Chain Reaction

by Gillian White

  Seeing this, observing this from as far back as she can remember prevented Frankie from following her mother’s example when she married Michael Rendell twenty years ago. She felt lucky to have escaped her childhood whole and functional. Her mother’s subservient behaviour made Frankie feel sick. Irene even cut the tops off her father’s boiled eggs. She kept house compulsively, made friends with no one. She was always jumping at sounds, waiting for Father’s key in the door, or the phone which might be him. And Frankie was brought up as a second devoted fan of the man until she grew old enough to understand and detest the calculated way in which William allowed Irene to adore him.

  He was her love, her treasure.

  She was his spare rib and contented with that.

  A human being should not be at her happiest when thinking of somebody else, should she?

  Frankie asked her mother once, ‘What would you do if Daddy left home?’ Irene reached forward and slapped her daughter’s face.

  Mother tried to discuss his work. She responded over-eagerly to his long and distracted stories. She laughed over-loudly at his jokes. Oh, he was nothing special, a skinny, tall, glaring man with a bald head and a bristly moustache. He invariably wore a beige anorak and spent his whole life in the competitive world of insurance.

  ‘We’ll have lamb chops with new potatoes tonight, Frankie, seeing as how it’s your father’s favourite.’

  ‘We are having a golfing holiday this year. Now don’t look so grumpy, dear, it’s your father who needs the rest, not you.’

  ‘Not that chair, Frankie, Daddy will be home in a minute. Hop on to the stool, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘No, dear, no, you are quite wrong. I don’t think the green looks so good. William hates green, the blue suits me far better.’

  ‘We will stop at the services when your father feels ready to stop and not before. Stop scratching.’

  And, ‘Smile for Daddy, Frankie, smile!’

  When Frankie got into university it was, ‘Oh Frankie, your father will be so proud.’

  A good woman and look where it got her. Irene was not a victim, she was a fool. Her long and patient subservience should have received some lasting pay-off, but look what happened. William turned up his toes one morning and left her.

  It was unforgivable of him to die first.

  And now Irene is enraged and turning her anger on everyone else.

  But drugs?

  Frankie knows very well that in days gone by she would have had her mother at home with her. That was the accepted behaviour until a generation ago. She wonders what communal understanding suddenly changed that noble concept.

  Of course the very idea is right out of the question. Poppy and Angus would not tolerate that notion for a second—and rightly so. They are studying hard at the moment. Poppy, a troublesome adolescent, is struggling with her A levels and Angus is at the new university training to be a computer technician. They have their own rooms. They need their own rooms and Frankie certainly needs hers. They also all need their space, and peace and quiet in order to get on with their lives. Mother, with her demands and her confusion, would soon put paid to all that. Poppy and Angus were both taught from an early age never to disturb their grandfather, to tidy up after themselves whenever they went to Granny’s house, not to make a fuss if the sport was on all afternoon or when Grandpa told them to keep off his precious lawn. No, no, she cannot come home, there’d be no one around to look after her. Frankie’s first responsibility, especially now Michael has left them, is to her children.

  Matron is right: it will have to be drugs.

  ‘But nothing too rigorous, Matron, please. Nothing that might change my mother’s personality.’

  ‘But of course not, Mrs Rendell,’ says Miss Blennerhasset sensibly.

  They have drugged her and they have taken away her shoes.

  Frankie is going to have to press on with the sale of the wretched flat. She has no option. So far there’s been little interest, although the agent tells her this will take time. On top of her other responsibilities Frankie has to pop round occasionally to give the place the once over, to make sure it is spick and span for any viewers. Life is such a rush these days. Her eyes turn in on her problems as she fights for a parking space, bumps into people along the High Street dodging between parked vans and buses and even missing a turning in her haste. She has thirty essays to mark tonight and she doesn’t get enough sleep as it is, thinking of Michael and his moll. Twenty years and it’s suddenly over, the destruction of love, a wilderness complete. But she was the one who demanded separate lives, separate holidays, separate interests, separate friends—well, she is certainly separate now all right. She dusts. She hoovers. She wipes the surfaces over and sprays a little fresh air. All her mother owns in the world, these precious, pitiable things. How little they matter in the end. Disposables. They will have to sell them when the flat goes, or get the Council to take them away. Funny how flies like to congregate in deserted places. Where do they all come from? Do they make nests in the winter?

  ‘How is Mrs Peacock, Mrs Rendell?’

  Frankie starts and turns. But it’s all right. The head round the door is drab and benign with a genuine enquiry into her mother’s condition.

  ‘Not good, I’m afraid, Miss Benson. She came back here again yesterday.’

  ‘Oh dear, not again,’ says Miss Benson with feeling, stepping into the room, a tall young woman with fly-away, pale brown hair. She looks as if she works in a bank. Nervously she clears her throat. ‘I am so sorry. It must be such a worry for you, and with the main road, too.’

  ‘It is a worry,’ admits Frankie, stretching upright while kneading her back, glad of a rest, glad of an opportunity to discuss this pressing problem with an impartial stranger. ‘And my mother is very angry with me.’

  ‘She is bound to be,’ says Miss Benson, dismayed to hear it. ‘It is all very sad. She was just getting used to life here, too, after the move.’ And can those be tears in Miss Benson’s eyes? Surely not! ‘I wondered if a visit from me might help to cheer her a little.’

  ‘Oh, would you do that? Would you really?’

  Miss Benson seems like a lonely soul, at home most evenings, according to Mother, always time for a chat, even inviting Irene in for tea and a piece of Marks & Spencer angel cake at her first-floor flat on occasion—unusual in a young person these days, unusual to bother like that. ‘But of course. In a funny way I miss Mrs Peacock. You really would think there would be a way that society could look after her at home. I mean, she’s not—’

  Gaga? Miss Benson shrinks from the word and leaves an empty space while fiddling with the shoulder strap on her cheap black bag. ‘Well, there isn’t, I’m afraid,’ says Frankie. ‘We have been through all that. Apparently that sort of care would cost more than Greylands.’ Frankie looks suddenly doubtful. Will Mother be rude to Miss Benson, too, upsetting the woman, perhaps, with her tall stories of conspiracy and unkindness? She is now convinced that someone is stealing her things. Probably not. Miss Benson, so mild, so obviously kind and good, is nothing to do with Mother’s present predicament. She might even be able to talk some sense into Irene, make out she is on Mother’s side.

  ‘I will go on Friday evening, if you don’t mind then,’ says Miss Benson with pity in her voice. And then the rather surprising addition, because she doesn’t look the type to offer such sinful gifts: ‘And I’ll take her some cigarettes along while I’m at it.’

  SEVEN

  ‘Joyvern’, 11, The Blagdons, Milton, Devon

  AND NOW JOY IS insisting that Vernon take her out to look at some suitable properties. She can’t wait to leave Joyvern, for someone to come along and buy it so she can pick up her dusters and flee.

  All this is too much for Joy and losing face is the worst of it, losing face in front of her friends and neighbours. She has always been needy of other people’s approval; she used to enjoy showing people around her new house, her decorated house, her extended house, her newly carpe
ted house, always something to show them. But not like this, oh no, not now she is leaving and forced to give it up.

  Vernon and Joy were one of the first residents of this brand-new estate. They were given a bottle of champagne and a bouquet of flowers by the builders. Prideful people, they set the standard as it were, first to put up hanging baskets and their little red mail box beside the gate started a colourful trend. They moved in when the garden was little more than a shape scraped out of the muddy earth by a digger. Those were spindly saplings, now grown into sturdy standard cherries. The road that led to the cul-de-sac was hardly passable in those days, what with the builders’ mess and the asphalt wagons and the dangerous piled-up mountains of paving.

  But during all their fifteen years on the estate, Joy suffered a perpetual worry that someone else would move into the cul-de-sac who was more affluent, more sophisticated than they, forever afraid of embarrassment in front of other people, or of one of her family committing some social gaffe. Vernon is the only one in the world to know how much she suffered. Spend spend spend seemed to be the only answer. Joy’s magazines tell her that this is an illness but Vernon would disagree with this. Joy spent with a purpose. She had to keep in front. The kitchen shines with its new yellow tiles, begonias in the window, bright blue plates, all matching, not cheap. Decorating the whole house every couple of years and then came the roof extension. She wanted to get the builders in but Vernon insisted on doing it himself. ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees, Joy, you really must try to remember that.’ The lists run on and on, ever changing—the small conservatory at the back, greenhouse, gazebo and pergola, the patio and the bathroom Jacuzzi. A sensible navy Ford for Vernon and a neat little Mini in a daffodil hue for Joy. Holidays in Greece, Corsica and Turkey, Benidorm is not for the Marshes. They held barbecues and At Homes on Christmas Eve, and Tupperware parties when they were in vogue and they were the first to join the new Neighbourhood Watch scheme. Suzie and Tom, five and eight when they moved here from Joy’s mother’s house, were well-kept, well-behaved children with green-shampoo-shiny hair and scrubbed and rosy English faces. They played in the garden, not out in the road like they tend to do nowadays. They never had sweets stuck round their faces. They did well at school, went riding, played tennis, joined the Scouts and the Guides and went on to further education and are now living with their partners. Tom is already married with a baby of his own.

  Suzie swears she will soon be engaged and that everyone lives together nowadays. She’s got a good job as a Clinique beautician and as Joy says, you can’t get a more reputable brand than that.

  Nothing to shame Joy there.

  As a mother she has a great deal to be proud of.

  Then, seven years ago and out of the blue, Vernon was made redundant.

  He had wanted to search for another job, difficult though that might be, at least it would be safe, but Joy said no, this is your chance to use that money and those brains of yours to become self-employed—‘your own man’ were the actual words she used as if, up until then, Vernon had been somebody else’s. ‘Your own man at last!’

  They were already in debt. Oh, not the dangerous, embarrassing kind—more like Access, Visa, Joy’s accounts at M&S, Laura Ashley, the loan for the second car, for example. Vernon knows now that that precious redundancy money should have been used to pay these off, but we would all be millionaires with hindsight, wouldn’t we?

  He has let Joy down with the failure of Marsh Electronics Ltd, the tatty shop where he goes every day trying to get rid of the bits and pieces, hopelessly picking the mail off the mat without ever needing to read the demands that spiral monthly like weeds in a garden.

  He has never been the kind of man to make a success on his own. He lacks the drive, the energy needed for that sort of lonesome enterprise. Now Joy would probably have done better, being more ambitious than he. She might have made a success of a dress shop—that’s if she hadn’t smuggled out all the stock.

  She tries to make out she does not blame him, that she believes he did his best, but she doesn’t honestly mean that, not deep down. Deep down she thinks that Vernon, her man and protector, has let her down badly. Oh yes, he knows his wife well enough by now. He is a fat, flatulent failure and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.

  Joy—you might well imagine some frivolous blonde but she’s not like that, not at all. Five foot four and firmly built, she doesn’t go in for glamour but taste, the navy-and-white-spotted styles of sailing folk. Underplayed, but just as costly as if you were dressing in silks. Timberland coats and Timberland shoes. Bridge handbags, or Emmy. Beautifully tailored mock-riding jackets, hand-knitted, chunky sweaters that somehow cost hundreds, leather jerkins from Jaeger while Vernon shops for his suits from Marks and feels fine in them.

  That rich, bronze tone in her dark brown hair does not come off a Superdrug shelf. She might wear her hair short in a sensible style but that cut and that loose perm cost an arm and a leg every time she goes to the salon.

  ‘Well, you want to be proud of me, Vernon,’ says Joy when she senses his disapproval. ‘You don’t want me to look like just any old thing.’ And she smuggles in her purchases and tells him she’s had them for years, it’s just that he is too lazy to notice.

  He dreads going round to view houses. He imagines what sort of property they will find for £45,000, and that is taking a risk by the time the bills are paid off. He can imagine the look of pain on Joy’s bravest face as she turns and smiles and says, This will do nicely, Vernon.’ She has put her name on several mailing lists and already picked out some which might suit, but the last place she wants to end up is some pebble-dashed, terraced, former council house at the wrong end of town.

  And the other morning she told him with horror that she’d dreamed of a mobile home.

  ‘It won’t come to that, dear,’ Vernon said.

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I promise you.’

  From the kitchen window she heard him discussing their affairs with Bob Pritchard next-door-but-one.

  She called him in. She shouted that the phone was ringing.

  Hands on hips she scolded, ‘Vernon, what in heaven’s name do you think you are doing?’

  ‘Just putting the world right there with old Bob.’

  ‘You were not putting the world right! I heard you! I heard you saying that things had reached crisis point. What’s that got to do with Bob? Angela has been longing to find out what’s going on round here, and now you’ve spilled the beans it’ll be everywhere tomorrow. Why do you never listen? We are moving because the children have gone and we want somewhere smaller…’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Joy. Everyone knows—’

  ‘Excuse me, but no, they do not! Or they didn’t until you put your oar in. Sometimes you can be so insensitive, Vernon,’ and she fled upstairs in floods of tears.

  She had told everyone they sold the Mini because she was finding driving so stressful.

  Oh, why can’t she be honest? Life would be so much simpler. Honest with herself if no one else. There is no shame in what they are doing—thousands of others are in the same boat. There certainly would be shame if they went creeping deeper and deeper into debt until everything was beyond redemption, as some people do. But Vernon isn’t that sort of man. Vernon is a good man; he intends to pay everyone back and still end up with a place to live in.

  ‘This can’t possibly be it, Vernon.’

  They draw up outside the house in the highly polished blue Ford. Vernon might be in a mess financially but he still cleans and polishes the car on a Sunday. A man of habits, sometimes just lately he thinks it is the habits that have been keeping him sane.

  Vernon glances at the brochure again. The place is in the middle of nowhere, fields to front and back. He strains to read the name on the broken gate. ‘Hacienda. It is, I’m afraid.’

  Joy fidgets, peering out. ‘Well, at least it’s a house on its own, with a garden and a name.’

  ‘But look at it, love! It’
s nothing but a heap of ruins. It can’t have been lived in for years. Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Hang on, Vernon. Hang on. It could be made nice.’

  Vernon senses trouble brewing. ‘It could be made nice, yes, if you had a spare fifty grand to spend.’ And he rests his case, firmly folding his arms on the subject.

  She won’t have it. ‘But we might have one day, who knows?’ says Joy hopefully, suddenly drawing strength from the notion that she could after all have a detached house with a garden and a decent-sounding address. This when he has spent hours trying to convince her that they really have got to make a sensible choice.

  The gate is not attached to the post. They walk up the weedy garden path and push open the shabby front door, avoiding the nettles that grow amongst the feelers of ivy. ‘It could be a charming little cottage. I can see exactly how it could be in my mind’s eye,’ calls Joy, cheering. ‘And look, what a cosy little sitting room this must have been. We could sit in front of the fire in the winter and—’

  ‘Joy! The ceiling is caving in with the damp. None of the doors fit. The chimney is running with water.’ Vernon wanders round the room in a gathering state of gloom, and out into the small kitchen beyond. There’s an old stone sink, flagstone floors, rotting shelves hanging off the bulging walls. He sniffs. There is something dead and decaying behind the alcove. He wishes he could share his wife’s optimism but he can’t. She is resorting to fantasy because she cannot bear the truth.

  ‘We could put a Rayburn in here and cook on it and heat the water. And what a wonderful, overgrown garden, Vernon. A secret garden! We could even keep chickens. We could grow all our own food, eat our own eggs and sell the surplus, and we could have open fires instead of that costly central heating. This house is even small enough to light with oil lamps, they’re in all the shops again now.’ She is suddenly gleeful after months of depression. ‘Oh, Vernon, think. Just think of the money we’d save!’

  He will normally say anything to avoid confrontation. ‘Joy! Stop it!’