Gilliflowers (52 page)

On an evening I’d slip away after dinner on the pretext of going for a walk, or to Eileen’s or to visit Dot. I even invented choir practice, claiming I’d been asked to fill in for someone at Eileen’s church so as to balance out the ratio of male to female voices. I began practising carols around the house as a way of lending credence to the lie.

The party season got properly underway. Social activity began to pick up. Mike hosted a bash at the beginning of December. He rarely plays host at his own pad, but when he does his parties tend to be noisy, smoky boozy affairs with mates from his days as a roadie lending raucous vibes. I managed to get out of going by claiming the date clashed with a meal out I’d arranged with my lit lady friends. I felt it would be rude to let them down. Of course there was no such date.

My friend Tez called and invited me to meet up for a lunchtime drink or two. I declined, claiming a heavy cold and said I’d catch up with him in the New Year if he were still in the area.

When Reny and Angela held a fancy cocktail party I had a bad migraine.

A dinner party at Rob and Howard’s place fell on the night of a carol concert at Eileen’s church. There was indeed one being held, but I wasn’t part of it.

Penny and the Muppet came wassailing early, bringing Shane’s father with them for a weekend visit. All three were going to spend Christmas with Lorraine and James. Lorraine is heavily in pod and due to pop around the alleged date of the nativity. She’s apparently having a home birth at which Penny will help. Knowing her she’ll elbow the midwife aside, deliver the baby, name it and give James and Lorraine precise instructions about how to bring it up. Then she’ll arrange for it to prick its finger when it comes of age and fall into an enchanted sleep…oh hang on, I’m getting her mixed up with wicked witches of yore, silly me.

Leo reserved a table at the sushi restaurant he has a part share in for the Saturday evening of their visit. I cried off due to injury, real this time. I’d taken a nasty tumble while out running earlier in the day. It was my own fault. I was too busy mulling over the contents of my mind to pay much attention to where I was placing my feet. I went too close to the edge of the kerb and lost my footing, crashing onto the road. Thank God there was no traffic around. I would have ended up as road kill. The weird guy who cooks up recipes using animal car casualties would have scraped me up and made me into a houseboy stew.

I hurt my right shoulder in the fall, sustaining a nasty friction burn. I tried to hide it from the resident TCP fiend, Shane, but he came into the bedroom after I’d showered, catching me unawares. Before I could hide under the bed he’d whipped out a wad of cotton wool and was daubing my shoulder with the pungent antiseptic fluid.

I hate the evil stuff. I reckon it could be used as a form of torture:
‘You will give away State Secrets or suffer the torment of a thousand cuts.’

‘I will never talk. You can’t make me. Do your worst!’

‘Very well, you will give away State Secrets or suffer the torment of a thousand
cuts followed by the liberal application of TCP by a merciless man called Shane. He
will slap your arse and tell you to stop being a fucking big baby when you scream in
agony!’

‘NO! Not TCP torture! I’ll talk I’ll talk. I’ll give you every State Secret you want.

I’ll even tell you where the Queen hides her stash of Jaffa Cakes.’

Anyway, getting back on track, I said I didn’t want to go out because I was stiff and sore. Dick crossly said sitting at a table was hardly likely to aggravate my shoulder, and besides it was only a graze. Penny chimed in with a comment about me smelling unpleasant because of the antiseptic. She said it was strong enough to taint the food. It was a clincher. I chose to take offence. I refused to venture out ‘smelling unpleasant enough to taint food.’

Three cheers for TCP and the Midlands Hag. For once she’d done me a favour.

They all went off to eat sushi and quaff sake. I took a flask of 0% hot chocolate down to my Elvin palace to quaff amongst the fairy lights.

Then came the day of the annual Christmas Charity Ball at the Masonic Hall, a regal building with a history dating back to the eighteenth century. I was determined not to attend. No way was I floating around without a drink fending off mason’s daughters who wanted to dance with Dick and Shane’s ‘young friend’ while demonstrating an unnatural interest in my career prospects and marital status. Dancing the hokey cokey would be a risky affair. Once my left leg was out there the inside of it would be fair game to be measured by some lass looking for a groom to fill a suit she’d bought at a wedding outfitter’s sale.

Members of the lodge recognise Dick and Shane as a couple. They know I live with them, but most remain determined to ignore my emotional involvement with them. I’m their young friend, a favoured employee or ward of some kind. Gay couples are one thing, gay trios quite another.

I began priming the situation at breakfast by laying claim to a headache and saying I didn’t think I’d be up to Masonic dinner dance activity if it got worse (which of course it would.) Shane gazed at me for a long moment before speaking. “You’re getting a lot of headaches lately, Gilli. Why do you think that is?”

I played the game, trying to turn it to my advantage. “Maybe I need a break from my meds.”

He gave a cool smile. “I don’t think so, my darling. They seem to be doing their job much better these days.”

“Apart from causing me headaches, and rampant acne.”

“Take some painkillers and have a lie down when Dick has gone to work. You’ll feel better by lunchtime I’m sure.”

“I can’t. I’ve got a big meat order due today. I need to sort the freezer out.”

“Afterwards then, so you’re fresh for this evening.”

I made no comment. He left for work and then Dick left in his turn. I did what I’d been doing every morning since buying my mother’s Christmas card. I got it out and looked at it. Shane had remained critical of how much I spent on it, but acknowledged it was an area outside his jurisdiction and was indeed none of his business.

As Dick said he isn’t a new age sensitive kind of man. He has moments when he’s a gentler being, but essentially he is as he is. He tries to be fair, but isn’t over concerned if he isn’t. He does what he judges to be right at any given moment.

I’d taken back the clothes because I’d been told to, but retained the boyfriend cards, slipping them into my sock drawer. He hadn’t said to take them back, bedsides I didn’t fancy the checkout lady thinking I’d been caught in adultery and dumped by both boyfriends.

My mother’s card was unwritten in. I didn’t want to write in it. I didn’t want to sign it. It felt like signing her death warrant. It was crack in the pavement mentality. If I didn’t step on the cracks then nothing bad would happen. I glanced at the calendar on the kitchen wall. There were only a few posting days left.

I’d already gotten my card from her. It was in the summerhouse. I hadn’t shown it to the boyfriends. It was scenic with a boy and a dog in a glittery snowy landscape. It said ‘For a Dear Son’ on the front. Inside she’d written: ‘to Gilli, with much love from mam’ followed by a row of biro kisses. She also wrote the date, ‘Christmas 2008’ as if to give me a point of reference. This was her last card to me and she was dating it as a memento. It choked me every time I looked at it. There had been a photo enclosed with the card. It was a copy of the one on her unit, of the two of us at Flamingo Land.

On the back she had written ‘remember the happy times.’

Taking a deep breath I wrote out her card: ‘to mam, with lots of love from Gilli.

Thanks for the photo. I’ll remember.’ I followed words with a sprinkle of kisses. I didn’t date it. She had no need of dates.

Once the meat order had been delivered and put away I sealed the card up and took it to the Post Office sending it registered delivery so she’d get it the next day.

By the time I got home I felt drained. The headache I’d invented was becoming a reality. I draped my coat over a kitchen chair, swallowed a couple of painkillers, made up a flask of tea and some cheese sandwiches and trotted off down the garden to my winter palace. It was barely three in the afternoon, but the sun was already going down. These were the dark days before Christmas, the shortest of the year.

I switched on all the lights, lit the candles and settled down. The way I was feeling I could happily have moved into the summerhouse. I felt swaddled and safe under its roof. By four it was properly dark. I didn’t put the main light on or the table lamps, choosing to have fairy lights and candlelight as the only means of illumination. It was a cold day and while the heating system took away the worst of the chill it didn’t obliterate it altogether. I curled up on a sofa with a blanket tucked around me admiring the lights and their reflection in the windows. I usually closed all the blinds, so as to prevent detection, but it being early I had no expectation of the men folk arriving home.

I thought about the present I’d bought my mother for Christmas. I’d wracked my brains about what to get her. Nothing seemed right. What do you give a terminally ill person other than what they really want, more time?

The puzzle was solved by bizarre chance. I was in the supermarket doing a mundane shop one day when the music system started playing what had become one of my favourite Christmas songs. Joni Mitchell’s ‘River.’ It was being sung by one of my less favoured singers, my mother’s mate Marti Pellow. I have to say he sung it well. I wasn’t the only one to recognise his voice. I overheard two fellow shoppers, women about mum’s age, talking about him. Like her they had been fans. One wondered what he was doing now. The other supplied the answer. He was playing the lead in a touring musical production of The Witches of Eastwick.

When I got home that day I hit Google and there it was, my gift for my mother.

Tickets to see her once upon a time pop hero in a musical. A theatre venue close to her was hosting the show in March. It would give her something to look forward to, a goal. I bought two tickets for best seats so she could take fuck-face Frank or her friend Marie.

A sudden cold draught interrupted my warm thoughts causing my heart rate to shoot up the scale.

“A pretty bolt hole you’ve made for yourself.”

“Shane!” I stared at him in shocked surprise, sitting up properly as he walked into the summerhouse, closing the door behind him. “You’re home early.”

“Obviously.” He undid his coat. “I wondered where you were and why you’d gone out leaving the doors unlocked. I phoned, only to hear your mobile ring from your coat pocket. I saw the lights from the kitchen window.”

Taking off his overcoat he draped it over the back of the chair opposite me and sat down, tweaking his trousers before crossing one long leg over the other, placing his hands on his knee. He glanced around. “So this is where you’ve really been disappearing to. Quite a show you’ve put on, if not quite my taste. It all looks new, must have cost a bit.”

“Don’t worry. I put it on my own credit card, not the household account.”

“I wasn’t worried, Gilli, not about cost, though do remind me to go over your statements later, see where you’re at in comparison to the national debt.” He flicked a finger at the Christmas tree. “I wondered why you haven’t pushed to have one in the house this year. I thought perhaps it was to do with us going to Leo’s.”

“You could have asked, Shane.”

“Quite right.” He spotted mum’s card and the photo on the coffee table. Leaning forward he picked the picture up and looked at it. He gave a small smile. “You haven’t changed much. You still have the same cheeky look about you when you smile, a rare enough occurrence these days. Something tells me life was probably going all your way on the day this was taken.”

His smile switched off. He leaned back in the chair, studying me, his green eyes cool and appraising. I put my left hand up to my mouth, chewing at my thumbnail.

“Dick is worried sick about you.”

I felt a pang of guilt. “Why?”

“Because for some unfathomable reason he adores you, a grave mistake in my opinion. Few people are deserving of adoration, least of all you. He’s afraid we’re making you unhappy by asking too much of you. He fears we’re losing you. You barely speak to us these days. You avoid our company. You’re constantly distracted.

You do the minimum in the house. The kitchen is a mess, Gilli. The breakfast pots are still stacked in the sink.”

“Sorry, it’s because of this headache, I…” I fell silent as he held up his hand.

“I don’t want your excuses. I disagree with Dick. I don’t think we’re losing you. I don’t think you want to be lost, not permanently. We’re not making you unhappy.

You’re making yourself unhappy. Not socialising, all this,” he made a circling motion with his hand, “is pure avoidance. It’s also manipulation, unconscious perhaps, but manipulation all the same. It’s beginning to get to Dick, but not me.”

He pointed at the photo again. “You put on this bold cheeky front, like nothing bothers you, but the truth is, Gilli, everything bothers you. You have a whirlpool mind. It churns everything round and round until you don’t know whether you’re coming or going. On your worst days I’ve seen you almost in tears because you can’t decide what shirt to wear. Behind the grin you’re a scared, mixed up, insecure little boy who yearns for guidance and structure, which you then rail against when it clips your wings in a way that doesn’t suit your immediate wants.”

Getting up he began closing the window blinds. “Hiding away achieves nothing. It solves nothing. It’s going to stop. Dick and I have your long-term interests at heart and they supersede what you want in the short term. Take a good look around, boy, because you won’t be holing up in here again after today. It’s out of bounds to you until the spring.”

I gazed at him for a moment and then reached for the thermos flask on the table.

“I’ll just finish off my tea first.”

Jesus! I almost shit my kecks as he lunged for me. The thermos got knocked to the floor as he lugged me up off the sofa.