Lifesaver (13 page)

He would almost certainly have been wearing his habitual stay-press slacks with the knife-edge creases that day, either his mossy green ones, or the bilge brown: the uniform of most dads up and down the country until well into the Eighties, before Gap began its rapid ascent to world sartorial domination. Greg would, doubtless, have been in his jeans. It was the fact that Greg bucked the trend and wore jeans which had made me fall in love with him in the first place. The jeans and the cigarettes had set him apart from all the other fathers; tricking me into believing that he was on my wavelength, blinding me to his coarse skin and the broken blood vessels in his cheeks, the hallmarks of a burgeoning forty-five year old lush. I mean, they were proper Lee jeans, without any sort of creases ironed into them.

It sounded so trivial, but one of the things I really missed about my dad was that he never lived to acquire a fashion sense. Mum at least lasted into her late sixties, outliving him by ten years. Dad would have been such an attractive septuagenarian. He was rake slim and tall, with the easy smile of a model and floppy hair, like Jeremy Irons in
Brideshead Revisited
. But he was shy, too, and I think in a way he had looked up to the younger Greg. Admired his louche good looks, casual trendiness, and ability to drink vast quantities of alcohol and still chat up women with aplomb.

Although it had been a huge deal at the time, what Greg and I actually had was nothing very much, not when I thought back to it. A few fumbles on the kitchen floor late at night, after my parents had gone to bed, the white ceramic tiles freezing against the hot skin of my back. His hand inside my bra, his alcohol-scented promises in my ear, hours and hours of passionate, Silk Cut-flavoured kisses.

I’d wanted him, for years, and I systematically set about making him fall for me. After the squeaky-voiced, spotty teenage wimps from the boys’ school, his masculinity was as overpowering as a strong aftershave, and by the time I was sixteen, I was obsessed with him. At every opportunity I sent him sly, flirtatious glances from under my eyelashes, making sure that my school shirt was artlessly untucked and the hem of my skirt sliding high up my thighs as I crossed my legs in front of him. I watched him shift in his seat and prickle with sweat, and my thrilling newfound power made me hug myself with excitement.

He and his wife Jeanette used to come round for drinks and dinner on a regular basis, and when they did, I made sure I was always available to hand round nibbles and top up Cinzanos. One night, when Dad had popped out to buy more wine and Mum was upstairs showing Jeanette the new bedroom curtains, Greg and I found ourselves alone, at last. We were both shaking—although it later occurred to me that Greg’s unsteady hand as he pulled on his Silk Cut might have been attributable to mild
delirium tremens
.

‘You’re so grown up these days, Anna,’ he said, leaning forward, his eyes glittering with lust.

‘So when are you going to take me out to dinner, then?’ I managed to reply, blushing furiously at the blatant come-on.

‘Whenever you like. You tell me when you’re free.’ We were staring fixedly at each other, like frightened rabbits.

‘I’m very busy,’ I replied, trying desperately to affect insouciance. ‘But I’ll look in my diary - I’m sure I could fit you into a small space somewhere.’
Boom boom!
, as Basil Brush would have said.

The
double-entendre
hadn’t been intentional, but it certainly hit the mark. Greg’s pupils had instantly dilated even further, and his gaze shifted to my breasts. He later confirmed that it was the moment when he fell in love with me, as opposed to just lusting after me, which he claimed to have been doing for years prior to that.

‘Freudian slip?’ he’d murmured, moving closer. I could feel the heat blazing in my cheeks. I wanted to move away, but couldn’t, paralysed by his glorious manly confidence. His lips were millimetres from mine, when we heard footsteps in the hall, and we sprang apart. My hands were shaking.

‘Red or white?’ Dad sang, coming back into the room with his pipe in one hand and an off-licence carrier bag in the other. ‘Anna, go up and ask the girls which they’d like, would you?’

That had been eight months before Greg told Dad about us; during which time Greg and I had done everything we possibly could, sexually speaking, without penetration actually occurring. Poor Greg. I felt quite sorry for him. He had been, to put it crudely, gagging for it. For the first few weeks he’d relished the sexiness of our foreplay, but as time went on, he must have been thinking that he was just too old for heavy petting. But I had not let him go all the way. I thought that was probably why he convinced himself that he really was in love with me, enough to risk telling Dad, and to risk losing his wife.

On that horrific evening, Greg and I had engineered a hasty liaison behind the trolley train in the Asda car park, shortly before he’d been due to meet Daddy in the pub. Through plumes of Silk Cut he’d told me that he was going to leave Jeanette, and ‘that was that’. I remembered him grinding out the cigarette stub under the sole of his Dunlop Green Flash trainers. Adults never wore trainers in those days, except for the performance of physical exercise. It was another thing which had impressed me about him.

‘That’s that’, he’d said. If he hadn’t said it, I’d have told him not to. I was in love with him, but I was eighteen years old, and the gates of adulthood, with all the freedom and potential just visible through the bars, were just beginning to swing open. I had finished my ‘A’ levels, and had a place at Reading University, starting that October, studying English and Drama. However much I adored his jeans and Green Flashes, his Silk Cuts and his hairy chest, I did not wish to start taking huge bagfuls of his dirty washing down to the launderette, or cook him steak and chips every night. Not to mention the grief I’d have got from my family about it - Jeanette was Mum’s best friend.

But because he’d said it so firmly, all my rehearsed objections had dissolved on my tongue like sherbet. He seemed so convinced, so masterful, that I couldn’t argue. I rationalised it by thinking that if he wanted to leave her all that much, it probably wasn’t anything to do with me anyway. I could still go to college, I’d just come and visit him at weekends. Or he could move to London with me. And I felt ready to lose my virginity. When I told him so, he instantly looked at his watch.

‘I won’t be long,’ he said. ‘See you in the Feathers in half an hour. I’ll tell your dad, meet you after for a quick debrief, then I’ll get off home and break it to Jeanette. Our new life starts here! And don’t worry, it’ll all be fine.’

That had been the last time I ever saw Greg alone. I’d sat at the bar in the Feathers, a pub round the corner from the Fox and Goose, for two hours after that, waiting for him, my trembling fingers nursing the dregs of a warm blackcurrant and soda, but he hadn’t come. I’d even heard the wail of the ambulance siren going past the door, without knowing its destination. Eventually I’d gone home to find the hastily scribbled note from Mum telling me to meet them at the hospital, but by the time I got there, it had been too late.

Greg and Jeanette had been at the funeral, of course, but every time Greg had looked meaningfully across at me, I’d stared at the carpet, filled with horror and revulsion. The mere thought of his hairy chest - and what I’d encountered due south of it—made me want to vomit with guilt into the tepid vol-au-vents which Mum handed round back at ours after the service.

At least he hadn’t decided to tell Jeanette first, I thought. That at least had been a small comfort.

‘Vicky, please let me in, I’m outside your front door. I’ve been worried about you. I only want to see how you are.’

A small voice floated down the stairs:
‘Mummy, do you think I’m adorable?’

There was no answer from Vicky, as far as I could tell, to either of us. I tried again.

‘Vicky, come down, please. I’ll keep phoning and knocking you until you do. Anyway, I promise I won’t take up much of your time… Or I could take Crystal to the swings, if you like.’

‘Mummy, am I?’

‘I’ll fill up your whole answering machine tape. I know you’re there, I can hear Crystal through the letterbox.’

I heard Vicky’s voice then, somewhere upstairs. ‘Yes, Crystal, you’re adorable. Most of the time.’

A pause, an inhalation I could swear I heard too, then a howl of outrage: ‘I WANT TO BE ADORABLE
ALL
THE TIME!’

Good grief, but that child was a drama queen. However, it seemed that she had succeeded where I was failing, to flush Vicky out of the undergrowth of her turmoil. Footsteps thumped down the stairs and the door swung abruptly open. Vicky stood in the doorway, a cross expression on her face and Pat riding on her left hip. She wore no make-up and her hair badly needed a wash. Her skin was a familiar greenish hue which would have left me in no doubt that she was pregnant, even if she hadn’t suspected it herself.

‘Sorry Anna, I didn’t hear you knocking.’

Remembering that I was meant to be here to offer moral support, I let the obvious lie slide. Instead, I leaned in and planted a kiss on her cheek, followed by another on Pat’s plump smooth one. I had a sudden urge to take him out in the car just so that I could drive over a cattle-grid and watch his cheeks wobble. He was that sort of a baby.

‘Hello you two. Any chance of a cup of tea? Give us a cuddle, Pat.’

Somewhat ungraciously, Vicky stood aside and admitted me, passing Pat into my outstretched arms. Her house was even more of a mess than ours was, but where our mess had a neglected mien to it, a sort of chilly, damp mess; Vicky’s was the messy chaos of small children, exhaustion and not enough hours in the day. Toys were strewn on all the floors, including on the not-very-clean kitchen tiles, and the breakfast things were still on the table despite its being half past eleven.

‘You sit down,’ I said to her, ‘and I’ll make the tea. Where’s Crystal?’

‘In a strop upstairs, as per. Hiding in our wardrobe. Hopefully she won’t find any mothballs and eat them. Oh, I can’t wait for term to start.’

Vicky flopped down onto a pile of un-ironed baby clothes in a wicker armchair in the kitchen. I put Pat down and he immediately crawled away to play with the standard lamp in the corner, so I chased after him and picked him up again.

‘Come on, Patch, you can help me make tea. You can pour out the boiling water for me.’

Vicky must have been in a bad way, because she didn’t even look up to check that I was joking. She was staring into space, chewing the skin around her thumbnail. She looked utterly defeated.

I came over and crouched down in front of her, putting my hands on her knees, as Pat made another bid for freedom in the opposite direction. There was a rough, sticky pinkish patch on the front of the left leg of her jeans, which I hazarded a guess was yesterday’s yogurt. ‘So you are pregnant, then,’ I said. She nodded, misery etched into the creases of her forehead.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered.

I would never have suggested that she didn’t need to do anything except take plenty of folic acid and let nature take its course, but I couldn’t help thinking it.

‘Have you told Peter yet?’

‘No. He’ll be thrilled,’ she said glumly. ‘If he was as stressed about it as I am, it would be so much easier. I wouldn’t feel so alone.’

‘You’re not alone. You’ve got me.’

Vicky’s eyes welled with tears and she looked away.

‘I mean it, Vicky, of course I’ll be there for you, whenever you need some extra help with the kids, or anything.’

‘I don’t think Ken’d be too happy if you were to move in here twenty four hours a day, because that’s what I need.’

Ken probably wouldn’t even notice, I thought, remembering my mosaic-making experience of the day before with a sudden secret flash of glee, followed instantly by shame—why did I feel gleeful about having a secret? I rubbed the rough blistered skin on my right thumb, my badge of achievement. Despite the wobbly moment with Pregnant Paula’s comment, and my subsequent hasty departure, I had already begun to see the mural project through rose-tinted glasses, and planned to go down to Gillingsbury again the following day. Perhaps this time Max might be there, I thought. I couldn’t sit around moping about Holly and Dad for ever.

I had an urge to invite Vicky to come with me—maybe I could pretend that I’d just been aimlessly driving around and had spotted the sign and gone in? Or maybe not… The thought of Crystal in the car with us for over an hour, and then charging round Moose Hall with Spike and his cronies, was not a particularly enticing one. I felt guilty for thinking it, but sometimes I did wish that cuddly, pliant Pat was my godchild instead of bristly Crystal. Much as I really did love her, she was living up to her name at the moment—brittle and precious; nice to look at but not very practical. Hopefully it was just a phase.

Besides, Vicky didn’t do anything on an impromptu basis anymore; the children had eradicated all her former spontaneity as briskly as a pulled clean Etch-a-Sketch. I missed the old Vicky, I thought, with a pang. I missed having a laugh with her. She was a brilliant mimic, and we used to conduct endless conversations in different accents, switching fluidly between Norwegian and Polish, Pakistani and Russian. But she never did her accents these days, or told me funny stories, or made up mad personas to try and fool drunk men in bars; pretending that she was a divorced millionairess looking for a new husband, or a former Miss World (a pretence she could pull off with no difficulty, back in the day), or a lady mud-wrestler. Although her arms were too spindly to get away with that one, even when she professed to be bantam-weight.

When had she got so serious? Still, I supposed, I was hardly a bundle of laughs anymore myself. We’d grown up, that was all. But it still felt like a loss. And at least she had Crystal and Pat to show for all that seriousness, which was more than I had. I just wished she enjoyed them a bit more. I was
sure
that, however tough having kids was, I’d find so much joy in being a mother. It made me sad that Vicky found it such a struggle.