by Georgie Hall
It’s the emotional explosions, the illogical tantrums sparking from nowhere, the high-voltage upset at some injustice, then white-hot fear, or blistering sensitivity, occasionally melting into heartbreaking compassion. All this weeping and wailing is drying me out. I can’t keep up with it, and each lightning strike leaves me in ashes, scorched and exhausted, nervously awaiting the next ambush.
*
Downstairs, seeing Paddy’s toast plate dumped in the sink alongside my unrinsed wine glass, I feel a bit angry and teary again which I know is all about last night, but I blame it on the state of the house. There’s not a surface without stuff on it. Bloody, bloody stuff.
I swear at each item of mess while snatching it up, repeatedly screaming, ‘Fucking stuff!’ I then curse my husband and children in turn, jumping out of my skin when a female voice behind me says, ‘Sorry, I’m having trouble understanding you right now, please try a little later.’
Now I curse Alexa instead, and try to make her react to my increasingly blue language while I empty the overflowing kitchen bin, followed by the badly stacked dishwasher. She is resolute that she doesn’t understand me, but our neighbour (the affable retired physics teacher on the right, not the shared-drive new-Nazi neighbour to the left) catches every word of ‘fucking trumped up digital weather bitch spy DJ’ as I stand by the shared fence trying to cram last night’s wine bottle into the already full glass recycling box. He asks if I’m OK. I tell him I’m fine, just running lines for an audition.
‘Sci Fi?’ he asks hopefully.
‘Jane Austen adaptation.’
I go inside and take a few deep breaths before calling my parents. Mum’s hungover falsetto is strained. ‘You’re not picking them up yet, are you? Summer’s making everyone breakfast pancakes. She is such a sweet girl! Messy, like you. But well meaning. Can you bring painkillers when you do come? We’ve run out.’
I ring off, embracing this rare window of opportunity before I need to set off. Inner happiness, Eliza. You have the place to yourself. Enjoy it.
I go into the garage and stand by Arty’s old bed, feeling tearful.
Fail.
Nobody knows how much her love meant to me. Or that losing her has coincided with losing so much of myself.
Arty didn’t judge me by anything but my kindness. My age never counted against me, nor its femininity. To her, I wasn’t a mother, wife, co-worker, daughter, sister, object of desire or derision. I wasn’t even her owner. I was just me.
I can’t help myself; I can’t stop missing her.
In search of distraction, I go back to the kitchen and check through my phone’s messages. Joe’s shared this morning’s survivor’s photo from his summer ball, a drone shot in which he’s somewhere amid a crowd of students sprawled round a fountain blowing plastered, stoned kisses upwards. I send love hearts back and then retune the radio to catchy pop on the local station, dancing around the kitchen to ‘Shiny Happy People’ as I tidy, trying to remember what its ironic message is.
By the time the surfaces are clear, Joe’s replied that he’s at his voluntary job at a food bank. He’s helping the impoverished of Exeter while I’m feeling sorry for myself and swearing at Alexa.
I ask her what ‘Shiny Happy People’ was rumoured to be about. The Tiananmen Square massacre, she tells me dispassionately. I was nineteen when that took place, the same age as many of those students who died fighting for freedom, and I still remember the shock of it, the first real sense I had of the scope of my freedom compared to others. Joe’s that age now. Joe, who marches and debates and freedom fights whereas I no longer even shout at the television when Question Time’s on. It’s said we get more right wing as we get older, but I feel increasingly out of touch, muted by the mantra I was raised with: never discuss politics, money or religion.
A jolly jingle cuts through REM and a voice announces that he has Graham from Solihull on the line with a great story for Saturday morning listeners. ‘Heeeeello, Graham!’
‘Yes, hello. Well I was driving home from work on the motorway yesterday when I saw a woman stealing a sheep out of a field…’
Mortified, I switch to Radio 4 which informs me that Greta Thunberg is today being honoured with Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award. Her small voice trembles angrily as she tells us we, the world’s older custodians, have poisoned it. I turn the radio off, feeling personally responsible.
That’s it. I must do something for good, something for change, and something to stop me disappearing into old age like a dissolving bath bomb, my fizz gone.
Figuring out how to do it will have to wait until after I put the bedding on to wash.
*
It saddens me that each generation now seems morally obliged to accuse its predecessors of selling out, of being poor caretakers, as though there must be a baddie to each goodie. Greta’s little voice cuts me to the quick, not because the world isn’t on fire, but because it’s now burning so brightly it’s no-platforming the wisdom that comes with age, its patience and its pragmatism, its regrets, its survival, its helpfulness.
Humans are, as we grow up to discover, all in search of a responsible adult. Right now, that’s a teenage girl from Sweden.
At thirteen, I genuinely didn’t think I’d live to see Greta’s great age. Nuclear terror had us in its grip in 1983, those missiles ready to launch; reading When the Wind Blows gave me nightmares; watching women holding hands around a military base full of armed tridents made them come to life. My friends and I believed all life would be destroyed any day at the touch of a button.
Perhaps all generations start their moral awakening thinking the world is about to end?
Teenage rebellion is a rite of passage that I barely recognise in myself thirty-five years on. The Eliza who sent off her postal order to join CND was obsessive, tens of badges soon peppering her lapels with rainbow peace doves and cutesy messages like Inspector Clouseau Says ‘Ban the Beumb’. My love of debating and campaigning lasted well into my twenties. I joined the League Against Cruel Sports and Compassion in World Farming, became a vegetarian, debated at school then student union, picketed with comrades and argued furiously with my parents about everything. I was an idealist without any set direction, catching onto campaign slogans: Say No to Cruise, Support the Miners, Free Nelson Mandela, Meat is Murder, Choose Life!
Fast forward thirty years and I’m still teased by the Finch family as the rebel with too many causes.
My children’s generation has a new set of badges: avatars, emojis, memes and hashtags. While Ed fights it out for glory in virtual battlefields and Summer ‘influences’ her disciples to apply warpaint, it’s Joe who has inherited my passion for real causes, but with far better focus. I’m grateful for his social conscience, but it frightens me too.
It stemmed from a very dark place: not nuclear but self-destruction. At fourteen, Joe was deeply depressed without us knowing it.
*
For once I’m not obliged to spend an hour bellyaching at Summer and Ed to sort and process their laundry. I grab all identifiable dirty clothes in Summer’s pigsty and Edward’s monk cell, stripping and changing the beds and collecting enough cups and plates to start a café. This rare bonus should have put me ahead of the clock, but I make the mistake of performing a Parental Safety Check of their cupboards and drawers.
OK, so it’s technically snooping, but very low level. If I wanted to know about their inner lives I’d have to be a far better whizz at cracking online passwords. Filching through a few knickknacks is barely a security pat down.
To my relief there’s no evidence of drug taking, binge drinking, knives or unhealthy pastimes, although Summer has a lot of my jewellery.
If it hadn’t been for the parental safety check, we would have had no idea how bad things were getting for Joe at school five years ago. He was monstrously unhappy, something he only confided in a Moleskine notebook. Much as I hated myself for reading it, I was madder at myself for not seeing the signs sooner. That b
ook was terrifying: he wrote about there being no point to his life, about the world being a better place without him.
Since then I’ve considered the quick drawer frisk a potential lifesaver – unless it’s my husband’s bedside drawers, which I daren’t go near in case they contain grounds for divorce.
Joe has embraced his global causes as a reason to stay alive. And while he makes a point of not campaigning hard at his family, we’re all right behind him: Summer’s activist hashtags change with each season’s trending humanitarian movement; Ed sticks more steadfastly to ending cyber bullying and saving badgers; meanwhile Paddy and I recycle assiduously and try ever-harder to like soya protein.
The least I can do is find a reason for action, not just lie awake at 5 a.m. worrying who will look out for my children when I die.
Morally liberated, I peg the wet washing out and put on another load.
*
I arrive late at The Prettiest Cottage in Warwickshire where Summer and Ed are deep into a tub of Cadbury Celebrations and a jigsaw with Dad, briefly metamorphosed from screen-obsession to wholesomeness by indulgent grandparents and a not-spot.
Mum’s reluctant to let them go, having already been abandoned by Jules, Reece and the girls who are visiting Warwick Castle. I stay longer than I should, drinking tea and agreeing last night was super.
‘Isn’t Matteo charming?’ Mum says breathily, like she has a crush.
‘Mmm.’ I want to take issue, but it will just draw attention to the fact he got under my skin.
‘Paddy was very quiet.’
‘Strong and silent is his thing, you know that.’
‘Mmm.’ She deliberately uses the same inflection I did.
Mum and I mainstream passive aggression together on bad days.
She takes a cup of tea through to Miles who is still sleeping off his hangover and I start gathering my children’s things. The Jack Russell terrier follows me round, dropping his ball and nudging it towards me whenever I stop.
I stoop to take it, then unexpectedly well up. Arty did the same thing as a young dog.
‘Are you having one of your weird sad moments?’ Summer has come in and caught me with my face pressed in my hands watched intently by a small crouching terrier.
‘Just dizzy,’ I mutter.
She walks to my side, prising the ball from my grip to throw it, then puts her arm round me. ‘I told Dad you’re right about not getting a new dog just yet.’
‘You did?’ I’m beyond touched.
‘I was talking to Mr Owusu about it this week.’
‘Oh yes?’ I say tightly. (Mr Owusu is a teaching assistant in Summer’s art class, on whom she has a raging crush.)
‘He suggested I should do a multi-media montage called It’s A Dog’s Life. I was thinking of something Britart retro, inspired by Tracey Emin maybe? We’ve still got Arty’s basket, haven’t we?’
I feel a fierce spike of anger at using Arty’s things, her death, like that. I manage to quash it enough to tell her we’ll talk about it later when we’re not in such a hurry.
Her Nike tick eyebrows angle kindly. ‘Can I skip drama club today? I’m knackered.’
‘Not for the amount it costs each term. Here, see if you can spot your brother.’ I find Joe’s summer ball photo on my phone and hand it to her.
The ticks lower disapprovingly. ‘OMG, why d’you like it with a purple heart? Mum, a purple heart means you want sex.’
‘It does?’ I snatch the phone back. ‘Why don’t I know these things? I thought that was an aubergine?’
Summer explains the meanings of different colour heart emojis while we carry bags out to the car. Yet another hidden code of which I’m ignorant. I must no longer send purple, black or green hearts for fear of serious reprisals.
‘She’s winding you up, Mum,’ Ed assures me as he clambers into the back seat, hooking his earphones on.
‘Am not!’ A Nike tick arches.
Mum hurries out with a shopping list. ‘I almost forgot, Julia asked if you’ll pick these up for her as you’re going to a supermarket. You are all still coming to lunch tomorrow?’
‘Paddy’s playing cricket,’ I remind her.
‘But Joe’s up for the day, yes?’
‘Yes.’ I glance down at the list and spot anchoiade, raspberry vinegar and girolle mushrooms. My sister is an Elizabeth David purist.
‘We’re delighted our oldest grandson will be here!’ Dad has followed her out.
I tell them about Joe working his voluntary shift today. ‘It makes us all feel like we should do something truly selfless too, doesn’t it? An act of kindness without ego. We get very self-absorbed as we get older.’ I eye the list again.
‘I felt just the same at fifty,’ Mum pats my hand, ‘didn’t I, Peter?’
‘My God, yes!’ Dad guffaws. ‘All those charity committees you joined, the WI, voluntary driving and so forth. Always on the go.’
‘I was thinking of something a bit more life-changing.’ There’s a growl in my voice.
‘It’s a phase,’ Mum dismisses. ‘You’ll soon realise that nothing you can do will make a blind bit of difference. Family comes first. Very tricky age for a woman, fifty. It gets far lovelier after you’ve weathered this decade, just wait and see.’ She takes the list from my hand, plucks the pen from Dad’s shirt pocket, adds Co-codamol, Imodium, Rennies and Anusol then hands it back.
*
Nobody in the family ever mentions Mum’s fiftieth birthday. It was August 1991, and the hints had been dropping fast.
She’d been dieting for weeks, had half a dozen new sparkly frocks and coordinating shoes in her wardrobe and casually left her address book out where we could find it. She expected a party.
Obliging and generous, Dad planned everything to a tee and had us all sworn to secrecy. Mum’s passport was located, her summer wardrobe raided and packed, the dog booked into kennels.
We travelled to a jaw-dropping Tuscan villa, all mile-wide views with misty poplars. Just Mum, Dad, Jules and me (Miles was supposed to divert from a Euro-Railing trip with a bunch of university mates to join us but ran out of money somewhere in Germany).
Dad showered Mum with Florentine gifts: gold jewellery, leatherwork, pietre dure, ceramics and perfume. The sun shone. Crickets chirruped. A private cook came twice a day to conjure feasts.
Twenty-two, footloose and fancy-free, I got a nut-brown tan while reading my weight in self-improving fiction and flirting with Gino the pool man. After a couple of days, Jules stopped making expensive calls shouting at Reece – they were ‘off’ at the time – and joined me, also turning brown and flirting with Gino.
Mum got sunburn, then shellfish poisoning, then developed conjunctivitis and trapped a nerve in her back, which was so painful she begged and charmed an Italian doctor into prescribing opiates that could have knocked out a horse. On her birthday itself, spaced out on painkillers and prosecco, she shouted that she fucking hated Italy, and should have married Peter fucking O’Toole after all. Then she screamed that she was old. Then she fell in the pool.
At the time I thought my mother supremely selfish and ungrateful. Now I know first-hand that passing one’s half-century is very tricky to navigate, regrets burning as brightly as the cake candles. She’d longed for a party, noise and hubbub to cheer her up and help her forget the newly empty nest at home, her beloved little sister who had died not long before, her lost career and lack of purpose. Instead Dad took her to his favourite place at ludicrous expense, where her two lazy daughters drew every eye, her body entered meltdown and she got a lot of handbags and painted pottery she didn’t want.
No wonder she went on a charity bender afterwards.
*
I’m late dropping Edward at his trampolining club in Warwick (he isn’t keen, but experts insist it’s good for mental health), then it’s a race across country to deliver Summer to her drama group in Evesham. Back up the A46 to pick up Edward then take him across to Stratford for his autism-friendly swimming
class, about which he’s also unenthusiastic. The leisure centre is next to a retail park with a supermarket megastore that I hurry round while he splashes. They have nothing on Jules’s list, so I snatch up the nearest substitutes. I’m starting to sweat badly again, another hot flush bubbling up.
I collect Edward, still wearing his tinted swimming goggles with noise-cancelling headphones over them, deliberately blocking me out as punishment for expecting him to learn something that’s ‘an aqueous skill-set belonging to another species, and fundamentally incompatible with a Nintendo Switch’. I buy his favourite hot chocolate in exchange for the goggles, and we head to another retail park where there’s a Game store, his usual reward for enduring the trampolining/swimming double act. While he’s browsing, I dash next door to Boots for the drugs Mum asked me to get. An untrusting pharmacist fires lots of awkward questions at me about co-codamol addiction. My raging flush has alerted his suspicions, and no wonder; when I catch my shiny-faced reflection in the sunglasses stand, I look like a heroin addict going cold turkey.
Having sheepishly asked the pharmacist what he would recommend for, ahem, perimenopausal symptoms, I purchase a LadyCare magnet, Menopace, Pukka Womankind tea, and an arsenal of herbal supplements including one that boasts aphrodisiac qualities. I’ve also bought a battery-powered face fan. I’ll be cool-headed and horny as Gwyneth Paltrow in no time, with added Boots points.
Ed has taken root in Game where he can’t afford the second-hand Sonic classic he wants to buy and I refuse to sub him the twenty quid it costs.
‘I WILL DIE HERE RIGHT NOW!’ He throws himself down on his knees, covers his head with his hands and starts rocking.
This isn’t unusual, although it’s been a few months since it last happened and I was hoping that meant we’d turned a corner. I breathe deeply and resist telling onlookers ‘he’s autistic!’ in the same tone characters in movies shout ‘he has a gun!’ (this is a tech store after all; I’m the weird neurotypical in here).