This Holey Life (11 page)

‘I could’ve dropped him back if you were worried, I mean tired,’ Martin goes on.

‘And let you worm your way back in?’

‘Would I have succeeded?’

‘I wasn’t prepared to risk it.’

‘So there’s a chance then?’

‘Don’t sound desperate, Martin. It doesn’t suit you.’ Claudia turns away from him and focuses her attention back on her son. ‘Jeremy, say goodbye to your
father.’

‘Can’t he come too?’ Jeremy begs, as if Martin’s a Labrador.

‘You can see him during the week,’ she says, fastidiously ignoring the Labrador who’s begging for crumbs. Any crumbs. ‘Wednesday would be good. I’ve got a late
meeting in town. He can pick you up from school. Dulwich, that is. It’s all sorted out. I cleared up the confusion with them today.’

Then, before anyone can answer this, she flips her attention to me. ‘Thanks Vicky. You’ve been an angel.’

You don’t know the half of it, I want to say but I am trying to be gracious.

‘And thanks Steve. You really are a holy man,’ she kisses him. He blushes.

And suddenly we are watching the cab retreat down the street, a dirty emission pluming out of the exhaust, which appears to be held in place with masking tape. Martin is watching his family
leave him behind. For a moment he looks on the verge of crying like a baby. But then he turns away and goes inside, telling me to get a life. Me? What a cheek! I have a life. Maybe not the one I
was expecting but it looks a darn sight more appealing than his right now.

The evening is very, very quiet. The house quieter still. Even Martin can’t fill it with his noise. He has shut himself in the back room. He’ll be grateful for that
zed-bed, you mark my words. Meanwhile I’m grateful for our marriage bed with the clean sheets. For the chirpy snoring so close to my ear. I’m grateful that we’ve stuck with it, me
and Steve, even though we’re different people to the ones who stood in Lewisham register office, pledging our troths. Even though there have been times – bad times, serious times
– when I’ve wanted to go out into the garden, walk across those stepping stones, climb over the fence and up onto the railway cutting and hurl myself under the 10.26 to London
Bridge.

Marriage. That’s one thing I’ll do better at than Martin. Ha!

Thoughts for the Day
: Why aren’t I the sort of woman who makes men blush?

Chapter Fourteen:
Monday January 14th

Steve has encouraged me to take Imo to the parent and toddler group at St Hilda’s this afternoon. Olivia has already been to pre-school there this morning and has the
collage of Katie Price and Peter Andre to prove it. I don’t really want to go back but Steve said it would do me good, as if I’m ill or something.

Olivia, the big girl for once, has a congregation of smaller children about her, while Imo, still trying to roll over, has managed to wedge herself under the baby gym. As I am prising her free,
a familiar voice assaults me.

‘Vicky! How lovely to see you.’ It’s Amanda, swooping down on us, scarves swishing, beads jangling. ‘I was wondering when you’d make it down here to see us with
your tots.’ She looks at my tots, one with her entourage, the other with her Beryl Cook thighs. ‘I hear Olivia is establishing herself at playgroup.’

‘She seems to have found her feet,’ I say, cagily.

We look at Olivia’s feet, encased in her plastic Cinderella shoes. She has now seated a group of toddlers on a mat and is reading
Where’s Spot?
to them in a sing-song teacher
voice, slapping their wrists if they try and lift the flaps.

‘She can certainly command an audience,’ Amanda observes. ‘Following in her father’s footsteps.’

I get a picture – a vision – of Olivia as a grown woman, in a dog collar, standing in the pulpit, delivering a sermon on tidiness. Even Jesus folded his grave clothes before leaving
the tomb, I hear her say. And the angels who attended him were shining white.

‘Vicky? Are you alright, dear? You look a little peaky.’

Maybe anaemia’s catching. Maybe I need a stint in hospital, being looked after, being cared for. Three meals a day. But no. I’d never sleep. Not in the knowledge there were deadly
germs all around me, waiting to pounce.

‘You need a pick-me-up,’ Amanda proffers a plate of Rich Tea.

‘I need a double gin and tonic.’

Amanda laughs, worried.

‘But I’ll make do with a biscuit and cup of tea.’

‘You must come for lunch soon. And bring that clever brother of yours,’ Amanda blushes.

I need that G and T now.

On the way home we collect a subdued Rachel from school.

‘Can we go to the sweet shop?’ she asks, a long shot.

‘No, it’s not Friday. But there’s some delicious homemade shortbread from Mrs Gantry. You could have one with a glass of milk.

‘Alright,’ she says, no fuss.

‘Are you okay, Rach?’ She normally puts up more of a fight. ‘Bad day at school?’

‘Yes. No. It’s just sort of like, weird, without Jeremy. I kind of got used to having him around and stuff.’

‘We all did, darling. But you can see him soon. Wednesday probably. I expect Uncle Martin will bring him back here after school.’

‘It’s not the same, though, is it?’

‘No, Rach. Things change. It’s just part of life.’

She winces and my stomach pulls. It’s a hard lesson to learn but an important one. You go along in life and you get used to it, the way things are, day by day. And then gradually, little
by little, bit by bit, things change and it’s only when you look back that you see those changes. Like your hair growing. One day you step out of a salon, all sleek and groomed and coloured
and you manage to keep it up, the sleekness, the grooming, the colour, and then one day you look in the mirror and your hair has got away from you. It is a wiry, straggly mess (actually, bad
analogy; my hair’s always like that). But sometimes change comes more quickly. Unexpected and out of the blue. One day something happens and your life changes forever.

Rachel slips her hand in mine. For a second. Long enough to get my attention. ‘Can I have Nesquik in my milk?’ she asks.

Steve is out. Another meeting. Martin and I are in the kitchen. He is battering his laptop with his fat fingers. I am ironing cassocks. If I could have prophesied this as a
young woman at college...

‘I miss him,’ Martin cuts into my reverie. I almost scald myself on a jet of steam I am so taken aback by this revelation. Not just that he misses his son but that he should confess
this human frailty to me. Wise words are needed.

I breathe deep, move the iron back and forth. ‘Well... maybe you needed this to happen so you could get to know him.’

Martin stares at me, deadpan. I’m not sure if he has heard me or if he is even aware I have spoken. But then I notice his fat fingers twitching on my table, like the hairy fat legs of a
tarantula, and it dawns on me that he is angry.

‘What?’ he says, almost spitting at me. ‘Maybe I needed to be turfed out and move in here?’ He shoots a venomous look at his surroundings. At my MFI sale kitchen fitted
by my husband who could turn his hand to anything, whose wife never in a squillion years thought this would extend to weddings and funerals. ‘High life living in Penge?’ My brother
pronounces the ‘P’ explosively.

‘Oh, shut up, Martin.’ One squirt of steam in the eyes and he’d be sorry.

He abandons his laptop, standing up and throwing back his chair in a way my floor will not appreciate. Then he announces that he’s going to the pub. ‘Don’t blame me if I get
very drunk,’ he says, petulant, harvesting a wad of notes from his wallet and stuffing them in his back pocket as he heads out the door.

‘No, of course I won’t, Martin. Cos you getting drunk would be my fault, wouldn’t it?... Martin... I said, “Wouldn’t it’?”’

My question lingers in a swirl of steam. I am speaking words to empty space. He has gone. And I am left alone with a half-ironed cassock and a bad mood.

Much, much later, after checking on the children, watching for the rise and fall of their chests, their pink colour, their warmth, I glance out the landing window to the street
below. Tamarine is putting out the rubbish. Mr Khan from number 12 is just back from his shift at work, pushing his spotless Raleigh down the passageway. A cat, black and sleek, leaps onto a
wheelie bin as Ray from the dry cleaners walks past with his collie. Who says London’s anonymous? All these people, their comings and goings, are part of my life.

But hang on. There’s Martin. Staggering up the street with a woman in tow. Not Claudia... someone else. She looks vaguely familiar. A little like... Christina Aguilera. I should know.
I’ve seen her on one of Imo’s collages. But that’s not why she clicks something in my brain. As she stands under the lamplight, gazing up at him, talking earnestly to him, the way
Heidi used to be with him, she looks ridiculously young, barely out of her teens, maybe scraping twenty.

I feel sick.

Not because I’m witnessing my revolting pig of a brother being unfaithful on my doorstep but because I now realise who this young woman is. Melanie. From the shoe shop. With the long
blonde hair like Christina Aguilera. The student drinking frothy coffee outside Starbucks. The One Small Incident. And Martin is stupid enough to make it more than that. Two, three, four, five,
six, who knows how many small incidents? Who knows how far these incidents have gone? How big they’ve become? Claudia’s worst suspicions are being confirmed before my very eyes.

I’d better wake Steve. I won’t be held responsible for my actions.

That is how I come to be in the car, at eleven thirty in my slippers, ferrying a celebrity looky-likey across South East London. Martin, true to his word for once, got
rip-roaring drunk, banging and crashing into furniture and walls even more than normal. ‘Ssshheeee’s come back for a coffee,’ he slurred, diving onto the sofa and falling
spectacularly asleep just as the baby started caterwauling. My instinct was to feed Imo, get her straight back off, but I stopped myself from running up those stairs and grabbing her out of the
cot. I went to the fridge, took out a bottled of expressed milk (waiting for this moment), and handed it to a bleary-eyed Steve. Much better if I disappeared for a bit, according to Miriam
Stoppard. Less confusing for baby. As much as I would’ve liked to stay and have it out with Martin, I left that to Steve. He’s been on the courses. He’s got the words whereas
I’ve only got a big sack full of anger and bitterness.

I volunteered to drop Melanie home. Melanie whose job in the shoe shop is part-time. Who is indeed one of Martin’s students. A PhD student. Older than she looks. And who stood, ten minutes
ago, horrified in our front room, whether at being in Penge, or in our poky terrace, or at Martin’s disgusting prostrate form, or at the newly-ironed cassock hanging from the door frame, or
all of these, I am not sure. And where does Melanie live? Dulwich, of course.

After a silent journey – apart from my huffs and sighs, which are supposed to communicate my disapproval – I pull off the South Circular, passing Martin and Claudia’s family
home. I go this way on purpose. Melanie doesn’t even flinch.

‘Just here,’ she says, after a few more of my huffs and sighs, indicating, with a hair advert flick of her hair, one of the biggest houses in the Village and that’s saying
something.

‘You live here?’ I can’t help myself asking.

‘My mum’s place. I’m crashing while I do my PhD.’

I want to ask why she needs to work in a shoe shop. With that kind of money surely you and your offspring need never work again.

Melanie unfolds her long legs out of my very old and modest Espace and stands up straight, all ready to slam the door (please don’t fall off). I don’t think she is going to thank me
for the lift somehow.

‘Don’t be fooled by him,’ I say, before she can vanish up her drive, so big it has an entrance and exit so you don’t even have to bother with three point turns or
reversing.

‘I’m no fool.’ She bends down to look me straight in the eye, then closes the door with deliberate self-control so at least it doesn’t fall off and make me look like Del
Boy.

But I can see through her. Despite her staggering self-assurance and apparent lack of conscience, I don’t believe one word of it. She is a fool. Martin is a fool. Somewhere back down the
road, sleep a woman and child who, somewhat against their better judgement, love that man who happens to be my brother. And that man happens to be staying in my house, eating my food, raiding my
fridge, breaking my crockery, breathing my air, passed out on my new leather sofa. And what am I doing? Driving home this idiotic young woman.

Just who’s the fool here exactly?

Thoughts for the Day:
Why can’t we leave London? Why can’t we live in some Dibley-esque parish in the country with stone cottages, a village green, a local
pub full of eccentric characters and yet child-friendly and welcoming of incomers. A pretty church with a prettier vicarage and a smart, flat lawn. Daffodils and honeysuckle. Apples and plums. A
proper Harvest Festival with those wheat sheaf loaves and giant marrows with Hallelujah! carved into the side. Somewhere far away from the hustle and bustle, the noise and the grime. Far, far away
from my brother, Martin, and his messy, dirty, filthy excuse for a life.

Chapter Fifteen:
Wednesday January 16th

I haven’t seen Martin for two days. No opportunity for strong words. Yesterday morning he left for work before even Imo woke. He never suffers from hangovers – so
unfair as he really, really deserved the mother of all hangovers. He deserved my wrath and all of God’s judgement. But Martin being Martin has so far got away with it. And tonight Jeremy, the
human shield, is coming over. I need to tread carefully.

Playgroup pick-up. Waiting outside, Imo perched on one hip, a hip that will need replacing before its time. I am one of many, part of a multitude of diverse mothers,
child-minders, and one solitary dad, most of us with a baby or toddler in tow, in slings, pushchairs, on reins, with dummies, organic grapes and snot bubbling out of nostrils.