No Place For a Man (3 page)

‘Will we have to leave our school and go to Briar’s Lane?’ Natasha’s eyes sparkled at the prospect. Jess waited with interest for the answer. Tucked away inside it was what they all wanted to know: the ‘what the hell do we live on?’ question.

To Jess’s fury, Matt laughed. ‘No. I get paid full whack for six months, then it’s final goodbye with a lump sum, a good one, and on with the rest of life. We could come out of it quids in.’ He reached out and patted Jess on the behind. She twitched away out of reach as he went on, talking to Natasha and Zoe, ‘And your famous mother’s working, so everything’s fine.’

‘Fine? What’s so bloody fine?’ Jess slammed the dish of potatoes down on the table. ‘You’ll only be “quids in” as you put it if you get another job pretty damn fast. What the hell are you going to do, where are you going to find another job like that one at your age?’

There, it was out. The A-word. Jess knew the score even if Matt didn’t; the world was full of redundant men of his age – Jesus, there were even three here in the Grove – refugees from comfortable careers in midlife like stodgy complacent wives discarded for racy younger models. Matt could end up like Wandering Wilf who paced the south-west London
streets all day, pretending he had a deep sense of purpose and telling anyone who asked that he was writing a whole novel in his head.

‘I don’t want another job “like that one” as you put it,’ Matt said quietly as he reached across towards the steaming chicken casserole. ‘Don’t spoil it, Jess. This is the best day of my life.’

…
Tidying a teenager’s room is like archaeology: over the years the chaos forms time-capsule layers beneath a crust of abandoned school work. At the top lie lager cans, surf magazines, long-lost videos and ticket stubs from recent gigs. Dig a little further (preferably in stout gloves) and you unearth an early Gameboy, a wheel-less skateboard and
…

Jess stopped typing and stared out of the window. The lupins by the front garden wall had the first signs of the blight that afflicted them every year. Someone had suggested it might be to do with living under the Heathrow flight path, it being a kind of unquestioned local assumption that excess fuel was jettisoned freely as the planes came in to land, though no-one had yet come up with a good explanation as to why this should affect only lupins. Surely they couldn’t be the only kerosene-sensitive plants? If you took notice of the frantic headlines in the local paper, things fell off, or out of, planes fairly constantly. Frozen sewage had
crashed through the windows of a primary school, a poor dead stowaway had once plummeted onto a building site and a bit of a wing (luckily, for the passengers, not a crucial bit) had demolished a greenhouse on the allotments. Eddy-up-the-road walked with his face permanently pointed at the sky so as not to miss the inevitable mid-air collision (and potentially profitable I-saw-it-happen statements to the press) that he was sure was imminent. Whatever was falling now, the lupins’ leaves were starting to go that sad greyish colour. Soon they’d wilt and struggle, the flowers would be stunted and contorted and huge fat bugs would seize the vulnerable moment and move in for the kill. Jess wondered why she persevered with them. She should give up on the bloody things, she knew as she stared out at them; plant delphiniums instead and ring-fence them with slug pellets. Her father couldn’t understand why she didn’t turn over every bit of earth for organic vegetables but she was sticking with the lupins: she couldn’t decide if it was simply because she was a hopeless optimist that she trailed home with a box full of them every spring from the garden centre, or because she was too stubborn to give in and admit defeat.

Across the road Angie, in her sleek baby-blue Ellesse tracksuit, hauled her DKNY gym bag out of her Discovery and unlocked her front door. Jess felt guilty; it should have been one of her own days for tone-and-groan (as Matt so sweetly put it) but she’d felt too vulnerable to face one of those jacuzzi tell-all sessions that she and Angie would inevitably have. Angie, divorced and with children boarding somewhere near Oxford, liked to think she was sensitive to her friends’ inner tensions. She had time for them, she said, and
enough of life’s harsh experiences under her belt (and below her belt, rumour had it) to be both worldly-wise and impartial. She would persuade, with a light touch to the hand and an almost whispered, ‘Come on, you know you can tell
me
’ and it would all be out. The least Jess felt she should do was discuss Matt’s redundancy with him before she confided in anyone else. From the collective household attitude so far, she was the only one who considered it something of a disaster. The girls seemed to think it was almost as thrilling as a large-scale lottery win. As he’d become more and more euphoric and expansive over dinner they’d ceremoniously recruited him as an honorary Idle Teenager in temporary replacement for Oliver and suggested he pop down to Tesco for a shelf-stacking job on the late shift. Matt had actually looked as if he might give it some serious thought. She could anticipate Oliver’s e-mailed response when she got round to telling him: it would be ‘Choice, cool’.

Jess read over what she’d written – a few hundred words of lightweight rambling on the delights of sorting the absent Oliver’s bedroom, along with a hint of the poignancy of nest-flying. Five hundred or so words to go. There would be letters from readers after this one: some would tell her sad tales of teenagers who’d left at fifteen and never come back, others would tell her off for clearing up after someone who was legally a grown-up. One or two would rail about the pampering of boys and how mothers like her did not do their sons’ future partners any favours by collecting up mould-encrusted coffee cups and giving them a wash. Only she would know that she hadn’t actually had time to make a start on the room at all yet but, with the deadline only hours away, was making up her column as
she went along; this was, after all, the entertainment end of journalism: you had to be part actor, part novelist, part sit-down comic.

Upstairs, as if to make up for the lack of Oliver’s idle oversleeping presence, Matthew was huddled under the duvet snoring away the effects of too much of last night’s red wine.

‘No reason not to,’ he’d said as he’d opened a second bottle. Natasha had smirked. ‘What about your liver?’ she’d said, saving Jess the trouble of mentioning it herself.

‘Hey Tash, it’s not every day you get your life back,’ he’d replied, waving his glass around with cheery expansiveness and looking generally as if he’d discovered Santa was real.

Had the job really been that bad? Jess wondered now. Matt had never seemed unhappy, certainly never said he was, but then again it was something she couldn’t recall that she’d actually asked him. You didn’t watch someone come home from the same job every day for twenty-two years and expect to find new, fascinating things to say about it. Matthew only talked about work when there was something amusing to report. Occasionally he had mentioned tricky clients: the Oscar nominee who’d demanded a large-scale press briefing and then refused to discuss her film role but had plenty to say on veganism, or the clothes designer who’d assumed that public relations was something to do with Matthew procuring under-age boys for him. Out at parties or dinners, Matt didn’t go into detail about his work. When asked he’d say he was in PR, in the kind of voice that made it sound too boring for further questions. He’d neatly deflect any remaining curiosity by asking what the questioner did
and then feign staggering fascination with whatever reply he got, whether it was accountancy, greengrocery or painting the scarlet noses on garden gnomes. Whatever his previous reticence, it would certainly have to be talked about now, along with the big question – What Next?

According to the clock in the top corner of Jess’s i-Book it was coming up to eleven and there was still no sign that he intended to get up. Monica, coming in to clean, had been lied to and been asked to tiptoe around as Matt ‘had a migraine’. Monica had given her a raised-eyebrow ‘oh really?’ look and Jess had felt a vague shame about not telling her the truth – after all, everyone would know soon enough that it would be for a hell of a lot more than just one day that Matt would be off work. But then there was the thought that Monica, the next morning, would be cleaning (and chatting) down the road at Clarissa Hamilton’s. Jess needed a few more days to get used to the idea, work out some way of deciding Matt’s jobless state wasn’t so world-shattering, before she could fend off neighbourly nosiness disguised as sympathy.

Jess read yet again the first couple of paragraphs of her piece and tried to put herself back into the necessary light-hearted mood that identified her style. This was where the acting aspect came in, thinking herself into character before she could get on with the performance. …
And under the bed, half a plate of spaghetti bolognese, crusted over like lava on a long-dormant volcano
…

There wasn’t really a plate of food under Oliver’s bed, anything left over and edible would have gone straight into Donald the cat, but it was the kind of detail the readers liked. Domestically, she had to come
across as just that tiny bit more of a slattern than was strictly acceptable, give an impression of colourful barely-coping muddle. As in a TV sitcom, her children had to be just that bit more of a trial, though likeable if you dug deep enough, and her husband …

‘God my head!’ Matt’s body slumped down onto the sofa. He was wearing his ancient navy blue towelling robe that had been pulled into long thready loops by Donald in his fond-kitten days.

‘That wine must have been full of dodgy chemicals. I won’t be buying any of that again.’ He ran his hands through his fair hair. It stayed sticking up, making him look like a scruffy schoolboy from a bygone age. Jess smiled at him, just managing to stop herself from pointing out that without his income there wouldn’t be much more in the way of wine-buying.

She’d thought about it in bed the night before as she lay awake wondering if, long term, Natasha had had a point: would the girls have to leave the Julia Perry school? At least her father would be thrilled about that: George had called Jess a traitor to her class for sending them to a private school – but then he’d said the same when she and Matt had got a mortgage to buy their first flat. ‘A millstone’ he’d called it, believing firmly then in the kind of state-owned rentable property, allocated according to need, that Soviet Russia went in for. Would they have to sell the house? Would Matt ever be employed again? He wasn’t far off fifty, which, in terms of the dynamic young bods in charge of recruitment, was just on the edge of death. She’d gone over and over all those early-hours questions that hadn’t, given the help of all that alcohol, lost Matt any sleep.

‘Sorry, were you working?’ Matt’s head rose a little from his hands as he looked at her.

‘Just doing my piece for Sunday after next. It’s due in today,’ she told him. ‘Your eyes look terrible, all puffy and half shut.’

‘That’s the sun’s fault. It’s too bright. It should be more considerate.’ He groaned and got up, heading for the kitchen. ‘Any coffee on the go?’ He held on tight to the doorpost, his face contorted into exaggerated angst and agony.

Jess laughed at him and he grimaced at her ruthlessness. ‘Only for Monica and I think she’s had it already. If you’re making one I wouldn’t mind, that’s if you’re up to it …’

‘Not sure.’ Matt tottered through the doorway. ‘But for you I’ll try.’

Jess grinned to herself as she added a couple more sentences. This was almost like having Oliver back, reminding her of the many Sunday mornings (or early afternoons) when he’d sworn himself off alcohol for life (maybe a day or two in reality) and tried to get away with doing nothing more useful than lying on the sofa like a Victorian consumptive, too fragile to clear a table or peel so much as a single carrot for lunch, and absolutely, definitely,
positively
not in a state to tackle any A-level physics revision. She wondered where he was – he’d still be travelling, she guessed. The flight to Singapore must have been about twelve hours, then on to Cairns for at least another six.

‘When can we expect to hear from the wandering boy, do you think?’ Matt had come back with the coffee and managed, with worryingly trembling hands, to get the slopped-over drops on the desk but not on Jess’s keyboard. He settled himself on the sofa again.

‘He promised to e-mail as soon as he could,’ she told him. ‘He seemed sure he’d find somewhere easily
enough to do it from though he hasn’t yet, I checked.’

‘The whole place is probably covered with Internet cafés, full of backpackers calling home to plead for a cash top-up. I hope he leaves it a good few weeks before he starts on that one.’

‘Mmm. Me too.’ She swivelled the leather chair round and looked at him. ‘Matt, we should talk about what’s going to happen now, about you, and work and stuff.’

Matthew stood up abruptly and made for the door again, showing an amazing and instant recovery of agility. ‘Fine, we will, but not just now, OK? Time for a shower.’ He turned back then and grinned at her. ‘We could go out to lunch though, chat then. I could be a feature you’re writing, an interviewee, tax deductable.’ He winked and left her alone. Jess heard him climbing the stairs, fast at first, presumably to get out of range of further questions, and then more slowly as he started on the next flight up to the big converted attic which had been their bedroom (plus bathroom) for the past four years. Perhaps she and Matt should move back down the stairs and take over Oliver’s room themselves, get a lodger or two for the attic and help supplement the forthcoming lack of income. They could put an ad in
Loot
, ‘Non-smoking professional with a busy off-premises social life and somewhere else to go at the weekends …’

She sighed and went back to her piece. Perhaps one day she’d be able to write about all this, in her light-hearted, joky, doesn’t-really-matter kind of way, but somehow she doubted it. At the moment she seemed to be the only one who was taking this redundancy seriously.

*  *  *

Natasha and her friend Claire were perched on the cloakroom bench, their bodies woven among the coats for camouflage and their feet well up off the floor in case any of the staff felt like doing a quick check for lingerers. They were supposed to be outside playing netball, a game most girls of their age considered about as interesting as cabbage-growing. There were murmurings of other skivers from various corners of the room and a smoke-laden draught wafted in from the open window where someone had, at the risk of a term’s worth of detentions, lit up a Marlborough.