The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva

by Sarah May

  ‘I hated that,’ Robert conceded.

  ‘But what else could we do?’ Margery appealed to him.

  ‘I hated the empty houseyou not being there.’ He was aware of sounding childish, but his mind was suddenly full of the kitchen in the house they rented from a local farmer when he was a child, and the old stool he used to sit on by the window, waiting for Margery to come home. ‘Sometimes I thought you might never come back and that I’d end up in that children’s home at the end of the street. D’you remember that kid there who only had half a head of hair? He terrified me.’ Robert’s mind ran on to other things he didn’t mention; things that seemed less easy to define and therefore less shareable…like the rabbits’ legs strung from the outhouse door where the goose lived. Part of the agreement they’d had with the farmer was that the goose, who did nothing but spit, got fed by them. Then there was the one-arm bandit machine in the lounge.

  Margery said, ‘I always came home.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I know that, but I didn’t know that then. And we weren’t like everyone else and it made me lonely.’

  ‘Well, you never really know what goes on behind closed doors and anyway, we were better than a lot of people,’ Margery concluded.

  They eyed each other drunkenly; nervouslyas if they’d just hit a clearing in the forest they hadn’t really been looking for in the first place and, after being used to shadow for so long, were suddenly able to see more than they’d anticipated. More than they’d ever wanted.

  And it wasn’t as though either of them was trying to gain the upper hand because there was no upper hand to be gained. The joint, overriding memory they both had of Robert’s childhood was one of survival, and right now they just needed to reassure each other that they had survived.

  Margery looked away at the crumbs on the tablecloth, trying to work them into some sort of pattern while thinking of the looks she used to get from shopkeepers on the High Street when Robert was only months old and she pushed the pram in. They served her, but the looksshe’d never forget the looks.

  ‘The look on their faces,’ she said out loud. ‘Nothing would break their facesand you were such a beautiful baby, Rob. And that was the late sixties, for Christ’s sakeyou’d think people might of lightened up a bit after a world war. Not the bloody English; not bloody likely. I nearly moved to Londononce; didn’t think I could stand it any more.’ She smiled timidly at him. ‘Wonder what would of happened to us if I’d of done that?’

  When he didn’t answer, she got up and started to clear the table.

  Robert sat and watched, aware that her hands found it difficult to grip the plates as she tried to pull them towards her. He knew he should help, but he was angry with hertoo angry to offer to helpand he didn’t know why.

  She came back in with the apple pie and a jug of cream, behaving deferentially towards the cream as she did all items she considered a luxury.

  ‘It’s off,’ Robert said after the first mouthful.

  ‘It can’t be offI just bought it.’

  He took another mouthful, more wary this time, wondering whether he’d drunk so much beer it was curdling the cream as soon as it hit his stomach. ‘Definitely off.’

  Margery smelt the jug, then dug her spoon in and slurped it up. ‘It’s not off.’

  ‘It tastes funny,’ Robert insisted.

  Margery shunted her chair back, angry herself now, and came in with the empty cream carton to show him the sellby date.

  Robert stared at her. ‘That’s why.’

  ‘That’s why, what?’

  ‘It’s UHTMum, you bought long-life cream.’

  ‘It’s Elmlea, it’s what I always buy.’

  ‘But it’s long-lifewhy d’you buy long-life?’

  ‘It’s cream,’ Margery insisted.

  ‘Long-life cream.’

  ‘Robertyou’re shouting.’ She stared at him. ‘Are you not eating yours now?’

  ‘It’s fineI’ll eat it.’

  ‘Well, don’t if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I’ll eat it,’ he said, trying not to raise his voice again.

  Robert’s voice was impatient, unkind. ‘I don’t know about KateI think you’re all stressedthe whole lot of you.’ She paused, knowing that now would be the ideal time to bring out the letterKate wasn’t here; she had Robert to herselfbut somehow she wasn’t ready to part with it. It was starting to feel like a very valuable insurance policy that she wasn’t ready to cash in just yet.

  She thought about how she’d come across the letterin Kate’s suit jacketas though she’d been meant to find it. Somebody was looking after her. Maybe she did have a guardian angel. Tom used to believe in angelsthought everybody had one. He used to say he could feel his angel’s fingers all over his shoulders and back.

  ‘A woman waved at me today,’ Margery said, without thinking.

  Robert looked up at her, then carried on eating.

  ‘She was standing at the window in the house opposite. Couldn’t of been more than twenty-one.’ She paused, but Robert still didn’t have anything to say. ‘Their nets are nice. It’s nice to see a house with nets up at the windows, especially living as close as you all do to each other. In London.’

  Robert looked as if he was having trouble swallowing the last mouthful.

  ‘Mumit’s a brothel.’

  ‘A brothel.’

  ‘The house oppositeit’s a brothel; got to be.’

  ‘I thought Kate was joking. Are you sure?’

  Robert shrugged.

  Chapter 20

  ‘We were featureddid you see it? WE WERE FEATURED!’ Evie cried out, trying to keep the momentum at the PRC going.

  ‘Featured where?’ Ros asked.

  ‘Time Outmost happening postcode in the whole of London or something. I couldn’t believe it, I just sat there thinking, oh my God, that’s usthat’s here. I know,’ Evie carried on, with an apocalyptic reserve of energy, ‘we should start our own magazine.’

  Kate, who had her eye on her tortillauntouched and busy reheating under the sidelightwas about to say something in response to this when Evie’s voice carried on, ‘Colour, small format, covering everything that’s happening in the postcode; a sort of postcode lifestyle magazine…handbag size. We could launch it at the street party.’

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ Ros put in. ‘Think of the advertising space we could offer.’

  ‘We could cover What’s On,’ Evie said, appealing to everyone.

  ‘Shopping and events update,’ Kate shouted suddenly.

  ‘I could take care of that,’ Evie responded, pleased. ‘You’d be good at Agony Aunt. Ros could do some sort of lifestyle page. Harrietyou could do a mums and babes info section.’

  ‘What…me?’ Harriet flicked her head up, nervously. So far that day she’d already committed to being a home rep for the Natural Nappy Company and to sitting on the nursery’s Management Committee.

  ‘Yesyou,’ Evie insisted; her eyes started to flicker round the room again until they fixed on Jessica. ‘Jessica…’ Her voice was full of pity, a pity she reserved for the badly dressed; and tonight Jessica was so badly dressed it was verging on the confrontational. ‘Jessica…’

  Jessica looked across the acre of cream carpet at Evie, about to say something when her phone started to ring.

  It was Ellie.

  For a moment, Jessica thought she might be phoning to apologise.

  ‘Mum? It’s Arthurhe’s been screaming.’

  ‘Is he asleep now?’

  ‘I don’t know, he’s making this whimpering noise. Should I go in and check on him?’

  ‘No, I’m on my way backdon’t worry.’

  ‘Okay…’ Ellie sounded relieved. ‘I’ll see you in a minute.’

  Jessica came off the phone. ‘I’m going to have to leaveArthur’s having one of his nightmares.’

  The women in the room murmured briefly, sympathetically, a murmur that seemed to say Jessica h
ad the sort of life anybodylet alone a childwould have nightmares about.

  Her left thigh caught the edge of the coffee table as she stood up, but it wasn’t until her right shoulder bounced off the doorframe that it occurred to her she might be drunk.

  As she left the room, she heard Ros bringing up the issue of the brothel at No. 21 with Derek Stokes, then her phone rang again.

  She headed instinctively to the downstairs loo.

  ‘Mum?’

  Staring at the photo of Miles Burgess shaking Prince Charles’s hand at last year’s Business and Enterprise Awards, she said, ‘Has he started screaming again?’

  ‘No, he’s stopped. Everything’s fine.’ Ellie yawned. ‘He seems fine now. Stay a bit longer if you want.’

  ‘No, I’m making my way home.’ Jessica’s eyes gazed downwards to an aerial photo of the Burgesses’ Spanish villa and a pile of Harriet’s booksmostly on lactational rescue: I Eat at Mommy’s, etc., as well as one entitled, How to Make Your Child Brighter.

  ‘Mum, you don’t need to do that, he’s fine now.’

  ‘Ellie, I’m coming home.’

  Jessica had rung off.

  Ellie rolled onto her side.

  Her pillow smelt faintly of the Guerlain Vetiver she’d stolen from the men’s perfume counter at Selfridges. Keisha knew the boy at the counter and kept him talking while Ellie put the sample bottleout on the corner of the counterin her bag.

  It didn’t have a lid and leaked on the bus home, but she didn’t care.

  She’d been tracking down the scent, which she’d first smelt on a book of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poems that Mr Hunter had lent her for two months, and had at last found it.

  She got the sock she kept the perfume in out of the chest of drawers, gave the underside of her pillow another light spray then got back into bed, burying her face into it.

  It wasn’t until she came off the phone that Jessica realised how dehydrated she was. Making her way down the Burgesses’ white and beige hallway towards the kitchen, she kept veering over to one side until she eventually banged into the sink.

  She watched her reflection in the kitchen window as she drank tumbler after tumbler of water. Behind her was the Burgesses’ kitchen; a normal family kitchen, which was in itself fascinating to Jessica. Normality in all its guises had become fascinating to her since Peter’s death; she had taken to staringshe knew she staredat families when they came into Lennox Thompson, on the street…anywhere. Because they weren’t a family any more. They might all be called Palmer, but they weren’t ‘The Palmers’. They were Jessica, Ellie and Arthur.

  And what made it worse was no longer being certain that it was sharing her life with Peter she missed, or just sharing her life. Was there much point trying to disentangle one from the other now he was gone? They’d grown up together. Towards the end they were more like brother and sister than lovers. So whysince his deathhad she become so obsessed with classifying what they had as love, or not. It was as if Elliein saying what she said earliersomehow knew.

  There was another burst of hysterical laughter from the lounge as Miles came up on her before she even had a chance to turn round.

  ‘Jes-si-ca.’

  He always said her name like thatever since last Christmas when he’d walked her home late, under his golf umbrella, and tried to invite her into No. 236 while Harriet and Casper were staying in Berkshire.

  That was after the Lennox Thompson Christmas party.

  They’d been standing on the pavement together; she’d managed to laugh the invitation off before walking through the rain home. She didn’t even like Miles, but walking awayand turning down some temporary relief from a loneliness so severe it was close to becoming a medical conditionwas one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

  She finished the glass of water and put it unsteadily down on the draining board.

  ‘They been giving you a hard time?’

  She turned round.

  ‘In there,’ he said, jerking his head towards the lounge.

  Jessica shook her head as he took a step closer, put his thumb gently under her chin and tilted her face towards him. Why did he do that? He didn’t look entirely sure himself.

  ‘You’ve been crying.’

  ‘No.’ She touched her cheeks, which were wet, and tried to breathe in deeply, but all she got was a lungful of the fabric conditioner that Miles’s rugby top had been washed in.

  Now she really was crying.

  She was about to collapse on him; about to collapse on Harriet’s husband in Harriet’s kitchen in Harriet’s house. Behind them the lounge door started to open and she jerked suddenly away.

  It was Kate.

  Jessica stopped in front of her.

  The two women stared at each other.

  ‘My bagand coat,’ Jessica whispered.

  Kate disappeared into the lounge

  Miles was standing behind the kitchen table still, watching her.

  She looked away as the lounge door opened and Kate reappeared, instinctively shutting it behind her, Jessica’s coat and bag in her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kate said as Jessica struggled into her coat, carefully pulling out her hair as it got trapped beneath the collar.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kate said, suddenly confused.

  Jessica left and Kate turned to look at Miles, who seemed a long way away and who was staring back at her either hopefully or helplessly, she couldn’t decide which, but it didn’t much matter because the two amounted to pretty much the same thing on Prendergast Road.

  Slamming the Burgesses’ front door shut behind her, Jessica ran through rain that was bouncing heavily off the wet shapes of houses, cars, bins…straight past the florist at No. 283 until she realised. Then she stopped, turned and walked slowly back towards the maisonette. Things couldn’t carry on like this indefinitely; she couldn’t carry on feeling like this forever; something somewhere had to give…surely.

  Chapter 21

  Wiping the rain from her face with one hand while trying to fit the key in the lock with the other, she finally managed to let herself into No. 283. She climbed the stairs unsteadily, the lino on the treads continually looming and receding.

  ‘It’s meI’m home,’ she said reassuringly into the void of silence that was the maisonette.

  In the kitchen, she opened a bottle of wine and poured a glass, took a long sip then went upstairs.

  Ellie was lying on her bed, listening to an audio book on Peter’s old Walkman. Her hair was spread out on the pillow and she looked as if she was drowning. Other than this, she seemed okay. The body lying on the bed was the anatomically retarded one Jessica had grown used to: no breasts, and hip bones that jutted out obscenelymade more pronounced by the fact that Ellie had inherited Peter’s height.

  Ellie frowned at Jessica as she walked into her bedroom, irritated by the fact that Jessica was still wearing her soaking wet coat, irritated by the way the rain had matted her hair and made it greasy; irritated at how all this combined, conspired to make her look so incapable. Irritated, most of all, because her mother could have been so beautiful if she wanted to…so beautiful.

  ‘What’s that you’re listening to?’

  Ellie turned the Walkman off. ‘What?’

  ‘I said, what’s that you’re listening to?’

  ‘CarrieStephen King.’

  Jessica noddeda memory of having seen Carrie at the cinema with Peter when they were first going out tugging briefly at her consciousness.

  ‘How’s Arthur?’

  ‘He’s fine nowyou should have stayed.’

  Jessica went upstairs to Arthur’s room and pushed the door open. He was lying on his back, his arms flung out to either side as though he had just fallen from a great height. She went in closer, close enough to smell the deep sleep he was inand check on his breathing. Then she carefully retreated, shut the door and went back downstairs to Ellie. ‘He’s okay.’

  ‘I said he was.’


  ‘I knowI know.’

  ‘So, how did it go tonight?’

  Ellie was doing a good impression, lying on her bed asking all the right questions, of being a daughter, so Jessica decided to return the favour and do the best impression she could of being a mother.

  ‘It was good to get out; it was good, yeah.’

  ‘No it wasn’t’, Ellie said. ‘I can tell. I don’t know why you bother with them, they’re all so…so utterly pointless.’

  Jessica pulled herself away from the doorframe. ‘You should turn offgo to bed.’ She was about to leave when Ellie said,’ You’re drunk.’

  After a while Jessica said, ‘So? One of us has got to be.’

  ‘I’m fifteen years old. Grandad said you were virtually a recluse at fifteen.’

  ‘I had my reasons,’ she concluded, her eyes fixed on Ellie. ‘But there’s nothing stopping you going out.’

  ‘Where would I go?’

  ‘We live in London, for Christ saketry growing up in Littlehaven. And where’s Keisha these days? I never see Keisha round here any more.’

  ‘We’re not talking.’

  ‘Why?’

  Ellie shrugged. ‘I’m not talking about this nowyou’re drunk,’ she said again.

  After a moment’s pause, she got out of bed and turned off her light, then got back in again.

  ‘And what about Jerome? He seemed nice.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ellie shouted suddenly, sitting up on her elbow. ‘You want to know about Jerome?’

  Jessica nodded, no longer convinced she did.

  ‘Keisha says he was just being nice because he wanted me to give him a blow job and then he was going to film it on his mobile and send it to EVERYONE.’

  ‘I need to speak to the school about this.’

  ‘Since when d’you speak to the school about anything? What’s the point anyway? Nothing happened.’

  A shaft of light from the hallway cast a long shadow of Jessica across the bedroom floor, reaching the bed where Ellie had turned to face the wall. Suddenly afraid of herself, Jessica was about to leave when she became aware of a scratching sound in the doorway and, turning round, saw Arthur standing behind her, Burke clenched in his hand and the science goggles pushed up on his forehead. How long had he been standing there?