The Boy Who Fell to Earth (9 page)

‘You’ve perfected this kind of casual contempt for men, Lucy,’ Phoebe persevered, refusing to give up on her only sister. ‘But think about how this will rub off on Merlin: “
Mummy, when I grow up, I want to be a miserable misanthrope like you
.” ’

‘Being misanthropic and cynical is all a part of my mystique,’ I replied. Merlin was squatting in the grass, his face vivid with excitement. ‘
As if we were villains of necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and teachers, by spherical predominance
,’ he said, parroting Edmund in
King Lear
, with no real comprehension of the meaning of the words, which I knew, from my librarian mother, related to
astrology.
Merlin
’s sign read ‘DO NOT DISTURB’, with Asperger’s in the ascendency. I touched his golden head and he beamed up at me. His smile was painful in its nakedness and I felt a stab of remorse at the thought of his sweet face becoming tutored in moroseness by my example.

‘You see why I’m worried, Mum?’ Phoebe threw up her hands in frustration before flouncing off to the kitchen for more alcoholic reinforcement. ‘This is why I made you come home from your medieval knot gardening,’ she called back over her shoulder.

‘Medieval knot gardening? … You know there’s a very fine line between a hobby and mental illness, Mother.’

‘Oh, sweet pea.’ My mother’s voice dropped an octave. She stood behind me and brushed my hair, the way she did when I was little, even though it was so much shorter now. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much as I should. Single-parenting has exhausted you. When Merlin says jump, you jump – and, as a result, you’ve now got a strained back and have to lie down with a toyboy for, oh, I’d suggest about a month or two.’ I couldn’t see her, but could hear the twinkle in her voice.

‘I think celibacy is the only dignified attitude for a career woman in her mid-thirties, don’t you?’ I said trenchantly, trying not to be depressed by the fact that my pensioner mother was obviously more sexually active than I.

‘Celibacy is not dignity, Lucy, dear. It’s lack of opportunity. You’re so famished for love, petal, that you’ll soon start sexually harassing yourself.’

‘So what if I do?’ I jibed. ‘Porn – so much cheaper than dating.’

‘But can a deluxe, top-of-the-range vibrator talk to you, cuddle you or change your flat tyres?’ my straight-talking
mother
asked plainly. ‘Sex is going to rear its ugly purple head at some time or other, darling.’

I shuddered. ‘Do you know the best contraception for a woman my age? Nudity.’

‘Do you know the best way to avoid wrinkles? Take your glasses off,’ my mother touchéd.

‘I’m not like you, Mother. I can’t get naked in front of a stranger. I’ve become such a prude. Even when home alone I don’t walk around my bedroom naked.’

She sighed. ‘Sometimes I think you’re adopted, Lucy, I really do. Orgasms are a minor pastime of mine I rate just before eating and drinking and waking up each morning,’ my bohemian mother espoused. ‘Your vagina has become the Howard Hughes of sexual organs. No visitors and never goes out. A little casual sex would do you the world of good …’

‘There’s nothing casual about casual sex, Mother. It’s incredibly stressful. You have to get your roots done, your facial hair tweezed … Casual sex? God! Nothing could be further from the truth. “Casual sex” is when you’re married and half-heartedly make love with the telly still on.’

‘Well, sweet pea, you simply must have sex soon before you sag. My skin has sagged so much my tattoos are no longer legible.’

I swung around in my chair to eyeball her. ‘You have tattoos? When did you get a tattoo?’

Mum ran a hand through her helmet of dyed red hair and waved away my query. ‘I went out to dinner with your father and his actress friends once and we spent the entire time establishing which of us had the perkiest breasts. Sadly, it turned out to be your father.’ My mother fired off a laugh of affection for her long-lost husband. It amazed me that
he’d
betrayed her and yet she still found it in her heart to love him.

‘Do you know that our mother has a tattoo somewhere on her body?’ I interrogated Phoebe as she returned from the kitchen with a platter of antipasto.

We both looked at our parent with amused awe. ‘Show me!’ Phoebe insisted.

‘I’m not showing either of you until your romantically challenged little sister promises to date again. Merlin needs a male influence in his life,’ Mum reiterated, in the same tone someone would say ‘
May Day. Abandon ship. Right now
.’

‘Lucy, our mother has a tatt. Just promise to date again,’ Phoebe beseeched me. ‘Come on. Don’t you want to see it?’

‘Perhaps I’ll date again, later …’ I shrugged, with a mouth full of taramasalata.

‘How much later, dear? You’ll still be hot, yes, but only due to your menopausal flushes. You’ll be wearing support fishnets. And an orthopaedic G-string, as your vagina will have dropped because you didn’t do those pelvic-floor muscle exercises I keep telling you two about,’ my mother chided. ‘Do them now, girls, for God’s sake.’

We all sat silently for a few minutes, contracting and holding and counting. Cold was creeping into the garden. The best of the day was behind us.

‘Mum’s right. I love you so much, Lulu. But you’re becoming curmudgeonly,’ Phoebe said, ruffling my just-brushed hair. ‘You need an outlet … Merlin needs an outlet. Your relationship is too intense. You need a man in your life. Do it for your child.’

‘I can’t believe you’re serious, Phoebe. Where can a
36-year-old
woman with a special needs child find a sexy, intellectual, evolved male who is interested in her? Let me tell you. In a bookstore. Under “Fiction”. Besides, Merlin would hate it if I dated men.’

‘Merlin!’ my mother called in her imposing voice, a voice that could not just quell a school library of unruly illiterates but no doubt command a battleship. ‘Come here, darling!’

My mother gestured for him to come closer. But, of course, he couldn’t just walk over. He had to walk towards us in a certain way, for luck. Anti-clockwise, it turned out today. ‘So that I can go on living,’ as he put it. Five minutes of anticlockwise circumnavigation later, he threw himself at me, launched himself really, like a fleshy Exocet missile. He hugged me with debilitating enthusiasm, the kind of hug that would require a chiropractor to reset my bones.

‘So, what’s been on your mind lately, Grandma?’ Merlin said experimentally, trying to fit in.

‘Merlin,’ my mother chirped, ‘don’t you think it would be a good idea if your mum had a boyfriend?’

I awaited his howl of protest, but instead his eyes sparkled. ‘Why does a woman marry one man and have babies and then stay that way for life? I find it lacking in ambition. It’s like being the teacher’s pet. I like the French approach. You don’t have to think I’ll be upset if you get a boyfriend, Mum. I would find it intriguing.’

As I prised myself free of Merlin’s vice-like grip, I looked at my son’s slender, toned body and, for the first time in a long time, missed the bulk of a real man.

‘It’s not a man’s world. I don’t think father-pride. That’s the old style. But it would be enthralling to know what happened to my real father. Is he a time traveller?’ His face lit up with
puppyish
eagerness. ‘A moonwalker? Or an International Man of Mystery?’

Sadness settled on me like a soft deposit of giant snowflakes. I could be the best mother in the world but my son would still be furtively seeking a father’s hand in the dark.

‘Look,’ I acquiesced, ‘even if I wanted to go out with men again … I’m a single mother. I mean … how can I date?’

‘Because,’ my mother stated grandly, ‘I am going to Merlin-sit. I’ve put away my leopardskin luggage for a while, to stay with my adorable grandson,’ she said, placing a big, juicy, coral-coloured kiss on his cheek.

‘Grandma, how old are you exactly? Were you alive during the reign of William the Conqueror? Did you date Harold Godwinson before he was speared through the eye by the Normans?’

My mother laughed. We knew better, in my family, than to be perturbed by any of Merlin’s remarks.

‘I’m not entirely sure exactly how old I am, petal. I just round my age down to the nearest decade. And keep a Happy 50th Birthday card around at all times.’

‘Fifty, eh? Yes, fifty is a fabulous age for a female … especially if she happens to be sixty-six!’ I rebuked. ‘But you’re really not gallivanting off around the globe for a while?’ I asked her, amazed.

‘Only if you give a definite yes to start seeing men again.’

‘I could give you a definite maybe …’

It was this tipsy sentiment, plus a glimpse of the Rolling Stone-inspired ‘lick me’ tongue tattoo on our mother’s left hip bone, which prompted me to allow my sister to create my dating profile on Match.com.

‘Now … which photo to post?’ my mother pondered. ‘You
need
to look flirtatiously at the camera, show some toe cleavage and be doing something interesting like playing a ukulele. Under no circumstances have a pet in shot. Especially not a cat.’

‘I don’t want to contemplate why you’re an expert in internet dating, Mother, it will only give me nightmares. Internet dating is unsafe.’

‘Why? Because it doesn’t have a fire exit and wheelchair access?’ my mother poo-pooed.

‘Just some friendly advice –’ Phoebe admonished, cracking open her laptop – ‘maybe telling a man on the first date that you define marriage as a “legal contract which sanctions rape” might not be the best way to attract a mate.’

‘Ugh …’ I sighed. ‘Dating was bad enough at sixteen, but at thirty-six it’s ridiculous. You’re both lobotomized to think computer dating could ever work.
Maths-obsessed cross-dresser in Manolo Blahniks and Prada A-lines seeks slightly soiled health-food fascist for mismatched evenings worrying about the sugar content of M&Ms
… No, thank you.’

‘Must have GSH,’ Phoebe typed in my profile section, ‘as
I
definitely don’t have one.’

‘Ha ha.’ I biffed her good-naturedly. ‘GSH … LTR … Every personal statement decodes as the same thing:
Depressed suicidal failure seeks gullible female with more money than me to shag for free until the police arrest me for skipping bail
. The trouble is,’ I admitted in a bout of honesty, snapping closed my sister’s laptop, ‘I don’t think I’m as nice as I used to be. That desire to please, to take the crap and hold my tongue is gone. Merlin-wrangling will do that to you. Plus your husband dumping you for a domestic goddess. I feel as though I was born with a set allocation of patience and it’s all used up.’

My mother and sister exchanged sympathetic looks. Phoebe rallied first. ‘You’ve just forgotten how foxy you are. A little makeover and you’ll look better than any famous young telly chef.’

‘I don’t want to look like a famous young telly chef. Are you kidding? Those women don’t win a TV statuette unless they weigh less than it does.’

‘You’re slim enough, Lulu, you just need to tone up a little. Why don’t you take up jogging?’ Phoebe pointed into the lane, where a Lycra-clad gent was galumphing along, panting.

‘He looks as though he’s chasing the fat he lost last week,’ I grunted.

‘Phoebe refuses to take you to yoga ever again, but what about Pilates?’ my mother suggested. ‘Get in touch with your body.’

‘Funnily enough, I heard from my body just the other day. “H
ow’d you like to go to the six o’clock pump class in vigorous bum-toning?
” I asked it. And, clear as a bell, my body said, “
Listen, witch … do it and die
.” Besides, I’m already athletic. Do you know how many trays I’ve run up to Merlin’s bedroom for nothing more serious than a hangnail?’

‘More proof that you over-pamper him. Merlin needs the robust influence of a man in the house. I’m booking you into my salon for some’ – Mum chose the word carefully – ‘grooming.’

‘Grooming? Isn’t that what paedophiles do on the internet you say is so safe?’ I retorted.

‘Beauty fades,’ my mother said, ‘but implants last for ever.’

‘You haven’t!’ I gasped. Although nothing about my mother would surprise me.

‘Not yet.’ She winked. ‘But I am scrupulous about
eyebrows,
bikini line and underarms. I’ve glimpsed your underarms, dear. The last time I saw anything like that, the whole herd had to be culled. And your pubic hair looks as though you’re harbouring Brezhnev’s escaped eyebrows in your knickers.’ Her laughter was vibrant with affection. ‘Any man down there will feel like one of those tigers in a Rousseau painting.’

‘I like my pubic hair, Mother. It’s like having a little pet in my pants.’

But my mother would not be dissuaded. She’d given up her National Trust working holiday for this, after all. ‘I had a feeling you’d say that.’ She then extracted some goodies from her handbag. ‘My secret armoury. Stay-up stockings, to hide veins. And crotchless panties, for the times you haven’t waxed.’

My mother then pressed a few hundred quid into my palm. ‘And buy yourself a little something. You look as though you were dressed by Helen Keller in a dark room.’

I had been concealing heartbreak beneath wisecracking stoicism, gritting my teeth in preparation for pain and constantly poised for disappointment for so long, I’d forgotten how to yield; the pleasure to be had in letting go.

‘Use it or lose it, honey,’ were my mother’s wise words. ‘Believe me, the worst thing about old age is that you grow out of it.’

‘Don’t worry about life after death, you should worry about life
before
death, as in,
will you ever have one
?’ Phoebe reiterated.

Exaggerating runs in my family. We are the world’s most brilliantly over-the-top, unbelievably world-class exaggerators known to humankind or the entire universe – with no exaggeration. If my father got a parking ticket, it
would
turn into an armed arrest, a full body search and a possible prison break-out. If my mother so much as singed the toast, by the time she’d honed the anecdote, the entire kitchen had burnt down and she’d been fondled by the fireman. But maybe this time my loved ones weren’t exaggerating my plight? Maybe I had turned into an alien from Planet Doom?