Man at the Helm (17 page)

Roderick: (
irritable
) I asked for julienne.

Adele: But you know I’m afraid of the mandoline after what happened.

Roderick: But it achieves uniform thickness.

Spotting that, I knew my place was back by the rice and onions – which were now whining softly in the pan and begging to be stirred. I didn’t, though (stir). I knew, even at that young age, you don’t stir someone else’s pan, however desperate the situation. And that people who do are outrageous interferers and have no respect for the person whose pan it actually is. Gwen had taught our mother this years ago and then, when my sister unthinkingly stirred a pan of grated potato that was meant to be staying in one piece, our mother explained the rule to us.

I became a bit alarmed about the rice and onions – it looked as though it might be starting to burn. The onions and oil had gone to nothing and it was left to the rice to take the heat. The whole thing had taken a turn for the worse and a new sound was emitting from the pan, an agonized hiss, and the anxious smell
of hot metal obliterated the comforting aroma of sweating onions. I decided I must speak out, and though I knew my interference would have an adverse effect on the project (and would make our mother hate me), I had to try to save the risotto. I guess this is the worrier’s dilemma. Speak out and be despised, or live with devastation.

‘Can rice burn?’ I asked.

‘No, not really,’ she said, without looking up from her notebook.

I struggled on. ‘Are you sure?’ I said, in a dreadful high voice.

‘About what?’ she said, looking up now, annoyed.

‘… that rice can’t burn,’ I said, and she sprang up and crossed the smoky room.

‘Why didn’t you tell me it was burning?’ she said.

‘I did,’ I said.

‘Jesus!’ she said, and flung the pan into the sink. The kitchen filled with hissing steam and it was as though Stephenson’s derailed Rocket had burst through the wall. The others appeared and asked what had happened and my sister looked at me, blamingly.

‘You didn’t stir her pan, did you?’ she asked.

‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I’m not stupid.’

That was the end of the risotto. But happily it didn’t put her off altogether and it wasn’t long before she dragged out a huge, rather stained earthenware pot (given to her by Mrs Vanderbus, who no longer needed the capacity) and cooked a casserole of frozen chicken wings. The result was a soup of fingery bones and soft carrots in a soupy liquid – but quite nice and a success in terms of filling the house with the comforting aroma of stewing onions and not burning.

And she carried on for a while with low-maintenance dishes, mainly stews in the earthenware pot and sometimes roasted
fruits with demerara sugar and custard, and I just wished that one day Dr Kaufmann would peer in through the window and see the scenes of meal production and note how sensibly I’d taken his advice. Sadly, I have to admit that our mother didn’t actually eat much of the food herself – just picking at it while she cooked – carrot coins and the odd spoonful here and there. The point was, though, that she was buying and cooking food and that was very good for the campaign to keep us out of the Crescent Homes.

Charlie Bates’s non-appearance all this time should have been a relief to my sister and me, but after a while it wasn’t. We could have done with him. We actually missed him and the way he made our mother feel.

It had been the same when we’d lost our father, who’d seemed nothing but a killjoy and table-manners tyrant, but then not having him at home with us had been disastrous, albeit gradually, like pulling at an irritating thread and accidentally unravelling your cuff, then your sleeve, then the whole jumper. After a short while we felt the lack of him and yet felt uncomfortable with him. The problem was, we didn’t know him any more. Each day that passed we grew and changed, and every time we saw him he seemed settled more snugly into his new life. He even got a new dog.

My sister said it wasn’t that having a man was good, but that not having one was bad. And that men were just irritants of one sort or another that you’d rather have than not. And it was that (the rather having than not) that explained all the unpleasant, crosspatch fathers you saw in armchairs and driving seats, and reading newspapers before anyone else was allowed. Women and children would simply rather have them than not – even with all their habits and bad breath – and that was the basis for the repeat pattern we were desperate to repeat.

Anyway, Mr Phil Oliphant hadn’t shown any signs of popping in with news of a suitable pony for me, and since there was no one else on the horizon and nor did we feel inclined to scrape the
bottom of the barrel and apply for the retired mechanic or the gardener quite yet, we said we’d do what we could to repair Charlie and our mother’s relationship.

I know it doesn’t make sense and I’m sorry, but that’s life, I’m afraid.

My sister’s recent reading led her to the conclusion that Charlie’s love for our mother had ‘fallen asleep’ and just needed reawakening. This mostly happened in ancient marriages where one partner has gone to seed physically or mentally. Apparently love couldn’t be awakened with the gentle opening of the window blinds or a cup of tea at the bedside, but needed a proper jolt – a metaphorical pulling off of the sheets and a dead leg.

My sister thought it through carefully and devised the following plan to reawaken Charlie’s love. One of us (me) would go to the Piglet Inn and blurt out to Charlie that our mother was paired off with someone else. This news would be said as if blurted out without thinking and would make Charlie wild with jealousy and regret. I wasn’t entirely sure what ‘paired off’ meant, so I double-checked.

‘You’ll just drop into the conversation that she’s going out with Mr Lomax,’ my sister said.

‘Mr Lomax – really?’ I said.

‘It’s got to be Mr Lomax,’ said my sister.

‘Not again,’ I said.

‘Well, why not? He’s the obvious choice,’ she said.

‘Not the crab,’ said Little Jack, with a bored person’s very good memory for things from a long time ago. ‘I don’t like him.’

‘Look, she doesn’t actually have to
go out
with him. Charlie just needs to think she is. And someone just needs to mention it in front of him,’ she said, with her hands up in a USA-style gesture meaning ‘Come on, guys!’

‘We just need to accidentally-on-purpose blurt out that she’s
having a romance with someone,’ she said. ‘Anyone would do … but Lomax is probably best.’

Jack’s objections caused a brief discussion as to who the fake new lover should be for maximum impact, but we remained in favour of Mr Lomax as the reawakening conduit – him being a handyman of repute, a holder of the Confederation of Registered Gas Installers certificate and a Liberal, plus his alleged ability to sit through Shakespeare, if need be, which Charlie couldn’t (having once said to our mother that he’d rather stick a pin in his eye than see
Hamlet
at the Haymarket).

The plan was that I would go to the Piglet Inn and buy two fleur-de-lys pies. And accidentally bump into Charlie. I had a few rehearsals and the following Saturday I mounted the Raleigh Rustler and went to the Piglet Inn. Charlie was there, which surprised me for some reason, leaning on the bar reading the racing paper. I tapped him on the elbow and he looked down at me and nodded.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he grunted.

‘I’ve come to get two pies,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ve come to get drunk,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I said.

‘I ask myself the same thing all the time,’ he said.

‘You should try to cut down on it,’ I said.

Then the barman asked Charlie what he was having and Charlie said he’d better serve me first – before I put the Piglet out of business with my prohibitionist talk.

‘Two takeaway steak pies,’ I said, and the barman went away to get them and that was my chance to blurt out the lie. But in spite of many successful rehearsals, when it came to it, standing there with the overwhelming stench of cigarettes and beery carpets and the sense that the whole room was staring at me, it was hard to deliberately blurt it out. It’s easy to blurt things out
naturally when you don’t mean to and you shouldn’t, but when you’re
trying
to the time never seems right, then you wait too long, the perfect moment passes and then if you wade on and insist on blurting it, it seems 100 per cent deliberate (which it is).

Plus you can only drop something into a conversation if you’re actually having a conversation, which you never are with Charlie – him not being a conversationalist.

Anyhow, I didn’t manage to blurt it out. I paid for the two pies and said, ‘Bye, then,’ to Charlie and he looked at me with his red eyes and said, ‘Bon appeteeto,’ which was strange, him hating Italy so much.

I left the bar and went to get my bike. As I was leaving the Piglet car park, I saw Mr Lomax go into the bar. I waited a moment and then watched through the window from the roadside. Mr Lomax went to the bar. Then he and Charlie went together and sat at a little round table, like best friends, with their pints and what looked like pies. It was strange because when, previously, I’d mentioned Mr Lomax to Charlie, he said he knew of him but hadn’t been introduced.

I cycled home, and though nothing awful had happened I was troubled by the thought that I could easily have been mid-blurt when Mr Lomax arrived. And that Charlie might, right this moment, be relaying the lie to Mr Lomax. I felt that panicky feeling you have after a stupid near-miss. At home I couldn’t face telling the others that I’d failed to blurt out the lie about Mr Lomax, nor could I bring myself to say that Charlie and Mr Lomax were having a drink together like old friends, and maybe even a pie.

‘Was he there?’ my sister crowded me.

‘Yes, he was at the bar,’ I said.

‘So what did you say?’ she asked.

‘I just let it slip that Mum was dating Mr Lomax,’ I lied.

‘Dating?’ said my sister.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you say “dating”?’ she persisted.

‘No, I think I said she’s
going out with
Mr Lomax,’ I lied.

‘Good, “going out with” sounds more modern and sexual. What did Charlie say?’ said my sister, excited at the thought.

‘He looked really furious,’ I lied. ‘His eyes looked sideways, like he was imagining it.’

Then, for some reason, my sister decided to bring our mother in on it.

‘Lizzie has told Charlie that you’re going out with Mr Lomax,’ she said.

‘What did you tell him that for?’ asked our mother.

‘To make him jealous,’ I said.

‘To reawaken his love,’ my sister said.

‘Oh?’ said our mother. ‘What did he say to that?’

‘He was furious and jealous,’ I lied, quietly.

Jack and I sat down to the fleur-de-lys pies and I put my troubled feelings to the back of my mind. But then around five o’clock that afternoon Mrs C. Beard came over and told us something that brought my troubled feelings back to the front of my mind. Mr Lomax’s van had blown up. Mr Lomax wasn’t in it, he’d been moving a radiator in Mr Terry’s flat above the butcher’s shop when the van, parked in Mr Terry’s space behind the shop, suddenly and for no apparent reason blew up and caught fire.

My sister gripped both my arms.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Oh my God! Charlie’s tried to kill Mr Lomax,’ she said, ‘because of what you told him.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘it was probably just a coincidence.’

‘There’s no such thing as a coincidence,’ she said. ‘It’s when things coincide.’

‘Exactly,’ I said, ‘they coincide and that doesn’t mean the two things were connected.’

‘What two things?’ asked our mother.

‘Lizzie telling Charlie you’re dating Lomax and Lomax’s van being blown to smithereens,’ said my sister.

‘It wasn’t smithereens, it’s still in one piece,’ said Little Jack, who’d somehow seen it.

‘It sounds like a non-verbal message,’ said our mother, seeming awfully pleased.

‘I suppose so,’ I said, ‘or it might have been a coincidence.’

I looked at my little family all smiling and quite happy at the thought that Charlie had tried to maim or kill Mr Lomax – or at least blow up his van – and I realized then that I was the only normal one.

Just as I was assessing the different levels of madness represented by my family, the Longlady twins appeared at the door. It was unusual for them to call and I wondered if something bad might have happened. Like both their parents having been killed in a car bomb and them needing to move in with us.

It wasn’t that, though. They’d had their ears pierced at Green’s of Church Gate and now stood there with tiny gold rings in their ears, and though it was exciting and a talking point I saw how diluting a twin could be (if mismanaged) and decided an ordinary sister was probably preferable. I vowed that if I ever had twins, I’d separate them at birth and let them meet at mealtimes and by accident only, like other types of sibling, and not have them trolling around in matching pinafores and similar hair and sharing momentous moments. Soon after the piercing, though, Miranda had to remove her sleepers due to her lobes having gone lumpy in spite of being dipped into a saline eggcup before bed every night. Not satisfied with saying her earlobes had gone lumpy, Miranda announced she was susceptible to
keloid scarring, which sounded more worrying and more interesting than Melody’s perfectly healing ears.

Soon after the exploding van and the pierced ears, I was in the street. I’d thrown a sweet wrapper down and Mrs C. Beard came rushing out of her house to tell me to bloody well pick it up and dispose of it properly. It was rolling away in the breeze and she waited while I ran after it, and gave me a short lecture on what the world would look like if everyone threw WigWag wrappers down. And then asked me if I’d heard the news about the Bateses’ bungalow. It was actually a Curly Wurly but she said WigWag, being originally from abroad.

I hadn’t heard about the Bateses’ bungalow and half expected to hear it had been blown up. Mrs C. Beard told me that Mr and Mrs Bates had moved out of their bungalow at 12 Bradshaw Street and into one of Charlie’s other properties (presumably one of his bungalow shells). And that 12 Bradshaw Street had been sold to a young couple who’d got it at a renovator’s price.

I liked Mrs C. Beard and didn’t mind that she always told us off. But I didn’t like the bungalow news – especially the bit about the renovator’s price – and decided it would be best if our mother didn’t hear about it quite yet.

I told my sister, though, and she was livid, especially the bit about the renovator’s price.

‘You know what that means, Lizzie?’ she said.

‘I think so,’ I said, thinking she meant that Mr Lomax hadn’t actually done the kitchen renovations. I struggled with the idea, as I couldn’t think why he wouldn’t have or what it meant.

‘That Liberal candidate never did the kitchen, that’s what I think,’ she said.

We rode our bikes over to 12 Bradshaw Street to see for ourselves and snuck round the back and, peering in through the
window, we saw the kitchen – the same cementy mess as I’d seen before. The backdoor window boarded, no cascade effect glass to be seen, no new cupboards, no pan carousel, and no A–Z spice rack. I felt sad for the second time over that kitchen and vowed never again to get emotionally involved with a room, especially someone else’s kitchen.

My sister and I decided to wait a while before telling our mother. However, the very next day in the pharmacy, we heard Mr Blight saying to her, ‘I see your friend has sold his bungalow, then.’

‘What bungalow?’ said our mother.

‘Number 12,’ said the pharmacist, and then he said what I knew he was going to say, ‘to a young couple. They got it at a renovator’s price.’

‘Renovator’s price?’ said our mother. ‘But –’

‘Come on,’ my sister interrupted, ‘let’s get going.’

We walked home, our mother’s mind ticking over, her hand softly, protectively at her throat and, I suppose, her heart slowly sinking.

Back at home our mother sat drinking coffee. ‘Sold it to a young couple for a renovator’s price?’ she said. ‘But it didn’t need renovating. Mr Lomax renovated what needed renovating.’

‘Mrs C. Beard told Lizzie they were a
retired
couple,’ said my sister.

‘Mrs C. Beard? What’s she got to do with it?’ said our mother, somehow missing two other points.

Later, she phoned Charlie, a thing she hardly ever did – if ever; well, maybe once. A woman answered and said that the Bates had moved house and she didn’t have their new number.

She rang Mr Lomax and asked some direct questions and said, ‘I see,’ a few times and after saying, ‘OK, then, cheerio,’ hung up.

‘What happened?’ my sister asked. ‘Why didn’t he do Mrs Bates’s kitchen?’

‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘Mr Lomax did the work, as discussed, but not in that property.’

‘What?’ said my sister. ‘In what property, then?’

‘In one of Charlie’s bungalow shells. It makes sense,’ said our mother. And she seemed satisfied with that.

Of course, my sister and I were now 100 per cent off Charlie Bates, not so much for blowing up Mr Lomax’s van as for having the wrong kitchen renovated at our mother’s expense.

Although surprised that he was capable of doing something as serious as blowing up another man’s van, my sister seemed impressed that her campaign to reawaken Charlie’s love had been so successful.