Man at the Helm (8 page)

While we’d been in London – staying too long at the zoo and crying in Devonshire Place and getting pills – Little Jack had been scheduled to visit our father, on his own – a thing none of us liked. And it hadn’t gone to plan.

Little Jack liked our father but going to his new house with his new wife and baby was always somehow awkward. It was the kind of awkwardness that overwhelmed things or gave you a headache. Mainly, it was the baby. Firstly, the baby was very popular with its parents. He had blond hair with brown eyes, which must have been an unusual combination because they never stopped saying how lovely it was in a baby.

‘Look at that blond hair with those brown eyes,’ they’d say.

And that was irritating but, more importantly, Jack claimed that the baby didn’t like him. Jack’s problem with the baby had started during a visit Jack and I had had together a couple of months before. It had been Sunday lunch and Jack had said he wasn’t hungry. He’d pushed his food around the plate and just scooped the odd mouthful and chewed it for ages and our father had said Jack must use his cutlery properly.

This annoyed me. I thought that if you decide to leave your children, fine, but you don’t then have the right to stop them scooping in the European way just because you don’t choose to scoop.

I was so annoyed I spoke up on the subject.

‘Dad,’ I said, ‘it’s the modern way. If we ate like you, pronging
one pea at a time, we’d look like idiots at school. Everyone scoops nowadays.’

Our father did a small head bow. ‘Thank you for your contribution,’ he said, and told an anecdote about a brilliant genius overlooked for promotion due to being known for his poor table manners. And turned his attention to Little Jack.

‘Jack, you must eat your peas and carrots.’

And no sooner had our father uttered those words than the baby started saying ‘more’ – meaning he’d eaten all
his
peas and carrots and wanted some more. We’d never heard him speak a proper word before, so we couldn’t just ignore it, and the rift between Jack and the baby began.

And our father’s wife, with a look of pride, spooned a few more peas and carrots into his little bowl of semi-mushed-up lunch. And the baby gobbled them up, staring at Jack, and asked again for more.

I had my own crisis at that Sunday lunch table. I say crisis, though it was more of a philosophical meandering. I asked myself how it was that our lovely tall father had suddenly become the husband of a new woman and the father of a whole separate new baby who could already say ‘more’ and outdo Little Jack on the veg front. I gazed at the blond-haired baby. What would it make of us, I wondered, as it matured, its half-siblings arriving every month or two and eating a roast dinner (badly) and being tutored in table manners and being irritable about it? The baby was sure to grow into a table-manners expert and to be well rounded with our proper and fussy ex-father as its man at the helm. As these notions floated around my mind I felt a surging wave of sadness for this little half-brother of mine. Imagine, I thought, having someone’s ex-father as your own and having to see the unruly cast-offs for Sunday lunch every three months – it would be horrible, surely, and really annoying.
I felt sorry for him and hoped to God that our new man at the helm (when we’d secured one) didn’t come with anything of that sort. My heart sank at the thought of some discarded old daughters and a son turning up for lunch and forgetting the manners he’d taught them in his previous life. Scattering crumbs and chomping at our kitchen table while we were trying to enjoy a new happy life with home-made pineapple fritters and whatever our man at the helm liked to eat.

Anyway, back to that Sunday lunch: it really did seem that the baby was rubbing it in for Jack. I don’t know what age babies usually start doing that kind of thing, but this baby seemed to be saying ‘I love vegetables,’ which was hard on Little Jack because he had previously been our father’s only son and now he was relegated to being ‘one of his sons’, and added to which he only liked pie and now this new baby could eat a better lunch than Jack even though he hadn’t even walked yet.

So that’s how it always was – awkward, not enjoyable, and a baby–Jack rift. And as a result, on that day (the day
my sister and I had been in London), on the journey to our father’s house, on his own in the chauffeur-driven car, taking advantage of a stop at Bagshaw Bridge service station, Little Jack absconded and Bernard had had to leave the Daimler on the forecourt and run after him. Bernard had searched high and low, on foot at first, then cruising slowly round the streets in the Daimler, and eventually he’d gone back to our house and had to tell our mother that Jack had absconded. Our mother thanked him for his trouble and said that Jack was home safely and watching telly.

That night, waiting in the Chinese takeaway, our mother recapped the events of the day. First, Debbie had nipped out of the open gate and stolen a christening cake from Merryfield’s bakery, and then Jack had run off, and as if that wasn’t enough, my sister and I had been in London far longer than expected and Debbie had passed raisins on the slabs all day long.

‘What a day!’ she said.

‘What a day!’ she said again, puffing away in the waiting area. And it turned out she could say ‘What a day’ in Greek, Latin and German, but that it didn’t always mean the same exact thing – i.e., ‘What a day’ in English meaning ‘What a
strange
day’ but in the other languages you had to add the word ‘strange’ for it to make sense. The lady at the counter told her how to say it in Mandarin.

To be honest, it all got a bit much, her saying ‘What a day’ in all these languages and dwelling on it like that, but I can’t deny it had been the strangest day.

It wasn’t long after that strange day that Mrs Iris Longlady called round to firm up on the vague tea invitation she’d issued when we’d first moved to the village. Because people never called round we weren’t used to being called on and we weren’t sure what to do, so we just stared at her. She didn’t mention the tea invitation for some while, and started her visit with a complaint about one of our ponies having stepped on her daughter Melody’s foot on a public highway. Our mother sympathized but quickly related a story about Little Jack being stung by one of their bees and swelling up like a balloon.

Things must have equalled out then because Mrs Longlady launched into a full-blown chat. Our mother’s lack of interest must soon have become obvious, though, because Mrs Longlady switched her attention to me and held my eye while she rambled, mostly about her twin daughters. We knew the twins already from school. One nice-ish, one less so. Melody (nice) and Miranda (less so). In fact, Melody and I had developed a secret little friendship. Secret for her because her mother disapproved
of our mother and our not having a man at the helm. Secret for me because my sister and I officially disliked the Longlady girls. My sister didn’t know Melody and just lumped her in with her less nice twin, Miranda, whom she did know.

Melody and I often met up on the way to school and at going-home time we could quite reasonably walk home together, coming from the same classroom and being almost neighbours. Also a secret and known only to the Longlady family and me was that Melody was a latchkey kid on Tuesdays because her parents were occupied out of the village and Miranda had sporting commitments. I would often sneak into Melody’s house for half an hour, or she might sneak home with me and look at the ponies, which was how come our Shetland pony had stepped on Melody’s foot. The thing is, anyone horsey knows how to react to being stepped on, with a push at the shoulder before the pony bears weight, but a non-horsey person doesn’t and therefore sustains an injury. Melody, being non-horsey and only knowing about bees, got a bruise on her foot. That’s when we invented the story about meeting unexpectedly in the lane to explain it.

Mrs Longlady asked me if I could tell the twins apart. I knew she wanted me to say that I couldn’t, but I could, easily, so I didn’t say anything. She then asked our mother if she could tell them apart and our mother very sweetly said no, she couldn’t, which was kind because she’d never even seen them. My sister spoiled it by saying she could tell them apart and explained that one was fatter in the face and had bigger teeth.

Mrs Longlady claimed forcefully that the twins were identical and definitely from the one egg. Her emphasis on this and the distinction of the single egg made such an impression on me that when, around that time, we had the
Facts of Life
film at school and saw a diagram in pastels of an egg and were given full
details of the miracle of conception and the strange phenomenon of twins, I saw that innocent illustrated egg as Mrs Longlady’s egg (containing the embryonic Melody and Miranda) and I saw the illustrated sperm, penetrating and fertilizing the egg, as the sperm of Mr Longlady the accountant. As if they were the prototypal and original sperm, egg and embryo – which was quite disturbing and sick-making and made it all much worse than it might have been if I’d been able to think in the pastel abstract. Or about cattle, as my sister had.

I told our mother that I couldn’t get the Longladys’ egg and sperm out of my head. Our mother wished I hadn’t told her that. She put her hand up to her mouth and told me to go and read
The Beautifull Cassandra
by Jane Austen. Apparently the thing about Jane Austen is, it shoves unwanted thoughts aside and replaces them with contemplative ideas and musings that are of use and beauty. It turned out I was too young for Jane Austen, though, because
The Beautifull Cassandra
didn’t manage to shove the Longladys aside, except that the unusual double-l occupied me for a moment – thinking it looked wrong.

Anyway, when Mrs Longlady had said all she’d come to say and finally seemed to be leaving, she said, ‘I just popped round to say come to tea tomorrow at three. I’m baking today, so make sure you’re hungry.’

We arrived at Orchard Corner the next day at three. Mrs Longlady looked down the street. She asked when our mother would be appearing and we said she wouldn’t be appearing and Little Jack said, ‘She’s gone to bed.’

And Mrs Longlady said, ‘Well,
really
!’ and left Mr Longlady to run the show.

The twins appeared with their hair in matching plaits. My secret friend, Melody, didn’t give away our friendship and was
almost as mean as her less nice sister, Miranda, but probably only to hide that she liked me.

Miranda had been moved up a school year due to being cleverer than children of her own age (this really boiled down to the fact that she’d memorized the eight-times table and was tall for her age). Hence she was in my sister’s class. But, alas, after being moved up it turned out that she wasn’t quite clever enough for the next year up, after all. Like when a certain size of shoe is a bit too tight but the next size up is a bit too big – she was between the two years (cleverness-wise) and she knew it. So, after being moved up, Miranda felt she had to cheat or copy to stay afloat. She needn’t have worried, though – you can’t move a kid up a year and then humiliate them by moving them back down again. They might get teased and go into a downward spiral and end up less-clever when they’d started out cleverer-than-average.

At the tea the twins seemed to dislike Little Jack, Miranda especially, and stared at him when he tried to speak, which he soon stopped doing. And though they were a bit hostile towards him, I’m ashamed to say that at that point my sister and I were slightly captivated by Miranda, the less nice twin. Mainly because she strode about with tall confidence and slanged inventively. Melody, as mentioned before, also seemed less nice in that context and seemed to go along with her sister on everything, including not liking Jack. But fair enough.

When Little Jack picked up a little toy penguin, for instance, Miranda shrieked at him, ‘Hands off my penguin, you little tealeaf.’ And when Jack almost jumped out of his skin Melody laughed and Miranda said, ‘He’s a jumpy little dingbat, isn’t he? What’s up with him?’

And Melody laughed again.

Miranda said her name meant ‘must be admired’ and somehow that rang true, because however horrible the conduct, on one
level it was somehow impressive. That’s how bullying works, I suppose. We should have stuck up for Jack more but (
a
) it was funny seeing him being called a gritty little pug and (
b
) we didn’t want her to start calling
us
inventive names. She had already called me ‘Miss Muffet’ just because I sat down. And laughed at my frog puppet which I’d brought especially, thinking they might like it.

When Mr Longlady called us in for tea Miranda said, ‘Damn it.’ And Mr Longlady had rather crossly asked her not to swear. We thought it odd. We had no idea that damn was a swear word and also we wondered why he’d not objected when she had shouted out, ‘Cunty balls, cunty balls,’ as she swung on the swing in the garden.

Perhaps he hadn’t heard.

Miranda was confusing – warm one moment, crushing the next. She praised the loveliness of our house and got us talking about its loveliness, but then spoiled it by saying that people in the village hated us for living in it. Little Jack, having been protected from this kind of talk due to his age, took it to heart and asked why people in the village hated us, and Miranda said, ‘Ah, poor little mongoose, they don’t hate you, they hate your mother.’

And Little Jack said, ‘No, they don’t.’ And looked really sad.

And Miranda said, ‘Of course they do,’ in a really caring way, and patted his arm like a nice teacher and poor Jack didn’t know whether to feel better or not.

Later, at the tea table, Miranda told us that she had a special secret name for us. She asked us to guess what it was. We said we couldn’t guess.

‘Do you give up?’ said Miranda.

‘Is it the mongooses?’ asked Little Jack

‘No, that would be silly,’ said Miranda.

None of us spoke. ‘Do you give up?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ we said.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell you. It’s the cunty balls.’ Which annoyed me because I’d had a feeling it was going to be that – only I didn’t say in case she laughed at me, which she would have if I’d said it. You just couldn’t win.