Reasons to Be Cheerful

by Nina Stibbe

  My sister drove her home in the Flying Pea which she’d borrowed until my mother would need it back, and I went over there that day, on the bus, straight from work with a small holdall. I’d taken the rest of the week off.

  It had been agreed that I would sleep in my old room and Andy Nicolello would take the Zedbed in the lounge. I was very grateful, but also felt it was the least he could do.

  I’d been very much looking forward to helping my mother convalesce; the weather was set fair and I imagined it as a kind of holiday, playing Scrabble or working on the novel together. Things weren’t quite as I’d planned though; firstly my mother was much iller than I’d expected–in mental and physical discomfort. The warm weather did at least mean she could lie out on her three-position recliner, though, and rest under the shade of some spindly trees and an umbrella, which was something, and I lay near her on a beach towel. I dragged various bits of furniture outside including a coffee table and assorted seats. It looked rather like the Nicolellos’ encampment.

  I didn’t see much of Mr Holt or Jack or Andy, who all had work and school to go to and were making themselves scarce. Mr Holt, particularly, was averse to getting involved with anything in the health department unless it entailed opening a stiff jar of ointment or digging a grave. My mother’s tired-out uterus having come free of its moorings was to be avoided.

  When she was a bit better, I pointed out that her hair had gone brittle because of the hormonal shock. I’d read about this in a magazine article called ‘Do You Understand Your Hair?’ and I offered her a fifteen-minute moisturizing treatment that had come in a free sachet with that same magazine. She’d seemed keen and I’d combed it through, but then, when it was time to wash it out, she’d flopped down on to the recliner with the treatment still on under a turban, too tired to come inside for a rinse. I read a book with Danny, who then fell asleep next to Sue the dog, who was also asleep, and I lay down and was just dropping off when my mother suddenly said, ‘I’ve had my tubes tied at the same time as the repair–to kill two birds.’

  After my littlest brother baby Danny was born in 1977 Mr Holt had told my mother, ‘No more children.’ And made it clear that if she snuck any more babies out, he’d run away, knowing all too well that she’d had Danny deliberately and without asking and against their ‘no babies’ agreement. The pregnancy had caused ructions until he arrived and was the best baby anyone ever had and as soon as he could smile he smiled and as soon as he could talk he said the nicest things, and lay on the carpet on his stomach, singing with his little legs stirring the air, drawing wax crayon pictures of teapots and dogs. And now he was nearly four and getting nicer by the day.

  She was furious with Mr Holt about the tube-tying, almost as if he’d crept into the operating theatre with his bolt of green gardening twine and, while the real surgeon was distracted by the tulip tattoo on my mother’s flank, begun tying up bits of her pink tubing the way he tied the wayward stems of the climbing rose and willowy beanstalks, with a secure but gentle knot.

  But actually, it had been her choice.

  Mr Holt had only said, ‘Let’s have no more.’

  And she’d said, ‘One more.’

  And then he’d said, ‘No more. We haven’t any money, love, and we’ve got four.’

  And so, because of the past and knowing she couldn’t trust herself to put her thing in, and because she didn’t fancy the inter-uterine device, and the pill made the blood in her veins dangerous, and because she knew that the painful urge to produce had got the better of her more than once, more than twice… she’d had Dr Mutts do it while he was in there, repairing the old equipment.

  I squinted in the sun. I said I was sorry and that we’d all try to be the best we could be so that she wouldn’t need any more babies, and that must have sounded ridiculous because she said that wasn’t the point and she didn’t know what she’d done to deserve such wonderful children, she really didn’t. So I picked up her book and offered to read it to her so she could relax. She was still wearing the turban, with the treatment on her hair underneath. It wouldn’t hurt to give it a bit longer, I thought.

  I began reading aloud from a book my aunt Josephine had sent, On Lies, Secrets and Silence, which I’d expected to be poetry but wasn’t and therefore not easy to read. I wasn’t able to get any flow because it wasn’t the easiest to understand and I’d have to pause every now and again to collect my thoughts–it was boring and devastating by turns. I felt sad and a little angry that my mother had wilfully poisoned herself with men, drink and pills, and starved herself of food and now lay here taunting herself, and me, with selected prose of Adrienne Rich. I closed it.

  ‘I can’t get going on this,’ I said. ‘I’ll read you a magazine instead.’

  She groaned.

  ‘It’s Britain’s top-selling weekly for women,’ I said, and she rolled slowly over and listened as I read her an article about Sylvester Stallone and reincarnation, and then a thing on regressive hypnosis, and then Marguerite Patten’s teatime treat recipes. My skin prickled in the heat and I felt strangely afraid. I looked at my sleeping mother and couldn’t help but wonder what was the point of everything–the teatime treats, the shampoo that knew your hair, the vials of sparkly green eyeshadow, the polka-dot sweater with collar and pocket, tiny chequered headscarves that made us look simple and adorable–if all it boiled down to was this.

  Andy drifted into sight and offered to make some tea. I declined. I’d started to enjoy declining offers of food and drink from him. It was all I had. But to be fair he was keen to be helpful and at one point he threw a rug over the washing line and began banging it with a hard brush.

  ‘You’re throwing up dust,’ I told him.

  Later, he did some gardening, which bothered my mother no end. He reassured her that he’d been trained in gardening and had grown a whole hedge from seed but I doubted it and this proved right when he cut clean through the gnarly stem of the honeysuckle and began yanking it off the shed where it had been delightfully scrambling since the house was built in 1969. I was embarrassed for Andy and sad for my mother who loved well-established climbers with nests and fragrance. But actually, because she’d just had her tubes tied, the honeysuckle didn’t seem such a tragedy.

  Later Andy apologized. ‘I’m sorry about the climber,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing really. It’s got a good old root–it’ll spring up in no time.’ And that must have made her sad because she pretended to yawn and turned away.

  I knew she was expecting visitors. My grandmother was threatening to call in, and my sister and my mother’s friend, the well-meaning idiot, Carrie Frost.

  I pulled myself together and, inspired by Marguerite Patten, I made a pair of sponge cakes and put butter icing in between. Out of pure habit I made the icing in two shades of pink, and had been about to write Get Well Soon across the top in the darker pink but when I practised on a plate, the writing put me in mind of denture gums and women’s tubes. So I daubed it all over the top and dusted it with icing sugar to disguise its fleshy tones.

  My sister arrived and, to my mother’s dismay, had JP Junior in tow. They sat on carver chairs in the garden and Junior had to listen while my mother told him about the time his father had been prejudiced against Abe. Junior seemed terribly unhappy about it all and said, ‘Oh my God,’ a few times, and eventually Tina said, ‘Jesus, Mum, can you stop going on and on about his father.’

  My mother ended by saying it was OK, Abe would have the last laugh because he was great pals with Bill Turner and Jacobs the accountant.

  ‘What are you wearing on your head?’ my sister asked.

  ‘Lizzie has done me a beautifying hair treatment.’

  Mr Holt appeared and joined us and then Jack, and my mother decided, at that moment, to remove the towelling turban. Her hair stood on end in stiff waves, like Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein. To be fair, no one laughed out loud, but snorts escaped and my mother, sensing something wrong, made a lurch to cov
er it up again and was in sudden, acute pain. My sister said, ‘What the hell, Lizzie?’

  It felt for a moment as though my life was caving in on itself. My sister, in a bikini top, arm slung across the shoulders of my boss’s son who was pouring tea and cutting into the pink-iced cake. My boyfriend (ex-boyfriend) sitting next to my recumbant, towel-covered mother, as if protecting her from me. Mr Holt, awkward, looming over us but unwilling to sit among us, for fear of being trapped in the frightful tableau. Little Jack, who’d always been a boy, with moped grease under his fingernails, no longer little, and baby Danny, saying things like ‘architectural’ and ‘kebab’.

  Junior offered a plate of cake to my mother, and my sister said, ‘Not for her, June, she’s borderline anorexic.’ And somehow that made everyone laugh again, but openly this time–though what we were laughing at, I do not know, and my own laughter very nearly turned to tears. And then, to cap it all, Granny Benson arrived. To her credit, she had brought my mother a tin of fruit drops for refreshment, and suggested she go inside now as it was getting chilly, which was quite right and motherly.

  ‘Good grief!’ she said. ‘Who are all these enormous men?’ and touched her hair, and then, for something else to say, turned to me. ‘How’s the driving going, Lizzie?’

  ‘Slowly,’ I said, and so, after a small whisky and soda, she let me take her for a spin around the block in her Volkswagen. She agreed that I was a bit clunky and offered to pick me up one day the following week–I could drive her to the hairdresser and the library and we could have tea at her house, she said. And though she was a bossy boots, and usually to be avoided, I was glad of the offer.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said.

  I left after five days, by which time my mother was quite back to normal, mentally if not physically. I told her that Andy and I were not going out, as such, any longer and she was surprised.

  ‘Oh, why?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s just not working–he’s weird, I’m weird, I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘I was annoyed with him for having driving lessons from you when I couldn’t,’ I said, ‘and then it went wrong from there.’

  ‘Well, I can’t just chuck him out, if that’s what you’re suggesting,’ she said, ‘like some sort of Rachman.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t suggesting that, but you could give him notice, say six months. That would be plenty long enough for him to fix up somewhere else.’

  ‘But then what? We actually need his rent.’

  ‘Get another lodger.’

  ‘But we like him.’

  And then we stopped discussing it because Andy was probably somewhere around and I felt confused and sad about the whole thing.

  22. Immediate Restoration

  I was at home in my flat the following Sunday when Andy appeared, unexpectedly, and acted as if nothing had happened, and I gave him a cup of coffee. And then Priti was at the door, also unexpectedly. Her tooth was hurting again, so I walked her round to the emergency dental clinic which was open at the weekends on Granville Road, near to my flat. The dentist on duty, by chance, was Bill Turner.

  It was that same upper left two bothering her, of course.

  Bill had a look around her mouth. She jumped when he touched her upper left incisors.

  ‘This is all rather sensitive up here, is it?’ he said.

  Priti nodded. He tapped again. She jumped. He tapped and she cried out.

  Bill told her the tooth could most likely not be saved and that the only option was to take it out. But that this would leave a gap, right at the front of her mouth. He asked her if she thought she’d be able to manage the pain with painkillers and antibiotics while her own dentist made her a denture to put into the socket.

  ‘If I take this tooth out today,’ he explained, ‘you can’t have a temporary denture put in the gap for some weeks, until the socket has healed. If I extract it today, you must find another dentist to make you a false tooth. This clinic is only for emergency procedures–we don’t make dentures.’ Bill spoke as though Priti were an idiot.

  ‘OK,’ she said, seeming bewildered. ‘I don’t want a missing front tooth.’

  ‘Well, if you can hang on and see your own dentist and get a denture made, he can fit it straight into the socket, and later make you a bridge.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So you’re going to try to hang on?’ Bill Turner checked.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered for Priti, who looked ghastly.

  ‘Yes,’ she repeated.

  Bill wrote her a prescription for some strong painkillers. He seemed to assume JP was Priti’s dentist.

  ‘The nurse can book you in,’ he said.

  ‘Could you take her on, Bill?’ I asked, using his name to remind him how well we knew each other.

  ‘I’m full to bursting,’ he said. ‘I could see her on my private list–but since she’s a friend of yours, why not book her in with JP?’

  ‘He’s full too.’

  Priti took her prescription and we left.

  Priti came back to the flat with me. She was horrified at the thought of going to school with a gap at the front of her mouth.

  ‘If that happens, I will leave school,’ she said.

  Andy ran down to the pharmacy at the infirmary to have Priti’s prescription made up. And by the time he got back I had it all worked out.

  ‘We could treat her,’ I said quietly, at the kitchen sink.

  ‘Who could?’ said Andy.

  ‘We could. You make the denture and I’ll extract the tooth.’

  ‘Can you do that?’

  ‘I treat everyone else, why not her? She needs us.’

  I had it all worked out. Andy would take the impressions, now, that day, and make the denture in his lunch hour over the following days–to fit immediately after I’d extracted the tooth, which I’d do as soon as possible. It was all entirely normal, except that I wasn’t actually a dentist.

  ‘We could have it done by Tuesday,’ I said. ‘She’s never going to find a dentist to do this on the NHS–and you know it.’

  ‘But then she’d have a denture,’ Andy said. ‘She won’t want a denture.’

  ‘She’s got no choice,’ I whispered. ‘She’s not registered anywhere.’

  I appealed to Andy along political lines, knowing it was my best bet. ‘Dentists aren’t providing dentures on the NHS except for their long-standing patients, and people like Priti are falling into a gap.’ I almost asked him to excuse the pun, but didn’t. ‘You know this. You see the work coming into the lab, and it’s nearly all private, isn’t it?’

  Andy jabbed at the sugar with a teaspoon while he thought about this.

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘And then, once it’s all settled down,’ I said, ‘you can make her a bridge, and it’ll be perfect and free and justice will be served.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Andy.

  We put the idea to Priti and she seemed quite relaxed about it. We planned it all out, including the idea of replacing the denture with a bridge in a few months’ time. Andy made absolutely sure she knew that this was not the orthodox route, and illegal.

  ‘But you’re never going to find an NHS dentist to do this,’ I said.

  We went down to the surgery and within a few minutes Andy had made Priti’s dental impressions and forty-eight hours later he was back again with a perfect little denture he’d made during two lunch hours. Priti came to look. She held it up to her mouth, and I think she was pleasantly surprised because she laughed. She’d been ringing around all day, she told us, trying to find a real NHS dentist, but with no luck, and the pain was still there in spite of the tablets–throbbing, building.

  She had no qualms. ‘Yes, please, please, do it.’

  So then–God–that night, we broke the laws of the land in order to help our friend.

  Injecting Priti was difficult. She was nervous and suddenly turned her head. Somehow the needle went through her lip–the local squirted out in an ar
c of tiny clear jewels across the surgery. Priti was unaware of it and I mention it now only because it was such an extraordinary sight. I told Andy he must assist, like a dental nurse. I started again with a new syringe and this time held her under the chin so she couldn’t move, and Andy was there, ready.

  ‘You have to keep still,’ I said.

  While we waited for the anaesthetic to take, Andy got Priti to write a note saying she was one hundred per cent aware of the treatment–just in case it ever got investigated and Priti changed her story. Years ago, he’d done a home-made tattoo for a boy who claimed afterwards not to have wanted it–a solicitor had been involved and Andy had been cautioned.

  I extracted the tooth perfectly and discovered, as expected, an old abscess on the root, which I showed to Priti. Andy fitted the little denture. Priti felt slightly dizzy afterwards and had to sit with a kidney dish between her knees, taking steady breaths. The socket stopped bleeding quite quickly and she peered into the vanity mirror. The new tooth looked perfect, much better than the original which, as I said previously, had stood out at an unattractive angle.

  ‘You like it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m happy.’

  She was happy. Was that all? It was an anticlimax.

  Soon Priti wanted to go home. I unlocked the front door.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mustn’t drink any alcohol. You mustn’t fiddle with, or remove, the denture, and don’t rinse your mouth out today. And only gently tomorrow, with salty water.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And come in tomorrow evening so we can have a look.’

  It wasn’t until she said, ‘Thank you,’ that I could then hear how affected her voice was by the thing in her mouth. And I felt a wave of panic. What had we done?