Man at the Helm

by Stibbe, Nina

  And Tuppence, said, ‘Yes, I have,’ with a little stamp of his foot, like a five-year-old, and we all hated him and had no idea what to call him.

  On the whole, Dr Norman seemed to be sexually interested in our mother – either that or it was a habit of his to act flirtatiously and look at women’s nipples. And for a short while she seemed interested in him too. But somehow all the sexy nipple-looking and flirty chitchat seemed empty and cold and as though they weren’t keen on each other. And, added to which, somehow my sister and I didn’t even want Dr Norman at the helm. Yes, he was a doctor and knew not to say ‘pardon’ or ‘notepaper’, but he just wasn’t the kind of man we wanted. He had a high-pitched laugh, which came out too often. He flapped his hands nervously around the ponies. Also, having Dr Norman at the helm would mean having Tuppence too (or Tanner as he would no doubt become) and we couldn’t have stood it, we thought.

  So after the enthusiasm in the surgery and the excitement at the prospect of his moving in, we were lethargic and just let Tuppence play with the Lego and ignored him while Dr Norman looked at our mother’s nipples a bit more and had cups of coffee and laughed a lot. There were five minutes of drama when Tuppence climbed up into a pear tree, criticized our platform for not being a proper tree house, and then said he was too scared to climb down. Dr Norman could have regained some respect at that point, but instead he became anxious and wanted to call the fire brigade. I climbed up into the tree in my sister’s running spikes to help, but Tuppence made such a fuss and wouldn’t be helped so in the end I gave him a bit of a shove and he tumbled down quite safely into his father’s flapping hands.

  Later, having omelettes, Dr Norman asked if it would be OK if he brought his girlfriend, Penny, round.

  ‘Do as you please, there are no rules here, as you’ve seen. Just do as you please,’ said our mother, ‘do exactly as you please.’ She sounded cross in spite of her reasonable words and a bit like her own mother.

  Before we’d finished our omelettes all up, Dr Norman seemed to have hiccups and kept holding his hand to his mouth and saying, ‘Excuse me.’ It went on for some time and we offered the usual procedural help and discussed amongst us the best methods for curing stubborn hiccups. Dr Norman declined all suggestions, including the tremendous shock which my sister put forward as an option.

  ‘We could turn the lights off and do something shocking,’ said my sister.

  ‘We could throw a cushion at him,’ said Little Jack.

  Tuppence then helpfully explained it wasn’t hiccups as such, but a rare kind of throat spasm where pockets of air get trapped in the folds of the oesophagus at times of stress and are released suddenly when the throat relaxes, causing a series of small painful burps. Our mother looked appalled and it put her right off him sexually (her being squeamish about anything to do with burps, sick or spit etc.). She looked nauseous and suddenly Penny the girlfriend seemed like a good thing.

  Over the six weeks that Dr Norman was lodging with us there were many tiny mentions of our mother putting the house on the market, and at the same time Dr Norman grew to really like it and to feel it might be the ideal home for him and Penny and any kids they might have in the future. I thought this before Dr Norman actually did. And sure enough, when our mother finally decided she had too many debts and no money and selling up really was the only option, Dr Norman was first in the queue to buy it and he said how great it would be for him and Penny and any future kids.

  Dr Norman brought Penny to see the house one day. Penny was young but had her hair in a bun and pale yellow trousers. They walked around the house, including the bits they wouldn’t normally see, such as our mother’s bedroom. I shadowed them, keen to hear their thoughts.

  ‘How much do you think she’d accept?’ asked Penny.

  ‘She’s pretty desperate,’ said Dr Norman.

  Dr Norman made an offer considerably less than the asking price. Our mother said the offer was a bit on the low side and Dr Norman said she could take it or leave it.

  In the queue, right behind him, was Dr Gurly, the lady doctor who, we guessed, must have heard about the house from Dr Norman, there being no For Sale sign up. Anyway, Dr Gurly came to view the house with a friend called Sheela and a clipboard and they took detailed notes. They measured the height of the kitchen cupboards and asked if the interior shelves were height-adjustable – which they were – them being cereal lovers and cereal boxes getting taller and taller. Our mother left them to roam around outside and waited until they said how lovely the garden was and then told them about Mr Gummo.

  Dr Gurly and Sheela were very friendly towards us and after they’d finished their look around said how much they liked the house and Sheela asked if we’d been happy living there.

  What a question. In truth, we hadn’t been very happy, but it would be unfair if that reflected badly on the house. The house, though less marvellous than we’d been led to believe at the outset, had been fine and hadn’t demanded any attention. Its good points had never quite made up for the fact that it was stuck in the old heart of a jittery little village and not in a town. But it was a nice house, roomy and with a grassy paddock, outbuildings, view, beams and whatnot. As the estate agent said, ‘All the features you would expect from a superior dwelling’, meaning gas-fired central heating, a downstairs lavatory and a view of the church steeple.

  ‘In all fairness, the house has done its best,’ I said, and that caused Sheela to look sad for a moment, so I looked at my sister who was perfect as always and patched it up with, ‘Of course, we’re sad to be leaving, but we can tell you’ll be very happy here.’

  And that went down very well and then Little Jack explained about our financial situation, which he was supposed to know nothing about, and it was slightly embarrassing.

  Dr Gurly and Sheela then told our mother they would be making an offer, which they did, via the agent, and they offered the whole price and our mother accepted it and reminded them about Mr Gummo.

  ‘What about Dr Norman and Penny and their future children?’ I asked later.

  ‘There are plenty of other houses around for them,’ said our mother.

  ‘Not as nice as this one, which has all the features you’d expect from a superior dwelling,’ I said, and suddenly felt I’d said the wrong thing seeing as presumably we’d be moving to one of the less nice houses which wouldn’t even be a superior dwelling.

  The strange thing was, as soon as our mother had accepted Dr Gurly’s offer, the agent, Golbert & Blick, put a For Sale sign up – when it wasn’t even for sale any more. Our mother said that was the norm, and my sister said, ‘What do you expect from an outfit who don’t know how to spell “windows”?’

  ‘Spacious porch with original tiles and bottle-bottom windoes.’

  And then, seeing the sign, other people wanted to look around, including Mrs Longlady and Mrs C. Beard, even though neither had any intention of buying it, but just wanted a little outing. Apparently that was the norm too and you just had to grit your teeth while they gawped at your sleeping arrangements and peered into your bathroom cabinet.

  Then, in what seemed like a sudden move but probably wasn’t, our mother made an offer on a two-bedroomed house on the Sycamore Estate. We knew where the Sycamore Estate was but had never been there. Our mother painted a vivid picture. She explained that the estate was a specially designed residential area with a whole lot of slim streets with modern semi-detached houses with garages or carports, saplings and nice bits of grass. It was near the senior school and handy for a parade of shops and a bus stop. She’d never been there either. It sounded ideal.

  Dr Gurly and Sheela were very keen to prepare for their move into our house and one or other of them often drifted in between appointments to measure walls, windows and bits of furniture. Sometimes they measured things they’d measured before, thinking the original measurements untrustworthy. They were planning to put up a dividing wall in the kitchen to make an intimate dining room which they were going to fill almost ent
irely with a large dining table and have a low lamp hanging in the centre. They wanted a scrubbed kitchen table (about the size of ours) in the kitchen and a smarter dark wood table in the dining room for when they were entertaining their doctor and nurse friends.

  Our mother planned to offer Dr Gurly and Sheela certain of the larger items of furniture and garden stuff at a price to be agreed – the Suffolk Punch, the four-poster bed (but not the mattress), the walnut wardrobe, the large settee in her sitting room, and other sundry items. Dr Norman came to see our mother to ask if she’d take a higher offer. Our mother said she’d accepted the asking price from Dr Gurly. Dr Norman seemed cross about it and offered a bit above the asking price. Our mother said she couldn’t accept.

  Dr Mann: Why have you sold the house to another doctor?

  Adele: Dr Lady outbid you fair and square.

  Dr Mann: But it’s the perfect house for myself and Penny, my girlfriend cum patient.

  Adele: It’s also the perfect house for Dr Lady.

  Dr Mann: She had no right outbidding me. Dr Lady’s only a lady doctor.

  Adele: She’s two, actually.

  24

  We moved on a Friday with the help of Mr Lomax. Free of charge.

  Mr Lomax was still a feature in our lives, even after turning out to be a partly bad apple. My sister felt sure he didn’t know that we knew of his entanglement with Charlie Bates, and though it was tempting to a righteous person like her to make him face up to his misdeeds and general badness, my sister decided that his usefulness as a repentant odd-job man was too valuable to throw away on revenge and justice.

  ‘But why’s he being so helpful then, if he doesn’t know we know?’ I asked.

  ‘He knows and that’s enough,’ she said. I still wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t mind because I didn’t think he was all bad. I have to say, though, it felt wrong not telling Little Jack, who had sensed badness in Mr Lomax all along. It seemed unfair not to reward his intuition. I said so to my sister and she said people like him didn’t need acknowledgement for their knowingness. If you know everything, you know everything and can’t expect people to be constantly telling you that you were right.

  The day started well. Everything was in boxes and lots of rubbish was in bags by the bins. Our mother kept reminding us there was very little space at Willow Drive and that we should only take what we absolutely needed or couldn’t bear to part with. I packed my clothes and Monopoly and Scrabble, my collection of scrapbooks and a fan I’d got from Spain. We had eight trips to and fro on the move day in Mr Lomax’s brand-new van.

  Much of the big furniture did indeed stay in the house and became the property of Dr Gurly and Sheela – the scrubbed table in the kitchen, for instance, because it was too big, and other things too valuable to hang on to.

  Let me describe our new house. It had two rooms downstairs. A kitchen and a lounge. Mr Lomax fixed a piece of chipboard up to make a bedroom for our mother in the smaller half of the lounge. The remaining bit of lounge adjoined the kitchen and became our playroom. We’d never had a lounge before and weren’t sure what people had them for. Our mother, who’d previously winced at lounges, said a lounge was instead of a sitting room, only more for lounging in than sitting and usually smaller. Upstairs were two bedrooms, one of which had a pink and purple plaque affixed reading ‘Lizzie’s Room’. I can hardly put into words just how affected I was upon seeing this. I saw it as a sign that this was a most positive and perfect move for us, which I already thought. I apologized to my sister for her name not also being on the door – seeing as it was to be her room as much as it was mine and she said something that shook me.

  ‘Well, you’ll live here a good bit longer than I shall,’ she said. And I thought about that for a moment – life without my sister. And I think I felt what Charlie and other men felt when pondering outer space and infinity and I was terrified by it. I didn’t want to even imagine such a thing and my eyes stung and a smell of pepper surrounded me. Looking back, I was a bit all over the place, feeling first elated by the silly name sign, then devastated by a simple fact. It wasn’t a reflection on the house or the room or the idea of my sister leaving in the future. It was just that moving house is a big thing and can upset your balance and cause havoc with your emotions.

  To continue with the tour of the new house, there was a dampish bathroom with pale pink tiles covering the walls and dark patches where the carpet met the pedestal of the basin and the trunk of the toilet. And that was the whole house. The staircase was a ladder of chunky planks at such an abrupt angle that Debbie never ventured upstairs and the rest of us never went up or down without due care and holding the rope, which of course Debbie couldn’t do, being a Labrador.

  There were built-in cupboards and shelves around the place, including a cupboard that cut off a corner so that the cupboard was triangular and useless. The back garden was a lawny yard with a rabbit’s grave at the end. We knew this because the girl who’d lived there before had said so in a note. That it was buried there and had been called ‘Bunny’.

  That first night, before we’d unpacked, I heard my sister say to our mother, ‘Lizzie’s gone a bit weepy.’ And I could have killed her because then I did cry and had to pretend to be getting my clothes out of a bin bag.

  Our mother said, ‘Is she? Perhaps I should go and get some chop suey.’

  And my sister said, ‘Or chips?’

  Our mother went off and came back with the chips and we sat on the floor. Debbie couldn’t settle and kept wandering around. She didn’t have much space. There was no boot room or porch. There wasn’t even a space big enough for her basket and nowhere for her to stretch out like a walrus and be alone. Even the garden was too small. There wasn’t room to run or chase a bee.

  Eventually, days later, when Debbie was still unsettled, we decided we’d have to start walking her and that seemed so strange. The ‘having to walk Debbie’ thing was a negative. Debbie hated being taken for a walk – I think she was embarrassed. We’d drag her down to a square of grass and she’d sniff around and go to the toilet and while we were there waiting for her to go, other dogs would turn up and do the same and all the dog owners would smile and nod.

  Another downside to the new house was that it had no land, only the yard of lawn and rabbit grave. This was a problem for our two remaining ponies, Sacha and Maxwell (Bilbo and Robbie having been sold and therefore of no concern).

  We should have sold them all. But we couldn’t bear to part with Sacha and Maxwell. Our mother said there was no spare money, so we had to find some cheap grazing for them or they would have to go too. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way,’ she said.

  The first thing we did was go to see Dr Gurly. We explained our predicament, which was that we desperately wanted to keep our ponies but we had strong feelings about farms and could we please keep them in their paddock until we found a nice farm with a kind and animal-loving farmer. My sister told Dr Gurly about the farmer shooting the cow in the plough and Dr Gurly said, ‘Golly, how horrible.’ I added that farmers hardly ever stroked their calves or piglets, but my contribution was badly timed and rather cut short Dr Gurly’s sympathizing over the shot cow, so I added the greasy-feathered crows hanging by their feet from boundary wire as a warning. And all the drowning, castrations, branding and baby mice. And Dr Gurly started laughing. Dr Gurly had the kind of confident manner that enabled her to laugh at things that weren’t funny but might be a bit exaggerated.

  She apologized, though, and said she didn’t mean to laugh and it all sounded quite horrible and she couldn’t bear the thought of us ever setting foot on a farm again. She was joking but not against us, just enjoying our stories, and said that as far as she was concerned we could keep two ponies in the paddock, but only as a stopgap with an eight-week limit and she didn’t want the 50p per week. But she would like to check with Sheela first. Which she did later and then phoned to say it was fine but not for too long – because she wanted to get a go-kart. And go-karts and p
onies don’t mix.

  We found the Sycamore Estate to be a magical place. The little houses lining the curved streets being just like the triangle-topped squares Jack arranged beside his train track. And ditto the little trees dotted about and bits of picket fence. The Sycamore Estate was neat, cosy and small. The houses were either very similar or exactly the same. Some had been tampered with to give them the edge – such as a name etched onto a slice of wood.

  Ours was number 28 Willow Drive and had no extras.

  It was understood on the Sycamore Estate that things were as they were. If your house was prettified with fake Swiss shutters or black iron door furniture in the medieval style, then very good. If, however, yours was a bit rickety – say the lounge window was boarded up after an accident or a row, or the garage door dented after a bump – that was OK too. There was no sense that you were expected to enhance anyone else’s life via your house or behaviour.

  We were tucked away and no one saw us except the other Willow Drive dwellers. No one was there unless they lived there (and I’m not counting anyone who lived there), so no one was there. No one heard what we were saying, only estate people and they didn’t mind us and we didn’t mind them. No one walked past on the way to church and no one gazed in. No one parked outside to go to the Co-op or the doctor or the butcher or on a country walk. It was as though we no longer lived in the village.

  No one on the Sycamore Estate had much more than anyone else except the occasional few who’d built extensions over the garages, but those people were admired for that little bit extra and not thought badly of and they usually had four children or a fourth on the way and that was their excuse for the extra room.

  As I say, a few had fake shutters in the alpine style and some had medieval-style door furniture. One or two had knobbly glass in the front door and some had tarmacked over the nine foot of lawn at the front to fit another vehicle off the road. Some had a dog, many didn’t.