‘Just passing? Where are you headed, Scotland?’
He flapped his overgrown mono-brow and yanked open the door. The bottom caught the floorboard as it had since the day they moved in, necessitating a hefty shove from my shoulder to give myself room to pass. I stepped inside and was hit by the familiar sickening aroma of joss sticks that most people grew out of after their gap year. Dad heaved the door shut but not before my personal Pootle cloud drifted over the threshold and settled above my head. I already felt like a surly teenager and I hadn’t even taken off my coat.
‘Jemima’s in the conservatory,’ said my dad, who had always insisted on using first names in our household.
He felt the titles ‘mother’ and ‘father’ aged people and stripped them of their true selves.
‘We’ve all been given a name for a reason, Clover,’ he used to say through a cloud of marijuana, ‘and why should our own fruit not be entitled to know us as the person we really are?’
‘My name’s Chloe and I’m not a fruit,’ was my usual answer.
To me, it was just another reason to feel different, not having people I could call mum and dad like the other kids at school. I didn’t want to be different; I just wanted to be normal.
The conservatory was at the end of a hallway painted dark red and filled with my father’s increasingly angry looking artwork. For a man who preached love and peace, his paintings screamed – ‘I may just kill someone one day!’ I led the way, my father (biological if not by name) padding along behind me in hand knitted slipper socks, not unlike the socks Heidi and Hurley had jointly purchased at the flea market. Despite the snow outside, he wore loose linen trousers, pulled tight into his still neat waist, into which was tucked a paint-splattered, faded blue T-shirt. A wool scarf accessorised the look.
I had a moment as we wandered silently towards the conservatory when I pictured my mother sitting in a chintz armchair with a cup of sweet tea by her side reading a Maeve Binchy novel. Of course, when we reached the now ramshackle conservatory, my mother was balanced on her head and one leg in the middle of a tatty yoga mat with her bum sticking up in the air to greet us. An overwhelming aroma of jasmine spiralled into the hazy air from a burning joss stick held by a stone Buddha and the sounds of whales mating emanated from an ancient cassette player. My mother wore red Lycra hotpants that left nothing to the imagination over a pink long sleeved Leotard. I took one look at her and regressed another five years or so.
‘Clover!’ she cooed from somewhere between her legs, ‘happy Thanksgiving for last Thursday’
‘It’s Chloe,’ I growled, ‘and I’m not American.’
I endured a painful twenty minutes of trying to focus on anything except the twisted bodies of a sixty-two and sixty-three year-old, while Jango and Jemima saluted to the sun, even though the sun’s rays were not strong enough to fight through the overgrown back garden to the conservatory’s dirty windows. Judging by the groans, sighs and creaks, it sounded like a painful twenty minutes for them, not to mention the poor bloody whales.
‘Great, any chance of a coffee?’ I mumbled when the yogarific experience thankfully came to an end.
‘Coffee, Clover? Not in this house,’ my mother laughed, wiping her sweaty brow on my father’s T-shirt and rubbing his bare stomach as she did so, ‘I’ll make you my homemade camomile tea. It has very relaxing properties. Chill you out.’
Chill me out? What was she, nineteen?
‘And wheatgrass shots all round,’ my father whooped, leading the way to the kitchen.
‘Yay,’ I muttered, ‘add a soil shake and let’s get this party started.’
I would never forget the first time I saw our little house in Newcastle attached to the gallery that my father inherited from his artist friend. I always remembered the thrill of seeing my father unlock the door to our new home with a shiny key on a smart leather keyring handed to him by a lawyer with a bushy moustache. The keyring bore the name of the solicitors, which was etched in gold writing and matched the gold loop threaded through the key. I was a princess and this was the key to my castle. We’d never really had our own key before, having lived in squats and communes. Of course, my father ripped the keyring off and replaced it with a length of knotted rope with a bell on it but we had made a small step towards normality.
After I left home and moved in with Roxy and Heidi, my parents had moved to the bungalow, favouring the more rural location in Embleton rather than being close to the buzz of the city. They sold the house and the gallery, downsized and, as far as I could tell, lived off the profit because, to be frank, the day my father sold a painting would probably be the day the world imploded.
My parents had never been big on cooking. Even as a child, I had fended for myself rather than wait for them to get the munchies after smoking a spliff. In our new home, the kitchen became my domain, my sanctuary. While they created art (and a lot of mess) throughout the house, I kept the kitchen neat, clean and more like the kitchens of other girls my age who had mothers who baked brownies and flapjacks and fathers who carved a Sunday roast with an electric knife. The older I got, the more I protected my territory. My parents could turn the rest of the house and garden into an ever-changing gallery space but the kitchen was my room to study in, to entertain my friends in and to bake cakes. My parents accepted this as my quirk. They prayed I would have more quirks but I didn’t. It surprised me, then, that when I followed them into the kitchen in the bungalow they had lived in for the past decade, it suddenly felt less like the lifeless room with an unused cooker in it and more like the hub of something much closer to a home.
‘What’s that smell?’
I sniffed the air and settled on a tall three-legged stool that had been painted white and fitted with the head and wings of a plastic swan.
‘Bread,’ said my mother nonchalantly.
She wrapped a tea-towel around her neck and skipped across to a shiny metal bread maker whirring on the work surface.
‘Bread? Since when did you start baking bread in a bread maker?’
‘Months ago,’ said my father who was pouring shots of wheatgrass juice, ‘This particular loaf’s got curried fruit. Jemima, let her try the nutty one on the chopping block there.’
‘Curried fruit? Well I might have known it wouldn’t be a Hovis loaf. Chopping blocks are for people who cook. You don’t cook.’
Jemima and Jango looked at each other and laughed as if sharing an hilarious private joke.
‘Clover, how do you think we eat if we don’t cook?’ said my mother.
‘You never cooked for me.’
‘You were independent. You hardly let us do anything for you.’
I blinked at my father who deposited a glass of wheatgrass juice in front of me.
‘Did I have a choice?’ I said, holding up the glass of green slime and grimacing.
‘There’s always a choice, Clo’,’ said my mother. ‘We let you make your own decisions and your own food.’
I put the glass to my lips.
‘Well sometimes kids want their decisions… and their food made for them.’
My father skipped over to my mother and wrapped his hands around her frustratingly tiny waist. By some miracle of science, when their skinny genes collided, they had created a child of average-to-above-average size. Bummer.
‘Oh you did alright, Clover. You didn’t starve and neither did we. Although you look like you haven’t had a good meal in months, Jem, you petite, horny woman.’
I choked on the green gunk.
Did my father really just say horny?
‘Nothing wrong with my appetite, Jango, you know that,’ my mother replied with a guttural laugh and a wink. ‘One slice of bread or two, Clover?’
‘It’s Chloe,’ I hissed before gulping my camomile tea and burning my tongue. So much for its relaxing properties.
The three of us sat around the kitchen table from our old house that had once been polished pine until my father had run out of canvases and had decided to p
aint a depiction of the 1980’s miners’ strike on the top. I had always found it rather distracting trying to eat while Arthur Scargill glared at me from the picket line. I looked on in bemusement as my mother sliced the homemade nutty bread into thick doorsteps and laid it on a wooden block along with softened butter, chunks of cheese and pots of what looked suspiciously like homemade chutneys.
My mother sat beside me on the wonky wooden bench and gazed at me for longer than was comfortable before speaking.
‘You look different, Clo, what is it?’
My father nodded from across the kitchen.
‘I thought that too.’
I pulled off my woolly hat and ruffled my hair.
‘I didn’t straighten my hair this morning. I figured with the snow and everything there wasn’t much point.’
My mother tilted her head as if noticing I had hair for the first time. She waved her hand dismissively.
‘That doesn’t even register with me, I’m afraid, I’ve never been one for pruning and preening, you know that.’
I glanced at her frizzy grey-blond hair that was pulled into a ponytail on top of her head and erupted like a firework from the frayed elastic hairband.
‘No, there’s something more… more…’
‘More yellow,’ my father said with a nod.
I raised my eyes towards my fringe.
‘I prefer the word blond to yellow.’
‘Not your hair,’ my mother giggled.
‘Your aura of course,’ said my father.
‘Oh of course, silly me, my aura,’ I said sarcastically.
I popped a chunk of cheese into my mouth and chewed.
‘Pale yellow though not bright yellow,’ my mother said.
I had to ask.
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘Good,’ she smiled, ‘it signifies an emerging awareness, a hopefulness, new ideas and positivity. Am I right?’
I paused and chewed thoughtfully.
Was she right?
I could have told them about the crossroads I was at in my professional life, about Zachary and the cake making business idea. I could have asked for their opinion and support, taken inspiration from their creativity. Instead, I glanced at my hippie, artistic, non-conformist parents and I felt my stubbornness to become nothing like them re-emerge. I swallowed the cheese and shook my head.
‘No, nothing to report. Same old me, I’m afraid. It must be the cheese messing with my aura.’
My mother’s eyes lingered on my face long enough to make me blush and she gave a little nod as if to show she instinctively knew more about me than I gave her credit for. I lowered my eyes and concentrated on my mug of hot tea.
‘Jango, heat up that soup will you?’ she said, curling her legs up underneath her on the bench beside me and reaching for her menthol cigarettes.
‘Soup?’ I repeated. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been making chicken soup for the soul now. What I wouldn’t have given for a pot of soup waiting for me when I got in from school after that bus journey in winter.’
‘It’s sweet potato and squash,’ said my father, stirring the pot with a wooden spoon carved into the shape of a giant squid, ‘strictly veggie in this household I’m afraid.’
‘Not strictly, Jango,’ my mother began, blowing the menthol smoke high into the air, ‘you have been known to…’
‘Don’t even go there,’ I said, raising my palm defensively.
My mother laughed.
‘Oh dear, our little girl is still sexually uptight.’
‘I am not!’
My face turned scarlet. In my opinion, there was never a time when sex talk with parents became truly comfortable. Especially not with mine who had embraced the Sixties free love phenomenon, had run with it for the following four decades and were still running into the fifth. Even at retirement age, they were insatiable. I wondered what agony aunt Denise would think of them. Their swinger antics would be enough to turn her hair white.
If it wasn’t already white.
‘Really?’ my mother said with a knowing smile. ‘Who’s the lucky man?’
My father carried three bowls of soup to the table and sat across from me smiling eagerly.
‘No-one,’ I said, flustered.
They leaned closer and peered at me as if watching a rare species at a zoo.
‘No-one,’ I said again, pulling the bowl of soup towards me and jabbing in the spoon, ‘in particular.’
My mother pointed her cigarette at me.
‘Ooh, she said “in particular”, Jango, that means there could be a few someones.’
‘No it doesn’t,’ I muttered.
‘Now that I approve of,’ my father nodded.
‘How can you say that? Most fathers would be horrified at the thought of their daughter sleeping around.’
‘I’m not most fathers.’
‘You can say that again,’ I mumbled.
‘And I’d say it’s better than not getting any at all,’ he shrugged.
I swallowed a mouthful of burning soup.
‘Yes,’ said my mother, yanking her legs into the lotus position, ‘no-one wants to be a dried up prune at the age of…’
She peered at the ceiling, the smoke from her cigarette swirling towards the stationary ceiling fan. I waited. She put the cigarette to her lips, inhaled and then exhaled.
‘I’m thirty-six,’ I said eventually.
My mother and father nodded as if they had known all along.
‘You did give birth just the once,’ I said sourly, ‘one might have thought it’s the sort of thing a woman would remember.’
‘God no,’ my mother laughed, waving her hand at me, ‘it’s the sort of thing a woman would rather forget. There’s nothing beautiful and serene about pushing a small human out of your fandango, believe me. Not that you’ll ever have to worry by the sound of it.’
I took great pleasure in scalding my own throat with the sweet potato soup while my parents exploded with laughter, spitting breadcrumbs over Arthur Scargill’s strawberry blond comb-over.
‘I don’t know what the problem is with your generation,’ she carried on. ‘No sex, no kids, just money, money, money.
‘Money matters,’ I said sternly. ‘Not having money means you can’t do everything you want to do.’
My mother flicked her cigarette ash.
‘A lot of the wonderful things in life don’t cost money,’ she said. ‘A beautiful sunrise or sunset, a walk in the countryside among the flowers and pretty weeds and animals, a great conversation, a kiss.’
She smiled dreamily at my father.
‘Hear hear,’ he said with an equally dreamy smile. ‘We’ve never had much but we’ve had fun.’
‘Life isn’t all about having fun,’ I bristled.
‘Isn’t it?’ said my mother.
I took a deep breath.
‘No, it isn’t. There has to be a certain amount of work and responsibility and money. Money makes the world go round.’
My parents smiled at me as if I were the naïve one.
‘Forces make the world go around, Clover,’ said my father softly, ‘money is something we humans invented to create imbalance and hierarchy and misery.’
‘And happiness,’ I protested, although my words lacked conviction.
When I had had my great job and my prospects at the top of the ladder, I could have argued my point but now I faced an uncertain future, part of me wished I could share their optimism, however naïve, that everything would work out and I would be happy even without beautiful things and a valuable home. That a walk among the weeds would make me feel just as content and secure as perhaps landing a job that paid a hundred grand plus bonuses.
Who was I trying to kid?
My mother patted my arm in the way one would an anxious child.
‘Don’t worry, Clo’, we get your point and we understand you. You’ve always been that way.’
‘What do you mean “that way”?’
She glanced
at my father.
‘Different,’ they said eventually.
I bit hard on a chunk of cheese.
Different in my own home, different to the rest of the kids at school; was there anywhere I was just normal?
‘I’m not different,’ I said firmly, ‘you are.’
It was meant to be a criticism but my mother and father smiled merrily and tucked into their bowls of steaming soup as if the conversation had ended very satisfactorily thank you very much. I felt my ears steam as much as my bowl, especially when my mother chuckled to herself and added – ‘Don’t let the important things in life pass you by, Clo’. Thank God for the impulsive pregnant teens or the British population would dwindle to nothing. You’d all be millionaires with no-one to leave it all to.’
I counted to ten but still my temper fizzed beneath the surface.
‘That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing great about growing up poor and there’s also nothing fabulous about teenage pregnancies.’
‘Gets it out of the way,’ my mother said with a shrug.
‘Gets it out of the way,’ I repeated slowly, ‘well that’s a lovely way of thinking about your child’s arrival on the planet.’
My mother sucked hard on her cigarette, a satisfied expression on her face.
‘You know I always thought your friend… who was she, Ronnie?’ my father said through a mouthful of bread.
‘Ruby,’ said my mother.
‘Roxy,’ I corrected them.
My father clicked his fingers.
‘Roxy, that’s it. I was just waiting for the day you announced she was a pregnant teen.’
‘I’m surprised you remember her,’ I said stonily, ‘you never did take much of an interest.’
‘How could I forget?’ my father smirked with an inappropriate eyebrow dance.
‘She was a pretty one,’ my mother nodded, ‘and a livewire.’
‘She had a difficult childhood,’ I said churlishly, ‘it tends to have repercussions.’
My parents nodded in agreement without the slightest hint of realisation that I was in part referring to them. I sighed. What was the point in trying to make them see how I felt? They would never change. They were Jango and Jemima Baker, mad, overtly sexual, hippie artists and they would be until the day they died. I had come here to try and face some issues, to make them see where they had gone wrong, to talk through my fears for the future with them and find clarity and direction but it was all pointless. They would struggle with direction even if they had their own personal GPS implanted in their heads and we were years beyond talking through our issues as a family. They had brought me up to deal with my life on my own as an independent woman. They didn’t want to be burdened with my woes. They lived their life and I lived mine. Who was I to tell them they should be any different?
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