Читать книгу Something Old, Something New - Rebecca Raisin, Darcie Boleyn - Страница 15
ОглавлениеIn the Middle of the Night
I don’t know why I agreed to this, I really don’t, as my instincts are screaming out against it. Perhaps it was guilt over the New York trip, but whatever my reasons, I caved and there is no going back now. That’s the problem with denying the children an opportunity – even if it was an impractical and impossible one – I just feel guilty and as if I need to compensate in some other way.
Henry has been asking for months if he can get a bearded dragon like his friend Joshua. Apparently, Joshua’s two bearded dragons turned out to be male and female and within months of them cohabiting, the female laid eggs. The eggs hatched and the ‘baby beardies’ – as Henry calls them – need homes.
Joshua’s parents are quite laidback, so much so that their house is full of different types of animals. It kind of freaks me out whenever I go there to pick up Henry after a play date, but I think it’s just because of all the things you hear in the media about reptiles and unusual pets. I mean, they actually share their home with spiders and snakes. Joshua’s father, Ken, works in one of those out of town exotic pet shops, so he often brings work home, and his mother Julie is a social worker. I’ve known them for years because Joshua and Henry went to the same nursery.
I knock at the door of their terraced house and wait. Henry is beside me and he hops from one foot to the other. ‘At least with it being half-term, I can help him to settle in, eh Mum?’ he asks me, his eyes wide with excitement. I nod and smile but my stomach is in knots.
What if it escapes? What if it bites? What if it carries diseases and one day I don’t turn up for work and three weeks later we’re all discovered covered in boils and…
‘Hey Annie, Henry and Anabelle! Come on in.’ Julie stands aside and ushers us into her cosy three-bedroom house which is positively bursting at the seams with vivariums, children and animals. Yet it smells very pleasant, like apple pie and fresh linen. In spite of my fear of the spiders, I feel like I could sit on one of the large sofas in the lounge, tuck my feet under me and take a nap. Let someone take care of me for a change.
Henry disappears with Joshua almost immediately to see the baby beardies and I bite my tongue to avoid telling him to watch out for spiders and snakes.
‘Mumma, can I go and play in the garden?’ Anabelle asks when she spies one of those plastic sit-in cars through the French windows.
‘Of course you can,’ Julie replies and directs Anabelle through the kitchen and outside. I briefly wonder what pets they have living in the garden, then my attention is drawn to Julie’s t-shirt which appears to be moving. It’s like she has one boob that’s developed the ability to wriggle. ‘Oh!’ She pats her chest gently as she catches me staring. ‘I’m just keeping Bertie warm.’
‘Bertie?’ I ask, even though I don’t want to. I try to tear my gaze away from her chest. What kind of animal is Bertie? I’m terrified that it’s going to be a big hairy spider.
‘Yes,’ Julie tucks a hand down her neckline and extracts a ball of mink fluff, ‘he’s a baby chinchilla.’ She holds the creature out and I peer at it. It jerks in her hand and I jump back. ‘Oh, Annie. He won’t hurt. He’s just sleepy. Here, you hold him.’
I cautiously take the fluffy thing and cradle it in the crook of my arm where it settles immediately and falls back to sleep. She’s right. He is soft and warm and kind of cute.
‘So do you have everything ready for the baby dragon?’ Julie asks.
I nod. She sent me an email listing everything we’d need so I took it to the pet shop where Ken works. ‘I’ve set it all up according to the manual. The only thing is… I’m a bit worried about the feeding thing. I bought some of those dead bugs, you know, crickets in a jar.’
Julie grimaces. ‘I’ll be honest, Annie, the dragons aren’t fussy on those things. They much prefer the live ones.’ Funny, she repeated exactly what her husband told me yesterday. ‘Tell you what, keep the jar for emergencies and I’ll give you a pot of live ones. Only trouble is, they’re normal black crickets and not the silent ones.’
I smile and shrug. It makes no difference to me whether they’re noisy or not; bugs are bugs and they terrify me. I could never go on a TV show where I’d be sent to a desert island or into the jungle because the sheer amount of insects around would totally freak me out. Having bugs crawl all over me? No thank you! As for crunching on bugs when one day we run out of other food sources, as some experts are claiming we will… there’s no way I could ever put something like that in my mouth.
Julie leads me into the hallway and up the stairs. I keep a hand over the chinchilla and negotiate the steps carefully because every one seems to have a tower of paperbacks, a pile of ironing or a pair of shoes on it. With me being rather clumsy, I’d never manage to live here. I’d be sure to break a bone every day of the week.
At the top of the stairs, we turn right then head up another flight. Joshua’s room is up in the attic. It’s a fabulous conversion that Julie showed me two years ago after they had it done. With four boys, a husband and all their pets, they needed to make the most of what space they had. When we reach the top of that flight, we walk across a small landing and through an open doorway. Henry is sitting on the floor with Joshua and they are staring into a vivarium full of tiny bearded dragons.
‘Look Mummy!’ Henry squeals. ‘Joshua has so many of them. He’s really lucky!’
I smile and take a step closer. The lively black and green creatures scuttle about inside the blue-lit tank, chasing after small crickets. They hop and jump in the pursuit of food, their instincts driving them to feed, to survive, to be on top. I think briefly about school but shake the thought away.
‘Which one do you want, Henry?’ Julie asks.
Henry stares hard at the viv. ‘Um. I don’t know. I wish I could take more than one home.’ He eyes me over his shoulder, chewing his lower lip, his childish attempts at manipulation being honed even at this early stage. I will myself to be strong, to take only one lizard home with me. Not every animal needs to be paired off like in some perfect children’s movie, surely?
‘Choose, please, Henry. We can’t keep Julie and Joshua waiting. And we have to get back for Janis.’ The latter comment isn’t strictly true, although having three children does give me an excuse if one of them is dallying somewhere.
‘Okay…’ He sighs, defeated, and points to one of the babies.
As Joshua places the dragon into a plastic tub, Julie hands me a smaller tub full of crickets and explains about feeding times. ‘It’ll be like having another baby,’ I say, though at least once the lights go off, these creatures apparently sleep through the night. I eye the plastic tub in my hand and shiver as the contents shuffle around; they remind me of currants with legs.
‘You’ll love him!’ Julie replies. ‘They’re such friendly creatures and he’ll have such fun roaming your house.’
I’m not so sure that’s a good idea as I think about Dragon and Fairy Princess and how they love chasing house spiders and woodlice. There was also that time when Janis was looking after the school hamster and it escaped. We only found it when Dragon refused to leave the fireplace in the living room because he could smell it under there. At the time, Dex had been with us and he’d had to remove the front of the fire to get at the chimney space. By then, the hamster was a little worse for wear and we’d had to nip out to the pet shop and get a new one while Janis went to Cassie’s for an hour. I just didn’t have the heart to tell her it had died. She was too young and being my first, I hadn’t gone through all that before. Henry is tougher though, more of a realist. For instance, when he had goldfish, I bought him a proper tank that we put in the kitchen on the Welsh dresser and for a few months it was his pride and joy. He’d feed the fish every morning and clean them out at weekends. Then one Saturday, we came down and the biggest fish, Bob, was gone. It had just disappeared. I thought that the other fish might have eaten it, but there was no evidence left in the tank. Henry had thought about it quietly for a few days in that way he does, then one day over pizza, he’d announced his conclusion. Bob had leapt from the water and fallen to the floor, where Dragon or Fairy Princess had consumed it. And just like that, without emotion or elaboration, my son had cleared up the mystery. To this day, I still don’t know if he was right, but we don’t have a cat, and as the dogs spent the weeks following the fish’s disappearance lurking in front of the tank, watching the remaining fish intently, I had to accept that perhaps my then six-year-old son was in fact correct. Bob had leapt to his death, a bit like my post when it falls through the letterbox and into Dragon’s mouth. I hope that this bearded dragon won’t suffer a similar fate.
At the door, I give the sleeping chinchilla back to Julie and Henry holds on tightly to the plastic tub containing his dragon. He and Joshua share a smile and Joshua solemnly tells Henry to take care of the beardy and to bring him back to play any time he likes. Just imagine! A reptile play date.
As I open the door, I realise that something is missing.
Anabelle!
‘Julie, is Anabelle still in the garden?’
Julie slaps a hand to her chest. ‘Oh my lord yes! She’s so quiet, I’d completely forgotten.’
We rush through the house to the kitchen and peer through the window. And sure enough, there she is, my beautiful little girl, driving around in the red plastic car talking away to herself. Then I look more closely and there, on the dashboard, I can just make out a green shell.
Julie rushes out into the garden and I follow.
‘Oh thank you, thank you!’ she gushes as she scoops the shell up. ‘You’ve found Larry!’
‘Larry?’ I ask as I help Anabelle out of the car and let her take the tub of crickets from my hand, hoping she doesn’t loosen the lid in the car.
‘Yes, our tortoise. Joshua let him out the other day for some exercise but he forgot about him and it was dark by the time he realised. We thought he’d escaped under the fence so it’s an enormous relief to see him again. Well done, Anabelle!’
My little girl smiles and nods, as if it’s an everyday occurrence to find a missing tortoise and take it for a drive, then she takes my hand and we head home.
****
Later that night, after I’ve tucked Henry into bed and checked on Anabelle, I pop my head into Janis’ room. ‘How’s it going, sweetheart?’
She glances up from her laptop. ‘Hey Mum!’ She removes her earphones and I realise that she probably didn’t hear me.
‘Everything okay?’ I sit on the edge of her bed and look around her room. I come in here all the time to drop ironing off and to speak to Evan on the laptop but I rarely actually register how it has changed. The little-girl pink was painted purple a few years ago then covered in posters. It makes me smile as I meet the eyes of long-haired rockers and smouldering movie stars, the beautiful people who grace our screens and make us dream of another life. The room could do with a fresh lick of paint but Janis would not be happy at all if she had to remove all her images of rock gods and stars of the silver screen, as well as her inspirational quotes and study notes. It seems that every spare inch of wall has a yellow sticky note bearing some literary quote or revision tip on it.
When did she grow up? When was it that her feet grew so much that she now wears a size and a half bigger than I do? I’m often struck by how quickly time passes. I take each day as it comes and work busily through it but at moments like this, when an evening stretches out before me, these niggling thoughts creep in and I feel sad that time has passed so quickly, that my babies are growing up and I’m hardly aware of it until another stage in their lives has passed.
But I can’t stop it can I?
It would just be nice if I had someone to share it all with, someone who understood.
I think then of my mother, the woman who gave up so much for me. She worked all hours and never once complained, not even when I had to tell her that I’d gotten pregnant, that all her hard work had been in vain. She surrendered some of the best years of her life working two jobs just to make ends meet and saving every spare penny so that I could go to university. She wanted me to achieve my dream of being a globetrotting photographer, to be independent, self-sufficient and to experience a freedom she never could. How did she feel when she found out that I’d risked all that for love? She didn’t try to encourage me to get an abortion and she didn’t even shout or cry, she just nodded and asked me what my plans were. She must have been disappointed, yet she took it all in her stride. Did she ever look at me in the same way I look at my children and think how quickly I’d grown? Did she ever wonder when I changed? These are questions I’ve never asked her, things I fear questioning her about in case she tells me something that hurts, that confirms my worst suspicions – that I did hurt her when I let her down.
I briefly contemplate ringing her but she’ll probably be on her third glass by now, surrounded by her sophisticated French friends and her doting husband. She lives in France on her husband’s vineyard and I’m happy for her that she has a second chance at love and happiness. After my father died, she remained strong. She never revealed distress or weakness, although I knew that she suffered; she just did it silently. I always wanted to make her proud and I swore that a man would never leave me in the situation that my father left her in. I couldn’t bear to be abandoned like that.
‘Studying going well?’ I ask Janis and she colours.
‘Yeah I guess.’
‘What is it?’ I smile. ‘Social networking distracting you?’
Her colour deepens and I move closer. I don’t want a chasm to open up between us. I want to keep my children close and to be there for them, to be a good mum. But a good mother ensures that her children are achieving their potential and doesn’t let them underachieve.
She takes a deep breath as if she’s going to divulge some deep, dark secret. I wait, afraid to move in case I deter her. Then she exhales slowly and says, ‘I’m okay Mum… honestly.’
‘I’m here to talk, you know. Whenever. I know the younger two keep me busy but you’re my child too and I love you, Janis.’
‘I know, Mum.’ She nods her easy acceptance of my fierce maternal devotion, evidently unable to comprehend exactly how much I love her, then plugs her earphones back in. I stand there for a moment and smooth out the patchwork quilt again. I want to say more, to have a meaningful conversation with my baby girl, but I can’t seem to find the right words because I’m afraid of saying the wrong ones. So I say nothing at all.
As I pull her door behind me, then walk out onto the dark landing, I am suddenly overwhelmed by sadness. There is no manual to help with this stuff, to tell you how to negotiate your way through having three children by two different men and two divorces, while dealing with your own guilt at getting it wrong before you’d even really begun. There are manuals on parenthood, sure, but I need a precise one to help with my particular situation.
And as I descend the stairs, heading to the living room where I’ll sit with a book or flick through the television channels for an hour before heading up to bed alone, I wish again for all that I miss. For things to have been different from the start. Yet at the same time, I know that what I want is impossible and that, therefore, I would change nothing.
Getting pregnant when I did gave me Janis. Marrying Dex gave me Henry and Anabelle. Things happened as they did and I wasn’t wholly to blame. Yet I wasn’t totally blameless either.
****
I jump awake, dragged from a dream about being in the jungle. Strangely, Lady Macbeth was there, talking about when the owl shrieks and the crickets cry…
Crickets?
I hold my breath and will my heart to slow down as I listen.
But I am not mistaken; my house is filled with the song of crickets. It’s as if I am abroad and they’re chirruping away. But I am not on a Greek island in a café eating date and walnut scones filled with honey and yogurt; a pleasant image inspired by a recent novel. I am, in fact, in England, inside my own home, clad in my fleecy pyjamas and it is February. So why, then, can I hear crickets?
I sit up and rub my eyes. My neck is stiff from sleeping on the sofa and I am cold. I need to go to bed and snuggle beneath the duvet. I pick up my phone and check the time. Three-thirty a.m. I head out to the hall and nearly fall over Dragon who is sleeping across the hallway guarding the stairs like some ancient mythical creature guarding its gold. Fairy Princess is not far away, snoring her head off in a very un-princess-like way. They clearly don’t need to go out, so I step carefully over them and tiptoe up the stairs. The house is immersed in darkness and I usually like this time when I can listen to everyone I love breathing in unison under one roof. But tonight, there is another noise and it is incongruous in my Sutton semi.
The crickets! The central heating must have encouraged their journey to maturity and some of the larger ones are chirping.
Upstairs, I pop my head into each child’s room to check on them. Anabelle and Janis are sleeping in their beds, but when I enter Henry’s room, he is sleeping on his knees in front of the vivarium. How can children do that? Fall asleep in some strange sort of yoga position. The lights inside it are off but I can make out the small dark shape of the baby dragon underneath the fibre-glass cave. I gently scoop Henry up and shuffle him into his cabin bed – not easy when he is getting so big and I have to lift him up four steps too – then pull the covers over him. As I turn away and head for the door, something crunches under my foot.
And again as I take another step.
There is a slimy wetness beneath the crunch.
I pause as my sleep fuddled mind tries to conjure an explanation.
Lego.
Henry probably sneaked a grape up here too and that somehow got mixed up with the Lego and that’s what’s now sticking to the ball of my foot and oozing between my toes. It must be Lego that Henry has left out again, even though we’ve had the discussion about putting it away once he’s finished playing with it. The dogs don’t brave the stairs very often, but if they do and they decide to consume some of his plastic building blocks or his intergalactic pirate ship, then there will be an expensive trip to the vet and Henry will lose what is now being hailed as a better investment than stocks and shares. I will certainly have to speak to him about tidying up properly tomorrow.
But as I take another step, the chirruping gets louder and something scuttles across my naked foot and up my shin. I shake my leg vigorously and hear a plop as something hits the wall. It’s like a horror movie where everyone except for the actress can see that at any moment she’s going to have her leg ripped off by a giant killer scorpion. My heart thuds as I realise with mounting dread what must have happened. This is no giant scorpion and this is not a movie. I told Henry ten times before he went to bed to ensure that he put the lid on the cricket tub properly but now…
I thrust my fist into my mouth and bite down to stifle my scream. I want to get my feet off the floor so I take it in turns to lift one then the other. Which is your favourite foot? Which one would you keep if you had to choose? It’s like some bizarre Sophie’s choice.
I hate bugs!
The doorway is further away than the bed so there is only one option open to me. I hop back to the steps and climb them, then perch on the edge as I use a tissue from my pyjama pocket to clean the squashed cricket corpses from between my toes. The thought makes me heave but what can I do? I am trapped, a prisoner in my own home, surrounded by a Gryllidae enemy. I long for some antibacterial handwash but I would have to step back into the abyss to get it, so I have to make do with an already soiled tissue.
And all this because I could not deny my son another pet. I am a stereotype of the overindulgent single mother. Will my son grow up with a sense of entitlement because I struggle to say no to him when I should stand firm? No. Henry is a good boy, not some little prince who believes everyone exists to please him. He’s kind, intelligent and sincere, even a bit too serious at times for a boy of his age. Giving him a pet all of his own is a good thing. It provides a sense of responsibility and helps him to understand how important it is to care for an animal properly. I have done the right thing; this will be good for him. Just not for me.
As these thoughts race through my mind, I sit still for a while, gazing into the darkness. My eyes burn with tiredness but I cannot look away in case I come under attack from an advancing cricket army.
I am staring at the floor as the grey dawn light seeps into the room and brings with it another day. I am cold and tired and my head is fuzzy. But only when I am certain that no crickets have found their way up the steps, do I finally surrender and crawl beneath the covers at the bottom of Henry’s bed and fall into a restless slumber.
