smoking a pipe, looking very calm, very still. I gazed into his clear, lucid eyes. Swallowed.
I looked like him. Everyone said so. Less so, perhaps, as I grew older. The eyes, huge and grey, and the pale skin, yes, but the mouth – which I’d always thought was his, wide and generous – seemed to be shrinking these days. Looking more like Mum’s.
I sighed and went back to the kitchen. Linda
was already planted firmly at the sink, ostentatiously scraping burned fat off a grill-pan. She snorted when she saw me.
‘Blimey, what’s this? Miss Jean Brodie?’
I glanced down at my skirt. ‘Oh. No, I’ve got a job interview.’
‘A job interview!’ Her pale eyebrows shot into her crispy blonde perm. ‘You? As what?’
‘As a researcher for a historian,’ I replied shortly, wishing, not for the first time, that I hadn’t employed such a ‘character’. A ‘conscious card’, as my brother would say. I’d thought her fun and amusing when she’d first waddled into my kitchen, sucking her teeth and telling me my chickens had death foot, and that the whole place needed a good seeing-to, and that she was as happy with her hand up a horse’s backside as she was with it down a lavatory, but now I wondered whether someone a little more servile wasn’t what I needed.
She was a huge woman, with big legs that, as Angus said, made you wonder how they met at the top they were so thick at the bottom. Marcus had replied that it didn’t bear thinking about. She can only have been about fifty, but had an old woman’s habit of farting gently at every step. As she rocked from side to side now to get to the table, an unfortunate smell pervaded. I skirted her and made for the back door.
‘If you wouldn’t mind making sure Angus doesn’t watch television all day I’d be grateful,’ I said obsequiously, ‘and Lily could perhaps do some revision. She’s got exams when she gets back.’
Linda rose magnificently to this, suddenly realizing I was putting her at the helm. Her back straightened as she turned, eyes bright.
‘Right. I’ll get after them, shall I? Get ’em off them settees the moment I’ve cleaned this kitchen. They can tidy their rooms an’ all.’
‘Marvellous,’ I said faintly, thinking that that would be a first, but that actually, Linda would probably achieve it. Might even get them to pick up those wet towels instead of side-stepping them gingerly like landmines, get them to wear socks and brush their teeth. In fact, it occurred to me as I shut the back door behind me and hurried down the gravel to the car, that this working lark was a doddle. I stopped still in my tracks. Why had I come to it so late? Why had it taken me fourteen years to get to this point? Why hadn’t anyone told me – Penny, Eva, any of my other mates? No wonder so many women did it. I Don’t Know How She Does It? Oh, I do. You just get someone else to do it. Feeling a bit light-headed with realization, I toddled down to my car.
By the time I arrived at Laurence’s house later that morning I was walking on air. Not only had I had the pleasure of walking through Covent Garden at lunchtime, pausing briefly to watch the acrobats in the Piazza, loving the crowds, being propelled by tourists and feeling as brisk and impatient as any other commuter, but now that I’d slipped down a side turning and emerged into a quiet, rarefied street, I was in heaven. Never mind that the litter rolled luxuriously in the gutter, or that two doors down, a young lad lay prone in a doorway in a sleeping bag – never mind. This was what I’d come for: a slice of old, elegant London, still visible through the detritus and the grime.
The house itself was tall, white and stuccoed. Did Laurence De Havilland own the whole thing, I wondered? My excitement mounted. Yes, he probably did. And no doubt I’d have the run of it. Whiz from floor to floor finding his hat, or locating his walking stick, and then when I’d finished transcribing his historical notes or whatever else he wanted me to do, I could swan off for lunch in the Piazza. Meet a friend in a wine-bar, whistle round Whistles – the very idea made me feel about nineteen again. It was as though a film was lifting from my life, revealing the exciting and the possible, just as the predictable and the mundane – a jumble of pots and pans and laundry – melted into the air.
I gazed up at the four storeys, almost expecting to see the great man himself at a desk in the window, peering down over his half-moon glasses as his interviewee nervously mounted the steps. How many had he seen already, I wondered? Was I the tenth this week? Had he rejected the others out of hand? Was he only seeing me as a favour to Penny? I smoothed down my skirt, clutched my shoulder bag tightly, and rang the bell.
Moments later, a light tread came down the hallway, accompanied by girlish laughter. Something hilarious was shouted back upstairs. I frowned and stepped backwards. The door was opened by a ravishing-looking girl of about twenty-five, with waist-length dark hair, slanting eyes and a wide sexy mouth. She was wearing a tiny white T-shirt, low-slung jeans, and her feet were bare. His daughter? She flashed me a perfect smile.
‘’Ello! You must be ’Enrietta?’ Her French accent was weighty.
‘H-Henny. Henrietta – that’s right.’
‘Emmanuelle,’ she offered. ‘Come, come een,’ she cooed, standing aside to usher me through. ‘’E’s waiting for you upstairs. I take you up, yes?’
‘Um, thank you,’ I said, flummoxed, as I followed her towards the stairs. Daughter, I decided. Must be. Or granddaughter even. But French, clearly, or Spanish, so … golly, was he foreign? Penny hadn’t mentioned that. Could one have a foreign uncle? Was Penny secretly French?
‘You ’ave come far?’ she asked, flashing me another adorable smile as she twisted around on the stone staircase to look at me encouragingly.
‘Um, not too far. Flaxton – in Kent. A little village.’
‘Ah, pretty! I love the countryside. Si charmants, your villages, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Um, yes. It is. Ch …armant.’
‘He ees in here, in ze attic,’ she trilled, as she led me further and further up, around the huge stone staircase encased in a wrought-iron balustrade, and just as I thought we could go no further – we were there. My guide breezed in through some double doors and I found myself standing in a long, billowing room. It was pale and spare, like a cool husk. The walls were white and covered in bright modern paintings, and the boards beneath our feet were wide, bleached and uncovered save for one, jewel-like rug. A bank of French windows, hung with simple calico curtains, looked out over the street, and around the room were dotted modern pieces of furniture, very much in the David Linley mould. Two huge creamy sofas faced each other at the far end of the room, one with its back to me, and to the left stood a leather-topped desk covered in books. It was a beautiful room, but conspicuously empty. There was no sign of its owner, except – heavens. Was that a foot, sticking out over the end of that sofa? A stockinged foot?
‘Laurie, get up!’ Emmanuelle danced across and tweaked the big toe. ‘She’s ’ere. I told you she’s ’ere!’
‘Ouch!’ The body attached gave a yelp, and the next minute, a dark tousled head shot over the back of the sofa.
‘Oh God, sorry. I was about to reach my best score.’
He threw down a Game Boy, jumped smartly to his feet and came across the bleached boards with his hand outstretched, smiling broadly.
‘Hi. Laurie De Havilland.’
I stared, horrified. This man was in his late thirties at most; tall, dark, with intense brown eyes – bedroom eyes, my mother would have called them – a gravelly voice and flashing white smile. He was devastatingly handsome but in a decidedly wicked, twinkly sort of way. As he stood beside Emmanuelle in a pink shirt, old torn jeans and his socks – was there a no shoes rule here? – I gaped back, painfully aware of my good suede boots, my ghastly tweed skirt, my pearls.
‘It’s Henrietta, isn’t it? Penny’s told me all about you. You’re just as I imagined.’
‘Well, you’re not,’ I blurted out. I couldn’t help it. ‘You’re much too young!’
He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Too young for what?’
I blushed. ‘Well, I thought …Penny said you were her uncle. So I rather imagined …’
‘Some crusty old geezer with a walking stick and a monocle chasing you round his desk?’ He moved to a side-table where there was a tray of coffee. Poured a cup from the percolator. ‘Sorry to disappoint.’
‘Oh no, you haven’t,’ I rallied. ‘It’s marvellous. I mean – oh God.’ I blushed even ha
rder, vowing to kill Penny for not briefing me properly.
He laughed. ‘Penny’s grandfather married three times. He was a bit of a rascal, by all accounts. I’m the result of the old boy’s last gasp when he was in his seventies. And it really was his last gasp, as a matter of fact, since he died on the job, having impregnated my mother. What a way to go, eh, sugar?’
Was he calling me ‘sugar’?
‘In your coffee.’
‘Oh. No, thank you.’
‘Milk?’
‘Please.’
‘You know, you look awfully familiar.’ He regarded me carefully as he handed me the cup. So did he, I thought as I took it nervously, the cup rattling boisterously in the saucer, but I couldn’t for the life of me think why.
‘’E say that to all ze girls,’ chided Emmanuelle, crossing to a desk where she picked up her handbag and a bundle of letters. ‘I go now, Laurie, oui?’ She went across and kissed him prettily on the cheek. Girlfriend. Definitely girlfriend, my scrambled brain decided.
‘And I post these for you on ze way,’ she went on. ‘You look after ’Enny, yes?’
‘Oh I will, and listen, chérie, après le déjeuner, peux-tu …’ He continued in quickfire French, to which she responded even faster. I tried to look simultaneously alert and patient while this exchange was taking place. At the end, she turned to smile at me apologetically.
‘So sorry, but my English is so bad, sometimes I lapse wiz Laurie.’
‘Ah oui,’ I agreed. ‘Absolument.’
They looked at me, surprised.
‘Absolument to lapsing with Laurie, or speaking French?’ he enquired.
‘Oh, er …’ God, he was wicked. ‘To speaking French,’ I said, seeing it as the lesser of two tiger traps.
‘You speak French?’ Emmanuelle said with interest.
I kept a vivacious smile going. Couldn’t speak for a moment. ‘Absolument,’ I said again, the palms of my hands feeling distinctly sweaty.
‘Well, that helps,’ observed Laurie thoughtfully, ‘although you won’t need it much. And incidentally,’ he winked, ‘Emmanuelle’s never lapsed with me in any other respect, although I’d love you to think she had. Might think it was part of your job description.’
Not That Kind of Girl Page 4