No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses! (14 page)

Daily Rant
greeted me this morning with the news, ‘TV'S ANNIE NOONA BACK IN REHAB!' As I have never heard of Annie Noona and have no idea who she is, the news didn't have the desired effect on me. I was obliged to dig out yesterday's newspaper: ‘NO MORE FISH IN THE OCEAN!' That perked me up.

Looked up the mysterious Annie Noona on Google. Turns out she is a superstar who is regularly being found unconscious in her glamorous New York apartment, so she must have cracked up once again.

Funny how these days people are falling from their dizzy heights before one even noticed their ascent to celebrity to start with. Let alone spotted them waving briefly from the summit.

This evening Jack rang me from the States on Skype. Of course for him it was the afternoon. It wasn't particularly satisfactory. Nothing remotely like him actually being here. First he was too close to the camera, so all I could see was this huge mouth on the screen like something out of a nightmare, saying, ‘Hello Mum!' At the ‘u' bit of ‘mum' I thought he was going to swallow me up.

We sorted that out and then it turned out that all
he
could see of
me
was the arm of the chair I was sitting on, which wasn't ideal.

Anyway, eventually we managed to work it out. But it was so strange! I mean it's not like talking face-to-face at all. It's like watching telly. It's not even as intimate, I think, as talking on the telephone when you feel all secretly close to the other person with them whispering in your ear. And they don't look at you. They're so busy looking at the picture of you on the screen, that you feel all the time as if you're at a cocktail party where the person you're talking to is constantly checking over your shoulder to see if there isn't someone more interesting in the room.

Then occasionally the whole thing jammed and Jack's image would stay flickering on the screen, mid-sentence, a mass of Jack-like pixels, until the computer had obviously coughed, got rid of the frog in its throat, twiddled itself and jumped back to life.

Skype's not all it's cracked up to be. I can't feel the family, smell them, touch them, hug Chrissie when I say hello, or give Jack's hair a motherly tousle (though of course he'd flinch if I did that; one has to be careful with sons). And however good it is, I'll never be able to feel Gene on my knee as we watch
Tom and Jerry
and laugh when Jerry gets totally squashed by an iron and ends up on a washing line. It's better than nothing. But it's not the same.

Anyway, when we got the hang of it all, I found that the family seem to be getting on maddeningly fine – which I
found very discouraging because obviously I wanted them to arrive, find everything was just vile, and come steaming home. But I heard myself telling dreadful lies like, ‘I'm so glad it seems to be going well,' while all the time I wanted them to say the rooms were full of bedbugs (as I gather all apartments are in New York these days), that it was so cold they were freezing – or so hot they were boiling – and that the Americans were brash and unwelcoming, but unfortunately nothing of the kind.

As Chrissie has this mega-job with a cosmetics and general beautifying company, Gene has not only been paid for to attend some weird little private preparatory school, but they've also been installed in a very glorious ‘apartment', as Jack calls it, on the Upper West Side, with views across the Hudson, and a kitchen with a breakfast bar in it (can you imagine a bar in your house? At breakfast? I can barely have my tea and toast lying on the sofa with the
Rant
and my feet up in the morning, let alone balance high on a tiny stool like some nightclub chanteuse, with my legs entwined round the stem of the seat). They have the biggest and lowest white leather sofa in the world, it all looked quite hideous, just the sort of place you'd imagine Annie Noona having her latest breakdown in (Jack showed me the layout by pointing the camera at various corners), which is not the sort of place in which any right-minded granny would choose to live, but still. I had a quick chat with Chrissie, who said it was all mind-blowingly wonderful except that the air-conditioning in their apartment block
had stuck, and they were freezing cold, and then Gene was put on.

My heart missed a beat when I saw him. I noticed his front tooth had finally fallen out. That and being on Skype meant he didn't really look like Gene at all – all brightly lit and rather puffy, through the fish-eye lens. I suppose I must have looked the same to him. No change there, then.

‘Hello Granny!' he said, settling down and looking rather astonished and pleased to see someone just over my shoulder. ‘How are you?'

‘How are
you
?' I replied. ‘What's it like?'

‘I lost my tooth, look!' he said, trying to show me by pulling his upper lip towards his nose making him look even more grotesque.

‘Well, I never!' I said. ‘I hope the tooth fairy came!'

‘Yes, I got a … a dollar.' he said.

‘But how is it in New York?' I persisted.

‘It's brilliant, Granny!' he said. ‘I love it here!'

His little-boy enthusiasm really touched me. One of the delights of getting older, but also one of the problems, is the cynicism. ‘Oh yeah, another riverside apartment in New York, big deal, so what,' you think, partly because you've seen so many in movies (and I've even stayed in one on a couple of trips to the States), but also because you know they don't bring happiness. They just appear to for a couple of months. But for Gene the place was bliss. While I would just hate to live in a film set, he obviously thought it was the height of chic.

‘What's the weather like?' I said. Quite unbelievable that I was asking this little boy such a pedestrian question. But it's the sort of question you ask on Skype.

‘It's nice out, but here it's
freezing
!' he said. ‘You'll have to knit me a jersey, Granny.'

Knit him a jersey? After those complicated socks I'd knitted him as a baby? As I've said, my knitting days had well and truly stopped. I could never take on a major project like a jersey. Particularly now he was so big. By the time I'd finished it he'd be a grown man. I'd never catch up.

‘We'll see,' I said, cautiously, reminding myself of my mother's irritating way of saying ‘no' to me, when I was small. A horrible phrase, ‘We'll see.'

And then I was suddenly overtaken by an overwhelming urge to knit. Knitting him a jersey would be a wonderful way to feel close to him. And I could show it to him when we talked on Skype, and he could see how it was progressing.

Sadly, you can't really make conversation with a five-year-old child in the same way as you can with an adult. Children aren't very skilled at it. There was a lot of ‘And what have
you
done today?' and getting not a lot back. Children haven't been trained to ask questions of other people. Had he been here, in the house, we could have made faces at each other, or simply done something together like build a robot out of cardboard boxes, or read a book, or play the elephant game. Making conversation is something you do at cocktail parties, not something you do with your grandson. And then I fear that when we meet again, Gene won't even recognise me.

Oh, come off it, Marie. Stop wallowing in self-pity, you wally! Of course he'll recognise you.

(Well, not if the facelift's successful.)

Oh shut up, you big banana!

Mr Parson's secretary has just rung up to say they can move my appointment to next month. I suppose some other poor woman has finally become overcome with terror and hasn't been able to go through with it and he's got a sudden vacancy. I said I was worried that the auction to sell my money-raising pictures might not have taken place so I was a bit concerned about the bill, but they seemed quite cool about it all, saying that they were sure they could trust me. Rather sweet really. Who wouldn't trust a retired art teacher, after all? We're not renowned for our careers as swindlers.

But, suddenly terrified now the operation seemed so much closer, I rang James who shrieked, ‘Go for it, girl,' which didn't help much.

‘I think you'll have to wait before you start your portrait,' I said, relieved to put off the evil hour. ‘I don't know how far you've got, but if you've started you'll have to paint out all those wrinkles. Sorry about that.'

Penny was no help at all. She just said that I shouldn't get it done, it was all vanity and I looked perfectly okay anyway. And she said it was putting her in an awful position
because she'd have to deal with the Residents' Association and the protests about the trees while I was recovering, and thanks a lot. And if I had any spare money, shouldn't I be spending it on my Romanian orphans, anyway? I was always banging on about them, she said.

‘Why should you spend money on the orphans?' said James, when he phoned later and I told him what she'd said. ‘Do something for
yourself
for once, my darling.'

But I'm not really of a ‘do something for myself' generation. We weren't brought up to pamper ourselves. We were brought up with the strict injunction to deny ourselves everything nice and give to the poor. My grandmother even used to look disapprovingly when I left a bit of bacon fat on my plate and say, ‘Think of all those starving children in India.' I remember trying to think of them, and wishing there were some way I could post them my bits of fat, but quite honestly eating them myself wasn't going to help them. So I just felt awful.

Today I had to go to Jack and Chrissie's house and check that it is all spic and span for potential tenants. I promised I would, but it makes my heart ache to go down there and know there's nobody home. Brixton, where they live, used to seem to be a vibrant jolly place, a happy, laughing mix of races and cultures. Now it seems sinister and dark, with hidden threats waiting to pounce from beneath every
burnt-out car rusting in the gutter. As I opened the door I felt a pang when it dawned on me properly that Gene wouldn't be at the top of the stairs, running down to greet me.

They'd left it pretty immaculate, I must say. I did find a piece of Lego under the sofa, which made my heart turn over, but otherwise Chrissie had done a spectacular job. I almost wish I could move into it myself, though it would hold too many memories.

Can it really be true they've left? I looked to see if they'd taken the last disc off the CD player and found they'd left in
The House at Pooh Corner
. I watered the plants and wondered whether to look in Gene's room but just couldn't bear to, so I came away and dropped the keys off at the estate agents and told them that, as far as I could see, everything was in perfect order and they could start showing people round whenever they liked.

The estate agents have just rung to tell me that three ‘prospects' are visiting today. It seems so odd to think of other people living in that flat. I used to sit in that kitchen when Gene was tiny, feeding him bits of mush that Chrissie had prepared for him, pretending, when he didn't want to eat, that the spoon was an aeroplane going into his mouth, making him laugh and then popping in some squished-up carrot when he wasn't thinking about it.

That very spot would be in future where some ghastly young banker would be microwaving a ‘dinner for two' for his leggy secretary, and then afterwards they'd go into Gene's bedroom and bonk the night away, under a newly installed plasma TV screen.

Yuk!

The
Rant
tells me today: ‘COMPLETE COLLAPSE OF SOCIETY!
Social workers predict “total disintegration” of family life. Only one person in five knows how to eat with a knife and fork, and only one in 20 can boil a kettle. Ninety per cent of teens “don't know who their father is
.”'

Golly. Can this really be true? Makes me want to slash my throat. No wonder the
Bitter Quinces
director is alive and well in my dreams. He's got all this grim material to work with.

When I went out today to make some sketches of the trees this month – the April picture I've done is great, though I say it myself – I thought I'd try to sprinkle a bit of joy in people's lives. Why not? So when I came across some wretched hoodie who was skulking along staring miserably at the ground – probably one of those hopeless, homeless people who have no idea who their father is – I smiled at him broadly and said, ‘Lovely day, isn't it?'

Instead of getting out a knife, plunging it into my heart and seizing my handbag, he looked up, flashed a dazzlingly friendly smile and replied, ‘Lovely, isn't it! And by the way,
when's that meeting going to be?' Turned out he was one of the dealers Penny and I had spoken to about the hotel plans. I took his address – he certainly wasn't homeless – and said I'd let him know if we had a big meeting and could I rely on him to tell his mates?

‘Sure! Cheers!' he said, as we parted.

Amazing.

Rang Jack on Skype. I scanned his face and tone of voice for clues about when they might be thinking of returning, but there was absolutely nothing. As far as I could tell, Chrissie was loving her job and it was still going to be a year's trial. Jack had met a web designer and he seemed to be getting some work, but still had time to look after Gene, and Gene, he said, was ‘settling down' at school.

‘He'll have a few problems, but he'll get used to it,' he said. ‘It's difficult being a new boy in a new country.'

Gene wouldn't be drawn on the matter, but I could see by his face when I asked about school that he felt uncomfortable there.

‘You should have seen Dad at his first day at school!' I said, to cheer him up. ‘I picked him up after the first day and he said he didn't like it at all and was very pleased to get home. But when I said “Tomorrow it will be better” he burst into tears. “But I've
been
to school, Mum!” he said. “I don't have to go again, do I?”'