The Boy Who Fell to Earth (31 page)

The shrink Jeremy had hired assured me that Merlin was just projecting his negative feelings about himself on to the person he loved most. I told myself not to get upset; that things could be worse. The female turtle swims thousands of miles to lay gazillions of eggs and not one of her offspring sends her a mother’s day card, right?

By mid-week, when Merlin woke me again in the middle of the night to ask why countries go to war with other countries to show them that going to war is wrong and announced that he was going to stick a knife into Tony Blair for getting us into the Iraq war under false pretences, I actually felt nostalgic for the days when I only worried about him accidentally hacking into a Pentagon computer whilst looking for evidence of the existence of UFOs and getting extradited to the US to serve a sixty-year jail sentence for cyberterrorism.

By Thursday, my nerves were so shredded I decided to take up Jeremy’s kind offer. Trying to map a child with Asperger’s … well, in charting the unknown, it equals the feats of Columbus, Captain Cook and Cortez.

While we waited for Jeremy’s car to cruise into our street, Merlin turned to me, sombre-faced. ‘Isn’t it good to have a big smile on your face?’ he asked me glumly. ‘I’m going to have a big smile on my face all day. And it’s a stunningly beautiful day,’ he added, in a desultory monotone. Misery was rising
off
him like steam. ‘You know how my father transforms through the fridge to the North Pole to be with his polar-bear family? Well, I think the polar bear thinks I’m a seal and wants to eat me.’

‘Don’t be silly, darling. Daddy loves you. As do I. You’re a wonderful, quirky, clever, original, unique person, with so much to offer the world.’

He pulled the sleeves of his shirt over his hands, a wintry gesture at odds with the glitteringly sunny late-autumn day.

When Jeremy’s Mercedes purred to a halt outside our house, Veronica lumbered up out of the front seat to greet Merlin. ‘How is my little Mark Zuckerberg in the making?’ she exclaimed, tweaking his cheek. The once-surly Veronica had become so sweet she could spontaneously trigger tooth cavities.

Merlin greeted them both with scrupulous courtesy. As he loaded his rucksack into the boot, Veronica patted my hand consolingly. ‘All masterminds are overwrought. They’re highly strung. It’s normal. Did you know that H. G. Wells was so gawky and insecure at school that he had only one friend? Albert Einstein took a job in a patents office because he was too disruptive to work in a university! Isaac Newton was able to work without a break for three days but couldn’t hold a conversation, apparently,’ she informed me cheerily. ‘Today’s Asperger’s is tomorrow’s genius!’

I tried to interrupt to explain that Merlin’s ‘genius’ was like a comet, infrequent and brilliant but also accompanied by a lot of space garbage, but she was too busy bustling her ‘gifted grandson’, a category she obviously felt comfortable explaining to her bridge buddies, into the car. I knew what Merlin meant now. When you have Asperger’s Syndrome,
the
expectation that you’re a genius is as limiting as the assumption that you’re stupid. For his next birthday, Veronica would probably give him a set of Mattel Nobel Prize action figures to play with.

Merlin’s face in the back window of the car was a mask of misery festooned in an incongruous grin. I felt a tug of labyrinthine love so strong I thought it might tow me along behind them like a tin can.

If you’re going through hell, put your foot down. That seemed to be my motto, because two hours later I was greeting my mother at a spa hotel in Oxfordshire and wondering how to break it to her that Phoebe had checked in already. Since our last altercation they’d had the same rapport as, say, a gun-toting Islamist and a Jewish settler. I was hoping to act as a UN peacekeeping force by bringing them back together. I so desperately wanted to return to the days when we were close knit, inflicting pain occasionally, but kissing to heal it better in the same instant. Loving, laughing, fighting, defending – that had always been our way.

‘That cold of mine that won’t go away? Well, it led me to the clinic with a sample of something to be tested that I have never carried around in a Chanel tote before. Anyway, the clinic have put me on a ludicrous detox which means I can only sniff asparagus or drink neat vodka – am obviously opting for the latter.’ My mother pulled a bottle of spirits out of the voluminous pocket of her shift, which was guacamole green. ‘Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.’ She winked, taking a nip.

Vodka wasn’t exactly on the organic health spa menu. I glanced around, worried we’d be taken into custody by the Colon Constabulary, but it was Phoebe who appeared armed
with
barbs and scowling menacingly. When my mother and sister realized that I’d invited them both for the night, I began to wonder if it was too late to email the UN to request an armoured personnel carrier.

‘Will you two please kiss and make up?’ I pleaded, pulling on an invisible flak jacket.

‘I would apologize, but it’s just not in my nature. Sorry about that,’ my mother said superciliously.

‘I’m sorry too,’ my sister replied, adding caustically, ‘that you can’t say sorry, that is.’

We managed to change into our terry-towelling bathrobes and reconvene around the indoor pool with no bloodshed. But the atmosphere was as taut as an Olympic rower’s thigh.

‘So, darling,’ my mother asked me, ‘how did you get time off work?’

‘Well, actually, I’ve decided to give up work, Mother.’

My mother’s high-rise hair, turbaned in a towel, toppled forwards as she swivelled to face me. ‘What?’

‘Jeremy’s offered to support me, so I think I might take a sabbatical.’

‘Don’t be insane, dear. If there’s one thing my life should have shown you it’s that a woman needs her own identity,’ she scolded.

‘She’ll still have her feet on the ground, they’ll just be better shod,’ Phoebe rejoindered tartly. ‘Good for you, Lulu. Jesus Christ, I’d give up being a space waitress if I could. Do you know how tired I am of standing in the aisle of a plane saying, “Your exits are here, here and here”? I want to be saying to my billionaire lover, “Your entrances are
here
” ’ – she pointed to her pudenda – ‘“
here”
’ – she pointed to her mouth – ‘“and
here”
,’ she concluded, vaguely gesturing towards her rear.

I looked at my sister agog. This kind of talk was just so out of character. Was she high? Had she joined a less literal kind of Frequent Flier Programme?

My mother, who was reluctantly biting into the stick of celery protruding from her organic health juice, washed it down with another gigantic gulp of vodka. ‘To be honest, dears, I can understand why wives want to hook up with their ex-husbands. It saves so much time … I mean, you already know he’s a complete prat.’

‘Sure there are grounds to despise Jeremy,’ Phoebe consented, wearing a green moustache of vegetable purée. ‘But what about finding grounds to like him again? Look how Jeremy’s helped Lulu with Merlin. He’s got a shrink now, and he’s at a wonderful school.’

‘It’s true, Mum. Do you remember how I dreaded speaking to all his headteachers?’ I shuddered at the thought of all those belittling meetings. ‘Well, even though Merlin’s having trouble adjusting, his new teachers ring me full of optimism. Jeremy has lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. I’m much less stressed. Honestly, I’ve cut down to only about four heart attacks a day.’

‘Mark my words, lying and manipulation are the only emotional skills that man will ever master,’ my mother warned. ‘Jeremy Beaufort would cheat at solitaire.’

Phoebe scoffed, loudly enough for the other spa habituées to look up from their hand-reared arugula and crane around in their sun-loungers to gawk in our disruptive direction. ‘Why?’ my sister rebuked. ‘Because he’s upper class? Because he’s wealthy? Because you’re a stereotypical, prejudiced,
Guardian
-reading bigot? He abandoned the Tories. Doesn’t that earn him any Brownie points?’

‘It doesn’t matter what party he belongs to. The man is
drunk
on power. I can see him now, dear, sitting in the Houses of Parliament, stroking a cat whilst having people killed at whim and laughing maniacally.’

Phoebe was not amused. ‘Why do you always have to be a non-conformist, just like everyone else? … So, where are you off to next, Mother? Knitting your own orgasms in Uzbekistan? Getting a third-eye infection in Goa? … Can’t you see that we’re sick of mothering our own mother?’

I placed a hand on my sister’s arm in a gesture of calming entreaty. ‘Phoebe, I think it might be time for you to go to the vets and get your claws done.’ My gentle sister had become so bitchy of late she needed to wear a flea collar, and perhaps a little muzzle.

‘May I suggest you stop being so jealous,’ my mother said curtly. ‘That particular shade of green has been discontinued.’

‘How many ways can I say this? Taking advice on life from you, Mother, is like’ – she verbally hovered before alighting on the appropriate metaphor – ‘asking a Saharan camel-herder how to build an igloo.’

My mother and I were shell-shocked by the change in Phoebe. In the past few weeks, her personality had shifted up several gears from Doris Day to Bette Davis. She used to bring happiness wherever she went. Of late, she brought happiness
when
ever she went.

My animated mother usually laughs a lot, whilst making many exaggerated, comical gestures. But she sat stock-still now, her hands folded mutely in her lap. ‘I only want what’s best for my girls. It’s all I’ve ever wanted,’ she finally said. ‘Why do you think I stayed with your father through thick and thin? Or rather thin and thin, as it was most of the time. I stayed long after my happiness warranty expired,’ she said sadly. ‘For you girls.’

‘Even if Lucy didn’t have any feelings for Jeremy, which she obviously still does, she must go back to him because she needs the money. As do we all. Christ, we’re already benefiting. Who do you think is paying for this happy little family jaunt of ours?’

My mother practically regurgitated her celery. ‘I thought you won this spa treat in a raffle, Lucy?’ She cocooned herself more tightly into her terry-towelling robe. ‘That’s what you told me, dear. I never would have come if I’d known Jeremy was paying for us.’

‘I’m not going back to him for the money. I’m going back to him because it’s the best thing I can do for Merlin. And because he’s kind. And because it’s so lovely to be taken care of. And because he stimulates me intellectually.’

‘Really? I would say all that man’s read with any real interest is his father’s will.’ My librarian mother smiled thinly. ‘Are you sure you’re not just going back to him because his
Who’s Who
is ten inches long?’

‘Oh Mum, you honestly think I’m that shallow? Besides, Jeremy is not in politics for the power and the glory. He wants to make the world a better place. He’s matured. Come and hear him talk, Mother. He’s become a man of character—’

‘“Character” is when you do the right thing when nobody is watching,’ my mother asserted. ‘I’ve met Jeremy’s mother and, believe me, that man was raised to be enchanting, not sincere.’

‘And you raised us to be irresponsible and spendthrift … but that doesn’t mean we’ve followed your example,’ Phoebe said bitterly. ‘I scrimp and save every last penny. In fact, next strike day, I’m crossing the picket line.’

My Labour-voting mother gasped, as if mortally wounded.

‘Listen.’ I quickly took both their hands in mine, before
things
deteriorated any further. ‘The West of England Chamber of Commerce have chosen Jeremy, as the fastest-rising MP, to host their big event in the terrace pavilion in the new year. There’s hundreds of MPs coming. All the ministers and lords have been invited. The Tory bigwigs say that Jeremy’s headed for the top. A ministerial job beckons. The PM called him an “outstanding economic thinker”. Why don’t you both come along and see him in action and then decide? I’ll put your names on the list.’

‘Why on earth would I want to come and hear a coalition politician prattle on about himself for approximately eternity?’ my mother disparaged.

‘Because you’ll get free champagne and a crate of cider to take home,’ I encouraged.

My mother flinched. ‘Surrounding oneself with neocons, dear, is only one step up on the pleasure scale from an appointment with a proctologist.’

‘Will you come, Phoebe?’

‘Sorry. I have my stamp-collecting class …’ She sighed, followed by an exuberant postscript. ‘Free champagne? On the river? Of
course
I’ll come, you idiot! Try and stop me.’

We spent the rest of the day in tense silence. When my mother went for a swim, I asked my sister why she seemed determined to get a doctorate in Bitchery.

‘I’m sick of being nice all the time. Expecting life to be kind to you because you’re kind to life is like expecting a shark not to eat you because you’re a vegan.’

I stroked her arm. ‘But you used to be so positive. You were positively Pollyanna-esque. What happened?’

‘Oh, I can still be positive. A positive attitude may not solve your problems, but it will definitely annoy enough people to make it worth your while.’ Phoebe cackled alarmingly.

When my sister went for a swim, my mother blurted out that Phoebe had become so annoying, even a Buddhist would murder her right now. ‘She needs to take more HRT. At the moment she could use her raging hormones to heat the whole of Hampshire.’

This had turned out to be a mini-break from which I needed a mini-break. We went to bed before they served the decaff organic coffee and checked out unexpectedly early, straight after the bowel-cleansing, bran-intensive breakfast. Driving back to London, I started to think that distant relatives might be the best – and the further away the better.

‘Be careful what you wish for, because then you might get it’ is one of the great lies. I wish for Johnny Depp naked, and there’d be nothing better than getting him. Except for getting my other wish as well – a chocolate-coated Hugh Jackman for dessert. I also wished for a happy family life. Which is why the contented tableau that met me when I arrived at Jeremy’s house in Mayfair that Saturday morning lifted my jaded spirits. Veronica was surprised to see me. Well, I was eight hours early. But she greeted me warmly: ‘What a delightful treat!’ Smiling down at me, she seemed as plump and comfortable as a cushion. She then ushered me into a cosy and welcoming sitting room for ‘drinkie-poos’. She’d recently started putting the word ‘poo’ at the end of everything. ‘Drinkie-poo? Lunchie-poo? Chrissie-poo?’