Girl in Profile (5 page)

Moth

Bounce and Rhyme

I walk Roan to school, half dragging, half carrying Dove along too. Past the cinema seat cemetery (all munching their popcorn as our trailer trails by), past Mr Chan's takeaway still smelling of prawn crackers and crispy duck. I'm hungry, wails Dove, and I tell her off for messing about with some badge that says “I am three” on it instead of eating her breakfast. Past the new estate going up ninety-nine to the dozen. How fragile their infrastructures are. How precarious.

“Will Daddy put the lights on in them?”

“Maybe. If he gets the contract.”

We see a white van in the distance and lay bets as to whether it's Drew or not. Dove shakes her dandelion hair and the seed thoughts disseminate, take root, spring up somewhere. “It's a different man in a little white van.” How clever she is.

Over the disused railway track where coal-black cats with smouldering eyes bask between the girders, as if they've been tossed off a wagon on its way from the opencast mine that once sparked the valley.

“Jonah's here.”

Ah, yes. Jonah's grandmother is reversing her black Skoda into a spot on the corner by Ebenezer's beds. We wait for them to catch up. Jonah might as well be stuck in a friggin' whale, he takes so long to get out of the car. We pant up the hill together, Jonah telling Roan about a computer character you can plug in like some kind of air freshener, and Roan, who's barely played a computer game in his life, nods wisely.

“I'm thinking of giving it a go with the new fella,” Jonah's grandmother confides. In two years of panting up a hill together I still don't know her Christian name. “Moving in with him.”

“Oh, well done you.”

“Well done you,” Dove parrots on my shoulder, irritatingly.

“You're a little cough drop, aren't you. Trouble is, I don't know what to do with Woody.”

Woody is Jonah's grandmother's late husband.

“I'm thinking of putting him in my son's garden till I see how things pan out.”

“Why can't he stay where he is?”

“I'm letting out the dormer for the summer.”

“Oh, well, he'll be safe in your son's garden won't he?”

“I just don't want him getting knocked over and flying about all over the shop.”

I try not to laugh at the thought of ashes from a purple urn disseminating, taking root, springing up somewhere like Dove's dandelion seed hair.

I affect a cool calm nonchalance at the school gates. I always have. None of the goo-goo Lady Ga-Ga stuff the working mums go in for, leaving lipsticked imprints on their children's cheeks before leaping back into their massive jeeps because, let's face it, they have to cross some mountainous terrain before reaching their offices ten minutes away. Most of the mums round here go back to work and the grandparents take over the childcare. The only other full-time mum I know is in hospital with a brain tumour. Doesn't that tell you everything you need to know about full-time isolating parenting? I never really had a job to go back to. Miss Carmarthen at twenty-two didn't leave me many career options except getting laid by the best-looking sparkie in town, which happened to be Drew, then getting pregnant, then getting married. I pat Roan on the head like he's the rescue dog, and he shines back at me. Those teachers' hearts must fill with fucking joy when they see him coming. God polished him before he came out. Polished till he saw his own face in him.

“You coming?” Fair play to Jonah's grandmother, she does try to include me in the geriatric small talk of the playground, especially since Maggie got her brain tumour; but I draw the line with a full stop at an octogenarian zumba class.

“We're off to the library,” I explain. “Bounce and Rhyme.”

Rhys' grandad limps over on his zebra stick. How he keeps up with that little fucker Rhys, God only knows. He's a bit of an old perv, Rhys' grandad, but he's nice enough. He's got the oddest way of licking his lips when he speaks, which Dove invariably tries to imitate. The effect is beyond rude.

“You won't know what to do with yourself when the –
lick lick
– littlun goes to school.”

Dove
lick licks
back at him, her eyes as innocent as china-blue plates.

“I'm sure I'll think of something.” Like having a shit in peace, having a cup of tea in peace, thinking for a microsecond in peace without a child chirruping in my ear like friggin' Tweety Pie.

We trudge down the hill at a snail-in-its-shell pace because everything in the world is a mystery to Dove: the worm on the pavement, a lemonade can, some crazy old lava lamp in a window, a lion door knocker. I put on my breathless excitable voice as if I'm seeing the objects for the first time too. Drew thinks it's weird, but it comes natural to me. To be honest, everything with kids came natural to me. I had perfect pregnancies, perfect births. I didn't even get a single stretch mark. My friends have stomachs that look like road maps left out in the rain and they want to know my secret. Well, here it is,
The Six Million Dollar Man
top tip – pumpkin seeds. Eat a handful every day and you won't get stretch marks. As for the birth – keep active. Scream, shout, kick your partner in the goolies, push like you're doing a crap. Job done.

The library's bustling with old folks, all after the latest large print erotic thriller by the look of it. God almighty. How soon we grow old yet we don't really change. Still gagging for it, still looking at ourselves in the mirror. Our lives are like fish that slip through our own nets. We never seem to catch them. We sit by the river waiting for them to jump out at us. In the end all we get is an old boot, a clump of weeds. Oh to be wise and mature, having lived a life full of meaning, without regrets.

“Shall we start with ‘Twinkle Twinkle'?” the librarian asks.

Why not, we always do. The grandparents start to croak. I start to croak. A young mum – I try to check my excitement – starts to sing. Actually sing. I look at her with suspicion. This can't be right. She can't be a full-time mum after all. She must be on maternity leave. Knowing it will all end soon she's loving every minute of it. Look at those hand gestures to “The Wheels on the Bus”. Those aren't the hand gestures of a full-time mum, I can tell you. They're far too vigorous. My heart goes down on me like a dirty old man would if I let him – fast, rough, slobbering. My suspicions are confirmed when we stop for a tea break and she asks for a cup of hot water, no biscuit. Gracie's grandad and I exchange a look of pure bafflement. What kind of creation is this? He's bereft even of gardening tips. We've been up since the bum crack of dawn. We accept anything we're offered – antiseptic throat lozenge, chewing gum, cream cracker. Say the words ‘chicken casserole with dumplings' and a full-time parent's liable to wet themselves.

“Is that some new trend?” Sydney's great-grandmother asks, shocked and shaky.

“Oh, no. I just want to feel like me again for when I go back to work. I'm a project manager, you see.”

I see. My heart is a submarine. When did I ever feel like me? I dunk my digestive, Dove appropriates the librarian's mug even though it's got the librarian's name on it. There was a small power struggle for a couple of weeks which Dove eventually won. She usually does. She could bring a grown giant on stilts to his knees, that one. Gracie's grandad gives me some ideas on crocuses. Sydney nearly chokes on a deseeded, deskinned grape. A guy comes in with a trolley full of books. He stares at me just to add to my paper clip of stares. I'm a magnet for them to be honest. He's not bad looking. I imagine him taking me against the library wall – hard, fast, intense. Then I think of Drew lying on the mat in the children's room so that he can comfort them easily when they wake from a nightmare. Guilt is eternal, not love. Dove and I choose a book about a girl with a magic paintbrush. Everything she paints becomes real. The keys to escape from jail, the horse to ride away on… Lucky fucker. We step out into the sunshine and I rally car myself for the journey home, which will involve many mysteries, distractions, detours…

“Listen to the birds, Mummy.” Dove tilts a pixie ear to catch the birdsong.

How loud it is. Surprisingly loud. And persistent. Like the birds have had too much to drink and are getting shouty with each other. The young guy comes out of the library with an empty trolley and winks at me. So sure of himself. I flick my pixie crop – to match Dove's pixie ears – gone long and smile.

“What do you think they're singing about?” I ask her.

“Anything.” Like I'm an idiot. “They're just happy.”

How clever she is.

Elizabeth

Pathos and Bathos

Peter Pan sits on the wicker chair beside the window and reads to me. His profile against the ultramarine blue of the sea is pale and sharp as a cliff, and his hands hover like gulls about to swoop on a chip over the pages of
Crickets of Great Britain and Ireland
. He'll read anything he can lay his hands on, anything those gulls can snaffle from the mobile library each week. It's a substitute for eating. He gobbles syntax, devours the parts of speech, hoards metaphors under his pillow for when he gets the midnight munchies.

“The scaly cricket is wingless and therefore silent. They use their wings to sing, you see. Without wings there is no song.”

I think of the wings I stitched laboriously for my daughter's ballet classes, my son's plays. The roots I dug, the wings I stitched so they might fly, so they might sing. Instead of me. Resentment swells up in me like a stale old fart. What did I do with my amazing beauty, my verve, my vitality? I gave them away to one husband, two children and a dog. And for what? The dog's long gone to a land of sniffs and smells, husband's raced off down the autobahn, and the children have flown so high and sung so loud they don't deign to see me anymore, they don't deign to hear me.

“We are merely groundhoppers. Eating liverwort.”

I lobotomised my own life for them. Willingly. Eagerly even. That is the extraordinary thing. I wanted to do it. I stayed at home, kept my eyes on
kinder
and
kirche
, didn't take my chances, passed the open windows, ignored the innuendoes from the men who might have.

“When I was young…”

“You were never young, Peter. You were born immediately old like one of those peculiar lizards.”

“Well, I was actually, as a matter of a fact. Once upon a time I was young, and when I was young I set more store by the apprehension of things than the things themselves. D'you know what I mean?”

I think I do. Like the alternative life I lived in my head complete with soundtrack, frantic sex, high-speed car chases, mysterious assignations, passionate illuminations… And now it is all constipation and colostomy bags and Satie coming from the Blue Room. Sad, faltering, slow. Like the tick-tock of Wendy's heart that beats like a metronome. When the music stops so will she. We don't stand a fucking chance, do we.

“Now I want to immerse myself in the things themselves. Feel the thinginess of things, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I think it is a premonition of death when we dissolve into all things, into each particular thing.”

“Hamburgers for lunch,” Nurse Tinkerbell announces from the exit door.

Is that bathos or pathos? I'm not really sure, but the gulls wheel away, screeching, over the waves of Peter's hair, and the little book on crickets slides to the floor.

“Oh, and Elizabeth, you have a visitor.”

My heart leapfrogs over all the other little children's hearts. It must be Minnie.

“Doctor Kharana wants a word.”

A word. In the beginning was the word. What word will I end with? I need to learn the anagrams of life. Heart is an anagram of earth my late husband used to say. Never a linguist, poor man. Stumpy little tongue. Never a cunnilinguist either for that matter. The secret is to spell out the alphabet with your tongue. Most women have a favourite letter. Mine was
m
I seem to remember. The most curvaceous letter in the alphabet. Mmmm.

Gwen

Bousculé par le Monde

Dear Gwen Marie,

Your letters are very touching, ma cherie. If you are so sad in your room you must change the apartment. I will gladly send money for this. I have always thought your atelier to be a little damp – damp enough for champignons in my opinion and not good for someone of your constitution. You must regain equilibrium of mind and body. Immodesty is not charming in a woman. Leave Paris for a while. Visit the countryside, look at the flowers and the starlings. Take a deep breath of nature and she will pay you later in blossom. I am bousculé par le monde as always. I must curtail everything in order to work. The promenade of one evening and I am debauched. You, as an artist, can understand that. Fundamentally I am a private man, a silent man, like a great moon that looks over an unknown empty sea where few ships pass. But I will visit you again, one day soon.

Your affectionate friend, A.R.

The twice weekly trip to market, nightly bed, daily meal, midday cup of tea when the houses opposite cast great shadows like dirty old tramps peering in at me. Ida sends a concoction of honey and coriander for my throat – it is bad again – and Dorelia sends a silver brooch. They are in the south of France, bathing their children in sea water to cure them of freckles. Ida is square as a box and mad as a lemon squeezer, so she says. The baby is due soon, just to add to the collection. They pop out whole and splendid as dolphins, her boys, leaving her shrivelled as seaweed. My brother is a satyr. Does he sleep with Ida one week, Dorelia the next? Do they take alternate shifts in bed, creeping into the soft contours of the one that has left? Do all men need more than one woman to be happy?