Unchained Melanie (16 page)

Whatever these women filled their daily lives with, the contrast between their sleek, well-kept appearance and the subjects of the paintings could hardly have been greater. The artist, as Cherry had told her, had painted big angry canvases crammed with ironic social realism (so Melanie read on the catalogue, and which she didn’t feel qualified to dispute). She particularly liked a six-foot-square scene depicting a kitchen table piled high with family detritus. There were school-books, a computer, newspapers, junk mail, a sleeping cat, half a Lego castle – anything but food – the table looked as if it had never been used for meals. In the corner, cowering against a big fridge, lurked a fat woman spooning baked beans into her mouth, guiltily, covertly, cold from the tin. It was a scene of true domestic desolation. Another painting showed a defeated-looking woman waiting in a long bus queue, clutching a toddler, a buggy and several bags of shopping. Close by, great hulking lads sped fast and free along the pavement on too-small Chopper bikes. The paint looked as if it had been applied with fury – great
splodges and streaks of muted, rather ugly shades livened with the occasional startling bolt of primary colour.

‘A dismal thing, real life, isn’t it?’ Cherry appeared at her side with two glasses of white wine.

‘Not exactly a symphony of domestic bliss,’ she could only agree, ‘but I like these, they’ve got a lot to say.’

‘Mel, this is Helena – she’s the artist.’ Melanie was surprised to find herself looking at a small slim woman with pale ginger hair scrunched back in a neat high ponytail. She was wearing no make-up, and her nose was dotted with the kind of freckles that little girls are usually reassured will disappear with age. The paintings with their fierce energy looked like the work of someone much bigger, and much older, too. Helena couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and surely hadn’t yet had time or experience to become as domestically jaded as her paintings.

‘Congratulations,’ Mel said to her. ‘These are terrific and I see you’ve sold a lot already. You must be pleased.’

‘Mmm, I am! I didn’t expect to sell this many – I just handed out invites to all the mothers at the gates of my son’s school.’ She leaned forward and lowered her voice to confiding level. ‘I targeted the ones with the biggest cars, the off-roader types. I didn’t dream they’d all turn up!’ Helena was as excited as a child, high on her success. To Mel, she didn’t look old enough to have a child, let alone a school-age one. ‘How old is your son?’ she couldn’t resist asking.

‘Eight. I know what you’re thinking – I still get asked for ID in pubs. I did actually have him when I was seventeen. His dad’s not around – it’s just the two of
us.’ A girl approached carrying wine, topping up glasses. ‘Goodness, I mustn’t drink any more – I’ve got to pick him up later. Luckily the school’s just round the corner.’

Melanie laughed. ‘I remember that feeling. When you’ve had a lunch with a friend and you’ve shared a bottle, that’s always the day Miss wants to haul you in to talk about the reading scheme.’

‘Or the PTA rep starts a long spiel about the summer fête.’

‘And you’re standing there breathing so slowly through your nose you think you’ll faint, but the alternative is to have it all round the staffroom that Rosa’s Mother Drinks.’ As if to confirm the truth of this, a woman behind Melanie could be heard saying, ‘No, not for me, I’m driving,’ followed by a swift recant, ‘Just half a glass, then.’

Helena drifted away to be congratulated elsewhere, and Melanie felt peculiarly out of place. She was at a different stage from most of the women in the gallery. Their homes were full of the hustle of family life, their voices full of false complaint at how busy they were, how rushed life was. She was by contrast a slowed being, able to choose the hours she kept, the routines she set herself. She could live as mad as a skunk, pile old newspapers into string-tied heaps, keep garbage in carrier bags on the stairs, make smelly towers out of empty cat-food cans. She could, with only a small deviation of decisions, become a witch-creature, alone with her cat and frightening to children. She had an unsettling vision of herself as a much older woman – double-locking doors, fearful of strangers, wary of unexpected telephone calls, taking her handbag up to bed at night. She gave herself a small mental shaking.

This wouldn’t happen. Definitely not.

‘Will they know me? I’m eighty-one now, you know.’ Melanie guided Mrs Jenkins into the Ford Galaxy she’d borrowed from Perfect Patty, and hoped there’d be room for all the luggage as well as Hal, Brenda and their pair of well-grown children. It would be pushing it a bit, especially if they’d brought with them bulky Canadian presents. Somehow she kept picturing them coming through the swing doors of the Terminal 3 Arrivals Hall with a mounted moose-head (shot by Hal) resplendent on top of the baggage trolley. A couple of bottles of duty-free and a bottle of unsuitable perfume hastily bought on the plane was far more likely.

‘They’ll know you. You don’t forget your own mother,’ Mel reassured her. ‘And they’ve got photos of you, haven’t they?’

‘From Christmas. At our Brian’s.’ Mrs Jenkins went tight-lipped and folded her hands firmly round her handbag. At Christmas, at her son’s house the year before, there’d been what Mrs Jenkins had called a ‘misunderstanding’. It had involved money, of course, family disputes involving aged widows usually did. Mrs Jenkins had been protectively unspecific about the argument but had hinted that Brian was angry that she hadn’t made provision for ensuring her home would not have to be sold if she had to go into residential care. He’d suggested remortgaging for an annuity, ‘freeing up capital’ – Mrs Jenkins, vague as she sometimes was, had remembered the exact words clearly enough.

‘I’ll die in my own bed in my own good time,’ she’d declared soon after New Year. ‘And he can get his share of the spoils then.’ Mel trusted that Brenda, so eagerly
awaited from Canada, wouldn’t prove to be just as graspingly cash-minded.

It was quite a trek from the car park to the Arrivals Hall, but Mrs Jenkins showed no sign of flagging as they walked. She was wearing her best winter coat – smart navy blue, teamed with a pink and mauve flowered silk scarf she had shown proudly to Mel when Brenda had sent it for her birthday. The colours went perfectly with her lilac-tinted curls, which she’d had specially shampooed and set at Luscious Locks for this great occasion.

‘I hope the plane’s not going to be late,’ Mrs Jenkins commented as they took their places at the barrier rail alongside minicab drivers clutching name-boards.

‘No, it isn’t. Look up there, it says it landed about five minutes ago. Perfectly timed.’ Melanie showed her the screen above them with the flights listed. Mrs Jenkins gave it a glance, then concentrated on the doors, catching her breath each time they opened to reveal another outpouring of weary-looking travellers. She was shifting from foot to foot, either with nerves or because her narrow navy shoes were hurting her bunions. Mrs Jenkins was usually only seen in either her tartan slippers or a pair of flat capacious moccasins.

‘They might be quite a while yet, perhaps we should find you somewhere to sit,’ Mel suggested, looking around for seats not occupied by sleeping, sprawled people who must surely be in the wrong part of the terminal.

‘I’m not sitting down. I might miss them,’ Mrs Jenkins declared, clutching hold of the steel barrier rail as if Mel was about to haul her bodily across the terminal.

At last, passengers started emerging, carrying duty-free bags emblazoned with maple leaves. Any minute now, Mel thought, feeling almost as nervous as her neighbour.

‘That’s them.’ Mrs Jenkins said it quietly, not moving. A portly foursome wielding a pair of heavily laden trolleys was walking slowly down the aisle towards them. They gazed through the waiting crowd, scanning for the familiar face. Brenda, Mel could see, looked pale and anxious, puffy-eyed and lank-haired, as if the journey had taken eighty hours, not eight. Then her face lit up: ‘Mom!’ she yelled. Abandoning her luggage, Brenda defied her middle-aged bulk and leapt the barrier, clutching her mother to a stoutly filled orange tee shirt. Mrs Jenkins herself looked bewildered, crushed beneath Brenda’s bulk. The rest of the family, equally sturdily built, stood around looking awkward. Melanie could only watch, as one by one the son-in-law Hal and grandchildren Barty and Lee-Ann kissed their aged relative. Apart from Brenda, who was now weeping copiously, they looked as if they’d just met a stranger. Which, of course, they had. It all seemed suddenly terribly sad: this family of remote and unconnected beings. Much as she relished being on her own, Mel hoped and prayed that Rosa would not choose to live so far away. Or, if she did, that she had a job with an airline and paid at least fortnightly visits to her old neglected mum.

Rosa took Desi for a walk along the Hoe. It was cold; the wind was blowing in sharply from the south-east and she wished she’d worn a coat. Desi was a good person to walk with: he didn’t make daft comments about everything and everyone, nor did he, unlike
just about every other student in the city, take a skate-board everywhere with him and try to impress her by doing silly tricks on it. Only the local kids were really good at it: the wannabe boardies were useless and kept falling off. There was this thing they did when they bailed, toeing the board up into the air and catching it, as if that was what they’d meant to do all the time. She knew it was just a scuzzy way of saving face when they were about to fall flat on their butts. At least two of their Hall’s residents were going round with either a wrist or foot in plaster from trying to compete with the experts. The only students who were remotely competent were the ones who hung out at the Boardriders club, real surfers, body-boarders, windsurfers – people with years of balance practice. She and Desi didn’t really fit among them – neither of them was what anyone would describe as sporty. Desi couldn’t walk across a road without tripping over his feet, and Rosa’s idea of exercise was tapping out texts to Gracie, who was now backpacking in Mexico.

Perhaps she should have taken a year out. Most of the others had been away since school and done something mad in foreign parts. The parents of Rota-Girl Kate at the flat had shelled out £3,000 so she could impress with ‘taught at a school up a mountain in Patagonia’ on her CV. Two of the boys had done Australia, Sydney-to-Cairns, along with a thousand other kids from the British private education system. A gap year would have given Rosa time to forget about Alex. Even now she had to stop herself phoning his mobile just to hear his voice. She had stuff to tell him. Stuff he was going to need to know. One thing
she
knew, she wanted to go home. For good, not just for a weekend. This just wasn’t going to work. If it wasn’t
for the feeling that she’d be abandoning Desi to a harsh and cynical world, she’d be on the next train to Paddington.

Gwen simply didn’t mention the defrosted badger, so neither did Mel. In her parents’ house all was its pre-pornography tranquillity. If something had been resolved, this had happened privately and would never be mentioned again. In the sitting room with its walnut sideboard hosting a never-changing parade of Mel and Vanessa’s old school photos, Mel accepted a cup of tea, helped herself from a plate of bourbon creams and listened as Gwen told her about the holiday Howard had booked for them both, ‘As a surprise!’ Gwen was quite skittish about this, delighted that he could still astound her in good ways as well as bad. They were to go to Spain after Christmas, for a whole month – special pensioners’ rates.

‘It’s an apartment – and there’s two bedrooms, so we thought you’d like to come too, seeing as you’re on your own.’

‘Well – er, I don’t . . .’

Gwen wasn’t in any mood to accept the word no. ‘Rosa will be back at university and you can bring that computer of yours if you’ve really got to do your work. A change will do you good. And it’s not as if you’ve anything else to do.’ She leaned forward, as if the world was waiting to hear, and said, ‘You might meet someone. There’ll be a lot of the more mature sort of men there.’

Mel doubted this: it was far more likely there’d be a surfeit of elderly ladies.

‘I think perhaps I should leave them for someone else. I’m not looking for one!’ How many times did this
have to be said? Mel was smiling, but her jaw was tense.

‘It won’t be all bingo and ballroom dancing, you know,’ Gwen said. ‘At least . . . I don’t think it will.’ She was finding room for doubts to creep in.

‘Even if it is, we don’t have to join in with all that. There’ll be lots to do,’ Howard reassured her. They looked more comfortable together than Mel had seen them in ages. Howard had carried the tea tray into the sitting room. He’d put it carefully on the table and then straightened the cushions on the chair before Gwen sat down. She was, Mel could see, conscious of being treated like someone bordering on regal, sporting a gracious smile like a minor royal on a walkabout, deputizing for someone grander. Even if she’d been desperate to spend a month in Spain, it would have been like tagging along on someone else’s honeymoon.

‘I tell you what, I’ll look after the dog for you, then you won’t have to worry about him,’ she volunteered.

‘Vanessa’s having him. You have a think anyway, you don’t have to decide today. There’s Christmas to get out of the way first,’ Gwen said, getting up and bustling back towards the kitchen for some forgotten item.

‘Dad, I really would rather not come,’ Melanie said as soon as Gwen was safely out of hearing distance. ‘You don’t mind, do you? I mean, I could come over for a weekend, just to top up your supplies of English Breakfast tea or something.’

‘No, it’s fine by me. You do what you want. You’ve got your own life.’

‘Glad to have her back?’ Mel risked asking, hearing Gwen banging cutlery around in the kitchen.

‘Oh yes. Though . . .’

‘Yes?’

Her father hesitated and glanced quickly at the door to make sure he wasn’t overheard. ‘Sometimes being on your own for a bit is a good thing,’ he said. ‘It was quite relaxing, really. Not having to set the table properly for a meal, leaving the washing up till morning.’