Mothers & Daughters (21 page)

The kitchen of the Scout hut always smelled of powder paint because it also served as the art storage area. Over the worktop where I was now slicing bread rolls hung a string of papiermaché-covered balloons; both windowsills were jammed with unpainted clay candleholders. Before I'd been able to get at the fridge, I'd had to shift a full-size post box built of corrugated card.

On the other side of the steel serving shutter, the gang show was in full swing. Rows of parents, grandparents and Scout-and Cub-siblings were being entertained by various ropey acts, prior to a sing-along and buffet. One of the mums was supposed to be helping me with the catering, but she hadn't shown. All the leaders were out the front, supervising.

‘Two big piles of rolls, one cheese spread and one chocolate, and bugger healthy eating,' Akela had told me. There was also squash to make up and tins of cakes and biscuits to unpack. ‘I'm really sorry I can't stay,' she said. ‘Another pair of hands would have been useful, wouldn't it?'

Snatches of the show filtered through as I worked. ‘Let the audience see your card,' I heard as I punctured the foil on a jar of Nutella. ‘Pass me my magic cloth, Wolverine.' The butter had gone hard and I had to beat it with a fork before it was any good. I thought of my mother whisking egg whites by hand and how red and furious her face would turn before she'd finished. ‘Was this your card?' the magician cried. ‘Oh, hang on.'

Which is when the back door opened and David walked in. I almost dropped my fork in shock.

‘Is something wrong?' was my immediate question.

‘No.'

‘Why are you here?'

‘I was passing. I wanted to see you.'

‘How did you know where I was?'

‘You said yesterday, on the phone.'

His appearance, unannounced and out of context, flustered me and I lost track of where I was up to and knocked over my jar.

‘Are you busy?' he said as I scrabbled about.

I raised my eyebrows at the piles of food.

‘OK, I'll rephrase that: would you like some help while I'm here?'

‘Were you really “just passing”?'

‘No.'

‘So what is it? Has something happened with Ian or Jaz?'

‘Not that I'm aware of, and I only saw Ian half an hour ago. No, I was just at a loose end and I wanted to see you. Should it be so strange?'

You're fooling no one, I thought. Something's rattled you. You've had a row with Ian and you needed a refuge, let everything simmer down. I could just tell.

‘All right,' I said. ‘Since you're offering, you're more than welcome. Hang your coat up over there and wash your hands. I need those cake tins unpacking, and what's in them arranging on the foil platters in the corner. We've probably got about fifteen minutes till the end of the show and I've not even started on drinks yet.'

David followed my instructions, rolled up his shirt-sleeves and set about plating-up. Skull-jarring music thumped through the wall from next door. ‘What in God's name's that?' he asked, peering through the slots between the shutters.

‘Charlie Blunt break-dancing. It's all right, he'll be finished in another thirty seconds.'

‘You sat through rehearsals?'

‘God, no, they do all their rehearsing at home. But I know because he used to do exactly the same act before he became a Cub, while he was still a Beaver.'

I sawed into bread at top speed, careless of the skin between my finger and thumb.

‘How did you get into all this in the first place, Carol?'

‘The Boy Scout thing? Gosh, well, Sal Vaughan, the original Dove – not this new one who I don't really know yet – was a friend of Laverne's. I started helping Beavers when Josh was in the pack, and stayed on after he left. But I sometimes get drafted in for Cub and Scout dos as well, hence tonight.'

‘And you do this for no pay?'

I drew the back of my hand across my brow in a gesture of martyrdom. ‘Actually, the ones who deserve medals are the pack leaders who turn up every week and have to organise all the events and be responsible. I just potter in the background.'

The thumping bass stopped at last, to be replaced after a pause by a halting violin solo. David prised the lid off another tin.

‘Ah, yet more fairy cakes. How many are we feeding? Five thousand, is it?'

‘You have no idea how much these lads can get through at a sitting. It's devastation. They hold competitions to see who can stuff the most in their mouth at once.'

‘Does that come under badgework?'

‘Scoffers Award.'

A little grin appeared on David's face.

‘What?' I said.

‘This vast acreage of food. Reminds me of the birthday parties Jeanette used to throw when Ian was small. She always over-catered, always we'd be eating leftovers for a week afterwards.'

‘Well, you do. I did, with Jaz.'

‘It was like a competition: the table had to be crammed. Hedgehogs out of Matchmakers, jelly goldfish.'

I said, ‘How long were you married?'

‘Eleven years. Though we met three years before that. She was a secretary in my father's office. I came back from London, and there she was.' His brow furrowed at the memory.

‘Was she ill a long time?'

‘About two years, from first diagnosis.'

‘It must have been hard.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said, as the violin scraped to a conclusion.

David shook his head. ‘I'll say what no one else is entitled to: it's twenty years ago, and life moves on. At the time she died I never thought it would, but it does and thank God for it.'

I watched as he carried on laying out cakes to some precise and careful pattern of his own devising. He looked so comfortable with himself, this man in his fifties, with his expensive shirt and sleek haircut, that it was impossible to imagine him young and vulnerable. Twenty years ago, when I was trying to work out whether to dismantle my marriage or not.

The sandwiches finished, I put the butter away and shook the crumbs into the sink. I was about to move the conversation on by asking about work when a Cub on the other side of the screen shouted, ‘Hey, mums and dads, want a great family day out, with fun and thrills for all ages?'

‘Yeah,' someone yelled back gamely.

There was a brief pause, some whispering, and a giggle.

‘Then come to – shurrup, stop it, Tom – come to Knickerworld! The country's only pants-based theme park. Yes, we've got it all at
Knicker
world.'

The audience tittered. David raised his eyebrows at me.

‘They write the script themselves,' I said.

‘Evidently.'

‘
There's millions of knickers all under one roof
,' sang the Cub.

‘Kids,' called another one. ‘Come and ride in our giant Y-fronts! See our display of famous people's kecks! Marvel at the history of undercrackers in our award-winning museum! And don't forget to pick up some souvenir grundies in the gift shop.'

‘Because you're worth it.'

‘Try on a selection of smalls from other countries, including porcupine pants, termite trunks, bumblebee boxers and sharkskin Speedos.'

‘Knickerworld, the best of both worlds.'

After every line there was shrill laughter, which quickly began to affect the performers themselves. The routine continued, but with gaps of increasing duration where the boys were struck voiceless, convulsed with the hilarity of their own jokes.

‘Visit our fabulous café and sample shreddies with a difference—'

‘
Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's underpants
.'

‘See royal golden pants.'

‘
Here come the pants
—'

‘And our special room of record-breaking pants.'

‘
The pants effect
.'

‘– including the smelliest –'

‘
The pants of your life
.'

‘– your mum's –'

‘– big hairy pants –'

The sketch dissolved into helpless sniggering, and Akela took charge. ‘Thank you, Robbie and Max, for that very interesting sketch. I'm sure we'll all be saving up to go to, er, Knickerworld in the near future.'

I could hear several boys having what sounded like asthma attacks.

‘Easily amused, aren't they?' said David.

‘God, yes. Anything at all to do with undercarriages.'

‘. . . the part where we ask the families to join in,' Akela was saying, ‘as a way of showing their appreciation for the boys' hard work. So if I could ask Martin . . .'

‘Quick,' I said, ‘we've got about five minutes to sort the drinks.'

While David tore open the polythene wrapper and released the cups, I poured a couple of inches of undiluted juice into an empty gallon container and held the neck under the cold tap. Through the wall came the jolly sound of audience participation.

‘
There were snakes, snakes, big as garden rakes
,

In the store, in the store
.'

Once the squash was made up, we started a production line. David held each cup at the base to stop it falling over, and I filled it as far as the plastic crimps.

‘In the quartermaster's store
.'

After about the first ten we got into a rhythm. ‘Anyway, what about you?' said David.

‘What about me?'

‘Where are you up to?'

‘In what way?'

‘With your life. The past. Anything.'

‘There were gulls, gulls, pecking on your skull.'

My mind at once emptied itself. All I could dredge up at that instant was a random image, a night over thirty years ago, back at Pincroft, trying to write my wedding list during a power cut. When the electricity came on afterwards, my mother found that one of the candles had burned a black spot on the underside of the shelf above and the only person she could blame for it was herself.

‘There's nothing to tell,' I said. ‘I am who I am: Jaz's mum, Matty's grandma.'

‘And?'

‘
Akela, Akela, Snogging with a sailor.'

‘I don't know what you mean, David. I'm fifty-two, I'm divorced. I work in a gift shop. I like photography and gardening, I'm a member of a women's gym – you already know all this.'

‘You're telling me your CV. What about
you
?'

‘
My eyes are dim, I cannot see

I have not brought my specs with me

I have not brought my specs with me
.'

The song dissolved into screams and whoops and clapping. And then the shutter went up a fraction and Charlie Blunt's face peered underneath. ‘Akela says are you ready for us?'

‘We are,' I said, with the sense of someone who's had a narrow escape, though I couldn't have told you what from.

The hall was hot and full and a sea of green sweatshirts. Scouts came forward to take the plates and offer them round; the drinks were serve-yourself.

‘Are you finished here, or do you have to stick around?' asked David.

‘My work here is done. Someone else can wash up.'

The boys were giddy with post-performance relief, high and naughty and fun. I looked out across the rows of chairs and saw parents I recognised, children I'd watched grow up. Martin Clark, a Venture Scout in his last term at school, I'd known since he was a shy ten-year-old with a speech impediment; now he was six feet tall and comfortable playing guitar in front of forty people. I felt my throat tighten at this glow of youth before me. All that energy and promise and clear skin.

‘Do you fancy a drink, then?' said David.

I let him lead me back through the kitchen and out of the rear entrance into the car park.

‘Where's your Micra?' he asked.

‘I walked. It's only twenty minutes.'

He came round to open the passenger door of his Audi. I'd forgotten such courtesies. Inside it was clean and polished, no wet wipes on the floor or muddy marks on the seats. No sweet wrappers in the coin compartment.

‘Where shall we go?'

‘The Lion's nice.'

‘I don't know where that is.'

‘Top of the High Street. I'll direct you. Although we're not going anywhere just yet.' In front of us a Saab waited for an ancient Citroën to complete a twelve-point turn. ‘Why he doesn't back out . . .'

I wound the window down and breathed in the spring evening.

‘How's, you know, your girlfriend who isn't your girlfriend?' I said.

For a few seconds he didn't answer. I thought he was concentrating on the Citroën.

‘David?'

‘I'm not seeing her any more.'

‘Oh. Oh, I'm sorry.'

‘I told her this evening.'

So that was why he'd been after my company. As I'd guessed, not for its own pleasure, but because he needed cheering up. Only I'd picked the wrong source of upset. I weighed the thought, decided it was OK; we all require the distraction of the ordinary at times of emotional crisis. ‘You should have said.'

‘Well.'

‘Was it horrible? I'm really sorry.'

‘Bloody awful, actually, but it had to be done. And now it's finished.'

I pictured him in some grand hotel foyer speaking urgently with a woman who looked like the model on the Golden Age skin cream ads. Then I thought, Why am I imagining him in a hotel? They'd have been in David's house, or round at hers. I wondered whether she'd cried or shouted, or just been incredibly cool. ‘Did she have an idea?'

‘She claimed she didn't. I wish I'd never—But I did.'

The Citroën flung itself at the gate-post, stopped with a fraction of an inch to spare.

‘Rotten for you,' I said inadequately, ‘on top of everything else.'

‘No, really, a relief. For me. It's not been – she's not – she wasn't—'