Sisteria (2 page)

‘Please, darling, don't go all silent on me.' Beverley got off the stool, went over to her daughter and put an arm round her. She expected Natalie to push her away, but she didn't.

‘I can't believe you haven't noticed,' she said miserably. ‘Just look at my nose.'

Natalie had her maternal grandfather Lionel's sizeable, though by no means record-breaking, hooter. Somehow the Gold family nose had skipped a generation. Beverley had escaped it, but Natalie had inherited an instrument which was long and broad, with an ever-so-slightly bulbous end that drooped towards her top lip. With her mother's olive skin, long dark hair and huge brown eyes she had the look of an exquisite Old Testament heroine about her. Beverley and Melvin had spent many hours trying to convince their daughter that she was beautiful. Each time they thought her self-confidence was improving, some revolting toe-rag at school would destroy it by ripping the piss with a remark like ‘Oh, miss, why don't you ask Natalie Littlestone that question. She always NOSE.'

Today, in order to compound Natalie's usual agony, her nose had sprouted on the side of one nostril a large angry red hillock which was about to evolve into a spot, but hadn't yet developed a head.

Beverley squinted at the spot. She was determined to play it down. The faintest acknowledgement that Natalie's nose had spawned an embryonic super-zit would guarantee that she skipped school and spent the day locked in her squalid, dirty-knicker-strewn bedroom consoling herself by playing her Verve CD at full volume.

‘Natalie, for heaven's sake,' she said, ‘it's just a pimple. You can hardly see it.'

‘Where from? Fiji?'

Ignoring her daughter's sarcasm, Beverley picked up Natalie's half-finished bowl of cereal and took it over to the sink.

‘Just put some TCP on it,' she soothed, ‘and then cover it with some of my concealer. There's a tube in my make-up bag in the bathroom. It'll probably go down by tomorrow. Now then...' she continued as she picked up two foil parcels, ‘I've given you a couple of tuna fish bagels for your school lunch, and there's a piece of Grandma's cheesecake for afterwards...'

‘My God,' Natalie said between sobs, ‘you don't get it, do you? You just don't get it. I have a throbbing boil the size of Brent Cross on my already hideously deformed nose which the entire school makes fun of, and your solution isn't sympathy and the offer of a consultation with a plastic surgeon... no, it's blinkin' tuna fish bagels and cheesecake. Mum, when are you going to get real and stop behaving like some nineteenth-century Ukrainian Jewish peasant? Grandma's lived with us for five years and in all that time I've never seen her fuss like you.'

Beverley said nothing. It was true. But Natalie was clearly in no mood to be reminded that despite her grandmother's celebrated lack of interest in fussing and
kvetching
, she served up ample aggravation in other ways. Hardly a day went by when Queenie didn't let Beverley know how much money the husband of some old school friend or other was rumoured to be making selling software (which she assumed meant he travelled in duvets, pillows and cushions) and how much better Beverley could have done for herself than to marry Melvin.

By now Natalie had clacked off towards the door, only to collide with her father, who was on his way into the kitchen fully dressed apart from one bare foot. He was carrying a handful of socks.

Without saying a word, she barged past him.

‘Morning, sweetness,' he said with good-natured sarcasm. He turned towards Beverley. ‘Blimey, what's got into
her
?'

‘Don't make fun, Melvin. It's serious,' Beverley explained, putting the foil parcels in the fridge. ‘She's got a slight spot on the side of her nose. Honestly, her mood swings are getting intolerable. You're a pharmacist. Couldn't you bribe some bent doctor to take her ovaries out one night while she's asleep?'

‘You wish,' he chuckled.

‘Listen,' Beverley said, ‘did you give Benny a shout?'

At some stage, which she found impossible to pinpoint precisely, their son had turned from a boisterous, eager little boy who was always up and ready for school each morning by seven thirty, to a lolloping, grunting nearly-sixteen-year-old who could sleep through the after-effects of a six-mile-wide meteorite landing next door.

‘No, I didn't. For the simple reason that I've been too busy trying to sort this lot out.' He sounded fraught now as he brandished the socks at Beverley. ‘Do you mind telling me why I have just found nine odd socks in my drawer? I mean, what happens in this house? Is there some sock pervert who gets a thrill from going round separating them from their partners? I tell you, Beverley, if you are incapable of managing the laundry, I'll have to take it over.'

‘Melvin, I know I'm not a pretty sight in the morning, but has something Kafkaesque happened to me since we made love ten minutes ago? Have I turned into a punch bag?'

‘I'm sorry, Bev, but it's just that this bloody fucking sock thing drives me insane. I mean, where do they go? I would just love to have the time to write a thesis on this disappearing sock conundrum.'

‘Try the tumble dryer,' she said, smiling to let him know his apology had been accepted.

While Melvin pulled the entire tumble dryer contents out on to the floor and began rummaging irritably through the pile, Beverley went over to the breakfast bar and took the letter from under the pepper pot.

‘By the way, this came in the post,' she said, holding the folded paper towards him.

Melvin, who was by now lining up socks along the kitchen worktop while muttering to himself about having discovered a warp in the space-time continuum into which all the world's single socks were disappearing and being teleported to the constellation Ursa Major, suddenly looked at her and turned white.

‘For Chrissake, Beverley,' he pleaded irritably, ‘don't ever
this
me. I don't need to be tortured with
thises
. Be specific. Who's it from? The bank? The building society? Barclaycard? Don't just stand there... I need to know. How much do they want?'

‘Melvin, it's not a bill. Here, read it.'

Melvin was just about to snatch the letter from her when the mobile phone in his jacket pocket started ringing.

‘For crying out loud. What now?' Furious, he pulled up the aerial and stabbed one of the buttons. Almost at once he raised his eyes heavenwards. It was several seconds before he got the chance to contribute more than half a sentence to the one-sided conversation.

‘Alma, I know... Alma, please... please will you listen to me? I know it was very good of you to come into the shop at six o'clock this morning and start the stock-taking... Of course I understand how shocked a woman of your age must have been... No, I would not like to feel a rat brush past my ankles. It must have been horrible.' Putting the phone between his chin and shoulder, Melvin triumphantly picked up a navy ribbed sock which more or less matched the one he was wearing, and lifted his right foot. ‘OK, Alma, so now you know it was only one of the toupees which had fallen off the stockroom shelf, go and make yourself a nice cup of sweet tea...'

Melvin was beginning to sway as he stood on one leg trying to pull on his sock. In order to stop himself falling over, he started hopping on the spot. ‘OK, OK, Alma, listen. If you really think you're having angina pains, dial 999. But remember the last three times you went to casualty with a suspected heart attack, they told you it was your crumpets lying a bit heavy.'

Melvin pushed down the aerial and shoved the phone into his jacket pocket. Then, leaning against one of the kitchen cupboards, he finished putting on his sock.

Realising there were now more important matters to address than the letter, Beverley put it back under the pepper grinder and stared at her husband in disbelief.

‘Toupees? You are flogging
toupees
now? Since when did a chemist's shop sell toupees? I don't get it, Melvin. There must be something I'm missing. What's wrong with toothpaste and panty liners?'

‘Look, I was going to tell you,' he said, absentmindedly putting a maroon sock over a navy one so that he was now wearing two socks on one foot. ‘I was reading in
The Sunday Times
Style section a few weeks ago that toupees have really taken off in New York. I just know it will only be a matter of time before they start to catch on here too. I think by getting in on the ground floor of a trend, we could be sitting on a gold mine. I mean it, this could be the end of all our money worries. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to convince old McGillicuddy at the bank to extend the overdraft on the business account by a few grand. Said I could keep it going for six months if I wanted. So now I've got ten gross best-quality micro-fibre Korean toupees in the stockroom waiting to go. I thought I'd start by seeing how they do in the shop, and if - I mean when - they take off, I'll start flogging them by mail order. They're the future, Beverley. I just know it.'

‘OK, so when you say a few grand,' she said, trying to sound casual, ‘what are we talking? Two? Three?'

‘Five,' he blurted.

‘Five,' she gasped. ‘But Mel, you already owe nearly fifteen. I hope to God you know what you're doing. Sweetheart, please don't take this the wrong way, but your track record isn't exactly...'

‘Shh,' he said, gently placing a finger over her lips and smiling. ‘Trust me. It's in the bag. A few months from now everything's gonna be peachy, Bev. Absolutely peachy.'

With that he gave a decidedly doubtful Beverley a peck on the cheek and was gone. Seconds later she heard the front door slam. A few seconds after that, she heard it open again.

‘Forgot my shoes,' Melvin called from the hall. She heard him charge upstairs, charge down again and leave the house for the second time.

As Beverley sat herself back down at the breakfast bar, she listened to the car pulling off the drive and shook her head. ‘Toupees,' she said out loud. ‘So now it's toupees.' On the other hand, what did she know? Maybe for once in his life Melvin
had
hit on something - found not so much a gap in the market as a bald patch. Certainly Mr McGillicuddy thought so.

***

‘These were on the mat. More of the usual, I see.' Beverley looked up to see her mother coming into the kitchen. Queenie Gold was an inch or two shorter than she'd been in her prime and limped slightly as a result of an only partially successful hip replacement operation. But people meeting her for the first time were never in any doubt that looks-wise she'd most definitely had a prime. Even in her mid seventies she possessed a smooth, milky complexion, and her pretty almond-shaped eyes, which Beverley and Natalie had inherited, were, despite their fleshy hoods, still a brilliant blue.

Queenie took the hate mail from the pocket of her long sleeveless cardigan and handed it to her daughter. Beverley said nothing. Clearly Melvin had either failed to notice them on his way out or had taken fright and ignored them on purpose. She'd open them later when her mother wasn't looking over her shoulder.

‘So,' Beverley said in an effort to deflect the lecture she knew was coming, ‘how's your hip this morning?'

‘Fine. It's not my hip I'm worried about. It's you and Melvin.' Queenie heaved herself on to the stool next to Beverley.

‘Oh, God. Here we go again,' Beverley said under her breath. She reached across the worktop for last night's
Evening Standard
and pretended to read it.

‘Of course, even twenty years ago I knew Melvin would never amount to anything,' Queenie continued, while Beverley mouthed her mother's words from inside the newspaper. ‘I'll never forget the day the pair of you got married. When I saw Melvin turn up at the synagogue in jeans and that tie-dyed granddad vest covered in CND badges, I wept from the humiliation of it all. Then there was the honeymoon. You couldn't go to the Canaries like all the other young marrieds - no, my son-in-law the hippy decides you have to go on a tour of all the Cruise missile bases in Europe. I tell you, Beverley, that night you ended up in prison in Germany, I turned to your father and said, “Lionel, that boy will never amount to anything.” A year later poor Daddy was dead. I tell you, Beverley, he died of a broken heart.'

‘Mum,' Beverley said from behind the newspaper, ‘he died because he was run over in Cranbrook Road by a 144 bus.'

‘Only because you were giving him so much aggravation that it had started to interfere with his concentration... I don't know, Beverley, why couldn't you have married a rich doctor? Donatella Greenberg - you remember, the one in your class at school with the gums - she married a rich doctor.'

‘What are you talking about? Donatella Greenberg went to Sierra Leone fifteen years ago and married a witchdoctor.'

‘Believe me, even from witchdoctoring he's making a better living than Melvin.'

At that moment Natalie came charging back into the kitchen, her school bag slung over one shoulder. Beverley put down the newspaper.

‘Mum, I'm dead, dead late,' she said, ignoring her grandmother and hopping agitatedly from one platformed foot to the other like a three-year-old desperate for a wee. ‘Please tell me this looks OK. Do you think anyone'll notice the zit?'

Beverley looked at Natalie's face. It was covered in a thick layer of pinky-orange concealer.

‘It's fine. You can't see a thing. Promise... By the way, Nat, you did GCSE geography. Which is further west, Bristol or Liverpool?'

‘Mum, what are you going on about? I mean, like I care. Will you stop changing the subject? Now tell me honestly. Does my nose look gross? Yes or no?'

‘How many more times? I've told you, it's absolutely fine. The only thing about you which looks gross is that bloody stud you've got in your tongue. Believe me, nobody will notice the zit.'