Darling Read online

  ‘Imagine. Us in Boise, Idaho.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘Big fishing country. The Rockies, Pioneer villages … fuck-all, really.’

  ‘Thomas! I do believe that’s the second time I’ve heard you cuss.’

  ‘Is that right? Ah, that’s not me, that’s American Thomas. Tom … Wassernacker. He swears like all—’

  ‘Oh, shut the fuck up and come here …’

  ‘Darling! I do believe—’

  ‘Hush now.’

  There were bright stabs of joy, daily, despite the teenage parrying. Thomas seemed to be taking to Stevie faster than I had hoped. Going over and above; under and around too, drafting new ways for us all to be. It was a Wednesday evening, and I was to idle in the bath while he took the kids to the summer drive-in, showing Grease. As it happened, the hospital called first, needing me to cover, but his thoughtfulness was no less magnificent.

  As Thomas started up the engine, with Lola and my son in his car, my mind buzzed. I wanted Stevie to love culture, even if it started out with some shiny, big-quiffed, ‘Summer Lovin’’; that night he would at least learn something about the beauty of transformation. I read books and watched plays, which some people found surprising, but that in itself surprised me. High Desford was not a complete cultural desert – not compared to Elm Forest, the small, scruffy nearby town where I had spent my early years.

  Even if it was semi-arid, I had studied and sought out thoughts, dowsed for words and meaning, drunk it all in ever since we had moved here. If I had not been made a nurse by vocation and were I not Stevie’s destined mother, I would have written. All the blinking time. I certainly read. Some of the first lines I ever committed to memory, apart from Neneh Cherry’s ‘Buffalo Stance’, were from Ophelia’s loco chatting which we had to recite once at school:

  ‘Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.’

  So good. A bit too much sense for real madness, but that seemed to be the point. (We thesps of Class 4C probably did not greatly enhance the meaning with our am-dram gurning and tied-lunatic lurches.)

  Thomas and the kids left for the movie before my shift. However, St Foillan’s then called again to explain that they did not need the cover after all, and that the first call had been due to an administrative error, so I opted to hang around alone at Littleton Lodge.

  I waited for them, wondering: what must it be to live in a home such as this, with a creator of homes such as this? It would be more than ordinary dreams could offer to see love in every lintel, every stairwell, every last nail. I leaned against the wall of his study; the petrol blue paint still smelled of the cost and challenged the eye in just the right way. He was clever. But more than that he knew how to plan for the way lives would be lived within his spaces, how to build, yes, love into an angle, to create unity and harmony, or division with a layout – a true domestic God. What power! I imagined myself as part of the house itself, a quiet corner or window. I moved upstairs, smoothing the balcony with my hand. I did not know what had been done or how, but interventions had been made in the original building so that the below flowed into the above without a stutter. I pretended to myself that I was doing my old pausing-to-admire schtick, but I knew I was in fact going straight to where I had to be: Lola’s bedroom.

  I went in, looking over the made bed, the chair with her stack of ironed clothes that got done by the lady up the road twice a week, the wardrobe and the desk. Tess watched my every move from her frame, the sun lighting up her milk-and-honey mouldings, frozen. I opened the wardrobe door. All the wispy skirts and half-cocked dresses, just smart enough to pour scorn on the mottle-thighed proles, plus a trifle or two of vintage, to my narrowed eyes the whole predictable cache of competitive irony – Behold my sweet regurgitated rara! My jaunty 10p fedora! I, so young and so untender … and so tediously well-off! All of it in colours tied to studied trends, the shapes following sanctioned fashions. Uncharitable, perhaps, but clothes that focused so much on the now and the then did little to move me. Whatever the year, my dress had always had something loud to say about sunshine and breasts and hip-to-waist ratios, even at a younger age, even in the coldest weather; moreover, I had never been so slight. Girl should eat more. I leant into the back of the wardrobe, groped and looked down – nothing but oak and dark space. I withdrew, closed the door and moved to her window, to its unobstructed view over the garden. The best view in the house, really. She was loved. Did she know it?

  Finally, I did what I had come to do. I opened her bedside table and sifted. What was inside? Pens, coins, a phone charger, a plastic-sheathed tampon, a couple of hairbands, a notepad, five or six GoGo chocolate bar wrappers, an empty purse maybe. Girl’s mess that did not invite.

  Next drawer down: hairdryer, brush, dental floss, that sort of thing. Diet pills (ah!) half empty, more tampons, B vitamins, a few unused soaps, hair oil, foot cream. More debris denoting female effort.

  I straightened, looked at the dressing table. Not sure why it caught my eye; perhaps it was the only exposed hint of disorder in that cleaner-controlled room. Peeking out from the third drawer down was the corner of a patterned headscarf. I reached for it, pulled the drawer out. The headscarf billowed up into a silken cloud of ironic paisley. There was a small block of something underneath it. I dug my fingers under, pulled and … yes, Golden Kings cigarettes. We smoked the same brand. If Thomas had the first idea … I planned to have a word, put her straight. A drawer of secrets, then. More scarves – none I could imagine her wearing – and when I pushed through to the bottom, a blue book; an A4 exercise book with a dolphin postcard taped to the cover. The dolphin in its sea was a similar blue-grey so that it seemed as if the creature were swimming out at you from the depths of an ocean which was balanced upon the word HAWAII. Also on the book’s cover, in large neat underlined capitals:

  DONE LISTS

  There was one entry – DONE LIST 1 – several pages long.

  I read it; of course I read it. And then I smiled, dropped my head.

  Just a child, I reasoned. A girl alone with her pen and her angry, angry words. I got it, we all needed an outlet. Angry child, angry words. Love would win.

  Everything was wrapped, wedged and replaced. Five minutes later the three of them were pulling into the drive. I had texted Thomas about the cancelled shift; Stevie almost skipped to me in his KAFOs.

  ‘Stevie, careful.’

  Lola did not look at me. She would not meet my eye and when I examined Thomas he also seemed to be holding tense words an inch behind the jawline. Our backs to the kids, my expression asked him the question; he responded with the slightest shake of the head.

  We readied ourselves for bed. I listened to one message – it was always the same one – then I deleted the seven missed calls, put my phone on vibrate as usual. Enough already.

  ‘So now, what was that earlier?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The atmosphere.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Really? But—’

  ‘The kids had bickered a bit, that’s all. Nothing big, everyone’s just tired.’

  It did not take a mother to know that his sixteen-year-old girl and my five-year-old boy would get nowhere near arguing, but I said nothing more.

  Soon we were locking limbs around each other, never that tired, not then. But even as we stroked our bodies brighter and pushed on through to that grasping, eyes-shut, giving, gasping place where no child could ever find us, I wondered. Lola had changed.

  It was as if she could read, in my eyes, what I had read in her room. But of course she could not and, in the end, I did not let it keep me from tumbling into the grave-deep sleep of the satisfied woman.

  When I woke, I felt the childish urge to skip the whole breakfast routine and slip us out of the door. But Lola was the teen, and moody by definition. I was not. I swung out of bed, leaving Thomas to snore, went downstairs to my bag to get my phone and – before I had tripped the wire that triggered the brain-alarm ‘Stop
, in the name of your flaws’ – I was reaching for the pack of cigarettes, giving it a hopeful shake. I had been almost certain it was empty, but in fact it contained one final stick of tobacco. I ran the cigarette along my upper lip as I breathed it in. I weighed it in my pinch. I rolled it between thumb and finger. I held it between my lips, closed my eyes and waited for the dirty billow of longing to overwhelm me. It did not come. Moved by this lack of feeling – triumphant even – I dropped the packet into the dustbin.

  Over breakfast, silence was broken only by exasperation. A wall-faced Lola, with ‘Screw You, Darling’ graffitied all over her. Stevie upturning his bowl in a rage because his KAFO had got wedged between the chair and table:

  ‘They so annoy me, Mummy!’

  Thomas soothed us all but my embarrassment soared as the milk dripped to the floor and then, after a quick wipe around, I gathered my son so we could totter – clack-clack – out of their smart door and drive home.

  ‘No, she totally hates me, I’m serious. Huh-ates me!’

  That weekend I pretended not to listen through the old serving hatch as Lola complained into her mobile for long minutes, muffled by a cushion; you could make out the tear stains on the silk. I sprinkled radishes through the all-Littleton Lodge salad. The lettuce, cukes and curlicues of pea shoots made a fine bed in their bowl. I’d left Thomas and Stevie in the garden, devouring the pièces de resistance: cherry tomatoes plucked straight from the vine.

  ‘I know, how could she say that to Jess and not have told me?’

  I figured she had to be talking to Ellie. I tore up a few more butterhead leaves, picked five minutes before from the Waite patch. Lola went on:

  ‘Ellie Motte-Ryder is a complete and utter bitch.’

  I rummaged for a jug, found one so well designed that it almost annoyed. I glugged some olive oil into vinegar, added mustard, seasoned and whisked. She had not seen me, could not hear me, did not know I was there.

  ‘I can’t believe she said that!’

  It still needed parsley. I slipped out of the back door to the herb garden, snapped a stem or two and crept back in.

  ‘No … Oh my God, did she? Well just kill me now.’

  The herbs in a colander, I turned on the tap, only for the water to explode in a great gush.

  ‘Hello?’ she called.

  ‘Only me,’ I said.

  ‘Got to go,’ she told her phone.

  No time to waste. I walked into the sitting room where she was curled up under a throw, limbs unstirred as if under a layer of custard, no matter that the windows were open and it was 78 degrees outside.

  ‘Can I get you anything, Lola?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  Darling White is rude. She’ll get fuck-all of me.

  Lola did not speak, stared straight ahead.

  ‘Nothing?’ I repeated.

  ‘Perhaps a new life?’ She would not be seen to cry, refused, but her voice caught, a downward glance.

  ‘Ah, now …’ I moved closer, ready to sit. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

  She raised a hand before her face, hiding her eyes, blocking me out.

  ‘Actually, just a hankie would—’

  ‘Sure, let me get you one.’

  I hurried back to the kitchen; I had to keep trying. I loved to care. Nursing was love – that simple and that complicated – love, time-stamped and dished out to strangers. Caring for your sick child could be similar but it did not vary with precisely the same frictions and erosions and unwanted quickenings and surprise softenings, with the rough incidents that abraded you when tending the wounds of the unknown many. Your love for your child was relentless, and joyous, and painful. But all of it – nursing, caring, loving – there was nothing better, nothing else I ought to be doing with my life.

  Grabbing my handbag, I pulled hard at a corner of cotton and there, once again, was a packet of cigarettes that I did not remember buying, was sure I had not bought. The box was light. I shook it, flipped it open and there, once a-bloody-gain, lay a lonely smoke.

  Ah, got it now, Lola. Her Golden Kings, all of them, were for me.

  I snatched up the hankie, pinched the cigarette between my fingers, held it high and walked back into the sitting room.

  ‘Why are you giving me these when I’m trying to give up?’

  She said nothing.

  ‘Why, Lola?’

  She shifted so that her feet tucked further up under the creamy blanket and lowered her gaze to the floor.

  ‘You seemed really stressy without them. Just trying to help.’

  ‘That’s the only reason?’

  She looked me in the eye. Looked away.

  ‘OK … Well, thanks for the support, or whatever, but I need to kick these things. I will quit, too. Here.’ I passed her the hankie.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And don’t you even think of trying it.’

  ‘No way,’ she advert-flicked her hair to one side, patted an eye. ‘That’s never going to happen. I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine but—’

  Clack-clack. Stevie was coming in, with Thomas close behind.

  ‘Mummy, we’ve got tomatoes for the salad, look!’

  ‘Thanks, sweetness.’ I got up, trying to give Lola an ‘our secret’ look. She was staring at her nails.

  ‘Let me show you, Mummy. Let me show you the plants, let me—’

  ‘OK, OK,’ I said, with a sunny nod at Thomas. ‘Someone’s had a lot of fun! I’m coming.’

  I turned back to Lola once more, but with a wave of her wrist she had already commanded the TV to amuse her. We three walked up the garden. Quite some garden too; long and wide beyond anything I had ever imagined when I had first walked down this street. A lavender farewell by the kitchen door, alongside pots of herbs: rosemary, purple-afroed chives, thyme, mint, a stately bay tree. We walked on, passing the shed, through lawns fringed with a whole production of blooms, past the willow tree and onwards until there, before we reached that murderous pond, we breathed in the must of tomato plants.

  Stevie tugged me closer to what was left of them. ‘Here, Mummy.’

  ‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’

  ‘I wish we could live here so I can eat them every day.’

  I said, ‘I’ll buy you some nice tomatoes, sweetie.’

  ‘But I want these!’

  Thomas was saying nothing. My eyes must have spoken despite me, and the look he gave answered at perfect pitch, did not shout, did not whisper.

  ‘Can I dig a muddy pool?’

  Thomas laughed. ‘Sure, why not? I’ll get a trowel.’

  I chose that moment to leave them in the sunlight, Stevie sitting straight-legged on the grass in his dew-smeared KAFOs, with Thomas making a whole mudpit of mess in the place where his good things grew, and all for my boy.

  Unwatched, I wandered back towards the house with sassy step, arms swinging free, pausing only to lean into the boundary shrubs and pick a trumpet of buddleia. Black and a flash of crimson fluttering out: a Red Admiral weaving up into the sky, first I’d seen for years.

  I moved through the French windows into the cool of the kitchen. Lola’s phone drawl drifted to me, a sharp note in the August air:

  ‘Yeah, she’s still around. And her son … I know … Yeah, she’s basically a pretty big slut.’

  My foot paused mid-step. I was rinsed down by disgust and anger, all washed over by something icier: cold shame. Shame that I had even tried with her, shame that I had failed. I turned and grabbed my handbag from the counter, slipped into the dining room, ducked sideways through the conservatory, out of the side gate. I had to have it.

  I ran, a mad tiptoed sprint, halfway up the road. Just a couple more final puffs.

  Her conjuror’s trick cigarette glowed as I lit it. Lola knew, she had always known. The fags weren’t some anarchic take on Girl Guide charity. She was a Millennial, she had been told her whole life that the nasty things were mul
ti-talented killers. I inhaled deep.

  First the cellar, then this. She clearly wished me a slow death.

  Almost impressive. Not too shabby; no sugar-candy Mandy, this one. But dislike could do more damage than tooth-rot. No matter, la! I would sure as hell win her over.

  One, one coco full basket.

  She would change. We would be just fine in the end, Lola and I. Because that was how it was going to be. Love wins.

  On the Monday evening, I engineered an excuse to stay over at Littleton Lodge when Stevie was with Demarcus and Thomas was dining with clients. I needed time alone with Lola. I would cook for us.

  Food, though, was turning from my gift into our battleground. Most days Stevie ate anything, but Lola? She was a tricky one. That night I offered her spaghetti, with either bolognese or a tuna and tomato sauce, but she ‘wasn’t feeling’ pasta, so I offered grilled chicken and potatoes, but she wasn’t feeling chicken, or potatoes, so I offered a sea bass fillet, not feeling it, sausages, nah, sirloin steak, nah – she wasn’t feeling any meat at all. By this time I was feeling the need for air, so – back in a minute! – I left her in front of the TV and grabbed my bag, which now held a fresh pack of cigarettes, put there by me alone.

  I smoked. Then, with my deliberate failure already stale in my mouth, I hit upon a meat-free inspiration: everyone loved my Caribbean vegetable curry. I aimed for Pattie’s West Indian Food Store a few streets away, bought what was needed and wandered back.

  There was no sign of Lola downstairs.

  I snatched up a knife and cut out the scowling. There would be no asking, nor pleading; no telling, no pandering now, just dinner on a plate. I needed to calm my blood and get this sauce to bubble; it would taste almost as good from Thomas’s overpriced pot. I diced the onion fast – chuk-chuk-chuk – grated the ginger, then fried them together nice and slow. I whistled as I chunked up the vegetables, inhaled a savoury puff which seared my skin as I poured liquid over. A breather.