Playing with the Grown-ups (3 page)

'It was just a joke.'

Kitty began to feel unsure, but Bestepapa gave another giant hip roll, and she laughed out loud at his defiance, leaving her
mother to sweep out, without deigning to acknowledge them, the religious philistines.

Bestemama was up within minutes.

'Honestly, Harald,' she said. 'You of all people should be pleased Marina's found something that makes her happy, and encouraging
Kitty to join you in mocking her is unforgivable. It demoralises her.'

Bestepapa tried his hardest to look contrite.

Bestemama stumped downstairs, each footfall a stamp of disgrace, and once he was sure she was gone, Bestepapa held his hands
to his heart coyly and whispered, 'OMmmmm,' releasing a giant fart that sounded like a duck quacking.

'That showed her what we think of mumbo jumbo gumbo.'

Kitty promptly fell on the floor, convulsed with laughter, blue spectacles steamed up from her exertions.

She wondered what exactly her mother did with Swami-ji, and her head spun with the limited tabloid knowledge she had of Rajneesh
and his Rolls-Royces, the jolly round Maharishi with the Beatles. She lay awake long into the night, and she felt jealous
of her mother's newfound happiness. Nothing was certain any more. Her mother ate greying macrobiotic food that she bought
at Holland &Barrett up in London, and spurned Bestemama's meatballs.

'Her favourite since childhood!' said Bestepapa, his voice rising with indignation.

Sam and Violet rejected Marina's efforts to teach them Hindi chants in the bath.

'Humpty Dumpty!' they shouted, drenching her with soapy water.

Elsie and Ingrid were equally glum about the whole thing, and they lay with Kitty in the sitting room, waiting for Marina
to come home, like the long-suffering wives of a prophet. They chain-smoked menthols, because they thought they were sophisticated
and, if feeling particularly laconic, let Kitty have a hasty baby puff. They watched Doc& Who, which gave Kitty nightmares;
she dreamed of her mother riding a Dalek in a crimson sari, evil grinning monkeys perched beside her.

Although she was calm like the desert, Marina, who Kitty felt was only half hers to begin with, seemed to be slipping quietly
away. Since she was small, Kitty had suspected that her mother was really a changeling who had been left in the garden one
night by a bearded witch who stole her from the fairies and hid her for safekeeping at Hay House. She knew the crone would
return one bad day to claim her. That day seemed to have arrived. But instead of the twisted thorny figure of Kitty's nightmares,
her mother's spiriter was a man, a reedy Indian man in his fifties, with kind eyes and feet like wrinkled walnut shells.

In the photographs her mother had peppered around her bedroom Swami-ji looked benevolent, but Kitty knew it was all an act.
She did some detective work to catch him in his sorcery before it was too late.

'Mummy, has the Swami bloke ever said something secret to you, and told you not to tell anyone else, no matter who?' She tried
to say this casually, as they walked up the lane.

'You are intuitive, Kitty,' her mother said. 'It's SWAMI-JI. "Bloke" is disrespectful. Yes, my mantra. This is a special thing
you say over and over again when you meditate. Each devotee of Swami-ji has a mantra that belongs just to them.'

Kitty's stomach started somersaulting but she tried to look calm.

'Are you allowed to tell me your mantra?'

'No,' her mother said smiling. 'One day when you meet him, Swami-ji will give you your very own.'

'Please tell me. I swear on my life I won't tell anyone,' Kitty said, wheedling. She knew that if her mother told her the
spell would be broken.

'No. I can't.' Marina was final. 'Now stop it, please.'

'Please tell me, PLEEEAASSE you;'re the best mother in the world . . .' Kitty smiled and shook her arm.

'No. Why am I not allowed to have anything of my own, just one thing? I don't have to share everything.'

Kitty didn't understand her, and it made her angry.

'I think the Swami man - ji, is . . .' She searched for the word, and then shouted it: 'SHIT.'

The word hung pleasurably in the empty lane. Her mother was silent, and for the first time since her spiritual awakening,
she looked angry. This gave Kitty a small fleeting pinch of victory. She did think Swami-ji was shit; he was making her life
unbearable. The truth was out.

Her mother grabbed her arm tightly.

'What has Bestepapa been saying to you?' she asked in a voice like tar.

Kitty wriggled away and glared at her.

'I can think someone's shit on my own and I can walk home on my own,' she said, running up the hill towards Hay House.

She left her mother standing frozen, like Lot's wife in scripture class.

Her mother stayed in her studio for two days. She appeared briefly to take Sam and Violet to nursery, and to kiss them goodnight
after their bath. Kitty decided that maybe they were quite fun after all, and sat on the bathroom floor and watched as Nora
sponged their funny little twiglet arms and legs.

When her mother saw her, she said hello politely as though Kitty were an acquaintance at a cocktail party. Kitty longed to
say sorry, but her mother was a fortress whose walls she could not penetrate. Instead Kitty smiled at her extra hard, so she
would know. Her cheeks hurt with the effort.

Nora passed Kitty a Quality Street, a caramel, her favourite.

'You can pick the programme,' she said. 'I think Grease is on Channel 4.'

'Nora, can I ask you something?'

'What is it, Pest?'

'I know I'm big, but can I sleep in your bed?'

'Sleeping with you is like sleeping with a washing machine,' Kitty whispered happily.

Nora gave a warm snore in response.

When Kitty was sure Nora was fully steeped in sleep, she slipped into Marina's bedroom and wedged herself in amongst her pillows,
awkwardly trying to fit her body in the imprint of her mother's. Swami-ji stared at Kitty accusingly from the bedside tables.
'I'm sorry,' she said to him firmly, 'but she's my mother. Not yours.' She crossed her fingers superstitiously, and turned
all of his pictures face down.

Kitty saw Bestemama shake her head.

'What makes you think my life needs to be changed, Marina? Answer me that. I'm happy.'

'How do you know?' her mother said. 'How can you know anything until you've tried it?'

'I just know, Marina,' Bestemama said with a stark sigh.

When her mother asked her to meditate with her in the studio, Kitty was thrilled. They sat cross-legged on the floor in the
dark, and they shut their eyes.

Kitty tried. Every time she was nearly still a thought would pop into her head and flood it with disturbance.

'What's for supper?' her head said. 'Be quiet,' Kitty told it silently. 'Katrina Donnelly has ginger hair, which means her
pubes must match, and Miss Jackson is a lesbian,' her head answered. It was exhausting. She tried to think pure thoughts.
Instead her head swam with images of buxom page-three girls. Kitty was hungry. She knew they had been there for hours. Her
bottom hurt. She opened one eye. Her mother sat glowing like a pearl in the dark.

'Mummy?' she said in a hushed voice.

Marina looked like a statue. She didn't answer.

'Mummy?' Kitty felt frightened. Maybe she'd fallen into a religious coma.

She poked her in the arm. After she'd poked for three minutes her mother said, 'What is it, darling?' She looked at Kitty
in confusion, her silver eyes glazed.

'I think we've been here for HOURS. We've missed supper, what will I eat? I think it's definitely past my bedtime.' Her mother
looked down at her watch, a Patek Philippe, a present from Mr Fitzgerald.

'Kitty, we've been here for ten minutes. Why don't you go to the big house and I'll see you down there in a few hours.' She
said this kindly.

'Do you know what?' Kitty told the canaries in the garden. 'Soon I will be able to meditate for two whole hours.'

'Who are you talking to, Kit?' Elsie came out of the laundry room.

'To the canaries. I think they're listening.'

'Lord, you're odd,' Elsie said.

She was savouring her croissant with great oozing pleasure when her mother walked in, dangling her car keys.

'I'll be back in a minute,' Marina said, not addressing anyone in particular. 'I'm going to pick up a friend from the train
station.'

'Just a friend from London.' She sailed out, her chiffon billowing behind her like a flag.

'Will you bring me some rhubarb and custards?' Kitty shouted after her.

Nora took Violet and Sam up to the farm to feed the chickens, so Bestepapa could have his 'hour of peace'. He smoked his pipe,
looking fondly at a picture of Nelson Mandela in the paper.

'Brave fellow, that one. Don't know about the wife though. Seems a bit suspicious if you ask me.'

'No marriage yet, please,' Bestemama said. 'You need to concentrate on your career.'

'Hear hear,' said Bestepapa. 'What do you want a mar-quess for anyway? Find a man who is good with his hands like Morris.'

Elsie snorted.

'Maybe it's Mr Fitzgerald that's coming from London,' Kitty said, wiggling in her chair.

Elsie snorted again.

'Don't hold your breath,' she said.

Forty minutes later, they heard her mother's car crunching on the gravel, followed by footsteps on the garden path. The front
door opened.

'Did you bring me my sweets?' Kitty called.

'No,' her mother said. 'But Shanti bought you all some prasad to eat.'

Lurching behind Marina was a lumbering pink woman in a gold sari with violently yellow hair. In one hand she held a tambourine.
The woman wore anklets on her surprisingly small feet, that swung with little bells as she walked, announcing the arrival
of a much more delicate sort of a person than she was. She carried a lumpy bag made from hemp, and Kitty realised that if
'prasad' came from that bag, she probably didn't want to eat it.

'Namaste,' Shanti said, hands folded reverently, her body wobbling, a great pink trifle. She hit the tambourine for emphasis.

Bestepapa looked confused, Bestemama furious and Elsie spat out a mouthful of crunchy nut cornflakes, which hit Ingrid's arm.

'Yuck,' Ingrid said. And it was unclear to which particular thing she was referring. Shanti seemed unperturbed by the reaction
her appearance had provoked.

'I am the director of Swami-ji's spiritual centre in London. I think you know that we have become a big part of Lakshmi's
life - oh sorry! You will all still know her as Marina, more on that later - a big part of Marina's life, and she ours. We
thought that you might perhaps be . . .' She searched for a word. 'RESISTANT to the idea of us. Lakshmi speaks so highly of
you all, and wanted me to visit with you so I could . . . explain our philosophy, and I thought if Mohammed can't come to
the mountain . . .'

'The mountain will come to Mohammed!' Marina finished the sentence, and clapped her hands like a four-year-old.

'Lakshmi wants me to give you the chance of spiritual redemption.' Shanti winked.

'Who's this Lakshmi type she keeps talking about?' Bestepapa whispered to Kitty.

'I think she means Mummy, but I'm not sure,' she hissed back through her teeth.

'Would your guest like a cup of tea, Marina?' Bestema-ma asked stiffly, unable, it seemed, to address the hulking stranger
in gold.

'Not to bother,' Shanti chuckled. 'I bring my own; goat's milk is still hard to come by in most households . . . Fresh chai.
Would you like to try some?' She pulled out a thermos from the lumpy bag and sat down, uninvited, next to Bestepapa, who edged
away from her as though she carried a virulent strain of disease. Marina sat next to Kitty and patted her. She sat very quietly
so she wouldn't be asked to leave.

'Would you like to take the stage, Lakshmi, or should I?' Shanti asked her mother in a confidential voice.

'I think I can start.'

Shanti gave her what was obviously a Sanskrit thumbs-UP.

Her mother took a deep breath.

'I've made a lot of decisions recently, life-altering decisions, which have not been easy. I have prayed a lot, and sought
the guidance of elders from my spiritual community.'

Here Shanti shot the Larsens a syrupy smile.

'And I hope, as I have, that you will come to a peace and understanding about them. Firstly, I have changed my name to the
spiritual name of Lakshmi, the goddess of abundance.'