by Sue Margolis
For the very first time, it’s dawning on me that Mum might regret spending the past three decades alone.
“You need to live your life. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Mum, please give me a break. Having the kids to stay is a big step for me. I’m trying to get back into the world. I really am.”
“You must. Don’t let life pass you by. Time goes so fast. I don’t want you to reach my age and have regrets.”
So I’m right. My mother isn’t happy being alone. She disappears into the kitchen to start dinner.
CHAPTER
seven
Bogdan, Sam’s chess coach, is prone to rants. They go something like this: “Eed-y-ot! What have you done? You just moved your knight in front of your bishop and got nothing for it. You need to think, Sam! Think and plan!”
Sam is pretty robust, but in the last week or so—ever since Bogdan started coming to the house to wave his arms, bash the table and shoot spittle—my grandson has become anxious and fretful. Compared to his previous coach—a limp, geeky type called Tim—Bogdan is a pit bull.
Minor problems are tipping Sam over the edge. Last night he had a meltdown just because he lost one of his Dude Dice. On top of that, the child is spending every spare minute shut in his room, trying to improve his game. Sometimes he plays solo chess with the hats. Sometimes he plays against the computer. If he’s not playing chess, he’s reading about it. Now when he messes up a game, he even calls himself an idiot. Or worse: a retard. This is all down to Bogdan. The man is a bully and I want him gone.
Rosie is no fan either. “Bogdan has coffee breath and his trouser legs end before they get to his ankles. He’s weird.”
The first time Bogdan yelled at Sam, it was as much as I could do to stop myself from barging in on their session and telling the man his fortune. Mum stopped me. She said that making a scene would embarrass Sam and make him feel worse. So against my better judgment I didn’t. Instead—making sure I stayed out of sight—I kept an ear on things from the doorway. After Bogdan had gone, I sat Sam down and asked him if he was OK.
“Sure.”
He didn’t sound—or look—as if he meant it. “Nobody has the right to shout at you like that. I’m going to tell him not to come again. It beats me why your mother hasn’t got rid of him.”
“But Bogdan is meant to be the best there is.”
“Well, I’d hate to see the worst.”
“Mum says he sets really high standards and he’s strict because that’s how you make people stay focused and get the best out of them.”
“Your mum said that? OK, leave it with me. I’m going to speak to her.”
If this isn’t enough, I’m worried about Rosie, too. She’s having trouble sleeping. I’ve asked her if she’s still afraid of the Hitlers. She says not.
“They don’t scare me anymore because I’ve got my star necklace to protect me. I don’t know why I can’t sleep.”
“Do you think it’s because you’re missing Mum and Dad?”
“I am missing them, but we talk on Skype. I don’t think it’s that.”
I’ve asked if there’s something bothering her at school. Is she struggling with her lessons? Has she fallen out with her friends? She says school is fine.
Each night I make her a cup of warm milk and she drinks it in bed while I read to her. After twenty minutes, I’ll close the book and tell her it’s time to go to sleep. But she begs me to stay and read some more. I don’t want her to get upset, so I carry on. Sometimes I end up reading for an hour or more. Eventually she’ll let me kiss her good night and allow me to go. Ten minutes later she’ll come trotting downstairs with Denise, asking for a cuddle. The last couple of nights I’ve taken the pair of them into my bed. Sometimes it’s gone eleven before she drops off. Of course she’s finding it almost impossible to get up in the morning. I’ve already let her have a couple of days off school to catch up with her sleep. I can’t keep on doing it.
An exhausted Rosie plus an anxious Sam equals conflict. They seem to be fighting all the time. I’m coping, but the noise and rows are getting too much for Mum.
“All I did was ask one of them to hand me the TV remote,” she told me the other day, “and as Rosie went to get it, Sam snatched it from her and made her cry.”
They’re squabbling about nothing and anything: who gets in or out of the car first, who has the most bubbles in their milk, who has the biggest plate of food, who has the biggest brain. Last night Rosie was having an imaginary tea party with some soft toys and Sam ate all her imaginary biscuits. She chased him round the living room, trying to wrestle the imaginary plate from his hand, but he locked himself in the loo and made loud munching noises. Rosie was beside herself.
The following day I got a call from Sam’s teacher, Mrs. Gilbert. She announced that Sam had produced a plastic assault rifle during show-and-tell and started firing indiscriminately. She reminded me that the school has a strict anti-toy-weapons policy and that bringing a gun to school was highly inappropriate.
“But Sam doesn’t own a rifle.”
“He most certainly does. It’s called the Sniper. I have it locked in the cupboard under my desk.”
Then I remember. Tom’s parents sent it for his last birthday. It’s an exact replica of an army assault rifle—albeit scaled down—and makes a terrifying noise—a bit like a busted popcorn machine—when you fire it. Sam adores it. I remember watching him unwrapping it. Abby and Tom were furious when they saw the thing. They are emphatically against children bearing plastic imitation firearms, but since they didn’t want to offend Tom’s parents they had to let him keep it. He’s allowed to play with the gun in the garden, but only on his own. If his friends saw it they would report back to their parents. I had no idea that Sam had brought his assault rifle with him when he came to stay, let alone taken it to school—I assume hidden in his sports bag. Meet my grandson, the gun smuggler.
“I don’t want you to worry unduly,” Mrs. Gilbert went on. “The children thought it was great fun. Nobody was traumatized.”
“Thank the Lord for that. I had no idea he had taken it to school. I can only apologize and assure you that he will be punished and it won’t happen again.”
“Good. I do have one slight concern, though.”
“What’s that?”
“All the children know that guns aren’t allowed in school. Sam purposely disobeyed the rule. He’s usually such a good, well-behaved boy. This is so out of character. I’m wondering if he’s slightly troubled at the moment. After all, both his parents are away. I’m wondering how he’s coping with that.”
Was Mrs. Gilbert suggesting that because Abby and Tom had gone to Nicaragua, my nine-year-old grandson was a school rampage killer waiting to happen? Did we need to “talk about Sam”? “Mrs. Gilbert, are you telling me that you think Sam has psychological problems?”
“What? Good heavens, no. Sam said he brought the gun in as a joke and I believe him. But at the same time I can’t help thinking he might be attention seeking.”
“I don’t think it’s that.”
I explained about Bogdan and the chess tournament. “Poor mite’s really stressed. He’s also taking it out on his sister.”
“That’s not good. But it does make sense. OK, leave it with me. I’ll talk to him again and see if I can’t calm him down.”
“Would you? I’d really appreciate it. And my apologies again. Send him home with the gun and I’ll hide the damn thing.”
When I sat Sam down to discuss the assault rifle episode, he said he’d only taken it to show-and-tell because he couldn’t think of anything else to take. What’s more, because Mrs. Gilbert had laughed really hard at the Death Valley snow globe, he felt he had a standard to maintain. He thought the gun would be fun. I told him I understood, but I was confiscating it until his parents got back. He protested, but I took it anyway.
Mum says that all the noise and fighting between the children is giving her tension headaches and that I need to get t
o the root of the problem. The one thing that doesn’t bother her is Sam taking a gun into school. “So what? It’s only make-believe. It doesn’t mean anything. You played with guns—all the kids did. I used to buy you caps for it.”
I’m not going to argue the toss about toy guns with my elderly mother. I’m more concerned about Bogdan. I am in no doubt that he is the root of Sam’s problem. His bullying is making Sam anxious and bad-tempered. Rosie’s irritability, on the other hand, is due to sleep deprivation. I would put money on this being caused by all her after-school activities. She gets overstimulated, not to mention overtired, and can’t sleep.
The truth is that neither of my grandchildren is getting enough downtime. On top of his chess, Sam is doing other after-school activities. These have to be adding to his stress. Then there’s all the homework: spellings to be learned, tables to be recited, the difference between igneous and sedimentary rock to be Googled. By then it’s eight o’clock and time for a bath and bed.
Despite the memories Abby has of coming home from school and unwinding in front of kids’ TV for an hour or so, she doesn’t let Sam and Rosie do the same. Along with all the other Faraday House mothers, she makes sure her children are still learning and supposedly expanding their brains way after school has ended. Not for the first time, I wonder what happened to daydreaming, doing nothing. But like Abby says, times have changed. Kids are competing from the time they start preschool. Daydreaming is a luxury.
• • •
After Bogdan’s first outburst I told Abby how I felt about him. “You don’t get the best out of people—especially kids—by terrorizing them. He’s a horrible man.”
Abby insisted that he wasn’t horrible, just Russian. “You need to understand the Soviet temperament,” she said. “It goes back to communist times. These people mentor with fierce, almost military discipline. And they give off all this fiery emotion. Do you have any idea what Russian athletes go through when they’re training for the Olympics? Their coaches have no time for carrot. With them it’s all stick. That’s why they produce so many champions.”
Then it hit me. Despite everything Abby had said about not putting pressure on Sam, she wanted him to be a champion.
I told her there was a difference between discipline and striking fear into a person and that I intended to tell Bogdan he could stick his fiery emotions where the sun don’t shine.
“Mum, please don’t. Bogdan isn’t just a coach—he’s a guru, and he’s costing us a fortune. Get rid of him and Sam’s chances of doing well in the tournament go up in smoke.”
So I did nothing. Then Sam started getting anxious and I had another conversation with my daughter.
“But he’s worrying me,” I told her. “He starts fights with Rosie and he shuts himself away playing chess as if his life depended on it. I don’t like it.”
“He’s tense because this is a regional tournament. It’s his first really big competition. He’ll calm down when it’s over. You have to stop worrying. Tom and I will give him another pep talk.”
And they did. Rosie went upstairs and left them to it. She has no interest in “Sam’s boring chess.” I hovered in the doorway.
“So, Sam,” Tom said. “Grandma is worried that Bogdan yells and you’re getting upset. Do you want me to speak to him?”
“No. It’s fine. Bogdan yells a bit. But it’s only because he thinks I’m capable of doing better. If he thought I was useless he wouldn’t bother.”
“Good for you, darling,” Abby said. “That’s the spirit. Bogdan doesn’t mean to be unkind. It’s just his way. Everybody we’ve spoken to about him says his bark is far worse than his bite. But you mustn’t work too hard. You need to take time out to relax.”
“I know. But I have to keep working on my game. It’s the only way I’m going to win.”
“OK,” Abby said, “so long as you’re not wearing yourself out. Sweetheart, I want you to know that Dad and I are really proud of you. It’s not easy preparing for a big tournament when we’re so far away. But we’ve got tremendous faith in you. You have such talent.”
“Your mum’s right,” Tom said. “You just need to go out there and show the other kids what you’re made of. Who’s the best?”
“I am.”
“I didn’t hear you. Who’s the best?”
“I am!”
• • •
Abby and Tom are thousands of miles away healing the sick and injured. Their only reward is gratitude and the satisfaction that they’ve eased some of the suffering in the world. Every time I speak to Abby she tells me there’s still a constant stream of casualties being stretchered into the field hospital—many with crush injuries that have caused internal damage. “We don’t have the facilities to treat those patients. So they have to be airlifted out. It takes time. There are rows and rows of them on mattresses waiting their turn. All we can do is give them morphine for the pain. Many die before they make it out. Then there are all these distraught people wandering around, looking for lost relatives. The place is chaotic.” She’s lucky if she and Tom get four hours of sleep a night.
My daughter and her husband are good people. They are exceptional people. But there’s no getting away from it—they’ve changed. Abby has changed most. Back in the day, when she still walked in her father’s footsteps, she didn’t want the children to go to private school. Tom did. He’d been educated privately and wanted his children to benefit the way he had. At the time the local state school was underperforming and Abby took a leap of faith. They convinced themselves that it was possible to have kids at private school and still be cool, relaxed parents. Then the after-school activities started. Now that they could have a chess prodigy on their hands, they want him to win. Even the likes of Abby and Tom haven’t been able to resist being sucked into the Faraday House vortex of competition and ambition. They’ve become what they said they would never become—pushy parents. But I wouldn’t dream of adding to their stress by telling them.
Instead, a day or so later, I confide in Ginny and Tanya. We’ve just dropped the kids off at school and, along with other groups of mums, we’re hanging around chatting outside the main building. When I tell Ginny and Tanya that I think Abby and Tom might be turning into tiger parents, Ginny laughs.
“Well, they’re hardly the worst offenders. Don’t get me wrong. I can’t say that I approve of all this hothousing, but right now I could point out half a dozen mothers who’ve had their kids up since six practicing piano or violin.”
“Well, I think Sam and Rosie are being pushed too hard—especially Sam.”
“You’re probably right,” Tanya says. “Abby and Tom have been turned. But you can’t blame them. Being a parent at this school is a bit like being in a cult. If you’re not part of it, you have no place. And God knows I’ve tried to be out of it. I was dead against Cybil doing too many after-school activities, but in the end she made such a fuss about wanting to keep up with her friends that I gave in.”
Ginny says that by coincidence she was reading an article on tiger mothers in yesterday’s Guardian. “Apparently what these women don’t realize is that quiet time gives children the chance to consolidate what they’ve learned. It also breeds creativity.”
This jogs a distant memory—of the poems Abby would write when she was nine or ten, usually when she was alone, messing about in her room. They were mostly tragic odes to childhood suffering. Even then Abby was big on suffering. They had odd, melodramatic titles. “He Vows to Die with Sacrifice” sticks in my mind. I remember Brian joking that she was going to be Homer when she grew up and me saying she couldn’t be Homer and Mother Teresa.
“The thing is,” Tanya says, “when you ask parents what they want for their kids, they always say they want them to be happy. But in the upper school, loads of kids are self-harming or have anorexia—boys as well as girls—because they can’t take the pressure. Where’s the happiness in that?”
Tanya is in the middle of telling me about this amazing woman she kno
ws who teaches kids mindfulness techniques when we hear yelling. Claudia is coming toward us. Hero is a few paces behind her mother, bawling her head off. There are tears and snot running down the child’s puffy red face.
“Will you look at that?” Tanya says. “Oh, this is pure joy… . St. Claudia’s kid is having a tantrum.”
But Tanya’s elation is short-lived. Claudia has seen us and as she crouches in front of her daughter, I get the feeling we’re about to be treated to a master class in dealing with a temper tantrum.
“OK. That’s enough.” Claudia’s tone is calm but firm. “Hero—listen to me. We’re late. I need to get you into school. This has to stop.”
Hero ratchets up the decibels. Tanya is practically punching the air.
“Hero … I need you to focus. Come on … focus on Mummy. Look at me.”
Hero isn’t having it.
“I have to video this,” Tanya says, rooting around in her bag for her phone.
“Don’t you dare,” Ginny barks. “It’s not fair on Hero.”
“Hero wouldn’t see it.”
“Even so.”
Tanya pulls the zip back across her bag, grumbling that she can’t see what harm it would do.
“Hero, that’s enough… . Tell you what… . Let’s practice our breathing exercises. Take a deep breath… . Come on, you can do it… . That’s it… . Take a breath and let it out slowly. Let go of all that nasty anger and frustration… . That’s it… . Breathe in and out … and slowly feel the tension float away.”
Hero takes a series of short gasps.
“Good girl. Excellent. And again.”
This time she manages a proper deep breath. The child is calming down.
“That’s it! Well-done!”
“Crap,” Tanya says. “How did she do that?”
“Now, tell me again why you’re so upset,” Claudia says, “but slowly this time so that I can understand.”
“I’ve forgotten”—gasp—“Josie’s”—gasp—“reading folder that she left at our house.”