by Kerrie Noor
According to Neff, Janice and Janet knew Henry from the Comm; they worked there, and Henry was a regular. He fixed almost everything in the place and always, according to Neff, with a joke, “drainpipes and lubricant being his favorite.”
I hadn’t been to the Comm in years; in fact, I can’t remember when. Probably back in the days when there were only four channels on TV, pubs had darts matches instead of Sky, and cigarettes were as cheap as crisps.
“The good old days,” laughed Neff, pulling out her mobile to text Mavis about the drums. “She’ll be wet with excitement.”
The waitress, pulling a disgusted face, shouted “Three Americanos” at the kitchen door and, with another “Jesus,” headed back into the kitchen.
Chapter Forty
They
Contentment has a price—lackluster on par with TV dinners in front of TV reruns.
Helen and I had just finished for the day when Mum texted: “Where are you?”
Like I had arranged to meet her.
Which was quickly followed by “They are here, come now.”
Like I knew what she was talking about.
I looked at Helen unpacking the van in the garage. “Were we-I to meet her or something?” I said.
Helen stopped mid extension lead rolling. “No, I was just about to put my feet up. Last thing I feel like is—”
She stopped; her mobile pinged.
She dropped the extension lead, pulled out her mobile, and read out loud . . .
“‘You too, the more the safer.’”
She looked at me. “Amy’s coming around. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since the wedding.” She stopped. “Why don’t you come up after you’ve seen your Mum? Amy’s bringing wine left over from the wedding.”
I didn’t say anything. The last thing I wanted after a Mum visit was to sit in Helen’s heap of a home trying to find space to put my feet up—not my idea of fun no matter how many wines. I mean, even Mum refused to go there . . .
I was about to put up a fight when Helen’s mobile pinged again; she looked down at it and read out a text from Mum. “‘Bring Amy as well . . .’”
Helen looked at me with a how did she know? look.
“Mother sees all!” I said with a spooky face.
Helen’s phoned pinged again. She looked at it, smiled, then flashed her phone at me.
I stared at a row of emoji smiley faces.
“I thought Steven is the only one privileged with those,” I said.
Helen laughed.
We headed up to Mum’s, and she greeted us at the door and ushered us in with a “they are here.”
Still in our work clothes, we reluctantly followed to find that they was a tight-faced retired army woman, “rank unknown.”
I recognized the face and so did Helen; we had recently fitted her kitchen. In fact, her kitchen was the first job Helen and I had worked on together.
She was a woman not to be argued with, a woman with a stiff upper lip and an ability to knock a bill to half and never stop talking to take a breath. We had been warned by many: Mum’s pal Mavis being one, Neff being another, and George.
“Go in high,” he said. “She’ll knock the bill by half at least. And she’ll talk you into submission. Once her mouth opens, it never shuts—a tsunami of words.”
It was also the job that had bonded Helen and me.
We spent several hours in Mum’s kitchen going over the plans while Mum ranted on about the “ridiculous size of kitchen,” the “pointlessness of islands in kitchens,” and why anyone needed “multiple ovens and walk-in freezers when the co-op, Pizza Hut, and any other takeaway she could think of was just two steps away.”
Not that I knew anyone who had a walk-in freezer, let alone a Pizza Hut nearby, but Mum was prone to exaggerations. And her exaggerations cheered both Helen and I up as we tried to plan, price, and outwit a penny-pinching ex-army hero with more medals on her wall than my gran’s plate collection, one being pinned on her chest by the Queen, which we heard about ad infinitum. In fact, Helen and I had perfected the art of sign language while hammering, drilling, plastering, and feigning listening: builders’ multitasking that only two women in sync could perfect.
“How’s your new kitchen, Ms Frasier?” said Mum.
She eyed Mum’s wheelchair. “You can call me Frasier.”
“Well then, Frasier, can you tell these two your plans?”
Ms Frasier’s eyes ran up and down our outfits, taking in the splattered jeans and grimy socks like she had never seen work clothes before.
“You never took your shoes off in my house,” she said.
Mum liked shoes left at the door.
“I mean, I know you were working and such, but it would have been nice if you had . . . when you went into the other rooms like . . . it’s the carpet . . . just new . . .”
“Just tell them your plans,” said Mum with suppressed impatience.
“Well, they are not exactly my plans per say, more the general plans of the committee, and I have been requested, sent, to impose like—on your good selves . . . and you are under no obligation as such, but there will be a feeling of gratitude—no money of course, I mean, the committee is as skint as a sterile kangaroo’s pouch—”
“What?” said the three of us in unison.
“An empty kangaroo pouch. Spent a lot of my days feeding kangaroos, in the morning before I was off to work. They can . . . you know . . . kick, if you don’t know what you are doing . . . saw a dingo once.”
“Just tell ’em, would you?” snapped Mum.
“Absolutely, yes, right . . .”
Ms Frasier talked of the wall of gratitude and how it was built (“obviously not to last, as you well know”). She talked of the ethos of the wall of gratitude, who designed it, who changed the design, who believed in the ethos (as it definitely wasn’t her), and the falling of the wall (“if it was such a bad thing—for it to fall, that is”).
“It’s a wall!” shouted Mum.
Ms Frasier, unfazed, moved on to how much it would cost to recycle the wall and how much some wanted it to stay, but she did sometimes wonder . . . as we all do . . .
I made coffee. Helen searched for biscuits, gave up, and began to make cheese and oatcakes as Mum signed where the chutney was—Ms Frasier’s favorite.
“Might even shut her up,” she mouthed behind her back.
Helen slid a jar of co-op deluxe onion relish in front of Ms Frasier.
Ms Frasier stopped, caught her breath.
“Are you listening?” She faltered.
“Of course,” I said. “Sugar?”
She dismissed with her hand.
“So, what do you think?” she said, pausing to blow on her coffee.
“About what?” I said.
“The wall of gratitude,” said Ms Frasier.
“Is it up or down? I’m confused.” Helen looked at me. “Didn’t I fix it?”
“No . . . yes, you did, but that’s not quite the point. The point is . . . well, difficult to pinpoint . . .”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, just say it!” shouted Mum.
“What? Oh yes . . .”
She sipped.
“Well, go on then!” shouted Mum.
Finally, with Mum on the edge of her seat crunching an oatcake into smithereens and Frasier with a mouthful of cheese, we got the gist of the story . . .
The committee wanted to arrange a celebration day for, as Ms Frasier put it, “wheelchairs and things.”
“Disabilities,” shouted Mum.
“Exactly,” spluttered Frasier, “a Disability Awareness Day, and they wondered about photos of you at the wedding. We could”—she chuckled—“plaster them all over the wall—the wall of gratitude—pending the committee’s latest ethos.”
She looked from face to face. “Fun, don’t you think?”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Mum as Amy walked in with a “what’s that about my wedding?”
Ms Frasier opened her mouth to exp
lain, and Mum jumped in with a “nothing, no need to worry.”
“There’s no need to interrupt,” snapped Ms Frasier.
“Isn’t there?” said Mum.
“Quite frankly, no. I was only going to compliment Amy on her young man and wondered if he knew about hanging pictures, if he was handy with a hammer.”
“What are these two girls, chopped liver?” shouted Mum.
Ms Frasier turned on Mum. “I was looking for a volunteer. The committee’s as skint as a sterile marsupial’s whatever—we can’t pay anyone.”
“What?” said Amy.
Mum gestured a she’s mad with her fingers. Ms Frasier, with an I saw that tut, placed her mug on the sink, slipped her shoes on with a “really,” and headed for the drive.
Amy, Helen, and I waved her off as Mum scowled at her.
“Bloody woman. Me, disabled—as if.”
“What’s that you’re sitting in?” said Helen. “A toilet seat?”
“This chair doesn’t make me disabled any more than a pension makes me a geriatric. I am more than a friggin’ wheelchair. I am a storyteller and a card shark,” she shouted, “and the last thing I want is photos of me done up like . . . like a Kangaroo’s dinner—”
“Dog, Mum.”
“—plastered across the community centre. I mean, how will people take my storytelling seriously?”
Chapter Forty-One
Forgiveness
Habits: the scaffolding you build your day around.
Amy followed Helen and me into the garage; there wasn’t much tidying up to do. I told Helen and Amy to go up to her flat while I finished off.
“Make sure you come up,” said Helen. She caught my face and laughed. “Don’t look so scared, the flat’s not that bad.”
“Mum wants us to toast her new home,” said Amy.
“Just the one drink,” laughed Helen, “don’t panic.”
I packed away the rest of the tools and headed up to Helen’s flat, wondering what sort of state it was in. If the van was anything to go by, a pretty bad one.
I walked in to find Amy and Helen sprawled out on oversized beanbags, clutching plastic cups of red wine. Between them was a low Japanese-style table with as many scratches as a second-hand cat scratcher. On top of the table, elegantly set around a candle, were a plate of crackers, a block of cheddar, a humming bit of Stilton, oozy Brie, and a selection of recycled-cardboard placemats (which I vaguely remember Helen talking about making), plus one grape.
Helen told me to pour myself one and “pull up a pew.”
“Sorry about the grape,” she said. “There were a few more.”
I looked around.
The last time I saw the bedsit, the floor was covered in overflowing boxes and bulging bin bags; I couldn’t find a loo roll, let alone a coffee mug.
Now, it was like a Nordic, minimalist, open-plan space with bugger all in the seating area, apart from the two beanbags that looked like they needed a few drinks to be comfortable in and a small platform with Helen’s bed suspended above the lounging area. Genius. A cooking area was flooded with light thanks to a new VELUX window. It too was empty, like the sort of kitchen someone rarely made anything in apart from coffee and sandwiches.
It looked bigger, lighter, and tidy, the sort of tidy that made you take off your boots and wipe the toilet seat after you used it (not before).
“It’s amazing,” said Amy.
“Not sure about the kitchen,” said Helen. “Work in progress.” She laughed.
We both knew she ate mostly with Mum.
“Where is everything?” I stared at the kitchen area; all I could see was a kettle.
“Built in, like a caravan, a spaceship,” said Amy, “a Tardis.” She laughed.
Helen patted the other side of her beanbag and handed me a glass.
“All designed to put your Mum off,” said Helen. “She took one look and headed for the hills.”
Even more genius . . .
I squelched beside Helen, gingerly clutching my wine as I tried to shift into a comfortable hollow. I rolled towards Helen’s thigh and giggled. I felt like a student, though I had never been one; neither had Helen, for that matter. But as she sat cross-legged, hair astray, bra tossed to the wind, it seemed as if she was making up for it.
By the time we were onto our third bottle of wine, Helen was really making up for it, choosing music from the good old days and talking about her new drumming passion, while Amy had moved from what a great guy Gary was to what a dick her father was.
Helen, thanks to Amy calling her cheese “boggin’,” along with her music, switched Barry White to a low hum and began to search through her secret cupboards for anything salty.
I was mesmerized with her ingenuity of design; every bit of space had been used.
I asked her how long it took to create something so well made, and she shrugged, stating that anger had its virtue. “When you’re angry with a hammer in your hands, there are two things you can do: smash or create . . .”
Amy didn’t hear. She was fingering her mobile; her father had texted, and she seemed torn about answering. Amy had the sort of relationship with her father that Helen called distant and Amy called invisible.
As Helen pulled streamlined cupboards from nowhere on the search for the elusive bag of nuts she insisted she’d bought, Amy pondered her father. Amy, like Helen, had been tucking into the wine and was talking with no filter on.
“Always thought he was a bit of a twat,” said Amy. “But I had no idea that he was a full-blown one.”
“You said he was a changed man,” said Helen, peering from a vertical pull-out shelf with nothing in it.
“Yeah, well, that was before the wedding,” said Amy.
“Families,” I muttered.
Amy emptied her glass, listing all the Christmases her invisible Dad had never joined in. “Not one friggin’ Christmas.”
“He did bring home a couple of pheasant on Christmas Eve once,” said Helen.
“He was a stranger to me until Mum left,” muttered Amy.
“Dumped it on the table and left for the pub,” said Helen, “and we came home to find feathers everywhere thanks to that cat.” She closed a cupboard. “The cat threw up, wasn’t right for days.”
“See what I mean, a twat,” said Amy.
Helen pulled out a drawer, shuffled about inside, then closed it.
“You’d be surprised how far feathers can spread,” she muttered.
“My mum hates pheasant, she’d have gladly fed it to the cat,” I said, filling up Amy’s and my glasses.
“I mean, he only paid for that wedding to put on The Henry Show. It was all about him,” said Amy. “‘Nothing but the best for my daughter’ is actually nothing but the best for big fat Henry.”
“I wouldn’t call him fat,” muttered Helen, now staring into her empty fridge for the fourth time.
“He ruined my day,” huffed Amy. “I’ll never forgive him.”
“Janice and Janet reckon he wanted to make you like him,” I said.
“In Lycra?” said Amy. “I think it was that Janet and Janice he was trying to impress.”
“Forget the Lycra, there’s more to Henry than Lycra.” Helen gestured with her empty glass. “He is a man who learnt to salsa to impress his daughter.”
“I thought you hated him,” I said.
Helen flopped onto Amy’s beanbag and snuggled next to her daughter. “Hate is fluid.”
She opened another bottle.
“Fluid?” said Amy.
“Yes, it comes and goes . . .” She paused for thought. “Sometimes I feel nothing, other times sorry for him, and yet other times—I don’t know.” She sighed. “He was never dull.”
“Families,” I said. “You can’t choose ’em, you can’t live with ’em, and you can’t leave ’em . . . you’re fucking stuck with ’em.”
“I mean, I had no idea that he was jealous of me,” said Helen.
“I didn’t either,” said Amy.
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“One of my pals hated her dad,” said Helen. “She bossed him about when he was ill, shouted at him when he didn’t do what she said. They had an epic row, and do you know what? He died . . . without speaking to her. They never made up.”
She touched her daughter’s arm.
“Wouldn’t you hate that?”
Amy glumly looked at her phone.
Helen’s face lit up; she reached for her handbag and pulled out a bag of nuts. “Peanut?” she said.
Amy, dialing, left the room. “Dad?”
Helen tossed the bag of peanuts at me, eased herself up from Amy’s beanbag, and turned Barry White up.
“You’re my first, my last, my everything . . .”
She flopped beside me and snuggled in.
I put my arm around her shoulder and patted her. Helen’s kindness never ceased to amaze me. All the conversations we had had about Henry, how he had treated her. On her good days, she called their marriage colorful; on bad days, she swore worse than Mum . . .
“That was a nice thing you did,” I said with another pat.
“He’s her father,” muttered Helen, then fell asleep.
Epilogue
A few days later, I woke up and looked at Steven’s familiar face with a huge sense of comfort and closeness. After the codpiece incident, the darkness had begun to vanish, and the mornings were bliss to me again.
There is something about looking at the same sleeping face in the morning that gives the day a purpose, something to get up to, even if it is just to make that sleeping face a cup of coffee.
It’s hard to find words to describe the delicious feeling of belonging, sharing, knowing that you’re not alone, especially in the dark hours of the early morning. Steven’s snoring had chased away many bad dreams, as had his long legs that wrapped around mine. Sometimes it was the last thing I wanted—in fact, in my dark period, I felt suffocated—but not now. There is real comfort in gently pushing a leg away.
Mum is not right about many things, but she is right about a sleeping face and the familiar octopus legs that wrap around you in the dark.