by Judy Astley
‘Why give us eggs at all?’ she demanded of Graham, complaining at full volume that she’d been faced with something that may have had only three minutes boiling but had been almost fossilized in the hot trolley. ‘We’re forever being quizzed about our bowels. Eggs like that sabotage one’s entire system. Why do they ask if we’ve “been” as they so coyly put it, when they serve up food that guarantees the answer “no” for a good four days? And that woman over there – ’ She pointed across to the bed opposite to a sleeping lady whose complexion was the colour Graham usually noted in the patients he transported to the mortuary – ‘She can’t take anything that hasn’t been liquidized, so do you know what they did?’ As usual she neither waited for nor expected a reply. Conscious of the rising volume, Graham felt his shoulders hunch in an attempt to be invisible. ‘They shoved her egg through a sieve and then down her throat. Almost choked and died.’ Monica looked highly satisfied with her complaints. The rest of the ward’s occupants shuffled their magazines and adjusted their headsets.
‘Social Services are coming as soon as they can fit us in,’ he said carefully, trying to put off the moment when she’d discover how vague they’d been about exactly which day. He hoped Nina would have to deal with that one. ‘I’m organizing another rail for the stairs and they might say we need some in the bathroom too. We could put a shower in,’ he suggested tentatively.
‘A shower? We’ve got a shower, a perfectly good one,’ she sniffed.
‘That’s in the bath. I mean one you walk into with its own door, no stepping over big ledges where you could trip.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my eyesight,’ Monica retorted, ‘I don’t have any trouble seeing where the side of the great big pink bath is. What do they think I am, totally decrepit?’
Not yet, Graham thought to himself with dread, but it was a good idea to prepare. Further ahead – how far or near exactly? – was the prospect of much more intense looking after. Nina should be doing that, he thought. Daughters were for the personal things. He did personal things at work, portering those of unreliable bladder, those who reacted badly to coming out of anaesthetic. He didn’t want it in his off-time as well. He would never be without a mop. He felt depressed. After he’d quietened her down with talk of the cat and the garden, Graham set off for home. He felt the need for fresh air, great gasping lung-fulls of it. He left his car for later and set off striding across the Common, head down against the scudding wind, staring down to where only the sprouting grasses and the dog-stained bases of trees were properly in focus.
‘Oh. You’re here.’ Henry walked in through Nina’s back door and found himself in the unusual presence of Joe. No-one else seemed to be around.
‘Hi Henry, glad to see you making yourself so much at home,’ Joe replied.
‘What? Oh, yes, well. It’s just the neighbourly way in,’ he said, looking back at the door as if expecting it to say something in his support. ‘Must be my Northern upbringing.’
He sauntered over towards the sofa but then hovered around awkwardly, inhibited by Joe’s rather off-putting presence. Joe looked grim; normally he’d point out and laugh at Henry’s display of tactlessness. He wanted to ask where Nina was, as she was obviously who he’d come to see. All that sympathy and support he’d given to Nina over the past difficult year and Joe was allowed back in to make free with the house as if he was perfectly welcome. Henry didn’t approve of civilized separations. Marriages that ended, particularly this one, should be a proper battlefield, then everyone knew where they stood. He resorted to polite niceties. ‘How are you all anyway? I saw Emily earlier, running like the hounds of hell were after her.’
Joe leaned against the sink and studied Henry, unsmiling and silent. Henry put his hands in his pockets and stared back, wondering what he’d done. He felt like a bad schoolboy about to be told by a furious headmaster: ‘Of course you know why I’ve sent for you.’ Perhaps Joe was calculating just how close he’d got to Nina since the divorce. Gleefully, Henry prepared to torture him a bit, hint that there was more going on than the odd drink and movie together. Joe, though, had a miles-away look about him, so he might not even take it in.
‘I’ve just come to ask Nina about the paint. Whether she wants me to get it or will she,’ he started explaining, feeling annoyingly flustered.
‘I don’t know anything about it. Sorry Henry, I assumed you’d called in because you’d seen the police car outside and couldn’t resist nosing in. Do you fancy a drink?’ Joe opened the fridge and pulled out a can of beer and a bottle of white wine that had been opened previously. He pulled the cork out and took a sniff. ‘I don’t know how long she’s had this but it smells more or less OK.’
‘Er, no thanks,’ Henry told him, perching nervously on the arm of the sofa. ‘I didn’t see any police, but what were they here for? If you don’t mind telling me, that is.’
‘Out on the Common, there was a fucking flasher – he had a grab at Emily,’ Joe told him, concentrating on pouring the wine as he said it to keep his voice under control.
Henry gave a nervous burst of laughter. ‘A flasher? Oh! I thought you’d been burgled or something dreadful like that . . .’ The words were hardly out of his mouth before he felt his head connect with the floor and his body lose all sense of which way up it should be. Joe had, in one staggeringly swift movement, put down both bottle and glass and hauled Henry into the air and down to the ground. He stood over him now, his foot against Henry’s throat like a hunter showing off a shot tiger.
‘I used to think you were just a bit of a prat, Henry,’ he said, his voice trembling with fury. ‘Now I know you’re a huge one. You think it was funny? You think some harmless saddo just waved his limp little dick from a nice cosy distance? You think that would have sent Emily into a life-fearing panic?’ He wandered back to the sink and continued pouring the wine as if nothing had happened. Henry stayed where he was, rigid with shock and feeling a ridiculous sense of embarrassment. Clambering up from the floor would only draw attention to the fact that he had been so forcefully (and easily) put there. Joe looked down on him with disgust and emptied his wine glass over Henry’s paint-encrusted chest.
‘Oh just get up and go home, Henry. Go home and play with your fucking paints.’
Chapter Ten
‘It’s nothing to do with sex, it’s about physical domination. It’s all about power,’ Sally was saying to Nina at the gallery.
‘Yes I know all that.’ Nina didn’t want to talk about it. She sat on the floor, unpacking a box of glasses, taking rolls of bubble-wrap from each one and polishing meticulously before placing it on a shelf. She’d worked up a soothing rhythm to the work, smoothing out the bubble-wrap and laying it out flat on the floor, cleaning each glass the same way, starting with the bottom, twisting it clockwise and ending with a brisk wipe round the rim. The rims were different colours, a glimmering ring of sapphire or ruby or citron. They’d soon be sold – a set of six would make a good wedding present and it was coming up to that season.
Nina was immersing herself in the routine, shutting out thought. She rather wished she hadn’t told Sally about Emily and her encounter on the Common, but then Sally walked her dog there just like most of the other residents and it was only fair to warn her. Emily had pleaded with her that if she really had to say anything, then just to say it was a flasher, nothing more. She felt tainted by being touched, and as if that feeling would be increased with each person who knew. Sally, never short of an opinion, inevitably contributed well-meaning interpretations. To her, as to Henry, exposure was just one of those nasty little occurrences that one could expect – the sort of thing men with nothing better to do went out and did. No big deal: practically every woman you met had come across a flasher. It was thought of as one of life’s unpleasantnesses, like treading in dog-dirt and just as easily forgotten. In fact Sally had been dangerously close to finding it funny. It was easy to imagine her thinking that she wouldn’t have run home hysterical from seeing a man wave his penis at her, that
she’d have given him what for, told him she’d seen a bigger dick on a dachshund, or that he should do that sort of thing in the privacy of his own bathroom. Emily, a week ago, would probably have said she’d have done exactly the same, but then that didn’t account for the element of danger and threat and the awful aloneness. And he’d touched her, which made it real assault. Nina could have made it into a joke, said something like, ‘Guess what, Emily met a flasher on the way home from school. Poor girl didn’t know where to look!’ But then that would both be untruthful and a betrayal of Emily, who was outraged and devastated that someone could so thoroughly and unexpectedly call up terror. It didn’t even begin to figure as something that could be laughed off, it was a wicked invasion.
‘I wish they wouldn’t call them “flashers”,’ Nina came out of her trance and said. ‘It almost makes it sound glamorous, sort of sequin-studded and joky, as if they’re just one of life’s little eccentricities and no more dangerous than a marauding fox out there in the bushes.’
‘Are they really any more dangerous though? Don’t they get their kicks just by showing?’ Sally asked. ‘I mean, all little boys wave their equipment around from the first day they can get their hands on it.’ She laughed, ‘I remember Daniel only ever wanted to pee out on the street against someone’s hedge. I always used to ask him if he wanted to go, just before we left the house, and every time, after about a hundred yards when we got to where the shops and people started, there he’d be, unzipping and looking around for an admiring audience. I guess some men simply don’t move on.’
‘They can start with that, according to the police, and then some of them carry on pushing for more thrills right up the scale towards rape or even murder. Emily is really traumatized, all the fight’s knocked out of her and that’s saying something. She’s stayed in the house for three days now. She doesn’t want to go out at all. Joe’s offered to drive her to school and pick her up after but she says she’s not going back this week, she’s so angry that she can’t cope.’
Sally’s perfectly pencilled eyebrows rose up her forehead in surprise. ‘Joe? Is he back home with . . .’ Nina laughed; trust Sally to pick up on the Joe situation as a priority – and that was even without being told what had happened at the flat. ‘No he isn’t!’ she told her, putting the last glass on the shelf and turning her blushing face to the floor as she gathered up the squares of bubble-wrap. Rather than chucking them straight into the bin, she put them carefully on the counter next to the till, ready for safe hoarding, amused to realize that without question she was turning into her own mother.
‘Joe’s just spending a lot of time visiting and making sure that Em knows he’s there for her. It’s really useful, seeing as Mother’s still in hospital.’
‘How kind,’ Sally grinned knowingly. ‘Next thing you know his bathrobe will be hanging behind your bedroom door again.’
‘I don’t think so. In fact I’m sure so,’ Nina said. ‘For one thing Catherine’s bought him a disgusting peachy coloured one to go with the walls. Whatever happens, and nothing will, I’m not giving that house-room.’
‘You could take it down the garden for a ceremonial burning and then replace it, without saying a word, with something gorgeous like those navy blue waffled ones from Conran, or something cashmere,’ Sally suggested.
‘Absolutely not!’ Nina dismissed the idea. ‘I shall never again be responsible for the purchase of any of Joe’s clothes. I never was, actually, come to think of it. I think it was one of the things he minded about. Catherine probably buys him silk socks from Muji and pretends they’re actually a present, when really she’s just being mumsy.’ She shuddered. ‘Oh never again, what bliss.’
‘Protesting too much again,’ Sally warned as the gallery door opened. Nina looked up, prepared to welcome a customer and saw that it was Graham. ‘Oh hi, how are you?’ she said, ‘Coffee?’
‘No thanks. I just came to talk about Mother. They’re coming to check the house later this morning and then she can come home.’ Graham had always been one for getting straight to the point, frill-free conversation, but this sounded like an accusation. Nina felt irritated. She hadn’t told Graham about Emily and the man on the Common, because he’d pass on the story to Monica, who would worry and fret and keep harping on about it for months, long after everyone else had forgotten about it. So Graham probably thought she’d simply lost interest in Monica now that she was clearly well on the mend – she hadn’t been to see her for two days, though she had phoned Graham and made sure that neighbours and the entire bridge club would be in attendance.
‘Yes I do know. Do you want me to collect her? You’ll be at work then, won’t you?’
Graham stood looking too big and awkward with his hands in his pockets. He looked around, eyeing the gallery’s stock nervously. Nina noticed how he hardly turned his head but somehow flicked his glance around furtively, as if it wasn’t for him to express any interest in this sort of thing. She thought of the arty knick-knacks her mother had collected over the years, the usual Dresden shepherdesses, the Staffordshire dogs, Meissen porcelain, all locked into display cabinets where the dust, the cat and clumsy fingers couldn’t get at them. Graham, as far as she was aware, had never in his life bought anything of artistic interest. It had simply never been his role. She wondered if he minded about that, if he’d ever felt he’d missed out on home-building. It was tricky contemplating asking him, in case he then started to brood on something he’d never given any thought to.
‘She might need help getting dressed.’ Graham addressed the floor and Nina recognized this from childhood: the avoidance of eye contact when he was asking for more than he was saying.
‘Are you sure?’ Nina asked. ‘She seems just the same as usual, apart from furious that she’s been kept in so long. She says she’s absolutely fine, can’t wait to get home and get on with life.’
‘Well she would, wouldn’t she? She wants to be at home,’ he persisted. ‘But she shouldn’t be on her own. That’s what they said at the hospital.’
Nina sighed, picked up a sheet of the bubble-wrap to fidget with and popped its air sacs one by one. The little explosions seemed to fill the hollow air of the gallery like gunfire. It was a satisfying noise. ‘What exactly are you saying, Graham? I have offered to have her to stay with us for a few days, but she says she won’t come because she wants to be back in her own place and back with you. What else can I do?’
‘All you can do is take her home, give her some supper and leave her to it, I should think. She’s got the telephone,’ Sally contributed briskly. Graham’s body became even more hunched and defensive, now faced with two of them. He glared at Sally and waited in a sulky silence to bring out the words he really wanted to use. Eventually he said, ‘You could come and stay at the house with her.’
‘What? Oh Graham that just doesn’t make any sense. I’d still have to go out to work, just like you do. And what about the girls? They’d have to come too.’ Nina gave an explosive laugh. ‘She doesn’t need two of us to look after her, she’s got you and all her bridge and Townswomen’s Guild pals. She’ll be fine, Graham, don’t worry so much. I’ll call in whenever I can. Promise. If you’re really worried, perhaps we could organize one of those alarm things that she could wear round her neck. In fact I’ll do some phoning and talk to her about it this afternoon.’ She reached out and patted his arm. He looked stiff and wary of the gesture. ‘Don’t worry so much,’ she told him. ‘Be careful you don’t undermine her independence and turn her into an invalid. That’s the last thing she needs. Look, I’ll meet you at the house later this morning for the social worker visit, will that help?’
Graham left, and the gallery seemed full of unexpressed resentment. ‘Why is he so worried, do you think?’ Nina asked Sally. ‘I mean those two have been rubbing along all these years without exactly overwhelming affection between them. So why is he so terribly concerned now? She’s fine, she insists she is, though she says no-one believes anything you say once you’re
past sixty. They’d have let her out after twenty-four hours if they hadn’t got to make sure she was going home to suitable stair rails and stuff. It’s like conditions for parole.’
‘You’ve really got no idea, have you?’ Sally said, looking at Nina in wide-eyed mock amazement.
‘Well no I haven’t. Tell me.’
‘It’s not her he’s worried about being properly looked after. It’s himself.’ Sally went and opened the door so she could light a cigarette. ‘It’s a possibility of role reversal and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. All these years your besotted mother has taken care of her beloved little boy’s every need and now he’s wondering who is going to grill his sausages for him just the way he likes them.’
‘It certainly isn’t going to be me,’ Nina declared. ‘If he can’t grill a sausage at the age of thirty-nine . . .’
‘I know and you know. But you’ll have to keep reminding him that he’s a big boy now or you’ll end up with two households to run and a very large extra child. Trust me, I do know. When you’ve got boy children it’s hard to stand back and let them do anything for themselves. You so desperately want to be needed. Your mother has done such a thorough job of making herself indispensable that your great big baby brother can barely wipe his own bum.’
Emily lay in bed listening to the distant sounds of Radio 4 drifting up from the basement. Henry wasn’t like proper painters they’d had in the house, the ones who whistled along tunelessly to whatever came up on Capital and left coffee cup rings all over the table. Henry brought his own favourite Charles and Diana porcelain mug for his tea, liked listening to Gardeners’ Question Time and argued out loud with the panel about when to mulch delphiniums and how to build runner bean wigwams. Emily usually enjoyed having him around, feeling that in the great war between adults who’d long ago taken every exam they’d ever need and teenagers who had them to come, Henry was on the teenage side. He’d admitted taking his own French A-level with a raging hangover and ‘borrowing’ someone else’s art portfolio to try to get into college – an attempt which had failed since the someone else’s name was written neatly in the bottom left-hand corner of each drawing. Henry still kicked his shoes off and left them where they could be tripped over, had a fondness for Marmite on toast and only read newspapers that he could describe as ‘fun’.