Reasons to Be Cheerful

by Nina Stibbe

  ‘God, no, you did the right thing,’ he said, ‘but you must be careful.’

  Then I told him how I’d extracted JP’s root–I couldn’t help myself. He was shocked and impressed, couldn’t believe it, and wanted all the details.

  ‘Was it difficult?’

  ‘Not really, only like getting an awkward eyebrow hair–once I’d got hold of it, I just wiggled it out.’

  ‘You’re a real little dentist now,’ he said, with pride.

  14. The American Sabbatical

  The surgery was going to be closed while JP and Tammy had a week in Dubrovnik with Bill and Jossy Turner. This closure coincided with the Mercurial Laboratory also being closed–it being one of the weeks of the so-called ‘Leicester fortnight’, during which many factories and businesses closed down and the city became a ghost town. The point being that Andy would have the week off too. I had been on the point of asking if he fancied going away together for a few days, maybe to Blakeney or Wells, and mentioned this to my mother.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘if Mr Holt is planning a trip over to Norfolk to visit his mother he might give us a lift.’

  I was imagining a week of beach walks, sea dips, birdwatching and sex. Andy roaming, gazing at swooping seabirds through his binoculars, and then spying me in the dunes, wearing my parka with nothing underneath. But my mother advised me against bothering Andy.

  ‘I believe he’s planning a solo birdwatching trip along the coast of Suffolk,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘but I’d like Suffolk too.’ I could write some articles about life on the east coast, I thought, and maybe do a watercolour or two, and relocate the sexy games to Walberswick dunes. But my mother felt the word ‘solo’ was a clue to Andy’s intentions.

  ‘I think he’s planning to have some time alone,’ she said. ‘You know, solo.’

  This irritated me no end, Andy Nicolello thinking he could just crash into our lives, cause ructions and necessitate the swapping of curtains. And now the holidays were here and he thought it fine to just disappear on his own.

  ‘I could still go with him,’ I said. ‘He’d have plenty of time alone–the two of us need only meet up at the end of the day and have a rudimentary supper in our digs.’

  ‘I think Andy really needs some space.’

  How was my mother the expert on what Andy wanted and needed? What about what I wanted and needed? Or was it that she secretly planned to whizz up the A14 in her parka with nothing underneath?

  I didn’t suggest anything to Andy for that week. He went off on his own with his binoculars and a notepad and a book about peregrine falcons. And with nothing else available to me, except going to stay in Andy’s empty bed to spy on my mother, I invited myself to my father’s house for a couple of days, to see them and also to investigate their USA plan, which suddenly seemed quite interesting. For the remainder of the week I’d do DIY jobs in my flat while listening to music, and possibly write an article entitled ‘Mothers’.

  Before going to my father’s, I met up with my sister at the Hungry I Pancake House. She was full of Massachusetts.

  ‘Whoever gets to go to the States will be eating lots more pancakes–they practically live off them over there and fill them with cherries and ham and God knows what.’

  The more we discussed Massachusetts, the more I felt I should be the one offered the opportunity–my sister and brother were already so successful and I was very much in a rut with nothing much on the horizon, only Andy, and to be honest, where was that going?

  ‘Why would they pick you to go with them?’ I’d asked my sister. ‘You’ve never shown any interest in them before.’

  ‘I’m the obvious choice. I’d help them settle and then get a job and be a perfect role model,’ she’d replied, and continued, ‘The USA is crying out for trained nurses who speak English and have a psychology diploma.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said, ‘the USA has its own trained nurses. You’d seem very old-fashioned over there compared to American nurses.’

  ‘What do American nurses have that I don’t have?’

  ‘Confidence!’ I shouted, which was a bit low of me.

  My sister laughed. ‘So what skills could you take over there?’ she asked.

  ‘Dental nursing. I’m in training, plus I’m working on my A to Z of Dentistry.’

  ‘You must be fucking joking,’ she said. ‘Have you seen their teeth over there?’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They’re light years ahead in dentistry. You’d never get a job in a dental clinic over there with your teeth–they’d laugh in your face.’

  That rang true, actually. I’d heard JP and Bill Turner marvelling at the veneer work Brits were getting done in the States and coming home with. The dazzling white teeth literally shone out of the mouth as if they were illuminated from within. Unnaturally white teeth were a thing some people were particularly keen on, I’d noticed, especially middle-aged men. So perhaps dental nursing wouldn’t be an option for me, but I could go anyway–in the first instance as a kind of daughter-cum-au pair and then launch myself as the USA correspondent for Woman’s Own. I could pick up all sorts of American lifestyle tips that would enchant and enthral our British readers.

  How does Rosalynn Carter keep her trim figure in spite of a peanut addiction?

  How do American women cope with the modern problems such as indecent exposure, sexual betrayal, the side effects of the contraceptive pill, and creasy eyeshadow?

  Do they mind not having a queen/king?

  Do they get French cheeses and if so, how, and what do they serve it with?

  Why do American women like English men so much when they sound so stuffy?

  Why do Americans serve such big lunch portions?

  How do they keep their turkey moist during cooking?

  Why do their cars have to be so big?

  Racoons?

  The history of that double-wink, with the right eye, then the left.

  And all the above was without even going there and seeing it for myself in real life; there would literally be no end of things to report on. It gave me butterflies and goosebumps just thinking about it.

  By the end of our pancake lunch, my sister and I were in a race for the USA but we agreed on one thing–we’d keep it between the two of us. If Jack got wind of it, he’d go straight to the head of the queue, being a boy, and clever.

  ‘If anyone gets to have a year in the USA with Dad it should be one of us girls,’ said my sister.

  ‘And we must stop saying “queue”,’ I said. ‘It’s “line”.’

  ‘And you must learn to drive,’ said my sister, which was true.

  It wasn’t going to be difficult, I thought, to get ahead of Tina in the race for America. She seemed to have forgotten the impact of the face-to-face encounter and only made the odd phone call reminding them how medically qualified she was becoming, with new courses and modules stretching a year ahead. This would mean nothing, though; if they had to choose between the two of us, they’d only remember her as a needy vegetarian with a habit of speaking the truth at the worst moments. Whereas I was going to stay with them, in person, and my jolly presence and tips on how to make frothy coffee, and combat bad breath and dental sensitivity, would be at the forefront of their minds for weeks afterwards.

  Knocking on the door of your father’s family home is a horrible thing. Anyone who has done this will know. You knock, he lets you in and goes overboard with how welcome you are. His new children’s intimacy with him hits you every time. They talk to him, call him an old silly and they burp but he doesn’t mind really. And then it turns out your half-siblings play Beatles records at the wrong speed just for fun, and your half-brother knows all the words to ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Sergeant Pepper’ and they have all the records, in their sleeves, and this is all heartbreaking.

  Of course, the ‘American Sabbatical’–that’s what they were calling it–cropped up. Firstly, that they probably wouldn’t be going until 1982, which
was months and months away; a child in a straw boater piped up, ‘It’s because of my Latin classes.’

  ‘Why, do they not have Latin classes over there?’ I asked, and my stepmother moved in to shield the girl from my question.

  ‘Timing is important,’ she said, ‘educationally.’

  My stepmother mentioned that my father was very much at home in the USA.

  ‘He seems to go down very well there.’

  ‘Why is that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s his very Englishness they take to, coupled with his funny Americanisms.’

  She and my father then told various anecdotes about people being delighted at my father saying, ‘Howdy y’all,’ and so on, but in his royal voice.

  My father’s house was most charming, with rickety patterned floor tiles that knocked together under your feet. Mrs Penrose wandered about with beeswax polish, and an old apple tree creaked by a flaky red-brick garden wall. To have an old apple tree seemed such a delightful thing–I thought of our spindly young trees, put in by Mr Holt after Dutch elm disease had done for every tree on our estate and beyond, which still showed no sign of fruit, only papery blossom.

  The youngest child clambered up the tree as if reading my mind, and I watched my father, amused but fretting that she might fall out. It was a curious scene; the child was barely four feet up and perfectly able-bodied. I thought of all the trees I’d climbed–some seven foot at least, not to mention the roofs and windowsills–if only he’d known. If only I’d known this was all it took. I imagined all the confidence I’d ever had swirling about in the branches of all the trees I’d climbed, disappearing in the breeze like petals, because no one had stood at the bottom calling, ‘Be careful, Lizzie.’

  When the child protested that she couldn’t get down, my father called, ‘Oh, you silly nitwit,’ and fetched a ladder.

  In the morning I heard my father move through the bedrooms, swishing the curtains back and waking the children, one by one.

  ‘Good morning, [name], it’s another lovely day.’

  And I imagined their sleepy little eyes opening on the new day. How lucky they were. I imagined hearing this every morning in Massachusetts.

  I stayed in bed until nine even though I’d been wide awake since seven and by the time I got downstairs they were all togged up for a walk in the woods. I went with them but I couldn’t get the morning greeting out of my head. ‘Good morning, [name], it’s another lovely day.’

  One of the children saw me smoking and another saw me not smiling–and all the things I did or said, or didn’t do, meant so much to them but nothing to me because I was only acting–for Massachusetts. And then, to cap everything else, my father and his wife’s friends, Gita and Prideep, came for supper and talked about the danger of aerosols to the environment, poor old Robert Runcie having to drive up and down the Dover Road, and Mrs Thatcher writing to Mr Carter asking for missiles–and I had nothing to say except that my colleague might have a test-tube baby.

  I felt Massachusetts slipping away and I’m ashamed to admit that, before I left, I went to the velvet-lined cutlery box they had in the dining room and helped myself to a silver rat-tail teaspoon.

  15. Woman’s Own

  Intuition told me I wouldn’t be going to Massachusetts with my father. My brother wouldn’t go either–he’d be too busy dissecting crabs or watching zebra gallop patterns at the University College. I doubted my sister would be invited; she’d ruin the family vibe with awkward comments like at a recent dinner where the middle child had played Vivaldi in plaits and a Victorian blouse, and my sister had said, ‘Do you know “Ring My Bell”?’

  If I wasn’t going to become the Woman’s Own USA correspondent, based in Massachusetts, I’d go to London instead and get a job and become a writer in my spare time, which would be considerable. Writing was one of those careers that needs no qualifications–a thing my mother endlessly mentioned–but to have written reams and reams of stories, essays, articles and poems, which would be doable in London, the city being so conducive to it.

  ‘Writers just have to write, like artists, musicians and criminals. They just need to keep going at it,’ she’d say. And, ‘The old writers are falling like flies–Barbara Pym, C. P. Snow, Elizabeth Bishop, all gone this year.’

  And you see, I had the benefit of my mother’s innate knowledge of the publishing industry. Quite how she knew so much, I don’t know–but she seemed to know more than the actual professionals. I wouldn’t be bothering Faber & Faber and trying to write a literary masterpiece to beat all the grotty old men to the prizes and recognition, though. I shouldn’t even want to write a book, as such. I’d write my column for Woman’s Own and try to bring it up to date for the younger reader, and if Woman’s Own didn’t want my column (it being too young in tone) I’d offer it to Woman which was that bit younger.

  I’d research which toothpaste was actually best for fresh breath, not which was the most advertised (Colgate) or had the nicest name (Crest) or the nicest colour (Aquafresh) or was the gentlest (Sensodyne). I’d conduct a fresh-breath test–feeding a bunch of women garlic-and-herb cheese on toast with spring onions and chilli powder, and then getting them each to clean their teeth with a different brand, and finally asking a really fussy man, say JP, to declare a winner.

  I say a man like JP because he was extremely anti smelly foods and had banned his previous two wives and now Tammy from eating onions unless they were Whitworth’s dried variety (and you know my views on dried veg of all kinds), and frequently complained that my cooking made the building smell ‘like Calcutta’.

  Extrapolating, I might research an article about all the things men don’t like women doing. (‘He’d Rather You Refrained From…’) I could interview women in London and produce a league table of worst things. My own limited experience suggested that men disliked women driving, eating onions and spices, having a dog, talking about sport, laughing loudly, spending money on fripperies, disagreeing with them, chatting on the phone, climbing trees, talking about dogs, mowing the lawn in flip-flops, wearing too much make-up, being too fat, being too keen, worrying and reading the news on TV.

  The readers could decide for themselves how they might react to the findings. One woman might stop talking about dogs to please her husband, another might suddenly take up laughing and golf just to make hers suffer. It would be entirely up to you, the individual.

  I’d already been working on a piece about the brain entitled, ‘Who is in Charge Here?’ about how never to read the newspaper when you’re eating your lunch because your brain–focused and worried about the news–can fail to notice that you’re also eating… and even after a huge cheese-and-pickle cob it will stop worrying about nuclear war and start wondering, ‘Where’s my lunch?’ even though you’ve just eaten it. And how sniffing lemon peel can help you remember people’s names. And how chanting can soothe period pain. And how giving your brain a name could raise your intelligence and what are good names for brains and that ninety per cent of women asked to name their brain called it Brian. And only ten per cent of men did. OK, I made up the brain names thing, but I bet it’s fairly accurate. That’s how suited I was–and still am–to magazine journalism.

  On a dull but serious note, I thought I might write about how to avoid athlete’s foot. I might test all the preparations on the market. But then, I thought, maybe not. Maybe athlete’s foot is just too unattractive a subject. But then again, maybe that could be my specialism (‘The Uncomfortable Truth’) and I could implore young women not to waste so much money and time on cosmetics and bubble bath and instead buy their own car with the money they saved. I’d urge all woman to get a car. For I had noticed a link between women with their own car and other good things.

  Or I could stick to the same old stuff: which soaps go soggy in water, why baths are safer than showers, why showers are more healthy than baths, why baths are better at cleaning intimate areas, why showers are better at preventing thrush, how showers cure depression, how baths are good for r
eading, how showers save water, how will we bathe after a nuclear attack, why some people hate pulling the plug out while they’re still in the bath (feelings of desolation and loss), and why some people like it (the sense of toxins being dragged away down the plughole).

  16. A Good Bash

  Tammy’s birthday came round on the Friday before her party and she and JP had a full-blown argument. In front of me.

  JP had asked Bill’s nurse Rhona to walk on his back.

  He’d asked me as well but I’d refused because I hated him and, even if I didn’t, I’d seen this kind of thing before and knew never to do anything physical with anyone except in a life-saving scenario. I’d seen things go horribly wrong, like the time my mother pulled a man’s head sharply round to relieve a muscle ache–and the man has had to wear a neck brace ever since, except when in the bath, and can only cross the road on a zebra.

  Anyway, Tammy was terribly upset when she found out about Rhona’s back-walking.

  ‘What’s the problem? She walked on my back,’ JP said. ‘I’ve got lumbago.’

  ‘You know that back-walking is highly erotic!’ Tammy shouted. ‘I used to walk on your back, and then look what happened–you left your wife.’

  JP seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘The two things weren’t connected.’

  ‘Well, you definitely used to get aroused by it.’

  Later, she apologized for this all going on in front of me but went on to say she felt vulnerable because of the ‘breeding programme’.

  ‘It’s really changed everything, you know, having to have sex in the mornings when he’s most likely to be fully able, but I feel like heck and haven’t even had my sugar-free Alpen.’

  I told her I didn’t mind. I wasn’t really listening.

  ‘You are coming to my party, aren’t you?’ she said.

  I had been keeping quiet about it because I really didn’t want to go but felt guilty because, well… poor Tammy.