The Happy Glampers

by Daisy Tate

  Her fingers moved to her lips. She’d never quite been able to recapture the sensation of kissing him. A tingle or two had presented itself when Freya forwarded a picture he’d sent of a cow or the shop, but nothing quite as powerful as being held and kissed by the man himself.

  An urge to swing the car back to the motorway and do just that gripped her. She’d felt strong in his presence. Supported. Admired even.

  She tsked the impulse away.

  She needed to do this on her own.

  Besides. There’d been more than enough upheaval over the past year without throwing a palpitating heart into the mix. Apart from her new job and looking after Luna, she owed it to her children to be present for them. Present in a way their father clearly couldn’t. Parenting wasn’t just about fancy holidays and spending money. It was about being tough when necessary. Giving them boundaries. Guiding them into the future with a strong moral compass and sometimes, like now, facing cold, hard facts. Life wasn’t easy. It was also what you made of it. The sooner they realized that, the better.

  After a few more minutes of weighted silence, Charlotte pulled up in front of her old home. ‘Get out.’

  She’d never spoken to her children like that before, so they did.

  ‘Mummy?’ Poppy slipped her hand into Charlotte’s as they stared up at the vast, brutalist construct that housed not only Charlotte’s childhood home, but dozens of other families’ cramped, poorly heated, poorly maintained, poorly plumbed flats. A woman emerged from the front door and openly bought drugs from a couple of boys about the same age as Jack. An older bloke, passed out from booze most likely, was slumped against the wall in front of a ground-floor flat that had the television blaring so loudly everyone knew Emmerdale was about to start. A half-hour to escape into someone else’s misery, she supposed.

  The green she’d once played on while her mum smoked fags and drank with ‘the girls’ was little more than a rubbish tip now. Strange. It had never once occurred to her the place would have got worse. She’d thought either that it might’ve been knocked down, or tarted up like the Park Hill Estates had been. Listed. Trendy. Desirable.

  But here it was. Her childhood home. A microcosm of everything that was wrong with the world.

  ‘Mummy, why are we here?’

  ‘I wanted you to see where I grew up.’

  A woman dragged her screaming toddler out of the front door, jammed her into a pushchair and set off down the hill throwing a stream of verbal abuse behind her.

  Poppy squeezed her hand. Charlotte’s eyes glassed over. She had expected her daughter to let go. But she held on tight. She didn’t make gagging noises, or launch herself back in the car, or demand to leave as Charlotte had feared she might. She stood by her Northern mum’s side in her pristine Zara dress and held her hand tight.

  Charlotte braced herself for Jack’s response. A scoff, no doubt. They got it. She’d grown up poor. They’d grown up rich. They’d learned their valuable lesson about not taking things for granted – could they go now, please?

  Instead he tipped his head towards hers – he could almost rest his chin on top of her head. He took her other hand and said, ‘Dad doesn’t have a fucking clue about real life, does he?’

  Rather than answer, she hugged her children in tight. She loved them so much. This moment – however perfect it felt – would probably not last. There’d be more tantrums, more rage, more fights. But they’d taken this first step towards their new reality together, and that was what counted.

  An hour later, after they’d wolfed down gourmet burgers in a restaurant so hip it served nothing on an actual plate, Charlotte was still feeling brave. Daring almost. As if this layer of motherhood – being amicable and fun with her children – had never been a possibility for her. It had. Of course it had. She’d seen all sorts of mothers at the children’s school who were trendy and with it. Besties with their kids. She didn’t think they would go that route – BFFs – because she wasn’t their friend. She was their mum. And the distinction was important.

  Saying that …

  She drew a couple of skinny fries through some ketchup then set them down on the wooden serving board. ‘How would you two feel if I were to send the odd email to Rocco?’

  They both shrugged.

  ‘You can do what you like, Mum,’ Jack said through a mouthful of sweet potato wedges. He sounded like he actually meant it. ‘Dad does whatever he wants. Why shouldn’t you?’

  ‘How about we agree not to discuss your father’s romantic life.’

  ‘I’m in,’ Jack said, as Poppy vigorously nodded her assent.

  They chatted about the vicarage for a bit. If they wanted their rooms painted anything other than Fresh Cotton – the neutral shade Charlotte had chosen over Magnolia. Whether or not they’d mind if Luna or Izzy stayed on if Izzy needed looking after once her treatment was finished.

  ‘No that’s cool. They’re pretty fun.’

  High praise indeed!

  Poppy took a sip of her water then asked, ‘Mum? Is it all right if I go to the same school as Felix and Regan?’

  Oliver had already put down a deposit at Badminton, but … ‘We can definitely look into it. Do you mind if I ask why?’

  Poppy shrugged. ‘Luna probably needs another kid around the house.’ Charlotte didn’t press. That was good enough for now.

  ‘Do you think they’d take me?’ Jack asked, eyes glued to the table.

  Now this was a surprise.

  ‘I thought you wanted to go to college in London.’

  ‘Yeah, but …’ He flopped back into his chair, tracing his finger along the ring of water round his fizzy drink. ‘Xanthe and Dad are … They don’t always get along and the baby …’ He shuddered. ‘I just … it might be easier if I stayed with you. You remember stuff. Dad and Xanthe? Not so much. Besides. Bonzer might need someone to walk him with Izzy being, you know, the way she is.’

  Charlotte said she’d call on Monday morning.

  ‘Well, then.’ Charlotte signalled for the bill. ‘I guess we’d better hit the road.’

  They all stared at the final skinny fry, then one by one looked away, each of them unwilling to be the greedy guts who took it.

  Jack picked up his knife and cut it into three equal pieces. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Enough for everyone.’

  Emily poured hot water over the fennel tea leaves and renewed her silent vow. ‘This time I will do it. This time I will tell them.’

  Over supper she’d done the worst preamble ever. She’d gabbled on about how wasn’t it interesting how people were like grains of rice – the same, but different. Her father had lifted his own bowl of rice, greens and char siu up to his mouth, drained the lot, then excused himself from the table. He had a long day of lectures ahead. Her mother, who worked at the Office for National Statistics, began to talk about how even thinking two grains of rice could be the same was ridiculous considering how many variants there were – long grain, short grain, sweet, sticky, wild – all of which culminated in her mother landing on her favourite topic: how ‘so-called Chinese’ food in the UK was never up to snuff. Fakey, fakey, fakey, fake, her mother crowed. Why couldn’t anything be genuine any more? Honest? Real.

  Hmmm.

  Well.

  Emily carried her father’s tea into the lounge – one palm under the base of the cup, the other perched atop the lid he liked to slurp the tea out of until it cooled.

  She set the ceramic cup down on the small lacquer-topped table beside his straight-backed chair. He was scrawling remarks on his students’ papers. Some in Mandarin. Some in English. She wondered what he was teaching this year. Something engineery, obviously. Structural? Civil? He never really talked about it. And she never really asked.

  He nodded his thanks but kept on working.

  Emily went back to the kitchen and repeated the ritual, but this time with ginger tea. She warmed her mother’s red cup with hot water, then put in the dried ginger (from China courtesy of a friend) and poured in more
water. Her father had brought the mug back from China after he’d been to his father’s funeral. It was embossed with three goldfish and represented family. Her mother had never used another mug since.

  Her stomach churned. Oh, boy.

  She sought the word for ‘lesbian’ in Mandarin but still couldn’t remember it. It was one of those words that meant one thing but had been repurposed to mean another. Maybe her parents wouldn’t even know the difference. The original word, she remembered, meant comrade. That same Google search had pointed out that – until 2001 – being gay was listed as a mental illness in China. It had been a crime up until 1997.

  She stared into the sitting room and tried to see it as a stranger might. It was very sparse. At least in comparison to those belonging to the mah-jong players her parents fraternized with down at the Islington Chinese Association. They tended to decorate their homes in the swirly, opulent old style of Chinese interior decor, whereas her parents were more … She didn’t know what really. Ikea goes to China?

  Simplicity.

  What you saw was what you got.

  She carried the cup of tea into the lounge, hovering as her mother’s tiny fingers spread the mah-jong tiles across the green felted frame she kept behind the sofa when they didn’t have a game in progress.

  ‘Put tea here, Emily.’ She pointed to a small lacquer-ware side table. ‘Sit down. You making me nervous.’

  Emily sat down, tucking her knees beneath the wobbly card table, careful not to knock the legs. Her mother got snappy when she shook the table. Or maybe that was just a Chinese thing. Feel it. Express it. Move on. Except for the big stuff, of course. If there was one solitary golden rule about being Chinese, it was never ever talk about the big stuff. Which, up to now, had suited Emily to a tee.

  ‘That better.’

  After all these years of living in the UK, her mother still had that staccato, Chinese immigrant way of speaking English. It used to drive Emily mad, seeing as they had sent her to endless elocution lessons. ‘You should sound like Maggie Smith.’ This, though neither of them had ever been able to pronounce her surname properly. Smiff.

  ‘I like women.’

  Emily’s father put down the paper he’d been marking, but her mother didn’t even look up from the tiles. ‘Yea. Okay.’

  ‘Ma. It means I’m gay. A lesbian.’

  Her mother moved a tile then looked at her. ‘Yea. Okay.’

  ‘Ummmm … and you’re all right with this?’ She clarified the situation. ‘It means no grandchildren.’

  Her father started to chuckle. He wasn’t much of a laugher, but he did have this great, cartoonish chuckle that occasionally burbled out of him when he’d hit the rice wine over Chinese New Year.

  ‘Emily.’ He put his papers onto the sofa. ‘We’ve known we weren’t getting grandchildren for a very long time.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  This was a bit anticlimactic. Did everyone know? Rocco had figured it out after she’d gone all gooey-eyed over Tansy, but … it had been a moment of weakness. There’d been gin. Too much gin. Charlotte, Freya and Izzy had never said anything. Then again, they had deemed her the Queen of Detachment back in uni. Perfect, they said, for a doctor. They’d also never said a word during her Melissa Etheridge phase. Hmmm … Maybe they did know.

  Her eyes drifted to the sideboard, where there was a photo of her in her mortarboard and Bristol Uni gown. Izzy was standing next to her. Emily wasn’t looking at the camera.

  Ah.

  She hadn’t realized she looked at Izzy so … adoringly.

  Emily’s mother knocked on the table to get her attention. ‘You should talk to Mrs Wang’s son if you want tips.’

  Mrs Wang of ‘my son has nine hundred engineering degrees’ fame?

  ‘What? On being a lesbian?’

  ‘Yea. He know all the hot spots. He know Soho like this.’ Her mother held up her hand and turned it back and forth.

  ‘He’s male, Mom. Boys can’t be lesbians.’ Plus. Wasn’t he the one they’d been trying to get her to go out with?

  Ohhhhhhhhh.

  ‘I been around the block more than one time, you know.’ Her mother continued to clack the mah-jong tiles into place. She was one of those women who did things when they were happy rather than when they needed to be distracted, like Charlotte. Come to think of it, her mother was always busy. ‘Song-Li’s son not lesbian. He is one of those – whatchamacallits – drag lady.’

  ‘Drag queen?’

  ‘Yea. He perform at Chinese Community Centre last May Day.’

  Her father hooted, then did some crazy arm gestures. ‘Gangnam style!’

  ‘What? No. Dad, that’s K-pop, not drag queen music.’

  Her mother waved her hand at him as if he were going senile. ‘He talking about karaoke. He won first prize. Song-Li’s son do … Beyoncé. Maybe Sia. Can’t remember.’ They both cackled at the memory. Apparently they’d had a whale of a time.

  Emily felt as though she was in a Louis Theroux documentary: ‘The Secret Lives of Chinese Parents’.

  ‘So, ummm, anyway … I guess we’re all caught up with the lesbian thing, then?’ Emily reached for her ponytail and, too late, remembered it wasn’t there.

  ‘Yea. Okay, fine. You ready to play mah-jong with your mother?’ Her mother looked across at her and smiled.

  Yes. Yes she was.

  Freya glanced up at the Vettriano painting and promptly tripped over a box of pans.

  ‘Careful Mum!’ Regan held her hands out to catch the cake, although she was nowhere near enough to help. Living in a building site had a way of turning even the simplest of journeys into an obstacle course.

  ‘I’ve got it. We’re fine.’ They were as well.

  When Rocco had sent the painting down ‘to get rid of some of the clutter in the attic’, she’d not been under any illusion as to why he’d sent it. He’d done it so she could get the money. It certainly hadn’t been so that she could have a daily reminder that her mother could have chosen another life. Now that it had been hanging there for a couple of weeks, she had a new interpretation of the painting. Life was full of options. There would always be other men. Other careers. Other roads to follow. It was what you made of the path you chose that mattered most. And, of course, whether or not you decided to stay on it.

  ‘What’s good?’ Monty reached up to take off the tie Felix had wrapped over his eyes.

  ‘No you don’t!’ Felix cupped his hands over Monty’s eyes, even though he hadn’t taken off the tie. ‘You ready, Mum?’

  She was. The cake, on the other hand, was a bit of a shambles. Not a patch on what Charlotte would’ve whipped up, but she was at the cinema with the kids. Izzy and Luna were due back later and Emily was rocking into town tonight if the WhatsApp message was anything to go by, so, this was the cake they had. As long as it tasted good, she told herself. That’s what counted here.

  At least Monty had been so distracted by getting the television aerial up in the choir loft that he hadn’t noticed she and Regan had been making it. Felix really could do ‘tragic son being denied his television rights’ when called upon to be a decoy.

  Regan lit one candle, then the rest. ‘Ready?’ she whispered, even though Monty wasn’t more than a metre from them. The piece of ply straddling two workbenches that served as their table was diagonally opposite their vestry-based corner kitchen. It comprised a microwave, their bashed-up Coleman camp stove, a kettle and a sink big enough for cleansing a pair of hands preparing to do the lord’s work and not much more.

  Suffice it to say, the lord’s architect hadn’t envisioned a family of four eating three meals a day in this room, but needs must, and all that. The basement café kitchen had already been gutted, so it was make do or give up the ghost.

  This family wasn’t planning on giving up the ghost, holy or otherwise, any time soon.

  ‘All right, here we go. One … two … three!’ Felix tugged off the tie blindfold and they all began singing.

  ‘Hap
py Father’s Day to you! Happy Father’s Day to You!!! Happy Faaather’s Day dear Daaa-dyyy! Happy Father’s Day to you!’

  Monty looked beside himself with joy. He loved being the centre of attention. The cake was lopsided and the butter icing had already started separating under the heat of the candles Regan had weighted it with, but he looked as though they’d just handed him the keys to a gold-plated Ferrari.

  ‘You nutters!’ And by nutters he obviously meant the loves of his life. ‘It’s not even Father’s Day.’

  ‘Yeah, we know,’ Freya smiled sheepishly. ‘We thought things went a bit pants on the real one.’

  More than pants. He’d come into London to stay the weekend. Everyone had been excited and a bit hypersensitive as it was the first weekend the For Sale sign had gone up outside their house. They’d had a fight when he’d found out the reason they had enough money to go out for dinner was because Freya had put his brew kit on eBay. Monty had stormed off in a cloud of ‘I thought we were being honest about everything’ and taken the train back to Bristol. Freya had stomped off to the shed and made some designs that she ended up hating. The children had unearthed a pizza from the freezer and eaten that instead of going to the gastro-pub on the river that Monty loved as they had planned. It was meant to be his ‘farewell to London’ tour.

  Monty said, ‘It’s perfect. I love it. Help me?’ He pointed at the candles.

  They all leant in and, after a swift one-two-three, they all made wishes and blew.

  After the children had gone to bed in the side chapels they’d partitioned off (Felix, who didn’t care about daylight, in the north-facing transept, and Regan, their early bird, in the south), Monty and Freya collapsed onto the sofa which they’d plonked where the altar had once stood.

  ‘Oh, this is nice,’ Monty sighed, stretching out so that his head was in her lap.

  Freya curled down and pressed a light kiss onto Monty’s forehead. He tasted like sawdust and buttercream. Good thing she liked it, because that would be his man scent for the foreseeable future.