Mummy Said the F-Word

by Fiona Gibson

  My world has shrunk. In a desperate moment I catch myself muttering to a yellow Sticklebrick. I pore over holidayhomefin-der.co.uk and manky-arse-smelling-hovels.com in search of a last-minute bargain – someplace we, too, could enjoy amazing beaches and incredible food. (‘You’d love the seafood, Jake!’ Choke on a langoustine, shithead!) The only vacant cottage I can find is on the outskirts of Hull. There’s an interior photo. Its living-room carpet looks like it’s suffering from some kind of fungal growth.

  Then something wonderful happens.

  A text from Sam: HEADING BACK TOMORO WHY NOT MEET US AT CAMPSITE NR OXFORD FOR I NIGHT ITS FANTASTIC HAVE STAYED THERE BEFORE WILL CALL WITH DETAILS SX.

  Completely fantastic idea. Yes, I hate camping. I can’t grasp the logic of uprooting one’s family from a reasonably comfortable home with proper beds to a rocky field with a stinking toilet block. However, with three more interminable days to fill, and a tent in the attic that Martin bought in a fit of robust outdoorsiness, we’re already there.

  Stuff Sardinia, Martin Collins. With a grin plastered all over my face, I text back: LOVE 2 CX.

  13

  As we drive towards Oxford, it strikes me how little time Jake and I spend together, just the two of us. There isn’t the opportunity. Maybe that’s why he’s so hacked off these days. With Jake beside me, and Lola and Travis snoozing on the back seat, I decide to broach it again. The cleaning thing. The spending £1.25 of his own money on Mr Sheen thing. We have left London far behind, and the vast expanses of green have lifted my spirits.

  ‘Jake,’ I venture, ‘would you tell me if something was worrying you?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Eyes fixed ahead.

  ‘I mean … you don’t seem like yourself. Like your old self, I mean. Before Dad, um, moved out. I’m just a bit worried.’

  Shrug.

  ‘You never used to tidy and polish and stuff.’

  Squirm in seat.

  ‘Why d’you think you do that?’ I try to maintain a calm, gentle tone. ‘You don’t have to, you know. You can be really messy like you were before. It’s totally fine. I wouldn’t mind at all.’

  ‘Mmblm,’ is all he says.

  ‘In fact I’d like it,’ I charge on. ‘It’s how kids are supposed to be, isn’t it? You can worry about being boring and tidy when you’re grown-up.’

  Pause. ‘Dad wouldn’t like that.’

  I flick a glance at him. ‘You mean, Dad wouldn’t like it if you were messy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Tension fills the car. I can virtually hear it buzzing in my ears like flies. The sun has ducked behind a cloud. ‘Jake,’ I say gently, ‘is Dad’s place really tidy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And d’you think … that’s why Dad lives there instead of with us? Because –’ I cough to clear a rattle in my throat ‘– because they’re not messy like us?’

  Jake nods. His eyes have moistened, and he turns away quickly.

  A lump rises in my throat, and I place a hand on his knee. ‘Honey, that’s not the reason. I tried to explain that when Dad moved out.’ Jake stares pointedly at undulating fields. ‘He just didn’t want to live with me any more,’ I add. ‘It was about us – me and him. Not you or Lola or Travis.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, sounding as convinced as if I’d tried to resurrect the tooth-fairy myth.

  ‘So you thought if you made your room really nice, Dad would come back?’

  Jake nods.

  ‘That’s what you want, for us all to be together again?’ My chest feels tight, and tears prickle the backs of my eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispers.

  ‘Jake, hon, I’m really sorry.’ It’s all I can say.

  What I want to do is pull over and hug him, but that would wake the others and trigger a barrage of questions about why we’ve stopped here when there’s nothing to see, and why are we cuddling and crying? So I hammer on, through light April drizzle now, with a listless grey sky hanging over us.

  All this time Jake’s been Mr Sheening to try to lure his dad back, and I hadn’t realised.

  A bumpy gravel track leads to Sunny Acres Campsite. I park up at the entrance and put my arms round Jake, expecting him to shrug me off, but he doesn’t. He feels small and thin and vulnerable. I try to blink back hot tears, but some smear in Jake’s hair and I quickly rub my face with my sleeve.

  A man wanders past with his jacket hood jutting over his face like a funnel. As Lola stirs in the back, I rest my hands on Jake’s shoulders. ‘Darling,’ I murmur, ‘I’m sorry, but me and Daddy aren’t going to get back together. Sometimes it’s worse when people do that – stay together when they’re not getting on – because they’re screaming and arguing all the time. You wouldn’t like that, would you?’

  He stares down. ‘’Spose not.’

  I squeeze his hand. ‘C’mon. Let’s go to reception and find our pitch. Sam said it’s lovely here.’

  Jake opens the passenger door and peers around. ‘No it’s not, Mum. It’s horrible.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I insist, climbing out. ‘The weather’s rubbish, but I’m sure it’ll brighten up and—’

  ‘No, I mean that. Look. We’re all gonna be poisoned.’ He points at a notice shrouded in clear plastic on the side of Toilet Block A: ‘IMPORTANT WARNING DO NOT USE WATER DUE TO CONTAMINATION.’

  ‘Well,’ I bluster, ‘we won’t drink it. We’ll buy bottled water from the shop.’ Clearly, standards have slipped since Sam’s last visit.

  ‘What about showers?’ Jake asks, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine to shower in.’

  ‘But what if it’s not? It might give us skin diseases.’

  ‘Jake, for goodness’ sake—’ I’m stopped in my tracks by Lola and Travis lurching out of the car, firing questions.

  ‘Is this where we’re going to sleep? In that little house?’

  ‘No, Lola, that’s the toilet block.’

  ‘Where’s Sam?’

  ‘He’s coming later.’

  ‘Are we’re gonna be poisoned? I heard Jake saying—’

  ‘No, of course we’re not. D’you think I’d let that happen to you?’ I march round the car, slamming the doors that everyone’s left wide open. ‘Come on, let’s find out where we’re supposed to pitch our tent.’

  ‘In the rain?’ Lola wails.

  ‘It’s not rain. It’s drizzle. Let’s try and cheer up, shall we? This is our holiday. It’s going to be great.’

  I smile manically, but no one smiles back.

  * * *

  My plan had been to pitch our tent and have dinner ready for Sam and Harvey’s arrival. In a burst of enthusiasm I’d packed lamb cutlets, shallots and a bunch of rosemary into our coolbox. As seasoned campers, we wouldn’t be huddling over tepid baked beans and slug-like sausages, oh no.

  Under Travis and Lola’s authoritative gaze, Jake and I lug the tent from the boot and dump it on our allotted expanse of sodden ground. Our pitch – I believe that’s the correct camping term – is situated next to a super-tent, with several annexes, and Toilet Block B, which has the same warning about the water.

  We haul the tent from its nylon casing. There seems to be a heck of a lot of it, with numerous bits of string attached. ‘Where are the instructions?’ I ask, delving into the bag.

  ‘I bet there aren’t any,’ Jake announces, and I’m sure I detect a hint of smugness.

  You’d assume that by now, in the twenty-first century, someone could have invented a self-erecting tent. One with a button you would press and the thing would ping up.

  ‘We’ll manage fine,’ I bluster. ‘I think you feed the poles through these channels.’

  I now recall that I have never actually put the thing up. On our sole family camping trip, to the New Forest, Martin had taken charge of such matters. Jake and Lola had been deemed too little to help, and Travis had been nestling in the warm, tent-free environment of my womb. We’d returned from the children’s play area to find proud father hamme
ring in the last of the pegs.

  Then Martin had contracted food poisoning. I’d cooked, so it was probably my fault. As we’d failed to bring loo roll – also my fault – he’d spent the night lurching to the toilet block with fistfuls of socks on which to wipe his rear.

  ‘That pole doesn’t go there,’ Jake scolds me, snatching it from my grasp and sliding it swiftly into its correct channel.

  Within minutes the basic structure has taken shape. Miraculously, Jake appears to have inherited his father’s tent-erecting gene. All seems to be progressing nicely when a tremendous wind – strong enough to knock Travis off his feet, at which he screams in delight – sends the tent billowing skywards like gigantic out-of-control knickers.

  ‘Shit!’ I yell.

  ‘Shit!’ Travis cries excitedly, causing a tubby man erecting a silver tent to glower in our direction.

  ‘Grab it and peg down that corner!’ I cry desperately.

  ‘You’ve got the hammer,’ Jake protests.

  ‘I gave it to you!’

  ‘No you didn’t—’

  ‘Need some help?’ An elderly man has emerged from the nylon stately home next door to watch our performance.

  ‘No thanks,’ I pant, gripping a flailing guy rope.

  The man shakes his head and chuckles softly.

  ‘It’s hopeless, Mum,’ Jake rages as I haul our temporary home to heel.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Lola announces.

  ‘So am I,’ Jake mutters.

  I glare at them. ‘We can’t start cooking until the tent’s up. We have to prioritise.’

  ‘What’s “prioritise”?’ Lola asks, seemingly unconcerned about our lack of accommodation.

  I ignore her.

  ‘What time is it?’ she insists.

  ‘Dinnertime,’ Travis announces with a grin.

  Perhaps the wind will die down. Then we’ll knock up the tent in a jiffy and have as lovely a time as anyone who can afford to go to sodding Sardinia. I scan the site for a similar tent to ours, intending to prowl around and take notes on its construction. There aren’t any. Perhaps ours was discontinued. It looks rather mottled and mildewed; maybe it contracted a disease in the loft.

  The drizzle has subsided, and a hippyish young couple have emerged to play cards at a folding table. It doesn’t seem windy around their tent. As far as I can make out, it isn’t windy anywhere apart from at our pitch. It seems to have its own micro-climate. No wonder it was vacant.

  A man in biker’s leathers sips a beer outside a tiny igloo tent. A smattering of middle-aged couples prepare dinner at their stoves. The air fills with delicious aromas. God, everything smells incredible. The children have begun to look pale and hollow-cheeked, and I swear that Travis has lost weight. It’s 6 p.m. Even if we manage to pitch the tent, I still have to connect the camping stove to its rusting gas bottle and get creative with lamb and rosemary. It should be marinating by now. Sam and Harvey are due any minute. Our neighbour from the stately tent is observing us from a fold-out chair. His wife, who looks about eighty, is dragging an airbed from the back of their Volvo and attaching it to some whizzy device, which inflates it instantly. We, too, have airbeds, but no blow-upper gizmo like theirs. Just a tiddly foot pump which I now recall drove Martin into an apoplectic rage.

  The woman drags the inflated bed across the battered grass. ‘Beautiful evening,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ I muster a smile.

  She proceeds to unload sleeping bags, a wicker hamper, a camping stove, an extensive assortment of pots and pans, and a small white dog – the rat-faced variety that are forever poking their quivering noses around your groin – and, incredibly, a TV. Travis’s eyes light up when he sees it. It’s so humiliating, sitting here on the tent bag surrounded by bored, fidgety children, while someone older than my mother creates a luxurious home-from-home.

  Slowly, with Jake’s assistance, I make a half-arsed job of pitching our tent. If not fully erect, it’s at least in a state of semi-arousal. While the kids pile into it, I lay out the airbeds and pump with the foot thing until my knee starts making peculiar clicking noises. I will not ask to borrow our neighbours’ inflator machine. I am Caitlin Brown, single mother of three, and am perfectly capable of managing everything all by myself.

  Despite twenty minutes’ pumping, the first airbed lies flaccid and useless. It brings to mind Martin’s appendage when I’d gone all-out in the foxy-lingerie department – black balconette bra, coordinating knickers, stockings and suspenders, the whole caboodle – in an attempt to perk up our sex life (not yet realising that he’d been directing his attentions elsewhere and that there wasn’t enough arousal to go round).

  I pump faster, my leg pistoning manically. The point at which we’ll tuck into lamb infused with rosemary seems a long way off. I’m missing Bethnal Green, our scabby house, even the sea monkeys.

  ‘When is dinner ready?’ Lola asks, popping her head out of the tent.

  ‘Soon,’ I mutter. Marvellous, isn’t it, how the youth of today expect meals to appear instantly when it’s apparent that no food preparation has taken place?

  ‘Hey, love!’ our neighbour shouts from his chair. ‘Can I give you a hand with that?’

  ‘Think I’m nearly done,’ I call with fake gaiety.

  He gurgles with amusement and sips from his glass. He’s drinking wine. Talk about rubbing salt into the wound. There’s a popping noise and the pump’s tube pings out of the foot bit. It won’t fit back in. Perhaps it’s been over-pumped and is suffering from nervous exhaustion, as I am. When I examine it closely, I discover a small rip in the rubber. What am I supposed to do now – blow the beds up with my mouth? Christ, I’ll end up being stretchered off to hospital with collapsed lungs.

  The elderly woman throws me a sympathetic look. She’s putting up the cooking tent now. Their camping stove has its own tent. As does the yappy dog; they’ve brought a kind of nylon kennel.

  I’m beginning to feel distinctly under-equipped. Tears well up and I blink them back angrily. I will not break down and start girlie-blubbing in front of all these seasoned campers. Then, just as I’m considering tearing down the tent, flinging our lamb to the yappy dog and driving back to London, my world brightens. Sam’s car pulls into the site. He and Harvey tumble out and instantly the whole living-under-canvas experience seems bearable.

  ‘Hey,’ Sam says, ‘your tent’s up already! I’m impressed.’

  ‘Easy,’ I boast.

  He studies the flaccid airbed. ‘Hang on. I’ve got a pumper-upper thing in my car.’

  ‘Oh, Sam,’ I say, laughing. ‘You say all the right things.’

  ‘Here you are, dear,’ the old lady says. ‘We had plenty left over so we thought you and the children would like some.’

  Normally, I’d take offence at a stranger trying to force her food on to us, but her stew smells wonderful and our camping stove hasn’t yet made it out of its box.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ I say, taking the bowls gratefully.

  We fill our faces, and the kids tear around the site, finally crawling into our tents, exhausted.

  Which leaves us – Sam and me – and a bottle of chilled sauvignon that he’d had the forethought to pick up on the way.

  ‘So,’ I say, ‘what did you get up to in Cornwall?’

  Sam stretches out on his side on our tartan blanket. ‘Oh, just the usual stuff,’ he says quickly.

  I sip my wine and try to read his expression. It’s not like him to be evasive. ‘Martin sent a postcard,’ I venture, ‘to tell us what a fabulous time he’s having.’

  Sam winces. ‘That was kind of him.’

  ‘To be honest, I’d rather be here than in Sardinia.’ I mean it. The air is still now, the sky smattered with pinprick stars. I can’t remember the last time I noticed stars. Maybe this is what those Bambino writers mean when they bang on about getting back to nature with your kids.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ Sam murmurs. ‘Thought it might not be your kind of thing
…’

  I snigger. ‘Neither did I.’

  He looks at me and there’s a flicker of something. Like he’s really looking at me, as if I’m different somehow and not just Cait who’s handy to hang out with.

  He sits up and rests an arm round my shoulders. My entire body tenses, and I shiver involuntarily.

  ‘You’re cold,’ he murmurs. ‘Better get tucked up in your tent.’

  ‘Yes, you’re probably right.’ I gather myself up, even though I’m not remotely tired, even after all that tent-grappling.

  As quietly as possible, I unzip our tent and wriggle in. I don’t want to be packed off to bed by Sam. I want to sit up with him, talking, feeling the warmth of his arm round me after months of being starved of touch.

  The realisation astounds me. I want Sam to touch me. I want him. Slithering into my clammy sleeping bag, I zip it up to my neck, as if that might shut out the feelings. I wriggle to get comfortable and my foot strikes something hard at the bottom of my sleeping bag. Travis’s hook. I fish it out irritably and toss it aside.

  Jake stirs, murmuring softly.

  ‘Did I wake you?’ I whisper.

  Unintelligible response.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’ From Jake, this counts as crazed enthusiasm.

  He turns over and eventually the tent fills with his soft snores. Lola murmurs in her sleep, and Travis, sensing my presence, snuggles closer, gusting stew-breath into my face. There are bursts of distant laughter, and a faint breeze ripples the tent.

  I wonder what Sam’s doing now – if he’s still sitting out there, and why he was so keen for me to go to bed. I lie patiently waiting for these wanting-Sam feelings to go away.

  They don’t.

  I screw up my eyes tightly and try to think of other things, like Martin suffering multiple jellyfish stings in Sardinia, but it doesn’t work.

  Then I hear a tent being unzipped and soft footsteps on the grass. ‘Cait?’ comes the whisper.