“What about you, Mavis?” she said now. “Tell us how your — relationship is going.”
“It just — carries on,” Mavis said rather lamely. “It’s been going on for so long that it’s part of my life.”
“A bit like a marriage?”
“A marriage, and not a marriage.”
“Does his wife know?”
“Oh no.” Mavis looked shocked. “Of course not.”
“How do you know?” Gabs asked her. “She may have her own bit on the side, for all you know. The fact that you’re fucking her husband might suit her nicely.”
“I don’t think Dorothy’s the type,” Mavis said after a moment.
“Well, you don’t look the type, either,” Gabs said. “When you think about it, very few people do, but most of them are at it in one way or another.” She laughed at Mavis’s expression. “Oh, I know I look the type.”
“Do I look the type?” Alice asked, interested in the view of someone who was evidently an expert.
Gabs considered her carefully. “Possibly. You’re quite a private person, aren’t you? Not as private perhaps as Mavis — sorry, Mavis — but I reckon you keep your personal life to yourself.”
“I have to,” Alice said. “We all have to, don’t we? Isn’t that why we’re here?”
“Yeah. But a lot of women can’t help themselves. They just have to tell a couple of friends, and then word gets out. My guess is you haven’t told anyone at all. Am I right?”
Alice agreed.
“Not even the son? What’s his name?”
“Especially not the son, whose name is Finn, and who would be extremely interested.”
“Teenagers, eh?” said Gabs, whose own teenage years couldn’t have been that far behind her.
“Teenagers indeed,” Alice agreed. “I’ll tell him one day — I’ll probably have to — but not yet. Apart from anything else, he’s too busy coming to terms with his own hormones.”
“All the hormones and none of the sense,” said Gabs, who was showing a remarkable degree of insight for one so young.
“Too right.”
“I never wanted children,” Mavis said. “Just as well, really.”
“Well, I didn’t exactly want one,” Alice said. “It just happened.”
“But you’re glad you’ve got him?”
“Oh yes.”
“Who’s his dad, then?” Gabs asked. “Not your feller, I gather.”
“Not my feller. Finn happened long before that. It was an irresponsible artist called Trot.”
“You still see him?” Gabs asked.
“Yes. Because of Finn.”
“How civilised. Mostly they just bugger off.”
“That’s true.” Alice had at least two friends whose partners had buggered off, leaving them holding their respective babies.
At that moment, the door opened, and an elderly woman appeared, wearing a flowery nightie and carrying a strange yellow bag. She was without either slippers or teeth.
“Someone has locked poor Puss in the kitchen,” she said, ignoring the visitors. “Would you let him out, dear? He’s making a terrible noise.”
“Mother, you know we can’t have him around when we’ve got company.”
“He’ll be fine now I’m here.” Mavis’s mother sat down in a rocking chair, cradling her yellow bag in her arms. A clear plastic tube appeared to connect the bag with her nether regions, and it wasn’t difficult to guess what it was. “A glass of white for me, dear. And some of those nice crisps.”
“Oh dear.” Mavis looked around her in desperation, then lowered her voice. “I’m not sure what to do. She can be a bit aggressive when she’s had her sleeping pill.”
“Let her stay,” Gabs said. “You’d like to stay, wouldn’t you?” she said to Mavis’s mother.
“Of course. This is my house. Mavis only lives here.” She held out her hand, smiling sweetly. “I’m Maudie. How d’you do?”
Gabs took the proffered hand. “You’re lucky to have one of those.” She pointed to the bag. “They save so much bother, don’t they?”
“Oh yes,” Maudie said, patting the bag. “You don’t have to wait for help. I wouldn’t be without mine. You can just pee all night without even thinking about it. You should try it.”
“I don’t think I could do my job with one of those,” Gabs said, winking at Mavis. “But there’s a lot of my old people could do with one, but the authorities won’t let them have them.”
“Why ever not?”
“Risk of infection, they say. But I just think they want our lives to be as difficult as possible.”
“My dear, I do so agree with you,” Maudie said.
“How did you manage to get yours?”
“Mavis persuaded them. Mavis is a very good persuader. She said she couldn’t manage me without. I think she was just being lazy. But it suits us, doesn’t it, Mavis?”
Mavis was obviously uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.
“They tickle a bit at first,” Maudie was saying, “but you get used to it. And look —” she gave her tube a hefty tug — “they stay in, whatever you do.”
“So they do,” said Gabs.
“Mother, don’t you think you should go back to bed?” Mavis said, desperation in her voice. “We’re having a meeting.”
“Are you, dear? That’s nice. No, I think I’ll stay. I like talking to — what’s your name, dear?”
“Gabs.”
“What a very odd name.”
“Mother!”
“It’s okay, Mavis; I don’t mind,” Gabs said. “It’s short for Gabriel. My mother was religious.”
“Are you religious too?” Maudie asked, scattering half-chewed fragments of crisps.
“Not very, no,” Gabs said. “Are you?”
“Well, I go to Mass. I like Mass,” Maudie confided, “but church sometimes gets in the way, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does,” Gabs said. She leaned forward and whispered something in Maudie’s ear, and they both laughed uproariously.
Alice felt sorry for Mavis, with her unfashionable sixties hairdo and her sensible shoes. She was obviously a nervous host, and now her mother had gatecrashed the proceedings and was forming this unlikely alliance with Gabs. Gabs appeared to be enjoying the situation, and it was also clear that she was good with old people.
Good with old people. How patronising that sounded. As though the elderly were somehow different, separate, and could all be lumped together so that others could be good with them. Alice herself would have hated to be classified with people all her own age (forty-seven) and expected to behave in a uniform manner. But no one claimed to be particularly good with people of forty-seven.
“More wine, anyone?” Mavis had apparently given up the unequal task of guiding the meeting back onto the rails and was once again struggling with the corkscrew.
“No, thanks. I’m driving,” Alice said, aware that she was probably already over the limit.
“Why not?” Gabs held out her glass. “I came by taxi,” she explained. “It’s been a good week, and so I can afford a little luxury.”
“How much do you charge?” Alice asked. “That is, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“It’s complicated,” Gabs said. “I have a sort of sliding scale.”
“Do you now? That sounds exciting.” They both laughed. Mavis, on the other hand, merely looked confused, and was obviously worried about the continued presence of her mother. But she needn’t have worried.
“We’ve got some kitchen scales, but Mavis dropped them,” said Maudie, helping herself to more crisps. Someone (Gabs?) had poured her a glass of wine, and she was becoming merry. “Not sliding scales. Smashed scales.” She seemed pleased with her little joke. “Shall we sing something?”
“I think she’s confusing this with the day centre,” Mavis said. “No, Mother. We can’t sing anything. This is a meeting.”
“Keep
the home fires burning,” warbled Maudie, spilling wine on her nightie and dropping her plastic bag on the floor. “Where’s the bloody cat?”
Gabs was enjoying herself more than she had anticipated. The evening, lubricated by cheap wine and the timely arrival of Mavis’s mother, was looking up, and while she felt sorry for Mavis (poor cow; where did she get that skirt?), she couldn’t help being amused at her discomfort.
“My guess,” she said, taking another swig of her wine, “is that the ‘bloody cat’s’ shut up somewhere. It’s making the dickens of a noise.”
“Let him out, Mavis,” said Maudie. “Poor puss. Poor, poor pussy. All by himself. Ding dong bell, pussy’s in the well.” She started singing again.
“All right. I’ll let him out. But on your own head be it, Mother. Remember what happened last time?”
“Bollocks,” said Maudie cheerfully when Mavis had left the room. “She does talk a lot of — what was that word I just said?”
“Bollocks?” Gabs said.
“That’s it. Bollocks.”
Mavis returned, accompanied by a huge tabby cat, which wound itself into the room with tail stiffly upright and a wary, malevolent gaze.
“What’s his name?” asked Gabs, who was fond of cats.
“Puss — Puss — what’s he called, Mavis? I’ve forgotten,” Maudie confided.
“Pussolini,” said Mavis.
“What a great name! Does he live up to it?” asked Alice.
“Oh yes. He lives up to it all right,” Mavis assured her.
The cat strolled up to Gabs, sniffed her ankles, and then jumped onto her knee.
“Goodness!” said Mavis. “He never does that.”
“He knows I like cats,” said Gabs, who had been surprised at the glimpse of humour from Mavis. Maybe there was more to Mavis than she’d initially thought.
“No one likes Pussolini,” said Mavis, with more feeling than she’d shown all evening. “Except Mother, of course.”
Gabs stroked the cat and wondered where the rest of the evening was going. Since the advent of Maudie, some of the point had been lost, and she for one couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about.
“Where were we?” she asked now.
“Sliding scales?” said Alice.
“Oh yes. Sliding scales. Perhaps I’d better save that for next time?” She glanced towards Maudie, who appeared to be listening attentively. She might not have her own teeth, but there was nothing wrong with her hearing.
Maudie reminded Gabs of her own great-grandmother, a redoubtable woman who had lived to be ninety-eight. Adored by her numerous descendants, she’d managed to stay on in her own home until the very end, regardless of the gloomy prognostications of her family, who were concerned that she would have falls and forget to eat properly. Considerate to the last, she had died in her sleep two years ago on Boxing Day, leaving her relatives with happy memories of a riotous final Christmas and the reassuring thought that she had died in her own home (the fact that they had done their best to remove her from it was conveniently forgotten). Gabs still missed her, for she herself was the black sheep who’d skipped a couple of generations, and she hoped that she would be able to carry on the same feisty heritage of nonconformity.
“Would you ever marry?” Alice asked her suddenly.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“It might interfere with your livelihood.”
“I’d give it up,” Gabs said. “It was only ever a stopgap. I sort of fell into it; I can fall out again — no problem. There’s plenty of other things I could do. I’ve got my care work, for a start. But if I do marry, it’ll be someone rich. My old gran always used to say, ‘Don’t marry for money, but marry where money is.’ I think she had the right idea.”
“And did she? Marry where money was?” Mavis asked.
“No.” Gabs laughed. “My granddad hadn’t got a bean. But I gather it wasn’t for want of trying. What about you two? Would you marry your fellers if you could?”
“Good question,” said Alice. “But yes, I think I would. Well, I’d live with him, anyway. I love Jay, and I think we’d make a good couple. What about you, Mavis?”
Mavis glanced at Maudie, who appeared to be asleep. “I don’t know,” she said. “Once, I certainly would have. But he kept on promising to leave his wife, and I kept pretending I believed him, and now I think I’ve accepted things as they are. I have my home; he has his. He’s got his kids, and I never wanted any. It’s odd, but I think we’re best off as we are. Provided Dorothy never finds out.”
“What about if something happens to him?” Alice asked.
“Yes, that’s always bothered me. No one knows about us, so I’d probably be the last to hear. And then when I did find out, there’d be no one to offer a shoulder to cry on.”
“That bothers me, too,” Alice said. “We’re the invisible ones, aren’t we? There’s no place in the pecking order for mistresses. We sort of hover on the outskirts of other people’s families — skeletons in cupboards, secrets that have to be kept. I often wonder what I’d do if anything happened to Jay. That’s one of the reasons I’ll eventually have to tell Finn. He and I are pretty close, and I’d really need him.”
Listening to them, Gabs felt some sympathy, but she also couldn’t help thinking they were both mad. There must be a moment between attraction and falling in love, and if the guy was married, that was surely the moment to stop. This had nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with practicality. Gabs had no compunction about sleeping with other people’s husbands, but she had no intention of falling for one. That way lay endless complications, and Gabs preferred her life to be straightforward.
“How do you manage to live like that, year after year?” she asked. “Secret meetings and phone calls and never being able to be seen out with your man?”
“That seems odd, coming from you,” Alice said, but without malice.
“Oh, I’m different. I don’t get involved,” Gabs told her.
“How? How do you not get involved?” Mavis asked.
“It’s a job. You don’t get involved with all those socks and ties you sell, do you?”
“That’s not at all the same,” Mavis objected, although she couldn’t help laughing. “No one ever fell in love with socks and ties.”
“True. But it’s the same idea. You approach your job in one way, your social life in another.”
“Well, I couldn’t do what you do,” Mavis said, not for the first time.
Gabs tried to conjure up a mental picture of Mavis stepping out of her sensible skirt and old-fashioned court shoes and preparing to entertain an eager (and paying) client, but failed. “Horses for courses,” she said. “You’ve got your socks and ties; I have my clients.”
“And I,” said Alice, consulting her watch, “have to go. I’ve got a piece to finish this weekend, and I haven’t even started it.”
“Me too. Early start tomorrow,” Gabs said. “No days off in my job. I’ll just phone for a taxi.”
Alice and Gabs gathered up their coats and bags and prepared to leave. As they stood in the hallway saying their farewells, Maudie’s voice could be heard coming from the living room.
“Bad girls,” she called after them cheerily. “All of you. Bad, bad girls.”
Mavis looked shocked, but Gabs laughed. “She’s right,” she said. “No flies on your mum. We are bad girls. After all, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
Part Two
Alice
On the evening after the meeting, Trot and Finn returned home filthy and late.
“Really kind of you to ask me for tea,” Trot said, pecking Alice on the cheek. “I’ve brought wine.” He deposited a bottle of Liebfraumilch on the kitchen table. Alice reflected sourly that this seemed to be a weekend for cheap, nasty wine, but tried to accept the offering with good grace.
“Did you catch anything?” she asked, stirring Bolognese sauce.
“Trot caught an old watering can, and I caught a very s
mall fish. I put it back,” Finn said. “We threw away the rest of the maggots,” he added. “I didn’t think you’d want them hanging around.”
“How kind,” murmured Alice.
Finn opened a cupboard and brought out a box of cereal. “Want some?” he asked Trot.
“Yeah. Why not?” Trot said, taking off his jacket and flinging it over a chair.
“Well, one reason is that I’m serving supper any minute,” Alice said. “And it’ll —”
“Spoil our appetites,” chorused Finn and Trot, giving each other high fives and fetching bowls and spoons. Alice noticed that Trot could always locate anything connected with food or drink, but never knew where to hang his coat.
After supper, they played Monopoly. Trot and Finn, who for some reason loved the game, wrangled and fought, and finally formed a syndicate, winning handsomely. Alice, who loathed it, happily admitted defeat. She had spent much of the game in jail (despite having a “get out of jail free” card), working on her article, and neither of the others had even noticed. Games of Monopoly with Trot had been known to last into the small hours, and she needed to get some sleep.
Afterwards, Finn asked whether Trot could stay the night.
Alice looked at Trot — at his filthy jeans, his unshaven face, and his socks, which were more hole than sock. Trot followed her gaze.
“I’ll have a shower,” he said.
“And I’ll lend him some clean boxers,” Finn told her.
And I, thought Alice wearily, will have to make up the bed, provide clean towels, and afterwards do the necessary laundry.
“Please?” Finn said again, making puppy eyes at her.
“Oh, all right,” Alice said. “You’d better sling your things into the washing machine — both of you. I’ll put a wash on now.”
“You’re an angel.” Trot patted her on the head. “Isn’t she, Finn? Isn’t your mother just the best?”
“Don’t push your luck,” Alice warned, tidying up the Monopoly money and wishing that Trot was equally good at making the real kind. For if he were, some of it might — just might — come Finn’s way, and at the moment, keeping Finn was not cheap.
The Frances Garrood Collection Page 32