Woman of a Certain Rage

by Georgie Hall

  Instead, I crouch down beside my poor, stressed son, our exit strategy tried and tested. ‘You will not die, Ed. We are taking Dad his lunch on the boat. We will come here again next week. We’re having lunch now.’

  *

  Up until Ed was eight or nine, it was obvious most bystanders blamed his tantrums on overindulgent parenting. Now he’s bigger we’re given a wider berth, just the occasional ‘spoilt brat!’ still coming our way. I sometimes dare myself to picture the scene when Ed’s eighteen, broken-voiced and fully loaded with testosterone. Before that happens, I pray for his coping strategies to evolve, and I also pray for a better collective understanding of autism.

  Ed’s anxiety isn’t just about the desire for gratification. While this moment started out with the same ‘Can I have this?’/‘No you can’t’ scrap so many parents have with kids in shops, its ramped up tenfold in nanoseconds because there’s no sensory filter with Ed. He locks onto console games because they take him somewhere he can block out the confused unpredictability of real life he finds so hard to tolerate. Games have logical algorithms he can master, whereas human nature doesn’t, especially his own.

  Most Saturdays are not like this. He gets high on trampolining, grumbles good-naturedly about swimming and then we browse the games so he can decide what to save up for, then go home for lunch or visit Granna and Grandpa, always sticking to the same routine. Ed likes routines.

  Most Saturdays don’t usually involve waking up in his grandparents’ cottage or lunch on the boat with testy Mum and Dad.

  *

  It’s later than I’d hoped when we get to The Tempest’s mooring, by which time Ed’s unhelpfully muttering ‘Spin! Hammer! Fire! Jump!’ and ‘Maaamma-hoo-ha-hoo, wow-wow!’ (he repeats game catchphrases when stressed). The marina café tables are all crammed with tourists; pretty girls with bare shoulders glance up from their phones as we pass, my son impersonating a small moustachioed Italian plumber. ‘Mario time!’ ‘Oh yeah!’ ‘Hoo! Just what I needed!’

  There’s a group of American tourists photographing The Tempest, and I’m forced to apologise when Ed burrows through them to step on board muttering, ‘Super Mariooo Sunshine! Hoo!’

  Paddy looks up and glowers for a moment before realising it’s us.

  It makes sense to all but Paddy that the couple who have The Prettiest Cottage in Warwickshire would wish to keep their narrowboat moored in one of the county’s Most Idyllic Spots, no matter how impractical. When they took ownership of The Tempest, Mum and Dad moved her from a humble canal-side marina to showstopping central Stratford’s riverside where she’s now a much-admired tourist attraction, often photographed and occasionally vandalised.

  As well as being a piece of living industrial history below the waterline, an old traditional canal narrowboat like ours is a feat of lifelong craftsmanship above it, her interior as highly decorative as her colourful livery, a magical doll’s house to peek into. Thirty years ago, after serving his apprenticeship with Shropshire’s finest cabinet maker, Paddy refitted the inside of his father’s narrowboat as a way of saying thank you for all the support his parents had given him. It took him every weekend for six months, a floating work of art and labour of love finished in oak, walnut and hand-veneered marine ply.

  After Eddie’s death, the narrowboat became a shrine. She may have changed ownership and name, but the lovingly planed, jointed and fitted woodwork inside the boat remains much as it was when Paddy first produced it as a young man, his bright future ahead of him like our children’s are now. It’s aged to beautiful glossy, mellow imperfection, the Hollanders’ felled family tree carved and dovetailed into the boat’s heart.

  *

  Today, as well as the tourists, Paddy has several enthusiastic gongoozlers (canal equivalent of trainspotters) watching him from the nearest café table.

  He’s out on the stern deck, T-shirt sleeves rolled up, looking manfully oily as he straddles the open engine inspection hatch, refitting something mechanical that he says is essential if Grandpa and Granny want to go out in her.

  ‘Unlikely,’ I point out kindly. Mum’s refused to step on board since the Jack Russell jumped into a particularly ferocious river lock and everyone thought he’d drowned. He eventually bobbed up none the worse for wear, but the psychological damage was done.

  One glimpse inside reveals spilling cupboards, upended cushions and all Mum’s interior design touches buried beneath a mosaic of open toolkits.

  ‘I’ll tidy up in a bit,’ he mutters.

  ‘It’s fine.’

  We’re horribly awkward, and yet I now feel oddly protective of him. I try to silently convey this as I give him his lunch, but he’s too busy grumbling that I’ve bought him a Chicken Caesar wrap again to notice.

  As a diversion, I tell him about my sister’s exotic ingredients, aware that my voice is artificially bright, as though I’m performing a Victoria Wood sketch. I’ve always jumped through hoops to please him, even ones a square peg like Paddy can’t easily follow.

  *

  When we first went out together, I played it indefatigably bright and bubbly, desperate to get laughs and be liked. I really fancied Paddy Hollander.

  ‘Are you always this happy?’ he’d ask with that slow smile.

  ‘I’m like a stick of rock with the word “happy” running right through me!’

  If he’d snapped that brittle act in two, he’d have found the word LIAR. It breaks my heart that he believed me. Nobody’s that happy, Paddy. Surely you of all people knew that?

  Now we’re here.

  *

  While Edward grumpily takes his sandwich inside the boat to shade his gaming screen, Paddy and I stay in the sun.

  ‘What’s he upset about?’ Paddy nods into the cabin.

  I tell him about the twenty-pound game. ‘How’s your morning been?’

  Paddy describes the function of the engine part he’s refitting and I nod, not understanding a word, until he eventually says Joe FaceTimed him during a coffee break.

  ‘That was sweet of him.’ I’m pleased and a bit jealous.

  ‘Yeah. Make up for not seeing me tomorrow.’

  ‘You can always miss cricket.’

  ‘Joe understands.’ They’re both keen cricketers. ‘It’s an important match.’

  ‘I’m not sure Mum does.’

  ‘She’ll get over it.’

  ‘She’s miffed you hardly said a word to her yesterday evening. Or to Miles.’ I feel mean as soon as I mention it, aware that it was just as much their fault.

  He stares down at his wrap. ‘Yeah, about last night,’ he says, voice a tense undertone. ‘I’m sorry I let you down.’

  ‘Honestly, it’s fine. I should probably have helped out more.’

  ‘No, it was me. I could feel it happening but there’s nothing I could do. Sometimes I just can’t keep it up, Elz.’

  I stare at him in shock. Paddy never willingly talks about our sex life, and this is practically in public! ‘Ed’s here,’ I point out quickly.

  ‘He’s got his headphones on. This is important.’

  ‘You drank too much wine, that’s all.’

  ‘I thought it might make me better at it, like it does you. You put on that big act when you drink. You’re so good at it, making all the right noises, pretending you’re loving it.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I fake it?’

  ‘We both know you fake it, Elz, especially when you’re pissed. I can always tell.’

  There’s a loud thud in the cabin as Ed goes into the bathroom.

  ‘I can’t pretend like you can, OK? But next time I’m going to make a plan beforehand to help me get through it.’

  ‘A plan?’ Is he going to map out our bodies and the bed like a fitted kitchen, marking all inlets, outlets and perfect working triangles?

  ‘It’s what Joe does. He was telling me how well it worked for him at the ball last night. He tried it with a couple of girls he’s never met before and lasted over an hour with each. It’s
like having a playlist at a gig, he says.’

  I’m struck dumb. Can our son really have been sharing sexual tips with his father?

  ‘Maybe it’s easier to keep it up with someone new,’ Paddy looks at me earnestly.

  I’m so shocked I can hardly breathe. Surely I must be hearing him wrong.

  ‘I think I need to try it with strangers, Elz. You’ve Only Got One Life, Joe says. I’m not getting any younger.’

  Before I can slap him or hiss that I could have bought him a packet of Viagra Connect in Boots there’s a furious rattling and screaming from inside the narrowboat.

  Edward has got trapped inside the bathroom – the lock’s faulty – which causes much panicked consternation and Mario catchphrases as Paddy fiddles around with a screwdriver.

  ‘Why don’t you just replace the fitting, Dad?’ Ed fumes when he’s finally sprung out.

  ‘This is a very rare Victorian Ashwell’s Patent Toilet Lock, Edward.’ Paddy starts screwing the facing plate back on. ‘It came out of The Barge Inn where me and your granddad used to drink.’ (Only Paddy could get sentimental over a well-engineered loo lock.)

  But Ed’s not interested, making pointed yawning noises as he returns to his game.

  ‘That one’s no better at backchat than his dad.’ Paddy flicks the brass catch between Engaged and Vacant to test it. ‘He should try Joe’s method.’

  At last the penny drops (as if into a cranky old loo lock) as I realise: ‘You and Joe were discussing how to keep up a conversation?’

  ‘Hollander men aren’t small talkers, even clever ones like our boys.’

  Watching him, I experience a fierce, blushing rush of affection and remorse. I reach out to touch his face. ‘It’s my family who are bloody hard going. Miles was deliberately rude for a start. I’m sorry you two have fallen out.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He ducks his head away. ‘He prefers flying now.’

  Whatever the reason, I can guess how much he misses having somebody to crew the boat with. I pat The Tempest’s bulkhead wall. ‘Let’s take her out soon.’

  Paddy looks thrilled.

  Another agonised wail from Ed makes us both spin round. His console has run out of charge, and the cable has been left at his grandparents’. ‘I am going to DIE RIGHT NOW! Mamma Mia! Let’s a-go. MY LIFE IS OVER!’

  8

  Fixed Time

  ‘Why are all boats “she”?’ Edward asks as we drive out of Stratford, meltdown forgotten now that we’re back on a routine course.

  ‘Ship figureheads used to be female to protect sailors at sea,’ I reply. ‘They probably liked to think of them being goddesses or mother figures to look after them.’

  ‘You are my mother figure,’ he says, ‘and our family’s figure head.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I wait. There’s usually an Ed afterthought.

  ‘Although you’re an atheist and not very good at steering so your boat it would probably be scuppered with significant loss of life.’

  A bottle of lunchtime Petit Chablis has taken the edge off the hangovers at Granna and Grandpa’s cottage. Miles and Dad are both having a siesta on sunloungers in the garden. Mum’s inside listening to Any Answers.

  Despite protesting that I really haven’t got time to stay, I end up with a mug of tea thrust at me, so I help Mum wash up lunch and listen with more satisfaction than I should as she grumbles about Jules’s family ‘treating this place like a hotel! And Reece is totally impractical. Which reminds me, can you look at my computer? I’m trying to write to Melvyn Bragg about his sinuses again but it won’t print it out. Miles has no time, and you are so clever with these things, darling girl.’

  After turning it off and on again I’m clueless. Thank goodness for Edward who has it fixed in minutes, runs a virus check and finds a link to the vintage Sonic game he wants to buy so that he can show Granny.

  Mum obligingly gives him the twenty quid, telling him, ‘You boys are so much better with computers than we girls.’

  ‘Mum!’ I reproach.

  ‘You’re not a girl, Granny,’ Ed points out pragmatically, pocketing the money. ‘And actually, the best pupil in my IT class is one.’

  I want to hug him.

  ‘Don’t say “actually”, Edward,’ Mum tells him off sharply.

  ‘If you do think you’re a girl, Granny,’ the Ed afterthought strikes a grave note, ‘it’s probably because you are having a second childhood.’

  *

  Edward is very fixed in his ways, unwittingly selfish, anxious if his routine is altered, and characteristically autistic (he prefers ‘Asperger’s’, but that was no longer a term our local authority’s CAMHS team accepted by the time Ed joined their statemented pupils on one glorious united spectrum, a magic roundabout of difference). He was diagnosed in Year Three, six years ago. We were lucky it was spotted relatively early and although at first I hated the idea of him being labelled, he was so profoundly grateful to find where he belonged, autism is now his designer label.

  In many ways, Edward strongly resembles his namesake Eddie, the Hollander grandfather he never got to meet, a fellow gent, geek and control freak, with the same Weetabix thatch of hair above a Ferris Bueller face, and that high anxiety which folds away into itself. Paddy disagrees, but I believe our son comes from the over-diagnosed generation whereas his grandfather hailed from an undiagnosed one, much as ours remains.

  Edward might not show his best side when we’re places in which he doesn’t feel safe – let’s face it, anywhere that’s not home. And he might rather get lost in a screen than in table talk, but he is the most family-oriented and devoted of all of us and says he never wants to leave home. He’s made me laugh and cry more than any other human being I’ve ever known. The battle to keep him in mainstream education was epic but I’d fight anybody to give Edward Hollander an equal chance in this world, not because he’s autistic or disabled or labelled. Because he’s brilliantly, uniquely, totally Ed and I love him.

  Today, that love is severely tested by another trip to Game, but it survives intact.

  *

  We’re home at last, and my menopausal mood-swing-o-meter is already heading into the red again. Where do Saturdays go?

  I’ve driven almost a hundred and fifty miles today, which is not only a shameful carbon footprint, but I haven’t yet spared a moment to think about noble, immortal acts to make life feel more worthwhile.

  Now Summer’s back from drama club and she and Ed both have lots of homework they must crack on with because we’re out tomorrow. I put away shopping then tackle the washing mountain and start prepping the lamb meatballs for tonight (why didn’t I just buy ready-made frozen ones, why?) While I’m chopping onions, I take a long call from Lou who’s in floods because her ex has taken the kids on a mini-break with Babysitter Girlfriend – ‘Daisy says she could hear them having sex through the wall!’ – I listen in horrified sympathy, phone sliding round between ear and shoulder so I can carry on chopping because the kids are in the room and I can’t go hands-free – she’s said ‘slutty little tart’ three times and ‘his fucking cock’ twice – and this sauce needs to go on asap.

  No sooner has the call ended than Paddy’s back, mucking up the downstairs shower with black engine oil marks before dripping round the utility room in nothing but a towel and sifting through my ordered piles of washing, looking for his cricket whites, only to discover they’re still dirty in his kitbag from last weekend.

  ‘Why are they still in here?’

  ‘Is that a rhetorical question or do you genuinely have amnesia?’

  We start to scrap and I feel aggrieved for womankind, which could partly be me channelling Lou’s mood. I tell Paddy it’s not always my responsibility to unearth his cricket gear, although I’d have washed them if he’d put them out. And then he tuts (he knows I hate tutting) and asks if I’ve remembered the cake for tomorrow’s home match?

  ‘You expect me to bake a cake for your cricket tea?’ I’m shocked.

  ‘You
offered. And you told me to remind you.’

  Certain I didn’t, I reply that I’m no more fucking Nigella than I am his laundrymaid, and he points out that I’ve washed everybody else’s sports stuff so it’s a bit deliberate to leave his out and am I trying to make a point? I hiss, ‘Yes, my point is that you’re a bloody dinosaur!’

  I miss having Arty to walk my fierce temper off.

  Feeling martyred and telltale hot, I march out to the garden with the plastic recycling. As soon as I do, breathing in a cloud of jasmine, I have a crystal clear flashback of sitting out here last Sunday evening, the best part of a bottle of rosé up, consoling Paddy for being caught for ten and offering to bake a cake for his next cricket tea. Oh, my lousy menopausal memory.

  Now I mutter dark oaths by the bins, trying not to cry, hating myself for the brittle, self-absorbed cow I’ve become. ‘You need to pull your fucking self together,’ I tell myself. ‘Or non-fucking self.’

  ‘Is it Persuasion or Sense and Sensibility?’ asks a voice beyond the garden fence with a clink as our affable retired neighbour recycles a jam jar.

  Inside, I start baking for Paddy. My emancipated soul burns, especially when Summer joins me to take over mixing lemon juice and caster sugar to pour over two cakes hot from the oven, her favourite task, then photographs her handiwork on her phone. Seconds later a luscious, lip-smacking shot is cropped, filtered, captioned Making drizzle cake with my fam! tagged #baking #yummy #cake #homemade #instafood #delicious and shared with thousands of followers.

  ‘I love it when we bake,’ she confides.

  It’s our closest moment of (hashtag) mother-and-daughter togetherness in weeks.

  ‘Can I take the spare one into school next week? I think lemon drizzle is Mr Owusu’s favourite cake.’ She checks his Instagram feed, heavily populated thanks to a second career in photography that’s given him a cult status at school. In amongst leggy models, broody musician portraits and abstract landscapes are some seriously high-end food shots. ‘No, it’s OK, it’s pistachio and lime.’ She likes the image with colour-appropriate heart emojis. ‘We can make that next time!’