Out on a Limb (9 page)

‘Pru, I told you. It’s absolutely fine. Hey, give it a few weeks and she’ll be lining up husband number five.’ Pru laughs and rolls her eyes, but neither of us think so. Not really. Not now. ‘Look, okay, then. I
will
have my weekend. Give me a chance to get Seb’s room straight for her, then, well… Let me see. Monday evening? Actually, no. You won’t want to drag over late, will you? So perhaps you’d better make it Sunday.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure.’ I hug her. Now my worst case scenario is actually happening, I feel an unexpected sense of relief. At least I won’t have to waste time fretting about it any more. ‘As long as it’s p.m., okay?’ I say, smiling. ‘Come on. Let’s go feed these kids, eh?’

* * *

That’s it , then. The deed’s done. Sunday. I’ve committed. Now all I have to do is get used to the idea.

‘But I mean, what
could
I say?’ I ask Spike as we rattle back across the Severn toward a uniformly blue sky and my last forty-eight hours of freedom. My last forty-eight hours before morphing from newly single reasonably optimistic forty-something-on-a-gap-year (GSOH, all her own teeth, no baggage to speak of, interested in gd times, gd conversation, travel, married men need not apply) to middle-aged scratchy singleton with elderly dependent relative (up for most things but must be in by eleven at all times – and absolutely no sleep-overs, ever). Spike doesn’t comment, but I can tell he’s sympathetic. ‘What
can
I say?’ I ask him. ‘She’s my mother, after all. This is the sort of thing you just have to
do
, isn’t it? Lots of people do it.
Loads
of people have their parents to live with them, don’t they? And it’s not like it’s going to be for ever, after all. I mean it’s not even as if she’s going to
want
to be there for ever, is it? It’s hardly ideal, is it? I know she thinks it’s going to be more congenial at our place: no Doug, no kids, no military manoeuvres. But we shall see. She’s never actually lived with us before, has she? And what with Jake and his band, and Mr Davidson next door, and me out at work so not available for taxiing, and you know how much she hates noise and muddle and mess and – yes, I’m sorry, mate, but your dog hairs as well. No. It’ll be all right. It is just going to be temporary. She’ll be desperate to leave in no time at all.’

Spike goes ‘woof!’. And I know just what he means. What he means is ‘come
on
– didn’t you clock her expression? You’re talking absolute bollocks and you know it. She’s cock-a-bloody-hoop, is your mother.’

Oh, dear. And now Mr Davidson is here, to seal this lovely day with a very loving kiss. Mr Davidson, who lives next door, is a postman, which means he is quite possibly the person least circadian-rhythmically suited to living next door to a house in which an internationally famous pop star lives. Thus at no point, I suspect, will relations ever be loving. Even grudgingly polite to vaguely cordial would be nice.

To be fair to Mr Davidson (for being fair to Mr Davidson is an ever present factor in my life), living next door to someone for whom drumming is the recreational pursuit of choice is not exactly ideal. To be scrupulously fair to Mr Davidson, of course, Jake is not as yet an internationally renowned pop star, so I can fully appreciate that his commitment to his craft carries not quite the same weight as, say, Phil Collins’s might, but if he can’t drum how will he ever BE an internationally renowned pop star?

To be fair to everyo ne else who does not have a pop star in waiting in the family, I wouldn’t much like living next door to us either. Indeed, before having children (having sons, specifically, as they are both much more noisy than girls and much more hated than girls by society generally – particularly if they wear sweatshirts with hoods on – as any mother of sons knows already), I probably would have agreed that it’s just, come on,
not on
, to have persons drumming and plugging amps in and singing badly into microphones in a residential area.

But once I became a parent to someone who does all those things, my attitude, of necessity, changed greatly. Having established a bullet-pointed plan of times when drumming/playing/rehearsing was
un
acceptable i.e. most of the daytime and all hours of darkness unless certain noise-minimisation principles were observed, and thus whittled practice down to a few scant hours a week, not to mention doling out draconian punishments for episodes of transgression, then it became –
still
becomes – a little galling to note that other noisy activities (about which I paid never-no-mind at one time), such as lawnmowing, strimming, hedge trimming, drill manoeuvres involved in the putting up of patios/conservatories and water features, leaf blowing and jet washing, tend to be done, in such areas, at pretty much any old damn time without reference to anyone, and without the expectation of any sort of come-back at all. Scrub something, lop something, erect something out of breeze blocks and no one seems to mind at all. But pick out a tune, add a paradiddle and a flourish, and you’re everyone’s least best friend. So drumming, band practice and all related pursuits happen mainly, in our house, from four till six weekdays, between ten and four Saturdays, and never, never, never on a Sunday.

And then Mr Davidson moved in next door. Mr Davidson who is a postman.

As well as being a postman, Mr Davidson is divorced, in his late fifties, short of stature and short of temper. I’m not sure which of the first three can lay first claim to being the reason for the last of these, but suffice to say, when he moved into the house, no one warned him of the many-cymballed beast that lived next door, therefore second claim, obviously, has to be that.

‘Ah, Abbie,’ he says, ambushing me as I get out of my car, while effecting to have been simply fortuitously in the location of it – something which he has perfected over many years.

‘Mr Davidson,’ I say back.

It’s a cause of some irritation to me that while I have always, unfailingly, called him Mr Davidson, he has equally unfailingly always called me Abbie. As if I wasn’t a forty-four year old mother of two sons but a little girl next door he gives sweets to.

‘I’m glad I caught you,’ he says , bending down to stroke Spike, who is already belly up at his feet. Irritatingly, Spike is a bit of a turncoat in the matter of Mr Davidson. Spike, who, being a dog, has absolutely no business toadying up to a postman in the first place, actively
likes
Mr Davidson .

But
I’m
not glad he caught me. Not at all. I’d quite like to tell him to bog off, like Jake always does under his breath. Except I’d quite like to say it in a very loud voice. ‘Bog off, Mr Davidson!’ It could slip out so easily. Would roll so sweetly off my tongue. But instead I affect my empathetic face, while he maintains his ‘I’ve got a bone to pick’ one. What the man really needs is some joy in his life. Just to
get
one would be a start. Can’t he go out now and again, perhaps? Take up a hobby? But then I remember. He already has a hobby. Sitting in his house making endless tetchy lists about the noises that emanate from mine. ‘Is there a problem, Mr Davidson?’ I ask him, because even though there clearly is, I’m not about to encourage him.

‘I’ve had an hour and a b loody half of it this afternoon…really not good enough…something must be done…making that infernal racket with the windows open…trying to have five minutes peace in my own garden…’ And so on and so forth and yadda yadda yadda…

Still. There’s always a silver lining in the blackest of clouds. Next week my mother will be coming to stay. I shall set her on him instead.

When I finally get inside and upstairs, Jake and his pals have finished band practice and are sitting in a little fairy ring on the carpet in the drum room, eating toast. I’m aware I should be cross – and I will be so once his friends have left, of course – but one of the paradoxes about my relationship with Mr Davidson is that the more he rants about ‘Your son and his racket’, the more childishly ‘yah-boo-sucks-you-old-haddock’ I become. So, for now at least, I look upon this assemblage of hair and hormones and I feel that most pleasing of parental sensations: a glow of pride at my son’s talent and, yes, commitment, and a great love for every similarly dedicated young man in the land. After all, they’re not out mugging old ladies, are they? I am, I also feel, the custodian of their futures. It is my job – no, my
duty
to fend off Mr Davidson and to nurture their blossoming careers.

That said, I do catch my breath as I enter. The room smells of Lynx and sweat and the sort of universal non-specific aroma of putrefaction that seems to accompany all teenage boys’ gatherings the minute any of them take off their trainers. I climb over an amp and go and open a window. Four almost empty chocolate mousse pots are lined up on the sill, their gooey remnants quietly liquefying in the sun.

Three, then, are now four again. So the ad obviously worked. ‘Hello!’ I say brightly to the one I don’t recognise, who, having finished his toast, is now twiddling with his strings.

‘Er, hello,’ he says back, blushing furiously under his fringe, and looking shocked and appalled at having being spoken to at all, in the way boys of their age always seem to be. Bless him.

‘This is Hamish,’ says Jake. ‘He’s joined the band.’

‘Lovely!’ I trill. ‘Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Hamish. I do like the colour of your guitar.’

‘Ignore my mum ,’ Jake then adds to Hamish. ‘She’s mad.’

‘So,’ I say, because I must at least make a token stab at being stern. ‘Truth now. Have you been practicing with the window open again?’

Jake finishes his last mouthful of toast. ‘Come
on
, Mum. You can see how hot it is in here, can’t you? And it wasn’t for long, honest. Just half an hour or so. And it’s not like it’s late or anything. It’s not like –’

‘Even so,’ I cut in. ‘You know the rules.’ I look around me. ‘Anyway, where’s the fan gone?’

The fan which I purchased from B and Q not four weeks back. The fan which is nowhere to be seen. Jake frowns.

‘Er…’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs McFadden,’ pipes up Ben. ‘I…er…broke it. Um…I’m going to replace it…I’m saving up, and –’

‘It wasn’t his fault, Mum,’ Jake is quick to point out. ‘It was David’s fault.’ David who is no longer a quarter of a Black Lung. Which is pretty convenient for David, I guess. No loss. He didn’t have enough commitment anyway. ‘It was him that put the can of Coke there. You weren’t to know, were you?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘Well,’ I say, because at this precise moment my largesse is at its zenith. (It will ebb away, I know, the nearer Sunday gets, but for now, I’m just glad to have come home alone.) ‘Not to worry, Ben, okay? It wasn’t expensive.’ £16.99, to be precise, which is not a lot of money, except to someone whose only income stream consists of a paper round and a bit of babysitting. Besides, I could never be cross with Ben anyway. His mother has Parkinson’s and the father is long absent. He has to leave his amp here because he can’t get it home. At times, I’ve even thought I’d be happy to adopt him. I’d rather have Ben than my mother, for sure.

‘But I will,’ he says. ‘I –’

‘Absolutely not. I won’t hear of it. Accidents happen. But in future, boys, don’t bring your drinks up here, eh? Not with all this electrical equipment plugged in. I don’t want to come home one day and find the house has exploded, do I?’

They laugh politely, be cause they are all well brought-up boys. And Mr Davidson is just an old goat.

I pick up the overflowing bin as I exit, as I don’t doubt it’s probably contributing to the smell. It’s only when I get it downstairs and start trying, and failing, to offload the fetid contents into a bin liner, that I see that what’s causing the blockage is a very large wodge of roughly crumpled sheets of paper, that have been recently wedged into the top. Vaguely interested (as with fridges, the contents of boys’ bins are invariably instructive) I tug it out. The first of them has the letter ‘K’ written on it, in thick black marker pen, and a piece of sticky tape stuck at the top. Properly curious now, I pull out another – and on this one is written an ‘E’. And then another, and another, till I have six in all. Appropriately arranged they appear to make a banner, for the purpose, I surmise, of sticking in the window. RENKAW? KENWAR? WRAENK, perhaps?

Silly me. It spells WANKER. God.
Boys
.

I’m just clearing away the tea things and thinking about how best to spend my penultimate evening sans mother (God, and for how
long
?), when my mobile and the doorbell clamour for attention at almost precisely the same moment. As it is my practice to attend to all mobile phone calls as a matter of priority right now (though it could well
be
my mother, it could equally well be Sebastian, in extremis, which is reason enough to be alert at all times), and as it is more often than not someone for Jake on the doorstep, I attend to the former, while bellowing ‘JAAAAKE!!! DOOOORRRR!!!’ up the stairs.

But it isn’t Seb or Mum. It’s Charlie who’s calling. My thumb hovers for a few seconds while I decide what to do. Not to press green would be the sensible option, but my thumb steps straight in and overrules me.

‘It’s me,’ he says.

I know that already, but m y heart leaps in any case. I do wish it would stop doing that. ‘I
know
.’

‘Can I come over?’

‘God, Charlie. NO. You most certainly cannot.’

‘Okay, okay. Keep your hair on. Just thought I’d see if any cracks were showing yet.’

‘Charlie, this is not some sort of game! Stop doing this, will you?’

‘Okay, okay,
okay
. Point taken.’

‘Good! And good
bye
!’

‘Hang on! Don’t hang up! This is a legitimate phone call!’

I don’t hang up because even though I know I should I’m too cross now. ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘right.’

‘No, it
is.
I do actually have a bona fide reason for calling you.’

M y heart’s stopped leaping about now, at least a little. Which is encouraging. It must just be an autonomic reflex. ‘Which is?’

‘I’ve been having a sort out.’

‘Oh.’

‘You know. Of the flat. And I seem to have accrued quite a lot of your stuff.’