Bad Mothers United (12 page)
Read Bad Mothers United Online
Authors: Kate Long
‘I wouldn’t have mentioned it,’ said Ivy, peeling off her headscarf and folding it into triangles, ‘only Maud says he were going like a rat up a pipe,
whizzin’ from one end o’ t’bypass to th’ other. How the police didn’t clock him, I don’t know. He’s a lucky devil, your Steve, int he?’
Stupid, more like. I said, ‘I don’t see that I can do much about it. I never wanted him to have a motorbike in the first place, but he wouldn’t be told. Not about anything. Not
when we were married and even less now. Was he at least wearing his helmet?’
‘I’ve no idea, it weren’t me who saw him. I’ve brought you them photographs, though.’ She sat herself down on the sofa and opened her handbag. Inside was an A5
brown envelope that she slit open and tipped up onto the cushion beside her. A handful of very small black and white prints spilled out. ‘They’re not all of your mum, I could only find
two with her on. But there’s others I thought you might be interested in.’
I came and perched on the sofa arm to see.
She passed across the first photo and it was a high-street view, the road surface cobbled and empty of cars. Shop signs hung from brackets; a man in a bowler hat stood under one of them. Ivy
tapped a building on the extreme left of the picture. ‘Now. That were t’Grapes. Where Londis is.’
‘What, this is Bank Top?’
‘Oh aye. So, your mother’s mother – Polly, your grandma Marsh – she used t’clean for the landlord. She did all sorts for anyone, actually – laundry and
fruit-picking – owt to earn a penny here and a penny there. And she’d to take Nancy and Jimmy with her on these jobs, either that or leave them with her mother, Florrie. Only Florrie
was a harsh woman, what you’d call a last resort when it came to childminding. So when your grandma Marsh was working in t’pub, Nancy would play down below in t’cellar out of the
way, and she’d open a window and when us kids saw that, we’d all climb in as well. We’d to be careful, like, because we’d have been in trouble if we’d been
caught.’
‘What did you get up to? Under-age drinking?’
Ivy laughed out loud. ‘I should think not. No, we climbed about on t’barrels and threw a rubber ball and hid from each other. It were a good place for hiding because it were pretty
gloomy. Oh, and there was a frog’d sit under one of t’barrels and drink beer as it dripped.’
‘Get away.’
‘It’s true as I’m sitting here. Talking of frogs, see this drinking fountain?’ She slid another photo out, again a street scene but one I partly recognised because it
featured the spire-end of the church. Next to Saint Mary’s, against the wall of a building long gone, was a plain stone basin and metal spout. ‘Nan’s brother Jimmy once filled
t’bowl wi’ tadpoles. He used Polly’s milk pan to fetch them from t’ditch at t’bottom of the graveyard. He allus was drawn to water, that lad. And these taddies, they
looked so funny, wriggling about. Us kids were two-double laughing. Well, except for Jacky Ollerton, that were t’teacher’s son, who told him if a policeman caught him he’d be
locked up because the fountain was the property of the mayor. Jacky said putting taddies in there was same as putting them in t’mayor’s hat. And then a policeman did come! Sergeant
Battersby walking up Church Street towards us, large as life and twice as ugly.’
‘My God. So did Jimmy end up in prison?’
‘Did he heck, we all scarpered. Hello, what’s t’cat got in its mouth?’
Pringle had slunk in under the table and was gnawing at something pink and plucked-looking. I thought briefly of the ‘human hand’ story – thanks for implanting that image in my
head, Steve – but this lump of flesh was bulbous at one end and bony at the other, not hand-shaped at all. ‘Hell’s bells, it’s a chicken leg.’
‘Ooh, hey.’ Ivy seemed impressed. ‘Perhaps you could train him up, get him to bring you fillet steak next time.’
Pringle paused and stared at us, as if considering the option.
‘I tell you what, Karen, he’s put some weight on since he’s been living here. He’s like a different animal. You’ve got the magic touch.’
‘I’ve got the fat touch.’ I prodded my own stomach unhappily.
‘Get away. You’re a bonny woman. At least you’ve a bust.’
‘I’ve one of those, all right.’
The photos sat between us in a spill of nostalgia. I thought of Mum’s plump figure, how as a little girl I’d sat on her lap and pressed my head into her squashy bosom. In middle age
she’d worn ecru corsets with diamond-shaped panels down the front; I could remember them hanging over the maiden to dry above the cooker.
‘These pictures are brilliant. Can I take them to school and photocopy them?’
‘You can have ’em.’ She shoved two or three in my direction. ‘See, you get to a point in life and you look around and it’s all clutterment. You say to yourself,
What’s this for? And this? Why am I hanging on to it?
You want to get a big broom and sweep everything away. It’s the past, you know? It’s gone. Buried. Meks no
difference now.’
You’re wrong there, I thought.
Walshy wanted to christen the yurt immediately. Soon as the last peg was hammered home, he sent Roz off to Spar for peanuts and wine while he got Gemma and me to carry the
kitchen chairs outside. He was after lighting a row of candles, but I told him there was no point in the daytime and he’d be better saving them for when it dropped dark. Instead he brought
his radio down and tuned it into some cheesy local station. By the time Roz returned with her clanking carrier bag, we’d actually abandoned the chairs – too upright, not yurty enough
– and were lolling around on cushions, barefoot, to
Wonderwall
.
Really I had an essay to be getting on with, so when Gemma came round with the wine I only let her fill my glass halfway. I’m not much of a drinker anyway, I just don’t enjoy the
sensation of letting go and not caring. Always at the back of my mind I’m worried I might be needed suddenly: what if there’s a problem with Will and I need to get back home pronto?
Us mothers can’t afford to get wrecked. We have to stay Alert and Responsible. I’ve no tolerance for alcohol anyway, I reach the jelly-legs stage while everyone else is still just
warming up. ‘You need to put in more practice,’ Roz told me once, as though getting drunk was some kind of critical life-skill. I said, ‘It makes me miss my son.’ That
shut her up.
I watched Roz now, lying half-propped up on her elbows like a sunbather. On one side of her Gemma sat cross-legged and on the other Walshy hugged his knees and rocked to the music. It made him
look disturbed.
‘This tent reminds me of being at the circus,’ said Roz.
Gemma smirked. ‘Does that make us the entertainment, then? The Amazing Boozing Students. Hmm. I think I’d want my money back.’
‘I’d pay to see
you
in a spangly leotard,’ said Roz, winking at her.
This flirty banter was a new thing. I couldn’t tell whether it annoyed Gemma or not.
‘All three of you,’ said Walshy, ‘in sequined bikinis, on horseback. With feathered headbands. Yeah, I’d put my hand in my pocket for that.’
‘In your dreams,’ I said.
‘You often are,’ he said.
Roz snorted.
I thought, I wonder where we’ll be in ten years’ time. I wonder if we’ll look back at this day, the Day of the Yurt, and what we’ll remember from it. If we remember it
at all. Perhaps we’d be too grown-up to bother with such nonsense. After all, we’d be completely different people by then, wouldn’t we?
Or maybe not. Walshy already liked to talk about the city pad he was going to have, and the car he’d drive, and probably he was right because his dad would sort these things out for him.
His dad would get him a rep’s job in a good firm, and Walshy would wear a suit to work and have a succession of girlfriends who looked like models. Walsh at thirty would simply be an
extension of the way he was now.
Roz maintained she was going to marry Gareth and go and live in a cottage on the Welsh coast, in amongst those rocks she’d spent three years studying. And I could see her, grown chunky
– Gareth was running to fat already – and red-cheeked and windblown. Her hallway would be full of wellies and kagoules. ‘What’ll you do with your Geology degree?’
I’d asked her once. ‘Stuff the degree,’ she said. ‘I wanna keep chickens and goats.’ You know, it goes through me when I hear students dismiss their courses like
that.
I glanced across at Gemma; imagined a European city street lined with nineteenth-century apartment blocks, Gemma leaning out of an upper-storey window showing her bare tanned arms. Sleek as a
cat, she’d be, and entirely content, chatting to locals as she did her daily shop, and drinking weird foreign brews. I knew her mum had plans for her to travel. There was a placement for
her at an international school, if she wanted. Right now Roz was draping a daisy chain on her head, a tribute she accepted without a word or movement.
And where will
you
be in ten years’ time, Charlotte?
I let my head fall back, followed with my gaze the lines of roof struts to where they met in the centre of the yurt. Such regular straightness, lifting to such a neat point. That was why they
had vaulting in church roofs, to raise your thoughts beyond the here and now. We all need to stop and look upwards sometimes. I tried hard to focus on the future, to visualise what lay in store.
Except when I’ve played at this before, I can only think of Will, and only as he is now, aged two. It’s as if a blackout curtain drops down in front of me. Nan’s friends like to
nod at Will and go, ‘Eeh, they’re not young for long. He’ll be grown and gone before you know it.’ But I can’t even imagine my son a little bit older, not even
starting Reception class. The thing about children is they feel so much rooted in the present. The concept of a twelve-year-old Will seemed ludicrous.
Right now, everything seemed ludicrous. Like the degree: I travelled up to York and I sat with my books and I wrote my essays and went to lectures and my marks were good and on the surface
everything was ticking along. I’d heard Martin calling me one of the most conscientious students he’d ever taught. The truth was, though, motherhood had broken my brain. There were
some days when I couldn’t remember the words for things, when I read the same paragraph ten times and it still didn’t go in, when grasping the simplest idea felt like trying to shift
a boulder with a stick. My concentration kept dipping, failing; I was incapable of making decisions. I didn’t know what I wanted any more.
And yet you hear people say how teenage girls have babies ‘because it’s the easy way out’, and that pisses me off SO much. It’s the complete opposite. Having a child in
the picture makes everything you do about a million times harder. There’s nothing easy about the way your identity’s squashed into a mum-shape, whether it fits or not. There’s
nothing easy about being distracted and tired and anxious, all kinds of health professionals watching you like hawks, about the massive endless weight of responsibility. Trying to frame your
basic short-term plans, never mind the long-term. Where was I headed? God knows. Motherhood had taken up almost everything I was. What room was there left?
Something small and hard hit me on the cheek. ‘Fuck,’ I said.
‘Oops,’ said Roz. ‘Friendly fire, sorry.’ When I looked, she’d started flicking peanuts at Walshy. A lot of her shots were going wide, though. He stood the
onslaught for about twenty seconds, then made a lunge for her, grabbing her wrists and forcing her backwards across a cushion.
‘I’ll teach you to play with nuts, missus,’ he said.
She squealed and wriggled underneath him. Without lifting his body weight off her, he let go of one of her wrists and grabbed a fistful of peanuts. He raised his arm above her face. ‘Now
we’ll see.’
One by one he let the contents of his fist fall. Peanuts bounced mainly onto her chest, trampolining off onto the grass. ‘Say “Walshy, you are King of the Nuts”.’
‘No!’ She was giggling and breathless. His face was close to hers.
‘Say it.’
Gemma was sitting just a few feet away – there was even a peanut lodged in her shirt – but she’d zoned out. Her eyes were closed and her features relaxed.
‘Say it, Roz.’
‘No.’
‘Then we’re doomed to lie here, locked in combat indefinitely.’
She let out another squeak.
Walshy shifted his body down and let his head drop onto her chest. ‘Actually, I’m quite happy. You make a smashing mattress. Nice and squashy. Well-covered. Lovely fleshy squashy
tum-tum. Mmm.’
There was a pause while she thought about this, then without ceremony she heaved herself sideways and bucked him off so he flopped onto the grass. Before she could sit up he reached across and
grabbed her T-shirt.
‘Aw, what? Come back, flesh-mattress. I need you.’
‘Piss off.’
‘Eh? You’re not in a mood, are you?’
She unhooked his fingers from the material and stood up. ‘Why would I be in a mood?’
‘I dunno. Girls usually are. One minute you’re fine, the next, bang. It’s a mystery.’
Roz ignored him. She just strode over to the yurt entrance, lifted the flap and slipped through, dropping the canvas behind her.
‘What? What did I do?’ Walshy turned to me.
‘Called her fat, you pea-brain.’
‘I did not. I called her squashy, which is a compliment. Women are meant to be squashy. Squashy bellies, squashy boobs.’
‘Shut up, Walsh,’ said Gemma.
He sank back down on a cushion. ‘She started it.’
After a moment Gemma opened her eyes, unhooked her daisy crown and laid it across Walshy’s chest like a wreath.
And this grand non-plan of yours for the future – where do I fit in?
Daniel’s voice came into my head, unbidden and plaintive. He would phone tonight. If I talked to him
about the way I was feeling, would he listen, or would he try to tell me about membranes or capillaries or neural transmitters?
In front of me, Walshy heaved himself into a sitting position and plucked the daisy chain off his chest. He edged over and tried to hook it over my wrist, but I shook him off. He sighed, took
the flowers and mashed them into a ball between his palms.
Daniel and me, ten years’ time. Would we make it that far? If you really loved someone, you didn’t fancy other people, did you? No, you didn’t, Slut-Girl. I tried to picture
a wedding day, Mum in raptures and some unsuitable hat, Will tricked out as a pageboy, Mrs G sulkily dishing out buttonholes at the back of Bank Top parish church. The idea felt bizarre, like
trying to imagine myself on TV or something.
‘Are you OK?’ I heard Gemma say. ‘You’ve not drunk your wine.’
I rubbed my face like someone waking up. ‘Oh, yeah. I’m – I’ve got an essay crisis on, that’s all. Sitting here worrying I’m not working instead of going up
to my room and nailing the bastard. Mad, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘Go for it, then. Make a choice and then stick with it. Which is it to be, work-time or yurt-time?’
‘
Othello
.’
‘Good girl.’
I crossed the scraggy lawn still in my bare feet. Inside our back porch we keep a bike with a punctured tyre and a stolen sandwich board (Walshy’s), a measuring pole (Roz’s), a
barbecue (Gemma’s), a broken toy motor boat I filched off a skip, and twelve boxes of empty bottles we keep meaning to put out for recycling. I navigated past them all and placed my
trainers under the kitchen table out of the way. Then I thought, before I started work I really ought to have a pee so as to minimise any distraction.
I was about to push on the loo door when it opened to reveal Roz standing on the other side. Her face was red, wet and streaky with tears.
‘Oh,’ I said, taken aback. ‘Jesus. Are you OK?’
She glared at me and her skin flushed darker.
‘Sorry, Roz. Stupid question. Can I do anything?’
Roz shook her head as if she was brushing me away.
I said, ‘Look, you mustn’t bother about Walshy, he’s always talking bollocks. You have to let it slide over you. You’re certainly not fat, if that’s what’s
worrying you.’
I put a hand out to touch her shoulder but she jerked back angrily. ‘For God’s sake! It’s
not
that.’
‘What is it? Tell me, then I can help.’
‘Just, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea what’s going on in my life right now.
No idea
.’ Her eyes were brimming with hurt. She
seemed distressed beyond reason.
Then she barged me aside and ran down the hall.
‘Is it Walshy, though?’ I called recklessly. ‘Is it him?’
No response. I heard her thumping up the stairs, the slam of her bedroom door, silence.
What the hell was happening to this house?