by Anna Maxted
‘I’ve copied out the recipes for you,’ she said. ‘I’ll lend you a baking tray. You can buy most of the ingredients, but I’ve bought you a tin of Marigold Swiss vegetable bouillon powder, for the mushroom gravy. Make up half a pint. One tablespoon of powder, mixed with boiling water. See?’ She pointed to the side of the tin with a varnished fingernail. ‘The letters “tsp” stand for “tablespoon”. Two tablespoons per pint. Simple. But it’s important you get it right. Remember, if in doubt, add more powder. It increases the flavour.’
I nodded. ‘Right.’
She took over for the gravy. I paid close attention, without standing too near. The atmosphere was roughly the same as when I took my driving test. Except, I suppose, she was a little more excited than my examiner to have the honour of my company. She dropped an onion, then a fork, and then a serving spoon, splatting hot butter over Gabrielle’s immaculate tiles. She never quite met my eye.
I never met hers either. I had a brief thought that maybe these recipes, easy as they were, weren’t entirely suitable for someone with an irritable bowel, but my mother was aware of his complaint, and in matters culinary I trusted her. While we waited for the meatloaf and baked apples to cook, Angela showed me how to give the appearance of almighty, backbreaking effort.
One, put flowers on the table (in a vase, not just lying there). Also, not sunflowers. A small and delicate bloom.
Two, serviettes. Plain, not patterned or jokey. Fold them in half triangular-ways, then again, so they prop up themselves.
Three, heat the plates, in the microwave for two minutes.
Four, wear an apron to answer the door.
Five, spray oh de cologne on your wrists. (I’d have to buy some.)
Six, bleach the toilet.
Seven, arrange a row of tea lights on the table (these are small candles) and dim the overhead light. Remember, it’s not an interrogation.
Eight, wear a light lipstick (pale red, she suggested), a skirt, and heels.
Nine, provide wine, and Japanese rice crackers in nice bowls.
Ten, turn off the TV before you let him in.
I’m not sure this was the correct order. Also, I couldn’t quite tell the difference between the appearance of almighty backbreaking effort, and almighty backbreaking effort. I never turned off the TV. The TV was my friend. It was great for filling in gaps in the conversation. Maybe I could turn it down?
Already I was aching to bend the rules. I should do what she said and press the ‘off’ switch. It wouldn’t hurt to try. Much.
I wanted to show my mother I was grateful, without excessive physical contact. ‘This was very kind of you,’ I said carefully. ‘I appreciate it. I wondered,’ I added in a rush, ‘if you needed me to do anything for Grandma Nellie. Is her house secure? Her kitchen has a stable door. Now, most people think you can get away with just locking the lower half, and securing the bolt. But you have to lock the upper door too. Otherwise someone can smash through the window, unbolt the bolt, and climb in. And does she have a security letter flap? It’s very fashionable for thieves to hook keys off hall tables with a fishing rod – it’s easy with a normal letter box. They’re usually after the car keys, but they can equally let themselves in and raid the house. They usually do it between four and six in the morning. What she needs is a security letter flap – you can stick a pole through it, but it snaps shut so you can’t pull anything back out. There are other measures she can take – hook mortice bolts, and reinforcing strips for the door. And is her alarm in good working order? She should read the small print of her house insurance contract, because they’re shockers, that lot. And have you cancelled her milk? I mean, temporarily cancelled her milk? And her Daily Express? And there should be some lights on, all night, to give the appearance of habitation. And curtains should be drawn, downstairs at the back. And windows locked. Each window should have its own lock, a generic lock is fine. I can recommend a good locksmith. Her extension has a flat roof, so that’s a weak point, securitywise. She doesn’t have any garden ladders lying around, does she, because that’s a no-no—’
I stopped, because my mother was looking supremely uncomfortable. As if she felt she ought to speak but didn’t want to. I smiled impatiently, and raised my eyebrows.
My mother twisted her wedding ring, back and forth, back and forth, at speed. ‘I thought I’d mentioned it,’ she said. ‘I must have forgotten. Grandma Nellie moved into a home eight months ago.’
She hadn’t forgotten. I’d forgotten. It was shocking how great chunks of significant information passed in and out of my ears like ghosts.
‘Oh, right, yes, of course.’ I went hot. My mouth felt dry and the forbidden word strained at my lips. It was strange, actually, that I had forgotten Grandma Nellie’s move to a home, because at the time, I’d thought about it a lot. I’ll be honest. I don’t do much deep thinking on my personal relationships. In fact, I spend more time agonising about relationships that don’t actually exist. For instance,
Oh, Susanna, don’t you cry for me,
I’m off to Alabama with a banjo on my knee!
I heard the tune on one of Jude’s plastic toys, and recalled the words out of nowhere. And wondered why Susanna would waste her time moping after a man who was so plainly a conceited idiot – moseying off to Alabama with a banjo, daring to imagine her distraught! She was probably glad to see the back of him – him, his silly banjo, and his unrealistic view of job opportunities in the music business. Susanna – I imagined her demure and blonde, in a checked pinafore, baby-blue and white – was probably too well brought up to tell him she loathed his banjo playing, and him.
I don’t know why I do this. But, in between fretting about imaginary Susannas, I did think about my grandmother going to a home. I didn’t like to dwell on it, because such a move so plainly signfied The End for Grandma Nellie. As Gabrielle is always reminding me – or was – the whole world is not as seedy as I imagine it. When her mother was in hospital with pneumonia, the nurses were wonderful, kind and caring. But Martine’s elderly uncle had Alzheimer’s and when Martine complained to a nurse that he was ignoring her, she replied, ‘Oh, I give a sharp tug on his nasal tube, that gets his attention.’ After a tale like that, it’s hard to conjure up Florence Nightingale. Despite our troubled history, I didn’t like to think of Grandma Nellie at the mercy of strangers. So I suppose I blanked it.
‘But,’ said Angela, ‘there, there, there is one thing you can do, if, if, if you like. I know Grandma Nellie would be delighted.’
I cringed. Did I really make her stammer? And it was embarrassing, after the meatloaf and baked apple, to forget that my grandmother had been packed off to a home.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
My mother coughed, delicately, placing her fingertips in front of her pearly lipsticked mouth. ‘She’d love you to visit her in hospital.’
‘Of COURSE!’ I boomed. ‘Whenever you like, it would be a pleasure!’
Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat, kill me now. I’d rather die.
Chapter 19
The spectre of Grandma Nellie – or maybe that’s tempting fate – the looming visit to Grandma Nellie got me thinking. I’m not claiming anything profound. Just, life is over pretty quick – mine seems to jump in bursts of six months, in accord with dental appointments – and so many people make a mess of theirs. I was at work, two weeks later, and Greg was telling me about a case he’d taken on for a Mrs Speck. It was standard.
They lived in Dover. He was in London overnight for business. Mr Speck told his wife that he was meeting a male colleague for dinner at a restaurant called No Boo. Or something. She’d rung No Boo, who’d confirmed the reservation, but she was still suspicious.
‘Anyway,’ said Greg. ‘I put a static on it’ – a one-man observation – ‘and he follows him back to the hotel.’
I was relaxing into the story, I loved the way Greg used the lingo. It made me feel like a member of an élite club. ‘Static’. ‘Get
some victor’ – video footage. ‘Sunray’ – the client. ‘Alpha one’ – the male subject. Once, when we were on surveillance, he said the words, ‘Alpha one in pole position indicating right’ – meaning, the geezer was at traffic lights, the right hand lane – and I got a silly little shiver down my spine. I think Greg knew this, because he spoke plain English to everybody else.
‘So after an hour, he comes down from his hotel room with a gorgeous Oriental woman. At that point, I put the full team on him. He goes to a cash machine. Hands her some notes. Then she gets a cab back to Kensal Rise.’
What a scummer. I was no longer relaxed. It depressed me. There was Grandma Nellie, on the brink, and here was Mr Speck banging prostitutes while his wife sat at home phoning No Boo. And what killed me was, she knew. Or she would do, when Greg filed his report. And then what would she do?
Divorcing aged twenty is enough of a blow, but at least you haven’t squandered too much of anyone’s time. When you were Mrs Speck it was different. She was stuffed. Either she ignored Greg’s findings and accepted that she would waste her entire life on a man who wasn’t worthy of her. Or she accepted that she’d wasted half her life on a man who wasn’t worthy of her but that, possibly, there were better men out there, and jumped into the harsh, desperate world of middle-aged dating, on the slim chance that she might track one down.
Of course, I should add that Mrs Speck might do other man-free things with the remainder of her days and find fulfilment that way. But truth was, women like Mrs Speck weren’t accustomed to finding fulfilment without a man. Mrs Speck was unlike me but, I realised with a shock, I sympathised. If you are used to living a certain way, it can be near impossible to embrace a new way. Mrs Speck might move into a cosy apartment, take up pottery, join the National Trust and an opera-based social club, but she’d be merely treading water through the days, grateful when it got to 10 p.m. and she could get into bed and lose consciousness respectably, passing time until, she hoped, she met the man who would make her normal again.
‘Poor Mrs Speck, stuck with a shit like that,’ I said, and stamped out of Greg’s office.
He looked startled and I was annoyed with myself. Job done, I cut clients’ problems out of my mind like you slice off a piece of bruised apple. It was not my concern what Mrs Speck decided to do with our findings and the rest of her life. Truth was, I was impatient to see Jason and it was making me ratty. For one thing, the hair on my tush was growing back. I didn’t like to see all that pain and mortification go to waste.
He had sent me chocolates from Kenya every day. Or rather, he’d got his PA to send me chocolates from Thorntons every day. I’d told Gabrielle, expecting praise on Jason’s behalf. Her response: ‘How horrid.’
When he rang, the following morning, my bad mood popped like a bubble.
‘Jase!’
‘Hello, Chocolate Girl!’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Chocolate Girl. It’s a song title. By Deacon Blue. And I’ve been sending—’
‘Yeah, I get it.’ I paused, tried to click in to my new personality. ‘Thank you,’ I added. ‘It was really nice of you. They were delicious. I may be heading for diabetes.’
Silence.
‘It would be lovely to see you, Jason,’ I said, after a few moments. I had to be less brusque. More acquiescent. Nicer. Fewer orders, barked statements. More shy, eyelash-fluttering questions. Thing was, I needed Jason. In a world of people who didn’t think much of me, he stood alone.
‘Come round,’ I said. ‘I’ll make you dinner.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’ll make you dinner.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes!’
‘No!’
‘Jason,’ I said, ‘I have been taking this seriously. This list of conditions.’
‘Ah, that. Ah, Hannah. You know, that list … it was a bit much. Especially the note from Jack, I mean, I felt bad when I saw it … I can’t imagine it was easy to secure. It’s just, I felt hurt, by you, I felt angry. I just wanted to see if you would try.’
I squirmed in my seat. Despite my supposed new personality I was still unhappy with the concept of bleating out emotion as one experienced it. If someone tells you ‘I feel hurt … I feel angry,’ that is, to me (and I’m quoting Jason here – don’t think I thought of this myself) co-dependent behaviour. Co-dependence, if I stayed awake long enough to compute, is when you act in a way so as to trick your stooge of a partner into a certain response. When Jason told me he felt hurt, he felt angry, he was forcing me to feel pity and guilt.
Isn’t that the opposite of good manners, the aim of which are to make people feel comfortable?
Supposedly, it was the Holy Grail of therapy to access and express your emotions, the point at which you became adult. How, when sharing your hurt and anger is such an enormous bore and inconvenience to those around you?
I felt mean for having such thoughts. I said, ‘Come at nine. That would give me time to cook.’
‘Wow,’ said Jason. ‘Can’t wait.’
Then I looked in the mirror on my wall and realised I was the colour of milk. I’d have to cancel. No way could I see Jason before I’d had a respray. I kid you not, at that precise moment, the phone rang. It was an underling calling on behalf of Gabrielle’s beautician (now there’s a made-up word, invented to give us faith in absolutely nothing), reminding me that I had a St Tropez booked for five thirty today. If that isn’t fate, tell me what is.
The process of being St Tropez’d is dull and humiliating, but after my Brazilian, it was a breeze. Then she said, ‘You’re done!’ I jumped up, triumphant, looked in the mirror, nearly fainted.
‘B … b … but I … this isn’t a tan! This isn’t golden brown! It’s dirty brown! I look all smeared and filthy! I look like a chimney sweep. I look like I’ve been rolling in mud. I look …’ I finished miserably, ‘like a black-and-white minstrel. I’ll be lynched on the tube.’
The woman smiled like I was stupid. ‘It’s only temporary. You shower tomorrow morning and your lovely golden tan will have developed underneath.’
A likely tale!
‘But until then,’ she continued breezily, ‘you can’t get your hands wet. Or any part of you. And drink through a straw. Or else you’ll get two white bits at the edges of your mouth.’
‘You mean –’ I gulped – ‘you mean I look like this until tomorrow morning?’
‘Didn’t you read the information leaflet?’
Of course I didn’t read the information leaflet! What did she think I was, a tourist?
‘No,’ I said, as haughtily as I could (in the circumstances).
She gave me a disdainful look. ‘If you shower tonight it’ll be forty-five pounds down the drain.’
Forty-five pounds? All she’d done was paint me brown! She’d have a nerve charging a tenner!
I paid and slunk out. Forty-five pounds. I was one of the world’s poor. Also, I’d left my car at the station to avoid rush-hour traffic. I couldn’t afford a cab, I just couldn’t. And don’t tell me Londoners are stand-offish. From Green Park station to Kentish Town tube strangers all but collapsed laughing in each other’s arms. At last I escaped into the polluted air, only to remember I had to go food shopping. Where people were equally insolent. Staring. Nudging. By the time the checkout man squawked, ‘Chimchiminy cheroo!’ I’d had enough.
I jumped into my car, and dialled Jason to postpone. Then I cut off. He’d wanted to see me tonight. And I’d bought the meatloaf ingredients. Also, I wanted to see him. I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want to give the impression that I was half-hearted about our new start. I’d just have to … dim the lights.
The doorbell rang dot on nine. I sighed. It would have to do. The flat was extraordinarily tidy. There were flowers on the table – an old lady bunch, all the supermarket had, but flowers all the same. I’d scoured the floor of the bathroom for pubic hairs and Dustbusted three wiry offenders. My bed linen had been washed at sixty degrees (the lowest te
mperature at which bacteria die, according to Jason) and tumble-dried, giving it a lovely burnt cottony smell. Meanwhile, I looked fairly frightening. I’d got the edges of my mouth wet, even though I hadn’t drunk, despite an uncharacteristic raging thirst. That beautician had made me paranoid; every second I’d felt drool leaking from my mouth. When I checked for white bits, I had a white outline around the whole of it, like a clown. Plainly, unlike most young ladies, I slavered like a dog. I’d covered it up by applying a generous amount of lipstick. Consequently, I now had a huge fake mouth. I’d applied mascara to my eyelashes, although my face looked so dirty I might as well have applied it to my alleged moustache. My hair looked great. The clothes Gabrielle had picked out for me weren’t that bad. Beautiful red high-heeled shoes like a prostitute might wear. A white flared skirt with an uneven hem. A red halterneck top. The worst you could say was, there was a whiff of the transvestite about me. That apart, I hoped Jason would be impressed.
‘Hannah! Oh, is there a power cut?’
‘Hi, Jase. No. It’s atmospheric. For the dinner.’
‘But it’s pitch-black.’
‘You get used to it.’
‘Well, let’s at least have a candle. Or the hall light on. There. Ahhh! Jesus! Hannah! What have you done? You’re all … mucky. Is it, is it … er, fancy dress?’
I was about to be angry, because I was embarrassed, but I looked at Jason’s handsome, good-natured face, his smile caught somewhere between confusion and horror, and started to giggle.
‘No,’ I said finally. ‘This is a tan. It was meant to impress you.’
‘But …’
‘It’s a Miw Hiw tan.’
‘A what?’
‘Jason, it’s a fake tan.’
‘Oh.’
‘Instead of getting skin cancer?’
‘Oh! I see!’
I knew he’d like that one.
‘But … so … why is it … so … wrong?’