Читать книгу The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia: A Black-Hearted Soap Opera - Sarah May - Страница 15

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The dark was still deep when Dominique left the house at five a.m. Mick’s flight from Florida – his last flight – was due to land in half an hour.

The road from Littlehaven to Gatwick was all new bypass, cutting across land with small strips of forest that deer used to graze in. She remembered pointing out the deer to Delta when she was small, but now there were no deer left to point out to Steph. They’d hit a deer once, in the red Renault, and Mick had wanted to stop and pull the animal off the road, but she hadn’t let him; she’d told him to keep driving. Then it started raining and they had to pull over anyway because the ton of running deer that had hit the windscreen had snapped both wipers clean off and they couldn’t see a thing. She’d tried to remind Mick about that deer a couple of years ago, but he couldn’t remember and this had shocked her. There was no way she could have forgotten a thing like that, but Mick told her, smiling, that he had no memory of it, no memory at all. As if he’d never been there in the car while they waited in the dark for the rain to stop, the dead deer and forest somewhere to their left, and Delta crying uncontrollably in the back. It was a shame the deer were gone, she thought, looking at the early-morning darkness and the way it hid the land’s details.

Leaving behind the patch of countryside the bypass intersected, she entered Gatwick’s network of roundabouts, Jacuzzi showrooms, electronics factories, out-of-town warehouses, hotels and – finally – the airport itself.

She had been a first-class air hostess working long-haul flights when she and Mick met. The first-class bit mattered, and ‘we got it together at fifty thousand feet’ was a conversation opener she still used. Most of the passengers in first class then were men, and she got on with men – even growing up without a father. It was women she didn’t like. Mick once called her a misogynist and it was true. She knew how to make men happy. How did you make a woman happy?

As soon as the plane wheels used to leave the tarmac – wherever she was in the world – she not only felt herself breathing again, but felt pleased to be breathing again. She never got claustrophobic in the pressurised cabin’s few cubic feet of reconditioned air and she never worried about dying. It was being on the ground she was afraid of: gravity. Anything that sucked you in or down or tried to anchor you in any way. She started taking as little time off between flights as regulation allowed and spending more and more time in hotel rooms in foreign cities with curtains shut and phials of sleeping pills, trying to defy gravity. As long as she had movement, as long as she had altitude, she was fine. It was her ground life that was going all autistic on her. Then Mick came along, and he changed all of that. Mick changed all of her.

When she told her mother, who was a scientist researching food dyes, that she was thinking of becoming an air hostess, Monica had just smiled at this new fatality in her life and said, ‘I suppose everybody’s got to do something.’

Then, two weeks later, Dominique got a phone call from her on a busy Friday night at the pub she was working in, and Monica told her she had an interview with someone running training sessions for Laker Air the next day. Which made Dominique feel, when she got accepted on the training programme, that the whole air-hostess thing had been her mother’s idea in the first place; that her whole life so far had been her mother’s idea. Even Mick; even Mick’s love for her; even her happiness – and Dominique being happy or not was the last thing on earth her mother cared about. It was just that happiness was part of the plan Monica had formulated for her daughter in the absence of academic success, because that’s what normal people were: happy. So she presumed.

Dominique stood for a while at the Arrivals barrier watching passengers from the Florida flight, jetlagged, walk through the automatic doors, thinking she should have done what Mick wanted and taken the girls on this last flight with him. Why hadn’t she just gone? She was about to leave her post by the barrier and get a coffee when she saw Laura, whom she used to fly with on Laker Air in the late Sixties.

Laura had always had long hair, but now it was cut short, close to the scalp. Her legs looked long and brittle and her knees too pronounced, but Laura was still flying. Dominique felt herself pause, trying to decide whether she wanted to talk to Laura, who was still flying, or not. Whether she’d ever liked Laura, who was still flying, or not.

‘Dominique. My God. Dominique.’

‘Hey, Laura.’ Up close, Laura felt taller than her, slimmer, and better smelling. The short haircut pronounced her cheekbones and shoulders. Dominique wondered how she was looking under airport strip lighting. ‘Just landed?’

Laura sighed. ‘Just landed.’ She parked the small suitcase on wheels by her side and kept hold of the two duty-free bags.

‘They’ve changed the uniform,’ Dominique said.

‘The uniform?’

She nodded at Laura’s navy suit and Laura looked down. ‘Oh – I’m with BA now.’

‘Since when?’

‘This was my first flight with them. To Delhi.’ She looked down at her suit again. ‘You don’t think it’s too dowdy?’

‘Dowdy? No.’

The two women looked at each other, trying to simultaneously absorb and keep at arm’s length their different lives.

‘God – isn’t it awful what’s happening to Laker?’

‘Well – you got out in time.’

‘Just. It’s the people with families I feel sorry for. God,’ Laura said again, suddenly exhaling. ‘It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’

‘It has – can’t remember how long exactly, but – yes.’

‘Yeah, ages. God. So. You’re here waiting for Mick?’

Dominique laughed without knowing why. ‘He should be around somewhere – the screen says his flight’s in Baggage Reclaim and people are already starting to come through.’ She wished she didn’t sound so vague. It made it seem like her and Mick didn’t really speak any more, like one didn’t really know where the other one was; like they often missed each other.

And sure enough there was Laura laughing and saying, ‘It sounds like you lose your husband a lot.’

‘Not too often.’ Vague.

Laura nodded with her lips partly open. ‘I was in Mick’s cabin crew on the Barbados flight a month ago. One of my last flights on Laker Air.’

Dominique didn’t know what to say to this. Why were they talking about Mick? Laura gave the sleeves of her sheepskin coat a couple of tugs. ‘Where were you?’

‘Where was I when?’

‘Barbados – you should have been in Barbados.’

‘Well, I wasn’t.’

Laura paused. ‘Have you ever been?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve never been?’

‘No.’

‘Well, the next time he flies to Barbados, you get him to book you a seat on the plane,’ Laura said sympathetically. ‘I know it’s difficult with the kids and everything … how many have you got?’

‘Two.’

‘… But you should go. You really should. Barbados is …’

‘Laura!’

They were standing in the shadow of a second air hostess, who Laura didn’t introduce.

‘This is Mick’s wife. Mick Saunders.’

The other girl nodded.

‘I used to fly too,’ Dominique put in, ‘a long time ago.’

The girl nodded again.

‘When did you give up?’ Laura asked.

‘Well – I didn’t really give up – I got married,’ Dominique said, looking for the first time at Laura’s left hand, which was ring-less. She held on to this, and the fact that up close there was a food stain on the lapel of Laura’s jacket.

‘So,’ Laura said heavily, ‘there you go.’

‘There you go.’

‘Well. I’ll probably see you again. Give my best to Mick.’

‘I will,’ Dominique said, hands in pockets. ‘Bye.’

‘Bye,’ Laura replied, steering her friend away.

Dominique was thinking of going to the Laker Air desk and getting them to phone through and find out where Mick was when Laura parked her case and came running back.

‘I meant to say – I saw Mick go up to the observation deck.’

‘The observation deck?’

‘About ten minutes ago.’ Laura shrugged. ‘And I heard about him being laid off – I’m sorry.’

‘Well –’ The way Laura said it made Dominique want to defend, not Mick, but herself. ‘I think he’s pretty pleased about it. The package was good.’ She paused. ‘So good, in fact, that we’re thinking of emigrating to New Zealand and –’

‘New Zealand? When?’

‘I don’t know, I –’

Laura turned abruptly away, tripped over a suitcase somebody had parked in her path, then broke into a run.

Dominique watched her go, feeling unsettled. Something about the way Laura was running made her think she was crying at the same time. She rejoined her friend and the two women in uniform disappeared through the sliding doors that led to the car parks, the friend taking one last look at Dominique before the doors shut again. Dominique stood there wondering what either of them had to show for all those air miles they’d clocked up between them – after how many years of service? And even if there was anything to show – who was there to show it to? She started to make her way to the observation deck, thinking about the food stain on Laura’s lapel. Was Laura happy? Were women like Laura happy? ‘Women like’ – had she really thought that? There were no other women like Laura. There was only one Laura: Laura was unique. Just as she, Dominique, was unique.

She got into the lift, and a few seconds later the doors opened onto a lobby whose floor was covered in rubber matting. Through the lobby doors she saw Mick standing outside in the persistent dark in his overcoat and a pair of gloves. The gloves were thick woollen ones that made his hands look disproportionate to the rest of him, and his pilot’s cap was on the wall beside him.

When the automatic doors opened the wind nearly blew if off. A plane flew over and Mick turned his head to follow its undercarriage.

‘Your hat’ll blow off the wall,’ she said, stepping outside.

He turned round and smiled at her. ‘Hey, you.’

They stood looking at each other.

‘How’d you find me?’ he said at last.

‘Just did. Aren’t you cold?’

‘Maybe.’

They stayed where they were, not moving any closer.

‘Sad?’

‘Maybe.’

She wished she hadn’t said that. It sounded as though she was attacking him in some way. Her clearest, most instinctive thoughts always came across as aggressive when she articulated them.

‘I was waiting for you downstairs in Arrivals.’ She thought about mentioning Laura. ‘I didn’t know where you were.’

‘I was watching the planes.’ He broke off.

For some reason this seemed like a stupid thing for a pilot to say.

‘Was the flight okay?’

‘The flight was fine. How are the girls?’

‘The girls are fine. I left them both asleep. They missed you, but they’re fine.’

‘So everything’s fine.’ He reassured her with a smile, but it wasn’t enough to make her want to cross to him. ‘You know what I was thinking up there? I was thinking – I can’t remember the last time a child asked to come into the cockpit. We never get children up front any more and I was trying to work out why that was; why the fact that aeroplanes stay up in the sky at all doesn’t interest them any more. So I came up here.’

‘To watch the planes?’ she said.

He smiled at her. ‘To watch the planes.’

‘You look tired.’

‘Maybe I am.

‘You sure you’re okay? Nothing happened on the trip, did it?’

‘The trip happened. The flight happened, and the thing I’m still waiting to happen hasn’t yet – so I’m waiting.’

‘What’s meant to be happening?’

‘I’m meant to have some sort of feeling – definitive feeling – about the fact that I’ve just flown a plane for the last time. I don’t seem to be having that feeling.’ He paused. ‘I called you from …’ another plane went over ‘… Florida,’ he shouted. Adding, ‘Don’t worry – everything’s fine.’

‘It’s probably the jetlag.’

‘The jetlag. Probably. It always makes me maudlin.’

‘Well don’t be maudlin – when you’re maudlin you make other people sad,’ Dominique said.

‘So.’ Mick smiled then grabbed hold of her hand, pulling him towards her. ‘Come here.’

‘I am here.’

‘No. Come here.’ He kissed her. ‘I missed you.’

‘I missed you.’

‘I mean I really missed you.’

Dominique laughed. ‘There’s a lot of kissing going on here.’

‘I kissed you once.’ Mick put his arms round her, picking his cap up from the wall.

‘Why aren’t you wearing that?’ she asked.

‘No idea.’ He kissed her again, on the forehead this time. ‘Come on, let’s go home.’

They left the observation deck and got into the lift, walking out a minute later into high-voltage airport lighting. They were holding hands and the world around them was moving rapidly.

The green Triumph made its way down the layers of multi-storey, through the barrier at the bottom and out into the morning.

Mick spoke to the woman in the car-park kiosk, calling her Barbara and asking her when her shift ended. Dominique knew that if she asked him in an hour or even three hours’ time when Barbara’s shift ended, he would be able to say three o’clock without any hesitation. Mick wasn’t just talk, he took people to heart. He listened to them, and they trusted him. Dominique didn’t ask – because the subject bored her – but she was pretty certain Mick had all the data on Barbara: husbands, lovers, children, other jobs. Mick would have the whole Barbara panorama at his fingertips because Mick understood that although Barbara’s life and death meant nothing to him personally, there were a lot of other people to whom it did. This was a leap of faith she herself had never been able to make. She didn’t give a shit about Barbara or how long her shift was, but Mick did.

For a while the road followed a metal fence with runway the other side, then turned off at right angles. She stared at the web of runway and lights and couldn’t ever imagine knowing what they meant.

‘I missed you,’ Mick said, turning to look at her.

‘You said. I missed you too. I think I already said that as well.’

‘One hundred and forty-four hours is a lot of hours to spend away from you.’

‘You were counting?’

‘I always count.’

She smiled and rested her head on the seatbelt. ‘You’ll never have to count again.’

By the time they parked the car outside No. 4, dawn was at last streaking highlights through the remains of night, diluting it with an early-morning grey. Stephanie answered the door in her gymnastics leotard, preoccupied.

‘Hi, Dad – can you make pancakes?’ she said to Mick. Then, turning to Dominique, ‘And can I take the mirror off the wall in the downstairs toilet?’

‘If you want –’

As they walked into the house the phone started to ring. ‘I’ll get that.’ Mick disappeared into the study and Dominique wandered into the kitchen where Delta was sitting drawing at the table.

‘Where’s Dad?’ she said.

‘On the phone.’

‘Somebody called for him a few minutes ago.’

‘Who was it?’

‘I don’t know – they wouldn’t leave their name. How is Dad?’

‘Jetlagged.’

‘No – I mean, how is he?’ Delta lowered her voice, anticipating a searing insight into the state of her father’s mind.

‘I don’t know.’

‘It must be weird,’ she persisted, ‘to suddenly stop doing something like that – after all these years – especially something like flying.’

She was floundering. They’d told her, but not Steph, that Mick had been made redundant. They’d told her that Florida would be his last flight, but they hadn’t told her what to think about this. Whether it was a good or a bad thing; whether it was something they were meant to be celebrating or not talking about. She’d been given facts without guidelines and wasn’t that interested anyway, so she was floundering.

‘Yes, it must be,’ Dominique trailed off.

She opened the fridge then shut it, staring at the magnetic letters on the door’s white surface for a while, trying to make out a pattern. Then, yawning, she went over to the kitchen table and sat down.

‘What are you doing?’ she said, watching her older daughter.

‘A sketch for a mural.’ Delta turned the sketch pad round and carried on adding details with a pencil.

‘What is it?’

‘A matador delivering the coup de grâce. I thought I could paint it on the wall opposite my bookshelves.’

‘Well, I don’t mind you painting there, but …’

Delta wasn’t listening. She turned the sketch pad back round to face her.

‘Won’t it give you nightmares?’

Dominique sat staring at the Great Wall of China, which was December’s picture on the calendar they got free every year from Mr Li’s Chinese takeaway. Then she went to find Mick in the study.

‘That was Station Pets,’ he said when she went in, signalling to her to shut the door. ‘They’ve got two hamsters left: a boy and a girl.’

‘Well, we only want one.’

‘Why don’t we just buy them both – she won’t be expecting two.’

‘But they’ll breed, Mick.’

‘So they’ll breed … we’ll buy a bigger cage or sell them or drown them or something.’

‘Don’t hamsters eat their young?’

‘Not these ones – they’re Russian hamsters. I told him we’d take them both.’

‘So why did you even ask me?’

He smiled at her. ‘He’s got a cage with a wheel, and because we’re taking two hamsters he recommended buying an extension with plastic tubing so they’ve got more to do … some kind of hamster gym. He’ll throw in the exercise ball for free.’

‘Hamsters need exercise?’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘Well, if we’re buying the hamsters we should buy whatever goes with them, you know, whatever makes them happy.’ She watched him run his finger along the edge of the desk. ‘What about the Sindy House?’

‘We’d better keep it – she might change her mind again. We could just give her both anyway.’

‘The Sindy House and the hamsters? I don’t know, Mick.’

She looked at him standing there in his uniform. How did he do it? How did he walk off a plane and into No. 4 Pollards Close and just pick up all the threads like that as soon as he crossed the threshold? She couldn’t have done that. He’d just landed a plane that had been in the air for over eleven hours and here he was talking about hamsters and Sindy Houses like he’d never been anywhere but here all the time. Maybe that’s why she stopped flying when she had Delta. Why they both decided she should stop when Delta arrived, because they both knew that if she carried on, one day she’d get onto a plane and never come back. Whereas Mick never had to come back because he’d never left in the first place.

‘Stephanie wants pancakes for breakfast,’ she said, as the phone started ringing again.

‘Hello?’ Mick sank onto the corner of the desk, his hand resting in his groin while staring at Dominique. ‘Hello? Monica? No – I just got back from Florida. Didn’t hear about any tornadoes – what? She’s just here,’ he said, passing the receiver over.

‘Stephanie wants pancakes,’ Dominique whispered, in a sudden panic.

‘You said.’

‘Don’t make Scotch ones, I want normal ones – lemon – sugar.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out.’ Mick blew her a kiss then left the room.

Sitting down at the desk, Dominique watched the door shut behind him. She was alone in the study with her mother.

‘Dominique?’ The voice was impatient, almost angry.

The first of her mother’s boyfriends she remembered was Clive, a child-development researcher, who specialised in Early Years. His arrival in their lives coincided with her own early attempts at speech, and on his advice the ‘mumumuh’ she was beginning to stutter was encouraged to become ‘Monica’ rather than ‘mummy’ because Clive believed that the great universals ‘mother’ and ‘father’ should be unleashed from their biological fetters and given spiritual status instead. They even managed to get the Danish au pair to go along with this. Clive stayed in their lives for only nine joss-stick-filled months, but two of his legacies remained (because they suited Monica): a belief that yoga was necessary to civilisation, and that Dominique should never have recourse to use the word ‘mother’ or any of its diminutives.

When she’d had Delta, she’d asked Monica if her daughter could call her ‘grandma’, but Monica said there was no way she could do ‘grandmother’ when she hadn’t even done ‘mother’.

‘Dominique?’

‘Sorry, sorry – we just got back from the airport. Where are you, anyway? Minnesota?’

‘Minnesota? Who told you I was in Minnesota?’

‘Mick did, I think. Anyway – I thought you were in Minnesota.’

‘I was in Montréal. Montréal’s got nothing to do with Minnesota. Are you sure he said Minnesota?’

Dominique wasn’t sure any more.

‘You probably heard him wrong.’

‘Probably. I don’t remember.’

‘That’s your problem, Dominique, there’s very little you do remember.’

‘I remember things,’ Dominique said slowly.

‘What would I be doing in Minnesota anyway?’ Monica cut in.

‘I don’t know, but weren’t you meant to be spending Christmas there?’

‘Where?’

‘Minnesota.’

‘I wasn’t in Minnesota,’ Monica exploded, ‘I was in Montréal. Montréal, Canada.’

‘Sorry,’ Dominique said. Then again, ‘Sorry.’

‘And no, I wasn’t meant to be spending Christmas in Montréal – I was running tests on healthy animals with the help of some people there so that we can get this new red food dye approved.’

‘So …’ Dominique said, unwilling to follow any of this. ‘Where are you now?’

‘Gatwick.’

‘Gatwick?’ Dominique sat up and looked out the study window at the side passage where there was mint growing between the paving slabs and the fence. ‘We were just at Gatwick.’

‘I’ve got some other people to see at Ciba Pharmaceuticals about the new dye, which is why I flew back.’

‘Ciba? How long are you at Ciba for?’

‘Oh – just a few days.’

‘But it’s Christmas Eve tomorrow.’

‘Yes.’ Monica paused. ‘So – how are all of you?’

‘We’re all fine – Stephanie’s excited. About Christmas. Stephanie’s excited about Christmas.’

‘And is Mick off flying again soon?’

‘Mick never flies over Christmas.’

‘Right. So. You’re all pretty busy then.’

‘Not really. Just getting ready for Christmas.’ She wished she could stop saying the word ‘Christmas’.

Monica paused again. ‘I did phone last week – I spoke to Mick.’

‘Mick? He didn’t say.’

‘I phoned right after I heard about the Harrods bomb. I was in Canada and I saw it on the TV, and I had this sudden feeling you might be up in London shopping, so I rang …’

‘When was the bomb?’

‘The seventeenth.’

She could hear Monica trying not to become angry with her again for not knowing the date of the Harrods bomb when it only happened six days ago. ‘I wasn’t up in London then.’

‘I know – Mick said.’ Monica paused. ‘I was thinking …’

‘What?’ Dominique laughed nervously. ‘You want to spend Christmas here?’

Monica breathed out. ‘I suppose I could do, couldn’t I?’

Dominique stared at Linda Palmer’s gazelle that Mick had brought downstairs and put on his desk. What was it he’d said about the gazelle? He’d said that it confronted him – that the gazelle confronted him. There was something going on between Mick and the gazelle that she didn’t understand, and it wasn’t even his – it belonged to Linda. She picked it up then put it down. How exactly did a wooden animal that fitted in the palm of your hand get confrontational anyway? She didn’t like it.

‘But you’ve probably made arrangements,’ Monica was saying. What else had Monica said that she hadn’t heard? This was something she’d always been able to do – fade people out. When she was a child she used to be able to make them invisible as well. Something that had prompted Monica to have her tested for epilepsy.

‘No arrangements – no. We’re having a small party on Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day – just family.’

‘Well, I’m family …’ Monica said.

Dominique heard the airport down the phone, and the Tannoy announcing a delay to the Dubai flight had more clarity for her right then than anything she and Monica were saying.

‘If you’re sure that’s what you want to do,’ she said. ‘Christmas here, I mean.’

‘And if you’re sure you could put up with me for three to four days,’ Monica said. Now it was her turn to laugh nervously.

Dominique didn’t say anything. She’d never heard Monica laugh nervously before. ‘So – do you want to come straight here or are you going to Ciba first?’

‘No, I’ll come to you.’

‘You’re sure? I can get Delta to come and pick you up?’

‘Delta drives?’

‘She was eighteen on her last birthday.’

‘I’ll get a cab.’

‘I would come myself but we’ve just got back from the airport.’

Why was Monica doing this? She’d never spent Christmas with them before – maybe once when Delta was small, but never more than once. Dominique couldn’t work out Monica’s motive – and life, for Monica, had to have motive.

‘I’ll get a cab.’

‘Okay – fine.’

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘Of course.’

‘You don’t sound sure.’

‘It’s unexpected, that’s all.’ Dominique paused. ‘Impulsive; and I’m not used to that in you. You’re not a very impulsive person.’

‘Well, I was here, and I thought … well, it’s Christmas.’

‘It is Christmas.’

The Tannoy was updating people about the Dubai flight, then the phone flatlined.

She stared out the window at the mint again, wondering where it came from. She’d gone through a stage of reading gardening books and they all warned against mint; mint and bamboo. There were others she couldn’t remember, but they were all difficult to control, and she never could work out why this was seen as a bad thing.

Out in the hallway, Stephanie was doing a headstand over the bathroom mirror, which was on the floor between her hands. ‘What are you doing, Steph?’

There were flecks of spittle on the mirror.

‘Watching the blood in my head,’ she said with difficulty.

‘Well, stop it – you’ll make yourself sick.’

‘It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Steph – pancakes,’ Mick’s voice called out from the kitchen.

Steph was leaning against the hallway wall looking at her Mickey Mouse watch. ‘Four minutes and twenty seconds that time,’ she said, walking unevenly into the kitchen where there was a plate of immaculate pancakes on the bench next to the hob.

Dominique followed her in. ‘Monica’s coming for Christmas.’

Mick, still in his pilot’s uniform, put the pancakes on the table. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I’ve just spoken to her.’

He got the maple syrup out of the cupboard and didn’t say anything.

‘Who’s Monica?’ Stephanie asked.

‘She’s your grandmother,’ Mick said.

‘Mick – you know we don’t call her that.’

‘OK. She’s Mummy’s mummy, which makes her your grandmother, only we call her Monica because she suffers from a disorder called babushkaphobia.’

‘What’s babushkaphobia?’ Delta asked.

‘A woman’s aversion to her grandchildren.’

‘But we don’t know a Monica, do we?’ Stephanie insisted.

‘She was here about a year ago – maybe longer,’ Delta said, without looking up from her matador.

‘Is she the one with the short hair and dragonfly earrings?’ Stephanie asked.

‘I don’t remember dragonfly earrings,’ Dominique said, sitting down at the table. Mick made his way round everybody, sprinkling chocolate drops from a packet over their shoulders and onto their plates.

‘Well, I do,’ Stephanie said.

‘Why’s she coming now?’ Delta asked.

Dominique shrugged, looking up at Mick. ‘She said she phoned last week?’

‘Last week?’ He thought about this. ‘She did phone last week – to make sure none of us got blown up in the Harrods bomb.’

‘That’s what she said.’ Dominique looked down at her pancakes. Mick had sprinkled chocolate drops in the shape of a heart.

‘Why’s she coming now?’ Stephanie repeated. ‘I hate Monica.’