Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (15 page)

Ros was at the printers in Bellenden trying to get the Carpe Diem merchandise ready for the street party. She’d stopped using the printers on Lordship Lane when the ‘No Buggies’ sign went up.

The printerwho was bipolartucked his longish grey hair behind his ears and leant forward, peering at Ros’s printout. ‘Carpe Diem,’ he said, sounding pleased.

Ros gave a quick smile and maintained her impatient posture. ‘I’m going to need five hundred postcards, two hundred A-five leafletsand twenty posters initially. I was thinking about T-shirts as wellI don’t know, twenty or something?’

The printer nodded, as if he was thinking about this.

Ros paused. ‘Does that sound okay?’

‘Carpe Diem,’ he said again, grinning suddenly at her this time and showing two rows of teeth that looked as though they’d suffered subsidence and had been left hanging from what remained of his gums.

Ros tried not to look. Dentists were happy to arrange instalment payments for care plans these days. Why couldn’t people just look after themselves?

The printer was still leaning over the counter, waiting for
her to respond to his persistent repetition of the words ‘carpe diem’, and this was having a strange effect on Ros. She felt increasingly violent towards him and wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to stop herself grabbing hold of his hair and smashing his face against the counter if he repeated the words ‘carpe diem’ one more time. She’d never experienced such a surge of violence before.

‘I want everything two-tone,’ she said tersely. ‘Black and pink.’

The printerfortunatelygave up then, slumping over his counter as though his world had just died and he was trying to come to terms with it. ‘Black on pink or pink on black?’

‘Black on pink. I want the pink matt and the black typeface glossy.’

‘Raised on the postcards?’

She shook her head.

‘What sort of typeface?’ He pushed the book towards her and she scanned it efficiently, relieved to feel the violence subsiding.

‘Nothing too rounded.’

‘Okay, well I’ll do a mock-up and you can take a look at it, let me know if you’re happy and we’ll go from there.’

‘You had some A-five leaflets for me to collect as well.’

‘What’s the name?’

‘Granger.’

He rifled, distracted, through the wire tray on the counter and handed her an envelope with the street party flyers inside.

‘Should I pay for these now?’

He waved the idea of payment aside, as though he was too depressed to consider making a living right then. ‘Later…’

Ros shrugged, then stepped out of the printers into the mid-morning heat.

Bellenden had been regenerated, which meant there were more white homeowners living there than black tenants. Mr Walsh, the glazier, had taken an unprecedented number of calls from new homeowners over the past two years, all wanting the same thingthe panels above the front door glazed with the house number, and fleur-de-lys panels put in the front door itself. A dog’s grooming parlour had recently opened, and Antony Gormleywho used to live in the area before making enough money to move to north Londonhad designed the balustrades on the pavements. Despite Antony Gormley’s presence and the fleur-de-lys glazing in the majority of front doors, Ros still didn’t feel safe, and her eyes skittered nervously over two youths now making their way towards her.

They aren’t making their way towards me, she reminded herself, they’re making their way down the street. Soon we’re going to pass. She walked into the damp shade beneath the railway bridge. The youths’ eyes looked flatly into hers.

Their pit-bull strained on its leash, froth trickling from the corners of its mouth.

‘Fuck it Tyrone,’ one of the youths said, in a high-pitched voice.

A girl’s voice. They were girls, Ros realised, elated with relief. Girls immersed in genderless street gear. Then she remembered reading somewhere that girl gangs were on the rise and that some even used gang rape as an initiation ceremony. The dog looked as if it had been trained to rapemaybe the ‘fuck it Tyrone’ was a command.

They were drawing level, the girls, and Tyrone, spread across the pavement. Ros’s left shoulder was scraping along the inside of the railway arch. The moment had arrived. They were going to close in on her.

Her heart thumping, they carried on walking, the flat stares shifting to someone or something else. Only Tyrone gave her a froth-ridden backwards glance.

She carried on walking towards the sunlight, aware that she was actually shaking, and didn’t feel herself again until she’d finished distributing street party leaflets to all the shops on Lordship Lane. All the shops, that is, apart from William Hill, the Co-operative funeral parlour, Favourite chicken barand Starbucks, which the PRC had made a point of boycotting since it opened a year ago.

Once this was done, she got back in the car, aware that she had to be at Evie’s in under ten minutes. She drove to Prendergast Road via Beulah Hill. As she passed No. 8, she saw someone she recognised by the front gate. Ignoring the refuse lorry behind her, Ros stopped the car and leant over the passenger seat. The day had looked suddenly dull through the lenses of her wraparounds.

‘Harriet?’

Harriet hadn’t anticipated this.

The encounter with Ros was so unanticipated, in fact, that she could do nothing but stand and stare.

Ten minutes ago she’d parked her car outside No. 8 Beulah Hill and rung on the peach-coloured door. It was the first time she’d gone round since they’d written the letter and sent it to Admissions.

No answer.

She tried again and, this time, Mr Jackson’s face appeared in the bay window.

The front door opened.

He didn’t seem surprised to see a woman he didn’t recognise standing on his doorstep with a child in a car seat hanging from her right arm.

‘I’m sorry to bother you…,’ Harriet started.

Mr Jackson cut in with, ‘You come to see the house?’

Harriet paused. ‘Actually…no. We’ve just moved to the
area and I’ve got a feeling our post is being sent to your address by mistake.’

Mr Jackson considered this.

In the house behind him, a gospel choir was singing.

‘The name’s Burgess. Have you had any mail for Burgess?’

‘I don’t know what comes through the door. Nothing but rubbish most of the time.’ He pausedand forgot what they’d been talking about.

‘So, nothing for Burgess then?’ Harriet prompted him.

He stared back at her, confused. ‘You want to come in?’

‘Well…’

‘Come oncome in.’ He walked down the hallway away from her, towards the kitchen.

Harriet checked the street behind her then followed him in.

It was dark inside and it took her a while to get used to the light. The house smelt as though the bath was rarely used and the decor was pre-credit. Threadbare carpets, scratched, chipped and stained G-Plan furniture, which a woman’s pride had covered in crocheted runners in order to conceal the more obvious defects.

Mr Jackson stopped in the middle of the kitchen and smiled expectantly at her.

It occurred to Harriet that he had no memory of just having spoken to her on the front doorstep. Did he think she was Meals on Wheels?

‘We were talkingjust now.’

He nodded, the first sign of worry creeping over his face.

‘Some of our post might have been delivered to your house by mistake?’

In the background, the choir on TV were in a state of exultation.

‘I throw so much stuff away,’ he muttered to himself, then caught sight of a pile of letters by the cooker.

He picked these up and handed them to Harriet.

She rifled uncomfortably through the unopened bills, Iceland promotions and half-completed scratch cards. Nothing for the Burgesses.

‘Nothing?’

She shook her head. ‘D’you mind if I pop round again? I’ve contacted the post office, but—’

‘Nobody wants to work these days,’ Mr Jackson put in. ‘No, they don’t want to work. You see them around, they don’t want to work. They’re all the samewant something for nothing.’

Harriet wasn’t listening. She wanted to get back to her car. ‘I’d better get going.’

She made her way back up the hallway towards the front door, glancing into the synthetic opulence of the lounge as she passedat a glistening sewing machine on a well caredfor sideboard.

‘D’you sew?’ Mr Jackson asked suddenly.

‘Do I sew?’

‘You look like you might sew. My wife used to sew. That’s her machine over there. She used to be a dressmaker. Maybe you want to take the machinenone of my children sews.’

‘I couldn’t…’

‘But you sew.’

‘I used to…’

‘Welltake it.’

Harriet was about to respond when the doorbell rang. Mr Jackson shuffled past her and stood staring at the woman filling the doorway.

‘Uncle Alex? It’s me, Jadecome to check up on you.’

Mr Jackson continued to stare at his niece, until suddenly, ‘Jade!’

She stepped, smiling, into the hallwaythen she saw Harriet backed against the wall with Phoebe hanging from her right arm. She stared expectantly at her.

Mr Jackson seemed as surprised as his niece to see Harriet in his hallwaydespite having just offered her his wife’s sewing machine.

‘I came to see the house,’ Harriet lied.

Jade nodded slowly.

Mr Jackson smiled at the two women. ‘Who wants a drink?’

‘Didn’t the estate agent come?’

‘No. They phoned your unclehe was happy for me to come on my own.’

‘I told them not to do thathe’s got slight Alzheimer’s. Somebody should be here with him to do the viewing.’

‘I’m sorrythey said it was okay. Anyway…’ Harriet started to move towards the front door, which was still open.

‘I should tell you…’

Harriet stopped, suddenly alarmed.

‘We’re thinking of taking the house off the market.’

‘Whose house?’ Mr Jackson asked.

‘Ohthat’s a shame.’

‘I meant to contact the agent this morning.’

Harriet nodded, and held her left hand out to Mr Jackson. ‘Well, thank you anyway.’

Mr Jackson shook it warmly, pressing a Fox’s glacier mint into her hand. ‘For the baby.’

She hesitated a moment, then quickly left. The front door shut behind her and she made her way, with relief, back to the car.

She got as far as the gateand there was Ros parked in the middle of the road, staring at her.

‘Harriet?’

Harriet stopped.

This was almost as bad as the time just after Phoebe was born when Ros had seen her through the window at Starbucks even though she’d managed to get a seat at the back near the toilets. PRC members were meant to go to the
small local café across the road, even though there was no pushchair access and no baby change. Harriet had wheeled the newborn Phoebe into Starbucks and collapsed with relief into a crumb-ridden club chair. Ros had just come up on her and thenas nowshe didn’t have an answer.

‘Not thinking of moving house, are you?’ Ros joked, omitting to mention that she was.

‘No,’ Harriet said flatly, unable to think of anything else to sayor even begin to offer an explanation.

Ros continued to watch her. Harriet, she decided, wasn’t to be relied on. Eviedespite her often hysterical unpredictabilitycould be relied on to stick her neck out for you. Harriet’s ‘no’ was insurmountable.

‘Are you going to Evie’s?’

‘In about half an hour.’

‘See you there.’ Ros paused, put the car into gear then headed on to Prendergast Road.

As she drove, she phoned Jessica. ‘Jessica?’

‘I can’t talkI’m driving.’

‘Harriet hasn’t said anything to you about moving house, has she?’

‘No, why?’

‘I’ve just seen her outside Number eight Beulah Hill.’

‘No idea. And Ros? I had to tell Kate you’d put an offer in as well.’ Silence. ‘Maybe you should phone her.’

‘Maybe,’ Ros agreed. ‘But what I want to know iswhy was Harriet at Number eight Beulah Hill…?’

‘Ros, I don’t knowI’m on the M-twenty-threeI’ve got to go.’

Five minutes later, Ros was knocking on the door to No. 112 Prendergast Road.

Evie answered, holding a jug of Pimms in one hand, and sucking on a piece of cucumber. She said, ‘Hi!’ Then, ‘Aggie’s dyspraxic.’

‘Ros, I don’t knowI’m on the M23I’ve got to go.’

Jessica rang off. It wasn’t just warm, it was hotunseasonably hot. The air was barely moving and it was more like a day in mid-August than early May.

After forty-five minutes on the M23 they turned onto the A27 towards Shoreham and the house on Marine Drive that Jessica’s dad, Joe, had bought nearly twenty years ago, after selling his companyQuantum Kitchens.

‘Hope you don’t mind her offloading me on you,’ Margery said.

‘Course not,’ Jessica laughed, a warm complicity passing between the two women.

Margery’s eyes noted with approval the conifers and rock garden at the front of the house as they pulled onto the driveand the double-glazed rose in the front door when they rang the bell.

‘He’s not in,’ Arthur said. ‘He’s not in,’ he said again, his voice breaking this time.

Just then the sound of a mower starting up filled the air.

‘That’s him,’ Arthur shouted, pushing open the side gate and disappearing into the back garden, closely followed by Findlay.

There was Joe driving his new sit-on mower, Toro, towards them, crashing through the buddleia and waving happily.

Joe was happy. Today. Most days. Generically happy.

The impression was overwhelming and unavoidable.

Waving back, Jessica looked out over the garden vibrant with unfashionable, seasonal colour and felt a strange, unnerving sense of comfort. The lawn was early summer soft: a bright, vibrant, fledgling green. The borders were packed with perennials and annualsthe guardians of suburban dreams, bringing the men and women who cultivated them to their knees when there was nothing else left to.

Joe came to a stop where the crazy paving patio began and, leaving Toro’s engine running, jumped down and held Jessica tightly in a hug that was primal in its reassurance.

After being introduced, he hugged Margery just as tightly, making her gasp, before swinging Arthur up into the air and rubbing Findlay’s head.

Then, squinting at the boys, he said, ‘Who wants a ride?’

Arthur squealed with excitement and Findlay silently conceded as Joe hauled them both up onto the mower. Turning Toro round, they accelerated back up the garden, Joe letting Arthur take the wheel and not caring when they drove into the wigwam of sweet peas.

‘Your sweet peas,’ Margery said.

Joe either didn’t hear or chose to ignore this.

Margery and Jessica stood silently observing the demise of the sweet-pea wigwams as Joe helped the boys off Toro and went over to the barbecue he’d built himselfbased on one him and Lenny, Jessica’s step-mother, used at their time-share villa in Portugal.

Margery could almost smell the parties and gatherings that had taken place here in the back garden on Marine Drive. She rarely bought anything other than mince, liver,
pork fillet andoccasionallya small chicken if Edith was coming to lunch. She wondered what it would be like to order enough meat for twenty people or more. During what she considered her long life so far, Margery had hosted very littlenot even her mother’s funeral; not even Tom’s. They hadn’t let her anywhere near Tom’s. Wherever she went, she was the guest grudgingly invited, grudgingly welcomed. Margery had experienced every nuance of social abandonment among family, friends and strangers.

The air filled with the smell of barbecue.

She heard Joe Palmer’s voice coming from somewhere close by. ‘You stay where you arethis is your day off. Sangria?’

Then Jessica’s, ‘Dad, I’m driving.’

‘It’s weakloads of lemonade in it. I’ll make you a coffee after.’

Why couldn’t Robert have married into a family like this? Not that barrage of dogs, Wellingtons, loud echoing voices and flat smiling faces that concealed cruelties Margery didn’t understand. The few times she’d been to visit Beatrice and Marcus in Gloucestershire it had been like Bluebeard’s Castle. There wasn’t a door in that Georgian house she hadn’t been afraid of opening.

And the lack of warmth and intimacy that pervaded every peeling, rotting nook and cranny of that house had been grafted, by Robert’s bride, onto Robert himself, and now Robert was trying to live his life without love and fool Margery, of all people, that he didn’t even need hers. Her thoughts turned to Robert himselfwhat a beautiful, healthy baby he’d been. And the joythe joy she’d taken in him, despite the way they’d looked at her on that maternity ward, despite the lack of flowers and visitors. The other women on the ward didn’t know her, didn’t know of her, but her story was clear as day and they kept their distance.
You wouldn’t think that the distance between hospital beds varied much, but it did. To the eye it might look the same…if you were to measure the distance between beds it would have been the sameespecially in that place with
that
Sisterbut the distance wasn’t the same. There was her bed, then there was everybody else’s bed.

‘Margery?’

For a moment she thought it was visiting time in the ward; that somebody had come for her after all. She squinted up through bright sunshine at a familiar face she couldn’t place.

‘Margery? Sangria?’

She smiled at Joe, utterly terrified. She had no idea where she was.

‘Margery,’ Joe said again, then broke off. ‘You all right, love?’

‘Joe,’ she said at last. ‘Joe.’

He crouched down, a jug of sangria in his hand, raising it into the air between them. ‘Or d’you want water?’

‘I want that.’

Joe chuckled warmly and poured her a glass.

Margery took a sip, aware that her heart was racing.

Joe disappeared back into the house.

‘Not too close,’ Jessica yelled at Arthur, who was running towards the barbecue in pursuit of a football.

Robert never got a chance to play with anybody like that, Margery thought. Never got any invitations anywhere. For a moment, watching Findlay kick the ball back to Arthur, she couldn’t think where she was. Who were these people? Did they mean anything to her at all? She watched a ladybird crawling across the back of her hand, then took another sip of sangria and looked away.

Jessica was staring at the cedar tree at the end of the garden, where Joe had started to build a tree house for Arthur.

Beyond the cedar tree there was a line of Scotch pines, bent crooked by sea winds. When smoke from the barbecue blew the other way, there was the scent of pine needles baking in the sun against the cracked, bald patches of lawn under the trees. Jessica thought she could smell creosote as wellfaintlyand turned back to the barbecue and the smell of cooking meat instead.

Then Joe reappeared, carrying two salads.

Margery got laboriously to her feet. She had to be useful; that was her role in life. ‘Need some help there, Joe? Don’t worry…’

Joe wasn’t worrieduntil Margery tried to wrestle the salads from his hands.

‘I’m fineMargery, I’m fine.’

‘You can’t do everything, Joe.’

‘Let me just get these to the table.’

‘You go and sort out the barbecue.’

Margery pulled the salad dish out of Joe’s hands and, failing to grasp it in her own, had no choice but to watch it fall onto the crazy paving where it smashed, the broken pieces mingling with the salad.

Arthur and Findlay stopped their game and came running over. ‘What’s happened?’ Findlay yelled then, embarrassed, ‘Grandma—’

‘Stay on the grass,’ Jessica shouted, ‘There are pieces everywhere.’

Margery still hadn’t said anything.

Joe crouched down.

‘Oh, Dad.’ Jessica scraped up orange, olives and mint leaves, glancing up at Margery, whose shoes were covered in pomegranate seeds.

‘How did that happen?’ Margery said at last.

Joe, who’d just cut his hand, disappeared into the house.

‘I don’t know how it happened,’ Margery said to Jessica.

‘Margeryit’s finejust an accident. Come on. Boysaway from the barbecue,’ she yelled at Findlay and Arthur who, bored, had drifted back over to the fire.

The smell of barbecue was sending a neighbour’s dog into paroxysms and the constant yapping was beginning to make Jessica panic.

‘It’s all ruinedcompletely ruined. I ruined it,’ Margery carried on, watching Jessica scrape the salad and remains of the bowl into a pile. ‘He must have spent ages on this.’

‘The meat’s ready,’ Findlay called out. ‘I SAID THE MEAT’S READY.’

They all stopped.

Joe opened the kitchen window and poked his head out. ‘What’s all the noise about?’

‘It’s all ruined,’ Margery said again as Joe reappeared on the patio with dustpan and brush.

‘It’s only salad.’ He scraped it into the bag he was holding. ‘I’ll make another one.’

‘You can’t make another one,’ Margery insisted, tearful.

‘I think I’ve got enough of everythingapart from olives. We’re almost out of those.’ He stood up, wincing again.

‘You all right?’ Jessica asked, watching him.

‘I will be if I stop bending down like that,’ he said.

‘He can’t make another salad,’ Margery said to Jessica as Joe made his way back to the kitchen.

‘Dad loves cooking, Margeryit’s fine. Come here.’ She put her arms round Margery, who sniffed a couple of times.

Unsure what else to do as Jessica hosed down the patio, Margery drained her cup of sangria then stalked unevenly up the garden to where Arthur and Findlay were playing.

‘Who
are
you?’ Arthur asked as she bent down to peer at them through the branches of the cedar tree.

‘I’m Findlay’s grandma,’ she said.

Findlay didn’t back her up and Arthur didn’t respond to this.

After lunch, Joe got Margery into the lounge where he switched the TV on for her. Once he’d left the room, Margery’s eyes scanned the walls full of brightly coloured photos of Lenny and Joe taken in global locations: cruise ships…winter breaks in Barbados…the villa in Portugal…snorkelling among coral…riding camels in the desert. Margery felt disorientated to the point of nausea. It wasn’t the places that bothered hershe had never really dreamt of travel although she had always said she wouldn’t mind a trip down the Nile before she diedit was the overwhelming sense of life lived. She had tried to live, but every time she’d tried, something had been taken away from her, and every time that happened she was left with that feeling of waiting again; forever waiting for something…anything to happen. So much time to fill in, always; so much time.

‘She’s asleep,’ Joe said, emerging from the house with a tray and sitting down at the wrought-iron table. ‘Have the boys got sun cream on?’

‘Course they’ve got sun cream on.’

‘It burns quicker down here on the coastit’s the salt in the air.’

‘Dadthey’ve got sun cream on.’

They sat in silence, drinking their coffee, happy to observe a dragonfly that had landed on the table near the sugar bowl.

‘Arthur’s getting big,’ Joe said after a while. ‘My mum used to always say that you lose them when they start school.’

‘I’ll be happy for any childcare I can get my hands onhowever it comesand if it’s free, all the better.’

‘How’s it goingwork?’

‘It’s not,’ Jessica said, listlessly.

‘And Ellie?’

‘Ellie’s…God, she’s difficult.’

‘Understatement,’ Joe chuckled. ‘I know you don’t want to hear it, but you’re too similar, that’s what it is.’ Then, suddenly serious, ‘If it all gets too much, you know you’ve got a home hereall of you. I’ve always said that.’

‘I know.’

‘Me and Lenny aren’t going to just stand by and watch you—’

‘Dad,’ she cut him off, ‘I just need to make this moment workhowever rudimentary my attempts look to the outside world.’ She sighed, her eyes on the dragonfly. ‘I mean having Ellie so young and then losing PeterPeter was one thing,’ she said with difficulty, ‘but then, Elliethere’s just never any let-up…’ She broke off. ‘Is it this hard for everyone?’

‘Noyou’ve had it harder than most.’ He gave her leg a squeeze. ‘You’re doing brilliant, Jessbrilliant.’

Jessica nodded, not wanting to cry.

‘I need to make this work to get beyond it.’

‘I know you need to make it work, I just don’t want you thinking you’ve got to do it all by yourself. Come and make it work down herewith us.’

‘Don’t ask me again, DadI might just say yes.’

‘You know how much Lenny loves the kids.’

‘Dad!’ Jessica warned him.

‘Calm down, love,’ Joe said, taking hold of her hand. ‘Just calm down.’

The dragonfly took off.

‘Why didn’t you and Lenny ever have kids?’ Jessica said suddenly. She’d said it without even thinking. Watching Joe, she realised for the first time that Joe must only have been in his mid-thirtiesthe age she was nowwhen he’d met Lenny.

Joe looked at her.

‘Sorry,’ she said quickly, ‘it’s none of my—’

‘We tried.’ He shrugged.

‘You wanted kids?’

‘More than anything,’ he said with difficulty. ‘The things we tried…the doctors we saw…and then it got to the stage where the longer it went on, the more it felt likeI don’t know, it’s difficult to explainbut like that was something that wasn’t going to happen to us.’

Jessica, listening, was trying to work out when this had happened, chronologicallyhow old must she have been: twenty?

‘Anyway,’ Joe said, looking at her, ‘People weren’t so keyed up on the whole infertility thing or IVF or anything like thatnot that it was infertility. More like an inexplicable genetic incompatibility. Did I say that right?’

Jessica nodded.

‘I could have children with any woman other than Lenny. Lenny could have children with any man other than me.’

Jessica tried to process the full implication of the choice they had both clearly made, and realised suddenly that if she had known this about Lenny sooner, it might have changed everything between thembecause she had never trusted Lenny; had always presumed Lenny and Joe wouldn’t last.

To be fair, the relationship between Lenny and Jessica never had the best of beginnings. The year she was fifteen, the year she lost her motherJessica realised her dad was having an affair. A year after that, the woman her dad had been having an affair with while her mother was still aliveLennymoved in with them and became her stepmother. It was obviouseven to an emotionally decimated sixteen-year-oldthat Joe was uncontrollably in love with Lenny. Now, for the first time, Jessica realised just how much Lenny must have been in love with Joe, and howfar from taking anything away from her at that timeLenny had in fact given her a man who wouldn’t otherwise have been up to being a father.