Pedigree Mum (16 page)

‘No, I’d rather walk him home, it’s only fifteen minutes away. I thought it’d give us the chance to get to know each other.’

‘Right.’ James checks his watch.
All right, all right, we’re going
, Kerry thinks with a prickle of irritation. ‘If you give me your address,’ he adds, ‘I can drop off his basket, his food and everything later. All his info’s in there.’ He indicates a cardboard folder on the kitchen table labelled ‘Buddy’. ‘Veterinary records, vaccinations, pet insurance …’

‘MOT?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Has he been MOT’d?’ Kerry asks with a bemused smile. ‘I’m sorry, James. This feels a bit like handing over a car. Are there any quirks I should know about? Is he a good runner?’

‘Oh,’ James emits a dry laugh. ‘He’s certainly that.’

‘And I take it that’s his fuel.’ She indicates the big bag of chicken and vegetables in dry biscuit form on the table.

‘Yep, he has a cup in the morning and another for dinner …’

‘Well, um … I suppose we’ll be going then. You’ve got my number in case you think of anything else I should know …’

‘Yes.’

‘Here’s my address.’ She takes a scrap of paper and pen from her bag and scribbles it quickly. Looking down at Buddy, who is gazing mournfully up at her from his curled up position on James’s feet, Kerry feels a rush of affection for this unwanted pet. ‘Come on then, Buddy,’ she says softly. Buddy glances at his ex-owner, then gets up and potters slowly to the front door.

‘Here’s his lead.’ James hands it to her and she clips it onto his collar.

‘Well, thanks,’ she says.

‘No, thank
you
.’ He checks his watch again. ‘Er, I really should get back to work now …’

‘Oh, of course. Um … can I just ask why you’re re-homing him?’

He looks at her, and she sees tiredness clouding those soft grey eyes. ‘Circumstances have changed,’ he says with a shrug.

‘Right. Well, you don’t have to worry about him. My children have been asking for a dog for years, driving me mad, coming up with names …’ She stops abruptly as he’s clearly not interested. ‘We’ll be off then,’ she adds.

James nods and says goodbye without addressing Buddy at all, then steps back into the house.

Kerry takes a moment to gather her thoughts in the small front garden. It was clearly once well-tended, its rectangular borders edged with scalloped tiles, but has now grown indistinct beneath a light covering of weeds. The paint on the front door is peeling, a piece of guttering is dangling down, and tiny pink flowers are sprouting in the cracks between the paving slabs. Kerry waits while Buddy sniffs a dandelion, half-expecting James to burst back out of his house and crumple to the ground for a last, heartfelt hug with his beloved dog. But there is nothing.

‘Heartless shit,’ she mutters under her breath, turning away and making her way down the quiet residential street with Buddy trotting meekly at her side.

As they walk together, Kerry notices a small shift, assuming at first that it’s the freshness of the breezy October day. She feels lighter somehow, and is conscious of a kernel of excitement fizzling inside her as she realises what’s happening.

She isn’t walking alone.

Of course, she and the children spend huge chunks of their weekends on Shorling beach these days, but Freddie and Mia tend to run off and dabble about in the rock pools or shallow waves. They don’t walk together, like this. And during these past couple of weeks, it has felt as if they don’t walk to and from school together either. As soon as she spots Audrey-Jane, Mia tears ahead to catch up, trying to ingratiate herself with excitable chatter which, to Kerry’s consternation, seems to be largely ignored. Meanwhile, Kerry feels obliged to engage in polite chit-chat with Lara and Emily, who seem inseparable and are clearly not keen to let her in. Even Freddie will do anything – lag behind, or tag along with any boy who’s roughly his age – to avoid walking at his mother’s side.

She keeps glancing down at Buddy as they walk, scarcely believing she’s now in sole charge of this living, breathing creature who will require regular feeding, play and exercise.
He depends on me now.
Both thrilling and terrifying, the thought lodges itself in Kerry’s mind. Still an hour till school pick-up, when she plans to bring Buddy with her to the school gates. She has it all figured out: how she’ll adopt a casual stance, so Freddie and Mia won’t suspect anything when they first spot her from a distance. They’ll wander across the playground towards her, not paying much attention. Then they’ll spot him and – the rest is a blur. It makes Kerry’s heart race just thinking about it.

Picturing James’s handsome but distinctly beleaguered face at the handover today, she glances down and says, ‘My circumstances have changed too, Buddy. I think we’re going to get along just fine.’

Harvey Chuckles is standing on a small stage in a draughty community hall, knowing without a doubt that every child in this room would give anything to be somewhere else.

‘Wanna play outside,’ a boy complains, triggering a ripple of dissatisfaction.

‘Make him go away,’ a little girl shrieks from the front row of chairs.

The woman sitting behind her taps her on the shoulder. ‘Hush, sweetheart. Don’t be rude …’

‘But I don’t like him. Tell him to go, Mummy!’

‘Just be quiet and watch, Cordelia,’ the woman snaps. Harvey blunders on through his act, producing his dove pan, an ingenious device the size of a saucepan which enables him to make small objects disappear. By this point, he is wishing
he
could crawl into the pan and magic himself to a place where strong alcohol is administered. He has juggled beanbags, ridden his unicycle and played jaunty tunes on his one-man-band. Yet his doleful audience look as if they’ve been forced to watch one of those late night Open University programmes on BBC2. Why did they hire him, he wonders? Is it that this particular
bunch of pre-schoolers would prefer a freestyle party with
no entertainer, or that he is a particularly substandard clown?

Think, think.
Balloon animals – that always delights them (well, it works with Sam, Harvey’s four-year-old nephew, though maybe he’s just been humouring him). With a rush of determination he kicks his dove pan aside.

‘Now,’ he announces, ‘I want you to come up with the most outrageous animal you can think of and I’ll make it for you …’ His yellow clown wig is making his head itch and the children are growing more restless by the minute. Whatever made him think this was a good idea? Before his recent incarnation as a children’s entertainer, Harvey had led a reasonably healthy, functioning life, grabbing whatever small acting job came his way and keeping mind and body in shape with regular runs along the long, flat sweep of Shorling beach. He’d never realised that small people, who are barely capable of going to the loo unaided, could be so bloody hostile. Performing in front of a roomful of young strangers is
nothing
like entertaining Sam, who laughs at anything he does.

‘Anyone think of an animal yet?’ he asks, sweating a little.

‘A dog!’ chirps one of the mothers.

‘A dog. Great! That’s an easy one. While I do this’ – he starts twisting the sausage balloons between clumsy fingers – ‘the rest of you can think of something more challenging for me …’

‘Mummy …’ whimpers a little curly-haired girl, dissolving into quiet sobs as Harvey finally manages to fashion his sausage balloon into a dog, yes, but a dog with an unsightly bulge between its back legs, like elephantitis of the testicles.

‘Bit of a malfunction there,’ he sniggers, aware that it’s wrong to laugh when a child is weeping just six feet in front of him. ‘Now, can anyone think of any other—’

‘Er, excuse me!’ trills the malnourished-looking woman who booked him for this birthday party. ‘Would you mind doing something musical again? I think …’ She winces apologetically, ‘the little ones might enjoy that more.’

‘Oh.’ He adjusts his slightly-slipped wig. ‘Yeah, that’s … that’s fine.’

‘It’s not that we don’t like your animals,’ she adds quickly.

‘No, no, music’s great, that’s an excellent idea …’ He drops his unused balloons by his feet and struggles back into his one-man-band contraption. It’s home-made, constructed during his student years, and seemed funny and quirky back then. Now, strapped to the fully formed body of a thirty-three-year-old man, it seems … ridiculous.

‘Play “Cuckoo Clock”!’ the curly-haired girl commands, having miraculously stopped crying. Relieved, he starts to play a vague approximation of the theme tune he hasn’t heard for decades. ‘That’s the
old
one,’ she complains.

‘Uh?’

‘They changed it,’ one of the mothers offers, ‘last week. It’s more, er …
modern
now.’

Harvey stops playing. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t heard it.’

‘Haven’t you?’ the woman asks. ‘I’d have thought, with this being your job—’ She emits a small, withering laugh.

‘Nope, no idea.’ At this point in the game, there’s no point in pretending.

‘He doesn’t watch
Cuckoo Clock
,’ the curly-haired girl gasps.

No
, he thinks,
because I’m an adult, you see, and the only reason I’m doing this is because my agent just told me there’s nothing on the horizon – I think she’s building up to dropping me actually – and unless I can rake together a couple of hundred quid I’ll never make this month’s rent
…

‘Well, er,’ the skinny woman says, glancing at the other mothers anxiously, ‘maybe that’s enough for today? What does everyone think?’ There are a few nods from the adults, and an air of relief fills the room.

With difficulty, Harvey unstraps his one-man-band and places it carefully on the scuffed parquet floor. The skinny woman appears beside him, addressing the audience with a rictus grin. ‘That was great, wasn’t it, boys and girls? Now let’s all put our hands together for Charlie Chuckles!’

‘Harvey,’ he corrects her, but she fails to hear. He checks his watch. He was booked till four, and it’s only twenty past three.

*

Of course, his name isn’t really Harvey Chuckles. He is Harvey Galbraith, an actor who grew up in Cumbria before heading south, and who has spent the past decade feeling ridiculously grateful for whatever crumb of work has fluttered his way. For a few years, he nabbed parts in enough TV dramas and plays to convince him that this was a career worth pursuing. Yet things dwindled away and, during especially barren periods, he resorted to doing a little modelling. There was the odd catalogue, or women’s magazine at the less glamorous end of the spectrum, in which he’d invariably be cast as the ‘husband’ in fashion shoots, kitted out in Aran sweaters and chinos, often accessorised with a Labrador on a lead. But even that has dried up now. ‘Sorry, Harv,’ Lisa, his old modelling agent told him. ‘You’re still a good-looking guy but you’re not striking enough to make it as the Mature Hunk.’

So here he is, packing his clowning gear into the boot of his five-year-old Punto in Shorling community centre’s car park. On this blustery Friday afternoon, he hasn’t even bothered to change out of his costume or take off his face-paint. This isn’t like him at all; when he started this six months ago, he vowed that no one would find out what he was doing. No one who mattered, anyway. Harvey has been single for a criminally lengthy period, and he suspects that, if any woman finds out what he does, he’ll have no chance of meeting anyone. What kind of adult female wants to go out with a clown, for God’s sake? Oh, maybe once – just for a laugh – but there’d be no possibility of anything serious, anything
real
. A sharp wind whips through the springy yellow curls of his acrylic wig as he closes the car boot. Scraps of litter twist and dance across the car park, and there are bursts of laughter from the children inside the hall.
Now
they’re having fun, charging up and down like a pack of raucous hounds which is all, frankly, children really want to do. They don’t want to watch a small metal bird disappear into a dove pan.

Spots of rain are starting to fall. Harvey climbs into his car and turns on the windscreen wipers, watching their back-and-forth motion for a few moments. A scrap of white paper is trapped under one of them and doesn’t appear to be dislodging. Clicking the wipers off, he steps back out into the rain and pulls it out from beneath the wiper.

‘Look, Mummy, a clown!’ a little girl yelps from the pavement. Harvey turns and gives her a half-hearted wave; she waves back, beaming delightedly. Still clutching the damp piece of paper, he realises he can’t just chuck it on the ground – not in front of the only non-hostile child he’s encountered all day. ‘I like your wig,’ she calls out, giggling.

‘Thank you.’ He bows graciously as she and her mother wave again and make their way down the street. Harvey glances down at the soggy fragment in his hand. Although it’s smudged and barely legible, he can just make out a single word: ‘piano’. Carefully avoiding tearing the paper, he unfolds it and reads: PIANO TUITION KERRY, plus a mobile number.

Piano lessons
. It’s raining harder now, causing Harvey’s diamond-patterned satin trousers to cling to his legs. But he’s stopped noticing the cold and imagines himself sitting in an elderly lady’s front room, perhaps being offered tea from a china cup. The room would be warm, with a sleeping cat on the rug, and the piano teacher would teach him to play something beautiful. It doesn’t matter that Harvey doesn’t know anything about classical music, or that the nearest he’s come to playing the piano is tinkering about on his ancient Casio keyboard at home. Because right now, the music that fills his head is making this wet October day feel a little less bleak.

Imagine … not playing the wrong
Cuckoo Clock
song on his one-man-band but something
lovely
,
like rippling water
.
What would it be – Handel, Chopin or another of those dead guys? Harvey has no idea. But he knows that being able to play would be an escape from all of this – something of his own. The clowning has to stop, he decides, climbing back into his car and pulling out his phone from the pocket of his baggy red jacket. He places the tiny, sodden piece of paper on the passenger seat. Then, with a swirl of excitement in his stomach, and making a mental note to switch back to his normal voice – not his Harvey Chuckles voice – he taps out the piano teacher’s number.