Man at the Helm (18 page)

It was very difficult for me to join in a proper discussion or give my views on this subject, as it had all become like a story in a book you’re not really concentrating on – where one of the characters has told a lie, made a mistake, opened someone else’s letter in error or misunderstood something – I couldn’t remember what was true and whether Charlie might have blown up Mr Lomax’s van or not.

It gave me a headache and I vowed to tell only the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in future – lies being a nightmare to manage. Anyway, it all happened or was lied about and understood or not, and then Charlie suddenly turned up at our house.

After seeming theoretically impressed by the van bomb, when she actually saw him in the flesh my sister came down hard against him and was most unwelcoming.

‘You! What do
you
want?’

‘I’ve come for a cup of tea with your mother,’ he said, barged in and flicked his fag end out behind him.

He told us to put the kettle on and disappeared into our
mother’s sitting room. My sister told me to listen under the window while she made a pot of tea.

Charlie’s voice was muffled, but I heard him ask if he could borrow an amount of money. I think it was a thousand pounds. It was either a thousand or a hundred, and the way he was speaking it was more than a hundred.

‘It’s a lot, I know, and you know I hate asking but … I’m in a bit of a fix,’ he said.

‘I’ll try,’ our mother said. ‘I’ll see what I can do … when do you need it?’

‘Toot sweet,’ he said, ‘tomorrow at the latest.’

They must’ve kissed then because it went quiet, and then my sister knocked at the door and went in with the tea. She’d given him my Kellogg’s Corn Flakes mug and I honestly didn’t think he deserved it.

‘What were they saying?’ my sister asked.

‘I wish you hadn’t given him my mug,’ I said.

Not more than fifteen minutes later, our mother called us into the sitting room. She and Charlie were having a minor disagreement.

‘No, listen,’ she said to Charlie. ‘Shush, Lizzie won’t mind, will you, Lizzie?’ said our mother.

Charlie leapt up and said he had to get some cigs from across the road.

‘Mind what?’ I said.

‘Popping over to sit with Mrs Bates for an hour or two,’ she said.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Charlie would like to relax here with us and take his mind off his problems for a while, but he doesn’t like Mrs Bates to be on her own,’ she said. ‘He’s a softie at heart.’

‘What problems?’ I said.

‘His bungalows and the indoor market coming to nothing, and his wife,’ she said, and added, ‘Lizzie, you’re sounding rather unsympathetic.’

‘Why me, though?’

‘You know her from last time and she really liked you,’ she said.

‘Do I really have to?’ I whined.

‘We, as a family, have to give something back in return,’ she said.

‘In return for what?’ I asked.

‘For getting Charlie to ourselves for a bit,’ said our mother.

Of course I agreed, just in time for Charlie to waltz back in with some Lloyd’s Old Holborn and a paper.

‘Thank you, Lizzie, you wonderful girl,’ she said, and she gave me a hard little hug. ‘Lizzie has said she’ll pop over to see Lilian tomorrow to keep her company while you’re here.’

Charlie gave me a look. A slightly disgusted look.

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ I said, and gave him a similar look.

The next day Charlie was at the table at breakfast time, which meant he’d stayed the night. I asked his advice on how I might entertain Mrs Bates.

‘What does she like doing?’ I asked.

‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘Yakking, mostly.’ And then he went across the road and got a different newspaper.

My few hours with Mrs Bates were fine and flew by. She was in a new bungalow and had things in boxes but nice curtains up. She sent me out to Baxter’s to get some Walker’s Ready Salted and a bottle of Hoyes’ lemonade to have with the ham salad we’d be having for our lunch. Before we ate, she took ages over ‘spot the ball’ in the paper, tracing with her finger the way
the ball probably travelled after probably being kicked by the player with his leg raised. Then put her ink crosses in a gentle arc.

Then, while we had the ham salad, she told me about a BBC2 documentary she’d watched the night before about a man who had committed a murder but possessed unusual maths abilities. The man had always known he was capable of violence – he’d flown off the handle at the drop of a hat since the age of two as well as doing tricky sums in his head.

After that Mrs Bates made herself a batch of what she called napkins (but I realized were sanitary towels) out of last week’s Radio Times and kitchen roll. On one of them you could make out Jon Pertwee’s face through the kitchen roll top sheet. She kept saying ‘What a rum do’ about the documentary and ‘Poor chap’, as if she couldn’t get him out of her head.

Mrs Bates asked what our mother used, sanitary towel-wise. I said Kotex and Tampax, and Mrs Bates gasped, ‘At those prices?’ and I felt awkward at the relative luxury of our mother’s pads against Mrs Bates’s home-made ones.

Mrs Bates was keen to show me her calligraphy writing set. I told her I was proud of my handwriting and she asked me to show her a sample. I wrote my name and address and held it up for her, but she’d gone back to ‘spot the ball’.

When she’d done she opened the pages of her calligraphy writing book. She’d written out the words of a hymn. The writing was nice but a bit old-fashioned. She looked again at my writing and pursed her lips. For some reason no one ever complimented me on my nice handwriting. Mrs Bates obviously wasn’t impressed and my teachers, who were always on at us about it, just ignored it. Mine was one of the neatest in the class. I don’t mean to show off but it was nice. I practised it, doing nice loops (but not overdoing it) and having a perfect
slant. I did find signing my name a bit of a challenge as I struggled with the double z and, annoyingly, Lizzie was the one word I couldn’t dash off with a flourish. I had to go quite slowly and it was unimpressive to see. I started signing ‘E. Vogel’ to avoid the z’s.

My sister’s writing was unattractive. A horrible mix of upper and lower case that I’d read was a sign of schizophrenia. I told her about it being a sign of schizophrenia but she said she couldn’t care less what it was a sign of and that it was
what
you wrote that counted, not the neatness (or not) of your writing, and she starting using even more capitals. I thought that reaction was probably a further sign of schizophrenia but kept it to myself. I didn’t mention any of this to Mrs Bates, but made sure I admired her calligraphy and then looked at the different nib widths on the special pens.

Finally, with approximately one hour to go, we made two plum pies against the clock. Mrs Bates always kept her rolling-pin in the fridge so it wouldn’t upset the pastry and had a special method for pinching the pie edges so that fruit juice wouldn’t leak on to the oven floor and burn. And when the pies were cool enough, I said goodbye and went home with a plum pie in a Co-op carrier hanging from my handlebars and promised to bring the pie plate back as soon as we’d done with it.

Back at home, I found my sister watching telly.

‘I’m back,’ I said.

My sister nodded and carried on watching telly.

‘Where are the others?’ I asked.

‘Little Jack’s in disgrace and Charlie’s gone to the Piglet Inn for a pie,’ she said, bored.

I felt a bit annoyed, to think that Charlie had been at the Piglet Inn eating pies while I was entertaining his wife (making pies). I
found our mother in the kitchen, sketching a scene. ‘I’m back,’ I said, and she nodded too.

‘So what was it like?’ she said.

‘Mrs Bates sent this pie,’ I said, that seeming to be sufficient explanation.

My sister appeared then and they both stared at the pie, as if I’d plopped something alien on the table, and made faces.

‘Doesn’t anyone want any?’ I asked.

Our mother stood gazing, trance-like, at the pie, frowning and scratching the back of one leg with the other, and then lit a cigarette.

‘Mrs Bates made it, and I helped,’ I said.

I was crestfallen. I’d gone off on this mission and, to be honest, I’d expected some sort of hero’s welcome on my return, especially as I’d come with a home-made pie with a no-lard pastry.

Our mother looked at the pie for a moment more, then picked it up and dropped it, tin plate and all, into the kitchen bin.

‘What’ve you done that for?’ I asked in a cry.

‘I don’t want you bringing Mrs Bates’s food back here,’ our mother said definitively.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘It might be poisoned,’ she said.

‘What a thing to say – Mrs Bates wouldn’t poison a fly,’ I cried.

‘She might poison Charlie, though,’ our mother said.

I picked the pie out of the bin, grabbed the Co-op carrier, stormed out of the house and cycled over to Mrs Bates’s.

‘They didn’t want the pie,’ I said breathlessly, and handed her the carrier bag.

Mrs Bates looked confused, as if she was unable to understand what I was telling her, like a French person or a guinea
pig. She just shook her head ever so gently and took the pie with both hands.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and suddenly felt like Mr Gummo, delivering bad news for all the wrong reasons.

One evening, soon after my visit to Mrs Bates, Charlie was round and he and our mother were having an altercation. A cheque she’d given him had bounced and caused major difficulties and embarrassment. It was meant to pay for some materials for his second bungalow shell and the non-payment had caused a cash-flow emergency and an interruption to the work.

‘You’ll have to ask your ex-husband,’ Charlie was saying.

‘I can’t ask for any more,’ she was saying.

‘Say you need money for something for the kids,’ he was saying.

And so the conversation went on in that vein.

In the end, our mother telephoned our father and asked for some money to take us on holiday. Our father must not have been feeling very generous. We couldn’t hear his side of the conversation, but we gathered he was saying he couldn’t keep sending money for holidays we never actually had. And seemed to want to know what the hell she was doing with all the money.

‘It’s everyday expenditure,’ she said, ‘the children are bloody expensive,’ and she plucked things out of the air desperately, ‘Lizzie went to Porlock with the school – that cost a fortune – and the ponies have had vet’s bills, we’ve had to have a new bread bin etc.’

We didn’t see this as a problem, more of a bickering between our two already divorced parents. And when, a few days after this phone call, a caravan was delivered in lieu of holiday money and our mother was beside herself with fury, we thought it very
funny and were secretly pleased Charlie wouldn’t get his money. Also, and more importantly, the caravan, an Eccles Topaz, was most enchanting to my sister, Jack and me. It was second-hand but ‘in pristine condition’ and full of surprises inside with ingenious things and hidden cupboards and foldaway items. Our mother walked round it, said, ‘The petty bastard,’ and kicked it a few times.

The Eccles Topaz was very noticeable in our lane and of great interest to the neighbourhood. Anyone who walked past openly admired it: ‘Oh, you’ve got a caravan,’ and so forth. So much so, our mother considered camouflaging it with a net and leaves. And then, to make matters worse (for our mother), a man from Bagshaw Bridge garage arrived to fit a reverse periscope (a retrovisor) on to her car and extension arms to the wing mirrors. Our mother was livid and told the man to take his hands off her car, and the man said, ‘Suit yourself,’ dropped the paid-for parts on to the driveway and stomped off.

Then Mr Lomax, the Liberal candidate, was at the gate looking at the Eccles Topaz. Admiring its lines and actually patting it with his hand.

‘She’s a beauty,’ he said, ‘what are your plans?’

‘I did not buy this caravan. It was given to the children by their father in lieu of money for a holiday,’ said our mother.

‘Well, the world’s your oyster with a caravan,’ Mr Lomax said, and seemed to be of the opinion that a caravan was a jolly good thing, which made our mother even crosser.

Mr Lomax left and Charlie arrived soon after and surveyed the Eccles Topaz with a stony expression. Within a week it was gone again, plus the bits and pieces of the retrovisor and the wing mirror extensions, and we supposed Charlie got his emergency money after all.

Our mother was very anxious, we could tell. She smoked more
than ever and left cigarettes burning in ashtrays and standing up on their ends and lit new ones and didn’t even take a puff. In the end, she wrote an act for the play about the situation.

Roderick: I’m sorry, Adele, I can’t give you any more money.

Adele: What about a holiday for the children?

Roderick: I made some shares in your favour and you must live on the dividends.

Adele: What about an impromptu holiday?

Roderick: I have arranged for a nearly new Eccles Topaz to be delivered from Don Amott, King of Caravans.

Adele: Well, I shall gift it to my lover, who will sell it through
Exchange and Mart
.

Roderick: What about the much-needed holiday?

Adele: A caravan does not equal a holiday, however pretty its name.

Miss Benedict turned up again to tell our mother that Little Jack had been refusing to take his coat off in the classroom. She seemed eager to have the interview over and done with as soon as possible, not wanting to risk any untoward turns in the conversation. They sat again at the kitchen table.

‘I just wanted you to be aware,’ said Miss Benedict.

‘Of what?’ asked our mother.

‘Of the fact.’

‘What fact?’

‘That Jack has been refusing to take his coat off,’ said Miss Benedict.

‘Is it important?’ asked our mother.

‘Well, yes. If he’s asked to take it off, he really should take it off,’ said Miss Benedict.

‘Perhaps it might help if you didn’t ask him to take it off, then
he could have it on without disobeying you?’ said our clever mother.

‘But the children all have to take their coats off inside,’ explained Miss Benedict.

‘Oh, I see,’ said our mother. ‘I’ll speak to Jack about it.’

‘Thanks, that would be helpful. I was wondering if you’d had any further thoughts about getting a baby donkey,’ Miss Benedict said.

Our mother hadn’t seen that coming and was silenced while her head decoded it.

‘No, I haven’t and I shan’t,’ said our mother, eventually.

Then Little Jack entered with his coat on and said hello.

‘Hello, Jack,’ said Miss Benedict.

‘Hello,’ said Jack.

Then Miss Benedict said goodbye etc. and left.

‘Why was she here?’ asked Jack.

‘She was updating me,’ said our mother.

‘Did she take her coat off?’ asked Jack.

‘No, actually, she didn’t,’ said our mother.

We could have done without Miss Benedict coming round and harking back to Bluebell the baby donkey. It didn’t do Little Jack any favours at all, only serving to remind our mother of a recent bout of unhappiness. It was a reminder to us, though, that busybody actions are often selfish at heart and mostly don’t help the intended recipient. And coming on top of the Eccles Topaz and our father’s refusal to cooperate, it resulted in a horrible play that went way back to our mother’s miserable years at a cheap boarding school in Lincolnshire.

Miss Bruce: Adele Benson, you were seen wearing your gaberdine in the hall.

Adele: Sorry, Miss Bruce.

Miss Bruce: And do not be seen wearing any outdoor garment ever again inside the hall, form room or any other part of the school.

Adele: Yes, Miss.

Miss Bruce: Only a barmaid would wear a gaberdine inside.

Adele: Yes, Miss.

Miss: Are you planning to work in a public house, Benson?

Adele: I don’t think so, Miss.

Miss: We shall see, shan’t we?

After the demise of the Charlie Bates relationship, it was increasingly hard to know how to herd our mother into happiness. I say ‘herd’ because she was like a sheep who didn’t seem to understand the direction in which she should be trotting. And would wilfully dart away from guidance and not be nudged towards lovely, jolly things.

She disliked food (the eating of it) and had stopped cooking and she hated telly. She only really liked rugged men, whisky and ginger ale, poetry (especially love poems, annoyingly), Shakespeare plays and sunbathing. And here we were, two girls, both poetry haters and not inclined to drink.

I put all her known likes into my head and thought creatively and came up with what seemed a brilliant solution – a Scrabble tournament. Her and Little Jack in one team versus my sister and me – thinking it might overlap into poetry writing. My sister was supportive of the idea and I took it to our mother. She wasn’t keen and just said, ‘Ugh!’

However hard she tried (and she tried very hard) to recover from the Charlie Bates thing, she just couldn’t.

‘Are you still sad about Charlie?’ my sister asked her.

‘Very,’ she said. ‘The thing is, no one likes me and I’ve already had sex with two husbands in the village.’

‘And a teacher,’ my sister offered.

‘He was one of the husbands,’ said our mother, seeming to forget he was actually only engaged to be married and not a husband, as such.

And then my sister started counting and wanting a true account of the husbands and I had to elbow her.

My sister and I decided it was time to make another, more concerted play for Mr Oliphant. He has popped up a few times before, I know. That’s how it was with him. Here’s a recap on why we liked him. He loved horses and was nice. He wore a cloth cap but in a well-dressed kind of way, and had nice jackets albeit farmer-style, and had a nice rounded lump in his trousers which, my sister explained, meant good underpants and the English arrangement of his male parts, bunched up, as opposed to the European way of having it all hanging down one trouser leg and looking lopsided. Plus hiding, she said, the obviousness of an unwanted arousal.

Also, Mr Oliphant’s financial stability was reassuring. Quite often around that time bills would come through the letter box and our mother would run her hand through her hair and swear out loud and fling them in a pile under a paperweight.

Let me get something straight before we start the Mr Oliphant episode. I did not ever want my own pony. I liked ponies but I wasn’t a true horsewoman. My sister was, though, and could speak to the horse with her seat and steer it with her voice. I knew I’d only ever speak with my voice and steer with the reins – and that’s not what horses really want.

We had a couple of little ponies called Robbie and Bilbo in the paddock. Robbie was very fat and had laminitis and, though he couldn’t be ridden hard, had to be walked daily to relieve his legs. And Bilbo had a bowel thing and had suffered a twisted gut
after an undetected bout of colic before being rescued by a horse refuge and then rescued from the refuge by my sister. In addition to those two invalids, my animal-loving sister had her own pony for actually riding, as opposed to just caring for. He was a New Forest pony officially called Blaze, but she was trying her utmost to change his name to Sacha – after the French singer of ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’. Her reasons for wanting to change the name being that he didn’t actually have a blaze (the facial marking) and because calling a pony ‘Blaze’ was like calling a dog ‘Rover’ and she hadn’t reached the ironic stage, aged only eleven. We all tried really hard to remember to call him Sacha and not Blaze.

My sister had acquired Blaze all by herself. She’d looked in
Horse & Hound
every week and the
Leicester Mercury
every day. And that was when she first met the well-known local equestrian Phil Oliphant. Mr P. Oliphant lived at the edge of the village and she’d popped in to see if he had any ponies for sale that might be suitable for her. Phil Oliphant had no pony for sale at that time but said he’d keep his ear to the ground for one. My sister had been pleased to know that she’d got Phil Oliphant’s ear to the ground on the search, because although he was a farmer he wasn’t a busy farmer, he was the type of farmer who owns a lot of fields but has a private income from an old uncle and never has to do any actual work on the land except for building horse jumps and places where the hunt can pass through with maximum excitement. We all knew that Prince Charles had hunted across Mr Oliphant’s fields and had fallen at one of his tiger traps – that’s how challenging they were.

Eventually, and without the help of Phil Oliphant as it happened, my sister found herself a pony – Blaze. Then, like everything else, she wanted me to have a pony too so I’d be in it with her. I didn’t want one. And apart from the awkward business
of passing the war veteran Mr Nesbit and his embarrassing comments, I loved plodding around on our general family ponies and I didn’t mind doing my bit towards the upkeep of them, but I was certain I didn’t want my own. I’d seen how much work was involved and I didn’t want the responsibility.

Months had passed since Mr Oliphant had said he’d keep his ear to the ground, so we decided it was time to give things a kick-start. My sister felt his name being Phil was a blow. We’d known one other Phil, Phil Smith, our father’s lover from Vogel’s – an altogether different type of man – and she worried that our mother might see it as a sign. I was much more worried that I’d end up having to have my own pony. But we both agreed that with all his land, his love of dogs and horses and all other things considered, he’d make a marvellous man at the helm (or ‘helmsman’, as my sister had started to say). We went round to his house anyway to get the ball rolling.

He remembered us and we reminded him he was going to help us find a pony and then he remembered that too. My sister suggested we attend a horse and pony auction with him doing our bidding. I think she imagined Mr Oliphant in a bidding war with a cruel type of farmer, touching his cap for the perfect pony. I thought this a very risky strategy and thought it might result in me actually getting a pony. I’d seen this kind of thing in
Laurel and Hardy
and other shows, where the people don’t really want the thing they’re bidding for but end up with an oil painting or a grandfather clock when in fact they were just sneezing. And luckily Phil Oliphant felt the same, saying it would be illegal and that he might end up having to buy the damned thing.

‘But my sister needs a pony,’ said my sister, not giving up, ‘and our mother isn’t as experienced at choosing horses as you … we really need an expert equestrian.’ And that’s the thing
about flattery, people don’t notice anything else if you also say they’re good-looking or experienced.

Phil Oliphant said although he couldn’t do our bidding at auction, he’d be happy to give us his professional opinion on ponies we were considering, but only if our mother was all right with that.