Julia Gets a Life (45 page)

We made love again (
again)
when we got back from the restaurant, and afterwards Craig fell immediately asleep. I spent a good hour lying beside him, just looking. Not believing my luck. Not believing its end. When I did finally sleep, I dreamed a long, thoughtful dream. There were doors; doors ahead of Craig, opening before him, and doors after me, shutting softly behind. I kept running back and propping them all open with my Mother’s
faux-
vegetable doorstops, so I could still see where I came from. So I could still see an exit. Then the final door opened and Craig stepped on through it. Not Disney this time, but impenetrable white light. Craig beckoned, but I didn’t want to come with him, because this door was too heavy and it wouldn’t stay open – even with a half-ton of clay propped against it. And there was a sign. It said ‘one way only’. So if I went through, there would be no going back.

*

            Laughable in the morning (we both laughed, of course). Chapter one in every volume of every dream book ever written. But that’s because it’s a universal feeling, I guess. But I found I still couldn’t quite get a handle on the bottom line, decisions wise, so I did the very best thing one can do in such circumstances. I didn’t make a list, or make some dice out of sugar lumps. Instead, I arranged to meet my mother for lunch.

*

            The deal is that we meet at the front of the Doc Shop. Even my mother cannot fail to find a shop that sells nothing but four floors of stout leather boots. But when I get there I find it isn’t that any more. It’s now a branch of a funky ‘yoof’ apparel emporium. But there’s footwear in the window, and she’s stepped inside anyway.  I find her inspecting a pair of girls’ biker boots with buckles, and wondering loudly why young women today don’t appreciate how feminine a little peep toe always looks. With a lavvy-pan heel. And a nice pair of stockings. And a skirt that isn’t trailing along in the gutter, or exposing their buttocks.

            Richard, ironically, gets his name dropped into the conversation only moments after we sit down. Mother starts rustling. I’m used to my mother’s rustling, of course. There cannot be a cinema in the South East that hasn’t at some time projected its offerings to the low but insistent accompaniment of drink carton drainage, the opening of sweet wrappers or the search for the hankie she just
knows
she put somewhere. Today, however, her rustling is purposeful rather than an opinion on a film. She produces two items which she helpfully identifies as vases.

            ‘When he came to pick the children up he admired several of my pieces, and I thought what a shame it was that he didn’t have any for himself.’ This last bit is accompanied by one of my mothers ‘smiles’ - the ones she uses in place of a ‘you cow’ suffix.

            ‘So you made him these.’

            ‘So I made him these. He told me his flat is mainly magnolia so I had complete artistic freedom with colour, which was nice.’

            Listening to my mother throw expressions like artistic freedom into the conversation is deeply disconcerting. I fear she may be consorting with the man with the phallus.

            ‘So you plumped for this pinky-greeny-magenta type combo. Very nice...’

            ‘Doesn’t it say ‘Chinese rug’ to you? I’ve always felt Richard appreciated a more traditional style.’

           
What?

            ‘Hmmm. So what are you going to eat?’

            ‘Do any of these dishes have a nice bit of steak in them? I can’t make head nor tail of the menu.’

            ‘There’s a stroganoff here. That’s got meat
and
gravy.’

            ‘Or a pie. I’ve not had a pie for a while.’

            ‘The only pie is a filo one with ricotta and truffles. I don’t think you’d like that.’

            ‘For pudding perhaps.’

*

            Here we go then.

            I leave my Mother at Victoria Station, with her rail-card, her rainhood and around of tongue sandwiches, and promise to call just as soon as I’m back. Then I tube it to Paddington, grab a tea and a paper, and find my seat on the train for the long journey home.

            I don’t have the faintest idea what I’m going to do when I get there. I’m going to go to Richard’s, of course, to make suitable noises about his exciting news, give him his vases (sic) and gather up the children, but that done I don’t have any kind of a plan.

            As we thrust smoothly westwards, I’m nurturing, I realise, a rather optimistic assumption that as soon as I clap eyes on him, it will all become clear. Why on earth should I think such a preposterous thing? In fact, why think at all? Has it helped me thus far? I should cocoa, it has. Why can’t I just do a crossword or scrutinise the readers’ husbands’ bottoms in
Coffee Time!,
like everyone else does.

            There is an awful lot of sky between Swindon and Bristol. Big sky, in that shade that is so beloved of travel agents and which it is impossible to describe without resorting to cliché. I ponder for ten minutes and come up with
Blue-Flush.
But it
is
luminous today. And criss-crossed with pale quilts of cirrus and mares’ tails, and populated by high planes and solitary birds. Beneath these lie the soft curves of the Wiltshire fields. Like prairie, except they’re not waving or nodding. Many are already shorn of their wheat and sport black plastic bales, like blackheads among the stubble. Which seems early to me. It is still only mid-August. Or have I missed some profound change in agri-technology? Do short stalks take less time to reach harvesting ripeness? I don’t know any more. I only ever see sheep. I miss having arable farming nearby.

It is early evening when I finally pull up outside Number seven Malachite Street. The sort of buzzy, scented, balmy early evening that makes you want to stuff your two boneless chicken breasts back in the freezer and go to a country pub with a garden, and sit at one of those picnic tables that have bird poo and ketchup splats on them, and say to yourselves ‘ah! Summer at last!’. And guess what?

            Butterflies. Small but robust.

            Richard answers the door in jeans and a T-shirt. His feet are bare and his hair is slightly ruffled. Like he’s been absently scratching an itch.

            ‘Oh,’ he says, not opening the door any wider. ‘Didn’t you get the message? The children aren’t....’

            ‘Here. I know. I came because I was driving by (Oh,
yeah
? Down a small residential street, off another residential street, off a road that leads to a community tip, a drop-in centre for the homeless and a place selling fireplaces and antique coal scuttles)....and I wanted to drop these off.’

            I brandish my carrier.

            ‘Oh.’ His eyes narrow a little, but he opens the door a fraction more. The smell of Italian cooking wafts along the passage. Great heavens, he’s not become another bloody pasta man, surely? I breathe in deeply. But no. It’s only frozen pizza.

            ‘So, can I come in?’

            ‘Um.’ Grudging. ‘Yes, I suppose.’

            For a moment I assume he must have a woman in. Rhiannon, perhaps? But then I realise the last conversation we had (bar arranging childcare logistics) involved him making a meaningful relationship declaration and me telling him in fairly unequivocal terms where he could shove it. No wonder there’s condensation forming on the letter box. It will take him some moments to recover his equilibrium.

            He stands aside politely and I move past him into the hall. My mother was right. It
is
mainly magnolia. With contrasting carpets. In a selection of colours to reflect bodily functions. Bile yellow, blood red, a distressing shade of brown. I have never set foot in this place and don’t know in which direction I should head. I am assuming (given the cooking aroma) that I should go kitchenwards. But there is carpet at every room threshold. So I hover with my plastic bag.

            ‘Straight on,’ he urges.

            I’m reminded of the strangeness of our territorial conversations back in April, and how all the simple host/visitor exchanges stuck in my throat. And I keep spotting items that belong to the children; Max’s baseball cap here, Emma’s slippers there.

            We enter the room at the end of the passage. The carpet had me fooled. This is the kitchen after all. Except it’s the dining and living room too. God knows why, but I’m shocked by its smallness. It makes me want to blush. All I can think is that Richard went on the TV looking like a big noise in civil engineering and unknown to all the millions of people who saw it, he lives in a poky little hovel. Except it’s not a hovel of course, because Richard is house proud and tidy and good at minimising clutter (much enhanced, of course, by my lack of input), but it’s bijou way beyond the point of being stylishly compact.

            I sense he is studying my discomfort so I make a noisy fuss of busying myself with my bag. He glances at his watch. Me, or the pizza?

            ‘So. What did you bring me?’ he says, not sitting down.

            ‘A present from Mum,’ I say. ‘She made them herself for you. Erm....’

            I pull out the bubble wrapped shapes and unwrap them. ‘They’re, erm ...erm...well, see for yourself.’

            I laugh a little as he takes one. It’s only a nervous/embarrassed type laugh (even though they
are
grotesque) but he wastes no time in upbraiding me for it.

            ‘They’re very nice
act
ually. It was a very kind gesture. You should try being a bit less....’

            ‘I’m sorry?’

            ‘A bit less critical of your Mother. How do you think she would feel if she knew you were standing here tittering about these?’

            He wields them aggressively.

            ‘I wasn’t tittering.’

            ‘Yes you were. You were taking the piss.’

            ‘I wasn’t.’

            ‘Yes, you were.’

            He is quietly insistent. How dare he?

            ‘I wasn’t taking the piss, as you say. Not at all. And anyway, are you trying to tell me you didn’t have a good laugh about the rotating hen egg holder?’

            We are squared up like duelling toddlers across a kitchen table the size of a monopoly board. Do the three of them sit around this to eat? Richard’s chin juts.

            ‘That was different.’

            ‘How?’

            ‘Because it was funny.’

            ‘Only because you painted nipples on two of the eggs. That’s not taking the piss at all, I suppose?’

            He carefully places the vases on the table. Like they were the crown jewels. And then looks at his watch again.

            ‘It’s not the same thing at all. Your Mother has made a point of making these for me. Of letting me know that she’s thinking of me. Of being kind. Of being
thoughtful
. And all you can do is pour scorn on her efforts and titter, like a...’

            I intend to interrupt with something placatory and Mother-friendly, and to steer the conversation away from what is rapidly turning into an extended dip into the cess-pool of my character. But then he looks at his watch
again
, and irritated, instead I say,