Did The Earth Move? (8 page)

Eve was hacking hard at a particularly stubborn root with a garden trowel when Tom's head unexpectedly poked out of the back door.

'Hello,' he said with a smile and ambled into the garden, all rangy, blond-topped six-foot-two of him, gangling along in his oversized jeans and 'Porn Star' T-shirt.

'Hello there!' she answered and watched him walk over, taking in how handsome he looked – slim, big shoulders, a square face with long, surfer hair. She thought he was fabulous.

And she of course was her usual completely extraordinary self, he couldn't help thinking, grinning as he walked towards her: her blond mane tucked up into a hideous old khaki hat. The rest of her outfit was no better – a fuchsia and white, too tight, tie-dyed top, armfuls of bead bracelets, baggy combat trousers and a pair of filthy old walking boots. But he adored his mum.

'Come here,' she smiled and opened her arms. He bent down to kiss her face and gave her a quick hug.

'Where are the kids?' he asked.

'They've gone to see Jen's new kittens,' she said. 'But you are just what I need.' She looked back down at the deep trough she'd dug all around the offending plant: 'Brute force. Will you pull this bloody bush out for me?'

'Oh bad karma, man! Why are you digging up the roses?'

'Only this one. It's all straggly and mangy despite everything I've done for it and look, don't debate it with me – just pull! Here, you'll need my gloves, it's really prickly.'

Tom forced his hands into her small gloves, stiff with earth, and grasped the base of the bush. He strained hard against it, and with a crack the root snapped and the bush tore away.

'There you go!' He tossed it onto the ground and they grinned at each other.

'What are you doing here anyway?' she asked, because it was a Friday afternoon, still not gone 5p.m. 'Shouldn't you be at work, dot.com.ing away?'

He laughed at this then his face switched to serious. Even a little bit nervous, she thought.

'Out early for good behaviour, but there's something I want to talk to you about. I wanted to see you on my own.'

'OK.' She took her hat off to get a better look at him. 'I'm all ears,' she smiled to reassure him.

'Right.' He ran his hands through his hair and tried to smile back, 'here goes . . . Deepa is pregnant.'

Before this had even really registered with her, he added: 'And we're planning to have the baby – and get married.'

'Deepa's
pregnant?'
she asked, with the very slimmest of hopes that maybe she'd heard this all wrong and Tom was talking about someone other than his girlfriend of two minutes. Eve really liked Deepa but...
babies? Marriage?
She was still trying to come to terms with the last shock marriage announcement to hit her. This did not compute ... did not compute. No!

'Yeah.' Tom stuffed his hands into his pockets and pulled his jeans up.

'How did this happen?' What kind of stupid question was that? she wondered, as soon as she'd asked it.

'Umm . . . the usual way, I suppose,' Hint of shy grin.

'You've known about contraception since you were
six,
Tom. There really isn't any excuse,' she snapped.

Tom gave a reply that was somewhere between a mumble and a giggle and hoicked his jeans up again, which was pointless because they were too wide and they sagged down as soon as he let them go.

She could feel the angry heat in her cheeks. Her son Tom, just turned 20, just landed his first proper job was seriously contemplating marriage –
parenthood
– with a student just a little bit younger and a little less dizzy than him. He had no idea! They had no idea! And the worst thing – the part that was really bringing hot tears to the back of her eyes – was that this is what had happened to her. Pregnant at 20, married the bloke . . . and look how badly that had turned out.

She'd wanted things to be so different for her children.

Oh God.

Tom put an arm round her. 'Sorry,' he said, patting her head against his shoulder.

She put her hand on his back.

'Oh Tom. This is going to be so hard. A baby? Have you really thought this through?'

'Yeah, we have. We've given it a lot of thought. It's not what we planned, but what is?'

She was struck by the note of seriousness in his voice.

'Do you love her?' she asked.

'Yeah, I love her and she loves me and we'll work out the baby thing.'

He made it sound so simple. That's how it was when you were 20. Fairly straightforward, you didn't see all the other complicated stuff that proper, older, grown-ups suspected lay ahead for you.

But she felt a bit better.

'It'll be cool, Mum,' Tom said and did his jean-pull thing again.

'You need a belt,' she said and he just smiled.

'Robbie's going to be an uncle,' she added. 'And he's only two.' She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at this, didn't know which way it would go.

'It'll be cool.' Shrug, pull at jeans. She couldn't believe he was really 20. The same age she was when she'd had Denny. Tom still seemed such a
teenager
and she'd thought she was such a grown-up back then. It made her laugh to think of herself at 20, all tailored suits and blow-dried hair. She'd thought she was so adult, and look at me now... Not for the first time, did she wonder if she'd done everything a bit backwards. Back then she'd been a married, two-children, suburban housewife with a businessman husband, a proper swank house, antique furniture and clothes which almost all needed dry cleaning. Now, she was single,
dating,
muddling along with post-teens and young children, living in a basement flat, listening to pop music, dressing at Top Shop. Her own life had run in a strange and unpredictable way.

'When's the baby due?' she asked, pushing her hair back from her face and wiping her hands down on her trousers.

'The start of September. She's 18 weeks ... I know we've taken a while to start telling people. It was a big decision.'

She noticed the 'eighteen weeks'; her son was already talking pregnancy terminology. 'Sick?' Eve asked.

'As a dog. It would be quite funny, if I didn't feel so sorry for her.'

'Poor thing. Has she tried ginger biscuits?'

'Mum, she's tried ginger everything – ginger biscuits, ginger tea, ginger wine. Raw grated ginger. Barfed it all up.'

'Poor, poor thing... Do her parents know yet?'

'Ermrnrn... I think she's going to tell them this weekend. I don't know if I'm going to go along or not. I don't want to get hit or anything.' Smile, shrug, tug at jeans.

'Oh God. Are they ... ummm? Is Deepa ...?' What was the currently PC way to ask about your son's Asian girlfriend's um . . . cultural heritage?

'D'you mean religion and stuff?'
Religion and stuff?!
Well that was one way of putting it.

'Yeah.'

'They're all C of E, lapsed. The missionaries must have got to their ancestors or something.'

'Can I make one suggestion?'

He nodded.

'Please don't wear that T-shirt when you go with her to meet the family.'

'Oh yeah ... right.'

'Porn star!' He even had one top he'd worn round for Sunday lunch, quite blissfully unaware, emblazoned 'Masturbation is not a crime.'

'Do you really need to get married?' she asked. Marriage seemed far too complicated an arrangement for them both to rush into. 'Wouldn't it be better to try living together with the baby first?' she asked.

'We want to get married, Mum. Give it our best shot.'

She had to admire their enthusiasm . . . blind optimism: 'When?' she asked.

'Before the baby gets here. Deepa wants to go for June. The local church, hotel with a big garden. She wants the white dress, veil, wedding car – the lot. Bump and all!'

'And what do you think about that?' Eve wondered.

'Well, it's not really my style. But if that's what she wants . . . And she flunks it will bring her parents round ... so ... it's cool.'

'Hmmm. D'you want some tea?' she asked.

'Have you got cakes?' Even in a crisis, Tom could eat cakes.

'Yes. I have cakes. Joseph's getting married too,' she told him, trying to sound ultra casual.

'Oh yeah? Who to?'

'His girlfriend, Michelle.'

'Wedding frenzy then.' And that was all he seemed to want to say about it, which surprised her.

At the back door, as she stopped to kick off her muddy boots, he added: 'There's something else too...'

She turned to face him, foot dangling mid-air, and when he saw the hole in the toe of her sock Tom felt a stab of sympathy for his mother and wondered if he really had the right to put her through this.

'Yes?'

'I want to invite my dad... you know, Dennis, to the wedding. And maybe his family too, if they'll come.'

Eve carried on taking off her boots.

'I see,' she said finally. 'Well, you can't really expect me to be thrilled at the prospect of that.'

'No.'

She was beginning to wonder what she was going to be hit with next. Anna exposed as a playground drug dealer? Robbie offered chairmanship of Lego?

Dennis. Tom wanted to invite Dennis to the wedding ... as simple as that. Dennis, the dad who had walked out on her and Denny and Tom about sixteen years ago now. They had, of course, seen him since then. He'd had to get back in touch for the divorce. Then followed erratic cheques and even more erratic visits, when he breezed into the country, phoned from his all-expenses-paid Trusthouse Forte suites and chaperoned his dazed sons through several days of money, treat and sugar rush highs. They got everything they wanted at Hamley's, ate sundaes for supper, went to the zoo, whizzed round Hyde Park on their brand new roller-blades, skateboards – whatever it was he'd bought them that time. Then, at the end of his visit, they would be handed over to her for a sobering detox and back-to-reality bump.

Dennis the Dog . . . Dennis the . . . whatever really ugly word began with D. Dope? No. Dunce? No. Duplicitous dog shit. That was more like it.

'He's going to be a grandfather,' Tom was telling her. 'He might like to know.'

'Hmmm.' He'd never been too interested in playing at happy families in the past. Well... not with them, anyway.

'Careful you don't step on Robbie's cars,' Eve warned him as she put on the kettle and cleared a space for them both at the table in the chaotic kitchen. 'I'm going to break my neck one of these days.'

'Robbie's cars?!' Tom bent down to pick up a battered old tractor.
1
recognize this one.'

'Maybe Uncle Robbie will pass it on to his nephew – or niece,' she said and felt the 'laugh or cry? laugh or cry?' confusion coming over her again.

'I know, Mum,' Tom said. 'It's a bit weird ... but we'll be cool. Think how much fun it will be for Robbie.'

'What would you like to drink?' she asked him as the kettle came to the boil. He knew the wide selection on offer: three types of tea – all decaffeinated, herbal teas, fruit flavours, Carob Cup, decaf coffee ...

But his mother was pulling up a chair so she could reach to the top of the kitchen cupboards and she was bringing down the battered old biscuit tin, so now he knew just how rattled she was. This was the hard stuff, only to be used in emergencies – full strength Arabica roast. Still perched on the chair, she unwrapped the foil package and breathed in deeply with her eyes closed.

'Mmmm,' she said, 'I'm feeling better already.'

He was wondering if she still kept supplies of her other emergency drug when she jumped down from the chair and brought the tin over to him.

'Would you like one? Because I think I will. Counteracts the worst effects of the caffeine, you know.'

He looked into the tin and saw about six pencil-thin, three-centimeter-long joints, 'One hundred per cent organic grass,' his mother was saying now. 'Totally nicotine free and grown in a greenhouse in Brighton, so fairly clean conscience.' As he took one out, she added: 'Listen to me, I sound like a dealer. You know I only smoke in exceptional circumstances.'

'You old hippie,' he said.

'Oh thanks!'

They sat down, at the kitchen table in the disgracefully messy London flat he still thought of as home, to a steaming pot of coffee, lit up their spliffs releasing the unmistakable sweet smoke smell and talked it over a little.

'Is Deepa's family going to be OK about this?' Eve asked her son.

'We'll have to wait and see.'

'What's she studying again?' Eve felt embarrassed that she couldn't remember.

'Medicine. She's in her second year.'

'Ah, so I don't think "congratulations" is going to be the first word you hear from her parents.'

'No. But we're getting married. They'll like that.'

'They might not, Tom. Who knows? Twenty is young.'

'We'll be the same age you were,' Tom reminded her, unnecessarily.

'Yeah.' She breathed out a mouthful of smoke and swallowed down a cough. 'That's why I'm worried for you.' Her eyes were fixed to his. 'Twenty is young,' she repeated, 'especially nowadays. But we'll all try and help you out.'

Her hands settled down round the coffee mug again. Such nice hands, he thought, mummy hands. Small, warm and capable. The nails were short and often a little bit earthy and she always wore two clunky silver rings and, on her fourth finger, a chip of emerald on the daintiest of platinum bands. Despite the gardening, her touch was usually soft, due to some weekly ritual involving olive oil and salt and going to bed with socks as mitts. Completely fruity.

'Where is Dennis at the moment?' she asked. She let her sons handle any contact or correspondence they wanted to have with their father. She was determined to be uninterested.

'I'm sure he's still in Chicago. He'd have told us if there'd been any change there.'

Vigorously she stubbed out her remaining butt in the bronze ashtray she'd placed on the table, jangling all the bracelets wrapped around her arms.

'Deepa seems like a really good person, Tom,' she said. 'It might all work out very well. But promise me you'll do everything you can to be a great parent to your baby. Because every child deserves two good parents, even if they aren't together any more.'