Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (25 page)

Inside No. 283 Prendergast Road, Jessica stood banging on Ellie’s door.

‘Ellieopen up! Ellie!’

There was no sound coming from inside Ellie’s room.

‘Mum!’ Arthur called out from somewhere.

‘Just a minute.’

‘There’s something wrong with Ninja Action Man’s eyes…Mum.’

‘Just a minute, Arthur.’

Jessica pushed open the bedroom door.

Since Ellie’s GCSE exam leave started last month, she’d barely spoken to her. Something was wrongmore wrong than usualand Jessica didn’t know how much more of it she could stand.

Ellie rolled slowly over, blinking in the light and air coming into the room through the open door. She stared at Jessica then rolled back over.

The smell of dope in the room was overwhelmingmade worse by the fact that the windows and curtains remained permanently closed. The dope fumes had in fact permeated the entire maisonnetteas she’d kissed Arthur goodbye at nursery the other morning, his hair had smelt of dope. The
only two suits she possessed came back from the dry-cleaner’s still smelling of it. As soon as she opened the downstairs door, she smelt it. And she’d only found out on Wednesday when she called in to check on Ellie at lunchtime that her supplier was the girl from the florist’s downstairs. She’d found them both on the sofa smoking and watching a documentary about Papua New Guinea. The erroneous copies of
CHAT
that kept turning up in the maisonette came from the same source.

The dope smoking had intensified since exam leave started and now Jessica, worried every second of every day, called in as often as she could to check on Ellie. Nobody ever came to the house and Ellie never seemed to go outother than when she had a shift at Film Nite. Occasionally she might be out of the house the whole afternoon, returning at dusk with mud on her shoes. She said she went to the park.

Jessica wasn’t sleeping at night and by two in the afternoon could barely keep her eyes open at work. She’d fallen asleep in the car after a viewing on Thursday, and most nights now she fell asleep for forty minutes beside Arthur on his bedafter settling him.

She was smoking as much nicotine as Ellie was dope, and on Friday she’d had a complaint from nursery staff who’d overheard Arthur saying ‘fuck’which was highly probable given that ‘fuck’ was pretty much the only word Ellie used when she did bother to talk to her.

She crossed Ellie’s room and opened the curtains and the window.

‘Why are you doing that?’

‘It stinks in hereI’ve got to get some air in.’

‘God, what’s that?’ Ellie groaned as the smell of barbecue filled the room.

‘The street party.’

‘Street party? Have they only just found out we won the war or something? I’m going to puke.’

‘Sopuke,’ Jessica said, breathing in the dope-free barbecue fumes.

Behind her Ellie rolled off the bed and made for the bathroom. Outside, the road curved and went downhill, so she couldn’t see any signs of the street party from the bedroom window. She’d left messages with Evie, offering to help on any stalls they were short of help on, but Evie hadn’t got back to her. She didn’t feel like going, but Arthur wanted to. Casper Burgess had told him that they were doing face painting.

‘Maybe we could look for some new clothes for you,’ she said, turning round as Ellie walked, swaying, back into the room. ‘Boutique have got a stallwe could have a poke.’

A sudden memory cut through the morningof her mother, Linda, saying exactly the same thing to her, and of her giving the exact same response as Ellie was about to give.

Ellie collapsed back onto the bed. ‘I don’t want any new clothes.’

‘We need to start lookingas of September you’ll be able to wear your own clothes to school and you haven’t got many.’

‘Mum, when are you coming?’ Arthur called out.

Jessica moved towards the door. ‘D’you want me to run a bath or something?’ she said, as lightly as she could. ‘I’ve ironed your jeans.’ As she spoke, her mind filled with the image of Ellie, Arthur and her moving happily among the stallsArthur getting his face painted, Ellie choosing a couple of tops. She allowed herself to become aware of the day outside, the brilliant June day whose airy, wide-flowing breeze brought round stretches of human noise that seemed to Jessica to come from another world.

‘Ellie, what’s going on? You have to tell me what’s going on.’

‘Nothing,’ Ellie yelled back. ‘Nothing’s going on so just fuck off.’

Jessica slammed Ellie’s bedroom door shut and went
downstairs, glancing into the kitchen where there was a lot of milk on the floor. ‘Arthur?’

‘I was hungry. I was trying to put it on some cocoa pops then it fell on the floor because of the lid.’

‘It’s okayI’ll sort it out later.’

Arthur was kneeling at the coffee table with Burke the Transformer in one hand and Ninja Action Man in the other. The lab goggles he wore all the time were over his eyes.

He didn’t look up when Jessica sat down on the sofa, folded her arms and put her head on her knees. He carried on staring down at his right foot, resting his chin on his knee and hooking his hands under his toes. ‘Mum,’ he said tentatively, without looking at her, ‘Mumcan you sort out Ninja’s eyes?’

Jessica looked slowly up at him, her eyes bloodshot, blank.

He watched her scratch her forehead and attempt to smile.

‘Sure I can,’ she said with an effort.

He passed her Ninja Action Man and watched in silence as she pulled off the head and pushed her fingers inside until his eyes clicked into place then put the head back on and handed it to him.

‘It works,’ he said, pleased, moving the switch at the back so that the eyes clicked suspiciously from side to side.

The sound of drums beating somewhere close by started up. This couldn’t go on. She needed to talk to somebody about Ellie and the only person she could think of right then was Robert Hunter. She stood up.

‘Are we going to the street party?’ Arthur asked, hopeful but not excited.

‘Not just yetI need to see Findlay’s dad about something first.’

Arthur didn’t comment on this. ‘Then can I get my face painted?’

‘What d’you want it painted as?’

‘Burke.’

Outside, the street party was in full swing and Jessica had to get through it to get to No. 22.

The first stall was the Ghanaian drummer’s; as he carried on unpacking drums from the back of the Nissan parked by the stall, children were gathering round the ones already lined up, tentatively beating on them. As she passed, Jessica heard him explain the meaning of the symbols down the side of the drum and tell a teenager how the goatskin had been stretched and treated.

‘Can we do the drums?’ Arthur asked.

‘Laterwe’ll do them later.’

‘My face, I want my face painted,’ he said as they passed Harriet’s Natural Nappy Co. stall. A turquoise and white butterfly was painted across Harriet’s face and Aggie McRae was having her face done.

‘Later,’ Jessica responded, pulling on his arms and trying not to lose patience.

She probed the crowd for Robert, but couldn’t see him anywherethen noticed Miles, talking to Joel McRae, too late.

Behind her, a patter of drums started up.

Miles had seen her.

Joel was pushing Ingrid backwards and forwards in the buggy, trying to get her to sleep.

‘Aggiedrums!’ he called out. ‘D’you want to see them? They’d be great for her motor coordination skills,’ he said to Miles, starting to sway on the spot, suddenly taken with the idea of getting Aggie drum lessons. Most people’s kids took recorder or piano or something. Imagine saying to people, ‘Aggie does drums.’

‘She’s dyspraxic,’ he explained proudly to Miles, adding, ‘developmental coordination disorder. Apparently it affects four times as many boys as girls, so Aggieshe’s really rare.’

His eyes flickered quickly over Miles’s pudgy face to see if he could detect anything close to envy. Interesthe was sure there was interest. Well, that was good: interest was the first step on the road to envy. He felt buoyed up. He was only just ‘coming out’ about Aggie and the whole dyspraxia thing, but had already noted that it went down well. His agent, Tory, had been positively intriguedeven murmured something about getting her son, Jed, tested.

‘We had no idea,’ he carried on to Miles. ‘I mean, we noticed she was sort of clumsy, bumping into stuff, unable to judge distances, didn’t take to riding her bike, temper tantrums (Miles here let out a short laugh that momentarily confused Joel), rough and aggressive with her sister, Ingrid…but we just thought: that’s toddlers. Then it carried on and Evie took her to see someone and they put a name to it. It was a huge relief to us,’ he insisted, ‘really huge.’ And Aggie really was flourishing under all the attention from occupational therapists, speech and language therapists…her tantrums were getting worse, but thenshe was a girl. ‘Dyspraxia is a real problem for kids with a high IQ.’ He paused, but this didn’t elicit any comment. Oh, God, it was tragic, he thought, his eyes sliding quickly over Miles who had gone all static on him. Did he take his tongue out at the weekend or something?

Miles hadn’t said a word yet.

‘They’ve got a dyspraxia unit at St Anthony’s, which is where Aggie’s going.’

At last, Miles turned to look at him. ‘St Anthony’s?’

Joel nodded. ‘What about yours?’

He waited, but Miles just turned away in order to stare vacantly about him again. ‘We’re thinking of moving to Buckinghamshire,’ Miles said, abruptly.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ Joel said, offering his condolences.

‘Yeah.’ Miles paused, his attention caught suddenly by Jessica Palmer. ‘Little Widdringtonthe village my wife grew up in.’

‘God, I’m sorry,’ Joel said again.

Miles didn’t respond; he was too busy watching Jessica, who was virtually running down the street towards him.

She’s come for me, he thought, his face looking brieflyto the few onlookers there were in the vicinitybeatific. He ignored the fact that she was pulling Arthur along behind her and that Arthur looked frightened and kept tripping up.

‘Robert,’ she said, coming to a halt by the stall. ‘You haven’t seen Robert, have you? Robert Hunter?’ Ignoring Miles, she appealed to Joel, who was staring at her, horrified.

Jessica cast her eyes self-consciously over herselfthe leggings with the white bleach spots on and the oversize T-shirt with a map of Lake Como on it that Joe and Lenny had brought back from their Italian Lakes trip.

‘I think we might be moving to Buckinghamshire,’ Miles said to her.

She stared back at him.

Joel stared at him.

‘Mum,’ Arthur said, tugging on her arm. ‘When are we going to get our faces painted?’

‘In a minute. I’ve got to go,’ Jessica said to Miles. ‘I’m looking for Robert.’

‘WaitJessicaI dream about you,’ he whispered urgently. ‘And it’s the same dream; it’s the same dream every time. It has to mean something,’ he said.

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘It has to mean something,’ Miles insisted, trying not to raise his voice.

Jessica moved on down the street.

‘It has to mean something,’ he said suddenly to Joel, who was trying to push Ingrid away, towards the drums. ‘What if I’m in love with her?’

Joel, realising Miles wasn’t going to go away, lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘She was wearing leggings…’

‘I knowI can’t stop thinking about her.’

‘You can’t stop thinking about fucking her. In the dream, you’re fucking her, right?’

‘Right. Yeah, but how did you…’ Miles broke off, watching breathless as Jessica disappeared.

Jessica continued to push through the crowds of people, fumes from the industrial-sized barbecue filling the airpast parents busy applying sunscreen to offspring in buggies with Carpe Diem balloons tied to the handles, while trying to keep an eye on their running, tripping, lurching, already heat-addled older children, who had become their animal or superhero familiars at the hands of Harriet and her mother.

These people were enjoying themselveswhy couldn’t she be like them, just for once?

The Southwark Council recycling unit had a queue of people outside hoping there were still enough ‘Bags for Life’ left.

She passed Ros, in full control of the Carpe Diem stall.

‘Does Arthur want a balloon?’ Ros asked, handing the mute, watchful Arthur one of the pink and black Carpe Diem balloons.

Arthur accepted the balloon in silence, and couldn’t take his eyes off it.

Ros paused, waiting for Jessica to comment on the balloon, but all Jessica said was, ‘Have you seen Robert?’

‘Robert?’

‘Robert Hunter.’

‘Oh. I think Kate said he had a migraine or somethingshe’s just over there, next to the Boutique stall.’

Jessica moved on towards Kate’s cake stall, which was opposite the allotment stall run by Letitia Parry, chair of the Allotment Committee. In fact, the Parrys had two stallsone advertising the allotments, which was also selling allotment produce and taking deposits from people who wanted to add their names to the waiting list, and one covered in banners swaying precariously in the hot wind that read
Save Our AllotmentsSay No to Mobile Phone Mast
. The allotments were under threatfrom T-Mobile. People on their mobiles walked sheepishly past, glared at by a group of Goths from the Nunhead Cemetery Preservation Society, who’d agreed to help man the stall because Nunhead Cemetery had also been targeted by T-Mobile as a potential phone-mast site.

Letitia was handing out
Say No to Mobile Phone Mast
leaflets, getting people to sign the petition and talking rapidly in incomplete sentences, her tongue licking frantically at her lower lip. ‘He’ll end up with leukemia if that mast goes up,’ she barked at Jessica as she passed, while reminding her husband, Giles, of the price of the vegetables for sale, and talking intimately to Labour Councillor Derek Stokeswho was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

Derek was sweatingsweating intensely. He always found this first flush of summer weather, when women started to remove their outer layers, difficult. Standing there, talking to Letitia, managing with an effort to keep his huge walrus eyes riveted on the network of fine, purple veins that had
broken out over her face and looked, in places, as if they might break free altogetherhe felt as though he was drowning, quite literally drowning, in a sea of breasts. He was intoxicated and had to put a lot of effort into stopping his eyes from sliding over Letitia, whose body, swollen with the heat, was beginning to bulge in peculiar places.

Fortunately for him, she broke off just then to remind Gilescompletely cutting across a young couple trying to buy early tomatoesthat he needed to take his bloodpressure medication.

Giles, in a sudden panic, dropped the money the young couple had given him and ended up taking double the recommended dose.

The next minute Jessica found herself and Arthur herded along with other parents and children in front of the allotment stall. They were being grouped for a press photograph.

‘I just need to get through,’ she said, but nobody moved.

Next to her, Giles ParryLetitia’s husbandstarted to hallucinate. It seemed to him that all the children were levitating, either out of their buggies or off the ground, and flying away. ‘The children,’ he said weakly to Letitia, who was busy giving her best to the camera as the photographer from
Southwark News
asked them to regroup one last time.

‘Okay,’ she called out, ‘say bananas.’

‘BANANAS,’ Jessica automatically found herself joining in.

Letitia let out a cheer that was taken up in a confused way by everybody nearby, and that completely drowned out Giles’s second attempt to point out that all the children were floating away into the sky. ‘The children,’ he said again.

Letitia’s rabble-rousing monologueprimarily for the benefit of Derek Stokes, who’d gone a funny colour, she couldn’t help noticingabout how this was only the start of the fight, washed pleasantly over people as slowly, unanimously, they decided they’d done their bit and took it upon
themselves to disperse; already distracted by the slow, rhythmic beat coming from further up the street where the Ghanaian drummer was now playing.

Above the sound of the drums rose the clear, high-pitched wailing of David at No. 8, whose parents had ignored Ros’s request to keep their son indoors. He stood in his favourite spot, his arms encircling the trunk of the loquat tree, singing happily.

The singing was affecting the older children who’d started to run round in circles in the middle of the road between the line of stalls, yelling excitedly to each other, under the impression they’d run into the middle of a complicated game with rules nobody was going to explain to them.

A boy with a pink and black Carpe Diem balloon tied to his head galloped down through the stalls.

Jessica made her way through the children to where Margery was hovering between the Boutique stall and Kate’s cake stall, manned by Kate and Beatrice. Flo was in her pushchair, her face and dress covered in chocolate saliva.

‘Finn!’ Arthur yelled happily, catching sight of him under the table where what remained of the cakes were laid out.

He squatted down next to him. Today was going wrong and soon he was going to shut downlike Burke. He could make the whole world fall suddenly silent when he decided to shut down, and then the silence became something he could crawl into.

‘I’m looking for Robert,’ Jessica said to Margery.

‘Robert? He’s got a migrainehe’s in the house.’

Inside No. 22, Robertlying in bed, still, semi-consciousheard the drums.

For a moment he thought he had somehowmiraculouslyundertaken a journey he’d always dreamt of taking; a journey whose destination had been on the tip of his tongue
for as long as he could remember, but that he’d never quite been able to articulate. Then he opened his eyes.

It struck him forcibly, for the first time, that he really had no idea how he came to be lying on this bed, in this bedroom, in this house, in this valley in south London. He’d grown up with the knowledge that the whole is greater than the sum total of its parts, but no matter how much he looked back on all the partsand lately he’d been doing this frequently, minutelythe mathematics of his current situation were implausible: there was no whole.

He listened to the wind brushing through the branches of the rowan tree outside the bedroom windownow in full leafand the drums, louder, carried on the same wind that was blowing through the tree, and tried to decide whether he still had a migraine or not.

He’d been on the verge of getting up earlierjust after Kate left the room a second timebut then everyone forgot about him and in the silence that followed the exodus from the house, he fell into a much deeper sleep than the one he’d been tossing and turning in since 6.00 a.m. He had no idea what the time was now, but the house was still empty. He let his eyes close again, the sun falling warmly across his shoulders and chest, until he became aware of the front door bell ringing.

He waited, hoping it would go away.

It didn’t.

With an effort, he put on the T-shirt and shorts he’d taken off the night before and made his way slowly downstairs.

He opened the front door.

There was Jessica Palmer waiting outside, under the sunflowers.

It struck him forcibly, as they stared at each other, that he couldn’t think of anybody else he’d rather see right then.

‘Ellie,’ she said.

‘Ellieright.’ Robert hesitated, peeringconfusedat the activity in the street beyond them and the continual stream of people ambling past the gate. ‘Come income in.’

Jessica stepped into the hallway, her eyes trying to adjust to the light as Robert shut the front door behind her.

She felt suddenly cold.

‘Tell me,’ Robert said, trying to lead her through to the kitchen.

Jessica stayed where she was so that they were standing with their backs against the walls of the narrow turn-of-the-century hallway. She was exhausted. What was she doing? Why had she come here? She didn’t know this man. Then she found herself talking. ‘I can’t do it any moreI can’t spend any more time in that flat with her or I’m going to kill her. I’m going to kill Ellie.’

She made a move towards the front door, but he caught her by the shoulder. ‘Jessica…’