Unlike a Virgin (6 page)

‘I love you, Gracie Flowers,’ he said, kissing the top of my head when he’d finished singing.

‘I love you, too,’ I said. Thankfully. I say that because my mum didn’t. My mum and dad had had an argument the night before. I’m not entirely sure what it was about, but I think it was because my mum thought she should have been invited along to the meeting. She was worried they’d want my father to partner someone younger and more glamorous on the show. It was important to her. They’d danced together for nearly twenty years. She didn’t say anything to him as he left the house that day.

Later, I was in the exam. I’d read the paper through, like they told us to, and was just about to start on the first question when a teacher scuttled into the exam hall and whispered to the examiner. The next thing I knew the examiner was tapping me on the shoulder, then she led me out of the room and told me that Dad had had an accident. Another teacher drove me to the hospital, but it was too late. I saw my mum through some glass doors talking to a doctor. Then I heard my mum howl. And it was the worst sound I’ve ever heard.

He was knocked down by a bus. It sounds almost comical. He was on Regent Street, crossing the road, when apparently a fan shouted at him. He stopped, waved and did a dance move, then carried on running right into a bus. Silly sod.

Still, he’s buried in a lovely place. The slutty silver birch whispers in his ear and I come once a week for a chat and a singsong. My mum never comes. She hasn’t been here since the funeral. She hasn’t really been anywhere since the funeral.

When I first started coming I would lie on the ground, knowing that he was there a few feet beneath me, and cry. Then I started to chat to him. I told him all about Danny Saunders, who stood by me. I told him how I couldn’t apply to
music college, which was something we’d always spoken about. I explained that it was because I couldn’t leave Mum. I told him all about the singing competition I’d entered shortly after he was buried, and how I’d screamed my head off while Ruth Roberts was singing for the judges and how they’d asked me not to enter any singing competitions again and how I didn’t want to anyway. Then I ran out of things to say to him because my life seemed to have stopped moving in any direction at all. That was when I started to bring my ghetto blaster down to the cemetery and play music to him. Then the ghetto blaster broke and I started singing to him instead.

One day I came to see him and noticed that there was a new grave next door but one to Dad’s. I looked at the fresh soil and the new flowers. There’s nothing sadder than fresh soil in a graveyard. You can’t help but think of the people left behind and their loss. I sang Dad ‘Mr Bojangles’ that day. Actually, I didn’t just sing, I did a few little dance steps as well. When I finished I heard clapping and a man saying, ‘Bravo.’ I looked about and saw an older couple, a man and a lady, both dressed in wellies and Barbour jackets. The man was holding a Thermos flask and the lady a bunch of daffodils from Sainsbury’s. I know because I’d put the same ones on Dad’s grave earlier.

‘Bravo,’ the man said again.

I blushed. I felt like I’d been caught naked. I’d never met anyone else at the graveyard. No one else ever came to the silver birch corner.

The lady put the flowers on the fresh grave. She was in her sixties, but she was beautiful. She looked like a retired ballerina.

‘Lucky you, Mum,’ she said to the grave with a smile. Then she turned to me, ‘You don’t by any chance know the song that goes, “Heaven, I’m in Heaven”, do you?’

The man in the wellies and Barbour jacket roared with laughter. I’ve never heard anything like it. He could literally have woken the dead. I thought we might have a scene from Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video on our hands.

‘She’d love that!’ he screamed, and the beautiful lady joined in with his laughter.

Of course I knew the song. Fred Astaire, my father’s dancing hero, sings it in an old black and white movie.

So I sang the song and they danced like Fred and Ginger. It was weird and wonderful, and afterwards, they introduced themselves. Leonard and Joan, brother and sister. Leonard opened his Thermos and shared his whisky-laced coffee with me.

‘Camille Flowers,’ Joan said, looking at my dad’s grave. ‘A wonderful dancer. It was so sad when he died.’ And she hugged me. God, I remember that hug. I closed my eyes and melted into it. It made me realise that my mum hadn’t hugged me for years.

We arranged to meet the next week and then the week after that, and now we’ve been meeting every week for seven years. Leonard still brings his Thermos and I still bring the doughnuts.

I’m not thinking about our history today, though, as I walk to silver birch corner. I’m thinking about John St John What’s-his-name taking my job.

Joan and Leonard are already seated in their usual spot, on top of the monument to Alfred George Roberts. He was a
textile merchant who died in 1893. We say it was the syphilis what got him, although we don’t know that for fact.

‘Happy birthday to you!’ they start to sing. We’ve celebrated many birthdays over the years.

‘Oh darling …’ Joan says as soon as she sees my downcast face. ‘Did it not go your way?’

‘No! Some posh bloke got it. He gave the job to some posh twat who didn’t even work for the company.’

‘That’s a travesty! Do you want me to talk to the lubricant chap?’ Leonard asks as he takes a doughnut from the bag.

‘One doughnut today, Len, your blood pressure was up this morning,’ Joan instructs him.

‘Spoilsport! Now, while we’re on unpleasant subjects, Grace, what did you make of that letter?’

‘What letter?’

‘There was a letter. Did you not get one? A company – oh what are they called, Joan? I had it a moment ago in the car.’

‘Something construction.’

‘Yes, yes, something construction. But what construction? SJS Construction? Was it?’

‘I think it was, Len.’

‘Well, anyway, this construction company want the land we’re standing on, Grace. They want this corner of the graveyard to build an access road to a big development they’re planning.’

‘They can’t be so arrogant as to think they can build a road through a Victorian graveyard!’ I replied.

‘Actually, they can. And, in fact, they could. The council would allow it apparently because it only affects a few graves.
Mum’s, your dad’s, Alfred’s here and two others I believe, but the relatives of the deceased have the final say.’

‘Oh, thank God for that. They must have written to Mum. I’ll write back and tell them where they can shove their access road.’

‘That’s our girl. Now then, “Feeling Good”?’ Leonard enquires.

I walk over to Dad.

‘Hi, Dad,’ I whisper. ‘Not a great day for the five year plan. Sorry.’ I pause for a moment, then I start to sing. And like every birthday I’m taken back to the bathroom, when I sat on that toilet seat and Dad first played Nina Simone to me.

My birthday is on the same day as Danny’s dad’s. Friendly Wendy is into birthdays and star signs and general superstitious nonsense, and she thinks it’s weird that Danny goes out with a girl who’s born on the same day as his dad. When I asked her why, she just answered, ‘Um, dunno, its just a bit twisted, that’s all.’ I don’t know about twisted, but it is incredibly annoying. Especially since Danny’s mum and dad moved to the middle of Wales, because it means I spend all my birthdays on the M4.

We’re supposed to be setting off as soon as I’ve visited my dad, but I’ve decided to delay things a few minutes.

‘Dan.’ I call him on my mobile when I’m back in my car.

‘Hey, birthday girl.’

‘Do us a favour. I left my debit card in the pub last night. I couldn’t get that pill thing – it’s £27! – can you pop over to the pub, pick up the card for me and run up to Sainsbury’s and buy the pill for me. You need to go to the pharmacist in the
middle. He should remember me. I’ve answered all his questions, I just didn’t have the money to pay.’

‘Oh, Grace, babe.’

‘Please, Danny, he said I’m at a fertile point or something and I need to take it quickly. I just need to pop in and see my mum before I go.’

Then I hang up. It’s best not to give Danny time to formulate an excuse, and anyway, I’m already swinging into Mum’s driveway. I don’t even stop to look at my beautiful childhood home. I just jump out of the car and run up to the porch.

‘All right, Mildred, how’s it hanging?’ I say as I cross the threshold. Mildred is the lady who’s buried under the porch.

‘Mum,’ I call as I walk into the hallway. There aren’t any lights on, so I flick the light switch. Nothing. Mum never changes light bulbs, although I’m sure she has some. There are bound to be boxes and boxes of them stored somewhere.

The house looks different inside from when I was a child – it hasn’t been decorated since then. That’s not the difference, though. The difference is that it’s crammed with stuff. When I was little there was room to run around or dance in the house, whereas now there are just narrow corridors of space that allow you to move from one cramped room to another. Piles and piles of books, DVDs, beauty potions, make-up, gadgets and fitness equipment are stacked in neat piles against the walls and the effect is suffocating. I’ve tried to speak to her about it, but she gets defensive. She says that she doesn’t nag me about how I spend my money, so it’s not fair for me to do it to her. But it’s not the money that worries me. I remember at the time of my father’s death people saying how clever Dad had been
with their money and how my mother would always be well provided for. So it’s not about that; it just makes me sad to think of her sitting in a cramped, dark house buying things she doesn’t need to fill a void in her life that will never be filled. Mind you, thinking about my mum makes me sad, period.

‘Grace, is that you?’ Her face appears at the top of the stairs.

My mum is beautiful. Perhaps that’s the most frustrating thing. Mentally she may be a fruit loop, but her outer casing is divine. She’s short, like me, but whereas I curve in and out dramatically and have a bottom the size of a widescreen TV, my mum is petite all over, like a little bird. My dad used to call her his little starling because she seems to flutter everywhere. She’s blonde and she wears her hair in a neat wavy bob, like movie stars in the fifties used to. My mum has been all dressed up with nowhere to go for ten years.

‘You look nice,’ I say. She smiles vaguely. ‘Did you get a letter about the cemetery and people wanting to build a road over Dad’s grave?’

Mum’s lips tighten and she walks back to the bedroom she came from. ‘I don’t know,’ she says.

I walk into my dad’s old study. I try not to look at his old cork noticeboard with all the pictures of us and postcards and tickets to parties pinned to it. Nothing has faded because Mum won’t open the blinds in here. It’s like walking onto a dark stage where a play set a decade ago is about to take place. His old computer sits where it always sat, looking archaic now. Somewhere in one of the drawers is his old mobile phone. My dad never got to see the iPhone or, more importantly, the iPod. It’s funny the things that make you sad.

There aren’t any letters, opened or unopened, upon the desk.

‘Mum, where do you put the post?’ I shout, but as I’m shouting I stub my toe on something underneath the desk. I reach down and slide a heavy cardboard box towards me.

‘What have we got here?’ I mutter.

The box is full of letters, all of them unopened.

I sit on Dad’s swivel chair and rummage through them. The aim is to spot the All Souls Cemetery postmark, but that’s soon forgotten when I realise they’re all formal, terrifying-looking letters. Many from British Gas show a red letter in the address window. The words ‘Urgent’ and ‘Do Not Ignore’ swim in front of my eyes.

‘Jesus,’ I mutter.

I take the top few letters and put them in my bag. I’ll have to pay them for her when I get the chance. I carry on searching for the All Souls Cemetery letter. It’s not there. Maybe Leonard was wrong and it won’t affect Dad’s grave after all.

‘Mum!’ I shout, walking back into the hallway. ‘Mum, I’m off.’

‘Oh, bye.’

‘Are you sure you didn’t get a letter from the cemetery?’

‘Not that I remember.’

‘You’d definitely have remembered. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’

I wait for her to say something like ‘happy birthday’ or ‘wait a sec, let me give you your present’ or ‘I love you’, but she doesn’t. She just stands at the top of the stairs and nods.

I love my car, even though bits keep falling off her. It was my exhaust last week, and the week before that a wing mirror. The passenger door generally won’t open and some of my less agile clients have found it hard to get in the car through my side. She’s a Nissan Micra and she was my twenty-second birthday present to myself. She was £650, and even though she’s cost me a lot more since then, I adore her. She’s red and her name is Nina. The only thing about her that I’m not keen on is the pattern on her seats. They’re flecked with yellow and people have commented that it looks like vomit stain that won’t come off. People can be so cruel. My favourite bit of Nina is her horn, which I am beeping furiously at the moment because Danny bleeding Saunders is in the pub while I’m waiting outside in the car.