Man at the Helm (16 page)

I was telling the truth when I said that everyone in the whole parish of four villages would be at the Summer Garden Party. It was held every year in the grounds of Kneebone cottage hospital, which wasn’t actually in the village and only did varicose veins, bunions and appendixes. Not knee bones, or anything tricky or potentially fatal, the only death in twenty years having been a lonely chiropodist in a window leap.

The dog show element was very much just for fun and not like Cruft’s or anything where you had to take surgical spirit to the dog’s paws and put Carmen rollers in their hair. There were various classes, the first being the Dog Most Like Its Owner, in which Mrs C. Beard’s daughter, Charlotte, won first prize with their boxer dog, Minnie. Mrs C. Beard seemed thrilled, but Charlotte did not and she didn’t want her toffees of yesteryear.

My sister entered Debbie in the All-rounders, which was open to all dogs and was 50/50 (beauty/obedience). In the starting line-up, Debbie snapped at a little brown dog called Teasel. It was unlike Debbie to snap and my sister said so to Mr Phil Oliphant when he came round doing his close-up inspection of the entrants.

‘Debbie wouldn’t usually snap,’ she said, loud enough for the audience to hear.

Mr Oliphant suggested it might be the stress of the event and said Debbie was a lovely bitch in spite of the uncharacteristic snap. Then he went on to inspect Teasel and commented that Teasel looked like a teasel. Then he turned to my sister and said, ‘Doesn’t this little dog look exactly like a teasel?’

My sister nodded and agreed that Teasel the dog looked just exactly like a teasel, as if it was a good thing and amusing.

Mr Oliphant found nice things to say about all the dogs in the show, and of course Teasel won first prize.

My sister didn’t mind not winning and wasn’t surprised, especially after Debbie had snapped at the eventual winner (Teasel).

We stood at the rope, watching the last of the dog classes – the obstacle course with obedience aspect. My sister was delighted to report that Mr Oliphant had remembered her and had asked her if she’d found herself a pony yet.

‘What did you say?’ I asked.

‘I said yes, I had found a pony called Sacha and he was very nice but that my sister, you, were now looking for a pony,’ she said, beaming.

‘But I’m not,’ I said.

‘I know, but I said you are and he said he’ll keep his ear to the ground for us,’ she said, wide-eyed and nodding slightly, ‘and is more than happy to look at any pony we’re considering and give it the once-over.’

‘Why, though? I don’t want a pony,’ I said.

‘Him and Mum – you know,’ she said, exasperated, ‘just pretend you do.’

I was losing faith in Mr Oliphant. First of all, he was just too nice, and also I’d seen him walking round the show in a straw boater with his judge’s badge on and linking arms with a woman. And as if that wasn’t enough to put you off, there he was commenting that dogs looked like teasels when no one except him knew what a teasel was. My sister said he might’ve meant a weasel, but I thought he was just showing off knowing what it meant. I bet the owner didn’t even know.

‘I’ve seen him linking arms with a woman,’ I said.

‘That’s only his wife,’ said my sister. ‘The marriage is on the rocks.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘I just know, plus you don’t walk round linking arms with a wife if the marriage isn’t on the rocks. Linking arms is a sign, a very bad sign.’

‘Then why do it?’ I asked.

‘Don’t ask me, people just do it, it’s desperate. It’s instigated by the weaker partner,’ she said. ‘We did it in Science. It’s animal behaviour.’

Then I had to go and fetch our mother and Little Jack so that we’d be in time to introduce her to Mr Oliphant. We watched the last few dogs run through fabric tunnels and sit down. That bloody Teasel won again, which was pretty annoying. Then the dogs and owners filed out of the ring, followed by Mr Oliphant, and my sister waylaid him as planned.

‘Mr Oliphant,’ she called. ‘Mr Oliphant, I’d like you meet our mother.’ And he veered off course.

‘Hello, Mrs Vogel, how very nice to meet you,’ said Mr Oliphant, as he took her hand gently in his.

Our mother looked so pretty with loops of soft hair falling around her bare shoulders. Her sleepy green eyes looking so unusual and big under the floppy hat. She was by far the best-looking woman at the show – the pill-induced wooziness, and the light shapes in the dress pattern which moved like fluffy clouds in the summer sky, all adding to the general effect.

‘This is the dog judge, Mr Oliphant,’ my sister told our mother loud and clear. ‘He’s offered to help us find the perfect pony for Lizzie.’

‘Golly, what a very kind dog judge,’ said our mother. Mr Oliphant laughed as if she’d been joking, but I didn’t see what the joke was.

So Mr Oliphant had shaken her hand and been a bit mesmerized by her and had seemed – for all of the moments it took – to be in love with her, but then the woman I’d seen him linking arms with waddled up and claimed him back. I could see what my sister meant: the marriage did seem to be on the rocks. The magical atmosphere created by our mother’s prettiness, the sleepy sensuality brought on by a mixture of her nice eyelids and the pills, was washed away by this woman, like a bucketful of Jeyes Fluid dashed on to a grubby step.

‘Phil,’ she said, ‘you’re wanted in the committee tent.’

‘Am I?’ said Phil Oliphant, sadly.

My sister and I wandered off to see the small pets, while our mother and Jack went to see the pork pies in a tent. Apparently there was a clever one with a layer of chutney under the pastry lid that Jack had read about in a leaflet. A few minutes later Mrs Frink from the hunt announced that the organizers were looking for help to get the piano up on the stage, as the Talent Show was about to begin.

Everyone flocked to the stage to get a good seat. The deckchairs were soon all taken and my sister unfolded our rug again and we sat on it with Debbie in between us. Our mother and Little Jack failed to see us waving at them and stood on the other side of the stage, watching from behind a trestle table strewn with second-hand clothes, Little Jack nibbling the pastry off his pie.

The show began and two girls did a ballet routine called
Goose Pond
, which was meant to be like
Swan Lake
. Judging by its boringness, it probably was quite like
Swan Lake
and people started fidgeting. Then a boy sang ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ very quickly, which was slightly better than the ballet. Then a girl read a poem she’d written about a river flowing out to sea, which was easily the worst of the three.

Then a very small girl did a tap dance and burst into tears, which I didn’t count, and two girls did a reasonable gymnastics routine with one-handed cartwheels and the splits. The audience enjoyed it until one of the girls couldn’t get right down into the splits for the finale and it looked awkward and no one clapped. But overall, it was probably the best. So far.

Last, but by no means least, suddenly there was Miranda Longlady. My sister and I were agog seeing her up there. She was smiling the smile of an entertainer (mad but professional-looking) and wearing a yellow dress and a bowler hat. She took her time in setting up the stage. And looking at her, it was as though the sun had come out – this was partly because Melody, her egg-twin, was shining a strong torchlight upon her, and partly because the sun had in fact just come out. After welcoming the audience to the show, Miranda brought out Bufo, our mother’s frog puppet, from a little box. Bufo was shy at first and hid under Miranda’s arm. She’d put a yellow ribbon round his neck to match her dress and the ribbon around her hat. I hated her.

She began, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Freddie the frog.’

I glanced at our mother across the trestle table. She was very alert and open-mouthed. I felt very awkward. I felt embarrassed to see Bufo up there, as though he was my child or brother or something, and I felt ashamed that our mother would see him. Her being in no fit state to be seeing frogs from her childhood that I’d lent without asking.

Freddie the frog soon gained his confidence and bowed. The two of them performed a hysterical routine, with Mrs Frink accompanying on the piano (as she had with the
Goose Pond
girls and the gym duo). They finished with a short, flirty, comical conversation. Miranda had become an accomplished puppeteer
and when they were done, the audience laughed and clapped and called out, ‘More!’

Mrs Graham-Golding came on to the stage still laughing and clapping. Almost incapacitated, she had to lean on a chair while she got her breath back.

‘Oh my goodness me. Oh dear,’ she panted, ‘that was wonderful, was it not, ladies and gentlemen? Thank you, Miranda and Freddie.’ Miranda curtsied and Bufo waved. And everyone clapped again.

I looked over at our mother and we gave each other a long and wide-eyed stare. Then Mrs Graham-Golding appeared on stage again with her co-judge, Mr Frink from the hunt, to announce the contest winner. It was Miranda, of course, and Bufo, and she was called up to receive her little trophy and a bag of the wartime toffee.

I felt confused. My sister was clearly of the opinion that it had been a good result. My own overall feeling was of deep resentment and anger and jealousy and the feeling (yet again) that I wanted to punch Miranda in the face. I looked around and saw our mother step away from the trestle and waylay Mrs Graham-Golding in a similar fashion to my sister’s waylaying of Mr Oliphant (determined and a bit abrupt). I jumped up from the rug, but by the time I’d got close enough to hear the conversation, it was coming to an end.

‘I see, well, that is a shame. It’s a tricky situation,’ Mrs Graham-Golding was saying, ‘let me see what I can do.’

Soon after that, the judge appeared back on stage. She apologized for asking for the audience’s attention once again. ‘Just before we commence with the tea dance, I should like to announce that Freddie the frog, joint-winner of the Talent Contest, was appearing by kind permission of Miss Lizzie Vogel and the judges have decided that Lizzie should be awarded some toffee.’

There was a ripple of applause and I made my way up to take the little paper cornet from the smiling judge.

Miranda stood close to the stage. ‘What a freakish lot those Vogels are. First, they force the stupid bloody frog on me’ – she turned to Melody – ‘didn’t they, Mel? And now they want my glory for that little idiot Lizzie.’

Melody nodded vigorously until Miranda smacked the top of Melody’s head. And as I clambered off the stage, Miranda flung Bufo at me.

‘Here’s your frog back.’

I was happier than I had ever been. It wasn’t the justness, the frog back or the toffee. It was that our mother had acted for me, for us. It was the look we’d given each other across the trampled grass and the warped trestles. And that we’d been thinking the same thing.

Later I said to our mother, ‘Isn’t she the bitter end?’ which was the kind of thing she’d say, having been brought up in the 1950s.

Our mother nodded. I wanted more, though.

‘I hate her, don’t you, Mum?’ I said.

‘No. I don’t hate her,’ she said, ‘but she is the bitter end.’

While we waited for Mr Oliphant to come good, I’m afraid to say a dispute arose regarding control of the Man List. I’d always known my sister was pretty much the boss, but I thought there was an understanding that we both had to agree before any man was added.

Mr Nesbit was an oldish man with a full beard who had apparently once lived in a section of our house. He often sat on the street bench almost opposite, sucking Nuttall’s Mintoes, shouting out about the Suez Canal and inviting children to knock on his wooden leg.

Looking at the Man List one day, I was surprised to see Mr Nesbit’s name had been added without prior discussion, albeit with a question mark. I knew only too well that men were a bit thin on the ground in the village and our mother was in need of cheering up after the disastrous attempt to re-engage with the wider family, but I was 100 per cent anti-Mr Nesbit. It was a notion too ludicrous to even discuss, but his name was there in blue pen so I had to.

‘Why have you added Mr Nesbit to the list?’ I asked, hoping it might be a different Mr Nesbit, a doctor in the next village or something.

‘Why not?’ she said.

‘You mean to say it actually is
the
Mr Nesbit?’ I said. ‘He’s virtually a tramp.’

‘He’s a war veteran, Lizzie,’ said my sister.

‘He’s got mental problems,’ I said.

‘He’s been through some trying times,’ said my sister.

‘Mum would never cope with the wooden leg,’ I said.

‘She’d bloody well have to get used to it,’ said my sister, sounding very cross.

‘It would be a disaster,’ I said.

‘We said we wouldn’t rule anyone out,’ my sister reminded me.

‘I’m ruling Mr Nesbit out,’ I said.

‘Well, I’m saying give him a chance,’ said my sister.

‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s temperamentally unsuitable for the helm.’

I felt uncharitable but very sensible. We couldn’t have someone on the list who habitually shouted, ‘Get off and milk it,’ as we rode past him on our ponies. Plus, how could we work together if she could act in that unilateral manner? Not that I would have used those words at that time. Obviously.

‘How would you like it if I added someone without your say-so?’ I said.

‘You can add whoever you like,’ she said.

So I did. I added an equally undesirable man to the list – someone I knew my sister would never want at the helm. Someone on a par with Mr Nesbit.

Mr Terry the butcher was one of those cheerful, involved-in-the-village types who collected money for the Xmas decoration committee and donated pieces of meat and premium sausages to the Summer Garden Party.

‘You’ve added Mr Terry to the list,’ said my sister.

‘Yeah, I know, he’s nice. He’s a redhead. Mum loves a redhead,’ I said.

‘He’s a butcher, Lizzie,’ said my sister.

‘Is that bad?’ I asked.

‘I’m a vegetarian,’ said my sister.

‘You can’t rule him out just because you’re a vegetarian,’ I said. ‘He’s a redhead.’

‘Mum’s a vegetarian,’ said my sister, clutching at straws.

‘No, she’s not,’ I said.

‘How do you know?’ she said.

‘I saw her eat a chicken’s leg on New Year’s Eve,’ I said.

‘She was drunk and had forgotten about being a vegetarian,’ she said.

In the end we agreed to delete both Mr Terry and Mr Nesbit.

I wouldn’t really have wanted Mr Terry the butcher either. Not with our squeamish mother and all those bloody aprons, but I’d rather him than Mr Nesbit and his slogan-shouting and the leg propped up outside the bathroom door.

The pills our mother got from Dr Kaufmann and Dr Gilbey of Devonshire Place were a help, but the truth was that she remained basically unhappy without anyone grown-up in her life to have chats or sex with. I suggested she make friends with Mrs C. Beard across the road – for chats. But she wasn’t keen, probably because Mrs C. Beard seemed preoccupied with all the wrong things, such as the one-way system in the village and how increased road speeds might affect the duck pond. My sister suggested we buy a new yearling to ‘school on’, but our mother had had enough of ponies. I think she’d been put off by Robbie, our Shetland gelding, with all his minor ailments and his major one.

I felt let down by the pills: they’d not made enough tangible difference, only causing a hiatus in the laundry resulting in irreparable damage to most of our clothing. So I took the brave step of going to see Dr Kaufmann on my own. I felt we were grown-up enough to seek proper advice and stop groping around in the dark, and made an appointment in the correct manner – on the phone – and when the receptionist asked for a brief description of my ailment I said, ‘It’s personal,’ and the
receptionist said, ‘I’ll make a note to that effect.’ So I said, ‘It’s not an ailment, but a worry.’ And the receptionist said, ‘Say no more, dear.’ And sounded a bit like Dick Emery.

I could tell Dr Kaufmann was uncomfortable when I stepped into the surgery alone because he ran to the door and called his wife to come in. She rushed in and offered me two Smarties, which I thought odd – her being a doctor’s wife and Smarties looking like pills. I refused them, just in case they were pills. Dr and Mrs Kaufmann obviously knew about things at our house and looked at me with knitted brows.

I explained that our mother was lonely due to having no moral support and asked him and his wife what we should do for the best. I was careful to look at them both in turn as I spoke, because our mother had taught us always to look at everyone in the group when speaking and never just the man, which one is prone to do.

Dr Kaufmann asked me why now, particularly, I had come for advice. I explained that my sister and I were a bit worried about being made wards of court. He said things really weren’t that bad. We shouldn’t worry about abstract things, he said, but try to help with the everyday.

‘Such as what?’ I asked.

‘Such as making sure the whole family eats a meal every day,’ he said.

And he seemed to think this – the meal thing – was the key.

Dr and Mrs Kaufmann were exceedingly nice and helpful and made me feel so much better. They made me realize that our mother wasn’t the only adult who had pills and loneliness. And that sometimes even families
with
a man at the helm had problems. I could have cried with relief.

I didn’t say a word about the extra pills we were getting from Dr Gilbey of Devonshire Place. I was tempted momentarily,
knowing how cross Dr Kaufmann would be, not with our mother who was, after all, just a person on medication due to circumstances, but with Dr Gilbey, who was supposed to be a trained doctor with huge responsibilities. I imagined Dr Kaufmann getting the train with us to London and having it out with Dr Gilbey, swiping the tumblers of orange squash and little biscuits off the tray and scattering pills on to the floor as a symbol of his anger and calling Dr Gilbey a disgrace, which is about the worst thing one man can say to another without swearing. I couldn’t imagine Dr Kaufmann swearing.

I came away from the doctor’s feeling much less worried and reported the recommendations to my sister and we decided between us we should begin a cookery spree – an idea proposed by me ages ago (if you recall) – and I took the moral high ground.

‘I warned you about the underweight thing months ago,’ I reminded my sister, ‘and all you wanted to do was buy more foals.’

My sister was hurt by this and reminded me that it had taken her months to get me to care one iota about our poor abandoned mother and her state of mind.

So we truced, let bygones be bygones and straight away selected a few cookbooks to look at for ideas. We settled on
My Learn to Cook Book
by Ursula Sedgwick because it contained very attractive illustrations of eggs, pies and simple meals and offered clear and detailed guidance via a friendly cat and dog character. The recipes seemed very achievable as opposed to those in the other books, which appeared almost to be written in a foreign language plus had photographs, which were always off-putting as opposed to Ursula Sedgwick’s jolly illustrations.

We made Quick Lorraine, which was basically egg and bacon pie except with the addition of grated Cheddar and ground-up
peppercorns. The shortcrust pastry was the most difficult part, as it always is, but, using
My Learn to Cook Book,
it turned out great. Then, at tea, eating the Quick Lorraine, we got our mother reminiscing about her cooking glory days. And interwoven was the story of her marriage and its breakdown. Which was news to us.

She told us that, in the early years, she and our father had been a pair of trendy iconoclasts – eating one day at Cranks vegetarian restaurant in Carnaby Street with two baby girls in tow (my sister and me) and the next day, on a whim, they’d leave us with Jane the nice nanny and dine at the Savoy – where his parents kept a suite – and order room service omelettes with vodka and not even bother to eat them but rush out to a show at the last minute and have ice cream. They were free of convention in those days and our mother had loved that. Midway through the 1960s, however, my father was suddenly called back to Leicestershire to take over the family business. It was fair enough: he was in his mid-thirties and it was about time he did a day’s work.

My father was impressively able to snap back into the man he was required to be, but our mother struggled. There was something wrong with her. She says it boiled down to the fact that she was so young, only twenty-something, and hadn’t ever wanted or needed to be serious and proper, but I suspect it was more that she didn’t like the man my father had snapped back into – the true, proper, educated him. To be fair, she’d fallen in love with and married the other version – a person who didn’t really exist and had been going through a phase. And that must’ve been a bit daunting.

It was scary to think you could accidentally marry someone who was in a phase.

Our mother did her best to support him as a wife, and did OK
up to a point, on the entertaining side of things with her cookery skills – the foundations of which she’d learned at her boarding school, where they taught girls everything they needed to know in order to be a good wife to a successful man (plus Latin and maths). And then honed the skills at home with Gwen, the family’s inventive cook, who was interested in Italian and French foods – a rare thing at the time. Unless in Italy or France.

The dinners our mother produced during those years – between the iconoclastic years and the divorce and before she and he stopped liking each other – were as beautiful to look at as they were delicious to eat, and this was much appreciated by the many business guests our father had to entertain – especially the Americans, who were way ahead of the British in the ways of food apparently.

Our mother’s meals often had a clever theme. It was something Gwen the inventive cook had taught her – make the food look interesting and your husband (or guest) will find you enigmatic beyond the plate. And that reminded me of a thing our sports teacher used to say about starting one goal ahead if you and your teammates all have your hair in medium-height ponytails (as opposed to different heights/styles).

Our mother made sure that the meals she served were fascinating. For instance, a flourish of multicoloured steamed matchstick vegetables arranged as a rainbow above a hunk of grilled flesh was called Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain. I could picture it in my mind. Other dishes I could picture were the Tropical Aquarium – tiny savoury shapes in aspic, depicting fish with spinach seaweed. And Picture-frame Pie – which looked, from a distance, like a Cézanne – set with apricot gelatine in ornate pastry, sculpted to resemble the carved wood of a frame. Last one: inspired by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, a fruit and nut platter depicting an old man’s swollen face with apple
cheeks, a dappled yellow conference pear for his drunkard’s nose and half-open Brazil nuts for eyes.

Her ramblings were quite interesting, but more importantly, they offered a perfect run-up to our suggestion for a cookery spree and, as soon as she stopped rambling, we begged her to cook for us and she was quite touched.

‘Cook something for us,’ we begged.

‘No, I can’t,’ she said coyly, ‘I’ve lost my confidence, food-wise.’

‘We beg you,’ we said.

‘Don’t beg,’ she said.

‘It’s only us, Mum. It won’t matter what happens. We’re not even grown-ups,’ said my clever sister, ‘and no one will know.’

All that chatting and begging led to the risotto a couple of days later.

As our mother began to prepare her ingredients and equipment, my sister went out to groom her pony and teach him to count to three with his hoof, Little Jack read his book about Romans killing people and themselves, and I was left to supervise the risotto, which annoyed me. I was not interested in cookery per se and especially not in watching someone else cook special rice. Plus I hated being on my own with a parent (still do) and I didn’t know what to say – whether to encourage, enquire or ignore, having had no experience of cooking or spectating it, except for the Quick Lorraine.

I must say, it
was
amusing, though, seeing our mother at the stove all aproned up and with a low ponytail. She really looked the part, which was odd in itself as I’d never before seen her looking the part – any part – except on a sun-lounger. She had her utensils laid out and the special rice ready beforehand, which seemed a good start, but no recipe book; the recipe was in her
head, which seemed bad. She put oil and butter into a pan, added a whole lot of chopped onions and let them cook down while she boiled up some coffee. She then tipped the rice into the onions. It was going well and the comforting aroma of the sweating onions soon began to swirl around and, with it, a feeling of well-being.

She must have got bored then because she suddenly left the cooking area and started writing in her notebook at the kitchen table and swigging the coffee. It was a big kitchen, the table and cooker being at opposite ends. I went over for a peep at the notebook, hoping to see a recipe, but saw what looked like the beginning of a play.

Adele: I thought macédoine.