This Holey Life (20 page)

‘You’re welcome.’

Jeremy ignores this exchange between father and daughter and takes a step towards me. I find myself getting up and meeting him in the middle of the room where he is beginning to sag. I find
myself putting my arms around him, holding him up, holding onto him. I find myself giving him a hug that both he and I are crying out for.

‘Can you move a bit,’ Dad calls out. ‘Only I can’t see the box.’

Thoughts for the Day:
Maybe we could replace the dustbowl. DFS must have a sale on. They’ve always got a sale on.

Chapter Twenty-Four:
Sunday 17th February Second Sunday of Lent

Last night there was a fire. All that wood on the beach, what arsonist could resist? Maybe it was Martin, creeping down from London in the night with his lighter. A shame,
though, all that wood gone to waste. It would have made lovely decking for all those seaside gardens.

I go down and have a look. The smell of it. The fire crews are still there, on the beach, with noisy diggers, shifting planks and dousing down. I leave them to it and walk the back streets. I
remember them well. We used to come here every summer when I was a kid – apart from that one holiday to Weston-super-mare where Martin made me go on that smelly old donkey. Two weeks out of
London to get the air and lose the stress. Not that Dad was ever stressed as a gardener. The holidays were far more trying, being cooped up overnight in a B&B with Martin, banished from the
house from ten in the morning till five in the evening by the landlady. That’s stress.

Most days we’d sit on the beach for a few hours, a picnic of sausage rolls and crisps, or fish and chips, trying to ignore the smell of rotting seaweed. Sometimes for a treat we’d
have a bite to eat in a café: the Connaught, the Denton, Macari’s. Or maybe afternoon tea in one of the seafront hotels. Martin would sit there, morose, shovelling heaped piles of food
into his big gob, every now and then eyeing up the girls. Any girls. Mum would try and engage us in some kind of discussion: Northern Ireland, school, our favourite pop bands. It was excruciating.
At home we managed to avoid all this. At home Martin would be out most of the time, playing cricket or rugby or slouching around with friends. Mysterious friends without Christian names. We rarely
saw them because Martin was even less keen on bringing them back than I was my own friends. My small group of select friends. Mainly Alice. I thought I was going to lose her after primary school
but her parents sent her to the dump after all. Something to do with their socialist principles. But she was always going to shine, wherever she went. She got into Oxford, took a degree in
chemistry and I went to teacher training college. Alice had rooms to herself in a quad. She met her future husband at a May ball. I shared a bedroom with Stacey from Woolwich. It overlooked the
dustbins. We had a black and white telly and a leaky radiator and when I complained about it, that’s when I met Steve and I didn’t have to go on any more family holidays.

Family holidays. When it was raining or it wasn’t one of our days to eat out, we had to walk around the shops – unless we were at Arundel castle or Bignor Roman villa. I found this
bookshop. It was small and cosy, the way bookshops are supposed to be. The old chap who worked there didn’t mind me going through his stock. He didn’t mind that I never bought anything
more than a bookmark.

The shop has gone now. Time marching on again. I am left behind, wondering what happened to my childhood. Wondering what happened to my mother. Just another story with an unfortunate ending. Not
a
Da Vinci Code
thriller to be made into a film with the likes of Tom Hanks. But an important one nonetheless. It stars a woman: Pamela Stanton. She marries a gardener, Jim Wright and
becomes Mrs Wright. They have two children, a boy and a girl, Martin and Victoria (aka Professor Bumface and Vicky-Love). Pam lives a good, honest life, working alongside her husband, weeding,
hoeing, raking. She has bad feet. Bunions. She has an operation and her feet get better.

It’s only later when her kids have grown up and produced kids of their own that she gets bad knees. Years of kneeling, carrying and fetching. Keep your back straight and bend your knees,
that’s what the Health and Safety gurus tell you. Health? Safety? Forget your back. What about your knees? What about my mum’s knees? They got bad. They got really painful so she would
have to stop herself crying in pain because it upset Dad too much. She forced herself to get out of bed in the mornings to make Dad a cup of tea the way she’d done every day of her married
life except for birthdays and Mother’s Days. That was her job. That’s what she did. Never mind all those other roles she might have played had life dealt her a different hand. All those
other shoes she might have worn.

So this woman goes to see her doctor. Unlike a certain Polish woman with hennaed hair, she trusts her GP. The doctor says she needs an operation and writes off to the specialist, the knee man,
who is in agreement about the necessity of putting my mother under the knife. She gets a letter in the post with a date and my mother, unlike the time with her bunions when she made up a biscuit
tin for Martin and me, is not at all anxious. She is grateful to have the prospect of an end to her pain so that she can once again spring out of bed and do somersaults for Dad in his gardens.

Only this time she has every reason to be anxious. The matrons have disappeared and a new breed of germs has crept into our hospitals, worming their way along floors, sidling up walls, clutching
onto door handles and swarming around toilet bowls. We cannot see these germs but they are there, waiting to pounce on the sick, the old, the frail. They lie in wait for my mother. They come and
get her in the middle of the night and they take her away to a place from which she can never return. The same place they took my Thomas. Two years before. They come back for her, not the same
germs exactly, but another deadly battalion with the same deadly intentions.

This is an important story. One I want to tell the whole wide world. Only whenever I open my mouth to speak, the words melt in my mouth and I am mute. Dumb. I have nothing to say. So I let my
hands do the talking. My hands clean and scrub and brush and wash so that one day my life will be free of germs and my family – what is left of it – will be safe.

Afternoon. While Steve and Dad are out in town hunting for treasure in the pound shops with the older kids, Imo naps in her travel cot on the landing. I tiptoe past her, moving
between bedrooms, sorting things out, Dad’s stuff. Tatty old clothes that charity shops these days would turn away. The bin is the only place but Dad struggles with the idea of throwing away
stuff he believes to be ‘perfectly good’.

Every now and then I pause in my sorting and watch my baby sleep. She is pink-cheeked. A good colour. I don’t need to worry. I shouldn’t worry. Jesus tells us not to worry.

I have a go under Dad’s bed and for once I can see through to the other side. Pat’s been here. Where’s she put the tin... ?

I find it eventually on the top shelf of Mum’s wardrobe, which looks intact, her clothes still hanging there, empty. Maybe Pat does have some idea of boundaries after all. I take down the
tin and feel Mum surround me, like she’s in the room, watching me, telling me not to fuss, to leave things be. But I don’t. I take the lid off. Inside, amongst her important documents,
letters, postcards and mementoes, is the photo I was hoping to find. Uncle Jack.

This photo has always held a fascination for me, ever since I first found it, stuck down the back of the sofa. Jack was not an actual uncle but Dad’s best mate. It was his friendship that
earned him this title. Dad’s other friends were known by their surnames, Mr Brown and Mr Slater and all the rest of them who met down the pub or spoke on the street or maybe came round for a
tipple at Christmas. But Jack was Uncle Jack. Only we never got to call him that to his face because Uncle Jack was dead before we were born.

Two men in a photo. One got married and had children, the other died. Never got old and retired to Worthing. Never lost a wife. Or had a tattooed home help. Time marched onwards for Dad but it
stopped for Uncle Jack and though we never met, I somehow can’t forget him. As if I don’t have enough to fret over without adding Uncle Jack to the ranks.

Still, I can’t help wondering why this snapshot taken on a sunny day of two best friends never earned the right to a frame, a place on the mantelpiece amongst the wedding photos and goofy
school pictures. How did it get lost in the sofa? Why was it put away in Mum’s tin, hidden away in the dark? Why did Mum look out in the street like that when I first asked her about him?
What did he do that was so bad? Someone with a smile like that.

‘What are you doing, Mummy? Can I help you?’ Olivia has appeared by my side, creeping in without me even realising they are back from their bargain hunting.

‘Hello, sweet pea.’ I give her a kiss and feel the cold of her skin burn into me. ‘Did you have a nice time?’

‘Not really. We spent ages in these smelly shops. You’re going to be really cross with Granddad. He spent twenty pounds in the pound shop, which means he bought twenty things. I
don’t know where he’s going to put them all. But I had an ice cream.’

‘An ice cream? In this weather?’

‘Granddad says it will put hairs on my chest. I don’t want hairs on my chest. Will I get hairs on my chest?’

‘No, you definitely won’t get hairs on your chest. That’s just a joke of Granddad’s. He used to say it to me as well and last time I looked I didn’t have any hairs
on my chest.’

Olivia sighs with relief and then spies the tin in my hands.

‘Ooh, Mummy,’ she breathes. ‘What’s in there?’ She starts to go through the contents carefully, somehow knowing these are special things.

‘This is Grandma’s tin,’ I tell her. ‘Like Mummy’s tin back home.’

‘I miss Grandma,’ a voice says. It is Rachel. She has crept into the room as well, shuffling onto her bottom and sitting alongside us.

‘Can you remember her, Rach?’

‘Course,’ she says, as if it’s the most stupid question she’s ever been asked. ‘She had curly hair like grandmas in books and she gave me chocolate buttons and cut
the crusts off my soldiers. You always make me eat the crusts on my soldiers.’ Rachel’s not one for letting anything go.

‘They’re good for you.’

‘Well, I miss her.’

‘Me too, darling,’ I tell her, gently, squeezing her cold hand. ‘I miss her too.’

Olivia carries on studying the postcards and letters and then she stops for a moment and leans back on her heels, looking from her sister to me. ‘Are you sure you’re not going to
die, Mummy?’ she asks.

‘Not till I’m very old.’ I give her a smile, which I hope is full of reassurance. I don’t know if I can promise such things. Is it right to make her believe this? Or
should I prepare her for the fact that life is fragile? That it can crack and shatter in a moment.

Rachel is holding the photograph of Dad and Uncle Jack, handling it delicately as black and white means precious.

‘Very, very old, Mummy?’ Olivia is still in need of reassurance, her eyes wide and dark and full of uncertainty.

‘Very, very old, Olivia.’ I squeeze her hand tighter and grab hold of Rachel’s too. Reassurance of my own.

‘Who’s old?’ asks another voice. Dad has climbed the stairs and is standing holding onto the door handle, breathing heavily. ‘Are you talking about me?’

‘No, Dad, don’t get paranoid. We were just talking about, you know, stuff.’

‘Oh yes, Stuff. I know all about Stuff.’ He winks at the girls, who giggle, which makes Dad stand up tall, chest back and head held high. He’s still got it, whatever it is he
thinks he’s got. Whatever it was that made Mum giggle like a girl all their married life. You could hear it at night, as the house settled to sleep, Mum’s giggles drifting like snow.
Magical Christmas snow. It wasn’t embarrassing, cringing giggling, giggling you don’t want to associate with your parents. Giggling like Dorota. It was what he said to her, summing up
the day, a way with words, a silver tongue to go with his green fingers. He misses his audience, his captive audience that used to hang on his every word, even when she was shattered from a day out
in the open, shovelling and digging and pushing wheelbarrows. She always had a last scrap of energy to muster up a giggle. I’m not the giggling kind but the girls do their best to make up for
this whether they mean to or not.

As I watch Dad watch the girls, I see a flicker of something cross his brow like a cloud passing overhead on a fine summer’s day, unexpected and unwanted. Then as soon as it’s come,
it disappears, replaced by the smile, but the smile doesn’t quite do it this time. It doesn’t quite brighten the eyes or wrinkle his brow. I look back at the girls. Maybe they’re
up to no good all of a sudden. Not taking care.

But no, they are still sitting as well as they can, Olivia holding the tin like it’s the Ark of the Covenant, Rachel still with the snapshot in her hand. Turning back to Dad I realise that
it is Rachel he is watching, her hand. He is looking at the photograph, remembering his old pal, Jack.

‘Do you want to have a look, Dad?’ I ask him, reaching for the photo but he waves me away.

‘No, no, you’re alright, Vicky-Love. I need a cup of tea. Jeremy was supposed to be putting the kettle on. I can look anytime I want. Make sure you put it away safely.’ And
he’s gone, shuffling off and breathing heavily like his son. Martin.

Thoughts for the Day
: Perhaps we could deck over our garden – then I wouldn’t have to worry about the weeds.

Chapter Twenty-Five:
Wednesday 20th February

Time to go home. Relief combined with regret. I should have talked to Dad more but it’s been tricky with the kids and Pat and the ‘stuff’ and trying to spend
some time with Steve. Right now Steve is outside packing up the car, assisted by his new apprentice, Jeremy.

Inside, the girls trail after Pat while she does her chores, asking her intimate questions that she answers with more honesty than I feel comfortable with.