Janet knew there was something funny about Ray, she wasn’t stupid. She knew Bridget thought she was, she knew what her daughter thought long before she’d had it shouted at her in all that mud and rain, the car door slamming shut and open in the wind. Janet saw as good as anyone.
What man went off of a Saturday night and came back wearing mascara? She’d found a Kerby clip in the bed, once, it must have fallen out of his hair, she knew it wasn’t hers and she knew it wasn’t some other woman’s either; she’d been through that already, thinking he had a fancy woman, thinking he’d only married her so he could carry on with someone his own age. A fancy woman wouldn’t leave traces of lipstick in the corners of his mouth, not unless she was teaching him how to put it on. A fancy woman wouldn’t let him use foundation. Sometimes she thought he left it on purpose, so she’d notice, so she’d come out with it and ask. Only she never did. Why rock the boat? That was her own mother’s voice in her head. Why go making a fuss when you can just as well get on? She had Bridget and Paul to think about. She had her job.
“Ray says I’m to leave off. I’ve got Paul to think about.” She wished she’d learnt to drive. She wished she had money to buy her own car. “He’s old-fashioned. Not like yours. He says she’s made her bed.”
Kate left her tea half drunk. Janet put both cups in the sink.
“I’m sure it’s not my place, Janet, but it’s not up to him. She’s your daughter. This isn’t the eighteen hundreds. You’re not tied to him. He doesn’t own you. If Simon tried that. Well he knows not to try. Maybe he can talk to him, man to man?”
Janet knew what Ray thought of Simon Hilperton. Pussy whipped, is what he said when the children couldn’t hear. Bridget had gone over there once for tea when the Hilperton’s were new and trying it on with everyone in the street. She’d come back reporting that Peggy’s dad had been seen hanging out the laundry in the garden.
Janet went into the telly room and got a chair and opened the top cupboard of the dresser they kept in there that Ray had converted into an entertainment console for the telly and the VHS. Bridget’s birthday present was in there, already wrapped, she’d resisted getting a card. She didn’t want to embarrass her. She brought it to the kitchen, crinkly red paper with cats on.
Kate said, “I’ll take you, Janet.”
Silly woman had tears in her eyes. Janet didn’t feel like making her feel better. It was her fault. She should be guilty about it.
Her tabard was in the cupboard with the ironing board, looped over the folded legs. She put it on as a sign that Kate could go.
“It’s the holidays, Janet.”
As if she knew the first thing about work.
At the door Kate said, “I’ll pick you up at nine then, shall I?”
Janet wondered what would happen if she didn’t tell Ray at all. If she just up and left like Bridget.
She went into school, Paul dragged along with her and was put to scooting up and down the empty assembly hall in his socks getting splinters in his feet while she scrubbed the potato peeler and disinfected the floor and cleaned out the big pans and stacked the trays and let the chatter, and clang and crash of metal, go over her head. She got home in time to put a shepherd’s pie in the oven. Ray got in from work, hung up his anorak, the zip still broken, the shoulders soaked from the rain he’d run through time after time all day, from the Vauxhall Rover to front door of flats, semis, and one detached on the park that they’d been trying to shift for ages. Seymours had the run of the housing market in Surbiton. Ray used to work for an estate agent in Camden till his suits got too shabby and his patter too old. He said he was happy not doing the commute anymore, especially since the bomb. No one at work was as bothered as him about nuclear war. They all said it would blow over as if this was the funniest joke they’d ever heard. They’d told him to stop pointing out to buyers the potential for fourteen days hibernation.
Over pudding of tapioca she told Ray she was taking Bridget her present.
“I’ve told you before, Jan, we’ve to let her to her lesbians.”
That’s what he always said. She’d tired of saying, she’s not a lesbian, Ray. He always replied, She soon will be. What did he have against lesbians anyway? And what if Bridget did decide she wanted to be one? There’d been a girl at school Janet had been hooked on when she was a girl. Monica Pearson. All the lads had been mad about her. She’d followed her about all summer wishing she had a figure like hers. She’d never had the guts to speak to her and she’d never have done anything if she had; she wasn’t that way inclined but if it was a choice between a bit of the other or getting mugged by a man old enough to be her father then she knew which one she’d rather. Not that Ray didn’t mean well. Not that she regretted Paul and Bridget.
“It’s her birthday, Ray.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“Sixteen.”
“About time.”
“What does that mean?”
“Can I have her present?” said Paul.
He’d been allowed to spoon his own jam. He’d made a smiley face that he was busy turning jagged. Kit lurked under his chair, grappling with the lump of mince dropped from Paul’s fork.
“Eat up.” Janet nudged his bowl. “I thought I could take her one of my lemon drizzles. Or a fruit loaf. She’s bound to be hungry.”
“Have you learnt nothing, woman?” Ray put down the Daily Express. “Remember last time? She doesn’t want to see you.”
Paul smeared jam around his mouth. Janet could hardly look. He was a messy eater, just like his dad. Bridget had always been such a clean little thing, always clearing up, wiping her mouth, worrying for the slightest stain down her front. Janet had said she’d make a lovely wife one day. Maybe that’s what had done it. Maybe it was Janet’s fault.
She’d hardly touched her own dinner and didn’t want any pudding at all. She’d gone off eating completely since Bridget left. Everyone at work said she’d lost weight. They’d asked her what diet she was on. She’d said, The Bridget Diet and Thick As Mince Mary had believed her and asked for a meal planner. She didn’t know how Ray could keep shovelling it in. It was as if he’d put up a fight and thought better of it.
He pushed his bowl aside as if the fairies were going to come and clear it up. On the drive home from The Rokeby that time they’d tried to get her home for Christmas he’d said “There’s no men, is there. She’s not going to get raped. If she wants to make a show, then so be it. She’ll learn.”
“Learn what?” Janet had shouted back, but he’d turned up the radio and Janet had looked out the window, her face away from him, for the whole rest of the journey.
She tidied the kitchen, took Paul up to his bath and two aspirins while he played in the water. Her period came while Paul cleaned his teeth. The whoosh that spelled a change of gear, the sense of having the life drain out of her, she didn’t have energy for the fight. Ray was right. Bridget didn’t want to see her. She’d made that perfectly clear.
While Paul fetched his rabbit she stuck a heavy flow pad in her knickers and washed her hands and flushed the loo and came downstairs with Paul all clean and cosy in his jim-jams and together they watched Kenny Everett like she used to with Bridget. That night she lay awake, Ray snoring beside her, knowing she wasn’t going to see her.
Bloody Kate Hilperton could turn up all she liked with that ring on the bell, that face, expecting her to sit in that Volvo, Bridget’s present on her lap like the fool woman she was but that wasn’t going to happen. When morning came she put the present ready on the telephone table in the hall. And when the bell rang she finished serving up toast and soldiers to Paul, wiped her hands on her tabard and before Kate could speak, handed it to her. She told her she’d changed her mind and wouldn’t be coming at all.
You would have made or would still make (or maybe secretly are) one hell of a screenwriter!
My heart hurts for Janet. That feeling of everything crumbling around her and still she soldiers on. Ooof.