Meltdown (14 page)

‘Shhh!’ Monica shouted. ‘It’s Henry!’

And together they all watched as their friend Henry, his new wife Jane beside him, achieved his dream of becoming a servant of the people.

They cheered and cheered and by the time the newly elected prime minister appeared on television to declare that Labour had won, everybody was completely drunk.

‘We were elected as New Labour and we will govern as New Labour,’ said Tony Blair.

‘So that’s all right then,’ said Rupert.

And everyone agreed.

The grandpa project

Monica arrived, red-eyed, back at the house to find Jimmy and the children all stretched out asleep on the floor of the basement family room with the final frame of
Thomas the Tank Engine
still frozen on the big wall-mounted TV screen.

‘Jimmy! Jimmy!’ Monica cried out. ‘Wake up! It’s seven thirty!’

Jimmy was on his feet in an instant, exploding from the bean bag and becoming vertical in a single convulsion. As he did so, the TV remote fell from his chest and hit the ground, somehow managing to turn the DVD back on.

According to Ringo Starr, Thomas was still going up the track, preparatory to coming back down the track. Then he would meet James and say hello. For a moment Jimmy felt as if he were in a kind of parental Groundhog Day in which Thomas was always poised to go back up the track. Which of course he was.

‘Right! OK! I’m hot to trot!’ he blurted.

He was so on edge that he never really slept anyway, not any more. Jimmy believed that his sleep was more like the way a computer sleeps. It
looked
asleep, with its apparent inertia and gently throbbing electric heartbeat, but one tiny touch of its mouse and everything was back up and ready to go, every relevant document still open, sentences half completed, spell check still hanging on to misspelt words, ready to resume everything that it had been doing at the point of abandonment, without a pause. That was Jimmy, he never really slept. Or so he believed.

‘Well, thank God you managed to get a bit of sleep at least. That’s good,’ Monica said.

Under normal circumstances this simple statement would have brought forth an instant denial from Jimmy, or at best a grudging half-agreement.

‘Maybe half an hour,’ he would have protested, ‘and I wasn’t
really
sleeping. Just dozing.’

He and Monica had been engaged in an unacknowledged sleep battle ever since Jodie had left. Each was absolutely certain that the other was getting more sleep than they were. Each constantly belittled the amount that they themselves had had while never failing to point out when they felt the other had been able to nod off. It was a pointless expenditure of what little emotional and intellectual energy remained to them both. But not this morning. This morning all pettiness was put aside. This morning Jimmy wished he
was
still asleep because this was the morning he woke up to a world with no Robbo in it.

‘How was Lizzie?’ he asked.

‘She looks dead, Jim,’ Monica said. ‘That’s the honest truth. She looks like she’s died too.’

There was silence, except for the fittingly funereal tones of Ringo Starr describing Thomas’s progress up and down the track.

‘Anyway, we’d better get moving,’ Monica said finally. ‘We’re already pretty late.’

‘I thought maybe you’d stay a bit longer with Lizzie, you know, with . . .’ He could hardly frame the sentence as the realization flooded in on him once more that his friend of twenty years, good old Robbo, was dead.

‘Jimmy, how could I? It’s a school morning!’ Monica said. ‘Laura’s with her. She still has a nanny.’

Was it his imagination or were those last words a veiled rebuke? Monica never, ever complained to him about their terrible reduction in circumstances. She was far too sweet and good for that. But the bald statement that Monica could no longer spare the time to comfort her widowed friend because Jimmy was now too poor to pay for a nanny hurt like hell.

‘Come on, Jim,’ Monica continued, ‘we really have to get going.’

‘But . . . but,’ Jimmy protested, ‘can’t we just keep Toby home today? I mean . . . Robbo’s
dead
.’

He hadn’t even thought about getting his son ready for school. Who cared about school? The founding member and Lord Chief Radish had got pissed and smashed his car into a wall trying to buy fags.

‘No, we can’t,’ Monica replied wearily. ‘Toby’s missed far too much already. Mr Lombard isn’t happy and we’re going to need all the good will we can get at that school if we have to delay . . .’

She was right and Jimmy knew it. They were hanging on by a shoestring at Abbey Hall as it was. Quite apart from the fact that they’d had to ask for a ‘brief’ delay in paying next year’s fee, they were also now firmly bracketed with the ‘problem’ parents because Toby had been marked late or absent so many times. In fact they had recently received a very firm letter.

‘God, I miss Jodie,’ Monica said for the ten-thousandth time since her departure.

This was the real effect of losing all their money, and never more keenly felt than on school mornings. It wasn’t the reduced material expectations, the holidays and the cars. Not really, not any more. They scarcely cared about those things now.

But God, they cared about losing Jodie.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to bring up their own children, they wanted to desperately. It was just that they had had
no idea
what it really entailed. The shock had been terrible.

It had taken them both weeks to begin to understand the basic fact that every aspect of each of their three offspring’s lives now required at least one of them to be in attendance
all the time
. To prepare for it, supervise and police it, get them to it, get them back from it and clean up after it.

The readjustments that they had been forced to make to their routines had been shocking and brutal. It was all the more painful because they realized how pampered and deluded they had previously been. It seemed incredible now, but both of them had actually believed that despite having a full-time nanny and various cleaners they were nonetheless bringing up their children themselves.

‘I won’t send Toby to boarding school,’ Monica had often said. ‘I cannot see the point of
having
children if you’re not going to bring them up. I
like
my children, for heaven’s sake. I enjoy their company. Why would I want to send them away?’

Monica still liked her children. She loved them absolutely. But at this stage in their lives she was discovering that she did not always enjoy their company. Their snotty, pooey, shrieking, fighting, weeping, never-endingly demanding company. Sometimes bored, often hysterical, commonly trying to kill themselves with household products and appliances and
always
in need of attention, they could in fact drive her insane.

‘
Please
,’ Monica now begged them on a daily basis, ‘just give me one minute to myself! To
think
!’

With Jodie she’d had all the minutes she wanted. She had her whole life. She hadn’t realized it at the time. She thought she was pretty busy with the kids. She had in fact described herself as ‘a part-time charity worker and full-time mum’. But now she understood that she had been full-time on her own unbelievably privileged terms. She had always been able to escape, to have a moment to herself. To think. Now she didn’t have a minute. Not one minute. Ever.

‘And it’s not just the bloody school who are on our case either,’ Monica said as she started to grab slices of bread in order to make Toby’s lunch. ‘Mr Lombard says all school registers are scrutinized by the local council. If you have too many unauthorized absences they send round the truant officer.’ Monica’s eyes welled up. ‘For Toby!
The truant officer.
Can you imagine?’

‘Will I have to go to prison, Mummy?’ Toby asked.

Jimmy looked down into the tired, anxious face of his little boy, a lad who had once been so jolly and uncomplicated but who was now slowly becoming infected by the constant anxiety he could sense in his parents.

‘No, of course not, darling!’ Jimmy said, forcing a smile. ‘Mummy and I were just having a laugh.’

Jimmy often found himself forcing smiles these days. It was something he had never done before. It just showed that sudden financial ruin could take the twinkle out of the most natural smile.

Monica continued slapping Kraft cheese slices between slabs of Sunblest while Jimmy began searching for clothes.

‘Some of the boys laugh at my lunch,’ Toby said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Gavin says cheese sarnies are for builders.’

Jimmy felt furious, suddenly dizzy with anger. He wanted to tell Toby to tell Gavin that he was a stupid little
bastard
. He wanted to go up to Gavin himself and tell him that if he bullied Toby he would punch him into next week and then wring his father’s neck. But he couldn’t, of course. He knew that if he gave in to such emotions it would lead to far greater disasters even than those currently enveloping him.

‘Tell Gavin that Winston Churchill swore by cheese sarnies and that an empire was not built on chocolate Müller Corners.’

‘Can’t I go back to having school lunches?’ Toby pleaded.

How could Jimmy tell him? How could he tell his son that he and Monica had decided the twenty pounds a week those lunches cost was an unnecessary expense? He, Jimmy, who only months before had regularly dropped that amount or more into the hands of beggars outside Soho House? But the truth was that he and Monica had only two cards left on which the credit was good. They were only weeks away from actual insolvency. Or, if they were careful, maybe a couple of months. Every penny counted.

Jimmy looked at the two empty wine bottles from the previous evening and felt a terrible pang of guilt. Of course Toby could go back to school lunches, he’d just give up wine. What had they been doing drinking
two
bottles last night anyway? It was ruinous.

Then he remembered the reason. They’d been celebrating, hadn’t they? Celebrating Lizzie’s promise.

A bridging loan to tide them over. He’d forgotten about that in all the subsequent shock and sadness.

And Lizzie had said that she would keep her promise, hadn’t she? Despite everything, she was going to help him out. Once more Jimmy felt the surge of almost hysterical relief that he had experienced the previous evening. Not instead of his terrible sadness over Robbo, but alongside it. What was more, he felt no guilt for the emotion. Why should he? One thing was certain, Robbo would have called him a stupid
twat
if he had.

‘By the way,’ Monica said, washing an apple, ‘Lizzie told me to tell you to be sure to send over the banking details for the loan. Can you believe it? She must be the kindest person on earth. I told her not to worry about it but she insisted. She said she won’t need to handle it herself. Her PA can sort it out. It’s amazing really, she’s still thinking about other people.’

‘It
is
amazing,’ Jimmy replied, ‘but not surprising. What’s more, I’ll do what she says. She and Robbo wanted to help us and we’re going to bloody well let them. And Toby can go back to school lunches.’

‘Yes!’ said Toby, punching the air.

Monica glanced across at the various bits of paper stuck to the upper part of the huge fridge.

‘Oh my God,’ she said suddenly, genuine panic in her voice. ‘Is it Tuesday?’

‘Yes.’

‘He needs his swim stuff!’ she almost screamed. ‘And his gym kit and . . . Oh NO! We haven’t done his grandpa project!’

‘What?’

‘His grandpa project. Shit!’

‘Don’t say shit, Mummy,’ Toby said.

‘I said
ship
, darling,’ Monica replied, briefly on automatic pilot before returning to the real agenda of forgotten homework. ‘He’s supposed to have made up a little presentation about a grandparent either living or dead.’

‘Oh my God!’ Jimmy replied, feeling the panic rising. ‘Not for today?’

‘Yes to-bloody-day!’

What a terrible morning. Robson was dead and Toby hadn’t done his grandpa project. The former might have been the greater tragedy, but the latter was real and immediate. They’d forgotten about yet another piece of homework and yet again their son would be in trouble at school.

Jodie had
never
forgotten homework. Not once.

Monica cursed herself. She had remembered it on Friday evening after Toby had brought it home, and she had decided to do it on Saturday. She had also remembered it on Saturday but had at that point decided to do it on Sunday. She had also remembered it on Sunday, when she had sworn to herself that she would help him with it on Monday. On Monday, she had forgotten it completely and now it was Tuesday and due in.

‘Do it, Jimmy. Do it now. Make a grandpa project NOW, while I find him some clean pants and sports kit. We have to be in the car by eight fifteen at the latest.’

Jimmy knew there could be no argument. Toby’s recent list of tardy and uncompleted homework was nearly as reprehensible as his attendance record. In the old days Jimmy had approved of homework. He had felt that if it was not too onerous and it concentrated on fun topics, homework probably helped to get children to understand that learning was a lifelong activity and not merely something to be endured between the hours of nine and three-thirty.

But that was before he had had to supervise the bloody stuff himself. Now he understood what homework
really
was.

A threat to family life.

An outrageous assault on the well-being of both child and (more importantly) parent or carer. Because what Jimmy had not understood during those happy times when he had watched his little lad busy with Jodie in the craft corner, scribbling away at his maths project or producing heartbreakingly sweet little poems, was that Jodie was actually
doing most of the work
! Or at the very least gently and patiently taking Toby through it until he understood it himself. And it was certainly Jodie who had done all the tricky bits, like creating a three-dimensional shape out of paper and glue and discovering the cubic capacity of a thing by immersing it in water. These days it seemed that parents (or carers) were
expected
to share in (i.e. do) the bloody homework. The forms actually instructed the parent (or carer) to get involved.