Courting Trouble (22 page)

Flicking on the radio one morning, I heard a politician pontificating that a woman being sexually assaulted while she’s drunk ‘is akin to falling over when inebriated’.

‘Except, of course, the pavement doesn’t choose to insert itself into your vagina,’ I grumbled back.

Even when shopping for new trainers with Portia at the shopping centre, the lyrics of rap songs seared into my psyche. ‘Mad cases of manslaughter, I rape this man’s daughter, then put the shit on camcorder,’ I was charmingly serenaded in the shoe shop, along with other songs about ‘ho’s and ‘slapping my bitch up’.

I tried to make a joke out of my discomfort by covering my daughter’s ears, but she shrugged me off. Since my mother and I had forbidden contact with her grandfather, my once effusive, ebullient child would utter only a few grunts in our direction. In a supermarket queue we stood behind an old codger who was holding the hand of a little girl. ‘Why can’t I get to know
my
grandfather? I mean, it’s not like I have a dad any more,’ Portia implored. It was the most she’d said in weeks. Even the traumatized, shell-shocked Chantelle was more verbal than Portia these days.

‘Your father, who has the loving and affectionate nature of volcanic rock, is otherwise occupied in his role of emotionally constipated shagger of my ex-friends’ is what I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue, replying instead, ‘Your daddy loves you very much, but had to go away on a research trip.’ Which sounded like the crap it was. Portia marched off towards the car, her eyes rolling. Since the arguments about Danny had begun, she had been doing so much eye-rolling, passers-by must be wondering if epilepsy ran in the family.

But, even though Roxy had banned us from having anything to do with Danny, Danny was obviously determined to have a lot to do with us. With ‘Shoemaker and the Elves’ fairy-tale magic, we’d wake in the morning to find the front door painted or the garden weeded. The gate no longer squeaked and the hedge was pruned. There were suddenly flower boxes on the outside sills and no leaves in the guttering. Not only were our cars waxed and polished, but Roxy’s MG Midget could now reverse and the soft top opened and closed with ease. Roxy was reluctant to believe this was all Danny’s doing until the parking officer who was about to tow her car was found hanging from a tree branch by his pants.

‘Okay, now
that’s
classic Danny,’ Roxy drawled, with the tiniest hint of begrudging appreciation.

Nathaniel was also paying us a lot of attention. He’d discovered that my mother kept bees, as did he. ‘Bees are endangered, just like beautiful, smart, feminist women,’ he’d said. It gave him the perfect excuse to drop in with jars from his own hive. Then he’d linger and stall over coffee and tea, which often turned into joining us for dinner, followed by wine and nightcaps. Whenever Nathaniel was around, the Countess laughed flirtatiously and made many extravagant, comical gestures with her arms. Roxy would always turn up in her tightest leopardskin trousers. The downside to this intestine-constricting sartorial pant choice was that one night she ate a cupcake too many and they split at the crotch.

‘That cake was the straw that broke the camel-toe’s back,’ the Countess quipped, and they both fell about, killing themselves laughing. If the death threats didn’t get them, their own riotous cackling surely would. Or perhaps ‘toy-boy-itis’ would be the cause of my mother’s demise? Roxy was currently dating a 24-year-old gym instructor. I’d had to give her new partner a safe-sex talk, as in, what to do if my mother has a heart attack.

Eventually, his addiction to computer games tried her patience. She kicked him out and joined us for a celebratory helping of Phyllis’s scrumptious Beef Wellington.

‘I simply can’t believe you’re over fifty, Roxy,’ Nathaniel flattered.

‘It’s all those age-preserving chemicals found only in champagne,’ I said a little censoriously, as I watched my mother down her third glass in a gulp. ‘You really shouldn’t encourage her, Nathaniel. She’s quite bad enough already.’

‘The badder the woman, the better, in my view,’ he flirted. ‘I so enjoy coming around to your house. It’s like entering a comedic coven. But where’s Portia’s father, if you don’t mind me asking? What happened to him?’

‘The glass slipper didn’t fit Tilly any more,’ Roxy volunteered, mid-munch.

‘Yeah. It’s on another woman’s foot,’ the Countess added.

‘Okay! No need to blab my entire life history to all and sundry.’

‘I hope you consider me to be a little more than “sundry”,’ Nathaniel said, placing his hand over mine.

Roxy and the Countess signalled astonished delight through ocular semaphore.

Portia always says that a smirk is a thought that appears on your face. And I did a lot of smirking that night, as Nathaniel kept finding any excuse to brush up against me, take my arm or touch my leg. Now that he’d ascertained my single status, a date could not be far off.

As Nathaniel’s interest in me became more obvious, the only thing that could wipe the smile off my face was my deteriorating relationship with my daughter. Not only was Portia communicating exclusively by grunt, but her school marks were dropping. Her religious studies teacher sent me a copy of her essay on Buddhism, which started, ‘Buddha is something you spread on bread.’ Her economics teacher said that her essay on globalization had been a paragraph-long rant about the Western world getting too fat, which Portia described as ‘globulization’. The teacher wanted to know if anything was going on at home.

Of course, these were small border wars compared to Phyllis’s predicament, but I was starting to wonder if it was too late to reconsider rigorous boarding schools and arranged marriages. But, finally, one Saturday afternoon, I heard Portia’s voice fire with enthusiasm, ‘Wow! Oh, wow!’ She was peering through the living-room curtain. A scallop of sunlight fell across her face, reminding me of her delicate beauty. She bounded for the door. Curiosity meant I wasn’t far behind her.

It was the first time I’d seen my father in daylight. I stood for a moment, peering at him. My daughter’s high forehead and long limbs, the dimple we both shared – these obviously came directly from him. He was battle-scarred but handsome, strongly built, with bulging muscles. His eyebrows resembled worn toothbrush bristles. He didn’t look like the demon of my nightmares but more like an amiable, fighting-fit, slim-line Santa: a man who should be in a big chair in Harrods, as kids wriggled in his lap, whispering action-figure names in his ear.

I was still taking stock of him when I heard my mother’s footfall in the hall behind me. ‘Don’t tell me, it must be National Asshole Day.’

‘Peace offering.’ Danny held a bottle of wine out to my mother. ‘A nice Aussie drop of red. I think the label reads, “Because we’re fussy bastards”.’

Roxy pushed past Portia and me to slam the door. Danny put out a muscular arm to prop it ajar. And so we stood there, three generations of the Devine clan, facing our phantom patriarch.

‘The law of machoness prohibits men from admitting that we’re ever wrong. But you’re right, Roxy. I have been the world’s biggest asshole and I want to spend the rest of my days making it up to you. And getting to know my daughter.’ He patted me gingerly on the back, as if I were an unknown dog which might bite his hand off. ‘And, of course, my darling granddaughter. Can you find it in your hearts to forgive me?’

‘Can’t you see he’s sorry, Gran?’ Portia chirped. ‘He has such a puppy-dog look.’

‘Then get him wormed,’ Roxy scowled.

‘The thing is, when I was born . . . way back in, oh, about 1533, we didn’t question authority. I was only twenty when I joined the force. I thought I was just doing my job . . . But when I found out we were using the names of dead babies . . .’ Danny looked down at his feet, totally dejected. ‘Well, it turned my stomach. And then I fell for you, Rox . . . Which meant I had to leave Special Branch and get out of your life. Because how could I confess the truth to you? You would have hated my guts anyway. The police force used and abused me, too, you know,’ he said bitterly. ‘But I would never have scarpered if I’d known you were expecting. On that, you have my word.’

‘Gee, let me add that to my list of things I don’t give a fuck about.’

‘You’re as beautiful as ever, Rox. I have a face which would launch a thousand dredgers, barges, tugs . . . I know that. But I do have a big and loyal heart. And I want to give it to you.’

I sensed genuine contrition and melted a little towards him, but Roxy answered by slamming the door on his arm. He leapt back, yelping. Portia made a move towards the door. My mother blocked her, arms folded.

‘I’m sorry, possum. But this is for your own good. You just don’t understand the male of the species, darling.’

‘That’s because you never let me meet any!’ Portia retorted mulishly, before executing another exaggerated eyeroll.

‘If you keep doing that, darl, you’re definitely going to shake loose a few brain cells. And then all those Montessori pre-school fees and maths tutoring will have been for nothing.’

My daughter looked to me for help, her eyes large and pleading.

‘Danny does seem genuinely sorry, Mum. He says he really loves you,’ I ventured.

‘Yeah, he loves me kinda like an Aztec high priest loves the still-throbbing heart of his human sacrifice.’

‘My grandpa’s not the type to give up, you know,’ Portia said rebelliously.

‘That’s because the man’s not normal. If he was a normal man, I would hit him repeatedly over the head with copies of
The Female Eunuch
until he bled to death, repenting.’

‘I agree with Portia, Mum. Somehow, I don’t think killing Danny would entirely eliminate his desire to befriend us. I suspect he would just come back and haunt us.’

A note came through the letterbox, followed by a disembodied male voice. ‘This is where I’m living, temporarily. The lift seems to be powered by oxen and I have to share a communal laundry with several Baltic republics. But you’re all welcome, any time.’

I picked up the folded piece of paper from the mat and scanned the address. It was a flat on the canal near King’s Cross. Portia snatched the note and memorized it, too, before Roxy grabbed it back and tore it up.

Half an hour before my daughter went missing again, I was sitting up in bed with a coffee and a Sunday newspaper, vaguely wondering what gift to give Portia for her thirteenth birthday while also concerned about a world in which Saudi women can be electronically chipped so that an alarm goes off if they try to escape, when a phone call came from Portia’s best friend, Amelia, informing me that my daughter hadn’t turned up to dance class. A Saudi-type electronic chip was starting to look like a pretty attractive birthday gift all of a sudden . . .

My mother and I drove straight to the address Danny had given us. The whole harrowing trip, I experienced once more that cold, nauseous shock of dread all parents feel when a child goes missing. We parked half on the pavement and, the car wheels still spinning, shot up the stairs. I banged on Danny’s door while my mother took aim with her capsicum spray.

‘What kept you?’ Danny said, motioning us inside. He had opened a bottle of wine and put out three glasses on the coffee table. Portia was curled up on her grandfather’s couch, eating birthday cake. She looked so happy it was as though she were being tickled from the inside with a feather.

Even though I hadn’t had breakfast, I immediately took a big, nerve-soothing swig of vino. ‘Some day, Portia, when you have your own children, you’ll understand why I drink.’ What with dating, InterRailing, sex talks and driving tests to come, I needed Valium even to contemplate the years ahead. When women I meet at work tell me how stressed they are with their small children, I think to myself – Just you wait!

‘Don’t give the kid a hard time. Portia’s supposed to be rebellious. I mean, she’s practically a teenager – the period when your offspring are certain they’ll never be as bloody stupid as their parents. When she’s having a teen tantrum, I suggest you just keep eye contact, back off slowly and sleep on the nature strip,’ Danny joked in an attempt to ease tensions.

Roxy turned her capsicum spray in Danny’s direction. ‘What the hell would you know about raising a kid?’

‘Nothing, worse luck,’ Danny admitted. ‘But I want to learn. I know you don’t believe me,’ he entreated earnestly, ‘but I’ve changed.
You
changed me. You changed my world view on everything. Nuclear weapons. Animal testing. Even page-three topless models . . . Jesus, do you remember the time we stormed the Miss World contest and flour-bombed the judges?’ He gave a crinkle-eyed smile.

‘Who could forget?’ my mother said. ‘Those Miss Worlds couldn’t spell their country’s name without looking at their sash.’

‘And you suggested to the press that it was only fair that women who’d had cosmetic enhancement assure the judges that at least 75 per cent of their body parts came from their country of origin.’

‘Oh God, I do remember that. Then you got hold of the loudhailer and announced that the beauty contestants from countries with military dictatorships must vow not to topple duly elected winners.’

Danny grinned. ‘Yeah, that’s right. Just before you got arrested.’

‘Christ, don’t remind me. I was wearing a sash that read “Fuck You!”’

A momentary truce ensued. My mother holstered her capsicum spray back into her leopardskin handbag and sat down at the small kitchen table.

‘You got arrested?’ Portia asked, enthralled, all big eyes and ears.

‘Hon, why don’t you get along to dance class now and leave the grown-ups to talk for a bit, there’s a good girl.’ The dance studio was only a block or two from here, in Bloomsbury. She could walk quite safely and join in the last hour of her class. ‘Your mum and I will pick you up afterwards and go shopping for birthday presents, okay?’

‘Okay, Gran.’ My daughter beamed. Her job here was done. All the people she most cared about were sitting in the same room, talking things through, and there were no visible lethal weapons, obvious body wounds or signs of bloodshed. As soon as Portia skipped down the stairs, Roxy turned towards Danny.