This Holey Life (31 page)

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Karolina says, beating me to it. ‘I have complaint against your pervert husband.’

I feel Dorota flinch next to me and put my hand on her arm, to keep her from launching herself onto Karolina and squashing the life out of her, tempting though it may be to let her try.

‘A pervert is someone who strays from what is acceptable,’ I hear myself say, matter-of-fact. ‘Everything my husband does is good and honourable and from the best will in the
world. What
you
are doing is perverted.
You
are trying to disrupt a family with lies and fabrications.
You
are living in a fantasy world and dragging us into it.
You
are
the pervert.’

Karolina continues to watch some film or other and doesn’t appear to have listened to one word though I have been speaking loud and clear. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she
says, at last, slowly, her eyes finally open and aimed in my direction. ‘I have very bad English.’

At which point I look at my mother-in-law. Dorota strides over to the TV and turns it off. Then, in her mother tongue, she repeats what I have just said, I presume, though she could be adding
all sorts.

Karolina shrinks as she lies there on the sofa, so she looks hardly older than her daughter and I have to fight this ridiculous urge to feel sorry for her.

Dorota has no compunction. ‘You are crazy woman and yet not so crazy you can’t listen to us talk sense to you. We know your game. We know you tell stories to make trouble. I
don’t care why you do this but I want you to stop. I want you to think what you are doing to my daughter-in-law. She is best daughter-in-law I have. When you hurt her, you hurt me. We have
had enough hurt in our family. Maybe you have had hurt in your family but that doesn’t mean you lash out at us.’ Dorota takes a deep breath and sits herself down on a chair, after
sweeping a mound of papers to the dirty floor.

This is where I decide to wing it, looking at her struggling for breath, puffing on her inhaler, seeing her upset. Her hurt. It is my turn to do something. And actually once I start speaking I
know exactly what I want to say, what I want to happen. And I can make it happen. I can insist it happens.

I take a step closer to Karolina, to the sofa where she still languishes, eyes tight shut once again. ‘I want you to go to Desmond and tell him the truth.’

A pause.

Natasha turns the TV back on but all I can hear is my heart beating. I feel this enormous surge of power boiling up in my guts, but I don’t know if I am in control. I don’t know if I
can do this. I am looking so hard at Karolina’s closed lids that I wonder if the force of my stare will make her eyes ping open.

And they do. They hold my gaze for a second and then they turn to the ceiling. Then she speaks. In a tired voice. In Polish. Dorota listens and then Dorota laughs, theatrically, and puts her
hands on her ample hips, before replying in a steady voice. The conversation goes on for a while, quite a while, and I feel the old familiar frustration build inside me again. I wanted to do this.
I wanted to sort this out but Dorota is the one with the knowledge, with the steering wheel in her hands. Eventually, as Karolina drags herself from her lair and staggers to the kitchen, Dorota
turns to me and translates. ‘She says if I weren’t old woman, she would throw me out of the window. I said she should try it. She wouldn’t get very far. Then she offers me vodka
and I say okay, if she listens. And I tell her. I tell her about the effect she has had on my family. I tell her about Thomas.’

Dorota reaches out to me but all I can do is collapse onto the sofa, still warm from Karolina who is now clanking around in the kitchen, emerging with a tray, a bottle and three glasses. She
balances the tray on top of her mess on the coffee table and begins to pour. As she pours, she sniffs and I can see that she has been crying, that she is still crying, tears sliding down her face,
into the corners of her mouth. But her tears leave me cold. They mean nothing. They are a drop in the ocean of my grief. Then she hands me a glass of vodka.

I pick up the glass slowly and smell the vodka. I swill it around, taking in the clear liquid, and then I knock it down in one and feel the warmth of glorious relief spread up from my toes to my
brain.

‘We’re going to see Desmond now,’ I tell Karolina.

And she nods.

Finally, I have winged it.

The vicarage. Amanda takes Natasha to the kitchen for a glass of milk, while Desmond, Dorota, Karolina and I sit together in his book-lined study. It smells of old dust and
heavy learning.

‘In your own time,’ says Desmond, spidery hands clasped together in a prayer-like grip. ‘No one wants you to feel pressurised to say anything other than the truth.’

Oh, yes, the truth. That’s what we’d all like to hear.

Karolina juts out her chin and the gesture makes me scared that rather than giving us the truth, she will return to her fantasy world. I hold my breath while she begins to speak.

The story according to Karolina:
I always want to be dentist. I like teeth. It is first part of body I look at when I meet somebody for first time. My mother died
when I was twelve-years-old. When my father goes away to work, I go to live with my aunt in Kraków. Very small flat. I cannot wait to leave there and have my own life. My own flat. But it
will take very long time. I study hard for six years at medical school. For the last two years I work with patients under supervision. Then I can register with Polish Chamber of Physicians and
Dentists. I get a permit and so I am allowed to practise.

But then I find out that I am pregnant.

I do not want to marry my boyfriend. He is not the one. He is dental student too and not yet grown up. My father and aunt are not happy with me. I cannot afford to leave home but the idea of
staying is too horrible. I get fat. I get stretch marks. I have baby, Natasza. My aunt looks after her when she is only a few weeks old so I can go back to work. I want to be able to look after
Natasza, not my aunt, but what can I do?

I get depressive.

I see doctor who says dentists are often depressive, but it could be post-natal depressive. She gives me pills and I am okay for a while. When Natasza is one-years-old, I hear about England.
UK need dentists and they come to Poland to recruit. It is 2006. One third of all new dentists who join NHS are Polish trained. So I think it will be good opportunity for me. Somebody needs me. So
I go on visit and have interview and they want me. I go on language and adaptation course. Then Natasza’s father gets back with me. He wants to come to England. So we come to London,
together, a family. A new life.

I stop my pills.

We have good job and flat and Natasza goes to nursery and speaks English. And then my boyfriend decides it is not such good idea and he wants to go back to Poland. But I will not go. I stay
with Natasza. But then I get depressive again. I get new pills but I think they do crazy things to my head. I start dreaming about home. About Polska. About my mother and the church where she took
me when I was a girl. Where I felt safe. The candles. The incense. The black Madonna. I want to go somewhere like that and I find St Hilda’s down the road, near my flat. Ugly building. Not
like a church. No statues. No candles. No incense. But it has same feeling. I feel safe.

And then I meet the priest.

He smiles at me and shakes my hand. He is kind. He asks me questions like he wants to hear my answers. He explains he is curate, what this means in his English church, and I wonder if he
could be the one to cure me from my sickness. And I see his wife with all her girls and she tries to be nice to me but I don’t want her to be nice. It is okay for her with her family, her
easy life. She has husband. She has church. She has everything. And one day, during Alpha, he talks about suffering. How the world is not the perfect place because we are not perfect. After, when
they stand around drinking tea, always drinking tea, I see his mobile phone on a chair and it is so easy. I take it and I put it in my bag.

Over next few days I make calls to my phone. Then I leave phone here in your house when you ask me for mother’s lunch. I go upstairs to put your baby in her cot because she is tired and
no-one seems to notice her in the busyness, this Melanie girl making trouble. I put the phone in next to baby. She likes it. She holds it in her hand and falls asleep. It is easy. I know it will be
found. But I didn’t think about the baby boy. Or how Vicky has worse life than me. Dorota – she is so like my aunt – makes me put on Vicky’s shoes but I do not want to walk
around in them.

I make it all up. Stefan never touched me. Never spoke to me. Except as a priest should speak.

I am sorry. I am sorry for your Thomas and I ask you to forgive me.

Karolina has been addressing the ceiling (have they never heard of feather dusters in this house?) while the rest of us sit still, open-mouthed, holding our collective breath. A public
confession with no confessional box to hide away in. But Karolina is looking at me when she asks for forgiveness, me alone, and it is within my power to give it to her. So I do. It is free. I let
go of my anger and it floats out the crack in Desmond’s window, up the garden path, where it can cadge a ride on the bus that is trundling past, away from Penge, out of my life.

And then what do I do? If I was at home, I would go and put the kettle on. But I am not. So I get up and, ignoring Desmond’s gob-smacked mucky face, and Karolina’s empty one, I kiss
Dorota on the cheek, telling her: ‘You’re my favourite mother-in-law.’

Later, back home, I sit in the quiet of my kitchen and breathe deep while Pat and Dad, Dorota and Roland toast a happy outcome with tea and biscuits. Martin and Claudia
suddenly appear. I am so engrossed in re-living the morning’s developments that I barely noticed the usual banging and crashing that accompanies Martin or the gock-gock of his wife’s
stilettos. He is treated regally, people jumping up to offer chairs and make tea while Dad sits quietly, contemplating his son. Martin sneaks a cock-eyed glance at him and earns a small,
encouraging smile and a tilt of the head. Claudia asks after Jeremy and I tell her he must be next door with Jessica. Martin says, ‘That’s my boy.’ Claudia goes to wallop him but
remembers at the last moment that her husband is an invalid, which wouldn’t necessarily stop me. Then Martin and Dad disappear to the garden for a man-to-man, more handshaking and
back-slapping. Pat announces their intention to stay a couple of days in the camper outside. I try not to think about this. The double bed. The very small rickety pull-out double that looks like
it’s seen some action over the years. But... why begrudge Dad some company in his old age?

Then, while Claudia jigs Imo up and down, with some effort, on her petite lap, while Pat quizzes Dorota on what it is like to be the mother of a priest, while Roland disappears to watch
Seven
Brides for Seven Brothers
with Olivia and Rachel in the front room and after I have checked everyone is alright, praying (am I praying?) for Steve to get back from the Good Friday service and
help me hold this strange band of people together, I head out into the garden. My garden.

Much later, with a mound of mouldering garden waste and a mug of tea in my hand, I survey the last two hours’ work and revel in the fact I’ve been left to it. No
children. No family. No annoyances.

I try to enjoy my relief. But it is spoiled by this nagging feeling, wriggling around my gut like a case of threadworms. I can’t quite work out the cause of this worry: is it Dad and Pat
canoodling in the campervan? Is it Martin and Claudia who have shut themselves in the back room ‘to talk’? Is it Melanie or Geoffrey Chaucer, both of whom could still scupper these
delicate marital negotiations? Or is it Karolina and the way she duped us? The friend I lost before I even had her... It could be any number of the holes in my life.

As I stoop to pick up a stray football – Jessica’s – I get a flash of memory: Martin trying out his card tricks on me.
Shut your eyes and pick one.
But I’m still
none the wiser to what exactly the niggle is.

Then I hear Bob calling out in his soft baritone: ‘JESSICA!’

Jessica?

Bob pokes his fat bald head over the loose fence panel (must-get-Steve-onto-it). ‘Have you seen her? Is she with you?’

‘I thought she was at yours. With Jeremy.’

‘Haven’t seen either of them for a couple of hours.’ He checks his watch. ‘At least.’

Tamarine appears next to him, barely visible over the fence. ‘You better see this, Bobby,’ she says, eyeing me up sideways so my heart goes cold and the nagging feeling springs right
up out of my body and hangs there in the Penge air in front of me. Why didn’t I acknowledge it earlier? ‘I found it under Jessica’s pillow.’

Tamarine hands Bob an envelope. One of my blue Basildon Bond envelopes that my children are always pilfering to play post offices. The ones I spotted earlier in the shed. On the vacant camping
chair.

Bob holds the envelope in his hand like it’s a letter bomb. I can make out the word ‘Dad’ in bubble writing.

‘Open it, yeah,’ says Tamarine gently.

So Bob opens it and scans the letter inside. He says nothing but the letter floats to the ground as he spins on his foot, as deft as an ice-dancer, and runs off in a way I have never seen him
run until he disappears inside, leaving Tamarine scrambling on the other side of the fence to retrieve it. Tamarine’s hand quivers as she hands the letter over for me to read and in that
movement I can see how much she loves Jessica.

It is a few moments before I realise that Tamarine is urging me to tell Martin what’s happened. Before her Bobby goes round and hits him. Because her Bobby will blame his Jeremy for
leading Jessica astray. Because her Bobby has no sense when it comes to Jessica’s mother. Tamarine goes in then, after the man she loves. And I go inside to face Martin and Claudia with this
news. If ever a prayer was needed it is now.