by Dawn French
‘GUESS!’ she retorted.
And waited.
‘YES. Only you,’ he whispered as he hung his head.
‘So, are you saying that you want to pursue a relationship with … her … or are you saying this … affair or whatever it is, will cease? Please, please, answer honestly,’ said Anna.
All this time the Dane was following the conversation very closely, alternating between Anna and Julius as if she were watching tennis. Now she stared right at him, while he averted his gaze.
‘I want to save our marriage. I don’t want to be this man any more, but you must understand all the stress with Florence has been—’
Anna snapped. Her eyes were ablaze. ‘DON’T bring her into this. Don’t you dare sully her with this. Don’t speak her name in this shitty room, or I will end you, I swear, right now.’ She recovered her composure as quickly as she had lost it, and continued: ‘So am I to understand that you are prepared to live a faithful life with only me as your lover from now on? Please answer honestly.’
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
At this point the Dane wanted to have her say. ‘Mrs Lindon-Clarke—’
‘Do call me Anna. We’ve shared the same dick, after all.’
‘OK, Anna. I want you to know that none of this was personal …’
‘Oh, it’s personal, believe me.’
The Dane pressed on bravely. ‘I want you to know that he approached me. Seriously. I didn’t really even fancy him. I want you to know that.’
‘Charming,’ mumbled the injured adulterer, adding a childish, ‘You didn’t resist much.’
The Dane continued unabated. ‘I mean, I feel a bit odd now because the way he’s being here now is not how he is being with me. I s’pose that’s obvious, but he told me stuff …’
Julius was panicking. Shush, please. Come on. Stop it. The dam was about to burst.
It did.
‘Listen, Joojoo …’ the Dane continued.
(JOOJOO?! Anna felt physically sick.)
‘This whole scene is utter shit, but the woman deserves the truth.’
(THE WOMAN??! Anna felt physically sick.)
‘He told me that it was pretty much over between you two ever since your daughter … was pinched.’
(PINCHED??!? Anna felt physically sick.)
‘That you stopped loving him, or having the sex with him or even holding him. He said he felt unloved and unwanted …’
(UNLOVED??!! Anna felt physically sick.)
‘He cried when we were in the gym, and I … cuddled him.’
(CUDDLED??!!! Anna felt physically sick.)
‘And he said that even that slight touch was like rain in the desert …’
(Anna felt physically sick.)
Julius attempted to stop her. ‘That’s enough.’
‘No, let her finish, she’s only telling her truth.’
The Dane picked up the baton. ‘He told me that he’d never done anything like this before.’
(Physically sick.)
Julius put his head in his hands. Even he, with all his brazen denial, couldn’t look Anna in the face on this particular front.
‘Oh. God. So that’s not true then …?’ The krone had finally dropped for the Dane.
Julius mumbled something incoherent into his hand facemask.
The Dane continued, ‘Right. Oh God. Should have known. He told me he didn’t feel guilty because you guys were getting a divorce anyway, and a man has needs …’
(Sick.)
‘… and that I had saved him.’
(BLEUUUUGH.)
‘OK, I’m going to stop you there,’ Anna interrupted quickly before she actually heaved up her breakfast porridge all over both of them. ‘You need to know a couple of things. First of all, Julius’s arrested emotional development is pretty much that of a fourteen-year-old. How old are you?’
‘I’m twenty-six actually.’
‘Yes, so that is too young even for you. Believe me. “Joojoo” is a particularly alarming case of chronic juvenility, but the rule of thumb with men is usually to gauge them at about a third of their actual human age. Just a tip for future transgressions. Or simply for the future. Secondly, I have to tell you that you’re not the only one. I’m sorry if that doesn’t help to make you feel special, but he’s been a very busy chap for a long time, although he promised me it would stop. He says he hates himself for it. Clearly, he’s prepared to loathe himself by now, so FYI, if I were you, I’d get myself checked for any kind of STD since, as we all know, he doesn’t “like” to put a hat on it. I have regular checks, ever since I lost the trust, and the reason I do that is because, contrary to the stonking lies he’s told you, we do, of course, have sex. Fairly regularly actually, although admittedly it’s less lovemaking and more habit recently, but … because of that fairly frequent practice, I am currently pregnant.’
‘Anna, darling!’ Julius blurted out. ‘Pregnant?’
‘Not your darling. Your wife.’ Anna speedily rebutted the untimely hug he was approaching to give her; she stood up sharpish and started towards the door.
Then she turned back to the Dane. ‘I’m sorry for you that you’re mixed up in all this. For what it’s worth, I don’t blame you as much – he’s a skilled manipulator. He’s a politician, after all. Did he tell you that I don’t “understand” him …?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘Hmm. Disappointing.’
With that, Anna swept out of the room. She resolved that the future would be different after this.
Minnie’s 1st Birthday: Hope
Minnie burst out laughing when Hope carried in the caterpillar birthday cake with the single candle on the top. Hope knew it wasn’t the cake that set her off, or the candle, it was the bad singing and clapping. There was nothing little Minnie liked more than music and dancing. And clapping. Hope pretty much always had some kind of music on in their little garden flat. The radio went on when they woke up and went off when Hope went to bed. She even had an old cassette player of her dad’s to put at the bottom of Minnie’s cot to lull her to sleep. All the cassettes she used were her dad’s old Bob Marley and UB40 and the Specials and Jimmy Cliff ones. Minnie would call out for Hope to come in and turn the tape over to the B side if she hadn’t fallen asleep by the end of the A side. Recently, she was even attempting to do it herself although, with her chubby little one-year-old fingers, she wasn’t quite dextrous enough just yet. If a whole side of any cassette had played and Minnie didn’t cry out for more, Hope knew for sure she’d nodded off.
During the day, Minnie would haul herself up against any chair or table to stand up and wobble about precariously like a Weeble at the first bar of any music. She was already a definite person in her own right; she was longing to be independent, even if her little legs weren’t willing as yet; she was a determined little mite. She behaved as if it were a nuisance that she should have to learn anything – she wanted to already know it. She wanted to be in the growing-up fast lane. Sometimes she was impatient and tetchy with it, but Hope was one of life’s supreme soothers. She knew the value of it; she’d done it for herself and her sister forever, so it was second nature to be a calmer, and she knew exactly how to placate a grumpy Minnie. No problem. A privilege, in fact.
Minnie’s lovely open face had become even lovelier. She had flawless skin and huge dark eyes and a comical row of four front teeth emerging from her lower gum. There were none on the top thus far, which made her ready smiles hilarious: she looked like an old hillbilly hick from the sticks. She didn’t fully know why, but people would laugh when she smiled, so she smiled a lot. And they would laugh more. And on it went. Big laughs from silly little things.
There were a dozen or so folk crammed into Hope and Minnie’s small flat to celebrate this important day. Her sister Glory was there with her partner Ky and their brand-new baby girl they’d decided to call Princess, all wrapped up and held tightly like the very precious princessy thing she was. Hope remembered when she’d likewise held
Minnie so tightly and carefully when she was as new. The need to protect and cherish was very strong in both sisters. They were instinctively motherly.
A couple of uncles and their partners and kids were there too. They had all been fantastic supports for Hope when she arrived back in Bristol with Minnie a year before. They felt sorry for Hope that her supposed ‘boyfriend’ had hightailed it back to Africa, leaving her to raise their daughter alone. He didn’t seem to care at all: he ran off, sent no money and made no contact, and they would berate him in support of Hope, calling him a ‘dyam hidiot’ and a ‘wase o’ space’. Hope had to let this be. They didn’t know the truth and they couldn’t, but each of their barbs at him was a harpoon in her. Darling, kind, upright Isaac – unknown and maligned.
Everyone was a bit worse for wear after their New Year celebrations the night before, but they wanted to be there for little Minnie, whom they’d all taken entirely to their hearts. They’d clucked around her all year commenting on how like her mother she looked. Only the first time this was mentioned had it occurred to Hope that it was a strange thing to say. She’d had a brief moment then, where she looked closely at Minnie’s features, at her faultless skin, at her mop of cinnamon curls, at her huge expressive eyes, at her chunky-lunky toes and fingers, and she remembered the big snoring black man with his chin on his chest in that maternity suite and the dark blonde hair strewn across the face of the slumbering mother.
Mother?
No, no, no. Don’t think about that. HOPE is Minnie’s mother. She’d vanquished all those threatening thoughts, and consigned them to a deep, hard-to-reach place behind the back of her memory, marked ‘unremembered’. From then on, she easily accepted all comments made about Minnie’s physicality and personality as a kind of vicarious flattery, and it wasn’t hard to acknowledge that yes, Minnie really was so very like her.
And her dad, of course.
But mainly HER.
And with each compliment or remark she accepted about their similarity, the sediment of denial incrementally forming firmly on top of the truth gained another weighty layer.
‘One, two, three … blow!’ said Hope, clapping and smiling along next to Minnie, who was utterly unaware of what was expected with the candle, so Hope blew it out for her and she squeaked with delight.
One person who was clearly struggling to enjoy the party was Doris, Hope’s mother. Glory had her arm around her and Hope noticed that she was making brave attempts to smile, but she seemed pitifully sad. No wonder – it had been a hell of a year. She’d gained two grandchildren, lost a husband and started a serious attempt to conquer her relationship with vodka. She was feeling hugely wobbly.
‘Let’s have some music! Your choice, Uncle Devon! Something to kick us off into a fantastic New Year, eh?’ said Hope optimistically as she delegated the job of jollying up the party to her uncles.
Then: ‘Cut up the cake, G, I’ll sit with Mum for a minute,’ she said as she took Doris’s arm, ‘and, Ky, can you keep an eye on Minnie?’
‘Sure,’ replied Ky as he lifted Minnie out of her high chair and into the clamouring arms of her several young cousins who loved to pretend that Minnie was their baby.
Hope led her mum to the sofa and sat next to her. ‘You OK, Mum?’
‘Yes. No problem,’ replied Doris.
‘Lies. Mum, it’s OK not to feel OK, OK?’ she comforted her mother, putting her arm around her, noting just how scrawny she’d become under the clever camouflage of one of her big woolly jumpers. Winter allowed Doris to wear layers of loose warm clothes to hide her bony body. Until someone touched her like this.
They both knew Hope was noticing. Hope wanted to reassure Doris. ‘You’re not alone, Mum, and you never will be. Not as long as I have breath in my body – and Glory’s the same – and we’re bringing more kids into the family by the minute, so, honestly, you’ve got loads of us …’
‘I know, darlin’, I truly know. I jus’ not sure how much strength I have in m’blood for all dis.’
‘For a party?’
‘For life.’
That floored Hope. Her mum had been battered by a tough year, but Hope had never heard her sound so defeated. She needed to say the right thing.
‘Mum, listen to me …’ Hope started, but noticed that Doris’s head was drooping. ‘Mum, please look at me. Please,’ she tried to encourage her.
Doris raised her face towards Hope. All the skin on her skull seemed to be tired of holding on tight, and had given up, just as Doris had in this moment. She had lost her way and her sorry eyes told Hope that. Even in her worst drunkenness, Doris had always had a flare in her eyes. She had a purpose: to get to a bottle; and once she had, she was content for a while until her purpose rose up to consume her again. It was a dreadful cycle, but it was a structure of sorts. All habits are. The familiar, however destructive, is better than the new. Even in her haziness, Doris had always loved her girls. She hadn’t always remembered about them, but they were in her heart. And, unbelievably, Doris had kept her cleaning job; somehow she muddled through and no one ever reported her because everyone loved her, and because her hours were night-time hours, and Doris was skilled at scuttling about, getting her job done without being spied on, often without being really noticed at all, it was easy to camouflage her sozzled state.
All of that had changed in the summer when Zak died and Doris suddenly had a dark hole at the centre of her already unsteady world. Part of the reason Doris had numbed herself with lots of alcohol for so long was that she knew Zak would never reach old bones. How could he when he polluted his body so regularly with such a potent poison? Doris needed the booze to help her avoid thinking such unthinkable thoughts. When they were both in their Elysium, nothing else mattered, and nothing bad was ever going to happen, so that’s what they both chose. Their habits were benign. No one else had to witness them once Hope had moved out and subsequently away. Glory had been propelled into the arms of Ky by a need to escape the stupor of her parents’ home. She’d left them to it, and they muddled on in their interdependent fug, oblivious.
When Hope had arrived back in Bristol with her new baby, she knew she couldn’t live with them, it would be catastrophic, so she moved into her little garden flat and laid down some rules. ‘OK, guys, listen up. I want you to have time with Minnie, she’s your first grandchild, I know that. BUT. It has to be here, at mine, and the deal is you both HAVE to be sober. Seriously. Or you ain’t coming in. Got it?’
So, Doris and Zak had visited every morning around 10 a.m. for about an hour, tops. That’s when they could keep their promise and, to their credit, they never broke it. Hope was sorry that she couldn’t rely on her mum and dad for babysitting or for any support outside this one daily hour, but, for Minnie’s sake, she recognized what a giant effort it was for them both to stick to the agreement, and they all chugged on, doing their best within it.
Zak had seemed relatively steady as summer approached. If you’d seen him, you would have thought he was a lethargic sixty-seven-year-old. He wasn’t. He was forty-seven, with a stealthy blood clot pumping its way around his body, waiting for him to be inert enough for it to invade his lungs. The mixture of that lethal clot and his whole respiratory drive shutting down while he gouched out meant, on that fateful night, that his body simply forgot to breathe.
Forgot to fight the clot.
Forgot to fight.
Forgot he was loved. Forgot his wife. Forgot his kids.
Forgot to live.
He simply stopped dead, and when Doris woke from her inebriated slumber, he was cold and slumped next to her on their sofa, with his ‘horse’ box of gear and accoutrements on the table in front of him. She took him in her arms and rocked him, gently encouraging him to wake up, for two hours before she called anyone. She called Hope first, of course.
‘Umm, Daddy’s asleep, Hope. I cyan wake ’im. He’s really really sleepin’. I think you should come,’ she said and put the phone down.
Hope knew. She’d been aw
aiting this phone call since she could remember. In some awful, truthful way, it was a relief.
The funeral was small and sad and full of loud music, just as he would’ve wanted. Some of his old band members were there. Two were already dead, and the ones who turned up could’ve been. All but one of them appeared to be husks of people, as ravaged by their various substance-use as Zak had been. Somehow, when musicians are at the funerals of their chums’ untimely deaths, it’s a sorrier sight, as if they uniquely should remain forever young or forever rebellious or forever glamorous, as if they owe us that. We want them stuck in amber and ageless. We don’t want to see them as haggard spectres gathered in gloomy groups, smoking vapes and wearing black coats from the back of the wardrobe which hang loosely on their diminished bodies, awkwardly not knowing what to say. People who don’t talk much because they prefer to play, having to find some words.
Clumsy or not, they all found kind words for Doris, whom they loved very much. They also found hip flasks of courage-giving brandy that they shared with her, which wasn’t Hope’s favourite sight of the day. Sandwiching their mother between them, Hope and Glory walked Doris up the aisle at the grim crematorium and sat in the front row, Zak’s four girls together, including little Minnie who sat on Hope’s lap and was sheer sunlight on a very dark day.
As far as Minnie was concerned, this was a fantastic play date. There was music, so that meant fun. However much the celebrant tried to keep the ceremony focused and serious, Minnie’s delighted squeals and clapping hands couldn’t fail to lift everyone’s spirits. When a happy child laughs, everyone laughs. A ripple effect. Minnie had been an oasis of joy for Zak, so it was fitting that she was at the centre of that day, uniting them all, when everyone present wanted to remember the best of him. There was plenty of wonderful about Zak to celebrate …
… and that’s what Hope wanted to remind her mum of now, on this day, while Minnie was enjoying her birthday.
‘Mum …’ Hope took her mother’s face in her hands, the face she’d looked into and loved her whole life, the face that was now the tiredest it had ever been. ‘I know you miss him, we all do, but you do times a million. He was your true love – you always said that – and he still is. No one can ever take that from you. That’s yours forever, isn’t it? The love doesn’t die, does it, Mum? You still love Nanna Bev and she’s gone, but … you said she lives in you. And that’s what I think about Dad; he lives in me and Glory and Minnie and you – and in Princess too now. The best of him. We won’t forget him, ever ever ever.’