Reasons to Be Cheerful

by Nina Stibbe

  ‘What, you think I shouldn’t have accepted driving lessons because you weren’t offered?’

  ‘It seems disloyal,’ I said, realizing I should have rehearsed this better.

  ‘Disloyal? How?’

  I wanted an analogy. An ‘imagine how you’d feel’ but it was pointless.

  ‘You know what you are, don’t you?’ I said.

  ‘What am I?’

  ‘You’re her replacement Angelo.’

  Andy looked confused and put both hands up in a gesture of calm.

  ‘OK, see ya,’ he said and walked smartly to the door.

  ‘And a cuckoo,’ I said, though so quietly I wasn’t sure he heard.

  On my next driving lesson, I confirmed with Mrs Woodward that she had been quite right–my mother was teaching the lab technician to drive.

  ‘I saw it with my own eyes,’ she said, ‘but maybe she’s just giving him practice and he’s having driving lessons with a professional?’

  ‘No, she’s teaching him. He’s had a lifetime of driving around on various motorized vehicles–and, knowing him, he’ll pass first time.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Woodward, ‘you’ll just have to pass first time as well.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘And I’ll stop taking my insomnia tablets,’ she said. ‘I need to be more alert.’

  Andy and I had split up. Had we? Or had we not quite ever got together? I wasn’t sure. But now he was at my house, in my room, and with my mother. I felt uneasy and trapped and then laughed it off and then back again. I wanted to pass my driving test before he passed his, or asap afterwards. That was going to be my focus as far as Andy was concerned.

  I needed all the driving practice I could get and I asked everyone I knew with a car, including JP.

  ‘Are you telling us that your mother’s giving the lab boy driving lessons?’ he asked, puffing away one afternoon at tea break.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she is.’

  ‘You don’t think they’re involved, do you?’ asked Tammy.

  ‘I wouldn’t put anything past the pair of them,’ said JP, and to give him credit, he immediately apologized. ‘Sorry, nurse, but you must admit, it’s rum.’

  I looked at JP, puffing away and exhaling through his curled-up, hammy tongue, and then at Tammy, sipping at her teacup and flicking the ash off JP’s cigarette.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’d be very suspicious if it were my mother, but then she can’t drive, and she’s not like that, so it wouldn’t arise,’ said Tammy.

  I picked up the receiver on the telephone extension.

  ‘Let’s find out,’ I said and dialled Mercurial.

  Tammy and JP looked alarmed.

  ‘Mercurial,’ answered Mr Burridge at the other end.

  ‘Hello, Mr Burridge,’ I said. ‘Is Andy around? It’s Lizzie from Wintergreen.’

  ‘Hold the line.’

  ‘Yes?’ came Andy’s voice.

  ‘Hi, sorry to bother you–it’s our tea break and JP and Tammy were just wondering if there might be anything untoward going on between my mother and you.’

  ‘She’s teaching me to drive.’

  ‘So you’re not embroiled or anything?’ I said, holding the receiver outwards so JP and Tammy could hear.

  ‘No, we’re not. Is that all?’ Andy said. ‘And why are you interested in what that fucking twat thinks anyway?’

  ‘Yes, that’s all,’ I confirmed and hung up.

  ‘Apparently not,’ I said, feeling slightly like Sue Ellen Ewing.

  The following Saturday afternoon I did the mature thing and went over to have dinner with my family. Andy was there watching sports on the telly with Jack and it all felt a bit awkward but he did brew up a pot of coffee and we all sipped and chatted politely. The moment we’d finished, my mother announced that she’d be taking Andy out for a drive before dinner and that dinner would be cauliflower cheese and oven chips–if anyone felt like cooking. I must say a word here about McCain oven chips; they’d just come on to the market and were a miracle for people who loved chips but didn’t want to have a chip pan going. I didn’t love them per se, but benefited nonetheless via the life-changing joy and convenience they brought. The availability of McCain’s meant, overall, more chips but less fuss. I remember grilling them, for speed, but I can’t guarantee that was included in the official instructions.

  ‘Lizzie, come driving with us,’ Andy said. ‘You might pick up some tips.’

  It seems sarcastic written down, but that wasn’t his style–he was being generous. My mother wasn’t so keen, though. Andy’s lesson was an official teaching and learning scenario and therefore if I insisted on coming I must be invisible and not speak. ‘Andy has his test coming up. He needs to concentrate and not have you giggling in the back seat.’

  My mother’s cars were never just vehicles. The Flying Pea, for instance, contained two smart, closeable ashtrays stuck to the dashboard via suction pads. There were assorted nylon blankets and cushions, fruit drinks and peanuts and snacks for Danny such as raisins and crisps. There was a cassette player that worked even if the engine was switched off, and lots of stationery in a polythene bag. My mother often did her paperwork in the car, parked up in field gateways. This was a trick to avoid going home that she’d learned from Mr Holt who also did his paperwork in the van–and more than once he had pulled into a favourite gateway to do a couple of hours’ work only to find she had got there first.

  Once they’d had a row. Mr Holt, claiming to have much more to do, had asked my mother to find another gateway, or go home and do hers there.

  My mother had had to quietly explain to him that the moment she stepped through the door, the young of the herd would drag her down, pull on her, cling to her, and demand that she feed them, and so affecting were their cries and grabby hands that she might as well take her stock-check forms, dockets, contracts, daily call sheets, complaints and orders, and smear them all over with Alphabetti Spaghetti and kid wee because that was the effect of the home on her work.

  Whereas, the moment they heard the telltale throb of Mr Holt’s van outside they’d turn down the volume on the television, do a hasty tidy-up, and at least one of them might greet him at the door, asking if he’d like a cup of coffee.

  I sat back and marvelled at my mother’s teaching style; she was much better than Mrs Woodward.

  ‘No!’ she’d yell. ‘Stay in third.’ Or, ‘OK, overtake that tractor–if it’s safe to do so.’

  Andy looked adorable, thoughtful, slightly anxious, pressing his lips together in concentration, and after my mother said, ‘Take the next left,’ he’d repeat, ‘Left.’

  The cushions and blankets made the back seat cosy. I noticed there were new blankets–dark pink, fringed, and therefore erotic-looking. And I began thinking how well they got along, like mother and son, but a mother and son where the mother has never called the son a greedy little bastard or said, ‘Well, if you like your father so much, why don’t you just go and live with the fucker?’ And then I was asleep all among the erotic blankets, lulled by the smooth motion of Andy’s expert driving, and the mumbling voices.

  I woke to hear my mother’s voice.

  ‘OK, pull in over there, we’ll have a short break.’

  And as Andy faffed around positioning the vehicle, she lit them a cigarette each. It seemed less mother-and-son-like all of a sudden as she chugged down a blackcurrant-and-apple juice and wiped her mouth on her hand.

  ‘Look at that view,’ she said.

  I looked out and saw giant water-filled tyre tracks in the verge beside us, and a lichen-covered, wooden gate held shut with a loop of plaited baler twine, and then the gentle valley beyond. To my surprise Andy started saying how much he hated the city.

  ‘I mean, it’s great for work, but I hate the bustle, the grime, the stress,’ he said. ‘I could never live there.’

  ‘I know,’ said my mother. ‘You belong here among all this.’

  �
��Yes.’

  ‘I love to visit cities, but for life, I’d miss the hedgerows too much, the frozen ditches, the steaming cows,’ she said.

  ‘The fresh air, and the birdlife,’ continued Andy.

  ‘The puddles in the lanes, and the angry jaybirds shouting in the branches.’

  ‘The darkness of the night.’

  ‘Yes, unadulterated darkness. You never see the stars properly in the city.’

  ‘What about cultural opportunities?’ I interrupted. ‘And the live-and-let-live attitude?’

  They both jumped slightly.

  ‘Christ almighty, Lizzie!’ My mother turned to face me, hand on chest. ‘I’d completely forgotten you were there.’

  ‘If the city is so terrible, how come you encouraged me to go and live there?’ I asked. ‘I miss the frozen ditches too.’

  She laughed. ‘Everyone needs some time in the city.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Andy.

  ‘No, men don’t have to worry about such things in quite the same way,’ said my mother, and while we pondered this, she continued, ‘Actually, shall I leave you two to walk back, and Lizzie can get some fresh air?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Andy, ‘great idea.’ He grinned at me and we got out and watched as my mother sped off.

  Andy linked arms with me and we strolled along the lanes I knew so well, and loved and missed, and which were now his lanes, and after a while Andy pushed his hand gently up into the back of my hair, fingers splayed. And I let my hand rest inside his waistband and felt his buttock muscles moving, one at a time. It seemed about as erotic as a walk could be without stopping to have sex. It seemed we were still on intimate terms.

  ‘How would you be able to live in London,’ I asked, ‘if you can’t even cope with Leicester?’

  ‘I don’t think I could live in London.’

  ‘But I thought you might want to, later on.’

  ‘It might seem bearable, later, but I doubt it.’

  ‘But I definitely want to go,’ I said. ‘Would me being there make it bearable?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  And instead of going straight home, we called in to the King’s Head and played darts. I got an accidental bull’s eye and wanted to celebrate but a bull’s eye is only a cause for celebration if you’re aiming for one and I hadn’t been. I’d been aiming lower.

  ‘Let’s get something to eat here,’ said Andy.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I’d better get home and put the oven chips on.’

  Walking home I told Andy I didn’t like him having driving lessons with my mother. It wasn’t because she’d refused me, I told him, it was a different thing now I’d seen them together.

  ‘She might try something on,’ I said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘She might throw herself at you.’

  ‘Oh, does that run in the family?’ said Andy, laughing.

  ‘No, seriously. You should be on your guard, especially on driving lessons, when you park up in gateways, like just then.’

  ‘Actually, a friend of mine said the same thing.’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘Willie Bevan.’

  ‘Who’s Willie Bevan?’

  ‘Oh, just this bloke at work.’

  ‘And what did Willie Bevan say?’

  ‘That she’s a bit of a goer and might have ulterior motives.’

  ‘A goer? What’s that?’

  ‘A goer–someone who goes.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I groaned, imagining Fenella Fielding and Ernie Wise.

  ‘Well, you said the same thing yourself, just now,’ said Andy.

  ‘Yes, well, now you know.’

  It all felt too awful. My mother was turning into a sex rival. Willie Bevan knew it and I didn’t even know who Willie Bevan was.

  At home, dinner was fried-egg-and-chip sandwiches. My mother wasn’t hungry but smoked through the meal and kept saying how important it was to know the Highway Code, even the obscure road signs.

  ‘They’re never going to ask you the obvious ones,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know a bloke called Willie Bevan?’ I asked her.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Jack didn’t know Willie Bevan, nor did Mr Holt and neither did I. Willie Bevan is of no consequence to this story whatsoever and yet Willie Bevan had warned Andy that my mother was a goer.

  I looked at Andy.

  ‘I’m off,’ I said quietly.

  Andy, surprised, jumped up with a mouthful of food and followed me to the door.

  ‘Byeee!’ I shouted to the others.

  ‘Bye, see you,’ came the reply.

  ‘Bit sudden?’ said Andy, hand over mouth, polite as ever.

  ‘I can’t stand it any more. It’s all too weird.’

  Andy swallowed his mouthful, blinking, sad, puzzled.

  ‘Shall I come with you?’ he said, frowning, hands upwards in dismay.

  I made an emotional sigh of sadness and looked at the ceiling.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘You belong here.’

  19. Crystal Deep

  Improving the appearance of the waiting room had been at the top of the list of ‘Masonic Improvements’ and now it had been freshened up and had a new, more clinical-style mirror and a bucket for umbrellas, but JP still wasn’t satisfied.

  ‘How does it compare with the waiting room at Cunningham, Pope and Fisher?’ JP asked one day as he gazed in scornfully from the surgery. In truth, Cunningham & Co.’s was like something out of a stately home–velvet chairs, oil paintings and tables with knobbly legs standing on a Turkish rug, all with an aura of graceful opulence.

  ‘They have a Turkish rug,’ I said.

  ‘OK, I’ll get one,’ he said.

  It was just plain bad luck that later that day a patient called Mr Gillespie came in. Mr Gillespie was proprietor of Fur, Fin & Feather–a fact that was hinted at on his dental record. (‘Owns pet shop.’)

  By the end of the fifteen-minute appointment JP was all for getting an aquarium.

  The ‘Crystal Deep’ aquarium was delivered a week later and the fish shortly afterwards. Soon I came to love seeing the shoal of pretty neon tetras, swimming in a loose dart formation, the light glinting off them, making the African violets and cactuses look like the boring old plants they were.

  It was disappointing but typical that after his urgency to acquire them JP had so little interest in the fish. He never looked at them nor asked after their welfare. He was like a divorced father failing to turn up at parents’ evening, sports day, school fete or sickbed, not knowing what his child’s dog was called, or his child’s new baby brother, or that he’d given her origami paper for her last birthday and the one before that.

  I asked JP one day if he was pleased with the Crystal Deep.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Your aquarium,’ I reminded him.

  He glanced through the doorway at it and said, ‘Well, I always think it looks a bit dull, don’t you agree? Maybe we should get one of those angelfish.’

  This was a bad idea and I put him off, explaining that he shouldn’t introduce more fish at that point, certainly not an aggressor like an angel–I’d read the manual. An angel might worry or kill the other fish, I told him. But he bought one anyway, plopped it into the tank and marvelled at its elegance. I watched the tetras dart around the new fish–silver white and still except for its tiny pectoral fins vibrating, ominously, like wasp wings. I felt a great sense of dread and wished I could reach in and remove it.

  ‘He’s a calm fellow,’ said JP, ‘don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, for now, but according to the experts, he might turn nasty.’

  I got down the following morning to find the angel had eaten most of the tetras.

  When JP arrived, I shouted the news at him in a tearful and judgemental way, and then heard him on the phone to Mr Gillespie. The fish were cannibalizing each other, he said (no mention of introducing the angelfish), and after finishing on the phone he told us
the problem was most likely caused by patients tapping on the glass.

  Later that morning, while Tammy made the tea, JP wrote a sign reading, DO NOT TAP ON THE GLASS, and asked me to help him heave the admin desk out of the surgery into a corner of the waiting room. When, after tea break, Tammy noticed the desk gone, and when JP explained that she was going to have to police the aquarium, she objected strongly.

  ‘Absolutely no flipping way am I going to sit out there on my own with those fish,’ she said.

  ‘Just do it, Tammy, for the fish, for Christ’s sake,’ said JP. ‘It won’t be for ever. Just until they settle.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less about the fish,’ said Tammy. ‘Can you imagine how humiliating it’ll be for me, stuck out there asking patients not to tap on the glass?’

  ‘What kind of mother do you think you’re going to be if you can’t make this tiny sacrifice?’ JP asked. ‘Eh?’

  Tammy was furious. Her face went dark red; she let out a loud cry of anger and swiped a cactus off the console. It landed at JP’s feet. The pot and the plant remained intact but dry soil spilled out on to the carpet and dusted his shoes. He turned and went back into the surgery.

  And that was that. Tammy stopped speaking to JP, and didn’t take coffee, tea or cigarette breaks with us. Everything was left to me.

  Tammy and JP’s relationship continued to deteriorate. The two of them didn’t speak unless they had to and then one day, to punish JP, Tammy announced, ‘I’m going back to the flat to stay with Lizzie–for the foreseeable.’

  And the next day she did and I had to hide the portrait of her with Fawn behind the settee in case it caused her any more upset. She wouldn’t take the bedroom but slept on a camp bed in the lounge, wearing her slumber shades. Frankly I’d have preferred it the other way around. This way I couldn’t watch telly or have Andy over (in theory) because the lounge was now her room.

  Tammy went completely off her fertility programme, including going to a delicatessen, buying an andouillette sausage so authentic it boasted about using the pig’s entire gastrointestinal system, and was very much not recommended for babies, invalids or expectant mothers. She smoked, drank heavily, ate seeds, picked up cats and stroked them, went to Jazzercise three times a week–it really seemed as though she was on the lookout for fertility rules to break.