Authors: Judy Astley
She lay beside Gaz in her bed staring at the sloping attic ceiling on which the greying stain from a long-ago burst pipe seemed somehow bigger than last time she’d given it a proper look. It was roughly the shape of the Queen’s profile on a stamp. She’d get Gaz to go up a ladder and paint a face and a crown on it. And maybe draw round it, see if it changed and really was getting bigger. Someone had to keep an eye on these things. That pair of irresponsible old hippies wasn’t likely to. That was the trouble with being the afterthought child: they’d worn out all their parenting skills (such as they were – she had an opinion on that too) with Clover and Ilex and sort of imagined Sorrel would somehow bring herself up. She hadn’t done too bad a job so far, Sorrel considered, but now and then any seventeen year old could use a bit of a telling-off, a bit of No You Can’t and Because I Say So, like her friends at school got. Her mum hadn’t even asked her if she was on the pill. Suppose she got an embolism and collapsed and they couldn’t answer questions at the hospital about any medication she was on. She might die and end up with ‘Parents
couldn’t
be arsed’ as cause of death on the certificate.
Sorrel prodded Gaz in the ribs. He was a real gold-medal sleeper. And not only that, he specialized in waking up really quick and wanting sex, like instantly. Not attractive in a boy, she and Millie at school had concluded. You wanted someone who’d give you some conversation and a bit of a lead-up. He could at least clean his teeth. She prodded him again, harder, then leaped out of bed and across to the door before he could pounce. He could stay shag-less this morning, she decided. She had better (well, other) things to do. If her folks weren’t going to get on to her about her exams and the state of her room and what was she doing having boys in all night at her age then she’d have to take responsibility and deal with things herself. There was the big trip to plan. She’d got the clothes and the guidebooks and the websites, it was just a matter of sorting the itinerary. And, if he was really serious about coming along as well, sorting Gaz.
FIVE
MANDA WASN’T THE
only one with a wedding on her mind. Lottie found that memories of her own and Mac’s came to her as they all ate lunch together (and surprisingly delicious the lamb had turned out to be, considering the vicious stabbing it had been treated to. It must have had a tenderizing effect). It was the paired-off arrangement of her children at the table that made her think of it: Manda within hand-patting distance of Ilex, Clover across from Sean and the stringy, pallid Gaz smirking unsubtle sexual complicity down the table at Sorrel. The long-ago wedding day had been a perfect one: as sunny as any loved-up teenage bride could want – at least weather-wise. Her mother had worn a huge mushroom of a hat in a fate-tempting shade of unlucky green – defiantly eager to hex this marriage in the hope that her daughter would eventually come to her senses and settle with a solid civil servant. The Revd Cherry had bravely overlooked
the
way Lottie’s scarlet and purple Ossie Clarke dress bulged like a full-sail spinnaker over the lump that was very soon to be Ilex. He’d managed to welcome in the many parishioners who’d turned up uninvited to the service ‘to wish them well’, so they said, but really to see their bossy vicar get his comeuppance by having to marry off his pregnant daughter to a hairy, dissolute rock musician. He’d even chivvied press photographers off the graves outside the church without entirely losing his temper. He must truly have been in a mood of profound relief, Lottie recalled, for back then wayward girls were such a dire responsibility for a parent. What to do with them? How to deal with a girl who refused point blank to turn out just like her mother? And yet now, what seemed only a few brief years later, here was Lottie, assembling her own family round the scratched old elm table and being pleased that the lamb was the right shade of pink. For several seconds she had a flash of utter unreality, half-wondering who all these people were who seemed to have originated via herself and Mac. Where had they come from? Because in her head she was still an eighteen year old all geed up about life’s possibilities and couldn’t be anywhere near old enough to have produced a grown-up family, plus partners and children. And what unlikely people they’d turned out to be, with their proper occupations (Ilex with a slick Chelsea office suite and two assistants) and ordered family lives (Clover
colour-coded
her bedlinen). Lottie’s parents would have been thrilled, right through to the next generation with this pair of almost unnaturally pink and tidy granddaughters. Impossible ever to imagine Sophia being busted for smoking dope at school or Elsa throwing paint round her bedroom (across furniture, carpet and all) in the manner of Jackson Pollock, as Lottie had. Would these little girls ever take off on a Friday night, not to the pub as planned but hitching lifts in lorries to Scotland on a whim to see a band? And what staggeringly well-mannered children they were, Lottie thought as she watched the girls sitting prim and straight in their matching polka-dot Mini Boden dresses and tidily eating the lunch she’d prepared. Surely they weren’t stunned to silence because for once they were eating in Holbrook House’s rarely used dining room instead of in the haphazard muddle of the day-to-day kitchen? It was certainly a quirkily imposing room – a mixture of dark wood panelling, blood-coloured paintwork and many unfathomable splashy abstract paintings (left over from Lottie’s short-lived phase as an artist), none of which should give a qualm to a pair of lively under-tens. How come they didn’t shout or squabble or slop their food about or knock over their drinks? They did not wield their knives and forks awkwardly like medieval daggers; they didn’t whinge about not liking garlic and they never forgot to say please and thank-you at the appropriate times. Much as she loved them, Sophia and
Elsa
reminded her of Midwich Cuckoos – small perfect aliens planted in a community to unnerve the residents. They certainly unnerved Lottie. Clover (who as a seven year old herself had eaten all her meals under the table, convinced she was really a poodle puppy) must have painstakingly drilled Table Manners into these two from the day the breast-feeding stopped. Lottie caught Manda studying the children from across the table as if taking in exactly what a four and seven year old should be like. They’re not all like this, Lottie wanted to tell her; this isn’t even close. Go hang out in any shopping mall, look over the fence of your nearest primary school, see the tantrums and the rampaging and the off-the-scale energy. Not that Manda would. When (if) Manda had children they, just like these two, would be hurtled between Tumble Tots and Monkey Music and Kodali violin and be fed on Baby Organix and the wholesome, child-friendly recipes of Annabel Karmel. And Lottie would sadly acknowledge that when she and Mac volunteered to take them on their customary muddy annual adventure with their tepee to Glastonbury, Manda would be ready with well-rehearsed reasons as to why not, just as Clover always was.
‘Manda, more potatoes?’ Lottie, feeling as if she was playing the role of Granny Perfect, offered the extra ones to her putative daughter-in-law before she asked anyone else. If Manda thought this
counted
as a comment that she needed fattening up, well, it wasn’t a million miles from the truth. Manda’s body hovered between pin-thin and skeletal. Also it seemed logical to start the offers of seconds with the one who looked the hungriest as opposed to what her own mother had done, which was to begin with the biggest and greediest male – her own husband. The Revd John Cherry had never said no either, especially not on a Sunday when the preparation of this ritual lunch was a frantic business crammed in by Mary Cherry between Family Communion and Evensong. Why no one had ever considered moving the full-scale roast beef extravaganza to Monday or Saturday and serving up a simple soup and salad on Sunday was beyond Lottie. She’d suggested it once, on a day when her mother had yet again raced out of church, pushing past the vicar’s usual gaggle of fond old ladies lined up to congratulate him on his sermon, to baste the joint and shove the Yorkshire puddings into the temperamental Aga.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! It’s
Sunday
lunch.’ Mary had looked at Lottie in amazement as if her daughter had questioned why Christmas had to be in December. ‘
Sunday
lunch – that’s the point!’
‘No more for me, thanks. I’ve had
loads
!’ Manda held up a long skinny hand and fended off the dish of potatoes as if terrified by such proximity to carbohydrates.
‘No you haven’t.’ Sorrel pointed her knife at
Manda’s
plate. ‘You’ve had two tiny ones. And you can’t be on a diet, so maybe you’re—’
‘Sorrel! Pass the potatoes down to Sophia, will you?’ Lottie interrupted hurriedly.
‘I was only going to say …’
‘Yes, well, please don’t.’
‘Candida.’ Sorrel grinned at her mother and at Manda. ‘I was only going to say you might be avoiding potatoes because you’d got a yeast infection. It’s called
Candida albicans
. I looked it up.’
There was a short silence while everyone worked out how much of an embarrassment factor this carried. About 98 per cent, was Lottie’s guess, recalling gynaecological plain speaking from some
Guardian
article or other. Still, at least Sorrel hadn’t said ‘pregnant’. Manda would be aware enough of her biological clock without people like Sorrel carelessly setting it chiming. At past thirty Manda must have lots of friends who were producing babies. The poor girl was probably thoroughly sick of being invited along to baby showers, turning up each time clutching a beautifully wrapped gift and having everyone say, ‘Hey, maybe your turn next, Mands!’
‘You thought I was going to say “pregnant”, didn’t you, Mum?’ Sorrel declared triumphantly. Lottie groaned.
‘Potatoes are nothing to do with yeast infections,’ Manda said calmly. ‘I’d actually be completely fine with potatoes if I had candida. But I haven’t. Thank you for your concern though, Sorrel.’
‘Isn’t candida something to do with thrush?’ Clover asked Manda, who looked so startled Lottie wondered if eyeballs really could drop right out.
‘Yes, but you can get it right through your digestive system as well as up your fanny,’ Sorrel explained breezily. ‘It’s not
just
sexually transmitted, you know.’
‘I definitely haven’t got anything like
that
,’ Manda blurted. ‘I’m very well. Peak condition, in fact.’
She smiled nervously around the table, at all the faces that now gazed at her, as if waiting to hear her deny each of a long list of unpleasant and deeply personal symptoms and possibly proffer a signed-off appointment card from her local genito-urinary clinic.
‘Thrush!
Perlease
, I’m still eating!’ Sean shuddered, his loaded fork poised halfway to his mouth.
‘She still didn’t answer the pregnant bit,’ Sophia hissed loudly across the table to Sorrel. ‘Not
actually
. Are you having a baby, Manda?’ The child stared, bright-eyed and waiting. As, by now, were they all. Poor Manda was brick-scarlet. Lottie looked at Ilex – the one person who possibly should have been expected to come to her rescue. He was beyond helping, deep in murmured conversation with Gaz. She caught the words ‘offside’ and ‘penalty’.
Manda hid her face inside the twin curtains of her flat brown hair and stared down at her empty plate, trusting the personal speculation would soon move
on
to someone else. She considered saying that yes, actually, she did think she might be pregnant. Maybe this way Ilex, if he actually could be arsed to listen, would be kick-started into commitment mode, but then that would very nearly be as bad as having to ask him to marry her. She didn’t want her magical special day to come about under any hint of pressure, though how much longer she could leave it before giving in and pushing him right into it she really didn’t know. As they’d arrived at the house she’d had a good sneaky look at the front porch, checking it for wedding photo potential. Close to perfect, was how it appeared to her, although it needed a lot of tidying up. It would take more than that idle part-timer Al to get the garden sorted. They should get Green Piece in and give it a total makeover. Weeds pushed through the gravel in clumps, roof tiles needed replacing and the rampant passion flower scrambling up the walls could use a serious trim. Some tubs and hanging baskets of trailing white fuchsias and surfinias would help to soften the look. If all else failed, she could get the nursery to send round fully grown white-flowered climbers in pots. And roses. Of course there must be roses, for a wedding.
‘No, of course I’m not pregnant, Sophia,’ Manda said, sounding close to defeat.
‘Is that because you and Ilex haven’t been doing
mating
?’ Sophia persisted, her voice so clear and loud that even Gaz and Ilex looked up.
‘What’s mating?’ Elsa chipped in.
‘Bloody good fun, that’s what it is.’ Sean chortled.
‘Sean!
Pas devant les enfants
.’ Clover leaned across the table and hit her husband’s arm sharply.
‘That means you can’t say things in front of the children. Jakey’s mum’s
always
saying it,’ Sophia explained to her little sister. Lottie marvelled at the child’s worldly wisdom.
‘Still doing the French classes, are you, Sophia?’ she asked.
‘
Oui
.’ Sophia nodded.
‘
Je pearl fronzee
,’ Elsa chipped in.
‘Fantastic,’ Lottie told her. ‘What brilliant girls you are.’
Poor kids, did Clover ever give them time to lie on the lawn and watch the clouds drifting over?
Sean interrupted. ‘Is no one having these potatoes? Cause if they’re going begging …’ He didn’t wait for an answer but leaned across towards Sophia and scooped up a crisp roast potato in his fingers.
‘Dad
dee
! I was saving that one!’ Sophia leaped from her seat and ran out of the room, sobbing dramatically. Oh good, Lottie thought, feeling immensely cheered. The child shows signs of being pretty normal after all.