Monday Lunch in Fairyland and Other Stories Page 11

  ‘Where are Denise and Robbie?’ asked Jack. He felt easier now that Alice had moved. He asked the same question most nights. Always prepared to be surprised by the answer, he was always a little disappointed to find it much the same.

  ‘Denise is washing her hair. Robbie’s in his room.’

  Denise washed her hair six nights a week. Robbie’s habit was to go to his room as soon as supper was over to fiddle with his home-made radio set. Robbie was a mathematician, training to be a teacher. Denise, presently working as a receptionist in a travel agency, hoped one day to own a beauty parlour. Saving towards this end, she followed carefully the rules of dedicated parsimony, and grumbled at the self-inflicted hardship it caused. In his heart, Jack would have been delighted if his children had been a little more gregarious. But they didn’t seem to have many friends. Certainly, none of them ever came to the house. However: he was not one to be ungrateful for his mercies. What he did have, and it was a pretty rare thing these days, looking round – was a close-knit family unit. As a family, they liked each other. They enjoyed doing things together. And nobody should under-rate that, thought Jack. With a small twist of his head he went on to reckon, as one wrestler flicked the other satisfyingly to the ground, that he and Alice had been married coming up to twenty-five years now. What’s more, never a cross word. Alice had always had the good sense to agree with him, so there had never been any cause for dispute.

  Denise came in, towel over her head, shaking her wet frizz of hair. Jack couldn’t ever remember having seen a shine on Denise’s hair, not even when she was a youngster. It was something she strove for, but, Jack imagined, considering its natural hazy texture, it was something she would never achieve. But he wasn’t one to discourage anybody, let alone his own flesh and blood. So night after night, when Denise came in shaking herself like a dog after rain, Jack made an effort to restrain the criticism that welled up within him. It wouldn’t do to criticise Denise on so vulnerable a matter as her hair.

  A drop of water flicked Alice on the mouth. Even so small a drop smelt of expensive conditioner – Denise’s only extravagance. A frail, flower smell. Alice brushed it away with her hand. She looked at her daughter. Looking directly at a real person like that, Mr Rochester vanished. Denise had a largish nose and large hands, like Jack. Her eyes were on the small side – though the blessing was she wasn’t short-sighted. (Quite a wonder, considering Alice’s mother, from Chippenham, had been nearly blind.) They were shut, as she towelled away at her wrinkled hair – cropped eyelashes barely reaching her flushed cheeks. In books Alice read the heroine’s eyelashes always cast shadows upon her cheeks. Denise’s didn’t. Still, not everyone could give birth to a beauty, and Alice recognised the fact that Denise had a pleasant expression. What she’d call an open face.

  ‘Cup of tea, Denise?’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  Jack would be wanting his hot milk in half an hour, and no doubt Robbie would be down soon, that funny distant look in his eyes that always appeared when he’d been listening in to police messages – and he’d want something or other. Alice could never guess what. For a mathematician, Robbie was curiously irregular about his nightcap habits. To be on the safe side, Alice kept a good supply of everything so that she could never be caught off-guard. Sometimes, usually midweek, he liked a bedtime sandwich, too. You could never tell with Robbie.

  Alice went to the kitchen. Denise took her place on the sofa, shaking her head, eyes smarting. Bloody wrestling. She could never persuade Dad to turn over to BBC2. That was the channel she liked: plenty of programmes about dwarfs and illegits and the educationally sub-normal – the sort of thing that reduced her to the warmth of compassion, and sent her to bed smug at her own good fortune. But she could only watch those sort of programmes when Dad was working late and she was here with Mum alone. Mum was easy. She’d agree to anything, and spoil her at the same time. Biscuits, little sandwiches made with salmon fishpaste and cress cut from the plastic dish on the window sill. Mum spent her whole life looking after them a treat. Sometimes Denise felt bad about it – but then it gave Mum such obvious pleasure. You only had to look at her to see that. She was quite radiant, sometimes, faced with a pile of washing that would have caused Denise herself tears of frustration. Well, some people were born housewives: that’s all there was to it. They had no ambition to be anything else, no matter what Women’s Lib might say. Denise wasn’t like that. She had her ambition – her talent – and she wasn’t going to give that up for any husband on earth. It would be plain stupid. In fact it would be foolish even to think about marriage at the moment. Besides, it would be hard to give up the comforts of home life before she had to.

  Upstairs in his bedroom, Robbie, who had had a good evening listening in to trouble in a pub over Uxbridge way, felt the desire for a plate of ham and chips come upon him. The strength of the feeling wrung his mouth with a fresh supply of saliva, and he hurried downstairs to the kitchen. Mum had better be quick. He couldn’t wait much longer. His stomach was a burning pit, empty, lusting for the food that had come to his mind in so tantalising a way.

  Alice was making tea for Denise. Arranging a tray while a kettle boiled. She always did a tray, even for one cup of tea.

  ‘Plate of ham and chips, Mum, please,’ Robbie said. ‘I’m starving.’ Alice looked surprised.

  ‘But you’ve had your tea. A good meal.’

  ‘Can’t be helped. I’m famished.’

  ‘Very well. Just a minute, till I’ve taken the others their drinks. Shall I put it on a tray for you?’

  ‘I’ll have it in here.’

  Robbie liked to eat by himself. He liked his food after the others had finished, alone at the kitchen table, staring at the calendar of English cathedrals on the wall, his mind on other things. But what he couldn’t abide was that the room should be empty. So his mother – wonderfully obligingly, really – stayed with him. The music of her washing-up was of such comfort that people would laugh if he told them how much it meant to him. Sometimes, Mum would say something. He would answer her, politely of course, but not with the warmth that encouraged further observations. He required silence with his meals as other men need wine. On holiday, that was the one thing that bugged him, communal meals on the boat.

  ‘Days getting longer,’ said Alice. She passed him a tube of mustard. Robbie liked English mustard with his ham, French with his beef.

  ‘Yes,’ said Robbie

  ‘Enough ham?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Shall I do you a slice of bread?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And a lager?’

  Robbie nodded. When there was nothing more she could do for any member of her family, Alice felt flat. They were the moments she most dreaded. The yellow of co-operation thinned in her blood, leaving her physically lighter, feeling she might take off like an autumn leaf in a west wind. Tasks were her anchor.

  Empty, she returned to the sitting-room. Her husband and daughter were eating slices of the jam sponge she had baked that afternoon. There was nothing she could do for them so, second best actions though they were, she plumped up the cushions and drew the blinds. She hoped they might all sit round for a while, now, and talk. She liked the sound of their voices. The drone of the telly, on most nights till closing down, was never the same joy.

  But tonight she was to be rewarded. The news over, Jack switched it off. Robbie came in.

  ‘You’ve turned it off.’ His forehead was sweaty. It often glowed, like that, at any unusual change. Change of events confused him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack.

  ‘You’ve turned it off earlier, though.’ Robbie lowered himself into an upright armchair with aged caution. Five minutes and he’d go back to the set. See how Patrol 2 was getting on up in Uxbridge.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said Jack, ‘for a very good reason. Days getting longer –’

  ‘That’s just what I was saying to Robbie,’ interrupted Alice.

  ‘Days getting longer, and it’s t
ime to discuss our annual holiday. Not, I imagine, that there’s very much to discuss. Need I ask where it’s to be?’

  ‘Broads, of course,’ said Robbie.

  Fifteen years they’d been going to the Broads, same boat, and Robbie liked it. He liked it best when it rained, sitting out on the deck, mack over his head, watching his mother peel potatoes at a sink no bigger than a pudding bowl. He liked watching the rain falling into the green weed on the water. He liked a drink in the local pub, evenings, talking to the local policeman in policeman’s language, telling him some of the better stories he’d heard on the transmitter. Of course, the policeman had never been to Uxbridge but, as he said, he could credit the stories: the kind of thing the Force had to deal with these days. Robbie liked him. He liked everything in Norfolk but the communal meals, and more and more Mum was giving him sandwiches which he could take off and eat on his own.

  ‘Broads, natch, silly,’ said Denise. The thing that got her most about the place was the early mornings. You could hear birds and that if you woke early. Her sleeping bag, on the narrow bunk, was cosy. She could read her beauty magazines by the small light over the porthole, waiting till Mum got up to fry eggs and bacon for breakfast. That was a smell, on a boat. Not the same thing, in a house kitchen. Then, on the boat, Mum would offer her snacks all day long and she couldn’t refuse.

  ‘The Lugger, as usual?’ Jack knew as he asked the question that it was rhetorical. There were many advantages to the Lugger. For a start, as the years went by and it grew more dilapidated, its rent decreased. To be honest, the Lees were the only family left who were still attracted to the boat: the only hirers. And in return for giving it a good spring clean on arrival – Alice was a wonder, the way she managed to clean a year’s dirt and damp in an afternoon – they hired it for peanuts. That, in these days of economic crisis, was something to be considered. Moreover, it was fun the Lugger. A good time was had upon her by all, come rain come shine. Been the same for years. They knew their way around. They felt easy on board. They respected their captain – Jack: they took his word. If he said the engine was snarled up and there would be no cruise that day, they’d all potter off, quite happy, believing him. And the engine often was snarled up. Increasingly, over the years. But, in truth, it was no hardship to Jack to put it to rights again. In his heart, the task was a positive enjoyment. There was something about kneeling on the boards of the deck, feeling the muscles pulling in your back, greasy black fingers coaxing the tired parts . . . After eleven months in an office shuffling through clean white papers, Jack loved tinkering with an oily engine. So much so that, sometimes, he even prolonged the job, anticipating the cheer that would go up when he straightened his back and declared the fault mended. He knew the feel of the key in the ignition, familiar as his own front door. There weren’t many greater pleasures than turning it, face against the wind and hearing, distinctly, the putter of the gallant little engine as the Lugger’s nose pushed once more through the reeds and into the open grey waters . . .

  He’d write the usual letter. Tonight.

  “Course, the Lugger,’ said Robbie. ‘You’re very quiet, Mum.’ He turned to her.

  In the barren heath of Alice Lees’s mind the yellow of cooperation failed to flower. She waited, stranded, helpless. But no warmth surged through her veins, as it usually did at this annual family conference. For years, she’d been just as delighted as the others at the thought of a summer holiday on the Lugger. Where was that most familiar of feelings, now? As she waited for it to infuse her limbs, in the silence of the front room, the eyes of the family upon her, Alice saw a kaleidoscope of all their years in Norfolk.

  Potato peelings. She remembered them best. Miles and miles of brown spotted peelings uncurling from several tons of potatoes and overflowing the minute, discoloured sink. ‘Here, be a love and get rid of these for me, will you?’ she would say to no one in particular. But no one ever cared to hear her occasional cries for help. So – quicker to do a thing yourself, really – she’d push the peelings into a slippery plastic bag, feeling them curl like cold brown ribbons round her wrists, and squeeze the bag into the bin full of empty tins and egg shells and apple cores and lumps of cotton wool smeary with Denise’s eyeshadow. Oh! The smell in the galley – Jack insisted they called it the galley. Funny the others didn’t notice it. Tea leaves and baked beans, fried fish and pulpy fruit squashed under the superficial fumes of disinfectant. To Alice the smell was an obscenity, a tangible, creeping thing that crawled over her skin, into her hair, lapped in her nostrils at night while she tried to sleep. Not that she ever slept much. That awful plash, plash, thud, thud, a watery rapping hand against the boat. Then the lurching rock and the scrape of weeds when another boat passed, leaving behind its sickening wake. ‘Jack!’ she’d cry, queasy, head rolling about on the hard pillow. But Jack would be snoring, hands lumpy on the blankets, the oil washed to skeleton branches of black in the creases of his skin. Denise, too, slept peacefully beneath her face-pack, and Robbie was curled dreamingly under his mack on the deck. The moon, Alice knew, would be looking at itself in the black water. She didn’t like the idea of two moons. They made her flesh prick. Also, she didn’t like the idea of moorhens and water rats scuttling through the reeds on their night errands bumping, as they sometimes did, against the boat. The horrors of the night about her, Alice longed for morning. Stirring a tired fork among the bacon, at least there was light of a kind in the galley. The shopping to think of, the sleeping bags to be aired. Robbie’s socks to wash: Denise’s hair to set before she dried it, netted, in the sun or wind. Sometimes, on board the Lugger, every muscle in Alice Lee’s body would protest, while the yellow of co-operation racing in her blood would urge her to go on. And go on she did. It was only conditions on board, being so different from home, made her so tired. Silly, really. The change itself probably did her good, and adversities were part of the fun, weren’t they? Fun! Evenings, she’d let them all go off to The Jolly for a drink, and when they’d gone she’d sit out on deck, on the small plastic chair, alone, scuffing at the midges. Dreading the night. Counting the hours to go home. But not wanting to dwell on her silliness: for that’s what it was. A five minute sit-down, a glance at the sunset clouds that dyed the water (she’d never been much of a one for sunsets herself, preferred grey skies that needed no comment) then back to the galley to peel more potatoes. They’d come back ravenous, wanting a big fry-up supper at once. Oh God! The bin would be full again, plate scrapings from lunch. Lumps of meat Jack hadn’t been able to chew. They’d arrive to find her started on the frying, smiling.

  ‘Well?’ said Robbie.

  ‘I’m not going,’ said Alice.

  ‘Not what, dear?’ Jack, a careless listener, could rarely believe what he heard.

  ‘Not this year.’ As she saw her own words spin into an incredulous void, Alice felt the gradual induration of her body. She leaned back in her chair, but her spine remained stiff.

  ‘Mum says she’s not going. Hark at that. She wouldn’t miss it for anything.’ Denise, filing her nails, was full of sarcasm. Robbie rubbed at the sweat that had accumulated on his forehead.

  ‘Not going?’

  ‘Am I to believe my two ears are deceiving me?’ asked Jack, looking his wife directly in the eye.

  ‘No, Jack.’

  ‘Then what’s all this about? I want to get the letter off tonight.’

  ‘You can do that. You can get the letter off, go on your holiday. It’s just that I’m not coming too.’

  A film of blackness, like a year’s dust, had gathered over the room. Alice felt faint. She held on to the arms of her chair.

  ‘Mum’s gone mad,’ said Robbie, ‘haven’t you, Mum?’

  ‘She’s having one of her turns,’ said Denise.

  ‘She hasn’t had one of her turns for twenty years, since she was pregnant with you. Or was it Robbie?’

  ‘Could someone get me a glass of water?’ Alice asked quietly.

  Jack went to the sideboard, momen
tarily alarmed. He poured a glass of brandy from a dull bottle which he kept for victims of possible car crashes in their street.

  ‘I said water, please.’ Alice hated spirits.

  ‘Go on. You need some of the hard stuff.’

  Obediently, Alice drank. Jack watched her, uneasy at her paleness. Best to get her to bed as soon as possible, he thought. Then he could write the letter and post it in the morning. By then, she would have come to her senses. This turn was something to do with her time of life, more than likely.

  When she had washed up the cups and plates and her own brandy glass, Alice went willingly to her room. In the morning she, too, knew she would feel better.