Unlike a Virgin (13 page)

‘You’re not pregnant, are you?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, just something my mum used to say. It’s probably an old wives’ tale. “If you’ve got a way with the babes, you’ve got a babe on the way.” Or something like that. Coffee?’

I shudder. I don’t like that old wives’ tale very much.

Leonard and Joan aren’t here. They never miss a week at the graveyard except when they go to Dorset for two weeks every September, and they always tell me beforehand. I don’t like it. I’ve eaten two doughnuts.

Still, I’ve had a good chat with Dad. What I tend to do in times of crisis is talk aloud about my problems while standing on Dad’s grave until I come to some sort of conclusion. Then I state the conclusion loud and clear and wait for a sign. I always take it that Dad sanctions the outcome because my father was pretty canny and I’m sure if he didn’t agree with a conclusion formulated on his grave he would let me know somehow, by dropping a branch on my head or getting a bird to poo on me or something.

‘So you’re saying you’re cool with that?’ I ask. ‘I go to Mum’s and open her bank letters with her; we work out how much she owes and then I get a loan and take over paying
them off. Excellent. So that’s the plan then. And she has to tell the evil SJS Construction people to shove their money right up their … Sorry, Dad. So that’s it. Done deal.’

I look about me, waiting for a sign of discontent, but the sun moves from behind a cloud to dazzle Dad’s grave, the silver birch and me with light.

‘Nice.’ I smile to Dad. Well, to his tombstone.

‘Oh, Grace, Grace, a man came to see us.’ It’s Joan, looking very flustered for someone who’s usually so elegant.

‘Hiya,’ I say. ‘I was worried something had happened to you. Who came to see you?’

‘Leonard is just parking. A man from SJS Construction. He visited us at our house about an hour ago. Oh, Grace, he’s not a very nice man. He was quite threatening. I said we should go to the police, but Leonard said they’d laugh at us. I don’t think they would, do you?’

‘What did he say?’

‘That we’re the only people who’ve objected. He offered us … Well, Grace, he offered us an awful lot of money.’

‘How much?’

‘Twenty thousand pounds.’

‘Twenty thousand pounds! And what did you say?’

‘Well, I didn’t speak, I let Leonard do the talking while I made the tea. I wish I hadn’t made that man tea, Grace. I’ll throw away the cup when I get home.’

‘What did Leonard say?’

‘He said that this spot was magic and couldn’t be bought for any amount of money. He said no. He said it for you, too, Grace. He said that we three come here to pay our respects and that that is something that can’t be bought.’

‘Bloody goat!’ shouts Leonard as he appears. ‘I knew the chap as well. Not well, but I played cricket with him years ago. He came in like an old friend, didn’t he, Joan? Joan even made tea for him! And then he turned, just like that …’

‘He did, Grace, he did.’

‘He of all people should know. He lost his wife years ago now, didn’t he? What was her name?’

Joan shook her head.

‘Oh, what was it? I had it a moment ago,’ blusters Leonard.

‘Lovely woman. Terrible when she died. He fell apart.’

‘Leonard wrote him a lovely condolence card.’

‘Now look what he’s doing. This definitely calls for a letter to the
Gazette.
I’ll get
London Tonight
onto
this. Just you watch me.’

‘Relax, Len, think of your blood pressure,’ Joan soothes. I get out the doughnuts, but as I’m crossing Dad’s grave with them I look up and I see something. There’s a car parked on some industrial land across the canal. It’s a great big Range Rover. Not just any old gas-guzzling Range Rover, mind, it has a logo on the side that looks suspiciously like the SJS Construction motif. There’s a large silver-haired man standing beside it, and he’s holding something up to his face. It might be binoculars, but it could also be a camera, so I hold a finger up for his benefit. I feel like a football hooligan, and it’s not altogether unpleasant. That must be the land he wants to build on. And he obviously needs an access road down the side of the graveyard and over the canal. I keep my finger up until he gets back in his car.

‘Now, then, Simon & Garfunkel anyone?’

Leonard and Joan don’t respond, they just stare at me with sad eyes.

‘It’s all right, I’m going to make Mum change her mind, then the pressure won’t be all on you,’ I tell them, sounding far more confident than I feel.

My mother. Now there’s a sigh. Where to start with my mother? We used to get on when Dad was alive. To be honest, our lives were amazing when he was here. Life excited Dad. ‘Grace, guess what I saw?’ ‘Rose, you’ll never guess what happened!’ ‘Listen to this, my lovelies!’ He would sweep us up in his amazement for the littlest things: a new version of a favourite song, a funny sitcom, a comfy sweater. He found wonder in everything and, as a result, so did we. But when he died and it was Mum and I alone, we didn’t find anything wonderful, least of all each other.

I thought she was a princess when I was growing up, though. Every fairy-tale heroine looked like my mum in my imagination. When Cinderella danced with Prince Charming at the ball, it was my mum and dad doing the Viennese Waltz. Light as a butterfly she would cover the floor, her exquisite face lost in a dream, my father revering her as he moved her in his arms. She became the nation’s sweetheart,
with a manager to organise magazine interviews and TV appearances. She even appeared
on This Morning with
Richard and Judy.

The Rosemary Flowers you meet nowadays couldn’t be more different. She hasn’t left the house for at least three years. I can’t be sure it’s not longer than that, to be honest. I think it started the day I had my freak-out at the singing competition. When I say I screamed and screamed, I don’t want you to think I made a few ‘eek’ sounds because that definitely wasn’t the case. No, I howled. I howled as though someone was being murdered in front of me or I was being murdered myself. And I ran onto the stage, but only because it was the quickest route to the exit. A man appeared from backstage and caught me, while another ran from the audience to help him. They carried me out as I screamed and someone called an ambulance. I calmed down once we were outside, in the sense that I stopped yelling and started crying. I cried a lot that day – so much that I worried I’d never stop. I haven’t cried since.

I don’t remember my mother in the ambulance with me, but I do remember her at the hospital, how she dropped shaking to the floor as though she couldn’t take any more of what life was offering her. When we returned home from that trip there was an unspoken agreement between us that we weren’t terrific socially and that we should probably stay at home for a while. But whilst I eventually got going again, she didn’t. She just got worse and worse. Now she sits at home all day, buying things on the internet, doing her workouts and thinking. I sometimes wonder whether I work really hard so I don’t have time to think. There’s nothing worse than having time on your
hands to listen to those nagging voices of doubt inside your head. I’d rather sell houses.

Still, I shouldn’t complain, at least I’ve stopped worrying that she’ll kill herself. There was a time when Wendy and I were on suicide watch. It was horrible. Before Dad died my mum used to make her own dancing dresses. She’d go to the fabric stores in Shepherd’s Bush market, where she’d haggle and flirt, then she’d come home with rolls and rolls of material and take to her sewing machine for days at a time. I would watch, fascinated, as the creation unfolded on the dressmaker’s model. The pulsing bleat of the sewing machine was a regular backing track to my life growing up.

But during the dark years, as I call them, when it was me and Mum at home, she didn’t touch the sewing machine. It sat there gathering dust and fluff, another symbol of a life given up on, until one day I came home from Danny’s and heard the ghostly sound of the sewing machine from my past. I crept upstairs and into the spare room and there was my mother surrounded by swathes of velvet and silk, all richly textured, but all black. Weeks it took her, longer than any dress she’d ever made, and when she finished the result was chilling. It was by far the most beautiful dress I had ever seen, and I invited Wendy over to show her.

‘It makes all those Oscar dresses look scabby,’ Wendy whispered when she saw it.

It had a mid-calf-length skirt made of velvet, which was shaped around the hips and ruched slightly at the front, as though there were a train at the back. There wasn’t a train, though, just a small kick of material that came from just under the bottom. The silk bodice rose to a heart-shaped top, with
side panels of velvet, and she’d sewn row upon row of tiny beads and sequins across the front.

‘What’s it for?’ Wendy whispered.

I shrugged.

‘It’s not a dress she could dance in. She wouldn’t be able to move her legs. She doesn’t need a dress to go out in because she never goes anywhere.’

‘So what’s she going to do with it?’

I froze.

‘She’s going to die in it.’

Wendy gasped.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, but not in a way that suggested I was being silly.

We walked out of the spare room as though in a trance, then we raced through the house, hiding painkillers and sharp knives, convinced that my mother had made this beautiful dress to meet my dad in heaven. The Death Dress, we called it, and we only ever whispered in its presence. It sat on her dressmaker’s dummy like an ominous premonition for over a year, then one day I walked into the spare room and it had been covered up by a plastic dress protector. I think that was the day my mother decided to live. Not that she really does live. More like buries herself alive.

These days it’s virtually impossible to communicate with her. We do speak – I’m civil; she’s vague – but that’s it. Today, though, we’re having to go beyond that, and it’s not easy for either of us. We’ve been going round in circles for thirty-five minutes according to the cooker clock. We’re getting nowhere, and now I’ve resorted to whining like an eight-year-old.

‘
M-u-u-m
,’

‘Grace, I don’t want to hear another word on the subject. I’m accepting this man’s kind offer.’

See! She’s impossible.

‘It’s not a kind offer. How can it be a kind offer? It’s a place I’ve gone to every week to be close to Dad.’ My voice cracks, making us both recoil. I used to be so good at not crying, but for some reason tears keep popping up and having to be blinked or swallowed away at the moment. It’s a right pain. I turn away from her and look out of the kitchen window. The back lawn needs mowing and buttercups are scattered across the lawn. I used to dance among them as a child singing, ‘Build Me Up, Buttercup’. When I think the urge to cry has passed, I face her again.

‘For ten years I’ve gone there to sing and talk to him, to wipe the bird poo off his grave and give him seasonal flowers, which I buy in Sainsbury’s on the way. And I’m sorry, Mum, but you can’t take that away from me.’

‘Grace.’ To give her credit, her voice sounds softer. ‘I’ve signed the form. They’ve got my signature.’

‘But you could retract it. You could say you’ve changed your mind. We could talk to him together. He lost his wife; he’d understand.’

She shakes her head silently.

‘No, Grace, it’s different for you.’

‘Why?’

‘I hate thinking of that cold dark place where he is, Grace. I can’t do it …’ She turns away. This is unprecedented. Mum never mentions my dad being dead.

‘But, Mum,’ I say gently. ‘Come with me. Come next Saturday. It’s not cold or dark. The slutty silver birch whispers
to him all day. It’s a beautiful place to be laid to rest. I always thought we’d be laid next to him. Please, Mum, come with me next week. You can meet Leonard and Joan.’

‘Who are they?’

‘I told you when I met them. Their mum is buried near Dad.’

‘I didn’t know you still saw them.’

‘Yes, every Saturday. They’re fighting the construction company, but it’s not fair for them to take all the flak on their own. Len’s over seventy and he has high blood pressure, and SJS Construction seem like bullies.’

‘The man I met seemed like a very nice man,’ she says. I might be wrong, but she looks as though she’s trying to suppress a smile as she says this.

‘Mum, I’m with Leonard and Joan, but it’s quite hard for me to be with them when my own mum wants to sell my dad’s grave. But we’ll fight it and we’ll win, because everyone will be on our side. They want to build a slip road, but it shouldn’t be built there, Mum. Please be on our side. On Dad’s side.’

‘I’ve signed a form.’

‘We’ll say you’ve changed your mind. Don’t worry about the money.’

‘There is no money, Grace.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘We had investments and I was given money each month, but when the banks went bust we lost most of it, so I started using credit cards, and now I either sell the grave or the house.’

‘Oh, shit.’

‘For once I agree with you, Grace.’