by Isla Dewar
It was Thursday, her favourite spying night. The night before the weekend started. Jamie might be relaxed and do something that made her surveillance worthwhile. At half-past nine she saw him at the window. He was leaning on the sill, head on the pane, staring out over the rooftops towards the river. He seemed to sigh and then turned and walked away. Martha waited for him to come back. But he didn’t.
She listened to the radio. ‘Mrs Robinson’, a song she liked. She lingered, listening, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, singing along. She was enjoying herself, didn’t really register the thump on the car roof. The next thump shook the car. For a second or two Martha didn’t know what was happening. She stared up at the roof. The pounding got louder, rhythmic. ‘Open the window, Martha. Open the window, Martha.’
Jamie appeared at the window, banging the glass with the side of his fist. ‘Bitch. Bitch.’ Red with fury, spittle sparking from his mouth, he punched the glass so hard Martha thought it would smash. Shaking, fearful, she wound it down. ‘Stop it.’
‘You stop. You stop coming round here watching me. You stop spying.’ He reached in, grabbed Martha’s jacket and yanked her towards him. ‘I’ve got something to show you, Martha.’
Behind Jamie a small crowd was gathering. She doubted anybody would come to her rescue. The crowd, hands in pockets, had settled down to watch. Joining in was not on the cards.
Jamie held up a suit on a hanger. She recognised it. His grey work suit. The only thing extraordinary about it was its ordinariness. Grey jacket, three buttons, grey trousers. Martha thought it smelled vaguely of petrol.
‘See this, bitch. See this. It’s what I wore when I was with you. You got me to marry you. You had a baby. You watched me go to work every day. To a job I hated in a suit I hated. I thought my life was over and I wasn’t even twenty-four. You took my life. You turned me into a drab little nowhere man doing the nine-tofive. A man I hated. Then you tell me the baby isn’t mine. My life. My life. That job. In this suit. You bitch.’
Martha noticed that a couple of men in the gathering crowd were cheering.
Jamie wept with fury. ‘Things I wanted to do. My dreams. All lost because you lied to me.’
He took a Zippo lighter from his jeans pocket. Flicked it open, sparked a flame. ‘This is what I think of you and this fucking suit.’ He held the lighter to the trousers. The suit exploded. Fire shot up through the jacket, whooshed towards the sky. Leaping flames gushed and sparked. Jamie threw the hated burning thing to the ground and jumped back. A gust of wind caught it, set the flames searing hotter, wilder, and lifted the burning fabric towards the crowd. The onlookers scattered, pushing into one another. Running backwards, not wanting to miss the show, but fearful of getting burned. The street reeked of petrol and smouldering polyester. Jamie looked terrified. Horrified at what he’d just done.
‘Jamie Walters, fucking stop it. What are you doing?’
‘I’m burning my old life. I’m setting fire to this effigy of a time I hated.’ He pointed at Martha. ‘You know what she did. She lied. She fucked up my life.’ His voice was raw, cracked, stretched beyond its normal range.
Martha was bent over the steering wheel, heaving in air. The smell was awful. She coughed. Heard sirens in the distance. She was dizzy, finding it hard to focus. She stared at the woman who had shouted at Jamie. She looked familiar. Martha lifted the hem of her T-shirt to wipe her face. Rubbed her eyes. ‘Jesus. Grace. It’s Grace.’
‘It was always Grace,’ shouted Jamie.
Martha wiped her face again, started the car revved wildly, and, tyres squealing, took off. She shot into the night-time traffic, no signalling, no pausing to check the road was clear. She hurtled forward, had to get away. Teary-eyed, sweaty, nostrils lined with the foul smell of smouldering polyester, she careened into a thick howl of blasting horns, slamming brakes and flashing lights. She whirled the car into the inside lane and battered away from the terrible scene. The enraged husband and his new love – her nemesis.
She thundered along London Road, staring ahead, white-knuckling the steering wheel. Then she pulled over and stopped. Scenes of moments ago played in her head. She couldn’t believe it. Spread her hands before her, watched them trembling and swore quietly. She examined her face in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were swollen. Her throat raw. She couldn’t go home like this.
38
Cheers to All of Yez
Charlie opened the door and took in the state of her – shaking, tear-stained, mascara running. ‘Jesus.’ He noticed an odd reek of charred cloth and petrol. He put his arm round her and steered her indoors to his living room. ‘What happened?’
‘Jamie . . .’
He led her to the sofa, sat her down and stepped back to consider her. Tea? Brandy? Brandy, he decided. He opened a bottle, fetched ice from the kitchen and laid out two glasses. He was delaying the moment when he’d hear her story while he sorted out his feelings. Please don’t let Jamie have hit her, he thought. He dreaded the idea of having to go and hit him back. That would lead to a fight which he’d inevitable lose and he’d end up face down in the street. Back in his fighting days he’d seen enough gutters close up and didn’t want to visit any more. He wasn’t keen on the pain either.
He gave Martha her drink and asked, ‘What about Jamie?’
She told him.
He took Martha’s hand, turned it over, drew his thumb across her palm. ‘So what were you doing parked outside Jamie’s flat?’
‘Spying.’
‘Why?’
‘I needed to know all about him. Everything. What he was doing. Who he was with. Absolutely everything.’
‘Isn’t that snooping?’
‘Of course it’s bloody snooping. I’m a snoop. I’m a spy. I’m not very nice. Oh, look at me from the outside, my clothes are clean and ironed, my hair’s brushed, I’m wearing lipstick, shoes polished – anyone would think I was a good, respectable, trustworthy woman. But I’m not.’ She pointed to herself. ‘In here I’m grubby. I have nasty thoughts. I want Jamie to be unhappy. I’m not very nice. I don’t like me at all.’
‘Know what you mean. I don’t like me either.’
‘You don’t?’
‘Nah. Not really. I haven’t lived up to my expectations. Cowboy, trumpeter and generally cool dude. Still, I like you.’
‘You do?’
Planning to pull her to him sometime soon, he slid his arm along the back of the sofa so it rested behind her head. ‘Of course I like you. Even if your imaginary horse had a better name than mine. Durango. I could hate you for having such an excellent name.’ They sat in silence staring ahead, sipping their drinks.
‘It is a good name,’ said Martha. ‘I had a fertile mind back when I was a child. I had a keen imagination. Don’t know what happened to it.’
‘It probably got rusty after you stopped using it on account of growing up and starting to think about what to make for tea instead of enjoying yourself wallowing in your imaginings.’
‘I was happy back then. It was before my life got complicated. Before I got pregnant and scared and duped a perfectly reasonable man into marrying me and making me respectable. I think about it and think about it. What was I scared of? People’s opinion of me? I was a coward. I wasn’t very rock’n’roll.’
Charlie said, ‘Not many people are when it comes to telling their mother they’re in the family way.’
Martha supposed this was true. ‘Men,’ she said. ‘Why are they so butch? So blokey. I mean, burning a suit. Shouting. It wasn’t necessary.’
‘It was. He’d a lot of anger to get out into the world.’
‘He didn’t have to take it out on me.’
‘Martha, I rather think he did.’
‘He didn’t need to be so shouty. I had no idea he was like that. The rage. The passion. When he lived with me he was mild, easygoing. He shrugged a lot.’
Charlie said, ‘Ah.’ As if the shrugging explained everything.
‘Then he’s suddenly
like that. Yelling. Furious. Burning a suit for heavens’ sake. I don’t understand men. There’s no let-up to their being men. Like if you ask a man what he wants to eat, he’ll say steak. Never just a salad with a slice of wholemeal bread on the side. Or a cucumber sandwich.’
Charlie had been on the verge of slipping his arm round Martha’s shoulders. But the steak accusation struck home. He was fond of a steak.
‘It’s all meat with men. Steak and chips. Steak and chips and sex,’ said Martha.
Charlie withdrew his arm. He felt insensitive, boorish and blokey, obsessed with sex and large chunks of meat. So he politely asked Martha if she’d like a top-up.
She held out her glass. ‘Then there’s Grace.’
‘Yes, there’s Grace.’
‘You knew about Grace? You knew she was here in town shacking up with my husband?’
‘I had an inkling. I wondered about it. Then I saw her that day when I went to pick up Evie. She was beautiful. She was everything you said she was and I wondered some more.’
‘She got my guitar and my husband.’ Martha took a huge gulp of her brandy, coughed. Her eyes filled.
Charlie wondered if the tears were a result of the wild swig or was she suffering from shock and sorrow?
‘I mean,’ said Martha, ‘that woman got everything I wanted. She got the manager, the recording contract, the hit song. She’s got the amazing voice, the musical ability. She’s beautiful. Beauty just suddenly happened to her. She had a father with a car. Bloody everything. Why did she come back for my husband?’
‘Love?’
Martha put down her drink, turned to Charlie. ‘Love? Love? She gets that, too?’ She raised her hand, spread her fingers and counted Grace’s blessings on them, ‘Beauty, talent, a hit song, a manager, my guitar, my husband. And she’s got a child, a son. And she gets love.’
Martha took up her drink, swigged, coughed again. ‘It’s really not fair. What do I get? Nothing. When do I get love? I want that. I want all of that.’
Her upper lip trembled. Her eyes glazed.
‘There is no fair,’ said Charlie. ‘Fair doesn’t exist.’
‘It’s my turn,’ said Martha. ‘She’s got everything, now it’s my turn to get something.’
Tears now. She swallowed, wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Charlie reached for her, took her to him.
‘It’ll be OK.’
‘She’s even got a bloody father. I want a home of my own. I want someone to love me. I want that red guitar. I want a father with a car. It’s my turn.’
Charlie wanted to tell her life didn’t work like that, but couldn’t. Instead he stroked her back, felt her tears soak his shirt and said, ‘It’s your turn soon. Good things will come to you.’
He stroked Martha’s back. Smelled her hair – a soft herby shampoo. He put his lips to the top of her head. He wasn’t in luck tonight. The only thing that would happen would be his shirt getting damper and damper. Martha sobbed. He reached over and picked up her brandy. No sex for him, then. He raised the glass to the empty room, ‘Cheers.’ Cheers to all his ghosts. His mother who didn’t want him, his father who also didn’t want him, his aunt who wasn’t his aunt and who had abducted him, ‘Cheers to all of yez.’ He drained the glass. And felt the seeping dampness of his shirt.
39
Bastards Bastards Bastards
‘You need to be bolder. You need to be noticed. You need flashy cake boxes in bright colours. You need slogans. You need people to know that if it’s not a Sophie cake then it’s not a cake.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Sophie. ‘I’m not that kind of person. I’m a woman of a certain undesirable age with large hips and a bit of an embarrassing bum. The only good thing about that is I don’t see it. But it comes with me everywhere I go. And I fear that people might think it got the way it is through my having eaten too much of my own product.’
‘So you should celebrate it.’ Chrissie Lewis examined her fingernails as she spoke. The gesture made her seem superior. Sophie marvelled. Chrissie was small, had recently been rescued from living on the streets yet she was regal, proud and had the bearing of someone who was convinced she was right about everything. Brenda had sent her to Sophie’s kitchen to demonstrate her baking expertise and she had whipped up a sponge.
‘I do not feel like celebrating my body. It doesn’t deserve it. I hate it,’ said Sophie.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t do that. I love my body. I love being me.’
‘You do?’ This was fascinating. Until this moment Sophie had presumed nobody liked who they were. Everybody wanted to be someone else. She fancied being Katharine Hepburn.
Chrissie pointed to her face. ‘Look at this face. My life is on this face. Look closely; you can see I once was beautiful. Silken creams were spread on this skin. Wonderful food slipped over these lips. Now this face tells of the times I overdid things, squandered a deal of money and ended on the streets. The face says it all. It isn’t pretty any more and I wouldn’t change it. I’m proud of this face.’ She leaned forward, tapped the table with her finger. ‘I worked hard for it.’
‘I feel my face just happened to me when I wasn’t looking.’ Sophie touched her cheek. ‘It takes me by surprise every time I look at it. I think, Goodness, is that me? In between glances and occasional stares in the mirror I forget about it.’ She stared at Chrissie’s face and had a fleeting glimpse of the life written on it. She saw sorrow, loneliness, hardship, worry and uncertainty round the eyes and, leaning closer, saw the remains of beauty, pride and mischief. ‘You quite enjoyed yourself, didn’t you?’
‘I had a lovely time. Years of living with a mean, overemotional thug of a man who stripped me of my self-respect made me shy, lonely, insecure. Then I came to my senses, fell in love with a man much younger than me and ran away taking a pile of the thug’s money. Fifty thousand pounds. There is nothing more satisfying than squandering a nasty, miserly, bullying man’s money. It’s fun. Plain, simple, outrageously lavish fun.’
Sophie said, ‘I don’t think plain, simple and outrageously lavish belong in the same sentence.’
‘Of course they do. I was lavish with my husband’s money. It was delicious revenge for the years of misery he caused. I found it was very easy to be a wastrel. I hugely enjoyed it. Then it was over.’ She shrugged. ‘Money gone. Lover gone. Me on the streets feeling a bit cold, lonely and frightened, I must admit.’ She sniffed, held her nose up to breathe in the cooking smells. ‘The cake’s ready.’
Sophie nodded towards the clock. ‘It needs another few minutes.’
‘Nonsense. The cake is ready now. I don’t use clocks.’ She tapped her nose. ‘I use this. The smell turns, darkens and deepens when the cake is done. I have an affinity with cakes. Actually I have an affinity with all sorts of food since there were times when I didn’t have any.’ She opened the oven door and turned to Sophie. ‘Perfect.’
This irritated Sophie. The cake was splendid, and better than any she’d made. Not that her cakes weren’t excellent, just that as the creator of excellent cakes, she knew a cake that was more excellent than anything she produced. A pang of jealousy, then.
She felt inadequate in the presence of this woman. Chrissie had lived a full and tempestuous life. And what have I done? she asked herself. Stayed home and baked. Life was an adventure, a rollercoaster ride if you were bold. And she wasn’t. A fire in the hearth, a warm bed, food on the table and the contented knowledge that her daughter and granddaughter were safe was all she asked. Well, more or less.
Chrissie eased the cakes from their tins onto a wire rack and left them to cool while she washed up. She dried spoons, spatula and whisk and put them away. Sophie noted that the baking bowl was being placed on the wrong shelf and grudgingly acknowledged that the new position was more convenient than the one she’d chosen. She thought it was probably acceptable to dislike someone who rearranged your kitchen, especially if they made a good job of it.
Yesterday, Duncan had phoned Sophie and
asked if she was speaking to him.
‘Of course I am,’ Sophie had said. She was too proud to tell him she missed him. She found recovering to be a lonely business. Martha and Evie were out most of the day. She was stuck at home and still had to pluck up her courage to step outside. She told him to drop by any time he fancied.
So when the doorbell rang she knew who it was, and groaned. She didn’t feel up to standing up and going down the stairs to open the door, and she didn’t want to introduce Duncan to Chrissie. Sophie had a gut feeling about her. A notion that this small defiant woman, so firm about her beliefs and proud of how she lost her looks, who had survived life on the streets, would not have a conscience about stealing her man friend.
She gripped the table, rose stiffly and raised her hand to stop Chrissie from answering the door for her. ‘I’ll go. It’ll do me good.’
By the time she got downstairs Duncan had rung the bell another couple of times, and when she opened the door he was at the end of the garden path heading home, having given up on her hospitality. When she called him back, he turned, smiled, and sheepishly retraced his steps. He apologised all the way up the stairs. He was sorry for just dropping in with no prior warning, he was sorry for forgetting to wipe his feet on the mat, he was sorry for not being sympathetic to the pain she must have been suffering the last time he called and for not appreciating the trauma she’d been through.
‘Duncan,’ said Sophie, ‘do me a favour and shut up.’
And he did, but only after apologising for apologising too much. ‘I know, I’m a fool. Sorry. Sorry. I can’t help saying sorry. Sorry for that.’
He held his breath after that and only exhaled when they reached the kitchen. He stopped at the door, taking in Chrissie. He smiled and crossed the room, holding out his hand. ‘Hello, I’m Duncan. Lovely to meet you.’
The man had completely changed. The humble apologetic Duncan disappeared and a lothario appeared in his place. He held Chrissie’s hand fractionally longer than was polite. For a jealous moment Sophie thought he was going to press it to his lips. But no, he let her have it back as he gazed into her eyes. From Sophie’s vantage point he seemed to be grinning dopily. He sat, spread his arms and said, ‘I’ve got two lovely ladies. Lucky man, me.’ He looked from one lovely lady to the other. A man expecting a cup of tea.