Reasons to Be Cheerful

by Nina Stibbe

  What would Andy be doing now? I wondered. My mother might be at the shelves, choosing a book to lend him–a book he probably didn’t want but would now have to read and then discuss. This thought–of Andy having to read Moby-Dick–cheered me up no end. I laughed quietly to my reflection.

  He would try to be a good kind of lodger. He would entertain everyone by peeling an orange in one piece and describing birdsong. He was a quick learner and would soon realize that the best, most helpful thing he could do would be the feeding of people. I imagined him heating up spaghetti for Danny, searching the kitchen drawers for the can-opener, not spotting the wall-mounted one in a silly hidden place near the boiler. He’d put slices of bread under the grill, and take a while to notice that the pilot light doesn’t work and have to search for matches, which were kept out of Danny’s reach in a little red tin, where Andy would never think to look. Then, once he’d lit the grill and the toast was toasting, he might take hold of the grill-pan handle without the oven glove and, it being burning hot because for some reason it was made of highly conductive material, would drop it with a God-almighty crash–the noise and chaos making him seem (unfairly) a clumsy idiot, which he wasn’t. And then my mother would appear and ask if everything was OK and how was he getting on with Moby-Dick, or Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone or a Pamela Hansford Johnson, to indicate that, though he was a clumsy idiot, she didn’t really mind just as long as he was reading a book that she could chat about.

  I regretted my decision to not leave a Things to Watch Out For list, which would have included:

  Make sure your bedroom door is firmly shut or else it might pop open whenever anyone opens or closes the hall door. Check the latch bolt has fully entered the strike-plate throat. Test by trying to pull the door open–if you hear a click, that’s it. But don’t trust by just looking.

  The thing about giving this kind of advice outside of a journalistic context, though, was: A) people don’t actually listen, B) they think you’re fussing, or mentally ill, C) what’s in it for you? D) it’s not sexy to worry about practical things.

  I hadn’t left him entirely without advice on survival, though. I’d warned him not to show any disrespect to the piano, which was an easy thing to do–situated as it was in a sort of passing place between the kitchen and the lounge, making it an easy target for a perfunctory plink.

  By the time my bus pulled in, I had concluded that Andy would be fine. And that though his living there would expose us all in some uncomfortable ways, it somehow put us on the map and made us all exist more, especially Jack with those daisies facing out on to the street.

  I waited a whole fortnight before going home again, and when I did, it was all change. My brother Jack had grown, probably to his full height of six foot one inch, and towered over my mother who was five foot six inches. He’d got a moustache too and was outside the front of the house tinkering with a Suzuki AP50, which was, if he was to be believed, the second-fastest moped in Flatstone.

  The biggest and most noticeable change of course was that Andy Nicolello was there, and now seemed settled and happy and showed every sign of belonging. For instance, filling the kettle through its spout, shaking coffee powder into the mug without a spoon and kissing the dog on the lips.

  I can’t emphasize enough just how strange and exciting this was for me, and how distracting. I mean, notice that I barely mention my little brother’s moped–a thing that was totally against the rules in our house because of the likelihood of the novice rider being run into by bigger, more powerful vehicles. The story of how Jack got this moped was a heartbreaking one, and though he survived, I will tell it, but later because now I have to describe how wonderful it was to see Andy Nicolello there, at my house, eating a slice of toast and Dairylea and laughing at the photographs in the parish magazine.

  Not everything was rosy in the garden, though, I heard, e.g. my mother had thanked him for not playing a certain LP that he’d got from his brother, containing golden oldies such as ‘Runaround Sue’, which she considered unpleasant, saying she’d rather hear Sue’s side.

  Also, my mother’s habit of having the gas fire going the whole time was bothering Andy’s throat. He wasn’t used to the dry air and had developed a persistent cough. Though he’d lived in a shack, it had been well-built and with insulation and ventilation and none of the spent-gas dryness of my mother’s house–a flimsy type put up in a hurry. Andy told me in confidence that he’d suggested my mother wear a cardigan over her vest instead of putting the fire on, and that she’d been most annoyed by the suggestion and told him he didn’t get to decide who wore what in her house for £5 a week. If he wanted those kinds of rights, it would be more like £15 a week. She always liked her arms out, still does.

  Also, Andy was occasionally thoughtless about my mother’s sensitivities (and mine, come to think of it). There’d been an incident, my mother told me, at the depot, earlier in the week, that was keeping Mr Holt over there practically all weekend. The incident involved two old boys Mr Holt had under him–Stan and Clarence–brothers who’d shared a Jack Russell called Scamp which came to work with them. Stan had taught Scamp to take titbits from his mouth at dinner break. Clarence thought the trick uncouth and had put in a formal complaint against his brother. Before Mr Holt had had a chance to conciliate, Clarence had accidentally run Scamp over in the forklift. The two had been on compassionate leave the rest of the week, Clarence in a terrible state. Mr Holt was exhausted, having done the work of three men and attended a dog funeral.

  Hearing this, probably for the second or third time, Andy let a snort of laughter escape. Anyone who knew my mother at all would have known not to snigger at that point. She swung round and stared at him for a moment and I knew for certain there’d be no way of making up for that.

  My mother changed the subject.

  ‘I’m exhausted and in need of a chamomile tea,’ she reported. ‘I’ve just written a gruesome strangling scene–I feel like Anthony Burgess.’

  Andy went out then, which I suppose was polite of him but disappointing. I watched him loping down the street, then wandered around looking for further signs of his living there. It was a small house so it wasn’t long before I’d looked everywhere and was at the door to my (his) room.

  Andy Nicolello had a duvet cover of autumn leaves in oranges and browns–I noticed this through the open door. I entered and snooped. I opened every drawer and held his clothes to my face, the Daz fragrance still detectable but competing with the sawdusty smell of my bedroom furniture. I closed the drawer and lay on the bed. My collage of Smirnoff adverts had been covered over with an enormous poster of Africa, made up of animals. The zebra, the lion, the elephant, the gazelle and others. I clacked through his cassettes. Ian Dury, Paul Simon, Bach, the Sex Pistols. I wrote Scamp in the layer of light dust on his mirror, thinking it quite funny, then changed my mind and wiped it away. He might assume my mother had done it and think her mischievous, and that was the last thing I wanted.

  I snooped deeply. I noted a framed photograph of Pablo Picasso and a pretty woman, both in their bathing costumes, smoking.

  Later, Mr Holt arrived home and was delighted to see me. ‘Please tell me you’ve made an apple pie,’ he said, with praying hands, and I said, ‘I’m just about to.’ And I did, albeit a crumble. And when we ate it later I began asking about Scamp and the old boys but my mother stood behind him frantically signalling, ‘No,’ which was a habit of hers to keep everything sweet.

  Andy returned and we took a cup of tea up to his (my) room and chatted. I thought I might take my top off but, just as I crossed my arms and took hold of the bottom edge of my shirt, Danny walked in wanting to tell us that his lorry was articulated, which was impressive but not conducive to sex.

  12. ‘Bright Eyes’

  Around that time, maybe a few weeks later, JP surprised me horribly with an invitation to join him and Tammy for lunch at the Golden Fleece–a pub run by a Freemason called Kenneth Benn. We were to be ready to leave
at one o’clock, he said, as he was playing a round of golf later with Bill Turner and couldn’t hang around.

  ‘The noisettes of lamb are highly recommended, I hear,’ JP said.

  I politely declined the offer. It wasn’t just the thought of watching him arrange bits of food on his cutlery, nor my suspicion that either they were trying to entice me into a ménage à trois or that JP wanted to present me to Kenneth Benn as the daughter of city tycoon and Freemason Edward Vogel, it was also that eating out wasn’t a favourite occupation. I hadn’t quite recovered from the realization (at a young age) that the sight of me eating made my mother hate me–an idea born around the same time that my divorced father was very prone to taking us for long restaurant lunches to prevent the possibility of a visit to his new life.

  Things happened during those lunches–dramatic and troubling things. For instance, the time my brother, Jack, pretended to be a dog and ran around under the tables barking, and bit my father’s hand in front of everyone. The time we were seen by our mother’s cousin in a restaurant with our father and she reported back to our mother that we’d seemed to be having ‘a fine time’ and our mother had been terribly hurt by this and surprised because we always, always told her what a terrible ordeal it was. And the time, early on, when we went to Fenwick’s of Leicester’s dining room to be introduced to the wife our father had just married and the waitress gave us too few bread rolls.

  We’d seen the marriage announced in the newspaper and sent them a home-made card. None of us was very good at drawing women and so our mother had had to do the bride and she made her a bit grotty with a huge neck but none of us dared complain. And here the wife was, in Fenwick’s–the new Mrs Vogel, in real life looking like Shirley Partridge, smiling and touching her earrings. She wore clip-ons and told a funny story about one falling into the soup on their honeymoon cruise and splashing the captain.

  Although captivated by my new stepmother’s charming story, I’d noticed that everyone except me had taken a roll from the bread basket, and now there were none.

  ‘Yes,’ my father was saying, ‘the captain’s smart white uniform was covered in green spots,’ and I interrupted him with the news about the rolls.

  ‘Don’t worry, Liza,’ he said (he called me that sometimes), ‘call the waitress over and ask her to bring you one.’ Everyone paused to watch me do it but I didn’t, I couldn’t–I was just a small child and not ready to call waitresses over. My father drummed his fingers, waiting so that he and Shirley Partridge could continue with their honeymoon tales and maybe even burst into ‘I Think I Love You’–him singing, her on tambourine. After a while, my siblings resumed chattering, tore into their rolls and attacked the butter. I wished I were dead.

  Suddenly, in the distance, a door swung open and there, all in white–half-surgeon, half-saint–was the waitress holding a roll in a pair of silver tongs, as carefully as if it were one of my vital organs.

  ‘Madam,’ she said, placing it down, ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I cried two tiny tears of relief that no one saw but Shirley. I’d have loved to fall into her arms, but obviously never would. And neither could I relate the whole thing to my real loving mother because she’d dig around in the details and find a version of the event in which she was being personally snubbed.

  ‘Oh, won’t you come with us to the Golden Fleece, Lizzie?’ Tammy pleaded. ‘Don’t you want to?’

  ‘I do want to,’ I said. ‘It’s just I don’t usually eat in public.’

  When JP and Tammy got back from the Golden Fleece at two-ish they were snarky. I asked how the meal had gone and Tammy told me I’d been sensible to decline–she’d ordered the noisettes of lamb and it had been like eating rubber bands, and Kenneth Benn had been smarmy as heck.

  ‘You dodged a bullet, Lizzie,’ she said.

  JP denied it angrily, and said his lamb had been perfectly tender and Ken most hospitable.

  Tammy faffed around in the utility room for a few moments and then, realizing she was running late for her hair appointment, asked me if I’d mind moving the cactuses out of the waiting room to the shaded bench in the garden.

  ‘They need their outside time,’ she said.

  I said that would be fine.

  JP went upstairs to the empty surgery for a rest. He was good at taking naps and often had twenty minutes. Sometimes he’d have a cassette of Neil Sedaka or The Mikado going and I’d hear him shouting along to ‘Oh, Carol’, ‘Tit Willow’, or ‘Three Little Maids’. This particular afternoon, it was Art Garfunkel, and soon he was singing along to ‘Bright Eyes’. It’s a dreamy kind of song, as you might know, with a lovely melody and compelling lyrics (dreams, rivers, fog, eyes) and I couldn’t help but sing along and harmonise. Before we got to the last chorus though, the waiting-room door interrupted us and I was surprised to see Priti. She looked ghastly–a terrible swelling around her mouth was dragging her lower eyelid down, giving her a zombified appearance. I was reminded briefly of Holly the buck rabbit arriving at Watership Down, after escaping the Sandleford warren and being nursed back to health.

  ‘My God, Priti, what’s happened?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got such pain,’ she murmured. ‘Can the dentist help me?’

  JP hated seeing casual patients, especially just before golf–when he apparently really needed the rest. But after my mother had called him a xenophobe, seeing Priti in this state, and knowing JP had at least thirty minutes before he had to leave, I ran upstairs–after settling Priti with a Woman’s Own and a tissue–knocked assertively and put my head round the door.

  He wasn’t napping, he was fiddling around with a screwdriver adjusting the chair.

  ‘Da-de-da-da-de burned so brightly, la-da-da-da so pale…’ JP sang.

  ‘JP, there’s a casual with toothache, will you see her?’

  ‘Is he coloured?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s Indian.’ I looked him steadily in the eye.

  ‘Da-de-de-de-da burned so brightly…’ he sang.

  Then: ‘It’s not one of your mother’s friends, is it?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s the girl Tammy kicked in the face–she’s in a lot of pain.’

  ‘Her again, is it? I haven’t got time–send her up to the FPA,’ he said, and turned away. ‘Bri-ight eyes…’

  ‘I think you have got time.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You’re meeting Bill at three–you’ve plenty of time.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you’re the boss here, I forgot,’ he said.

  ‘She’s in agony,’ I began, ‘and feverish.’

  ‘Off you go now, nurse, please,’ he said, turning up the volume on his radio-cassette player.

  I returned to the waiting room and told Priti that the dentist was unable to see her but that he’d strongly suggested she go up to the FPA and they’d give her a list of dentists who might be able to fit her in. I explained where she needed to go.

  ‘I could walk up there with you,’ I offered.

  ‘Why won’t the dentist see me?’ Her mouth was paralysed with pain.

  ‘He’s too busy.’

  ‘But there’s no one else here,’ said Priti, her voice trembling, gesturing around the empty room.

  ‘How can the light da-da-da-da-da suddenly burn so pale?’ drifted down through the ceiling.

  ‘It’s his golf afternoon,’ I said, unable to think of anything better to say.

  Priti’s response to this was shocking. She grabbed a tentacle from one of Tammy’s most impressive Schlumbergera, pulled it off, dropped it to the floor and silently broke down. Tears began dripping down her face, wide, glossy tears that ran along her jawbone and dripped off her chin.

  I picked up the cactus tentacle and stared at her. She tried to speak but the words were lost in a dry, harsh moan that came unbidden from her crumpled mouth. She covered her face with her hands and her body rocked with quiet sobs.

  Upstairs JP had rewound the cassette and as ‘Bright Eyes’ came on for a third time my
sadness turned to anger. How dare he not help her? How could he let someone suffer like this while he tinkered with a screwdriver and played Art Garfunkel? Maybe if he could just see her he’d have a change of heart. I remembered my mother’s words about making monsters less monstrous.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ushering Priti into the hall. ‘I’d like the dentist to see just how much pain you’re in–and maybe he’ll be able to help.’

  We ascended the stairs one step at a time, and at the door to the spare surgery, I knocked.

  ‘Ye-es?’ said JP. I pushed Priti gently into the room before me.

  ‘Erm, sorry to bother you again but this is the patient. I thought you should see how poorly she looks.’

  I was shocked to see JP now lying on the dental chair, in swimming trunks and protective goggles, under a sunlamp. I tried to retreat, pulling on Priti’s sleeve, but JP shot up, pushed his goggles on to his forehead, turned and looked at us in disbelief.

  ‘There’s a high wind in the trees, a cold sound in the air, and nobody ever knows when you go, and where do you start? Oh, into the dark,’ sang Art Garfunkel.

  JP squirmed in the chair and flicked the cassette player off.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, nurse?’ he shouted. ‘Get her out of here at once.’

  Back in the waiting room I apologized profusely to Priti. ‘I didn’t realize he was under the sunlamp.’

  We heard the front door slam and through the window I saw JP dart across the road with his club bag bashing against his hip.

  Priti started to leave but I told her to wait. It was ridiculous. If her pain had been in her toe, her arm, her leg, her stomach, she’d have gone to the GP and had it cleaned up, looked at, fixed and medicated for free, but because it was in her mouth, she was turned away. It was insane.