Читать книгу The Not So Perfect Mum: The feel-good novel you have to read this year! - Кэрри Фишер, Kerry Fisher - Страница 12

Friday was a low point in my week because I spent the entire day in the house I hated cleaning the most – lots of those white ornaments with drippy shapes of women holding babies and whole shelves of decorative bells and silver spoons embossed with Lisbon, Sicily, Madeira and every other place Cecilia and Arthur had been cruising. Plus Cecilia herself, of course, whose idea of letting things slip was not hoovering the back of the airing cupboard every week.

That Friday, nearly two weeks after the kids had started at Stirling Hall, was particularly grim. I’d been dragging the Hoover up and down three flights of stairs as Cecilia had people ‘coming from the country’ for the weekend so she needed me to have a ‘quick do’ on the third floor, but didn’t take away any of my usual chores to allow me extra time.

I’d already been late to pick up Harley and Bronte once that week and the school had been very clear. More than ten minutes late and they charged for after-school club. I just had the kitchen floor to mop when Cecilia called me into the ‘snug’, where the smell of lavender was fighting with something citrussy. Cecilia sat propped up on a pile of cushions with her feet in a bubbling foot spa as though there was nothing more pressing to do, while a woman with a tidy ponytail and white uniform perched on a stool, massaging her hands.

‘Maia, I’m in such a state. I’m going to a black tie ball with Arthur tonight and I can’t decide which nail varnish goes with my dress. Would you be a dear and get it out of the wardrobe for me? It’s the long purple one with the fishtail and gold trimming.’

I don’t think I managed to look overjoyed but I still ran upstairs two at a time and raced back down, not caring that I was scrunching the silk up as I tried not to trip over it. I burst back in, just remembering to hang the dress on the door rather than throw it on the settee.

‘Thanks, Maia. Have a look at the nail varnishes and tell me which one you think goes best with it,’ Cecilia said.

The grandfather clock was chiming three o’clock. I needed to leave in the next thirty seconds. I plumped for a pink thing on the first row of the rack.

‘Here, how about Pinking Sheer?’ I said, reading the bottom.

‘That’s quite nice. Can you find Poolside Passion to compare? It’s quite a bright colour. That might be it on the second row.’

I started turning up the different bottles with all their stupid names, Punks in Pink, Pinking the Perky, Pinking Obvious, but no Poolside Passion.

The beauty therapist carried on massaging cream into Cecilia’s hands, making no attempt to help me out. In the hired help category, she obviously considered that someone who ripped out pubic hair was far superior to someone who just cleaned it out of the shower.

‘Cecilia, look, I’m really sorry, I’m going to have to go. I have to fetch the children. I’ve done everything, given the top floor a good clean for your guests, but I’m afraid I haven’t managed to mop the kitchen floor. I have hoovered it though, so it just needs a quick flick over.’

I said it as an aside, pulling off my work slippers and turning towards the door. But the idea of sullying herself with a bottle of Flash seemed to wind Cecilia up. It was like those rubbish seventies shipwreck films Mum loved, where a light wind starts to ruffle the trees gently and before you know it, the waves are tossing people over the side and sails are ripping in two when a few minutes earlier there wasn’t even a ripple in the water.

She sat up very straight on the settee, her dark bob rigid like a tin helmet. ‘Maia, I’m sorry, but doing half a job doesn’t work for me, not when I’m so terribly busy. So I’d be really grateful if you could finish off properly?’

I tried again. ‘I’m sorry but if I don’t go now, I’ll have to pay an extra £16 for the children to go into after-school club which I can’t afford at the moment. I have managed a lot of extra things today.’ I smiled to show that I wasn’t offended.

‘I’m sorry but if you can’t stay on for a few more minutes or organise yourself better to fit in a couple of tiny extras, I probably need to think about employing someone more flexible.’

‘What do you mean? I am flexible. I come in at short notice, I do one-off special cleans when you have people to stay. I pop in on Sundays to tidy up when you’ve had a dinner party. And they weren’t tiny extras, I’ve cleaned a whole floor from top to bottom.’

‘I don’t want to lose you, but if your other commitments mean that you aren’t able to maintain a satisfactory standard, then I think it’s better that you seek alternative employment.’

I stood, I think the prof used to call it, nonplussed. The beautician’s hands slathered and smoothed cream. The spa bath bubbled gently. I couldn’t afford to lose another £60 a week. Harley was already clamouring to do guitar lessons at £160 a term. Unfortunately my mouth opened before I got going with the humble pie.

‘I’m sorry you feel like that. By the way, I popped your vibrator back in the bathroom cupboard in case you’re looking for it.’

I saw the beautician’s hands slow, then stop. I tossed a ‘nice working for you’ over my shoulder and took a second to enjoy the satisfaction of seeing Cecilia’s arched eyebrows disappear into her hairline before the reality of being even worse off depressed the shit out of me.

I decided not to tell Colin about getting the sack. He’d grumped enough when a corpse had made me redundant. I knew he’d somehow bring this latest trouble back to the fact that the kids were at Stirling Hall.

That evening, as soon as he disappeared off down the Working Men’s Club for a game of pool – I never dared point out the irony of his choice of venue – I grabbed my bottle of Malibu and headed to Sandy’s. I’d lived next door to her for eleven years since the council gave me a house when I was expecting Harley. Colin had disappeared for a few months as soon as the words ‘I’m pregnant’ left my mouth but he reappeared, broke and full of soppy promises when Harley was about four months old. In the meantime, Sandy helped me through the new baby fog, taking Harley next door to give me a break from the crying, and passing on clothes that her son, Denim, had grown out of.

Sandy and I knew details about each other that adults weren’t supposed to share. We’d laughed till bubbles came out our noses about the noises men made during sex. Once, after too much Malibu, I’d told her that Colin shouted, ‘Goal’ when he came, so now she always called him the striker. Sometimes she’d ask him, ‘Played much football lately?’ when she knew I could hear. Guilt took the edge off my laughter.

Sandy, on the other hand, took information oversharing to uncomfortable extremes. Instead of saying, ‘You remember so-and-so, you know, blonde hair, heart tattoo,’ she’d say, ‘You remember Dave, the one who liked to watch in the mirror.’ ‘You know, Jim, the one who went at it like a hog in heat?’ She showed no mercy when it came to describing men’s ability in bed, parading across the kitchen doing a reverse fisherman – ‘It was this big’ – and peering at a tiny space between her thumb and forefinger.

Friday nights had become my only little moment of ‘me’ time as the women I worked for called it. They got their feet massaged; I parked myself in Sandy’s kitchen and made the miserable events of the week into something we could laugh about. It was like snuggling under a duvet when it’s snowing outside.

When Sandy opened the door that evening, she had a line of bleach on her top lip. The mouldy hay smell indicated that henna was working its red magic under the Morrisons carrier bag covering her hair. Bronte and Harley pushed past her as they always did, grunting a hello. They were far more interested in bagging a cushion next to her sons, Gypsy and Denim Blue, and settling down to Doctor Who with a jumbo bag of Quavers.

‘Hello, Harley, hello, Bronte,’ Sandy shouted through to the front room. ‘I thought they’d be coming in shaking me hand and doing little bows. You wanna ask for your money back.’

I shrugged and followed her into the kitchen, where I helped myself to a couple of glasses. My sense of humour about Stirling Hall had packed up its troubles in an old kit bag and disappeared completely.

‘So, who’s the lucky man?’ I said, pouring out the Malibu and watching the Coke bubble up into a coconutty froth.

‘Who says there’s a new man?’ she said, a big grin making her little elfin face even pointier.

‘Come off it. You only put that rabbit poo on your hair when there’s a new bloke about.’

Sandy was a single mum who worked shifts packing dog biscuits at the factory down the road. Unlike me, being poor didn’t seem to bother her. She didn’t care that she relied on the charity foundation in town for her kids’ clothes, or that she spent her life switching between credit cards, which even at 0% interest, she had no hope of paying off.

‘He’s a new guy at the factory,’ Sandy said.

‘Called?’

‘Shane.’

‘When did he start?’

‘A few weeks ago.’ Sandy lit a Marlboro Light. I wondered if the bleach was flammable but I knew she’d start chanting Sensible Susan at me if I said anything.

‘Go on, then. Spill the beans. It’s not like you to get all secretive,’ I said.

‘I haven’t been secretive. You’ve been too caught up in blazers and book lists to be interested in my shenanigans,’ she said, in a tone that didn’t sound like a simple observation.

‘Sorry.’ I sighed. ‘I’ve been really busy.’ I waited for her to grin, then jump in with marks out of ten, size of willy, number of ex-wives and kids like she normally would. Instead, she sat there blowing smoke rings until I felt I had to explain.

‘I haven’t had a lot of time for anything. It’s a full-time job remembering to buy plain biscuits so that you don’t get called in because you’ve sent in a bloody chocolate HobNob. I spend half my life making sure Bronte’s hair is tied back with green ribbons, not pink elastic bands, and working out how the hell I am going to afford ballet, guitar and flute lessons while losing every decent paying job I’ve ever had. So I probably have had my head up my arse.’ I took a big glug of Malibu to disguise the wobble in my lip.

‘What? You’ve lost another job? Jesus, you’re gonna beat my record soon.’ Sandy sounded reasonably sympathetic considering her own working life was one long verbal warning. While I launched into my account of Cecilia, she pulled off her jogging bottoms with a mutter of ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ and fetched a little pot of wax off the hob. She splayed her legs and started on her bikini line, her voice fading out like a badly tuned radio when the wax didn’t come off in a clean rip.

Harley came bursting in. He stared at Sandy whose red lace thong appeared to be quite fascinating to a ten-year-old. She made no attempt to shut her legs. ‘You know what they say, Harley, you can’t beat an older woman. You come back in a few years’ time and I’ll show you what I mean.’

Harley shrugged but I could tell from the way he backed towards me that he wasn’t quite sure if she was joking.

‘Mum, Denim says he’s got the latest iPhone. But his is only an iPhone 4, isn’t it? That’s not the latest one, is it? Marlon’s got an iPhone 5. He got it early, cos his birthday’s next week and his mum bought it when she was filming in America. But Denim keeps hitting me when I say that. Can you tell him that his is an old one? He keeps calling me a liar.’

Even though people skills had been the focus of Harley’s Personal, Social and Health Education ‘prep’, he could still fit what he’d learnt into an eggcup. I’d taken such a battering that week that my alcohol-dulled reactions were a bit pterodactyl. Sandy, on the other hand, was quick off the mark.

‘You spoilt little shit. Do you know how many bloody night shifts it took me to get the money together for that? He’s only had it a few months and now he’s going to be at me for the new one. Denim and Gypsy not good enough for you now you’ve got all them poncey little Lord Fauntleroys to play with? Sorry if their stuff isn’t quite up to your majesty’s high standards.’

The colour had risen in Harley’s cheeks. His grey eyes were wide, wide open. He glanced sideways at me. I could feel the puzzlement in him. And in me. Sandy had always been such a soft touch, always telling me to ‘leave off of them, they’re just kids’.

I pulled Harley to me. Sandy had called my son a shit. I never swore at kids. Especially not other people’s. Sandy was bristling away on the other side of the table. We usually ganged up against the woman a few doors down whose kids nicked bikes on the estate, Sandy’s bully-boy boss who smelt of Brut, the bastards in the council’s housing repairs department. Not each other. I looked straight into Harley’s eyes, willing him to go with me on this one.

‘Why don’t you go and say sorry to Denim and say that you think you made a mistake?’

‘I didn’t make a mistake. Marlon has got an iPhone 5.’

I rolled my eyes and resisted the urge to shake him. ‘Harley. How would you like it if Denim told you that something you’d got new was a load of old rubbish? You wouldn’t. Go. And. Say. You. Are. Sorry. Then I think it’s time to go. Tell Bronte.’

I screwed the cap back on the Malibu. ‘Sorry about that.’

Sandy carried on attacking some stubborn hairs with her tweezers, head bent over her crotch.

‘I s’pose it’s to be expected if you fill their heads with fancy ideas. But you’re not going to be able to afford all that stuff, neither.’

I hated the satisfaction I could hear in her voice.