Queen Mum (11 page)
Authors: Kate Long
She sipped her cider thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, anyway, it was a good day out. Manny’d never been, nor the girls. But I said I wanted to treat them to a special day, so Manny booked the
afternoon off work and we took the girls out of school.’
Juno’ll go berserk at that, I thought.
‘And did they like it?’
‘Loved it. It’s what I said, the whole family needs loosening up. It did them all good.’
‘And you’re getting on better with Manny?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You didn’t seem so sure at first.’
She shifted in her seat, recrossed her legs. ‘I think he’s one of those people you have to get to know. Break their defences. I’m good at that. There’s a fun person
inside Manny, struggling to get out.’
The clock above us began to strike; it was as if I’d never heard it before. The mellow note sounded right through me, through the moment, and I was looking round the kitchen and seeing it
with Kim’s eyes: the old tin advertising signs, the striped French jars, the framed posters for plays Manny had helped fund.
‘You go home tomorrow,’ I said.
‘Yep.’
‘That’ll be a relief, I should think.’
‘Back to the brood. Oh aye; it’s chaos at ours. But I’ve missed it, you know. It’s been way too quiet here.’
‘It didn’t sound quiet last night.’ I made sure I was smiling.
‘Oh, yeah. Oops. Did we keep you awake? We went on longer than we meant.’
‘What was it?’
‘Karaoke. We got a machine from Argos on the way back, impulse buy. I tell you what, the girls are really good! They did that “Mad World”, really sad, and Pascale’s a
dead ringer for Norah Jones; looks like her and sounds like her. Fantastic. She should be on TV. Hey, what am I saying?’
We laughed. ‘They are lovely. They get that hair from their mum.’
‘Are they mixed race?’
‘Manny’s grandmother was Algerian. So their colouring’s from Manny’s side. But those Pre-Raphaelite waves are Juno’s.’
‘I always wanted a girl. Them little frilly socks they have; someone to go shopping with later on. They don’t care so much, lads, do they?’ I could have said, as long as you
have them and they’re safe and alive, it doesn’t matter what damn sex they are. You should be down on your knees saying thank you. Instead I said, ‘It depends on the
individual.’
‘Yeah,’ said Kim, tugging at the neck label on her cider bottle. ‘Suppose so. Anyway, Pascale should get her name down for
Stars in their Eyes
. Never mind mucking about
with that violin, she wants to train her voice up.’
‘I think she is in the choir at school.’
‘You know what I mean. Proper singing.’
Before I went she said, ‘It’s been nice to chat to you. I wish we’d seen more of each other.’
I was taken aback, and touched. ‘I’ve not done anything.’
‘You’ve helped today. Calmed me down. I’m a bag of nerves, what with going back to God-knows-what tomorrow, and trying to give up smoking on top.’
‘You’ve given up smoking?’
‘Thinking about it. I’ve only had two today; normally I’d have had about ten by this time.’
‘That’s brilliant.’
‘Actually, though, I do need another now, if you’ll excuse me.’ She went into the hall and came back with a packet of JPS. ‘Only three left. I might stop altogether when
I run out.’ I watched her concentrate as she lit up the tip, then she took herself over to the door and assumed the position. ‘Manny was saying,’ she breathed, ‘how you
could get away with smoking when you were younger, but it took away your quality of life as you got older. His granddad died of lung cancer, didn’t he? I suppose he smoked a lot, being
French. We had a long chat about it the other night. Family, and stuff. Didn’t get to bed till two.’
As she was speaking, Kim reached over for the bird-parcel and dropped it neatly into the steel bin. I did a double take.
‘Oh!’
‘What?’
‘I thought you were going to bury it.’
She shrugged. ‘What’s the point?’ she said.
*
I told Tom about the bird later.
‘So?’ was his response.
‘It shocked me. I’m probably being silly but it seemed callous.’
‘It would have been callous if the thing had been alive.’
‘Well, yes. But it’s . . . I don’t feel as though I can get a handle on Kim. You think she’s pretty straightforward at first, but there are – cogs – going
round inside.’
‘Do you need to Get a Handle on the woman? She’ll be out of our lives in twenty-four hours.’
‘Let’s hope. I want normal service resuming as soon as possible. Juno in her kitchen, and the faint screech of violins through the French windows.’
Tom looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I’ll tell you something.’
‘What?’ I thought for a second he might have an answer.
‘Whatever you say about Kim, she’s rubbed off on you.’
‘What do you mean?’
He reached across and pinched my cheek. ‘You sound ever so
northern
tonight, my love.’
*
Kim
– What’s this? Champagne? You celebrating my departure, have I been that bad?
Manny
– You’ve been great. And congratulations on the cigarettes. What’s it been now?
Kim
– Four hours.
Manny
– That’s excellent.
Kim
– If you say so. I’m always giving up, it means nowt.
Manny
– You must be looking forward to going back.
Kim
– Yeah, I am. It’s what you were saying, yesterday, about everyone needing a sense of place. A place you know’s home. Oh, cheers.
Manny
– Cheers. To a successful Queen Mum, whoever it turns out to be. Yes; I believe everyone has a particular landscape that strikes some mental sympathy,
whether it’s urban or rural. And it’s not necessarily anything to do with where you were born.
Kim
– If I won the lottery tomorrow, I wouldn’t move, I wouldn’t, honest. I love the moors, they’re so . . . free. I even love the streets and
the chimneys. It’s what I grew up with. Mind you, it is nice round here.
Manny
– Mmm. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever felt properly settled, living in Chester. We were always moving around because of my father’s
job, when I was young. Although it was fun, in many ways. Travelling’s an education, and I am a bit of a gypsy by nature. But if I had to settle anywhere, this is probably the right
place. Juno’s made this house home.
Kim
– You’ll be glad to have her back, then.
Manny
– And sorry to see you go. Top-up?
Kim
– Get away. You’ll be putting the flags out.
Manny
– Mrs Beale will miss you. You scored quite a hit there, she was telling me.
Kim
– We were driving right past Superbowl anyway. I said to her, you do crown-green bowling, it’s the same action. And she wasn’t so sure, but she
turned out to be dead good at it. She’s small but she’s strong. I tell you what, she sent some skittles flying that afternoon. Reckoned she was imagining aiming at that consultant
last year who told her to forget she had a husband.
Manny
– I remember Juno telling me about that. Disgraceful.
Kim
– Yeah. And I don’t think Mr Beale was on top form that afternoon we saw him. Not that I hung around;
I thought she’d want to be on her own with him. I had a walk down the road and looked at house prices.
Manny
– You probably did her a lot of good.
Kim
– She’s going back to Superbowl with her friend, she said. I wonder if she meant Juno?
Manny
– And the girls’ll miss you.
Kim
– Aw, that’s nice. The lads won’t have.
Manny
– Don’t say that. They will have done; their mother.
Kim
– You don’t know them. Rabble. It’s a nice drop of stuff, this.
Manny
– Oh, can I—
Kim
– Cheers. I wonder how Lee and Juno got on, in the end? He’s so easy-going it’s not true, so she’ll probably have been all right.
Manny
– She’ll see a few changes when she gets back here.
Kim [To camera] –
I envy Juno. I do. Those girls, she’s so lucky. And being needed; I’m too old for anyone in our house to need me. I mean, we’ve
talked about another baby, but we never did anything. That’s what always happens, talk talk talk and never act. If I want anything doing, I have to sort it out myself. You know, going out
and that, I have to ring up, get tickets, arrange transport. No bugger else’ll bother. Sometimes I get fed up of instigating all the time. Lee’s so passive. It’s been great
this week to have people saying thank you. ’Cause it’s not too much to ask, is it?
Lee [To camera] –
I don’t rile easily, but, by God. She’s altered all the pre-sets on my radios, and she’s changed my daily paper order at the
newsagent’s. All I can say is, I’m counting the hours; no, the minutes. It’s not that she’s a nasty woman, just, she’s no idea. I reckon the root of the problem
is, she’s come in this house thinking, I’m better than them, I’ll show them how to do it right. She’s tried to hide it, but I know that’s what’s going
through her mind.
Juno [To camera] –
Call me Sisyphus.
[Laughs]
It’s been a fortnight of tremendous effort and I don’t honestly know if I’ve made any kind
of positive impact at all. No one’s fallen out with me, as such, but I get the impression I’ve been being smirked at behind my back all this week. Lee’s been absolutely zero
support; I don’t know if he’s like that with Kim. At this exact moment I couldn’t feel less like a Queen Mum, which is probably something I shouldn’t be admitting on
camera because it’s shooting myself in the foot as far as the voting goes, I know that, but I don’t care because I’m going home and anyway, Manny’s promised to take me
for a weekend in London whatever happens.
[Blows nose]
I have so missed him. I want to get home now.
Kim
– Do you ever feel like, I don’t know, like you’ve taken a wrong turning in your life? Or looked around and thought, How did I get here? I mean, if
you had your time again, would you have done anything different?
Manny
– That’s difficult to say. I—
Kim
– You see, most of the time I jog along, and it’s all fine, lah lah, and then every so often it hits you. You’re not young any more, and
you’re looking on the Internet at what your school friends have been doing, and I always meant to go to America—
Manny
– You could still do that—
Kim
– On my own, I meant. It wouldn’t be the same if I went now, everyone in tow, dragging along, complaining. And anyway, I’d never be able to prise
Lee out of his chair long enough. I was watching that film,
Shirley Valentine
, a couple of weeks ago and I got to thinking, I’ve felt like that sometimes. You know, submerged. I
don’t know how to explain it; a feeling, some days –
[Kim starts to cry]
I’m not usually so soft. I’m, I don’t know what’s up with me.
Manny
– Come here, give me your glass before you tip it over. That’s right. Now, come on. You’re all right. I expect you’re excited about going
home tomorrow. I can imagine it must be very emotional, very unsettling, everything upside down for a fortnight. No wonder you’re . . . But you’ll be home in less than twenty-four
hours. It’ll be fine. It will.
[To camera]
Look, can you switch off, please. Switch
off
.
*
There are times when, if I lie very still in bed with my eyes closed, Joe comes, as he used to. I hear the creak of a floorboard along the landing, the tiny shush of the bedroom
door. My mind’s eye sees him standing in the light. Then he pads over to the bed. I keep my lids tight shut, but I feel him standing there, breathing through his mouth, waiting for me to
acknowledge him.
I once tried to tell Tom about this but he just looked alarmed, so I turned it into a dream I’d had. ‘I dream too,’ he said, unexpectedly. ‘You never tell me about
it,’ I said. ‘No; it wouldn’t be helpful for me,’ he muttered, and turned the TV on.
I was lying here now, on top of the duvet, waiting for Joe. Tom was downstairs watching
Newsnight
; Ben was up to God-knows-what in his room.
The bedside clock ticked quietly next to my ear. I put my hands on my belly as I used to when I was pregnant, when the skin was tight and full. It was soft there now, squashy. I squeezed a roll
of flesh.
Joe came into my head, waving two toilet rolls. ‘Stick these together,’ he commanded, holding them to his eyes like field glasses. ‘Make a telescope.’
‘Do you mean binoculars?’
He pointed to his knee. ‘Look at my bruise.’
‘I can’t see.’
He pushed his trouser leg up. ‘Oh dear. Was that when you fell at nursery?’
He nodded. ‘And Eden hurt her head, and she cried. I didn’t cry.’ A memory of wrapping masking tape round the toilet rolls while Joe watched intently. ‘There.’ I
held them out, pleased with myself.
‘No!’ He howled with impatience and pulled the tubes apart.
‘Well, how did you want them? What was I supposed to do with them?’ I asked him now.
‘God Almighty, they must think the electorate are a bunch of dunces!’ said Tom loudly. The bedroom door banged against the linen basket. ‘It’s a good trick if you can do
it: every single bloody party’s going to cut taxes and yet somehow spend loads more on services. If it was that easy, wouldn’t they be doing it now? They wonder why no one’s
voting and yet there isn’t anything to tell them apart; just suits, talking.’
Joe vanished.
‘The country’s run by fools.’
I kept my eyes closed.
‘But the trouble is, there’s no one smart enough to provide any real opposition. Oh, and your mum phoned, did you hear it go? But I let the answerphone pick up. She’ll only
want to go on about that mudslide in Russia. Where are the nail scissors, Ally?’
‘On the chest of drawers. In one of my boxes.’
‘I’ve a nail catching on my sock – do you mean the black and gold casket? – been driving me mad all evening – I can’t see it, Ally; which box? – got
them.’
