Comfort and Joy (7 page)

I’m not sure I entirely love the juxtaposition of Indian people and monkeys, but I know from long experience that this is
a
losing battle. There aren’t any brown or black people where Pat comes from, and she marvels every time she takes Maisy to
school with me at the multiculturalism on display. Or, as she puts it, the number of ‘darkies’. We had out first row about
this, many aeons ago. ‘Don’t mind me,’ Pat had said. ‘I don’t mean any harm.’ And she doesn’t. However.

‘I don’t think gibbons are little brown monkeys,’ says Tamsin.

‘What are the wee brown ones called?’ Pat asks.

‘Marmosets?’ Sophie suggests, looking confused by the turn the conversation has taken.

‘No,’ Pat says, frowning. ‘Ah, come on, the wee brown ones. Agile, like. They always remind me,’ Pat starts, chuckling affectionately,
‘of Clara’s friend …’

‘Sam!’ I shout across the table in despair. ‘Sam. Darling. Please.’ I flick my eyes to Pat.

‘So,’ Sam says, bang on cue. ‘Who’s coming to see my show on the 27th? I’ve offered you all tickets, right?’

‘He was a lovely wee dancer when he was a boy,’ Pat says to nobody in particular, her mind having – mercifully – wandered
away from primates. She takes a genteel sip of her vodka and lemonade. ‘Loved it. Absolutely loved it. His da and I used to
joke that he was a pansy, didn’t we? Oops,’ she laughs. ‘Not a pansy. Oh, it’s that hard to keep up with how you talk in this
house. What would you say – a gay? We used to think he was a gay.’

‘So you did,’ says Sam. ‘And I’ve always thought you’d secretly like it if I had been.’

‘Ooh
yes
,’ says Pat, nodding violently. ‘I’d have
loved
it. Well, not then – I’d have been that ashamed. I wouldn’t have been able to show my face. Oh, I’d have died. It was bad
enough having to take you to dance classes – I used to cry about it sometimes. The shame, you know.’ Sam rolls his eyes, having
heard this all his life, though the other people round the table look mildly astonished. ‘But I’d love it now. Like in
Sex and the City
! All the gays. Oh, they have fun, don’t they? They have great fun. They’re that colourful.’

‘Do you know anyone gay, Pat?’ asks Tamsin.

‘No, my darling, I don’t,’ Pat says, looking pretty cut up about it. And then, seamlessly, ‘You’d like a gay, wouldn’t you?’
she asks Sophie. ‘One of your kiddies. I can tell. A wee mammy’s boy. A wee gay dote.’

‘I …’ says Sophie. ‘Good Lord, what an extraordinary thing to say. I wouldn’t mind a … gay. A gay child. I wouldn’t mind at
all. But that’s not to say …’

‘Aye,’ Pat says. ‘I knew it. For company.’ As I was saying, Pat occasionally has piercingly acute flashes of insight. This
particular one has the welcome effect of temporarily silencing Sophie. Tim, meanwhile, is now howling with laughter – an oddly
feminine sound – at something Hope, whose breasts are falling out of her dress, has said, and I feel the first twinge of pity
for Sophie. The horrible truth of the matter is, you can home-make all the yogurt you want, but it’s not going to stop your
husband’s eye wandering.

‘Have we finished eating?’ asks Jake. ‘Because I think it’s time for a little smoke. A little doobie. A little blow. Mind
if I skin up, Clara?’

I don’t know what’s happened to my supper. It sounded perfectly normal in my head: a few friends round, a couple of acquaintances,
us, pot luck in the kitchen, two days before Christmas, everyone out by about eleven. Instead, this. It’s not quite the easy,
relaxing evening I had in mind. Good practice for the 25th, I suppose, but still. And now Tim and Sophie, both very active
in the PTA, are going to go back to all the Reception parents and share the glad tidings that we adore make-up and heels on
small girls and like nothing more than a bit of
skunk after supper. Though I suppose I could always come back with the news that Tim likes his wine by the pint.

‘Um,’ I say, inclining my head towards Sophie, and then swivelling it around and indicating Pat. ‘The boys are upstairs. I
don’t want them to come down and find people smoking.’

‘Maybe now’s not a good time, Jake,’ Tamsin says, putting her hand on his; the effect is of marble next to papyrus. But Jake’s
already on his feet and marching up the stairs, trousers squeaking, to see what Jack and Charlie are up to. He comes down
triumphantly a minute later. ‘They’re not there,’ he says. ‘They must have gone to bed.’

‘Ooh, let’s have a smoke,’ says Hope.

‘Ganja,’ says Tim, in his idea of a Jamaican accent. ‘GANJA! Yah mon. Takes me back. Takes me back, Hope.’

‘I don’t know,’ I say lamely, ‘that this is quite the night for it, Jake.’

‘I know what cannabis is,’ Sophie says indignantly. ‘I’m not that square.’

‘Well, none for me, thanks – but suit yourself, Jake,’ I say. ‘Though open the window, would you?’

‘Is that drugs?’ says Pat.

‘Medicinal,’ Jake says, pulling a gigantic packet of grass out of his jacket pocket (denim: the leather and denim combo reminds
me of the Fonz). ‘Relaxes me, that’s all. Soothes away the aches and pains. So that I can concentrate on the important stuff,’
he adds, giving Tam’s thigh a squeeze. ‘Right, babe?’

‘Right,’ says Tam enthusiastically.

‘Drugs!’ Pat says. ‘Well, I never.’ She picks up Jake’s bag and has a good sniff. ‘Smells nice,’ she says. And then, after
a pause, ‘What kinds of aches and pains?’

‘Oh, just the usual,’ Jake says, swiftly constructing an enormous joint. ‘The aches and pains of age, Pat. Though you’re only
as young as the woman you feel, eh?’

‘I know all about those.’ Pat nods. She’s looking more interested than I’m entirely comfortable with: I’d sort of have preferred
it if she’d expressed abject disapproval. I catch Sam’s eye and wince: it seems to me that neither of us is entirely in control
of the situation, but he just shrugs at me and leans back in his chair.

‘You must have smoked, Pat,’ Jake says. ‘At some point in your life. Everyone smoked in the sixties.’

‘No,’ Pat says. ‘That was only on the telly, and we didn’t get one of those till 1969. Dollybirds and parties in London. Such
fun, they looked, the swinging sixties. We liked Val Doonican.’ She does a little dancing motion with her arms.

‘Ah, of course. You’re Irish. No Pill for you,’ Jake says, succinctly. He lights up. ‘I forgot.’

‘I have four kiddies,’ Pat says, laughing. ‘No Pill for me, no. No parties or miniskirts either, mind.’

‘You can make up for it now, Mum,’ Sam says fondly.

‘I’d maybe leave the miniskirts,’ says Tamsin, eyeing Pat’s small, rotund form. ‘That ship has sailed. And Pat’s probably
okay on the contraception front.’

‘Ooh yes,’ Pat laughs, winking – yowsers – at Jake. ‘My cuddling days are over.’

‘You’re only sixty-five, Ma,’ Sam says. ‘You never know. But I didn’t mean miniskirts. I meant, have a smoke.’

‘Did you? Right you are,’ says Pat cheerfully. ‘I will, so.’

See, this is what happens. This is the man I live with – my husband – and he still occasionally has the power to absolutely
astonish me. I mean, he’s encouraging his mother to smoke weed. What is he doing, and why?

Sam and his mother’s relationship occasionally takes me aback. They’re not close in any obvious way; they never say anything
especially nice to each other. They love each other, obviously (though
is
it obvious? Do we all
obviously
love each
other through the goodness of genes?), but they’re not particularly physically demonstrative, and they don’t stand around
saying lovely things to each other. But then, sometimes, you find that they are closer than you’d ever imagined. Once, I came
home to find them both in front of
Sex and the City
, this being Pat’s absolutely favourite programme in the world. Pat was red with mirth and howling with laughter, Sam only
marginally less so. ‘Oh, you have to see this, Clara,’ Pat had said, breathless with giggling. ‘It’s that funny.’

I’d seen the episode in question before: it was the one where Samantha has a boyfriend whose sperm tastes bad. ‘Funky’, if
I remember rightly. Now. The idea of watching this with my own mother doesn’t bear thinking about, and my mother is a metropolitan,
much-married, wised-up sort. The idea of Sam watching it with his totally blew my mind. There they were, huddled companionably
together, honking with laughter at sperm-in-the-mouth jokes. I don’t especially think of myself as a blushing flower, but
I felt so embarrassed that I went downstairs and tidied the kitchen. When I asked Sam about it later, in bed, he said that
Pat was laughing at the alien campness of the programme generally, at the hilarious (to her) out-thereness of the women, rather
than at bad-tasting sperm
specifically
. But I wasn’t so sure. Pat has had four children and, presumably, an active sex life before her widowhood. I couldn’t really
take the conversation forward beyond that without causing myself to visualize Pat administering oral sex, so I didn’t. But
still. I don’t think she’s quite as unworldly as Sam believes her to be.

I don’t know what manner of blow Jake’s brought along to my supper party, but everyone’s completely wasted by the time I dole
out pudding, including – incredibly – Sophie, who took several deep puffs to prove, I suspect, that she was as game as Hope,
who offered Tim a blowback (enthusiastically accepted)
and who is now being stared at by him with unabashed, red-faced, drunken longing. This has the effect of making me cross with
Hope and making me feel sorry for Sophie for the second time tonight, and so I engage her in a safe-territory conversation
about schools and nurseries and local babysitters. We’ve been chatting amiably enough for five minutes or so – about baby
slings, and whether one exists that doesn’t hurt your back – when Sophie suddenly says, ‘Did you like being pregnant?’

‘I loved it. It’s my ideal state.’

‘I hated it,’ Sophie says in a quiet voice, looking straight at Tim, who is not looking back at her. ‘I was so ill, all three
times.’

‘Poor you,’ I say, meaning it. Her face looks smaller than it did ten minutes ago, more vulnerable, and also more stoned.
Across the table, Tim is still drunkenly gibbering at Hope; I notice Sam has poured him more water and is now offering coffee.

‘Constant morning sickness,’ Sophie says, laughing mirthlessly. ‘It never really went away. Pretty much twenty-four hours
a day. The first time round was dealable with, but when you have toddlers running about and you need to throw up three times
an hour …’

‘But Tim helped, I’m sure?’

‘He was working,’ Sophie says.

‘But … but so were you. And you were ill. Looking after children is work too, you know.’

‘Mm,’ says Sophie. ‘So people keep telling me. It’s hardly the same thing as going in to the City at the crack of dawn every
morning.’

‘It’s much worse,’ I say.

Sophie smiles at this, unexpectedly. ‘Can I ask you another thing?’ she says. ‘It’s … it’s quite personal. I wouldn’t dream
of asking normally, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

‘Ask away,’ I say. ‘And it’s Jake’s blow.’

‘It’s about sex,’ Sophie says.

‘What about it?’

‘Did you … After Maisy. Because with me, I’m just … I’m just so tired. So tired,’ she says, closing her eyes.

‘You have three small children,’ I say. ‘Of course you’re tired. You’re exhausted. Maybe stop baking bread and making yogurt?’

‘But Tim … Tim has needs, you know.’

‘Nobody needs yogurt to that extent, Sophie.’

She smiles again. ‘No, not that. He says that if we let our sex life fall by the wayside now, it’ll be the thin edge of the
wedge. And that we must get back in the saddle properly. Gosh, I’m speaking like your mother-in-law. And I am willing, it’s
not that. The body is willing, but the spirit is weak. The spirit is just
so tired
.’

I don’t think this is the time to share my theory about putting out with Sophie. And besides, it’s all becoming clear now.
Sophie has turned herself into some kind of domestic goddess to compensate for the fact that she needs to be asleep by 9 p.m.;
Tim is drooling all over Hope because he’s sexually frustrated and pleased to have someone flirt with him: it means he’s perceived
as more than Dad Man. Hope is letting Tim drool on her because she thinks it means she’s more attractive than his wife, and
that’s the kind of reassurance she needs, because she’s Needy McNeedpants. Hope would kill for Sophie’s marriage and three
children: it’s all she wants. Sophie would kill for a bit of me-time and to have her job back and for Hope’s wardrobe and
enviably flat stomach. Everybody wants what they can’t have: it’s the dance of early middle age, and we’re all doing it. What
freaks me out is that I don’t see any way out: everybody’s going to keep on doing it until they either drop dead or admit
defeat. And even then – admitting defeat only
means trying again later, with somebody else and no guarantees that anything is ever going to pan out differently.

Jake, who has smoked most of the joint, seems the least stoned. He now turns his attention to Hope, staring rather off-puttingly
at her giggling with Tim, until she senses his gaze and is forced to look him in the eye.

‘Hope, darling,’ Jake says, conversationally. ‘Why are you flirting with this poor woman’s husband?’

It’s one of those moments when every conversation taking place around the table coincidentally ends at the same time, and
Jake’s words ring out as loudly and clearly as a bell, except it’s more gloomy tolling than jaunty peals.

‘Not flirting,’ says Hope. ‘Being friendly. I’m just being myself, Jake.’

‘Why don’t we swap places,’ I say. ‘Hope, come and sit next to Tamsin.’

‘Don’t want to change places,’ says Tim. ‘Want to stay here with the sexy lady …’

He is interrupted by the ringing of Sophie’s phone. ‘Damn,’ she says, looking at the screen. ‘Babysitter.’ A quick conversation
establishes that our neighbours need to get home to attend to their youngest child, who has woken up and is refusing to go
back to sleep.

‘Why don’t you go, Tim?’ Sophie says, with a glint in her eye that wasn’t there before. ‘I’ll be along in a while.’