Copycat (32 page)

‘She’s a dyke and that’s all there is to it,’ said Sam.

Always a threat to the male of the species. An ingenious way of involving the men.

If only she hadn’t confided in me.

‘Nobody likes Poppy at school,’ said Scarlett, pretending to sound concerned for my sake. ‘She’s thick. She came last in the maths test. Thirty-two out of thirty-two.’

‘Well, that’s not your fault, Scarlett,’ I said. This was the very reaction she had wanted and my daughter purred like a cat. It did sound quite sensible the way I put it. ‘Poppy’s teachers need to know exactly what standard she’s at, for her sake. Nobody wants her to go up to the comp in September and find herself out of her depth. That’s how some children slip through the system and end up illiterate and innumerate.’

‘She’s been bragging about going private.’

I smiled sadly. ‘Maybe that’s her way of defending herself. It might be the best solution for her. It might mean she’ll get special help.’

‘Is Poppy special needs, Mummy?’

‘Of course not, don’t be silly.’

But when Lawrence came home from school with a bloody great bruise on the back of his head, it was almost a matter for rejoicing because it was Josh who had thrown the stone and that justified our position. This incident was added to the list of transgressions that we could gang up together to chew over.

‘Josh has an aggressive streak. He never could play properly,’ said Sam with a fair amount of triumph. These were my own words of years ago, now turned into weapons. My betrayal of Jennie was absolute. ‘Always determined to be the best and the strongest,’ said Sam. ‘Temper tantrums if he didn’t come first.’ Sam would never have noticed these flaws if I hadn’t pointed them out.

‘What were you doing to make him do that?’ I had to ask my wounded son.

‘We were all throwing stones,’ he said innocently, blind to his encouraging audience.

‘Did Josh get hit?’ I asked him, knowing he would tell the truth.

‘No, Josh was behind the boiler-room door.’

‘Well, that’s a blessed relief,’ sniffed Tina, ‘else we would have had the police round by now.’

Yes, it was so easy it was frightening – so simple to turn and destroy a person we had known for so long, especially when it came to protecting our own in the noble cause of righteousness.

I had liked to imagine I would stand alone against the abomination of victimization, or the singling out for suffering of any one person by any group, guilty or not. But Jennie’s barefaced gall, how she sat and told lies about Sam and Tina at my own familiar kitchen table where I had welcomed her so often, changed me. It brought out all those destructive feelings and turned me into a stranger. I had never known so much rage was lying dormant inside me.

She had deliberately attempted to wreck my marriage.

Not only that, but her sly approach to Mrs Forest, trying to blacken Scarlett’s name behind my back, as if she had forgotten how much I cared for her children, hurt me and repulsed me.

I saw that as unforgivable.

And after all we’d endured together, all those scenes and trauma sessions, the explanations, the forgivenesses, the passions and the truths and the lies, the laughter and the tears…
Who would have thought it would come to this?

It wasn’t my fault, it was Jennie’s. If only she’d taken my advice and gone on to get a degree that might have led to a job she enjoyed… If she’d done that she could have saved herself – she was just too feeble, or too bloody stubborn.

But even bearing all this in mind, the group offensive would not have happened but for the personalities involved.

Sam, for a start, could never relate to such a withdrawn person as Jennie. Sadie was trouble – bored and unhappy – with no other interests save the shop and her opera; and Tina thrived on the pickings of gossip. At home all day on her PC or driving long distances, she had too much time to dwell on trivia.

Hilary Wainwright, with her part-time career, was far more interested in playing the good fairy, and like so many people with wings on their backs, the misfortunes of others gave her propulsion. Maybe I was being unkind, but her vehement dislike of Jennie had started when her goodness was thrown back in her face.

Angie’s dislike was more reasonable. Jennie was unforgivably rude after the incident of Scarlett’s leg and it was Jennie who’d kept that pot boiling in her worst high-handed manner.

And me?

Well, I was riddled with guilt.

So eager to pander to Sam.

To show him whose side I was on and to demonstrate in the strongest way my belief in him, and my fury at Jennie.

‘She thought I was turning you against her,’ said Sam. ‘That’s why she made up that hideous lie.’

I still found this hard to understand.
‘But she must have known that I wouldn’t believe her.’

‘Why?’ Sam asked mildly. ‘You’ve believed her before. She’s told more extraordinary porkies than that.’

‘That’s true.’

‘So you’ve finally got to admit it,’ he insisted. ‘You were duped by that freak, you were her puppet for ten years, and the irony was, you believed
she
was the needy one.’

After all that, it was me who was weak, not Jennie, and I was taken by my new image – an unworldly, brainless, credulous fool. It was nice to be called ‘child’ again, it relieved me of so much responsibility. I enjoyed the new coddling, the tutting and shrugging; I was no longer a knowing old bag. No-one could say of me, ‘No flies on that one.’

Sam said, ‘Tina’s not my type. Give me some credit – an Essex girl, common as muck. And she’s so busy chasing after Carl, when would she have the time for any extra nooky?’

I longed to ask:
Who was it then, Sam?
I knew for sure there’d been somebody. I wasn’t such a cretin as that, whatever he might like to think. But I guessed that all I needed to do was wait until he made his confession. He always did. A creature of habit. Baring his soul was part of the thrill.

It was me who brought home the scoop of the week.

I brandished a copy of the paper like a flag. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’ And I read aloud to a startled Sam: ‘
“LOCAL POTTER’S WHEEL OF FORTUNE!
An obscure local potter, working from her garage at home, hit the big time this week when she accepted an important commission from US dealer and art connoisseur, Demetrius Hogg. This means a whole change of fortune for housewife and mother, Jennie Gordon of Mulberry Close…” ’

I read on quickly, tumbling over the words in my pleasure at seeing the amazement spread over Sam’s face. “Of course I couldn’t believe it at first,’ said Mrs Gordon, thirty-four, mother of two. But teacher and author Mrs Josie Magee, who taught Mrs Gordon for two years, said, ‘I knew that if Jennie kept going, one day she would make it big. She’s a one and only. The magic touch. For her this is just the start.’

‘ “Mr Hogg, with connections to the world’s most prestigious auction houses and whose clients include wealthy collectors, studios and stores, told the
Express,
‘I am delighted to have discovered such excellence. Jennie’s beautifully formed and textured sculptures make an important contribution to the ancient craft of creating with clay and must be exploited fully. Only then can they be properly admired by those who appreciate such unique talent.’

‘ “It is understood that Mr Hogg has purchased several of Mrs Gordon’s pieces and these include works entitled ‘Sky through the Eyes of God’, ‘The Wings of the Wind’ and ‘Hound Howlings’. When asked where her inspiration came from, Mrs Gordon said, ‘It comes from anguish.’

‘ “There will be an exhibition of Jennie Gordon’s work at the Hamish Lisle Gallery at the end of this month.” ’

‘Read that again,’ said Sam, so I did. ‘It’s no good. I can’t take it in.’ Neither could I. Wait till the neighbours heard. At last Jennie had somewhere to put her passion.

So why did I feel so sad?

S
O WHY DID I
feel so sad?

Look at me now, I was successful, with appointments in my diary other than dentist and smear.

I felt so sad because it had required an almost intolerable level of misery for me to discover my art, to stumble on this magic talent never awakened before. I had to reach rock bottom to find it. The passion that drove me to work every morning was due to a total collapse of the spirit and I could only vaguely recognize the acclaim my work received. Graham was prouder of me than I was and made sure I saw the articles and write-ups that catapulted me to fame. It was my anguished sculptures that made it, not my humble everyday pots.

I prayed for the equanimity that would let me get back to my pots again.

As the fastidious Stella would have said: ‘How could you expose yourself so? What do these ugly forms mean?’ And her lips would pleat over her teeth just like a Cornish pasty.

But the main benefit of my phoenix-like rise from the ashes of lowly housewife and mother was the diversion it caused for me and my family. And, my God, we desperately needed something. I also have to admit to a sense of revenge lurking somewhere in the hotchpotch of emotion – I had survived in spite of the odds. We had risen above a malicious campaign aimed at our destruction and so long as I could keep plying my trade we would do a hell of a lot more than survive.

It looked as if we might make a fortune.

Far too good to be true.

Martha was contemptuous of humbler winners of the National Lottery when they stood beaming daftly in front of the cameras, swearing that their lives wouldn’t change. ‘Why do these morons buy tickets?’ she’d ask. ‘Why don’t they give the money to me – at least I’d know how to spend it.’ And Martha did love to dream like that: imagining how it might have been if she’d gone to drama school as she’d hoped, or if she’d kept up her tennis, or if she’d married that queer MP who had once proposed at a drunken party, but who she’d turned down because he was too old.

She certainly liked to pour scorn on me. ‘You don’t have a clue when it comes to taste. I mean, of course that dress doesn’t suit you, it’s tacky, it’s dated, it does nothing for you.’ And over the years she had influenced my buyings, from upholstery fabrics to Graham’s new suits.

When she went to buy clothes for her children, I would go with her and buy the same makes.

‘And do stop calling it “sweet”, Jennie, please. Whatever’s the matter with pudding?’

Could it be – and I shrank from this thought – that Martha’s influence came out in my sculptures, that they were nothing to do with me at all? And as I had now lost contact, would my talents peter out? Had I soaked up enough to last me? It was so difficult for me to believe that my creations, admired by so many, came from the dull and heavy heart of frumpy Jennie Gordon. There was no doubt that Martha was my inspiration.

Had she heard about my little success?

‘She knows all about it,’ Graham reassured me. ‘They all know. They’d have to be hermits not to know. Your face is splashed over every local paper, and then there was that
Guardian
interview last week.’

‘What do they think? How do they feel?’ It gave me pleasure to try to imagine, especially Sadie Harcourt with her arts degree and her hand-made earrings.

‘Don’t spare them a thought,’ said Graham contemptuously. ‘Knowing them, they’ll be green. Pretentious prats.’

‘Jealous? Of me?’ The idea was preposterous.

‘You’ve got to get them out of your head.’

Was Graham jealous?
What would I have felt like, I wondered, if he had been the one suddenly to be called an amazing talent by the
Sunday Times
magazine? Would I change my attitude towards him? See him as a brand-new person, a stranger, stronger, who had grown a new part like an extra leg which was nothing to do with me –
not mine
? I might have found this stranger threatening and have worried that he might find somebody else more worthy. But I secretly wished it had been Graham; he deserved to triumph so much more than I did.

Now whether it was my fifteen minutes of glory that weakened the will of my neighbours, or whether they were just getting bored or running out of ideas – whichever it was I don’t know – there was nevertheless a marked reduction in vicious behaviour; more of a cold and stony silence. Stares and whispers. Their prey had been shown a hole in the hedge large enough to take all of them. And in this calmer climate we were at last able to sell our house. We sweated as the deal went through; in those days you heard such alarming stories.

I had hoped that Martha might bend enough to congratulate me, just a note or a phone call for old times’ sake. But no.

Nothing.

Filled with a new and startling energy, we set off for the gallery where I was to be introduced to the world. Great preparations were under way. White carpets, walls and windows. Hogg, Hamish Lisle and Tomikins rushed around seeking perfection. I felt foolishly out of my depth in this precious environment, yet I couldn’t deny the flushes of pride when I saw my pieces out of the garage and displayed to their best advantage, made bolder and richer by clever lighting. They were big, big and getting bigger as my passion and anger grew, especially the heads of the two black rooks, which even I found disturbing.

‘My God, it’s so dark. Is it sinister?’ I asked Hogg, as I followed him round and watched him directing the handlers where to place another haunting piece. ‘People will see these and think I’m a freak.’

‘No, they won’t, they’ll love them, like I do,’ he said. And I saw how much the right angle mattered and how a fraction of an inch could make all the difference. My mentor was a fat little Texan, bald as the American eagle, with round gold spectacles hooked over his chubby ears.

They were asking unbelievable prices, when you think that most of these were knocked up crazily in a week or even a matter of days. This must be some fluke, I thought. I lived with a fierce premonition that something would go disastrously wrong: they would discover that I was a fraud and the critics would expose me to an angry public.

‘Why don’t you ever make something nice?’ asked Poppy, as awed as I was.