Comfort and Joy (23 page)

‘Robert’s just arrived. He’s having a shower and then he’s joining us here,’ says Sam. ‘Did you have a nice time, Ma?’

‘Oh, aye,’ says Pat, sipping her Coke through a straw, so that her mouth looks like a tiny beak. ‘Nice enough. Just a wee
junk shop, you know. Well, a big one.’

We took Pat to Greece one summer. The house was beautiful. The pool was turquoise and you could walk from the garden to the
most stunning beach, down a path that smelled of wild herbs. Pat began to look bored and sulky after three days: the trip,
apparently, did not compare favourably with the time her old-age-pensioners’ group went to Calais for a weekend. Not enough
shops, no booze cruises, ‘nothing to look at’. I wouldn’t mind – each to his own – but why come in the first place, knowing
the kinds of places I book? You know? Why come and sit there and make a face like I’d taken her to Darfur?

‘The stuff in the shop we went to wasn’t really Pat’s cup of tea,’ I tell Sam.

‘No,’ says Sam. ‘I don’t suppose it was.’

‘I just wanted a wee cat rug,’ says Pat plaintively. ‘But never mind. Never mind me. You just go on and enjoy yourselves,
son.’

‘There’s a herbalist four doors down,’ says Evie. ‘Let’s go to it when Robert gets here. I love Moroccan herbalists, they
have jars full of saffron and rose petals and special solutions of delicious oils.’

‘We can go after this,’ I say.

‘I’ll stay here with the wee ’un,’ says Pat. How,
how
could I have forgotten how irritating she is in travelling mode?

We sit for a while, drinking coffee – Coke in Pat’s case – and turning our faces to the sunshine like flowers.

‘Maisy’s that good at eating,’ Pat observes. ‘Foreign stuff, I mean.’

‘They’re just pastries filled with almond paste. You like marzipan, Pat – try one,’ I say, pushing the plate towards her.

‘No, you’re all right,’ Pat says. ‘Don’t fancy the look of them.’

‘Try one, Ma,’ says Sam. ‘They’re nice. You’ll like them.’

‘Don’t make me
do
things,’ Pat says to Sam, her good humour deserting her. There’s a mutinous look on her face and her voice sounds both defensive
and aggressive. ‘I’m not
like
you lot.’

This is unimpeachable fact. As I may have mentioned, Pat is exceptionally keen on Hallmark-type greeting cards and on the
sentiments contained within them, which she treats as though they were piercingly insightful, quasi-Buddhist aperçus into
the human condition. This reliance – or perhaps dependence – on ready-made sentimentality comes at the expense of other human
emotions, especially the ones requiring thought. There is no digging in Pat’s world, no self-examination, no questioning –
only greeting cards and the hysterical, over-the-top behaviours learned from soap opera. So if somebody makes Pat unhappy,
she never thinks, ‘But
why
are you like that,
why
do you do/say things that make me/you sad/happy, what can
I
do to help you/myself?’ Instead, there are the comfortable, omnipresent platitudes, applicable both to herself and to her
family: ‘A mother’s work is never done’, ‘Going abroad gives you diarrhoea’, ‘Foreigners exist to rip you off’, and a whole
separate slew involving ‘family’, ‘kiddies’, ‘love’. Every emotion comes with a pastel-coloured teddy attached. To her, the
words are enough: they don’t require any action or examination – they merely need to exist and be said out loud. Pat lives
in the kind of universe where, if you fell out with your mother twenty years ago over a stupid thing that neither of you can
quite remember, you say ‘I’ll never forgive her’ like a mantra until she dies, at which point you hurl yourself into the grave
at the funeral, ululating like a maniac, and spend the next twenty years telling your kids about their marvellous gran,
who you made sure they never met.

Anyway. Pat’s ideal card would be one with a cover that read: ‘We’re That Different Now, Son, You and I.’ (
We’re that different now, son, you and I/ It wasn’t always so/ But you had to make your way in life/ And so I let you go.
PS: Now I just sit here crying, but don’t mind me.
) Sam knows this, and sees the absurdity – which doesn’t detract one iota from the fact that Pat is his mother, whom he loves
and feels defensive about, and loyal towards. It’s an awkward situation to navigate – but then, I tell myself, his navigation
of it is no longer my business. It’s another weird thing about separation: what was our joint problem is now his alone; what
we took care of together – what was made a hundred times easier by our complicity – is now Sam’s sole affair. The difficulty
is, it’s not easy to absent yourself completely from situations that have been ongoing for nearly a decade, even though the
rules dictate that you must.

Poor old Pat. My own family would probably be the recipients of the
You Are Very Strange, But I Quite Like You
card, or maybe
To Me, You Are Like Characters in a Film
. Pat likes, and perhaps even loves, us, but she doesn’t believe we’re quite real; she thinks the whole thing – our whole
lives – are a diverting entertainment, a bit like watching telly. I don’t for one moment imagine that she believes we are
capable of actual, real, painful, complicated feelings or emotions, and I don’t think she believes Sam is, either: by making
a comfortable life for himself, he has jettisoned his right to her sympathy. Pat’s other children live in the world she recognizes,
a bus ride away from her own home. They eat plastic bread and oven chips and tins of Bigga peas, they work shifts, they go
to the pub. They are known creatures. Not so Sam, with his home-made pesto and his quilted loo roll. And very much not so
me, with my everything.

When her son and I separated – after a child, two stepsons and seven long years – Pat’s sole words to him were, ‘Are you all
right, son?’ and to me, ‘Aye, it’s a shame.’ That was it. No ‘Are
you coping?’, no ‘Do you need a hand?’, no ‘Talk to me about it, I’m your mother.’ God knows Kate has her faults, but at least
she moved in for a week – nightmare: she literally shoved a toothbrush in my mouth every night and said things like, ‘There’s
no need to be repulsive just because you’re mildly depressed’ – and sent food parcels for a month afterwards (‘C – There are
other pleasures in life and food is one of them. Enjoy the duck confit, but please don’t get fat again. Carbs are the enemy!
Love, K’). My sisters rallied. Sam was alone. He has friends, obviously. But none of his family made themselves available.

I think of it and look at him feeding Maisy the froth from his coffee in the North African sunshine. He is watching his mother
– Pat is sitting silently; she’s finished sipping her Coke and has pursed her lips in a hen’s bottom way – with that mixture
of pity, irritation and absolute love, and I feel sorry for him. Zero assistance from his family:
pas une saucisse
, as Kate would say. He’s the one who ‘made it’ and got away, ergo in the eyes of his brothers and of his mother, he is impermeable,
always dealing, a Coper, successful, absolutely undesirous of help or any offer of support. It must have been horrible for
him. On the other hand, swings and roundabouts: that’s exactly what he thought about me. Nevertheless.

‘It must have been horrible for you,’ I say, patting his arm. ‘When we split up. It was horrible for me too, but at least
I have these mad people wishing me well.’

I am expecting Sam to make a joke of this, or to respond with some light, throwaway remark, or to tell me to stop pawing him.
Instead he says, ‘Thank you, Clara. That means a lot, you saying that,’ and smiles a genuinely warm smile.

Robert appears just as Maisy finishes hoovering up her pastries. He has Jack and Charlie in tow. ‘It’s fantastic here, Mum,’
says Jack. ‘Can we move to Morocco?’

‘I’m starving,’ says Charlie.

Kate appears too, having purchased four rugs, two bedspreads and one crateful of hand-painted tableware, all of which are
being shipped to London; she’s also bought us six coloured tea-glasses each as an early Christmas present. ‘You’re that good
to everyone, Kate,’ Pat says, perking up. We order another round of drinks and cakes, after which Evie, Robert and I wander
down to the chemist’s, or rather the traditional herbalist’s, which looks extremely promising. The cool, stone-floored hallway
is lined with jars of roots and petals, and the window display is dazzling – huge glass bottles filled with every kind of
pigment known to man, lapis-lazuli blue next to fuchsia next to pea green next to ochre. But as ever in Marrakesh, pottering
about browsing is not an option: the chemist finds us immediately, offers mint tea and leads us upstairs, to a room where,
he promises, the really ‘special’ stuff is. The special stuff includes top-grade argan oil, which we buy by the half-litre
at Evie’s insistence – ‘It’s brilliant on everything,’ she says, ‘skin, hair, salad’ – and a jar of some creepy-looking root
which the chemist pulls out with great reverence. ‘Viagra!’ he says triumphantly, grinning at Robert.

‘Goodness,’ says Robert.

‘For virility,’ the chemist elaborates. ‘Herbal.’

‘I see,’ says Robert. ‘What do you do with it? Chew on it?’

‘Make tea,’ says the man. ‘Infusion.’ He turns to me. ‘No sleep for you any more, madame! No ladysleep for long time!’

‘We’re not togeth–’ I start saying, but it’s too late. The chemist is on a roll.

‘Busy life make tired,’ he says. ‘Everyone. In your country, in my country. Whole world. Man work hard.’

‘Why don’t you give him your femmo lecture about how women work hard too?’ says Robert. ‘Now seems a good time.’

‘Oh, be quiet,’ I say.

‘Man work hard,’ the chemist repeats. ‘He want so bad, you
know. He
want
to make good time in bed. Party time. But sometimes …’ He looks down at his white-overalled crotch and makes a sad face.
‘Little guy no wanna play,’ he says, shaking his head.

‘God, Americans have a lot to answer for,’ says Evie. ‘There should be a crimes-against-language tribunal set up in The Hague.
I’m going back downstairs to look at the tisanes. I’m embarrassed in advance by how this dialogue is going to end. Get me
some saffron, would you?’

‘My little guy’s okay, thanks,’ says Robert.

‘All man say this,’ laughs the chemist. ‘From the shame.’

‘From the shame, Robert,’ I repeat. ‘D’you have peen shame, darling? About your little guy?’

‘You’re the most annoying person I have ever met, Clara,’ Robert says conversationally, and very much not for the first time.

‘Snap,’ I say.

‘I’m okay, really – thanks,’ Robert says to the chemist.

‘Apart from the peen shame you carry every day,’ I say, making a helpful face. ‘Poor Robert. All flooby and –’

‘Stop it,’ says Robert.

‘You buy, huh?’ says the chemist. ‘You buy anyway. You buy many root. For friend, for family. Mans happy, happy ladies. Everybody
happy! Many hours, hard.’ He makes a fist. ‘Hard. With these root.’

‘I suppose I could get some for Jake,’ Robert mutters. ‘Give it to Tamsin for his stocking.’

‘My husband would like a dozen,’ I tell the chemist firmly. ‘Twelve. For his own personal use. I sleep too well,’ I add, making
an unhappy face. ‘Every night. His little guy … we have problems.’

‘Haa!’ the chemist shouts in delight, clapping his hands. ‘I will help you! Take twenty, I give nice price, family price.’

‘Two,’ says Robert. ‘I’ll take two.’

‘Six,’ says the chemist. ‘Happy Mrs!’

‘Yes, watch out, my love,’ Robert says. ‘It’s your lucky night. Now,’ he adds, smiling at the chemist. ‘My wife.’ He gestures
to me. ‘She has very bad haemorrhoids. You know haemorrhoids? On the bottom. Well –
in
the bottom, horrendously enough. Piles. Protruding from …’

‘Rob. Stop. It’s not funny.’

‘… from the anus,’ says Robert. ‘Yep. She is in terrible pain. Ow! Bottom-ache! Like that. All the time. And she’s too shy
– um,
trop timide
– to ask. But I love her, you see. So very, very much. So I am asking for her.
Is there a remedy?
’

Robert should have been an actor: he really does look like the definition of a concerned spouse refusing to let his wife’s
happiness be destroyed by her bottom problem. Every inch of his being is focused on the task at hand, the task being my humiliation.
With the volume muted, you’d think I had a terrible sickness and lived in a refugee camp and he was begging a medic for antiretrovirals.

‘And perhaps something for constipation, if you have it,’ he adds. ‘It seems to exacerbate the problem.’ He looks at me and
shakes his head sadly. ‘Doesn’t it, my poor darling?’

‘I don’t have piles. Haemorrhoids,’ I say to the chemist. ‘Or constipation. Monsieur is making a hilarious joke.’

‘Many people from Europe have,’ says the chemist with a shrug. ‘I can fix. One herb for make small, one cream for itchy. I
find.’

‘
I don’t have
…’ I start to say, but it’s too late: he’s already rootling through his cabinets looking for suitable remedies.

‘Robert!’ I hiss. I am actually blushing. ‘It’s a totally inappropriate joke. It’s a Muslim country. You can’t go around talking
to people – to strange men – about my bottom.’

‘Oh dear,’ says Robert. ‘But I just did.’ He bursts out
laughing. ‘I win,’ he says. I don’t know why he and I can only communicate in the manner of really babyish ten-year-olds –
sometimes I worry that it’s because we don’t have anything real left to say to each other – but it passes the time. Say what
you like about Robert, but he does lighten my mood, even if it is at the expense of my dignity.

By the time we get home, the house is a flurry of activity. Moustafa is up a ladder, trailing multicoloured paper lanterns
all across the courtyard. Two young men have appeared from nowhere and are sweeping, polishing the brass tables and placing
dozens of nightlights on every available surface. Foot-high candles have been put inside the lanterns surrounding the pool.

‘What’s this?’ I ask. ‘Are we having a party?’

‘It’s tonight!’ says Flo. She is stringing silver baubles on metres of silver ribbon. ‘Some of them got shattered in my suitcase,
so annoying. But I thought we’d have these crisscrossing the landings. And then maybe hang some from the glass lanterns, too.’