Queen Mum (20 page)

‘She’s fine. Everyone’s fine, as far as I know. Sophie wanted a chat.’

‘Yeah?’

I put my hand to the side of my mouth as though I was whispering a great secret. ‘Women’s problems.’

‘Gross.’ He unpeeled another cheese slice and began rolling it like a spliff.

Tom wandered in. ‘Was I supposed to hang the washing out?’

‘Yes.’

‘That our Sophie I saw slipping out into the night just now?’

‘It was.’

‘Everything all right there?’

‘Don’t ask, Dad,’ said Ben, waving his cheese tube in the air. ‘Women’s bits.’

‘Right,’ said Tom. ‘Jolly good. Did you want this blouse on a hanger, Ally?’

*

*

Manny had come round to help Tom fix some cupboards to the garage walls when it came out about the Blackpool trip. I was supposed to be helping Tom, originally, but I’d
feigned a migraine at the eleventh hour because we’d had the Bike Row again and I was still smarting. There was no way I was going to hold cupboards up for him when he wanted to kill
himself.

The Bike Row goes like this:

Tom – I think it’s time I had a motorbike again.

Me – No, don’t, they’re too dangerous.

Tom – They’re not dangerous. I’m a good rider. You remember; we went everywhere on a bike when you first met me. Anyway, I’ll do a refresher course.

Me – It doesn’t matter how good a rider you are, it’s the bad car drivers you need to worry about. You’re just not visible on a bike.

Tom – I’ll get a ruddy great Goldwing, then. No missing one of them.

Me – You’re still so vulnerable if you fall off. And I don’t want Ben getting into bikes, either. I’ll buy him a car outright before I’ll see him climb on the back
of a motorbike.

Tom – Ally, I understand why you’re worried. But you can’t wrap us both in cotton wool.

Me – I can stop you deliberately making yourselves more likely to die, though.

Tom – OK, look, I know we’ve had one death in the family, but that doesn’t mean Fate’s against us. You could argue that we’ve had our portion of tragedy.

Me – Life doesn’t work like that, though. There was a woman in the paper and she’d lost three sons in different accidents and then her husband dropped dead of a heart
attack.

Tom – Heart attack, precisely. So he wasn’t doing anything dangerous, was he? I could go tomorrow, any one of us could. That’s why you have to pack in as much living as you
can.

And so we go on, round and round. We have the Bike Row about once every twelve months, usually at the start of summer, but Tom had been distracted this year and it hadn’t happened. Then
suddenly we have a September warm as June, and the high-pitched engine-buzzing on Sunday afternoons from the main road gets into his head, and we’re off again.

Most people believe they’re lucky. I mean, if you’ve had a normal life with the normal kinds of losses and disappointments in it, then you tend not to dwell on your own mortality or
the frailty of those around you. But those of us who are acquainted with grief see the world a different way.

Fate doesn’t even-out your luck for you. Real life’s not like fiction, where an author might feel he has to balance hope and despair for artistic neatness. When Fate’s deciding
whether you’re going to get splatted, no unseen power tots up what’s happened to you so far to see whether you’ve had your share of crap for the year. Every day, every moment is a
blank, unconnected with the weight of what’s gone before, where anything could happen. And that’s what made me so angry with Tom, because he should have understood.

‘You want to jump on a big Kawasaki and ride right away from me!’ I once shouted at him. ‘You want to escape!’

I waited for him to say, ‘Who wouldn’t?’ but instead he smashed a wall clock. I didn’t know whether that meant yes or no. That was the Boxing Day after Joe died and we
could hardly bear to be in the same room.

So here was Manny, handsome even in his decorating gear, leaning in at the kitchen door and asking ever so sweetly for a drink. I fumbled the lump of cheese I was grating, skinning my knuckle
instead.

‘Cup of strong coffee, please. And an answer to a proposition.’

‘Oh yes? Did you know you have a load of sawdust in your hair?’

He stepped back onto the patio and brushed at his black fringe. Fibres of wood fell like snowflakes onto the paving. ‘Did I get it all? Has it gone?’

‘Not really. It’s mostly at the side. No, the other side.’

I stood on the threshold and he bowed his head while I fluffed his fringe with my fingertips.

‘There you go.’

‘A woman’s touch.’

I sucked on my knuckle. ‘So what’s this proposition?’

‘I’m planning another trip to Blackpool. We had such fun when we were there before, I thought it might cheer Juno up.’

‘Right.’

‘And I’d like you to come too, all of you, I mean. We’ll make a family day of it, have a laugh. Do some crazy things.’

‘Do you mean for the day or staying over?’

‘Let’s make a weekend of it. If you’re game?’

I thought Tom and Ben might like that, big dipper, amusement arcades, fast food. ‘If we’ve nothing else on, that would be great.’

‘’Cause it was excellent when we were up there before.’

‘With Kim. You said. Actually, Kim and I were chatting on the phone the other day. She says you’re helping her with a film course. I have to say, I think that’s very generous
of you.’

I meant: How can you help the woman who humiliated your wife? Tom would have been making voodoo dolls.

Manny didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘It’s my passion. I love the arts and I love to help people access them. Kim’s genuinely interested, and it’s wonderful because
she’s always been defensive about education before. I think she had a bad experience of school. But she’s a bright woman, you know?’

I must have looked unconvinced.

‘No, she is. There’s more to Kim than comes across at first.’

‘If you say so.’ I handed him his steaming coffee. ‘But I wouldn’t mention that to Juno, if I were you.’

We took the train, because Juno said it would be more of an adventure. Manny charmed some people out of their seats so we could be together in one big group. Us girls had one
table, and the boys claimed the one across the aisle.

‘Do you remember that time we went to London to see
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
?’ said Pascale, settling herself into her corner seat. ‘We were in Chester, shopping or
something, and she said, “Let’s go and get a cup of tea at the station.” ’

‘Which was, like, miles away.’

‘Yeah. So we trooped after her and she didn’t go in the cafe at all, did she, Soph?’

‘No. And I was bursting for a pee as well. What she did was, she said, “I wonder where this train’s going.” Pascale read the monitor and told her, “Euston.”
Then she just, climbed on, didn’t she?’

‘Yeah; she went, “Shall I get on it?” and left us on the platform and shouted to us through the window. We thought she’d gone mad. But then she waved the tickets at us
and told us to shift ourselves.’

Juno was beaming. ‘Wasn’t it a nice surprise, though?’

‘There’s always something a little planned about Juno’s spontaneity,’ said Manny. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper which he passed across
to her.

She started to speak, but the train moved off and the girls screeched and my bag fell off my lap. I bumped my head on the edge of the table trying to catch the tins of Fanta as they rolled
by.

‘Poor old Mum,’ I heard Ben say.

‘What’s that?’ asked Sophie, nodding at the paper in Juno’s hands.

‘A letter of support from a member of the general public.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said.

She screwed the letter up and pushed it down the neck of an empty plastic bottle that someone had left behind. ‘Yes, that’s what I thought till he started going on about surveillance
cameras and eugenics.’

‘Have you had a lot of interest from nutters?’

‘A bit.’

‘I’ve got a game,’ announced Manny. ‘A train game. Each of you has to think of a famous person and imagine the kind of carriage they’d design for themselves, given
carte blanche. Like
Through the Keyhole
. So, for example, I’d say, everything in this carriage is pink. The curtains are ruched pink satin over lace and there are frilly cushions
everywhere, and a small white hairy dog is sitting on the table looking out of the window.’

‘Barbara Cartland,’ I blurted out.

‘Spot on. Shall I do another? OK, then; the walls of the carriage I’m imagining now are covered in rhinestones and mirrors, and the seats are padded purple velvet with ermine
cushions.’

‘The Beckhams,’ said Sophie.

‘Wrong; anyway, I haven’t finished. The ceiling is set with twinkling lights like stars and in the corner is a piano made out of finest – ’

‘Elton John,’ I said.

‘ – finest ebony inlaid with tortoiseshell, and the name of its owner is picked out in diamonds across the top.’

Manny looked about expectantly.

‘And there’s a bottle of black hair-dye in the cupboard, and a tooth-whitening kit.’

‘Got it,’ said Tom. ‘Elvis Presley.’

‘Nope.’

Small back gardens flashed past the window, then banks of brambles.

‘Give up?’

‘Liberace,’ cried Juno suddenly.

‘Bingo,’ said Manny. ‘Well done. Your turn.’

‘Who the hell’s Liberace?’ said Sophie.

‘A famous glitzy American entertainer.’

‘I’ve never heard of him. What does he do?’

‘He’s dead now, but he used to play the piano very flamboyantly, he was popular in the Fifties—’

‘Oh, wait a minute,’ said Pascale. ‘That’s not fair. How are we expected to know someone from half a century ago? That’s age discrimination.’

My eyes kept being drawn by a couple two seats down from us. Sophie was watching them too. Young and gorgeous, they could barely keep their hands off each other. The girl’s skirt was so
low-slung that you could see a good two inches of the waistband of her white knickers, and her boyfriend’s fingers kept sliding round the flesh just above the elastic, making her squirm and
gasp. No one else in our party could see the couple from where they were sitting. Sophie’s lips parted in sympathy as the girl caught the boy’s face between her hands and French-kissed
him. ‘All right, then,’ Manny was saying. ‘You have a go. One point to Juno, but it’s Pascale’s turn.’

Pascale grinned. ‘OK. You’ll like this one, Dad. Are you ready? Right, the carriage I’m imagining has names all over it. It’s got people’s names sewn into the seat
covers and painted on the roof and felt-tipped on the windows. Most of them are men’s names, but—’

‘Tracey Emin,’ said Manny.

‘Oh, rats. Was it so easy?’

‘It was a clever idea, well done.’

‘She could do a train carriage.’ Pascale looked thoughtful. ‘She could write on it all the names of the people she’d ever travelled with.’

‘That wouldn’t work, though, would it?’ said Juno, swigging from a bottle of Evian. ‘If you went on a bus, you wouldn’t know the names of everyone else on board,
would you? Unless you took some sort of a register. And you’d have to be quick before some of them got off. And if you went on a train like this one, imagine how many passengers there are on
here today. Maybe the rail companies have records, but whether you could access them . . . Probably someone like Tracey Emin could, because she’s famous.’

Manny was staring at her from across the aisle. ‘It’s a game, Juno. A game.’

The young girl with the tiny skirt was now sitting on her boyfriend’s lap and licking his cheek. His eyes were closed and his head tipped back against the seat. Sophie’s eyes were
glued to the band of brown skin between her ribs and hip-bones. I prayed we wouldn’t hit any long tunnels.

‘I’ve got one,’ said Tom. ‘Who’d have a carriage done out entirely in brown, brown nylon, brown melamine, with about a million china animals on every surface? Eh,
Ally? And plastic covers on the back of the three-piece suite, and one of those signs saying
If you sprinkle when you tinkle please be neat and wipe the seat
over the loo?’

‘Ha ha. Very funny.’

Juno raised her eyebrows at me.

‘He means my mum,’ I told her.

The girl we’d been trying not to watch got up from her seat and walked right past us. Close-up you could see her skin was glittery with bronzing powder – that’ll be all over
his jeans, I thought – and her long straight hair was lightened in odd strands. Lip gloss, long caramel-coloured nails; she was groomed rather than pretty, but still eyecatching. I saw Tom
steal a glance at her navel as she swayed against his seat. When she reached the end of the carriage, the Engaged sign on the toilet lit up. Ten seconds later her boyfriend got to his feet and
followed her.