by Mavis Cheek
He continued to watch the waiter.
'Well, I just threw my arms around Mrs Perry's neck and hugged her so tight that she staggered back into the Wellingtons and old newspapers and assorted livestock and nearly fell over them.'
She waited for them to laugh. Nobody did.
'Well, quite frankly, I could have kissed her to death,' said Angela. 'Because she gave me back some happiness.'
The waiter having withdrawn, Ian immediately began studying the menu. The children looked embarrassed. Happiness is a strong word on a parent's lips.
'Ian?' she said. 'What do you think?'
He looked very directly back at her, eyes suspiciously reflecting nothing in the candlelight, refusing to respond, saying instead, and perhaps more belligerently than he meant, 'Well, what was wrong with it then, that the others pulled out?'
Mrs Fytton of Church Ale House would conduct herself as genteely as a daisy.
'Well?'he said. 'What?'
'The pigs’ said Angela, ‘I believe.'
That told them.
Her family had never been ones for singing en troupe, so it was a miracle of pitch and unity when they all managed to chorus 'The pigs?' together.
She very nearly broke into song herself with a bit of Gilbertian stichomythia:
'The pigs? Yes, the pigs. Not the pigs? Yes, my pigs.
How can you say you own such things when you have never owned such things?
They're my pigs, they're my pigs, they're my PIGS!'
Instead she sat there smiling. The Mona Lisa with a ring of confidence. Ian said, 'Pigs, Angie?'
'Oh, not my pigs,' she said. 'I've only got bees and hens and eels on their way to Sargasso.'
'Pigs, Mum?' Claire was trying to be calm.
She looked at her son. Tigs, Andrew,' she said, just so he would not feel left out.
She thought he looked slightly amused. But perhaps it was only a constriction of the lower intestine. He had been like that as a baby - you never knew if he was pleased to see you or had wind. She smiled at him anyway. His face froze again. Why did her children not know how to even smile at her?
'Yes’ she said firmly, 'pigs. Apparently the previous prospective owners couldn't stand the smell. Which is quite ridiculous, because the dear little things are on the top of a hill far enough away and there is only just the very faintest tang on the air. So, thanks to the porkers, it's mine. Anyway, I think it was all meant. The owner was probably a white witch. You know, ancient forces drawing me back to my roots and all that...'
Ian snorted. 'You were born in Reigate.'
She looked at him superiorly, aware there was a halo around him of some sort. Afterwards she realized this was because she had drunk so much, but at the time she took it as an omen. 'Not that sort of roots’ she said. ‘I mean experience and identity.'
Her daughter looked at her blankly. Andrew was staring straight ahead at a very bad painting on the wall. She thought, Oh, how the longest revolution has failed, remembering her own politicization at that age. Why, when she was first pregnant she had to be sent home from a sit-in because her advanced condition made it just too uncomfortable to sleep on bare floors. Ian had been very supportive over that, taking the remaining women blankets and wine and coffee, shouldering his way past the sneering police. Where did all that go?
To the marketplace, she supposed. Come to that, where did all those women in blankets go? Not to the marketplace? Clinging on to the cliff face of life by their fingertips while the next generation of little blonde plastic persons in power miniskirts hit at their knuckles with a hammer and pinched their husbands from the bloody marketplace, she supposed.
Ah, ah. Well, well. Life was like childbirth. If you told women how hard and painful it was really going to be they would never attempt it. So far, for her success in life, she had been served with a pair of children who could scarcely shit unless she both reminded them and paid them to do it (her own fault), and a husband who'd run after a little bit of skirt (whose fault-testosterone's?). Love-forty.
She looked at her family. Somerset, she went on to tell them, is representative of anywhere rural really. Could be Yorkshire, could be Derbyshire, could be Norfolk. Somerset, she went on to tell them, is full of honest, caring folk, real and vibrant nature, past and present history. She was getting back in touch with a time when women had a place very firmly marked out for them - in brewing, in preserving, in dairy-making, in hens and goats and - yes - pigs. And they didn't have to bloody do EVERYTHING and still look like a supermodel
'Back to my roots,' she reiterated. She saw Claire's puzzled eyes staring at her hair. 'Not those roots,' she said, exasperated.
'Well,' said Claire, 'they are showing through a bit.'
'The roots of life. Those honourable, ancient ways.' She looked at her ex-husband in triumph.
He looked back at her. 'Not having a washing machine, then?' he asked.
Andrew smirked. So did Claire. Angela did not respond. Instead she broke into Goldsmith:
'O luxury! thou curs'd by Heaven's decree, How ill exchang'd are things like these for thee!'
'Have some water,' said Ian, quite affectionately..
It was at that point she realized she must be careful. If she said such things they would put her in a home and freeze her assets. So she just smiled sweetly and said that she hoped her children would continue to call her home theirs. But in Somerset. Non negotiable. A fait accompli.
Ian, pouring her water, said, very quietly, 'And whatever happened to Women's Liberation - all your ideas of equality? The Times's top 100 companies without a woman chairperson among them,' he mimicked.
She was stung. 'Whatever happened to yours?'
'Oh, purleez,' said Claire.
So Angela contented herself with saying, 'Women's rights have done well enough. Not brilliantly, but well enough. You can legislate for those. But Women's Liberation comes from within. This will be liberation. Free to do whatever I like within the annals of time without feeling guilty.' She slumped a bit then. Knocking out a sentence as complicated as that took a huge effort in your cups. She wasn't entirely sure it contained a subject and predicate. She regrouped. 'Anyway, we've been let down, we mothers with children -'
'Mothers usually do have children,' said Ian, half amused again. 'It's one of the qualifications.'
'Oh, ha ha,' she said. 'Anyway - it has let us down.'
She raised her glass to the unsmiling stare of Andrew, the rolling eyes of Claire, leaned back luxuriously and sighed. 'And I am also a dumped wife. And you have got away with it, Ian Fytton. New home, new wife, new baby...'
He had the grace to look uncomfortable, which was something, she supposed. Personally she didn't feel uncomfortable, she felt heartbroken and enraged.
'In olden times if a woman willingly committed adultery she was put down a well with a large stone around her neck. Or tied to the whipping post at the edge of the town for any passing sadist to chastise. If a man committed adultery he was told off - but he couldn't help it because women were lustful creatures. You know, the vampire-vagina, the devil's gateway. Plus ca bloody change... If the woman with whom he committed adultery was not willing - that's to say, if he raped her -'
This was too much for Andrew, who stood up. 'I'm going to the toilet,' he said.
'Lavatory, dearest,' she said automatically. 'If he raped her, she had to pay a fine to her feudal lord for her loss of value
'And?' said Ian.
She filled her glass very slowly, almost drop by drop. 'Not a lot has changed.'
'You're not down a well or tied to a whipping post.'
Her eyes were brilliant, she knew, because she could feel them moistening. 'No?' she said, far, far too bitterly. 'No?'
'Go on about the house, Mum,' said Claire eventually.
Andrew returned and sat down. He looked very pale. She longed to put her arm round him and say it would be all right. But she couldn't promise that. This was not a grazed knee. It was a decision she had taken ent
irely for herself, about herself. It was - in a way - a rejection. Her son shrugged at her smile. There was about his mouth that same line of disapproving resistance that lay around Ian's. Very possibly its source was the phrase 'bloody women'. Well, he must learn to paddle his own canoe. He was nineteen, for God's sake.
She smiled at Claire instead. Who glowered. One day, my little bird, she thought, one day you will know."
'Now, shall I go on?'
The skittles nodded, suitably receptive to information. ‘I arranged this dinner in your honour, mostly,' she said to her ex-husband. 'Because this move of mine will affect you quite a lot.' She said this composedly. Really she wanted to run wildly round the restaurant like a goal-scoring striker, hugging everyone in sight. He looked at her, puzzled.
Firmly retaining the image of herself down a well with a stone round her throat and him above, looking down, smiling, while fondling a toothsome maid, she made it very clear. It would affect him because, despite his having remarried and become a new father, he was also father to these two children sitting here. They should have been suspicious at her use of the term children, since most of the time nowadays she pleaded with them to grow up. But they were not. This was still fantasy land; still Tintoretto's wife and it will come to nothing.
We'll see about that, she thought. And so saying, looking at the three skittles, she took a deep breath and prepared to roll that ball. But the skittles refused to play. At the mention of new fatherhood Ian suddenly perked up, Church Ale House forgotten. He took from his pocket an envelope of photographs, which he dealt out to Claire and Andrew amid squeals and gruffs of delight. Instead of launching into her moment of glory, Mrs Fytton, genteel daisy, sat through long delighted descriptions of baby Tristan (Tristan!). She sat through long delighted reminiscences of Australia and the wedding and how Binnie -
'Who's Binnie?'
'Belinda.' Ian's wife.
'Ah,' she said. ‘I did not know you called her that.'
Smile, sip, smile, sip.
'Sounds like a plastic rubbish sack.'
In future, she decided, she would think of the woman as a bin-bag. Or a victim of her own gender, she added vaguely.
'I want a wedding like that.' Claire was acting as she once did when stroking someone else's Barbie-at-the-Ball gown.
Binnie, apparently, though already pregnant, looked so great, made everyone laugh, danced the night away...
Whatever happened to children loathing their stepmothers?
'I used to have a twenty-five-inch waist’ said Angela to thin air. 'Once. Until very recently actually.'
‘I can't get into her clothes’ said Angela's wonderfully soft and rounded daughter.
It was. It was sodding Barbie. Only this time her won-drously soft and rounded daughter did not so much want to own the doll as be it.
'Yes, yes’ said Angela, whose resentment grew at each new Binnie attribute because she was paying for the meal and because it was supposed to be her evening and because no amount of agony aunt consolations along the lines of 'Try to be glad if your old partner remarries someone your children admire because it helps them' made her feel any better about La Bin-bag and the cherubic Tristan. If she wasn't still sucking up to God following God's major reversal of her fortunes concerning Church Ale House, she might even have wished a six o'clock colic on the babe. That'd sort all of them out.
'Yes, yes’ she interrupted. 'But what about pudding, folks?'
'Remember when we went surfing at dawn and Binnie managed to -'
'LEMON CHEESECAKE sounds good’ said Angela.
Andrew, no longer pale and no longer in need of the bad painting, said, 'The surfing was really great. Can we go back there, Dad. Can we?'
He sounded, this son of hers, as if he was ten. She felt disgusted and had another glass of wine.
'Or ZABAGLIONE’ she shouted, not managing the word at all well.
They ordered.
'Tristan's cutting his teeth in a very interesting way’ said Ian, with total seriousness.
Angela waited for Claire to say, 'Euchh! Dad, PUR-LEEZ,' but instead, meretricious fruit of her womb, she said 'Really?' and leaned closer to hear.
Even Andrew affected to look interested, though Angela-the-mother knew his mind was still somewhere in the surf of Bondi Beach.
'Aah’ murmured Claire sweetly, which went through Angela like a knife. 'Aah - how many has he got now, then?'
Ian said, 'Two,' as if it were a double-first from Cambridge.
No one was paying any attention to her. She tested this by saying, 'You both had a full set by the time you were two weeks old.'
Neither of her two little Judases noticed, and the father of Tristan carried on. Apparently the Bin-bag, who was a dentist, thought she could write a paper on the subject.
Angela felt oddly unliberated towards her. * 'She'll be lucky,' she said with tremendous satisfaction, 'if she has time to pick up a pen.'
At which all three of the skittles gave her quite a look.
'Oh, Mum,' said Claire. 'You're so critical’
Critical? she wanted to say. Critical? This woman stole my husband and behaved in all kinds of devious ways and you call me critical? There, it was out, free at last in her mind, and fuck the sisterhood. 'This thing is bigger than both of us,' the small blonde plastic woman trading under the name of a rubbish sack had had the nerve to tell her. To which Angela had responded shrilly, 'So - we're not talking about my husband's cock, then?' before showing her the door.
'It's not being critical,' she said, as mildly as possible. ‘I know what it's like to try to get anything done with a little baby. That's all I meant
She said no more. Gather ye rosebuds, my children, she thought, sitting back and eyeing them as they rattled away to their father. For soon it will be as ashes in your mouth. A little muddled, she agreed, but her bruised and failing ego felt considerably repaired.
Ian said, very nicely, 'Your mother was very, very good at it all. I'm actually having to be hands-on with this baby. Not like with you.'
Somehow it sounded like a failing on her part.
'Ah’ said Angela, 'did you miss all the mess, then, darling?' And she picked up Andrew's spoon, dipped it into the zabaglione and gave it to Ian. 'You can catch up now if you like.' And she laughed. It did, indeed, seem a comical idea.
'Mum’ hissed Andrew. 'Be quiet.' His expression distinctly said he wished his mother was on the moon.
Be quiet, the boy says. Unable to think beyond his perfidy, she said, 'Andrew, don't speak to me like that.'
She fixed him with her gimlet eye. He fixed her back with his. This was perfidy indeed. ‘I’ll have you know, my son’ she said loudly, stabbing at the table top, ‘I used to wipe your bottom.'
All three pairs of eyes were fixed on her. As indeed were several pairs of eyes from the neighbouring tables. And the waiter's.
In the eighteenth century, she thought, you really would go in fear of Bedlam if your family looked at you like that.
'Oh, Mum’ said Claire, in a voice that put her in imminent danger of being smacked. 'Oh, Mum...' And she slid Angela's glass away.
Angela promptly slid it back again. That is quite enough of Bondi weddings, the wonders of milk teeth and Belinda Warren's Profession, she decided. No more delays. She rolled that ball.
'So, I'm moving to Somerset’ she said. . Ian nodded, dipping into his zabaglione. 'You said. When?' 'Three weeks' time.' 'WHAT?'
A strike. A veritable strike. All three stilled their spoons. If she was inclined to smirk it was, she told herself, only fair.
'Well, three and a half weeks to be exact.'
'And where are we going to go?' asked Claire, all forlorn.
Andrew was staring at his mother as if she was the bad painting now. Ian's eyes were fixed, glazed, spoon half to his lips, the zabaglione dripping from it in plops like yellow tears.
It's got four bedrooms’ she said. 'Five if you count the sewing room. You'd like the sewing room...'
/> 'Sewing room?' Claire's eyes went very round.
'But only one bathroom.' This she directed at her daughter. 'One.'
'How long have you known about this?' asked Ian.
'About six weeks’ she said. 'You can speed things up beautifully if you have a good solicitor. I didn't want to worry Claire and Andrew while they were preparing for their A levels.' She did not add, 'Or in Andrew's case re-preparing for them...' Perfect cover story. Why, she could have been a spy.