Another Life Altogether (43 page)

“All right, you horrible little wretches,” Mr. Matthews boomed, making me jump as he burst out of the chemistry lab. “Get inside. And anybody that breathes one single word without my permission during the next hour will find themselves in detention again tomorrow night. Am I making myself clear?”

A couple of minutes later we were sitting, heads bent over our exercise books, copying down the long series of indecipherable chemical formulas from the textbooks Mr. Matthews had handed out.

Time passed with excruciating slowness, expanded, it seemed, by a silence punctuated only by the scratch of pencils over paper, the turning of pages, and the hollow staccato of coughs. Eventually, five o’clock
came around and we were released. Since I had half an hour before the bus arrived to take me home, I didn’t gallop away like almost all my fellow students. Instead, I ambled slowly along the corridor, breathing in the pungent smells of floor polish and disinfectant as I passed mop-wielding cleaning ladies.

As I made my way to the exit, I saw Malcolm walking in front of me. His satchel was unbuckled and bounced against his hips, and as he turned the corner of the corridor its flap flew wide and something fell from it and fluttered to the floor. When I reached the corner, I bent down to pick it up. It was several pieces of paper folded together, covered in tight paragraphs of tiny, scrawled writing. Without thinking, I picked up my pace.

“Malcolm,” I called.

He spun around. “What do you want?”

I waved the papers at him. “You dropped this.”

“Oh.” He took it from me. “Thanks.”

Without knowing why, I realized that I wanted to keep him there. “It’s probably not important,” I said, “but I thought … I thought … Well, you never know what someone has written on those little bits of paper. I write things all the time and I, well … I just thought you might need it, that’s all.”

Malcolm looked at me steadily, as if he were trying to solve a puzzle in my face. Then he let his lips ease into a slight smile. “Actually, those are my notes for the history essay I have to write tonight. I spent ages writing these. I’d be sort of lost without them. So, really, thanks a lot.” He put them back into his satchel.

“I’m glad you didn’t lose them,” I said as he buckled up the flap. Then, not knowing what else to say, I turned to make my way to the school’s main doors. I was surprised, though, when Malcolm matched my pace to walk beside me. I was also surprised and rather pleased when he seemed to want to make conversation.

“So why did you get put into detention?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, that’s what they all say.”

“No, really, I didn’t do anything,” I said with conviction. Then, more softly, I asked, “What did you do?”

“I got caught running in the corridor, but it wasn’t really my fault. I know better than to run in the corridors when Adolf is on patrol.” He looked at me and grinned. “See, I had to stay behind after registration, and when I got out I ran because I didn’t want to be late for French. Miss Greenly hates it when you’re late. Of course, there was no point trying to explain that to Adolf. You know, I actually think he’d make a good dictator, that man.”

“He is a bit of a wanker,” I ventured.

“You can say that again.” Malcolm laughed. “So, anyway, why did you end up in detention?”

I hesitated.

“Come on,” he said, nudging me gently with a skinny elbow. “You can tell me.”

For a moment, I wondered if I should just tell Malcolm that I’d set fire to the filter paper and tried to smoke it, if it would be disloyal to Tracey if I told him the truth. But while I’d taken the blame with Mr. Matthews, I wasn’t prepared to let Malcolm think I’d done such a stupid thing. So I told him what happened. Malcolm said nothing as I spoke.

“Do you want a lift home?” he said as we pushed out into the chill and he pointed to a car standing by the entrance, the headlights on and the engine running. “That’s my dad. He can drop you off in Midham if you want. It’s on our way.”

I looked around the school grounds. There were still a few kids from detention crossing the car park. And by the gates I could see a little crowd. I wondered if Tracey was among them, still chatting with Greg, waiting for him to give her a lift home on his motorbike. I wondered, too, what she would think if she saw me pass the school gates with Malcolm in his father’s car.

“No, no, it’s all right,” I said. “Really, I don’t mind getting the bus.”

“But that’s daft. It’d be much quicker for you if—” Malcolm paused, following my gaze.

“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t want to be any trouble.” I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back. For a moment, he looked hurt. Then his expression shifted to that same look of disdain I’d seen when I joined him earlier outside the lab.

“I get it,” he said. “You don’t want your precious friends to see you with me. Is that it?”

I said nothing.

“Your lovely best friend, the one who deliberately dropped you in it with Adolf—you don’t want her to see you with Malcolm Poofter Clements?” He imitated Tracey’s sour and mocking tone. “What would she say if she saw you with a pathetic little nancy boy like me?” He tossed his head and waved his hand loosely through the air, the way Tracey did when she made fun of him.

“No, it’s just that …” I wanted to explain to him. It wasn’t really like that. It was just that I couldn’t bear to go back to what had gone before. I couldn’t be like him, teased and ridiculed, and withstand it.

“You know something? You’re the one that’s pathetic. Look at you.” He jabbed a finger in my direction. “So busy worrying about what other people think. Did it ever occur to you to start thinking for yourself?” For a second, his expression was a burning accusation, and then he turned and stalked toward his father’s car.

N
OT LONG AFTER MABEL AND FRANK JOINED US TO WATCH
COLUMBO
,
Frank started to make far more frequent visits to our house. Most of the time, he came without Mabel. Chugging up the driveway in the Tuggles delivery van, he often arrived just after I got home from school. The only positive thing about these visits was that he didn’t stay long. Instead, he and Ted would leave together, returning late when he dropped Ted at the end of our driveway and sped off down the road. Sometimes, when I heard the distinctive churn of Frank’s van as it approached in the evening, I’d peer out my bedroom window to watch Ted make his way up our path—now a smooth gray band of new concrete after my mother had replaced the old one. In the dark, I could see his silhouette and the glowing orange dot of his cigarette end sweeping back and forth from his mouth.

“Frank’s being ever so good to Ted,” Mabel said to my mother one Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks after Frank’s more frequent visits had commenced.

Mabel was standing on a chair in the kitchen while my mother, a handful of pins clenched between her lips, adjusted the hem of her wedding dress. The dress was hot-pink satin with a bell-shaped skirt, huge puffy sleeves, and a deeply plunging neckline—a feature that my
mother and Mabel had argued about for weeks, with Mabel (unusually, as far as decisions for the wedding were concerned) finally winning out. Up on the chair like that, I thought Mabel looked more like an enormous cake decoration than a bride.

“I’m sure Ted doesn’t appreciate it, but Frank’s doing him a whopping big favor,” Mabel said.

“What do you mean, Auntie Mabel?” I asked. I was sitting at the table, leafing through the Littlewoods catalog. I’d been instructed by my mother to look at two pairs of shoes she’d circled, the ones she thought would go best with my bridesmaid’s dress. Both pairs were pink—one satin and pointy-toed, the other shiny plastic with a three-inch heel. I’d already decided that I’d rather walk barefoot on burning coals than wear either. “How’s Frank helping Uncle Ted?”

“He’s trying to help Ted get a job.”

“He is?” Somehow, I doubted this. After having had the opportunity to observe Ted for a couple of months now, I’d concluded that he would prefer to attend his own execution than engage in anything resembling legitimate work. And, after overhearing his surreptitious conversation in the hallway with Frank, I’d developed various theories about what sort of shady activity the two of them might be up to, finally concluding that Frank, worried about all the expense of the wedding, had engaged Ted in getting some of the supplies on the cheap. I wanted to confide my suspicions to Mabel, knowing that she’d be livid with Frank if this was, in fact, true. Maybe she’d even break off her relationship with him. But I wasn’t sure how my mother would take any blowup so close to the wedding, so I’d decided to keep my suspicions to myself. Still, I couldn’t help trying to sow a few seeds of doubt about Frank in Mabel’s mind. “How’s he helping Uncle Ted find a job?” I asked.

“Every day, after Frank’s finished at the Tuggles factory, he comes over here, picks Ted up, and takes him out to look for work. Bloody angel for doing it, you ask me.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Shouldn’t Uncle Ted be looking for a job during the day?”

“Frank says he’s trying to help Ted get a job working nights, says they need to go then so they can talk to the shift supervisors.”

“But I thought Ted said he didn’t want to work nights,” I said. “And Frank agreed. He said it would be too hard on a man Ted’s age.”

“Oh, I don’t know, darling,” Mabel said, wrinkling up her nose. “Anyway, whatever sort of work he’s helping Ted to look for, I’ve told Frank that he’s wasting his time. The day I see our Ted in a normal job will be the day that pigs get wings. And, once the wedding’s over, I’ve told Frank—” Mabel paused, looking excited, as if another thought had dawned on her. “Speaking of the wedding, Ev, I meant to tell you. I got a reply yesterday to the invitation I sent to Mam. And guess what—she says she’s going to come. She’s coming to the wedding, Ev.”

My mother stood up, spitting the pins from her mouth so that they spattered, like silver threads of spittle, down her dress to land on the linoleum with bright little
pings
. “Really? Mam’s coming here, all the way from Australia? She’s coming?” Her features simmered with excitement.

“Yep, she’s coming all right. Unfortunately, she says she was late making a booking and the only flight she could get is one that gets her into London the night before. So she won’t be able to get here until the actual day of the wedding. Still, she’ll be here.”

“That’s great, that’s brilliant,” my mother said, bouncing up and down on her heels, her face filled with the kind of delight she usually reserved for eating Mr. Kipling cakes. Within a couple of seconds, though, her expression changed. “She’s not bringing that bloody Australian gigolo with her, is she?”

Mabel looked sheepish. “Well, I think so. I mean, he is her fiancé. And I did include him in the invitation.” She winced in apparent anticipation of my mother’s reaction.

“You invited him?”

“I had to invite him, Evelyn,” Mabel said, lifting and then dropping her shoulders in such a dramatic shrug that the billowy satin dress rustled as if it, like Mabel, were letting out an exasperated sigh. “You never know, maybe you’ll like him once you meet him.”

“Right,” my mother said, crouching toward the floor as she began to search for the pins she’d spat out. “I’d say that’s about as likely as Frank getting our Ted a job.”

AS APRIL TURNED
to May and the wedding came closer, the pace of activity in our house rose to a previously unknown level of frenzy, which, given my mother’s history of frenetic focus, was really quite breathtaking. During the final fortnight before the ceremony, I got the impression that she never really slept. She was working on the wedding when I went to bed and she was working on it every morning when I got up, and it became increasingly common for her to wake me with some noise or disturbance during the night.

Even my father, who was usually pleased when my mother was engaged in some new all-consuming project, was concerned at the ceaseless pace with which she continued to work. “Don’t you think you should take a day off, Evelyn?” he asked her one Sunday afternoon as she sat at her sewing machine in the kitchen, her foot pushed down on the pedal as if she were a racing-car driver in the final stretch. I was standing at the counter, making myself some toast and jam for an afternoon snack. I cringed as my father shouted from the doorway over at my mother. But he had to yell; otherwise she would never have heard him above the roar of the sewing machine’s motor.

“Take a day off?” my mother yelled back, pausing to straighten out the rose-patterned material she’d been pushing under the flash of the sewing-machine needle. “I haven’t got time to take a day off. I’ve got to get these tablecloths finished. And then I’ve got the place mats and serviettes to make. Then there’s the decorations to buy, and the booze
to order. I haven’t even got around to finishing the menu. And, of course, I’m going to have to fit in some time to make the wedding cake.”

“But do you have to do it all, Evelyn?” my father said, recoiling as my mother pressed her foot down and the sewing machine roared again. “I mean, can’t we just order the food and the cake? Can’t we get some help from somebody else?” He was shouting at the top of his voice, trying to make himself heard above the sewing machine’s harrowing bawl.