by Sue Margolis
“Sam, I know you loved Granddad, but …”
“I loved him, too,” says Rosie. “I cried for days and days and days when he went to heaven and couldn’t come back.”
“OK … you both loved Granddad. And he loved you, too … very much. But, Sam, you are not taking his ashes into school. I keep them here because they are precious. Please take one of the baby pictures … Now, both of you—go and get dressed.”
I leave them and go downstairs to look for Rosie’s games kit. I find it straightaway. Abby has left the sports bag under the coat hooks in the hall. I can’t think how I missed it.
By now Mum is at the foot of the stairs calling up to the children to say their eggs are ready. They come charging down. Sam has made no effort to get dressed. Rosie is in her school sweatshirt, regulation tartan kilt and tights. “Gran’ma, I can’t find my shoes.”
“They’re on the floor at the end of your bed.”
“They’re not. They’ve gone.”
I trudge back upstairs and find them in the bathroom. Rosie must have put them there, but I can see no point in turning it into an issue. I’m just glad to have found them.
In the kitchen, the kids are moaning about their eggs. Abby makes them soft-boiled eggs. With Marmite soldiers.
“But Nana’s done you poached eggs on Marmite toast. What’s the difference?”
The difference is, you can’t dip the toast.
“When I was growing up,” Mum starts, “children ate what was put in front of them and they were grateful.” She grimaces and starts rubbing her back. The children take pity on her—which is no doubt what she had in mind—and start eating.
I remind them that we have to be out of the house in ten minutes.
“Nana, do you think I should be allowed to take Granddad’s ashes to school for show-and-tell?”
Mum looks at me. “He wants to take Brian’s ashes to school? Why would he want to do that?”
“It’s for show-and-tell,” Sam says.
Mum tells him he should show his grandfather some respect.
“But he’s ashes. You can’t respect ashes.”
“My grandson the smart-aleck.”
“But I’m only saying.”
Mum fetches her handbag and sits down at the kitchen table. “Here … I’ve got something interesting you can take.”
She pulls out her large purse and opens the wallet section. “Here you are.” She slides a faded, dog-eared black-and-white photograph across the table. “Who do you think the little girl is?”
I’ve seen the photograph dozens of times. The little girl in the cloche hat and brand-new coat with a velvet collar is my mother, age seven.
“She’s pretty,” Rosie says.
“Look how chubby I am.” Mum smiles. “My mother fed my brother and me too much schnitzel and strudel.”
“So, it’s you,” Sam says.
“It’s me on my very first day in this country. I came here on my own—all the way from Germany.”
I could see where this was going. “Mum, please. Not now.”
“They should know about these things.”
Rosie wants to know why Nana Frieda was on her own. “Where were your mummy and daddy?”
“What things should we know about?” says Sam.
I give my mother a hard stare. “They’re too young.”
“They’re too young? What about me? I was seven.”
Both children are demanding to be let into Nana’s secret. But it’s late (thank heavens). I tell them we have to leave it for another time.
“Aww.”
“Right … Rosie, you get your shoes and coat on. Sam, you have precisely two minutes to get dressed.” I pass the photograph back to Mum. She puts it away without looking at me. She’s blaming me for wanting to protect the children.
“But what about show-and-tell?” Sam persists. “You won’t let me take Granddad’s ashes and now I can’t take Nana’s photo.”
“Get dressed and I’ll find you something.”
“But it has to be something that belonged to Granddad.”
I can’t think. I’m not giving him Brian’s watch to take to school, and Sam would hardly want a pair of his GoldToes from the clothes sack. Mum suggests giving him Brian’s Death Valley snow globe.
“But what if he breaks it?” I say.
“Have you got a better idea?”
I haven’t. I fetch the snow globe from the desk in Brian’s study.
Sam reappears fully dressed and presents himself for inspection.
“Good boy. OK, you can take this.” I hand him the snow globe.
His eyes are wide. “Wow. Thanks, Grandma.” He’s holding it in both hands, as if it’s a bird’s egg that might crack at any moment. “Granddad used to let me play with the snow globe all the time when I was little. It always reminds me of him.”
“Promise me you’ll look after it. I want it returned to me in one piece.”
He promises. He’ll give it to his teacher to keep in her desk drawer.
Rosie wants to know what’s so special about a silly old snow globe.
“It’s funny,” Sam says.
“Why?”
“Because it’s really hot in Death Valley. It never snows.”
“I don’t get it… . If it never snows somewhere, why would you put it in a snow globe? It’s a stupid joke.”
“You’re stupid.”
They bicker all the way to school.
CHAPTER
four
Thanks to roadwork and a broken-down truck, the ten-minute journey to school has taken half an hour. The kids are still arguing. Now it’s about the color of air. Sam says it’s invisible. Rosie insists it’s blue. If I side with Sam, Rosie will get hysterical, so I opt to keep quiet. What with the traffic, the shenanigans before school, the constant quarreling and the fact that I didn’t have time for breakfast, I’m not in the best of moods. And it’s getting worse. We’ve done two laps of the school perimeter and I can’t find anywhere to park. As I curse the SUVs for taking up too much room, Rosie breaks off from bickering with her brother to tell me that whenever her friend Flora’s mum takes them to school, she chants for a space and it always works.
“Well, bully for Flora’s mum.”
“Sam, you smell like sick.”
“Well, you smell like dog poo.”
“You smell like dog poo and sick and farts.”
So long as they’re not hitting each other, I let the insults fly. As we approach the school gates for a third time, I have to slam on the brake so as not to mow down a mother and her children who have stepped into the road, oblivious of the traffic. I come to a halt no more than four feet from the group, but the mum—fur gilet vest, dinky ankle boots, newborn in a harness—doesn’t look up from her phone. Carnage averted, I carry on cruising for a space. I can’t help noticing that even the women in gym gear have freshly blow-dried hair. That means they shower before they exercise. Why would a sane person do that? More glossy, immaculate children and their mothers emerge from Range Rovers and Cayennes that are parked so tight they’re practically sniffing one another’s fenders. Women join other women and stroll toward the gates, ponytails and totes swinging.
There are some dads tagging along with the women. That was something you never saw in my day, busy dads making time to bond with their kids on the school run.
One of the dads is carrying a giant, superbly executed model of an erupting volcano—which I’m certain his child had little hand in making. He peers round the volcano and greets the woman in front of him with a double kiss—as if they’re at a cocktail party. Private school.
According to Abby, most of the women at Faraday House Prep are stay-at-home mothers. Many—like Gilet Woman—have babies as well as older children. Not that you’d think it to look at them. When did the school run turn into the runway?
After Abby was born, I became a full-time mum. I slept when she slept. Since she was awake nearly all day—mostly with her gums clamp
ed to my nipple—and woke to be fed every couple of hours during the night, neither of us got much sleep. With no time to myself I went days without washing my hair. I lived in my old maternity jeans and Dr. Scholl’s. I only wore a bra if somebody was coming to visit—which didn’t happen very often. Back then—long before mummy-and-baby groups and coffee shop meet-ups—mothers were far more isolated. I have a vivid memory of the time I invited a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses in, just for the company.
I swear that none of these Faraday House women has ever pooped with a toddler on her lap or sniffed her underwear and decided: “Yep, good for another day.” That’s because they all have au pairs and/or full-time nannies. Maybe I’m just old and bitter, but to me there’s something sexless about these mannequin mummies. There’s nothing earthy or, God forbid, slutty about them. I swear they all have pixilated vaginas.
When Abby went back to work, she put Sam and Rosie in day care. It was cheaper than hiring a nanny. Sam was four when he started—a few months off starting big school. Rosie wasn’t even a year old.
Abby didn’t want to go back to work so soon, but she had no choice. She and Tom (whose NHS salary was decent, but unremarkable) had a hefty mortgage and they needed the money. They still do. Even now they don’t earn enough between them to pay two sets of school fees. So Tom’s parents—who used to own a small chain of furniture shops—help out.
Abby was always against private education. She got it from her dad. He was adamant that a decent education was a right and not a privilege. Money had no place. Like her father, Abby believed that state school standards would never improve until voluble, demanding middle-class parents sent their kids to them.
Tom, on the other hand, wasn’t keen on using their children as part of a social experiment. They argued the toss. I kept well out of it. Had I been asked for my opinion, I would—albeit reluctantly—have taken Tom’s side. But in the end the argument was settled for them. Just as Sam was approaching school age, three of the local primaries failed government inspections and were put on special measures. One decent school remained, but Abby and Tom lived too far away to stand a hope of Sam being accepted. They enrolled him at Faraday House. To his credit, Brian never challenged their decision. Even he knew they were doing the right thing—not that he would ever admit it.
Eventually I find somewhere to park—right outside the school entrance. “Hoo-bloody-ray.” I switch on my indicator and creep past the space, intending to reverse in. I’ve just begun the maneuver when one of those chichi baby Fiats nips in and claims the space. I look into my rearview mirror. I am expecting to see a blonde, with giant sunglasses on her head. Shades—albeit used as hair accessories—appear to be de rigueur even on a slate gray day like this. But the person I see in the mirror is a man. “Right. I’ll sort him out. Bloody cheek.” I yank on the hand brake.
“Gran’ma, don’t say anything. It’s Sarah’s dad.”
“I don’t care whose dad it is.”
I’m out of the car. The chap—in a beautifully cut suit—rolls down his window. He’s far too big for the Fiat. His head is almost touching the ceiling. Probably borrowed the nanny’s car. “Sorry … is there a problem?”
“Too right there is. You could see I was about to back into this space. You people think you’re so damned entitled… .”
He is already apologizing, explaining that he’s running late and got confused. He didn’t see my reversing lights and thought I was double-parked up ahead. His remorse, which seems genuine, takes the wind out of my sails. But not as much as what happens next. As he starts to pull out of the space, I see that the girl sitting next to him has both legs in metal braces. My hand flies to my face. I’m a monster. I start running down the road after him, shouting apologies and waving my arms like a crazy woman. He either doesn’t see me or pretends not to.
“You could have warned me,” I say to the kids as I let them out of the car.
“We did.”
“No, you didn’t. You just told me he was Sarah’s dad.”
“But everybody knows that Sarah can’t walk properly.”
“I don’t.”
We fall in behind a couple of women in gym gear. They have perfect bottoms. One is pushing a heavy-duty cross-country stroller.
“… and there she was, in the kitchen snorting her son’s Ritalin.”
“Nooo.”
“I kid you not… .”
Faraday House is a magnificent Georgian manor, surrounded by tall hedges and bowling green lawns. There are tennis courts, rugby and cricket pitches, indoor and outdoor pools and a performing arts center. The original eighteenth-century building is dwarfed by the new glass-and-steel additions, which have been built to accommodate the ever-increasing population of the senior school.
Despite everything this place has to offer, I worry that it’s too privileged, too white—that it doesn’t reflect real life. Abby agrees and despite their emphasis on altruism she worries about the kids turning into brats who take advantage for granted. Once they start senior school she is going to insist that they donate a percentage of their allowance to charity.
Because it’s the first day of term, Mrs. Spencer Jupp, the head, has stationed herself in the wood-paneled entrance hall to welcome back children and parents. An enormous glass chandelier glistens and glimmers above her. To her side is an antique velvet sofa and a walnut occasional table. Mrs. Spencer Jupp—known to everybody as Mrs. S.J.—is wearing a pale blue woolen shift dress and matching pashmina. She looks as if she is receiving dinner guests at her country estate. Instead she is ever so politely marshaling children, as well as issuing directives to the stragglers like Sam and Rosie. “Do giddyap, chaps. The bell went two minutes ago.”
Much as they might want to giddy, they can’t because so many of the children want to stop and chat with the head. “Hi, Mrs. S.J., did you have a good Christmas?”
“I did, Ben/Olivia/Arthur. How was yours?”
There are two hundred pupils in the lower school and I’m guessing that Mrs. S.J. knows each of them by name. This is what you pay for—the personal touch.
I wave good-bye to Sam and Rosie and watch them disappear into the thicket of children.
As I reach the bottom of the school steps, I feel a tap on my shoulder.
Then comes the booming, almost regal voice. “Judy! Long time no see.”
Ginny throws her arms around me as if we’re old friends. “I just heard on the tom-toms about Abby and her husband going to Nicaragua. Good on them.”
Abby sent a round-robin to her mummy friends at the school to let them know she was going. Now it appears to be on general release, which is good because it saves me having to explain. “What they’re doing is amazing. Totally restores one’s faith in human nature. You must be very proud.”
“I am. But at the same time I worry about there being another quake, or that they might catch some terrible disease.”
“Of course you do. It can’t be easy, and naturally you daren’t voice your worries in front of the children. Speaking of which, I think you’re just as wonderful, stepping into the breach like this. Not many women our age would go back to full-time parenting. And you’ve already got your old mum at home.”
I tell Ginny it’s only for six weeks and fingers crossed, I’ll manage.
“Well, if it all gets too much and you need somebody to take the kids off your hands for a few hours, you only have to shout.”
I first met Ginny about a year ago. She was picking up her grandson Ivo from school—which she does every day. I was doing a one-off pickup because Abby had been held up at work. I remember her coming over to me, full of upper-class bonhomie: “Ah! Another grandma. At least I’m assuming you are. By the way, it’s not your skin that gives you away. It’s the Crocs. Aren’t they amazing? So comfortable. I live in mine.” She raised a large foot, encased in fuchsia rubber.
In fact, my Crocs belonged to my mother, who swore they eased her bunion pain. I’d borrowed them because I was running l
ate and they’d been lying by the front door. Nevertheless I agreed that they were enormously comfortable and owned up to being a grandma. It was then that I noticed Ginny’s T-shirt. Across her shelf of a bosom were the words Being a grandma is God’s reward for not killing your kids. She was clearly a bit of a one-off—at least by Faraday House standards. She had a sense of humor. In my experience, the educated classes are often so in thrall to the high arts that levity scares them. God forbid they should laugh in case it makes them look lowbrow.
On top of that, Ginny’s T-shirt and baggy jeans—not to mention the Crocs—indicated that she had no interest in fitting into the school’s elevated sartorial mold. I admired that. Indeed I, too, took a perverse delight in turning up at the school gates looking a bit slovenly. That day I was wearing faded black leggings and an ancient waterfall cardigan covered in bobbles. I think we both took one look at each other and recognized kindred spirits.
Once we’d finished discussing Crocs, we moved on to our grandchildren. Ginny’s grandson Ivo was in the same year as Rosie. He belonged to her son and daughter-in law. She had two more grandchildren, by her daughter. For some reason, she seemed reluctant to say much about them and I was too polite to push it.
We learned so much about each other in that first, short encounter. I told her I’d recently been widowed. She revealed that her husband had run off years ago, leaving her with two small children. “Put me off men for good, I can tell you.”
I can’t remember the last time I saw Ginny. Abby hasn’t asked me to do the school run in ages.
“Judy,” she’s saying now, “I want to apologize.”
“What on earth for?”
“For not calling you. I see Abby most mornings, dropping off the kids. We always nod and I’ve kept meaning to stop her and ask for your phone number. I wanted to check how you were doing. The thing is, when people are grieving, one never knows if one’s interfering. But I suppose you could always have told me to bugger off.”
Another thing I like about Ginny is how she speaks like the Queen and curses like a trouper.
“I wouldn’t have dreamed of telling you to bugger off,” I say, touched that she’s been thinking about me. “I’m always up for a bit of company that isn’t my mother.”