Читать книгу Summer Holiday - Penny Smith - Страница 8

While he was at his minor public school, Nigel had been called before the headmaster to explain how he had come to be in possession of a packet of cigarettes and a hip-flask full of whisky. During the complicated explanation he had given, in which he had blamed dark forces and a boy who was swotty, spotty, blond and a bed-wetter, he had discovered an aptitude for lying. It was standing him in good stead now, but what he needed were the books his mother had given him and which he had mixed up with two yards of leatherbound dictionaries bought in a drunken moment from Sotheby’s.

When Miranda turned on her mobile phone on Monday, there were several texts and voicemail messages, at least half of which related to the books. ‘Pesky blighter,’ she said aloud, making an avocado, cottage cheese and tomato sandwich for breakfast – she’d had no dinner the night before. There was also a message from Alex, suggesting dinner on Wednesday at Zuma, a very smart restaurant in Knightsbridge. That struck her as odd because he didn’t look the type who would know its name, even less frequent it.

Was he expecting her to pay? Or go halves? Well, if that was the price of hanging out with younger men, she supposed she’d have to bite the bullet.

The trouble was that she had recently put what was left of her cash into a copper-bottomed scheme that Lucy had organised. It had been paying such rich dividends that she had taken out a mortgage on the house and piled in more. She envisaged it growing year by year into a kind of enormous, bouncy pension that she could lie around on in her old age – but it left her very short for day-to-day expenses. That was one major disadvantage in not having Nigel to sort out the finances. And the reason she needed a job.

She composed a text, saying she would love to have dinner with him, then hesitated over whether to put an ‘x’ at the end of the message. She put it on, took it off and put it on. Then took it off just before she pressed send. A date. With a man who was only a bit older than her daughter. Or thereabouts, since she didn’t know for certain how old he was. If he was thirty, he was thirteen years younger, therefore two-thirds her age. Or was that three-quarters? Her maths had always been a bit foggy, particularly round fractions.

She finished her breakfast, and put the items in the dishwasher. Oh dear. Is that one of those non-eco things I shouldn’t be doing, like brushing my teeth without using water? Or was it okay as long as the dishwasher was full? But that meant there would be bits of dried food mouldering away in it, smelling like a teenager’s bedroom.

After a quick shower (saves on water), Miranda threw on an orange and cream Diane von Furstenburg dress and carefully put on her makeup. She had a hair appointment at eleven thirty, which would leave her with just enough time to get to the Lanesborough, near Hyde Park Corner, which did a very fine pot of loose-leaf tea. There she would do battle with her mother. It was a ritual she felt sure neither enjoyed much, but it had become so entrenched in their lives that it would be difficult for them to back out now.

Her mother. Where to start? She had got to that age where every action was accompanied by an equal and inapposite reaction. Bending resulted in a little exhalation, a ‘pah’ of effort. Sitting down occasionally concluded with a full-blown ‘aaaah’. Was it legitimate, she wondered, to say that she loved her mother but didn’t like her very much? That seemed churlish when Miranda knew how much effort it took to raise a child.

A few hours later, in the unforgiving daylight of the glass-domed room, her hair newly highlighted and blow-dried (such a treat after two days of it being sweaty and itchy), she watched as her mother ever so slightly touched her tongue to the cup while sipping the Lady Grey. It was just one of the habits that irritated her. Mothers. Couldn’t live with them, couldn’t shoot them. Although there were those who did, obviously. Her parents had loved Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em – if Miranda ran the BBC (or was it ITV?), she would commission a show called Some Children Do ’Ave ’Em. It would feature a mother who was constantly at you about everything and a father who forgot your name but remembered the hamster’s.

She had a forlorn hope that she would never look like her mother, but was very aware that at some stage she probably would. In which case, she was heading for a mouth like a sucked lemon and long earlobes.

Nigel had cloyingly called her mother a stunner, and it was true that photographs from her youth showed some similarity to Diana Dors. But for half a century she had been married to a philandering workaholic and the stress had left her features crabby and disappointed.

‘What are you going to do with that boy of yours?’ her mother asked, reaching for the pot of clotted cream.

‘Jack is perfectly all right, Mum. He phoned me the other day from Indonesia. He’s on his way to Borneo and I think he said he was volunteering to help at an orang-utan centre. It sounds like he’s having a great time and getting work experience,’ she lied.

Her mother spread a large dollop of strawberry jam on her creamed scone and then consumed half of it. At least I’ll have inherited excellent teeth and digestion, thought Miranda.

‘He needs a sense of direction,’ said her mother. ‘If you hadn’t got divorced, he might have stayed on the straight and narrow. Been working in the City now and saving for a house.’

Miranda listened to the well-trodden rant and continued to sip her tea. Thank goodness for Jack. Weird how Lucy had become so like her father. She had been such a sweet child. Rather like a stuffed squid when she was going through the terrible twos, with dimpled arms and legs that didn’t seem to bend in the middle, but she had turned into a pretty little girl.

‘Did I ever have a comfort blanket, Mum?’ she suddenly asked.

Her mother looked disgruntled at being interrupted just as she was getting into her stride about feckless youth, but finally said, ‘No, not a blanket. There was that stuffed polecat you had from Uncle Ben. You used to suck its ears and scream like a banshee if we didn’t have it with us. Why?’

‘I was remembering how Jack used to take a funny little bear everywhere until he was about eleven. And Lucy had that pink satin blanket from a doll’s cot. I found it the other day when I unpacked a box of odds and sods that’d been in the cupboard under the stairs. She must have lobbed it in there years ago – terrible reek of mothballs. I think I’ve finally found her sentimental streak.’

‘She’s a wonderful girl, Lucy …’

Before her mother could begin a new strand involving her beloved granddaughter, Miranda cut her off by enquiring sweetly if she wanted a top-up because she was definitely having more Darjeeling, and waved over a waiter.

‘Did you have a good weekend?’ asked her mother, searching for a neutral topic.

‘Er, yes, actually. I did some volunteer work at a canal in Oxfordshire,’ she said, clasping her hands together and giving her mother a challenging look.

‘Did you?’ her mother asked, horrified.

‘Uh-huh. It was really good fun. Thought I needed to get out more – do something constructive. It’s a precursor to getting a job. Yes. After all these years. And before you ask, no, I don’t think it will be in the acting world – I’m far too long in the tooth. I don’t know what kind of job, except it won’t be lap-dancing, circus work or anything else that will embarrass the children. Although I quite fancy burlesque … Mum, you should see your face! Anyway, I went to Oxfordshire and met some very nice people.’ Not a total lie. One of them was very nice.

‘Really?’ her mother asked in disbelief.

‘Yes, Mum. They were. Perhaps not the sort of people you’d meet at the Rotary Club, but good sorts.’ What on earth was she saying? She’d be using expressions like ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk’ next.

She pressed on, ‘I enjoyed it so much I’m going to go again.’ So there.

‘Well, it’s very singular of you, Miranda,’ her mother said. ‘If you’re going to do charity work, why not do proper charity work? Doesn’t Lydia do something with disadvantaged children?’

‘Yes. I think she knits them into socks for the army. But I wanted to do something energetic.’

‘You never used to say that at school.’

‘That was rather a long time ago. And I was utterly hopeless at hockey and netball. It’s very dispiriting to be the last person to be picked for the team and it puts you off doing anything energetic. If you remember, I was only good at shot-put, and nobody wants to be good at shot-put unless they’re lesbian.’

‘Miranda!’ Her mother’s eyes darted to the next table.

‘Oh, all right, not lesbian, then,’ said Miranda, wanting to voice the L-word again. ‘Fat.’ What was it about being with her mother that always made her sound like she was seven? ‘The point is, I’m going to go and volunteer again – and I met a rather scrumptious man, who I’m going to have dinner with on Wednesday.’ There. It was out.

‘From canal clearing?’

‘Mum, you’ve done that face where you look like Lamb Chop eating a pretend carrot.’ She laughed. ‘I think he might be mixed race. He’s got dreadlocks. Down to here.’ She gestured to her waist. ‘And now you’re doing what Butter and Marg did when they wanted feeding,’ she said, talking about the goldfish she had won at a fair. They had lived in a bowl that eventually went a livid green and killed its occupants.

‘Does Nigel know?’ she eventually asked.

‘Mum, I’m not married to him any more. I’m a free agent, just like he is. He doesn’t have to tell me about his latest floozy, and I don’t have to tell him what I’m doing.’

‘Have you told Lucy? Or Jack?’

‘Nope. They’ve left home. It’s nothing to do with them.’ Yet. ‘And it’s a dinner date, not a wedding.’

‘But mixed race.’ Her mother shook her head.

‘Mmm.’ Miranda reached for the teapot. ‘He might not be, though. I have no idea. Doesn’t matter either way, though, does it? I think he lives in a camper van. Or that seems to be what he lives in. I don’t know very much about him. I will by Thursday, if you want me to keep you posted?’

Her mother tightened her lips, realising she was being baited and refusing to capitulate.

Miranda left the Lanesborough feeling rather as she had on leaving school, a combination of exhilaration and trepidation. Her dad wouldn’t approve of Alex either. He approved of Nigel and men like Nigel. He read the Daily Telegraph and believed there was too much immigration and that too much of what he paid in tax went to social-security scroungers. On the other hand, they had a cleaner from the Philippines and he kept quite a lot of his money in offshore accounts. ‘If it wasn’t for the stupidly generous state handouts encouraging people to sit at home watching television and producing more children, there would be people available to do the jobs,’ he would declare, to anyone who would listen. ‘As it is, we allow thousands of people to come here and most of them are instantly able to access stuff that we pay for. Why should they be able to go to our hospitals for treatment when they’ve contributed nothing, and send their children to our schools when they don’t even speak English?’

Who was it who said you were only an adult when your parents were no longer around?

Maybe she was having a mid-life crisis. How do you know whether it’s a mid-life crisis or something you’d have done anyway? A friend’s husband had done a classic: he’d run off with a twenty-year-old Norwegian student, spent all his money on renting a smart flat and buying a Porsche, and started wearing low-slung jeans and tight-fitting shirts that looked ridiculous with his mini pot-belly. He’d come crawling back two years later, wanting to be part of the family again.

But Miranda had always had a nice car. And she tried to be on trend if not trendy – maybe she’d have a look for a funky top in one of the high-street shops for Wednesday. Aha, and that’s how the mid-life crisis starts. She smiled. ‘You can drop me here on the corner.’ She handed the cabbie a twenty-pound note. ‘Keep the change.’ It was odd, she thought, how you tipped cabbies and hairdressers, waiters and waitresses, but not gas fitters, car mechanics, salespeople, hospital porters. All of them did you a service, but only some got a little extra cash. And, actually, the waiters and hairdressers she tipped were often bloody annoying.

She would have liked to be the sort of person who had the balls only to tip those who deserved it – the sort of person who took the service charge off the bill or demanded to see the manager. She had done it once and got so hot and sweaty that in the end she had meekly paid up.

Her mobile rang as she was searching for her house keys. Wedging the phone between shoulder and ear, she carried on rifling through her enormous handbag.

‘Hi, Miranda. Wondered if you fancied going to a play tonight? I’ve been let down at the last minute so I’ve got a spare ticket.’

‘What play?’

‘I think it’s called Spurt of the Moment or something like that. Written by some young person. You know me, I book them up so far in advance. Check on the Internet. It’s at the Royal Court. Should be good.’

Amanda Drake was one of Miranda’s closest friends. They had met at antenatal classes when having their first children and done instant bonding, having constantly answered to each other’s names. Amanda’s house was Miranda’s second home, the place where she felt most comfortable. It was full of squashy sofas, huge televisions, palatial bathrooms and a light, airy kitchen where much gossiping was done over bottles of wine. It had been there that Miranda had done her sobbing before, during and after the divorce.

‘I’m desperately trying to get into my house, and can’t find my keys in this stupidly large bag. I’ll call you in a moment,’ Miranda mumbled, unaware that her chin had hit the mute button. She put her bag on the doorstep and took out its contents one by one. It was only when the objects were strewn around her that she remembered she had put the keys in the tiny front zipped compartment while she was in the taxi, so that she could reach them easily.

She piled everything back in and semi-shuffled into her house, turning the alarm off with concentration. She had set it off again the week before, and if there was one more accident, she would lose her police response. No one had told her that, had they, when she’d spent a fortune putting it in?

Miranda was on her way to the bin in the kitchen to throw away drooping roses from a vase on the dining-room table when Amanda rang back.

‘Oh, sorry. I was going to phone you. Got sidetracked by a bunch of past-their-sell-by-date flowers. Is there anything sadder than a wilting rose?’

‘Erm. A child with its leg blown off by a landmine?’

‘Oh, make me sound callous, why don’t you? I meant is there a flower sadder than a wilting rose?’

‘A depressed daffodil? A weeping willow? A lethargic lily? A suicidal scarlet pimpernel?’

‘Oh, enough of the aliteration!’ laughed Miranda. ‘And is there truly a scarlet pimpernel? I thought it was an eighteenth-century spy.’

‘That too.’

‘Let me look at my diary. I’m flicking through the pages as we speak. I’m almost sure I haven’t got anything on … fnaw, fnaw …’

‘Naked at four thirty of a Monday afternoon, eh? Who have you got round there, you saucy minx?’ asked Amanda, in a raunchy voice.

‘Ha. No one. But remind me to tell you of a rather naughty prospect which may be coming up. Literally. On Wednesday. Now. Diary. Here it is.’

‘No. You can’t do that. Tell me about the naughty prospect first.’

‘Shan’t. I’ll check my diary, and if I’m seeing you tonight, I’ll give you all the gory details later. And here we are. Nope. Totally free for – oh, look – the rest of my life. That is shabby. Really. Nothing in the diary apart from tea with Mother, and some dreary dinner party at Sally Thurston’s next week.’

‘Why do you say yes?’

‘Habit. She means well. She’s kind.’

‘Kind of boring, you mean,’ said Amanda.

‘You’re right. How do I get out of it, though, when I’m not doing anything else?’

‘Start doing things.’

‘Okay. You can give me this lecture later. What time tonight?’

‘It starts at seven thirty or seven forty-five. How about we meet at six thirty in the restauranty bit of the bar downstairs?’

‘Fine. Are we having dinner or just a vat of wine?’

‘Maybe a light nibble. And you can tell me exactly what kind of light nibbling you’ve been up to.’