Every Good Girl (14 page)

‘He could. Or we could all go to him,' Nina suggested mischievously.

Monica glared. ‘Don't be so silly. When would Graham get chance to do cooking? He's got his work.'

‘
I've
got my work, not to mention the house, two daughters, dog, cat, etc. Oh look, none of that matters just now. How are you feeling? And how did you fall? Did you get dizzy? Because if you did I hope you told the doctor. It might be blood pressure or something.'

Monica closed her eyes wearily and sighed before saying, ‘I wondered when you'd get round to asking how I feel. As a matter of fact what I'm feeling most is furious. They won't even let me walk to the lavatory. They wheel in a commode, and then fuss round the bed with curtains that don't quite close. It's ritual humiliation. I'm perfectly all right and I want to go home. Or a room to myself. You'd think having a son on the staff here . . .' Her voice was rising to petulance. Nina felt sorry for her and reached for her hand. ‘Just stay for tonight,' she said. ‘I'll come and see you in the morning and if you're all right, maybe we can think about getting you home.'

‘What about your precious job? Will you be able to get the time off? You certainly took your time getting here.'

Nina bit her lip. Sally had already done her a favour today, taking over her afternoon at the gallery. The
lunch with Joe, going to his flat, that dreadful fluffy bedroom, the fervent not-to-be-thought-of sex and Catherine's thermometer – it all seemed months ago now. She could almost imagine she'd dreamed the whole afternoon, but her knickers were still damp from Joe and she was quite sure a mild scent of sex hung around her. Any second, she dreaded silently, Monica would sniff the air, nose-up like Genghis, and ask her if she'd been out making new friends.

‘Don't worry, I'll sort something out,' Nina reassured her mother. ‘There might be some other arrangements to be made as well,' she suggested tentatively, waiting to see if her mother had already thought of them.

‘Such as?' Monica challenged, daring her to spell it out.

‘Like proper care for you. If you're going to be falling down the stairs, getting a bit wobbly, maybe we should think about something to make life easier . . .'

‘Like a coffin, I suppose,' Monica snarled.

‘Don't be silly.'

‘You're patronizing again.'

‘I only meant a couple of extra handrails here and there in the house. Something non-slip for the bottom of the bath, that kind of thing. I'll talk to Graham.'

Graham sat gloomily in the pub clinging to his pint of bitter. Jennifer was opposite, her glass of cider long finished.

‘She'll be all right. They're very strong, these old ladies, they're always having falls and getting better again,' she said.

‘She'll decide she's old,' Graham said. ‘And it'll make her angry. She's very good at blaming.'

‘Well she can just blame the stair carpet then, can't she, this time. It's not as if anyone pushed her,' Jennifer
said, with a note of impatience. The words
Not yet
hovered unsaid at the end of Jennifer's sentence. ‘Do you want me to put another half in that glass, because I'm having another even if you're not.'

‘Yeah, all right. Thanks.' Graham pushed his glass across the table and slumped back in his chair. He could see there might be changes ahead and he didn't like change, not unless it crept up very, very slowly. There was something Monica liked to say to people who asked her about living in that big difficult house with all its rooms that no-one went in, something that was just a bit embarrassing, like ‘Well I've always got my great big boy to look after me.' She'd squeeze his arm and he'd feel dry-mouthed dread as if any moment she was going to take out a tiny handkerchief, lick it and wipe his face, just as she had, without fail, every morning when she'd got him out of the house to be taken, ‘by hand' as she'd called it, to the infants' school. She'd say the thing as if it was a bit of a joke, really, just something you said, not meant. Everyone knew that
she
looked after
Graham
. He'd heard the neighbours sometimes, making comments like ‘When's that son of yours going to go off and get married and settle down?' They didn't say it often these days though, as if at his age still being at home with a mother was like the kind of illness that you don't mention. ‘Settling down' made him think of people who were much wilder than him, people on television who did mad comedy shows and then went on and did some really serious acting, or restless junkies like the twitchy skinny ones they got in A & E at work who sometimes didn't die in doorways but got better and went round schools doing talks and helping. Settling down didn't mean him: he was already settled, had never not been.

‘Here, drink this, you'll soon feel better.' Jennifer's large breasts, bulging snugly in her blue cardigan, appeared by his shoulder before the rest of her did. She put the drink on the table. Just breasts and one arm, Graham could see. Breasts to fall into, that's what Jennifer had, arms and breasts to be snuggled in, smothered in. He sipped his drink fast, needing to feel cooler.

‘Thanks,' he said.

‘We could get something to eat, or we could just go back to . . . well there's no-one in at your place, is there?' She looked up at him strangely, a sort of sly coyness in her eyes.

Graham stared at her, not understanding. ‘Home? You mean you want me to take you to
my
home?' His mother was at home; not in body obviously, but in spirit, in influence, in omnipotence and control. She was in the floral wallpaper, the kitchen smells, the bathroom bleach. A reminding hint of her lavender cologne waited for him in the hall. He couldn't take a woman there, because she'd
know
.

Jennifer bit her lip and looked pink. ‘Well, not if you don't want to, of course. I mean I don't want you to think I'm being a bit forward, but we've both been grown-ups for quite a good few years now, haven't we?' He stared at her, saying nothing, feeling flustered. She leaned across the table and took his hand. ‘Look, it's all right, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have even thought of it. I expect you're feeling a bit shell-shocked about your old mum. Another time. Now, are you hungry?'

‘Oh God and it's Lucy's audition this afternoon!'

In the morning Nina stood in the kitchen staring at the wall calendar and willing it to swap its arrangements round so that she could fit everything in. ‘Sally
said she'd do this morning at the gallery, but then I'm supposed to do the afternoon . . .' she muttered away to herself, watched by Emily who guzzled cereal noisily, standing up by the sink. Her schoolbag was ready at her feet, coat flung across it, just in case Nina doubted the need for a speedy getaway and asked her to do something useful.

‘Why don't you get Dad to take Lucy to the audition?' she suggested. ‘Or I could take her, I suppose. Depending on where it actually is, and what time . . .' she backtracked rapidly, as if making the suggestion was more than enough; thinking through to the actual undertaking would be too exhausting.

‘No, it's OK, you're right. I'll ask Joe. At least it's after school so he can't complain it's a waste of lesson time. If he's not actually recording today he might be able to get there on time.' He owes me one, she thought, then corrected herself mentally, for after all it wasn't a question of who owed whom. Such brief, body if not heartfelt passion was hardly a matter of having time to trade. Only the week before Sally had shown her a magazine article called ‘Sex with the Ex: Women who can't give it up!' She hoped she wouldn't turn into one of those.

‘Oh and Henry phoned while you were at the hospital last night,' Emily recalled. ‘He said when do you want him to do the painting, cos he happens to be free at the moment, till the end of next week.'

‘Everything at once,' Nina said, looking round the room and feeling immediately defeated by the amount of clearing out that still needed to be done before the painting could even start. All the shelves would have to be cleared, all the pictures taken down, and the paintwork hadn't been washed and Henry would want the sofas and floor dustsheeted and the rugs rolled up.
She took a deep, resolute breath and started some mental sorting.

‘Right. I'll phone Joe and ask him about Lucy. Megan's taking her to school and should be here any second, Henry I'll call when I get to the gallery and you, Em, are responsible for organizing supper tonight.' She thought for another few seconds, then added, ‘Make it supper for four, perhaps Joe would like to stay. I happen to know Catherine's away and besides, we could talk to you about what you want to do next year, couldn't we?'

‘I wondered when I was going to be consulted about that,' Emily grumbled, putting her cereal bowl into the sink. She looked up, caught sight of her mother's face and hurriedly rinsed the bowl and put it into the dishwasher. ‘Sorry. I will
try
. I've got a lot on as well, you know.' Emily was doing her best to sound grand, like a stressed executive, and Nina laughed. ‘You wait, you just wait. One day you'll know what having “a lot on” can really mean.'

Graham had already taken nightdresses, slippers and washing equipment into the hospital on his way to work. Nina doubted that Monica would be allowed home yet. She'd heard enough stories from Graham about the lengthiness of the Social Services' assessment procedures. Nina had only to find some interesting and heartening accessory to take to her mother that morning. She wondered about flowers, but knew Monica would take that to mean she was in for a long stay that nobody was telling her about yet. A pot plant would be even worse: she'd assume she was a terminal case. Monica loved chocolates, so Nina called in at the small food market opposite the gallery and bought some that had soft centres of kiwi and melon
cream and coffee truffle at a suitably exotic price, then dashed across to Art and Soul to get some gift-wrap from the cupboard under the counter.

‘You're not supposed to be here,' Sally grumbled cheerfully. ‘You're supposed to be hand-holding and heart-to-hearting before it's too late and you end up in therapy dealing with eternal guilt.'

‘Oh thanks a lot, Sal. Sorry to be so disappointing but she's not dying, it was just a fall.'

‘Don't you believe it. They're all dying, old parents. They do it on the sly when you've just had a row and said something terrible. Or they do it while you're stuck in a jam on the M25 half an hour late for lunch with them. You're supposed to hold your tongue about anything that matters the minute they hit sixty-five. Earlier, if they're smokers,' she warned grimly.

Nina pulled out a selection of flowered paper and chose a sheet patterned with sweet peas and some lilac ribbon for the chocolates. Monica would tut about the waste but would carefully roll up the ribbon to keep for another day. She had had a dresser drawer full of such saved treasures in her kitchen ever since Nina was a child. It was probably all still there, all the neat bright rings of ribbon in the huge oak sideboard. They'd still be there after she died, Nina thought, ready for her to sort through. It wouldn't be Graham's job – he'd be too upset. Just as he was too upset at fourteen to bury his pet mouse (‘Nina, you'll do it') and too upset at seventeen to go to his father's funeral (‘A funeral's no place for a schoolboy, Nina').

‘Haven't you got any customers you can harangue? Or what about calling up a few suppliers, give our contributing artists the benefit,' Nina asked Sally.

‘No-one's around yet – it's only just gone ten.' Sally lit a cigarette and opened the gallery door, blowing
smoke out to join the passing exhaust fumes. ‘Isn't it today you're supposed to be taking Lucy back to that second audition for Barbados? You know you could close early and just go, though it is Friday, and . . .' It was like hearing Emily backtracking in the kitchen again.

‘No it's all right, Joe's taking her. He seemed quite happy to, actually, really almost thrilled to have been asked.'

‘Aha!' Sally exclaimed triumphantly. ‘He's feeling left out! They do that.'

‘Like parents
do
die . . .' Nina interrupted.

‘Yeah but men, once you've got rid of them, they go through a phase several months later, just like Joe. I mean, he did demand that extra lunch with you yesterday. They start taking every titchy opportunity to get back in, dipping in and out now and then just to make sure they've got the choice. You should make sure he knows he hasn't. I know, I'll fix up that night out I keep promising us. Then you'll have something to torture him about.' She gave a gleeful chuckle.

Nina smiled but didn't say anything. The feeling had been creeping up on her that she almost wanted Joe to have that choice. At least, she wanted him to want to have it, which might, or might not, amount to the same thing. She couldn't tell Sally what she and Joe had done on that frilly silly duvet: not unless she wanted a lecture on wimpy weakness anyway.

‘If he's going to start having another family with someone else, he won't have any choices about anything for long. He doesn't even seem to have much of a choice about that either,' she told Sally instead. Her fingers, awkwardly tying the ribbon on the chocolates, felt like sausages. Tying gift ribbon was one of those things you really need three hands for. In her head just
then she was suddenly way back, years before, thinking about changing nappies, the tricky little plastic tapes that covered the sticky fasteners. She remembered the dexterity needed and quickly learned, of holding down a wriggling, giggling baby while she fastened a too-big Snuggler round its tiny bottom. Then there were all the poppers on the clothes to negotiate, the kicking little feet in a Babygro . . .

‘They were so sweet,' she murmured, finally tying an acceptable bow.