by Judy Astley
‘Well what do you think? Do you like it?’
‘What? Oh the flat,’ Nina said casually. ‘Yes, it’s very . . . very you.’ Joe had an amused, disbelieving look. ‘Well it’s almost very you,’ she conceded. ‘You always said you hated art deco,’ she added, grinning and pointing at the table lamps.
‘Yes, well. One has to make allowances, you know.’
‘Yes I do know. I made lots of allowances for you.’
‘Not lamps though,’ Joe said. Nina laughed.
‘God no, never lamps.’ Sitting, half lying on the vast bed of a sofa, Nina’s legs began to itch again. ‘Bloody tights,’ she complained, raking her legs with her nails.
‘You could take them off now, there’s only me to see,’ Joe suggested.
‘I’d only have to put the things back on again to go home,’ she said.
Joe got up and headed for a doorway. ‘No you don’t. Look, why don’t you come and choose some of Cath’s, she buys them in dozens, there’s loads of packs not even opened.’
Nina stared at him. ‘You can’t go lending your mistress’s tights to your ex-wife!’ she told him.
He had a naughty, sneaky grin on his face as he hovered by the door of the room in which, Nina was highly conscious, he did untold sexual adventuring with the sleek, cool Catherine. Part of her was desperately curious to follow him and have a look round. If, when she told Sally about all this at the gallery, she couldn’t accurately describe their bedroom and its contents Sally would probably swear she’d never speak to her again. It was her duty to report back.
She got up and wandered as nonchalantly as she could into the room with Joe and immediately wished she hadn’t. She could tell, just instantly tell, that there was nothing of the decorating of this room that was Joe’s. It was all Catherine’s, it had to be, this plump peach boudoir for swanning and preening, an altar for the worship of the look-good god. The atmosphere was of determined femininity with mirrored wardrobe, drawn-thread duvet cover, rose-sprigged curtains (frilled pelmets, fringe and tie-backs too) over lacy blinds. To Nina, it looked as if Catherine had decided it was already time for 1980s fabric overload to be revived; either that or she was madly compensating for Joe’s cool minimalist taste. Bedside tables were draped with at least three layers of cloth, starting with chintz identical to the curtains, followed by a square of something plain and pink-fringed and topped off with white drawn-thread linen. Both were equipped with more peach-glassed art deco lamps. Joe’s old gunmetal alarm clock stood like a lonely protest beneath one of them.
‘Good grief, where on earth are you allowed to keep your tennis kit?’ she exclaimed.
Joe turned from the drawer he was rifling through and looked sheepishly at her. ‘In the cupboard by the front door,’ he admitted. ‘And I didn’t choose the paint colour in here either, in case you thought my taste had gone seriously off. I gave her free rein.’
‘You sure did. You always hated peach. But then I guess that’s love for you.’
He handed her a cellophane pack containing a hugely expensive pair of velvety tights. ‘Here, have these,’ he offered. Behind him in the still-open drawer Nina could just see several cardboard packs of much cheaper chain-store tights. ‘Thanks,’ she said, accepting. They grinned at each other.
Removing her tights in front of Joe, who sat on the bed recalling the exaggerated adventures of his own long-ago gap year, Nina felt mildly uncomfortable. There was no way the putting on of tights could ever be a dignified or attractive process, though she was willing to bet that Catherine could manage to do it prettily enough. This is ridiculous, she thought, we’ve shared twenty years of married life and he’s seen me give birth twice. Why should I expect to look attractive or dignified to him now? Why should I want to? She sat on the bed next to Joe and started wriggling her foot into the first velvety toe. ‘We’re creasing the duvet,’ she commented. As she turned to catch Joe’s eye, a juvenile attack of giggles overwhelmed them both and they collapsed against each other, snorting and hysterical.
What happened next was almost inevitable, Nina reasoned very much later. The sex was sharp, fast and devastatingly satisfying, over before they’d even finished laughing. Nina lay back on the bed following the sponged-paint patterns on the ceiling and wishing she could stop grinning. It was such a giveaway, and so undignified. Her skirt was bunched up to her waist, her knickers were dangling from one of Catherine’s precious lamps and her left leg from the knee down was still trailing the black tights. She dressed quickly, and as she put her shoes back on she found herself wishing that Joe would leave the room only so that she could bundle her own discarded tights under Catherine’s pillow. It would be sweet revenge for forcing such complicated décor on so artistic a man. It was then that she caught sight of what sat on Catherine’s bedside table. On top of a fat paperback novel was a chart, and a thermometer. Joe saw her noticing. ‘She takes her temperature every morning,’ he said, shrugging, though Nina hadn’t actually asked. She didn’t need to.
‘What happens when it peaks?’ she asked, her heart beating strangely hard.
Joe grinned, ‘I either have a headache, or I work late,’ he confessed.
‘So far,’ Nina said.
‘Yeah, well, so far,’ he agreed.
‘Graham phoned.’ Emily greeted Nina at the front door, looking pale and worried. ‘It’s Grandma. He said she’s had a fall and she’s gone to hospital and can you call him after six. I didn’t know where you were.’
It was nearly that now, Nina realized as she went into the kitchen and headed for the phone. It was a classic, she thought as she pressed the buttons: here come the celestial thunderbolts, just because she had a few minutes’ lapse from sense, cavorting with her ex-husband. Here comes the wrathful God with punishment. Not ‘cavorting’, though, she thought, tapping her fingers on the window ledge waiting for Graham to reply. That kind of instant, urgent, nailed-to-the-bed sex wasn’t so lightweight as cavorting. Delicious pangs of remembered thrill ran through her body, doused by Graham’s grim ‘Hello?’ She really must never do that again. She probably wouldn’t be required to.
‘Will Grandma die?’ Lucy, coming into the room trailed by the inevitable Sophie, asked. Lucy had no particular expression in her voice, no fearfulness. She simply wanted to know, as if she was really asking whether Monica had got to the right age yet.
‘I doubt it, God I hope not,’ Nina said, trying to keep a nervous trembling out of her voice. This was what she most dreaded, most feared. Her mother defeated, helpless and angry. Immobility, as much as ill health, would kill her. Graham had his job, she had hers, arrangements would have to be made. Panicking, she thought too far ahead as she dialled, ahead to nursing homes, builders organizing a granny extension, stair lifts. The impossibility of the two of them sharing a home. It would be like two cats in a box, she thought, waiting for Graham to answer.
‘She’s had a fall,’ Graham, a man of only the most necessary words, told Nina at last.
‘I know that, Emily said. How bad is it, where is she and what’s the damage?’ she urged him impatiently. Graham had always been slow to tell things, relishing the important delivery of profound news, choosing words that could require the most drastic interpretation. ‘There’s been an accident’ had been one of his favourite childhood phrases – covering everything from the demise of an ancient goldfish to the death of their father from heart failure at the Bowls Club, with white-skirted matrons elbowing for the chance to be the one whose arms he died in.
‘She fell down the stairs. One of the banisters is snapped,’ he explained infuriatingly. Oh Graham, not that sort of damage, Nina thought, fighting an urge to laugh.
‘And she’s in the hospital, till they’ve assessed her. They think it’s only bruising, but they’re not sure about her hip.’
‘She’s had a dodgy hip for ages,’ Nina said. ‘Maybe now she’ll decide it’s time something was done. Those stairs, perhaps they’re getting too much for her. The whole house is too, real
ly. I wonder if this might be the time to think about moving her to somewhere smaller.’
There was a silence. Nina realized too late how insensitive she had been. Suggesting changes in her mother’s living arrangements, however sensible and well intentioned, meant potential earthquakes in Graham’s own life.
‘We shouldn’t talk about it now,’ he said, his voice carefully expressionless. ‘You should just go down to the hospital and see her.’ He hung up abruptly and Nina felt dreadful.
‘Is Gran OK? Has she broken something?’ Emily looked up from her homework and asked.
‘Only the banisters, according to Graham,’ Nina said grimly. ‘I’m more afraid it might have broken her spirit. She might get fearful now, more frail.’ More dependent, demanding, difficult, she added guiltily from safely inside her head.
‘Take more than falling over,’ Emily grunted, turning her attention back to her work.
‘They don’t “fall over” though, do they, old people? They “have falls”, as if it’s something that happens to them, not something they are active enough to do, like children. Older people are often talked about like that as if they’ve gone, oh what’s the word, passive.’
‘I wouldn’t call Grandma passive,’ Emily pointed out. ‘Anything but.’
Nina laughed. ‘Too right. I’m just worried she’ll decide she’s actually old, and go downhill from there. She and Graham will have to do some serious role reversal, with him looking after her for a change.’
‘Neither of them will know where to start,’ Emily commented, laughing.
‘That, Emily, is too true even to be slightly funny.’
Chapter Eight
The eight-bed ward was full of silent grey women. Nina couldn’t see, at first, which one of the pearly heads dozing open-mouthed on banked-up pillows was her mother’s. A soundless television was playing up on a high stand in the corner, but no-one looked at it, rather like a prattling bedside visitor who the patient wished would just go home. There was a distant smell of long-cooked food, which Nina guessed had been served a good while ago. Monica wouldn’t like that, wouldn’t approve of too early an ending to the day, as if they were all overtired children needing an early night.
Nina found her in a bed close to the window, sitting staring blankly out across the dusky west London skyline, her fingers playing nervously with the blanket. She looked smaller than usual, older and unnervingly frail.
‘Get me out of here,’ were her first words on seeing Nina.
Nina smiled gently at her and Monica scowled. ‘And don’t smile in that condescending way, you look like a demented lady vicar.’ She started twisting around awkwardly, looking for something. ‘My clothes, get my clothes, Nina. I think they’re in that silly little locker thing. I can’t stay here, there’s no shopping done for Graham.’
‘It’s only for a night or two, just to make sure you’re properly mobile again,’ Nina told her, getting up and trying to straighten the blankets, wondering how far she would have to go to pin down her mother. ‘And Graham’s fine. It’s about time you admitted he was a fully grown man who can fend for himself. It’ll do him good.’
‘He could come to you for supper I suppose,’ Monica conceded doubtfully.
‘He could. Or we could all go to him,’ Nina suggested mischievously.
Monica glared. ‘Don’t be so silly. When would Graham get chance to do cooking? He’s got his work.’
‘I’ve got my work, not to mention the house, two daughters, dog, cat, etc. Oh look, none of that matters just now. How are you feeling? And how did you fall? Did you get dizzy? Because if you did I hope you told the doctor. It might be blood pressure or something.’
Monica closed her eyes wearily and sighed before saying, ‘I wondered when you’d get round to asking how I feel. As a matter of fact what I’m feeling most is furious. They won’t even let me walk to the lavatory. They wheel in a commode, and then fuss round the bed with curtains that don’t quite close. It’s ritual humiliation. I’m perfectly all right and I want to go home. Or a room to myself. You’d think having a son on the staff here . . .’ Her voice was rising to petulance. Nina felt sorry for her and reached for her hand. ‘Just stay for tonight,’ she said. ‘I’ll come and see you in the morning and if you’re all right, maybe we can think about getting you home.’
‘What about your precious job? Will you be able to get the time off? You certainly took your time getting here.’
Nina bit her lip. Sally had already done her a favour today, taking over her afternoon at the gallery. The lunch with Joe, going to his flat, that dreadful fluffy bedroom, the fervent not-to-be-thought-of sex and Catherine’s thermometer – it all seemed months ago now. She could almost imagine she’d dreamed the whole afternoon, but her knickers were still damp from Joe and she was quite sure a mild scent of sex hung around her. Any second, she dreaded silently, Monica would sniff the air, nose-up like Genghis, and ask her if she’d been out making new friends.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort something out,’ Nina reassured her mother. ‘There might be some other arrangements to be made as well,’ she suggested tentatively, waiting to see if her mother had already thought of them.
‘Such as?’ Monica challenged, daring her to spell it out.
‘Like proper care for you. If you’re going to be falling down the stairs, getting a bit wobbly, maybe we should think about something to make life easier . . .’
‘Like a coffin, I suppose,’ Monica snarled.
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘You’re patronizing again.’
‘I only meant a couple of extra handrails here and there in the house. Something non-slip for the bottom of the bath, that kind of thing. I’ll talk to Graham.’
Graham sat gloomily in the pub clinging to his pint of bitter. Jennifer was opposite, her glass of cider long finished.
‘She’ll be all right. They’re very strong, these old ladies, they’re always having falls and getting better again,’ she said.
‘She’ll decide she’s old,’ Graham said. ‘And it’ll make her angry. She’s very good at blaming.’
‘Well she can just blame the stair carpet then, can’t she, this time. It’s not as if anyone pushed her,’ Jennifer said, with a note of impatience. The words Not yet hovered unsaid at the end of Jennifer’s sentence. ‘Do you want me to put another half in that glass, because I’m having another even if you’re not.’
‘Yeah, all right. Thanks.’ Graham pushed his glass across the table and slumped back in his chair. He could see there might be changes ahead and he didn’t like change, not unless it crept up very, very slowly. There was something Monica liked to say to people who asked her about living in that big difficult house with all its rooms that no-one went in, something that was just a bit embarrassing, like ‘Well I’ve always got my great big boy to look after me.’ She’d squeeze his arm and he’d feel dry-mouthed dread as if any moment she was going to take out a tiny handkerchief, lick it and wipe his face, just as she had, without fail, every morning when she’d got him out of the house to be taken, ‘by hand’ as she’d called it, to the infants’ school. She’d say the thing as if it was a bit of a joke, really, just something you said, not meant. Everyone knew that she looked after Graham. He’d heard the neighbours sometimes, making comments like ‘When’s that son of yours going to go off and get married and settle down?’ They didn’t say it often these days though, as if at his age still being at home with a mother was like the kind of illness that you don’t mention. ‘Settling down’ made him think of people who were much wilder than him, people on television who did mad comedy shows and then went on and did some really serious acting, or restless junkies like the twitchy skinny ones they got in A & E at work who sometimes didn’t die in doorways but got better and went round schools doing talks and helping. Settling down didn’t mean him: he was already settled, had never not been.
‘Here, drink this, you’ll soon feel better.’ Jennifer’s large breasts, bulging snugly
in her blue cardigan, appeared by his shoulder before the rest of her did. She put the drink on the table. Just breasts and one arm, Graham could see. Breasts to fall into, that’s what Jennifer had, arms and breasts to be snuggled in, smothered in. He sipped his drink fast, needing to feel cooler.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘We could get something to eat, or we could just go back to . . . well there’s no-one in at your place, is there?’ She looked up at him strangely, a sort of sly coyness in her eyes.
Graham stared at her, not understanding. ‘Home? You mean you want me to take you to my home?’ His mother was at home; not in body obviously, but in spirit, in influence, in omnipotence and control. She was in the floral wallpaper, the kitchen smells, the bathroom bleach. A reminding hint of her lavender cologne waited for him in the hall. He couldn’t take a woman there, because she’d know.
Jennifer bit her lip and looked pink. ‘Well, not if you don’t want to, of course. I mean I don’t want you to think I’m being a bit forward, but we’ve both been grown-ups for quite a good few years now, haven’t we?’ He stared at her, saying nothing, feeling flustered. She leaned across the table and took his hand. ‘Look, it’s all right, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even thought of it. I expect you’re feeling a bit shell-shocked about your old mum. Another time. Now, are you hungry?’
‘Oh God and it’s Lucy’s audition this afternoon!’
In the morning Nina stood in the kitchen staring at the wall calendar and willing it to swap its arrangements round so that she could fit everything in. ‘Sally said she’d do this morning at the gallery, but then I’m supposed to do the afternoon . . .’ she muttered away to herself, watched by Emily who guzzled cereal noisily, standing up by the sink. Her schoolbag was ready at her feet, coat flung across it, just in case Nina doubted the need for a speedy getaway and asked her to do something useful.