Another Life Altogether (16 page)

My father shifted in his chair and muttered something under his breath. I wanted Tracey to sit down, to stop mulling over the photographs and trophies, to leave my dead uncle alone on the mantel. But she continued to pick up and examine the trophies. “They’re a bit dusty, you know,” she said, running her finger over a large silver cup and then indicating the patch of gray dirt on her fingertip. “It’d be nice to clean them up, don’t you think? Honor his memory.”

My father closed his eyes and sighed.

Granddad, on the other hand, seemed delighted at the idea. “Aye, you’re right about that, young lady. They do need polishing up. Your mam used to do it once a week,” he said, turning to my father. “But me, I’m no good with things like that. Maybe I’ll ask Evelyn to do it for me. What do you think?”

“You can ask her,” my father answered dubiously. A resounding bang followed by several smaller crashing noises emanated from the kitchen.

“Maybe I’ll wait,” Granddad said, pushing back the top of his brass lighter, striking the flint with a flick of his thumb and lighting his cigarette. “I just hope that’s not the best china she’s messing about with.”

“I’ll do it,” Tracey said. “I’ll give them a dusting. And I know how to polish things. I watch my mum polish her and my dad’s ballroom-dancing trophies all the time.”

“That would be champion, would that,” Granddad said.

“No, Tracey, it’s all right. Just leave it,” I said. I saw the annoyance on my father’s face, the way that all this talk of his dead brother seemed to upset him, make him sink further into himself.

“No, I want to,” Tracey insisted. “I think it’s important.”

“You’re a good lass,” Granddad said. “It’s a pity it takes a stranger to take care of the lad’s memory, it really is. There’s a tin of polish and a duster somewhere in one of them cupboards in the kitchen. Ask Evelyn. She’ll help you find it.”

Half an hour later, the room was filled with the caustic smell of Brasso, Uncle Brian’s trophies were sparkling, and the rugby match had ended. When the final scores were announced, I finally realized that we had been watching England playing New Zealand. And, as seemed the norm for almost every international sport, England had lost.

“No wonder this country’s such a mess,” Granddad declared. “Wasn’t so long ago those people were living in our colonies. Now they’re beating us at the sport we bloody well invented. I don’t know what this country’s coming to. If you ask me, it all started to go down the drain when we ended national service. Well, that and letting all those Pakistanis and West Indians in.” He puffed on his cigarette for a few seconds, then, as an afterthought, added, “At least
they
don’t play rugby.”

“But they’re damned good cricket players,” my father said.

“Yes, well,” said Granddad, stabbing the air with his cigarette. “That proves my point then, doesn’t it?”

“What point?” I asked.

“That we should keep England for the English,” he responded. “None of this colored immigration. None of this racial mixing. They’re sneaking in everywhere these days.”

My father heaved a sigh. This was a theme that Granddad revisited almost every time we saw him.

“Watering down the English culture, they are,” Granddad continued. “And that’s what made England great, you know. The culture. There’s
only one Shakespeare. Only one Winston Churchill. Only one …” He cast about for a few seconds, frowning and taking a puff of his cigarette. “Only one Tom Jones.” He gave a satisfied nod.

“Tom Jones is Welsh,” I said.

Granddad shrugged. “Aye, well, British, though, isn’t he?”

“And he’s got a lovely voice,” my mother said. “But that’s what they say about the Welsh, isn’t it? They might have a bit of a funny accent, but they don’t half know how to sing.”

Granddad let out a loud dismissive snort.

“We read Shakespeare at school,” Tracey said. “It was dead boring.”

“Yes, well, I’ve never read him myself,” Granddad admitted. “All those to bes and not to bes, all that wherefore art thou Romeo rubbish. It’s a bit much, really.” He paused to take a loud, long sip of his tea, wiping his lips with the back of his hand before going on. “But it’s the English have made the biggest contribution to world literature, there’s no denying that. I mean, England’s produced all the world’s best poets. I mean, there’s … Wordsworth … Keats, and that bloke—you know, the one they have as the poet laureate, the one that writes poems for the Queen’s birthday. It’s not as if them West Indians have produced any great writers.”

“How do you know?” I asked, guessing that Granddad was even less qualified to make pronouncements about foreign literature than of his native tongue.

“Yes, how would you know?” my mother echoed, leaning toward Granddad in an effort to ensure that he heard this particular question quite clearly. “I mean, you already said yourself you’re not much of a reader.” She gave a triumphant nod.

“You know, you’re right about that, Evelyn,” Granddad said, turning toward her slowly, a smile itching at the edges of his pale lips. “But then I don’t have the time. Not like some people. I mean, if I managed to get myself put in the nuthouse for a couple of months, then I’d have plenty of time to catch up on my reading.” He looked at Tracey, smiling wider
now. “Yes, that’d give me enough time to get through the entire works of Shakespeare, don’t you think?”

“Well, I suppose so …” Tracey began, looking a little confused as she eyed my mother, then me.

I began pulling at a loose thread in one of the settee cushions. As I felt the heat of Tracey’s questioning eyes on me, I tugged hard and a wide patch of the cushion’s fabric began to work loose. I feared that our friendship would unravel as easily as that thread. Within seconds, Tracey would learn the awful truth about my mother and she’d run screaming from the house. I wanted to do something to stop it, but I felt paralyzed. Instead, I watched the stitching on the settee come undone and waited for the inevitable.

“I don’t think people in nuthouses are allowed to read,” Tracey said matter-of-factly as she turned back to Granddad. “I mean, don’t they lock them up in straitjackets and padded cells? I saw one on the telly once, and it looked a bit like a prison, it—”

“Right, then,” my mother declared, springing up so abruptly that Tracey and I knocked against each other at the other end of the settee. “I think we’d better be leaving. Come on, Mike, we’ve got to get over to Mabel’s now. Jesse, you and your friend get yourselves ready. I’m off outside. I think I need a breath of fresh air. Bye, now, Dad,” she said, the words falling behind her as she strode down the hall.

Tracey gave me a bewildered look. I shrugged and stood up.

“Shame you’ve got to go,” Granddad said, rising from his chair. I thought he was getting up to wish us goodbye, but instead he walked over to the television and switched the channel to the wrestling and went back to his armchair. “This should be a good match,” he said, waving his big weathered hand toward the screen.

IF THE ATMOSPHERE
in the car had been chilly before we arrived at Granddad’s, it was positively frozen when we left. My father, true to
form, seemed determined to pretend that everything was fine, while my mother fumed silently. If she’d been a cartoon character, there would have been steam coming out of her ears.

“Right, then, let’s get off to Mabel’s then, shall we?” my father said cheerily, turning the key in the ignition and putting the car into gear. “I bet she’s going to be pleased to see us.” He beamed toward me and Tracey in the mirror. “Do you want to pick up a cake or something on the way, Evelyn?” he asked, smiling at my mother now.

“No,” she answered stonily.

“But I thought you wanted to get Mabel a cake,” my father said. “You know your Mabel likes a nice bit of cake.” I sat directly behind him, pressing my knees into his seat and willing him to shut up.

My mother turned to him. “Are you deaf?” She had put her sunglasses on for the car journey, but she took them off now, widening her eyes at him expectantly. “Don’t tell me you’ve inherited that from your father as well? I said”—she began speaking very slowly and very loudly—“I don’t want to get a cake, and that means I don’t want to get a cake. Understand?”

“For God’s sake, Evelyn, I was just trying to be helpful.”

“Well, don’t bloody bother.” She looked out the window, paused for a moment, and then swung around to look at me in the backseat. “And you, Jesse, make sure you behave yourself when we’re at our Mabel’s, can you? I’m sick of this family showing me up.”

“I didn’t do anything! Don’t go blaming me just because Granddad upset you.”

“Too clever for your own good, that’s what you are,” she said, turning toward the front and putting her sunglasses back on.

“But I didn’t do anything,” I repeated. Neither of my parents responded.

It took us twenty minutes to get to Auntie Mabel’s house—twenty minutes of stiff, angry silence that was beginning to take its toll even on Tracey. As we clambered out of the car, she whispered to me, “Did I say something wrong at your granddad’s house?”

“No,” I said, desperately hoping that this excursion wouldn’t put an end to our friendship, though at that moment I wouldn’t have blamed her for demanding to be driven back to Midham and declaring that she never wanted anything to do with my family again. I only wished I had that option.

“Well, it’s just that I don’t think your mam likes me very much.”

“It’s all right, she doesn’t like anyone,” I said, hoping that she might find at least a little comfort in this, and then adding, in a tone that sounded more desperate than I had intended, “But I like you. And I really, really want you to be my friend.”

“EVELYN, MIKE, JESSE!
By heck, this is a lovely surprise.” Despite her exclamation, Auntie Mabel didn’t exactly sound thrilled to see us standing on her doorstep. In fact, she looked somewhat perturbed—perturbed and a little disheveled. It was very out of character. Mabel was the kind of woman whose very first actions of the day (after lighting a cigarette) were to remove her hairnet and curlers, tease and shape her hair, and apply her makeup. In all the years I’d known her, I’d never seen her without eyebrow pencil and mascara, her hair vigorously styled, her body pressed into a Playtex Cross Your Heart Bra and Eighteen-Hour Girdle, her tamed curves straining against the seams of a tight dress. Now here she was at half past three in the afternoon, her hair flattened against her head, wearing a red nylon dressing gown and last night’s faded makeup. In fact, her eyebrow pencil and mascara had come off almost completely and I was struck by how amazingly small her eyes appeared without their usual adornment.

“Did you just get out of bed?” my mother asked accusingly, apparently forgetting that she was in the habit of rising well after the noon hour herself.

“Well, how was I supposed to know you were coming round? What, don’t they have phones where you moved to? I mean, couldn’t you have given me a ring?” Mabel put her hands in the pockets of her dressing
gown and leaned her shoulder into the doorjamb. In the bright sunshine, her shrunken eyes narrowed to flickering slits as she peered beyond her tiny square of yard to the massive concrete edifices of the tower blocks beyond.

Mabel had moved to her new council estate only a year before. The city had grand plans for slum clearance, and forced from the terrace house, almost identical to Granddad’s, that she’d occupied for as long as I could remember, she’d packed up her things and settled into this box-shaped little home. She didn’t care for it much, but she counted herself lucky, since a past relationship with one of the men in charge of the relocation plans had meant she’d been able to avoid moving into one of those immense buildings that now blocked her view of the sky.

“We wanted to surprise you,” my mother replied. “And, besides, you haven’t exactly been ringing night and day yourself. I don’t remember the last time I heard from you.”

Mabel gave a guilty shrug. “I know, I know. I’ve been a bit busy recently, what with one thing and another. You know how things can be, Ev.”

“Well, are you going to invite us in, then?” my mother demanded. “Or are you going to leave your own sister standing on your doorstep?”

Mabel shot a look over her shoulder down the hallway, then turned back to us, sighing. “You’re right. I’m terrible, aren’t I? Come on, come in.” She gestured us into the house. “Ooh, it is lovely to see you, our Jesse,” she said, pulling me toward her as I stepped into the hall. She kissed me on the cheek and pressed me into her shoulder. “And is this a friend of yours, then?” she asked, releasing me and gesturing toward Tracey.

“This is Tracey,” I said.

“You’re a bonny lass,” Mabel said. “But you could do with a bit of meat on them bones, love.” She reached out and gently pinched one of Tracey’s skinny arms. “See, hardly anything on you. Come on, I’ll give you something to fatten you up a bit. But first I need a minute to put my face on and make myself decent.”

While Mabel went upstairs, my mother went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea. My father slunk off into the living room, where he turned on the television and commenced watching the wrestling. Tracey and I followed him, sat down on the settee, and began leafing through the copies of
Woman’s Weekly
that Mabel kept in a stack on her coffee table. We turned to the “problem pages” in the back.

Most of the problem-page letters were filled with words like “menopause,” “ovaries,” “infertility,” questions about bodily functions that seemed dull, and a little disgusting, older women’s problems that we knew didn’t apply to us. The ones we searched for were about sex. Some actually used the occasional “penis,” “vagina,” and “sexual intercourse,” and when Tracey or I came upon one of these forbidden words we nudged each other and read the letters in furtive, giggling whispers.

“Hey, listen to this one,” Tracey said, jabbing me with an elbow. “‘Dear Jill, I have a very difficult and embarrassing problem to share with you. But I have decided to write because, quite frankly, I really don’t know what else to do. There’s a woman who moved into the house two doors away from mine about a year ago. In the last few months we’ve become very close friends. She understands me in a way my husband doesn’t. Recently, I’ve begun thinking about her all the time—and not just as a friend, if you understand what I mean.’” Tracey barked out a laugh before pressing her hand to her mouth and sniggering into her palm.