The Yorkshire Pudding Club (11 page)

‘Right then.’ He took a big breath. ‘You know my job’s not up to much…’

Bit of an understatement, thought Janey. ‘Yes, I know you hate it,’ she said.

‘Well…Well, er…’

‘George! You’re doing my head in! Will you just say it?’

‘Okay then’–
here we go
–‘what if I jacked it in and became a househusband and looked after the baby, and you went back to work.’ There, I’ve said it, he thought and waited for her reaction.

She stared at him with her jaw open roughly south of the Equator.

‘You big Northern lump!’ she said eventually.

He downed his head. ‘It was just an idea, sorry,’ he said. I can’t put this right, he thought. This was my only chance.

‘No, you don’t understand me,’ said Janey breathlessly. ‘You big, gorgeous, fantastic, Northern, beautiful lump of a man. You’d do that for me?’

He snapped his head back up. ‘Well, course I would. I want to. Oh Janey, I feel terrible about being so bloody thick I can’t do anything better than work in a factory making chuffing plastic cogs. Hardly the great provider, am I?’

‘George,
I
feel terrible about not having your tea on the table every night when you come home. You do all the house stuff, the things I feel I should be doing…’

He knelt on the floor beside her and took her hand. ‘I love making your tea. I love cooking. I love being at home and working on it.’

‘And I love going out to work,’ Janey said, and then she snogged his face off. ‘Why haven’t we had this conversation before, George? What took us so long?’

He stroked her hand. ‘We’re having it now, that’s all that counts.’

He wished he had been brainy and could have got a job like Simon and set her up in the lovely house she deserved. Dyslexia had not been taken seriously in their schooldays; he was just pigeonholed as slow and thick, and ignored so he didn’t hold the rest of the class up. He could make anything with his hands though; he had a natural flair that had never been harnessed or encouraged because spelling and sums were all that counted when he was a lad. He should have done joinery after school, but he just got channelled into a factory knowing no better and found the rut too bloody impossible to climb out of.

‘You do work hard, don’t you do yourself down. You provide enough for us to live on; it’s me and my fancy ideas that’s the problem,’ Janey said.

He had tears in his eyes, her big, comfortable, pair-of-slippers husband with the hugest, softest, best heart in the world–one that put her cheating, selfish,
unsacrificing one to shame. She did not deserve her luck in having him.

‘So, when the baby’s here, I’ll jack me job in?’ he reiterated for confirmation. ‘I’ll leave it till the last minute and get as much overtime in as I can. I’ll work every Saturday from now till then and get the double time.’

‘Oh yes, George, jack the bloody thing in,’ she said, and her arms swallowed him up, well as much of him as they could. He squeezed her back tightly, wiping at his eyes.

Soft sod, thought Janey. My big, beautiful, soft, gorgeous sod.

You could keep all the fancy flowers and cars wrapped up in bows and surprise helicopter trips that millionaires and film stars gave out to their paramours. Nothing could compete with this moment for either of them. This was
love
.

All the way home from the surgery, Elizabeth was hoping that John had delivered her car and put the keys through the letterbox so she would not have to see him. Then, when she got home and found the car wasn’t there yet, she was relieved that she had not missed him after all. How nuts is that? she thought, although she had long accepted that she wasn’t the full shilling as far as her emotions were concerned. She could have hidden them behind a spiral staircase, they were that twisted, or so a disgruntled ex had once told her.

A fat splash of rain landed on her and she hurried into a house that was cosy, warm and welcoming. She had only been in ten minutes when there was a knock on the door and she knew who it was. She opened it up to find him standing there in the pouring rain, jangling her keys at her. She felt obliged to invite him in for a cuppa and he did not refuse.

‘That’s never the same cat?’ he said, pointing at the sleepy black shape on the kitchen chair.

‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘That’s him.’

Seven years ago, one of Helen’s workmates had
given a kitten to her, but Slimy Simon had told her he had just ordered a leather suite and if she did not get rid of the creature, he would. Elizabeth stepped in and said she would have the kitten and John volunteered to go and pick him up for her. Poor Hels. John said that she had broken her heart handing the little animal over. She loved cats, did Helen; she should have kept him and thrown the other animal out. Elizabeth had thought it then and still continued to think it.

John gave the cat a stroke on the head that woke him up and Cleef sniffed him, got up, and started purring, as if some old memory had been prodded into life.

‘What did you call him in the end?’ he said. ‘Guinness, wasn’t it?’

Oh flip.
‘I changed it.’

‘What to?’

Oh, double flip.
‘Er…Cleef,’ she said.

A slow grin crept over his lips. ‘Cleef, eh? As in Lee Van Cleef? You used to call me that.’

‘Did I?’ she said, trying to look as if she didn’t know what he was talking about.

She faffed about with cups and teabags, unconsciously slipping back into that once-familiar routine of milk and two sugars if she wasn’t stirring, one if she was. It wasn’t lost on John that she remembered. She squeezed past him to get to the fridge. He took half her kitchen up with that big arctic coat on and he wasn’t that much smaller when he took it off. She sat opposite to him across the kitchen table and he kicked her accidentally with one of his big meaty giraffe legs.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Clumsy as ever, eh?’

But that wasn’t what was causing the pained expression on her face. She had noticed that the pamphlets the midwife had given her were by his elbow and if she tried to move them, she would only draw attention to them.

‘So, any luck on the job front yet?’

Not for a pregnant woman galloping towards forty…
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I’ve bought a
Yorkshire Post
though and it’s full of jobs on Thursdays. I’ll have a look later.’

‘What do you fancy?’

‘Same as,’ she said. ‘I’m too set in my ways to try anything else, plus I like working in offices. So what made you come back to Yorkshire then, after living over in Deutschland for so long? Didn’t you like it over there?’

‘I loved it,’ he said, ‘especially the south, although most of the work was up north, but…well, my dad’s got Alzheimer’s and my mum will need help.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said, meaning it.

‘So am I, but I want to see a bit more of him and my mum now. I can’t talk to him on the phone like we did, which is a shame. I’ve been ready to come back for a while, to be honest. I just had some business ends to tie up first.’

‘Sorry to hear about you and Lisa as well,’ she said.
Ha!

‘Oh, that’s all history. In fact, I think she’ll be married again by now.’

‘Oh?’

‘She went off with a German. Called Herman,’ he said, poker-faced but with a twinkle in his eye.

‘No!’ Elizabeth battled with a grin.

‘Straight up. He was a nice bloke too. I hope she has better luck this time.’

‘You have any kids?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I hardly ever saw her, to be honest. I used the excuse of working hard so I didn’t have to go home, and that’s not the recipe for a happy marriage, is it?’

Her breath caught in her throat as he slid one of the pamphlets absently aside so that he would not put his drink down on it.

‘Did…did you manage to stay friends?’

‘She was angry and frustrated with me, so no, I don’t think I’ll be on her Christmas card list, but I wish her well, really I do. I didn’t give her enough love. We shouldn’t have got married so quickly. We both did it for the wrong reasons.’

Elizabeth didn’t comment. She didn’t want to open up that can of emotional worms again–the whole John/Elizabeth/Lisa thing. He drained his mug in one. She didn’t offer him another. She wanted to get him out before he saw what was in front of his face.

‘Right, I’ll get off,’ he said, to her enormous relief. ‘You leave the lights on that car again and I’ll be round to smack your backside. Your battery was kaput though. I put a new one in for you, by the way. And before you start, you don’t owe me for it, Elizabeth Collier; it was a spare I had knocking about. Good little car
that, considering it’s eight years old. Don’t do a lot of miles, do you…?’

His voice trailed away as his coat knocked off a leaflet about
Healthy Eating During Your Pregnancy
and he went to pick it up and put it back with the rest. Then his eyes fell full on the titles of all the other pamphlets. He looked at her, then back at them, and she knew he had forged the link between them.

‘Yes, I’m pregnant,’ she said, mounting an early attack in self-defence. ‘That what you want to hear?’

He stared blankly at her; she saw his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he gulped, and she could not stop herself from reacting to that look.

‘If you must know, I lost my job because my hormones went so crackers that I told my boss to stick his job up his rear end. I’m not with the father, don’t actually know who he is, screwed him at a New Year’s party and I’m not brave enough to abort it so I’m stuck with it. You see, John, getting away from me was probably the best thing you ever did, so don’t
ever
try to convince yourself that you made a mistake–I haven’t changed a bit.’

Then she ushered him, unresisting, out of the door, closed it firmly behind him and then slumped to the floor, curling herself into the same shape as the little being inside her.

The next morning, a letter arrived for Elizabeth, from the Personnel Department at Just the Job. It asked her to attend an interview on Monday at the head office in Leeds, with some bloke called Terry Lennox. Crikey, she thought. Golden Door actually came through for me in the end–and so quickly? Unbelievable! She stuck it in her pocket to show the others the following day when they were due to meet for a scout around Mothercare and have Saturday-afternoon refreshments afterwards.

‘How’ dja get on in Leeds then?’ Janey asked her when they were all seated in the pretty Edwardian Tea Rooms holding menus that were as tall as the little old lady waitresses in their black frocks and white aprons. Elizabeth relayed the saga, stopping short of her meeting with John Silkstone. She knew what they were like; Janey especially would question her like the Gestapo and Helen would get all fluttery with Mills & Boon-type excitement. Then she told them about how Golden Door had fixed her up with an interview and showed them the letter from Just the Job, which the others both thought was a bit strange.

‘They wouldn’t have contacted you directly in any case, surely?’ said Janey. ‘The letter would have come from, what was it again…Golden Door?’

‘It’s very quick as well, isn’t it?’ said Helen sceptically.

‘Listen, the last time I applied for a job I was flaming sixteen! I don’t know what goes on.’

‘Terry Lennox has signed this!’ said Janey with a little gasp.

‘Yeah, so?’

Helen and Janey exchanged glances and pulled impressed faces at each other.

‘What?’ demanded Elizabeth.

‘Haven’t you heard of him? He’s the MD,’ said Helen.

‘Well, if it was this Golden Door lot, they’ve come through for you big time,’ said Janey, crossing her arms over her fast-expanding bosom. It had grown an inch since they had opened their menus.

‘Well, it has to be them. It can’t be anyone else, can it?’

‘I’m very surprised, that’s all,’ said Janey.

‘You can’t be more surprised than me,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I thought they were a bunch of farts.’ She suddenly hoped that Frances had not really told them she had a degree in Japanese.

A stoop-backed Mrs Overall-type waitress arrived and took Elizabeth’s and Helen’s order for strawberry tea and big choux Elephant’s Feet. They looked over at Janey, expecting her to go for her usual sawdusty wholemeal scone with a portion of lowest-of-the-low-fat margarine, but she surprised them.

‘Make that three,’ she said, and got a big cheer from her friends.

‘How did your first antenatal go yesterday?’ Helen asked Janey.

‘Okay,’ she said, smiling enigmatically. She had gone for her appointment with a completely different mindset after having that talk with George. His enthusiasm for the baby was extremely infectious and she had found herself thinking that, with the recent turn of events, things just might turn out all right after all. She had not seen him smile like that for a long, long time and never mind the whys and wherefores, she
was
giving him his baby at last. He was so thrilled about it that any of her remaining tears were dried up by his happiness. In fact, she had virtually swaggered out of the surgery feeling quite proud of herself, and it was so good to be free of that ever-niggling gremlin that she was being unfair to him. They had gone to bed early last night and made love–shock horror–with the lights on. Her orgasm had been mindblowing and, to her surprise and delight, she was up for a repeat performance not long after. George had been quite happy to oblige, especially when she went for a different position to their usual one. Then this morning she nudged him awake, ready for more.

‘What’s the matter with you, woman!’ he said, trying to get away from her but giggling too.

‘I don’t know, but service me, husband!’ she said, and made him late for work for the first time in his whole life. She was thinking about that when Elizabeth poked her with a teaspoon and hoisted her out of her reverie.

‘Oy, Mona Lisa. What are you smiling like that for? And what about this antenatal? Is that all we get? “Okay”?’ And she did an impression of Janey being very elusive.

‘Sorry, I was miles away then,’ said Janey, and got out her blue folder that the midwife had given her. ‘I brought this to show you. Did you get one of these as well? Loads of vouchers and info and a free pants liner.’

‘I got the folder. I didn’t get the pants liner,’ said Elizabeth dryly, ‘which is just as well because I’m not sure my heart could have stood the excitement.’

‘Can’t see me ever using this,’ said Janey, picking up a voucher for a free jar of coffee. ‘It just makes me feel sick these days.’

‘You’ll get your taste for it back eventually,’ said Helen. ‘And tea. Once the baby’s here.’

‘I hope so. I used to like my Yorkshire tea,’ said Elizabeth.

‘You’re sure you’re doing the right thing keeping it, aren’t you? You’ve really thought this through?’ Janey asked Elizabeth, softly for her. She knew Helen had been thinking the same but would not dare say the words aloud, whereas she would.

‘I’m sure,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We’ll work it out somewhere along the line.’

‘There’s always adop—’ Janey started to say but shook her head before she had finished. She doubted even Elizabeth, with her hard heart, could carry a baby for nine months and give it up at the end. There were no options open other than keeping it. She just felt sad that Elizabeth’s bairn wouldn’t have
the family life her bairn would. It was history repeating itself.

‘Look, I know it’s early days,’ began Helen, putting her hand over Elizabeth’s, ‘but if I’m not in hospital myself, I’ll be your birth partner if you want.’

‘Or me,’ said Janey. ‘You know I’d do that for you.’

Elizabeth nodded and her eyes went all glassy, so she started studying the ice-cream menu and getting fidgety on her seat and they said no more on the subject. Even when her dog had died and then two weeks later she had been at her Auntie Elsie’s funeral, she had not broken down in front of them. At least she’d had the grace to look shocking though, because when her father had died she hadn’t turned a hair. That had always secretly disgusted Janey, although she had never said so aloud.

‘Why do they test your urine?’ Janey asked.

‘For IQ,’ said Elizabeth. ‘So your kid’s got no chance with you two thickies for a mam and dad.’

‘For protein,’ said Helen, being sensible.

‘Who are you having as a consultant?’ Janey asked.

‘Willoughby-Brown,’ said Helen.

‘I suppose he’s private,’ sniffed Janey and Helen nodded meekly. It had been her mother’s idea to have one of her father’s old medical colleagues, although her father had never believed in private medicine. Or schools, for that matter.

‘I’m having Greer,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Me as well,’ said Janey.

‘The midwife told me, unofficially, that he was better than Falmer,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Barry the Butcher is better than that piss-head doctor!’ Janey laughed, but as soon as her words were out, she wished she could have dragged them back into her mouth and swallowed them whole.

‘God, I’m sorry!’ she said to Helen. Her apology made it worse and Elizabeth rounded hard eyes at her.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Helen, with a smile that didn’t quite cancel out the wounded look.

Then the waitress came back with a big tray of buns and rescued the atmosphere from suffocating them all.

It was Janey’s first cream bun in three years and it was almost worth the wait; the pleasure of it was certainly up there with the recent night of marital lust. Helen was a bit jittery whilst she was eating it and ended up abandoning most of it.

‘What’s up with you?’ said Elizabeth with a jokey laugh. ‘Scared of being seen scoffing?’

Helen laughed back, but it was a very odd laugh.

When Elizabeth got home, there was a note pushed through her letterbox:
Elizabeth, please phone me when you get in. John.
And there was his number.

She crumpled it up and threw it in the bin and got on with feeding Cleef. What on earth could they have to say to each other now?