by Georgie Hall
*
‘Sorry. Sorry! Sorry, sorrrrry. SORRY! Sorry. So sorry!’
An American friend once told me that Brits apologise in the same way Yanks say ‘you’re welcome’. It’s an oral apostrophe not a statement.
Today I am genuinely sorry. Sorry that I didn’t make up with Paddy and was snappy with the children, that I had road rage driving here, and now that I’m doing my job so badly. I’ve narrated tens of audiobooks with calm assurance, but today I’m fluffing and lip-popping like a beatboxer.
‘Sorry!’ Fuck, fuck, fuck (that far more universal oral apostrophe, silent in my case). I keep botching the same small section of text. We’re overrunning today’s deadline. With time so tight, I’ve skipped lunch to work through. I’m light-headed and dry-mouthed, as well as hot and bothered from crossing my legs and holding on tight to avoid another dash up two floors because I’ve drunk so much coffee.
Now my phone is lighting up. It’s on silent, but Edward’s school’s name is striping the screen.
‘One minute. I have to get this.’
I step outside. It’s pastoral care. He’s refused to get in the taxi home again.
Is it pick-up time already? Thankfully, Paddy’s on standby.
Poor Edward gets so illogically scared of things. We can’t possibly understand the sheer terror of that taxi. Right now it’s his Armageddon.
‘Can somebody come and fetch him?’ asks the care leader wearily. ‘I appreciate Mr Hollander’s number is the one down to call, but he’s not answering his phone.’
‘Yes, of course. We’ll pick him up in the next hour. Sorry!’
‘Thank you, Mrs Hollander.’
I try Paddy’s number, but he’s not answering my calls either. There’s nobody else I can ask. My elderly parents aren’t up to driving all the way there or handling Edward when he’s like this, and my brother, who lives with them, doesn’t find his nephew easy to deal with. Not many people do.
Our oldest son Joe is the one who understands Ed best, and I worry it’s no coincidence that his anxieties have escalated since his big brother went away to university last autumn.
‘I have to go,’ I tell my boss, a hipster twenty years my junior who usually empathises with family pressures with man-bunned earnestness. I love him, and I can see how much it pains him when he must act tough, like now.
‘Eliza.’ He explains with quiet, puppy-eyed apology that if we don’t get this job finished today, I won’t get hired again. It’s not the first family crisis that’s called me away, is it?
Family always comes first for me. Edward comes first. But I need to feed and clothe them.
‘One more minute and I’ll sort this,’ I promise.
I call Paddy two, three, four times. I text furiously. He should be in his workshop. His phone is his business. Where is he? If he’s on that narrowboat again, I’ll kill him.
In extremis, I get back in the small room with the screen and complete the task in half an hour. I’m boiling hot and too faint with relief and hunger to feel any sense of achievement, especially when Hipster Boss high-fives my sweaty palm and says, ‘All you needed was a bit of pressure! I’ll remember that next time.’
At least it looks like there will be a next time. I need this work.
Now I’m road-raging my way to deepest industrial Coventry.
I use the journey to talk to my oldest bestie, Lou, on Bluetooth. She’s been going through a tough time and we speak most days.
‘Please cheer me up,’ she pleads. ‘It’s his weekend to have the kids and she’ll be there.’
I start describing my Portaloo road-rage incident, but she’s just furious on my behalf so I tell her instead about our big family theatre outing followed by supper tonight. Still a trendy Brighton clubber who can dance until dawn, Lou loves teasing me that I’m becoming a ‘greyhead’, the heartless term we coined for elderly audience members when we were studying drama at university together. She should see my roots.
Realising that I’m in the wrong lane and about to leave the motorway an exit early, I nip back across the chevrons and force myself in a tiny gap. There’s an angry beep.
‘Oh God, I’ve picked up another one.’ I tell Lou as a snarly sports car with blackened windows closes in tight behind me, headlights flashing. I hold up an apologetic hand.
‘Don’t let yourself be intimidated!’
‘It was my fault.’
I try to get out of his way, but he’s right up behind me, switching lanes when I do. When I attempt to shake him off by squeezing between two big articulated trucks, he squeezes in too.
‘Escape along the hard shoulder!’ urges Lou who watches too many Fast and Furious movies.
‘I am in an elderly French people carrier – he’s in a penis extension with more horsepower than Royal Ascot.’ But I eye up the hard shoulder just in case. A movement catches my eye. ‘OHMYGOD it’s a dog!’
‘A dog is in the other car?’ Lou is agog.
I veer across and stop a hundred yards ahead of the poor creature I’ve spotted on the tarmac. The sportscar pulls in up ahead with a sinister rev, but I don’t care. I’m already wriggling across the handbrake to climb out of the passenger’s side to run back, my throat full of dinner-gong heartbeats.
It turns out to be a lamb, not a dog, almost fully grown, bleating in terror as great high-sided monsters thunder by. But that’s nothing to the terrifying sight of a well-meaning middle-aged woman bearing down on it, at which it hot-hoofs it up a grassy cutting and starts running up and down a sturdy-looking fence, on the other side of which fifty doppelgangers are grazing with heartless disinterest. It must have broken out somehow, but there’s no obvious sign when I scale the bank after it.
I’m not a big sheep fan but I feel duty bound to try to catch it and heave it back in. The fence is five feet of post and rail with mesh stock wire stapled to it. Planted in front is a row of some scraggy, prickly bush, no doubt there to discourage escapees, or indeed entry. The lamb darts about behind them while I get snagged, poked, walloped and partially undressed by the bloody things.
I step back to reassess.
The sports-car driver is out of his car. He’s the sort of man the media excitedly call a ‘silver fox’, olive-skinned and grey-bearded, leaning back against its boot watching me, arms crossed in an expensive suit. I beckon him to come and help. He waves back. Or is that an offensive arm gesture? I can see the flash of white teeth. He’s laughing at me. Bastard.
The lamb shoots past again. With reflexes I had no idea I possessed, I grab it and somehow get it off the ground.
It is unbelievably heavy. And wriggly. I reel around with it clutched to my chest. One of its legs kicks its way down my top and lands a blow right on my breastbone. I am going to lose my footing and tumble us both onto the carriageway at any moment. I’ve wasted sleepless mornings worrying I might have an undiagnosed cancer/degenerative disease/dementia and instead this will kill me. My children will be motherless and humiliated. It will feature endlessly on those real-life traffic cop shows The World’s Most Ridiculous Road Deaths. Portaloo lorry man’s prophesy will be done.
The lamb kicks free with an astonishing bound that propels it over the rail and back to its friends. I fall against a prickly bush, winded.
When I’ve caught my breath enough to head back to the car, picking the thorns out of my arms, I realise with relief that sports-car man has gone. There’s a note flapping beneath my wiper.
You drive like shit, Crazy Lady, but that was beautiful. Bravo!
I scrunch it up. Road-raging sexist pig. He could have bloody helped. Yet a part of me can’t help feeling Crazy Lady is an upgrade from Mad Old Bitch.
And I’m proud of my rescue. It’s made me feel good.
Back in the car on hands-free again, Lou is also completely cheered up by the happy ending, although she thinks it’s a shame sports-car man didn’t leave his number.
‘Why would I want that?’ I harrumph.
‘To pass on to
me. I need a rich lover with an Italian two-seater.’
‘Not one with a temper like that.’
She says she’s sorry it wasn’t really a dog. ‘You could have kept it.’
‘I’m not ready for another dog,’ I mutter.
‘I’m not ready for a new husband either,’ Lou says sadly.
I stop myself joking that I am.
Lou is one of the very few friends with whom I can confide dark truths with blackest humour. In the bad old days of airing our mutual marriage complaints I’d have told her about my dog fight with Paddy, even the shameful bits. But last year Lou’s twelve-year marriage ended when she discovered her husband inside their babysitter and that’s trumped everything. Even hating Trump.
We finish our call and I drive to the leafy haven that houses Edward’s school. He’s been in the library making PowerPoints about Marvel characters and is on very good form, polite and bright, talking non-stop as we set off: what a great day he’s had and how many heavy metals there are on the Periodic Table. It’s only when I try to address the taxi problem that he starts banging his head against the side window. I stop myself, ask him a few Dr Who trivia questions. He’s soon happy again, and so am I because for all his anxieties and differences, a happy Edward is the very best company. He even keeps his headphones off and lets me turn on the radio – a rarity – and we sing along to ‘Walking on Sunshine’ and then ‘Old Town Road’.
Back on the motorway, Summer calls, her soft, up-toned voice on hands-free making Edward cheer. She’s lost her bus pass at school, she explains. The jobsworth driver knows her but refused to let her get on.
‘Come and get me from Waitrose?’ It’s just across the road from the grammar school. ‘I’ve had a Gucci recipe idea for tonight.’ (Gucci is ‘classy’ in Summer-speak.)
‘You’re babysitting,’ I remind her, glancing despairingly at the car clock. Traffic ahead is at a standstill, the extra round trip will eat time and we must check Paddy’s OK, plus I desperately need a bath before we go out. There’s a distinctly sheepy waff in this car…
‘I can cook at Granna and Grandpa’s,’ Summer says. She’s looking after her cousins and brother there while we’re all out.
Even though I know this is just a classic ruse to get me to spend, I don’t want to argue, because Summer – who is a wonderful cook – is sounding unusually positive, and one day her teenage animosity towards me will end. Why not now?
‘Give me twenty minutes.’ The radio kicks in again as we ring off. James Blunt’s singing ‘You’re Beautiful’, a ballad the nation loved until somebody pointed out how posh he is, and therefore single-handedly responsible for social injustice, fox hunting and Joules.
It remains a wonderful song. I long to believe what he’s saying. I remember the bearded businessman lounging against his sportscar. That was beautiful. Bravo!
‘You are beautiful, Mum.’ Edward turns to me, only slightly spoiling it by adding, ‘Even though you’re now too old to mate.’
Just for a moment fifty-year-old Eliza Finch, mother of three with grey roots and a grumpy marriage, feels beautiful. This sunny afternoon feels beautiful. The world feels beautiful. You’ve only got one beautiful life.
Car horns beep behind and I realise the traffic has started moving again and there’s a big gap in front of me. I let off the brake. I want to share the love, the beauty of the day. I turn to smile as a car surges past me on the inside.
A crisp-suited blonde businesswoman in a BMW gives me the finger and mouths you cunt.
‘Cockney rhyming slang,’ I tell Edward quickly, turning off James Blunt.
*
Aged four or five, I overheard a friend of my father’s calling Edward Heath the c word. I could tell from my parents’ frozen faces that this was a bad, bad word. I stored it carefully and only brought it out on very special occasions, mostly when my sister’s hand-me-down dolls were misbehaving. Pippa called Sindy a cunt in the privacy of my room when they fell out over tiny shoes.
Some years later my little brother abducted my entire doll collection in an Action Man parachute raid, including a brand-new Bionic Woman with Mission Handbag. I was devastated. Jaime Sommers was my confidante, heroine and future self. I loved her.
We negotiated long and hard and one by one the hostages were returned, but not Jaime. He said that she’d escaped using her superpowers and he didn’t know where she was.
I took it to the highest authority.
‘Miles has stolen Jaime Sommers,’ I explained to my parents. ‘He’s a cunt!’
It would be years before the discovery of her irreparably broken bionic body in the drawer beneath his bed. He’d accidentally snapped off both her legs and hidden the evidence.
It still hurts. But what hurts most is that I got into far more trouble for saying one little word than he did for taking my doll. Forty-two years later and I still haven’t entirely lived it down. Nobody says the c word in our family.
*
Paddy Hollander Bespoke Cabinet Maker operates out of a converted oak-framed barn belonging to his cricket team captain. Paddy pays a peppercorn rent, which might explain why he sometimes treats his working day with a pinch of salt, unlike his bowling.
We find him chiselling a dovetail joint, listening to loud rock circa 1985 on the geriatric CD player, Simple Minds singing ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’.
He looks surprised to see us. It turns out he’s left his phone in the car after he went out to buy some lunch.
‘The school couldn’t get hold of you, then I couldn’t. We were worried,’ I say, trying not to sound too irritated as I notice today’s paper well-thumbed on the workbench. Then I feel ashamed of myself for seeking proof that he’s not been working as hard as me. It’s not a competition.
‘We bought your favourite toffees!’ Summer weaves towards him brandishing a canvas Waitrose bag. ‘Mum said no, but I talked her round.’
Our daughter isn’t quite ready to shed her antipathy towards me. Summer loves spoiling Paddy, and I feel guilty enough about the dog fight to succumb to bribery.
Paddy looks from the bag for life to me, the disagreeable bag he married for life. He’s trying to read my face and I’m trying to hide a groundswell of emotion because Jim Kerr’s singing that rain keeps falling down and I’m suddenly upset about the dog fight again, angry at Arty for dying and at Paddy for not understanding and at myself for saying such awful things when all I wanted was to be told we can wait, this will pass. And to hug him, because I might be spiky and oversensitive, but I give bloody good hugs.
I look away, frightened I’ll well up.
‘What time are we due at your parents’ place tonight?’ Paddy is asking.
‘Oh, you’ve got ages,’ says Summer, who is photographing herself draped on a handmade carver chair with an ornate curved back. She makes Edward take off his headphones and sit on the matching one beside it to pose like a King and Queen. I want to chivvy them all home, clinging on to my hope of a relaxing bath, but I must make peace with Paddy first.
Pinned up on his big noticeboard are tens of my old acting headshots, some curling with age, the many faces of Eliza Finch. Alongside these are a couple of equally outdated school photos of the three children and a legion of pictures of his dad’s narrowboat. Paddy worships that boat. In a mosaic of ageing, she remains the same glossy red, her pretty face never changing. Perhaps that’s why he loves her so much.
‘Do you like the chairs?’ he asks me.
‘They’re lovely. Is it a commission?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not too Oberon and Titania?’
‘A bit, maybe.’
‘I’ll put them up on Etsy if you don’t want them,’ he says vaguely and I realise too late that he’s made them for our anniversary next week. Paddy always makes furniture. After twenty-two years we could seat an orchestra.
‘No, they’re beautiful. Truly.’
Some of his pieces are works of art, but it’s weeks since he’s sold anything. He’
s reliant upon word of mouth and online trading places and for someone as softly spoken and tech phobic as Paddy, that’s a slow sell.
‘People, gather round.’ Edward is addressing his impromptu court, face and voice deadpan. ‘My taxi driver thinks we don’t know what he’s saying on his phone in Urdu, but Louis has a translation app. He calls us the rich white retards. Can I have a toffee?’
So that’s why he won’t get in the cab. I’d trade every mad bitch and crazy lady to take that away.
‘We’ll get another driver,’ I reassure him. ‘I’ll call the council to complain.’
‘I’ve been called worse, Mum.’ Edward unwraps his sweet, characteristically unemotional, but that doesn’t mean the insult’s not burning in his head. ‘You should hear what he calls other road users.’
I can imagine only too well. It’s still burning in mine.
*
Crone, frump, battleaxe, hag, harridan, bat, bag, witch, cougar, bint, biddy, trout. Who can think of a single positive word used to describe a woman over fifty? We’re ‘feisty’, ‘bossy’, ‘irrational’, ‘overemotional’, ‘hormonal’, ‘abrasive’, ‘difficult’ and we’re fucking pissed off about it, but that’s nothing to the white molten anger if anyone insults those we love.
Nobody calls my son a retard and gets away with it. Edward’s got more sense than any of us. He’s certainly got a better memory. And he isn’t remotely ableist.
*
As soon as we’re home, I leave a message on the council’s SEND answerphone, demanding an appointment.
As I do, my eyes search the hallway. Returning home without Arty hurrying to greet me still leaves me hollow. She’s gone. The sentient being that loved me most is dead. And a part of me vanished with her. Somehow I feel less visible in my own home as well as outside it.
Arty was far more sensitive to my moods than the rest of the family for a start. She came to find me while they just stand and shout for me. She noticed me.
For a moment after I’ve rung off I stand alone in the kitchen and just miss her.
It’s already half past five and I’m desperate for my bath, but there’s disaster awaiting us in Summer’s room, where her beloved feral-turned-house cat has been trapped all day. It’s peed on the bed, thrown a hairball up on the family iPad, pooed mid-carpet and run along the shelves smashing all the blown glass figurines Summer’s collected since the age of eight.